Hacks & Wonks: Recent Episodes
Crystal Fincher
Hacks & Wonks is a show hosted by political consultant Crystal Fincher, who talks with Policy Wonks and Political Hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work, with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening and what you can do about it.
Representative Sharon Tomiko Santos, running for reelection in the 37th Legislative District, argues that displacement, public safety, housing, childcare affordability, and a fundamental reimagining of Washington's education delivery system are the defining challenges of this moment.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Sharon Tomiko Santos at https://friendsofsantos.nationbuilder.com/.
Kelabe Tewolde is running for State Representative in the 37th District, challenging the incumbent in a race centered on housing affordability, education investment, environmental justice, and public safety in South Seattle.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Kelabe Tewolde at https://www.kelabeforwashington.com/.
Silas James is running for Seattle City Council District 5 as a working-class Democratic Socialist focused on fixing failing systems.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Silas James at https://silasforseattle.com/.
Nilu Jenks is running for the District 5 Seattle City Council seat, prioritizing affordable housing, reliable public transportation, and climate resilience.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Nilu Jenks at https://www.neighborsfornilu.org/.
Ron Davis, challenging 15-year incumbent Rep. Gerry Pollet, shares his vision and priorities for the 46th district.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Ron Davis at https://www.voterondavis.com/.
State Representative Chipalo Street is running for the open 37th District Senate seat, emphasizing his record on progressive taxation, housing affordability, reparations, and immigrant protections as the district faces compounding pressures from federal policy rollbacks and a tight state budget.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Chipalo Street at https://electchipalo.com/.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Erica Barnett discuss:
🗄️ Data center moratorium 🚈 Link light rail ridership soars 🕸️ The whole KCRHA situation 🫶 CARE Department proposal
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Erica Barnett, on Bluesky at @ericacbarnett and on PubliCola.com.
Tatiana Brown is running for the open 37th District State Senate seat on a platform of progressive tax reform, environmental justice, expanded public safety alternatives, and community-driven governance.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Tatiana Brown at https://www.tatianaforwa.org/.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Jerry Cornfield discuss:
⚖️ Developments in WA redistricting case 🧑⚖️ WA Supreme Court races ⚔️ Impending battle to be Speaker of the House 🔍 Rep Tarra Simmons faces ethics charges 😭 Tragedy in Longview ✊ Spokane 3 found guilty
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Jerry Cornfield at https://washingtonstatestandard.com/author/jerry-cornfield/.
Jaelynn Scott is running for the 37th District House and shares her priorities, including progressive revenue, social housing, care-based public safety, and sanctuary protections for immigrants and LGBTQ communities.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Jaelynn Scott at https://www.votejaelynn.com/.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Robert Cruickshank discuss:
☕ Mayor Wilson, Starbucks, and business lobbying
🏳️🌈 Seattle to declare a state of emergency to support LGBTQ refugees
🚈 Sound Transit swings the axe at ST3 projects (vote is next Thursday, 5/28)
🚲 The NIMBY drama over Bicycle Weekends on Lake Washington Blvd
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Robert Cruickshank, on Bluesky at @robertcruickshank.com.
Hannah Sabio-Howell, a labor organizer and former Washington State Senate communications staffer, is challenging incumbent Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen for the 43rd Legislative District's state senate seat. The district, which covers Capitol Hill, First Hill, the Central District, and Madison Valley, is widely considered the most politically progressive district in the state.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Hannah Sabio-Howell at https://hannahforwashington.com/.
Washington Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen is running for reelection in the 43rd District. In this Hacks & Wonks interview, he defends his record and shares his priorities on taxes, education, child care, immigration & protecting Washington residents from a hostile federal administration.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Jamie Pedersen at https://peopleforpedersen.org/.
Port Commissioner Toshiko Hasegawa is running for the King County Council District 2 open seat and shares her priorities, including prioritizing criminal legal reform, affordable housing, child homelessness, and resisting federal overreach.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Toshiko Hasegawa at https://www.votetoshiko.com/.
Rebecca Saldaña is leaving the State Senate to run for the open King County Council District 2 seat. She spoke with Hacks & Wonks about her priorities, including addressing the county's budget deficit, homelessness, public safety, transit equity, and environmental justice.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Rebecca Saldaña at https://www.rebeccasaldana.com/.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and David Kroman discuss:
🚧 Governor comms sign-off rule delays info flow
🧊 WA tries to gain access to privately-run ICE facility
❌ Calls for dissolution after KCRHA audit
🧒 Wilson expands free student meals and childcare
🚓 SPD Chief questions LEAD program
🛑 Judge halts law to oust decertified sheriffs
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, David Kroman at @kromandavid.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Robert Cruickshank discuss:
⚔️ Progressive Democrats take on moderate incumbents
🚈 Sound Transit 3 in crisis
🏘️ Mayor Wilson's housing proposals
💯 Katie Wilson's first 100 days
🧑🏫 Seattle Public Schools debates how to handle educator misconduct
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Robert Cruickshank, on Bluesky at @robertcruickshank.com.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Erica Barnett discuss:
📜 Accountability law enacted for sheriffs
⚔️ Court battle starts over millionaires' tax
🏛️ Wilson town halls on shelter proposal and surveillance
👮 Cops assigned to Magnuson
↔️ Opposing views at Comp Plan hearings
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Erica Barnett, on Bluesky at @ericacbarnett and on PubliCola.com.
Crystal gives a quick update on the Hacks & Wonks schedule.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii.
Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown has focused on protecting state residents, filing 49 lawsuits against federal actions and prioritizing consumer protection and workers' rights during his first year in office. Join us for an inside look at the often unseen work of the Attorney General's Office.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Attorney General Nick Brown on Bluesky at @atg.wa.gov.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Robert Cruickshank discuss:
😡 WA still providing driver data to federal immigration agents
🌱 New Seattle electeds inaugurated
🤨 SPOG misleads on drug policy
🥳 Mike Solan out as SPOG president
🪓 Bob Ferguson proposes an income tax – and huge austerity
💸 Inslee criticizes Ferguson's raid on climate funding
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Robert Cruickshank, on Bluesky at @robertcruickshank.com.
As Washington state braces for devastating federal budget cuts, State Representative Shaun Scott is leading a progressive revenue effort he says could protect critical services from austerity measures contained in the Trump administration's proposed budget.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Representative Shaun Scott at @organizewithshaun.
Washington State Representative Chipalo Street is entering the upcoming 2026 legislative session with an ambitious agenda that includes fixing structural problems in juvenile rehabilitation, reforming the state's regressive tax system, and protecting residents from federal overreach.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Representative Chipalo Street at housedemocrats.wa.gov/street/.
The Transit Riders Union faces a transformation as its longtime leader prepares to become Seattle's mayor. For over a decade, the grassroots organization has built power for working people across King County. With Katie Wilson headed to City Hall, TRU is navigating a leadership transition while positioning itself to push an ambitious agenda.
Wes Mills, TRU's new General Secretary, discussed how the organization is adapting and what comes next.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii, find Wes Mills on Bluesky at @oowm.org, and Transit Riders Union at transitriders.org/.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Shauna Sowersby discuss:
🌊 Historic flooding across WA
🛡️ Protecting workers from immigration raids
⚔️ Legislature's public records fight continues
📉 County plans for Trump homelessness changes
💸 New SPOG contract = bad deal for Seattle
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Shauna Sowersby at @ssowersby.
Seattle's creative economy drives 18% of city GDP but artists can't afford to live here. Randy Engstrom, co-leading Mayor-Elect Wilson's arts transition team, argues culture must be central to solving housing, education, and economic challenges - not treated as expendable when budgets get tight.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Randy Engstrom on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/randyengstrom/.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and David Kroman discuss:
✂️ Ferguson budget relies on cuts
🧑⚖️ Trump sues WA
🏢 Affordable housing bailout
🔮 Significance of Wilson hires
✋ Eddie Lin sworn into Council
🚈 Light rail arrives in South King Co!
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, David Kroman at @kromandavid.
Senator Rebecca Saldaña is preparing for her 10th year representing South Seattle's 37th Legislative District with plans to address healthcare access, immigration protections, and Washington's budget shortfall.
In a recent interview on the Hacks & Wonks podcast, Saldaña outlined her priorities for the January legislative session. She said her work remains grounded in the experiences of immigrant and refugee families, working people, LGBTQ residents, and those fighting displacement in her district.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Senator Rebecca Saldaña at @rebeccasaldana1.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Erica Barnett discuss:
▶️ Mayor-elect Katie Wilson's transition
▶️ KC Exec Zahilay's staff review
▶️ Council hands a budget of Harrell's priorities to Wilson
▶️ Pipeline spill raises safety concerns
▶️ Is ICE using local surveillance in WA?
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Erica Barnett, on Bluesky at @ericacbarnett and on PubliCola.com.
Washington state's 2025 elections saw progressives win across multiple cities and legislative districts, with people-powered campaigns and bold ideas beating out establishment moderates. Listen in to the Hacks & Wonks 2025 Post-Election Roundtable from Tuesday, November 11, 2025, as the strategists who saw it coming explain what pundits missed!
Panelists:
- Stephen Paolini, Principal at Bottled Lightning Collective
- Lexi Koren, Communications Consultant with PowerHouse Strategic
- Crystal Fincher, Executive Director of KVRU and Hacks & Wonks Host
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today's special guests, Stephen Paolini at @stephenpaolini, and Lexi Koren at @lexikoren.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Robert Cruickshank discuss:
🤩 Katie Wilson elected mayor!
🌊 Progressive wave across region and state
👀 What to watch out for next
🏫 Role of Stranger school board endorsements
⚔️ Looking forward to legislative session
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Robert Cruickshank, on Bluesky at @robertcruickshank.com.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Robert Cruickshank discuss:
⚾ Mariners!
💸 Seattle wastes homelessness money
⛔ SPOG undermining popular CARE team
🚫 Seattle School Board rejects cop at Garfield
🗳️ Use dropboxes to vote!
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Robert Cruickshank, on Bluesky at @robertcruickshank.com.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Melissa Santos discuss:
WA/CA/OR vaccine alliance
Cell phones in schools
Firefighter immigration raid = inside job
Harrell pushes light rail extensions despite shortfall
Autonomous vehicles pilot starts
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Melissa Santos at @melissajsantos.
Amy Sundberg, public safety reporter for The Urbanist and publisher of Notes from the Emerald City, joins Hacks & Wonks to discuss how Seattle's City Council is poised to expand the city's surveillance pilot program before collecting any evaluation data on its effectiveness, raising concerns among privacy advocates about potential federal access to the data amid heightened immigration enforcement.
The expansion, scheduled for a final council vote on September 9 at 2:30 p.m., would install new cameras in three areas and tap into Seattle Department of Transportation's existing network of traffic management cameras, adding more than 365 cameras total to the Seattle Police Department's Real-Time Crime Center.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Amy Sundberg at @amysundberg.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Robert Cruickshank discuss:
🧊 Spokane blocks warrantless ICE action
🥡 $15m Uber Eats settlement
🛒 UFCW 3000 backs Wilson
🚲 Biker hit where safety upgrades were cancelled
🏫 School board updates
🪧 Protests against Microsoft use by IDF
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank, on Bluesky at @robertcruickshank.com.
Hacks & Wonks hosted a 2025 Post-Primary Roundtable on Tuesday, August 12, 2025 to dig into the 2025 primary results - what they mean, how they happened, and what's next - with the people who actually do the work of winning (and sometimes losing) campaigns in Seattle and King County. Listen to the roundtable as a podcast or watch the recorded livestream on YouTube!
By bringing together a panel of seasoned local political consultants who've been in the field, in the strategy rooms, and on the phones - not just pundits looking at numbers from a distance - they cut through the noise and spin to give insights not found in typical news coverage.
Panelists:
- Riall Johnson, Principal Partner at Prism West
- Stephen Paolini, Principal at Bottled Lightning Collective
- Lexi Koren, Communications Consultant with PowerHouse Strategic
- Crystal Fincher, Political Consultant with Fincher Consulting and Hacks & Wonks Host
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s special guests, Riall Johnson at @rialljohnson, Stephen Paolini at @stephenpaolini, and Lexi Koren at @lexikoren.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Erica Barnett discuss:
⛪ Christian nationalist rally moves to new park
🤑 Police execs take bonus meant for officers
🛡️ Trump admin targets sanctuary cities –
📮 -- and vote-by-mail
🕵️ Tacoma ICE facility must open for inspections
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica Barnett, on Bluesky at @ericacbarnett and on PubliCola.com.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and David Kroman discuss:
💰 Seattle B&O tax overhaul proposal
📉 Seattle budget forecast
👁️ Seattle surveillance expansion
⚖️ Tacoma minimum wage initiative sues city
⚔️ MGP challenger in CD3
🗳️ Election results update
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, David Kroman at @kromandavid.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Josh Cohen discuss:
❤️🩹 A Hacks & Wonks update
🗳️ Primary election results!
👀 Seattle: Mayor, City Attorney, City Council seats
💵 Seattle Democracy Vouchers
🥊 King County: Executive, D5 Council seat
🤓 Takeaways
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Josh Cohen at @jcohenwrites.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Robert Cruickshank discuss:
🙅 End of Denny Blaine nudity
🗳️ Urbanist endorsements
🧑🏫 Sea Public Schools news
🐀 Hot Rat Summer
📸 Seattle police cameras
❌ Harrell cancels safety upgrades
💸 Business pours $ in WA Senate races
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank, on Bluesky at @robertcruickshank.com.
Seattle voters will decide in August whether to renew funding for the city's groundbreaking Democracy Voucher Program, the first and only system of its kind in the United States that gives residents public money to support local candidates of their choice.
Proposition 1 on the August 5 primary ballot asks voters to approve a 10-year property tax levy to continue the program, which provides every eligible Seattle resident with four $25 vouchers annually to contribute to qualified candidates for mayor, city attorney, and city council.
Estevan Muñoz-Howard was one of the original leaders of the 2015 campaign that created the Democracy Voucher program and continues his work as a democracy activist with People Powered Elections Seattle. Professor Jennifer Heerwig from Stony Brook University is the leading scholar studying the program's impacts. She's tracked its effects through multiple election cycles and recently published a book on her findings called Democracy Vouchers and the Promise of Fairer Elections in Seattle.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Estevan Muñoz-Howard on LinkedIn and Professor Jennifer Heerwig at https://www.jenheerwig.com/.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Erica Barnett discuss:
⚖️ No Wilson charges
💬 Pro-Harrell message testing poll
🔄 Moore replacement
👑 Bills expand Davison/Police power
🔎 Ask to end consent decree
🤖 PC Sheriff gets bad advice from ChatGPT
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica Barnett, on Bluesky at @ericacbarnett and on PubliCola.com.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Josh Cohen discuss:
🎯 WA top target in Medicaid cuts
😬 KC Assessor Wilson arrested
🚔 Barnes confirmed as police chief
💰 Possible sales tax increase for public safety
🏗️ Rinck revives Morales’ community dev program
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Josh Cohen at @jcohenwrites.
King County Executive candidate Claudia Balducci outlines her approach to the region's biggest challenges, emphasizing housing affordability, prevention-focused public safety & regional coordination.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Claudia Balducci at @claudiaforkcexec.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and David Kroman discuss:
👀 NYC mayoral race hints at Seattle’s?
💰 Seattle biz tax revamp?
🚔 Pursuit GPS trackers & digital billboards
📷 License plate readers proliferate in WA
🏘️ Affordable housing industry crisis
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, David Kroman at @kromandavid.
King County Executive candidate Girmay Zahilay details plans for the region's biggest challenges, including homelessness, public safety & housing affordability.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Girmay Zahilay at @girmayzahilay.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Robert Cruickshank discuss:
👑 ‘No Kings’ protests ⚕️ WA immigrants' health data shared w/ feds 🏘️ Housing First works well 🚍 Saka erases advocates, makes deal w/ Curby 🤑 RealPage ban delayed 🎒 School waitlists lifted
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank, on Bluesky at @robertcruickshank.com.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Erica Barnett discuss:
👋 Cathy Moore resigning
🗳️ Kshama Sawant running for Congress
😬 KC Assessor John Wilson won't resign despite calls
🚔 Diaz/Tompkins updates
🏳️🌈 WA State Patrol interrupts Pride flag ceremony
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica Barnett, on Bluesky at @ericacbarnett and on PubliCola.com.
Jeanie Chunn, candidate for Seattle City Council District 2, shares her stance on housing affordability, public safety, transportation, and more while advocating for significant changes to the city's approach to public safety, housing, and budget priorities.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find more about Jeanie Chunn at votejeanie.com.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Josh Cohen discuss:
🏳️⚧️ “Protect Our Kids” anti-trans rally & counterprotests
📉 Every Seattle elected = negative approval
🏘️ Seattle's interim missing middle housing
🤦 Essential behavioral health facilities stymied
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Josh Cohen at @jcohenwrites.
Eddie Lin, running for Seattle City Council in District 2, shares his stance on housing affordability, public safety, transportation, and more while emphasizing his government experience and commitment to community-driven solutions.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Eddie Lin at @linforseattle.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and David Kroman discuss:
🖋️ Ferguson acts on state budget, parental bill of rights
🧊 Troubling ICE raids
🤓 Seattle Mayor race deep dive
🔔 Sara Nelson bellwether
🗳️ Other notable primary races
⛺️ Rushed Tent City 4 move
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, David Kroman at @kromandavid.
Jamie Fackler, running for Seattle City Council in District 2, shares his stance on housing affordability, public safety, transportation, and more while emphasizing his opposition to corporate influence in local politics.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find more about Jamie Fackler at https://www.jamieforseattle.com/.
In an extensive interview with Crystal Fincher of Hacks & Wonks, Seattle City Attorney candidate Erika Evans outlines why she is challenging incumbent Ann Davison with a platform centered on community-based solutions, addressing root causes of crime, and protecting civil rights.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find more about Erika Evans at https://electerikaevans.com/.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Robert Cruickshank discuss:
📊 Breakdown of Legislature's state budget
🧐 Ferguson’s first four months
🤔 Mallahan can? What's up with Seattle mayor race
🚔 SPD hiring up but few women + another lawsuit alleging racism
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank, on Bluesky at @robertcruickshank.com.
In a wide-ranging interview on the Hacks & Wonks podcast, Seattle City Attorney candidate Rory O'Sullivan outlines his vision for transformative change in an office he believes has gone in the "wrong direction" under current City Attorney Ann Davison.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Rory O’Sullivan at @electrory.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Donna Blankinship discuss:
💔 State Senator Bill Ramos
🗳️ April ballot results
💵 Seattle Democracy Vouchers
📚 Seattle Education Levy expanded
🧑⚖️ Spokane homeless initiative struck down
📈 Sharp increase in homelessness
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii. Find today’s co-host, Donna Blankinship on Substack at Civics for Adults and Bluesky at @dgblankinship.
In a comprehensive interview with Crystal Fincher of Hacks & Wonks, Seattle City Attorney candidate Nathan Rouse outlines his vision for reforming the office through the lens of his public defender experience, criticizing incumbent Republican Ann Davison's approach while proposing alternative solutions focused on addressing root causes of crime.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find Nathan Rouse at @nathanrouse.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Ryan Packer discuss:
😟 Poll: people are plugged in/worried
🫰 No wealth tax = everyone else pays
🛣️ Transpo budget overview
🤷 Workers’ comp upgrade debacle
🪪 KC AFIS levy pros & cons
🚸 Tacoma Streets Initiative II
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Ryan Packer at @typewriteralley.
In response to sweeping policy changes at the federal level, Seattle City Council has established a Select Committee on Federal Administration and Policy Changes to track and respond to threats to federal funding, executive orders, and civil rights rollbacks affecting the city. The committee, chaired by Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, aims to address the local fallout from the Trump administration's second term.
In this episode of "Hacks & Wonks" hosted by Crystal Fincher, Councilmember Rinck and journalist Amy Sundberg, who covers public safety and local policy for The Urbanist, discuss the committee's purpose and the challenges Seattle faces.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii. Find Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck on Bluesky at @alexis4seattle and Amy Sundberg at @amysundberg.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Lex Vaughn discuss:
🪧 Thousands protest Trump admin
🧑🎓 WA student visas revoked
🐀 Union head blasts “Ratfink” Ferguson
🤞 Progress on rent stabilization
👀 Fingerprint levy on April ballot
💥 Seattle City Council tensions
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Lex Vaughn on Bluesky at @lex.vaughn.theneedling.com and at TheNeedling.com.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Erica Barnett discuss:
🙅♂️ Ferguson against wealth tax
⚖️ WA joins lawsuit on public health funding cuts
👩💼 Braddock appointed acting KC Exec
💸 Moore skips public bidding process for $1M
🤷♂️ Saka denounces “defund”
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica Barnett, on Bluesky at @ericacbarnett and on PubliCola.com.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Shauna Sowersby discuss:
🌟 Frank Chopp’s legacy
💰 Senate & House budget proposals
📜 Parents’ Bill of Rights initiative
🧯 Natural gas initiative ruled unconstitutional
🚈 Dow Constantine nominated for Sound Transit CEO
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Shauna Sowersby at @ssowersby.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Robert Cruickshank discuss:
🤨 Gov Ferguson’s workplace complaints
😧 More troubling activity around Bruce Harrell
🏘️ SoDo housing proposal passed
👋 SPS superintendent resigns
🙄 Adam Smith is all wrong
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank, on Bluesky at @robertcruickshank.com.
Hacks & Wonks host Crystal Fincher and community leader Monisha Harrell have announced their acquisition of KVRU 105.7 FM, a non-profit, non-commercial community radio station based in South Seattle, with plans to preserve it as a trusted resource in South Seattle through community-driven programming.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii, Monisha Harrell at @moharrell, and KVRU at @kvru.
Seattle voters will decide between two competing social housing funding measures in a special election ending Feb. 11. Proposition 1A, backed by labor and community groups, proposes a payroll tax on high earners to generate $53M annually. Proposition 1B, supported by the Chamber of Commerce, redirects $10M from existing funds.
We chat with Rian Watt and Tiffani McCoy about the initiatives and their potential impact.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii. Find our guest Tiffani McCoy on Twitter/X at @houserneighbors and guest Rian Watt on Bluesky at @rianwatt.
On this topical show re-air, Crystal welcomes Everett Maroon, Executive Director of Blue Mountain Heart to Heart, for a conversation about their work in Southeast Washington using a harm reduction philosophy to support people, stabilize lives, & promote health and wellness in the community. Crystal and Everett chat about how the opioid epidemic has impacted rural communities, the role that stigma plays in keeping people from the help they need, what harm reduction is and why it is important.
They then review the recent roller coaster ride of Washington state’s substance use disorder policy, starting with the Washington Supreme Court’s Blake decision, followed by a temporary legislative fix, then an impasse at the end of last year’s legislative session, and finally a middle-of-the-road deal that recriminalized simple drug possession in addition to newly making public drug use illegal. Crystal and Everett lament the missed opportunity to meaningfully change the system & the continued lack of treatment services relative to need, and wrap up with what can be done at the state and local level to address the opioid crisis.
Transcript and resources:
https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/everett-maroon-blue-mountain-heart-to-heart/
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks and on X (formerly Twitter) at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and X at @finchfrii. Find more information about Blue Mountain Heart to Heart at https://bluemountainheart2heart.wordpress.com/
On this topical show re-air, Crystal welcomes Evan Thompkins, STAR Program Specialist with the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment, and Stephanie Van Jacobs, Program Manager at WellPower!
The STAR program offers a promising alternative response to mental health and substance use crises, providing individuals with the support and resources they need while reducing the burden on traditional police response. With strong community support and a commitment to meeting the evolving needs of Denver residents, the STAR program is poised to continue making a positive impact on the lives of those it serves. As cities across the country grapple with the challenges of addressing these complex social issues, Denver's STAR program serves as an inspiring example of what can be achieved through community-driven, collaborative solutions.
Transcript and resources:
https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/denvers-star-program-offers-promising-alternative-response-to-mental-health-and-substance-use-crises/
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks and on X (formerly Twitter) at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and X at @finchfrii. Find Denver Department of Public Health & Environment on X at @DDPHE.
On this topical show re-air, Eleuthera Lisch, director of the King County Regional Office of Gun Violence Prevention, joins Crystal for a conversation about curbing youth gun violence using community-based approaches with violence interrupters. Encouraging early data from the program indicates fewer youth involved in shootings, fewer re-hospitalizations after gun injuries, less shoplifting near outreach, and 400+ high-risk youth mentored.
Transcript and resources:
https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/king-countys-community-led-approach-showing-promise-in-combating-gun-violence/
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks and on X (formerly Twitter) at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and X at @finchfrii. Find Eleuthera Lisch and the King County Regional Office of Gun Violence Prevention on X at @KingCountyRGV.
On this Tuesday topical show re-air, Crystal welcomes Dr. Stephan Blanford, Executive Director of Children’s Alliance, for a wide-ranging conversation on childcare. They delve into the importance of childcare as an economic driver and its societal impacts through preparing kids for success in school and life. A review of the state of childcare in Washington reveals that this critical resource is often out-of-reach for those who need it most and looks at the factors that make it inaccessible and expensive. Crystal and Dr. Blanford then discuss how various stakeholders can make an impact on the issue at all levels of government.
Transcript and resources: https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/dr-stephan-blanford-childcare/
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii. Find Dr. Stephan Blanford and Children’s Alliance on Twitter/X at @ChildAllianceWA.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Robert Cruickshank discuss:
😖 Morales bullied out of office
✋ Rinck sworn in
🙅 SPS recall effort shut down
🔥 KC Exec race heats up
🤓 Final precinct data & election thoughts
💚 Green Jacket Lady is back!
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank, on Bluesky at @robertcruickshank.com.
A groundbreaking guaranteed income pilot program in Tacoma, Washington has not only demonstrated positive economic impacts but also challenged long-held misconceptions about poverty and cash assistance. The Growing Resilience in Tacoma (GRIT) program, which provided $500 monthly payments to 110 families, is helping reshape traditional narratives that have long portrayed poverty as a result of personal failings or suggested that direct cash assistance leads to dependency.
Join Crystal for a conversation about guaranteed income and GRIT with Sukhi Samra, Executive Director of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards, and Dona Ponepinto of United Way of Pierce County.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii. Find Sukhi Samra and Mayors for a Guaranteed Income on Twitter/X at @mayorsforagi, Mayor Victoria Woodards and the City of Tacoma at @CityofTacoma, and Dona Ponepinto and the United Way of Pierce County at @UWPC.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Erica Barnett discuss:
🧮 Seattle budget and amendments
🙅 County rejects Rivera’s proposal for sobering center
👨⚖️ Sal Mungia wins open Supreme Court seat
🗳️ Reichert concedes
⚔️ How WA electeds will take on Trump admin
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica Barnett, on Bluesky at @ericacbarnett and on PubliCola.com.
Jason Schwarz, Director of the Snohomish County Office of Public Defense and the Chair of Washington's Council on Public Defense, talks about new public defender caseload standards under consideration by the Washington Supreme Court to address the state's public defense crisis. The combination of public defenders working under decades-old caseload standards and lack of state funding have led to massive delays and staff exodus, creating an urgent need for reform to ensure justice for defendants, victims, and the community at large.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Katie Wilson discuss:
📈 Minimum wage increases for the win
🙄 More Burien shenanigans
💰 JumpStart raid
💲 Seattle progressive revenue proposals
🚋 Saka💔Streetcar
🏁 King County Exec race begins
👀 Upcoming appointments
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Katie Wilson, on Twitter/X at @WilsonKatieB, as well as the Transit Riders Union at @SeattleTRU.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Robert Cruickshank discuss:
😭 Presidential election
🥳 Washington election results
🤓 What that means for how Washington Democrats will need to govern moving forward
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter/X at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank at @cruickshank.
In a competitive race between two Democrats, Melissa Demyan, a labor organizer, is challenging 20-year incumbent Larry Springer for a 45th district state house seat. We talk with Melissa about her priorities, how she differs from Rep. Larry Springer, and her vision for the 45thth legislative district.
Transcript and resources: https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/new-leadership-or-old-guard-demyan-challenges-springer-in-45th-district-race/
Follow us on Twitter/X at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher at @finchfrii and find Melissa Demyan at @MelissaDemyan.
VOTE by Tuesday 11/5! Then track your ballot!
Andrew Villeneuve of the Northwest Progressive Institute discusses how their new poll shows Democrats leading in most statewide races, voters are likely to reject three of four initiatives on the November ballot, and a close race in Washington’s 3rd congressional district.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter/X at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, at @finchfrii and find Andrew Villeneuve and the Northwest Progressive Institute at @nwprogressive and https://www.nwprogressive.org/
On this Tuesday topical show re-air, Crystal learns about north King County’s innovative new Regional Crisis Response (RCR) Agency with its inaugural Executive Director Brook Buettner and Kenmore Mayor Nigel Herbig. Following national guidelines and best practices for behavioral health crisis care, a five-city consortium established RCR in 2023 as part of a vision to provide their region with the recommended continuum of behavioral health care - which includes someone to call, someone to respond, and somewhere to go.
Executive Director Buettner and Mayor Herbig share how the program grew out of a need for a person-centered mobile crisis response, rather than the traditional law enforcement response which is often without the right tools or expertise for the job. They describe the collaborative process of getting buy-in from police agencies, electeds, and city staff to design a service that has evolved from the RADAR co-response program to approaching a 24/7 behavioral health first response. Finally, they cover impressive early results in cost-savings & outcomes and offer advice to other cities looking to bring similar solutions to their own communities.
As always, a full text transcript of the show and resources is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Bluesky @finchfrii and find Mayor Nigel Herbig on X at @nigelherbig.
Brook Buettner
Brook Buettner is inaugural Executive Director of the groundbreaking Regional Crisis Response Agency, which deploys services to people experiencing behavioral health crisis in the North King County community. She is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and an experienced human services professional with a focus on policy advocacy and program implementation for high-needs populations. During her two decade-long career, she has been focused on transforming systems to meet the needs of individuals who are high utilizers of both criminal legal and health and human services systems. Ms. Buettner holds Masters in Public Administration and Social Work from the University of Washington.
Mayor Nigel Herbig
Nigel grew up in the Seattle neighborhood of Wallingford, attended Seattle Public Schools, and graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in Political Science and Comparative Religion. Nigel and his wife, Tiffany, decided to move to Kenmore when their daughter was a baby as they were looking for a great place to raise their daughter where they could purchase their first home. They have never regretted that decision.
Nigel has worked in broadcasting, fundraising, and politics. He currently works at the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.
Mayor Herbig represents the Council on the Eastside Transportation Partnership (Vice Chair), and the Sound Transit SR 522 Bus Rapid Transit Elected Leaders Group. He also sits on the King County Affordable Housing Committee.
In a recent interview, Shoreline Mayor Chris Roberts outlines the city's approaches to housing, development, and public safety, emphasizing how the newly opened light rail stations are reshaping the community north of Seattle.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter/X at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, at @finchfrii and find Mayor Chris Roberts at @ElectRoberts.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Shauna Sowersby discuss:
📊 Cascade PBS/Elway polls
🗳️ Ballots arriving in mailboxes
💸 Capital gains tax repeal costly for schools
🏳️🌈 Tacoma rainbow crosswalk
⚖️ Pierce County jury pay pilot
😵 Yakima County coroner
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter/X at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Shauna Sowersby, at @Shauna_Sowersby.
Four statewide initiatives backed by a California hedge fund manager are stirring up controversy as Washington voters prepare to cast their ballots this November. The measures, which would repeal several recently passed laws, are being met with strong opposition from groups who argue they would benefit wealthy people and corporations at the expense of working families and crucial public services.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter/X at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, at @finchfrii and find more about the Defend Washington campaign at defend-washington.com/.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Ron Davis discuss:
🌲 Public Lands candidate takes stance on I-2117
🤩 Overlook Walk opens to widespread acclaim
🏫 School closure update
🏘️ Suarez out of touch on housing
📸 Seattle police bonuses and surveillance approved
📊 Tacoma’s refreshing budget approach
🌀 Hurricane-caused IV fluid shortage
🕵️ Inspectors given access to Tacoma ICE facility
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter/X at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Ron Davis at @ronpdavis on both Twitter and Bluesky, as well as ronpdavis.substack.com for his newsletter.
Pierce County Executive candidate Ryan Mello outlines his comprehensive vision for the county and pledges active leadership that emphasizes public safety reforms, affordable housing, environmental conservation, and economic development.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter/X at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, at @finchfrii and find Ryan Mello at @RyanMelloTacoma.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Scott Greentone discuss:
🚔Tacoma police chief admin leave mystery
🏫Revised school closure plan
😨Weird Serrano video & AG debate
🗣️Woo/Rinck debate
💲Seattle budget scrutiny + Saka ♥️🐴
📺Seattle Channel in jeopardy
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter/X at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Scott Greenstone at @evergreenstone or on Instagram and Threads at @scott.memestone.
Shasti Conrad, Chair of the Washington State Democratic Party, discusses the role of the State Party in volunteer and candidate support, turning out the Democratic base, maintaining unity within a diverse party, and the transition to Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter/X at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, at @finchfrii and find Shasti Conrad at @ShastiConrad.
Resources
Washington State Democratic Party
“The WA GOP put it in writing that they’re not into democracy” by Danny Westneat from The Seattle Times
Get involved with the Washington State Democratic Party
Ruth Rosas from America Walks and Cecelia Black from Disability Rights Washington share details about next week’s Week Without Driving (September 30 - October 6, 2024), which challenges elected leaders, advocates, and individuals to forgo their cars and understand the barriers for nondrivers.
Follow us on Twitter/X at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, at @finchfrii, Ruth Rosas at @AmericaWalks and Cecelia Black at @cecelia_black.
Resources
Week Without Driving | September 30 - October 6, 2024
Week Without Driving Events Planned Across Washington State as the Challenge Continues to Grow Nationally | Disability Rights Washington
Week Without Driving 2024 Resources and Social Media Toolkit
Week Without Driving | America Walks
“Disability advocates challenge Vancouver’s elected leaders to go a week without driving” by Chrissy Booker from The Columbian
“What a Week Without Driving Can Teach” by Anna Zivarts for Bloomberg
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Robert Cruickshank discuss:
🏫 School closure plan spurs outrage 👨🏫 Dangerous state Superintendent candidate ⛔ Council barges ahead with SOAP/SODA zones 🏘️ … and I-137 quasi-alternative ✈️ Boeing strike and furloughs
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter/X at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank at @cruickshank.
Issaquah City Councilmember Victoria Hunt, running for Washington's 5th Legislative District open House seat, outlines her priorities and emphasizes her diverse experience in local government, environmental science, and data-driven policymaking.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter/X at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, at @finchfrii and find out more about Victoria Hunt at https://victoriahunt.com/.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Josh Cohen discuss:
🗣️ Ferguson/Reichert debate
📋 New poll on statewide initiatives
🏫 Seattle Public Schools closure proposals
💵 New progressive PAC backs Rinck
🏘️ Zahilay proposes $1B for workforce housing
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter/X at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Josh Cohen at @jcohenwrites.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Daniel Beekman discuss:
✅ Public Lands recount done ⛪ Church sues City of Burien 📈 Seattle City Light rate hike 🙅🏽♀️ Judge Vaddadi refutes Ann Davison 📚 Seattle Public Library back up 🤦 SCC stalls on social housing
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter/X at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Daniel Beekman, at @DBeekman.
In a competitive race between two Democrats, Melissa Demyan, a labor organizer, is challenging 20-year incumbent Larry Springer for a 45th district state house seat.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter/X at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher at @finchfrii and find Melissa Demyan at @MelissaDemyan.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Ashley Nerbovig discuss:
🖐️ CPL hand recount underway
💔 King Co Council votes to keep youth jail open
🚈 Light rail to Lynnwood opens
🏘️ Tacoma tenants rights law goes to court
🙄 Pierce Co homeless stability site fight
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter/X at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Ashley Nerbovig, at @AshleyNerbovig.
Washington's Vision Zero initiative, aimed at eliminating traffic fatalities, faces setbacks as road deaths have surged in recent years. Ryan Packer, transportation reporter for The Urbanist, joins Hacks & Wonks to discuss what infrastructure improvements lead to real traffic safety and how Seattle’s new $1.55B transportation levy aims to address some of these safety challenges.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Ryan Packer at @typewriteralley.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Erica Barnett discuss:
🌲 CPL race heads to recount 🪚 Brutal austerity budget process begins in Seattle 🎭 Aurora Ave in Seattle vs Shoreline 🏠 Moore’s planned renter protection repeal
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter/X at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica Barnett, at @ericacbarnett.
Hacks & Wonks hosted a 2024 Post-Primary Roundtable on Tuesday, August 13, 2024 to bring an insider’s view of the recent Washington state primary election results.
By bringing together a panel of seasoned political strategists, the program offered a unique lens through which to view the results. Since these campaign experts have been in the trenches, crafting messages, crunching numbers, and reading the electoral tea leaves for years, they cut through the noise and spin to give insights not found in typical news coverage.
Panelists:
- Riall Johnson, Principal Partner at Prism West
- Stephen Paolini, Principal at Bottled Lightning Collective
- Heather Weiner, Political Consultant with PowerHouse Strategic
- Crystal Fincher, Political Consultant with Fincher Consulting and Hacks & Wonks Host
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s special guests, Riall Johnson at @RiallJohnson, Stephen Paolini at @stephenpaolini, and Heather Weiner at @hlweiner.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Robert Cruickshank discuss:
🫠 Seattle City Council meltdown
💸 School funding crisis continues
🌲 Public Lands race still tight
🚨 Surprise endorsement in Seattle race
🥊 Moderates creamed in primary results
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter/X at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank at @cruickshank.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Rian Watt discuss:
🗳️ Primary election results
🔒 Dems fear Lands Commissioner lockout
🤬 SCORE jail contract approved over public protest
😤 Council delays social housing initiative
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter/X at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Rian Watt at @rianwatt.
As Washington voters prepare to elect a new justice to the state's highest court, candidate Sal Mungia highlights his extensive legal experience and judicial philosophy as key qualifications for the position.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Sal Mungia at https://www.salforjustice.com/
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Lex Vaughn discuss:
🗞️ The Stranger got sold
🛑 Public Lands race up in air
🙄 Council’s competing initiative to I-137
😒 Hollingsworth minimum wage repeal effort
🤨 Seattle pursues SCORE contract
🧐 Woo graffiti update
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter/X at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Lex Vaughn at @AlexaVaughn.
On this week-in-review, Crystal Fincher and Shauna Sowersby discuss:
🗳️ New statewide initiative qualifies
🔍 Gov candidates on transparency
📊 Polls, polls, polls
🤔 Crypto IE for Randall
👮 KC Jail resumes booking for drug use Downtown
💔 Remembering Matt Driscoll
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter/X at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Shauna Sowersby at @Shauna_Sowersby.
Washington State Senator Rebecca Saldaña discusses her fight to advance environmental justice in WA and warns of ballot initiatives that could devastate our climate crisis response and other progress.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Senator Rebecca Saldaña at @team_saldana.
In this week-in-review:
🔥 Seattle cop fired
✅ Endorsement roundup in key races
📋 Polls for Governor & President
🗳️ Ballots are out w/ “I Voted” stickers
🤑 Realtor $ for Woo
🤖 AI bots for Woo on Reddit
🏘️ ADU construction boom
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter/X at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank at @cruickshank.
Seattle City Council candidate Tariq Yusuf joins Hacks & Wonks to discuss his policy priorities and vision for the city.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Tariq Yusuf at @tariqforcouncil.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola, and co-host of the Seattle Nice podcast, Erica Barnett!
They discuss:
- Washington Supreme Court Upholds Lacey RV Parking Ban
- Hilary Franz Campaign Controversy
- King County Leaders Launch 100 Days of Action Against Gun Violence
- Seattle PayUp Minimum Wage Repeal Legislation Stalls
- Seattle Audit on Reducing Overdoses and Drug-Related Crime
- Seattle Police Deputy Chief Controversy
- Seattle Transportation Levy Heads to November Ballot
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter/X at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica Barnett, at @ericacbarnett.
Seattle City Council candidate Alexis Mercedes Rinck joins Hacks & Wonks to discuss her policy priorities and vision for the city.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Alexis Mercedes Rinck at @Alexis4Seattle.
Seattle City Council candidate Saunatina Sanchez joins Hacks & Wonks to discuss her policy priorities and vision for the city.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Saunatina Sanchez at @SaunatinaforSEA.
Patrick DePoe, a former elected member of the Makah Tribal Council, current Director of Tribal Relations for the Department of Natural Resources and candidate for Commissioner of Public Lands, outlined his vision for managing the state's natural resources while emphasizing his unique professional and lived experience.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Patrick DePoe at @PatrickDePoe.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Senior Advisor at The Urbanist and Executive Director of The Economic Opportunity Institute, Rian Watt!
They discuss:
- Washington State Democrats Pass Ceasefire Resolution
- Everett Herald Layoffs Spark Concerns Over Local News Coverage
- Seattle Social Housing Initiative Moves Forward
- Seattle Public Schools Faces Uncertainty Over School Closures
- Seattle City Council's Sidewalk Plan Falters Due to Funding Misunderstanding
- New Seattle City Council's Lack of Productivity Under Scrutiny
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Rian Watt at @rianwatt.
Dave Upthegrove, a former legislator and current King County Councilmember and candidate for Washington State Commissioner of Public Lands, recently discussed his bid for the position, highlighting his priorities and outlining his vision for the future of the state's natural resources management.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Dave Upthegrove at @DaveUpthegrove.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattle Times City Hall reporter, David Kroman!
They discuss:
- Former Seattle Police Chief Comes Out, Uses as Defense Against Sexual Misconduct Allegations
- Seattle Police Department Recruitment Test Controversy
- Seattle Police Officer's Invalid Driver's License Scandal
- Auburn Police Officer on Trial for Murder
- Controversial Hire for Seattle City Council Communications
- Seattle's Transportation Levy Proposal
- King County's Crisis Care Centers Plan
- Potential Boost for Sounder South Line
- Newcastle's Pride Flag Controversy
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, David Kroman, at @KromanDavid.
Chris Reykdal, current Superintendent of Public Instruction, joins Hacks & Wonks to discuss his re-election campaign.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Chris Reykdal at @chrisreykdal.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by reporter covering social justice issues for NPR member station KNKX, Lilly Ana Fowler!
They discuss:
- Gun Violence Impacting Schools
- Burien Police Chief Resigns & City Manager Calls Police On Homeless People Almost Every Day
- Governor Inslee on Emergency Abortions
- PayUp Minimum Wage Legislation Repeal
- COVID-19 Uptick
- Death at ICE Detention Center
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Lilly Ana Fowler at @LillyAFowler.
Reid Saaris, an educator and former non-profit leader, joins Hacks & Wonks to discuss his campaign for Superintendent of Public Instruction.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find more information about Reid Saaris at https://reid4waschools.com/.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank!
They discuss:
- Seattle Public Schools Consider Closing Multiple Schools Amid Budget Deficit
- Seattle's Wealth Disparity: Median Home Price Surpasses $1 Million, City Boasts 54,000 Millionaires
- City Council Considers Minimum Wage Repeal for Gig Workers, Faces Ethical Concerns and Low Approval Ratings
- GOP Sues to Keep Fiscal Impact Statements Off Ballot Initiatives
- Asylum Seekers Left Unhoused Next to Vacant EconoLodge in Kent
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank at @cruickshank.
King County Prosecuting Attorney Leesa Manion discusses progress and challenges in her first 18 months - highlighting efforts to rebuild law enforcement relationships, reduce juvenile crime, and address violent crime through collaboration and early intervention.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find King County Prosecuting Attorney Leesa Manion at @KCProsecutor.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola, and co-host of the Seattle Nice podcast, Erica Barnett!
They discuss:
- Gubernatorial Candidate Mullet Files Ethics Complaint Against Ferguson
- Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz Demoted After Discrimination Allegations
- Sue Rahr Announced as Interim Police Chief
- Budget Proviso Threatens Community Development Funds
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica Barnett, at @ericacbarnett.
State Senator Patty Kuderer joins Hacks & Wonks to discuss her run for Insurance Commissioner - pledging to be a strong consumer advocate, push for universal healthcare, and get tough on insurance companies. She touts her legislative record and experience as an attorney representing policyholders.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and learn more about Senator Patty Kuderer’s campaign at https://www.pattykuderer.com/.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and Founder and Editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn!
They discuss:
- PayUp Legislation Repeal Sparks Controversy and Recusal Issues in Seattle City Council
- Another Discrimination Lawsuit Against SPD
- Police Recruitment and Standards
- Snohomish County Achieves 10% Reduction in Homelessness
- Burien City Council Poised to Reject County-Funded Homeless Shelter Project
- Boeing Locks Out Firefighter Union Amid Contract Negotiations
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Lex Vaughn at @AlexaVaughn.
On this topical show, Crystal welcomes Edmund Witter, Senior Managing Attorney at the King County Bar Association's Housing Justice Project, for a conversation about how the eviction crisis is exacerbating an already dire situation as Washington state grapples with record homelessness.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Edmund Witter and the King County Bar Association at @kingcountybar.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Chair of People Power Washington, Shannon Cheng!
They discuss:
- Three Bob Fergusons File for Governor During Filing Week in Republican Stunt
- Boeing Faces Criminal Prosecution for 737 MAX Crashes
- Gig Worker Pay Protections Face Repeal Amid Political Tensions and Mayoral Speculation
- Comprehensive Plan Coalition Urges Mayor Harrell to Improve Draft
- Stuart Sloan's Attempt to Remove Nude Beach Thwarted
- Controversial Police Contract Passes City Council Amid Accountability Concerns
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Shannon Cheng, at @drbestturtle.
Mayor Bruce Harrell has introduced a draft proposal for a $1.35 billion transportation levy to renew the expiring Move Seattle Levy. The proposed nine-year levy aims to address street repaving, bridge maintenance, and spot improvements for transit, but falls short of the transformative vision advocated for by transportation and climate activists.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Doug Trumm at @dmtrumm.
Resources
“Harrell Proposes Modest $1.35 Billion Transportation Levy Renewal” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
Seattle Transportation Levy Proposal | Seattle Department of Transportation
“A Deep Dive on the 15 Corridor Upgrades in Seattle’s Draft Transportation Levy” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
“Seattle Gives Up on Bike Network Expansion Goals in Draft Transportation Levy” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
“Seattle Levy Proposal Keeps Modest Pace of Building New Sidewalks” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
“Seattle Levy Proposal Lowers the Bar on Public Transit Investments” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
“Seattle Voters On Board with Big Transportation Levy, New Polling Shows” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
Seattle Neighborhood Greenways
Disability Mobility Initiative | Disability Rights Washington
Cascade Bicycle Club
Senator Manka Dhingra joins Hacks & Wonks for an in-depth interview to discuss her campaign for Attorney General and plans to address WA’s most pressing issues.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Manka Dhingra at @electmanka.
Resources
Campaign Website - Manka Dhingra
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank!
They discuss:
- Republican Divisions Threaten Party's Chances in Governor's Race
- Corporate-Backed Super PAC Boosts Conservative Democrat's Campaign
- Seattle Councilmember Seeks to Roll Back Gig Worker Protections
- Mayor's Office Cuts Anti-Displacement Proposals from Growth Plan
- New Light Rail Line Set to Open on Eastside
- Business Group Launches Campaign to Relocate Light Rail Station
- Seattle Children's Hospital Refuses to Share Patient Records with Texas AG
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank, at @cruickshank.
Resources
Nick Brown Discusses Key Issues in Washington State Attorney General Race from Hacks & Wonks
“MAGA Republican Semi Bird endorsed by Washington GOP for governor” by Scott Greenstone for KUOW
“The WA GOP put it in writing that they’re not into democracy” by Danny Westneat from The Seattle Times
“Corporate backers of Mark Mullet launch an independent expenditure to boost his flagging campaign” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate
“Nelson Bill Would Eliminate Minimum Wage for "Gig" Drivers—and Slash Workers' Rights” by Erica Barnett from PubliCola
“Seattle hospitality giant buys into City Council member’s Fremont Brewing” by Paul Roberts from The Seattle Times
“Mayor's Office Removed All New Anti-Displacement Proposals from Draft "Anti-Displacement Framework"” by Erica Barnett from PubliCola
“Planners Proposed Bigger Upzones Before Harrell’s Team Intervened, Records Show” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
Discover the 2 Line | Sound Transit
“How will your life change when Bellevue's light rail opens?” by Joshua McNichols from KUOW
@cruickshank on Twitter/X: “The Seattle Chamber of Commerce is out with a new campaign to Save South Lake Union. From what? you may ask. From a subway station that would be at the center of the neighborhood and serve more riders than their inferior “couplet” plan.”
Email Sound Transit Board of Directors at emailtheboard@soundtransit.org
“Seattle hospital won't turn over gender-affirming care records in lawsuit settlement with Texas” from The Associated Press
“Medical provider leaving Texas over AG investigation into gender affirming care for minors” by S.E. Jenkins from CBS News Texas
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
Nick Brown joins Hacks & Wonks for an in-depth interview to discuss his campaign for Attorney General and plans to address WA’s most pressing issues.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter/X at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter/X at @finchfrii and find Nick Brown at @nickbrownnow.
Resources
Campaign Website - Nick Brown
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by staff writer at The Stranger covering policing, incarceration and courts, Ashley Nerbovig!
They discuss:
- GOP Candidate Dave Reichert's Anti-LGBTQ Views
- Boeing Faces Scrutiny Over Safety Issues and Alleged Cover-Up
- Tacoma to Implement ShotSpotter Despite Concerns
- Local Guaranteed Basic Income Pilots Show Promising Results
- Seattle Police Officer's Troubling Past Revealed
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Ashley Nerbovig, at @AshleyNerbovig.
Resources
Denver's STAR Program Offers Promising Alternative Response to Mental Health and Substance Use Crises from Hacks & Wonks
“Dave Reichert to Pierce County Republicans: "Marriage Is Between a Man and a Woman"” by Rich Smith from The Stranger
“Boeing whistleblowers describe ‘criminal cover-up,’ safety risks to Senate” by Dominic Gates from The Seattle Times
“Tacoma police to test gunshot-detection system. Shotspotter has faced criticism elsewhere” by Puneet Bsanti from The News Tribune
“ShotSpotter is a Failure. What’s Next?” by Hannah Cheves of the MacArthur Justice Center
“IMPD will not go ahead with gunshot detection system” by Sarah Nelson from The Indianapolis Star
Seattle Considers Controversial Surveillance Technologies with Flawed Approval Process from Hacks & Wonks
“ShotSpotter: Why waste money we don’t have on technology that doesn’t work?” by Marcus Harrison Green from The Seattle Times
“How King County’s $500-a-month guaranteed income program fared” by Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks from The Seattle Times
Guaranteed Basic Income Final Evaluation | Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County
“Guaranteed income returned to Pierce County this week. Why free money deserves a shot” by The News Tribune Editorial Board
“Seattle Police Knew Officer Who Struck and Killed Pedestrian Had “Checkered History,” But Hired Him Anyway” by Andrew Engelson from PubliCola
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
On this topical show, Crystal welcomes Evan Thompkins, STAR Program Specialist with the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment, and Stephanie Van Jacobs, Program Manager at WellPower!
The STAR program offers a promising alternative response to mental health and substance use crises, providing individuals with the support and resources they need while reducing the burden on traditional police response. With strong community support and a commitment to meeting the evolving needs of Denver residents, the STAR program is poised to continue making a positive impact on the lives of those it serves. As cities across the country grapple with the challenges of addressing these complex social issues, Denver's STAR program serves as an inspiring example of what can be achieved through community-driven, collaborative solutions.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter/X at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter/X at @finchfrii, find Denver Department of Public Health & Environment at @DDPHE and WellPower at @WeAreWellPower.
Resources
Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) Program | City and County of Denver
Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) | WellPower
2022 Mid-Year Report | Support Team Assisted Response (STAR)
“Denver successfully sent mental health professionals, not police, to hundreds of calls” by Grace Hauck from USA Today
“These First-Responder Superheroes Don’t Wear Capes or Even Uniforms” by Matt Levin from Oprah Daily
“Denver's STAR set to expand amid tension over its future” by Esteban L. Hernandez from Axios
“As STAR expands, community members feel left out of planning. Here’s why it matters.” by Victoria Carodine from Rocky Mountain PBS
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Staff Reporter for Real Change and creator of the Gossip Guy newsletter, Guy Oron!
They discuss:
- Washington's Ban on High-Capacity Magazines Ruled Unconstitutional
- Three New GOP Initiatives
- Boeing Whistleblower Raises Safety Concerns
- Seattle City Councilmembers Call for Improvements to Comprehensive Plan
- Transportation Levy Faces Scrutiny
- Alternative Response Plans Hindered by Police Union Agreement
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Guy Oron, at @GuyOron and gossipguy.net.
Resources
“State Legislative Session Falls Short on Housing As Seattle Comprehensive Plan Process Ramps Up” from Hacks & Wonks
“WA’s ban on high-capacity gun magazines ruled unconstitutional” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times
“State GOP chair files 3 new initiatives to WA voters” by Claire Withycombe from The Seattle Times
“New Boeing whistleblower alleges serious structural flaws on 787 and 777 jets” by Dominic Gates from The Seattle Times
“Boeing’s long fall, and how it might recover” by Dominic Gates from The Seattle Times
@typewriterally on Twitter/X: At a meeting of the 34th District Dems tonight, both CM Rob Saka and Tanya Woo, when asked about the Seattle Comp Plan, say they hope Mayor Harrell improves the plan before it gets to council. "This is not Alternative 5," Saka says. "We need to do better."
Transportation Levy Proposal | Share your input by April 26
“Harrell Proposes Modest $1.35 Billion Transportation Levy Renewal” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
“Advocates Urge City to Adopt More Ambitious, Less Car-Centric Transportation Levy” by Erica Barnett from PubliCola
“Transportation Levy Needs to Put us on Track to meet our Climate, Safety, and Equity Goals” from Seattle Neighborhood Greenways
“Proposed Contract Kills Any Hope for Real Police Alternatives in Seattle” by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
On this topical show, Crystal Fincher and Executive Director of The Urbanist, Rian Watt, dig into how housing policy shapes the future vision for our communities, why the recent legislative session didn’t live up to its “Year of Housing 2.0” billing, and how the Seattle Comprehensive plan falls short and can be improved.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Rian Watt at @rianwatt.
Resources
“State Legislators Push for ‘Year of Housing 2.0’” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
“Year of Housing 2.0 Mostly Fizzles Out at Washington Legislature” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
Find your Washington state legislators
Contact your Washington state legislators
“Seattle Releases Comprehensive Plan Less Ambitious Than Bellevue” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
“Housing Leaders Call Out Seattle’s Bare Minimum Growth Proposal” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
“Land Use Chair Tammy Morales Takes Aim at Proposed Seattle Growth Plan” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
“Op-Ed: Harrell’s Anemic Growth Plan Is Not ‘Space Needle Thinking’” by Tiffani McCoy, Mike Eliason and Paul Chapman for The Urbanist
“Growth Plan Falls Short of Seattle’s Needs, Planning Commission Says” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
Complete Communities Coalition
Public participation opportunities for Seattle Comprehensive Plan | City of Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development
Find your Seattle City Councilmembers
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola, and co-host of the Seattle Nice podcast, Erica Barnett!
They discuss:
- Seattle Police Contract Raises Budget Concerns, Accountability Questions
- Thurston Sheriff's Hiring of Officer Involved in Manny Ellis' Killing Illuminates Broader Accountability Issues
- Burien Countersues King County Over Encampment Sweeps
- Unhoused Asylum Seekers at Garfield
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica Barnett, at @ericacbarnett.
Resources
“Tentative Police Contract Includes 23 Percent Retroactive Raise, Raising Cops' Base Salary to Six Figures” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“City Council FINALLY Ratifies Coalition of City Unions Contract Despite Budget Deficit Concerns” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
“Residents condemn Sheriff's hiring of former Tacoma officer involved in death of Manuel Ellis in Tacoma” by P. Jade Asumbrado from The Journal of Olympia, Lacey, and Tumwater
“Officer hired as sheriff’s deputy despite involvement in fatal Manuel Ellis arrest resigns” by Gene Johnson from The Associated Press
About Certification Hearings | Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission
“Washington state creates process for public to seek police decertification” by Amy Radil from KUOW
“As Burien Countersues Over Homelessness Ban, Another Unsheltered Person Dies Downtown” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“Will Seattle Respond to the Refugee Crisis with Housing or Handcuffs?” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
“Anonymous donor offers $50,000 to get asylum-seekers shelter” by Anna Patrick from The Seattle Times
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Assistant Managing Editor for Diversity and Inclusion and the Social Justice Columnist for The Seattle Times, Naomi Ishisaka!
They discuss:
- New Candidates Running for Seattle City Council
- Everyday Gun Violence
- Seattle Dual-Dispatch Pilot is Underutilized
- Ferguson’s Police Centric Plan
- Deaths at Tacoma ICE Facility, SCORE and KC Jails
- Problematic Gravel Yard Gains AG’s Attention
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Naomi Ishisaka at @naomiishisaka.
About the Guest
Naomi Ishisaka is the Assistant Managing Editor for Diversity and Inclusion and the Social Justice Columnist for The Seattle Times. She is a journalist and photographer who focuses on racial equity and social justice.
Resources
“Tanya Woo faces these candidates in bid to keep her Seattle City Council seat” by Katie Campbell from KUOW
“Alexis Mercedes Rinck Launches Progressive Challenge to Tanya Woo” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
“Outraged by police violence? Everyday gun violence is outrageous, too” by Naomi Ishisaka from The Seattle Times
“Coming about! What it means that Bob Ferguson just tacked right on cops” by Danny Westneat from The Seattle Times
“Seattle’s Dual Dispatch Program Is Underutilized” by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger
“Activists monitor Tacoma ICE facility 24/7 after detainee death” by Lilly Ana Fowler from KNKX Public Radio
“Immigrant rights groups outside Northwest ICE Processing Center face intimidation” by Brian Hayes from The News Tribune
“Woman’s Malnutrition Death Raises Questions About Medical Care Standards at South King County Jail” by Andrew Engelson from PubliCola
“Man dies at hospital after medical emergency at King County Jail” by Vonnai Phair from The Seattle Times
“WA’s AG, health officials raise questions about gravel yard by school” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
King County is taking a comprehensive, community-focused approach that early data suggests is helping steer young people away from cycles of violence.
In an interview with the Hacks & Wonks podcast, Eleuthera Lisch, director of the King County Regional Office of Gun Violence Prevention, discussed the promising impacts of the county's community violence intervention initiatives.
At the heart of the strategy are organizations like Regional Peacekeepers Collective and Rainier Beach Action Coalition - Restorative Solutions that employ street outreach workers and "violence interrupters" - credible messengers with lived experience who can rapidly respond to shooting incidents.
When violence interrupters are deployed to active scenes involving law enforcement, their role is crucial. "They will be able to de-escalate tensions, they will be able to form rapid rapport, and they will be able to create a follow-up and safety plan for the individuals that they are able to connect with," Lisch explained. Their expertise in crisis intervention and rapport-building can help defuse volatile situations and ensure the well-being of those involved.
Violence interrupters don't just react to youth gun-violence, but work proactively to prevent it. "They're providing daily contact - they're connecting with that young person, they're checking in on their well-being, their safety," said Lisch. "They're helping make sure that that young person is able to access rides and supports to get to and from court as needed, to get re-entered into school, re-engaged in school, to get to employment opportunities."
While the work is still maturing, Lisch pointed to some early positive signs of impact, including:
- The average age of those involved in shootings rising into the 30s, suggesting fewer youth are getting caught up in violence cycles
- Over 400 high-risk youth currently being intensively mentored
- Reductions in youths' re-hospitalization rates after gun injuries
- Decreases in losses from youth shoplifting near outreach sites
"We're seeing loss prevention happening - that there are less young people, through whatever crisis they are in, going into stores and taking things that don't belong to them," Lisch said.
She cautioned that transformational change can take 4-5 years to manifest fully as interventionists build trust. But the initial data "is a strong indicator that we are seeing a downtrend in young people involved in gun violence."
Lisch stressed the need for sustained funding and coordination across jurisdictions. “First and foremost, our advice is to fund peace, fund safety…If we're seeking safe communities and we're seeking peace, we have to invest in the strategies that help us get there.
The county is working to evaluate the efforts and demonstrate their cost effectiveness. “We've just recently contracted a cost-of-violence analysis to help support our local elected leaders in King County and at the state of Washington level to understand the cost savings of community violence intervention strategies.”
Even as the community intervention programs show promise, Lisch emphasized there are ways all residents can get involved and be part of the solution. "We can all participate in safe storage, and we can all participate in amplifying the message that community-led solutions are important and that they are a functional part of a holistic public safety framework," she said. "We often talk about gun violence being a disease. I want to emphasize, as strongly as I possibly can, that the community is the cure."
The data suggests this public health-focused approach, with the community leading the way, is making a positive impact.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find the King County Regional Office of Gun Violence Prevention at @kingcountyrgv.
About the Guest
Eleuthera Lisch
Eleuthera Lisch (She/Her) is a violence prevention professional with over 27- years of experience developing, implementing, and bringing to scale cutting edge gun violence prevention, intervention, public safety, and community reconciliation programs, both nationally and internationally. Eleuthera serves as the inaugural director for the Regional Office of Gun Violence Prevention for Public Health-Seattle & King County.
As a seasoned strategist, social change innovator, advocate for social justice, and champion for community safety and well-being, Eleuthera proudly supports grassroots to “grass tops” partnerships and emerging leaders. She has raised millions in funding/endowments for gun violence prevention programs and other services in Seattle and King County and has consulted to provide subject matter expertise in cities across the nation.
She received a White House Champion for Change Award in 2012 for her work with the Dept. of Justice National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention and featured as a model "social change agent" in Paul Shoemaker’s Can’t Not Do, The Compelling Social Drive that Changes the World.
Eleuthera is proud to be a member of the National Office of Prevention Directors Network. She is grateful for the giants whose shoulders the movement to prevent gun violence was built on and honored to work with communities and champions across the nation who strive to ensure that all communities, families, and individuals can live free of violence and thrive.
Eleuthera was born in Puerto Rico and is the proud daughter of noted activist Arthur Lisch and teacher Paula Lisch. She lives with her husband of 30 years, Patrick Burningham, in Southeast Seattle, Washington.
Find the King County Regional Office of Gun Violence Prevention on Twitter/X at @kingcountyrgv.
Resources
King County Regional Office of Gun Violence Prevention
“King County to start Office of Gun Violence Prevention” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times
Community Violence Intervention | Center for Gun Violence Solutions at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Community Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative (CVIPI) | Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice
“Community Violence Intervention Programs, Explained” by Nazish Dholakia and Daniela Gilbert from Vera Institute of Justice
King County gun violence data | King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office
Lock It Up: Promoting the safe storage of firearms | Public Health - Seattle & King County
“Governor Newsom Signs Historic Tax on Gun Manufacturers to Fund School Safety and Violence Prevention Programs” | September 26, 2023 Press Release from Office of Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel
Hacks & Wonks Week in Review: Presidential Primary, Legislative Retirements, Police Recruitment in Seattle, Seattle Public Schools Board, and Burien Gets Sued
Presidential Primary Takeaways
In this week's presidential primary, Trump and Biden secured enough delegates to clinch their parties' nominations. While Trump's impact worries moderate Republicans in Washington like Dave Reichert, Biden faces pressure from the "uncommitted delegates" protest vote demanding an end to violence in Gaza.
Washington Legislative Retirements
Several longtime Democratic legislators, including Frank Chopp and Karen Keiser, announced their retirements after the recent session. This exodus provides an opportunity for a new generation of more progressive leadership.
Police Recruitment in Seattle
The Seattle City Council discussed subsidizing housing and lowering standards to recruit more police officers amid a staffing shortage. However, mounting evidence and feedback from police suggest the culture within the department and lack of accountability are deterring recruits, not council rhetoric or compensation.
Seattle Public Schools Board Appointments
Seattle Public Schools is in the process of selecting two people to fill vacancies left by two departures from the Seattle Public Schools Board. Highlighting the diverse range of candidates, including labor leader Joe Mizrahi and Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce's Sarah Clark, the segment explored the potential policy implications and the importance of educational governance in the city.
Sheriff Sues Burien Over Unconstitutional Anti-Camping Ordinance
Burien passed a stricter anti-camping law aimed at homeless individuals, which the King County Sheriff's Office refused to enforce as likely unconstitutional. In retaliation, Burien moved to defund the county's contracted police services, prompting criticism that it is escalating rather than solving homelessness.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank, at @cruickshank.
Resources
Tacoma City Councilmember Olgy Diaz Shares Strategies for Running for Office from Hacks & Wonks
“Trump and Biden win Washington's presidential primaries” by Melissa Santos from Axios
“How did Washington's 'uncommitted' voters do on presidential primary night?” by Katie Campbell from KUOW
Senate Democratic Caucus Status | Northwest Progressive Institute
“Shaun Scott Is Running for the State House” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
“Longtime Washington state senator is leaving, but not right away” by Jerry Cornfield from Washington State Standard
“Sam Hunt to retire from the Washington State Legislature after many decades of service” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate
“As Seattle police applicants lag, City Hall looks to bureaucracy” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times
“Higher salaries? Subsidized housing? What will it take for Seattle to recruit and retain more police?” by Casey Martin from KUOW
“Seattle School Board narrows candidate field for open seats” by Sami West from KUOW
“King County files complaint over Burien's anti-camping ordinance” by Jadenne Radoc Cabahug from Crosscut
“VIDEO: Sheriff files legal complaint against City of Burien regarding constitutionality of its expanded camping ban; City responds” by Scott Schaefer from The B-Town Blog
“Burien’s anti-camping ordinance is not an answer to homelessness” by The Seattle Times Editorial Board
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
In a recent interview on the "Hacks & Wonks" podcast, Tacoma City Councilmember Olgy Diaz provided an insider's guide on how to prepare and run for elected office. Drawing from over a decade of experience in political campaigns and advocacy, Diaz offered detailed advice for prospective candidates.
Diaz stressed knowing your "why" for running as a motivating force. "Think about what problems you're trying to solve or what communities you're trying to represent," she said. Align your passion with the appropriate position, whether school board, city council, or state legislature.
Assembling the right team is critical, according to Diaz. This includes identifying trusted people to handle key roles like communications, field operations, fundraising, and campaign compliance. Diaz advised being intentional about building a team that reflects the diversity you want to see.
Once committed, assemble a "kitchen cabinet" of trusted family, friends, and community leaders to comprise your core team, Diaz advised. "You need to figure out who's going to help with what, and be really comfortable asking for help."
Budgeting is crucial, and Diaz recommended using unionized vendors and allocating at least two-thirds of funds for direct voter communication like mailings and advertising. "Yard signs don't actually vote," she quipped.
On fundraising, Diaz's top tip was simple: "You don't get any money that you don't ask for, so ask everybody unabashedly." This includes calling personal contacts like friends, current and former colleagues, as well as adversaries of your opponent.
Authenticity in messaging is paramount. "Be authentically who you are all of the time and be willing to own where you might disagree with people because I think that matters as much in governing as it does always agreeing with people. People respect you more.”
But running for office is just the first step – Diaz also offered advice for translating campaign advocacy into tangible policy actions through ordinances and legislation. She recommended focusing first on achievable goals to start delivering wins while getting accustomed to the new role. Throughout, Diaz emphasized building bridges and bringing more people from underrepresented communities into the process as future leaders.
Diaz also emphasized building a diverse campaign team that creates opportunities for mentorship. "The more of us there are … the better our policies can become."
Resources
Public Disclosure Commission | Training and Resources
National Political Women's Caucus of Washington
Emerge Washington
Washington Institute for a Democratic Future
Build the Bench WA
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
The Washington legislative session for this year just ended and we've received news about several legislators who are not running for re-election. This opens up opportunities for new candidates to run this year to represent their communities in the legislature, in addition to hundreds of local elected positions across every community in our state. So we thought this was a great time to talk with Tacoma City Councilmember Olgy Diaz about how to run for office. Olgy was born and raised in Pierce County to parents who immigrated from Guatemala. Throughout her career, she has worked to foster a more reflective democracy and expand access to power through work with local nonprofits like One America and Planned Parenthood, in the Washington State Legislature, and in candidate campaigns across Pierce County. Over the last 13 years, she has talked to voters in English and Spanish all over Washington. Olgy is passionate about conservation, tribal sovereignty, and wildlife, and serves as the vice chair of the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Coalition. She served on the City of Tacoma's Human Rights Commission, worked in the Washington State House of Representatives and Senate for five years, and is the Immediate Past President of the National Women's Political Caucus of Washington. She spends most of her spare time building up future civic leaders through key leadership roles and has trained hundreds of political candidates across our state. We both serve on the board of the Washington Institute for a Democratic Future, an organization that does just that. Olgy has been effective in advocacy, productive in governing, and successful at winning elections, which is why I'm so thrilled to welcome her to this show about how to prepare for a successful run for office. Welcome back to the show, Councilmember Olgy Diaz.
[00:02:38] Councilmember Olgy Diaz: Hi, Crystal. How's it going?
[00:02:40] Crystal Fincher: It is going well because I'm talking with you this morning - thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about how to prepare to run for office, what the most important things are to consider - because a lot of people don't have any exposure to this - the things that are visible about campaigns aren't necessarily the most important things. Lot of times when people think about running, they think about yard signs and parades and delivering speeches, or they have this picture of the West Wing in their head, or Parks and Recs, or Veep or whatever it may be. But a lot of times it's just not reflective of what running a campaign, particularly a state or local campaign, a local government or legislative campaign looks like. So just starting out, Olgy, what do people need to do to prepare to run for office?
[00:03:33] Councilmember Olgy Diaz: I think the biggest things that folks can do to prepare are really sort of reflect - think inward - and think about what problems you're trying to solve, or what communities you're trying to represent, and where that is needed. So the thing that's going to get you through the hard days - the days where you feel betrayed or left behind or just generally out of energy on a campaign - your why is what's going to get you through. And so you've got to really think about - if I am deeply passionate about making sure that kids have access to classrooms that don't have moldy walls or leaky ceilings, and that they've got a curriculum that makes sense, and that they've got maybe some access to after-school services, that's probably someone who's deeply passionate about running for school board, not Congress. So making sure that your interests align with what you're wanting to govern over - I think is the deepest and hardest part of getting ready to run for office - because a lot of people will gravitate towards some of those offices that look shiny or feel like they are name in lights, really sexy. But really, if you're deeply passionate about climate change, you might be the best fire commissioner and not the best state legislator. And that's not to push people out of some of the bigger races, but it's also helpful to start at the ground level and work your way up - makes it much easier to have been elected to something else before you go and run for governor. It really is a nine, ten month, however month long you're running for office job interview. And actually in any good job interview you're doing, you're going to want to see what this job actually does - read the job description, read the budget, read the minutes, read the notes of what the people who are doing this job already do - so you can prepare yourself for that work. A lot of offices, I would say more offices than not, in Washington state don't have staff. So you're going to be the expert in your thing - so be prepared to be savvy, be researching. And get ready - so think about, if I've never served on a board, even my little PTA board or my nonprofit board - go sign up. I don't know of a single government who doesn't have a board or commission that they're looking for volunteers who are passionate about work. And that's where you can meet people in the community, it's where you can build a network, it's where you can learn about different topics. Sure, a lot of these positions are unpaid, so you've got to find the volunteer time to do it. But running for office is also unpaid, unfortunately. So at some point, you do have to be wanting to serve the public - so I think it's really helpful to try to start serving on boards or commissions at any level of government to try to just get that - How do we work together? Understanding - How does this governing body work? How do you organize? It can be one of those early tools of learning how you put your teams together and how you build coalitions.
[00:06:30] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think you raise a number of important points. I really do want to underscore you talking about - just know why you want to run, what is motivating you. It's always a bit dismaying to have someone come and be like, Yeah, I really want to run. I really want to be on the city council. Then you asked, Okay, so what do you want to do? What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to do to help the community? And they haven't thought that far yet. All they have thought about is that they want to be elected. That is a red flag for me. It's a red flag for a lot of people. Know how you want to help. And like you said, it should be something you're passionate about. And then you have to align that with different positions. There are so many jurisdictions and positions up for election - city councils, school boards, parks districts, port commission, state legislature, county council, all of these different things - and they're very different positions at different levels of government. So are you interested in public and community safety and want to do that? That's probably going to happen more at the local level. Are you interested in intervening with climate change? That may be something you can impact a lot at the port. Or like you said, it doesn't have to be statewide lands commissioner - could also be fire commissioners, different things like that. Know if the role is a legislative position or an executive position - those are two very different types of roles. Are you going to be making decisions together with a team? Are you the one who the buck stops with and you're doing that yourself? Those are all things to consider and you have to think about - do your interests and skills align with that particular position?
So for someone who has thought about - Okay, I am really fired up about this specific set of issues, I have identified what positions seem like they match best for me. I think I do want to run. I think I do want to do this. What's the next step that they should take?
[00:08:32] Councilmember Olgy Diaz: They should absolutely get sign-off from family and friends - whoever that chosen family is, whoever that internal family is - because it's going to take everyone. And sometimes, especially in smaller races, you don't have the ability to get a high-paid consultant. And so your mom might also end up being your speechwriter. I think oftentimes folks do the best when they have someone who is closer to a normal voter as opposed to a political junkie actually listen to their speeches, listen to their answers, really listen to whether or not you're giving jargon or whether or not you're giving something that really resonates with the average person. And so your kitchen cabinet of folks that you assemble is going to be some mix of family and friends, plus people in the community - prominent folks and leaders and activists - I think those are some of the best assets that you can have, especially in these smaller races where you're not going to have a bunch of paid staff. Because somebody might have a friend of a friend who knows how to do graphic design and they can do all your Canva stuff for you. You're starting something very grassroots, very deep and passionate, and you need to figure out who your people are so that you have them with you in the trenches. And sometimes if you're busy, like a lot of us are working and running for office, you need to figure out who's just going to do the laundry - just the little things that make sure that you're able to keep going through the campaign cycle really, really matters. And so start assembling that list of who's going to help with what, and be really comfortable and ready to ask for help. I think that's one of the things that I have seen really knock down candidates - is an unwillingness to either ask for help, ask for what they need, or say no. And any mix of those things can really tank your campaign, so you got to be really secure in what you need, where you're trying to go, and how you're going to get there.
[00:10:18] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - think you're 100% correct - you do need to sign off and negotiate how all of the people in your life are going to function during the time that you're running. And also with work - really important - for most of the people who are probably going to be listening to this who would be considering running - probably are working. And running for office is a significant time commitment - much more of a time commitment as things get closer to the election. But it's something that you do want to talk with your job about, talk with who you're reporting to about - make sure that they understand that you may need some flexibility, or figure that out as time goes on. It is really tough for someone to run while working an inflexible job. Unfortunately, there are things that both happen during the day, that happen during the evening - lots of demands on your time and resources at different times. And so understand what the road looks like - certainly something you're going to have to negotiate with and contend with and plan for.
I want to talk about putting together the actual campaign team, which is one of the first things that someone, once they do make a decision to run, is going to do. What should their considerations be as they look to put together a team?
[00:11:40] Councilmember Olgy Diaz: Yeah, so as I mentioned, there are a lot of races - say you're running for city council in a small city or you're running for port commissioner - there might not be enough resources either in terms of your own fundraising capacity to bring in a high paid consultant. Or there might not be, frankly, consultants - there's not enough consultants for how many candidates we have in this state. One of the places where we're running really low actually is fundraisers. And so you got to think about what the major roles are in a campaign. And those are - traditionally - someone to help you, organize you, or keep you on task with fundraising. Someone to help you make sure that you can reach voters in a way that will actually reach them - and so that is either a communications professional or a general consultant who will do different kinds of mailings, or text messaging, or help you figure out which folks you want to talk to at the doors or on the phones. That can bleed into a little bit with what's called a field director, so that's someone who can look at the lay of the land, look at who traditionally votes, and figure out who you need to talk to and how many times you need to talk to them to make sure they hear your message. And I would say a lot of times folks often want some sort of a social media director or some sort of a comms professional who's not just deciding how they meet voters where they're at with the message and how they develop that message, but also who is actually just trying to help drum up support and excitement about your campaign with your followers and with potential new voters. And those are two different lanes from a similar - it all works very closely together - better communications can help you get more fundraising, more money, more volunteers. But it's really pivotal that you identify who can take those roles, whether or not it's people who you actually pay and hire to do that. All of those roles are jobs that exist in the political ecosystem, but they're all also jobs that someone who maybe just does social media work on their own can help you with if they're a volunteer. So making sure that you have a time when you're coordinating all these folks if you're doing it all with volunteers, or maybe you have money to pay a fundraiser, but not a general consultant, or vice versa - those are the two major roles that people will often pay people for.
And then the big one that is, I think, the most worth money - because if you're doing illegal things, it's hard to win a race - is compliance. We have a state that has one of the best transparency in campaigns and elections. So you've got to make sure you have someone who's willing to go to the trainings or who just knows that work because they're a professional in that work, who's willing to file your stuff in a timely fashion, make sure that all your disclosures are done, make sure that everything that you're raising and spending is reported above board because that's something that can really ding you in a campaign by either your opposition or just by the public. You're not trustworthy if you can't be bothered to do the homework of telling people what you're up to in a state where that's really required of you. So I think those are the four major roles is comms, field, treasury, consulting, and fundraising.
[00:14:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And that treasury piece is so important - just fundamentally - and would be one of the first people I locked down and put together. This is something that I often advocate, regardless of the size of the campaign - even if it's a small town or a big legislative or congressional campaign - have a professional paid treasury and compliance person. A lot of people don't realize that the campaign calls for a treasurer - you have to declare that when you file for office. And so a lot of times they think it is purely a financial thing. And so I have a friend who's a bookkeeper, I have a friend who's CPA who can totally do that - but that's actually the easier and simpler part. Alongside with treasury and built-in when we talk about treasury in a campaign context is that compliance - is the having to file all the required disclosures and reports, to follow the many campaign and spending regulations - everything from how you can accept money, maximum amounts that you can accept, how you track that, how you keep track of and collect cash and deal with that, the information you have to collect from all of the donors to report, how long before an election you can accept gifts of a certain size. All of that is a ton of rules and regulations. The PDC does a very good job in providing classes for people who are not professionals. So if you did want to have someone in that role who wasn't already doing it - start early, have them prepare by going to those trainings and doing that. But the compliance part is the most important part of that - I just cannot underscore that enough.
Also, it's probably good to talk about the difference between people here, these positions - okay, so campaign manager and consultant - What is the difference? What do they do? In the campaign context, usually a general consultant is handling strategy and communications usually. The details of that can vary based on what your needs are, who's on your team, what is contracted - but make it a point to be clear on what those roles and responsibilities are, have a contract so that there's no confusion about who is responsible for what. Sometimes a consultant is just going to do paid communications like mail, or digital video, or ads, or things like that. Sometimes they're very involved in strategy and day-to-day preparation for interviews, or helping with endorsements, or all of that - those are pretty normal things that come with professional political consultants, at least. What I would say most of all is that whether or not you officially hire someone in that role or not - usually if you can, I advocate hiring that - of course, I am a political consultant, but I don't work with candidates, so it's not self-interest - it's important to have someone who has navigated campaigns and races like yours. There's lots of stuff that is specific to the campaign world. It is not just like marketing. There's a whole different cadence. There's lots of intricacies and relationships that are useful and valuable - and they know how to negotiate through that. They know how to put together a campaign plan, how to target voters. You want someone who has experience doing that - if it's not a paid consultant, someone who has shepherded, successfully, candidates through that whole thing before. And usually consultants are more on the strategy end of things - so helping to construct what the messaging is, helping to construct what the plan is. Campaign managers are usually more on the operational side of things - so implementing the campaign plan, putting the field plan into work, working with other volunteers, working with the rest of the team, and leading the crew there - from everything administrative to all of that. Sometimes in small local races, all you can afford is - and a very valuable thing in addition to a treasurer - is a campaign manager. And then you're working with your team of people to handle the rest and to do the strategy. It's helpful to look at what people who have run in that jurisdiction before and who have been successful have done - how they've constructed their campaign - you can see what people have spent and kind of reconstruct what their teams look like through public disclosure reports through the PDC - make use of that information. This doesn't mean you have to mimic that, but it is useful to know so that if you are deviating from it for a reason, you understand what the pros and cons of that are and what the implications of that are. What other considerations would you suggest?
[00:19:16] Councilmember Olgy Diaz: Yeah, I would say the Public Disclosure Commission website has some of the best free information that you can get for your campaign just by looking through it - because you can find both what past campaigns have done, what they've paid for, what kind of budgets that they've had in the past based on how much they've raised. You can also see lists of lobbyists. So if you're really interested in doing health care reform, you might call through all the health care lobbyists and they might be a good pot of money for you, once you start thinking through what your lens is on that - are you going to call the folks who are interested in it in the way that you are interested in it? Probably. I think sometimes lobbyist is a bad word, but more often than not - there are good ones and bad ones. So making sure that you call the ones who are lobbying for the things that you care about - I think those are great ways to build your network and build more allies in the work that you're trying to achieve by running for these offices.
[00:20:06] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. And that's a good point that you raise - just the alignment with the team, which sometimes is underrated. And unfortunately, there's a shortage of political professionals in the state in many areas - we're working on that. It can be hard when there's a limited pool of people available, but it is critical to have people who are generally aligned with who you are, what your priorities are - and who back that, and who are consistent. Otherwise, we get to a situation - and unfortunately, we've seen quite a bit of this lately - where one, someone may not know how to really communicate with voters about who you are, what you care for, and what you believe. If someone is used to messaging the opposite - if someone has advocated against renter protections, has advocated against more housing, has worked for interests that you traditionally have opposed or competed with - they're going to be more used to and skilled to working with and messaging things in that characterization. They oftentimes struggle to communicate outside of their own alignment and their own experience. And there's also the problem of consultants working with multiple candidates who have one candidate positioned in one way - hey, there's a progressive here, but there's a more moderate or conservative over there. And unfortunately, the messaging that they're pumping into the environment, into the community is directly refuting what you're doing. We've seen that a few times-
[00:21:38] Councilmember Olgy Diaz: Too many times.
[00:21:38] Crystal Fincher: -in the very recent past. It's a problem. Or someone just doesn't have the types of networks or connections in the community that are useful to you, that are relevant to who you are, and are not able to put together and really understand and communicate with the coalition that you need to build in order to be successful - that may look different than coalitions that they've successfully built before. Do they generally work with candidates like you? Are they generally communicating and really making the vision clear, and being successful reaching voters with candidates like you? Those are very important considerations. And I think people ignore that and - Oh, well, they're the only person available, or just they were cheaper. - that backfires all of the time.
[00:22:26] Councilmember Olgy Diaz: Way too many times to count.
[00:22:28] Crystal Fincher: Yes, yes. So the alignment is really important, and I think it's getting more important as we go on in years here. So, okay - they're putting together the campaign team - a couple of tips and things to look out for when it comes to some of the general areas of the campaign. When it comes to a budget, how should they approach a budget?
[00:22:51] Councilmember Olgy Diaz: I like to say - you should approach your budget of your campaign the way, if you've ever run a small business, you might think about it like that. Because you are mostly seeking donations - unless for some reason someone here is wealthy enough to self-fund their campaign - you want to be a good steward of money that's coming into you, either from friends and family or from organizations that value your values and want to see you in. Because all those resources are finite, you want to make sure your budget reflects your values. So if you're running as a progressive person who values workers, you're going to want to make sure that you use union printed materials, union workplaces. Or if you're doing an event in a hotel for some reason, use a union hotel - don't use a non-union hotel. Those kinds of things that really make sure that what you're doing and what you're paying for aligns with the kind of values of your campaign really, really matters - both because it sets the tone for your values and for how you might govern, and it helps put money back into that same ecosystem that's helping support you.
You also want to make sure that you've got enough money for the essentials. So we all tend to know that using labor materials - because we're paying people what they're worth - is a little bit more expensive than non-union materials. It's worth it, but you just got to make sure your budget reflects that if you're going to spend a bunch of money on printed mail pieces that you've got the money to do so. And that might mean less yard signs. Yard signs are one of the most visible things that people love to spend money on, but they're really expensive and they don't actually really equate to votes. Most people who see yard signs driving by - they're for visibility, they're for sort of creating the buzz - and they're for donors, I like to say. But they're not really for getting out any votes - yard signs don't actually vote. But mail pieces are much more likely to land in a mailbox with someone's ballot - they're more likely to see it as they're filling out their ballot. Digital is huge and important, and it helps get your name out there. General advertising rules say that you should probably see someone's name or see someone's face seven or eight times before it sort of sticks, especially in a big campaign year when everybody else is also doing the same thing. So the more touches you can get on a voter, the more likely they are to remember your name. So your budget should reflect how you're going to try to reach the voters - it should be very heavy on direct voter contact opportunities and possibilities. And some of that will be if you're able to fund a campaign staffer - because they'll help you get to more voters, or help you get through more endorsement questionnaires, or maybe help you schedule if your schedule is really busy. And your budget should make sure that it reflects, like we mentioned earlier, that priority of having someone who can do the compliance. Even if you're giving your friend 50 bucks to make sure they're up on whatever rules are coming out of the PDC, I think it's really important to make sure you fund that.
And like governing, budgets are our values documents. You want to make sure that it just reflects what you're trying to accomplish and how you're trying to accomplish it. And make sure that it is scaled for roughly how much of a budget people have spent on your race in the past. It helps, as you're shopping for a consultant, to know that - Hey, I'm running for school board. I've seen people in the past spent between $40k and $80k on this kind of race and this kind of school board size so that when the consultant says, Oh, your budget should be $200k, you kind of have a sniff test of whether or not that's real or not, so you know whether or not you want to hire that person. So you have done a little bit of your own research to know what kind of ballpark - because when something costs you $40k versus $120k, that's literally money that you're going to have to help find. So you got to be sure that you're willing to bite off what you can actually chew in terms of the kind of race you want to run.
[00:26:27] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely - that all makes sense. I also want to caution people against spending too much, especially on people, too early. This is about being a good steward of resources. And unfortunately, what I have seen happen too many times from afar is running out of money basically mid-campaign or spending way too much money on staff and overhead. And then when it comes time to communicate with voters - which is basically the most important thing that you're going to be doing - not having enough money to do that, which is basically just sabotaging your own campaign. A good rule of thumb is that at least two-thirds of what you raise should be going towards direct voter contact. So that's not going towards just paying the salary of your campaign manager or the retainer of your consultant, your fundraiser retainer - those can all add up really quick. Or as you go to assemble a team, you're like - Okay, I've got the best team of people. Yes, it's going to cost me $8,000 a month, but I'm sure we'll get it. You've got to go beyond just the hope and vibes to - is that really a level of expense that you can sustain and build on top of to have the war chest needed to communicate with voters? I see that wind up really backwards - people spend 75% on staff sometimes - and that's when we're talking behind the scenes, months before the end of the election, going, This actually is not possible for them to do. They don't have any money to do that communication that's so necessary because voters - most voters just don't pay attention, which is also just a really good thing for people to generally know. People generally don't read news articles - most people don't read them at all. The 20% who do mostly just read headlines. People don't pay attention to politics. Most people learn that there's an election coming because they get their ballot in the mail. People like us are in the middle of campaigns for months and months and months, and it seems like everyone in our circle knows, so this must be things that most of the community is paying attention to and aware of. That is so not the case - you have to communicate with people. And unfortunately, so much of that is paid. Like you said, the mail, the advertisements that you see in newspapers, the digital ads, the videos, social media pushes - which are somewhat limited politically in Washington state - but just doing all of that is critical to winning a race. And you're doing that the heaviest late in your campaign, which is why we see all of the ads and the stuff generally happen around the time you get your ballot until Election Day. So have enough money for that. Fund that stuff first - that's always been my rule. Fund communication, direct voter communication first - and then as you can afford other things, when you get money in the door, it's looking pretty consistent, then you can add on to there. But be very realistic about that. And be realistic about your fundraising and take those early cues seriously. If you start fundraising and you're pulling in $3,000 a month and you're spending $5,000 a month, you need to quickly reorient things, reorganize things in your campaign, redo your budget so that it fits with what you're doing. And you either need to trim expenses or see how maybe you can fundraise more. But that's also going to rely on you, and your discipline with fundraising is another thing that's going to be really important. When it comes to raising those funds, what are the biggest tips that you have?
[00:30:05] Councilmember Olgy Diaz: Ask. Ask everyone you know - your pastor, your second grade teacher, your former intern colleague three jobs ago. I like to joke that your phone is your best weapon in a campaign - it's where your list is going to come from, it's who you're going to be calling and texting and asking for help and money and all of the things. Anybody who you don't ask and knows you're running - quite frankly, might be a little bit offended that you didn't ask if they're a political person. I have run years and years and years of candidate trainings. And every year I tell the people in our cohorts, call me for money - if you're running and you didn't call me for money, I don't know that you actually listened to the training I gave you. And I think in the time that I've been doing it - of the hundreds of women and people of color I've trained to run for office - I think 10 tops have actually asked me for money. And I give them my cell phone and my email. Make sure that you actually ask everyone in your life. Anybody who sends you a birthday text - those are people to ask for money, they're thinking of you. Anybody who puts on your Facebook wall - Happy Birthday - those are people who are thinking of you. Anybody who you've had a meaningful relationship with, who knows your values, knows your heart, knows your drive, is someone you should ask. And those are the first people you should ask. And then you start building out from there to some of the other folks you should ask. There might be folks who are diametrically opposed on values or otherwise to whoever you're running against, and those are also people who you should ask for money - much later in the campaign. There's also oftentimes people who are really interested in seeing folks who look or have your values run for the seat that you're running for, and there's oftentimes people who are interested in just changing the way democracy looks - and so those are also sometimes people who you might ask for money from.
But really, really, really make sure that you're talking to your folks that are closest to you first - that includes your parents, if you have them, that includes your grandparents, your kids, your cousins. Everybody who's closest to you and loves you probably is going to give you at least 50 bucks or something - because they love you. Even if you have a parent who is deeply opposed to your politics, they care about you, they love you - if you still have that relationship, you should ask. Let them say no. And I think that's the number one rule for fundraising is - You don't get any money that you don't ask for, so ask everybody unabashedly. I found this last campaign cycle that texts were actually a really great way of getting people to give, as opposed to - we used to call it call time. We still call it call time, but you don't have to make as many phone calls as we did in the past. You definitely have to make phone calls, but it can also be text time, it can also be Facebook Messenger time. And be really detail-orientated - keep a list or keep track of who you're asking so you're not asking the same person five times that are ghosting you. Let them ghost you, but make sure you do ask once. And then I would say also make sure that you're asking for an amount - it's really helpful if you're calling your uncle who's very wealthy, ask him for a max. And if you're calling your cousin who delivers pizza, maybe ask him for 20 bucks. Make your ask appropriate for who the person is, but don't try to undersell anybody - it's kind of a difficult science to finding the right amount to ask people.
[00:33:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and the better you do with the people who you do have an existing relationship, the people who do love and care about you, the easier it's going to be later on down the line when you're talking to people who you don't yet know - people who you may just know that you're politically aligned with or they're passionate about an issue that you plan to take action on. It's going to make you look more credible if you start out with a solid fundraising performance, and that's going to build momentum down the line. I think those are great tips. One I would add would be - Don't make excuses for people. Let them say no to you. A lot of times, and I think even more with women and people of color - as the trainings we've done have really illuminated this - there's different relationships with money among many communities, People from communities who traditionally haven't grown up with as much wealth as we see in most of the political class. And that obviously impacts the approach to things, and the way we think about things, and even the way we prioritize - Oh, they have so much more important things going on, I don't want to bother them with that. And that feeling is coming from a place of caring, but it is also an act of caring - and people are happy to support someone who they are confident is the right person for the job and who's going to help people in their community and people like them. And so sometimes - I've sat in call time with a number of people, and they'll be like, Oh, this person's never, never going to give, or they don't have anything, or they're in this tough position. And a lot of times, those are the people who are happiest to give. Now, you don't ever want to break anyone - like you said, asking for an amount that is doable and appropriate - you don't want someone to wind up in a bad financial position. But also, they're the ones who know their financial position best. And it's real easy to get presumptive about that - you may not know. And people have money set aside to give to various causes - they might have that money already available to do that. So don't ever assume someone can't give. It's okay if they say no, but you should absolutely ask. And you should make a strong case and ask with confidence. Sometimes people are much more confident in raising money for a different cause, but it's much more complicated and there's a lot of self-consciousness around asking for it for yourself. But that's a very important thing, and we have to get better people into these elected positions, people who are more aligned with their communities. And the only way that happens is by going through this. I wish we were in a political system where money did not matter. Unfortunately, we are - and so we do have to deal with this and contend with it. And it would be a shame to put all of the time and energy into running a campaign without doing all you can to fundraise and give yourself the resources necessary to win.
I also want to talk about just tips for messaging and how people can be authentic. I think sometimes people feel conflicted - they're used to seeing politicians give non-answers, avoid taking stances and positions on a wide variety of things - that being authentic is risky. What advice do you give to someone who is passionate about issues, who really wants to help, but is questioning - How do I communicate with people in an authentic way?
[00:36:49] Councilmember Olgy Diaz: I think really being yourself matters. I have seen, especially I think with candidates of color or first gen candidates, this want to sort of cosplay white, or do a thing that isn't really authentic, or be a Leslie Knope when you're really not Leslie Knope - you're probably more like somebody else who is more uncouth. Be that person. People really appreciate the authenticity of how you show up, what you look like, in addition to what you're saying. If you're not comfortable in a suit jacket all the time - unless it says that you're required to wear that, don't wear that. Wear what makes you comfortable. Be confident in who you are. And that's all going to come out in your answers and in your voice. And really be willing to own and accept that you don't know everything. You're not an expert in everything yet. Most elected officials aren't an expert in anything, quite frankly, before they get there. And then they get there and they learn a lot and they grow and they do more. But even if you are an expert in something, accept that there's going to be things that you're not an expert in and be willing to own that as well. If somebody can ask you a really tough political question that makes you uncomfortable, just be honest with people about - Hey, I might step in this a little bit, but here's my answer. Or, be willing to say - You know what? I don't know the answer to that right now. Let me do some research and get back to you. And just make sure that you do actually follow up with people - follow up matters - no one expects you to have every answer. I can't tell you the amount of times I would knock on a door and talk to someone who's deeply concerned about some minutia of city government that I was like - I have been in government for decades and I don't know what you're talking about. I'm going to have to go research that, come back with an opinion on it - because I don't know what my opinion is on it yet because I just learned what this issue is. And so just be willing to do the follow-up when people ask you things - I think that really matters, it really helps. And be ready to be brazen and be standing who you are and what your values are - it's going to make you a better candidate, it's going to make you more authentic, and it's going to make you more relatable. Because even if you are not what you think a candidate or politician should be or look like, you are because you're doing it. So just be that person. And especially if you have an opinion that is different from what you think the room wants - I've also seen candidates fall into the trap of showing up at an endorsement meeting for an organization where they're only loosely aligned with the issues - be authentic to that. Because you don't want to lie to people and tell them what they want to hear, and then go and tell a different room of people the opposite - that also messes with your authenticity. Be authentically who you are all of the time and be willing to own where you might disagree with people because I think that matters as much in governing as it does always agreeing with people. People respect you more.
[00:39:24] Crystal Fincher: Yes. My approach in advising candidates has followed that path. And really, it's because you're running in order to govern. And if you don't run as who you are and authentic to who you are - just trying to give the right answers and not give the wrong answers - when you do get elected, people don't know what you stand for, people have different impressions of what you would do, and you basically paint yourself into a box when you govern. You didn't run on anything, so you don't have a mandate for what you're going to do, which makes you afraid to do something because then people might get mad at you - because what you spent your campaign doing was trying to prevent people from getting mad at you. No one has a good time with that. No one is served with that. You don't govern effectively like that. And there are many examples we can look around at right now and look at how people who avoided taking stances on issues are now struggling to deal with those issues when they're elected. And so you have to be authentic to yourself in order to give yourself a shot when you are elected at accomplishing the things that are so important to you for the community.
Another thing on the point of governing, one thing that I see electeds struggle with - specifically sometimes those who come from more of an advocacy or an activism background - is how to translate that advocacy, the energy into policy. What tips would you have on navigating through that?
[00:41:01] Councilmember Olgy Diaz: I would say - as much as being authentic on the campaign trails, you've got to be authentic as an elected official. So if you have made a lot of promises on the campaign trail, you got to make sure you follow through. I think when you're just starting out, there's a big learning curve. You got to figure out sort of where the bathrooms are, how this thing works - but take some of the low hanging fruit that is a little bit easier and start working on that. Start trying to figure out how you can deliver some wins that are doable so that you can start learning how to pass bills, and how to legislate, and how to govern on the easy things before you start biting off the hard stuff later. And really be ready to deliver for the folks who you made promises to if you did - otherwise, you're not really doing a service to the people who helped get you there, the people who are depending on you. And it might be something that you'll got to go back and say - Hey, this is going to take some time. Especially if you're from an advocacy position and you've got the ear of the folks who are asking for stuff - talk to them about what it looks like on the inside and how they can be helpful. Something that I learned working both at Planned Parenthood and One America organizing advocacy is that sometimes the push from the outside is as helpful for the elected official on the inside. It's not always adversarial. Sometimes it's just they need that extra nudge, and see how you can make your friends who helped get you there as helpful to help you pass things and be more effective for the exact communities we're all trying to help.
[00:42:20] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that's great advice. And then also just the nuts and bolts of - governing is action-based. People make a lot of promises on the campaign trail - really campaigning is talking, it's making a lot of promises, making a speech and saying that you care about something. Where really, once you're elected, it's the action that is the proof of the caring. So you're going to have to learn how to write that ordinance about the issue that you said you wanted to address. You're going to have to learn how to turn that into policy, how to speak to different impacted parties in your community, how to talk to people who you disagree with and who you may not placate as you develop your policy and write your ordinances or write your bills. But it's important to hear from them just to make sure that you understand what their perspective is, that you understand what the challenges they're having with it. You may not disagree with them, or you may learn something that - Hey, they're saying this is a concern. I can make this tweak without fundamentally altering the thing that I'm doing, and maybe I avoid some unintended consequences. That's all a really important process. But really it is now action-based - it's about what are you doing, whether it's allocating funding, writing an ordinance - but those are also things that are not intuitive and not easy to do. So people better work on getting familiar with what that process is, talk to people who are doing it, and learn how to get that done. Because you really should hit the ground running as much as possible and work on crafting that policy.
[00:44:02] Councilmember Olgy Diaz: Yep, there's a reason the president comes in with a first 100-day plan. You don't have to have 100 things you do in your first 100 days, but you should definitely have one thing - seems doable. When I first got appointed, no one asked me to do it, but because of my background in choice and reproductive justice, the first thing I did was make sure that folks who were trying to get gender-affirming care and abortions were protected in our city. No one asked for that, but that was my value set - I came in, I did it, and we keep it pushing. We do the next thing that matters to us. So have a thing that you're ready to do if you get there, because then you can be talking about that on the campaign trail.
[00:44:36] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Great advice. So that is number one with authenticity. And number two, over the past 15 years - have heard so many times from consultants or political people - Oh, this person is the ideal candidate. And so many times people who look like me, people who look like several people I've helped to elect, people who look like you, or have a background like people like us are not at all what people envision when they're saying - They're the ideal candidate. There is no ideal candidate. The ideal candidate is just someone who really cares about and is willing to serve their community. And that comes in so many different packages. And also what we see, which a lot of people are not aware of, is that when someone doesn't look like what they think of oftentimes as the standard politician - if they do have a different background, that's more exciting to voters, that turns out more people, and they are more successful on average than someone who is like the traditional candidates. So don't let people's expectations, don't let the current composition of whatever body you're looking to get elected to intimidate you from doing that. Like you said before, you are qualified. People are qualified in many different ways. For some people, that looks like a bunch of degrees or owning a business. For other people, that looks like having personal lived experience with the issues that you're trying to make a difference with and having a perspective that is missing but desperately needed in the body. I do think it's important to have been working in the community, to be able to demonstrate that you care about and are credible in the issues that you're talking about, that there is a connection with people in your community. If you run and people are like, Who the heck is that? And no one from anywhere knows where you are, I would suggest there should be more groundwork put into what you're doing. You should have a lot of people who do know who you are and can attest to what you have done, how you've helped in your community and all that. But don't let you feeling like you don't fit be what stops you.
On the flip side of that, I will also say - be aware of when a body has excluded people like you. And that has to be a consideration that sometimes people are hesitant to talk about or it's - Oh, it's great. We need someone like that in that body. - and everyone's excited to get them there, without understanding that that there might be a hostile place currently, that that there may come with a lot of challenges for that candidate that other people may not have had to face. Also being realistic about what the history of the body that you're joining is, what the current composition is, why different people may not be there - and be prepared to contend with that, knowing that that may be a challenge when you get there. I think that's something we don't talk about enough that we need to talk about more.
[00:47:40] Councilmember Olgy Diaz: Absolutely. It's funny you say that - that was actually my lived experience. So I ran for Tacoma City Council in 2013 - I didn't win. I did try to take out a very popular incumbent - we have a lot of political dynasties in Pierce County, so he was a son of somebody, like a lot of them are. But at the time, I would have been the first Latina elected to Tacoma City Council. I didn't win, and then 10 years went by and we got an open seat. And I was calling around to folks - because my favorite thing to do is help people run for office - and I was like, Who are we going to get to run for this appointment? And multiple people were like, You, man, what are you talking about? So I applied and then got the appointment and then ran for the seat. And now I'm actually the first Latina elected to the Tacoma City Council 10 years later because now was actually the moment that the city was ready for that, that people were pushing for that. And 10 years ago, that was less the case, even though it shouldn't have been - our Latino population hasn't skyrocketed in that time - but it's just what's for you hits you, what doesn't misses you. But it's also a matter of - I was willing to answer that call because it was still a need. And I think that that's part of it - is knowing what these environments are. And I am so grateful that I'm on the council I'm on now, as opposed to the one that was there 10 years ago - that would have been miserable. And now we have a majority women council, we have a majority BIPOC council - it's just such a better place to be a part of now. Not to say anything disparaging about prior council, because we had a great mayor who's now a congresswoman, but it's just a different time and it's a more fun time for me to be in office. Also, it's just a different place in my career, so I think making sure that you've got that conviction to keep following through because you may not make it the first time is also a big part about thinking how you run for office.
[00:49:21] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that's a really good point. There are so many people who run, unsuccessfully, their first time. And it's important to define what success looks like for you, even if you aren't elected. You were smart about that, there are a number of people I see being smart about that - and others not being so smart. There are so many people who are successful on their second run, and that's because of how they set themselves up in their first run. Are they building relationships? Are they growing their network and their coalition? Are they working together with people in positive ways? Are they finding ways to build with different people in different ways? I see things backfire and people set themselves back if they're bitter and negative. Politics is all coalition based - you may disagree with someone on something here and agree with them on something else. You work together on the something else, and then you just build a coalition with different people on the other thing that you're working for that you care about. You can do that while being true to yourself, while not doing things that are philosophically disagreeable to you. But it is about building bridges, maintaining lines of communication, building relationships, people being able to trust that they can count on you, that you are true to your word, that you are who you say you are, you'll do what you say you'll do. Or if that changes, that you clearly communicate that and why. Building those relationships throughout the campaign is important - it will help you if you are elected to govern. And if you aren't elected, it helps you to run again if you so choose. And even if you don't run again, they help you to make the type of change - even in an unelected capacity - that you were trying to make in an elected capacity. So really look at how you're setting yourself up, regardless of what the outcome is. Run the kind of race that you will not have regrets if you don't win - that has been a piece of advice that I've given, that I strongly believe. Do things that you can live with throughout the whole thing. If you sell yourself out - whatever that looks like to you - and do things you're uncomfortable with in the name of winning, and you don't, there's so much regret tied to that. And then you're looking to the community like someone who you aren't and nothing good comes from that. So again, being authentic, running a race that's true to you is very important.
Any closing piece of advice that we haven't gotten to, or that you would want to leave people with?
[00:51:54] Councilmember Olgy Diaz: Regardless of whether or not you're paying a campaign team, or you're getting volunteers, or truly anybody with a pulse who exists and is willing to help - make sure you're setting yourself up with a team of people you trust, you can depend on, and that you quite frankly want to spend a lot of time with because you're going to spend a lot of time with them - either checking in on them or actually literally with them. And really, I like to take it the step further and say, Try to build the team that reflects the kind of workplace that you want to have. So sometimes that means having unionized campaign workers. Sometimes that means having an all-BIPOC or an all-woman staff or team. Make sure that you're intentionally seeking out the folks who are going to round out your opinion. So you might not have everyone be of the same demographic - it might be helpful depending on what you're up to, what you're doing - you don't want any gaps in who's in the room helping you make decisions so that you're not making decisions that don't make sense for a big part of the community. And then mentoring and leadership building is a big part of what I've done before getting to office and to get to office. So I like to be mindful of bringing people in who can learn this stuff so that maybe they then want to go be a consultant, because we need more BIPOC consultants. Or maybe they want to go later on and be a policy writer. They want to run for office themselves. I like to try to make sure that we spread the wealth and keep giving back and pulling forward with people. I like to say - I'm the first one, but I'm not going to be the last one in Tacoma. And so making sure that we're building those bridges and opportunities for mentorship is really helpful and important. And keeping your eyes open for who the next leaders are and bringing them in and lifting them up - I don't think having more of us in the world, in the politics, in the progressive movement is detrimental. This is not a crabs in a pot mentality - the more of us there are, the better it is and the better our policies can become. I'm going to want somebody to the left of me as much as I deal with those on the right of me. And it really all helps push and pull and help us all be better and get us to better policy solutions, ultimately, in the end, which is what we want. So I think that those are the big things is - how you build stuff that's going to build and outlive and outlast you.
[00:53:56] Crystal Fincher: Wise words from someone who has walked that path and helped many other people walk it. Thank you so much for spending the time with us today, Councilmember Olgy Diaz.
[00:54:07] Councilmember Olgy Diaz: Thank you.
[00:54:09] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
Week in Review: Conservative Initiatives, Comprehensive Plan, and Ax Murderer Controversy
Conservative Initiatives Pass Democratic Legislature
In a surprising move, the Democratic-majority in the Washington state legislature passed three conservative ballot initiatives into law, bypassing the need for a public vote. The initiatives ban a state income tax, expand parental rights regarding instructional materials and student records in public schools, and give police broader authority for vehicular pursuits.
Barnett warned the parental rights measure could be wielded to out LGBTQ students: "It is outing trans kids, it is outing potentially gay and lesbian bisexual kids...it's a violation of the rights of privacy of children and teenagers."
The decision avoids a costly campaign battle, but Barnett questioned if it signals Democrats being "willing to negotiate instead of fight" well-funded opposition.
Mayor's Comprehensive Plan Faces Criticism
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell's proposed 20-year Comprehensive Plan allows for just 100,000 new housing units, despite projections that 250,000 more people will move to the city. Critics blasted this as woefully inadequate to address the affordable housing shortage.
Barnett called it "stunning in its lack of ambition" beyond mandated zoning changes. Fincher urged residents to attend public meetings and directly press the mayor's and councilmembers' offices, saying "They need to hear from you, their constituents."
Revelation of Ax Attacks on Homeless People Raises Concerns
Weeks after a suspect's arrest, Seattle police admitted they withheld information about horrific ax attacks targeting the city's homeless population. The lack of public warning sparked outrage.
Barnett speculated police view such crimes against the unhoused as "not affect[ing] the general public." Fincher condemned the "dehumanizing conversations and rhetoric...about visible street homelessness" that enable such violence.
Both hosts emphasized the need for accountability and citizen engagement from Seattle's elected leaders on these intersecting crises around housing, public safety and inequality.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica Barnett, at @ericacbarnett.
Resources
Executive Dow Constantine Details How King County Tackles the Homelessness Crisis Through Housing Solutions from Hacks & Wonks
“Why we are voting to pass WA’s parental-rights initiative” by Jamie Pedersen and Laurie Jinkins for The Seattle Times
@ErinInTheMorn on Twitter/X: "Democrats in Washington State just passed a PRIEA act which will likely result in forced outing of trans students in the state. Initiative 2081 gathered enough signatures to go on the ballot. Rather than fighting it at the ballot box, they decided to pass it instead. Horrific"
“LGBTQ Advocates Are Ready to Fight the Parents’ Bill of Rights” by Vivan McCall from The Stranger
“First-of-its-kind database: Majority of people killed in police chases aren’t the fleeing drivers” by Susie Neilson, Jennifer Gollan and Janie Haseman from The San Francisco Chronicle
“City Attorney Disqualifies Judge from Criminal Cases, Issues Traffic Ticket to Officer Who Killed Student With His SUV” from PubliCola
“Republican City Attorney Ann Davison Throws Municipal Court into Chaos” by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger
“The City Attorney’s Blanket “Affidavit of Prejudice” Policy Against Judge Vaddadi” by David Ziff from Ziff Blog
“Draft Comprehensive Plan Would Increase Housing Less Than Needed to Accommodate 250,000 New Residents” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“Seattle Releases Comprehensive Plan Less Ambitious Than Bellevue” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
“Mayor Harrell proposes housing density in every Seattle neighborhood” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times
One Seattle Plan Engagement Hub
One Seattle Plan Open Houses
“First Hill man arrested in ax murder as Seattle Police secretly searched for suspect preying on homeless — UPDATE” by Justin Carder from Capitol Hill Seattle Blog
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
In an interview with the Hacks & Wonks podcast, King County Executive Dow Constantine outlined the county's approach to addressing the region's homelessness crisis - a crisis he says fundamentally stems from a lack of affordable housing.
"The reason people don't have housing is because they can't afford housing," Constantine said. "It's a tremendously bad, unfortunate side effect of the economic story that we've seen unfold here over the last 20 years."
Constantine stressed that the root cause of homelessness is people not being able to afford a place to live amid soaring housing costs. Other factors, like addiction, have been shown to be made worse by homelessness, but are not the root cause of it. "If you say they're not housed because they're addicted, that is simply saying that we're not providing the appropriate service," he stated.
The county has taken a regional approach by partnering with cities through initiatives like the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to fund services and shelters. A key effort is the Health Through Housing program, which has acquired over 1,200 units by purchasing and converting former hotels and motels.
"We had the University of Washington come in and study [this approach]...what we were anecdotally observing was absolutely true - that this made an enormous difference in people's lives," Constantine said. "About 95% of people who come into this permanent supportive housing are successful, meaning that they don't end up back in homelessness."
However, the county has faced challenges getting some cities like Burien to site shelters and affordable housing projects amid pushback from opposed residents. Constantine urged residents and elected officials to see this as a shared crisis requiring regional cooperation.
"For elected officials: you have to develop a spine...your jurisdiction has to do its part of the solution," he stated. "For residents: everything will work better when we're all participating and accommodating folks in your community."
Looking ahead, Constantine said state legislative action is needed to reform Washington's "woefully inadequate" tax system that leaves cities and counties underfunded for affordable housing and services.
"We have to adopt a mentality that we're all in this together, and that this is a shared challenge, and the solutions have to be shared," he concluded.
Resources
King County Regional Homelessness Authority
Health Through Housing: A Regional Approach to Address Chronic Homelessness
“Kenmore’s canceled affordable housing project draws sharp criticism” by Anna Patrick from The Seattle Times
“Redmond Swoops In To Save Kenmore’s Cancelled Low-Income Housing Project” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
“A Seattle suburb known for affordability becomes example of U.S. debate on homelessness” by Anna Patrick from The Seattle Times
“King County will have to close health clinics without state help, Constantine says” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times
“King County allocates $3 million to fund 100 hotel rooms for asylum-seekers” by Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks from The Seattle Times
“King County Announces $1 Million in Additional Support for Asylees and Refugees in Tukwila” by Lauryn Bray from South Seattle Emerald
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, today I'm very thrilled to be welcoming King County Executive Dow Constantine to the program. Welcome.
[00:01:00] Executive Dow Constantine: Thanks for having me.
[00:01:01] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for coming. And thank you for having a conversation that I think is very important - one that is on the forefront of many people's minds, that we see as we go about our daily lives, and unfortunately some of us have to experience - and that is dealing with homelessness, and the role that the county is playing in addressing homelessness in our region. Just starting out, what has been your approach to addressing our homelessness crisis, and why is it so important for the county to be involved?
[00:01:33] Executive Dow Constantine: So a brief but really complex question. It is important to us because the reason our government exists is to seek to make this a welcoming community where every person has the opportunity to thrive. And it is tremendously difficult to thrive if you don't have a safe, secure place to call home. The county has a wildly complex system of governance, including local governance - so, there is one county government, there are 39 city governments, there are myriad special districts. And of course, there's the state and much more. And it is often difficult to figure out who's on first - who is in charge of which aspect of this complicated picture of housing and homelessness. So we have taken on the role of trying to create partnerships to bring together all of these jurisdictions, regardless of their formal responsibilities or authorities to stitch together a complete approach to helping our shared constituency - those folks who are unable to secure housing. The county is Public Health - the county has some considerable region-wide human services programs that we have constructed, notwithstanding the fact that we're only technically responsible for those programs in the unincorporated area of 250,000 people. The county has a lot of capacity that some of the smaller cities don't have. And so in many cases, sort of by default, we've stepped in to try to bring together all of the parties. Seattle has its own capacity - Seattle's a big city with an appropriately sized government that has experts, it has the capacity to go out and seek funding, to go out and hire experts and do the work. So we work in partnership with them, but we also try to help the smaller cities that don't have that capacity be able to step up and do the work for their constituents. And we can't do it alone. And all of that is to say that the county is not the be-all and end-all in this arena, so we sought to create a regional authority where we could unite, bring together all of the contracting that governments were doing for outside entities to provide services to the people. And that was really the motivation for starting the effort on the Regional Homeless Authority.
[00:03:54] Crystal Fincher: And I wanted to talk about that a bit because I think people wonder - we've heard a number of officials from cities around the area, including Seattle, talk about how important this is to address regionally - that it's hard to address within each silo of each jurisdiction, and so a regional solution is needed. The King County Regional Homelessness Authority seemed to be an answer to that. But it's unclear sometimes what is within the scope of the authority, and what the county is doing, what cities are doing. So speaking from the county - where do you overlap, or where do you work with the KCRHA, and where do you operate independently?
[00:04:34] Executive Dow Constantine: So I'm going to oversimplify in order to hopefully make it clear. But we had a lot of places where we're entering into contracts with nonprofits to go out on the streets and provide services. And then the City of Seattle had a lot of contracts, often with the same nonprofits. And those contracts were on different schedules, and had different requirements, and required a lot of paperwork by those nonprofits - things that were not contributing to actually getting people off the street. And so we decided to try to take all of that and put it into a single entity with a single set of processes - and the city and the county contributed staff who had been doing that work in our respective governments. The homeless authority is in charge of helping people who are on the streets - not through homeless authority employees providing direct services, but by contracting with those folks who can help people on the streets - getting people into shelter, getting people into housing, getting people into the services they need to be able to stabilize their lives and exercise the kind of control over their lives they want to have and that they used to have. The authority is not in charge of housing - of building housing, of creating housing stock. And that has been a source of considerable confusion over time - is to come back to the obvious basic issue that people are homeless because they don't have housing, they can't afford housing. And therefore, the authority should be building housing - no, that is not their job. That is our job, the city's, various cities' jobs. It is the housing authorities' jobs, it is the state's job. And keeping clarity about that and keeping the authority focused on the mission of contracting for direct services to folks on the street is important in order for all of us to be more effective.
[00:06:14] Crystal Fincher: Got it. So as we get into talking more about what's happening in specific areas, I want to talk a little bit about what you just brought up - that homelessness is primarily a problem of housing, people not having housing. However, we hear people around the region - some saying, This is really an issue of addiction, this is an issue of criminality. It's not a housing issue. These are people who sometimes want to be out on the streets and don't want to have housing and don't want to have jobs - that kind of narrative. What do you think of that, and what is your approach to the issue of homelessness and what it's comprised of?
[00:06:58] Executive Dow Constantine: So the reason people don't have housing is because they can't afford housing. They may have been evicted from housing for the inability to pay rent or lost their home because they couldn't pay their mortgage. They may have lost their housing because of domestic violence or because they were acting out in some way because they have an untreated or undertreated behavioral health challenge. But fundamentally, it's because people can't afford housing. There is too much money chasing too little housing in our region. And that is a tremendously bad, unfortunate side effect of the economic story that we've seen unfold here over the last 20 years - where there's just so much more money being paid to so many more people and then a bunch of people being left behind. So if you say - Well, they're not housed because they're addicted or they're not housed because they have an untreated mental health problem - that is simply saying that we're not providing the appropriate service in order for them to be able to exercise that authority over their own lives, to be able to earn money, and be able to get the housing they need. It also means that we have an affirmative responsibility to deal with the housing imbalance so that there is housing for people to rent at wages you can afford. It is a dodge simply to try to blame the victim all the time here. People want to say - Well, that would never happen to me because I'm a responsible person. I would never have a drug addiction. I would never get into a bad relationship. I would never lose my job - all those sorts of things. But that can happen to anybody, and we have to view every single person on the streets as though they are our brother or sister, or our daughter or son. And if we do that, then we will see our obligation to help them - not by simply being paternalistic toward them, but rather offering them the help they need to exercise agency - to be able to do what it is they want to do, which is live with the dignity and security. And to reconnect with their families and friends and peers. You go talk with folks who are living in homeless encampments - they are mostly from around here and they mostly really long to be able to simply be accepted in their community again, to be able to see their kids, to be able to be seen in the community as a person who is worthy of respect, and to carry themselves with dignity. And depriving them of that is just utterly unacceptable and inconsistent with who we want to be.
[00:09:29] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, one of the things that we've learned over the past several years - and that the county has actually helped to operationalize - is the type of shelter, the type of housing that is most helpful. We've seen a move away from congregate housing to individual rooms where people can feel secure, can lock a door, and can really start to stabilize. Why has that been so important and how has the county been able to implement that?
[00:09:58] Executive Dow Constantine: Well, sometimes congregate shelter - just an emergency shelter overnight - is essential. You're out on the street - it's unsafe either because of the weather or some other factor and you need to get inside. But being brought inside, given a mat on the floor, and then being kicked out with all your stuff at 7 in the morning is not a prescription for long-term progress. You just keep cycling through, you can never get your feet under you, you can never get stabilized, you can never get on track to deal with whatever underlying challenges you might have, or the simple act of getting cleaned up and applying for a job and starting to make money again.
So when COVID started, we started moving people from congregate shelters into individual hotel rooms we had rented - it became clear that those people, in addition to avoiding getting COVID, were getting better in a whole lot of other ways. That having a door on the room with a lock on it, the ability to have their stuff be safe, the ability to get a full night's sleep, to have a bathroom to use when you wanted to started to get people calmed down to reduce the trauma and increase their ability to accept the other help that was available. And that help might be behavioral health treatment, that help might be job counseling, that help might be a whole range of things that could offer people a path back to the lives that they lived and that they want to live. And we had the University of Washington come in and study the hotel that we had in Renton, where we had moved many, many people who had been in congregate shelters, cycling in and out every day. And the university quickly identified that what we were anecdotally observing was absolutely true - that this made an enormous difference in people's lives. It was not their permanent home. It was not what they ultimately wanted for themselves. But the step up to a room of your own made a huge difference in their ability to start taking stock of the rest of their lives and being open to accepting the other help that was available. And so we really pursued that, and we've now purchased 1,200+ units through our Health Through Housing Initiative. We just opened a facility in Auburn - it's great, it's an old hotel, not that old - that folks are now moving into with supports on-site. And we're soon opening one in Redmond. And just as we found in the original Renton hotel, about 95% of people who come into this permanent supportive housing are successful, meaning that they don't end up back in homelessness. Some of them spend a lot of time in permanent supportive housing - some of them ultimately move into a place that was purpose-built for that - but a lot of folks move on to a job and subsidized, affordable housing, and ultimately to reclaiming their lives. And that is what we want. We want to prevent people from coming into homelessness, and we want to offer them the supports they need to exit homelessness.
[00:12:55] Crystal Fincher: I want to talk about the Health Through Housing initiative a little bit more because it does seem to be a model that is working. And one of the things that seems to be tough, that a lot of areas are having challenges with, is how to work between jurisdictions - how a county can work with a city, its elected officials and leaders, be responsive to the local needs and residents and their concerns, and the need to house people there locally, and balancing sometimes differing perspectives and needs there. How have you worked through that process with cities, and what advice would you give to other counties in the same position and cities when it comes to working with the county?
[00:13:41] Executive Dow Constantine: Well - how have we worked through it? Usually with great patience. We don't have land use authority inside of cities. We don't have permitting authority inside of cities. Even if we're bringing the resources, we have to work with those cities to get a place sited. What we offer to do is work with them to choose the operator so that the nonprofit operating it is one that the city's comfortable with and to have some percentage of the folks moving in be people who've been homeless in the local community - and I think those are all reasonable accommodations. And some cities have been quite successful - their leaders have stood up and worked with skeptics in their community in order to get sites up and running. Other cities have been less successful where the opponents of doing anything have ultimately kept them from taking action and moving forward. We're getting more and more success as people see that when these facilities open, they are not a blight, but a blessing - that they are able to get people off their streets locally and to help folks from around the region get their lives back.
And I will say that the system we have where every local community essentially gets to approve or veto the housing that we collectively need is an awfully tough environment in which to solve a problem of this scale. The legislature keeps taking measured actions to require more of local jurisdictions, to say - No, you really do need to site these places. You really do need to include more affordable housing. You really need to include more housing generally. And in general, those measures have been successful. But there are still some communities that are being tugged back and forth by folks who just don't want to be part of the solution. We had a big challenge - permanent supportive housing issue in Kenmore, where Plymouth Housing had been working on a project in cooperation with the city for years, and there was an election and then the council majority changed - and suddenly they disapproved the permit. That building now, I'm pleased to say, is going to be sited instead in Redmond. And the city of Redmond stepped up and said - This is not okay. We want to help those who are in need in our region of the county. And they've voted to proceed, and they're moving forward pretty quickly on identifying a site and getting the funding to help Plymouth Housing build that building.
[00:16:04] Crystal Fincher: Now, you did mention the legislature taking some actions to help make it easier to address this housing affordability, housing quantity, homelessness crisis. Is there any legislation that you're tracking right now that you think would be very helpful moving forward?
[00:16:23] Executive Dow Constantine: I can't speak to any specific legislation this year. There was a bill introduced quite late, as I understand it, that would require cities to accommodate facilities like the Plymouth Housing facility we just discussed. But in general, the legislature and the county have multiple approaches - there's subsidy and then there's leverage, where they have essentially regulation that says in order to receive our funding for other things, you have to accommodate a certain amount of housing. And I do think that our cities more and more are getting with the program - that they are each having growing pains - they're each having a struggle between those who don't want anything to change and those who realize that the future is coming, whether you prepare for it or not. And as they see success in their neighboring cities, they realize that maybe a little bit of change is not the end of the world. So I'm encouraged about it.
If I could double back to the Regional Homeless Authority, the idea there was to bring together King County and Seattle - where the big player is issuing contracts locally - and our other 38 cities, and the people with lived experience to inform the work we're doing. And that has been a difficult beginning - trying to get everybody to work in sync. It's getting better - we've got a new interim executive director who I think is going to be able to continue to build those relationships. We do definitely need all of the formerly known as suburban cities, all of the non-Seattle cities - many of them are not very suburban at all anymore - to participate at the appropriate scale for their city and participate in funding, participate in programming, participate in siting buildings - both affordable housing and supportive housing. And as we do that, we have the capacity in a county of 2.3 million people - one of the economic centers of the country - to give everybody a safe place to live and the supports they need to get moving again. But it needs to be an all-hands effort. It can't just be a few governments and our nonprofit partners.
[00:18:28] Crystal Fincher: When you talk about it needing to be an all-hands effort, one thing that I think a number of people noticed - I certainly noticed - was King County playing an active role in saying, The solution in different cities may look different in each individual city. And there are multiple ways to address this, individual ways may be right or not right for each city. But cities have to act affirmatively - you need to do something to be part of the solution. And it seems like you, with the county and different departments in the county, stepped up when it came to the city of Burien, which has been toiling with this for quite a while - in not just how to address this, but even whether to address this. And stepping up and saying - Hey, you are using county resources, whether it be the sheriff, whether it be other things, and you're not going to be able to use these in ways that are consistent with the law and in ways that aren't working towards a solution. What was your approach to Burien and how did you work through that issue?
[00:19:32] Executive Dow Constantine: First off, the Burien saga clearly illustrates a point that I'm always trying to make, which is that homelessness is not a downtown Seattle problem. Homelessness is an everywhere problem. It manifests differently, it's more visible in different places. You see it in Seattle in part because there aren't a lot of woods for people to camp in. And in part because this is where all the TV stations are, so whenever they want to film some salacious story about homelessness, they go out in the streets of Seattle. It's just easier than driving to Kent or Shoreline. I will say that Burien started out, I think, with pretty good expressed intentions around helping people who were showing up, sleeping on their streets. They got a lot of pushback when they started trying to figure out how to site a facility. And it became, as in Kenmore, an election issue where an organized group of naysayers was essentially saying - These people don't belong here. - and blaming the victim and refusing to acknowledge the basic obligation to provide people an alternative if you need them to go somewhere. You don't have to construct the perfect solution. You don't have to construct their forever home. But you can't go to somebody who's sleeping in the park or on the street and say, Leave. - without saying - To go over here, which is a place that's at least as good and safe, right? Because if you're just chasing people back and forth across the street, you're being cruel to them and you're achieving nothing. And Burien could not really get past that. We put a million dollars on the table and a whole bunch of new Pallet shelters - tiny homes that are manufactured here in the Puget Sound region. And just kind of an organized group of citizens kept the city council stymied for a long time and unable to identify a piece of city property to move people to. They had previously approved Downtown Emergency Service Center building with 95 units in Burien - and that is in fact opening this summer - so that preceded this whole controversy. And that's going to be a great thing because again, people are going to be inside and be getting the help they need. They're going to be countering the narrative that all of those folks on NextDoor have about their community. But ultimately, Burien came to terms with the need to do something real to fix this issue, and they are now fixing it. They've applied for some of the funding that King County's put on the table. They are working with others - I think the City of Seattle and Seattle City Light - on a site. And so they went through a lot of agony and I think probably a lot of electoral challenges, but ultimately they're going to get to a solution that's going to work for some of the folks who are homeless there.
[00:22:08] Crystal Fincher: I also want to talk about how things look at this point in time and moving forward. Many cities, including the City of Seattle, including the county are looking forward and dealing with significant budget deficits. The City of Seattle has a $200 million-plus deficit coming up. A lot of cities are saying they're going to need to scale back on efforts in many areas. Some of the market forces, perhaps, that made it particularly advantageous a couple years ago to purchase hotels when costs were more attractive than they are now made it possible to do more. Looking forward, is it going to be harder to purchase these hotel sites or housing sites to build and to work with cities? How do you think this looks moving forward?
[00:22:58] Executive Dow Constantine: The strategies change from time to time with market conditions, right? There was a moment when hotels were depressed because no one was traveling - it was a good time to go buy hotels. There will be opportunities now with, for example, the opening of many, many new light rail stations and light rail lines to paint on a broader canvas - to work to include affordable housing and even supportive housing and other facilities targeted to those who have been homeless in different station areas where everyone can have inexpensive access to all the opportunities the region offers. It's a different situation than we had four years ago, but it is still an opportunity. I will say that the reason that the City of Seattle, King County, and others are facing deficits is not because the economy is in the tank - it's going great. We're, again, one of the economic centers of the country. It's because the state has among the worst tax systems in the nation. And so the tax system is utterly misaligned with the economy and people are not paying based on their ability to pay. Some people pay a much higher percentage of their means - both income and wealth. Those are folks who have very little money who end up paying a lot more in sales tax as a percentage. Those are folks who own homes as their primary or only asset, where they're paying property taxes - if you have 100 times as much money, you don't have a home that's worth 100 times more. So if our measure of wealth is real property, it is a very inadequate and inaccurate measure of your ability to pay. So you probably can afford more than a person who is living on government assistance or living at poverty wages, but you're paying a heck of a lot more than someone who is legitimately wealthy. And there are a lot of folks who are legitimately wealthy in our community. The legislature needs to create a tax system where you're taxed based on what you earn, and what you have, and whatever proxies there are to allow us to understand the right mix of those two things - they need to adopt them. And then we will have adequate money to do what needs to be done so that every person can be successful and can contribute back to the community. Then we will all be better off when we have that kind of a community. In the meantime, we are making do with the woefully inadequate tools we have. And we're asking the legislature for help - they're in part failing and in part keeping hope alive - so we'll see how the session turns out.
[00:25:29] Crystal Fincher: We will see how the session turns out. I completely am aligned with your assessment of why we are in the challenging position that we are financially as a region and hope that in November 2024, when some of these issues are on our ballot, people remember this and pay attention. Also, the biggest city in the county, Seattle, is facing a major budget deficit and does have some progressive funding options that have been recommended. Do you think the City should take action on some of those options?
[00:26:02] Executive Dow Constantine: Yeah. I wouldn't presume to tell the mayor or the City what to do because that's just bad for business, but I - and by business, I mean our business working with the City. But I do think that the City of Seattle has a lot more options than we have. The counties do not have business occupation tax, counties do not have utility tax, counties do not have the authority to levy the kind of head tax or employee tax that the City has - although we did go to Olympia and ask for that with the cooperation of the major employers in the county, remember. And it was killed, not by the Republicans - though none of them were going to vote for it - but by the Democrats. So we would have had a relatively low but countywide employer tax, essentially, to pay for homelessness and housing services - and we did not get that. So cities have that organic authority, the county does not have the ability to do that. So the state of Washington is in charge of all local tax authority, and they have failed - under Republican and Democratic control - to come to terms with the fact that we have this terrible tax system and that it's particularly terrible for cities and counties, and particularly for counties.
[00:27:13] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, I want to talk about another area where the county is unique - and that is public health. The county is responsible for delivering so many healthcare services to communities, and it seems like this is a really important element of addressing our homelessness and housing crisis also. How have you been able to leverage that at the county? And looking forward, why is it so important to make sure that we are adequately funding and supporting healthcare at the county level?
[00:27:48] Executive Dow Constantine: So public health is a county responsibility. We have had the City of Seattle sort of participating - they contribute about $15 million of our many hundreds of millions of dollars a year. But it's basically a county department, a county function. It is many things. It is epidemiology. And it is about, for example, pregnancy care and birth control. It is about so-called lifestyle issues, like trying to reduce diabetes population-wide, trying to reduce smoking population-wide, trying to deal with these population health issues that affect a lot of individuals and very much inequitably. And it's also about direct service to people. So it is about 70,000 people who get their healthcare at King County Public Health clinics. And maybe half of those people would not qualify for Medicaid because they may be here without documentation - they're not eligible for federal assistance, but we as a county provide that assistance because we don't think that a kid ought to not get healthcare because their parents happen not yet to be documented. Right now, our general fund has been subject to this 1% lid on the increase in aggregate property taxes for, I think, like 17 years now. And with inflation at 6%, 7%, whatever percent over the last few years, we have a huge problem in our general fund. And the one thing that is not mandatory - one major thing that is not required by the state - is providing that healthcare directly to residents. So we're looking at potentially having to close all of our public health clinics after this year if the legislature doesn't take action, which is absurd in one of the wealthiest regions in the country. But that is the grim reality. And so I've been in Olympia pushing them to recognize that reality and to provide us the local funding authority to be able to keep our healthcare going. Now, the way in which direct services are provided has evolved over the years - there are many community-based clinics, nonprofits, et cetera, providing healthcare. There are also an awful lot of people who are getting them directly from county-run clinics and that will continue to evolve. But the thing that's not going to change is there are going to be folks who need help from their local government in order to be able to get basic healthcare, and we desperately need to be able to continue to provide it.
[00:30:15] Crystal Fincher: One issue that we've been seeing recently has been that of some refugees, who are fleeing unimaginable conditions elsewhere, arriving here not having housing and landing at one of a couple shelters - those shelters basically operating beyond their capacity now because of the demand - and the need to help house those people in some ways. We saw some of them being moved to hotels, and then questions about the funding for the hotels. Where does that situation stand? And how can help be provided moving forward?
[00:30:55] Executive Dow Constantine: This is a problem that's manifesting in different ways all over the country. But the real focus there right now is a church in South King County that started off with a few people arriving, and then the word started to spread, and they continued to throw their doors open to folks arriving, and soon were overwhelmed. The county stepped in - this is like homelessness - nobody is specifically in charge of this except the federal government, right? So the county stepped in - we pulled some money that we had set aside for other purposes, I think for homelessness. And we got 300 people into a hotel with ongoing permanent funding so they would not become unhoused. And there was a community group that put a whole bunch of people in a different hotel and then didn't have any money to follow up and pay to keep them there, so then that was the precipitating crisis. We have been working with the state of Washington to see what the state can do. We've been talking with our federal partners, but of course they have 50 states and who knows who else talking with them about the crises that are happening in their communities. We as a nation have to come to terms with what is going to be the future reality, which is that a lot of people are going to be migrating to the United States from places that are war-torn, that are famine-ridden, and a lot of it is because of the changes in the global climate. And we're going to have to have an orderly, humane, and funded way to welcome those who are seeking asylum - and not just asylum, but a new life contributing to their new country. It is agonizing. During the Syrian crisis - when people were trying to bar refugees from our country, we went out and welcomed Syrian refugees here and made accommodation for them. During the Ukraine war - when that started, we opened up a hotel to accommodate refugees. Then when Afghanistan suddenly fell, we opened another hotel to accommodate Afghan refugees. And that is who we are as a community, and we do not have the capacity - we don't have the financial capacity - to be able to deal with this on our own. The United States government must act, and the refusal of Congress to step up to anything that is going to deprive them of a campaign issue in November is pretty exasperating.
[00:33:13] Crystal Fincher: That it is. Finally, I'm wondering, from your perspective as someone who has helmed successful initiatives to get people housed, who's working with a lot of different localities - what are your top recommendations for elected officials who are trying to figure out how to navigate through this in a proactive way, and for residents of cities who aren't sure what to do, but know that something needs to happen? What would you recommend to both of those groups?
[00:33:45] Executive Dow Constantine: Well, for all of us, we have to adopt a mentality that we're all in this together, and that this is a shared challenge, and the solutions have to be shared. For elected officials - You have to develop a spine. This is not about you going out and being a hero and solving the whole problem yourself, but your jurisdiction has to do its part of the solution. And that has to do with homelessness and accommodating those who've been on the streets. And it has to do with housing and providing housing for people of all incomes, including folks at the low end of the economic spectrum. And for residents - Everything will work better when we're all participating and accommodating folks in your community is not a negative thing. It's not a burden - it's an opportunity. Your children, the children of this community are the folks who are ending up homeless on the streets. Your children are the ones who are struggling to be able to afford to live in the neighborhood in which they grew up. So you making your community into a place that accommodates people of all economic circumstances is really preserving the ties that bind us together, preserving the social capital that makes us a better community. I would say that we have a lot of really good funded programs right now to be able to build that kind of affordable housing. We have a lot of really good programs to be able to build that supportive housing for those who've been homeless or who may be struggling. But we also have to get to the point where the actual market is working again and that people can make money building housing for other than the top of the market. And as long as it is the case that you can't afford to build workforce housing, then people at the workforce level are going to be pushing out the people who have less money than that, right? And I cannot emphasize enough that government is never going to be able to solve all of this simply by building public housing. It is going to have to be that, and incentives, and the market working, and much more. And then we will be able to get back to some equilibrium where every person is able to afford a safe, decent home - and in doing so, to be able to thrive and give back to their community.
[00:36:06] Crystal Fincher: Okay, one small additional question - talking about that, I was just reminded that social housing has been voted on and passed by the residents of Seattle. There's going to be an initiative collecting signatures to fund that - do you think that's part of the solution when it comes to housing and homelessness?
[00:36:25] Executive Dow Constantine: Yeah, I don't know for a fact. I'm intrigued by it and I want to better understand how that's going to work in the City of Seattle. But I do think that you just got to recognize that housing is - despite aspirations of some folks over the years - housing is mostly about a market like everything else. And the market's not working - the market is broken. And when the market's broken, it is the responsibility of the government to step in and fix it and to make the market work. And that means adding stock that would not be built by the market, that means providing either incentives or requirements for people to build for a broader range of incomes. And this is not rocket science - although rocket science is not actually that complicated - but this is not rocket science. We know how to do all of this and it is just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other until we get it done.
[00:37:19] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much, King County Executive Dow Constantine, for helping us to understand the lay of the land here in King County and for helping to just blaze the path on getting people housed and on actual solutions here. Thank you so much.
[00:37:36] Executive Dow Constantine: Thank you.
[00:37:37] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Editor of The Stranger and noted poet, Rich Smith!
Crystal and Rich discuss the significance of the Stranger endorsing “Uncommitted Delegates” in the March 12th Presidential Primary. They then celebrate the legislature’s passage of the Strippers’ Bill of Rights and mourn the deaths of rent stabilization and even-year elections at the hands of the Senate Ways & Means Committee. Finally, they cover Seattle City Council’s inexcusable silencing of protesters with arrest.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Rich Smith at @richsssmith.
Resources
Check out our audiograms about proposed Seattle surveillance technologies and get your public comments in by the NEW deadline, March 22nd!
Vote Uncommitted WA
“The Stranger Endorses Uncommitted Delegates for the March 12, 2024 Presidential Primary Election” from The Stranger Election Control Board
“Donald Trump has a massive lead over Nikki Haley in Washington's 2024 Republican presidential primary, NPI poll finds” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate
“Washington Passes Strippers’ Bill of Rights” by Rich Smith from The Stranger
“Senate Democrats Stiff Renters for the Third or Fourth Time, It's Honestly Difficult to Keep Track” by Rich Smith from The Stranger
“Conservative Senate Democrats Stiff Renters Yet Again” by Rich Smith from The Stranger
“Ways & Means declines to take up NPI's even year elections bill, ending its 2024 run” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate
“Police Arrest Six of Sara Nelson’s Political Enemies After She Refuses to Hear Concerns of Asylum-Seekers” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
“6 protesters arrested during council meeting at Seattle City Hall” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times
“King County, Tukwila announce new investments to help asylum-seekers” by Anna Patrick from The Seattle Times
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
An update from last week's Tuesday topical show - public comment on bringing three surveillance technologies to Seattle has been extended from the original February 29th deadline to March 22nd. Check out our audiograms from this week and get your comment in now.
Today we are continuing our Friday week-in-review shows, where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Editor of The Stranger and noted poet, Rich Smith.
[00:01:20] Rich Smith: Hey, Crystal - how you doing?
[00:01:22] Crystal Fincher: Doing? I mean - I'm doing. All things considered, I'm all right. All things considered is doing heavy lifting in that statement, but here we are. But hey, we have a presidential primary going on. We have ballots now, and there is a movement that The Stranger has endorsed for Uncommitted Delegates - for those who identify as Democrats - in the March 12th presidential primary. What is that? And why has The Stranger decided to endorse that?
[00:01:55] Rich Smith: Great questions. Yeah - well, you've got your primary ballot. You've got some options there. They include Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., Dean Phillips, Marianne Williamson - who dropped out, and Uncommitted Delegates. Uncommitted Delegates is just a delegate that will, if that bubble gets more than 15% of the vote share after the primary, go to the national convention - which is scheduled for August of this year in Chicago. And in the first round of balloting, when voting on the nominee, they just aren't pledged to vote for any particular candidate unlike the pledge delegates, which Joe Biden will almost certainly win the vast majority of at the conclusion of the primary. So functionally, that's what it means - uncommitted delegate is someone who can decide who they want to vote for at the convention rather than just doing it ahead of time.
And The Stranger endorsed it for a number of reasons. Chiefly, we do not like Joe Biden's response to the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. We do not like his hard right turn to the right. We do not like a number of other things that he did or did not do during the course of his four years in office. And this is the only time - the Democratic primary - where we get to raise an objection, make our voices heard in a language that he can hear, which is the language of delegates at the convention. The thinking is - if we send some uncommitted delegates, if the movement gets big enough, then during that first round of voting, the delegates can make a little noise if the war crimes are still going on.
[00:03:39] Crystal Fincher: Now, one important note in this effort, because a lot of people were saying - We're going to write-in "Ceasefire," we're going to write-in a different candidate. That is, in Washington state - because of state law - a suboptimal option because officials only tally write-in votes from candidates who file "timely declarations" of a write-in candidacy and who also exceed the number of votes earned by the second place candidate. So that "Ceasefire" vote, that write-in is not going to be tallied or reported. It'll get lumped in with people who write-in some random name of a friend or someone who they wish would be president there. So the actual most organized and impactful way to register that vote is Uncommitted Delegates. There also have - heard some people who typically vote for Democrats say - Well, I want to cross over and vote for Nikki Haley instead of Donald Trump because I find Donald Trump offensive and don't want that. I don't know how much of an impact that is going to have here in Washington state. One, ultimately, most of the votes will wind up going to a Democrat - we're a blue state, that's not controversial. But two, even on the Republican side, NPI just came out with a poll this week showing Donald Trump holds a commanding lead in the Republican primary among Republicans - about 75% of Republicans saying that they planned to vote for Donald Trump in that poll. So what's the hope - to get Nikki Haley from 20% to 25%, 25% to 30%? I don't know how much of an impact that is.
Obviously, people are free to choose however they do want to vote, but very important that you do make your voice heard, that you are aware of what the options are, what the ballot looks like. And again, for the Uncommitted Delegates option, that's actually a bubble that you can fill in - you don't have to write-in anything, and that's how that would be registered. Also, a reminder that the presidential election ballots are due by March 12th, 2024. Don't forget to sign the outside of your ballot. In presidential primaries, we have to declare the party on the outside of the ballot - without those things happening, your ballot can't be counted. So make sure that you - one, participate and vote your conscience. There is a very effective way to do that right now.
[00:06:10] Rich Smith: Yeah, we need as many people to do it as possible so we can send as many delegates as possible and show Biden that his behavior on foreign policy matters and on immigration - two domains over which the executive branch has almost exclusive control. I know that Congress has the purse or whatever, but as we've seen with the sending of weapons to Israel in December - Joe Biden, if there is an emergency, the executive branch can skirt Congress and send the money anyway. And the way that the national security apparatus is set up, especially with the continued authorization of use of military force, Biden can bomb the Houthis without talking to Congress much. He's got a lot of power and it's just so rare to get the opportunity to speak directly to a president about foreign policy. We don't have a draft, people aren't really talking about foreign policy when they vote - foreign policy isn't at the top of their list of things that they vote on. And so, presidents don't feel like they have to respond to Democratic pressure because there's not a lot of Democratic pulleys that give us power over him, basically, on those policies - on immigration and on foreign policy. So we rarely, rarely get this opportunity - it's certainly worth doing for that reason.
[00:07:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And I've talked about this a lot of times before, but primaries are your opportunity to truly vote your conscience. There's a lot of pressure in a lot of different directions in general elections. And it's not just a referendum on one person - sometimes we are in the position of picking the lesser of the two evils. But when that is ultimately the choice, it is on us to do all we can - in the meantime and around that - to lessen the evil overall. And so it is the time to be able to vote your conscience. There are lots of people who are having lots of discussions about voting in November, about Biden versus Trump. But this isn't that time. This is a Democratic primary where you can vote your conscience and you can send a message in a way that is stronger than just about anything we can do, especially as Washington state residents. So I certainly will be taking advantage of this option and want to make sure that lots of other people know that this is an option for them too.
[00:08:35] Rich Smith: Hear, hear.
[00:08:37] Crystal Fincher: Also want to talk about the legislature this week. There was a positive thing - a positive, I mean, maybe there are more positive things - but there was a positive thing that happened that's worth talking about. A Strippers' Bill of Rights passed. What did this bill do and why is it important?
[00:08:55] Rich Smith: The bill did a lot. The bill established and added a bunch of labor protections for strippers in Washington state who have been needing them for far too long. It repealed the lewd conduct codes - the WAC, as they call them, Washington Administrative Codes - which were used and cited to raid gay bars in Seattle in January. And in doing so, it creates a pathway for strip clubs to apply for liquor licenses, so they can help offset the cost of some of the labor protections the state will now force them to implement - having panic buttons in certain areas, more safety training, lowering the house fees or the rental fees that strippers have to pay to clubs before they go on stage for the night so that they start the night indebted. And if the fees are too high - sometimes they're as high as $150, $200 a night - they will work a whole shift and just give all that money to the club owner and go home empty-handed. So this bill capped those fees to help strippers make money and express themselves sexually without the burdensome fees. What does it do? It frees the nipple and the jockstrap in queer bars so that the police don't have a reason to barge in as they did in January with their flashlights and their photographs - taking pictures of people in jockstrap in the clubs. It will more or less revolutionize the strip club industry in Seattle and give the workers the protections that they've long needed. I don't know if you've been to a strip club recently in Seattle, but it's kind of sad in there. It's not really a social atmosphere. People are there to sort of drink Dr. Pepper, and watch people dance, and then go get loaded in the parking lot, and then come back in. And that creates a kind of menacing atmosphere. And so the hope is - and that's supported by a state report released in 2020 - that having a more social atmosphere, having stuff to do there that's not just watch dancers and mull a lap dance will create a safer and funner environment for everybody and liberate sexual expression.
But before this, with the lewd conduct laws - everything that a stripper did on stage was criminalized. They technically couldn't walk off stage with too sheer a bra or they would be having a threat of arrest. They couldn't take tips while they were dancing on stage without actual threat of arrest. There was a bunch of proximity rules in the codes that would have made lap dances illegal, basically. And so it decriminalizes stripping, essentially, in Washington and makes us the last state in the union to allow alcohol sales - in a kind of roundabout way. Basically, the repeal of the code means there's no enforcement of alcohol sales in clubs and it allows them to apply for the state's other liquor licenses - so that's the kind of roundabout way they're doing it. But it's incredible. It takes the boot of the state off the neck of marginalized communities and is a real win.
[00:11:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this is a marginalized community of workers. Workers that have been denied rights, been at risk of criminalization and penalties and everything that comes with that. Workers deserve protection - starts just as fundamentally and as simply as that. And every employer owes safety and fair compensation to their employees or to contractors working on their behalf. And so, this certainly brings us in-line with the modern world in many ways. And so just pleased to see that the legislature took action to protect workers in this way.
Now, the legislature failed to take action, unfortunately, in some other very key areas - in areas that Democrats, certainly the House of Representatives, defined as priorities, defined as very important. Starting with the failure to pass rent stabilization, which would have, among other things, capped rent increases at 7% annually - which is still a healthy increase. But right now there is still continuing virtually unlimited rent increases across the state. I have talked about before - my neighbors received a 45% rent increase annually - in one year - from previous year. And this is contributing to housing insecurity. This is contributing to our homelessness problem. This is contributing to income inequality. And it's contributing to rising house prices across the state overall. This, in particular, really does fail to help our problem of displacement here in our communities - was just so disappointed to see this. Why did this happen?
[00:13:48] Rich Smith: Yeah, it was a little bit - the short answer is that two men with somewhat adorable electoral ambition decided to quietly strangle the bill in the Senate's Ways and Means Committee, after a State senator representing Southwest Washington - Annette Cleveland - strangled the bill in a kind of clumsy and public way in the Senate's Housing Committee. And they don't offer many reasons for doing so, and the reasons they do offer are not good and unsupported by evidence. So in the Ways and Means Committee, you could only lose two Democratic votes, basically, to get anything through. The Ways and Means Committee is stacked with conservative Democrats, certainly fiscally conservative Democrats. And so Mark Mullet is on the Ways and Means Committee - he represents Issaquah, and he's just a true believer. He thinks that a rent stabilization package at 7% will decrease construction of new housing in the medium to long-term. And so it is not worth protecting the 40% of households in Washington who rent now from astronomically high rent increases that push them out of their communities - that's too great a risk - a potential medium to long-term decrease of indeterminate size in the number of housing units constructed in Washington. This is the kind of information that they're providing. Van De Wege did not give a reason. Rep Strom Petersen, who had talked to Van De Wege, asked him if he needed any amendments on the bill - they were willing to negotiate cap size, they were willing to negotiate all manner of exceptions. And Van De Wege shrugged and said, No. So not even giving a full-throated principled reason for quietly doing this to millions of Washington renters.
And Annette Cleveland beforehand strangled the bill in her committee, saying that - it was spreading, basically, misinformation as far as I'm concerned. She said that the rent cap of 15%, which was the one that she was considering at the time - extremely high, almost comically high rent cap - would only catch the most egregious abusers because landlords would, as a matter of course, raise rates 15% every year. Because if they can't raise it however much they want, then they'll raise it to the cap every single time. This is silly. Everyone will tell you, even the f**ing landlords will tell you that a 3% to 5% rent increase on an annual basis is the kind of norm. That's what the developers and lenders are both agreeing on when they sign their contracts. That's the stuff that they're counting on when they're figuring out their returns on investment. So a 7% rent cap is more than genuous, especially with the exceptions in the bill. In any event, aside from that, she also cited a bunch of old papers talking about first-generation rent control, which is much more strict than the rent stabilization measures that the legislature was discussing. Those arguments are also - in recent review from academics - a little bit suspect, a little bit rosier, actually, for rent stabilization, and we could have a whole show on that. But anyway, she cited those disingenuous anti-rent control arguments to justify her support of killing rent stabilization measure, which is a completely different policy. And she insulted her colleagues while she was at it by citing the Urban Institute report that was actually less critical of rent stabilization than she made it out to be. But showing that she was concerned with the bill's impact on Black and brown people - doesn't want to raise the rents on those communities - and so decided to kill a bill that would make sure that they wouldn't face high rent gouging prices that have been pushing them out of their communities for the last two decades.
I know I'm ranting here, but I can't underline this enough. This bill is too late, but must pass. We really could have used rent stabilization at the beginning of 2010 when rents started shooting up, and would shoot up over 92% over that decade. Rents have been sort of flat in aggregate for the last couple of years, but that doesn't mean, as you say, that landlords aren't jacking up rents on people to economically evict them because they can. That sort of stuff needs to stop - that bill would have prevented it - the Senate Democrats didn't let it happen this year.
[00:18:08] Crystal Fincher: Didn't let it happen. And it should be noted that two people who were critical to killing this bill - Mark Mullet and Senator Van De Wege - are also running for statewide office. Mark Mullet is running for governor as a Democrat. Kevin Van De Wege is running for lands commissioner. Really interesting choices to refuse to help 40% of the state's population.
[00:18:35] Rich Smith: Just a number of coalition partners - the Members of Color Caucus in both chambers prioritized this bill. The LGBT community came out, especially in Seattle, to do a big rally in support of this bill. Hundreds of people descended on the Capitol steps in Olympia during this session to support a bill from every part of the state - east, west, north, south. Every renter has been feeling this pressure, and the state legislature on some bulls**t about potential long-term costs to the housing supply - which they cannot quantify or have not quantified, I haven't seen the number. If so, please send it over to me - I can't wait to have that discussion. And the only salvo that they're giving us - and I'll stop talking after this - is, Well, next year, Mullet won't be there because he's giving up his seat to run for governor. Van De Wege won't be there because he's giving up his seat to run for land commissioner. A couple of other senators are going to announce their retirement - Sam Hunt has announced his retirement, we've got maybe a couple more. So those places on Ways and Means will be replaced by politicians who don't have the same politics as these conservatives. So next year, it'll be a whole new legislature. The complexion will change and yada, yada, yada. And in the meantime, renters are going to face massive rent increases. So that's the consolation.
[00:19:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And we really don't know if the next legislature - if the Senate is going to be constructed differently. We don't know who's going to be elected to those open seats. And so what I will say is moving forward this year, it's important to get people who are running on the record, to talk about how important this is. As local party organizations are going through their endorsement processes, this be a question that's going to impact whether you decide to endorse or not. Those are the types of decisions that should be being talked about now and decided now, so as we move forward we have a better idea of who stands where and what we can expect from this legislature.
The last thing I would say is - as people are running, it's so clear how much more power chairs of committees and leadership have. So it's great to be elected as a senator, as a representative. But as we've seen, chairs of committees can just flat out refuse to hear a bill that has wide popular support, that would pass on the floor if it got there. They can prevent it from getting to the floor. So who do these senators expect to support, or will they rule out supporting people for chair and leadership positions? This matters and this is very impactful for the type of policy that we're able to pass here in Washington state. Those are very important things that usually get less attention that need to be getting a whole lot more.
[00:21:32] Rich Smith: That's right.
[00:21:32] Crystal Fincher: I also want to talk about another bill that died. Even-year elections, which we have talked about, certainly in our conversation with Andrew Villeneuve from the Northwest Progressive Institute. They were instrumental in helping to write and shape that. Representative Mia Gregerson from the 33rd LD sponsored that in the House. It passed the House, got to the Senate. And what unfortunately happens to so many bills in the Senate, it died. What happened here?
[00:22:03] Rich Smith: Well, based on the reporting from NPI, the bill was sent not to the Senate Governance Committee, but to the Ways and Means Committee where it quietly died. So another way that a bill can quietly die - because people can take executive action on it and vote on it, and it can die that way, certainly. But they can also just decide not to take it up in the committee and then die that way - then no one has to go on the record with who doesn't want more democracy, who doesn't want to give cities the opportunity to have more democratic elections in Washington. So yeah, that's my understanding - the Ways and Means Committee strikes again. They killed the bill by not taking it up in time. And now cities don't have the option to move their local elections to even years, which studies show and King County proves increases turnout. It's a loss for democracy. It's inexcusable. And Secretary of State Steve Hobbs and a number of power players came out against it - saying that it was going to be costly and there's other complications that election officials were going to encounter. But the state's Office of Financial Management - when sending it to the Ways and Means Committee - said that the bill had an indeterminate fiscal impact. In short, the state doesn't know what the fiscal impact would be. And I struggle to understand how holding fewer elections costs more money than holding an election every year does. But maybe initially with changing stuff around, maybe you have to buy more software or whatever. But yeah, I don't understand that math - haven't seen that math. But that was the political dynamic that killed the bill.
[00:23:39] Crystal Fincher: An opportunity to improve our small-D democracy. Has failed to take advantage of the opportunity and basically assurance - we see what even-year elections versus odd-year election turnout is. Even-year elections routinely have turnout 20-plus percentage points higher than odd-year elections. It's always better to have more people weighing in on who represents them and how their community should be shaped. So again, disappointed to see this. And hopefully we can take this time, as we have elections throughout the state at the legislative level, that we press candidates on this, and see where they stand, and try and set this up for success next session.
[00:24:26] Rich Smith: Yeah, it was interesting that they decided to send it to the Ways and Means Committee. So Jamie Pedersen - Seattle senator - is the Floor Leader. He decides which committees bills go to. So one question would be - why didn't this bill go to the Governance Committee, which is chaired by Sam Hunt, who's retiring this year? And then another question would be - what was the conversation in Ways about why they wouldn't pass the bill? And those would be two people to ask, in case you're interested in contacting your representative about why the bill died or you want to add your support.
[00:24:55] Crystal Fincher: Yep, absolutely. Now we will turn to local politics and policy in the City of Seattle. This week, we saw a different approach from the Seattle City Council in dealing with protests. And coverage, even in The Seattle Times, noted that protest has been a normal, consistent part of public meetings in Seattle for most of the last decade, for decades before that, and beyond. Seattle, as a city, has such a long and storied history of protests in favor of change - and successfully creating change also, by the way. And this is happening while other councils across the state, from Spokane to Tacoma, are dealing with largely the same things - have managed to de-escalate these situations, have managed to listen to people in their community who are passionately advocating for issues - many of which are crisis levels within communities. But in the city of Seattle, we saw insults from the Council perspective and calls for arrest, which did result in several people getting arrested for protesting. What happened?
[00:26:18] Rich Smith: Yeah, so the council met to pass a resolution to rename a street after George Fleming, who was a Black state senator. Sidebar, nerd thing - not a big deal, but worth noting. The resolution called George Fleming the first Black person elected to the State Senate, but he was actually the second or third, kind of depending on how you want to slice it. The first Black person was bi-racial - William Owen Bush was elected to the House of Representatives in 1889. He wasn't a senator - okay, fine. But the first Black senator was elected in 1921 - that's John H. Ryan, out of Tacoma. And so George Fleming would be the second Black senator. Minor note. But they basically framed the protesters as interrupting this resolution that was supposed to honor a Black pioneer in Washington politics, but not getting his achievement correct is not particularly honoring him either. So I see it as a little bit disingenuous.
But in terms of the facts of what happened, they were going to do this resolution. 20 people showed up during public comment to advocate for the refugees who are in crisis now in Tukwila - in a church parking lot, basically - they don't have anywhere to sleep. The shelter is unstable. And they wanted to say that maybe spending a little bit less money on police would give us more money to help these disadvantaged communities. That was the people's agenda that day, even if it was slightly different than the City Council's agenda. So knowing that, Sara Nelson, Council President, decided to comment by 20 minutes rather than giving them an hour to say their piece. And the people continued to want to talk after 20 minutes and so decided that they were going to stay right there and protest until she made public comment longer. She did not. They called for security. They told people to leave. Some people left. Six people did not leave. The six people who stayed were arrested for trespass and sent to jail. And the people who left were banging on the window outside of the chambers and chanting - Shame, shame, shame. At which point, Seattle City Councilmember Cathy Moore, who's a former judge, said that she felt as if her life was threatened and demanded the police to arrest those people outside of the chamber who were banging on windows. Everybody made a big stink. And I think another councilmember - I can't remember which one - also said that she felt threatened by the mob out there who was interrupting this moment of democracy.
As you said, protests in City Hall - that's the job. We tried to tell people that this slate of City councilmembers did not know what they were talking about, had very little understanding of the normal workings of City politics, and of the City in general. And this is just another way to show that they didn't read the job description. You gotta listen to the people when they talk. First of all, because they will stop talking and chanting when they feel like they've said their piece. And so it's just better for democracy to hear their voice. You all ran on listening to community. And one of your first major operations as a council is to sic the police on the community who is voicing their dissent in Council chambers where we have voiced our dissent forever? That's not listening to community. That's saying you listen to some community and you'll use state violence to shut down other members of the community. So that's what happened. And it was inexcusable and dumb - at the same time.
[00:30:05] Crystal Fincher: Strategically, it does not seem like that was a wise decision. This isn't even a progressive versus conservative issue on why this was just really poor decision making. That's why you see councils across the state - and country, really, but certainly across the state - not resorting to arresting people for protesting. All that does is escalate issues and create more passion around issues that is going to manifest itself during your meetings. I will say a lot of councils have been struggling with how to better deal with and manage dissent. The reason why I am more familiar with what councils are doing across the state is because of that reason - it's something that a number of people are looking to figure out and respond to, particularly because there have been actual threats of violence - actual threats made during meetings, people carrying guns into meetings - that is happening as well as not even commenting on stuff. Insults, threats coming to people in meetings. Racist, sexist attacks we've seen across the state.
So there have been efforts from a variety of councils to implement rules to be able to get through their agendas while enabling people to express their First Amendment rights and make their voices heard to their public representatives. That has not included calling for arrest. That has not included saying that people chanting - maybe in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable or that you disagree with - is threatening to your safety. And that particular thing sounds real familiar to a lot of people in my position and a lot of different positions - and if you know, you know - that conflation of, I am uncomfortable, I don't agree with this, to - I am being physically threatened, my safety is in danger. Those are two very different things, and the conflation of them is something that is a very cynical and harmful thing to resort to that I hope we don't see much more of. I hope they take this opportunity to really explore what it does mean to hear from people who do and don't disagree with you. And I hope they do that quickly because they are going to put the City in a position where they're going to face legal scrutiny, where there are going to be lawsuits that are going to cost the City a lot of money if they continue down this path. So we'll see how this materializes, but certainly this is not the best start to this council that they could have.
[00:32:43] Rich Smith: Hear, Hear. There was a moment when Abolish ICE protests were particularly salient and the Council was having a meeting. Abolish ICE protests came in - disrupted the meeting. Immediately, Kshama Sawant stands up with her fist in the air. Teresa Mosqueda starts clapping from her seat. Other progressive members of the council are nodding and listening. Bruce Harrell was the Council President at that time - immediately calls for security to get people out of there. And eventually - they chanted, they stayed a little bit, and eventually they left, and the meeting got brought to order. This is a normal course of events in City Council chambers. And them making a big stink of this is them being politically opportunistic - trying to gain civility politics points with their base. And as you said, it may open them up to liability and it's just unwise. And I agree - I hope they take this opportunity to do a little research on the positions that they have, and on the history of those positions, and how to de-escalate and manage dissent.
[00:33:51] Crystal Fincher: Just a side note on that - those protesters were protesting in support of asylum seekers who are trying to secure a place to healthily stay. The county is taking action - it was announced this morning that the county actually authorized grants to organizations that will be assisting the asylum seekers, as well as funding that should secure a stay through June with an enhanced heated tent - better amenities, I guess, than they have now, or just better basic shelter than they have now. It certainly is a conundrum. That is a short-term solution, there needs to be a medium and long-term solution put together. It does look like the governor and the legislature have included allocations to help both migrants and asylum seekers overall, and specifically those in Tukwila - with it looks like $5 million to $8 million allocations is what is proposed. We will see what that turns out to be by the end of session next week. But it's a challenge. Interesting to see the differences in how the different jurisdictions have handled it. People do ask - Well, why would Seattle even be taking that up anyway? Because this is a regional problem and that's why they involved themselves in it before. So these were people returning to the body that had itself involved themselves in it - I think it was a month ago that they decided to take action to help extend stays in some hotels throughout cities in the county.
[00:35:23] Rich Smith: By the way, it's the right thing to do. We should be bending over backwards to help these people seeking asylum in our sanctuary city. They want to work. They want to be members of society. And we should be doing everything we can to help ease that transition and help them. It's going to pay off in the long run, and it's morally indefensible not to help them in the short term. I don't know why they're throwing up their hands and saying - Oh gosh, go talk to the county, go talk to the state. We can't really do anything here. That's not particularly welcome in this Portal to the Pacific. And it speaks volumes about how they feel about immigrants, how they feel about people coming into the city, and who they think they're serving.
[00:36:03] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and this feeds into the larger problem that we're having with not having enough housing or shelter for people overall. These are people who don't have it and what we have to contend with - people are like, Well, these are migrants. Other people just want to be homeless. They had the opportunity to get off the street. They could take advantage of shelter if they wanted to. The fact is, there are thousands fewer shelter and housing spaces available than there are people out on the street. We cannot offer housing or shelter to people currently on the street. There is nowhere near enough. Even if we offer shelter to three people, there are eight more standing next to them where it's just not possible. Until we build more, we're going to have this problem. It's going to get worse. It is on us as a society to fix that problem, so that we can move people off of the streets. It's not acceptable to anyone to have people languishing outside - it's unsafe, it's undesirable. These conversations about offers to do stuff are really irrelevant until there is enough space for everyone. Then you can talk about - Well, they decided not to. And then a conversation about penalties could potentially be appropriate then. But before that - how is it valid to talk about criminalization of being outside if there aren't enough spaces to bring people inside? This is what has always perplexed me.
[00:37:36] Rich Smith: Yeah, the only way you can believe that is if you believe two things. One, every homeless person is a drug addict and a criminal on purpose because they like it. Two, we have enough space in the jails for all of these drug-addled criminals who just want to steal TVs all day. Neither thing is true. Most people on the street develop drug addictions as a way to cope with being on the street. It is not drug addictions that send them there to the first place, at least not the majority. And the jail - we do not have big jails. And when they go in there, we don't have enough staffing for the jails. And people think that people get treatment in the jails - they do not get adequate treatment in the jails. Staffing issues prevent them from getting the treatment they need. The treatment they need does not meet their needs because they get buprenorphine in lower doses - if you're on fentanyl, bup is not going to be enough to help you or to treat you in jail. And when you get out, you're going to have a higher risk of overdosing and dying. So people's misunderstanding of the criminal justice system leads them to believe these silly things. And I really wish they would read three articles before talking.
[00:38:46] Crystal Fincher: And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, March 1st, 2024. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is editor of The Stranger and noted poet, Rich Smith. You can find Rich on Twitter, @richsssmith, with three S's in the middle. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. You can find me on all platforms - and soon, Hacks & Wonks on all platforms and a few new things going on - at officialhacksandwonks.com. If you like us, please leave a review - that is a very helpful thing. And be sure to subscribe for the full versions of our Friday week-in-review and the Tuesday topical show. You can always get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by metro news columnist and opinion editor for The News Tribune in Tacoma, Matt Driscoll!
With two weeks left in the State legislative session, Crystal and Matt dig into several bills with potential for huge impact and needing public support to get across the finish line - HB 2114 (rent stabilization), HB 1932 (even-year elections), and SB 6105 (Stripper Bill of Rights). See the resources section for links to contact your legislators about each of these bills!
Next, they discuss the promise of the City of Tacoma’s detailed Anti-Displacement strategy, Mayor Bruce Harrell pledging no new taxes at his annual State of the City address, and no charges against the SPD officer who killed Jaahnavi Kandula.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Matt Driscoll, at @mattsdriscoll.
Resources
Why Seattle’s Proposed Surveillance Mash-Up is a Lose-Lose with Amy Sundberg and BJ Last of Solidarity Budget from Hacks & Wonks
“Pass bill limiting rent hikes to help stabilize households” by The Seattle Times Editorial Board
“Seattle's LGBTQ Communities Demand Rent Stabilization” by Rich Smith from The Stranger
HB 2114 - Improving housing stability for tenants subject to the residential landlord-tenant act and the manufactured/mobile home landlord-tenant act by limiting rent and fee increases, requiring notice of rent and fee increases, limiting fees and deposits, establishing a landlord resource center and associated services, authorizing tenant lease termination, creating parity between lease types, and providing for attorney general enforcement.
HB 2114 - Send a comment to your legislators
“NPI's even year elections bill advances out of Senate State Government Committee” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate
HB 1932 - Shifting general elections for local governments to even-numbered years to increase voter participation.
HB 1932 - Send a comment to your legislators
“Why a dancer with Tacoma ties is fighting for WA's 'Stripper Bill of Rights'” by Matt Driscoll from The News Tribune
Strippers Are Workers Campaign
SB 6105 - Creating safer working conditions in adult entertainment establishments.
SB 6105 - Send a comment to your legislators
“Some Tacomans are being pushed out of their neighborhoods. The city wants to intervene” by Shea Johnson from The News Tribune
Anti-Displacement Strategy | City of Tacoma
“Mayor Bruce Harrell Promises to Deliver Bare Minimum at 2024 State of City Address” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
“$230 Million Deficit Hangs Over Annual Harrell Speech” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
“King County Prosecutors Decline to Charge SPD Officer for Killing Pedestrian” by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review shows delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
If you missed our Tuesday topical show, our producer Shannon Cheng was guest host and welcomed back Amy Sundberg and BJ Last from Solidarity Budget to discuss how the City of Seattle is rushing to bring three surveillance technologies to the streets of Seattle with minimal public input. Make your voice heard at the final public meeting next week on Tuesday, February 27th at 6 p.m.
Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Metro News columnist and opinion editor for The News Tribune in Tacoma, Matt Driscoll.
[00:01:31] Matt Driscoll: Thank you for having me - it's always wonderful to be here. And of course, as luck would have it, hammering started in the background. Hopefully that's not too annoying, but yeah - it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:42] Crystal Fincher: Excellent - love having you back. Well, we have a couple weeks left in this legislative session, which is scheduled to end on March 7th. Houses have already gotten done passing legislation that originated in their chambers, now the other chambers are taking up things. And there's a few bills that I wanted to talk about that are trying to make it through, that a lot of organizations have as policies, and that would be really impactful to residents throughout the state. The first one is one talking about rent stabilization - different than rent control - rent stabilization basically limits rent and fee increases during the year. So this is something that a lot of renters have been talking about. We've certainly covered the housing affordability crisis at length on this program, but it really is a challenge for renters facing seemingly endless rent hikes. And those rent hikes currently don't have any caps. We've seen instances of rent literally doubling in some places, but fees 20-30% increases annually, which is way beyond the cost of inflation, generally, and really challenging for people to be able to afford. This has been cited as contributing to income inequality, to our homelessness crisis, and to just regular affordability, to displacement. Really challenging, so one thing that has been in the works for over a year has been the effort to try and limit rent increases. This bill would limit rent increases to 7% during any 12-month period, which is still a pretty substantial increase for most people - but within the realm of reality and affordability and achievability for a lot of people. How do you see this bill?
[00:03:38] Matt Driscoll: Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting and it is very similar to a citizens' ballot initiative that we covered here in Tacoma last election cycle, which did place some rent increase limits on local landlords and some caps on local fees. To me, it's kind of the other side of the coin - although this coin is probably not a coin, it has a bunch of sides. But we talk a lot about just the affordable housing crisis and the need to build more housing of all kinds, particularly affordable housing - being able to meet all sorts of different economic demographics with that. And this is another side of that, which is people faced with the crisis of housing, calling on lawmakers and policymakers to enact some protections and some regulations to keep them from just getting gouged and forced out financially. And particularly in this bill and in the initiative that ended up passing just barely in Tacoma, I mean, the rent increases and the fees that they still allow are not insignificant. And the fact that we see the pushback to it that we do, particularly from landlords' associations, and conservative lawmakers, really speaks to how out of whack the market is. If you can't get by by raising rent 7% annually, I think it raises questions. Now, there are, I think, some legitimate concerns about how far to crank that lever, because I personally believe at some point, if you do crank it too far, you are going to impact the "mom and pop" landlords who do exist, who are real providers of legitimate affordable housing to people and housing to people that they might not be able to get otherwise. So I do think you have to walk that balance.
Certainly to me, this bill seems reasonable, but I'm sure for a lot of lawmakers, it comes down to that question of how much reach do you want the government to have in dictating what are supposed to be those free markets we love so much in this country. But really, this conversation is indicative to the crisis that's happening in cities across Washington and across certainly the West Coast, where the cost of housing is just greatly outpacing any income growth or job growth that we might have. People are freaked out, and rightly so. You talk about all the necessities, whether it's food or - there are safety nets for that. But I think the housing one is one that feels really close because there aren't safety nets. If you lose housing, you lose housing. If you need to go to a food bank, you can go to a food bank, but there's not a house bank. And so it'll be interesting to see what happens and then see where the momentum goes on this.
[00:06:02] Crystal Fincher: It will be interesting to see where the momentum goes. And you raised a good point in talking about the Tacoma Renter Protection Initiative, which is similar to other renter protection initiatives and legislation we've seen in various cities throughout the state - whether it's Spokane, Bellingham, Tacoma, Federal Way, we've seen local communities across the state take action on this because this is plaguing communities. That housing expense is almost everyone's biggest expense and so if that is skyrocketing, that's taking families' available discretionary income, that's impacting the local economy, and obviously causing a lot of housing insecurity that is really putting a lot of people in tough positions, and communities in tough positions, and governments and how to deal with that. And it's so much more expensive to deal with once it gets to the crisis level - once someone is displaced or can't afford housing, loses their apartment. All of those are really, really expensive to deal with from a city and county perspective.
So I am hopeful that this legislation passes. It's currently in the Senate and it faces an uncertain future, so this is going to be one where community feedback to all of your legislators is really going to make a difference on this - particularly your senators, because they're going to determine the fate of this. There are a number of people on the fence - some moderate to conservative Democrats who have voiced some concerns. Jamie Pedersen is working on this in the Senate - has expressed some reservations, but has certainly heard a lot of feedback from his constituents who overwhelmingly are renters in his district. We'll see how this turns out, but this is one where - for folks listening - if this is something that's a priority to you, reach out to your senators. Fortunately, we make it really simple in Washington to be able to send communications about legislation. We'll also put links in the show notes to make that easy. But they're going to need to hear from you on this - certainly would be a big step forward for the state in terms of renter protections here.
Also want to talk about another bill, which we've certainly talked about before and recently in our conversation with Andrew Villeneuve in one of our Tuesday topical shows, that the Northwest Progressive Institute has been very active with. The even-year elections bill, which has advanced out of the House and then advanced out of the Senate State Government Committee. So it's looking fairly positive, but still has to go through some more hurdles. This would enable cities and towns to choose to hold their elections in even-numbered years instead of odd-numbered years. This is a big deal because turnout is much higher in even-numbered years. And as we've seen in the state of California, when we do put those other races - municipal races, local races - on the ballot with those national races, people still vote, still great turnout, even better turnout than they would see in those odd-year elections. We just got done with an election in November that had the lowest turnout since we've been keeping records here in Washington. It is a problem. We're deciding elections with sometimes close to only 20% of the residents participating in the election - that's not representative. I don't think that's doing anyone any favors. The more people who can participate, the better. I also sometimes hear - This is all a progressive conspiracy to turn things out because we see so many elections that trend progressive in the end.
And one thing that I would remind people is Seattle is a very visible place. Seattle has more progressive voters than conservative ones, so certainly elections in Seattle and therefore King County do trend as ballots are counted in the final days - those late ballots certainly do trend in a progressive direction. That's not the case statewide. It really just depends on what the local population is. If we're looking at southwest Washington, for example, those often trend red in a lot of those swing districts there. It just really depends on what there is on the ground. And even in those situations, I still think it's better for more people to participate in elections, and voting, and deciding what their communities are going to look like. What do you think about this bill?
[00:10:23] Matt Driscoll: First and foremost, Crystal, it's awfully generous of you to acknowledge that even where there are more conservative voters, it's better for more people to vote - that's very bipartisan of you, I appreciate that. This is one of those ones that makes me question myself - am I a super liberal hack? Because there really doesn't seem to be a good reason not to do this, in my mind. At the end of the day - participation in democracy, in our elections - the more people, the more registered voters we can get involved, the better. That's what we should all want. None of us should be afraid that our arguments should stand up and they don't - if they're in the minority, they're in the minority - that's the way it's supposed to work.
I will say that there's also part of this that frustrates me because we do look at those even-year versus odd-year elections, and one of the reasons that this gets cast as perhaps a progressive-motivated thing or a progressive scheme is because in those odd-year elections, the voting demographic does skew older, whiter, landowner, property owner - that's real - and i guess the frustrating part about it is just progressives could vote. I just went through that election last November and it was brutal to go through the endorsements. I do think election burnout is real. It does feel like there's always an election. I think we got to be generous to the general public and realize that most people are just trying to get through their lives, and put food on the table, and get their kids to school, and all that. And I think we're asking a lot of them to constantly be kind of in election mode, which is certainly how it feels. But at the end of the day, if progressives are concerned about the disparity, they could just vote in odd-year elections and they just don't - historically - we talk about it every time until we're blue in the face, and then they don't. But full circle - this is about participation. Whether we like the reality or not, the reality is people don't vote in off-year elections nearly as much as they do in the even year. We have historical data backing this up. And I also think it's important to note that all this bill will do is give places the ability to do it. It doesn't dictate it. It's local control of it. If you want to make that change, you can. So to me, again, I don't see an argument against this. It seems like a no-brainer, but so little is a no-brainer when it comes to Olympia.
[00:12:34] Crystal Fincher: I completely agree with what you're saying. And as this makes it through and follows the path that a lot of bills do, one of the things that happens is amendments are offered and sometimes accepted. So this passed the House. Once it did arrive in the Senate, it received some amendments that passed out of committee. I'm not in love with these amendments. One of them not only requires the city to basically opt-in legislatively and pass an ordinance to say we're going to do this, but now it requires a popular vote from the people. So the city has to both adopt an ordinance or policy by its legislative body-
[00:13:10] Matt Driscoll: An odd year? Do they have to vote in an odd year? Is that part of the stipulation?
[00:13:15] Crystal Fincher: You know, it probably is. And yeah, it would have to receive approval from its voters. Now, this is something where the voters vote for their city council or their town council - whatever their government legislative body is, usually a city council - who make decisions like this all the time. Putting this out to a public vote is a costly endeavor. Elections aren't free. You have to pay to administer them, it's costly, it's time-consuming. And as you say, this is probably going to be on another odd-year election ballot. This is pretty simple. I wish we would let people and the electeds that they selected make these decisions. I would love to see that amendment taken out before it does get to a final vote, but we'll see how it goes. It would be progress either way. Definitely better than nothing, but would love to see as much good as possible and not add another hurdle to this that is seemingly unnecessary and also costly at a time when a lot of cities and counties are dealing with budget deficits and are really trying to trim costs instead of add them.
Another bill that you covered this week is about a proposed Strippers' Bill of Rights that's currently in Olympia. What is happening with this and what would it do?
[00:14:29] Matt Driscoll: Yeah, I mean, I kind of became mildly fascinated with this over the last week because it was pretty new territory for me, to be honest with you. So basically, the background on it is adult dancers, strippers in Washington essentially lack a whole lot of protections that I was, for one, shocked to hear didn't exist - like requirements of clubs to have security. In recent years, there have been some slight upgrades, installations of panic buttons and stuff, but really it's kind of a Wild West out there in terms of staffing, and training requirements, and de-escalation requirements. And basically, whether you frequent strip clubs or not, just picture a strip club and think of all the things that you would assume would be in place to protect people and employees and the reality is that many of them don't exist currently. And so this bill would do a lot of that around training, de-escalation, that sort of thing - which all, to me, feel like no-brainers. And I think in the legislature's view - from the testimony that I've heard, at least in the House - it seems to be a shared sentiment.
Where it gets tricky is this bill also opens the door for the legal sale of alcohol in strip clubs. And at least initially going into it, for me, it's a juxtaposition until you get into it. Because on one hand, you're talking about safety and regulations. And then - oh, yeah, we're going to add alcohol - and you're like, what the? that doesn't necessarily seem like that's about safety. But at the end of the day, as I learned and wrote about - and others have written about it plenty this session - essentially the deal for strippers is they pay a nightly rate, if you will, to work, to perform. They're independent contractors. They're not employees of the strip club. So you will end up owing $100, $200 just to start your shift. And then the money that you make in the process of your job, after you pay that back, that's what you make. One, that's clearly exploitative. It sets up bad situations, as you can imagine. But the reality of it is because there's no legal alcohol sales in Washington strip clubs, that's really the only financial model that exists for club owners. And so it puts pressure on them to exploit the dancers. And then that puts pressure on the dancers to maybe ignore warning signs about things that make them uncomfortable because they're all of a sudden in financial distress trying to pay what they owe just to work. So it just creates this whole set of tensions that I think - really a lot of the supporters of this bill would argue - really decrease the safety in these clubs.
So this bill would do all of that - it made its way through the Senate, it's now over to the House, it's out of committee as of earlier this week. But the hang up is going to be around that alcohol point. I think most lawmakers seem to agree with the safety measures, but there's hang up around the alcohol and how that works. We could go into the weeds - some legislators think that the Liquor Cannabis Board already has the ability, they could just make a rule. Liquor Cannabis Board says - No, we need you to grant us the licensing authority, yada, yada, yada. It's all very complicated, but it's going to come down to the booze.
[00:17:22] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and this is really interesting - I personally am absolutely in support of this. Strippers are workers. They deserve protections that any worker deserves. Employers have an obligation to protect their employees, or in the case of independent contractors to protect the people who they are making money from when they work in their establishment. As you said, this does require adult entertainment establishments to provide dedicated security personnel during operating hours. It does establish restrictions on the leasing fees charged to not exceed what a dancer can make so they don't go into debt while they're dancing - that serves no one. It also requires adult entertainment establishments to provide mandatory training to their employees on first aid, conflict de-escalation, and identifying and preventing human trafficking, sexual harassment, discrimination, and assault. Expands certain safety requirements, including key padlocks for locker rooms, cleaning supplies, and certain safety signage. And then, as you said, it prohibits the Liquor and Cannabis Board from adopting or enforcing a rule that restricts the exposure of certain body parts or that restricts sexually-oriented conduct. That particular element, I believe, came out of the targeted enforcement of gay establishments in the City of Seattle - seemingly with these lewd laws - saying that those can't be in the proximity of alcohol, which just seemed really out of touch, antiquated, potentially a way to harass the LGBTQ+ community, and just not something that is consistent with the values - certainly that we hold in Seattle, but in Washington state, as we've shown. So I do hope this gets through.
The alcohol issue - for me, I trust the strippers working in the establishment to know what's safe for them and if they're advocating for this and saying this is part of what we need to have a safe and sustainable environment, I trust them with that. There are plenty of situations where we allow alcohol where, if you take away the purity-attached issues to it, that seem to me to be dicey in a lot of situations. I'm also someone who it's just like - Wow, we have parking lots at bars. Doesn't that seem like it's setting up a very problematic thing? So that's a much broader conversation there. But if the strippers don't have a problem with it, I don't have a problem with it, really. They know the business and their environment much better than I do, certainly.
[00:19:48] Matt Driscoll: Yeah, I just think the whole thing's fascinating because I was talking to Laurie Jinkins about this last week when I was reporting on it - and she comes from a public health background. And her basic reaction to it is the expansion of alcohol is not good - she points to health data. I think you can certainly make that argument, but it's very interesting what you hear from folks working in the industry, and they a lot of times will compare it to Oregon. And admittedly, I'm going to lose any Pierce County street cred here, but it's been a long time since I've been inside a strip club - but I've never been in one in Oregon. What they say is - Look, in Oregon, whether you agree with strip clubs or not, they're actually a place that legitimate people might want to hang out because you can get a drink and maybe you can get some food, and if that's what you're into - entertainment - it works for you. And guess what you have in Washington? Strip club, honestly, is almost the last place you would want to hang out unless you were really driven to go to a strip club. Door charges are insane, you're buying $15 Cokes, there's nothing to drink, there's nothing to eat, it's empty and kind of sad. And lo and behold, what do you get? You get the folks who are choosing to go to those establishments - and I'm trying not to paint with a broad brush here, but I think we can all imagine the scene that this creates.
And then when you really talk about the fact that you've essentially created an economic model where the clubs in Washington rely on taking income straight from the dancers as opposed to everywhere else, where they make their income off the booze and the food - like every other sort of nightlife establishment. You can see how that would even out the relationship or the power dynamic between the dancer and the club, where here the club has all the incentive to suck as much as possible out of the dancer, and the dancers are in tough positions where they're trying to make it work. So I think it's fascinating. And again, this is not very satisfying, but it'll be very interesting to see where this goes in the coming days.
[00:21:41] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely will be. And I agree, it will be very interesting to see where it goes. Moving on from legislation and where things stand there, there was something that I wanted to talk about that I found really interesting and perhaps a model that other cities may be able to look at, depending on how this turns out. And that is a plan from the City of Tacoma to prevent displacement in the city. And this is in addition to a housing affordability action plan that was adopted by the City that they seem to have been making positive progress on. But a specific anti-displacement strategy that consisted of 21 actions, including buying property to build affordable units in areas that have a high risk of displacement, requiring owners of subsidized properties to issue notices if they intend to sell, or opt-out, or refinance. But really saying it's as much of a problem that people are being economically displaced, forced out of neighborhoods - we're losing the culture and character of our neighborhoods, we're losing cohesive communities that are being displaced - and the fallout from that is undesirable. So often we hear in other conversations about zoning - maintaining the character of the neighborhood - well, the people are essential to the character of the neighborhood. And when the people are being lost, that's a problem that the City of Tacoma has recognized and is taking action on, which I think is very commendable. What do you see in this anti-displacement strategy?
[00:23:12] Matt Driscoll: Yeah, I think it goes back to that multi-sided, not-a-coin thing I was talking about earlier. Well, we've got the need for housing and you've got policy pushing to place some regulations and protections for tenants. This is another part of that where cities, certainly in Tacoma, are recognizing that the economic realities and the housing realities in the city are, in fact, displacing untold number of people. We've been seeing it here for a long time. Hilltop is often painted, at least regionally, as the epicenter of it, where we've had Link Light Rail expansion and we've seen the housing going in, and if you see a lot of families that have been here for a long time getting pushed out. This is an acknowledgement of that from City leaders, and so I think it's commendable, they get credit.
Of course, the cynic can me points out that cities, including Tacoma, are great at coming up with plans - we already had an affordable housing action strategy, and now we've got our anti-displacement strategy, and we passed our anti-racism legislation with 21 bullet points of what we commit to do. And at the end of the day, the proof's in the pudding and people are still getting pushed out. And so the hard part is the work of - is the city actually going to acquire land and do the sorts of things that it lays out as its vision? I've been here long enough to have seen lots of visions - very few of them have come to full fruition - it's usually you get pieces and then a crisis pops up or some other thing happens. And so we'll see what happens at the end of the day, but certainly if nothing less, it's an acknowledgement of those very same forces we started talking out with at the beginning of this show of just the crazy increases of the cost of living, particularly of the housing. I hear from Chamber of Commerce types sometimes who point out - You keep saying rents are skyrocketing and really it's raising similarly to everything else. Yes, everything's getting more expensive. And yes, in theory, there have been some income gains - although I think it's totally fair and accurate to say they have not kept pace with the cost of living. But I just think housing is that one that people feel just so closely and it feels so razor thin and desperate that lawmakers, city council - here in Tacoma - are hearing it loud and clear from their constituents who are actively being pushed out or just looking around and realizing that one wrong move and they would no longer be able to afford to live here. I don't take any shame in admitting that's certainly my family's situation - if we had not purchased our house when we purchased our house, we could absolutely not live where we live today. We would be in Parkland, somewhere other than that - and that's just the reality. And so again, we'll see what comes long-term, but it's an acknowledgement and it's an important one, and I think it's right.
[00:25:40] Crystal Fincher: I also think it's right. This affects everybody. A lot of times I hear a lot of people say the same thing you did - Well, thank goodness we were able to buy our house at the time that we did because we certainly couldn't afford it now. This is an issue that is really affecting seniors in the community and whether they can age in place - whether they can remain in the communities that they have built their lives in, that they have relationships in, that is so important to maintaining their own safety net as perhaps their abilities evolve and change as they age. Lots of people need to downsize houses, need to have more accessible homes. And right now in many communities - certainly in Seattle and Tacoma, but also many of the suburbs - it is not possible to buy in the same area and get something similar that you would there. They're looking at a much different quality of life if they were to do that, or they need to move far away, basically, from perhaps family, support systems, the doctors that they've seen forever, the people who've been helping them in their lives for so long, and really lose touch with those things that keep them healthy and supported. And often their family too - and their families aren't able to afford to move in and live in the same area - it's really a problem that a lot of families are facing in this multi-generational way that is really, really troubling. And I'm glad this is being addressed.
[00:27:05] Matt Driscoll: Yeah, it's just a subset of the folks being affected by this - you probably know the data better than I do - but if you want to be terrified at some point, look at the data about the number of people moving into retirement age and that age bracket in the next decade or more. It's a significant amount of people. And if we don't come to terms with the fact that our economy as it currently stands, particularly in relation to housing, is just cruel and out of whack right now - there are going to be countless people really with no flexibility, nowhere to move, creating those situations that you just described where you get stuck. You have a house you probably can't look after anymore. You can't afford to move anywhere else. You don't have whatever it would take to get into senior - I mean, it's terrifying. And so one small part of a bigger pie of the economic cruelty that we have, but it's a big one. And so I'm hopeful, but again, cities are great at the plans and the bullet points and the statements of great aspiration. The proof is in how it pans out. And so I think it's important for people to keep an eye on it and keep folks accountable, so it's more than just talk.
[00:28:11] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely agree with that. Getting more into the details of this, there were a number of actions - I was happy to see that this was a pretty comprehensive report - there are metrics to track over the time. As plans from cities go, especially ones that we're seeing these days in major cities, it at least had a lot of detail - that they'll either follow or they won't - but certainly a lot less vague than some of the plans that we see elsewhere. Some of the other things included were expanding one-time cash assistance to keeping families housed, offering incentives for developers to build affordable housing in at-risk areas, prioritizing new units to be rented or sold to at-risk or displaced residents, focusing down payment homebuyer assistance in high-risk neighborhoods, or reducing the cost to build accessory dwelling units. In addition to proactive rental inspection programs or community land trust with the intention of preserving affordable housing, increasing funds to the City's tenant protection program and housing assistance contracts, or creating a property tax relief program. The strategy also called for the City to consider establishing a reparations committee that would research the possibility of reparations for historical racist policies, particularly because BIPOC communities have been disproportionately displaced. Those communities have been decimated - they're far less than half of what they initially were, and that percentage is still declining there. It is a challenge - they're being disproportionately displaced, and certainly reparations are being looked at in a variety of areas and is justified.
We'll see how this does play out, but I'm excited. The plan excites me because it was quite detailed. We'll also link that in the show notes for people to read themselves and see the data behind the policies, the justifications behind them, the metrics that they'll continue to be tracking, and what their metrics for progress are. It'll be interesting to see, but we talk about affordability under a whole umbrella of a homelessness crisis, the housing crisis - but it is going to take addressing these discrete elements, each one by themselves, and a plan to address all of them. And I think Tacoma is certainly showing leadership so far in that area.
Also want to talk this week about Mayor Bruce Harrell delivering his 2024 State of the City address. This is his third State of the City address since he has been elected, these addresses are annual. He touted some reductions in crime, which I'm sure everyone is happy to see. He talked about the CARE Department that they established, which has started with a small trial of a co-responder model during limited hours during the day. Hopefully we will see that expanded - certainly, to at least cover 24 hours throughout the day, and more than a handful of responders there - that would certainly be welcome. And I think polling continually shows that residents want to see this expanded and available at all times and in all areas.
He also made news with basically a no new taxes pledge, which is very different than what he said before. He said that he'd be looking to implement progressive revenue. He convened a task force to look at different progressive revenue options because there's a $250 [million] budget shortfall that the City is going to have to deal with this year. And he basically said - Hey, we're not going to raise taxes. I'm not going to support any raising of taxes. Our challenges are much more fundamental to that. We need to basically look at every inch of the budget and re-examine what we're doing. This seems aligned with Council President Sara Nelson's pledge and op-ed where she said not only was she looking to not implement new taxes, but also cut taxes for business. This is also at a time when they're saying they're going to increase funding for public safety. So this seemingly indicates, particularly if they're looking at cutting taxes - but really either way, whether they do or don't cut any taxes - some pretty significant cuts for services and programs throughout the city that don't have to do with public safety. And this has a lot of people alarmed. How did you see the State of the City address?
[00:32:31] Matt Driscoll: What I always enjoy about our conversations is I view all this stuff from afar, from Tacoma. I know what Tacoma and Pierce County budgets look like, and I know what Seattle and King County budgets look like -and there's part of me that looks at that, and if you guys can't figure it out with the resources you have already? But I also acknowledge that the challenges in a place like King County and Seattle are not insurmountable, but are sizable. And when you look at budgets and you look at the need for these services and potential of cuts, it's very real and it could be not good for a lot of people.
From a broader perspective, I do think the dynamic and the shift that we've seen in Seattle is interesting - particularly as it relates to homeless response as an example of that, because there was a development where some funding appears like it's going to get taken back from the King County Regional Housing Authority. And I do think from the broad constituency that is now reflected in certainly the city council - and you could argue in Mayor Harrell's election as well - there's a dissatisfaction with the amount of money that we are spending towards trying to address some of these problems and the actual outcomes that we are seeing. And I think a lot of that is very natural because the positive outcomes of homeless response are difficult to track. People always want to break it down - we spent this much and we housed this many people. The reality is it's just not that simple. There's more human nature involved in that. But at the same time, I do believe - and I think Seattle in some ways can be the poster city for this - is it's understandable when people look at the more progressive side of homeless response and say - You're basically advocating that we can't sweep encampments, what we see around us is okay. But I think for most people, when they look around and the problems that they see and the suffering they see, it feels not okay. A lot of times, from one side of it, the solutions you get are really long-term. And because of the way these debates stick us into stupid corners, it starts sounding like you've got one side advocating for - Shut up about the encampment in front of your business, just deal with it. And I think that, at some extent, bleeds into the electorate where they start having pushback to that. And I feel like that's the tension point where Seattle's at - yes, it's a progressive city. Yes, people genuinely want humane responses to the homelessness crisis. They're not looking to criminalize people. They're not looking to make matters worse. They want to address the underlying root causes and the lack of housing and the lack of everything that we need. But at the same time, the status quo is unsustainable. I think you see that in some of this talk of re-evaluation of what we're doing, is it working? And those can be tricky evaluations because like I said, they're not always straightforward. And I think there's a lot of good work being done. And I think attempts to purely quantify it in hard data can be suspect. But at the same time, I don't think it's entirely wrong when people say we're spending a lot of money, we've been talking about this a lot, and all I see is it getting worse. And so that's a very rambly way of - my view on Seattle politics from 33 miles away.
[00:35:33] Crystal Fincher: Well, there's a lot there to talk about. I absolutely agree that people see the problem getting worse and are frustrated by that. And hear the amounts of money that are being spent and are wondering if that's effective or not - because the amounts do sound big. With the budget in Seattle - Seattle is unique in the state, in the types of industry that it has and the types of companies that it has. And Seattle certainly gets a lot from those companies. But I also feel we absolutely need to talk about and acknowledge that those companies get a lot from Seattle. As of a few years ago, Amazon had more office space in the city of Seattle than any corporation in any other city in the country. So great - Amazon is hiring. But Amazon is also taxing our infrastructure. They're causing a lot of stress on the roads - people talk about potholes and trucks - and well, Amazon is impacting a lot of that. Amazon is a lot of the impacts on our transit network. Amazon is impacting just the use of our resources, right? And Amazon is benefiting from the great resources that the city of Seattle does provide. And again, this goes both ways. Certainly people benefit from being employed, but we can't say - And that's it, that's the end of the story. There's also the desire to have those corporations, some of the richest ones in the world in Seattle, pay their fair share. In our state - as we've talked about, our regressive state tax code without an income tax - I do think there's a very valid conversation, especially in a city that has as many high-earners and as many mega-corporations as the city of Seattle does, whether people are paying their fair share. And when you look at how residents in the city of Seattle vote, that answer continues to be - No, we don't feel like everyone's paying their fair share yet, and we need to move further in that direction. City government currently, both the council and the mayor, seems to feel differently. So that will be a continuing tension that carries on. We'll see what happens, but certainly looks to be a bumpy ride coming up.
The last thing I wanted to talk about this week was the announcement that there are going to be no charges for the officer who killed a student, Jaahnavi Kandula, as he was driving 74 miles per hour down a city street - the speed limit is 25 miles per hour - responding to a call. This is the incident that a lot of people probably became familiar with because they heard another officer, who is also the vice-president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, mock her death - saying that her life didn't have value, basically laughing about it in just a really sick and sadistic way. No charges will be faced by that officer either. For the officer who was mocking, the rationale that the county prosecutor gave was that it's up to the Office of Police Accountability in Seattle to determine what, if any, discipline should be faced by that officer. And then for the officer who actually ran over this young woman, just saying there was not enough evidence to show that basically he was acting recklessly.
And a lot of people's response to this has been if driving 74 miles per hour with no indication that it is in a different category of emergency, certainly - and really responding to a call that police are not needed at and that other cities don't have police responding to those calls, but that's a side issue - but hey, if that's not reckless, then what is? And so we're again in a situation where the law feels woefully inadequate. And we have the county prosecutor saying - Okay, but according to the law, this would be tough, if not impossible, to prosecute and get a guilty verdict. And people looking at the common sense of it and saying - But that just doesn't make sense. Can we drive 74 miles per hour on a city road and have no consequences for any actions, any harm that results from that? And so we're once again in a situation where our laws seemingly have endless loopholes or exceptions for people who work in public safety that don't seem to apply to the rest of us. How did you see this?
[00:39:53] Matt Driscoll: Yeah, we're certainly tackling the big ones on today's show, aren't we? I mean, to me, and I realize that this is a difficult view to articulate fairly, and I'm going to try my best because people feel very passionate about it for a lot of reasons. But I think two things are true. One, creating the type of police force that we need does demand accountability. There has to be accountability. And I think right now, a lot of folks genuinely feel like there is no accountability. Attempts are made to hold police accountable for what many feel are reckless, or dangerous, or whatever behavior. The result we get is - well, it wasn't illegal, it was fine. And so accountability has to be part of that, but I don't think you can change police culture through accountability. I feel like what this situation represents is more the reflection of a police culture, particularly in the mocking comments. I don't know enough about the intricacies of this case to re-litigate it. I've read the same things you read - I know the speed, the lack of lights, I also know the prosecutor came back - the interviews with other people, that they heard it, that the student seemed distracted. I don't feel prepared to re-litigate that exact string of events.
What I will say is when you're in an emergency or your family members in an emergency, you'd probably want the first responders driving 75 miles an hour - maybe not 75, but you get my point. I do think there has to be leeway in the law that gives first responders and cops the ability to do things that otherwise would be considered reckless. I think that needs to happen, but I think the problem we run into is that responsibility that we've given to a police force - the police force, their culture, doesn't reflect those values that are behind that. In a perfect world, if we had the police force we had, they would use these powers responsibly. But a lot of times what we see - and again, particularly in the commentary, that's what feels inhumane. The cop who was involved in the accident, it sounds like they were distraught at the scene - I don't know what's going on with them. But I know when people hear cops talking about this person’s life in a way that assigns it no value, it feels like a reflection of police culture that feels above the law, and feels drunk on power, and feels reckless. So if this cop had been charged with this, I don't know what it would have changed. I do think accountability is necessary, but I think the bigger problem is the police culture we have. And maybe, best case scenario, we're in the process of slowly transforming our police forces to - hiring the type of people and weeding out the bad - I don't know if I have a lot of faith in that. But it's not going to happen overnight. My overarching point is - yes, you need accountability, but I don't think accountability can be your vehicle towards the change that we need, if that makes sense.
[00:42:49] Crystal Fincher: It makes perfect sense. I completely agree with that. It's just a really, truly unfortunate situation. And this young woman deserved better - from everybody, at all points in time from this. And I hope we take this seriously as a community, both locally and statewide, and really do look at issues with culture and start to get to the root of that problem.
And with that, I thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, February 23rd, 2024. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was Metro News columnist and opinion editor for The News Tribune in Tacoma, Matt Driscoll. You can find Matt on Twitter or X at @mattsdriscoll, with two L's at the end. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. You can find me at @finchfrii, with two I's at the end, on all platforms. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this topical show, special guest host Shannon Cheng welcomes back Amy Sundberg and BJ Last from Solidarity Budget to discuss how the City of Seattle is rushing to bring three surveillance technologies to the streets of Seattle with minimal public input - a final public meeting happens next week on Tuesday, February 27th, 6pm!
Amy and BJ fill Shannon in on Seattle’s Surveillance Impact Report process and their concerns that three technologies - Acoustic Gunshot Location System (AGLS, aka ShotSpotter), Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV), and Real-Time Crime Center (RTCC) - are being rushed through without providing the public transparency into potential privacy concerns, especially relating to equity and community impact, ahead of their potential adoption.
After identifying the problems the City claims to be solving with these surveillance technologies, Amy and BJ discuss how each proposed technology, both individually and in combination, have been shown to be ineffective and at times harmful when used in other cities around the country. They then provide examples of solutions proven to address gun violence that show great promise but are chronically underfunded.
Finally, Amy and BJ share a host of opportunities that concerned listeners have to make their voice heard, including at the final public meeting next week on Tuesday, February 27th, 6pm!
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the guest host, Shannon Cheng, on Twitter at @drbestturtle, find Amy Sundberg at @amysundberg, and find Solidarity Budget at https://www.seattlesolidaritybudget.com/.
Amy Sundberg
Amy Sundberg is the publisher of Notes from the Emerald City, a weekly newsletter on Seattle politics and policy with a particular focus on public safety, police accountability, and the criminal legal system. She also writes about public safety for The Urbanist. She organizes with Seattle Solidarity Budget and People Power Washington. In addition, she writes science fiction and fantasy, with a new novel, TO TRAVEL THE STARS, a retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in space, available now. She is particularly fond of Seattle’s parks, where she can often be found walking her little dog.
BJ Last
BJ Last is a business analyst, and former small business owner, with two decades of budgeting experience across a wide range of industries. He organizes with the Solidarity Budget and Ballard Mutual Aid.
Resources
Public Comment Period Opening for the Technology Assisted Crime Prevention Pilot Technologies | City of Seattle Information Technology
STOP Surveillance City - Solidarity Budget Call to Action
Stop Surveillance City Sign-On Letter | Solidarity Budget
“Harrell Plans Hasty Rollout of Massive Surveillance Expansion” by Amy Sundberg from The Urbanist
“Seattle’s New Policing Panopticon” by Puget Sound Prisoner Support for Puget Sound Anarchists
The Surveillance Ordinance | City of Seattle
“Mayor Johnson to end ShotSpotter deal after summer, making good on key campaign promise” by Tom Schuba and Fran Spielman from The Chicago Sun-Times
Seattle Police Department 2023 Year-End Overview | Presentation to Seattle Public Safety Committee - February 13, 2024
Dangerous Surveillance #1 - Closed-Circuit Television Cameras (CCTV) | Solidarity Budget
Dangerous Surveillance #2 - Acoustic Gunshot Location System (AGLS), aka ShotSpotter | Solidarity Budget
Dangerous Surveillance #3 - Real-Time Crime Center (RTCC) | Solidarity Budget
“Cook County, Ill., officials say ICE using data brokers to purchase protected information” by Lindsay McKenzie from StateScoop
@DivestSPD on Twitter/X: SPD sociopath Micah Smith #7714 involuntarily committed people to score a date w/ an ambulance driver
“OPA Documents Show Current SPD Officer Misused Internal Police Data to Try to Get a Date, “Caused Anxiety and Concern”” by Carolyn Bick from South Seattle Emerald
Rainier Beach Action Coalition
King County Regional Office of Gun Violence Prevention
“Richmond is offering an important lesson on public safety at a critical time” by Justin Phillips from San Francisco Chronicle
“Want to reduce violence? Invest in place.” by Hanna Love from The Brookings Institution
Seattle Solidarity Budget on Instagram
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
[00:00:52] Shannon Cheng: Hello, everybody. This is Shannon Cheng, producer of Hacks & Wonks. I am going to be your special guest host again today, and I'm super excited to be welcoming back to the show Amy Sundberg and BJ Last from Solidarity Budget. Some of you may recall that we did a show back in November about the Seattle City budget process. And we talked at that time about a proposed crime prevention pilot program that included technology such as ShotSpotter and CCTV. Well, today we're sort of doing this as an emergency show because we're trying to follow up on what's happening with the City's process in acquiring and implementing these technologies. So I just really wanted to have these experts back on to fill us in on what's going on and why it's important. So starting off, what is happening? What are these surveillance technologies that are being considered by the City?
[00:01:41] Amy Sundberg: Good to be back. We're happy to be here talking about this. Yeah, so there are three different technologies that are currently being discussed and reviewed. The first one is Acoustic Gunshot Location Systems, or AGLS - or colloquially known as ShotSpotter. So I would say as we continue to have this conversation, you should consider those phrases interchangeably. I might say AGLS, I might say ShotSpotter, but it's the same technology in either case. The second one is CCTV, and the third one is a Real-Time Crime Center software.
[00:02:13] Shannon Cheng: When we talked about budget back in November, I feel like there were only two at the time. And now we're talking about three - is that true?
[00:02:19] BJ Last: Yes, that has come in. They're claiming magically that it's all going to work under the same dollar amount. Back when we talked, it was just the AGLS, the Acoustic Gunshot Location Service, and the closed circuit television cameras, the CCTV. So now it's the Real-Time Crime Center, the RTCC, which is largely just a massive compiler of data that goes and pulls in tech from ShotSpotter, from AGLS microphones, from City-owned CCTV cameras, from privately-owned CCTV cameras, and a bunch of AI algorithms - a real quick overview of what that one is. But yeah, we're now up to three techs as a suite.
[00:02:57] Amy Sundberg: I should say, too, that the RTCC software also will integrate the license plate readers, which we just saw a massive expansion of at the end of last year.
[00:03:05] Shannon Cheng: Right. Just to remind everybody where we were at at the end of 2023 - during that budget process, funding for this surveillance technology was allocated, and I believe it was $1.8 million total. And of that, $1.5 million was supposed to be for a pilot project for this Acoustic Gunshot Locator System plus the CCTV - and there was no Real-Time Crime Center at the time. And then the other $300,000 was for this expansion of Automatic License Plate Readers that Amy just mentioned. So where are we now with these three surveillance technologies?
[00:03:46] Amy Sundberg: Well, we are in the middle of a convoluted process that BJ and I and others have been spending a lot of time trying to understand and to help other people understand. So it's called a Surveillance Impact Review, which all surveillance technologies that are going to be used in the City of Seattle now have to go through this review process because of an ordinance that was passed.
[00:04:09] BJ Last: And do you want to give a shout out to who was the primary sponsor of this ordinance? It is our current mayor, Bruce Harrell - just a fun one to know, given with how this process is unfolding.
[00:04:21] Amy Sundberg: I actually didn't know that, and that is kind of ironic - so thank you for sharing. So this process has to be done for any technology that is deemed to be surveillance technology, which all three of these technologies have been deemed. And it is a review process that has many steps. We have the draft reports available now, which I believe were filled out by SPD and maybe also the executive's office. And right now we're in the stage where we are able to give public comment. So there has to be at least one public hearing for this report - they are having two public hearings. One of them already happened, and the other one is upcoming on February 27th at 6 p.m. at Bitter Lake Community Center and online, of course.
[00:05:14] BJ Last: And I will say this process is being exceptionally, I'd say, rushed and short. So they started taking public comment on February 5th. They stop taking public comment on February 29th. So y'all can do the math - that's well less than 30 days that people actually get to go and provide feedback on this. And as Amy mentioned, there will be a grand total of two public hearings on this. So we're looking at literally less than a hearing per technology being done - three technologies, but only two total hearings. And as a comparison of how this works - Dayton, Ohio, an area I think a lot of people in Seattle would probably look down as like red state, flyover country - when they were looking at adopting just one of these technologies, they had 13 public hearings versus nominally progressive Seattle doing its grand total of two for three technologies.
[00:06:05] Shannon Cheng: Okay, so at the end of last year, the City allocated the money for these technologies. Now they're going through this process. As you said, it's this Surveillance Ordinance - so that took effect in November of 2018. It was designed to provide greater transparency when deciding whether the City was going to adopt any technology that is surveillance, as Amy said. And just to be clear, this is not just restricted to the Seattle Police Department wanting to implement surveillance technologies. When I was looking back at some of the past technologies that had to go through this process, SDOT had to do this for some cameras they had for traffic detection to help streets moving smoothly. So this is just - whenever we're implementing something that is going to be observing, it's so that the public and the city council can understand - what are the impacts and are there any concerns that we need to know about before we just roll all this stuff out onto our streets. So that's where we're at. And in the past, I noticed it took them maybe 6-7 months to go through this process. But as you're describing it, BJ, it sounds like it could be less than a month that they're trying to do everything right now.
[00:07:16] BJ Last: Correct. They're trying to limit all the public input to less than one month just to go push it through. You did a great job summarizing the Surveillance Ordinance, Shannon. It really was designed so the people of Seattle get to meaningfully - A) find out what surveillance they're potentially going to be impacted to, and B) get a chance to evaluate it so that we don't end up - Oh wow, there's this new surveillance because five people fell for a sales pitch. That people of the city actually got a chance to research the thing, find out what they were dealing with, and that's really hard to say that's happening when you're trying to do three different technologies in less than 30 days.
[00:07:50] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, that's a lot of information. I admit I've been having trouble wrapping my head around everything. So it sounds like we're already past the point of one of the public meetings having happened. We're recording this show Thursday, February 15th. The first one happened on Monday, February 12th. So what was that public meeting like? Did they provide in-depth information about the impacts that these technologies might have? And how did people react?
[00:08:17] Amy Sundberg: No, I wouldn't say that. About half of the meeting was a presentation about the technologies, but it was more about why they're going to adopt them - what they think will be helpful about the technologies. They didn't really go over any of the negative impacts that we are so worried about. And then there was a chance for public comment. I would say there was about 15 or 16 people who wanted to give comment at this first meeting, which - people didn't have a lot of advance notice. And like you said, it is three different technologies - some of which people are hearing about for the very first time - and they are technical. It does take some time to learn even what they are and how they work and why we should maybe be worried. So 15 or 16, given that, I feel like was higher than anticipated. And what I heard over and over again is people saying - This is too rushed. We need to slow down. We have concerns. We are against this surveillance technology. And also this is too fast, and this process is not serving the people of Seattle well. I would say there was maybe one comment that wasn't that. It was very uniform, in terms of people being very concerned about this. And it was at noon on a Monday, so people are taking their lunch break or time off in the middle of a workday - that's how worried they are, right? I am happy that the second public meeting is in the evening to give a different demographic of folks the chance to come out and give comment. But I still think two one-hour sessions is not sufficient.
I will also say that there are other worrisome things about this process. For example, there is a Surveillance Advisory Working Group. And how they plug into this process is once everything else is kind of done, they are supposed to review these reports. And then they complete a civil liberties and privacy assessment, which for a surveillance technology, you can see how crucial that would be. And right now, that group has one confirmed sitting member. So they can't meet quorum, right? And I know that there are some other folks that are lined up, but they do need to be confirmed in the committee first. And again, this is being very rushed - the mayor's office gets to appoint some and then the council gets to appoint some - the timing of it all makes me feel uncomfortable, to be frank. That this is going to be rushed right before these three technologies are going to be discussed - who is being chosen and why? I don't know the answers to that, but these are questions that we're going to have to ask as those appointees come on board. And then they're going to be brand new, and right away have to do this review. Again, a very rushed process.
And then perhaps my - all these things are very concerning, but one of my biggest concerns is the Racial Equity Toolkit component of this process. So all of these Surveillance Impact Reports have to have a Racial Equity Toolkit as part of the process. And it's been very unclear as to how - is the Racial Equity Toolkit a concurrent process? Is it a separate process? What is the timeline? What kind of outreach is going to happen? How are they reaching out to the impacted groups? Are they making sure to do so in a way that is best for those groups and to do it in a variety of different ways, et cetera, et cetera? There's a lot of open questions that I have not been able to get answers to thus far. I've been hearing that possibly these public hearings that we're having for the Surveillance Impact Report might be kind of rolled into the Racial Equity Toolkit, which seems inappropriate to me, frankly, for technologies that have such potential for grave misuse and negative impact. As well, we do not yet know exactly where this technology is going to be deployed. We've been told several locations - Aurora Avenue North, Belltown, and the Downtown commercial core - that's what we were told last year. Then a couple weeks ago, they added Chinatown International District - apparently at the last minute, and they don't know where. They've said that it's probably not going to be all of these places, but wherever they're going to deploy this technology, they need to do - in my opinion - a separate RET, Racial Equity Toolkit, because each neighborhood is going to have different dynamics, different demographics, different things going on, different groups that need to be consulted. And I haven't heard about any individual outreach. So it doesn't mean it hasn't happened, but I have been actively asking and I have not been able to find anything out that this is actually happening. As well, you're going to want to look at reports, studies for racial impacts, potentially. Again, I'm not seeing those being cited in the draft report. So it seems like a very slapdash, non-serious job that is being done. And it doesn't seem like the communications that have been sent out to the public don't seem to come from an administration that's serious about equity and social justice. And I'm very concerned, frankly, that I am even having trouble getting my questions answered.
[00:13:38] BJ Last: Also, that's a great point on the four different areas that are up for consideration, because there are four areas - again, two public comment periods. Last one that's open is up in Bitter Lake - that is not exactly close to Chinatown International District, that is not close to Belltown, that's not really close to Downtown core. So three of the four areas that could potentially get this will have never even had a public hearing in their area. Fortunately, people can join that remotely, but that's also not even an option for everyone. So they've said this might go out in one of four areas. They're not even trying to do outreach in each of those areas, which is - as Amy said, seems like a problem, and that's something they're not really taking seriously. Same with when they wrote up the Surveillance Impact Reports - there's a section of what studies have they looked at for each technology. And for two of the reports, those are entirely blank. And for one of them, for CCTV, they referenced one study that actually found this has no impact on violent crime. So this seems very slapdash, just trying to push it through, not trying to get the community involved.
[00:14:41] Amy Sundberg: We also really expected to see them talking to other cities. None of these technologies are particularly new. A lot of cities have used these technologies, have deployed them in various combinations. I will say also, it is not new to put all three of these technologies together in one place. Chicago, for example, does it - they've been doing it for a while now. And we're seeing a lot of cities backtracking - having had a contract for ShotSpotter or similar technology, and then discontinuing that contract. And just this week, we got the news that Chicago is going to be discontinuing their very large contract for ShotSpotter by fall at the latest. And it seems that it would make sense for a city who is considering deploying this technology to talk to other cities about the experience that they have had, especially if it seems like maybe they've had kind of a negative or mixed experience.
[00:15:37] Shannon Cheng: So what I'm hearing from the two of you is that we're on the brink of potentially acquiring or implementing these technologies, which we have some concerns about, that the product of this Surveillance Impact Report process is to provide the city council a holistic view of what these technologies are meant to do, whether they work, what kind of drawbacks they might have. And unfortunately, it sounds like the process that they're going through, there's just a lot of things wrong with it - the speed at which it's going, the incompleteness of their filling out the draft report, the not making sure that the last group who is going to review the report before it goes in its final form to city council even has people on it. It just makes you wonder - it's not like they didn't know this was coming. I remember when we spoke last November - BJ, you pointed out they had been trying to get ShotSpotter since the year before. They had an entire year. Now they've had two years to start planning, filling out this report, getting all these ducks in a row. And it just seems like we're now here at the last minute and there's some kind of false sense of urgency being put on the city council - who is also brand new to all of this as well - to just accept things that are going to have ramifications for everybody who lives, works, or plays in Seattle for many, many years to come. So I feel worried listening to the two of you talk.
So that's just the process. What about the technologies themselves? When we hear the word "surveillance," my concerns are my privacy rights - when I just go about my daily life, I don't necessarily want to feel like I am being monitored and all the details of that are being kept somewhere. When people feel like they are being surveilled, there can be a chilling effect on just how they behave - whether that's in public, or where they go, or who they associate with, or what they say. We're trying to live, theoretically, in a vibrant community with diversity in it. And I think that surveillance does have this effect that homogenizes - when people try to play to the camera and make sure that they're not going to get singled out for whatever that is being looked for. And then there's a lot of discrimination when it comes to surveillance - just the way that it's implemented - it's just got issues where the system's just never perfect at understanding what it's seeing. And so unfortunately, biases trickle through. So just generally, that's why surveillance is bad. And so that's why it's really important and why there's supposedly this process where before we undertake letting more of it into our lives, we want to understand what are the issues with it.
So here we are - we're in the City of Seattle, we're thinking about implementing these three technologies. Again, that would be the Acoustic Gunshot Location System, the CCTV cameras, and the Real-Time Crime Center. What problem does the City claim that we're trying to solve with these technologies? And does it seem like that they will?
[00:18:53] BJ Last: So the claim is that this is specifically for gun crime - which is always the claim that these technologies and a lot of other surveillance technologies use as an excuse - because that is a very real and very, very serious problem. And the thing is, they know it absolutely doesn't work - their technologies don't actually work to reduce that. And that's why you see what their pitch is keeps changing - from, Oh, this is going to prevent or reduce crime, to, Okay, this will help gather evidence for after crime has occurred, to, Maybe this will help the community know to improve the emotional health of kids, to, Maybe this will get people to medical treatment faster. It's just sort of as studies come out showing one doesn't work, they just keep moving the goalposts and moving the pitch. That's why even the technology suite keeps changing. From it's just, Oh you need CCTV - that's gonna solve it - make us a crime-free world, to, Oh, you need Acoustic Gunshot Location, AGLS. Oh no, you need the two of them combined. Oh no, you need the two of them plus RTCC, the Real-Time Crime Center, and all of its algorithms. It just keeps going because it absolutely does not work on this.
And this is actually even really reflected in how the City has kept trying to pitch these things. This right now is called the crime prevention pilot - emphasis on the word "prevention." So when they tried to get it back in the 2023 budget, an actual quote from Mayor Bruce Harrell - "Cities across the country have used this as an evidence gathering tool, not a violence prevention tool." So 2023, they're - Nope, no prevention. 2024 budget, they're back to calling it prevention. They're just constantly trying to change what it is. So nominally, it is for gun violence, but we've seen time and again that it does not work for that. Studies that you look at - like Chicago, they found that it's missed hundreds of gunshots in an actual year, while at the same time having an incredibly high false positive rate, with 9 out of 10 alerts being no evidence of any gun crime occurred. CCTV - again, the study that the city mentioned, found that it has absolutely no impact on violent crime rates or clearance. So what it's supposedly for, it absolutely doesn't work and does a whole host of harm in the meantime.
[00:21:02] Amy Sundberg: Another way that it's being pitched is to deal with SPD's unprecedented staffing shortages - that's a quote from the report. So conveniently this week, we just had the new numbers released for crime in Seattle in 2023. In terms of staffing for SPD - in 2023, they lost 36 more officers than they were able to hire in the year. So they're a net negative 36 - so it went down - they have less staffing now than they did before. And yet in 2023, they had a 9% reduction in overall crime and a 6% reduction in violent crime. Now, I don't want to be gaming these statistics - what is very serious is that there was a 23% increase in homicide. And obviously, we don't want to see that. But the question is, does staffing actually impact these numbers? Is that the thing that does it? And so in that case, does alleviating this staffing issue with these techs - is that going to have any impact on the numbers? And the studies, in general, say no - with CCTV, it would maybe have an impact on car theft or maybe some types of property crime. But property crime actually went down 10% in 2023 already. The numbers don't really line up either in terms of this unprecedented staffing and needing this technology. And at a certain point, I think you have to do a cost-benefit analysis of what do you expect to potentially gain from adopting a technology versus what are the harms that might happen. And so far, this conversation has been shifting the goalposts a lot on what we hope to gain and ignoring all of the potential and documented in other cities harm that could be caused. And I feel like that's a really unfortunate way for this conversation to be framed.
[00:22:53] BJ Last: And before getting into some of the harms, I want to - you mentioned, Amy, that they're using the - what they have been trying to claim since 2019 is a massive police staffing shortage. That is just a complete nonsensical argument for these. Acoustic gunshot Location Services - it's a false call generating machine. I mentioned Chicago found a 90% false positive rate. Atlanta found a 97% false positive rate. That's one of the reasons why both of those cities have stopped using Acoustic Gunshot Location Services. Other cities have as well, with police coming out and saying - This is a massive strain on our resources, because we're constantly getting these alerts that are coming through as, Oh, it's a shots fired incident. We're dispatching cops and they get there and they're like - there's absolutely nothing around. So the claim that this somehow would help for staffing levels is absolutely absurd, when again - AGLS just generates false positives, that's what it does.
[00:23:45] Amy Sundberg: Another thing that they're saying is that this would help get more justice for victims and victims' families of gun violence - and that also doesn't seem to be the case. There was a new review that just came out in the last couple of weeks by Cook County state attorney's office in Illinois that found that - they're using ShotSpotter. They found it has, "a minimal effect on prosecuting gun violence cases." And, "ShotSpotter is not making a significant impact on shooting incidents, with only 1% of shooting incidences ending in a ShotSpotter arrest." And then they also said - Also, it's really expensive. - so that's a thing, too. And then I spoke to an expert at the MacArthur Justice Center - attorney named Jonathan Manes - and he says that ShotSpotter doesn't make police more efficient or relieve staffing shortages. He says - Actually, it's the opposite. It vastly increases the number of police deployments in response to supposed gunfire - these false alerts that BJ was talking about - but with no corresponding increase in gun violence arrests or other interventions. And then he went on to tell me that it actually increases response times to 911 calls as a result of flooding the system.
[00:24:56] BJ Last: And it isn't just Acoustic Gunshot Location Systems that don't work on this. Again, with CCTV as well - there was a study from Dallas looking into this, and it found it didn't have any impact on clearance rates for violent crime. There was no benefit from actually going and putting out a bunch of CCTV cameras. And this actually corresponds with a lot of the studies done in London that have also shown the same thing - when they put cameras out through the city, they don't see that. The British Home Office looked into 14 different CCTV ones and found that they didn't reduce crime, make people feel any safer. So it's not just acoustic gunshot location, but even CCTV doesn't work, which I feel like for some people - it feels almost counterintuitive on that because we see so much crime dramas and all of - Oh, cameras solve everything - often with someone saying the word "enhance" multiple times and you get perfect evidence that never would have existed otherwise. And that's just not borne out by reality, they just do not do that.
[00:25:54] Amy Sundberg: I also just wanted to mention - this is called a pilot project, so it is not necessarily going to have a huge deployment right from the start. But the reason it's still really important to have this public conversation now, as opposed to later, is that this Surveillance Impact Review is happening now. This is our chance to discuss it. And once it passes this review, it won't go through another review if they decide they massively want to expand. So this opens the door to any future expansion that the City might decide that they want to do. And we've seen a recent example with the license plate readers, which did go through a surveillance review process in the past. They had it deployed on only a few SPD patrol vehicles, and now they're going to be on every single patrol vehicle that SPD owns. And that took very little effort. It received very little coverage in the media. So this is our one opportunity to most effectively push back against the broader use of these technologies, even though right now it's just being discussed as a pilot.
[00:26:59] Shannon Cheng: So during budget season, as we discussed before, they only talked about those first two - the Automatic Gunshot Locator System and the CCTV - but now they're adding on this Real-Time Crime Center. This is the one that I feel the least familiar with, but it also sounds potentially very insidious. And now they're trying to sell this as a package of these three together, claiming that - maybe these individually don't work that well on their own, but somehow magically, if we combine them together, it's going to completely be a Transformer robot or something and be able to save the world. So my understanding with this Real-Time Crime Center - and this ties into this expansion of Automatic License Plate Readers you were just talking about, Amy - is that it's just trying to basically aggregate a bunch of data from different sources that the police department has and then give this one view or something to some observer to call the shots about what's happening or what's not happening. What really worried me when I was reading about it is that it takes in these sources that maybe the City has deployed around, but it also offers this opportunity for private cameras to be incorporated. So people can opt-in to let their own - whether they have a Ring doorbell camera, that type of thing, or just a security camera at their business or their home - and they can allow, basically, law enforcement have access to that without their neighbors necessarily knowing or people coming into their store. And that doesn't go through a process on its own at all and wouldn't be subject to maybe public disclosure requests to know where the location of those cameras were or where they're being pointed. So what more can you tell me about RTCC? Because I just - I'm worried.
[00:28:56] Amy Sundberg: I think you should be worried. Yeah, it is worrisome. And the more I read about it, the more worried I become. You always hope in these situations that you start out being worried and then those worries are ameliorated through gaining more knowledge. But in this case, it is the opposite. I think the ability to plug in all these private cameras into the system is a big issue. The amount of data that is going to be collected - I don't think that can be understated - it's a massive amount of data because it's taking in all the data from all these other surveillance technologies, both the already existing ones like license plate readers and these potential new ones. And then all of these private cameras, which can keep expanding over time without oversight because they're privately owned cameras. So the public doesn't really get to weigh in on those private cameras. They can be pointed anywhere - you are correct. And the City has no control over where the private cameras are pointed. But that data still is then brought back to the software and collated and run through algorithms and available for people to have access to. So that is definitely worrisome.
[00:30:03] BJ Last: Yeah, the fact that the City doesn't control where the cameras go - since they now allow the private ones in there - is a huge thing. You may think - Hey, the City wouldn't point a camera at, oh, say, the parking lot of Planned Parenthood or a healthcare facility, because Seattle wants to be a sanctuary city for people seeking abortion healthcare or people seeking transgender healthcare. Hey, a private individual can. The Denny Blaine Beach - we just had that, where someone tried giving the city $550k to put in a playground there to effectively drive a queer beach - to disband it. Hey, they wouldn't have to give the City $550k, they could just point a camera there. So any place, if you were like - Oh, well, the City wouldn't do that because for whatever reason - they wouldn't target any groups. Guess what? Any private individual can go and point a camera wherever they want, and now that's getting fed in. And that is now data that does not need a warrant to be accessed. And so any potentially marginalized group anywhere that Seattle is trying to be a sanctuary city for is completely at-risk off of this. So just all of that is now in play as these private cameras roll out.
And beyond private cameras, RTCC, the Real-Time Crime Centers, they're also another Software As A Service, like the Acoustic Gunshot Location. And part of that is they openly brag about how they are constantly rolling out new algorithms as part of your subscription package - A) that really seems like that violates the Surveillance Ordinance because those aren't going up and getting public review as a part of that, so now that can't happen. And then what even are the ones that they're doing? So some of the ones that groups are trying to do is the theory of detecting whether or not someone has a gun on them by using cameras and looking at the way they walk, which unsurprisingly is incredibly inaccurate - as inaccurate as that actually even sounds, just from me trying to describe it. So you now have the potential of - that's now part of the RTCC. So SPD is now going to potentially roll up because - Hey, the camera algorithm thought you had a sort of funny walk, so guess what? The cops are now getting called as if you're someone carrying a gun on you. That is really - like that's so absurd, it doesn't sound like it should be accurate, but that is actually what this is.
[00:32:11] Amy Sundberg: I have a couple of other concerns as well - going back to the privately-owned cameras for just a moment. Because they're privately owned, what that means is it makes it more complicated and confusing in terms of restrictions that normally govern the police. So, for example, they wouldn't necessarily have to get a warrant for footage that they normally would be required to get a warrant for. And there's settings that the private users can do, but it's confusing. I don't think your layperson is necessarily going to know what they're opting into. I've spent the last two weeks immersing myself in information about this, and I still find aspects of it confusing. And your average person doesn't have two weeks to do that, you know? So it kind of disrupts the current checks and balances we have around surveillance and police power, which I find very concerning.
And then in terms of undermining Seattle's status as a sanctuary city, one of the things that is key to understand about this software is - the privacy of the data is not guaranteed. Once it's in that Real-Time Crime Center software, there's a lot of interagency exchange. So SPD might originally get the data. And then it could be exchanged with another law enforcement department somewhere else. And they could exchange it with another law enforcement department somewhere else. And then it could end up with ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], as one example. I asked some experts - because we do have an ordinance here in Seattle that requires that when ICE makes a request, that it be referred to Mayor's Office Legal Counsel when they ask SPD for something. I was like - Well, would that help? But probably not, because of what I just stated - because it can pass from agency to agency to agency. So it's some fourth agency that's giving it to ICE - it's not SPD, so there's no chance to have that interruption there. As well, there are documented cases when a police officer will just give the data to ICE and they'll just - whatever policies are in place, they'll just kind of conveniently ignore that and hand over the data. So the idea really is that once this data is being collected and being collated, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to firewall it, protect it, make sure it stays in a limited space at all. And that has implications, as we've said, to undocumented people. It has implications for people who are seeking abortion - especially from other states where abortion is no longer legal. But we might eventually live in a world where abortion is no longer legal here in Washington state, and then it would apply to anybody seeking an abortion. It applies to all sorts of cases where privacy is really crucial, and not because anyone is committing gun violence - that's not why.
[00:35:08] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, that point about who does get access to the data that's collected. It's one thing to have all these things collecting the data, but if it isn't well-protected or there isn't a good system to limit or manage who has access to it, that's very concerning. And as you said, it impacts vulnerable communities first, but ultimately it impacts all of us. When marginalized communities feel like they're being targeted, they tend to go into the shadows and the margins - and that just is not good for anybody. Right after the Muslim Ban, we worked for - trying to make sure that local law enforcement wasn't cooperating with federal immigration enforcement. And one of the arguments was that if undocumented folks can't trust local law enforcement to not turn them in for deportation - if they're a witness to a crime or something like that - they're not going to want to engage and help the community solve these ills. They're just going to go into hiding. And that's just bad for all of us in general. So it's really worrying. And then also, in addition to these unknown other people who have access to the data, Seattle Police Department officers themselves, in theory, might have access to that data. And we have some documented cases, even recently, where they have abused their access to data. Is that correct?
[00:36:25] BJ Last: Yeah, yeah - absolutely. That is correct. We have had cases of SPD officers abusing access to data. One of the most famous ones was an officer effectively stalking a ambulance driver, an EMS person, and even having people involuntarily committed just to get to see that EMS person. By the way, they are still on the force. So, you know, in terms of how well our accountability system supposedly works.
[00:36:50] Shannon Cheng: Wait, what? Because they wanted a date with the EMS person or something?
[00:36:55] BJ Last: Because they wanted a date with them - that they were going and doing that.
[00:36:59] Shannon Cheng: Wow.
[00:37:01] Amy Sundberg: I would also just chime in and say we're talking about these really harmful impacts to our most vulnerable residents, our most marginalized residents. And I would say that is true across all three of these technologies, and it's documented. In terms of just ShotSpotter - increases pat downs, frisks, increases policing in the more marginalized communities, which tends to be where the microphone arrays are located in a city. And CCTV, it's been shown that people of color are more likely to be surveilled than other folks, so there is a disparate impact. So this is a throughpoint between all three of these technologies in terms of some of my gravest concerns - because again, these are not new technologies, so we've already seen how they've operated in the real world.
[00:37:52] BJ Last: Yeah, and just to go on that, a couple of real concrete examples on each of these technologies - of them causing massive amounts of harm and abuse. In Washington, D.C., there was a case of a very high-ranking police officer - believe he was a lieutenant offhand - blackmailing gay men using CCTV footage. UK, case of a CCTV operator - got fired because he kept pointing cameras into a lady's apartment - I'm sorry, a flat, because it was in the UK. Very real risks of harm. Acoustic Gunshot Location - we know Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old that was chased and shot while unarmed by Chicago Police Department because they were responding to a ShotSpotter alert. Just last month in January in Chicago - cops responding to what was listed as a ShotSpotter alert opened fire on an unarmed man that they saw because one of them heard a loud noise when he stepped out of a car. Also out of Chicago - we have seen police officers literally run over gunshot victims because they were responding to ShotSpotter alerts. These are all things of really real actual harm that these technologies have caused.
[00:38:57] Amy Sundberg: In addition, once we start talking about algorithms - which is what a lot of these technologies use - the algorithms tend to have racial bias baked into them because they're trained on datasets, and their datasets are informed by the racial bias that created them. So you end up in this loop where people are - Oh, well, the algorithms will solve racial bias. No, that is not true - because the data they're trained on has racial bias in it. So you see it instead perpetuated and potentially strengthened.
[00:39:27] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, garbage in, garbage out. In my past life, I hung out with a lot of people who were very technology-focused, and I can see this - Oh, we'll just add all these things together and it's going to work. The problem is that they're trying to model the real world based on these just very concrete assumptions about what cause and effect are, when we know the real world is actually very nuanced and requires a lot of context to interpret. And the problem is with these surveillance things is you're getting a very narrow view of different aspects of the world. So, for example, for the Acoustic Gunshot Locator, you're just getting random sounds. And then okay, maybe now you're trying to match it up with video feed to try to figure it out. And then now you're adding in this algorithm that's going to compile it all together. But the thing is, we're talking about real people's lives at stake - that they're basically experimenting on. This is a testbed for unproven models with real world consequences, and when we're talking about the actual people who live in our city, that if they make a mistake - somebody gets run over or somebody gets shot. Because we've seen that there's this worldview that law enforcement has where they see a lot of things as a threat or they just feel like there's a lot of danger out there when that may not be the case. There's a difference between being uncomfortable and unsafe. And I don't know that these surveillance technologies are really going to help with determining between being uncomfortable or unsafe. In some ways, surveillance technology is allowing them to abstract from the real situation - when you look at things through the camera, you're like, Oh, well, it's a fancy technological solution, so it's got to be right. But you can't just assume that what the camera sees is the truth.
[00:41:19] BJ Last: Yeah, and you talked about how these are unknown, haven't been studied - guess what? Stuff that actually reduces violent crime has been studied - this isn't something that we don't know - there are very real solutions on this, which is the much cooler thing. And I'm really happy that we're now transitioning into this, but most of them largely boil down to actually invest in community. Instead of giving the money to a tech company somewhere, invest in the actual communities themselves on that. There are some examples of that - the Rainier Beach Action Coalition - their program of youth violence interrupters, which are people in the community that are out there activating neighborhood street corners, they've been shown to reduce violence by 33%. In terms of that difference on actual invest in community on this - so for that $1.5 million, they could go and actually give 168 young people jobs for two years. So invest in community - it is proven, what Rainier Beach Action Coalition does. You can invest in community, give 168 people jobs, and you reduce violence. Or give the money to a couple big tech companies - that's just one of the things.
[00:42:20] Amy Sundberg: We also have this work done in King County through Public Health and the new Office of Gun Violence Prevention. And I sat in on their meeting, giving their briefing to the new council. And for example, they give out free firearm lock boxes. And basically it means that you have a safe place to store your gun - because a lot of times kids get the guns because they're just laying around in a closet or a drawer or whatever. But if you have them locked up, then the kid can't get to the gun and suddenly everybody's safer. So they hand out those for free, which is very effective. They also had a gun buyback that they hosted where people could go and they got gift cards. And apparently it was so well attended last year that they ran out of gift cards before the end of the event. So there is actually an appetite in this community for these sorts of programs. It's more a question, I think, of funding than anything else. Which instead - what we're going to throw $1.5 million away on this technology that we're pretty sure isn't going to work, when we have these things that community wants and that we know will help. And that office also coordinates with the Peacekeepers Collective and their gun violence prevention programs as well. So there is a lot of stuff happening on a local level.
And then as well, there's Guaranteed Basic Income, which I always have to give a shout-out to. But the reason I want to shout it out, and one of the reasons I'm so excited about it, is because it has been shown in studies to reduce firearm violence specifically. And also addresses inequality - and what we know, again, from other studies, is that inequality predicts homicide rates better than any other variable. So the more unequal your society is, or your city is, the more likely homicide rates are to go up. So if you address that and give people their basic needs - give them what they need - then that number tends to go back down. And maybe not the sexiest idea ever, but it works. And that's what's important. We've seen a violence interruption program in Richmond, California - which I love to pieces because it's been going on for a long time - it has hugely positive results for that community. And it actually combines the idea of a basic income with other services like mentoring for young people that live in Richmond, California. And like I said, they saw a huge reduction in violence. So you can get creative in terms of how you combine these different elements, but all of them have studies backing them up that show that they're effective in the real world.
[00:44:55] BJ Last: Yeah, and that's a phenomenal point, Amy - that it's not even community investments that are specifically linked to this, or specifically targeting - it's not just doing things like cure violence model or gun violence interruption things. Like you mentioned GBI, restoring vacant land - so pretty much making things into little parks, putting out grass and a few trees - that's shown to go and reduce violent crime, including gun crime. Upping the number of nonprofits in the community, mental health treatment facility options - even things like that that aren't specifically directed or don't in their name say, Hey, our mission statement is directly addressing this - these community investments, as Amy said, you reduce inequality, you reduce crime, because that is the biggest thing connecting them. So doing that - reducing inequality, invest in community will actually reduce crime and cut down on gun violence. Whereas giving money again to these three tech companies, that doesn't do that.
[00:45:48] Amy Sundberg: I also am really excited about the idea of creative placemaking, as a creative artist myself. That, again, has been shown to reduce gunshot violence - it's putting up art installations and cool, funky, creative plays and concerts. Basically, we have this opportunity to invest in making Seattle a more fun and vibrant and exciting place to be. And that will also reduce gun violence. It's one of these win-win, right? Same with some of these violence prevention programs - you're investing in community and you get the reduction in gun violence at the same time - it's another win-win. As opposed to the surveillance tech, which isn't going to be effective and it has all of these different harms, so it's kind of more of a lose-lose. And when you have win-wins and you get to pick between a win-win and a lose-lose, the fact that we're having this big debate and wanting to go with the lose-lose is a little bit baffling.
[00:46:49] Shannon Cheng: And the lose-lose is super expensive - we're talking about $1.5 million now. But my understanding is these companies - they're for-profit companies. So they obviously have business models which range from the subscription services, to just trying to expand their footprint of deployment, to selling their database that they're collecting all this information from us from to other parties who we may not have any control over. It boggles the mind.
[00:47:16] BJ Last: It is massively expensive. For just one of these technologies, Acoustic Gunshot Location, Chicago has spent over $50 million over six years. And again, that's just one of these technologies. Seattle wants three. And not to be - Oh, we should be penny pinching to try to reduce gun violence by going with investments like restoring vacant land, placemaking, cure violence models. We shouldn't be doing them because they're cheaper, but A) they work and you can do so much more as you go and invest in that. It goes a lot further, the number of investments you can make. And all of these investments are ones that actually do go and - yeah, make your city cool. Make it a better place, like Amy said, with the creative placemaking, they're restoring vacant land, they cut down on violence, and you can do a heck of a lot more of it than you can if you go for this surveillance tech.
[00:48:06] Amy Sundberg: While actually involving community - the people that live here - and giving them the resources and giving them more agency.
[00:48:13] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, wow. Well, here on Hacks & Wonks, we interviewed a lot of the City Council candidates - many who are seated now - and I remember hearing a lot from them about really needing to audit the budget and making sure that the money being spent is being used effectively. And so I hope they hear this - pick the win-wins, not the lose-loses.
So we're partway through this messy process, which seems like it's being rushed. For our listeners who have listened to this and they have concerns, what can they do about it?
[00:48:42] Amy Sundberg: They can do so much. Now is the time. There is a lot that can be done right now. And I really encourage people to get involved in whatever way feels best for them, because there are several options. I'd say the top option is to attend that second public hearing, which again is on Tuesday, February 27th at 6 p.m. - and it's both, there's a virtual option and it's at Bitter Lake Community Center. So I really, really encourage people to go, to give public comment, to support your community members who are in this fight with you. There also are forms online for each of the three technologies, which you can fill out - and you do have to fill it out three times, which I understand is not ideal, but I think, again, it is part of trying to make this process less accessible to community. So if you can stomach it, I say - let's show them that it's not working by filling out those forms. You can call and email your councilmembers because they're ultimately the ones that get the final say - they're going to have the final vote on whether or not these surveillance technologies are deployed. Start talking to them now - it's not too early, it is definitely not too early. Whatever you can do, if they're going to be talking in your community, if they're having a town hall - go talk to them there - the more, the better, frankly. You can write a letter to the editor at The Seattle Times. And again, those are shorter - those aren't op-eds - they're much shorter and easier to do. I encourage you to do that. And Solidarity Budget has put together a letter objecting both to the use of these technologies in our communities and also objecting to this rushed and sloppy process, which you can sign on to. We'll put a link in the show notes for that. You can sign on as a group or an organization, or you can also sign on as an individual. And I really encourage you to do that because it shows that we as a community are standing together.
[00:50:38] BJ Last: And follow Solidarity Budget - we will have more updates as this goes. If there are any more educational items that come up or additional ways to give input, we will definitely be sending that out through those channels. As Amy said, there's that hearing coming up on the 27th - you can do public comment. Or you can do comment forms online anytime until the 29th. And talk to your friends about this. This has not been something that has been widely covered - which, by the way, thank you so much, Shannon and Hacks & Wonks, for covering this, because it really hasn't gotten much coverage in local media that there are these three big surveillance techs coming. So there's a chance your friends, co-workers, whoever else you chat with doesn't even know about this. So let them know as well.
[00:51:21] Amy Sundberg: I really think that increasing surveillance to this level - this does represent a massive expansion of surveillance in Seattle, and I really don't want to understate that at all - it's a huge expansion. And I really think it's deserving of a really robust public conversation about what we want for our city and what direction we want our city to go into. And I don't want to get into national politics, but you have to think about the national political climate and the ramifications that are coming down the road, too. When you're thinking about increasing surveillance to this level - not only what is that going to enable us to do in June or July when it's first implemented, but what is it going to mean in the future? What is it going to mean next year and in future years, in terms of where your data is going to be, what the laws are going to be, et cetera, et cetera. This is something we should all be talking about, as far as I'm concerned - all the time - we should be talking about this.
[00:52:18] Shannon Cheng: Well, thank you so much. We will definitely include all the links to all the information and the resources in the show notes. This show will be airing on February 20th, so you have a week before that final public hearing on the 27th to get your comments in, to figure out how to attend, to tell all your friends to get out there. So thank you so much, Amy and BJ - it's been so great to have you back on again. Bye!
[00:52:43] Amy Sundberg: Thanks.
[00:52:44] BJ Last: Thank you.
[00:52:45] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank!
Crystal and Robert chat about Raise the Wage Renton’s special election win, how a rent stabilization bill passed out of the State House but faces an uphill battle in the State Senate, and the authorization of a strike by Alaska Airlines flight attendants. They then shift to how gender discrimination problems in the Seattle Police Department create a toxic work culture that impedes recruitment, the inexplicable pressing forward by Seattle on ShotSpotter while other cities reject it, and the failure of a philanthropic effort by business titans to solve the regional homelessness crisis.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank, at @cruickshank.
Resources
“Renton $19 minimum wage hike ballot measure leading in early results” by Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks from The Seattle Times
“Washington State House Passes Rent Stabilization Bill” by Rich Smith from The Stranger
“Rent Stabilization Backers Aim to Beat Deadline to Keep Bill Alive” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
2024 Town Halls | Washington State House Democrats
“Alaska Airlines flight attendants authorize strike for first time in 3 decades” by Alex DeMarban from Anchorage Daily News
“The Seattle Police Department Has a Gender Discrimination Problem” by Andrew Engelson from PubliCola
“Harrell Plans Hasty Rollout of Massive Surveillance Expansion” by Amy Sundberg from The Urbanist
“Chicago will not renew controversial ShotSpotter contract, drawing support, criticism from aldermen” by Craig Wall and Eric Horng from ABC7 Chicago
“Despite Public Opinion, Seattle Cops and Prosecutors Still Prioritize Cracking Down on Sex Work” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“Council’s Public Safety Focus Will Be “Permissive Environment” Toward Crime” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“The private sector’s biggest bet in homelessness fell apart. What now?” by Greg Kim from The Seattle Times
“Amazon donation is ‘another step’ after homelessness group’s collapse” by Greg Kim from The Seattle Times
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical shows and our Friday week-in-review shows delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank.
[00:01:08] Robert Cruickshank: Thank you for having me back here again, Crystal.
[00:01:11] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much. Well, we've got a number of items to cover this week, starting with news that I'm certainly excited about - I think you are, too - that this week, in our February special election, Renton had a ballot measure to increase the minimum wage which passed. What are your takeaways from this?
[00:01:31] Robert Cruickshank: It's a huge win, both in terms of the margin of victory so far - nearly 60% of Renton voters saying Yes to this in a February election with low turnout. It will raise the wage to around $20 an hour in Renton. And I think it's a clear sign that just as we saw voters in Tukwila last year, and just as in fact voters in SeaTac 11 years ago - kicking all this off - moving to $15 an hour with a city ballot initiative that year, voters in King County, Western Washington want higher minimum wages. And I don't even think we need to qualify it by saying King County in Western Washington. You can look around the country and see - in states like Arkansas, when people put initiatives on the ballot to raise the wage, they pass. So I think there's, yet again, widespread support for this. And I think it also shows that the politicians in Renton - there were several city councilmembers like Carmen Rivera who supported this. There are others, though - the majority of the Renton City Council didn't. They spouted a lot of the usual right-wing Chamber of Commerce arguments against raising the minimum wage, saying it would hurt small businesses and make it hard for workers - none of which actually happens in practice. And voters get that. Voters very clearly understand that you need to pay workers more - they deserve more, especially in a time of inflation. This has been understood for well over 10 years now - that the minimum wage wasn't rising quickly enough and it needs to keep going up. So I think it's a huge wake-up call to elected officials - not just in local city councils, but at the state legislature - they've got to keep doing work to make sure that workers are getting paid well and that the minimum wage keeps rising.
[00:03:04] Crystal Fincher: I completely agree. I also think, just for the campaign's purposes, this was really exciting to see. Again, not coming from some of the traditional places where we see ballot measures, campaigns being funded - great that they're funding progressive campaigns in other areas, but that these efforts are largely community-led, community-driven. The Raise the Wage Renton campaign, the Seattle DSA - the Democratic Socialists of America, Seattle chapter - were very involved, did a lot of the heavy lifting here. So really kudos to that entire effort - really important - and really showing that when people get together within communities to respond to problems that they're seeing and challenges that they face, they can create change. It doesn't take that many people acting together and in unison, speaking to their neighbors, to have this happen in city after city. And like you said, it started in SeaTac, and we see how far it's carried.
I also think, as you alluded to, this puts other councils on notice. I know the City of Burien is talking about this right now, other cities are looking at this locally. And we have been hearing similar things from Burien city councilmembers that we heard from some of those Renton city councilmembers who declined to pass this on their own. They were parroting Chamber of Commerce talking points. They were parroting some old, disproven data. People recognize and so much data has shown that when you empower people, when you pay people, that is what fuels and builds economy. The economy is the people. So if the people aren't in good shape, the economy is not going to be in good shape. People recognize that. And we really do have to ask and reflect on - I think these elected officials need to reflect on - who are they serving? And where are they getting their information from? Because in city after city, we see overwhelmingly residents respond and say - This is absolutely something we want and we need. And there's this disconnect between them and their elected officials who are parroting these talking points - Well, we're worried about business. Well, we're worried about these. And I think they need to really pause and reflect and say - Okay, who are we really representing here? Where are we getting our information from and why are we seeing time after time that these talking points that have been used for decades, from the same old people and the same old sources, are completely falling flat with the public? I think they should be concerned about their own rhetoric falling flat with the public. They're certainly considering where these elected officials are as their reelections come due, as they're evaluating the job that they're doing. So I think they really need to think hard, evaluate where they are, and get aligned with the people who need the most help, who are trying to build lives in their communities. And stop making this go to the ballot. Stop making the people work harder for what they need - just pass this in your cities and make it so.
[00:06:17] Robert Cruickshank: Absolutely. It would be certainly better for working people - for the elected officials to do this themselves. I am noticing a growing trend, though, of progressive and left-wing activists - socialists in this case, DSA - going directly to the ballot when needed. We saw it in Tacoma with the renters' rights legislation last year. We've seen it last year with social housing. And now again this week, House Our Neighbors came out with the initiative to fund social housing, which they had to split in two - due to legal reasons, you had to create the developer first, and then now you have to fund it. And again, the city council had an opportunity to do both here in Seattle. They had the opportunity to create the authority. They passed on that. Then they had the opportunity to fund it. They passed on that. And I am bullish on House Our Neighbors' chances to get their funding initiative, which would be through a payroll tax on large employers, passed by voters this fall. Because again, social housing was super popular at the ballot last year in a February election. Now they're going to go for November 2024 election when there's going to be massive turnout. It's unfortunate that people are having to put a lot of time, money, effort into mounting independent efforts to get things on the ballot - that's hard. It takes a ton of work, not just the gathering signatures and raising money, but just keeping a coalition going and all the meetings and stuff. But hats off to the people who are able to do that. It's not a sustainable way to get progressive policy done, but in a moment where there are more members of city councils who are aligned with the big corporations and wealthy donors, it's what you're going to have to do and it's building power. Ultimately - hopefully - it starts leading into successful victories in city council elections around the region, just as it's led to successes at the ballot box for initiatives.
[00:07:59] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. We saw in this effort, as we've seen in others, significant opposition from some elements in the business community. There were some businesses, especially small businesses, who were supportive of this, who were either already paying their employees higher wages because that's how you attract people in business - is not doing the absolute bare minimum. But we saw significant resources spent. This campaign was outspent. And still, the people made it clear what they wanted with another really, really impressive and strong margin. So we'll continue to follow where that goes. We will certainly continue to follow other ballot measures on the ballot as they develop this year, especially with House Our Neighbors and the Social Housing Initiative in Seattle - just going to be really interesting to see.
Moving to the legislature, significant news this week that rent stabilization has passed the State House and now it moves on to the Senate. What will rent stabilization accomplish?
[00:09:03] Robert Cruickshank: So the bill, HB 2114, which passed out of the State House - it was the last bill they took up before the deadline to pass bills out of their original house - limits the amount of increase in rent each year to 7%. So a landlord can only raise your rent 7% a year. This is modeled on similar legislation that was adopted in Oregon and California right before the pandemic - in Oregon and California, it's a 5% annual increase. This being Washington state, we can't do things exactly the way that are done elsewhere - we've got to water it down a little bit, so it's 7%. But it's not rent control in which a property or a apartment is permanently capped at a certain level, no matter who's renting it. Like the Oregon and California laws, this one in Washington would exempt new construction. And the reason you want to exempt new construction is to encourage people to keep building housing. And there's plenty of research that shows now that one of the most effective ways to bring rent down, not just cap its growth, is to build more housing. So building more housing and then capping the annual rent increase on housing that's been around for a while generally works. And you're seeing this in California and in Oregon - especially in cities that have been building more housing, rents have come down while those living in older apartments, older homes, are seeing their rents capped, so they're having an easier time affording rent.
This is all good, and it made it out of the State House on mostly a party line vote - Democrats almost all in favor with a few exceptions, Republicans almost all against. Now it goes to the State Senate where there's a number of conservative Democrats, like Annette Cleveland from Vancouver who blocked the Senate's version of the bill, who's against it. Surely Mark Mullet, a conservative Democrat from Issaquah running for governor - surely against it. And Rich Smith in The Stranger had a piece yesterday in which he related his conversation with Jamie Pedersen from Capitol Hill, one of the most rent-burdened districts in the city, one of the districts in the state of Washington - legislative districts - with the most renters in it. And Pedersen was hemming and hawing on it. And so it's clear that for this bill to pass - it surely is popular with the public. Democrats, you would think, would want to do the right thing on housing costs going into an election. But it's gonna take some pressure on Democrats in the State Senate to pass the bill, especially without watering it down further. The bill that Annette Cleveland, the senator from Vancouver, had blocked in the Senate would cap rent increases at 15% a year. It's like. - Why would you even bother passing a bill at that point? 7% is itself, like I said, watering down what California and Oregon have done, but 7% is still a pretty valuable cap. Hopefully the Senate passes it as is. Hopefully the State Senate doesn't demand even more watering down. There's no need for that. Just pass the bill. Protect people who are renting.
[00:11:44] Crystal Fincher: Agree. We absolutely need to pass the bill. I do appreciate the House making this such a priority - building on the work that they did to enable the building of more housing, which is absolutely necessary, last session. And this session moving forward with protecting people in their homes - trying to prevent our homelessness crisis from getting even worse with people being unable to afford rent, being displaced, being unable to stay where they're living, to maintain their current job. So that's really important. But it does face an uncertain future in the Senate. I do appreciate the reporting that Rich Smith did. He also covered some other State senators on the fence, including Jesse Salomon from Shoreline, John Lovick from Mill Creek, Marko Liias from Everett, Steve Conway from Tacoma, Drew Hansen from Bainbridge Island, Sam Hunt from Olympia, Lisa Wellman from Mercer Island, and Majority Leader Andy Billig being on the fence. And so it's going to be really important for people who do care about this to let their opinions be known to these senators. This is really going to be another example of where - they've obviously had concerns for a while, they're hearing talking points that we're used to hearing - that we know have been refuted, that maybe that information hasn't gotten to them yet. And maybe they don't realize how much of a concern this is for residents. They may be - they're in Olympia a lot of time, they're hearing from a lot of lobbyists - and they aren't as close sometimes to the opinions of the people in their districts.
But one thing that many people need to understand is that many of these districts are having legislative town halls coming up as soon as this weekend, but certainly in short order. We'll put a link to where you can find that information in the show notes. Make it a point to attend one of those. If you can't, call, email, make your voice heard - it's really going to take you letting them know that this is a priority for you in order for this to happen. It's possible. So we really need to do all we can to ensure that they know how we feel.
[00:13:58] Robert Cruickshank: Exactly. And those State senators you named, they are all from safe blue seats. Not a single one of them, except for maybe John Lovick in Mill Creek, is from a purplish district where they have to worry about any electoral impact. Although, to be honest, this stuff is popular. There are plenty of renters in purple districts who are rent-burdened and who would love to see the Democratic majority in Olympia help them out, help keep their rent more affordable. So it's a huge political win for them. Some of this may be ideological opposition. Some of them may be getting a lot of money from apartment owners and landlords. Who knows? You got to look at the case by case. But gosh, you would hope that the State Senate has political sense - understands that this is not only the right thing to do, but a winner with the electorate, and passes the bill. But it is Olympia. And unfortunately, the State Senate in particular is often where good ideas go to die in Olympia. So we'll see what happens.
[00:14:48] Crystal Fincher: We will see. We'll continue to follow that. Also want to talk about Alaska Airlines flight attendants this week authorizing a strike. Why did they authorize this, and what does this mean?
[00:15:01] Robert Cruickshank: Well, I think it goes back to what we were talking about with workers in Renton. Flight attendants work long hours - they're not always paid for it. They're often only paid for when the flight is in the air. And their costs are going up, too. The expense of working in this country continues to rise and flight attendants continue to need to get paid well for that. Flight attendants' union is very well organized. There's the good Sara Nelson - Sara Nelson, head of the flight attendants' union, not Sara Nelson, head of Seattle City Council - is an amazing labor leader and has done a really good job advocating for the flight attendants across the industry. And you see that in the strike authorization vote - it was almost unanimous with almost complete 100% turnout from members of the Alaska Flight Attendants Union. Alaska Airlines has been facing its own issues lately, especially with some of their Boeing jets having problems. They've also, for the last 20 years, at least tried to cut costs everywhere they could. They outsourced what used to be unionized baggage handlers at SeaTac many years ago - that caused a big uproar. It was, in fact, concerns about Alaska Airlines and how they're paying ground crews that was a major factor in driving the SeaTac minimum wage ballot initiative way back in 2013. So here we are now - the Alaska Airlines flight attendants looking to get better treatment, better wages and working conditions. And huge support from the union.
And as we've seen in this decade in particular, huge support from the public. And I think it's really worth noting - you and I can both remember the 90s, 2000s, when workers went out on strike weren't always getting widespread public support. And corporations had an ability to work the media to try to turn public against striking workers - now, teachers always had public support, firefighters had public support, but other workers didn't always. But that's really shifted. Here, there's a widespread public agreement that workers need to be treated well and paid well. You see that in Raise the Wage Renton succeeding. You see that in the huge public support for Starbucks workers out on strike who want a union contract. And if Alaska Airlines forces its flight attendants out on strike, you will see widespread public support for them as well, especially here in western Washington, where Alaska maintains a strong customer base. People in the Seattle area are loyal to Alaska, and they're going to support Alaska's flight attendants if they have to go out on strike.
[00:17:20] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and there's still a number of steps that would need to happen in order for it to lead to an actual strike. The flight attendants' union and Alaska Airlines are currently in negotiations, which according to an Alaska statement, is still ongoing. They signal positivity there. Hopefully that is the case and that continues. But first-year flight attendants right now are averaging less than $24,000 in salary annually. And especially here, but basically anywhere, that's not a wage you can live on. Those are literally poverty wages. And this is happening while Alaska Airlines has touted significant profits, very high profits. They're in the process of attempting to acquire another airline for $1.9 billion right now. And so part of this, which is the first strike authorization in 30 years for this union - it's not like this happens all the time. This is really long-standing grievances and really long dealing with these poverty wages - and they just can't anymore. This is unsustainable. And so hopefully they are earnestly making a go at a real fair wage.
And I do think they have the public support. It is something that we've recognized across the country, unionization efforts in many different sectors for many different people. This week, we even saw - The Stranger writers announced that they're seeking a union, and wish them best of luck with that. But looking at this being necessary across the board - and even in tech sectors, which before felt immune to unionization pushes and they used to tout all of their benefits and how they received everything they could ever want - we've seen how quickly that tide can change. We've seen how quickly mass layoffs can take over an industry, even while companies are reporting record profits. And so this is really just another link in this chain here, saying - You know what, you're going to have to give a fair deal. It's not only about shareholders. It's about the people actually working, actually delivering the products and services that these companies are known for. The folks doing the work deserve a share of those profits, certainly more than they're getting right now.
[00:19:44] Robert Cruickshank: I think that's right. And again, the public sees that and they know that being a flight attendant isn't easy work. But whoever it is, whatever sector they're in, whatever work they're doing, the public has really shifted and is in a really good place. They recognize that corporations and governments need to do right by workers and pay them well. Hopefully the flight attendants can settle this without a strike. And hopefully Alaska Airlines understands that the last thing they need right now is a strike. They've had enough problems already. So hopefully the corporate leadership gets that.
[00:20:13] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I also want to talk about a new study that certainly a lot of people haven't found surprising, especially after two very high-profile gender discrimination lawsuits against SPD. But a study was actually done that included focus groups with Seattle officers, both male and female. And what was uncovered was a pervasive apparent gender discrimination problem within SPD. What was uncovered here?
[00:20:45] Robert Cruickshank: All sorts of instances of gender discrimination - from blocked promotions, to negative comments, to inequities and inconsistencies in who gets leave - all sorts of things that made it an extremely hostile work environment for women. And some of the celebrated women of the department - Detective Cookie, who's well known for leading chess clubs in Rainier Beach, sued the department for gender and racial discrimination. And what the study shows that it's pervasive, but the only times it seemed to get any better were when women led the department - Kathleen O'Toole in the mid 2010s and then Carmen Best up until 2020 seemed to have a little bit of positive impact on addressing these problems. But under current leadership and other recent leadership, it's just not a priority. And it speaks, I think, to the real problems - the actual problems - facing police. You hear from people like Sara Nelson and others on the right that the reason it's hard to recruit officers is because - Oh, those mean old progressives tried to "Defund the Police' and they said mean things about the cops. That's not it at all. This report actually shows why there's a recruiting problem for police. Normal people don't want to go work for the police department. They see a department that is racist, sexist - nothing is being done to address it. Who would want to enter that hostile work environment?
I remember when Mike McGinn was mayor - we were working for McGinn in the early 2010s - trying to address some of these same problems, trying to help recruit a department that not only reflected Seattle's diversity, but lived in Seattle - was rooted in the community - and how hard that was. And you're seeing why. It's because there's a major cultural problem with police departments all across the country - Seattle's not uniquely bad at being sexist towards women officers, it's a problem everywhere. But it's the city that you would think would try to do something about it. But what we're hearing from the city council right now - and they had their first Public Safety Committee meeting recently of the newly elected council - is the same usual nonsense that just thinks, Oh, if we give them a bunch more money and say nice things about cops and ease up a little bit on, maybe more than a little bit, on reform efforts trying to hold the department accountable - that officers will want to join the ranks. And that's just not going to happen. It is a cultural problem with the department. It is a structural problem. The red flags are everywhere. And it's going to take new leadership at the police department - maybe at City Hall - that takes this seriously, is willing to do the hard work of rooting out these attitudes. And you've got to keep in mind, when you look at this rank-and-file department - they elected Mike Solan to lead their union, SPOG - in January of 2020. Solan was a known Trumper, hard right-wing guy - and this is well before George Floyd protests began. Yet another sign that the problem is the department itself, the officers themselves, who are often engaging in this behavior or refusing to hold each other accountable. Because again, this toxic culture of - Well, we got to protect each other at all costs. - it's going to take major changes, and I don't see this City leadership at City Hall being willing to undertake the work necessary to fix it.
[00:23:54] Crystal Fincher: I think you've hit the nail on the head there. And just demonstrating that once again, we get a clear illustration of why SPD has a problem recruiting. It is absolutely a cultural issue. It is what they have been getting away with despite dissatisfaction from women. And women in the department saying either we're targeted or discriminated against, but a lot of us - even though we're experiencing it - just try and keep our heads down and stay silent. And a lot of those people end up moving out eventually because who wants to work in an environment like this? We recognize this in every other industry. There's a reason why organizations and corporations tout their corporate culture, tout their benefits for women, their respect for women, their inclusion of women in leadership and executive-level positions. And we don't see that here. So if the leadership in charge of this - from Bruce Harrell, who is the ultimate head of the department, the buck stops with him to the police chief to the City Council - if they're actually serious about addressing this and not just using this as a campaign wedge issue with the rhetoric, they will have to address the culture of this department.
Now, the Chair of the Seattle City Council's Public Safety Committee, Bob Kettle, who was recently elected in November, said that the hiring numbers were disappointed. He said - "The number of women that were hired in 2023 was not acceptable. We need to have a representative force where women are well represented. We need to be creating that culture and an environment of inclusion. And also the idea that you can advance, you can be promoted, you can move forward in the organization." So if he is serious about that, he has to address the culture - and that's going to involve addressing a number of things. That's going to involve, perhaps, addressing a number of the people currently in leadership who have created and who continue this culture and who are going to have to be dealt with if this is going to change. But this isn't something that's just going to change because there're new people elected in office. This isn't something that's just going to change because they're getting compliments more as a department and more funding has been thrown at them. This is going to take active engagement and a difference in leadership, a difference in training, a completely different approach. So we'll follow this. Mayor Bruce Harrell also said that he is planning to meet with women throughout the department to hear directly from them and listen to their concerns - we will see what results from those conversations and what happens. But now there is a lot of touted alignment between the mayor and city council here, so there really should be no roadblocks to them really addressing this substantively - if they're serious about addressing this.
[00:26:58] Robert Cruickshank: I agree. And one of the ways you'll see whether they're serious or not is how they handle the SPOG contract. And one of the things that helps change a department's culture, where this sort of behavior is clearly known to not be tolerated, is for there to be real consequences. How are officers disciplined? How are officers fired? How are they held accountable? Right now, it's very difficult to remove an officer - the current contract rules make it very easy for an officer to contest a firing or disciplinary action and be reinstated or have the disciplinary action overturned. You're not going to eradicate a culture of racism and sexism without changing that as well. And that is at the core of the fight over the SPOG contract, and we will see whether the mayor and the city council are serious about cultural changes at SPD. And you'll see it in how they handle the SPOG contract - hopefully they'll put a strong one out and hold their ground when SPOG pushes back. But that's not going to happen, honestly, without the public really pushing City Hall hard. Because I think you see - from both the mayor and the city council - a desire to cut deals with SPOG, a desire to not go too hard at them. And I don't see - absent public mobilization - a strong SPOG contract coming.
[00:28:07] Crystal Fincher: I think you're right about that. In other SPD public safety news, Seattle is planning a significant rollout of the ShotSpotter system. We've talked about that before here on the show - it's basically a surveillance system that's supposed to hear, to be able to determine gunshots from noises, to try and pinpoint where it came from. Unfortunately, it has been an absolute failure in several other cities - we've had lots of information and data about this. And this week, we received news that the City of Chicago is actually canceling their contract after this failed in their city. And so once again, people are asking the question - Why, with such a horrible track record, are we spending so much money and getting ready to roll this failed technology out in Seattle? Why is this happening?
[00:29:04] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. I see people on social media speculating it's because of campaign donations and things like that. I'm not sure that's it. I honestly think this goes back to something Ron Davis said in the campaign when he was running for city council, criticizing his opponent, Maritza Rivera, who ultimately won, and other candidates in-line with Sara Nelson for wanting to, in his words, "spread magic fairy dust" around public safety issues and assume that would work. And that really, I think, is what ShotSpotter is. It's magic fairy dust. This idea that there's some magical technological tool that can quickly identify where a gunshot is happening and deploy the officers there immediately. It sounds cool when you first hear about it like that, but as you pointed out and as Amy Sundberg has written about extensively, it doesn't work - just literally doesn't work. The number of false positives are so high that officers are essentially sent on wild goose chases - you can't trust it, it's not worth the money. And Chicago, which is a city with a very serious gun violence problem, explored this. And for them to reject it means it clearly does not work, and Chicago needs solutions that work.
I think honestly, the reason why the city is adopting is they want to do something that looks like they're acting, that looks like they're taking it seriously, even though this isn't going to actually succeed. It is very much that magic fairy dust of trying to appear serious about gun violence, without really tackling the core issues that are happening here, without tackling the problems with policing, without tackling the underlying problems in communities and neighborhoods that can cause gun violence. There is a growing issue at schools in Seattle with gun violence. And students have been trying to raise this issue for a while, ever since a shooting at Ingraham High School in late 2022, another shooting that led to another student's death in near Chief Sealth High School in West Seattle recently, to a group of students robbing another student at Ingraham High School at gunpoint in recent weeks. There's a serious problem. And what you're not seeing is the City or the school district, to be honest, taking that very seriously or really responding in the ways that the students are demanding responses. And I think the really sad story with something like ShotSpotter is all this money and effort is being spent on a clearly failed piece of technology when other answers that students and community members are crying out for aren't being delivered. That's a real problem.
[00:31:21] Crystal Fincher: It is absolutely a real problem. And I think there's near unanimous concern and desire for there to be real earnest effort to fix this. We know things that help reduce gun violence - there's lots of data out about that. The city and county have done some of them. They've implemented some of them on very limited basis. But it is challenging to see so much money diverted elsewhere to failed technologies and solutions like this, while actual evidence-based solutions are starved, defunded, and are not getting the kind of support they deserve - and that the residents of the city, that the students in our schools deserve. This is a major problem that we have to deal with seriously. And this just isn't serious at all. I feel like - it was the early 2010s - this technology came out and it was in that era of "the tech will save us" - everyone was disrupting in one way or another. There were lots of promises being made about new technology. And unfortunately, we saw with a lot of it in a lot of different areas that it just didn't deliver on the promises. So I don't fault people for initially saying - Hey, this may be another tool in the toolkit that we can use. But over the past 10 years, through several implementations in Atlanta, Pasadena, San Antonio, Dayton, Ohio, Chicago - it has failed to deliver anything close to what has happened. In fact, it's been harmful in many areas.
And so you have people who are interested in solving this problem who are not just saying - Hey, we just need to throw our hands up and do nothing here. We're not trying to minimize the problem. They're in active roles and positions really saying - Hey, this is a priority. And unfortunately, this is not a serious solution to the problem. The Cook County state's attorney's office found that ShotSpotter had a "minimal effect on prosecuting gun violence cases," with their report saying "ShotSpotter is not making a significant impact on shooting incidents," with only 1% of shooting incidents ending in a ShotSpotter arrest. And it estimates the cost per ShotSpotter incident arrestee is over $200,000. That is not a wise use of government expenditures. A large study found that ShotSpotter has no impact - literally no impact - on the number of murder arrests or weapons arrests. And the Chicago's Office of Inspector General concluded that "CPD responses to ShotSpotter alerts rarely produced documented evidence of any gun-related crime, investigatory stop, or recovery of a firearm."
Also, one of the big reasons why Seattle is saying they're implementing this is - Well, we're so short-staffed that we really need this technology and it's going to save manpower, it's going to save our officers' time, it's going to really take a lot of the work off their plate. Unfortunately, the exact opposite was shown to happen with ShotSpotter - "ShotSpotter does not make police more efficient or relieve staffing shortages." In fact, they found it's the opposite. ShotSpotter vastly increases the number of police deployments in response to supposed gunfire, but with no corresponding increase in gun violence arrests or other interventions. In fact, ShotSpotter imposes such a massive drain on police resources that it slows down police response to actual 911 emergencies reported by the public. This is a problem. It's not just something that doesn't work. It's actually actively harmful. It makes the problems worse that these elected officials are saying that they're seeking to address. With the challenges that we're experiencing with gun violence, with the absolute need to make our cities safer - to reduce these incidences - we quite literally cannot afford this. And so I hope they take a hard look at this, but it is really defying logic - in the midst of a budget crisis, in the midst of a gun violence crisis - to be embarking on this. I really hope they seriously evaluate what they're doing here.
[00:35:54] Robert Cruickshank: I agree. And what you're raising is this question of where should we be putting the resources? And shout out to Erica C. Barnett at PubliCola, who's been writing in the last week or so some really good articles on this very topic - where is SPD putting its resources? A few days ago, she had a very well-reported article at PubliCola about enforcement of prostitution on Aurora Avenue, which is a very controversial thing to be doing for many reasons - is this is actually how you should protect sex workers? But also, is this how we should be prioritizing police resources? Whatever you think of sex work, pro or con, whatever your opinion is - is that where police resources should be going right now when we don't have as many officers as the City would like to have, when there's gun violence, and when there's property crime? And then she also reported recently about, speaking of Bob Kettle, he put out this proposal that he wants to focus on what he calls a "permissive environment towards crime" and closing unsecured vacant buildings, graffiti remediation as priorities. Again, whatever you think about vacant buildings and graffiti - how does that rank on a list of priorities when there are problems with gun violence in the City of Seattle? There are problems with real violent crime in the City of Seattle. And how are police department resources being allocated? I think these are questions that the public needs to be asking pretty tough questions about to City Hall, to Bob Kettle, to Sara Nelson, to Bruce Harrell, and SPD. Because, again, they haven't solved the cultural problem with SPD. They're not going to get many new officers until they do. So how do you use the resources you have right now? And it doesn't look like they're being allocated very effectively, whether it's cracking down, in their terms, on sex work on Aurora or buying things like ShotSpotter. It just seems like they're chasing what they think are easy wins that are not going to do anything to actually address the problem. And we will be here a year or two later still talking about problems with gun violence because City Hall didn't make it a real priority.
[00:37:52] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Also want to talk this week about news that was covered - actually in The Seattle Times and elsewhere - about the private sector kind of corresponding organization to the King County Regional Homeless Authority - We Are In, a philanthropic endeavor from some of the richest residents in the states and corporations in the state - actually folded. It was a failure. What happened? Why did this fall apart?
[00:38:24] Robert Cruickshank: A lot of this stems from the debate in 2018 over the Head Tax - taxing Amazon to fund services related to homelessness. Mayor Ed Murray declared way back in, I think 2014, a state of emergency around homelessness. We're 10 years into that and nothing's been done. But what the City was looking to do in 2018 - Mike O'Brien and others were talking about bringing back the Head Tax, taxing the corporations in the city to fund services to address the homelessness issue. And the pushback from Amazon and others was - You don't need to tax us. We'll spend money better than government can and do it ourselves. And so that's what things like We Are In was intended to do. It was really intended to try to forestall new taxes by, in theory, showing that the private sector - through philanthropic efforts - can solve this more effectively. And guess what? They can't. In part because homelessness is a major challenge to solve without government resources, without major changes in how we build housing and how we provide services and where they're provided. And what you're seeing is that a philanthropic effort is not going to solve that. They keep chasing it because I think they have a political imperative to do so.
But what happened was that We Are In wasn't producing the result they wanted to, leadership problems. And now Steve Ballmer is talking about - Well, maybe we'll just fund the King County Regional Homelessness Authority directly. It's like - okay, in that case, what's so different between that and taxation? There is a report that consultants came up with - I think got publicized in 2019 or 2020 - that the region would need to spend something like $450 million a year to really solve homelessness. You could easily raise that money through taxes and taxing corporations and wealthy individuals. And they are just so adamantly opposed to doing that. They would rather try to make philanthropic donations here and there, even when it's clearly insufficient to meet the need. It's not well thought out. It's not well programmed and just falls apart quickly.
[00:40:27] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I agree. Over so many years, we've heard so many times - Just run it like a business. We need to run government like a business. And over and over and over again, we see that fail - that doesn't work. When you can't target what you're doing to a certain market, when you're only serving a limited subset - when you have to serve the entire public, when you have to actually invest in people, and this isn't a quick product or service that you can use that automatically fixes a situation, there have to be systemic issues that are addressed. And sometimes there's this attitude that - Oh, it's so simple to fix. If you just put a business person in charge of it, they'll get it done. Look at how they built their company. They can certainly tackle this. And over and over again - this is the latest example - that just simply doesn't work. They aren't the same. They aren't the same set of skills. They operate on different levels. There's different training. Lots of stuff is just absolutely different. And part of me, fundamentally, wishes we would stop denigrating and insulting the people who have been doing this work, who have been really consistently voicing their concerns about what's needed, about what their experience shows solves this problem, about what is actually working. There are things that are working. There are things going right in our region that we seem to not pay attention to or that we seem to, especially from the perspective of a number of these organizations who spend so much money to fight taxes, spend so much money to pick councilmembers, saying - Well, we think we have a better solution here.
And so we wasted time trying and failing with this when, again, the answer is systemic. We have to sustainably fund the types of housing and resources that get people housed once more, that prevent people from becoming unhoused, and that make this region affordable for everyone so that one unforeseen expense can't launch someone into homelessness. We have been doing a poor job on all of those accounts as a region for so long that it's going to take significant investment and effort to turn things around. Some of that is happening, and I'm encouraged by some things that we're seeing. But at the same time, we're also hearing, especially in the midst of these budget problems that cities are dealing with, that they're looking at unfunding and rolling back these things. Interesting on the heels of this ShotSpotter conversation, where we're investing money into that - they're talking about de-investing, about defunding homelessness responses, public health responses to these crises. And I think we have just seen that this group involved with this effort just does not understand the problem, had the opportunity to meaningfully participate in a fix, and it just didn't work out. That's great - they're doing a great job running their businesses. They can continue to do that. But it's time to really follow what the evidence says fixes this and not what business titans are wishing would fix it.
[00:43:55] Robert Cruickshank: That's exactly right. And yet for the business titans, it's a question of power. They want to be the ones to ultimately decide how their money gets spent, not we the people or our elected representatives. I think of one of the things we started out talking about today is - rent stabilization bill in Olympia. Capping rent increases is a way to reduce homelessness. There are plenty of people who are pushed into homelessness by a rent increase they can't afford. Steve Ballmer calling up those State senators who are going to be tackling this bill saying - Hey, this would really help reduce homelessness if you pass this bill. I'm going to doubt that Steve Ballmer is making those calls. If I'm wrong, I'm happy to be wrong. I don't think I am. For them, they want the power to decide how their money is spent. And even when they spend it poorly, they still want that power. And I think they're willing to hoard that power even at the expense of people who really are in need, who are living without a home, and who need all of our help urgently.
[00:44:49] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely agree. The last point I would want to make is that it's not like philanthropic funding is all evil, it's never helpful - it is. But this is about who is leading the solutions here and what we're doing. And I think that there are so many experts - so many people in organizations who are doing this work well - who need that additional funding. Let's put that philanthropic money into systems that are working instead of trying to recreate the wheel once again. So much time and money was lost here that so many people can't afford and that have had really horrible consequences. And I think a number of people who went into this were probably well-intentioned. But it just goes to show once again that - we know what works. And no matter how much we wish that it could be some simple fix over here, that it wouldn't require any public expenditure, it absolutely does. So it'll be interesting to follow and see what happens from there.
And with that, I thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, February 16th, 2024. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is the incredible Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank. You can find Robert on Twitter at @cruickshank. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. You can find me on all platforms at @finchfrii, with two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattle Times City Hall reporter, David Kroman!
Crystal and David dig into why Seattle is putting less money into new affordable housing project this year and how this week’s launch of a second social housing initiative by House Our Neighbors may be appealing to voters wanting to see progress on the issue. Next, they discuss the pressure on Mayor Bruce Harrell to deliver results now that a City Council friendly to his agenda has taken office and how the new Council’s relative inexperience was on display at initial committee meetings. Finally, the show wraps up with a troubling story of the for-profit Tacoma immigration detention center refusing to allow state inspectors access after hundreds of complaints about the facility’s poor conditions.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, David Kroman, at @KromanDavid.
Resources
Harm Reduction in Rural Washington with Everett Maroon of Blue Mountain Heart to Heart from Hacks & Wonks
“Why Seattle will fund fewer new affordable housing projects this year” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times
I-136 Let's Build Social Housing | House Our Neighbors
“Seattle’s social housing developer proposes payroll tax on ‘excess earners’” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times
“New Social Housing Initiative Would Tax Business to Fund Up to 2,500 Over 10 Years” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
“A council of allies in place, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell feels pressure to deliver” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times
“Watch: New Transportation Committee gets intro from SDOT, CM Kettle puts foot in mouth” by Tom Fucoloro from Seattle Bike Blog
@KromanDavid on Twitter: “Councilmember Rob Saka: "Ideally I'd like to have an across the board auditing of the entire city budget, but I am mindful that that is very costly and a time intensive activity. It's not practicable or feasible this year."”
“State inspectors denied entry to privately-run immigration detention center in Tacoma” by Grace Deng from Washington State Standard
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
If you missed our Tuesday topical show, I welcomed Everett Maroon of Blue Mountain Heart to Heart for a conversation about how the opioid epidemic has impacted rural communities in Washington, the damaging role of stigma, what harm reduction is, and why it's so important. Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show, and today's co-host: Seattle Times City Hall reporter, David Kroman.
[00:01:22] David Kroman: Hello. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Thanks for being here. Well, there is - been a decent amount of news this week. We will start off talking about news you covered about why Seattle is funding fewer new affordable housing projects this year. What's happening and why are they seeming to step back here?
[00:01:45] David Kroman: Yeah, it's interesting, and I would say kind of concerning for the general affordable housing landscape. So back to as far as 2018, Seattle has always made these annual announcements of how much money they're going to be putting towards affordable housing. They pair it with federal tax credits and private donations, but it usually ends up being over $100 million a year. Last year, for example, it was $147 million - I think it was about that the year before. This year, the award is only $53 million for new affordable housing projects - that stands out because voters just passed a new housing levy that's triple the size of the one before it. There is still money - less money, but there's still money - coming in from the Mandatory Housing Affordability program. And there's also the JumpStart payroll tax, which is supposed to go towards housing. So all those things together would suggest there's a lot of money for new affordable housing, but the problem is that a lot of the projects that the city has funded in the past are struggling with their finances. The combination of interest rates and some wonky details about what loans they're on mean that these 70 projects or so that are in the works, or at various stages of development, need something in the order of $90 million to prop them up. So it's a frustrating reality for people in the affordable housing world because they want to be building new housing, they want to be putting new units on the market. But because of just the nature of construction industry and where interest rates are at, a lot of that money is getting sucked up into basically paying for housing that we thought we'd already paid for.
[00:03:17] Crystal Fincher: So does this money that is usually allocated annually - does it only go to the construction? Does it ever go to propping up other projects? Did this happen by surprise for the city? It doesn't seem like it was telegraphed that it would be this much of a hit. How did this change come about?
[00:03:36] David Kroman: Yeah, the Office of Housing always helps out with operations and maintenance, and they see that they have a certain obligation not to just fund the construction, but to make sure that the buildings that they're helping fund function properly and can actually house people. I don't think it's uncommon that they go back and help out buildings that they'd already funded. As far as I know, though, it has never gotten to this size. It was telegraphed actually a few months ago - their initial announcement of how much money would be available suggested that it was going to be quite a bit smaller. I think people thought there were some more technical explanations for that. But what's really happening - in affordable housing, there's basically two loans that these affordable housing buildings get. There's the construction loan, which is what they get to put up the building. And then there's their final loan that they convert to once they've leased up enough of their units and are bringing in enough rent - because, despite the fact that it's affordable housing, the calculations that the banks make around these still require that they're collecting some level of rent from their tenants. Usually that process takes two or three years for them to convert from their construction loan to their final loan. But for a lot of reasons, they're just having a really hard time doing that. They're having a harder time filling their units - I think that's probably worth following up on why that is exactly. And then they're having a harder time collecting rents - some of that does go back to some of the pandemic era policies that were intended to stabilize people in their rental apartments.
So they're not able to get to the point where they can get off of their construction loan. And that is a really bad loan to be on for a long period of time, just because the rates and interest rates on those are way higher. And so I think that reality is just coming to pass this year, that basically every single one of these projects is functioning on a construction loan. But if the Office of Housing didn't go back and help them weather this storm, then we're looking at a much worse problem, which is affordable housing buildings that have already been built and people are living in them - but them just basically going belly up or needing to be sold. And so kind of a rock and a hard place for the Office of Housing - they have a choice of spending on new buildings or helping out the buildings they've already funded. The choice in some ways is fairly obvious because you don't want to lose these buildings you've already built. But it does mean that future projects take a fairly significant hit.
[00:05:48] Crystal Fincher: Well, it does look like that and it's important to keep these projects moving and healthy so that they don't go belly up or cause a large amount of destabilization in the market. But looking forward, especially with this hit to new affordable developments in an already-crisis level situation with housing affordability, the need for more units to be added - what kind of long-term impact does this look to have? Are we looking at a similar situation next year where we could be looking at a further hit? Is this a permanent injury to affordable housing funding, at least for the short to midterm?
[00:06:28] David Kroman: Yeah, it's a good question. I'm not sure, but I do know that something fairly material would have to change between now and next year to make sure that this isn't a problem anymore. The number of units in a building that have to be leased up and collecting rent is like 90%, so it's really high. It used to never be a problem, but it seems like a lot of these buildings are hovering around 80% occupancy/rent collection. So unless the City has some trick up its sleeve for making sure that these buildings are 90% leased up and the people who are in them are paying that rent, it sets up a situation that is out of the City's hands because these are banks making these calls on whether or not they qualify for these cheaper loans. It's not like the City can pass some law that requires the banks to give them a cheaper loan. And so my guess would be it's not a problem that will go away in a year and probably will come up again this time next year. In the past, this has just never been a problem because, unfortunately, affordable housing is in such high demand that banks have never even thought twice about whether or not an affordable housing development would hit 90% occupancy and payment. The deeper concern here is that as banks see that that assumption is maybe not holding up as well, they might be more hesitant to write these loans in the first place. The only sort of cold comfort, I guess, is that this is not really a specific problem for affordable housing. I used to cover transportation - any transportation project is having these massive cost overruns and problems with construction projects too. And so maybe there's a little more leniency on the part of the financers because they understand that this isn't just some negligence on the affordable housing providers part, it's just the reality of the construction industry right now. But that doesn't mean that it's going to start being cheap anytime soon.
[00:08:13] Crystal Fincher: Right - that's almost the takeaway. Everything about building housing right now seems expensive and growing more expensive. Inflation has definitely hit every element of it and interest rates are higher than they used to be, and just everything seems to be contributing to a higher overall cost. And so that's a challenge that we're going to have to figure out how to deal with, especially as it would be one thing if this were 15 years ago - We need to make plans because this is going to become a problem if we don't address it appropriately. But this now is a problem, a major problem, crisis level, where from the legislature to different cities are all acknowledging that we do have to build more residential units - at minimum - in addition to a variety of other policies, in order to prevent rents and housing costs from continuing to skyrocket. So here we are again, but not enough money is currently budgeted to go around. Is this a money issue? I know there's also a big budget deficit that they're in the process of beginning to deal with. Did the money just run out? Is this a matter of priorities?
[00:09:21] David Kroman: Yeah, there is one lever I think that the City could pull and is pulling that could actually help this a little bit, which is one of the problems is the permitting timeline - for anything really, but affordable housing included - it used to be a year and a half basically just to get all the permits. There has been some legislation passed recently to exempt some affordable housing projects from design review in an effort to speed things up. That could help because then you're not sitting on a piece of property without actually being able to do anything with it. But yeah, it is a money problem because what it is at the end of the day is just things are costing more. The problem is every time there's a property tax levy in Seattle, the specter of levy fatigue is raised. So far, Seattle voters have never hit that - they have handily passed pretty much every property tax levy put before them. But there is, to an extent, an upper limit on how much in property taxes Seattle officials are going to feel comfortable asking voters to fund affordable housing. And if more than 50% of their money is going towards projects that they already thought had been funded, suddenly the political scenario starts to feel a little more fraught.
Meanwhile, the other two funds that the City relies on for affordable housing are also no longer guaranteed solid funds. The Mandatory Housing Affordability pot - that depends on there being a lot of development in the City of Seattle. And of course, we've seen permits for new development plummet, which means there's just not going to be as many contributions from private developers toward affordable housing. And then the JumpStart payroll tax, this new city council is thinking already about this $230 million budget gap that you mentioned, and are not the friendliest to the idea of a business payroll tax. And so shifting the JumpStart tax from pure housing purposes to basically budget relief is very much on the table. And I think nonprofit housing developers understand that. So the problem is that in addition to the housing levy, which is robust and large, not going as far as they had hoped, combined with these other two sources of funds either declining or perhaps being repurposed for political reasons, in general, creates a lot of uncertainty among nonprofit housing developers.
[00:11:23] Crystal Fincher: It does. We will continue to follow this. Thank you for covering that so comprehensively. Well, and that leads into news this week that House Our Neighbors launched a new social housing initiative, basically Part 2 of their initiative process that they talked about before. What is House Our Neighbors? What did the first initiative do? And what are they launching with this initiative that they just filed?
[00:11:51] David Kroman: House Our Neighbors is the political side of Seattle's new social housing developer. 2023, they ran an initiative that set up this public developer that was theoretically going to take money and then either buy or build buildings. On its surface, it sounds a little bit maybe like Seattle Housing Authority, but their focus was going to be on mixed income or housing for not necessarily the poorest residents - 80% to 120% AMI. The idea being that if you're trying to raise a family in Seattle, it's really difficult because it's very, very hard to find two-, three-, four-bedroom affordable apartments. This would fill that gap that they see is missing between the market and government provided subsidized housing. The complaint or pushback on the last initiative was that there weren't any funds to do any of that work. That was intentional on the part of the people who ran the campaign because there are concerns about violating the state's rules against having multiple subjects in one initiative. So this new initiative that they're running would be that second step. It would provide a funding source via a tax on businesses with employees earning more than a million dollars. Their hope is to raise $50 million a year and buy or build around 2,000 units of social housing. I don't know that their announcement was coordinated with the Office of Housing's affordable housing announcement, but the two things certainly are related to each other.
[00:13:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. And with social housing, it's designed to be permanently affordable, government-owned, mixed-income housing that insulates itself, basically, because it's not part of the private market - where we just got done talking about all of the factors causing price increases in the private market. But because this is public, government-owned, it can move forward with a different model that is conceivably more insulated from market forces, in addition to not having profit pressure attached to it - helping to keep it more affordable with mixed incomes where people paying into the pot help fund the affordable housing for everything else. This did pass in the City of Seattle. And as you said, this was a two-part initiative process. The first part was on whether we were going to establish this public developer. And now comes the time to fund it. So when it comes to funding, what is the funding mechanism? And why was this chosen?
[00:14:15] David Kroman: Yeah, the funding mechanism is similar to the JumpStart Tax that we were talking about before, which is it focuses on companies that have an employee making a million dollars or more. And I think the thought behind this - if you think back to the contentious Head Tax debate, which was targeting overall revenue of a business and trying to tax that, that became really contentious because you have businesses like grocery stores that have really high revenue, but super thin profits. So when you have Uwajimaya, for example, testifying against this tax as a beloved local business, people get kind of queasy about it - it basically failed because of that. The argument here is we're not really focusing on the overall revenue. We're focusing on whether or not they have employees that they're paying over a million dollars, because that suggests - if you can pay somebody a million dollars or more, you should be paying some tax on that. And it's a marginal tax, so the first million dollars of that person's salary are not taxed - it's everything above that that is taxed. The City's payroll tax exempts grocery stores and healthcare businesses, or at least healthcare businesses have waiver for a few years. This one doesn't do that. This targets any business that's paying people a million dollars or more. The exact number of businesses that that includes is a little murky. They relied on a couple past legislative efforts at the state and city level to come up with their calculations. If it passed, we'd get a little more sense of who would actually have to pay this tax, but that's basically how it works.
[00:15:33] Crystal Fincher: So what they're referring to is an 'excess earners' tax, and it'd be a 5% marginal payroll tax. As you said, if they had an employee making $2 million, the tax would not apply to that first million. It would only apply to the one million above that at a rate of 5%. They're estimating with that revenue source, they could acquire or build 2,000 affordable units over 10 years. What is the timeline for this initiative now? What do they have to do in order to qualify and get it on the ballot?
[00:16:06] David Kroman: They have set 30,000 signatures as their goal, and they want to get it by June - because if they got it in by June, that would leave the current city council no choice but to put it on the November ballot. And anybody who's trying to do a more left-leaning progressive initiative wants to get their measure on the November ballot because turnout in Seattle is going to be probably 80% - it's a presidential election - and the progressives of Seattle figure that more turnout favors them. So the goal is November '24. But they said that if for whatever reason they didn't get there, they would run it anyway at a later ballot date. I just think politically, that would be a little more challenging for them.
[00:16:40] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. They just filed the initiative. So that process for the initiative to be approved, get to the signature gathering process will be commencing. How does this fit in, in the general overall landscape? Tiffani McCoy, who's the policy and advocacy director with House Our Neighbors, talked a little bit about this happening because there is either not a plan or a deficit in the ability to deliver the amount of housing we need and the type of housing we need at scale.
[00:17:11] David Kroman: Yeah, it fits in because the affordable 80% to 120% AMI - there is just not really anybody interested in doing that right now. There have been some one-off projects around the city where a developer, out of the good of their own heart, has said that their building is going to be affordable to a certain level - workforce housing. But you're really relying on individual developers being interested in doing that. Usually those come with time limits, so they guarantee it for 30 years or 40 years or something like that. And then as we talked about before, there's Housing Authority and Office of Housing - it's a small lane, but there is a lane for 0% to probably 60% AMI. But when voters are approving a property tax levy, they're not quite as interested in building housing for people who are making up to $80,000 a year. But when you're looking at how expensive it is to live in Seattle or what the median income is, those people are having a hard time finding places to live and especially raise families in Seattle. And so that is more who this effort is targeted towards, which is fill that gap between 0% to 60% AMI and then 200%+ AMI housing, which there's just not a lot of people out there building that kind of housing right now.
[00:18:21] Crystal Fincher: Right. And that matters so much because that is related to a lot of the staffing shortage talk that we hear about, whether it's teachers or bus drivers or healthcare workers or - across the board, we're hearing about workforce shortages, particularly in the City of Seattle and surrounding areas. And a big piece of that puzzle is that people just can't afford to live in the areas where those jobs are. It's way too expensive. So you have people moving further and further out, making it harder to commute in for a job, or just finding a job elsewhere outside of the city. And so housing affordability is an important element in just these conversations about our overall economy, including workforce strength and availability. It is absolutely related to those challenges.
So once they made this announcement, the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce immediately make a statement that opposed it. I don't know that this opposition was necessarily surprising, but it was an immediate reaction. How did they respond?
[00:19:30] David Kroman: No, not surprising at all - they took the JumpStart Tax to court. They clearly don't like payroll taxes on businesses. Their argument was they supported the Housing Levy and they support some level of voter-agreed-upon property tax to build housing for the poorest people. The Chamber's line, and this has been their line and that of other businesses since at least back to 2017 when the first Head Tax debate came up, is this all comes down to supply. That the real issue is that Seattle is zoned in a way that you just can't add more supply, especially in the 60% or whatever it is of the city that's zoned for single family homes. So their argument is you are asking businesses to try and address a very small part of a much larger illness. And in so doing, you're not going to get us to where the city actually needs to be. And at the same time, you're going to materially hurt these businesses at a time when it has been, at least for some of them, sort of a difficult period. I think the counterargument is it has not actually been that difficult of a period for businesses like Amazon. And if you're paying somebody over a million dollars, something must be going okay for you. But I think the Chamber's position does kind of go to this point, which is - you're talking about a symptom when the real cause is just that we have built a system that doesn't allow for new housing construction.
[00:20:42] Crystal Fincher: Yes, and it would be less ironic if they didn't seem to also oppose a lot of the rezoning and necessary new construction for that. But I guess it's a comfortable position to be in when you can just oppose things that seemingly have to do with each other. But I do think that's part of the reason why this passed in the first place. This passed after several years of seeming opposition and defeat of efforts to make things more affordable overall, including housing, especially those that are funded with taxes. And that has been a big point of contention between the Chamber and other folks there. The Chamber traditionally takes a - Hey, just don't tax us approach. A lot of their financial support of candidates in elections seems tied to their willingness or unwillingness to tax business. So this has been a long-standing divide that we have here. But I wonder if they've ever wondered if that long-standing hesitance to do that, in the face of skyrocketing costs borne by the regular residents of Seattle and surrounding areas, might have something to do with the alternatives becoming more popular to the point where they pass this in Seattle. So it'll be interesting to see how formal and robust the opposition to this initiative is. But it does seem like this is an alternative that the residents of Seattle are looking at. And as we look forward, especially if the JumpStart Tax is raided for the general fund, some of the other mechanisms that the legislature is looking at right now don't end up coming to fruition - this may be one of the only avenues where it looks feasible that something can actually happen, that there can be funding for, and that we can start to make up some of the gaps that are reopening here in some of the other areas. How do you see the prognosis for this moving forward?
[00:22:42] David Kroman: Yeah, I think you're right that this is a lot of voter response to an intractable problem. I think it is true that the underlying problem is supply - I think that's hard to dispute at this point. It's just there are a lot of people coming into the city and just not enough housing for them. And so then, therefore, even old, run-down housing is being competed for - rich people are outbidding people of lesser means for housing that you would not necessarily associate with rich people. A lot of that is enabled by the fact that most of the city - it's just cast in amber and there cannot be any added density. So at a time when the city's population is growing, you've got certain neighborhoods in Seattle where the population is actually decreasing, and I think that is what is driving a lot of rent increases. I think the reaction, though - the problem is now, the struggles are now - and so it's all well and good to diagnose the deep problem and look back at what the city should or shouldn't have done, or what the city should be doing to help this problem in 10 or 15 years. The city could upzone across the entire city tomorrow, and the construction environment - as we just talked about - means it's pretty unlikely that you're going to see a huge influx immediately of new housing and density because it's just not a great time for building new stuff. And so I think that then causes people to look for alternative options. And this is one of them, which is a more direct taxation to construction that is divorced from - well, not entirely divorced because we talked about the problems facing the nonprofit housing world, but more divorced from market forces that, again, perhaps should have been addressed a long time ago. But even if they were addressed tomorrow, would take years, decades, perhaps, to really show meaningful improvements in the affordability of Seattle. And so I think that is why these solutions that the Chamber doesn't like - because they are not market solutions, they are taxation solutions on their clients and the people that they represent, but that becomes more appealing because people want to make some immediate progress in the next year.
[00:24:38] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, we will continue to follow that story and the initiative and see how it goes.
I also want to talk about a piece that you wrote this week about Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, titled, "A council of allies in place, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell feels pressure to deliver." I think that pressure is an appropriate response - a number of commitments or what he ran on two years ago still has a lot of areas for improvement. I don't know that anyone feels that the type of progress that was indicated or promised has actually happened. But some of that was in his telling because he didn't have a great working relationship with the council - even though they have very distinct roles and responsibilities. But he's saying now, and part of what he said during the campaign - if we have a better working relationship, we could accomplish more. What did this story uncover, what did you talk about, and where does he stand on what he's accomplished and what he's looking to accomplish?
[00:25:37] David Kroman: Yeah, I think it's perhaps not quite exactly like having a one-party President, House and Senate, but it's something like that. Because at least since I have been watching City Hall, I would argue that there has been no mayor who, at least on paper, has come into a more favorable political environment than Bruce Harrell does right now. Because he endorsed five people for city council - which I don't think Durkan or Ed Murray dipped that much of a toe into the political scene, so that alone was a big jump into playing politics - and then all of them won. And then he gets this bonus of another one of his opponents, Teresa Mosqueda, leaving to go to the King County Council. So basically he gets six new friendly people on the council, banishes all but Councilmember Tammy Morales as clear opponents to his agenda. And then more than that, if you've been watching the committee meetings in city council this year, their agenda items are what is the Seattle Department of Transportation and what does it do? They are just getting their feet under them. They are still trying to find where the bathroom is. Meanwhile, Bruce Harrell has been in City Hall for 14 years. So all of that added together means there is nothing in his way to basically do what it is that he has envisioned for City Hall. The question is - can he or will he do that?
And also it kind of puts to test some of the narratives that were created around what the previous council was at fault for doing. Some of those I think could end up being true, but also I think some of the problems that we're talking about here - fairly complicated and don't just boil down to who exactly was on the previous city council. For example, police recruitment. The mayor has said he wants to grow the department to 1,400. It's a real question of whether the police department is ever going to be back to 1,400. But there's no longer the boogeyman of "Defund the Police" to fault for those challenges - now the rubber meets the road. Can a council that has explicitly said it wants to hire more police officers actually do that? And then if it doesn't, I will be curious to see how voters respond. Will they give him the same level of scrutiny that they gave the council the last few years? That will be interesting to watch.
[00:27:35] Crystal Fincher: That will be interesting to watch. I do also find it interesting, from the perspective of his allies that we heard during the campaign, of stuff like "Defund the Police" and blaming some of the inability to achieve what they said they wanted to achieve on that, as if the council had been hostile. But if we look - particularly over the past two years - the council didn't pass up an opportunity to fund the hiring of more police officers. Functionally - policy-wise, budget-wise - they allocated all of the money that was asked for, they allocated bonuses related to that, yet they still ran as if this council was somehow hostile to that issue. It seemed, to your point, like the creation of a boogeyman that didn't exist, and certainly not since he's taken office here. Did that strike you as genuine reasons or reasons that really would have impeded him taking action on some of his priorities that he seemingly talked about? Well, it was because of the council that I couldn't. But on an issue like police funding, where council did provide the funding for that, where council did provide everything that was asked for to do that, yet there still wasn't progress - does that rest on the council or was that another issue?
[00:28:51] David Kroman: Yeah, I think if you ask him and you ask the current council, they acknowledge - Sure, they didn't literally defund the police by 50%. And what they did "defund" was mostly a shuffling of the decks.decks -moved parking enforcement to SDOT for a while and they moved 911 to Community Safety. So the police department's budget shrunk, but those functions just moved to a different department. I think they acknowledge - yes, that they didn't cut them. But policing is an incredibly competitive recruiting environment. And I think their argument is. And I do think - yes, they didn't literally defund, but they were pretty public about some of their comments around the police. And I think that that probably had an effect on certain police officers' willingness to stay at the police department and others' willingness to come to the police department - can have a whole debate about the merit or harms of that, but I do think that probably played a factor. But at the same time, I think that there's a lot else going on around that issue of police recruitment that transcends just conversations around "Defund the Police" and what the previous city council did or didn't do. The mayor's office has had a budget for marketing for a couple years now. As far as we know, the recruitment environment has not improved. And so I think there are a lot of technical details that will slowly come out over Harrell's administration that show that the problems - while I do think that whatever the city council's previous image was, made probably a difference around that - I think there's a more complicated story around the mechanics of what recruitment actually looks like.
[00:30:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I tend to think that there's a more complicated story around the mechanics of recruitment, particularly because several surrounding departments, including those with staunch supporters of hiring police, of funding police, are also experiencing challenges with hiring. It's hard to find a department around that isn't saying that they're experiencing staffing problems. So it seems to go deeper, in my view, than just that. Can I absolutely say that their willingness to examine the budget four years ago had nothing to do with this now? No, I can't. Certainly conservative elements in talk radio and Fox News continue to make a lot of that and characterize "defund" as a current dominant thought, which I think is just demonstrably false. On top of that, just on that issue, with the understanding and the knowledge that even if you were to hire an officer today, it's going to be a year plus before they can actually be deployed on the streets because of their need to train and go through their requirements. Is there a plan in the interim? We're two years into Bruce Harrell's term now, and it doesn't seem like - okay, barring that, what are we doing? I don't want to say no plan. They introduced a limited partial trial of a co-response model for behavioral health through his new CARE Department. There is that going on in a limited way - would love to see that expanded so it's at minimum around-the-clock, but certainly more than a handful of officers and responders involved there. Certainly in the area of public safety, I think a lot has been examined there. Were there any other issue areas, whether it's homelessness, the City's environmental plans, economic development within the city, that he talked about wanting to deliver or work on in his next two years?
[00:32:10] David Kroman: Harrell - I think he's going to be dripping these out slowly. But the thing that I would say stood out to me the most was his comments about the City's relationship to the county. We had seen some comments of his about, specifically the City's relationship to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, leak out unintentionally over the last two years. Fairly clear that he took a skeptical eye toward that body. But now I would say the big change now that he has this friendly council and basically full control of the City Hall is he's no longer saying those things in private. He's being fairly public about - he has a skeptical view of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. And he has a skeptical view of the amount of money that the City of Seattle is giving that body and whether it is doing what he wants it to do. He said basically the same thing about Public Health Seattle King County, which I thought was interesting. I had never heard that relationship come up as one that needed additional scrutiny. But he said that when it comes to the issue of fentanyl, that basically he thinks Public Health Seattle King County should be doing more, and he was wondering why they're not doing more. And so as far as specific policies or legislation he might introduce, I don't have a great read on that just yet. But I do think - and I've heard this from the new council members too - I wouldn't be surprised if we see a fairly dramatic rethinking of how the city and the county work together on some of this stuff.
[00:33:25] Crystal Fincher: Interesting. Certainly, it seems like there might be some budget implications attached to that. That might be another reason why we are talking about this now, as the City looks to trim a couple hundred million dollars or make up for a budget deficit of over $200 million that they're facing. Has he been responsive, or did you get a chance to talk about some of the seeming inaction on some of those areas? There certainly seemed to be a number of promises as he walked in and optimism from a lot of people as he took office that - Hey, you're someone with a different vision who's looking to move forward on a variety of things, talking about One Seattle and the vision that he has for that. Has that resulted in or materialized in anything? Is he talking about doing anything specific with that? I think a lot of people are wondering just kind of overall what his plans are.
[00:34:17] David Kroman: Yeah, I think so far this has not been the most policy-heavy mayor's office by any stretch. I think back to the Murray administration - before, of course, everything else came out - but that was an office that pushed super hard for the task forces around $15 an hour and housing affordability, the HALA committee, and they would lock people in a room and make them work it out. This is not that office. What we have heard from him is a lot of messaging and, I think, an effort to do perhaps not systemic things, but pushes around certain homeless encampments or priority policing around Third Avenue or 12th and Jackson. And it's kind of these hits and sort of giving a general message about what kind of mayor he is. I think he would perhaps point to some of the rules - tree canopy legislation or things like that. But I don't know that you can point to the first two years of his office and call it a major policy-heavy term. I think there's going to be more pressure on him to be a little more policy-minded in the next two years, because as we just talked about, he's not going to have to do nearly the amount of negotiation with this city council as he would have had to do with the last one. If he comes down to them and says - I think this is really important, we got to pass this. - pretty good chance he's going to get it passed without, there's going to be tweaks and I'm sure there's going to be some nods towards pushback or accountability. But at the end of the day, this is a city council that has kind of adopted the mayor's own One Seattle slogan.
When he was on city council, too, I don't know that everyone would have pointed to him, as a city councilmember, as the most policy-driven. He had certain things that he focused a lot on around policing, or he was the one who pushed the hardest for body cameras. And he's pushed hard for some police technologies like ShotSpotter and things like that. But when he was on city council, he wasn't taking the lead on a lot of big, big policy swings. And so far, I would say that's mostly been true for the first half of his term. It's just he's going to have to show some big policy swings, I think, for these next two years - because I do think he's hyper-conscious of his own reelection campaign, is my sense. We didn't talk about that specifically, but I think he's interested in running for reelection. I think it's assumed he will run for reelection. And so he's going to have to build a case for himself to voters in two years from now.
[00:36:28] Crystal Fincher: Definitely. I also want to talk about some of the firsts that we saw this week. We saw the Seattle City Council conduct their first committee meeting. The Transportation Committee, chaired by Councilmember Rob Saka, held its first meeting. As you talked about, it was very Intro to or Transpo 101, because these are a lot of new members who are not familiar with the way this functions, who are still just getting their bearings underneath them for how City Hall works, how legislation works, what SDOT does do. They are all very new and are not even coming into this with a policy background in the area that may help. So this is really starting from Step 1 here. What did we hear during this committee and outside of the committee - statements from members of the council this week?
[00:37:19] David Kroman: Well, a few things that stood out to me. One, it's starting to hit home a bit that this is just an incredibly green city council. This is two-thirds of people who have not held elected office before - that's not to say that they have zero experience. Maritza Rivera, for example, was a department head, so she has spent some time in City Hall. But at the end of the day, some of the questions they're asking or getting briefed on are things like - What is the Sound Transit Board? Who decides where the West Seattle to Ballard stations go? - things like that. Not to say that they don't know those things, but that's the level that we're at right now in their committee meetings. So that was one thing that really stood out to me, which is - they don't have a lot of time to figure out a lot of these big problems. We're already a month in to the year because they had to spend the first month appointing a new member. Council President Nelson didn't schedule any committee meetings during that time. So it's February and we're doing the briefing meetings. I think that's going to be something to watch.
We also heard, I would say - let's call it some acknowledgement of the reality of the situation. On the campaign trail, we heard a lot of talk about "auditing the budget." We really heard it in the applications to fill the vacant council seat, this phrase "audit the budget, audit the budget." It was never super well defined what they actually meant by audit. We heard from Councilmember Saka that a literal audit of the entire budget is something that would take a really long time and be really expensive. And he acknowledged that they're not going to do that, at least not this year. So that raises some questions around what they actually meant when they were saying we were going to audit the budget and how that is materially different from what happens every year with the budget - which is you review what you can, and cut where you think you can cut, and fund what you want to fund. So that was interesting - just there's a certain reality that comes with moving from being on the campaign trail to being in office.
[00:39:06] Crystal Fincher: There is a reality about moving from the campaign trail to moving into office. Speaking personally and speaking as someone who is a political consultant, has worked with plenty of candidates. This is something that you hope candidates would have an understanding of while they're running. This is directly related to what their plans are going to be. Certainly, Rob Saka and other councilmembers were asked plenty of times on the campaign trail how they were planning to deal with this looming budget deficit. And part of the background of this is that, "Well, we need to audit the budget" issue - never sound credible or serious to a lot of people because, overall, just a citywide budget audit is not the thing. But as you said, the budget process is what that is. The budget process is continually reviewing, understanding, approving, modifying - what this funding is, how effective the funding has been - that's all part of the standard budget process of the City every year. And so a lot of it seemed like they were trying to avoid talking about what their plans were. They were trying to avoid taking a stance on particularly the progressive revenue that would be needed to close a budget hole like this. And the mayor put together a Progressive Revenue Task Force that came out with options that may seem doable - asked about those, the move from a lot of the candidates, especially the moderate to conservative ones, was to say - I don't know about that progressive revenue, but we really need to audit the budget before we do anything else. We need to take a look at exactly what's being spent where and see if it works and that kind of stuff. But I think we're arriving in another situation where if you actually come in with a plan about what you want to accomplish, that's one thing. If you're coming in trying to avoid talking about what you want to accomplish, that becomes really hairy - trying to contend with and explain once you're actually in office. So now the one thing that people heard you talk about, which seeing response certainly online following these comments, was - Hey, the only thing he talked about was doing audits. And now he's saying that - Well, they can't really do that, we're walking it back, it's not practical or feasible. One, that seemingly could have been something that when people pointed that out on the campaign trail, maybe they should have taken that to heart and come up with a more realistic plan. But also now that we're here, it just seems like maybe there wasn't the kind of understanding related to what they were saying. I hope future candidates look at that and take that under advisement. I hope voters look at that and again, look at the types of answers that you're getting - even though they may sound good in a soundbite, are they actually realistic? Will they actually get done what you want to see happen in the city? Or is it just a line that people are tossing out in order to avoid talking about something else, or because it sounds good as a soundbite?
[00:41:57] David Kroman: Yeah, I would say this, though, about the budget. I don't want to sound like I'm defending the City's budget process too much because - it takes you a little while, but it's very easy to see where dollars are allocated, theoretically. It is much, much more difficult to know if those dollars are actually being spent in the way that the city council budgeted them for. We've seen this actually crop up in conflicts between the city council and the mayor's office, which is city council will budget a certain amount of dollars and the mayor's office - not this mayor's office, past mayor's offices - just won't spend it because it wasn't part of their priority. And I think you can look to that conflict and generalize it out a little bit. I don't know that there are great mechanisms to show for sure that when the city council puts money towards a certain thing, it's A) going to the thing that it was supposed to, going out at all - I do think there are probably some amount of dollars that are dedicated and not being spent for whatever reason. I don't think it's corruption or anything like that. It's just staffing and permit timelines or whatever it might be. And then of course, the final question of - So it's gone out the door, is it doing what it was intended to do? I think those are all questions that are probably worth asking. And I'm not sure are always asked in the fullest sense every year during budget. And so I agree that the use of the word "audit" was incredibly fast and loose on the campaign trail. Because when you say "audit," that implies something pretty specific. We have a Washington State Auditor. We have a City of Seattle Auditor. And they do audits, or you can hire people to do an audit. It's clear that audit in the most literal sense of the term is not on the table here because that costs time and money. Close scrutiny of whether the dollars that the City has allocated are being used in the way that people said they were going to - sure, I can buy that a little bit more. I don't know how you bring that more into the process than what's already there. To the new councilmembers' credit, I think there is room there to shed a little bit more light on that end of the budgeting equation than has been done in the past.
[00:43:50] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely agree with that. I think you raise a really important point. It's hard to do it comprehensively - doing a deep dive into everything is a challenging thing. I do think that those questions do need to be asked frequently, especially on these high priority items. We definitely have a number of examples in the Durkan administration where they just refused to spend money - if council funded something and it wasn't aligned with the priorities of the mayor's office, the mayor's office just wouldn't spend that money in some instances or would look to divert that money to another area that wasn't one of their policy priorities as they've identified. So certainly just because money is allocated, does not mean at all that it's being spent at all or spent effectively. And I hope council does take seriously their responsibility to make sure that what they intend to happen as they set forth does happen and that money isn't just sitting there - that should be working for the residents of the city. But we'll certainly see what happens there.
Last thing I want to talk about today was a story that was really concerning about a for-profit ICE detention center in Tacoma blocking health and labor inspections. What happened here?
[00:45:04] David Kroman: Yeah, this was news to me. It looks like the state had tried to pass a law that basically increased access to the ICE facility - a privately run jail, basically - for people who have come into the United States. Because, as we know, there have been a lot of complaints about that facility over the years, but it's always been a little bit of a he-said, she-said situation because there's just such limited access in a way that - not to say that the state or city or county jails are in great shape, but lawmakers have an eye into those places and can see what's going on in there. They just don't with this facility because it's private. And so this bill was supposed to allow that access, but it seems like the GEO group that runs the prison is fighting them super hard on it in court and even barring people from entering. And this is pretty new to me - it seems pretty concerning - something that if you were a lawmaker, you might want to follow up on.
[00:45:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, these complaints, there were hundreds of complaints - over 200 just between April and November of last year - stuff like insufficient food, misuse of solitary confinement, clothes rarely laundered and returning when they were supposedly laundered wet and dirtier than before, detainees with mental health issues being refused clean clothing. Medical issues, including stroke, paralysis, asthma, internal bleeding. One instance, a detainee with a broken arm was only given ibuprofen and not a cast for days after the incidents. When you talk about the types of violations that can happen when you have people who are 100% under your control, who you control their access to everything - the possibility of denial of that is egregious and atrocious. And so you do have to follow the laws of the state. Representative Lillian Ortiz-Self is trying to work through legislation to ensure that the state can inspect and examine what is happening here so it gets out of the world of he said, she said, and to ensure that they're following the laws of our state. And they've refused. So it is really concerning.
A law was passed in 2021 aimed at shutting down the detention center by 2025, but that was ruled unenforceable. It just really is scary to think about - that we have these facilities responsible for people's care, basically, while they're being detained just seemingly unaccountable to anyone, with really catastrophic impacts on people who are jailed or detained here in this situation. And sometimes I'll hear people very flippantly - If they didn't want that to happen, then they shouldn't have done something to land in there in the first place. One, I think it might surprise people, the amount of seemingly innocuous things that can land someone in there. But regardless of how they landed in there, these are still people in the care of the state. And the detainment is what has been called for there, so they're being detained. But that doesn't mean that abuse, neglect, mistreatment is in any way justified. It is never justified. And I just think that we need to look at these things seriously. And when we hear about facilities, with the responsibility on behalf of the state, where they can control people's access to the necessities of life, that we should hold a higher standard than the average private company out there. And it really is just infuriating to me that we seemingly land in these situations where we have people being mistreated and they just seem to not care about the law - it's about the profit - and regardless of how people suffer at their hands in the process of it, I just - these types of stories really get to me.
[00:48:54] David Kroman: Yeah, and I think it's why people are so concerned and looking for ways to get more eyes on the private prison industry - just because it is a constitutional right that people, even incarcerated people, have healthcare and food and not inhumane conditions, but just a little harder to make sure that it's not happening when the prison doesn't necessarily need to answer to the voters.
[00:49:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. Hopefully that is something that will change soon.
And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, February 9th, 2024 - it's my mom's birthday today, as we're recording this February 8th. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was Seattle Times City Hall reporter David Kroman. You can find David on Twitter at @KromanDavid, that's K-R-O-M-A-N, David. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. You can find me on all platforms at @finchfrii, with two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical shows delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, please leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this topical show, Crystal welcomes Everett Maroon, Executive Director of Blue Mountain Heart to Heart, for a conversation about their work in Southeast Washington using a harm reduction philosophy to support people, stabilize lives, & promote health and wellness in the community. Crystal and Everett chat about how the opioid epidemic has impacted rural communities, the role that stigma plays in keeping people from the help they need, what harm reduction is and why it is important.
They then review the recent roller coaster ride of Washington state’s substance use disorder policy, starting with the Washington Supreme Court’s Blake decision, followed by a temporary legislative fix, then an impasse at the end of last year’s legislative session, and finally a middle-of-the-road deal that recriminalized simple drug possession in addition to newly making public drug use illegal. Crystal and Everett lament the missed opportunity to meaningfully change the system & the continued lack of treatment services relative to need, and wrap up with what can be done at the state and local level to address the opioid crisis.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find more information about Blue Mountain Heart to Heart at https://bluemountainheart2heart.wordpress.com/.
Everett Maroon
Everett is the Executive Director of Blue Mountain Heart to Heart. He supervises their program areas and is also responsible for fundraising, development, and evaluation of the agency. He has overseen a broad expansion of HIV case management services into Asotin and Garfield counties, harm reduction programs into the Tri-Cities and Clarkston, and an innovative, outpatient opioid recovery program across six counties in Southeast Washington. Everett co-authored the now-completed Greater Columbia Accountable Community of Health’s (GCACH) Opioid Resource Network, and contributed to the Washington State Opioid Strategy. He serves as a technical assistance provider on the Law Enforcement-Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program expansion in Washington State. Everett also is a state commissioner on the LGBTQ Commission. He has worked on quality improvement projects for various federal and state agencies for more than 28 years.
Resources
Blue Mountain Heart to Heart
Eastern Washington Health Profile | Community Health and Spatial Epidemiology Lab at Washington State University
“Treating opioid disorder without meds more harmful than no treatment at all” by Mallory Locklear from YaleNews
“We Must Support People Who Use Substances, Not Punish Them. Here’s How.” by Susan E. Collins, PhD for PubliCola
“New Law on Drug Possession, Use Takes Effect July 1, 2023” by Flannary Collins for Municipal Research and Services Center of Washington
Substance Use and Recovery Services Plan | Substance Use and Recovery Services Advisory Committee (SURSAC)
“Finally Addressing Blake Decision, Legislature Passes Punitive Drug Possession Bill” by Andrew Engelson from PubliCola
“Legislators Continue Failed War on Drugs Approach in Blake Fix Bill” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
"WA’s new drug law could help needle exchanges — or restrict them" by Andrew Engelson for Crosscut
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I'm very pleased to be welcoming Everett Maroon, who's the Executive Director of Blue Mountain Heart to Heart. Everett supervises the program areas of Blue Mountain Heart to Heart and is also responsible for fundraising, development, and evaluation of the agency. He has overseen a broad expansion of HIV case management services, harm reduction programs to the Tri-Cities and Clarkston areas, and an innovative outpatient opioid recovery program across six counties in Southeast Washington. Everett co-authored the now-completed Greater Columbia Accountable Community of Health's Opioid Resource Network and contributed to the Washington State Opioid Strategy. He serves as a technical assistance provider on the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, or LEAD, program in Washington state. Everett is also a co-chair of the Washington state LGBTQ Commission. He's worked on quality improvement projects for various federal and state agencies for more than 28 years. And Everett and I also had the opportunity to both serve on a steering committee for a statewide ballot initiative surrounding decriminalization of substances. Welcome to Hacks & Wonks, Everett.
[00:02:07] Everett Maroon: Thank you so much, Crystal. And it's really great to see you, and I appreciate having some time to talk with you today - so thank you.
[00:02:15] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So I just want to start off - what is Blue Mountain Heart to Heart?
[00:02:21] Everett Maroon: Well, it's a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in Southeast Washington state based in Walla Walla. We also have an office in Kennewick and then another one in Clarkston - roughly 30 people on staff. And it was founded in 1985, originally as an HIV concern, where we probably helped about 250 people live and pass away with dignity at the beginning of the AIDS crisis. Then was incorporated in 1991 - the organization moved into longer-term case management as the medications for HIV became more sophisticated and HIV went from being a death sentence to a chronic condition. And at that point, we began getting more involved in prevention of infectious disease, including HIV, hepatitis C, and STIs.
I came along in about 2010, first as a grant writer and then as the executive director. And it really was notable to me - people would come in - if they had HIV, there was so much the state would do for them. And the state's interest was around public health - so if we keep people from being able to transmit this virus to other people, we'll keep the transmission rate low. In public health, we talk a lot about viral load - community viral load. And so you would add up the viral load of all the people living with HIV or AIDS in a community, and then that's the number that you get. And depending on how many people are in your community, you have a risk assessment for how much you should be concerned about HIV transmission in that community. Well, if you didn't have HIV and you came into my office, I had many more limitations on what I could do for you. Even if you were battling basically the same kinds of issues as people living with HIV had - unstable housing, lack of engagement in the workforce, mental health, substance use - all of these things rise up as things that destabilize people in their lives. Certainly systemic racism - the way that we invite so many foreign-born Latino farm workers to Washington state to pick our agricultural crops every year, but then pay them far below what a living wage would be. And we then expect that there's not going to be detrimental effects on those people. I think we all see that the state needs to do something different around supporting people who are here to make the state so profitable and make its agricultural sector so productive.
So it really bothered me that - in one instance, because there was a transmissible disease associated with the potential client, we were all willing to put money into programs to support them. But then if they didn't, they just had the effects of the destabilizing forces around them and we weren't doing much. I really wanted to change that. I thought that we could get more investment in supporting people and stabilizing their lives and improving their wellness and health. And that that would be a good thing for everybody in the community, not just these people who were facing very serious gaps in resources and support. So we met as a board and a staff and changed our mission, amended a few things to it. And now our mission is really about helping people with a variety of different chronic diseases, including substance use disorder. There are certainly things to say about the limitations around the disease model for substance use, but when I'm thinking about federal and state funding for assistance programs, that model really helps create investment, financial support. So from 2010 to today, the agency has grown from about $150,000 in annual budget to about $4.1 million. We've gone from 2.5 FTEs a year to more than 30, and we have 14 case managers across 3 different case management programs. We have a drug user health equity program. And we still continue to have those prevention programs, but they're more aligned with case management.
So we use a no-wrong-door approach here - no matter what your initial need is when you walk in, we try to see what other resources we can bring to bear to help that individual. So if you're coming in because you're using, or you need syringes for consuming - say, methamphetamine or something like that - you can also get nicotine cessation kits, you can get Plan B, you can get Naloxone because there may still be fentanyl in the substances you're consuming. We have a wound care clinic. We have a contingency management program for people who want to begin abstaining from methamphetamine. So no matter where someone's coming in, we have a variety of programs that we can try to support that person with. The harm reduction philosophy is one of the umbrella guiding value systems or philosophies for our work, even though we're doing some discrete specific activities for people. So that's, in a nutshell, what Heart to Heart is. We have a board of 9 and a staff of 30, and I think 28 of those positions are full-time.
[00:07:47] Crystal Fincher: So who are you typically serving?
[00:07:50] Everett Maroon: We see some diversity across our caseloads - it varies a little bit from program to program. I would say that we have somewhere around 55% are men and 45% are women. We do tend to see white, non-Hispanic people out here more often than not in our caseload, but we have about 12% of folks who are Hispanic and some other race - so white, mixed, African-American, Native. We see a lot of people on the far lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum, I would say - and that varies a little bit from location to location. So when I look at who we've served in Clarkston, about 12% of our prevention clients tell us that they are unhoused and almost 40% of them are temporarily housed - so that could be like couch surfing or at a shelter. The unhoused number is highest for our Kennewick clients at 35.6%, so majority of people that we're serving in Kennewick are unhoused or temporarily housed. In Walla Walla, maybe about 20% of people are unhoused, but the people who are temporarily housed are in truly atrocious conditions. So there are a lot of people in Walla Walla living in someone else's shed or garage - they don't have access to plumbing, they don't have access to heat or air conditioning in the summer when it's 110 degrees out here.
So there're definitely big stressors on the people that we're serving. A lot of the women that we're serving are in very abusive relationships, or they have experience being sex trafficked, or being made to participate in illegal activities in order to have a relationship or to have housing. So there are definitely gender differences in terms of what people are facing among our caseloads. Folks that are in some of the more rural areas that we serve with our mobile clinic - they are very concerned about other people in their small communities knowing what's going on with them. And so they're very reluctant to seek care because they don't want other people to know what they've been engaged in. And that is its own kind of barrier for them.
[00:10:22] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And that being tied to the stigma that is causing so much shame, whether it's having HIV, an STI, substance use disorder - a variety of things where the stigma creates this shame cycle, which prevents people from seeking help, prevents people from getting better, and actually encourages the spread because of that and not being treated.
Now, we met each other around the issue of substance use disorder. The landscape about how we deal with substance use disorder has changed over the years. Starting out, particularly with you being so engaged in so many different rural areas in Washington state, what have you seen or how has particularly the opioid epidemic impacted the communities you're working within?
[00:11:15] Everett Maroon: I think that what you said about stigma is really relevant to answering this question. In large part, we see stigma coming in to sort of silence people and keep them away from seeking help. A 2019 study from Washington State University showed that in general, Eastern Washingtonians have a life expectancy of five fewer years than people living west of the Cascades. Part of the reason why is because of later dates of diagnosis, delayed care - those kinds of things add up for people en masse, and then we see a detriment to the outcomes for them. So if you don't get your cancer diagnosed until you're stage 3, your prognosis is worse than if you'd shown up really early in stage 1. The same kind of thing happens for people who are engaging in substance use. And just to be clear, many people use substances and don't become dependent on them. But when they do, it becomes very difficult very quickly for them to extract themselves on their own. Opioids in particular - because they so mimic this endorphin pathway that we all have as human beings - it's almost impossible for people to just will themselves to stop using because the withdrawal symptoms kick in so overwhelmingly that they just feel terrible. And so to deal with that, they use again. A different way of thinking about how people might seek help is to say it's going to be non-stigmatized for you to come into our office and say - I've been using fentanyl, I've been using meth, I've been using anything in front of me. What can we do today about reducing my use? There are very few places where somebody can walk into a doctor's office and say that and then be taken seriously and aided. When you're talking about rural environments, I think that the stereotype is that people in rural environments don't care about folks that are struggling with these issues. I see directly - I observe - it's that we have such a smaller, thinner resource infrastructure. It's that we have fewer providers. So if there's a problem with one provider, there might not be another one in your health insurance plan that you can go see. So now you got to either work with this person who says something stigmatizing to you, or you just don't do it. And if you return to this place of - Well, I'll just get through this myself. Well, we know that that's really not a good option for most people. It's not a realistic option for most people.
So in my rural environment, what we've tried to do is build a trauma-informed, non-stigmatizing or anti-stigmatizing environment so that people know they can come in, tell us the God's honest truth about what's really going on with them. And we're going to start from whatever space zero is for them. So there're definitely folks who can tell us about a time they were entering treatment and then they relapsed and then they were kicked out of the program. Or due to relapse, they missed two appointments and then they were kicked out of the program. Where they admitted that even though they were getting Suboxone for their opioid dependence, they were still sometimes using meth on the weekends and then they were kicked out of the program. So we just believe in our harm reduction philosophy that - if we're not looking to dispose of people, but we're looking to retain them for future engagement, we're going to see better outcomes for them. Because we're going to walk with them as they stumble, because we acknowledge that that's part of what they're facing - occasional relapses and stumbles. And you can do that in an urban center and you can do it in a rural environment. We just have to have the commitment.
[00:15:08] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, I've heard a lot of people have different conceptions and misconceptions about harm reduction, and hearing - Well, if you don't require people to be clean before you help them. If you don't use this as a stick to get them to do what is best for them, then we're really just enabling their problem. We're becoming part of the problem. - Why is that not true? And what is harm reduction and why is it important?
[00:15:39] Everett Maroon: That enabling hypothesis is very persistent, almost as persistent as opioid use disorder - it's been around a long time. But when you look at the actual evidence for treatment - in fact, there was a study that just came out that showed that treatment without prescribing a medication is almost worthless. We really need to be thoughtful about what clients need. If somebody had a heart attack after having a heart attack six months ago, the cardiologist would not say to them - Well, you had another heart attack. I refuse to see you anymore. If someone had type 2 diabetes and they walked into the doctor's office and the doctor said - Oh, your blood sugar is really high. You must not be following my treatment plan. I'm just going to cut off all of your insulin and see how you do. We would cite that provider for malpractice. But somehow when we're talking about meeting clients where they are or patients where they are around substance use, people rise up from the woodwork and say - You're enabling them. All we're trying to do is keep people engaged in care so that we don't lose them and we take away opportunities for them to make behavior change. If we're continuing to engage with people and motivating them to come in to see us, then we can provide them with more opportunities to stabilize their lives. If you stop trying to force a particular outcome on a client and you give them room to sort out what their priorities are, you're actually teaching them how to cope with stress the way we want to see people cope with stress - which is in an adaptive, positive way. When we get patronizing with people or we prescribe for people - You must do it this way, you cannot do it that way. Well, I see a lot of people who have overdosed and passed away waiting four weeks or more to get an assessment so they can get into treatment. So I know there has to be more ways for us to reach out to people where they're already at, so that we're not just losing them forever because nobody's going to get better from something if they're not even here anymore.
So for me, what harm reduction means is - I'm using a respectful position as a professional to support people how ever they initially show up and to continually be there for them so that we can help them move through these stages of change that we know people go through when they're dealing with some behavioral health challenge. So if we allow people to come in and say - I relapsed last weekend - and they know that they can say that because we're not going to throw them out of the program for that. Then we can say - Okay, what do you think was the root cause of why you used again? And then you can sit down and say - Well, they wanted to please somebody, or it was offered to them and they weren't ready for it to be offered to them, or they haven't really broken out of this friend group that's always telling them to use it, or maybe a trauma happened to them. And then we can respond to that root cause and help them find another way to get through that if that ever happens to them again. If we had just said no to them and pulled a hard line on it, they would do no learning, we wouldn't learn as professionals, and we would lose that client. Life isn't perfect and people aren't perfect, so our programs should not demand that of them - in the same way that we don't demand it of other people who are living with conditions that we don't stigmatize like we stigmatize SUD.
So harm reduction is very easily misunderstood, but it is also the most studied public health intervention of the last 30 years, with more than 1,500 different research efforts pointed at it. And what it has continually shown is that it is better at engaging people and retaining people and getting behavior change. So if you want to get concerned about a syringe service program in a particular neighborhood, do know that people that are going to it are five times as likely to get into recovery as people who don't utilize it. So I think that there are many ways that we could have this knee-jerk reaction against harm reduction, but at the end of the day - it gets people into recovery, it helps them reduce their use, it helps them stabilize the things in their life that were very out of control, and it helps keep them safer so that they encounter fewer infections and sequelae associated with having those infections. So we're here to help reduce the traffic on first responders and hospital systems and law enforcement. And I will just always sing the praises of the harm reduction approach because I see it work every single day.
[00:20:42] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, like you, I've seen it work up close. You are certainly doing the work, have so much experience in seeing it work. But to your point, we have so much evidence. We have so much data pointing towards this being the most effective method. And it is largely because of stigma and because these deeply entrenched narratives and beliefs - largely by people who don't know many people who've been in this situation, or who hear an anecdote that is happy and was the case for one person but is not addressing what the majority of people are experiencing and what is shown is helpful. And principally, addiction is not a logical activity - people are not making inherently logical decisions. You can't just say - Well, I've decided that this person is going to be hitting rock bottom. They need to hit rock bottom in order to really get things together, and certainly the logical response to something going bad is to prevent the things that caused it from going bad and changing behavior. - And nothing about the reality of substance use disorder functions like that. And our refusal to come to grips with that from a policy perspective is playing out and seeing worse outcomes on our streets in many situations, worse outcomes in our communities - both people housed and unhoused, with great support without great support - it is just such a challenge. And I appreciate people in your position, organizations like yours, who are engaged in really trying to do that.
Now, in Washington state, we've had a bit of a roller coaster ride over the past few years when it comes to substance use disorder policy, drug policy, and how we've approached it. Which kicked off this roller coaster ride with the Blake decision by our State Supreme Court, which basically decriminalized personal possession of all substances in our state, which kicked off a reaction that said - Oh, but drugs are bad and we have an opioid crisis. So clearly we need to reinstitute these laws, crack down and reinstitute penalties, and make sure we know this is criminal behavior and we can lock people up for engaging in personal use, now use in public places. - What is your opinion of that approach?
[00:23:06] Everett Maroon: Well, the State Supreme Court was not trying to decriminalize drug possession in Washington state. It was saying that the statute as written, which was different from all 49 other states in the United States, was not constitutional. Because there was no other statute that they could turn to to say this is how law enforcement should enforce simple drug possession, we then did not have a statute on the books that was valid for detaining people around that for, I think, eight weeks. You will note that the state of Washington did not completely fall apart in those eight weeks with no drug possession statute. But it is an extremely common statute to cite people on, which is why it's costing the state millions and millions of dollars - I think seven figures, right? Eight figures. It's in the tens of millions of dollars. To re-adjudicate all of these sentences - because when you void the statute, you void all of those convictions that go back to the 1970s. So it was very commonly asserted in courts across the state of Washington - the statute around possession without intent - and so prosecutors did not want to not have something to turn to. When I talk to jailers and corrections staff, when I talk to many sheriff's deputies - the people who are actually on the ground - and many peace officers in city police departments, everybody knows that simply locking people away and arresting them and demanding accountability from them hasn't worked. If it had worked, we would not be here today. So people were really ready when the Blake decision came down, in my opinion, to do something different.
But systems don't like system change. Systems are very stubborn and they want to stay in the track that they've been in, which is why reform is so difficult. So in the response that came immediately from Blake, they opened up a bill - even though it was now out of the timeline for the legislative cycle. So they made all these exceptions for themselves so that they could run a bill through. And that was - the engrossed Senate bill 5476 came out in 2021 and stood up a temporary measure. And they said this will sunset June 30th of 2023. And of course, by then, we'll have a new statute. We would never not attend to this. So they gave themselves a two-year window. Well, in 2023, the legislature was not decided on how to respond. Should it be back to a felony? Should it remain just a misdemeanor? Maybe it should be a gross misdemeanor. Maybe we shouldn't make this gross misdemeanor have a sentence of 364 days, but we'll have it make a sentence of 180 days. Maybe that's actually worse. So there was no real throughline in the policy debate around what to do for simple possession. Meanwhile, to the south of us, Oregon had - through ballot initiative - decriminalized all drugs. There's some evidence saying that's been a good thing for them, there's some evidence saying that hasn't been a good thing for them. Oregon is less than half the population of Washington state and has a much smaller revenue base. We've got very large corporations set up in Washington state that Oregon simply doesn't have, including Amazon and Boeing and many other big players, that give us a much bigger budget than Oregon gets.
So I feel like it was maybe foreseeable that the legislative session would end without answering this question. Legislature, in the long year, ends in early May. So now they had less than two months before this statute was going to disappear. And I have heard from several people, why didn't we get there? The progressives ran out of the room and said - We can't vote for this. The GOP had decided they weren't going to vote for the bill as written because it wasn't enough about accountability, which is their new catchphrase for saying the onus is on the individual to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and not have a drug problem anymore. That left only the middle-of-the-road Democrats and they were not enough to carry the day on that vote. Well, then in the intersession between the special session that was called and the end of the regular session, there was a lot of dealmaking and communication. And what we got out of it were some of these middle-of-the-road ideas. So, in fact, it is now a gross misdemeanor with a 180-day sentence. It does still have a line into diversion programming - so instead of arrest, you can put somebody into the Recovery Navigator program that got set up by 5476. And they fixed some problems that were in the paraphernalia statute, so now it is clearly legal again to put out litmus tests to the public so they can test their substances for fentanyl and those things.
The other thing it did was clarify for municipal officials - they can regulate some pieces of harm reduction activities or harm reduction-related activities, most notably around whether organizations or agencies can hand out safer smoking kits. This is an important question because when the pandemic hit, heroin dried up because shipping stopped, which meant smuggling stopped. And the world really got heroin from one notable place - Afghanistan - and when the poppies couldn't be processed anywhere because they couldn't get transported anywhere, China showed up with synthetic fentanyl precursors that Mexican cartels were really happy to turn into fentanyl. And rather than coming all the way from Afghanistan and around to Asia and then the United States, they could just be right next door to the United States. And so they flooded the markets in the U.S. with really cheaply made, very inconsistent fentanyl products. Fentanyl is so much more potent than heroin or any organic opioid. And fentanyl has a much shorter half-life, so people who I saw as participants who were making do with shooting up heroin 3 times a day, now were using fentanyl 30 times a day, and everything fell apart for them. They could not hold a job anymore. They couldn't manage relationships with their family. They couldn't stay housed. Because it was all about that next hit to delay the withdrawal symptoms, which were much worse on fentanyl than they ever felt on heroin. So we had 933 Narcan uses to reverse overdose in 2023, and we had 301 in 2021. So within two years, we saw the crisis hit a threefold increase - that is really astounding. It's horrifying. So King County, I think, has had a 47% increase in overdose fatalities in the last year. There are other places around the state that look more like 28% or 30%. But those are still terrible increases in fatality. It's not really clear where overdose as an event that maybe doesn't lead to a fatality is because many of these events don't ever get captured by first responder systems or hospital systems. But what I see from self-reports from our participants is that it's much, much worse.
So I think it's good that the state is making these investments in diversion, but we really don't have the treatment bed capacity that the legislature is pointing people to go into. If everybody who wanted to be in treatment today could be in treatment today, there'd be enormous waiting lines. So we have to do a lot more - again, at the system level - and we have to lower the barriers to getting into treatment. So I'm really happy this year to be a part of the Bree Collective that is going to look at treatment reform for OUD. They did look at this in 2017, and this is the first time the Bree Collective has come back to look at the same issue again. But as you said earlier, so much has changed so rapidly that we need to return.
[00:32:09] Crystal Fincher: As I look at that law and what happened with that law - one, I still mourn a little bit the opportunity that was there, but these things happen with policy all over the place. One of the things initially after that decision, the first Blake fix - because there are basically two attempts to fix it through legislation - is everyone seemed to agree, whether it was Republican, Democrat, progressive, conservative, that we don't have adequate detox capacity. We don't have adequate treatment capacity. And that requires a lot of investment and people wonder where they're going to get the money from - there's not universal agreement on that - but that we are lacking there. And part of what I heard from legislators with the intention after the first shot at the fix, where they applied the sunset, and there was - You know, evidence does point to more of a public health-based approach and less of a carceral approach to substance use disorder. But we don't have the infrastructure necessary to responsibly do that, so we need a stopgap in between. So we are providing these carceral solutions to this program with the hope that we take these two years - we really do a lot on adding capacity, making needed investments, and making sure the infrastructure is there so that when we do divert someone, there is treatment there for them to go. Now, the pandemic happened in that interim, which threw a lot of things off - it's not like people simply sat there and said, We plan to do nothing from the outset, this is just a whole red herring. But it didn't happen. And then politics happened and people got afraid of being called soft on crime and soft on drug use, basically. And that motivated some fear-based legislation or provisions.
And so what we wound up with was - in the second fix - was less of a focus on diversion - they basically made that largely subject to prosecutorial discretion. Although they did, like you said, shore up paraphernalia concerns. But they did weaken the ability to reliably stand up harm reduction services and gave cities basically the latitude to say - We don't have to have these in our community - which is harmful because oftentimes, harm reduction services are where people who fall through the cracks of the other programs, people who are rejected from the other programs, people who people say - Well, they won't accept help. Well, they will from harm reduction services that are truly aligned with trying to help them as a person and meet them where they're at. So with this landscape that we have now, what has this done to you as a service provider and your ability to meet the needs of this community?
[00:34:59] Everett Maroon: Let's be clear about what allowances they gave municipalities to affect the work of harm reduction organizations. The State Supreme Court still, very clearly, in 1988 said that giving people clean syringes and the associated other medical supplies is an essential public health program. So there's really nothing that municipalities can do to end actual syringe exchange, be it on a needs-based or a one-to-one-based exchange. There's nothing unlawful about it, and there's nothing that local government can do to stop that work. Where they can come in and say - No, you can't do this - is around the safer smoking kit provision and around litmus tests, because those are the newest things that have been added. Those were clearly not what the State Supreme Court was thinking about back in 1988. So what I've seen happen are harassment campaigns that have been semi-organized, that have made people fearful of going to SSP sites. And I've seen that when public health entities are doing those harm reduction programs, that you can defund those projects. And that stops the work there. But they still don't have the availability to come in and as a county commission or a planning commission for a city council, come in and say - You can't give out syringes to people. So they can't do that.
And let's just note for a moment that the safer smoking kits - they're called things like crack pipes, which elicits this whole racist juggernaut that was put on people in the 1980s, again, because they were talked about in very racialized terms and very racist terms. Whereas people using a different form of cocaine just didn't face the same kinds of penalties and consequences. So it is a reminder to me that local government could have this effect on one kind of harm reduction activity and not another, that we're still operating through a very racist white supremacist lens here with regard to drug policy in Washington state. So for people who are thinking that they're acting agnostic to race and history of racism, I have news for you. You're not. You're still supporting those systems.
I think it's very possible for harm reduction organizations to get legal representation - maybe through entities like the ACLU, but there's certainly other people around the country who are very concerned that harm reduction be able to continue unabated to support people through this deepening overdose crisis, who can help you make arguments like - this is a protected class of patients. So very clearly, people with opioid use disorder and substance use disorder are covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act. And so local government that doesn't have a lot of money should think very carefully about how to restrict - if their goal is to restrict - these operations, because they may very quickly run afoul of the ADA. Also, and I'm not a legal advisor - I just say it as someone who's already come up against these issues - they may also very easily run afoul of the Equal Protections Clause of the United States Constitution. And that is very important for them to think about because damages related to not being in compliance with that are very high, can be very high. And so I really would recommend that people in local government volunteer or at least take a tour of these harm reduction organizations in their midst, have a better understanding of what they're trying to do, and start to ask questions with those harm reductionists about how can we align your work with, say, the work of first responders, the work of law enforcement who are engaged in diversion? How can we help align it with people who are offering treatment in our areas? I would love to see communities around Washington state put together interagency workgroups to try to help respond to the crises that are local to them. Certainly every community has different kinds of resources, different kinds of limitations, different kinds of advantages, things that they've done when working together that have produced great things for their communities. This is one of those times when we really can come together and instead of pointing at each other saying - You're not doing enough or you're doing the wrong thing - we really can say - Wait a minute, these are our kids, our spouses, our neighbors, our co-workers, and we want to show up for them. So how can we do that? And if we all work to have a better understanding of each other, I think we're going to have much better responses on the ground than in simply looking to curtail this activity.
[00:40:10] Crystal Fincher: I think sometimes we get into - we're looking at this from the outside, we're looking at the legislative session, and it is really simple to see - okay, they're entrenched in their interests, and we disagree, and therefore, they cannot be part of what a solution needs to be moving forward, or I can't work with them. Well, what I've seen - numerous examples across policy areas - of when people do sit down together and commit to listening to each other and understand that - Okay, we actually have a number of goals that align here. And how can we work together to make those happen is a really positive thing. Do you see examples of multi-agency responses working well in Washington?
[00:40:55] Everett Maroon: Yeah, we even have one here in Walla Walla, that is run through our public health organization, and it's a behavioral health mapping program. And I think it's doing well to try to help figure out what can we - again, what resources can we wrap around people not necessarily in crisis, but near crisis, who may be in crisis at some point in the near future. I think co-responder programs are doing really well in various places around the state. And I think the world of the Let Everyone Advance with Dignity or Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion programs - I run two of them. And I see prosecutors and corrections officers and population health and case managers and DSHS all showing up to say - Okay, wait, we're going to - here's all the things we know about Sally and how can we help Sally today? And when you turn around and you get a phone call from someone, they say - Hey, I'm calling you from treatment and I'm feeling great. Or they say - Here's a photo of me. I got a photo from someone who was in the woods on the west side and they're holding their kid. And thanks so much, I never thought I'd get my kid back. And they're out in the woods with the mountains behind them - that can and does happen. I would not be such a champion for harm reduction if I didn't see it working all the time to help people reclaim their lives. But sometimes it's no longer appropriate for them to just try and do it themselves and do it just with their families, that they have maybe burned or lied to and all of that. It's better for them to work with professionals and then they can return and re-engage those systems that they thought they were alienated from. But I see it all the time and I know that we can do it and we have to dig in as communities.
[00:42:37] Crystal Fincher: So we're currently in the midst of a legislative session. We have several cities and counties trying to deal with this in various ways. The state is trying to basically incrementally provide more capacity as they find and identify revenue to be able to do that. It's slower than all of us would like, certainly, but they are and have been moving towards that. What would your recommendation to legislators be this session? And what would your recommendation to local elected officials be for what can most meaningfully address this opioid crisis?
[00:43:14] Everett Maroon: I think that local governments are well-suited to looking at their regulations around housing, capacity, zoning, and helping situate things like recovery houses, transition housing, places where people can go to restart. But as long as we are trying to do treatment and therapy and wraparound care for people who are unhoused, we're just fighting - we're fighting the tide with our little sandcastle. So we have to think about what those barriers to the outcomes we want to see really are. We certainly need specific housing for women fleeing abuse. We need specific housing for single men, but also families. We need to be able to help people step back up into more traditional housing over time.
I think the state has a lot of priorities, and I appreciate that in Washington state, only a small amount of our budget is really actionable through discretionary means. There's so much that we have to spend on by statute or by ruling. And so it's a really difficult question, and I don't envy the legislators trying to tackle it. But when we try to take things little bit by little bit and we're not looking at the whole big picture, then we run into a lot of false starts and failures, and then people start to question if the approach is even right. I swear on all that's holy, the approach is right. But we can't get tens of thousands of people out of this situation very quickly if we don't have attention to housing, if we don't have treatment beds and treatment providers. If it takes three years to get the certification to be an SUDP, you are basically saying we have to wait three years for anything to change in Washington state. So we have to be thinking about workforce resources, housing, programs to help people deal with the trauma that they've picked up either on their way to using substances in a maladaptive way or after they started using them in a maladaptive way. I know people are going to say - Everett, where's the money come from? But I love this idea of health engagement hubs. But boy, the SURSAC committee asked for 10 sites and they got 2. It's just going to take us longer to figure out how to tweak that model to see how to make it work in as many places as possible. And I know also if we get people housed and we get them reengaged in the workforce and we get them back with their families, it's going to generate so much more revenue for the state. We're asking to front-load some programs so that we can get the benefits for a long time after.
[00:46:02] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And it is an issue of when and how you pay for it, fundamentally. Dealing with all of the symptoms of substance use disorder, all of the outcomes when you don't treat this in a way that is likely to lead to recovery. Then we see this manifesting in a wide variety of ways and making the other issues that we're dealing with from homelessness to the wealth divide to just everything that we're dealing with - education - so much harder, so much more expensive. We're placing this burden on ourselves, really. So we have to systemically look at getting ourselves out. I appreciate that.
For people in their communities who are listening and just thinking - Okay, I hear this and we need to do something. I see this problem in my community. I know this is a problem. We need to do something. And the low-hanging fruit of something in communities seems to always be - Okay, we'll pass a law, we'll toughen a penalty. What can they look to or help with or get involved with in their communities that is likely to lead to a more positive outcome?
[00:47:11] Everett Maroon: There are all kinds of things people can do based on their own ability, interest, time, and their connections. So if there's a leadership group in your town, join it. If there's a behavioral health committee through public health or city council, go to those meetings. Get a seat at the table. Pester people in your council and commissioner meetings. Ask them how they're working on it. Look at the budgets that are public budgets and ask the funders how do they evaluate the people who are providing services. There are lots of things that you can do to check in on how things are going. You can always write letters to the editor telling people about why they should themselves get involved in this work. You can volunteer at these organizations that are doing the work. And even if you just want to go be a candy striper at your local emergency department, there's a lot that you can do to help people there. Or if you're more into serving at a soup kitchen - consider that a lot of people who are living on the street don't have anybody say anything nice to them all day long. You can be that person. You can be the one who helps build a bridge back to their sense of humanity and connection to the community. So I worked in soup kitchens a lot, and I initially worked there because I had to do community service after shoplifting. So I will say that publicly - I was 22 years old and supremely stupid. But I learned so much from doing my time there. And then I continued to work at that soup kitchen for two or three years after that, because it just was so meaningful to me to be able to commune with people and help them feel okay about this one moment in their day. So I think shoplifting - the best thing I did for myself was get caught.
[00:48:56] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, thank you, Everett, for your time today, for your wisdom and knowledge. We will continue to pay attention to how things progress through session, through different cities in the state - but really appreciate your experience and perspective here.
[00:49:13] Everett Maroon: Thank you so much, Crystal. I appreciate the opportunity.
[00:49:15] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattle political reporter and editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett!
Crystal and Erica discuss public outcry over targeted inspections of LGBTQ+ establishments and Seattle Council President Sara Nelson’s remarks opposing even-year elections for local races. They then turn to news from King County that the target closure date of 2025 for the Youth Jail will be missed and how the annual “Point In Time” homelessness count will be different this year. The show wraps up with new polling that Seattle voters are supportive of a big Transportation Levy and a stunning update on the Snohomish County gravel yard vs elementary school situation.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica Barnett, at @ericacbarnett.
Resources
Pairing Advocacy and Research for Progress with Andrew Villeneuve of the Northwest Progressive Institute from Hacks & Wonks
“Seattle’s Queer Community Demands Swift Change After Raids of Gay Bars” by Vivian McCall from The Stranger
“Seattle LGBTQ+ bars, clubs on edge after ‘lewd conduct’ violations” by Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks from The Seattle Times
“Council President Sara Nelson Opposes Effort to Increase Voter Turnout” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
“Amid Backlash Against Therapeutic Alternatives, Youth Jail Will Stay Open Past 2025 Target Date for Closure” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“KCRHA Plans More Focused Homelessness Count, Council President Supports Bills That Would Make It Easier To Take Away Drug Users' Kids” from PubliCola
“Seattle Voters On Board with Big Transportation Levy, New Polling Shows” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
“Gravel yard warns Snohomish County school to stop speaking out — or else” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
If you missed our Tuesday topical show, I chatted with Andrew Villeneuve of the Northwest Progressive Institute about their work to advance progressive policies through their focuses on research and advocacy. Among other projects this year, NPI is working to combat the six dangerous Republican-sponsored initiatives and push for even-year elections for local races. Today, we are continuing our Friday week-in-review shows, where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Seattle political reporter and editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett.
[00:01:26] Erica Barnett: Hello - it's great to be here.
[00:01:28] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you back again, as always. Well, starting out the news of the week was something a lot of people were both surprised and very troubled to see. And that was Seattle's queer community being very alarmed - and now demanding swift change - after raids that included gay bars. What happened here?
[00:01:49] Erica Barnett: The Joint Enforcement Team, which is a group of Seattle Police Department officers and the Liquor Control Board of the state, went out and they were checking on a bunch of bars - I think it was more than a dozen. But the thing that has gotten the most attention is citations at two gay bars on Capitol Hill - The Eagle and The Cuff - for lewd conduct. And I believe it was associated with guys being in jockstraps and possibly nipple showing - and frankly, to my mind, very silly stuff that could not matter less. But they cracked down on this and it kind of feels like a throwback to the days when the city and the state were really concerned with behavior in bars and things that are moralistic laws that probably shouldn't even be on the books. So there has been a real outcry since then from the LGBTQ+ community about - why is this something that the Liquor Control Board and the police are focusing on right now? Feels like we're kind of in a backlash era on a lot of different issues from policing to just stuff like this moral conduct BS. And this is just another example of that. It's really unfortunate and kind of shocking that in 2024, the police and the Liquor Board care about whether somebody's butt is showing. It feels very, very silly and very, like I said, very throwback to a different era.
[00:03:07] Crystal Fincher: Definitely feels like a throwback to a different era - a few different eras - that aren't all that long ago, some pretty recent. But we can't ignore that happened during a time right now where we're seeing laws passed across the country to criminalize members of the LGBTQ+ community and targeting them in a way that is certainly more severe than we've seen in decades, seemingly. And so there was some pushback by some members of the team there - Hey, this wasn't actually a raid, these were check-ins. Regardless of what you call it, the impact is really the same. It has a chilling impact that scares people out of the space. You've got police seemingly coming in and not just going - Hey, I want to check on you in these situations. They came in as part of an enforcement action, it seemed. They also took pictures of people - they said, for evidence. But again, what are we using these lewd laws for? And I saw some people online say - Well, we don't allow nudity in hetero spaces so we're just treating the gay community the same way. There's nothing to see here. And oh, we absolutely do allow nudity--
[00:04:21] Erica Barnett: Well, and also we should - this is, what frustrates me about this is I feel like the police and the Liquor Board are so far behind the rest of the public. I think if you went out on the street and asked 10 people or 100 people - Should guys be allowed to wear jockstraps at a bar? And if everybody's consenting, should some sexual behavior be allowed at a bar? And should women be allowed to be topless or whatever? Most people would say - Yeah, I guess. I don't care. I'm not going there. You have consenting adults in an environment where everybody knows where they are - I cannot imagine that the public is on board with using police resources, which are supposedly so scarce that they can't respond to 911 calls, on cracking down on people for a little bit of nudity and "lewd behavior." I mean, the fact that we have lewd behavior laws is a whole other subject, but it all just feels very ridiculous to me.
[00:05:15] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and those laws are very relevant as a subject right now. And they are a problem - they are unequally enforced. In fact, one of the owners of one of these queer bars does own several other mainly hetero bars and spoke with authority saying - Hey, my bars that are not gay bars don't have this happen. They are policing these bars differently. And one of them testified that a police officer recently said that they're just starting to enforce these new laws again. It has a lot of people really questioning what the priorities are. As you said, we do actually poll people pretty often in Seattle about what concerns them. And nudity has never made the list, that I've seen - they are concerned about a variety of things of public safety. This doesn't seem to take the cake. And as you said, with a shortage - as they say - of police officers and resources to keep people safe, seems like they could be used in a much better and effective way than taking a picture of someone exposing a nipple. I just don't know where the priority is, and I do hope that this spurs some questioning of officials involved. How did this happen in the City of Seattle? How was there no one involved in this process that could raise the red flag of - Hey, this looks real suspect. This looks like we are not treating this community in the way that we treat other communities. It's just really a challenge.
There was a Washington State Liquor Control Board meeting, a couple of them - one yesterday where there's quite a bit of public comment from concerned community members. Members of the board said that this is a very concerning incident for them. They did end up questioning the usefulness of lewd laws overall. They did say - Hey, as an administrative body, it really isn't in our wheelhouse to be changing the law, but we do think that the legislature should review these lewd laws. The LGBTQ caucus within the legislature is going to be meeting about this to potentially address the lewd laws and potentially pulling from some other legislation that had been advanced by sex workers, who have advanced a lot of worker protection safety, workplace safety legislation to potentially help prevent something like this - unequal enforcement - from happening again. Just doesn't seem like lewd laws make sense in our society today, and I do hope they take a look at that. But certainly alarming news to a lot of people, myself included, to see. And surprising in a city like Seattle, but it really does go to show we just can't take anything for granted - that these things can't happen here. Potentially they can. And we need to make sure we're doing all we can to ensure that we are not targeting vulnerable communities.
Also want to talk about a story that made a decent amount of news, certainly in political Seattle, this week. And it was news that Council President Sara Nelson opposes an effort to increase voter turnout. What happened here?
[00:08:27] Erica Barnett: Well, so there was a story in The Stranger that quoted Sara Nelson from a meeting about a week and a half ago, saying that she had a strong concern about moving local elections to even years. The part that got quoted was - From the perspective of a local government candidate, I don't believe that greater turnout necessarily means a better informed public. And that was the part that got quoted and I think really blew up on social media, sort of suggesting that Sara Nelson - and the article also explicitly said - that Sara Nelson believes that there should be less voter turnout and that it's better for politicians like her who - she is one of the more conservative members of the city council - that it would be better for politicians like her if fewer people voted. And that's what got spread really widely. I will say there is a lot of debate about whether we should go to even-year elections.
But that quote from Sara Nelson was - to me, it was a classic example of taking a quote out of context. I was at that meeting and I remember her comments, but that didn't jump out at me. And the reason it didn't jump out was that she went on for several more minutes. And I'll just quote a little bit more of what she said. It doesn't necessarily mean a better informed public when it comes to the issues that impact people's lives directly, from public safety to potholes. These are the issues that we here at the dais deal with, and I'm concerned that there will not be time or there will not be interest in hosting all the forums my colleagues attended last year. Media will not be interested in the lower down the ballot races because of the high profile stuff like President and Congress. Down ballot participation hasn't really been examined and for those reasons, I'm concerned about moving local elections to even years. I think that would be bad for cities across the state. And she was expressing one side of this debate, which is that people in even-year elections - when there's president, when there's Congress, when there's all the statewide races, when there's just tons and tons and tons of other races - people aren't going to continue down the ballot and they're not going to inform themselves or vote in those very low on the ballot races, the ones that deal with potholes, the ones that deal with all those other local issues that the council deals with. So I think that quote was wildly misrepresented, and she was expressing a common argument against even-year elections.
Now, agree with it or not, she wasn't saying that she thinks people shouldn't be allowed to vote or that she likes low voter turnout - which it's understandable that that tiny little snippet was interpreted that way. But she did go on for quite a while. And I think it's really unfortunate that the rest of that very long quote was just clipped out.
[00:10:56] Crystal Fincher: As you say, Sara Nelson does have a tendency to go on for a while and sometimes the thoughts aren't as clear and easy to parse, sometimes you do have to do a bit of reconstituting to fully understand what she is trying to say. And it is important to have the full context of all of her comments there. I do think that it's important to pay attention to all of the things that she said. And that is one of the things that she said. And it's very possible, as I've seen her do before, where she'll throw out a lot of things - she may not expand upon them or be able to really fully articulate why she said them. But it is important to me that we don't ignore this because we see this happen in a lot of debates where they'll throw out some seemingly fairly common mainstream points of debate - people can disagree, this is generally what they think. But that portion - which I do think it is important to not discard just because there were other reasons also given - was the justification for why people like me, a Black woman, shouldn't be able to vote. A specific tool of disenfranchisement that we are hearing parroted today across the country. She is not the only person to articulate this ever. It's troubling, and I do think it's important to call it out.
[00:12:18] Erica Barnett: I just would recommend people watch the entire segment of that meeting on the 22nd. Because I do think that is super inflammatory - people are saying stuff like that all the time around the country. MAGA conservatives want to disenfranchise Black people, want to disenfranchise Hispanic people, want to disenfranchise everyone who won't vote for the Trump agenda. And that is horrifying. I don't think that's what Sara Nelson was saying here. I think that describing her as a conservative in Seattle is very real, but describing her as a MAGA Republican is ridiculous - in my opinion.
[00:12:50] Crystal Fincher: I don't even think we need to label her as a standard Republican, as a MAGA Republican, as a conservative. She's definitely a conservative. But I do think we are at a point in time where it is dangerous to ignore that - even if it's one point out of five or six that she made, it is included in the points that she made. And ignoring things like that or not taking that seriously, whether it comes out of the mouth of Trump or out of the mouth of Reagan Dunn or out of the mouth of Sara Nelson, has been what has helped to get us to the point that we're at right now - which is not a great point since we're rolling back voting rights all over the place in the country and in danger of doing that even more. I do see where people could have different interpretations of what she said. I think it's important to, while viewing the full context of what she said and that she did give a lot of other reasons, to make sure that this is never, ever, ever a reason that anyone articulates. And that anytime it's articulated, we hear that and we respond - because ignoring that makes it worse. And saying things in seemingly innocuous ways and putting - okay, three reasonable reasons and a wildly racist reason is how those views are peddled.
[00:14:08] Erica Barnett: I don't think she was making a wildly racist point. I am not a defender of Sara Nelson and her policies. I do think that lots of them are very damaging, but I believe she was basically making one point - which is when you have a lot of stuff at the top of the ballot, it is hard for voters to learn about or care about the stuff at the bottom. I share all your concerns, but I also think that it's important to be accurate about these things.
[00:14:33] Crystal Fincher: I think it is important to be accurate. I happen to disagree with the other points that she made and think they're disproven by California's even-year elections and the success seen there. There's going to be continued debate on this. But I do think that regardless of what her intention is, it's another intention versus impact statement. The impact of the words that she used has been undeniable over the years and how they're being used now is to disenfranchise.
[00:15:00] Erica Barnett: My frustration is mostly that The Stranger wrote this article that was very inflammatory without providing the appropriate context, which is the job of journalists - instead of trying to make somebody a villain when there are lots of policy reasons to make somebody a villain that don't involve taking their words out of context. But I really look forward to the debate on the even-year elections, because I think one thing you can say without any caveats is that Sara Nelson is not going to be a fan of voting reforms of any kind. And I think that that is going to break down along very much progressive and moderate and conservative lines. And I think we'll see hopefully more articulation of why people are for or against this. And that'll be revealing, I think, to people in the public trying to make up their minds on this.
[00:15:44] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I think you and I agree that the full context should always be known. I think it is helpful to see the full context of what she said. I just happen to also believe that we can't ignore the content that is included in that context. Even if it wasn't her main point and she didn't have an intent to do that, I just can't ignore that being included - from whoever says it at any point in time - to make sure that that doesn't make it easier for other people to continue to disenfranchise others.
I do want to talk about a story you covered this week about the Youth Jail looking like it's going to stay open past 2025, which was its target date for closure. What happened here?
[00:16:34] Erica Barnett: Well, essentially what happened is Dow Constantine in 2020 announced that he was going to have a target of 2025 for the Youth Jail to close - and actually more than a target, he said it would be closed. And since then, there has been an advisory group that's been meeting and discussing alternatives to the Youth Jail. And they came up with a list of six recommendations. And that list of recommendations, I think, reflects the fact that there is a real debate about what to do with young people who have committed very serious crimes like murder and if they can be immediately released into, let's say, a low-security or no-security therapeutic environment, or if they need to be in a secure locked cell, essentially. At the same time, the county has not come up with money to do any of the alternatives that are suggested in this report. And they right now don't really have a lot of prospects for coming up with money because unless there's a ballot measure, the money has to come out of the county's general fund, which is between $35 and $50 million in the hole next year.
So right now, the proposal is - basically there's some consensus recommendations that came out of the advisory group that are about setting up community supports and standing up more groups to help people, and this kind of stuff that we hear over and over again. It's currently fairly vague and would cost money, but not as much money as the recommendations that were a little more contentious. One, where there is general consensus but not total consensus, was to build these new housing alternatives called "community care homes" for people who leave the Youth Jail but don't have a safe place to go. So those would be essentially group homes. And the need is really in South King County. And those would be quite expensive - you're talking perhaps single family homes, more of a home-like environment. And then the more controversial idea was something that's called "respite and receiving centers," which would be where police would take kids immediately after they are arrested. And it would theoretically not be a jail, but in a lot of cases, depending on the crime, kids wouldn't be able to leave. There's locked versions of these that exist elsewhere. There's low-security versions. And so that is also very much up in the air, and it also would cost quite a bit of money. So we're sort of in a period of stasis where there's going to be some examination of these alternatives, but the Youth Jail itself is not going to close.
And just last thing, the Youth Jail - the Patricia Clark Children and Family Center is its official name - it went down into the single digits in terms of population during COVID and it's back up to about 30, 40. And population before COVID and before all these promises was about 50% Black - I think it was like 47%. The population after COVID - and of course, the goal of this in part is to reduce disproportionality - but the population now is still approximately 50% Black. And that's wildly out of proportion with the King County population. So progress has not been made, and I think that's the headline and the depressing conclusion - that we just haven't done a whole lot since before the pandemic.
[00:19:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it certainly appears that way. And several members of the council, in addition to the King County Executive, seem to be grappling with this and talking in a perhaps different way than they had before. Dow Constantine said that he believes there will continue to be a need for secure detention, meaning traditional jail for kids accused of the most serious crimes. Councilmember Girmay Zahilay said - I think the controversy will be around if a young person poses a serious threat to the community, to community safety - if, for example, they've been charged with murder - will that person be able to just walk free in a couple of days? He said, on the flip side - If we're going to build another facility that is a secure detention facility, we have to be clear on what we're changing to make it different from the current Youth Jail. So we will continue to pay attention to how they negotiate their way through this and how they do define what they're doing that is going to make it different from what they're currently doing, if at all. It's going to be interesting to see how they continue to go about that.
Also want to talk about the King County Regional Homelessness Authority planning a more focused homelessness count this year, which is different than they have done it in recent years. What is changing with the way they're doing the "Point In Time" count this year and why are they changing it?
[00:21:01] Erica Barnett: So the "Point In Time" count used to be a literal point-in-time count where people would go out at night and count people that they saw in tents and cars, and it would be an estimate. And it was always regarded as an undercount. King County Regional Homelessness Authority has since then adopted a form of sampling where they go out - they set up locations and invite people to come there. They give people who do show up coupons to give to people they know in their networks. And through a series of going through people's networks, they've reached people that wouldn't ordinarily be reached by just setting up a survey. And they use that to come up with a number. The last time they did this, they ran into some challenges - one of which is that they didn't have enough locations. Particularly in South King County, people were left out - populations and areas of South King County were left out. And they also did a separate portion of it, which was a qualitative process, where they did these interviews with people about what their experience being homeless was like. The interviews were, as I reported last year, often very rambling. They didn't include specific questions. They were just supposed to be conversations. But those interviews were used to determine the initial five-year plan for reducing homelessness. And they were regarded as pretty problematic, so they dropped that portion this year. They're going to more locations. They're doing it for a longer period of time, so there's going to be a little more time to collect interviews. And I think just overall, it's going to be more organized this year. From my reporting, it sounds like it was somewhat chaotic and rushed the last time - again, particularly in South King County, because that's where they started. And so they learned all their lessons off of the South End and then applied them in other areas. So the plan is just to be a little bit more organized and also do more training. Last year, there was a brief training that could be done online. And I think there's been more training this year and people are given specific questions to ask, rather than - What has it been like for you? - which was one of the questions last time.
[00:22:57] Crystal Fincher: And why is that "Point in Time" count so important?
[00:23:01] Erica Barnett: Well, it's important in a practical sense of being able to receive federal funds. It's also mandatory - HUD requires it. But it also gives a sense of whether homelessness is getting better or worse, whether it's going down or going up. And so. It's never an exact count. Even when you're doing statistical sampling, it's not going to be exact. And what's kind of wild is that there's a bunch of different counts for King County - one is done by the State Commerce Department, there's a King County one, and then there's a King County Homelessness Authority one. And they vary wildly - they are just tens of thousands apart. So one of the things that the KCRHA count does - it's the largest count. It's the one that has the largest number, which is over, I believe, 50,000 people experiencing homelessness in King County - I don't know if that's the correct number, but it gives probably a better sense of the scale than the previous "Point In Time" count, which was always around 10,000 to 13,000. So it kind of more accurately represents how bad the problem is, but it also shows year after year whether the number is going up or down using the same methods.
[00:24:02] Crystal Fincher: Well, we will pay attention to what that is. Certainly, this has been talked about throughout campaigns, during election season, from electeds who have just recently been elected or reelected. And so it's going to be really important to see if what they have been doing has resulted in more or less - it's not an exact count, but it is a process that seemingly repeats, has for several years. So relative size of the count, hopefully, is going to be an indicator of where we're at and if any progress has been made.
Also want to talk about new polling showing that Seattle voters look like they are supportive of a big transportation levy. Polling was done to determine the levels of support for a more modest levy versus one that includes additional projects, and it looks like there is support across the board. What did you see?
[00:25:00] Erica Barnett: Well, I think that even though transportation is not an issue that is in the headlines, it's something people experience every day, obviously. And people who use transit in particular can both see progress on some of the Rapid Ride lines that are being funded with previous levy funds and also frustration with the fact that things are not proceeding as quickly as voters might have hoped. So I think it shows that there is very strong support for some of these less high-profile issues, like the way that we get around our city - but also in a larger sense that people are still willing to support taxes when they go to specific things. And I think that might seem like an obvious point, but if you look at some of the other problems that we're facing, like homelessness, like the Youth jail and the very large cost of replacing it that we're just discussing, there's hope - because people actually are willing to pay for these things. I think people get very irritated by sales taxes, and understandably so - and it's the most regressive kind of tax. And at the same time, they're willing to support property taxes, which I think leaders should really take a look at. And the Housing Levy that passed recently is a good example of the city going way too small. I think they could have gotten a much bigger levy and polling showed that. And I think that once again, polling is showing that there's a strong voter appetite, so going big is going to produce more results. So my hope would be that City leaders would take notice of that and instead of doing this mealy-mouth thing they do every time where they're - Well, here's three numbers and we'll pick the middle one, they go big and actually get some stuff done.
[00:26:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think there's absolutely that political case - that it's easier to affirmatively sell something that people want to see, something that they're getting for their money. And just the scale of the challenges that we are facing that can be addressed through this transportation levy, to me, tell me that it's not just politically feasible, but really important to do. We are behind on our 2030 climate goals. We're behind on the ones coming after that. We need to do more. We need better transportation options. Hopefully, they're looking at some acceleration of some projects here. Certainly, it's been frustrating for a lot of people to see delays in projects that were initially expected to come. And we're facing issues like inflation that have increased the price tag. Everyone has seen that happen in every area of their lives. This is no different - things are going to cost a little bit more, and so I think it would be a mistake to not be able to go after the full suite of projects that we could. Certainly maintaining what we have is important, but we are falling further behind and are going to tax our existing resources more if we don't do more, provide more, and fund more. So I hope they wind up going for what is needed and not settle for what seems like - Hey, maybe people will be more likely to support a smaller amount. People just don't like that decision - the overwhelming majority of people just do thumbs up and thumbs down on the idea of that tax. Some people may oppose taxes and oppose this. But for people who are likely to be supportive, it is not going to change whether this passes or fails to go for the full amount, and I hope they understand that.
The last thing I want to talk about today was an update to a story we talked about on last week's week-in-review with Daniel Beekman. We talked about a Snohomish County elementary school and kindergarten who were being really adversely impacted by an unpermitted gravel yard that popped up without any warning to the school next door to them. In addition to just causing a bunch of dust and noise that is making it disruptive to be able to teach and very distracting, it's also seemingly caused some really concerning health concerns from headaches, black snot, coughing fits. It is just really challenging what these kids are going through. It has not escaped my attention or Daniel Beekman's attention, as he reported it, that the population of this school - they have a larger immigrant and refugee population, a larger population of students who are living in poverty than a lot of other schools, and wondering if that is the reason why they seemingly haven't had any kind of support or recourse against this happening, particularly since it's an unpermitted use. This is in unincorporated Snohomish County, so in this situation, it really is up to the county council to determine what, if anything, to do. And their only response so far had been to say - Well, we'll give them some more time to try and bring their use into a permitted use. That has been dragging on while this school and these kids and the staff there have been trying to negotiate their way through this and raise some red flags and ask people to intervene here.
An update came out this week in a follow-up story by Daniel Beekman. The gravel yard responded by sending a cease and desist letter from their attorney to the local school, really just saying - You guys need to stop talking about this. Not saying - Oh, wow. Kids are getting sick and they're having really bad health outcomes. We should see if we are the cause of this and try and stop it. Or, okay, maybe we'll pause this work until we are operating legally in a permitted way. That wasn't it. It's just to try and shut up the people who are complaining about black snot and headaches in kids - that are happening. I just thought that was really an unfortunate response and one that frequently backfires. It appears that it did here and that that is drawing more attention to this whole thing. So that was an update that I wasn't expecting to see, was certainly dismayed to see. I do hope that the county council does take some action here, that the county executive takes some action here to at least provide some recourse to examine what is happening here at the school, to not just let someone, in an unpermitted capacity, negatively impact kids who have to be at school. I think a few people had contacted the county council - hopefully that turns out to be helpful. But very troubling to see and we'll continue to follow along with what is happening there.
And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, February 2nd, 2024. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is Seattle political reporter and editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett. You can find Erica on Twitter at @ericacbarnett and on PubliCola.com. You can find Erica everywhere - I see her on all the platforms and getting PubliCola in my email inbox and everything else. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. You can find me on all platforms at @finchfrii, with two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this topical show, Crystal welcomes Andrew Villeneuve, founder of the Northwest Progressive Institute!
Crystal learns about the Northwest Progressive Institute’s (NPI) work to advance progressive policies through their focuses on research and advocacy, what’s covered in NPI’s long form blog The Cascadia Advocate, and the importance of reframing in progressive politics. Andrew then describes how six initiatives bankrolled by a disgruntled wealthy Republican are designed to cause a lot of damage to Washington, how NPI’s careful approach to polling has led to successful results, and why NPI is advocating for even-year elections to improve voter engagement and participation.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Andrew Villeneuve and the Northwest Progressive Institute at @nwprogressive and https://www.nwprogressive.org/
Andrew Villeneuve
Andrew Villeneuve is the founder of the Northwest Progressive Institute (NPI) and its sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. A recent focus of his research and advocacy work has been electoral reform. With Senator Patty Kuderer, Andrew and the NPI team developed the legislation that successfully removed Tim Eyman’s push polls from Washington ballots. And with Councilmember Claudia Balducci, Andrew and the NPI team developed the charter amendment that 69% of King County voters approved in 2022 to move elections for Executive, Assessor, Elections Director, and Council to even-numbered years, when voter turnout is much higher and more diverse. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps.
Resources
Northwest Progressive Institute
The Cascadia Advocate | Northwest Progressive Institute
Stop Greed
“Initiative 2113 (allowing dangerous police pursuits to resume) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate
“Reject Initiative 2113 to keep reasonable safeguards on police pursuits in place” by Sonia Joseph and Martina Morris for The Cascadia Advocate
“Initiative 2117 (repealing Washington’s Climate Commitment Act) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate
“Initiative 2081 (jeopardizing student privacy) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate
“Initiative 2109 (repealing billions of dollars in education funding) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate
“Initiative 2111 (prohibiting fair taxation based on ability to pay) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate
“Initiative 2124 (sabotaging the Washington Cares Fund) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate
Coalition for Even-Year Elections
SB 5723 - Giving cities and towns the freedom to switch their general elections to even-numbered years.
HB 1932 - Shifting general elections for local governments to even-numbered years to increase voter participation.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, today I'm thrilled to be welcoming Andrew Villeneuve from Northwest Progressive Institute to the show. Welcome!
[00:01:00] Andrew Villeneuve: Thanks, Crystal.
[00:01:01] Crystal Fincher: Happy to have you here. For those who may not be aware, Andrew is the founder of the Northwest Progressive Institute and its sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He's worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. A recent focus of his research and advocacy work has been electoral reform. With Senator Patty Kuderer, Andrew and the NPI team developed the legislation that successfully removed Tim Eyman's push polls from Washington ballots - I'm a huge fan of that legislation. And with Councilmember Claudia Balducci, Andrew and the NPI team developed the charter amendment that 69% of King County voters approved in 2022 to move elections for the Executive, Assessor, Elections Director, and Council to even-numbered years - here's to also doing that statewide for municipalities - when voter turnout is much higher in even-numbered years and more diverse. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps. Welcome - really excited to have you on and talk about everything that you're doing.
[00:02:15] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, thank you. I'm thrilled to be here and can't wait to dive into the conversation.
[00:02:19] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So starting off, what is the Northwest Progressive Institute and what do you do?
[00:02:25] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, the Northwest Progressive Institute is a 501(c)(4) strategy center that works to lift up everybody. We try our hardest every day to advance progressive policies that will enable people to lead happier, healthier, more prosperous lives. We just celebrated our 20th anniversary last August, and we have had a lot of success moving policy over the last two decades. We're particularly adept at using research to show people why we need a particular policy - so that could be health care, it could be environmental protection, it could be more education funding. We're not confined to just one issue - we think across issues. But that does mean, of course, that we see all of the places where we're held back. So we look for areas where we can move issues forward simultaneously and that has led us to do a lot of work on tax reform, election reform, and media reform - because those three issues are connected to every other issue. So that's why you'll see us doing a lot of work on fair revenue. on trying to address media concentration, and trying to make sure that elections are fair. Because ultimately, those things do have results, impacts for environmental protection, healthcare, education, foreign policy, every other issue that we care about. I think we're all frustrated by sometimes the slow pace of progress, and so any area where we can link up with another area and make progress at the same time - that's a real opportunity for us. And there's actually a term for this - it's called "strategic initiatives" - comes from George Lakoff. We're big fans of his work.
We also do a lot of efforts on reframing. We try to help people understand what frames are and how to use successful arguments so that you don't fall into the trap of debating the other side on their terms. Because we all know when that happens, the best you can do is lose an argument gracefully - you're not going to win the argument. Reframing is key, and we believe that everybody who works in progressive politics needs to understand how to do reframing. So we're always trying to help people figure out - okay, how do we use words that evoke our values and our policy directions and not the other sides'? So that's sort of a taste of what we do. Of course, we could talk for hours about all the specific projects we've worked on, but that is an overall view of what NPI does.
[00:04:42] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Also under the NPI umbrella is The Cascadia Advocate, a publication that I recommend everyone listening follow - very informative. What has been your approach with The Cascadia Advocate and what do you cover?
[00:04:55] Andrew Villeneuve: The Cascadia Advocate is a long form blog. It was founded in 2004 in March, and so that means it's going to be celebrating its 20th anniversary itself this spring. And what it is - is it's a place where you can find progressive commentary, sometimes even breaking news, on a daily basis. So if you want to find out why we should pass a particular bill in the legislature, or you want to find out what's happening with Bob Ferguson's latest lawsuit - for example, he just sued Kroger and Albertsons because they're trying to merge and create a giant grocery store chain - we cover those things on The Cascadia Advocate. We publish guest essays. We cover a lot of things that the mass media cover - so we'll sometimes critique how they're covering things, but we'll also provide our own original commentary in addition to just critiquing others' coverage. There's a whole mix there. So you're going to find research findings, media criticism, you're going to find book reviews, you're going to find documentary reviews. You're going to find Last Week in Congress, which is our almost weekly recap - weekly when Congress is in session - of how our delegation voted. So this is a place where you can see Washington, Oregon, and Idaho's Congressional delegations' votes. And that's really helpful. If you're too busy to watch C-SPAN every day - I know I don't have that kind of time because I'm trying to move the ball forward on progressive policy - but I do want to know how our lawmakers voted, I want to be informed. And I imagine a lot of other people listening to Hacks & Wonks would also like to be informed about what our delegation is doing. And so Last Week in Congress is something you can read on Sunday morning - takes a few minutes of your time to skim it. And at the end of that skim, you're going to learn a lot more about how our delegation voted that week. So those are some of the things you're going to find on the Cascadia Advocate.
I think it's a great publication. It's well-established and we have a superb code of ethics and style guide and commenting guidelines to make sure that we're putting out a professional product. So we're very proud of that. And the name is right there - Advocate, right? So we're not hiding what we're about. You're not going to have to worry - Well, what's their agenda? How will I know what it is? Because we're going to tell you what our agenda is. We're going to be very upfront about that. But we're also going to be fair, even to those that we criticize. So whether that's Tim Eyman - quoting his emails, letting people know what he said - we're going to tell people what the other side is saying. We're not just going to say what we're saying. But we're also going to be very clear - this is what we believe and this is what we're fighting for. And it's not going to be a mystery to any reader what that is.
[00:07:11] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - I appreciate it. And as many have seen, have shared links in our episode notes many times - recommend that as part of a healthy local media diet. Now, I want to talk about some issues that you've been engaged with since their inception. One of the big ones that we're going to be hearing about, voting on later on this year are the six statewide initiatives coming in 2024 in Washington state. Can you tell us about these and why they're so important to pay attention to?
[00:07:42] Andrew Villeneuve: Definitely. So very early this year, a group called Let's Go Washington, which is funded by a hedge fund manager and millionaire named Brian Heywood - he lives not far from me out here on the Eastside in Redmond - east side of King County, that is. He decided that he was going to go all-in on trying to get the right wing back into the initiative business. For those who have been in Washington for a while, the name Tim Eyman is probably familiar to you - Tim Eyman, for years, has been running initiatives to cut taxes and wreck government in Washington state. His agenda is to drown government in a bathtub, so it's basically Grover Norquist at the state level. And Brian Heywood has come along here after several years of Tim Eyman being out of the initiative business. Eyman's last initiative qualified for the ballot in 2018, and it appeared on the ballot in 2019. And despite our best efforts - it had a really dishonest ballot title that it was hard to educate voters what that was, so even though we raised a lot of money and ran the best No campaign that we could - when I say we, I mean the coalition Keep Washington Rolling that formed - we weren't able to defeat that last Eyman initiative. But we were able to go to court after the election was over and get it struck down. So it never went into effect, - which averted a massive transit and transportation catastrophe, I might add. So fast forward a few years, Eyman has been in trouble with the law because he just blatantly disregards public disclosure law, doesn't care about following it. And he also was double-crossing his own supporters - they just weren't getting the truth from him. And so that's why his initiative factory fell apart - when you're lying and cheating all the time, eventually that's going to catch up with you, and that's what happened to Tim Eyman. So he had to declare bankruptcy. The state won a big judgment against him, and he's been out of the initiative business.
But Brian Heywood has come in - and Brian Heywood, unlike Tim Eyman, has a lot of money. And he doesn't need to turn to anyone else unless he feels that he has to, but he hasn't done that yet - he's mainly relied on his own money. So he decided that not only was he going to try to qualify a tax-cutting initiative, but he was going to take aim at all these other laws that the Democratic majorities have passed that he doesn't like. So there's six initiatives that he wanted to get on the ballot this last year, so 2023, that are now we're going to be on the ballot in 2024. And that's because these are initiatives to the legislature, so they go to the House and the Senate first. That's something you can do in Washington - you can either submit initiatives directly to the people, or you can submit them to the legislature. And for those who don't know, an initiative is just a proposed law. So it's like a bill of the people - it goes before the legislature. If the legislature doesn't adopt it, then it goes to the people by default. So an initiative - again, just like a bill, but the people get to vote on it, and it comes from a citizen petition.
So these initiatives - last year there was going to be 11, but they pared them down to 6. It's kind of like making up for lost time - We weren't on the ballot for several years, so now we're just going to do a whole bunch of initiatives. The first one that they're doing would repeal the Climate Commitment Act. The second one would repeal our capital gains tax on the wealthy, which is funding education and childcare. The third one would repeal the WA Cares Fund, partly by letting people opt out. Then they have one that would roll back our reasonable safeguards on police pursuits. They have one that would establish a parental notification scheme, which is intended, I think, to jeopardize the health of trans youth in part - which I don't like that at all. And then they have one to ban income taxes. And their definition of income tax is anything that falls under this really broad, adjusted gross income umbrella, which could potentially jeopardize the capital gains tax and other sources of funding for things that are really important in our state.
So these six initiatives collectively would cause a lot of damage to Washington. We're talking about billions of dollars in lost revenue. We're talking about good policies being repealed. We're talking about a lot of destruction. And so we're working very hard to defeat these initiatives. We've created a PAC that will oppose all of them. And that joint effort is called Stop Greed - to oppose all six initiatives. We have a website - stopgreed.org - and the operation is already up and running. You can donate, you can sign up for the mailing list. If you want to get involved in stopping the six initiatives, we are ready to have your help because this is going to be a year-long effort. We're going to be working with a lot of other allies, organizations that also share our values to protect Washington. But these six initiatives - the legislature can't reject them and then just have them disappear, they're going to go to the ballots. So we have to be ready for that big fight in November. And they're going to appear at the top - so ahead of president, ahead of governor, ahead of everything else that we're thinking about as activists and civic leaders and whatnot. This is going to be the very first thing that people see underneath those instructions - is these six initiatives. So we're getting ready. And again, we invite others to join us in taking on this challenge so we can protect Washington.
[00:12:31] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And this is going to be one of the biggest battles that we've seen in quite some time in Washington state. Those six initiatives that you covered - for those who may not be familiar with Washington Cares, it's basically long-term care insurance that's state provided - trying to meet a need that is massive. Many studies have showed more than half of people over age 60 are going to need long-term care insurance at some point in time for the remainder of their lives. This often is not covered by health insurance, and it is something that has bankrupted people, has left people just in very precarious positions. As we age, as our parents age, this is something that is top of mind for a lot of people. And although no one loves an extra thing to worry about, having the confidence that when you or your family member or friend is in need of care, that they will have access to it is a very, very important thing. In addition to all these other ones - this is our landmark climate legislation, which I've definitely had some criticisms of, but do not support a repeal. I support fixing the areas that need to be fixed. And I think we can't ignore these things. These are some of the biggest pieces of legislation that we have passed that will equip us to deal with the challenges that we face today and that we're going to be facing tomorrow. So really appreciate the effort, the coordinated effort, to make sure that there is a vigorous defense against these.
Now, looking at what's going to be involved to beat these - looking at what these ballot initiatives may serve, even beyond their individual goals, is that a lot of times people look to ballot initiatives to motivate a base and to turn out a base. And certainly in Washington state - statewide, Republicans have been not having a good time, have been reaping the consequences of being out-of-touch policy-wise - whether it's on abortion rights to privacy rights, to their views on taxation and things that serve to defund and dismantle our government. What do you see as threats beyond these initiatives individually, but the threat of a motivated conservative voting base here in Washington state in November 2024?
[00:14:52] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, I think they're tired of Democratic rule. So they're going to be motivated to turnout because they probably will have Dave Reichert as their gubernatorial candidate - we can't really say nominee because Washington doesn't have a real primary, so we don't nominate people for the general election ballot like they would in other states. But they probably will have Reichert as their candidate, their standard bearer. And that is their best chance to get the governor's mansion since 2012 when Rob McKenna was their candidate in the general election - so I think they're going to be motivated for that reason. I also think the six initiatives are designed to turnout right-wing voters as much as possible - people who are disenchanted with Washington's direction, not happy that we're going a different way than Texas and Florida and Idaho and other states that are Republican-controlled.
And so I think that that's an opportunity for them, but it's also an opportunity for us. There can be a backlash to a backlash. And I'm not sure if Brian Heywood and Jim Walsh, who's - by the way, Jim Walsh, the state Republican Party Chair, is the sponsor of all six initiatives. So you've got Heywood and Walsh together - Heywood's the funder, Walsh is the sponsor. I'm not sure if they realize that backlashes can have backlashes. We saw this after Trump came in - there was a backlash to Democratic rule, but then there was a backlash to Trump's electoral college victory. And we saw that play out over the course of four years. It was really, really strong. What happened? You had this mammoth effort to correct what was going on, to have Democrats respond, to say - Okay, well, we're no longer just going to sort of lay down, right? We're going to actually work to turn out people. So we had this huge effort to flip the Washington State Senate in 2017. Then we had this big effort to win the midterms, which saw Democrats get control of the House. And then there was the effort to get the White House back, which also allowed us to get the U.S. Senate back, too, with that runoff in Georgia. So you think about all those sequence of events - how much had to align in order for all those goals to be realized? Because in 2017, Republicans had complete control of the federal government - they had it all - they had the White House, they had the House, they had the Senate, they had the Supreme Court. Democrats had nothing. All we had was some resistance in the states, basically. And we went from that - in the span of three years, we were able to take back the two legislative houses and the White House. We don't have the Supreme Court, but we were able to get the others. And the majorities were narrow, but they were majorities, which meant that we could actually work on progressive policy again. So we were able to pass the American Rescue Plan, CHIPS and Science, we were able to do the infrastructure law. We were able to do a whole bunch of other policies as well - bipartisan postal reform. We did electoral reform to deal with election certification so that we wouldn't have another January 6th. We got marriage equality put in. I mean, there are so many things that happened - I don't know if people remember all those accomplishments.
So you think about what we've done federally. And in Washington State, we've been doing the same thing - marching forward - all these laws that Heywood and Walsh want to repeal. So I think they're looking at this as an opportunity to say - It's time to roll back the clock. And that is an opportunity for them. But the opportunity for us is to say - Nope, we're not going to roll back the clock. We're going to keep moving forward. I think doing six initiatives is risky for them. Because one initiative, maybe people aren't going to - they're just not going to rouse themselves as much to care. But six seems like a four-alarm fire for those who are watching from our side. And so it's been really easy for me to - when I explain what's going on, when I make the pitch that we need to stop the initiatives, people are receptive right away. It's not difficult to get people roused and ready to go because they understand six initiatives targeting six progressive accomplishments, whether it's comprehensive sex ed or the climate law or the capital gains tax that's funding education - these are things that we've worked hard on that we're proud of. We don't want them all to be wiped away in the span of one election. So it's an organizing opportunity for us as much as it is for them. And that's the downside of deciding to do so much at one time - is that you're presenting your opponents with an opportunity to do organizing as well, that's sort of a banner opportunity. And they just have to live with that decision - that's the strategy they chose, and so we get to make the most of it from our side.
[00:18:55] Crystal Fincher: We've been seeing a number of polls - certainly a lot of discourse and reaction - to whether it's the conflict between Israel and Palestine, whether it is the failure to address climate change, healthcare kind of globally, nationally, to a degree that seems is necessary to actually make a dent in these issues. Do you see motivation in the base, especially the younger progressive voters, as being an issue that may be problematic come November? Or do you think that there are things that can be done to mitigate that, or that it won't be an issue?
[00:19:33] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, it's hard to know the future. I always tell people I don't do predictions because predictions are fraught with danger. It's just - you can easily be wrong, and people are convinced that they know what's going on. I take the view that it's hard to know what's going on and that's why we have to do research, so that we can try to understand it better. And I also warn people against the danger of drawing too many conclusions based on what you've seen on Twitter, which Elon Musk now calls X, or Facebook or TikTok or any of those platforms. Those are not representative of public opinion, not even young people's opinions. There are many people who just aren't there. So you can obviously follow some vocal voices and you can see what they're saying - there's nothing wrong with that, checking in - but don't sweep to conclusions about what those folks are saying and say - Oh, well, all Gen Zers are upset about what's happening here or there, because that's the prevailing sentiment on TikTok, right - that's a mistake. That can give you clues as to what people are thinking and feeling, but it's not where you want to draw your conclusions. And polling helps to get a little broader perspective, but it's still a sample. So we do a ton of polling at NPI. One of the things we're known for is our research. And I caution people - you can do enormous amounts of research and still only see a fraction of what you want to see. There's so much you could look at in terms of public opinion, like this issue, that issue, this race, that race - so many detailed, specific follow-up questions you could ask. And in a given survey, there's going to be limitations - you can only ask about so much. We try to do a lot of insightful research, but I'm mindful of the limitations of public opinion research. In the end, you come into every election somewhat unprepared because you don't exactly know what's out there, right?
So that's why what I call big organizing, which is a term that comes out of the Sanders campaign and other efforts - big organizing is this idea that we're going to talk to everybody as often as we can, which is hard because how do you have all those conversations? Well, it involves canvassing, it involves actually going out there and doing neighborhood meetings and doing that organizing - having those discussions with people. It turns out even people who are unhappy with politics want to talk politics when they get the right settings - you got a canvasser, who's very understanding, going to somebody's door, having a half an hour long conversation. People actually feel better after they've had that conversation - they're very appreciative that somebody wants to hear from them. So as a movement, I think we need to go out there and have those conversations with folks. And we need to make sure that if people live in areas that are hard to doorbell, that we're finding other ways to reach them. But that all requires investment - primarily time. Money, too, but primarily time because someone's got to go do that organizing, that outreach work. And they've got to be able to go to the door or go to that other setting where they're going to have that conversation.
So in terms of getting young people plugged in and engaged, I think it's going to be tough. I think there's a lot of distractions in our culture now, it's very hard to get people to decide - yes, I'm going to vote, I'm going to take the time to do that - especially if you live in a state where they've made voting hard, like Georgia. Washington - we're blessed, because voting is easier here than anywhere else in the country. But we see in odd years, it's still hard to get people to vote. That's why we're so big on even-year elections for local governments, because those even-numbered years, more young people come out. But we've just got to have a strategy for mobilizing people. It doesn't just happen on its own. You can't just sit back and go - Oh, well, we'll just hope that it works out. Nope. You don't let events shape you. You go out there and shape the events with a strategy. And so it's very important that as progressives, we don't just let the Biden campaign do the work. We don't just let the Democratic Party do the work and say - Well, they'll figure it out. We all have to be working together to figure out what the strategy is and then implement that strategy, to the extent that we can agree on what that strategy is going to be.
So for those who are not involved in some kind of direct action organization, I would find one - I think that's worth doing. This is a year when democracy is on the line. So getting involved in some way - no matter what the outcome is in November, you're going to feel good that you invested some time in trying to mobilize and turn out young voters and get them to save democracy along with everybody else who's going to be voting. So that's my advice for folks who are listening - find an organization to plug into that's going to do something to help young voters get engaged in this election, turnout and vote, save democracy. Because there's only one way to do that - and that is to reelect President Biden and Vice President Harris, in my view - there's no other outcome that will allow us to make any progress on issues we care about, including trying to bring an end to the violence in the Middle East. What's happening in Gaza is terrible, but that's not going to get better if Donald Trump gets back in.
[00:23:58] Crystal Fincher: Now, I want to talk about research - your polling. Local polling is hard - you hear that from a variety of polling organizations, we see it in results that have been really wonky in the past several years with surprising outcomes in several individual states. Polling on a smaller scale - smaller geographies, smaller communities - is a challenging thing. However, you've managed to do quite well at it. We've seen in your polling in the Seattle City Council elections, which looked straight on. You polled previously the Housing Levy, King County Conservation Futures Levy, Senate races, House races - were right on. And so I just want to talk a little bit about your approach and how you put those together, and why you feel like you're seeing better results locally than some other organizations.
[00:24:54] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, thank you for that. It starts with a rigorous commitment to the scientific method. One of the things that I think people don't understand about public opinion research is anyone can do it. You don't have to be an objective organization to do objective research. You can be subjective - and we are - but your research has to follow the scientific method if it's going to have any value. And what that basically comes down to is neutral questions asked of representative samples - that's the key. And actually, it's very hard to ask neutral questions of representative samples. The question writing part is particularly fraught with difficulty because there are so many ways to write a question that is loaded or biased and to use language that favors the agenda of the asker. Basically, writing a push poll is easy, writing a neutral poll is hard. And we've seen that over and over again, especially when I look at the work of our Republican friends across the aisle - Moore Information, Trafalgar - these firms are just, I can see their work product and I have deep questions about especially what they're not releasing because I know that what they are releasing is only a fraction of what they're actually asking. But when you ask a question - and you look at a group that does put out all of their work, like Future 42, which uses Echelon Insights, you read through their questionnaire and it's - okay, after the first four questions, which are so simple it's hard to get them wrong. After that, you start going to the rest of the questionnaire and it's biased. It's loaded. The questions are favoring conservative frames.
So you're not going to find out what people think if you tell them what to think first - that's one of the cardinal rules that I tell my team all the time - Whatever the topic is, we have to get this question right because we're not going to learn what people think if we don't. You don't want to have worthless data come back. And that really means that you've got to think about - Okay, well, how are we presenting the issue? What are we going to say in the question? And a lot of the times what we'll do is, we'll say - Proponents are saying this and opponents are saying that. So that's one way you can do it. And you have to really go out there and you have to find their words, their frames - so you have to be fair to their perspective. Even if you don't like it, it doesn't matter. As a question writer, you want that perspective represented to the best of its ability, right? So if Rob McKenna has said that the capital gains tax is an income tax - it's an illegal, unconstitutional income tax that will kill jobs and wreck the economy. We're putting that whole thing into our question, because we want people to hear what it is that they're saying. And then we're going to put that up against our best arguments and see what wins. So we've done that and we found that our frames, our arguments beat their arguments. And that's good news. But we only learned that because we actually did a fair question. If we had just said - Oh, well, this is why the capital gains tax is great. What do you think about the capital gains tax? People are going to say it's great. And so we haven't really learned anything other than - yes, people respond to our question prompts in the way that we would want them to. But that doesn't really tell us what people have brought to the table in terms of their own opinions.
So that's part of how we've been successful is - when we do polling, we're not trying to gin up some numbers for a particular cause or a candidate. We're not looking to get numbers that just reinforce the conclusion that we already reached. And I think a lot of consultants jump to conclusions, like at the beginning of a race, they'll say - Well, let me tell you how it's going to be. And our approach is we don't know how it's going to be - let's go out and get some data and see what people are thinking and feeling. And of course, we understand that whatever that data is, it's a snapshot in time and that the race could change. So like with the governor's race, we've been polling that and we're seeing some changes - Bob Ferguson is consolidating support, he's not as well known as people who are on the inside of politics might think he is. Nor is Dave Reichart, for that matter. People know who Jay Inslee is. They know who Joe Biden is. They know the top names in politics, but the attorney general is not the governor, and people don't know the attorney general as well as they know the governor. And they don't know Dave Reichert, as well as they know Jay Inslee either. So we're seeing in our polling, the candidates have an opportunity to introduce themselves to voters. And we know that if we ask a neutral question about anything, again, whether it's the governor's race or another race, then we're going to have hopefully an opportunity to find out where people are.
And then presenting that data in a way that's responsible, not just dumping the numbers out there and letting people jump to their own conclusions about what do the numbers mean. Even if they were responsibly collected, I think responsible publication includes context for those numbers. What do the numbers mean? Why are the numbers the way they are? What's the explanation for that? So when we release a poll finding, we never just put the numbers out there, we never just dump a poll file out there for people to read. We always provide analysis - this is what we think the numbers mean. And you can read the analysis on The Cascadia Advocate - that's the vehicle for all the poll findings to be released. People, when they want to see our polling, we're going to give them an opportunity to really understand what we're thinking when we saw the numbers - Okay, this is our take. And we always tell people in those analyses - We don't know the future, this is suggestive, it's not predictive. And you should expect that there's a possibility that the poll is off. But, I will say in the 10 years we've been doing research polling, we've yet to have our results be contradicted by an election result. And that's just because we write the neutral questions.
And then our pollsters, who I haven't talked about yet, but we work with three different pollsters. And they've all got a strong commitment to responsible fielding - building samples that actually look like the electorate. That's how you get results, too. It's not just the questions are good, but the fielding is appropriate - you're building those representative samples. And then you can hopefully get data that reflects the actual dynamic that's out there. And so when the election then occurs - if the polling has correctly captured the public sentiment that's out there, you should expect to see a correlation. It won't line up exactly. I've had people tell me - Well, your poll was off. The margin was this and your poll said it would be that. I'm like - Polls don't predict, so you shouldn't expect the margins to line up one-to-one or anything like that. But if a poll says such-and-such is ahead of their rival and they then go on to win the election, that's an indication that the poll did understand something about what's going on out there. So that's basically validation in my book. You're never going to get perfect alignment, like the poll has 54% and the candidate gets 54%, and it's off by maybe just a fraction of a decimal or something - that's not going to happen in polling, you don't expect that alignment. So I think that's why we've been successful is that commitment to the scientific method. And we're not going to deviate from that - we're just full steam ahead with that same commitment to excellence.
[00:31:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I really appreciate you explaining that. I do think that is a big reason for why your polls have seemed to accurately capture public sentiment. And I appreciate you talking about - you can be a partisan organization and still poll accurately. In fact, it's really critical that the accuracy is there. I think there's this assumption that - Oh, it's a partisan organization - they just want something to confirm what they already believe, to tell them that what they want to happen is popular. And that is a recipe for disaster in the medium and long-term - that sets you up for thinking you're in a different situation than is realistic. And then you don't win campaigns, you don't win ballot initiatives - you have to accurately understand where the public is in order to do anything with that from a campaign perspective, which is really important. And I do see polls from the Chamber where reading through the poll - and I highly recommend every time there is a poll, especially from news organizations, I will say Cascadia Advocate does excellent poll analysis - but most articles and most publications that I see, I always find different things than are encapsulated in their poll write-up when I read the actual poll. Reading the actual poll is a really illuminating thing - and you can see questions asked in very leading ways, you can see one side's argument is presented and another isn't, or one is misrepresented. And those are really problematic things for a poll. Sometimes people do use polls - if they aren't really looking to get information - just as a marketing tactic. But that becomes pretty apparent when you're reading the poll, when you're seeing - they aren't really asking these questions to get informative answers about what the public believes and why. So I think that's been really illuminating.
Looking forward, what do you plan on tracking? Are you going to be tracking the six initiatives? Are you going to be polling the statewide races? What is your plan for research?
[00:33:13] Andrew Villeneuve: Yes, we're going to be doing all that. The governor's race - we have a commitment to the public that we're going to poll on the governor's race - and no matter what the data is, we're going to release it, that's our commitment. We've polled on the governor's race three times already this cycle. And we're going to do it three to four times again this year. At the end of the cycle, you're going to have gotten six to seven different findings from us - different seasons of data - which will tell the story of the governor's race. How did it start out and where does it kind of end up? When I say end up, I say "kind of" because - of course, the election happens after that last poll. So we're going to have election data soon after that final poll comes out in October and that data will tell us who wins the governor's race. And that's the final word. But until we have that election results, then polling will help us understand what could be happening out there - I say "could," because again, we don't know what is happening until people vote and the election data comes in and then tells us - Okay, this candidate's ahead of that candidate, this is the voices of millions of people. Polls can only give you a peek into what might be happening at the time - that's the best we can do because there's no real way - sometimes people will ask me about sample sizes. This is a fun inside bit of polling. So a lot of people are convinced that the larger a sample size, the better the poll is. Not so. A poll can be perfectly representative if the sample is just 300 or 400 voters - it's not the size of the sample that matters, it's how representative it is. If it reflects the electorate, then it's a good sample. If it is not representative of the electorate, you've got a problem. So you could have 10,000 voters in your sample, which would be huge, right? Nobody has samples that big. But if they're all progressive voters in Seattle, or if they're all Trump voters from somewhere in rural Washington - it's not representative of the electorate and the data's worthless. It can't tell you what's happening in a statewide race.
So we'll be polling the governor's race. We'll be looking at Attorney General, we're going to look at U.S. President, we're going to look at U.S. Senate. We're going to look at basically all the competitive statewide races. In October, I expect that we'll have a poll result for every single statewide race. And there are so many that that's probably going to be the entire poll. We're not even going to be able to ask any policy questions because we're going to have six initiatives, possibly a few State Supreme Court races. We're going to have U.S. President. We're going to have U.S. Senate. We're going to have nine statewide executive department positions. Plus, we're going to have a generic question for Congress and legislature. So that's our poll - the whole poll is already written. I already know what's going to be in the poll because there's so much on the ballot this cycle that there's no room to ask about anything else. That's a lot of poll results to have to release. And it will take us some time to ship them all. We're not going to do it all in one day, that's for sure. Because I think what's responsible is to provide that analysis, as I said. So we're not going to do - Okay, here's the entire poll. Goodbye. Enjoy it. No, we're going to take the time to look at each of the results. And so that probably means it'll take us a whole week to talk about all the different poll results. And people are going to say - Why don't you release everything at once? I want to see it all. Well, because we want to give you the context. We want to give you our view on what's happening so that you understand the background, especially if you're not from here - if you're from another state, you're reading this polling, you want to know who are these people, what are the dynamics in this race, why is such-and-such ahead, what's the theory behind that. That context is going to be really helpful to you as a reader, so we're committed to providing it.
[00:36:27] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And what polling firms do you work with?
[00:36:30] Andrew Villeneuve: So there are three we work with. Public Policy Polling out of North Carolina is the one we started working with first - our relationship goes back over 10 years, and they've done excellent work for us. I'm particularly proud of our 2020 and 2022 polling because those are the two most recent even-year cycles. But in 2020, this was the first time that we went up and down the entire statewide ballot, including State Supreme Court races. And we're the only ones polling on State Supreme Court races. Nobody else does that, I'm especially proud that we do that. Probably this year we're going to poll on them - any that are contested, we'll do at least two rounds of polling - probably May and October. And you mentioned earlier that polling can be tough, especially at the state and local level. And one of the reasons it can be tough is because a lot of people will tell you they're not sure who they're voting for. If the race isn't partisan, then you can have an enormous number of people who say they're not sure - sometimes over 80%. And that can make it very difficult. But you still learn something when you ask people about their opinions - because you'll find out people's familiarity with the candidates, and you will also discover if there's been a change. So like in 2020, we said - Okay, we've learned that no one else polls State Supreme Court races, so let's poll them repeatedly because then at least we'll have data of our own to compare to from different seasons. So in May, we polled them and then we polled them again in October. And that was really valuable to have that comparison and to see just little small changes. What we saw was the incumbent justices like Raquel Montoya-Lewis - they picked up a little bit of support, so that suggested they were actually getting some awareness of their candidacies before the voters. And that was illuminating - so there weren't many people who really knew much about these candidates, but still there were a small number who had heard something and had decided how they were going to vote. And that was an indicator. And that indicator proved to be accurate. It accurately foreshadowed what really did happen in the election. So we're committed to doing that again. And we believe that it's crucially important that people have some data in those races. If you're an observer, data that gives you some inkling of what's going to happen in a race that's so far down-ballot that nobody else is really, frankly, writing about it - I mean, that's gold. These are the things that I wanted back in the day when we weren't doing all this polling. So I've always been of the mind that if it doesn't exist and you really want it, you should create it if you think it's really needed.
The other companies we work with - Change Research does a lot of our local polling. They've been working with us in Seattle and Spokane, and they've worked with us in Snohomish County and Pierce County. We've polled all the major counties with them, and we just love working with them. They're great. And then our third pollster is Civiqs. They are more recent on the scene. They're not as well-established as Public Policy Polling - they're a newer company, but they do great work. Their polling in the Senate race last cycle with Patty Murray and Tiffany Smiley - they were the ones who had Murray really way out there ahead and Smiley well behind. When I saw that work - they were dedicated to putting out this really great polling, said - Well, we need to add them to our group of trusted pollsters because they've proved they can do great work. So we've got those three now, and I'm not averse to working with other pollsters that have proved themselves as well. But every pollster we work with has to be committed to the scientific method. We will not accept any work that is done contrary to that method because that will yield worthless data. We don't want to pay for data that doesn't have any value, that isn't collected transparently and with integrity. We love working with all of our pollsters and we're excited to do good work with them this cycle.
[00:39:50] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I appreciate that breakdown. I appreciate something you said earlier, particularly as a political consultant. There are several consultants - lots industry-wide, it's an issue - where they have preconceived notions of what's going on and they are looking for confirmation, or they decide that they know what the dimensions of a race are and why people are aligned on certain sides and sometimes stick hard and fast to that. There's a different approach. You can wait and see what the information is. Certainly, we have our theories and ideas, but we learn so much more by actually looking at the data, waiting on the data, not being so devoted or tied to a specific theory or something that must happen. If you leave yourself open to say - I think this might be happening, I'm seeing something happen, I think these could be reasons why - test that, understand the data and research, and see how it turns out. And one thing you mentioned - I think it's particularly illuminating for people who do that - any race, most races, especially if it's not someone at the top of the ticket, is going to have a lot of people who are unfamiliar with the people involved. There are going to be a lot of people who are undecided - just not familiar with an issue, not familiar with a candidate. But when you do poll over time like you do, and when you do see how those people who were initially undecided then wind up making a decision, how they align on those - that can tell you a lot about why people are favoring something or another, who messages are landing with, what is effective and what's not effective. So even if you aren't getting specific data of someone saying - I don't know - polling over time and then once they do figure that out, or sometimes they just end up not voting, right? All of that information is valuable in putting together a picture for why people believe the things that they believe, why people are favoring certain candidates or policies, and how that might translate to other issues or races. So appreciate the repeated polling.
Now, I do want to ask you - as someone who does work with polling organizations and hearing a number of nonprofits, other 501(c)(4)s, be interested in that space - what advice would you give to organizations who are potentially interested in working with a pollster to field polls of their own?
[00:42:04] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, I guess the top advice I'd give is go seek out people who do it regularly. NPI is always happy to help people find out how we can answer our research objectives. Maybe you're trying to pass a bill in the legislature, maybe you'd like to get a ballot measure passed, maybe you're working on a policy that you think will come to fruition in 10 years and you want to get some initial data - we're happy to help. And of course, you can just go approach a pollster. But in our experience, most pollsters - their goal is to do the fielding and their goal is to get the project turned around and back to you. And then they move on to their next project because that's the polling business. Pollsters specialize in fielding and they do polls every week. They can't really linger on a project for six months and be - Well, we'll help you analyze that data. Their job is to give you the data, not necessarily to help you make sense of the data. Of course, they will try, in a basic sense, to help you make sense of it. If you are like - Well, I don't understand this crosstab, or I don't understand this results, or can you help me with this? - they'll do that. They'll answer all your questions to the best they can. But what is, I think, missing there is the guide. The pollster is going to do the fielding to the best of their ability. But can they actually guide you through all steps of the process? Some pollsters do specialize in providing more of that guidance, but they also charge a lot more. If you want that guidance, if you want that expert hand to assist you at all stages - not just writing the survey, but also deciphering what comes back - you're going to pay more. Lake Research Partners, FM3, other pollsters I can think of - that's their model. They do excellent work. I love them. We don't work with those pollsters as much because we're able to bring a lot of our own expertise to the table. So we work with pollsters that primarily do a really good job of fielding, but they're going to let us design the questionnaire because we want to do that. Of course, we'll take their input and counsel, but we'd like to write our own questionnaires. And so we work with pollsters that are comfortable with that arrangement. But if you're a nonprofit who needs help writing the questionnaire, then going with a firm like Lake Research Partners is going to be a great idea. But you are going to pay a minimum probably of $25,000 for that project. And you can expect to pay as much as $50,000 or more for that assistance and that data.
Research - it's something that can be really expensive to collect. So for those who love our research, we do accept donations to keep it going. You can donate at NPI's website. We do put the money that people donate right into our polling, so people do have that ability to support our research budget directly. And we actually use a donation processing platform that has no credit card fees, so the processing platform eats the fees. And the reason they can do that is because people can leave tips for the processor. So regardless of whether you leave a tip or not, though, we get 100%. So it's not quite the same as - well, click here to pay the nonprofit's credit card fees. You can actually just donate. And whether or not you tip or not, we're going to get 100%. And that's very innovative - that's the kind of thing that NPI does. We look for ways to make sure that we're running the most fiscally responsible nonprofit that we can. We try to be very cost-conscious. So when we do an event, it's usually in a public space. We usually source the food ourselves - we find a restaurant that will do a really great job for us, a local restaurant that we want to do business with, and then we bring them in to do the food in a public space. And that allows us to keep the costs under control of that event. When we do a fundraiser, a lot of that money can then go right into our research polling. So if you come to our spring fundraising gala - you buy a ticket - most of your ticket's actually going to go into research and advocacy. It's not going to go into event costs. And that's not something that every nonprofit can say. So for those nonprofits that want to learn - how do we do it? How do we keep the costs in check? How do we practice research responsibly? We're happy to talk and provide advice and guidance. And whether or not you want to take advantage of what our expertise is and work with us on a project, or whether you want to do something yourself - we can help. We can provide you at least with the leads that you need to get started and do your work. But if you are going to be doing research and you haven't done it before, and you're going to work with a pollster and you're expecting them to provide a complete package for you - just be prepared to pay well out of the five figures.
[00:46:04] Crystal Fincher: Right. That expertise is valuable. And that is reflected in some of those costs, as you mentioned.
Now, I do want to talk about your work this legislative session. The session recently started and there's a lot on deck. I want to start off talking about the even-year elections bill. What is that and why does it matter?
[00:46:27] Andrew Villeneuve: So this is a bill that would let localities switch their elections to even years when turnout is higher and more diverse. There's two versions of the bill - one that NPI wrote is in the Senate, and it just covers cities and towns. And the other one, which is based on the one we wrote and is sponsored by our friend Mia Gregerson - which we also support, we support them both - covers a lot more local government. So it's cities and towns, but then it's also ports and school boards and so on. And basically what we're trying to do is we're trying to liberate these important local elections from the curse of super low, not diverse turnout. So we know that in odd years, turnout's been declining - in fact, last year, 2023, we set a record for the worst voter turnout in Washington state history, around 36%. We're getting into special election territory with our odd year turnouts. So that means that in a special election, the turnout's going to be somewhere between like 25% and 35%. Well, regular election turnout in odd years is now approaching that special election average, which is not good. And so to liberate localities from that problem of having their leaders chosen by the few instead of the many, we want to let localities switch into even years - at their option. We're not making them. So we could propose a bill that would make it mandatory. And New York State is actually switching a lot of their localities to even years and it's not an option, as I understand their legislation.
But our legislation makes it optional. So that way we could do some pilots to see how it would work here in Washington state. Because there's a lot of folks in the election community who are real skittish about this. Because we've had a system in place for 50 years where local governments go in odd-numbered years for the most part - there's some exceptions, which I'll mention in a second - and then the state and federal is in even years. And they're comfortable with this arrangement. It provides continuity and consistency - every year there's going to be work for our election staff to do. And people should get into the habit of voting every year - I think the auditors are in love with this bifurcated system. And the problem is the voters are not. And so the old saying is, You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Well, we can schedule the election in the odd-numbered year, but that doesn't mean people are going to vote then. And I think it's wrong to have - in my city, I look at Redmond's turnout percentages, and it's true for other cities too, like Seattle - you can look at the turnout and say, Well, 37% of the voters are picking who's the mayor of our city? I don't like that. I want the mayor being chosen by like 60% to 80% of the voters. And that's what would happen if that election was being held one year later or earlier. It just doesn't make sense that we're having these elections at times when most people aren't voting. We know that if we move them to an even-numbered year, people will vote in them. There are some folks who say - Well, they're down-ballot, so no one's going to vote in them. Not true. When you look at data from other states, or when you look at data from here - because sometimes we have a special election. One of the things you were talking about earlier is the governor's race. But Seattle's actually going to have a special city council election this year - it's an even-numbered year, and there's going to be a city council election right there on the ballot. And that election - you and I can go over the data after it comes back, but I'm willing to say right now, even though I told you I don't like predictions, but I'm willing to tell you, I think the turnout in that city council election is going to blow the doors off of the regular turnout for that same position three years ago. It's going to be like twice as much or something in that territory. And that's because it's a special election in an even-numbered year. And it will be way down the ballot. People will vote for it. So what that shows is that people are still going to keep voting, even after they get past president and governor and these higher-profile positions - they're going to keep going. They're going to keep voting. And that's the benefit of local elections moving over - is they get to ride the coattails of those state and federal offices.
And we will hear, of course - people say, Well, you're going to kill local issues. You're going to bury local issues because you're having these elections at the same time as state and federal. So they're going to get drowned or swamped out. And actually, I love paradoxes. And one of the things that's a real paradox in politics is - you might think local issues just can't compete with state and federal. Oh, no. Local issues do very well when they're in the mix. Why is that? Because first of all - if people are not paying attention to begin with, it takes an enormous amount of energy just to get them to care about anything. So if you're a canvasser in Kent and nobody knows there's an election, nobody knows. So you're going door-to-door and you're like - Well, have you voted in the election? What election? What are you talking about? Okay. It's a lot harder to get people to care about the election when they don't know about it and they're not interested and they think it's an off-year. And I hate that term "off-year," by the way. Don't use it, but it's out there. It's used all the time, so people think - Oh, it doesn't matter. My vote doesn't matter. It's an off-year. Well, it's not. Every year is an on-year - but people hear that it's an off-year, so they think it doesn't matter. So they don't vote. And then they're told at the door maybe - if somebody comes to their door, which may or may not happen - but if someone does, they get told, Well, it does matter - but does that conversation actually move them to care? Whereas in an even year, that same person comes to their door - they already know there's going to be an election, they're already primed to vote. So now you're just trying to get them to take action in a race where they're already going to vote - they just need to make sure that when they get to that bottom of the ballot, they're going to check for a particular candidate. So as a canvasser, that makes your life so much easier.
And people can still do - we've heard all about, Well, TV ads are going to cost more and radio is going to cost more. Well, that might be true. But local candidates need to be doorbelling anyway. So doorbelling is not going to cost more in an even-numbered year - it's going to be the same price. You're not going to have to worry about that. It might cost a little more to print your literature because you'll be competing with more campaigns. But there are trade-offs, which is if you're a local candidate, you're running for Teresa Mosqueda's council seat that she's given up because she went to the County Council - well, you can go out and campaign with other endorsed candidates, like your legislative candidates. You'll be able to doorbell with them if you want, because they're going to have to doorbell too. So there's opportunities to do joint campaigning that haven't existed before. And you mentioned earlier that King County is moving to even years as a result of our charter amendment. So even if our legislation doesn't pass at the state level for cities and towns and other local governments, we're still going to get data back from the county starting in 2026, because voters have signed off on that already. And I'm convinced that what we're going to see is that folks like Claudia Balducci are going to be running for a four-year term in 2026, and they're going to find all these opportunities to go out and campaign with people. And the turnout in their districts and countywide is going to be much bigger than what they've seen in the past. And this is an opportunity to get people connected to King County government who don't even know that it really is there. So it's very exciting - that's what our bill does is it gives localities the option. They can either do it through ballot measure or they can do it councilmanically if they want. If they do it councilmanically, they have to hold several hearings spaced 30 days apart so that people know that it's happening. So we don't want anybody being surprised by such a change.
The way I see it - if this bill passes, let's say Seattle wanted to do it - if they were prepared, they could turn around a charter amendment to the people of Seattle in time for the November general election. Because they have to change their charter - they can't just pass an ordinance in Seattle, because that's a first-class city. So if we pass our bill, it gets signed into law in March or April, then by June it's in effect. And then the City of Seattle can use that law - they could propose a charter amendment and then submit it by August, turn it around. The vote happens in November. By 2025 - by this time next year - Seattle could, in a best case scenario, if they wanted, they could be starting their transition to even-year elections. But first, our bill would have to pass - either the Senate version or the House version, doesn't matter. One of them has to pass. And that has to get signed into law. Then the city council has to act. And my understanding is that the mayor, Bruce Harrell, is actually interested in this - he believes this is something that is worth doing, is what I've heard. So if that's true and he's willing to ask the council to do this, then this is something we could get out of this council. And I would love to see that. Let the voters decide. Let Seattle decide on even-year elections. Let's give the people the choice, in this presidential year, to decide if this is something that they want - that is an opportunity if our bill passes.
[00:54:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And it's really encouraging to hear that Mayor Harrell is interested in this - certainly that would make it much more possible for the City to do on its own. If people do want to get involved in supporting this legislation, how can they do that?
[00:54:38] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, we have a website specifically for this cause - evenyears.org - the word "even" and the word "years" .org. That's a clearinghouse where you can find out about the bill. There's also some national data there. There's academic studies if you want to read - what does the literature say about even-year elections? We've got it all packaged there. We've talked to the leading experts on this. The thing that makes me passionate about even-year elections - there's no other reform that increases voter turnout and diversifies voter turnout that's available to us. Everything that you can do, everything else - whether it's automatic voter registration, which we've done, or prepaid postage, which we've done, or same-day voter registration, which we've done - you go down the list, there's a lot of things we've done. And nothing moves the needle for local elections like timing changes. If you put these local elections in even years, the number of voters that come into the universe is astronomical. And I understand if you're a consultant, it might be upsetting to think that - well, it's like with the auditor's perspective - Some of our work is going to disappear in the odd years because it's going to go to the even years. Well, not necessarily. Remember, in the odd years, you have the opportunity to prepare for the even years. So there's still work to be done. There's still recruiting you can do. Imagine having more of a break in between elections. Imagine having more time to decompress, get away from the rat race, think about who you want to have run, do some really more thoughtful recruiting. There are some doors that are going to open here if we do this. And so I want people to understand - if you're working politics, this is a change, but it's not a change that is going to destroy your business if you're a consultant. It's not a change that's going to wreak havoc on everything. You're going to be able to adapt. And our legislation doesn't allow local governments to move in one day - they have to do it over a span of years. So you're going to have plenty of time to prepare for the transition and adapt. It's not going to be the end of the world.
[00:56:22] Crystal Fincher: Certainly not the end of the world - I have heard that from other consultants. But certainly I can tell you - just working in California - it is not an issue. It's not a problem. Local races share the ballot with other races in even years - in Los Angeles, for example. And it has opened up opportunity. It has opened up possibility. It has helped with recruiting. It has helped with policy. It's helped with all those other things. And that spurs more interest, it spurs more engagement, which spurs more opportunity. And so this is something that I think consultants are happy with in California. But as someone who is primarily interested in making sure we are representing communities and serving them to the best of our ability - having more people participate in the shaping of their own community is a positive thing, especially when we're seeing so many threats to our system. Having more people engaged in what happens and in the people who are in their local government and their community only helps this issue. So certainly want to see this succeed and we'll be following this for the remainder of the session. And with that, I thank you so much for joining me today, Andrew Villeneuve, founder of the Northwest Progressive Institute. Thank you so much for all of the information that you shared with us today.
[00:57:38] Andrew Villeneuve: You're welcome. I was glad to spend an hour with you and talk about what's happening. We have a State House bill tracker if you're interested in other things that are also moving in the State House. On our website - nwprogressive.org - there's tabs for research and advocacy. Research will show you our latest poll findings. Advocacy is going to show you our State House bill tracker, our endorsements, our other advocacy work. Check that out if you would like to see what we're up to, and get involved, and figure out what you want to plug into.
[00:58:05] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Thank you so much. We will include all of that in our episode notes for your easy reference and we'll pay attention to everything as it unfolds this year. Thanks so much.
[00:58:16] Andrew Villeneuve: Definitely. Thanks.
[00:58:17] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattle Times politics and communities reporter, Daniel Beekman!
Crystal and Daniel discuss the unsurprising Seattle City Council vacancy appointment and what we might see from a business-backed, Harrell-picked legislative body as they navigate a hiring freeze, a large budget deficit, and upcoming important policy decisions. Next, they turn to the Office of Police Accountability’s conclusion that SPOG Vice President Auderer’s comments about Jaahnavi Kandula’s death were “derogatory, contemptuous, and inhumane” and speculate how Chief Diaz and Mayor Harrell will handle disciplinary action.
The conversation then covers Daniel’s recent story about a Snohomish County school’s travails with a neighboring gravel yard and seemingly unconcerned local government. Finally, in the wake of the City of Seattle settling with 2020 protesters for $10 million, Crystal and Daniel wonder whether there will be any meaningful change in how the Seattle Police Department responds to protests.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Daniel Beekman, at @DBeekman.
Resources
The Raise the Wage Renton Campaign with Maria Abando and Renton City Councilmember Carmen Rivera from Hacks & Wonks
“In "Foregone Conclusion," Council Appoints Tanya Woo to Citywide Position” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“Total Corporate Takeover of Council Now Complete” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
“Harrell Issues Hiring Freeze as New Council Members Vow to "Audit the Budget"” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“SPD cop’s comments on Jaahnavi Kandula’s death were ‘inhumane,’ biased, watchdogs say” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times
“Snohomish County school seeks relief from gravel yard sited next door” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times
“City of Seattle settles BLM protesters’ lawsuit for $10 million” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
If you missed our Tuesday topical show, I chatted with Renton City Councilmember Carmen Rivera and Raise the Wage Renton Steering Committee member Maria Abando to learn more about the citizen initiative to raise Renton's minimum wage. Ballots got mailed out this week, so keep an eye on that and make sure all your friends and family in Renton vote by February 13th.
Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Seattle Times politics and communities reporter, Daniel Beekman.
[00:01:28] Daniel Beekman: Thanks for having me on.
[00:01:30] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, there is a good amount of news to discuss this week. Starting off, Seattle got a new councilmember. Tanya Woo was appointed by the council to fill the vacancy created by Teresa Mosqueda's election to the King County Council. What was the lead up? What happened here? How did this happen?
[00:01:53] Daniel Beekman: Well, it was an interesting situation where so soon after actual elections, we had this appointment process for the City Council because Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda jumped to the King County Council in the same election that elected an almost all-new Seattle City Council, so there's some kind of whiplash there with so much change so quickly. And we saw the new-look City Council appoint someone who narrowly lost in November, which was interesting to see. They sort of had an option of, in theory, choosing someone who fit the profile politically of Teresa Mosqueda, the outgoing councilmember, to fill that citywide seat, or of choosing someone who had just run, or going a whole other direction. And there was a lot of politicking ahead of the appointment. And I think that the new City Council President Sara Nelson said we're not doing anything else until we have this appointment. So we're not going to get down to actual business, which to some extent makes some sense in that you want to sort of have everything set before you start doing the work. On the other hand, it sort of laid down a marker of - this is our first new thing that we're doing as a city council. It's going to be significant, which it is - choosing someone to represent the whole city, at least until November, late November when the election results get certified. But yeah, it was interesting. What did you make of it? Were you surprised that they picked Tanya Woo?
[00:03:32] Crystal Fincher: I was not surprised at all. In fact, this seemed like it was a foregone conclusion for quite some time. Part of this was telegraphed publicly - it looks like with about a week before, there was a letter from Tim Ceis - who was a former consultant to Bruce Harrell, may currently be a consultant to Bruce Harrell, and business lobbyist - who had sent a letter to some of his allies talking about their success with the independent expenditure effort, referring to the money that they spent in support of electing candidates in this last election in Seattle, which was very successful for them. And saying that they had the right to voice their opinion and state that they wanted Tanya Woo picked. They named her by name and said - She is our person, you should pick her. Also telegraphed from a prior meeting where they narrowed down and selected the finalists where several councilmembers from the dais said - Since someone else already picked Tanya Woo, I'll go with a different person. So it looked like she was the favorite anyway. I think that the relationship that had been established between them was clear. They were all similarly ideologically aligned. They spent a lot of time together during the campaign trail.
But as you said, it was a controversial pick because Tanya Woo was just unsuccessful in that election and just lost to Tammy Morales. And so having a portion of the City opt not to have Tanya Woo represent them to vote for Tammy Morales - and I personally am not someone who feels that someone who lost an election should never be appointed, but I do think that the will of the voters does make a difference here. If Tanya would have had similar ideological preferences to Tammy Morales and lost, you could say - Well, they're saying similar things. The voters seem like they would be fine, too. They didn't just reject this. This seems like it could be a pick that does represent what Seattle residents feel best represents them. This is not that case, and so we will see how this turns out. But there's been a shift in ideology on the council now.
Interestingly with this, it's not like even if they didn't go with Tanya Woo, the majority of the council wouldn't still be in the same place. But this provides almost an extra insurance vote for them, as they consider the things that are facing the city, whether it's a budget deficit - Sara Nelson already signaling a desire to cut business taxes. They're going through an audit - they're saying right now - with the City and seeing where they can cut spending basically to address this $250+ million dollar deficit that's coming up that may be even bigger because they're also signaling that they want to further increase the police budget. So we'll see how this turns out, but it's going to be really interesting to see them negotiate the challenges that are facing them. What do you think this sets up for the council over the year?
[00:06:23] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, it was interesting. I haven't been the reporter covering most of this in the last couple of weeks for us. And going forward, it'll be my coworker, David Kroman, who is doing a great job and will do a great job. But I did just dip in for a minute when the new councilmembers were sworn in - This was early this month. And I remember that Councilmember Tammy Morales made it a point in that swearing in, getting started meeting - and talking about this appointment that they had to make - of mentioning some of the big ticket items and running down the list of what this year might look like. And it was striking to think about what they have coming up. There's a Comprehensive Plan update due by the end of this year, which sounds kind of wonky, but is important. It's basically redefining the growth strategy for the city for the next 20 years. There's a transportation property tax levy up for renewal. There's this potential budget gap that you mentioned. And there's the issue of the contract for the police officers union due. So those are some big ticket things all in this year. And I think it may be the budget, like you were mentioning, that turns out to be the one that's the hottest politically with this new group and where you sort of see the imprint of the new politics to the extent that it is a shift. But I'm sure other things will crop up as they always do.
[00:07:55] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, we will continue to pay attention to what happens with this council. Also, because this has been an appointment, this person who did get appointed has to stand for election in the very next election - they don't serve the full term after an appointment. So this seat will be on the ballot in November 2024. So that is going to be an interesting dynamic. Robert Cruidkshank talked about last week - this is going to be interesting to see. Given how there was controversy surrounding this appointment, how is that going to impact Tanya Woo, who is assumed to be running for this seat? And how many other people we see who applied for this appointment are also going to be on the ballot? Is anyone new going to be there? So certainly a lot to pay attention to politically here.
[00:08:40] Daniel Beekman: I was just curious to know what you thought about that, because I listened to what Robert was saying, listened to your show last week with him - and I think he was saying that he thought the new guard on the City Council is maybe overestimating their political momentum. And that the way this appointment process happened with Tanya Woo being backed by the independent expenditure sort of business types, there could be a backlash in November, which I could kind of imagine in the sense that people don't love the idea of behind the scenes - big business picking their leaders. And it's in a presidential election year, so that could factor into things. But also Councilmember Woo now obviously has support and name recognition and all that and will benefit from being there at City Hall. And support not just from business leaders, obviously. And so I'm curious to know what you think - I understand where he was coming from when he was making that backlash prediction, but I'm not so sure about it. What do you expect? Do you think it'll hurt or help her or what?
[00:09:46] Crystal Fincher: It could hurt. The potential is there. And it really depends on how things play out, I think, with the budget, primarily - with some of the real visible issues that they're going to be dealing with this year. I do think that it was notable and novel to have Tim Ceis send out that letter. Now, I don't think that penetrated immediately to the general public. I don't think 80% of people are aware that Tim Ceis sent any communication, or who Tim Ceis is realistically. Kind of same with how many people are really paying attention to the City Council right now. But as you hear these things being talked about, they do know that Tanya Woo lost. And this did make broad news - people are getting news alerts about it. And it's a name that they wouldn't expect to be there. So it's kind of like - Huh, that's different. And didn't she just lose? - which I think is an odd thing.
I do think that there has been a - you could characterize it as brazen - that business has a big voice here and that there is a close alignment. And whether or not you view it as them being in the pocket or being a puppet of big business, or that they're just aligned and view it as an extremely important constituency that they're prioritizing that there does seem to be a much closer alignment there. And Seattle voters have explicitly rejected that before. They are uncomfortable when it comes to corporate control. Seattle residents are taxing themselves to institute a small property tax for the Democracy Voucher program. And I really do agree with Robert's point about Seattle voters being uncomfortable with austerity - cutting services is just not what Seattle residents are necessarily comfortable with. And Seattle, to a greater degree than just about any other city in this state, prioritizes services for its residents - those that cost - and they want library services, they want housing provided, they want these different things. Now they want action and they want to see improvement on the ground on these issues, but they don't expect an absence of these services or - Okay, we're just wholesale slashing programs and services that you've been used to and that Seattle is known for providing.
So I do think that a number of these issues would be easier for them to run on, for them to implement had they mentioned that while they were running for election. But I think the other complication is while they were campaigning, they bent over backwards - these candidates that won, for the most part - to not talk about - Okay, there's a big budget deficit. What would you cut if you're not going to raise revenue? Where do you find revenue to provide more money for more police? And that's a conversation that many of them didn't want to have. I think Bob Kettle was probably the one who most explicitly talked about that. A few just didn't. A few threw out ideas like - Well, we need to find out what's happening with the City. But there wasn't anyone who said - You know what, we are going to be cutting programs. We are going to be cutting services. We are going to be providing business tax breaks. Not one said that one. So that's going to be interesting to see - in a deficit, when they're cutting services for residents and then seeing tax breaks for businesses, how that's going to fly.
[00:13:02] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, I think that it's not surprising or out of bounds for the new councilmembers and the new council president to feel like they have a kind of mandate. And I think voters can feel to some extent like they were installed in office being business-friendly candidates, and the voters knew that - that's not a total surprise. And I think it's understandable that they would say - OK, well, we got put here, this is who we are, and we're going to try to do what we want to do. We'll have to see how the budget actually plays out and the deficit, because there can be updated forecasts and new money comes in - and it's hard to know what that will look like. But I do think what you mentioned about - if there start being cuts to libraries, that might not be a politically savvy thing in Seattle - hands off our library. So I think to that extent, that's where the rubber could meet the road to see how much political juice folks have, if that's the direction it goes. I can see both angles here.
[00:14:05] Crystal Fincher: A lot is still up the air. Interestingly, it wasn't a unanimous vote by the council. One or two votes for this appointment - Joy Hollingsworth, Tammy Morales, and one other councilmember -
[00:14:18] Daniel Beekman: Dan Strauss.
[00:14:19] Crystal Fincher: Dan Strauss, that's right - did not have Tanya Woo as their choice. So there was some difference. So we'll see how these alliances play out. Even though there are ideological differences, councilmembers may still find things that they share, issues that they want to pursue - maybe on not the big headline issues, but other ones. And how those relationships build and progress - maybe that can provide some hope for how things play out with the City.
Also, speaking of the budget, Mayor Bruce Harrell just announced a hiring freeze. As the new council sets out on their quest to audit the budget, Harrell instituted a hiring freeze across all City departments except police, fire and the 911 response division known as the CARE Department. PubliCola covered this - everybody covered this - but this is going to be a significant freeze. Certainly not the first freeze. Hiring freezes are not unprecedented - in fact, with big budget deficits, we have seen this before. It'll be interesting to see how this results and how much money this could potentially save. What do you see? Do you think a hiring freeze makes sense at this point in time?
[00:15:30] Daniel Beekman: I wouldn't weigh in on whether it makes sense or not. It's interesting to see. And obviously, the idea is that we'll save some money leading into the budget season and maybe make some decisions easier, or get rid of some of the hard decisions that might otherwise be there. But also, it's a political signal - I would assume - to say, this is the situation we're in. This is really serious, and we're going to have to make some tough calls coming down the line. And the idea of exempting these public safety positions from that also sends a signal. Again - hiring freeze is one thing, cutting services is another thing - and if it starts to blur into cutting as the year goes on, then that's where you could imagine the average voter starting to get concerned. So it'll be interesting to see how it evolves and also how the relationship between the mayor and this new city council evolves too on something like this, as councilmembers get pressure from various advocacy groups or stakeholders with the budget - and employees - and as the mayor does too. Do they work in lockstep together - the mayor and the council, or the council majority to the extent that there is a clear one - or do they start playing off each other. I'm really curious to see how Mayor Harrell handles the new council - does he see himself as the leader, or is he going to play off what they're doing and position himself as different from whatever tack they're taking. And this hiring freeze and how it continues to play out could start to show what that relationship might be, I think.
[00:17:09] Crystal Fincher: That is going to be interesting to watch. This hiring freeze was not a surprise to me. Again, it's not unprecedented. The City is facing a very serious budget deficit with some major structural issues. Over the years, there have been several short-term, or shorter-term, sources of funds that have been used to plug holes, get us through some challenging times - and that's all coming to roost now. There are several needs for permanent funding that don't currently have permanent funding sources attached. Also, it's going to be interesting to see what they end up doing with the JumpStart Tax and the revenues from that. That certainly has been dedicated to a number of issues that have provided some very important services to people who need housing assistance, small business assistance, eviction assistance - just really plugging some of the real critical gaps for folks and businesses in the city. But this is being eyed as a source of revenue for some of the other priorities or things that they're looking to shift to. And they have signaled that that may be a source of revenue that they look to divert or repurpose.
And you're right - how the relationship develops between the mayor and council is going to be interesting to watch, especially since Bruce Harrell played a big role in recruiting and helping to elect these councilmembers - the majority who were elected, the new ones. He had talked about for a while, other people had talked about - Well, there needs to be more alignment between the mayor and council to get things done. Bruce talked about he wanted a council that would partner with him and that was loyal to him, really. And he has that now. And so from that perspective - okay, the barriers that you said that you had to being able to move forward on the priorities that you've set forth have seemingly been removed. So now we can expect to see, or we should expect to see, action on some of the priorities that have seemingly lagged or that there hasn't been as much progress on over the past two years since he took office. So it's going to be interesting to see what they set as an agenda, how aggressive they are with addressing priorities that residents have had when it comes to public safety - making everyone safer in the city, which they are taking steps to do. And some of the things that they've talked about with the CARE Department that is now rolling out a co-response kind of partial model for some mental health calls. Tammy Morales did make a point in some of her remarks to remind the colleagues that Bruce Harrell is not their boss. They don't work for him. They are partners with him. He's a colleague. He isn't a superior. And so it'll be interesting to see if - on the flip side, they view themselves as a check to some things that may come out of the mayor's office. We'll see how that turns out. It looks like there is broad alignment right now and a culture of positivity that they're trying to enforce - wanting to not have any negative comments, to get along and be really collegial. And we'll see if that results in some significant progress on homelessness, on public safety, on economic development, on just help for the people who need it most in the city.
[00:20:25] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, I think you're right that - in terms of the mayor, he's halfway through his term now and now has this friendly city council. So yeah, you would think that now would be the time to do the things that he promised to do on the campaign trail and that people want to see City Hall accomplish. So what are those things? It'll be interesting to see what comes out of his office this year. Is it just going to be taking care of those must-dos? We talked about the Comp Plan and Transportation Levy renewal and the budget. Or is there something more proactive that's going to come from his office on housing and homelessness? The voters just passed a new Housing Levy last year. But yeah, what's going to come out of his office - if anything - that's a big ticket item this year now that, like you said, in theory, there shouldn't be any barriers to him getting done what he wants to get done.
[00:21:18] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I also want to talk about news this week about the comment that we heard from an SPD police officer mocking, really, Jaahnavi Kandula’s death - she was killed by a police officer who was responding to a call - killed in a crosswalk, hit by his cruiser while he was driving it. And those comments made international news for how just grotesque and callous they were. I don't think anyone, besides perhaps the police union, is arguing that they weren't absolutely detestable. But it's been quite some time, but there was just an Office of Police Accountability finding at a disciplinary hearing on Tuesday where they found that the vice president of Seattle's police union acted unprofessionally and showed bias when he made callous comments downplaying the death of Jaahnavi Kandula. What did you think of this finding and this incident?
[00:22:24] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, well, I don't think it's surprising that the watchdog agency, the OPA, would come down with this finding, although I don't think they released what their recommendations for discipline were - it just goes, they sent it to the police chief, Adrian Diaz, for him to decide whether he wants to concur with those unknown recommendations for discipline or he has to justify doing something else. So yeah, I don't think it's surprising that the OPA would come down on it this way, given what their role is as a watchdog agency and given what happened and all the uproar locally, nationally, internationally. I think the big question is what the police chief is going to do and what the mayor, his boss, is going to do. It seems like a major moment for, again - what is the relationship between the mayor and the police chief and the police union? We'll be waiting to see what happens. And a little bit interested that - I could imagine a world in which the police chief and the mayor, knowing that this recommendation was coming down from the OPA, would get their ducks in a row. Let's say, if they were sure they were going to concur - this is kind of speculation - but if they were sure they were going to concur with the recommendations and kind of be ready right away to say - Yes, we agree with this and here's the action we're taking now, boom. And the fact that that didn't happen concurrently with this coming out from the OPA and that the police chief apparently is taking time to take a look at it is interesting. And then, of course, there's the ongoing investigation into the incident itself and the officer who was involved in the fatal collision. So that's a whole other thing that's still waiting out there as well, and whether he - what kind of consequences he might face.
[00:24:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I think that's where the rubber is really going to hit the road here is - so what are you going to do about it? And like you said, the OPA investigator did not make his finding public. The police chief will have to decide whether he's going to fire this officer, whether he's going to discipline him in any way. But that's going to be really interesting to see, especially in an environment where they are really supportive of police - they do have plans to hire more officers - they are trying to signal it's a new day in our relationship with the police department. At the same time, the mayor has at least given lip service - and I think some of the other new councilmembers have - saying that, But we do want to take accountability seriously. This looks to be perhaps their first test of this under the new council. And especially with something that there doesn't seem to be much ambiguity on where the general public is on this - it is pretty detestable. And even in the findings from the OPA director, it was pretty stark what they said. They said his comments were "derogatory, contemptuous, and inhumane" - that's a quote from Betts' summary. Said - "For many, it confirmed, fairly or not, beliefs that some officers devalue and conceal perverse views about community members." This is not something where it's anywhere close to acceptable. It said the investigators concluded that his comments did in fact violate SPD policies - that the department prohibits behavior that undermines public trust, including any language that is derogatory, contentious, or disrespectful towards any person. The policy also prohibits prejudicial or derogatory language about someone's discernible personal characteristics, such as age. They directly violated those, and at a time where I think everyone acknowledges there needs to be trust rebuilt between the police department and the community - that those are really serious violations. And if we're serious about creating a culture that is different than this, then can this remain in the police department? So a decision coming up that hopefully - I certainly would hope - that they find this is not compatible with the police department or its culture. But we'll see how this turns out.
[00:26:33] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, and I guess what raises the stakes - and of course the stakes are so high for the family involved and all of that. But what also raises the stakes here for the city is that this isn't just any police officer, but this person is vice president in the police officers' union, SPOG, and the guild. So right up at the top of the officer hierarchy and embedded in the culture of the force.
[00:27:01] Crystal Fincher: Now, I do want to talk about a story that you wrote this week that I think is really important to cover. It's about a school in Snohomish County seeking some relief from a gravel yard sited next door. What is happening here and who's being impacted?
[00:27:20] Daniel Beekman: Sure. This is an interesting one. So basically what's happening - this is an elementary school in the Mukilteo School District, but it's not in the city of Mukilteo. It's in this wedge of unincorporated Snohomish County between South Everett and Mukilteo. And next door on the same campus is a big kindergarten center that serves as the kindergarten for a larger area - so there's maybe close to a thousand kids on this campus. And there's this piece of property right next door to the school, closest to the south wing of the school - and some portables and the asphalt playground - that was a vacant lot until a couple of years ago. A company bought it that's involved in mining and gravel and sand and other construction materials with a mine up in, I think, Granite Falls, Snohomish County. And they bought this property to use as basically a gravel yard, sort of a distribution hub. So they'll bring stuff down from the mine and put it in piles there with big trucks. And then trucks will come get the material to take out to job sites. And for at least a while, they're also using it to bring in, I believe, construction debris from job sites and then to be taken elsewhere.
And especially starting last spring, the school started noticing - at first, they said they didn't get any word about what this was or that this was happening in advance - they just saw construction activity happening on this property. And then last spring started realizing - Well, this is a permanent thing. They're not building something. This is just what it is. And it's going to be like this for the foreseeable future. And they say they've been dealing with dust from these materials and with lots of noise from the trucks rumbling around and the construction vehicles' buckets slamming against the sides of the trucks as they're unloading and loading. They say it's really disruptive to classes - some of the classes, especially closest to the property - and also they're concerned about health impacts in terms of the dust. It's hard for them to know exactly what to attribute or not attribute to the dust, but they've talked about more bloody noses and black snot and headaches and stomachaches among students and teachers. So that's kind of what's going on.
And where government comes in is that it turns out that this gravel yard operation hasn't had any permits since the start. And there were some complaints filed last spring about this, and the county basically has taken the stance of - Yeah, they don't have any permits. There was some kind of mix up, perhaps, but we're going to work with them to bring them into compliance. What they're doing is, in theory, allowed under the zoning of this property. So yes, they need permits and they need to do various things to get those. But we're going to give them time to do that and work with them to do that to see if they can. And the school district and people at this school are saying - Why are you continuing to allow them to operate when we say it's disruptive to our classes and our kids learning, especially if they don't have the permits? So that's what I wrote about. It's a weird situation.
To the bigger picture about why it matters - obviously, it matters to the kids and the teachers there. But the bigger picture - there's a question about priorities of Snohomish County government that's being raised. Even one teacher wrote in a letter to the county council something along the lines of - what's worth more, kids or dirt? So there's sort of a question of priorities there and what the handling of the situation says about those. And then also - what I found interesting was the principal and others raising a question of environmental justice or equity and saying - Look, this school, it's on unincorporated land. There isn't a city hall to look out for us in this case. The school serves - I think, about 70% of the students qualify for free lunch, about half are multilingual learners, which means they speak a language other than English at home. There are a lot of immigrant and refugee kids. And the principal just said straight up - If this was happening in different neighborhoods or with a different demographic of students, I don't think the powers that be would be putting up with it. So that's the story, and we're going to keep following it and see what happens.
[00:31:55] Crystal Fincher: This was disappointing for me to read - just because that did seem to come through. It does seem to be a question of priority. When you talk about bloody noses, stomachaches, headaches, black snot - I mean, that is alarming to think of as a parent. If you see that going on with your kid, you know something's wrong. If you see that happening with your students and it wasn't previously happening, you know something's wrong. Again, like you said, it's hard to know exactly how to attribute it. But if this is a newer occurrence, you're going to ask questions and want a remedy. I think in the story you talk about - they can see the dust and there have been studies recently talking about how harmful particulate matter can be for developing lungs and hearts and brains - and for everyone, kids and teachers there. It's a big challenge. And for this to be happening suddenly - no notice, not current or appropriate permits for what they're doing - and the remedy to be, Well, we'll just let them keep doing it. Who knows what's going on at the school and we'll work with them to make sure they get up to code so they can keep doing this, instead of working to ensure that the kids are safe just seems backward.
And it really does stand in contrast with so many other issues that we see people talk about when it comes to keeping kids safe, keeping schools safe. We restrict several activities around schools - really common ones are you can't have guns in school zones, you can't have any weapons, you can't have alcohol - that kind of stuff. We restrict, and some cities have sought to restrict, whether homeless people can be in vicinities of schools - which I personally think is misguided, but there have been cities that have done that. And so why is it so important to keep kids safe in those situations, but not this one? Why is it in this particular situation that the health of these kids doesn't matter? And not just the health impacts, but that this has been very disruptive to their learning - they've had to restructure their days. Extremely loud and disruptive, which studies have shown does impact, does hinder learning. So why is this allowed to continue unpermitted without any kind of approval or exploration about whether this is an appropriate and compatible use? I do hope the Snohomish County government does better. I hope they engage more actively in this. I hope that they do track down what is happening with these kids and that they are able to mitigate this. But it does seem like these stories often go unreported, so appreciate you servicing this. We're used to hearing - we think of a place like Magnolia or Laurelhurst and how much process there is around anything new that happens. And that this is allowed to just up and happen in a different area, in a poorer area, just seems really disappointing and a reflection on priorities that need to change.
Also want to talk this week about the City of Seattle settling with Black Lives Matter protesters from 2020 for $10 million. What happened under this settlement?
[00:35:09] Daniel Beekman: Well, the City Attorney's office in the city made a calculation and said - We're going to cut our losses here, in terms of the money that we're spending on the case and the money that we could end up paying at the end of it if we continue. And that's what they do is - they make a calculation, and they negotiate - and say $10 million is what it's going to take to make this case go away, but we might have to pay more if we continue. And it wasn't a case where the City said - And we're admitting fault. Sometimes - I think rarely - but sometimes the city, public entity will say something like that with a settlement. That wasn't the case here. They said this is a straight up calculation of risk for tax dollars and that's why we're settling this case. But that's what happened. And it's the latest in a now pretty long series of settlements of lawsuits related in one way or another to the May, June, July 2020 timeframe. And it will be interesting, actually, to try to tally them all up and see what the final number would be. But this is, I think, the biggest - but there have been a whole bunch of settlements in the six-figures and over a million dollars related to the protest summer of 2020. I think there still is some litigation hanging out there, so we may continue to see more. And I don't know how much closure this will bring to the city and to the plaintiffs involved here from this time, but definitely a big settlement.
[00:36:45] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this is already - as you said, City Attorney Ann Davison reiterated the City was not admitting any fault here. This lawsuit was filed about three years ago, has already cost the City in defense and expert witness fees. Among the plaintiffs were a woman who had a heart attack when she was struck in the chest by an SPD blast ball, and a man who was hospitalized in a coma after his arrest, a veteran who uses a cane and was gassed and tackled because he didn't retreat fast enough - because the cane was viewed as a weapon - there were lots. The police indiscriminately fired tear gas and blast balls in this neighborhood - not only impacting protesters, but also impacting the entire neighborhood. There were people who were just in their homes who were impacted. by this. It was quite a significant event. Even though the City did not admit any fault, there was a finding by a federal judge saying officers had used excessive force and had violated the free speech rights of thousands of residents who were legally gathered. It really was a stain on the police department - another thing that most people looked at and said, This is not right. This should not happen. This is a violation of trust, and really just harmful to residents in the city. Police are supposed to be there, philosophically, to protect people. And seemingly the opposite happened here.
The attorney for the plaintiffs, along with some of the plaintiffs, did have a press conference yesterday and said - Hey, the City's not admitting fault, but they really should be. And there was so much that was troubling that happened here. The attorney cited other incidents, including a hoax perpetrated by the department to scare protesters into thinking armed members of the Proud Boys extremist group were in the area. The City hired an expert, University of Liverpool Professor Clifford Stott, who's among the world's foremost crowd policing experts. And I thought this was pretty jaw-dropping - Stott reportedly concluded that, particularly during the early days of Seattle's protests, he had not seen the level of violent aggression by police against unarmed protesters "in any democratic state." That's just a pretty stark, horrible conclusion - saying that this doesn't happen in democracies. We don't see this kind of reaction in free societies. And so this is a really significant payout. And once again, we're seeing a large payout because of police violations and misconduct. We're now seeing this happen while we're hearing - There's not much money to go around. We're trying to figure out what to do with the shortfall, yet we're still paying out this extra money. And it just seems like this should be a signal that - Hey, there is a reckoning that needs to happen within the department, within the city that perhaps hasn't happened yet. And maybe the insistence that - Hey, there's no fault here seems a bit out of touch. How did you see this?
[00:39:56] Daniel Beekman: I'm not sure about the admitting wrongdoing aspect of it and what reasoning is behind that decision. But I think a bigger picture question is - okay, so there's this big payout for the plaintiffs. It's a headline. It's meaningful in those ways. But the bigger question is - okay, well, if something happens and there are big protests - what if a decision comes down that people don't like in that other case we were talking about, the fatal collision? And there are protests on the street and the police department is sent out to handle those protests. Are we going to see the same thing happen again? That's the real question, right - is what's been put in place in regulation and policy and law and culture to ensure that things are done the right way the next time? And I think there's an open question about would things be different again, or not? So I think that's the thing that it would be helpful to hear from policymakers and from City leaders on. The look back is important, but there's that question of - what about next time? What do you think about that?
[00:41:14] Crystal Fincher: No, I think you're exactly right. I personally would love to hear from the police chief, from the mayor - who are directly responsible for the police department - what about next time? I think that's the right question to ask and what they should be asking themselves. What is going to change? How have we responded to this? Have policies changed in response to this? Has training changed? Has any guidance changed? Have they responded to this with any criticisms, with any - Hey, I would like this to change. This is under their purview. This is under their control. So how are they asserting their leadership? How are they affirmatively trying to shape this culture? Or are they just kind of taking a hands-off policy and hoping this doesn't happen again? - Hey, we'll deal with something if it directly lands in our lap, like we need to make a disciplinary decision on the one case that we talked about earlier that you just referenced. But when it comes to culture, when it comes to how things are looking moving forward - what is their vision for that? What are they setting forth? How are they leading? It's their responsibility. How are they handling that responsibility? Are they handling that responsibility? And I think residents are interested to hear that. They want to know that there are plans in place and that there is a response. Or are we setting ourselves up again for harm against residents of this city, and lawsuits that drag on that are really expensive - that take time and money? And here we go again. So I do hope they address that. And maybe, this new council can help prompt some of those questions - maybe as these conversations take place and as there are more press conferences, we can hear more about that, hopefully.
And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, January 26th, 2024. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was Seattle Times politics and communities reporter, Daniel Beekman. You can find Daniel on X, also known as Twitter, at @DBeekman. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. You can find me on Twitter - all platforms - at @finchfrii. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this topical show, Crystal welcomes Renton City Councilmember Carmen Rivera and Raise the Wage Renton Steering Committee member Maria Abando to learn more about the upcoming citizen initiative on the February 13th special election ballot.
Modeled after the successful Raise the Wage Tukwila initiative that passed with over 80% of the vote in 2022, community organizers in Renton are campaigning to raise their city’s minimum wage to keep up with surrounding cities like SeaTac, Tukwila, and Seattle. Maria and Carmen discuss how the ability to earn a living wage uplifts everyone, the signature gathering learning curve their coalition experienced, and the reaction - both positive and negative - to the effort.
With ballots arriving in mailboxes this week and a well-funded opposition materializing, Maria and Carmen share how folks can get involved and help their campaign across the finish line.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii, find Maria Abando at @maria_abando, Councilmember Carmen Rivera at @riveraforrenton, and the Raise the Wage Renton campaign at @RTWRenton.
Resources
Raise the Wage Renton
Donate to the Raise the Wage Renton campaign
City of Renton Initiative Measure No. 23-02 | King County Elections
“Minimum Wage Initiative Launches in Renton, Builds Off Successes in South King County” by Christopher Randels from The Urbanist
“Renton $19 minimum wage measure qualifies for February special election” by Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks from The Seattle Times
“Renton City Council Rejects $19 Minimum Wage but the Fight Continues” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
“Renton voters to decide on city’s minimum wage increase in February” by Bailey Josie from The Renton Reporter
“Renton residents, city leaders weigh in on raising minimum wage to at least $19” by KIRO 7 News Staff
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
I'm really excited about today's conversation with folks from the Raise the Wage Renton campaign. Today, I'm being joined by Renton City Councilmember Carmen Rivera. Hey, Carmen.
[00:01:05] Councilmember Carmen Rivera: Hey, how you doing?
[00:01:07] Crystal Fincher: Doing well. And also Maria Abando on the Raise the Wage Renton Steering Committee. Hey.
[00:01:14] Maria Abando: What's up? What's up?
[00:01:16] Crystal Fincher: So I am so thrilled to have this conversation. We have previously talked about other minimum wage increase campaigns. We eagerly spoke with, and then followed, and then celebrated the success of the Raise the Wage Tukwila campaign from last year. Last year, 2022? One of those years - time is weird for me these days. But now Renton is up to the plate. And so starting off, I just want to start with why this issue is so important - how did this even become an issue in Renton in the first place? - starting with Carmen.
[00:01:52] Councilmember Carmen Rivera: Thank you so much for having us on and sharing the space with us. This was born actually from a coalition of organizers and labor union workers that really found that there was a need in Renton. When you think about Renton, you may not fully understand or know that she is 60% non-white, she is the fourth largest city in King County, the eighth largest city in Washington state. We have about 21% of our population at or below two times the poverty level, 8% at or below the poverty level. And almost half of our city are renters, with the median rent for a two-bedroom apartment at about $2,195. And so - yeah, yeah. We're right there on par with Seattle, so invite me back when you want to talk about tenant rights and tenant protections in Renton - because we do not have any more than what the state allows. We do not have any increases, and so that's another aspect of this that - happy to talk more on. But all that intertwines with having a livable wage - something that makes it just a little bit easier for people to not only just survive in Renton, but thrive.
And so when organizers came to me in January of 2023, they presented this initiative that was pretty much a copy-and-paste from Tukwila. And we met and we spoke about it, and I didn't agree initially with all aspects of the initiative. However, organizers felt very passionate about it - they did some outreach. They stuck with what they had and they started gathering signatures. And I felt that it was important for me to use my position and my platform to endorse and support their campaign and help get the message out there. Because this represents not only over 6,000 workers who live and work in Renton, but 50,000 who also commute into Renton, the 45,000 who commute out of Renton - possibly to chase higher wages. So there is a lot going on here and a lot of people who can be directly and indirectly impacted by just increasing the minimum wage by a few dollars, so people can have a little bit more of a cushion. And I think Maria can really speak more to the coalition and the grassroots organizers who are really leading this initiative across King County where it's most needed - because we saw in a report from The Seattle Times in June of 2023, that you need to be making close to $30 an hour to afford to live in King County. And that isn't exempt in South King County, where we're a very diverse city and some people are just surviving barely.
[00:04:16] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, Maria, what brought you to this work, and why was this so important to address right now?
[00:04:24] Maria Abando: Yeah, yeah. So I was one of those organizers that came to Carmen asking for her to endorse and join us as well. But really, I feel like the origins of this campaign are really community, you know, that there's no other way to put it. And I think it really was community that was continuing to do the work post the Tukwila campaign with Transit Riders Union and also with the Stephanie Gallardo campaign - the Gallardo campaign for Congress in 2022 in Washington's 9th Congressional District, where we did end up doing work in Renton and across South King County. And so genuinely, a lot of those same folks from TRU, from the Gallardo campaign, recognized that we - regardless, temporary campaigns, they end. But when you do have true community-based organizing, this ensures that once those temporary campaigns are over, the movements continue, right? And in those campaigns - these were movements where we're talking about uplifting the oppressed, uplifting the poor, the working class people. And in general, I think, reminding our communities how powerful we are when we come together and fight together for a more just world - whatever that looks like, and particularly here in Renton - raising the wages.
So it's a lot of those same organizers - myself, Guillermo Zazueta, who's chairing the campaign, Bailey Medilo, Aram Balsafi, Michael Westgaard, even some of our same volunteers and our canvass hosts - Christina Mann and Ben Warden - and so on and so on. I wish I could name more. But I do think that it's important to uplift those names because we are a community, right? It's not just Carmen, it's not just myself - there's so many of us working behind the scenes. And there are a lot of folks from those previous campaigns that happened to call Renton their home. And so after those campaigns were over, we knew we wanted to pivot, attempt to do this type of work in Renton, and started to begin really filling out our leadership and filling out our volunteers from Renton residents - because we knew we had to make a really intentional effort to make sure that Renton residents were the ones that were the leading voices, and everyone else just comes in and supports.
But we all also, I think, have felt really inspired. We know that we are walking in the path that has been paved before us with the - of course, 2015 historic victories in SeaTac becoming the first city in the U.S. to adopt a $15 minimum wage. And of course, Seattle following suit after that. And it was 2022 - of course, Tukwila passing their ordinance mandating a $19 minimum wage after that as well. And, oh my gosh, being able to receive over 80% of the vote, which, again, incredible. And then there's more happening, right? There have been efforts in Burien. I know that last year, King County councilmembers were proposing a near identical $19 minimum wage for unincorporated King County. So all of this is, I think, coming to a point in terms of why is this important, right? Again, it's about uplifting the poor and uplifting the working class - and everyone else who benefits from that.
But also, I think if we're zooming out and looking at this regionally - thinking about what happens to the neighboring cities, to the neighboring towns, to those neighboring suburbs when one major city raises their wages significantly, right? And the answer to that, I think, is that the region must follow. So Carmen speaking to the ways that there are thousands of folks that commute out in order to chase those higher wages. So your highways, your transit systems - they're flooded with people flocking to chase those higher wages. We know that what ends up happening when you end up commuting to work in a different city with higher wages - you also end up spending your money in that other city as well, instead of the city where you live. Because you're maybe getting your coffee, maybe getting some food, maybe hanging out afterwards in that city. Or you're just losing a lot of time - people commuting an hour to work and commuting an hour back, which could be time spent with family or doing things that you care about. And we also know, and I can say personally from my perspective as a Black and Filipino woman, that Black and brown folks are often the ones that are in these surrounding cities and towns because of gentrification. And Carmen has uplifted that Renton is very diverse - it is a majority-minority place. And so we know, keeping all of those things in mind, that this is something that uplifts everybody. When Renton workers are able to earn a living wage, everyone benefits - and especially folks that are having to commute, especially folks that are really struggling to make those ends meet. And putting more money in folks' pockets to be able to spend that money on basic necessities like childcare, healthcare - and are in general less likely to miss rental payments and less likely to be able to lose stable housing. So I think all this is really, really important.
[00:09:55] Crystal Fincher: It's super important, and especially as wages haven't kept up with just about anything over time. But my goodness, the cost of housing is just out of control and has been out of reach for someone making minimum wage. And that is just fundamentally not the kind of community that we want to build. It's not what we think of when we think of "the American dream." It's not what we think of when we think of - Hey, get a job, work hard, and you'll be able to support yourself. You should be able to do that - that's what giving up your time and labor should be able to provide. And it used to, and it doesn't now. We've got to get that back to the right place.
Now, I want to talk about what this initiative does. Reading from the ballot text - this proposed ordinance requires employers to pay a minimum wage based on that established by the City of Tukwila - which we just talked about raised their minimum wage. Offer additional hours to existing part-time employees before hiring new employees or subcontracted services - which is something that many cities and states have moved to, something that just makes a lot of sense and is more fair for workers. To not retaliate against employees exercising rights created by the ordinance and comply with administrative requirements. If enacted, the ordinance cannot be repealed without voter approval. And so this is for the February 13th election, a special election date. So make sure people are ready for that February 13th election. You will get a clue when you get your ballots in the mail, which will be mailed on January 24th. You can register to vote online. You can register online up until February 5th. You can register up until Election Day - even on Election Day - at the County Elections Office in Renton, up until February 13th, the date of the election. So you said this was largely based off of Tukwila's initiative - it refers to that in the ballot text. When putting this together, was it looking at - Tukwila and Renton seem to be pretty similar, this meets the needs. Were there any conversations about things specifically for Renton? How was this initiative put together, and how is it decided what was needed for Renton?
[00:12:13] Maria Abando: So we definitely ended up working hand-in-hand with Katie and Artie from Transit Riders Union to see what was successful and to see what wasn't successful - for the most part, though, they were just successful with their campaign. And we did think about Renton and we were really recognizing that it's a very different place. Tukwila was fairly small. Renton has, I believe, over 60,000 just workers themselves that would be impacted by this - it's a lot bigger. It has some waterfront property kind of neighborhoods within the Kennydale area. It has The Landing, of course, which is a major shopping center where many, many folks come - not just from Renton, but from outside Renton as well - to be able to shop and spend money. And so we were really trying, I think, to do our best to recognize that because it was so much bigger and because the communities, I think, are - I wouldn't say more diverse than Tukwila, but just fairly expansive, there's just a lot there in Renton - that we wanted to talk to as many people as possible and grow a coalition with as many people as we possibly could. And so we really started with really working with our councilmember, Carmen Rivera, as much as we could. But also reaching out to as many labor unions as we could. We were really proud to get the very early endorsement from the Renton Education Association, which is our teacher's union. And then many unions followed suit - UAW 4121, UFCW 3000, the Teamsters, the MLK Labor Council, to name a few, and just so on and so on - and to ask their Renton members as well, what types of things are they looking for? What types of things that they foresee? What types of challenges might they foresee? And everyone was really communicative with us, which - we really appreciate it. And I think we really started to try and figure out our strategy based off of what our community was saying and really trying to let those Rentonites lead.
But I also will say we had to learn some of this stuff along the way, Crystal. We had to learn - I think we had a little bit more of learning what didn't work that hopefully can be used with other campaigns in the future, because we know this movement is going to keep on and keep on. One of the things that we learned, for example - this journey was a long one in terms of gathering signatures to be able to qualify for the ballot at all. And of course, we launched in January of 2023. And so here we are on the special election in February 2024. So we obviously shot our shot for November and we weren't able to qualify there, despite the fact that we did, in total, gather over 17,000 signatures, made over 50,000 door knock attempts, engaged over 150 volunteers, distributed nearly 12,000 campaign flyers, and even employed part-time canvassers and signature gatherers to be able to make all of this happen. What we learned was signature gathering in places like Renton that has a huge also community of unincorporated King County, that we were going to have to be a little bit more strategic about that because folks might have a Renton address, but that actually be in unincorporated King County. And so they actually can't sign those petition forms to be able to qualify for the ballot. And so we didn't know that. We were out there tabling in The Landing, doing what we need to do, trying to chat up all the people that were coming through and educate them on what we were trying to do. And the reception was really, really lovely. And people were signing. And we didn't realize that some of those Renton addresses were in unincorporated King County. So that was a hard lesson that we had to learn and recognize that our efforts are best spent at the doors, despite the fact that we would be able to get a lot more signatures doing tabling. We had to recognize that it's not about quantity, right? It's a quality thing.
I think we felt a lot of urgency and had to check ourselves on our values - that it's not about the urgency of this so much as it's about really improving the conditions of workers in Renton. And so we had to hit those doors in the areas that we knew would be able to vote for this. We had to have those conversations with those folks - genuinely get their feedback - and also work with businesses as well. So we've had multiple business walks - walking to chat with the small businesses downtown - to also get their feedback and get what their thoughts and their support in this as well. So I think, in general - trying some things, realizing some things that didn't work, and just continuing to be flexible and stay really grounded in what we're trying to do here.
[00:17:08] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, what has the reception been like, Carmen, from your colleagues on the council?
[00:17:16] Councilmember Carmen Rivera: I'm so glad you asked me that, Crystal. It has been mixed, and I think that's very reflective of the Renton community. Our council is very reflective of Renton, and something that Maria lightly touched on was - and I'm going to say it a little bit more candidly - this is probably the most conservative city that these organizers have attempted to pass such an initiative. I could arguably say that Seattle, SeaTac, and Tukwila - at the time that these initiatives were passed - were less conservative. And that being said, we have an interesting mix in Renton. We have a very changing tide of new Rentonites, young families starting out here, diverse majority, people of color. And we also have a lot of people who have been here for generations. And we have a lot of history with Boeing - being the home of Boeing - and union workers and labor workers. And so, some of my councilmembers did not agree with more aspects of the ordinance than I, but I think that they had differing opinions and they felt it was more important to leave it to the voters to decide if we should be raising the minimum wage in a place like Renton, or if it's going to be something that we decide. And they felt it was more important for the voters to decide.
[00:18:37] Crystal Fincher: Right, because there was an opportunity for the council to choose to enact this without this having to go to the voters. The council could have made this happen - certainly a number of residents were asking the council to do just that. Residents, organizations, some small businesses that we saw in the area saying - We don't need to go through the time and expense of an election, we can just make this happen when we know it's the right thing to do. The majority of the council opted not to do that, so it is going to residents. Maria, what has been the feedback that you've been receiving from residents and businesses in Renton?
[00:19:12] Maria Abando: So we've had a lot of feedback, a lot of concerns - of course. As we've kind of touched on, things are really, really expensive. And whether that's rent, whether that's cost of your groceries, cost of your fuel, whatever - folks are really struggling to make ends meet. So it's no surprise that when we talk about raising the minimum wage, there are folks who would get concerned that this is just going to end up raising the costs of everything else. And the fact of the matter is that isn't true. We have seen that after SeaTac and Seattle raised their minimum wages years ago, the vast majority of businesses ended up doing just fine and didn't have to really raise prices too much, or have to hurt businesses or force them to close. Studies actually show that raising the minimum wage does benefit small businesses by doing lots of things like reducing employee turnover and absenteeism, because not as many folks are going out and chasing those higher wages. It increases worker productivity because workers are feeling good, earning a little more, feeling proud to work where they work because they're treated right. It puts money back into the local economy because it increases, for us as consumers, our purchasing power. You got a little bit more money to spend at the Renton farmer's market. You got a little more money to spend downtown in Renton businesses. And overall, just helps ensure that working families can afford to live in Renton. So I think there was some pushback around - Are things going to get more expensive? Is this going to hurt small businesses? And we know studies show that that's not the case.
I also think that we have gotten some feedback at the doors where folks might say - Yeah, isn't raising wages something that our legislators are supposed to do? Our councilmembers - isn't that something they're supposed to do? Isn't that something that unions do? Like I'm part of a union, and unions are the ones who negotiate wages for me. So that's something that we've heard. And of course, of course, right - in a perfect world, yes, our councilmembers, our legislators would do this. We know that the fight for higher wages does need a multifaceted approach and is connected to so many other pushes. We do need unions to continue to be empowered to negotiate higher wages for workers. And again, that's why we're super proud to have the support - I named a few of the unions, but there are, I think, 15 endorsed local labor unions. And I didn't mention, but thank you, Carmen, including the Boeing Workers Union, which is IAM&AW 751. The healthcare workers unions, public school teachers unions - the Highline Education Association included. We saw 2023 being a strong year for labor and for labor unions - from Starbucks to the UW grad students and so on and so on. And so, yes, of course, we want unions to be able to do this. And that's why they are working in-hand with us as well to make sure that we hit this from a really multifaceted approach.
And two, are our legislators supposed to be doing this? We've hit on this a little bit. Yes, our coalition did show up strong at a December 4th Renton City Council meeting asking our Renton City councilmembers to just pass this outright. We had done a small letter-writing campaign to them, and so we did get folks to send over a hundred letters to our Renton City councilmembers before that meeting that were asking them to pass this - many of them unique. And like you have hit on, Carmen was our lone supporter. There were others that - on the council - more conservative members that ended up speaking against it. One of the councilmembers, even before it got started - perhaps seeing the amount of people that showed up - made a proposal at the start of the campaign to reduce the amount of time that people that showed up could testify and could speak. That was tough to see. But after meeting with more councilmembers and continuing to uplift why this is important, we were proud to be able to get the endorsements of two more councilmembers after that - Kim-Khánh Văn and Ryan McIrvin. And so we can see that we are gaining steam. And even when we can't necessarily do this by city council, the people can coalesce and come together and raise wages ourselves.
[00:23:37] Councilmember Carmen Rivera: And I do want to add that we got real direct feedback - part of the initiative, you have a position open up - you have to offer those hours of that position to any part-time employee before you hire a new employee to ensure that you are not taking advantage of your employees by only having them work part-time so you do not have to pay them benefits, which is a way that we've seen employees and part-time employees and minimum wage employees be exploited. And so that was one of the things, I think, a lot of feedback was given. And when you look at the money - and always follow the money - 60% of the City of Renton revenue comes from our business taxes and sales taxes. And so the business community has a very heavy influence in politics - understandably so - and especially organizations that might be a little biased when it comes to advocating for workers over business interests and, in my opinion, corporate greed.
[00:24:33] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, certainly all feedback is welcome. Everyone in the community has a stake in this - whether they're an employer paying people, whether they're an employee, other people who live and work in the city, other organizations and entities. But it really is about how out of balance things have gotten. And being responsive to community needs - it is not easy to collect that amount of signatures. I think for people who are not acquainted with signature gathering, it's like - Oh, you know, you just need a few thousand signatures. 10,000- 20,000 - just as many people thought - just set up at The Landing, or go to Renton River Days, or do whatever you want to do - gather a bunch of signatures there. Those are the worst places to gather signatures when you're in a place, especially like Renton, that has a high volume of people commuting in and out to work, the high volume of people, like you talked about, living in unincorporated King County and not Renton proper - the municipal boundaries. So it does take going door-to-door, it does take a long concerted effort, and it does take legitimate interest from the residents in the city. And so to me, what was striking was to see how dismissive some councilmembers were to the residents of the city who didn't just sit at home and think - Ah, this would be good. But took a step to say - You know what? I actually want this to change. I believe this should change. I believe this specific policy should be enacted, and I'm willing to go this other route if the council doesn't enact it themselves. That, to me, should have been a sign to the council - okay, let's at least listen. Let's see if maybe there's something workable here that we can work with, even if there was a compromise, right? Some kind of responsiveness to the residents who live there. Unfortunately, we didn't see that. But there is an opportunity for the residents to do this themselves, which we've seen them do in other cities. And in other states, frankly - some southern states have raised their minimum wage in places that people consider to be really conservative, are saying it's in the community's interest to make sure that we aren't trapping people in poverty by enabling them to work without making a wage that can support the basics in our own community. Everyone loses when that happens. And so this is why I'm excited and gratified to see this happen and this step be taken in response to what the residents have asked for via petition.
So now we're at the point where this is now a campaign. And a lot of times when campaigns happen and you're like - This is a good thing - especially when we're talking about issues impacting the business community, opposition occurs. Opposition appears. And that is what's happened here in Renton. So what have you seen with this opposition and how are you countering that, Carmen?
[00:27:30] Councilmember Carmen Rivera: Yeah, it's been interesting to see the opposition pop up. It came very quickly and very swiftly. And this was something that we were afraid of and tried to anticipate when we wanted this to be adopted outright - and that was my argument. We saw in 2022 the lowest voter turnout since 1936 in recorded King County history - incredibly concerning because people are a little, I think, apathetic and tired around politics and who can blame them? And so when the opposition came - almost a week after the meeting where we decided to place this on the ballot - the Washington Hospitality Association, the Washington Retailers Association, the Seattle Hospitality for Progress, all tried to create a No-PAC to campaign against raising the minimum wage. And they have raised, I believe, close to $96,000 at this point.
[00:28:25] Maria Abando: Seattle Hospitality for Progress itself dropped $20K at the start of the year, which is a whole thing.
[00:28:30] Councilmember Carmen Rivera: And it's just happening so quickly - that's the other aspect of it. We've been working on this movement for a year. And in that time, we've raised maybe $75,000 in a year. And from organizers - no corporations - organizers and organizational groups that are about people and community and coalition building. And in a matter of days, almost $100,000 has been raised by these corporations. And mind you, these are the corporations that are going to be most directly impacted. How the ordinance reads - and this is not being advertised specifically by the Renton Chamber of Commerce, which is believed to be an apolitical organization. However, they've gotten very politically involved - the president and CEO has become one of the champions, again, in the No campaign - using her platform and privilege to actually spread misinformation and to fearmonger some of her small business owners and some of the members of her Chamber. There is no information being spread in the business community, sadly, that if you have fewer than 15 employees, you're entirely exempt from this initiative. This initiative will not apply to you if you have fewer than 15 employees. If you have anywhere between 15 and 499, it is more of a tiered-step system, where I believe it's $2 the first year and then $1 every year after that. And so there is a more understandable system there when you explain it like that. And the direct impact, which is why we have this No-PAC created, is going to be to Walmart, Home Depot, Applebee's, Red Robin, Topgolf, World Market, LA Fitness, Starbucks, McDonald's, Fred Meyer, Safeway, gas stations, Target - those are the individuals that we're asking to pay just a few more dollars so people can have a little bit more comfort to live. And so I want to ask voters, and even those who are campaigning against this initiative - the entire No-PAC - can you really look me in my eye and tell me that the person who makes your coffee in the morning, or the person that you order your food from, or the person who checks you out, or helps you out at putting stuff away at Walmart, or helps direct you at Home Depot, or is working at Fred Meyer - doesn't deserve a livable wage? And that is going to be an interesting conversation to have on January 31st when we actually are going to be debating this at Carco Theater in Renton.
[00:30:49] Maria Abando: And many of those corporations are making record profits right now, and they can easily afford a modest wage increase for their lowest paid employees. I also have some questions and concerns about the Renton Chamber of Commerce spearheading a lot of this opposition work, because they are supposed to be an official 501c6 - nonpartisan, apolitical, receives public funds to be able to maintain operations - and being a top contributor to the No-PAC is concerning. And I'll be honest too - although I wasn't as super familiar with the Renton Chamber of Commerce when I was jumping into this, I am absolutely familiar with the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. Folks who have been around in Seattle labor conversations - the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber were the ones that filed that lawsuit against the JumpStart Tax in 2020. They were crying that the JumpStart Tax was taking away the right of residents to earn a living wage - so they do know the concept of what a living wage is, which is funny because the JumpStart taxes for qualifying businesses taxed 0.7% for every employee making over $150,000. So if you're telling me $150,000 of a salary is a living wage, then okay - say that then. And then I think it increased for employees that are going over $500,000. So these folks know what a living wage is, and they spread misinformation to protect their bottom lines.
I also have to just shout out and appreciate the dope Hacks & Wonks episode at the end of last year that Shannon moderated with BJ Last and Amy Sundberg from Solidarity Budget - when they were highlighting, again, that it wasn't just back in 2020 that the Chamber was getting involved with this. The Chamber was still involved now - they called out how the Seattle Metro Chamber has still been trying to pause the JumpStart Tax. And I believe it was Shannon as well that reminded us all that 15% of the JumpStart Tax revenue is supposed to be going towards small businesses. So if the Chamber is supposed to be supporting small businesses, why are they trying to prevent that 15% from going to small businesses in support of them? The Seattle Hospitality for Progress - again, the group that dropped that $20,000 into this No-PAC at the beginning of the year - happens to share an office in the building and work, probably together, with the Seattle Metro Chamber of Commerce and the Washington Hospitality Association. So they want to spread misinformation and say that - Oh, you know, this whole initiative is folks coming out of the region coming to change the identity of Renton - which is a little bit of dog whistling, in my opinion - but also not being transparent of the fact that they are pouring in thousands from other cities to be able to try and stop this from happening, something that will deny the lowest wage workers a living wage and continue to place the burden on the lowest wage workers of Renton.
[00:33:57] Councilmember Carmen Rivera: It's disappointing. I believe chamber of commerce organizations are important. I think they're a valuable part of the community. I think that there is a lot of potential when it comes to chamber of commerce because you do want a small business community that is thriving. And you want a small business community that can grow, and I appreciate that. It's really just unfortunate where you see certain biases and power plays being utilized. And that's really just doing a disservice to the community because a very new Renton, a growing type of Renton, is coming here. And I think they're very scared of that. I think it threatens what they believe to be kind of their way of life. And I think there's a lot of emotion at play in terms of who's supporting this initiative and who isn't. And I just want us to all be able to have a wholehearted conversation without emotions and feelings.
[00:34:49] Maria Abando: And at the end of the day - regardless of the opposition - we are very, very positive, Crystal. We know that we have a really, really strong winning strategy. And that winning strategy is engaging community. At the doors - I mentioned some of the questions and the feedback, but I didn't mention how many people were just immediately so overwhelmingly supportive as well. Many people recognizing - yes, things are so expensive. And so, yes, we need this. I know people who are working low wage jobs and I know folks who could really use this. So we engage community. We engage our unions. We are going back and engaging our signature signers, since we did have so many of those folks sign and so many of those folks write letters and express support. We're, again, engaging those businesses. And finding ways to continue to register voters and expand the electorate so that we can just turn out the vote. So I think the opposition is going to opposition. And we're just going to continue to keep on marching, keep on pushing, and don't stop until we win a more livable wage for folks.
[00:35:57] Councilmember Carmen Rivera: And I think you bring up a really good point, Maria - because what we've also seen in King County over the years is the more that there is a nasty No campaign, it actually gives more power to the initiative and the campaign that is happening. And we've seen kind of these hateful campaigns backfire. And that's really my hope - because we've been on the ground for over a year - meeting with residents, outreaching to community, working with workers and business owners and community organizers and unions to make sure that we can get this passed. Because I think if we can get this passed in Renton, we can see this passed in other South King County cities. And I think that is also what is scary to the Washington Hospitality Association, the Chamber, and this No-PAC - because this will signal a changing tide.
[00:36:44] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. I think the time is now. This is a really important and necessary thing to do for our communities. And hearing some of the opposition saying that this isn't the role of local government, but fighting against minimum wages overall - I think this has been said several times online - but that's basically their admission that they would be paying you less right now if they were legally allowed to. I don't think anyone thinks that's where we need to be. In this era where we are hearing of record profits - billion dollar profits - looking at CEO and executive compensation in the tens or hundreds of millions, the idea that raising the minimum wage - the wages of your lowest wage workers, and not all of your middle management, not your executive pay and compensation packages. Not any of that contributes to higher prices - when we've seen pay stagnate and prices climb anyway. So it really isn't an issue. This threat, I think, is losing teeth of - Well, if we raise low wage workers' wages, then things are going to get more expensive for you. Well, you haven't done that and things have gotten more expensive and now no one can afford it because wages are too low. So we really need to address this and we need to give people in communities power to buy from the businesses in their communities. What we see when lower wage workers make more is that has a direct and immediate impact on local businesses, on businesses inside that community - because now people do have the money to spend on it.
So I'm eager to see this - looking forward to the remainder of the campaign. If people want to get involved in this campaign and help spread the word before the February 13th deadline for this election, how can they do so?
[00:38:28] Maria Abando: Yes, so we definitely need people's support. We need folks to give what they can, especially volunteering. And so you can get involved at raisethewagerenton.org. Additionally, I would not be doing my due diligence if I did not come to all of y'all and remind everybody that these types of efforts do take funds. When we are up against large PACs that are being able to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars, it makes it more important for us to be able to send out mailers and have yard signs. We are hoping to raise $10,000 before Election Day to help dispel some of the lies and the misinformation that the No-PAC are sending out and also just to uplift the coalition and uplift the positivity of what we're bringing. And so I really, really ask everybody to consider, if you can, to also donate. And you can do that at bit.ly - so it's short link bit.ly/GiveRTWR - and that RTWR is capitalized. So please, please, please, folks - regardless if you're in Renton or not, we really, really need and appreciate the support.
I also just want to uplift just again from a personal standpoint that we're in a moment where we are seeing 67% of Black folks in Renton living in poverty. We are seeing 72% of Latino folks living in poverty as well. And so just again, the recognition that we are really working to uplift folks like this. This is not only a struggle for labor. This is a racial justice struggle. This is a struggle, in general, for anybody that is struggling right now. And so we are committed to standing and staying in this fight for the long run, regardless. We know that this campaign is going to end and we're going to keep on pushing. Even after this campaign is over, our PAC does not dissolve. We are going to continue to stay and continue to walk businesses, continue to educate folks on what they can do to support with implementation, what they can do next. Maybe we work with Carmen on tenants' rights. Maybe we continue to take what we've learned and see if we can support in the coalitions in other cities to be able to get this done. So really, this is not something that's going to be over in February. We need folks to sign up. We need folks to help us knock doors. We need folks, if you happen to be in a South King County city - that you're hoping to see this be implemented in your city as well - join now. Join now. Because community endures, and we're going to keep on going.
[00:41:20] Councilmember Carmen Rivera: Absolutely. And I would also ask - what is really forgotten by people who only live in Renton and only have ever lived in Renton is that there are people who used to live in Renton who would like to move back to Renton. There are people who are only living outside of Renton temporarily - I lived in Seattle for a minute, I owned in Redmond for a hot second. And I wanted to also come back home to Renton. And I was privileged enough to be able to do so. Not everyone has that ability. And so I meet students, I meet young graduates. I meet people that are either from Renton, they lived in Renton for a minute, or they got priced out of Renton - they want to come back to Renton. And if you have any tie to Renton, if you know anybody in Renton - if you care about South King County - help us get out the vote. Please, I am begging of you, so we do not give this election up to the old Renton that does not want to include the new, diverse, forward-thinking, progressive Renton. I want to involve all Renton, and so I want to make sure all of Renton is going to be able to vote in February. So my ask is please text your friends, post on your TikTok, your Twitter, your Facebook, your MySpace, your Snapchat, your Instagram, whatever. Just get the vote or get the word out there that we need to vote and get those ballots in by February 13th if you live in incorporated Renton - please. Because what we've also seen is the Washington Hospitality Association has bragged on their podcast about pushing off the unincorporated King County raise the wage initiative that Girmay Zahilay introduced last year. And so we need to really combat, again, corporate greed, corporate PACs, the Washington Hospitality Association - and advocate for workers and those that really need this, because that's who I'm fighting for.
[00:43:02] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, we will include links in our episode notes to the campaign and where people can get more information and get more involved. We thank you, Maria and Councilmember Carmen, for taking the time to help educate us about the Raise the Wage Renton campaign. Thanks so much.
[00:43:21] Councilmember Carmen Rivera: Thank you.
[00:43:22] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank!
Crystal and Robert dive into the open machinations of the big corporate donors to appoint their preferred candidate to a Seattle City Council vacancy and how the messy process has leached its way into Seattle School Board politics. They then discuss the qualification of a right-wing initiative to dismantle the state’s plan to take on the climate crisis.
Robert gives a rare kudos to The Seattle Times for their presentation of a debate over homeless encampments, they both are dismayed at the depressing and infuriating news that the Tacoma officers in the Manuel Ellis case are getting paid $500k each to voluntarily leave the police department, and the show rounds out with analysis of some media’s treatment of AG Ferguson’s lawsuit to block a merger between Kroger and Albertsons.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank, at @cruickshank.
Resources
RE-AIR: The Big Waterfront Bamboozle with Mike McGinn and Robert Cruickshank from Hacks & Wonks
“Harrell Administration Consultant Tim Ceis Urges Businesses to Back Tanya Woo for Open Council Seat” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“Business, labor lobby for open seat on Seattle City Council” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times
“Seattle City Council candidate has residency conflict in School Board role” by Claire Bryan from The Seattle Times
“Initiative 2117 (repealing Washington's Climate Commitment Act) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate
“‘Should Seattle remove encampments?’ Advocates debate” by Greg Kim from The Seattle Times
“Tacoma cops acquitted in death of Manuel Ellis will get $500K each to resign, city says” by Peter Talbot from The News Tribune
“Kroger-Albertsons merger would hike grocery prices, create near monopolies in some Washington communities, AG says” by Helen Smith from KING 5
“WA suit to block Kroger-Albertsons merger gets cheers, raised eyebrows” by Paul Roberts from The Seattle Times
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy walks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get full versions of our Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show, one of our audience favorites, and today's co-host: Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank.
[00:01:12] Robert Cruickshank: Hey - thanks for having me on again, Crystal.
[00:01:14] Crystal Fincher: Hey, excited to have you on again - here in 2024. Well, we've got a lot to talk about - things are getting spicy in the City of Seattle, with regards to this upcoming Seattle City Council appointment to replace Teresa Mosqueda's seat. Because Teresa was elected to the King County Council, which created a vacancy - so now it needs to be filled. So what happened this week?
[00:01:38] Robert Cruickshank: Well, I think a lot has happened with the machinations around this appointment process - and in fact, things we're learning about how the new regime at City Hall is conducting itself - and they come together. I think this is basically Tim Ceis - who is former deputy mayor to Greg Nickels back in the 2000s, corporate lobbyist, close to established power in Seattle - and Council President Sara Nelson, who, of course, just became council president after the new council with a bunch of her allies got sworn in at the beginning of the month. They seem to be conducting a purge of anyone progressive in the City Hall, in City staff, and are determined to consolidate power around what is actually, I think, a fairly radical agenda for the city that most voters didn't really actually select, especially when it comes to cutting taxes for big businesses and slashing public services. But in order to try to achieve that, they know that they need to try to push out and keep out anyone who might disagree, anyone who might even be remotely progressive on anything. I think it's a pretty significant misreading of the results of recent elections in Seattle - their candidates won often narrowly on questions of public safety, not on cutting taxes for big businesses. In fact, most of their candidates hedged on the questions of taxes when they were asked during the campaigns.
But I think you see a real desire to consolidate power around a small group of loyalists, no dissent allowed. And this is a approach to governance that I don't think Seattleites expect or want. I mean, most people in Seattle assume and want a fairly technocratic, go-along-to-get-along government where everyone is sort of driven by data, gets along with each other, and try to do things in the public interest. Now, you and I, a lot of our listeners, know that's not really how the city operates. But what we're seeing now is, I think, a much more aggressive and - in some ways, unprecedented for Seattle - attempt to impose a radical agenda on the city from the right.
[00:03:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this isn't what voters thought they were signing up for. This isn't what anyone campaigned on. Voters are looking at what the candidates are saying, they're looking at the mail, the commercials - again, definitely talked about public safety, talked about homelessness. But what we saw in Sara Nelson's first statement was austerity - we're cutting taxes for business. But voters didn't weigh in on this at all. And I don't think people are going to have a great reaction to this.
[00:03:55] Robert Cruickshank: When Seattle voters weigh in on questions of taxes, Seattleites pass almost every tax put in front of them. When it comes to state ballot initiatives to tax the rich - they might fail statewide as they did in 2010, but they pass with wide support in Seattle. When it comes to money in politics, Seattleites approved taxing themselves - raising their property taxes slightly - to create the Democracy Voucher program. This is a city that does not want corporate money in politics and yet, that is exactly what's happened here. The reason we're talking about all this right now is not just because there's a council appointment, but because Tim Ceis, this aforementioned corporate lobbyist, sent out an email at the beginning of the week urging all of the people - whether they're wealthy individuals or from big corporations - who donated to the independent expenditure campaigns to help get a lot of these councilmembers elected last year, telling them - Hey, we need you to mobilize right now to stop Vivian Song, who is currently on the Seattle School Board, who's seeking the appointment - Ceis says, We got to stop her. She held a fundraiser for Teresa Mosqueda. She endorsed Ron Davis. She's friendly to unions. And gosh, we can't have that on our council.
And the way Ceis put it was to basically act as if these wealthy interests had bought the council. They now own the council - it is theirs, not ours. Not ours in the sense of "we the people." And they can do whatever they want with it. So Ceis' attitude - and I think Sara Nelson shares this - is that it's theirs now, nobody else can tell them what to do with the city council. They have the absolute right to pick whoever they want to and impose this agenda on the city. I think both that attitude and a policy agenda they want are not what the city wants at all, and they are going to run into a big backlash real fast.
[00:05:30] Crystal Fincher: Real fast. And the brazenness with which he stated this was wild. This is from the email that Tim Ceis sent - "While it's been a great two weeks watching the outcome of our effort as the new City Council has taken office, the independent expenditure success earned you the right to let the Council know not to offer the left the consolation prize of this Council seat." Okay, they're just admitting that they bought this seat. They're just admitting that - Hey, yeah, it was our effort that got these people onto the council. And we spent a million dollars plus in this independent expenditure effort and that gives us the right - he said the "right" - to tell the council what to do, which I don't recall seeing something this overtly stated before.
[00:06:17] Robert Cruickshank: There's an important contrast we can draw - both Bruce Harrell and Eric Adams, mayor of New York, were elected in 2021. And at the time, Eric Adams was hailed as some sort of future of the Democratic Party - center right, tough on crime, pushing back against progressives. Well, here we are at the beginning of 2024 - Eric Adams has a 28% approval rating in New York - highly unlikely to win a re-election at this point. There are a lot of reasons for that, but one of the primary reasons is cuts to public services - libraries, schools, parks, all sorts of things. And the public is just clearly rejecting that. Bruce Harrell is up for re-election next year. And I think Harrell's going to have to decide for himself - does he want to be the one to get all the blame for this? Or maybe he just thinks Sara Nelson takes all the blame. Who knows? Maybe there's a good cop, bad cop approach being planned here - with Sara Nelson being the bad cop pushing austerity and Harrell's try to be the good cop, try to bring everybody together. Who knows? But I think what you see in New York is what you're going to see in Seattle - a significant backlash.
I also want to mention - you quoted Ceis' letter talking about giving a prize to the left. Vivian Song is not a leftist. This is the part that just blows my mind about all this. She's as mainstream a Seattle Democrat as it gets. If you read her application letter for the council appointment, she talks about hiring more cops, being careful with city spending. She's honestly probably a little bit to the right of most of the previous city council that just got voted out. But to Ceis and Nelson, she's unacceptable because she's friendly with unions, was friendly with some progressives - what that shows me is that they only want extremists like themselves or who will just do their own bidding. And I think they're setting themselves up for a significant backlash.
[00:07:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and the final point - in looking at this, there were so many applicants to this - all across the spectrum, right? There weren't just progressive applicants for the seat. There were dozens and dozens of people from across the spectrum - and good choices - people who had experience, who have the right intentions from across the spectrum. This isn't about - Well, we just don't want an extreme leftist from these corporate interests. This is about - You're going to pick our person. Because there are several other choices on there - they're talking about Tanya Woo. Why aren't they talking about Phil Tavel, right? Why aren't they talking about anyone else that seems to align with their interests? They want loyalists - that's the bottom line. It goes beyond what the ideology is. It's - are you going to be loyal to me? Are you going to back me on what I'm doing? And without that assurance - We're not backing you. With that assurance, you're in and we're going to fight. And hey, we spent a million plus to get these other folks in. Now we're using our muscle to get you in too. And we're telling people - Hey, this was our show. We elected these people. It was our effort and that gives us the right to dictate what's going to happen.
When you have the primary concern, the primary litmus test being loyalty and not is this going to help the residents of the city? Do they have experience? Can they credibly lead and do this? Wow, we get into a lot of trouble if it's just - Are you going to back me? Are you not going to question anything I'm doing? Are you going to rubber stamp this? So this appointment process is really going to be an opportunity to see where the loyalties lie. Are they serving their constituents or are they serving the business community? Because again, there are lots of picks if they wanted to go with a conservative person, right? I think they probably will. But the point is, it's got to be the one handpicked by business. This is going to tell us a lot about where the heads of these new councilmembers are at.
Yeah, it
[00:09:49] Robert Cruickshank: will. And I think it's also setting up 2024 - not just in terms of the policy discussions we'll see in City Hall, but the campaigns. This seat that gets filled in this appointment process later this month will be on the November 2024 ballot citywide. And I think Tanya Woo would likely run for that seat if she's appointed to it. If so, then she's going to have to go to voters - not as someone picked for her qualifications, at least in the way the public will see it. The public will see it as - she was picked by business because she's loyal to business. Vivian Song may want to run for that seat too - last night got endorsed by the King County Labor Council to hold that appointment. It sets up a very interesting - not just 10 days between now and when this appointment gets made, but 10 months between now and the November election, where I think you're going to see real contests over the future of the city.
[00:10:35] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Another interesting dimension with this about Vivian Song is about her residency and her existing Seattle School Board position. What's going on here?
[00:10:45] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, so we'll go back to 2021 - where there was an article that appeared in The Stranger when Vivian was running for the school board, questioning her residency - that she had changed residencies and changed voter registration - and questioning whether she was eligible to run for the District 4 seat for the school board. Now, the school board districts don't line up exactly with the city council districts, so listeners should keep that in mind - but Vivian won, won citywide. Because in school board, you are first elected out of the primary in just the district. Then the top two from that district go on to a citywide election in the school board. So Vivian won citywide in 2021. Last summer, it emerges that some of her critics and opponents on school board were questioning where she lives now - that she might not actually live in the district she technically represents. This is brought to the school board legal department, which looked at it and did not see a need to kick her off the school board, or declare her seat vacant and force an election.
People move around for personal reasons, and they don't have to be told to tell those personal reasons in public. But Vivian is not someone who is manipulating the system for political gain - there are legitimate reasons she was moving. And yet this comes out in a Seattle Times article this week and gets mentioned at a board meeting last night - the only board meeting during this entire council appointment process. This has been under discussion behind the scenes at the school district for months. But why does it emerge now? I think it's the obvious reason why it emerges now - because some of Vivian's critics on the school board, whether they're working directly with Tim Ceis and Sara Nelson or not, are certainly helping Tim Ceis and Sara Nelson try to torpedo Vivian Song's candidacy. Now, from a progressive perspective, this doesn't necessarily mean that Vivian's the right pick for the appointment process. We should take a look at everybody. But I think the relentless efforts to destroy her, both in her position on the school board and to keep her out of the city council, suggest to me some real problems with the way both the city council and the school board are now being governed by small little cliques determined to hold on to their own power, to push austerity, unfriendly to labor, and hostile to public input. I think it's a really shocking and disturbing development that we're seeing in our city. Away from small-d democratic governance. I think everyone in the city should be really concerned about these developments.
[00:13:05] Crystal Fincher: Completely agree. And statewide news - big news - it's going to impact our November 2024 ballot. The second right-wing initiative qualified for the 2024 ballot. What does this do and what does this mean?
[00:13:21] Robert Cruickshank: So background here is that the far right chair of the state Republican Party, State Representative Jim Walsh - hardcore MAGA Trump guy - became State Party Chair last year and is working with a wealthy mega-donor, a guy named Brian Heywood, to try to repeal the main accomplishments of the Democratic majority in the legislature of the last few years. So we've got six initiatives so far that they've submitted to the state to qualify - two of them have made it to the ballot. One of them you just mentioned, which will be Initiative 2117 to try to destroy our state's climate action plan. They want to repeal the carbon pricing piece of it - sometimes known as cap and trade, cap and invest, whatever you want to call it. Their argument is - Oh, it's why gas prices are so high in Washington state. Well, no. One, we on the West Coast have always had higher gas prices than the rest of the country. And in fact, the reason Washington has high gas prices is because of King County. I did an analysis a few weeks ago that shows - if you cross the river from Portland to Vancouver, Washington, the average cost of gas is the same. If you are in Tacoma, you're paying less than you pay in Portland, Oregon. So if carbon pricing was causing gas prices to soar across Washington state, you'd see it everywhere - but you don't. What that suggests to me is you might actually be seeing oil companies gouging King County - that's worth investigation, which the oil companies don't want.
But point being - Jim Walsh, who's a Trump guy, Brian Heywood, who's the wealthy funder, want to destroy our ability to tackle the climate crisis. They want to destroy our ability to fund the things that are needed to help people get off of fossil fuel. And so they're putting this on the ballot. They're going to put some other initiatives on the ballot to try to repeal our capital gains tax on the rich, that funds schools and early learning. And this is going to be one of the big battles that we're seeing this year - an effort to impose, again, a far-right agenda on the state of Washington. And I think that progressive organizations, the State Democratic Party are maybe a little slow to respond to this - I think they will engage, but now's the time to start letting people know what's happening here, what this attack is, how dangerous it could be, and the importance of stopping all six of these initiatives.
[00:15:30] Crystal Fincher: We've seen Republicans have an increasingly hard time winning statewide and legislatively over the past few years - they've lost power, they tried the courts. The Supreme Court actually just rejected a case trying to come to the Supreme Court about the capital gains tax. So this is their only recourse now. And unfortunately, because of the way our political system is, money gets you really far. And so if you have these multi-hundred millionaires, these billionaires who come in and say - You know what, this is what I want - they're able to basically make us go through this whole charade. And so we have to fight against it. It's here. We have to do this. But it really is important to talk to people about - not to fall for these cheap lines that, Oh, this is another gas tax. It's the hidden gas tax, as they say. But we've had this price gouging conversation before - I think more people are seeing it, which is encouraging. But we're going to have to go through this whole campaign.
[00:16:29] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, and I think that it's worth noting there are reasonable discussions to be had about how to do carbon pricing right and what it should fund. And there were very intense conversations and disagreements about that when this was passed in 2021. And I think it makes sense to take a look and say - Okay, how do we make sure we're doing this right? That's not what this initiative does. This initiative uses voter concern about gas prices to totally destroy our ability to tackle the climate crisis. This is coming from people who don't believe the climate crisis is real. Or if they do believe it's real, they don't really want to do anything to stop it because they think driving and keeping oil companies happy is more important. We see wild weather all across the region - we remember that super hot heat wave from the summer of 2021, we remember the long droughts of 2022 - this is not a time to mess around. If we want to look at how to address needs to ensure that carbon pricing works - great. If we want to take a look at what it's funding - great. But to totally destroy the system entirely because a bunch of right-wingers and wealthy donors want it, I think, is a disaster.
[00:17:30] Crystal Fincher: Absolute disaster. I was certainly one of those people who had criticisms of the Climate Commitment Act. There are certainly tweaks that should be made. There are some better ways that we can go about some of these processes. But the option isn't - do nothing. That's unacceptable. It isn't just dismantle and repeal everything. Just like with Social Security, just like with Medicare - these big, important pieces of legislation - that do come with benefits. We're going to have to tweak them. We're going to have to get information back, get data back, and respond to that with some technical fixes, some tweaks to make sure that we steer it onto the best path that it can be. But wow, we cannot afford to do nothing. We can't afford to dismantle this at this point in time. This is one of the most hopeful opportunities we have - really in the country - to show how states can lead and come together to get this done. We can't dismantle this at this point in time.
Also want to talk about a debate that we saw, on the pages of The Seattle Times, among homeless advocates that reflects a lot of the conversation going on in communities about how to handle encampments. What was talked about here and what's important to understand?
[00:18:42] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, I want to do something I don't always do, which is give credit to The Seattle Times for hosting this discussion. I think it was a really good way to do it - between two people - Tim Harris, who used to be the executive editor of Real Change, and Tiffani McCoy, a leader in the Initiative 135 House Our Neighbors Now social housing effort here in Seattle. These are two progressive people who have long records of advocacy for housing and for the needs of the homeless. So they didn't do the usual thing that media will do - is pit a progressive against some crazy right winger. These are two people, who I think come at this with the right intentions and the right values. And they both made some pretty good points about how we handle this issue of sweeps and encampments.
Sweeps - I believe they're awful. They're also popular. The public likes them. We saw the 2017 mayoral race, we saw in 2021 mayoral and city council races, city attorney race. We saw it last year in the city council races. Candidates who back sweeps almost always defeat candidates who oppose them - we're getting nowhere, and the people who are living in these encampments aren't getting help. Now, this doesn't mean we should embrace sweeps. And I thought that Tiffani McCoy did a really good job of laying out, again, the damage that sweeps do to not just the possessions of people who are living in tents, but to their own psychological state. And it often makes it harder for them to escape addiction, harder for them to find stability they need to get a home. I thought Tim Harris, though, made some good points about the problems that happen if you leave an encampment in place - how drug dealers eventually find it. And even the best managed encampments - it just takes one or two people with bad intentions to show up and the whole place kind of falls apart into violence. So leaving an encampment out there doesn't help the people who are living there, especially now we're in the extremely cold winter season.
But what happens is, too often, this gets framed as a discussion between - do we sweep or do we leave encampments indefinitely? And when that's the terms of the discussion, sweeps will win every single time. And we've seen that for years now. And I think progressives need to realize that that's the case. We are not going to stop sweeps by trying to argue against sweeps alone, and to argue essentially for leaving encampments indefinitely. We have to get out of that binary that we're losing and the people in those encampments are losing. And I think the only way out is to go to the solution, right? We need to build housing for people immediately. Bruce Harrell took office on a promise to build 2,000 units of housing for folks - homes, shelter, tiny homes, whatever - to get people out. Did that happen? Where did that go? You know, there are some tiny home villages that are out there. They do a great job. But why aren't we massively expanding those? Where are the safe RV sites? Where are other forms of shelter? Where's the permanent supportive housing that we need? Where are the new SROs that we need? I think that's where progressive energy needs to focus - is on getting people out of tents now - into real housing with a roof, with a door that locks that they like, where they can bring all their possessions, including their dog and their partner. And I think that's where the emphasis needs to go. I think if we get stuck in this sweeps versus indefinite encampments, we're just going to keep losing. The people who need help aren't going to get it. And so I thought that this debate that The Times hosted did a good job of really laying out why we need to go in that direction.
[00:21:59] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. I think this is another area where - just the classic communications issue - you can't just argue against something. You have to argue for the vision that you want - because it doesn't translate - what people do here is exactly what you said. Well, okay - if we aren't going to sweep, then they're going to just stay there and that's unacceptable too. And it's unacceptable to a lot of people for a lot of different reasons, right? Some people are those crazy right wingers who just, you know - Get them out of my sight type of thing. But there are people who are saying - We need to get these people into a better place. We have lethal cold in the winter. We have lethal heat in the summer. We have public safety concerns. People who are unhoused, who are in these encampments, are more likely to be victims of crime than just about anyone else. This is a hazard to their health, to everyone's health. This is a big challenge. We need to get them into housing. We need more shelter options. We can't have this conversation while we know there isn't the infrastructure to get everyone indoors. Until we have that infrastructure, what are we talking about? We have to build. We have to build more transitional housing. We have to build more single residence occupancy, or those SROs. We have to move forward with housing.
And I do believe in a Housing First approach. There's also this preemptive kind of argument that we're hearing from right wingers - Oh, we already tried that. Oh, we so have not tried that. We've never come close to trying that - on more than a trial with 20 people basis - that has never been a policy that the city has pursued overall. We have pursued these encampment sweeps and you can see they aren't getting us anywhere. The problem has actually gotten worse while we're doing this. So we have to make sure that we're speaking with unity and articulating what we want to see, what we're pursuing, what needs to get done.
[00:23:50] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, and I think there is another reason for urgency here. Sweeps, under rulings of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals - federal - in the case against the City of Boise, Idaho, and a similar case against the City of Grants Pass, Oregon. The appeals court ruled that you cannot sweep an encampment without offering shelter to the people living there. A lot of cities, including San Francisco and others, have wanted to get out of that. They appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in the last few days. The Supreme Court has said - Yes, we will take up those cases. It is highly likely then, perhaps by this summer, the U.S. Supreme Court will say - You can sweep whenever you want to. You can eliminate an encampment without having to offer shelter at all. And I think a lot of advocates will point out that those offers of shelter, you know, are maybe a fig leaf at best. That fig leaf is going to go away very soon. So I think that just creates even more urgency to push really hard to get the city and the state to step up and provide housing, whether it's, you know, buying more hotels to get people out of tents or put up more tiny home villages. Whatever it takes, we have to do it, and we have to do it now because there is now an actual ticking clock at the U.S. Supreme Court on this.
[00:24:57] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And you know what? I do want to recognize what Dow Constantine has been doing with leaning on this issue - with the buying the hotels, working in concert with different cities in the county, offering - even in the Burien debacle, it was really the county who provided the light at the end of the tunnel and real tangible assistance to actually deal with the issue and get people into housing. So, you know, more of that - more of what we've seen from Dow Constantine, more of focusing on getting people housed. Absolutely want to see it.
And just absolutely dejecting news - where I wasn't shocked, but certainly dismayed. The Tacoma cops from the Manuel Ellis case are getting $500,000 to voluntarily leave the department. What are your thoughts on this?
[00:25:47] Robert Cruickshank: I mean, it's unsurprising and appalling that they're getting half a million dollars after killing Manuel Ellis and getting away with it. I mean, getting away with it was bad enough - the way that the jury ruled in that case a few weeks back. Now they're literally getting money in their pocket after this - being waved goodbye. And I'm sure that this does not come with any stipulations that would make it difficult for them to get a new job anywhere else. I remember when McGinn was mayor in the early 2010s, the Ian Birk case. Ian Birk, the Seattle officer who shot and killed Native American woodcarver John T. Williams. Birk was not really prosecuted. There was an inquest. But Birk left the department, got a job somewhere else. Well, one of the things McGinn did was pursue legal remedies to make it impossible for Birk to get another job as an officer. I do not see any such thing happening here in the Tacoma case. These officers are getting a payday and getting away with it. But I think what this shows, yet again, is the importance of having real teeth in police accountability. And I think it also shows that the criminal justice system is not a substitute for that. We can't assume that the criminal justice system alone is going to hold cops accountable, as we saw in this case - yet again, it didn't. We need reforms at the state level to remove officer accountability from bargaining. We need to make it easier for cities to hold cops accountable who break the law, who commit murder, things like that. And that's where this needs to go, because what has happened here is injustice upon injustice upon injustice. And if this doesn't spur us to act, then what's going to?
[00:27:32] Crystal Fincher: There's currently a federal review going on by the U.S. attorney for Western Washington. The family of Manny Ellis is calling for a consent decree for the City of Tacoma's police department with this. So those levers are turning. This issue to me is really - my goodness, this is not a pro-cop or an anti-cop thing, right? How do we hold people accountable who violate the standards that we set for them, who violate the standards that are already in place? This reminds me of what happened in the City of Kent with the assistant chief who had Nazi memorabilia, Hitler mustache, Nazi signs at work - and then got paid a ton, got rich to leave voluntarily. What are we doing when there's no mechanism to fire a Nazi in the workplace? For people who are absolutely in favor of more police, why are you tolerating this? That's my question. Why are we allowing this to fall into the - Well, either you love cops or you hate cops and you're evil if you want to do anything attached to accountability. What are we even doing? I could go on about this for a long time, but this just falls into - What are we even doing? What is the point of anything if we have to pay people who violate our standard to leave?
[00:28:53] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah. I mean, we've been told since the summer of 2020 - Oh, we can't defund the police. Okay, then what are we going to do? Because we can't allow this sort of behavior, whether it is Nazi memorabilia in the actual work office in Kent or killing Manuel Ellis on the streets of Tacoma to continue - which is what I fear is actually what critics of police accountability want. They just want cops to be able to do as they please without consequences because in their minds - and these are mostly white folks like me who are saying these things - they don't think they're ever going to have to face those consequences. They want to maintain their hierarchy, their place at the top as much as they can. They see police as part of that. It's really toxic. And I think that it just shows, once again, the urgency of fixing this - including at the state level, to get the legislature out of this idea that some legislators have that - Oh, somehow it undermines labor unions and labor rights if we take accountability out of police bargaining.
Well, military soldiers can't bargain, they can't form a union. They have a strict uniform code of military justice. They're held, in many cases, to much higher standards than police officers. I think we could point out ways in which even the military needs to be held to higher standards, but at least there are some. They exist and they operate. Police - they are convinced that they have the right to do as they please and to get away with it - and to be paid well for it, even when they do horrific things. And that is what we have to reject. And I think at this point - cities, we need to hold them accountable and push them. But the state needs to step in and we need to see changes to state law to make it easier to have real accountability at the local level.
[00:30:25] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. Final thing I want to talk about today is a lawsuit announced by Attorney General Bob Ferguson to stop the Kroger-Albertsons merger that they have announced their intention to do, saying that this is going to be bad for competition, creating grocery monopolies. Grocery prices are already sky high - this would make it worse. What do you think about this?
[00:30:49] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, I think it's absolutely the right thing to do and well within Attorney General Ferguson's right to protect local business and to protect consumers. And people notice that Fred Meyer and QFC are owned by the Kroger company already, and there's not enough competition there - prices there are higher than they should be. You add in Albertsons to the mix, and that's even less competition. I think people understand that more competition helps bring prices down, it's good for consumers. More local ownership - good for consumers. And this is popular, right? I think the public likes it. What's interesting to me is the way this gets covered. There's an article in The Seattle Times today about Ferguson's lawsuit. And to read the body of the article, it makes it very clear that the public loves it, that there's a legitimate reason for Ferguson to sue to protect the particular needs of Washington businesses and Washington consumers - because our grocery market industry is not always the same as other states. And we need to have our attorney general in there fighting for our interests. People get that.
The Federal Trade Commission under Lina Khan is doing a great job really finally reinvigorating antitrust law and taking on mergers like this. And she's fantastic. But the article opens with this weird frame, questioning whether this is all a political stunt and saying - Oh, well, Ferguson jumped out and filed a lawsuit before the FTC did. Maybe he's trying to undermine the FTC or going rogue. Maybe it's just a political stunt. Yet the rest of the article makes it super clear that that's not the case at all. The article shows that the FTC says - No, we can work with Washington. They don't seem to be worried about this. In fact, the FTC regularly works with attorneys general around the country in multi-state lawsuits, in partnership with the federal government. So it struck me as a case where the second two-thirds of that article was really useful, but the top of it seemed to be The Times going out of their way to try to spin this against Ferguson.
And I think it's a real lesson to the State Democratic Party and to Ferguson's campaign that they cannot trust the media to give him a fair shake here in 2024. The media is going to be hostile. The media is going to try to take things that look potentially helpful for Ferguson and spin them against him. So they're going to have to be ahead of that game and prepare for that, as well as make sure they're doing their own comms, using social media really well to get the story out there. Because the public gets it - the public doesn't want to see Albertsons, Fred Meyer, QFC all owned by the same company. They know it's either going to raise higher prices, fewer staff in stores, or fewer stores outright. We've already seen some stores close across the region. You're going to get more of those bad outcomes. So thank you, Bob Ferguson, for stepping up. And Bob, watch your back, because the media is coming for you.
[00:33:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. This is a positive thing. This is consumer protection. This is what we ask him to do as our attorney general. We have seen the direction that things go when there's consolidation. There's a lot of people who order delivery now. I don't know if many people have been in stores lately, but it is a miserable experience because they've reduced staff to untenable amounts where you have to wait for someone to unlock half the thing or stand in a special section and a special line. It's just - this is the wrong direction that we're going in. We've already seen this as a result of consolidation. We don't want to see any more.
[00:34:03] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, and you can look at another act of consolidation that I wish someone had sued to stop, which is when Rite Aid bought Bartell Drugs in 2020. Everyone knows that's been a disaster. Bartell, locally owned store - you had great locally owned products for sale. You could go and get your prescription filled really quickly and easily. Once that merger happened, all of a sudden people's prescriptions got lost, lines got really long, took you hours to get your prescription filled. And then all of a sudden, stores started closing all over the place. Now Walgreens is closing stores because there's not a lot of competition. There's no incentive for them to keep these stores open. And now we're going to see the same things happen with grocery stores - those trends that are already kind of lurking, accelerating if this merger goes through. So kudos to Bob Ferguson, but he's got to watch out for the people who are coming for him, especially in the media.
[00:34:52] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, January 19th, 2024. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is the Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist Robert Cruickshank. You can find Robert on Twitter, or X, @cruickshank. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter. You can find me on all platforms - BlueSky, Threads, anything - @finchfrii. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
Please enjoy this re-air of our listeners’ favorite topical show of 2023!
On this topical show re-air, Crystal chats with former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and his former Senior Communications Advisor Robert Cruickshank about the missed opportunity for generational impact through how decisions were made about Seattle’s waterfront and the SR99 tunnel. Mike and Robert review how the vision of the scrappy People’s Waterfront Coalition, centered around making a prized public space accessible for all while taking the climate crisis on by transforming our transportation system, nearly won the fight against those who prioritized maintaining highway capacity and those who prioritized increasing Downtown property values.
The conversation then highlights how those with power and money used their outsized influence to make backroom decisions - despite flawed arguments and little public enthusiasm for their proposal - leaving Seattle with an underutilized deep bore tunnel and a car-centric waterfront. Some of the decision makers are still active in local politics - including current Mayor Bruce Harrell and his current advisor Tim Burgess. With important elections ahead, Crystal, Mike and Robert discuss how political decisions tend to conflict with campaign promises rather than donor rolls, how proven action is a better indicator than value statements, and how today’s dense ecosystem of progressive leaders and organizations can take inspiration and win the next fight.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii, Mike McGinn at @mayormcginn, and Robert Cruickshank at @cruickshank.
Mike McGinn
Mike is the Executive Director of national nonprofit America Walks. He got his start in local politics as a neighborhood activist pushing for walkability. From there he founded a non-profit focused on sustainable and equitable growth, and then became mayor of Seattle. Just before joining America Walks, Mike worked to help Feet First, Washington State’s walking advocacy organization, expand their sphere of influence across Washington state. He has worked on numerous public education, legislative, ballot measure and election campaigns – which has given him an abiding faith in the power of organizing and volunteers to create change.
Robert Cruickshank
Robert is the Director of Digital Strategy at California YIMBY and Chair of Sierra Club Seattle. A long time communications and political strategist, he was Senior Communications Advisor to Mike McGinn from 2011-2013.
Resources
“Seattle Waterfront History Interviews: Cary Moon, Waterfront Coalition” by Dominic Black from HistoryLink
“State Route 99 tunnel - Options and political debate" from Wikipedia
“Remembering broken promises about Bertha” by Josh Cohen from Curbed Seattle
“Fewer drivers in Seattle’s Highway 99 tunnel could create need for bailout” by Mike Lindblom from The Seattle Times
“Surface Highway Undermines Seattle’s Waterfront Park” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
“Seattle Prepares to Open Brand New Elliott Way Highway Connector” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I am very excited to be welcoming Robert Cruickshank and former Mayor Mike McGinn to the show to talk about something that a lot of people have been thinking about, talking about recently - and that is Seattle's new waterfront. We feel like we've spent a decade under construction - from a deep bore tunnel to the tunnel machine getting stuck - that's not even covering all the debate before that, but all of the kind of follies and foibles and challenges that have beset the process of arriving at the waterfront that we have now. And now that we are getting the big reveal, a lot of people have feelings about it. So I thought we would talk about it with one of the people who was at the forefront of criticisms of the tunnel and calling out some red flags that turned out to be a very wise warning - several wise warnings that have come to pass, unfortunately - for not listening to them. But I want to start early on in the beginning, both of you - and I had a short stint in the mayor's office - worked on this, talked about this on the campaign, really got it. But when did you first hear that we needed to replace the viaduct and there were some different opinions about how to make that happen?
[00:02:06] Mike McGinn: Okay, so I'm sure I can't pin down a date, but the really important date was, of course, the Nisqually earthquake in 2001. And so it gave the Alaska Way Viaduct a good shake - the decks weren't tied into the columns, the columns were on fill, which could liquefy - and everybody understood that if that quake had been a little stronger and harder, the elevated would come down. Now you might think that that would call for immediately closing the roadway for safety reasons, but what it did call for was for reconstructing it. And you have to remember that highway was really one of the very first limited access highways - it was built long ago and it was just at the end of its useful life anyway. Certainly not built to modern seismic standards or modern engineering standards.
So the conversation immediately started and I don't know when everything started to settle into different roles, but the Mayor of Seattle Greg Nickels, was immediately a proponent for a tunnel - and a much larger and more expensive tunnel than what was ultimately built. And it would have been a cut-and-cover tunnel along the waterfront that included a new seawall. So they thought they were solving two things at one time - because the seawall too was rotting away, very old, very unstable. But it would have gone all the way under South Lake Union and emerged onto Aurora Avenue further north, it would have had entrances and exits to Western and Elliott. And I seem to remember the quoted price was like $11 billion. And the state - governor at the time was Christine Gregoire - they were - No, we're replacing the highway. We don't have $11 billion for Seattle. And of course had the support of a lot of lawmakers for obvious reasons - we're not going to give Seattle all that money, we want all that highway money for our districts. And those were immediately presented as the alternatives.
And so much of the credit has to go to Cary Moon, who lived on the waterfront and started something called the People's Waterfront Coalition. I think Grant Cogswell, a former City Council candidate - now runs a bookstore down in Mexico City, but wrote a book about the Monorail, worked on the different Monorail campaigns before that - they launched something called the People's Waterfront Coalition. And the basic proposition was - We don't need a highway. This is a great opportunity to get rid of the highway and have a surface street, but if you amp up the transit service - if we invest in transit instead - we can accommodate everyone. And so that was really - as it started - and actually I remember being outside City Hall one day, going to some stakeholder meeting - I went to so many different stakeholder meetings. And I remember Tim Ceis saying to me - he was the Deputy Mayor at the time - You're not supporting that Cary Moon idea - I mean, that's just crazy. I was - Well, actually, Tim. So the Sierra Club was - I was a volunteer leader in the Sierra Club - and the Sierra Club was one of the first organizations - I'm sure there were others, I shouldn't overstate it - but the Sierra Club was persuaded by the wisdom of Cary's idea and supported it in that day. And so that was really how the three different options got launched - no public process, no analysis, no description of what our needs were. The mayor went to a solution, the governor went to a solution - and it was up to members of the public to try to ask them to slow down, stop, and look at something different.
[00:05:42] Crystal Fincher: And Robert, how did you first engage with this issue?
[00:05:47] Robert Cruickshank: For me, I had just moved to Seattle the first time in the fall of 2001 - so it was about six months after the Nisqually quake - and I came from the Bay Area. And that was where another earthquake had damaged another waterfront highway, the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco. And that was where San Francisco had voted - after that quake had damaged their viaduct beyond repair - they voted to tear it down and replace it with the Embarcadero Waterfront, which is a six-lane arterial but they built a lot more transit there. So they did the - what we might call the surface transit option - and it worked really well. It was beautiful. It still is. And so when I came up here and started to learn a little bit about the place I was living and the legacy of the Nisqually quake, I thought - Oh, why don't you just do the same thing here? It worked so well in San Francisco. Let's just tear down this unsightly monstrosity on the waterfront and replace it with a surface boulevard and put in a bunch of transit - San Francisco's made it work successfully. And the more I learned about Seattle, I realized there's a legacy of that here, too. This is a city where we had a freeway revolt, where activists came together and killed the RH Thomson freeway, which would have destroyed the Arboretum. They killed the Bay Freeway, which would have destroyed Pike Place Market. And so I naturally assumed - as being a relatively new resident - that Seattle would stay in that tradition and welcome the opportunity to tear this down and build a great waterfront for people, not cars.
But as we'll talk about in a moment, we have a lot of business interests and freight interests and others who had a different vision - who didn't share that community-rooted vision. And I think at numerous points along the way, though, you see people of Seattle saying - No, this is not what we want for our waterfront. We have an opportunity now with the fact that this viaduct nearly collapsed, as Mike mentioned, in the Nisqually quake - we have an opportunity for something really wonderful here. And so I think Cary Moon and then Mike McGinn and others tapped into that - tapped into a really strong community desire to have a better waterfront. I wasn't that politically engaged at the time in the 2000s - I was just a grad student at UW - but just talking to folks who I knew, anytime this came up - God, wouldn't it be wonderful down there if this was oriented towards people and not cars, and we took that thing down? So I think one of the things you're going to see is this contest between the vision that many of us in Seattle had and still have - this beautiful location, beautiful vista on Elliott Bay, that should be for the people of the city - and those in power who have a very different vision and don't really want to share power or ultimately the right-of-way with We the People.
[00:08:05] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. And I was involved in some things at the time - some curious coalitions - but definitely I was around a lot of people who favored either rebuilding the viaduct or the tunnel. Definitely not this roads and transit option - there's no way that's workable. That's pie-in-the-sky talk from those loony greenies over there. What are you talking about? But as this went on - I think no matter what camp people were in - there was always a clear vision articulated and people really focused on the opportunity that this represented, and I think correctly characterized it as - this is one of these generational decisions that we get to make that is going to impact the next generation or two and beyond. And there's an opportunity - the waterfront felt very disconnected with the way things were constructed - it was not easy just to go from downtown to the waterfront. It wasn't friendly for pedestrians. It wasn't friendly for tourists. It just did not feel like a world-class waterfront in a world-class city, and how we see that in so many other cities. You talk about the decision with the Embarcadero, Robert, and looking at - that definitely seemed like a definitive step forward. This was sold as - yeah, we can absolutely take a step forward and finally fix this waterfront and make it what it should have been the whole time. As you thought about the opportunity that this represented, what was the opportunity to you and what did you hear other people saying that they wanted this to be?
[00:09:38] Mike McGinn: Yeah, so I think there are - I think that's really important, because I don't think there was a real discussion of what the vision was. People will say there was, but there really wasn't. Because what was baked in and what you're referring to is - well, of course you have to build automobile capacity to replace the existing automobile capacity, right? In fact, this state is still building more highways across the state in the misguided belief that more highway capacity will somehow or another do some good. So this idea that you have to replace and expand highway capacity is extremely powerful in Washington state and across the country. And there were very few examples of highway removal, so that was just a real challenge in the first place - that somehow or other the first priority has to be moving automobiles.
For me, at that time I had become - the issue of climate had really penetrated me at that point. And in fact, when Greg Nickels took office and the Sierra Club endorsed him over Paul Schell - I was a local leader in the Sierra Club and a state leader in the Sierra Club - and my goal was that Mayor Nickels would do more than Paul Schell. And Paul Schell, the prior mayor, had done some good things. He had made Seattle City Light climate neutral - we'd gotten out of coal plants and we didn't purchase power from coal plants. He was really progressive on a number of environmental issues and we wanted Mayor Nickels to do more - and Mayor Nickels had stepped up. So we put on a campaign to urge him to do more. And he had stepped up to start something called the Mayors' Climate Protection Initiative - which was the City of Seattle was going to meet the standards of the Kyoto Protocol, which was like the Paris Agreement of its day. And that was - it set an emissions reduction target by a date in the future. And that was really great - in fact, over a thousand cities around the country signed up to the Mayors' Climate Protection Initiative. And I was appointed to a stakeholder group with other leaders - Denis Hayes from the Bullitt Foundation and others - to develop the first climate action plan for a city. Al Gore showed up at the press conference for it - it was a big - it was a BFD and a lot of excitement.
And one of the things that was abundantly clear through that process of cataloging the emissions in the City of Seattle and coming up with a plan to reduce them was that our single largest source of emissions at that time was the transportation sector. We'd already gotten off of coal power under Mayor Schell - we received almost all of our electricity from hydroelectric dams. We had good conservation programs. Unlike other parts of the country, transportation was the biggest. Now what's fascinating is now - I don't know if I want to do the math - almost 20 years later, now what we see is that the whole country is in the same place. We're replacing coal and natural gas power plants. And now nationally, the single largest source of emissions is transportation. So how do you fix that? If we're serious about climate - and I thought we should be - because the scientists were telling us about heat waves. They were telling us about forest fires that would blanket the region in smoke. They were telling us about storms that would be bigger than we'd ever seen before. And flooding like we'd never seen and declining snowpack. And it was all going to happen in our futures. Honestly, I remember those predictions from the scientists because they're in the headlines today, every day. So what do we do to stop that? So I was - I had little kids, man - I had little kids, I had three kids. How are we going to stop this? Well, it's Seattle needs to lead - that's what has to happen. We're the progressive city. We're the first one out with a plan. We're going to show how we're going to do it. And if our biggest source is transportation, we should fix that. Well, it should seem obvious that the first thing you should do is stop building and expanding highways, and maybe even change some of the real estate used for cars and make it real estate for walking, biking, and transit. That's pretty straightforward. You also have to work on more housing. And this all led me to starting a nonprofit around all of these things and led to the Sierra Club - I think at a national level - our chapter was much further forward than any other chapter on upzones and backyard cottages and making the transition. So to me, this was the big - that was the vision. That was the opportunity. We're going to tear this down. We're going to make a massive investment in changing the system, and this in fact could be a really transformative piece. That's what motivated me.
That climate argument wasn't landing with a whole bunch of other interests. There was certainly a vision from the Downtown and Downtown property owners and residents that - boy, wouldn't it be great to get rid of that elevated highway because that's terrible. There was also a vision from the people who still believed in highway capacity and that includes some of our major employers at the time and today - Boeing and Microsoft, they have facilities in the suburbs around Seattle - they think we need highway capacity. As well as all of the Port businesses, as well as all the maritime unions - thought that this highway connection here was somehow critical to their survival, the industrial areas. And then they wanted the capacity. So there were very strong competing visions. And I think it's fair to say that highway capacity is a vision - we've seen that one is now fulfilled. The second priority was an enhanced physical environment to enhance the property values of Downtown property owners. And they cut the deal with the highway capacity people - okay, we're here for your highway capacity, but we have to get some amenities. And the climate folks, I'm not seeing it - never a priority of any of the leaders - just wasn't a priority.
[00:15:44] Crystal Fincher: How did you see those factions come into play and break down, Robert?
[00:15:48] Robert Cruickshank: It was interesting. This all comes to a head in the late 2000s. And remembering back to that time, this is where Seattle is leading the fight to take on the climate and the fight against George W. Bush, who was seen as this avatar of and deeply connected to the oil industry. Someone who - one of his first things when he took office - he did was withdraw the U.S. from the Kyoto Protocol, which is the earlier version of what's now known as the Paris Agreement - global agreement to try to lower emissions. And so Seattle, in resisting Bush - that's where Greg Nickels became a national figure by leading the Mayors' Climate Action Group - not just say we're going to take on climate, we're going to do something about really de facto fighting back against Bush. And then Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Al Gore comes out with An Inconvenient Truth. And by 2007, people in Seattle are talking a lot about climate and how we need to do something about climate. But then what you see happening is the limits of that - what are people really actually willing to do and willing to support?
The other piece that comes together, I think - in the 2000s - is a revival of the City itself. Seattle spends the late 20th century after the Boeing bust - since the 70s "Will the last person out of Seattle turn out the lights," recovering in the 80s somewhat, recovering in the 90s, and then the tech boom. And by the 2000s, Seattle is a destination city for young people coming to live here and living in apartments and working in the tech industry. I think that unsettles a lot of people. One thing that really stood out to me about the discussion about what to do on the waterfront was this vision from old school folks - like Joel Connelly and others - we've got to preserve that working waterfront. And it's very much the sense that blue collar working class labor is under threat - not from corporate power, but from a 20-something millennial with a laptop working at Amazon who comes to Seattle and thinks - Gosh, why is this ugly viaduct here? It's unsafe. Why don't we just tear it down and have a wonderful waterfront view? And those who are offended by this idea - who are so wedded to the 20th century model that we're going to drive everywhere, cars, freedom - this is where you see the limits of willingness to actually do something on climate. People don't actually want to give up their cars. They're afraid they're going to sacrifice their way of life.
And you start to see this weird but powerful constellation come together where rather than having a discussion about transportation planning or even a discussion about climate action, we're having this weird discussion about culture. And it becomes a culture war. And the thing about a culture war is people pushing change are never actually trying to fight a war. They're just - This is a good idea. Why don't we do this? We all say these - we care about these values. And the people who don't want it just dig in and get really nasty and fight back. And so you start to see Cary Moon, People's Waterfront Coalition, Mike McGinn, and others get attacked as not wanting working class jobs, not wanting a working waterfront, not caring about how people are going to get to work, not caring about how the freight trucks are going to get around even though you're proposing a tunnel from the Port to Wallingford where - it's not exactly an industrial hub - there are some businesses there. But dumping all these cars out or in South Lake Union, it's like, what is going on here? It doesn't add up. But it became this powerful moment where a competing vision of the City - which those of us who saw a better future for Seattle didn't see any competition as necessary at all - those who are wedded to that model where we're going to drive everywhere, we're going to have trucks everywhere, really saw that under threat for other reasons. And they decided this is where they're going to make their stand. This is where they're going to make that fight. And that turned out to be pretty useful for the Port, the freight groups, the establishment democratic leaders who had already decided for their own reasons this is what they wanted too.
[00:19:11] Mike McGinn: It's important to recognize too, in this, is to follow the money. And I think that this is true for highway construction generally. You have a big section of the economy - there's a section of the economy that believes in it, as Robert was saying, right? And I do think the culture war stuff is fully there - that somehow or another a bike lane in an industrial area will cause the failure of business. Although if you went to the bike - outside the industrial building - you'll find a bunch of the workers' bike there, right? Because it's affordable and efficient. So there's this weird belief that just isn't true - that you can't accommodate industry and transit and walking and biking. Of course you can. And in fact, adding all the cars is bad for freight movement because of all the traffic jams.
So there's that belief, but there's also a whole bunch of people - I mentioned Downtown property owners - that gets you to your Downtown Seattle Association. The value of their property is going to be dramatically enhanced by burying, by eliminating the waterfront highway. But then you also have all of the people who build highways and all of the people who support the people who build highways. Who's going to float $4 billion in bonds? It's going to be a Downtown law firm. And by the way, the person who worked for that Downtown law firm and did the bond work was the head of the greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce at that time. So you have the engineering firms, you have the material providers, and then you have the union jobs that go with it. So really at this point - and this isn't just about the waterfront highway, this could be any highway expansion - you've captured the business community because a big chunk of the business community will get direct dollars from the government to them. And you've actually captured a significant chunk of the labor community as well, because labor fights for labor jobs. In the big picture, service workers are taking transit, service workers need housing in town, and you can start to see a split - like in my ultimate run for mayor, I won some service worker unions, never won any construction trades. In fact, they held a rally my first year in office to denounce me, right? Because I was standing in the way of jobs. So that's a really powerful coalition.
And I think what you see today in the country as a whole - as you know, I'm the ED of America Walks, so I get to see a lot more - this is a pattern. Highways aren't really supported by the public. They don't go to the public for public votes on highways anymore - the public wouldn't support it. And in fact, the data suggests the public gets that building more highway lanes won't solve everything. But you've got a big, big chunk of the economy that's gotten extremely used to billions and billions of dollars flowing into their pockets. And they need to protect that in every year. So you get that level of intensity around - Look, we're talking about $4 billion on the waterfront and a bunch of that money's coming to us. Better believe it's a good idea, and what are you talking about, climate?
[00:22:03] Robert Cruickshank: You talk about public votes, and I think there are three crucial public votes we got to talk about. One is 2007, when these advisory votes are on the ballot - and they're not binding, but they're advisory. Do you want to rebuild the viaduct or build a tunnel? They both get rejected. And then the next big vote is 2009, the mayoral election, where Mike McGinn becomes mayor - in part by channeling public frustration at this giant boondoggle. And then ultimately, the last public vote on this, 2011 - in June, I believe it was, it was in August - about whether we go forward or not and the public by this point, fatigued and beaten down by The Seattle Times, decides let's just move on from this.
[00:22:43] Mike McGinn: There's no other alternative. And it is worth returning to that early vote, because it was such a fascinating moment, because - I think the mayor's office didn't want to put his expansive tunnel option in a direct vote against the new elevated, fearing it would lose. So they engineered an agreement with the governor that each one would get a separate up or down vote. And by the way, Tim Ceis, the Deputy Mayor at the time, called in the Sierra Club, briefed us on it, and one of our members said - What would happen if they both got voted down? And Deputy Mayor Ceis said - by the way, Tim Ceis has got a big contract right now from Mayor Harrell, longtime tunnel supporter. Tim Ceis is the consultant for most of the business side candidates. Tim Burgess, another big supporter of the tunnel, now works for Mayor Harrell. Oh, and Christine Gregoire has been hired by the biggest corporations in the region to do their work for them as well. So there's a pretty good payoff if you stick around and support the right side of this stuff. But anyway, Mayor Ceis, Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis, when said, What happens if they're both voted down? He goes - Well, that would be chaos. You don't want that, do you? And I remember all of us just kind of looked at each other - and we all went out on the sidewalk, there were like six of us. And we went - We want that, right? And so we joined in and supported the No and No campaign. And The Stranger came in really hard. And I think Erica Barnett wrote the articles. And Cary Moon was in on it. And the defeat of that, for the first time, opened up the possibility - Well, let's think about something else.
And so a stakeholder group was formed. Cary Moon was appointed. Mike O'Brien was appointed. The waterfront guys were appointed. And the Downtown folks were appointed. And the labor folks were appointed. And I think a really important part of the story here is that it was advisory - they weren't making the decisions, it was advisory. But they got to a point at which the head of the State DOT, the head of the Seattle DOT, and the head of the King County DOT all expressed to their respective executives that surface transit worked and was worth it. And this was extremely distressing to the business community. So they mounted a big lobbying push and went straight to Gregoire. And Gregoire, for the first time, became a tunnel supporter. And they were promised that this new tunneling technology - the deep bore tunnel - would solve the cost issues of the deep bore tunnel. And not only that, the state's commitment, which to date was $2.4 billion - they had committed $2.4 billion to a rebuild - the state wouldn't have to pay anymore, because the Port would put in $300 million and they would raise $400 million from tolling. And coincidentally, the amount they thought they could raise from tolling was the exact amount needed to meet the projected cost of using the deep bore tunnel boring machine. So the deal was cut and announced. And the whole stakeholder group and the recommendations from the DOT heads were abandoned. And that occurred, basically, late 2008, early 2009 - the deal was made. And that was about the time that I was contemplating - well, I think I'd already decided to run, but I had not yet announced.
[00:26:14] Crystal Fincher: And this was an interesting time, especially during that vote. Because at that time, I had an eye into what the business community was doing and thinking, and it was clear that their numbers didn't add up.
[00:26:26] Mike McGinn: Oh my God - no.
[00:26:28] Crystal Fincher: But they just did not want to face that. And what they knew is they had enough money and resources to throw at this issue and to throw at a marketing effort to obfuscate that, that they wouldn't have to worry about it. And there was this sense of offense, of indignation that - Who are these people trying to come up and tell us that we don't need freight capacity, that we don't need - that this extra highway capacity, don't they understand how important these freeways are? Who are these people who just don't understand how our economy works?
[00:27:02] Mike McGinn: They were the grownups who really understood how things worked. And we were the upstarts who didn't understand anything. But there's a great line from Willie Brown talking about - I think the Transbay Bridge, and Robert can correct the name, in California, which was way over budget. And people were lamenting that the early estimates had been made up. And he goes - Look, this is how it works. You just need to dig a hole in the ground so deep that the only way to fill it up is with money. I think that's pretty much the quote. So that's the strategy. You get it started. Of course you have rosy estimates. And then you just have that commitment, and it's the job of legislators to come up with the cost overruns, dollars later.
[00:27:43] Robert Cruickshank: And I think it's so key to understand this moment here in the late 2000s, where the public had already weighed in. I remember voting - it was the last thing I voted on before I moved to California for four years. I'm like no - I was No and No. And that's where the Seattle voters were. They rejected both options. And then you start to hear, coming out of the stakeholder group - Okay, we can make the surface transit option work. And I left town thinking - Alright, that's what's going to happen, just like the Embarcadero in San Francisco and done. And the next thing I hear in late 2008, early 2009, there's this deal that's been cut and all of a sudden a deep bore tunnel is on the table. And this is Seattle politics in a nutshell. I think people look back and think that because we are this smart, progressive technocratic city - those people who live here are - we think that our government works the same way. And it doesn't. This is - time and time again, the public will make its expression felt. They'll weigh in with opinion poll or protest or vote. And the powers that be will say - Well, actually, we want to do this thing instead. We'll cook it up in a backroom. We're going to jam it on all of you, and you're going to like it. And if you don't like it, then we're going to start marshaling resources. We're gonna throw a bunch of money at it. We'll get The Seattle Times to weigh in and pound away at the enemy. And that's how politics works here - that's how so much of our transportation system is built and managed. And so people today, in 2023, looking at this monstrosity on the waterfront that we have now think - How did we get here? Who planned this? It was planned in a backroom without public involvement. And I think that's a thing that has to be understood because that, as we just heard, was baked in from the very start.
[00:29:11] Mike McGinn: Well, Robert, the idea of a deep bore tunnel was brought forward by a representative of the Discovery Institute, who you may know as the folks that believe in creationism.
[00:29:21] Robert Cruickshank: Well, and not only that, the Discovery Institute is responsible for turning Christopher Rufo from a failed Seattle City Council candidate in 2019 into a national figure.
[00:29:31] Mike McGinn: The Discovery Institute, with money from local donors - major, very wealthy local folks - they actually had a long-term plan to turn all of 99 into a limited access freeway. It's like - we need to get rid of that First Avenue South and Highway 99 and Aurora Avenue stuff - all of that should be a freeway. So they were the architects of the idea of - Hey, this deep bore tunnel is the solution. But Robert's point is just right on - transportation policy was driven by power and money, not by transportation needs, or climate needs, or equity needs, or even local economy needs really. When you get right down to it, our city runs on transit - that's what really matters. Our city runs on the fact that it's a city where people can walk from place to place. The idea that our economic future was tied to a highway that would skip Downtown - the most valuable place in the Pacific Northwest, Downtown Seattle. No, that's not really what powers our economy. But it certainly worked for the people that were going to get the dollars that flowed from folks and for the people who own Downtown property.
[00:30:42] Crystal Fincher: And I want to talk about money and power with this. Who were the people in power? What was the Council at that time? Who made these decisions?
[00:30:50] Mike McGinn: The Council at the time was elected citywide. And I think some people have concerns about district representation, but one of the things that citywide elections meant at the time was that you had to run a citywide campaign, and that's expensive. There's no way to knock on enough doors citywide. I did not have a lot of money when I ran for mayor, but at least I had the media attention that would go to a mayoral candidate. A City Council candidate would kind of flow under the radar. So you had people come from different places, right? They might come from the business side, they might come from the labor side. But ultimately, they would tend to make peace with the other major players - because only business and only labor could finance a campaign. They were the only ones with the resources to do that. So the other interests - the environmentalists, the social service folks, neighborhood advocates of whatever stripe - we chose from amongst the candidates that were elevated by, they would unify - in some cases, the business and labor folks would unify around a candidate. In fact, that's what we saw in the last two mayoral elections as well, where they pick a candidate. And so this doesn't leave much room.
So when I was mayor, almost the entire council was aligned with the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce at that time, either endorsed by them or had made their peace with them so the challenger was not being financed. So Robert said something about those outsiders - I went under the radar screen as a candidate at the beginning of my campaign. When I entered the race, nobody was running because everybody thought that Greg Nickels had the institutional support locked down.
[00:32:33] Crystal Fincher: But then a snowstorm happened.
[00:32:35] Mike McGinn: Well, it was even before that - honestly, everybody thought that he could win. And long before the snowstorm, I was like - We're getting a new mayor. And I was actually looking around to try to figure out who it was going to be - because I wanted a mayor who actually believed in climate, who had my values. But nobody - I was looking through who the people were that might run, and it dawned on me - Well, nobody's going to run. But we're going to get a new mayor and I have my values - and I've actually run ballot measure campaigns and had a very modest base of support. So I was really the first one in the race that got any attention. So I got some great media attention off that. Then my opponent in the general, Joe Mallahan - whatever else you may think about Joe Mallahan - he actually saw it too. He saw that there was an opening. And then we were joined by a long-time City Councilmember, Jan Drago. And I remember the headline from The Seattle Times or the comments at the time was - Okay, now it's a real race. But it just really wasn't. So I was really under the radar screen in that race because they were disregarding me. But there was in fact a lot of anger about the tunnel. There was a lot of just - Greg, for whatever his positives or negatives that history will deal with - and by the way, I actually think Greg did a lot of good. I just was disappointed in his highway policies and his climate policies at the end of the day - I have a lot of respect for Greg Nickels, but he wasn't going to win that race. And I came out of the primary against Joe Mallahan.
And all of a sudden we had these two outsiders and the business community's freaking out. All of it - I remember watching it - all of the support, the business support shifted to Joe. It took about a month, it took a few weeks. But all of a sudden - there was actually one week where I think I raised more money than he did, that was pretty unusual - and then all of a sudden all the money was pouring in. And boy, did Joe believe in that tunnel. And did Joe believe in what the Chamber of Commerce wanted to do. In fact, he believed in it so much that he believed that Seattle should pay cost overruns if there were cost overruns on the tunnel - an admission I got from him during the televised debate, I was shocked he admitted to it.
[00:34:41] Crystal Fincher: I remember that debate.
[00:34:43] Mike McGinn: Yeah. So you were kind of asking about how politics worked. It was really something. Yeah - here's another memory. About two weeks before the election, the City Council took - three weeks before the, two, three weeks, four weeks - they took a vote to say that the tunnel was their choice. Even though there's a mayoral election in which the tunnel is on the ballot, so to speak - in terms of the issues of the candidates - they took a vote for no reason to say it was a done deal. And then WSDOT released a video of the elevated collapsing in a highway, which is the first time a public disclosure request from a third party was ever given straight to a TV station, I think, in my experience in Seattle. I had Gregoire and the DOT folks down there working on that campaign too - their tunnel was threatened. So it really was something how - I indeed was kind of shocked at - it was such a learning experience for me - how much the ranks closed around this. I didn't appreciate it. I had my own nonprofit, I had been on stakeholder committees, I'd worked with a lot of people that weren't just Sierra Club members and neighborhood types. I'd worked with a lot of business people, many of whom had supported my nonprofit because they liked its vision. But they were very clear with me that as long as I supported the surface transit option, there was no way they could be associated with my run for mayor in any way, shape, or form - even if they liked me. It was a complete lockdown - right after the primary where Greg lost the primary and it was me and Joe, I was - Okay, open field running. I can now reach out to these people. There's no incumbent - maybe some of them can support me now. And they were abundantly clear on all of those phone calls that - Nope, can't do it. Until you change your position on the tunnel, we just can't do it. We have business in this town, Mike. We have relationships in this town. We cannot do that. So it was a real lockdown - politically.
[00:36:38] Crystal Fincher: That was also a big learning experience for me - watching that consolidation, watching how not only were they fighting for the tunnel against you and making the fight against you a fight about the tunnel, but the enforcement to those third parties that you were talking about that - Hey, if you play ball with him, you're cut off. And those kinds of threats and that kind of dealing - watching that happen was very formative for me. I'm like - Okay, I see how this works, and this is kind of insidious. And if you are branded as an outsider, if you don't play ball, if you don't kiss the ring of the adults in the room - which is definitely what they considered themselves - then you're on the outs and they're at war. And it was really a war footing against you and the campaign. Who was on the Council at that time?
[00:37:30] Mike McGinn: Oh my God. Let me see if I can go through the list. No, and it really, it was - your point about it was a war footing was not something that I fully, that I did not appreciate until actually going through that experience - how unified that would be. Excuse me. The City Council chair was Tim Burgess at the time. Bruce Harrell was on the Council. Sally Clark, Richard Conlin, Nick Licata. Mike O'Brien was running on the same platform as me with regard to the tunnel and he'd just been elected. Jean Godden, Sally Bagshaw. I hope I'm not leaving anything out - because -
[00:38:04] Robert Cruickshank: Tom Rasmussen will forgive you.
[00:38:06] Mike McGinn: Tom Rasmussen. Yeah - because City Councilmembers would get really offended if you didn't thank them publicly - that was another thing I had to learn. You have to publicly thank any other politician on stage with you or they held a grudge. Yeah. So I had - I didn't know all the politicians' rules when I started.
[00:38:25] Crystal Fincher: There are so many rules.
[00:38:27] Mike McGinn: There are so many, there's so many rules. But really what you saw then was that the Council tended to move in lockstep on many issues - because if they all voted together and they all worked citywide, there was protection. None of them could be singled out. So it was very - and it's not to say that some of them didn't take principled votes and would find themselves on an 8-1 position sometimes, but for the most part, it was much, much safer to be - it was much, much safer to vote as a group. And they tended to do that. And they had coalesced around the tunnel, except for O'Brien. And that could not be shaken by anything we brought to bear.
[00:39:04] Robert Cruickshank: And this is wrapped up in not just the electoral politics, but the power politics. Because Mike McGinn comes in - mayor leading the 7th floor of City Hall, the head of City government - and smart guy, nice guy, willing to talk to anybody. But is not from their crew, is not from that group. And as Crystal and Mike said, the ranks were closed from the start. This is - again, 2009, 2010 - when nationally Mitch McConnell is quoted as saying, It's his ambition to make Obama a one-term president. I don't know if he's ever caught on record, but I would be quite certain that Tim Burgess would have said the exact same thing - that his ambition was to make Mike McGinn a one-term mayor. As it turned out in 2013, Tim Burgess wanted his job - one of the candidates running for it. So these are all people who have a reason to close ranks against Mike McGinn and to use a tunnel as a bludgeon against him to do so.
[00:39:58] Mike McGinn: There were other bludgeons. After I won the general election and before I took office, they passed their annual budget - they cut the mayor's office budget by a third before I even took office. Just boom - I know - they were determined, they were determined. And so that was when the planning - that council then and with WSDOT - that was when basically the contours of the waterfront were locked into place, including what we now see as that very wide surface road. That was that Council. So if you're wondering, if you're looking at that going - Okay, wow, who decided that and where did it come from? Again, our current mayor and his current advisor and others - they've always been for that. Building that big surface road has always been the plan to go along with the tunnel, because highway capacity was their highest priority. And the park on the waterfront, along with a lot of money into the aquarium and into these new structures - that's their signature thing for so many other people. But the idea that you should, that there was an opportunity to transform our transportation system and transform our city to make it more equitable and climate friendly was never a priority in this process. Just wasn't.
[00:41:20] Crystal Fincher: It was never a priority. It was never seriously considered. And to me, through this process - lots of people know, have talked about it on the show before - I actually didn't start off Team McGinn. I wound up Team McGinn - didn't start off that way. But through that - and you won me over with logic - it was you being proven right on several things. You pointed out that their projections, their traffic projections were just so far out of left field that there was no way that they were going to come close. And they even had to come down on their projections before we even saw the traffic - the actual traffic turned out to be lower. You were right on that one - the laughable -
[00:41:59] Mike McGinn: They're under 40,000 cars a day - for a highway that was carrying 110,000 cars a day beforehand. So even as a traffic solution - to put that into context, 40,000 cars a day is like the Ballard Bridge. And I can guarantee you the replacement costs of the Ballard Bridge is not $4 billion or $3.1 billion. The E Line, I think, carries 15,000 people a day. Metro carries 220,000 people a day. What you could do with that $3.1 billion or $4 billion in terms of bus lanes, bike lanes, rolling stock for Metro, maybe pay raises for bus drivers so that we could actually have service - you could do so much with those billions of dollars. And we put it all into moving 40,000 cars a day? It's just pathetic. That's three Rapid Ride lines we could have had for a 10th of the cost, or even less. I think the investments in Rapid Ride lines are about $50-100 million a line to make the capital investments to make it work. So the waste - even if you don't care about climate, the waste of dollars - and who's paying those taxes? To a great degree, we have the most regressive state and local tax system in the nation.
And we'll have a ballot measure soon, and I know a lot of environmentalists will be out there if the package spends for the right thing saying - Hey, we need money for local streets. Imagine if we'd taken that gas tax money and the Legislature had allowed cities and towns to use it to improve their streets - which they can do. I know that the constitution says highway purposes, but when you read highway purposes, it says roads and bridges. It includes everything. You can use gas taxes for anything that improves the road. And they do. WSDOT has used gas taxes to pay for bike lanes and sidewalks. It's legal. That's a choice. So we're driving around potholed streets. We have - we're putting up little plastic dividers because we care more about the car getting hurt than the bicyclist on the other side of that plastic divider. We're watching our transit service melt away because we can't pay bus drivers enough. But hey, man, somebody's got a really rapid - 3,000 people a day get to skip Downtown in their private vehicles. Where are our priorities for equity? Where are the priorities for economy, or even just plain old-fashioned fiscal prudence? None of that was there - because all of those dollars were going to fund the needs of the most powerful people in the City. And they captured those dollars - and all of us will pay the taxes, all of us will breathe the smoky air, and all of us will watch our streets deteriorate and our transit service evaporate.
[00:44:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And to me, it was such a foundational lesson that the people that we have making decisions really matter - and that we have to really explore their records, their donors, their histories - because over and over again, we look at the decisions that wind up being made that frequently conflict with campaign promises, but that very, very rarely conflict with their donor rolls.
[00:45:16] Mike McGinn: And yes - and every one of them knows how to make the value statements. So if I had any advice for people in this year's election - everyone is going to say they care about housing, everyone's going to say they think biking safe. I don't - one of the things that I came away with - I don't care about the goals you put into some policy anymore. Show me the hard physical action you will take that might piss somebody off, but you're willing to do it because it's right. And if you can't do that, then your value statements are meaningless. So take a look - who actually, and that's the question I always ask candidates for office - Tell me about a time you did something hard that might've caused you criticism, but you did it because it was right. Or that you made somebody who was an ally or friend upset, but you did it because it was right. Tell me about that time.
[00:46:04] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's a challenge. And to your point and learning through just watching how people operated through that and some other processes - but that certainly was a big learning for me - is the role of coalitions, the role of accountability, and understanding. You have always had your finger on the pulse of Seattle, really - you're extraordinarily good at that. You're actually - both of you - are great strategists. But our political class is so detached from that sometimes - certainly I'm feeling frustration at some recent actions by our Legislature - we just had our special session day where they increased criminalization of substances, personal possession of substances - just reflecting on legislation to provide school, kids with free meals at school, things that seem like really basic and foundational that we should be able to land this. If we can call a special session to hand Boeing billions of dollars, we should be able to feed kids, right?
[00:47:00] Mike McGinn: At the time we were cutting school budgets - when we found money for that. But I don't want to be too gloomy. And then I want to turn it over to Robert to get a last word in here, 'cause I just loved - his analysis is so awesome. I don't want to be too gloomy because - I look at what happened in the Legislature this year on housing, that we're finally going to allow housing, people to build more housing in places so people can actually live closer to their jobs and live more affordably. 10 years ago, we would have thought that was impossible. There's a lot of hard organizing that did it. At America Walks, we're the host of the Freeway Fighters Networks - there are people in 40 cities or more around the country that are organizing to remove highways. And while it's just a small amount of money compared to the amount going to highway expansion, there's actually federal funds to study and remove highways. So it's a long, hard slog. What felt for us - for Robert and me and Cary Moon and others fighting this - which felt like an impossible fight at the time is a fight that is now winning in places. Not winning enough - we're not winning fast enough - but it can change. And so that's - I don't want to be too negative. They got money, but organizing and people - and we actually have the public with us on this, just like we have the public with us on housing. So we just have to do more. We just got to keep at it, folks - got to keep at it. We can win this one. Don't allow this story of how hard it was to deal with the unified political class in the City of Seattle for their climate arson - should not deter you. It should inspire you, 'cause I actually won the mayor's office and we actually did do a lot of good. And the next fight is right in front of us again today, so get in it people. We need you.
[00:48:46] Robert Cruickshank: I think that's spot on. And I remember coming to work in your office at the very beginning of 2011, when it seemed like the tunnel was just dominating discussion, but not in the mayor's office, right? When I joined, I fully expected to be like - roll my sleeves up to take on that tunnel. Instead, I'm working on the mayor's jobs plan, the Families and Education Levy, on transit. That's the stuff that was really getting done, and I think McGinn left a really great legacy on that. But we didn't win the tunnel fight. And I think we've diagnosed many of the reasons why, but one thing that really stands out to me as I look back from 12, 13 years distance is we didn't have the same density of genuinely progressive and social democratic organizations and people and leaders in Seattle that we have now. I think that matters because Mike's been talking about what's the next fight. I think one of the big fights coming up next year - when it comes time to renew that Move Seattle Levy - that's nearly a billion dollars that's going to be on the table. And we keep getting promised - when we are asked to approve these massive levies - that a lot of that money is going to go to safe streets, it's going to go to protect vulnerable users, we're going to do something to finally get towards Vision Zero. And instead it all gets taken away to build more car infrastructure. At what point do we finally stand - literally in the road - and say, No more. Do we look at the broken promises on the waterfront where we were promised a beautiful pedestrian-friendly waterfront and got another car sewer? We're going to have to organize and come together. We have many more groups now and many more leaders who are willing to stand up and say - We're not passing this levy unless it actually focuses on safe streets, unless it focuses on pedestrians and cyclists and transit users, and gives iron-clad promises to make sure stuff gets built so that some future mayor can't just walk in and start canceling projects left and right that we were promised. That's the lesson I take from this is - we're better organized now, we have more resources now, but it's still going to be a slog, and we're going to have to stand our ground - otherwise we get rolled.
[00:50:34] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I thank you both for this conversation today - reflections on the tunnel fight, how it came to be, what it was like in the middle of it, and the lessons that we take moving forward in these elections that we have coming up this year, next year, and beyond. Thanks so much for the conversation.
[00:50:50] Mike McGinn: Thank you, Crystal.
[00:50:51] Robert Cruickshank: Thank you - it's been wonderful.
[00:50:52] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Washington State government reporter for McClatchy, Shauna Sowersby!
Crystal and Shauna recount the terrifying details of a hole blowing out the side of a Boeing 737 MAX 9 midflight, the response by Alaska Airlines, and what steps the National Transportation Safety Board is taking to get to the bottom of the incident. They then shift gears and discuss Inslee’s final State of the State address, the start of the Washington state legislative session, and how $700k has been spent by the State Transportation Department on boulders to discourage homeless from returning to encampments. Finally, Crystal wraps up with a rundown of a Seattle City Council staff shakeup less than a week into new Council President Sara Nelson’s term.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Shauna Sowersby at @Shauna_Sowersby.
Shauna Sowersby
Shauna Sowersby was a freelancer for several local and national publications before joining McClatchy’s northwest newspapers covering the Legislature. Before that, Shauna worked for the US Navy as a photographer and journalist.
Resources
RE-AIR: Evaluating the Role of Incarceration in Public Safety with Criminologist Damon Petrich from Hacks & Wonks
“Alaska, United find loose hardware during inspection of 737 MAX 9s” by Dominic Gates from The Seattle Times
“When Alaska flight 1282 blew open, a mom went into ‘go mode’ to protect her son” by Dominic Gates from The Seattle Times
“NTSB focus on Boeing, Spirit assembly work after Alaska Airlines blowout” by Dominic Gates from The Seattle Times
“‘The strongest state in the nation’: Gov. Jay Inslee delivers State of the State address” by Shauna Sowersby from The News Tribune
“Leading WA lawmakers give media a rundown on their 2024 legislative priorities” by Shauna Sowersby from The News Tribune
“Washington taxpayers paid nearly $700,000 for boulders to deter return to encampments” by Shauna Sowersby from The Olympian
“Major Staff Shakeup Marks Sara Nelson's First Week as Council President” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
If you missed our Tuesday topical show, we re-aired my robust conversation with criminologist Damon Petrich about the ineffectiveness of incarceration. We hope everyone listens as the pressure to double down on the punitive status quo intensifies. Today, we are continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show, today's co-host: Washington State government reporter for McClatchy, Shauna Sowersby. Hello.
[00:01:24] Shauna Sowersby: Hi, Crystal - thanks for having me on again.
[00:01:27] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - thanks for coming on. We have a lot to discuss. I think this week we will start with what has been dominating the news and is quite concerning to many. And that is what has followed from the Alaska Airlines flight that had a door plug basically fall off during a flight and cause a rapid depressurization, forced the plane to return back to Portland - it was on its way to Ontario, California. And my goodness, so much has happened in the aftermath. What happened in this incident?
[00:02:06] Shauna Sowersby: Yeah, so what it appears like - kind of after the fact, after they've been given a few days to kind of look this over - was that, I believe, one of the theories is that the plug was not properly, the door plug was not properly put into place. They're not aware if it was even screwed down completely to begin with, if those screws were even there at all, or what's going on. But it sounds like a lot of those - if not most of those - flights have now been grounded so that they can kind of inspect that issue a little bit more.
[00:02:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, so all of the 737 MAX 9 aircraft have been grounded by the FAA. Initially, Alaska announced that they were going to ground them pending a maintenance inspection, which they had started and had already said - Hey, a couple of the inspections had already been complete, we're ready to fly again. The FAA actually stepped in and said - No, we're actually going to ground these - or the NTSB stepped in and said - We're going to ground them, we want a robust inspection. And they have decided to do that. And they actually don't have a time for return yet from that grounding - and they've learned more.
The nature of airplanes, airlines, as they're constructed, is it's not just Boeing. Boeing has subcontractors and suppliers that are also responsible for part of the assembly. And in this situation, Spirit AeroSystems, based out of Wichita, Kansas, is the subcontractor that is responsible for installing this door plug. And then Boeing in Renton is responsible for the final inspection of the component before sealing it behind installation and the sidewall. Dominic Gates of The Seattle Times is their aerospace reporter and has done a number of articles on this - useful to follow him and his reporting if you want to stay on top of this. But it just really seems, just like you said, that it seems pretty obvious that this was not installed correctly. Both United and Alaska in their inspections have found multiple problems associated with this door plug installment - whether it's loose bolts, some bolts or some hardware that may not be in the right place or missing - they just don't know what's happening. And this causes a lot of questions about the quality control of both Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems.
[00:04:27] Shauna Sowersby: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, all of this, too, is just so harrowing. I know you and I, before the show started, were kind of talking about the folks who didn't show up for that flight. I believe Dominic also wrote the article about - from the mother's perspective, who had to hold on to her child as the flight was trying to land an emergency landing. So yeah, I mean, this stuff - I'm glad that they grounded everything when they did. My own daughter actually had a flight out Saturday by herself, after Friday night had happened, on an Alaska flight. So we were kind of holding our breath for that and really glad to see the news Saturday morning that they had grounded all of those flights, but still - not something people want to be thinking about before they're boarding their flights.
[00:05:15] Crystal Fincher: Not something people want to be thinking about and also just another unpleasant incident for Boeing after their previous quite lengthy grounding of MAX airliners - following that software error that led to fatal crashes that took quite some time to fix. And kind of ironically, Boeing was also seeking a safety exemption for that other plane - had just requested it within hours of this incident happening on this type of plane. So there's still - looks like quite a lot to be determined, looks like the NTSB in its preliminary findings are really focusing on Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems. There was a question about an indicator light saying, you know, there may be something going on with the depressurization system that Alaska Airlines chose to - they followed up on, they saw it, they didn't seem like they quite got to the root cause of what it was, but they said - Okay, so we won't send these planes on long haul flights, we won't send them over water so that if anything happens, they'll be able to get to an airport quickly. Which on one hand, some people said, Why are they flying it at all? And on the other hand, people said, Well, that may have actually saved some lives, depending.
One thing that is absolutely clear is it's fortunate this depressurization happened at the relatively low altitude that it did - at 16,000 feet, instead of much higher up, which could have had this wind up being a very, very different and much more tragic story - if it would have depressurized at a much higher altitude or typical cruising altitude. And just more questions surrounding even Boeing and their training and preparation for this aircraft. One of the findings was, occurrences that happened was that when the depressurization happened, the cockpit door flew open, which Boeing says - Well, it's designed to do that, that's supposed to happen. The pilots didn't know that. No one on the plane knew that. And that also caused a checklist - this is important information that the pilots are dealing with - to just fly out of the cabin. So they're down information, trying to manage an emergency, one of the pilots' headset fell off or was sucked off as that happened.
Yeah, so I mean, this was a harrowing thing. Very, very happy that the injuries that did occur were relatively minor. But it does seem like it was a really traumatic experience. As you said, that article detailing the mother having to basically hold on to her son whose shirt and headphones had been sucked off. And then basically her seatmate holding on to her, as she's holding on to her son. The flight attendants - because of how they were positioned and the noise and everything - they knew that there was a depressurization, but they didn't actually really know that there was a gaping hole in the plane, which also delayed them getting to help this mom and her son. And she's staring out at the ground 16,000 feet below, trying to hold on to her kid - just, I can't even imagine. But this has certainly caused me to feel uncomfortable about flying on these MAX planes and just wondering - Okay, so they're inspecting all of this. Well, are they inspecting everything on the planes? Because I think there's a lot of people questioning - this is a quality control issue. What else may be escaping their attention?
So I do hope that we do get to the bottom of this. It does seem like the NTSB generally does very thorough investigations and inspections. They seem like they're being cautious and just their plan to deal with this - making Boeing revise their safety materials and warnings for pilots and airlines to reflect the reality of the situation that we know now. So this is quite challenging, but also - looking at having potential regional economic effects again. What does this mean for Boeing, who's one of our region's largest employers? What does this mean for Alaska Airlines, and potentially United, having to cancel a lot of flights? Just a lot of questions. But there has to be absolute confidence in the safety of air travel or else everything unravels from there. So we'll see how this continues to unfold.
[00:09:27] Shauna Sowersby: Yeah, I'm really curious to know what's going on internally at Boeing right now. And, you know, if we're actually going to see any action on that front in the coming weeks as well.
[00:09:40] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And it does seem like Boeing initially is taking a little bit different of, is operating a little bit differently in the beginning of this challenge that it did initially in the beginning of the last MAX issue challenge. They seem to be stressing that they plan to be transparent, that they plan to be accessible, that they're trying to support their partner airlines, saying that they know they need to get this right and rebuild trust. So it is a different stance that hopefully, I mean, after learning how seemingly trying to cover things up or discount things before did not turn out that well. And that this is a real crisis. So yeah, we'll see how everyone approaches this and what the findings continue to uncover.
[00:10:28] Shauna Sowersby: I will be looking forward to it.
[00:10:30] Crystal Fincher: As will I. Well, here in the state of Washington - as we start a new year, not only is there a new start of the legislative session, which just convened, but also we get our annual State of the State from Jay Inslee, who has announced that he's in his final term. He will not be running, he is not running for reelection. What did he have to say in his State of the State address?
[00:10:55] Shauna Sowersby: Yeah, it seemed to me like Inslee really wanted to highlight his last - he mentioned that this was his 11th State of the State that he's given, this will be his last one as governor. And so I - this one seemed to be highlighting a lot of the things that he believes are wins for Washington state. The one that comes to the top of my head is the regional training centers for law enforcement officials that they had opened out in Pasco - so to him, that's a really big issue. He mentioned climate issues, of course - talking about the CCA [Climate Commitment Act] and being proud of that work. Also brought up housing from last year and all the bills that were passed to increase the supply of housing. So he just kind of went through all the things over the last three terms that he's been in that he believes the state has done really well.
[00:11:49] Crystal Fincher: What was the reaction to his State of the State address, both by lawmakers in his party who are Democrats and by Republicans?
[00:11:58] Shauna Sowersby: Yeah, I would say the Democrats are cautiously optimistic, it seems like. I would say - well, Laurie Jinkins did say that she is very optimistic. But, you know, it seems like some of the other ones are a little bit more cautiously optimistic about the things that Inslee is saying. Republicans - Jerry Cornfield asked them a question the other day, because he felt like they were kind of focusing too negatively on on issues. So he's like - Is there anything nice that you do have to say? And it seemed like there was kind of a struggle to come up with that, as they were listing out all these kind of other issues that they were bringing up - public safety and things of that nature.
[00:12:41] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it'll be interesting. There are going to be a number of ballot initiatives that they're gearing up for that are going to be on the ballot. So they are certainly in a critical mood and are trying to ride that all the way through to November. But there are - agree with them or disagree with them - there have been some major landmark achievements under Jay Inslee. One of the biggest and most recent is the Climate Commitment Act, the CCA, which is raising quite a bit of money from pricing carbon, basically - trading credits that are trying to cap emissions and have that money be reinvested in policies and infrastructure that helps to do the same. We'll see how that turns out to be, what the results and progress of that are as we get more reporting and tracking of what's going on - but certainly a lot of cause for optimism, a lot of opportunity to make some significant investments and movements towards decarbonization, reducing pollution, and lowering greenhouse gas emissions.
Talking about public safety - that center that had been opened - as many municipalities talk about wanting to accelerate hiring and recruitment of police and sheriffs. This adds to the capacity to do that. We've talked about it before, but some people don't know there's quite a bit of lead time - once you hire an officer, it's not like you hire them today, they're on the street tomorrow. They do have to go through a training, quite extensive training, policies and procedures. And so it can be and often is a year plus from the time that they're hired to the time that they are actively on - working for a police or sheriff's department - so that expanding capacity. Talked about mental health treatment and support there, expanding capacity. There have also been some challenges in those areas, which I definitely saw Republicans point out. But kind of as you saw him wrapping up his final State of the State, did you see him trying to - was he contending with what he might view as his legacy or what he wanted to leave people with? How did you read this final State of the State address from Inslee?
[00:15:02] Shauna Sowersby: Yeah, I would say it was kind of exactly that. Like, hey, here's this reminder. Look at all of these things that I've done over the course of the last 11 years, 12 years. I feel like it definitely was written in such a way, or given in such a way, that it was to check all the boxes, show off all the things that he's done - understandably. There were a lot of good things that have been done, so why not show them off, I guess?
[00:15:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. He also did say that he saw two grave threats in the US and the state - one to just the basic tenets of democracy, part of the larger conversation. The other is about reproductive rights and women having reproductive choice - and called on the legislature to enshrine reproductive protections in the State Constitution this session, something that did not get passed last year. So we will see if they decide to heed that call this session or not. What do you see as the prospects for that?
[00:16:07] Shauna Sowersby: Well, Republicans have already stated that they are not on board with this idea at all. I think that's - it seems pretty unanimous across both Republican caucuses in the Senate and the House that it's just not going to happen. They believe that there's other issues that need to be taken care of. They - one of the things they always go to is - There's no threat to it here in Washington, it's already protected. Why would we need this additional measure? So they have very clearly stated that there is no appetite in their parties to pass this. And since this would be a constitutional amendment, it would require some Republican votes there as well.
[00:16:49] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, we talk about there being no threat, but we continue to see a number of Supreme Court cases that do have the potential to impact what we're doing here in the state and what's happening in other states - increasing demand, restricting capacity for what we're doing here in Washington state and what women have access to. So we will continue to follow along with that and see. But as you've been covering and have been talking about, our legislative session did start. There have been a couple of availabilities talking about priorities in this session. What are Democrats and Republicans saying are their priorities for this legislative session?
[00:17:29] Shauna Sowersby: Yeah, it seems like everybody is on board with behavioral health and continuing that progress from last year. Of course, housing is on the docket for both parties. And what was it - even just on Monday, they already passed Rep. Barkis' lot-splitting bill off the House floor. So, you know, huge appetite to continue that work, it looks like. Public safety is another thing that I keep hearing from both parties, although I will say it seems like it's coming more from the Republicans than it is the Democrats. And those are some of the major issues I can think of kind of off of the top of my head. I know that the ballot initiatives from Let's Go Washington will also have, could have a major impact this year, too, on what the legislature decides to do once those are certified. They've talked about how they'll deal with them as they come to them. But that's also something - they need to need to watch out for as well.
[00:18:31] Crystal Fincher: So when we talk about housing - obviously, there was some pretty significant action and movement on housing last session. What specifically are they talking about trying to accomplish this session?
[00:18:44] Shauna Sowersby: Well, I will tell you that it doesn't seem like - this more pertains to rental housing - rent stabilization has come up and they've been asked about this many times. And so I know that that's been a really big issue for a lot of folks. And a lot of folks are really curious in this - and it doesn't seem like that one is going to get passed anytime soon. But in terms of housing, Representative Melanie Morgan introduced a bill to create a centralized Department of Housing in Washington state, so I thought that that was a pretty interesting idea. Trying to think - the lot-splitting bill was the other one that comes to mind.
[00:19:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it'll be interesting. And just as you continue to talk about - as you mentioned, addressing behavioral health needs and needing to dramatically expand capacity, in addition to expanding the labor force that is available. There are shortages in providers and workers in that arena and that needing to be addressed there. So that is an area where there does seem to be bipartisan recognition that action is needed in that area. What that ultimately turns out to be - we will see - but it is basically at crisis levels, most people are acknowledging, and needing to happen there. Housing and homelessness are still there. There seems to be a lot of the back and forth that we've been hearing in a lot of localities about what is the right approach, criticism of trying to double down on failed policies for many. But we will - we'll see what happens there. Transportation is another area that that you covered there - lots of major projects that have skyrocketing costs. The ferry system struggling, and what to do about that, are major issues. What have you heard in those areas?
[00:20:41] Shauna Sowersby: Well, definitely in terms of ferries, it does not seem like either the Democrats or the Republicans feel very optimistic in that area. I'm trying to think of what - one of the quotes I heard the other day, but it was like, you know, if you're expecting anything anytime soon, don't. This is stuff that is going to be in the works for quite a while. We are - obviously, as I'm sure you're familiar with, there's been a lot of issues with our ferries in the last several months - you're hearing news stories about them getting grounded, all sorts of things, so I think that that is going to be, will continue to be a very serious issue that needs to be addressed. And it doesn't seem like that'll happen anytime soon.
[00:21:33] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that is going to be a challenge. I think you did report that most lawmakers don't have an appetite for delaying any of the outrageously expensive and growing more expensive transportation projects. You know, a lot of highway projects are what we're looking at there. So it looks like they will find the money from somewhere - and where that comes from, we will see. But yeah, just a lot on their docket and a lot to keep track of. Session has just gotten underway. Early action, early hearings are underway. But we will see what continues to unfold there and we'll continue to follow your reporting.
Also wanted to talk about another story of yours this week, talking about - my goodness, Washington taxpayers have paid nearly $700,000 for boulders to deter a return to encampments by people who had been cleared out. What is going on?
[00:22:33] Shauna Sowersby: That is a good question. I live here in Olympia, and so I was just driving by the former encampment on Sleater Kinney a couple months ago, and I noticed how many boulders there are. I mean, it's massive - I don't know if you've seen it anytime soon. But it got me really curious. I just wanted to know what was going on. And so yeah, had a conversation with WSDOT about it - one encampment at Sleater Kinney, the one that I had mentioned, that one alone is $643,000 just for the boulder placement, transportation, and all that stuff. So yeah, this is - it shocked me whenever I heard that number, and whenever I added up all the numbers that they had given me and everything to total nearly $700,000 just for boulder placement in three areas.
[00:23:27] Crystal Fincher: I mean, it's wild, it's frustrating. As we've talked about several times on this program - fundamentally, at its core, homelessness is a housing problem. The one thing that every homeless person has in common, the cause of being homeless is not having a house. There are things that can contribute as factors. There are oftentimes, you know, being homeless is so hard that it often exacerbates other factors or other risks that were there before. But we seem to be spending money on everything but getting people into housing. And spending so much money on things that are not helping move people into housing. And to think that we're investing in literal rocks - $700,000 in rocks - to say, Don't come back, does not alleviate the problem of homelessness. We basically - we know that if we clear an encampment without also helping people into shelter or housing, that they just move to a different place. We're relocating the problem, we aren't solving it. And to spend $700,000 in a basically relocation effort doesn't seem like the best investment to me. Did this strike the people you were talking to as a large expenditure? Did they seem like - Well, this is just what we needed to do? Was there any kind of thought or reflection on that?
[00:24:57] Shauna Sowersby: Yeah, I actually posed that question to WSDOT because I was curious too. I'm like, this - people might be startled by this number, right? Like, what do you think of this? And she acknowledged - Kris Abrudan - she acknowledged that it is quite an expense, but stressed the need to have something like that in place to prevent people from returning to encampments. I asked the same question to Governor Inslee at a press conference. I asked him - if he thought that that was a good thing to invest in. And it was sort of the same response - I was actually a little surprised by Inslee's response, especially since he's kind of been on the forefront of wanting to create so much housing and help homeless folks and stuff, but his response to say - Oh well, the neighbors like it being there, they like having those boulders there because it means people won't return. I just was a little surprised by his response in that instance.
[00:26:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I mean - and wow, you know what a good way to get people not to return to the site of an encampment would be - would be like providing them housing. They wouldn't return if they had a place to actually live. And how much could $700,000 go towards making that possible? That is not a small amount of money. That could do a lot, not just for the plain old housing costs or even, you know, if it was temporary shelter hotel. But to move towards permanent housing - for some supportive services, assistance, coordination - it just seems like such an expensive waste to me personally. But I really appreciate your reporting on this because it does take understanding what we are contending with, with the issue on the table - what's being proposed and done currently to address it, and going, Is that working? And is this the wisest expenditure of money? I certainly hope that more people would figure out ways to - instead of spending money on eco-blocks, or on hostile architecture, on rocks, that we would take that money and do something that more meaningfully and permanently addresses the issue and gets people off of the street for good. And doesn't just keep them on the street, but just away from this specific area with some rocks - which also like are an eyesore to many people, like they're not cute.
[00:27:30] Shauna Sowersby: I'm saying - thank you. Yes. I'm like, are we just gonna keep expanding rocks everywhere until, you know, there's no more room for anything.
[00:27:40] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and it's a challenge. And also that we have to contend with these things. I mean, hostile architecture is the term for it - but these are in public spaces, these are in places that we all congregate at, drive by, are around, and it's not pleasant for the community. I'm sure some people will say - Well, encampments aren't pleasant either - and they certainly aren't for the people who are forced to live there because they have nowhere else to live. And I just think that we should focus on removing the pain from everyone and really sustainable solutions that try and address the root cause of the problem and not the symptoms of the problem, that ignoring addressing the root cause just continues to exacerbate.
[00:28:26] Shauna Sowersby: Yeah. And not to mention, those are all being graffitied up and everything now, too. So if we're talking about an eyesore, you know, it's just progressively getting worse on that front.
[00:28:38] Crystal Fincher: My goodness. Well, the final thing I wanted to talk about today is local to Seattle. We recently had the new city council sworn in. Sara Nelson selected as Council President - who is a conservative - or centrist, as they're calling themselves. And with this, the first action, one of the first actions that Sara Nelson took was to fire the head of Central Staff there, which was very concerning to a lot of people. With the amount of new councilmembers who, regardless of what your political leanings are - there's a lot to just understand if you've never held elective office before, you're coming in to a major city. To legislate, to be part of the city council - just how things work, understanding what the roles and responsibilities are, how to conduct yourself during meetings, what the status of projects underway and planned are, getting familiar with what is going to be in your portfolio on your committees. It really is a lot. You are drinking from the fire hose. And this is true for any new elected in any position, regardless of ideology. Just the job is daunting. And so there's a lot that needs to be caught up. Institutional knowledge is really important. People who understand why legislation was written a certain way, understand the consequences or ramifications of things that have been proposed, understand what stakeholdering went into different processes and what was done. This institutional knowledge - a lot of it walked out the door with a lot of the outgoing councilmembers. And with all these new ones, I think there's been broad agreement and reporting and discussions that while there's going to be a lot on their plates and, you know, having people who understand just how things work at the city is really important.
When it comes to Central Staff, these are the people who support all of the councilmembers, who help to analyze and move legislation, who are working in this capacity. And Esther Handy is the person who was fired, but was largely credited for stabilizing that office when they took this position a few years back and just has done the job very well. Having competent people in those roles is very important for just the writing and passage of sound policy, across the whole portfolio of policy. And there was no performance reason given. It wasn't like they weren't doing their job. Sara Nelson said that she just didn't feel like, you know, just didn't like the supposed political leaning of Esther, which that doesn't seem to have ever been an issue before. These are nonpartisan positions. You know, was she performing the duties of the job? It seemed to catch, it absolutely did catch a lot of people by surprise. And really at a time when this kind of knowledge and stabilization is needed, was just viewed as really short-sighted. Certainly looks that way to me. And it looks like someone really wanting to say - It's a new day, there's a new sheriff in town. And, you know, this is, we're now doing this my way. So very new day there at the Seattle City Council. Hard to find a similar incidence of something like this happening in the city before. Certainly within offices, people in their own staffs, and people who know that they're in, you know, kind of positions attached to the elected - that happens, and it's unfortunate sometimes for the actual lives involved. But people are prepared for that, and that happens more often. But for this, this caught a lot of people off guard and was just like - Whoa. It looks like there's going to be a use of power in ways that we have not seen in recent memory here in the City of Seattle.
[00:32:41] Shauna Sowersby: Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how - how else everything is affected moving forward. What else will be changed, too?
[00:32:48] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, January 12th, 2024. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is Washington State government reporter for McClatchy, Shauna Sowersby. You can find Shauna on Twitter at @Shauna_Sowersby. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. You can find me anywhere you want to find me at @finchfrii, with two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
As the public and policy makers at various levels of government are pressured to double down on punitive status quo approaches, we hope everyone listens to this re-air of Crystal’s robust conversation with criminologist Damon Petrich about the ineffectiveness of incarceration.
As lead author of the seminal work “Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Damon performed an extensive analysis of 116 research studies looking at the effect of incarceration on reoffending. The review’s finding that the oft-used policy of imprisonment does not reduce the likelihood of recidivism sparks a discussion about how the United States ended up as the world leader in mass incarceration and the disconnect between conventional assumptions about what prisons provide versus reality. Noting that the carceral system does a poor job of rehabilitation - while eating up budgets across the country and exacting significant societal costs - Damon and Crystal talk about how to design and evaluate programs that do work to deliver greater public safety for everyone.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and reach Damon for more information about his research at dpetrich@luc.edu
Dr. Damon Petrich
Dr. Damon M. Petrich is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Loyola University Chicago. He received his Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from the University of Cincinnati, and his Bachelor of Arts (Honors) and Master of Arts degrees in Criminology from Simon Fraser University. His research focuses on two interrelated areas. The first is the development of antisocial behavior across the life-course, specifically focusing on desistance from crime and the mechanisms by which exposure to community violence impacts self-regulation and behavior. Dr. Petrich’s second area of research surrounds the effectiveness of sanctions and programs in the criminal justice system. Throughout these projects, Dr. Petrich uses a wide range of methodological approaches, including qualitative techniques, meta-analysis, machine learning, and marginal structural modeling.
Resources
“Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review” by Damon M. Petrich, Travis C. Pratt, Cheryl Lero Jonson, and Francis T. Cullen for Crime and Justice
Scott Hechinger Twitter thread
“Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022” by Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner from the Prison Policy Initiative
“Risk-need-responsivity model for offender assessment and rehabilitation” by James Bonta and D. A. Andrews for Public Safety Canada
“Let’s Take a Hard Look at Who Is in Jail and Why We Put Them There” by Alea Carr for the ACLU-WA blog
Book - “Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect” by Robert J. Sampson
Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation Program - “Police Legitimacy and Legal Cynicism: Why They Matter and How to Measure in Your Community”
“Polls Show People Favor Rehabilitation over Incarceration” by Matt Clarke for Prison Legal News
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, I am excited to welcome Damon Petrich, who's a doctoral associate in the School of Criminal Justice at University of Cincinnati and incoming assistant professor at Loyola University Chicago. He was the lead author of a recent article, "Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review," along with Travis Pratt, Cheryl Lero Johnson, Francis T. Cullen. Damon's research focuses on the effectiveness of corrections and rehabilitation programs, desistance from crime, and the impact of community violence on youth development. Thank you so much for joining us, Damon.
[00:01:13] Damon Petrich: Thank you very much for having me on, Crystal. I'm excited to talk a little bit about my work and the implications of that and all that, so thanks again.
[00:01:20] Crystal Fincher: I'm very excited to talk about this and it's extremely timely - has been for a while. We have conversations almost every day in the public sphere having to do with public safety - this is such a major component of it. And so I'm hoping as we have this conversation, it'll help us to better assess what the costs and benefits are of custodial sanctions and incarceration, and alternatives to that - to have a conversation that kind of orients us more towards public safety. Sometimes we're so concerned with metrics around police and how many they are, and what the length of a sentence should be. And sometimes we focus on things that take us off of the overall goal of keeping us all safer and reducing the likelihood that each of us are victimized and to hopefully prevent people from becoming victims of crime. And just to have accurate conversations about how we invest our public resources - what we're actually getting from them, and then how to evaluate as we go along - what we should be tracking and measuring and incentivizing. As so many people talk about taking data-driven approaches and create all these dashboards - that we're really doing it from an informed perspective. So just to start out - what actually were you studying and what were you seeking to find out?
[00:02:47] Damon Petrich: Yeah, so the main purpose of our meta-analysis, which I can explain exactly what that is later on if you have questions, but the main purpose was to understand what happens when you take one group of offenders and you sentence them to something custodial like prison or jail, and then you sentence another group of similar offenders to something non-custodial like probation. How do those two groups differ in terms of whether they reoffend? So does prison actually deter recidivism, or does it make people more likely to commit crime afterwards? So that's sort of what we were looking at and so we considered all of the available research on that, in this review.
[00:03:29] Crystal Fincher: Got it. So right now we have gone down the path of mass incarceration - that is the default punishment that we, as society, have looked to for crime. Hey - sentence them and many times it's, Hey, they're going to jail. Sometimes they get out of jail and they have supervision that continues, but jail is really focused, where we focus a lot of our effort and where we put people and hope that that'll straighten them out and they come out and everything is fine. How did we get here and where are we in terms of how we're approaching incarceration in our society, in our country?
[00:04:11] Damon Petrich: Yeah, so there is a lot of public uproar around a lot of issues, like race issues, and there was crime spikes and concerns over social welfare - and there's all this confluence of issues in the '60s and early '70s. And we decided to - as a country, not everyone, but politicians decided that we should tackle the crime problem by A) incarcerating more people, and then B) once they get there, keep them there for longer. So we enacted things like mandatory minimum sentences, where the judge really has no discretion over what happens - the person gets automatically a sentence of incarceration if they've committed a certain type of crime. You had habitual offender laws where if you're - like California's three strikes policy - where if you have two prior felonies and you get a third, no matter what it is, you're going to jail for life. Michigan had the "650 Lifer Law," where if you get caught with 650 grams of heroin or cocaine, you're automatically going to prison for life. And then we got rid of parole and stuff like that in a lot of states.
So all these things lead to more people going to jail and then for longer, and those laws came to be in the '70s and '80s. And over that time, our incarceration rate ballooned up by about 700%, so by the early 2000s, we were at over 2 million people incarcerated and another 7-8 million people on probation or parole. So it's a pretty big expansion - the United States has 5% of the world's population and a quarter, or 25%, of the prisoners, so it's a little ridiculous. The crime rate here isn't nearly as high, or nearly high enough to justify that huge disparity. So yeah, it's a whole confluence of factors led us to be the world leader in incarceration.
[00:06:14] Crystal Fincher: And what attitudes or what justifications are the people who have the power to enact these policies and continue these policies - how are they justifying them?
[00:06:25] Damon Petrich: So there's a few reasons why you might want to incarcerate somebody. One is just because you want to punish them or get revenge on them, so that's more of a moral reason. But the main focus of politicians were twofold - one was incapacitation, so that one means that because you're keeping somebody locked up in a cage, obviously they can't be out in the community committing crimes. So the thought is that you're going to reduce crime that way. The research on that is a little squishy even now, and I can talk a little bit more about that later if you want. But the other reason, and the one that we focused on in our review, was that prison deters people from going back to crime after they get out. So the idea there is that prison sucks - you go in there, you're cut off from your job, from your family, from your friends, or from just having hobbies or things to do. And you're not going to want to go back, so when you get out of prison - you think real hard, and you think how much prison sucks, and you decide not to go back to crime. That's the thinking behind that deterrence hypothesis anyway.
So those two - incapacitation and deterrence - were the main drivers of those increase in laws and stuff during the '70s, '80s, and '90s, but there really wasn't any evidence for either of them - in the '70s and '80s in particular. So most of the research evaluating whether prison actually does deter recidivism has popped up over the last 25 years or so.
[00:08:05] Crystal Fincher: And as you took a look at it - all of the studies that have popped up over the past 25 years had varying degrees of rigor and scientific validity. But as that body of research grew, people began to get a better idea of whether incarceration actually does reduce someone's likelihood of reoffending. How big was that body of work, in terms of studies, and what were you able to look at?
[00:08:40] Damon Petrich: So in our particular review, we looked at 116 studies, which is a pretty sizable number. Most people - when you read through an article and a literature review might have 10 studies or something that they just narratively go through, but we looked at 116. And then within those 116 studies, there were 981 statistical models. So 901 different comparisons - or 981 different comparisons - of what happens to custodial versus non-custodial groups. So we looked at a pretty big chunk of literature.
[00:09:20] Crystal Fincher: And in that, in the reliance of - that's a really big number - and I think, people now are maybe more familiar, just from a layperson's perspective, of just how big that number is. As we've seen throughout this pandemic that we're in the middle of, studies come out - people are looking at one study, and wow - study number two comes out and we're feeling really good about it. And man, we get to five studies and people are like, okay, we know what's going on. To get beyond a hundred is just a real comprehensive body of study and analysis. What were you able to determine from that?
[00:10:05] Damon Petrich: So I should probably explain upfront what a meta-analysis is and why it's useful. So like you were just saying - like in the COVID pandemic, for example - one study will come out and it'll say, oh, Ivermectin reduces symptomatic COVID cases by X percent. And then the next study will come out and say, Ivermectin makes people way worse. So any individual study can be kind of misleading.
A good analogy for what a meta-analysis does would be to look at baseball, for example. So let's say you're interested in some rookie player that's just come out, he's just joined Major League Baseball and you go to his - you want to know how good this player actually is? You've never seen him play, you've only heard rumors. So you go out to his first game, he gets up to bat four times and he gets no hits. So you walk away from that game thinking, wow, this player is terrible, the team wasted all their money recruiting and paying this guy's salary. But that could have just been an off game for many reasons - it's his debut game so maybe there's just first-game nerves, maybe the weather was bad, maybe he was having personal problems in his life, or he had a little bit of an injury. So there's a number of reasons why looking at his performance from that one game is not going to be representative of who he is as a player. Ideally, you'd want to look at all the games over a season where he might go up to bat 250 times. And over those 250 times, he gets 80 hits, which is a pretty good batting average - it's over .300. So with that amount of data, you could come to a more solid conclusion of whether he's actually a good player or not.
And with that amount of data, you could also look at what we call moderating characteristics. So you could look at, for example, whether he plays better when it's an away game or in a home game, whether it's early or late season - you could look at all these sorts of things. So this is essentially what we're doing with research as well, in a meta-analysis.
So if you look at studies on incarceration - one might show increases in recidivism after people go to prison, the next might show decreases, and the next might show that probationers and prisoners reoffend at about the same rates. So just like in the baseball analogy, in a meta-analysis, we're looking at all of the available research. We're combining it together and determining A) what the sort of overall or average effect of incarceration is, and then B) whether these moderating characteristics actually matter. So in other words, is the effect of incarceration pretty much the same for males as it is for females, or for juveniles as adults, or when the research design is really good versus when it's not so great. So that's basically what we did in this meta-analysis is again - looked at 116 studies and from those 981 statistical estimates.
[00:13:13] Crystal Fincher: Very helpful. Totally makes sense with the baseball analogy, and I especially appreciate breaking down with all the statistical models and not just kind of thumbs up, thumbs down - the binary - it either increases or reduces the likelihood of recidivism. But under what conditions are - might it be more likely, less likely that someone does? What are some of those influencing effects on what happens? And so you were just talking about the justification that people used going into this, and now that we have data coming out - does it turn out that people go into prison or are incarcerated in jail, they think - wow, this is horrible. Some in society are like the more uncomfortable we make it in jail, the better we want to make sure it's a place that they never would want to come back to - that it's so scary and such a bad experience that they are just scared straight for the rest of their lives. Does it actually turn out to be that way? Do they take a rational look at - this was my experience, I don't want to go back again, therefore I will not do any of the things that I did going in.
[00:14:28] Damon Petrich: I would not say that's the conclusion - no. So again, based on the 116 studies that we looked at, which is again a lot, people who are sentenced to incarceration - so jail, prison - they commit crime, they reoffend at about the same rates as if you'd sentence those same people to probation. So in other words, they're not being deterred by being sent to prison. These effects are the same for both males and females. So in other words, prison doesn't reduce reoffending for one group versus the other. It's the same whether we look at adults versus juveniles, it's the same regardless of what type of recidivism we're interested in - rearrests or convictions. It's pretty much the same across the board. There's some slight variations in research designs, but even within those, prison either has no effect or it slightly increases recidivism. We don't find any conditions under which prison is reducing reoffending or deterring these people from going back to those lives.
[00:15:35] Crystal Fincher: So from a societal perspective, a lot of people kind of make the assumption that, Hey, we arrest and we incarcerate someone - whew, our streets are safer. They get out, and now they can choose to reintegrate themselves into society hopefully - they do and we're all safer because of it. But it looks like impressions that some people may have that, Hey, we're letting someone off easy. And suggestions - there's so much media coverage around this - and suggestions that because we're letting people off easy, that we're making it easier for them to reoffend, or they don't feel sufficiently punished enough and so that becomes an incentive to reoffend. Does that seem like it tracks with what the studies have shown?
[00:16:33] Damon Petrich: Not really - so there's some studies that actually ask prisoners and offenders whether they'd prefer going to prison or probation. And a lot of them will say, oh, I'd rather do a year in prison than spend two or three years on probation. So it's not like they view probation as just being super easy. And they're not saying this because they received time off their sentence for being in the study or anything like that. Probation's not easy either - and you have to also think that while these people are on probation, they're able to stay in close touch with their family, they're able to maintain connections with work or find work, they're able to participate in the community, they can pay taxes - that I know a lot of people who are pro-prison love.
So there's all sorts of reasons why - beyond just them reoffending at the same rates as if they'd gone to prison - there's a lot of reasons why we might want to keep these people in the community. And it's not like we're saying, let everybody out of prison - so the nature of this research - you want to compare apples to apples. So in this research, comparing prisoners to probationers - these have to be people who are getting - they could either legitimately get a sentence of jail or probation, or prison or probation. So these are going to be first-time offenders, people who are relatively low-level - they've committed low-level crimes and all that. So we're not saying - there's not going to be a situation where a murderer just gets probation - that sort of thing. So I know that might be a concern of some people - they think that's a natural argument of this analysis, but it's really not.
[00:18:24] Crystal Fincher: Well, and to your point, we're really talking - if we're looking at all of the crime that gets people sentenced to prison time, a very small percentage of that is murder. A very small percentage of it is on that kind of scale - you can wind up in jail or prison for a wide variety of offenses - many of them, people perceive as relatively minor or that people might be surprised can land you in prison. Or if someone has committed a number of minor offenses, that can stack up - to your point in other situations - and increase the length of detention or the severity of the consequences. As we're looking through this and the conversation of, okay, so, we sentence them, we let them out - it's not looking like there's a difference between jail or community supervisions, things like probation - what is it about jail that is harmful or that is not helpful? What is it about the structure of our current system that doesn't improve recidivism outcomes for people?
[00:19:42] Damon Petrich: Probably the main one is the rehabilitation is not the greatest. So just as an example, substance abuse is a very strong predictor whether people are going to reoffend, unsurprisingly. About 50% of prisoners at the state and federal level in The States meet the DSM [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders] criteria for having a substance use abuse disorder - so they meet the clinical criteria for substance abuse disorder. So half of them, and then more than that just use substances, but they don't meet the criteria for a disorder. But of that 50% who has a substance abuse disorder, only about 20% of those actually receives treatment for it while they're incarcerated. So, you're not dealing with a root cause of reoffending while they're in prison - so you're not deterring them, but you're also not rehabilitating them - so you're really not doing anything.
And then in the rare cases where these people are provided with rehabilitation or reentry programming, it's often not based on any sort of evidence-based model of how you actually change people. So there's a lot of psychological and criminology theory and research on how you actually elicit behavioral change, and these programs really aren't in line with any of that. And I could give examples if you wanted, but -
[00:21:17] Crystal Fincher: Sure. I think that's helpful, 'cause I think a lot of people do assume, and sometimes it's been controversial - wow, look at how much they're coddling these prisoners - they have these educational programs, and they get all this drug treatment for free, and if they don't come out fixed then it's their own fault because they have access to all of these treatment resources in prison. Is that the case?
[00:21:43] Damon Petrich: No, I wouldn't say so - first of all, they don't have access, a lot of them, to any programs. And then, like I said, the programs that they do get really aren't that effective. So the big one that everybody loves to argue for is providing former inmates with jobs. If you look at any federal funding for program development, like the Second Chance Act or the First Step Act - I think that was one under Trump - and then under Bush, there was a Serious [and] Violent Offenders Reentry Initiative - pretty much all of these federal bills will be heavily focused on just providing offenders with jobs. And almost all of the evaluations of these programs show that they don't reduce reoffending.
And it's not really that hard - again, if you go back to the literature on behavioral change and, criminology literature - it's not really that hard to understand why just providing a job isn't going to reduce or lead somebody away from a life of crime. A lot of these people have spotty work histories where they've never had a job at all, they believe and know that it's easier to gain money by doing illicit work than it is legal work, they have things like low self-control so they're very impulsive, they don't know how to take criticism or being told what to do by a boss. They live in neighborhoods with very poor opportunities for good jobs and education, and maybe there's a mindset around there that illegal work or whatever is just a better way to go - that's sort of ingrained. So there's a lot of different reasons why just handing somebody a job isn't going to lead them away from crime, 'cause they have all these other things that need to be dealt with first.
So ideally, a rehabilitation program that's comprehensive would deal with all of those other background factors and then provide them with a job. Because if you make them less impulsive, better able to resist the influence of their antisocial friends, and get this thought out of their head that other people are being hostile towards them when they're really not - all these sorts of cognitive and behavioral biases that they have - if you deal with all of those things and then you give them a job, they're more likely to actually latch onto that job as something worthwhile doing. And then they're going to go on to get out of a life of crime. But if you just give them a job and you haven't dealt with any of those issues, you can't really expect that to work. And that is the model that we currently do - is something that we don't really expect to work that well.
[00:24:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that's - it's really interesting and I don't know that a lot of people actually know that, Hey, giving someone a job isn't sufficient - which is why I think it's so important to talk about studies like this, because some of what has become conventional wisdom, really is not accurate or reflects what has been studied and discovered. And I guess in that vein, what are the factors - you just talked about a few - but what does increase someone's likelihood of reoffending or recidivism, and what reduces it?
[00:25:08] Damon Petrich: So those are probably two ends of the same, or two sides of the same coin, but this is pretty well known in criminology - a model called the risk-need-responsivity [RNR] model was developed by a couple of fellow Canadians, named James Bonta and Don Andrews, along with some of their colleagues in the '80s and '90s. And they, through again, other meta-analyses just like we did, found certain categories of characteristics of people who are more likely to reoffend. So you have things like having antisocial peers - so that one's pretty obvious - if you have a bunch of friends that are involved in crime, it's going to be pretty hard for you to get out of that life because you're surrounded by those people. Same with family members. If you have what are called criminal thinking patterns - so again, you might have what's called a hostile attribution bias, things like that, where somebody says something a little bit negative to you and you take that as a huge insult and you retaliate with anger and aggression - things like that. Or being impulsive - so you're again quick to anger, you're swayed by small little enticements in the environment and that sort of thing - so you're easily swayed one way or the other. Things like that are strong predictors of reoffending. Substance abuse - it's what I mentioned earlier. If you don't really have any sort of proactive leisure activities, like hobbies and stuff like that. So there's a bunch of well-known things that we know are strongly associated with recidivism, and a rehabilitation program should ideally deal with them.
Now this model that Andrews and Bonta and all these other people came up with - this RNR risk-need-responsivity model - the risk part says that we should give people a risk assessment when they're entering prison or leaving prison and determine what level of risk are they from reoffending. And we assess these different criteria, like criminal thinking patterns and antisocial friends and substance abuse. So we determine what those factors are and then we design them a treatment program that actually deals with those factors at the individual level. So we're not just giving a blanket rehabilitation program to everybody, and you're providing the most amount of care to the people who most need it or who are the most likely to re-offend.
And then once we've done all that, we need to make sure that we're addressing these problems in some sort of a format that we know actually works. The most well-known one, but not as often used, the most well-known within the sort of psychologist and criminological literature is cognitive behavioral therapy [CBT]. So this is pretty popular for dealing with depression and all sorts of eating disorders and substance abuse problems in non-offender populations. Well, those programs also work in offender populations and they work pretty well. So the research shows - again meta-analyses - that when you deal with all these three factors - risk, need, and responsivity - you can reduce reoffending rates by about 26%. So it's a pretty sizeable amount - it's much greater than you're getting by just sentencing people to prison without doing anything.
[00:28:42] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and I think you cover in your paper - those things are absolutely true. And you just talked about several administrations' attempts to implement programming and resources to try and help people get jobs, potentially - hey, there's even a CBT treatment, but if that treatment has twice as many people as are recommended being in a session and occurs over half the time that it's supposed to, you really are sabotaging the entire process or really setting it up for failure. And it just seems to be an expensive exercise that we aren't really getting anything out of. Does that seem to be consistent with how you've seen the attempts at introducing this programming within prisons and jails?
[00:29:40] Damon Petrich: Yeah, for sure - this is a pretty common finding too - so it's not just about preaching that you're going to do these things. You actually have to implement them well. So just like you said, there's a number of studies that show this - so you've designed some really great program that deals with all of these risk factors that lead people back into reoffending, you give it to them in a cognitive behavioral setting. So all seems good on paper, but in practice, like you said - one of the famous studies there - can't remember the names of the authors offhand right now - but one of the famous studies there showed that they're providing it to people in groups of 30, as opposed to 15, and they're delivering it in a really short amount of time. And they're not maybe giving it to the highest-risk people - so they're just mixing random people in there at varying levels of risk. So when you do all these sorts of things - you implement the program poorly - you can't really expect it to work.
And this is often the case - is the government pays people to come up with these great programs, and then not enough funding is provided to actually make sure that they're implemented and evaluated well. So the amount of funding that actually goes into that - developing the programs to begin with - is small, but when you do do that, you're not making sure that you're actually implementing things well. So it's just sort of shooting yourself in the foot, and probably making people come to the conclusion that these things don't work - when they do work, if you just implement them well.
[00:31:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and there's also a lot of rhetoric - and you discuss this - there's a lot of rhetoric coming from the government, even coming from leadership within the Bureau of Prisons or leadership in our carceral system, saying we do want to rehabilitate people. We are trying to implement programming that does this. You see - we have these educational opportunities and we are doing evaluations of people. And it may be happening while they're understaffed or other challenges, but one of the biggest, I guess, red flags is that none of the evaluation of their programs and none of the incentives that arise are in any way tied to what is the actual result of what happens. Are you actually succeeding on reducing someone's likelihood for reoffense? It does not seem like any compensation is tied to that, any kind of evaluation of positions or regular reporting - to say, is this program having its intended effect? And if not, what do we need to do to correct for that? Is that what you found?
[00:32:33] Damon Petrich: I would say that's probably a pretty fair assessment. A lot of the programs that are implemented are never evaluated at all. And then the ones that are - it's usually once - there's one evaluation of those programs. And then, like you said, there doesn't really seem to be a lot of self-reflection - I don't know what other word you would use - but these programs don't really change on the basis of these evaluations. So, it's kind of disheartening to hear about, I guess.
[00:33:14] Crystal Fincher: It feels very disheartening to live in the middle of - and one of the big things about this is that this - we have these conversations and we talk about these studies and we're saying, yeah, it actually - we're not doing anyone any favors right now when it comes to reducing recidivism. And having these conversations oftentimes detached from the cost associated with what we're paying for these. And my goodness are we paying to incarcerate people? It's not just, well, we do lock them up and we keep them away. Or we do a good job of keeping them in - they reoffend, they go back to jail. And lots of people are like, we did our job, they went back to jail - boom, everything is fine.
But we are paying through the nose and out the ear for this - just here, we're in the state of Washington, and right now the state spends about $112 per day, or over $40,000 annually, to incarcerate one individual - that's the cost per inmate. In King County - the county that we're in - they spend $192 a day, or $70,000 annually, to incarcerate an individual. That is a huge amount of the tax dollars that we spend - these come out of our general fund, meaning that these are dollars that every service, everything that is not a dedicated source of revenue, is competing for. So when we talk about things and have conversations like, well, we don't have the budget for that and we don't have the money - that is related to how much of that money we're spending on other things. And my goodness, I would think that we want to get our money's worth for that level of expenditure. And it really appears that if we're saying the goal of jail is to get people on the straight and narrow path and becoming contributing members of society and all of the implications of that, it doesn't seem like we're getting our money's worth. And so, if those aren't the goals and if we just want to punish people, it's not like we're punishing people for free. We're punishing people at the cost of $70,000 per day [year], and at the cost of all the other services and infrastructure needs that we have.
So it really seems like we're punishing ourselves as much, or more, as others - particularly if we're bringing people back into society that are likely to reoffend in one way or another. And so if our goal is to keep our community safe and that is the North Star, it looks like we need to realign our processes and our expenditure of resources. I guess my question to you, after all that, is - how should we be moving forward? What should we be looking to do? What is shown to work?
[00:36:24] Damon Petrich: Well, I would say - yeah, $70,000 a year as just a revenge cost per person seems like a lot. $80 billion in the country as a whole, for a revenge cost, seems like a pretty high price to pay, given we're not reducing reoffending. You could make the argument that these people aren't offending while they're in prison, but that's - there's other reasons why that might not be completely accurate, which I could talk about too, but -
[00:36:59] Crystal Fincher: Well, I'm interested in that. Why might that not be accurate?
[00:37:03] Damon Petrich: So, obviously the person - if you incarcerate a particular individual, obviously they can't be out in the community committing crimes. So that's obvious, but there's a number of reasons why that might not, en masse, actually reduce crime a whole lot. The research on it - this is a little bit squishy - in terms of whether incarcerating more people leads to lower crime rates, because one influences the other. But for example, if you look at illegal drug markets - a lot of the homicides in the United States and other violent crime that people are really concerned about, and it's plastered all over the media is - homicides, gang-related stuff. So if you take key gang members out and you put them in prison, what ends up happening is that there's competition in that market to take over that person's place, either within the gang or other gangs coming in. So what ends up happening oftentimes is a spike in violence. So that's one reason why just incapacitating, particularly high-crime individuals, might not actually lead to lower crime rates overall. Again, you're lowering crime for that one person, but you might be increasing crime on a more systemic level.
Beyond that, these things have broader societal and community level impacts - incarcerating a lot of people. Again, research shows that when you're incarcerating a lot of people in a particular community - so there's a bunch of really good work by Robert Sampson - he has a book that came out a few years ago called Great American City. And he looked at these individual neighborhoods in Chicago over time, and what he finds is that in communities where there's a higher number of people incarcerated in a particular community, this ends up increasing what's called "legal cynicism." And this is done in some other work as well with David Kirk and Andrew Papachristos - but they show that this increases legal cynicism, which means people are skeptical of police helping them out, the police doing a good job. And what ends up happening after that - when people are more cynical of the legal system, they're less likely to report crimes to the police, they're less likely to cooperate with the police. So what ends up happening? You incarcerate more people and people in that community end up being less willing to cooperate with law enforcement. And this leads to sort of an endless cycle where things sort of get out of hand. So there's all these unintended and nonfinancial consequences of incarcerating a lot of people that could potentially end up leading to more crime.
[00:40:03] Crystal Fincher: Well, and - speaking as a Black woman - obviously, looking at the impacts of mass incarceration in the Black community and in neighborhoods around the country - where it is almost like the community is responding to the actual outcome and that, Hey, this actually isn't making my community any better. I'm experiencing traumatic impacts from this - whether it's my relative went to prison or a sole breadwinner in the family and now we're thrown into poverty, or I'm in a situation where I don't have a parent who used to be there - who now is no longer there. Or causing instability and impacting the education that people get and the kind of job opportunity, watching someone who's come out have to struggle and be ostracized. And it looks like, Hey, this is just the first step on a long cycle of traumatic and undesirable events - and I don't want to participate in a system that is doing that.
With that, as we look forward, and I think this is also related to conversations about just fundamental trust in our criminal legal system and relations with police and throughout the system. It's - if we think about how to turn that around - to me, seems related to thinking about the question of how do we get better outcomes for everyone? 'Cause it seems like right now where we're investing a lot in poor outcomes for people who were already, usually, in pretty poor spots leading to themselves being incarcerated, coming out and not necessarily improving, definitely not improving. And if anything, a chance that it gets a little bit worse. How do we change that entire outcome? And I know you're looking specifically in the incarceration space, but what should be, what could be done differently? Or do we just need a fundamental restructuring of the way we do this?
[00:42:17] Damon Petrich: I don't know about a fundamental restructuring - I don't, I'm not great at that high-level thinking stuff, but what I do know is that - we're probably going to continue to incarcerate people. That's something that's done in every country and people seem to love here. So if we actually want to use prison for public safety - because 95% of inmates eventually get out - if we actually want to use it for public safety, then let's actually try wholeheartedly to rehabilitate them while they're in there. And again, there's a lot of theory and evidence-based principles on how we can do this, like the risk-need-responsivity model that I talked about earlier, cognitive behavioral therapy more broadly. If you use these types of things and continue to work on them and develop them over time, then yeah - prison might actually be helpful if people are going there and getting the help that they need. But that's not what's happening currently. So that's one level in incarceration terms - that's the area that I know best.
So that's one way you could potentially alleviate some of this stuff is - if people are actually getting resources and stuff when they're in prison, and then when once they're reintegrating, they're not only going to reoffend less, but maybe they're going to contribute to their community more. They're going to be better able to connect with their family and stuff like that. So rather than being a hindrance, it could potentially be a help. Obviously, again, it's not ideal to remove people from their communities and their family and friends. And like I said earlier, if you have the option to sentence them to something community-based instead, I think that's the better route to go. But if you are going to send people to prison, which I think we're going to continue to do a lot of the time, then let's rehabilitate them while they're in there is the main point. And do so based on what actually works to do that.
[00:44:23] Crystal Fincher: It's really the investment in the people who are there, and we're - I think up against a lot of societal attitudes and resistance where it just feels wrong to a number of people to be providing services and shifting that investment to things that are seemingly helpful for the inmate, because everything about how we've been conditioned to understand our prison system has been - the punishment is kind of the key, and they'll make rational decisions afterwards to avoid prison based on how bad the punishment is. When it comes to community supervision, things like probation, what are the differences there? If there are better outcomes from that, what accounts for the better outcomes when it comes to probation versus incarceration?
[00:45:23] Damon Petrich: I wouldn't say the outcomes are better - they're just pretty much the same as they would be if they're sentenced to prison. So, probation costs less and then it also enables the people to be out in the community doing community things, like being with their friends and families and all that. I mean, you can't quantify, based on a recidivism percentage, what their family members and friends and employers are getting out of it. So that's something we can't really look at - or I guess you could, but something we don't often do - but so there's intangible things that you would get by keeping people in the community. Plus it doesn't lead to all that other stuff I talked about where people become cynical of the legal system and it leads to this cycle of whatever.
[00:46:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and so if we're were doing this programming in prison and helping people, I think your research shows it's extremely important to do both the structural, Hey, you need a place to live, you need to be able to pay your rent and your bills - so having a job, having housing, having healthcare, getting those very basic needs met is critical. But also addressing a number of the mental or behavioral health issues that are common among the incarcerated population - and dealing with that is as important. And basically those two things both need to happen hand-in-hand. How do we do a better job of that in our current system?
[00:46:57] Damon Petrich: Well, first of all, I'd like to say that you're right there - I think maybe when I was talking earlier about employment, it might sound like giving people jobs is just a waste of time, but that's not the case. It needs - the two things need to be paired - you need to deal with the cognitive and behavioral problems in addition to giving them jobs and housing support and all that. In terms of how you actually go about doing that, there are examples in the literature of programs that do this, so there's examples out there.
I think if you're a state or local or even federal correctional department and you're interested in doing this - implementing something that's evidence-based - or if you're just a concerned citizen that wants to rally your local officials to do that - go and talk to researchers like me, or people at universities that have criminology departments or criminal justice departments, because this knowledge is out there. It's widely available. You just have to go and seek it out. So at my university, for example, we have the University of Cincinnati Corrections Institute and under the guidance of Ed Latessa, he was - now passed - but he was, over the last 30 years, responsible for disseminating a lot of this evidence-based practices to some of the state and local criminal justice agencies. And they helped with implementation and evaluation in a lot of these places, so the help is out there. You just have to look for it a little bit.
[00:48:38] Crystal Fincher: And another question I had - your analysis seemed to suggest that when we're talking about low-risk, medium, and high-risk offenders - or people who have done relatively minor crimes versus those who have done more serious crimes - that these interventions are particularly effective the more serious the offense or crime has been. And that perhaps even sometimes treating someone who is a really low-risk as if they're a high-risk, can worsen the outcomes for that person. Is that the case?
[00:49:21] Damon Petrich: Yeah, that tends to be a finding in research - we're not exactly sure why, but providing a lot of really intensive services to people deemed to be low-risk can actually be harmful rather than helpful. We don't know based on research why, but there's a lot of pretty good hypotheses about why. So a low-risk offender is going to be somebody who's a first-timer who's committed some not-that-serious crime. So they probably have a job, they probably have pretty strong connections with their family and all that. So if you're taking them and you're putting them in a program where you have to be there 40 hours a week, they're probably going to get fired from their job, it's going to be harder to stay in contact with friends and families that are sort of tying you into a non-criminal life. And then you're probably going to be associating with all kinds of people who are high-risk, and maybe they're going to draw you towards, oh yeah, I could earn four grand going out tonight and stealing some laptops. There's a lot of reasons why just taking low-risk people and putting them in these programs is going to be harmful rather than helpful.
[00:50:31] Crystal Fincher: And so with that in mind, and you talk about, Hey, if we're trying to influence local electeds - one of the interesting things about having a podcast and radio show that caters to extremely politically and civically inclined people is that we actually do have a number of policymakers and politicians who listen, and people who are enacting and in control of this policy. If you were to talk to them and give them advice about how to move forward, especially in the current environment that we find ourselves in, where over the past few years has been increasing awareness of some of the defecits of our system and pushes to change those. And also, as we have seen more recently, a real strong pushback from a lot of people who are invested in our current system saying, Hey, let's not change things too much. Maybe we need to jail more and for longer. And maybe we're just not doing enough incarceration, and that's the answer. In that kind of political environment, what would you tell people who are in charge of this policy, who may be facing pressure to keep going forward with the status quo, about how they should evaluate how they should move forward and the kinds of things that they should do?
[00:52:07] Damon Petrich: I know a lot of these politicians get lobbied by correctional officer groups or whatever, and that's whatever, but ultimately you get voted in by voters. So, I'm not an expert on public opinion - I have other friends who are more into that kind of stuff, but I do know from talking with them and from reading that literature, that the public actually does support rehabilitation. So they have for a long time and it's shifted more towards being in support of rehabilitation over time. So right now, most Americans support providing rehabilitation programs to prisoners and offenders. So this is something that's going to please your constituency, people want this kind of thing. And it's not like you're going to be losing all kinds of jobs by getting rid of prison - there's going to be a need for skilled people who can provide these programs and probation officers and all these sorts of things. So it's not a net loss when you're getting rid of prisons. There's a lot of reasons to sentence people to community supervision and things like that - provide rehabilitation. There's public support for it, there's jobs involved, there's cost savings - big time, obviously - it's way cheaper to keep somebody out of prison than it is to keep them in prison. So there's a lot of different reasons why you would want to do that as a politician.
[00:53:43] Crystal Fincher: I think that makes sense. Certainly it's a lot cheaper to keep someone out of prison versus in prison. I mean, we talked about the annual costs - in the state of Washington over $40,000, King County over $70,000 - comparing that to how much we invest in a student of $11,500 a year. If we focus more on investing in people, both inside and outside the system, it seems like we set ourselves up for a safer community, fewer people being victimized, and more people leading thriving, productive, tax-paying lives. And we're all happier than we are right now, I would think, I would hope - it seems like the research points in that direction. So I certainly appreciate you taking the time to speak with us about this. Is there anything else that you want to leave with us, in thinking about this study and your research?
[00:54:55] Damon Petrich: I think we covered it pretty well. Just to circle back to something you just said - I know this might put me out of a job since I focus on what happens when people's lives go awry, but you really are better off to invest in early prevention programs and giving people a good start on life than trying to correct the program or the problem afterwards. So yeah - politicians spend some money on prevention programs. I know the good effects of that are a long way out, but they're actually good on a societal level. So I guess I would add that, even though it's not good for criminologists, maybe, to put themselves out of a job like that.
[00:55:40] Crystal Fincher: Well, much appreciated, and thank you so much for having this conversation with us today.
[00:55:45] Damon Petrich: Yeah, thank you very much for having me on. I'm glad that there are people out there interested in this stuff, so thanks again.
[00:55:51] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and Founder and Editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn!
Crystal and Lex dive into the new year’s headlines with a debate over Space Needle NYE drone shows vs fireworks, a rundown of new Washington state laws taking effect, and a discussion of why it’s important to look past a poll’s summary headline. They then chat about the new Seattle City Council taking office, a lawsuit against the City of Burien over its homeless camping law, and a new entrant into the Attorney General’s race.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Lex Vaughn at @AlexaVaughn.
Resources
RE-AIR: Ending Youth Incarceration with Dr. Ben Danielson of AHSHAY Center from Hacks & Wonks
“The new Washington state laws taking effect in January 2024” by Laurel Demkovich from Washington State Standard
“Poll: Washington voters want to spend more — while cutting taxes” by Donna Gordon Blankinship from Crosscut
Crosscut - Elway Poll | 2024 Legislative Preview
“Tammy Morales, Rob Saka To Chair Key Council Committees During Pivotal Year” by Ryan Packer and Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
“Seattle politics shift as City Council gets new members, president” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times
“New City Council Elects Former Conservative Outcast as President” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
Council Vacancy | Office of the City Clerk
“Unhoused people sue Burien over new homeless camping law” by Anna Patrick from The Seattle Times
“Update: Eastern WA attorney who fought gun laws, COVID mandates plans run for state AG” by Eric Rosane from Tri-City Herald
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
If you missed our Tuesday topical show, we re-aired an important conversation I had with Dr. Ben Danielson, director of AHSHAY Center about ending youth incarceration. Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and founder and editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn.
[00:01:20] Lex Vaughn: Hey, nice to be back.
[00:01:21] Crystal Fincher: Hey, great to have you back - excited to have you back. I don't know that I'm excited to talk about everything on our list today, but we've got to get through it. But I do-
[00:01:33] Lex Vaughn: There's a lot.
[00:01:34] Crystal Fincher: There's a lot. And so - first show of the new year - we just had New Year's Eve, New Year's Day happen and we welcome that in in the greater Seattle area with a big Space Needle fireworks show. This year, it was a drone show pre-show and then a fireworks main show. And this year, there was a bit of a challenge with it - it was a smoky, hazy, kind of unintelligible soupy mess. What did you think about it?
[00:02:09] Lex Vaughn: I was like, what is this? It's 2024 - did someone read like the last part of the year backwards, like 420, and go - This is a 420-themed New Year's Eve celebration? I don't know - it was funny. I mean, I was celebrating out-of-state with family, but I immediately was getting messages from people like - Did you see this? Did you see this? I mean, honestly, I think that - I know that a lot of people are flipping out and going like, Something needs to be done - but this is Seattle. Come on - you know that the Space Needle thing doesn't always work as planned and that's part of the fun. And the look of it was definitely fun this last year.
[00:03:01] Crystal Fincher: You know, it was interesting - weather is always, always a factor in anything that happens in this region, whether it's 4th of July celebrations or New Year's Eve. I think for me, I have just been, I mean, I'm someone who has traditionally loved fireworks for most of my life and has enjoyed them. Yes, 100%. But I also, especially over the past couple of years, contending with the smoke generated by fireworks - not on New Year's Eve, but you know, July 4th, mostly, but I guess the neighborhoods on New Year's Eve - the fire hazard associated with it, which is definitely worse in the summer than it is in the winter. It just seems like now we have the option for drone shows and those seem like they're a bit more resilient - they don't create smoke. And part of the challenge of this current show was the way that the fireworks and the smoke interacted with the atmosphere, kind of making each other worse, making visibility worse. And it just seems like, okay - I am ready to move on from fireworks and to move on to drone shows. They seem like they can do everything the fireworks shows do and more. And it just seems like given where we are at with our climate, given where we are at with the volatility of just Seattle weather period, that it seems like it makes more sense to me to do that. But you know, I don't know if that's an option moving forward. You know, I don't know what's gonna happen with that. I'm not in any way affiliated with that. So it'll be interesting to see, but I wish we could move beyond fireworks personally.
[00:04:38] Lex Vaughn: I'll never be over fireworks. I want that - well, I don't know - it's like, I know there's a lot of debate over it. But I also think any attempt to lessen fireworks only increases fireworks. So honestly, the best plan for reducing fireworks all over a region is always like a big, you know, show that people can watch. And when I, you know, go back to my hometown in California for New Year's or July 4th - that city stopped doing a central fireworks show. And what happened is just a proliferation of fireworks all over the city. There's just like a fireworks show going on everywhere all night. So I always think it's worth it to have one big show or you're gonna get that.
[00:05:31] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I do think that a big show that the community can come to is important. In the absence of that, people are definitely going to celebrate on their own. I'm just thinking the big show can be a drone show. We saw a pretty successful pre-show - I thought -
[00:05:45] Lex Vaughn: The drone show is a good backup. I mean, especially in Seattle, 'cause it's like, you know, you might be excited about a show and then, something about the weather happens and it's - Oh, you're not gonna see anything. So it's like the drone show is the only thing that can be guaranteed if it can move to a little space where it's free from smoke or clouds or whatever.
[00:06:09] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, also wanna talk about a few more things this new year is ushering in, and that's a number of new state laws taking effect as of January 1st. One of them includes marijuana testing and changing in how that can be used by employers. Under the new law, employers are blocked from conducting drug tests for cannabis when making hiring decisions. They can still test for other drugs before hiring and they can still test employees for cannabis in certain situations, like after accidents or if they suspect someone's impaired. There are also some exemptions for companies that need to test for federal requirements and other workers potentially - including police, airline crews, corrections officers - may still have to test. But it's a pretty significant change in just kind of pre-employment testing overall - that's done with a lot of lower wage jobs, certainly not so much predominant and higher wage jobs. But it does, there has been a tension for quite some time in going - Okay, well, if it's legal, then why are you testing for it? And so this seems to bring things more in line. Do you think that makes sense?
[00:07:21] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, and I hope the message of a law like this is it's not worth it because you could be breaking the law and you can get sued. Like it's a liability for you now to try to judge people this way - If you haven't like sped up with the times here and realize that it's generally not that big of a deal to use cannabis.
[00:07:46] Crystal Fincher: Another law that took place is a - that is taking effect - is a 10-day gun waiting period. So as of now, those wishing to buy a firearm in Washington need to complete a background check and then wait 10 business days before they can complete that purchase. We've seen this referred to as kind of a cooling off period before wanting to purchase a gun and actually owning one. We have certainly seen a number of examples from mass shootings to domestic violence situations where people use guns to murder people immediately after purchasing them. And so while no gun reform is going to solve everything - usually no anything solves anything for everything - and it really is gonna take a patchwork of policies and laws to move forward. And this seems like a positive one to me that has some evidence behind it.
[00:08:39] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, honestly, this is like, I think the most positive new law of this next year that I'm really looking forward to seeing put in place and I hope becomes more commonplace because like you said - yeah, there's a lot of reform that needs to happen to make this country safer from gun violence. But this cooling off period is a major one. When I was a reporter at The Seattle Times, I definitely covered some very tragic situations where it was very clear that a young man or something was distraught over somebody breaking up with them and made a horrible decision really quickly. And it's like in a lot of these cases, it's - what could have happened if this person had just been held to a few more days of thought before pulling that off.
[00:09:31] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Another law taking effect impacts hospital staffing. Hospitals in Washington need to establish staffing committees made up of nursing staff and administrators. This is in response to years of advocacy really by healthcare workers saying that - Hey, these staffing ratios have gotten way out of whack. We're not able to provide adequate care to patients, patient care quality is suffering and we need to get back to staffing ratios - happening during a time where we're losing healthcare workers. There's been a lot of attrition. The pandemic only has made that worse. And so this is trying to still allow hospitals to have their say, but to do it with the input of nurses and hospital staff to say - Let's put patient safety first. Let's really work on these ratios and make sure that we're moving in the right direction and really putting patients at the center of this year. And I think this is a step forward in this direction that will bring a little bit more transparency and accountability to the process.
[00:10:43] Lex Vaughn: And it's awesome that hospital staff is getting this extra leverage to make that happen. Because I mean, obviously they've been pressing for stuff like that as unions and all. But it's crazy the way they have to fight to give us quality care. Increasingly, unfortunately, in our health systems here in the US, it's like a lot of hospital administrators are more focused on turning hospitals into these profit machines without as much thought about what's happening to staff and their patients. And those staff - those are the ones rooting for us and protecting quality of care.
[00:11:30] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So there's a new voting rights law. It's intended to address situations where there are signs of polarized voting among different groups in a community, and where there are risks to some groups having their votes diluted so they don't have a fair opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. It makes it easier to try and address this with a couple different mechanisms - it allows organizations to sue on behalf of their members, it allows local governments to voluntarily reform their election systems to be more representative of their populations, and for lawsuits to be filed if the locality refused to take such steps. So it hopefully can bring the cost down. I mean, sometimes there are clear violations, but it has been very costly - prohibitively costly - for someone to pursue it if they feel they have been wrong and want to bring that in court. So this seeks to try and address that and provide a pathway for people to be able to sue without that cost prohibitive element involved and to recover costs they incur when researching those possible legal challenges. What are your thoughts on this one?
[00:12:42] Lex Vaughn: I have to admit, I was like, when I, you know, just kind of heard about this one and got a general sense of it, I was like - wait, what? This sounds a little bit confusing to me. The motivation of it is just that like, if someone is feeling outnumbered in a community, that they have strength and power to - I have to admit like this one, I didn't totally get, 'cause I don't know if I've seen a law like that before.
[00:13:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it is in line with previous voting rights act laws. And we have passed legislation in the same vein - I think five years ago, we passed a voting rights act in the same vein. But it's really an issue of like - we see a challenge when it comes to districting that's happening right now in Yakima, or issues where it looks like - Okay, a community's overwhelmingly voting in the same way if you look at it geographically, but things are sliced up and that's not turning out the way it is in government. I mean, there's a case to be made in a city I'm pretty familiar with - the city of Kent, the largest city in the state that doesn't have any council districts, no form of districted government, which makes the government certainly less representative than it is in other areas. But to try and bring a case or bring a suit and rectify this has been prohibitively expensive. You can see something being wrong, but whether you can pursue any remedy or whether there's any recourse is a whole different subject. And so it's like - okay, we see that there are problems happening, but we don't have the tools and power to make it realistic to expect something to be done about it.
And if someone doesn't expect something to be done about a violation, if they see that there's no consequence for bad actions, it makes it more likely that that's going to happen. So this makes it more likely that - hey, if you are violating the law, if there are violations happening here, you can expect more of a consequence for that than you did before. So hopefully one that prevents further violations from happening, but for those that currently are, it makes them easier to remedy and rectify. So I think that's a positive step. Will it solve anything? Will it immediately change anything? I don't think this is like an immediately transformative piece of policy - we're going to see something that flips from night to day in this. But I do think that it's part of, again, patchwork of legislation like most things that makes it easier to hold people and entities that are violating voting rights laws accountable and to give people more tools to fix it.
[00:15:25] Lex Vaughn: And maybe like slow the role of people who were planning on exploiting people in new ways or something like that.
[00:15:31] Crystal Fincher: Yes. Because there's a lot of that happening right now. Okay. Absolutely.
Another law that a lot of cities have been dealing with is one that addresses street racing. So this law imposes tougher penalties for street racing. If you're caught, you can have your car impounded for three days on the first offense and forfeited on the second one. It also increases penalties for those who are found to be aiding and abetting street racers. I don't know if this is going to get there. I mean, that seems like a really tough penalty. I am not personally familiar with how these laws have resulted in any changes, or whether they've resulted in any changes. But it seems like they're trying to do more. That people are seeing that this is a problem - and it is a problem - it's a problem for a variety of reasons. And they're trying to do something to address it - and hopefully it does help. We will see.
[00:16:28] Lex Vaughn: Honestly, I think it's - of course this is dangerous. I mean, whenever I hear something like this happened - I can't believe sometimes I hear this happened in Seattle sometimes. I'm like - What street are you on? Oh my God. This is horrible. This is not the place. But I think the thing is - there is a culture for this that will always be there. And no matter what law you put in place, I mean, you're just going to make it sexier. So, I mean, honestly, I wish that there was some way to - I don't know - give people a space to do this more safely or something. That's the real solution, 'cause it is going to keep happening.
[00:17:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think you're onto something there. I mean, clearly you're right - there's a culture around that - and I mean, it's so interesting. And it's kind of an offshoot of car culture. There are car enthusiasts and this is a subset of that. And it's kind of tangential, but we, as a community, as a society have been reducing the number of just alternative, recreational opportunities in spaces, particularly for younger people. And then criminalizing a lot of activity there. Some of that, you know, may be warranted. Not all activity is positive. Like we said, there's a lot of danger associated with street racing, but what are we doing to give people options to do safer activities? Whether it's racing activities or others, if we aren't providing positive, affirmative options, particularly for younger people - places for people to congregate and share that don't require an entry fee, that don't require purchase necessarily, that are places where people can congregate and recreate and do things that are meaningful to them together - that we're moving in the wrong direction overall. I think that's a valid concern and one we need to do better with as a community and society.
[00:18:28] Lex Vaughn: But it's not going away. So it's - we just need a more proactive approach.
[00:18:35] Crystal Fincher: Yep, and so we will keep our eye on how these laws pan out, on new laws as they pass. We have a new legislative session starting on Monday, and we'll be following along with what happens there. But we're seeing these results now and we'll keep paying attention.
Also wanna talk this week about a new Crosscut poll that was just released - part of the poll at least. And the headline of this poll is - Washington voters want to spend more - while cutting taxes. Also another headline saying that 57% of people are in favor of repealing the state's new capital gains tax. Now this is interesting. We've talked about this before in the podcast, but polls are very interesting things. And it's very important to pay attention to the questions asked, who they're being asked of, and what the particulars are in this. And this one - I think there are some interesting findings in this poll, I think that you have to dig a lot deeper than these headlines. And I think that this doesn't actually tell us much about what voters' likelihood of voting for or against some of these questions asked in here. And one of the reasons why this is being asked is because there is likely to be an initiative, a statewide initiative, to repeal this tax.
But it's very important to actually read the poll, to go beyond the synopsis in the article and to take a look at the actual poll. And when we do that, we see that these questions were asked in a way that they aren't asked when people are invested in, where like people working, right - if you're actually working on this thing, you would not trust this. You're not asking questions in this way. Usually when you're trying to figure out what happens - one, kind of the most important thing, you wanna ask the question in the same way that it's gonna be asked to voters on their ballot. Now we're kind of before that point, right? So a lot of times you'll hear - Well, is it the ballot title? Is it the ballot language? We don't have that yet, but you wanna get close to that. You wanna describe it in a way that you feel that they're gonna encounter it in the real world with voters. You also with this, it's very important understanding, particularly with something like this - there's gonna be a lot of money, there's gonna be a lot of communication in these campaigns. So people are gonna hear messages in favor of it. People are gonna hear messages opposed to it. They're gonna be getting mail in their mailboxes, they're gonna see digital ads, they're gonna be seeing political commercials about this - and they're gonna be getting a lot of messages. You want to expose the people you're asking those questions of of likely messages that they're gonna hear so that - okay, afterwards, is it more likely or less likely that they're going to support it? - or that you're coming closer to the conditions under which they're gonna make their decision. That's really informative and really predictive and a pretty accurate way of figuring out where support really lies.
And really in those things, when you have a poll, you're asking those questions - there's a lot learned by asking the initial question before they hear any pro and con arguments. And then asking that final question - the question again - having heard all that, are you still in favor of, more likely to support, less likely to support this initiative or this law? And seeing who that moves and who different arguments influence is all part of how people put together these campaigns. None of that was in here. This was asked in kind of a kludgy way, actually, kind of a muddled way in how they did this. They kind of asked - Hey, they're expected to have a surplus from a capital gains tax and a carbon pricing trade system. What should we do with this money? And so it's just - Okay, we should put it into schools. And actually the majority of people did not say they want to keep spending at the current level or reduce taxes somehow. They were saying - majority 55% said put more money into schools, reducing homelessness, mental health programs, and combating effects of climate change.
Then they asked - Okay, the following are some proposals that the legislature is expected to discuss in the coming weeks. As I read each of these, please indicate whether you favor, strongly favor, oppose, or strongly oppose each one. And so all it says is - Repeal the state's new capital gains tax. And that's it. And the other ones are - Eliminate some restrictions on when police can pursue criminal suspects in cars. Put more money into mental - like they're just asking the sentence. Now, if there's one thing, especially people involved in politics, involved in reporting know - it's that people do not have the context for this at all when you just ask that.
[00:23:23] Lex Vaughn: In just a general sense, the average person is like - less taxes. Like no context, like what is it?
[00:23:32] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, sure, it's a tax - repeal it. What is that?
[00:23:32] Lex Vaughn: Are you taking more money from me? And it's like, if this does end up on the ballot, you know, again, like this year, the main message that I know we've kept saying to defend that capital gains tax is - it affects such a small number of people. It's probably definitely not you.
[00:23:51] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, exactly. [laughing] It is such a small percentage of people. And when people are like - Oh, okay, you're not talking about something that applies to me and I'm already struggling and trying to figure this out.
[00:24:02] Lex Vaughn: Honestly, that thing needs like a rebrand or something - capital gains tax.
[00:24:05] Crystal Fincher: Well, and I don't even - you know, I don't know.
[00:24:08] Lex Vaughn: The 1% tax - I mean, I think it's even smaller than 1%. It's like - tippity-top.
[00:24:13] Crystal Fincher: I would question whether it even needs a rebrand because the other thing about this is that we have seen a lot of high quality polling that turned out to look like it was pretty accurate when it came to this. And basically the numbers look flipped. When people actually are asked a reasonably composed question, when they - after they hear pro and con messages, they're more likely to support the capital gains tax. It has actually been a popular policy in polling that we've seen till now. And, you know, the questions were asked more comprehensively and differently than they were here. It'll be interesting to see as this continues - I mean, certainly this is going to produce a great headline, which in today's media environment is a goal for many people. Most people don't read beyond headlines. So if you can get a great headline, that is a win because then that gives people an impression of something, even though it may not be completely accurate or there's not other contexts surrounding it. But it'll be interesting to see where this comes out.
I would just be leery about these results based on the way that these questions are asked, based on the fact that it does contradict other publicly available polling that we've seen. And it'll be interesting to see, but I am taking this with a grain of salt - for these results. I do think that there are - just looking, polls are always interesting things. And even if it's not the number one thing that the poll may have been designed to elicit, it'll be interesting. There's this larger discourse, kind of want to say Stancil-ized discourse - discourse about the economy, and whether people are happy, and what this means for Joe Biden, and like where people are at. And that there are a lot of economic indicators that seem positive, but people are kind of sour on the economy overall - more sour than traditional economic indicators would indicate is logical. But these questions, there's a question asked here - Hey, what's your outlook for the country? - basically - do you expect things will - in general terms, get better over the next year or get worse? Much better, somewhat better, somewhat worse, or much worse. And in these, what we saw is that people said - Okay - and it was asked four ways in four categories. Do you think this for the United States, for Washington State, in your community, and in your household? And across the board, people gave, you know, majority of people said - Hey, things are actually gonna get better for my household. Majorities across the board there. And then slightly less for their community, and then less for Washington State, and then less for the United States. So there's this difference where if you look and you ask people individually - Hey, do you think the next year for you in general terms is gonna be better or worse? Most people say better. But if you ask people - Okay, generally for the United States, do you think the next year is gonna be better or worse? Most people say worse. And the further out it gets from them, the less likely they are to think that it gets positive. There are lots of theories for why this is, there are lots of people's views - but it's an interesting dynamic that is there. And it's not a new dynamic - we've seen this before, but it certainly is more pronounced. It's very pronounced and there's a very wide gulf, wider than we've seen in quite some time. The other interesting thing about that is when you look at the crosstabs broken up there - younger people are actually more optimistic than older people, which is interesting.
[00:27:52] Lex Vaughn: Now I don't trust anything in this poll.
[00:27:54] Crystal Fincher: [laughs] What I don't have at my fingertips right now is enough data on this asked in different polls in a variety of different ways to immediately be suspicious and wanna look into more. Like with that question about the capital gains tax, it's just at odds with other polls that we have seen - certainly publicly available, certainly at odds with a lot of private polling.
[00:28:21] Lex Vaughn: But young people being optimistic - about anything political - hmm.
[00:28:24] Crystal Fincher: In some ways, right? And about like, does it, are you more optimistic about your own prospects? Like looking at the personal, 'cause the further away you get, the more politically influenced it is. But looking at the personal, it's really interesting. And I just find that very, very interesting in what that means and the difference there. And to me, when I see those things, the interest is in wanting to dive down and - okay, what explains that difference? Who is experiencing kind of in that zone between you thinking things getting better for yourself and worse overall? You know, who is in that category? Who are the people who move? What's influencing that movement is interesting to look at.
So we'll link this poll. And like generally, I would just say for people, when you're consuming polls, there's usually a whole article breakdown, and then there should be in each article - there is in this article - a link to the actual poll. Always read the actual poll. Always read the questions. Because a lot of times, some of these challenges or things that seem non-standard or problematic are often visible to a layperson if they read it. Like, okay, that's a weird way to ask the question. Or, you know, if you ask me that, I might be confused. Or like, what does that even mean? So there's a lot there, but that was an interesting finding. But we're certainly hearing about this today - we're recording this on Thursday - and we'll be hearing a lot more about it. What did you think just generally about it?
[00:29:53] Lex Vaughn: First of all, I have to admit - I think a lot of times I don't click on that kind of external PDF like there is here with a breakdown of who was interviewed, breakdown of landlines, cell phone, text. I'll say at least this poll does a very good breakdown of exactly who they interviewed. But in general, I don't take a lot of reporting on polls very seriously. I usually think it reveals the bias of a media organization or a polling organization. And I'm - that's informative. That's what I'm taking from this.
[00:30:36] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's, you know, polling is an interesting thing. Polling is - not all polling is predictive. Not everybody is polling likely voters or trying to mimic an election result. Some polls are just trying to take the pulse of where people are at. This, you know, is asking some things that they're gonna be dealing with in the legislature. And it's not like there's gonna be an immediate vote up and down on proposed legislation, but it could indicate people's general satisfaction of the legislation or not.
I think with these things, it is important to read the actual poll. I will say - just for here - it's important to read the poll 'cause I have seen more than one misleading breakdown of a poll, or things that omit some significant or even contradictory findings. And so I think it's important to look for yourself to - okay, not a synopsis, but if we're really talking about how important this is about policy or what people think, let me look at everything people ask and let me look at this whole poll and see what happens - because we can't always trust the breakdowns. But also just understanding what polls do and don't do. A poll that - things can change massively in either direction, right, between now and the election. These are a snapshot in time. Something, especially at this point in time, is not predictive. They're very early. There's usually - if you're asking about a specific candidate or policy, a lot of people who aren't familiar with it yet, or who don't have all of the context - there's still a lot of pro and con arguments and a lot of communication that's gonna happen. So they're not determinative, certainly. They're not absolutely predictive. But they can be useful information points. And usually they're most useful - not in the horse race sense - but in the who does something appeal to and why, if it's done well. And just understanding that - certainly from a campaign perspective is really important - Even if you set aside the - ultimate who's likely to vote for this or not type of questions. So just another interesting one. I'm sure we're gonna see other ones. I think this is part one of two that they've released, so we're going to see some more from this soon. And that was a Crosscut poll.
Also this week, Seattle City Council - councils all across the state, really were sworn in - the new Seattle City Council was sworn in. And so we have a new council. We have committees that were assigned. We have Sara Nelson, who is now the council president. Sara Nelson, who is a moderate conservative, who is now seeming to be very aligned with the mayor and leading a council that is much more aligned with the mayor's office - that is much more moderate to conservative. And so we're going to see a new council and seemingly a new direction here in the state. We saw one of Sara Nelson's first actions as council president was to disband the Renters' Rights Committee, which former Seattle City Councilmember, Kshama Sawant, had chaired since 2019 - disbanded that committee, and which is not that surprising. More than half of the residents of Seattle are renters, so it seems like that is applicable to the majority of people - it would be useful and helpful. But Sara has indicated distrust and hostility of several of those efforts before, has hosted landlord support groups before. And so it is not surprising, even though it may be really unfortunate.
[00:34:18] Lex Vaughn: Yeah.
[00:34:20] Crystal Fincher: But we're gonna see. What do you think about this whole thing?
[00:34:24] Lex Vaughn: It's really unfortunate that a whole slate of people was elected that are probably gonna just kinda be in lockstep with the mayor. And I see all of them as like, faux-gressive - they know how to kinda have the facade of progressive to fit into Seattle, but their policies that they're rooting for are just so obviously conservative and Republican to me. Like making your first order of business disbanding a Renters' Rights Committee. [laughs] It's like, it's just amazing. And it just kind of adds to the cognitive dissonance of the whole identity of the city - who these council people are and what they're probably gonna do legally this year, the policies they're gonna enact - just makes me laugh that anyone thinks the city is liberal. 'Cause it's - unfortunately, these people that were just elected are probably going to move forward with basically a lot of conservative policies on a local level.
[00:35:33] Crystal Fincher: It's gonna be really interesting to see. And for me, there's a lot that they're going to be dealing with. And just so people know - that for committee chairs, the people who are going to decide the general direction of these areas, what kind of legislation they pursue within their committees. Rob Saka will be chairing the Transportation Committee. Tammy Morales will chair the Land Use Committee. Joy Hollingsworth will chair the Parks, Public Utilities and Technology Committee. Maritza Rivera will chair Libraries, Education and Neighborhoods. Cathy Moore will chair Housing and Human Services. Dan Strauss will chair Finance, which will handle the budget, Native Communities and Tribal Governments. Bob Kettle will chair Public Safety. And the vacant Position 8 position - the person who will be appointed to the council - will chair Sustainability, City Light, Arts and Culture. Sara Nelson will chair Governance, Accountability and Economic Development. Within those, there's a lot that's gonna happen.
And I think one thing that some people discount or don't expect is just how much practically they're going to have to deal with. Now it's kind of like - Okay, strip the progressive or conservative, whatever labels. There are serious issues that people have to deal with and a range of options, like a range that could be under the progressive label, a range that could be under the moderate label, right? But they're going to have to chart - well, they don't have to - their job is to chart a path forward for lots of this. Rob Saka, Chair of Transportation, which, you know, there's certainly a lot at stake - when it comes to transportation, there's gonna be a new Move Seattle Levy. He's overseeing the $700 million annual budget. We see a lot of asks and needs from the community. He's talked about getting back to the basics and being "the pothole king." And there, and it'll just be interesting to see. There's a lot of practical daily things that have to be dealt with. How is he going to do that? What approach are they going to take to a lot of things? We've seen Bob Kettle, Chair of Public Safety, talk about a lot of law and order oriented things, building a better relationship, promoting respect. We heard Sara Nelson talk about - one of her other first acts was proposing another pay increase for SPD, which is, you know, without anything changes, would deepen the budget deficit that the city is facing, barring any new revenue on the heels of other additions to that budget and elements of pay.
It'll just be really interesting to see, because these things are having practical effects. They're all going to impact the budget that they're all going to have to deal with, with a major budget deficit coming up. They were all, most of these people who are new on the council were very hesitant to discuss what their actual practical plans were for dealing with this budget deficit, most hesitant to put support behind any new taxation, progressive taxation, proposals from the work group that the mayor convened on this that came up with options. But they have talked about cutting in areas. They have talked about the need to trim overall, but were hesitant or unwilling to talk about what specifically that would be. They're going to have to get into specifics now. They're going to have to deal with the things that they were hesitant to talk about during the campaign. It's going to be really interesting to see how this, how this carries out.
Also, this is a very new council overall. They're going to have to get their feet underneath them. Sara Nelson announced that they are not going to be having regular committee meetings for most of this month to allow people to get up to speed - there's a lot of that that needs to happen - and that their first council meeting of the month will be on the 23rd to appoint the new councilmember that is going to take over for Teresa Mosqueda, who is, was just elected to the county. So it's going to be really interesting and just FYI - applications for that vacancy, if anyone is interested, are being accepted until January 9th. And that is Tuesday and the appointment will take place on the 23rd. Certainly a lot of talk about who might potentially take those places. We have heard a couple names bandied about, one of them being Tanya Woo, who lost -
[00:40:10] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, how about not Tanya Woo? [laughing]
[00:40:13] Crystal Fincher: You know, I just have a hard time - you're representing all of Seattle. It is a city that has made a strong stance and has made strong statements - fortunately - when it comes to protecting all members of the LGBTQ community, including trans people. And there's an interview with Hacks & Wonks, it's been covered elsewhere where Tanya Woo did not fully support the ability of trans people to participate in regular everyday life like everyone else, expressed reservations about trans people participating on sports teams - said if they wanted to exclude them, she would be willing to support that in a position on the city council - which just to me, there are policy differences, but then there are issues of just basic humanity and support of people and residents of the city. And that, to me, is one of those that's automatically disqualifying in my personal evaluation of that. And so it looks like that is not necessarily disqualifying for some people who might be considering this on the council, but I certainly think it should be considered with this. Now I do understand that she, I think, made an Instagram post apologizing for that and trying to clarify their position. I would just suggest that, you know, and lots of people evolve over that. So I'm not saying that that is what she thinks or believes for the rest of her life. Maybe she has changed and maybe she has learned more, and I hope that she has and that other people are on that journey. I just think that when it comes to appointing someone responsible for the city, we can appoint someone who is further along in that journey and not learning about the humanity of people at the same time that they're having to learn about all of these policies and operations that they're now having to. So it's gonna be really interesting to see. There are certainly other people who have held various elected office, school board candidates that have had exposure and that may be able to be really positive additions to the council, particularly with a number of councilmembers that have not served in elective office before - having someone who had in whatever capacity could be a very positive, helpful thing for this council. It'll be interesting to see. I think that there are - certainly there have been some names that have been talked about publicly. I think there are more names that are circulating privately. It'll be really interesting to see how this shakes out. But either way, I also don't think that's gonna tip the balance of this council. I do think that it could help with policy formation and general operational items. But I think just, you know, it's not gonna tip the balance of power of the council.
[00:42:55] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I think the direction the council is gonna go is pretty well set.
[00:43:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah.
[00:43:01] Lex Vaughn: Yeah.
[00:43:02] Crystal Fincher: Yep, so we will see. Also this week, news of a lawsuit against the City of Burien over their new homeless camping law that - we have heard about the saga of Burien for quite some time. There was also an independent report this week that came out really chastising the city manager for not handling some of the major issues that they're doing with due care and seriousness. But this is a lawsuit being brought on behalf of unhoused people by a regional advocacy organization suing the city, claiming that it banishes homeless people, inflicts cruel punishment, and it violates Washington's constitution. The Northwest Justice Project filed the lawsuit on Wednesday in King County Superior Court on behalf of the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness and three individual plaintiffs. What were your thoughts on this?
[00:43:56] Lex Vaughn: I mean, it seems like this is the next step in inevitable plan to get this in the Supreme Court. I think there's probably a variety of cities, not just Burien, who have been wanting to challenge this. So this is another showdown that'll go to a higher court. But in general, I think it's just sad that it's happening because it's - we're talking about people's right to exist. It's not just a right to be homeless or something. It's a right to exist. There are people who cannot afford shelter. We as a society are not providing them enough aid in a dark period of their life. And you can't just ask people to go poof. Like, there's no magic wand that makes them just dissipate in air overnight. They have to exist somewhere. And to criminalize that is incredibly inhumane.
[00:45:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I mean, they have nowhere to go. Homelessness is a housing problem - it's the lack of housing. There has certainly been a lot of talk and skewed coverage presenting the homeless population as basically criminals and violent drug abusers. And one - homeless people are more likely to be victimized by crime than any other group. And if we were looking at facts and data, we would start from that point - they are not more violent than the general population.
[00:45:35] Lex Vaughn: A lot of people are escaping violence. I mean, especially homeless youth, you know?
[00:45:41] Crystal Fincher: 100%.
[00:45:42] Lex Vaughn: Yeah.
[00:45:42] Crystal Fincher: But, you know, criminalizing - it doesn't help that. Sending someone to jail because they don't have shelter doesn't help them to get shelter - it moves them further away from it. It destabilizes people. And it's just incredibly expensive.
[00:45:58] Lex Vaughn: Yeah.
[00:45:59] Crystal Fincher: There is just-
[00:46:00] Lex Vaughn: So ineffective.
[00:46:01] Crystal Fincher: Yes - so really expensive and ineffective. Seems like - okay, that should be the thing not to do. But that's the thing that they are rushing to do. Interesting about this lawsuit is it doesn't cite Martin v. Boise, which is a previous 2018 decision that came out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, saying that homeless people can't be punished for sleeping outside on public property if there are no adequate alternatives to offer them. Doesn't cite that, and it is also citing that it's a violation of Washington State's Constitution. So this, you know, which to me is notable because we'll see if Martin v. Boise stands. I don't think there's absolute confidence that that's going to continue to stand, although I certainly believe it should. But this could be something else that could prevent the large-scale just criminalization of homelessness without there being any place for anyone to go. No surprise to listeners of the program - I do believe we have an obligation to provide shelter and housing for people and that we have done a poor job of that, we have not kept up with the demand. And we continue to spend tons of money on these criminalized solutions that could go so much further if we invested them in ways that have shown they're more likely to reduce homelessness. There's been lots of coverage about Housing First models, which have been under attack, and there's actually an article recently about a very coordinated, conservative attack on these models. Just anecdotally, I've seen lots of people - Housing First policies have failed - when the truth is they haven't been tried yet. We've done a lot of criminalization. We have not done that - and man, we would love to, but suggestions that they don't work and that they failed are just false and not rooted. In reality, we haven't tried them. We have tried criminalization, and that's what's gotten us here.
[00:47:53] Lex Vaughn: Criminalization, another word for addiction to punishment. Doesn't matter that there's just mounds of research showing that these old techniques of criminalization don't reduce homelessness, they don't make us safer. It's just frustrating to continue to see this happen when it's like there's so much evidence and research showing that criminalization is an expensive and ineffective strategy for solving A) homelessness, and B) making us a safer community in general.
[00:48:33] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. The last item on our list today is there is a new entrant into the race for attorney general - a Republican from central Washington, an attorney named Pete Serrano, is the first major Republican to toss his name into the ring for Washington Attorney General. So he joins former US attorney Nick Brown, senior King County Deputy Prosecutor and State Senator Manka Dhingra in the race - who are both Democrats. So if he was elected, he would be the first Republican to hold the office since Rob McKenna vacated the seat in 2012. He's running on pretty standard conservative policies right now, which are kind of out there. He announced his candidacy with the host of the Washington Gun Law blog, if that gives you any hint - he is not in favor of any kind of gun control or gun laws. He, I believe, fought against vaccine mandates, filed legal challenges against the state's COVID-19 emergency order, fought against gun control legislation, and wants to bring more of that to the AG's race. What do you think of this?
[00:49:48] Lex Vaughn: I think it's interesting that the first person he was coming out swinging against is Bob Ferguson. And I think as he campaigns, he'll probably keep his aim there because even though Bob Ferguson isn't running for AG again, he's running for governor. I guess this guy is gonna sell himself as like the check on Bob Ferguson if he wins the governor's race. I think - hopefully this guy won't stand a chance - but he will make these campaigns a little bit more colorful.
[00:50:21] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, certainly a new dimension in this race. There were - the main people in the race, two well-known Democratic candidates or fairly well-known Democratic candidates. This being the first Republican candidate is a new dimension in the race. We will continue to follow it. We're gonna have a lot of very interesting statewide races, which is not an unusual thing - except in Washington State for the past decade, basically, where we haven't had much change there. So will be interesting to follow, and we'll keep our eyes peeled on what happens there.
And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, January 5th, 2024. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and founder and editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn. You can find Lex on Twitter @AlexaVaughn - you can also find her on several other platforms, as well as me. I'm everywhere @finchfrii. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
As a new year starts with hope and possibility, please enjoy this Sept 2023 re-air where @finchfrii welcomes Dr. Ben Danielson, director of AHSHAY (Allies in Healthier Systems for Health & Abundance in Youth) Center, for an important conversation about ending youth incarceration.
With King County’s commitment to end youth detention by 2025 looming and AHSHAY’s goal to end youth incarceration in Washington state by 2030, they discuss how punishment does not equate to community safety and is in fact harmful. Dr. Danielson describes how their work includes both the building and unbuilding of systems - building through support of proven community-based programs and unbuilding through recognition and tearing down of ingrained systems that only add trauma to young people’s lives. By amplifying the brilliance he sees in community, working to break down silos and barriers, and loving those who are loving our communities, Dr. Danielson hopes we all can take collective action to promote the ability to thrive for young people everywhere.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find out more about Dr. Ben Danielson’s work at the AHSHAY Center here.
Dr. Ben Danielson
Dr. Ben Danielson is a clinical professor of pediatrics at UW Medicine, community leader in health equity, and the director of Allies in Healthier Systems for Health & Abundance in Youth (AHSHAY) Center.
Ben believes in young people. He believes in both collective liberation and in being pro-Black. He asserts that the right-thing-to-do is known and we must not talk ourselves out of doing it. He believes there is an abundance of brilliance all around us and that we do not lack ideas or effective approaches to even our greatest challenges. Ben understands that the best solutions most often come from the wisdom of those most impacted by injustice. He holds bold certainty that cultivating relationships makes for a better world.
Ben has benefitted from co-conspiring with brilliant youth and a wide array of compassionate people. He realizes he is often the least useful member of the circles he joins and he is inspired – every day – by the young people, families, communities, and organizations with whom he interacts.
There is a profound joy that each of us is due. It comes from a deep regard for our ancestral paths, the powerful love of those who know us, a reflective understanding of our worth and purpose, a sense of dignity that is expressly offered and received, a flywheel of discovery based on the unfading spark of curiosity, and the honor of sharing the long collective journey together.
Resources
AHSHAY Center
AHSHAY Overview Slides
“Program led by Dr. Ben Danielson to keep youth out of jail” from UW Medicine Newsroom
“King County’s ‘Zero Youth Detention’ plan goes forward even as $232 million youth jail goes up” by Marcus Harrison Green from The Seattle Times
“King County Executive Dow Constantine commits to depopulate youth jail by 2025” by Elise Takahama from The Seattle Times
Care & Closure | King County - a plan for youth healing, accountability, and community safety
“This UW pediatrician has helped young people for 30 years. Now, he's on a mission to end youth incarceration” by Kim Malcolm & Andy Hurst from KUOW
“Uncommon partners joining forces to tackle youth incarceration: ‘We can’t throw away human lives’” by Naomi Ishisaka from The Seattle Times
“Focus on children and change the trajectory of generational trauma” by Ben Danielson and Victoria Peattie Helm for The Seattle Times
Pro Se Potential - prevention based, restorative program empowering youth of color to become proactive leaders in society
Choose 180 - transforms systems of injustice & supports the young people who are too often impacted by those systems
Community Passageways - create alternatives to incarceration for youth and young adults by rebuilding our communities through committed relationships centered on love, compassion, and consistency
“UW systems experts put health of kids at the center as King County seeks to reach ‘zero youth detention’” by Jake Ellison from UW News
YouthCare - works to end youth homelessness and to ensure that young people are valued for who they are and empowered to achieve their potential
Lavender Rights Project - elevates the power, autonomy, and leadership of the Black intersex & gender diverse community through intersectional legal and social services
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
I am thrilled to be having this guest and conversation today on the show. I want to welcome Dr. Ben Danielson, clinical professor of pediatrics at UW and director of AHSHAY Center. Welcome, Dr. Danielson.
[00:01:08] Dr. Ben Danielson: Thanks so much - I'm really happy to be able to join you today.
[00:01:11] Crystal Fincher: I'm really happy to have this conversation today - it's a very important conversation to have. And that is because King County has made a commitment to end youth incarceration by 2025, which is just around the corner - there's a lot of work that needs to be done to make sure that we deliver on this commitment - and that is informing and underpinning the work at the AHSHAY Center. Can you tell me a little bit about what went into the formation of this and what brings you to this work?
[00:01:42] Dr. Ben Danielson: Well, I'm a pediatrician - a primary care pediatrician - that worked in Seattle's Central District for a couple of decades and served an amazing community of mostly low-income, very diverse, incredible families and kids - such an honor to be part of that space. And as a Black man, I was also very aware of the great disproportionality of the youth that were being drawn into youth detention at the facility that was almost around the corner from the clinic I worked in in the Central District - and how the injustices that were stacked and piled all the way back, to maybe early childhood and before, that were leading to that vortex was really, really deeply concerning. Came to a point of deep reflection for myself and had to really ask - What can I be doing to actually be promoting the well-being, the wellness, the health, the ability to thrive for young people, especially Black and brown people, in this area? And I could not keep from seeing how youth detention was ruining lives, is ruining lives - especially Black lives - in this county and across this country. I'm surprised there aren't more physicians and pediatricians involved directly in this work, and I'm also hoping that the opportunity to contribute to helping end youth incarceration will be something that more and more people can get on board with. I wish there was more of a strong health presence in this space. I wish we had less silos and more collaborative work in this space, and I really started the AHSHAY Center to help support the brilliance that has already existed for a long time in communities and around us trying to end youth incarceration.
[00:03:40] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, there may be some people listening who think - Well, isn't youth incarceration a public safety issue? Shouldn't police be dealing with this? Why is a doctor concerned with this? - What do you say to people thinking that?
[00:03:56] Dr. Ben Danielson: Well, first, I back up - and one thing I've learned, as my hair grows a little grayer, is the importance of just being willing to engage in conversations with people who might start from a very different place than me and really trying to understand what their concerns are, where we might share common ground, what the relevant issues are. You asked that question from what sounded like a public safety perspective. If I'm being my usual nerdy self, I would look at the data - and I would know for myself that if you're trying to make communities safer, then the last thing you want to do is incarcerate young people. The data just proves that that does not work. In fact, it works in the opposite direction - it creates more likelihood that young people will be arrested again and again. And we have great solutions in communities, done by amazing people for a long time now, that actually reduce what they call recidivism - crime from happening more and more - and it makes the communities safer. So if someone's coming to me with - We need to be making our communities safe - then what I know in my heart, what my community tells me, and what the data says is that you should not be incarcerating young people.
[00:05:13] Crystal Fincher: Definitely. Absolutely true that the evidence shows that youth incarceration is harmful, actually - not helpful. It doesn't make us safer, it actually makes us less safe. Just wondering about - when we talk about harm and we talk about recidivism rates, what does that look like on the ground and in our communities?
[00:05:33] Dr. Ben Danielson: Well, I guess I think a little bit about a young person's journey through our communities and how, as a young, young child sometimes - if you're a low-income or Black or brown, sometimes the images of what society says you can be, what maybe privileged society and white society says you can be is constrained and limited. The images around you of possibilities are sometimes less than they should be for a young person whose mind and heart are full of possibilities and ideas. As I think about them entering the school system, I know that the very same behavior for a Black child, for instance, that is also seen in a white child will lead that Black child to greater disciplinary action across our school systems, across this country - despite those school systems having wonderfully good intentions, people in them, and lots of people who really care about things like social justice and anti-racism. I know that that means that for that child, their chance of suspension and being sort of seen as somehow troubling to a school system can be started and reinforced - I had that very same experience myself as a young child - and that can perpetuate and spiral throughout the educational experience.
I know that we have had practices like putting what they call safety officers, which are basically police in schools - and how for especially Black and brown communities, the presence of police more often in your life does not increase your safety, it increases the chances that you will be arrested. This is a concept that is not often appreciated in circles outside of Black community and low-income community, unfortunately, but more contact means more likelihood of being stopped by police. I understand that every step of the way, if you're Black and if you're low-income - but especially if you're Black - everything tilts more towards society trying to herd you towards incarceration. The chance of being stopped by a police officer goes up. The chance of that police officer deciding to detain you goes up. The chance of that police officer deciding to take you in and have charges filed goes up. The chance of those charges being more severe goes up. The chances of those charges and the severity leading to detention goes up. All of those things - the racism that's built into every part of that amplifying spiral - is really tragic. It's a tragedy. And that process leads to what we see - incredibly disproportionate rates of incarceration for Black and brown youth, especially. And what we see within the detention process is maybe still really good-hearted people trying to do their best to help young people, but in a system that is racist and in a system that - above and beyond the racism - also does not work, does not help to change or reduce the chances of a young person being rearrested.
What I also see on this hopeful side is incredible community-based programs that are often maybe staffed by people who look like the young people that are serving, might have people associated with them that have had lived experiences that are really relevant and important, maybe recognize and identify people also who represent different pathways, different opportunities, different possibilities - working together to instill in a young person that sense of belonging, a sense of connection to their community, and a sense of reinvigoration of their sense of personal purpose, their meaning, their voices mattering. When that starts to happen, you see everything change - in Black communities and brown communities and white communities across this country.
What I've learned on the sad side is that systems like systems of incarceration seek out young people who've already faced trauma and then traumatize them more. That feels like the most elemental of injustices to me - to take people who have faced harm, young people, and then harm them more. That is something that we all as citizens of this country, as people living in this country in any state of citizenship or otherwise, we just need to - we need to reckon with that. We need to account for that. If there weren't great alternatives - man, it'd just be a hard conversation for you and me to have. If there weren't resources out there that were showing that they were working, it'd be a theoretic conversation. We are so far beyond that. And it's a shame for us as a country and as a county - is that rather than face truth and reality and data and hearts and minds and everything else that we've seen, we continue to practice something that is harming our young people.
I don't know if that answered your question - there was a lot of ramble.
[00:10:39] Crystal Fincher: No, it absolutely does. And I think it lays out just what is at stake here. And I do appreciate how you concluded that - with we do have models that are working. We do have programs that are setting people up for success instead of incarceration and failure. So with all of that in mind, what is the approach that AHSHAY is taking? What is the work that you have ahead of you?
[00:11:09] Dr. Ben Danielson: One thing I notice, working as part of an amazing and brilliant Black community and being part of an academic system and our healthcare system, is just how super siloed a lot of our efforts really are. Really great people doing great work and yet, structurally and sometimes for lots of other reasons, a lot of that work remains kind of siloed. And this sounds strange, but I think over the course of time - one of the privileges I've attained from going from being a low-income child sleeping in a car kind of stuff to having a lot of privilege, resource-wise and otherwise, is that maybe that also is a position of connection, of interconnection, or of bridging. And so one of the deep tenets of AHSHAY work is maybe being able to sit in spaces that others don't always have an opportunity to, and maybe to help support the chances that people can move from silos to collaboration to collective action in different ways.
All of this is a learning process for me - I'm the novice in the space of legal issues, clearly - I'm not one of those doctors that pretends that they're an expert in everything. And I've learned so much from incredible people in our communities - from the most active and incredible nonprofit leaders to just those grandmothers who are doing it every single day - with love, and with heart, and with sweat, and with hope, and pouring everything into our young people. There's so much we could be doing together. There's so much we are doing. It feels like perhaps AHSHAY just has a chance to channel brilliance, to catalyze connectedness, build on relationships, to maybe try to listen again to conversations that have historically gotten shut off, and then try to play some role in helping to amplify the good work and the good hearts and the good efforts that are out there.
[00:13:15] Crystal Fincher: Definitely needed. So how does this work happen?
[00:13:20] Dr. Ben Danielson: Ah, thank you. The way we think about it at the AHSHAY Center is sort of it's two armed, although they are related. You think about unbuilding the fortifications of youth incarceration and building up the fortifiers of health and striving for youth, often through work in community. It seems important to think both about unbuilding and building. I think a lot of our approaches, historically, have been about either running away from something - we gotta stop doing this, stop doing that, stop doing that - it's a very almost medical related thing about stopping harm. We also have to couple that with really building the institutional resources, the connectedness, the best elements of community that allow us to work through our issues together, to maintain sustaining and thriving relationships. And so you gotta build stuff too, even as you unbuild things - another thing community has taught me.
So building both a sense of the acknowledgement of hope that we can create communities that can support youth even through problem and problematic moments - that maybe if we talked about justice, we really should be talking about the fullness of that, especially for young people - what it means to never feel like you got kicked out of your society, your community because of a transgression. But that that meant that the community held you even more strongly and closely, and held you accountable, and allowed you to be accountable, and allowed you to grow through a moment. And allowed you to be sort of healed and restored through that process, because a lot of what was happening in that moment was because of things that have been happening to you and to your generational line for a long time. The building also means a true reckoning, I think, for the racism that is so built into our systems, and requires that we actually build new systems rather than try to do little patches on the existing ones 'cause that just has proven itself not to work. The building means being able to build relationships and think about where we're going to - not just where we're running away from - and develop programs, policies and opportunities to feed into that building, that opportunity.
The unbuilding is roll-up-your-sleeves work, right? Working with the county on its decommissioning plans for the detention center, working with community-based organizations on supporting their ability to get up into broader scale to amplify their work, helping to do things that might sound boring but are really important - like understanding what resources actually exist out there across our county, understanding how they interconnect, understanding how youth relate to them, and understanding how we sort of know the landscape that is around us in a way that pulls us out of our silos and helps us see each other - all kind of stuff like that. So we're working on the dreamscape and the landscape at the same time.
[00:16:21] Crystal Fincher: I appreciate that approach so much. And obviously, you have been so well known for so long for the work that you have done - particularly in our Black local community - but this work of both building and unbuilding is absolutely necessary and I love that you articulate that so well and have built that into the work. When I talk to people kind of across the spectrum, even for people who are very supportive and encouraging and in-line with this vision, sometimes they have questions about - Okay, I know we need to invest in people, I know we need to unbuild harmful systems and build ones that will help keep us healthier and safer - but they don't really know what those programs look like, what that work is, and what specific kind of support is needed. When you talk about that and you're considering that with AHSHAY, what kinds of infrastructure, systems, supports are necessary to achieve the end of incarceration, but ultimately healthier and more positive and productive systems?
[00:17:35] Dr. Ben Danielson: Yeah, it is interesting. Even in our dialogue around this, we're talking mostly about stopping something - ending incarceration. And I would just wonder if we'd approach it differently - if the title were about what we're building towards instead of what we're eliminating - 'cause I do really believe that when you build towards something really powerful and positive, you actually obviate the need for the thing that was negative on some level. I know that sounds too idealistic, but I'm gonna stay in that abundant space for as long as I can.
The programs that I see out there that are really inspiring to me - some of them, the nature of them is perhaps a formerly incarcerated person who saw a path, and really understood an experience, and wanted to pour back into young people all of the knowledge and wisdom - most importantly, the mentoring and guidance and coaching and support - possible. And so you see these programs like Pro Se Potential, that are just directly connecting with young people and instantly creating a sense of belonging - absolutely credible to the young folks that are part of that, 'cause these young adults are seeing other older adults who've been in the same spaces and places. And helping young people find their voices and articulate their souls, understand their traumas - and more importantly, also see their potential. Those programs are amazing. And the more of those we can have in our communities, the better.
You also see other programs that have been really strongly integrated into systems and really help to support a interceding at moments where incarceration could have happened, so great diversion-oriented programs that offer alternatives to incarceration. And again, wrap a supportive hug around young people - create skills, help them understand trauma, and help them move through their lives in ways that are really affirming to them. Programs like Choose 180 and Community Passageways and some of the others in our county are really, really incredible. And again, scale those up and you've got a whole different perspective.
'Cause most importantly - if I could mention just quickly - what we've seen in youth incarceration has been an interesting kind of almost J-curve. From the time that I started working as a pediatrician a few decades ago - when the King County Detention Center had 200 young people in it on any given day, to 2019 when that number was down to more like 20 or less. All of those efforts of people working together in different ways went - to me - from an idea that, of closing youth detention, that seemed kind of hard to imagine when there's 200 young people in there, to something truly possible. 'Cause 20 - like 20 could be zero. 20 allows you to see something different. And so we've had all of these experiences that tell us what's possible. And this county, like other parts of the country, has done a lot of work towards that. Now sadly, since around 2018 or 2019, the number of youth in detention on any given day has been kind of creeping back up again. And I think, in a way, we need to be redoubling the efforts that we were investing in for a while there. We have programs at work - they've demonstrated benefit, they've shown what could be, they've opened the possibility from 200 to 20 to maybe seeing zero. There have been plans in place.
And we've been ambivalent in this county. We built a brand new detention center, which opened - I don't know, what - early 2020. And then we announced the decommissioning of that detention center in mid to late 2020. We've had a roadmap to Zero Youth Detention that was active for a long time. And in some ways, the emphasis on that work got distracted by other things. We've had people working on this decommissioning work in something that the county calls Care & Closure. And there hasn't been as much community engagement as there should have been from the very beginning. So all of these things, I guess - I just introduce the idea that ambivalence is still part of human hearts in a lot of this work too.
[00:21:45] Crystal Fincher: Ambivalence is a roadblock that we do have to get beyond. Appreciate your detailing those great programs - I think you really hit the nail on the head - talking about those programs have demonstrated their value in keeping the community safe and building relationships and connections with youth, with investing and pouring into them. And you can see the outcomes and you can see how powerful that work is, but it's really an issue of scale right now. You can look at funding, you can look at staffing, you can look at scope - and the traditional models that we're trying to unbuild that are harmful just have such a broad footprint, almost a ubiquitous footprint, in our society right now. And these pilot programs and organizations - and some substantial and doing great work, but just still needing so much more to address the need. And I wonder, especially just looking at some of the political situations upcoming - we've got elections right now, we've got forecasts for lower budgets, lower revenue. And so as we talk about building and investing, I've already heard some people say - Well, I don't know that we have the money for that, and maybe we just need to focus on trying to clean up our streets the traditional way or just investing more in the current system. And so we do have conflicts over resources and where those are going to go. How do you navigate that?
[00:23:18] Dr. Ben Danielson: First, inside my head - this is what I think - I don't necessarily say this right away because sometimes you need to engage with people first before you get to the point of dropping certain things. But I think it's a stronger argument that we can't afford to keep doing things the way we're doing them. A sad fact is that King County is probably one of the lesser costs for incarcerating a youth for a year. The average in the country is somewhere in the $115,000/year, or something like that. King County - it's around $87,000/year. $87,000/year to incarcerate a young person. Any of the programs I mentioned, and many other programs that could be built up to scale, would not even come close to costing - on a per-youth basis - that kind of expense. So if we really want to have a dollars conversation, I'm happy to have that one 'cause the cheaper approach is the more effective approach - is to not incarcerate youth.
If it's about people's roles and work in this, I also want to say just that there's a lot of stuff that we try to do at the very end point, right when crisis is happening, that would actually probably work better if we were doing it way earlier, way further upstream, way more effectively. The return on investment for maybe even doing some of the same things in communities instead of in prisons, at points where we know trauma and supports are there and are necessary, instead of waiting towards the moment of arrest or the moment of being in front of a judge. We have to be thinking - if we really want to talk about being good stewards of resources, then we have to be talking about that. And again, I'm kind of on solid ground in supporting communities that have been trying to end youth incarceration forever. I do want to say that it's been partnerships also that have helped us see that possibility - it's taken judges being willing to engage in diversion programs. It's taken incredible efforts from the legal systems - we even have advocates in the DA's office, in addition to the Public Defender's office. This is a place that has great human resource with lots of brilliance that is capable of really - not just envisioning a different community, but actually contributing to it and feeling great about their contributions.
[00:25:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I appreciate you bringing that up because I think many of us have seen so many allies and partners within and throughout systems in this work, and people who understand that the way we're doing things is not the best way and is harmful and trying in their roles and in their positions and working with others to help. I also see and hear from some of our leaders, whether it's in public safety or politics or prosecutors, saying things like - We're having an increasing problem with youth violence and crime, and part of the problem is that these youth haven't experienced consequences and we're too lenient on them. We heard this during the legislative session last session and we hear it during some council meetings - and their prescription is that we need to get tougher and that they need to experience consequences - and for them, that means that they might have to experience jail and being locked up to really teach them that lesson. How effective do you think that is?
[00:26:40] Dr. Ben Danielson: Thank you for that question, 'cause I think that last part of that question sort of answers itself. We have tried and tried again the idea of consequences and punishment as the only form, or the primary form, of addressing issues and we've seen it fail. Since the late '80s, maybe even earlier, we've been addicted to the idea of doubling down on consequences as a way of addressing issues that we talk about as community safety or crime - however we label those things. Doesn't work, hasn't worked, still not working. I don't always like using mental health terms inappropriately, but there is somebody named Einstein who talked about - the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again and hoping for a different result. We have proven beyond a doubt that that - let's just get tougher - just hasn't worked. It also - if we really cared about these things, we'd be actually talking about the roots, the deeper issues, the ways in which we create or take away opportunity for young people, the way we make it almost criminal to be poor in this country, the ways in which we so divest in infrastructure and supports. And maybe humane being - like just human beings at a civil level, the humanity that we owe ourselves and each other - our lack of investment in those, I would put forth have way more to do with what we're seeing, or perceiving, or the news cycles are telling us are happening around crime than something else.
[00:28:24] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's a challenge - we hear it all over. And I think we do conflate punishment with safety. And we have to untangle the public conversation around those things, which I appreciate you having this conversation and helping to do that, but it really is - it hasn't worked. And I do think that, as you say, there are a lot of well-meaning people who just don't really consider that there is an alternative. But as you said, there are alternatives - they're working, they're thriving. It's really a matter of scale and coordination, really, and institutionalizing what is helping instead of what is hurting. As you are doing this work and looking at what's necessary, for people who are listening and saying - This is really important, I support this, I wanna be a part of this, I want to help build and not just fight against what is harmful - both very important things - what would you say to them? How can they help?
[00:29:19] Dr. Ben Danielson: There's so many different ways to help. I'm a strong believer in that there is not one path or two paths. I'm very thankful to you, Crystal, for not asking me - What are the two things we need to do? - 'cause I feel like that is a, that's almost a white supremacy question that creates an impossible, or a really strange set of alternatives. Communities know that there are many paths to getting to places you need to, so there's so many ways. I really appreciate what happens across the University of Washington. There are such champions, like Sarah Gimbel at the School of Nursing and the work that Sarah is doing to make sure that healthcare is being supported, not only in detention, but outside of detention. There are so many champions in our health department who are trying to instill a stronger public health and Health in All things in this work.
Maybe most importantly though, I'll just go back to mentioning - there are incredible community-based programs that - not only the ones that are just, that are focusing on alternatives to incarceration, but just the ones that are just loving our young people. YouthCare and other programs that really help young people experiencing, who are unhoused, and who are pushed towards being unhoused by so many oppressive practices. Incredible advocacy and rights organizations like Lavender Rights that really sees people that other parts of society seem to not want to see - our LGBTQIA2S+ young people and adults who are deserving of every, every fulfilling opportunity to thrive that we should be thinking of. There are so many important community-based programs and I will just say, I feel like there is a significant threat to our nonprofits and community-based programs right now as resources - just that old scarcity diet that they've been functioning under for so long - it's just, it just wears and tears on an organization's ability. A lot of leaders are burned out and things like that. So we need to, we need to show how much we love those who are loving our communities with us and support them with our time, with our dollars, with our words of support.
If you are LGBTQIA2S+ and every message across this country is about how much you might need to worry about your own safety right now - a county like ours, we should be yelling out - We support you, we see you, we want you to thrive, we believe in you, and we reject any energy that is trying to make you feel afraid, alone, lost or unsupported. We need to model the behaviors that we say we want our young people to grow into. And as long as they're not seeing us standing up and doing the things that we should do - from our moral hearts, from our heads, from, I don't know, from the evidence tells us, from what the budgets tell us, from every direction - if we're not doing that, I don't know why we expect young people to see anything different in the world around them either. So let's be the people that we wish other people would be - probably somebody famous said that before - but let's just try that for a while, right?
[00:32:22] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, definitely appreciate that. And I love "the organizations and people who are loving our community" - I absolutely love that, that is excellent advice and very well put. I really do thank you for your time today. And for people who wanna learn more and get engaged with AHSHAY, how can they do that?
[00:32:41] Dr. Ben Danielson: Well, we're in startup phase in many ways - still working on getting our website together - look out for that in September, October kind of timeframe. We're just looking to support the brilliance that's out there, so if you're part of a community-based program that's just doing great work - we'd love to connect with you and find how we can support you. Trying to be able to support conversations that maybe America has not gotten good at - like talking across difference, and actually holding space for that, and being willing to keep talking - because it's for our young people, because it's more important than maybe whatever feelings we have about other folks around us. And if there are ways in which you have an idea, a thought, a way that you can personally contribute to the life of someone else around you - if there's somebody who needs to see you in order to see the possibilities in themselves, I just encourage you to get out there and be in the lives of people who would really benefit from your presence and your brilliance and your wisdom.
[00:33:46] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much for this conversation today. Thank you for everything that you have done and you continue to do. You truly have been doing incredibly heavy lifting for quite some time - and I thank you, and we all thank you so much. Dr. Ben Danielson.
[00:34:02] Dr. Ben Danielson: Thank you for the opportunity to talk.
[00:34:05] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattle political reporter and editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett!
Crystal and Erica discuss how a City of Seattle audit of registered rental properties shows a shift from smaller rental properties to larger apartment buildings that mirrors national trends, rather than being a direct reaction to tenant protections that landlords often cite as an issue. They then call out local media outlets republishing a sensational story of a homeless landlord with a “nightmare tenant” without fact checking.
On the public safety front, Crystal and Erica dig into the importance of the upcoming Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) contract and whether all the newcomers to City Council will get up to speed quickly enough. Finally, they chat about the departure of Sound Transit’s CEO and what it signifies about the embattled regional transit agency.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica Barnett, at @ericacbarnett.
Resources
“Decline in “Mom and Pop” Rentals Driven by National Trends, Not Local Renter Protections, City Audit Finds” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
““Nightmare Tenant” Story Amplified by Seattle Times Crumbles Under Scrutiny” by Katie Wilson from PubliCola
“What a New Seattle Police Guild Contract Could Mean for Reform” by Amy Sundberg from The Urbanist
“Seattle police not complying with law requiring lawyer access for kids, audit finds” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times
“Only 4% of detained youth are offered attorney access by Seattle police, audit finds” from KUOW
Audit Report on SPD Compliance with Youth Access to Legal Counsel Requirements | Seattle Office of Inspector General
“Op-Ed: Quick CEO Ousting Points at Sound Transit Board Deficiencies” by Robert Cruickshank for The Urbanist
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, after a hiatus, we are back with our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Seattle political reporter and editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett.
[00:01:11] Erica Barnett: Hi, Crystal.
[00:01:12] Crystal Fincher: Hey - good to have you on. I've been gone for a while and I'm back - so happy to be back, with you on the program. And there were a few really interesting stories that have come out in PubliCola recently - first one I wanted to talk about was about an audit the City did on its housing supply. And really landlords, and whether renter protections - what effect they had - what the types of landlords we have in the city are, what the impacts they're having, and what kinds of things are impacting them. There's been a lot of talk and a lot of conversation about this as we have had broader conversations about the cost of housing - we're in a housing pricing crisis, the cost of housing is way too high - about homelessness and how the cost of housing is contributing to that. What can be done about it? - lots of renter protection initiatives being passed around the state. And this conversation has been happening with a lot of landlords - both big and small - saying - Hey, these are onerous laws and protections. These are gonna push us out of the market. This is gonna create a housing shortage in and of itself. And so the City decided to embark upon an audit to figure out what was really going on. What did they look at, and what did they find?
[00:02:37] Erica Barnett: Well, the audit originally came out of some efforts by a few councilmembers - Kshama Sawant, Alex Pedersen and Sara Nelson - to sort of, I would say on Sawant and Pedersen's part, to demonstrate that so-called "mom and pop" landlords are going out of business as you said. And on Pedersen and Nelson's part - they're the more conservative councilmembers - to sort of demonstrate that all these tenant protections are the reason that landlords are being driven out of the market.
The audit basically found that this is not really a specifically local-to-Seattle problem, it's a national problem. And whether it's a problem or not depends on your perspective. The very, very small rental properties - meaning single family houses or duplexes - are in fact going, the number is going down. Because of sales - because they look at the market and say, I can get a lot of money for selling this house. And they make a rational economic decision and do so. And because of demolitions to build more apartments. So there's broader factors going on here that are contributing to this, but overall - one other interesting finding from the audit is that the number of housing units has been going up, not down, even as these very small, single family houses, things like that are being sold. So there's a trend toward very large apartment buildings and away from these kind of older buildings. And that's just - I mean, it makes sense if you think about - it makes sense that this is a national situation, if you think about sort of how housing stock changes over. Buildings that are 180 years old don't last forever. And at a certain point, it just becomes a good economic decision for the landlord to sell to either a developer or somebody who wants to buy a house.
[00:04:29] Crystal Fincher: And so where - this was one of the issues that they did look at closely - where landlords are saying, Hey, we're being pushed out, we just can't do this anymore. And so were these sales at a loss? Did it look like there was a mass exodus because of this legislation?
[00:04:46] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I mean, I seriously doubt any of these sales, or many of these sales, were at a loss. I mean, just looking at the Seattle market, as you said, I mean, housing prices have been going up - not just rents, but obviously the cost of houses and property has been skyrocketing, particularly during the pandemic. And so I don't get the sense that there is an exodus of landlords getting out of the market at a loss. The audit did include a survey of landlords, but it really needs to be taken with a grain of salt. The survey found that landlords did complain quite a lot about restrictions and all kinds of regulations ranging from the need to let tenants know six months in advance that they're going to be raising rent to a 43-year-old law that says you - essentially it says that you can't evict people without a good reason, you can't just kick people out without having a specific set of reasons. So a lot of landlords don't like these rules - they complain about them, but I don't get the sense that that necessarily correlates with landlords getting out of the market. It seems much more like a market-driven decision in a lot of cases to me.
[00:05:55] Crystal Fincher: It did look like a market-driven trend, particularly looking at - of the small units that were sold, almost 70% were sold between 2019 and 2021 after housing prices spiked by about 20%. And so it does look like it was tied to the potential for profit and selling those - and they are selling to larger landlords, it looks like. So there is a trend, but like you said, it looks like it is a national trend - in line with national trends - that we aren't really unique in this area. It also - just interesting in the poll, especially how we talk about and look at polls across a wide variety of subjects, mostly political. The survey of landlords - the way that questions were asked were really interesting. And it was from an industry association where the only choices that they had were really to complain about something or another - like pick which things you don't like - which obviously is going to impact the answers. Now that doesn't mean that there's no validity to them, or that none of the complaints were valid. Certainly we've heard from landlords who have brought up concerns and talked about having particular challenges, but it doesn't look like that is what is driving trends in landlord ownership and in that department. So what is going to come from this, or what is this going to inform? What comes next?
[00:07:29] Erica Barnett: Well, I think what's going to happen next - I mean, as you said, these are not just made up or illegitimate concerns in many cases. So I also don't want to just dismiss landlords as being universally baseless complainers. SDCI, the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, was sort of the target of this audit. And I think that some of the complaints that landlords made - and particularly again, small landlords who I've reported separately have less access to the City than these big property owners that tend to find it easier to comply with these laws. I think that they have a legitimate gripe with not being able to access SDCI as easily - finding the system that they use for filing information, for keeping up with current regulations - they find it confusing. And so I think what's going to happen next is that the City's Department of Construction and Inspections is going to make some efforts to make things easier, to make things more accessible to landlords and particularly small landlords. And they have indicated that they are willing to comply with that. And in the past, from what I understand, when the auditor has sort of come at SDCI and said you need to do these things, they've done them. So I expect SDCI will be responsive.
Now that does not mean that small landlords are going to stop complaining and they now have a very sympathetic city council. I expect that the new city council will be more sympathetic to small landlords' concerns, complaints - it's a significantly more conservative, less progressive council than the one that we've seen over the last couple of years. So we'll see - it could be that the new council will try to roll back some of these tenant protections in response to these landlord complaints. So stay tuned next year.
[00:09:21] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely will stay tuned. We've also heard that from, especially some smaller landlords, that these protections are overbroad - they're really onerous on smaller landlords - and they treat their tenants like family and they're not the source of the problem. It's these big nameless, faceless corporations that are managing these mega properties. Is that what this audit found?
[00:09:44] Erica Barnett: Well, no. And actually, one really interesting aspect of this audit, which I can say - you know, as a focus group of one - comports with my own experience living in Seattle and renting for over 20 years, is that these family mom and pop landlords were the ones that elicited the most complaints, overwhelmingly the most complaints, from tenants for sort of everything from basic maintenance - building codes, keeping things up to legal standards - to landlord-tenant disputes where the landlords would violate a landlord-tenant law. I mean, I just - I flashback on landlords who would just kind of barge into my apartment without letting me know in advance and giving me the required notice. This stuff is very common and I think it's - this audit shows that it's much more common, at least in terms of complaints, with smaller landlords and ones that say they treat their tenants like family. I mean, maybe they do, but you know, you shouldn't treat your tenants like family if that's how you treat your family. So I think that's just, that was a really interesting finding of the audit.
[00:10:50] Crystal Fincher: Also very interesting finding to me. Now, kind of zooming in a little bit, there was a story that was covered by a lot of local media that Katie Wilson did a little bit of fact checking on for PubliCola and found out that the truth was different than what had been reported, with a story about a supposedly homeless landlord who became homeless because of a tenant nightmare story. What was reported, and what actually occurred here?
[00:11:24] Erica Barnett: Yeah, this story actually got picked up, not just by all the sort of local TV stations and pundits - conservative pundits - but it got picked up nationally. And the basic story that, the basic version of the story that was told was that there's this guy named Jason Roth - he's a working mechanic. And he owned this property and he had a tenant who was illegally trying to rent it out as an Airbnb and refusing to leave. And so he, according to this version, was forced to live in his van and really, you know, was just - really missed the property, so he was often interviewed standing out in front of it. And yeah, there's an ongoing dispute between Roth and this tenant - but as Katie discovered, the story was much more complicated than it seemed.
[00:12:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it seemed like there was - it was a sob story that a lot of outlets were happy to carry. And it seemed like it was almost in response to a number of the renter protection initiatives, a lot of the momentum that increased protections for tenants have been having, and say - Hey, maybe this has gone too far because look at this guy, he's having such a rough go. And my goodness, his tenant has totally taken advantage of him. And now he's just destitute and, you know, homeless in his van, and this has just gone too far. Is that what happened?
[00:12:47] Erica Barnett: Well, no - I mean, what happened is that there was this sort of very complex and I, you know, I'm not gonna try to describe all the ins and outs of it, but there's a very complex business deal between basically this guy, Jason Roth, and his tenant. And you know, these two guys who sort of decided to try to rent out this - the apartment was actually a duplex, so it's a house that's got two units. And they were gonna rent out one as an Airbnb and the tenant was going to serve as the kind of manager of the Airbnb in exchange for a decrease in his rent. He paid rent for a very long time - was renting out the upper unit - but there was a bunch of sort of business machinations that happened. They were using this company, this third party company, to rent an Airbnb. The third party company sort of went out of business, they're also sort of still in business - but anyway, like I said, very complicated situation. But you know, ultimately it boils down to a dispute over a lease that they signed where they were going to go into business together on a different business venture. So these are sort of two bumbling guys - is how I would describe it. But ultimately the tenant was unable to pay his rent - he says, because people were not renting this Airbnb, it's in a kind of industrial area off Rainier - and so he said he wanted out. According to him, Jason Roth, the landlord, said that he needed pay for an entire year. And that is sort of one of the cruxes of this dispute is whether this guy needs to pay him, you know, $40,000 or so. It's in court, they are disputing it back and forth, but it's not as simple as it seemed.
Then on the other side of things - the homeless landlord part of the narrative - Jason Roth is the son of a family that is pretty well off. They own a company, they have a beachfront property that's, you know, $2 million, they own a number of properties - so his kind of contention that he has to live in his van is questionable at best. And his claim to be a mechanic - his work history is very, very hard to verify. And so, at best this is a complicated story about a dispute between two people. And at worst, it's a landlord sort of failing to manage a property very well. The property, by the way, is apparently owned by his parents, not by him. He said that, you know, it's his property. It seems like it's not actually his property. So at worst, he's kind of milking this for media attention - he also has a GoFundMe where he's raising money. Okay, I said I'd give you the short version - it's not really the short version - but everybody should read the story, 'cause it's even more complicated than that.
[00:15:31] Crystal Fincher: There were so many twists and turns. Absolutely everyone should read this story and we will link it in the show notes and on social media. But yeah, just kind of starting off - just beginning to look at this, the very first fact check - Hey, is there a mortgage on this property? Can he not pay the note? Oh, it turns out there's no note, and it looks like it's owned by his dad. And when asked about it, he doesn't want to talk about his personal finances and just said that it was a personal loan.
[00:15:58] Erica Barnett: Yeah.
[00:15:58] Crystal Fincher: So we see another situation where apparently - this is a property owned by your parents that you give to the kid to do something with and manage, and it sounds like he just seriously mismanaged this thing. And to your point, even he admits - Well, yeah, I could go get an inexpensive apartment, I don't have to live in my van. He's choosing to live in his van, which is certainly a different situation than a lot of people who are homeless and forced to live in vehicles who don't have a choice, who are unable to afford anything else. Not to say that it's a desirable position, but it does look like there is a pretty solid paper trail that - one, this tenant did pay rent for at least a year beforehand. Two, it looks like there was an arrangement that they both - the tenant here and this son playing landlord - agreed that the son hire this property management company to basically run an Airbnb, which may not have been legal in the first place. That company did a very poor job, creating a lot of problems for the tenant - including like hostile tenants, hostile renters of the Airbnb confronting the other tenant, who is helpless to do anything about it. And an attempt to remedy and make right that situation seemed to lead to this dispute of what was gonna happen. And it looked like there was a pretty substantial negotiation including equity that was offered in the son's company. And that just didn't turn out to be a fruitful or successful negotiation, which happens sometimes. But this seems to be almost a contractual dispute later on down the line, stemming from mismanagement or lax management of this property and problems that arose from that. So a much different story than one was led to believe from the initial stories and reporting on this.
[00:17:52] Erica Barnett: Yeah, and I think - I mean, there's a couple of things here too. I mean, the sort of deadbeat tenant angle - this tenant was supposed to be paying $4,300 a month, which is, you know, an absolutely, maybe it's not exorbitant depending on how much money you're making, but that's a lot of money. And the assumption was that, you know, he would be renting out an Airbnb. And in fact, the lease - all of the coverage said that he was illegally trying to rent out a vacation home or whatever. It says in his lease that he is permitted to engage in a commercial short and/or midterm rental with website listing service, and, you know, e.g. VRBO, Airbnb, et cetera, to sublet one half of the property. So this was never an illegal arrangement. It was explicitly a legal arrangement within the lease. Now, in the larger sense - yes, it may have been illegal, but that's both Roth and the tenant engaging in activity that may be illegal.
Pulling back, I mean, I think that - everybody from Business Insider to The Seattle Times to Fox News and our local right-wing pundits jumped on this - just says how eager people are to believe, or a certain segment of the population, is to believe that tenants are somehow getting one over on hardworking people. And I mean, the eagerness extended to not doing any fact checking - The Seattle Times ran this piece, Business Insider ran a piece, where they didn't even talk to this tenant. And one thing that he told Katie Wilson, our reporter on this, was that he sent all the information, all the court documents, and his lease, and all this documentation to Business Insider. And he says that they just ignored it because, you know, presumably this sort of homeless landlord story - that's a spicy headline, it sounds like a good story, and it sounds contrarian. So I guess who cares if it's actually true. So I think it's just, it's an indictment of the news media in some ways, the punditocracy, and just even media literacy and people reading the story and believing that this could be true, or assuming - Oh, well, of course that makes sense 'cause tenants are always trying to cheat landlords. I just find it very indicative of sort of where we are - in Seattle and as a nation - between the sort of ownership class and the rental class. So, and in Seattle, of course, most of us are renters. So it's just very interesting that this story caught fire.
[00:20:18] Crystal Fincher: It is very interesting. And seeing the reach and spread of the original, un-fact-checked tale versus the facts that later came out not being quite as viral, not being as eagerly reported for the reasons you just talked about.
But I do want to talk about the potential for a new Seattle Police Guild contract in this next year - it's largely expected that we're going to see a new contract in this new year. And Amy Sundberg did a piece for The Urbanist this week that really got into what that means, or what the potential is for reform. What does it look like is coming, and why is it so important?
[00:21:04] Erica Barnett: Well, I mean, we don't really know what's coming in terms of the specific outlines of the contract. The big kind of eternal dispute, or one of the big eternal disputes, is whether police officers in their contract can negotiate away accountability provisions, or whether accountability is something that can be debated or included in the contract at all, or whether it's just something that should be a baseline - you have to adhere to whatever accountability standards are set and you can't negotiate those away. So that's going to be a big element, I think, of the contract - is that question. And there are other really major disputes over things like arbitration, which is a process where officers can challenge disciplinary decisions and arbitrators who are judges, who may be in other states, often will overturn local decision-making. And so there's sort of a debate over whether we should get rid of or limit arbitration. So there's lots of stuff in this contract beyond just kind of the basic, how much are cops going to get paid?
And the City kind of threw a wrinkle in this earlier in 2023 when they assigned a Memorandum of Understanding, which is separate from the contract - it's kind of a side agreement - that gave the police a lot of things they were asking for without sort of asking anything in return. So they get to get a bonus every time they do a special event and volunteer to staff it - and they get double overtime for special event shifts. And the things that they agreed to in return are pretty minimal - there will be parks rangers outside the downtown area - you know, woo-hoo. They can use parking enforcement officers to help staff some positions - TBD. So the City arguably gave away some of its negotiating power in this MOU. And now we have a new city council and we're entering 2024 with this contract still kind of up in the air.
[00:23:16] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and a lot is in the air. And you know, one thing that has been talked about before, but I think is really impactful is the impact that this new city council will have. There's a lot to get up to speed on when you take office. And to a person, the new city councilmembers have not held any elected office before. And for anyone - this is not any commentary on their capacity. For anyone - from any kind of background - coming into local elected office, there's just so much to absorb, to learn - just how things are done. Just, you know, how to craft and move legislation. All of the different boards and commissions and advisory bodies, the committees, just the history of what's happened. It's so much to get up to speed on. That takes a while. And we have some pretty impactful and important decisions coming up. And so a lot of people are kind of looking at this - at least this first year, even for some of the new councilmembers who are viewed as savvier perhaps than some of the others, and saying - It's gonna take them a while to get up to speed. So when there is such an issue like this - where there's a lot of technical expertise that is necessary and helpful, as well as just big impactful political and community ramifications here - this is a lot to ask from a brand new councilmember.
[00:24:47] Erica Barnett: And, you know, the council - they don't participate in the negotiations directly, but they do sit on the Labor Relations Policy Committee, which is this kind of obscure committee that determines the parameters, sort of what can be, what subjects are on the table during the negotiations. Five councilmembers sit on that committee and then a city council staffer participates or sits in the room during actual negotiations. So yeah, there's a lot on the line. And of course, council can also lead by taking the bully pulpit and advocating for various things, which has happened in the past - not really successfully, but there was a, you know, there's a landmark accountability legislation that was passed prior to the last contract passing. And of course, the most recent contract did not include those accountability provisions. But, you know, I mean, arguably the council can do a lot to sort of express outrage, raise questions, bring attention to issues. And I mean, like you said, the current council does not have a lot - or the incoming council does not have a lot of experience, are gonna be getting up to speed. If you're Bruce Harrell, you're probably feeling pretty good about this council coming in, you know, with regard to the SPOG contract in particular, because none of these folks are experts on public safety. And so, you know, with the maybe exception of District 5 Councilmember Cathy Moore, who was a judge and has served as a council aide. But yeah, just not a lot of experience in this area on this incoming council.
[00:26:22] Crystal Fincher: Not a lot of experience and, you know, not just - I think it's fair to say that that tips the balance of power in favor of the mayor's office - that they have more power, they have more sway, they have more influence. Because it's not coming from the council at this point in time, 'cause they're just trying to get up to speed - even before you get to the issue of alignment, which the alignment definitely does favor the mayor's office - just their ability to engage is not going to be there to the degree that it would be under most of the council compositions that we've seen before in our lifetimes in the City of Seattle. So that's gonna be another interesting dynamic that comes to play. But one of the biggest things - there was landmark kind of reform legislation passed, but because the contract specifically said, Hey, you know, we're gonna do things a little bit different and where we disagree, the contract is going to supersede any city law - those were basically wiped out. It's gonna be really interesting to see what happens with those provisions and whether, after seeing so many of the challenges that we've seen over the past several years, that the council sees fit to take back some of the power that they ceded. And I, you know, there was more than one councilmember who said that they wish they didn't cede that much power and give away that much power in the contract now - seeing some of the consequences of that happening. So it's gonna be really interesting to see how this plays out.
[00:27:56] Erica Barnett: And I think just, you know, on the question of accountability, I mean, I think it's also true that when the City has enacted accountability measures or the state has, that SPD doesn't always follow them. And I just wanna mention briefly that there was an audit by the Office of Inspector General, which is an accountability body, that found that there's a requirement that when police are arresting youth, they have to let them know that they can access an attorney and they have to provide access to an attorney right away - and, you know, in the car upon arresting them. And this audit found that they were only complying 4% of the time. I mean, and this is a city law that was sort of augmented by state law and police were ignoring it in 96% of cases, are ignoring it in 96% of cases.
[00:28:44] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and just from, I think, the layman perspective of most people, most residents - I think it's fair to say that in Seattle today, most residents are generally welcoming of police doing the job that they have said that they're supposed to do. But they want police following the law when they do it - and that's where we're seeing a big deficit. It's, you know, accountability for everyone but the police - that doesn't seem like it makes sense. So even for people who are like - Hey, I wanna call 911 and I want a policeman to come, or a policewoman or whoever - you know, someone to respond there. I also want to see them follow the law - that has been borne out in surveys and polls and focus groups - and that's what's missing and that's what the city council has the opportunity to address, is the accountability, is putting the teeth. And when something goes wrong, you can rest assured something can be done about it. And I don't think many people have much confidence in that right now and that is going to be something that has to change.
Finally today, I wanna talk about an op-ed that appeared in The Urbanist by Robert Cruikshank - talking about the deficiencies of the Sound Transit Board, particularly in the light of CEO Julie Timm announcing that she's departing. What could and should happen next? What was the gist of this op-ed?
[00:30:16] Erica Barnett: Yeah, the gist was basically that departing CEO Julie Timm was not the - getting rid of her or, you know, her departure is not gonna fix the financial crisis that Sound Transit is facing, the - just all the different problems that they're facing with their capital program, cost overruns, et cetera. That in fact, the real problem is the composition of the board and the fact that it is made up of elected officials from around the region who don't necessarily have a lot of transit expertise, nor sort of a vested interest in wanting Sound Transit to be a success. And the sort of solution that was proposed in this op-ed was that we should elect Sound Transit board members individually, as opposed to just having somewhat random assortments of elected officials serve in these roles. So it's a long op-ed - it's worth reading and it raises some very interesting points - not all of which I totally agree with. But it makes a great point that the CEO - the buck may stop with the CEO and Julie Timm was there for just a little bit over a year and is walking away with a year of pay - $375,000, you know, essentially departure bonus, so she's doing okay. But that hiring the greatest CEO in the world is not gonna solve this problem.
[00:31:57] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and so talking about the problem, or I guess diagnosing this problem - do you see the same problem that Robert and many other people do in that there is a Sound Transit board that doesn't seem invested in the transit system that we have, they don't seem like regular users, and they don't seem to really have an eye on providing the best transit service that we possibly can. Do you think that's a fair criticism?
[00:32:26] Erica Barnett: I mean, I do - I don't think that a transit board is going to typically, you know, unfortunately be regular users, especially when you have a very suburban transit board as we do, 'cause it's a regional body. So, you know, I think that's - look, should all the board members ride the bus and ride the train? Sure, but not all of them live on the train line, and a lot of them are - we're talking about rich elected officials - it's kind of like the gotcha of, oh my God, like nobody on the city council is, you know, rents a one bedroom apartment. Well, of course they don't - they make a lot of money, they buy houses. So anyway, but that criticism aside, I do think that there is an issue - not just of sort of suburban city councilmembers and mayors not feeling particularly invested. There's also just a problem of kind of not seeing the forest for the trees.
And, you know, I cover Seattle primarily, and so I'll give a Seattle example, which is that - there is a lot of momentum in Seattle to change the line that is currently being built. There's, you know, Dow Constantine, King County Executive, lives in Seattle, and Mayor Bruce Harrell have proposed a whole bunch of changes to the line that we voted on in downtown Seattle and environs. So we're considering moving the Chinatown International District Station and actually really getting rid of it, building a second station right across from the old one in Pioneer Square - the existing one - moving the station in South Lake Union to accommodate short-term construction concerns by Amazon and Vulcan, getting rid of the Midtown Station - which was supposed to be a replacement for the First Hill Station, which Sound Transit got rid of in the first line of the system. So there's just a lot of kind of short-term and small-bore thinking that is going on that should not be happening, in my opinion. And so I think that, you know, it's not just that - Oh, these suburban people don't ride the bus. It's that like they are all atomized and advocating for their own little areas in various ways, and they're influenced by powerful people in their jurisdictions. And so that just kind of - I don't know, it just nickels and dimes - except the, you know, we're talking more about billions of dollars and it causes all these delays that we're seeing. So I think that is a real problem.
[00:35:05] Crystal Fincher: I think that's a real problem. And I think - one of the main points that Cruickshank was making in this piece is that we need to really fundamentally re-examine the composition of this board and how we're putting it together. And I think, even beyond the composition or how we arrive at the current composition is, who is this board accountable to? And I think part of that informs some of the options that people may look towards, whether it's an elected body, which some people agree with and some people don't, whether it's looking at a different type of composition among electeds, whether there's a different expectation of how people use this system.
And I do want to push back a little bit. Just because people are in the suburbs doesn't mean they [don't] use transit. There are transit-dependent people in all of the suburbs.
[00:36:02] Erica Barnett: Oh totally.
[00:36:03] Crystal Fincher: There are abundant renters in all of the suburbs. Yes. Now that board is coming from existing elected officials - to your point, you are absolutely correct in that they skew much more, a lot richer than their average constituent. You know, renters almost are never represented on suburban boards. I'm related to one of the few of them that are renters on a suburban city council. But it's a different kind of challenge. But I think these are good questions to ask on - what can we be doing better? Because the consequences of continuing in the same way that we've been seem to be these continued delays, the meddling in seemingly basic and well-laid plans that have been established for years, voted on. And the seeming cavalierness with which they approach these changes and these like billion dollar inflation estimates just doesn't seem to - they don't seem accountable to anyone. We're talking about major budget shortfalls. We're talking about delays of 10 plus years, 20 plus years from original timelines. And it just doesn't seem like it's as unacceptable to them as it is to so many of us in the public. And not to mention that a lot of these, especially suburban areas, have been paying for a product that they're not going to see for decades for some people even in their lifetime. And then we talk about - Well, they don't support transit enough and blah, blah, blah. Well, you know, if you're paying for something that you're not receiving, and if you have people who don't seem really interested in delivering the thing that you're paying for, that's going to impact how much you support what they're talking about. We have to do a better job of this. And I guess the question is - is there a way that we can do, that we can improve on what we're currently doing? The idea of electing a board - is it one that you think can address this problem?
[00:38:18] Erica Barnett: Well, I mean, I am very skeptical for a number of reasons. Robert, in this op-ed, cites BART and says - if we elect them, much like in San Francisco where there's nine districted sort of board members for the Bay Area Rapid Transit System, then they can devote their full time to this, or more of their time to this. First of all, I don't know that BART is a perfectly run system. And I don't know that - it seems more that the good things about BART are due to management rather than the sort of elected body that makes the high-level decisions. A lot of stuff at Sound Transit is done by staff and directed by the CEO, at the request and demand of the board. But I also think the idea that if we elect someone to represent, let's say Pierce County or part of Pierce County, then they will automatically be more responsive - well, I don't know that the majority of Pierce County is demanding the things that you and I might want them to demand. They have been marginally supportive of Sound Transit - the voters, I mean, at best. And we might get, if we elect a board of nine people who are from various areas, but you have a specific interest in transit - I was saying before we started recording - we could end up getting nine Rob McKennas. As you also recall, Rob McKenna went on to be the Attorney General of the state, was a board member who was very knowledgeable about Sound Transit and implemented some decisions - advocated for and got some decisions made that were ultimately really bad and are causing some of the problems we have now. So, he was very much an anti-transit Sound Transit member. I don't think that electing people directly is a panacea. I think that there are a lot of other sort of endemic issues and if you have nine people all kind of advocating for their geographic areas, you might just end up with a bloated and even more bloated budget because everybody's putting different things on the Christmas tree.
[00:40:51] Crystal Fincher: We could definitely have that. It is hard for me to see - admittedly, it is hard for me to see how we do much worse than we currently do with an elected board. It's hard for me to not see - because at least there would be an interest in delivering something for the area that they represent, which that doesn't even seem to be a priority at this point in time. And that seemingly you would have people more invested in the system who have more of an interest in the system. Is that a guarantee? Absolutely not. Can you prescribe who is going to be elected in any kind of a process, whether it's redistricting or anything else? That's very, very hard to do and usually doesn't turn out as planned. But I think it's prudent at this point in time to be revisiting how we compose this board, particularly among just the litany of failures and challenges that we see stemming from these big, broad decisions that are coming from the board at this point in time - whether that's putting in a stronger management structure, that may be the thing. But to me, something has got to change here, because we are - to expect the same kind of result is just, seems like it's really sabotaging transit and our region for the longterm and throwing good money after bad.
[00:42:12] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I mean, I do think one caution is - the idea of elected board members - I mean, they would, if we're modeling this on other systems like BART, they're not gonna be paid. And so you're talking about sort of biasing the outcomes toward people who are independently wealthy. I mean, it's kind of like our legislature, right?
[00:42:41] Crystal Fincher: Now, I have to throw in - I'm always in favor of paying for the time of elected officials - for that reason. I'm in favor of proposals to pay our legislators for the time that they have - because if we don't, then we do bias it in favor of the wealthy. And I think that, for the money that we're investing, we should have people who can be dedicated to serving in that capacity.
[00:43:08] Erica Barnett: I will say - if we're gonna be spending money on people, I mean, I think one thing that would really help Sound Transit and something that they're looking to do - who knows how well they'll implement this - is like just hiring some people who are experts in mega-projects. Sound Transit doesn't really have that. And they don't, and they are looking at, as I said, this $54 billion plus mega-project. And I think one of the weaknesses, and in a way - the strength of Julie Timm was that she was actually very focused on rider experience, I think, to the detriment of big picture capital planning. And I think they need some people there - that they're gonna have to pay pretty well to recruit - to look at the big picture. 'Cause a lot of the stuff is not political so much as it is practical, and a lot of the problems are not gonna be fixed by shuffling the political deck. Even if we have a bunch of people who like transit, I mean, that's not gonna change the political realities, or sorry, the financial realities that Sound Transit is facing. And so they need to just kind of have some smart engineering and financial experts come in. Because, I mean, honestly, this agency is not big enough right now to implement this giant program that they've got on their plate. And they don't necessarily have all the right expertise yet, so I think that's also gonna be necessary too. And when they're choosing a new CEO, I think it's important to hire somebody who recognizes and respects that fact, and that like the politicians are not the experts, the CEO is probably not gonna be the expert on all this stuff. And so there's a lot of stuff that needs to change beyond just the board.
[00:44:56] Crystal Fincher: There is absolutely a lot of stuff that needs to change beyond the board. I will say that I think we are seeing a fair amount of politically affiliated interference in this, particularly with the willingness to jettison work and planning that has been done over the years, at seemingly the last moment, with consequences of delay and that in and of itself ballooning project costs. So some of this is absolutely self-inflicted from decisions that are made and remade and changed and re-changed. But to your point, I think that there's a lot of change that needs to happen here. And hopefully we are able to meaningfully examine and identify the root causes, and try to implement some fixes that'll stick.
And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, December 29th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was Seattle political reporter and editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett. You can find Erica on most major social media platforms right now - on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @ericacbarnett, with two T's at the end. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter, also, at @HacksWonks. You can follow me on any major social media site at @finchfrii, that's two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this topical show re-air, Crystal welcomes Dr. Stephan Blanford, Executive Director of Children’s Alliance, for a wide-ranging conversation on childcare. They delve into the importance of childcare as an economic driver and its societal impacts through preparing kids for success in school and life. A review of the state of childcare in Washington reveals that this critical resource is often out-of-reach for those who need it most and looks at the factors that make it inaccessible and expensive. Crystal and Dr. Blanford then discuss how various stakeholders can make an impact on the issue at all levels of government.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii, find Dr. Stephan Blanford at @StephanBlanford and Children’s Alliance at @ChildAllianceWA.
Dr. Stephan Blanford
As the Executive Director of Children’s Alliance, Dr. Stephan Blanford leads a team of committed staff, volunteers and more than 6,000 members, advocating fiercely for the improved outcomes for children in Washington state. As an unapologetic advocate for racial and social justice, Stephan’s work has ranged from early learning to college entrance leading small, direct service youth development agencies to multidisciplinary demonstration projects.
In 2013, he was elected by the voters of Seattle and served a four-year term on the Seattle School Board, where he received the “Leadership for Equity” award at the conclusion of his term. More recently, the Evergreen Chapter of the American Society of Public Administrators awarded him the “Billy J. Frank Race and Social Justice” award for leadership and advocacy. Extending his work at a national level, he is the board chair of Integrated Schools and serves on the board of Partnership for America’s Children, Balance our Tax Code Coalition, and several other progressive organizations.
Dr. Blanford holds a Bachelors’ degree in Social Justice from Antioch University, a Masters in Public Policy from the Evans School of Governance and Public Policy and a Doctorate from the College of Education at the University of Washington.
Resources
Children's Alliance
Washington Child Care Collaborative Task Force | Washington State Department of Commerce
2023 KIDS Count Data Book | Annie E. Casey Foundation
“Child care costs more than college in Washington state” by Melissa Santos from Axios
“Report: WA's high cost of child care hits single moms hardest” by Sami West from KUOW
“The Real Costs Of Child Care In America” by Joy Borkholder from InvestigateWest
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well today, I am very pleased to welcome to the program Dr. Stephan Blanford, the Executive Director of Children's Alliance. And I wanted to have a conversation today about childcare - how important it is, how unaffordable it has become, and how we fix this - it's so important to so many people. And so I guess I will just start off by asking you, Stephan, why is childcare so important? Why does it matter so much? And what brought you to this work?
[00:01:24] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Interestingly, I have a background in education - I served as, I was elected and served for a term on the School Board in Seattle. And also my doctoral work was in K-12. And there's a tight correlation between kids having experience in high-quality early learning settings and them doing well in K-12 settings. And so if you are interested in increasing achievement in the K-12 setting - and in particular, if you're interested in addressing the opportunity gaps, the racial opportunity gaps that affect so many children - you have to prioritize early learning and high-quality childcare in order to achieve that goal. And so that's something that I've been passionate about since - in particular - since my young child was of an age where she was getting into childcare. And I learned a lot about it and then have had a passion to try to have all kids have the type of experience that she had.
[00:02:29] Crystal Fincher: Certainly, and I certainly have had my own experiences with childcare with my son, who is now definitely much older than childcare age right now. What do you say to people who say - maybe are an employer - what does childcare have to do with me? Why is this something we should be worried about as a community and as a society?
[00:02:51] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Yeah, that's a great question. Because in many parts of the state - Seattle in particular, but many parts of the state - we're one of the most childless cities in the United States. So lots of people don't have that type of experience where they're looking for childcare, where they even know someone that is seeking out childcare. But it is such an economic driver. And so many of the negative outcomes that we see in society - in all parts of the state and in all parts of the nation - are correlated with kids not doing well in school and then not being successful in life. And so I tell people all the time, whether you are a grandparent that whose kids are no longer in school or a business owner or whatever, there's a huge implication on your life by the access or lack of access to childcare.
[00:03:43] Crystal Fincher: Well, speaking of access - what is the state right now? We hear that it's unaffordable, we hear that it's hard to come by. Is that true?
[00:03:53] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Yes, it is. In many parts of the state, there are families that have to drive great distances in order to find childcare. We call them childcare deserts, where there's such a limited supply of childcare that families are just giving up on that. And in many cases, it affects women - because obviously women are, who would normally be in the workforce are having to make really tough decisions and go back to taking care of kids at home where they would prefer to be out in the workforce and helping to support their families. So it has huge implications, whether you're in one of those childcare deserts or even if you're in a more populated part of the state - because that inability to find any childcare and more importantly to find high-quality childcare has severe implications for families and communities at large.
[00:04:50] Crystal Fincher: Why is it so hard to find?
[00:04:52] Dr. Stephan Blanford: There's a great number of complex factors that lead to the fact that the supply is reduced. The fact that when I sent my kid to childcare - I was also in school in a graduate program - and I was paying more in childcare costs than I was paying for tuition at that time. And that has not improved over the 10 years since I graduated from graduate school. That hasn't changed - where the cost of tuition at the University of Washington is lower than the average cost of childcare in most parts of the state right now. And so - mine is a middle-class family - if you're a low-income family, then the economics of that just do not pan out. And so we are coming to realize that childcare is a public good - it's a public benefit in the same way that K-12 education benefits the community as well as it does the individual child. But we don't have a mechanism by which we can support childcare centers so they can provide this critical service.
And if I could add one more thing that I think is really important and complicates this matter, many of the childcare providers in Washington State and around the country are Black and Brown women. And for some unknown reason that has a lot to do with race and racism, they are undercompensated. It is the third lowest paid profession in Washington State right now. And when we think about the importance and the change in trajectory for kids that having access to high-quality childcare can have, it's unconscionable that that would be the third lowest paid profession. You would think that it would be way up there with doctors and other critical professions - it would be compensated at a rate that is commensurate with its importance in society - but for some reason it is not.
[00:06:51] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And you brought up a great point. It is more expensive to pay for childcare than it is to pay for college, which is really saying something with the inflation that we've seen in higher education prices and along with childcare costs. So in this situation, how is it that costs are so high yet compensation for workers is still so low?
[00:07:18] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Well, there's a big component of it that has to do with ratios. In most childcare centers that are licensed, you have to have a certain number of adults for a certain number of children. And in particular, kids that are 0-3 years old - they require an even more robust ratio to ensure that the kids are safe during that time that they are away from their parents. And so that has a lot of bearing on the cost - as well as a licensed center has to have exits, has to have lots of equipment in the center, has to be safe and obviously secure so kids aren't getting out and getting out into the street or whatever. And all of those costs are borne by the childcare provider, usually a business person who is trying to establish a center that has all the safety measures in place and the appropriate staffing ratios to ensure that kids are safe and learning while they're in their care. And that all of those things together lend themselves to it being a pretty expensive enterprise.
[00:08:27] Crystal Fincher: Now, what does it mean - for a family and for a community - for childcare to be this expensive?
[00:08:34] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Well, we spend a lot of time at Children's Alliance advocating that there is a role that the state government has to play in subsidizing the cost. Because the reality right now is - for low-income families who cannot afford those expensive costs that we've been talking about, that means that their kids don't have access to childcare at all. Or they have access to very low-quality childcare - we're talking about being placed in front of a TV and spending eight hours a day, not engaging in that way - and those are pretty significant, have long term consequences for young children. We believe that there is a role that the state government has to play. It has funded the Fair Start for Kids Act in 2021, which is driving about a billion dollars into the sector. And that's a start, but it is by no means the solution to the problem. So we will continue to advocate for improvements and increased funding to make it more affordable for families - middle- and low-income families - to be able to afford childcare, and also provide support for the providers who are trying to provide the service.
[00:09:49] Crystal Fincher: So, you talk about how it is so challenging for the families to afford it. It sounds like the families who most stand to benefit from high-quality childcare, and who we need to make sure have access, are the ones having the hardest time affording and accessing it. Is that how you see it?
[00:10:09] Dr. Stephan Blanford: That is exactly correct. Yes, that is exactly correct. And so the Fair Start for Kids Act that was passed in 2021 has gone a long way towards making it more affordable, but we don't have enough supply in Washington state. And that lack of supply is impeding the ability of the legislation to provide childcare. Ultimately, if you're a childcare provider and there are subsidies that are available, you're still trying to figure out ways to make sure that all the families in your community are getting childcare. And if you are constrained by the fact that you're only licensed to take care of 15 or 20 or 50 kids, then if there are a 100 kids standing outside your door waiting to get in, then you have to make some difficult choices. And in many cases, the families of those children - those hundred that are stuck outside - they then have to make difficult choices, which include someone staying at home so that there's someone to take care of the children.
[00:11:15] Crystal Fincher: Which again, impacts a family's ability to be economically mobile, to participate fully in our economy, to be able to advance in the workplace. Childcare - for people with kids, communities with kids - is so key to just everybody's ability to function and participate in our society, basically.
[00:11:40] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Right. And it has disproportionate impacts, as I've shared before, on women and their participation in the workforce. There's a study out of Washington State University that says that the gains that have been made in women's participation in the workforce in Washington State have been totally eroded by the fact that childcare is so inaccessible. Women who have decided that they want to participate in the workforce and have made that move and have gotten the training necessary to be able to participate in the workforce - those gains have been eroded by the fact that there is no childcare. And so we're trying to bring that data to legislators and say that we are at a time now where there's need for significant intervention and investment in the childcare sector to ensure that women can participate and children can be served.
[00:12:37] Crystal Fincher: So you talk about there being this shortage and the wages being so low. How do we impact this shortage of childcare workers and pay them a living wage?
[00:12:52] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Well, it has been nice to see - as someone who's kind of a grizzled veteran of advocacy around childcare and other issues - it's been nice to see a coalition of people who are now concerned, who now see the implications of this situation that we're in. So now there are business leaders, governmental leaders who never would have been talking about childcare 5 years ago, 10 years ago. And they now know that it is critically important to the economies of their communities, to business interests, to just every aspect of society. We can't really restart the economy to the degree that it needs to be restarted without a significant investment in accessibility and availability of childcare in the state. It just won't happen. And what it portends - our inaction - is that more and more populations are gonna be disproportionately impacted by that inaction.
[00:14:02] Crystal Fincher: So what else is needed to help address both the affordability and the issues on the business owner's side - like the regulations, which sound like they're necessary to protect kids - and the costs involved?
[00:14:18] Dr. Stephan Blanford: I believe that at some point we're going to have to have a statewide conversation about childcare. And my hope is that that will lead to more significant legislation. And if not legislation, a referendum that is passed or an initiative that is passed by the citizens of the state to tax themselves to be able to afford childcare for anyone who needs it. There are other states that are playing around with the idea of universal pre-K - making sure that every child in the state has access, which means a significant investment in childcare - there's an argument that says that it's a public good and should be funded in the same way that public education is funded. And the economics of it - there's a study that says that for every dollar invested in childcare, there's a $17 return to the economy of the jurisdiction that makes that investment, which is a significant bargain and helps to address some of the biggest challenges that we face around opportunity gaps - racial and economic opportunity gaps. So my hope is that there - we'll continue to have these conversations and get to the point where the voters of the state take this issue up. I believe it will pass. I think enough people are connected to it and understand that they will benefit. And my hope is that we'll see that in the short-term because it's having detrimental impacts right now for families and communities all across the state.
[00:16:07] Crystal Fincher: It absolutely is having detrimental impacts. Barring a statewide initiative being passed - and that's a great idea - what can cities, counties, regions do to try and address this in their own areas?
[00:16:27] Dr. Stephan Blanford: A great question. So I mentioned the fact that I served as a School Board director here in Seattle. And during that time, we were able to create a partnership between Seattle Public Schools and the City of Seattle where there were significant investments and collaboration between the two sectors - the K-12 sector and the early learning sector - to actually have childcare centers based in some of our elementary schools that were under-enrolled. Kids would move directly from the early learning part of the school into the K-12 sector. And there was a national organization that reviewed that collaboration and gave it its highest rating - saying all states in the nation should emulate that type of a model. Because in many cases there are schools that are under-enrolled - so they have classrooms that are unoccupied - and by doing a little bit of work around licensing and changing the structure of the school, they can ensure that kids at all ages in their community from 3 years old to 5 years old, and then from 5 years old to 10 or 11 are served by that elementary school. And I think that's a model that could be emulated in many parts of the state and would go a long way towards solving this problem because there's a significant investment that a business owner has to make in order to secure a space, make the changes in that space before they can open their doors and serve the first child. There are existing buildings - schools - that can solve that problem very easily, but it requires a lot of collaboration and cooperation between schools, cities, and in some cases those aren't easy collaborations to make.
[00:18:25] Crystal Fincher: Definitely, but it does sound promising - obviously, with the review that it received from when it was happening. Is that still happening?
[00:18:34] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Oh yeah, yeah. I was having a conversation with a parent the other day that was talking about the fact that she was able to get childcare and it was just down the street at her local school here in Seattle. And she was just gushing about how important it was and how much it helped her family to be able to have that accessibility and availability so close to their home. And when she got done, I said - Yeah, I was on the School Board, I voted for that, I helped to champion that. And she was really grateful. And it made me very proud because that was a contentious issue - not everybody on the School Board was supportive of that notion. But I know that collaborations between sectors like the early learning sector and the K-12 sector - they go a long way towards addressing some of these very pernicious issues that we've been grappling with for years, like our opportunity gaps, that Black and Brown kids stand to benefit, particularly if those collaborations are set up in the schools that they normally attend.
[00:19:42] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now we also are hearing a lot about school closures right now, about coming deficits, about structural deficits in education. Are these types of partnerships things that can help that kind of situation?
[00:19:59] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Absolutely, absolutely. I think you have hit the nail on the head in that - I hear those stories and I'm really glad that I'm not a School Board director anymore and have to grapple with the declining enrollments that we're starting to see in Seattle and many other school districts. But there's an opportunity there to address the childcare crisis while those schools are going through the challenges that they're going with finance and declining enrollments. I think there's a great opportunity to take some of those classrooms and be very intentional about making them childcare settings. And there's always the possibility that we can be building new childcare settings in communities - and in the short-term, we can redeploy empty classrooms in schools to serve that challenge while we're building those settings 'cause eventually the kids are gonna come back. We know that our enrollments go up and then they go down. And at some point those classrooms are gonna need to be filled by K-5 students. But during that time where we have empty classrooms, why not redeploy them in order to solve the childcare crisis that we are in right now?
[00:21:20] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I think some other things I've heard talked about were challenges with zoning in some areas, challenges with opening up - being allowed to open in certain areas - obviously, in Downtown Seattle and several downtowns who've experienced a lot of growth and the availability of childcare and childcare centers has not grown with them, especially in some of those concentrated areas where it's harder to get real estate, afford a lease, find space. What can be done in that area? Is that something worth addressing and taking on?
[00:21:57] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Yeah, I think so. While I was on the School Board - and I was campaigning 10 years ago, so I've been done with my School Board service for about 6 years - and there was a real push to try to make Downtown more of a living neighborhood and involving having an elementary school being based there, increasing the number of childcare settings. And in many cases, it didn't really pencil out - we have a number of families that are choosing to live in the Downtown area, but not at sufficient numbers to warrant the opening of an elementary school. I don't know if that has changed in the six years that I've been off the board, but we need to make decisions that are based on the data that we have and not use childcare and K-12 as a driver to create that neighborhood. Seattle Public Schools didn't have the luxury of investing, hoping that kids were gonna come. We needed to be sure that kids were already there before we tried to deploy a childcare setting or a K-12 setting there. But the question that you ask, which I think is an important one, has to do with licensing and changing settings to be able to allow children to be served in those settings. And that's a partnership between the City, which can do a lot of the licensing, the state and the school districts in order to work in collaboration to ensure that the spaces are conducive to learning and the safety of the kids that are going to be put there.
[00:23:41] Crystal Fincher: And is there anything within the private sector that employers, especially larger employers, can do to help their employees afford and access childcare?
[00:23:53] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Yes, and many, many employers are starting to do that - either by placing a childcare setting inside of their buildings. And I think in particular, given the fact that there's so many vacancies in office space Downtown - if I were an employer and I was trying to one, get my staff back into the office, and two, help to drive the economy by getting people back to work - I would seriously consider working with a childcare provider to provide their service inside of my building. I can tell you from my own personal experience that I have employees right now who are very challenged by the notion of coming back to work, being back in the office on a regular basis because of the inaccessibility of childcare. And so if there were a site in our offices that was dedicated childcare, I could imagine that those employees would be excited by that notion. They'd be able to hang out with their kid at lunchtime. They would - the transit or the transportation issues that are associated with taking your kid to childcare and then going into the office - a lot of that would be solved because you'd all be in the same place. I have worked for an organization that had onsite childcare, and I know it was a driver - it was something that helped us to attract talent and retain talent because in many cases, people wanted to be in the same building that their kids were getting their childcare.
[00:25:32] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Onsite childcare is an elite benefit for employees with families, certainly. So looking - for average people in the community who recognize that this is a problem, that this is an issue, but maybe aren't seeing the urgency from some of their elected officials or from within their community. What can the average person do to help move policy like this forward, to help advocate for what can help?
[00:26:04] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Well, it's something that Children's Alliance has been working on for quite a while, so I'm gonna be shameless and plug my organization and say - check us out at childrensalliance.org, and you can lend your voice to the many voices that - we have 7,000 members across the state who are all advocating for childcare. We are reaching out to legislators. I have two legislators on my schedule today that I'll be talking to about this issue. And I think it is critical that those who are concerned about this issue, they're reaching out to their legislators and saying the time for studying this is over - we need to take action on it and demanding that type of action. I think that extends to School Board races - here in Seattle, we have School Board races that are occurring right now. City Council races - every opportunity to reach out to your elected officials and share with them why this is a priority. I know from my own experiences as an elected official, childcare is usually way down on the list of things that people think are important. And as we've discussed today, we're now understanding how central it is to so many aspects of life for families and communities all across the state. And so I encourage your listeners to be very active and not just sit on the sidelines around this critical issue.
[00:27:39] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, that's fantastic advice. And even in the candidate world - we've seen candidates in recent years not be able to run or to have to drop out of races for lack of childcare. It really is something affecting everyone. And it also shines a light on the importance of electing people who understand this issue, who have experience with what it's like to deal with this. And hopefully that helps them to be more invested in making some better policy. So I thank you so much for the time that you've taken to speak with us today - very informative, definitely given us a lot to think about, some things to move forward on, and an outlook for and a pathway to get this thing fixed. So thank you so much for your time, Dr. Stephan Blanford.
[00:28:29] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Oh, thank you, Crystal - you ask really good questions and I'm hopeful that we're moving some of your listeners to action.
[00:28:37] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, thank you so much.
[00:28:39] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Thank you.
[00:28:40] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
Seattle budget season may be over but it’s never too early to start preparing and studying up for next year!
On this topical show re-air, special guest host Shannon Cheng chats with Amy Sundberg and BJ Last from Solidarity Budget about the City of Seattle budget process.
After covering budget basics and where we’re at in Seattle’s budget process, they cover the ongoing fight over the JumpStart Tax and what’s being done (or not done) to address the upcoming $251 million budget deficit in 2025. Next, the trio breaks down the difference between “ghost cops” and the fully-funded SPD hiring plan, as well as why ShotSpotter still isn’t a good idea. The show wraps up with a sampling of this year’s other budget fights, how people can learn more or get involved, and Amy and BJ’s dream budget items!
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the guest host, Shannon Cheng, on Twitter at @drbestturtle, find Amy Sundberg at @amysundberg, and find Solidarity Budget at https://www.seattlesolidaritybudget.com/.
Amy Sundberg
Amy Sundberg is the publisher of Notes from the Emerald City, a weekly newsletter on Seattle politics and policy with a particular focus on public safety, police accountability, and the criminal legal system. She also writes about public safety for The Urbanist. She organizes with Seattle Solidarity Budget and People Power Washington. In addition, she writes science fiction and fantasy, with a new novel, TO TRAVEL THE STARS, a retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in space, available now. She is particularly fond of Seattle’s parks, where she can often be found walking her little dog.
BJ Last
BJ Last is a business analyst, and former small business owner, with two decades of budgeting experience across a wide range of industries. He organizes with the Solidarity Budget and Ballard Mutual Aid.
Resources
Seattle Solidarity Budget
Notes from the Emerald City
Tools to Understand the Budget | Seattle City Council
“Mosqueda, Council Colleagues Pass JumpStart’s COVID Relief Package and Economic Recovery Spending Plan” by Joseph Peha from Seattle City Council Blog
“Seattle's Jumpstart payroll tax raised more than expected. Is the money going where it's most needed?” by Angela King & Katie Campbell from KUOW
Memorandum: General Fund Deficit Historical Analysis from Seattle City Council Central Staff
“Harrell’s 2024 Budget Leaves Big Questions on Safety and Looming Shortfall” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
Final Report of the Revenue Stabilization Workgroup
“Removing Vacant Police Positions in Seattle’s Budget Is Good Fiscal Stewardship” by BJ Last for The Stranger
“Police Budget Fizz: Hiring Falls Short, Shotspotter Gains Support, Burgess Misrepresents Jane Jacobs” from PubliCola
“Nearly half of Seattle police calls don’t need officers responding, new report says” by Elise Takahama from The Seattle Times
“Set Money Aside for Illegal Surveillance, or Fund Community Needs Now?” by BJ Last and Camille Baldwin-Bonney for The Stranger
“New UW study says human-services workers are underpaid by 37%” by Josh Cohen from Crosscut
City of Seattle Budget Office
Stop ShotSpotter! Webinar - Seattle Solidarity Budget and ACLU of Washington | Nov 8, 2023
Guaranteed Basic Income Panel - Seattle Solidarity Budget | Oct 10, 2023
The People's Budget Seattle | Announcing Winning Projects
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
[00:00:52] Shannon Cheng: Hello, everyone! This is Shannon Cheng, producer of Hacks & Wonks. I'm here as your special guest host for today. Everyone's been super busy with elections, but another important thing currently happening right now in a lot of our local jurisdictions is that they're having budget deliberations for the coming year. Budgets are super important - we talk a lot about policy on this show, but what really matters in the end is how that policy is implemented and budgets manifest our intent.
So Crystal let me take over the show for a day, and I wanted to have some folks on who are closely following the budget here in Seattle. They're two local community organizers with Solidarity Budget. And before we get to meeting them, I just wanted to point out that while we're gonna be focused pretty deeply on the City of Seattle's budget, a lot of what we talk about is applicable to other places. So if you're interested in getting involved in the budget where you live, we can learn something from these experts. So without further ado, I just want to welcome Amy Sundberg and BJ Last. Amy, starting with you, can you tell us a little about yourself and how you got involved with Solidarity Budget?
[00:02:00] Amy Sundberg: Yes, hello! It's good to be here. I'm Amy, and I am the publisher and writer of the newsletter Notes from the Emerald City, which is a weekly newsletter that covers issues involving public safety, police accountability, and the criminal legal system - in our local area - so Seattle and King County mostly, and occasionally the state of Washington. As well, I sometimes cover public safety issues for The Urbanist. And I organize with People Power Washington and Solidarity Budget. Originally, I got my start organizing with People Power Washington and we would uplift the demands of Solidarity Budget. And eventually I connected with the folks at Solidarity Budget and started working with them as well, so that's how I initially got involved.
[00:02:45] Shannon Cheng: What about you, BJ?
[00:02:46] BJ Last: Hi, thanks. Great to be here. BJ Last - don't do anything as cool as Amy on a regular basis. I've lots of years as a budget analyst, former small business owner, was a professional baker - did pop-ups, but then COVID, so that kind of went by the wayside. I actually first got involved with Solidarity Budget over SPD overtime. SPD has a massive history of overspending on overtime. In 2020, there was a resolution the City passed mid-year saying if SPD overspends on its overtime, we won't give them more money for it. Lo and behold, SPD did. At the end of the year, council was like - Okay, fine, we'll give you more money, but we swear we're gonna take it from you next year to do an offset. And wanted that fight to be like - No, we need to actually try to get that money from them next year to have any kind of budget accountability. And spoiler, that sadly never happened.
[00:03:34] Shannon Cheng: I agree with you that Amy is cool and also that the SPD overtime issues are very frustrating. For folks who don't know, could you give a little background on what Solidarity Budget is, and how it came to be, and how you all work together?
[00:03:48] BJ Last: Sure thing. So Solidarity Budget came up out of - actually Mayor Jenny Durkan. Groups caught that Mayor Durkan was promising a lot of different groups the exact same pot of money and then being like - Y'all fight amongst yourselves to do this. And groups came together and was like - We're tired of actually just always being pitted against each other and forced to fight each other for scraps in the City budget, while all the funding goes to things that no one was wanting, like while all of the funding goes into SPD. SPD alone is still a quarter of the budget, getting everything carceral - it's about a third of the general fund. So it was that desire of - No, we don't want to be pitted against each other. And just rejecting this framework of - we have to fight against each other for scraps. So coming together as groups to be like - what are our big priorities and saying - Look, we are advocating for all of these things.
[00:04:38] Amy Sundberg: I would say in addition, we wanted to make sure that when we're talking about the budget every year, that those most marginalized are centered in that conversation. And often they aren't, right? So it's important to have a coalition who has that front of mind when advocating.
[00:04:54] Shannon Cheng: That's super smart. Our experience has been - it can be hard to get heard by electeds, just - if you're not the people in power, sometimes it just feels when you send your email and make your phone call, your voice might not be heard. And so trying to come together and forming a coalition so that you can have a larger voice seems like it would make a lot of sense if you want to push the lever on budget-related issues.
Okay, so let's jump into some background and some budget basics before getting deep down into the weeds. Did you want to give, Amy, a sense of what the scale of budgets are at different jurisdictions and then what we're talking about here in Seattle?
[00:05:31] Amy Sundberg: Sure. So there are many different government budgets. The biggest one, of course, is the national budget for the United States, which is around $4.4 trillion. So obviously a huge pot of money. Most of that money comes from personal income tax that we all pay every year and also corporate income tax, et cetera, et cetera. Then we have the state budget, which is about $72 billion per year. And then we have the King County budget, which is $6.2 billion per year. So you see, we're kind of getting smaller and smaller as we get into smaller jurisdictions. And then we have the City budget. And city budgets tend to be around $5 to $6 billion per year in total. All of these budgets are made up from various types of taxes and fees, and they each are responsible for funding different services in our communities.
[00:06:26] Shannon Cheng: Great. So for the City of Seattle - let's just focus in on that as our example for today's episode. So where does the money for the City of Seattle come from?
[00:06:35] Amy Sundberg: If we're talking about - particularly general fund - most of that money would come from property tax, sales tax, and B&O tax, which is a business tax. I think that's about 60% of the funds. And then there are a lot of other very small buckets of money that come in as well to make up the entire amount.
[00:06:56] BJ Last: That's a great overview, Amy. And one thing I do want to just mention - so the total Seattle budget is $7.8 billion, but the vast majority of that is stuff that is extremely restricted. For example, we have public utilities. So City Light - that's $1.5 billion - that is all funded by the rates people pay for their electricity. So while that's there in that total number that makes the City's budget look absolutely huge, it's not accessible - the council can't use that to fund things. So the general fund is a much smaller slice of that. It's just about $1.6 billion. And that's the money that the City pretty much has full discretion as to where it decides to go and spend that.
[00:07:37] Shannon Cheng: So if I'm understanding it correctly, you're saying Seattle's budget is pretty big, but a large part of it is already appropriated to specific things. So when it comes to these priorities that when people - they're looking around at their city or their neighborhood, and they want things - it's gonna have to come out of this thing you call the general fund. Is that correct?
[00:07:57] Amy Sundberg: Yes, that's correct. So most of what we're advocating for every year is general fund dollars.
[00:08:04] Shannon Cheng: Okay, and so you are saying, BJ, that the general fund is about $1.6 billion. So what types of things are currently getting funded out of the general fund?
[00:08:14] BJ Last: Yeah, that's correct. So it's $1.6 billion. It's - very broadly defined, Public Safety is 47% of it. And that is SPD, also includes the Office of the Inspector General, the CPC, the police pension - those are all four different departments that are in there, that are all cops. The Fire Department and CARE/CSCC, which is the 911 dispatch - which is currently CSCC, may be getting rebranded CARE soon. So that's 47%. The next biggest bucket is Administration and that's 22%. And Administration is kind of a massive catch-all that includes a lot of things - so major expenditures in there are for indigent defense and the City's contract with the King County Jail. So when SPD goes and arrests someone and puts them in there, the City is effectively leasing part of the jail from King County - and that's to pay part of it. And it also includes things like Judgment and Claims Funds, which is for when people are suing the City - that comes out of there, that's housed in that Admin section. And unsurprisingly, that one's also been increasing a lot lately due to lawsuits coming from 2020, which we know what those were. And then the other thing that is anything really is Education & Human Services, and that's about 15% of the general fund. So those three things of Public Safety, Administration, Education & Human Services account for 80% of the general fund.
[00:09:39] Shannon Cheng: Wow, so what's left in that 20% that's remaining?
[00:09:43] Amy Sundberg: Oh gosh, it's a lot of small things. Libraries, for example, will get funded out of that. A lot of our Transportation actually gets funded through specific levies, so it wouldn't come from general fund. And I think that's true of Parks & Rec as well. But there might be some little bits of money that go to Transportation and Parks & Rec - they have varied funding sources, basically.
[00:10:05] Shannon Cheng: Okay, great. So that's the general fund, the discretionary portion of the City of Seattle's budget. So what's happening right now with the process?
[00:10:14] Amy Sundberg: When we talk about budget season in Seattle, it's generally just a two-month period in the fall. But really, budget goes on for much of the year - because before the fall, the City departments are having to analyze their budgets and turn in reports to the mayor. And then the Mayor's Office is developing a proposed budget - that's the budget that gets announced at the end of September. At that point, the City Council is able to come in and make their changes that they might wanna see in that proposed budget. So that's where we are right now. First, they review the proposed budget to make sure they understand what's in there and what isn't in there. And then the Budget Chair, who this year is Councilmember Mosqueda, puts together a balancing package - that's a package where she thinks that there is consent amongst the councilmembers, that everyone agrees that these are changes that should be made for the most part. And then each councilmember is given the opportunity to suggest amendments to that balancing package. And they need to get two other councilmembers to sponsor that in order to get those amendments considered. So that's where we are right now - we've just heard the amendments that are being considered. And eventually what will happen is that those amendments will be voted on by the Budget Committee, which is all of the councilmembers to be clear.
[00:11:35] Shannon Cheng: Okay, so Mayor Harrell sent over his proposal end of September and we're about a month into the Council's involvement. And this is the budget for next year?
[00:11:45] Amy Sundberg: Yeah, for 2024.
[00:11:46] BJ Last: So Seattle operates on a biennium budget basis. So last year they set the budget for 2023 and 2024. So this year they're currently doing adjustments to that 2024 budget. And then next year it'll be back to doing the full biennium, where we'll be looking at 2025 and 2026.
[00:12:04] Shannon Cheng: Okay, so this is just finishing up last year's work through the end of the year, and just adjusting based on the realities of how much money is coming in and new needs for expenditures.
[00:12:15] Amy Sundberg: Theoretically that is the case. Seattle is a little bit less strict about that than some other municipalities. I would say King County is more of a true biennial budget, whereas Seattle's kind of a biennial budget. And I think actually there's been some push to make it more like King County, to make it more of a true biennium. So we'll see what happens with that.
[00:12:36] Shannon Cheng: Okay, interesting. Another thing I keep hearing about all the time is this fight over the JumpStart Tax. And I think it'd be good to just lay out very clearly - what is that fight all about?
[00:12:47] Amy Sundberg: Yeah, so the JumpStart payroll tax passed in the summer of 2020. And then the council passed a spending plan for it in 2021 to put into statute what exactly the JumpStart Tax is supposed to go to pay for. And just so we're clear on what that spend plan is - 62% of JumpStart funds are supposed to go to affordable housing, 9% to Green New Deal, 9% to Equitable Development Initiative, and 15% to small business. What has happened though - basically, because this was going on in the middle of the pandemic - obviously there was a lot more needs, the City budget was a little messier than maybe normally. So they allowed some of these JumpStart Tax dollars to be spent as a kind of a slush fund for the general fund so that we wouldn't have to have an austerity budget. And the idea was that over time this would transition and eventually all of the JumpStart Tax funds would go to those percentages that I mentioned a moment ago.
However, what has ended up happening is that every year - regardless of what mayor we have - every year the mayor will take some of the JumpStart dollars and move it over for general fund purposes, instead of those specific Green New Deal and affordable housing purposes. Every year Council kind of tries to claw back those JumpStart funds to put them into the main purposes they were meant for. Now we're still having some budget issues, so there has been - even for this year - some money that Council agreed could be used from JumpStart funds to fund general fund priorities, especially because JumpStart funds ended up being larger than originally anticipated. So the compromise that was struck was that those extra dollars that we weren't originally expecting can be used to kind of help prop up the general fund. But what ends up happening is sometimes more money beyond that gets pulled from JumpStart into the general fund. And of course, because affordable housing in particular is a large percentage of where that money is supposed to go and is such a priority in the city right now, given our housing crisis, this becomes a big fight every year.
[00:15:05] Shannon Cheng: Okay, yeah - that's helpful. So I think I saw - in 2021, the JumpStart Tax generated $234 million. And so that was one of those years where the City and the Council felt that some of that needed to go towards other things than that spend plan that you referenced. And so about 37% of it ended up going to the general fund. And then that leaves a much smaller slice left for addressing those issues that you listed - housing, small business support, Green New Deal, equitable development - which, if people stop and think about - looking around, what are the biggest issues that the City's facing right now? I mean, that's what these are trying to address - the housing crisis, small businesses struggling after the pandemic, needing to do something about climate change in a meaningful way, and then also trying to spread our resources in a more equitable way across residents of the city.
And so - to me then - thinking about JumpStart Tax, it's sort of a mini version of a whole budget. Because we had purported values that we stated out when we passed this legislation - saying this is what we want to spend this money on. And then, as with many things, it's the reality of the implementation that lets us see where our priorities truly are. And it sounds like - in 2020, we said very strongly - We need to meaningfully address these issues that we've been in a state of crisis for for a long time, and they've just been getting worse. And people are pointing that out - you see that. What I find really interesting is that the original people who've opposed the JumpStart Tax - so that would be the Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown Seattle Association - are these the same people who are now pushing to take the money away from JumpStart's original purposes and redirect it towards other things?
[00:16:53] BJ Last: Honestly, yes. They're a lot of the people pushing that they want to - I'll use the phrase - "liberate" JumpStart funds so that it can be used as effectively just more general fund backfill. They also haven't entirely given up on fighting JumpStart. As part of the Revenue Stabilization Task Force that was meeting this year, the representatives from the Metro Chamber of Commerce, she made comments of - Hey, we think we should actually pause JumpStart for a year or two - supposedly to help businesses on recovery. So they are still fighting on JumpStart a little. The opponents of JumpStart have much more moved to - they just want it to be more general fund.
[00:17:32] Amy Sundberg: And I do think it's important to state also that when we talk about wanting to allow businesses to recover, JumpStart Tax only applies to very large businesses with very high payroll and very highly paid employees. It's not hitting small businesses - that's not how it was set up.
[00:17:51] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, previous to JumpStart Tax, there was an attempt to pass the Amazon head tax and that did pass, but then eventually got repealed because of a lot of protest. And I believe the JumpStart Tax came out of a coalition that got built after that failed attempt, which included small business groups - because 15% of the JumpStart revenue is supposed to go towards small business support. Which everybody likes to say - small business is super important to the health and vibrancy of the Seattle economy. But are we willing to put our money where our mouth is on that? I just find it pretty insidious the way that they're approaching this because they oppose the tax to begin with, they're still opposing it now, they wanna pause it. But when they ask for the money to go back to the general fund, it seems like it's going back to a lot of their own interests, such as downtown activation. So not only are they taking the money back for themselves, they're also weakening the implementation of what this tax was originally said to do. People probably heard about this tax when they announced it - there was all sorts of glowing praise of this is gonna address meaningfully these problems that everybody cares about. And yet now, by weakening it and taking money away, we can't spend as much of that money on it. And so obviously, when you look at the results of what the JumpStart Tax has done, it will look like it's less. And so I just really wanna call that out.
I also wanna call out that the council that passed the JumpStart Tax in July of 2020 is pretty much the same council we currently have other than Councilmember Nelson who replaced Councilmember González in 2021. And JumpStart Tax passed 7-2. The only two councilmembers who did not vote for it were Councilmembers Juarez and Pedersen. How have they been reacting to all this JumpStart scuffling?
[00:19:33] Amy Sundberg: They definitely have been less supportive of increasing the JumpStart Tax in any way - that has been noticeable.
[00:19:40] BJ Last: Yeah, they have also been very much on the wanting to just throw the spending plan out the window. Actually, it was Councilmember Pedersen who's the first one that I heard use the expression of "liberate" JumpStart funds - create additional flexibility and disregard that. There are also subtler attempts to pretend that the JumpStart spend plan is very unclear, and so potentially needs to be revisited due to that - even though it's actually an extremely clear spend plan. People just keep trying to violate it - it's not that the plan isn't clear, people just keep asking for stuff that goes outside of that spend plan.
[00:20:13] Shannon Cheng: Okay, so then the councilmembers who did vote for it - so those would be Councilmembers Herbold, Morales, Sawant, Strauss, Lewis, and then obviously Councilmember Mosqueda, who spearheaded the effort. Are they staying strong behind the values that they voted for on the JumpStart Tax, or has that kind of squished up since then?
[00:20:31] Amy Sundberg: I would say - I mean, you know - it's hard to say what is in their hearts, but I would say it's a mix. I think some of them have stayed pretty strong, and I think others of them have, you know, less so.
[00:20:45] Shannon Cheng: Okay, fair enough. I guess I'm just concerned 'cause it sounds like this JumpStart Tax issue will continue to carry on, and it is possible that we will lose its biggest champion on the city council next year. So I just want everybody listening to understand what this fight is about and why it's so important. To me, it kind of comes down to differences in opinion over what is gonna float all the boats in this city, right? I mean, business wants us to believe that if we just pour all the money into business and their interests, that that will just generally help everybody. Whereas what JumpStart was trying to do, I believe, is trying to build from the ground up by providing people housing, trying to spread the resources in a more equitable fashion, tackling climate change, providing good jobs that come out of tackling climate change. And so I just really think this is a fight over shifting decision-making about how we spend our resources from being concentrated with a few powerful interests, and letting more people have a say and access to success and opportunities to do well in this city.
[00:21:48] Amy Sundberg: I would say Councilmember Mosqueda in particular has been a stalwart advocate of JumpStart. And as the Budget Chair, she has been in good position every year to counter the attempts to try to use JumpStart as more and more of a City slush fund. So if we lose her on Council at the end of this year, that certainly will make it more concerning going forward in terms of what will happen with JumpStart. I'll also say there is this spend plan. It is in statute currently. That statute could be changed, so it's not like it's protected forever.
[00:22:21] Shannon Cheng: All right, so everyone - it's Election Day. Get out and vote - try to think about who's gonna be our next champion for the JumpStart Tax.
So moving on, we also keep hearing all this news about an upcoming budget shortfall in 2025. What's happening with that?
[00:22:39] Amy Sundberg: So the City of Seattle is facing a massive budget deficit starting in 2025. It is now estimated to be around $251 million deficit, which has gone up based on the mayor's proposed budget. So basically, the mayor's proposed budget this year has made the problem worse - potentially - in upcoming years. $251 million is a lot of money. And so the question is, what are we going to do to address that? There are two main ways to do that. You can make cuts to the budget - spend less money. Or you can pass new progressive revenue that will help fund the budget. We are not allowed by law to have a not balanced budget, so that is not an option - it's not on the table. Or of course you can do a combination of cuts and new progressive revenue. So those are kind of the two levers that councilmembers have to play with. And what is relevant in this budget season right now is speaking about new progressive revenue, because if we want to pass new progressive revenue for the City of Seattle, we would need to plan ahead a little bit. Because it will take some time to implement any new progressive revenue that we might pass - there's a ramp up to getting it done. So if we wanted to have that revenue to rely on for 2025, we would really ideally want to pass things now before the end of the year.
[00:24:03] BJ Last: What I'd add on to what Amy mentioned is how we actually ended up getting to this upcoming deficit. Over the last two decades roughly, Seattle's population has grown at a really robust clip. We have all seen that. We have not seen the same growth in the general fund revenues that come in. Property tax increases are limited to - I believe it's at most 1% a year for the city - because sales tax also does not increase. So while we are seeing this really big increase in population, we have not seen the same with our general fund. It has really not moved that much. So it isn't the narrative of - Oh, the city has added a bunch of new pet projects or whatever, and that's where it's come from. It's come from largely - the city has gotten bigger and the general fund growth has not kept up with that. 85% of that upcoming deficit projected is all due to just open labor contracts. The Coalition of City Unions - their contracts are open. SPOG - their contract is also open. Paying Coalition of City Unions, paying the City workers - the people that like literally keep the lights on, fix the roads - of actually going and paying them is where this is coming from.
[00:25:06] Amy Sundberg: And especially because inflation rates have been so high the last couple of years, right? So that's - they need a much larger raise than they would need if inflation was not high.
[00:25:15] BJ Last: Also on the inflation part - thank you, that's a great call out, Amy - growth of the general fund has not kept up with inflation, especially just these last two years. I think there've even been other years where it hasn't happened, but these last two years in particular, we have not seen the general fund grow at the same rate. So things have gotten more expensive for the city that the general fund has to get spent on, but the dollars coming in the door haven't kept up with that.
[00:25:35] Shannon Cheng: Is anything being done about that? Did the mayor propose anything about progressive revenue, or thinking about this upcoming problem?
[00:25:42] Amy Sundberg: The mayor did not propose anything having to do with new progressive revenue in fact, which is a decision that he has been critiqued for in the local media. And there certainly has been a fair amount of rhetoric about just tightening our belts, right? But to be clear, $251 million - that's a lot of cuts that would drive us straight into an austerity budget, one would think. So that is where the mayor's office has landed, but there have been a lot of conversations about potential new progressive revenue that started with the task force that BJ mentioned earlier, which was brought together to look at various possibilities of what could be good new revenue sources. And certainly there were people that sat on that task force that had a priority of finding good new progressive sources of revenue in particular, as opposed to regressive taxes that will hurt people who have less more. And they did find some reasonable options that would not require a change in state law, and so could potentially be implemented in time to address the 2025 budget shortfall.
So I would say that there are three main possibilities at play right now that are being discussed. One of those is a capital gains tax, so we had a capital gains tax at the state level pass - so far it has survived any legal challenges that it has faced. So it would be possible for the City to institute a tax above that. It would be a fairly small amount, probably 1-2% capital gains tax. Councilmember Pedersen originally was the councilmember who suggested this, and he also suggested that we remove a certain water fee. So it'll be interesting to hear a more robust analysis of that water fee to find out - is that truly a regressive tax? Or with various rebates, et cetera, that are available for people - is it not that regressive a tax? Because if we were to take away that water fee, it would be revenue neutral, so it wouldn't actually assist us with the upcoming deficit. Not to say it's still not worthwhile to talk about, even if that's true, because we want to get rid of more regressive taxes and institute more progressive taxes. So either way, that's a good conversation to have - but it's unclear to me more of the details of that water tax, how regressive it is. So that is an important thing to discover.
The other two options have to do with the JumpStart Tax that we were talking about. One of them would be just to increase that JumpStart Tax across - it has a tiered structure right now, so across the tiers to just increase it. Councilmember Sawant has already proposed very, very modest increases in that JumpStart Tax in two of her amendments for the 2024 budget to fund specific priorities. So increasing the JumpStart Tax just full stop is one option. Another really intriguing option that has been discussed is something called a CEO pay ratio tax. This would require corporations that pay their top executives exorbitant amounts to pay an extra tax, or fee, or surcharge. So basically what we could do is use the JumpStart Tax as a vehicle by adding an extra layer to it. So there would be an extra tax that would only apply to corporations that exceed a certain CEO pay ratio. And what I have heard about this tax - again, so it would be fairly easy to implement because you don't have to change state law, you would just add an additional layer to an already existent tax. And what I've heard is that it would collect a significant amount of funds, but I don't have any actual numbers on that. So it will be really interesting to hear an analysis of how much money that could potentially actually bring in.
And what Councilmember Mosqueda has announced is that there will be an extra Budget Committee meeting after the main 2024 budget is passed to discuss some of these possibilities at more depth. So they will be discussed earlier in November, kind of as a briefing, and then the councilmembers will meet after the budget is passed to potentially vote on some of these possibilities, if they're not already passed in the 2024 budget.
[00:30:09] BJ Last: One thing I wanted to mention - so the Revenue Stabilization Group looked at about 20 different taxes. They did a great write-up that finally made it out in August after having been delayed a few times. The three taxes Amy mentioned - one of the reasons that they're at the top three is how quickly they can get implemented. So, you know, we're currently sitting and recording this - it's November, the budget deficit starts on January 1st, 2025. There is very limited time to go and get an ordinance passed and actually then to have that go into effect - since a new tax doesn't go into effect the day that it is passed - and to make sure that it would survive any legal challenges. So there is even like a broader list of things, but because we have kept putting this conversation off, because the city has sort of kept pushing the can down the road, we don't have very much time to go and pass this. We have about 13, 14 months to get something passed and to start having dollars coming in the door before that deficit hits.
[00:31:04] Shannon Cheng: All right, so time is of the essence here. And it sounds like although Mayor Harrell didn't put anything in his proposals to address this, at least Council seems like they're gonna be on it in some fashion. So we'll see what comes of that.
Okay, so that's the revenue side of the budget. And I think that's helpful for people to understand, 'cause I think it's much easier to talk about what you want to spend money on rather than where that money is gonna come from. I mean, I know I'm like that in my own life. So maybe we need to talk about what are we gonna spend all this money that we're bringing in on. And earlier in the show, talked about a rough breakdown of the general fund - it sounds like a huge portion of that goes towards public safety, which includes the Fire Department and the Police Department. So is the reason why sometimes it feels like there's so much focus on the police budget because they're kind of the biggest chunk of the budget, so that if you were trying to look for places where we could make some savings, it would be there?
[00:32:05] BJ Last: I'd say absolutely. Not only are they the biggest chunk - no other department eats up as big a portion of the general fund as SPD does. So not only that, but they also get absurdly special treatment that no other department gets, where a lot of basic budget practices even just get entirely thrown out the window because it's for SPD. Ghost cops are a great example of this. Ghost cops are positions SPD gets funded for, even though they have no plan, intention, or ability to fill these roles. So these are not people that SPD even thinks they can plan - they have said they aren't going in the plan, there's no desire to, but they still get funding for them year after year. There are like 213 of these now currently sitting around and it works out to be - about $31 million of SPD's budget right now is slush fund on this. And we talked about the upcoming deficit in 2025. So a $250 million roughly - $30 million on these guys - you can see that this is a large percentage of the deficit sitting right there in these ghost positions that councilmembers just don't want to touch.
And to give a sort of example of how no one else gets treated this way - where they get to just sort of hold on to this positional authority when they have no ability to fill it. Last year, the city abrogated 24 911-dispatcher positions, which - abrogation means they remove positional authority to it. No one probably heard about this 'cause there wasn't a big kerfuffle because it's normal. Council and the mayor and everyone's like - Well, you guys have said you can't hire these guys for the next two years for the duration of the biennium, so we're just gonna remove positional authority to it. If staffing plans change, we can re-add it. We can also add this back into the 2025 biennium if staffing levels have picked up. And in fact, they actually already are adding back about three of them in the supplemental of - in 2024 now in the budget process because their hiring has picked up. So just using 911 dispatch as an example - the ghost cops, the excess positional authority - no other department gets that. Every other department it is what your staffing plan is - the number of people you actually expect to hire - that is the number of positions you get, and that's the number of positions you get funded for. SPD gets this massive slush fund that they get to go and use on whatever the heck they want.
And there was also even a technology one that we saw in the 2022 budget. Truleo - it's a technology - it swears it's like AI, natural language processing of body camera footage. SPD specifically asked for additional money for this program as part of the 2022 budget. Council explicitly did not give them funding for this. They said - We are not funding this program. Then the City found out at the start of this year that SPD actually went ahead and bought Truleo anyway. So they ended up canceling the contract, but it ended up as a thing of - usually if a department goes to a company and says, We need additional money for this project - if they don't get that money and then they find a way to fund that project anyway, it raises a lot of questions. Like, why did you say you needed additional money for this if you could already cover it with your additional budget? And hey, all those other items that you said you needed additional money for, that we gave you additional money for - how many of them did you really need additional money for versus you were just attempting to pad out your budget? So that's one of the reasons why it gets a lot of attention. Not only is it just the biggest percentage of the general fund by a lot, but the absurd special treatment that they get.
[00:35:29] Shannon Cheng: So SPD is 26% of the general fund?
[00:35:33] BJ Last: SPD itself is 24-26%. That does not include the police pension department - that is a separate pension in there. It does not include the Office of Inspector General and the CPC, the Community Police Commission, even though they are also both part of that. So when you start adding all of those, it goes up even over a quarter. And then when you add in the city attorney's office, municipal courts, indigent defense, jail services - what we're spending on carceral - it's a third of the general fund all ends up sitting there.
[00:36:05] Shannon Cheng: Wow, okay. Yeah, I see here - just the Seattle Police Department alone, not all those other things you added on - they're sitting at just under $400 million. So what I'm understanding is these ghost cops are haunting, I guess, the Seattle Police Department budget.
[00:36:23] BJ Last: These ghost cop positions - they do haunt the general budget. Amy talked about how we're defunding JumpStart. So it's about $85 million last year, $85 million this year, $85 million next year - that's getting transferred from JumpStart to the general fund. So again, transferred from Green New Deal, affordable housing to the general fund. Because SPD gets a quarter of the general fund, that means that $21 million a year roughly is literally going from affordable housing to SPD and its ghost cops.
[00:36:54] Shannon Cheng: Oh man. Okay. So, and then they're taking it, and as you said, spending it on things that they were explicitly told not to spend it on or who knows what else, right? We try to dig in and get more transparency into what's going on, but that can be difficult.
And just what BJ was saying about budgeting practices and that SPD is not subject to those at times - so I looked at the King County biennial budget for the same time period from 2023 to 2024. And they have line items across all of their appropriation units, including the Sheriff's Office and the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention, that's called a vacancy rate adjustment. And this is exactly what BJ is describing - it's capturing salary savings from them not having been able to hire and being able to put that back into the general budget so that they can use it for other things that there's a need for. And then in addition to that, last biennium for King County, they had an additional line item specifically only for the Sheriff's Office and the Department of Adult Juvenile Detention called Capture Additional Vacancy Savings. And here, I'll just read the line item - it says it's to increase expected savings due to vacancies to account for current unprecedented vacancy level. And, you know, it allows the Sheriff's Office and DAJD to request additional appropriation to reverse it if the vacancy rate reverses and that we're able to magically start hiring a ton of people. I mean, we see that there's kind of a nationwide hiring shortage across every kind of profession, but in police and corrections officers as well. So this is not abnormal, and there was not a giant fight in the King County budget when this happened. Just to give you a sense of the magnitude - just from the original base vacancy rate adjustment, it was $5.3 million from the Sheriff's Office. And that additional vacancy savings was $5.7 million. So this is meaningful money that can be used in other places and not just locked up in the - Oh, well, maybe law enforcement will get to use it. Or maybe when they get close to the end of the spending period, they'll just spend it on something that we didn't all agree that we wanted.
[00:39:03] Amy Sundberg: I will say as well that SPD has a very optimistic hiring plan and they never hit it - at least for the last several years that I've been following it, they don't hit it. And this year they actually - the department shrank again. They have a negative total when you add in hires minus attrition. So it's still shrinking in spite of these hiring bonuses that we have no evidence actually works. But these ghost cop positions aren't even part of that. They're ones that even SPD says - We definitely aren't gonna hire that this year. It's not taking away from the hiring plan that SPD wants and thinks they can hire. It's additional positions beyond that. And to be clear, it's a couple hundred additional positions. It's not like four or five.
[00:39:50] Shannon Cheng: Okay, thanks. 'Cause I feel like people conflate that a lot - this talk of supporting SPD and public safety and fully funding their hiring plan, which it sounds like that's what has been happening, but then you have this conversation about abrogating these positions or ghost cops. And so you're saying that those are two separate things?
[00:40:10] BJ Last: Absolutely. SPD - they always put out incredibly optimistic hiring plans, even by their own terms. So their hiring plan for next year is still that they will end up with - I think it's a record number of hires, like more than they've ever had - hiring 125 cops, I think it is. And with the number of cops leaving slowing down. And they're like - Cool, our full hiring plan for next year is roughly 1,130 cops. And they're currently getting funded for like 1,344 cops, something like that - it's a difference of 213 positions between what they've said they can hire and what they actually plan on trying to hire - between that and what they're actually funded for.
[00:40:47] Shannon Cheng: What are the issues in the hiring pipeline? Why is there a limit to the number of officers that they would actually be able to hire?
[00:40:54] Amy Sundberg: I mean, there's a lot of factors. Primarily, there aren't enough applicants to begin with - not enough people want to become police officers at SPD. That's an issue. But as well, I just also - the hiring process takes time because they have to go through a series of testing and vetting. And then if they aren't lateral hires - if they're new recruits, then they have to go through the academy. And even once they're done with academy, they go through more training on the job, so they're not really full officers at that point yet. So it just - there's a long ramp to hiring new officers. Lateral officers - SPD has a great interest in hiring them because they've already been a police officer somewhere else. So they can kind of get plugged in more easily, directly into SPD. But they've been having a really difficult time finding lateral hires. So far in 2023 - I forget - it was four, five, or six total lateral hires for the entire year. And they had expected to be able to hire many more. And when asked about it, Chief Diaz said that the candidates simply weren't good enough for them to hire more than that. But somehow magically, they expect the candidates to get better next year if you look at who they expect to hire next year, which I think is interesting.
[00:42:09] BJ Last: And I'd also say, Amy, none of that is unique to Seattle at all. It was already touched on - this is not just Seattle Police Department is having trouble hiring, this is police departments everywhere. Fewer people want to become cops. And just like Seattle, it really, really wants lateral hires because it's much shorter. I think the timeline from a new recruit is like 18 months before they are counted as a employable officer, or whatever their term is. The lateral is much shorter. So not only does Seattle want them, every other department wants them. Thing is just - people do not want to be cops as much. We know one of the things that isn't a barrier to hiring at all is pay. The average SPD officer made over $155,000 in 2022, based on the City's wage data. So they are making - the city pays an absolute ton for SPD on the individual officer level. There're the hiring bonuses that have been around that don't do anything. So it's - for these lateral hires, it's $30K that they're getting offered, it's $7,500 for a new recruit. So the city has already tried throwing just buckets and buckets of money to see if that would somehow turn into more people wanting to be cops in Seattle. And it has absolutely positively not worked. And that really needs to be acknowledged - not throwing money at this one - that's not going to change things here. It's not unique to Seattle, it's across everything.
And it's also one of the reasons why other cities have moved to actually non-police responses to things. Because we look back - tons and tons of studies - SPD did its own study in 2019 that showed, I think it was 56% of all 911 calls are non-criminal. There was the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform Study that came out in 2021 - showed 80% of all the calls SPD is currently doing don't match anything in the criminal code, and 49% of those calls could immediately go to the community. So one of the reasons other cities are going into non-police responses is because it's what cops actually do - is they respond to non-criminal stuff, that's where they spend all their time. So why on earth are we throwing all of this money at people to show up, and escalate non-criminal situations, and traumatize people? And Seattle has really dragged its heels on that. After having talked about non-police response for years, multiple studies coming out about how little of SPD's calls are actually anything that counts as criminal, how much could go to community - just this last month, they finally launched a dual dispatch, which is SPD responding to stuff. So years later, the city has just refused to move on this item.
[00:44:43] Amy Sundberg: I will also add, since we're in the middle of election season - I keep hearing from candidates that what they want to do to fix public safety in Seattle is hire 500 new cops. And I'll just say, your opinion doesn't matter - regardless of your opinion of whether we should hire more cops, whether you want less cops - we are not gonna hire 500 new cops in Seattle anytime soon. It is literally impossible. It is just not gonna happen. So when I hear candidates say that - I mean, it's pie-in-the-sky thinking, it's not a real solution because there are not 500 new cops for us to hire. And also there's, as BJ said, there's the 18 month ramp up to even get someone trained up to become a police officer. So this is just not reality.
[00:45:32] Shannon Cheng: Okay, well, speaking of a mismatch between reality and intended outcomes, I keep hearing about this technology called ShotSpotter. I feel like we had a giant debate over it last year, it sounds like it's reared its ugly head again this year. Can you break down what this fight over ShotSpotter is and why it's important?
[00:45:54] BJ Last: Sure, so ShotSpotter at a basic level - well, first off, so the company is now called SoundThinking. They did a rebrand because - yeah, the reputation that ShotSpotter has. It's an acoustic gunshot detection service is what it describes itself as - and it is people sitting in a room hundreds of miles away, listening to recordings of loud noises. And then saying whether or not they think that loud noise was a gunshot. That is what ShotSpotter boils down to. Like they swear there's a super fancy AI algorithm, but whatever that AI decides to flag - it goes to people sitting in a room hundreds of miles away, listening to a noise, and saying whether or not they think it was a gunshot. And they have a large financial interest in actually saying everything was a gunshot. Because of how the contracts are written - that there's no guarantees that they won't send a lot of false alerts. The only guarantee that is in there is anything where the police actually find that there was evidence of a gunshot - for 90% of those, ShotSpotter will have given an alert. So it's pretty much if they say that something wasn't a gunshot, and it turns out it was, that then could potentially hurt their contract. If they call every single loud noise a gunshot, that has zero impact on them at all. So people listening to loud noises with an incentive to go and say everything's a gunshot.
And you are right - we had this fight just last year, when the city went and asked for it. And what this ask was - was they asked for additional funding, specifically for ShotSpotter, which council declined to give them. They're asking for it again. Of that additional money specifically for ShotSpotter - this additional money piece actually though, has no impact on whether or not the city actually purchases ShotSpotter. In order to purchase a subscription to ShotSpotter - because it's a subscriptions purchase, so it becomes an annual expense every single year - SPD has to go through a Surveillance Impact Report, which is they have to meet with the community, put together what would be a lot of - what would be the impacts of this technology, what does it do, get community feedback, and then council also has to go and approve that. SPD has been able to do this any single day that it's wanted to. It could have started this process. When they first asked for it last year, they could have started this process then. In any of the time between last year's budget and now, they could have started this process. So they have not done that. So they're asking for money - again, for something that they've taken no steps to actually get anywhere close to being able to legally purchase.
[00:48:17] Amy Sundberg: I think too - I have a lot to say about ShotSpotter - I've spent way too much of the last several weeks of my life thinking about ShotSpotter. And to be honest, I just - I find it personally painful that we're having this discussion again this year. Because not only is ShotSpotter ineffective, so it's a waste of money - which is bad enough. I mean, we obviously do not have money to waste. But it is actively harmful, to be clear. There are many, many studies that show this. It increases the number of pat-downs, searches, and enforcement actions. It justifies the over-policing of Black, Indigenous, and people of color neighborhoods that they are primarily living in. It leads to unnecessary contact between the police and vulnerable populations. And it also leads to false arrests. There have even been some cases where they've shown that possibly some of the "evidence" - I put that in air quotes - "evidence" has been tampered with in various ways. I mean, this is actively harmful. It is not just a waste of money. And then also, this year is being sold as part of a crime prevention pilot.
And let me be clear - gun violence is a huge problem. It's a huge problem in Seattle. It's a huge problem in King County. Frankly, it's a huge problem across the entire country. And I don't want to minimize the impacts of that in any way, but there is no evidence that shows that ShotSpotter decreases gun violence. So people who are desperate, who want a solution to that problem, are being sold ShotSpotter as the solution, but it's not true. And that's what I find so painful, right? Is that there's people who desperately need a solution to this problem, and instead of actually giving them one that might have a chance of working, they're given ShotSpotter as a false hope instead - which I find repugnant, frankly.
[00:50:13] BJ Last: Oh yeah - it's incredibly predatory what they do, Amy. They prey on communities that are struggling with issues of gun violence - which is a massive issue, as you said, that really has huge impacts - and they sell them something that just makes things worse. You mentioned on some of the - what happens with some of these alerts - Adam Toledo was one of the most famous examples of this. So Adam Toledo was a 13-year-old that the Chicago police killed because they were responding to a ShotSpotter alert. And they chased after a 13-year-old, and ended up shooting him in an alley when his hands were empty - when there was nothing in his hands. So this is the real harm that does come from this. And again, it is preying off of communities that have been disinvested in and that are dealing with real problems of gun violence and being like - Oh, hey, here's something we swear will make it better. And that goes and makes it worse.
[00:51:01] Amy Sundberg: I will also say - we had this fight last year, we're having it again. There've been a few new wrinkles that have been introduced this year that I think are important to address. One of them is that this year, they have proposed that along with the ShotSpotter acoustic gunshot technology, that they include CCTV cameras. And what Senior Deputy Mayor Burgess said during one of these budget meetings was that the combination of these two technologies leads to higher accuracy and also better admissibility in court. However, these claims have not been backed up. We did find a study that shows that, in fact, the combination of these two technologies does not improve accuracy. And Councilmember Herbold asked Tim Burgess for his evidence - What makes you think this? A month after she asked, she says she finally received his answer - which was six reports on CCTV alone with no ShotSpotter technology included so does not, in fact, give any evidence that it makes ShotSpotter better. And one kind of manual suggesting that maybe you could combine these two technologies with no study attached. So the only study we have found says, in fact, it does not improve the accuracy. So I think that's really important to note. There seems to be a certain lack of regard from certain quarters for actually looking at the evidence - that I find sad, frankly.
And another wrinkle that I'll mention is that BJ talked about the Surveillance Ordinance - the report that they would have to do in order to implement ShotSpotter. In the original proposal from the mayor's office, they asked to do one report - so each report, you have to do a racial equity analysis as part of that report - and they asked to only do one report. But this is mobile technology, so you can pick up the camera and the ShotSpotter tech and you can move it to a different neighborhood. So they would only be doing their racial equity analysis in the original neighborhoods that it was going to be placed, and then they could pick it up and move it to any other neighborhood without having to do another racial equity analysis, which I think is deeply problematic because different neighborhoods are different. And a lot of the neighborhoods that they were talking about originally using this technology on are primarily white. And my concern would be - what if they picked it up and moved it to a community that wasn't primarily white, but didn't have to do a racial impact report on that. That is deeply troubling. And I will say Councilmember Mosqueda, in her balancing package, addressed this problem and said - No, you should do a racial equity impact for each time you move it. So hopefully we won't buy ShotSpotter at all, but hopefully that change will stay if we do - because I think you can't do one impact report for a neighborhood, and then move it somewhere completely different and expect that report to have any validity.
[00:54:09] Shannon Cheng: So ShotSpotter doesn't address the problem it's claiming to try to solve. In fact, it sounds like it might be making things worse. And so they're asking this year for about $1.8 million, but what do we know from other cities - once you buy a pilot, this $1.8 million this year, what happens after that?
[00:54:28] BJ Last: It's a subscription service. So even if you wanted to maintain the same amount or the same coverage area, you are spending that every single year. So this is, would be an ongoing expense. And that's also assuming the ShotSpotter doesn't change its rates. And then if you decided to expand the footprint of where it is, that's gonna add what you're spending every single year. So it is very much just an ongoing expense into a budget that as we said - hey, is already facing a substantial general fund deficit for something that does not address a serious problem.
[00:55:00] Amy Sundberg: And the company SoundThinking - I mean, their business model is to persuade cities to expand. So it would not be surprising to me if we were to start this pilot - if in a few years we were spending more like $10 million on ShotSpotter, that would not shock me.
[00:55:16] Shannon Cheng: Okay, so it's - this year, we're trying to decide whether to dip a toe into this ShotSpotter technology, but it could lead to larger expenditures in future years if this initial pilot gets funded further.
[00:55:34] BJ Last: Absolutely. And also the ShotSpotter company SoundThinking - they do a lot of other surveillance items. They recently bought PredPol, which is nominally predictive policing, that has all the absolute racial bias issues that you probably imagine the moment that a company said that they can sell you predictive policing. So odds are it would not even be staying at just ShotSpotter - of microphones listening for loud noises - that SoundThinking would be trying to then expand to all of their other horrible, dystopian, incredibly biased technology.
[00:56:05] Shannon Cheng: Yay.
[00:56:07] Amy Sundberg: It's really concerning, right? I think a lot of people want to hold up technology as this panacea - where it will fix everything. And that is not always the case. And in this case, I would argue it is not at all the case. And there are actually things that we could be investing in that might address the issue much more effectively.
[00:56:28] BJ Last: Yeah, like the things that are proven to work on this are low tech items - they're violence interruption programs, resourcing communities, things like that that are actually shown to reduce gun violence.
[00:56:39] Amy Sundberg: Even physical changes in the environment have been shown to have a significant effect - like adding more lighting, for example.
[00:56:47] Shannon Cheng: So those are some of the big fights over public safety, which - they're really important. Unfortunately, I also feel like they often overshadow some of the other big fights that might be going on - just there's a lot of rhetoric right now about public safety, especially with the ongoing election. So what are some of the other big budget fights that you're seeing in this year's deliberations?
[00:57:05] BJ Last: Well, I'd say a lot of those fights are actually also public safety items. Like there are fights on School Safety Traffic and Pedestrian Improvement, SSTPI fund - so that's been getting cut. That is safe routes for kids to walk and bike to school - Vision Zero stuff is also getting cut. We're fighting really to stop that. And so far, at least 22 pedestrians have been killed while walking, biking, or rolling. So that is absolutely a public safety item, I would say. Same with - there are currently amendments to undo the cuts to food safety. The proposed budget cut about $950,000 from food security, so that was 650K roughly for food banks and 300K for food access. I would very much say that food access is also very much a public safety item. I think there was even a French musical, Les Mis - didn't that have a lot to do with an entire revolution because people couldn't afford bread and were hungry?
[00:57:58] Amy Sundberg: There also is a fight about funding behavioral health services at Tiny House villages. Right now, that funding is a lot less than it was in 2023 for 2024. And the reason why that's important is because having this funding allows Tiny House villages to house people with higher acuity needs. But if they don't have those services available, then those people can't live there. So, I mean, that's a huge issue. And there are a couple amendments to address that - one of them would take the ShotSpotter money and use it instead to pay for that, which I think is a great use of that money. And there also are fights about pay wages for human service workers - to make sure that all human service workers are getting inflationary increase and a 2% raise on top of that, a true 2% raise on top of that. There have been various little fiddly things regarding that - some of those workers were not covered because they're technically paid through King County or with federal money. But they're still doing the job every day, they still deserve that full 2% raise. So there are amendments that are working to address that shortfall to make sure that those folks get paid a fair wage.
[00:59:08] BJ Last: Yeah, and on the 2% raise for human service providers, there's a pay equity study that the University of Washington released - I think it was February this year - that found human service workers in Seattle are underpaid by 37%. So 2% is just a drop in the bucket compared to what we, a city-funded study by UW found that they are currently underfunded by. There was even a resolution passed that wants to increase their wages by 7% by 2025, so this is a small item just trying to move inline with that resolution and to also make progress towards that study. 'Cause again - underpaid by 37% is huge and that impacts people's ability to actually provide services.
One other item I'll throw out - there was also a cut in the budget to ADA accessibility. The reason that the City specifically funds this is the City was actually sued because our city is so inaccessible. And this is money to increase the number of curb cuts to make our sidewalks more accessible. And one of the really big things on this is the City funds on this really are supposed to make sure that the entire city itself is accessible. 'Cause apparently one way that the city can sort of get around paying for part of this is - if new construction is going in and puts in curb cuts, that can count like the number that they need for this. We know the neighborhoods with lots of new construction going in. So the fact that there are a ton of new curb cuts in South Lake Union, absolutely is not an excuse to cut ADA accessibility funding that covers the entire city.
[01:00:39] Shannon Cheng: Sounds like there's no shortage of needs desperately needed for funding across all of the budget, so it will be interesting to see how these fights pan out. So I just wanted to talk a little bit about how people can get involved and learn more about the budget if they're curious about this. I mean, you two are experts and - how do you go about that?
[01:01:01] BJ Last: So I'd say - two really good tools that people can go to for more information. So on the City Council's website - so if you go to just seattle.gov/council - there is a budget tool on there that is very helpful. Sorry, the link to that one's a bit longer, so I'm not gonna try to like read it out and hope--
[01:01:18] Shannon Cheng: Oh, don't worry - I'll put any of the links in the show notes.
[01:01:21] BJ Last: Oh, nice. And then the other is if you go to seattle.gov/city-budget-office, you can find the entire budget book for both this year and prior years - to go and read through.
[01:01:34] Amy Sundberg: There's also a fair amount of local reporting - not just from the Seattle Times, but from PubliCola, from The Stranger, from The Urbanist, my Notes from the Emerald City - I cover the public safety budget news. So you can follow some of it that way.
[01:01:49] Shannon Cheng: Okay, that's great. So that's - if you don't have time or interest in attending personally every single budget hearing, or meeting, or briefing, right? But I mean - that information, it is publicly happening. We talked to a lot of candidates on this show leading up to the city council elections and we asked them about the budget. And I would say there were varying degrees of understanding of how the budget works or what kind of information is even out there. So it is out there, right? Like it might be kind of hard to dig into or dig up, but it's not like it's inaccessible.
[01:02:25] Amy Sundberg: It is out there. It is available. And also there are people like us who talk about the budget all the time and would happily talk about the budget to more people.
[01:02:33] Shannon Cheng: Yes, that is exactly why I wanted the two of you to come on to the show with me.
[01:02:37] BJ Last: Yeah, I'd say also a good resource - follow Solidarity Budget. We have our website - make sure you have the link to that - and also we're on a bunch of social media stuff. We post a bunch of stuff about the budget, so it is another resource to follow for news on that one. 'Cause as you mentioned, Shannon, it is a ton of time if you're trying to actually attend every budget meeting and/or read through the entire budget itself, which is - I think it's over a thousand pages. If not, it's at least very close.
[01:03:04] Shannon Cheng: Did you read through the entire budget, BJ?
[01:03:07] BJ Last: No.
[01:03:08] Shannon Cheng: Wow, even you haven't. Okay. Well, there we have it. So what are opportunities if people wanna get more involved with Solidarity Budget - whether that's more in deep involvement and they wanna dig into the spreadsheets and the weeds about the budget, or they only have a little bit of time and want to lend support to what you're fighting for and don't know where to start. What can people do?
[01:03:28] Amy Sundberg: I mean, I'll talk about the easiest things first, I think - and I'll even throw some dates your way so that people can mark them on their calendar if they're feeling inspired. So I mean, the easiest thing to do is to advocate with your councilmembers. And there are many ways that you can do that. You can email them, you can call their office, you can try to set up a meeting with them. I don't know that this is happening right now, but sometimes they even will like go to farmers' markets and hang out. So you can go and talk to them during their office hours at farmers' markets or whatever. And then there also are public comment opportunities at these budget meetings, where you can go and give - it's usually 60 seconds to 120 seconds, so one to two minutes. I say plan for 90 seconds and then go with it. And which you can tell them exactly what you would like to see in the budget or what you would like to see removed in the budget. And if you want to give public comment, you can either go in person to City Hall, or you can call in remotely if you want to do it from the comfort of your home or if you want to do it from your workplace, right? There are options for everybody.
A couple of upcoming events and opportunities - on Wednesday, November 8th, there's gonna be a ShotSpotter webinar - so it'll be virtual at 5:30 PM - that you can sign up for on our website, seattlesolidaritybudget.com. And then there's opportunity to give public comment on Monday, November 13th - there's actually opportunity at 10 AM and at 5 PM. At 5 PM is the big public hearing - that's just all it is - is a lot of people giving public comment. There's gonna be a big rally. It's gonna be amazing. I recommend you come out or call in for that one. The final budget will be voted on on November 21st - there will be opportunities to comment at that meeting at 2 PM. Although at that point, it's mostly finalized usually unless something interesting happens. But this year, because of the progressive revenue conversation, there's actually gonna be that additional meeting talking about progressive revenue. So if that's what has you fired up and you wanna give comment on that, that meeting is November 30th, it's a Thursday. And I think it will be at probably at 10 AM. Although like BJ said, you can always check our website to find out more information there.
[01:05:45] Shannon Cheng: And we will provide all these links in the show notes, so don't worry if you didn't get that all.
[01:05:49] Amy Sundberg: Yeah, there's a lot of dates. There's a lot to keep track of. We also do provide scripts to let you know what Seattle Solidarity Budget's priorities are in terms of what we would like to see changed in the budget, additional investments we'd like to see, or things we'd like to be removed.
[01:06:06] Shannon Cheng: Great.
[01:06:07] BJ Last: And as Amy said - yes, there's the big hearing on the 13th and opportunities for public comment. You can also - as Amy said - you can email, call your councilmembers anytime. Like you do not have to wait for that. You just heard something today and you're like - Hey, I think that's messed up or that's something we should do. You can type an email right now. So no time like the present. You don't need to wait for the public hearing.
[01:06:28] Shannon Cheng: All right, great. Just to wrap up - people talk about budgets as moral documents, as a representation of the values that we, as a society and our community, want to see happen. I'd just like to end the show - we've been pretty deep in the weeds, but what is your vision for what you want to see in the budget? Like if you, if none of these politics or complicated situations existed and you could get your dream item into the budget, what would that be? We'll start with you, Amy.
[01:06:58] Amy Sundberg: Yeah, so I'm a big advocate for a guaranteed basic income, which is a no-strings-attached cash payment - usually monthly, although it doesn't have to be - to people who are in need in various ways. And I would love to see that be prioritized for people who are impacted by the carceral system and over-policing in particular. And we've just seen amazing results from guaranteed basic income programs throughout the country. They've kind of multiplied over the past few years, so we have a lot of data. And what the data shows is that it just improves people's lives on so many levels. It improves their physical health, it improves their mental health, it improves children's brain development, it improves children's educational attainment, adults' educational attainment. And there actually are some pretty new, interesting studies that show that it actually could decrease violence, which I think is a really interesting opportunity. It increases food security, housing security - I mean, it's great.
And what I really love about guaranteed basic income is that it really empowers people to take control over their lives and to make their own choices about their lives. It lets them regain their dignity. So when you read the stories about people who have participated in these programs, get ready - have a tissue, get ready to get a little teary-eyed. I know I do, because it can really - it has such a huge impact. I hosted a panel earlier this season about guaranteed basic income, bringing in local experts who are running programs like this in Washington State. And one of the people we had come was King County Councilmember Zahilay. And he said, This is one of the most personally impactful programs that I've been a part of as a King County Councilmember. GBI is the future. Like you hear stories of people who are able to buy soap - I'm not even kidding, right? Like soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste. The one that always gets me is grandparents who are able to buy their grandchildren presents for the first time in years - I can't say that without tearing up. People who are able to see family who lives far away for the first time in years. People are able to get tutors or help for their kids. These GBI programs just make such a huge difference. So I would love to see a very large, robust, long-term GBI program funded by Seattle public dollars.
[01:09:28] BJ Last: Also to tie onto that, Amy - not only just the incredible human benefit to people of GBI and how transformative it is for people, it's also cheap. And there've been some studies showing that it actually is cheaper than some other options. Vancouver, BC, and I think there was at least one other city had studies doing - hey, they did GBI for people who are currently unsheltered. And they're like - Oh wow, this actually got people into housing so much faster that it saved the city money because it was less that had to be spent on temporary shelter and other supports. So not only is it incredibly transformative, but it's not something where suddenly you think of and that creates a big budget problem. It actually doesn't. So it's - you empower people, improve their lives, and save money.
[01:10:11] Amy Sundberg: Well, it addresses the root causes that are a lot of the reasons people don't feel safe in the first place.
[01:10:16] Shannon Cheng: What's your dream item, BJ?
[01:10:19] BJ Last: I was actually probably gonna go GBI as well.
[01:10:22] Shannon Cheng: That's okay, you can have the same one.
[01:10:24] BJ Last: But since that has been sort of mentioned, the one thing - if we wanted a second item, I'd also put out participatory budgeting, which did come out. There was some money allocated to that in the 2021 budget that has not been spent still 'cause the city has just dragged its feet on rolling that out. So a real ongoing annual investment in that that was actually rolled out to be deployed versus the city kind of always trying to fight it - 'cause that is another empowering item of letting communities decide - what do we think is the biggest need that we have.
[01:10:54] Shannon Cheng: Great, yeah. I think they just extended the voting for that initial participatory budgeting program to November 12th, so we'll include a link to that in the show notes also. Well, those all sound like wonderful things that we could spend money on in our budget. And now it's time to go out and fight and try to get the money and political will to do it. So thank you both so much for being on the show with us today, and I guess that's it.
[01:11:21] Amy Sundberg: Thanks for having us.
[01:11:22] BJ Last: Thank you so much for having us, Shannon.
[01:11:23] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
The makeup of Seattle City Council may be changing a lot next year, but the issues they’ll face won’t.
Over the six weeks leading up to ballots being mailed out for the 2023 general election, Hacks & Wonks presented our series of interviews with most of the Seattle City Council candidates!
On this topical show re-air, join Crystal and Shannon behind-the-scenes of Hacks & Wonks for a bonus (not-so) short episode where they discuss how questions got chosen and written, the why behind those kludgy SPOG contract questions, thoughts and observations after all the interviews, and their approach to editing. And also, a bit of venting.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Shannon Cheng at @drbestturtle.
Resources
Elections 2023 One-Stop Shop | Hacks & Wonks
“Rob Saka, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 1” from Hacks & Wonks
“Maren Costa, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 1” from Hacks & Wonks
“Seattle City Council District 1 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks
“Tanya Woo, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 2” from Hacks & Wonks
“Tammy Morales, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 2” from Hacks & Wonks
“Seattle City Council District 2 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks
“Joy Hollingsworth, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 3” from Hacks & Wonks
“Alex Hudson, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 3” from Hacks & Wonks
“Seattle City Council District 3 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks
“Maritza Rivera, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks
“Ron Davis, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks
“Seattle City Council District 4 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks
“ChrisTiana ObeySumner, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 5” from Hacks & Wonks
“Seattle City Council District 5 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks
“Pete Hanning, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 6” from Hacks & Wonks
“Seattle City Council District 6 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks
“Andrew Lewis, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 7” from Hacks & Wonks
“Seattle City Council District 7 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, this is a little bonus short - I don't know, we'll wind up seeing how long this turns out to be. I am joined here with someone who you don't hear from on the mic often, but every time we do, it's wonderful. She is the person who does so much work for the podcast - this is a team effort. I'm here with Dr. Shannon Cheng. Hey, Shannon.
[00:01:14] Shannon Cheng: Hey, Crystal!
[00:01:16] Crystal Fincher: So Dr. Shannon Cheng - who is incredible, who works with me, who is a subject matter expert on public safety, is the guru for knowledge about like the SPOG contract, SPMA contract, that kind of stuff. She really understands and has the ability to actually explain it and share it in really accessible ways. But I just want to back up and talk about what you do and how you became an expert. What do you do, Shannon?
[00:01:44] Shannon Cheng: So I find myself involved in local policy and politics kind of by accident. I mean, you referenced that I'm a doctor - my doctorate is in Space Propulsion, I'm an aerospace engineer by training. And I guess if I try to think about the throughline of how I've operated in life is that I kind of don't want to end up doing things that aren't gonna let me go to sleep at night. So what happened with me with aerospace is - at one point - understanding that basically staying involved in that industry was contributing to weapons of destruction and war. And I just couldn't bring myself to do that. So through volunteering and activism, I guess that's how I met up with Crystal and got connected and have been doing a lot of things. I work on People Power Washington, which is focused on equitable public safety and policing across Washington state. We've worked on the Seattle, King County and State Legislature levels. We work on things ranging from budget advocacy to monitoring these difficult to understand police guild contracts and understanding how those get in the way of accountability, trying to work to pass charter amendments at the county level that would support better public safety and--
[00:02:59] Crystal Fincher: Shannon was instrumental in the passage of that 2020 County Charter Amendment to reform public safety. Instrumental.
[00:03:07] Shannon Cheng: And yeah, then recently I was invited to join the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability. And so that's been really a wonderful experience to just engage with families who have been directly impacted by police violence and brutality, and trying to work to have that not happen to anybody else ever again. So that's kind of me.
[00:03:32] Crystal Fincher: That is. Except you are the ultimate fun fact person. Like you have so many fun facts. A prior student of yours is currently on the Space Station right now.
[00:03:42] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I mean - he was up there for a six month stint. He may have come back down by now, but - I think the launch was in February - and when they were showing the pictures, I was like, Wait, I taught that guy Dynamics.
[00:03:58] Crystal Fincher: You have a picture of you like in zero gravity working on a thing. You are an orienteering champion, which is a whole thing.
[00:04:07] Shannon Cheng: Yes. It is a sport that is not super popular in this country - it's widely popular in Europe, in Australia, New Zealand, those areas. But yes, you could say I am an orienteering champion of sorts--
[00:04:20] Crystal Fincher: You are literally an orienteering champion.
[00:04:24] Shannon Cheng: --thanks to participation and attendance.
[00:04:27] Crystal Fincher: And you being great. It's not like there were no competitors. Yeah, there are so many fun facts about Shannon - just awesome things that pop up here and there. But Shannon is talented at everything basically, and is just one of the best human beings I know. And an instrumental part of Hacks & Wonks. So that's why we're both here talking to you right now.
So we wanted to have this conversation to talk about just what we were thinking when we were putting together questions for the Seattle City Council candidate interviews. And we meet and kind of do a whole thing - have an approach anytime we do series of candidate interviews - this is no exception. But especially with all of them and this conversation, there's been a lot of tangential conversation brought up - a lot on social media, a lot in the community. And some of these questions have become even more relevant in the past couple of weeks, particularly the ones revolving around policing in the city of Seattle and the new contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild that is in the process of being negotiated. And so I guess starting out - when we start thinking about how we're going to do candidate interviews, what do we usually talk about? How do we usually approach that?
[00:05:51] Shannon Cheng: I think we're - I know you are always wanting to kind of understand how would a candidate actually vote on issues that matter to people in this city? Because ultimately people can say things and have platitudes, but it really comes down to when there's a hard vote, which way are they gonna go? So I think, especially for the lightning round, a lot of our questions were centered around trying to ask these questions - and getting a Yes, No, or seeing if there was a waffle from these candidates - just to better understand how they think about these things and when push comes to shove, which way they would lean.
[00:06:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I think that is my approach. And it is an approach that is the result of years of working in politics, years of seeing how candidates process information throughout a campaign, how they conduct themselves just in their general lives, and how that translates to policy, and whether they govern in a way that's consistent with how they campaigned. And certainly one thing that is a throughline is - especially when it comes to tough votes - everybody will say, I believe the children are the future. Everybody will say - yes, they wanna address root causes of stuff, right? But as we see, like we've seen recently in this city, when it comes to issues of public safety or homelessness, people have all these value statements - but it comes down to a vote. It comes down to - Are you going to fund something or are you not? Are you going to really put into place the necessary elements to successfully implement what you're going to say or not? Are you going to just fund what you said - Oh, we need to do more than that. - but if you're only like voting to fund that, that's a different thing. So we tend to ask more specific questions than sometimes we hear elsewhere - we're not the only people who ask specific questions, but I definitely try to do that.
And we try to figure out what votes are likely to be coming up, where are the big fault lines, especially for the upcoming year, going to be? What does it look like different interests are pushing for and where do they stand on that? Because it's gonna be an issue. There's going to be pressure put on them to vote certain ways. And if they can't stand up strongly for what they believe and be conclusive about what they're gonna say, that doesn't have a good track record of resulting in the kind of policy that people expect in that direction - if they're soft on that. So that's part of what we do. And I've interviewed people from different philosophical orientations, political orientations. And sometimes there are people who I think or suspect I'm gonna agree with, who are soft on things I don't expect. People who I don't expect to agree with, who - I hear their answers on some things - I'm like, Okay, that was thoughtful and informed. And I certainly have my opinions - you know that - we talk about my opinions on the show. But I really do hope - my goal isn't to super interrogate and like make all the points - it's really to get what they think on the record, out in the open. And really help people to make an informed decision based on what the candidates are saying, kind of without the - with the exception of the lightning round - without the time limit on - Okay, you got to get your answer out in 30 seconds or 1 minute. There's some nuance - sometimes it's more than that - or an issue is complex and we need to talk about it.
[00:09:01] Shannon Cheng: And I would just also add that we have a lot of first time candidates this year, especially with open seats. And so it's also understandable that maybe a candidate isn't well-versed in every single issue area that is going to come up. And so I think having this robust set of questions also can help educate - both them and the voters - what is coming up. And maybe if they feel a little weak, or they get a question and they don't understand what it's even about, that's a signal of - Hey, this is kind of important. Maybe you need to look into that, and understand what's going on, and figure out where you stand on it.
[00:09:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And I - we'll have candidates be like, Whoa, I hadn't thought about that before, I need to learn more about that. And I appreciate that - when someone - taking office, we can talk about all of these issues. But there will always be issues or events that happen, that pop up that you don't talk about while on the campaign. And so a candidate's always going to have to get up to speed on something new. Electeds have to get up to speed on new things all the time. And so how do they approach that not knowing - knowing that they don't know something - How do they approach that? Who are the people they turn to to help learn? What sources of information are they learning from? How do they process information? Those are all things that are useful to hear and to know. And so even if they encounter something that - okay, maybe they didn't think about, you have a perspective about how they process information.
So I guess in how we approach writing questions, what is the process for that?
Okay, Shannon right now is like, Okay, so Crystal is like - ties herself into knots and then tries to avoid writing the questions. And then it's - maybe we don't want to do interviews at all. And oh my gosh - they're too many, they're too few. It's a little bit of a tortured process sometimes, but you help bring some clarity and order to that whole process.
[00:10:55] Shannon Cheng: I mean, you've done candidate forums - so we look at what you've done for candidate forums in the past. And then my issue area - that I work on in my spare time - is public safety and policing, and so I had the opportunity to put candidate questionnaire questions about that topic in as possible questions to ask. So - I don't know-- [both laughing]
[00:11:19] Crystal Fincher: Well, with that.
[00:11:20] Shannon Cheng: It's very last minute. [both laughing]
[00:11:22] Crystal Fincher: It's so, yeah.
[00:11:23] Shannon Cheng: But I don't know that people need to know that. [both laughing] We'll edit that part out.
[00:11:28] Crystal Fincher: Well, it is - we do this in between our regular work. I'm a political consultant. Shannon works with me. We're busy doing that for most of the day on most days, and we squeeze this podcast in between them - with lots of coordination and research and preparation done by Shannon, which I sincerely appreciate. But it is a process and we're trying to figure out what makes sense to ask. We do still have time limits-ish - we stretch it sometimes.
But I do - maybe we should start off talking about some of these questions about policing in the contract because some of these issues have come up lately. Shaun Scott, who is a great follow on Twitter - I don't know if he's elsewhere, but on Twitter, certainly - he was talking about, Hey, the city passed an ordinance. And he's absolutely right - City passed an ordinance giving the city council and OPA? - I think, one of the entities - the city council subpoena power over SPD and other entities, but like including SPD. And they did pass an ordinance that did that. Unfortunately, the SPOG contract of 2018 superseded that. Basically, it had clauses that contradicted and said, No, we're not gonna do that. And then another clause that says, And if City law says that we need to do that, that doesn't matter, this contract is going to replace or supersede City law in that. So subpoena power was essentially taken away. A number of accountability measures were taken away. So the questions that we asked were more specific than we usually ask. It wasn't like - oh, everybody deals with this and talks about it all the time. It was more - these are some areas in the SPOG contract that might be opaque or obscure that haven't been widely publicly discussed, but that are very important in dealing with issues like we're seeing now in the news. How did you put together those questions, and why are those specific ones important?
[00:13:30] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, so I think it's important to first understand that officer discipline is considered a working condition under state labor law, and that's why these union contracts are kind of the last stop for determining how things happen. So as you said, the City has passed, I think, multiple ordinances to try to give subpoena power to our accountability bodies - the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General. But the thing is that because we're governing under state law, unless that officer discipline-related provision gets negotiated into a contract that is accepted by the police unions, then it's not gonna be in effect. And so it's confusing, right? We see this all the time that there's these announcements made - Hey, like huge step forward in accountability. We managed to pass a law that says we have subpoena power. - but then what's left out is the asterisk that is, Well, once it gets negotiated with the union. And so I think that's the thing that gets lost a lot. And so I see that a lot. And so when we came up with our questions - literally it's from observing what the process has been, and then going actually through the contract line-by-line and trying to understand - okay, where are these provisions that kind of weaken the glorious accountability system that everybody likes to point to and pretend that we have. So knowing that going through labor contracts is not everybody's favorite thing, that's why we try to boil it down into - Okay, here's a few especially egregious things that seem like baseline we should try to get in the next contract - which is why talking to electeds about it is important because they are the ones who are gonna hold the power in terms of getting what we want in the next contract. So that's the process that we came up with our questions.
[00:15:23] Crystal Fincher: So, the question that we asked candidates in the lightning round was - Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't give the Office of Police Accountability, known as OPA, and the Office of the Inspector General, known as OIG, subpoena power? Why is subpoena power important and what difference could it make?
[00:15:41] Shannon Cheng: Subpoena power is important if you're trying to do an investigation and the information you think is necessary to understand what's happening for your investigation isn't available, or if people involved aren't cooperating and giving you that information. So at that point, a subpoena allows you to basically demand that that information is shared with you. In the 2017 Accountability Ordinance that was passed, it was explicitly laid out that the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General would have subpoena power. However, in the 2018 SPOG contract - I'll just read directly from the contract - they list those two sections and then they have an addendum that says, "The City agrees that these sections of the Ordinance will not be implemented at this time with regard to bargaining unit employees and their family members, and third party subpoenas seeking personal records of such employees and their family members." So basically, the contract said - there's no subpoena power for these two entities.
[00:16:40] Crystal Fincher: And yeah, I mean, we've heard and seen in several stories - the Seattle Police Department did not cooperate with the investigation. They can just say, currently - No, we're not gonna give that to you. No, we're not gonna share that. We decline to do that. And in issues - right now, there's an international conversation about both the killing of Jaahnavi Kandula and its aftermath with an officer mocking her killing. And the record of the police officer who was doing that, the records of officers overall. And we still don't know everything that happened with the East Precinct and it's leaving, we don't know what happened with CHOP - like those kinds of things - we still don't have answers because we can't demand them. We can't compel them. And this does. Not that that's gonna solve everything, but it is a tool of accountability. And at minimum, if you can't even get information about what happened, how are you gonna attach any kind of accountability to that? So it really is a very primary - we have to at least understand what happened, we have to be able to get that information. So that is what went behind that question.
Another question we asked - Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian? What is this sworn versus civilian issue about, and why is it important?
[00:17:57] Shannon Cheng: So the Office of Police Accountability has investigators - they're actually embedded in the Seattle Police Department - and a lot of their investigators are actually sworn officers. And so some people might think, Well, doesn't that seem kind of problematic? Because you would end up in this scenario where you have cops investigating other cops. Also, the cops that come into the OPA as these sworn investigators - my understanding is they kind of rotate in and out - so a cop going in could expect to then be back out at some point. And that would lead one to think, Well, maybe they wouldn't want to be as thorough in their investigations. So what the civilian aspect was - was that I think people would trust more to have a civilian who is not a sworn officer doing these investigations. And in that original 2017 Police Accountability Ordinance, there was provision made that there could be civilian investigators on this team within the OPA. However, again, that 2018 SPOG contract specifically said - and here, I'll again read from the contract - "The parties agree as follows: Unless otherwise agreed, at any time after the date of signing, the City may replace up to two (2) sworn investigator positions with up to two (2) civilian investigators." So they've basically limited the OPA to only have at any time two civilian investigators, and then that contract goes on to say, "Any case that reasonably could lead to termination will have a sworn investigator assigned to the case." So not only have they limited the number of civilian investigators, they also say those civilian investigators can't work on any cases that would lead to any kind of discipline that is on the harsher side of things. So that's why we asked that question.
[00:19:44] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and with these, it is important to understand - different jurisdictions have different things that they can do, right? They all have their own levers that they can push and pull. Some things you can only do at the county level, some things you can only do at the city level - in a variety of ways. And so we do try and focus in our questions also on what can they do in their capacity as a city councilmember. And because they do have the power to approve or reject this contract, putting - understanding what their conditions for doing so would be, getting them on the record about that is important 'cause this impacts how the police operate within the city and with residents.
The next question we asked - Do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move police funding to public safety alternatives? Why was this a question?
[00:20:34] Shannon Cheng: This is a question because - as we all know, the City has been trying for a very long time to stand up a alternative crisis response that may or may not involve the police. I think a big hurdle to that being stood up is this concern that I've heard - that if the City was to stand something up that didn't involve the police or the police didn't agree with, that they could file an Unfair Labor Practice with the state and basically say - this is some violation of their contract, that kind of work that had been under the purview of the police department was now being taken away from them and given to somebody else. So it's - I don't know that there's wording explicitly in the contract that says that, but it would be the union invoking the contract to say that the City was taking work away from them, basically, that they wanted to keep.
[00:21:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and it's a big major issue. And right now we're kind of at an impasse - alternative responses and funding non-police public safety responses and interventions is one of the most popular things supported by Seattle residents right now. They vote for candidates who say they're gonna support that. Polling shows that north of 70% across the board, it's been over 80% in some polls. When asked explicitly - hey, if your tax dollars are gonna be spent, what do you most want it to be spent on? Highest thing is standing up alternatives to policing to address things like behavioral health crises. We all see that this is so desperately needed and that - it used to be five years ago, kind of pre-2016, pre-George Floyd, when police used to have no problem. They said all the time - we aren't social workers, we don't have the tools to handle this other stuff, we wanna do our core jobs and not handle all these other things that we don't really have the tools for. And it seems like because of fear of losing funding, losing headcount, whatever, that stopped and they started clinging to everything that they could have. So like we ask a question - Do you think parking should be housed within SPD? Lots of cities are having conversations, especially since police are saying that they're short-staffed to say - Okay, how can we more effectively deploy police officers and take things off of their plate that shouldn't be on there in the first place, that are not core to what a sworn officer - a sworn armed officer - is needed for. But the challenge is that that is coming up against, as you described, those feelings that - Well, that's something that we, you know, that was in our sphere of responsibility, funding is attached to it, headcount is attached to it. And if we lose that, maybe that's gonna be a slippery slope to losing other things.
So like in the City of Seattle, the city council has actually funded alternative police responses. They have decided they wanna move forward with that, they've allocated money for that. And once that happens, it's basically up to the executive - currently Bruce Harrell, before with Jenny Durkan - to use that funding and implement the thing. Well, it's kind of stuck there. The money isn't being used. And for a while, especially with Monisha Harrell, when she was with the city, they talked about, Okay, well, we wanna do all that, we're just gonna do it with an internal department of public safety that will also house civilian responses. And I think part of standing that up as an internal department was to address the concern of the issue of headcount. And if the headcount decreases, even if it's just parking officials who do not need a gun to enforce parking, that - hey, let's not call that like a regular response, let's not use sworn headcount to do that, we can deploy that more effectively. But that is a problem that is stalled. And so the question really is - will they ensure that in the contract that is currently being negotiated, the contract that the council will be voting on, can they eliminate that as an issue? And obviously this has to be negotiated by both sides, but is there something they can come to that enables the City to move forward with what the residents are demanding and what leaders have committed to do? We've gotta find a way to have the contract not impede the progress that the city is repeatedly begging to make and promising to make. So that's what went into that question.
Another question we asked - Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers? Why is this an issue?
[00:24:53] Shannon Cheng: So the current contract that we're under explicitly gives SPD officers the right to work off-duty. And this is in-uniform, so one factor in this is that this is basically allowing them to use public resources, meaning their uniform - and they retain their police powers while they're working for not us, not the public that's paying them, but for private clients who they work for. So, a lot of these things are things like security or traffic direction, and they get paid a lot of money for these jobs - sometimes I think even more than they make as an officer. And so one of our concerns is that, especially in a time when it's short-staffed, then allowing in-uniform off-duty work - it creates confusion with the public, for one thing, when you see a police officer not working in their official capacity as a police officer, but dressed as one and maintaining all the same powers that they do - it just doesn't have clear boundaries between their professional work and then their side job. And then with the short staffing, these added hours that they're doing on top of, in theory, their full workload at SPD, plus potential overtime that they're gonna have to do - this is just gonna lead even more to officer fatigue. And we can see how that could lead to more of the poor decision-making or judgment calls, and has detrimental consequences for all of us in the public. And often - with their history of biased policing - would affect certain populations more than others. So that was why we asked this question.
[00:26:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and with these questions overall, some people are like - Well, why are these all like accountability questions? Are there any other things? Like, do you just hate cops? And to me, hating cops is not the issue, right? This is about public safety for everyone in the city and in the region. And every candidate who's run - I collect and keep political mail, advertising, blah, blah, blah - and what is really astounding is kind of the revisionist history of members of the council who are known for being moderate or conservative. Everybody's like - Well, you know, they elected me to be moderate and conservative. Or like people covering them - They elected someone. But when you look at what they said when they were running, when you look at their mail and what they communicated to voters - to a person - they talked about the importance of police accountability and reform. And, you know, some people wanna go further than others, but they all promised that. And so, if that wasn't just BS - anyone who's serious about that, and even if you're working towards community-centered, different things - anyone who is serious about what we're currently doing, and this contract is currently being negotiated, we really do have to contend with these things. And if we aren't, then we're not really serious about doing anything about accountability, let alone re-imagining what public safety can actually be.
So no matter what someone's ideological position is on the council, they should be engaging with this. This is in their sphere of responsibility. They're gonna have to vote on this contract. And so we need to know - we should know, and we should be talking about - what these parameters are. It's very important and consequential, and can determine whether we wind up in similar situations to now - where we have an officer where basically the globe has said, That's disgusting and should be unacceptable. Why is this officer still there? And we have City electeds basically going - Oh, there's nothing we can really do about it. The contract, you know, like, can't really fire them. There's no precedent. - and like, those are all legal issues because of the contract. But they approved this contract - Bruce Harrell approved the contract that we currently have. He's not the only one - I think Debora Juarez was on the council at that point in time. Lorena González used to be, and said she regretted the vote. Like, this was consequential. We talked about this at the time - not many people were listening in the wider community. But like, this is not a surprise that we're seeing problems because of the overriding of accountability measures passed by the City and supported by people in the city. So that's why we asked those public safety questions.
We asked a bunch of questions in the lightning round about how people vote. Why do you think these were good questions to include?
[00:29:06] Shannon Cheng: I think they're good because this is an instance where they had to sit down with their pen in hand and make a choice - bubble choice A or bubble choice B. And so in this process of trying to figure out how these candidates think and where they stand on things, asking them about times where they actually did have to make a decision and knowing what decision they made, I think that's why we asked those.
[00:29:30] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. And it's fair to ask. And it gives you insight into how they process information when it does come time to make a choice on one or the other, even if they think - maybe they don't think either choice is perfect, but they do need to make a choice and what they made is informative. In these, you know, also informing on different issues, where they stand there. We asked also issues about housing. We asked them if they rent or own - and that's an important question to ask, it's an important thing to know. And it's wild that we don't talk about that more because that is one of the biggest dividing lines in Seattle politics. It's one of the biggest dividing lines in voters. When you look at any results map of an election, you basically see the results of homeowners versus renters, higher income, higher net worth people versus lower income, lower net worth people. That is a fault line in Seattle politics. And looking at how votes happen, we see people voting aligned with their housing status a lot. It's something that matters, that is predictive pretty regularly. And so we wanted to ask that. We wanted to understand if they rented, if they own, and if they're a landlord. Some candidates were, some candidates were not. And then we face questions - the council actually passed an ordinance that was vetoed by Mayor Harrell, just about some more accountability for landlords and more sharing of information to try and better poise the City to address the housing affordability crisis. And so that's why we asked those.
We asked the question about allowing police in schools because that has been talked about in some meetings. It looks like there are some influential interests that want to make that happen and encourage that. I don't think that's wide-ranging, but there were a couple of powerful and well-placed people who - that was coming from their camps - and so we thought it was important to get people on record about that. We asked about trans and non-binary students - making sure they could play on sports teams that fit with their gender identities and using public bathrooms and public facilities - and got a range of answers on this one. Why did you feel this was so important to ask?
[00:31:37] Shannon Cheng: I think this is a community that's been under attack just nationwide, at all levels. And so it's important to know - I think Seattle touts itself as a progressive, inclusive, welcoming city - and we want to make sure the people who are leading us actually are.
[00:31:55] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And respecting people's humanity without condition, without making them less than. And unfortunately, the sports issue is propaganda. It's propaganda. I understand why the propaganda campaign caught on - it's using very cynical tactics - but we do have to stand up and say, That's propaganda. We can't be like - Okay, yeah, trans people, we accept everybody - live, love, and light - all that kind of stuff. And then say, Yeah, but if your kid wants to play on a sports team - which is a very important formative part of growing up for many people, if they choose to do that, and also not just sports, just any kind of activities attached to school, which is something that so many people partake in - and say, Yeah, but not that. Like that is an issue of just fundamental humanity and inclusion - and so we should be explicit about where people stand, and we should talk about that, and we should force people to be accountable for where they stand on that. And make sure people know - before they vote - whether people plan on including every member of this community in our community.
We asked about the economy, the JumpStart Tax - which there's been lots of talk from different interests about, from some Chamber interests saying, Maybe we need to divert some of that to help restart, relaunch downtown's economy. There are other people saying, Hey, this might be something that we need to increase to help with the upcoming budget deficit. And some people who just disagree with it overall, and think that we - that that's placing a burden on business, and that's gonna be bad for residents - and usually coming from the same people who say the sky is falling every time that there is a minimum wage increase, and then more people move here and are happier than they are in other places, so it seems like we would stop listening to people who continue to predict that and are wrong, but we don't do that. But wanted to get people on record for where they stand on that, because - in Seattle politics, interests are tied to taxes - that that's where a lot of corporate interests are really concerned about. And they will use other issues as wedge issues in messaging, but their primary concerns are about taxation and the maintenance of their capital. That's really what's driving a lot of this. And so the JumpStart is going to be at the heart of that interest and conversation.
[00:34:09] Shannon Cheng: We hear businesses - obviously they don't wanna pay more taxes, but at the same time, we also hear businesses complaining that they're not getting the services that they expect the City to deliver to them. And so I think it's pretty telling that - you don't wanna pay for it, but you wanna get it.
[00:34:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and we also asked about how candidates can better support small business. I do think there's a conflation of gigantic multi-trillion dollar mega-corp interests and - in the business community - and a small mom-pop shop, local business who is - hired a couple of people from the neighborhood and is trying to make it. Both businesses, both part of the business community - but usually very different interests and needs. And we have a lot of small businesses who are struggling. Small business - business is important to the economy across the board, right? But we need it not to be extractive. We need not to say, Oh, it's so important. So like Boeing, we're gonna give you more money than we've ever given anyone before with no accountability. We did this because Boeing is gonna create jobs and we need lots of jobs. But then we don't get a refund when Boeing lays people off and leaves town, right - that's a problem. And we have trillion dollar corporations in the city of Seattle who frankly use small business owners to say - Oh, please, we're suffering and we need help, and we shouldn't pay any taxes. When most residents, according to polling and election results, feel that businesses like - mega corporations are not paying their fair share. There is a conversation to be had - some kind of income inequality and differences in access and challenges that small businesses are facing compared to large businesses. It's kind of similar to what lower income people are facing in comparison to larger income people. Small businesses are having problems affording rent - that's a really, really, really big issue - they are suffering from predatory rent increases. Also, that's putting people out of business. But there's a lot to be discussed. And if you talk to business owners - we've done shows with different business interests - and their needs are broad and varied and they should be listened to, they are part of the community. But we do need to talk about them as part of the community and not as this super entity or something like that. So that's what those questions were looking to get at.
And then just some perspective stuff - asking if they're happy with Seattle's waterfront, asking about return to work mandates - just helping to further get inside their minds, how they think, what their perspective is, where they're coming from, and who and what they may be sympathetic to as interests and as bills - when that comes up. Transportation and transit related questions - we have absolutely seen a difference in engagement and thoughtfulness, willingness to fund and include provisions that are helpful for pedestrians and people on transit, people riding bikes from leaders who actually use them. And we suffer when leaders are responsible for transit policy who don't use and ride transit - all sorts of distorted and weird policy and perspectives come out when we have people governing systems that they don't themselves engage with. And so we asked those questions to try and see - are you actually using the system? Because we hear different things from people who do take them versus things that don't. And just, that's a useful thing to know. Similarly, Pike Place car traffic is something that we talk about - just another one of those perspective things in there.
We obviously asked about the upcoming revenue shortfall in the City of Seattle for $224 million. Everyone is going to have to contend with that. Every candidate on the campaign trail, every candidate that we interviewed has talked about wanting to implement new things that are going to require additional revenue, that are going to require resources. And we're moving into - Okay, we're going to have fewer resources and either we're gonna need to raise revenue or make cuts. And so it's just not a serious position to be in to say we should be doing all of these other things - these new things that require revenue - when there's going to be less of it. And everyone is kind of dodgy usually when it comes to cutting things, but they're going to need - odds are it's gonna be a combination of cuts and attempting to pursue new revenue. If someone is saying they aren't gonna pursue that, then we need to view their other plans that do require revenue differently. If someone is saying, I'm gonna go after revenue hard - that's great, but we should also know if there are any cuts that they think they may need to do. Revenue may take a while to come in. We will probably need to do some trimming in the meantime - just because the City's mandated to have a balanced budget. And so that's something real that they're gonna have to contend with. And those are really hard decisions. And you can see how hard they are by how unwilling or unable candidates are to answer how they're gonna prioritize cutting, where they think they should come from. If revenue doesn't pass or come through, what does that mean? How are you gonna approach that? And we do need to press on those tough decisions 'cause those are gonna be really consequential things.
And I think sometimes candidates - we've talked about this on this show before - think that just like the hard part is running, and then you get elected, and then you can exhale. Running for office is the easy part - it only gets harder - and the spotlight on you gets hotter and brighter when you actually do have to make a decision that's consequential for the people in the city. And so we should poke and prod about that and try to get as specific as we can. We don't always do perfectly with that - I'm reflecting on the answers that we got. There were so many vague answers - and try and poke and prod - and some people just don't wanna answer specifically, or just are unable to answer specifically. But hopefully, as you said before, that is an indication that they should think about that seriously. And they're gonna need a game plan 'cause it's coming and they're going to have to deal with that. And it's going to be bad if they just start engaging with that after they take office and have to really make those decisions and move forward with it.
[00:40:16] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I mean - I feel like in response to that question in particular, we heard a lot of answers to the effect of - Well, we need to look at the existing budget and look at where there are inefficiencies and you know, blah, blah, blah. And I am curious how many of those candidates - we have an entire City Budget staff, right? - who works on that kind of stuff and auditing. It's not like there aren't people looking at that. I just wonder how much have those candidates engaged with what is already out there? Have they found things that have been already identified? Would that even be in their process of trying to figure out how to reallocate resources, if that's the way they're going to go?
[00:40:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And with these - I think it's important - obviously I have my own perspective, and I think it's important to ask questions and to frame them appropriately for the moment and for what's happening. And when I ask a question, I do - with these - try to give people a fair shot to respond, to give whatever their response is, right? I'm not going to cut them off in their response. I want voters to be able to hear what they think - even if I disagree with what they think, they get to hear what they think. But one observation I do have certainly, and formed definitely from working with candidates over the years, is that - we do hear, we heard a lot, we heard more than I was comfortable with, like, Oh, we do need to take a look at that. We need to start to understand where this stuff is. We need to ask tough questions. Like, you decided to run for office. This information has been out there, it's publicly available. There's a ton of information and resources just on the City website itself to walk you through the budget - each budget process - and hearings and a ton of Information. That's not usually where the issue is. The issue is when it's time to make a decision about what to cut, people are hesitant to do that. They're afraid of making people mad. And so we have these situations where candidates either don't feel like they need to come with a game plan, but we are in multiple crises. We need people who are saying - Okay, I have talked to community, I have done homework on what's happening, and this is my plan for what I think will fix it. We need people coming with solutions. We need people coming for proposals. That's the job. The job isn't to ponder and examine and to have endless meetings, right? That's part of the problem in Seattle and many places is that they want to task force something to death and workgroup it and blah, blah, blah. And then we end up in the same place that we were.
I do hope that they get some more concrete solutions and process because that is going to enable them to hit the ground running. And it really does make a difference. If you don't understand the budget - the basics of the budget - just the, you know, like not every line item, that's a really hard thing to do. But have you even bothered to go on the City website and look at the budget documents they do have? Have you bothered to read and recall where some of the major issues of funding and major decisions were before? If you haven't, maybe you should. Maybe that would help inform you as to what's possible. You know, even if you think there's waste, fraud, and abuse - as they talk about with all that stuff - well, where specifically? 'Cause that general nebulous thing of we've been - it's not like this is the first rodeo with the City with a budget shortcut, it's not like all of that. And I'm not saying that there's nothing that can be reallocated - that should be looked at - but that information is out there and available. You can find that out. And I'm continually surprised - not necessarily surprised - I'm continuously dismayed by the number of candidates who say - Oh, I don't know that. You know, how can we know that? Or I'm not sure, I haven't looked into it yet. Well, look into it. You decided to run for office - get it together, figure out what you wanna do, and share that. But it's a risky proposition to have someone go - You know, I need to figure out what's going on, we need to look into that, I'm not sure what it's gonna be. And meanwhile, trust me to make this decision. Based on what? That's my personal opinion - that was a little venty, but I do feel strongly about that. And as a political consultant who works with candidates and gotten people up to speed on this kind of stuff - people can do better. People can do better. People need to be better. The city needs the people to be better, to deal with stuff like this.
Anywho.
We also asked about climate change and specifically 2030 climate goals. This is happening amidst a backdrop where it seems like every major body - 5, 10 years ago, people were like, Yay, we're totally gonna make these 2030 goals. We take climate change super seriously, and we've set forth these ambitious targets that we're gonna achieve. Everybody loved announcing those goals and that those goals reflected their commitment and blah, blah, blah - which is part of my problem sometimes, celebrating the press release instead of delivering the result. But when it came time to make the tough decisions in order to get there, they punted, punted, punted, punted until we've gotten a rash of announcements over the past couple of years that - Yeah, so those 2030 goals, we're not gonna hit them, but we're totally gonna hit our 2050 goals, right? And so if we can't hit this milestone, this benchmark, we're not gonna be on track for that. And the issue really is people just don't wanna make the decisions that are necessary to get there, right? Like, incrementalism isn't gonna get us there. And we are experiencing the impacts of climate change and it's not pretty, and it's not gonna get any better, right? Like this is the best it's going to be for a long, long time - and it's worrisome. So this is important. And specifically, it is 2023 - 2030 is right around the corner. There's a lot that can be done. And there's a lot of money being raised by the carbon credit auctions from the Climate Commitment Act. There's a lot of investment available throughout the state. Do they have plans to pursue and get some of the - what are the plans here? But we need to get on track and be serious about 2030, get back on track for 2030. 'Cause if we can't hit that, we can't hit anything. And we're in for a world of hurt. It's a serious thing.
[00:46:22] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I mean, I think it's trying to understand - does this candidate have or feel a sense of urgency around this? Are we actually gonna put a honest effort into trying to meet these goals? And what are their ideas about how to do that? Because as you said, we needed to be doing this stuff yesterday, but the next best time to do it is starting now. And so what is the plan?
[00:46:47] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and there were some candidates - a couple that I'm thinking of - that had some good concrete ideas for this. There were others who very much did not. But also with this - candidates also learn from each other during the campaign trail. And one thing that I do think that we need to do is to encourage that more. The more candidates can learn - like actually engage with solutions - is a good thing. Sometimes - obviously if someone's biting a speech word-for-word, which happens sometimes in politics with candidates - that is irritating, especially for the people in campaigns sometimes. But if there's a good idea and someone else is - You know what, that makes sense. - that's a good thing. We should encourage that. And so I do hope - with a number of these responses, and definitely this one too - that people pay attention to what other candidates, even if they aren't in their same district, say because there are some good workable, achievable plans and ideas on the table that could definitely help. And if a candidate hasn't really engaged with that or thought about it before, there are other candidates who are great resources for them.
[00:47:51] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I think so. I think my experience, having gone through all these candidate interviews, is just every candidate is unique and is coming from a different place to run for office. And they do come with different expertise and experience. And so I think it is kind of a helpful resource to look at for other candidates, whoever ends up getting elected, people who are just concerned about our community as a whole. What are these candidates talking about as being the issue? Why are they stepping up to do something that - to me, sounds like an awful thing to have to do - put yourself out there, and get scrutinized, and knock on doors every free moment of your life. I don't know - I mean - but they wanna do it.
[00:48:35] Crystal Fincher: Shannon is a notorious introvert, yes.
[00:48:38] Shannon Cheng: They wanna do it. And there's a reason why. And maybe listening and trying to understand - what is that reason and what can we do about it? What are they saying would be helpful to them to address the thing that got them to do this incredibly hard thing?
[00:48:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. Another question we asked was just - was about childcare, which is a really, really big deal. We talk about - housing is on everyone's mind, it's on everyone's agenda because it's such a major expense and it keeps rising wildly. It is unsustainable, right, in this situation. The number two expense for most families, which sometimes creeps into number one with multiple children, is childcare. We talk about groceries, we talk about gas and people definitely feel those, but people are feeling childcare in a way that is wild. It's more expensive than college and college is wildly unaffordable, right? This is so expensive and it directly impacts whether people can work - period - whether people can participate in this economy. It is cost prohibitive to get childcare for a lot of people. It's cheaper just not to work, right? And that impacts people's upward mobility, likelihood to be in poverty, to be able to get out of poverty if you are in, whether they're going to need government assistance, right? This impacts so many different things. And the way kids develop depends on the quality of care that they receive from early childhood on. And so this is directly impacting many families, indirectly impacting everyone in the community - from businesses, the regional economy, other parents, community members. And so we don't talk about it enough still. There are a lot of people who are and that's awesome and great, but I think it needs to be elevated even more. And for anyone who's talking about issues of affordability, who's talking about inflation, who's talking about just families having a hard time dealing with expenses - you cannot have that conversation in any credible way without talking about the cost and accessibility of childcare. So that's why we talked about that.
And then, just general - Why are you running? What are the differences between you and your opponent? I will tell you - just from my perspective as a political - this is a question that I would ask candidates before deciding to work with them. And I'm looking, in that question, to hear specific and tangible things that they wanna do for their community. It is a big red flag when that answer doesn't include how they want to help people. If the answer is just about them - Well, you know, this was the time for me and lots of people came to me and like, blah, blah, blah. People know - different jurisdictions are different. They suit different leadership types, personality types - depending on what you wanna do. So is this someone who's running for every open position available under the sun? Or do they have something specific that they wanna do in the role that they're seeking? Do you have something tangible you wanna accomplish? People should have tangible things they want to accomplish, and not just running for vanity or because power is attractive, or it's something to put on the resume or whatever - run to accomplish something to help people. I am drawn to people who are rooted in that and have answers with that. I will say just in my experience overall - that determines how someone, absolutely determines how someone governs, how consistent they are to governing - and the way that they ran absolutely has an impact on that. And even beyond, even for candidates who lose, right? Usually candidates who are like - You know, I'm running because I see this as a problem impacting lots of people, and I think that I can be part of the solution in fixing it. - is that if, even if they lose, right, they still stay engaged in the community and working on that. You can see the motivation is not power for me - to them. It is actually doing something to help the community. And so, I look at a variety of different people who've run over the years, and it's interesting to see the people who are still active in community versus those who just disappear. And it was like a phase - them wanting to be involved. Now that's - obviously there's nuance to this conversation - people don't owe their lives to serving and all that kind of stuff. But if you are saying this is an important part of who you are, it seems like that would continue beyond a campaign and that you would see consistency there. So that for me, as a person who is either deciding who I'm gonna vote for, or who I'm gonna work with or in support of - that answer matters a lot to me. That motivation matters a lot to me. How do you see it?
[00:53:17] Shannon Cheng: I agree with a lot of what you just said. What I really liked about the interviews we did was that opportunity you gave them to just talk without time limits that forums often impose. And it was refreshing to kind of hear people kind of being more their authentic self. And I think that's just - I don't know that I can describe it, right? But I think just you have to listen and hear how they talk about things. And that was - there were many candidates who came on who, just based on reading, doing all the research ahead of time for their interview and reading about them - and then when they came on, they were not what I expected. I mean, some were. But there were some surprises as well. And I mean, that was, it was really great to - ultimately, these candidates are all people. And I think on the campaign trail and it can get heated - sometimes it can get kind of boiled down to a caricature almost, or just what their campaign website makes them out to look like. And I don't know that that really is the most informative in terms of understanding who these people actually are. And for me, that just feels like - I wanna know that the people who are making these hard decisions for myself, and people I care about, and neighbors who I care about - even if I don't know them directly - I just want them to be good people.
[00:54:45] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I want them to care. I want them to see the people and the humanity. I want them to not see statistics. I want them to understand that it's people. I want them to not celebrate the fact that they - it's fine and good - Hey, we passed something. But that then has to be implemented in a way that is felt by the people who it's intended to help. And if that doesn't happen, it all doesn't matter. And I feel like we don't pay enough attention to that part of it a lot. And so I personally, as a voter, am looking for people who understand that and who at least value writing legislation that has a reasonable shot at being implemented well and can deliver on the result. And who track that and who are willing to course correct there and not just paper over things that may not be great and act as if they are - 'cause the goal is to help people.
I do wanna talk about - so we took a little bit of a different approach to editing. Candidate interviews - I know how things can get in campaigns and being a candidate is not easy, it's nerve-wracking and being in these interviews - and editing can make people sound better, sound worse. Sometimes people take a pause to consider, or - and that is a, Shoot, I don't know, or like, will say different things, right? And so the approach that we took to candidate interviews - particularly when we had both candidates in the race - we wanted to present them as straightforwardly as we could, to basically not edit their answers. Because there was a lot - we would lose things on a variety of sides, right? And my goal is to not interject our presentation of the candidate. It's to give you the candidate. And I think people can hear throughout these interviews that you can hear someone thinking, you can hear someone processing, you can hear someone being - dodging, or like really contending with someone - like that whole thing mattered. And it seemed like we didn't - editing that, that was just gonna be a no-win situation for - Are we making someone look better? Are we making someone look worse? Are we interjecting what we think into there? So we actually decided just to - sometimes I would flub up a question, right? And like that's edited out, but we let candidates just answer and let their answers be their answers. And you can hear them. And they are people, right? And this isn't easy. And people can be super nervous in an interview, right? Like this is - I get nervous sometimes before I do things - that's totally fair. So I - if someone - I'm not looking for someone to sound perfect or perfectly polished, right? There are some times you can sound too polished. But just to give people an accurate impression of who they are, and how they're engaging with the answer, and can make their own call on whatever that is. But basically it was like - we don't record live, but you got the answer as though it was. So that's the approach that we took there. 'Cause we did get a couple of questions on - Are these edited? Or like, How, like, are you going to do that? Or like, Did you, you know, take - No, that's, that's exactly how it happened.
[00:57:50] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, we cut out things like coughing fits or the ever-present train siren behind Crystal.
[00:57:57] Crystal Fincher: Yes, yes.
[00:57:58] Shannon Cheng: Otherwise - tried to keep it real. I mean, you know, our goal with this project is to educate people about who they are going to make choices between and hopefully inform them in that decision that's coming up. November 7th!
[00:58:13] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You can register to vote online. Even if you have been convicted of a felony and have been incarcerated, the moment you are released, you are eligible to re-register and vote again. Just be involved in making this decision. Voting locally is really important. It's more consequential than all the federal stuff that's going on. Although we hear wall-to-wall coverage and every news program every night is talking about Congress and the president - and not that that's not important. But like, look at how different states are. Look at how different Washington and Alabama are. Look at how different Forks and Seattle and Cle Elum and Spokane and Ellensburg - that is how much control cities have over who they are and how they operate. It can be as different as all of these different cities. They can be night and day difference. And that is all the impact of these local officials that we're electing in the elections that we're having this November. So that's why I do this show. It's really, really important to talk about this stuff and not enough people do regularly. And I'm not saying that it's easy - we make it hard for people to understand and participate in these issues. So just trying to make that more accessible to more people and to help understand where it may be helpful to focus and consider and engage. But this matters, and it matters to try and elect people who will actually deliver on the policy that you think they should be delivering and implementing. So that's why we did this and appreciate you listening to our little explainer about our approach.
[00:59:47] Shannon Cheng: Thank you everyone!
[00:59:48] Crystal Fincher: Thank you!
Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this topical show re-air, Crystal chats with Bothell Mayor Mason Thompson about what got him engaged in public service, what issues are top of mind in Bothell, and how he approaches making meaningful change when the system is biased to keep things the same.
Mayor Thompson believes that continuing as we always have will only make our current problems worse, that it’s impossible to make everyone happy, and chooses to prioritize real fixes even in the face of opposition from those comfortable with the status quo. He makes the case for diversified zoning in Bothell as a solution to multiple problems his community faces - creating affordable housing, minimizing ballooning infrastructure costs associated with sprawl, relieving upward pressure on taxes, improving traffic conditions, and addressing climate change.
The conversation wraps up with a call to action for those who are empathetic, curious, and driven to make the world a better place - to plug in, to not underestimate themselves, to not overestimate those in power, and to have confidence in listening to and advocating for their community.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Mayor Mason Thompson at @electmasont.
Mayor Mason Thompson
Mason is the Mayor of Bothell. He grew up in the area, went to the University of Washington, and stayed home to raise his family in Bothell. He found politics a few years ago, and after getting involved quickly realized how much local government needs to change and how resistant the system is to change. So he spends a lot of time talking about issues like housing and transportation to highlight how change is not just necessary, it's beneficial. He's finishing up his first term in office and won his first re-election this year.
Resources
City of Bothell
“Ambitious Planning and a Decade of Growth Are Transforming Downtown Bothell” by Natalie Bicknell Argerious from The Urbanist
“Thompson captures Bothell City Council post by 5 votes” by Jerry Cornfield from Everett Herald
“Bothell Legalizes Duplexes on Corner Lots and Trims Red Tape” by Stephen Fesler from The Urbanist
“Bothell Preserves Main Street Pilot, Discarding Arguments About Hurting Transit” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
“Bothell Finds Its Long-Term Vision for a Citywide Bike Plan” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
If you know me, you know that I'm very excited for our conversation today with our guest: the mayor of Bothell, Mason Thompson. Welcome to the program.
[00:01:04] Mayor Mason Thompson: Thank you, Crystal. It's really fun to be here. I really enjoy listening to the show, so it's cool to be on this side of the fence too.
[00:01:10] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. I appreciate it. I have been following you for quite some time - haven't known you personally, but have followed - as you were running, and what you've been doing while mayor, and have just found it really inspiring and interesting. I think starting out - I'm just curious and I think a lot of people are curious about what got you interested in public service.
[00:01:33] Mayor Mason Thompson: I think it is everybody's responsibility to do whatever they can to make the world a better place. And not everybody can, and this looks different for everybody - it's not an expectation I'm putting on people, but I feel a pretty deep conviction that that's my responsibility. And there were basically two things that got me involved in city politics the first go around. The first is that the City purchased a former golf course, and I thought there should be mountain bike trails there. So I joined the Parks Board knowing that I didn't have any decision-making authority, but it gave me access to the conversation and kind of thought - Hey, what can I do with this? Let's just run an experiment and see if I can make this happen. The other thing that happened right around the same time is Donald Trump got elected. And that's just one of those moments in time that make you realize that there is nobody riding in on a horse to save us. And if we don't all do everything that we can to make the world a better place, then people like him do. So I got involved with the City on the Parks Board because I wanted to see mountain bike trails. And then I got involved with the 1st LD as a PCO because I wanted to get involved on the partisan side as well. And because of reasons, nine months later I got asked to run for city council and said yes, and here we are.
[00:02:50] Crystal Fincher: Nice. So what is Bothell like? What's the lay of the land in Bothell?
[00:02:55] Mayor Mason Thompson: Bothell is a suburb that is far enough from the core that we haven't seen housing prices go up to a point where everybody who wants to change things has mostly been excluded. So we're in a really cool position where we have the ability to do things that are a little different that involve some change. And we've seen this since well before I got involved in local politics - our downtown has changed quite a bit and I wasn't in any way involved in that, but I'm also grateful it happened even though the people that did that aren't my traditional allies. So we have a bunch of people in Bothell that want to change the world and want to actually meaningfully address the biggest challenges we face, which involves change. There's no way to status quo our way out of our problems. So I'm really fortunate that I'm surrounded by a lot of really incredibly talented people up here that want to make change and want to make the world a better place for our kids.
[00:03:51] Crystal Fincher: So what was running for office in Bothell like?
[00:03:55] Mayor Mason Thompson: It was terrible. Running for office sucks. My opponent had every advantage - a lot of money, hired great consultants - I did not have a consultant when I ran. And I knew that the only path I had to success was just to work really hard. So I knocked on doors all year - I set my schedule up so I could do it. And on election night, I was down about 86 votes, I think. And so I had the whole ballot chasing experience - three days before certification, we were actually tied for a day. I get to tell the story about how I was knocking on doors trying to get people to cure their ballots, and somebody said on that exact day - Well, I didn't think my vote would actually make a difference. And I got to tell him - Sir, if you had voted right now, your vote would be the difference in this race because as of today, we're tied and certification is in a couple of days. So I ended up winning by 5 votes - we had two recounts because Bothell is in King and Snohomish County. And I didn't find out I won until the middle of December sometime. So I feel like I got the full experience, and I'm ready for an easier experience this go around 'cause that all sucked - but here we are.
[00:05:04] Crystal Fincher: Here we are. And that's really interesting and really curious - sometimes people have this romanticized idea of running for office and it's tough. It's a tough thing to do. Did you learn anything, or did your perspective change or broaden as a result of talking to so many residents while you were running?
[00:05:24] Mayor Mason Thompson: Absolutely. And I tell candidates now that I think it's the most important thing they can do - not just to get elected, but so you truly understand where your community is at and what people think about things. And the great thing about canvassing and knocking on doors is people aren't self-selected by who shows up to council meetings. So you're not getting the standard group of people that know council meetings exist, that have the spare time to do it, that care about certain issues in the community. You get, I think, a much broader perspective of where your community is at. So when I came on board, I had some pretty decent convictions around where my community was at and that gave me a lot more confidence to actually advocate for change because I think the community is behind a lot of the things I care about.
[00:06:11] Crystal Fincher: So what does the community care about? What are the issues that are top of mind in Bothell?
[00:06:18] Mayor Mason Thompson: I'm gonna back up a second because you said running for office people have this romanticized idea of - and running for office for me was mostly knocking on doors and hearing everybody complain about the things they don't like. That is what running for office was. And the two things that really bubbled up to the top that everybody likes is the fact that housing is really completely inaccessible to almost everybody that hasn't acquired it a long time ago. And whether or not you have housing, you have kids, you have family - you know somebody that's trying to acquire housing right now and no matter how bad you think it is, it's probably worse. The other thing that people talk about a lot is, frankly, the inconvenience of our transportation system. And they don't always say that. They'll say things like, "I can't find anywhere to park. It takes me 20 minutes to get to the freeway. Traffic is terrible." And the inherent inconvenience of everybody getting around in cars is something that everybody recognizes and also something that I feel like we need to address - because we've already paved almost 18% of Bothell for people to drive on, and I think that's enough. And we should do better - not just try the same things even harder than we already have - because those things have caused all of the problems that people told me they don't like when I ran.
[00:07:39] Crystal Fincher: How has the reaction been to the approach that you're taking?
[00:07:44] Mayor Mason Thompson: Not universally positive. Anytime you want to make change, you're going to rile some feathers, especially folks that have been involved in creating the status quo or folks that benefit from it. But honestly, I think that the general electorate is a pretty long way ahead of where most elected officials and most government structures are in terms of the actual things we need to do to change our problems. And when you have a quick second to chat with somebody and you can ask them what they really care about, everybody wants something to change. And all of our systems are set up to bias toward keeping things exactly the same. Mostly, I think people are pretty on board with a lot of the things I want to do and I hope that, because I'm taking everything I learned from them when I knocked on a lot of doors and just putting that into practice.
[00:08:35] Crystal Fincher: So that's interesting that you talk about - whenever you want to change, obviously some people are not going to be happy about it and there's going to be some opposition. We see in a lot of jurisdictions and in a lot of different ways, leaders who run on principles who say they truly believe in making change and they have a vision on what could happen. But when opposition comes, they fold. How do you approach still maintaining your values, working despite opposition to achieve the kind of change that you want?
[00:09:11] Mayor Mason Thompson: The governor recently quoted John Lovick as having said something like, "The only thing we hate more than the way things are is the possibility that those things might change." And change is scary, change people see as loss, and change is unfortunately also the only way that we're going to actually meaningfully address any of our problems. And fundamentally, I think that is the job of every elected official - is to meaningfully address the biggest challenges that we face. But when you try to do that, it requires change and that is always uncomfortable because there are always things that we won't know about what the future looks like with change. And people will bring up all the different things that we don't know that could possibly happen, instead of prioritizing fixing the negative things that are happening right now. So you get all of these voices - some people saying, Do this, some people saying, Don't do this. And the easiest thing to do is to try to make everybody happy. And usually what we wanna hear is - Yeah, I care about all the things that you care about, but I also care about keeping things in a way that you're comfortable with. And it's really hard, I think it's impossible to walk that line. So I just don't try - I am here to make the world a better place.
And I will happily tell people my convictions around righting historic wrongs around climate, around actually fixing some of the problems that we have. And I'm not here to say anything negative about the path that other people take. But I will also say that when you do run for office and you win, there's a significant amount of pressure to go along to get along. There's the cool kids elected club, and you go to different organizations that are groups of cities and everybody circles the wagons. And it's really, I think, a way for people to belong to something, which is important, which is something we all care about. But I keep my eye on the prize and think that my job is to meaningfully address the biggest challenges we face. And there's no way to make everyone happy. So I'm not gonna try.
[00:11:20] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. There really is no way to keep everyone happy, but making changes certainly can keep people happier over the long-term - seems like you're absolutely willing to do that. You talked about housing. What is the current housing situation in Bothell? What's your split between homeowners and renters, and home prices? What is the housing situation in Bothell right now?
[00:11:43] Mayor Mason Thompson: The median single-family - or the median home price, not single-family home - the median home price in Bothell, I think, is just under a million dollars right now. It was a little over a year ago. And if you've got $200,000 to put down and can afford a $5,000/month house payment, that's attainable for you. And if you can't - good luck, I guess - move somewhere else. And we reserve about 65% of our land right now for the most expensive housing type that is the most expensive for the City to upkeep, that pushes tax pressure upwards because the maintenance cost for that built environment is really high. And those areas produce the most children and having children is creating demand for new housing. And we limit our growth mostly to the 35% of the area where we allow different housing types. And I'm working really hard to change that because that's at the root of everything that my community told me they cared about. If you want traffic to get better, the answer is not to push everybody out farther apart and only allow one type of thing in the neighborhood. All that's doing is requiring people to drive farther on your roads, which is more maintenance costs, which is more traffic, and you get all of people's cars and none of their humanity. If we allow people to live there, we get everything that makes us human, including probably a car or two, because that's the way that we've decided we want people to get around.
[00:13:12] Crystal Fincher: That's an interesting talking point. And I think Seattle, certainly in King County - largest city in the county, largest city in the state - and has a finite amount of land that can be built within. That's different than a lot of suburbs in the area where it is possible to build out. The challenges come with sprawl when you build out. What are the economic impacts, the impacts to city infrastructure? What is the cost of continuing to not use your land effectively and efficiently, and continue to expand and build single-family homes and developments seemingly without end?
[00:13:57] Mayor Mason Thompson: Before I get into the costs, I guess I'll just say that everything that we don't like about the way things are is caused by the decisions that we've made in the past. And if we keep everything the way that it is right now, what's gonna happen is all of our problems are gonna keep getting worse. And we have a ton of problems - every city does. I'm not aware of any city that has an actual plan to maintain their roads over the long term. We have what's called a Safe Streets and Sidewalks Levy, and we have enough roads in Bothell to reach to Spokane. And those are just our city-owned roads, not the three or four different state highways that go through town. And those were all built out - about half of Bothell was built out when it was unincorporated. Most of Bothell was built out - '70s, '80s - and we're reaching the end of that infrastructure life cycle. And we have a levy that is around, I think, a third of the total property taxes that people pay to the City. And almost all of that, we're just using to maintain roads - and it's not enough. So the more people drive, the more they are traffic - because traffic is just people driving cars - but there's also a pretty significant infrastructure cost that we're gonna have to find a way to pay for someday.
And when you're in my position, going back to the voters and asking for more money every couple of years - that's not a great, it's not great for your career prospects. So one of the things I'm really interested in doing is trying to solve multiple problems at once - where we allow more housing in between all of the other housing that already exists on roads that we already have an obligation to maintain, and we can realize more tax revenue per acre in the land that we have without requiring any more infrastructure. And so if you can add revenue and reduce the amount of added costs, then we've got a chance at structurally fixing this thing that is broken. And we had a company called Urban3 come out and do a land evaluation for Bothell. And we know that in Bothell, the average fourplex kicks off double the tax revenue per acre that the average single-family home does. And most of those fourplexes were built in 40s, 50s - back when they were legal - and they're old and run down. And the single-family homes are a lot newer, a lot nicer, and that fourplex still outperforms the single-family home from a tax revenue per acre. It doesn't matter - I guess the cost of the road frontage and maintaining it is the same no matter how many people live behind it. And the more people that live behind it, the more hands we have on deck to help pay the bills - and many hands make light work.
[00:16:28] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So what are you doing to try and make and keep housing more affordable in Bothell?
[00:16:36] Mayor Mason Thompson: I guess the first step is simply opening up that 65% of Bothell's residential land that we've deemed untouchable for any future development. We have a middle housing code amendment that's going on in parallel with what's going on at the state right now. And we're paying pretty close attention to what's going on with the state, because - boy, if they pass something, it'll be a whole lot easier for us. But if they don't, we're ready, we're working on it. And honestly, just making more modest housing types legal to build. This isn't a requirement - we're not making it illegal to build a single-family home. But if somebody wants to build something more modest, I don't see why they shouldn't be able to. So we also have some different growth centers in town that we're looking at, and we have our comp plan coming up. And we are looking at different ways to integrate residential and commercial to reduce the amount of times people have to get in their car. 'Cause there's really only two ways to make traffic better - either people take fewer trips in their car, or they have to drive less for the trips that they do take.
So when I look at how to make all of our problems better - allowing infill housing and building more housing in between all the housing that already exists makes housing less expensive and makes traffic better, because people have to drive fewer miles and take fewer trips in their car. It reduces the upward pressure on taxes because we have more folks to help pay the bills. Another thing about infill housing - we are limited in property taxes to raising it 1% per year. Inflation was 10% last year. So the City took a huge haircut, bigger than we normally do. And we need to figure out how we're gonna pay for stuff, and how we're gonna reverse this upward pressure on property taxes that we have 'cause nobody likes that. And when we build new housing - that's not subject to the 1% - we get to take all of that. So we've really got a way to address almost all of our biggest issues - and I haven't even touched on the climate impacts, my gosh. But just by allowing more housing closer to all the other housing, we touch just about every issue that people in Bothell find important.
[00:18:44] Crystal Fincher: Do most people live and work in Bothell? Do they commute out and drive back? What is that situation like?
[00:18:52] Mayor Mason Thompson: Most people commute out and drive back in Bothell. We do have a pretty substantial group that lives in Bothell, but they're definitely a minority - that live and work. And we have people that go in every direction. We have people that go north toward Everett, Snohomish County - think Boeing employees. We have a significant amount that will take 522 into Seattle. And we have a significant amount that work on the Eastside. But we're mostly a commuter suburb, and we have also a significant amount of people that live outside of Bothell that come into Bothell to work. Now, if we can build housing for those people - to me, that looks like a capture opportunity, because we already have their cars. They're already driving here, they're already parking here, they're already adding maintenance costs to our roads every time they drive through it. Why shouldn't we realize some tax revenue and some of their humanity at the same time? One thing I think gets lost in the conversation about adding more residents is that - yeah, when more residents come, they're probably gonna have cars. And they might be traffic sometimes, like you, because they drive them. But that's not all you get from them. You get more kids for your kids to play with. You get more people to go on a walk when you see. You get more folks to hang out on long summer nights, and maybe crack a beer, and chat with a neighbor. People don't just bring the things you don't like. They bring their full humanity, and I think that more people makes for a stronger community not a weaker one.
[00:20:25] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So what approach are you taking to try and capture more of those people? You talk about infill housing, allowing more housing. Is there anything happening on just the attracting businesses front? What does economic development look like in Bothell?
[00:20:43] Mayor Mason Thompson: Economic development - Bothell has decided over the years that we wanted to stay this quiet suburb, that we don't wanna be a place where all the chain stores go. So we don't have - I think, fortunately - as much sort of strip mall retail as a lot of our neighbors do. I'm keenly interested in small neighborhood businesses, or even just small businesses in a downtown neighborhood - and having more small retail space so we can have that incubator where residents who wanna start a business can do so in Bothell. This drives me nuts because we have two residents that I know personally that have started businesses in the last couple of years - one went to Mill Creek and one went to Woodinville. They both wanted to be in Bothell, but we just don't have small, accessible retail space. So I think that's a big part of economic development.
Another part is that we need to go out and tell the story about why people like living in Bothell so we can try to attract larger businesses. Because on a budget economic development side, they make a much bigger difference. We have the Canyon Park Business Center with a huge biotech hub. We have North Creek with a lot of different technology in it. And I want to see more larger companies try to utilize those spaces and take advantage of, honestly, a lot of the different housing opportunities that are coming to Bothell and the fact that people like living here - so we can get more economic development and more money from those folks so we can, again, reduce that upward pressure on taxes that we see from current residents, and pay to make Bothell a cooler, more vibrant city.
[00:22:13] Crystal Fincher: How do businesses respond to attempts to make Bothell more livable, more walkable, suitable for people using all different types of mobility options? Are they pretty welcoming with that? Are they open to removal of parking and more mobility infrastructure? How has that been?
[00:22:35] Mayor Mason Thompson: Businesses follow people and businesses want to land someplace that their folks want to live - that is attractive - because that's gonna help them compete for a scarce resource of talent. And we have a lot of talent in the area, but we also have a lot of companies competing for it. So the folks that I've talked to want a place where their people can afford to live close to home. I forget what the number is, but there's some massive dollar amount difference that you have to earn to have the same level of happiness depending on the length of your commute. So they want to go someplace that is - A) there's enough population nearby that likes living there so that they can have employees that want to work for them and want to take advantage of a short commute.
Parking minimums - I have yet to talk to a business that is really excited about us making them subsidize our problem against their will. And parking minimums are a tax that we place on housing and businesses that we use to subsidize getting more traffic and climate change - they're a bad deal. The promise is that - I'll back up a little bit - nobody likes other people's cars. Their car is the only righteous car, and other people's cars are traffic and in the parking spot that they want to take. Everybody agrees on this. The problem is that when we say our solution is that we're gonna mandate people to give more space to cars, what we get is more cars. If we turned Bothell City Hall into a pizza restaurant and we gave away a thousand pizzas a day, do you think Bothell would eat more or less pizza?
[00:24:14] Crystal Fincher: They would eat more pizza.
[00:24:15] Mayor Mason Thompson: Right? It's pretty obvious. So if we force people to build a lot more parking spots and we force a lot more infrastructure for cars and then we give it away to them for free, do we think people are gonna use more or less of it? It's the same question. They're gonna use more. This idea that there's a fixed amount of demand for people driving is silly because if nobody ever built a road, we would not have any cars because there would be no place to drive them and then we would walk everywhere 'cause it would be easier to get around. So the problem is - is when we expect business to solve our problem of too many people's cars by creating more space for them, we really just make our problems worse. And it's not just the problem that we're trying to solve for there, it's all of our other problems. Because there's a finite amount of space in cities and we have to choose - what do we want here? Do we want parking here? Do we want housing here? Do we want businesses here? And every time you choose one thing, you say no to something else. So we haven't tried to address parking minimums citywide yet in Bothell - I personally believe that they are harmful and shouldn't exist.
[00:25:22] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. Now you referenced climate earlier - what is Bothell doing to try and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and pollution of all varieties?
[00:25:33] Mayor Mason Thompson: We're trying to make it legal to build more housing closer together. And it's not just the middle housing - we have a few different areas that we have recently upzoned quite a bit, like Canyon Park we finished the master plan up for, we've allowed micro housing citywide in the - I shouldn't say citywide - in that 35% that we allow people to do it in.
[00:25:51] Crystal Fincher: So you mentioned climate change earlier and the impacts that not allowing diverse types of housing - restricting development and the impact on both city budgets and climate change that has. What else is Bothell doing to address climate change and pollution?
[00:26:09] Mayor Mason Thompson: I don't want to minimize the impact that building more housing in between all of the other housing that exists has on climate. It is one of the best things that we can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and that's a big part of our strategy. We are also adopting the provisions of what used to be 1099 - I think it's 1181 this year - and we're doing that with a grant from Commerce. And we've also recently - over the last say, 5 or 10 years - preserved a lot of open space in Bothell. We have the Wayne Golf Course that I mentioned earlier, we have the North Creek Forest. There's another organization up in Snohomish County Bothell - there's a parcel land up there, Shelton View, that we haven't acquired but we are keenly interested in doing so if there's a path. So I will say from a preservation point of view, we're working on that. But also just an understanding that building more Bothell in between the Bothell that already exists - isn't just the best thing we can do to address our biggest problems that we see every day as a city, it's also the best thing that we can do for the long-term problem of climate change.
[00:27:14] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. What does homelessness look like in Bothell?
[00:27:19] Mayor Mason Thompson: I wasn't expecting this question. I think homelessness in Bothell looks a lot like it does in every other suburb - where Seattle is the only city that is trying to do something about it, so everybody goes there - we offload our homeless problem to Seattle because there are resources down there, and then we blame Seattle for the problem that we had a hand in creating. There's not a lot of visible homelessness in Bothell - a one-bedroom apartment I think is around $2,200-2,400 right now as a median rent, so the median rent isn't much different than in some of our bigger, traditionally more expensive neighborhoods. But again, homelessness is a housing problem. And I wanna be part of the solution to homelessness, regardless of whether or not there's a lot of visible homelessness in Bothell, because people are suffering and people need places to live. So I will just say that those micro units that we've allowed - those smaller, traditionally more affordable types of housing that don't cost as much to build - are a really, really, really important part of dealing with homelessness.
Because homelessness comes with a lot of comorbid effects - if I lived on the street, I might wanna do something to get away too. And I have an incredible amount of sympathy for those folks and want to build enough housing for them. I will also say that I ran the year Seattle is Dying came out, so I got a ton of questions when I was doorbelling about people that are homeless. And I'll just repeat my stock answer here to that question that I figured out over time - I am a man of faith, I'm a Christian. And if you look at the parable of the sheep and the goats, where Jesus really delineates who's with me and who's against me - Jesus doesn't talk about your theological beliefs, Jesus doesn't talk about how often you go to church. Jesus says - that which you have done to the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done also unto me. So Jesus said - Take care of the people in society that are the most vulnerable and have the most need. So if I see somebody waking up underneath a bridge with a needle in their arm, I see Jesus. And I will support policy that treats that person with all of the dignity and compassion that I would treat God.
[00:29:35] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, I think that's the way to be. We're in a time where there's a lot of people - a lot of people who even call themselves Christians - who don't take that view. And we're seeing attacks on the trans community, the entire LGBTQ+ community, different racial communities - and it is a scary fraught time for a lot of people. And not just in terms of rhetoric, but in terms of policy being passed in a lot of places. What is Bothell doing to make all of its residents feel welcome and included, and how is that going?
[00:30:17] Mayor Mason Thompson: There's always a temptation during interviews like this to highlight the things that you're doing really well, 'cause we all wanna make ourselves look good, right? I'm not sure we're doing enough, to be blunt. We have resolutions - we can make public statements supporting Black and Brown people, supporting the trans community, supporting these groups that are traditionally marginalized - but I don't know that we're doing enough. And that pains me greatly. I could just talk about housing here and how, quite frankly, anybody that is in a traditionally marginalized group typically has less money than people who look like me. So creating more housing is the answer to a lot of questions, but I don't wanna just lean on that all the time and pretend like that's enough. So if anybody's got any great ideas, I'm here for them. And we have a couple of councilmembers that have some lived experience with this, and I lean on them heavily when it's time to make decisions - because they understand this a lot more than I do.
[00:31:16] Crystal Fincher: So if someone is interested in getting involved in the community, involved in policy in Bothell - what advice would you give them?
[00:31:26] Mayor Mason Thompson: If you are empathetic, if you care about other people, if you're curious, if you wanna figure out why things are the way they are, and if you're willing to do the work - both to get elected as well as to change the world once you are - you are completely qualified to run for office. Because nobody has any idea what they're doing. We are all guessing, we are all faking it - because we are all trying to solve problems that there isn't a playbook for. The built environment that we have is less than a hundred years old. We've reached the point in time where we know what doesn't work about it. And this hasn't been done before. We know things need to change, but this isn't a math problem. This isn't two plus two equals four. This is a really messy process - trying to unwind a whole lot of things that are really expensive to deal with and really problematic, and it requires a lot of change that makes people uncomfortable. If you're empathetic, if you're curious, and if you're willing to do the work - do something, do whatever you can do to make the world a better place. And if that looks like bringing a meal to a neighbor when they're having a rough day, do that. If that looks like running for office, do that. But plug in where you can and start doing the work. And if you start doing the work of trying to make the world a better place, other things find you at that point in time. So I would just say to anybody listening - don't underestimate yourself and don't overestimate the people that are already sitting in these seats because we don't know what we're doing. We're trying to figure it out. We're trying to make the best decisions we can to make the world a better place and we need help.
[00:33:07] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I appreciate you bringing that up, especially that - hey, the people sitting in the seats of leadership right now don't necessarily have all the answers. I think a lot of people are used to seeing City of Seattle, our Legislature, Congress, and they see that they have these full staffs and policy people and an office full of people to help them wrap their arms around policy. That is not the case in suburbs - you are rolling up alone. It's considered a part-time job. In reality, if you're doing a good job at it, it usually is much more than a part-time job. And usually there's a stipend of less than $10,000/year, I think mostly less than $5,000/year. Yet we're tasking these people that we elect with managing sometimes multi-billion dollar budgets with that, and people are just rolling up with the knowledge that they have or had and doing whatever they're doing. There is not a lot of guidance. There's no person who has all of the expertise and all of the research and policy documents ready to hand to you. You have to seek that out to yourself, which is also a note - to people advocating for policy, advocacy organizations - that my goodness, if you get involved in suburbs, you can make such a huge difference and so many don't. What advice would you give to electeds at the local level - other mayors, other people on city councils - for the approach that they should take, or advice that you have for them on making the kind of change that they ran to make?
[00:34:42] Mayor Mason Thompson: Oh, you're gonna get me in trouble here. Do your best to meaningfully address the biggest issues we face. There's this idea that there's a difference between local issues and state issues and federal issues. And I have never heard anybody talk about policy that they support by saying - a different level of bureaucracy should handle this. And if we care about meaningfully addressing the biggest challenges that we face, then we are gonna have to change things. But you just laid out all of the reasons why that's so hard and why the system itself is so biased toward keeping things exactly the way they are right now. We hire part-time amateurs to make our most important policy decisions in almost every jurisdiction around here. And if you think about the experts that we're listening to - senior staff who give council their advice - they've been doing this for a long time. If you're a director at a city, you've had a really good career and you're really good at doing things the way that we're doing them right now. And most part-time councilmembers aren't gonna show up on a random Tuesday night and disagree with subject matter experts that have been doing this for decades, even if we know that we have to change things in order to get different results - because we don't know what we're doing, we rely on them. So I guess this isn't really advice, it's more just if you listen - well, this part's gonna be advice. If you listen to your community and you know that things need to change, have the courage to follow through and to actually change things instead of just making sympathetic noises toward our biggest problem and then fighting to keep everything exactly the same.
And I'm incredibly sympathetic to people in different jurisdictions because our job interview process is nine months long, it's all done in public. People will take anything you've ever said and try to take it out of context and use it against you. It requires an incredible amount of privilege. And the more wealthy your network, the easier it is to raise money. The more flexible your job is, the easier it is to both get and do the job. Folks in our community who are struggling just to get by - and there's a lot of them because of the way things are right now - they're busy trying to survive. Everybody should do everything they can to change the world, but if you're busy trying to survive - you can't do anything to change the world and that's okay. So I guess the advice that I would give is - recognize the amount of privilege that you have. And when the voices that we talk to - mostly as people who own homes, people who are comfortable, people who have the privilege to be able to do this work that pays us next to nothing, and will take as much time as you give to it - all of our friends are the same way. My friends are all pretty comfortable in life. So if we listen to the concerns of the comfortable and we only address the concerns of the comfortable, we're missing the biggest problems we face as society. Because all those big problems that I talk about, I don't face them - my life's pretty good. But we wanna actually make change, we have to make change, and we're gonna have to make some people uncomfortable - but I think it's really important that we talk about why, and we talk about shared values, and we talk about who we want to be rather than what we want to do.
Because I'm really petty and what I want to do is not always who I want to be, but who I want to be is somebody that cares about the people in society who need it the most. I wanna be bold enough to be able to make change that's necessary. I want my kids to be able to afford to live in Bothell - if they want to - down the road. I want to leave them a habitable planet. The way things are have caused all the things that are wrong with it. And this idea that we can nibble at the edges and not fundamentally change the way we do things and expect different results is wrong. So I don't even remember what question I was talking about - I was rolling and you didn't stop me - but I guess just have the courage to make change. And I know that it's really hard, and I know that people show up and yell at you in council meetings - and I don't know every other community, so I am really reticent to criticize any other elected official. But if there's one thing that I wish I had more company with, it's the comfort in actually being with people that are comfortable to actually change the things that are causing the biggest problems we face. And that is unfortunately in short supply.
[00:39:28] Crystal Fincher: Completely agree. Thank you so much for your insight today, information - glad we get to learn more about you and Bothell. Thank you so much, Mayor Mason Thompson.
[00:39:40] Mayor Mason Thompson: It's still weird to hear that title, but thank you very much, Crystal. And thank you for the work you do - I really appreciate it and I really enjoy listening to the show, and I'll probably listen to this one with a little more critical eye than most of them.
[00:39:52] Crystal Fincher: Much appreciated. Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this topical show re-air, Crystal welcomes back Katie Wilson of the Transit Riders Union to walk through the wildly successful Raise the Wage Tukwila Initiative, which was approved with over 82% of the vote in the November 2022 general election, and increased Tukwila’s minimum wage to $18.99/hour for large businesses starting in July 2023. Katie details the broad, community-based coalition that was built and the thoughtful legwork and preparation that set the initiative up for success at the ballot box - from community surveys to signature gathering to Get Out The Vote, the campaign provides a template for how to build power through civic engagement. Crystal and Katie then talk about lessons learned, key takeaways, and what’s next on the horizon for the Transit Riders Union.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Katie Wilson at @WilsonKatieB and the Transit Riders Union at @SeattleTRU.
Katie Wilson
Katie Wilson is the general secretary of the Transit Riders Union and was the campaign coordinator for Raise the Wage Tukwila.
Resources
Minimum Wage and Fair Access to Additional Hours of Work | City of Tukwila
What’s on the ballot: City of Tukwila Initiative Measure No. 1 | King County Elections
“Tukwila voters approve minimum wage hike” by Melissa Santos from Axios
“Tukwila minimum wage hike passing by huge margin” by Seattle Times staff from The Seattle Times
“The minimum wage movement is more mainstream than ever” by Guy Oron from Real Change News
“Transit Rider’s Union Leads Coalition Seeking to Raise Tukwila’s Minimum Wage” by Andrew Engelson from The Urbanist
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
So today, I'm very excited to be welcoming back to the program, Katie Wilson of the Transit Riders Union. Welcome.
[00:00:46] Katie Wilson: Thank you, Crystal.
[00:00:47] Crystal Fincher: I am very excited to talk about the Raise the Wage Tukwila initiative, which was wildly successful and you played a really big role in. So I think just to start off - just recapping what the initiative was aiming to do.
[00:01:07] Katie Wilson: Sure. So Raise the Wage Tukwila basically set out to, as the name suggests, raise the minimum wage in the City of Tukwila. And toward the beginning of this year, we did a lot of outreach to workers, to local businesses, to residents, to community organizations to put together our measure. And we decided to basically try to bring Tukwila's minimum wage up to more or less match the minimum wages in the neighboring cities of SeaTac and Seattle.
[00:01:40] Crystal Fincher: Makes sense. And so when you were going about - I guess - the planning for this, the idea for this, how did this begin?
[00:01:49] Katie Wilson: So the Transit Riders Union, which is the organization that I work with and for - we started thinking about something like this campaign in the middle of last year. And at that point, we were doing a lot of work on renter protections with another coalition called Stay Housed, Stay Healthy. And as part of that work, we were trying to get cities all around the county to do more to protect renters, both with emergency protections and permanent protections. And that really got us thinking about what it would look like to do some deeper organizing in South King County. And so we began talking to lots of ally organizations and doing some outreach - and eventually settled on this idea of doing an initiative in the City of Tukwila.
And the City of Tukwila is a really interesting place. It's a small city - it only has about maybe 20, a little over 20,000 residents. But it's a really big job center - so you have the Southcenter Mall down there and all of the retail jobs around there - so a lot of low wage workers are basically commuting from all over South King County and beyond to work at jobs in Tukwila. And so - we also thought that because Tukwila is nestled in between SeaTac and Seattle, it made a lot of sense to propose raising the minimum wage up to parity with those neighboring cities.
[00:03:22] Crystal Fincher: Now who is the coalition that you began this with?
[00:03:25] Katie Wilson: Yeah, it's a really broad coalition. So there are a lot of community organizations that do work in Tukwila, especially with the many immigrant communities in Tukwila. So for example, there's the Congolese Integration Network, which was very involved, and African Community Housing and Development. And the Washington Community Action Network and Working Washington both really stepped up on helping us with some of the signature gathering and Get Out The Vote. And a number of labor unions who have members in Tukwila and South King County also really stepped up and helped out - including UFCW, including SEIU Local 6, Teamsters 117. So it was really a kind of a broad community and labor coalition that came together.
[00:04:18] Crystal Fincher: Really strong coalition. How did you, or how did the coalition, go about writing the initiative and determining exactly what was right for Tukwila?
[00:04:28] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so that process really began more than a year ago. And we basically talked to - on the one hand - policy experts, people who worked on minimum wage and other labor standards campaigns in Seattle and other places, even around the country. And we did a lot of talking to workers at Southcenter Mall. We did a couple of surveys where we had about 100 workers responding to survey questions about the issues that they face at work. And then of course just talking with all the organizations that were starting to come together in this coalition. We also did some door knocking just to Tukwila residents to take people's temperature on how they felt about something like this. And so through all that - and then I guess outreach to local businesses was an important part of that too - so we talked to, we would just walk into pretty much any local Tukwila business that we could find and try to talk to the owner about what they thought about this.
And so through all that, we came up with our policy, which is pretty simple. It's basically raising the minimum wage to match SeaTac. There's some small differences in how we do the inflation adjustment, so it's going to go up year after year based on cost of living. And it's going to be a little bit on its kind of own trajectory, but very similar to SeaTac. And we have a graduated structure so that the new wage, which will be $18.99 next year, will go into effect on July 1st of 2023 for large businesses - ones with over 500 employees worldwide. And then we have a three-year phase-in for smaller businesses so that they'll be going up and basically match the large employer rate in 2025. And then there's an exemption for the very smallest businesses, with up to 15 employees and up to $2 million in annual revenue. So that really came out of those conversations. And then the other piece of the policy - which is important - is access-to-hours policies. So that basically means that employers have to offer available hours of work to existing part-time employees before they hire new employees or subcontractors.
[00:06:55] Crystal Fincher: Which is actually a really big issue - there and across the board - and was really happy to see that addressed in the initiative. So going out - so now you've written the initiative - qualifying to get on the ballot involves getting a certain number of signatures from residents in the city. How did you go about that process?
[00:07:20] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so we began signature gathering around the end of March of this year. So our team - Transit Riders Union - we had two full-time people that we brought on to be organizers for this campaign. And we planned basically a campaign launch event around the end of March - brought together people from our coalition, Transit Riders Union members, volunteers - and so that was the kickoff of our signature gathering effort. And then after that, every Saturday we would have a big volunteer day where people would gather in the morning and we would send people out knocking on doors, gathering signatures. And then we also did more signature gathering during the week. So it was a pretty big effort.
And in Tukwila, signature gathering basically means door knocking. So if you're doing an initiative in Seattle, there's a lot of big public events and public spaces, like outside the light rail station, where you can stand there outside and just talk to person after person as they walk by and ask them to sign your petition. The thing about Tukwila is that there's not really many public spaces where you're going to find Tukwila residents. So you could go to Southcenter Mall, but the vast majority of people that you talk to don't actually live in Tukwila. They're there for shopping or they're there for work, and they live somewhere else. So if you want to efficiently gather the signatures of Tukwila residents, you really have to find people at home. And so it was almost all door knocking.
[00:08:59] Crystal Fincher: Which was really exciting to see, to watch from afar. And is, as you said, different than we've seen in a number of big cities and frankly, from a number of campaigns that have been really well-funded - is focusing a lot on tabling and transit stations, and going to those large events. So as you were planning the door knocking associated with this, were you taking advantage of that time to also educate the renters and homeowners on what this was, what it meant? What was that process like?
[00:09:43] Katie Wilson: Yeah. I think part of the great thing about doing an initiative is that when you're out gathering signatures, you're also talking to the same people whose votes you're going to need in the fall. And so we were definitely - yeah, obviously talking to people about why this was important and also asking them questions like - do you work in Tukwila? Do you know anyone who will benefit from a minimum wage increase? And so building those relationships with Tukwila residents and voters right off the bat, I think, really helped us when it came to the fall because a lot of people remembered having signed the petition in the spring, so they were already aware that this was happening and we got to come back to them and say - hey, remember that thing that you signed? We got enough signatures, so it's going to be on the ballot for you to vote on, right? So there was an opportunity to talk to the same people multiple times during the campaign. And we also did some registration of new voters too. So we were able to knock on doors and talk to people who maybe had just moved from another city and needed to update their registration to be able to vote in Tukwila, or someone who was an immigrant who is just newly eligible for voting. So we were able to do some of that as well.
[00:11:00] Crystal Fincher: So was this a largely volunteer signature gathering effort? I think you said that there were paid canvassers involved. Were there other financial supports involved? How did this look financially and volunteer-wise?
[00:11:18] Katie Wilson: Yeah, it was really a mixture. So we had a lot of volunteer signature gathering - again, like TRU members and volunteers who had just gotten involved in the campaign. Also, a lot of other organizations would bring out volunteers - the Seattle DSA - mostly during the Get Out The Vote portion of it, but definitely came out canvassing with us a number of times. And then we also had, on TRU's side, two staff organizers who were doing a lot of signature gathering as well. And then Washington Community Action Network has a canvassing team and they put in some time as well. So it was really a combination, I would say, probably roughly about half and half signatures gathered by volunteers versus signatures gathered by staff.
[00:12:08] Crystal Fincher: Makes sense - and then other people are looking at this, other organizations who may be considering initiatives to help improve things in their own communities. What are the biggest lessons that you learned about the signature gathering - going through this process - and what advice would you provide?
[00:12:25] Katie Wilson: Yeah, I think one thing is just that it is a lot of work. So yeah, don't underestimate how much work it is to go and gather what sounds like not a lot of signatures, right? We gathered over 3,000 signatures, but you have to expect that your validity rate is going to be very low, especially in a city like Tukwila, right - where you have a lot of - big proportion of renters, so people tend to move a little bit more often. Lots of non-citizens, so people might not realize that they're not able to sign it. And so we gathered over 3,000 signatures and we had plenty to qualify, but I think we had a little over 1,700 valid out of that. And door knocking is really intensive work, so you could spend basically all day knocking on doors gathering signatures and maybe you get 15-20 signatures at the end of that - just in terms of signatures per hour, signatures per day - it's a much slower process than it is, for example, in Seattle when you're just outside the Capitol Hill light rail station talking to 30 people an hour, right? And so that's one thing - is just don't underestimate the amount of work it is. But also, I think that - obviously our results in Tukwila were very, very good and there are, I think, a lot of reasons for that. But I do think that running an initiative is an opportunity to really just do some deep talking to voters and setting yourself up really well for people to come out and vote and know what they're voting on in the election itself.
[00:14:12] Crystal Fincher: So thinking - you get to the point where you do get enough signatures, you do qualify - I guess one other question, just with the validation - because with these signature gathering processes, valid signatures have to come from registered voters, so you have to meet all the qualifications and be registered. How did you go about the validation process for making sure that out of the signatures that you collected, you determine which ones were actually valid?
[00:14:40] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so it's ultimately - it's King County Elections that does the official validation. So you turn your signatures into the City Clerk and the City Clerk transmits them to King County Elections. And then King County Elections basically checks each signature, each entry against their voter file and the signature that they have on file for each voter. And what we were doing - before we turned in our signatures - we did our own rough verification process where basically we would - and we had an excellent volunteer data entry team from among TRU's membership who were doing this process, where basically they would - we would scan the petition sheets after we collected them. And then for each entry, we would check them against the Washington State voter file, which is a public document that you can download for purposes like this, and try to find that person to at least verify that they actually are a registered voter in Tukwila. Now, of course, we don't know what their signature looks like, right? So we can't actually match the signature that we got against the official signature, but we can at least try to find that name and that address and say - okay, yes, this is the person who is a registered voter at this address. And so that gave us a pretty good idea of how many valid signatures we had. And it also - what it allowed us to do - is then we had a list of hundreds of entries where we didn't find that person in the voter file. And so we were able to do some follow up with those people to, for example, try to help them get registered to vote if they were eligible, but not registered - or if they needed to update their voter registration information.
[00:16:35] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. Okay, so you qualified. Now it's time to - knowing that you're going to be on the ballot - to make sure that voters know that this is going to be on the ballot and why they should vote for it. How did you go about putting together how to communicate this to the residents of Tukwila?
[00:16:58] Katie Wilson: Yeah, I think we did all the things that campaigns do. And so we prepared over the summer. And then after Labor Day, we kicked off our Get Out The Vote campaign. And we - the centerpiece of it, of course, was just more door knocking, right? And we had pledge-to-vote postcards that we were inviting people to sign - that we would then mail back to them when ballots dropped. So they would get an extra reminder from themselves to look for their ballot. And we also made refrigerator magnets that are - they look like a campaign button, except it's a magnet on the back instead of a pin. And so we would give people reminder-to-vote refrigerator magnets. And we also did door hangers, which we would leave at the door if no one answered. We did some mailers - we didn't do mailers to everyone because it's pretty expensive, but we carved out a subset of voters to do mailers for. We did a bunch of texting people. So yeah, really just all of the above - everything that you do to get the word out. We did a few yard signs.
And really, I think we were expecting, when we went into this campaign, that we were going to have really strong, well-funded opposition from some of the business associations. And so we planned accordingly and did all the things that we would need to do in order to effectively fight a No campaign. We also got lots of media coverage, right? So we'd be in touch with all the TV news and the reporters trying to get news coverage of the campaign. So we did all those things. Of course, in the end, we actually had no opposition, which was kind of amazing, but we still did all the things. And I think that's part of the reason why we had 82% vote in favor of the measure.
[00:19:11] Crystal Fincher: Right - and I just want to pause for a moment and just talk about 82% - which is just an eye-popping number for a minimum wage initiative. We haven't really seen a result like this before. And as I look at it, it has a lot to do with how you went about the strategy and putting together this initiative from the very beginning. The strength of the coalition that you put together - it was broad, it was inclusive, it wasn't necessarily - hey, we're coming from the outside to tell you what we think would be best, or we already know exactly what we're going to do and we're just transplanting it to the city. You really did involve people who were there and looked at what would make the big differences for them locally - incorporated that into the legislation, talked to business owners there in the city. And it seems like that doing the legwork upfront and really understanding who your stakeholders were, understanding how this impacted people, and including the people who would be impacted made a big difference. What do you see as the reason why you were able to get such a huge amount of people in support?
[00:20:32] Katie Wilson: Yeah - well, thank you. I would love to believe that it's - we just ran such a great campaign, that's why we won by so much. But I do think that there were some other elements of it that were important, which were less due to what we did. One thing that we did do that I think was a good strategic decision that made a big difference was - in designing the measure - having it really explicitly say we are raising Tukwila's minimum wage to match next door in SeaTac, as opposed to just choosing a number, right? If we had said $19/hour, right - now it amounts to the same thing, it's going to be $19/hour. But I think that it just sounds so ridiculously reasonable that Tukwila should have the same standard as the city next door - that I think just that framing and having that be the way the legislation was written, rather than putting a number on it - I think was probably really helpful. It's just really hard to argue that - no, Tukwila should not have the same minimum wage as SeaTac - when you have people doing the same jobs right across the street from each other in the two different cities, who are getting paid different amounts, right? So I think that was good.
But I do think a couple of other things. I think that kind of the moment that we're in, right? We're in this moment where there's high inflation and just the cost of living - from food to gas to rent - are going up so rapidly. I think that ended up helping us. And I kind of thought that maybe it would hurt us because people would look at cost increases and say - well, if you raise the minimum wage, prices are going to go up even more. And we heard that fear a little bit, but I think mostly what the inflation and the high cost of living did was it just made it really undeniable that people who were making the statewide minimum wage or just a little bit more are not able to afford to live here anymore, right? And so I think that really on balance helped us. And I think also the fact that we've experienced this really tight labor market this year has meant that a lot of large employers have actually needed to raise their wages for the time being just to get workers in the door and to keep them there. So you've seen in the news - a lot of major corporations have just announced - okay, our starting wage right now is going to be $17 because otherwise we can't hire people. And so I do think there was an element of some corporations that might normally be inclined to fight something like this were already having to pay significantly more than the statewide minimum wage. And so it just wasn't worthwhile to them to fight it. And so I think that really helped. And that moment is not necessarily going to last, right? There's almost certainly going to be a recession next year. Probably we're going to enter a period where some people are being laid off and employers don't really need to pay more than the minimum wage to get people in the door. And so in that sense, I think we lucked into a window of opportunity where there just wasn't a lot of fight back.
[00:23:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and certainly windows of opportunity are real and even if you have a great initiative with a great team - timing and just those larger conditions make a difference. But I do want to go back and talk a little bit more about your strategy for canvassing and even having those conversations throughout the signature gathering process - going back and revisiting people afterwards. Were you planning to visit most voters who you identified as likely to support the initiative?
[00:24:31] Katie Wilson: Yeah, our fall door knocking strategy - I think we ended up pretty much just knocking every - knocking all registered voters' doors in the fall and only taking out doors where, during the signature gathering, someone had refused to talk to us or didn't want to be bothered. So we - yeah, which was a very small minority of people. We really just ended up knocking everyone. Tukwila is a small enough city and we had enough people power in the fall, especially with many of our coalition allies stepping up and helping out, that we were able to knock, I think, everyone's door at least a few times. So we weren't terribly selective. I think after ballots dropped, we became maybe a little bit more selective in trying to knock the doors of like likely voters who hadn't voted yet. And even low-propensity voters - people who maybe voted once in the last four years or something. So we got a little more selective, but it ended up being the most efficient thing just to knock everyone.
[00:25:47] Crystal Fincher: So basically if you were a resident in Tukwila, you got a knock from the campaign at least once and most people got it multiple times. Even if it did - slightly - it was for good reason and a very beneficial result. I do think that door knocking is an area of a number of campaigns, especially initiatives sometimes, where a lot of campaigns overlook it. And they think - okay, we just need to make sure we have an adequate communications budget to be up with commercials and in people's mailboxes and online where people are at. But really focusing on having those conversations with voters and utilizing the opportunity to get a signature as not just a signature gathering opportunity, but one - to have a conversation to build understanding and support, and to really inform how you move forward - was a really smart and effective one that I would love to see more campaigns really being intentional about investing a lot more in. I guess looking at overall lessons that you came out of this with - what are the biggest lessons you learned, or biggest takeaways from this campaign for you?
[00:27:12] Katie Wilson: I think to say something a little more on the negative side - and where I think we and other people who are thinking about doing campaigns like this should think about how to do better - one of the most heartbreaking things for me was when I was doing some door knocking really close to Election Day, like the last couple of days. I talked to people at several doors where they had signed our petition, they were super supportive, but they had probably never voted before and they just didn't make the connection between - Oh, this is - there's an election, this is on the ballot, and you're going to get this thing in the mail which is your ballot, and you actually need to do something with that. And there's a deadline. And so I went to one household where there was a bunch of people living there in an apartment, and they had signed the petition, and they were excited about it. And they're searching for their ballots and finding their primary ballots, but not the - and I'm just like, Oh god, okay, it's just too late - the one person's ballot who we actually found wasn't there and wasn't going to be home. And so I think that Tukwila, year after year, has just rock bottom voter turnout compared to other cities in King County. And we still need to do an analysis to see to what extent our efforts moved voter turnout. And I think they probably did a little bit, but not hugely. So Tukwila - still this year - voter turnout compared to other cities in King County was very, very low. And so that - that I think is disappointing and just speaks to the structural factors which make that the case - we didn't shift those in a huge way. And so I think that's something to kind of think about for future campaigns is - okay, what is it going to take for these people who are registered to vote and a 100% there on the issue, but just are not practiced at this kind of civic engagement and no one is really helping them with that in a really deep way. So what is that going to take? So that's one thing.
And I guess just in terms of more positive overall lessons - obviously, raising the minimum wage is really popular, so we should do it more. There's a lot of other cities in King County that could do this. And so that is one thing that we're thinking about as we look at next year and beyond - is what are the opportunities to get this done in more cities around the county? Because I would imagine that it is very popular everywhere.
[00:30:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, really popular. And just on the point you made - I think, especially for people who are inclined to listen to this show on the radio, via podcast are more passionate about voting and civic engagement than the average person. But really important to understand that the average person is not necessarily excited at all, and probably doesn't know what there is to be excited about or mad about or ambivalent about - that it's just not on the radar for a lot of people. And even though it seems like it's consuming our lives or the news or anything like that, it's just not reality on the ground for a lot of people. And I think one of the things is - I look at my work - it's really the prolonged and repeated engagement that moves the needle there. And a silver lining on the cloud is it actually - a couple of percentage points really does change an election. Boosting turnout by 5% is a humongous amount in the quantities that we measure, and that completely changes the complexion of campaigns. So even the work you did - and again, we're still going through results and precinct-level results and figuring that all out, but clearly made a difference. And I hope there is continued engagement on the ground - in Tukwila specifically - and in areas where we do activate, whether it's through a candidate campaign or through an initiative, to keep that going because it really is the repeated engagement and people being able to see that something from the formation and policy prospect that - hey, they did get excited about, and then it did happen, and then they're receiving a benefit. And - oh, I see that what I sign and actions that I took resulted in something that actually benefits me, or people that I know, or family that I have, or whatever the case is makes a big difference. I guess as you're - you said you're considering looking at what's on the menu moving forward - what is next and what are you considering?
[00:32:31] Katie Wilson: Yeah, and I think that's exactly right - it's what you said - just that a one-off campaign is not enough to move that needle. And people need to have the experience of - oh yes, wow, I voted and something happened and it's actually something that makes a difference in my life. And so as we're looking at what to do next - as I mentioned, I think there's a lot of potential for other cities to do minimum wage raises, so we're looking at that. But we had our Transit Riders Union membership meeting in November and had a discussion about this, and I think heard really strongly from our members that we need to keep organizing in Tukwila specifically. And so we are kind of in the process now of figuring out what that could look like. And so we're having - actually tonight, we're having a meeting with some Tukwila renters to talk about what it might look like to push for stronger renter protections in Tukwila, right? Because while we were door knocking, we talked to many, many people who were getting large rent increases, and this was part of the sad thing too - is you'd talk to someone in the spring and they'd sign the petition. And then go back in the fall and they'd moved out because - they no longer live there - because they got a $300/month rent increase, right? And so I think one possibility is to push for stronger renter protections in Tukwila next year - basically working with a lot of the people that we met during this campaign this year.
And then I think we're also looking at how to keep organizing with workers in Tukwila, and specifically at and around Southcenter Mall. And the new law is going to go into effect next July. And so I think one project is making sure that everyone who works in Tukwila knows about that - knows the law, knows their rights - both on the minimum wage side of things, but also the access-to-hours policy. And the City is going to have to do some rulemaking to decide how to actually put those policies into practice, what to require of employers in terms of reporting and informing their employees. And so there's the details that have to be figured out. So we're going to be involved in that process and we're going to try to get Tukwila workers involved in that process. And yeah, I think also just continuing to talk to workers at the mall about what other issues they're facing - maybe there are other labor standards issues that workers in Tukwila want to do something about. So we're figuring that out now. We're in the space where there are so many possible things that we could do next year that sound worthwhile. And so we're going to have to figure out where there's the most interest and energy to move forward.
[00:35:30] Crystal Fincher: I just can't tell you how excited I am to see what you're doing next. I just have so much admiration for how you went about this. You nailed the strategy and the execution of this. And it really is a model for other coalitions to follow - that can really be community-based, community-led and bringing about the kind of change that people need in their own communities. So thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:36:02] Katie Wilson: Oh, my pleasure - it's great to be here.
[00:36:05] Crystal Fincher: All right - thanks so much.
Thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Post-Production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can follow me @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this topical show re-air, Crystal learns about north King County’s innovative new Regional Crisis Response (RCR) Agency with its inaugural Executive Director Brook Buettner and Kenmore Mayor Nigel Herbig. Following national guidelines and best practices for behavioral health crisis care, a five-city consortium established RCR in 2023 as part of a vision to provide their region with the recommended continuum of behavioral health care - which includes someone to call, someone to respond, and somewhere to go.
Executive Director Buettner and Mayor Herbig share how the program grew out of a need for a person-centered mobile crisis response, rather than the traditional law enforcement response which is often without the right tools or expertise for the job. They describe the collaborative process of getting buy-in from police agencies, electeds, and city staff to design a service that has evolved from the RADAR co-response program to approaching a 24/7 behavioral health first response. Finally, they cover impressive early results in cost-savings & outcomes and offer advice to other cities looking to bring similar solutions to their own communities.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Mayor Nigel Herbig at @nigelherbig.
Brook Buettner
Brook Buettner is inaugural Executive Director of the groundbreaking Regional Crisis Response Agency, which deploys services to people experiencing behavioral health crisis in the North King County community. She is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and an experienced human services professional with a focus on policy advocacy and program implementation for high-needs populations. During her two decade-long career, she has been focused on transforming systems to meet the needs of individuals who are high utilizers of both criminal legal and health and human services systems. Ms. Buettner holds Masters in Public Administration and Social Work from the University of Washington.
Mayor Nigel Herbig
Nigel grew up in the Seattle neighborhood of Wallingford, attended Seattle Public Schools, and graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in Political Science and Comparative Religion. Nigel and his wife, Tiffany, decided to move to Kenmore when their daughter was a baby as they were looking for a great place to raise their daughter where they could purchase their first home. They have never regretted that decision.
Nigel has worked in broadcasting, fundraising, and politics. He currently works at the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.
Mayor Herbig represents the Council on the Eastside Transportation Partnership (Vice Chair), and the Sound Transit SR 522 Bus Rapid Transit Elected Leaders Group. He also sits on the King County Affordable Housing Committee.
Resources
The Regional Crisis Response Agency | City of Kirkland
“RCR Agency Welcomes Brook Buettner as Executive Director” from City of Kirkland
National Guidelines for Behavioral Health Crisis Care - Best Practice Toolkit Executive Summary | SAMHSA
The North Sound RADAR Program | City of Shoreline
King County Outcome Data for North Sound RADAR Navigator Program
“RADAR: Response Awareness, De-Escalation, and Referral Final Evaluation Report” prepared by the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy Department of Criminology, Law & Society at George Mason University
“North King County cities will broaden mental-health response to 911 calls” by Amy Radil from KUOW
“New Crisis Response Center in Kirkland to Serve North King County” from City of Kirkland
“$500k grant from DOJ to help reduce use of police force in North King County” by Hannah Saunders from Bothell-Kenmore Reporter
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I am very excited to be welcoming Mayor Nigel Herbig - he is the mayor of Kenmore. And Brook Buettner, who's the Executive Director of Regional Crisis Response - a collaboration for a mental health alternative response between the cities of Kenmore, Kirkland, Lake Forest Park, Shoreline, and Bothell that's really innovative and I think a number of cities are looking at this in the region - want to just explore what this is. So starting out with Brook, how did you get involved in this work and what interested you in this?
[00:01:27] Brook Buettner: Thanks, Crystal - I'm so happy to be here with you. So my background is that I'm a licensed clinical social worker and I also have a background in public administration. And most of my social work career has been in service of folks that have chronic behavioral health conditions, are living homeless, and then have some overlap with the criminal legal system - either with the police, or with having multiple charges around poverty, or around homelessness. So this is a really exciting program for me to be able to be involved in.
[00:01:54] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. And Nigel, as mayor of Kenmore, what got you involved in this particular program and work?
[00:02:00] Mayor Nigel Herbig: First, I want to start off by saying that I'm a long-time listener, and I'm excited to be here, Crystal - so thank you for having me. Kenmore entered into this work back in - I want to say 2017 or 2018 - when we joined with other cities and King County MIDD funds and started the RADAR program, which was a co-response model across parts of North King County to give folks other ways to have service calls responded to - without the only response being a police response, because I think we all recognize that a solely police response is not always the right answer and is not always in the best interest of everybody involved. And we did that successfully for a few years. And then in 2021, we started larger conversations with the cities of Bothell, Lake Forest Park, Shoreline, and then we reached out to Kirkland also, about expanding what we were doing with RADAR and making it into a larger regional model. And so our staff and our councils worked for about a year and a half trying to figure out how that would all work.
And what we ended up doing was folding the North King County's RADAR Navigator program with Kirkland's Community Responder program to form a new entity that's regional in nature, is going to have a lot more resources, will be operating more hours during the day - I think we're aiming towards 24/7, I don't think we're quite there yet - and will really be a resource for folks who are experiencing, or decompressing in public, or having some sort of other issues so that they'll get a response that actually meets them where they're at. And gets them help immediately rather than the other alternatives, which are the ER or jail - both of which we know are not ideal for anybody who's experiencing either an issue with drug addiction or a mental health issue. So yeah, it's exciting to see multiple cities all coming together to recognize the issue and working together - 'cause as individual cities, there's no way that we could have done this - little Kenmore could've never done this on our own. But working with other cities, we're gonna be delivering something that I think will be meaningful to folks who are experiencing issues out in the field, and I think we'll be getting better outcomes for everybody. And I think that's something we're very excited about.
[00:04:00] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You talk about how challenging this is for individual cities to address and to deal with. I do think it's notable that there was an attempt, a recognition by Kenmore that this was something that needed to be tackled. There was the RADAR program, previously in place, that you just mentioned - this was built on top of and leveraged with the region. How did the discussions go with the region? How did you get buy-in for taking this collaborative approach? And how did you work through the design of the program? How did that work, Brook?
[00:04:34] Brook Buettner: We're very lucky in North King County that there was already a great deal of support for alternatives to police response for people in crisis. As you mentioned, the commitment to the RADAR Navigator program that had been going on for about four years prior to this conversation and showing really successful outcomes for folks. And across our elected officials, our police leadership, and our community, there was a strong commitment to doing things in a new way for people in crisis. And so it was a matter of not having to bring people on board, but just discussing what's our shared vision - what do we want our community to look like and how are we gonna get there? And so it was a big lift for city staff to come up with the agreement, the interlocal agreement, that governs this entity - but it was done pretty quickly in my experience and very well to where we have a strong and robust infrastructure to start really offering these alternative services to folks in crisis.
[00:05:29] Crystal Fincher: Nigel, what advice would you give to other cities working through this process right now in terms of figuring out the agreements that are going to govern these collaborative approaches, getting buy-in from various stakeholders? How did that work in your experience and what guidance would you give other folks working through this?
[00:05:48] Mayor Nigel Herbig: I think part of what made things work, where we are in North King County, was the fact that we'd already been partnering with other cities with RADAR. But we also have other regional models that we're used to - we're used to doing regional collaboration around here. Kenmore is part of ARCH, which is a regional coalition for housing - which is a multi-jurisdictional affordable housing developer that covers kind of Kenmore and then down to the Eastside. And so we're very used to working in a collaborative manner with our neighbors to address issues that we really can't do, again, by ourselves - we can do affordable housing, but it's very hard for a smaller city, right? It's a lot easier if people are pooling things together. So we already had those models that we were familiar with, which I think really helped some of the conversations - 'cause Kirkland's also part of ARCH, I think Bothell is too. So we're starting from a place where we understand how these models work. I think having trust between the cities is important also. We have good relationships with - I have good relationships with my colleagues in Kirkland and in Bothell and Lake Forest Park and Shoreline - I think that's helpful. And then also having staff that's willing to really dig into the details and work collaboratively with their colleagues is important.
A lot of this came out of the fact that - and I think we all recognize this - the state and the county have largely been underfunding our mental health response for a long time. And even on our council, there was some pushback to - this should be a county response, this should be the county's responsibility. And I don't completely disagree with that assessment either, but I think we all recognize that something had to be done. And at the end of the day, sometimes cities just have to step up and figure out a way forward. And it's nice to see five cities coming together to work together towards a solution, while we try to figure out the larger long-term solutions that are truly regional and even statewide, frankly.
[00:07:25] Crystal Fincher: So can you walk me through what your most frequent calls look like, feel like, what that process is? I think for a lot of people - they're familiar with the concept of alternative response, they're familiar with how important it is, and understanding that police can't do everything and they are not the most effective response for every kind of crisis - so having a tailored response that is most appropriate and most effective is really helpful. How, as you work through this, what does a typical call look like? What does a typical day look like?
[00:07:58] Brook Buettner: In crisis, of course, there's no typical call or no typical day. But we are looking to deploy social workers or mental health professionals on any 911 call that comes in that has some identified component of behavioral health. So that's mental health, or substance use, or some social service need like a homelessness component, a family dynamic issue where it could be helpful to have a social worker there. And then the social workers - we call them crisis responders - the crisis responders are going either in the car with the police officer, or when possible in an independent vehicle and meeting the police officer on the scene. And we are stepping more and more in our community into the space of two crisis responders going to - responding to the scene - without a first responder. And that is really what we call the alternative response model.
And it can be anything from somebody that has called 911 because they themselves, or somebody that they care about, is suicidal - has made suicidal statements or gestures. Or someone that is in a community space and is having mental health symptoms or substance use-driven symptoms that are causing them to be troubling to the other folks in that environment. To, like I said, family dynamics where someone calls 911, for example, because their teenager is so agitated and escalated that they become violent. And our crisis responders are very, very good at identifying what's going on, deescalating folks, bringing them down to a level of calm where they can talk through what's underlying the crisis. And then the crisis responder's job is to figure out what to bring to bear on the situation to alleviate the immediate crisis and then connect the person to the system of care so that they don't fall into crisis again.
[00:09:33] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And it looks like you've structured the program on best practices for the continuum of behavioral health care starting with having someone to call - we have our 988 line, someone to respond - these crisis responders, and then having somewhere to go once it's determined where the appropriate place is for them to receive the help that they need. Especially when it comes to that somewhere to go, we just passed a county-wide behavioral health center levy that will fund a number of those services and staff. But that's been a big challenge in our region. How have you navigated through this in the program, Nigel, and how's it working?
[00:10:14] Mayor Nigel Herbig: Well, I'm really excited. I mean, Kenmore and our partner cities - we're actually out ahead of King County a little bit and had been working in partnership for - I don't know, a little while now, I think going back to 2021 - really reflecting on the lack of a door for people to go to, a place for people to go to when they're in crisis. And working together, we identified funds and we identified a location, we identified our provider, and we will be opening up the first crisis response center for North King County. And again, it's the same cities - it's Kenmore, Lake Forest Park, Shoreline, Bothell, and Kirkland - and we're excited to have this model here. They selected Connections Health Solutions, which is a national innovator in the space. They've done a lot of great work in Arizona, and that model is also what I believe the executive based his models off of. And they should be opening up next year, and it's gonna offer a place for people who are facing any sort of mental health issue or behavioral health issue - a place where they can go and actually talk with somebody, regardless of insurance, regardless of where they live, or any of that. It'll give people a place to go, which right now is severely lacking throughout the county.
[00:11:23] Crystal Fincher: What happens when there is no place to go?
[00:11:26] Brook Buettner: I can kind of speak to that. So in the past, when we encountered someone in the field in crisis, the options were either that they stay where they are, that they go to the emergency department, or an arrest and jail - if it's not safe for them to stay in the community setting or in the home where they are at - safe for themselves or safe for the people around them. And this allows us an alternative to say - Maybe the emergency department is not the right place, and certainly jail is not the right place for somebody in deep behavioral health crisis. We're gonna take them somewhere that we know will accept them, we know will allow them to stay, will provide robust psychiatric and behavioral healthcare, and do discharge planning so that they're walking out with a plan and a connection to ongoing care. Connections, in particular, has a model that has multiple levels of acuity and step-down so that if somebody comes in at the highest acuity, they're in one setting. And as they deescalate, as they get different treatment on board or medications on board, they can step down to a lower acuity setting and even to an outpatient model while they wait to get hooked up with the local behavioral health system of care. And Crystal, you mentioned the behavioral health continuum of care, and I love that you brought that up because this is - North King County is about to have, kind of the first in our state, fully-executed crisis continuum of care when this facility opens up and it's super exciting.
[00:12:44] Crystal Fincher: It's very exciting and so necessary. And I appreciate you all doing the work to get this implemented to be a model for the region. Other areas are looking at this - some areas are eager to adopt this and have public safety agencies, police agencies that are willing partners. Others have some concerns and there's almost a concern of - Okay, is this competition for us? Are they looking to move us out? What feedback have you heard from law enforcement officials, and how have they said it's impacted their job and the work that they have to do?
[00:13:19] Mayor Nigel Herbig: To be honest, I haven't heard anything negative from our police partners - Kenmore, like Shoreline, contracts with the King County Sheriff's Office - they've been great partners in this. I think our chief is always looking for better ways to interact with folks who are in crisis and this gives him another tool. This gives him more resources to address the problem at hand, rather than only having law enforcement resources to fall back on - and I think he views that as a positive. So I have not heard any pushback from our law enforcement community up in North King County around this, and I think they're looking forward to using this as a resource and being partners in this.
[00:13:56] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. For years and years - going back a decade and more - have heard several officers, chiefs talk about how challenging it is to respond to calls where there's a behavioral health component, or there isn't any illegal activity per se but someone is clearly in crisis, or people are being impacted around them and an intervention needs to take place but a criminal or a legal intervention doesn't seem to be the most positive. Brook, what have you heard from officers who have co-responded on these, or who are looking forward to a complete alternative response? How are they saying it's impacting their work and their ability to do their job?
[00:14:37] Brook Buettner: We have been extraordinarily lucky in North King County that we've had support from law enforcement leadership since the get-go. Law enforcement was who asked for this program initially five years ago, saying these are not the kind of calls that we're supposed to be on - we need help, we need support. And so it has been a journey to get all of the responding officers - patrol officers and deputies - socialized to this idea. But once an officer or a deputy sees it in action, it's an easy sell. So what we find is that the more interaction we are having with law enforcement, the more referrals we're getting because they see - wow, that works - or we'll let them know that the follow-up that we did ended up keeping somebody from falling into deep crisis again. And it becomes a really good alternative for them and a good tool in their tool belt. I also am really attentive to making sure that we maintain good relationships on a one-on-one basis with all of our law enforcement partners, so that it's not a pain to have a social worker along but rather a pleasure - to say we're a great team, we work well together. Both sides recognize that each role has something to bring to a highly escalated crisis situation, and both sides recognize where their limits are. And so it's just been a constant growth of support and of buy-in. I've heard from several chiefs that they see shift in the culture - in the willingness to talk about behavioral health in a new way among the community and also within the department - that it opens up conversations that otherwise may not have happened. So it has really been a positive for our five police agencies.
[00:16:05] Crystal Fincher: I think that is really an outstanding observation. And strikes me as important, especially as we hear from several police agencies across the state really that they're trying to recruit, they're short on officers, they're having a tougher time on that - and needing to triage their time and resources, and response times being impacted, other things that they're saying are being impacted. How can this help manage the workload for officers and across the public safety continuum? How has that been working?
[00:16:34] Mayor Nigel Herbig: Speaking for Kenmore, our officers, right - until we had RADAR in place and until we had these partnerships - if somebody was out on the street decompensating, yelling, screaming, doing something like - like you said earlier, that's not illegal, but is disruptive to the community and the person is obviously in crisis - the only response we had was a police response. And I think even our officers recognize that there are better ways for them to be spending their time than dealing with somebody who's decompensating. It's not what they were hired for, it's not what their expertise is in. And this gives them a tool so that they can - working with the social workers - find what the right response is, hand off the person to the social worker, and then get back to catching speeders or investigating break-ins or whatever it is that they could be doing rather than dealing with the guy who is having a breakdown. So I view this as actually an expansion of our response, if you will - it gives us the ability to respond to more calls on both sides of things, both law enforcement and people experiencing a crisis.
[00:17:38] Crystal Fincher: How have you seen that play out, Brook?
[00:17:40] Brook Buettner: It is absolutely allowing officers to focus more on life safety and law - criminal law issues - by kind of carving off this segment of the work that comes into the 911 system and routing it to the appropriate resource, the right tool at the right time. I see what we're doing as a third kind of branch of the first response system. Going back again to the continuum of care, the level of care that someone gets should be based on the acuity of their need and of their crisis. And we have outpatient behavioral health for folks that have behavioral health challenges that are at a low acuity level. We have other systems in place that are secondary responses for people that are in crisis. And when people are in very high acuity crisis and 911 is needed, we now have this first response behavioral health tool in our toolbox - that crisis responders that are skilled and trained and experienced in meeting people that are in the highest acuity level of behavioral health crisis, but still not committing a crime. So it is a 911 call - it's not necessarily a law enforcement need, but there is a need for a very high level response - and we're now able to provide that.
[00:18:47] Crystal Fincher: Did you have anything to add, Nigel?
[00:18:49] Mayor Nigel Herbig: Well, I was gonna say - I think a lot of this came out of the recognition that we've seen over the last 150 years that when your only response is a police response, the outcomes are not ideal. We have seen too many folks who are dealing with a mental health issue - and that is a huge section of our population - it's not something we talk about, but a huge proportion of folks are dealing with some sort of mental health issue. And just because somebody is having a very hard day doesn't mean that they should end up in jail or be put at risk, frankly, of a police interaction. We know that sometimes those interactions can turn out tragically. And being thrown into jail or worse, because you're experiencing a mental health issue, can ruin somebody's life or - and frankly, can ruin not only their lives, but also their kids' lives. When we enter somebody into the criminal justice system, it has long-lasting effects on not just the person impacted, but also their family, their kids, their kids' kids - it can have multigenerational effects on people. And we've seen that play out over the last, well, 50, 100 years. This gives folks, this gives our police officers a different response. And I think it's - that's what I'm excited about - I'm excited that people who are experiencing mental health issues can actually get the treatment they need rather than a pure law enforcement response, because nobody deserves to go to jail because they're having a breakdown.
[00:20:12] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And it's a shift in how we've been doing things. What are the results that you're seeing from this? Obviously, people are looking to justify these expenditures and implement these in their own areas. What results are you seeing when it comes to amount of calls, recidivism? I know in some other cities, they talk about how many calls come in about behavioral health issues that aren't someone breaking the law but that are someone in crisis, as you've talked about, and how much time that takes up, how many repeated calls those spur, and how much time that demands - just the amount, enormous amount, of resources that demands. How are you seeing that impacted and what results are you seeing from this program?
[00:20:55] Brook Buettner: Directly to your question, Crystal, we don't have a lot of data yet on reduction in 911 calls, or 911 dispatch center or officer time. I do have some outcome data though that our King County partners were able to pull together for us for the RADAR Navigator program - that folks that were touched by the RADAR Navigator program - in two years following that program touch, we saw a 67% reduction in adult jail bookings. And that is a tremendous impact. We saw a 60% reduction in behavioral health crisis events. And that is measured by King County's Department of Community and Human Services who oversees the behavioral health system crisis response. They also experienced a smaller 4% reduction in emergency department visits. And of the folks that our program touched, 14% were subsequently enrolled in publicly funded behavioral health services. And I think that's a significant undercount because a lot of the folks in our community do have private pay insurance and so there would be no way to count that. But we know that interaction with this program results in a reduction in jail, a reduction in crisis services, and an increase in engagement with the behavioral health system. And those are all big wins.
And to your specific questions, those are the kind of things we're gonna be looking at in our program analysis as we go on. How is this saving on 911 calls? How is this saving on officer time? My dream is that we capture the cost savings of reduction in jail nights and say - let's put that back into the earlier end of the continuum of care and fund diversion, and ultimately fund a robust system of community-based behavioral health care so that people don't fall into crisis. Again, I wanna say we're extraordinarily lucky that our electeds and our city staff are all so interested and committed to doing this kind of analysis and thinking in this way.
[00:22:37] Crystal Fincher: Thanks - I appreciate that data, that information - it's really, really powerful. And what strikes me hearing that is that when you talk about being booked into jail, emergency room visits - these are the most expensive parts of our system to use and to utilize. And savings on these are incredible - I'm looking at that reduction in the jail number, and that is a budget-altering number right there. Pretty incredible. And I recognize this is a newer program - certainly you've done the work with the RADAR program, this predecessor, and getting the data there. I'm sure more will be rolling in as this continues and you move on, so that's great. Did you have something you wanted to add, Brook?
[00:23:16] Brook Buettner: Yeah, just a thought that this is what we sometimes call a different purse problem - that each of these reductions affects a different financial system. And so part of our work is gonna be pulling together those cost offsets and making sure that the savings are redirected appropriately to meeting people's needs.
[00:23:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that is such an incredible problem in the public sector - yeah, this is saving a billion dollars, but if that's spread across a ton of different budgets in different ways, it's a whole different animal than someone handing someone basically a rebate check for a billion dollars. As you look forward, you talked about moving forward and moving towards a program where it truly is an alternative response where there are one or two crisis responders who respond to these calls without law enforcement initially - they can certainly call them in if it's warranted or they need backup. How do you see this progressing with that change and beyond it? What are the plans?
[00:24:14] Brook Buettner: First, I'll say that the primary challenge that stands between us and a pure alternative response system is the dispatch question - and the ability to understand when a 911 call comes in, what's really going on - and that is often not clear from a 911 call. So we really wanna work through this very carefully with all of our partners and make sure that we're doing the outreach in a way that's safe and appropriate, that meets people's needs, but also keeps our responders safe. And so that is probably my work for the next two years - is digging into - How do we do call receiving? How do we triage? And then how do we appropriately dispatch the right resource? I have kind of been moving from calling it alternative response to thinking of it as a behavioral health first response. Whatever - when someone is in behavioral health crisis - whatever resource is the right resource. And I can see, for example, that being a crisis responder plus an EMT when someone has or has stated that they will take too much medication - and that's a medical plus a mental health need. Whereas if there's maybe a weapon in play, then that's a law enforcement plus a mental health need. And so thinking of it as a first response system with all of the tools that we need available to our dispatchers.
[00:25:27] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Nigel?
[00:25:28] Mayor Nigel Herbig: I think something that Brook kind of glossed over a little bit - but I think is an important thing that we're gonna have to work out - is the fact that we're using multiple different police. We have different police forces, if you will, and different dispatch systems. So like I said earlier, in Shoreline and Kenmore you have King County Sheriff's Office and they're dispatched in one way. And then Lake Forest Park and Bothell, they have their own. And Kirkland, they have their own police officers and they're dispatched differently. And so it does create - it is a complication that I believe we'll work through. And I know with Brook's leadership, that'll get worked out - but it's not as straightforward as just having one dispatch system that we need to educate and get up to speed.
[00:26:06] Crystal Fincher: How is this being funded? How much did you have to come up with as individual cities in this regional partnership? How is the funding talked about? Because this is something that has been kind of thorny when we look at the Regional Homelessness Authority, but with this collaboration, how does this work, Nigel?
[00:26:25] Mayor Nigel Herbig: I can't get into what the specific numbers are we're spending - I do know it's more than what we were with RADAR. Part of that is because we're expanding things from - we're approaching 24/7 is part of the goal. Part of this is also funded by King County MIDD, the Mental - oh, I don't remember -
[00:26:41] Crystal Fincher: I know - I always try to remember what MIDD stands for.
[00:26:43] Brook Buettner: Mental Illness Drug Dependency.
[00:26:45] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
[00:26:46] Mayor Nigel Herbig: Thank you, I was just digging around.
[00:26:48] Crystal Fincher: Very, very useful.
[00:26:50] Mayor Nigel Herbig: No, super useful - and they're the reason why we were able to do RADAR and test out, essentially test out the model, set the foundation for where we are now - is because of the MIDD funding. And we're very thankful to King County and Councilmember Dembowski for his help with that. Our expenses are definitely higher than they were in previous years with RADAR - there's no question around that, and it was part of our budget discussions last year. But I think it's something that we're all committed to because we do see the long-term payoffs - not just on our budgets, but frankly in outcomes - and all the councils seem fairly committed to that. So I believe that they - I wasn't involved in these negotiations, staff was - but I believe that they were negotiating based on population and number of hours that would be required to cover each jurisdiction, and then breaking up the cost and using some sort of formula that we all agreed to. Brook can probably speak a little bit more to that, but we got to a place where everybody was comfortable with the investments that we'd be making.
[00:27:47] Crystal Fincher: Sure, Brook?
[00:27:48] Brook Buettner: Yeah, so like Mayor Herbig said, the MIDD funding has been really foundational to piloting this as the RADAR Navigator Program and even to the expansion. We also have some funding through the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs' Trueblood dollars for Mental Health First, or Field Response teams. And we have had some support from the Association of Washington Cities. And then I'm so delighted that starting this year, we have general fund contribution from each of our five cities. It is per capita-based at this time. We have plans to really keep a close eye on utilization and think about whether some cities have higher utilization and that may affect their contribution rate. But I also have plans to get the payers on the hook for this as well. So when we talked about the wrong purse problem - a 4% reduction in emergency department visits is a big bonus for insurers and for the managed care organizations. And King County Department of Community and Human Services and the behavioral health services organization have been thinking about this as well. How do we get the private insurers to be picking up what they are supposed to be covering for their covered lives around crisis services? There are a couple of folks at the State Legislature that are really thinking carefully about this. And I see us as being kind of a test case outside the traditional behavioral healthcare system to be reimbursed by the health payers for this service that ends up with better outcomes and lower costs over time.
[00:29:07] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. As we move to close this, what advice do you have to other cities approaching this? And what would you tell residents about why this is so useful and so important?
[00:29:21] Mayor Nigel Herbig: I think I would advise other cities to take a look at their 911 calls, talk with their police officers - see what sort of calls they're responding to that maybe they're not the best equipped first responder for. I don't think police officers enjoy these sorts of calls on their own. I also think that you can point towards the outcomes that we will have around better results for the people involved, better results for the community, and frankly, cost savings at the end of the day when it comes to jail days and ER visits. And other cities might be big enough to do this on their own, which will make their lives a little bit easier and all of that. But I think other cities - and if you're looking in other parts of the county, there are places where there are multiple cities all right next to each other that could, if they wanted to, join together and do this sort of work. And I would encourage them to have those conversations and really ask themselves - What do they want the response to be when somebody calls 911 in crisis? Because I don't think anybody actually thinks the right answer is a person with a badge and a gun. And I think people need to really reflect on that, and really think about how they truly serve the people that they are working for, and make sure they're doing that in the best and most responsive and person-centered way possible. And this is, I think, a huge step in that direction.
[00:30:36] Crystal Fincher: Any final words from you, Brook?
[00:30:38] Brook Buettner: I love what Mayor Herbig said - just asking yourselves - What is it that we want people in crisis to get from our first response system? And then from my social-worky side, building relationships across jurisdictions and across sectors to bring - this is very complex - so to bring all the players to the table to offer the kind of response that people deserve when they're in crisis.
[00:30:59] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you both to Brook Buettner, Mayor Herbig - sincerely appreciate you spending time with us today and helping to educate us on what's going on there in the north part of the County. And it's certainly a lot to reflect on and hopefully emulate moving forward. Thank you both.
[00:31:16] Mayor Nigel Herbig: Thank you.
[00:31:17] Brook Buettner: Thank you so much for having us.
[00:31:18] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Tuesday topical show, Crystal welcomes Jaelynn Scott, Executive Director of Lavender Rights Project, for a conversation about their intersectional work to protect Black trans femmes (and thereby all trans people) by focusing on housing justice, economic justice, and violence prevention.
Though our lawmakers have passed some protective legislation in what many consider a progressive state, Crystal and Jaelynn discuss how much more needs to be done to ensure the safety of Black trans people here in Washington. To that end, Jaelynn describes a King County Housing First initiative Lavender Rights Project is undertaking in conjunction with Chief Seattle Club to provide permanent supportive housing for trans people who don’t feel safe in shelter offered by traditional housing services agencies - the hope is to become a model for how similar support can be provided to other vulnerable communities across the country.
Crystal then notes the remarkable success of pilot after pilot of guaranteed income programs, and Jaelynn details the small program Lavender Rights Project has run over the last two years and its positive impact on participants. Finally, the two give a rundown of how to listen, step up, and take action - whether you’re a state legislator, a county or city official, or a concerned community member - to push back against anti-trans sentiment, hate, and fascism.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Jaelynn Scott and the Lavender Rights Project at @lavrights.
Resources
Lavender Rights Project
The Combahee River Collective Statement
“Introducing our New Mission: thoughts from Executive Director, Jaelynn Scott” | Lavender Rights Project
“BREAKING: Lavender Rights Project and Chief Seattle Club opening permanent housing for QT2BIPOC in Fall 2023” | Lavender Rights Project
“Here’s why the Lavender Rights Project, county officials, and Seattle’s mayor think this Capitol Hill apartment building is the right place to start a new approach to creating supportive housing and putting a real dent in the homelessness crisis” by Justin Carder from Capitol Hill Seattle Blog
“Seattle's new 'Health through Housing' property to serve QT2BIPOC residents” by Erica Zucco from King5
“This organization’s plan to provide housing for Black trans people in Seattle offers a much-needed glimmer of hope” by Naomi Ishisaka from The Seattle Times
Seattle Solidarity Budget: Basic Income Guarantee
Solidarity Budget presents: Guaranteed Basic Income (GBI) panel discussion
Washington State Basic Income Feasibility Study | WA Department of Social and Health Services
Welcoming Cities Resolution | Seattle City Council
“Seattle City Council reaffirms support for immigrants, refugees” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times
“Seattle ‘Welcoming City’ resolution includes plan for push back on federal orders” by Agatha Pacheco from The Seattle Globalist
Impact of Gender Affirming Care Bans On LGBTQ+ Adults | Human Rights Campaign
“Majority of LGBTQ adults feel safety threatened by gender-affirming care bans: poll” by Brooke Migdon from The Hill
“‘Kids Online Safety Act’ will ‘protect’ children from trans content, senator Marsha Blackburn admits” by Emily Chudy from Pink News
We are family, too — A love letter to the Black community from your trans family | Lavender Rights Project
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, today I am excited to be joined by Jaelynn Scott, the Executive Director of Lavender Rights Project. Welcome to the show.
[00:01:02] Jaelynn Scott: Good to be with you.
[00:01:04] Crystal Fincher: Well, I'm excited to have this conversation - your reputation precedes you, Lavender Rights' reputation has been talked about. We just had a guest bring you up on the show the other day talking about what wonderful work you do - that was Dr. Ben Danielson. What is Lavender Rights Project and what brought you to this work?
[00:01:22] Jaelynn Scott: Oh my goodness, I love Dr. Danielson - I'm so glad he brought us up. So Lavender Rights Project is a Black trans-led organization. We're based in Seattle, we serve all of Washington, and we also do national policy work as well. And we're primarily focused on protecting Black trans people. Honestly, we're in the business of protecting all trans people from violence, period - but we use a lens of Black trans feminism to do that work. And what I mean by that - oftentimes I need to clarify - is we really believe in intersectionality, and as a praxis, and not in the way that people casually use. Like, you know, my mother's from Italy and my father's from whatever, and it's intersectional - nah. In the original term that was meant by the Combahee River Collective - when they brought it up and as others who have coined intersectionality - thinking about what are those pieces, those intersectional pieces that need to be put in place to protect the most vulnerable in our community. That, in 1977 - with the collective, right - was Black women. And I think we have more clarity on gender diversity, so we say Black trans women, Black trans femmes even to be specific. And it really is a praxis, right? It's a strategy to look at - we're not only concerned about Black trans femmes and Black trans women but we know, as the Combahee River Collective said, that if we can really protect Black trans women, Black women - if we can do that, it means all of the systems of destruction and oppression will dismantle because we have taken care of that core group that are affected by each of those intersections. So that's the work that we do, but doing trans work from that lens in particular - in three quick areas, I'll let you know quickly. So housing justice, economic justice, and really getting in the meat of violence prevention, also - those three.
[00:03:19] Crystal Fincher: Well, and a lot of work is in that portfolio - a lot needs to be done. You talk about protecting the entire trans community from violence, particularly with the lens of Black trans femmes, which is critical. We're in Washington state, which is in a better position than several other states - true, and we've done some positive work on positive legislation. But there are still challenges here despite the fact that this is a blue state, a progressive area. What do you say to people who feel like - Hey, we're in Washington, it's all good. We don't need to worry about this here. We're all progressive.
[00:03:56] Jaelynn Scott: Yeah, I mean, the fact is, is that it is not safe anywhere in this country and frankly in the world for trans people - not completely - and especially for Black trans people. For me personally, I'm Black first, and so we start there, right? That there is still police violence against Black communities in Washington state, that we have dismal outcomes in terms of health and housing - even here in progressive states, in Washington state. All of the progressive legislation that exists isn't quite reaching our community because of systemic oppression and because of systems that really need to be looked at and anti-Blackness. And then we add transgender to that lens. I mean, it is just the fact that - anecdotally, when I go to a grocery store, that it is hard to feel safe even there because of - my hair might not be in the right place, my makeup might not be right, and I might catch the wrong light. And it is a constant stare or a calling out of who I am and what people are projecting onto me as a trans woman. And that's the case with all of us who are visibly trans, and those of us who may be a little bit more stealth and can navigate safely. The fact is that many of us in Washington state live in fear. And so is there a modicum amount of protections in terms of legislation? Yeah, it's a bit better in terms of our access, but those freedoms aren't necessarily reaching us in the way that they need to, those protections aren't reaching us in the way that they need to protect - particularly Black trans people.
And socially, it's still a mess. We are not that different - I'm from Mississippi - culturally, it's not that different than it is in Mississippi in terms of my ability to navigate socially, social spaces in Washington state. And in many ways, it's safer in Black community in the South because at least there are more of us there, and I'm able to navigate Blackness a little bit easier when there's more Black people here. So you're faced with this sort of double thing - you got us who are a smaller amount of people navigating a mostly white community, and also the general transphobia and transmisogynoir that exists across the country. And if there is a slight degree of - very, very slight degree - of it being socially more acceptable, it's not enough to secure our protection and safety. And it is still dismal.
[00:06:23] Crystal Fincher: Now, you talked about the areas that you're practicing in, where you're focusing on - housing being one of them. Why is housing so important?
[00:06:33] Jaelynn Scott: Yeah, so we had conversations with community, with our community members - and across the nation and also in Washington state - to really get to what are we being asked of as an organization to focus on, to really think about in the protection of Black trans people. And we determined both from research and also from those conversations, three particular areas that are absolutely necessary to guarantee our protection. And the first of those is housing. We believe in Housing First as a disruption and violence against Black trans people. We need to be able to know that our housing - and really food security - but housing is secure and we don't have to depend on others for our security. And we don't have to negotiate our livelihood, right - and our wellbeing so that we can have a place to stay at night. And so the research shows that when people are housed that the outcomes are a lot better in terms of their own security and safety. And it is absolutely critical that we focus in. It's a strange thing - we started as a legal services organization, I think seven years ago now, and we never were in housing and housing justice. But as you know, in Washington state, especially Seattle, and across the country - there's a housing crisis. And no one was actually standing up to do this work. Outcomes for trans people in general - for public housing services - is absolutely terrible. We were finding that our clients and our people, that our family - were not feeling safe in shelters, were not feeling safe by the traditional housing services agencies. And it was unacceptable, so somebody actually needed to step in.
So our project is small, it's tiny - 30, maybe 32 housing units for individuals here in the Seattle area. It is permanent supportive housing - ongoing in perpetuity - they leave when they want to leave and they have ongoing supports for their health. It's open to all folks, but we'll primarily be focused on the people that we serve with our specialty. But it really is a model - and that's how I'm looking at it - it's a good model to work across the City of Seattle, King County, Washington state, nonprofits. We're partnering with a Urban Native organization, Chief Seattle Club - who actually owns, right, the land whose land this really is - and they have a lot more competency in the area. So they're providing a lot of support for us as we learn housing. And so there's this beautiful model happening - if it works, and I pray that it does, that we can then replicate across the country with other partners and other people who are interested in getting secure and well-funded housing for trans folk to protect them from violence. And I really think this model is not exclusive to Black trans community, but I think it really could be used for trans community - trans exclusive housing that is well supported by the government and well supported by community is what's needed in this moment to reduce the crisis of violence in our community.
[00:09:33] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - to reduce the crisis of violence, to help people stabilize and find housing security, which is necessary to address so many other challenges that people find in life. Now you talked about this being a model, which I think is important - and permanent supportive housing is, as you said, what research is showing to be most effective in keeping people safe and stable. How did this partnership come about?
[00:10:00] Jaelynn Scott: Yeah, so initially there was a client of ours who - and a friend, a community member who we were advocating for - who had experienced some really lack of cultural competency with King County, I'll just name it. And they hired her for an event and she was targeted by right-wing media and doxxed because of how she showed up - she did a burlesque performance and they ran with it. And I think King County was really just regretful about that experience - they were hoping to empower trans folk and really show Black trans visibility. And there needed to be some healing. And they asked her - What do you need? We'll do whatever is needed to repair this. And she said - We need housing for my community. And to their credit, King County jumped on it. And so we found the right model with King County - they contacted us because we were the only Black trans-led organization in the state that was doing this work and especially in King County. They contacted us and we began discussions - how could we get into this work and find the right model that worked for Black trans folk? We identified the right program, we found the right partners - we knew we wanted to partner with either a Black or Native org, right? - to help us get this rolling and get going. And it just moved on and progressed from there.
[00:11:21] Crystal Fincher: So where is this at in the process currently? Will this be opening soon?
[00:11:25] Jaelynn Scott: Yeah, and by the way, I do want to name - her name was Beyoncé Black St. James - she's a fantastic community leader out of Spokane who does amazing advocacy work, but also is just a powerful and beautiful and fantastic performer. But we are in the process - we were awarded the facility, it was announced. And we are now waiting on some minor repairs that need to happen in this new building. And so we're sort of caught up in really - King County's working on getting things through their processes and government processes so that we can actually get this minor repair done and open our house. We're delayed in the opening about a year. So we really need our community to continue to encourage the county to move quickly to get this facility open, because we're just wasting money at this point with open rooms - and we have residents lined up and ready to move into the facility.
[00:12:20] Crystal Fincher: Now, when you say permanent supportive housing, what does that mean for the people who will eventually be moving in? What does that look like and how will they be served?
[00:12:28] Jaelynn Scott: So Ebo Barton, who's our Director of Housing Services has worked really hard to build out a network of support for our residents. So on the first half, King County will provide ongoing social services support as they do for any of their agencies. There also will be security - and we don't look at that security on-site as protecting anyone else but our residents. So there will be 24 hour security on-site to protect them from the outside and make sure that they are safe, as well as ongoing support groups for - I believe there's support for gender affirming care, and healthcare, and counseling services to heal from just the trauma of being Black and the trauma of being trans in this community - as well as getting them career support and moving on career support. There's a number of, I believe, 9 or 10 agencies who are committed to supporting our particular facility in addition to King County's ongoing services.
[00:13:28] Crystal Fincher: So is most of the focus on this facility, are there any plans for others, or is it working on getting this model straight and then evaluating after?
[00:13:37] Jaelynn Scott: Yeah, so we aren't a housing services org, right? So I think we see ourselves as a policy shop and really our direct services really informs what we're doing to push forward in policies. I mean, we equally do criminal legal services and we also do policy advocacy around criminal law and this intersection with trans people. And we do economic justice - we're really pushing for a guaranteed income as a sort of third pillar of support for all trans people in Washington State, quite similar to the guaranteed income in San Francisco. So we aren't a housing services organization and I don't think we're immediately planning on expanding those services. It is our hope that - King County has promised that those properties will move over and shift into the ownership of organizations. I think we just wanna stay there - continue to work in supporting that property and maybe even have those residents, if they want to, participate in the movement building and policy work that happens with our organization. So we're not seeing them as this sort of dual client versus people providing services - that they are a part of our community and they're part of the movement building effort. So I think we wanna stay there and it's a good size for us at the moment, but we do and we have been talking nationally with other Black trans community members and organizations who are hoping to do projects similarly. So we hope other people will take on the banner - and even in Seattle, we need a lot more than 32 units to take care of trans community in general. I know, and I don't wanna get ahead of the county, but there was at least a request for proposals for transitional housing services for veterans - for LGBTQ veterans focusing on trans communities - that King County is also doing, that we hope another agency will take up the banner and continue to provide for those expanded services. I know Chief Seattle Club is hoping to serve more Two-Spirit people - we will also be serving some of those folks in our facility. And so there's a number of places that we can start moving in.
And really this is the right response right now to what is happening across the country. If we can take anything from these coordinated political attacks - and let me tell you that they are coming after us, not because they actually care that much about the issues - they are coming after us because they wanna get elected, because they need a boogeyman and they think that this is gonna score them political points. But what they don't know is it's drawing more attention to the issue of the crisis that is happening in trans community. And it's really bringing more support from the majority of Americans who actually have love in their heart and care for their community, and believe in the diversity of the American society, and really support LGBTQ community. And so that's - right now, it is our opportunity to in response to them, not necessarily be put on the defensive, but let's finally secure and build trans protections, trans security, trans safety in response to their disgusting actions.
[00:16:31] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, I love that. And focus on support and building, as opposed to centering the people who are just pushing fascism and hate.
[00:16:42] Jaelynn Scott: Fascism, period. Period.
[00:16:44] Crystal Fincher: So you said you are a policy shop and you have a lot of experience in policy. One, I'm excited to hear about the talking about a guaranteed income - every single pilot, and there have been many now, for guaranteed income has just been successful and shown that it's helped. Turns out when you give people money and let them spend it on what they need the most, that's the most effective intervention that we see. Is this something that you're advocating for locally, and in our city or state? Is this something that looks like might be possible here in Seattle?
[00:17:20] Jaelynn Scott: Yeah, so there is two areas - well, a few areas. So we're doing our own very, very small - a sort of a pilot just for our community to get a sense of how this is actually serving us. We started thinking about guaranteed income because in the summer of 2020, we were doing mutual aid and we were finding that people - $50, $100, $500, every once in a while - they were becoming more dependent on that. And we didn't like the positionality of us looking like sort of the saviors of individuals instead of empowering them to have economic security. And what we found now is that there were a few, right - that were return. And so we had enough money to do about five folks - it's over the last two years - a $1,000 a month, every single month, for those people. And they, we're watching just the results - both from our surveys and our conversations with them - their economic security, their housing security, how they're thriving in their own careers. Month after month after month, we're just seeing so much improvements and they are needing less to do the GoFundMes and less seeking mutual aid - that is declining - and support in the community. And so that's sort of our - that's the piece where I say we do the support so to inform how we approach it.
So we do - there's basic income, right - which is a kind of a guarantee for all. And then there's sort of guaranteed income, which I think in our understanding is really focused on particular populations that are most in need. There's a basic income approach in Washington state that, I think, there was even a bill pushed through that didn't actually make it through - I don't think it made it out of committee and it failed, and I think that will continue to come up. And we do support that, but we really do believe - that you have to start looking at who are the people who are most in need and you have to consider gender and race, economic status, pregnancy status, as well as a number of items in order to get this right. And I believe the state version was kind of a lottery system that we weren't feeling secure about. So we've been in conversation with the Transgender Cultural District in San Francisco, and they launched a - worked with the City of San Francisco as well as other agencies and nonprofits - to get a guaranteed income for trans people in the City of San Francisco. And that is, you know, there's been some lawsuits and et cetera, but that is getting launched there if it hasn't started already. But that program follows on the heels of other guaranteed income for people who are pregnant, guaranteed income for other particular populations in San Francisco that have proven effective - and at least $1,000 a month in an ongoing way. And that's what we wanna push in the City of Seattle. We're currently, I believe, and the people who are doing a Solidarity Budget are also looking at how they can do guaranteed income for particular populations. And so we're in conversation with them as well as pushing on our own for a guaranteed income for trans people. And hopefully using some of the data from the support that we provided - our organization - to prove that this is a proven method to protect your Washington and Seattle populations.
[00:20:21] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. What other policy is really important right now, or what is at the top of the list for you that you're advocating for?
[00:20:29] Jaelynn Scott: Yeah, so I think right now it's guaranteed income. We use policy in a number of different ways - like the capital P, which is like the legislation - but the lowercase policy, which includes how King County is operating in relationship to providing housing to trans people. Like we see all that as a sort of movement building policy where different aspects depending on who's involved. But right now, we're really concerned about what's happening nationally. As you may know, Washington state really has a suite - what I've been calling a suite - of trans protections that have passed over the years, including an expansion of Medicare to include gender affirming care. As well as recent legislative session, there was the SHIELD law, which protects people who are seeking refuge here from extradition to other states and penalty and persecution from other states for what they do in Washington state. And finally, there is a youth gender affirming care access for people who end up in shelters who are runaways and making sure that they have access to this data and aren't turned back to dangerous living situations for seeking affirmations in their gender. And all of those are good bills - they're all at different levels of acceptance and there's lawsuits and all kinds of things happening, being pushed from outside parties who are trying to push legislation here.
But they don't necessarily really address the needs of trans communities of color because they are mostly written in legislative corners, sessions with white folk who are in the legislative game. They really haven't, didn't sit down - because they're on the defensive, right? It's a quick thing. You gotta get this stuff going 'cause you're seeing like all of the sort of outlawing gender affirming care in Alabama and Georgia and et cetera, and criminalizing seeking care outside of the state - both for abortion and gender affirming care. And so to their credit - that they needed to, and they felt like they needed to respond. And I do think there needed to be a response. But there wasn't enough time to actually doing the organizing, the movement building, the conversations with communities of color to say - actually, you never had access to gender affirming care in the way that white communities have. You've never had that access, especially not in the US South. So what is it that we can do now to correct the original sin, right? So that you never find yourself there and none of our communities will find ourselves there. But what we're doing now is putting a band-aid on an issue and making sure that those people of privilege who have already had access to care, don't lose that access.
So one of the ways they could have done it, right? is to say - Okay, we want to protect people seeking gender affirming care here from Texas, for example. And we wanna have this legislation up so that they can't be extradited to other states and et cetera. Okay - build a budget line item in the state budget that provides support for them, to fly them in to seek care, to make sure they have access to medical care, to make sure they have recovery services and et cetera. In addition to that, if you had really talked to communities, you would have known that none of the people who are most at risk in Texas can afford to get here to seek that care and to actually benefit from that bill. And so there was additional conversations needed. If not that, at least put out some funding and support for communities of color here to gather and come up with legislative priorities on our own that they can take the lead from instead of us following on the tail end of whatever they decided in their corners.
[00:23:57] Crystal Fincher: So for people who may be legislators or policy makers listening right now, where can they start with that? How do they start with that?
[00:24:06] Jaelynn Scott: Yeah, I think right now capacity building funding is absolutely necessary. So for those organizations who are trusted - there's POCAAN and PCAF and our organization, Lavender Rights Project. There is Gender Justice League. There's a number of queer and trans organizations - Creative Justice - who serve Black trans and queer people, who are brilliant and who have policymakers and movement builders and do amazing work, but they aren't as well funded as the big box nonprofits. And so we need the ability to actually hold policy - to have the staffing for it, to organize for it, to fund our people to do that work - so that when the legislative session comes up, we have the policy recommendations necessary, that we actually have boots on the ground. We're learning from other community members about what those priorities are, but we are behind the game here. We're behind the ball here. We are years and years and years behind the ball. So that capacity building around the ability to do both organizing and policy making - that's needed, critically needed - including lobbying, the ability for us to fund our own lobbyists. We need it and we need it like 30 years ago in this state.
[00:25:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and makes a lot of sense. Now we're thinking about legislatively, do you think - for local leaders, city council members, mayors - locally, that they need to embark upon the same path or are there additional suggestions that you would have for them?
[00:25:41] Jaelynn Scott: Yeah, I haven't - we've been thinking a lot about the State Legislature. And locally we've been thinking more around sort of some of the direct support initiatives like guaranteed income and et cetera. But I do think it's worth local politicians, councils - to figure out how can they build out a sanctuary county, city for trans people - what policies are in their power to make, what protections are in their power to make to ensure security and safety for Washington residents and others who seek care here. And let me tell you, it will work because I - the majority of the Black trans people that work in my organization come from the US South, they come from the East Coast. They come from other places where they may have felt less safe and they sought refuge here because of the promise of progressiveness of Washington state. Now that promise has mostly been empty, but they can work really hard to make sure that promise is fulfilled - because we are already starting to see that there will be a flood of refugees from other places around this country as this ball continues to drop on attacks against us and the rise of fascism in this country. So there are protections that are in the power of King County - to make sure that folks have income, to make sure they have access to employment, to make sure they have access to housing, to ensure that their laws protect them safely within their city jurisdictions - that people need to be looking at on their own and starting to work on.
[00:27:14] Crystal Fincher: Now for people who aren't policy makers - they're just looking around and feeling very troubled by what they're seeing by the rise of hate and fascism, anti-trans violence. What advice would you give for how they can meaningfully help?
[00:27:32] Jaelynn Scott: People, we need the voices of everyone at this moment. And the first thing is to continue to love on your LGBTQ family that's around you. And really lean into care for them in this moment - because whether or not we're saying it, a lot of us are feeling deeply traumatized, targeted and attacked at this moment. And there was a poll that was recently released - I can't remember, but I found it through the HRC, National HRC - that more and more of us are feeling less safe across the country because of what's happening. And so what can you do to extend your love and care to people. Also, as people start seeking refuge here and refuge from other states, be thinking about what can you give up? You know, we might be at the place that we were during the crisis of immigration, especially in the Trump administration, where people were starting to open up their homes to - as refugee assistance. And I think it's time to start planning that. What can we do to prepare our space for people who might need care and safety here?
And I think the third thing I will say is look at and lean into Black queer and trans communities of color, Native and Indigenous Two-Spirit communities - and see the organizing that they're doing right now. Follow their lead. When they say - Hey, we need you to speak out against the Kids Online Safety Act - that's currently moving through Congress right now. And that promises to silence trans communities nationally in social media, that will almost destroy the social media and the publicity of nonprofits who do this work. And really will remove the ability of trans youth to find affirming media, to find affirming care, services, information, education, sexual health on social media. It will be destructive, and yet it has bipartisan support. Speak out, right - whenever we say this bill is being pushed in this state that's not quite working - and take the lead from communities of color, trans and queer communities of color in their legislative efforts. It's pretty easy. Follow them on social media, right? Give when they say give, take action when they say take action. Many people are often calling and saying - I want to volunteer. I want to be on the ground. I want to whatever. But when we post - Hey, we need you to call your Congressperson on this - no one calls. It's so much easier than you think. Follow, support, and listen.
[00:29:56] Crystal Fincher: It does. And it makes a difference when you call and when you reach out, especially when it's to your Congressperson. They pay attention, they listen, and it is very important to do that. I appreciate that. As we move to close this interview, is there just anything that you would urge people to reflect on, or act on, or do as we move forward?
[00:30:18] Jaelynn Scott: Yeah, so Black trans community, Black trans people, Black trans women, trans folk have always been here. And I think - speaking specifically to Black community at this moment - we have always been a part of culture. There have been moments when we have been silenced, where colonization has forced our history around gender diversity on the continent to be erased. And we need to have a conversation. We need to have a conversation about how much trans communities have supported who we are as a people - our role in the civil rights movement, our role in the Black Lives Matter movement - how we have always been there for Black community. And we need Black community to stand up for us in this moment too - that we are much more beautiful because of our diversity and that violence against any Black person is violence against the entire Black community. And so, yeah, we need to have conversations. But I also want us to take care to not take the lead from white right-wing neo-fascists who are concerned about the destruction of trans folk, the oppression of women, and who really cannot stand your Black skin - to let them lead the conversation, to let them take your voice, and you to be taking talking points from them. Let's have a conversation as community as we are - deeply from the place of the value for human rights, civil rights, and our value for our love ethic that we all share as Black folk. Let's sit down around that and let's sit down around gender and have a convo. And so I think that right now is what's at the top of my heart in speaking and speaking to the community that is closest to my heart.
[00:32:02] Crystal Fincher: Very well said, absolutely necessary to be said. I sincerely appreciate you sharing with us on the program today - all the work that you're doing as part of the Lavender Rights Project. And thank you so much for your time today.
[00:32:17] Jaelynn Scott: Thank you, Crystal. And thank you so much for this platform. This is - it's a critical moment - and this may seem small on a podcast and a brief conversation, but every single one of these matter at this moment.
[00:32:28] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this topical show re-air, Shannon Cheng of People Power Washington joins Crystal to dive into the intricacies of how the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) contract stands in the way of police accountability. With negotiations already underway, Crystal and Shannon talk about what we should be looking for in the next SPOG contract and why police accountability is important. An overview of the historic difficulty bargaining with SPOG highlights how the City has been left with a lacking accountability system, how the community has struggled to have their interests represented at the table, and how the Seattle Police Department has fallen out of compliance with its consent decree. With little insight into the closed-door negotiations with SPOG, Crystal and Shannon look for signs in recent agreements with other local police unions where progress in accountability reforms was paired with officer wage increases.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Shannon Cheng at @drbestturtle and People Power Washington at @PeoplePowerWA.
Shannon Cheng
Shannon Cheng is the Chair of People Power Washington, a grassroots volunteer organization which champions policies that divest from police and reinvest in community-based solutions and alternate crisis response, decriminalize non-serious offenses, and implement accountability and enforceable standards for police officers and agencies. People Power Washington was instrumental in the passage of the 2020 King County charter amendments to reform public safety, and continues to be involved with public safety advocacy in the City of Seattle, King County, and Washington State Legislature.
Shannon holds a Bachelor and Master of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She continued her graduate work at MIT and earned a PhD in Space Propulsion with a Minor in Geology/Geophysics because she loves rocks.
Since graduating, Shannon has been working on computational lighting technology with her husband, becoming a passionate orienteer, and organizing in support of civil liberties — from immigrants’ rights to voting rights to criminal justice reform.
Resources
Sign up for the People Power Washington mailing list
“Police Management Contract, Which Includes Concessions, Could Serve as Template for SPOG Negotiations” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
Timeline of Seattle Police Accountability | ACLU of Washington
“As negotiations with city loom, Seattle’s police union has had an outsized influence on police accountability measures” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times
Public Employees' Collective Bargaining Act | Revised Code of Washington
“Officials Announce Changes to Police Union Negotiation Strategy, But Accountability and Bargaining Experts Say More Should Be Done” by Paul Kiefer from PubliCola
“New King County police contract increases pay, body cams, and civilian oversight” by Amy Radil from KUOW
“King County strikes deal with union for bodycams on sheriff’s deputies” by Daniel Gutman from The Seattle Times
“Seattle police union elects hard-line candidate as president in landslide vote” by Steve Miletich and Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times
“Seattle approves new police contract, despite community pushback” by David Kroman from Crosscut
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I am thrilled to be welcoming a crucial clutch member of our team and absolute talented woman in her own right, Dr. Shannon Cheng. Welcome to the show.
[00:01:05] Shannon Cheng: Hi, Crystal - excited to be here.
[00:01:08] Crystal Fincher: Excited to have you here. Now, you wear many hats. One of those is as Chair of People Power Washington - Police Accountability. Can you just let us know a little bit about the organization and what brought you to the work?
[00:01:21] Shannon Cheng: People Power Washington - we're a volunteer-run, grassroots group focused on bringing equitable public safety and police accountability. We focus on several geographic areas - we started off working in Seattle - we also do work in King County as well as now Washington State. We're working at different levels of government because our experience was - working at the city level - we found out there were some things that really had to be taken care of at the state level and vice versa. We started off in 2017, right around when the Seattle Police Accountability Ordinance was passed, and that's how we got involved more deeply and have continued. And then in 2020, when the summer protests were happening, a lot of people came out of the woodwork really wanting to get involved with this issue in particular. And so our group's really expanded and that's why we added on King County to some of the work that we do.
[00:02:14] Crystal Fincher: When it comes to police accountability, really wanted to have this show because over and over again, no matter what direction we come at it from, it seems like one of the biggest barriers to accountability that we always hear is the police union contracts. And we hear from the police chiefs, from the mayors that, Oh, that would be great to do, but we can't do it because of the contract. Or we hear about discipline that has been taken, that is then reversed after arbitration, because of things having to do with the contract. So I really wanted to talk about and examine that, especially because that contract is currently being renegotiated. So why is this so important and what's at stake?
[00:02:59] Shannon Cheng: As we have been working on trying to get better police accountability in Seattle specifically, what our group kept running up against - any kind of progress that was trying to be made, any solution that was being suggested to try to improve the system - the barrier we kept running up against and being told was, Well, that has to be bargained in the SPOG contract. And SPOG is the Seattle Police Officers Guild - they're the police union in Seattle that represents our officers and sergeants. There's another police union also - the SPMA, the Seattle Police Management Association - which represents the lieutenants and captains. But SPOG is the main one that is constantly standing in the way.
And so I think one thing that - I think when we talk about police accountability, it's helpful to think about are there are these different branches of accountability and we have obstacles along all of those paths. So when we talk about police accountability, I think it's important to realize there's several different tracks that we can try to hold police accountability and then understanding what are the obstacles that are in each of those tracks. So the first one would be criminal accountability. This is where the state would charge an officer. And we have seen a lot of issues with that where we don't have an independent prosecutor who is willing to bring charges against a police officer. Oftentimes the investigations that are done that would lead to charges being brought are not being done in a way that doesn't have conflicts of interest. So that's something that's being worked on. There's also civil liability, where a person who has suffered distress at the hands of a police officer would be able to bring civil charges and get redress in that fashion. On the federal level, that is what is blocked by qualified immunity. People may have heard of that, where if the case is not exactly been decided with this exact same parameters in a previous precedent, then people are not able to get their case through. Another avenue of accountability is regulatory, which would be decertifying a police officer who has fallen beneath the standards that have been set for what a police officer should do.
And then the final one that I think that many people think about a lot is what I would call administrative accountability. And this is done at the local level in our local police departments - and it has to do with how we can impose discipline on police officers at the local level. So when the police chief - as you were saying, Crystal - decides that an officer was acting in a way that they need to be disciplined, then that's what we call administrative accountability. And so the reason that the SPOG contract is so important is that it basically dictates how the City can impose accountability onto our officers. And so everything that ever happens that has to do with looking into how the officer may have behaved, or deciding whether that was within policy, and then if it was not within policy, what kind of discipline can be imposed, or even whether that discipline sticks - all of that is tied up into what is agreed upon between the City and the Seattle Police Officers Guild in their contract.
[00:06:29] Crystal Fincher: So when we hear accountability being talked about, there are actually specific policies and things that - many people have looked at this contract process and best practices around the country and have come out with. What are the recommendations that are specifically being made for the next SPOG contract? What should the public be looking to get out of this?
[00:06:54] Shannon Cheng: Yeah - I think at a minimum - the next SPOG contract should be in alignment with the recently negotiated contract with the Seattle Police Management Association. We were able to get things such as subpoena power for the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General through that contract. We also were able to restructure the disciplinary review process so that it was less biased towards officers getting discipline overturned in arbitration. I think there was also a clear definition of what honesty means for police officers, which is very important. So yes, minimum is what happened in the SPMA contract. And then beyond that, it should go further and not block anything from the 2017 accountability ordinance - so things such as being able to civilianize the Office of Police Accountability so that we don't have the conflict of interest of officers investigating other officers. And then I think a broader conversation that the City has been trying to but has been hampered is talking about what kind of alternative public safety response that we might want to be able to have other than sending an armed officer. I think there's been a lot of concern that the SPOG contract, as written, could lead to an unfair labor practice claim by the union if Seattle moves forward with any kind of pilot. And so this is what has been holding us back in ways that a lot of other cities around the country have been able to move forward.
[00:08:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And cities in our area have been able to move forward. Seattle appears to be behind the curve when it comes to things like the holistic types of responses - to be able to send an appropriate response to whatever the emergency is, which isn't always an armed police officer - it may be a social worker, someone who can address substance use disorder, or different things to address those issues that just can't be handled by a police officer with a gun or through our criminal system.
So I think having those things in mind is really important as we continue to move through this in this conversation. And this is a really challenging issue for people to deal with because of the messaging environment and the way that the politics of the situation has unfolded. Because there are some folks - we've heard repeatedly from the head of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, who has been known for making incendiary statements before, and this kind of feeling or proposition that police accountability is inherently anti-police. When I think - on the ground - most people, even if they don't mind having the police show up and seeing them all over the place, is that we all have standards for our jobs, for our performance, how we should deal with other people, and there are rules. And if those rules are broken, there should be some kind of accountability attached to that. If you are not doing what you're supposed to be doing, if you're abusing others on the job - that, in every other circumstance, is grounds for usually immediate termination. But we're finding nearly the opposite in terms of the police. I think a lot of people are challenged by the notion that, Hey, why am I held accountable for being able to de-escalate a situation, follow the rules and regulations of my job. Yet people who have control over other people's human and civil rights don't have that and a big challenge having to do with that. So as we navigate this - I guess starting off - how do you think of and characterize and do this work, and refute those kinds of accusations and challenges?
[00:11:07] Shannon Cheng: I think it's important to remember that police officers and law enforcement are given special extra powers that a lot of the rest of us don't have. They have state-sanctioned power to take away life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. So they have direct control over the civil and constitutional rights of people in situations. And we trust them to uphold the Constitution and not overstep bounds - and that's what we would expect to see. Unfortunately, that's not what happens a lot of the time and that's where we do need accountability to come into play - when people's rights have been violated.
[00:11:55] Crystal Fincher: Okay, so we've talked about the different types of police accountability. We've talked about administrative accountability. I just want to review where we're at in this process, specifically, when it comes to the Seattle Police Officers Guild contract.
[00:12:12] Shannon Cheng: Okay, so the current Seattle Police Officers Guild contract expired at the end of 2020. So currently the officers are working without a current contract and the City and the union are under negotiations for the next contract. We don't have much visibility into when the next step is going to happen and we don't know what parameters they are going to be bargaining.
[00:12:43] Crystal Fincher: So right now they're operating without a contract and that means the current contract continues. And we had this conversation, or we had a public conversation about this - not many people were probably tuned into that conversation - before the last contract negotiation. What went into that contract negotiation and how does that tee up what's at stake in this contract?
[00:13:05] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, the previous contract negotiation was finished in the end of 2018. And so that contract had already been overdue for several years. And one of the reasons it took so long to negotiate is that the City of Seattle has been under consent decree since 2012 - so 10 years - and what that means is that the Department of Justice came in, did an investigation into officers at the bequest of many community organizations, and found that there was unconstitutional policing happening in the City of Seattle. So basically the federal government is providing our local law enforcement oversight and trying to bring them back into compliance with the Constitution. So as part of that - in 2017, the City of Seattle passed an ordinance that established a police accountability system that at the time was hailed as being a landmark accountability system, that had three branches - people may have heard of them. There's the OPA, which is the Office of Police Accountability - their job is to do investigations and suggest discipline that the chief will then apply. There's also the OIG, which is the Office of Inspector General, which is observing and making systemic recommendations to the system. And then finally there was the CPC, which is the Community Police Commission, and their role was to bring community voices in - it was the community that originally brought up issues with how policing was being done in Seattle, and so this was to continue to let them have a voice into how we rectify the system.
So the issue is that that ordinance passed into City law in 2017, but it was not actually implementable until the next SPOG contract was negotiated with the officers. And in 2018, 18 months after that landmark law got passed, a SPOG contract got ratified which basically rolled back a lot of the provisions from the police accountability ordinance. And so there was a lot of community outcry - many groups came out, including the CPC, to ask that the City Council and the mayor reject that contract because it basically did not honor what - all the work that had been done to try to put a workable system into place.
[00:15:43] Crystal Fincher: We're picking up this contract negotiation again here - that's currently being negotiated. I think a lot of people are looking at this - looking at the conflicting statements that we've heard from the mayor between what was said while on the campaign trail and what has been said after he was elected to office, in addition to some leaked comments. So in this particular contract, what are the things that are important to get out of it to ensure the kind of accountability that we've talked about, to ensure that people are treated in accordance with the law, in accordance with regulations. And that's not to say that they can't do their jobs, just that they should be able to do it correctly. What are the most important things to consider here?
[00:16:36] Shannon Cheng: I think the contract really needs to allow us to see what a robust accountability system could do. I think there's this assumption that because we have the existence of these three bodies - the CPC, the OPA, and the OIG - that we have a working accountability system, and people often blame that system for not imposing the accountability. But the truth is that that system has not been able to be fully implemented because of the restrictions put on it by the 2018 SPOG contract. So since that contract passed, we've had incidents where the federal judge overseeing this consent decree ruled the City out of compliance on the issue of accountability specifically. There was a famous case where an officer's discipline got overturned in arbitration because the arbitrator decided that the chief's firing wouldn't stand.
[00:17:32] Crystal Fincher: So that must be really a fundamental challenge that really speaks to the culture of the department. If you're trying to weed out - as they would call it - bad apples. They are constantly saying, This doesn't represent all of the officers and all that kind of stuff. Well, if it doesn't, then this is an issue of culture and you have to be able to weed out those bad apples in order to avoid spoiling the whole bunch, as the rest of that saying goes. But if those people are still winding back on the force - was that the case where an officer was - punched a handcuffed woman and broke her jaw, which is not supposed to happen as most people can deduce - and was actually fired by the chief, which is a high bar to clear. They cleared that bar, but were put back in the job through arbitration. What does that do to other officers? What does that say to other officers, especially when you hear the kinds of things coming from the head of the union - that come from them - and some of the really inflammatory things that really make it hard to believe that police are viewing every member of the public equally and doing their job impartially, and really putting the health and safety of the public as their primary priority.
As we go through this, many people aren't familiar with union negotiations overall. This is a very different category of union, seeing that they have special privileges and abilities granted to them by the law. They get to impact other people's civil rights and lives. So in just the mechanics of negotiating this contract - it's hard because these negotiations are private - but what is the process of negotiation? How do people go about getting the kinds of concessions that are necessary to ensure that we're all safe?
[00:19:35] Shannon Cheng: I think it's important to first understand that - in Washington State, public sector unions are given the right to collectively bargain under state law. This is the Public Employees' Collective Bargaining Act. This is where a public employer and a public sector union and their exclusive bargaining representative will sit down at a table and hash out personnel matters such as wages, hours, working conditions, as well as grievance procedures. Under this state act, police guilds and associations fall into a special category - they're classified as uniformed personnel, and so they are considered vital to the welfare and public safety of the State of Washington. So what this means is that - if in the course of doing the collective bargaining with one of these unions they can't reach an agreement, that union is not allowed to go on strike. Because of that, the Public Employees' Collective Bargaining Act then gives them the opportunity to instead go to a third-party arbitrator to decide the disputes about the contract. And then the Washington Open Public Meetings Act is what says that all these negotiations for collective bargaining are behind closed doors.
So effectively, what this means is that the public has very little insight into what's happening. And for many unions that's reasonable, but as we discussed before - for police unions in particular, they have a lot of power and influence and impact, and they deal with the public nearly day to day in their jobs. And so how that happens and when things go wrong, the public has a deep interest into making sure that our interests are represented. So the way that - practically speaking - these negotiations happen at the City is that the two parties are the City of Seattle and the Seattle Police Officers Guild. So on the City side, we're represented by the Labor Relations Policy Committee. In the past, this was effectively only representatives from the mayor's office or direct reports from under the mayor. After getting burned so badly with that 2018 SPOG contract, there's been a lot of effort to change that so that other bodies have more input. So for example, the City Council has five representatives that sit on that committee and they have been able to get a City Council staffer to be able to be at the table for this round of negotiations. In addition, because accountability has been such a difficult point for them to negotiate at the table, they wanted to have an outside expert - with specific technical expertise about the accountability system - to be also present at the table. So that didn't quite happen. Instead, what they are having is representatives from our three accountability bodies able to be present only for the part of negotiations about accountability. So that's who's sitting at the table from the City side. And then SPOG has their representatives to represent the police union.
So as I said, the public has very little input into how these negotiations are proceeding. The City Council did hold public hearings back in the fall of 2019 - ahead of the start of these negotiations - to get input into what the public would be interested in seeing. The issue is - 2019, at this point, is several years ago, and a lot has happened since then in this area, and the conversation and discourse has changed, I think, fueled by what happened in the summer of 2020 and all the protests that broke out. But collective bargaining is a lengthy process. It takes a long time. It's going to take several years. We expect to hopefully see a tentative SPOG contract come out sometime in this next stretch. But until it does, we really have very little insight into what is happening and what is being traded back and forth between the two sides.
[00:23:54] Crystal Fincher: Okay. And just going through what the - continuing through what the process would be once they do come to an agreement in the negotiation - what are the steps to then get it approved officially?
[00:24:08] Shannon Cheng: Right. So if a tentative agreement is reached, then the members of the Seattle Police Officers Guild will vote to see whether their guild would accept the contract. If a majority of them agree, then the tentative collective bargaining agreement would be sent to City Council for ratification. A majority of City Council members would have to vote for that. And if it passed out of City Council, then the mayor would have to actually sign the agreement. And then that would make the agreement official.
[00:24:39] Crystal Fincher: Okay. And if they can't come to an agreement, what happens?
[00:24:46] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, so if they can't come to an agreement - under state law, it could go to interest arbitration. And so this is where a third party arbitrator would make a binding decision on the topics of the contract that they have not been able to come to agreement with. I think historically - going to interest arbitration has been considered risky for the City because these arbitrators would look at like agreements from around the country to make their decision about what seemed fair or not. And this problem is not just in Seattle where we're having difficulty having good contracts with our police union - this happens around the country. So I think the sense has been that if we looked at other contracts, those would tend to lean towards the police union and not be in our favor. I think there are some who feel that - after the protests of 2020, that situation may have changed a little bit. And another note is that that other police union we talked about in Seattle that represents the captains and lieutenants, the SPMA - they recently negotiated a contract that did include more of the progress we would want to see in accountability. So it's possible that if SPOG had to go to arbitration and they looked at this other contract from the same city, that they would agree that SPOG should do the same.
[00:26:16] Crystal Fincher: So what are the signs and signals that we're getting from this current negotiation? Where does it look like things stand? It's hard because so much of the process is opaque, but what have you been able to glean?
[00:26:31] Shannon Cheng: Yeah. So about the specific SPOG negotiations themselves - that as they're happening now - very little. It is very opaque, as you said. But so instead we can try to look at these hopeful signs of other police guilds that have had their contracts negotiated in the recent past. So as I just said, the Seattle Police Management Association contract - that was bargained and passed and accepted this past summer in June 2022. From that contract, SPMA got wage increases that went back retroactively and are pretty in line with sort of the consumer price index. And what Seattle got was that we were finally able to get some of the elements that were missing from that 2017 police accountability ordinance. One thing that has been not available is that our accountability bodies have not had subpoena power over the police department. And so in the SPMA contract, they just didn't mention subpoena power at all - and so because of that exclusion of that term, then it is now granted under the accountability ordinance.
Other improvements that happened was handling how badly arbitration can go sometimes for the City. So trying to - we can't get rid of arbitration as a route for disciplinary appeal, but we can put some guardrails around it. So what they were able to negotiate was that officers couldn't bring new information into the appeal decision. Previously, the initial investigation would happen, the discipline would be decided - and then in the officer's appeal of the decision, they could bring up new information that was not available to the original investigators. And so it was like having another investigation all over again. So they have now said, No, the officer needs to provide all of the information up front and that all needs to be considered first at the first investigation. They also have decided that the arbitrators have to decide whether the chief-imposed discipline was arbitrary or capricious - and if not, they can't overturn the chief's discipline. So these are all positive things that we've seen in the Seattle Police Management Association contract and we would definitely hope to see the same put into the upcoming SPOG contract.
Then in King County, our sheriff's office - they recently reached an agreement with their deputies just this past November and got similar wins. In exchange for pretty generous wage increases, the County has finally been able to get the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight the authority to actually conduct independent investigations as well as subpoena power. These are things that County voters had passed overwhelmingly in charter amendments and then got enshrined in county ordinance, but again, those were being blocked by the police officers guild contract not accepting those changes. So those have both moved forward and I think those are very positive signs that it is possible to sit down at these difficult negotiations with our police guilds and give them fair wage increases. And in exchange, have them accept reasonable accountability measures.
I think unhopeful signs - that I think about - is just how SPOG historically has been a very difficult union to negotiate with. We've just seen that they are much more - they're less willing to give unless they get something in exchange. For example, when we wanted them to start wearing Body-Worn Cameras, we had to pay them extra in order to do that. So things like that give me pause in terms of how negotiations with SPOG would be going - because they have been difficult. I think also their current leadership, the SPOG president, has been very antagonistic and unaligned with a lot of the efforts have been made to try to improve public safety.
[00:31:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I agree with the evaluation of not being aligned. You just mentioned the county-wide vote for increased accountability and restructuring the County Sheriff's department to make that possible. Seattle has voted over and over again, both for statutory improvements and for candidates who have promised on the campaign trail to increase accountability measures. Yet there has been really inflammatory positions and statements made that seem to suggest that they think the public just wants to reject that, and you have to hate police in order to want any kind of accountability, and it's just unacceptable to even think about. And over and over again, the public in opinion polls and in elections says the opposite. They do want people to be accountable for performing on the jobs much like they are. We shouldn't expect people - service workers making minimum wage - to be able to de-escalate situations that we don't expect of police, who that's supposed to be one of the things they're trained and expected to do. So I think a definite misalignment between what the public wants and expects, and what SPOG is willing to entertain and discuss.
So since we're in this time without a contract, what are possible outcomes that could happen short of getting a contract, or that could inhibit contract negotiations moving forward?
[00:33:03] Shannon Cheng: I think what's really going to be important with these upcoming negotiations is that the City is taking seriously what the public has over and over said that they want to see - which is we need to have a robust police accountability system that hasn't been watered down and that is allowable by the SPOG contract. In 2018 - at that City Council hearing where they ratified the problematic contract - there were masses of community members who came out. Groups, citizens, many people came out saying, We agree that SPOG has the right to have pay increases, they've been working without a contract for a long time - they deserve to have fair wages and benefits - but not at the cost of throwing out all the work that we've done under the consent decree and trying to put together a system where we have an accountability system that will help build community trust in what this office, this department that is supposedly here to protect and serve us is doing. And unfortunately the other side came out to that same City Council hearing and everybody was just talking past each other. They were just saying things like, We deserve to have raises. If you don't pass this, it means that you think we don't deserve raises. And that is not what the community was saying. They were saying, You deserve a raise, but in exchange, you need to give us accountability. And they just left out the accountability piece completely.
And so I think it's really important that - as the City moves forward, that they listen to what the public has been saying and make sure that we get that accountability this time, not at the expense of this argument of, Oh, well, the officers have been working without a updated contract for too long. Because these negotiations - we know they take a long time - historically they have been. This is not an unknown, they should have been prepared for that, and to know that this would be an argument that was going to be made. So absolutely, they need to tie any increase or benefits that they give - which is our leverage over the police guild - to getting what we want back, which is full implementation of the 2017 police accountability ordinance. At the minimum, they should have the same things that were negotiated and agreed upon in the SPMA contract in the SPOG contract. And then they should go beyond. Right now, we have an issue where the Office of Police Accountability is restricted in the number of civilian investigators that they can have and what kinds of cases those civilian investigators can manage. We have a situation where we have cops investigating cops. And it's cops who then get put back into the system where maybe they're the ones under investigation again. So I think just anybody can see that there's a huge conflict of interest there where - an officer assigned to be an investigator maybe wouldn't want to do the best job of the investigation because they're going to be back working with these same people in a short time period. So we need to really button down and get our accountability system into a situation where it is more in line with what had been celebrated as this groundbreaking, new way of approaching the issue. Because right now, the current system is just really broken.
[00:36:41] Crystal Fincher: It is really broken and I appreciate all the work that you've done, that other organizations have done to - one, highlight and help people see what are the processes and policies behind this brokenness, and what is the path to being able to have more accountability in this system.
I guess heading into - closing this and final words - if people are interested in making a difference in this issue and trying to make sure that we have accountability, it seems like there are a couple different options. One big opportunity is with the elections that we have coming up. You'd mentioned that it's going to take a majority of the council to ratify whatever contract does wind up happening. We will have several open seats coming in this City Council election. So what are the kinds of things that people should be looking to hear from candidates in order to have confidence that they are going to act on the kind of accountability measures that are necessary?
[00:37:51] Shannon Cheng: I think first and foremost, hearing from people that they recognize that there is a problem with the current system. And that they deeply understand that just because we have a system in name, it doesn't mean that the system is working. And that this is all tied up in these contract negotiations. I don't know if by the time elections happen, whether the negotiations will have moved forward or not. But I am sure that whatever contract does come out, more work is going to be needed to be done for the future one. So setting ourselves up for success and having people that even recognize that there is a problem. I think that so often - police officers are given the benefit of the doubt sometimes, and they don't like receiving criticism. Nobody does, but police officers in general get very defensive and it can be hard to stand up to that and push back, especially with a lot of the mainstream narratives that are going around - but somebody who is going to be bold and willing to stand up for what the public wants in the face of all of that pushback.
[00:39:05] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. What are other ways that the public can help push this in the right direction?
[00:39:10] Shannon Cheng: I think being in touch with your electeds - City Council is important, but honestly, I think the mayor is the one who holds the keys to a lot of how this plays out. So if anybody has the ability to figure out how to tell the mayor that this is absolutely what we want and we will not accept a contract that does not bring our accountability system up to snuff, that's important.
Our group is going to be monitoring and watching for when this contract does get negotiated and comes out, and we'll be looking at it and try to analyze it. We don't know exactly how much time we will have between when that contract comes out and when the City Council vote and mayor signing will happen, but we will be on alert. And so if you're interested and want to receive updates about when that happens and when is an effective time to make your voice heard, you could sign up for our mailing list. If you go to wethepeoplepower.org/join-us, there's a form there where you can sign up. As I said, we also do work at the King County and state levels, but you can have an option to only receive alerts about the areas that you're interested in.
[00:40:24] Crystal Fincher: Thanks for helping us understand the really intricate and confusing process with the contract. And thanks so much - we will be following up on this as we get more news about it.
[00:40:35] Shannon Cheng: Thanks, Crystal.
[00:40:36] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Tuesday topical show, special guest host Shannon Cheng and fellow co-organizer with People Power Washington, Amy Sundberg, delve into everything they wish people knew about the looming Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) contract.
The conversation starts by outlining the outsize control the SPOG contract has on the City of Seattle’s police accountability system, the City budget, and efforts to civilianize jobs that don’t require an armed response. Amy and Shannon then break down a soon-to-be-considered Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the City and SPOG - what each side gets, its fiscal impacts, whether the agreement will have any effect on SPD understaffing, and why the already-disappointing dual dispatch pilot is worse than they thought.
Next, the two non-labor lawyers try to explain why any attempt to offload roles from an overworked police department entails lengthy negotiation and sign off from SPOG, how SPD continues to be understaffed despite best efforts to counter attrition, and what might happen if City electeds stood up to the police guild. Finally, in anticipation of a full SPOG contract coming out sometime in the next year, they discuss why the MOU is a bad omen of what is to come, how the process is designed to exclude public input, the difference between police guilds and labor unions, a stalled attempt at a state legislative solution, what Councilmember Mosqueda stepping down from the Labor Relations Policy Committee means - and wrap up with Amy giving Shannon a powerful pep talk!
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the guest host, Shannon Cheng, on Twitter at @drbestturtle and find Amy Sundberg at @amysundberg.
Amy Sundberg
Amy Sundberg is the publisher of Notes from the Emerald City, a weekly newsletter on Seattle politics and policy with a particular focus on public safety, police accountability, and the criminal legal system. She also writes about public safety for The Urbanist. She organizes with Seattle Solidarity Budget and People Power Washington. In addition, she writes science fiction and fantasy, with a new novel, TO TRAVEL THE STARS, a retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in space, available now. She is particularly fond of Seattle’s parks, where she can often be found walking her little dog.
Shannon Cheng
Shannon Cheng is the producer of Hacks & Wonks and new to being in front of the mic rather than behind the scenes. She organizes for equitable public safety in Seattle and King County with People Power Washington and for state-wide policies to reduce police violence and increase accountability with the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability. She also works on computational lighting technology, strives to be a better orienteer, and enjoys exploring the world in an adventure truck with her husband and her cat.
Resources
Notes from the Emerald City
People Power Washington - Sign up for our mailing list
How the SPOG Contract Stands in the Way of Police Accountability with Shannon Cheng from Hacks & Wonks
Council Budget Action to authorize Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the City and the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) | Seattle City Council
“City Council Agrees to Pay Cops Double Time for Working Special Events” by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger
“Will Seattle Pay SPOG a Premium to Let Others Help SPD with its Staffing Woes?” by Amy Sundberg from Notes from the Emerald City
“Harrell’s Dual-Responder Proposal Would Fail to Civilianize Crisis Response” by Amy Sundberg from The Urbanist
Better Behavioral Health Crisis Response with Brook Buettner and Kenmore Mayor Nigel Herbig from Hacks & Wonks
Labor Relations in the City of Seattle | Seattle City Council Central Staff
Labor Relations Policy Committee | City of Seattle Human Resources
“Firefighters’ Tentative Contract Could be Bad News for Other City Workers Seeking Pay Increases” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“Police Unions: What to Know and Why They Don’t Belong in the Labor Movement” by Kim Kelly for Teen Vogue
“Seattle Police Officers Guild expelled from King County’s largest labor council” by Elise Takahama from The Seattle Times
SB 5134 - 2021-22 | Enhancing public trust and confidence in law enforcement and strengthening law enforcement accountability for general authority Washington peace officers, excluding department of fish and wildlife officers.
SB 5677 - 2021-22 | Enhancing public trust and confidence in law enforcement and strengthening law enforcement accountability, by specifying required practices for complaints, investigations, discipline, and disciplinary appeals for serious misconduct.
Labor 4 Black Lives - Seattle
DivestSPD
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
[00:00:52] Shannon Cheng: Hello everyone! This is Shannon Cheng, producer of Hacks & Wonks. You have me again today as your special guest host. Today, I'm super excited to have a fellow co-organizer with People Power Washington with me, Amy Sundberg, who also writes Notes from the Emerald City. And we were wanting to have a conversation about the Seattle police contract negotiations as they relate to the Seattle Police Officers Guild, or SPOG. We're hoping to break down what is a dense but very important topic for our listeners. Amy, do you have any thoughts on this before we get started?
[00:01:29] Amy Sundberg: Yeah, I mean, I think it's really important whenever we talk about police guilds that we make the distinction that just because we might be being critical about police unions, police guilds - that in general, we are very supportive of labor and that there are many reasons why police guilds are different than all other labor that hopefully we'll have a chance to get into later in this episode. But until then, just to be clear - in general, we support workers' rights, we support workers organizing for better conditions in the workplace, and that is not a negotiable part of our philosophy.
[00:02:06] Shannon Cheng: Yes, 100% - completely agree. We in no way are saying that workers' rights are not important. They absolutely are. Police are entitled to have living wages, but there are also issues that crop up with the way that negotiations happen in Washington state that sometimes are counter to other goals that we have as a society.
So before we jump in, I wanna talk about what impact does the police contract have in the City of Seattle? So one aspect that I've been following super closely for the last many years is that the current police accountability system that we have here in Seattle - you may have heard of it before, it's composed of three independent bodies. There's the OPA or the Office of Police Accountability, the OIG or Office of Inspector General, and the CPC, the Community Police Commission. This three-body accountability structure - the powers that they have are completely governed by what the SPOG contract says that they have. And you may have heard that we had a strong accountability ordinance passed back in 2017 - establishing these bodies and giving them authority. Yet the following year in 2018, we passed a SPOG contract that rolled back a lot of those accountability provisions. So oftentimes I hear community members frustrated that we aren't able to hold an SPD officer accountable for something egregious that has happened. And it all goes back to the accountability system and what has been written in the SPOG contract.
[00:03:44] Amy Sundberg: I would also just say that this is one of the reasons that police guilds are different from other unions - is because they are currently negotiating these sorts of accountability provisions in their contracts. And they're the only workers that are negotiating for the right to potentially kill other people, right? They're armed. And so it's a different matter because of the stakes involved.
[00:04:09] Shannon Cheng: Yes, a very big difference. I used to be a union member of Unite Here Local 8 - I worked at a restaurant. And we had accountability measures in our contract, but it was for things like if I didn't charge a customer for a bread basket. And the consequences of me not charging $1.95 for the company I work for is very different than an officer using excessive deadly force to kill a community member. So stakes are completely different.
So beyond the accountability system, the SPOG contract also has a huge impact on city funding and what the City budget looks like every year. We did an episode recently about the budget and how the police have an outsize portion of that - do you wanna talk a little bit more about that, Amy?
[00:04:57] Amy Sundberg: Yeah, so the contract will determine how much money is flowing into SPD. And right now, SPD gets about a quarter of our general fund - so that's the part of the budget that can be allocated to anything that isn't already tied up via statute. So a quarter of the general fund, which is a significant amount of the money that we have available to us as a city. And the question always is - Is that number gonna grow? And how much of the general fund are we as a city comfortable with SPD taking up? That is a question that is decided basically in this contract.
[00:05:32] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, 'cause the contract sets the pay rates and raises that SPD will receive. And I think we've heard from a lot of other city unions that are also currently bargaining their contracts that there's this issue that a lot of them are being offered raises that aren't keeping up with the cost of living. For example, the Firefighters, the Coalition of City Unions. So it will be interesting to observe and see, when the eventual SPOG contract comes out, what kind of raises do they get and how do they compare to other city workers?
The final thing that I think the police contract holds a lot of power over is something that we know is extremely popular in the city. When we've done poll after poll, people really want to see an alternate crisis response available to community members. We know that police are not the best at deescalating crisis response situations. And sometimes it's very harmful - and actually escalates - and has led to deaths of community members. So we've been struggling as a city to stand up some kind of alternate crisis response since the summer of 2020. And unfortunately the SPOG contract has been a huge obstacle in the way of that. Could you explain that more for us, Amy?
[00:06:44] Amy Sundberg: Yeah, I would say first of all, that definitely this alternate emergency crisis response is a big part of this, but the contract stands in the way of civilianization in general overall. So this is one big piece of that, but it also means that if there are jobs that we feel like should be done by civilians who are not armed - besides crisis response - that also gets decided in the contract. So I do think that's important to talk about.
[00:07:10] Shannon Cheng: So that's why keeping an eye on this police contract is really important. It really does hold the key to so many facets of the change that we want to see in our city.
Let's now talk about what's been happening more recently. During the Seattle budget process, we learned that the City had come to a possible temporary agreement with SPOG, which they call an MOU, or a Memorandum of Understanding. To be clear, this is not the final full contract that we do expect to see with SPOG eventually, and that we've been waiting for for several years now. The previous contract expired at the end of 2020, and they have been in negotiations for about three years at this time. So this MOU came out. It was meant to address what some electeds are calling "emergent needs" of the city. And they had to do this during the budget process because it had budget implications that needed to be approved. Do you want to tell us a little bit about what's in this MOU?
[00:08:16] Amy Sundberg: Yes, I would love to. I'm glad that you emphasized this is different than the actual SPOG contract. It is temporary, and it is to address these "emergent needs," so to speak. So it does have an expiry date of the beginning of January of 2026. So I just want to get that out there first.
But the MOU accomplishes three main things for the City, and then we'll talk about what it gives SPOG. So the three main things that it accomplishes for the City are - first of all, it would allow the City flexibility to sometimes use parking enforcement officers or other civilians to staff special events. They certainly wouldn't be the only people staffing special events, but perhaps they could do things like traffic control that don't really require a sworn armed officer to do. It would allow the City to use park rangers at parks outside of downtown. Right now, they have an agreement that park rangers can only be used in downtown parks. But last year, they started a huge expansion of the Park Ranger program, so now they have a lot more park rangers - or they're in the process of hiring them - and would like to be able to expand to use them at all the parks in the city.
And the third thing it would do is allow the City to implement its new dual dispatch emergency alternative response program. Basically, the pilot just launched this past October. And it turns out that if this MOU is not approved - which it is not currently signed yet - it's not actually true dual dispatch yet, from my understanding. What was said in all of the press briefings and all of the communications is that how this program is supposed to work is that there's dual dispatch, so that means that SPD will go out at the same time as the alternative responders - CARE responders, I'm gonna call them. They go out at the same time. But apparently right now, they're not actually allowed to be dispatched at the same time because this MOU hasn't been approved. So the police have to go first, and then they can request to have an alternate CARE responder team come out after they arrive. So that is not how I understood this was going to work, and if this MOU is approved, then it will be able to work the way it's been described previously.
[00:10:38] Shannon Cheng: Okay, so there's a difference between what we've seen from press releases and press briefings about this new dual dispatch pilot within the CARE department to what is actually possible right now without this MOU.
[00:10:53] Amy Sundberg: Yeah, and my guess - and this is me guessing, to be clear - my guess is that, of course, people involved knew that this MOU was being developed, knew that this agreement was being developed. And so when they launched the pilot, they explained how it was gonna work if this MOU was signed, even though it hadn't been signed yet - in maybe a burst of hope that that's how it would turn out. As well, I imagine, because of - you're not allowed to talk about things that are going on in negotiations at the labor table, so they probably weren't allowed to talk about it. And instead of getting into the nitty-gritty of it and confusing people, that they might have decided - for simplicity's sake - explain it the way they did. But, you know, of course, now we know that that wasn't entirely accurate.
[00:11:38] Shannon Cheng: Okay, so basically, what we had seen in the past that was all this glowing announcement about this new dual dispatch pilot should have a giant big asterisk next to it because they had not actually completed what needed to be done to be able to launch it in the way that they were talking about it.
I do wanna eventually dig deeper into what the MOU specifically says about the dual dispatch, but first, we've talked about what the City is getting out of this agreement. And to be clear, even though this isn't the full contract, this is something that was negotiated with SPOG. And so I think that it's important for us to look at because it gives us a little hint as to how negotiations with SPOG are going. So we've heard what the City is getting. So what is SPOG getting out of this negotiation?
[00:12:21] Amy Sundberg: Yeah, so what they have now in the MOU is that they want to give officers who volunteer to staff special events a special additional bonus. So it would be $225 bonus for each special event shift that they volunteer to do. And that's in addition to overtime. So what The Stranger reported, which I actually think is a really helpful way to think about it, is that this bonus basically means that officers will be getting paid double time for any shifts that they work - that they volunteered for - for special events. Normally, overtime is time and a half. So instead of time and a half, they're getting double time. However, if they finally reach an agreement on the full SPOG contract, the bonus would not necessarily increase - so it's not tied to their current wages.
[00:13:15] Shannon Cheng: Okay, so let me get this right. We are giving SPOG extra bonuses to work shifts they already get paid overtime for. And in exchange, they are letting us let them work less at some of these special events. Is that a fair characterization?
[00:13:33] Amy Sundberg: I mean, possibly. It's a little bit - to be honest, I'll be interested to see how it plays out because I don't know how much less they actually will end up working. So we might just be paying more to get the same thing, or we might be paying more for them to work less so that parking enforcement officers can take a few of their jobs. It's unclear how this will work out in practice.
[00:13:59] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I've heard some of the discussion of this. We all know, or we've been told over and over again from many quarters, that SPD is very understaffed, that the officers are overworked, that people are upset that response times are slow - and everybody blames the fact that there aren't enough officers to do the amount of work that is out there for them. So part of trying to offer these special event shift bonuses is that right now for these shifts, when they ask people to volunteer - if they don't get enough volunteers, my understanding is that they go by seniority. And so maybe some of the newer officers are made to work these extra shifts, thereby making them even more overworked than they already are. So some of the thinking behind this is that if they offer this bonus to sweeten the deal in terms of working these extra shifts, that perhaps some of the higher senior-ranked officers would be willing to take some of these volunteer shifts and thereby spread the workload out better across SPD. But this doesn't actually do anything to help with the overall understaffing issue, right? We still have the same number of officers doing the same amount of work, unless they do agree to let some of these other parking enforcement officers take over some of the shifts.
[00:15:23] Amy Sundberg: Right, and unless there are actually shifts available for those parking enforcement officers to take after whoever has volunteered has volunteered. So it kind of depends how they set it up. I will say, I think what you said is exactly what the City and SPD has been saying - I think that's a very accurate characterization. But I've also heard from other sources that special event shifts are actually pretty popular among officers and that it's a nice way to make extra money potentially - because it is paid overtime, and now double time. So that's why I'm not really sure how this is gonna play out in practice.
And just to talk about the overall impact of what offering this bonus does to the budget - because this was just passed in our 2024 budget now. This Memorandum of Understanding would start October 1st, 2023. And like I said, it would go to the beginning of January 2026. And we are paying $4.5 million - that would cover from October of this year 'til the end of next year. And then we'll be paying another $3.6 million for 2025 to cover these special event bonuses. So altogether, it's a little more than $8 million for a little bit over two years of bonuses. For at least this next year, the money came from a reserve fund. But again, this is $4.5 million that is being spent on these bonuses instead of on any other pressing needs that the city might have. Just to name one, we gave a big cut to mental health services in tiny home villages. And if those tiny home villages don't have these services, certain people who have more acute needs cannot live there. So it's gonna really impact who is able to live in a tiny home village going forward. So that is one thing that we cut in 2024 - we have much less money for that now. Obviously, there are lots of needs in the city though, so that's just one example.
[00:17:24] Shannon Cheng: That's really good for us to understand - what is a concrete example of what we're giving up in order to give these bonuses to the police officer. So this really matters because we're in a time of budget shortfalls, both current and upcoming. We're being told that SPD is overworked, and yet we're in this state where we're being asked to pay SPOG more money to maybe do less work and accept help for tasks that they said they're not good at. And I'm talking about this dual dispatch co-responder program.
So why don't we turn to that and get a little bit more into the weeds and delve into what is problematic about how this dual dispatch pilot is set up. I think there's been a lot of talk about the alternate crisis response that we've been trying to set up in the city. I think it's evolved a lot over time. And something that I want people to appreciate about all this is that all this talk fundamentally doesn't matter unless we have the agreement of SPOG - that they will accept how we want to do things. And this MOU is the first time that I have seen - spelled out - some of the details of what our dual dispatch program could look like. Amy, I know you've been following this for a very long time. I think you've been at pretty much every meeting that's been about this topic. And so - of people in the world who I think would know how we've ended up at this dual dispatch program, you could tell us about that whole history. So I will turn it to you.
[00:19:04] Amy Sundberg: Yeah, I can. And I will say, I wrote an article about this for The Urbanist, I think, a couple of months ago. We'll link to it in the show notes. I will say it was a very hard piece to write because I have been following this since 2020 in all of its little details. And then I was trying to boil it down into a thousand words - explaining to someone who maybe knew very little about this - what exactly had been going on for the past three or so years. I do recommend you check that out.
But it has been a very frustrating process, I will say. We started talking about some kind of alternative crisis response in summer of 2020 because of the George Floyd protests. And we had a few, I would say, champions on the city council who really wanted to see this happen. So it wasn't that there was nobody advocating for this - there definitely was. Councilmember Lewis in particular, and also Councilmember Herbold - both very strong proponents of having some type of program like this in Seattle. But what we saw was just obstacle after obstacle, after hurdle after hurdle, and just a lot of back and forth, a lot of dragging feet from both the executive's office - both previous Mayor Durkan and current Mayor Harrell - and a lot of dragging of the feet of SPD. You can kind of chart it out and see the strategy of making this take as long as possible, which I do in that article I was talking about.
But I think one of the most powerful things I can do is compare Seattle to another city who did it differently. So in Seattle, we have this new pilot now through the CARE Department. It has six responders hired. They are focused, I think, only in the downtown area. And they work 11 a.m. to 11 p.m, so it's not 24/7 coverage - because there's only six of them, right? There's only so much you can do with six people, and they work in teams of two. So that is what we have. That just got stood up a month ago, month and a half ago - very recently. And like I said, it's not even a true dual dispatch until the MOU gets signed. And frankly, I was very disappointed that it was a dual dispatch at all. So that's what we've finally accomplished in Seattle after all of these years of politicking - versus Albuquerque. So Albuquerque, first of all, it's a little bit smaller than Seattle - maybe about 200,000 fewer people live in Albuquerque. So keep that in mind when we think about scale, right? So they also are under a consent decree, just as we have been, for a slightly shorter amount of time - but for a long time as well. So that is comparable in some ways. But in 2020, they took seriously the call from community to start some kind of emergency alternative response to respond to crisis calls. And in 2023, they budgeted $11.7 million to their response, which has been growing over the last several years. They now have over 70 responders employed to do this alternative emergency response. Their teams respond to calls related to homelessness, substance abuse, and mental health, as well as calls related to things like used needles and abandoned vehicles. And they are allowed to answer calls on their own, and they don't have to go out with the police. And they talk a lot about how what they're doing is using a public health approach. This is Albuquerque. And I guess I didn't mention earlier, but Seattle - what we are paying for our alternative response program for 2024 is $1.8 million. $1.8 million versus $11.7 million. And Albuquerque is smaller.
[00:22:46] Shannon Cheng: That's incredible. And also I wanna call out - so $1.8 million is a little over a third of the bonuses that we are giving SPOG in this MOU to have them maybe work less special event shifts. That is just mind blowing - the difference in scale of what we're willing to put money towards.
[00:23:08] Amy Sundberg: Yeah, and the Albuquerque program has been so successful, they keep scaling up. And they've scaled up pretty quickly - it's really impressive. So kudos to them. I really appreciate that they're offering us a vision of what could be, but it certainly is not what we have been doing here in Seattle - which is really disappointing, especially given how strongly people that live here reacted to the murder of George Floyd and how long those protesters were out there - night after night after night asking for something better, right? And we look now at where we are and like - well, we haven't given people something better. That's just - I mean, that's my opinion, but I think it's also - if you look at the facts, it's pretty backed up by facts.
[00:23:53] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, and by polling. And I agree, it's been really frustrating to see other places around the country continue to lap us - even locally here. I don't feel like it's talked about very much, but we did do a show with them here on Hacks & Wonks. So up north, there's a five-city consortium that is Bothell, Kenmore, Lake Forest Park, Shoreline, and Kirkland. And what they started with - they didn't start out immediately with full civilian-led crisis response. I think something that people are concerned about in standing up these programs is that they're worried - well, what if the crisis responder comes across something that they can't handle and they get hurt? - that kind of question. And that's why they're arguing that they need this police backup. There's all sorts of things about that - I mean, I would say sometimes the police tend to actually escalate these situations and make them more dangerous, and thereby I'm not sure that having the police backup would actually help. So what happened with this five-city consortium is that they started out with a program within the King County Sheriff's Office called RADAR. And it was a co-response model where a sheriff's deputy and the crisis responder co-responded to a situation. And I believe that it was more equal - that the co-responder had agency in these calls. It wasn't just the sheriff's deputy making all the decisions. But what happened is that over time - and I feel like it was a relatively short amount of time, like on the order of one to two years - the sheriff's deputies realized, You know what? We're not really needed at these calls. And it's actually really boring for us to sit around, watch a crisis responder who's skilled deescalate a situation, and I could spend my time better doing something else. And so that's actually what's happening. This program has now evolved into something called the Regional Crisis Response Agency, which is civilian-led. And they're not yet, I think, at 24/7 coverage, but they're working towards that. And so this is happening literally just north of us, okay? So it is possible here in Washington state - I know that there've been comments made that some of these other places, maybe they have different state labor laws that might affect things. But fundamentally, I think the difference is whether the police guild is willing to work with the program and allow it to happen. So I think for whatever reason, with the King County Sheriff's Office - they were more open to accepting this kind of program, and letting it grow and evolve, and thereby taking workload off of them. Whereas here in Seattle, we don't really see that same situation with SPOG.
[00:26:33] Amy Sundberg: Yeah, I've been really interested in this consortium of cities that has done this. I think that is, from what I understand, it's not an uncommon path for these programs to take - to start out with more of a police presence and then kind of realize over time, Oh, maybe this isn't actually necessary, and to evolve in that way. So I mean, there is certainly hope that Seattle could do the same thing. We're just very far behind in terms of timing. And there's also - while there is hope, there's no guarantee that it will develop that way.
[00:27:08] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I would say that a lot of what I'm seeing happening in Seattle now is putting a lot of trust in faith that SPOG is going to allow certain things to happen, or not stand in the way, or not demand exorbitant amounts of money to get the things that the City wants. And I don't know that - looking at past history of our dealings with SPOG - that we can really trust that that's how things are gonna go. I mean, they have social media accounts that literally post made up images of a public safety index that has no relation to reality - doing fearmongering about whether people in the city feel safe or not. I just don't see them as being good faith participants in working with us on measures that make the public feel safe that doesn't involve the police department.
[00:28:04] Amy Sundberg: Yeah, I agree with you. I am also concerned - certainly that's been part of my motivation for following this story so closely over the last several years. Because like I said, there's no - just because it's gone like that in other cities does not mean that it will happen that way here. And as we see, in fact, it hasn't. The type of program that Albuquerque has developed doesn't look very much like what we have developed in the same amount of time. So no guarantees then - just hopes, thoughts and prayers, which doesn't necessarily get you very far.
[00:28:36] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, so I guess what was spelled out in this MOU about the dual dispatch that I found concerning is that it really looks like the police officer has authority over almost every aspect of what the alternate - well, I don't even know that we can call it an alternate crisis response - what the dual dispatch looks like. They get to decide when and if it's safe for the crisis responder to enter the scene. They get to decide whether they leave or not. The MOU specifically says that it doesn't affect the number of officers who respond to the incident. So if you're worried about understaffing and needing less officers going to some of these calls, that's not in this MOU. Something that really worried me is that even if the officer decides that the crisis responder can handle the situation - afterwards, the crisis responder will file the incident report within the police department's system. And so - I think in 2020, what we heard was a lot of community members coming out saying that they do not feel safe calling the police when they or a loved one is undergoing a crisis. And so if the solution we're offering now is one where police show up and even if they don't participate, they get record of what happened with the loved one - this kind of goes against everything that was being asked for, and it is still not going to serve people in the city who don't wanna use police for these situations.
[00:30:08] Amy Sundberg: I agree. I don't think that it is what community was asking for. There definitely are people who don't feel safe calling the police who aren't gonna want their information then transferred to a police database to potentially be used later. I will say that one thing the MOU does do - that wasn't particularly clear from the original press release about it - is that it does allow a police officer to clear a scene while not being physically present. So it does clear the way for potentially calls being answered only by the CARE responders and not actually having a police officer there as well. So that is important to note, but even if that is happening, there will still be information about that filed into the police database - in SPD's database. So that is part of the agreement, part of what is being memorialized here.
Also, the scope of the program is defined by this agreement, and I find that quite troubling. The number of responders allowed to be hired by the end of 2025, beginning of 2026 is 24 full-time. 24. So just to remind you, Albuquerque - smaller than us - has more than 70, and they were able to ramp that up in two to three years. So we're talking about a two-year ramp up here. If we were serious about this program, we could definitely ramp up above 24, but we will not be able to because of what this MOU says. We are limited to 24 - that's all we'll be able to do. And then the other thing that I found very interesting is that this MOU limits the call types that CARE responders will be allowed to answer to person down calls and welfare check calls. So there will be no ability to expand beyond those two call types, regardless of how anything might change in the interim. I thought that was really interesting because during one of the hearings - when they had Amy Smith, who is the director of the new CARE Department, people were really interested in the call types, right? What call types would be answered? Yes, right now it's person down and welfare check, but could we expand that later? And she seemed, to me, to be kind of reluctant to answer - kept heading off and being like, Well, first we need to expand to 24/7 coverage. Which reasonable, fair enough - but after reading this MOU, I was like, Oh, and also they won't be allowed to expand, so it's a moot point, right? These are the two call types, and that's all that they're gonna be able to do - period.
[00:32:43] Shannon Cheng: So let's back out a little bit because this is something that I know I have been confused about for a long time. And to be clear, I am not a labor lawyer - if there's any labor lawyers listening to this and who can help explain this to me better, I would really appreciate it. But you hear about all these types of calls that we acknowledge - and I think even sometimes SPD acknowledges that they are not the best first responders for. So why is it that we have to go through this whole negotiation process - and whether it's through an MOU or the full contract - why does that have to happen before we can offload work from an understaffed department to other people who are better at the job?
[00:33:26] Amy Sundberg: Well, Shannon, I am also not a labor lawyer, but I will do my best. From what I understand, workers have bodies of work. So you have to negotiate if you wanna take away any piece of that body of work and give it to a different worker. So that's what we're looking at here - because these are considered SPD's body of work. However, you make a really compelling point in that - for years now, SPD has been talking with increasing urgency about how understaffed they are, about the staffing crisis. And we know that this staffing crisis of police departments is not just here in Seattle - it's nationwide. Police departments all across the country are facing the exact same staffing shortages that we are here in Seattle. So obviously this is not just a local problem - this is larger than that. Given the fact that this is a problem that doesn't seem to be able to be addressed anytime soon. I mean, as much as people like to slag on City Council about these sorts of things, the fact is - they, in the last year or so, they passed these big police hiring bonuses. They've approved the hiring plans. They've done everything SPD has asked them to do regarding staffing in particular. And yet we do not see any particular improvement in this area. Staffing so far for 2023 for SPD - they actually still are in the negative. They are not hiring as much as they are losing officers - still, even with these bonuses, which have not been shown to work. So this is gonna be a problem for a while. This is not something you can fix quickly. There is a hiring training pipeline that takes quite a while to complete to get new police officers. There are not a lot of lateral hires - that is, police officers who are already trained, who are willing to move from a different department - we hired hardly any of those in 2023. Apparently we had some candidates, but they weren't qualified to serve in SPD - they weren't appropriate candidates. So we don't have a lot of them. Chief Diaz has said he expects potentially more lateral hires in 2024, but he did not give any reasons as to why he would expect that to be any different, so whether he has actual reasons or whether he's just kind of hoping - I'm not certain - but this is obviously something that's gonna go on for more than a year or two, right?
[00:35:55] Shannon Cheng: Right.
[00:35:55] Amy Sundberg: So because of that, I do think that there is potentially a legal argument to be made that some of the body of work of SPD officers needs to be given to other people because there just simply aren't enough SPD officers to do it all. And then you made a great point that what we've seen in other municipalities is that police officers - some of this work - they don't even wanna do it. They're actually end up being quite happy to have other people doing it so that they can go off and do other parts of the job that perhaps they prefer. So it's interesting watching this play out here and how it's kind of different from how it's playing out elsewhere in the country.
[00:36:38] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, it feels like here - as you said, the City has done everything they possibly could to encourage staffing and hiring of new or lateral hires to the department and it just - it's not working. So in the meantime, we still have all these needs in the city to address - and they're not getting addressed, or they're getting addressed poorly. So it's frustrating that we're being held up by this issue of certain aspects being considered under the police body of work and not being able to let people who are better able to do that work - and honestly, for less money - and alleviate some of all the problems that people are frustrated about in this city. So again, not a labor lawyer, but my understanding is there would be concern that if we just went ahead and started taking some of this work from SPD without their signing off on it - is that SPOG could file an Unfair Labor Practice with the state PERC, the Public Employment Relations Commission, which oversees state labor law. And I guess I don't know what that ruling would be, but it seems like the City's not willing to go that route. I understand that it would entail standing up to SPOG, which I agree completely is a scary thing to do, but the people who are our electeds are the ones with the power to do that. So I don't know - if you've been elected, we need you to stand up to SPOG.
[00:38:10] Amy Sundberg: Well, and because of the staffing shortage at SPD, that does present a really compelling argument that the city can make if there was to be an Unfair Labor Practice suit filed, right? Because if SPD is unable to do this work because they can't hire enough and they've been getting all the support they've been asking for to hire as much as possible, and yet they still don't have enough staffing, someone has to do the work. So I do think that - I don't know how that suit would go, but it's not for sure that SPOG would win.
[00:38:44] Shannon Cheng: Right. I just wonder why that's not an option that the City seems to be pursuing and that they're just, with this MOU, basically just saying, Fine, we'll just pay out. - what to me feels like, I don't know, sort of a ransom that SPOG is holding us under to let us do things that we all fundamentally want to do. So where is this MOU in the process? You said that the $4.5 million plus $3.6 million the next year has already been approved through the budget process. So what happens next?
[00:39:15] Amy Sundberg: Yeah, so the money has been approved - that part is done. But what happens next is that the full council has to vote on the actual MOU agreement. So there's money for it, but they haven't yet approved it. So that vote, I believe, will be happening at their full council meeting on Tuesday, December 5th, which is at 2 p.m. in the afternoon. So if people want to get involved and share their opinions with their councilmembers about this MOU, you have until December 5th to do so. You can email your councilmembers, you can call your councilmembers, you can see if now that budget season is over, you can potentially even meet with them - although it is a pretty tight timeline to do that. And then you can give public comment at that meeting on December 5th, either virtually - you can call in - or you can go to City Hall and do it in person. I do encourage people to do this if they are so moved. I think it's really important for our elected leaders to hear from the people and hear what we wanna see and what we are concerned about. Even if we are not able to stop this MOU from being approved, I think it's really valuable for our elected leaders to know that this is an issue of concern, that the people of Seattle care about it, and that we're paying attention. And I do feel that there is significant value in that as we move towards potentially looking at a completed contract with SPOG. Those negotiations are ongoing - I don't expect to see that contract this year, but I would not be shocked to see it sometime next year. So to let electeds know now that this is something that we care about will then build momentum for the bigger conversation that is to come.
[00:40:59] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, completely. Our electeds really do need to hear that this is something that we're concerned about, that we understand is important, that we've been waiting for five years for a different full SPOG contract to help address some of the things we talked about at the beginning of this show.
I would also - I just wanna let people know - I think this is also something that's very in the weeds and maybe isn't really well understood. But the way that these labor contracts get negotiated at the city is that there's a whole team on the City side, which includes representatives from the mayor's office, as well as from city council. And the way that it's structured - it's called the LRPC, or the Labor Relations Policy Committee - the way they have it set up is that five councilmembers, and the five is important because five is a majority. Five out of nine of our council sits on that LRPC, so they are privy to the negotiations. And under state labor law, all of these negotiations are behind closed doors. So the public really has no insight into what's happening until we get something like this temporary MOU coming out for approval, or eventually a full contract for approval. The last time that the public had any opportunity to give input into what this SPOG contract is gonna look like was in December of 2019, when a public hearing was held 90 days ahead of when they started negotiations for the new contract. So it has been four years since the public has had any chance to weigh in on what we would like to see in this contract. And as we all know, a lot has happened in those four years that may affect what we hope to see that comes out. Anyway, just going back - the LRPC, I believe, is purposely structured to have this majority of council on it. Because that means that any labor agreement that comes out of that committee means that it had the approval of those five councilmembers. So if we get to the City Council meeting where Council's gonna approve it, and one of those councilmembers ends up voting against it, there could be a argument made that they were not bargaining in good faith. So the whole thing is set up that the public has very little in the way of power to affect how these agreements happen. And I just wanna call that out.
[00:43:14] Amy Sundberg: For sure, Shannon. If this is an area that you work on regularly as we do, it is very frustrating how few chances there are to have any real impact.
[00:43:23] Shannon Cheng: I would also say that the other period of time where you might have impact is that period between contracts - so after a contract has been accepted and is implemented, and before the next contract is entering into this black box of contract negotiations. The way that we've seen some of these negotiations happen, they are so lengthy in time that - SPOG is currently working without a current contract for three years. I think the contract they're negotiating is five years long. So we're already behind the last time that we did this - last time they approved it in November of the third year, it's almost December. So this is gonna be even less time after they approve this contract before they're gonna have to start negotiating the next one. I seriously wonder if at some point we're gonna get to the point where they're gonna be negotiating two contracts at the same time, or maybe they need to make the contract longer than five years? I just - again, not a labor lawyer - I don't know what happens with all this. But the reason - I think, and I've seen indications of this - that the negotiations take this long is because SPOG is not willing to accept accountability provisions that the City wants. And what's gonna happen, which is the same thing as what happened the last time, is that so much time will pass with them not having a real contract that they're gonna come out and make this argument that they haven't had a living wage increase for many years, and we just - the City needs to cave and give them what they want so that they can get raised back up to whatever level that they deserve. Which I'm not saying that they don't deserve, but they're doing this at the expense of us getting things that we want in that contract. And it's the same playbook every single time - and we need people to step up and call this out if we don't want it to keep happening.
[00:45:15] Amy Sundberg: I will say too, that from what I understand - and I actually did talk to a labor lawyer about this - this is fairly unusual in labor overall for these contracts to be so far extended. And one of the issues that arises because of this is issue of back pay. Because when negotiating for raises, it's actually not unusual for any kind of union to get back pay as part of it for when the negotiation is taking place. But normally that amount of time would be maybe six months max of back pay, because that's how long it takes to complete the contract. In this case though, we're talking about over three years of back pay, and three years in which there has been a lot of inflation, right? So we're talking about potentially millions upon millions of dollars in a lump sum that the City will need to pay when they approve this contract - just for back pay, for things that have already happened - not even looking forward and thinking about how much the raises will cost the City in the future. So that becomes a significant issue at that point.
[00:46:22] Shannon Cheng: And this links back to why this MOU matters, right? As you were saying that - we know the money for it is coming out of some special pay reserve that the City has. I would think that that pay reserve has been put aside in part to probably help pay some of this back pay that we're expecting to get when there is a final SPOG contract. So if we're using up $4.5 million now through next year, $3.6 million the next year from this reserve, that is less money that we have at the bargaining table to have leverage over what we get from SPOG in the final contract.
[00:46:53] Amy Sundberg: But not only that, Shannon - also it impacts all other city workers. That's the money that's potentially for them too. So I mean, if you look at the firefighters, they're in the middle of negotiating a contract right now - I guess they have one that maybe they're voting on - which doesn't keep up with inflation. So if they agree to this contract - in real terms, they'll be receiving a wage cut - our firefighters. And then we have the Coalition of City Unions, who I - unless this has changed in the last few days, the most recent offer was a 2.5% wage increase. 2.5% - do you know how much inflation has been? These poor workers. And of course we don't have any insight into what SPOG is being offered right now - that is not public information. But it will be really interesting - when this contract does become available to the public - to see how that compares to the contracts that the Coalition of City Unions is being pressured to accept, or the contract that the firefighters are being pressured to accept. So it's not like this all happens in a vacuum. Whatever SPOG does also affects all the other unions in the city.
[00:48:01] Shannon Cheng: That's a good point. I mean, much like the general fund funds lots of aspects across the city, I imagine this pay reserve - it's not the SPD pay reserve, but effectively it feels like that might be what it is. And that's super unfair to all the other city workers. Everything at the city is interrelated - SPOG is not the only union that the City is dealing with, both in terms of funding for their department, but also the staffing and the pay raises. So let's go back and talk a little bit more about police guilds and other unions, and I've heard police guilds are different from other workers' unions and that sometimes aren't aligned with the working class. Could you talk a little bit more about that, Amy?
[00:48:44] Amy Sundberg: Yeah, I mean, I would say that police guilds are different from other unions in at least three ways. The first way, as you said, is that in general - police are on the side of the boss. They're not on the side of working people. They get their power from protecting rich people, right? Obviously I could say it in more academic language, but that is basically what I mean. They get their power from protecting rich people's interests. They get their power from protecting rich people's property. And that is not in alignment with other working people who are fighting for different rights. And you can see this in history. If you look at the history of policing in this country - in the South, police kind of rose up - they caught slaves. That was one of the first things they did, right? And the police developed from that, which is obviously horrendous. And then in the North, it was a little bit different, but police rose up or were very heavily involved in union busting back at a time when that was a big deal. So they have never been aligned with the working class, but I do think that those origins have become hazy through the passage of time and because of messaging, right? It definitely benefits police guilds to be seen as part of unions, even though they're not necessarily gonna be fighting for the same things that unions fight for. And so I think that's part of why there is that kind of argument at play. So that is one reason why they're different.
Like I said earlier, another reason why they're different is because they, along with potentially prison guards and border patrol workers - these are kind of a different class of workers in that they're the only ones negotiating for the right to use force, right? To potentially kill, to hurt somebody, to surveil people - all of that kind of stuff, which is just inherently very different than the rights that other workers are organizing to get. And then the last point is that they do benefit from exceptions to rules governing other workers in terms of scope and in terms of contract negotiations, particularly with respect to provisions governing transparency and discipline. So they have different rules applied to them. So it's just - it's different, they're different. And it's important to really talk about these things, and study these things, and look and see more deeply how they're different because this is an argument that is brought to bear to kind of stop further accountability from being possible - as I know, we've both seen that play out here in Washington state.
[00:51:21] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, completely. As I mentioned before, I foresee that when the eventual SPOG contract comes out, there will be pressure from SPOG that this is part of their inherent labor rights, that if we don't get what we wanna see in it in terms of the accountability pieces specifically, that - Well, you'll just need to wait till next time, or something like that. It'll be this incremental approach. When the 2018 SPOG contract got approved - I was at that hearing - and definitely there was a division within labor there. As you were just mentioning, I think that some people do see that the police guilds are not always aligned with workers - and we did see some unions come out to that effect. We also saw other workers come out in solidarity with SPOG arguing that - Yeah, they deserve their raises and benefits and they had been working too long without a contract. At the time, SPOG was still a member of the MLK Labor Council, so I think that helped a lot. We did, in 2020, see SPOG get ousted from that MLK Labor Council. So I am curious to see if anything plays out differently this time around - remains to be seen.
And finally, I will say that I've heard a lot of councilmembers reference this - that they are hoping for some kind of state legislative solution that will help them with being better able to negotiate these contracts with the police guilds. But we've been following this at the state level also. And I will say that currently any action on the state level - it's dead. It's been dead for several years. There was a bill introduced in 2021 that laid out some things, but there was no movement on it. And the reason there's no movement on it is because labor as a whole is not on board with it - they feel like it's gonna be an erosion of workers' rights. And it may be, but as you were saying, police guilds are different than unions - and I think that the legislation was crafted to try to make that distinction. And so I'm not sure whether those fears are completely founded or not, but in any case, nothing is happening on that front.
[00:53:27] Amy Sundberg: I did find that legislation very interesting. And I agree that over time it was worked upon to be really laser precise in terms of what it did. And at the end of the development that I'm aware of, what the bill actually did is that it took accountability measures for police off of the bargaining table by creating an overall unified standard that police departments across the state would have to live up to. So it would no longer be something that you negotiate in the contract - it would just be, This is how we operate. This is how accountability works in the state of Washington. And as I said, that is one of the ways in which police guilds are different than unions - is that they have this bargaining power over these accountability issues that are just not relevant in any other union's bailiwick of work. So that is why the bill was crafted the way it was to be such a kind of surgical carve-out of certain things.
The reason this would be helpful - first of all, it would set a statewide standard so that's inherently helpful. But also if you take those accountability issues off of the bargaining table, then you can actually spend more time and energy bargaining for other things - like a better emergency alternative response program, or something like this. So right now it's harder for the City to do that because they have to be thinking about these accountability pieces. And especially right now, because - I do not know that they will be allowed out of the consent decree totally until they meet the 2017 accountability ordinance in the SPOG contract. And I do not think that Judge Robart will allow them to leave without showing that that is part of the new contract.
I will say as well, that one of the reasons the MOU is worrisome to me is because it kind of shows potentially how things are going with the larger negotiation around this actual contract, which as we know - because it takes so long to negotiate it, once we get one, we're stuck with it for potentially a really, really long time, right? So it's a big deal. Whatever ends up in this new contract is a really big deal because we'll be stuck with it for a while. So even though the MOU is term limited - it will expire at the beginning of 2026. So at first I was like, Well, at least we don't have to pay these special event bonuses in perpetuity, at least it's only for a couple of years, at least we're only limited to 24 alternate first responders for a couple of years. But the thing is, these are also aspects that will have to be in that full contract - something will have to be in that full contract to allow us to continue this pilot in 2026 and beyond. So what is that gonna say? Is that also gonna limit how many people we can hire by a really significant amount? Is that also gonna limit the call types to be very, very narrow that they can respond to? Is it going to memorialize this sort of bonus so that we're paying out millions upon millions of dollars just to have permission to do these things when we know that SPD doesn't have the staffing to do them? That is an issue of real concern. And the MOU - to me - says these are things that we are potentially - they're going to have to be addressed in the contract so that we have something that reaches after 2025, and this might be how they are addressed, right? I mean, we don't know, obviously - black box - but these are things that when that contract is released, I'm going to be looking at very carefully and going to be very concerned about.
[00:57:11] Shannon Cheng: What if they don't include any of this stuff in the eventual contract? Does that mean on January 2nd, 2026, the dual dispatch pilot just suddenly has to stop operating?
[00:57:20] Amy Sundberg: I mean, yes - I think so. Unless they come to another MOU, right? Or like you said, they could risk an Unfair Labor Practice suit. But I mean, ultimately, this is gonna have to be worked out. So it's all fine and good for councilmembers to be like, Well, this is temporary - but ultimately it cannot be temporary. We're going to have to come to some kind of arrangement as to how this is going to work in the future.
[00:57:46] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, completely agree. I mean, Amy and I have been staring at this black box of contract negotiations for a really long time and trying to see any indication of anything that's going on with it. And this MOU is the first indication of how things are going. And I would say our estimation is - it's not going well. I mean, I think the other thing I saw that happened is we heard Councilmember Mosqueda say that she stepped down from the LRPC. I don't know that she fully explained what her reasoning was behind that, but my sense is she is probably the councilmember on current LRPC who is the most wanting of all the things we've been talking about in this episode. And she's specifically said that she didn't agree with the MOU because she felt like it was bad strategy in terms of the overall SPOG contract negotiation. So to me, part of her stepping down sounds like it's because those negotiations are not going well. And to me, that's very concerning.
[00:58:45] Amy Sundberg: Absolutely, and especially because she's going to be moving over to King Council now - she got elected as a King County councilmember now and she knew it was going okay. So she knew that was a possibility for her political future. And so she only had a few months left and yet she still stepped down. To me, what that says - obviously she's not allowed to say anything - but to me what that says is that there were big problems because otherwise why wouldn't you just finish your term? Like it's no big deal to do just a couple more months. And we also know that Councilmember Mosqueda has in general been a fierce champion of workers' rights and is very aligned with labor. So I am very concerned both as to what this means about the upcoming SPOG contract and about what this means to other labor and how they're being treated by the City. And we've seen this already playing out. So the fact that she stepped down shows, I think, the potentially - some deeper issues that are going to continue to be revealed over the next several months.
[00:59:49] Shannon Cheng: And I think this all happened kind of under the radar, but I was trying to do some digging to try to understand when that happened. And as far as I can figure, it was sometime around August. It was the same time that - from the mayor's side, Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell used to be on the LRPC. She has now been replaced by Tim Burgess. And with Councilmember Mosqueda stepping down, she has now been replaced by Councilmember Strauss.
[01:00:12] Amy Sundberg: I will say that Monisha Harrell was also known as something of a champion when it came to accountability, right? I felt that accountability was genuinely important to her and that she was committed to fighting for that in the next contract. But with her gone - again, black box, so we don't know - but it is discouraging news.
[01:00:35] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, so not to end everything on a huge downer, but that is the life you choose when you decide to make police contracts your issue of main interest.
[01:00:49] Amy Sundberg: You know, I actually - yes, this is bad news. But I do not think people should take this as a downer at all. I think people should take this as encouragement to get involved. If you haven't gotten involved up until this point, or if you are involved and you're beginning to flag or feel a little tired - which believe me, at this point I can really, really relate to - we're gonna need all hands on deck next year. And that's just me being realistic. It is really frustrating, but the only way we're gonna see the change that we want in this regard is by organizing. Organizing, organizing, organizing. And I will be more specific than that because I remember a time when people would say that to me and I would be like - I don't know what that means. Like, sure, but what do I actually personally do? And what I would say is if you wanna get involved - and I highly, highly encourage you to get involved with this - you need to find an organization to plug into so that you have that accountability of structure and community to kind of keep you going. And it doesn't mean you can't take breaks. In fact, I'd say you 100% should be taking breaks as well. I am about to take a week and a half break and I'm very excited about it, so I am the last person that will say anything against taking breaks. But if you're part, if you're building those relationships with others, it will keep you involved for the longterm, which is what we need for this kind of fight.
And organizations that are working on this specifically - I mean, I don't know them all, but I know People Power Washington - Shannon and I are involved with - we definitely are always working on this. Defend the Defund is another organization that you can look into. Labor 4 Black Lives - another organization you can look into. At the very least, you can follow this stuff in the news, whether that's - I don't as much recommend The Times, but PubliCola's great, The Stranger - you can follow it. You can subscribe to my newsletter Notes from the Emerald City - it's free. And I'm not doing this to push myself - I'm doing this because if you don't know what's happening, you cannot do anything. You're taking that choice away from yourself at that point. So my newsletter is once a week, so you can just like get it over with really quick and then move on with your life. But at least you kind of know what's happening. That being said, I think joining an organization - even if it's in a relatively time-light capacity - is the way to go, just because it will help to keep you engaged. Even like DivestSPD - they're a watchdog, big into accountability - that would be another one you could look into. But we're all gonna need to come together if we want to see changes in Seattle. If we wanna see the sorts of things happening in Albuquerque happen here, we're gonna have to work towards it because it's quite clear that our electeds are not gonna - either are not capable of doing it alone, or don't want to do it - so pressure, pressure is needed.
[01:03:53] Shannon Cheng: Thank you so much, Amy, for ending us on a better note. I 100% agree. I mean, being involved in an organization is what has kept me going through all of the ups and downs of everything. And we'll link to as many of those organizations that you listed in show notes for anybody who wants to get involved. I know for certain, People Power Washington will be watching what happens with the upcoming SPOG contract closely. If you just sign up for our mailing list, you will probably get an action alert when it is time because we are not going to have a lot of time when this happens. They are probably gonna drop it on us and we're gonna have to react quickly. So yes, please get involved in whatever capacity you can - and thank you so much!
[01:04:40] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Friday show, we present Part 2 of the Hacks & Wonks 2023 Post-Election Roundtable which was live-streamed on November 13, 2023 with special guests Katie Wilson, Andrew Villeneuve, and Robert Cruickshank. In Part 2, the panel breaks down results for Seattle City Council District 7 and reflects on the implications of Seattle’s elections on progressive priorities. For those disappointed in the results, encouragement is given to remain engaged after the election, re-evaluate strategy and messaging, and work on building relationships around issues everyone supports.
The conversation then moves outside of Seattle to encouraging results from around the region - a more progressive and more diverse King County Council, success for initiatives addressing cost-of-living concerns in Tacoma and Bellingham, promising municipal election outcomes in Bothell, Spokane, Tacoma, Bellevue, and Redmond, as well as defeat of a right wing incumbent in the Snohomish County Sheriff race. Plus, a discussion of the exciting upcoming move to even-year elections for King County races and the need to address an unintended consequence this turnout-boosting change has on citizen initiatives!
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find guest panelists, Katie Wilson at @WilsonKatieB, Robert Cruickshank at @cruickshank, and Andrew Villeneuve at https://www.nwprogressive.org. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Katie Wilson
Katie Wilson is the general secretary of the Transit Riders Union and was the campaign coordinator for the wildly successful Raise the Wage Tukwila initiative last November.
Andrew Villeneuve
Andrew Villeneuve is the founder of the Northwest Progressive Institute (NPI) and its sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer.
Robert Cruickshank
Robert is the Director of Digital Strategy at California YIMBY and Chair of Sierra Club Seattle. A long time communications and political strategist, he was Senior Communications Advisor to Mike McGinn from 2011-2013.
Resources
Hacks & Wonks 2023 Post-Election Roundtable Livestream | November 13th, 2023
Transcript
[00:00:00] Shannon Cheng: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I’m Shannon Cheng, Producer for the show. You’re listening to Part 2 of our 2023 Post-Election Roundtable, with guest panelists Katie Wilson, Andrew Villeneuve and Robert Cruickshank, that was originally aired live on Monday, November 13th. Part 1 was our last episode – you can find it in your podcast feed or on our website officialhacksandwonks.com. You can also go to the site for full video from the event and a full text transcript of the show. Thanks for tuning in!
[00:00:44] Crystal Fincher: We'll transition to District 7, which we saw the third incumbent running for Seattle City Council, who - this is a very, very close race still, but it looks like Andrew Lewis may have run out of runway to come back in this race. What was your view of this, Robert?
[00:01:03] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, I mean, Andrew Lewis won a close election in 2019 and he appears to have lost a close election here in 2023. I know that there is - we'll see the spending slide in a moment, but there's more spending certainly against him than his colleague Dan Strauss saw. I think that looking at the map - and there it is, I mean, it's almost 2:1. Similar to Davis, Andrew Lewis got nearly half a million dollars spent against him.
If you look at the precinct map so far and compare it to 2019 - in 2019, Andrew Lewis held his own on Queen Anne, on the top of Queen Anne - that sort of island up in the sky of privilege and prosperity. Andrew did pretty well, won a bare majority in Queen Anne, just like he won in the district as a whole. If you look at the map from 2023, Queen Anne almost uniformly going to Bob Kettle. Now again, not all ballots are in, but I think you see - another thing that stood out to me is downtown. Downtown Seattle, Belltown - a lot of renters, also a lot of condo owners - that also seems to have gone to Bob Kettle. So I think that the narrative about public safety probably tripped up Andrew Lewis here.
And I think Andrew Lewis - he voted against the drug ordinance in June when it first came up, but I think that was the right thing to do from a policy perspective. And then he wound up voting for it after working out a deal with the mayor's office to improve the ordinance. Voters may not have liked that, and certainly Bob Kettle ran pretty hard against that - putting out campaign messaging saying that Lewis was waffling, which is never a thing you wanna have said about you. I think that this is one where Strauss made the pivot that Lewis didn't really wanna make. And I think we, again, as progressives, gotta look at this and think - Lewis stood where we wanted him to stand, especially in that vote in June. And I think figuring out how to support candidates when they do things like that is going to be really important.
This is another one obviously where turnout was different - a significant drop-off of turnout from 50% turnout in 2019 to 40% turnout in 2023. Again, you don't need much shift in turnout - especially if it comes among younger voters, renters, people living in dense communities - giving the victory, potentially to Lewis had they shown up. So this is where I feel like we can talk about Lewis - what Lewis should have done. I also look at the progressive movement as a whole and think - what did we all need to do differently in this election? I think finding ways to really fight for someone like Lewis, who's with us on most things, and certainly took up what I thought was a courageous vote in June - We've gotta reflect on that and think how we do better next time in these types of close races.
[00:03:55] Crystal Fincher: What did you think, Andrew?
[00:03:57] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, I think District 7 is the most conservative of the seven districts. And so the deck was kind of stacked against Andrew Lewis to start out with. And then as Robert said, the public safety piece was kind of big here. How much did voters see and hear about why Andrew Lewis was taking the votes and the actions that he did? Because for those of us who follow politics closely, we are interested in what happens at council, we're interested in the votes, and we pay an inordinate amount of attention and consume a lot more information. We might've been able to follow what Andrew Lewis was saying a lot more easily about why he voted the way he did in June, and then what he did in the fall - the late summer and fall - that caused him to take a vote that many people might've thought was contradictory to the vote that he took in June. And so I'm not sure how many voters were able to follow what was happening there. And it might've looked like, to use the old political cliche, flip-flopping. And if that's the case, if that's how voters perceived that, that could have been a negative. And Bob Kettle certainly being able to capitalize on that - that could be a very powerful thing if people are already feeling a little unhappy, disenchanted.
We saw at the beginning of this year - we did a citywide poll right before the election that was for the initiative, the social housing initiative - we had the special election, we did a poll before that. And pretty much everyone in the council got a negative job performance rating, except for Sara Nelson, who had a slightly positive one. And I looked at that and went - Hmm - 'cause we weren't just assessing, how do you feel about the council as an institution? 'Cause that's a separate question. It's possible to like your member of the institution and dislike the institution - we see that dynamic with Congress. But here, people actually - we had in the poll, we had people rate each councilmember and the ratings were not good for most of the incumbent councilmembers. Sara Nelson being the exception, as I mentioned. So people were already unhappy, and then you take this public safety dynamic and this confusing position-taking that is going on, I think for many voters, and it becomes something that leaves you feeling not confident about voting for the incumbent.
And I know Andrew Lewis worked really hard. I know he did a lot of door knocking, that I think they did try to leave it all out there in the field. But when you put together the low turnout, the money that was spent against Andrew Lewis, you put in the fact that it's a very conservative district out of the seven to start with, then you have the recipe for a Bob Kettle victory. Bob Kettle had a lot working for him. I don't think he ran the strongest campaign we've ever seen in Seattle city elections history. I think he just was lucky. He was a beneficiary of circumstances. So I'm gonna miss Andrew Lewis on the council - One of our board members is on his staff and I just think he brought a lot to the council. And I hope he runs for something else or stays involved in politics because I appreciate his vision.
[00:07:01] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I do appreciate his vision. And I think you're onto something with the confusing. It's confusing to be able to explain that, and I think that wasn't the only set of confusing votes that he took. There was a notable one last year, early this year - time doesn't mean much to me anymore - that he took there, and while that does happen and while there are certainly justifications, that's a hard thing to explain. And when you do, you better be clear and hope it cuts through to the voters. And I think that's a really hard thing to do for the general public, particularly when you have hundreds of thousands of dollars painting some of your votes in a different light. We saw in one of those ads with Bob Kettle - Sara Nelson blaming deaths on Andrew Lewis, which I think was disingenuous. But it just showed the amount of spending, the type of rhetoric that was in this race and that they really felt he was vulnerable on public safety and they certainly took advantage of that.
I wanna shift a little bit and talk about what this means moving forward for the city of Seattle. What does this council mean for the city? I wanna start with Katie. What are we likely to see?
[00:08:25] Katie Wilson: [baby crying] Can you come back to me?
[00:08:25] Crystal Fincher: I sure can. We'll start with Robert.
[00:08:30] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah. I share the baby's thoughts on this. It's not good, folks. I think what this election will have done is turn the 2020s into a lost decade for Seattle. I think we're going to spend the next four years until 2028, when a new council is inaugurated, playing defense. I think it's going to be very difficult to advance new policies, especially around housing, transportation, and climate. I think that especially for the next year or so, some of the most regressive forces in the city are going to feel emboldened. People who don't want new housing, people who want a transportation policy centered around cars and nothing else are gonna feel really like the wind is in their backs and they can really push harder than they might otherwise have pushed. I think there's going to be big fights over a comprehensive plan that's supposed to be approved next year. And this incoming council may not be as friendly to dense urban housing that we need to tackle the climate crisis and the affordability crisis as some of the other candidates would have been. We have to renew a transportation levy next year. Is that going to be focusing on a new sustainable transportation plan that focuses on transit, people who walk, people who bike, or is it gonna be tripling down on cars? Those are some of the things that come to mind.
The fight over JumpStart and taxing corporations is going to be significant. It's quite possible that this election turns out to foretell a significant decline in the quality of life in Seattle - if we see budget cuts to major public services, to libraries, parks, and certainly human services, I'd worry a lot about that. It's also possible that we don't see an incoming council that's really focused on building enough housing, especially affordable housing, and transportation options to make it easier for people to live and work here - that we become even more polarized into a city of the very rich and the very poor.
So I think we gotta be clear right here as progressives. The messaging we had on public safety, on homelessness wasn't working. Again, I don't think we should throw out our core values, but we've got a lot to learn from here. And the messaging that does work for us - housing, that people want people to fight for their rights as renters, wanna fight for affordability - we didn't do enough of that, I don't think. And finally, we need to figure out what pulls our people out to the polls. Do we need to start running ballot initiatives at the same time as mayoral elections, as city council elections in November? I think we should very seriously start considering that. But we're in for four years of playing a lot of defense and we're gonna lose a decade when we really can't afford to lose it to tackle affordability, racial justice, police reform and climate.
[00:11:11] Crystal Fincher: What are your thoughts, Andrew?
[00:11:13] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, I like to be hopeful and optimistic about the future. And I think that there's an opportunity to persuade the council to be progressive. And I think that we can see a lot of great things happen with this council if people put in the work to create the relationships and to connect with folks - I'm someone who believes you create the future you wanna see. And I'm not a huge fan of predictions either because I think it's really hard to make them and they're so often wrong. So my advice to those who are concerned about the outcome of this election is it's time to dig in and to build the relationships with those new councilmembers and to talk to them now before they get sworn in and to create that connectivity - that connective tissue - that should exist and make sure that again, people have had a chance to hear what it is we're looking for.
There's a lot of research, including NPI's research that shows people want the things that progressives in Seattle have been campaigning for. We want, for example, a more pedestrian-friendly city. We want a city that's not so car-centric. We want a city that has better transit. We want more housing. We want to make sure that as we're building the housing, we're not also losing our tree canopy because that is a critical tool in the fight against climate damage. So there's a lot that can be done, I think, by the council. And the mayor and the council need to hear from people now and not after they make a decision that people are unhappy with. It's not just the public testimony that matters, but it's also the work that's being done in between.
I like to think of the holiday season as a time for catch up and preparing for what comes next. And my suggestion to those who are listening is - okay, yes, celebrate the holidays - whatever you celebrate, do it. Don't lose out on your holiday traditions. But while you're preparing your plan for Thanksgiving, send off a note - find the information for the people who won their council races and send them a note and tell them what you're looking forward to in the next council and the policies you're hoping that they'll champion - and see what happens. I think that we don't put enough value on what we do after the election. There needs to be activism that comes after the voting has stopped and the counting is done - and before people take office and start governing - that in-between time to me is a critical time to get opinions shared with people who are coming in. So that's what I would encourage folks to do.
[00:13:44] Crystal Fincher: I want to strongly second that encouragement. I think that there is a lot of opportunity and whether you're happy with the results or not, I think it's really important to remain engaged after the election and to push for what you want whether it's a progressive or a moderate council. I also think that there is value in building relationships and there's value in starting a dialogue. Everything that we do is a result of coalitions and sometimes those coalitions don't look exactly like we expect them to. There are several issues that are very, very popular among Seattle residents that you look at what the council ran on and it may seem opposed - maybe that's the opportunity for some dialogue and some movement there.
Looking at setting up alternative response - that may be a little - I think most people have something more comprehensive in mind than the trial that just started, getting that spun out in all neighborhoods in a more comprehensive way 24/7 certainly is really popular - one of the highest polling issues in Seattle, there's opportunity there. Progressive revenue polls really high in the city as we head into this time of a pretty significant deficit in the City's budget. There's opportunity for dialogue to say this is absolutely critically important to me, my neighborhood, my neighbors and to make sure that councilmembers understand the impact that Seattle programs, that different things in your community have on your life.
This is really a time to get engaged - to let the councilmembers, incoming councilmembers, know it's important. And the existing councilmembers - who knows what they're liable to do. Now, some of them don't have to worry about what voters might think - that may have been part of their equation before. So there may be an opportunity for some bold action even before some of the existing ones end up going. So I just really do second that and point out that there are still some things that are really popular among residents in Seattle that I think they're looking to see these candidates deliver on. Katie, did you wanna add anything?
[00:16:00] Katie Wilson: Yeah, and I apologize if this is repetitive since I wasn't listening for a little bit, but yeah, I mean, the thing that is foremost in my mind is progressive revenue in the City budget. Knowing that the city is going into a situation where there's a more than $200 million a year shortfall starting in 2025. And I think there will continue to be efforts to basically repurpose the revenue from the JumpStart corporate tax to fill that gap. And so my kind of worst nightmare - well, maybe not worst nightmare, but one of the bad nightmares for what could happen with the new council aligned with the mayor and kind of pressured by the Chamber of Commerce and similar interests - is that they basically just gut JumpStart, take all of that money away from affordable housing, away from Green New Deal, away from equitable development. And basically it just becomes a general fund slush fund for the police budget. And I could totally see that happening. So that is, I think, something that will be a big issue next year, assuming that the economy doesn't just totally turn around and suddenly the shortfall evaporates.
So yeah, I mean, and I think that to what Crystal just said - given that the councilmembers will have an opportunity in the coming weeks as they complete the budget process to vote on potential revenue proposals. I know Councilmember Sawant every year proposes some massive increase to JumpStart, like doubling it or something. So, you know, maybe on their way out, some of the outgoing councilmembers will just say, f--- it and we'll do that. But I'm sure the new council would reverse it right quick, but it would be fun anyway.
[00:17:47] Crystal Fincher: Well, and one thing I do wanna add - another thing that is very popular and necessary in the city, and that seeing you with your baby there reminds us all of, is the importance of childcare and how critical it is that the council play an active role on making it more accessible and affordable to the residents of Seattle and how important that is to Seattle's economy. So look forward to seeing what plans and action they have there.
I wanna switch gears a little bit. We have talked a lot about Seattle for all this time, but let's talk about some of the other races. Let's talk about the King County Council races. So the first one up was Jorge Barón versus Sarah Reyneveld. We also saw Teresa Mosqueda versus Sofia Aragon. I think with Jorge Barón, we saw him do one of the things that's relatively rare in Seattle politics - and that was lock down both The Stranger and The Seattle Times endorsement, which usually equates to a pretty comfortable victory and I think we saw that here. But we also saw a race with Teresa Mosqueda and Sofia Aragon that was a little closer than some people anticipated. Why do you think that was, Robert?
[00:19:03] Robert Cruickshank: So I think that that district includes a fair amount of Burien. And I think Burien's politics this year were very polarized around - you might say The Seattle Times, Brandi Kruse narrative of, we gotta crackdown on visible homelessness in ways that are really just appalling and honestly dishonest. Sofia Aragon had been mayor of Burien and sort of leader in that effort. And so people who were invested in that narrative, whether they're in West Seattle or in Burien portions of the district, had a champion.
That said, Teresa Mosqueda is an incredibly effective politician and legislator. I wanna give a shout out to Kamau, @Kamaumaumau on Twitter, who's got a Mosqueda theory of politics - talk about popular stuff, pick a few strategic fights and highlight them, get elected, pass a bunch of taxes to solve people's problems, and then talk about it. The fact that Mosqueda was a very effective and visibly effective leader on the Seattle City Council, I think, helped insulate her a little bit from some of the criticisms that that council got. Those criticisms never really seemed to stick to Teresa Mosqueda - while Lorena González was going down to defeat, and Ann Davison was being elected our city attorney, and Sara Nelson getting elected citywide seat in 2021 - Mosqueda won with 20-point victory citywide that same year. And so I think Mosqueda, you have to give your hat off, take your hat off to Mosqueda for running a smart campaign, being a smart politician, showing that she's engaged on the issues, but also championing some really popular things and making sure voters know about it. So I think there's a lot to learn from Teresa Mosqueda and how she was able to pull out this victory, which was a close one, obviously. They threw everything they had at her and she prevailed. And I think that's a big kudos to the type of campaign she ran.
[00:21:02] Crystal Fincher: Do you think the electoral theory of Mosqueda holds up, Andrew?
[00:21:07] Andrew Villeneuve: I think so. I mean, Teresa Mosqueda is one of the people who's impressed me the most in local politics the last few years. I've had her at one of the NPI events, speaking about issues that are important. She is someone who understands data and she's very quick to realize - okay, this is the policy that will help us in 20 years. And so I really appreciate that about her. She's very passionate about even-year elections, which I hope we'll say a couple more words about, 'cause I think that is a remedy for some of the things that we've been talking about this past hour.
But when you look at her performance on the electoral map, Teresa Mosqueda doing well in places like Georgetown, performing well on Vashon. People sometimes forget that Vashon is a part of King County - it's a critical part of that district, the 8th District. So I see Sofia doing well in some parts of West Seattle. Robert mentioned Burien, another critical place. But that Vashon performance - that is an orange island on the general elections dashboard for Teresa Mosqueda. And looking at some of the precincts - I see 64% here, 73% over there. I mean, those kinds of margins matter. And I think that's how Teresa Mosqueda was able to build that majority. And of course, when you start - maybe it's a close race on Election Night. But when you start in a better position than your opponent, that late progressive ballots are just gonna lift you much higher. So the race - when that certification arrives, it's not gonna appear as close as it was on Election Night.
So I do applaud Teresa Mosqueda for running a good campaign for the County Council. And I think, with both Jorge and Teresa coming in, the County Council is getting more diverse. I think it's gonna get more progressive. I think we're gonna see some exciting new policies coming out of the Council. This is what we need. We're at a critical time. King County is on some very steep fiscal shoals, and we need the Legislature to step in, and we need progressive tax revenue options for King County like yesterday. And I'm hopeful that Teresa and Jorge will go down and advocate for that in the Legislature. And knowing them, I believe they're well-positioned to do that and bring that fresh energy that King County needs to the legislative delegation and say - Look, folks, this can't be something we punt and just don't do this year and just leave it to next year, and then it's the same story next year. We've gotta change and break out of that cycle.
[00:23:33] Crystal Fincher: Completely agree. And I know Mosqueda put in a ton of time on Vashon, which makes a difference. You have to show up. She's incredibly effective in what she does. She's a budget expert. And I'm excited to see what she does on the King County Council.
There's an interesting dynamic that we don't see a lot of times. We saw Seattle move in a more moderate direction, but we saw the King County Council move in what looks to be a more progressive direction. What do you think accounts for that? I'll open it up to anyone.
[00:24:05] Katie Wilson: Well, I'll just say one thing about the Mosqueda race. I mean, I don't know - I think, Crystal, you said it was pretty close. But in the end, I don't think it is that close - it's like a 10-point margin, so it's actually kind of a pretty big, major, major victory for Mosqueda. And I just looked up the PDC numbers - I don't think that Sofia Aragon ran that much of a campaign, so I think that's something to consider. Mosqueda, I think around $150,000 for Mosqueda's campaign, around $100,000 for Aragon. So it doesn't surprise me too much that she won by that much, even though so much of the district is outside of Seattle. But yeah, I mean, I think it's super interesting that the King County Council looks like arguably a place where a lot more interesting progressive stuff could happen in the next four years than the Seattle City Council.
[00:24:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. I'll interject really quick. The same thing that we talked about with engaging, building relationships, holding these electeds accountable to what they said they would do in the election and to what your neighborhoods need are just as important in cities like Burien with the results that we saw as they are in Seattle.
What do you think we are going to see from the King County Council moving forward with the addition of Jorge Barón and Teresa Mosqueda?
[00:25:20] Robert Cruickshank: I mean, I think that there's certainly an opportunity for some more progressive policy, certainly around housing. They're gonna have to solve, as Andrew mentioned, the revenue issue. And that becomes particularly important with King County Metro, which is making a comeback from certainly the pandemic lows, but with a still slightly smaller route network than it had going in. And so a little bit less ridership than it had going in. There's been recovery, I think, on a lot of routes that don't necessarily serve downtown Seattle - there's been recovery on those too. But the way people get around has shifted a little bit, and the system does need to catch up to that and then go ahead. Like Metro and transit are so essential to our ability to tackle the climate crisis. And King County is squarely in the middle of that. So one thing that I think Barón and Mosqueda are going to be confronted with immediately is a need to tackle that question. There's been talk that the county may put as much as a billion dollar ballot measure on the ballot in 2024 to tackle climate issues, potentially including transit. And I think that that's ambitious. That's, I think, correctly ambitious - we need to see what the actual details of the proposal look like. But that's something where Barón and Mosqueda are going to have to take a close look.
And certainly they're going to have to advocate the Legislature because, as Andrew mentioned, the Legislature since the mid-2000s has really undermined the ability of local governments, including counties, to raise their own revenue and stay fiscally afloat. And that's catching up to King County real fast. And so they're going to need to lead on that.
[00:26:56] Crystal Fincher: What are your thoughts, Andrew?
[00:26:58] Andrew Villeneuve: I agree. I think we have to deal with the Metro issues, but we also have rural roads problems in King County that haven't been addressed. And the previous council of the last 20 years had kind of let these issues fester. My councilmember used to be Kathy Lambert and Kathy cared a lot about rural roads, or so she said, but then the rural roads just weren't getting funded. And I think, you know, here's part of the problem with being a Republican in today's environment - and this is setting aside a lot of the Trump cult stuff - but what we see from a lot of Republican elected officials is they're willing to spend money that's already there, but they want to spend it in ways that actually don't help anybody. So like, for example, just canceling certain taxes and sending the money back to taxpayers. Well, you can't fix the potholes over there on the road with your tax refund. So when rural residents, you know - and Skykomish comes to mind, that's a place that many people might think is not in King County, but it actually is. It's part of Kathy Lambert's old district, now represented by Sarah Perry, my councilmember. And, you know, you think about - okay, what's it going to take to repair some of these rural roads? And it's going to take money. And some of the roads are in terrible shape 'cause they haven't been maintained. And when you don't maintain your roads, you know, they fall apart. It's the same thing with bus service. Like if you're not investing in your bus service and, you know, you're not providing like really reliable, consistently good experience for people, people are going to stop riding. They're going to go back to their car if they have one, because they're, you know, those choice riders can choose not to take the bus. And we don't want choice riders to go back to driving their car because that makes traffic congestion a lot worse. So we need to both address the rural roads, we need to address Metro. There's other public services as well that people don't even know the county does that we need to have elevated.
What I'm really excited about though is in the next few years, King County Elections, thanks to the work of the Northwest Progressive Institute and all of our partners and allies - we're moving county elections to even years. So that means that starting in 2026, we're going to elect Teresa Mosqueda and Councilmember Balducci and Councilmember Zahilay and of course, new Councilmember Barón - they're all going to be coming up in 2026. That's their next election - that's three years from now, not four years. And of course, that's also when Julie Wise and John Arthur Wilson's seats come up as well. And then in 2025, we elect the executive and five other council positions for three-year terms - that's the last odd-year election for those. And then those come up in a presidential year. And I just can't wait to see how much higher the turnout is and how many more people discover that county government is a thing - and it does things that are really important and meaningful to their lives. And I hope that they start to realize - okay, now I get to help pick these people - because they are even-year voters, and now they're going to have a say in how King County is run and who represents it. So I just think that that is a tremendously positive change that we're doing for King County. We also now need to do that for our cities.
[00:29:53] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely agree. And I hope that we see legislation at the state level. I know Representative Mia Gregerson had a bill there to bring even-year elections, which just increased turnout and participation, which is good for everyone. And would love to see it in all of our elections here. Other cities are doing it and we should also do it here in Washington State.
I want to, with a little bit of time that we have left, move out a little bit - and I'll go to Katie to start out with. Looking wider in the region, wider across the state - thinking Tacoma, Spokane, Bellingham - there was actually a lot to be excited about and a lot of progressive victories. What did you see around the state that you found encouraging or exciting?
[00:30:44] Katie Wilson: Well, the Spokane mayor race, obviously the outcome was encouraging. But the thing that I've paid the closest attention to and that I think is just very, very heartening is the result of a few initiatives on issues. So down in Tacoma, there was a very ambitious renter protections initiative, which will bring Tacoma's renter protections up to, and in some cases beyond, what we have here in Seattle. And that initiative was outspent massively. I think it was like three to one and the opposition - very, very well funded by real estate and landlord interests - with TV ads, mailers, just like everything. They just went balls to the walls on that. And the initiative is winning. And I think that's just like - really, really speaks to the way that the rent increases of the last few years have shifted public opinion and to just the popularity of renter protections. This is something that the Transit Riders Union and lots of other organizations in King County have been working a lot on over the last few years here.
And the other couple initiatives were up in Bellingham. There's a renter protections initiative up there that would also do basically landlord-paid relocation assistance for rent increases greater than 8% and more, requirements for more notice of rent increases. And then also a minimum wage initiative that will raise Bellingham's minimum wage to $2 above the state minimum wage. And those both passed by large margins - I believe somewhere around 60% or even more. And I don't think those face any opposition. So that again, just gives you the sense of this kind of like native support for kind of cost of living kind of issues. So that's super heartening. And then one thing I wanted to point out, which is - and I think that also, we're gonna see next February - it looks like we're gonna have in Renton, the Raise the Wage Renton will be on the ballot for people to vote on. So hopefully that also passes with flying colors, although obviously February election is a little bit more challenging.
And the one thing I wanted to say in connection to what Andrew brought up about even-year elections, just 'cause it's been on my mind - at least for Seattle and King County, this isn't, it's not the same for code cities, but for Seattle and King County, one unintended consequence of moving to even-year elections will be that it will become harder to run citizens' initiatives because the number of signatures that you need to gather depends on the number of votes cast in the last election for mayor or county executive. And so if we're switching to even years, many more people are voting, which is great. Suddenly you're gonna need to gather a lot more signatures in Seattle or countywide in order to run an initiative. So I hope that alongside those changes, we can try to push for lowering the signature threshold for ballot initiatives in those jurisdictions. Yeah, I'll stop there.
[00:33:46] Crystal Fincher: I think that's an excellent point. I will also throw in as we're talking about elections and when they are being so important, we have a King Conservation District election coming up in January, I believe. It would be great to get that onto a regular ballot - that's going to take some legislative action. That would be great to push for, but in the meantime, make sure that you engage in that election, which will be coming up also. Robert, what did you see that excited you throughout this?
[00:34:16] Robert Cruickshank: You know, I think that we saw on the Eastside of Lake Washington, a lot of victories for more progressive candidates. In Bellevue, we certainly saw that. Big shout out to Bothell - Bothell elected a bunch of urbanists. They, Mason Thompson, who's the mayor of Bothell, won his election four years ago by five votes. He got 60% this year. So did the other folks running with him - Amanda Dodd and Carston Curd got around 60%. This is Bothell, which is a great city, and I think it's going to become even better, you know, now that they've got some really urbanist folks there. They also have one of the only Palestinian Americans on their city council. So Bothell, you look at - there's some good folks in Redmond. There's definitely some good folks in, I mentioned, bellevue. Tacoma - not only did Tacoma for all pass, but Jamika Scott won, Olgy Diaz is leading. So those are really great, great signs out there.
And I think what that shows is that there are lessons that Seattle can learn from other parts of the region. There are also differences. Those races don't have sort of the obsessive Seattle Times, Brandi Kruse eye on them, which changes things. And those races in those more suburban communities also didn't have the avalanche of corporate money, although certainly the Tacoma for All initiative did. But I still think there may be things we can learn about how to turn out voters and how to win some persuadable voters from those. But overall, that's really positive signs to take from around the state, even as we who are in Seattle - we'll gnash our teeth a little bit about how some of these races turned out.
[00:35:53] Crystal Fincher: And I'll give you the closing word, Andrew.
[00:35:55] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, thank you. It has been a pleasure to share this evening with all of you. I think this has been a great discussion. I want to encourage you to look at all the different election results from the different cities and other jurisdictions, because it is - in a local election cycle, you have this amazing patchwork quilt of elections. And some jurisdictions are dealing with issues that are specific to those jurisdictions, and that really causes their elections to go in a certain direction. But others, you know, don't have those. And what we saw this year in places like Spokane was a really progressive result. Not only did Lisa Brown win a convincing victory, and I hope folks will look at the amount of money that was spent against Lisa Brown - it was enormous. You know, we're talking about the Tacoma tenant rights initiative, which is a huge victory - kudos to those folks. But Lisa Brown also overcame an avalanche of money and of opposition money. And that was a really big deal that she was able to do that. And then of course, for Spokane City Council President, we have a woman of color winning that race. The council in Spokane is gonna stay progressive. You know, that is a really encouraging sign. There's been 12 years of Republican rule in Spokane, and that's coming to an end. And Lisa Brown is gonna be in a position to do some great things for Spokane, and people in Seattle should track what's happening over there. Spokane has fortunately a fairly vibrant media ecosystem - I've been reading all of the reports that their TV stations have been doing for this election. And it's just interesting to see how they covered the mayor's race over there. There were a lot of forums and debates and articles and the controversy over, you know, the Matt Shea appearance that Nadine Woodward, Lisa Brown's opponent had - that was very well covered. People definitely heard about that. So that gives me some confidence. You know, when we're looking at news deserts - and my hometown of Redmond is one - you know, there's not enough information for voters. And Spokane is big enough that it has that media ecosystem that really helps.
For me, the most important race this year is the defeat of Adam Fortney. He is the former, soon-to-be former, Snohomish County Sheriff. And he was one of the most right-wing sheriffs this state has ever seen. He had Mark Lamb up here for a fundraiser recently - Mark Lamb is that really scary guy in Arizona who's also a sheriff, and he has some really horrible views that are extremely extreme. I mean, we're talking like more extreme, I think, than people in Washington have ever seen in a candidate around here, perhaps, with the exception maybe of folks like Matt Shea. But this was a guy who really speaks for a fringe, and he came here and he made, you know, merry with Adam Fortney. And that sort of speaks to who Adam Fortney is. He was becoming a favorite of the Washington State Republican Party - he was appearing at like every event they had, talking about rolling back police reform laws. He had done some really terrible things as sheriff, like taking the measuring devices out of police cars that were tracking police officers' driving. He rehired deputies who've been fired by his predecessor for misconduct. He lost the accreditation that had been so hard won under his predecessor. So he was really awful. And Susanna Johnson, who is his opponent, launched a campaign a year ago and just spent a whole year working, working, working, canvassing, canvassing, canvassing, doorbelling, doorbelling, doorbelling. And we did research in this race. And what we found is that, you know, if people knew about Fortney's bad record, they'd vote for Susanna Johnson. And that's what we saw in the election. So my hat is off to all the Stohomish County progressives who worked so hard to get that big victory. Congratulations to you - I think you set the tone for this election.
[00:39:23] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And congratulations to all of the campaign staff that worked. It is a hard and often thankless job. And we appreciate that you were willing to put yourselves out there and support your candidates.
And with that, the roundtable comes to a close. I wanna thank our panelists, Katie Wilson, Andrew Villeneuve, and Robert Cruickshank for their insight and making this an engaging and informative event. To those watching online, thanks so much for tuning in. If you missed any of the discussion tonight, you can catch up on the Hacks & Wonks Facebook page, YouTube channel, or on Twitter where we're @HacksWonks. Special thanks to essential member of the Hacks & Wonks team and coordinator for this evening, Dr. Shannon Cheng. And if you have not listened to the show that she guest hosted about the Seattle budget, you need to.
If you missed voting in the election or know someone who did, make sure to register to vote, update your registration, or find information on the next election at MyVote.wa.gov. And as a reminder, even if you've been previously incarcerated, your right to vote is restored and you can re-register to vote immediately upon your release, even if you are still under community supervision.
Be sure to tune into Hacks & Wonks on your favorite podcast app for our midweek shows and our Friday week-in-review shows, or at officialhacksandwonks.com. I've been your host, Crystal Fincher. See you next time.
On this Tuesday topical show, we present Part 1 of the Hacks & Wonks 2023 Post-Election Roundtable which was live-streamed on November 13, 2023 with special guests Katie Wilson, Andrew Villeneuve, and Robert Cruickshank. In Part 1, the panel breaks down general election results in Seattle City Council Districts 1 through 6. Similarities and differences between the contests are discussed as well as the impact of low voter turnout, lopsided outside spending, and campaign messaging. Stay tuned for Part 2 of the roundtable releasing this Friday for more election analysis!
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find guest panelists, Katie Wilson at @WilsonKatieB, Robert Cruickshank at @cruickshank, and Andrew Villeneuve at https://www.nwprogressive.org. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Katie Wilson
Katie Wilson is the general secretary of the Transit Riders Union and was the campaign coordinator for the wildly successful Raise the Wage Tukwila initiative last November.
Andrew Villeneuve
Andrew Villeneuve is the founder of the Northwest Progressive Institute (NPI) and its sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer.
Robert Cruickshank
Robert is the Director of Digital Strategy at California YIMBY and Chair of Sierra Club Seattle. A long time communications and political strategist, he was Senior Communications Advisor to Mike McGinn from 2011-2013.
Resources
Hacks & Wonks 2023 Post-Election Roundtable Livestream | November 13th, 2023
Transcript
[00:00:00] Shannon Cheng: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I’m Shannon Cheng, Producer for the show. You’re listening to Part 1 of our 2023 Post-Election Roundtable that was originally aired live on Monday, November 13th. Audio for Part 2 will be running this Friday, so make sure you stay tuned. Full video from the event and a full text transcript of the show can be found on our website officialhacksandwonks.com. Thank you for tuning in!
[00:00:38] Crystal Fincher: Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Hacks and Wonks Post-Election Roundtable. I'm Crystal Fincher, a political consultant and the host of the Hacks & Wonks radio show and podcast, and today I am thrilled to be joined by three of my favorite Hacks and Wonks to break down what happened in last week's general election in Washington.
We are excited to be able to live stream this roundtable on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Additionally, we're recording this roundtable for broadcast on KODX and KVRU radio, podcast, and it will be available with a full text transcript at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Our esteemed panelists for this evening are Katie Wilson. Katie is the general secretary of the Transit Riders Union and was the campaign coordinator for the wildly successful Raise the Wage Tukwila initiative last November. Andrew Villeneuve is the founder of the Northwest Progressive Institute and its sibling, Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. And Robert Cruickshank - Robert's the Director of Digital Strategy at California YIMBY and Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, a longtime communications and political strategist, and he was Senior Communications Advisor to Mayor Mike McGinn from 2011 to 2013. Welcome, everyone.
[00:02:02] Robert Cruickshank: Thanks for having us.
[00:02:04] Katie Wilson: Yeah, thanks, Crystal.
[00:02:04] Crystal Fincher: Well, absolutely. Let's start talking about the City of Seattle City Council races. There are quite a number of them - we'll break them down by district. So there were 7 districted positions. This was the first election since the latest redistricting process, so these districts are not exactly the same as they were the last time we had an election, so that may have played a little role - we'll talk a little about that later.
But going into Position 1 - as we see, Rob Saka currently holds a commanding lead and he will win the race for Seattle City Council District 1 with 54% of the vote to Maren Costa's 45% of the vote. Turnout in this election was 46%, compared to 2019's 54%. Quite a bit difference. Starting with Robert, what was your take on this race?
[00:03:09] Robert Cruickshank: You know, I have to say I was a little surprised at the margin of victory for Rob Saka here - for a couple reasons. One is that I thought Maren Costa ran what seemed to me to be a strong campaign that potentially would have resonated with a majority of voters, not just 45% of voters in West Seattle and in Georgetown-South Park.
But also Maren Costa got endorsed by all of the other candidates in the primary aside from Rob Saka. And one might have thought that that would have conferred added legitimacy and certainly support for the campaign. It does not seem to have turned out that way. One thing I think we'll certainly want to talk about tonight is the effect of lower turnout - did that wind up sinking progressive candidates or was it other factors?
But here you see the first of the seven districts - significantly lower turnout. Now if we had 2019 level turnout, would that have been enough to bring Maren Costa to victory? Hard to say. Maybe not. But this certainly is one where Maren Costa, who had a great record of standing up to Amazon - she was one of the two employees who was fired by Amazon for doing climate organizing, and then wound up getting a settlement as a result of that. I'd be interested to dive more deeply into what happened there.
But it's also - one thing I would keep in mind is West Seattle - voters there have been pretty cranky and upset ever since the pandemic began - because while for the rest of us in Seattle, pandemic 2020 meant lockdowns, it meant protests, it meant a lot of disruption. For West Seattle, it also meant being cut off from the rest of the city because the bridge went out. The bridge closed right around the time the lockdowns began due to safety concerns it might collapse. And having spent a little bit of time there in West Seattle lately and talking to voters out there - there is a strong sense of disconnection, of anger and frustration, at City Hall and it's possible that got taken out on Maren Costa, who's seen as a progressive candidate. There's definitely a narrative that the business community - and their wealthy PACs and Seattle Times - tried to tell to paint progressives as a kind of incumbents here. And it's entirely possible that that was another factor here too. But certainly worth looking at to see what happened in District 1.
[00:05:23] Crystal Fincher: Definitely. What do you think about this, Andrew?
Oh, you are currently muted.
[00:05:35] Andrew Villeneuve: I was surprised too. I think this was a result that not a lot of people maybe saw coming because if you look at the top two results, Maren had a significant lead - plurality lead, but a lead. You look at the difference - they are in two different brackets when you have - Maren Costa's up there in the 30s, Rob Saka's back there in the 20s. So I think a lot of people assumed in the general election that there was going to be a significant advantage for Maren Costa, especially having the support of all of these rivals who had not made it to the general election. But I think when you look at Rob Saka's message, I think we have to conclude that it did resonate with the voters in the district.
And I'm looking at his website and just checking out all of his enendorsements - and he emphasized he was endorsed by Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell - I think that was a key endorsement that he got. I think the mayor is very popular - our organization does quite a bit of polling - some of Hacks & Wonks listeners may know. And in all of our polling this year we've seen the mayor is very popular with Seattle voters. And that includes District 3 voters, voters across the city - really he's popular all over the place. So having that endorsement and touting that as prominently as he did - I think that was a key factor. And then of course The Seattle Times - I think they have more pull in certain districts than others. And District 1, I think, is a district where I think that they have more pull than some of the other publications that endorsed in the race. I think The Stranger's endorsement matters more in District 3 than it does in District 1. And I think we saw the result of that here with this result.
And it could have been closer if there had been higher turnout. I have to agree with that as well. And the fact is right now we may see the lowest turnout in the history of the state of Washington in a general election. It's not clear yet if we're actually going to get to that worst turnout marker but we are certainly close. Currently I am looking to see how many ballots are left because the Secretary of State is saying - Well, we think the turnout is going to be somewhere between 36% and 39% - that's statewide. And if we don't surpass 37.10% then it is the worst turnout 'cause that was the low mark set in 2017. And as we can see, Seattle has higher turnout than the state as a whole, but it's lower than it has been in past odd years. This is part of a disturbing trend where we keep seeing turnout declining in odd-year elections - it is not going in a healthy direction, so that could definitely have an effect. If there is an opportunity later we can talk about even-year elections and what that could do for Seattle, but I'll leave it there and we'll continue to talk about the other races.
[00:08:13] Crystal Fincher: Definitely. What did you see? We will go over to this next slide here - looking at the role of independent expenditures in addition to campaign fundraising, did you see the role of money in this race being significant, Katie?
[00:08:33] Katie Wilson: Yeah, totally. I haven't actually studied in detail all of the slides you put together, but this is obviously telling that there is a pretty massive independent expenditure contributions here against Maren Costa. And you have to believe that that was a significant factor. I hope that maybe you, Crystal, or someone can speak to the relative weight of independent expenditures in the different City races because I haven't looked at that but I wonder to what extent that can help us to understand some of the results. But I think the spending against Maren was really significant.
I will say this was one of the races that also surprised me. Partly because whereas we saw in a couple of other districts some of the more progressive labor unions actually lined up with the more moderate candidate, in this race labor - maybe not 100%, but was pretty strong for Maren and so it also surprised me to see this margin.
The last thing I'll say, because I know we have a lot to get through, is that I'm really curious about what is so horrible about Rob Saka that all of his opponents in the primary came out for Maren, so perhaps we will get to learn that - maybe that's a silver lining.
[00:09:40] Crystal Fincher: Hopefully we learn he can rise above that given he is going to be a councilmember. It will certainly be interesting to see what his prime agenda is. He's certainly talked a lot about public safety, police - a lot of public safety talk involved with a lot of different issue areas. So it's going to be really interesting to see what his priorities are as he begins to govern.
I want to talk about Seattle City Council District 2. And this is one that saw a pretty tantalizing result - had us all on the edge of our seats. On Election Night, which is just a partial tally because we have vote by mail - those come in day after day, it takes us days to count them. We saw Tammy Morales overtake Tanya Woo after a few days of counting. This is a very, very close race. We can see here the breakdown of what the daily ballot returns were and how those changed over time. Robert, what did you see with this race, and why do you think Tammy was able to prevail when so many of the other progressive candidates were not?
[00:10:54] Robert Cruickshank: This is not the first time Tammy Morales has been in a very close election in District 2. She ran for the seat the first time in 2015 against then-incumbent councilmember Bruce Harrell and narrowly lost by roughly 400 votes. She did get, of course, elected in 2019 and now re-elected here in 2023. I think part of the story here is incumbency does help. I think the fact that Morales has worked really hard to show her voters that she delivers in southeast Seattle also goes a really long way. Obviously there was frustration among a lot of voters in the Chinatown International District area - that shows up in the results so far - Tanya Woo did very well there. But in other parts of District 2 - Columbia City and points south - Morales held her own and did well.
I think you've seen in the four years Morales has been in office, she's been a champion for workers, a champion for renters. She's fought very hard to tax Amazon, supported the JumpStart Tax. She's been very attentive to the needs of the district. When a number of people were struck and killed along MLK Boulevard there, Morales stepped up and met with people, fought hard and is continuing to fight hard at the City and with Sound Transit to make safety improvements. Morales is seen by a lot of people in southeast Seattle as someone who is attentive to the district, attentive to concerns, and responsive - along with being a progressive who's delivered results. So I think those are the things that insulated Tammy Morales from a more maybe conservative-moderate wave this year. Tanya Woo certainly ran, I think, a strong campaign - obviously a very close result. But I think a lesson here is that progressives who get in office and try very hard and very overtly to show their voters that they are working hard for them, that they share their values and are trying to deliver - that can go a really long way.
[00:12:56] Crystal Fincher: I definitely agree with that. How did you see this, Andrew?
[00:13:00] Andrew Villeneuve: I see Councilmember Morales as someone who is willing to do the work and that really matters. In a local campaign, doorbelling counts, organizing counts. I looked at Councilmember Morales' website while I was writing our election coverage last week and I was noticing how many of the pictures that she has are her with other people - and they're holding signs and look very excited. I look a lot at how do candidates present themselves and who do they surround themselves with. And there's something about these pictures that struck me as - it's not so conventional, it's very fresh. I thought that was a good image for her to put out to the electorate. This is a hard-working councilmember who's got a lot of supporters - a lot of grassroots support - focused on the needs of the neighborhood.
Incumbency matters, as Robert said. I was looking at her 2019 results as well. In 2019 she had 60.47% of the vote in that contest. And that was a sharp change from 2015 when she was facing off against Bruce Harrell and lost by only a few hundred votes. So I think that that big victory four years ago was helpful in setting the stage for this closer election this year where it was a tougher environment - the district's changed and of course you had an opponent who was well funded and trying to get the seat. And I think a more credible, perhaps a better opponent - someone The Seattle Times and others could really rally around more than Mark Solomon from four years ago. So I think that's what made the race closer.
But Councilmember Morales brought a lot of strength to this race, and you can see in the late ballots that that dominance was key. And that's why it's so important that that lead change occurred last week, because if Tammy was still behind this week it would be hard to pull it out. And we're seeing that in those other two races that we'll talk about later where things got really close but there's no lead change.
[00:14:51] Crystal Fincher: What was your evaluation of this race, Katie?
[00:14:54] Katie Wilson: I don't have a lot to add but I'll just say I think with a margin that small everything matters, right? And so, kudos to the folks who ran that campaign and who were out knocking on doors and making phone calls and sending texts - because with just a few hundred votes that makes a difference. Fewer than a thousand votes difference in that race would be looking more like the District 7 race and we'd all be singing a very different tune.
And I will just say - the implications of that race - Tammy being theon council again is going to be super important for social housing, for the success of Initiative 135, because she's really been kind of a champion of that on council and now will be able to continue that work - that was one of the things looking at the initial results that was running through my mind is - oh gosh, who's gonna carry the standard for social housing?
[00:15:54] Crystal Fincher: That's a great point. I also want to look at the spending in this race where Tanya Woo and independent expenditures in support of her and in opposition to Tammy Morales were substantial. And in this race, as in District 1 and a few others, we saw some very sharp and pointed criticisms coming through in mailers, in commercials. It was quite the direct voter messaging campaign. Do any of you think it went too far? Do you think it backfired at all? How did you evaluate that in this race?
[00:16:38] Robert Cruickshank: I don't know that it -- obviously it didn't succeed. But again I agree with Katie that in every close - super close election like this, every little bit makes a difference. I think it's clear that it certainly helped Tanya get to a very near victory. It's entirely possible though that it also may have backfired in some ways. I think that generally speaking, voters want to hear from candidates positive things about why you should elect them. They don't want to hear a candidate delivering negative hits. Someone else delivers the negative hits - it shouldn't be the candidate themselves. So it's entirely possible that Tanya Woo maybe put a ceiling on herself by going personally directly negative. But then again just a couple of shifts here and there and we're talking about a Tanya Woo victory.
[00:17:30] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, you raise a great point. In a race this close, everything matters. Been involved in close races before - you dissect every single little thing. Wonderful to be on the winning end, agonizing to be on the losing end of this - for the candidate and staff.
As we look to the District 3 race, this was an interesting race because we had one of the most notorious active incumbents in Kshama Sawant, who had gotten a lot of ire from The Seattle Times, from some of the TV news - were not a fan of her. She was a Socialist, not a Democrat, and pointed that out fairly frequently. Was a lightning rod but you can't say she didn't represent her district. She was reelected. She withstood a recall attempt but she decided not to run for reelection, so we had Alex Hudson and Joy Hollingsworth competing to be a new representative in this district. What do you think this race was about, and why do you think we got the result that we did? We'll start with Andrew.
[00:18:39] Andrew Villeneuve: So this is a race that we actually polled at NPI. We do as much polling as we can locally during odd numbered cycles, but it's tough because there's so many jurisdictions and some of them are too small to poll. But in this jurisdiction, there were enough voters that we could do a poll which was great. And in our poll we found a significant lead for Joy Hollingsworth. In the aggregate, which is a combination of a series of questions that we asked - Joy Hollingsworth got 52%, Alex Hudson got 28%, 16% said they were not sure, 3% didn't recall how they voted - that's the early voters, part of them. And 1% would not vote. So what we saw in the election was - of course, the late ballots have now come in - and what's interesting is Joy Hollingsworth's number is not very far off from the number she got in the poll. So basically it looks like the people who were planning to vote for Joy, or did vote for Joy already, did that. So they followed through - that's what they did. And it looks like Alex Hudson picked up most of the undecided voters and brought that race much closer. But Joy had this built-in lead that the poll showed was out there. Joy had done the work to build a majority coalition of voters in this election and our pollster did a good job modeling the election. They had to figure out who is going to turn out, and that's always a guess. They looked at 2019 turnout, 2017 turnout, 2021 turnout - tried to get a feel for who's that likely electorate going to be. And what we saw basically is the dynamic that was captured in the poll is what played out in the election. Joy had a majority and that majority was able to get Joy elected. Alex took the undecideds, the not sure folks, brought them in and made it a much closer race. But didn't do well enough in the late ballots to change the outcome, and that's despite District 3 being a very, very, very progressive district - a district that I think The Stranger has more influence in than other districts in the city.
So I think it's really great that we were able to take a look at this race. I wish we could have done all 7 districts. But we have a poll write-up where we talked about what we heard from voters because we actually asked them - Why are you backing this candidate? We did a follow-up question. It was a ground breaking thing for us in a local poll to ask the why behind the vote. And people told us that Joy is from the district. People said she grew up in Seattle, she's genuinely invested in the community, not everyone with a political science degree knows what's best. She has extensive experience across a lot of relevant areas - greatly focused on public safety, had the mayor's endorsement, long Central area presence. So those are some of the comments that we heard. People who were supporting Alex said that she was an urbanist, she had a better set of plans. There were some really positive things people said about her.
We didn't get a lot of negativity in the poll so people weren't really trashing the other candidate, but they were praising the one that they had decided to support. And I like to see that. I like to see that positive focus. So I think that's why we saw the result we did. Joy ran a really strong campaign, she connected with people. She was all over the place - I heard from District 3 voters saying, She doorbelled my home or she made herself accessible. I really liked that. And people just like to see someone from the Central District running for this council position. And my hat is off to Alex for putting together a great set of plans, running a strong campaign as well - it's just that in this election, Joy was her opponent and Joy was able to seal the deal with the voters.
[00:21:59] Crystal Fincher: How did you see this, Katie?
[00:22:03] Katie Wilson: I think Andrew gave a good rundown there. What I would have to add is this is one of those districts where some of the labor unions that you might think would line up with the person who is perceived as the more progressive candidate actually went for Joy. UFCW 3000 and Unite Here Local 8 both endorsed Joy and she got MLK Labor's endorsement. I think that probably mattered. I live in District 3 and I got in the mail an envelope, and when you open it there was a card from Unite Here Local 8 - pro-Joy. And so I think that for a lot of people who maybe are not in a hyperpolitical bubble, there was not a clear contrast between the two candidates in terms of who was the lefty pick and who was the more moderate pick. So yeah, I mean, and I think basically everything that Andrew said resonates with me as well.
[00:23:02] Crystal Fincher: Robert, do you think that the contract - or contrast or lack of a contrast played a role in this race?
[00:23:09] Robert Cruickshank: I absolutely do. I think there's an interesting column from Danny Westneat of all people in Seattle Times over the weekend, but what made it interesting is quoting a Seattle University professor who said he talked to his students and the students said - Yeah, they both seem progressive. They both seem pretty similar. And I think if you look at their campaign literature and their websites, that comes through. There's a longstanding strategy of a more moderate business-friendly candidate like Hollingsworth blurring those lines. I remember the 2013 election when Mike McGinn, the incumbent, narrowly lost to Ed Murray. And Murray ate into McGinn's base on Capitol Hill partly by blurring those lines. Jenny Durkan did a very similar strategy to Cary Moon in 2017. Blur the lines, make yourself seem progressive, make it seem like both are fine.
A couple other things stand out as well. The Washington Community Alliance puts together this great general elections dashboard. And I was looking at the results so far, precinct that we have - not complete results, but so far from 2023 in District 3 - and comparing it to what we saw there in 2019. And something stood out to me immediately, and Andrew alluded to this. On Capitol Hill itself, Alex Hudson did really well, so did Kshama Sawant. In the northern part of the district - North Capitol Hill, Montlake, and anywhere along the water, Leschi, Madrona - Egan Orion in 2019, and Joy Hollingsworth did well in those areas. In the Central District, Kshama Sawant put up 60, 65, 70% in those precincts. In 2023, Joy Hollingsworth won most of those Central District precincts. That seems to be where the battle for District 3 was won by Joy Hollingsworth and lost by Alex Hudson. So I think that's a big part of it. I think the fact that Hollingsworth is from the community, is herself a woman of color, I think that resonated really strongly there. I think that those factors meant Alex Hudson had a real hill to climb, literally and figuratively, getting up there in District 3. And I don't think Alex was able to do it. You know, we at the Sierra Club endorsed Alex, but we interviewed all the candidates, and they were all really strong candidates there.
I think ultimately, there's an interesting contrast with Sawant and Hudson that - I haven't figured out where I am on this, but it's interesting to think about. You know, Sawant won four elections in Seattle, the last three of which were in District 3 against huge corporate opposition. And one of the ways she prevailed was by mobilizing a strong base and by showing she delivers for her base. She delivers for workers, she delivers for renters - everybody knows that. And her base of activists from Socialist Alternative are out there aggressively getting votes. They did a great job of it. Unfortunately, Hudson is much more of a wonk candidate. She has extensive experience with housing and transit, knows local government inside and out. And when Sawant was in office, you'd hear a lot of progressives lament Sawant's approach, lament Sawant's attitude and style. And wish they had someone who was more of a wonk who'd work within City government - that's definitely Alex Hudson, but you gotta get elected. And what we see is that there's something to Sawant's approach - not that you have to agree with all of it - there's something to her approach to winning elections that I think progressives can learn from. And I think that - looking back, I think Hudson may have wished she could be more overtly progressive, especially when it comes to finding the things and finding the issues that motivate the base to show up. That's one of the only ways you would be able to overcome Hollingsworth's strength in that key battleground in the 3rd District, which is the Central District.
[00:26:55] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think you've hit on something there. And I think it's something that we see in the Tammy Morales race, that we've seen from Kshama Sawant - that if you are a progressive, playing it safe, trying to not be that progressive - not saying that these candidates were overtly trying to not be progressive. But you have to show that you're willing to fight and willing to deliver. You have to show that there's some basis to believe that not only are you talking the talk, but you can also walk it. And I think this race could have benefited for more of that on the progressive end. But it's gonna be interesting to see because Kshama was unique in many ways, but lots of lessons to learn from her just epic ground game that she had race after race.
And do have to hand it to Joy Hollingsworth, where I think - similar to Andrew and others - have heard anecdotally for quite some time that she has been out there knocking on doors, that she has been out there talking to community. And that is extremely important and only helps a candidate to be in contact with so many people in the community.
So going to District 4 - which this is a race that still isn't called, still is too close to call for a lot of people. What do you see happening here? And what do you think is this dynamic happening in this district, Robert?
[00:28:19] Robert Cruickshank: You know, I think this is another one where it is a very sharply divided district within itself, similar to District 3. You've got not just the U District - obviously is going to vote more progressive. So was most of Wallingford and areas around Roosevelt and even parts of Ravenna. But then once you get further north and further east towards the water, you get a bit more moderate, even more conservative. And once you're of course out in like Laurelhurst or Windermere, you're among the wealthy class. But Davis fought hard, fought very closely - nearly won. I don't know that there are enough remaining ballots as of here on Monday night to give Davis enough room to make that 300 vote gain that he needs. But he fought really close and really hard against a huge mountain of corporate money. This is one where I really have to wonder - if we saw 2019 levels of turnout, would we see a Davis victory? The results certainly suggest, especially as the later ballots came in, that might well be the case.
Davis ran, I thought, what was a very strong campaign, certainly one that connected with a lot of people in the district. But so did Rivera. And I think this is a interesting test case for how did sort of The Seattle Times-Chamber of Commerce narrative play out? Was Davis able to really overcome that and tell his own narrative of where we should go in Seattle? It certainly seems like in a lot of these races, any progressive candidate faced a lot of headwinds from just a constant narrative that the city is unsafe, city's on the wrong track, it's the fault of progressives and the city council, we have to make a change. And that drumbeat was really loud and really constant. And as you see here on the slide, Davis was outspent significantly greater - nearly half a million dollars spent against him to defeat him by putting out that message. How do you overcome that? You've gotta try to build a base, you've gotta try to actually get out there and sell a strong progressive agenda. I think Davis did as much as he could, but it clearly wasn't enough.
This is one race where, gosh, I would love to be able to see good polling after the fact and take a deep dive into what happened here. Because I think if you wanna find a candidate who isn't an incumbent, is a progressive, and who tried to win against all this money - Davis ran what I think a lot of us would have considered to be a smart campaign. But I'm sure there are things that were missed, mistakes were made - that I think are worth taking a closer look at once we have more data.
[00:30:54] Crystal Fincher: Do you think it was possible to win this race given the headwinds, Katie?
[00:31:02] Katie Wilson: Well, I mean, with a margin that small, you have to say yes. I mean, again, small things matter. But I mean, I guess I think what I would say here - and this is not really just about this race, but as we're going through these races district by district and picking out the little things about the candidates or the spending or whatever - I think it is important to keep in mind something that Robert alluded to, which is turnout. And Danny Westneat had this piece, which Robert mentioned, that really just laid out kind of like - not only is turnout way down from 2019, like double digits down, but it's young voters who didn't turn out. And I really have to think, I mean, I think that like if we had seen 2019 levels of turnout with that demography, this race would have turned out differently. I think it's even possible that Districts 1 and 3 could have turned out differently. I mean, the difference is so great in turnout and in who voted. And that is not just a Seattle thing. That's not a, so I mean, that was something that Westneat seemed to kind of emphasize the "Sawant effect" or something, but this is bigger than Seattle, right? This is like countywide, statewide - you look at the turnout numbers and turnout across the state is way, way lower than 2019. And it is young voters who would have voted strongly progressive who didn't turn out. So I think that's just a really significant thing to keep in mind as we kind of nitpick all of these races.
Sorry, crying baby.
[00:32:25] Crystal Fincher: We're doing baby duty and that happens and we're fine. Andrew, what did you think?
[00:32:30] Andrew Villeneuve: Yeah, some great things have been said by Robert and Katie about this race. I was so impressed with Ron Davis as a candidate. I just found him extremely thoughtful. I'm like - why can't we have candidates like this in every city? Maritza Rivera also had some really interesting things in her campaign that I liked. But I think what was really striking for me is Rivera, if you go on her endorsements page, you'll see Bob Ferguson is the very first endorsement listed there. And that's really interesting. And not everyone can get an endorsement from Bob Ferguson. Maritza Rivera had one and made sure that people knew that she had that endorsement. Also, you see Mayor Harrell's endorsement there. The mayor's doing well in this election. His candidates are doing well, and I don't think that's a coincidence.
And I also noticed Sara Nelson's endorsement there. Sara Nelson gets a lot of flak from folks in Seattle, especially on the left, perhaps deservedly so for some of the positions she's taking. But in our polling, she's actually got a pretty good approval rating relative to other members of the council. I say relative because these things are relative. So Sara Nelson is perceived better right now than other members of the council - and that includes Councilmember Sawant, who's leaving her district with a horrible, awful job performance rating, including from her own constituents. It's not just citywide. Our polling was very, very clear on that. People are not happy with her job performance. So she was able to get elected several times, she built an amazing coalition. But then that support has eroded away. And I think that's why she didn't seek re-election. I think she realized she was going to have some difficulty getting re-elected if she sought re-election. So exiting allows to avoid a defeat, which I think is a good strategy, because then you can go and take your experience in elected office and do something else.
But I just thought Davis had a tremendous set of ideas. He engaged with groups that other candidates didn't, from what I heard. And what I really liked was, again, he had this thoughtful, urbanist-centered vision. It really appealed to me personally. If I was in District 4, I'd be like - wow, this is just really exciting vision for Seattle. And his voters' pamphlet statement just talked about how everyone deserves a home in Seattle. And the themes that I saw there were very powerful. And I'm a little surprised that he didn't quite have a stronger Election Night performance. I thought Rivera might lead, but to see him down by as much as he was, that wasn't quite what I thought we might see. And I don't do predictions, so I'm always willing to be open-minded and see what happens. But I was thinking that the race would be closer on Election Night, and then it would be possible for there to be a lead change by the end of the week if that were the case. But instead, Maritza Rivera has kept a lead throughout this count. So I think, unfortunately, Ron Davis is out of runway to turn this around. But he came really close. And I think he should definitely run for office again.
[00:35:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, a lot of great ideas that we heard. Go ahead, Katie.
[00:35:25] Katie Wilson: Sorry, just to add one thing to what I was saying before from the Westneat column. This is roughly 40,000 fewer Seattleites showed up for this election than in 2019. So if you look at that, we're talking about an average of 5,700 votes in each district that would have been added. And so you look at these margins, and that would have shifted several of these races.
[00:35:47] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I agree. And then I also-- I'm looking at this difference in spending. And the spending isn't just money. It's communication. It's the commercials that you see, it's the mailers that you get, it's the digital ads that you see. And those do move some voters. Are they going to close a 25-point deficit? No. But can they move a race 5, 10 points? Absolutely. And so as I'm looking at this, I'm looking at just how close this race is. And it seems to me that money definitely impacted this race, as did turnout, as did so many other things. But it just seems really hard to be able to go up against that amount of communication when you don't have it - to be outspent, to be out-communicated by that degree. And given that, I do think Ron Davis mounted a really, really good campaign for hopefully his first campaign and not his last, because he did contribute a lot of great policy ideas, concrete policy ideas, that I think would do the city good.
Moving to District 5, where we saw ChrisTiana ObeySumner versus Cathy Moore. This race was pretty conclusive as of the first tally on Election Night. What was your evaluation of this, Andrew?
[00:37:11] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, this was the one race I think that everyone could say - That's done - on Election Night. That's a done race. We can see where things are going. And of course, there has been a shift in the late ballots, but not enough of one to threaten Cathy Moore's position. So I guess what we saw is Cathy Moore had a campaign of enormous strength, resonated with the electorate. And we just didn't see the same from the other side. I mean, I know The Stranger made a very powerful case. But you look at the top two field, and there were other candidates - Nilu Jenks was running and didn't quite make it. But I feel like the fact that there wasn't a stronger vote for ObeySumner in the top two, that sort of set up the general election. I think you want to have as much support as you can get in the top two. And then you want to be able to run as strong of a general election campaign as you can. And I think that here, there might not have quite been the same resonance with the electorate for that candidacy. And I think that that's part of the issue - when you are having trouble connecting with voters for whatever reason, then you're going to see that kind of lopsided results.
And sometimes there's nothing you can do about it because for whatever reason, you're just not clicking. But I heard from a lot of folks who-- I asked every District 5 voter, who are you voting for? And everybody basically told me Cathy Moore - that I talked to. And I ran out of people to ask to see if I could find any ObeySumner voters. But to me, that sort of spoke for people had talked to their neighbors, they had considered their choices, and they settled on Moore. And so that's where we were on Election Night. And of course, again, late ballots - we saw some change, but not a whole lot of change. And so again, I think hats off to Cathy Moore for running a campaign that brought together a lot of people, excited a lot of folks. And we'll see now how Cathy does on the council as Debora Juarez's successor.
[00:39:16] Crystal Fincher: And Robert?
[00:39:18] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, I'm a District 5 resident - voted for ChrisTiana, but have had many conversations with Cathy Moore. And Cathy Moore is definitely not easy to pigeonhole as a corporate moderate. Cathy has, I think, some pretty strong progressive background and positions. This is an interesting district up here in District 5 too, that - people assume it's so far north that we're almost suburbs, and that's kind of true. But there are also large pockets of immigrant populations, people of color, low-income folks. And if you look at the map so far of the precincts - votes that have come in so far - ChrisTiana, they've only won a single precinct in Pinehurst, but they're pretty close in areas like Licton Springs, north Greenwood, Lake City. They're almost neck and neck with Cathy Moore in some of those areas - these are some of the denser parts of the district as well. Again, I don't think anyone's surprised that Cathy Moore prevailed by a fairly wide margin here. Again, given what Andrew pointed out in the primary, that that seemed foretold there.
But I just wanna emphasize that Cathy Moore did not run the same race that maybe Rob Saka or Maritza Rivera or Bob Kettle or Pete Hanning ran. And I think that certainly helped. It's a district that four years ago, handily reelected Deborah Juarez over Ann Davison, who's of course now our city attorney. Which suggests that in District 5, there's definitely a lot of support for a left of center, but not too far left of center candidate. Well, again, we'll see what Cathy Moore does on the council. I think Cathy also ran a campaign that was good, but also kind of promises a lot of things to a lot of people. And the rubber will meet the road in the next few months on the council, especially as some important decisions come up around budget, around police contract, and around transportation levy.
[00:41:17] Crystal Fincher: Now, moving on to District 6 - this is where we saw incumbent Councilmember Dan Strauss wind up overtaking and winning the race over Pete Hanning. How did you see this race, Andrew?
[00:41:34] Andrew Villeneuve: So this was a race where we saw our first lead change, and Councilmember Strauss was fortunate in that he had the advantage of incumbency. He also, I think, had a district that perhaps, he felt like - okay, I can handle this redistricting, like I can handle some adjustments to the lines. I think he was well-prepared to face a slightly different electorate than what he faced in his last campaign. And he also was mindful of his public safety posture as he went into the campaign, realizing that - we're gonna talk about District 7 next - but realizing that it's important for people to perceive you on public safety as being someone that understands the issues that are out there in the community, which we know are significant. We know some people are concerned about property crime. We know some small business owners are very vocal about the issues they're going through, they're looking for more help from the city. And I think Councilmember Strauss was ready for that dynamic.
I also think he made an effort to present himself as someone who's gotten things done. And he got not the most enthusiastic endorsement from The Stranger, but it didn't seem to hurt him too much. I mean, they sort of riffed on his "Ballard Dan" moniker. I went to his website and was reading about how he presented himself, and he's talking in his campaign bio about non-political things. And I think that's a really interesting and smart choice is to show yourself as not just a politician, but also a fellow community member, someone who has different interests. You're not just interested in politics - that's not the only thing you care about. And I think that that helped him connect with voters. I think it's very important for people to see who you are - that helps them identify with you. It's very important that people identify with you when they go to vote, because elections tend to turn on identity and trust more than anything else.
Issues do matter, of course. And those of us who are very much in the wonkish space, we love people's issues, positions - we love to evaluate them. But I think a lot of voters are more in the mindset of - Do I want this person representing me in government? And they think about it at a very basic level. They don't think necessarily about people's issue positions. And they certainly don't have an Excel spreadsheet where they run a calculator to see whose position they're closest to. So I think that was one of the key things that I saw here was just, again, Strauss presenting himself as someone that folks could identify with and empathize with.
And I also think Pete Hanning could have run a stronger campaign here - not as much resources on Hanning's side as I thought we might've seen, and that could have been a difference maker. Again, in a close race with a lead change, it's like just what we were talking about earlier - anything can make the difference. So we could talk about a lot of different factors, but what I saw was an incumbent who was interested in getting reelected and put in some of the work. And made sure that there were reasons for people to identify with him. And I think that we saw that worked out for him, and he was the first of the two incumbents to get that lead change on Thursday. So congratulations, Councilmember Strauss, on your reelection.
[00:44:37] Crystal Fincher: How did you see this, Katie?
[00:44:41] Katie Wilson: Yeah, I don't - sorry, I'm a little bit distracted. But yeah, I mean, I think that Councilmember Strauss definitely did somewhat of a pivot to the right, or just trying to kind of blow with the winds of his district and that paid off. And yeah, I'll pass it on to Robert.
[00:45:02] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, I think a couple of things stand out. Certainly the slide that's being displayed right now - notice there's no independent expenditure against Dan Strauss. Strauss clearly cozied up to the Chamber here, he cozied up to Mayor Harrell. So his blowing with the wind, which I think is an apt description, worked.
It also worked when Dan put out mailers saying, I voted against defunding the police. Dan has been very active in trying to get encampments cleared at Ballard Commons Park and other areas in the neighborhood. So I think we who are progressive - who don't want to see a renewal of the War on Drugs, we don't feel comfortable when we see sweeps happening, we're not totally comfortable with this current mayor - have to do some reflection here. And the fact that Strauss took these positions that we who are progressive don't really like and prevailed with it - isn't great for us. And I think we've got to be honest about that and reflect on what that might mean, and how we pivot, and how we handle things differently. It doesn't mean we should abandon our core values. You never do that in politics, otherwise we should go home. But I think we got to take a look at this race and see why.
Now, a couple other factors I want to point out. Again, Strauss is a incumbent and that helps. Also his district is fairly favorable. I think there's sometimes a reputation that like Ballard gets as being a bunch of cranky, conservative Scandinavians and it's just not. If you have a view of the water in District 6, you voted for Hanning. If you don't, you probably voted for Strauss - and that goes as far up as North Beach, North of 85th Street, which is pretty well off, parts of Crown Hill, pretty well off, lots of homeowners in Phinney Ridge and Greenwood, Ballard and Fremont all voting for Dan Strauss by pretty healthy margins. So I think the fact that that district - one that reelected Mike O'Brien in 2015, and I think would have reelected him in 2019 had O'Brien had the stomach for it - it is a favorable one. I think there's more opportunity there then Strauss was able to really make out of it. But again, this is a race where, press as we can point to things that didn't go our way, we didn't get the turnout we wanted, we had a lot of money spent against us, but someone like Dan Strauss who sort of blew with the wind, decided which way the wind was blowing, moved away from a lot of our positions and prevailed. So we have to be honest about that.
[00:47:27] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this race I thought was interesting because he did run away from his record basically and try to correct for that. It's really interesting because we saw two different approaches from two incumbents who both wound up successful. Tammy Morales, who is probably now the most progressive member remaining on the council - one of the most progressive before - showed that she was engaged and she did care. And I think maybe the key is really that - there has been this prevailing idea that progressives just don't care about crime or they wanna go easy on it. And one thing I think both Dan Strauss and Tammy Morales did was show that they cared very deeply and they were willing to stay engaged, stay involved, try and push through public safety, community safety initiatives that both of their districts had been calling for. And being engaged is what helped them. And really showing that they care and showing that they're working on the problem is what helped them - both of them - in those races, even though they have taken very different approaches and Tammy Morales stood by her record, fought hard for the district and a number of different things. So that was interesting for me to see - just the different approaches - but both looking like they were successful as long as they were engaged.
[00:48:55] Shannon Cheng: You just listened to Part 1 of our 2023 Post-Election Roundtable that was originally aired live on Monday, November 13th. Audio for Part 2 will be running this Friday, so make sure to stay tuned. Full video from the event and a full text transcript of the show can be found on our website officialhacksandwonks.com.
The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can follow Crystal @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thank you for tuning in!
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattle political reporter and editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett!
First up, for those looking to supercharge their engagement in Washington State policymaking or advocacy, Crystal gives a shout-out for the Washington State Institute for a Democratic Future program. Applications for their 2024 class are open and due by November 20th for early applicants (there is also an extended “late application period” until November 27th but with an increased application fee). Check out the program that launched Crystal’s career in politics and see if it’s right for you!
Crystal and Erica then dive into a roundup of election news starting with how the Seattle City Council is losing institutional knowledge with its makeup shifting after last week’s election results, meaning the new council will need to get up to speed on many complex upcoming issues such as the City budget, the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) contract, and the Comprehensive Plan. Contributing to this loss of experience is Teresa Mosqueda moving over to the King County Council and how speculation has begun over who her appointed replacement will be. The election news wraps up with two snafus - the King County website breaking on Election Night and USPS finally delivering missing ballots from an unchecked mailbox.
Moving on from elections, they discuss Seattle budget news - a $20 million increase in the JumpStart Tax to fund student mental health care programs, narrow passage of controversial ShotSpotter surveillance technology, continued struggle to fund City employee pay increases, and a spotty outlook for much-needed progressive revenue solutions. Delving further into City worker wage issues, the City sent an oblivious email to workers providing financial tips whilst asking them to accept a sub-inflationary pay increase and the tentative firefighters’ union contract also doesn’t keep up with cost of living. Finally, Crystal and Erica revisit the saga unfolding in Burien with a looming deadline to accept $1 million to address their homelessness crisis and Sound Transit resumes fare enforcement.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica Barnett, at @ericacbarnett.
Resources
WAIDF - Washington State Institute for a Democratic Future
“Morales Surges While Other Progressives Flail in Latest Election Results; Mosqueda Explains Why She’ll Stay Through the End of This Year” from PubliCola
“Who Will Replace Teresa Mosqueda?” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
“County Website Failed on Election Night Due to “Traffic Issue”” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“USPS failed to deliver ballots from one Seattle mail drop box” by Sarah Grace Taylor from The Seattle Times
“City Budget Will Fund Shotspotter—But Also Significant Progressive Priorities, Including $20 Million for Student Mental Health” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“A Mixed Seattle Budget, While a $221 Million Deficit Still Looms” by Amy Sundberg from Notes from the Emerald City
“City Employees Seeking Wage Increase Advised to “Avoid Impulse Buys”” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“Firefighters’ Tentative Contract Could be Bad News for Other City Workers Seeking Pay Increases” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“As Deadline to Use or Lose $1 Million in Shelter Funding Looms, Top Burien Official Offers New Explanation for Failing to Inform Some on Council” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“King County gives Burien deadline to take $1 million for homeless shelter” by Greg Kim from The Seattle Times
“Sound Transit to start issuing citations today to riders who don’t pay” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times
“Seattle light rail is about to get heavy for those who don't pay the fare” by Joshua McNichols from KUOW
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical shows and our Friday week-in-reviews delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
If you missed our 2023 Post-Election Roundtable on Monday night, you can catch the recording on our YouTube channel, or Facebook, or Twitter feeds. We'll also be releasing the roundtable next week as podcast episodes. Tune in for our breakdown of last week's election results with guest panelists Katie Wilson, Andrew Villeneuve and Robert Cruikshank. Also wanna make sure if you can't listen to the Post-Election Roundtable, it will be available on the website with a full text transcript. Today, we are continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show, today's co-host: Seattle political reporter and editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett.
[00:01:38] Erica Barnett: It's great to be here.
[00:01:40] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you back as always.
It's the time of year where I get to talk about the Washington Institute for a Democratic Future. It is that time again and seeing as how this is Hacks & Wonks and a lot of you are hacks and wonks who are listening, the Washington Institute for a Democratic Future is really ideal for people who may be interested in looking at working in policy or politics, getting more involved in their community and activism. It is a six-month fellowship that runs from January to June that has 10 intensive weekends plus an optional week in Washington, DC. And each of these weekends is in a different place geographically across the state. And it gives you the opportunity to do a deep dive on policy, how that policy is impacting people on the ground from a variety of different perspectives - so, you know, there's a huge network of legislators, policy experts, advocacy organizations, unions, business owners, different people. So you may go to Kitsap County and explore the economy in Bremerton and issues that are happening there. In Central Washington, issues that are important there and talking about legislation that impacts migrant workers and immigration - from a policy perspective - but also talking to workers and representatives for themselves, talking to farmers and business owners there to see how they're being impacted and what their feedback is and what they feel the most prevalent issues that they have.
So it's getting a really comprehensive view of what people are facing on the ground throughout the state and how policy is impacting that and has a potential to impact that. So just really important - that is absolutely what I credit for me working in politics. I started my political career after doing IDF - just a really powerful network and a really powerful policy education in ways that really matter and getting to see that a lot of times the situations aren't simple, different people have different perspectives, policy impacts people in different ways. Few things are 100% good and positive and 100% bad or negative. It's really understanding how things impact people differently and trying to do the most good as possible, particularly considering sometimes what's politically possible, different types of activism - whether you're working legislatively, electorally, just more on the ground in community, mutual aid, just a lot of different things.
So I recommend this. The early application deadline is Monday, November 20th - so coming up. There's an extended late application period that continues through Monday, November 27th. The website is democraticfuture.org. There's more information about it there, but definitely encourage anyone who may be considering working in politics or who's interested in that - who wants to understand how they can more deeply impact policy in their community and state - to do that. I do want to underscore that you don't have to already be an insider. You don't have to have any idea of what's going on, really. This is a Democratic organization - it is not catering to Republicans, I can tell you that - but looking at people with a variety of experience from diverse backgrounds across the state. It's just a program that I heartily recommend, and I believe most people who go through it come out on the other end more able to impact change in the world around them. So apply to the Institute for a Democratic Future.
Well, we think we have a pretty good view of what actually happened with the election now. It's taken a while to count, but what are your takeaways from the general election that we just had?
[00:05:39] Erica Barnett: Well, I mean - as others have said, and as I've said in other venues - obviously we are, the City we, are going in a more centrist direction with the city council. From Position 7 - electing Bob Kettle over Andrew Lewis - kicking out a couple other councilmembers. So politically, I think the direction is going to be a little less progressive generally, a little more in the sort of Sara Nelson centrist direction. And I think - big picture - the council is going to be made up primarily of new people and people without a whole lot of experience. The most experienced councilmember, I believe, will be Tammy Morales, who just narrowly got reelected - correct me if I'm wrong on that. But not a lot of institutional memory and knowledge on the council, which I think is going to be - it's always problematic when you lose the majority of an institution all at once, right? And when you're talking about staff who have been there for a long time, as well as councilmembers who maybe have a few terms under their belt - so people are going to be learning on the job and they're gonna be doing it in a year when there's a massive looming budget crisis, when there is the Seattle Police Officers Guild contract on the table, and just lots of other things that the new council is going to have to grapple with - that are really, really big problems and big questions - and they'll be doing it, sort of coming in with virtually no City experience in almost every single seat.
[00:07:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that is - it's a really big deal. And we talked about this kind of in the beginning when people were filing or announcing that they weren't running for re-election - kind of hitting a lot of people going - we're losing a ton of institutional knowledge. And just the work that it takes to get up to speed, it's not just what do you wanna do with issues, with - and even with that, a number of the new councilmembers on the campaign trail had a lot of questions, had a lot of things that they wanted to find out and investigate and get to the bottom of, but maybe not as many new ideas. And they're gonna have to understand just procedurally how do things work. Legislation is a weird thing - crafting legislation, working it through the process is not an intuitive endeavor. And it does take institutional knowledge. There's so many reports, committees, just things to digest when you're getting in - even if you've held office before. If you haven't, that's just a big mountain to climb to get your feet underneath you as far as how to understand what's happening from all of the different information sources, advocates, departments, but also how to then enact and respond to the challenges that are happening.
I think in this situation, it actually passes a big advantage to the mayor's office. The mayor's office does have a lot of institutional knowledge. The mayor's office does have an agenda that they wanna enact. And right now the council - the new council - is not going to really be in a position to ask questions based on historical knowledge, to investigate or interrogate what expenditures may be, what proposals may be, if there is precedent for something, if there isn't, how something fared before when it was proposed or when it was enacted. There are a lot of things that we do and undo in government and understanding the history of that - how it worked out - is actually really useful so we can learn from what we did before and do better next time, particularly when implementation with a lot of programs has been a major issue. So I am concerned for what this is going to look like in practice with a council that just is really inexperienced.
[00:09:41] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I mean, and I just was thinking as you're talking - just kind of going through all the different folks that have been elected and thinking about how - on the current council, I would lift up Lisa Herbold as an example of somebody who's been there 25 years in various roles. And she is the person, particularly like during budget, who brings up things that have happened in the past or says - Well, we actually discussed this six years ago and this was the discussion then, or there's a proviso on this money that says this. And you need someone who is able to do that, whether it's a staff member or a number of staff members or a councilmember, not just during budget time, but during - for example, the SPOG contract. Five members of the council sit on the Labor Relations Policy Committee and they're going to be bargaining with the police guild and Mayor Harrell's office. And if you are talking about people that don't have a lot of institutional knowledge of what came before, I mean - like you, I'm concerned that they're just going to get steamrolled by whatever the mayor's office and SPOG decide that they want or that they can agree to.
And I also thought of another thing that they're going to be doing next year, which is the Comprehensive Plan. There's a major update every 10 years and that's happening next year. And that's the document that guides planning and development and zoning for the entire city. And during the campaign, this was a question that came up - which Comp Plan option do you support? And everybody said Comp Plan 5 - for the most part. And I think that without getting into the details of what that even means, I would be really curious to ask every single person who was elected - So what's in Comp Plan 5? Because I think that sometimes campaigns deal with surface level issues, but the Comprehensive Plan is a massively complex document that they're going to be discussing over the course of a year now - starting in January, February - and it's really consequential. So that's just another example of a complex decision that this council is going to have to be making - again, without a lot of institutional knowledge.
And I will say just to mention one idea that got squashed this year, Teresa Mosqueda, who is one of the councilmembers who's leaving to go serve on King County Council, brought up the idea of doing staggered elections so that instead of electing all 7 district city council seats all at once, like we did this year, we would do 4 one year and then 3 two years from then. And the idea is that even if you elect a completely new council every four years, at least people have a couple of years of experience under their belts. And that idea just got quashed, and I think it's very unlikely to happen - but that would have made a little bit of difference.
[00:12:51] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I thought that was an excellent idea - was sad to see that not be able to move forward. Now, speaking of Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, who was just elected to the King County Council - this now brings up an issue of there being a vacancy timing around when she can choose to go or not. Evidently there's been some calls - maybe people looking at the Supreme Court or Congress, different things, and then looking at the Seattle Council and going - Well, hey, if there's an opportunity to get another progressive in, maybe you should leave early. Why did she appear to decide against that?
[00:13:31] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I mean, Teresa Mosqueda is not Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And one big difference is that she is not independently wealthy and - nor is her staff. And so I think that just as a practical matter - and this was my immediate reaction actually when I started seeing calls for her to step down and just kind of not have a job for a couple months, was - well, like normal people can't do that. And even if you're making $130,000 a year, or whatever it currently is at the city council, it is hard when - she has a little kid. And her staff, some of whom may go over with her to King County Council, still need to make a living. So there's a very practical consideration.
And the other thing is, I think it's a bit of sour grapes. I mean, the voters have spoken and I think it would be a bit of sour grapes to say - Well, we're gonna shove a progressive onto the council under the wire. But more importantly, I don't think that it would probably work. I don't think it would be successful to try to get - for Teresa Mosqueda to try to appoint another Teresa Mosqueda-type to the council because you have to get the support of your colleagues. And I don't know that the current council would be willing to sort of subvert the process. I mean, it wouldn't be subverting the process, it would just be rushing it a bit. But to do that at this point, when we have a new council coming in, it just - there's a sense of fairness about that, that I think would strike some of the current council the wrong way, even if they are more progressive people who are leaving.
[00:15:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and it's not like there's a situation now, or upcoming with the new council, where there is a one-member majority and this one change is going to tip the balance of decisions that are made. I think with looking at some of the budget action, which we'll talk about shortly, earlier this week - we can see that's not the case. And there's also just the responsibilities of the job, which I think Teresa Mosqueda takes seriously. The City of Seattle is heading into a pretty significant budget deficit - hundreds of millions of dollars budget deficit. And I think most people consider her to be the foremost budget expert on the council - particularly with so many new people coming into the council and so much work to do on the budget, the more work she can do to help prepare this next council for what's gonna happen, to help usher in what hopefully will be sustainable changes to the budget, the better for everyone and for the city, I believe. So that's gonna be interesting.
I did see Hannah Krieg report on rumors that Tanya Woo is either angling for, or people are angling for her, to be appointed to that position when that does happen. Tanya just lost a very narrow election to Tammy Morales in Seattle's District 2. What do you think the prospects for that would be, or what that would mean?
[00:16:45] Erica Barnett: Well, I mean, I would be completely speculating, but it does seem - and segue to completely speculate about that - I mean, it does seem sort of unlikely, you know, just looking at historical appointments for the council to appoint somebody who ran against one of the people that won. Historically what the council has done is either appoint sort of placeholder people who have said they're not going to run for re-election, because remember - this is just a temporary position until the next election, which in this case would actually be in 2024. Because of the way it works, it would be the next state election since there's not another city election until '25. So you're talking about a very temporary seat. I don't know. At this point, my gut would be that they wouldn't do that. But again, that is just speculation. I know Brianna Thomas, who ran for council a couple of times and now works in the mayor's office in labor relations, is another potential person who is definitely angling for that position. So she seems like another possibility, but again, that's somebody who really wants to stay on the council and maybe perceived as progressive, or a member of the kind of progressive wing of the council - she worked for Lorena González, who's quite progressive, before joining the mayor's office. So I'm not following that super, super closely yet, but yeah - it'll be interesting, but perhaps not hugely consequential, except for 2024, who ends up getting that position.
[00:18:36] Crystal Fincher: I wanna talk about another Election Night story, or one that was really made plain on Election Night. And that was King County's elections website and its performance or lack thereof on Election Day. What happened?
[00:18:50] Erica Barnett: Yeah, so I've been wanting to write about the King County website and it's not just the elections website, but we'll talk about that specifically. But I would encourage people to go to kingcounty.gov and just check it out. See what you think. They did a big website redesign, revamp. And one of the consequences of that revamp is that it's really hard apparently to load sort of new information into the website for just kind of regular County departments. And so on Election Night, if you are an election watcher, what ordinarily happens is that you start refreshing the webpage around 8:10p. The results usually go up right around 8:15p. And so on Election Night, people were refreshing, refreshing, refreshing, but there were no results for at least 15 minutes. I actually gave up and got the results from King 5, which apparently got them because the elections people had to post the results on Twitter. I'm not really on Twitter that much anymore, so I didn't see this, but they had to create essentially a workaround for this website that is - it's not only does it look like something from - I don't know, 1999, maybe that's a little mean, 2003 we'll say - but it doesn't function very well and a lot of stuff is broken, and links don't work, and all the photos are gone, and it's just a mess. And yeah, it was really consequential on Election Night when people were trying to find out who won and couldn't get this information for 15, 20 minutes, which I know might not sound like much, but it is hugely consequential if you are a campaign or if you are somebody interested in the results, like I was as a reporter. So man, it was just a mess.
[00:20:54] Crystal Fincher: It was a mess. I was at KIRO doing Election Night coverage and it was a big challenge. Fortunately, their team was able to get the results from the alternate posts, so we had them before they were live on the website. But it's really a challenge. And especially at this point in time where there is so much bad faith information, misinformation about elections, the integrity of our elections, and what's happening. Unfortunately, that means that we need to do as great a job as possible at being transparent, at making sure that things work as expected, that we can explain what's happening and why it's happening, and provide some predictability and transparency in the process. And having that happen on Election Night is very suboptimal. We'll see what improvements they make to it. And we've seen rollouts of websites - these things are hard. It is not like you flip a switch and everything works. So I don't wanna devalue the work involved, but I do hope they reflect on the timing of this, the type of testing and rigor that they use to test this - especially for the kind of strain that is expected on a night like Election Night. I think we heard some of the reasoning was that - Well, you know, it just had a lot of traffic and that contributed to the collapse. Well, yeah, that's gonna be expected on Election Night. And I hope they are able to do a better job in the future - making sure that it can accommodate the infrequent but predictable heavy loads that the website is going to experience.
[00:22:40] Erica Barnett: Well, I think in one way it was actually optimal - possibly - because I think it, you know, people have been complaining about this website for a while. I mean, when I first went to it - and I don't know, it's probably been a month or two now - I truly thought, and again, it's kingcounty.gov. I truly thought it was a, like a test website. Like it was sort of the interim version between the old website and the new one, and this was just like temporary. And then called and found out - no, this is the website. And I think there are just - there are so many things that are suboptimal and just bad about it. And I think that sometimes in my experience, the tech side of things tend to, you know, say things like - Well, it's just, you know, it's not the design, it's that you're just not used to using it, or you're not using it right, or there's nothing wrong, there's nothing to see here. And I think a website falling apart on Election Night that just really like pissed off a number of people outside the county might impel them to actually take some action on this thing, because it is infuriating to use. I mean, it is - just one quick example that, you know, that's emblematic - is you go to the website now, and one of the, it's sort of like "the top things people need." And one of them is like animal control. Another is a camera in rural King County that like is on some road in rural King County - I don't know who needs that, but I wouldn't put it in the top, you know, 10,000 things on that website that people are looking for. So hopefully this will bring some sanity back, 'cause I use that website pretty frequently and it is very frustrating to use.
[00:24:35] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I also use it frequently. And we didn't talk about this part before, but yeah - I had the same thought as you. I thought it was an interim site that - okay, well, they - my read was - well, they were hoping to do some upgrades, but clearly they couldn't get them done in time. So this is the, you know, meantime, they just stripped it down to bare bones and just want to make sure it's functional. That was my read, my assumption - I didn't look very deeply into it besides just being frustrated that everything was hard to find and wasn't where it was before. But yeah, it was a challenge, these things often are. But that would also make me want to keep it as, these things happening as far away from elections as possible. Like, you know, let's implement changes in January or February instead of later in the year, you know, closer to the primary or general election if we're doing these things. And yes, it may be a bigger site-wide thing, but my goodness - if you're hoping that things land well with the public, this is certainly - elections are one of the most visible things that the county does. I would be surprised if there was something that generated more traffic to the website than the election site around election time. But we will see how that continues and hopefully they're able to get that together soon.
Also want to talk about another elections-related story, and that was the story of the post office missing pickups from a ballot box that contained ballots in some races - one of them still is too close to officially call. What happened here?
[00:26:21] Erica Barnett: Well, from what I understand, the post office just didn't pick up any mail from this one site - or sorry, from this one box for like a month. And I just read about it in The Seattle Times, probably like you did. And I got a tip about it and was gonna look into it, but you know, a one-person website, so I didn't get around to it - Times did. And yeah, it just sounds like they somehow messed up and didn't pick up any mail at this box. So there are 85 ballots, I believe, that are being counted now. Not enough to turn around Ron Davis's election prospects against Maritza Rivera in District 4, but still - 85 ballots is 85 ballots. When you're talking about margins of like 300 votes, every little bit counts. So this was pretty significant to find out about at the, you know, at the 13th hour, really.
[00:27:31] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And then just reading about the process that occurs when this does happen. It looks like they were able to follow the process and get these ballots counted by verifying the dates and signatures on them, but certainly a conundrum here, and would love to see what's put in place to make sure that this doesn't happen again. Yeah, will be interesting to see.
And the last thing I'll just say about these elections is - you alluded to a little bit earlier with talking about Teresa Mosqueda - it's not just her, but it's her staff. And in big cities - smaller cities and suburbs don't have council staff, but in Seattle, they do. And the role of staff is really important. It's going to be even more important because they're gonna hold the institutional knowledge. They do a lot of the policy work, preparation work, doing the research, interacting with community, doing constituent service. And a lot of them have been there for a while. They are absolutely valuable resources. Sometimes bureaucrats get a bad name for working in government service, but I just - seeing the work that they do, how instrumental they are to the process, particularly in support of elected officials who oftentimes just need good information and assistance to get stuff through the system. It's really important to have capable and competent bureaucrats. I think the City does have a number of them, and I think we're gonna see how important they are in the coming year.
[00:29:04] Erica Barnett: Yeah, the City couldn't run without the deep state. I mean, truly. You need those people who've been there 20 years who like know Robert's Rules of Order in and out, and can write a script and, you know, for a city councilmember to read, and can write legislation and just do all the sort of grunt work that keeps things running. I mean, they, you know, staff gets maligned and they're always sort of subject to budget cuts because - who needs all these administrative people? But in a lot of cases, you really do need the administrative people because they're the ones that make the council meeting not look like chaos.
[00:29:41] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And who help make legislation stand up to legal challenges and get things implemented in the way they were intended. It is really important and just wanted to say that I see them. And when - I'm thinking about Andrew Lewis, who was not reelected - that means that his staff has a lot of question marks too. And in a city as expensive to live in in Seattle, that is a harrowing thing. So elections do impact lots of people in lots of different ways.
I do wanna talk about the budget, and action this week with the council pertaining to the budget. What did they do?
[00:30:21] Erica Barnett: Well, they are still continuing to sort of hack away at Mayor Bruce Harrell's 2024 budget. And they have voted on a whole slew of amendments. I would say the headline, and surprisingly it has not been a huge headline, is that Kshama Sawant - outgoing councilmember, often does a lot of kind of performative stunty stuff that doesn't actually result in legislation - but she won on a big issue this week. She got $20 million - a very, very tiny increase, I think it was 0.01%. So 0.0001 to the JumpStart Tax to fund mental health care and mental health programs for students. And $20 million is a really big deal at a time when the City is anticipating big budget decisions next year, potentially budget cuts. And when a lot of these debates in the City budget are over $300,000 or $1.5 million, just these very tiny increments. So to me, that is the huge headline is that Kshama Sawant sort of won the budget as she is walking out the door.
But other stuff in the budget this year includes ShotSpotter, which is the controversial proposal that Mayor Bruce Harrell has made for a couple of years running to put surveillance systems in neighborhoods to detect gunshots or things that sound like gunshots. A lot of criticism of that system, but it sounds like the council is going to finally give in - on a 5-4 vote most likely - and fund that. And City pay increases are still sort of outstanding because that work is happening in the background, but there's gonna need to be money for City employees to get pay increases. And there's a lot of other stuff kind of around the margins - Sara Nelson is getting some money for the City to subsidize private drug treatment for some folks. And then kind of looming in the background after they pass this budget - and this is another reason Teresa Mosqueda, as you mentioned, is sticking around - They've got to figure out some revenue solutions for next year, 2025, and beyond. So they're looking at other increases to JumpStart, a capital gains tax, and there was talk of a CEO excess compensation tax but it seems like that's not gonna raise very much money - so it's off the table for now.
[00:33:14] Crystal Fincher: Well, it certainly is gonna be interesting to see how those conversations play out as this year progresses, this next year progresses. I know several of the candidates who were elected expressed curiosity at some of the revenue options but were notoriously hesitant to commit to supporting any particular option. And knowing that so much of the outside spending that came into these races during the campaign was fundamentally about resisting taxation and some of those efforts and proposals, it's gonna be interesting to see what actually does wind up passing, if anything.
[00:33:58] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I - on that note, I will just say that a lot of candidates said that the City doesn't have a budget problem, it has a spending problem. And I think they're going to realize that the City actually does have a budget problem when they have to get in and actually deal with the budget. I don't think that - there's a lot of talk of, We're gonna audit the whole system and I wanna look at the whole budget. Well, good luck, that's not really possible. I mean, you have entire departments each with their own budget division - hashing out the budget, looking at the actual budget documents for any one department could be a job for a person for a year. So I think they're going to be, they're in for a bit of a rough awakening if they think that they can't raise any new revenues and that they can accomplish $250 million in budget reductions through cuts alone. So we'll see when that awakening takes place, but I think it will.
[00:34:58] Crystal Fincher: Oh, I absolutely think it will. It is certainly one thing to have catchy and simple slogans and taglines and soundbites when you're running for office, but governing is a serious thing. It is actually harder than running the campaign. So we will see how this progresses.
Now I also want to talk about this week - a couple of things when it does come to the potential raises for City workers - that they've been saying, Hey, it's really expensive to live in Seattle. We count on cost of living adjustments to help keep up, but even that is hard with inflation, the cost of living. We aren't making enough in the first place. We need more money. This is teeing up to become a major confrontation, really, with the mayor's office signaling that they're hesitant to give raises anywhere close to what workers are asking for. There may be labor actions taken. We will see what happens. But this week, one interesting thing came out in an email from the mayor's office. What did they send?
[00:36:16] Erica Barnett: So an email went out to most City employees this week. And what it said was - I think the subject line was "Financial Self-care," something related to that. And what it said was basically - if you are struggling with money, maybe you should look at your spending. And it gave some examples of things that you can do to sort of reduce your costs in your day-to-day life. And one was pay yourself first, which is this sort of very - I would say for a normal person - very unrealistic idea that before you pay your bills, you should put money in savings or in investments. And I think it's self-explanatory why most people can't do that. People living paycheck to paycheck need to keep the lights on, need to pay their rent. And then another suggestion was that people consider - when making purchases, whether something is a want or a need - which again, I mean, there's just something so condescending about that and so out of touch with the way normal people make spending decisions. And like, sure, like, do I make impulse buys? Does everybody sometimes? Yes. But the advice in this email - not to sort of waste your money on frivolous stuff - hits really poorly at a time when City employees are saying, Look, we're not asking for raises, we're asking for a cost of living adjustment to deal with the fact that inflation went up 8% last year and continues to rise. And what that means is a dollar buys less. So it's just - it was very, very, very poorly worded and poorly timed, considering that City employees are literally talking about striking right now. And so I just, I was sort of blown away by it.
And one of the reactions - it got a lot of reaction when I posted about this. And one of the most common reactions was - huh, this is interesting because Mayor Harrell is saying that we all need to work from the office at least three days a week as part of his downtown revitalization plan. And part of that plan is that we're gonna go out to eat at lunch, and we're gonna go out to get drinks after work. And I don't know - is that a want or need, Mayor Harrell? So it's - I think it hit really poorly with a lot of City employees. And I've gotten a lot of reaction from folks who received it, sort of saying - Thanks for pointing this out, this is ridiculous.
[00:38:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. I've also seen a lot of reaction to that. When you're saying - Hey, help me, I'm struggling, and it's, you know, the cost of living, inflation is just unreasonable - it's hard to keep up with. And when the cost of rent is going up, and childcare is going up, and groceries are going up, and people are feeling this in every way - to have the person who does have the power and authority to say, You know what, we will ease this a little bit. We will grant your cost of living adjustment. We already know that you have shortages, and we're burning you out with the amount of work that we're placing on you and the amount that we're not paying you. So we're going to ease that burden and address some of these work shortages, some of these staff shortages in areas that are critical to delivering essential services for residents of Seattle. Seems like there's precedent for thinking that way - we've talked about financial solutions with the police department to help address retention and staffing. Seems like that should apply to other departments, but somehow it doesn't here. And just doesn't seem to be landing with people very well.
And just to be clear, right - it's not like financial education and financial planning tips are never warranted. But they are not an intervention or response to poverty. The problem with poverty is not poor people making bad decisions and that's why they're poor. It's that they don't have enough money. And wow, we just got a whole lot of new data on how effective giving people in poverty more money is, as opposed to all of these extra things that are not more money. If you want to reduce poverty, invest in the people who are experiencing it. And if we want a city that is resilient moving forward, if we want a city where we do take pride in paying people a living wage - meaning a wage where they can live in the city - we're gonna have to do better than this for City employees, certainly.
Now I also wanna talk about what the prospect is, and what the outlook is for this pay increase. And there was something that happens that maybe makes that cost of living adjustment look a little questionable. What was that?
[00:41:11] Erica Barnett: I believe you're talking about the firefighters' contract, which was sent to firefighters - members of the Fire Department - last week. And the votes on that are gonna be tallied soon. But basically what it said was the firefighters, if they vote on this, will agree to a sort of maximum annual wage increase of 4%, a minimum of 2%, which is quite a bit less than the other City workers were asking for, the Coalition of City Unions. And the sort of compromise or payback for that is that if inflation is above 4%, then the money that would be paid to workers getting an inflationary increase is gonna go into what's called a COLA bank. And so - like say inflation 6%, your wage increase is 4% - you get 2% in the COLA bank. If next year inflation is 1%, you can get some of that back. So your minimum increase will always be 2% for the life of the contract. So that's still 2% to 4%, which is not a whole lot of increase, particularly for workers whose pay has been falling further and further behind under their existing contract. But the thinking is that this could be sort of a foreshadowing of what Harrell is going to ultimately offer the rest of the city. So I think there's quite a bit of discontent around that. And again, there is talk of some sort of action. There have been practice pickets happening. And I don't have any special insight into whether the City workers would strike, but I know it's being discussed. They are not technically allowed to do that under their contract. So again, not sure what sort of action they're going to take, but I know that there is a lot of discontent with the idea of settling for a 2% to 4% wage increase at this point.
[00:43:16] Crystal Fincher: I wanna shift a little bit and really talk about a story that you broke - a couple weeks ago, I feel like it was - that we also saw reported at The Seattle Times as new this week. What is going on in the City of Burien right now?
[00:43:33] Erica Barnett: Oh man, the - well, I mean, just a very, very quick background - the City of Burien passed a ban on sleeping in public at night. And has meanwhile, been sort of pushing around this group of unsheltered people from place to place - And now has the legal authority to use the Sheriff's Office to do so. They have meanwhile, been sort of sitting on an offer of a million dollars from King County, which originally proposed sort of a land swap deal where a Pallet shelter could be built in downtown Burien. But of course the city rejected that, I think, primarily because it would be in sort of a visible location. They've been sort of hemming and hawing on what to do with this million dollars ever since. And we're talking about, I think that was over the summer - I believe in June or July - that they, it was in July, that they voted against using it for that shelter. And so now it's November and King County has said - Look, we have to use this money. Or you have to use this money or we're going to put it out for bid.
And so they have until November 27th to do that. The City Manager, Adolfo Bailon - apologies if I am mispronouncing his name - but he essentially sat on this information for a week and did not tell most of the council that this sort of deadline had come up until a week into the four weeks that they have to figure out a new location. So meanwhile, I think the council has one more meeting before this deadline passes. And my guess is they're not going to come up with a solution since they haven't done so so far. And this money is just going to go back into King County and then they'll put it out for bid for other South King County cities to use.
[00:45:45] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think - if people do want to catch up on what's happened, there has been no one following what's been happening in Burien with more rigor than you and PubliCola. So I would encourage people to catch up on what you have already covered. But just a little more context - this is happening with a very polarized council. There is a 4-3 moderate conservative council majority. The three members in the minority have been very vocally opposed to the way things have gone. This all kicked off because the county basically - they were trying to figure out how to deal with this as a city, were looking like they were going to embark on some illegal sweeps. The county executive's office basically said - Hey, looks like you're about to embark on illegal sweeps. Since you contract your police department through the Sheriff's department, we're just letting you know that the sheriffs cannot participate in an illegal sweep. This kicked off a lot of hemming and hawing by the council - ended up coming to what, I think, the county viewed as a reasonable compromise and offer for help that lots of cities would love to have. And they said - Okay, you're trying to deal with this. We'll help you with a million dollars, some Pallet shelters. You talked about the land swap deal - there's publicly owned land that is being leased to a car dealership, we'll accommodate for that. And basically you have land available to make this happen. We know you need more resources to adequately address this. We will help you with that. And the council majority basically refused to engage with that for a long time.
So the county finally has gotten around to saying - Okay, this isn't just an offer out there forever. We need to put this money to good use, so do you wanna take it? And the city manager in Burien initially said, Hey, I didn't even see it. I had no idea this was happening. Turns out he did, he actually responded to the email. But it has been quite a trial and tribulation there, and so we'll have to see what's gonna happen. But it does look like basically an effort to sabotage any attempt to do anything but criminalize homelessness, which just feels so out of joint from where most people are on this topic. Even people who feel that - hey, eventually sweeps are justified, almost uniformly feel like, but we need to do all we can to make sure that we do transition people into housing if possible, that offers of shelter are made, that we don't just move the problem from one place to another. City is not engaged with that at all. They seem perfectly satisfied to just sweep people from one place to another, as has been documented by the sweeps that they did of one location - seeing the people just move to another location. Homelessness is a problem about the lack of housing. If you aren't doing anything to provide housing, you aren't doing anything to solve homelessness, unless you feel the visibility of it, and not the people who actually don't have homes and are dealing with everything associated with that, which is just a very, very, very hard way to live. So we'll see what continues to happen. What are the prospects for them taking this up? Do they still have the option to ignore it?
[00:49:14] Erica Barnett: Well, do you mean taking up the offer for a million dollars? Well, I mean, certainly they have the option to ignore it. I mean, it will go away. I mean, I think that - I'm perhaps a little bit less charitable than you are in my assessment of what people want, just having watched all these meetings of people sort of screaming that these are - Seattle people are sending mobs of homeless people down to Burien and just this kind of very unrealistic, fantastical stuff that people say. But I think there's some magical thinking going on on the council as well. The city has just hired, just signed a contract - a no-bid contract - with a group called The More We Love that's run by one individual, a Kirkland mortgage broker named Kristine Moreland. And she has said that she has access to special resources that no one else does, and she can easily house and shelter people. And that it's just that all these other experienced homeless outreach providers have failed. And I think that is a fantastical notion because, as you said, there is not enough housing, there is not enough shelter. And generally what she does is put people into detox, which is a three to five day program that doesn't include any housing or treatment, or takes people to Seattle and puts them into Union Gospel Mission shelters. Those are two of the things that I am aware of her doing, neither of which is a solution. And one of which is just moving people out of Burien and into Seattle, which is not housing them. So I think that there's just, there's a lot of unrealistic thinking going on. And of course, there was an election in Burien as well. And two of the more progressive members will no longer be on the council next year - they've been replaced by people who agree more on this issue with the conservative council majority. So yeah, it's, you know, I don't expect the situation there to get any better on this issue, nor do I think that this new council is going to have more realistic notions of what's possible without additional resources.
[00:51:35] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, certainly the election results there were definitely a move in the other direction. We saw King County GOP endorsed candidates like Kevin Schilling handily winning his race there. Now, some of the opponents were pretty new, didn't have many resources, but can pretty much see a continuation and perhaps even an acceleration of these policies that are very punitive and hostile towards the unhoused population.
The last thing I wanna talk about today is an update on Sound Transit's fare enforcement policies and processes. We've talked about this before, you have covered this for quite some time. So now they're coming out with a new fare enforcement system. What are they going to do now?
[00:52:32] Erica Barnett: Well, as far as I can tell, the main difference - they're going to be enforcing fares and this has been covered in the past, but there will be more opportunities for people to get warnings and things like that - the initial fines will be lower. But the main difference is that the fare enforcement people are now called fare ambassadors and they are not in security uniforms, which Sound Transit is saying is a significant change. I mean, I guess it does make things feel different if you have a person who is not in a uniform, but an orange vest, checking your fare. But ultimately, I mean, that's the big substantive difference. They say that this is gonna be more equitable, they're gonna check everybody on the train, but as you mentioned, I've been covering this for a long time and for years, they've been saying that their process is completely equitable and that they - it is essentially impossible for them to discriminate against anybody or target anybody because of their race or perceived socioeconomic status because they start at both ends of the train and they move to the middle. And there was a slide that they showed so many times that I started kind of making fun of it on PubliCola because, you know, it was just this very, you know, sort of bored recitation at every council, or sorry, at every Sound Transit meeting where they would say - You know, we start at both ends of the train, we work our way to the middle, it's completely equitable. So, you know, they're saying this is gonna be completely equitable too. I don't think that it is possible to have an equitable fare enforcement policy because I think fare enforcement hits different people differently. And if you can't pay it, eventually, you could go to court and get a misdemeanor on your record. So fare enforcement inherently and fares inherently are not equitable. So we'll see how it plays out in practice, but once you start enforcing fares, you have instituted an inequitable process because poor people are less likely to be able to pay fares, more likely to get caught without having paid their fare, and then more likely to be unable to pay the fines that will eventually start accruing.
[00:54:50] Crystal Fincher: I have a major pet peeve - pet peeve is too minor a way to say it, but it probably comes through and I haven't overtly articulated it, but you know, in lots of things that I talk about - but people just taking action to take action, that is not a serious attempt to fix the problem that they say they're trying to fix. Whether I agree with what they're stating is a problem or their way that they're going about it - even if you take everything at face value, their solutions are not in any way adequate enough to address what they're saying is a problem. And so the momentum - we've heard Sound Transit board members talk about how important fare enforcement is - people are getting away with it and we need to collect these fares for our system. We - our budget depends on fare box recovery and if people aren't paying, then that's throwing our finances and our system into chaos. Which would make most people reasonably think - Okay, so if they're doing fare enforcement action and spending all of this money on these fare enforcement people, and instituting this basically entire administration dedicated to fare enforcement - one would think that the fines that they issue would be collected by Sound Transit. I was surprised to learn from your reporting before that that wasn't the case. And it seems like it still isn't the case under this new system, is that correct?
[00:56:24] Erica Barnett: My understanding is - yes, that the fines go to the, go into the administration, into the court system, but, you know, I am not 100%, I have not looked into this. So please don't, please do some fact checking on this for me, 'cause I - maybe you can look into it, Crystal - but I'm pretty sure that, yeah, the fines don't go to Sound Transit. I mean, I think like big picture, Sound Transit does have some financial problems. A lot of them are related to the fact that they continue to provide service that is suboptimal for a lot of people. A lot of times trains are stopped because of incidents, escalators very often don't work. And the trains are running a lot slower now, they're more crowded because there's not enough cars and they're not running as frequently. And so the service has really suffered. And so - number one, it's not a great product right now. It could be a great product again, but you're sort of instituting fare enforcement at a time when the product itself is suboptimal. And second, they're planning the next expansion of the light rail system and a lot of the stuff they're doing, you know, in particularly in South Lake Union, for example, to appease Amazon and other companies in that area is moving stations around and making big changes that are going to cost money. And then on the flip side, eliminating stations like the Midtown Station that have huge constituencies, like all the people on First Hill that got robbed of a station in Sound Transit 1 when they cut the station there. So you're sort of putting the squeeze on people who might be your riders in the future and moving things around to appease big companies. So I don't know - I think a lot of people are frustrated with Sound Transit right now and focusing on, Oh my God, it's those damn, you know, fare evaders, as they call people who don't pay, they're the problem - just feels really off point right now. And, you know, I mean, I'm sure you've ridden light rail. It's noticeably slower recently because people, the drivers for one - I mean, one reason for that is that the drivers are slowing down in the Rainier Valley to avoid hitting people because Sound Transit put the trains at grade in the first segment of light rail. So yeah, it's just - it's not a great look.
[00:59:05] Crystal Fincher: It's not a great look. And yes, I have ridden light rail recently. I've also ridden BART recently and LA Metro trains recently. And my goodness, is it just noticeable? If you know me, you've heard this rant, but Los Angeles, the car capital of the world, and Seattle actually started planning their light rail systems at the same time. And Seattle has wound up with a partial line that still has end points getting pushed off for decades, it seems like. And LA has built this vast network of multiple lines and everything in a city where it's not easy to get stuff done, where people have more of a connection to their cars, where it's harder to get around in other areas - so the lift of getting people to make that change seems heavier down there. And wow, we've just gotten bogged down in the Seattle process, it seems. But it seems like the main problem, what's underlying everything else, is that their - the people in charge of this system, the Sound Transit Board, are not regular transit riders. They don't seem to use the product that they're responsible for. And listening to them talk - most of them are, predominantly drive cars, they don't take transit often. And you can hear that in their comments, you can see that in how they are planning, or not planning, or the things that they're missing, as we progress here. So I certainly hope that we see more of a focus on appointing leaders to that board who understand the system and use it, and understand how important it is to their community and the relevance of their community, and how it needs to adapt to other communities. Yeah, it's really interesting. I'm thinking of a number of suburban leaders, whether it's Bothell or Covington - people wanting to improve the service, make it relevant for their community, but it is just been a big challenge.
With that, I thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, November 17th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was Seattle political reporter and editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett. You can find Erica on Twitter @ericacbarnett and on multiple platforms now - just search Erica and on PubliCola.com. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks and soon you'll be able to follow it on other platforms. You can find me on most platforms as @finchfrii. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe and leave a review if you're able - to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattle Axios reporter, Melissa Santos!
Melissa and Crystal discuss how Election Night results in Washington state aren’t conclusive and can change due to our mail-in ballot system, how four County election offices were evacuated and whether this might explain low turnout trends. Then they dive into where Seattle City Council election results currently stand and the impact that enormous spending by outside interests had on voter communication. Looking outside Seattle, more encouraging progressive results appear to be taking shape across the state in Tacoma, Bellingham, Spokane, Snohomish County, Bellevue, Bothell, and more!
The show wraps up with reflection on why celebrated Seattle Police Department Detective Denise “Cookie” Bouldin suing the City for decades of racism and gender bias from SPD management and colleagues is yet another indication of internal police culture not matching their publicly declared values.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Melissa Santos at @MelissaSantos1.
Melissa Santos
Melissa Santos is one of two Seattle-based reporters for Axios. She has spent the past decade covering Washington politics and the Legislature, including five years covering the state Capitol for The News Tribune in Tacoma and three years for Crosscut, a nonprofit news website. She was a member of The Seattle Times editorial board from 2017 to 2019, where she wrote columns and opinion pieces focused on state government.
Resources
Digging into Seattle’s Budget Process with Amy Sundberg and BJ Last of Solidarity Budget from Hacks & Wonks
“4 election offices evacuated in Washington state; fentanyl found at 2” by Melissa Santos from Axios
“Business-backed Seattle council candidates take early leads” by Melissa Santos from Axios
“Seattle council incumbents still trail in latest election results” by Melissa Santos from Axios
“Business-backed groups spend big on Seattle council races” by Melissa Santos from Axios
“Tacoma to consider new tenant rights measure on Nov. 7 ballot” by Joseph O’Sullivan from Crosscut
“Tacomans deciding on progressive renter protections” by Lauren Gallup from Northwest Public Broadcasting
“The 4 biggest takeaways from election night results in Tacoma and Pierce County | Opinion” by Matt Driscoll from The News Tribune
“Bellingham voters consider minimum-wage hike, tenant protections” by Joseph O’Sullivan from Crosscut
“Lisa Brown leads incumbent Nadine Woodward in Spokane mayoral race” by Mai Hoang from Crosscut
“Controversial Sheriff with Right-Wing Ties Faces Voters in Washington State” by Jessica Pishko from Bolts
“Johnson defeats Fortney in sheriff’s race, new ballot drop shows” by Jordan Hansen from Everett Herald
“Pioneering Black detective sues SPD, alleging racism, gender discrimination” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
If you missed our Tuesday topical show, it was a special one. Our producer and special guest host, Shannon Cheng, chatted with Amy Sundberg and BJ Last from Solidarity Budget about currently ongoing City of Seattle budget process. The conversation ranged from the fight over the JumpStart Tax to why ShotSpotter is more egregious than you thought. This is the first show that I actually have not hosted on Hacks & Wonks and Shannon did a fantastic job. It's a really informative and interesting show, and I highly suggest you listen.
Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Seattle Axios reporter, Melissa Santos.
[00:01:41] Melissa Santos: Hi, Crystal.
[00:01:43] Crystal Fincher: Well, good to have you back on this Friday following general election results in Washington state. We have a lot to talk about, a lot that's interesting. I think the first thing I wanna talk about is just the nature of elections and results. As a reminder to people - for so long, so many of us were used to going to a polling place, voting, getting election results on Election Night. We still get that from a lot of other places in the country. It does not work like that here in Washington - and particularly for the City of Seattle, some other, especially major metropolitan areas - where there's, you see differences in where different demographics typically vote in the timeline when ballots are out. What races look like on the first night can look very different than what the ultimate results show. How do you approach this?
[00:02:39] Melissa Santos: Well, so I basically - especially in Seattle races - I try to put a caveat at the top of any story I write on Election Night or the next day, sometimes even Friday of election week saying, Races are known to swing by 10 or 12 points in Seattle - this could change. It will change. It could change dramatically, essentially. So that's, I think, what we're seeing here. I mean, as of right now, when we're actually recording - we don't have Thursday's results yet. So we only have a very limited batch of ballots, especially because of something else we're probably gonna talk about later - there was limited counting in some counties, including King County, yesterday and fewer ballots released because of a scare they had at the elections office. So we just don't have a lot of information. Election night - like half the ballots maybe are being reported, so that's just a ton of room for results to change. And we have seen that repeatedly in Seattle, especially when it comes to progressive candidates looking like they're down, and then - oh look, they won by four points, three points, two points. So this happens a lot. And that's just a good caveat to keep in mind as we're talking about election results the week of the election in Seattle.
[00:03:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and as you said, we are actually recording this on Thursday morning. Viewers will start to hear this on Friday, but we don't have many results - we might as well talk about it now. The reason why we have even fewer results than we thought, or fewer ballots counted, is that there were some wild things that happened at some elections offices yesterday. What happened?
[00:04:10] Melissa Santos: So four county elections offices in Washington state, including in King County, received an unknown powder substance in envelopes that were delivered to the election office. And so the King County Elections office in Renton, that does all this counting, was evacuated for three hours the day after the election - in which counting was not happening because they had HazMat there, they had the Fire Department there, they had the police there checking to make sure this wasn't something super dangerous, that there wasn't a chemical attack, essentially, against the election offices. And in Spokane County, they got a similar thing and they actually didn't - I don't think they released results yesterday at all, actually, in Spokane. Or at least it was very delayed and limited. So in King County, they released many fewer ballots, and counted many fewer ballots, and reported fewer than they had expected to on Wednesday, the day after the election. And then also Skagit and Pierce County offices got mysterious packages. And two of them - in King County and Spokane, it was, there were traces of fentanyl. We're still waiting for more information, so there was some sort of fentanyl in there. Not clear about the other two - might've been baking powder in Tacoma, according to one report I saw, so. But in any case, this is a threat that people are sending stuff that is very threatening. I mean, everyone remembers it was around - Anthrax scares and this and that. So when you get in the envelope as a public servant like that - you're worried it could kill you, it could kill your colleagues, and then you're gonna not keep counting ballots probably. Or your coworkers across the building are gonna stop counting ballots - and that's what happened.
[00:05:45] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And people are on heightened alert for a number of different reasons. These bring to mind some of the increased attacks that we've seen that seem to have anti-Semitic, anti-Arab, anti-Muslim bias. There have been envelopes of powder mailed to synagogues in our state. So this has a lot of people wondering - are these ties to election denialists? Is this someone with some other grievance? But people are on heightened alert about that. King County counted about half as many ballots yesterday as they originally intended to, so we have really abbreviated results. The other factor that is a challenge that is not standard - not what we normally see - is turnout is low, is trending really low. And weirdly, it was trending above where we were a couple of years ago until Election Day - 'cause we can track how many ballots are received each day, how that compares - so it was actually up by a few percentage points. But on Election Day, really, turnout seems to have cratered. We don't know why. Again, the results being released - it's so early, so we just may not have the full picture. Maybe people just voted in a really late flux and we don't know that yet. There's just a lot that we don't know. But right now, turnout seems to be trending pretty low in a different way than we've seen before, at least so far. So we're not sure what that means, who might not have turned out, is this gonna wind up low? We just have a lot that we still need to see, both in results and in just the ballots received, and what that means for turnout.
So with that said, let's start off talking about the City of Seattle. We had several council races. And I guess thinking, going through the results - overall, the more moderate candidate was leading pretty significantly in a lot of cases on Election Night. Again, as we talked about earlier, several of these races are still within the bounds where it's possible these races could change. And the person who ultimately winds up winning could be different than the person currently leading in several of these races - if ballots trend how they traditionally trend in the city - there's been a few different folks who've done some public analysis of this.
But right now in District 1, Rob Saka - this looks to be one of the races that looks pretty conclusive, that Rob Saka currently holds a pretty commanding lead over Maren Costa. In District 2, Tanya Woo is currently leading Tammy Morales. This is a closer race and one that is within the margin where we see late ballots overtake what the early results were. In District 3, Joy Hollingsworth - this seems like a pretty settled race - seems to have prevailed over Alex Hudson. District 4, we have Maritza Rivera leading Ron Davis. This is one that is at the margin of where races come back - if ballots trend in the same way as they had before, Ron could end up eking out a win. If they don't, maybe he comes up a little short, but definitely a race we anticipate tightening up. In District 5, Cathy Moore holds a pretty commanding lead - this looks like one where it's beyond the range of kind of the bounce-back of ballots over ChrisTiana ObeySumner. And in District 6 -
[00:09:34] Melissa Santos: District 6 is Dan Strauss, and that is really, really close, with Dan Strauss and Pete Hanning. And we actually saw Strauss, who's an incumbent, and is the more leftward candidate in that race - I mean, of the candidates in that race.
[00:09:47] Crystal Fincher: Of the candidates in that race.
[00:09:49] Melissa Santos: Not really the most leftward councilmember that is on the ballot necessarily, but in this race he is the more progressive of the two. He was down two points on Election Night, but now it's less than one percentage point. And that's just with the limited ballots we saw on Wednesday. So that's an example of how much you can switch there - we saw about a percentage point gain in a very close race. So I suspect Dan Strauss will actually win his race and be reelected, but we will see.
[00:10:18] Crystal Fincher: It would be shocking if he didn't wind up winning this. And in District 7, we have Andrew Lewis and Bob Kettle, with Bob Kettle currently in the lead over Andrew Lewis. This is another one where it is still within the range that this is too close to call. We need to see further results. And if again, ballots trend in the same way as they've trended - particularly in 2021, but also in 2019 - then Andrew Lewis could wind up winning.
This week is gonna be interesting with results because we typically get a daily update at between 4p and 5p, depending on the county. And King County - it's typically 4 p.m. But Friday is a holiday, so we won't get updates on Friday. Today, Thursday, will be the last day of updates. And then the next day that we get an update on the vote totals will be Monday. So Monday will probably be a very conclusive day, a day that shows whether people are on track to make it, where a lot of the late ballots are going to be in the tally - because the counting continues over the weekend, even though they don't release the results until Monday. So we'll see what that is. But a lot of races that are currently too close to call, even though if you've seen some other media outlets, particularly some columnists - I think Danny Westneat had a column, that was like - Oh, the progressive era in Seattle is over or something like that - which I think certainly the early results are different than even earlier results that we've seen in prior races, different than even in the primary, I think we would say. So there is something afoot here, and there's certainly going to be a different council with one, so many new candidates. But there's gonna be a new composition on the council, certainly. But saying what that composition is going to be with so many of these races still in the air, I think it's premature to say at this time, and we'll still see. We just don't know about the turnout and don't wanna mislead people, have to rewrite headlines. I think you're one of the more responsible journalists when it comes to setting appropriate expectations and making sure you don't overstate what the results are saying.
[00:12:45] Melissa Santos: I mean, I think the one thing you can say, that I got from Danny's column, that I can guarantee will be correct is you will not have Kshama Sawant on the council anymore. And she has been one of the sort of firebrands on the council, very - has strong views that she doesn't shy away from and doesn't - whatever dynamic that is on the council, some people don't like it, some people do like it - that she just says what she wants to do and doesn't kind of do as much backroom compromise sometimes on certain issues. That's gone. So you don't have a Socialist on the council anymore - that is happening - 'cause she didn't run for re-election. There wasn't a chance for her to lose. So either way, that was gonna be different.
But a couple of the moderate candidates we were talking about, I'm not really sure which way they'll vote on some of the issues that typically define Seattle moderates. And for me, Cathy Moore comes to mind. She won by - I mean, you can say Cathy won at this point - it was about 40 points. So that is not going to be, that's not going to happen for ChrisTiana ObeySumner. But Cathy, during election interviews, was a lot more forthright actually about taxes, saying - I disagree with the business community actually, that we probably need more tax revenue. And so she was much more open on the campaign trail about the notion of taxing businesses to close the City's budget deficit. And this is one of those issues that typically defines sort of the Seattle centrist moderates, business-friendly candidates - is having a lot more reticence about taxing businesses. Usually the candidates won't say - Absolutely not under any circumstances. But they'll say - We need to do an audit. I'm not, I mean, some of them actually will say, I don't think we have a budget deficit - in the case of Bob Kettle, I think that was something he said regularly, despite what the revenue projections do say. But Cathy Moore was a lot more nuanced on that topic. And also on zoning, potentially, and being willing to have more dense zoning in certain areas. I'm not sure that she'll vote the way - it remains to be seen. People can say things on the campaign trail and do totally different things, so we'll see. But she was fairly consistent about being sort of more on the liberal side of certain issues in that respect.
Joy Hollingsworth, who has, I think, pretty definitively come out ahead in District 3 - this is Sawant's district. You know, she's a really - she's just a really compelling personality too. I mean, and I'm not saying this in a negative way - you talk to Joy, you feel like she's listening. She's a good candidate on the campaign trail. I saw her canvassing a lot - like in person, a fair amount - 'cause I live in that district. And her campaign sent out a lot of communications. She had the benefit of independent money, which we will talk about soon, I think, as far as more outside spending benefiting her campaign. So there were more mailers sent out - not even necessarily by her campaign, but on her behalf. And I just don't know if she's a traditional candidate. And she would say this and has said this - When am I the centrist candidate? I'm a queer, cannabis-owning business owner, you know, who's Black, and I just don't, when am I like the right-wing candidate here? So I mean, maybe doesn't fit the profile of what people think of when you're talking about sort of centrist candidates. And again, has done a lot of work on cannabis equity and equity issues, I think, that also helped her relate to a lot of voters in her district.
Well, Rob Saka, I think, is more - who I think is pretty clearly winning in District 1 - is probably the most traditional, sort of more business-backed candidate who's skeptical of taxes, skeptical of how the City's spending its money, and then also had a lot of big business backing on independent spending. And is sort of more - we need to hire more cops, more in the traditional line of what you're thinking of as a centrist candidate. And he is going to be replacing a more progressive councilmember in Lisa Herbold. But, you know, they basically have Saka in that mold, clearly. And then the other two races that are decided already, it's not totally clear that it's some - it's gonna be a, exactly what kind of shift it's gonna be. And in fact, Cathy Moore is replacing a more moderate on the council anyway. So a lot is still dependent on what - the results we still don't have.
And also, one of the more progressive members on the council is Teresa Mosqueda, who is running for King County Council and is likely to ultimately win that race, and that's gonna be an appointment process, where - to replace her on the council. So who that is - you could end up with a fairly progressive council, potentially, in some respects. If all of these races switch to progressive suddenly in the late results, which certainly may not happen. But it's just a little premature on Election Night to necessarily say the council's going to be way less progressive than it was, I think, potentially. That's all.
[00:17:40] Crystal Fincher: No, I completely agree with that. We've talked about on the show - if you know me personally, we have definitely talked about this in person - but painting, you know, the media narrative out there, that - Oh, it's the super progressive council, you know, who's always battling with the mayor, and we want a change of direction. I'm always asking, define what that direction is, because we did not have a progressive council. There were different people in different positions on the council - certainly had progressives on it, but a number of moderates on it. And in this change, as you said - in District 1, I think it's very fair to say that that moved in a more moderate direction. District 5, I think that's moving in a more progressive direction, everything on balance.
[00:18:30] Melissa Santos: And if Ron Davis wins in District 4 - which that district has been super swingy in the past because it has - I think university students is a factor, sort of, I do think there's a late turnout surge there in a lot of years, in some years, maybe that's greater than some districts. If he wins, you're going to be replacing Alex Pedersen, who is one of the more - certainly centrist, some would say conservative - but center candidates, and so you'd have a much more liberal person in that respect on, I think, both taxes, on criminal justice, I think on also zoning, definitely zoning, Ron Davis is like the urbanist candidate - is kind of what he's known as, and having worked with FutureWise and these organizations and in advocacy, sort of behind-the-scenes roles. So yeah, that would be, kind of, undermine the narrative to me. If you replace Alex Pedersen with Ron Davis, I'm not sure the progressivism-is-gone narrative exactly will hold up, so that's - but again, we would need some big swings for these things to happen. I'm not trying to act like you're going to get all these progressives. It definitely was a good night for business-backed, sort of, more centrist candidates on Election Night.
[00:19:42] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely, I agree with that. And I think if Maritza Rivera ends up doing that, that's basically a wash on what their representation does - that looks like they have continued with what they generally had. And didn't move in a more progressive direction, but certainly did not get more moderate or conservative than what was already there, I think. I think there are two buckets of candidates that we're looking at, as you alluded to before. I think that Rob Saka, if Bob Kettle were to wind up prevailing, if Maritza Rivera were to wind up prevailing - those, I think, are most firmly in the traditional moderate conservative, very skeptical of taxation, very supportive of carceral solutions, more punitive solutions, lots of talk about hiring and supporting police, different answers to different issues, often involving public safety elements. I think that's fair to say. I don't think most people would put Cathy Moore, Joy Hollingsworth in that same category.
I think Tanya Woo is a bit of a toss-up. This is another race where, I think, next to Dan Strauss, the next most likely candidate of what looks the way ballots traditionally go, even with some wiggle room - Tammy Morales, the way ballots trend in Seattle, certainly has a path to finishing in the lead. There is definitely a difference between those two candidates, but I think Tanya Woo has certainly expressed some reservations for taxation, has certainly expressed her support for public safety solutions - Maybe she falls somewhere in the middle there. It seems like she's not as aggressive as some of the other candidates and their zeal for those solutions, but she has signaled that she's open to them. So I think that's a question mark if it goes the Tanya Woo route. But this is a race that is definitely too close to call at this point in time for the way Seattle ballots trend. So that's Seattle.
Let's talk a little bit more about the money, which you have written about - basically, everybody wrote about. We have not seen spending of this magnitude in Seattle City Council races since the Amazon money bomb that we saw in 2019. What happened with outside money in this race and what impact do you think it had?
[00:22:34] Melissa Santos: So originally in 2019, there was a big - originally, that's not that long ago, I understand, but in recent history of Seattle elections - the Chamber of Commerce had a PAC that was spending a lot on behalf of the business-preferred candidates. And Amazon gave a million dollars plus to that - a million of it right at October, I think, in 2019. And that kind of - especially, Sawant in her race, again, Socialist councilmember, was saying Amazon's trying to buy the election. And then there was a sense that left voters turned out citywide even to kind of object to that. There was one, something that I think a lot of observers thought happened that year. And that one might have helped fuel this surge of left-leaning voters after the initial vote count as well. And also, Trump was in office. There was a lot of sort of motivation, I think, of progressives to kind of vote and make themselves heard wherever they could during that era.
Okay, so this year - your original question - this year, we didn't have a chamber PAC doing all of the money. It wasn't all relayed through this chamber PAC. It was different. There were all these little political action committees called Neighbors of this Neighborhood. It was Downtown Neighbors Committee, Elliott Bay Neighbors Committee, and then University District Neighbors Committee. So it sounds, you know, those innocuous, sweet-sounding PAC names, right? But they were all supporting the candidates that were preferred by the, I mean, the Chamber and the Downtown Seattle Association. And they spent a fair amount of money. I mean, in the - I don't think that I had all the receipts when I did the calculations on Sunday, so there's a few more that have come in since then. But I mean, it was $300,000 almost for Maritza Rivera. And when I say for, I mean, a lot of it was spent opposing Ron Davis, but all benefiting Maritza - either in direct support from these external groups that were saying, Vote for this person, or, you know, saying, Don't vote for this person, her opponent, the more left-leaning candidate in that race. So that's quite a bit of money for one race, one district race, you know, you're talking about.
And then we saw that for support for Rob Soka as well. And they were some of the similar groups where - there's overlap in who is supporting these PACs, right? Landlords organizations, there were builders and construction and realty interests. And there were - the Realtors PAC actually gave separately to a few candidates like Tanya Woo and Bob - okay, I shouldn't say gave. Let me back up. The Realtors PAC, the National Realtors PAC, actually spent its own money separately from these Neighborhood groups to support Tanya Woo and Bob Kettle. And so you just saw that outside PAC money was coming in. And that was, you know, a lot more than the leftward union side spent this year by a significant margin to kind of help support these candidates. So, I mean, at the end you had $1.5 million almost spent and more than $1.1 million of that, maybe $1.2 million, was from the business sort of backed interest sort of pouring money from outside into these races, supporting their preferred candidates.
[00:25:53] Crystal Fincher: So I think - one, something that gets missed or I've seen a lot of questions about - so people are like, Okay, there's a lot of money. Corporations have a lot of money. How does that impact races? What does that mean when it comes to these campaigns and when it comes to what voters see?
[00:26:11] Melissa Santos: So what you're paying for is communication. What they are paying for is communication. They're paying for mailers that go to voters, they're paying for TV or radio ads in some cases - maybe not radio this year, but it's, you know, this is some of the things that independent expenditures pay for. Online ads - so reaching voters to tell them about the candidate. And this is what campaigns do. That's the whole point of a campaign. Except when you have someone from outside doing it also, it just really widens your impact as a candidate - even though they don't coordinate, they're not involved together - it still will help get your message out to more people if you have supporters doing this on your behalf and buying mailers.
I mean, I live in District 3 and most of the mailers I got were from Joy Hollingsworth's campaign, but I did get another mailer from an independent expenditure committee. And this was one that also was like - You like weed, vote for Joy Hollingsworth. Literally, that's what it said. I wish I was not kidding. So, I mean, again, that's - again, muddying the who's progressive and who's not a little. I mean, the mailers contribute to that, but anyway. And I got one mailer from Alex Hudson's campaign. So it just was like 5-1 on the communications I got from Joy Hollingsworth just to my own house. And so that's just an example of - even though only one of them was independent spending, you know, you can have a lot more mailers come and reach someone on behalf of a candidate if you have this outside money paying for it.
[00:27:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and communication is really everything. I think, you know, most people know I do this kind of work during the day, this podcast is an extra thing, this is not the main thing that I do. But it really all comes down to communication. Like you talked about before, there are things that the campaign can do to directly communicate with voters - phone calls, canvassing is the most effective thing they can do. And if a candidate and their campaign is on the campaign trail doing that, that is certainly generally a really positive thing for their campaign and one of the most effective things that you can do to win votes. But Kshama Sawant is notorious and the DSA - people passionate about Kshama are notorious for mounting really formidable, substantial ground games where they are covering most of the district. Most candidates are not knocking on most of the doors in their district. They're knocking on, you know, a pretty small percentage of them. And even though to them and their supporters - they see the candidate talking all the time, attending events every night - you're only reaching 15, 20% of the people in the district probably. And so the other 80% of voters have not heard anything directly, have been busy living life.
The thing that many candidates don't realize is that the hardest thing isn't getting them to understand that you're better than your opponent, especially for candidates who have not run for office before. The hardest thing to do is to let voters know that you exist overall. Most voters don't know that candidates exist. Most voters don't know that there's an election coming until they see the ballot arrive in their mailbox. People, like a lot of the people who listen to Hacks & Wonks - we're not the normal ones. We've talked about this before on this show. Most people do not pay attention to the news, to candidates, to elections as much as we do. That's really important to remember when it comes to this, because that spending - the type of communication, whether it's mail, the digital video ads that you see, cable TV ads, banner ads, text messages. One, that all costs money. And so having money enables you to do more of that. And getting that in front of voters is generally the most meaningful exposure that they have to candidates - that's how they're learning about a lot of them. So if they are bombarded with information from one candidate, they hear predominantly about one candidate - usually their communications talk about how wonderful the candidate is, all the wonderful things that they're saying or planning to do, or the version of that that they're spinning in that communication - that makes a big difference. And that's how people get to know who the candidates are.
If someone isn't doing much of that, they can't win. That's kind of just a structural Campaign 101 thing. So again, talked about this on the show before - if you know me, we've definitely talked about this. Sometimes when people are making sweeping pronouncements about - This narrative clearly won the day and this is what voters are saying - that may be the case in a race where there's robust communication coming from all sides, where the amount of money spent is a lot closer with each other on both sides. But in these races where one candidate is outspent by hundreds of thousands of dollars and the communication that that equates to, you rarely see those candidates win in any circumstance, regardless whether the one outspending is moderate, conservative, progressive, what kind of message they have - if it's good or bad, it can be really mediocre, it can be pretty bad. If you spend and communicate that much and so much more than your opponent, that in and of itself usually is enough to win, which is why people talk about the influence of money and the communication that that buys being corrosive or toxic or such an issue, because that in and of itself is oftentimes enough to move enough voters to win the campaign.
[00:31:57] Melissa Santos: And we should mention - Seattle has a Democracy Voucher system and I think all of the candidates, I think all of the candidates use Democracy Vouchers. Crystal can correct me if I'm wrong. But certainly some of the business backed ones receiving outside money also were limited - this limits their spending as a campaign, right? So the outside money takes on an even bigger role when each of the candidates can spend - I mean, gosh, the limit is, it starts at like $90,000, then it goes up if you all raise a lot of money. But you're limited, you're not spending more than $150,000, or $125,000, or something as a campaign. I forget the exact limits, but somewhere like around there or even lower. And then you have - so think about that - the campaign spending, we say $115,000 and really can't spend more. And then someone else is spending almost $300,000, right? So - separately - so you're having these, sometimes it's gonna be the majority of money in a race because the third party committees are not limited in how much they can raise and how much they can spend. So that's how you can get millions and millions of dollars. This year, it wasn't millions, but it was more than a million backing a certain slate of candidates. And that gets a big impact when you have fairly low-cost campaigns and everyone's limited to that to a certain degree.
[00:33:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. So I think that is the picture of Seattle races at this point in time. I think it is fair to say that even if a number of the candidates come back, I think it's an over-pronouncement to say that there was a broad shift in direction one way or another. But I think it's absolutely fair to say that no matter what the results end up being, they're not going to be celebrated by progressive candidates, that moderates are going to wind up happier than progressives are gonna wind up with these results - in the city of Seattle.
But I wanna talk about elsewhere in the state because I think the broad picture in the state - even though Seattle's likely to dominate the media conversation - that the picture in the rest of the state was more positive for progressive people than it has been in quite some time, that we see trends moving further in a Democratic and progressive direction, particularly in purple and red cities in some of the many metro cities. So Seattle, the biggest city in the state there, moved and had their results. But looking at Tacoma, looking at Spokane - these are two cities that seem to have moved definitively to the left in the composition of their councils, in Spokane's case - including the mayoral race - and also with some ballot initiatives. So starting with Tacoma - what's happening in Tacoma?
[00:34:47] Melissa Santos: Well, they do have a measure on the ballot that's about sort of renter protections, which actually looks like it might prevail. It was down a little bit on Election Night, but again, we don't have a lot of results from Pierce County yet, and it's super close right now. And given the way the ballots so far have sort of trended, even with this limited amount of ballots released, I suspect that this sort of measure to enact a lot more protections for renters against eviction - and I'm blanking a little on some of the details of it - but that's sort of a priority for more liberal voters and certainly policy makers. That looks like it may pass still, still uncertain. But you also - what I thought was interesting, you know - you had, I'm just making sure I did not, two days ago with my Tacoma results, but it looked like Jamika Scott was doing really well and likely to win her race in Tacoma. And Jamika has run for mayor before and she's sort of a known, you know, pretty serious policy person, I think, in Tacoma on advocating for ways of getting rid of systemic racism. I mean, getting rid of it would be difficult, obviously, but sort of ways to mitigate and kind of make lives better for people who traditionally have not benefited from our systems. And she was really active with, or I mean, leader of the Tacoma Action Collective, which has been a group that's been sort of protesting different institutions in Tacoma, as far as their treatment of Black people and treatment of people of color more broadly, I think, as well. But especially with police brutality. This is someone who has been kind of consistently saying, We need some change in our system. And she's being elected, and people like her message in Tacoma - enough of them - to really catapult her into office, it looks like. And so that's something that was interesting. We saw Olgy Diaz, who is an appointed councilmember - oh gosh, no, she won an election by now - has she--
[00:36:51] Crystal Fincher: No, she was appointed, and she's running for her first actual election now, following the appointment. And she just took the lead. She was narrowly down on Election Night. Again, the same caveats apply - that that Election Night is a partial tally. It is not a result. So on the initial tally, she was down just by a smidge. Now she is actually leading. And just with the way ballots trend, it looks like that lead will continue to grow. So you had the more progressive candidates, certainly, in both of those races prevail. I think interestingly, particularly in Jamika's race - Jamika was not endorsed by The News Tribune, which has been very consequential in endorsing folks. And despite that - and I think, as a credit to the work that Jamika has been doing in community for a while and the coalition that Jamika built - speaking directly to issues that are impacting so many people. And a lot of times speaking meaningfully to communities, as you said, that have not traditionally been served very well by government. And really inspiring a coalition to rally around her, to vote in support of her, to turn out for that. I think that was helpful.
In the same way, the Tacoma for All tenant protection measure, which had a storied path to the ballot - the City of Tacoma was basically looking to put a competing, less impactful measure that did less than this initiative did - looked like that was motivated by some of the opposing forces who didn't wanna see this measure prevail. They ended up going to court over it and the process wound up being flawed. So this wound up being the only measure - the citizens' initiative - on the ballot. And that attracted a ton of outside spending - the realtors, a number of landlord organizations, developer organizations spent a lot - hundreds of thousands of dollars in opposition of this initiative. And for - one, to be as close as it is, given all that spending, is pretty miraculous and I think goes to show the depth of the problem and how extremely it is felt to have this much support. But it looks, based on the way that ballots traditionally trend, like it's on track to eventually take the lead and win.
So this is not the only initiative - there are others across the state, including other tenant protection initiatives that are speaking to what's - the large percentage of renters in the state are facing the seeming imbalance between how landlords can technically treat tenants and how important it is to put more safeguards around. And I think generally it's not controversial to say that treating being a landlord like any other business is not good for society when we're talking about a basic need for people. And putting more protections around whether the timelines of being able to raise rent, how you can evict people, the kind of notice that's required, and assistance that may be required. If you are forcing someone to move out, the issue of economic evictions, or just putting someone out - not because they did anything, but just because they want to earn more money from that property - are things that people are willing to revisit across the state. And I think a lot of people can learn that lesson.
The other thing, just - I, as someone who does this for a living, get really excited about - that we're seeing in Tacoma and play out elsewhere in the state, is that sometimes these initiatives come and I'm speaking as a consultant, so obviously this happens - it has a lot of good results sometimes - but this wasn't the result of consultants getting around, establishment party entities saying, We want to put an initiative on the ballot, what should it be? And deciding what that's going to be in rallying support. This was something that truly did come from the community. This was a response from people in the community to problems that people in the community were having. They got together, they made this happen, they knocked on doors and advocated for it. This was not funded by an outside source - anything like that. And I think those are wildly successful. I think we've also seen this with the Tukwila Raise the Wage initiative that was successful that the Transit Riders Union did - that kind of model, which oftentimes is a reaction to inaction sometimes by people in power, which is frustrating to a lot of people, not seeing the issues that they feel are most important being addressed. We're having another very viable path with municipal initiatives being initiated, not just by the same old players with money, but people in community learning how to advocate and move policy themselves. I think that's a really powerful thing. We're seeing that across the state and I think we're gonna see more of it. I think that's a positive thing.
[00:42:24] Melissa Santos: Yeah, Bellingham looks poised to raise its minimum wage as a city. And they passed a measure that actually - they've been doing tenant protections as a city council, but I think that what they look on track to pass - I should say the minimum wage is leading, I should say. I guess I'd have to look just close at the results. But they're on track to pass something that requires landlords to help tenants relocate if they raise their rent by 8% or more. I mean, that's like a pretty - Bellingham is a fairly liberal city, a lot of college students from Western and all this. But that's a level, that's like sort of testing out new policies at a city level that I don't think we've - I don't think Seattle requires the landlords to do rent - well, anyway, it is kind of, I'm rambling now, but it is kind of some creative, interesting stuff happening in some of these cities that is very on the progressive edge.
And Spokane's mayor looks like they're going to be replaced with a Democrat - Lisa Brown, who used to be the state Senate majority leader and has been working in Governor Inslee's administration as Commerce Director. And so that's a big change there too. And that is certain - I think that is a very clear contrast in candidates where you have some voters rebuking the sort of far-right ties potentially of the mayor. Crystal has probably been following this more than me, but there was a big controversy recently with the mayor of Spokane sort of engaging with Matt Shea, who is like - oh my God, I forget all of this.
[00:43:56] Crystal Fincher: Domestic terrorist, an advocacy, an advocate of domestic terrorism, someone who was planning to partake himself.
[00:44:02] Melissa Santos: Yeah - who, an investigation that was commissioned by the State Legislature when Matt Shea was a legislator found that he engaged in acts of domestic terrorism. The current mayor were kind of hobnobbing with that, became an issue in that race. And voters are saying, Let's try something different - it looks like in Spokane with a more Democratic mayor. So that is a different than maybe what progressives might be seeing in Seattle. You're seeing other cities have sort of different results.
[00:44:33] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. This was one where there's - in Seattle, it's on the centrist to progressive spectrum. This was a clear Democrat versus far-right Republican who did hobnob with Matt Shea, who attended - Matt Shea, who now is well-known as someone who was found to engage in domestic terrorism, to support a variety of far-right, extremist, insurrectionist type beliefs. Nadine Woodward appeared at one of his events, hugged him, seemed to be hobnobbing with his people. And even after that was palling around with Moms for Liberty - which are notoriously anti-LGBTQ, particularly anti-trans - candidates pushing for policy, pushing for book bans in school districts across the nation, basically. So there was a clear contrast here. These issues were front and center, and voters made a clear choice here and made the decision to change direction. And there're also - three of the four Democratic councilmembers are leading in Spokane. And so this is definitely moving in a more Democratic direction in Spokane, which is a really big deal. We saw similar in Tacoma.
We were looking at a lot of suburbs - I mean, looking at the Eastside, just in King County - so many of those races. Now, Bellevue may have a more progressive council than Seattle. We've seen in a number of these cities, whether it be Bothell or others, where they have moved on affordable housing policy, transit and transportation, mobility policy in ways that Seattle has not. They seem to be outdoing Seattle when it comes to some of the implementation of progressive policy that lots of people have been asking for in the city of Seattle. Other cities have been moving beyond them and it seems like, in those cities, voters have responded well. There has been vigorous opposition to these, we hear reporting about pushback to expanding zoning and the types of housing that's able to be built in all areas basically. But those debates were had and it looks like in most of these situations where there were competitive candidates fielded, they prevailed. So I think that Seattle certainly looks one way. A lot of the state has really, really positive signals and directions. And as someone who works in elections, the map for what's possible in Washington state, I think, has expanded even more with this cycle. And there are some absolute blueprints to look at moving beyond to other cities, whether it's kind of party supported, establishment supported, well-funded efforts or more grassroots initiatives - that there are multiple routes now to passing policy that helps more people and especially the people who need the help most. So we will see what that is.
Also in some pretty high profile races, like the Snohomish County Sheriff, where we had someone who billed themselves as a constitutional sheriff, who had said that they didn't plan on enforcing all of the laws, especially when it comes to gun legislation that we've passed, some gun control legislation - just some real extreme views. And voters picked the more moderate sheriff candidate there - certainly not revolutionizing what the traditional practice of public safety is among sheriffs, but I think voters definitely want to put more boundaries in place, and are worried about accountability, and really focusing on what makes people safer from all perspectives, and wanting to make sure people's rights are respected. And not necessarily feeling like violating people's rights is just a necessary price we have to pay to be safer as a community - that allowing that perhaps is part of what is making us more dangerous, what is contributing to some of the challenges in recruiting police officers. And addressing some of those systemic issues or at least promises of doing that from people are more convincing to voters in areas that have been comfortable voting for Republicans even - that they aren't just willing to just say, Do whatever you say you need to do regardless of whether it violates rights, or doesn't jive with the law, or whatever that is. So interesting results across the state certainly.
Now with that, I want to talk about a couple of other things that we saw, including news. We saw news, we saw coverage before - I think particularly from PubliCola, from Notes from the Emerald City - about one of the most well-known officers in the Seattle Police Department suing the department. Detective Cookie Bouldin - suing the department saying that she has witnessed and experienced racism, gender discrimination over several years with the department. What do you see with this?
[00:50:19] Melissa Santos: I mean, I don't think it's necessarily a surprise that over time, especially over decades, a woman of color, Black women in particular, may not have felt at home in the Seattle Police Department. This is something I believe she's raised before, now it's just there's a formal lawsuit. It's something that - it's not a huge surprise, but I think that it is a blow to the department to have someone so recognized as a leader and over time, to make these claims. It's kind of like when - not to change the subject to another thing, but when Ben Danielson, who worked at Seattle Children's, is a very respected Black pediatrician - is also suing Seattle Children's for discrimination and racism - maybe not discrimination, but discriminatory policies. And this has a huge impact when you have someone that you've held up as sort of an example of your best, in some ways, as a department or as an agency or as a hospital. And who is sort of someone you've said - This is someone who shows how we are including communities, who has been working on these issues. And then they say - Actually, there's been a lot of problems and there's been discrimination and racism that I've encountered in unacceptable ways. It's a huge blow to the police department, Seattle Children's.
These are things that really are not good for the - not just the image of the police department, but because - they point to real problems. I'm not saying this is just an optics issue or something, but it signals that maybe what you've been saying publicly isn't what's happening internally, and it isn't what's happening privately, or how people are experiencing your actual policies and your actual operation. So that's not great. And I know for the police department - and I know that Chief Adrian Diaz has been really vocal about stamping out racism in the department. I mean, it's something he talks about a lot. But this indicates that there's been problems for a long time, at least in the minds of one of their really esteemed long-time officers in the Seattle Police Department. And I don't know that one chief talking about stamping out racism and trying to talk about culture change can - I don't know that the boat shifts that fast, right? So if you're pointing to deeper issues that have been - for decades, someone who's been there for decades, or was there for decades - gosh, I mean, it kind of, it raises questions about how much is still persisting of this and then how quickly it can change if it still is persisting.
[00:53:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I mean, I think lots of people aren't surprised to hear that it is persisting, given a number of the things that we've seen coming out - whether it's the video of the SPOG Vice-President mocking the value of the life of a pedestrian that was killed, Jaahnavi Kandula, that was killed by a police officer speeding without lights and sirens on on the way to a call, whether it's the tombstone that they saw, whether it's just a number of the incidents that have resulted in complaints against several officers, consistently against a consistent group of officers, it seems, in several situations.
And it's particularly notable just because Detective Cookie, as she's known by so many, has really been such a PR boon for the department, really is a face of the department. When people talk about community policing, when they talk about building relationships with community, when they talk about - Hey, there should be officers that really care, really get to know people, look out for people - a lot of them are directly thinking about Cookie Bouldin. They're directly thinking about things that they've seen her do in community. There's a park named after her. She's known for almost mentoring people, working, getting kids involved with chess - really someone who, I think, regardless of where you stand on the institution of policing where people would say, even with people that disagree, but if you're like Detective Cookie - She's okay, I've seen her help, I've seen her care. Certainly what I think a lot of people would want police to aspire to be, would want the role to aspire to be in a best case scenario. And for her to say - Yeah, well, this institution certainly, in Seattle, is one that is racist, is discriminatory, and has harmed people like me, people who it's held up as paragons and examples of what the job really is and how it can be done in the community - is troubling.
We've seen this happen several times before in other departments - not with, I think, officers as publicly visible and known as Detective Cookie. But certainly a lot of discrimination suits - particularly from Black officers, other officers of color - saying that there have been systemic issues that they have been the victim of. Or even off-duty incidents where people have not recognized that they were officers and just saw a person of color and treated them in a different way than they were supposed to. So we'll see how this turns out, but certainly a stain, another stain on the department. I don't think anyone can say this is coming - this is just grievance, or sour grapes, or someone who just hates the institution of policing and is using anything to just tear down police, or who isn't supportive of policing overall. This is someone who has kind of built their life and they're living on that, is known for doing that and seemingly cared about that, yet went through all this. And maybe because they cared, endured through all of it - don't know the details there, but it is challenging.
And I think one of the things that came out of the debates and the campaigns, the conversations that people had is really a reckoning with - maybe this is a big problem for recruiting. Maybe it's not the money that has been thrown at them that we've tried to use, that now even police officers are saying this is not a problem about money. People are talking about - it's not an attractive job. Maybe is it actually what's happening within departments the part that's not attractive and not external reaction to it. I hope that whoever winds up being elected on the council contends with this in a serious way. I think no matter what the view is on police, and I think there's a range of them within the candidates who are currently in the lead and even those who are not. But I do think this needs to be taken seriously. And I think even if you look at polling of Seattle residents - their views on public safety and policing are more nuanced than some of the like flat, simple - either you back the blue, you support cops, or you don't. Think people are, I think it's fair to say that at least most voters are generally supportive of having police respond when they call 911, but they want that to be an effective response. They want it to be a constitutional response that does keep everybody safe, and respect everybody, and build trust in the community. And we're just seeing too many things that are not that.
And with that, I think that we have come to a close today. Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, November 10th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks, and this past week's guest co-host, is the incredible Dr. Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was Seattle Axios reporter, Melissa Santos, who does a wonderful job reporting on all things political and beyond. You can find Melissa on Twitter @MelissaSantos1. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can find me on all platforms, basically, as @finchfrii - that's two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, please leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Tuesday topical show, special guest host Shannon Cheng chats with Amy Sundberg and BJ Last from Solidarity Budget about the City of Seattle budget process.
After covering budget basics and where we’re at in Seattle’s budget process, they cover the ongoing fight over the JumpStart Tax and what’s being done (or not done) to address the upcoming $251 million budget deficit in 2025. Next, the trio breaks down the difference between “ghost cops” and the fully-funded SPD hiring plan, as well as why ShotSpotter still isn’t a good idea. The show wraps up with a sampling of this year’s other budget fights, how people can learn more or get involved, and Amy and BJ’s dream budget items!
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the guest host, Shannon Cheng, on Twitter at @drbestturtle, find Amy Sundberg at @amysundberg, and find Solidarity Budget at https://www.seattlesolidaritybudget.com/.
Amy Sundberg
Amy Sundberg is the publisher of Notes from the Emerald City, a weekly newsletter on Seattle politics and policy with a particular focus on public safety, police accountability, and the criminal legal system. She also writes about public safety for The Urbanist. She organizes with Seattle Solidarity Budget and People Power Washington. In addition, she writes science fiction and fantasy, with a new novel, TO TRAVEL THE STARS, a retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in space, available now. She is particularly fond of Seattle’s parks, where she can often be found walking her little dog.
BJ Last
BJ Last is a business analyst, and former small business owner, with two decades of budgeting experience across a wide range of industries. He organizes with the Solidarity Budget and Ballard Mutual Aid.
Resources
Seattle Solidarity Budget
Notes from the Emerald City
Tools to Understand the Budget | Seattle City Council
“Mosqueda, Council Colleagues Pass JumpStart’s COVID Relief Package and Economic Recovery Spending Plan” by Joseph Peha from Seattle City Council Blog
“Seattle's Jumpstart payroll tax raised more than expected. Is the money going where it's most needed?” by Angela King & Katie Campbell from KUOW
Memorandum: General Fund Deficit Historical Analysis from Seattle City Council Central Staff
“Harrell’s 2024 Budget Leaves Big Questions on Safety and Looming Shortfall” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
Final Report of the Revenue Stabilization Workgroup
“Removing Vacant Police Positions in Seattle’s Budget Is Good Fiscal Stewardship” by BJ Last for The Stranger
“Police Budget Fizz: Hiring Falls Short, Shotspotter Gains Support, Burgess Misrepresents Jane Jacobs” from PubliCola
“Nearly half of Seattle police calls don’t need officers responding, new report says” by Elise Takahama from The Seattle Times
“Set Money Aside for Illegal Surveillance, or Fund Community Needs Now?” by BJ Last and Camille Baldwin-Bonney for The Stranger
“New UW study says human-services workers are underpaid by 37%” by Josh Cohen from Crosscut
City of Seattle Budget Office
Stop ShotSpotter! Webinar - Seattle Solidarity Budget and ACLU of Washington | Nov 8, 2023
Guaranteed Basic Income Panel - Seattle Solidarity Budget | Oct 10, 2023
The People's Budget Seattle | Vote by Nov 12, 2023
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
[00:00:52] Shannon Cheng: Hello, everyone! This is Shannon Cheng, producer of Hacks & Wonks. I'm here as your special guest host for today. Everyone's been super busy with elections, but another important thing currently happening right now in a lot of our local jurisdictions is that they're having budget deliberations for the coming year. Budgets are super important - we talk a lot about policy on this show, but what really matters in the end is how that policy is implemented and budgets manifest our intent.
So Crystal let me take over the show for a day, and I wanted to have some folks on who are closely following the budget here in Seattle. They're two local community organizers with Solidarity Budget. And before we get to meeting them, I just wanted to point out that while we're gonna be focused pretty deeply on the City of Seattle's budget, a lot of what we talk about is applicable to other places. So if you're interested in getting involved in the budget where you live, we can learn something from these experts. So without further ado, I just want to welcome Amy Sundberg and BJ Last. Amy, starting with you, can you tell us a little about yourself and how you got involved with Solidarity Budget?
[00:02:00] Amy Sundberg: Yes, hello! It's good to be here. I'm Amy, and I am the publisher and writer of the newsletter Notes from the Emerald City, which is a weekly newsletter that covers issues involving public safety, police accountability, and the criminal legal system - in our local area - so Seattle and King County mostly, and occasionally the state of Washington. As well, I sometimes cover public safety issues for The Urbanist. And I organize with People Power Washington and Solidarity Budget. Originally, I got my start organizing with People Power Washington and we would uplift the demands of Solidarity Budget. And eventually I connected with the folks at Solidarity Budget and started working with them as well, so that's how I initially got involved.
[00:02:45] Shannon Cheng: What about you, BJ?
[00:02:46] BJ Last: Hi, thanks. Great to be here. BJ Last - don't do anything as cool as Amy on a regular basis. I've lots of years as a budget analyst, former small business owner, was a professional baker - did pop-ups, but then COVID, so that kind of went by the wayside. I actually first got involved with Solidarity Budget over SPD overtime. SPD has a massive history of overspending on overtime. In 2020, there was a resolution the City passed mid-year saying if SPD overspends on its overtime, we won't give them more money for it. Lo and behold, SPD did. At the end of the year, council was like - Okay, fine, we'll give you more money, but we swear we're gonna take it from you next year to do an offset. And wanted that fight to be like - No, we need to actually try to get that money from them next year to have any kind of budget accountability. And spoiler, that sadly never happened.
[00:03:34] Shannon Cheng: I agree with you that Amy is cool and also that the SPD overtime issues are very frustrating. For folks who don't know, could you give a little background on what Solidarity Budget is, and how it came to be, and how you all work together?
[00:03:48] BJ Last: Sure thing. So Solidarity Budget came up out of - actually Mayor Jenny Durkan. Groups caught that Mayor Durkan was promising a lot of different groups the exact same pot of money and then being like - Y'all fight amongst yourselves to do this. And groups came together and was like - We're tired of actually just always being pitted against each other and forced to fight each other for scraps in the City budget, while all the funding goes to things that no one was wanting, like while all of the funding goes into SPD. SPD alone is still a quarter of the budget, getting everything carceral - it's about a third of the general fund. So it was that desire of - No, we don't want to be pitted against each other. And just rejecting this framework of - we have to fight against each other for scraps. So coming together as groups to be like - what are our big priorities and saying - Look, we are advocating for all of these things.
[00:04:38] Amy Sundberg: I would say in addition, we wanted to make sure that when we're talking about the budget every year, that those most marginalized are centered in that conversation. And often they aren't, right? So it's important to have a coalition who has that front of mind when advocating.
[00:04:54] Shannon Cheng: That's super smart. Our experience has been - it can be hard to get heard by electeds, just - if you're not the people in power, sometimes it just feels when you send your email and make your phone call, your voice might not be heard. And so trying to come together and forming a coalition so that you can have a larger voice seems like it would make a lot of sense if you want to push the lever on budget-related issues.
Okay, so let's jump into some background and some budget basics before getting deep down into the weeds. Did you want to give, Amy, a sense of what the scale of budgets are at different jurisdictions and then what we're talking about here in Seattle?
[00:05:31] Amy Sundberg: Sure. So there are many different government budgets. The biggest one, of course, is the national budget for the United States, which is around $4.4 trillion. So obviously a huge pot of money. Most of that money comes from personal income tax that we all pay every year and also corporate income tax, et cetera, et cetera. Then we have the state budget, which is about $72 billion per year. And then we have the King County budget, which is $6.2 billion per year. So you see, we're kind of getting smaller and smaller as we get into smaller jurisdictions. And then we have the City budget. And city budgets tend to be around $5 to $6 billion per year in total. All of these budgets are made up from various types of taxes and fees, and they each are responsible for funding different services in our communities.
[00:06:26] Shannon Cheng: Great. So for the City of Seattle - let's just focus in on that as our example for today's episode. So where does the money for the City of Seattle come from?
[00:06:35] Amy Sundberg: If we're talking about - particularly general fund - most of that money would come from property tax, sales tax, and B&O tax, which is a business tax. I think that's about 60% of the funds. And then there are a lot of other very small buckets of money that come in as well to make up the entire amount.
[00:06:56] BJ Last: That's a great overview, Amy. And one thing I do want to just mention - so the total Seattle budget is $7.8 billion, but the vast majority of that is stuff that is extremely restricted. For example, we have public utilities. So City Light - that's $1.5 billion - that is all funded by the rates people pay for their electricity. So while that's there in that total number that makes the City's budget look absolutely huge, it's not accessible - the council can't use that to fund things. So the general fund is a much smaller slice of that. It's just about $1.6 billion. And that's the money that the City pretty much has full discretion as to where it decides to go and spend that.
[00:07:37] Shannon Cheng: So if I'm understanding it correctly, you're saying Seattle's budget is pretty big, but a large part of it is already appropriated to specific things. So when it comes to these priorities that when people - they're looking around at their city or their neighborhood, and they want things - it's gonna have to come out of this thing you call the general fund. Is that correct?
[00:07:57] Amy Sundberg: Yes, that's correct. So most of what we're advocating for every year is general fund dollars.
[00:08:04] Shannon Cheng: Okay, and so you are saying, BJ, that the general fund is about $1.6 billion. So what types of things are currently getting funded out of the general fund?
[00:08:14] BJ Last: Yeah, that's correct. So it's $1.6 billion. It's - very broadly defined, Public Safety is 47% of it. And that is SPD, also includes the Office of the Inspector General, the CPC, the police pension - those are all four different departments that are in there, that are all cops. The Fire Department and CARE/CSCC, which is the 911 dispatch - which is currently CSCC, may be getting rebranded CARE soon. So that's 47%. The next biggest bucket is Administration and that's 22%. And Administration is kind of a massive catch-all that includes a lot of things - so major expenditures in there are for indigent defense and the City's contract with the King County Jail. So when SPD goes and arrests someone and puts them in there, the City is effectively leasing part of the jail from King County - and that's to pay part of it. And it also includes things like Judgment and Claims Funds, which is for when people are suing the City - that comes out of there, that's housed in that Admin section. And unsurprisingly, that one's also been increasing a lot lately due to lawsuits coming from 2020, which we know what those were. And then the other thing that is anything really is Education & Human Services, and that's about 15% of the general fund. So those three things of Public Safety, Administration, Education & Human Services account for 80% of the general fund.
[00:09:39] Shannon Cheng: Wow, so what's left in that 20% that's remaining?
[00:09:43] Amy Sundberg: Oh gosh, it's a lot of small things. Libraries, for example, will get funded out of that. A lot of our Transportation actually gets funded through specific levies, so it wouldn't come from general fund. And I think that's true of Parks & Rec as well. But there might be some little bits of money that go to Transportation and Parks & Rec - they have varied funding sources, basically.
[00:10:05] Shannon Cheng: Okay, great. So that's the general fund, the discretionary portion of the City of Seattle's budget. So what's happening right now with the process?
[00:10:14] Amy Sundberg: When we talk about budget season in Seattle, it's generally just a two-month period in the fall. But really, budget goes on for much of the year - because before the fall, the City departments are having to analyze their budgets and turn in reports to the mayor. And then the Mayor's Office is developing a proposed budget - that's the budget that gets announced at the end of September. At that point, the City Council is able to come in and make their changes that they might wanna see in that proposed budget. So that's where we are right now. First, they review the proposed budget to make sure they understand what's in there and what isn't in there. And then the Budget Chair, who this year is Councilmember Mosqueda, puts together a balancing package - that's a package where she thinks that there is consent amongst the councilmembers, that everyone agrees that these are changes that should be made for the most part. And then each councilmember is given the opportunity to suggest amendments to that balancing package. And they need to get two other councilmembers to sponsor that in order to get those amendments considered. So that's where we are right now - we've just heard the amendments that are being considered. And eventually what will happen is that those amendments will be voted on by the Budget Committee, which is all of the councilmembers to be clear.
[00:11:35] Shannon Cheng: Okay, so Mayor Harrell sent over his proposal end of September and we're about a month into the Council's involvement. And this is the budget for next year?
[00:11:45] Amy Sundberg: Yeah, for 2024.
[00:11:46] BJ Last: So Seattle operates on a biennium budget basis. So last year they set the budget for 2023 and 2024. So this year they're currently doing adjustments to that 2024 budget. And then next year it'll be back to doing the full biennium, where we'll be looking at 2025 and 2026.
[00:12:04] Shannon Cheng: Okay, so this is just finishing up last year's work through the end of the year, and just adjusting based on the realities of how much money is coming in and new needs for expenditures.
[00:12:15] Amy Sundberg: Theoretically that is the case. Seattle is a little bit less strict about that than some other municipalities. I would say King County is more of a true biennial budget, whereas Seattle's kind of a biennial budget. And I think actually there's been some push to make it more like King County, to make it more of a true biennium. So we'll see what happens with that.
[00:12:36] Shannon Cheng: Okay, interesting. Another thing I keep hearing about all the time is this fight over the JumpStart Tax. And I think it'd be good to just lay out very clearly - what is that fight all about?
[00:12:47] Amy Sundberg: Yeah, so the JumpStart payroll tax passed in the summer of 2020. And then the council passed a spending plan for it in 2021 to put into statute what exactly the JumpStart Tax is supposed to go to pay for. And just so we're clear on what that spend plan is - 62% of JumpStart funds are supposed to go to affordable housing, 9% to Green New Deal, 9% to Equitable Development Initiative, and 15% to small business. What has happened though - basically, because this was going on in the middle of the pandemic - obviously there was a lot more needs, the City budget was a little messier than maybe normally. So they allowed some of these JumpStart Tax dollars to be spent as a kind of a slush fund for the general fund so that we wouldn't have to have an austerity budget. And the idea was that over time this would transition and eventually all of the JumpStart Tax funds would go to those percentages that I mentioned a moment ago.
However, what has ended up happening is that every year - regardless of what mayor we have - every year the mayor will take some of the JumpStart dollars and move it over for general fund purposes, instead of those specific Green New Deal and affordable housing purposes. Every year Council kind of tries to claw back those JumpStart funds to put them into the main purposes they were meant for. Now we're still having some budget issues, so there has been - even for this year - some money that Council agreed could be used from JumpStart funds to fund general fund priorities, especially because JumpStart funds ended up being larger than originally anticipated. So the compromise that was struck was that those extra dollars that we weren't originally expecting can be used to kind of help prop up the general fund. But what ends up happening is sometimes more money beyond that gets pulled from JumpStart into the general fund. And of course, because affordable housing in particular is a large percentage of where that money is supposed to go and is such a priority in the city right now, given our housing crisis, this becomes a big fight every year.
[00:15:05] Shannon Cheng: Okay, yeah - that's helpful. So I think I saw - in 2021, the JumpStart Tax generated $234 million. And so that was one of those years where the City and the Council felt that some of that needed to go towards other things than that spend plan that you referenced. And so about 37% of it ended up going to the general fund. And then that leaves a much smaller slice left for addressing those issues that you listed - housing, small business support, Green New Deal, equitable development - which, if people stop and think about - looking around, what are the biggest issues that the City's facing right now? I mean, that's what these are trying to address - the housing crisis, small businesses struggling after the pandemic, needing to do something about climate change in a meaningful way, and then also trying to spread our resources in a more equitable way across residents of the city.
And so - to me then - thinking about JumpStart Tax, it's sort of a mini version of a whole budget. Because we had purported values that we stated out when we passed this legislation - saying this is what we want to spend this money on. And then, as with many things, it's the reality of the implementation that lets us see where our priorities truly are. And it sounds like - in 2020, we said very strongly - We need to meaningfully address these issues that we've been in a state of crisis for for a long time, and they've just been getting worse. And people are pointing that out - you see that. What I find really interesting is that the original people who've opposed the JumpStart Tax - so that would be the Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown Seattle Association - are these the same people who are now pushing to take the money away from JumpStart's original purposes and redirect it towards other things?
[00:16:53] BJ Last: Honestly, yes. They're a lot of the people pushing that they want to - I'll use the phrase - "liberate" JumpStart funds so that it can be used as effectively just more general fund backfill. They also haven't entirely given up on fighting JumpStart. As part of the Revenue Stabilization Task Force that was meeting this year, the representatives from the Metro Chamber of Commerce, she made comments of - Hey, we think we should actually pause JumpStart for a year or two - supposedly to help businesses on recovery. So they are still fighting on JumpStart a little. The opponents of JumpStart have much more moved to - they just want it to be more general fund.
[00:17:32] Amy Sundberg: And I do think it's important to state also that when we talk about wanting to allow businesses to recover, JumpStart Tax only applies to very large businesses with very high payroll and very highly paid employees. It's not hitting small businesses - that's not how it was set up.
[00:17:51] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, previous to JumpStart Tax, there was an attempt to pass the Amazon head tax and that did pass, but then eventually got repealed because of a lot of protest. And I believe the JumpStart Tax came out of a coalition that got built after that failed attempt, which included small business groups - because 15% of the JumpStart revenue is supposed to go towards small business support. Which everybody likes to say - small business is super important to the health and vibrancy of the Seattle economy. But are we willing to put our money where our mouth is on that? I just find it pretty insidious the way that they're approaching this because they oppose the tax to begin with, they're still opposing it now, they wanna pause it. But when they ask for the money to go back to the general fund, it seems like it's going back to a lot of their own interests, such as downtown activation. So not only are they taking the money back for themselves, they're also weakening the implementation of what this tax was originally said to do. People probably heard about this tax when they announced it - there was all sorts of glowing praise of this is gonna address meaningfully these problems that everybody cares about. And yet now, by weakening it and taking money away, we can't spend as much of that money on it. And so obviously, when you look at the results of what the JumpStart Tax has done, it will look like it's less. And so I just really wanna call that out.
I also wanna call out that the council that passed the JumpStart Tax in July of 2020 is pretty much the same council we currently have other than Councilmember Nelson who replaced Councilmember González in 2021. And JumpStart Tax passed 7-2. The only two councilmembers who did not vote for it were Councilmembers Juarez and Pedersen. How have they been reacting to all this JumpStart scuffling?
[00:19:33] Amy Sundberg: They definitely have been less supportive of increasing the JumpStart Tax in any way - that has been noticeable.
[00:19:40] BJ Last: Yeah, they have also been very much on the wanting to just throw the spending plan out the window. Actually, it was Councilmember Pedersen who's the first one that I heard use the expression of "liberate" JumpStart funds - create additional flexibility and disregard that. There are also subtler attempts to pretend that the JumpStart spend plan is very unclear, and so potentially needs to be revisited due to that - even though it's actually an extremely clear spend plan. People just keep trying to violate it - it's not that the plan isn't clear, people just keep asking for stuff that goes outside of that spend plan.
[00:20:13] Shannon Cheng: Okay, so then the councilmembers who did vote for it - so those would be Councilmembers Herbold, Morales, Sawant, Strauss, Lewis, and then obviously Councilmember Mosqueda, who spearheaded the effort. Are they staying strong behind the values that they voted for on the JumpStart Tax, or has that kind of squished up since then?
[00:20:31] Amy Sundberg: I would say - I mean, you know - it's hard to say what is in their hearts, but I would say it's a mix. I think some of them have stayed pretty strong, and I think others of them have, you know, less so.
[00:20:45] Shannon Cheng: Okay, fair enough. I guess I'm just concerned 'cause it sounds like this JumpStart Tax issue will continue to carry on, and it is possible that we will lose its biggest champion on the city council next year. So I just want everybody listening to understand what this fight is about and why it's so important. To me, it kind of comes down to differences in opinion over what is gonna float all the boats in this city, right? I mean, business wants us to believe that if we just pour all the money into business and their interests, that that will just generally help everybody. Whereas what JumpStart was trying to do, I believe, is trying to build from the ground up by providing people housing, trying to spread the resources in a more equitable fashion, tackling climate change, providing good jobs that come out of tackling climate change. And so I just really think this is a fight over shifting decision-making about how we spend our resources from being concentrated with a few powerful interests, and letting more people have a say and access to success and opportunities to do well in this city.
[00:21:48] Amy Sundberg: I would say Councilmember Mosqueda in particular has been a stalwart advocate of JumpStart. And as the Budget Chair, she has been in good position every year to counter the attempts to try to use JumpStart as more and more of a City slush fund. So if we lose her on Council at the end of this year, that certainly will make it more concerning going forward in terms of what will happen with JumpStart. I'll also say there is this spend plan. It is in statute currently. That statute could be changed, so it's not like it's protected forever.
[00:22:21] Shannon Cheng: All right, so everyone - it's Election Day. Get out and vote - try to think about who's gonna be our next champion for the JumpStart Tax.
So moving on, we also keep hearing all this news about an upcoming budget shortfall in 2025. What's happening with that?
[00:22:39] Amy Sundberg: So the City of Seattle is facing a massive budget deficit starting in 2025. It is now estimated to be around $251 million deficit, which has gone up based on the mayor's proposed budget. So basically, the mayor's proposed budget this year has made the problem worse - potentially - in upcoming years. $251 million is a lot of money. And so the question is, what are we going to do to address that? There are two main ways to do that. You can make cuts to the budget - spend less money. Or you can pass new progressive revenue that will help fund the budget. We are not allowed by law to have a not balanced budget, so that is not an option - it's not on the table. Or of course you can do a combination of cuts and new progressive revenue. So those are kind of the two levers that councilmembers have to play with. And what is relevant in this budget season right now is speaking about new progressive revenue, because if we want to pass new progressive revenue for the City of Seattle, we would need to plan ahead a little bit. Because it will take some time to implement any new progressive revenue that we might pass - there's a ramp up to getting it done. So if we wanted to have that revenue to rely on for 2025, we would really ideally want to pass things now before the end of the year.
[00:24:03] BJ Last: What I'd add on to what Amy mentioned is how we actually ended up getting to this upcoming deficit. Over the last two decades roughly, Seattle's population has grown at a really robust clip. We have all seen that. We have not seen the same growth in the general fund revenues that come in. Property tax increases are limited to - I believe it's at most 1% a year for the city - because sales tax also does not increase. So while we are seeing this really big increase in population, we have not seen the same with our general fund. It has really not moved that much. So it isn't the narrative of - Oh, the city has added a bunch of new pet projects or whatever, and that's where it's come from. It's come from largely - the city has gotten bigger and the general fund growth has not kept up with that. 85% of that upcoming deficit projected is all due to just open labor contracts. The Coalition of City Unions - their contracts are open. SPOG - their contract is also open. Paying Coalition of City Unions, paying the City workers - the people that like literally keep the lights on, fix the roads - of actually going and paying them is where this is coming from.
[00:25:06] Amy Sundberg: And especially because inflation rates have been so high the last couple of years, right? So that's - they need a much larger raise than they would need if inflation was not high.
[00:25:15] BJ Last: Also on the inflation part - thank you, that's a great call out, Amy - growth of the general fund has not kept up with inflation, especially just these last two years. I think there've even been other years where it hasn't happened, but these last two years in particular, we have not seen the general fund grow at the same rate. So things have gotten more expensive for the city that the general fund has to get spent on, but the dollars coming in the door haven't kept up with that.
[00:25:35] Shannon Cheng: Is anything being done about that? Did the mayor propose anything about progressive revenue, or thinking about this upcoming problem?
[00:25:42] Amy Sundberg: The mayor did not propose anything having to do with new progressive revenue in fact, which is a decision that he has been critiqued for in the local media. And there certainly has been a fair amount of rhetoric about just tightening our belts, right? But to be clear, $251 million - that's a lot of cuts that would drive us straight into an austerity budget, one would think. So that is where the mayor's office has landed, but there have been a lot of conversations about potential new progressive revenue that started with the task force that BJ mentioned earlier, which was brought together to look at various possibilities of what could be good new revenue sources. And certainly there were people that sat on that task force that had a priority of finding good new progressive sources of revenue in particular, as opposed to regressive taxes that will hurt people who have less more. And they did find some reasonable options that would not require a change in state law, and so could potentially be implemented in time to address the 2025 budget shortfall.
So I would say that there are three main possibilities at play right now that are being discussed. One of those is a capital gains tax, so we had a capital gains tax at the state level pass - so far it has survived any legal challenges that it has faced. So it would be possible for the City to institute a tax above that. It would be a fairly small amount, probably 1-2% capital gains tax. Councilmember Pedersen originally was the councilmember who suggested this, and he also suggested that we remove a certain water fee. So it'll be interesting to hear a more robust analysis of that water fee to find out - is that truly a regressive tax? Or with various rebates, et cetera, that are available for people - is it not that regressive a tax? Because if we were to take away that water fee, it would be revenue neutral, so it wouldn't actually assist us with the upcoming deficit. Not to say it's still not worthwhile to talk about, even if that's true, because we want to get rid of more regressive taxes and institute more progressive taxes. So either way, that's a good conversation to have - but it's unclear to me more of the details of that water tax, how regressive it is. So that is an important thing to discover.
The other two options have to do with the JumpStart Tax that we were talking about. One of them would be just to increase that JumpStart Tax across - it has a tiered structure right now, so across the tiers to just increase it. Councilmember Sawant has already proposed very, very modest increases in that JumpStart Tax in two of her amendments for the 2024 budget to fund specific priorities. So increasing the JumpStart Tax just full stop is one option. Another really intriguing option that has been discussed is something called a CEO pay ratio tax. This would require corporations that pay their top executives exorbitant amounts to pay an extra tax, or fee, or surcharge. So basically what we could do is use the JumpStart Tax as a vehicle by adding an extra layer to it. So there would be an extra tax that would only apply to corporations that exceed a certain CEO pay ratio. And what I have heard about this tax - again, so it would be fairly easy to implement because you don't have to change state law, you would just add an additional layer to an already existent tax. And what I've heard is that it would collect a significant amount of funds, but I don't have any actual numbers on that. So it will be really interesting to hear an analysis of how much money that could potentially actually bring in.
And what Councilmember Mosqueda has announced is that there will be an extra Budget Committee meeting after the main 2024 budget is passed to discuss some of these possibilities at more depth. So they will be discussed earlier in November, kind of as a briefing, and then the councilmembers will meet after the budget is passed to potentially vote on some of these possibilities, if they're not already passed in the 2024 budget.
[00:30:09] BJ Last: One thing I wanted to mention - so the Revenue Stabilization Group looked at about 20 different taxes. They did a great write-up that finally made it out in August after having been delayed a few times. The three taxes Amy mentioned - one of the reasons that they're at the top three is how quickly they can get implemented. So, you know, we're currently sitting and recording this - it's November, the budget deficit starts on January 1st, 2025. There is very limited time to go and get an ordinance passed and actually then to have that go into effect - since a new tax doesn't go into effect the day that it is passed - and to make sure that it would survive any legal challenges. So there is even like a broader list of things, but because we have kept putting this conversation off, because the city has sort of kept pushing the can down the road, we don't have very much time to go and pass this. We have about 13, 14 months to get something passed and to start having dollars coming in the door before that deficit hits.
[00:31:04] Shannon Cheng: All right, so time is of the essence here. And it sounds like although Mayor Harrell didn't put anything in his proposals to address this, at least Council seems like they're gonna be on it in some fashion. So we'll see what comes of that.
Okay, so that's the revenue side of the budget. And I think that's helpful for people to understand, 'cause I think it's much easier to talk about what you want to spend money on rather than where that money is gonna come from. I mean, I know I'm like that in my own life. So maybe we need to talk about what are we gonna spend all this money that we're bringing in on. And earlier in the show, talked about a rough breakdown of the general fund - it sounds like a huge portion of that goes towards public safety, which includes the Fire Department and the Police Department. So is the reason why sometimes it feels like there's so much focus on the police budget because they're kind of the biggest chunk of the budget, so that if you were trying to look for places where we could make some savings, it would be there?
[00:32:05] BJ Last: I'd say absolutely. Not only are they the biggest chunk - no other department eats up as big a portion of the general fund as SPD does. So not only that, but they also get absurdly special treatment that no other department gets, where a lot of basic budget practices even just get entirely thrown out the window because it's for SPD. Ghost cops are a great example of this. Ghost cops are positions SPD gets funded for, even though they have no plan, intention, or ability to fill these roles. So these are not people that SPD even thinks they can plan - they have said they aren't going in the plan, there's no desire to, but they still get funding for them year after year. There are like 213 of these now currently sitting around and it works out to be - about $31 million of SPD's budget right now is slush fund on this. And we talked about the upcoming deficit in 2025. So a $250 million roughly - $30 million on these guys - you can see that this is a large percentage of the deficit sitting right there in these ghost positions that councilmembers just don't want to touch.
And to give a sort of example of how no one else gets treated this way - where they get to just sort of hold on to this positional authority when they have no ability to fill it. Last year, the city abrogated 24 911-dispatcher positions, which - abrogation means they remove positional authority to it. No one probably heard about this 'cause there wasn't a big kerfuffle because it's normal. Council and the mayor and everyone's like - Well, you guys have said you can't hire these guys for the next two years for the duration of the biennium, so we're just gonna remove positional authority to it. If staffing plans change, we can re-add it. We can also add this back into the 2025 biennium if staffing levels have picked up. And in fact, they actually already are adding back about three of them in the supplemental of - in 2024 now in the budget process because their hiring has picked up. So just using 911 dispatch as an example - the ghost cops, the excess positional authority - no other department gets that. Every other department it is what your staffing plan is - the number of people you actually expect to hire - that is the number of positions you get, and that's the number of positions you get funded for. SPD gets this massive slush fund that they get to go and use on whatever the heck they want.
And there was also even a technology one that we saw in the 2022 budget. Truleo - it's a technology - it swears it's like AI, natural language processing of body camera footage. SPD specifically asked for additional money for this program as part of the 2022 budget. Council explicitly did not give them funding for this. They said - We are not funding this program. Then the City found out at the start of this year that SPD actually went ahead and bought Truleo anyway. So they ended up canceling the contract, but it ended up as a thing of - usually if a department goes to a company and says, We need additional money for this project - if they don't get that money and then they find a way to fund that project anyway, it raises a lot of questions. Like, why did you say you needed additional money for this if you could already cover it with your additional budget? And hey, all those other items that you said you needed additional money for, that we gave you additional money for - how many of them did you really need additional money for versus you were just attempting to pad out your budget? So that's one of the reasons why it gets a lot of attention. Not only is it just the biggest percentage of the general fund by a lot, but the absurd special treatment that they get.
[00:35:29] Shannon Cheng: So SPD is 26% of the general fund?
[00:35:33] BJ Last: SPD itself is 24-26%. That does not include the police pension department - that is a separate pension in there. It does not include the Office of Inspector General and the CPC, the Community Police Commission, even though they are also both part of that. So when you start adding all of those, it goes up even over a quarter. And then when you add in the city attorney's office, municipal courts, indigent defense, jail services - what we're spending on carceral - it's a third of the general fund all ends up sitting there.
[00:36:05] Shannon Cheng: Wow, okay. Yeah, I see here - just the Seattle Police Department alone, not all those other things you added on - they're sitting at just under $400 million. So what I'm understanding is these ghost cops are haunting, I guess, the Seattle Police Department budget.
[00:36:23] BJ Last: These ghost cop positions - they do haunt the general budget. Amy talked about how we're defunding JumpStart. So it's about $85 million last year, $85 million this year, $85 million next year - that's getting transferred from JumpStart to the general fund. So again, transferred from Green New Deal, affordable housing to the general fund. Because SPD gets a quarter of the general fund, that means that $21 million a year roughly is literally going from affordable housing to SPD and its ghost cops.
[00:36:54] Shannon Cheng: Oh man. Okay. So, and then they're taking it, and as you said, spending it on things that they were explicitly told not to spend it on or who knows what else, right? We try to dig in and get more transparency into what's going on, but that can be difficult.
And just what BJ was saying about budgeting practices and that SPD is not subject to those at times - so I looked at the King County biennial budget for the same time period from 2023 to 2024. And they have line items across all of their appropriation units, including the Sheriff's Office and the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention, that's called a vacancy rate adjustment. And this is exactly what BJ is describing - it's capturing salary savings from them not having been able to hire and being able to put that back into the general budget so that they can use it for other things that there's a need for. And then in addition to that, last biennium for King County, they had an additional line item specifically only for the Sheriff's Office and the Department of Adult Juvenile Detention called Capture Additional Vacancy Savings. And here, I'll just read the line item - it says it's to increase expected savings due to vacancies to account for current unprecedented vacancy level. And, you know, it allows the Sheriff's Office and DAJD to request additional appropriation to reverse it if the vacancy rate reverses and that we're able to magically start hiring a ton of people. I mean, we see that there's kind of a nationwide hiring shortage across every kind of profession, but in police and corrections officers as well. So this is not abnormal, and there was not a giant fight in the King County budget when this happened. Just to give you a sense of the magnitude - just from the original base vacancy rate adjustment, it was $5.3 million from the Sheriff's Office. And that additional vacancy savings was $5.7 million. So this is meaningful money that can be used in other places and not just locked up in the - Oh, well, maybe law enforcement will get to use it. Or maybe when they get close to the end of the spending period, they'll just spend it on something that we didn't all agree that we wanted.
[00:39:03] Amy Sundberg: I will say as well that SPD has a very optimistic hiring plan and they never hit it - at least for the last several years that I've been following it, they don't hit it. And this year they actually - the department shrank again. They have a negative total when you add in hires minus attrition. So it's still shrinking in spite of these hiring bonuses that we have no evidence actually works. But these ghost cop positions aren't even part of that. They're ones that even SPD says - We definitely aren't gonna hire that this year. It's not taking away from the hiring plan that SPD wants and thinks they can hire. It's additional positions beyond that. And to be clear, it's a couple hundred additional positions. It's not like four or five.
[00:39:50] Shannon Cheng: Okay, thanks. 'Cause I feel like people conflate that a lot - this talk of supporting SPD and public safety and fully funding their hiring plan, which it sounds like that's what has been happening, but then you have this conversation about abrogating these positions or ghost cops. And so you're saying that those are two separate things?
[00:40:10] BJ Last: Absolutely. SPD - they always put out incredibly optimistic hiring plans, even by their own terms. So their hiring plan for next year is still that they will end up with - I think it's a record number of hires, like more than they've ever had - hiring 125 cops, I think it is. And with the number of cops leaving slowing down. And they're like - Cool, our full hiring plan for next year is roughly 1,130 cops. And they're currently getting funded for like 1,344 cops, something like that - it's a difference of 213 positions between what they've said they can hire and what they actually plan on trying to hire - between that and what they're actually funded for.
[00:40:47] Shannon Cheng: What are the issues in the hiring pipeline? Why is there a limit to the number of officers that they would actually be able to hire?
[00:40:54] Amy Sundberg: I mean, there's a lot of factors. Primarily, there aren't enough applicants to begin with - not enough people want to become police officers at SPD. That's an issue. But as well, I just also - the hiring process takes time because they have to go through a series of testing and vetting. And then if they aren't lateral hires - if they're new recruits, then they have to go through the academy. And even once they're done with academy, they go through more training on the job, so they're not really full officers at that point yet. So it just - there's a long ramp to hiring new officers. Lateral officers - SPD has a great interest in hiring them because they've already been a police officer somewhere else. So they can kind of get plugged in more easily, directly into SPD. But they've been having a really difficult time finding lateral hires. So far in 2023 - I forget - it was four, five, or six total lateral hires for the entire year. And they had expected to be able to hire many more. And when asked about it, Chief Diaz said that the candidates simply weren't good enough for them to hire more than that. But somehow magically, they expect the candidates to get better next year if you look at who they expect to hire next year, which I think is interesting.
[00:42:09] BJ Last: And I'd also say, Amy, none of that is unique to Seattle at all. It was already touched on - this is not just Seattle Police Department is having trouble hiring, this is police departments everywhere. Fewer people want to become cops. And just like Seattle, it really, really wants lateral hires because it's much shorter. I think the timeline from a new recruit is like 18 months before they are counted as a employable officer, or whatever their term is. The lateral is much shorter. So not only does Seattle want them, every other department wants them. Thing is just - people do not want to be cops as much. We know one of the things that isn't a barrier to hiring at all is pay. The average SPD officer made over $155,000 in 2022, based on the City's wage data. So they are making - the city pays an absolute ton for SPD on the individual officer level. There're the hiring bonuses that have been around that don't do anything. So it's - for these lateral hires, it's $30K that they're getting offered, it's $7,500 for a new recruit. So the city has already tried throwing just buckets and buckets of money to see if that would somehow turn into more people wanting to be cops in Seattle. And it has absolutely positively not worked. And that really needs to be acknowledged - not throwing money at this one - that's not going to change things here. It's not unique to Seattle, it's across everything.
And it's also one of the reasons why other cities have moved to actually non-police responses to things. Because we look back - tons and tons of studies - SPD did its own study in 2019 that showed, I think it was 56% of all 911 calls are non-criminal. There was the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform Study that came out in 2021 - showed 80% of all the calls SPD is currently doing don't match anything in the criminal code, and 49% of those calls could immediately go to the community. So one of the reasons other cities are going into non-police responses is because it's what cops actually do - is they respond to non-criminal stuff, that's where they spend all their time. So why on earth are we throwing all of this money at people to show up, and escalate non-criminal situations, and traumatize people? And Seattle has really dragged its heels on that. After having talked about non-police response for years, multiple studies coming out about how little of SPD's calls are actually anything that counts as criminal, how much could go to community - just this last month, they finally launched a dual dispatch, which is SPD responding to stuff. So years later, the city has just refused to move on this item.
[00:44:43] Amy Sundberg: I will also add, since we're in the middle of election season - I keep hearing from candidates that what they want to do to fix public safety in Seattle is hire 500 new cops. And I'll just say, your opinion doesn't matter - regardless of your opinion of whether we should hire more cops, whether you want less cops - we are not gonna hire 500 new cops in Seattle anytime soon. It is literally impossible. It is just not gonna happen. So when I hear candidates say that - I mean, it's pie-in-the-sky thinking, it's not a real solution because there are not 500 new cops for us to hire. And also there's, as BJ said, there's the 18 month ramp up to even get someone trained up to become a police officer. So this is just not reality.
[00:45:32] Shannon Cheng: Okay, well, speaking of a mismatch between reality and intended outcomes, I keep hearing about this technology called ShotSpotter. I feel like we had a giant debate over it last year, it sounds like it's reared its ugly head again this year. Can you break down what this fight over ShotSpotter is and why it's important?
[00:45:54] BJ Last: Sure, so ShotSpotter at a basic level - well, first off, so the company is now called SoundThinking. They did a rebrand because - yeah, the reputation that ShotSpotter has. It's an acoustic gunshot detection service is what it describes itself as - and it is people sitting in a room hundreds of miles away, listening to recordings of loud noises. And then saying whether or not they think that loud noise was a gunshot. That is what ShotSpotter boils down to. Like they swear there's a super fancy AI algorithm, but whatever that AI decides to flag - it goes to people sitting in a room hundreds of miles away, listening to a noise, and saying whether or not they think it was a gunshot. And they have a large financial interest in actually saying everything was a gunshot. Because of how the contracts are written - that there's no guarantees that they won't send a lot of false alerts. The only guarantee that is in there is anything where the police actually find that there was evidence of a gunshot - for 90% of those, ShotSpotter will have given an alert. So it's pretty much if they say that something wasn't a gunshot, and it turns out it was, that then could potentially hurt their contract. If they call every single loud noise a gunshot, that has zero impact on them at all. So people listening to loud noises with an incentive to go and say everything's a gunshot.
And you are right - we had this fight just last year, when the city went and asked for it. And what this ask was - was they asked for additional funding, specifically for ShotSpotter, which council declined to give them. They're asking for it again. Of that additional money specifically for ShotSpotter - this additional money piece actually though, has no impact on whether or not the city actually purchases ShotSpotter. In order to purchase a subscription to ShotSpotter - because it's a subscriptions purchase, so it becomes an annual expense every single year - SPD has to go through a Surveillance Impact Report, which is they have to meet with the community, put together what would be a lot of - what would be the impacts of this technology, what does it do, get community feedback, and then council also has to go and approve that. SPD has been able to do this any single day that it's wanted to. It could have started this process. When they first asked for it last year, they could have started this process then. In any of the time between last year's budget and now, they could have started this process. So they have not done that. So they're asking for money - again, for something that they've taken no steps to actually get anywhere close to being able to legally purchase.
[00:48:17] Amy Sundberg: I think too - I have a lot to say about ShotSpotter - I've spent way too much of the last several weeks of my life thinking about ShotSpotter. And to be honest, I just - I find it personally painful that we're having this discussion again this year. Because not only is ShotSpotter ineffective, so it's a waste of money - which is bad enough. I mean, we obviously do not have money to waste. But it is actively harmful, to be clear. There are many, many studies that show this. It increases the number of pat-downs, searches, and enforcement actions. It justifies the over-policing of Black, Indigenous, and people of color neighborhoods that they are primarily living in. It leads to unnecessary contact between the police and vulnerable populations. And it also leads to false arrests. There have even been some cases where they've shown that possibly some of the "evidence" - I put that in air quotes - "evidence" has been tampered with in various ways. I mean, this is actively harmful. It is not just a waste of money. And then also, this year is being sold as part of a crime prevention pilot.
And let me be clear - gun violence is a huge problem. It's a huge problem in Seattle. It's a huge problem in King County. Frankly, it's a huge problem across the entire country. And I don't want to minimize the impacts of that in any way, but there is no evidence that shows that ShotSpotter decreases gun violence. So people who are desperate, who want a solution to that problem, are being sold ShotSpotter as the solution, but it's not true. And that's what I find so painful, right? Is that there's people who desperately need a solution to this problem, and instead of actually giving them one that might have a chance of working, they're given ShotSpotter as a false hope instead - which I find repugnant, frankly.
[00:50:13] BJ Last: Oh yeah - it's incredibly predatory what they do, Amy. They prey on communities that are struggling with issues of gun violence - which is a massive issue, as you said, that really has huge impacts - and they sell them something that just makes things worse. You mentioned on some of the - what happens with some of these alerts - Adam Toledo was one of the most famous examples of this. So Adam Toledo was a 13-year-old that the Chicago police killed because they were responding to a ShotSpotter alert. And they chased after a 13-year-old, and ended up shooting him in an alley when his hands were empty - when there was nothing in his hands. So this is the real harm that does come from this. And again, it is preying off of communities that have been disinvested in and that are dealing with real problems of gun violence and being like - Oh, hey, here's something we swear will make it better. And that goes and makes it worse.
[00:51:01] Amy Sundberg: I will also say - we had this fight last year, we're having it again. There've been a few new wrinkles that have been introduced this year that I think are important to address. One of them is that this year, they have proposed that along with the ShotSpotter acoustic gunshot technology, that they include CCTV cameras. And what Senior Deputy Mayor Burgess said during one of these budget meetings was that the combination of these two technologies leads to higher accuracy and also better admissibility in court. However, these claims have not been backed up. We did find a study that shows that, in fact, the combination of these two technologies does not improve accuracy. And Councilmember Herbold asked Tim Burgess for his evidence - What makes you think this? A month after she asked, she says she finally received his answer - which was six reports on CCTV alone with no ShotSpotter technology included so does not, in fact, give any evidence that it makes ShotSpotter better. And one kind of manual suggesting that maybe you could combine these two technologies with no study attached. So the only study we have found says, in fact, it does not improve the accuracy. So I think that's really important to note. There seems to be a certain lack of regard from certain quarters for actually looking at the evidence - that I find sad, frankly.
And another wrinkle that I'll mention is that BJ talked about the Surveillance Ordinance - the report that they would have to do in order to implement ShotSpotter. In the original proposal from the mayor's office, they asked to do one report - so each report, you have to do a racial equity analysis as part of that report - and they asked to only do one report. But this is mobile technology, so you can pick up the camera and the ShotSpotter tech and you can move it to a different neighborhood. So they would only be doing their racial equity analysis in the original neighborhoods that it was going to be placed, and then they could pick it up and move it to any other neighborhood without having to do another racial equity analysis, which I think is deeply problematic because different neighborhoods are different. And a lot of the neighborhoods that they were talking about originally using this technology on are primarily white. And my concern would be - what if they picked it up and moved it to a community that wasn't primarily white, but didn't have to do a racial impact report on that. That is deeply troubling. And I will say Councilmember Mosqueda, in her balancing package, addressed this problem and said - No, you should do a racial equity impact for each time you move it. So hopefully we won't buy ShotSpotter at all, but hopefully that change will stay if we do - because I think you can't do one impact report for a neighborhood, and then move it somewhere completely different and expect that report to have any validity.
[00:54:09] Shannon Cheng: So ShotSpotter doesn't address the problem it's claiming to try to solve. In fact, it sounds like it might be making things worse. And so they're asking this year for about $1.8 million, but what do we know from other cities - once you buy a pilot, this $1.8 million this year, what happens after that?
[00:54:28] BJ Last: It's a subscription service. So even if you wanted to maintain the same amount or the same coverage area, you are spending that every single year. So this is, would be an ongoing expense. And that's also assuming the ShotSpotter doesn't change its rates. And then if you decided to expand the footprint of where it is, that's gonna add what you're spending every single year. So it is very much just an ongoing expense into a budget that as we said - hey, is already facing a substantial general fund deficit for something that does not address a serious problem.
[00:55:00] Amy Sundberg: And the company SoundThinking - I mean, their business model is to persuade cities to expand. So it would not be surprising to me if we were to start this pilot - if in a few years we were spending more like $10 million on ShotSpotter, that would not shock me.
[00:55:16] Shannon Cheng: Okay, so it's - this year, we're trying to decide whether to dip a toe into this ShotSpotter technology, but it could lead to larger expenditures in future years if this initial pilot gets funded further.
[00:55:34] BJ Last: Absolutely. And also the ShotSpotter company SoundThinking - they do a lot of other surveillance items. They recently bought PredPol, which is nominally predictive policing, that has all the absolute racial bias issues that you probably imagine the moment that a company said that they can sell you predictive policing. So odds are it would not even be staying at just ShotSpotter - of microphones listening for loud noises - that SoundThinking would be trying to then expand to all of their other horrible, dystopian, incredibly biased technology.
[00:56:05] Shannon Cheng: Yay.
[00:56:07] Amy Sundberg: It's really concerning, right? I think a lot of people want to hold up technology as this panacea - where it will fix everything. And that is not always the case. And in this case, I would argue it is not at all the case. And there are actually things that we could be investing in that might address the issue much more effectively.
[00:56:28] BJ Last: Yeah, like the things that are proven to work on this are low tech items - they're violence interruption programs, resourcing communities, things like that that are actually shown to reduce gun violence.
[00:56:39] Amy Sundberg: Even physical changes in the environment have been shown to have a significant effect - like adding more lighting, for example.
[00:56:47] Shannon Cheng: So those are some of the big fights over public safety, which - they're really important. Unfortunately, I also feel like they often overshadow some of the other big fights that might be going on - just there's a lot of rhetoric right now about public safety, especially with the ongoing election. So what are some of the other big budget fights that you're seeing in this year's deliberations?
[00:57:05] BJ Last: Well, I'd say a lot of those fights are actually also public safety items. Like there are fights on School Safety Traffic and Pedestrian Improvement, SSTPI fund - so that's been getting cut. That is safe routes for kids to walk and bike to school - Vision Zero stuff is also getting cut. We're fighting really to stop that. And so far, at least 22 pedestrians have been killed while walking, biking, or rolling. So that is absolutely a public safety item, I would say. Same with - there are currently amendments to undo the cuts to food safety. The proposed budget cut about $950,000 from food security, so that was 650K roughly for food banks and 300K for food access. I would very much say that food access is also very much a public safety item. I think there was even a French musical, Les Mis - didn't that have a lot to do with an entire revolution because people couldn't afford bread and were hungry?
[00:57:58] Amy Sundberg: There also is a fight about funding behavioral health services at Tiny House villages. Right now, that funding is a lot less than it was in 2023 for 2024. And the reason why that's important is because having this funding allows Tiny House villages to house people with higher acuity needs. But if they don't have those services available, then those people can't live there. So, I mean, that's a huge issue. And there are a couple amendments to address that - one of them would take the ShotSpotter money and use it instead to pay for that, which I think is a great use of that money. And there also are fights about pay wages for human service workers - to make sure that all human service workers are getting inflationary increase and a 2% raise on top of that, a true 2% raise on top of that. There have been various little fiddly things regarding that - some of those workers were not covered because they're technically paid through King County or with federal money. But they're still doing the job every day, they still deserve that full 2% raise. So there are amendments that are working to address that shortfall to make sure that those folks get paid a fair wage.
[00:59:08] BJ Last: Yeah, and on the 2% raise for human service providers, there's a pay equity study that the University of Washington released - I think it was February this year - that found human service workers in Seattle are underpaid by 37%. So 2% is just a drop in the bucket compared to what we, a city-funded study by UW found that they are currently underfunded by. There was even a resolution passed that wants to increase their wages by 7% by 2025, so this is a small item just trying to move inline with that resolution and to also make progress towards that study. 'Cause again - underpaid by 37% is huge and that impacts people's ability to actually provide services.
One other item I'll throw out - there was also a cut in the budget to ADA accessibility. The reason that the City specifically funds this is the City was actually sued because our city is so inaccessible. And this is money to increase the number of curb cuts to make our sidewalks more accessible. And one of the really big things on this is the City funds on this really are supposed to make sure that the entire city itself is accessible. 'Cause apparently one way that the city can sort of get around paying for part of this is - if new construction is going in and puts in curb cuts, that can count like the number that they need for this. We know the neighborhoods with lots of new construction going in. So the fact that there are a ton of new curb cuts in South Lake Union, absolutely is not an excuse to cut ADA accessibility funding that covers the entire city.
[01:00:39] Shannon Cheng: Sounds like there's no shortage of needs desperately needed for funding across all of the budget, so it will be interesting to see how these fights pan out. So I just wanted to talk a little bit about how people can get involved and learn more about the budget if they're curious about this. I mean, you two are experts and - how do you go about that?
[01:01:01] BJ Last: So I'd say - two really good tools that people can go to for more information. So on the City Council's website - so if you go to just seattle.gov/council - there is a budget tool on there that is very helpful. Sorry, the link to that one's a bit longer, so I'm not gonna try to like read it out and hope--
[01:01:18] Shannon Cheng: Oh, don't worry - I'll put any of the links in the show notes.
[01:01:21] BJ Last: Oh, nice. And then the other is if you go to seattle.gov/city-budget-office, you can find the entire budget book for both this year and prior years - to go and read through.
[01:01:34] Amy Sundberg: There's also a fair amount of local reporting - not just from the Seattle Times, but from PubliCola, from The Stranger, from The Urbanist, my Notes from the Emerald City - I cover the public safety budget news. So you can follow some of it that way.
[01:01:49] Shannon Cheng: Okay, that's great. So that's - if you don't have time or interest in attending personally every single budget hearing, or meeting, or briefing, right? But I mean - that information, it is publicly happening. We talked to a lot of candidates on this show leading up to the city council elections and we asked them about the budget. And I would say there were varying degrees of understanding of how the budget works or what kind of information is even out there. So it is out there, right? Like it might be kind of hard to dig into or dig up, but it's not like it's inaccessible.
[01:02:25] Amy Sundberg: It is out there. It is available. And also there are people like us who talk about the budget all the time and would happily talk about the budget to more people.
[01:02:33] Shannon Cheng: Yes, that is exactly why I wanted the two of you to come on to the show with me.
[01:02:37] BJ Last: Yeah, I'd say also a good resource - follow Solidarity Budget. We have our website - make sure you have the link to that - and also we're on a bunch of social media stuff. We post a bunch of stuff about the budget, so it is another resource to follow for news on that one. 'Cause as you mentioned, Shannon, it is a ton of time if you're trying to actually attend every budget meeting and/or read through the entire budget itself, which is - I think it's over a thousand pages. If not, it's at least very close.
[01:03:04] Shannon Cheng: Did you read through the entire budget, BJ?
[01:03:07] BJ Last: No.
[01:03:08] Shannon Cheng: Wow, even you haven't. Okay. Well, there we have it. So what are opportunities if people wanna get more involved with Solidarity Budget - whether that's more in deep involvement and they wanna dig into the spreadsheets and the weeds about the budget, or they only have a little bit of time and want to lend support to what you're fighting for and don't know where to start. What can people do?
[01:03:28] Amy Sundberg: I mean, I'll talk about the easiest things first, I think - and I'll even throw some dates your way so that people can mark them on their calendar if they're feeling inspired. So I mean, the easiest thing to do is to advocate with your councilmembers. And there are many ways that you can do that. You can email them, you can call their office, you can try to set up a meeting with them. I don't know that this is happening right now, but sometimes they even will like go to farmers' markets and hang out. So you can go and talk to them during their office hours at farmers' markets or whatever. And then there also are public comment opportunities at these budget meetings, where you can go and give - it's usually 60 seconds to 120 seconds, so one to two minutes. I say plan for 90 seconds and then go with it. And which you can tell them exactly what you would like to see in the budget or what you would like to see removed in the budget. And if you want to give public comment, you can either go in person to City Hall, or you can call in remotely if you want to do it from the comfort of your home or if you want to do it from your workplace, right? There are options for everybody.
A couple of upcoming events and opportunities - on Wednesday, November 8th, there's gonna be a ShotSpotter webinar - so it'll be virtual at 5:30 PM - that you can sign up for on our website, seattlesolidaritybudget.com. And then there's opportunity to give public comment on Monday, November 13th - there's actually opportunity at 10 AM and at 5 PM. At 5 PM is the big public hearing - that's just all it is - is a lot of people giving public comment. There's gonna be a big rally. It's gonna be amazing. I recommend you come out or call in for that one. The final budget will be voted on on November 21st - there will be opportunities to comment at that meeting at 2 PM. Although at that point, it's mostly finalized usually unless something interesting happens. But this year, because of the progressive revenue conversation, there's actually gonna be that additional meeting talking about progressive revenue. So if that's what has you fired up and you wanna give comment on that, that meeting is November 30th, it's a Thursday. And I think it will be at probably at 10 AM. Although like BJ said, you can always check our website to find out more information there.
[01:05:45] Shannon Cheng: And we will provide all these links in the show notes, so don't worry if you didn't get that all.
[01:05:49] Amy Sundberg: Yeah, there's a lot of dates. There's a lot to keep track of. We also do provide scripts to let you know what Seattle Solidarity Budget's priorities are in terms of what we would like to see changed in the budget, additional investments we'd like to see, or things we'd like to be removed.
[01:06:06] Shannon Cheng: Great.
[01:06:07] BJ Last: And as Amy said - yes, there's the big hearing on the 13th and opportunities for public comment. You can also - as Amy said - you can email, call your councilmembers anytime. Like you do not have to wait for that. You just heard something today and you're like - Hey, I think that's messed up or that's something we should do. You can type an email right now. So no time like the present. You don't need to wait for the public hearing.
[01:06:28] Shannon Cheng: All right, great. Just to wrap up - people talk about budgets as moral documents, as a representation of the values that we, as a society and our community, want to see happen. I'd just like to end the show - we've been pretty deep in the weeds, but what is your vision for what you want to see in the budget? Like if you, if none of these politics or complicated situations existed and you could get your dream item into the budget, what would that be? We'll start with you, Amy.
[01:06:58] Amy Sundberg: Yeah, so I'm a big advocate for a guaranteed basic income, which is a no-strings-attached cash payment - usually monthly, although it doesn't have to be - to people who are in need in various ways. And I would love to see that be prioritized for people who are impacted by the carceral system and over-policing in particular. And we've just seen amazing results from guaranteed basic income programs throughout the country. They've kind of multiplied over the past few years, so we have a lot of data. And what the data shows is that it just improves people's lives on so many levels. It improves their physical health, it improves their mental health, it improves children's brain development, it improves children's educational attainment, adults' educational attainment. And there actually are some pretty new, interesting studies that show that it actually could decrease violence, which I think is a really interesting opportunity. It increases food security, housing security - I mean, it's great.
And what I really love about guaranteed basic income is that it really empowers people to take control over their lives and to make their own choices about their lives. It lets them regain their dignity. So when you read the stories about people who have participated in these programs, get ready - have a tissue, get ready to get a little teary-eyed. I know I do, because it can really - it has such a huge impact. I hosted a panel earlier this season about guaranteed basic income, bringing in local experts who are running programs like this in Washington State. And one of the people we had come was King County Councilmember Zahilay. And he said, This is one of the most personally impactful programs that I've been a part of as a King County Councilmember. GBI is the future. Like you hear stories of people who are able to buy soap - I'm not even kidding, right? Like soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste. The one that always gets me is grandparents who are able to buy their grandchildren presents for the first time in years - I can't say that without tearing up. People who are able to see family who lives far away for the first time in years. People are able to get tutors or help for their kids. These GBI programs just make such a huge difference. So I would love to see a very large, robust, long-term GBI program funded by Seattle public dollars.
[01:09:28] BJ Last: Also to tie onto that, Amy - not only just the incredible human benefit to people of GBI and how transformative it is for people, it's also cheap. And there've been some studies showing that it actually is cheaper than some other options. Vancouver, BC, and I think there was at least one other city had studies doing - hey, they did GBI for people who are currently unsheltered. And they're like - Oh wow, this actually got people into housing so much faster that it saved the city money because it was less that had to be spent on temporary shelter and other supports. So not only is it incredibly transformative, but it's not something where suddenly you think of and that creates a big budget problem. It actually doesn't. So it's - you empower people, improve their lives, and save money.
[01:10:11] Amy Sundberg: Well, it addresses the root causes that are a lot of the reasons people don't feel safe in the first place.
[01:10:16] Shannon Cheng: What's your dream item, BJ?
[01:10:19] BJ Last: I was actually probably gonna go GBI as well.
[01:10:22] Shannon Cheng: That's okay, you can have the same one.
[01:10:24] BJ Last: But since that has been sort of mentioned, the one thing - if we wanted a second item, I'd also put out participatory budgeting, which did come out. There was some money allocated to that in the 2021 budget that has not been spent still 'cause the city has just dragged its feet on rolling that out. So a real ongoing annual investment in that that was actually rolled out to be deployed versus the city kind of always trying to fight it - 'cause that is another empowering item of letting communities decide - what do we think is the biggest need that we have.
[01:10:54] Shannon Cheng: Great, yeah. I think they just extended the voting for that initial participatory budgeting program to November 12th, so we'll include a link to that in the show notes also. Well, those all sound like wonderful things that we could spend money on in our budget. And now it's time to go out and fight and try to get the money and political will to do it. So thank you both so much for being on the show with us today, and I guess that's it.
[01:11:21] Amy Sundberg: Thanks for having us.
[01:11:22] BJ Last: Thank you so much for having us, Shannon.
[01:11:23] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Election 2023 re-air, Crystal chats with Sarah Reyneveld about her campaign for King County Council District 4 - why she decided to run, the experience she brings as a public sector attorney and community advocate, and her thoughts on addressing frontline worker wages and workforce issues, the need for upstream alternatives in the criminal legal system and substance use crisis, how to improve policy implementation, climate change and air quality, and budget revenue and transparency.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Sarah Reyneveld at @SarahReyneveld.
Resources
Campaign Website - Sarah Reyneveld
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Hello, I'm so excited to be welcoming to the program today King County Council candidate, Sarah Reyneveld. Hello.
[00:01:01] Sarah Reyneveld: Hello, Crystal. Thank you so much for having me today - I'm excited about the conversation.
[00:01:07] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I guess just starting out - we have seen you run for State Legislature before. I'm wondering why you're choosing to run for the County now, and what do you hope to accomplish in that position?
[00:01:18] Sarah Reyneveld: Yes, I think that King County Council and the King County is really at a critical point in time, and I'm excited to bring my lived experience as a working parent, a Seattle Public School parent, a transit rider, a union organizer - I helped organize my union of Assistant Attorney Generals - and also my experience as a public sector attorney who has fought for workers and our environment, and as a community advocate working with communities across King County to really make transformative change for workers, working families, and our environment on the King County Council. So for some background - in 2016, I became King County Councilmember Kohl-Welles' appointment to the King County Women's Advisory Board where I had the opportunity to work with communities throughout King County and the King County Council to help advocate for and secure investments in affordable housing, in behavioral health, childcare, and services to support survivors of gender-based violence. I started this work and became the Chair of the King County Women's Advisory Board before the pandemic - and I had two young kids at the time - and we had struggled like so many parents with access to affordable childcare, and the board at that time decided to take up that issue. So we worked on recommendations to expand childcare access for working parents and were able to work together with communities across King County, and the Executive, and King County Council to help reinstate a childcare subsidy, to expand access to childcare for working families, and establish a wage provider boost to help increase pay for childcare providers who are disproportionately women and BIPOC women and immigrants. And then the pandemic hit and I continued to do this work and it really laid bare - staggering inequities and injustices in King County that disproportionately impacted women and our communities of color and immigrants and other marginalized communities, who are more likely to be on the forefront and were experiencing disproportionately - unemployment and financial loss and illness.
So as I continue to work on these issues, I saw what an important role King County played in not just responding to the pandemic and now the shadow pandemic, but in really providing public health, and behavioral health, and public transit, and helping with food security and housing. So I'm running for King County Council because I've been doing this work with community and I think the status quo is no longer good enough. We need bold and transformative action to really meet the urgency of this moment. We have a really unique opportunity to create a more equitable economy and a sustainable future for all workers and working families in King County. And I think that King County can and must do more - and my priorities are to create more truly affordable housing to help better meet the behavioral health needs of our neighbors in crisis, to really tackle the climate crisis and protect our environment for future generations, to provide accessible and frequent public transit for all, and to really look at what we can do to reimagine our public safety and criminal legal system. So I'm excited about the opportunity.
[00:04:46] Crystal Fincher: I see. Now you covered a lot there. In there, you mentioned caring for workers, addressing housing. One thing called out by experts as a barrier to our homelessness response is that frontline worker wages don't cover the cost of living. Do you think our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for our area? And how can we make that more likely with how we bid and contract for services?
[00:05:10] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, absolutely. I absolutely think that our nonprofits have a duty to pay more in terms of adequately funding - not just contracts - but ensuring that those contracts lead to an equitable living wage and union jobs. And that includes cost of living adjustments and other supports for workers. So right now we have a really high turnover rate for frontline workers and particularly those workers that the County contracts with - I've heard 40-60% turnover rate. And I think we need to address the underlying issue of why those workers are turning over. And the underlying issue - one of them is pay equity and not ensuring that we are paying, particularly our frontline workers, adequately or providing them with the supports that they need. So it's about equitable pay, it's about cost of living adjustments, and it's about ensuring that those workers have access to affordable housing and transit in King County as well - so they can really afford to live where they work. And so I see this issue as very intersectional and something that King County can do more to address. And I would just say, generally, I think we as a society tend to lift up certain sorts of workers - the CEOs of companies, for example. And those people that are really doing the real work of caring for our community - of building our housing, of connecting us through transit, of providing behavioral health services - we don't invest equitably or sufficiently in those workers. And so starting with contracting is critically important, but we need to do more to ensure that we're investing in living wage jobs, and workforce housing, and bonuses, and ensuring that these workers have the supports that they need. And that is part of my vision for building back better and creating a more equitable economy that really centers workers and working families in King County.
[00:07:13] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Now, would you have voted to approve the transfer of inmates to the SCORE jail to alleviate a lot of the issues plaguing the King County Jail, including overcrowding, lack of water, inadequate healthcare, illnesses, understaffing? Would you have voted in the same way that the King County Council did?
[00:07:31] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, I think that's a great question. I want to start with just the conditions at the King County Jail. So the six deaths in 2022 in the downtown jail and kind of the subsequent ACLU lawsuit, I think, show that King County is failing too many criminally involved individuals, particularly our Black and Brown community members and those with chronic behavioral health and substance use issues. I am really concerned about what is happening in terms of inhumane conditions at the jail that include excessive use of solitary confinement, and lack of transportation to medical appointments and court appointments, and delays with mental health and other medical appointments. And I think King County, which is the oversight body of the King County Jail, needs to do more to address these concerns and ensure safety. And these really poor conditions at the jail didn't happen overnight. They are partially caused by lack of adequate staffing - that's been an issue for decades and was exacerbated since COVID. And also issues with an antiquated, really obsolete building. And lack of access to medical care and treatment, as I was stating.
So on the King County Council, if elected, I want to work with disproportionately impacted communities and fellow King County Councilmembers to urgently address these issues. I think we need to invest more in restorative justice. And when the King County Council took that vote in terms of transferring those incarcerated folks to SCORE, I think they noted that we need to do more in terms of investing in restorative justice and upstream alternatives to really reimagine our criminal legal system. So first I think we need to prevent and reduce incarceration through investing in upstream - investments in youth and vulnerable adults. And that means doing more to expand effective diversion programs, such as the Law Assisted Diversion Program and Co-LEAD, which has been really effective in diverting folks out of the criminal legal system and out of the King County Jail to begin with. I think we also need to move towards actualizing King County Executive's vision and so many activists' vision of really closing the downtown jail and reimagining and reducing the size of the King County facilities.
So in terms of the SCORE vote, I don't think either option were good options. The King County Council arrived at that vote because there had not been enough, really, work done on restorative justice and on the underlying issues around staffing and overcrowding at the jail. And I think keeping vulnerable incarcerated people in a downtown jail that had significant understaffing and overcrowding issues and a lack of access to medicine, or transferring incarcerated people to a facility that had potentially access-to-justice issues is not - neither one of those are good options. And so that's why I want to roll up my sleeves and ensure that we're really investing sufficiently in diversion programs and alternatives - to invest in folks to prevent them from becoming incarcerated in the first place and also move towards reimagining our system. And I will say that I don't think King County Council can address this issue alone. In 2022, there were over, I think, 100 people in King County Jail that were deemed to be incompetent to stand trial in King County that were awaiting a treatment bed. So if we work with our state partners to really fund mental health and ensure treatment for vulnerable populations like this, then we won't have to make these sort of decisions.
[00:11:00] Crystal Fincher: So am I hearing that you would not vote - disagreeing with this vote? If in the future a vote were to come up to extend or expand this SCORE transfer or transfer to other jails, does that mean you're a No vote on that?
[00:11:13] Sarah Reyneveld: I think that we need to, like I said, invest in alternatives and upstream alternatives to the criminal legal system. So like Councilmember Zahilay and Councilmember Kohl-Welles said - the transfer to SCORE was really not addressing the root cause of the issue. We need to be investing in upstream alternatives and staffing and ensuring that folks within our system are safe.
[00:11:36] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Now you talked about substance use disorder being so key in treating upstream issues to really address the root causes of what is leading people to criminal behavior. We're dealing with a conundrum. The governor just called a special session following our State Supreme Court invalidating personal substance possession as a crime. Our Legislature took action a couple of years ago to recriminalize it - that has a sunset provision. They were not able to decide on any statewide policy before the session ended, so they're going to be taking that up in a special session. There are conversations about - should drug use be criminalized at all? If it should, is it a misdemeanor, gross misdemeanor, felony? Where do you stand? Where should personal possession of substances be dealt with? How would you handle that?
[00:12:27] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, I think this is an issue that the Legislature has been grappling with and it's really an important issue. And I think we need to be moving away from criminalization of drug possession. Specifically, we moved away from criminalization of drug possession for marijuana - we need to do the same thing with psychedelics and other sorts of drugs that have medicinal and other positive effects. I think when it comes to addressing our fentanyl and heroin crisis, I think that if I were a legislator, I'd probably move in the direction of ensuring that we're looking at the lesser of any sort of crime - which would be a misdemeanor - and looking at pathways to treatment for that use. And I think we have to think about how we can connect folks that are in crisis because of substance use disorder with services. And so to me, it's about what more can King County do - because I'm not sitting in the place of a legislator - to ensure that we're investing in upstream solutions and treatment. And so I think helping to implement the King County Crisis Care Center Levy and ensuring that folks that are in - particularly a substance use crisis, whether - we know that we have a fentanyl crisis. I have worked on litigation to sue Purdue Pharma and understand just the addictive effects of those drugs. And we need to make sure that there's - those folks are connected to Medicaid-assisted treatment on demand, that they're connected to services. And so looking at what more we can do to scale up the crisis centers in an equitable way and preserve and restore beds that are primarily aimed at treating the underlying causes - I think it's critically important.
And so one of my priorities, if elected to the King County Council, will be to look at how we're implementing these crisis care centers, how I'm working potentially with the Legislature for additional treatment beds for substance use disorder. I have, as so many people have had, someone in my life that has experienced a substance use disorder issue. And I think it's so hard to navigate the system to even find detox or substance use treatment for someone like me that knows how to navigate systems, much less someone that could be either at-risk at being involved in the criminal legal system or becoming unhoused or dealing with a substance use crisis. And so finding ways in which we can ensure that those that are affected are obtaining treatment, I think is critically important.
[00:15:07] Crystal Fincher: You raised a number of important issues there and you touched on helping to get the Crisis Care Centers Levy - which passed - implemented.
[00:15:16] Sarah Reyneveld: Yes.
[00:15:17] Crystal Fincher: There have been some criticisms and challenges with implementation of programs - at all levels of government, really, but including with the County - and issues of staffing that may not have been foreseen, or challenges run into, communication issues. Do you think there's an opportunity to improve implementation of policy and programs overall? And how do we need to do that? What needs to change in order for that to happen?
[00:15:42] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, I think that's an excellent point. And I absolutely think there are opportunities to improve policy implementation at the County. One of the things that I really appreciate about King County's work and that I wanna bring as a lens to my work is that I do believe that the best public policy is made - I think Councilmember Zahilay says this in his views and paraphrasing him, but - by those that are closest to the injustice. And so we really need to invest in community-based solution to a lot of our largest challenges in King County. And so I appreciate that on all issues of County government and all levels of County government, whether it be addressing the gun violence crisis or the behavioral health crisis or childcare, we're really investing in community-based solutions. So I think that's critically important, but I think we also have to have a way to measure outcomes in terms of what is the County doing that's working and what is the County doing that's not working. And if we have, for example, a health through housing facility that we have stood up, but it's not being adequately staffed and we're not adequately utilizing it, and really ensuring that vulnerable populations can access housing and those services - we need to look at what more we can do to ensure that that is being used appropriately and we're really maximizing opportunities to make good use of public dollars. So I think we absolutely need to be working with communities and listening to communities and centering their voices. And then I think King County, as a body, needs to work with those communities to make sure that the investments that were being made are working on the community level and that we're really scaling up things that work. And I, as someone who's taught at the Evans School of Public Affairs and has been a policy wonk for years, am really interested in working with community and my fellow councilmembers in doing that work.
[00:17:38] Crystal Fincher: So on almost every measure, we're behind our 2030 climate goals. You've talked about addressing climate change and mitigating the impacts of that on people being one of your priorities. We've experienced the impacts from wildfires, heat and cold, floods, et cetera. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet our 2030 goals?
[00:17:59] Sarah Reyneveld: Yes, thank you for that excellent question. As an Assistant Attorney General that works to protect our environment and public health, this is an issue that is critically important to me because of the urgency of action and the need to really address this challenge - centering communities in a just transition. So first, I think we need to electrify transportation and invest deeply in transit. We know that to meet our carbon reduction goals, we have to get people out of cars and into transit. And yet we have seen that Metro Transit service has languished since the pandemic and ridership has fallen by half. And those transit delays - I'm a transit rider to work, I take my little boy to daycare downtown with me - and they're disproportionately affecting transit riders, which are working families, BIPOC communities, low income communities, youth, seniors, and others that rely on transit. And it's a transit justice issue. So I have already been doing some of this work, but if elected to the King County Council, I want to continue this work by working with a coalition of transit riders and groups like the Transit Riders Union and Seattle Subway and The Urbanist and others to pass a county-wide transit revenue package to fund a King County Transportation Benefit District, which would supplant the city one and really help us restore an increased Metro Transit service to deliver faster, more frequent, reliable, and zero-emission service that connects all our community members. I think the measure should also ensure that transit is free to those who are cost-burdened. Right now, one of our impediments to increasing transit service and getting people out of cars is the shortage of transit operators and mechanics. And part of this funding package, or looking at other funding sources, has to be to address that issue of recruiting and retaining Metro bus drivers. And that has to include a living wage and additional incentives and supports, including safety supports, to build the workforce of Metro operators. Now, I just spoke to Metro operators at ATU last week, and they told me they're facing significant workplace safety and pay and other challenges that are really contributing to job stress and attrition. So we have to address that underlying issue if we're gonna get people out of cars and into transit.
I also think we need to do more to decarbonize our built environment, which is probably the largest carbon emission in King County, through the adoption and strengthening of commercial building codes that will require communities to reduce energy use and also center communities in initiatives such as the Climate Equity Capital Pool to electrify their homes, for electric appliances and retrofits and solar panels. I think there's a lot of opportunities that we can leverage on the federal level to use grants and incentives and rebates to really update the building codes - and achieve these energy efficiencies and decarbonize our environment and our built environment - while bringing workers along. And I think we need to look at passing stronger provisions and incentives to transition off natural gas in a way that brings people and workers along and hastens this just transition to a clean energy economy - because we know that natural gas use in commercial and residential buildings accounts for a really large percentage of greenhouse gas emissions.
I would also say that we need to do more to sustainably manage our forests and our working lands to ensure climate-friendly forest management and farming to mitigate climate change impacts and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and look at how we can promote carbon storage in soils and increase the use of green space. I would also say, probably lastly, a large percentage of the carbon emissions in King County result from our food system. So I wanna lead in ensuring that all communities have opportunities to become food producers, to access urban and rural farmland, and that we're really centering disproportionately impacted communities and empowering them to become farmers - particularly in food deserts and ensuring that tribes have access to their traditional food sources and cultural resources.
And I've talked a lot to labor about this, and I would say that I believe that we can work towards a just transition to a clean energy economy that really centers workers and equitable pathways to green jobs and apprenticeships, but it's gonna take us building a coalition. And I'm committed to really rolling up my sleeves and working with our labor partners and folks that are disproportionately impacted and our community members to build that just transition towards a clean energy economy and a sustainable community that addresses our climate crisis.
[00:23:01] Crystal Fincher: You talked about needing to address the staffing issues in our public transportation department, certainly an issue in Metro that is urgently in need of addressing. We've seen in several other departments - with sheriffs, certainly with municipal police departments in the County - that they're giving retention bonuses, hiring bonuses to help attract people. And what we've seen is - although they are on record saying that that isn't really moving the needle and may not, there are a lot of people in other departments saying that would absolutely move the needle here. Do you support retention bonuses and hiring bonus and some of the things that we've seen for folks working in public safety for other workers?
[00:23:40] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, I think that's an excellent question. I think we really need to listen to workers, and my platform is all about lifting up and centering and listening to workers. And to me, hiring bonuses are not gonna address the root cause of the issue. And the root cause of the issue is really living wages and supports for drivers. But if hiring bonuses will help certain segments of workers - I did talk to, for example, an ATU bus operator that said that they had hiring bonuses in Pierce County and that they had not yet received any sort of retention or hiring bonus. And so if that's something that's going to help workers feel valued, I think that we do have to look at that as an option. However, it doesn't really address the root cause. And that is we need to support our frontline workers and give them a living wage. So we need to increase base pay for workers. We need to give them benefits - adequate benefits - flexibility, and the working conditions that they deserve. And for some frontline workers, that's gonna mean more investment in safety measures or hazard pay. And for other frontline workers, that may include a bonus. But I think we need to listen to workers, we need to center workers, and we really need to give them living wages, benefits, and the working conditions they deserve.
I think you are absolutely right to say that the workforce issue is huge in King County, and we have to do more to address it. When I talk to workers - everyone from grocery store workers to our bus operators, to behavioral health workers - they're really struggling to make a living wage to afford to live in King County, and save for retirement, and raise their kids. And they're really the sheroes and heroes of, I think, responding to the pandemic or the shadow pandemic, but also just of taking care of our communities. And they're really bearing the brunt of our crises - our unhoused crisis, the opioid crisis, the behavioral health crisis. So we at King County have to do better to support them, and that includes living wages, benefits, and working conditions. And I am interested and very committed to doing that work to center workers.
[00:25:56] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and you're completely correct that they are bearing the brunt of that. Another issue that kind of delves both into addressing climate change and mitigating the impacts of it and public health is air and clean air within buildings. And this has been increasingly talked about - especially as we've learned more about airborne pathogens, and as we've dealt more with wildfire smoke, and how much we've learned about how pollutants and pollution impact health, impact life expectancy. There are areas in Seattle that have life expectancies years shorter than other areas in the same city. Does the County have a responsibility to provide clean and safe air within its buildings and to try and incentivize that throughout other privately owned buildings and businesses in the County?
[00:26:45] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, I absolutely think the County has a responsibility - working with our state regulators as well as our federal regulators and policymakers - to ensure that everyone has access to clean air. I see this as an environmental justice issue - you pointed out that disproportionately - communities that live in areas with higher rates of pollution and that are more impacted, disproportionately impacted by climate change are experiencing poor air quality. And I think we have seen through the effects of climate change and really rampant wildfires and other issues, that these are disproportionately impacting our frontline communities and communities that are already overburdened. So I think that one thing that we can do at the King County level is really urgently lead on addressing the climate crisis. And our air quality is just gonna get worse as the climate crisis and the impacts increase. And so I think we need someone that's gonna really roll up their sleeves and provide strong leadership to really address these underlying issues around air and water pollution and to address the climate crisis. And so I wanna do that work with disproportionately impacted communities, and part of that work is really getting people out of cars and into transit. So really think having a strong vision for what that looks like and how to center frontline communities is really critically important.
[00:28:18] Crystal Fincher: Looking at the state of this race, you're in a competitive race this time - you were last time, too - but this time you're part of a competitive race. What do your endorsements say about you, and what are you most proud of?
[00:28:33] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, I think I am - just to get back to my roots - I am a public sector attorney, I am a working parent, I am a community advocate, and I have lived in the 4th Council District for 25 years, and really have dedicated my 15-year public service career to advancing progressive policy, legal, and budgetary solutions to some of our most pressing challenges. And I have worked in community to drive progressive policies forward, and I think my endorsements reflect the work that I've done in community. I have endorsements from five members of the King County Council, including Councilmember Kohl-Welles and Councilmember Zahilay, who I've worked with directly around securing access to more childcare, to addressing gender-based violence, to doing more for affordable housing. And I think my endorsements really speak to the depth of work and the way that I have worked to elevate community voices in community and doing that work. I would say that one of the endorsements I'm most proud of is Councilmember Kohl-Welles' endorsement because she's been a mentor to me and I have worked with her on a number of issues to improve the lives of women in disproportionately impacted communities in King County. And I'm also proud of the endorsement from my boss, A.G. Bob Ferguson. I have dedicated my career to being on the frontlines, to helping enforce workers' rights to fair wages to equal pay, to protect our environment. And I've done this work in the Attorney General's office and the fact that I have the support of my boss as I'm running for King County Council, just like he ran for King County Council, and that he's been helping me out on the campaign trail. And ensuring that I'm running a strong grassroots campaign really means the world to me.
[00:30:20] Crystal Fincher: Now, we've also talked about how important it is to enact a lot of policy, to take care of people - obviously, we need to address staffing. All of the things that we've talked about today - a lot of them require revenue. We just ran a big levy because we needed the revenue. The list of things that everyone says is necessary, evidently costs more than we have in the budget, so new revenue is needed. What progressive revenue options exist at the County level today, and will you pursue any of them?
[00:30:50] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, so I have a long history of advocating for progressive revenue, including the capital gains tax as a citizen advocate and board member of Washington's Paramount Duty. And so I have fought with, alongside a coalition of folks that are really pushing for progressive revenue reform at the state level. I still think there's so much more we can do and look forward to being a strong partner in that work. King County is projected to face revenue shortfalls and has constrained revenue sources. I do wanna fight against austerity budgets and look really critically at how we can obtain authority from the Legislature to pass truly progressive revenue sources that center working people. I think we also need to look at potentially lifting the 1% property tax lid if we can provide exemptions for homeowners and fixed income seniors. But I think the kind of frustrating thing about the County is it is revenue-constrained and that we need to work hard both on the County Council and in partnership with communities to figure out what more we can do to obtain authority to pass truly progressive revenue sources, whether or not that's taxing business or looking at more progressive revenue sources other than property tax and sales tax and some of these use fees. So I'm dedicated to doing that work in partnership with community and I'm really looking forward to that.
[00:32:26] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. And with the budget, King County does incremental budgeting making it difficult for the public to understand - making it difficult for some people in government to understand, but especially the public - to understand how King County funds are allocated in the base budget. What can be done to make the budget easier for the public to understand and influence?
[00:32:47] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, I think that's an excellent question. We need more transparency in the budget process and we need more participation from community at the County level in the budget process. I have testified, for example, funding for the mental health counselors under MIDD. I have testified for affordable housing. I've testified for more childcare funding. And sometimes it's difficult, as the budget comes over from the Executive, to know what's different about the budget, right? And so I find generally that through this work as a member of the King County Women's Advisory Board and as a citizen advocate that King County budgets are not as accessible, for example, as legislative budgets. And more needs to be done to ensure that they're more transparent and accessible, and also that we're ensuring that the public is engaged in the budgeting process and understands it. So I think one of the things that we can do, and Councilmember Zahilay has done such a great job of this, is just explaining the King County budget process - how the budget comes over from the Executive, what the budget looks like, and how to understand the budget. I think another thing we could do is helping to really center folks that historically have not had a seat at the table in the budget process and have been excluded from power structures in developing policy and budgetary proposals - so that those folks are actually involved in the collaboration process through working groups and meetings and collaboration so that we're moving more towards participatory budget models, where constituents are not just involved in testifying, but really involved and actively involved every step of the process and ultimately in the decisions that impact them. So I'm really interested in working with all communities, and particularly frontline communities that are disproportionately impacted by these issues, and to really look to see what we can do towards more participatory budgeting. But first, of course, we have to make that process more transparent.
[00:34:49] Crystal Fincher: Now, as we said before, you have at least one opponent now - the filing deadline isn't for a few weeks, couple weeks, few weeks here. So as you're talking to people who are considering who they're gonna vote for in this race, why should they vote for you over your opponents?
[00:35:08] Sarah Reyneveld: Thank you. I'm running because I wanna continue the work that I've done with community and elevate community voices here in the 4th Council District and beyond to advance bold and transformative action for workers, for working families, and our environment on the King County Council. And as I said before, I think we're in a critical moment of time, and I am really committed to working with our most impacted communities to ensure that we are building back better and really creating equitable economic recovery that centers workers and working families and leads to a more sustainable future. Like many in our district, I'm a working parent, I'm a public school parent, transit rider, community organizer, and I have really dedicated my career to advancing progressive legal policy and budgetary solutions to some of our most pressing challenges - and I think we've really gotten results. As a member of the King County Women's Advisory Board, I have worked in partnership with community and the King County Council to secure investments in affordable housing, behavioral health, childcare, and services for survivors of gender-based violence. And I really wanna build on that track record. And I think I have the skills to do so - to really center community voices and to advance really bold, progressive solutions.
I think there's three things that I would highlight to voters about why they should choose me in a competitive race. One is community - I'm running for the community and have demonstrated a history of leadership in my community, which is really reflected in our campaign's range of endorsements from elected officials to community leaders and labor. And I have lived experience as a mom and union member and transit rider that is not only reflective of my district, but I feel can be valuable on the King County Council. And lastly, I have a demonstrated history of leadership in my community working to build coalitions to deliver on progressive policies for workers and working families. And I think I've demonstrated that I'm unafraid to grapple with and do the real work of really advancing transformative solutions that are necessary at this critical moment in time. And I really look forward to the conversation on the campaign and hopefully to working with my community to ensure equitable economic recovery that really centers workers and working families and creates a more sustainable future for all.
[00:37:37] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:37:40] Sarah Reyneveld: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:37:42] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Election 2023 re-air, Crystal chats with Jorge Barón about his campaign for King County Council District 4 - why he decided to run, how 17 years at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project has prepared him for the role, and his thoughts on generating progressive revenue for county services, drug possession and substance use disorder, addressing overcrowding in the King County Jail, improving frontline worker wages and workforce issues, air quality and climate change, and the importance of oversight and genuine community engagement in policy implementation.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Jorge Barón at @jorgebaron.
Jorge Barón
Jorge L. Barón has spent his legal career advancing and defending the rights of marginalized communities, and has served as executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project for more than 15 years. Jorge has fought egregious policies like the Muslim Ban and family separation as well as built coalitions that drove significant policy change and generated hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for immigrant communities. Jorge has had the honor of being awarded the King County Council’s MLK Medal of Distinguished Service and served on the Joint Legislative Task Force on Deadly Force in Community Policing. Jorge is originally from Bogotá, Colombia, immigrating with his mom and brothers at the age of 13. Jorge is a graduate of Yale Law School and Duke University, a proud former union member, and public school parent.
Resources
Campaign Website - Jorge Barón
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I am excited to be welcoming a candidate for King County Council District 4 - Jorge Barón. Welcome to Hacks & Wonks, Jorge.
[00:01:03] Jorge Barón: Thank you so much for having me, Crystal. I'm pleased to be here.
[00:01:05] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - we're pleased to have you here. I guess just starting out - what made you decide to run for King County Council?
[00:01:12] Jorge Barón: Yeah, it's a great question because I think for me, this is a new adventure that I'm embarking on. I think if you'd asked me 10 years ago if I was going to run for elected office, I would have said no. But I think what's happened over the last - since that time - is that I've seen, of course, working in the immigration field for the last 17 years, I've seen a lot of bad policy, but during the Trump administration, I saw a particular period of really egregious attacks on communities that I'm a part of, that I care about, and that I was working on behalf of. And I also saw how state and local government played an important role in protecting people. And I also saw people, frankly, that I've considered mentors and people who I admire - like Representative Pramila Jayapal and Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda - who also went from being advocates on the outside of government to go inside and to actually work on policy issues at the government level, and saw how effective they've been in creating some policy change in a progressive direction.
So that gave me an inspiration, and of course, I've continued working here at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, but last year I made the decision to step away from this work that I've been doing for now 17 years. And when I started thinking about what would come next, I thought that working at the local government level would be an avenue to further some of the same social justice issues that I've been pursuing for nearly two decades, and that gave me the inspiration. And of course, when Councilmember Kohl-Welles announced that she would be stepping down, saw an opportunity to put myself forth and to share with folks in District 4 - where I live - that I would be a good advocate for the social justice values that I've been pursuing for a long time now.
[00:02:46] Crystal Fincher: How do you think your work at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project has prepared you to run and serve?
[00:02:52] Jorge Barón: Yeah, no - it's a good question. And I've been very fortunate, of course, to have had the privilege of serving in this role. And for a long time, I thought that something else would pull me away from leaving here, and it - nothing better came along, but I felt like it was a good time for me to allow other people to step into leadership roles here and for me to take a break and do something new. But the experience that I've had here, I think, has prepared me for this role in a couple of different ways. First of all, obviously, I've had the opportunity to be the chief executive here at this organization - that we've been able to grow into now the second-largest nonprofit law firm in the Pacific Northwest, and I think that experience of being a leader in that role has given me an opportunity to learn a lot about how to manage organizations and how to run an effective organization.
And I think the other part that's been really important in the work that we've done here that I think will be helpful - very important at the county level - is that I have been able to work in partnership with many stakeholders in building coalitions that have enabled important policy change at the state level. And one of the things that has inspired me to run at the County Council level is seeing that right now the county is facing a very difficult period because of the limitations that the state government has placed on - particularly on the revenue side - and I think we need people who are going to be able to build the kind of coalition to push the State Legislature, to work in partnership with our state legislators to make sure that we get some changes - that I think a lot of people recognize are needed - to the way that the county is funded, to make sure the county can actually operate effectively and carry out its responsibilities. So that kind of coalition building - working with state legislators in making actually progressive and important changes happen at the state level - which is what I've been able to do here, is something that I feel is going to serve me well if I get the privilege of serving on the council.
[00:04:41] Crystal Fincher: When you talk about the issue of revenue, which is very important - and as we talk about this and the things we'll talk about as we continue, lots of them will require additional revenue. More money is needed. But as you talk about, the progressive revenue options that exist at the county level are limited. What progressive revenue options will you pursue, if any, and how will you go about doing that?
[00:05:04] Jorge Barón: Yeah, no, I think it's important to talk about it because that's absolutely one of the key things that I think we need to discuss and make sure that voters understand. And I've seen it, and it's been frustrating to me actually, from - in my role at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, we've been advocating before the councils - at least myself, I've been advocating before the council since around 2008, 2009. And even since that time, the conversation had been that the county was in an unsustainable fiscal path, right? That we had this structural deficit, and particularly because of the 1% tax lid that restricts how much property tax revenue the county can collect, that we were in this unsustainable path. And in some ways, I feel like we haven't - as a community, we haven't felt the actual impact of that because inflation has been relatively low during that period, because there have been different periods of COVID relief money, for example, that came in the last couple of years that in some ways mitigated the full impact of that situation.
But we're starting to now, and the upcoming budget cycle - we're facing, as a county, $100 million shortfall. And so I think now we're gonna start feeling the direct impact of those changes. And so I think we radically need to restructure how the county is funded and move away - I don't think we're gonna be able to move away completely, obviously - but at least shift some of the burden that currently is impacting particularly low income and even moderate income households here in King County and make sure that we create the opportunity. And again, this is one of the challenges - is that it's not something the county directly can do, but we will need to work with the state legislators to provide those opportunities for some changes so that we become less reliant on things like the sales tax and the property tax. And we have opportunities to have the revenue come from sources that have greater ability to pay. Obviously this is not only an issue for the county. Obviously at the state level, we also need to be working on that because we have the most regressive tax structure in the country. And so at all levels of government, we need to do this.
And my hope is to be able to bring new energy to this conversation, to help talking about it all the time that - my campaign have been trying to talk about it - that's the first thing I always talk about because I think a lot of people don't understand the situation that we're in and that we're gonna be facing in terms of county services having to be drastically cut at a time when we see so much need in the community and people are saying - Why aren't we tackling these issues? Why aren't we tackling housing affordability, the homelessness crisis? - all kinds of issues that we can talk about. And those things - we need more investments to be able to make progress in those areas. And so the regressive revenue options need to be something that we absolutely put top of mind in talking to voters and talking to state legislators.
[00:07:46] Crystal Fincher: Right, and you talked about how to handle issues in terms of public safety, behavioral health, and how important that funding is. In the wake of the State Legislature increasing criminalization of possession of drugs and public use of drugs - making it a gross misdemeanor. And in the wake of the Seattle City Council weighing this issue themselves and currently still searching for a path forward on how to approach drug use and abuse in the City of Seattle - how do you view this in King County? Where do you stand on the criminalization of public drug use, and what do you think needs to be done to address this crisis?
[00:08:23] Jorge Barón: Yeah, Crystal - I'll be very clear that I do not support criminalizing substance use disorders. I believe that we have - what I try to tell people about this issue is that we need to look at this the same way that we talk about - for example, when we talk about climate justice, a lot of people in this community - I guess I would say most people in this community, I know there's some people who are still climate skeptics out there - but most of us believe the science and we talk about the importance of believing the research and following the science. Same thing with public health, right? Most people in this community say we need to believe the science around public health and COVID and vaccines, right? And why don't we do the same thing with regard to public safety and the criminal legal system, right? There is abundant research when it comes to how to address the serious issues - and I wanna say it's important to note that the issue is not about doing nothing about the fact that people are experiencing substance use disorders. And obviously, it's a crisis in the fact that we have so many people in our community who are dying because of that. So the question is not, should we do something? We absolutely should do something. The question is, what should we do? And for me, the response of trying to punish people and putting people in jail because they're experiencing substance use disorders is not the solution. And I think the evidence and the research conclusively proves that that is not the path that is going to result in people actually being safe.
And I'm concerned - some ways - that particularly right now, some of the debate is framed as in, we're trying to protect people by putting them in jail. And if you look at the evidence, that's not the case - at least if you look at overall numbers. And I know people will say - Well, there's this one example, this anecdote where this person got better because they went to jail. And I appreciate that there may be cases like that, but we can't do public policy based completely on anecdotes. We need to look at the research. And the research to me is very compelling in that, for example, with people who are experiencing substance use disorders with things like fentanyl, that you will end up increasing the risk that they will die if they go into jail. It's pretty dramatic - the statistics and the data on increasing the risk of overdose in those situations. And so I am concerned, I think we need to be thinking about what is best approach long-term - and particularly because the criminal legal system is also a very expensive system, right? And so when we're talking about investing limited public resources in a time of austerity in terms of the fiscal situation that we were just talking about - to me, it doesn't make sense to continue to invest in a system that has not proven to have, for lack of a better term, return on investment - when we see that there are programs that are currently underfunded, that we're not putting enough resources in, that do have an impact in terms of reducing peoples experiencing substance use disorder, and that will actually put them in a pathway to recovery.
So I think we need to really rethink how we're approaching things. I think we've learned lessons for decades of using the criminal legal system to try to address substance use disorders. And I think we have been doing important things here in this community, and I think it's important to recognize that there's been programs like the LEAD program here locally, that have been seen as models for other places, but we've never sufficiently resourced those. And right now, of course, the need has only escalated because of the impacts of the pandemic and so many things that disrupted the lives of so many people. So I think we need to be investing in the things that actually have a return on investment.
[00:11:54] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, you make a great point about our jails - one, not being a source of treatment, but they're not equipped to do that right now. And in fact, they're not equipped to do a lot of things that people think they do and things that they have done before. We've seen outcry from everyone from the ACLU to the guards and workers at our jails saying - Things are overcrowded, we're understaffed, we don't have adequate services, facilities, we don't have the tools to do the job that you're asking us to do and the way that you're asking us to do it, and the overcrowding is really making issues harder. In order to address that, the King County Council voted to initiate a contract with another jail provider - the SCORE Center in Des Moines - to transfer some inmates over there. Would you have voted to do that? And do you think we should do what Dow Constantine suggested and closing the jail? What is your plan for this? Would you have done what the County Council did? And where should we move forward after that?
[00:12:56] Jorge Barón: Yeah, Crystal - that's a good question. So the answer to your question about the SCORE jail is that I would not have voted to enter into that contract and to transfer people, primarily because I think at the time - and I think still to this point, from what I understand - the concerns that a number of people raised, and particularly the public defenders who represent people in the facility, in the jail, that the issue of access to counsel and access to family was not adequately addressed at the time. And to me, this is a particular issue that I care a lot about, just because I've had a lot of experience being an attorney and starting my career at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project as a staff attorney working with people in the Immigration Detention Center in Tacoma. I did work during law school in the criminal legal issues and prisons in the South. And this issue of being able to access attorneys is a really important one that we as a community should be absolutely standing up for - because when people are put into jail pending a charge, we have a strong presumption in this country of being presumed innocent until we're proven guilty. And one of the key ways that people can have that right be enforced is through access to counsel. And so if we're gonna undermine that, I think that's a serious issue.
I absolutely, to be clear, do not think that the conditions at the King County Jail are adequate, and we absolutely need to take steps to address the overcrowding. I think people in the community may not always be paying attention to this, but it's remarkable that we have groups that don't normally align on this - like the public defenders on the one side and the correctional workers in the jail - calling for the same steps because of how bad the situation was. And so we should be listening to people who are working most directly with people in there. And obviously we should be deeply concerned about the fact that multiple people have been dying in our care. I've been telling people that we need to think about, as a community - when we take one of our neighbors into custody because we determine that they need to be held in jail, we become responsible. They become our responsibility, and we need to make sure that we have the staffing and the resources to adequately care for them. And if we see that people are dying at the rate that we've seen, we're not living up to that commitment. And so we need to take steps, and I would support, at least as an interim measure, the call from the public defenders and from the correction officers of having booking restrictions that will limit the number of people who are gonna be in the jail until we know that we can actually take care of people.
I know it's a complex issue because I think part of the challenge has also been that the state has failed in its obligation to make sure that we provide treatment and assessments for and evaluations for people who have behavioral health issues, and that's also exacerbated the problem in terms of people being able to be released. But we need to address this with more urgency because literally people are dying in our custody, and it shouldn't be - even if you're accused of a crime, this should not be a death penalty situation where we're putting people in fatal consequences because they're accused of a criminal offense. And so I think we need to be taking very significant steps to move that. And again, the SCORE Jail - I understand the intention, but we also need to be respecting the right for people to be able to defend themselves in court.
[00:16:19] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I do wanna talk about housing and homelessness. And it's been an issue that has been on the top of mind of everyone, basically. One thing that it's a big challenge for our community to deal with, and another because so many people are struggling themselves. One issue called out by experts as a barrier to our response is that frontline worker wages don't cover the cost of living, and that services provided by frontline workers, especially those with lived experiences, are necessary to effectively reduce the amount of people who are homeless. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for our area? And how can we make that more likely with how we bid and contract for services at the county level?
[00:17:04] Jorge Barón: So Crystal, I absolutely agree that nonprofits have a responsibility to make sure that their workers are adequately compensated. It's something that I've been working on here at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and I think one of the things that I see frequently at the county level - and I think a lot of people don't realize that a lot of the human services that the county provides is actually done through nonprofit entities that the county contracts out with. And so the county does have a responsibility to make sure that we're structuring the contracts in ways that are going to incentivize our nonprofit partners to do the right thing. I've seen practices where, for example, we have contracts where there's lesser amount of funding year-over-year for a nonprofit partner. And of course, that doesn't help when we have a situation where the cost of living is increasing. I've also seen situations where there's this pressure of - well, you're not delivering enough services per FTE, and so it incentivizes employers to try to do it as cheaply as possible in kind of a race to the bottom that actually hinders the ability of organizations to be able to adequately compensate their employees.
And so I definitely think that the county has a responsibility to make sure that it's structuring its practices to incentivize for people to be paid well. And I think part of the problem is that sometimes we think of short-term - how many services we can provide in the very immediate term - but we lose sight of the fact that when we don't compensate people well, we end up losing those workers. And so you get into the cycle where people, the attrition rate is very high, the experience that we get from workers - it's lost. You spend a lot of energy and time with recruiting and hiring and training new employees. And so I think people need to understand that there is actually - it's a better investment to compensate people well. Even in the situations where that might mean - in the very short term, you might not be able to do as many services. But in the long term, you're actually gonna be able to serve people better and more fully if you invest in the workforce so that they will stick around. Because particularly in a place - obviously the cost of living is increasing, it's all connected - housing affordability is limited. So we need to make sure that the people who are providing services to county residents can also themselves be able to be county residents - because I hear that from a lot of people that they're having to, they can't even live in the county that they work in because of the high cost of living. So I absolutely think that needs to be a responsibility that the county plays a role in doing better from its part.
[00:19:35] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And as you talk about, there are shortages everywhere, there are staff shortages even in the county. And this impacts how the county is able to deliver services. There's been lots of coverage about staffing crises in a variety of government agencies, school districts, just seemingly at every level. And these people are crucial to programs and services that people count on, that have been around for decades, and that are now in jeopardy. King County has done hiring and retention bonuses for deputies in the Sheriff's department. Should we be doing that for other workers in other departments? How do we address this?
[00:20:11] Jorge Barón: I do think that we should look at those options. I do wanna work and wanna be very proactive in engaging labor partners that represent workers and finding what they think would be best for their workforce. 'Cause I wanna be very respectful of the role that they play in channeling the voice of the people who are working for the county. Because I know sometimes that can create some tensions for people who have been working there for a long time and then money is being invested to attract new workers. And so I wanna make sure that it's done in a way that we're engaging people who are already part of the workforce and who have devoted a lot of time to serve the community. So I think that is important.
But Crystal, one other thing that I was gonna mention when you talk about workforce issues is important role - and again, how lots of these things are connected - is childcare issues. That's one topic that I've heard a lot from community members that is making these workforce development issues more difficult, and in terms of attracting and incentivizing people to join the workforce is the high cost of childcare. And particularly the way that our current subsidies are structured at the county level, we have the situation where if you make above a certain amount, you then don't qualify for any subsidy at all. And that makes it difficult because then if you're considering - Well, okay if I take this job and maybe it's a good union paying job, but it actually will put me above the income level that qualifies for the subsidy. And then when I start doing the math, it turns out that doesn't make sense for me to take the job because I'll end up paying more on childcare than would make the job worth it. And as a parent who had three children go through the childcare system, who's gone through the public school system, I felt that very directly. And I've been fortunate to be able to have the resources to make that happen, but it was a big stretch. And so for a lot of people in the community, that's gonna be something that I think has made it more difficult for people to be able to join the workforce. And that impacts us all, right? We can talk about, for example, the challenges that the Metro Transit is having and the fact they're having to reduce routes - and it's not because of lack of money, it's because of the fact that they can't find enough drivers and they've had challenges there. So I think we need to be able to connect those dots and realize that investments in those areas are important to make sure that we have an adequate workforce. And it's also a good social equity and racial equity issue to make sure that we're investing so that folks can get the support they need to make sure they can not fully be participants in the community.
[00:22:40] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and thank you so much for bringing that up because that is a major factor in just the affordability of our community, the ability for people to participate in our workforce and our economy, to be upwardly mobile, and to get out of poverty. So thank you so much for talking about how important it is to help make affordable childcare accessible. I also want to talk about health, and especially with the county doing the heavy lifting when it comes to public health, really, and being the source of delivery for so much of it. I wanted to talk about something that we've been dealing with increasingly, whether it's because of COVID, which is still around and still here, and trying to reduce transmission and mitigate the impacts of it, or wildfire smoke, which we have to contend with, and that is extremely unhealthy to breathe and be in the midst of. Or other illnesses, viruses that are all around - trying to just reduce the prevalence of illness in our community. And it's become more apparent that how we treat air, how important air is to health, and how air filtration and ventilation is important to public safety. Do you have a plan for, would you advocate retrofitting, ensuring that all of our public buildings have the recommended air filtration, air turnover, healthy air systems for our community? And how can we help private businesses and spaces do that?
[00:24:08] Jorge Barón: Yeah, I absolutely support that. And I think it's an important - and I think there will be some important opportunities with some of the investments that are coming through the Inflation Reduction Act that - mostly focused on energy efficiency, but there could be opportunities where some of those resources could be used at the same time to make sure that we're improving air quality inside buildings, homes, and businesses as well. And it's interesting 'cause I think one of the things that I think about when I think of this - when you're talking about the community health - one of the things that's most disturbing to me and one that I absolutely wanna continue to focus on if I'm given the opportunity to serve in this role, is the disparities that we see in life expectancy in our communities. I'd encourage people to look up some of the research that's publicly available where you can see the life expectancy disparities in census tracts around the county, around the region. And I think to me, it should be disturbing to all of us that there are census tracts in South King County where the life expectancy is 17 years less than census tracts in other parts of the county - just a short drive away. And of course, when you dig into the reasons for that - and of course, there are many - but issues of pollution and of all the social determinants of health are driving a lot of those disparities. And that is something that we should not find in any way acceptable at this point of time in a county, particularly a county that we renamed in honor of Dr. King. I always think of what he would think about those kinds of disparities and obviously, he would find them unacceptable and I find them unacceptable.
And so addressing those issues and looking at the reasons that the impact - that all kinds of issues are impacting people's health, including air quality, both inside and frankly outside would have. And so when we talk about that and of course, with the ongoing impacts of climate change and the climate crisis, we're gonna be needing to tackle that even more - because unfortunately, we're gonna continue as we work in the long-term strategy, obviously, of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, but we also have to mitigate the impacts that we're seeing day in and day out with now the wildfire season that we see where the smoke is impacting people. And of course, many of us may have the fortune of being able to work inside and protect ourselves to some degree, but a lot of other people can't. And so we need to be addressing on multiple levels - ensuring that all community members and of course, particularly the most directly impacted communities, which of course overwhelmingly are people of color, immigrant refugee communities - that they're being given the tools and the protection to make sure that we don't see the level of disparities that we're currently seeing across the county.
[00:26:47] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And following on that - talking about how exposed people are - climate change is a major factor in this. And on almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals, while experiencing some of the devastating impacts that you just talked about - from wildfires and floods and cold and heat. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet the 2030 goals?
[00:27:10] Jorge Barón: I think there's a number of things. So one of our major drivers in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, of course, is our transportation system. And so a lot of that has to be focused on stopping our reliance and reducing our reliance on cars. And trying to build a transit infrastructure that is gonna be reliable, it's gonna be safe, and that it's going to be such that people can rely on it to get to work and to get to other places in the community. So for me, that's important. I think it's important - obviously, I appreciate and support the efforts to electrify our bus fleet and would do anything I could to expedite that and move forward on that. But the challenge is that if we can have the buses be electric, but if people are not using them and they're still relying on their cars, that's not gonna help us achieve the targets. So that's gonna be really important.
I think the other sort of big sources is obviously our infrastructure and our buildings and homes. And as I mentioned earlier, there is gonna be some opportunities for credits and investments through federal resources in the coming years that we need to make sure that we as a county are promoting and incentivizing and fully tapping into so that we can further reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and we can get closer to reaching the goals that we've set for ourselves. So I think that's gonna be an important work that we need to do in the community. And this is, again, where a lot of things are connected to - also how we build and how we structure our communities is gonna be important, because as we talk about transit - I fully support what the legislature did to create greater density 'cause that has a significant impact on climate justice goals. And so that's something that I think we are going to need to also monitor - as these new changes that the legislature made - how those are implemented will have an impact in our long-term strategy to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. So I think this is gonna be an important period of time for us to really step up in our commitment to addressing what is a very urgent issue.
[00:29:12] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. One issue impacting, I guess a major issue that impacts residents is how we implement policy - state level, county level, federal level really. There's been some great, helpful policy passed, but when it comes to the implementation of it, there's been a lot that has been desired in some circumstances - including those where some partners may not understand what needs to be stood up at the county level to deliver services. The county is pretty visible in this 'cause a lot of times the county is the entity responsible for the ultimate disbursement of funds or provision of services that come through the state or county level. And there seems to be sometimes a disconnect between what the county has capacity for, what it's capable to do and what legislation or funding or program calls to be done - leaving a shortfall in service delivery, things getting delayed, things not turning out as intended. What can be done to better improve the implementation of policy so that more people can receive the benefits that were intended?
[00:30:17] Jorge Barón: I completely agree, Crystal, 'cause I've seen that myself in terms of being able to get policies done both at the local level and at the state level in terms of changes to policy. For example, we did some work many years ago on the connection between immigration enforcement and local law enforcement - and we achieved a victory of getting an ordinance passed at the county level. And then time went by and the actual implementation of that was not happening. And we later found out that some of the things that we had thought that the policy had changed had not changed. And so I've definitely seen that situation play out. And I think what it takes is constant oversight and very intense focus from entities like the council. I think the council has a particular responsibility and a duty to be the one who is providing oversight as the elected officials who are responsible for making sure that the policies that are in place are actually being implemented. 'Cause oftentimes what I see in those situations is that things get passed and then you move on to the next thing, but if the implementation and the oversight is not there, then changes aren't actually playing out on the ground level. So that's an important thing.
I think the other thing that I think is important is a genuine engagement with communities that are going to be served. And I think that's another element that I would like to bring to the council is the fact that I have been working for nearly two decades now with marginalized communities throughout the state, particularly here in King County, and have built those relationships with people. And I would wanna be very proactive. I often tell people - Sometimes people say, I'll have an open door. And that to me is not really a good way to approach it because that still means that people have to come to me and my office. I wanna be very proactive in being out there - as I have been in my work here - of being out in community, talking to people, seeing how things are actually playing out on the ground level, and being engaged, and having genuine relationships with people so that you can actually assess how those policies are being implemented because that's what it takes. It's not just about receiving a report in council chambers, but it's about discussing with people how is this actually playing out. And that's how we've found things out here in my work at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project - has been working with community members - hearing how is this actually playing out on the ground level? How is this policy that looks nice on paper, on the King County Code, actually being impacted or being reflected on what people are experiencing in the community? And that's what it's gonna take to make sure that implementation is actually - that things are being done the way that we've intended them to be done when there's been changes in policy.
[00:32:54] Crystal Fincher: Definitely. As we move to close today, I just want to give you the opportunity to share with voters who are going to be making a decision between you and a couple other candidates in the primary election. What differentiates you from your opponents most of all, and why should voters choose you?
[00:33:14] Jorge Barón: For me, I think I hope voters will look at the track record that I've built over the last two decades working as a civil rights and human rights leader, working directly on behalf of marginalized communities with a deep commitment to equity and justice. I think that to me is really important because it's the work that I don't just talk about, I have done that work. And also the fact that I had the experience of working at the state level - building coalitions with community members, with allies - in a range of issues to make actually proactive and significant progressive change to policies that have impact marginalized communities across the state. And I hope to bring that same level of expertise and skill of building coalitions to impact policy that will make the situation for the county and county residents better.
And then finally, again, the fact that I've had this experience and I've been fortunate to have this experience of leading a nonprofit organization, building an effective organization that has delivered, that's widely recognized as delivering strong services. And that puts me in a good place to be able to provide that oversight, to be able to ask the tough questions, to make the tough decisions because I've been in that kind of executive role before. And be able to make sure - because I think this is an important component of county government, and I think something that will help us build the case for more investments is - I think one of the things that people in the community rightly are concerned about is - are our tax dollars being invested well in various programs that the county funds? And because I've been a nonprofit leader, seeing how to properly allocate and distribute and make resources be spent effectively, I'm in a good position to be able to evaluate those things when those issues come up at the County Council. And so all of those experiences that I've had - I've been very privileged to be able to play that role - have prepared me well for this role. And I hope the voters in the District 4 will give me the opportunity to represent them in the council.
[00:35:12] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much for joining us today and for helping us learn more about you, and certainly wish you the best.
[00:35:17] Jorge Barón: Thank you so much, Crystal - it was great talking to you.
[00:35:19] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Election 2023 re-air, Crystal chats with Teresa Mosqueda about her campaign for King County Council District 8 - why she decided to run, the experience and lessons she’ll bring to the County from serving on Seattle City Council, and her thoughts on addressing progressive revenue options, public service wage equity and morale, housing and homelessness, public safety, transit rider experience, climate change, and budget transparency.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Teresa Mosqueda at @TeresaCMosqueda.
Teresa Mosqueda
As a Progressive Labor Democrat, Teresa Mosqueda is committed to creating healthy and safe communities, investing in working families through job training, childcare and transit access, and developing more affordable housing for all residents. She brings a proven track record of successfully passing progressive policies and building broad and inclusive coalitions. Teresa was named one of Seattle’s Most Influential People 2018 for acting with urgency upon getting elected, received the Ady Barkan Progressive Champion Award from Local Progress in 2019; and earned national attention by leading the passage of JumpStart progressive revenue to invest in housing, economic resilience, green new deal investments, and equitable development. Prior to elected office Teresa worked on community health policies from SeaMar to the Children's Alliance, and championed workers’ rights at the WA State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, where she helped lead state's minimum wage increase, paid sick leave, farmworker protections, workplace safety standards, and launched the Path to Power candidate training with the AFL-CIO.
Resources
Campaign Website - Teresa Mosqueda
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
I am very excited today to have joining us - current Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, who is a candidate for King County Council District 8, which covers Seattle - including West Seattle, South Park, Georgetown, Chinatown International District, and First Hill - as well as Burien, part of Tukwila, and unincorporated King County - in White Center and Vashon Island. Welcome to the program - welcome back.
[00:01:22] Teresa Mosqueda: Thank you so much for having me back - I appreciate it.
[00:01:25] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So I guess the first question is - what made you decide to run for King County Council after being on the Seattle City Council?
[00:01:35] Teresa Mosqueda: I've been really, really honored to be able to serve the full City of Seattle - 775,000 residents at this point - to be able to pass progressive policies like progressive revenue through JumpStart, Green New Deal and affordable housing that it was funding, to be able to quadruple the investments in affordable housing, to expand worker protections. But the truth is, we know that much of the population that I was elected by - the folks that I really center in my public policy - also work and have family outside of the City of Seattle. And in many ways, I want to build on what I've been able to accomplish in Seattle - investments in affordable housing, investments in new career pathways, good union jobs, to expand on the childcare and working family supports that I've centered in my work on City Council. But in order to reach the broader population of working families who are just outside of Seattle's borders but may work in Seattle and come in and out of the City - I want to create greater equity and stability across our region - the County is the place to do it. And in terms of stability, the County is the only place that has purview over public health, has the purse strings for behavioral health investments. And so if I want to complement efforts to try to house folks and create long-term housing stability, especially for our most vulnerable community members, the County is the place to do that - through investments in behavioral health, by sitting on the Public Health Board, by being directly involved in the budget that has purview over public health and behavioral health investments. I see it as an extension of my work at the City to create housed and healthy communities. And it actually goes full circle back to my roots where I started my career in community health. It is exciting opportunity, and I see it as a growth and expansion of the work that we've done in Seattle.
[00:03:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You talk about progressive revenue - the JumpStart Tax, which is a really, really important source of revenue that has been so helpful for businesses in the City, for residents, so many people in need - and has been a benefit to the City, especially in this time of a budget downturn in that the JumpStart Tax helped to bail out a budget shortfall there. So this revenue seemed to come just in time. You had to fight for it. You led the fight for it. What lessons do you take out of that fight to the County, and what progressive revenue options are there at the county level that you would be willing to pursue?
[00:04:05] Teresa Mosqueda: I think one major lesson is how I've approached building these big progressive policies that have not only earned the majority of votes, but the vast majority - if not unanimous vote sometimes - that have withstood the test of time, have not been overturned, and have not been overturned by legislative councilmatic action nor by the courts. I will take with me to King County the ability to build these broad coalitions. And think about JumpStart - who was there when we launched it? It was ironworkers and hardhats, along with business entrepreneurs from both small and large business, with community and housing advocates standing collectively together to say - We will not only stand by this progressive revenue, we will stand by it knowing that it's five times the amount of the previous policy and it's twice as long. That's a huge effort that took place to try to get people on the same page, and we had to - with growing income inequality, growing needs, an increase in our population. There was no other option. This had to succeed, and so I will take that same approach to King County Council.
So much is on the needs list right now in the "wake" of the global pandemic. We have the ongoing shadow pandemic. We have increased needs for mental health and community health investments. We have increased needs for food security and housing stability. There is not an alternative. We must invest more and we must do it in a way that withstands the test of time, like I've done on Seattle City Council. So for me, it's the how I bring people together that I will bring to King County Council. And I think it's also the what - not being afraid to push the envelope on what's possible. Many people said it was impossible to pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights - and we got sued, and we won. People said it was impossible to legislate having hotel workers get access to guaranteed healthcare at the gold level, protections from retaliation, maximum workload. We not only passed that in legislation, but we withstood that in the court. And the same is true of JumpStart. We withstood multiple litigation attempts to try to take away JumpStart, and it's withstood the test of time. And I'm excited to see what else we can do in a city that sees so much growth but incredible inequity across our region - to bring people together to address these pressing needs.
[00:06:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You talked about housing and homelessness, and one thing called out by experts as a barrier to our homelessness response is that frontline worker wages don't cover their cost of living. Do you believe our local service providers, a lot of whom are nonprofits, have a responsibility to pay living wages for the area? And how can we make that more likely with how we bid and contract for services at the county level?
[00:06:54] Teresa Mosqueda: Yeah, two things I would say. One is - absolutely, we need to make sure that folks who are working on the frontline as human service providers - think folks who are the counselors to youth, or people who have mental health or substance abuse needs that we need to help address so that they can get stably housed, think about services to our vets and seniors. These are workers on the frontline who rely on relationships and have skills, expertise in the human service category. They need to have investments in these deeply needed services. And in order for us to create greater stability, we need to be paying them living wages. I say "we" - because this is not about the nonprofits needing to pay them more. It is about we, the public entities, needing to increase our contracts to these organizations who then employ people to be on the frontline. For better or worse, we have a human services system that has largely relied on contracting out critical services that are arguably public services. They are supported by public dollars, and we, public officials, have a responsibility to pay those organizations enough so that they can invest in the wages for frontline workers.
That is what I have tried to do at Seattle City Council. The first year that I came in at Seattle City Council, the Human Services Coalition came to me and said - We have not had a cost of living increase in 10 years. To not have a COLA in 10 years for most workers in our region and across the country is unheard of, but it's especially unheard of for the very folks on the frontline trying to address the most pressing crisis in our country right now - and that is housing instability and homeless services. So we worked in 2019, and we passed the Human Services cost of living adjustment - that is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what needs to be addressed. The historic and chronic underfunding of these positions still needs to be addressed. We are not going to be able to close this gap of 40, 50, 60% turnover in our critical organizational partners, organizations, if we don't address the wage stability issue. So I think actually going to the County and bringing that experience of having worked directly with the human service providers and hearing their stories about why it was so critical not only to have a cost of living adjustment, but to get at this chronic underfunding is going to be really coming at a pivotal moment. Seattle does have a cost of living adjustment. I want to bring that cost of living adjustment to King County and collectively with Seattle, I want to work to address the underpayment for human service providers as well.
[00:09:26] Crystal Fincher: There's been a lot of action when it comes to addressing housing and homelessness from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to new legislation, and potentially even more legislation coming out through the end of this legislative session. We're currently recording this in mid-April, so it may come out a little bit further when there's a definitive answer for everything that happens. But amid a lot of this work that is currently being implemented or has just been authorized, there's a lot in process but still seemingly a lot more that needs to be done. What would your top priorities be to make a noticeable and meaningful difference in both homelessness and housing affordability if you're elected to this position?
[00:10:11] Teresa Mosqueda: Resources for housing is critically needed across King County. Resources will help local jurisdictions be able to implement the new requirements that are going to be coming forth from our State Legislature, which - I want to thank our State legislative members - every year they go to Olympia and every year we ask them to be bold - be bold on housing solutions, recognizing that housing is the solution to being houseless. Housing helps people who have multiple compounding factors get healthy, get stable, and be productive members of our community. Housing is the solution to this biggest crisis that we see, not only in Seattle and King County, up and down the West Coast, but across our entire country. We have not built enough housing to house our current population plus the population who will continue to come to our region. So one of the things that I think I can take to the County is the desire to make sure that local jurisdictions, whether it's Burien or Tukwila, or unincorporated areas like in Vashon and Maury Island or in White Center - that they have resources as well to help build the type of housing that's being requested from the State Legislature - to do so in accordance with their Comprehensive Plan so that people can implement it in the time frame that works for those local jurisdictions, but to help them take away the barrier of not having enough resources. Seattle is unique in that we have pushed forward different resources. We have different types of tax revenues - thanks to JumpStart, for example - but in areas that don't have those type of resources, I hope the County can continue to be a good partner, in addition to the state, to build the type of diverse housing that we're now going to be required to build and hopefully we can do even more.
The State Legislature is actually creating a new floor. We should be building upon that, and where we can go higher and denser - that is good for the local environment, it is good for the local economy, it's good for the health of workers and small businesses. And it's what I've heard from Vashon Island to Tukwila - people have said, "We don't have enough workforce housing." Small business owners have said, "I don't have enough workers in this area because they can't afford to live here." So I want to hopefully break down misperceptions about what type of housing we're talking about. We're talking about housing for seniors and vets, kiddos, youth, workers. We're talking about supporting the creation of that housing with additional revenue - that's one of the things I'd like to bring to the County. And to also recognize that when we have diverse economies that are prosperous, it's because workers can live next to their place of employment. Workers can walk to their childcare. We don't have time to spend two hours in the car commuting back and forth - that's not good for our health, our family's health, and it sure isn't good for the health of our planet. So it's a win-win-win, and I think that's something that I can really bring in as a County Councilmember - the knowledge that these local jurisdictions want to do more, but sometimes are limited with their resources. And wherever I can, I want to help step up and provide that support.
[00:13:08] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Public safety has also been an area where the County continues to make a lot of news, has a lot of responsibility - they operate a jail, and that has itself made a lot of news. Over the past couple years throughout the pandemic, some of the employees of the jails - the guards - other people, the Public Defenders Association have called out overcrowding conditions, unsafe conditions in the jail. There's been times where the jail has not had clean water, several illness outbreaks, people not being treated correctly. It seems to be a really bad situation. Recently, the King County Council just voted to extend a contract to rent additional beds from a SCORE facility in Des Moines. This, during a backdrop of events where the King County Executive has made a promise to close the King County Jail, but it seems like we're getting further away from that, or at least not getting closer to that. Would you have voted to extend the SCORE contract? And should we close the jail? What is your vision for the short term?
[00:14:17] Teresa Mosqueda: I think that the move to close down a jail that's both outdated and unsafe is not only good for the inmates, it's good for the folks who are working there. I think this is another example of where there's a false perception of sides. People who work within the jail, as well as those who are incarcerated, have expressed their not only horror when seeing mold and deterioration of the building, but it is extremely unsafe as well - as you mentioned - due to overcrowding. There's a few things that I think we can do. Number one, we should address upstream - who was being sent to these facilities in the first place. In a presentation that the Seattle City Council received from the City Attorney's Office, there was a large number of people who were initially booked and jailed, and ultimately were released because there was no grounds to put forward charges. And I think we need to stop the habit or the practice of putting folks in that situation to begin with. Even if they are not incarcerated for long periods of time, the fact that people are being jailed - especially youth - creates consequences down the road, mental health consequences, consequences for your housing, for your livelihood, your employment. And the negative impact of just being booked in the first place - both for the physical health of somebody, but also the trajectory of their life - is quantifiable. It is known, and we should stop that practice early.
I agree with the effort to move folks into a situation that is healthier, but I also want to continue to look at how we can reduce the chance that someone is ever incarcerated in the first place, invest more in restorative justice practices. I'm optimistic by some of the conversations I've heard from folks in the community, specifically in Burien, about the ways in which some of the initial conversations have taken place with the Burien City Police Chief Ted Boe, and some of the commitments that have been made to try to look at restorative justice differently. And I think that holistically we need to look at what leads someone to be in that situation in the first place and back up to see what additional community investments we can be making so that people can have greater access to economic security, community safety, and reduce the chance that someone ever interacts with the carceral system to begin with.
[00:16:40] Crystal Fincher: What do you think, or for people who are considering this voting decision and who are looking around and who are feeling unsafe, and who are not quite sure what the right direction is to move forward, or what can be done but feel like something should be done - what is your message to them? And what can make us all safer?
[00:17:01] Teresa Mosqueda: There's a few things that I think have really come to light, especially during the pandemic. We tell people to stay home to stay healthy. Well, if people don't have a home, they can't stay healthy. If we can think about the increased situation where many of us have probably seen loved ones in our lives - whether it's family members or friends - who have turned to substances to cope, to self-medicate with the stress, the trauma, the isolation that has only increased during the pandemic. I hope there's greater empathy across our community and across our country for why people may be self-medicating to begin with. And I think if we think about these recent examples of where we have seen people become more unstable in their housing situation or turn to substances because of increasing stress and pressure, that hopefully there's greater empathy for why it is so critical that we invest upstream. It is not an either/or - it's creating greater balance with how we invest in community safety, in what we know equals the social determinants of health. When we invest in housing, it helps reduce the chance that someone is going to engage in criminal activities later in life. When we invest in early learning, in job opportunities, in youth interactive programs, when we invest in even gun reduction and youth violence reduction strategies, it helps create healthier individuals and healthier populations, reduce the chance that someone ever interacts with an officer to begin with. These are public safety investments, and they shouldn't be seen as a separate silo from "traditional safety." It actually saves lives, and there's a huge return on investment when we make some of these upstream program policies a priority. I think it actually creates healthier communities, and for those who are looking at it through the economic lens, healthier economies - knowing that that return on investment has been proven time and time again. And it's good for individuals and community health as well.
[00:19:02] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, there's a shortage of workers across the board - certainly King County is included in this shortage of county workers in several areas, including in many front-line positions that impact public safety - maintenance, care, health - all of those that are crucial to delivering services and help that the residents of the County need. We've seen hiring, retention, and referral bonuses for public safety employees. Do you think we should be considering those for other employees?
[00:19:39] Teresa Mosqueda: Absolutely. This is part of the conversation that I raised while at Seattle City Council. There is, I think, a detrimental impact to workplace morale across public servants when we're not uniformly treating people the same. It's not what I feel, it's not that that's my perception - that's actually coming from workers within the City of Seattle who completed a survey that our Human Resources Department, in addition to Seattle Police Department and other Seattle agencies, completed to ask, "What would you like to see? How would you feel if certain employees got a hiring bonus or retention bonus?" And overwhelmingly, workers in public service said that they thought that this would hurt morale - if existing public servants weren't treated the same. I mentioned that in the Human Services category, there's a 40% to 60% turnover rate for our nonprofit organizations who are helping folks on the frontline. There's a huge turnover rate, as well, within our Human Services Department - we've had to freeze the hiring, and reduce hours, and reduce positions. Public libraries, community centers are front-facing programs for the community during COVID and we are slowly starting to scale those back up, but they're nowhere at capacity right now. And what workers themselves have said within the City of Seattle is - they want to see greater strategies for retention. Investments in childcare keeps coming up. Investments in more affordable housing keeps coming up. And if you want to look specifically at the Seattle Police Department, the officers themselves said that they did not think that hiring bonuses was the way to address retention and morale issues - that played out in their comments in the press, as well as the survey results that we saw.
I think that there's a more equitable approach that we should be taking. I think that we should be looking at how we recruit and train and incentivize people to come to public service overall, whether that means you're coming in to work as a firefighter or a police officer, or whether that means that we want to recruit you to be serving the public in libraries or as a lifeguard - which we don't have enough of - or as a childcare provider, which we don't have enough of. We should be looking across the board at these public service programs and figuring out ways to both address retention and morale, and to do so equitably. And to listen to what workers have said - they want housing, they want childcare, they want regular and routine transit. And they want us to, especially within the City of Seattle, address disparity in wages for folks of color and women compared to their counterparts. Those are some things that I think we should be taking on more seriously.
[00:22:17] Crystal Fincher: Definitely. Now, you talk about people saying they want regular and routine transit. Lots of people want that. Lots of people - more importantly - need that, are relying on that. And there's been lots of talk about the rider experience around safety on transit, but also about the availability and accessibility of service and all-day service - not just some of those commuter-centric commute-time service bumps that we've seen. What would your approach to Metro be as a councilmember?
[00:22:50] Teresa Mosqueda: So I appreciate that you raise safety because it is an issue that comes up for riders as well as the drivers. Members of ATU, who drive buses around King County, have expressed increased concern around their safety. Whether they're driving in the day or night - given COVID has increased interpersonal violence across our country, they are on the receiving end of that as well. So I'm excited to talk with ATU, with members who have been out on the frontline as our bus drivers, as well as riders to talk about how we can improve safety for everyone. That is - again, on the preventative side, trying to figure out ways that structurally and through public policy we can ensure that riders and drivers are safe.
There's also two things that drivers have talked to me about and folks within King County Metro. They say there's a lot of focus on new routes and how do we expand routes - routes, routes, routes - which I also agree with. But they've also brought up that we need to continue to invest in the people, maintenance, and operation to make sure that there's enough people to be working on existing routes and new routes to come. Similar to housing, we don't want to just build units. We want to make sure that for those who need personnel in those units to make sure that folks stay stably housed, we're investing in the workforce to ensure that that housing, that that unit is successful. We need to be looking at investments in the workforce, recruiting folks to come to these good living wage union jobs, and to be thinking about how we improve retention and stability as well. And for as far as maintenance is concerned - thinking more about how we can invest in greener fleets, greener maintenance opportunities, and ensure that those vehicles are running well and routinely. So those are two of the things that have come directly from the frontline drivers themselves.
And then more broadly - workers. You mentioned all-day services. I would also argue all-night services to the degree that we can add additional stops, because many of the childcare providers who are coming in early in the morning, construction workers who are coming in early in the morning, janitors who might be going out late at night, talk about how they have to rely on vehicles because there are not times that the buses are showing up to get them to work and back home in time. So I think that it's multi-prong. But again, I think the common ground here is that the workers in this sector are agreeing with the recipients of the service. And collectively, I'm hoping that we can address safety, workforce needs, and increase routes as well.
[00:25:23] Crystal Fincher: Definitely, and I really appreciate you bringing up the workforce needs. I know a couple people who use transit regularly but ended up getting vehicles because of the unpredictable cancellations due to staff shortages, whether it's maintenance or drivers, just making it unreliable to get to work on time. And already the time taken to commute that way is a lot, so that would improve the experience greatly - definitely appreciate that. Transit is also very, very important to achieving our climate goals. And by most measures, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals - while we're experiencing devastating impacts from climate change, including extreme heat and cold, wildfires, floods. What are your highest-priority plans to get us on track to meet our 2030 climate goals?
[00:26:17] Teresa Mosqueda: One thing might surprise folks in that category - probably not a huge surprise for folks who have heard me talk before - but I think if we can invest in additional housing, dense housing across our region, it will actually reduce CO2 emissions. And it's really common sense, right? We are the third-highest mega-commuter city or region in the nation. We have more people who are commuting back and forth to work than most of the country. And the reason is because they can't afford to find a house near their place of employment. If CO2 emissions from cars - single-occupancy cars - is the number-one contributor to pollution in our region, I believe that is at the top of our list for helping to reduce our carbon footprint across the country and across the globe. We should be increasing density. We should see it not only as a good economic stimulant, what's right to do for workers and working families, but it is one of the best things that we could also do for our climate. I think that there's - again, a misperception or a false divide between folks who are environmentalists and want to see more trees, and their perception that additional housing or density takes that away. It does not. We can both create setbacks for higher buildings and use the airspace to create living opportunities, while we plant additional trees and preserve old growth. I've gone to at least three ribbon-cutting ceremonies for Habitat for Humanity, who created - basically - townhouses connected altogether. We don't have a lot of row houses in Seattle, but row houses, if you will, around trees created in the shape of a U with old-growth trees in the middle - allowing for greater shade, and a play area for kiddos, and a place to sit for elders. It is very much possible to build dense housing options and preserve old growth while planting new trees.
So I think in addition to creating density, we can plant more trees. We can do more to incentivize good living-wage jobs in industries that are cleaner. I heard from our friends in Georgetown Community Center that they had to beg and plead for one of the local industries to incorporate more greener options for a glass manufacturer down there. And we should simultaneously be seeing the opportunity to promote good jobs as a requirement for also promoting good green jobs. And I worked very hard with members of both the environmental community and the labor community in the past to push Just Transition policies - to ensure that as we transition to greener economies or greener manufacturing strategies, that we're preserving good living-wage jobs and, even better, preserving good union living-wage jobs. So I look forward to making sure that we have denser cities, that we have greener cities, and that we have greener industries.
[00:29:13] Crystal Fincher: Now, King County does incremental budgeting, making it more challenging for people to understand how county funds are allocated in a base budget. The budget is known as one of your areas of strength. What do you think can be done to make the budget process easier for the public to understand and influence at the county level?
[00:29:35] Teresa Mosqueda: I've been really proud of what we've been able to accomplish in Seattle. And coming from working the halls of Olympia on behalf of the Washington State Labor Council for eight years and then for three years before that with the Children's Alliance, I was used to this concept of having these biennial budgets that needed to be seen in full, that you could see the red line to know what was the investment from last year versus the upcoming year. Unfortunately, the City of Seattle doesn't have such a budget document. It's basically like single pages - page after page of narrative descriptions of what the dollars will do. That's fine for some budget notes, but what I think we are working towards in the City of Seattle - a preview for folks who love budget talk - is we're going to one day have a true biennial budget and an actual budget document where you will be able to see the red line, either additions or subtractions to specific programs so that everyone knows what is being invested in, how funding is changing, and where priorities are showing up in the budget. I am excited about being able to build on that work that I've done in Seattle, especially as Budget Chair, in some of the most pressing economic times in recent history, starting in 2020. And have been able to not only allocate millions of dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act, but also to create greater transparency in how we budget.
One of the things that I think is maybe misunderstood out there is the way in which we've helped to provide transparency in the entire budget, but specifically the Seattle Police Department. It had not been exposed year-over-year that Seattle Police Department actually had about $40 million that was rolling over year-over-year on top of funding that the chief, that the mayor, that the department had acknowledged they could not use. And in a time where we saw an economic crisis on the horizon, growing needs in our community, and knew that that was $40 million that was not going to be put to use, not going into direct services for the community - and for those who wanted to see additional officers, wasn't even going to be able to use to increase the hiring plan. It's good budgeting to be able to make sure that that funding is transparently accounted for in the General Fund - and where we can deploy it to things like food, housing, childcare, economic security for small businesses that we do so. That's something I'm really proud of - that we were able to show what the full picture was, not only for that department, but for all departments. And to make some important investments in mental health services, behavioral health services, youth violence, gun violence reduction strategies - things that similarly invest in community safety, but we were able to show where those line items move.
I will bring to King County Council the ability to structurally push for greater transparency for members of the public, encourage us as the legislative branch to own the separate but equal branch of government that the council is as the legislative branch, and ensure that the public has an opportunity to dive into the proposal that comes from the executive, just like the proposal that comes from the governor to the State Legislature. You receive that, you dissect it, you talk to community about what it means - and then ultimately the legislative branch reconvenes, reconfigures the budget, and presents it to the executive for a signature. It's good governance, it's good transparency. I think it's understandable from folks across whatever political spectrum - it's important to have budget transparency and accountability, and that's what I've been able to accomplish in the City of Seattle.
[00:33:02] Crystal Fincher: It is, and I think there are a number of people, especially listeners to Hacks & Wonks, who do enjoy budget conversations, who would definitely look forward to more budget transparency at the County level, like you've been working towards at the City level. As we close here and as people are going to be making the decision about who they're going to be voting for for this County Council position, what is your message to voters and people listening about why they should choose you?
[00:33:30] Teresa Mosqueda: I'm very thrilled to be in this race for King County Council. I think I have not only proven that I'm an effective legislator at the council level, but that I know how to center folks who have been left out of policy conversations in the room, but more importantly - follow the lead of those who've experienced the injustices over the years. We have been able to move historic, monumental, national-headline-grabbing policies within the City of Seattle in my now going into six years in Seattle City Council. And it has been done, I believe, in a collaborative way, in a way that has made transformational change, and in a way that I think has always centered - been centered on my progressive commitments to investing in working families, folks of color, and the LGBTQ community, workers to ensure that there's greater opportunity and prosperity. And creating housing and stability - that is something that is good for our entire community. I do this work because it's all about how we create healthy communities. You have to have investments in good living wage jobs and housing stability and opportunity education to have self-determination and control over your own life and your own decisions. And I think through public policy, through investments with public resources, we can create greater opportunity across our county.
I am excited, as well, to be coming to this race as a woman, as a Latina, as a Chicana - poised to be the first Latina ever elected to King County Council. And with a King County population that is made up of half people of color and a quarter immigrant and refugee, it is critical that we have more voices with folks who have the lived experience coming from communities of color serving in these positions. I think that's why I've been able to effectively and efficiently move policy through so quickly - because I have put at the front of the line many of the community members who are often left out of policy discussions. I hope to bring in my commitment to working with folks who are workers, women, folks of color, members of the LGBTQ community to hear more about what we can do at King County Council. I know I have big shoes to step into with Councilmember McDermott and his commitment to public health, working with the LGBTQ community, his tenure in the State Legislature - and I'm also excited to add to that and serve our broader region and our growing needs.
[00:35:59] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much, Councilmember Mosqueda, for spending this time with us today and having this conversation. Sincerely appreciate it, and we'll certainly be following your campaign eagerly over the next several months. Thank you.
[00:36:13] Teresa Mosqueda: Thank you so much - I appreciate it.
[00:36:15] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Election 2023 re-air, Crystal chats with Cydney Moore about her campaign for re-election to Burien City Council Position 2, accomplishments from her first term, and her consistent progressive track record. They then dig into the details of Burien government’s recent non-handling of their unhoused population as sweep after sweep has disrupted and endangered lives, caused community division, and failed to solve anything. Highlighting the importance of upcoming elections, a 4-3 majority on the Burien City Council has been unwilling to accept an offer of help from King County and has instead focused on retaliation against those working on solutions.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Cydney Moore at @vote_cydney.
Cydney Moore
Cydney Moore is a mother, activist, and elected representative with a long history of service to her community. Her background includes over a decade of experience in nonprofit leadership, and years of experience as a small business owner, a journalist covering politics, and as an advocate for social justice issues including housing for all, fair wages, women's rights, LGBTQIA2S+ rights, immigrant rights, ending the war on drugs, and more. She has worked on policy issues at the city, county, and state level, and currently holds office as a Burien City Councilmember. Cydney also serves on the board of 3 nonprofits (the Burien Arts Association, Tukwila Pantry food bank, and the Multi Service Center), and is on several regional boards and committees, including the Domestic Violence Initiative Regional Task Force. Her other experience includes acting as a Lead Organizer for ACLU Burien People Power, and volunteering for organizations like the Burien Severe Weather Shelter and Burien C.A.R.E.S. Animal Shelter.
Resources
Campaign Website - Cydney Moore
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
I am very excited today to be welcoming Burien City Councilmember Cydney Moore to the program. Welcome, Cydney.
[00:01:00] Cydney Moore: Hi, thank you so much for having me - I'm really excited to be here.
[00:01:04] Crystal Fincher: Well, we certainly have no shortage of things to talk about, especially with recent news and events in Burien. But I do want to start because you are a councilmember, you are running for reelection right now - is to talk about what led you to run for office, to want to serve, and what have you been spending your time doing in your first term?
[00:01:24] Cydney Moore: Well, I feel like I've always been drawn towards public office. Even as a kid, I used to dream about becoming the first female president. Even as far as third grade - I found some old notes in school folders my mom had stashed away where I had written policy proposals for what I would do - and it's pretty consistent, actually. One of the things that I talked about was everyone will have a home. I guess I've always wanted to serve my community, I've been an activist my whole life, I have been working in nonprofit leadership for over a decade now. So this is my passion, this is what drives me - creating a better community for all of us, creating a better future for our people - that's what gives me joy.
In my first term - it's been a rough go - I took office in January of 2020, right before the pandemic hit, so I had a lot of goals and aspirations for what I wanted to do, and we ended up scrambling to mitigate the harms that were ongoing in the crisis we were all facing. But throughout that, we were able to accomplish some great good. One of the things that we were able to do in Burien that I'm really, really proud of was approve hazard pay for essential workers throughout the pandemic, and we also implemented an eviction moratorium that kept people from losing their homes throughout the entire state of emergency in Washington. I also have been involved with passing a groundbreaking list of renters' protections in Burien. We're leading the charge in some of these areas and other cities are certainly looking to us as an example - I'm incredibly proud of that.
We have launched a new co-responder model that integrates behavioral and mental health professionals and crisis responders alongside police on calls. I am hoping that we can work towards having an individual standalone crisis response team that can call in police if needed, but can operate independently. I proposed an increase in our human services budget, so I'm really, really proud of that - that was just in our last budget cycle and it actually funds a lot of incredible services across our city, including things like rental assistance, utility assistance, education opportunities, mental health support, therapy for children, youth and adults, food banks - just all the good things - doubled the city arts budget. Right now, we are working on passing legislation to raise the minimum wage here in Burien - very, very excited about that, that's something that I started working on initially right after I got into office and that sort of got put on halt due to the pandemic, so I'm really excited to be taking that back up again. I created a lobby effort to King County Council through my work with the Domestic Violence Initiative Regional Task Force, serving as a representative from our council, to allocate additional funding for domestic violence protection order advocates, and proud to announce that we actually got $375,000 allocated to the protection order advocacy program. So, yeah - I think we've done some good, I'm really proud of what we have been able to accomplish. I'm really proud of my track record so far in office, and I'm hoping to continue the work.
[00:04:54] Crystal Fincher: It is an impressive track record, particularly with new councilmembers coming in, dealing with things during the pandemic. But, hey - it sounds like you guys have a totally progressive council - there's no friction or issues in Burien, is there?
[00:05:10] Cydney Moore: You know - it's funny because it's not funny. But if you don't laugh, you cry. So one would think that - forward-facing - our council is progressive. We have people - the majority of our council has claimed to be progressive - they ran on progressive values. And as of late, we're not seeing quite so much of that as we would like. There has been a lot of divisiveness. And I'll tell you - getting positive things passed is like pulling teeth with our council - to put it plainly. It's brutal. It's painful work. And I really wish that we were a little more cohesive and aligned in our goals and our values so that we could do more work because it is slow-going and it's unfortunate.
[00:05:59] Crystal Fincher: It is unfortunate, and we've seen it blow up in the news. So, is it that there's a 4-3 kind of moderate conservative majority on the council now?
[00:06:07] Cydney Moore: Yes, that's very accurate. You can see a pretty consistent 4-3 split on just about everything major, and especially when it comes to passing progressive policies. Absolutely.
[00:06:21] Crystal Fincher: So, Burien has been in the news because of sweeps, a lease, what to do with the unhoused population, and whether to help, how to help, the county has stepped in. This has been an ongoing saga that we have been talking about during the week-in-reviews. But can you walk us through what has been happening and where things stand?
[00:06:42] Cydney Moore: Okay. So, we had a number of unhoused people who were camping on property that is jointly owned and operated by our City and the King County Library system. Our building - the first two stories is our Burien Library, and then the third story is City Hall, and we share a space on the ground floor for city council meetings and multipurpose uses for the library. So, there's a condo association of those two entities that operates this building. We had a lot of campers out there for quite a long time. Some of them had been there for - I'd say, a year, maybe more - and it was fairly mellow. A lot of these people are individuals that those of us who've worked directly with our homeless population have known for, sometimes years. But the condo association decided they wanted to sweep people off the property - and our city council and our city manager essentially took a hands-off approach, deferred to the condo association, and we did not take action to allocate new space for people to go. We directed our contractors that provide outreach services, LEAD and REACH, to go out and offer people what support they can, but it's been abundantly clear there is not shelter space available in Burien - we don't have any significant shelter here. And the shelters in the surrounding area are absolutely full, so we were told outright there aren't shelter beds available for most of these people.
We moved forward with the sweep, and I worked very diligently for the weeks leading up to the sweep to try and find any alternative options for people in terms of places they could relocate to, looking for different property, reaching out to different organizations, and fell short. So the night before the sweep, myself and my dear friend and colleague, Charles Schaefer, who was then the chair of our planning commission, we went out and we told the unhoused people camping there - We don't have anywhere for you to go. Do you have any plans for where you might go? And most of them said - No, they had no idea where to go, otherwise they would have gone there already. Most of them were scared and didn't know what was going to happen to them, and so Charles and I let them know legally they have a right to camp on public property - besides parks, because Burien has a ban on camping in parks. And we have very little public property in the city that is not parks. It's very minimal - and I can say that with a very strong degree of certainty because I've looked, I've looked at length - but we did locate a small piece of public land one block away in our downtown core, and we told people - If you camp here - legally, that is allowed and per Martin v. Boise, the Ninth Circuit Court ruling that says we can't criminalize homelessness, our city will not sweep you until policy changes or they figure out some loophole. We told them straight up - the City doesn't condone this, we're not acting on behalf of the City, the City is not sanctioning this, and quite frankly, people are gonna be upset, and the City is probably going to work to remove you as quickly as possible. But for the time being, until there's some other alternative, you can go here if you choose to - and they did.
And so the following morning, we had a big media circus - lots of people coming out to watch the sweep, see what happens. A lot of people in the area were devastated at the prospect, but there were, alternatively, people who were very excited to see people removed and were under the impression that by removing them from this piece of property, they were somehow going to disappear. Again, many of these unhoused people have been living here in Burien for years - this is their home - even if they don't have a house, they have strong roots here, connections, family even. So there was quite an uproar when people came out the next morning and realized that the problem had not gone away, they didn't solve anything, and people they thought they were going to disperse out of our downtown core moved one block away, and at that point could not be swept. Our city council and our city manager collaborated to take action to lease out that property quickly, and they decided to lease the property to Burien C.A.R.E.S., which is our contracted animal shelter here. They leased the property for $185 a month, which has been speculated as far below fair market value - it's a sizable piece of land in a prime location, so that is of some concern. And as soon as the lease was signed, they conducted a sweep on that property and did not allocate any space for those people to relocate to. I begged them for months, I tried at every city council meeting between the two sweeps to ask our council to consider any option. I made a few proposals - none of them are ideal, but emergency temporary places that people could stay for the time being while we sorted through it - and they denied all asks for taking action.
So they swept the unhoused population again, which had grown in size because people here have, again, close ties, and there are people who I know of personally who typically tend to avoid camps, that realized that that was a safe place, that there was safety in numbers there, that it was someplace they would be able to stay in contact with people like service providers and family members because they were not hiding off on the side of the road or in a bush somewhere - they were centrally located and stable for the time being. So they got swept again, and Charles and I went up there again and informed people - Hey, we've been looking, we still haven't found anything, but we have located some other public property that is big enough for you to camp on if you decide to go there. Charles and I consulted the King County parcel viewer and a number of city maps, and we found a little slice of - patch of grass - that ran adjacent to a park just a few blocks away. And according to the King County parcel viewer and all the city maps we consulted, that piece of land was somehow overlooked or whatever - it just wasn't part of the park, so legally, it would be acceptable for people to camp there.
So many of the people relocated there, and they stayed there for a couple of days until one of our city councilmembers apparently called the police. The police said they wouldn't sweep them because as far as the police could see, that's not part of the park and it's legal for them to be there. She contacted our city manager, who took it upon himself to do some digging, and found one map in our city files that contradicted all the other maps we have and said that it was a park. And so he told the police - This is a park, I'm deciding that this is a part of a park, you have to go remove them. A testament to the ambiguity of the legal status of whether this piece of land is park or not park is the fact that our police will immediately sweep people who are in a park - that's just a policy that's standard ops for them. They did not immediately sweep people. They posted a 72-hour notice, giving people time to get their things together and try and relocate. City council still did not take any action.
So Charles and I went out and spoke to people again, and the options continue to get increasingly worse - the land is increasingly smaller every time that we are finding. We let them know there is a very small piece of dirt that runs along our main downtown strip, right next door to the Library-City Hall building - literally on the next block, and two blocks down from the original lot that they went to after the first sweep - so they're right back where they started, pretty much. But a number of our unhoused people camping out have relocated to this very small patch of dirt. Some people decided to go try their odds camping on some vacant private property that had sat empty for a while - they managed to go unnoticed for a few weeks. But I got a text last Tuesday from one of their mothers - and she's a very kind woman, she does what she can, but she lives in Puyallup and is on the verge of homelessness herself, so she's not able to fully support her son - but she let me know that there were 14 people who were camping on this private lot in the north end of town, and police had just arrived with a trespass order, and they were giving them two hours to get out. So I went out again and tried to get whoever I could to come out and help get people assistance in relocating and getting their stuff, and trying to make sure they could get where they were going to go without losing too many of their important belongings. And some of them decided to come down to the patch of dirt on 152nd and our downtown core and join the others, and some of them decided to drag their tents to a median in the middle of a very busy road just down the block, and it's a really dangerous area in that particular corridor, but they asked the police - Is this public land, are you gonna sweep us? And the police said no, and so they decided that they were gonna take their chances. And so to my understanding, there are still a couple of people who are camping out in a very small island median in the middle of a very busy road.
And to this day, our council has refused to take action. We have had an offer come in from King County of $1 million and 35 Pallet homes, which house two people apiece, to allocate property and help us operate a safe space for people. Our council voted that down.
[00:16:43] Crystal Fincher: And I wanna talk about this for a minute - because you talked about what was happening on the ground, but during this process, the City of Burien received a letter from the Office of the King County Executive, Dow Constantine, from his legal counsel, saying - Hey, it is illegal to sweep people off of public property when there is no shelter available. You basically made it explicit, City of Burien, that there's no shelter available. And your police force are actually county sheriff's deputies who are contracted by the City of Burien, so because they fall under the authority of the county as deputies, we are saying they can't participate in that - which caused quite an uproar. What was the response to that?
[00:17:25] Cydney Moore: People were confused and upset. Some of us were very pleased. I was very surprised when I found out our city got that letter, and I was very grateful to our county for their response and taking a stance that they're not going to violate people's constitutional rights to exist in a public space with nowhere else to go.
[00:17:47] Crystal Fincher: And that's really the crux of it right there - is that time after time, as we've seen in so many other cities, just sweeping someone and saying - Well, you can't camp here - does not do anything to address the issue of homelessness. It doesn't do anything to provide shelter, to provide housing, to address that underlying problem. And so many times, people who come at this problem from the issue of - Well, the people being there, their existence, me having to look at them and deal with them is the problem - when the root of the problem is they don't have a home, and so many other issues become exacerbated, and so many things get destabilized from not having a home. So as you said, they move from one location to another to another, because it's not like there's any attempt to work on housing from the council majority. And also, illustrative of how councils work, you can have people on very different sides, but the majority is going to carry the day. So although there were three people who have been working diligently on the council to try and provide a real solution that doesn't just create the next spot for someone to camp, or once you've made all of the spots in one city illegal, just push them into another city and say it's their problem - it's about really finding a way to provide people with shelter. Because it is not ideal for people to be sleeping outside. As you said, it's dangerous, it's completely suboptimal. So this offer from the county that came in - about three weeks ago now, I think - has the majority of the council done anything to take advantage of the million dollars, the 35 Pallet shelter help?
[00:19:24] Cydney Moore: No, we had that brought before us for a vote, and our council majority declined and they voted it down. And at this point, our next regularly scheduled council meeting isn't until July 17th, and so we are working to take advantage of this gap to rally public support and coordinate with a variety of different organizations in our community to hopefully put pressure on council enough that they will take action. Burien is actually in the middle of a budgetary shortfall - we're facing an impending fiscal cliff if we don't raise taxes and fees and find new revenue sources. And so turning down a million dollars for anything at this point seems pretty irresponsible, but certainly turning down a million dollars to serve our unhoused and vulnerable population is - it's unconscionable in my mind. I can't tell you how many times I've sat there thinking how amazing it would be if somebody dropped a million dollars in front of me to go help the homeless - that's literally the stuff that dreams are made of. And to turn it down is - I just can't fathom why anybody would say no to that.
And like you pointed out, sweeps are dangerous. People living outside - it's dangerous. Unhoused people are disproportionately targeted as victims of harassment and violence. And we have data that shows that sweeps cause a number of disruptions to people's lives - they result in people losing things like documentation, identification, medication - disrupting any kind of progress they are making towards stability. It interrupts their contact with service providers, case managers, family members that serve as a support system. And they increase the mortality rate of unhoused people. It just - they're dangerous. Burien already has a disproportionately high mortality rate for our unhoused population compared to King County as a whole. So we are facing a very real crisis here - our region is facing a homelessness crisis in general, but Burien is finally having to stare that issue in the face and we're failing in our response, our leaders are failing in our response. And our people are suffering as a consequence of that. And it is quite devastating to witness, especially being on the ground in direct contact with these people that some of us have worked with for years. We know their names, we know their faces, we know some of their backstories, some of them I know family members of. It's an ugly thing to witness seeing people who are already in crisis being shuffled around and disregarded and hung out to dry - by leaders who are tasked with protecting the safety and wellbeing of all of our constituents. So it's disappointing, to say the least.
[00:22:05] Crystal Fincher: Very disappointing. And very disappointing that your attempt to help people while following the law, and the law that the Office of King County Executive Dow Constantine very helpfully and forcefully advised the City of Burien that they were running afoul of in their current way, their reaction wasn't to say - Okay, let's pause and reevaluate. Obviously we're getting legal advice that this is illegal. It does jive with the court decision saying that we can't sweep without offers of shelter. We've pretty much just flatly admitted that there aren't offers of shelter. So maybe we pause and talk with some of our partners and figure out ways to get these people housed. No one wants people out on the street - if we can try and work to find a way to get them into shelter, that would be excellent. They decided not to do that. They decided to double down on the way things were going, to basically - I think a fair characterization to the letter from the King County Executive's legal counsel was indignation from the city manager, who then went forward and basically just kept doing the things that he was doing, even appearing to not check with the council before some of the things - although he does have the support of the council majority.
So now we're in a situation where they haven't taken up any of this offer to house people, and people are being harmed by this. People are out exposed to the elements and to a very hostile, activated, conservative, radical element that has been drawn to Burien over this issue. And some of the contentious scenes that we've seen across the region with people just talking in very dehumanizing ways about the homeless population - really not seeing them as people, really just seeing the problem is that they're inconvenienced by having to look at people and not really caring about what that person is going through - that's a challenge. So they haven't had time to address the offer of a million bucks and Pallet shelters. They did have time, however, to hold a special meeting to consider censuring you and to consider removing Charles, who you talked about - the Chair of the Planning Commission - because of your helping and trying to find a solution to this problem. What in the world? What was your reaction to that?
[00:24:16] Cydney Moore: Yeah, I spoke to this during the special meeting when the council was considering removing Charles from the Planning Commission - who I might add, has served our community dutifully for many years and has been serving the homeless directly, I think, for 14 years in our city - so he knows them very well. And what are you going to expect from somebody who's been in that field for so long other than trying to help? But my response is that - throughout history, there is a pattern of punishments being doled out to people who try to help persecuted minority groups, whether that's people based on their race or their religion or who they love - it's a consistent pattern. And history does not look kindly on those who are enacting those punishments against people who try and help. I told our council, I said - Charles is going to have to live with what we do tonight for the rest of his life, or at least until our council makeup changes. But every person on this council is also going to have to live with their decision and this decision may follow you. Are you prepared to answer for it, for what you do tonight? 'Cause I'm very comfortable in my position, but I don't know if later on when people ask you - Why would you do this? - if you'll have justification or excuses enough to explain why you would take such action.
It was very, very clear that what Charles and I have done is try to inform our constituents of what our laws are and how best to comply. And I think that's something that really needs to be noted in these conversations - these unhoused people have been asking how they can follow the law. They're asking - Where is it legal for me to go? Where can I be? Where am I allowed to exist? And our city has offered no real option, but has publicly stated - Oh yeah, you can be on public property - until we find a loophole to take it away from you. And you can be on sidewalks, which obviously is true to the extent of people can stay on sidewalks large enough where they're not obstructing them - you have to maintain a three feet clearance path on a sidewalk and there's not that many sidewalks that are wide enough for people to camp on in Burien without obstructing. So these individuals are literally just asking their leaders - Where can I go? Where am I allowed to be? And we did our best to inform our constituents of what the City's policies are, where they are legally allowed to go, how they can comply with the laws. And that's the duty and obligation of any public servant, especially a councilmember that makes those laws and policies and a planning commissioner, the Chair of the Planning Commission, whose job it is to advise on zoning and land use issues. So arguably we were doing our job to the best of our ability and to the expectation that I think we should all be held.
And our council - the term that has been used by many in our community - used Charles as a scapegoat. They can't remove me - I am an elected official. But Charles was appointed, and they found a target and took advantage of that. And I think it just reflects really, really poorly on our council and on our city as a whole that our leadership would penalize someone for informing people of their constitutional rights and informing people of knowledge that is public, by the way - all of the information that we shared is all public knowledge, it's all easily accessible on government websites. Yeah, I don't know how they felt comfortable doing that. I really don't understand any valid justification for that - and that's what I said.
[00:28:08] Crystal Fincher: Well, I'm gonna hop in here and editorialize. We know there wasn't a valid reason for that - but as we've seen in Tennessee, as we've seen in so many other places - if they feel they have the power to do it, they will. They had the power to remove Charles. I think they initially thought they may have the power to remove you. You were actually, as you said, doing your job. They still have not taken up the offer to house people. Their job is to serve and take care of their constituents. They have constituents who have been out on the street. There's an offer of shelter and money to make that happen available that they just won't do - they would rather just sweep people, just kick them out - knowing how destabilizing that is and knowing how much it has failed directly in the City of Burien. This clearly isn't working. It's really expensive to do - requires a lot of public enforcement resources, law enforcement resources, parks resources - requires a whole lot and it's not making a difference. So one would think that they would stop doing the same thing over and over again - getting failing results - and start to do something that would work. The county didn't just say - This is illegal, you can't do it. They offered an olive branch and said - And we will help you. And they basically slapped that hand away and said - No, we're good. In fact, we're not even gonna deal with that. We're just gonna try and kick out people who disagree with us and enact these really retaliatory actions. And it is really a shame.
But what happened was lots of people saw this and people of all cross-ideological spectrums - I don't think many of the commissioners who wound up taking action would call themselves progressive, but they do call themselves public servants - and were appalled at this negligence and scapegoating and retaliation by the majority on the city council, mayor, deputy mayor, city manager, others, and said - This is unacceptable - and resigned in protest. And the entire Planning Commission resigned in protest and several other commissioners throughout the city - I think 12 in total resigned from their position. So now, Burien is in a crisis - doesn't have a planning commission, has several other commissions short-staffed. Many cities - this is comprehensive planning time where the Planning Commission is doing some heavy lifting - and now there is nothing there, because they decided to act petty and retaliate and not use money offered to them for free to house people. So where do things go from here?
[00:30:35] Cydney Moore: That's a good question. As you said, we don't have a planning commission now, and they were absolutely in the middle of a major project. We haven't heard from our city any official statement in regard to what the plan is going to be to fill these vacancies. So our entire Planning Commission is gone. Our Parks Board has lost their chair, the vice-chair, and another member. We've lost at least one Airport Committee member and arts commissioner. Like we - arguably our city is in a spiral right now, and I don't know what's going to happen next. I don't know what we're going to do, I haven't heard anything from our leadership, I haven't heard anything from our city manager - certainly haven't heard anything regarding plans to move forward. As I said, my goal right now is to work with my fellow progressives on council to lobby as much support as we can and pressure as we can to get the council majority to approve use of this million dollars and designate a safe space for people to go.
Our unhoused population is still waiting for a response and things aren't getting better. And as you said, there is significant anger in the community and there's been a large conservative presence - and the hostility there is not dissipating. I'm aware of people who have - like I said, unhoused people are always disproportionately targeted as victims of harassment and violence, but people have been very aggressive towards our unhoused people here throughout this - throwing fireworks at their tents, stealing their tents, and bragging about it openly. There are people who are openly in public talking about wanting to shoot them and shoot me. So this violent rhetoric has maintained and our unhoused people are out there exposed with nowhere to go, no safety, no walls to hide behind. And so we're going to continue pushing for our council to take action - because we don't have an option not to, honestly - doing nothing is just not an option in my mind and in the mind of many others in our community.
As far as our city operations go - like I said, I really just don't know. We are legally required to have a planning commission and to have a comp plan, a comprehensive plan, and we just don't have the people now. And it usually takes quite a while for us to go through the process of putting out a call for new applicants and going through the screening process, interview process, all of this. And quite frankly, the strain on our staff has been significant - like you said, it takes a lot of resources to engage in things like sweeps. Our staff is already pretty bare bones. Burien operates with some incredible people, but they are stretched thin. And having to call multiple special meetings certainly doesn't help with their workload. Having to engage in sweeps doesn't help with their workload. And now having to add on to their plate - trying to figure out what to do with a whole bunch of empty spaces and an entire empty planning commission - yeah, I don't know what that process is going to look like, or how quickly any of that will move forward. You would expect our city manager to be offering some insight or - the City was really quick to respond to that letter from King County, but obviously not so quick to respond to the fact that we have had a mass resignation from our public servants that we need, we legally have to have. So I'm waiting with bated breath, just like everyone else, to see what happens there.
[00:34:20] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I should note, while they haven't taken up any substantive action at all to try and house people - even though there's an offer of a million dollars, 35 Pallet shelters, they've had meetings to censure and retaliate against their opponents - they also had time to welcome Prime Minister Modi from India, who has taken a lot of heat from the human rights community for human rights violations, free speech violations. They rank very, very low - I think they've dropped from something like 140th to just under 160th out of 180 in the World Press Freedom Index. Certainly seeing a lot of protests - I think there's no one who says - Ah, everything is great. And yes, this is someone we should celebrate and welcome. Although those three Burien city councilmembers did somehow and they found time for that, but not time to take up the ability to house their residents who are without homes right now.
Now, before we close - usually we talk about a lot of other stuff with candidates - this time, I felt it was appropriate to talk about everything that has been happening with the situation in Burien because it has been in the news and is so pressing - and is still just languishing with the council not doing anything at the time that we're recording. But this is happening also while you're running for reelection. And you've drawn several opponents - I think most, if not all, come from the people who are virulently anti-homeless - is the way to say it. They don't seem to have any solutions or care at all about the actual housing - Just get them out of here - seems to be the thing. And they're running to take a hard line on getting those people out of here and getting someone who actually is doing the work to house people out. What can people do if they're looking for more information about your campaign?
[00:36:09] Cydney Moore: I would encourage everyone to check out my website - it's votecydney.com - C-Y-D-N-E-Y. Sign up for updates, sign up to volunteer. Please donate if you can - I run a grassroots campaign, always have - I'm not a particularly wealthy person that's self-funding my operations here, so anything that you can do to help will help us get through this election. I am working very diligently with our partners in the community to build a coalition of support for my campaign. But this is of the people, by the people, for the people - so if you can, please contribute however you are able to. Also, you can always follow me on social media - @vote_cydney on Twitter, Facebook - Cydney Moore for Burien City Council. I welcome any feedback people might have, any input you might have, any ideas for creative campaigning you might have. This is rough - it's a rough time to be dealing with all of these things and running a campaign - and I have drawn out a lot of scrutiny. I guess you could say that I'm a pretty polarizing person at this moment and people are drawing some hard lines. And people aren't always falling on the side of those lines that you would expect. I have had people who don't actually necessarily agree with my position, but do respect the fact that I'm willing to stand up for my position, who have expressed their support. And I have people who you would think are progressive, who you would think would be aligned with me, who are pissed - they're really mad at me for what I've been doing. And so, yeah, I can use all the support I can get at this time.
And what I'll say about my opponents are the most vocal one is avidly anti-homeless and has been actively asking our council to sweep people and seems to be of the mindset that we should let them hit rock bottom, which I guess in my mind means let them die - because if you're outside and have nothing and have nowhere to go and have - barely even have clothes on your back, no food, no safety, I don't know how much more rock bottom it gets than that than just letting them die. And that's what happens. Our unhoused people are dying. So that's certainly concerning and not somebody that I would want representing me in elected office in my city. And my other two opponents - I just have not seen or heard much at all from - I literally just met one of them for the first time the other day. I've never missed a city council meeting in all of my years of serving, and I've never seen those individuals attend a single meeting. I've never seen them out in the public engaging with people, and I'm actively involved in a lot of things - I serve on the board of three different nonprofits in this community, I volunteer for a number of different organizations and causes. And so it concerns me that we have people running that I don't know and nobody that I know who are also involved in the community have ever seen, so I can't speak to their values.
But I'm here and I am present and I'm active and I will remain so. And you can look at my track record - my voting record is available on the City of Burien website and I encourage everyone to look to it - I don't think you're ever gonna find a single vote I've ever taken that is not solidly progressive. So I'm - like I said, I'm pretty consistent in that - and I am adamant about maintaining the fight for positive change in our city. And I would ask and invite everyone who is willing to join me in that. What happens here in Burien has a ripple effect across our region - like I said, we are leading as an example in a lot of different ways for a lot of different policy issues. And so community doesn't end at city limits - what happens here can absolutely impact our neighboring cities and cities across this area and sometimes across the country - there are other cities who have looked at us and our policies from around the country. So please help me because there are a lot of people who are against what's going on here and we need all the help we can get. We need people who will continue to fight for what's right in office and keep things real in local politics.
[00:40:14] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Cydney Moore. And we'll continue to follow the events happening in Burien. Thank you.
[00:40:22] Cydney Moore: Awesome, thank you so much for having me. And I look forward to following your future coverage.
[00:40:27] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
Over the last six weeks, Hacks & Wonks presented our series of interviews with most of the Seattle City Council candidates! (We did have one cancel, one decline, and one not respond to our invitation…)
Now, join Crystal and Shannon behind-the-scenes of Hacks & Wonks for a bonus (not-so) short episode where they discuss how questions got chosen and written, the why behind those kludgy SPOG contract questions, thoughts and observations after all the interviews, and their approach to editing. And also, a bit of venting.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Shannon Cheng at @drbestturtle.
Resources
“Rob Saka, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 1” from Hacks & Wonks
“Maren Costa, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 1” from Hacks & Wonks
“Seattle City Council District 1 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks
“Tanya Woo, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 2” from Hacks & Wonks
“Tammy Morales, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 2” from Hacks & Wonks
“Seattle City Council District 2 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks
“Joy Hollingsworth, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 3” from Hacks & Wonks
“Alex Hudson, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 3” from Hacks & Wonks
“Seattle City Council District 3 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks
“Maritza Rivera, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks
“Ron Davis, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks
“Seattle City Council District 4 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks
“ChrisTiana ObeySumner, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 5” from Hacks & Wonks
“Seattle City Council District 5 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks
“Pete Hanning, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 6” from Hacks & Wonks
“Seattle City Council District 6 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks
“Andrew Lewis, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 7” from Hacks & Wonks
“Seattle City Council District 7 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, this is a little bonus short - I don't know, we'll wind up seeing how long this turns out to be. I am joined here with someone who you don't hear from on the mic often, but every time we do, it's wonderful. She is the person who does so much work for the podcast - this is a team effort. I'm here with Dr. Shannon Cheng. Hey, Shannon.
[00:01:14] Shannon Cheng: Hey, Crystal!
[00:01:16] Crystal Fincher: So Dr. Shannon Cheng - who is incredible, who works with me, who is a subject matter expert on public safety, is the guru for knowledge about like the SPOG contract, SPMA contract, that kind of stuff. She really understands and has the ability to actually explain it and share it in really accessible ways. But I just want to back up and talk about what you do and how you became an expert. What do you do, Shannon?
[00:01:44] Shannon Cheng: So I find myself involved in local policy and politics kind of by accident. I mean, you referenced that I'm a doctor - my doctorate is in Space Propulsion, I'm an aerospace engineer by training. And I guess if I try to think about the throughline of how I've operated in life is that I kind of don't want to end up doing things that aren't gonna let me go to sleep at night. So what happened with me with aerospace is - at one point - understanding that basically staying involved in that industry was contributing to weapons of destruction and war. And I just couldn't bring myself to do that. So through volunteering and activism, I guess that's how I met up with Crystal and got connected and have been doing a lot of things. I work on People Power Washington, which is focused on equitable public safety and policing across Washington state. We've worked on the Seattle, King County and State Legislature levels. We work on things ranging from budget advocacy to monitoring these difficult to understand police guild contracts and understanding how those get in the way of accountability, trying to work to pass charter amendments at the county level that would support better public safety and--
[00:02:59] Crystal Fincher: Shannon was instrumental in the passage of that 2020 County Charter Amendment to reform public safety. Instrumental.
[00:03:07] Shannon Cheng: And yeah, then recently I was invited to join the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability. And so that's been really a wonderful experience to just engage with families who have been directly impacted by police violence and brutality, and trying to work to have that not happen to anybody else ever again. So that's kind of me.
[00:03:32] Crystal Fincher: That is. Except you are the ultimate fun fact person. Like you have so many fun facts. A prior student of yours is currently on the Space Station right now.
[00:03:42] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I mean - he was up there for a six month stint. He may have come back down by now, but - I think the launch was in February - and when they were showing the pictures, I was like, Wait, I taught that guy Dynamics.
[00:03:58] Crystal Fincher: You have a picture of you like in zero gravity working on a thing. You are an orienteering champion, which is a whole thing.
[00:04:07] Shannon Cheng: Yes. It is a sport that is not super popular in this country - it's widely popular in Europe, in Australia, New Zealand, those areas. But yes, you could say I am an orienteering champion of sorts--
[00:04:20] Crystal Fincher: You are literally an orienteering champion.
[00:04:24] Shannon Cheng: --thanks to participation and attendance.
[00:04:27] Crystal Fincher: And you being great. It's not like there were no competitors. Yeah, there are so many fun facts about Shannon - just awesome things that pop up here and there. But Shannon is talented at everything basically, and is just one of the best human beings I know. And an instrumental part of Hacks & Wonks. So that's why we're both here talking to you right now.
So we wanted to have this conversation to talk about just what we were thinking when we were putting together questions for the Seattle City Council candidate interviews. And we meet and kind of do a whole thing - have an approach anytime we do series of candidate interviews - this is no exception. But especially with all of them and this conversation, there's been a lot of tangential conversation brought up - a lot on social media, a lot in the community. And some of these questions have become even more relevant in the past couple of weeks, particularly the ones revolving around policing in the city of Seattle and the new contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild that is in the process of being negotiated. And so I guess starting out - when we start thinking about how we're going to do candidate interviews, what do we usually talk about? How do we usually approach that?
[00:05:51] Shannon Cheng: I think we're - I know you are always wanting to kind of understand how would a candidate actually vote on issues that matter to people in this city? Because ultimately people can say things and have platitudes, but it really comes down to when there's a hard vote, which way are they gonna go? So I think, especially for the lightning round, a lot of our questions were centered around trying to ask these questions - and getting a Yes, No, or seeing if there was a waffle from these candidates - just to better understand how they think about these things and when push comes to shove, which way they would lean.
[00:06:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I think that is my approach. And it is an approach that is the result of years of working in politics, years of seeing how candidates process information throughout a campaign, how they conduct themselves just in their general lives, and how that translates to policy, and whether they govern in a way that's consistent with how they campaigned. And certainly one thing that is a throughline is - especially when it comes to tough votes - everybody will say, I believe the children are the future. Everybody will say - yes, they wanna address root causes of stuff, right? But as we see, like we've seen recently in this city, when it comes to issues of public safety or homelessness, people have all these value statements - but it comes down to a vote. It comes down to - Are you going to fund something or are you not? Are you going to really put into place the necessary elements to successfully implement what you're going to say or not? Are you going to just fund what you said - Oh, we need to do more than that. - but if you're only like voting to fund that, that's a different thing. So we tend to ask more specific questions than sometimes we hear elsewhere - we're not the only people who ask specific questions, but I definitely try to do that.
And we try to figure out what votes are likely to be coming up, where are the big fault lines, especially for the upcoming year, going to be? What does it look like different interests are pushing for and where do they stand on that? Because it's gonna be an issue. There's going to be pressure put on them to vote certain ways. And if they can't stand up strongly for what they believe and be conclusive about what they're gonna say, that doesn't have a good track record of resulting in the kind of policy that people expect in that direction - if they're soft on that. So that's part of what we do. And I've interviewed people from different philosophical orientations, political orientations. And sometimes there are people who I think or suspect I'm gonna agree with, who are soft on things I don't expect. People who I don't expect to agree with, who - I hear their answers on some things - I'm like, Okay, that was thoughtful and informed. And I certainly have my opinions - you know that - we talk about my opinions on the show. But I really do hope - my goal isn't to super interrogate and like make all the points - it's really to get what they think on the record, out in the open. And really help people to make an informed decision based on what the candidates are saying, kind of without the - with the exception of the lightning round - without the time limit on - Okay, you got to get your answer out in 30 seconds or 1 minute. There's some nuance - sometimes it's more than that - or an issue is complex and we need to talk about it.
[00:09:01] Shannon Cheng: And I would just also add that we have a lot of first time candidates this year, especially with open seats. And so it's also understandable that maybe a candidate isn't well-versed in every single issue area that is going to come up. And so I think having this robust set of questions also can help educate - both them and the voters - what is coming up. And maybe if they feel a little weak, or they get a question and they don't understand what it's even about, that's a signal of - Hey, this is kind of important. Maybe you need to look into that, and understand what's going on, and figure out where you stand on it.
[00:09:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And I - we'll have candidates be like, Whoa, I hadn't thought about that before, I need to learn more about that. And I appreciate that - when someone - taking office, we can talk about all of these issues. But there will always be issues or events that happen, that pop up that you don't talk about while on the campaign. And so a candidate's always going to have to get up to speed on something new. Electeds have to get up to speed on new things all the time. And so how do they approach that not knowing - knowing that they don't know something - How do they approach that? Who are the people they turn to to help learn? What sources of information are they learning from? How do they process information? Those are all things that are useful to hear and to know. And so even if they encounter something that - okay, maybe they didn't think about, you have a perspective about how they process information.
So I guess in how we approach writing questions, what is the process for that?
Okay, Shannon right now is like, Okay, so Crystal is like - ties herself into knots and then tries to avoid writing the questions. And then it's - maybe we don't want to do interviews at all. And oh my gosh - they're too many, they're too few. It's a little bit of a tortured process sometimes, but you help bring some clarity and order to that whole process.
[00:10:55] Shannon Cheng: I mean, you've done candidate forums - so we look at what you've done for candidate forums in the past. And then my issue area - that I work on in my spare time - is public safety and policing, and so I had the opportunity to put candidate questionnaire questions about that topic in as possible questions to ask. So - I don't know-- [both laughing]
[00:11:19] Crystal Fincher: Well, with that.
[00:11:20] Shannon Cheng: It's very last minute. [both laughing]
[00:11:22] Crystal Fincher: It's so, yeah.
[00:11:23] Shannon Cheng: But I don't know that people need to know that. [both laughing] We'll edit that part out.
[00:11:28] Crystal Fincher: Well, it is - we do this in between our regular work. I'm a political consultant. Shannon works with me. We're busy doing that for most of the day on most days, and we squeeze this podcast in between them - with lots of coordination and research and preparation done by Shannon, which I sincerely appreciate. But it is a process and we're trying to figure out what makes sense to ask. We do still have time limits-ish - we stretch it sometimes.
But I do - maybe we should start off talking about some of these questions about policing in the contract because some of these issues have come up lately. Shaun Scott, who is a great follow on Twitter - I don't know if he's elsewhere, but on Twitter, certainly - he was talking about, Hey, the city passed an ordinance. And he's absolutely right - City passed an ordinance giving the city council and OPA? - I think, one of the entities - the city council subpoena power over SPD and other entities, but like including SPD. And they did pass an ordinance that did that. Unfortunately, the SPOG contract of 2018 superseded that. Basically, it had clauses that contradicted and said, No, we're not gonna do that. And then another clause that says, And if City law says that we need to do that, that doesn't matter, this contract is going to replace or supersede City law in that. So subpoena power was essentially taken away. A number of accountability measures were taken away. So the questions that we asked were more specific than we usually ask. It wasn't like - oh, everybody deals with this and talks about it all the time. It was more - these are some areas in the SPOG contract that might be opaque or obscure that haven't been widely publicly discussed, but that are very important in dealing with issues like we're seeing now in the news. How did you put together those questions, and why are those specific ones important?
[00:13:30] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, so I think it's important to first understand that officer discipline is considered a working condition under state labor law, and that's why these union contracts are kind of the last stop for determining how things happen. So as you said, the City has passed, I think, multiple ordinances to try to give subpoena power to our accountability bodies - the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General. But the thing is that because we're governing under state law, unless that officer discipline-related provision gets negotiated into a contract that is accepted by the police unions, then it's not gonna be in effect. And so it's confusing, right? We see this all the time that there's these announcements made - Hey, like huge step forward in accountability. We managed to pass a law that says we have subpoena power. - but then what's left out is the asterisk that is, Well, once it gets negotiated with the union. And so I think that's the thing that gets lost a lot. And so I see that a lot. And so when we came up with our questions - literally it's from observing what the process has been, and then going actually through the contract line-by-line and trying to understand - okay, where are these provisions that kind of weaken the glorious accountability system that everybody likes to point to and pretend that we have. So knowing that going through labor contracts is not everybody's favorite thing, that's why we try to boil it down into - Okay, here's a few especially egregious things that seem like baseline we should try to get in the next contract - which is why talking to electeds about it is important because they are the ones who are gonna hold the power in terms of getting what we want in the next contract. So that's the process that we came up with our questions.
[00:15:23] Crystal Fincher: So, the question that we asked candidates in the lightning round was - Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't give the Office of Police Accountability, known as OPA, and the Office of the Inspector General, known as OIG, subpoena power? Why is subpoena power important and what difference could it make?
[00:15:41] Shannon Cheng: Subpoena power is important if you're trying to do an investigation and the information you think is necessary to understand what's happening for your investigation isn't available, or if people involved aren't cooperating and giving you that information. So at that point, a subpoena allows you to basically demand that that information is shared with you. In the 2017 Accountability Ordinance that was passed, it was explicitly laid out that the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General would have subpoena power. However, in the 2018 SPOG contract - I'll just read directly from the contract - they list those two sections and then they have an addendum that says, "The City agrees that these sections of the Ordinance will not be implemented at this time with regard to bargaining unit employees and their family members, and third party subpoenas seeking personal records of such employees and their family members." So basically, the contract said - there's no subpoena power for these two entities.
[00:16:40] Crystal Fincher: And yeah, I mean, we've heard and seen in several stories - the Seattle Police Department did not cooperate with the investigation. They can just say, currently - No, we're not gonna give that to you. No, we're not gonna share that. We decline to do that. And in issues - right now, there's an international conversation about both the killing of Jaahnavi Kandula and its aftermath with an officer mocking her killing. And the record of the police officer who was doing that, the records of officers overall. And we still don't know everything that happened with the East Precinct and it's leaving, we don't know what happened with CHOP - like those kinds of things - we still don't have answers because we can't demand them. We can't compel them. And this does. Not that that's gonna solve everything, but it is a tool of accountability. And at minimum, if you can't even get information about what happened, how are you gonna attach any kind of accountability to that? So it really is a very primary - we have to at least understand what happened, we have to be able to get that information. So that is what went behind that question.
Another question we asked - Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian? What is this sworn versus civilian issue about, and why is it important?
[00:17:57] Shannon Cheng: So the Office of Police Accountability has investigators - they're actually embedded in the Seattle Police Department - and a lot of their investigators are actually sworn officers. And so some people might think, Well, doesn't that seem kind of problematic? Because you would end up in this scenario where you have cops investigating other cops. Also, the cops that come into the OPA as these sworn investigators - my understanding is they kind of rotate in and out - so a cop going in could expect to then be back out at some point. And that would lead one to think, Well, maybe they wouldn't want to be as thorough in their investigations. So what the civilian aspect was - was that I think people would trust more to have a civilian who is not a sworn officer doing these investigations. And in that original 2017 Police Accountability Ordinance, there was provision made that there could be civilian investigators on this team within the OPA. However, again, that 2018 SPOG contract specifically said - and here, I'll again read from the contract - "The parties agree as follows: Unless otherwise agreed, at any time after the date of signing, the City may replace up to two (2) sworn investigator positions with up to two (2) civilian investigators." So they've basically limited the OPA to only have at any time two civilian investigators, and then that contract goes on to say, "Any case that reasonably could lead to termination will have a sworn investigator assigned to the case." So not only have they limited the number of civilian investigators, they also say those civilian investigators can't work on any cases that would lead to any kind of discipline that is on the harsher side of things. So that's why we asked that question.
[00:19:44] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and with these, it is important to understand - different jurisdictions have different things that they can do, right? They all have their own levers that they can push and pull. Some things you can only do at the county level, some things you can only do at the city level - in a variety of ways. And so we do try and focus in our questions also on what can they do in their capacity as a city councilmember. And because they do have the power to approve or reject this contract, putting - understanding what their conditions for doing so would be, getting them on the record about that is important 'cause this impacts how the police operate within the city and with residents.
The next question we asked - Do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move police funding to public safety alternatives? Why was this a question?
[00:20:34] Shannon Cheng: This is a question because - as we all know, the City has been trying for a very long time to stand up a alternative crisis response that may or may not involve the police. I think a big hurdle to that being stood up is this concern that I've heard - that if the City was to stand something up that didn't involve the police or the police didn't agree with, that they could file an Unfair Labor Practice with the state and basically say - this is some violation of their contract, that kind of work that had been under the purview of the police department was now being taken away from them and given to somebody else. So it's - I don't know that there's wording explicitly in the contract that says that, but it would be the union invoking the contract to say that the City was taking work away from them, basically, that they wanted to keep.
[00:21:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and it's a big major issue. And right now we're kind of at an impasse - alternative responses and funding non-police public safety responses and interventions is one of the most popular things supported by Seattle residents right now. They vote for candidates who say they're gonna support that. Polling shows that north of 70% across the board, it's been over 80% in some polls. When asked explicitly - hey, if your tax dollars are gonna be spent, what do you most want it to be spent on? Highest thing is standing up alternatives to policing to address things like behavioral health crises. We all see that this is so desperately needed and that - it used to be five years ago, kind of pre-2016, pre-George Floyd, when police used to have no problem. They said all the time - we aren't social workers, we don't have the tools to handle this other stuff, we wanna do our core jobs and not handle all these other things that we don't really have the tools for. And it seems like because of fear of losing funding, losing headcount, whatever, that stopped and they started clinging to everything that they could have. So like we ask a question - Do you think parking should be housed within SPD? Lots of cities are having conversations, especially since police are saying that they're short-staffed to say - Okay, how can we more effectively deploy police officers and take things off of their plate that shouldn't be on there in the first place, that are not core to what a sworn officer - a sworn armed officer - is needed for. But the challenge is that that is coming up against, as you described, those feelings that - Well, that's something that we, you know, that was in our sphere of responsibility, funding is attached to it, headcount is attached to it. And if we lose that, maybe that's gonna be a slippery slope to losing other things.
So like in the City of Seattle, the city council has actually funded alternative police responses. They have decided they wanna move forward with that, they've allocated money for that. And once that happens, it's basically up to the executive - currently Bruce Harrell, before with Jenny Durkan - to use that funding and implement the thing. Well, it's kind of stuck there. The money isn't being used. And for a while, especially with Monisha Harrell, when she was with the city, they talked about, Okay, well, we wanna do all that, we're just gonna do it with an internal department of public safety that will also house civilian responses. And I think part of standing that up as an internal department was to address the concern of the issue of headcount. And if the headcount decreases, even if it's just parking officials who do not need a gun to enforce parking, that - hey, let's not call that like a regular response, let's not use sworn headcount to do that, we can deploy that more effectively. But that is a problem that is stalled. And so the question really is - will they ensure that in the contract that is currently being negotiated, the contract that the council will be voting on, can they eliminate that as an issue? And obviously this has to be negotiated by both sides, but is there something they can come to that enables the City to move forward with what the residents are demanding and what leaders have committed to do? We've gotta find a way to have the contract not impede the progress that the city is repeatedly begging to make and promising to make. So that's what went into that question.
Another question we asked - Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers? Why is this an issue?
[00:24:53] Shannon Cheng: So the current contract that we're under explicitly gives SPD officers the right to work off-duty. And this is in-uniform, so one factor in this is that this is basically allowing them to use public resources, meaning their uniform - and they retain their police powers while they're working for not us, not the public that's paying them, but for private clients who they work for. So, a lot of these things are things like security or traffic direction, and they get paid a lot of money for these jobs - sometimes I think even more than they make as an officer. And so one of our concerns is that, especially in a time when it's short-staffed, then allowing in-uniform off-duty work - it creates confusion with the public, for one thing, when you see a police officer not working in their official capacity as a police officer, but dressed as one and maintaining all the same powers that they do - it just doesn't have clear boundaries between their professional work and then their side job. And then with the short staffing, these added hours that they're doing on top of, in theory, their full workload at SPD, plus potential overtime that they're gonna have to do - this is just gonna lead even more to officer fatigue. And we can see how that could lead to more of the poor decision-making or judgment calls, and has detrimental consequences for all of us in the public. And often - with their history of biased policing - would affect certain populations more than others. So that was why we asked this question.
[00:26:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and with these questions overall, some people are like - Well, why are these all like accountability questions? Are there any other things? Like, do you just hate cops? And to me, hating cops is not the issue, right? This is about public safety for everyone in the city and in the region. And every candidate who's run - I collect and keep political mail, advertising, blah, blah, blah - and what is really astounding is kind of the revisionist history of members of the council who are known for being moderate or conservative. Everybody's like - Well, you know, they elected me to be moderate and conservative. Or like people covering them - They elected someone. But when you look at what they said when they were running, when you look at their mail and what they communicated to voters - to a person - they talked about the importance of police accountability and reform. And, you know, some people wanna go further than others, but they all promised that. And so, if that wasn't just BS - anyone who's serious about that, and even if you're working towards community-centered, different things - anyone who is serious about what we're currently doing, and this contract is currently being negotiated, we really do have to contend with these things. And if we aren't, then we're not really serious about doing anything about accountability, let alone re-imagining what public safety can actually be.
So no matter what someone's ideological position is on the council, they should be engaging with this. This is in their sphere of responsibility. They're gonna have to vote on this contract. And so we need to know - we should know, and we should be talking about - what these parameters are. It's very important and consequential, and can determine whether we wind up in similar situations to now - where we have an officer where basically the globe has said, That's disgusting and should be unacceptable. Why is this officer still there? And we have City electeds basically going - Oh, there's nothing we can really do about it. The contract, you know, like, can't really fire them. There's no precedent. - and like, those are all legal issues because of the contract. But they approved this contract - Bruce Harrell approved the contract that we currently have. He's not the only one - I think Debora Juarez was on the council at that point in time. Lorena González used to be, and said she regretted the vote. Like, this was consequential. We talked about this at the time - not many people were listening in the wider community. But like, this is not a surprise that we're seeing problems because of the overriding of accountability measures passed by the City and supported by people in the city. So that's why we asked those public safety questions.
We asked a bunch of questions in the lightning round about how people vote. Why do you think these were good questions to include?
[00:29:06] Shannon Cheng: I think they're good because this is an instance where they had to sit down with their pen in hand and make a choice - bubble choice A or bubble choice B. And so in this process of trying to figure out how these candidates think and where they stand on things, asking them about times where they actually did have to make a decision and knowing what decision they made, I think that's why we asked those.
[00:29:30] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. And it's fair to ask. And it gives you insight into how they process information when it does come time to make a choice on one or the other, even if they think - maybe they don't think either choice is perfect, but they do need to make a choice and what they made is informative. In these, you know, also informing on different issues, where they stand there. We asked also issues about housing. We asked them if they rent or own - and that's an important question to ask, it's an important thing to know. And it's wild that we don't talk about that more because that is one of the biggest dividing lines in Seattle politics. It's one of the biggest dividing lines in voters. When you look at any results map of an election, you basically see the results of homeowners versus renters, higher income, higher net worth people versus lower income, lower net worth people. That is a fault line in Seattle politics. And looking at how votes happen, we see people voting aligned with their housing status a lot. It's something that matters, that is predictive pretty regularly. And so we wanted to ask that. We wanted to understand if they rented, if they own, and if they're a landlord. Some candidates were, some candidates were not. And then we face questions - the council actually passed an ordinance that was vetoed by Mayor Harrell, just about some more accountability for landlords and more sharing of information to try and better poise the City to address the housing affordability crisis. And so that's why we asked those.
We asked the question about allowing police in schools because that has been talked about in some meetings. It looks like there are some influential interests that want to make that happen and encourage that. I don't think that's wide-ranging, but there were a couple of powerful and well-placed people who - that was coming from their camps - and so we thought it was important to get people on record about that. We asked about trans and non-binary students - making sure they could play on sports teams that fit with their gender identities and using public bathrooms and public facilities - and got a range of answers on this one. Why did you feel this was so important to ask?
[00:31:37] Shannon Cheng: I think this is a community that's been under attack just nationwide, at all levels. And so it's important to know - I think Seattle touts itself as a progressive, inclusive, welcoming city - and we want to make sure the people who are leading us actually are.
[00:31:55] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And respecting people's humanity without condition, without making them less than. And unfortunately, the sports issue is propaganda. It's propaganda. I understand why the propaganda campaign caught on - it's using very cynical tactics - but we do have to stand up and say, That's propaganda. We can't be like - Okay, yeah, trans people, we accept everybody - live, love, and light - all that kind of stuff. And then say, Yeah, but if your kid wants to play on a sports team - which is a very important formative part of growing up for many people, if they choose to do that, and also not just sports, just any kind of activities attached to school, which is something that so many people partake in - and say, Yeah, but not that. Like that is an issue of just fundamental humanity and inclusion - and so we should be explicit about where people stand, and we should talk about that, and we should force people to be accountable for where they stand on that. And make sure people know - before they vote - whether people plan on including every member of this community in our community.
We asked about the economy, the JumpStart Tax - which there's been lots of talk from different interests about, from some Chamber interests saying, Maybe we need to divert some of that to help restart, relaunch downtown's economy. There are other people saying, Hey, this might be something that we need to increase to help with the upcoming budget deficit. And some people who just disagree with it overall, and think that we - that that's placing a burden on business, and that's gonna be bad for residents - and usually coming from the same people who say the sky is falling every time that there is a minimum wage increase, and then more people move here and are happier than they are in other places, so it seems like we would stop listening to people who continue to predict that and are wrong, but we don't do that. But wanted to get people on record for where they stand on that, because - in Seattle politics, interests are tied to taxes - that that's where a lot of corporate interests are really concerned about. And they will use other issues as wedge issues in messaging, but their primary concerns are about taxation and the maintenance of their capital. That's really what's driving a lot of this. And so the JumpStart is going to be at the heart of that interest and conversation.
[00:34:09] Shannon Cheng: We hear businesses - obviously they don't wanna pay more taxes, but at the same time, we also hear businesses complaining that they're not getting the services that they expect the City to deliver to them. And so I think it's pretty telling that - you don't wanna pay for it, but you wanna get it.
[00:34:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and we also asked about how candidates can better support small business. I do think there's a conflation of gigantic multi-trillion dollar mega-corp interests and - in the business community - and a small mom-pop shop, local business who is - hired a couple of people from the neighborhood and is trying to make it. Both businesses, both part of the business community - but usually very different interests and needs. And we have a lot of small businesses who are struggling. Small business - business is important to the economy across the board, right? But we need it not to be extractive. We need not to say, Oh, it's so important. So like Boeing, we're gonna give you more money than we've ever given anyone before with no accountability. We did this because Boeing is gonna create jobs and we need lots of jobs. But then we don't get a refund when Boeing lays people off and leaves town, right - that's a problem. And we have trillion dollar corporations in the city of Seattle who frankly use small business owners to say - Oh, please, we're suffering and we need help, and we shouldn't pay any taxes. When most residents, according to polling and election results, feel that businesses like - mega corporations are not paying their fair share. There is a conversation to be had - some kind of income inequality and differences in access and challenges that small businesses are facing compared to large businesses. It's kind of similar to what lower income people are facing in comparison to larger income people. Small businesses are having problems affording rent - that's a really, really, really big issue - they are suffering from predatory rent increases. Also, that's putting people out of business. But there's a lot to be discussed. And if you talk to business owners - we've done shows with different business interests - and their needs are broad and varied and they should be listened to, they are part of the community. But we do need to talk about them as part of the community and not as this super entity or something like that. So that's what those questions were looking to get at.
And then just some perspective stuff - asking if they're happy with Seattle's waterfront, asking about return to work mandates - just helping to further get inside their minds, how they think, what their perspective is, where they're coming from, and who and what they may be sympathetic to as interests and as bills - when that comes up. Transportation and transit related questions - we have absolutely seen a difference in engagement and thoughtfulness, willingness to fund and include provisions that are helpful for pedestrians and people on transit, people riding bikes from leaders who actually use them. And we suffer when leaders are responsible for transit policy who don't use and ride transit - all sorts of distorted and weird policy and perspectives come out when we have people governing systems that they don't themselves engage with. And so we asked those questions to try and see - are you actually using the system? Because we hear different things from people who do take them versus things that don't. And just, that's a useful thing to know. Similarly, Pike Place car traffic is something that we talk about - just another one of those perspective things in there.
We obviously asked about the upcoming revenue shortfall in the City of Seattle for $224 million. Everyone is going to have to contend with that. Every candidate on the campaign trail, every candidate that we interviewed has talked about wanting to implement new things that are going to require additional revenue, that are going to require resources. And we're moving into - Okay, we're going to have fewer resources and either we're gonna need to raise revenue or make cuts. And so it's just not a serious position to be in to say we should be doing all of these other things - these new things that require revenue - when there's going to be less of it. And everyone is kind of dodgy usually when it comes to cutting things, but they're going to need - odds are it's gonna be a combination of cuts and attempting to pursue new revenue. If someone is saying they aren't gonna pursue that, then we need to view their other plans that do require revenue differently. If someone is saying, I'm gonna go after revenue hard - that's great, but we should also know if there are any cuts that they think they may need to do. Revenue may take a while to come in. We will probably need to do some trimming in the meantime - just because the City's mandated to have a balanced budget. And so that's something real that they're gonna have to contend with. And those are really hard decisions. And you can see how hard they are by how unwilling or unable candidates are to answer how they're gonna prioritize cutting, where they think they should come from. If revenue doesn't pass or come through, what does that mean? How are you gonna approach that? And we do need to press on those tough decisions 'cause those are gonna be really consequential things.
And I think sometimes candidates - we've talked about this on this show before - think that just like the hard part is running, and then you get elected, and then you can exhale. Running for office is the easy part - it only gets harder - and the spotlight on you gets hotter and brighter when you actually do have to make a decision that's consequential for the people in the city. And so we should poke and prod about that and try to get as specific as we can. We don't always do perfectly with that - I'm reflecting on the answers that we got. There were so many vague answers - and try and poke and prod - and some people just don't wanna answer specifically, or just are unable to answer specifically. But hopefully, as you said before, that is an indication that they should think about that seriously. And they're gonna need a game plan 'cause it's coming and they're going to have to deal with that. And it's going to be bad if they just start engaging with that after they take office and have to really make those decisions and move forward with it.
[00:40:16] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I mean - I feel like in response to that question in particular, we heard a lot of answers to the effect of - Well, we need to look at the existing budget and look at where there are inefficiencies and you know, blah, blah, blah. And I am curious how many of those candidates - we have an entire City Budget staff, right? - who works on that kind of stuff and auditing. It's not like there aren't people looking at that. I just wonder how much have those candidates engaged with what is already out there? Have they found things that have been already identified? Would that even be in their process of trying to figure out how to reallocate resources, if that's the way they're going to go?
[00:40:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And with these - I think it's important - obviously I have my own perspective, and I think it's important to ask questions and to frame them appropriately for the moment and for what's happening. And when I ask a question, I do - with these - try to give people a fair shot to respond, to give whatever their response is, right? I'm not going to cut them off in their response. I want voters to be able to hear what they think - even if I disagree with what they think, they get to hear what they think. But one observation I do have certainly, and formed definitely from working with candidates over the years, is that - we do hear, we heard a lot, we heard more than I was comfortable with, like, Oh, we do need to take a look at that. We need to start to understand where this stuff is. We need to ask tough questions. Like, you decided to run for office. This information has been out there, it's publicly available. There's a ton of information and resources just on the City website itself to walk you through the budget - each budget process - and hearings and a ton of Information. That's not usually where the issue is. The issue is when it's time to make a decision about what to cut, people are hesitant to do that. They're afraid of making people mad. And so we have these situations where candidates either don't feel like they need to come with a game plan, but we are in multiple crises. We need people who are saying - Okay, I have talked to community, I have done homework on what's happening, and this is my plan for what I think will fix it. We need people coming with solutions. We need people coming for proposals. That's the job. The job isn't to ponder and examine and to have endless meetings, right? That's part of the problem in Seattle and many places is that they want to task force something to death and workgroup it and blah, blah, blah. And then we end up in the same place that we were.
I do hope that they get some more concrete solutions and process because that is going to enable them to hit the ground running. And it really does make a difference. If you don't understand the budget - the basics of the budget - just the, you know, like not every line item, that's a really hard thing to do. But have you even bothered to go on the City website and look at the budget documents they do have? Have you bothered to read and recall where some of the major issues of funding and major decisions were before? If you haven't, maybe you should. Maybe that would help inform you as to what's possible. You know, even if you think there's waste, fraud, and abuse - as they talk about with all that stuff - well, where specifically? 'Cause that general nebulous thing of we've been - it's not like this is the first rodeo with the City with a budget shortcut, it's not like all of that. And I'm not saying that there's nothing that can be reallocated - that should be looked at - but that information is out there and available. You can find that out. And I'm continually surprised - not necessarily surprised - I'm continuously dismayed by the number of candidates who say - Oh, I don't know that. You know, how can we know that? Or I'm not sure, I haven't looked into it yet. Well, look into it. You decided to run for office - get it together, figure out what you wanna do, and share that. But it's a risky proposition to have someone go - You know, I need to figure out what's going on, we need to look into that, I'm not sure what it's gonna be. And meanwhile, trust me to make this decision. Based on what? That's my personal opinion - that was a little venty, but I do feel strongly about that. And as a political consultant who works with candidates and gotten people up to speed on this kind of stuff - people can do better. People can do better. People need to be better. The city needs the people to be better, to deal with stuff like this.
Anywho.
We also asked about climate change and specifically 2030 climate goals. This is happening amidst a backdrop where it seems like every major body - 5, 10 years ago, people were like, Yay, we're totally gonna make these 2030 goals. We take climate change super seriously, and we've set forth these ambitious targets that we're gonna achieve. Everybody loved announcing those goals and that those goals reflected their commitment and blah, blah, blah - which is part of my problem sometimes, celebrating the press release instead of delivering the result. But when it came time to make the tough decisions in order to get there, they punted, punted, punted, punted until we've gotten a rash of announcements over the past couple of years that - Yeah, so those 2030 goals, we're not gonna hit them, but we're totally gonna hit our 2050 goals, right? And so if we can't hit this milestone, this benchmark, we're not gonna be on track for that. And the issue really is people just don't wanna make the decisions that are necessary to get there, right? Like, incrementalism isn't gonna get us there. And we are experiencing the impacts of climate change and it's not pretty, and it's not gonna get any better, right? Like this is the best it's going to be for a long, long time - and it's worrisome. So this is important. And specifically, it is 2023 - 2030 is right around the corner. There's a lot that can be done. And there's a lot of money being raised by the carbon credit auctions from the Climate Commitment Act. There's a lot of investment available throughout the state. Do they have plans to pursue and get some of the - what are the plans here? But we need to get on track and be serious about 2030, get back on track for 2030. 'Cause if we can't hit that, we can't hit anything. And we're in for a world of hurt. It's a serious thing.
[00:46:22] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I mean, I think it's trying to understand - does this candidate have or feel a sense of urgency around this? Are we actually gonna put a honest effort into trying to meet these goals? And what are their ideas about how to do that? Because as you said, we needed to be doing this stuff yesterday, but the next best time to do it is starting now. And so what is the plan?
[00:46:47] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and there were some candidates - a couple that I'm thinking of - that had some good concrete ideas for this. There were others who very much did not. But also with this - candidates also learn from each other during the campaign trail. And one thing that I do think that we need to do is to encourage that more. The more candidates can learn - like actually engage with solutions - is a good thing. Sometimes - obviously if someone's biting a speech word-for-word, which happens sometimes in politics with candidates - that is irritating, especially for the people in campaigns sometimes. But if there's a good idea and someone else is - You know what, that makes sense. - that's a good thing. We should encourage that. And so I do hope - with a number of these responses, and definitely this one too - that people pay attention to what other candidates, even if they aren't in their same district, say because there are some good workable, achievable plans and ideas on the table that could definitely help. And if a candidate hasn't really engaged with that or thought about it before, there are other candidates who are great resources for them.
[00:47:51] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I think so. I think my experience, having gone through all these candidate interviews, is just every candidate is unique and is coming from a different place to run for office. And they do come with different expertise and experience. And so I think it is kind of a helpful resource to look at for other candidates, whoever ends up getting elected, people who are just concerned about our community as a whole. What are these candidates talking about as being the issue? Why are they stepping up to do something that - to me, sounds like an awful thing to have to do - put yourself out there, and get scrutinized, and knock on doors every free moment of your life. I don't know - I mean - but they wanna do it.
[00:48:35] Crystal Fincher: Shannon is a notorious introvert, yes.
[00:48:38] Shannon Cheng: They wanna do it. And there's a reason why. And maybe listening and trying to understand - what is that reason and what can we do about it? What are they saying would be helpful to them to address the thing that got them to do this incredibly hard thing?
[00:48:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. Another question we asked was just - was about childcare, which is a really, really big deal. We talk about - housing is on everyone's mind, it's on everyone's agenda because it's such a major expense and it keeps rising wildly. It is unsustainable, right, in this situation. The number two expense for most families, which sometimes creeps into number one with multiple children, is childcare. We talk about groceries, we talk about gas and people definitely feel those, but people are feeling childcare in a way that is wild. It's more expensive than college and college is wildly unaffordable, right? This is so expensive and it directly impacts whether people can work - period - whether people can participate in this economy. It is cost prohibitive to get childcare for a lot of people. It's cheaper just not to work, right? And that impacts people's upward mobility, likelihood to be in poverty, to be able to get out of poverty if you are in, whether they're going to need government assistance, right? This impacts so many different things. And the way kids develop depends on the quality of care that they receive from early childhood on. And so this is directly impacting many families, indirectly impacting everyone in the community - from businesses, the regional economy, other parents, community members. And so we don't talk about it enough still. There are a lot of people who are and that's awesome and great, but I think it needs to be elevated even more. And for anyone who's talking about issues of affordability, who's talking about inflation, who's talking about just families having a hard time dealing with expenses - you cannot have that conversation in any credible way without talking about the cost and accessibility of childcare. So that's why we talked about that.
And then, just general - Why are you running? What are the differences between you and your opponent? I will tell you - just from my perspective as a political - this is a question that I would ask candidates before deciding to work with them. And I'm looking, in that question, to hear specific and tangible things that they wanna do for their community. It is a big red flag when that answer doesn't include how they want to help people. If the answer is just about them - Well, you know, this was the time for me and lots of people came to me and like, blah, blah, blah. People know - different jurisdictions are different. They suit different leadership types, personality types - depending on what you wanna do. So is this someone who's running for every open position available under the sun? Or do they have something specific that they wanna do in the role that they're seeking? Do you have something tangible you wanna accomplish? People should have tangible things they want to accomplish, and not just running for vanity or because power is attractive, or it's something to put on the resume or whatever - run to accomplish something to help people. I am drawn to people who are rooted in that and have answers with that. I will say just in my experience overall - that determines how someone, absolutely determines how someone governs, how consistent they are to governing - and the way that they ran absolutely has an impact on that. And even beyond, even for candidates who lose, right? Usually candidates who are like - You know, I'm running because I see this as a problem impacting lots of people, and I think that I can be part of the solution in fixing it. - is that if, even if they lose, right, they still stay engaged in the community and working on that. You can see the motivation is not power for me - to them. It is actually doing something to help the community. And so, I look at a variety of different people who've run over the years, and it's interesting to see the people who are still active in community versus those who just disappear. And it was like a phase - them wanting to be involved. Now that's - obviously there's nuance to this conversation - people don't owe their lives to serving and all that kind of stuff. But if you are saying this is an important part of who you are, it seems like that would continue beyond a campaign and that you would see consistency there. So that for me, as a person who is either deciding who I'm gonna vote for, or who I'm gonna work with or in support of - that answer matters a lot to me. That motivation matters a lot to me. How do you see it?
[00:53:17] Shannon Cheng: I agree with a lot of what you just said. What I really liked about the interviews we did was that opportunity you gave them to just talk without time limits that forums often impose. And it was refreshing to kind of hear people kind of being more their authentic self. And I think that's just - I don't know that I can describe it, right? But I think just you have to listen and hear how they talk about things. And that was - there were many candidates who came on who, just based on reading, doing all the research ahead of time for their interview and reading about them - and then when they came on, they were not what I expected. I mean, some were. But there were some surprises as well. And I mean, that was, it was really great to - ultimately, these candidates are all people. And I think on the campaign trail and it can get heated - sometimes it can get kind of boiled down to a caricature almost, or just what their campaign website makes them out to look like. And I don't know that that really is the most informative in terms of understanding who these people actually are. And for me, that just feels like - I wanna know that the people who are making these hard decisions for myself, and people I care about, and neighbors who I care about - even if I don't know them directly - I just want them to be good people.
[00:54:45] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I want them to care. I want them to see the people and the humanity. I want them to not see statistics. I want them to understand that it's people. I want them to not celebrate the fact that they - it's fine and good - Hey, we passed something. But that then has to be implemented in a way that is felt by the people who it's intended to help. And if that doesn't happen, it all doesn't matter. And I feel like we don't pay enough attention to that part of it a lot. And so I personally, as a voter, am looking for people who understand that and who at least value writing legislation that has a reasonable shot at being implemented well and can deliver on the result. And who track that and who are willing to course correct there and not just paper over things that may not be great and act as if they are - 'cause the goal is to help people.
I do wanna talk about - so we took a little bit of a different approach to editing. Candidate interviews - I know how things can get in campaigns and being a candidate is not easy, it's nerve-wracking and being in these interviews - and editing can make people sound better, sound worse. Sometimes people take a pause to consider, or - and that is a, Shoot, I don't know, or like, will say different things, right? And so the approach that we took to candidate interviews - particularly when we had both candidates in the race - we wanted to present them as straightforwardly as we could, to basically not edit their answers. Because there was a lot - we would lose things on a variety of sides, right? And my goal is to not interject our presentation of the candidate. It's to give you the candidate. And I think people can hear throughout these interviews that you can hear someone thinking, you can hear someone processing, you can hear someone being - dodging, or like really contending with someone - like that whole thing mattered. And it seemed like we didn't - editing that, that was just gonna be a no-win situation for - Are we making someone look better? Are we making someone look worse? Are we interjecting what we think into there? So we actually decided just to - sometimes I would flub up a question, right? And like that's edited out, but we let candidates just answer and let their answers be their answers. And you can hear them. And they are people, right? And this isn't easy. And people can be super nervous in an interview, right? Like this is - I get nervous sometimes before I do things - that's totally fair. So I - if someone - I'm not looking for someone to sound perfect or perfectly polished, right? There are some times you can sound too polished. But just to give people an accurate impression of who they are, and how they're engaging with the answer, and can make their own call on whatever that is. But basically it was like - we don't record live, but you got the answer as though it was. So that's the approach that we took there. 'Cause we did get a couple of questions on - Are these edited? Or like, How, like, are you going to do that? Or like, Did you, you know, take - No, that's, that's exactly how it happened.
[00:57:50] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, we cut out things like coughing fits or the ever-present train siren behind Crystal.
[00:57:57] Crystal Fincher: Yes, yes.
[00:57:58] Shannon Cheng: Otherwise - tried to keep it real. I mean, you know, our goal with this project is to educate people about who they are going to make choices between and hopefully inform them in that decision that's coming up. November 7th!
[00:58:13] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You can register to vote online. Even if you have been convicted of a felony and have been incarcerated, the moment you are released, you are eligible to re-register and vote again. Just be involved in making this decision. Voting locally is really important. It's more consequential than all the federal stuff that's going on. Although we hear wall-to-wall coverage and every news program every night is talking about Congress and the president - and not that that's not important. But like, look at how different states are. Look at how different Washington and Alabama are. Look at how different Forks and Seattle and Cle Elum and Spokane and Ellensburg - that is how much control cities have over who they are and how they operate. It can be as different as all of these different cities. They can be night and day difference. And that is all the impact of these local officials that we're electing in the elections that we're having this November. So that's why I do this show. It's really, really important to talk about this stuff and not enough people do regularly. And I'm not saying that it's easy - we make it hard for people to understand and participate in these issues. So just trying to make that more accessible to more people and to help understand where it may be helpful to focus and consider and engage. But this matters, and it matters to try and elect people who will actually deliver on the policy that you think they should be delivering and implementing. So that's why we did this and appreciate you listening to our little explainer about our approach.
[00:59:47] Shannon Cheng: Thank you everyone!
[00:59:48] Crystal Fincher: Thank you!
Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Tuesday topical show, Crystal chats with Andrew Lewis about his campaign for Seattle City Council District 7. Listen and learn more about Andrew and his thoughts on:
- [01:02] - Why he is running
- [03:31] - Response to critics calling him ‘fickle’
- [07:03] - Lightning round!
- [12:33] - Lightning round follow-up: Endorsements, SPOG contract questions, waterfront, reallocating encampment funds
- [17:05] - Homelessness response: Is there room for improvement?
- [20:13] - City budget shortfall: Raise revenue or cut services?
- [23:39] - City budget shortfall: Progressive revenue options?
- [26:03] - Climate change, bike and pedestrian safety
- [31:36] - Public Safety: Alternative response
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Andrew Lewis at @LewisforSeattle.
Andrew Lewis
Councilmember Lewis is a born and raised Seattleite and a proud graduate of Seattle Public Schools. He holds a BA in history and political science from the University of Washington, a masters degree from the London School of Economics, and a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to serving on the City Council, he served the people of Seattle as an assistant city attorney. He lives in West Queen Anne with his wife Laura, an assistant attorney general, their daughter Vivian Grace, and two rescue cats, Scoop and Maggie.
Resources
Campaign Website - Andrew Lewis
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, I am very happy today to be welcoming Seattle City Councilmember Andrew Lewis to the show. Welcome.
[00:01:01] Andrew Lewis: Hey, great to be here.
[00:01:02] Crystal Fincher: Well, lots of people have been familiar with you for quite some time. You are an incumbent running for re-election here on the Seattle City Council. I guess the first question is just - Why are you running, especially when so many other of your colleagues have chosen not to?
[00:01:18] Andrew Lewis: Yeah, well, it's really great to be here to talk about the campaign 'cause I really do think Seattle is positioned to be one of the definitive cities of this century in terms of our potential - our potential for climate resiliency, our potential to overcome a lot of the challenges we face around housing insecurity and emerging challenges in public safety - and I wanna be a part of that. And finish a lot of the work that we've set in motion in the first term, and really bring a lot of that work to its full conclusion. We've worked, in my office, to put in place a big capital plan to redo a lot of our community centers in the city to be climate resiliency hubs - that is gonna be an increasingly necessary piece of infrastructure for shelter during extreme weather events like heat and smoke surges. We have worked to put in place a pilot for a dual dispatch alternative 911 response that is gonna be hitting the road in October, and that the Harrell administration and my office have shared ambition to see scaled to a bigger civilian department that has the capacity to respond in a public health-centered way to a lot of emergencies in our community. So if the first four years was about setting the stage to get these investments locked in and get a commitment and funding locked in, the next four years is really about implementation and really seeing that fully realized. We also have a lot of big, exciting things that are coming on the horizon in the next term - including major revisions to Seattle's Comprehensive Plan, which has huge implications for housing affordability, for climate. We have the Move Seattle levy which will be renewed in 2024 as well. So really, really big policy lifts that I really have strong opinions on and wanna see realize their full potential for a multimodal city with dense and abundant housing. So those are some of my priorities and I'm sure we'll dive into those more over the course of the interview.
[00:03:30] Crystal Fincher: We will. Now, one criticism leveled against you is that you're fickle - that may be putting it pretty bluntly. But one, The Stranger said - in their endorsement of you to be clear, they are absolutely recommending you - they said you "could really use a stronger spine" and The Seattle Times said, "Seattle voters have every reason to feel whiplash these past four years. Perhaps no other councilmember has veered from one position to the next as often and as dramatically as Andrew Lewis. Do you agree with that criticism and how do you respond to it?
[00:04:04] Andrew Lewis: Yeah, I actually don't agree with that criticism - that probably won't surprise anybody here. But I think that a lot of it comes down to the fact that we unfortunately have a media environment where there isn't much recognition or respect for nuance - absent the Hacks & Wonks podcast, of course, where nuance is the currency of the realm. But if you look at some of those instances where we, as policy makers, are forced into a very polarizing environment where the options that were dealt are these two polar options and there's not really much interest from actors in the media that have a strong agenda and like - look, obviously I'm supported by The Stranger, I appreciate their support, I'm glad that I have their endorsement - and they wouldn't contest that they have an agenda. I'm sure The Seattle Times editorial board would not contest that they have an agenda either. And I do think that polarizing actors can get frustrated when the dichotomy that they're pitching people gets flipped on its head because people that are in the middle - that are being forced to pick false choices from two things that are dealt - want to flip the table over on those false choices and try to figure out a way to bring community together and come up with a better policy. And I think that we see, with the result of the Fentanyl Work Group that Mayor Harrell put together with support from my office, that we are getting a better proposal with a broader base of support from the work - that we have spent over the summer digging into how to best respond to the fentanyl crisis, rather than just reactively passing a policy that was set up really with no clear, well-thought-out implementation plan in June. And I can't really sit here and say that it's bad policy to take a little bit longer and ask real probing questions instead of just pick between two choices that are put in front of us. And honestly, I think a lot of the problems in our politics come from accepting those kinds of false choices. So, look - if I'm reelected, I'm certainly going to continue to try to figure out how to make the best policy outcomes we can. And sometimes that might mean rejecting divisive policies. And if people want to call that being fickle, that's what they can do. But I think that the people of Seattle want to see solutions to their problems and not just figuring out how the red team or blue team can win in a given moment.
[00:06:49] Crystal Fincher: I appreciate your beautiful rhetorical flourish on "nuance is the currency of the realm" here on Hacks & Wonks. You have a podcast also where nuance is also covered there.
Now, we're going to depart from our normal kind of candidate interview script - I guess, that we've had over the past several years and switch it up a little bit before we get back to the regular script - and do a bit of a lightning round, which we've done in live events and in forums, debates, but haven't so much in these interviews. But I think it can be useful to level set and to help give people just a base understanding of who we are before we get back into long-form questions where we get to discuss things without the, I guess, limitation of kind of the super short soundbite type of thing that other forums are limited to. So starting out - these are yes or no questions, and we'll make our way through them, is - Did you vote yes on the King County Crisis Care Centers levy?
[00:07:52] Andrew Lewis: Yes.
[00:07:53] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote yes on the Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services levy?
[00:07:57] Andrew Lewis: Yes.
[00:07:58] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote in favor of Seattle's Social Housing Initiative 135?
[00:08:03] Andrew Lewis: Yes.
[00:08:04] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Bruce Harrell for Mayor?
[00:08:08] Andrew Lewis: I voted for Lorena González.
[00:08:10] Crystal Fincher: And did you vote for Nicole Thomas Kennedy or Ann Davison for City Attorney?
[00:08:16] Andrew Lewis: When I don't publicly endorse a candidate that I have to work with, I don't publicly state - so I'm gonna decline to answer.
[00:08:24] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. And did you vote for Leesa Manion or Jim Ferrell?
[00:08:27] Andrew Lewis: I voted for Leesa Manion.
[00:08:29] Crystal Fincher: Do you rent your residence?
[00:08:33] Andrew Lewis: I own.
[00:08:35] Crystal Fincher: Okay, and are you a landlord?
[00:08:37] Andrew Lewis: I am not.
[00:08:38] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to require landlords to report metrics, including how much rent they're charging, to help better plan housing and development needs in your district?
[00:08:47] Andrew Lewis: Yes.
[00:08:48] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to provide additional funding for Seattle's Social Housing Public Development Authority?
[00:08:54] Andrew Lewis: Yes.
[00:08:55] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with King County Executive Constantine's statement that the King County Jail should be closed?
[00:09:03] Andrew Lewis: Yes.
[00:09:04] Crystal Fincher: Should parking enforcement be housed within SPD?
[00:09:08] Andrew Lewis: Yes.
[00:09:09] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to allow police in schools?
[00:09:13] Andrew Lewis: No.
[00:09:14] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget for a civilian-led mental health crisis response?
[00:09:19] Andrew Lewis: Yes.
[00:09:20] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget to increase the pay of human service workers?
[00:09:25] Andrew Lewis: Yes.
[00:09:26] Crystal Fincher: Do you support removing funds in the City budget for forced encampment removals and instead allocating funds towards a Housing First approach?
[00:09:36] Andrew Lewis: No, but I'm happy to expand on that later.
[00:09:39] Crystal Fincher: Will do. Do you support abrogating or removing funds from unfilled SPD positions and putting them towards meaningful public safety measures?
[00:09:49] Andrew Lewis: No.
[00:09:49] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocating money in the City budget for supervised consumption sites?
[00:09:54] Andrew Lewis: Yes.
[00:09:55] Crystal Fincher: Do you support increasing funding in the City budget for violence intervention programs?
[00:09:59] Andrew Lewis: Yes.
[00:10:00] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't give the Office of Police Accountability, OPA, and the Office of Inspector General, OIG, subpoena power?
[00:10:11] Andrew Lewis: I'm on LRPC, so I can't comment on active bargaining, unfortunately - but I can expand on that later.
[00:10:17] Crystal Fincher: Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers?
[00:10:23] Andrew Lewis: Same answer, unfortunately.
[00:10:25] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Will you vote to ensure that trans and non-binary students are allowed to play on all of the sports teams that fit with their gender identities?
[00:10:33] Andrew Lewis: Yes.
[00:10:34] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans people can use bathrooms or public facilities that match their gender?
[00:10:39] Andrew Lewis: Yes.
[00:10:40] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with the City's decision to implement the JumpStart Tax?
[00:10:44] Andrew Lewis: Yes.
[00:10:45] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to reduce or divert the JumpStart Tax in any way?
[00:10:52] Andrew Lewis: I could, yes.
[00:10:53] Crystal Fincher: Are you happy with Seattle's newly-built waterfront?
[00:10:58] Andrew Lewis: Yes, but that's something I want to expand on, too.
[00:11:02] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Do you believe return-to-work mandates, like the one issued by Amazon, are necessary to boost Seattle's economy?
[00:11:09] Andrew Lewis: Yes.
[00:11:10] Crystal Fincher: Have you taken transit in the past week?
[00:11:12] Andrew Lewis: Yes.
[00:11:13] Crystal Fincher: Have you ridden a bike in the past week?
[00:11:15] Andrew Lewis: Yes.
[00:11:16] Crystal Fincher: Look at you, Andrew Lewis. Should Pike Place Market allow non-commercial delivery car traffic?
[00:11:24] Andrew Lewis: No.
[00:11:25] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines?
[00:11:31] Andrew Lewis: Repeat that one more time, sorry.
[00:11:33] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines?
[00:11:39] Andrew Lewis: Yes.
[00:11:40] Crystal Fincher: Should we accelerate the elimination of the ability to turn right on red lights to improve pedestrian safety?
[00:11:46] Andrew Lewis: Yes, absolutely.
[00:11:48] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever been a member of a union?
[00:11:50] Andrew Lewis: Yes.
[00:11:51] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to increase funding and staffing for investigations into labor violations like wage theft and illegal union busting?
[00:11:59] Andrew Lewis: Yes.
[00:11:59] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever walked a picket line?
[00:12:02] Andrew Lewis: Yes.
[00:12:02] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever crossed a picket line?
[00:12:04] Andrew Lewis: No.
[00:12:05] Crystal Fincher: Is your campaign unionized?
[00:12:07] Andrew Lewis: So we pay the union wage. I don't know if he is formally - my campaign manager's formally joined, but of course I'd be all for it. So, yes.
[00:12:20] Crystal Fincher: And that was the next question. If your staff wants to unionize, would you voluntarily recognize their effort?
[00:12:25] Andrew Lewis: Yeah, totally.
[00:12:26] Crystal Fincher: Well, look, Andrew Lewis - you concluded our first in-interview lightning round here on Hacks & Wonks. I guess following up on that, there were a couple of issues where you wanted to follow up on that - so I'll give you a little bit of time to clarify.
[00:12:41] Andrew Lewis: Yeah, I mean, the first thing I would say, like in how I do endorsements - there were some questions about endorsements. If I publicly endorse - publicly endorsed Lorena, publicly endorsed Leesa Manion - I will say in the future who I voted for. If there's a municipal office where I have to work with that person, like council colleagues or other municipal officials - if I don't publicly endorse, I don't state 'cause I have to work with those people. So, I mean, people can maybe infer based on some of my other statements and actions, but it's just a hard and fast rule I have that I inherited from my friend, Nick Licata. So I will just say, put that out there. On the waterfront - well, actually, first, LRPC - there's some questions regarding bargaining. At the Seattle City Council, there's a body called Labor Relations Policy Committee - it's five City councilmembers. Our deliberations are private 'cause bargaining is private - for good reason. We oversee the bargaining process for all unions that have contracts with the City, including the Seattle Police Officers Guild, and we weigh in in that body on approving bargaining parameters. So sitting on that body - it's just best practice to not specifically talk about hard and fast positions on the bargaining process. And I know that's frustrating to a lot of my friends in labor for the coalition bargaining that's happening right now. But by virtue of serving on LRPC, I have to be really, really careful about what I say to avoid unfair labor practice allegations and other things like that, regrettably.
On the waterfront, which is another question that came up. I think the waterfront's gonna be great and have a lot of really cool new things - the Overlook Walk, the Aquarium expansion, obviously going to be a big new investment. So on the whole, it's a beneficial addition, and I think yes is the best answer to that question. There are ways it could be dramatically improved - I don't think anyone out there is denying that. A couple of months ago, when we were discussing the designation of Dzidzilalich - the renaming of Elliott to Dzidzilalich Way - I asked the Office of the Waterfront staff how much leeway we have to make improvements to increasingly remove the amount of footprint that's on the waterfront that is reserved for cars - which is the biggest deficiency, in my opinion, of the waterfront. And everything essentially north of the ferry terminal is city right-of-way and not state right-of-way - where we have an increased amount of leeway to make changes. So I'm optimistic that over time, we can continue to work and shape the waterfront to reflect the kind of urban space that I think a lot of us in the community wanna see. It's tough that so much of the shape of the waterfront was kind of locked in over a decade ago before I was on the council to really have a say in how to shape those conversations. But just clarification there on the waterfront.
On the question regarding money that goes towards removing and remediating encampment locations - I mean, that's an ongoing - that maybe is the subject of further questions, actually, in the interview, but I don't think it's necessarily a situation where we're in a position to completely get rid of the money that we've set aside for the Unified Care Team - with the current state of how the rest of our contract with the regional authority is set up, we do need the ability in case of emergencies or obstructions or other exigent problems to be able to remediate an encampment location. But I think that we should be doing it with compassion and discretion and not - yeah, and that our focus needs to stay on having a Housing First approach to resolving the crisis of homelessness that we're facing.
[00:17:05] Crystal Fincher: How do you think that compassion and discretion has been going so far? Has the City met that mark, or is there room for improvement?
[00:17:14] Andrew Lewis: I think there's always room for improvement and I think that all of us admit that that's the case. We - for the first time, we're tracking why people might decline offers of shelter. In the Durkan administration, we never did that. It's something that's been a long council priority to like, if someone declined shelter, we should ask them why. In the Durkan administration, there was no interest - there was just sort of a philosophy of like, Well, no, if they say no, then why would we ask them? And it's like - well, if you want to increase the rate of people accepting offers, you should be asking people. And under the Harrell administration, we have started asking. And the Harrell administration has been very responsive to feedback in updating and changing a lot of our outreach practices that, in the Durkan administration, we weren't getting any traction as a council in that kind of responsiveness.
And what we've learned through that process is the dominant shelter preference are tiny house villages. And if you have more tiny house villages, you're gonna significantly reduce the amount of encampments in the city. There has been a 42% decrease in encampments over the course of the past year or so, through our work with the Unified Care Team. And that reflects a reduction in the amount of displacement, because there is an emphasis on increasing the amount of shelter placements from the outreach that we do to encampments. We have increased the amount of enhanced shelter in tiny house villages, though not as much as I would like to see. So I think the focus needs to be on continuing to scale up those enhanced shelter options that - we do have a consensus from the Harrell administration on wanting to do. The historic challenge has been resistance from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to tiny house villages, but I think the new leadership team there has a different view of the utility of them. So my hope is that we can continue down that path in centering things that work. The best model that we've done in recent years is the JustCARE model, which used a hoteling-supported placement system. But we can do the same work with tiny house villages, and that might be more attainable than leasing or acquiring additional hotels in the current climate. So that's what we need to continue to work on - in my estimation. If you want fewer encampments and you want to provide people with a place to go, I think it all really comes down to having more tiny homes.
[00:20:06] Crystal Fincher: And I think it's fair to say you've been the council's leading proponent of tiny homes during your time serving. I do wanna talk about the upcoming anticipated revenue shortfall in the City of Seattle. It's projected to have a revenue shortfall of several million dollars beginning in 2025. Because the City's mandated to pass a balanced budget, the options to address the upcoming deficit are either to raise revenue or to cut services. How will you approach the issue of how the City collects and spends money on behalf of its constituents?
[00:20:44] Andrew Lewis: Yeah, it's estimated to be around - $200 million is the deficit that we're anticipating for the next biennium. So we have the entire year of 2024 to plan around a variety of different strategies to mitigate the impact of that looming deficit. I think that there's a couple of things that can be brought to bear. Obviously, there's some revenue options that were queued up by a recent task force that was convened by Mayor Harrell and Councilmember Mosqueda. It's not likely that any of those revenue sources in and of themselves would be enough to completely close the gap. So there would have to be - if there is a strategy pursued to pursue new revenue, there would have to also be some level of efficiencies and reforms that are found. I think that there is some utility in having the City really take a hard and fast look at some of the things that we do and figuring out if we can do them better. I think there's a broad consensus, for example, that things like design review are tedious, subjective, not really helping to advance a lot of our current policy challenges around getting things built in the city. All of these processes come with associated costs. I think that there are ways to look at the 45 offices and departments that we have at the city and look for some opportunities for consolidations of certain roles. I think there's a credible argument to be made that the Seattle Department of Construction Inspections, the Office of Planning and Development, the Office of Housing, the Department of Neighborhoods could theoretically all be merged into one department and there's probably economy of scale savings that we could realize from those kinds of efficiencies and consolidations. So I think that we need to think creatively in looking at all of the different options to get there. I don't think we can take revenue off the table and we can't take looking at some ways to more efficiently and effectively deliver existing services. Or get out of certain lines of business entirely - like I just indicated, design review, but there's other things in the permitting and land use world that we could probably streamline as part of the Comprehensive Plan. And I think there's a lot of interest in those kinds of actions - to have a more, to be able to build housing quicker, to be able to build things faster, and to reduce the associated costs with the process that slows a lot of that housing construction down.
[00:23:39] Crystal Fincher: I think everybody would welcome streamlining of that process, and I've also seen indications that there is broad interest in doing that. So we talked about the streamlining - are you considering any progressive revenue options?
[00:23:54] Andrew Lewis: Well, yeah - I mean, look, I co-sponsored the JumpStart Tax - gosh, like three years ago now, I guess, is when we did that. It seems more recent. So I'm not averse to new progressive revenue. I have proposed in the past a capital gains tax, which is one of the things that was recommended in the report. But I wanna take a good hard look first at ways that we can really show our work in 2024 - trying to figure out how we can really make the case that there's ways to find some additional ways to save money in the deficit before we are rolling out and committing to new revenue. People forget - partly 'cause I think there's a lot of people that don't wanna give the council credit for things - but people forget that in the last biennium, we found $60 million worth of savings that we rolled into the budget. So it's not like we aren't able to go through this work and find ways that we can save money. I mean, the county has been doing similar budgeting practices by necessity for over a decade because they have to. I mean, the county's in a position where they have the same budget pressures that we're facing - they can't raise progressive revenue, so they have found ways to be more efficient and effective. And I don't think that we at the City face the same pressures, but I think that there's a lot of ability to realize similar efficiencies. Also because we have dynamic and new needs - the Social Housing Initiative is a dynamic and new need - that's not something that we've had before that we've had to figure out how to resource. So finding ways to redistribute and reallocate funding from other parts of the budget, I think, is something that should be a focus of our work in 2024.
[00:26:02] Crystal Fincher: Makes sense. On almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals - which is an important milestone to hitting the 2040, 2050 climate goals - as we are experiencing the impacts of climate change right now, many of which are devastating from extreme heat and cold, to wildfires and floods. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet 2030 goals?
[00:26:31] Andrew Lewis: So in my first term - really proud of prime sponsoring legislation mandating that new commercial construction needs to essentially be non-emitting. Like you can't build a new commercial building in Seattle and heat it with natural gas - you have to get heat pumps. Councilmember Strauss sponsored a similar bill for residential construction doing the same thing. So that's new buildings. I want us to work on figuring out ways to adapt existing buildings, to convert to electric heat pumps instead of using natural gas. One of our biggest contributing factors in our climate accounting, our carbon accounting, is the heating of large buildings. And that's something that we can really take on, and I think that we - in the Comp Plan next year and through other sort of incentives and mandates - can get there to speed that transition up and have that part of the carbon accounting really go down.
We need to continue to work on the biggest plurality of our climate challenge, which is our transportation system in the City of Seattle. I used to think it was as simple as the process of building out light rail - I don't think that anymore. I mean, obviously that's gonna be essential and having that grade-separated fixed rail transit is critical and we have to be completely committed to speeding it up, getting it done right, and delivering it. But other things like emphasizing 15-minute city planning in the Comp Plan and figuring out ways to follow the lead of other cities that have made a lot of stunning progress in the COVID era around the subsidy and expansion of e-bikes. I think that e-bikes have a lot of potential to be a significant component. I don't think they're a silver bullet for our transportation climate problems, but I think that they are like a leg of the stool. I think that e-bikes can be a significant way to make biking, as a transportation alternative, more accessible and getting more people to take on that kind of commuting habit to reduce their dependency on single occupancy vehicles. That means we need to - in the Move Seattle levy and just through other budget priorities, through our transportation budgets - really make sure that protected and safe bike infrastructure is something that we're really investing in. So that people feel like they're - not just that it is a comfortable and convenient alternative to use an e-bike, but that you know you can do it safely and in a way that you are going to feel and actually be protected by the infrastructure you use to get around the city. Really proud, in my first term, to have sponsored the first increase in a decade of the commercial parking tax, which is a tax on private commercial parking lots - to create the first-ever dedicated funding for Vision Zero infrastructure improvements. So building on that is something we really need to do to meet our climate goals.
I'm proud to be the only candidate in this race in the primary who mentioned climate change in my voter guide statement. I think - in 2023, it's kind of stunning that you can have six candidates running in the Seattle City Council race and only one of the six even mentions climate change as something that we need to be doing. But here we are. So that'll continue to be a priority. Last thing I'll throw out there - really proud of the work I did with 350 Seattle and a coalition of environmental organizations to make significant investments in our community centers, through the renewal of the Metropolitan Park District, to be heating and cooling centers in extreme weather events and also to decarbonize those community centers as part of the process. This is all - it needs to be everything - we need to be mitigating, we need to be investing in climate resiliency, and we need to be aggressively working to reduce our overall climate footprint. And we can really be the city that I think leads the country in being an urban example of how you can be part of the solution on climate.
[00:31:09] Crystal Fincher: Now, I just want to give my full-throated support to the e-bike subsidy and to helping to improve bike and pedestrian infrastructure. It's so important, and especially e-bikes - showing that more than even regular bikes - to reduce vehicle trips, vehicle miles traveled, and as you put it, certainly a leg of the stool that's going to meaningfully address carbon emissions and pollution in our city.
I want to talk about public safety and particularly alternative response. Other jurisdictions - not just around the country, but in our own region and county - have rolled out alternative response programs to better support those having behavioral health crises, experiencing homelessness, a variety of issues that may not be best addressed by a police officer in an armed capacity. Which used to be a pretty common - and in some places still is - commonly talked about by even law enforcement officers, that they cannot address and solve everything. But it seems like Seattle has been falling behind on alternative response, behavioral health responses. Where do you stand on those solutions, and what are your thoughts on the civilian-led versus co-response models? And how do we move forward quickly to help improve public safety in the city?
[00:32:32] Andrew Lewis: All right, well, I'm gonna give a long answer, 'cause I feel very strongly about this. And appreciate the question. And honestly, Crystal, I appreciate - as an avid listener to your podcast - the way that this topic is discussed extensively with the guests that you have on, because it is not in our broader media and I think this is one of the first parts of the problem. In our broader legacy media, this really isn't discussed as something that's important. You know, like there's only passing reference to it in the editorializing from The Times, definitely none of our local TV news discuss it. And I'll just plant that as a flag - that I think that that is part of the reason it's been hard to get momentum for it - is it is not given much bandwidth, time, respect, or analysis by a lot of legacy media voices, and that diminishes the momentum for it.
But just to maybe go way back - I think I got ahead of myself on that part - there's lots of great models nationally for how you can send alternative civilian responses for public health-based calls for service. Eugene, Oregon has a longstanding program called CAHOOTS, Crisis Assistance Helping Out in the Streets. That program's been in operation for 30 years - sends mental health clinicians without the assistance of police to respond to calls for crisis in the community. And they've never had any serious injury or death associated for their staff of responding to those calls. Denver, which is probably a more analogous city - for our purposes as a major city - has a program called STAR, Support Team Assisted Response. Almost exactly the same as Eugene's CAHOOTS program - mental health clinicians and EMTs, civilians, provider-based. They've had no significant challenge, and a Stanford study actually recently saw that there's been an attributable, nearly one-third decrease in street disorder in the place where they've been in operation - which is incredibly impressive - and they've only been in operation for three years. Albuquerque has a similar program. So we really are a late adopter to this work.
I will say that the council in June of 2020 really put down - a stake in the ground for having this kind of a service as a really, really big priority. I was a big leader in that, former Councilmember Lorena González was a big advocate of that, my colleague Councilmember Herbold has been a huge, steadfast advocate of this kind of service. And for whatever reason, and I don't really - people can speculate, but I never really got a good reason why - it was not a huge priority for the Durkan administration. And the Durkan administration just really was not interested in lending capacity, bandwidth, or support to developing this kind of a program. And we lost a lot of time as a result of that - to be quite candid. The Harrell administration coming in - and I'm gonna say this - I think the Harrell administration on this issue has been great. We have lots of impediments in the City of Seattle and Washington State, mostly related to the fact that arguably this work needs to be bargained. And I don't wanna get into the bargaining too much, but that's been a big impediment. But the Harrell administration has worked in good faith with Councilmember Herbold and I to develop this work along - and admittedly it's complicated work, and it's taken a lot longer than any of us would like it to.
But the Harrell administration has gotten us to a point where we're gonna have a pilot in October. And I give immense credit to them for making this a priority in the first year and a half of their administration. And this dual dispatch pilot that's gonna be hitting the road in October is gonna bear a lot of similarity - in practice, I think - to a similar dual dispatch program in the City of Kirkland, which is called RCR, Regional Crisis Response. Actually, if the podcast is looking for a great guest to talk to about that - highly recommend Councilmember Neal Black, who's the one in Kirkland who turned me on to the fact that they have that service. I was not aware of it - did a ride-along with it-
[00:37:22] Crystal Fincher: We actually did a show on that.
[00:37:24] Andrew Lewis: With Neal?
[00:37:25] Crystal Fincher: Not with Neal - with Mayor Herbig and the executive director of the RCR program.
[00:37:30] Andrew Lewis: Oh, that's right - no, you did. Sorry, sorry. Yes, of course - oh my God, sorry. Yes, I listened to that. Old friends with Nigel Herbig, so yeah - I was texting him about it when that launched a couple of months ago. Sorry, I totally spaced on that.
[00:37:44] Crystal Fincher: How dare you not know every episode of Hacks & Wonks, Councilmember Lewis? [laughing]
[00:37:48] Andrew Lewis: I know - scandal, scandalous. But in any event, I do think our dual dispatch will bear a lot of similarity to that program. And it sets a good foundation because the team - you know, it's a dual dispatch team. And just really quickly, 'cause there's a lot of confusion in community about this. A co-responder system is where you have like a mental health clinician and a police officer in the same unit, the same vehicle, and they respond at the same time in the same vehicle. A dual dispatch program is where the units are separate - like you have a mental health clinician, EMT, in one vehicle and you have police in another. And both of them are dispatched at the same time, but they can sort of work together and like screen off in the field as necessary based on the needs of the call. And in practice, my understanding is that leads, in lots of cases, to the officer, you know, clearing the call and moving on to something only they can do - in the overwhelming majority of situations where the mental health clinician is able to take on the call on their own. So dual dispatch has the potential to continue to evolve into something that is a fully independent 911 response like CAHOOTS and STAR - because with the right training and doctrine, that fully independent unit can have incrementally, you know, more responsibility and more autonomy as we implement the program.
So, you know, it's been a while, but I appreciate the Harrell administration's prioritization of this. I appreciate that we're building the program out in the new 911 Communication Center Department, and that we have a new civilian director who's very, very committed to this work - and, you know, I look forward to this pilot being the first step. But in these cities - like in Denver and Albuquerque, those pilots grew very, very quickly into big, mature systems. So my hope is that we can have a similar experience here - we're just getting that service. The best advertising for the service, Crystal, is gonna be getting it out there so people can interact with it, people - and people tangibly know. Like one of the pushbacks I get a lot as an advocate for alternative 911 response is that people don't really have a great conception of like what that means, and they're sort of vulnerable to counterarguments about like - you know, people are gonna kill the alternative responders, or like things that just aren't problems in these other jurisdictions. And I think by getting it out there, it'll make it easier for advocates - like myself, like Councilmember Herbold - to be able to say, Look, this is what we're talking about, we need more of this. And I think that once it's out there, I think that it's gonna catch a lot more attention and public support.
[00:40:38] Crystal Fincher: Well, I certainly hope so - and there have been, I believe, some fits and starts in Seattle previously, whether it's the JustCARE model or others - but sincerely hope that we can get meaningful alternative response, comprehensive response up and running here in the City of Seattle. And thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today about your candidacy and your time during your first term - much appreciated.
[00:41:04] Andrew Lewis: Thank you so much.
[00:41:05] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank!
Robert fills Crystal in on dismaying news about Seattle Public Schools - how the district provoked parent fury by removing teachers and splitting classes after they screwed up enrollment projections, as well as their proposal for an austerity plan that includes school closures and anti-union financial policies.
They then switch gears to discuss the conservative National Association of Realtors pouring money into the Seattle City Council races, Sara Nelson’s penchant for campaign stunts rather than governing, and right-wingers using high gas prices to take aim at carbon pricing.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank, at @cruickshank.
Resources
“ChrisTiana ObeySumner, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 5” from Hacks & Wonks
“Pete Hanning, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 6” from Hacks & Wonks
“A ‘routine’ reconfiguration of Seattle schools brings tears, concerns” by Claire Bryan from The Seattle Times
“‘Please don’t break our hearts,’ Seattle parents, teachers protest widespread classroom shuffles” by Sami West from KUOW
“Seattle parents raise concerns over classroom size miscalculations by school district” by Denise Whitaker from KOMO
“‘The board needs to make this right’; Parents concerned over SPS restructuring” by Dave Detling from Fox 13
“Seattle Public Schools Unveil Plans for Sweeping Cuts and Lasting Austerity” by Robert Cruickshank from The Urbanist
“National realtors group drops $659k in Seattle, Spokane elections” by Josh Cohen from Crosscut
“Burien Mayor Sees No Issue With Distribution of Homeless People’s Private Info, Council Member Blames Her Colleague for Fentanyl Deaths” from PubliCola
“Will high gas prices derail WA’s climate policy?” by Conrad Swanson from The Seattle Times
“Don’t let the oil industry gaslight us about high prices at the pump” by Leah Missik for The Seattle Times
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
If you missed this week's topical shows, we continued our series of Seattle City Council candidate interviews. All 14 candidates for 7 positions were invited, and we had in-depth conversations with many of them. This week, we presented District 5 candidate, ChrisTiana ObeySumner, and District 6 candidate, Pete Hanning. We did not talk with their opponents - Cathy Moore in D5 cancelled and Dan Strauss in D6 declined. Have a listen and stay tuned over the coming weeks - we hope these interviews will help you better understand who these candidates are and inform their choices for the November 7th general election.
Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show, and today's co-host: Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank.
[00:01:46] Robert Cruickshank: Hey - thanks for having me back again, Crystal.
[00:01:48] Crystal Fincher: Hey, absolutely - thanks for being back. Well, there's a lot of news this week - a lot about everything. We're going to start off by talking about Seattle Public Schools and them really provoking parent fury, once again, by removing teachers and splitting up classes after the district screwed up enrollment projections. What's going on here?
[00:02:11] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, there was a board meeting last night that was packed with parents from across Seattle, and huge media turnout - all four TV stations were there, The Seattle Times was there, KUOW was there - covering this. And what happened is - over the summer, the school district administrators told principals at schools different ratios and rules and projections for enrollments they had to use in determining how many teachers they would have and how many students they could have to a teacher. And there are rules coming from the state about needing to have small class sizes at elementary schools - it's a good thing, we want that. And so the principals went forth with what the district told them, made the assignments, school began in early September - everything's going great. Then all of a sudden, at the beginning of October, just a week ago, the district realized - oops, they screwed up the calculation. And that if they don't fix it, they could lose a $3.6 million grant from the state. Now the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction has said that Seattle's actually fine - we don't see an issue yet - but the district claims that they needed to take proactive steps. And so the district did - rather than say, Okay, here's some money to bring on additional teachers so we don't have to remove teachers from schools, so we don't have to take kids away from their classroom a month into the year - the district instead said, No, we're not gonna spend any extra money, we're just gonna move everyone around at 40 different schools, remove some teachers from the classroom entirely, create a bunch of split classes where a bunch of third graders now are gonna go into a room with a bunch of second graders, for example. And parents are furious, and they should be.
I can give you a personal story. I have a fourth grader at Adams Elementary in Ballard, and he was in kindergarten when the pandemic hit and schools closed. So he lost half of kindergarten, and then first grade was mostly online. By the time he and his classmates get to second grade, they had any number of problems in the classroom for the full year. Second grade was a disaster for my kid, who had a ton of behavioral issues, and a lot of other kids in the class. Get to third grade, and his teacher at Adams Elementary, Ms. Windus, is excellent and she puts in a ton of work with these kids to get them back on track - helping them get back not just academically, but socially, emotionally. Third grade was great - not just for my kid, but for all the others in the class. Fourth grade's been going great so far. Well, because of these district-mandated cuts, the school has to get rid of Ms. Windus who's like this excellent teacher.
And last night at the board meeting, we heard similar stories from across the city, including some really gut-wrenching stories from Southeast Seattle - Orca K-8 and Dunlap Elementaries - teachers of color, parents of color coming up and saying, Look, for the first time in years, I feel like there are teachers who get my kid and you're gonna remove them? One teacher got up and said, Tell me which student I should kick out of my class - the one who is homeless, the one who doesn't get enough to eat, the one who has behavioral issues that I've been able to help correct, the one who didn't think they could learn how to read but now they can?
People were furious and rightly so, because what is happening here is the district is trying to make kids pay the price for an adult screw-up, rather than the district figuring out how to make this right without disrupting classrooms in the middle of the year. They've just said - Eh, you all can deal with it, kids can suffer the consequences. And a lot of the kids are ones - like I said earlier, not just like mine - who suffered through the pandemic and all that disruption - but necessary disruption, to be honest - because of the public health needs. But now you wanna make sure that you've got stability for these kids, that once they're bonded to a teacher in a good classroom they stay there - that's the thing they need - is stability. And this district just doesn't care. There are deeper issues, which we should talk about in a moment, but what you saw last night was an outpouring of anger and frustration at a district administration that didn't care, and a school board that just kind of sat there and didn't really make any promises to fix it.
[00:06:20] Crystal Fincher: Well, and this seems to be a continuing problem, particularly with that feedback of not feeling like the district is as invested in the success of kids as a primary objective, and not really being responsive to the feedback that parents have. Does this feel like this is a continuation of this issue?
[00:06:41] Robert Cruickshank: It's exactly it. The district has made it very clear that they don't care about public feedback - they don't believe that they should be answerable to the public. They don't think that the needs of students is a priority - you see in the media coverage and in the superintendent's words last night - that financial responsibility is their top priority. Well, that sounds pretty neoliberal. This is - let's put money first ahead of the needs of kids. There were a number of teachers who were there last night - and parents said similar things - who were like, We're in the richest city in the richest country in the history of the world with some of the wealthiest billionaires here, some of the largest companies here. Surely we can figure out how to solve this by working with the Legislature to tax the rich rather than making kids pay the price. The point I made last night at the board meeting is - Even if we can't get legislative money right now because they're not in session, why don't we take money from something else, like Central Office? We should be taking money away from administrator salaries - and they can do with less - rather than decide the first way to take money is to take out of the classroom.
[00:07:51] Crystal Fincher: Well, and I guess that's a question that I have, that I've heard asked - what are the actual remedies here? Is this a situation where there are no good options or are there, is there a way to move forward without creating this type of disruption?
[00:08:05] Robert Cruickshank: So Seattle's kids are stuck between two bad actors. On the one hand, the school district, which is deeply mismanaged. And a number of candidates for the board, like Debbie Carlsen, and a number of parents last night have been calling for an independent forensic audit of the school - of the district - and its spending. I've heard similar things from legislators who say - Hey, we're giving the district money, we don't know where it goes. So an independent audit and management reforms are necessary. On the other hand, our kids are also being hurt by the State Legislature and a Democratic majority that has not made it a priority to fund our public schools. So what do you do in the meantime? Like I said, I think the answer has to be for the district to figure out - where can they pull money from right now? If you need to lay off administrators, highly-paid assistant superintendents or something in the middle of the year, do it. These folks make a fair amount of money - you save teachers here and there.
Parents have also raised questions about the new calculations that are being used to determine which schools lose teachers. In fact, a number of schools - including the one my kid attends - have seen enrollment go up. So this isn't a case of declining enrollment causing problems. At some of these schools, they've been adding kids back, which is great - you want to see that - and now they're getting punished for it. So you've got to take a look at - do we need to make mid-year cuts in the Central Office to free up money? Do we need to have some independent auditors come in and figure out what's going wrong? District administrators and most board members don't seem to want to do any of that, even though kids are paying the price.
[00:09:34] Crystal Fincher: And I guess that leads me into a question about the long-term finances and outlook of the district, which is troubling. They're looking at deficits, as are many districts in the state, and we've talked about that before. Seattle Public Schools is proposing an austerity plan. What does that mean, and what kind of impact will that have?
[00:09:57] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, so to be clear, districts across the state are facing financial problems because of the Legislature. In fact, there are at least three districts north of Everett that are under financial monitoring by the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. So the question is - how do you respond to this? What Seattle Public Schools is proposing, and this came up last night after parents had vented their anger - the board went on to talk about a new financial policy that they're proposing, which is essentially permanent austerity. It would involve locking the district in at a budget level that is $200 million below where it was at last spring. They would have multi-year budget planning - an idea that was initially introduced to the State Legislature by Republicans - which would mean that you have a low baseline and you have very strict rules about how you can add money back. So if we succeed in getting the Legislature to pass a wealth tax, for example, and more money comes to the public schools, this financial policy would make it very hard for the district to go back and add because they could say - Oh, well, this isn't in our four-year fiscal plan, we don't know where we can put this money.
There are also some interesting parts of the policy - and this came up for heated debate last night among board members - that are pretty obviously anti-union. I had an article at the Urbanist yesterday about this - and there are provisions that are clearly trying to undo the Seattle Education Association's gains in the contract last year during the strike. And in fact, one board member, Chandra Hampson - very neoliberal board member - openly said, Well, maybe we should look at reopening the collective bargaining agreement. - which a lot of people's eyes went wide, and jaws dropped, and made it clear we can't really do that. Teachers were there last night also to protest against this. There are other provisions in there which seem designed to hold down teacher salaries - it's all pretty neoliberal austerity-type stuff.
And what's interesting to me is the contrast to what's going on at City Hall. I think a lot of our listeners probably saw an op-ed in The Seattle Times from about two weeks ago, by Rachel Smith of the Chamber of Commerce and Jon Scholes of the Downtown Seattle Association, saying that City Hall shouldn't raise taxes on corporations and the rich. Instead, you need to cut your spending and just focus on outcomes. And now you're seeing some of the conservative candidates, like Maritza Rivera and others, saying that same thing on the campaign trail now. Well, Seattle Public Schools is about to adopt that exact strategy - of slashing spending, saying - Oh, we're focusing on outcomes, even though the effects on kids are clearly devastating. What this is leading up to - and this is starting to get discussed among parents last night at the board meeting - the district has said for months now they want to close a bunch of schools in the district next year.
And if you think moving a couple of kids around and teachers around in the middle of October is disruptive, wait until you close an entire school. The effect of school closures is devastating on kids. People may remember 10 years ago in Chicago when Rahm Emanuel closed 50 schools there - it was devastating for the community. Research made it extremely clear that kids whose schools were closed did more poorly academically than kids whose schools remained open. I mentioned that to the board and the superintendent last night - we'll see if they paid any attention to it. But it's clear that the school district is on a trajectory where they are embracing huge cuts - they want to spend less on our kids, regardless of the consequences. And it's gonna take parents rising up against that here in the district, and also us going to Olympia and making sure the Democratic majority there finally takes its paramount duty responsibility under the Constitution seriously and fully funds our schools.
[00:13:38] Crystal Fincher: If the Legislature doesn't, is the district gonna have much of a choice but to close these schools?
[00:13:45] Robert Cruickshank: They do. I think what is happening is the district initially said earlier this year that they needed to close schools to save money. But in articles that have come out since, district leaders have been saying - Well, actually, it's not really about money. There is a article in The Seattle Times in late August where they quoted the superintendent, Brent Jones, who said - We're not gonna see any savings from closing schools next year when there's a $100 million budget deficit, we might see savings two to five years out. The district closed schools in the late 2000s, only to learn a few years later that they had completely missed their enrollment projections - and by the early 2010s, they had to spend $50 to $60 million to reopen schools they had just closed a few years earlier. So it's not clear that closing schools is gonna help them. Finally, there's the issue of - if you've been moving kids around and making clear that their needs aren't as important as meeting a couple of financial projections in the middle of school year and then you close their schools, parents aren't gonna sit for that. A lot of them are just gonna walk away - they might move to a suburban district, they may put their kids in some private school. So closing schools sets in motion potentially a spiral of declining enrollment, which means less money coming to the school district.
[00:15:05] Crystal Fincher: Now, it seems like that's a problem that they're destined to run into again, with as volatile as enrollment can be - but it does seem to be cyclical. There are lots of times - oh, enrollment is just down. Well, it doesn't ever seem to just stay down. It doesn't ever seem to just stay up. So it seems like the decision of opening and closing schools - and the tremendous expense that comes with opening and closing schools, in addition to the disruption that comes from it - is an extreme response to something that we know is likely to be, has always been a temporary condition. Has this been discussed at all from the board level? Have they responded to that?
[00:15:50] Robert Cruickshank: Not really. And I think what you saw last night and with this current issue of the class sizes and allocations in the elementary schools, it's not clear that the district really has a handle on an ability to project enrollment at all. Ultimately, there's no need for the school district to do anything just yet. The legislative session begins in January. Typically, a school district does not approve its budget until late in the spring or even early in the summer. The Legislature was very close to passing a wealth tax last year - there were 43 out of 58 Democrats in the House who co-sponsored the wealth tax bill, certainly more would have voted for it. 20 of 29 state senators voted for the wealth tax. And significantly, there's been major change in the state Senate Democratic caucus - the previous chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, Christine Rolfes, a Democrat from Bainbridge Island, did not give the wealth tax a vote. She begrudgingly held a hearing on it in the 2023 session, but wouldn't bring it up for a vote - has blocked efforts to add more funding for our schools. Well, she left the Legislature over the summer to become a Kitsap County Commissioner. Her replacement as chair of the Ways and Means Committee, which handles all the budget bills for the Senate, is June Robinson from Everett - much more progressive. She was a leader in getting the capital gains tax done. The new vice-chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee is Seattle's own Joe Nguyen from West Seattle, who is a champion of various wealth taxes - and has said he wants to fight to fund our schools. So I think there are real opportunities for our schools and for families in Olympia in January - we need to fight for those. We also need to make sure that the district doesn't prematurely embrace an austerity plan that will hurt our kids even further.
[00:17:34] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. We'll definitely keep an eye on this. And thank you for being so steadfast and following this - and advocating for not only your kid, but all of the kids in the district.
I wanna talk about investment in Seattle City Council races - these campaigns are running hot and heavy right now, less than a month until Election Day, ballots are going to be mailed next week. So we have a lot that's happening and a lot of outside spending is beginning to show itself, including a very large investment from the National Association of Realtors. What are they doing?
[00:18:13] Robert Cruickshank: So the National Association of Realtors has dumped about a quarter of a million dollars into campaigns to try to elect Tanya Woo in District 2, Joy Hollingsworth in District 3, Maritza Rivera in District 4, Bob Kettle in District 7. And there's been some good discussion online about this - well, why would the National Association of Realtors support candidates who are less friendly to building new housing in Seattle? And some speculation is that - oh, they wanna have less supply of housing so the price of housing stays high. That might be part of it. But if folks have been paying attention to either the National Association of Realtors or their Washington state arm, the nut of this is they're a right-wing conservative organization. They hate taxes. The fight for the capital gains tax in State Legislature involved strong, determined, long-term opposition from the realtors - they were some of the biggest opponents of a capital gains tax to fund our schools. The National Association of Realtors is in fact mired in scandal right now. Redfin, Seattle-based Redfin, recently left the National Association of Realtors because there are a series of sexual harassment allegations, antitrust lawsuits against the National Association of Realtors.
Similar spending has come in in some of these races in Seattle City Council as well, for the same candidates, from the Master Builders. And so again, people wondering why - people like Ron Davis or Alex Hudson are really strong supporters of building more housing. So is Andrew Lewis. But again, this is just conservative politics - they don't want higher taxes. These people who run these organizations are Sara Nelson types - law and order, crackdown on crime, darn the consequences, and by the way, don't raise taxes. That's what this is really about. In fact, they're willing to undermine their stated goals of building more housing, selling more homes in order to achieve their real objective, which is right-wing ideologies.
[00:20:18] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this is a troubling trend, unfortunately. We have seen realtors engage in elections in Washington across the state in several previous cycles - and some very controversially. And to your point, usually they have been seen in these candidate races recently, engaging in ways that are very inflammatory, that are targeting candidates that are not conservative - usually running against conservatives - where issues such as taxes are on the ballot, but then being willing to use a number of social wedge issues to intervene here. So this is quite a significant investment in these races that they're making - not only Seattle City Council races, there is also a Spokane race - they have engaged in Spokane in this similar way before in prior cycles. In fact, I'm recalling one from 2021 right now - I think with Councilmember Zack Zappone out there. So it is not shocking to see them engage in this way, but once again, we're seeing the influence of big money in these elections. And this is something that Seattle has had a very negative reaction to before in these races. And so do you think this is gonna see the kind of reaction that we saw like in 2017 - when Amazon was so influential in spending money in those races?
[00:21:44] Robert Cruickshank: I don't know. I would like to think so, but I'm not sure. Amazon is the colossus of big corporations, especially here in Seattle. And everyone knows throughout the 2010s that Amazon grew dramatically, the city filled up with people working at Amazon - most of them are good progressive people who don't share the company's politics. But there's a sense that Amazon was distorting the way Seattle was growing and that Amazon was a bad corporate actor - in fact, the Biden administration just sued them over antitrust allegations a few weeks back. So everyone knows Amazon. Everyone knows Amazon is a villain - at least the corporate leadership. The National Association of Realtors and Master Builders are not nearly as well-known. They are right-wing interests, but the narrative isn't the same. It's interesting to me that Amazon is not playing overtly and publicly in these elections - I think they learned their lesson from 2019 when it blew up in their face. They're probably happy to see that burden, especially the financial burden, taken up by the Realtors and the Master Builders. But I think ultimately people are gonna wonder why all this money is coming in. Seattle is a city that supports clean elections - it's a city that pioneered the Democracy Voucher. It's a city that if we could, if the US Supreme Court would allow it, we'd probably ban all of these super PACs and corporate contributions - we can't because of federal rulings at the Supreme Court level. So I think while the Realtors and the Builders have a lower profile than Amazon, I think there is a chance the public will see this massive spending and think - Eh, I don't know if I like that. Seattle voters, especially those in the middle - that 20% of the electorate in the middle that can swing back and forth between a more conservative and a more progressive candidate - they don't like powerful, wealthy, private and corporate business interests telling them how to vote.
[00:23:40] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it'll be interesting - in my opinion - to see how this shakes out because this is not a situation like Amazon or where the Chamber essentially overplayed their hand and saying, Well, we're just gonna buy these elections. And you're right - Seattle typically doesn't have a - doesn't respond well to that. So I think in this situation, to your point, it is different in that we don't see the concentration of that spending coming from one source, but I think we are seeing it kind of trickling in from these different sources. And it'll be interesting to see at the end of the day what that amount of spending winds up being and how influential that is. Money is influential in politics, unfortunately. And Seattle has taken steps to try and equalize the playing field, allow more access to people running to be credible candidates - especially with the Democracy Voucher program - but there still is not a cap on spending in any kind of way when it comes to independent expenditures. And these big corporate-focused organizations who are spending in these races - know and understand that and aren't afraid to use it. And are feeling the heat right now because they're seeing popular sentiment - we keep seeing these polls of people in Seattle that they keep trying to explain away, but this is where the people are at. So this is really their recourse and they're fighting against the majority of people being in support of things like a wealth tax, like a capital gains tax, like an income tax, really. And so they're freaking out behind the scenes, realistically, and this is the manifestation of that. This is how they feel they can fight back - in these independent expenditures from corporate entities in these elections.
So it's a dynamic that they used to feel much more comfortable, I think, in knowing that - hey, especially citywide elections, these elections, we're gonna be able to get our person in. We know that we can spend enough to get them into the general and we can control the narrative. We know that a lot of times, the Times editorial board has a similar narrative to their interests - that that will carry the day. But between elections being districted now in Seattle, which that's a relatively recent development, and some more candidates having access to get on the ballot now, and that just the demographics and the impacts of income inequality and everything that we see flow from that being so present in our communities today - people are looking at that differently than they did, say, 10 years ago. So this is gonna be really interesting to see how this shakes out.
[00:26:32] Robert Cruickshank: I think that's right. And I think that the big spending matters - it helps drive a narrative and a conversation, but it has to resonate with people. And as you're explaining this, my mind immediately went back to Green Jacket Lady. If you remember from a couple of weeks ago, Fox News came to Seattle and tried to show that - oh, people are really worried about public safety - and they got a totally different response, including a woman in a green jacket who said, What are you talking about? Like, I don't feel unsafe in the city at all. You saw somebody using drugs from the safety of your car and you're scared? And that's a real response from real Seattleite voters. All this fear-mongering that The Seattle Times, and these corporate interests, and Sara Nelson and her crew are trying to stoke doesn't resonate. And if you look at the election outcomes from the primary, a lot of those candidates who were trying to run on those fears - they were trailing their more progressive opponents. We'll see what happens - ballots are in the mail next week - I don't wanna take anything for granted. At the same time, there's a substantial number of voters in Seattle who do not buy that narrative at all. They want smart solutions - doesn't mean they are totally happy with open public drug use, they're not concerned about break-ins - they are. But they also want smart solutions to those and they're not gonna be fear-mongered into actually not doing anything - they're not gonna be fear-mongered into supporting right-wing candidates as a result.
[00:28:02] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I think you're absolutely right about that. I think there's a misconception - it's just like, Well, some people just aren't concerned - but the majority of people are concerned. I think almost everybody is very concerned and unhappy with what they see out there - unhappy with what I see out there. Do I want people sleeping on the streets? Do I want people battling addiction and behavioral health issues that there's no one there to address? Absolutely not. But I think the misread is that - therefore we need to continue doing the same things that we've been talking about, for a decade really, and seeing things get worse while we do that. I think people have grown impatient with doing the same thing and getting the same failed result. And wanting meaningful investment in behavioral health treatment and addiction treatment, in housing, right - and really meaningfully solving these problems. And it seems like the issue here is that we have a number of candidates - candidates on one side - who seem like they want to continue largely with the status quo. And that status quo has been kind of a carceral focus - well, we can jail people, we can sweep them - but not doing the things that we know have been successful to really solve these problems in the longterm and not just move people from one area to another, have people go just in this revolving door in and out of jail - because jail can't address the problems that they're ultimately dealing with. I think people right now are saying - I'm fed up with this, but I actually want someone who will do something different that has a chance to fix this.
[00:29:41] Robert Cruickshank: That's exactly right. Polls continue to show several things consistently - Yes, the public is concerned about homelessness. Yes, the public is concerned about public safety. That doesn't mean they're concerned about it in the ways the right-wingers are, as you just explained. Those polls also show the public wants an alternative to armed policing - that is extremely popular across polls since 2020 - and they also want to tax the rich to fund it. That is incredibly strong, and that shows up in all the polls as well. And so these candidates who oppose those things are trying to stoke the fears and concerns, and the progressive candidates have to be smart about this - you don't dismiss public concerns, you explain why your answer is better. And that does resonate - that is resonating across the campaign trail, you see it at town halls, you see it when candidates are at the doors - their message gets a good response.
[00:30:32] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and this reminds me of an ad that I saw this morning that is really - for Seattle - a really inflammatory ad. And it was an ad from Bob Kettle, who is the candidate running against Andrew Lewis in Seattle's District 7, which covers the downtown area. And it's Bob Kettle and one of his big supporters, Sara Nelson - the most conservative member on the city council, I think most would say. And in this ad, Bob basically says - Hey, I'm running because of crime, and because this problem has gotten bad, and we need to crack down, basically. And Sara Nelson explicitly saying - Hey, Andrew Lewis didn't vote for my drug bill, and he is responsible for the deaths of people from fentanyl overdose, which is a wild accusation - for a couple of reasons. One, Andrew actually ultimately ended up voting for that bill. Two, just to say that not cracking down on a carceral solution is responsible for people's deaths - flies in the face of data, flies in the face of all available evidence that we know and that we have here, especially since incarceration has proven to be extremely ineffective. And risk after incarceration of overdose is the highest there - because people haven't been using for a while, their tolerance has gone down, but they're going back into the same environment they were with no additional tools of support - and are most likely to overdose in that situation. What do you think of an accusation like this?
[00:32:12] Robert Cruickshank: I think it's absurd. And it shows the lengths to which - not just Bob Kettle, but Sara Nelson in particular, will go to try to defeat progressives. 'Cause that's what Sara Nelson's really about - you watch her on the council - she's not a data-driven elected official at all. Her positions are often inconsistent and certainly inconsistent with data. But what she really wants to do is defeat progressives - defeat progressive candidates and progressive ideas. And it's kind of shocking - you and I both worked in the McGinn administration 10 years ago, and Sara Nelson was a lead staffer for then-Council President Richard Conlin. And at the time, my interactions with Sara Nelson were great. She seemed - I don't know about progressive necessarily, but certainly left of center - really forward thinking, interested in sustainability, really smart, knowledgeable, thoughtful staffer. Somewhere in the 10 years since, she made a hard right turn. Now, a lot of people have done that, especially in the late 2010s in reaction to movements for Black lives and efforts to reform police. And as the city becomes more progressive, there's a certain type of Seattleite react really negatively to that. A small business owner like Sara Nelson, who owns Fremont Brewing, certainly seems to be one of those.
And the City Councilmember Sara Nelson - a totally different animal from the Council staffer Sara Nelson we saw 10 years ago - is primarily driven by a desire to beat progressives. And here she sees an opportunity not to solve the problem of fentanyl addiction, not to solve a problem of public safety, but to beat an enemy. And in order to do that, she's willing to go to just absurd lengths. To accuse Andrew Lewis of being personally responsible for the death of drug addicts is a really awful thing to say about one of your own colleagues. But Sara Nelson thinks she can get away with it because again, she's clearly uninterested in having good relations with someone who's highly likely to get reelected. If Andrew Lewis wins, she's gonna have to work with him. She doesn't seem to care about any of that - she's not interested in building a strong relationship with a colleague. She's willing to just, you know, scorch the earth to try to get him defeated. Now there is a type of voter in Seattle who will respond to that, but it's not a majority of the electorate by any means - certainly in District 7, it's not the majority.
[00:34:27] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it definitely doesn't appear to be the majority there. And this is not the first time that we have seen this come from Sara Nelson, or candidates that Sara Nelson supports. We saw a media stunt earlier in the cycle - it was about a month ago - where she was with the District 2 candidate there and in a really cynical response and really tried to turn it into a photo-op, talking about crime or public safety, something like that, saying - Where is Tammy Morales? Well, Tammy Morales was literally doing her job that the taxpayers pay her for - she was at a meeting of the city council where they were discussing the Transportation Plan - a meeting that Sara Nelson wasn't at, that she used as a stunt to call out her colleague actually doing the work that they're paid to do, that Sara Nelson wasn't doing. So it's just like - it seems like Sara Nelson is uninterested in the governing part of the job, which is the job, but very interested in these stunts and this inflammatory rhetoric and running against councilmembers, really regardless of ideology, but that disagree with her, right? Because I don't think many people are - you know, would say Tammy Morales and Andrew Lewis are the same on every issue. I think it's fair to say most people consider Tammy Morales to be more progressive than Andrew Lewis, not that Andrew Lewis is not progressive. But it's - in that situation, it's just like - what are you even talking about? And are you working with these colleagues? Are you engaging with data? Are you working towards a solution? Are you just trying to inflame people with rhetoric, and these stunts, and going on conservative talk radio and doing this? And now we see this really inflammatory ad land. It just seems like Sara Nelson is really uninterested in governing.
[00:36:17] Robert Cruickshank: That's exactly right. And, you know, again, I think of Green Jacket Lady and Fox News because those are stunts that the national Republicans are really good at. You see it in Congress, right - the fight over the speakership - it's all about stunts to win the news cycle and defeat their opponents. Sara Nelson is engaging in the exact same stuff. She doesn't govern, she's not interested in data, very lightly interested in policy - it's all about stunts. That's all she knows how to do, that's all she really cares about because that's how she thinks she wins her actual objective, which is to defeat anyone she thinks as being progressive. We'll see what happens - like I said, there is a group of voters in Seattle that responds well to that. I don't think it's a majority of voters, even in District 7, but a lot of this comes down to turnout. We have elections here in Seattle in odd years - a lot of cities across the country have been moving their local elections to even-numbered years to make sure that more voters are participating in the process of choosing who represents them in City Hall. Seattle hasn't gone down that path yet - I think we should. We all know that there is much higher turnout in even-year elections in Seattle than odd-year elections. So this is not going to be so much a question of - can Sara Nelson convince more progressive Seattleites to turn on Andrew Lewis, and are more progressive Seattleites gonna show up and vote?
[00:37:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and it's challenging. The one thing that the people who love stunts - traditionally conservatives, Republicans - have done well for years is really, for their audience, connecting every single policy to a politician, to an issue at the ballot box. And really over the year, over the years in between these elections, really saying - This is the fault of this person. It was Kshama Sawant for a while while she was on the council, now they're trying to find a new person that they can blame this on. But that seems to be the MO there - it's the fault of this person - and they're constantly hearing that in their media ecosystems. It's not the same on the left - we don't talk about issues to that degree. Now there's more facts involved in a lot of these discussions than those - kind of in those right echo chambers - but still the connection isn't constantly being made. So when it comes time for people to turn out in these elections, you have a group that - based on, again, a lot of data that does not turn out to be true - that is missing tons of context, but they're eager to get voting. Which is why we see kind of in - because we do voting by mail - we can see those really eager voters, those getting their ballots in immediately, skew more conservative - they're ready to vote. Where people on the more progressive side need more information to vote - the communication does make a difference, which is part of the reason why you see spending on communication and them throwing so much money in there because they know that is influential and impactful in today's political world.
So the job is really for progressives to communicate about the stakes of this election, to communicate and share with your friends and family. There's a lot of people online - I am a chronically online person also - but it's like, I've seen people over the years kind of focus on advocacy online and skip their friends, their cousins, their family, all the people that they're surrounded with in their lives, people you talk to at work. Those are the people who most need to hear from you - Hey, you voting? You voting for this person? 'Cause like these policies that we've talked about, this issue that I know makes you upset, that I know you're frustrated about is really at stake in this election, especially in local elections that don't get the kind of national attention that our federal elections do. So I am just impressing upon everybody listening to make sure you talk about how important these local city council races are to people in your lives - and whether it's school board, city council - all of these positions are critically important. And it takes you getting engaged with people in your life to get the kind of turnout to win these elections.
[00:40:34] Robert Cruickshank: That's exactly right. I remember in 2019 - during that city council election that Amazon was trying to buy - being on the bus going downtown from my home in Greenwood, and just getting my phone out and going through my list of contacts - in text, Facebook Messenger, whatever it was - whatever the last communication I had with them, I went to that medium and sent them a message saying, Hey, have you voted yet? You got your ballot in? Here's a deadline, here's the nearest dropbox. And I was actually surprised the number of people who hadn't yet voted and were thankful for the reminder - and these are often people who are politically aware and engaged. So it makes a huge difference to talk to your networks, your friends, your family, your neighbors. Those are some of the people you can be the most influential with, and it is worth taking the time to do that when ballots arrive next week.
[00:41:25] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I wanna talk about something incredibly important that is happening right now that seems to consistently fly under the radar, but is tremendously impactful for all of our lives. And this situation taking shape - in that right-wingers really are trying to use gas prices to take aim at carbon pricing, especially here in our state. What's happening with this?
[00:41:51] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, so over the course of 2023, as gas prices rise - and they're rising across the country for many reasons, which we'll talk about in a moment - there's been a clear effort here in Washington State to blame that on the Climate Commitment Act, which the Legislature adopted in 2021, which creates a carbon pricing system. And has been raising more than a billion dollars a year to fund important projects to reduce carbon emissions. Their arguments are - and you see this in The Seattle Times all the time - that, Oh my gosh, gas prices in Washington are some of the nation's highest because we passed the Climate Commitment Act. This is not true. We all knew that going into this, passing the Climate Commitment Act could, as it did in California, add maybe five, seven cents a gallon to the price of gas - which would be dwarfed and has been by global trends. Gas prices are sky high right now in part because of demand for driving, in part because of oil company shenanigans with how they manage refineries to try to keep the price high. And in particular, the number one reason why gas prices are high is because of OPEC, geopolitics, and the Saudi government deliberately cutting production to try to squeeze Joe Biden to get what they want out of him or to help elect Trump. This has all been reported in the news, this is no secret. And yet these right-wingers - backed by the Western States Petroleum Association, the oil company lobbying arm - continue to try to put out a media narrative, and you saw it again in The Seattle Times over the weekend, trying to blame the Climate Commitment Act for high gas prices. This is not an idle threat. Tim Eyman has been defanged - he's gone bankrupt, he's pretty much out of the initiative business - but there are new people trying to take his place. Guy named Brian Heywood has raised a whole bunch of money to try and qualify six right-wing ballot initiatives for the state ballot in 2024 - one of which would repeal the capital gains tax, another which would repeal the Climate Commitment Act.
And so that's what the backstory is here - there is a effort backed by the right-wing to try to go after Washington State's effort to tackle the climate crisis. I think voters understand if you explain to them that - No, this is not why our gas prices are high. We can get rid of the Climate Commitment Act tomorrow and you're still gonna pay $5.50 a gallon for gas. We need to do other things to address transportation costs, including spending billions of dollars a year to give people the opportunity to get around their community without having to burn fossil fuel - that's what people want - that's our goal as environmentalists is not to make people pay a lot of money. Our goal is to give people alternatives that are affordable - that's a story, a message we can win with, but we have to fight a lot of oil company money and The Seattle Times, which is not as interested in telling the story. I will say a colleague of mine at the Sierra Club, Leah Missik, who also works for Climate Solutions, had an excellent op-ed - I think we can link it in the show notes - in the Seattle Times of all places over the summer, really just debunking all these arguments against the Climate Commitment Act, pointing out that the real reasons why gas prices are high, and pointing out that the oil companies are behind all of this.
[00:45:00] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And it's no secret - I have had my issues with the Climate Commitment Act, but one thing that is clear is that the revenue from the Climate Commitment Act is absolutely critical in addressing our infrastructure, and making the kinds of changes - and having the chance to make those changes in a just and equitable way - in order to make this transition to a clean energy future, to reduce fossil fuel emissions. And this is not an option that we have, right? We have to get this done. And the opportunity for progress, right, is here. And we're talking about the elimination of that opportunity for something that everyone but climate deniers understand is absolutely critical and necessary. And we're really seeing that element getting engaged here in this fight against the Climate Commitment Act - this is a chance for progress right here, and we need to move forward with this and several other things, right? But just blaming that for gas prices is completely disingenuous - it flies counter to facts. And it's always rich to me that people who are engaging in this conversation for gas prices, which absolutely do impact people's budgets and eat into their discretionary income if they have any, but that pales in comparison to the cost of housing, to the cost of childcare, to even the increasing cost of groceries, right? These things that we don't hear these conservative elements get engaged with in any kind of way, but something that they feel that they can use as a wedge issue here is one that we're seeing. So it's just very cynical - it is really unfortunate that they're not engaging in good faith with this. And I think we see most of the time voters reject these kinds of efforts, but it really is going to take a continued effort to explain that - No, this isn't the fault of gas prices and repealing the Climate Commitment Act isn't gonna do anything with gas prices, which by all accounts are going to get more volatile as we go on with time. So we need to stand up alternatives to just needing to purchase gas constantly all the time - whether it's through EVs, investing in transit, investing in safe, walkable, bikeable communities - we shouldn't force people to burn gas to earn a living and to build a life.
[00:47:33] Robert Cruickshank: I was talking with my wife about this and remembering in the 1970s, late 1970s, when Carter was president and there was another energy crisis. And Carter was trying to invest in getting us off of oil. Reagan becomes president, says - No, no, no, no, no. We're just gonna double down on oil and fossil fuels. For the 40 years since, anytime we have an opportunity to try to get off of dependence on fossil fuels, this country finds a way to not do it. And the only outcome has been gas prices get more and more expensive and we have no alternative but to pay it. Those of us who live in Seattle have some option for not having to pay for gas to drive - you can walk, you can bike more easily, you can take transit, more and more people have electric cars but those are expensive. But if you live outside Seattle, you have virtually no ability to get around, to get to school, to get to work, to get to shopping without paying for gas. It shouldn't have to be that way, and there are groups, environmentalists, who have been trying to fix this for decades. And we keep running into the same problems - oil companies like to make money off of this, they don't care about the consequences as long as the money keeps rolling in. We finally got a Climate Commitment Act. And as you say, it's not perfect. In fact, Sierra Club was neutral on it because of concerns about where the money would go. But we also believe that that can be fixed in a legislative process and certainly wouldn't support a repeal. And so this is where we can move forward and make sure this is done correctly. Or we just quit again, as we have every time for the last 45 years, and then we'll be complaining the gas prices are at $7 a gallon, $8 a gallon. We know that that's coming if we don't act now to give people the option to stop having to buy gas, stop having to spend so much money, and keep more of that money in their pocket and get around the communities sustainably.
[00:49:25] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, October 13th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank. You can find Robert on Twitter @cruickshank. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can find me on Twitter and most other platforms - Robert also on other platforms - I'm @finchfrii with two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar - I love using Overcast for mine. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical shows delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Wednesday topical show, Crystal chats with Pete Hanning about his campaign for Seattle City Council District 6. Listen and learn more about Pete and his thoughts on:
- [01:05] - Why he is running
- [01:49] - Lightning round!
- [09:15] - What is an accomplishment of his that impacts District 6
- [10:54] - City budget shortfall: Raise revenue or cut services?
- [14:39] - Public Safety: Alternative response
- [18:43] - Victim support
- [23:20] - Public Safety: Police accountability
- [25:52] - Housing and homelessness: Frontline worker wages
- [27:15] - Climate change
- [29:42] - Bike and pedestrian safety
- [31:24] - Transit reliability
- [32:49] - Addressing public drug use
- [38:30] - Small business support
- [40:47] - Childcare: Affordability and accessibility
- [43:22] - Difference between him and opponent
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Pete Hanning at @pmhanning.
Pete Hanning
As a lifelong Seattle resident, this city has helped shape who I am.
For the last 35 years, I have been a leader in the nightlife/hospitality industry. I owned the Red Door in Fremont for twenty years. My experience as a small business owner has honed my ability to solve problems and provide service to others.
I’ve been civically engaged throughout my career, with a focus on improving public safety and supporting small businesses. I’ve served on many boards, including the Fremont Neighborhood Council, the North Precinct Advisory Council, the Fremont Chamber of Commerce, the Seattle Restaurant Alliance, and the Washington Restaurant/Hospitality Association. I helped form the Seattle Restaurant Alliance and the Seattle Nightlife & Music Association.
I am currently Executive Director for the Fremont Chamber of Commerce. I believe the small businesses increase the quality of life of our community and form a key part of the fabric of our shared neighborhoods. I will always champion these small businesses and businesses throughout Seattle.
We are in a pivotal time as a city and I am running because we need a more pragmatic, problem-solving approach to shape our shared future.
I live in Fremont with my wife and two cats.
Resources
Campaign Website - Pete Hanning
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, today I am pleased to be joined by a candidate for Seattle City Council District 6, Pete Hanning. Welcome, Pete.
[00:01:01] Pete Hanning: Thank you very much for having me - I'm happy to be here.
[00:01:04] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So starting out, why did you decide to run?
[00:01:10] Pete Hanning: Well, I've been in Seattle now 52 of my 54 years, and I have loved my community for that entire time - and I find the most amount of satisfaction when I am of service to my community. I have always found that my community has given back even more when I am fully engaged. I come out of 35 years in the hospitality industry, so being of service comes naturally in that way. And then currently I'm the executive director of the Fremont Chamber of Commerce, so I am helping our small businesses in that community on a daily basis.
[00:01:48] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. Well, this year we are doing our candidate interviews a little bit different and including a lightning round. So there are some quick yes or no, or quick answer questions here before we get back to our regular type of questions. So starting out - This year, did you vote yes on the King County Crisis Care Centers levy?
[00:02:10] Pete Hanning: I did.
[00:02:11] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote yes on the Veterans, Seniors and Human Services levy?
[00:02:15] Pete Hanning: I did.
[00:02:15] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote in favor of Seattle's Social Housing Initiative 135?
[00:02:20] Pete Hanning: I did.
[00:02:21] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Bruce Harrell or Lorena González for Mayor?
[00:02:26] Pete Hanning: I voted for and supported Bruce Harrell.
[00:02:28] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Nicole Thomas Kennedy or Ann Davison for Seattle City Attorney?
[00:02:35] Pete Hanning: Well, I have a long relationship with Pete Holmes, so I was supportive of Pete Holmes. But he didn't make it into the general and I endorsed Ann - or I supported and voted for Ann Davison.
[00:02:47] Crystal Fincher: In 2022, did you vote for Leesa Manion or Jim Ferrell for King County Prosecutor?
[00:02:54] Pete Hanning: I voted for Leesa Manion.
[00:02:56] Crystal Fincher: And in 2022, did you vote for Patty Murray or Tiffany Smiley for US Senate?
[00:03:03] Pete Hanning: My smile does not mean that - who I voted for. I voted for Patty Murray.
[00:03:07] Crystal Fincher: Do you rent or own your residence?
[00:03:10] Pete Hanning: I have owned the home we live in since 2003.
[00:03:14] Crystal Fincher: Are you a landlord?
[00:03:17] Pete Hanning: Yes, my family - my mom lives in and rents property along Westlake - commercial property.
[00:03:25] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to require landlords to report metrics, including how much rent they're charging, to help better plan housing and development needs in the district?
[00:03:35] Pete Hanning: Maybe.
[00:03:36] Crystal Fincher: Are there instances where you support sweeps of homeless encampments?
[00:03:40] Pete Hanning: Yes.
[00:03:41] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to provide additional funding for Seattle's Social Housing Public Development Authority?
[00:03:47] Pete Hanning: Maybe.
[00:03:48] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with King County Executive Constantine's statement that the King County Jail should be closed?
[00:03:54] Pete Hanning: No.
[00:03:55] Crystal Fincher: Should parking enforcement be housed within SPD?
[00:03:59] Pete Hanning: Yes.
[00:04:00] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to allow police in schools?
[00:04:03] Pete Hanning: Yes.
[00:04:04] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget for civilian-led mental health crisis response?
[00:04:10] Pete Hanning: Yes, I like the co-responder program - I believe that we would need, in a lot of instances, law enforcement in second position.
[00:04:22] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget to increase the pay of human service workers?
[00:04:27] Pete Hanning: Yes.
[00:04:28] Crystal Fincher: Do you support removing funds in the City budget for forced encampment removals and instead allocating funds towards a Housing First approach?
[00:04:36] Pete Hanning: No.
[00:04:37] Crystal Fincher: Do you support abrogating or removing the funds from unfilled SPD positions and putting them towards meaningful public safety measures?
[00:04:46] Pete Hanning: Perhaps.
[00:04:47] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocating money in the City budget for supervised consumption sites?
[00:04:54] Pete Hanning: Perhaps.
[00:04:56] Crystal Fincher: Do you support increasing funding in the City budget for violence intervention programs?
[00:05:01] Pete Hanning: Yes.
[00:05:02] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG, or Seattle Police Officers Guild, contract that doesn't give the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General subpoena power?
[00:05:14] Pete Hanning: I'd have to see exactly what the contract looks like, but I am concerned that we are trying to fight a no-sums game where we need to have some compromise. And I think we have a priority to get that contract signed soon.
[00:05:29] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian?
[00:05:39] Pete Hanning: Perhaps.
[00:05:40] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move police funding to public safety alternatives?
[00:05:52] Pete Hanning: Perhaps.
[00:05:53] Crystal Fincher: Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers?
[00:06:00] Pete Hanning: In certain situations, yes.
[00:06:01] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans and non-binary students are allowed to play on the sports teams that fit with their gender identities?
[00:06:11] Pete Hanning: I'm running for city council, not school board.
[00:06:14] Crystal Fincher: But in your capacity as a city councilmember, would - if a vote came to it - vote to support?
[00:06:21] Pete Hanning: I would think so, but I would have to read it - exactly how it is written.
[00:06:27] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Will you vote to ensure that trans people can use bathrooms or public facilities that match their gender?
[00:06:32] Pete Hanning: 100%.
[00:06:33] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with the Seattle City Council's decision to implement the JumpStart Tax?
[00:06:39] Pete Hanning: No.
[00:06:40] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to reduce or divert the JumpStart Tax in any way?
[00:06:45] Pete Hanning: Perhaps.
[00:06:46] Crystal Fincher: Are you happy with Seattle's newly built waterfront?
[00:06:49] Pete Hanning: Yes.
[00:06:50] Crystal Fincher: Do you believe return to work mandates, like the one issued by Amazon, are necessary to boost Seattle's economy?
[00:06:58] Pete Hanning: I think they're a good step, and I don't think it's only for economic reasons why they should be implemented. I think there are societal reasons and cultural reasons why they're really important.
[00:07:10] Crystal Fincher: Have you taken transit in the past week?
[00:07:12] Pete Hanning: Yes.
[00:07:13] Crystal Fincher: Have you ridden a bike in the past week?
[00:07:15] Pete Hanning: Oh, yes.
[00:07:16] Crystal Fincher: Should Pike Place Market allow non-commercial car traffic?
[00:07:20] Pete Hanning: Yes.
[00:07:21] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines?
[00:07:30] Pete Hanning: It depends on what those measures are taken - to speed it up. I mean, District 6 is the only district currently that doesn't have a light rail station within the city, so we are woefully behind all the other districts. So I would definitely love to see it happen, but we don't - at what cost?
[00:07:52] Crystal Fincher: Well, District 1 is probably in the same boat as you are there also.
[00:07:57] Pete Hanning: Well, District 1 does - just to - because with the new district, they get all those SODO stations.
[00:08:02] Crystal Fincher: Oh, redistricted - they did, they did. You are correct.
[00:08:06] Pete Hanning: I know that. I'm a nerd about that kind of stuff.
[00:08:11] Crystal Fincher: A wonk on Hacks & Wonks. Should we accelerate the elimination of the ability to turn right on red lights to improve pedestrian safety?
[00:08:20] Pete Hanning: Yes.
[00:08:21] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever been a member of a union?
[00:08:23] Pete Hanning: No.
[00:08:24] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to increase funding and staffing for investigations into labor violations like wage theft and illegal union busting?
[00:08:32] Pete Hanning: Perhaps.
[00:08:33] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever walked a picket line?
[00:08:37] Pete Hanning: No, but I've also not crossed picket lines on purpose.
[00:08:41] Crystal Fincher: Well, that was the next question, if you've ever crossed a picket line.
[00:08:44] Pete Hanning: No.
[00:08:44] Crystal Fincher: So that is a no. Is your campaign staff unionized?
[00:08:50] Pete Hanning: Currently, I have no staff. I have some consultants and some groups that I'm working with, but - so the answer would be no.
[00:08:59] Crystal Fincher: If you did have staff and they wanted to unionize - or in any future endeavors you have - would you voluntarily recognize their effort?
[00:09:07] Pete Hanning: Oh, for sure. Everyone has the right to collectively bargain.
[00:09:11] Crystal Fincher: Well, that's the end of the lightning round. Hopefully pretty painless there.
[00:09:15] Pete Hanning: For sure.
[00:09:15] Crystal Fincher: Well, lots of people look to work you've done to get a feel for what you prioritize and how qualified you are to lead. Can you describe something you've accomplished or changed in your district and what impact it has had on the residents there?
[00:09:30] Pete Hanning: Well, I can share with you one of the things that I was instrumental in having formed was the Seattle Restaurant Alliance. Back when I was running The Red Door, we had a wayward chapter of the Washington State Hospitality Association's Seattle chapter - sparsely attended. And so myself and a few other restaurateurs decided to really take a look at ways we could create a more active and vibrant group that represented the hospitality sector. One of the things I was really clear on and fought for - and I'm glad to say that we have - is you do not need to be a paying member of the state association to vote and participate in the Seattle Restaurant Alliance. And so that really encouraged those smaller businesses, that might not have seen themselves in the state umbrella, really have a voice and have an opportunity. And out of that, when we were in the COVID times and we started looking at ways to help protect these small businesses, the Seattle Restaurant Alliance was the major organization that was able to help advocate for the hospitality sector in our community.
[00:10:53] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Now I wanna talk about the City's budget situation. The City of Seattle is projected to have a revenue shortfall of $224 million beginning in 2025, meaning that preparations and plans need to start now. Because the City is mandated by the state to pass a balanced budget, the options to address this deficit are either raise revenue, cut services, or some combination of that. Which one will be your approach to addressing this budget shortfall as a city councilmember?
[00:11:26] Pete Hanning: Most likely Option C, the combination of the two. With a real first - first and foremost, you have to make sure that the resources that you currently have and are using are being spent wisely, and that they - we're getting the amount of services from each dollar as much as we can. And then we have to look at, if we're not able to meet our obligations, then where funding will come from, extra funding will come from. But first and foremost, before we ask for extra money, we have to make sure that the money that we currently are bringing in is spent right - and it's in the right departments, and we're using it to the best of our abilities. And we also, as a municipality, I know we have some very wealthy people in our city, but we have a lot of people who are on fixed incomes or on the lower margins. And so the way our tax structure is in this state, it's very regressive. So I'm very concerned that, as much as we try to be targeted, we really don't have those tools. And I don't think those tools are best used at the municipal level. I really do feel like true fundamental change around our tax structure should happen at the state level.
[00:12:43] Crystal Fincher: I agree that we do need fundamental change at the state level, but if that doesn't happen and no guarantees that that happens, what would you advocate for at the city level?
[00:12:57] Pete Hanning: Well, I'm really concerned that we continue try to create these false walls around our city around tax structure, where most of the businesses that operate in our city also operate in other local jurisdictions, neighboring cities. And so we create this complexity of varying rates and varying taxes. We also incentivize businesses to leave Seattle in that way. And so I'm not sure that that would be my first approach - is to raise taxes. It would be a last measure.
[00:13:37] Crystal Fincher: So in that case, what would you prioritize cutting?
[00:13:42] Pete Hanning: I think we have to take a look at the amount of employees that we are currently staffed - in all the departments in our city. And that is a really difficult conversation to have - I recognize that. I do not say that cavalierly or with any malice. First and foremost, our City employees are our greatest resource and we should invest in them. And we should make sure that they are paid a very good wage in which they can live and thrive in this city. But there is also the reality of the amount of resources in which we can extract from our local citizens. And when I'm knocking on doors, I am hearing - a lot of people feel very concerned about A) the amount that they're paying, and B) that they don't see a real actual tangible return.
[00:14:38] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Well, I do wanna talk about public safety, particularly starting with alternative response. And while other jurisdictions around the country and in our own region have rolled out alternative response programs - and the Seattle City Council has funded alternative response - Seattle is stalled in the implementation, in what is a widely-supported idea by voters in the city. Where do you stand on non-police solutions to public safety issues? And what are your thoughts on civilian led versus co-response models?
[00:15:08] Pete Hanning: I prefer co-response models. I think it's really important that all the agencies are there at the same time - and so that they are getting the same information, so that people are not trying to say one thing to one group and another to another. And I understand that we do not want to have, nor do the police wanna be in first position on a lot of the responses that we get calls for in our city. But for the safety of everyone, having law enforcement in that second position is a good idea for most situations. I do outreach along the Leary corridor here with the Salvation Army and their street-level program - they don't go out without a King County Sheriff - and that's for good reason, it's for the safety of everyone. And so I feel really strongly that we have created this situation where we are saying that the police aren't part of the solution. They don't want more responsibility, they wanna be able to have clear understanding of what their role is in that, but they are part of the solution.
[00:16:24] Crystal Fincher: So for other jurisdictions that are similar, like Denver or Austin, who have implemented alternative response programs without a co-responding police officer, are you saying that you don't think that type of model would work here?
[00:16:41] Pete Hanning: It may work here, but I think that we would be better off going with the co-responder response. I think we should put our priorities there.
[00:16:51] Crystal Fincher: In the situation that SPD is in now, where they're saying that they're having challenges deploying the appropriate amount of police because they say they have a budget shortfall - or a staffing shortfall-
[00:17:02] Pete Hanning: It's a staffing shortfall, and which they do.
[00:17:04] Crystal Fincher: Correct. And so in that situation, do we still have the staff to deploy to all of that? Would you look at redeploying in any other way, or just maintaining the current status quo?
[00:17:15] Pete Hanning: Well, I think that gets back to your question earlier in the lightning round of - are there some roles in which sworn officers that we might see not participate in all the calls? And I do think that we need to have a hard look at what are the main priorities in which we want our police officers to be engaged in. So when I talk about doing outreach to our unhoused neighbors - the situation in our city - those folks need all of our help and all of our kindness. In most encampments, though, there is one or two tents or RVs in which there are people perpetrating crimes upon our unhoused neighbors - specifically in the sale of fentanyl, which is a poison. And we have to be really honest with ourselves. And we need to make sure that we have law enforcement there so that when we see that kind of sale of that poison within our communities, that we put a stop to it - because we have too many people dying on our streets because of it.
[00:18:24] Crystal Fincher: Now we will talk about housing and homelessness in just a little bit, but are you viewing homelessness as a public safety issue?
[00:18:31] Pete Hanning: Public safety plays in the homelessness crisis for sure. And the unhoused are, by far, our greatest victims.
[00:18:43] Crystal Fincher: I do wanna talk about victims, actually. And there's a lot of speaking being done - people say they're speaking on behalf of victims, a lot of victims claim they're being spoken over. But what victims are saying and what data show is that victims overwhelmingly want two things. One, they wanna make sure that what happened to them doesn't happen to them again or to anyone else. And they also want better support through and beyond what happened. What can we do to better support victims of crime, or people who have been harmed?
[00:19:18] Pete Hanning: We're in a community crisis. And by that, I mean, people are really struggling in finding healthy places in community. And especially those folks who are struggling with mental health or addiction - we have to do more to give them on-roads back into healthy community. And that starts with each one of our individual efforts. When I do outreach, I make sure that people know that I see them. That does not mean that they also don't recognize - and I let them know that I care about them, I see them, here are some resources - and I'm advocating for them to be moved from their current location because it is affecting that business that they are right out in front of. And it is not appropriate for them to be there. I'm honest. And I want people to really know that we have to have an honest conversation about what it means to be in a healthy community.
[00:20:26] Crystal Fincher: Well, I guess what I'm really trying to say - if they're, I think you were talking about some, you know, moving people or sweeping people away from where they're at if they're homeless, but I'm more focused on people who have been victims of crime and who have been harmed. The people who we talk about - if someone has had their car broken into, their business broken into, or has been assaulted, or stolen from - yes.
[00:20:49] Pete Hanning: Hear gunshots - yeah.
[00:20:50] Crystal Fincher: What can you do to better support people who have been through that?
[00:20:56] Pete Hanning: Time again, one of the things I'm hearing from the residents who I'm talking with while I'm on the campaign is they want some kind of police presence in the form of what is formerly referred to as beat cops, right - patrol officers in their community. Now, I know enough about policing, that beat cops - they do not reduce the amount of crime in our communities. They don't - we know the statistics, if we go off data. But like - policing is like every other job in America - there is both a tangible science to it and there is an art to it. The CPT program, which we did away with - the Community Police Team Officers - which is kind of a beat cop, if you will. It's officers who are embedded in a community who aren't in a patrol car, who are able to respond the day-after to events, is what we do find is - those communities, their sense of safety increases greatly by that presence of those kind of programs, right? And so, yes, it doesn't show up in the data, but it does show up in our sense of safety. And so, I really think - and that's why earlier when you asked about police officers in our schools - we have to build back a relationship where children don't feel afraid to have police officers in their communities, where they can build that dialogue. Now, how that's done and to make sure that those police officers are reflective of their community and understanding the community that they're serving - for sure, we need to always be on there. But what I'm concerned is, is we are creating these false barriers that actually widen that distance, sever our ability to be in community, to accept all of us in this bigger thing - to really widen the table, to make room at the table, does not mean to remove the law enforcement officers. It just means making more space for others also at that space. So, that's where I think people are really wanting - they're wanting more responsiveness.
[00:23:20] Crystal Fincher: Well, and I - just following on to that, you were talking about wanting community police officers and to bring back that program. Is it wise to bring that back without more accountability work done? Or is there a role for accountability, additional measures? Do you plan to pursue any additional accountability or reconciliation measures on behalf of the police?
[00:23:42] Pete Hanning: For sure. But in order to have that conversation, we have to rebuild the relationship with the law enforcement agencies and the police department so that they know that they are seen, that they're valued. And so that it starts with trust. And then you have those difficult conversations. And without that, you really just get everyone crouched, like we currently are, in these really polarized positions. And it's not giving - the community as a whole is frustrated because they're not getting any of the benefits.
[00:24:22] Crystal Fincher: Well, based on some of the recent votes, it looks like the community is frustrated at some of the slow pace of some of the accountability measures that have been promised, but haven't come to fruition. Are there any specific policies that you plan to advocate for in the area of accountability?
[00:24:38] Pete Hanning: What votes are you speaking towards?
[00:24:40] Crystal Fincher: Like the King County public safety vote, where they reorganized the Sheriff's department, implemented public safety reforms on a county-wide vote - that passed, obviously passed county-wide, but certainly in the City of Seattle. Looking at reforms that passed in that, do you have any specific policies that you would advocate for on the city level when it comes to accountability and good governance for the police department?
[00:25:09] Pete Hanning: So years ago, I did public testimony at the city council around then that turn's contract, which is now expired. I believe our police officers should be tested for drugs if there is a use of force, because I am fully aware that drug use in society as a whole is a certain percentage. And it would be naive for us to think that our law enforcement aren't also struggling with some of those issues. And we should know when our officers are struggling with signs of addiction and illegal use of drugs.
[00:25:52] Crystal Fincher: Now I do wanna talk about homelessness, particularly one thing called out by experts nationally - by people who have been involved in the local response, both in the city and the county level - is that frontline worker wages do not cover the cost of living in Seattle. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for Seattle? And how can that be made more likely with how the City bids for and contracts for services?
[00:26:22] Pete Hanning: Yes, everyone deserves a living wage. When we have so many different agencies and nonprofits all dealing in the same space, there is some inherent duplication of certain positions and inefficiencies that I think we have to be honest about. And just because a nonprofit has been doing yeoman's work for decades in our community does not mean that it's necessarily the right nonprofit, moving forward, to be spearheading that work. And so I think we do need to make sure that we are also maximizing and being efficient with how we spend our resources so that we get the best outcome possible. And so those employees actually are getting as much resources of it as they can.
[00:27:15] Crystal Fincher: I also wanna talk about climate change. On almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals, while we're experiencing devastating impacts ranging from extreme heat and cold, wildfires with smoke, floods, and so on - we are experiencing impacts now. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet those 2030 goals?
[00:27:40] Pete Hanning: Climate change - boy, it's a loaded question. My wife has a master's in environmental science - used to do environmental work for decades - so she is the expert in our household for sure. It starts with our own lifestyle choices that we make each and every day. And early on in my adult life, I became clear on a couple of things that I knew that I did and didn't wanna do. I chose not to have any children - first and foremost, a very big reduction in use of resources in our community. My wife and I have one car, and I bike to most of the places that I go to or use transit. We live next to a community garden and then we have 16 raised beds in our own yard and grow hundreds of pounds of produce every year and put it down. I choose and try to only eat animal protein one meal a day because I know both for my own internal personal life, it's better, but also for the environment as a whole. So those are all personal things that we can do. And then we can share that and encourage others to do it.
But at the city level, we have to continue to look at ways to encourage people to carpool, to use transit, to walk, to bike. Then we also have to make sure that our freight is done at the most efficient way possible, but also to protect and to incentivize the movement of goods, just like we do transit. Because those - not only is it important to move those goods about and those services about, but those are jobs - and we forget about that. I'm a big proponent of our freight community, because it really does represent the backbone of what Seattle is.
[00:29:42] Crystal Fincher: Well, one area that is preventing people from biking and walking is the issue of safety. We're basically having a crisis with the amount of pedestrian and bike deaths in the city of Seattle reaching an all-time high. How would you improve pedestrian and bicycle safety?
[00:30:02] Pete Hanning: I would love to see every community have pedestrian boulevards or areas in which they were activated - if not 24/7, on major times - so that we were putting different kinds of activities on our streetways and not just car activity. One way, though, is we also have to do a better piece about educating people. So in the Fremont community, in which I live and work, we're a very big tech corridor. And the amount of people that I see glued to their personal device, not looking up - there is an awareness that has to happen. There's also, there's some stuff that we really just at the city level, we're not gonna be able to affect, but the scale and size of some of the personal vehicles that are being purchased these days and built is really alarming. And so sight lines and just certain safety features just are not put first and foremost. You know, I also - I'm very fortunate - my community has a lot of great bike access to it, and so, and bus routes, but we need to continue to incentivize that behavior.
[00:31:24] Crystal Fincher: Now there are definitely mixed opinions on whether we're appropriately incentivizing and protecting transit. But one thing that's absolutely happening is that transit reliability is falling through the floor right now, with - staffing shortages are being cited and various other things. Now, granted Sound Transit is a regional entity, King County Metro is a county entity, but the City does provide for transit service and supplementing that. In your role as a city councilmember, what can you do to help stabilize transit reliability?
[00:32:02] Pete Hanning: We need to make sure that riding the bus, and waiting for the bus, and getting off the bus feel safe - first and foremost. It's the number one thing I hear why people aren't going back to the buses. Reliability might be second, but safety is always the first thing I hear. And so really it is making sure that folks can feel safe - to and from, and on our transit system.
[00:32:30] Crystal Fincher: How can you make them feel safer?
[00:32:32] Pete Hanning: Well, we can pass - we can get in line with the state's law around public use. And we can be a lot more clear on what is expected and accepted in our communities around consumption and the sale of drugs.
[00:32:49] Crystal Fincher: Now it is illegal to use drugs in public spaces in Seattle, so in what way-
[00:32:56] Pete Hanning: But it's - it's illegal in name and, you know, I mean - most people won't see this, but you and I are on video and you smiled when you said that, recognizing there's a wink and a nudge there, there's a fallacy to it, right? We can go to 12th and Jackson, you can go down along the Leary corridor, you can be along Third Avenue that's being called Fentanyl Way now. I mean, like - I am not trying to mischaracterize other drugs - fentanyl is a poison though. What it is doing to our community is truly a poison that we need to meet head on and directly because all these other issues aren't gonna be solved unless we really do better with that.
[00:33:48] Crystal Fincher: And I should just state for the record, my smile or grin was not in reference to that drug there, but so am I hearing - when you say we need to get in line with that, what does that mean or look like? Does it mean that you think that people need to be arrested and that jail is the appropriate response?
[00:34:05] Pete Hanning: Oh my god - we need to increase all of the tools in our toolbox and jail should be, and we hope, the last response. But there are those in our community who do need some time to calm themselves and to settle out and to sober up. I don't know if you've done any outreach to these folks who are in the thralls of this poison, but it is really hard to reach them. It is unlike any other drug. And I sold alcohol for over 30 years - I have a long experience of talking to people who are inebriated in one capacity or another, and this is different. And we see it - we see it on our buses, we see it in our bus stops, we see it in our streets, we see it in the front of our businesses, we see the businesses being shoplifted from - I mean, I wish it weren't the case, but it is.
[00:35:09] Crystal Fincher: I have done a lot of outreach and worked on this particular issue quite a bit. One thing that data overwhelmingly shows, but also that the majority of people who have been referred to, sought out, forced into incarceration or treatment say is that jail is more destabilizing than stabilizing, and that having better resources - or any available resources in some situations - for substance use disorder treatment is the most appropriate intervention. Do you agree with that, or do you think jail is effective?
[00:35:42] Pete Hanning: Oh, I totally agree with that - I would love if we had enough resource. Jail is a poor substitute for those other options. Sometimes it's the only option we have, unfortunately, right now. And the community at-large also is a victim in this, and we have a responsibility to everyone in this.
[00:36:09] Crystal Fincher: How do you address the revolving door issue there? Because even if you were to throw the book at them for what the law says, they're back on the street, not that long after. How would you address that?
[00:36:22] Pete Hanning: Well, I mean, the way I address all these situations is with compassion and honesty. And, you know, look - today is my 26th month of being sober, personally. And, you know, my journey is my own personal journey to it, but oh my gosh, am I so thankful of my sobriety - because the way I recreationally used for 30-plus years, there's no doubt in my mind that fentanyl would have made it into some substance in which I would have used, right? And that's really scary. And I have the utmost compassion and understanding that it takes numerous attempts for lots of us. It's like the tide - it rolls up the beach, it rolls back. Hopefully the tide - the next time it rolls a little farther up the beach, and at a certain point, you get to that beachhead and you've passed that tide line. And now you're back on stable land, right? And we have to, and there are many ways in which people find their road back. Your path is not my path. I do not wanna limit the amount of opportunities, nor say that anyone isn't able to really make change in their life for the better - for sure they are. But there are also people, Crystal, who have said they didn't get sober until they went to jail. And there is lots of family members who ache for their loved ones who are on the streets in crisis, just to even get into jail so that they know that they're at least somewhat safe - 'cause they're so fearful for their family members. And that's real. And that's not a great solution - maybe it's not a eloquent answer, but it's an honest one.
[00:38:24] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. It certainly is something that we are going to have to do a better job contending with overall. I do wanna talk about our economy, and we have a very vibrant local business community. We do have some of the largest corporations in the world headquartered here and nearby, but we have a vibrant small business community, including in your district. What are the top issues facing small businesses here in your district, and what can you do to better support them?
[00:38:56] Pete Hanning: I might sound like a broken record, right? I mean, it's public safety. It's no different than what the residents I'm hearing from - you know, in my day job as executive director of the Fremont Chamber, or when I ran The Red Door, you know - if my team didn't feel safe coming to work, if my customers didn't feel safe walking into our door front, if my business was not protected so that the goods and services, so that I could provide them to my guests, like I wasn't able to be successful. And so first and foremost, that is what we have to provide to our small business and our local business economy and community. The other thing, and you and I both brought it up - it plays out in every sector is employment, right? Workforce development, encouraging those who are no longer in the workforce to get back in the workforce. And, you know, we see - you know, when I see folks on the street, on Leary Way, I also would - not only would I love for that human to find some happiness and some relief and be able to join a healthy community again, I'd love to have them back in our economy 'cause we need everyone to be carrying the water right now - whether it's healthcare workers, first responders, maritime community, bus drivers, as you brought up, at Metro, service industry, still even tech - tech is hiring still. It's just certain segments have - you know, they downsize, but not to a great extent. We need to help our businesses find good employees.
[00:40:47] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Now I wanna talk about a related issue really - and part of finding good employees, part of employees being available to work - is childcare. We can't have a conversation about employment or inflation without talking about childcare. It's the number two cost for a lot of families, behind their mortgage. The number one for some families who have multiple children. And we just received reporting - recently received reporting - that childcare is now more expensive than college on an annual basis. What can you do in your role as a city councilmember to bring relief to residents in your district, dealing with the high cost and low availability of childcare?
[00:41:31] Pete Hanning: Yeah. You know, I know former Councilmember Burgess did all that great work around the preschool program - so making sure that's fully funded and that we have good access for it. And I'm glad you call it childcare because I always bristle at the term daycare - because a lot of childcare happens in the evenings and other time periods. I come from nightlife and hospitality. And although what kids should be doing in the evenings is usually, you know, winding down, doing homework, playing, and then going to bed - they still need appropriate and safe care while they're doing that, if their parents are working shifts in the different time slots. And so we do need to really take a look at that segment as a whole. Both it needs more people to join it - we need to make sure that it's a livable wage. And we need to shine a light of what a great career it is as well, right - and you are doing something so important for your community - taking care of our youngest and our oldest should be one of the most respected positions in our community.
[00:42:46] Crystal Fincher: To your point, it is also one of the most underpaid. It's minimum wage in a lot of situations. What can be done to help on the workforce side and on just the wage side of that?
[00:42:58] Pete Hanning: You know, I'm not sure that the City itself is the proper place to be the main arbiter of that. But I wanna make sure - you know, we do have our minimum wage standard for all jobs in our city. But above and beyond that, I wouldn't see that the City is - that that's their role.
[00:43:22] Crystal Fincher: Well, and as we move this conversation to a close today, there's a number of people who are trying to make the decision between you and your opponent. What do you say to people when they're saying that they aren't sure who they're gonna vote for?
[00:43:38] Pete Hanning: You know, well, I first encourage them to continue to read up and get the facts. That participation is the most important piece of it, right - if everyone is well-informed and the outcome is what the outcome is, that's a pretty good outcome, right, for our community. And so engagement is the first and most important piece. But I feel like I'm at a place - I know I'm in a place in my life - this is not a career position for me. You know, I'm in my mid-50s. I had a successful career in another industry. I really want to give back to my community and I have some strengths and some skills. I've been on a lot of boards. I've been in counsel, given counsel, taken counsel. I don't personalize things very much. I want to find really pragmatic solutions that we can all compromise on, because I do feel that that is the best way forward and we have some really difficult problems ahead of us - so I bring that experience. And I also bring this understanding of running a business for over 20 years and the importance to that - why those small businesses are important, and what you have to do to make sure that you stay within a budget, and that you can't be all things to all people. You really can't. That is an unfair thing to say. And so I, at least, don't - as today's interview is probably a good indication - I don't shy away from saying what I believe.
[00:45:25] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much for taking the time today to share who you are, what you do believe, and what your plans are should you be elected to the city council. Thank you so much, Pete Hanning.
[00:45:36] Pete Hanning: Crystal, it was a pleasure - thank you very much for having me today.
[00:45:39] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Tuesday topical show, Crystal chats with ChrisTiana ObeySumner about their campaign for Seattle City Council District 5. Listen and learn more about ChrisTiana and their thoughts on:
- [01:06] - Why they are running
- [04:49] - Lightning round!
- [12:20] - What is an accomplishment of theirs that impacts District 5
- [16:09] - City budget shortfall: Raise revenue or cut services?
- [21:48] - Public Safety: Alternative response
- [26:58] - Victim support
- [35:53] - Housing and homelessness: Frontline worker wages
- [39:25] - Climate change
- [43:28] - Transit reliability
- [46:58] - Small business support
- [52:48] - Childcare: Affordability and accessibility
- [56:33] - Difference between them and opponent
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find ChrisTiana ObeySumner at @votechristiana.
ChrisTiana ObeySumner
ChrisTiana ObeySumner is a Black, queer, non-binary, and multiply disabled person, community organizer and activist. They are CEO and principal consultant of Epiphanies of Equity LLC -- A social equity consulting firm that particularly specializes in social change, intersectionality, antiracism, and disability justice. For two decades, they’ve dedicated their life and career to amplifying the importance of social equity – defined as the lifelong work of deconstructing inequitable sociological impacts and products such as policies, institutions, cultures, biases, and constructs; and facilitating strategic and embodied pathways towards the construction of equitable processes, accountability structures, and outcomes.
Resources
Campaign Website - ChrisTiana ObeySumner
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I am excited to be welcoming to the program candidate for Seattle City Council District 5, ChrisTiana ObeySumner. Welcome!
[00:01:02] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Thank you so much for having me - I'm so excited.
[00:01:04] Crystal Fincher: Well, I'm excited to have you. And just starting off, I'm wondering what made you decide to run?
[00:01:11] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I get asked this question a lot - you know, it's, the best way I can put it is this. I have been engaged in some sort of civic, politics, social equity since I was a small child. My grandmom was a Black Panther, my family was always very opened and talked a lot about what it meant to be - you know, if not you, who, if not now, when - sort of things. And especially growing up in a family who was chronically unhoused or homeless - a lot of folks who were disabled, a lot of folks who under-resourced - most of my family is in Camden, New Jersey, in Philadelphia area. And so, and for me being autistic as an 80s child, so the ADA did not really help as much. There was always sort of a need and a early exposure to what it meant to advocate, to speak up for yourself, to speak up for others, to really call out inequity when you see it, to get into good trouble. And that has really been the through line of my life and my life's work - I have done that as a youth leader, I've done that for Mad Pride - especially in Louisville, Kentucky. I've done that in terms of homeless and housing unstable youth, especially in colleges - I came here to Seattle in 2010 to go to Seattle University, where I became Commuter Student rep and Non-Traditional Student representative for those reasons. I've worked in direct social services at DESC, Compass Housing Alliance. I did my AmeriCorps at Full Life Care for Harborview. My first work-study job here was in the Office of City Clerk where I learned how to read policy. I started my business, Epiphanies of Equity, in 2018, right after the running for the transparency seat in 2017, where I came second to Kirsten Harris-Talley. And since then has worked with over 250 businesses, governments and organizations across the country - obviously concentrated here - where we have specifically been working for social equity, for policy advocacy, for disability justice.
Essentially when humans are human-ing with other humans, we know that certain human things happen - how can we work towards a society where humans are working towards equity? And through all of this work - additional to the co-chair Disability Commission and Renters' Commission - I'm putting all of this resume out here to say, I have approached a lot of the work, especially since being here in Seattle, from a lot of different angles. And especially in the last few years, has really heightened where I've worked with a lot of folks in the city and beyond - this is the next natural step towards that work. And so when the incumbent or the previous councilmember, Councilmember Debora Juarez, announced that she was not going to run, I must've gotten - between Gluttonous Eating Holiday and the 1st of the year - got somewhere between a dozen and a half calls from folks who were just like - So, you heard, right? Open seat, you gonna run? And I really thought about it for a while 'cause I'm a wonk - of the Hacks & Wonks, I'm the wonk part of that - and I just really wanted to go to the policy piece and I decided, you know what, let's give it a shot. So here I am.
[00:04:47] Crystal Fincher: And here you are. Well, at this point, we're gonna switch up this interview a little bit and add an additional element that we haven't added before - a lightning round. Just quick answer, yes or no, or quick answer questions to level set a little bit. And then we'll get back to our regularly scheduled full-length answers where we can wonk out about everything. So starting off - This year, did you vote yes on the King County Crisis Care Centers levy?
[00:05:17] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes.
[00:05:18] Crystal Fincher: This year, did you vote yes on the Veterans, Seniors and Human Services levy?
[00:05:22] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes.
[00:05:23] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote in favor of Seattle's Social Housing Initiative 135?
[00:05:28] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. And Epiphanies of Equity was one of the folks who also tried to endorse it, as well as the JumpStart Tax.
[00:05:37] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. In 2021, did you vote for Bruce Harrell or Lorena González for Mayor?
[00:05:44] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Lorena González.
[00:05:45] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Nicole Thomas Kennedy or Ann Davison for Seattle City Attorney?
[00:05:51] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: NTK.
[00:05:53] Crystal Fincher: In 2022, did you vote for Leesa Manion or Jim Ferrell for King County Prosecutor?
[00:06:03] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I don't remember. I don't recall.
[00:06:14] Crystal Fincher: Okay.
[00:06:14] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Sorry.
[00:06:15] Crystal Fincher: Did you, in 2022 - no, that's totally fine. In 2022, did you vote for Patty Murray or Tiffany Smiley for US Senate?
[00:06:23] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Patty Murray.
[00:06:25] Crystal Fincher: Do you rent or own your residence?
[00:06:27] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I rent.
[00:06:29] Crystal Fincher: Are you a landlord?
[00:06:30] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: No.
[00:06:32] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to require landlords to report metrics, including how much rent they're charging, to help better plan housing and development needs in the district?
[00:06:41] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes, it's actually part of my platform.
[00:06:44] Crystal Fincher: Are there any instances where you would support sweeps of homeless encampments?
[00:06:49] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: No - not at all, in any form.
[00:06:52] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to provide additional funding for Seattle's Social Housing Public Development Authority?
[00:06:57] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes.
[00:06:58] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with King County Executive Constantine's statement that the King County Jail should be closed?
[00:07:05] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I do believe, yes - I'm abolitionist, so I think all the jails should be closed.
[00:07:09] Crystal Fincher: Should parking enforcement be housed within SPD?
[00:07:14] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: No.
[00:07:15] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to allow police in schools?
[00:07:18] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: No.
[00:07:19] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget for a civilian-led mental health crisis response?
[00:07:26] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes, if it's civilian-led and it's not further padding SPD budget.
[00:07:31] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget to increase the pay of human service workers?
[00:07:36] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Absolutely.
[00:07:37] Crystal Fincher: Do you support removing funds in the City budget for forced encampment removals and instead allocating funds towards a Housing First approach?
[00:07:46] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes.
[00:07:47] Crystal Fincher: Do you support abrogating or removing the funds from unfilled SPD positions and putting them toward meaningful public safety measures?
[00:07:57] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes, if they're unfilled.
[00:07:59] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocating money in the City budget for supervised consumption sites?
[00:08:04] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes.
[00:08:05] Crystal Fincher: Do you support increasing funding in the City budget for violence intervention programs?
[00:08:11] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. As a violence intervention program - I was, I think in my head I was getting, I have them mixed up the two different things - which, when you're talking about them, which one are you talking-
[00:08:24] Crystal Fincher: Like community-led violence or organizational-led violence intervention programs.
[00:08:28] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Oh! Yes, yes, yes.
[00:08:30] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha.
[00:08:31] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes.
[00:08:31] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract, a Seattle Police Officers Guild contract, that doesn't give the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General subpoena power?
[00:08:46] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes.
[00:08:46] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian, or police versus non-police?
[00:09:04] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Can you ask the question one more time?
[00:09:05] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian? Should there be a cap on civilians?
[00:09:19] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: No.
[00:09:21] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose - yes. These are confusingly led - we're not - these are not intended to be gotcha questions, so I want to totally make sure you understand. And that one's a little kludgy.
[00:09:34] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: There should not be a limit on civilians. So yes, I would oppose something that would have a limit. Yes, okay.
[00:09:39] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move funding to police safety alternatives?
[00:09:48] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes.
[00:09:49] Crystal Fincher: Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers?
[00:09:56] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Support eliminating in-uniform work by off-duty?
[00:09:59] Crystal Fincher: In-uniform off-duty work, like if they were to work in a security capacity elsewhere. Would you support eliminating them doing that in-uniform?
[00:10:08] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes.
[00:10:09] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans and non-binary students are allowed to play on the sports teams that fit with their gender identities?
[00:10:17] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes.
[00:10:17] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans people can use bathrooms and public facilities that match their gender?
[00:10:23] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes.
[00:10:24] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with the Seattle City Council's decision to implement the JumpStart Tax?
[00:10:29] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes.
[00:10:30] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to reduce or divert the JumpStart Tax in any way?
[00:10:35] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: No.
[00:10:36] Crystal Fincher: Are you happy with Seattle's newly built waterfront?
[00:10:41] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: It's all right.
[00:10:42] Crystal Fincher: Do you believe return to work mandates, like the one issued by Amazon, are necessary to boost Seattle's economy?
[00:10:49] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Absolutely not.
[00:10:50] Crystal Fincher: Have you taken transit in the past week?
[00:10:53] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes.
[00:10:54] Crystal Fincher: Have you ridden a bike in the past week?
[00:10:58] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I have a disability that doesn't allow me to ride a two-wheeled bike, but I do have a tricycle that I ride sometimes.
[00:11:03] Crystal Fincher: Should Pike Place Market allow non-commercial car traffic?
[00:11:09] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: No.
[00:11:10] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines?
[00:11:17] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes.
[00:11:18] Crystal Fincher: Should we accelerate the elimination of the ability to turn right on red lights to improve pedestrian safety?
[00:11:26] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yeah.
[00:11:27] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever been a member of a union?
[00:11:29] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes, SEIU 1199 Northwest.
[00:11:31] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to increase funding and staffing for investigations into labor violations like wage theft and illegal union busting?
[00:11:40] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes.
[00:11:41] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever walked on a picket line?
[00:11:43] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I have.
[00:11:44] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever crossed a picket line?
[00:11:46] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Absolutely not.
[00:11:48] Crystal Fincher: Unlike Drew Barrymore, evidently. Is your campaign unionized? Is your campaign staff unionized?
[00:11:56] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I have pushed for that because I use a organization that is in the process of unionizing.
[00:12:04] Crystal Fincher: Okay, and so assuming they're unionizing, will you voluntarily recognize their efforts?
[00:12:10] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes, yeah, yes. And my business is a co-op as well.
[00:12:16] Crystal Fincher: Awesome. Well, that concludes the lightning round - hopefully pretty painless. Now, back to regular questions. So lots of people look to work that you've done to get a feel for what you prioritize and how qualified you are to lead. Can you describe something you've accomplished or changed in your district, and what impact that has had on your district's residents?
[00:12:40] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yeah, so I've lived in District 5 the entire 13 years that I've been here. One of the things that people don't understand about District 5 is it's a lot more diverse than folks believe it is. I think the people who are the loudest seem to be seen as the demographic here - as primarily white, wealthy, middle-class, upper-class, homeowner types, right? But there's a lot of folks here who are people of the global majority, people who are disabled, people who are renters, people who are students. And one of the things that was really great to be able to advocate for was when I was co-chair of the Renters' Commission - at the time with Jessica Westgren, who was my co-chair - the Renters' Commission really advocated and wrote a letter of advocacy to City Council and to other pertinent entities, put out a press release in the news about some different rent stabilization and renter protection pieces that we'd like to see. What was able to come out of that was Councilmember Sawant's office passed the six-month advance notice for any rent increases, which was really significant for me. When I moved here in 2010 as a student, one of our first apartments that me and my mom lived in did have a pretty significant rent increase. I remember it was around the holidays and we only had maybe 30 or 60 days to get out or pay. My mom was on SSDI, I was on SSDI going to school - we did not have that. We were lucky to find another place to live, which eventually did end up getting sold. But there had been several times, either living with my mom or after I got married living with my partner, where if we didn't have that six-month advance notice, that we wouldn't also have had the opportunity to either save money if we could, get assistance if we could. I don't think people understand how quickly and how swiftly being housing unstable or becoming unhoused can really be. It really just takes being in a situation where you are responsible for an extra $200 a month - which means food, which means co-pay, which means transportation. In these cases, I don't know if you call the universe, luck, the ancestors, Buddha, whatever you call it - that was able to help us to find another opportunity for housing, but especially working in direct social services, I knew firsthand that that's not the case all the time. And so, especially as there's increased renters in the city, I think that's really helpful for that. There's other things that come to mind, but I feel like that's one that folks have heard me talk a lot about.
[00:16:07] Crystal Fincher: And that is helpful. I wanna talk about the City budget. The City of Seattle is projected to have a revenue shortfall of $224 million, beginning in 2025. Because the City is mandated by the state to pass a balanced budget, the options to address this coming deficit are either to raise revenue, or cut services, or some combination of both. How will you approach the issue of how the City collects and spends money on behalf of its residents?
[00:16:35] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: One of the things people hear me say a lot on this campaign trail, which I think I can get into a little bit with this question, is - I say a lot, either getting to the taproot of the issue or finding upstream solutions for effective collective and downstream results, which sounds - I understand it sounds very schmaltzy but let me explain what I mean with this question. There's this both-and situation that's happening with the budget that is really a interconnected effect to some upstream issues. And so there are certain areas of the way that the City gets revenue that are longer-term solutions that we really need to address. For example, we have the most regressive tax structure in the state. Washington State has the most regressive tax structure in the country. When we talk about some of the suggestions from the task force that just put out - the opportunities for progressive revenue task force - there are really promising things in there, like say having an income tax - which I know in Seattle, I'm learning, is a dirty word. This is the seventh state I've lived in, this is the first state I've lived in that did not have an income tax. Now I will say living in Louisville, Kentucky, it went a little bit too far, to be honest - I mean, they had a state tax, a city tax, a borough tax, it felt like a tax tax, they had all kinds of taxes - I'm not saying that. But we don't have an income tax at all in the most regressive tax structure in the country that also has one of the widest income disparities - the top 20% of income earners in the city makes 22 times more than the bottom 20% of income earners - there's a difference between $400,000 and about $18,000. So if we have a state constitutional law that says we can only have equality-based taxes and not equity-based taxes, or flat tax, that's not really gonna help have a progressive tax structure now, is it? So there's long-term pieces that folks have asked me before - Well, what, are you just gonna go off to the state and try to advocate to change the constitution? Yes, I will, if it's causing these issues.
Now, in the short-term - we can increase the JumpStart Tax to bring in more funding. We can look at, especially parts of the budget that is going towards criminalization and punishment. And I think to explain a little bit about when I talk about reallocation of funds, community and SPD have both said that there are certain things that they're doing that they feel is outside of their purview and what they actually feel is necessary for them to do. We're in agreement there. And a lot of those sort of lightning questions you had around domestic violence, around violence intervention, around social services, even around parking or events - District 5 has a 7-minute response time in SPD. And a lot of it is because they are going all over the place. I listen to the police scanner - I think it's something I got into after the 2020 protest comms, things I used to do - and there's so many, I would say like one in every four calls, that seemed like it was either like someone's in the elevator or someone's screaming down the street, something like that. If we were to take those services that the community feels like SPD is out of their purview, SPD feels like it's out of SPD's purview - and we reallocate those services to community-based services, not necessarily that they would also have SPD come along. First of all, that'd be against the point in a lot of ways. But we have them go to alternative community services - true alternative community services, preferably nonprofits and organizations that are already doing this work on the ground. You see the average cost that it took for SPD to do those services that we would be reallocating, and we reallocate that part of the budget to those new services, especially if there are upstream pieces that could help - like housing. It would be in our best interest - whether it's for our community, for the folks who are impacted, or for taxpayers - to have money that's going towards, say, sweeps, go towards permanent housing.
And so I would really, if elected, love to continue to work on how do we implement those seven or nine suggestions from the Progressive Revenue Task Force, and also continue to look at innovative solutions towards balancing this budget in ways that we can take the burden off of just increasing taxes - on the real estate taxes - in a way that's regressive. I think that we want to do, say, like a capital gains tax - I definitely think we need to do that. We want to do vacancy tax, we want to do land value or land banking taxes - I think that's important. I also feel, I feel really strongly - again, I know this is state - but I feel really strongly that as a city councilperson, it's my - any city councilperson's responsibility to advocate for issues that are impacting their community. And having flat rate taxation and regressive taxation is having a devastating impact on the community.
[00:21:48] Crystal Fincher: I also want to talk about public safety and particularly alternative response, because we do - as you said before - need a more comprehensive approach to public safety, and that goes beyond policing. While the council and mayor have definitely taken action to increase the police budget, give retention bonuses, and other incentives to retain and hire more police, we're lagging behind other jurisdictions around the country - and even in our own region and county - with alternative response programs to better support those having behavioral health crises and other issues. Seattle has stalled in implementing what is a very widely-supported idea. So where do you stand on non-police solutions to public safety issues? And what are your thoughts on civilian-led versus co-response models?
[00:22:40] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Major part of my platform - I guess now, because folks ask about it a lot - is that I firmly, firmly believe that we need to transition from hyper-relying on the police and having alternative solutions that is 100% civilian-led. I mean, let's look at it this way, like with the example I gave, right? If SPD is saying they're working out of their purview, it's impacting their response times. It's impacting how much their workforce burden is. It is forcing them to redeploy folks out of places like investigations, causing these huge backlogs in the lab, to street patrol. Why then would we require them to be a co-lead with the alternative solutions? We are trying to remove that hyper-reliance and burden off of them completely - like if it's out of their purview, it's out of their purview, and that's all that on that. Now, like I said, a lot of my family lives in Camden, New Jersey, and they had a huge reduction in their crime right before 2020 George Floyd racial reckoning by completely overhauling to community interventions and alternatives. They have some situations where there is a co-lead model, but those are for situations where there's active threats of harm with weapons involved, right? But if it's more so things, like I said - like intimate partner violence, domestic violence, someone needs social services, mental health services - things that wouldn't require police to be there, which is gonna be very few things. It has led to such a significant change in a place where it used to be considered one of the more dangerous cities in the country.
So I think what's really important here is I think when folks hear me talk about this, their first thought is like - Ah, this is a Defund the Police, BLM person. I think that that has definitely been something, looking the way that I do and sort of wanting to talk to what's really gonna get to the taproot of the issue, has been part of what folks have considered in terms of my viability, or like how am I going to be when I'm in office - one of those things, right? But the reason why I went through that whole resume in the beginning was not to toot my own horn, so to speak, it was because it shows that I have successfully and continue to successfully sit in spaces where folks are in conflict, folks are scared, folks are confused, folks do not have a lower risk tolerance that is needed for true transformative social change. And I am able to support and move along progress towards goals, especially goals at the organizational level and even the policy and governmental level. It's not as well known because I'm sort of - I am working with the folks who then go off and do the press conference, as opposed to one doing myself, right? But that is what I bring, that is the toolkit that I have built. And that toolkit has worked time and time and time and time again. In terms of SPD and public safety in a lot of ways, like I said - I look at it like if you go into an organization, you have a team or a department that is working outside of their scope, outside of their purview, they're overburdened, their work is suffering - you're sort of in a space of like, do we give them more money to give them more team to do all the things we're asking of them? Or do we do something else? And what I would always say in this case, if it was in the scenario is - you take all of the tasks that is not core and central and imperative to that team or department, and you reallocate it and create a new team or department. And you reallocate the budget that averages what that team and department does for those services - and then you continue to watch for progress. And I am very confident that if we actually diversify what we do to address all of the different multiple pathways towards this shared goal of community safety, we would be in a way better spot than continuing to throw money at a bunch of overworked, overburdened people working out of scope.
[00:26:57] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. I also wanna talk about victims. So many times we're talking about stats and responses and all that, and sometimes we don't focus on people who've been harmed or victimized. And a lot of people speak for victims, but we don't do a good job of listening to people who have been harmed themselves. And usually what they say is that - one, they wanna make sure that what happened to them doesn't happen to them or anyone else again. And they want better support. And that support - not just talking about within the system currently - they call police, there's a response. But even if police respond and come and take a report and do their thing, that person is still left - if it's a property crime, without property, with damage, without money, sometimes having to take off work - and it really does impact lives. How do you propose to better support victims or people who have been harmed?
[00:27:55] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I think one of the biggest upstream solutions we really have to address is - if we are to have services and supports that help folks help victims, we need to make sure that they are resourced to be able to do so, and right now they are not. And when we say resourced - not just a budget for the projects, right, or the services, or the interventions, housing, funding, whatever that is, but the people who would actually work in those positions. We know, like for example, in emergency services or shelter services, folks are so woefully underpaid it's a national crisis. But also the resources to be able to have folks in those positions who are being amplified in their voices and leadership because they are part of those most intersectionally impacted. One of the reasons why - I guess another reason why I'm running for office is, you know - if we want to talk about the knowledge of the policy process, how to put bills forward, things like that - I definitely have that. But there is an additional piece of that - the wisdom of lived experience - that can help to understand how these things happen in the actual reality on the ground, beyond a theoretical philosophical perspective. As a social service worker, as also someone who is not just a survivor - I guess we could say survivor of domestic violence - but continue to live it, especially running for office 'cause everything's public, right? There's a lot of different requirements, structures, pathways in place that it just leaves you to wonder that if there were folks who, whether it was directly making those decisions or through advisory councils, that was able to keep to-date the ways that our policies, our systems, and our structures are gummed up on the ground, in the lived experience, in the actual reality - if we could move some of those things so that they could be more helpful. That has been the biggest barrier I've seen for folks being able to get care, or to get resources, to get supports after they've been harmed - whether it's for their property, whether it's for their life, whether it's for their wellbeing, whether it's for their safety - the money isn't there. The staff is overworked and underpaid, and the attrition rate is so high that it's hard to move through the system at all. And then when you do go through the system, some of the requirements that you have to meet or some of the standards put in place in the framework doesn't get to the core root of what you need.
A quick example - I guess I can say it for myself 'cause that's a safe thing, right - is when I first moved here to Seattle, there was a person who came here with me, who I had been involved with. When they came here, they were abusive in very many ways - emotionally, physically, psychologically. It was the physical abuse that finally was able to remove them, to get a no contact order - however, they violated it. They finally left the Seattle area around 2013. But especially running for office, we have found him on the website, on the socials, sort of finding me again after all this time. It's interesting because first of all, there really isn't protection order resources or domestic violence resources across state lines. There really aren't spaces to go where - you can't point to someone states away and say that this person is causing harm because it's on the internet. There was a event that the campaign was gonna go to where there was information that led us to believe that there was a credible threat to my safety. And so the campaign went, but I did not go. And I think when you do something like run for office, there are some folks who are like - Well, you signed up for that - but you don't really, right? And I guess I'm sharing my own story because it's the safest.
However, I share this story because the dynamics of it is replicated every day, all day. Sometimes it's not because someone is in different state. Sometimes it's because folks have a different cultural background where they're not able to get like services - say, get emergency shelter, emergency motel, or income. You have to make a written statement that's signed that you are experiencing these things. And if it's family, if there's other sort of cultural pieces people may not feel comfortable doing that. So how do we have folks who have that experience be able to support having a framework in place that's going to be centered in intersectionality and inclusiveness? There's some folks who - this is impacting them financially in ways that are not documented because they're having to take more sick days, or because it is making them more sick, it's increasing their chronic health issues, or their productivity goes down at work. So how do we have supports in place where folks can understand those dynamics so folks are not getting verbal warnings from their boss, folks are not having less hours put on their schedule, folks are not having to then take time off of work to go to the hospital because they're having increased health issues. There are some folks who they do have property damage - when the physical altercation that led to this person finally being removed from my space at that time, they used my laptop in the event. And I was going to school - I didn't have money to buy another laptop. The only recourse would be to try to get this person to pay for it through a legal process - I didn't have money to go through that legal process, that person didn't have money to pay for a new laptop. There really wasn't any resources available to help me get another laptop, even though it was part of this event. A lot of that required other qualifications for me to have that I just didn't have at the time, and a lot of which - because this person wasn't physically living in my home, which definitely doesn't stop these sort of things from happening. So when you do have property damage or property loss, and the only option is to go through a legal process - and you may not have money for that, you may not be able to take time off for that, you might not be able to get child or dependent care for that - what do you do? And so these are the sort of pieces where running for city council, running for office, doing this work is coming at this not just because I want to be on the dais or - yes, there's a policy pieces that's really important - it's because there's this lived experience here, either individually or in my community or in the work that I've done, where I really would love to see a governance system where we are bringing in that actual reality, that grounded reality of how intersectionally we experience the outcomes or the bottlenecks or the gaps in our policy, in our investments, and in our understanding and framing of the issues.
[00:35:53] Crystal Fincher: So you alluded to it a little bit before, but I wanna talk about housing and homelessness. And one thing called out by experts as a barrier to the homelessness response is frontline worker wages that don't cover the cost of living. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for our area? And how can we make that more likely with how the City bids and contracts for services?
[00:36:17] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: You know, I think the really sad thing is that our nonprofits - nonprofits are operating in large part through funding from a larger entity, whether it is the City, whether it's usually the federal government - nonprofits need to be able to pay their staff, not just a living wage or a thriving wage, but a Seattle wage, right? The average person working in emergency or directs housing and social services right now is making between $50,000 and $55,000 a year. But a median one-bedroom apartment - if you were gonna have it as be three times your rent, it's about $1,651 a month. And the National Alliance to End Homelessness just put out a report where they suggested that the staffing component of the Homeless Assistance Grant is increased. But they said that it's a national issue and that in order for across the country, even just direct social service workers and homeless emergency shelter workers to be brought up to being able to pay for the average one-bedroom apartment, it would take 4.8 billion, with the B, dollars to do so. And so by nature of being a nonprofit, where is that gonna come from for a nonprofit? I mean, definitely going back to the task force for progressive revenue, we can look at the wage and equity taxes and see where that is. But really for a nonprofit, that's not gonna be really the case. What we really need is to redistribute - when we talk about reallocating funds, we also need to reallocate the funds in a city with such a high wealth disparity. And so I believe that part of the progressive revenue - we really wanna address, say, ensuring that we have even housing and services for folks so that we can end the crisis of who we could physically see outside, we also have to address what's happening in housing instability, economic injustice, labor injustice of folks who are only one paycheck - if that - away from also physically being outside.
And as someone who worked in direct social and housing services, I know that I worked with folks and also experienced situations where folks already were outside - they could not afford their rent and are receiving the same services. My quick story for that that I've been saying is that I remember having to get a conflict of interest waiver 'cause I had to take my client to DSHS. But when I looked at their letter, their DSHS caseworker was the same as mine. And so when we're looking at - oh, where's all the money going? If we only have these like, at minimum, 14,000 people outside, why are we using all this money? Well, because it's not just these 14,000 people who are needing these services, it's even the people who are providing the services that need the services. And so we really need to, as a city, actually not just talk about, but actually put to action economic and labor justice for this and other industries. But we also need to make sure that they are unionized and that they're able to collectively bargain for what they need for the future as well.
[00:39:25] Crystal Fincher: Now on almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals, while we're experiencing devastating impacts from extreme heat and cold, wildfires, smoke, floods, you name it - it's here. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet those 2030 goals?
[00:39:46] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: You know, when people ask this question, I always start off with saying - across living in seven states, that I believe I've experienced every type of natural disaster except for a tsunami, a sinkhole, and a typhoon. And yes, it does also include volcano eruptions, hurricanes, earthquakes, mudslides - all of those different sort of things - I have been through it. I always said I was just unlucky. As I got older, I realized it's because of climate disaster. We know that the climate disaster is human-made. It's based on consumption. We also know that the human-made climate disaster can be concentrated to a very select few people, who are in an owning class of organizations or businesses, or sort of other sort of production means that is contributing to this - whether it's shipping, whether it's fossil fuels, whether it's even folks who rely on that. The airline industry, I saw that Washington State did just pass a law to start to move towards green aviation fuel for planes, so we're not using all the gas, but even then - really in this Green New Deal, there's a couple of things. Number one, we need to really look at the building efficiency and energy performance pieces. We need to make sure that we are having Green buildings, that we're retrofitting for Green buildings - going back to those resources questions, we need to make sure we have the resources to help folks move towards having more Green buildings because we know that not everyone is going to be a multimillionaire or have a corporation where they can fund that on their own.
The second piece is that we really do need to divest - in all ways, in all spaces - from fossil fuels. And not just the fossil fuel organizations themselves, but those who are hyper-reliant on fossil fuels. If there is an organization that is resistant to divesting from fossil fuels, then it is in our best interest to consider alternatives to using those services or patroning them. We also - I would really love to see how we address the deforestation of our urban forest, that is the city that we lived in. We have lost so much of our tree canopy that it is causing not only these sort of high heat zones that are really harming folks, but we also see them happening along the lines of segregation and redlining. There is increased impacts of environmental racism and injustices leading to folks, especially during the wildfire season, having to go to the hospital because of exacerbations of their asthma - that is leading to other chronic health issues, that is only going to lead to public health crises down the line. And there's so much more even from there, right - reducing our reliance on individual transit, which means that we have to really invest in our public transit infrastructure so it's reliable, so that the workers and operators are able to get everything they're asking for in their current collective bargaining and they're able to be paid a Seattle wage, and that we are able to make sure it's accessible to all people. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot - we didn't just get to climate disaster in the last couple years, really - this has started since the industrialization period. We know it's really picked up since the 1970s, but that means that we're going to have to really work double time to make sure that we are able to have a sustainable future for life. And that's not being - I mean that literally - like so that we can actually continue to live as humans on the planet, 'cause that's where we're at.
[00:43:26] Crystal Fincher: That is where we're at. Now you talked about transit - right now, we are in a world of hurt when it comes to transit, particularly reliability. Some of that is because of shortages of operators or mechanics, but people are having a harder time finding buses that arrive on time or sometimes arrive at all. Understanding that Sound Transit is a regional organization and King County Metro is a county organization, what can the City do? And in your role as a city councilmember, if you're elected, what can you do to stabilize transit reliability?
[00:44:03] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yeah, it goes back to what I was saying earlier - you know, if elected a city councilperson, it's not just my job to do what I can and legislate within my purview. It is also my job to advocate and amplify what is happening in my district and in my city. And so that is the biggest piece of how we can have the multiple pathways towards shared goals in this case. If it's outside of my purview, that doesn't mean like - Oh well, I guess I can't do anything - but no, I'm supposed to go and advocate and say - Yo, what's going on with the 40 bus because it is taking, is like 20 minutes behind, or what's going on with, you know, the light rail and being able to get there, or what's going on with the E line. And I would continue to do that. I mean, advocating to King County Metro in terms of its accessibility and its affordability and its reliability is something I've already done in multiple ways - and it's on record of what I've done. But I definitely think what's really important here is going a little bit back to the climate justice conversation is - if we really truly want to reduce our reliance on vehicles, especially vehicles that are using gas, and we want folks to use more public transit, that's gonna, first of all, require like Complete Streets and making sure we have a pedestrian focus, if not pedestrians and public transit centered streets. But we also have to make sure the public transit is going to be a competitive option to having a car. And as someone who can't have a car because of my disability, I can only have public transit unless my partner drives me - and he works four tens a week, so most of the time I'm taking transit. You know, there has been situations, especially going east to west in District 5, where if I were to be able to drive a car, get an Uber, I can get there in 15 minutes. If I was to take the bus, I have to take two different transfers and get there in 45 minutes - if that. And so if we're in a situation - it's multifaceted with the infrastructure, where it's going, the operators - how much they're getting paid, their labor standards, are they getting breaks? Are they - do they feel safe? Are they getting medical for sitting all day? And is it affordable? You know, I talk a lot about first mile, last mile as a disabled person - can I get to a bus stop within a mile from my house, if I can walk a mile? Can I get to my destination within a mile from my bus stop, if I can walk that mile? What is the multimodal transportation going to look like? We really need to look at all of these different factors and the city councilmember's job is to advocate and amplify that to whatever level is needed and work together to get those solutions for your community as much as possible.
[00:46:58] Crystal Fincher: Now I want to talk about the economy. The City of Seattle has a vibrant business community - some of the largest corporations in the world are headquartered here and nearby, but also just a ton of small businesses - lots of entrepreneurs, micro businesses, especially in the district. What can you do to better support small business in District 5?
[00:47:22] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Well, I can tell you as a small business owner, too - it's really hard out here, right? Because there's so many different factors looking at, even just from the perspective that I have, with having staff where I have to make sure I have payroll every month and everything like that, right? The first thing I'll say is we know from the state and the city that we have a significant equity issue with public procurement. I am a business that relies on public procurement in a lot of ways. We need to make sure that we are actually putting the actions in place for public procurement and other equity for business owners. We have the Washington Women and Minority Business Enterprise certification that continues to need funding - to provide the grant funding, the infrastructure and supports needed for those businesses and others - that we can advocate to work for at the city and at the state level. Another thing I think is really important for businesses that have brick and mortar is I absolutely 100% believe in density, increasing housing density, increasing the amount of affordable housing that we have - 'cause we don't wanna just be putting housing in for housing sake and then be charging like $3,000 a month and people can't live there. But making sure we have affordable, accessible housing. One of the things that I've seen and folks have been really concerned about is you have these sort of small businesses that their commercial lease is maybe in the $1,000 a month area. Then they say - Hey, we're gonna build a development, but don't worry, we're gonna have retail space for you once the development is done. And if they can survive however long it takes to build this building - because they have to continue to be in operation - but then when the commercial leases or the retail spaces come online, they're in the $3,000 or $4,000 a month - three to four times increase of how much they're able to pay. And so they can't pay that and so those businesses just go away forever. And this is why folks get upset when they go from having a small coffee shop or a small diner or a small bookstore or a small grocery store in their neighborhood, and then the building goes up and now they have a Trader Joe's or they have a non-unionized Starbucks or they have something like that that shows up - someone who can afford those $3,000 to $4,000 rents. And so we need to also have a right-to-return put in place. We need to make sure that businesses, especially the smaller businesses, are able to have the supports they need if they are displaced, similar to like with renters - if there's a displacement where they will not be able to operate their businesses anymore, that they will be able to help.
And I wanna be very clear. When - I think a lot of times in the city, and what's really important about this question for me, is when we talk about businesses in Seattle, I think folks are thinking about the big businesses. They're thinking about the Amazons - heck, they're thinking about the restaurants that have multiple chains, right, and they sell different sort of things - that they're not gonna be as impacted, right? They're impacted, sure - 'cause the pandemic is pandemicking and that's impacting everyone. Especially when we're talking about JumpStart Taxes, right - we're talking about businesses that are making $8 million or more a year. And I'm talking about businesses like myself and other folks in District 5 - I'm talking about like $500,000 a year or less, right? Like I'm not talking about the same people. Even if you're thinking about - if you have staff, if you have a commercial lease, stuff like that - even a million dollars a year, which would be - I think I would just feel like I was sort of like, like the "In the Money" song would start playing if I ever hit a million dollars a year gross sales. But that's not common. When I talk about what is needed for small businesses in this district, I'm talking about those folks, right? I'm talking about the people who might be living in, around, above their business, who is - just like you can live paycheck to paycheck for your rent, living paycheck to paycheck for their business to make payroll, that have services or goods that they provide that the pandemic created this huge gap where they were not able to do that anymore, especially if they're a performer and needing stages to perform or something like that, or gallery space. Especially folks who are at the intersection of being, you know, what they call economically disadvantaged businesses, so they don't make a lot of money. Folks who are non-binary, trans, femme of center folks, folks who are a part of the LGBTQIA+ community, folks who are disabled, folks who are veterans - especially if they do not have the sort of veterans supports and services that you could get otherwise, especially if they, how service connected they are or what length of service they've had, 'cause that can vary. There's a lot of folks who really need help and that's where really understanding what's happening on the ground can come into play when we're making these investments in these policies to make sure that we are centering folks who are the most intersectionally impacted, and that we are not continuing to center folks who are, you know, in a completely different space and continuing that regressiveness in even the investments that we make.
[00:52:48] Crystal Fincher: I also wanna talk about a related issue of childcare. It doesn't just affect parents - it affects businesses, it affects everyone in our community because it impacts people's ability to participate in the economy and just make their bills. We recently got reporting and research that shows that now childcare is more expensive than college on an annual basis. It's many people's number one or number two expense who have families. What can you do to lighten the burden of childcare costs and availability for residents in District 5?
[00:53:24] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: What we've seen across the country is that when it's subsidized, either through local governance, state governance, federal governance, or through the employer - and really preferably a mixture of both - it can have an astounding effect on affordability. Really, it's one of those multifaceted issues, right - where we also need folks to be able to do, like to work the childcare. They're another industry that's woefully underpaid, as well as our teachers in our education systems. We need to make sure that we have childcare that's multilingual, multicultural, that is going to have disability justice and universal accessibility standards, that we have dependent care that can also support folks who have dependents who are not children - which is not always considered, whether it's elders or whether those are folks who are adults who may or may not be children, but they still require dependent care - that can make it really hard to go to work if you are unsure how they will be able to move throughout their day without some sort of support, without putting them in somewhere like a group home. Especially for adults, I would love to see what it would look like to have clubhouse-style day programs that are moving towards having that disability justice approach, if it's for disability. Or having it be something cool, like maybe free education and learning about trades, so that we can increase the pipeline of folks going into the trades or just certain things like that. But really when it comes down to affordability and second, it comes down to employer cooperation. We need to make sure that if, say, someone does get sick and you need to take care of your family - really, I know it's a federal law, but FMLA is just not very helpful. Again, one of those actual reality experiences, right - the policy, great intention, impact not so much. And so we can't really rely on things like FMLA or even the Paid Sick and Safe Time - which you can go through very, very quickly, depending on what's happening - to help if there's an emergency, if you can't get childcare that day. Childcare in the United States is going for anywhere between $700 if it's subsidized to about $2,500 a month. That's rent. People can barely afford their rent now, let alone a whole other rent. And so we really need to find ways to subsidize this down to as free as possible, so that is just one area that's not concerning for employees. But again, just like I said with housing, we don't just wanna be building housing for housing sake - we wanna make sure it's actually going towards the taproot of the issue. We don't wanna just be having childcare, independent care for the sake of it. We wanna make sure that the people who are in there is going to be able to have the economic and labor justice, and that's gonna actually meet the intersectional, multilingual, multi-ability, multicultural reality of our district and our neighborhoods. And that's what I would be fighting for.
[00:56:33] Crystal Fincher: Now, as we close today with this final question, there are a lot of people trying to consider who they should vote for - between you and your opponent. When you talk to voters who are trying to make that decision, what do you tell them?
[00:56:48] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: If you look at my opponent, Cathy - Cathy, again, has one of those resumes that's very out in front and I think it leads a lot of folks to wonder like - Why you? Right they're, you know, they're a former circuit court judge, been sort of in that space for a while. But there's also a piece of that where I ask folks to really consider the archetypes of things - you know, what is really the archetype of what makes a good candidate or a viable candidate? A lot of folks are like - Well, are you knocking the doors? You know, are you a homeowner? Do you have the money? Look, here's the point - I'm a renter, I've had to work 40 hours a week doing this because I don't have money to just take off of work. I come from what they call network impoverishment. Folks have been like - Can you ask your family for support? I'm like - I'm the person they come to that gives support, I don't have that. If I don't work, there is no one's house for me to go couch surf at. I'm a transit rider, I am a multiply disabled person, I understand what it means to have to fight for your Medicare, to have to have $200 copays. A lot of those both-and pieces - yes, I rent a single-family house in Greenwood, but the reason why it's affordable is because it's sinking into this ravine in the backyard - and as I look up in the ceilings, there's cracks in the foundation. You know, there's a lot of these different sort of pieces where if we want to talk policy, right - and I go back to helping, being a part of passing the six-months advance notice on rent increases, co-organizing and passing one of the nation's first bans on sub-minimum wage, working with legislators on fighting for lifting the cap on special education, fighting to make sure that youth continue to use the bus for free, finding out what's a taproot issues, fighting for making sure that we have disability justice implemented throughout our cities, that we are actually holding - not just saying a thing, but doing a thing if we really truly care about race and social justice. We want to talk about policy process, how to move that forward, how to work with people, how to make sure you find multiple pathways towards shared goals, the policy theory and the process - I got that. And me and Cathy can go - you know, we can really match that up. What I bring that's different is that wisdom of lived experience - not just for myself, but in all of the folks I've worked with as a consultant, as a commissioner, as a direct social service worker, as a youth leader across seven different states throughout the nearly 40 years of my life. And I truly believe and have seen success in the toolkits that I bring, that when you bring both the knowledge and the wisdom together - where you are both taking into account how the lived experiences of those most intersectionally impacted can be amplified in voices in leadership, into policy, into solutions, into leadership, into investments, to true equity - you will see progress. And if you focus on that, you don't get caught up by the minutiae, you can move forward. I have seen and worked with a lot of different folks, processes, organizations, piece - in this city - where we get caught up in the minutiae. I've been successful before in being able to move things forward in a smaller way, but you make the white paper and you give the recommendations and you look at it and they put it to the side. This being the next natural step of being able to have that voice, that conduit for my community on the dais is one that I really truly hope to bring to this community in a way I haven't before. And I'm always happy to chat with folks, get coffee, have a Zoom meeting and talk about some of the other things that I've done because as you can tell, there's so many stories and so little time.
[01:00:27] Crystal Fincher: There are. Well, thank you so much, ChrisTiana ObeySumner, for taking the time to speak with us today about your candidacy for Seattle City Council District 5. Thank you so much.
[01:00:39] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Thank you.
[01:00:40] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Founder and Editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn!
They discuss how the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) Vice President who mocked Jaahnavi Kandula’s death is now on red light camera duty, how a KING 5 story effectively victim blamed Kandula for what she was wearing, and how Seattle will pay nearly $2M after a man died of heart attack after incorrectly being on a 911 blacklist.
Crystal and Lex then talk about Senator Nguyen’s bill to detect gas price gouging, the Week Without Driving, Burien making their camping ban worse, how Bruce Harrell’s dual responder program fails to civilianize crisis response, and a new GOP candidate in the 3rd Congressional District race.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Lex Vaughn at @AlexaVaughn.
Resources
“Maritza Rivera, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks
“Ron Davis, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks
“Seattle police officer heard joking after woman’s death has been taken off the streets” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times
“New video shows moments before woman is hit by Seattle police vehicle” from KING 5
“Seattle to pay nearly $2M after man dies of heart attack at address wrongly on 911 blacklist” by The Associated Press and KIRO 7 News Staff from KIRO 7
“Sen. Nguyen moving forward on bill to detect price gouging at the gas pump” by Brett Davis from The Center Square
“Could You Go a Week Without Driving?” by Tanisha Sepúlveda from PubliCola
“Burien Makes "Camping" Ban Worse, Auderer Now on Red-Light Camera Duty, Harrell Order Subtly Improves New Drug Law” from PubliCola
“Harrell’s Dual-Responder Proposal Would Fail to Civilianize Crisis Response” by Amy Sundberg from The Urbanist
“Lewallen emerges as GOP alternative to Kent in rematch with Gluesenkamp Perez” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
If you missed this week's topical shows, we continued our series of Seattle City Council candidate interviews. All 14 candidates for 7 positions were invited and we had in-depth conversations with many of them. This week, we presented District 4 candidates, Maritza Rivera and Ron Davis. Have a listen to those and stay tuned over the coming weeks. We hope these interviews will help voters better understand who these candidates are and inform their choices for the November 7th general election.
Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and Founder and Editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn. Hey!
[00:01:36] Lex Vaughn: Hey, nice to be back.
[00:01:38] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you back. And I just have to say before we get into it - The Needling is so good. You do such great work there. And like the last two weeks are as good as it has ever been. There's no one in the country doing it better than The Needling right now. It's just absolutely great. If you guys are not tuned into The Needling - website, Patreon, social media - please get into it.
[00:02:03] Lex Vaughn: Thank you so much, Crystal.
[00:02:05] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, we have a number of things to talk about this week. Wanna start off talking about an update to the story of pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula, who was killed by an officer who ran over her while going over 70 miles per hour in response to a call - although he did not have his siren going at the time - and a story that came out in KING 5 also related to that. But just starting - update to that story is the SPOG Vice President, Daniel Auderer, who was caught on tape mocking Jaahnavi's death is now on red light camera duty - has been taken off the street. It is not uncommon for officers to be reassigned to administrative positions while investigations are ongoing - that's the case here. What do you think about where we stand here in terms of accountability?
[00:03:00] Lex Vaughn: I think no one should feel like anything real has happened as far as accountability or punishment goes - he's been reassigned, but he could be, as soon as we take our eye off this, he could be put back in the same position he was before. Auderer is still a major part of the guild leadership, so it's like - this isn't just any cop. This is guild leadership that forms a lot of the culture of the entire department, so it's upsetting to not see - once again, how - it's just upsetting to see how hard it is to even get real punishment happening for some of these people after what they do. They should be fired. And I think the next thing I'm focused on is just what's gonna happen in this next police guild contract - it's up this year and it's in negotiations right now. I just, I hope it's slightly better than the contract before - and it would just be nice if it was easier to hold police like this accountable.
[00:03:59] Crystal Fincher: I'm right there with you. And I hope it's significantly better than it is right now. And there's a model in place for it - the City of Seattle passed an ordinance in 2017 that included many accountability procedures that the SPOG contract that's currently in place, that was signed in 2018, supersedes. It has written in there that it supersedes City law - so if there's a conflict, the SPOG contract is what wins, basically, over what the City says. And as we've seen, there've been several examples of things that regular people look at and say - This is not okay, this is not what we want - where we see officers commenting across the country saying - This is inappropriate, incorrect. Yet it seems like not much can be done, and the most that's done is they're suspended without pay then reinstated, or assigned to desk duty, various administrative tasks. It's a challenge.
[00:04:55] Lex Vaughn: And I'm so tired of the shrug that happens - Well, I don't know, police contract. What are you gonna do? Well, now we're in negotiations. You are actively in a position to do something about it long-term. I don't want any shrugging right now about this 'cause we are actually in a zone where we can change the contract, or change how the City interacts with that union as a whole. I'm just learning myself about what options there are in increasing accountability. Is there a way to decertify this union completely if - I mean, I think a lot of what they support and don't fight against in their own ranks is kind of criminal itself. You're enabling people to kill innocent people - for me, to me, that's criminal. And it's like, I wish that was kind of acknowledged more often - where's the line here where some of what they're doing is criminal.
[00:05:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and you know, the other thing I look at here is this is a threat to public safety in Seattle, particularly for people who say and believe that - Hey, we need more officers on the streets now, we need to hire more officers, there is a shortage. One, if there's a shortage, why are they responding to overdose calls, crisis calls in the first place and redeploying it?
[00:06:11] Lex Vaughn: You know, as outlets like DivestSPD have reported in detail, it's - this call, where this young woman was killed by a cop going three times the speed limit in a high pedestrian area at night without a siren - he was rushing to a reported overdose call where health personnel, paramedics were already headed there. And apparently there were like six police units headed there as well? This is just inefficient, like at a minimum, at a minimum - incredibly inefficient and dangerous. And it really kind of underlines - how could you think we need more cops when in a situation like this, they're over-responding and actually a danger to the community. The entire way this operation is working is faulty and not increasing public safety.
[00:07:07] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely not increasing public safety. And hurting the effort that they've invested a lot of money into to recruit additional officers. Since they offered retention bonuses, you know, there was a lot of talk over the past couple of years that - Oh, they need more money, they need an incentive to stay. Well, the incentive is not money. Many of them are compensated fairly handsomely, but since that was approved and they've been receiving retention bonuses - the attrition has not improved - we're still hurting as badly as we ever have. And it's time - and I appreciate Tammy Morales in a forum last night, as well as others, and there've been several other people who've also talked about this - just plainly stating, Hey, these incidences happening are a problem, are a disincentive for people to apply to be a police officer, to want to be a police officer, particularly in Seattle. And especially when so many cities are talking about having shortages, why would they choose a city that has so many visible problems and problematic officers instead of another one there? So, I mean, this is - the culture is as much of a problem in terms of recruiting as anything else. But also, we do have to stop and say - What are we even doing overall? - to your point.
I also want to talk about this KING 5 story that came out recapping it, but got a pretty severe pushback and lots of call-outs - because in that story, they detailed what Jaahnavi was wearing, while it - was it dark colored this or that, you know, potentially talking about a drug test. And as you said - to be clear - she was in a crosswalk. She was doing exactly what she was supposed to be doing. The person doing what they weren't supposed to be doing was a person responding to a call that was questionable that they should be going to anyway.
[00:08:55] Lex Vaughn: I cannot stand anyone acting like - Oh, she just didn't look both ways. This was a high pedestrian area - at night, no sirens. How many of us would expect, as soon as we're entering a crosswalk, for a cop, a giant car to barrel at us at over the speed limit of what's, on our freeways? Okay - that's fast. She didn't, she barely comprehended what was going to happen to her before it happened to her.
[00:09:26] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and when you look at there, it's not - one, it's a crosswalk, and drivers should be aware of crosswalks and crossings marked or unmarked. This is a marked crosswalk - there's a crosswalk sign, there's barriers in the road - this is not an area - Oh, who would know that there would be a pedestrian there? Like, if there was a place for a pedestrian to be, it is there. And to essentially victim blame in that way and not talk about the responsibility of the person in the vehicle that has the power to instantaneously obliterate someone - what their culpability and responsibility was there - is just really disgusting.
[00:10:04] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I have to say, I'm really disappointed in KING 5 for that report, 'cause I mean, in Seattle, I think we tend to think of KOMO as the station that would run something like that, not KING 5. And it's hard to understand what the motivation of that report was. I mean, I guess they were maybe giddy that they had new video that hadn't been seen before, and I don't know, maybe there was only so much they had to say about it - she's wearing black clothes - but it just came off as very victim-blamey. You know, this is not a report that you wanna turn into a pedestrian safety cautionary tale - where that's not really the moral of the story here - 'cause I think any of us, most people, that would have happened to them, no matter what they were wearing, I doubt that cop would have all of a sudden had time to brake if she was wearing yellow. He was going way too fast.
[00:10:57] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Absolutely going too fast to respond in any kind of way at that speed, to be able to take any kind of evasive action - and we see that in how the accident played out. I think this is reflective of the super car-centric culture and how problematic that is - instead of realizing that everyone has a right to use the roads and therefore everyone, whether you're walking, biking, riding. But the responsibility that people have in understanding that - yes, if you have the potential to do greater harm, then you must take greater responsibility. The consequence for a pedestrian walking out into the street to a car is negligible - there's going to be no damage there, right? Like, you know, looking at the worst-case scenario is entirely different than someone losing their life. And so I suspect in this situation - a problem that we've seen in lots of news media in that they saw the video, they looked at the police report and what the information that the police gave out, which unfortunately too often only focuses on, especially when situations when police are involved, only focuses on the pedestrian that is involved or the non-police entity that's involved. Just really striking, we - was the officer driving - were they tested for drugs or alcohol? Were they, I mean, you know, a sign of impairment there, so how in the world it makes sense?
[00:12:22] Lex Vaughn: They were not. She was, he wasn't - despite the fact that this guy who ran her over, apparently had had his driving license suspended in Arizona the year before he came here and got hired with a bonus. So, you know, if you think these bonuses are getting us anyone quality, all you have to do is look at this case - not the case - we're not getting anyone special here.
[00:12:48] Crystal Fincher: Well, you know, I don't know who it's bringing, but there absolutely needs to be a different strategy implemented here. And everyone needs to do better in reporting, and considering how they talk about this, and what our stance as a community is about this.
I also wanna talk about another story this week that didn't seem to percolate, but that was surprising to me. And it was news that Seattle had to pay nearly $2 million to the family of a man after he died of a heart attack after getting delayed response because his address was wrongly on a 911 blacklist. One - okay, there's a 911 blacklist - there's news.
[00:13:29] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I did not even know that. Oh, God.
[00:13:32] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, so the situation is this person had a heart attack, fell out - had lived in the unit for a year. The people who lived in it before him wound up on a list - and responders and police say they keep a list of people who have been hostile to or problematic with police, which, you know, I don't know what hard and fast rules about that, how subjective that is, but you can see how that could come to be. But they wound up on this list because of a prior tenant - that wasn't told to them on the call, there was no indication, you had - no one has any idea -
[00:14:06] Lex Vaughn: I had no idea that was a thing.
[00:14:09] Crystal Fincher: - that - yeah, that the list exists or that they may or may not be on it. So this guy's lived here for a year. It's not even like he just moved in there.
[00:14:16] Lex Vaughn: And I'm like - oh my God. So it's like based on address, not even like phone numbers? 'Cause like I would imagine almost everyone has like a cell phone now. Like almost no one has a landline.
[00:14:27] Crystal Fincher: Some people have a landline.
[00:14:28] Lex Vaughn: I mean, okay.
[00:14:29] Crystal Fincher: Some people don't have cell phones.
[00:14:30] Lex Vaughn: It's like a small fraction of people.
[00:14:32] Crystal Fincher: Most people do, some people don't - but either way - so they call and they're like - Okay, help is on the way. But the help is - they see there's a flag, so they have to wait for basically police to co-respond with them, which delays the call. You know, another 911 call comes in after a paramedic is apparently on the scene, but not going in because they're waiting for police. And they're saying help is on the way, but no indication that there's a delay. The man passes away because of - looking at the settlement, feeling like had he received more timely medical care, he certainly would have had a better opportunity to survive. But that this was the reason why he died - and that this list exists, that finding out through this, that evidently the list was neglected - they don't take people off the list or hadn't before this - was very problematic. In response to this, they're now saying they'll age people off of the list after 365 days. But you can imagine-
[00:15:28] Lex Vaughn: Why did it have to take this to do that obvious a thing?
[00:15:31] Crystal Fincher: Why did it have to take this? And how does no one engage with the fact that, especially with half of Seattle residents renting, right?
[00:15:39] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I'm a renter. And I read this and I was like - Okay. I mean, I've lived in this place that I'm in for three years, so well - I mean, I don't know. It's like, I want to check - I don't know who lived here before.
[00:15:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, how do you get on? Is there an appeals process to come off? The lack of transparency surrounding this seems like it could create another situation like this in the future. So this was a story reported by KIRO 7 - would be interested to find out exactly what criteria are to get on the list. Are people ever removed from the list now other than aging off? And even with things aging off over a year, people move all the time - renters move all the time - this is absolutely disproportionately impacting people who rent. And a year is a long time to wait for something to edge off. If you have an emergency and you haven't lived in your place for a year, who knows if when you call 911, there's some reason that you don't know why people aren't responding. So I found that just really interesting.
[00:16:43] Lex Vaughn: And just another important part of that report is that apparently a dispatcher was punished and also sued the City because he tried to fix that system. And he was kind of like wrongfully punished on the job for trying to bring up and reform that 911 blacklist. And it just seems like - wow, you know, a person like me - I didn't even know it existed, but I think we all got to take a hard look at that 'cause that's a tragedy that didn't have to happen.
[00:17:14] Crystal Fincher: Absolute tragedy. And very interested to learn more about how that list operates and if it is in line with best practices and it just seems-
[00:17:24] Lex Vaughn: It seems very outdated.
[00:17:26] Crystal Fincher: It really does. Wanna talk about another story that is part of a larger story. And it's Senator Joe Nguyen, our state Senator, is moving forward on a bill to detect price gouging at the gas pump. Gas prices have been in the news a lot lately - they find their way into the news every year for a variety of reasons that - the price of gas is high. It's a cost that a lot of people incur. And as the prices rise, people feel that in their budgets, certainly - don't wanna minimize that at all for people who are on a tight budget. But for people who care about that, I hope they also have urgency in dealing with housing costs, childcare costs, some of the biggest costs that people have. But gas is a factor in there, and so we have a situation where gas prices are volatile - they have been, they always are. In this situation, we have Democrats and Republicans calling for a couple of different solutions. Republicans call for a gas tax holiday, they blame the Climate Commitment Act - which was passed here in this state, which assigns basically a price to carbon - and saying, This is the reason why gas prices are high. Other people have pointed out for quite some time that we still have these oil companies making record profits and that accounts for more of the gas price there. And these increases in price don't seem to correlate with the increase and decreases in cost. And we hear - Oh, you know, refinery's offline for maintenance. Well, that seems to coincide with major holiday weekends and times when they know people will be driving to make the price skyrocket.
California passed a bill similar to this, which Joe Nguyen said he looked at and is modeling this off of. And they found that there was some, you know, shady stuff going on. And what this does is basically establish a commission, or a tribunal, or some organization that can review pricing information and kind of proprietary data from these companies - saying that this isn't public data, so it's not like there are gonna be competitive disadvantages for sharing and it's not gonna be given to the public. But this group can review it and say - Okay, is this in line with costs, or are you just raising the price of gas to price gouge consumers - which appears that it's happened before. So this is an interesting bill that Senator Nguyen is moving forward with to detect price gouging. And I'm gonna be really curious to see how this plays out. What do you think?
[00:19:47] Lex Vaughn: I mean, I'd be interested to see how they plan on changing that behavior. 'Cause I guess I applaud the effort to detect price gouging and do something about it, but I'm almost in like a state of - I've just accepted oil companies do that all the time. I mean, I think especially in that year after - since the war in Ukraine, it seemed like there was a period where they were artificially jacking up the prices when they didn't really need to - even after President Biden had taken action to reduce that problem, the prices were still high. So I'm just so used to the price gouging that I assume is always happening, I'm like - Oh, okay, you gonna do something about it? Good luck with that. I don't have high hopes, but-
[00:20:34] Crystal Fincher: Well, I think there are bigger structural issues involved. I mean, we are trying to phase out fossil fuels in a long-term perspective, and that is going to make the cost of gas increase in the long-term. Now, as with many things - and part of that is the price is inherently volatile, it's gonna become more volatile, especially as - even if we wanted to burn all the oil in the world, there's a limited supply of oil. So this was coming at some time. How do we make this transition in a way that is as fair and equitable as possible? And that's what the proceeds of the Climate Commitment Act are supposed to do - these proceeds that are exceeding expectations from these carbon credits - that's what the push towards more renewable forms of energy, electric cars - but even better, getting the cars off the road and using transit - and making, building our infrastructure and building our communities in a way that make that a viable and attractive option for people. 'Cause right now we still have a long way to go for that.
And in this Week Without Driving, many of us are experiencing that firsthand-
[00:21:39] Lex Vaughn: How was that?
[00:21:39] Crystal Fincher: It's still ongoing. I shared online that I have a trip today to make where it's a two hour one-way trip, even though it's only 17 miles - but it underscores how important it is to improve transit service everywhere - and it benefits everyone. We have to get out, we have to mitigate the impacts of climate change. We have to get on this and accelerate our efforts to meet our 2030 goals - to have a shot at meeting our goals that are further down the line. We have a long way to go, but improving the accessibility and the experience on transit will improve traffic, will improve air quality, will improve finances. It costs a lot less if that's a reasonable option to do.
[00:22:24] Lex Vaughn: I'm always shocked when people aren't completely on board with building great public transit as fast as possible everywhere. 'Cause even if you're a driver and you're never taking public transit, how is it not in your interest as well for as many people as possible to be in public transit? You get less traffic. It should be a win-win-win for everybody to get more of these things online.
[00:22:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think there's a lot of misinformation about there. And I think the way that we have allowed communities to build and grow - that we've allowed sprawl and basically enabled-
[00:22:59] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, yeah.
[00:23:00] Crystal Fincher: -the inaccessibility of transit in communities makes people - the default lifestyle for many people is a car-based lifestyle. And we've allowed transit to atrophy in many places, if it even was readily available in the first place. So people - when people can't see it and can't see it working, they have a hard time conceptualizing it.
[00:23:22] Lex Vaughn: Oh yeah. And I mean, whenever you do that Google Maps route - I mean, I do that sometimes where I'm like - Oh, what's the public transit route? If it's very long, I'll opt for using my car for part of that trip somehow. And that usually is the defining thing, right - is just looking up on a Google Map - is this a half hour trip or a two hour trip?
[00:23:43] Crystal Fincher: Yeah.
[00:23:44] Lex Vaughn: I mean, that's a big difference.
[00:23:45] Crystal Fincher: It's a humongous difference. And for several - I fortunately am privileged enough to not have to drive often. But for those I do, that's an absolute consideration. And I would like to take transit. And there are some advantages even on a longer trip - you can do other things, you can multitask, you can just decompress - you don't have to be present and aware, paying attention while you're driving, you don't have the stress of traffic sometimes, which is nice. So I mean, even on a longer trip, there are some advantages to transit, but also it can be less convenient depending on there. And if you have to walk a long way, especially in poor weather, when it's cold. Or if there aren't adequate facilities at a transit stop - I saw someone yesterday comment, Hey man, I looked up something and it was a two and a half hour trip, and my bladder can't securely make that trip and we don't make public restrooms readily available to people. There are a lot of structural barriers in place for people to be able to use transit, and we have to do a better job at removing those barriers if we're gonna make progress. And so the Week Without Driving is really bringing that home to a lot of people in ways that we can talk about, but when you do it and you feel it, it just provides additional insight and urgency into that.
I also wanna talk about the City of Burien - yet again - who passed their camping ban and then decided to make their camping ban worse. So what Burien did was now expand the number of hours per day in which being unsheltered will soon be illegal. PubliCola has been doing an excellent job covering what's been happening in the City of Burien - we will link this article and update in our show notes also. But basically the Burien city attorney said that the city decided to make the adjustment after learning that shelters begin making their decisions about who to admit around 4.30 in the afternoon. And by 10, most are closed. And according to him, it would be too late to take people there - that's questionable reasoning. And by starting the ban earlier in the evening, the city thinks that it can plausibly say shelter was available - which is important in order to pass the constitutionality test - and that people refuse to accept it. Those are not hard and fast rules, and especially with some of the new shelter coming online, it is more flexible. The shelters making such decisions and closing early are part of the reason why it's hard for people to do that anyway. A meaningful percentage of people who don't have homes still have jobs. Lots of people who don't have homes or who are housing insecure have jobs. And if their shift goes beyond 7 or 8 or 9 or whatever the closing time is-
[00:26:32] Lex Vaughn: Very unreasonable.
[00:26:33] Crystal Fincher: -you have to choose between keeping the job that has a shot at either getting you back into housing or keeping you from falling into a further precarious position on the street. It just doesn't make sense. So they expanded the hours that they were doing that. During the meeting - there's a lot of misinformation that comes from the council majority on this council - they were saying that they, Hey, it increases the amount of time that they're able to camp, which is just false. Like it was weird. It only allows camping between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m. - or the ability to be in public while you're unhoused, basically - even though that there aren't good options for where these people to go. And as we've been reminded several times, options are available and on offer to the City of Burien to have people have a place to go - land has been identified for them. And this is a seven-member council, it's a split council - so four members in the majority, three members in the minority. That four-member council majority has not decided to take the county up on the offer of a million dollars to help with long-term placement, hasn't taken - two entities now who have offered Pallet shelters here. It's just really unfortunate.
[00:27:49] Lex Vaughn: Has that city been sued yet? Or like - 'cause it does seem illegal. I mean, they're not even, they're rejecting housing for these people and then doing this camping ban at the same time. I would think that's illegal.
[00:28:03] Crystal Fincher: Well, that's the question. And it does strike a lot of people as illegal, which is one of the reasons why the King County Executive's Office sent a letter to Burien saying that - Hey, because your police department contracts with the King County Sheriff's for your deputies, we're telling you our deputies cannot participate in these sweeps because it's unconstitutional.
[00:28:23] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, that's great.
[00:28:24] Crystal Fincher: And they say - Ah no, it's not. They try to do an end around and find a loophole by leasing to a seemingly faux dog park organization that - then they could trespass people off of land. It's just a whole mess.
[00:28:40] Lex Vaughn: The extent they're going to boot homeless people out of their city is crazy - without helping them.
[00:28:48] Crystal Fincher: Without helping them, yeah.
[00:28:49] Lex Vaughn: The option is right there, the money is right there - and they're not using it. I imagine a lot of these things just aren't true that they're saying? But is that true - that thing they said about all these homeless shelters accept people at 4.30 and not afterward? Is that a thing?
[00:29:06] Crystal Fincher: And the way he phrased it even is vague in and of itself - they begin making their decisions at 4.30.
[00:29:12] Lex Vaughn: Begin making their decisions at--
[00:29:14] Crystal Fincher: Yes.
[00:29:14] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, and it's like - yeah, just think about, I mean, the average person is not done with work at 4.30. They're not even home from work at 4.30, if they're not a remote worker. And yeah, and there's a lot of different shifts out there that people might be taking. And it assumes that people who don't have shelter don't have jobs, which is just the worst piece of misinformation.
[00:29:38] Crystal Fincher: Or don't have any other interests, or places to go - it's just challenging. And speaking of the King County Sheriff's, this is a big concern - who are they gonna have to actually enforce this? - which is a question that was asked. And Deputy Mayor Kevin Schilling said on the dais that - Hey, the King County Sheriff's Office signed off on the change. However, PubliCola followed up with the King County Sheriff's Office, and a spokesman for King County Executive Dow Constantine told PubliCola that the county has not made a decision about whether and how to enforce the law. So, that is absolutely not true - what Deputy Mayor Kevin Schilling said - that evidently is still under review. And it looks like they were, once again, in a rush and moved hastily without even knowing if this is something that they can enforce. It is just, it's just a challenge.
[00:30:31] Lex Vaughn: Come on, Burien - get some new people on that council.
[00:30:34] Crystal Fincher: Speaking of challenges that are pretty easy to foresee, or things that don't quite make sense based on what we're being told - is news that, hey, finally, finally, the mayor's office who has had the funding to do this and for some reason hasn't for a long time, announced that they're going to launch a dual responder program. However, this dual responder program would still fail to civilianize the crisis response, which is what the mayor's office had initially said they wanted to - we had a conversation with Deputy Mayor, then-Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell on this show about that before. But in the way this is going to be - in the way it's proposed, in the way it looks like it's going to happen - a new Community Assisted Response and Engagement Department, or CARE Department, will launch a dual dispatch pilot consisting of teams of two civilians, some of whom are behavioral health providers, who can be dispatched alongside SPD officers. And so this program hired six responders so far, $1.8 million has been proposed from the mayor in the 2024 budget.
And in the press conference, which I think you said that you watched, they talked about this being similar to or based on programs that have gotten acclaim in a few other major cities. However, ours is substantively different than theirs - in that, theirs don't rely on co-response - meaning that an armed officer has to go with someone all the time - or they have options out of that, that is not a requirement of the dispatch. And there's good reason for that. One, most of these calls don't apply to that. In Denver's program, they found that they only needed to call for armed police response 2% of the time where their crisis responders were dispatched - especially as you said before, when they're saying they don't have enough cops to do the job that is expected of them, you would think that'd be like - Oh, that's great news. We can deploy our resources in areas where they can be more effective.
[00:32:44] Lex Vaughn: That's why it's probably a dual response. They don't want our city to discover that we don't need police at every single one of these calls. And it's unfortunate that the mayor and this police department are more concerned with how can we get this police department more money, more people. It's, I guess, a rough transition here - to say the least - to get this city to wrap its head around the fact that you do not need police at every single one of these 911 calls. And in fact, it's very dangerous for a lot of these cops to show up, especially in cases where someone's having a mental health crisis or something. When I was a reporter at The Seattle Times, I unfortunately reported on cases where someone was having a mental health crisis and they were shot for not immediately obeying orders. That was, you know - I - if you have a loved one that struggles with mental health issues, the police - they're not who you want to call. It's dangerous, 'cause I think a lot of police are - they're just too willing and ready to shoot as soon as they're not listened to. And so I'm very disappointed that this is a dual response thing, when it's so clear we need that CARE team to just respond on their own, with their own expertise, without anyone armed on the scene.
[00:34:09] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and especially in crisis calls, armed responses - an armed presence - is its own escalator.
[00:34:17] Lex Vaughn: Yes - yeah, like duh - for anyone. And then imagine you're also in crisis - just not a great mix.
[00:34:24] Crystal Fincher: It's challenging. You know, Crosscut previously reported that while only 2.2% of calls for service in Seattle were crisis calls, those calls accounted for 25% of Seattle officers' use of force. And if we recall, Charleena Lyles in 2017 was a perfect example of that, really unfortunate example of that. It's just really challenging. They seem determined to have an officer respond - to your point, it seems like they are afraid of relinquishing anything. But that seems to be happening - if you listen to their logic - at the expense of everyone else's safety and more effective deployment across the city. Then another really meaningful point brought up is just the scale of this pilot - what are we really able to see?
[00:35:12] Lex Vaughn: Six people, right?
[00:35:12] Crystal Fincher: Six people - yeah, absolutely. And that is completely out of line with the scale of the programs in these other cities.
[00:35:21] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, Albuquerque - 70 people. They're really doing it.
[00:35:25] Crystal Fincher: Look at how many officers we have. Look at the size of the city. And one thing that's been noticed by lots of people for a long time is that we put out these pilots, we say we need to see results, and we need to get data on them to see if they're gonna continue. And you just throw a couple people out there - and you can't reasonably expect any meaningful intervention from a few people. Now when you do look at that, they do outsize good for what they're there. So it's like, just imagine if we were to appropriately invest and deploy in numbers that could effectively manage this problem citywide. But we continue not to do that, which is frustrating, and watch more of the budget continue to go to police officers, vacant police officer positions - and it's just frustrating.
[00:36:16] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I mean, it's like the police department and the City are trying to make this argument that we don't have enough officers. And it's like - Well, what if we're just not doing this efficiently at all? And it's just unfortunate to see that the priority here seems to be retaining dependence on a police department that is as bloated as possible, and not just creating a more efficient public health and public safety kind of operation system here. Like you said, a lot of these calls - they do not need an armed cop, especially one that might be barreling through a high pedestrian area at 75 miles per hour, coming to the call. And if we're really interested in public safety here, I really think we don't need more cops. We need to use the cops we have more efficiently, with more accountability. And expand this other program, the CARE program, and let them respond independently to a lot of these calls and expand it. And I'm worried that this program is being set up to fail. Some people might say that - Well, this is better than nothing. It's a start. - I guess, but I think it's being set up to fail. This is six people - not that many people - and they're not being allowed to be the first to intervene, which is really where I think the magic of those programs happens. It's like - Wow, the situation did not get escalated. This person got the help they needed without a gun on the scene.
[00:37:48] Crystal Fincher: And it feels like someone is coming to help, right? And it really is the difference in - is someone coming to help me, or is someone coming to control me? Is someone coming to make me do something, to stop me?
[00:37:59] Lex Vaughn: Yep, that is - that's it - right there, yeah.
[00:38:04] Crystal Fincher: And that makes such a big difference when someone is already in a place where they're unstable, where they're worried, concerned, where they're not perceiving things as well as they can be. And then expecting them then to be able to - oftentimes be calmer than the officer that's responding - and just rationally follow everything. You're being called because this person is not behaving rationally, right - so we know that from jump - everything else that stems from that, it's predictable that that's not going to have a great outcome. And again, we have to get to dealing with the root causes of this. There's nothing a police person can do to address a behavioral health crisis.
[00:38:47] Lex Vaughn: That's not their expertise at all.
[00:38:49] Crystal Fincher: That's not their expertise, it's not their job. It's not their - no training, no resources in order to do that. The people who actually can make those connections - who do understand our complicated and inadequate, but you know, system - and to try and get people in there and to get them some help that they need, so this is not a chronic problem. So this doesn't escalate. It's really important.
The last story I want to talk about today is the emergence of a new GOP candidate in Washington's 3rd Congressional District. This district is now notorious for being one of the biggest districts in an upset race in 2022, where Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez beat Joe Kent, a very far right-wing Republican in 2022 - biggest upset race in the country. And so Joe Kent announced that he was running again, he's been running, and he's endorsed by the likes of Trump and you know, a lot of really, really, really far right extremists. And that is what a lot of people blame on his loss that - wow, even that was too much for this pretty solidly Republican district. So it looks like other Republicans in the state - I don't want to call them moderate Republicans, 'cause I don't think that is an accurate descriptor - but ones who realize that Joe Kent-
[00:40:11] Lex Vaughn: Maybe just smarter, like more strategic Republicans.
[00:40:16] Crystal Fincher: Right - is a tainted brand, right? And are trying to operate more strategically. And so Leslie Lewallen, a city councilmember in Camas in Clark County, has entered the race and drawn early support and endorsements from prominent Republicans like former Attorney General Rob McKenna, former Secretary of State Sam Reed, and Tiffany Smiley. And Tiffany Smiley, who's the challenger to Patty Murray in 2022. And so they are not going the MAGA route, they're trying to go the other route. Although if you look at the issues that she's talking about, this is really, you know, how they're dressing up someone who holds a lot of the same core beliefs when it comes to women's choice, when it comes to these really troubling attacks and book bans that we're seeing in schools, attacks on the trans community and the LGBTQ community - just a lot of worrisome things. This is not, you know, what we had previously described as a moderate Republican. This is still a pretty far right Republican, but it's not Joe Kent. And, you know, Joe Kent is out of touch with reality in a variety of things - it's hard to really explain how wild this guy is without just being like - look at this, I cannot - I had to do this in 2022. Like I can't do justice to what this is with an explanation, just watch him talk.
[00:41:42] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, him and Loren Culp were kind of an insane, you know, pair to talk about back then.
[00:41:48] Crystal Fincher: They were just not in touch with reality. But, you know, this will be interesting. And we see this effort, with Dave Reichert in the governor's race, to try and dress someone up as a more moderate Republican to kind of assuage some of the fears that people have of someone too extreme. MAGA - the MAGA brand - is not popular throughout the state, that's not a winning brand in the state. And Republicans have been losing ground because of it. But I think, especially when we look at a lot of these races in King County - like I'm thinking of the 8th Congressional District race, the Reagan Dunn race against Kim Schrier - even someone who has, you know, traditionally branded themselves as a moderate, they still hold beliefs that are pretty repugnant to lots of people. Kind of first and foremost, the issue of abortion rights, right - these are pretty fundamental rights. The issue of privacy protections - pretty fundamental rights. Wanting a stronger safety net - pretty fundamental, you know, support by a lot of people in the state. And Republicans seem to disagree with that.
[00:42:48] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, or at a minimum, they're just spineless because Reagan Dunn, at certain points, has - if it's advantageous to him, you know, hasn't been as conservative, but just depends on where he's trying to mold himself.
[00:43:03] Crystal Fincher: Yeah.
[00:43:04] Lex Vaughn: Yeah.
[00:43:04] Crystal Fincher: So at this moment, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez has a pretty substantial financial lead. I think I read that she has like a million and a half dollars and Joe Kent has like a shade under $500,000. But I - this will be a district that this cycle, I'm sure, attracts a lot of attention and a lot of outside spending. Definitely on the list for Republicans to pick up. Now, you know, we're sitting here as Republicans just kicked out Speaker McCarthy, which makes Patty Murray now second in line to the presidency since there's no current Speaker of the House. But, you know, Republicans have problems from the very top of the ticket all the way on down, so it'll be interesting just to see how they manage this chaos.
[00:43:49] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, well, this whole next year is gonna be an interesting Republican identity journey - I don't know if it's a crisis, they've kind of been in crisis for a little while, but it's - they're gonna have to make some decisions about who they're gonna be in the future. Are they gonna continue the Trump route or are they trying to find this other, I don't know. I guess almost as far right, but just a different tone, different leaders at the helm kind of leading that. I don't know.
[00:44:24] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, very - it'll be interesting to see. And, you know, we'll have another shutdown battle coming up in about a month. Who knows if we'll have a speaker by then? Who knows if we'll be in any better position for anything by then?
[00:44:39] Lex Vaughn: I just heard yesterday there's a possibility of Trump being a speaker?
[00:44:43] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, so-
[00:44:45] Lex Vaughn: Oh my God, I didn't know that was a thing.
[00:44:47] Crystal Fincher: Fun fact is the Speaker of the House does not have to be a member of the House or Congress. So yeah, they can appoint - they could do that with Trump if they wanted to, I think?
[00:44:58] Lex Vaughn: Ahh, this world is insane.
[00:45:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's, you know - it is frustrating - the Republicans are not a party serious about governing right now. And I just wish we would contend with that more directly. Or at least-
[00:45:14] Lex Vaughn: And the people who vote for them. Like what are you doing?
[00:45:16] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. So we'll continue to follow this, but that will certainly - is an interesting new element in that 3rd Congressional District race that will have impacts here locally and nationally.
And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, October 6th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful cohost today is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Founder and Editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn. You can find Lex on Twitter @AlexaVaughn, V-A-U-G-H-N. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can find me on Twitter and most other networks @finchfrii, with two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
[00:46:41] Lex Vaughn: Bye.
On this Wednesday topical show, Crystal chats with Ron Davis about his campaign for Seattle City Council District 4. Listen and learn more about Ron and his thoughts on:
- [01:04] - Why he is running
- [02:42] - Lightning round!
- [08:50] - What is an accomplishment of his that impacts District 4
- [10:36] - Climate change
- [12:51] - Public Safety: Alternative response
- [14:31] - Victim support
- [16:18] - Housing and homelessness: Frontline worker wages
- [17:21] - Housing and homelessness: Highest priority plans
- [20:34] - Bike and pedestrian safety
- [22:20] - Transit reliability
- [24:10] - Childcare: Affordability and accessibility
- [26:10] - Small business support
- [27:59] - City budget shortfall: Raise revenue or cut services?
- [30:38] - Difference between him and opponent
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Ron Davis at @seattle4ron.
Ron Davis
Ron Davis is a public school dad, law school grad, and tech entrepreneur that has worked for most of his professional life on improving the lives of seniors, workers and patients. He’s an active member of the 46th Dems and the Transit Riders Union, where he serves on the progressive revenue committee. He also serves on the boards of Futurewise, Seattle Subway, the University YMCA and the Roosevelt Neighborhood Association, working on housing and climate legislation, transit policy, and on delivering social services to kids and their families, and to young adults.
Resources
Campaign Website - Ron Davis
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, I am very pleased to be welcoming Seattle City Council District 4 candidate, Ron Davis, to the program. Welcome, Ron.
[00:01:01] Ron Davis: Thank you so much for having me, Crystal.
[00:01:04] Crystal Fincher: Well, I just am first wondering - why are you running?
[00:01:08] Ron Davis: Yeah, that's a great question. So I've been working hard in my community to make it affordable and safe for a long time, and I've reached a point of frustration where I don't feel that the people representing me are doing a good enough job. So sort of backing up into sort of the deeper story - my parents were teenagers when they got pregnant with me - I grew up in the Portland area. And I got very lucky along the way, but some of that was because housing was more affordable then. So while my parents both worked at a diner, my dad was able then to get a job at a factory - minimum wage - but he worked 60, 70, 80 hours a week. It was brutal. And my parents were able to get a toehold in the middle class 'cause they could afford housing and they were actually able to afford to buy a house a few years in. And that became this platform that allowed my sister and I to rise - we both got bachelor's degrees, I got really lucky and ended up at Harvard Law School. And I've landed in this beautiful, comfortable place in Northeast Seattle - where I live in the comforts of the professional class - and I recognize like that was a lot, lot, lot of luck. And it would have been impossible without affordable housing, it would have been impossible without community support. And you just cannot have a journey like mine in Seattle. And that is frustrating to me - Seattle should be a place where people can start a career, raise a family, age in place - and not have to be filthy rich to do it. And so I am fighting to make Seattle a place where people can do those things. And where if people do happen to be unlucky, we come together and we put a floor on how far they fall because it could happen to any of us.
[00:02:41] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely could. Now we're gonna switch up the program from what we normally hear, or frequently heard in our previous past candidate interviews, and we're doing a bit of a lightning round-
[00:02:52] Ron Davis: Oh, dear.
[00:02:52] Crystal Fincher: -here. So just a brief - mostly yes or no, or short answer questions. But just to help the listeners get a better view of who you are on a wide range of topics before we dive into the detail. So starting off - This year, did you vote yes on the King County Crisis Care Centers levy?
[00:03:11] Ron Davis: Yes.
[00:03:12] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote yes on the Veteran, Seniors, and Human Services levy?
[00:03:15] Ron Davis: I did, yes.
[00:03:16] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote in favor of Seattle's Social Housing Initiative 135?
[00:03:21] Ron Davis: I did.
[00:03:22] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Bruce Harrell or Lorena González for Mayor?
[00:03:27] Ron Davis: In the general, I voted for Lorena González.
[00:03:29] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, in the general, did you vote for Ann Davison or Nicole Thomas Kennedy for City Attorney?
[00:03:35] Ron Davis: Nicole Thomas Kennedy.
[00:03:36] Crystal Fincher: In 2022, did you vote for Leesa Manion or Jim Ferrell for King County Prosecutor?
[00:03:43] Ron Davis: Leesa Manion.
[00:03:43] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote for Patty Murray or Tiffany Smiley?
[00:03:47] Ron Davis: Patty Murray.
[00:03:48] Crystal Fincher: Do you rent or own your residence?
[00:03:51] Ron Davis: Currently own - for seven years - rent all before that.
[00:03:54] Crystal Fincher: Are you a landlord?
[00:03:56] Ron Davis: No.
[00:03:56] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to require landlords to report metrics, including how much rent they're charging, to help better plan housing and development needs in the district?
[00:04:04] Ron Davis: Yes.
[00:04:05] Crystal Fincher: Are there any instances where you would support sweeps of homeless encampments?
[00:04:11] Ron Davis: As I understand the definition of sweep, it is where you're clearing a homeless encampment and there's nowhere for people to go - like no actual housing. So no, unless there was some imminent public health risk, like during - there were moments in COVID - but as a general rule, no.
[00:04:24] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to provide additional funding for Seattle's Social Housing Public Development Authority?
[00:04:30] Ron Davis: Absolutely, and I did some campaigning for I-135 as well.
[00:04:33] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with King County Executive Constantine's statement that the King County Jail should be closed?
[00:04:38] Ron Davis: Yeah.
[00:04:39] Crystal Fincher: Should parking enforcement be housed within SPD?
[00:04:43] Ron Davis: No.
[00:04:44] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to allow police in schools?
[00:04:48] Ron Davis: I think the schools should decide that, but my instinct is no. I think the students have been pretty clear that's what they don't want - they don't want that.
[00:04:55] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to allow it?
[00:04:58] Ron Davis: Ah, I see. No, not currently - I don't have any reason to think I would.
[00:05:02] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget for a civilian-led mental health crisis response?
[00:05:09] Ron Davis: Me and two-thirds of Seattle, yep.
[00:05:11] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget to increase the pay of human service workers?
[00:05:15] Ron Davis: Yes, it's egregious how much they're underpaid.
[00:05:18] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Do you support removing funds in the City budget for forced encampment removals and instead allocating funds towards a Housing First approach?
[00:05:26] Ron Davis: Yep.
[00:05:27] Crystal Fincher: Do you support abrogating or removing the funds from unfilled SPD positions and putting them towards meaningful public safety measures?
[00:05:36] Ron Davis: Yes. I do want to clarify - so when we say unfilled, we think the ones that are unfilled or unfillable in this budget cycle - but then yes.
[00:05:43] Crystal Fincher: These are yes or no questions.
[00:05:45] Ron Davis: Well, it's yes if it's the ones that are fillable or not.
[00:05:49] Crystal Fincher: Perfect. So let's do yes or no - we have plenty of time to get into the nitty gritty and detail of all the other stuff.
[00:05:55] Ron Davis: Got it.
[00:05:55] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocating money in the City budget for supervised consumption sites?
[00:06:01] Ron Davis: I do.
[00:06:02] Crystal Fincher: Do you support increasing funding in the City budget for violence intervention programs?
[00:06:06] Ron Davis: Yes, I do.
[00:06:07] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't give the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General subpoena power?
[00:06:16] Ron Davis: I would oppose such a contract, yes.
[00:06:18] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian?
[00:06:29] Ron Davis: Oppose that doesn't remove - sorry, I'm trying to make sure I got the question right.
[00:06:33] Crystal Fincher: If they don't remove limitations about how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian-
[00:06:39] Ron Davis: Yeah, I would have a problem with that. They've gotta be civilian.
[00:06:42] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move police funding to public safety alternatives?
[00:06:51] Ron Davis: Yeah.
[00:06:52] Crystal Fincher: Do you support eliminating in-uniform off duty work by SPD officers?
[00:06:59] Ron Davis: I don't know. I don't know what you're talking about, specifically. I'm sorry.
[00:07:03] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Will you vote to ensure that trans and non-binary students are allowed to play on the sports teams that fit with their gender identities?
[00:07:12] Ron Davis: Yeah.
[00:07:13] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans people can use bathrooms or public facilities that match their gender?
[00:07:19] Ron Davis: Yep.
[00:07:19] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with the Seattle City Council's decision to implement the JumpStart Tax?
[00:07:24] Ron Davis: Yes.
[00:07:25] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to reduce or divert the JumpStart Tax in any way?
[00:07:30] Ron Davis: No.
[00:07:30] Crystal Fincher: Are you happy with Seattle's newly built waterfront?
[00:07:34] Ron Davis: No.
[00:07:34] Crystal Fincher: Do you believe return to work mandates like the one issued by Amazon are necessary to boost Seattle's economy?
[00:07:41] Ron Davis: No.
[00:07:42] Crystal Fincher: Have you taken transit in the past week?
[00:07:44] Ron Davis: Yes.
[00:07:45] Crystal Fincher: Have you ridden a bike in the past week?
[00:07:48] Ron Davis: No.
[00:07:49] Crystal Fincher: Or the past month?
[00:07:50] Ron Davis: Yes.
[00:07:51] Crystal Fincher: Should Pike Place Market allow non-commercial car traffic?
[00:07:55] Ron Davis: No.
[00:07:55] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines?
[00:08:03] Ron Davis: Yes.
[00:08:03] Crystal Fincher: Should we accelerate the elimination of the ability to turn right on red lights to improve pedestrian safety?
[00:08:10] Ron Davis: Yes.
[00:08:11] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever been a member of a union?
[00:08:14] Ron Davis: Not unless you count the Transit Riders Union - not an actual worker union - no.
[00:08:18] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to increase funding and staffing for investigations into labor violations like wage theft and illegal union busting?
[00:08:26] Ron Davis: Yep.
[00:08:27] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever walked on a picket line?
[00:08:29] Ron Davis: Yes.
[00:08:29] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever crossed a picket line?
[00:08:32] Ron Davis: Never.
[00:08:32] Crystal Fincher: Is your campaign staff unionized?
[00:08:36] Ron Davis: We are not. We've encouraged it, but it hasn't happened.
[00:08:38] Crystal Fincher: So if your campaign staff wanted to unionize, would you voluntarily recognize their effort?
[00:08:44] Ron Davis: Absolutely.
[00:08:45] Crystal Fincher: So that's the end of the lightning round - thank you very much for that. Pretty painless, hopefully. Now, lots of people look to work you've done to get a feel for what you've prioritized and how qualified you are to lead. Can you describe something you've accomplished or changed in your district that's tangible or visible to the people who live there and what impact has it had on them?
[00:09:06] Ron Davis: That's a great question. In my district - um, depends on who and who it would be visible to, but I can think of a couple, a couple things that would be significant. One is I'm on the board of the Roosevelt Neighborhood Association and one of the areas I'm working on there is transportation - and specifically, transportation and pedestrian safety. So for instance, we had a situation where a number of people were turning out of driveways the wrong direction on a one-way street and it was creating scary conflicts and some residents raised the issue. We raised the issue to SDOT. We've also raised the issue to - I championed us raising the issue to both SDOT and local businesses - we got better signage implemented. We're getting way, way, way less reports of that. Let's see, something that I specifically get credit for. So also we've done - I'm on the board of the YMCA, so I was our biggest fundraiser last year. And we raised thousands and thousands of dollars to get it - to fund scholarships so that young kids could get afterschool care and summer care that was the same care that fully-paying families were getting. And so that was visible, of course, only to those families - we don't identify which families those are because we don't want those kids to experience any sort of identity segregation around that - but that brought a lot of kids into amazing wraparound care. And we also did some work related to that to bringing food into their families. So there's a couple of things I've worked on recently in the district.
[00:10:35] Crystal Fincher: Perfect, thank you. Now on almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals, while experiencing devastating impacts from extreme heat and cold, to wildfires, floods. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet our 2030 goals?
[00:10:52] Ron Davis: Yeah, so number one is we have to address transportation. So 61% of our emissions come from personal and commercial transport in the city. And so to make progress there, we have to make it so that people don't pay a time and safety and reliability penalty for doing something other than riding a car. So that means everything from a better built-out and disability-accessible sidewalk network - and street crossing network that is safe. Bike lanes that are separate and actually protected, and that form a grid that go from where people are to where they want to be without breaks in them where they're risking their lives. And then of course, frequent, fast, reliable transit. All of those things cost money and they also will cost road space. We are going to actually have to - if we want to make it so that people have a real choice, 'cause right now we're putting a huge thumb on the scale - pushing people into cars. If we want people to have a real choice, we're going to have to make genuine trade-offs in right-of-way. So I think that's the biggest - absolute single best biggest - thing we can do. Obviously we need to electrify everything that remains.
To support that, we also need to address our biggest other area of emissions, which is housing and commercial buildings, right? And so denser housing is more climate friendly, has lower emissions. Mass timber construction is much lower climate - I'm sorry - carbon intensive at construction. And that denser housing of course supports the kind of transportation network that I just described, so there's a virtuous circle there. The other piece that goes with that is allowing commercial in all neighborhoods without forcing businesses to build extra parking, right - through mandates. And once you do that, then also a lot more trips can be confined to existing neighborhoods and don't even need to be - the person shouldn't even have to be able to ask, shouldn't even have to ask themselves the question of - Do I need to get on a bus or do I need to get on a car? - when maybe they can go a block away or three blocks away.
[00:12:50] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now I wanna talk about public safety, particularly while other jurisdictions around the country and several in our region have rolled out alternative response programs to better support those having behavioral health crises - or with a challenge that isn't quite a legal challenge, but needs some intervention - Seattle is stalled in implementing what is a widely-supported idea. Where do you stand on non-police solutions to public safety issues? And what are your thoughts on civilian-led versus co-response models?
[00:13:22] Ron Davis: Okay, great questions. So one is we definitely need non-police response to non-police-appropriate calls. And a huge percentage of those calls could be appropriately handled without a sworn officer present. So I believe SPD did a study of itself and said 12% of calls could be immediately triageable. There was an external body that came in and said it was more like 49%. I have not been close enough to that data to know which one is right, but it's a lot. And it's embarrassing, to be honest, that a city as rich and capable as ours has fallen so far behind in delivering on this - especially when we have this massive behavioral health crisis, when we have a shortage of police officers so their ability to respond to every kind of crisis is diminished. We need to be handing off this workload to people who are better trained for it, because - well, A) because they're better trained for it, B) because a lot of those interactions are where some of our more racially inequitable interactions happen with police, and C) so that we can cut response times - which I think should answer the other part of your question. So I don't think co-response is necessary in most cases.
[00:14:30] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Now, I wanna talk about victims a little bit. There's a lot of people saying they're speaking on behalf of victims, but really speaking over them. And what we actually hear from victims is - is one, they wanna make sure that what happened to them never happens to them or anyone else again. And two, that they want more support and help to recover after what they've just been through. How can we do a better job supporting victims of crime?
[00:14:59] Ron Davis: That's a wonderful question. I have thought about certain parts of that - and I'll tell you which parts - and then I think that you've identified a gap in my own thinking, policy-wise. So the part I've thought about is restorative justice programming, where - and I campaigned for Pooja Vaddadi on this because I was very much interested in, now Judge Vaddadi's, championing restorative justice programming - which ultimately bring, when people come into the justice system, makes part of their restoration program not only focused on rehabilitating them and bringing them back to community. But also trying to make whole or right what they - whatever damage they've done - with care to protect victims from having to relive trauma. So I've thought a lot about it from that standpoint, and I've thought a lot about it in our social safety net. What I haven't thought a lot about is direct victim, direct sort of post-victimization programming. So I don't have a great answer, other than to say that you make a really interesting point - which is we love to talk about victims as sort of in the political chess, but too often we're not actually paying attention to them and their needs. And so I would definitely support spending money to make sure that we are taking care of people who've been victimized, 'cause trauma has lasting effects.
[00:16:17] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely does. I wanna talk about housing and homelessness. And one thing called out by experts as a barrier to reducing homelessness is that the frontline workers - their wages don't cover the cost of living, leading to shortages and challenges there. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for our area, and how can we make that more likely with how we bid for contracts and services?
[00:16:45] Ron Davis: Yeah, I do. I do think they have that responsibility and often they're constrained by funding, but often the funder of last resort is us. And so because our contracts - through things like public development agreements, labor harmony agreements, things we do with other contractors - more often for-profit contractors, we can set the terms on which we engage. I think we need to be setting terms that require higher pay. Now, that being said, we can't get something for nothing. And so we can't just say you have to pay more and then not actually provide the funds in those contracts. So we're gonna have to put our money where our mouth is, or our treasure where our heart is - as the scripture says.
[00:17:21] Crystal Fincher: What are your highest priority plans to address homelessness?
[00:17:26] Ron Davis: Yeah, so I think the data is pretty clear that what causes homelessness to vary by city is housing related, right? So although there are individual causes that push people into homelessness - like mental health, behavioral health issues, or other tragedies in people's lives - the thing that makes homelessness happen in a city is the lack of affordable housing. And so for me, my big focuses there are a mix of supply, subsidies, and stabilization policies. So on the supply side, that means a broad zoning reform - at least tripling the zoning envelope around the city, making sure that no neighborhood is exempt - and creating sort of livable, walkable communities where there's plenty of space to build. And it also means permitting reform, right? So moving to a single-track permitting process - right now we have this dual-track process that's really Byzantine and takes two to three years and it should be more like six weeks to six months - and potentially actually putting a time limit on that and allowing for a builder's remedy. On the subsidy side - even if we get permitting right and zoning right, we start to bend the curve on housing costs and make it so middle-class families can afford to live here again - it's still gonna be tough because this is America and it's an unequal society. And people wanna live in Seattle, so land is expensive. And so we are not gonna be able to meet the needs of all of the market, which means we also need to pay money in - so this is the subsidy side. So aggressive investments in affordable housing, in social housing which is mixed-income, investing in permanent supportive housing for people with chronic behavioral issues, direct subsidies or vouchers for people that appear that they just need a hand up and can get back into the market - you can generally segment the homeless population this way pretty effectively. And then on the stabilization side, displacement often pushes people into homelessness or further down the economic ladder. And so thinking about everything from - I would like to implement now an anti-rent gouging excise tax. I think it would get tied up in court, but I think it actually would be constitutional. It would be a way of sort of backing into something like a milder form of rent control without maybe running afoul of State constitution. I'm fine with the trigger law as well. I would also be interested in something called right-to-return legislation, which basically says - Hey, this is a high displacement risk neighborhood and so if you build here, people need to be able to return at the same price to the equivalent and be compensated in the meantime - which means some of those projects aren't gonna pencil out and it means more housing will get built in richer, lower displacement risk neighborhoods. That's okay. Or it means if people do have temporary displacement that they're gonna land well. I also think just direct aid to folks who appear to be at risk of homelessness - we found in, during the pandemic, is pretty good at - it's one of those pay a dollar in, save seven dollars later and keep people out of actually being on the street.
[00:20:17] Crystal Fincher: Sure.
[00:20:18] Ron Davis: Oh, I should say tiny homes - that's my other, I forgot one other thing, sorry - tiny homes. I also think we need, I do think we need to get, it's a - think of it as like kind of a tourniquet, right? It's not a long-term solution, but it can protect people and kind of stop the bleeding for folks who are on the street right now and have nowhere to go.
[00:20:33] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Now it comes to transit and transportation, we have a long way to go to address our current pedestrian and bicycle safety crisis. We are seeing injuries and deaths at record rates and community demanding change. How would you improve pedestrian and bicycle safety?
[00:20:53] Ron Davis: Yeah, great question. So, this is one of those things where my money is where my mouth is - just like on the last one, I didn't say I worked on statewide legislation to pass the missing middle housing bill. Here, you know, I'm on the board of Seattle Subway, I previously was on the citizen oversight panel at Sound Transit, I'm involved with Neighborhood Greenways, and working on Lid I-5. I - to me, the only safe street is a street is - that is engineered to be safe. And to be - a street that is engineered to be safe has some of the following features. One is it doesn't have long open stretches or really clear visual lines - long, clear visual lines. Two, it doesn't have really wide lanes or series of lanes. Three, it doesn't have wide crossings. So, some of it is just starting to actually engineer our streets because - in a way that slow people down, because we know that when people do - when there are conflicts and there are collisions and people are going slow - first, there's less likely to be a collision. And second, it's much less likely to be nearly so harmful. I mean, it's killing 30 people a year and injuring countless more. Other things that have been proven to be effective - bike lanes have been proven to just reduce overall harm on a road while not significantly impairing total vehicle throughput, raised crosswalks, better signalization, no right turn on red, as you mentioned earlier. I think we need to put more imperative language in our Complete Streets ordinance so that every time we're touching a road, we are moving it toward genuine safe - making it genuinely safe and complete.
[00:22:20] Crystal Fincher: I'm also wondering - we are dealing with transit reliability challenges now with a lot of routes being missed and seeing ghost buses, whether from lack of staffing or because there's just not the funding to continue in some places. What can the City do - recognizing that Sound Transit is a regional entity, King County Metro is a county entity - but what can you do in your capacity as a city councilmember to stabilize transit reliability?
[00:22:51] Ron Davis: There's a few things we can do. So one is we could increase funding - direct supplementary funding - from the general fund, we could increase funding through the transit levy - both. And we do, through the transit levy, buy additional hours from Metro so we have those relationships - we can do that. But I would say - just sort of backing out - there's a few gaps that I think are fundamental. So one is - something I loved about the Crisis Care Center levy is that it also included money for building up a workforce with more living wages, with training, with wraparound services to get people actually into that workforce and retain them. I think we need to be doing that for our transit workers and actually making that a career that's viable for more people. Of course, I also think that has to be paired with more affordable housing around here as well. Second, I think, of course, direct funding to make sure that there's enough buses - again, that we have frequency is high, but you mentioned reliability. I think another big piece of reliability is traffic. Much, much, much of our transit - other than a good chunk of Link - mixes with traffic. And so the cheapest, easiest, fastest way to improve that is red paint. So while Bus Rapid Transit is awesome and I love it, it's expensive - the first thing we can do is take our busiest transit routes and convert them to transit-only lanes and make sure that buses get places fast and reliably. And then you've tackled a huge part of the frequent, fast, reliable trio problem.
[00:24:10] Crystal Fincher: Now, another challenge that Seattle residents are dealing with is the extremely high cost and sometimes low availability of childcare. And that has so many impacts on our larger economy - even for people that don't have kids, this affects our community. But for those who do, the average cost of childcare is now greater than the cost of college, which is just eye-popping.
[00:24:36] Ron Davis: Unbelievable.
[00:24:37] Crystal Fincher: How do you propose to help this problem and to help families with this challenge?
[00:24:43] Ron Davis: Yeah, I think there's small things we can do, and then there's kind of one larger thing that we can do. So I think on the small side, just building capacity - we did see some success during the pandemic with funds that were set aside to say, make small remodels in an in-home childcare setting that would get a bathroom on the first floor that would allow doubling of the number of children available - things like that, that went a long way. So I think there's some smart things we could do there. I think there's smart things we could do in retooling some spaces downtown, which I think would actually bring more office workers downtown. And certainly exempting childcare from floor area ratio - basically it's free square footage, right, for audience members who aren't that nerdy, although most of your audience, I'm guessing, is a little bit nerdy and probably does know what that is - and allowing it, legalizing it at every neighborhood. I think the longer term, though - at some point, we're gonna have to more seriously fund a direct stream here that ensures that the workers are paid wages that make it viable - make it a viable career. And that the capacity is there, and that the affordability is there. And so for me, I imagine - I think that if I'm not mistaken, I think that economists say an affordable childcare is like no more than 7% of your gross income, I can't remember the exact number - but whatever that is, I think we should be capping it and subsidizing it accordingly.
[00:26:08] Crystal Fincher: A lot of good ideas there. I wanna talk about the broader economy a little bit. Seattle has a very, very diverse business community, as does District 4. We have some of the largest companies in the world here, as well as a really diverse and vibrant small business community. And I wanna talk about small businesses who are facing a lot of challenges - I guess from your perspective, what are the biggest challenges that they are facing, and how can you help?
[00:26:35] Ron Davis: Yeah, I think the two biggest are the sort of public safety behavioral health crisis that's happening on their doors - 'cause at least when I think of small business, archetypically I'm thinking of our little retail businesses. Although as a former small business owner, I guess there's multiple types, and that was not what I did. But, and then the other is real estate costs, right? It's very, very expensive to run a shop. So if it's expensive, and you're dealing with behavioral health issues at your door, and there's no civilian response you can call, you're really in a world of hurt. And so obviously everything we talked about earlier with public safety is how I would address the public safety issues, as well as I think we should be investing a lot more just generally in drug treatment and supplementing, even supplementing the Crisis Care Center levy in Seattle. But on the real estate side, Andrew Lewis recently proposed some legislation that is sort of the equivalent of a kind of a soft rent control for small businesses. And I'm interested in that, I like that. I haven't studied it closely enough to know exactly like how much, what do I think, what are the right situations? But especially for some of our like historic districts where a lot of those small minority and immigrant owned businesses tend to get started - like the Ave in Seattle - like I think we absolutely need to not have all of those turn into just open air malls like they have everywhere else. And I also think people need to be able to get started here and be successful.
[00:27:58] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Now, big issue looming over the City of Seattle is the projected revenue shortfall of $224 million - that's what it's currently projected to be starting in 2025. Because the City's mandated by the state to pass a balanced budget, the options to address the deficit are pretty binary - either raise revenue or cut services. How will you approach the issue of how the City collects and spends money on behalf of its constituents?
[00:28:28] Ron Davis: Great question. So one is, I wrote an article a while back that said - it was called "Seattle Needs Money" - and it was related to this exact topic. And it was, my argument was - Hey, this is a shortfall. We're losing a lot of revenue because of things like the real estate excise tax slowing down and we're gonna have to gut essential services or we're gonna have to raise money. And so the best choice of those is to raise money. And by the way, our taxes are really regressive - they fall a lot, much more on working class people, middle class people, poor people than they do on wealthy folks. And so our taxes need to be more progressive - as in they need to take more from people who have more - to rebalance our tax code a little bit. How would I do that? Some of my favorite options right now that I'm interested in and would probably just vote yes on now would be A) we could increase JumpStart - we could increase its scope and we could increase its magnitude a little bit. I think it should run from more like 1-4%, not 0.7-2.1% or whatever it is - I think you're still very much in the safe zone where you're not killing the golden goose or anything like that. Alex Pedersen has proposed a 3% top-off to the 7% tax on extreme capital gains - I think that's also a reasonable idea, I wouldn't do his funny switch with water bills, but it could be a significant - that'd be at least another $30 million. Between those two, you'd start to see a substantial difference. I think a vacancy tax is fine - it's not gonna raise a ton of money. I'm also interested in - I have spoken with some constitutional scholars to make sure this would be cool - but I am very interested in a 1% income tax with a $700 rebate, which would be free or actually a check if you make $70,000 or less, and above that would start to bite at 1% of your income. So it would be de facto progressive, but statutorily it would be written in flat. So between those, you could cover the entire gap and you would have money left over for things like fentanyl treatment, and affordable housing, and standing up a behavioral health crisis response, and offering people transportation choices - which in contrast, my opponent says she wants to do all those things, but wants to cut $200 million, right? You can't just do magic.
[00:30:33] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and I do enjoy hearing concrete ideas - much appreciated for that. Now, as we wrap up today, there are a lot of people trying to make the choice between you and your opponent who you just brought up - trying to determine why they should vote for you versus your opponent. What do you tell voters?
[00:30:54] Ron Davis: Yeah, I mean, usually, obviously I'm talking to them and understanding their values and what it is that's important to them, so it kind of depends on the issue. But I would say, like - at a high level, you know, I think we should raise money to deal with our deficit. My opponent Maritza Rivera thinks we should cut $200 million from the general fund, which will impact things like affordable housing, and drug treatment, and civilian responses, and pothole filling, and transit. I think that our city's tax code needs to be more progressive, she does not want to make it more progressive. I'm really focused on housing and homelessness as well as public safety, I think she's kind of only focused on public safety. My public safety plan doesn't ignore what SPD says is possible when it comes to hiring more officers, hers says that we can hire 12 times as much as they say is possible. So I think one of us is much more grounded in reality and aligned with our values, and I think the other is not. One last thing is our histories too are something that are worth looking at, right? I have a history of touching things, and having them go well, and having the people around me say - Hey, this was a really, really good experience. And 26 of 40 of her employees wrote a letter to the mayor not long before she announced that she was running - saying she shouldn't be trusted with City funds and had created a toxic work environment along with her supervisor. So I think the contrast is clear.
[00:32:16] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much for your time today and sharing your plans should you be elected to city council with all of the listeners today. Thank you so much.
[00:32:25] Ron Davis: Thank you so much, Crystal. It's an honor to be on your show - I'm a diehard listener.
[00:32:29] Crystal Fincher: Much appreciated. Thank you.
Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Tuesday topical show, Crystal chats with Maritza Rivera about her campaign for Seattle City Council District 4. Listen and learn more about Maritza and her thoughts on:
- [01:06] - Why she is running
- [04:46] - Lightning round!
- [19:29] - What is an accomplishment of hers that impacts District 4
- [22:51] - Response to ARTS staff letter complaints
- [24:58] - City budget shortfall: Raise revenue or cut services?
- [29:02] - Public Safety: Alternative response
- [31:24] - Victim support
- [33:33] - Housing and homelessness: Frontline worker wages
- [34:49] - Climate change
- [36:56] - Transit reliability
- [39:15] - Bike and pedestrian safety
- [39:52] - Small business support
- [41:43] - Childcare: Affordability and accessibility
- [43:40] - Difference between her and opponent
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Maritza Rivera at https://maritzaforseattle.com/.
Maritza Rivera
Maritza is running to make restoring our public safety system a priority because she knows from personal experience that failing to take public safety seriously harms low-income and underserved communities the most. She won’t rest until we get to 5-minute response times for priority 911 calls, take home and car break-ins seriously, get guns off our streets and out of our schools and shut down open-air drug markets.
Maritza loves Seattle, the small businesses, food, arts, music, and diverse populations that make up our city’s rich fabric. Maritza is committed to listening to everyone and working with everyone – to find real solutions to real challenges we cannot ignore any longer.
Resources
Campaign Website - Maritza Rivera
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, today I'm very pleased to be welcoming a candidate for Seattle City Council District 4 to the program - welcome, Maritza Rivera.
[00:01:01] Maritza Rivera: Thank you, Crystal. Thanks for having me on the program today.
[00:01:05] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, I wanted to start off by hearing why you are running.
[00:01:12] Maritza Rivera: Thank you for the question, Crystal. I'm running because I'm a mom of two teenage daughters who go to Ingraham High School, where - sadly, and I'm sure you know, and everyone else by now knows - there was a shooting in the fall last November. And a student got killed by another student. And our kids were all in lockdown for hours. And as I was sitting - not sitting, standing - at the parking lot waiting for the kids to come out and my girls to come out, it was, you know, a frightening experience. And I thought, you know, the public safety issues in Seattle right now are such that I can't sit around and watch what's happening. And when our current councilmember, Alex Pedersen, decided not to run again, I thought - I have 30 years of public service, I have something I can offer the city council, and I can't sit around and watch - I have to try to do something. You know, I grew up in New York City in the Bronx, in a mainly Black and brown neighborhood - and it was low-income and it wasn't safe. You know, we were safe in our homes, but it wasn't safe walking to and from school. And I moved to Seattle 22 years ago because it was so safe and vibrant and beautiful - and I thought what a great place it would be to start and raise a family, and we did that. And then fast forward - you know, things have really changed in Seattle - and, you know, I got into the race to address what I think is most urgent right now, which is the public safety issues across the city that the D4 is also experiencing, like the, you know, the shooting at my daughter's school, like the - daughters' school - the, there are home break-ins and car break-ins, the businesses on the commercial corridors of the D4 are suffering. Those small businesses - they're getting their windows broken into, there're folks using drugs blocking their entryways. So, you know, these are all the issues - there've been shootings in this neighborhood apart from the school shooting. And so we really need to address that.
And, you know, we need to do various things on the, you know, unhoused folks - we need to get folks off the street. I think it's inhumane to leave people living on the street where there's no sanitation and amenities, where women and youth are particularly vulnerable. Lots of folks in those encampments are vulnerable to, you know, the drug dealers who are preying on these folks. We really got to get them indoors. We need to provide services - both mental health and drug addiction services - but we need to have folks off the streets. You know, we need to do better that way. And so for all these reasons, I thought - you know, I'm going to get into this race and I'm gonna do what I can to help get our city back on track. I think the mayor's doing a great job, but he needs a city council that's gonna work with him to actually accomplish positive change.
[00:04:45] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Well, we are going to add a different element into this than we have in some of our prior years' candidate interviews and do a little lightning round here in the interview. Pretty quick and painless - but just some quick yes or no, or quick answer questions. So starting off - This year, did you vote yes on the King County Crisis Care Centers levy?
[00:05:08] Maritza Rivera: Yes.
[00:05:09] Crystal Fincher: This year, did you vote yes on the Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services levy?
[00:05:13] Maritza Rivera: Yes.
[00:05:14] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote in favor of Seattle's Social Housing Initiative 135?
[00:05:21] Maritza Rivera: That's the PDA [Public Development Authority]?
[00:05:24] Crystal Fincher: Yes.
[00:05:25] Maritza Rivera: No.
[00:05:26] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Bruce Harrell or Lorena González for Mayor?
[00:05:30] Maritza Rivera: Bruce Harrell.
[00:05:32] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Nicole Thomas Kennedy or Ann Davison for Seattle City Attorney?
[00:05:38] Maritza Rivera: Ann Davison.
[00:05:39] Crystal Fincher: In 2022, did you vote for Leesa Manion or Jim Ferrell for King County Prosecutor?
[00:05:46] Maritza Rivera: Oh my God. I'm so sorry, I'm having a - Leesa Manion, Jim - I can't remember, Crystal.
[00:06:04] Crystal Fincher: Okay. In 2022, did you vote for Patty Murray or Tiffany Smiley for US Senate?
[00:06:10] Maritza Rivera: Patty Murray.
[00:06:12] Crystal Fincher: Do you rent or own your residence?
[00:06:15] Maritza Rivera: Own.
[00:06:16] Crystal Fincher: Should parking enforcement be housed within SPD?
[00:06:24] Maritza Rivera: I don't have an opinion on that one.
[00:06:27] Crystal Fincher: Are you a landlord?
[00:06:30] Maritza Rivera: We are.
[00:06:31] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to require landlords to report metrics, including how much rent they're charging, to better help plan housing and development needs in the district?
[00:06:47] Maritza Rivera: You know, I'm gonna say maybe on that one.
[00:06:51] Crystal Fincher: Are there instances where you support sweeps of homeless encampments?
[00:06:57] Maritza Rivera: I, you know, we need to get people off the streets. So I do support getting folks off the streets and into sheltering.
[00:07:09] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to provide additional funding for Seattle's Social Housing Public Development Authority?
[00:07:17] Maritza Rivera: And that one also, I would say maybe, because it depends on - the reason I didn't vote for it was because I feel like we have all these programs for housing and I need to see, you know, where are we with what the investments we're already making before we add another thing. So I just have concerns about adding something else before we know what we're doing with the current investments that we have. But I think that, you know, it passed. So it doesn't matter, you know, it's the law of the land and I respect that. And I think that we should have - you know, let them do a, let us do a project - let us invest in a project and see how it goes. And if it's successful, then great - we should keep funding it.
[00:08:07] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with King County Executive Constantine's statement that the King County Jail should be closed?
[00:08:20] Maritza Rivera: You know, to be honest, Crystal - I don't know enough about why he's, you know, he's making the recommendation to close it to be able to answer yes or no on that one.
[00:08:31] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Would you vote to allow police in schools?
[00:08:37] Maritza Rivera: Depends what kind of police. Like I think if it's community police officers and if it's in a - you know, what the details around it is - I think I might support something like that, but it just depends what it is.
[00:08:53] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to allow any armed presence in schools?
[00:08:59] Maritza Rivera: Armed presence. I don't think we need armed presence in schools, but I do need - I think we need to make the relationship between, you know, our youth and schools and the police more - you know, a better relationship.
[00:09:16] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget for a civilian-led mental health crisis response?
[00:09:25] Maritza Rivera: I would have to see what that looks like. Civilian-led without any experience working with mental health folks - I'm sorry, with folks that are experiencing mental health crisis - like, I mean, you need mental health professionals to work with folks. So if it's in conjunction working with the mental health professionals, perhaps. But folks experiencing mental crisis really need a mental health professional.
[00:09:54] Crystal Fincher: Okay, and for these, we're going for quick yes, no, or maybe answers. We have a whole section to talk about all the details. So I promise you - you'll get the ability to explain yourself on topics in a fuller way after we get done with this.
Do you support allocation in the City budget to increase the pay of human service workers?
[00:10:14] Maritza Rivera: Sorry, can you repeat the question?
[00:10:17] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget to increase the pay of human service workers?
[00:10:25] Maritza Rivera: Maybe.
[00:10:27] Crystal Fincher: Do you support removing funds in the City budget for forced encampment removals and instead allocating funds towards a Housing First approach?
[00:10:42] Maritza Rivera: Most, I mean, maybe, Crystal. Again, we need to look at what the proposal - these are hard to answer yes or no because without the details, it's hard to say on some of these.
[00:10:54] Crystal Fincher: Do you support abrogating or removing the funds from unfilled SPD positions and putting them toward meaningful public safety measures?
[00:11:06] Maritza Rivera: We need to hire more police officers. So, I mean, taking money away from being able to do that, and you can't do the money-
[00:11:16] Crystal Fincher: Right, this isn't for hiring police officers. This is money that was allocated for unfilled positions that were then not hired yet. So in this year's budget - where there is money there for them to be hired, but they weren't hired yet.
[00:11:29] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, but it's not ongoing funding. So, you know, that's a maybe - because if it's, you're funding something temporarily, but then once you hire the officers, you're not gonna have the money to redirect the resources. So if you're saying the funds for this year's budget that haven't been used, and it's a one-time thing-
[00:11:51] Crystal Fincher: Well, there would still be money for hiring in successive budgets. It's just if they didn't use it in the current year.
[00:11:55] Maritza Rivera: Correct - current, but I mean - yeah.
[00:11:57] Crystal Fincher: So you think it should be saved and added to the next budget? Is that-
[00:12:01] Maritza Rivera: No, no - what I'm saying is if you're gonna use it for a one-time investment in something, then that's fine. But if it's not for ongoing - if you need to hire the officers, right? 'Cause the problem, Crystal, is sometimes - you know, if you're investing in something, that thing you're investing in, if it's a community thing, that needs ongoing investment as well. So I just wanna differentiate - if we're not using it this year, then we should redirect it to something else, like the budget in general of the City. But then it has to be something that's a one-time because then for the following year, you're gonna need it to fund the thing you originally-
[00:12:44] Crystal Fincher: Yes.
[00:12:44] Maritza Rivera: -fund, right?
[00:12:45] Crystal Fincher: And that is a useful differentiation.
[00:12:48] Maritza Rivera: Yeah.
[00:12:48] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocating money in the City budget for supervised consumption sites?
[00:12:56] Maritza Rivera: I would support - you know, I've had-
[00:12:58] Crystal Fincher: Going for a yes, no, or maybe, yes, no, or maybe.
[00:13:01] Maritza Rivera: Well, maybe on that, but-
[00:13:04] Crystal Fincher: Okay.
[00:13:05] Maritza Rivera: More leaning toward no, because I think the Fire Department actually has a better solution that I would support instead of consumption sites.
[00:13:14] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Do you support increasing funding in the City-
[00:13:16] Maritza Rivera: I'm sorry, the Fire Department, did I say Fire?
[00:13:18] Crystal Fincher: I think you said that.
[00:13:21] Maritza Rivera: Okay, great.
[00:13:22] Crystal Fincher: Do you support increasing funding in the City budget for violence intervention programs?
[00:13:28] Maritza Rivera: Yes.
[00:13:29] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't give the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General subpoena power?
[00:13:40] Maritza Rivera: I need more information about that, Crystal.
[00:13:43] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian?
[00:13:53] Maritza Rivera: I need more information about the SPOG contract. So anything related to that.
[00:14:00] Crystal Fincher: Okay. So again, opposing a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move police funding to public safety alternatives? Again, not enough information?
[00:14:12] Maritza Rivera: Can you tell me the question again? Sorry.
[00:14:18] Crystal Fincher: Sure. Do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move police funding to public safety alternatives?
[00:14:32] Maritza Rivera: So take money away from the police department to put into police alternatives.
[00:14:38] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that prohibits, or impedes, or makes harder the ability of the city to move police funding to public safety alternatives?
[00:14:53] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, I do need more information.
[00:14:55] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers?
[00:15:04] Maritza Rivera: Ask me again - sorry - do I?
[00:15:07] Crystal Fincher: Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers? So if they're working - doing parking duty, or traffic direction duty - off-duty. Or if they're working in a security capacity off-duty. Do you support eliminating their ability to do that in SPD uniform?
[00:15:37] Maritza Rivera: I need more information about that too, Crystal. These are very detailed.
[00:15:45] Crystal Fincher: They're specific questions.
[00:15:47] Maritza Rivera: Very specific - correct.
[00:15:49] Crystal Fincher: Yes. Will you vote to ensure that trans and non-binary students are allowed to play on the sports teams that fit with their gender identities?
[00:15:58] Maritza Rivera: Yes, I support that.
[00:16:00] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans people can use bathrooms and public facilities that match their gender?
[00:16:05] Maritza Rivera: Yes.
[00:16:06] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with the Seattle City Council's decision to implement the JumpStart Tax?
[00:16:14] Maritza Rivera: Yes.
[00:16:16] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to reduce or divert the JumpStart Tax in any way?
[00:16:24] Maritza Rivera: Need more information about that - it depends.
[00:16:27] Crystal Fincher: Are you happy with Seattle's newly built waterfront?
[00:16:34] Maritza Rivera: I mean, as a user of the waterfront, I think it's a great project. Obviously, I don't have the details of the investments that are being made and how things are getting completed, but I think it's a great project for the city.
[00:16:53] Crystal Fincher: Do you believe return to work mandates like the one issued by Amazon are necessary to boost Seattle's economy?
[00:17:02] Maritza Rivera: Yes, absolutely.
[00:17:05] Crystal Fincher: Have you taken-
[00:17:06] Maritza Rivera: We need to get folks back into the office if we're gonna get downtown back on track.
[00:17:11] Crystal Fincher: Have you taken transit in the past week?
[00:17:14] Maritza Rivera: Yes. Light rail.
[00:17:15] Crystal Fincher: Have you ridden a bike in the past week?
[00:17:19] Maritza Rivera: No.
[00:17:20] Crystal Fincher: Should Pike Place Market allow non-commercial car traffic?
[00:17:25] Maritza Rivera: Actually, I would like to see it closed off to non-commercial, which is a proposal - I know - that's being floated around.
[00:17:34] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines?
[00:17:42] Maritza Rivera: Sorry, ask again.
[00:17:43] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines?
[00:17:50] Maritza Rivera: Yes, we should do all we can to finish the extensions.
[00:17:56] Crystal Fincher: Should we accelerate the elimination of the ability to turn right on red lights to improve pedestrian safety?
[00:18:04] Maritza Rivera: Yes.
[00:18:05] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever been a member of a union?
[00:18:08] Maritza Rivera: I haven't personally, but my dad was when I was growing up.
[00:18:15] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to increase funding and staffing for investigations into labor violations like wage theft and illegal union busting?
[00:18:24] Maritza Rivera: I definitely support that.
[00:18:27] Crystal Fincher: So you would vote to increase funding?
[00:18:30] Maritza Rivera: I mean, I support doing it. I can't say - I mean, I don't know what the current, where we currently are with that work at OLS [Office of Labor Standards], but I definitely support it. And if we need more funding, then we need to look - figure out how to get it.
[00:18:47] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever walked on a picket line?
[00:18:49] Maritza Rivera: Yes. No - like walked with the picketers.
[00:18:53] Crystal Fincher: Supporting. Supporting the picketers, yes.
[00:18:56] Maritza Rivera: Supporting - yes.
[00:18:57] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever crossed a picket line?
[00:19:04] Maritza Rivera: No.
[00:19:05] Crystal Fincher: Is your campaign staff unionized?
[00:19:12] Maritza Rivera: Campaign - no.
[00:19:13] Crystal Fincher: If your campaign staff wants to unionize, will you voluntarily recognize their effort?
[00:19:19] Maritza Rivera: Yes.
[00:19:21] Crystal Fincher: Well, that's the end of our lightning round. Pretty painless, there we go. So back to other questions. Lots of people look to work you've done to get a feel for what you prioritize and how qualified you are to lead. Can you describe something you've accomplished or changed in your district, and what impact that has had on residents there?
[00:19:44] Maritza Rivera: I've worked - so I've worked at the City for a number of years now - I just resigned from my position as Deputy Director in the Office of Arts and Culture, where I primarily was in charge of getting our budget through the budget process. And prior to that, I was in Mayor Durkan's administration - worked in the Mayor's office and worked with a portfolio of City departments - a lot of it related to their budgets and reviewing of their budgets. So I think in general - not just in the D4, but across the city - I've been involved in reviewing department budgets and working to make sure and bring accountability to those budgets. And making sure that I was implementing the mayor's - and the city council, when they passed the budget - implementing the programs and the services that were passed in the budget. So like I'll say most recently, 'cause I was just at ARTS, there was recovery funding for arts organizations and artists across the city. And I worked - our staff did a great job - and I worked with our staff to get those dollars out the door as quickly as possible, particularly post-pandemic. And the department gives grants out to organizations, arts organizations, across the city. So we work to make sure and we were getting those grants out as quickly as possible. So I think these are things that are not just specific to the D4, but do include the D4.
True, in the Durkan administration - unfortunately, we were in a pandemic. And one thing that I feel really proud of is - I worked on reopening of the farmers markets after everything was shut down. It was really the first thing that was opened, and I worked with the farmers markets across the city - including the one at the University District - to make sure that they opened it safely during that post-pandemic, not post-, but during the pandemic, actually - I shouldn't say post-pandemic - during that pandemic time. And I'm really proud of the work that I did there because the farmers market was open and available to the residents here in the D4. And I'm proud to say there were no outbreaks at the farmers markets because we were following the public health guidelines, and working with the farmers markets' leaders who did a great job in putting the guidelines - following the guidelines and making sure that they were doing all they could to make sure that there were no outbreaks so we could continue to keep the markets open.
[00:22:51] Crystal Fincher: I wanted to ask more about your time at ARTS because there was reporting related to your time there saying that 26 out of 40 ARTS staff at the time signed a letter really detailing complaints against you, highlighted by three - that leadership disregarded City policies, that there was a toxic work environment, and that the staff's ability to do its work for the community was hindered. With over half of the employees there signing their name to this letter publicly and this being handed over to the Ombuds office with their concerns, how do you respond to this? Do you think that accurately reflects your time there? Were there any thing that these employees said that to you was something that you could improve or reflect on?
[00:23:39] Maritza Rivera: I'll say, Crystal, that the mayor brought in Director, or former Director - or former Interim Director - royal alley-barnes to direct the office. She, in turn, brought me on - I was backfilling for someone at the time. And, you know, I know that staff - you know, every time there's change of leadership, staff has - some staff have a hard time. And so - you know, we, I feel really proud of the work that I did while I was at ARTS. And I have a lot of respect for the folks that work there. I know change is hard, but we worked together and we were able to get a lot accomplished, and I feel really proud of my personal work while I was at ARTS.
[00:24:36] Crystal Fincher: As you consider those allegations in your time there, is there anything to you that you could have done differently to change that outcome?
[00:24:47] Maritza Rivera: Again, I just feel really proud of the work that we were accomplished - I mean, that we accomplished together. That's - you know, I feel proud of the work there.
[00:24:58] Crystal Fincher: Well, I wanna ask you about the budget, because the City of Seattle is projected to have a $224 million budget shortfall in 2025. The City's mandated to pass a balanced budget, so the options to address this are either raise revenue, cut services, or some combination of those two. Which one of those will be your approach to the budget?
[00:25:22] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, thank you for the question, Crystal - and obviously this comes up a lot. First and foremost, I think we need to look at the budget and make sure that we are accountable to the dollars that we're currently investing. So I say that, to say - we need to look at the programs that are being funded and make sure that they're having the outcomes that we intended - because part of budgeting is making sure that the money that you're using is being well spent. And you don't know that if you don't know what outcomes you're getting - How many folks are you helping? Is it really helping? Does the community feel like it's helping? And so we need to do the reviewing of those programs in each of those departments to make sure that the programs that we're funding are actually, like I said, having the intended outcomes. If they are, then we should continue them. If they're not, then we should redirect the resources to something different that will have the outcomes that we're intending. So we need to engage in that exercise before then we look at - excuse me - raising revenue. And so that, to me, is really important - the accountability piece. I feel really strongly - I mean, my dad was a blue collar worker and he paid taxes, and I just, I'm very sensitive - people work really hard for their money and we wanna make sure that we're spending their money, we're accountable to those dollars. And then once we do that exercise, then we can look toward - if we need to raise revenue, then we can look at how we would do that. But I do feel like the accountability piece is really important and it's been missing.
[00:27:18] Crystal Fincher: Well, I do wanna get into more specifics here because that is not a small budget cut - pretty significant - so unless that review winds up with some pretty steep cuts or that's the outcome - that will end up, there will also need to be revenue. There were some options presented by a revenue workgroup. Do you support revenue options, and which ones do you see yourself supporting or advocating?
[00:27:44] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, Crystal - I can't say now which ones I would support. You know, I'd have to, I'd look at it and see and talk to, you know, folks. And see and then talk to my colleagues and see what makes sense for the city - and talk to the mayor, obviously, as well. So we need to do this working together. We need to find these solutions working together as a city council and working with the mayor. So I can't say today which ones I would support, but I will say that we need to work together to look at which ones make the most sense for the city.
[00:28:25] Crystal Fincher: Are there any of the recommendations that you would not support, or what would be the priority revenue options or what you'd be most likely to support?
[00:28:36] Maritza Rivera: I don't have - I can't say today what that would be.
[00:28:41] Crystal Fincher: Okay, so nothing from the workgroup that you've heard makes it to the top of the list?
[00:28:48] Maritza Rivera: There's nothing today that - I wouldn't prioritize it right now. I'd wanna have conversations about it.
[00:28:54] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. I do wanna talk about-
[00:28:56] Maritza Rivera: I haven't met with the workgroup and I haven't had the opportunity to have those conversations.
[00:29:01] Crystal Fincher: I see. When it comes to public safety, several jurisdictions around the country and in our region have rolled out alternative response programs to better support those having a behavioral health crisis or other issues, but Seattle has stalled in implementing what's a widely-supported idea. Money's been allocated, but it has not been implemented yet. Where do you stand on non-police solutions to public safety issues? And what are your thoughts on civilian-led versus co-response models?
[00:29:32] Maritza Rivera: Well, I think that we need to support alternative responses because we know that, in certain cases, a police officer is not trained to handle a situation - but a mental health or social provider or social worker's in a better position to, is trained to respond to those situations and be able to deescalate. In terms of - you know, I think the non-police solutions where there's a co-response - sometimes that's appropriate and that's what we, you know, should support. You know, I think the Health One model is a great model - it's proven to be successful and it's one that we should look to invest more in. Those are the kinds of models that I think have proven results to work and something that we should look at expanding. And then, also - I mean, in terms of in the community - when the police budget got cut, things like the police, the community policing efforts, also - those are the things that kind of go first. And I think those are a really great way of working with community in the neighborhoods to really do, to handle, to address the public safety issues. And so I think that we need to go back to basics that way and make sure that all our neighborhoods have that community policing - community police and those neighborhoods working on the ground with the community folks to address the public safety issues in the neighborhoods.
[00:31:24] Crystal Fincher: Now, I do wanna talk about victims and survivors. We talk a lot about victims - people who have been impacted by crime or who have been harmed - but most of what we hear are people speaking for victims or over victims. And we don't often listen to what they're saying, and what they say mostly is that - one, they wanna make sure that what happened to them doesn't happen to them or anyone else ever again. And they want better support, more effective support, in helping to get beyond what happened to them - to help mitigate the harm that occurred, whether it's from an assault or a theft or you name it, some help getting beyond that. What can you do, in your capacity as a city councilperson to better support and help victims or people who have been harmed?
[00:32:19] Maritza Rivera: I mean, I think - I mean, we need to listen to folks and we need to listen to - you know, we need to listen to their experiences and we need to listen to, you know, their needs. I think that about victims and also survivors - and just in general, as a city councilmember, your job is to listen to your residents in your - to the residents in your district, in this case district. It used to be they weren't district positions, right? They were citywide. But now you need to listen to folks in your district and make sure that you are, you know, not operating in a vacuum when you are doing the work because really, ultimately, the work is to support the residents of the city. And so that includes victims as well - listening and listening to what their needs are, because you need to be well-informed when you are making these decisions that have an impact across the city.
[00:33:33] Crystal Fincher: One thing called out by experts as a barrier to the homelessness response is that frontline worker wages don't cover the cost of living - causing staffing issues, impacting the level of service. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for our area? And how can you make that more likely with how the City bids for and contracts for services?
[00:33:59] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, absolutely - I think the nonprofits need to make sure that they're paying living wages to the folks that they hire, in the same way that the City does. And, you know, I mean, I think with the bids - that's an area where you can, as you're working with these providers and nonprofits, making sure that you're setting up funding models that require nonprofits and providers to support workers and make sure that they're paying living wages to their workers.
[00:34:49] Crystal Fincher: Now, on almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals, while we're experiencing devastating impacts from extreme heat and cold, wildfires, floods locally and around the globe. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet 2030 goals?
[00:35:09] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, I think my biggest priority in terms of the climate is really on the transportation front. I think - you know, I came from a city where we had a robust transportation system and it meant that I didn't have a driver's license 'til I was 30 years old because I - and I took public transit everywhere. So, you know, Seattle - we need to be investing in a transportation system that's on par and competitive with other cities across the country. And, you know, we've lagged behind - it's taken us a long time to get even where we are, but we need to go further. And it really - I think, is one of the best ways that you can address climate change - is to get people out of their cars and using public transportation. And so I support, you know, the light rail, buses. We really need to get folks, you know, utilizing these services, but we can only do so if we have a robust service. And so we really need to focus on investments in the transportation. So, you know, like Move, the Move Seattle Levy's coming up next year - or not coming up, but, you know, renewal, hopefully. The council, whoever's sitting council, will vote to renew it and put it on the ballot again for folks in the city. But I really do think that we need to continue and we need to expand on the transportation investments, so we can have a robust system that folks will utilize and we can get folks out of their cars.
[00:36:56] Crystal Fincher: One major issue that people are saying is preventing them from getting out of their cars right now is transit reliability. Because of staffing shortages, other issues - the reliability of buses has been tanking with buses not showing up when they're scheduled, routes being suspended, some being canceled - and really putting people who are currently riding in a bind, forcing some of them out of transit and into cars. Now, Sound Transit is a regional entity and King County Metro is a county entity, but as you talked about with the Move Seattle Levy and other things, the City does impact transit service in the city. So what can you, as a city councilmember, do to stabilize transit reliability?
[00:37:43] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, well, we need to work in partnership with Sound Transit and the county to make sure that we are providing a service to residents that is robust and reliable. But we can only do so if we have strong partnerships, because to your point - we make investments, but Sound Transit is the entity that's responsible for implementing, right? So we need to have really strong partnerships with these entities. And I will say reliability is a huge issue, but I'm gonna say my experience is public safety is a huge issue as well. Right now, public safety, in my opinion, has impacted people's not wanting to take the light rail and buses. And then we've also seen bus drivers that have been impacted because of folks doing drugs on the buses and the light - well, bus drivers on the buses and the operators on the light rail. So we need to do, we need - I think public safety is an equally important piece to address when we're looking at trying to increase ridership of the light rail and buses across the city.
[00:39:10] Crystal Fincher: How would you-
[00:39:11] Maritza Rivera: And we need to work with our partners on that as well.
[00:39:14] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. How would you improve pedestrian and bicycle safety?
[00:39:20] Maritza Rivera: We need to make sure we have the robust bike lanes and we need to do things like the signal - I don't know what you call it - but the signal, when it changes, it lets the pedestrian, it gives some time for the pedestrian to cross before it changes for the driver. And so we need to do more of that across the city. We have that in certain places, but it's not robust. And so we need to do that - those kinds of things - to promote pedestrian and bike safety.
[00:39:52] Crystal Fincher: Now, we have a vibrant economy and a vibrant business community in the city and in the district. We have some of the largest companies headquartered here and nearby, but also really diverse and varied small businesses. What are the highest priorities for small businesses in your district, and what can you do to better support those businesses?
[00:40:17] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, the small business owners that I've talked to in the district are really concerned about public safety because they've had to deal with, like I said earlier, windows broken into. There's a business in the D5 that I know has gotten broken into five times and have been robbed. And so - those five times - so we need to support the public safety issues. We would need to provide support for the public safety issues that these small businesses are facing. You know, as you said, we have a vibrant economy. And I think that the lifeblood of any city is it's small businesses - it really - the small businesses keep a city vibrant. Obviously big business provides jobs, so that's important too. But right now I think what the small businesses are mostly facing are those public safety issues. And so we need to really work with them to make sure that we are addressing those issues so that folks are coming out and going to those businesses, and the business owners aren't losing money just trying to deal with the public safety issues that they're experiencing.
[00:41:43] Crystal Fincher: Now I do wanna talk about another issue crucial to our local economy and that's childcare. Many families are dealing with a high cost of childcare - it's the number two cost behind housing for most families. And we recently got reporting that shows that childcare is more expensive than college now. Families are breaking their budgets trying to afford this, and we can't talk about inflation or affordability without contending with childcare. What can you do to ease the burden on families for childcare costs?
[00:42:18] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, so it - I mean, I experienced firsthand just the childcare issues, a lack thereof. And I'm particularly concerned - I mean, I'm lucky that I actually took some time off to be able to care for my children because it wasn't penciling out - what I was making was going toward childcare. And it was difficult to even find the childcare to begin with, so we need to be supporting the opening of more childcare centers. We need to make sure that childcare providers are working - workers I mean, are making living wages because it's a hard job and, you know, folks are not gonna wanna do it if it's not, you know, a living wage. And so we need to support those things. And I know that the City has some childcare subsidies and my understanding is not everyone is aware - so making sure that community folks, you know, in low - in our underserved communities are aware of the services is really important too on the childcare front. But we definitely need more childcare options and we need to make sure workers are making a living wage so that they will want those jobs.
[00:43:40] Crystal Fincher: Now, as we move to close this interview, there are still a lot of people trying to make up their minds between you and your opponent. When a voter is asking - Why should I support you? Or what is the difference between you and the person you're running against? - what do you say?
[00:43:58] Maritza Rivera: What I say, Crystal, is that there is a stark difference between us in that - my opponent does not support the mayor's proposal to hire more police officers to address public safety. My opponent doesn't support the drug possession law, which is supported by the mayor and which I do support - and which our current councilmember in the D4 brought forward, actually, with Councilmember Nelson as well. That is huge. If folks - public safety, I have a sense of urgency of public safety. I've said, and I've been consistent, this is why I got into the race to begin with - was the public safety issues because of what happened at my daughters' school. And my opponent is not supporting the laws that would address public safety right now in the city - and that's what we're suffering the most from in the city currently - are the public safety issues. So that is a huge difference.
I also think that my opponent's rhetoric is divisive. He's named-called councilmembers. And I talked to a voter the other day who said - my opponent went to her door and was, you know, name-calling and being derogatory on some councilmembers and they didn't like that my opponent was doing that. So I don't think that - you know, you can agree to disagree on the city council and still work together. I worked for Tom Rasmussen when Tom was first elected. And, you know, one thing I saw with that group of city councilmembers - they didn't all agree, you're not always gonna agree, but they did work together to find compromise and move forward. And there was civil discourse. And that's what's missing from the city council right now. And, you know, my opponent's divisive rhetoric is more of the same of the city councilmembers who are engaged in that type of behavior. And so those are two stark differences between us.
[00:46:31] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much for joining us today, candidate for Seattle City Council District 4, Maritza Rivera. Thank you so much.
[00:46:39] Maritza Rivera: Thank you, Crystal. Have a great day.
[00:46:42] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by the former Director of Progressive Majority who has now transitioned into public service but remains involved in numerous political efforts across Washington, EJ Juárez!
They discuss Mayor Bruce Harrell's business-as-usual budget proposal - how it lacks bold vision, doesn't address the pressing problems we face, and double downs on police as our only public safety solution by ignoring calls for civilian-led alternative response and reviving conversation about failed ShotSpotter technology.
Crystal and EJ's conversation then moves to Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison signing onto a pro-encampment sweeps brief, Target trying to blame store closures on crime, Green Jacket Lady schooling a Fox News reporter, and a study showing drug decriminalization didn't lead to increased overdose deaths.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, EJ Juárez at @EliseoJJuarez.
Resources
“Joy Hollingsworth, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 3” from Hacks & Wonks
“Alex Hudson, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 3” from Hacks & Wonks
“Harrell's Proposed Budget Brings Back Shotspotter, Funds Human Services Workers, Includes No New Diversion for Drug Users” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“Business Bestie Mayor Harrell Ignores Gaping Hole in the Budget” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
“Four Problems with the ShotSpotter Gunshot Detection System” by Jay Stanley from the Amercan Civil Liberties Union
“City Attorney Davison Signs Brief Demanding Right to Sweep Encampments Without Offering Shelter” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“As Seattle Targets close, shoppers question if crime really is to blame” by Renata Geraldo from The Seattle Times
@DivestSPD on Twitter: “Seattle Times headline: Target closing stores due to crime. 21st paragraph: Shoplifting is down 60% overall, 40% in UDistrict, and 35% downtown. Next graph: Retailers don't always report, so you can just treat those numbers like they don't matter.”
“Seattleites challenge Fox News' spin on the city's crime” by Melissa Santos from Axios
@abughazalehkat on Twitter: “Fox News tried to do a bunch of scary man-on-the-street interviews about crime. It didn't go well.”
“New study suggests looser WA drug laws do not mean more overdose deaths” by Claire Withycombe from The Seattle Times
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
If you missed this week's topical shows, we continued our series of Seattle City Council candidate interviews. All 14 candidates for 7 positions were invited and we had in-depth conversations with many of them. This week, we presented District 3 candidates, Joy Hollingsworth and Alex Hudson. Have a listen to those and stay tuned over the coming weeks. We hope these interviews will help voters better understand who these candidates are and inform their choices for the November 7th general election.
Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: the former director of Progressive Majority who's now transitioned into public service and remains involved in numerous political efforts across Washington, EJ Juárez. Hey!
[00:01:42] EJ Juárez: Sorry, everybody - I'm back.
[00:01:46] Crystal Fincher: We love having you and there are always comments from listeners about how insightful you are when you're on - more than usual - so it's always great to have you on. I want to start talking about Seattle's mayor's budget proposal this week. Mayor Bruce Harrell released his budget that he will be presenting, or did present, to the council and city. The council will also take up the budget - they ultimately have the responsibility for passing a budget. But this is the mayor's recommendation - his take on where we should be moving the city. What were your big takeaways about what were in the budget and where do you see this going?
[00:02:28] EJ Juárez: Yeah, thanks. I think, first of all, this is a budget that really lacked a bold vision. And I think that my biggest takeaway was this is very much, in many ways, business as usual. This is the values document from an administration that's, I think, still pretending it's a decade ago and not catching up with the problems of today. There's no huge solutions here to some of the most pressing problems for the region and the city, but ultimately, the big swings that you would expect from a mayor who has a significant amount of political capital in the moment are missing. We don't have big swings for human service workers with large increases in pay and benefits to get them to where they need to be able to stay in this city and serve the people, as well as address the problems that are affecting every other element of City services. I think the other thing that was pretty shocking is the fact that we are still spending as much money as we are on the police alone in this city. This is not an integrated approach to safety or even really improving the conditions of different places around the city. So, again, I was a little dumbfounded.
[00:03:41] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think, overall, this is not a budget that anyone is finding surprising from Mayor Bruce Harrell. I think your point is well taken that it seems to lack the kind of investment and scale to meaningfully address the biggest challenges that the city is facing - in two different directions - one, in the revenue and services direction, certainly more voters are demanding a more comprehensive public safety response. This looks to largely be a traditional public safety response - there is money in there for a co-response program, there doesn't seem to be new revenue for diversion, which was supposed to be part of the safety legislation that gives the city attorney power to prosecute drug possession in the city and public drug use. It doesn't seem to meaningfully invest in the issues that are most pressing for the city.
Two glaring omissions in the budget are - there doesn't seem to be any preparation or contention - or at least at this point, it's hard to see - for the major upcoming budget deficit that the City is going to be facing. In the next budget - not this year, but next year - there's predicted to be a $225 million budget deficit. And that's quite a bit of money that's gonna require either significant cuts or a significant increase in revenue. So you would think that some of that preparation would be happening now. City council candidates are talking about it, departments are talking about it. And so it's weird that the chief executive of the City - the mayor - is not contending with that in the budget. I don't know if we're gonna be hearing more about that, but I hope we do because certainly the City needs a plan to get through that while addressing the City workers who are crucial to delivering on the mayor's agenda, on what the City just needs to do to operate and serve its residents. What's gonna be happening with that? They deserve a cost of living increase. I hope they get it. They're gonna be negotiating for that. But where is that going to come from in the budget? And it's going to have to be a bigger number than they're accounting for now. There are just some things that don't seem like they're meaningfully dealt with in the way that residents are demanding, and in a way that will solve the challenges that residents are demanding being solved and that Mayor Harrell says is on his agenda.
[00:05:57] EJ Juárez: I think you hit it right on the head in that - when you're faced with what will likely be a $500 million deficit in just two and a half years here, we are going to have to make really difficult and painful choices. That's not a number you can just raise your parking rates to get out of, which is what he's proposing. Maybe there's gonna be a huge influx for FIFA coming up and all of the sporting events and concerts, but there's not enough Taylor Swifts in the world to get us to $500 million with just raising parking rates to get us out of the forthcoming deficit. I really worry that the political courage to actually solve this problem just isn't there. This is a really, I think, high-profile instance of kicking that can down the road - either to the council or to the next mayor - to say, Hey, I'm gonna drive us towards the cliff, but you're gonna be at the steering wheel when it goes over. And it's really unfortunate because I think at that point, the options will have dwindled to fairly unpopular choices. And if those choices don't go forward, we will live with cuts that will both harm the residents of this city, but potentially cripple agencies and public services for up to a decade. I think we all remember what happened in the last recession when deep cuts to manage the forthcoming cuts at the time were ramping up - it took 10 years for agencies to get back to pre-2008 levels - with the inability of leaders to raise revenue quickly and plan accordingly.
[00:07:20] Crystal Fincher: There are lots of people who have said before that budgets are moral documents. They reflect your priorities. You put your money where your mouth is. And once again, we see residents of the city absolutely saying - I think by and large, it's fair to characterize where people are at the city saying - they don't mind funding extra police, but they also want to fund better alternative response programs, more comprehensive solutions to public safety and meeting people's basic needs - that helps keep people out of paths that lead to crime, or poverty, or homelessness, or all of those things. We know that investing in education, basic needs, making sure people do have their basic needs met does positively impact all of those other areas. Investment in police again this year - after lots of prior investments - $392 million. Alternatives to police - $5 million. And when you look at what that really means in the budget after years and years of this being asked for, demanded, actually funded by the council - this just seems like paying weak lip service to something the city's desperately in need of. So we'll continue to see.
Another item in there - that I was surprised to see back this year - was a proposal for ShotSpotter, which is infamous at this point in time. About a decade ago, it was viewed as this revolutionary new tech that could help automatically detect where gunshots are coming from, and help better deploy police, anticipate where people are coming from. It was supposed to be a positive new tool. What actually resulted was that it was very bad at detecting gunshots - it detected a lot of things that were not gunshots as gunshots, provoking police responses where they were not needed, where they were harmful or dangerous, and really just ended up not being an effective way to address gun violence at all. And cities regretting the money that they spent on that. That had all happened. This is not new news. This is 5 and 10 years ago news. But for some reason, not only was it proposed in the mayor's budget last year and was widely panned, but it's back this year for some reason. Bruce really likes ShotSpotter, despite the fact that there's so much evidence against it. And it just seems like there is so much on the plate to do, to knock out, to try - when it comes to the suite of public safety and community safety initiatives that we could be launching, why are we still talking about this?
[00:09:47] EJ Juárez: It is - the question I think that's on a lot of people's mind right now is when you have such a loud chorus from folks across the city who typically are not aligned on issues, who typically are not singing the same song, you have everybody largely lined up saying - This is a bad program. This is proven to not work. And here's a decade's worth of evidence. This is really Bruce against the world on this one. And Bruce is the loudest cheerleader for this program, which has huge consequences for communities of color, low-income communities, and just the general public. It is mind-blowing that again - the singular focus on implementing this program from the mayor's office is just devoid of any input or any, I think, actual critical thinking about what is this doing for the city. Yeah, I'm still stunned.
[00:10:36] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, so we will continue to follow that process. This is going to be important. It's gonna be important for you to talk to your councilmembers, council candidates, let the mayor and the mayor's office know how you feel about this. It's a document for how the City is going to be run, managed, and should reflect your priorities - and not just those of moneyed interests in the city. So I hope people do engage. We will certainly stay tuned on that.
I also wanna talk about this week news that City Attorney Ann Davison signed onto a brief demanding the right to sweep encampments without shelter as a prior Supreme Court decision - Martin v. Boise - what was that decision called - where it was ruled by the Ninth Circuit Court that it is unconstitutional to sweep people from encampments without offering shelter. Basically, if you have nowhere else for them to go - if they have nowhere to go - you can't sweep them. That's cruel, it's unusual, it's inhumane, it's unconstitutional - currently. And so that's why sometimes we've seen legitimate, good faith offers to try and get people into shelter. Unfortunately, we are operating in a time where we know we have inadequate shelter space - number one. And even that shelter sometimes is so inadequate - maybe just one night's worth of shelter - and there are lots of times restrictions and conditions placed on it. There are curfews. If it's a congregate shelter situation, that is - one, no longer viewed as a best practice, but an area that understandably has lots of concerns and fear attached to it. And if you think about - hey, you're going somewhere and you're just gonna be shoved into a room with people who you may not know, people who may be experiencing some of the hardest times in their life, may not be as stable as ideal. And that's a challenge for anyone to be in, and it's hard to stabilize in that kind of situation. And so it's understandable to say - hey, if we're forcing you to go somewhere, there should be somewhere else to go. Otherwise, you're literally just moving the problem around and doing nothing to solve it - probably, definitely destabilizing people further. But this lawsuit is basically saying - Hey, cities should have more autonomy, this is infringing upon cities' ability to make their own decisions. How do you view this lawsuit?
[00:12:56] EJ Juárez: I'll start by saying - when you start punishing humans for doing human things, it's a really awful situation you're in. People cannot go without rest. People cannot go without sleep. People must sleep to survive. And people that are already in crisis, who are doing the bare minimum needed to survive as a person, right - getting themselves rest and sleep - I think criminalizing that and making it more difficult for people to do what they need to do, is a really sad state of what we are spending our time legislating and monitoring. I do think that we have obligations to keep sidewalks clear, encampments both safe for the people that are there and I think for the people that are around them. It's obviously a super contentious issue with people on all sides. What I find interesting about this is that the city attorney is essentially joining the - I don't know - progressive, compassionate bastions of North Dakota cities and Colorado Springs to make this argument for a city that clearly has very different values than those places, but that is saying - We wanna do this, but we don't want the responsibility of caring for our residents after we take action on their bodies. We are going to physically move a person and force them out of a place of their choosing and throw our hands up and say - We don't wanna deal with it after that.
That's a new thing - and that is a very bold step towards, I think, the opposite of a compassionate response around how we would wanna treat our neighbors, right? And how many times do we hear from the city, the county, or the state about our neighbors? Be kind to your neighbor, love thy neighbor, whatever the phrase that comes out and whatever fluffy PR piece that we get from a government agency - but ultimately it's hollow because we're saying - We will love them until they inconvenience us. And that inconvenience and that discomfort I'm feeling by either seeing or experiencing - tangentially - homelessness is larger and more important than actually caring for the person experiencing a crisis. I find it odd that this is the stake that the city attorney is joining in on with an amicus brief that doesn't involve us, but that is her prerogative.
[00:15:06] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and it is her prerogative as an independently elected City official. Different cities have different systems. Some cities appoint their chief prosecutorial official in the city, Seattle elects it, and it's elected separately than the mayor, than councilmembers, and so there is latitude for the city attorney to act in this way - this is within their jurisdiction. I'm curious to know what councilmembers, what council candidates think about this - but also what the mayor's office thinks about this, which is really interesting. We haven't heard condemnation of it, I don't think. So it seems like this isn't too troublesome to him - and that's not surprising to the office, given what seems to be their current predisposition towards sweeps. But it is - one, interesting that this could happen in this situation because of the way Seattle's government is set up.
[00:15:55] EJ Juárez: People will continue to sleep - and that, at the end of the day, this is a lot of effort that our city attorney is spending on a problem where people will continue to sleep and exist. And it is beyond my absolute wildest imagination that a person can spend so much of our City resources and tax money on this problem without it being a signal to political donors, to folks who are furthest from crisis about the disdain that they have for people that are in crisis.
[00:16:28] Crystal Fincher: And it is disdain, and really - part of this lawsuit or brief trying to get these rulings really overturned, there were two, Martin v. Boise and then Johnson v. Grant Pass - where the City is essentially, and this group of people bringing this, is essentially arguing that homelessness is a choice. PubliCola did a really informative article on this, and reading from here - they're arguing that calling unsheltered people involuntarily homeless grants a special status on people who, in their view, in reality, engaging in a voluntary behavior by sleeping outdoors, much as an alcoholic who is caught being drunk in public has chosen to drink of his own volition. That's from a Supreme Court case from 1968, whose conclusions are contradicted by modern addiction experts - addiction is not a choice. Once someone is at the point where they're addicted, choice and logic no longer is in that conversation - that's just a biological reality. But it's really insidious, saying, as we do with so many things - Oh, they find themselves in this situation. And how many articles have come out in the past month just talking about the amount of elderly and seniors who are increasingly homeless, that we've seen inflation skyrocket - housing price skyrocket, transportation costs increase, eldercare, childcare, food, everything is increasing. There are lots of people on fixed incomes. If we have a health crisis, that can throw someone into bankruptcy and homelessness. But right now, as we hear in rhetoric and debates and conversations, we're seeing this reflected in this brief - basically saying it's their fault. They're there because it's their fault. It's a moral failing on their behalf. And that gives us license to not have to deal with it. That absolves us of responsibility from having to be responsible for our making sure people have a place to sleep, to live, to not die and languish on the streets. This is really a moral argument at the center of this, which is really insidious.
[00:18:33] EJ Juárez: It is, and I can feel my blood boiling as we talk about this now more and more, because we are never allowed to talk about homelessness without having to talk about addiction. We know - study after study and time after time - addiction is not the number one driver of homelessness in this country, nor is it the number one driver of homelessness in any city in this country. The conflation between addiction of any kind and the inability to be stably housed is so often presented to us in every argument about solving this problem, that it is the largest shiny object of distraction - because then it gets into the moral policing, it gets into the individual choices, right? The circumstances that a person may find themselves by choice, which in and of itself, as you just said, is not a true choice - because addiction doesn't work like that. But even in all the articles that we've seen coming out around this and the city attorney's language and our elected leaders, I would love for somebody to do a true study on how many times we can talk about homelessness without talking about addiction - and how often that conflation has ruined otherwise very good solutions to affordability, to making sure that people are able to earn wages that can pay for houses within a reasonable distance from the place of their employment. 'Cause even as we're talking about this - in these sweeps, the articles from the Supreme Court, the things that we're reading in terms of legal precedent - are all focused on this idea that folks are just drunk, folks are high, and therefore they don't wanna be housed. I think both the media needs to do better and our elected officials need to do better 'cause it's played out and it's tiring.
[00:20:11] Crystal Fincher: I completely agree. And I feel very similarly about conversations where homelessness is conflated with crime. Homeless people are much more likely to be a victim of crime than almost anyone else - they're victimized to the greatest degree. When it comes to the public safety discussion, everyone deserves to be safe. And that seems to make sense to start with people who are the most in danger, who need the most help - to help them become safe. And unfortunately, the toxicity of this conversation is putting homeless people in more danger - we've seen attacks. And just disgustingly, what's being normalized - was having this conversation with someone yesterday - is how often we see, particularly from right-wing elements, but we also see it from so-called moderates and progressives on campaign mailers in attack ads - is this viewing homelessness as the spectacle. And the very dehumanizing way in which people are shown who are having some of the toughest times in their lives - they're in various stages of crisis and just the exploitation of their likeness, of their images, sharing their locations, their details - that's just dehumanizing. And you're not showing that person with any intent to help, with any engagement with why they're there, with any engagement with who they are as a person. You're simply using that as a tool to degrade and dehumanize them and to really make it seem like this is a choice.
But a lot of the language we hear from that is just really dehumanizing. And we hear it in places like Burien who passed a camping ban this week, while still not engaging with any of the free resources offered to them to help solve their problem. It's just really disappointing. And we're engaged in these tropes and this rhetoric that is not tied to the reality of the problem. And it is a problem. There absolutely needs to be effective interventions to help this. I don't think anyone wants anyone sleeping on a sidewalk, I don't think anyone wants encampments there - but those are signals of a greater failure and of policies that we keep doubling down on that don't work. And it's time to stop doing that so we can finally do something that does work to help improve this problem.
Also wanna talk about news this week that a couple Targets are closing. And what was notable about this is, as we've seen with some prior press releases and announcements, Target blamed this on crime. But after so many other instances of seeing companies blame some of their store closures on crime and then follow up months after - okay, actually it wasn't the crime, it was some mismanagement, it was just us trying to save money, offload some assets - and that being really disingenuous, or in some other cases, just ways to do some union busting, like in Starbucks's case. But here, these are not in downtown Seattle - these are in two other locations. These are mid-format stores. And a lot of people in the neighborhood say - These stores were not meeting anyone's needs. It's not surprising that they're closing. And it just seems like crime may not be the real reason here, but one that corporations seem to be able to get away with. And then have people in the media basically dictate what they say as a story without any critical examination of their central statement there - that it is because of crime. How do you view this?
[00:23:29] EJ Juárez: It's such a troubling trend to watch - particularly retail over the last few years here - throw up their hands in the face of engaging in capitalism. It is - Oh, we want to expand. We're gonna open these stores. We're gonna try new models. But oh, we're actually - it got hard. We're not gonna adapt. We're not gonna try and survive. We're gonna close these stores and blame it on our customers. We're gonna blame it on the neighborhood. We're gonna blame it on the city. We're gonna blame it on X, Y, and Z. And there's this dissidence that's happening amongst these large retailers, I think. But also, I don't know - having gone into the U District Target myself, maybe they shouldn't have had two full racks of unicorn onesies available in a store that was tiny to begin with. So it's okay for business and enterprise to experiment with store formats and changing up what they do, but to then blame - and be, I think, fairly disingenuous about - store closings on crime and creating this really amped up sense of crisis that might not match reality. And I think we saw that come to fruition with The Seattle Times reporting on this, because for the first time, I think, in the face of these closures, we actually have a media outlet that said - Let's check. Let's actually show the truth here. And it showed that the reports don't match what Target is saying around where the incidents of crime and calls to police actually happened, where particularly the Ballard location was the lowest rate of incidents amongst all the Targets in the region. So it is odd to me. I just have to laugh, 'cause I can't get those onesies out of my head. I'm like - Your business didn't work. Adapt.
[00:25:04] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. These are not the traditional, full-service, big box Target stores. These are smaller versions that, according to lots of people - myself included - had tons of stuff like those onesies that were not needs. But the stuff that a lot of times you run to the store for - regular household items, food items - were not regularly available, but there were plenty of really nearby stores that had them more available, that were more convenient to get in and out of, at a lower cost - so it's not like there was no competition in this area. It does seem like this was an issue where maybe just the format of the store, like you said, the experimentation didn't work. I do think it is a positive sign that The Seattle Times - after receiving some criticism from prior coverage where - Hey, they reported what the company said. Later on, after actual scrutiny, those claims about closing because of crime didn't hold up. That's not to say that that's not at all a concern. I'm sure everyone has the concern. We need to do a better job of doing the things that we know have a chance at reducing retail theft, those kinds of things - doesn't seem like we're meaningfully investing in the things that have shown to successfully help that. But it looks like, especially amidst so many reports of record profits from some of these same corporations, that maybe this is just a really convenient way to avoid saying our idea didn't work.
[00:26:28] EJ Juárez: I think a lot about what has Target, the corporation, done to advocate to make those areas around their stores more livable, more walkable, safe, right? It's a little bit like - I'm gonna grab my toys and go because I don't like the situation I'm in - but I'm not gonna do anything to voice that concern and I'm not actually gonna advocate for policies that improve the conditions around my enterprise's footprint. And had we had a robust response from Target getting involved in those neighborhoods - saying we are here to advocate for our neighborhoods - then I think the lament around closing these stores could be more genuine, but we just didn't see that, and that's a shame.
[00:27:07] Crystal Fincher: I do wanna give a shout out real quick to Seattle's Green Jacket Queen, who - we'll link the story in our show notes - but a few people did an excellent job, but one woman in particular went viral after Fox News was doing some Seattle man-on-the-street interviews, trying to basically engage in the "Seattle is Dying" discourse, saying that there are addicts all over the place and rampant crime and carjacking and people shooting up and blah, blah, blah. And she had time that day and she took full advantage of it and basically just was ready - mocked the interviewer - it was just absolutely hilarious. And did not play into the incorrect framing, the incorrect facts, and just plainly stated - No, most people are not walking around scared or worried for their safety. Someone else talked about - The way to address crime is by addressing basic needs, and that helps people get their way out of that is a much more effective way of dealing with that as a community and as a society. And also Green Jacket Lady called out just the fearmongering - the reporter tried to say, I saw people shooting up. Were they bothering you? Oh no, I was in my car. Oh no, in your car. It gave me so much life. I was just so happy to see that - it seems like the city was - because we are starved for pushbacks on these narratives that don't match the reality of what people are living on the ground in the city.
[00:28:33] EJ Juárez: I think we're also starved for people that aren't giving us the political speak, that aren't talking in big meta-level stuff. We saw a star born in real time on Fox News and this woman was basically just the embodiment of that meme from a couple of years ago with - Oh, you don't like me? Oh, whatever, you don't care. This is Fox News and it was treated with the exact seriousness that Fox News deserved in the heart of Seattle, which was - You are playing in my face, get out of here. You are not representing our values, get out of here. And I think the fact that she called him out so beautifully - and kindly - with humor, You were in your car. You felt harm in your car driving by? That is the most, I think, Seattle thing ever. And also, how we get painted in the national media by some of these more conservative outlets. So I want this woman to run for mayor. I want her to run for governor. I think I'm ready to go knock on some doors.
[00:29:31] Crystal Fincher: Shoot, if she's ready, I will volunteer my services. Let's go. But I will say - she went viral nationally, basically - that's a situation that can have a few pros, but also several cons. And you don't always volunteer to be thrust into the spotlight. I will say I'm impressed - like I saw a few people who chimed in and were like, Oh, that's my friend, I know her. But that I still don't know her name is just a credit to the quality of her friends - not putting all her business out there, maintaining her privacy - which she deserves. If she ever wants to co-host a Friday show, invitation is open. But I also love that her friends are protective of her in that way and not putting her business out there. I saw Melissa Santos with Axios wrote an article, wound up getting in contact with her - and she said she wanted to stay anonymous. We absolutely respect that. And I respect that her friends have made that possible for her.
[00:30:25] EJ Juárez: Love it. I'll still buy the merch. Make it happen, Green Jacket Lady - I'm ready.
[00:30:30] Crystal Fincher: But I am down. I am ready to ride, Green Jacket Lady. If you ever want to, hit me up.
And I just want to close the day talking about a study that says what many of us know, but that if you follow a lot of the legislation being passed - the state level and in many cities - you would wonder why they're doing it. A study finding that decriminalization did not increase overdose deaths at all in Washington or Oregon, which is what many people have been saying - taking a public health approach to drug use is the most effective way to deal with both addiction and just all of the issues surrounding that. And we heard a lot of misinformation, whether it's from the Legislature passing the Blake legislation and increasing criminalization of drug use to conversations in the city of Seattle and elsewhere - talking about the importance of cracking down on drug use, because that's the only way that they'll see. And once again, basically the opposite is the case. And the premise for cracking down being that going soft doesn't work, and people are using drugs more than ever, and ODing more than ever, and we need to crack down to get people safe - just doesn't track with reality.
[00:31:45] EJ Juárez: Yeah, I think this was a fairly limited study of only about a year since these things have been passed recently. I think that the critical piece of this is that study needs to continue so that we can see year after year that this first set of data holds. And the fact that it did not show a demonstrable increase in these types of crimes or deaths - this is what anecdotally advocates have been saying, this is what they know from first-hand experience working with those communities. And it's nice to see science looking at policy and it getting the attention it deserves to cut through the noise. And I wanna commend the fact that this study was done. I wanna commend the fact that like they found the grant funding to do this because - especially in the polarizing time that we're in and the really punitive time that we're in, I think researchers and academics who are engaging in this type of work for the public good are often under attack and this is what we need more of. Also, I appreciate the fact that they're looking at two very concrete areas - Washington and Oregon - which are pointed out by national media and others as these places where it's all out of control. But yet it doesn't really match the data, so we know this is getting spun up by people who have different goals than actually helping people.
[00:32:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And it is good to see this data that's directly applicable to our state in Washington and in Oregon. This does align with several other studies and trials that have been done elsewhere - across the world, really. The War on Drugs is a failure, it's ineffective. And we see alternative paths that get better results and we just refuse to do that. Again, it's not that drugs aren't a problem, it's not that nothing needs to be done - but doing what we know won't work time after time is getting really tiring, it's getting really expensive, and we're losing the opportunity to do so much other good because we're determined to keep following this path which has not been fruitful at all.
So with that, I think we will conclude the news of the day. Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, September 29th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is the former director of Progressive Majority, who's transitioned into public service and remains involved in numerous political efforts across Washington, EJ Juárez. You can find EJ on Twitter @EliseoJJuarez. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter. You can find me on Twitter, on Blue Sky, on wherever you wanna find me - I'm pretty much @finchfrii everywhere. You can also get Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical shows delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On this Wednesday topical show, Crystal chats with Alex Hudson about her campaign for Seattle City Council District 3. Listen and learn more about Alex and her thoughts on:
- [01:08] - Why she is running
- [01:58] - Lightning round!
- [08:43] - City budget shortfall: Raise revenue or cut services?
- [10:53] - What is an accomplishment of hers that impacts District 3
- [13:21] - Climate change
- [15:03] - Transit reliability
- [17:32] - Bike and pedestrian safety
- [19:44] - Housing and homelessness: Frontline worker wages
- [22:16] - Childcare: Affordability and accessibility
- [24:41] - Public Safety: Alternative response
- [30:55] - Small business support
- [34:52] - Difference between her and opponent
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Alex Hudson at @AlexforSeattle.
Alex Hudson
Alex Hudson's journey began in Redmond and flourished on a family farm nestled in Unincorporated East King County. With familial roots spanning over 70 years, Alex's commitment to her community runs deep. Today, Alex resides in First Hill alongside her partner and serves as the legal guardian of a freshman at Grafiel High School. Embracing a car-free lifestyle thanks to the neighborhood's walkability and robust public transit options, Alex and her family thrive in their bustling urban environment.
Graduating from Redmond High School in 2002, Alex's determination fueled her journey to becoming a first-generation college graduate. Earning a BA in Political Science from Western Washington University, complemented by minors in Sociology and Economics, Alex's academic endeavors were marked by her active involvement within both the college and Bellingham communities.
As an empowered advocate, Alex founded the ACLU-WA student club, directed the Associated Students Drug Information Center, and penned a weekly column for the student newspaper. These accomplishments earned her recognition as the '2008 Associated Student Employee of the Year' and the '2008 ACLU-WA Youth Activist of the Year'.
Life threw a curveball with Alex's diagnosis of Hodgkin's Lymphoma, but access to vital government programs, coupled with gratitude for social institutions, enabled her recovery.
In 2009, Alex's relocation to First Hill aligned with her role as House Manager at Town Hall Seattle. Infatuated with the neighborhood's historical charm, architectural splendor, and vibrant diversity, she made First Hill her home.
After contributing to economic and community development consulting, Alex embarked on a pivotal journey as the inaugural employee of the First Hill Improvement Association (FHIA) in 2014. Over her 4.5-year tenure, Alex spearheaded transformative initiatives, including embedding community priorities within numerous development projects,, reimagining First Hill Park, citing two shelters for homeless people in the neighborhood, and leading negotiations for the 'Community Package Coalition', yielding an extraordinary $63 million investment in affordable housing, parks, and public spaces. Alex's impact reverberated further with the revitalization of the Public Realm Action Plan, the creation of Seattle's first 'pavement-to-parks' project, and the facilitation of over 20 artworks on street signal boxes.
Named one of 'Seattle's Most Influential People of 2015' by Seattle Magazine for co-creating Seattlish.com, Alex's prowess extended to Transportation Choices Coalition (TCC) as its Executive Director in 2018. Under her leadership, TCC orchestrated monumental victories, securing over $5billion in funding for better transportation, making transit free for every young person in Washington, reforming fare enforcement policies at Sound Transit, championing wage reform for ride-share drivers, and advocating for mobility justice in a post-COVID world.
Balancing her responsibilities, Alex contributes as a board member for Bellwether Housing Group and the Freeway Park Association.
With a legacy of empowerment and transformative change, Alex Hudson remains a dedicated advocate, shaping the landscape of Seattle's communities and transportation systems.
Resources
Campaign Website - Alex Hudson
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, I am very excited to be welcoming Seattle City Council District 3 candidate, Alex Hudson, to the show today. Welcome.
[00:01:03] Alex Hudson: It's great to be here - thanks for having me.
[00:01:06] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you here. So I guess starting off, just wondering why you decided to run?
[00:01:15] Alex Hudson: Yeah, I love the city of Seattle, and I want this to be a great place for the people who live here and people like my kiddo to be able to make a future. I have spent my career working on the issues that affect people in our city the most and pushing towards a city that loves people back. And so I'm excited about the opportunity to take my progressive values, my over a decade of experience taking good ideas and turning those into positive results for people to City Hall, where we can make a really huge impact on the things that matter most to people.
[00:01:58] Crystal Fincher: Well, you know, as we were putting together these interviews, we thought, especially for people like you who have just a ton of policy and advocacy experience - how we could have wide-ranging conversations, especially just getting into all the details, we could wonk out forever - but we decided we would try for the first time in interviews, lightning rounds, just to try and help level set a little bit. The eyes got a little wide there, but hopefully this isn't too painful and pretty normal. So we'll do this for a bit and then we'll get back to our regularly scheduled programming of questions, but just to help give a little context beyond the questions that we get to.
Wondering - starting out - This year, did you vote yes on the King County Crisis Care Centers levy?
[00:02:45] Alex Hudson: Of course.
[00:02:46] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote yes on the Veterans, Seniors and Human Services levy?
[00:02:49] Alex Hudson: Of course.
[00:02:50] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote in favor of Seattle's Social Housing Initiative 135?
[00:02:54] Alex Hudson: Absolutely.
[00:02:56] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote for Bruce Harrell or Lorena González for Mayor?
[00:03:00] Alex Hudson: I voted for Lorena González.
[00:03:02] Crystal Fincher: And did you vote for Nicole Thomas Kennedy or Ann Davison for Seattle City Attorney?
[00:03:06] Alex Hudson: I voted for Nicole Thomas Kennedy.
[00:03:09] Crystal Fincher: And did you vote for Leesa Manion or Jim Ferrell for King County Prosecutor?
[00:03:14] Alex Hudson: I voted for Leesa Manion.
[00:03:17] Crystal Fincher: Do you rent your residence?
[00:03:19] Alex Hudson: I do. Yeah, I'm a lifelong renter.
[00:03:21] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Would you vote to require landlords to report metrics, including how much rent they're charging, to help better plan housing and development needs in the district?
[00:03:31] Alex Hudson: Yes, absolutely.
[00:03:32] Crystal Fincher: Are there any instances where you would support sweeps of homeless encampments?
[00:03:39] Alex Hudson: The word sweeps is like always one where I'm like - what does that mean to folks, right? But in general, I think that people deserve to be able to live in a place, to exist peacefully before they are just moved along without any connection to resources or support. So I'm not sure if that's a yes or no, but I definitely support people's basic human right to exist and the City's obligation to take care of people.
[00:04:08] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to provide additional funding for Seattle's Social Housing Public Development Authority?
[00:04:13] Alex Hudson: Yes.
[00:04:14] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with King County Executive Constantine's statement that the King County Jail should be closed?
[00:04:22] Alex Hudson: Yes.
[00:04:23] Crystal Fincher: Should parking enforcement be housed within SPD?
[00:04:27] Alex Hudson: No.
[00:04:29] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to allow police in schools?
[00:04:35] Alex Hudson: No.
[00:04:37] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget for a civilian-led mental health crisis response?
[00:04:44] Alex Hudson: Absolutely, yes.
[00:04:45] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget to increase the pay of human service workers?
[00:04:51] Alex Hudson: Definitely, yes.
[00:04:53] Crystal Fincher: Do you support removing funds in the City budget for forced encampment removals and instead allocating funds towards a Housing First approach?
[00:05:01] Alex Hudson: Definitely, yes.
[00:05:03] Crystal Fincher: Do you support abrogating or removing the funds from unfilled SPD positions and putting them towards meaningful public safety measures?
[00:05:12] Alex Hudson: Yes.
[00:05:12] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocating money in the budget for supervised consumption sites?
[00:05:18] Alex Hudson: 100%, yes.
[00:05:19] Crystal Fincher: Do you support increasing funding in the City budget for violence intervention programs?
[00:05:24] Alex Hudson: Yes.
[00:05:25] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't give the Office of Police Accountability, OPA, or the Office of Inspector General, OIG, subpoena power?
[00:05:38] Alex Hudson: Let me make sure I understand the question 'cause there's a double negative in there. It's - oppose it--
[00:05:44] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to approve a contract that does not have subpoena power? Would you vote to approve or deny a contract?
[00:05:52] Alex Hudson: No. They should have subpoena power.
[00:05:56] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian?
[00:06:09] Alex Hudson: There should be no limit - like again, I just wanna make sure I'm understanding the question right - sorry...
[00:06:15] Crystal Fincher: Makes - totally fair, totally fair.
[00:06:19] Alex Hudson: There should be - the oversight of our police department should not be set by the Police Officers Guild.
[00:06:26] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move police funding to public safety alternatives?
[00:06:34] Alex Hudson: Yes.
[00:06:35] Crystal Fincher: Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers?
[00:06:40] Alex Hudson: Yes.
[00:06:42] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans and non-binary students are allowed to play on the sports teams that fit with their gender identities?
[00:06:49] Alex Hudson: Of course.
[00:06:50] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans people can use bathrooms or public facilities that match their gender?
[00:06:55] Alex Hudson: Yes.
[00:06:57] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with the Seattle City Council's decision to implement the JumpStart Tax?
[00:07:02] Alex Hudson: Yes.
[00:07:03] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to reduce or divert the JumpStart Tax in any way?
[00:07:08] Alex Hudson: No.
[00:07:09] Crystal Fincher: Are you happy with Seattle's newly built waterfront?
[00:07:12] Alex Hudson: No.
[00:07:13] Crystal Fincher: Do you believe return to work mandates like the one issued by Amazon are necessary to boost Seattle's economy?
[00:07:25] Alex Hudson: No.
[00:07:26] Crystal Fincher: Have you taken transit in the past week?
[00:07:28] Alex Hudson: Yes.
[00:07:29] Crystal Fincher: Have you ridden a bike in the past week?
[00:07:32] Alex Hudson: Yes.
[00:07:33] Crystal Fincher: Go ahead, Alex Hudson. Should Pike Place Market allow non-commercial car traffic?
[00:07:41] Alex Hudson: No.
[00:07:42] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines?
[00:07:49] Alex Hudson: Oh my God, yes.
[00:07:51] Crystal Fincher: Should we accelerate the elimination of the ability to turn right on red lights to improve pedestrian safety?
[00:07:57] Alex Hudson: Yes.
[00:07:59] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever been a member of a union?
[00:08:01] Alex Hudson: No.
[00:08:02] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to increase funding and staffing for investigations into labor violations like wage theft and illegal union busting?
[00:08:10] Alex Hudson: Yes.
[00:08:11] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever walked on a picket line?
[00:08:16] Alex Hudson: Like participated in support of? Or crossed?
[00:08:19] Crystal Fincher: Participated in support of a picket.
[00:08:21] Alex Hudson: Oh, yes.
[00:08:22] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever crossed a picket line?
[00:08:24] Alex Hudson: No.
[00:08:25] Crystal Fincher: Is your campaign unionized?
[00:08:28] Alex Hudson: No.
[00:08:29] Crystal Fincher: If your campaign staff wants to unionize, will you voluntarily recognize their efforts?
[00:08:34] Alex Hudson: Of course.
[00:08:36] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you for that. That was, I think, a pretty painless lightning round, but pretty illuminating, so appreciate that.
Now, the City is projected to have a revenue shortfall of $224 million beginning in 2025. Because the City's mandated by the state to pass a balanced budget, the options to address this upcoming deficit are either raise revenue or cuts. How will you approach the issue of how the City collects and spends money on behalf of its constituents?
[00:09:08] Alex Hudson: Yeah, this is super important, right? This is like - the basic function of our city council is to pass legislation, pass a budget, and speak on behalf of the priorities, values, and vision of the people of the City of Seattle. I think, you know, I was an executive director of nonprofit organizations for over a decade, and so I've spent a lot of time making and overseeing budgets - not nearly as large or complicated as the City of Seattle, but the basic tenets are the same, right? And so we gotta do a couple of things. We gotta make sure that the money that we're spending still meets our priorities, and that we may need to shift some stuff around so that we can meet the biggest priorities that are in front of us right now. I think we need to be able to take a look and make sure that our spending is matching the ability to do that. I said, you know, when I ran a nonprofit organization, we opted into having audits every year, and I'm very proud that we had five years of clean audits with no managerial notes - and I think that that should be a pretty common practice because the relationship of taking public dollars and spending them - it's really important to get that right. But the reality is is that we know that we do not have the resources that we need in order to address the urgent issues in front of us, and we are going to need to bring more resources into the City budget to be able to do that. And so that's why I've been a very big proponent of things like the municipal capital gains tax, which is a way to start to begin to move our deeply upside-down tax system and the ability to take from the people who have the most and put it into services for the people who have the least.
[00:10:53] Crystal Fincher: Now, a lot of people, as they're trying to make the decision between you and your opponent - especially after trying to get their hands around everyone in the primary - now we're looking in the general and are really honing in on issues. Now, you've been involved in a lot of work - as you have said, you've been the executive director of nonprofit organizations, have a long history of advocacy and policy experience. What would you say that you've accomplished that's tangible in the lives of District 3 residents that helps them understand who you are as a person and a candidate?
[00:11:27] Alex Hudson: Yeah, quite a number of things. I've helped to bring hundreds of millions of dollars of resources into the things that matter most to folks. I was the lead negotiator and spokesperson for a 10-organization coalition that fought for a fair public deal from the redevelopment of the Convention Center. And through that work - almost two years of organizing - we brought $63 million of revenue into affordable housing, parks and public open space, and multimodal transportation. So if you are riding, for example, on the bike lanes that connect 8th Avenue to Broadway on Pike and Pine, that's because of community coalition work. If you are experiencing betterment in Freeway Park, that's because of that work. If you are a renter or a formerly homeless person living in The Rise and Blake House, which is the largest affordable housing building ever built in the City of Seattle in the last 60 years, that's because of work that I've done. If your child is riding on public transit for free, that's because of work that I've done. If you are enjoying the beautiful First Hill Park, which was redeveloped at no cost to the public, that's because of work that I did to help create that community-led vision and to bring private dollars into that. There are safer streets, better bike lanes, more and better public transit service, more and better affordable housing that I have helped to bring to bear through my work in running the neighborhood organization or running Transportation Choices Coalition.
[00:13:11] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much for that - really comprehensive and impressive body of work that is visible to people in the district and the city to see what can be built and accomplished there. Now, I wanna talk about climate change because on almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals, which is a critical milestone in order to make sure that we do reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate and prevent even worsening climate change - although we already are absolutely feeling the impacts, whether it's extreme heat or cold, wildfires, floods. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet 2030 goals?
[00:13:52] Alex Hudson: Yeah, thanks for this question. This is the existential crisis of our time - there is nothing that is possible on a dead planet. And we know that cities are the forefront of this issue because the solution to our accelerating climate crisis is - or one of them is, certainly - is dense, walkable neighborhoods. I talk about, like, you shouldn't need to have a gallon of gas to get a gallon of milk. And the New York Times produced a map recently that talked about average carbon emissions by person and what it shows is that beautiful District 3 - because so much of it is 15-minute walkable neighborhoods - has some of the lowest greenhouse gas emissions anywhere in the country. And so we need to keep making it possible to live a low-carbon life. That means that we need to have more multifamily housing. We need to have a comprehensive plan that puts the things that you need in walking, biking, or transit distance of where you wanna go. We need to have a transit system, frankly, that isn't collapsing around us. And we need to be able to lean very deeply into that clean energy transition.
[00:15:03] Crystal Fincher: So, I mean, you mentioned our collapsing transit system. And unfortunately it is, whether it's staff shortages, other challenges that are really just cratering the reliability of the system. Obviously, Metro - King County Metro - is handled by King County, but what role can the City of Seattle play to stabilize transit service in the city?
[00:15:24] Alex Hudson: Yeah, folks may know that I have a long history working in transit advocacy. My family lives car-free by choice. And so we rely on public transit to get everywhere we need to go. ATU drivers take my kid to school every day - they make it possible for my whole family to live our lives, and I'm deeply grateful for the people who make that system possible. The City can do a lot to make our transit system possible. One is we need to continue our investment in the Transit Benefit District. I was happy and honored to run that campaign in 2020, November of 2020, and I always like to remind folks that that campaign passed by 82% at a time when - November of 2020, many people were still staying at home. And so that is not only some of the highest that anything has ever been approved in the City of Seattle, that sets an all-time historic national record for the highest approved a transit ballot measure has ever been in this entire country. So when we say that Seattle is a transit town, what we really should be saying that Seattle is the transit town. We need to make buses more reliable - that means we need to get serious about using our very limited public space, our roadway to prioritize the most number of people, which means bus lanes, bus queue jumps. We need to make it so that riding transit is a dignified and wonderful experience. We need to be investing in better bus stops. We need to be investing in the things that make it so that public transit system doesn't have to be a catch-all for social services. And we need to be making it so that fare isn't a barrier to people. So I think that there is a lot to do in terms of like allocating our roadway - that's the piece where the service and the reliability come to bear. We need to continue those investments through STBD [Seattle Transportation Benefit District] and others. And we need to make the experience of riding public transit be irresistibly good.
[00:17:32] Crystal Fincher: How would you improve pedestrian and bicycle safety amid the safety crisis that we're experiencing now?
[00:17:40] Alex Hudson: Yeah, this is not that complicated. And there are advocates who have been asking for some very basic things for years. We need to have - you talked about this at the top - we need to eliminate right turn on red everywhere in the city of Seattle. We need to signalize a whole lot more places to have left-hand turn lanes so that we're controlling the most dangerous driver movements that we have, which is those turning movements. We need to increase the number of bike lanes all over the place, right? Arterials should have bike lanes on them. I think a lot about 12th Avenue and obviously Eastlake has been much for discussion. We've done a really good job - I'm gonna get wonky, Crystal - we've done a really good job of tying housing density and transit service together in this beautiful virtuous cycle. But what we're missing is that third piece, which is the multimodal transportation. So I would like to see how we can make it - automatic thresholds get crossed in terms of density or transit that then induce and compel the City of Seattle to do these improvements. We have a Complete Streets mandate right now, but mandate's not really the right word - it's checklist. And so how can we make that go from discretionary or I-thought-about-it into like, this-is-what-is-required so that no one has to lose their life in the city of Seattle. We need more curb ramps. We need to make sure, you know, one thing that peeves me is how much of our lighting is for the road and how little of it is for the sidewalk. And so I would like to see more human scale lighting, especially since it's, you know, the big dark is coming and it can be pretty grim here for several months of the year. These are some of the really kind of basic things - we need to be doing a whole lot more narrowing, right - the real way that we have safer streets is through better design.
[00:19:44] Crystal Fincher: Now I wanna talk about housing and homelessness. And one thing repeatedly called out by experts as a barrier to the homelessness response is that frontline worker wages don't cover the cost of living and it sets up just a lot of instability - in the work and the workers who are doing the work. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for our area? And how can we work with them to make that more likely with how we bid and contract for services?
[00:20:17] Alex Hudson: Yeah, I'm on the board of the largest affordable housing provider in King County. And so I have a direct role in helping to make sure that we're living that value with our own workers. So I totally agree that the people who are on the frontlines of this issue should be able to have a comfortable life. I think the City can do a couple of things, right - like we can, in our contracting, like prioritize, we can be investing more deeply in these wages for folks. But I also wanna acknowledge the government's own responsibility in creating the housing affordability crisis in the first place. And so one of the most important ways that we can address this in the mid- and long-term is by bringing down the cost of housing. The City of Minneapolis released some great data a couple of weeks ago that I think should be front page news everywhere, which is by getting rid of exclusionary zoning and investing in affordability - they have created their, they have bucked macroeconomic trends and brought inflation down hugely compared to literally every other city in the country. So long-term, right now we need to pay people so that they can afford their rent today and next month and next year. But what we really need to do is recognize the government's own responsibility in creating this housing and affordability crisis in the first place, and then do everything we can to bring those costs down. It's also true of childcare, right? Like the biggest expenses that people have is their housing, their childcare, and their transportation. There is a lot that we can be doing to be bringing the costs down and making it so that more people can afford to live in the city of Seattle - and that we really think about the role of the government in terms of reducing and eliminating poverty.
[00:22:16] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and thank you so much for bringing up childcare, because that is - for many people, like you said, the second largest expense behind housing. For some people, it's coming ahead of housing, depending on how many children they have. Recently reported that the cost of childcare is greater than the cost of college here in Washington and in many states. It's just absolutely expensive and a crisis in its own making for people trying to participate in the labor market, so much appreciated with that. What can we do to help address our childcare crisis in the city?
[00:22:52] Alex Hudson: We can make it a whole lot easier to place childcare centers. There's a lot of pretty onerous restrictions about where those facilities can go. In 2015, we're gonna renew our Families and Education and Early Learning Promise levy, and we can be thinking about how to be - like that's the investment tool of how we do early learning and childcare. We can be thinking about things like universal pre-K and expanding all of these things beyond, and even investing in the earliest kinds of daycare. We can be thinking about how we can be incentivizing some of the vacant commercial space that exists all over the place, and how we can be subsidizing the childcare there. We can definitely be thinking more about how we do TOD-based, or transit-oriented development-based childcare. I was just talking to somebody recently about how we don't have childcare on top of the Capitol Hill light rail station - and one of the reasons is, is that the childcare providers there really feel like what they need is a vehicle pickup and drop-off zone. I, for one, recognize that vehicles actually put children in danger, but we can figure out creatively how to be partnering with those providers so that they can feel that transit-oriented development is a great place for their childcare to go. I'm really - you know, I think there's a lot of promise in the state capital gains tax, which is meant to be investing very deeply in early learning and creating free opportunities across the state. And so it's really those two things always, right - you got a problem - it's bringing down the cost of whatever that problem is, and investing more deeply in the subsidy for it.
[00:24:41] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I wanna talk about public safety too, and starting off on the issue of alternative response. And while a lot of other jurisdictions around the country, and especially in our own region - in King County - have rolled out alternative response programs to better support people having behavioral health crises, Seattle is stalled in implementing what is such a widely-supported idea. Poll after poll, one of the things most widely agreed upon - you know, north of 70, 80, in some instances, 90% - has been that of alternative response, having specialized responders for things that don't quite fit the armed police response, or where that has shown to not be as effective. Where do you stand on non-police solutions to public safety issues? And what are your thoughts on civilian-led versus co-response models?
[00:25:37] Alex Hudson: Yeah, I agree with the vast and overwhelming majority of Seattleites that we need more and better systems for making a safer Seattle for all of us - and that that includes civilian response, specialized teams, and others. I, like people in Seattle, are frustrated at why we're getting lapped by places like Kirkland, and I think that we can be doing a whole lot better here. I'm encouraged by the reality that we have some good solutions already in the city of Seattle that, frankly, other people have been copying for a very long time - like Health One. Health One is basically exactly what we're talking about, but Health One has barely seen its budget be increased since that program was implemented, you know, five or six years ago. Like, we don't need to sit around - this is such a Seattle thing, right, to like think that what we need to do is like create some brand new idea when it's like we already created the brand new idea. So we need to be investing in things like Health One. We need to be investing in LEAD and CoLEAD - these systems that really work - like We Deliver Care, part of the Third Avenue Project, is a really promising program that is working, that's connecting directly with people who are miserable and in need, and getting them those first and second steps towards the better life that they deserve, and a community that better reflects our desire to care for people. So I think it's pretty clear and obvious that what we need is this alternative response model. We need for that to include the ability for the people who are doing that first response to have a police officer back them up or be part of that if they want to, but not required to do that. And that's that difference between alternative responses and mandated co-responses. But this is really, really, really urgent. You and I were talking at the top of this - I have a 14-year-old and my 14-year-old and her friends wanna be able to go and enjoy the city. I want to be able to send her to the grocery store when I need eggs. I want her and her friends to be able to go hang out in the local parks and do things without a second thought. And the reality is that that's just not really possible right now and that there are far too many people who are not getting the care and support that they need.
[00:28:12] Crystal Fincher: What is on the top of your list? And this alternative response may be it - I think it is for several people, certainly is on the minds of Seattleites, especially those responding to polls seeming to implore the City to implement more alternative and co-response, alternative response models. What do you think will make the biggest difference in terms of public safety in the city and in your district?
[00:28:40] Alex Hudson: I really think that we can meet a lot of really important goals if we provide people with more resources to address mental and behavior - mental health crises - and to get people connected to drug treatment and services. Right now, I think when people are thinking about public safety, a lot of what that means for people - I hear this on the thousands and thousands and thousands of doors that I've knocked - people are really concerned about the prevalence of untreated drug addiction and suffering in our streets. So I deeply think that the first thing that we need are harm reduction centers or behavioral health centers - right now - that connect people who are struggling with drug addiction in our streets, connected to those services that they need in order to start living that better life. And that means, you know, things like medically assisted treatment - we need to be able to make that a whole lot easier to access. There's programs like the mobile clinics, which are good and promising - we need to scale that up. We need to also like get real about the housing that folks need in order to be stabilized. We have so few long-term residential care facility beds for folks who, you know, are gonna be the most successful with more support than even permanent supportive housing can provide people. And we've basically decimated that important resource in our city through a lack of investment. Seattle struggles to fund things at scale - like we talk about, we have these great ideas and they work, and then we give it like a tenth of the resources that it actually needs. And then we're like - Well, gee whiz, why didn't this work? And it's like - Well, 'cause we didn't actually give it the investment. So I think that it's really, really, really important that we stop people from dying in our streets. We get people connected to the medical care that they need, that they deserve. And then if we can address those issues with a real sense of urgency and in the framework of our progressive values, it's gonna feel like our city is more the place that we want it to be.
[00:30:55] Crystal Fincher: Now, our economy gets talked about a lot - the people who make up the economy - and especially in terms of Seattle's economy, which is very diverse, having the largest corporations in the world - Amazon headquartered here, Microsoft headquartered nearby, but also a lot of vibrant small businesses who really help to give the city character and certainly play a massive role in our local economy and just how healthy we are as a community. What do you think are the biggest issues facing, particularly small businesses, in your district and what would help them the most?
[00:31:34] Alex Hudson: Yeah, I love this question. District 3 is such a special place - there's a reason why people wanna live here, why it's so desirable to live here, and why people feel so sad when they have to leave. One of the things I learned is that District 3 in Capitol Hill is home to the densest concentration of small businesses anywhere in the state of Washington. It's this really beautiful ecosystem of uniqueness and flavor. But right now it's really hard to kind of sustain your business. Some of that is the cost of commercial rent. There's a great article in the New York Times just this morning about this, right - that there are tax loopholes that make it so that commercial rents that are vacant can be written off as losses by commercial landholders. And that incentivizes vacancy, which is super destructive to a sense of community and contributes to a lack of feeling of public safety. So we need to address the escalation in commercial rent. In the future, we need to make sure that we're building small business retail on the ground floor that's the right size, right? Like there's - downtown there's a whole lot of 5,000 and 10,000 square foot spaces that no small business can afford the lease on. And so that means that we've basically built a city that can only be successful with mega, mega global or national businesses. And that's not really kind of, I think the Seattle that we want. We need to recognize that it's gotten really expensive and in some places impossible to get insurance for small businesses, so the City can be helping to figure out ways that we can be either an underwriter or a supporter of the insurance that small businesses need. We need to make it faster, easier, and more seamless to open a business - we have some pretty onerous permitting and regulations that make it very difficult to start and operate a new business. And we need to figure out how we can be really intentional around getting around the restrictions around gift of public funds - this comes into play a lot with vandalism, either graffiti or broken windows, right - that becomes the financial responsibility of the individual business owner and those can be thousands of dollars that these businesses just don't have, and the city can be helpful there. So in addition to that, I think we need a whole lot more resources in our Office of Economic Development to be providing material and technical support to folks. It's a lot of paperwork and government bureaucracy stuff. And like people who start bakeries or boutiques are not - should not be expected to be experts in paperwork as well. So I think we can have a lot more kind of culturally relevant and in-language support at OED to be helping that. So there's a lot that we can be doing and this is super, super important.
[00:34:52] Crystal Fincher: So as voters are trying to make the decision between you and your opponent, what do you tell them about why they should make the choice to vote for you?
[00:35:02] Alex Hudson: I have over a decade of experience in translating good ideas into meaningful and impactful policy and investments that do and have made people's lives better. We are going to see - for the second time in a row - a majority brand-new city council, and there is a possibility that our most senior city councilperson will have been there for two years. And so it's really important that we have folks with a lot of experience because the crises that are surrounding our city don't stop - and we don't necessarily, nor does the ongoing work of the City of Seattle. I would also say I'm the very progressive candidate in this race and I think that I reflect the values of our district very strongly. People in this district want to see more housing. They want to see better transit and transportation options. They want to see a public sector that makes it so that our libraries and our community centers are open late and filled with programming. This is the strength of the public sector that I really believe in and know that we can have. So I think I am a strong representative of the progressive values of our district, and I have a very long proven track record of delivering on that and I'm ready to go Day One.
[00:36:39] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much, Alex Hudson, candidate for Seattle City Council District 3, for taking the time to chat with us today. Appreciate it and wish you the best.
[00:36:49] Alex Hudson: Thank you very much. It was an honor to be here.
[00:36:52] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Tuesday topical show, Crystal chats with Joy Hollingsworth about her campaign for Seattle City Council District 3. Listen and learn more about Joy and her thoughts on:
- [01:07] - Why she is running
- [02:11] - Lightning round!
- [08:51] - What is an accomplishment of hers that impacts District 3
- [11:31] - City budget shortfall: Raise revenue or cut services?
- [14:27] - Climate change
- [16:37] - Bike and pedestrian safety
- [20:03] - Transit reliability
- [22:30] - Housing and homelessness: Frontline worker wages
- [24:38] - Public Safety: Alternative response
- [28:15] - Community surveillance vs safety, stance on ShotSpotter
- [30:16] - Childcare: Affordability and accessibility
- [32:57] - Small business support
- [36:49] - Difference between her and opponent
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Joy Hollingsworth at @JoyHollings.
Joy Hollingsworth
Joy Hollingsworth is a candidate for the Seattle City Council in District 3. Born and raised in the historic Central District, a neighborhood her family has called home since the 1940’s, she is the product of a long line of educators and civil rights leaders. Joy works to build community by establishing relationships based on trust and commitment. She played basketball in college at the University of Arizona and earned her Master’s in Education from the University of Washington. Joy currently works at a nonprofit that supports over 400 food banks, meal programs and schools and, prior to that, worked as the Operating Officer and Policy Analyst for her family’s business.
Resources
Campaign Website - Joy Hollingsworth
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, I am very pleased today to be welcoming Seattle City Council District 3 candidate, Joy Hollingsworth, to the program. Welcome, Joy.
[00:01:02] Joy Hollingsworth: Thank you, Crystal - very excited to be here.
[00:01:06] Crystal Fincher: Excited to have you here. And the first thing I'm wondering is - why are you running? What made you decide to run, especially this year?
[00:01:15] Joy Hollingsworth: Yeah, when I was doorbelling, someone asked me - Why would you wanna put your hand in a blender and turn it on? And that was their way of asking me - Why would I wanna run for city council? But the biggest thing - 39 years living in the district - and I have seen how public policy has really impacted our community and the missing link of implementation and impact in the interpretation of that policy. So I've been on the tail end of it through - whether it's gentrification, small businesses being ravaged, through seeing our youth - all these different issues, I've seen it firsthand. And I thought that Seattle Council needs a person that has that historical perspective, but also can add to the future of our city - and I'm really excited for that opportunity.
[00:02:01] Crystal Fincher: Well, there is certainly a lot of opportunity ahead of us, both to fix a lot of things that have been plaguing us for a while and to build on an exciting vision for the future.
We're gonna do things a little differently than we have done in some prior years' candidate interviews - and helping to give voters an idea of where you stand on a wide variety of topics before we get into the detail, as we normally have our conversation, and doing a little bit of a lightning round with yes or no questions here. So I have a little list here. We'll go through these yes or no's pretty quick. Starting off with - this year, did you vote yes on the King County Crisis Care Centers levy?
[00:02:41] Joy Hollingsworth: I voted absolutely yes.
[00:02:43] Crystal Fincher: This year, did you vote yes on the Veterans, Seniors and Human Services levy?
[00:02:47] Joy Hollingsworth: Yes.
[00:02:48] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote in favor of Seattle's Social Housing Initiative I-135?
[00:02:54] Joy Hollingsworth: Yes.
[00:02:55] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Bruce Harrell or Lorena González for Mayor?
[00:03:01] Joy Hollingsworth: I voted for Bruce Harrell.
[00:03:03] Crystal Fincher: And did you vote for Nicole Thomas Kennedy or Ann Davison for Seattle City Attorney?
[00:03:09] Joy Hollingsworth: I voted for Ann Davison.
[00:03:10] Crystal Fincher: And did you vote for Leesa Manion or Jim Ferrell for King County Prosecutor?
[00:03:16] Joy Hollingsworth: Leesa Manion.
[00:03:17] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote for Patty Murray or Tiffany Smiley for US Senate?
[00:03:22] Joy Hollingsworth: Patty Murray.
[00:03:23] Crystal Fincher: Do you rent or own your residence?
[00:03:27] Joy Hollingsworth: Actually rent my house from my family - so I rent.
[00:03:29] Crystal Fincher: Are you a landlord?
[00:03:33] Joy Hollingsworth: I am not.
[00:03:34] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to require landlords to report metrics, including how much rent they're charging, to help better plan housing and development needs in the district?
[00:03:42] Joy Hollingsworth: Absolutely.
[00:03:43] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to provide additional funding for Seattle's Social Housing Public Development Authority?
[00:03:50] Joy Hollingsworth: Yes.
[00:03:51] Crystal Fincher: Are there any instances where you support sweeps of homeless encampments?
[00:04:00] Joy Hollingsworth: No, connecting them to resources - next to, if it was next to a school, that's a in-between for me.
[00:04:08] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with King County Executive Constantine's statement that the King County Jail should be closed?
[00:04:15] Joy Hollingsworth: Yes.
[00:04:16] Crystal Fincher: Should parking enforcement be housed within SPD?
[00:04:20] Joy Hollingsworth: Yes.
[00:04:21] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to allow police in schools?
[00:04:26] Joy Hollingsworth: Community resource officers, yes.
[00:04:30] Crystal Fincher: Do you support - and that's an armed officer in the school?
[00:04:35] Joy Hollingsworth: No, not an armed officer - a resource officer that's not armed.
[00:04:40] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Do you support allocation in the City budget for a civilian-led mental health crisis response?
[00:04:47] Joy Hollingsworth: Yes.
[00:04:48] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget to increase the pay of human service workers?
[00:04:53] Joy Hollingsworth: Absolutely, yes.
[00:04:54] Crystal Fincher: Do you support removing funds in the City budget for forced encampment removals and instead allocating funds towards a Housing First approach?
[00:05:06] Joy Hollingsworth: Is there a maybe answer to that?
[00:05:08] Crystal Fincher: You can say maybe if you want. You can say maybe.
[00:05:12] Joy Hollingsworth: Maybe, thank you.
[00:05:13] Crystal Fincher: Do you support - I mean, some might call it a waffle, but we'll also call it a maybe. And we do have plenty of time after this to get into the nitty gritty. So you don't have to just leave it at a yes or no. We will talk more about that later.
[00:05:26] Joy Hollingsworth: Thank you.
[00:05:26] Crystal Fincher: Do you support - yes, of course. Do you support abrogating or removing the funds from unfilled SPD positions and putting them toward meaningful public safety alternative measures?
[00:05:38] Joy Hollingsworth: Maybe.
[00:05:38] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocating money in the City budget for supervised consumption sites?
[00:05:44] Joy Hollingsworth: No. Are you talking about for - sorry, for - no, I'll just, no.
[00:05:52] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Do you support increasing funding in the City budget for violence intervention programs?
[00:05:58] Joy Hollingsworth: Yes.
[00:05:58] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't give the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of the Inspector General subpoena power?
[00:06:08] Joy Hollingsworth: Yes.
[00:06:10] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian?
[00:06:19] Joy Hollingsworth: Yes.
[00:06:20] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move police funding to public safety alternatives?
[00:06:29] Joy Hollingsworth: Maybe.
[00:06:31] Crystal Fincher: Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers?
[00:06:38] Joy Hollingsworth: Maybe.
[00:06:40] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans and non-binary students are allowed to play on the sports teams that fit with their gender identities?
[00:06:48] Joy Hollingsworth: Yes.
[00:06:49] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans people can use bathrooms and public facilities that match their gender?
[00:06:55] Joy Hollingsworth: Yes.
[00:06:56] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with the Seattle City Council's decision to implement the JumpStart Tax?
[00:07:01] Joy Hollingsworth: Yes.
[00:07:02] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to reduce or divert the JumpStart Tax in any way?
[00:07:07] Joy Hollingsworth: No.
[00:07:08] Crystal Fincher: Are you happy with Seattle's newly built waterfront?
[00:07:14] Joy Hollingsworth: Yeah, so far.
[00:07:15] Crystal Fincher: Do you believe - okay. Do you believe return to work mandates like the one issued by Amazon are necessary to boost Seattle's economy?
[00:07:27] Joy Hollingsworth: No.
[00:07:28] Crystal Fincher: Have you taken transit in the past week?
[00:07:32] Joy Hollingsworth: Yes.
[00:07:33] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Have you ridden a bike in the past week?
[00:07:36] Joy Hollingsworth: Yes.
[00:07:37] Crystal Fincher: Should Pike Place Market allow non-commercial car traffic?
[00:07:42] Joy Hollingsworth: No.
[00:07:43] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines?
[00:07:52] Joy Hollingsworth: Yes.
[00:07:54] Crystal Fincher: Should we accelerate the elimination of the ability to turn right on red lights to improve pedestrian safety?
[00:08:03] Joy Hollingsworth: Yes.
[00:08:06] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever been a member of a union?
[00:08:09] Joy Hollingsworth: No.
[00:08:10] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to increase funding and staffing for investigations into labor violations like wage theft and illegal union busting?
[00:08:18] Joy Hollingsworth: Yes, absolutely.
[00:08:19] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever walked on a picket line?
[00:08:23] Joy Hollingsworth: No.
[00:08:25] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever crossed a picket line?
[00:08:28] Joy Hollingsworth: No.
[00:08:29] Crystal Fincher: Is your campaign unionized?
[00:08:34] Joy Hollingsworth: I don't believe so. No, but they're allowed to.
[00:08:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, if your campaign staff wants to unionize, will you voluntarily recognize their effort?
[00:08:43] Joy Hollingsworth: Oh, absolutely.
[00:08:45] Crystal Fincher: Well, and that is our little lightning round here - that was pretty painless, I think. So looking at what's going on in the district, lots of people look to work that people have done to get a feel for what you prioritize and how qualified you are to lead. Can you describe something you've accomplished or changed in your district that's tangible to the residents, and what impact it has had on them?
[00:09:11] Joy Hollingsworth: Yeah, a couple things. From one aspect, which I can think of, the first thing I ever did was turn our unit that my grandmother purchased in 1949 into a triplex back in 2001. And people might think like - Oh, that was just one thing that you did, but I can't begin to tell you the impact that had on our community, especially for people not knowing how. And we hosted a listening session, a technical assistance program where we showed people how to be able to turn their house into a triplex - from permitting, to construction, to financing, to implementation, to all these different things. And that was through our church, that was through different organizations - through the Urban League. And so that was like one of the first things that I did as a young person back in 2001 when I was like 17, 18 - I joined our family 'cause I had a lot of experience, even as a young age, learning how to do that. The second piece is the food insecurity piece. For the last three years, I've been on the frontlines of food insecurity, ensuring that organizations outside of the traditional food bank sector - and that means people that are organizations that are receiving federal funding - so the organizations outside of that, whether that's the mom who started a food pantry in her apartment complex or the church group, ensuring that they had food. And that was all the way from Africatown to King County Equity Now, Byrd Barr, Cooka T with Feed The People, the Madrona Pop-Up Pantry - just ensuring that they had food and resources for sustainability into our district. Those are the two main things that I can think of off the top of my head in the district. And last but not least, our family has a cannabis farm and we were on the frontlines of ensuring social equity - and the biggest piece that I know that we were a part of was the $200 million that is gonna be reinvested through the Department of Equity and the Department of Commerce. Right now, you can go and look at those grants and those can be reinvested back into communities that have been disproportionately impacted by the War on Drugs - and that was the Central District that was ravaged in South End. So those three main things - the cannabis equity, the food equity piece, and then the housing piece.
[00:11:31] Crystal Fincher: So the City of Seattle is projected to have a revenue shortfall of $224 million beginning in 2025. Because the City's mandated by the state to pass a balanced budget, the options to address the upcoming deficit are either to raise revenue or cut services. How will you approach the issue of how the City collects and spends money on behalf of its constituents?
[00:11:56] Joy Hollingsworth: I think the first piece, and I've said this often, about our budget is - would love for us to have a full examination audit to ensure that where we're spending money, what is it going to different places. Right now, a lot of people are feeling like they're not even receiving the type of services that they should be from our city through their property taxes, through all the different revenue streams that are happening in our city. We're not able to meet some of the basic needs. So I'd like us to do a full examination - how we're spending money first off. And then the second piece is - okay, now we know how we're spending money. I'm a small business owner. I know every nook and cranny how money's spent and where it goes in and comes out. And then we can figure out revenue sources to figure out how we allocate it to those. And I know the state just passed a capital gains tax, there could be a vacancy tax - all the different pieces that the task force has come out and recommended for us - to increase JumpStart tax, the CEO tax. There can be so many different pieces - high earners tax - I think those are on the table. But I think the first step is for us to understand where the money's going, how it's being spent, where it's allocated, and ways - are there more efficiencies that we can be able to put in place?
[00:13:14] Crystal Fincher: So you talked about the state's action, the report that did come out from the council about options for raising revenue. Do you support or plan to advocate for any of those options in particular, or any others that you have?
[00:13:29] Joy Hollingsworth: I would love for us to look at a high earners tax - I think that would be an ideal place to look at - also a CEO tax. It's not to say I'm against a capital gains tax. However, it's hard to base a tax off of a stock market and how that can fluctuate, and I would hate for us to project a budget based on a stock market and then stuff happens and we can't be able to provide those services. So those three - increasing a JumpStart tax would be on the table as well that we can look at that piece as well - but yeah, high earners, JumpStart Tax, and a CEO tax.
[00:14:07] Crystal Fincher: So in favor of those. So would you be a no vote on capital gains?
[00:14:11] Joy Hollingsworth: Not to say I wouldn't be a no. I would love - if we did vote yes, it would have to also be another tax associated with that to balance it out in case - I would hate to project revenue based off of a stock market, how volatile it is, that's all I'm saying.
[00:14:27] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Now on almost every measure, we're behind our 2030 climate goals, while experiencing devastating impacts from extreme heat and cold, to wildfire and floods. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet 2030 goals?
[00:14:44] Joy Hollingsworth: Yeah, so we definitely have climate goals. One of the things that's not talked about is how much food is wasted in our city and how much that contributes to our climate piece. So for example, Spokane - 70% of their food is donated, 30% is purchased from a lot of their food banks. Seattle, it's reversed - 70% is purchased, 30% is donated. That is a food waste issue - 40% of our food is wasted. Every time you eat a hamburger - one pound - you are contributing 65 emissions of gasoline into our atmosphere. And so I'm vegan - I'm not trying to make anyone vegan - but understanding that a lot of times, a lot of our carbon emissions is food. And in Seattle, a lot of it is through transportation, obviously. And so those two biggest pieces - the food piece of it is ensuring that we can have a better system - how we get food into different spaces and food access points before it's wasted, because a lot of it is. And one thing that scares me a lot is food - I don't think a lot of people understand how important food is to our society and health and environment. But also is to ensure that we have equitable transportation policies. And right now what's going on is in District 2 - even though I'm in District 3 - a lot of the bus lanes are sitting empty. A lot of the transit options are being cut in South End communities. And so a lot of people down here would love to ride the bus. They'd love to have sidewalks. They would love - in North End and South End - we don't have a lot of sidewalks and pedestrian accessibility. I would love for us to champion more of the equitable side - climate justice - rather than just so much of infrastructure as we've been investing in, which is great, but it needs to marry the equitable piece as well.
[00:16:37] Crystal Fincher: Now, when it comes to transit and transportation - as you just talked about - we are having a pedestrian and bicycle safety crisis. Do you view this as a crisis and what would you do to address it?
[00:16:51] Joy Hollingsworth: Do I view the crisis of us not implementing a lot of bike lanes and pedestrianizing streets and safety piece? Oh yeah, absolutely. It's definitely a crisis. Look, North Seattle and South Seattle are the places that don't have adequate sidewalks. And so you have to design - in order for us to encourage people to use the buses, to use transit, you have to design it for a way we want people to interact. So sidewalk accessibility - ensuring that every sidewalk, or excuse me, every crosswalk next to a school should be lit - every single one. It used to be, you would press a button, it lights up for our kids to be able to walk to school. Also, we have to ensure that a lot of the sidewalk repairs, we have yet to - around Cal Anderson, you see a lot of the sidewalks are bumpy, they come out, they're not accessible for mom and strollers or someone that has a wheelchair. We have forgotten a lot about the infrastructure piece, like just the basic day-to-day stuff. And we've jumped over that to, you know, think about these grandiose things instead of really focusing, you know, micro issues that are within our community.
[00:18:10] Crystal Fincher: So with so much needing to happen, what would you prioritize and how do you balance the competition between car infrastructure and that for pedestrians and bikes?
[00:18:22] Joy Hollingsworth: A lot of people in Seattle feel like it's the War on Cars and it's not. It's about ensuring that we have safe transportation, whichever way you want to use that transit - whether it's bus, biking, walking, or, you know, using a vehicle. And so what's happening is - what I would love to prioritize are bike lanes that are, you know, not connected within our city. I think about 12th Avenue from Volunteer Park all the way up to Beacon Hill - that is a train wreck of a street. And so understanding, you know, we need protected bike lanes so people can be able to get from Volunteer Park up into the I-90 corridor, if they want to go east, or continue up into the Chief Sealth Trail - that place - ensuring that our sidewalks, accessibility around Cal Anderson Park or other places around our city are accessible and ADA specific so people in wheelchairs can be able to use them. I also want to champion, like I said, the crosswalk piece around schools. We have a number of schools in our school district from Meany over on John Street - that's where I live off of - those crosswalks are really dangerous, especially if you're coming east and the sun is shining right in your eyes, you can't even see the crosswalks. People can't even see people at times. So there's some high-need areas right now, but those would be some of the main pieces. So, you know, obviously bike lane infrastructure, the sidewalk infrastructure. And also too, we talk about how we want people to be in electric cars - it's hard to find an electric charging station around Seattle. And that infrastructure, you go to LA or other places, they're everywhere. And so if we want to invest in that infrastructure, we have to start doing it now.
[00:20:03] Crystal Fincher: So right now, you know, speaking of transit - transit reliability is a problem right now. Between operator shortages and other things, buses just are not showing up when they're scheduled or supposed to for a lot of people - impacting ridership. Now, King County Metro and Sound Transit are county and regional bodies, but what can the City do to stabilize transit reliability?
[00:20:28] Joy Hollingsworth: Yeah, one of the biggest things, Crystal, is we could make it affordable for a bus driver or a mechanic or someone in the working class to be able to live here. A lot of times I go on Twitter and - my favorite place - and you see, you know, people are talking about the late 8, or ghost buses that are not showing up, or just, you know, different issues that they've had with transit being late, or just certain different aspects. But we also have to understand that there are people driving these buses. And a lot of those people cannot afford to live in our city and they have to drive from Puyallup, from Tacoma, from wherever to live here - or there's a shortage on mechanics. And so we definitely want - I think the City can do a better job of making housing affordable, championing workforce housing specifically. There's a lot of people that make above affordable housing salaries, but not enough to make ends meet. And they are really struggling right now because we are pressing out our middle class and making it super unaffordable to live here. And so, you know, championing those pieces - whether if you're an essential worker, from someone who's a social worker to a teacher, to a first responder who is not with, works in the city, I'm talking about first responders that work, that do the contract work, that are, you know, the ambulance workers that might not be a Medic One - they're outside those systems that make minimum wage, which is ridiculous as they're saving lives. And then our bus drivers - they should have options for workforce housing, voucher programs, just like people do in affordable housing. And I think that would really help alleviate a lot of the housing costs that are going on and make it more accessible for people. And then the hiring bonuses, you know - police are at $30,000 and then we're offering a Metro rider $3,000, or Metro driver $3,000. Why can't that be the same, you know, or more closer to where we're making it more, you know, attractive for people to be drivers and operators - I think is important.
[00:22:30] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I wanna keep talking about housing and homelessness, because one of the things called out by experts as a barrier to the homelessness response is - like you were just talking about for bus drivers - frontline worker wages that don't cover the cost of living for the city. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for our area? And how can we make that more likely with how the City bids and contracts for services?
[00:22:55] Joy Hollingsworth: Yeah, first of all, absolutely nonprofits should. We know they're squeezed, but I'll go back to this with the City piece. It's hard to be at the City to talk about how we should be paying living wages to folks and try to say - Hey, nonprofit, you need to be paying this. - when the City can't even do that right now. And they're in a contract dispute to figure out livable wages and, you know, cost of living increases, and the 1% that was tried to provide to them - which is ridiculous when Tacoma, you know, I think was at 6%. And, you know, what we have to do - so the first thing I'd love to do is for the City to get on point to ensure that - hey, we have livable wages, cost of living, so we can show nonprofits how to do it. But the other piece is - for the contracting piece, there should be a requirement for a certain standard of livable wages for, you know, people that are bidding for contracts. If they're gonna bid for a contract, they should be able to pay their staff a certain amount. The challenge with a lot of that is that a lot of these nonprofits ramped up their programming during COVID - they got a shot in the arm from the federal government. And so now they have expanded their programming, they expanded their staff. If you look at a lot of the [Form] 990s in nonprofits, you have seen them grow tremendously where they went from a staff of 50 to 100, or a staff of 30 to 100. I mean, it's wild. But to see that growth - obviously the need is there - and so now they're struggling with new sources of revenue and what that looks like. And so ideally it would be great for us to have that requirement that they have to pay a certain wage to their staff in order to get a contract.
[00:24:37] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. And also wanna talk about public safety, which is a big concern - particularly alternative response, because while other jurisdictions around the country and even in our region have rolled out alternative response programs to better support those having a behavioral health crisis, Seattle is stalled in implementing what is one of the most popular and widely-supported ideas by voters in the city. Where do you stand on non-police solutions to public safety issues? And what are your thoughts on civilian-led versus co-response models?
[00:25:11] Joy Hollingsworth: Yeah, okay, so the public safety thing - look, I was the first one to come out and took heat for it from different news, well, from one news outlet, regarding my stance on police saying - Hey, I would love for us to have number one, better relationships with police officers. And I'd also love for us to - not love - but also for us, hearing from community members that they would like some type of police presence in their community to respond to certain Priority 1 and Priority 2 calls that are happening in their community. The second piece with that is it's not one or the other, it's also in addition to that - like you said, having other response models to different situations and activities that are going on in our city. Number one, being our Health One department through our Fire Department - they can alleviate a lot of the calls that are being transferred to SPD that should be responded by a medical professional or social worker that is equipped with a - someone who's doing pairs with the Health One piece, which is phenomenal. And we can ramp that up immediately - they already have the system, they have the stats to go with it, they can receive more funding. The third piece to that, which a lot of people have been asking for, are these situations where armed police officer's not required, maybe not a Health One person is not required - it should be like a mental health service provider. But a lot of the mental health service providers are also asking for potentially an officer to back them up in case something happens as well. And so it could be a co-response model as well. And I think a lot of those are needed because a lot of the calls that are coming into SPD are - officers not necessarily required.
Now, the activity that we've seen in the district - from Asian families being targeted to just the other day, this young lady was carjacked at my parents' house in Rainier Beach, two houses down, by gun. The activities that we're seeing - a lot of them, unfortunately, are done by a lot of our youth and our kids that are being taken advantage of from certain adults in certain aspects. And so that tells me that our youth don't have a lot of stuff to do because they're doing other activities - and that we can deviate, have a diversion program like Choose 180 and Marty with Safe Passages and Community Passages - these gun violence prevention programs where we can create environments where they have things to do after school. They have Late Night to go to a community center. Back in the day, we'd go to Late Night, 9 to 11, to play basketball all day. You had something to do. Get them off their cell phones and reconnected and engaged with community. 'Cause right now they don't have a sense of being, a sense of belonging - and the pandemic really exacerbated a lot of those issues with our youth. And so we have to do a better job of investing in the mental health piece and in the afterschool activities for our kids. And in-school mentoring, which is huge.
[00:28:15] Crystal Fincher: I also wanna talk about the sometimes friction between community surveillance and community safety. We have had proposals ranging from ShotSpotter to various cameras and license plate readers, various monitoring and hotspot focusing. Do you think those are effective, or do you prefer one over another? How do you process that, and consider that, and what would you advocate for?
[00:28:44] Joy Hollingsworth: Yeah, not the license plate readers - that would not be one that I think would, that I would support. I definitely went back and forth with the ShotSpotter piece just because of the technology of being able to identify specifically where shots were coming from. And I think it's really hard to - now, with the increase of gun violence and what's been going on in a lot of the shootings and someone being able to buy a clip off whatever to turn their 9 into a little mini gun - which is wild to me - that you can be able to shoot off so many rounds from a Glock. The ShotSpotter thing, I think, is a conversation I definitely want to revisit with community. I sat in those meetings, I heard from people, they talked about - some people just wanted to do a certain area, some people wanted to just test it out. I think it's worth revisiting to ask community like - Hey, is this something that we think is needed? Not necessarily like - Hey, police department, is this gonna be helpful? But like community - Do you think this is gonna be helpful for you? Would you want this? - and I think it's worth a conversation again.
[00:29:57] Crystal Fincher: So I mean, definitely some people in community are in support of it, some people are opposed throughout Seattle. Would you vote in favor of implementing a ShotSpotter pilot or trial?
[00:30:10] Joy Hollingsworth: Yeah, I probably - I probably would. I probably would, Crystal. Yeah.
[00:30:16] Crystal Fincher: Okay, I also wanna talk about childcare and how onerous it is on residents of Seattle and beyond to afford now - news that the average cost of childcare is more expensive than the cost to send a child to college. It is breaking the bank for a lot of families and really taking people out of the workforce - locking them into poverty. Is this something that you've thought about, and what would you do to address it?
[00:30:45] Joy Hollingsworth: Yeah, I thought about this all the time - ran into a mom who said she lost her childcare just because she received a dollar wage, a dollar increase per hour. And so she didn't meet the threshold income for being able to receive a certain childcare, which is crazy. And right now our city does a really bad and poor job of creating environments that are inclusive, that are encouraging, and that create and help small - not small families - but young families into our city. And a form of childcare besides what the City can do, obviously, to add childcare to one of their benefit packages. And I'd love to see how when we do forums, there's childcare provided. I'd love to see how businesses and different companies - they include childcare in some of their packages when they're trying to get certain employees, which should be for everyone. But also our community centers used to be a form of childcare for folks. And right now when we underfunded community centers, afterschool programs, different summer activities for parents that used to be free - we really deleted a lot of the affordable childcare that was like the original affordable childcare. Not saying - okay, we're gonna give everybody a certain amount of money, but it's like, hey, we're gonna create these free activities for kids. I worked at an afterschool program where you could drop your kid off at 7:00 AM. And after they got off at 3 PM, we would go pick the kid up at their school - our transportation program was our most valuable program for parents - pick the kid up. And then after we picked the kid up, we'd bring them back, they'd do their homework, then they'd go in the gym - they would practice. By 7 PM, that parent knew that kid was fed, they finished all their homework, and they were tired, and they were gonna go straight to bed. To me, a lot of these nonprofits and a lot - we have to fund more of those. There are a lot of nonprofits, there are a lot of organizations and community groups that can and want to do that - they don't know how to scale up, they don't have the funding to do that. And those have to be different forms of childcare for our kids, and we're just not doing a good job of that right now.
[00:32:57] Crystal Fincher: Now, I also wanna talk about business and about the economy. Seattle has a very diverse business community, District 3 has a very diverse business community. We have some of the largest corporations in the world headquartered right here, or right next door, and a vibrant community of small businesses. And I wanna talk in particular about the small businesses, especially in D3, because they do collectively impact our local economy so much - and they are dealing with a lot of challenges. And you yourself, as a small business owner, I'm sure are aware of that. What can we do, or what should we be doing to better support our small businesses and jumpstart our economy with them?
[00:33:45] Joy Hollingsworth: Over during the pandemic, 6,500 small businesses either closed, or permanently closed, in Seattle. And when the big businesses left downtown, the small guys, small businesses stayed open. The mom and pops stayed open, the little restaurant on the corner, the coffee shop - they made it work, they're resilient. And what I've been hearing from our small businesses that have been here for years, people that might have been born and raised here that have small businesses, or just started here new businesses and brought all this together is that they want to feel a part of the revitalization piece. Because right now they feel like a lot of the focus has been on our big businesses here. We have our Amazon, we have our Starbucks, we have Expedia, Alaska Airlines - we have so many different businesses that are here that create, they're a part of our ecosystem. But we also have our small businesses that have not - number one, had a seat at the table, have not been prioritized, who have - contribute to our tax revenue, contribute jobs, great paying jobs, create a small business - from cleaning up their sidewalk and contributing in that way, or creating places for people to build community. And so one of the things that I would love for us to champion, particularly within Capitol Hill and the Pike/Pine Corridor, is if you go - if you walk from our, what do you call it, our waterfront, our newly formed waterfront, and you continue up into downtown, you go through Westlake, you go up and then you see our huge, brand new, shiny convention center, it stops right there. And then you look up and you're like - Am I supposed to pass that overpass or not, or what is going on there? And so it's very dangerous - the sidewalks haven't been widened, it's not cleaned properly, it just looks like really - it's not well lit, it looks really dangerous. And so wanting to create this entry into Capitol Hill from downtown, so we can encourage people to come up as we are getting our economy stemmed from downtown.
And the second piece is, bringing Black businesses back to the Central District. A lot of those businesses don't have a BIA, or Business Improvement Association - they're not a part of a Chamber of Commerce. These are businesses that - from Simply Soulful to Monica's Hair Care - all these different businesses that want to come back in the Central District. They also want to feel like we are - there's a landmark - like people were encouraging people to come in the CD, we're creating programs that are just for them. They have access to Office of Economic Development with special, with intentional programming options and grants. And I think that's really important for me as well. So those two biggest things where they felt like they have a seat on the table, they have a voice to be able to advocate for them - it's huge - and we're not always just prioritizing what we think as the big businesses in Seattle.
[00:36:47] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. Now, you are in a race right now - with your opponent and you looking competitive - for voters that are trying to figure out the difference between you two and make their decision about who they should vote for, what do you tell them?
[00:37:06] Joy Hollingsworth: Yeah, I don't say one's better than the other. I say - Hey, this is my unique perspective. - a nonprofit leader, a small business owner, a family that grew up in the district for 39 years that has a historical perspective, someone that has experiences on being on the tail end of policy and understanding how it impacts our community and understanding and knowing what's missing as well. Someone who's going to listen, and we're building our priorities literally block by block - it's not what Joy's agenda is, it's not what I think the district should have - it's literally what I've been hearing. Our priorities are shaped by block by block people. And I'm also - if I'm wrong, I'm wrong - and I am humble about it, there's no ego. I wanna work with people and push stuff forward and figure out how we can find common ground and commonality. And I think that's the one thing that I would love to be able to bring to our city council - is that type of mentality with an optimistic outlook. It's hard to stay positive and be optimistic, and have something to look forward to, and think about how great our city is when there's so many problems that we've had. But I also think it takes someone crazy enough to figure out and be finding the opportunity and the optimism in certain things to inspire people to get stuff done. So we're not always having this friction and hitting heads - so I think that's important.
[00:38:34] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much for taking the time today to share who you are with us and what your plans are - very much appreciated - and we'll continue to follow your path on the campaign trail.
[00:38:46] Joy Hollingsworth: Thank you, Crystal. And I really appreciate this opportunity to connect with you - it was fun. And I love your plants in the background - the listeners can't see, but you have nice plants.
[00:38:55] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by staff writer at The Stranger covering policing, incarceration and courts, Ashley Nerbovig!
Ashley and Crystal discuss (and rant!) about continued and international outrage over Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) leaders caught on body cam laughing about a fellow Seattle Police Department (SPD) officer running over and killing Jaahnavi Kandula - how the SPOG contract makes it near impossible to discipline or fire officers, Mayor Bruce Harrell’s responsibility in creating the mess by voting for the contract as a City councilmember and in possibly getting us out of it by delivering a better one from the current negotiations, and how our recruiting problem is a culture problem in a competitive marketplace.
The show then covers passage of the War on Drugs 2.0 bill by Seattle City Council, the start of the trial for three Tacoma officers accused of murdering Manny Ellis, and a rally held by Seattle City employees for fair pay.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Ashley Nerbovig, at @AshleyNerbovig.
Resources
“Tanya Woo, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 2” from Hacks & Wonks
“Tammy Morales, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 2” from Hacks & Wonks
“Seattle Police Officer Probably Won’t Get Fired for Laughing about Jaahnavi Kandula’s Death” by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger
“Police response time to Wing Luke Museum 911 calls raises questions about priorities” by Libby Denkmann and Sarah Leibovitz from KUOW
“Seattle Police Officer Hurls Racist Slur at Chinese-American Neighbor” by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger
“‘Feel safer yet?’ Seattle police union’s contempt keeps showing through” by Danny Westneat from The Seattle Times
“Amid SPD controversy, Mayor Harrell leads with empathy” from Seattle Times Editorial Board
“Seattle Launches Drug War 2.0” by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger
“Council Passes New Law Empowering City Attorney to Prosecute People Who Use Drugs in Public” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
@daeshikjr on Twitter: “BREAKING: Seattle City Councilmembers revived a recently voted down bill that many community activists are calling War on Drugs 2.0. We spoke with Sara on her campaign trail about her experience with drugs, mushrooms, and what she hoped to accomplish while in office. …”
“Trial begins for Tacoma officers charged with killing Manuel Ellis” by Jared Brown from KNKX
“Trial of 3 Tacoma police officers accused of killing Manuel Ellis in 2020 gets underway” by Peter Talbot from The News Tribune
“Historic trial begins for 3 officers charged in killing of Manny Ellis” by Patrick Malone from The Seattle Times
@tacoma_action on Twitter: “Here's how you can support the family of Manuel Ellis during the trial…”
Trial Information for State v. Burbank, Collins and Rankine | Pierce County Courts & Law
“City Workers Rally Their Asses Off” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
If you missed this week's topical shows, we continued our series of Seattle City Council candidate interviews. All 14 candidates for 7 positions were invited and we had in-depth conversations with many of them. This week, we presented District 2 candidates, Tanya Woo and Tammy Morales. Have a listen to those and stay tuned over the coming weeks - we hope these interviews will help voters better understand who these candidates are and inform their choices for the November 7th general election. Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome to the program for the first time, today's co-host: staff writer at The Stranger covering policing, incarceration and courts - and rocking that coverage - Ashley Nerbovig. Hello.
[00:01:42] Ashley Nerbovig: Hey, Crystal - thanks. Hi.
[00:01:43] Crystal Fincher: Glad to have you on the show. We have no shortage of things to talk about and particularly this week where everything public safety was exploding, imploding, just all over the place. I want to start off talking about a story that is now making international headlines - the release of the video of an SPD officer, a SPOG executive, mocking the death of Jaahnavi Kandula, who was killed by another policeman while she was just a pedestrian just walking and run over by a policeman who - it didn't seem like he had his lights and sirens on, going over 70 miles per hour. Just such a tragedy in the first place, and then outrage was the dominant feeling nationally, internationally when that video came out. What is going to happen or what does it look like is going to happen? You wrote a great piece this week about that.
[00:02:42] Ashley Nerbovig: Yeah, he's not gonna get fired - for sure - unless something wildly out of the normal process happens. And even if that does, the arbitration process is such that they would look at the SPOG contract and be like - There was nothing in this that he did that's actually fireable. - and it's super frustrating to watch. And in that story, I break down how we've seen these cases before - that cops have said really outrageous stuff, or even done something pretty outrageous, or something that the public looks at as pretty outrageous - and the reaction has been either it's a written reprimand or it's unsustained findings. One of the examples I gave was that there was multiple officers in one car who - one of them said - they accelerate toward protesters, people can be heard to be laughing. And so one of them says - I effing hate these people - or something along those lines. And because they couldn't narrow it in and prove who said it, and none of the cops inside said who said it - it's frustrating, but it also makes sense when you read the SPOG contract - because they have to prove beyond a preponderance of evidence, which is more than 50%, which sounds like a pretty low standard to hop over. But actually, I think they did a review of a bunch of different cops' policies on what they have to prove to require discipline across the country and SPD is in a very small minority - the majority of people have something that's lower or at a preponderance of evidence, and our standard is right above it.
You see all of this outrage, and then you see Andrew Lewis and Lisa Herbold and Mayor Harrell and SPOG all say, essentially - We want to watch the OPA process, we're excited to watch that investigation. - as if they don't know that anyone reading the SPOG contract, anyone who's read enough OPA cases knows that this is going to end in the cop continuing to be on the force. And to some extent, you can make the argument that if this was one isolated comment, maybe it wouldn't be a firing that was justified. But when you look at his entire career, and then when you also look at what the actual other punishments are, right? You can get suspended, but you don't have that suspension served consecutively - you can serve it throughout a year. So it means that - the whole point of having a suspension is that they don't get paid, and it hurts their bottom line, and it's something to avoid. If you're just serving out a 15-day suspension over a year, and then you're making it up with tons of overtime, what are the consequences for cops in this city? And the answer is that our police accountability systems do not have actual consequences for our officers right now.
[00:05:28] Crystal Fincher: Not at all. And it's infuriating. And this has kicked off a conversation that we've had before - just talking about the SPOG contract and the importance of that - there are a lot of people who are new here who weren't paying attention several years ago. There was an attempt that the City of Seattle - the council in particular - attempted to do this. They passed police accountability legislation that tightened that up. But then the current SPOG contract that's in place - was approved by Mayor Harrell on the council, by the way, who voted for the current contract that is currently handcuffing him and preventing him from being able to do anything about this - that superseded many of the City ordinances that dealt with this. And one thing that a lot of people don't know is that contract can supersede City law. So the things that the City thinks is happening, the process that we have - our democratic, our initiative process, the council process - all falls by the wayside when this is approved. And at the time, this was approved on a narrow vote - this was not, the conversation leading up to the approval of this current contract was not like - Oh, this looks great, it's fine. Lorena González infamously toiled over the vote that she was going to do, and later said that she regretted voting to approving it. But they were warned that this was going to happen. They were warned that moving backwards on accountability was going to produce really unsavory results. And lo and behold, here we are.
So once again, we're in a situation where everyone - almost everyone - agrees. Most members of the public, of the national community, international community agree this is egregious. This is unacceptable. And the City's handcuffed because of this current contract. And I just want people to be aware that the next contract is currently being negotiated. The mayor's office - the same mayor who approved this current contract - is currently negotiating this next contract. And is Bruce Harrell going to ensure that something like this can't happen again with no remedy, or recourse, or consequence? That's really going to be up to how this contract is negotiated and structured. I don't know what's going to happen with this officer in this incident - he has a long record himself of issues, complaints - and I don't know what's happening with that is going to go through this process. But the executive's office, the council who will ultimately have to approve this contract does have a say in whether or not something like this can happen again. And I think they owe the residents of the city assurances that this shouldn't happen. We're seeing so many of these examples. This isn't the first example of a death mocked - it's just the first one that we have on video that's public. There was a tombstone before, there's been social media posts before.
And also the fact that this was, I believe, VP of the Seattle Police Officers Guild. When you have leaders doing this - similar to the assistant police chief in Kent who displayed literal Nazi memorabilia - that speaks to culture. These are leaders. These are people dictating what we have here. And tangentially, and this is going on while we're having a conversation about police being short-staffed, while we're having a conversation about how hard it is to recruit - after the city has thrown money and recruitment bonuses and retainment bonuses at people. And can we just acknowledge that someone looking at this, now that they have the choice to join any police department, basically, they want to - they're all hiring - why would they join Seattle? This is the recruiting problem here. It's this culture. It's this continued drumbeat of toxic, distasteful stuff.
[00:09:06] Ashley Nerbovig: I think you're right about it being a culture problem. But I also think that the strength of our SPOG contract - you could make an argument that these are some of the most protected City employees. And it's across the board that people don't want to be cops. And it makes sense because even if you take away all of the controversies, local governments overall are struggling right now to recruit people for any job. And then on top of it, you're talking about a job that requires a lot of no work from home - we've had a complete culture shift in what we value about work. And I think when you look at what the job of being a cop is, it's you have to live in a certain location, basically, you can live - although Auderer lives in Olympia, I think, so you can live far away - but you have to be able to go to work in-person. And then on top of it, you're tied to all of this really negative associations that we have with cops, and this shift in how we've thought about cops. And you're competing in a really tight job market where there's a lot of really - yes, you get a lot of money being a Seattle police officer, but that requires a lot of overtime. You can make that same money just like having a normal 40-hour workweek if you work something tech, and it can also be more flexible and more remote. I just think that the problem is exactly that being a cop is not appealing, and we can't change that - no one wants these jobs.
And so why are we not talking about what people do want to work and starting from that place of - people do want to help people. I think a lot of cops in those positions talk about reshifting budget priorities, and that would mean changing their jobs. But cops were the first people to tell me that they didn't want to be social workers, that they weren't trying to do social work - and that they felt like they didn't have the tools and they weren't the people to be doing mental health intervention, or drug abuse intervention. Or homelessness intervention. You can't help someone unsheltered when you're a cop. The only thing cops can do is jail. I thought something really interesting - I know this is something we're going to talk about in a bit - and I really want to say something that I thought about with the SPOG contract. One of the things that I can't remember if it was Teresa Mosqueda or Morales who said it, but one of them was like - If we aren't funding these treatment options - when they were talking about the drug vote - If we aren't funding these treatment options, and we aren't funding these diversion programs, the only thing cops are going to be able to do if they want to get someone off the street is put them in jail. And I think that people have this idea that cops have other options, but that's their tool. It's not a choice for them. The only solution for cops is to arrest - that is their main job activity.
And just this idea that people don't want these jobs, they are not effective for the problems that we have, and yet we have this desperation - and Bruce Harrell has this desperation to cling to tough-on-crime policies. And it's dumb. And you don't see any solutions, but people like to pretend like they saw some improvement - when they just like the feeling of, oh - you don't see anything change when you put a tough-on-crime policy. There's this idea that all of our - anytime we do something that's like violence intervention or like a community-based approach - that we don't see the results very quickly. And it always is so funny to me, because I'm like, you don't see - no one in their day-to-day life, if we tomorrow said you can arrest - other than maybe someone who went downtown and all of the homeless people, we can't even put anyone in the King County Jail. So I don't know what they're talking about right now, but you don't actually see a marked improvement - you just get a shift in media narratives - that's all that changes, really, in my opinion.
[00:12:49] Crystal Fincher: This is the same thing that we're doing - and your point is exactly correct - we're only funding one thing. And what you fund, what you put resources to, is what you're going to have. We are so desperately short of other support services, behavioral health support services. And there are entities in the process of addressing that, right? Absolutely frustrating that it's not here now, there is some work being done there. So progress is being made largely at the county level and regionally. But this is not going to work. This is the same old thing.
The thing that I find troubling, particularly as a progressive political consultant, is that this makes passing progressive policy harder. Because if you dress something up like progressive policy - Oh, it's really important that we treat root causes. And yeah, we all believe it. - and they all say that until it's time to actually put their money where their mouth is, to actually do the thing, to implement it. And then what we get is this warmed-over piece of legislation that does one of the things - yes, we can arrest - and makes it harder than it was before to do the other things. And it was astronomically hard before. We know what's going to happen with this. So the real question is, so what are they going to blame for the failure of this next? What excuse is coming up next? I talk to a lot of people, lay people, some people - I just like hearing an unfiltered opinion of someone who's not an insidery insider and paying attention to all the policy and stuff. And you would be shocked by how many people who are - they don't consider themselves super leftist, probably general Democrats, but they don't really pay attention to much - who are under the impression that Seattle's progressive city council has run amok. And it's like, when it comes to public safety, they are not passing progressive policy. Unfortunately, the conservative council - that is the policy that we have and that we've continued. And when everybody rushes to put that label on it - we're going to see a lot of political communication coming up soon, where I'm sure everybody is going to call themselves a progressive, probably pragmatic progressive, responsible progressive - but like they cling to that word and they want to present their policy is that. But when it's not, all it does is hurt actual progressive policy. So it's important for people to stand up and be like - No, we see that, and we see that it's not what the community is demanding and asking for. It's just really frustrating. We should probably get back to some of this news a little bit.
[00:15:02] Ashley Nerbovig: There's just one last thing I want to say about Danny Westneat - this is going back a couple topics, but it was something that you said about the SPOG contract and that this is the leadership of SPOG. And Danny had a - bless his heart, he tried, probably - I quote tweeted it when I read the first couple of graphs. And then I went back and read his whole column about Auderer - I can't even say his last name - but the SPOG VP's comments. And he said quite a few things that were just absolutely ridiculous, where he talks about how SPOG uses public safety as a bargaining chip and says essentially - Oh, it'd be a shame if something happened to this beautiful city of yours. And then he goes on to give them that bargaining chip and say that Seattle desperately needs more cops. And then he goes to talking about how - he names a city that basically did defund because they also broke up their cop union. And it's just such a wild series of thoughts. And he concludes it on - SPOG needs to clean house. And it's so frustrating - even if you're just thinking of it logically - if you are a member of SPOG, and your vice president has gotten out of this many OPA investigations with little to no punishment - you don't think they know who is leading them? That's who I want as my union vice president - I want someone who's gotten away with a bunch of stuff - that is how you stay safe and stay protected - and who's going to clean house - the leadership? The leadership is the problem. Anyway, I just wanted to fully round that out by giving Danny like a 2 out of 5 stars on that column.
[00:16:35] Crystal Fincher: There are a lot of people who are like - Wow, okay, didn't think there was going to be a day where many of them agreed with Danny Westneat. He got some of the way there. I think one of the challenges with that is a tendency to view unions as separate from workers, and the union as separate from the cops. They are elected by their peers in the union - this is representative of the culture, this is the result of them saying these are the people we feel best represent us. And this is what it is. If that's not a red flag, I don't know what is - but here we are. And it's hard for me to separate SPOG versus police because SPOG is police. And it's just time we had a serious conversation about real accountability. And it's a tangible conversation - there is someone responsible for this, there is an intervention that can work here - we can negotiate this. It's up to the mayor, the people on negotiating committee, it's up to the council who's going to approve this. This doesn't just happen - they're permitted to happen by a contract that is in place. And if we're unhappy with it, and if City Hall can't see that the people are unhappy with a contract that enables this, the question is - particularly for Bruce Harrell, who is the boss of the police department - they literally report to him, police chief literally reports to him, direct report, his responsibility. What is he going to do now? Is he going to respond to this and say, I'm going to ensure this doesn't happen again? Because that's a buck-stops-here attitude that is normally expected of an executive. That's the job. What is he going to do to ensure this doesn't happen again? How is he going to live up to his word that he's going to improve the culture and improve public safety? We're waiting. And it seems like they're just permitting this. They're just - Oh, that's too bad.
[00:18:20] Ashley Nerbovig: The Seattle editorial board said he's been leading with empathy. If anyone really wants to rage out, read that editorial. I don't know if Bruce called and said he was going to cancel the whole city's subscription to The Seattle Times, but it's just absolute garbage. Kandula was killed while Officer Kevin Dave was responding to a guy who had too much cocaine and wasn't even ODing. Rich, my editor, said this to me earlier this week, where he was like, we were talking about the drug vote, and he was saying - This is just another example of how cops shouldn't be the ones responding to people overdosing. EMTs can go to these things.
[00:18:56] Crystal Fincher: And do in most other cities - without police, to be clear.
[00:18:59] Ashley Nerbovig: And you mentioned earlier that it was unclear about his lights. And I don't know for sure what was going on there, because I know his in-car video wasn't working. But I've read another OPA case where someone had said that a cop was just turning on his lights and sirens to get through red lights - and the justification for that that they showed was that it was like - oh, he was tactically using his lights and sirens, which means that they only turn them on to get through lights and stuff, even though he's responding to a call. And when they do that, it means that their in-car video doesn't turn on. And that's allowed because - oh, it's a tactic. And super curious to see the end of this OPA report for Kevin Dave. EMTs are not worried about sneaking up on people - they just turn on their lights and go. But yeah, it's going to be really frustrating to watch.
[00:19:45] Crystal Fincher: So now can you break down what this legislation does? Because I've seen it characterized in a number of different ways - Oh, it's making drugs illegal. It's like doing different things. What did this legislation actually change?
[00:19:56] Ashley Nerbovig: This particular piece of legislation - to do my full roundup of this - everybody knows that in 2021, the Washington Supreme Court struck down our felony drug possession law. The Washington State Legislature scrambled to pass something - and they passed this idea of we're going to do two referrals to treatment before we arrest anyone, and we're only going to arrest on a misdemeanor, and that went across the state for people in possession of drugs. That went on for two years and it was unworkable - they didn't structure it, they didn't create a database for people to be marking referrals - it's called a stopgap measure. It was one of those things where it was a really half thought-out piece of what potentially could be progressive legislation, did more harm than just making it a misdemeanor and then trying to talk about decriminalization a little bit later - I think that might have actually ended up being strategically a better way to go, except you would have seen a bunch of people arrested in that time. The result is that they came back this session and they said - Okay, no. They had that big fight and they said - We're going to make it a gross misdemeanor, your first two offenses you're going to get a maximum sentence of 180 days, any offenses after that you're going to go up to 364 days.
And they said - We prefer people defer to treatment, we prefer cops defer. - that was one thing that Herbold and Lewis both kept saying is - their City bill, that it was different from the state bill and that it starts the diversion out of the system process at the cop level before people even have a case started, whereas they kept describing the state bill as getting started. There are multiple places throughout the system that you can get diverted - you can get diverted before you get arrested so there's never anything on your record, you can get diverted after you've been arrested by the cops and now the prosecutors are in charge of your case and they defer any charges or defer any charges from getting actually convicted and then you're able to get it off of your record. So that's deferred prosecution. And then there's, you can get stuff - after you've been sentenced, you can get stuff wiped off your record. The argument that the City was making in how their bill was different from the state bill is they're saying - Oh, we really make it clear that our policy is not to arrest. The state bill does too. They say that it's their preference that people are diverted to treatment rather than be arrested. They also put a bunch of deferred prosecution stuff in there to divert people out of the system once they have charges against them.
It's easier to talk about what this bill didn't do. It set a policy that said - This is our preference by the City of Seattle. So the state law was already in place. And now because it's a misdemeanor, state law passes - that starts in August, like everything gets implemented. So technically, cops could find people who were using drugs in public or possessing drugs in public and arrest them on a gross misdemeanor. And I think the using is such an interesting part of this, because there's nothing about possession as a charge that doesn't get at the same thing that public use does. When you make it all about public use and you add public use plus possession to this law, it is such a dog whistle towards people who are just mad at unhoused people. Morales said something really clear in the City Council vote, which was that this bill is not going to curb public use because the people who this bill is targeting have nowhere else to use. And so the state law passes, SPD cops can do this. But if SPD cops right now in Seattle - or right before this, because Harrell signed the bill yesterday - before this bill passed, if they arrested someone, their charges, because Seattle doesn't have its own ordinance, would have gone to Leesa Manion's office, the King County Prosecutor's, which would have made a ton of sense. King County Prosecutor's has a bunch of programs already in place for this - they've already been dealing with felony versions of this for a long time. But her office did a weird thing and got really like - We don't have the misdemeanor staff to handle this and these felony drug courts that we have wouldn't even apply to this. They did a bunch of workarounds - they really quashed the idea of these cases getting referred to them really early on, or at least they asked for money from us that apparently City Council just was unwilling to try to negotiate - or they were unwilling to negotiate trying to work out a contract. I never really understood what her motivations were with that or were slamming it down so hard.
And so the City said - We're going to implement this ordinance and we're going to send these cases to our city attorney, Republican Ann Davison. So that's what this law does is that it doesn't - anyone who describes it - all that this law does is say that now Ann Davison can prosecute these cases, and also we would really like it if cops didn't arrest people on these charges. And it says - and I'll give them this - it adds a bunch of paperwork that cops now need to have when they do arrest someone on a drug possession charge. But I think Morales really summed it up really well where she said - This does not expand any diversion, it doesn't expand any treatment. - and this is probably a little bit more opinion-based, but - It doesn't improve public safety in any way. And I think that's so key is that we can ask - even if it's not, even if you aren't someone that believes in the nefarious, like that cops are all like Auderer and don't care about behavioral health and don't really look at people who are addicts on the street as someone that needs public health intervention - let's buy the premise that there are well-meaning cops out there who want to take these people to treatment. We do not have resources. And this idea that - in the City Council staff member, or the City Council Central Staff's memo, they said - Diversion requires social workers. These are actually much longer, much more resource-intensive cases. And cops are going to maybe divert the first or second time that they find someone, but then there's no resources to pick that person up - there's nothing to actually help them, maybe they're not ready to get treatment yet. And at some point, they're just going to arrest them and they're going to go through all of the charges. And maybe they're not going to go to jail because King County won't take them right now, but it's creating the structure for that. And they're still going to have to continue to show up at municipal court until they get something on their record that ends up putting them in jail. And we know how bad jail is - we know that it increases the chances of overdose. I think this bill kills people - I think that's the bottom line of what this bill does - is that it's going to kill a bunch of people, and make a bunch of people poorer, and do nothing to curb drug addiction, and fill our jails, and just continue the cycle of mass incarceration.
[00:26:51] Crystal Fincher: The outcomes from this type of policy are clear. We have so much information about what happens when you do just fund, enable sending people to jail without doing anything to address the root causes for why they're there. Also, there are some people rejoicing over this - like it is going to help - I'll be curious to see their evaluation after a period of time, to see what their perception of what results. But it's just frustrating because we could choose to do what has shown to be effective elsewhere. Everybody is frustrated. I don't think anyone is happy. I don't want to be in a space where someone is using publicly, right? And perhaps inhaling secondhand something or whatever. But I also recognize that generally people who do use in public don't have another place to use. And if it is an issue of - addiction isn't logical, right? Addiction isn't reasonable. It's not - Oh, there are consequences for me going to jail now, so I'm just going to stop being addicted. The thing about addiction is that you can't decide to stop being addicted. It's not up to you. And that people fall into addiction for a variety of reasons. And being addicted is a reality that so many people face - to treat it as like they're less than human for struggling with that particular issue is ridiculous. But we do that from a public safety perspective. And as you said, this is going to largely wind up targeting the homeless - that's usually who this applies to - people. We can talk about the drug habits of executives and rich people, and the rates of drug use are not low across the board. I always find it so curious. We drug test minimum wage and low wage workers, but not high wage executives. I'm pretty confident what results we would see if we did that.
There's an interesting video with Sara Nelson - yeah, speaking of politicians using drugs, and then voting on drug ordinances - but Sara Nelson has a place to use privately. That's the difference.
[00:28:52] Ashley Nerbovig: Because we're going after public use, we're not going after possession. And the casual way she talks about it - you are aware that you are growing drugs, and you're telling people where to find drugs - and I can hear her argument against this, right? But the point of it is that drugs are not inherently dangerous, and it was incredibly frustrating to watch that video. And then think about the fact that when this was in front of the Public Safety Committee, Mosqueda came out and said - I want to make it very clear that lots of public health agencies at this point have said that breathing in secondhand fentanyl smoke is not dangerous to your health. I am someone who opens a window if someone blows vape smoke too close to me - I don't like it, I don't want that smell, I am not totally convinced that the smell will not linger. But it's like that, right - it's a smell, I'm not worried about getting a nicotine contact high. And the way that fentanyl gets demonized as the worst drug that we've ever seen, it's part of how we can dehumanize the people who are using it. And I think it's so interesting, because if you ask someone to class their own drugs, shrooms and weed and cocaine would be the bourgeoisie of drugs - they're allowed, it's fine - alcohol. All of those things are totally fine. And the people who use them are not degenerates or any way bad. Maybe cocaine. But for the most part, we are totally okay with those kinds of drugs, no matter how alcohol is still one of the most harmful substances in our society.
Whenever I call the King County Medical Examiner's Board to get the overdose deaths, it's overdose deaths and deaths due to alcoholism. But they're longer term, right? So I'm not saying that - fentanyl is absolutely killing people - it's in everything. And it is a new, very scary problem because we don't have a ton of ways to treat it. But it doesn't change the fundamentals of what we're seeing, which is you had someone like Sara Nelson who struggled with her own story of addiction. But as soon as it becomes a drug that they view as dirty or not fun to scavenge for, you get this attitude of - We need to crack down on this. And that's how it's got to be a punishment-based system - it's not a conversation, it's not help, it's not treatment - we've got to really show these people the errors, the way to be, and improve their life. And it's just so condescending.
[00:31:30] Crystal Fincher: This is the crack playbook at play. And again, to be clear, not at all saying that fentanyl is not very troublesome, problematic, and that we don't want people using that. Those are all true. But to say somehow a unique and unsolvable addiction issue as opposed to opioids, as opposed to all of the other things. The one thing that we know is that there are new drugs created all the time for a variety of things. There's going to be something more potent. Fentanyl is not the last, right? It's just the current. There is going to be a next. We've been playing this cat and mouse game with the War on Drugs, with all that we're doing - it's here. But hearing the language around that is the same tactic that happened with crack, right? And the justification to pass a ton of laws, super harsh penalties, mandating mandatory time, adding it as a strike for possessing crack, lower thresholds for dealing and all of that, as opposed to cocaine, which was used by a different demographic largely and fueled there. This is pretty transparent. And unfortunately, you hear a lot of the rhetoric in public meetings. You hear it from people - Oh man, this fentanyl, these people are like zombies, this is something completely new we haven't seen before. Those are all the same things that they said with crack. Those are all the same things that they say with the new drug that they want to use when they're in the mood to crack down and jail people - here is where we're at. Acting like fentanyl is just - oh, if you're addicted, you're lost, you're hopeless, is untrue. It is a dangerous drug. We need to address it. Public health approaches have a better record of doing that than punitive jail-based approaches. But it's a problem that we do need to get our arms around, but we make it harder to do that when we pursue policies to jail - which are very expensive to do in every single way. And then say - Sorry, we just don't have the resources to provide more treatment services, to provide more behavioral health services, to provide more housing, to provide detox for people. Those are all necessary for us to deal with this problem, and we just aren't doing it. I would like to do it. I would like to meaningfully address this - most people would - but this makes it much harder.
I do want to talk about this week, a very important - and for our state historic - trial starting, of the three officers accused of murdering Manny Ellis. What is happening here?
[00:33:58] Ashley Nerbovig: Yeah. So they're still in jury selection. It's going to be a long, drawn-out process. I think opening statements start October 2nd. And for people who don't know the case, Manny Ellis was an unarmed Black man who was in Tacoma - this was March before George Floyd's death, and there are so many parallels. Everything that is terrible about George Floyd is terrible in this case. Bob Ferguson comes in, says that he's going to investigate this case, does an investigation. Tacoma Police Department does not cooperate with Washington State Patrol. Washington State Patrol and AG Ferguson ends up creating this probable cause statement and now three officers, three men are all on trial this week. Or the trial is starting and jury selection is starting. And there's one guy who - I can't remember his name now - but he's live tweeting all of it. And there's been some really interesting tidbits. One of the jurors - the judge asked if there were any jurors who might have conflicts presiding over a case involving law enforcement, no one raised their hands, and then the judge looks at this guy and says - But didn't you say you have a brother in law enforcement? And there's no other details, but that's where it's starting right now. And it'll be a really interesting case - it's horrible to see these cases get to this point - and you wonder about, I don't know anything about the disciplinary records of these cops. But yeah, that's where it's starting. And that's the background on it.
[00:35:14] Crystal Fincher: And certainly - it's a trial. And I generally try not to follow these things or get emotionally invested in these trials - for good reason - they often don't seem to wind up with justice, and even what is justice when your loved one, someone you care about, a human being is killed. And just also lifting up - we hear about all these cases around the country - we have more than enough here locally. There's another police officer from Auburn currently awaiting trial for killing Jesse Sarey in Auburn. It's really troubling. And we also have family and friends of Manny dealing with this and having to once again hear the horrific details of this killing. And they're continuing to call for the firing of the cops who've been on payroll this entire time, who are still on payroll. There's a GoFundMe for the family. And court is something that people can show up to and show support if they want to do that also. It's a tragedy. And I hope the family is able to find peace and healing and that this can assist with that. I have no idea where they stand on this, but certainly, I'm thinking of them as this trial continues to go on.
Last thing I want to talk about today is Seattle City employees rallying for fair pay. Why did this rally happen?
[00:36:38] Ashley Nerbovig: Shout out to Hannah Krieg - she got all the great quotes for this one. This rally happened because apparently, and I'm quoting directly from her story - Bruce Harrell is funny, he's a funny guy, and if this is true, I believe it - Mayor Harrell told them to rally their asses off. The City started their negotiations for a pay increase of 1% and has settled on a pay increase of 2%. And the City workers are saying that's an insane way to start negotiations in one of the most expensive cities in the country. She puts this really good stat in there - that's a pay cut as the cost of, a 1% cost of living adjustment or even a 2% cost of living adjustment is a pay cut as the cost of living rose 8.7% this year. It's really important to note that the SPOG contract guarantees at minimum like a 1.5%, I think - I did a little tweet about this - it's plus COLA or something. But effectively, regardless of what their contract says, they have never gone a year without at least a 3% increase. Lieutenants and higher up guilds just got like a 4% increase. Sometimes I'll get these emails from the mayor's office that's - I'm really like unhappy with how you've portrayed us as prioritizing police. We really prioritize like other things too. - and it's, you can see it, where their money is going. So the workers are contract, are striking because they're not getting, at minimum, just keeping up with inflation. And the City of Seattle seems to think this is just like across the board, boy to cut is in general services and for the city. And that's - I really encourage people to follow Hannah's coverage on this because she's really on top of it.
[00:38:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's really challenging. We talked about police saying they have a shortage of officers and all of the action that has been taken to fix that including a retention bonus, healthy retention bonuses. And so we're talking about the shortages in the rest of the city, and it just doesn't seem like there is the interest in making sure the City is able to provide essential services and the level of service for everything that is currently happening and that people expect. There have been several council candidates who have said and agreed with - Yeah, we should be giving City workers the same kind of retention bonuses, investing in their retention, doing something tangible to actually address the shortage here. And we're going to be seeing Mayor Harrell's budget come out pretty soon. It's going to be interesting to see how he deals with that and what it is because a budget is a value statement - that's a document of values - where you're spending your money is what you value the most. And other things - you can talk about them and say they're great, but if you aren't funding them, clearly they were lower on the priority list in your estimation. And he may have his reasons to justify that. But it is disingenuous to say - Oh, I completely prioritize that, I value that, and I'm just not going to fund that while I'm going to fund this other thing. So it will be interesting to see.
But it seems like the City has a lot of work to do to start to step up. And everyone on the campaign trail talks about their values and making sure people can live where they work, how important that is to our economy - and it absolutely is important - again, what tangibly is going to be done about that? What are we going to see in that budget? And if not, just what is really the tangible impact of that? So we'll continue to follow that. But certainly workers see some definite red flags there and are rallying to make sure people understand that this is a problem that has consequences for the entire city and beyond. And for all the plans that people say they have, they're going to rely on these employees to execute them. So we better make sure that there are people in place to deliver on the policy that we pass as a city.
[00:40:34] Ashley Nerbovig: Yeah, I hope we get a strike. I think it would be good for people to feel what happens when they don't - I think that a lot of these services are invisible. And we already see that SPOG is doing all these sick-outs and they're not responding to calls - and a lot of them are blaming it on the staffing shortages. When you hear about sick-outs, you get a little bit curious about those call response times. I hope it turns into a strike because I think people do need to realize how essential these workers are.
[00:41:00] Crystal Fincher: Certainly the public - some people definitely see that, some people definitely don't. But a strike will be a failure, right? We're having a rally because an initial offer was pretty insulting. It was not a serious offer. It's a pay cut. If you're starting saying - Okay, how big a pay cut are you going to take to people who are already short-staffed and overworked? Because really, let's talk about it. When we talk about short staffing, that means that the same amount of work is falling on fewer heads. And that's a hard position to be in - and many of these positions aren't like super high-paid positions anyway. People are struggling to just pay their bills and work is getting harder, and now you're going to ask them to take a pay cut. And being disrespectful when that happens - Okay, go rally your ass off. So I hope there is more respect in this process and that lines of communication open and are productive. Because strikes are disruptive, right? They're not fun, they create a lot of drama. It may come to that - and I absolutely support workers' rights to strike and sometime that's necessary to get the job done - but I hope it doesn't come to that. I hope they are able to talk. But it's going to take more respect from the City perspective, realistically - they just aren't starting in a serious place.
[00:42:14] Ashley Nerbovig: Yeah, I like what you said there. It would be a failure. My chaotic evil side is - yeah, disrupt it, show people that you exist and stuff. But you're right. It would suck for these workers to have to go on strike because - the no pay and I'm sure they have a fund - you're 100% correct. What I would actually like to see is Mayor Harrell care about these people the way that he has been so consistently able to show care for our police department.
[00:42:44] Crystal Fincher: I completely agree. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, September 22, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is the incredible Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was staff writer at The Stranger covering policing, incarceration and the courts, Ashley Nerbovig. You can find Ashley on Twitter at @AshleyNerbovig, A-S-H-L-E-Y N-E-R-B-O-V-I-G. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. You can find me on just about every platform at @finchfrii, that's F-I-N-C-H F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks - wherever you want to listen to us, you can listen to us - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar of your favorite pod player. And be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen - it really helps us out. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Wednesday topical show, Crystal chats with Tammy Morales about her campaign for Seattle City Council District 2. Listen and learn more about Tammy and her thoughts on:
- [01:08] - Why she is running
- [01:51] - Lightning round!
- [8:43] - What is an accomplishment of hers that impacts District 2
- [10:46] - City budget shortfall: Raise revenue or cut services?
- [14:45] - Public Safety: Alternative response
- [18:11] - Victim support
- [21:33] - Housing and homelessness: Frontline worker wages
- [23:38] - Climate change
- [27:10] - Transit reliability
- [30:55] - Bike and pedestrian safety
- [33:45] - Small business support
- [35:58] - Childcare: Affordability and accessibility
- [39:30] - Difference between her and opponent
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Tammy Morales at @TammyMoralesSEA.
Tammy Morales
Tammy is a sitting City Councilmember running for re-election. She was one of the only supporters of I-135 for permanent affordable housing from the get-go. And Tammy's an urban planner who was previously an organizer for the Rainier Beach Action Coalition and a UFCW 21.
Her priority is to amplify the voices of Seattle's racial, climate, and economic justice coalitions. Tammy will continue her commitment to authentic community engagement that centers racial equity, especially when looking to prevent displacement, improve public health, create food security, and ensure access. She envisions a city where all single parents and their kids have full stomachs every single day; where every type of renter can afford where they sleep and have plenty left over for some fun; where children don't have to worry about bullets or cars as they make their way home from school or meet up with friends; where we prevent struggle; where we are kind to each other interpersonally and in policy; and where everyone has a fair shot at a happy and healthy life.
Resources
Campaign Website - Tammy Morales
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, I am very excited to be welcoming current City councilmember and candidate for Seattle City Council District 2, Tammy Morales. Welcome.
[00:01:03] Tammy Morales: Hi, Crystal - so good to see you. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:06] Crystal Fincher: Good to see you. Well, I just wanted to start off asking - why did you choose to run for re-election?
[00:01:12] Tammy Morales: Well, you know, when I ran last time, it was because I saw the displacement that's happening in the City of Seattle, particularly here in the South End and in our communities of color. And so I spent my first term working on trying to address those issues. And the work's not done - there's a lot more to do to increase affordability for our neighbors, to really build more community safety, and to make sure that we have the kind of healthy, vibrant neighborhoods that I know we can have in Seattle. And that's work that I'm really excited to continue to do.
[00:01:51] Crystal Fincher: Well, and we're doing things a little bit differently than we have some of the past candidate interviews and implementing including a lightning round.
[00:01:59] Tammy Morales: Okay.
[00:02:00] Crystal Fincher: So we have some quick yes or no, or quick answer questions. Starting with - this year, did you vote yes on the King County Crisis Care Centers Levy?
[00:02:10] Tammy Morales: Yes, I did.
[00:02:11] Crystal Fincher: This year, did you vote yes on the Veterans, Seniors and Human Services Levy?
[00:02:16] Tammy Morales: Yes, I did.
[00:02:17] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote in favor of Seattle Social Housing Initiative 135?
[00:02:22] Tammy Morales: You bet I did.
[00:02:25] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Bruce Harrell or Lorena González for mayor?
[00:02:32] Tammy Morales: I voted for Lorena.
[00:02:33] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Nicole Thomas Kennedy or Ann Davison for Seattle City Attorney?
[00:02:39] Tammy Morales: I voted for Nicole.
[00:02:41] Crystal Fincher: In 2022, did you vote for Leesa Manion or Jim Ferrell for King County Prosecutor?
[00:02:47] Tammy Morales: I voted for Leesa.
[00:02:48] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote for Patty Murray or Tiffany Smiley for US Senate?
[00:02:53] Tammy Morales: Patty Murray.
[00:02:54] Crystal Fincher: Do you own or rent your residence?
[00:02:57] Tammy Morales: I own.
[00:02:58] Crystal Fincher: Are you a landlord?
[00:03:00] Tammy Morales: I am not a landlord.
[00:03:02] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to require landlords to report metrics, including how much rent they're charging, to better plan housing and development needs in District 2?
[00:03:12] Tammy Morales: I did vote for more metrics for landlords, including more rental registration information in City Council - working with Councilmember Pedersen, which is not a well-expected partnership for me, but we work together well on some issues and that was one. Unfortunately, it was vetoed by the mayor.
[00:03:36] Crystal Fincher: Are there any instances where you'd support sweeps of homeless encampments?
[00:03:40] Tammy Morales: No.
[00:03:41] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to provide additional funding for Seattle's Social Housing Public Development Authority?
[00:03:47] Tammy Morales: Yes.
[00:03:48] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with King County Executive Constantine's statement that the King County Jail should be closed?
[00:03:55] Tammy Morales: Yes.
[00:03:57] Crystal Fincher: Should parking enforcement be housed within SPD?
[00:04:03] Tammy Morales: No.
[00:04:05] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to allow police in schools?
[00:04:08] Tammy Morales: No.
[00:04:09] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget for civilian-led mental health crisis response?
[00:04:15] Tammy Morales: Yes.
[00:04:16] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget to increase the pay of human service workers?
[00:04:21] Tammy Morales: Yes.
[00:04:23] Crystal Fincher: Do you support removing funds in the City budget for forced encampment removals and instead allocating funds towards a Housing First approach?
[00:04:32] Tammy Morales: Yes.
[00:04:33] Crystal Fincher: Do you support abrogating or removing the funds from unfilled SPD positions and putting them towards meaningful public safety measures?
[00:04:43] Tammy Morales: Yes, I voted on that a couple of times.
[00:04:46] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocating money in the City budget for supervised consumption sites?
[00:04:51] Tammy Morales: Yes.
[00:04:52] Crystal Fincher: Do you support increasing funding in the City budget for violence intervention programs?
[00:04:58] Tammy Morales: Yes.
[00:04:59] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't give the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General subpoena power?
[00:05:09] Tammy Morales: If that's the way it's presented, I would oppose that.
[00:05:12] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian?
[00:05:23] Tammy Morales: I would oppose that, yes.
[00:05:27] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move police funding to public safety alternatives?
[00:05:37] Tammy Morales: Do I oppose - would I oppose that? Yes.
[00:05:40] Crystal Fincher: Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers?
[00:05:46] Tammy Morales: Yes.
[00:05:47] Crystal Fincher: Will you ensure that trans and non-binary students are allowed to play on the sports teams that fit with their gender identities?
[00:05:55] Tammy Morales: I certainly would support it - yeah.
[00:05:58] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans people can use bathrooms and public facilities that match their gender?
[00:06:04] Tammy Morales: Yes.
[00:06:06] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with the Seattle City Council's decision to implement the JumpStart Tax?
[00:06:10] Tammy Morales: Yes, I do.
[00:06:12] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to reduce or divert the JumpStart Tax in any way?
[00:06:21] Tammy Morales: Reduce it - no. I'll say maybe divert, but it very much depends on for what purpose.
[00:06:30] Crystal Fincher: Are you happy with Seattle's newly built waterfront?
[00:06:37] Tammy Morales: Meh.
[00:06:39] Crystal Fincher: Sometimes I do wish our viewers could see faces and this - a little bit - that was a very meh face.
Do you believe return to work mandates, like the one issued by Amazon, are necessary to boost Seattle's economy?
[00:06:53] Tammy Morales: No.
[00:06:54] Crystal Fincher: Have you taken transit in the past week?
[00:06:58] Tammy Morales: Yes.
[00:07:00] Crystal Fincher: Have you ridden a bike in the past week?
[00:07:02] Tammy Morales: No.
[00:07:03] Crystal Fincher: In the past month?
[00:07:05] Tammy Morales: Yes.
[00:07:06] Crystal Fincher: Should Pike Place Market allow non-commercial car traffic?
[00:07:10] Tammy Morales: No.
[00:07:11] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines?
[00:07:19] Tammy Morales: Should what hap--
[00:07:22] Crystal Fincher: I'll repeat the question. Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines?
[00:07:37] Tammy Morales: Yes.
[00:07:38] Crystal Fincher: Should we make investments to speed it up?
[00:07:41] Tammy Morales: I don't know if it's the money that is causing the problem or if there's some other issues, but - I'll say yes.
[00:07:48] Crystal Fincher: Should we accelerate the elimination of the ability to turn right on red lights to improve pedestrian safety?
[00:07:54] Tammy Morales: Yes.
[00:07:56] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever been a member of a union?
[00:07:59] Tammy Morales: No, I haven't.
[00:08:01] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to increase funding and staffing for investigations into labor violations like wage theft and illegal union busting?
[00:08:09] Tammy Morales: Yes.
[00:08:11] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever walked on a picket line?
[00:08:13] Tammy Morales: Yes.
[00:08:14] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever crossed a picket line?
[00:08:16] Tammy Morales: No.
[00:08:18] Crystal Fincher: Is your campaign staff unionized?
[00:08:20] Tammy Morales: No, they aren't.
[00:08:22] Crystal Fincher: If your campaign staff wants to unionize, will you voluntarily recognize their effort?
[00:08:27] Tammy Morales: Sure.
[00:08:28] Crystal Fincher: Well, that's the end of our lightning round. Hopefully that was easy.
[00:08:34] Tammy Morales: I need to do a little more digging on Sound Transit's - delay, delay, delay.
[00:08:42] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Now, lots of people look to work you've done to get a feel for what you prioritize and how qualified you are to lead. Can you describe something you've accomplished or changed in your district, and what impact it has on residents?
[00:08:58] Tammy Morales: Oh, great. Yeah, so in District 2, we have fewer - less green space than in other parts of the city. And because we have so many young people down here, there's a lot of interest in more opportunity for young people to recreate. So we've invested a lot through the Metropolitan Parks District and through - mostly through the Metropolitan Parks District - for things like park improvements at Be'er Sheva Park art installation, for a new skate park in Rainier Beach. There's a lot of interest in creating opportunity for young people to be outside. So there's a lot that we've done to improve, to change the community centers to help them become community resilience hubs that are following Green building practices and preparing for extreme weather events. So creating space where people can go during extreme heat or during smoke events. So, you know, those are a few examples of the things that we've done in kind of the parks and climate arena. And then we've also invested millions of dollars in sidewalk improvements in different parts of District 2. This is a part of the city that lacks sidewalks in much of it - much of the South End. And so every year we've tried to put money into the budget process to make sure that at least in some patches of neighborhoods, there's sidewalk repair or sidewalk improvements that are being done.
[00:10:46] Crystal Fincher: Well, I do want to talk about the budget because the City is projected to have a revenue shortfall of $224 million beginning in 2025, which is right around the corner. Because we are mandated by the state to pass a balanced budget, our options to address this upcoming deficit are either raise revenue, cut services, or some combination of the two. Which one will be your approach to address this budget shortfall?
[00:11:12] Tammy Morales: Well, we absolutely have to raise revenue. So in the last budget cycle, we had a proposed amendment to do a modest increase of the JumpStart payroll expense tax - that was something that I supported, it did not pass - but I do think we're going to have to look at that again. You know, we are a growing city. In the last 20 years, we grew, I think, twice as fast as anybody anticipated. And so that means that we have increased need in the city, whether that's infrastructure or service needs, to make sure that our neighbors are getting the kind of public service that they deserve. And we have to be able to pay for that. So I do think that we will have to have a conversation about increasing the payroll expense tax. We're also looking at a capital gains tax - I think that will be part of the conversation we have this budget cycle. And, you know, the thing is that this is not new information for the City - there was a progressive revenue committee that was formed in 2017, 2018 that started looking at these issues, Mayor Harrell had another task force in the last year to continue that conversation. But the recommendations are the same, which is that as a growing city, given the constraints that we have at the state level, we do have to contemplate how else we will raise revenue to be able to serve our community. And increasing revenue, particularly on large corporations is - in my opinion, and the opinion of many of my colleagues - the way for us to go.
[00:12:58] Crystal Fincher: Certainly the JumpStart tax was a popular policy, not just with the City Council, but with the residents of Seattle - so looking at expanding that is definitely an option on the table. Are there still going to have to be cuts? Will those, you know, even if we were to successfully generate more revenue with both of those, does that cover that shortfall or will there also need to be some cuts?
[00:13:22] Tammy Morales: You know, we are absolutely looking at the possibility of having to reduce the budget next year. There's - and the challenge is that it is, you know, something like $140 million next year, and it will be even more than that the following biennium. And so how we address that is going to be part of the conversation we start this budget cycle. You know, how we address the staffing of the City is going to be a really hard conversation because what I fear is that, you know, the departments where, you know - there's been a lot of work done to recruit new people into the city, to make sure that we're diversifying our City workforce. And I want to make sure that if we get to a point where we have to have staff layoffs, that those new folks - who are mostly people of color - who have come in are not going to be the first people to go. So it's going to be hard conversations. And, you know, we are just now starting to think about the strategy for dealing with what those conversations are going to have to look like over the next year.
[00:14:45] Crystal Fincher: I do want to have a conversation about public safety - it's on the forefront of many people's minds. But also what we see through elections and polling is that a comprehensive view of public safety is where most voters are at - and many leaders in the City are talking about it - so it includes not just police, but also community response, alternative responses that are community-based.
[00:15:09] Tammy Morales: Absolutely.
[00:15:09] Crystal Fincher: While other jurisdictions around the country and in our own region have rolled out some of these alternative response programs to better support those having behavioral health crises, Seattle is stalled in the implementation of what again is a widely-supported idea. Where do you stand on non-police solutions to public safety issues? And what are your thoughts on civilian-led versus co-response models?
[00:15:34] Tammy Morales: Well, that's a great question. And it is something that we have been and will continue to talk about a lot in the city. I feel like I've been really clear for a very long time that the challenges that we have in our communities are very often the result of history of disinvestment in some communities. And so, in my opinion, we need to start at a higher level of this conversation - in order to reduce the violence and reduce some of the community safety issues that we are all very well aware of, we really have to be investing in changing the community conditions that lead to violence in the first place. So that's why it is important to me that we invest in affordable housing, that we invest in food security and access to healthcare and education. And really focus on economic opportunity, particularly for our young people. I think that's an important first step in this conversation.
The next step is really looking at the different problems that we have in the city. We do have a need for police to be investigating - particularly if we're talking about violent crime - gun violence, for example. And we need trained experts in responding to mental health crises. We need community programs, as you referred to, who are focused on violence interruption and can really support families after there is an incident. So there are different challenges - safety challenges - that we have, and they each require their own response. I think it's important that we really set up these different responses to be successful, particularly if we're talking about sending somebody out to respond to someone who's having an acute mental health crisis or a behavioral health crisis - police aren't equipped to deal with that. So Councilmember Lewis has been working - trying to set up a CAHOOTS-style alternative response system here for many years now. And I think that is the direction we need to be going. And I think we need to, as a city, really get serious about creating our public health response to some of the public health crises that we have.
[00:18:11] Crystal Fincher: Now I wanna talk about people who have been harmed and victimized. And for people who have been victims, they say overwhelmingly they want two things. One, to make sure that what happened to them doesn't happen to them or anyone else ever again. And they want better support. Sometimes - well, many times - people are left hanging, they call the police, report is taken. And even if a person is arrested, they're still left with - you know, if there is a break in, having to replace whatever it is, time lost work, medical bills, just a wide variety of things. How can we better support victims and survivors?
[00:18:50] Tammy Morales: Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I was having lunch yesterday with some leaders in the Vietnamese community. And as you know, there's been a string of home invasions, you know, with elderly folks being assaulted. It's important, as we're understanding their impacts, that we are addressing what they want. So, you know, whether that's victim support after the fact, support with mental health care, with medical care, or really looking at the interaction that they have when they call 911. So in the case of these incidents, for example, you know, we're understanding that there was a 15, 20 minute delay in getting a person on the 911 call who could speak their language. And when you're in a traumatizing situation, when you've been victimized, you know, you need support much faster than that. So one of the things that we're looking at is language justice and how we better support our neighbors who don't speak English as a first language in getting access to the City services that they deserve. The other thing I'll say is that we have some accountability that - we really need to be investigating or inquiring about from our police department. You know, in one of these instances, we understand that it was two weeks later before a detective actually reached out to the family. So getting a better understanding of how the investigation - you know, language access issues and getting those resolved, what the process is for investigating, beginning the investigations sooner - and then really understanding why it takes so long to get information is gonna be important for all of these families.
The other thing I'll say is that we have organizations in the city that do provide victim support. They provide aftercare. I'm thinking about Choose 180, Community Passageways - these are groups that work with the family afterward to make sure that they get the support they need. And all of these violence interruption programs, diversion programs - you know, real community support - also need to be supported so that they can scale up and provide the kind of assistance that they do to our community members.
[00:21:33] Crystal Fincher: I also wanna talk about homelessness. And one thing called out by experts as a barrier to the effectiveness of our homelessness response is that frontline worker wages don't cover the cost of living, especially in Seattle. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for Seattle? And how can we make that more likely with how we bid and contract for services?
[00:21:59] Tammy Morales: Yeah, that's a great question, Crystal. I mean, we all see the crises that are happening on our street. You know, when I see somebody who's homeless, what I see is somebody who's been failed by all of our different systems. And so as a city, we have an obligation to take care of the health and safety of all of our neighbors - you know, I hear a lot of people referring to our City charter saying that, you know, it is our primary duty to ensure the public safety. That's not just for some people - that's not just for housed people - that's for all of us. And so to your question, you know, the City contracts with many social service providers, with many different nonprofit organizations to deliver care and service to our homeless population on behalf of the City. And therefore it is our obligation to make sure that those workers are also paid well and compensated for, you know, really important frontline work that they do. In the last budget cycle, we did have to fight for, you know, cost of living increases for our social service workers. Our Human Services Department contracts with many different organizations and the contracts that they put out really need to include cost of living increases and adjustments so that folks get paid for the work they do. I mean, that's basic. So yeah, there is an obligation for us to make sure that folks who we are contracting with to deliver City services need to be paid fairly.
[00:23:38] Crystal Fincher: Now on almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals, while we're experiencing horrible impacts ranging from extreme heat and cold, wildfires, smoky and toxic air, floods, just everything. What are your highest priority plans to get us back on track to meet those goals?
[00:24:02] Tammy Morales: That's a great question. So there's a couple pieces of legislation that are in the works that need a lot of support from community. The first I'll say is the Building Emissions Performance Standards, which is a bill that has been - I think had been negotiated and was about to come before council. The mayor has recently decided not to transmit that. And I think it's because there's still a lot of work to do. So building emissions and transportation are the two big contributors to greenhouse gas emissions in the city. And those are the two places where we really need to start making change because as you said, we are way off track in meeting our 2030 climate goals for reducing emissions. So that bill is intended to, you know, set standards for future construction. And I think part of the challenge that we are hearing from advocates is that it doesn't go far enough and it doesn't achieve the goals soon enough. So we have a 2030 plan. The bill as created would set a 2050 deadline for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And so, you know, I am hopeful that the mayor does transmit that legislation. I believe Councilmember Sawant, whose committee it would be in, is planning to introduce her own bill if that doesn't come soon. So that's an important conversation for us to be having. And then there's another piece of legislation called the Living Hotels policy that would set similar environmental standards for hotels that are built in the city. I'm sure you know that tourism is itself part of the climate challenge for all of us as people come to the city - in planes, in cars, to stay in hotels - that really does add to our climate crisis. And so this is a policy that would intend to set some standards for green construction for any future hotels that are built and would really set some different standards for how we are raising expectation about what construction looks like in the city. So that's the building side.
And then what I guess I will say about the transportation side is, you know, we really need to get people out of their cars, which means we need to invest and really support a robust public transit system. So working with King County Metro to make sure they have enough workers, make sure that they're increasing their routes, the frequency and reliability of their routes - because we really need to make getting out of your car the easy choice in the city if we want to address the transportation emissions, transportation-related emissions in the city.
[00:27:10] Crystal Fincher: Well, and that kind of leads into my next question in that - right now, staying out of people's car, even for people who are using transit, is more challenging today because reliability of the system is tanking, really. Whether it's because of staff shortages or other challenges - more buses aren't showing up, routes being suspended, canceled. And so just the reliability of the system is posing a challenge for many people who rely on timely and consistent buses to get to work and their necessities of life. What can the City do to stabilize transit reliability - even keeping in mind that Sound Transit is a regional entity and King County Metro is a county entity - how can the City help to stabilize that?
[00:27:59] Tammy Morales: Yeah, well, so part of the work that we do is regularly meeting with Sound Transit and really trying to hold them accountable for delivery of service, for how they are delivering service. And when there are frequent disruptions because of maintenance needs or something is - it seems mostly maintenance-related needs - it's really disruptive to anybody who relies on that line to get into work or to do whatever else they need to do. So that is a conversation that we need to have with the department. And as they are building out the system, my hope is that there is a greater efficiency with getting these repairs done so that it is not so disruptive in the future. The bus transit system is something that is operated by King County Metro. And I think the fact that they recently - finally - signed a contract with their workers is a huge step. So part of the challenge at King County Metro is that workers are not paid well - they were still in bargaining - and I think a lot of that has been addressed. So my hope is that that will lead to folks coming back to work, their ability to increase staff retention, and start to address some of the reliability in that system.
And I think the last thing I'll say is that, we have a transportation levy that is coming up. So as we support getting more riders into Metro, it's gonna be important to make sure that they are getting access to service. So we use funding from the Transportation Benefit District to buy more bus service hours. But we can also use funding from the levy to really focus on other ways for folks to get around - building out, as you were referring to earlier, building out the bicycle infrastructure, the pedestrian infrastructure - to make sure that the sort of fragmented networks of bike lanes that we have are better connected. That would make it really easy for folks to get out of their cars and to start using a safer network system to get around. And really supporting the creation of greener infrastructure in the city so that people can get out of their cars and take advantage of those opportunities is gonna be an important part of the transportation levy conversation.
[00:30:55] Crystal Fincher: Well, and safety for pedestrians and people riding bikes is a humongous concern - right now, it's really a crisis. With more deaths occurring than ever before, we're far away from meeting our Vision Zero goals as the City of Seattle. What can be done? How will you move to improve pedestrian and bicycle safety?
[00:31:18] Tammy Morales: Yeah, well, I think we've talked about this before, Crystal, but the district that I represent experiences almost 60% of the traffic fatalities in the city. So we know that we have huge issues with the major arterials - Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Rainier Avenue, Beacon Avenue - all of these streets have high, they're really designed to be speedways. So the conversation we've been having with the Department of Transportation in the City is not just how do we improve sidewalks, how do we add more crosswalks, what can we do about signal timing - all of those things are important. But even more than that is that we need to redesign the streets themselves so that it is not easy to go 60 miles an hour down what is supposed to be a 25 mile an hour road. That's work that I think is starting to shift - there is more acknowledgement in the Department of Transportation that if we're gonna reach our Vision Zero goals, there is a significant shift in the way we design our roads that will be needed. And so that is work that we are beginning as a city.
And then I really think that one of my goals is to see in every neighborhood a pedestrianized street. So during COVID, we did some of these street closures to create Healthy Streets. We don't maybe need them in every block, but it would be great to have a pedestrianized street - you know, here in Beacon Hill, we have Plaza Roberto Maestas, where they close down the street - there's vendors, there's food trucks, it's a community gathering space. I think just having people be able to share an experience like that in every neighborhood can also help elevate the awareness of the fact that we have neighbors who are trying to navigate our community and we all have an obligation to be careful as we're going through our neighborhood. So it is increasing awareness of the fact that there are pedestrians and also - very importantly - rethinking the way we design our streets to make sure that folks can get around safely.
[00:33:45] Crystal Fincher: I do wanna talk about the economy and the businesses in your district. We have some of the largest corporations in the world in Seattle, but also very vibrant and diverse small businesses. What are the biggest concerns that you hear from small businesses in your district and what are your priorities to help them?
[00:34:05] Tammy Morales: Boy, what I hear about a lot is about commercial rents. So part of the issue about displacement in Seattle is not just residential tenants, but it's also about business tenants. So small businesses are also experiencing displacement, they're also dealing with landlord-tenant issues that they don't necessarily know how to resolve. And so a lot of the work that we're doing - that we plan to do next year - is around, it's sort of rooted in generational wealth building strategies. But it is very much about increasing commercial ownership of commercial property - so allowing business owners to buy something instead of being tenants. It's about access to capital, so that they can purchase commercial property. We have a lot of folks who need language access - again, this keeps coming up. A lot of our small businesses - the owners don't speak English as a first language. And so they need support understanding a lease agreement, understanding how to apply for a loan and what that loan is requiring of them. So that's another piece where, you know, we are working with our Office of Economic Development, with our Office of Immigrant and Refugee affairs to figure out what the right business navigator system is. But there's a lot of work to be done to support our small businesses in being able to stay in the city. And I'm excited about starting that work with OED and really making sure that our neighbors can stay.
[00:35:58] Crystal Fincher: I want to talk about another issue that's crucial to the economy and that's childcare. Now, childcare, we've recently seen reporting that it is now more expensive than college on an annual basis. We can't talk about inflation or affordability without contending with childcare, which is also just in shorter supply than it was, in addition to being much more expensive. What can you do to help families struggling with the cost of childcare?
[00:36:32] Tammy Morales: Yeah, that's an important issue. So there are a few things that we need to consider. The first is just the availability of childcare - so whether it is an in-home family daycare provider or a licensed childcare facility, we have to scale up all of those things. So from a land use perspective, that means making it easier to build childcare facilities and making sure that they are exempt from some of the paperwork requirements that we often impose on construction. We also need to make sure that we are supporting childcare workers themselves. It is an expensive proposition to take your child to childcare - and I know I've got three kids, it was not easy - but it's expensive because we are entrusting these childcare providers with our littlest citizens and they do an important job. And there's also limitations on how many children they can watch at one time. So making sure that we are providing them with good wages and access to benefits is also important.
And as you said, it is so expensive to provide childcare. So some of the things that we've talked about in the past - some things I would like to see - include, for example, having sort of a health savings account, but for childcare. So having employers provide access to a savings opportunity to be able to stockpile that. And also just asking our employers to provide better access to childcare subsidies so that they can ensure that their workers can get to work and do the things that they - provide the services that they are providing for folks. Part of the thing, one of the things that the City is doing is also trying to, through the Families and Education levy, increase the Seattle preschool program opportunities. So we just expanded, particularly for bilingual slots, we just added seven additional facilities that can provide bilingual education. So we now have 35 Seattle preschool programs operating in the city. And I think most of the additional ones were here in the South End. So there is work that the City can do in terms of providing actual financial support. And then there is work that we can do to make sure that it is easier to build and easier to increase the capacity of our city to provide space for childcare providers.
[00:39:30] Crystal Fincher: Now, as we close this conversation today, there is still a number of residents trying to contend and determine the differences between you and your opponent. When you're talking to someone who's trying to understand the difference and deciding for whom they're gonna vote, what do you tell them?
[00:39:49] Tammy Morales: Well, thank you for the question. You know, what I will say is that we are losing half of our current council, and I can tell you that that is potentially destabilizing. So we need trusted, experienced leaders on the council - people who can partner skillfully with other colleagues, with advocates, with the mayor's office to really get things done - and that's the experience I bring. I will say that's why I've been endorsed by other elected or formerly elected leaders like King County Councilmember Zahilay, Larry Gossett, Senator Saldaña, small business owners, advocates - it's because they wanna see a thriving Seattle and they know that I wanna see a thriving Seattle. But I also want a council that can collaborate, that can agree to disagree on policy without getting divisive - you know, I think we all understand that the council needs to be working better together. And so we need folks who can partner and collaborate. You know, I think folks might be surprised to learn that I have a great working relationship, for example, with Councilmember Pedersen, with whom I don't agree on very much at all. But we are very transparent with each other, we're very clear about where we're coming from and why we may not be able to support something. And that allows us to work together really well when we can find something that we agree on, like the legislation I referred to earlier. So, you know, it's important to have folks there who understand how to deliver, whether it's policy or budget resources, for the district. And that's something that I'm really proud of having done in my first term, and that I would be honored to be able to do in a second term.
[00:41:52] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much, Seattle City Councilmember and candidate for re-election in Seattle's Council District 2, Tammy Morales.
[00:42:01] Tammy Morales: Thanks so much for having me, Crystal - good to see you.
[00:42:03] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Tuesday topical show, Crystal chats with Tanya Woo about her campaign for Seattle City Council District 2. Listen and learn more about Tanya and her thoughts on:
- [01:06] - Why she is running
- [02:02] - Lightning round!
- [12:49] - What is an accomplishment of hers that impacts District 2
- [17:13] - Housing and homelessness: Frontline worker wages
- [19:36] - Homelessness: Involvement with opposition to SODO shelter expansion
- [25:15] - Public Safety: Alternative response
- [27:08] - Victim support
- [30:52] - City budget shortfall: Raise revenue or cut services?
- [36:02] - Small business support
- [39:16] - Childcare: Affordability and accessibility
- [40:28] - Bike and pedestrian safety
- [45:59] - Transit reliability
- [48:02] - Difference between her and opponent
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Tanya Woo at @votetanyawoo.
Tanya Woo
My family immigrated to Seattle in 1887. I grew up on Beacon Hill, worked at our family business in the Chinatown International District and now live in Rainier Beach. I’ve seen how South Seattle has changed. I’ve seen what happens to neighborhoods that don’t have a voice and are expected to just live with bad city policies. I want to change that, and that’s why I'm running for Seattle City Council. I spearheaded the renovation of my family's building, the Louisa hotel, that provides small business space and workforce housing. Twice a week, my Community Watch walks around Little Saigon, Nihomachi (Japantown) and Chinatown trying to make our streets safer for everyone, which includes our unhoused neighbors. My work against government discrimination in the Chinatown International District has taught me a very important lesson: the only time people in South Seattle are heard is when we make those in positions of power listen.
Resources
Campaign Website - Tanya Woo
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, I am very pleased to be welcoming Tanya Woo, Seattle City Council candidate in District 2, to the program. Thank you so much for joining us, Tanya.
[00:01:04] Tanya Woo: Well, thank you for having me - I'm really excited to be here.
[00:01:06] Crystal Fincher: Excited to have you - and just wanted to start off by understanding why you chose to run and why now?
[00:01:14] Tanya Woo: Yes, and so this comes from a long history of work in the Chinatown International District, as well as being a lifelong resident here in District 2. Just seeing the effects of the pandemic on our community, as well as seeing all of these high-impact projects that are happening around the Chinatown International District these last four years - and realizing that the district is really fighting for its life, basically. And so we were fighting for a seat at the table, we were fighting to amplify voices and to be heard - and realizing that the best way to get a seat at the table is to fight for it and to run for it. And so after a lot of discussion and a lot of encouragement, I decided to throw my hat into the ring.
[00:02:01] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. Well, as we get started on this show - I mean, we do candidate interviews a lot - we're adding a new dimension into the interviews this year, which is a lightning round before we get to the rest of our regular conversation and discussion. And so just a number of yes or no questions, that hopefully are easy, or super one-answer choice questions. So we'll just run through this and then get back to the other questions.
So this year, did you vote yes on the King County Crisis Care Centers levy?
[00:02:31] Tanya Woo: Yes.
[00:02:32] Crystal Fincher: And this year, did you vote yes on the Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services levy?
[00:02:37] Tanya Woo: Yes.
[00:02:38] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote in favor of Seattle's Social Housing Initiative 135? ... In February.
[00:02:43] Tanya Woo: I may not have voted for that. I may not have voted for that one.
[00:02:53] Crystal Fincher: Okay. And in 2021, did you vote for Bruce Harrell or Lorena González for Seattle Mayor?
[00:03:00] Tanya Woo: I did not vote in that election.
[00:03:02] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Okay, so I guess that covers - let me find that - so City Attorney. Last year in 2022, did you vote for Leesa Manion or Jim Ferrell for King County Prosecutor?
[00:03:17] Tanya Woo: Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I don't know which elections I voted for, which ones I did not vote for.
[00:03:21] Crystal Fincher: Okay.
[00:03:22] Tanya Woo: I'll have to pull up my record to answer.
[00:03:23] Crystal Fincher: We will skip the...
[00:03:26] Tanya Woo: I am so sorry.
[00:03:27] Crystal Fincher: It's fine, it's fine. We'll skip the rest of those. We'll go to the other questions. Do you rent or own your residence?
[00:03:34] Tanya Woo: My husband owns the residence.
[00:03:36] Crystal Fincher: Okay, are you a landlord?
[00:03:39] Tanya Woo: My family is a landlord.
[00:03:41] Crystal Fincher: Okay, would you vote to require landlords to report metrics, including how much rent they're charging, to help better plan housing and development needs in the district?
[00:03:50] Tanya Woo: Yes.
[00:03:51] Crystal Fincher: Are there any instances where you would support sweeps of homeless encampments?
[00:03:59] Tanya Woo: Yes.
[00:04:00] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to provide additional funding for Seattle's Social Housing Public Development Authority?
[00:04:06] Tanya Woo: Yes.
[00:04:07] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with King County Executive Constantine's statement that the King County Jail should be closed?
[00:04:18] Tanya Woo: Yes.
[00:04:19] Crystal Fincher: Should parking enforcement be housed within SPD?
[00:04:28] Tanya Woo: Oh. I don't think I've ever really thought about this one. Probably yes.
[00:04:43] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Would you vote to allow police in schools?
[00:04:51] Tanya Woo: I think that's up to the schools.
[00:04:52] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget for a civilian-led mental health crisis response?
[00:04:59] Tanya Woo: Yes.
[00:05:00] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget to increase the pay of human service workers?
[00:05:03] Tanya Woo: Yes.
[00:05:04] Crystal Fincher: Do you support removing funds in the City budget for forced encampment removals and instead allocating funds towards a Housing First approach?
[00:05:13] Tanya Woo: Yes.
[00:05:14] Crystal Fincher: Do you support abrogating or removing the funds from unfilled SPD positions and putting them towards meaningful public safety measures?
[00:05:24] Tanya Woo: Yes.
[00:05:24] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocating money in the budget for supervised consumption sites?
[00:05:33] Tanya Woo: Yes.
[00:05:34] Crystal Fincher: Do you support increasing funding in the City budget for violence intervention programs?
[00:05:40] Tanya Woo: Yes.
[00:05:41] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't give the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General subpoena power?
[00:05:54] Tanya Woo: Do I oppose it? Yes.
[00:05:56] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian?
[00:06:05] Tanya Woo: So sorry, can you repeat the question?
[00:06:09] Crystal Fincher: Sure, sure, sure. Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian?
[00:06:21] Tanya Woo: Yes.
[00:06:22] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the city to move police funding to public safety alternatives?
[00:06:32] Tanya Woo: Yes.
[00:06:33] Crystal Fincher: Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers?
[00:06:45] Tanya Woo: Such as traffic control?
[00:06:49] Crystal Fincher: That would fall under one if they're off-duty, I think, yeah.
[00:06:54] Tanya Woo: I do not oppose it, so.
[00:06:56] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Will you vote to ensure that trans and non-binary students are allowed to play on the sports teams that fit with their gender identities?
[00:07:07] Tanya Woo: And this isn't - do I oppose it?
[00:07:09] Crystal Fincher: No - will you vote to ensure that -
[00:07:10] Tanya Woo: Oh, sorry - okay.
[00:07:10] Crystal Fincher: - trans and non-binary students are allowed to play on the sports teams that fit with their gender identities?
[00:07:18] Tanya Woo: Oh, I think that's a conversation we have to have with the sports teams, but I would be in support of it.
[00:07:25] Crystal Fincher: So when you say conversation to have with the sports teams - if they voted against it, would you support that?
[00:07:31] Tanya Woo: I think we have to support - yes.
[00:07:33] Crystal Fincher: Okay, so you would support--
[00:07:35] Tanya Woo: If the sports teams voted.
[00:07:37] Crystal Fincher: Sports team said that they couldn't play, then they couldn't play.
[00:07:40] Tanya Woo: If they had good reason.
[00:07:41] Crystal Fincher: Got it.
[00:07:42] Tanya Woo: 'Cause I think every sports is different.
[00:07:44] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans people can use bathrooms or public facilities that match their gender?
[00:07:51] Tanya Woo: Yes.
[00:07:52] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with the Seattle City Council's decision to implement the JumpStart Tax?
[00:07:58] Tanya Woo: I'm so sorry, going back to the gender one - their stated gender or their perceived gender?
[00:08:04] Crystal Fincher: Whatever gender they identify as.
[00:08:06] Tanya Woo: Okay, yes, then - we need to ensure that it's served - okay.
[00:08:10] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with the Seattle City Council's decision to implement the JumpStart Tax?
[00:08:17] Tanya Woo: Yes.
[00:08:17] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to reduce or divert the JumpStart Tax in any way?
[00:08:29] Tanya Woo: That's a very complicated question.
[00:08:31] Crystal Fincher: Okay, we can leave it as - it's complicated, it's not a yes or no - and we can get to that. We have plenty of time to talk about this in the other questions, so we can cover the details of that.
[00:08:41] Tanya Woo: Okay great. Yeah - that's a lot of -- Oh, go ahead.
[00:08:45] Crystal Fincher: Are you happy with Seattle's newly built waterfront?
[00:08:50] Tanya Woo: Yes, I love the direction it's going in.
[00:08:52] Crystal Fincher: Do you believe return to work mandates, like the one issued by Amazon, are necessary to boost Seattle's economy?
[00:09:01] Tanya Woo: And that's the three days a week, right?
[00:09:05] Crystal Fincher: Theirs is three days a week - whatever, you know, if they're mandating a return and not work from home in whatever form that would be. So it could be three, it could be five.
[00:09:15] Tanya Woo: I think yes. Oh, okay. I think it's great to start with three. And then, of course, the willingness to work with families where that could be a barrier - where there's any barriers involved.
[00:09:26] Crystal Fincher: Okay, so do you think - I mean, do you think the mandate is necessary or is that it's on a case-by-case basis and--
[00:09:33] Tanya Woo: Well, I think it's necessary to revitalize the downtown area. I know there's a lot of barriers for some people not being able to physically return to work - I think case-by-case in those situations should be allowed.
[00:09:48] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Have you taken transit in the past week?
[00:09:52] Tanya Woo: Yes.
[00:09:53] Crystal Fincher: Have you ridden a bike in the past week?
[00:09:55] Tanya Woo: No.
[00:09:56] Crystal Fincher: In the past month?
[00:09:59] Tanya Woo: No.
[00:10:01] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Should Pike Place Market allow non-commercial car traffic?
[00:10:11] Tanya Woo: Oh, I know that is being talked about right now. I think it'd be nice to not allow it, but I know some of the business owners want it - so I think definitely let Pike Place Market decide on how they want to proceed.
[00:10:30] Crystal Fincher: Should we accelerate the elimination of the ability to turn right on red lights to improve pedestrian safety?
[00:10:44] Tanya Woo: For all red lights?
[00:10:45] Crystal Fincher: Yes.
[00:10:47] Tanya Woo: Okay. That would add a lot of needed infrastructure. I would support that, but I think we'd have to put together a plan to be able to carry that out.
[00:11:03] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines?
[00:11:15] Tanya Woo: Yes.
[00:11:16] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever been a member of a union?
[00:11:20] Tanya Woo: No.
[00:11:20] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to increase funding and staffing for investigations into labor violations like wage theft and illegal union busting?
[00:11:31] Tanya Woo: Would I support putting money into investigations?
[00:11:35] Crystal Fincher: Increasing funding and staffing for investigations into labor violations like wage theft and illegal union busting?
[00:11:42] Tanya Woo: Oh - yes.
[00:11:43] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever walked on a picket line?
[00:11:46] Tanya Woo: No.
[00:11:47] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever crossed a picket line?
[00:11:49] Tanya Woo: No.
[00:11:50] Crystal Fincher: Is your campaign unionized?
[00:11:53] Tanya Woo: They have the option to do so, but I do not believe so.
[00:11:57] Crystal Fincher: Okay. If your campaign staff wants to unionize, will you voluntarily recognize their effort?
[00:12:02] Tanya Woo: Yes.
[00:12:03] Crystal Fincher: Are any of the staff employed by your businesses unionized?
[00:12:14] Tanya Woo: If, are my staff employed by businesses unionized?
[00:12:18] Crystal Fincher: Any staff employed by your business unionized?
[00:12:22] Tanya Woo: No.
[00:12:24] Crystal Fincher: If they wanted to unionize, would you voluntarily recognize their effort?
[00:12:28] Tanya Woo: Yes.
[00:12:30] Crystal Fincher: Well, look, that's the end of the lightning round - you survived, it's wonderful.
[00:12:34] Tanya Woo: Okay great - these are always rough because I feel like sometimes issues are so complicated and there's a lot of gray - it's not always black and white - but yeah, that wasn't so bad.
[00:12:45] Crystal Fincher: Which is why we have a robust conversation in front of us to talk about all of that. But I want to start out for - helping to give people a feel for what you prioritize and how qualified you are to lead, which a lot of people see throughout the community. Can you describe something you've accomplished or changed in your district and what impact that has had on residents?
[00:13:08] Tanya Woo: Yes. Three years ago, during the pandemic - when there were a lot of pandemic racism, anti-Asian hate happening - our businesses were forced to close down throughout the city. And a lot of people were uncertain and just confused about what was happening, especially in our communities of color. I helped start a group called the Chinatown International District Community Watch. We saw there was a lack and a gap in services between the hours of 6pm and 6am - and that was the time when many of our streets, because of the stay-at-home mandate, it was just a ghost town. And so we wanted to make sure that people felt supported, that our small businesses felt supported in the Chinatown International District - which includes our housed and unhoused neighbors and residents. And so we started like this alternative to policing group that kind of just went through the three neighborhoods - Little Saigon, Chinatown, and Japantown - and just made sure everyone was okay. We believe that building trust between our unhoused neighbors and those who are there at 12th and Jackson engaged in the illegal markets were okay. We always believe that trust was the best way to de-escalate the situation. And they wanted to build connection and build relationships with people to help connect people to resources and to just be there. We wanted to give hope to our seniors and to our small business owners who were working through the pandemic. And so wanted to let them know that we were here and available if they need help - we did senior escorts. We also did something regarding self-defense training, which mainly focused on situational awareness - many in the Asian culture, people don't - there's not a lot eye contact, people are not looking around when they're walking. And so there are a lot instances where our seniors were unfortunately being attacked - we had a hate incident happen within the CID. And so we wanted to be there to show support for the community.
And it's been three years and we're still going strong. We kind of segued into different sections. There was a couple of large encampments that had grown in the first, second, or third year. And we started doing outreach and engagement in the encampments - getting to know our unhoused - we saw who was doing what, we saw the [unintelligible] who were engaged in the sex trade, who was engaged in the illegal markets. But we wanted to make sure that people who needed services and help were also being heard. So we were actively going into the encampments during that time - and now that those encampments have been resolved, we're going into Little Saigon area and 12th and Jackson with water bottles and meals. And trying to make that connection - that community cares, we want people to be okay. And we've done things where we've had to administer Narcan and CPR. And we really see that there's a need here. And so I believe that we're very, very slowly - there are many success stories - people who have found housing come back and say hi to us, and they invite us to see their homes. Many people who we have connected to other services, like brought to the hospital - helped bring to the hospital - have come back to thank us. And just seeing that we're making a difference in people's lives, I think brings me worlds of happiness. And so--
[00:17:03] Crystal Fincher: Now--
[00:17:03] Tanya Woo: --that was-- oh, go ahead.
[00:17:05] Crystal Fincher: Oh, no, go ahead, finish.
[00:17:06] Tanya Woo: Oh yeah, and so that's one of the things I'm really proud of and excited about - that this is continuing.
[00:17:12] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. Now talking about homelessness, one thing called out by experts as a barrier to the homelessness response is frontline worker wages that don't cover the cost of living and that impairing the response. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for our area, or that this is a problem with the response? And how can we fix it if it is a problem with how the City bids for contracts and services?
[00:17:39] Tanya Woo: Yes, I agree we have to pay a living wage and that is a huge barrier. I mean, even if - there's a huge turnaround in a lot of our nonprofits and our services - we have amazing people who are moving on and that turnaround, especially with caseworkers, is a bit detrimental to further relationships with many members of the community who need behavioral health services, addiction treatment, who are partnered with people to lead them through the journey from being unhoused into finding housing. And how important is that we pay a living wage to case managers so we don't see that there's a huge gap in services and that people are being missed or forgotten. And in other service sectors, I think there has to be - we have to meet those needs because the best way to fight homelessness is to prevent it. So especially with City contracts, there has to be - now that many City contracts are being renegotiated - to get a cost of living wage and also a percentage to match, for every single year going forward, the increase in the cost of living. I think that has to be comparable to other cities, other markets that we're seeing. And we have to make it a priority because we have to put people first, and we have to allow people to be able to live here and work here, as well as be able to negotiate these contracts so that they are fair. And also we have to make other, look at other things as well in terms of City contracts - I think trying to employ more minority businesses in City contracts, as well as female businesses, in terms of the larger contract picture is also very important.
[00:19:36] Crystal Fincher: Now, you were involved in the opposition to the proposed - it was nicknamed the "Megaplex" - but a services complex for the homeless there. And I think there were legitimate issues raised over the past several years about the CID residents being left out of discussions about what infrastructure is being built and developed, and mitigations or lack thereof. And the CID and its residents experiencing hardships and consequences out of proportion to people in other parts of the city, and that being a growing frustration - and then this happens and it feels like they're repeating the same cycle. While that's competing with the need to provide supportive housing, and to providing behavioral health treatment and services, and places where people can go and be, and offer these services. So if the right place or the right way to do it wasn't with that, what is the right way and the right place to do it?
[00:20:41] Tanya Woo: So first off, I want to make it very clear, we're not against the shelter. We were not against behavioral health services. We just wanted a seat at the table. This comes in a long line of historical high-impact projects that received no community input. And we're looking at I-5, we're looking at Sound Transit, we're looking at the stadiums, the Seattle Streetcar - all high-impact projects that have been detrimental, has really affected our community - but there was no community engagement or outreach. And so in the case of this shelter complex, the lease was signed in May, but the community was not notified until September for a facility that was supposed to open in November, December. And we asked, you know - there's something called the Racial Equity Toolkit that we have provided the City that dictates or advises on how to do that community outreach and engagement - and something that we desperately need and would like to see carried out. And so if King County and the City had started community outreach and engagement back in May, this would not even have been an issue.
And so basically in September, when we were first notified during a public safety meeting that only contained a few of us, we were asking around - Have you heard about this project? - and no one's heard about it and people were confused. And so we reached out - and we were a community in crisis - and none of our elected officials showed up for us. And so that's why we started protesting, was because, you know, protests that are loudest are the people who are not being heard. We went to King County, we went to City Council meetings - and we realized there are a lot of barriers for how communities of color, especially non-English speakers, communities of refugees and immigrants can engage in the political process. We requested for a translator ahead of time - we're told no, we had to bring our own - and then translation only goes one way, only goes towards the City councilmembers, it does not go back towards the community. And so we were just standing up in between breaks, yelling at the community members - this is what's happening, this is what people are saying. And that's emblematic of what's happening in the entire district. There is just not very much outreach and engagement and we definitely need more of that, we would like to see the table. There were a whole lot of issues that we would like to have been addressed. For instance, there should have been a good neighbor agreement between the community and the shelter that should have been in place when the shelter had opened back in 2020. And there should have also - we were seeing these encampments that were right outside the doors of the shelter - and last year, there were about seven homicides in the CID. I believe all but one were within the encampments. And so we were also asking for safety for our unhoused neighbors and wanted to enter a discussion with a public, a safety plan for everyone, including our unhoused neighbors. And we can go on and talk about all the reasons, I guess, that we wanted that discussion, engagement - and instead of giving that to us, they just decided to cancel the whole project and no one was happy.
[00:23:59] Crystal Fincher: Well, and so I guess that's my question - and so if you are in favor of providing services and doing that, where do you think they should be sited in the district?
[00:24:11] Tanya Woo: I think that area would have worked, but what we needed was that outreach and engagement. We were getting no information. We were holding our own town halls and reading off what we knew based on media and - of course we had our facts wrong 'cause no one was telling us what was happening. And that was basically - this is why I'm running - we wanted a seat at the table. And it's not gonna be given to us - we have to demand it.
[00:24:42] Crystal Fincher: So would you be supportive of starting a new process with that site as the goal, but with the appropriate amount and type of authentic community engagement and collaboration?
[00:24:55] Tanya Woo: Yes. And that's all we wanted - was that community engagement and collaboration. And we've historically have not gotten it. And so we feel like our community, that CID community, has suffered from the lack of investments and the lack of attention.
[00:25:14] Crystal Fincher: I gotcha. Now I also wanna talk about public safety - and starting talking about alternative response - in other jurisdictions around the country, and in our own region and King County, have rolled out alternative response programs to better support those having a behavioral health crisis. And Seattle is stalled in implementing, which is one of the most widely-supported ideas by Seattle voters and voters in District 2 - which is standing up non-police public safety issues and solutions. What are your thoughts on these and what are your thoughts on civilian-led versus co-response models?
[00:25:51] Tanya Woo: Yes. So I believe that Community Watch is a great example of alternatives to policing. And also there are a lot of organizations who do a lot of great and important work in community - We Deliver Care, LEAD, REACH, Co-LEAD, JustCARE - throughout the years that I would love to see grow on a larger scale and be able to support the entire city. I know they have little pockets within the city where they're doing this amazing work and it's working - and I would love to see more of that. That alternative to policing model is present, it's there - we just need to put City funding and City support behind it. So I also believe, like Health One, which pairs a case worker, case manager with a response team definitely needs to be expanded. Having more case workers out there should be a priority. Having case workers with officers should definitely be explored - and so I do support that model.
[00:27:06] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Now, a lot of times we hear people talking about what victims would want, but in survey after survey and talking to victims directly and BIPOC communities - the community in District 2 is largely at-risk for violence at greater proportions than other places in the city - but largely they say two things. They first wanna make sure that what happened to them doesn't happen again. And they want support - better support - through the systems. We've had business owners in the City of Seattle talk about - Yeah, I can call police, it takes them a long time to respond. But even if they come, it's not really helping me move forward. But something like a victim compensation fund or more support or something like that would happen. - How do you think we could better support victims of crime in the city? And how do you think that might change the overall feeling of safety?
[00:28:04] Tanya Woo: Yes. So for example, there have been about 14 robberies in the Beacon Hill, Rainier Beach area - mostly targeting Asian American seniors, but they're targeting young and old people as well. And so in those instances where they're targeting non-English speakers, we're seeing that not only are people not reporting in a timely manner, but they're not reporting at all - because that structure has not been put in place to help our immigrant, refugee, non-English speaking community. There's one survivor who I met recently who was severely traumatized by this experience - this person can't sleep at night, they have nightmares, and it's very obvious they need a lot of support. But that support structure has not been put into place, especially if you're a non-English speaker. So we were working with this person on connecting them to agencies to help - they have a $5,000 Harborview bill that they have to pay, working two jobs each, as well as dealing with all this trauma. And so we need something in place to help survivors, especially the refugee non-English speaking immigrant community members, to have access to these services, to be able to get assistance in paying their bills, or assistance in being able to get therapy, or other help that they may need. And that's - navigating the process is very difficult.
Also - with these 14 burglaries - the community was not notified. I don't know why they waited until 14 to get the word out. Even now, we're not entirely sure what the circumstances are. We know that for one instance, this person was followed from King's Plaza - but how do we stop these from happening by watching out for each other? Especially if these are starting out at King's Plaza or other grocery stores, how can we allow for these marketplaces to keep an eye out for each other and make sure that they're not being followed? Just getting the word out is very difficult, and I wish there'd be more City agencies working with our nonprofits and organizational partners who are in these communities to get the word out as well as to help connect survivors to resources. So I agree that there is a huge lack, but I think we really need to work together to build upon what we have.
[00:30:52] Crystal Fincher: Now I wanna talk about the City budget - and the City of Seattle is projected to have a revenue shortfall of $224 million beginning in 2025. Because the City's mandated to pass a balanced budget, the options to address the deficit are to either raise revenue or cut services. What approach are you going to take?
[00:31:13] Tanya Woo: Ah, I think we have to look at the entire budget and define metrics of success for every single agency and making sure that there are results. We put so much money into KCRHA, which is the Regional Homeless Authority, but there is no metric for success, we don't know where this money is going - well, we have a general idea, but we don't know what the results are. How many people are they housing? I know right now they're going through a process where they're trying to come up with a system similar to that, but I would like to see something done for all government agencies. I mean, for any of us who have ever applied for a grant, we know how arduous it is to just basically name every single line item, and then be accountable for it, and then also show the results to be able to close out that grant. I think we have to hold all our agencies to that same level.
[00:32:10] Crystal Fincher: So does that mean that that might be an area where you'd look to cut? Is that what you're saying?
[00:32:16] Tanya Woo: Or not cut, but to maybe move around - see what programs are successful, what are not successful, and then invest in the programs that are showing results.
[00:32:26] Crystal Fincher: So given that, if the money is just shifted and we're still dealing with a big budget deficit, how would you move to fix that?
[00:32:38] Tanya Woo: Ah, then we'll have to look at - so we have to look at our priorities and really focus on those. And so I think it's looking at the overall budget - and yes, I guess, moving money around does equal cuts and other things, but giving a real clear picture of where the results are and moving the money to where the results are, I think, should be the priority.
[00:33:09] Crystal Fincher: Okay, I think I've read that you're on record opposing a lot of the new revenue proposals and options. Is that correct?
[00:33:17] Tanya Woo: Well, I wanted to see what the Progressive Revenue Task Force was going to put out. And I believe they gave a list of recommendations, and three is moving on to further legislation. And so I do not oppose any of the recommendations so far, but I want to see where the legislation - what the legislation looks like before making a final determination.
[00:33:46] Crystal Fincher: Okay, so jury's still out, depends on what ultimately happens. So at this point, is it fair to say that you are not a strong supporter, or won't be leading any charge to implement new revenue, and may be a vote in support or in opposition?
[00:34:02] Tanya Woo: Well, from my understanding - the three things that are being pushed forward are just continuations of things that are currently in place. And so I just want to wait and see.
[00:34:15] Crystal Fincher: Well, the capital gains tax would be one, or a CEO tax would be another one, expanding the JumpStart tax. Yeah, so those ones are not currently in place. So are you looking to limiting what you would do to things that are already in place, or would you support something potentially beyond that?
[00:34:37] Tanya Woo: Oh, I would want to see - I think some of them were not considered - I think the legality of each is being considered. So I probably would not be an advocate for any particular tax currently. I just want to see what legislation gets pushed forward before making determination of which I'm supportive or opposed of.
[00:34:58] Crystal Fincher: Okay, so if that doesn't shake out and there isn't any new revenue, how would you propose doing things like supplementing victim services, or increasing public safety, or increasing homeless services that need new revenue? Would that just have to be offset by cuts in other areas, shifting to more higher priority areas on your agenda?
[00:35:26] Tanya Woo: Yes, I think it's looking at the budget in its totality and seeing where we can make those cuts and how these programs could be successful because I believe they're in place - we're not reinventing the wheel here - we're just supporting and being able to help build capacity of some of these organizations and nonprofits, as well as I think - communication, outreach, and engagement is really important and making sure that communities of color know what's available and have access or even knowledge of these resources.
[00:36:01] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Now, I want to talk about small businesses and the economy. You are a small business owner. Seattle and District 2 have very diverse businesses. Seattle has some of the largest corporations in the world headquartered here and some nearby, and also just a vibrant and diverse small business community - which is very important to our local and regional economy and just how the city is developing and feeling. What is most important - what would you lead and do to support small businesses in your district?
[00:36:40] Tanya Woo: Yes, my family has been involved with a lot of small businesses. My grandparents had the Moon Temple Restaurant that they worked at for 32 years. Then my parents used that to help fund and open Seattle's first Chinese bakery, the Mon Hei Bakery in the Chinatown International District - I grew up in there, in the bakery, doing odd jobs for 50 cents an hour. And then later my dad - because we were able to build that intergenerational wealth through these small businesses, able to buy the building that the bakery was in. And so realizing how important our small businesses are in terms of being the social center for many community members, also being a safe haven for community as well. And making sure that we have that economic engine to help provide good paying jobs and allowing for many communities to stay in place. And so I think we have to be more proactive versus reactive. We had the broken window fund that really helped a lot of businesses, but the application process was a bit cumbersome and a lot of people who did not understand it. And so I think it'd be nice to have these, like City of Seattle service stations - I know Othello has one, the U district has one - but to have some in locations where small businesses can have access to be able to get their questions answered regarding City resources and being able to get City grants. Now, many of our small businesses are dealing with graffiti and the City will send notices to our small businesses demanding that they pay a fee every single day that that graffiti remains in place. And so having access to government to be able to, to, I guess, push back on these notices, as well as to get help in terms of how to access resources, and also to just basically address their concerns. I know at 12th and Jackson, there is a huge illegal market there, as well as many people using fentanyl - and that's really affected the business community. And so how do we interact with local government and agencies to bring light to this issue, to get more attention, and possibly work with community in trying to resolve and help people.
[00:39:16] Crystal Fincher: Now, I also wanna talk about childcare, which is really important. And we recently received news that childcare is now more expensive than a college education - which has a devastating impact on families. Do you have plans to fix this?
[00:39:32] Tanya Woo: Yes, I think the City could do a lot to help, I guess, childcare businesses to grow and to help with permitting process for childcare businesses to get started. And looking at - and just basically working in partnership with the childcare business community - figure out what the barriers are in place to provide more childcare. I think also helping accessibility - not only physically, but financially. And also helping with choices, so people are not having to drive across the city to be able to access good childcare options. I think that's something we need to work in partnership with not only businesses, large and small, but also with what families need. So I think there's a lot of work we can do in that area.
[00:40:27] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Also wanna talk about transit and transportation. Pedestrian and bicycle safety has been atrocious. Pedestrians and bicyclists are not currently safe. What would you do to improve that?
[00:40:42] Tanya Woo: Yes, I know there's a lot of traffic calming measures that community has been asking for, but SDOT has not been able to put in place. And so trying to find out what those barriers are and - within SDOT itself - be able to implement these traffic calming measures. There are many promises that have been made in these last 10 years and many projects - communities really excited for - that have not been implemented. So I think it's really holding agencies accountable and finding out those barriers are to get through that. And looking, especially in South Seattle, our traffic death numbers have not, pedestrian traffic death numbers have not gotten any better - and I think they're getting worse at this point. So is there - I know there's a lot of discussion groups, a lot of people who are really passionate about this issue - but how do we draw everybody in and make these things happen? And I've heard the frustration where people are - We're gonna go out there and paint that sidewalk ourself, or we're gonna put that planter in - we can't wait for the City to act. - and so how do we allow for these community projects? I know there's been a lot of speed bumps that have been helpful. How do we look at other traffic calming measures and make them happen is of paramount importance.
[00:42:02] Crystal Fincher: It is, and I guess, what I'm getting at or what I'm wondering is - there have been a lot of promises made by SDOT, and the City, and various politicians and promises to bring change and it hasn't happened. So how exactly can you hold, what will you do to hold SDOT and your other colleagues accountable if you were to make it onto the council - as well as the mayor - to get action in District 2?
[00:42:33] Tanya Woo: Yes, and I think that's the big question that a lot of people are wrestling with. And I think it's just getting down to - what are the barriers? Is there a lack of staffing? Or a lack of permitting - is the permitting process the barrier? Is there a community engagement process that needs to be done? And being able, I think, trying to understand what that barrier is. Is it just not a priority?
[00:43:02] Crystal Fincher: If it is an issue of priority, how do you overcome that?
[00:43:06] Tanya Woo: I think we have to make it a priority - it's lives on the line here - and we have to draw everyone in. And I know a lot of people have a lot of suggestions, like we need better lighting and that's a bigger infrastructure issue - putting that in place. And there's discussions regarding the traffic signals and cameras, especially. But I think there's a very divided community in terms of how to attack the situation, but I think it's going to have to be a - it's all-of-the-above situation - but I think it's getting SDOT to act is the biggest barrier. And if SDOT doesn't have the capacity, how can we give them the capacity or allow for community members to step in and to help?
[00:43:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely allowing community members to step in and act would be good. Unfortunately, SDOT is not that fond of that in many instances, if it's not already part of a pre-planned program. A lot of it seems to be coming down to right-of-way and investment in car infrastructure versus bike and pedestrian infrastructure. And so parking spaces - that type of infrastructure and space that could be used to provide safe facilities there - would you vote to eliminate parking spaces in order to provide safe infrastructure for pedestrians and bicyclists in your district?
[00:44:30] Tanya Woo: Yes, I think that is a - I support that, but I think that's a community-by-community approach. I know for the Chinatown International District - that many people using bikes go through there, yet it's also part of the downtown core where parking is a huge importance, especially since there are many seniors there who cannot utilize the bike lanes or who need those handicap parking spaces. And so I think it's a community-by-community approach and definitely having those discussions is important, but it's a larger picture of how do we - it's growing pains we have - we haven't planned for the city to grow so quickly. So how do we fit that in into our communities? How do we bring in Sound Transit, Metro to offer more consistent schedules? Metro just got some schedules cut and with ST3 coming into place and that discussion happening, we have to involve and look at not only ST3, but bike lanes and draw Metro in on the discussion for a larger planning for the next couple of years so that we set ourselves up for success.
[00:45:57] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Now transit reliability is becoming an increasingly pressing issue with staff shortages and other challenges creating ghost buses, missed buses, canceled trips, eliminated routes and trips - and it is jeopardizing transit ridership, jeopardizing so much in the city. Now Sound Transit is a regional body and King County Metro is a county body, but what can the City do to help stabilize transit reliability?
[00:46:33] Tanya Woo: I think we have an aging workforce that's not being replenished. And so how do we go about that is a good question that needs - I think we need to talk about. Also, I think a lot of - there's a lot of public safety concerns that I think permeates through all of our issues, especially with hearing from - people going to, children going to school being on buses and seeing a drug use happening, as well as drivers having to deal with a lot of behavioral health issues or unhoused residents trying to stay warm or on their buses. And so how do we work together to promote the feeling of safety? And I think it's also looking, trying to offer more routes, more options and choices for people to be able to take the bus and have that system work. I know like a lot of people don't find it reliable because they always complain like - We're waiting longer than we feel like for buses to show up and then there's three or four buses at the same time that shows up - and how do we look at, make sure there's more consistent consistency and more options for people.
[00:48:02] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Now a lot of people are trying to make a decision about who they're gonna vote for, about who aligns with their values. What do you tell them in order to help them make their decision between you and your opponent?
[00:48:17] Tanya Woo: Yes, and so I've spent my whole life working towards a lot of the issues that I feel are huge priorities for the city - to provide more housing. My family actually went and we - have the Louisa Hotel - recently redeveloped and opened right before the pandemic. We have 84 units of workforce housing, which only charges people a percentage of their income so no one's forced to pay rent they cannot afford. I think we need more of that in the city and I know how to build. And we have about 20 units working with our organization called Housing Connector to be able to house the formerly unhoused, and that organization also pairs people with a caseworker to help partner through their journey from - into finding housing. And I think that's a really important project that many people - or many, I guess, apartment owners - should get involved in. I helped start Community Watch, which I feel like is a great model for alternatives to public safety. And so I see that there is a need, and we have to act, and so I've gone out and done that. We go into our unhoused community - try to bring services and connect people to resources. And so I have a lot of on the ground experience - I'm embedded in community within our encampments, I see firsthand the trickle down effects of policy, and I also see displacement and gentrification - which is something I've been working against my whole life and trying to protect our communities of color from that. And so I know what it's like to be in a community that feels like they're not being heard. To see a community, I guess, being on the list of one of the most endangered neighborhoods of the nation - a list we're not proud of - but we have to do more and we have to act to make sure that no other neighborhood gets put on that list in the City of Seattle and how do we get our neighborhood off that list is really important. So I'm a person of action.
And I'm in community and I hear the gunshots every single night where I live - I live in the Rainier Beach area, I work in the CID, I go to the CID and I hear gunshots there and I realize public safety is so important and not a topic that's being addressed by our current councilmember. I agree that police need to be reformed, but we need - my group, we were in place of a shooting and we are not equipped to be able to deal with that and so for that, we absolutely need a police department. But we need a police department that's culturally competent and that will prioritize de-escalation. And so having that in place, I believe, is really important - in partnership with community investments with the community, as well as we need more after-school programs for youth, our community centers, our libraries, and our parks to resume the programming that they had pre-pandemic. And so I think there are a lot of actionable items that can be done to help empower people that could be done that's not currently being done. So there's a lot of work in certain areas that I would like to help implement and those will fall in the three priorities, like with public safety, homelessness and housing, as well as transportation. And so as a movement of action and want to help amplify voices of community and make sure that our communities of color are not forgotten, especially in a district where there is a lot of diversity and we should celebrate that. And so part of the reason why I'm running is because I've seen all this in the last four or three - many years - I've lived here my entire life, I know the communities. And we have to act, time for action is now - we can't just talk about ideology and debate amongst each other about what will work and what not will work - and in the end, not coming to solutions. And this should be a priority - going to solutions and problem solving, and especially making sure that the perfect solution is not an enemy of a good one.
[00:53:09] Crystal Fincher: Well, gotcha. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to share with us today, candidate for Seattle City Council District 2, Tanya Woo - much appreciated.
[00:53:19] Tanya Woo: Thank you - have a good rest of your day.
[00:53:21] Crystal Fincher: You too.
Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattle political reporter and editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett!
The show starts with the infuriating story of Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) leaders joking about a fellow Seattle Police Department (SPD) officer running over and killing Jaahnavi Kandula - how the shocking comments caught on body cam confirm suspicions of a culture in SPD that disregards life, that the SPOG police union is synonymous with the department, and whether a seemingly absent Mayor Bruce Harrell will do anything about a troubled department under his executive purview.
Erica and Crystal then discuss Bob Ferguson officially entering the governor’s race with Jay Inslee’s endorsement, Rebecca Saldaña jumping into a crowded Public Lands Commissioner race, no charges against Jenny Durkan or Carmen Best for their deleted texts during the 2020 George Floyd protests, the latest on Seattle’s drug criminalization bill, and flawed interviews for KCRHA’s Five-Year Plan for homelessness.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica Barnett, at @ericacbarnett.
Resources
“Rob Saka, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 1” from Hacks & Wonks
“Maren Costa, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 1” from Hacks & Wonks
“"Write a Check for $11,000. She Was 26, She Had Limited Value." SPD Officer Jokes with Police Union Leader About Killing of Pedestrian by Fellow Cop” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“‘Feel safer yet?’ Seattle police union’s contempt keeps showing through” by Danny Westneat from The Seattle Times
“Handling of Jaahnavi Kandula’s death brings criticism from Seattle leaders” by Sarah Grace Taylor from The Seattle Times
“Political consultant weighs in on growing Washington governor’s race” by Brittany Toolis from KIRO 7 News Seattle
“Jay Inslee endorses Bob Ferguson to succeed him as WA governor” by David Gutman and Lauren Girgis from The Seattle Times
“Rebecca Saldaña Jumps into Weirdly Crowded Race for Lands Commissioner” by Rich Smith from The Stranger
“No Charges Against Durkan and Best for Deleted Texts; Investigation Reveals Holes in City Records Retention Policies” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“After Watering Down Language About Diversion, Committee Moves Drug Criminalization Bill Forward” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“Harrell’s “$27 Million Drug Diversion and Treatment” Plan Would Allow Prosecutions But Add No New Funding” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“The Five-Year Plan for Homelessness Was Based Largely on 180 Interviews. Experts Say They Were Deeply Flawed.” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
If you missed this week's topical shows, we kicked off our series of Seattle City Council candidate interviews. All 14 candidates for 7 positions were invited. And over the last week, we had in-depth conversations with many of them. This week, we presented District 1 candidates, Rob Saka and Maren Costa. Have a listen to those and stay tuned over the coming weeks - we hope these interviews will help voters better understand who these candidates are and inform their choices for the November 7th general election. Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Seattle political reporter and editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett.
[00:01:37] Erica Barnett: It's great to be here.
[00:01:39] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you back. Well, I wanna start off talking about just an infuriating story this week where Seattle police officers - a union leader - joked about killing of a pedestrian by another Seattle police officer - and just really disgusting. What happened here?
[00:01:58] Erica Barnett: The Seattle Police Department and the King County Prosecutor's Office actually released this video from the night that Jaahnavi Kandula was killed by Officer Kevin Dave. It is a short clip that shows one-half of a conversation between Daniel Auderer, who is the Seattle Police Officers Guild vice president, and Mike Solan, the president of the police guild - as you said, joking and laughing about the incident that had just happened. And also minimizing the incident - so from what we can hear of Auderer's part of the conversation, he makes some comments implying that the crash wasn't that bad, that Dave was acting within policy, that he was not speeding too much - all of which was not true. He was going 74 miles an hour. The incident was very gruesome and just a horrible tragedy. Then you can hear him saying in a joking manner, "But she is dead." And then he pauses and he says, "No, it's a regular person." in response to something that Solan has said - and there's been a lot of speculation about what that might be. Then he says, "Yeah, just write a check." - after laughing - "Yeah, $11,000. She was 26 anyway, she had limited value." I'm reading the words verbatim, but I really recommend watching the video, which we posted on PubliCola.com, because you can hear the tone and you can hear the sort of cackling laughter - which I think conveys the intent a lot more clearly than just reading a transcript of it.
[00:03:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, we will link that PubliCola story with the video in our show notes, but it's just infuriating. And just to recap what happened just in the killing of her initially - that was a tragedy and an infuriating event. An officer was responding to a call that arguably police aren't needed at - in other jurisdictions, they don't seem to be needed on those types of calls - but without lights and sirens blaring, going over 70 mph on just a regular City street. And yeah, that's illegal for regular people for a reason - common sense would dictate that would be against policy - we give them lights and sirens for a reason to alert people that they're coming really fast and to clear the way. And it just seemed like Jaahnavi didn't have a chance here. And then the slow leak of information afterwards - just the event itself seemed to devalue their life and the way it was handled - and then to see this as the reaction. If their job is to keep us safe, they seem gleefully opposed to that.
[00:04:28] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I think that in the aftermath of the story going national and international, I think that one of the reactions I've heard is - Well, this is how we've always thought - from people who are skeptical of the police, I should say - this is how we've always assumed they talk, but to actually hear it on tape is shocking. And I think what happened in this video, the reason we have it is because Auderer perhaps forgot his body cam was on. 'Cause after he makes his last comment about $11,000, she had limited value, he turns off the camera and we don't hear any more of that conversation. This is a rare look into one such conversation between officers. And I will say too, that there was a - Jason Rantz, a local radio personality, right-wing commentator, tried to pre-spin this by saying that this was just "gallows humor" between two officers, and this is very common in professions where you see a lot of grisly and terrible stuff. And I will just point out, first of all, gallows humor is like making a joke about, I don't know, like a 9/11 joke, you know, 20 years after the fact. It's not on the night that someone was killed, joking about her being essentially worthless and trying to minimize the incident. That's not gallows humor. That's just the way, apparently, the police union VP and president talk amongst each other. It just shows that the culture of the department - we talk a lot about City Hall, which I cover - they talk a lot about recruiting better officers and getting the right kind of police. But the problem is if the culture itself is rotten, there's no fixing that by just putting 5 new officers, 10 new officers at the bottom of the chain. It comes from the top. And that is then - these two officials are at the top of that chain.
[00:06:09] Crystal Fincher: It does come from the top. And this also isn't the only time that it seems they have really distastefully discussed deaths at the hands of their officers or other people's deaths. There was a story that made the news not too long ago about them having a tombstone in one of their precincts for someone who was killed. There have been a couple officers who've had complaints for posting social media posts that seem to make fun of protesters who were run over. We have had a protester run over and killed here in the city. This is something that we've talked about that we - as a community - project that is against our values, but we continue to let this police department just mock people's safety in the city. I mean, you know something wild is happening when even Danny Westneat - who I think most people consider to be an extremely moderate, feels in-line with the Seattle Times editorial board, columnist for The Times - even he thinks SPOG has gone too far, and he's notoriously sympathetic to the police department.
[00:07:15] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I think that in that article, he almost got there. The article was basically - we desperately need more police, but this darn police union just keeps messing up and saying these terrible things, so we've got to reform this police union - which I just thought was a bizarre note in an otherwise pretty reasonable article because the police union is the top. It is the people that create the culture for the rest of the department in a lot of ways, perhaps more so than the police chief and the command staff. It's made up of cops. The cops vote in the head of the police union, the vice president - they are the ones that are choosing these folks. So if the police union's culture is broken, I think that means that SPD's culture is broken.
[00:07:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, unions are the culture. I feel like that's a trickle-down effect of anti-labor forces trying to paint unions as separate entities as workers. They are the workers. They're elected and selected by workers. So if anything, they seem to be the distillation of the culture. And there is a problem - I don't think that's controversial to say, I don't think that's even in dispute anymore - widely across this.
And there've been, again, lots of people pointing out these problems for years and years. And it feels like this is where we arrive at if we ignore this for so long. As I talked about in the opening, we just got done with a large round of Seattle City Council candidate interviews. And it was really interesting to hear, particularly from a few of them - there's three that I'm thinking of, that people will eventually hear - but who will talk about the need for more cops, who will talk about how important it is to rebuild trust with the community. But over and over again, it seems like they put it completely on the community to be responsible for coddling, and repairing the relationship, and building trust. And it seems like that needs to start on the other side. This is not even something that in polite society would happen, right? These are disgusting comments and disgusting beliefs, no matter who has them or where they come from. And we basically have sanctioned and hand over the power to violate people's civic rights to a department where this happens. And it's just a real challenge. And we have several councilmembers right now who have talked about needing to bring accountability and reform the police department in campaign materials when they were running. And it just seems like that dropped off the face of the earth. This should be a priority.
But more than everything else, I wanna talk about the responsibility that the mayor has here - it's like he disappears in these conversations and we talk about the council and we talk about the police department. Bruce Harrell is their boss. Bruce Harrell is the executive in charge here. Chief Adrian Diaz serves at the pleasure of, is appointed by the mayor. This is the executive's responsibility. The buck literally stops with him on this. And he seems to just be largely absent. I think I saw comments that he may have issued an apology this morning, but - Where is he on talking about the culture? Where is his outrage? Where is he in dealing with this? And this is happening amid a backdrop of a SPOG contract negotiation. How is he going to address the issues here in this contract? Or are we gonna paper over it? There's a lot talked about - one of his chief lieutenants, Tim Burgess, a former police officer, and how sympathetic he's been to police - and is that going to create a situation where this is yet another event that goes unaddressed in policy, and we don't put anything in place to prevent this from happening again?
[00:10:45] Erica Barnett: Harrell's statement was very much like a "bad apple" statement without completing the thought, which is that a bad apple ruins the bunch - that we're disheartened by the comments of this one officer. As you said, not addressing the culture, not addressing the fact that he can actually do something about this stuff. He is the person with the power. And as you mentioned, he was basically absent - made a statement in response to some questions, but it was pretty terse, and it didn't get at the larger cultural issues that I think this does reflect.
[00:11:14] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And I know there were comments, I saw comments from a couple of City councilmembers as of last night - calls to hear from more on their opinion on this issue. I have not seen more - we'll see if those trickle in over the coming day or two. But Bruce Harrell has the responsibility and the power to do something about this. Is he going to use it? - that's the question people should be asking, even more than what Chief Adrian Diaz is gonna do. This is unacceptable behavior. This absolutely speaks to the culture, and it's time we have someone who takes that seriously as an executive.
Now, I also wanna talk about news that came out this week - that wasn't necessarily surprising, but certainly a benchmark and a milestone in a campaign - and that is current Attorney General Bob Ferguson officially announced his candidacy for governor and came with the endorsement of Jay Inslee. How do you see him as a candidate and his position in this field so far?
[00:12:17] Erica Barnett: It's a big deal. I think Ferguson has been waiting patiently - or not - to run for governor for a while. He's had this trajectory - waited for Inslee when he decided to run again last time - this is the reward. I think it puts him very much in the front of the field as Inslee's successor. Obviously we'll see, but I think Inslee is a fairly popular governor. You see this in a lot of races, where you have an anointed person - the King County Council, Teresa Mosqueda is kind of similar - comes in with all the endorsements and I think is well-placed to win. So yeah, I think this puts Ferguson in a really strong position.
[00:12:52] Crystal Fincher: He is in a really strong position. As we know - I wish it wasn't the case, but unfortunately it is reality - that money matters a lot in politics right now. It's the only reliable way to communicate with voters en masse. There's earned media, but there's less reporters around the state than there used to be. So paying to put communications in front of voters is something that needs to be done. Paying a staff that can manage a campaign of that scale is something that needs to be done. And Bob Ferguson is head and shoulders above everyone else - he has more than double what all of the other candidates have combined in terms of finances, so that puts him in a great position. Obviously having the endorsement of the most visible Democrat in the state right now is something that every candidate would accept - I'm sure almost every candidate on the Democratic side would accept right now. It's gonna be interesting.
But I do think we still have a lot of time left, there's still a lot of conversation left. It is an interesting field from Hilary Franz to Mark Mullet, a moderate or conservative Democrat. And then on the Republican side, Dave Reichert and Semi Bird - one who I think is trading in on his reputation, at least in a lot of media stories as a moderate, but from being pro-life, anti-choice, to a number of other viewpoints - I don't know that realistically he's a moderate, just kind of a standard Republican. And then Semi Bird, who's endorsed by people like Joe Kent and others, who are definitely on the far right-wing side. So this is gonna be an interesting race. There's a lot of time left. And I still think even though Bob Ferguson - I think it's uncontroversial to say he's the front runner - still important to really examine what they believe, to talk to the voters around the state. And it seems like he's taking that seriously and vigorously campaigning. So we'll continue to follow what this race is, but it is going to be an interesting one.
[00:14:54] Erica Barnett: I will say really quickly too, that Reichert does not seem to be running a particularly active campaign. He's not, from what I hear, out there doing a lot of on-the-ground campaigning the way that Ferguson has. So while I think you're gonna hear a lot about him on TV news and more right-leaning publications, I think that we're talking about the Democratic side of the field because it's very unlikely that we'll have a Republican governor - even one who has a lot of name recognition like Reichert.
[00:15:20] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. So we'll continue to follow that. And just as an aside, I thought I would mention that in the race, another statewide race, for Public Lands Commissioner, State Senator Rebecca Saldaña jumped into the race - joining State Senator Mona Das, Makah Tribal member Patrick Finedays DePoe, King County Councilmember Dave Upthegrove, and current State Senator Kevin Van De Wege. As well as on the Republican side - I'm not sure how to pronounce her name - but Sue Kuehl Pederson. It's a crowded race that's going to be an interesting one. And I'm really curious to continue to see what Senator Rebecca Saldaña has to say, as well as the other ones. But that's a crowded race, and that one could be very interesting.
[00:16:03] Erica Barnett: Absolutely. Weirdly crowded race.
[00:16:05] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, very interesting.
[00:16:06] Erica Barnett: Or surprisingly - I don't know about weirdly - but surprisingly crowded.
[00:16:09] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, surprisingly. Rich Smith of The Stranger did an article about that this week, which we will link in the show notes.
Now, I also want to talk about news we received this week about another long-standing issue tied to both public safety and a former mayor. And that's news that we received that former Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best will not be facing charges for deleting texts. What was the finding here and what does this mean?
[00:16:39] Erica Barnett: Yeah, as we all know, they deleted tens of thousands of texts, many of them during the crucial period when 2020 protests were going on, when they were amassing troops - so to speak - and reacting with force to people protesting police violence after George Floyd was killed. And the finding essentially was that the King County Prosecutor's Office could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that these deletions had been intentional and that they were trying to effectively conceal public records. It's a pretty high standard of proof that they have to meet at the prosecutor's office. I read the entire report from the investigator - what was released to reporters earlier this week - I have to say they put a lot of faith, I think, in or at least trust in public officials' statements that they sort of didn't know anything about the City's retention policy for cell phones, for text messages. The excuse was often - Well, I thought they were being preserved in a server somewhere, so it was fine to delete them. And I asked - because I think we all know when we delete our text messages, they're gone. You can't just get them back. AT&T doesn't have a server for us somewhere where we can get our text messages. So I said - Do they not understand how cell phones work? Was there any training on this? - and the response was - Well, I would dispute that they understand how cell phones work and there was training, but it was mostly about email. There's some stuff in here that kind of strains credulity a little bit, but again, it's a high standard of proof they had to meet, so that was their argument. There's a civil case where a federal judge said that it was unlikely that they didn't know what they were doing, but he had a lower standard of proof. So that's why it's a slightly different conclusion from basically the same facts.
[00:18:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think these are always interesting situation - when it comes to an actual charging decision and what's needed there. I'm sure they're considering - unfortunately in our society today, they can afford significant defenses that are not available to a lot of people - that may have factored into their decision. But overall, it just once again seems like there is a different standard for people with power than those without power. And we're having conversations about people dealing with addiction, about people shoplifting for financial reasons - and even not for financial reasons - people being assaulted and in some instances killed for petty theft, or eviction, or different things. And it seems like we have no problem cracking down and expecting perfect compliance from people without power. But those that do just don't seem to be held to the same standard of accountability. And I think that's damaging and troubling. And I think we need to explore that and make sure we do hold people accountable.
And it also just doesn't, once again, escape my notice that these aren't the first controversies that either one of them dealt with that did not have the kind of accountability attached to them. And so yes, it's a slippery slope. And if you keep sliding, you're gonna wind up in a low, dirty place. And once again, this is part of what undermines people's trust in power, and in institutions, and in democracy. And we need to be doing all we can to move in the opposite direction right now - to build trust and to conduct actions with integrity. And it just doesn't seem like that is a priority everywhere - they know they can get away with it - and it's really frustrating and disheartening, and we just need to do better overall.
[00:20:05] Erica Barnett: To put a fine point on one of the things that the investigation revealed to me that I was not aware of actually about public disclosure - which is that text messages, according to the City, can be deleted if they are "transitory" in nature. And "transitory" is defined as not relating to policy decisions or things of substance like that, which means that according to Durkan and Best, it was fine to delete anything that was not like - We are going to adopt this policy or propose this policy, or our policy is to tear gas all protesters or something like that. So if it's tactical in the moment, that was not preserved. But I do records requests - I get text messages from officials - and a lot of times they include stuff that Durkan and Best are defining as transitory, like text message - I mean, I'm just making this up - but an official saying this other official is a jerk or somebody. There's all kinds of sort of process related text messages and texts that give some insight to decision-making that would be considered transitory. It is entirely possible that Durkan and Best are deleting all of those kinds of messages, which is not something I think should be deleted, and that I think is in the public interest to know about if people are requesting it. So I found that very disturbing - this notion that you can just destroy records if they aren't related to policy. I think in practice, most officials know better than that - and that's just based on records requests I've done - but apparently that's a big loophole that I think should be closed in the policies at the City, if at all possible.
[00:21:33] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now I wanna talk about the return of the drug criminalization bill in the City of Seattle. What's happening with this?
[00:21:43] Erica Barnett: The City Council's Public Safety Committee voted this week to basically move it forward to the full council. There's a new version that has a lot of nice language - in the sort of non-binding whereas clauses - about we don't wanna start another drug war and we definitely, for sure for real, prefer diversion. But essentially the impact of the bill is the same as it has always been, which is to empower the city attorney to prosecute and empower police to arrest for people using drugs in public and for simple possession of drugs other than cannabis. There's some language in the bill - and including in the text of the bill itself - that says there will be a policy in the future that says that police should try to put people into diversion programs first. And there's a couple kinds of diversion programs that we fund - inadequately currently - to actually divert the number of people that would be eligible now. So the impact of this bill is, I think, going to actually be pretty limited because - unless the mayor proposes massive investments in diversion programs like LEAD, potentially like some of these pretrial diversion programs that City Attorney's Office wants to fund. But we're facing a huge budget deficit in 2025 and years out, so it feels like a lot of kind of smoke-and-mirrors talk. We really love diversion, but we're not gonna fund it. And maybe I'll be proven wrong in two weeks when the mayor releases his budget, but my bet is that there's not gonna be massive new funding for these programs and that this is gonna end up being mostly talk.
[00:23:19] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, mostly talk. And just on that specifically - that the mayor did announce $27 million to help support this effort. Is that $27 million - is it what it sounds like?
[00:23:33] Erica Barnett: Yeah, this is like one of the things that I feel like I've been shouting from the rooftops, and all the other local press - I don't know why - keep reporting it as if it is a $27 million check of new money, but it's actually $7 million that's left over in federal CDBG [Community Development Block Grant] grant funding that has to be spent, but the City has failed to spend it so far. So that's a lump sum - some of that's gonna go to an opiate recovery site run by DESC that I wrote about at PubliCola a couple of weeks ago. And then the rest is a slow trickle, over 18 years, of funding from a previously announced opiate settlement. And so that's gonna be on average about $1 million a year. As City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda was pointing out earlier this week, a lot of that - 20% of that goes to administrative overhead. So you're really looking at more $700,000-$800,000 a year, and it diminishes in out years - that is what they call budget dust - it is not enough to pay for virtually anything. I don't know what they're going to ultimately spend that trickle of funding on, but it's definitely not $27 million. That's what I mean by smoke and mirrors - that's a good example. It looks like a fairly big number, but then you realize it's stretched out into the 2030s and it's not nearly as big looking - actually, sorry, the 2040s, I believe, if I'm doing my math right - it doesn't look nearly as big when you actually look at what it is. So I encourage people to do that, and I've written more about this at PubliCola too.
[00:24:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. We can also link that article. The most frustrating thing to me about Seattle politics, I think - in addition to just the endless process and reconsideration of things instead of making a decision and doing it - is this thing right here where there is a problem and people seem to actually, in public, rhetorically agree with the problem. Arresting people just for drug offenses does not solve that problem - it destabilizes people more, jail is not an effective place for drug treatment. Does that mean no one in the history of ever has ever become clean in jail? - there have been people, but they're few and far between. And experience and research and common sense, when you look at what actually happens there, really shows that is more of a destabilizing experience, that people who are in addiction need treatment, effective treatment, for that addiction and substance use disorder. And for people who may be recreationally using, sending them to jail doesn't help them when it comes to - and in fact, it's very hurtful - when it comes to finding a job, to securing housing, a variety of things. And that often has a more negative effect when it comes to forcing people into needing assistance, into needing help or completely falling through the cracks and becoming homeless - and dealing with the challenges there that we all pay for as a society.
And so here we are again, where we actually did not solve the problem that everyone is articulating - and it seems like we just punted on that. But we're funding the thing that we say is not going to solve the problem, that we're confident is not going to solve the problem - and wrapping words around everything else, but that action isn't there. And I think what's frustrating to a lot of people, including me, it's sometimes - people on the left or Democrats are in this larger public safety conversation get painted as not wanting to do anything. And that's just so far from the truth. This is a problem, we need to address it. I just want to do something that has a chance of helping. And it seems like we're throwing good money after bad here and investing in something that we know is not going to be very helpful, meanwhile not funding the things that will be. And so we're going to be a year or two down the line and we'll see what the conversation we continue to have then is, but wondering at which point we stop doing the same thing that keeps getting us these suboptimal results.
[00:27:20] Erica Barnett: And this is one place that you can blame the city council. I know the city council gets blamed for everything, but they are out there saying that this is a massively changed bill and it's changed in meaningful ways - in my opinion, it really hasn't been.
[00:27:32] Crystal Fincher: I agree with that. I want to conclude by talking about a story that you wrote at PubliCola this week, talking about challenges with the way interviews for the Regional Homeless Authority's Five-Year Plan. What happened here and what were the problems?
[00:27:49] Erica Barnett: Yeah, the new Five-Year Plan for homelessness, which was pretty controversial when it first came out because it had a $12 billion price tag, was based largely on 180 interviews that the homelessness authority did with people who are unsheltered in places around the county. And the interviews were basically 31 questions that they were supposed to vaguely stick to, but some that they really needed to get the answers to - for demographic reasons - and didn't always. The interviews were conducted primarily by members of the Lived Experience Coalition with some KCRHA staff doing them too. I've read about 90 of the 180, so about half of the 180 so far - and I would describe them as primarily being very discursive, very non-scientific. And it's not just that they are qualitative interviews 'cause it's fine for a qualitative interview to ramble - I talked to a couple of experts about how this kind of research usually works - and the idea is to make it more like a conversation, and that was the goal here. But in a lot of cases, the interviewers were doing things like suggesting answers, like interrupting, like talking at great length about themselves and their own experience, making suggestions, making assurances or promises that they could help them with services. There are just all kinds of things going on in these interviews that are not best practices for this type of interview.
And then the interviews, which generally, people didn't tend to answer the question - there was a question about what has been helpful or harmful to you - and the goal there was to get people to say things that would suggest a shelter type, for example. They almost never said a specific shelter type except for a tiny house village, but the interviews were then coded by researchers to sort of lead to a specific set of shelter types. And without getting into too much technical detail, the idea was if somebody said they wanted X type of service or they had Y type of problem, that would suggest they needed Z type of service. So you're living in your car, you probably need a place to park your car safely. You're living in an RV, you need an RV safe lot. And the problem is, first of all, you're extrapolating from 180 interviews. And second, some of these solutions are pretty determinative. If you live in an RV, do you wanna live in an RV forever? Maybe not. Anyway, it just, it was not a great process to come up with this plan that ultimately is a plan to spend billions of dollars, even if it doesn't have that price tag, on a specific breakdown of types of service. And so I think they're not gonna do it again this way next year, but I think it did really inform this plan in a way that was not always super helpful.
[00:30:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I do know a little something about qualitative and quantitative research. As you said, doing qualitative interviews - in a narrative format, having a conversation - is not in itself a bad thing, but you can't interject your experience. You can't help inform the answers of the people you're talking to and that seemed to happen. And it really did seem like it was - they had an ambitious plan, maybe the training for how to do this was not as comprehensive as it needed to be - that certainly appears to be the case. Initially, they actually did hundreds, multiple hundreds of interviews for this, but a lot of them had to just be discarded - they were so outside of the bounds of what was supposed to happen, they were not able to be included in what they considered their final data set. And that's really unfortunate. It's a lot of time, it's a lot of effort - especially with populations that are harder to consistently contact and follow up with, any chance you have to connect with them is really meaningful. And so if you don't utilize that time correctly, or if you can't do anything with that, that just seems like an extra painful loss. I understand the ambition to get this done, but the execution really suffered. And I hope that there are lessons learned from this. Even in the ones that were done wrong - I say it seems like an issue of training and overambition, 'cause usually there is a lot of training that goes into how to do this. Usually these are people's professions that actually do this. It's not - Oh, hey, today we're gonna do some qualitative interviews and just walk up and have a conversation and check some things off the list. - it doesn't work that way. So that was unfortunate to hear. And the recommendations from this - I don't know if they change or not after review of this whole situation - but certainly when you know that eyes are going to be getting wide looking at the price tag of this, you really do have to make sure that you're executing and implementing well and that was a challenge here. So how do they move on from this? Was it at all addressed? Are they gonna do this again? What's going to happen?
[00:32:25] Erica Barnett: I don't think they're gonna do the qualitative interviews, at least in this way again. I think this was something that Marc Dones really emphasized - the former head of the KCRHA - really wanted to do. And it got rolled into also doing the Point-In-Time count based on extrapolations from this group of folks they interviewed. They call these oral histories and really emphasized the need to get this data. I don't think it's gonna happen again based on what KCRHA officials told me, but qualitative data - I mean, I should say, is not as you mentioned a bad thing - it can be very useful. But the training that they received was a one-time training, or perhaps in two parts, by Marc Dones - I don't think they have anybody on staff right now that is trained in the kind of stuff that Dones was training them on. So I think this is probably one of many things that we'll see that happened under - in the first two years of the agency - that's gonna go by the wayside in the future. So doubt we'll see this again.
[00:33:22] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I hope - there usually is really useful information and insight that comes from doing qualitative research. I don't think that we should necessarily throw the baby out with the bathwater here overall, but certainly this was a big challenge. And I hope that informs how they choose to move forward in the future.
But with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, September 15th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is the wonderful Dr. Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is Seattle political reporter and editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett. You can find Erica on Twitter @ericacbarnett, or X formerly known as Twitter, as @ericacbarnett and on PubliCola.com. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can find me on multiple platforms as @finchfrii, that's F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get the full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Wednesday topical show, Crystal chats with Maren Costa about her campaign for Seattle City Council District 1. Listen and learn more about Maren and her thoughts on:
- [01:08] - Why she is running
- [04:15] - Lightning round!
- [14:34] - What is an accomplishment of hers that impacts District 1
- [15:46] - City budget shortfall: Raise revenue or cut services?
- [17:45] - Climate change
- [20:54] - Transit reliability
- [22:20] - Bike and pedestrian safety
- [23:24] - Public Safety: Alternative response
- [26:00] - Victim support
- [29:43] - Housing and homelessness: Frontline worker wages
- [31:39] - Small business support
- [33:45] - Childcare: Affordability and accessibility
- [36:37] - Difference between her and opponent
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Maren Costa at @marencosta.
Maren Costa
Maren Costa is 21 year resident of West Seattle, Seattle Public Schools mom, tech leader, and climate justice organizer. While at Amazon, Maren guided big teams and big budgets to successful results. She rallied her colleagues and co-founded Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, which used first-in-the-industry collective organizing tactics to bring international scrutiny to Amazon's climate negligence -- and resulted in multi-billion dollar climate commitments. Now, Maren is running to represent Seattle's District 1 to help lead a housed, healthy, and safer Seattle.
Resources
Campaign Website - Maren Costa
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
I am thrilled to be welcoming a candidate for Seattle City Council District 1 to the show today. Welcome, Maren Costa.
[00:01:03] Maren Costa: Thank you, Crystal. It's a pleasure to be here, and I have to say I'm a big fan.
[00:01:08] Crystal Fincher: Well, I appreciate it. I just wanted to start out by hearing - what made you decide to run?
[00:01:18] Maren Costa: Yeah, that's a great question, and there's several facets to that answer, but the first one is I'm a mom and I have kids. And I think about their future, and I think about wanting to leave a better future for them than I currently see - the path that we're on - so that's a big one.
And then another one is that I was in Big Tech and managing big teams and big budgets and solving big problems, but I started to get really concerned about the climate crisis, and I believe when you wanna make change, you start where you are. And I was at Amazon at the time - one of the largest carbon footprints, and also a company that was getting like an F on every rating scale for climate, this was before The Climate Pledge - so I thought - Hey, I'm gonna start where I am. I started trying to make change from within and talking to all the SVPs and VPs and that I'd met in my 15 years at the time being there, but I couldn't make any progress, and so - people just didn't wanna talk about climate. It had worked for me before where I would say like - Here's a great idea, here's why it's great for customers, here's why it's great for the business. And it would be like - Great, here's the team, here's money, go do it. But when it came to climate, it was nobody wanted to move. And so I found another way to make change. I started organizing with my coworkers and organizing around climate justice and getting thousands of tech workers to stand up and walk out. We walked out for the Global Climate Strike. I did end up getting illegally fired right at the start of the pandemic when we were also standing up for warehouse workers' safety, but the National Labor Relations Board stepped in - took Amazon to court and we won, in addition to winning all of The Climate Pledge and those other things. So just really seeing the power of collective action, the powers that workers have when we come together, and how important that is in bringing balance to the powers that be - that's a big reason.
And then the third reason is I love Seattle - I've lived here for 33 years. I love District 1 - I've lived in District 1, in West Seattle, for 21 years. And I see the challenges facing our city. And I think a lot of us are frustrated with some of the seemingly intractable problems that we're facing. And I wanna take all of my skill set and my energy and put it towards trying to solve big problems for our communities.
[00:04:15] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, I decided to switch things up a little bit in our candidate interview series this year, and we're implementing a lightning round in the interview. So just a series of yes or no, or either-or questions.
But we'll start off with - This year, did you vote yes on the King County Crisis Care Centers levy?
[00:04:39] Maren Costa: Yes.
[00:04:41] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote yes on the Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services levy?
[00:04:47] Maren Costa: Yes.
[00:04:49] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote in favor of Seattle's Social Housing Initiative 135?
[00:04:54] Maren Costa: Yes.
[00:04:56] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Bruce Harrell or Lorena González for Mayor?
[00:05:02] Maren Costa: Lorena González.
[00:05:05] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Nicole Thomas Kennedy or Ann Davison for Seattle City Attorney?
[00:05:12] Maren Costa: Nicole Thomas Kennedy.
[00:05:15] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote in 2022 for Leesa Manion or Jim Ferrell for King County Prosecutor?
[00:05:25] Maren Costa: Gosh, I don't remember. 'Cause I know Leesa now, you know, roughly, through campaigning. I think I voted for Leesa? I don't remember.
[00:05:36] Crystal Fincher: In 2022, did you vote for Patty Murray or Tiffany Smiley for US Senate?
[00:05:41] Maren Costa: Patty Murray.
[00:05:42] Crystal Fincher: Do you own or rent your residence?
[00:05:46] Maren Costa: I own.
[00:05:48] Crystal Fincher: Are you a landlord?
[00:05:50] Maren Costa: No.
[00:05:52] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to require landlords to report metrics, including how much rent they're charging, to help better plan housing and development needs in the district?
[00:06:04] Maren Costa: I think so. Sounds like a good idea. I don't actually know much about that.
[00:06:10] Crystal Fincher: Are there instances where you would support sweeps of homeless encampments?
[00:06:21] Maren Costa: Only if people are already provided with where they're going to be safely housed.
[00:06:30] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote--
[00:06:31] Maren Costa: I'm not in favor of sweeps.
[00:06:33] Crystal Fincher: Got it. Will you vote to provide additional funding for Seattle's Social Housing Public Development Authority?
[00:06:40] Maren Costa: Yes.
[00:06:42] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with King County Executive Constantine's statement that the King County Jail should be closed?
[00:06:49] Maren Costa: Yes.
[00:06:50] Crystal Fincher: Should parking enforcement be housed within SPD?
[00:06:57] Maren Costa: No, but we know how complicated that turned out to be.
[00:07:01] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to allow police in schools?
[00:07:08] Maren Costa: I think that's a no. I want to hear more from the schools and the people - what they want, but -
[00:07:17] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget for a civilian-led mental health crisis response?
[00:07:24] Maren Costa: Yes.
[00:07:26] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget to increase the pay of human service workers?
[00:07:32] Maren Costa: Absolutely.
[00:07:34] Crystal Fincher: Do you support removing funds in the City budget for forced encampment removals and instead allocating funds towards a Housing First approach?
[00:07:43] Maren Costa: Absolutely.
[00:07:45] Crystal Fincher: Do you support abrogating or removing the funds from unfilled SPD positions and putting them toward meaningful public safety measures?
[00:07:55] Maren Costa: I think that makes sense.
[00:07:57] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocating--
[00:07:59] Maren Costa: That's a yes.
[00:07:59] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Do you support allocating money in the City budget for supervised consumption sites?
[00:08:11] Maren Costa: That's - I'm - yes. I think I'm a yes on that one. I want to do a bit more research on that as well, but -
[00:08:19] Crystal Fincher: Do you support increasing funding in the City budget for violence intervention programs?
[00:08:25] Maren Costa: Yes.
[00:08:27] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn’t give the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General subpoena power?
[00:08:36] Maren Costa: I don't know. I don't know what that is.
[00:08:46] Crystal Fincher: The ability for them to subpoena people involved in their investigations. So with the Office of Police Accountability and Office of Inspector General - people involved in doing police investigations. Would you approve a contract where they did not have subpoena power?
[00:09:04] Maren Costa: I'm sorry, I still don't quite understand. Like that we would be able to subpoena police officers to testify in cases against police officers - is that?
[00:09:18] Crystal Fincher: If there was a complaint made and throughout that investigation - yes, they could compel information from police officers or other people involved.
[00:09:28] Maren Costa: Okay, and then so would I support a contract that didn't--
[00:09:33] Crystal Fincher: That didn't have - where those offices did not have the ability to subpoena?
[00:09:40] Maren Costa: No.
[00:09:42] Crystal Fincher: Okay.
[00:09:43] Maren Costa: I would want to be able to subpoena officers to testify.
[00:09:48] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian?
Right now there are limitations - there must be, there's a cap on the number of civilians. Should that number of civilians be capped? Would you oppose a contract that didn't remove that limitation?
[00:10:17] Maren Costa: No. I would not oppose a contract that didn't remove. This is the double negative that's getting me.
[00:10:23] Crystal Fincher: You would only support a contract that eliminated--
[00:10:28] Maren Costa: Yes.
[00:10:30] Crystal Fincher: Okay, so the limitation would need to be removed and then you would like it. Is that a correct characterization?
[00:10:36] Maren Costa: Yes.
[00:10:36] Crystal Fincher: Okay, I just wanted to make sure.
[00:10:38] Maren Costa: Yes.
[00:10:38] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Not trying to have these be gotcha questions - want to make sure that you actually understand, that we get an actual real answer.
[00:10:47] Maren Costa: No, these are great questions and it makes me know how much I need to know, how much more I need to know.
[00:10:53] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move police funding to public safety alternatives?
[00:11:04] Maren Costa: Yes.
[00:11:07] Crystal Fincher: Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers?
[00:11:14] Maren Costa: Yes. I think that's - is that like traffic enforcement and stuff?
[00:11:20] Crystal Fincher: Yep.
[00:11:20] Maren Costa: Yeah.
[00:11:22] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans and non-binary students are allowed to play on the sports teams that fit with their gender identities?
[00:11:31] Maren Costa: Yes.
[00:11:32] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans people can use bathrooms or public facilities that match their gender?
[00:11:39] Maren Costa: Yes.
[00:11:41] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with the Seattle City Council's decision to implement the JumpStart Tax?
[00:11:48] Maren Costa: Yes.
[00:11:50] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to reduce or divert the JumpStart Tax in any way?
[00:11:55] Maren Costa: No.
[00:11:56] Crystal Fincher: Are you happy with Seattle's newly built waterfront?
[00:12:03] Maren Costa: Yes.
[00:12:05] Crystal Fincher: Do you believe return to work--
[00:12:07] Maren Costa: I have some complaints, but overall, yes.
[00:12:11] Crystal Fincher: Do you believe return to work mandates, like the one issued by Amazon, are necessary to boost Seattle's economy?
[00:12:21] Maren Costa: Probably in the interim.
[00:12:24] Crystal Fincher: Have you taken transit in the past week?
[00:12:28] Maren Costa: Yes.
[00:12:29] Crystal Fincher: Have you ridden a bike in the past week?
[00:12:34] Maren Costa: No.
[00:12:36] Crystal Fincher: Have you ridden a bike in the past month?
[00:12:40] Maren Costa: No. Not a bike rider.
[00:12:44] Crystal Fincher: Should Pike Place Market allow non-commercial car traffic?
[00:12:54] Maren Costa: I would say no. But I don't know. I don't know all the pros and cons there.
[00:13:01] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines?
[00:13:11] Maren Costa: Say again - sorry.
[00:13:13] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines?
[00:13:23] Maren Costa: Yes.
[00:13:24] Crystal Fincher: Should we accelerate the elimination of the ability to turn right on red lights to improve pedestrian safety?
[00:13:33] Maren Costa: Yes.
[00:13:35] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever been a member of a union?
[00:13:39] Maren Costa: No.
[00:13:40] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to increase funding and staffing for investigations into labor violations like wage theft and illegal union busting?
[00:13:49] Maren Costa: Yes.
[00:13:51] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever walked on a picket line?
[00:13:54] Maren Costa: Yes.
[00:13:56] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever crossed a picket line?
[00:13:58] Maren Costa: No.
[00:14:00] Crystal Fincher: Is your campaign staff unionized?
[00:14:04] Maren Costa: No, it's just Kyler.
[00:14:10] Crystal Fincher: If your campaign staff wants to unionize, will you voluntarily recognize their effort?
[00:14:16] Maren Costa: Absolutely.
[00:14:18] Crystal Fincher: Well, and that's the end of the lightning round - pretty painless, I hope.
[00:14:24] Maren Costa: It was - that was good. That was intense - I love it. It was wonky.
[00:14:30] Crystal Fincher: It was wonky - true to name.
Lots of people look to work you've done to get a feel for what you prioritize and how qualified you are to lead. Can you describe something you've accomplished or changed in your district and what impact that has on residents?
[00:14:50] Maren Costa: Yeah, I think that the work that I did at Amazon to bring Amazon as, both a city and a global company, into better alignment with climate justice has a direct impact in my community, particularly in the - one of the things that came out of that was their bid to buy 100,000 Rivian vans. And now I daily see those vans out in my neighborhood driving around and I'm so happy every time I see that 'cause it's like - wow, that's less pollution that's driving through my neighborhood right now. I mean, we can't, maybe, you know, there's, maybe we wish there was just fewer vans and that we were buying less in general, but when, you know, if we're gonna have those vans, it's so much better to see them being electric and I feel really proud of that.
[00:15:46] Crystal Fincher: Excellent, appreciate that. I wanna ask you about the City budget. City's projected to have a revenue shortfall of $224 million beginning in 2025. Because we're mandated by the state to pass a balanced budget, the options to address the upcoming deficit are either raise revenue or cut services. Which one of those is your approach or what combination of those will be your approach?
[00:16:18] Maren Costa: We should always be looking at how we can be more frugal with the resources that we have - that's a given. However, we need to raise more progressive revenue. I'm in favor of the recommendations that came out of the recent work task force assigned to progressive revenue. So things like an additional capital gains tax on top of the state tax, you know, a vacancy tax. As a climate justice advocate, I will always be interested in progressive ways that we could tax carbon. You know, anything like that where we can make doing the right thing the desirable thing, sort of like the sugar tax is, you know - that could have good benefits for climate. So we definitely need to raise more progressive revenue. It's always a challenge. There's money in our city, we can see it - but it's just hard to bring it actually into the workings of the City and turning it into things that benefit everyone here. You know, we have an upside down tax code. And so it's just - the chips are sort of stacked against us. And so we need to be more creative with the way that we generate progressive revenue. And I think that those recommendations, some of those recommendations that came out of the task force are good places to start.
[00:17:44] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now on almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals, while experiencing the devastating impacts from extreme heat and cold, wildfires, floods, toxic air, you name it. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet 2030 goals?
[00:18:05] Maren Costa: Thank you, Crystal. That was a great question and something I'm very passionate about. You know, one of the things that I say is, you know, all of these things that we care about if we don't have a planet to live on, you know, they don't matter. And then I also say that housing is climate justice, transit is climate justice - you know, it's all connected. And so there's so much work we need to do. One of the things that I would love to do - you know, out of the gate - would be to get climate resiliency centers in every neighborhood. So making sure that maybe all 27 branches of the public library, schools, community centers, you know, churches even - that have backup power, air filtration, heat pump air conditioning - safe places for people to go in extreme weather events. So that's like the first line of defense, but we need to also go heavily on offense because as we know, and as you say, we're behind - as a city, as a nation, as a planet. And so we know that the building emissions performance standards are going to be on the table for the next council. It sounds like they won't be coming through this, you know, before the end of the year. I will want to make sure that those have teeth, that we make sure that, again, doing the right thing is the desirable thing so that you can't, you know, too easily avoid them or buy out of them. Because it's time for us to start facing the facts that we need to do this tough work to make the transition that is inevitable and that we're already behind on. We know that climate will affect the most vulnerable among us, worst and first. And this is why our unhoused neighbors, low-income communities - we need to start there with our climate work so for example, you know, fixing the flooding problem in South Park, that was a king tide combined with an atmospheric river in December and it displaced about 20 families, many of whom have still not been able to move back into their houses. And so I would want to take a look at making sure that we're starting with the historically under-invested communities first.
[00:20:52] Crystal Fincher: Thanks for that. I wanna talk about transit a bit, starting off with - residents in the city are experiencing a lot of disruption and interruption in transit service and reviews are not all stellar. It seems like we really need some intervention. Recognizing that Sound Transit is a regional entity and King County Metro is a county entity, what can you do as a City councilmember to stabilize transit service?
[00:21:23] Maren Costa: You know, a lot of the closures are based on, you know, maintenance and drivers - a shortage of drivers. And so doing everything we can to make sure that drivers feel safe and supported and paid well and - so that we keep as many drivers as we can and hire more - the ones that we need. And then, you know, the maintenance, I'm not sure how we could do that better, but looking into any ways that we could improve - keeping buses on the roads. I'm trying to think if there's anything else at the City level - I'd say those are the two big ones.
[00:22:20] Crystal Fincher: How would you go about improving pedestrian and bicycle safety in your district?
[00:22:29] Maren Costa: We have some significant like problems, you know, for pedestrian safety and bike safety in District 1. We've seen a lot of road racing on Alki, up and down California Avenue and 35th Avenue. So bringing in some of the speed bumps have been helpful and we can continue to do more of that. We've built in some, you know, traffic controls around Alki that have really improved and we just need to keep doing that. Bike lanes need to be safe, protected, connected. We are missing almost entirely a safe east-west bike connection across District 1, so that would be something I would want to prioritize.
[00:23:22] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha, makes sense. Now, when it comes to public safety, other jurisdictions around the country and in our own region have rolled out alternative response programs to better support those having behavioral health crises. But Seattle is stalled in implementing what is a widely-supported idea. Where do you stand on non-police solutions to public safety issues? And what are your thoughts on civilian-led versus co-response models?
[00:23:50] Maren Costa: Crystal, this is so important. When I talk to voters in my district, public safety comes up, you know, top of the list for many people. And we know that we have a shortage of officers, a sort of a nationwide problem - hiring is hard. So now more than ever, we need to stand up these police alternatives. We are feeling the pain of the fact that we haven't invested in these areas as we should have. We had one tool in our tool belt and now we're really feeling the pain of that short-sightedness. I'm in favor of bringing in civilian response. We see programs like Health One and the firefighters making good strides in that area. What was the question again?
[00:24:53] Crystal Fincher: What are your thoughts on civilian-led versus co-response models?
[00:24:59] Maren Costa: Okay, I don't know that I know that nuance. Civilian-led?
[00:25:06] Crystal Fincher: Or responses where the person is accompanied by an armed policeman versus ones where they aren't.
[00:25:12] Maren Costa: Right, I see. Yeah, I think we need more. I think we actually need more nuance there. I think we need a few tiers. You know, there are certain calls that need to be responded to with, you know, an officer with a gun. Then maybe there's officer-led civilian-back. And then maybe civilian-led officer-back. And then civilian only. And we need to make sure that we're using all types of combinations there for the appropriate call - keeping our civilian responders safe, making sure that we're not putting them in danger. But leading with civilian as often as we can, because the more we can minimize, you know, contact between armed officers and community - you know, we can keep our community safe that way as well.
[00:26:00] Crystal Fincher: I wanna talk about victims. A lot of times we hear victims talked about in political conversations a lot and their concerns mischaracterized. But when talking to victims and data coming from studies involving them, two things come to the top as priorities. One, to make sure what happened to them never happens to them or anyone else again. And two, that they receive more support to help recover from what happened, to help restore what had been damaged or lost, or, you know, to help rehabilitate. And we do a really poor job of that - as a community, as a government - when it comes to assistance and support for victims. In your role as a councilmember, what would you do to better support victims of crime?
[00:26:56] Maren Costa: That's a great question. I think a lot of times, as victims, people can feel very isolated and alone. And so I think like community support - community support groups, community support networks - if there are other people with that same lived experience could be incredibly helpful. And I don't know if that exists or if that's something that the City could help promote. And then I think, you know, having a channel to express that frustration - what broke in the system that made you feel, you know, victimized, where did the system, how was the system not there to support you? And being able to be heard, to make sure that the City or whatever, you know, department understands what went wrong. And then seeing that be taken seriously and seeing change and results - that is what is restorative to, I think, to victims - is knowing that you've been heard and that change happened. And so in any way that we can make sure that victims are heard, and then that we take the problem seriously and make the changes necessary to make sure that it doesn't happen again is really important.
[00:28:39] Crystal Fincher: We've heard from certainly victims across the spectrum and some businesses - there's actually a business owner who wrote a column talking about wanting better support for businesses that have been victims of break-ins and theft - things like victims' assistance funds, business assistance funds, you know, to repair storefronts that are damaged or anything like that. Would that be something that you think would be helpful and that you would support?
[00:29:06] Maren Costa: I do. I've heard that from a lot of businesses. I know that, you know, in some cases, there's, you know, small business insurance and you can have some of that paid for, but it's a lot of times - it's not. It's every single time that window is broken, you're paying $10,000 to have it replaced. And it doesn't - there is no support. A lot of these businesses are on, you know, shoestring budgets already. And we want to keep our small businesses alive and vibrant and they need support.
[00:29:43] Crystal Fincher: I want to talk about housing and homelessness. One thing called out by experts as a barrier to the effectiveness of the homelessness response on the ground is that frontline worker wages don't cover the cost of living, especially in a city like Seattle. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for our area? And how can we make that more likely with how we bid for and contract for services at the City?
[00:30:11] Maren Costa: I do think we need to pay a living wage. I have met directly with people on the frontlines. They are being, as I've heard described, criminally underpaid - and I think that's accurate. The work that these people are doing on the frontlines for our city has such a massive value for our city, for our society. And, you know, not only are they undervalued almost everywhere, they're even more undervalued in some of these City positions where they could go do the same function somewhere else - you know, outside of a nonprofit or - you know, and be paid more. And I've had people say, you know, I could go work at Dick's Drive-In and make more money, you know. And the work that they're doing is highly skilled - it takes time and it's so important to build the trust. We cannot have this low-paid, high-turnover staff and expect the results that we all wanna see. And so I'm not sure how the contracts - not being a City insider, I don't know how the contracts are made or what control we have, but I would definitely be an advocate for making sure that those frontline workers are getting paid a living wage.
[00:31:39] Crystal Fincher: Now, Seattle and District 1 have a really vibrant business community. Some of the largest corporations in the world are here, and so many small businesses that run the gamut of products and services are here - but they face a number of challenges. What are the top challenges that you see small businesses facing in your district and what are your top priorities for addressing those needs?
[00:32:07] Maren Costa: I think that, you know, during COVID, we saw some subsidies that really helped keep small businesses alive, but I think we're still seeing the challenges. People are still kind of coming out of the shadow of COVID. In any ways that we could - and I know that a lot of that was federal money, but - you know, in any ways that we can continue subsidies that keep businesses afloat. I have a good friend who's a small business owner - my twin sister is a small business owner in District 1 - but a good friend who's just constantly bobbing, just barely bobbing above the line of staying afloat. And so we need to support these things. We need to make sure that there's different sizes of spaces for small businesses - making it really flexible - if you need 400 square feet, you can find 400 square feet. So, you know, having these shared business spaces or dividing these into smaller spaces, making retail units available on the first level of multi, you know, four-floors-and-a-corner-store, opening up zoning where we can have more small businesses throughout our communities. Just - what I usually say, like, what's good for small businesses is good for the community. Like when we know that it's working well for small businesses, we know we're doing something right. So they bring such, as you say, vibrancy to our communities and we wanna do what we can to support them.
[00:33:45] Crystal Fincher: Childcare is another humongous concern for, really, the entire community. For parents of kids, childcare is often a cost - their number two, sometimes with a number of kids, number one cost. We just saw reporting that childcare is now more expensive than college on an annual basis, which is just staggering. And the availability of childcare is also a challenge. What can you do in your role as a City councilmember to help parents with this?
[00:34:19] Maren Costa: We do need - I've heard that there's only about 50% of parents with kids, or the number of kids - only about 50% of the needs are met by the childcare centers that we have. So people are being forced to reach to, you know, relatives or nannies or, you know - but there's just not the space in childcare centers that we need in District 1. There's a large childcare center at the, you know, Delridge - you know, right by the Delridge on the West Seattle Bridge and Fauntleroy, I guess - that is under eminent domain for the - to the transit. And it's, you know, it's gonna be really hard to lose that center - they take care of a lot of families. And the money that is being offered for them to relocate is not anywhere near what they need to relocate. So making sure that that center gets to stay afloat, if in fact they are displaced by Sound Transit, would be incredibly important. And making sure that they're given the subsidies needed to actually rebuild their business. And then I would love to see more and, you know, smaller childcare centers distributed throughout neighborhoods so that people can, not only - you know, we would love to see people be able to live where they work, near where they work. So we're seeing a lot of displacement out, you know, into Federal Way and further out, people keep getting pushed out. But so to be able to live where you, near where you work and to be able to have childcare where you work. So making sure that some of the big businesses that go in put childcare centers in the buildings that they're in so that, you know, that's something that can work for working parents - to have childcare at your work site. And then just making sure that we're supporting the small childcare centers that are open and making a reasonable, viable business to open new ones.
[00:36:36] Crystal Fincher: Now, as we close today, there are a number of voters, residents living in Seattle who are trying to make a decision between you and your opponent and who they should vote for, who most aligns with their values. What do you say to voters when they ask - what's the difference or why should I choose you?
[00:36:58] Maren Costa: I think that the skill set that I bring and - the skill set, the values, and the focuses that I bring are going to be really, I think, valuable for the City going forward. So I come out of big business and big tech - I've managed big teams and big budgets, I've brought competing teams together to actually work together to get more stuff done at both Amazon and Microsoft. I think we need someone on council who actually really understands big tech. And then obviously I have a focus on climate. I think we need someone on council who has the depth of the climate justice focus that I have. And I think that my former opponents who endorsed me - the six primary opponents who came together to endorse me - speak to the level of trust that they have in me to authentically and thoughtfully lead our, and represent our district on council. They've seen me learn and listen and follow through. And I think my past experience and how I've shown up on the campaign trail speak to that.
[00:38:48] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much for joining us today - Seattle City Council candidate in District 1, Maren Costa. Thank you so much.
[00:38:57] Maren Costa: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to be here.
[00:39:00] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Tuesday topical show, Crystal chats with Rob Saka about his campaign for Seattle City Council District 1. Listen and learn more about Rob and his thoughts on:
- [01:10] - Why he is running
- [05:31] - Lightning round!
- [14:12] - What is an accomplishment of his that impacts District 1
- [17:46] - City budget shortfall: Raise revenue or cut services?
- [23:29] - Climate change
- [25:29] - Transit reliability
- [28:08] - Bike and pedestrian safety
- [30:22] - Public Safety: Alternative response
- [35:00] - Victim support
- [40:56] - Housing and homelessness: Frontline worker wages
- [43:03] - Small business support
- [47:30] - Childcare: Affordability and accessibility
- [51:38] - Progressive revenue options
- [53:41] - Difference between him and opponent
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Rob Saka at @voterobsaka.
Rob Saka
I am a Seattle Public Schools dad of three, attorney, justice reform advocate, Air Force Veteran, and West Seattle resident. As the son of a Nigerian immigrant, I overcame abject poverty, a traumatic and unstable home life cycling through the foster care system, to rise in the ranks of the U.S. Air Force, earn my college and law degrees under the G.I. Bill, and achieve success as an attorney and policy advocate in Seattle and King County.
I grew up in the foster care system in Minnesota until my father was able to rescue me at nine years old. We moved out west and settled in low-income apartments in Kent, blocks away from a justice center that would later house some of my childhood friends. Growing up, I watched my dad work numerous physically demanding low-wage jobs. As a single father, he ended up settling for any honest work he could get to put food on our table. I went on to earn my college degree under the G.I. Bill at the University of Washington where I met my wife, Alicia. After quickly moving up the Enlisted ranks, I earned a rare Deserving Airman Commission and served as an Intelligence Officer.
After 10 years in the military, I resigned my commission to focus on serving others as a civilian attorney. I thought I could help others in my community better overcome some of the systemic barriers I had navigated growing up if I was armed with the power of the law. After graduating law school from the University of California, Hastings Law, I moved back to Seattle to practice law at Perkins Coie.
I have tried my best to bring my unique brand of servant leadership and passionate advocacy in service of communities across this city, including by serving on nonprofit boards such as the Seattle Urban League, representing fellow Veterans in need pro bono, via the Seattle Stand Down Initiative, helping underserved microentrepreneurs start and grow their businesses, volunteering to be head coach for my daughter’s Little League baseball team, and much more. In 2018, King County Executive Dow Constantine appointed me to serve on the once per decade Charter Commission where I helped champion and pass several voter-approved ballot measures to reform our justice system and protect workers. In 2021, the King County Council appointed me to the nonpartisan Districting Committee tasked with redrawing King County Council districts using Census data. In 2022, Mayor Bruce Harrell appointed me to serve on the Seattle Police Chief Search Committee responsible for helping to select the next Chief of Police.
Resources
Campaign Website - Rob Saka
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well hello - today I am thrilled to be joined by a candidate for Seattle City Council in District 1, Rob Saka. Welcome, Rob.
[00:01:03] Rob Saka: Thank you, Crystal - appreciate the opportunity to share this virtual space here with you and your audience.
[00:01:10] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, I guess what I'm starting off wondering is - why are you running?
[00:01:17] Rob Saka: Yeah, so great, great question. So just a little bit about me first. I'm a - Crystal, I'm a public school dad of three - three young kids. I'm an Air Force veteran, attorney, community safety advocate. I had the pleasure of serving on a lot of boards and commissions, most recently the Seattle Police Chief Search Committee. Before that, I served - I got nitty gritty, waist deep in US census data and helped redraw the legislative boundaries in King County using a process that runs parallel to state and federal redistricting. Before that, helped champion and pass a brand new justice reform framework right here in Martin Luther King County - and that voter's ultimately approved. And, you know, so I live in Delridge with my family and look, I'm grateful - as an Air Force veteran, I went to law school. In the last 10 years, I've been helping organizations and individuals of all sizes start and grow their businesses and be successful. And I'm grateful, Crystal, where I am today personally and professionally.
But I'm also someone who overcame the foster care system for the first nine years of my life - cycling in and out, in and out, mostly in - before my father, who is a Nigerian immigrant, was able to finally rescue me from those circumstances at age nine. And, you know, me and my dad - he ended up raising me as a single parent, ended up sort of struggling growing up, our struggles continued together. But I was born in Minneapolis and moved out West like middle school age - landed in South King County in Kent, so proud to have called - proud to call West Seattle my home today, lived in Seattle for over 15 years. But, you know, particularly during the formative years of my childhood - you know, adolescence - grew up in South County in Kent. And, you know, so let's just say I have a non-traditional background and journey and path to where I am today. And I grew up in Kent - in the valley in Kent - that were blocks away from the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center, Crystal, that would later house some of my childhood friends. And sadly, some of them would be sentenced for their crimes by judges who are now my professional mentors in the legal community.
And so I've always felt this continuing, ongoing - not just responsibility, but duty - duty to make sure that more people from disadvantaged backgrounds and communities and walks of life are able to not only achieve their true potential in life, but thrive. And part of my calling, part of the way I've been able to do that is through justice reform and making sure more people that look like me and you and others, you know, aren't like - more specifically more Black and brown folks - aren't overly represented in the criminal justice system here. And so I mentioned some of that work. And I fought to hold bad police accountable in the past, and I'll continue to do that, you know, going forward if elected in Seattle City Council. But public safety has been weighing heavily on my heart and my mind, Crystal, as a dad - dad in the city, just a dad from Delridge. And I understand the need - as a Black man growing up in this country, I understand the need to have better police because I've experienced police brutality firsthand. And better police - not no police, not defund police, but better police - and I fought to hold bad police accountable, continue that work going forward. But the stakes have never been higher to make sure that we have the public safety resources and prevention and response and intervention capabilities - both, all - that we need to meet the challenges we're currently facing. And I was - been personally disheartened by some of the current direction of the Seattle City Council in particular, and I'm here to focus on solutions. The stakes for this city have never been higher - for my kids, for kids across this entire city. But I couldn't be more energized and excited at the opportunity that we all have to bring about the change that I think people are so desperately yearning for. So that's why.
[00:05:31] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Well, before we dive into all of the details and long discussion we're gonna have, we are adding a new element into our candidate interviews this year, which is a bit of a lightning round - just short form yes or no, or choose one answers. And so starting with this little group -
This year, did you vote yes on the King County Crisis Care Centers levy?
[00:05:56] Rob Saka: Yes, happily.
[00:05:57] Crystal Fincher: This year, did you vote yes on the Veterans, Seniors and Human Services levy?
[00:06:03] Rob Saka: Yes, yes - that benefits everybody. Not just 'cause I'm a vet - heck yes.
[00:06:08] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote in favor of Seattle's Social Housing Initiative 135?
[00:06:13] Rob Saka: Yes.
[00:06:16] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote in favor of Bruce Harrell or Lorena González for Mayor?
[00:06:21] Rob Saka: I voted for Mayor Bruce Harrell.
[00:06:24] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Nicole Thomas Kennedy or Ann Davison for City Attorney?
[00:06:29] Rob Saka: Ooh, yeah, it's - rock and a hard place - but given the choice between an abolitionist and someone super duper hefty and strong on public safety, I voted for Ann Davison.
[00:06:43] Crystal Fincher: In 2022, did you vote for Leesa Manion or Jim Ferrell for Prosecutor?
[00:06:48] Rob Saka: Leesa.
[00:06:49] Crystal Fincher: In 2022, did you vote for Patty Murray or Tiffany Smiley for US Senate?
[00:06:54] Rob Saka: Senator Murray. I helped knock on doors for her in 2010. Of course, yeah.
[00:07:00] Crystal Fincher: Do you rent or own your residence?
[00:07:03] Rob Saka: Today, I own - grateful for that - but I'm a lifelong renter and other unstable and insecure housing before that, but today, I own.
[00:07:12] Crystal Fincher: Are you a landlord?
[00:07:14] Rob Saka: No.
[00:07:15] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to require landlords to report metrics, including how much rent they're charging, to help better plan housing and development needs in the district?
[00:07:25] Rob Saka: Maybe. Curious to understand more about what specific set of problems that would help address--
[00:07:34] Crystal Fincher: We can get more into all the detail. We'll keep these to yes or no right now.
Are there instances where you support sweeps of homeless encampments?
[00:07:45] Rob Saka: I support better connecting our unhoused neighbors with shelter and services, and some people call it sweeps, some people call it restoring encampments or whatever, but--
[00:07:57] Crystal Fincher: Is this a yes or a no?
[00:08:01] Rob Saka: I support connecting people with, better connecting people with shelter and services. So I guess under your framing, yes.
[00:08:08] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to provide additional funding for Seattle's Social Housing Public Development Authority?
[00:08:15] Rob Saka: Maybe. We need to figure out where that's gonna come from, but I'm inclined to do it. I'm looking forward to working with the authors of the original bill - that I voted for - to figure out what the funding solution looks like.
[00:08:28] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with King County Executive Constantine's statement that the King County Jail should be closed?
[00:08:36] Rob Saka: As a principle - long-term, yeah, long-term, but yeah, we still have issues and challenges today that require incarceration, and so--
[00:08:52] Crystal Fincher: Moving on to - lightning round, lightning round.
Do you agree with King County Executive Dow Constantine that the Youth Jail should be closed in 2025?
[00:09:02] Rob Saka: Maybe.
[00:09:04] Crystal Fincher: Should parking enforcement be housed with an SPD?
[00:09:10] Rob Saka: Maybe.
[00:09:11] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to allow police in schools?
[00:09:17] Rob Saka: Yes, if that's what the community wants.
[00:09:19] Crystal Fincher: Would, do you support allocation in the City budget for a civilian-led mental health crisis response?
[00:09:25] Rob Saka: Yes.
[00:09:26] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget to increase the pay of human service workers?
[00:09:31] Rob Saka: Yes.
[00:09:33] Crystal Fincher: Do you support removing funds in the City budget for forced encampment removals, and instead allocating funds towards a Housing First approach?
[00:09:42] Rob Saka: No.
[00:09:44] Crystal Fincher: Do you support abrogating or removing the funds from unfilled SPD positions and putting them towards meaningful public safety measures?
[00:09:53] Rob Saka: No.
[00:09:55] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocating money in the City budget for supervised consumption sites?
[00:10:00] Rob Saka: No.
[00:10:01] Crystal Fincher: Do you support increasing funding in the City budget for violence intervention programs?
[00:10:08] Rob Saka: Yes.
[00:10:10] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract, or Seattle Police Officers Guild contract, that does not give the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General subpoena power?
[00:10:22] Rob Saka: Yes, I worked on it at the county level - yes.
[00:10:26] Crystal Fincher: So you oppose it, they should have subpoena power?
[00:10:28] Rob Saka: Yeah, absolutely. I believe an effective civili-- well, we can talk about it, but yeah, yeah.
[00:10:32] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian?
[00:10:45] Rob Saka: Help me understand this question - is it - so--
[00:10:47] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose basically lifting the cap, removing limitations? Would you oppose a contract that doesn't remove those limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian?
[00:11:03] Rob Saka: No.
[00:11:03] Crystal Fincher: Meaning should - okay, gotcha.
Do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability, do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move police funding to public safety alternatives?
[00:11:20] Rob Saka: Would I oppose a SPOG contract that removes?
[00:11:23] Crystal Fincher: That impedes the ability of the City to move police funding to public safety alternatives?
[00:11:31] Rob Saka: Yes, provided it doesn't impact, yeah.
[00:11:34] Crystal Fincher: Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers?
[00:11:43] Rob Saka: No.
[00:11:45] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans and non-binary students are allowed to play on the sports teams that fit with their gender identities?
[00:11:53] Rob Saka: Yes.
[00:11:55] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans people can use bathrooms or public facilities that match their gender?
[00:12:00] Rob Saka: Yes.
[00:12:02] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with the Seattle City Council's decision to implement the JumpStart Tax?
[00:12:08] Rob Saka: Yes.
[00:12:10] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to reduce or divert the JumpStart Tax in any way?
[00:12:15] Rob Saka: No.
[00:12:17] Crystal Fincher: Are you happy with Seattle's newly built waterfront?
[00:12:23] Rob Saka: Yes. Maybe. Could be better.
[00:12:26] Crystal Fincher: Do you believe return to work mandates, like the one issued by Amazon, are necessary to boost Seattle's economy?
[00:12:34] Rob Saka: Yes.
[00:12:36] Crystal Fincher: Have you taken transit in the past week?
[00:12:40] Rob Saka: No.
[00:12:41] Crystal Fincher: In the past month?
[00:12:43] Rob Saka: No.
[00:12:44] Crystal Fincher: Have you ridden a bike in the past week?
[00:12:48] Rob Saka: No. In the last month - yes.
[00:12:51] Crystal Fincher: Should Pike Place Market allow non-commercial car traffic?
[00:13:00] Rob Saka: Yes.
[00:13:02] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines?
[00:13:09] Rob Saka: Yes.
[00:13:11] Crystal Fincher: Should we accelerate the elimination of the ability to turn right on red lights to improve pedestrian safety?
[00:13:19] Rob Saka: Yes.
[00:13:21] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever been a member of a union?
[00:13:23] Rob Saka: Yes.
[00:13:25] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to increase funding and staffing for investigations into labor violations like wage theft and illegal union busting?
[00:13:33] Rob Saka: Yes.
[00:13:35] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever walked on a picket line?
[00:13:39] Rob Saka: Yes.
[00:13:40] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever crossed a picket line?
[00:13:42] Rob Saka: No.
[00:13:44] Crystal Fincher: Is your campaign unionized?
[00:13:49] Rob Saka: No, no one in my--
[00:13:52] Crystal Fincher: You would know if it was.
[00:13:53] Rob Saka: Yeah.
[00:13:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. If your campaign staff wants to unionize, will you voluntarily recognize their effort?
[00:14:00] Rob Saka: Yes.
[00:14:02] Crystal Fincher: See, and that's the end of the lightning round - quick and painless. And now we can get into our deep conversation where we can get into all of the nuance. Wanted to start out talking about, you know, a lot of people look to work that candidates have done to get a feel for what they prioritize and how qualified they are to lead. Can you describe something you've accomplished or changed in your district and what impact that has had on its residents?
[00:14:28] Rob Saka: Yeah, so a couple of things. I kind of - as I mentioned, I served on a number of boards, appointed boards, and commissions at the county and city level. And particularly with respect to my prior work in the King County Charter Commission where kind of basically changed the landscape for, you know - at the constitutional, the basic framework of the county, made a number of changes that voters ultimately approved and signed off on that, you know, helped make King County a better place. And therefore this district and the city, entire city a better place. So more specifically, you know, I'm really proud of a lot of the work that I did in the justice reform space. You know, I'm one of the co-architects, the reason why in this county we no longer elect our sheriff, we appoint our sheriff. Why? Because I believe in effective civilian oversight of law enforcement. Also, you know, one of the lightning round questions earlier was about, you know, granting the civilian Office of Law Enforcement Oversight or whatever - the parallel office, whatever it's called, at the city level - them subpoena power. And I helped champion and pass that at the county level to make sure that the civilian Office of Law Enforcement Oversight has subpoena power and voters approved that. And, you know, also with respect to the inquest process, when someone is killed by law enforcement, you know, I helped add safeguards and protections and making sure that that process is more fair and transparent for all, more specifically by adding and allowing the families of the deceased to be represented by, you know, have legal representation and clarifying what constitutes an in-custody death situation. So, you know, that's sort of like the package of justice reform work that I'm proud to have been a part of and help lead.
And then there's this whole issue of workplace protections. It is now unlawful in this county to discriminate against workers on the basis of, you know, their status as family caregivers or their status as a veteran, including veterans who were dishonorably discharged as a direct result of their, you know, their trans and queer status. Some, you know, as we know, when Trump took office, you know, he did what Trump does and unfortunately, a lot of people were given paperwork and discharged, many dishonorably, from the military. And so now in this county, you can no longer - so it's not just the people of, absolutely, you know, like everyone benefits from that, not just the people in the county. And selfishly, look, as a veteran and someone who has - with three young kids - and I have my own family caregiving obligations, but so my DNA and fingerprints are clearly all over that. But we know that everyone, everyone benefits, again, when they can show up to work without fear of reprisal, retribution, discrimination, because of one of those things.
[00:17:46] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Well, I wanna talk about the City budget. The City of Seattle is projected to have a revenue shortfall of $224 million beginning in 2025. The City's mandated by the state to pass a balanced budget. So the only options to address that deficit are either raising revenue or cutting services. Which one of those is, or what combination of those, is your approach?
[00:18:12] Rob Saka: Yeah, it might be a more - I respectfully, you know, reject the paradigm - it's one or the other, you know, cutting or modifying maybe. And we can consider new revenue opportunities, but I think my starting place is operating within existing state law, meaning, you know, we have to have a balanced budget and start with whatever City budget we do have in place. And, you know, so that's my starting point. We need to identify what's working well, like working well spending-wise - what kind of, you know, I personally support audits of city budgets - independent, third-party audits even of city budgets, potentially across the board to identify and regular ongoing like monitoring and systems evaluations to make sure we're getting the bang for our buck and making sure whatever dollars we're spending are wisely spent. And we can shift, you know, reshift or, you know, reallocate resources to areas of greater need and greater impact potentially, but depending on the opportunity. And then from there--
[00:19:25] Crystal Fincher: I guess starting in the frame, just to help clarify the frame. So if we are working within the City budget and starting with the existing City budget, what we're moving to needs to be $224 [million] slimmer than what currently is. So I think audits are wonderful things, I think they're actually an underutilized resource for many - and not a tool of punishment, but a tool of discovery. But if you do have to cut, if you are starting from the point of - let's take this budget and see where we can trim - where are you starting? What, where would you prioritize those cuts?
[00:20:03] Rob Saka: Yeah, I'm not gonna prioritize any specific area. I'm not gonna come in and target any specific area. Instead, I'm gonna approach it with a curious mind and, you know, figure out what are those programs and services that are well delivered, well administered, and we're seeing results for. And what are, you know, other opportunities where they either need potentially additional investment or maybe reinvestment and kind of going from there. And then, you know, that's kind of like the framing that I kind of view this as. And then from there, if an existing - so if everything, after all that work, you know, it's a set of, you know, it's a spectrum, a set of analysis that kind of run side-by-side and in parallel. But, you know, from there, let's look at - so take the issue of homelessness, for example. Homelessness is certainly a Seattle problem, but it is not a Seattle-only problem. The issue of homelessness in this city is a regional problem, it's a county problem, it's a state problem, and it's a federal problem. And it's a shared - so I think not only should we not try and solve the issue - whatever the issue is, whatever the challenge is - alone and in a silo. We need to look to those other partners and other governments for design, helping to co-design and co-engineer the policy solution - Step one.
Step two is we also need to look to them for, you know, like help funding the specific solutions as well. So, you know, I would push for more - that's one area where I would push for more funding of, you know, like the shared responsibility model. And from there, let's explore public-private partnerships - building housing, affordable housing - you know, there's organizations and private organizations, including some companies who, you know, want to contribute and help address the problem. And so working collaboratively with them to figure out what's doable, how we can potentially close some of those gaps and fund them. And then let's look at new revenue opportunities after that. And I know there's this new Progressive Revenue Task Force - or whatever it's been rebranded, it's called something else in Seattle now, but - and then let's look at new revenue potentials and opportunities. But there's like, I kind of think about it more than just like - yeah, I try to avoid the either or--
[00:22:43] Crystal Fincher: I mean, but isn't that, wouldn't that be the position that you're in when you're elected? You have to trim the budget by $224 million - absent finding new revenue, which is going to take a little bit to trickle in and get started anyway. So you're going to have to make that call as a councilmember, right?
[00:23:01] Rob Saka: I'm going to have to make the call to be the, be a responsible steward of whatever dollars we are spending. I'm going to have to make the call of being, you know, doing my due diligence to make sure that we're operating within the existing City budget, identifying, you know, system deficiencies and opportunities to improve and streamline and allocate and sometimes reallocate resources. Yes.
[00:23:27] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Okay.
So let's talk about climate change. On almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals, while experiencing devastating impacts from extreme heat and cold, to wildfires and floods. It's been really challenging and anticipated to see things like that with increasing frequency. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet the 2030 goals?
[00:23:53] Rob Saka: Yeah, so climate change is an issue that's really important to me personally and my family. And having talked to a lot of people throughout this district, it is one that I know is weighing heavily on the hearts and minds of a lot of people - I wouldn't say that supersedes public safety in the issue of, in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but it is very important, it's very urgent. So my specific plans and proposals from a policy perspective to address climate - make sure we have a, we actually bring to life climate justice and we're seeing and building out climate resiliency across this district and hopefully across the City as well. This - District 1, first of all, as you probably know, now includes South Park and Georgetown due to redistricting. And those are some of the most historically, you know, at-risk communities. The life expectancy of folks is lower there in the Duwamish Valley. We need to build out more sustainable communities and more resilient communities. So I support things like - we also need to cut down the amount of greenhouse gases as quickly as possible. And part of that is, you know, we need to encourage and incentivize people using 100% electric vehicles. You can do that at the city level in part by building out our infrastructure and charging battery infrastructure to support that across the city. So that's part of my plan.
Another part is we need to get people, again, out of those single-occupancy vehicles that are producing the most greenhouse gases and into public transit. And so we need to, therefore, expand our public transit options. And not only as we expand out options and service, we need to expand reliability and the quality, overall quality of the experience. And I do know, just having talked to a lot of people - 7,000+, knocked on 7,000+ doors personally in this district. My campaign has knocked on an additional 12,000 outside of that. You know, there are some people, a lot of people that want to take public trans and get out of their cars, but unfortunately they just don't feel safe. They don't feel safe when they're on the bus. Crystal, they don't feel safe when they're on the journey from their homes to the bus stop. They don't feel safe when they get off the bus to wherever the destination they're going, whether it's downtown or wherever they're going. And so we can build out and expand and drive reliability and predictability and accessibility and our transit options. But if no one's feeling comfortable to take the bus, it's a nice shiny object that's effectively akin to a art project. We need to make sure we create the experience that is in-line with people's expectations as well and making sure we're doing both things in parallel.
And also, you know, we need to - and part of my plan includes - working collaboratively with labor organizations to find the best opportunities and build the pipeline for those jobs, working class jobs, in sustainable fields and making sure that those are well-funded. And, you know, we create - everyone is able to share in the benefits of a sustainable economy that's diverse. Also building out and improving our green building codes and sustainable building standards, environmental standards - strengthening those. Those are just some of the things that, you know, kind of how I view the opportunity at the Seattle City government level, from a policy standpoint, to make further progress and accelerate our impact on addressing the climate challenges we face.
[00:28:08] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. So how would you look to improve pedestrian and bicycle safety in your district?
[00:28:17] Rob Saka: Yeah, so we need to - one's low-hanging fruit. One is bike safety. So we need to add more protective barriers to bike lanes where possible, where feasible. I think there's an opportunity for more bike lanes, but I think we're at a decent place there - we're better off in bike lanes today in this district than we are in pedestrian safety improvements and enhancements. I'll tell you - 7,000 doors I knocked on personally, Crystal, and all over this district - and I started right here in my own community in Delridge. And then I sort of branched off, fanned out to other parts of the district and, you know - Admiral and Fauntleroy and Alki. And then, you know, South Park. And for the last month before the primary, I came back home - came back home to Delridge and High Point and, you know, other more disadvantaged communities, historically underrepresented communities like South Park. And I was struck by a couple of things. 'Cause when I was at those, like the "more affluent" parts of the district - I was amazed, Crystal - like the potholes were few. When there were potholes, they were quickly patched and repaired. Amazingly, shocking - there were sidewalks on both sides of the streets. And then when I came back home, particularly to Delridge - more specifically, like when you get further east of Del, anywhere east of Delridge, you go, the Delridge corridor - Crystal, there's many neighborhoods and communities that don't - not only do they not have one sidewalk, they don't have any sidewalks, period. We need to build out our, like, and building out, investing in basic sidewalk infrastructure is a huge opportunity to address pedestrian safety in this district. And I plan to do just that.
[00:30:22] Crystal Fincher: Well, I want to talk about public safety a bit, and starting with alternative response. While a number of jurisdictions, definitely around the country - but even in our own region, in the county - have rolled out alternative response programs to better support those having behavioral health crises, Seattle has stalled in implementing what is a widely-supported idea by voters and residents in the City. Where do you stand on non-police solutions to public safety issues, and what are your thoughts on civilian-led versus co-response models?
[00:30:54] Rob Saka: Yeah, so it's imperative. It's an essential part of my plan and my public safety package - to actually stand up, fund, and deliver this - and work collaboratively with my fellow council members and the mayor to do so. We've, sort of as you alluded to, Crystal - we've kind of languished a little bit, been in the sunken place a little bit, if you will - talking about this great opportunity, and we just can't seem to get unstuck and unblock ourselves. Meanwhile, you mentioned a few other jurisdictions right here in the county, across the state, that have done it - but some great comparators, I think from a population standpoint, geographic scope and size, are Denver and Albuquerque. We literally do not need to recreate the wheel here. Instead, we need to just humble ourselves and look to how, specifically, other jurisdictions have been successful. What works? Now, also, at the same time, understanding every single thing that they did well is not gonna port over, make a direct, logical, one-for-one - mean it'll automatically work out well here in Seattle, but we don't need to recreate the wheel. Let's look to what's been successful in other jurisdictions - I named a few that would be good comparators. With respect to, but that is an essential part of public safety, not the only part. Yeah, we need to hire more police officers and train them and make sure they have the tools and resources they need to be successful, set and enforce the highest standards of excellence and professionalism in the communities where they operate, and hold them accountable swiftly if they fail to carry out their duties in a just, equitable, constitutional manner. So that's also an essential part.
But back to the first, the question here. Yes, I support these civilian-led responses. It's an urgent thing and we need to treat it as such. And for the co-response versus civilian-led response, I think that's gonna be a situation-dependent thing. I know they have various models in other jurisdictions. And if it's pretty clear, we need to develop some good, sharp, clear, consistent guidelines about what that response looks like. But I'll tell you, Crystal, when I - I volunteered for a 911 shift downtown, you know, at the call center downtown Seattle, and I was struck by two things. One, the mounting list of calls - queue of calls - that, like, deserves ordinarily some sort of police response of some sort, but because of staffing levels, no one was gonna get to it for hours, maybe some cases days. And also, I sat sitting side-by-side next to the frontline call center operator and listening to the calls, I definitely heard a few calls that someone was in a clear crisis situation and they needed a response of some sort, but a badge and a gun and armed response and a uniformed response was not at all what they need. We've seen how that's a formula for disaster. We, you know, we can train police officers - and yeah, we're gonna train them better, make them better, and hold them accountable, but we're not gonna train our way out of bad responses. Like, they don't need to be leading and frontlining a lot of these crises calls, especially when maybe the call earlier, someone might've been trying to take their life, that's conceivable, and then they respond to someone who just needs help. He needs a, they need a social worker or behavioral mental health crisis. We can't train our way out of that with uniformed gun-badge responses. So, but it's a situation-specific - to answer your question, you know, again, about the different models options. It's a situation-specific kind of analysis.
[00:35:00] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. I wanna talk about victims - a lot, and we hear people talk about victims and oftentimes mischaracterize what victims say, but both from, you know, anecdotal conversations and numerous studies, victims overwhelmingly want two things - to make sure what happened to them doesn't happen to them or anyone else again, and help getting beyond their - support and help to get beyond and to restore what was lost or damaged or hurt. And we don't do a good job from a governmental standpoint, or as a community, supporting people who have been victimized. And so often that feeds into very unhealthy outcomes later on down the line. What can you do in your capacity as a City Councilperson to better support victims of crime?
[00:35:55] Rob Saka: Yeah, so great, great question. I think the best - so all of these issues - highly complex, nuanced. So let's double click, dive a little deeper. So we talked about the imperative a moment ago to, you know, from my perspective, to hire more police, public safety, empower them, set and enforce the highest standards, and hold them accountable. Also the co-equal important policy plan that I have to stand up, fund and implement, you know, these civilian-led responses. But also a very, very important part of this whole equation is prevention - making sure that we don't have to, people don't have to experience crime to begin with. Making sure that people - that crime victims, if you will - you know, not only they don't feel the sentiment and have the experience of like, not wanting that to happen again to someone else, but also they don't feel the sense of like, we need to kind of restore and bring a sense of whole and completeness to whatever traumatic experience happened to them. So prevention is really important and crime prevention is really important. And why is there crime? Well, it's complex, not just one thing, but you know, rising inequality, lack of access to resources, unequal opportunities, poverty, you know, lack of mental behavioral health services and support. And I think building out programs and services anchored and oriented around addressing those root causes will go a long way in preventing crime to begin with and minimizing our impact. Because yes, we need effective prevention and address the root causes, if you will, but we also need to make sure that we have, you know, our whole like policy plans and funding strategy reflects, you know, making sure we can contemplate and resource the realities of today and have good interventions as well. So, you know, all of those things must and should coexist in parallel, in my view.
[00:38:17] Crystal Fincher: Okay, so I just wanted to clarify on that last one. I think your points about prevention and your plans to hire more police certainly speak to some other aspects, but specifically when it comes to supporting victims - people who have been - unfortunately, while you're working towards prevention and doing the other things, it is, there are going to be more people who are victimized unfortunately, even while we're reducing crime. But what could you do to better support victims, people who have been victimized, and people who do need help?
[00:38:55] Rob Saka: Yeah, so great question. The number one thing is making sure we have effective intervention and response capabilities. And, you know, we do that in part through making sure we have well, you know, well-resourced, trained set of public safety apparatus - firefighters, police, paramedics - and to make sure that people have the responses that they need and expect. Making sure if someone has been like victimized by property crime or whatever it is, that, you know, they can reasonably expect an officer to show up and, you know, take a report, and hopefully investigate that, and follow up, and show up in a timely manner. But also, you know, depending on the nature of the victimization for crime victims, we also need to do a better job of making sure people have access to services and - like trauma response and support services - and they're better taken care of from a mental health perspective as well. And help them navigate and better help them navigate everything - like, you know, talking about crime in abstract, you know, without a specific like fact pattern, it's a little tricky. But I do think at a high level, there is a huge opportunity to better help people navigate the various systems, structures, services, and programs that currently exist today once - for victims - and then build out and expand those as well.
[00:40:56] Crystal Fincher: I see. I wanna talk about housing and homelessness and in particular, one thing called out by experts as a barrier to the effectiveness of the homelessness response is frontline worker wages that don't cover the cost of living. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for our area, and how can you make that more likely with how the City bids for and contracts for services?
[00:41:24] Rob Saka: Yeah, I think that is some of the most important work going on - in any profession, in any discipline, in any - like the direct frontline work that, you know, our professionals across a variety of disciplines are doing directly on a day-to-day basis with our unhoused neighbors. And inflation is rising exponentially. You know, wage increases haven't kept up just across the board, especially in government and in nonprofit contracted work. So yes, I support, you know, making sure they have living wages because as a policy matter, like you sort of, your priorities show up in what you support and what you fund. So that doesn't also mean at the same time, you know, wouldn't look for - in the issue of homelessness, for example - wouldn't look for opportunities to perform, you know, like initial or like regular ongoing systems checks to analyze performance and, you know, figure out what's working well and, you know, knock down barriers to success and, you know, things like that. But yeah, I mean, I, these workers have a tough job. So I support living wages.
[00:43:03] Crystal Fincher: And I wanna talk about the larger economy - well, larger to the City and district, at least. And the City has a very, very vibrant business economy. Some of the largest corporations in the world headquartered here and nearby, as well as a really vibrant small business community that really spans the range across the board. But they have a number of challenges that they're trying to deal with and get beyond. So when it comes to your district, what can you do? I guess, one, what do you think the biggest challenges facing small businesses in your district are and how can you address those needs?
[00:43:43] Rob Saka: Yeah, the biggest challenge is facing this district. You're right, like, to first address - kind of how you prefaced that question, I like that framing - yeah, we have a vibrant economy with companies and businesses of all sizes. And, you know, the only challenge is it's not - the benefits that provides our region, you know, aren't always equally shared and distributed and those opportunities aren't always equally shared. And look, I grew up in Kent, you know, and - in the valley in Kent, like I said - and my dad, if we know what we know about Kent, the economy runs on two things - agriculture and warehousing district. It's always been a warehousing district. Today, there's this big, fancy Amazon fulfillment center - it's like the crown jewel of the Kent warehousing district. And I'm glad it's there, personally. And great, you know, but before that was there and long after it, something else, maybe. It's always been a warehousing district, always will be. And my father was a frontline warehouse worker in Kent. And I found my path to other opportunities in tech, you know, through the military and law school and other things, but we need to make sure more people have access to those opportunities.
But to answer, you know, that kind of follow-up question there about what can I do? What can I best do to support small businesses if elected? Well, one, I don't view my role as like prescribing, you know, setting forth prescriptive menu changes for a restaurant, for example. But where I can help, and I've talked to small businesses - small business owners, their workers, their customers - and the number one opportunity that I see to help support them and help make sure that they're successful is public safety. There, someone told me the other day - a small business owner with an office downtown told me the other day that their workers don't feel safe coming to downtown. So how can you impose these hybrid work requirements, which I generally support, as long as there's some - I also like the flexibility, especially, and value the flexibility as a parent of young kids to have, you know, like a couple of days to work from home, work remotely. But how can you impose these across the board, agnostic of whatever the attendant circumstances is, you know, requirements for working from the office based on some arbitrary number or some executive's gut feeling about what sparks innovation the most when people, when their workers don't even feel safe. And then their customers oftentimes don't feel safe. How are we going to stimulate the economy if people - we need to get more people, not just from this district, into these businesses across the district and across the city, but we need to get more people from, you know, South County and, you know, people from the Eastside and other parts of the state and like wanting to come here and spend their money and feel comfortable and invest here as well. So I think public safety is the number one opportunity that I see and I hear over and over and over again from small business owners, their workers, and customers.
[00:47:30] Crystal Fincher: Right, and I wanna ask you about childcare, which is a challenge faced not only by people with kids, you know - challenge faced primarily with them - but the effects are felt throughout the entire community. It's people's largest expense next to housing, frequently. And now the annual cost of childcare tops that of college annually. So it's just an astronomical expense and sometimes just the accessibility - just is there childcare available near you - is a challenge. What can you do as a City councilmember to help families in your district with this?
[00:48:10] Rob Saka: Yeah, it's a unique problem that I understand firsthand, not only as someone with childcare responsibilities - my number one job in life is the parent of these three kids - but also someone who experienced, you know, like pre-K childcare from a place of need in under-representation. And look, I mentioned I grew up in and out of foster care for the first nine years of my life - mostly in. And, you know, when I wasn't in foster care during that time, you know, sometimes I was in a, like a Head Start program or a funded program of some sort. Usually it was not being watched by whoever could watch me. And raised by soap operas. And I'm grateful, like I said, where I am today personally and professionally, not because of some of those, you know, lousy experiences, but I'm grateful because I am where I am despite some of those lousy circumstances. And you look at the research and you look at the data on people, on kids who have been exposed to like, like pre-K programs and preschool programs, been in those programs. And you look at their life outcomes. They perform generally better in school than their peers who don't have some sort of preschool program and are just sort of like, kind of how I was describing and how I grew up most of the time. Their graduation rates are higher, their college attendance rates are higher. Like their life outcomes are generally better. And so one opportunity that I see long-term - I got two terms in me if I win. One is not enough to get done what I intend to get done, and two is like just a sweet spot. I don't believe in mandatory term limits, but there's nothing wrong with self-imposed ones. So I have two terms - towards the end, I wanna actually build out and fund preschool program for all. And make sure that more people have that opportunity. And make sure more people have access to quality affordable childcare - and educational, like a learning environment that's gonna help them, and help communities, and help us long-term.
So really, really urgent challenge. And also part of that, like childcare workers are some of the most underpaid folks too. And they do work, and they do work for us. And I know firsthand, a lot of them put their - they were some of the most unsung heroes during COVID. They, a lot of workers, but like talking about this specific question, a lot of them put their health and safety on the line for poor wages, uncertain working conditions - to make sure more people could work. And make sure more kids are able to be successful long-term. And so they're grossly underpaid. So there's been other jurisdictions that have been successful, at least in terms of like starting to think about, how to better pay and how to better fund universal preschool programs for all. And so I'm curious to figure out creative ways to do exactly that on Seattle City Council.
[00:51:38] Crystal Fincher: And the last thing I just wanna touch on is - back to a budget issue - those Progressive Revenue Task Force recommendations that did come out, especially now before this revenue shortfall. So if dramatic cuts are to be avoided, there does need to be some new revenue in place. Do you support, or will you be advocating for any of the recommendations from the Progressive Revenue Task Force, or any other ideas you have?
[00:52:11] Rob Saka: Yeah, thank you, Crystal. So, we talked a little bit about my, like kind of how I view the budget and operating with the existing - looking to additional government partners at all levels, and funding sources, and public-private partnerships - and then expanding, looking at new revenue sources. But you asked a question about potential new revenue sources. And from this report, I'm most keenly interested in learning more about the vacant home, vacant lot tax idea. That seems to be - potentially, I don't know - I would love to learn more and explore and closely study, examine the feasibility of that. But that seems to be just the most low-hanging fruit opportunity in terms of one, creating revenue. We shouldn't just create revenue for the sake of it. You know, it should have a purpose and an incentive and disincentive structure behind it. I think that will help address the affordability crisis, and making sure we have beneficial use of living space at all times, and incentivize people to actually use stuff. So, but, so that's one thing I'm keenly interested personally in learning more about and exploring. Yeah.
[00:53:41] Crystal Fincher: Got it. In the last couple minutes we have here, there are people trying to make a decision between you and your opponent - and two new candidates, no incumbent in this open seat race - and people just searching for who best aligns with their values and who is best suited for this role. What do you tell voters who are trying to make up their minds?
[00:54:04] Rob Saka: Yeah, so we have a very clear choice in this race. The contrasts have never been more clear. We can choose the business-as-usual approach and, or we have an opportunity to bring about some change. And I'm a strong Democrat, you know, make no apologies about that - matter of fact, I'm the strongest Democrat in this race 'cause I'm the only one that's been endorsed by our home local Democratic Party, the 34th District Dems, shout out to them. And I'm a strong progressive. And, you know, I also need to think we need to better incorporate progressive values, equity, and make sure things not only are equitable by design - I think we do that well in Seattle - but also equitable in implementation. And is it truly equitable in implementation? And being willing to humble ourselves and figure out if that's not the case, what's the solve? What's the fix? What's the solution? And the issue of public safety, there's - I've been entirely consistent about this whole time. We need to stand up civilian-led responses. We need to hire more police and empower them to carry out their public safety mandate and hold them accountable. We need to also focus on crime prevention in parallel. So that's my plan. There's complexity and there's nuance there. And, you know, despite some of the rising crime and gun violence in this district - South Park, someone was shot and I think killed earlier today. And the issue of gun violence isn't one shared equally across this city and across this district. Certain communities, including the one I live in - in Delridge, are more impacted and bearing the brunt of it more than others. So it's just remarkable to see that after all these shootings, my opponent still thinks that defunding the police by 50% was a good idea. I think it was a bad idea. And that doesn't mean we can't hold bad police accountable. I fought to do that. I fought to do exactly that at the county level and I'll continue to do that and accelerate that work. But yeah, the issue of public safety has never been, the contrast has never been clear. And look, if people like the current direction of the Seattle City Council - the current approach, the toxicity, the divisiveness, the performative ideological-based, you know, acts and gestures rather than a collaborative approach focused on solutions, I'm probably not their candidate. But I am here to bring about the change I think people so desperately want and need - a collaborative, responsive government that centers equity, progressive values, and a little healthy dose of common sense as well. So yeah.
[00:57:23] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much for your time and for sharing more about your candidacy with us today - much appreciated.
[00:57:32] Rob Saka: Thank you, Crystal - appreciate you.
[00:57:34] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank!
They discuss a poll showing that Seattle voters want a more progressive City Council, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction overseeing more and more school districts in budget crisis, gubernatorial candidate Mark Mullet getting financially backed by charter school advocates, and Bruce Harrell’s ethnic media roundtable not going very well. The conversation continues with the possibility of a $19 minimum wage for unincorporated King County, internal drama within top brass of the Seattle Police Department, and reflection on a consent decree ruling that ends most federal oversight of SPD.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank, at @cruickshank.
Resources
“Ending Youth Incarceration with Dr. Ben Danielson of AHSHAY Center” from Hacks & Wonks
“Poll: Seattle voters want new direction on City Council” by Josh Cohen from Crosscut
“State will keep fiscal tabs on three cash-starved Washington school districts” by Jerry Cornfield from Washington State Standard
“WA Supreme Court sides with state in suit over school building costs” by Dahlia Bazzaz from The Seattle Times
“Big checks for a pro-Mullet PAC” by Paul Queary from The Washington Observer
“Harrell asks for better relations with ethnic media” by Mahlon Meyer from Northwest Asian Weekly
“King County looks at $19 minimum wage in unincorporated areas” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times
“King County Councilmembers propose $19 minimum wage for Skyway and White Center” by Guy Oron from Real Change
“Seattle police chief's alleged relationship with employee prompts inquiries, roils department” by Ashley Hiruko & Isolde Raftery from KUOW
“Judge ends most federal oversight of SPD, after 11 years and 3 chiefs” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
If you missed our Tuesday topical show, I welcomed Dr. Ben Danielson, director of AHSHAY (Allies and Healthier Systems for Health and Abundance in Youth) Center for an important conversation about ending youth incarceration. Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review show where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long-time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank.
[00:01:19] Robert Cruickshank: Thank you for having me back again, Crystal. It's always a pleasure to be here reviewing the week with you.
[00:01:23] Crystal Fincher: Always a pleasure and I wanna start out talking about a poll that came out this week, sponsored by Crosscut - an Elway Poll - showing that voters seem to want a more progressive City Council. What did this poll reveal?
[00:01:38] Robert Cruickshank: It's a really interesting poll. Crosscut's headline says - Seattle voters want a new direction on the City Council - but if you dig down with the poll itself, it's clear that there's strong support for a more progressive direction. One of the questions they ask is - Who are you more likely to vote for? A progressive candidate, a centrist candidate, or no opinion. The progressive candidate, 49%. Centrist candidate, 37%. And no opinion, 14%. That actually matches pretty closely some of the results we saw in key City Council primary elections last month. In District 1, for example, District 4, District 6 - you saw pretty similar numbers with a progressive candidate getting close to or around 50% and a more centrist candidate getting somewhere between the upper 30s and low 40s. We have a poll, we have the actual election results from the primary - now that doesn't guarantee anything for the general election. But evidence is starting to pile up that - yes, Seattle voters do want a new direction and it's very likely they want to be a more progressive direction.
We've lived for the last three years - certain media pundits and media outlets, like KOMO or The Seattle Times, pushing really hard this narrative that Seattle wants a right-wing turn, Seattle's fed up with a progressive City Council, we're fed up with homelessness, we're fed up with crime - we want to turn to the right, darn it. The poll results and the election results last month just don't support that argument at all. Yes, voters are unhappy and voters are looking at what the progressive candidates are saying and thinking - Yeah, that's how we want to solve this. Yes, we want to solve homelessness by getting people into housing. Yes, we want to solve crime by having all sorts of solutions - including alternatives to policing, alternatives to armed response - to help address this problem. And I think that some of the media outlets and Chamber of Commerce and others, who keep pushing this Seattle-wants-to-turn-right narrative, are just trying to will a story into existence, try to will that reality into existence - but voters are making it clear they're not going along with that.
[00:03:28] Crystal Fincher: It really does make some of the rhetoric that we hear over and over again sound like astroturfing, sound like a marketing project - because like you said, over and over again, these election results and these polls just repeatedly tell a different story. For example, we've talked on this show before about stopping with just - Hey, are you happy with the way things are going or are you dissatisfied? And if people say they're dissatisfied, there's been this assumption - that means that they want to get rid of progressive councilmembers and progressive policy. And that has never borne out in the data. One of the questions - On the issue of homelessness, if you had to choose, what approach should have the higher priority for city government resources? One option is: Moving the tents out of parks and public areas and moving their occupants into temporary shelters - which is a nice way to say sweeps - 41%. The other option: Developing permanent housing and mental health services for people experiencing homelessness - 55%. This is not controversial - we've been talking about this on this show for quite some time, lots of people have - these are serious policies backed by evidence and it just makes sense, right?
And it makes you question how deeply invested are people in the narrative that Seattle is fed up and they want a really punitive law and order, harsh lock-'em-up approach to things - that just doesn't play out. What we're gonna see in this general election, as we've seen before - it looks like we're anticipating some of the same type of communication, same type of commercial, same type of mailers trying to use those same tired depictions of homelessness as if the people who are homeless are the problem and not the fact that they don't have homes to live in. And Seattle sees that. They see that over and over again. And what we see is there is this attempt, especially around public safety rhetoric, to make it just very flat. Either you want more cops and you support cops and Blue Lives Matter and all of that, or you hate safety and you love crime and you don't want anything. And just making it either you're defund or this Antifa radical, or you're wanting more law and order on the streets. It just doesn't turn out that way. People want serious solutions. We've been doing the same things over and over again. And the public is begging these people to keep listening, but it just doesn't work. Like you said, a plurality here prefer a progressive candidate - 12 points higher than a more moderate candidate, as they put it - conservative wasn't a choice in here. Centrist and progressive - as is the way in Seattle - the way things are usually discussed.
Also, when they asked about priorities - How are they evaluating candidates for City Council? It's really interesting. The top answers were: Do they support creating a new department for non-police emergency response, Do they support city funding of substance abuse treatment for people in public housing - both of those at 72%. If you're in the 60s, that's automatic win territory. 72%, it's - how wild is it that this is not on the top of everybody's agenda? Then we move down to - looking at the lower end - the lowest, actually, was: Supporting a three-year moratorium on the Jumpstart tax - that actually made people more likely to vote against someone for voting against a moratorium on that tax, which we've seen the Chamber float and other allied business interests trying to siphon some of that money or reduce the tax that they're paying. And voters are clearly saying no. And people who advocate for that are going to be hurt by taking that position in this general election. So this is just really interesting. One of these questions: Support for Bruce Harrell's agenda. One, I want someone to define what that agenda is - great to ask that in a vague way - what does that mean? And I would love for people to talk - when they talk about the mayor's agenda, Bruce Harrell's agenda - define what that is. I think that's a tougher task than many people might assume at first glance. What else did you see here?
[00:07:38] Robert Cruickshank: There are a couple of things that stood out. You talked about taxes. They asked - How should Seattle cover a budget shortfall? 63% want a new business tax, 60% are willing to tax themselves - this just bolsters the point you just made that, contrary to what the Chamber wants, there's no support out there for slashing business taxes. We want to tax the rich more. And so that's another reason why progressive candidates are going to do well.
Something you said resonated about the astroturfing. And you see these efforts to try to create outrage about different public safety issues. We saw some of that this week, where Sara Nelson had a stunt press conference in Little Saigon - which is facing issues, and the community of Little Saigon deserves to be heard and deserves to have their needs addressed. That's not what Sara Nelson was there to do. She was there to have a press conference stunt where she could stand there with Tanya Woo and say - Where's Tammy Morales? Why isn't Tammy Morales here? The answer is, as Tammy Morales explained, Tammy wasn't invited because Tammy was also at the Transportation Committee hearing in City Hall doing her job and asked where's Sara Nelson? The answer is Sara Nelson's out grandstanding. She's also the same person who's floating things like moratorium on the JumpStart Tax, floating things like sweeps and crackdowns on visible drug use. Sara Nelson somehow snuck into office in 2021 and thinks somehow that the City is supporting her agenda - whatever that might be, whatever right-wing cause she has at the moment - that's not where the electorate is right now. And I think that's all they have - are stunts - because their actual agenda is unpopular.
And I think you're going to start seeing - as a campaign heads into the heat of the general election, the same playbook we've often seen from more centrist candidates. And Jenny Durkan was an expert at this - of just bear-hugging progressive positions, making themselves sound more progressive than they truly are - to try to get elected because they know that's what the electorate in Seattle wants. And then once in office, the mask comes off and they turned out to be the Chamber candidate that they always were. So that's something that the actual progressive candidates are gonna have to watch out for. And voters are going to need to be very careful in discerning between these candidates. Who's just mouthing the rhetoric that they think is going to get them elected? And who's a genuine and proven commitment to these ideals? - Who's really fought hard for taxing the rich? Who's fought hard for affordable housing? Who's fought hard to get services and shelter to people who are unhoused? - rather than people who are just maybe grandstanding on it because they think that's how they're gonna win.
[00:10:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I think you bring up a really important point. It is that discernment. Some of the justification I've heard for people who are very invested in the "Seattle has taken a right turn" try and retcon the justification - well, voters wanted a conservative business owner and they really want that perspective on the Council. They want someone who's gonna knock heads and get tough. But people so easily forget - that's not at all how Sara Nelson ran. Sara Nelson ran as an environmentalist, as someone who wanted to reform the police department - those were her top-line messages in her communications. She wasn't talking about being a business owner, she was not talking about being tough on crime - she initially started that in the very beginning in the primary and that fell flat. And so they switched up real quick and all of the communication looked like it was coming from a progressive. They used the word "progressive" 72,000 times - Oh no, we're the real progressives here. And it didn't turn out that way. And as you said, once she was elected, the mask came off and we continue to see this over and over again. The moderate playbook, the conservative playbook is to mimic progressive. It's to use that same language. It's to talk about issues in a similar way. Leave yourself a little wiggle room to not commit, to not give a hard and fast answer to something so that when you are elected, you can say - Well, I didn't exactly say that - or - I didn't take a position on this.
And we see this over and over again. I hope it doesn't happen again this time, but there's going to be a lot of money spent to try and do this again. And at some point we just have to say - We've seen this before and we've had enough, and we want people who are seriously engaging in how to solve the biggest problems that we face. Because Seattle voters are really frustrated - they are fed up, but fed up with not being listened to. I do congratulate this poll for going beyond just the - Are you happy and unhappy? - and asking the why - What direction do you want to go into? What policy solution do you prefer? And as I suspected, the answers are very enlightening and give you an eye into what voters are really thinking and considering. And I hope all of the candidates - and the electeds who aren't even on the ballot - take heed.
I also want to talk about school districts - right now, just as school is starting over again - facing budget crises and just a world of hurt. What's happening here?
[00:12:28] Robert Cruickshank: As schools are starting across Washington state this year, there are some schools where teachers have gone out on strike, mostly in Southwest Washington - places like Evergreen Schools in Vancouver, Camas in Clark County - and that's worth watching and we're supporting teachers. In addition, we're starting to see an even more ominous trend of districts needing the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, OSPI, to actually oversee their budgets. They need OSPI monitoring because they're in such deep financial straits, primarily because this Legislature continues to underfund our schools. The Legislature doesn't give schools enough money to cover their basic operations, especially in an era of inflation. And so you have at least three school districts that we know of so far, Marysville, La Conner, Mount Baker - these are all in Northwest Washington - are under OSPI oversight for budgets. It's the most, at any one time, in several years - since at least a great recession. OSPI is quoted as saying this is unprecedented. And they don't think it's gonna stop there. It's just the tip of the iceberg - as more and more districts face problems, as federal stimulus money goes away, as levy equalization dollars start to drop, as regionalization money - which is designed to help districts afford to pay teachers what it actually costs to live in their community - that starts to go away from the state. The state continues to underfund special education.
And just this morning before we went on air, we saw the State Supreme Court ruled against the Wahkiakum School District in Southwest Washington, their case where they were trying to get the state to be held responsible for the cost of school construction. The Supreme Court said - No, the state and local governments, local districts are gonna have to share that - even though it takes 60% of voters to approve a school bond for construction, those often fail. And small communities like Wahkiakum, small logging community on the Columbia River, don't have the property tax base to keep their schools in good repair. So what we're seeing is the Legislature, and now the Supreme Court, continue to hand blow after blow to local school districts. And this is alarming, not just because it leads to cuts and even school closures - something they're considering in school districts like Seattle - that's bad enough. But when you start to see state oversight in management of districts, that's when I think red flags should really go up. There's things like appointing emergency fiscal managers - in the state of Michigan and other states where Republicans took over - that led to huge cuts to schools, where these emergency fiscal managers would come in and turn schools over to charter school operators, they tear up union contracts, they would make all sorts of cuts to libraries and music and other important services.
Now, we're not seeing that in Washington state yet, but that architecture is now in place. And if the wrong person gets elected governor or the wrong party takes over the Legislature, all of a sudden these school districts could be losing local control over their basic dollars and spending to the state. So this is a unfolding crisis that the State Legislature and the Democratic majority there continue to ignore, continue to not take seriously - even though it remains in the Constitution, literally their paramount duty, to provide ample provision for funding, not just enough. The open dictionary says more than enough. No one can look at a public school district anywhere in Washington state and say schools are getting ample funding. They're just not. And this crisis is only going to grow worse. We're only going to see further cuts to schools, further closures, larger class sizes, teachers leaving - unless the State Legislature steps in.
[00:16:00] Crystal Fincher: We do have to contend with the fact that this is happening with the Democratic majority, right? Even more frustrating where - this is another issue voters support in such huge numbers - adequately, amply funding education and raising the revenue because revenue is needed to amply fund education. It's really frustrating. And so I guess my question for you, because you do pay such close attention - I do recommend people follow Robert for a variety of things, but his insight on education policy is really valuable - how do we fix this? Is it all on the Legislature? Where is the fix here?
[00:16:39] Robert Cruickshank: The fix is at the Legislature. Local school districts can only do so much. A 60% threshold has not been changed by the Legislature - they have the ability to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to change that, that never happens. But even more, the Legislature has also capped a local operating levy. Seattle, which has a very pro-tax population, would happily tax ourselves a lot of money to have amazing public schools. We can't do that because we're prevented by the State Legislature. And the obvious reason, of course, is Seattle has such valuable property because we have Amazon, Vulcan, other large corporate property owners here who will ensure that the Legislature doesn't do that. So we have a State Legislature and a Democratic majority that is just unwilling to take on the big corporations and the wealthy to fund our public schools. They point to the capital gains tax. And yes, that was an important victory in 2021. And it's raising almost double what was expected. But of course, there's a caveat there. They cap the amount of money that goes to the Education Legacy Trust Fund - anything above that is supposed to go to school construction, which is great - we just talked about the Supreme Court decision and how local governments and local districts in rural Washington definitely need help funding schools. That's great. But what happens when you don't have the ability to pay the teachers to go into those buildings? When you don't have the ability to provide the books, materials, the music classes, the arts classes, the small class sizes that we voted for in 2014?
The Legislature proposed a wealth tax last year - 20 out of 29 Senate Democrats, 43 out of 58 House Democrats supported it as co-sponsors. Surely there were many more who weren't sponsors who were on board. The bill never even made it out of committee in either chamber. At some point, we have to look at the State Legislature and the Democrats, even the progressives - even the Democrats we like and support strongly - haven't stuck their necks out for education, haven't stepped up to say we're gonna fix this. They aren't recognizing the crisis that's there and that's what we have to do. We have to point the finger at the Legislature and go to them at their town halls, to their offices, committee meetings in Olympia, testify virtually if that's possible again in January and make it crystal clear - this is a crisis, it is dire, and you have to fix it. And the only possible source of the fix is the Legislature.
[00:19:02] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Thank you for your insight on that, and we do have to get involved. We have to make sure they hear our voices, demanding that this happens. And while they're at it - to provide free school lunches for all school kids. Also several other states - I think we're at 11 so far - are doing the same, putting us to shame. All states should have this and so we have a lot of work to do.
Also wanna talk about a candidate for governor - Mark Mullet, current sitting senator out of the 5th legislative district, being backed by charter school money. What's happening here?
[00:19:42] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, Mark Mullet, a very right-wing Democrat - he probably would have been a Republican if he didn't realize that being a Democrat would get him elected more easily out there in Issaquah. He's been hostile to teachers' unions for a long time, notoriously hostile to other unions - very nearly lost his reelection in 2020 to Ingrid Anderson, a progressive nurse. Mullet only prevailed by 58 votes, but continues to act as a very right-wing Democrat. And he's always been in love with charter schools - he's been a major obstacle to getting the Legislature to fully fund our public schools. He sits on the Senate Ways and Means Committee. He works with centrist Democrats, corporate Democrats, and Republicans to try to block bills that would fund our schools. And in return, he's now gotten at least $25,000 from a charter school PAC to help fund a super PAC in support of Mark Mullet's run for governor. Polls continue to show so far that Mullet is trailing pretty badly here in the governor's race - Ferguson still has the lead, but it's early. We're well over a year away from the general election for governor. But Mullet clearly is staking his claim as the right-wing Democratic candidate, and the candidate of now folks who wanna privatize our public schools and spread charters everywhere.
And as we've seen in other states, charter schools are really problematic. They don't really meet student needs on the whole. Their outcomes aren't better for students. And they're often fly-by-night operations - they'll close in the middle of a school year and then leave students just high and dry. But it's really revealing that Mullet is taking, or at least getting supported by, so much money - that's not a direct donation to his campaign, but it's clear that they are running a super PAC explicitly in support of Mark Mullet. It's a real sign - that's where his bread is buttered - by big corporations and school privatizer money. So something that I think voters are gonna wanna pay pretty close attention to as the campaign for governor starts to heat up next year.
[00:21:33] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I do have to tell you, it is very concerning how unstable charter schools seem to be. How many - we see openings and then we see closings. And that just hardly ever happens with public schools. When it does, it's under financial duress and usually over the objections of all of the parents. But this has been something that we've seen with frequency with charter schools here in Washington. But yeah, definitely worth paying attention to that - and what that agenda is by the folks who have that super PAC and what other interests they're in-line with are really troubling. So we'll continue to pay attention to that.
I also wanna talk about a story that came out - I actually think it was late last week, this is a short holiday week and so kind of trickled out - but it was a story about Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell's roundtable with some of our local ethnic media outlets. We have wonderful, rich ethnic media outlets here in Washington State - all throughout the state, definitely here in King County. And the mayor's office seemed troubled by the lack of positive stories coming out, and so invited a number of these journalists to - it looks like City Hall - to have a little roundtable conversation. How did that turn out?
[00:22:56] Robert Cruickshank: Well, it's interesting. Many mayors have met with our local ethnic media - it's a good thing for them to do in and of itself - Mike McGinn did a great tour of them back when I worked with him in 2011. So it makes sense for Harrell to try to reach out, but it doesn't seem to have gone very well. And according to at least one of the reports that was there, the mayor wasn't happy about the meeting being recorded - said he could speak less freely. But I think when you're dealing with journalists, any public official should know that's how journalists like to operate - they wanna record everything. And it just seemed like the mayor wanted to make it very personal and wanted to get good coverage out of these outlets. And that's just not how you actually should be approaching these media outlets to begin with. These folks want respect, they wanna be treated as serious journalists - which they are. And I think that for a mayor to come in the way it appears Mayor Harrell did, I don't think it's gonna serve his needs and certainly not the needs of those ethnic media outlets.
[00:23:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this was covered in Northwest Asian Weekly and it was really a jaw-dropping read because it does seem to start off - Bruce Harrell is a charismatic guy and there's nothing wrong with that, there's nothing wrong with wanting to open lines of communication, to air out any challenges - I think that's a positive thing. Where I think this took a bad turn was this assumption that they should put aside their professionalism, put aside the obligation they have to report - and to seek information and accountability - and just play along, go along with what he says.
And the one thing that caught my eye, which maybe it didn't - well, a few things caught my eye - but one thing that I found troubling in here, which may not be an overt red flag and who knows what he actually meant by that, but there was an allusion to - Hey, there's Comcast money - anyone who works in the City of Seattle is aware of how much Comcast money there actually is in the City. But he said - Hey, the city might be able to facilitate ethnic media getting involved in Comcast channel 21, while also him saying that they were dying - which those ethnic media outlets directly challenged and he seemed to not accept or be willing to do. But dangling - Hey, there's more access, there's more information here for you if you play along. And that's the unspoken part of this. And even if that wasn't intended - I don't know what he intended - but as a public official, you have to be aware of when you're holding that much power, when you have that much control of resources and influence over people who are wielding those resources, and you have access to a bigger platform, and you're saying - Hey, I can help you out with this - there's the implication, if you aren't explicit and careful, saying - If you scratch my back too, if you ease up on the criticism, if you stop asking troubling questions. It seems like they heard that in this meeting and seemed to react - one, just mischaracterizing where they're at and they're not sitting here asking for handouts, they're not asking for anything unearned - they are professionals who put out great products, who many of us consume regularly and they're a part of our media ecosystem that too many people just leave out. And they're saying - No, we're not dying, we're here and we're thriving and we just want answers to our questions. We just want invitations to invites that other reporters are getting invites to.
And there seem to be questions with that, as well as some offense taken to them asking just regular general questions. One reporter, a Black reporter from a Black media outlet, brought up - Hey, we're having a really hard time getting straight answers from your police department. Bruce Harrell is literally the executive to talk to for that - they answer to Bruce Harrell, he is in charge of the police department. And his response - You're the only one who's had that problem. I think everyone listening knows that they're not the only ones who have that problem. We've seen that across the ecosystem in various places, particularly to people who don't cover City Hall sympathetically, and that's just really troubling. You're there and you're not listening to the reporters who are reflecting their communities and trying to get information that is really important to the communities they serve. And the dismissiveness was just really troubling.
[00:27:27] Robert Cruickshank: It really is. And I think it goes to the concerns that those media outlets have had for a long time. They wanna be taken seriously and deserve to be because they're serious journalists - doing serious journalism that is read and respected, not just in those communities they serve, but around the City. And yet they struggle to get invites to press conferences, they struggle to get responses from City departments, they struggle to get included in stories, they struggle to get their basic inquiries addressed. And they understand that a lot of the City's media relations folks, whether it's the mayor's office or City departments, don't always take them seriously. So to have the opportunity to sit down directly with the mayor is hugely important for these outlets - not only to show that they matter, but to get answers and to get things fixed that need to be fixed in the way the City is interacting with those media outlets. And yet for it to go this way, it just, in their minds, likely justifies a lot of concerns they had all along. It's not going to assuage them at all.
And from the perspective of supporting local media outlets, it seems like this should have been handled better. Even from Bruce Harrell's own perspective, it could have been handled better. 'Cause now he's got a story that makes him look bad and raises questions about the way his office is responding to some of the most important media outlets in the City. I think it's - to insinuate that they might be dying goes right to the heart of the problem. These media outlets have been thriving for decades. And it's not easy for any media outlet to survive these days, large or small, no matter what community they serve. And the last thing they want is to be dismissed again - in this case, dismissed as potentially just on the brink of death. I mean, who knows how many of the TV stations are on the brink of death, right? Seattle Times - who knows how long the Blethen family is going to want to keep running it until the family decides to sell it out to Alden Global Capital, which will just gut everything for parts. It's important to treat these media outlets and their reporters with respect, no matter who it is in elected office or whatever City department you're in. And so I hope that the mayor's office puts that right.
[00:29:29] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely agree. Also want to talk this week about a potential $19 minimum wage coming to unincorporated King County. What's being proposed?
[00:29:42] Robert Cruickshank: King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay is proposing a $19 an hour minimum wage for unincorporated King County - so that's outside of a incorporated city. So cities like Seattle, SeaTac have obviously raised minimum wage. Tukwila has raised it, Renton - which is on the ballot this year - likely to pass. But there are about a quarter million people in King County who are not in a city. They live in a community, sometimes, or maybe they don't live in a formal community, maybe they're out in more rural parts of the county - but they're part of King County. And what Girmay is recognizing is there's an opportunity to help them. So what he wants to do is raise the minimum wage for those parts of King County, for those 250,000 people - which is a substantial number of people - to make sure that they can also benefit from a higher minimum wage and raise it to $19. We all know how inflation is hitting people, especially the rise in cost of housing - and Girmay's done a great job trying to address housing as well in his role on the King County Council. But this is a great step forward for the King County Council to not just sit by and say the minimum wage is a city issue or it's a state issue. No, they have a quarter million people they can help right now. And to step forward and propose this, I think, is the right thing to do. I hope that all candidates for King County Council embrace it. I hope that the current councilmembers embrace it and pass it as quickly as they can, because I think this is an important step for folks living in those communities.
[00:30:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And they shouldn't be left out of the progress that many of the people who've been able to live in cities have been benefiting from. And sometimes we think unincorporated King County and people just think - Oh, it's just a few people living out in the boonies. You talked about how many people there are, and these are places like Vashon Island, Skyway, White Center - where there are a lot of people - these are our neighbors. They just happen to be in an area that wasn't formally incorporated. And so I see this as definite progress. We have a ways to go to get wages to a place where they're really funding people's lives today. Rents are so high. The cost of living has increased so much. Rents, childcare, these massive costs that are so huge and that are preventing people from being able to fully participate in society, to be upwardly mobile, to live the life that they choose. We know we can do better. We know we owe this to the residents. And I think this starts for businesses that employ more than 500 people. This is [not] burdening small businesses. It just seems like this is really the logical thing to do. Medium-sized businesses with 16 to 499 employees would be given a four-year transition period, but it's really important to get this on the way. This is a very popular policy also, fortunately. And so I am optimistic that this will pass and hope it has the unanimous support of the council.
[00:32:25] Robert Cruickshank: I hope so too. It should be unanimous. I'd like to see Dow Constantine come in strongly for it as well and help use his power and influence to get it done. It should be an issue in the council races - between Teresa Mosqueda and Sofia Aragon, for example. I think it's a really important contrast that can be drawn.
[00:32:40] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I wanna close out talking about a couple of stories revolving around the Seattle Police Department. The first is a story that broke - I think it was KUOW reported on it - but there have been rumors dogging Seattle Police Chief Diaz about an alleged affair or rumored affair. However, lots of people are really wondering whether to question this because it also may be rumors intended - falsely made up - intended to de-credit the chief and speed his way out. And people are trying to weigh which one of these this is. What happened here and what do you see going on?
[00:33:26] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, this is a sadly typical situation that we've seen in SPD over the years - where different elements of the command staff start sniping at each other and trying to take each other down, rather than focus on their jobs. It's unclear and we don't know - and I don't really care - what Chief Diaz is doing his personal time. Obviously, if it's an employee, then you gotta make sure all rules and ethics are respected - but if people are also throwing around insinuations, that hurts the woman in question. You don't wanna make a woman who's working in SPD subject to these rumors - not just that makes Chief Diaz look bad, the department look bad - you're sullying someone's reputation here. It shouldn't be sullied.
But the bigger question here is - what does it say about SPD and what does it say about how it's being run? We're in the middle of a wave of burglaries that people are complaining about, and complaining about slow SPD response time, people complaining about safety on our roads. And I will say just yesterday near my home in Northgate, I saw a driver go right through a red arrow, turning into an intersection - it wasn't like it turned red right as they were entering, it had been red for some time when they entered - in front of a police car. And the officer did nothing - just let it happen and no enforcement at all. People complain about the number of homicides that are happening. It's a real crisis out there, and concerns about is SPD really doing all it can do to investigate these? Is it doing all it can do to close burglary cases? And yet what do we see SPD doing? Their command staff are sniping at each other and spreading gossip and rumor, whether there's any truth to it or not. And I think it's just a sign of how dysfunctional SPD has become. I think it's also a sign that we need strong leadership to reform this department. We'll talk about, I know, about the consent decree in a moment, but it's clear that there are ongoing management problems. And it raises the question - do we need a external chief to come in, who isn't part of all these rivalries and gossip and jealousies, to come in and put a stop to a lot of this?
But it's just a sign - that these rumors are reaching the media - that SPD's commanders are not focused on the job they say they're focused on. They're happy to blame the City Council, which has no operational control over SPD, which hasn't said a word about defunding the police since they - for a hot minute in the summer of 2020, very gingerly cut a piece of SPD's budget, ever since then they've been showering as much money as they can on the police department - trying to ply them with recruitment bonuses and making it very clear - Oh no, we're not gonna defund you anymore. Sorry, forget about that. The City Council is not the problem here. There's a real problem with how SPD is managed. There's a problem with the command staff. And Council doesn't run that department - as you said earlier, the mayor does. And so we need to see how Bruce Harrell's going to respond to this too, because it's becoming increasingly clear that SPD isn't getting its job done.
[00:36:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and it's not getting its job done in any way - people are suffering - and the most cynical thing is there've, no surprise, been SPOG communications in various places literally touting - Detectives haven't been able to respond to this commercial burglary for two weeks and it's 'cause we were defunded. As you said, defunding did not happen. In fact, their funding has increased. They keep giving money to these people despite staffing shortages in other departments too. If that would help, that would be one thing. But even police officers are on record saying - Yeah, these hiring bonuses are not gonna get more people in the door, keep people. Retention bonuses aren't gonna keep people. That's actually not the problem. The problem is not financial anymore.
But it's really troubling just that everyone's eye seems to be off of the ball. And everyone's eye seems to be in a different place than where Seattle residents can see they need to be. As we talked about earlier with those poll results, Seattle residents want a more comprehensive response. They want responsiveness from the police department and they want to shift out responsibilities, assets to manage things in a way that does ensure they can get the service level they expect from the police department - and get other community violence interventions, diversion programs, other community safety initiatives up and running. And they just seem to be focused on literally everything but that. And at a time where everyone is facing this challenge of trying to manage, whether it's crime or behavioral health crises or everything that we're dealing with, they need to do better. We need Bruce Harrell to get this under control - what dysfunction and what disarray - he needs to get a hold of this.
[00:38:01] Robert Cruickshank: He really does. Again, the mayor runs the police department. The mayor has operational control. It's not the City Council. And I think we need to see that leadership from the top to really fix what's gone wrong at SPD.
[00:38:12] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now I wanna talk about big news that broke last night - that a judge just ended federal oversight of SPD after 11 years. Now you were in the administration that saw the consent decree established. What is the legacy of this consent decree, and where do we go now that federal oversight is largely ending?
[00:38:34] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, the consent decree has its pros and cons. The upside is, and always was - and this is why many in the community demanded it and went to the DOJ in the first place in 2010 and 2011 - they felt they needed a federal judge, a federal monitor and the US Department of Justice to come in and force SPD to improve its use of force policies, to address concerns about biased policing, and ultimately also added in were - later in the process - concerns about how it manages demonstrations. So it's a pro - is that you get an outside body that is widely trusted, certainly when Obama ran the DOJ and now that Biden does, to come in and force the changes that SPD wasn't willing to make and the City wasn't able to make. The downside though is it's a federal legal process that is fairly limited in what it can cover. You're at the mercy of the federal judge, the federal monitor - who wound up stepping in the summer of 2020 to undermine some of the efforts that were taken to reform the department, including cutting SPD's funding. So its coming to an end doesn't mean that SPD has been fixed. What it means is that in the eyes of this judge, the specific conditions laid out in the 2013 consent decree, in his mind, have been achieved. And what does that mean for people here in Seattle? It doesn't necessarily mean that SPD is a clean bill of health and is now operating in a much better place than it had been before. And in fact, the federal judge did retain jurisdiction over use of force and of how discipline is managed. He cares a lot about the contract - having raised significant concerns about the previous SPOG contract that was done in 2018.
But it goes back to something that I remember Mike McGinn saying a lot in 2012, 2013 during this whole negotiation process around the consent decree - pointing out correctly that lasting reform isn't gonna come from the federal government, it's gonna come from the community, and it's going to depend on the ability of City Hall to make change in SPD and make it stick. And he took a lot of heat for saying that. People thought he was trying to keep the DOJ out - he wasn't. He welcomed the DOJ, he was always honest about that, direct about that. But I think he was right. He was right then and right now that with the federal government largely stepping back - not completely, but largely stepping back - bringing an end to much of the consent decree, it's now up to us. It's up to us as a city, as a community, and especially our elected officials in City Hall to actually make sure that what we want done at SPD, what we want done with public safety more broadly happens. As we talked earlier in this podcast, there's a lot of support out there in the public for non-armed response to crime. People want it, it polls off the charts. We still haven't seen it. The mayor's office keeps promising and promising, keeps getting delayed and delayed. This mayor has been in office a year and a half now, and it's time to see it come to fruition - that's going to be another important piece of how we handle policing and public safety in the City - is to have armed officers doing less of it or focusing on the things they need to focus on and not the things where they don't need to be focused on. But we'll see what happens there because as we've seen all along, this is really up to the community to make these reforms stick. The DOJ had its role and we can ask how effective was it really - again, the ending of the consent decree doesn't mean SPD's fixed, it just means certain boxes got checked. But I think we have to see what happens out of City Council elections this year and what the mayor's going to do to address ongoing problems with the police.
[00:41:59] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. All with the backdrop of negotiations happening now for the Seattle Police Officers Guild contract - and that will set the tone for so much moving forward. It's going to be interesting to see how this proceeds.
[00:42:16] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, it really will. And I think that SPOG contract is going to be crucial - and who gets elected to the City Council this fall will play a really big role in how that negotiation winds up.
[00:42:26] Crystal Fincher: It absolutely will. And with that, we'll conclude this week-in-review. Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, September 8th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful cohost today was Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long-time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank. You can find Robert on Twitter - and multiple platforms, I think - @cruickshank. We're all around. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter. You can find me on most platforms as @finchfrii. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Tuesday topical show, Crystal welcomes Dr. Ben Danielson, director of AHSHAY (Allies in Healthier Systems for Health & Abundance in Youth) Center, for an important conversation about ending youth incarceration.
With King County’s commitment to end youth detention by 2025 looming and AHSHAY’s goal to end youth incarceration in Washington state by 2030, they discuss how punishment does not equate to community safety and is in fact harmful. Dr. Danielson describes how their work includes both the building and unbuilding of systems - building through support of proven community-based programs and unbuilding through recognition and tearing down of ingrained systems that only add trauma to young people’s lives. By amplifying the brilliance he sees in community, working to break down silos and barriers, and loving those who are loving our communities, Dr. Danielson hopes we all can take collective action to promote the ability to thrive for young people everywhere.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find out more about Dr. Ben Danielson’s work at the AHSHAY Center here.
Dr. Ben Danielson
Dr. Ben Danielson is a clinical professor of pediatrics at UW Medicine, community leader in health equity, and the director of Allies in Healthier Systems for Health & Abundance in Youth (AHSHAY) Center.
Resources
AHSHAY Overview Slides
“Program led by Dr. Ben Danielson to keep youth out of jail” from UW Medicine Newsroom
“King County’s ‘Zero Youth Detention’ plan goes forward even as $232 million youth jail goes up” by Marcus Harrison Green from The Seattle Times
“King County Executive Dow Constantine commits to depopulate youth jail by 2025” by Elise Takahama from The Seattle Times
Care & Closure | King County - a plan for youth healing, accountability, and community safety
“This UW pediatrician has helped young people for 30 years. Now, he's on a mission to end youth incarceration” by Kim Malcolm & Andy Hurst from KUOW
“Uncommon partners joining forces to tackle youth incarceration: ‘We can’t throw away human lives’” by Naomi Ishisaka from The Seattle Times
“Focus on children and change the trajectory of generational trauma” by Ben Danielson and Victoria Peattie Helm for The Seattle Times
Pro Se Potential - prevention based, restorative program empowering youth of color to become proactive leaders in society
Choose 180 - transforms systems of injustice & supports the young people who are too often impacted by those systems
Community Passageways - create alternatives to incarceration for youth and young adults by rebuilding our communities through committed relationships centered on love, compassion, and consistency
“UW systems experts put health of kids at the center as King County seeks to reach ‘zero youth detention’” by Jake Ellison from UW News
YouthCare - works to end youth homelessness and to ensure that young people are valued for who they are and empowered to achieve their potential
Lavender Rights Project - elevates the power, autonomy, and leadership of the Black intersex & gender diverse community through intersectional legal and social services
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
I am thrilled to be having this guest and conversation today on the show. I want to welcome Dr. Ben Danielson, clinical professor of pediatrics at UW and director of AHSHAY Center. Welcome, Dr. Danielson.
[00:01:08] Dr. Ben Danielson: Thanks so much - I'm really happy to be able to join you today.
[00:01:11] Crystal Fincher: I'm really happy to have this conversation today - it's a very important conversation to have. And that is because King County has made a commitment to end youth incarceration by 2025, which is just around the corner - there's a lot of work that needs to be done to make sure that we deliver on this commitment - and that is informing and underpinning the work at the AHSHAY Center. Can you tell me a little bit about what went into the formation of this and what brings you to this work?
[00:01:42] Dr. Ben Danielson: Well, I'm a pediatrician - a primary care pediatrician - that worked in Seattle's Central District for a couple of decades and served an amazing community of mostly low-income, very diverse, incredible families and kids - such an honor to be part of that space. And as a Black man, I was also very aware of the great disproportionality of the youth that were being drawn into youth detention at the facility that was almost around the corner from the clinic I worked in in the Central District - and how the injustices that were stacked and piled all the way back, to maybe early childhood and before, that were leading to that vortex was really, really deeply concerning. Came to a point of deep reflection for myself and had to really ask - What can I be doing to actually be promoting the well-being, the wellness, the health, the ability to thrive for young people, especially Black and brown people, in this area? And I could not keep from seeing how youth detention was ruining lives, is ruining lives - especially Black lives - in this county and across this country. I'm surprised there aren't more physicians and pediatricians involved directly in this work, and I'm also hoping that the opportunity to contribute to helping end youth incarceration will be something that more and more people can get on board with. I wish there was more of a strong health presence in this space. I wish we had less silos and more collaborative work in this space, and I really started the AHSHAY Center to help support the brilliance that has already existed for a long time in communities and around us trying to end youth incarceration.
[00:03:40] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, there may be some people listening who think - Well, isn't youth incarceration a public safety issue? Shouldn't police be dealing with this? Why is a doctor concerned with this? - What do you say to people thinking that?
[00:03:56] Dr. Ben Danielson: Well, first, I back up - and one thing I've learned, as my hair grows a little grayer, is the importance of just being willing to engage in conversations with people who might start from a very different place than me and really trying to understand what their concerns are, where we might share common ground, what the relevant issues are. You asked that question from what sounded like a public safety perspective. If I'm being my usual nerdy self, I would look at the data - and I would know for myself that if you're trying to make communities safer, then the last thing you want to do is incarcerate young people. The data just proves that that does not work. In fact, it works in the opposite direction - it creates more likelihood that young people will be arrested again and again. And we have great solutions in communities, done by amazing people for a long time now, that actually reduce what they call recidivism - crime from happening more and more - and it makes the communities safer. So if someone's coming to me with - We need to be making our communities safe - then what I know in my heart, what my community tells me, and what the data says is that you should not be incarcerating young people.
[00:05:13] Crystal Fincher: Definitely. Absolutely true that the evidence shows that youth incarceration is harmful, actually - not helpful. It doesn't make us safer, it actually makes us less safe. Just wondering about - when we talk about harm and we talk about recidivism rates, what does that look like on the ground and in our communities?
[00:05:33] Dr. Ben Danielson: Well, I guess I think a little bit about a young person's journey through our communities and how, as a young, young child sometimes - if you're a low-income or Black or brown, sometimes the images of what society says you can be, what maybe privileged society and white society says you can be is constrained and limited. The images around you of possibilities are sometimes less than they should be for a young person whose mind and heart are full of possibilities and ideas. As I think about them entering the school system, I know that the very same behavior for a Black child, for instance, that is also seen in a white child will lead that Black child to greater disciplinary action across our school systems, across this country - despite those school systems having wonderfully good intentions, people in them, and lots of people who really care about things like social justice and anti-racism. I know that that means that for that child, their chance of suspension and being sort of seen as somehow troubling to a school system can be started and reinforced - I had that very same experience myself as a young child - and that can perpetuate and spiral throughout the educational experience.
I know that we have had practices like putting what they call safety officers, which are basically police in schools - and how for especially Black and brown communities, the presence of police more often in your life does not increase your safety, it increases the chances that you will be arrested. This is a concept that is not often appreciated in circles outside of Black community and low-income community, unfortunately, but more contact means more likelihood of being stopped by police. I understand that every step of the way, if you're Black and if you're low-income - but especially if you're Black - everything tilts more towards society trying to herd you towards incarceration. The chance of being stopped by a police officer goes up. The chance of that police officer deciding to detain you goes up. The chance of that police officer deciding to take you in and have charges filed goes up. The chance of those charges being more severe goes up. The chances of those charges and the severity leading to detention goes up. All of those things - the racism that's built into every part of that amplifying spiral - is really tragic. It's a tragedy. And that process leads to what we see - incredibly disproportionate rates of incarceration for Black and brown youth, especially. And what we see within the detention process is maybe still really good-hearted people trying to do their best to help young people, but in a system that is racist and in a system that - above and beyond the racism - also does not work, does not help to change or reduce the chances of a young person being rearrested.
What I also see on this hopeful side is incredible community-based programs that are often maybe staffed by people who look like the young people that are serving, might have people associated with them that have had lived experiences that are really relevant and important, maybe recognize and identify people also who represent different pathways, different opportunities, different possibilities - working together to instill in a young person that sense of belonging, a sense of connection to their community, and a sense of reinvigoration of their sense of personal purpose, their meaning, their voices mattering. When that starts to happen, you see everything change - in Black communities and brown communities and white communities across this country.
What I've learned on the sad side is that systems like systems of incarceration seek out young people who've already faced trauma and then traumatize them more. That feels like the most elemental of injustices to me - to take people who have faced harm, young people, and then harm them more. That is something that we all as citizens of this country, as people living in this country in any state of citizenship or otherwise, we just need to - we need to reckon with that. We need to account for that. If there weren't great alternatives - man, it'd just be a hard conversation for you and me to have. If there weren't resources out there that were showing that they were working, it'd be a theoretic conversation. We are so far beyond that. And it's a shame for us as a country and as a county - is that rather than face truth and reality and data and hearts and minds and everything else that we've seen, we continue to practice something that is harming our young people.
I don't know if that answered your question - there was a lot of ramble.
[00:10:39] Crystal Fincher: No, it absolutely does. And I think it lays out just what is at stake here. And I do appreciate how you concluded that - with we do have models that are working. We do have programs that are setting people up for success instead of incarceration and failure. So with all of that in mind, what is the approach that AHSHAY is taking? What is the work that you have ahead of you?
[00:11:09] Dr. Ben Danielson: One thing I notice, working as part of an amazing and brilliant Black community and being part of an academic system and our healthcare system, is just how super siloed a lot of our efforts really are. Really great people doing great work and yet, structurally and sometimes for lots of other reasons, a lot of that work remains kind of siloed. And this sounds strange, but I think over the course of time - one of the privileges I've attained from going from being a low-income child sleeping in a car kind of stuff to having a lot of privilege, resource-wise and otherwise, is that maybe that also is a position of connection, of interconnection, or of bridging. And so one of the deep tenets of AHSHAY work is maybe being able to sit in spaces that others don't always have an opportunity to, and maybe to help support the chances that people can move from silos to collaboration to collective action in different ways.
All of this is a learning process for me - I'm the novice in the space of legal issues, clearly - I'm not one of those doctors that pretends that they're an expert in everything. And I've learned so much from incredible people in our communities - from the most active and incredible nonprofit leaders to just those grandmothers who are doing it every single day - with love, and with heart, and with sweat, and with hope, and pouring everything into our young people. There's so much we could be doing together. There's so much we are doing. It feels like perhaps AHSHAY just has a chance to channel brilliance, to catalyze connectedness, build on relationships, to maybe try to listen again to conversations that have historically gotten shut off, and then try to play some role in helping to amplify the good work and the good hearts and the good efforts that are out there.
[00:13:15] Crystal Fincher: Definitely needed. So how does this work happen?
[00:13:20] Dr. Ben Danielson: Ah, thank you. The way we think about it at the AHSHAY Center is sort of it's two armed, although they are related. You think about unbuilding the fortifications of youth incarceration and building up the fortifiers of health and striving for youth, often through work in community. It seems important to think both about unbuilding and building. I think a lot of our approaches, historically, have been about either running away from something - we gotta stop doing this, stop doing that, stop doing that - it's a very almost medical related thing about stopping harm. We also have to couple that with really building the institutional resources, the connectedness, the best elements of community that allow us to work through our issues together, to maintain sustaining and thriving relationships. And so you gotta build stuff too, even as you unbuild things - another thing community has taught me.
So building both a sense of the acknowledgement of hope that we can create communities that can support youth even through problem and problematic moments - that maybe if we talked about justice, we really should be talking about the fullness of that, especially for young people - what it means to never feel like you got kicked out of your society, your community because of a transgression. But that that meant that the community held you even more strongly and closely, and held you accountable, and allowed you to be accountable, and allowed you to grow through a moment. And allowed you to be sort of healed and restored through that process, because a lot of what was happening in that moment was because of things that have been happening to you and to your generational line for a long time. The building also means a true reckoning, I think, for the racism that is so built into our systems, and requires that we actually build new systems rather than try to do little patches on the existing ones 'cause that just has proven itself not to work. The building means being able to build relationships and think about where we're going to - not just where we're running away from - and develop programs, policies and opportunities to feed into that building, that opportunity.
The unbuilding is roll-up-your-sleeves work, right? Working with the county on its decommissioning plans for the detention center, working with community-based organizations on supporting their ability to get up into broader scale to amplify their work, helping to do things that might sound boring but are really important - like understanding what resources actually exist out there across our county, understanding how they interconnect, understanding how youth relate to them, and understanding how we sort of know the landscape that is around us in a way that pulls us out of our silos and helps us see each other - all kind of stuff like that. So we're working on the dreamscape and the landscape at the same time.
[00:16:21] Crystal Fincher: I appreciate that approach so much. And obviously, you have been so well known for so long for the work that you have done - particularly in our Black local community - but this work of both building and unbuilding is absolutely necessary and I love that you articulate that so well and have built that into the work. When I talk to people kind of across the spectrum, even for people who are very supportive and encouraging and in-line with this vision, sometimes they have questions about - Okay, I know we need to invest in people, I know we need to unbuild harmful systems and build ones that will help keep us healthier and safer - but they don't really know what those programs look like, what that work is, and what specific kind of support is needed. When you talk about that and you're considering that with AHSHAY, what kinds of infrastructure, systems, supports are necessary to achieve the end of incarceration, but ultimately healthier and more positive and productive systems?
[00:17:35] Dr. Ben Danielson: Yeah, it is interesting. Even in our dialogue around this, we're talking mostly about stopping something - ending incarceration. And I would just wonder if we'd approach it differently - if the title were about what we're building towards instead of what we're eliminating - 'cause I do really believe that when you build towards something really powerful and positive, you actually obviate the need for the thing that was negative on some level. I know that sounds too idealistic, but I'm gonna stay in that abundant space for as long as I can.
The programs that I see out there that are really inspiring to me - some of them, the nature of them is perhaps a formerly incarcerated person who saw a path, and really understood an experience, and wanted to pour back into young people all of the knowledge and wisdom - most importantly, the mentoring and guidance and coaching and support - possible. And so you see these programs like Pro Se Potential, that are just directly connecting with young people and instantly creating a sense of belonging - absolutely credible to the young folks that are part of that, 'cause these young adults are seeing other older adults who've been in the same spaces and places. And helping young people find their voices and articulate their souls, understand their traumas - and more importantly, also see their potential. Those programs are amazing. And the more of those we can have in our communities, the better.
You also see other programs that have been really strongly integrated into systems and really help to support a interceding at moments where incarceration could have happened, so great diversion-oriented programs that offer alternatives to incarceration. And again, wrap a supportive hug around young people - create skills, help them understand trauma, and help them move through their lives in ways that are really affirming to them. Programs like Choose 180 and Community Passageways and some of the others in our county are really, really incredible. And again, scale those up and you've got a whole different perspective.
'Cause most importantly - if I could mention just quickly - what we've seen in youth incarceration has been an interesting kind of almost J-curve. From the time that I started working as a pediatrician a few decades ago - when the King County Detention Center had 200 young people in it on any given day, to 2019 when that number was down to more like 20 or less. All of those efforts of people working together in different ways went - to me - from an idea that, of closing youth detention, that seemed kind of hard to imagine when there's 200 young people in there, to something truly possible. 'Cause 20 - like 20 could be zero. 20 allows you to see something different. And so we've had all of these experiences that tell us what's possible. And this county, like other parts of the country, has done a lot of work towards that. Now sadly, since around 2018 or 2019, the number of youth in detention on any given day has been kind of creeping back up again. And I think, in a way, we need to be redoubling the efforts that we were investing in for a while there. We have programs at work - they've demonstrated benefit, they've shown what could be, they've opened the possibility from 200 to 20 to maybe seeing zero. There have been plans in place.
And we've been ambivalent in this county. We built a brand new detention center, which opened - I don't know, what - early 2020. And then we announced the decommissioning of that detention center in mid to late 2020. We've had a roadmap to Zero Youth Detention that was active for a long time. And in some ways, the emphasis on that work got distracted by other things. We've had people working on this decommissioning work in something that the county calls Care & Closure. And there hasn't been as much community engagement as there should have been from the very beginning. So all of these things, I guess - I just introduce the idea that ambivalence is still part of human hearts in a lot of this work too.
[00:21:45] Crystal Fincher: Ambivalence is a roadblock that we do have to get beyond. Appreciate your detailing those great programs - I think you really hit the nail on the head - talking about those programs have demonstrated their value in keeping the community safe and building relationships and connections with youth, with investing and pouring into them. And you can see the outcomes and you can see how powerful that work is, but it's really an issue of scale right now. You can look at funding, you can look at staffing, you can look at scope - and the traditional models that we're trying to unbuild that are harmful just have such a broad footprint, almost a ubiquitous footprint, in our society right now. And these pilot programs and organizations - and some substantial and doing great work, but just still needing so much more to address the need. And I wonder, especially just looking at some of the political situations upcoming - we've got elections right now, we've got forecasts for lower budgets, lower revenue. And so as we talk about building and investing, I've already heard some people say - Well, I don't know that we have the money for that, and maybe we just need to focus on trying to clean up our streets the traditional way or just investing more in the current system. And so we do have conflicts over resources and where those are going to go. How do you navigate that?
[00:23:18] Dr. Ben Danielson: First, inside my head - this is what I think - I don't necessarily say this right away because sometimes you need to engage with people first before you get to the point of dropping certain things. But I think it's a stronger argument that we can't afford to keep doing things the way we're doing them. A sad fact is that King County is probably one of the lesser costs for incarcerating a youth for a year. The average in the country is somewhere in the $115,000/year, or something like that. King County - it's around $87,000/year. $87,000/year to incarcerate a young person. Any of the programs I mentioned, and many other programs that could be built up to scale, would not even come close to costing - on a per-youth basis - that kind of expense. So if we really want to have a dollars conversation, I'm happy to have that one 'cause the cheaper approach is the more effective approach - is to not incarcerate youth.
If it's about people's roles and work in this, I also want to say just that there's a lot of stuff that we try to do at the very end point, right when crisis is happening, that would actually probably work better if we were doing it way earlier, way further upstream, way more effectively. The return on investment for maybe even doing some of the same things in communities instead of in prisons, at points where we know trauma and supports are there and are necessary, instead of waiting towards the moment of arrest or the moment of being in front of a judge. We have to be thinking - if we really want to talk about being good stewards of resources, then we have to be talking about that. And again, I'm kind of on solid ground in supporting communities that have been trying to end youth incarceration forever. I do want to say that it's been partnerships also that have helped us see that possibility - it's taken judges being willing to engage in diversion programs. It's taken incredible efforts from the legal systems - we even have advocates in the DA's office, in addition to the Public Defender's office. This is a place that has great human resource with lots of brilliance that is capable of really - not just envisioning a different community, but actually contributing to it and feeling great about their contributions.
[00:25:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I appreciate you bringing that up because I think many of us have seen so many allies and partners within and throughout systems in this work, and people who understand that the way we're doing things is not the best way and is harmful and trying in their roles and in their positions and working with others to help. I also see and hear from some of our leaders, whether it's in public safety or politics or prosecutors, saying things like - We're having an increasing problem with youth violence and crime, and part of the problem is that these youth haven't experienced consequences and we're too lenient on them. We heard this during the legislative session last session and we hear it during some council meetings - and their prescription is that we need to get tougher and that they need to experience consequences - and for them, that means that they might have to experience jail and being locked up to really teach them that lesson. How effective do you think that is?
[00:26:40] Dr. Ben Danielson: Thank you for that question, 'cause I think that last part of that question sort of answers itself. We have tried and tried again the idea of consequences and punishment as the only form, or the primary form, of addressing issues and we've seen it fail. Since the late '80s, maybe even earlier, we've been addicted to the idea of doubling down on consequences as a way of addressing issues that we talk about as community safety or crime - however we label those things. Doesn't work, hasn't worked, still not working. I don't always like using mental health terms inappropriately, but there is somebody named Einstein who talked about - the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again and hoping for a different result. We have proven beyond a doubt that that - let's just get tougher - just hasn't worked. It also - if we really cared about these things, we'd be actually talking about the roots, the deeper issues, the ways in which we create or take away opportunity for young people, the way we make it almost criminal to be poor in this country, the ways in which we so divest in infrastructure and supports. And maybe humane being - like just human beings at a civil level, the humanity that we owe ourselves and each other - our lack of investment in those, I would put forth have way more to do with what we're seeing, or perceiving, or the news cycles are telling us are happening around crime than something else.
[00:28:24] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's a challenge - we hear it all over. And I think we do conflate punishment with safety. And we have to untangle the public conversation around those things, which I appreciate you having this conversation and helping to do that, but it really is - it hasn't worked. And I do think that, as you say, there are a lot of well-meaning people who just don't really consider that there is an alternative. But as you said, there are alternatives - they're working, they're thriving. It's really a matter of scale and coordination, really, and institutionalizing what is helping instead of what is hurting. As you are doing this work and looking at what's necessary, for people who are listening and saying - This is really important, I support this, I wanna be a part of this, I want to help build and not just fight against what is harmful - both very important things - what would you say to them? How can they help?
[00:29:19] Dr. Ben Danielson: There's so many different ways to help. I'm a strong believer in that there is not one path or two paths. I'm very thankful to you, Crystal, for not asking me - What are the two things we need to do? - 'cause I feel like that is a, that's almost a white supremacy question that creates an impossible, or a really strange set of alternatives. Communities know that there are many paths to getting to places you need to, so there's so many ways. I really appreciate what happens across the University of Washington. There are such champions, like Sarah Gimbel at the School of Nursing and the work that Sarah is doing to make sure that healthcare is being supported, not only in detention, but outside of detention. There are so many champions in our health department who are trying to instill a stronger public health and Health in All things in this work.
Maybe most importantly though, I'll just go back to mentioning - there are incredible community-based programs that - not only the ones that are just, that are focusing on alternatives to incarceration, but just the ones that are just loving our young people. YouthCare and other programs that really help young people experiencing, who are unhoused, and who are pushed towards being unhoused by so many oppressive practices. Incredible advocacy and rights organizations like Lavender Rights that really sees people that other parts of society seem to not want to see - our LGBTQIA2S+ young people and adults who are deserving of every, every fulfilling opportunity to thrive that we should be thinking of. There are so many important community-based programs and I will just say, I feel like there is a significant threat to our nonprofits and community-based programs right now as resources - just that old scarcity diet that they've been functioning under for so long - it's just, it just wears and tears on an organization's ability. A lot of leaders are burned out and things like that. So we need to, we need to show how much we love those who are loving our communities with us and support them with our time, with our dollars, with our words of support.
If you are LGBTQIA2S+ and every message across this country is about how much you might need to worry about your own safety right now - a county like ours, we should be yelling out - We support you, we see you, we want you to thrive, we believe in you, and we reject any energy that is trying to make you feel afraid, alone, lost or unsupported. We need to model the behaviors that we say we want our young people to grow into. And as long as they're not seeing us standing up and doing the things that we should do - from our moral hearts, from our heads, from, I don't know, from the evidence tells us, from what the budgets tell us, from every direction - if we're not doing that, I don't know why we expect young people to see anything different in the world around them either. So let's be the people that we wish other people would be - probably somebody famous said that before - but let's just try that for a while, right?
[00:32:22] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, definitely appreciate that. And I love "the organizations and people who are loving our community" - I absolutely love that, that is excellent advice and very well put. I really do thank you for your time today. And for people who wanna learn more and get engaged with AHSHAY, how can they do that?
[00:32:41] Dr. Ben Danielson: Well, we're in startup phase in many ways - still working on getting our website together - look out for that in September, October kind of timeframe. We're just looking to support the brilliance that's out there, so if you're part of a community-based program that's just doing great work - we'd love to connect with you and find how we can support you. Trying to be able to support conversations that maybe America has not gotten good at - like talking across difference, and actually holding space for that, and being willing to keep talking - because it's for our young people, because it's more important than maybe whatever feelings we have about other folks around us. And if there are ways in which you have an idea, a thought, a way that you can personally contribute to the life of someone else around you - if there's somebody who needs to see you in order to see the possibilities in themselves, I just encourage you to get out there and be in the lives of people who would really benefit from your presence and your brilliance and your wisdom.
[00:33:46] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much for this conversation today. Thank you for everything that you have done and you continue to do. You truly have been doing incredibly heavy lifting for quite some time - and I thank you, and we all thank you so much. Dr. Ben Danielson.
[00:34:02] Dr. Ben Danielson: Thank you for the opportunity to talk.
[00:34:05] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by state politics reporter for Crosscut, Joseph O’Sullivan!
They discuss Tacoma for All winning their lawsuit over competing renter protections on the November ballot, mobile home communities organizing against economic eviction, and Washington auctioning off $1B of carbon pollution credits. The conversation continues with reflection on people’s concerns over the closure of the Larch Corrections Center, how Bruce Harrell and Dow Constantine’s ideas add delay and expense to voter-approved Sound Transit light rail expansion, a questionable use of COVID relief funds for Emerald Downs horse racetrack, and Cruise robotaxis coming to Seattle streets.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Joseph O’Sullivan, at @OlympiaJoe.
Joseph O’Sullivan
Joseph O’Sullivan is Crosscut's state politics reporter. Before joining Crosscut in 2022, O’Sullivan spent nearly eight years as Olympia bureau reporter for The Seattle Times. Before that, he covered government and politics at news organizations in Spokane, Wyoming and South Dakota.
Resources
“The Childcare Crisis with Dr. Stephan Blanford of Children’s Alliance” from Hacks & Wonks
“Judge kicks Tacoma council’s competing renter protections off ballot” by Heidi Groover from The Seattle Times
“Judge issues ruling in ballot fight between Tacoma, renters group. Here's the decision” by Becca Most from The News Tribune
“WA mobile home communities organize against 'economic eviction'” by Farah Eltohamy and Mai Hoang from Crosscut
“WA's third carbon auction should push pollution credits over $1B” by Donna Gordon Blankinship from Crosscut
“‘Blindsided’ by a Washington prison closure” by Laurel Demkovich from Washington State Standard
“Prison closure plan stokes wildfire response worries in southwest Washington” by Laurel Demkovich from Washington State Standard
“Harrell, Constantine light-rail ideas add years, money to Sound Transit planning” by Mike Lindblom from The Seattle Times
“$1.1M in COVID relief steered to Auburn horse racing track” by Brandon Block from Crosscut
“The Capitol Hill Autonomous Vehicle Zone — More driverless robotaxi testing comes to Seattle” by Justin Carder from Capitol Hill Seattle Blog
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Transcript
Coming soon
On this Tuesday topical show, Crystal welcomes Dr. Stephan Blanford, Executive Director of Children’s Alliance, for a wide-ranging conversation on childcare. They delve into the importance of childcare as an economic driver and its societal impacts through preparing kids for success in school and life. A review of the state of childcare in Washington reveals that this critical resource is often out-of-reach for those who need it most and looks at the factors that make it inaccessible and expensive. Crystal and Dr. Blanford then discuss how various stakeholders can make an impact on the issue at all levels of government.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii, find Dr. Stephan Blanford at @StephanBlanford and Children’s Alliance at @ChildAllianceWA.
Dr. Stephan Blanford
As the Executive Director of Children’s Alliance, Dr. Stephan Blanford leads a team of committed staff, volunteers and more than 6,000 members, advocating fiercely for the improved outcomes for children in Washington state. As an unapologetic advocate for racial and social justice, Stephan’s work has ranged from early learning to college entrance leading small, direct service youth development agencies to multidisciplinary demonstration projects.
In 2013, he was elected by the voters of Seattle and served a four-year term on the Seattle School Board, where he received the “Leadership for Equity” award at the conclusion of his term. More recently, the Evergreen Chapter of the American Society of Public Administrators awarded him the “Billy J. Frank Race and Social Justice” award for leadership and advocacy. Extending his work at a national level, he is the board chair of Integrated Schools and serves on the board of Partnership for America’s Children, Balance our Tax Code Coalition, and several other progressive organizations.
Dr. Blanford holds a Bachelors’ degree in Social Justice from Antioch University, a Masters in Public Policy from the Evans School of Governance and Public Policy and a Doctorate from the College of Education at the University of Washington.
Resources
Children's Alliance
Washington Child Care Collaborative Task Force | Washington State Department of Commerce
2023 KIDS Count Data Book | Annie E. Casey Foundation
“Child care costs more than college in Washington state” by Melissa Santos from Axios
“Report: WA's high cost of child care hits single moms hardest” by Sami West from KUOW
“The Real Costs Of Child Care In America” by Joy Borkholder from InvestigateWest
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well today, I am very pleased to welcome to the program Dr. Stephan Blanford, the Executive Director of Children's Alliance. And I wanted to have a conversation today about childcare - how important it is, how unaffordable it has become, and how we fix this - it's so important to so many people. And so I guess I will just start off by asking you, Stephan, why is childcare so important? Why does it matter so much? And what brought you to this work?
[00:01:24] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Interestingly, I have a background in education - I served as, I was elected and served for a term on the School Board in Seattle. And also my doctoral work was in K-12. And there's a tight correlation between kids having experience in high-quality early learning settings and them doing well in K-12 settings. And so if you are interested in increasing achievement in the K-12 setting - and in particular, if you're interested in addressing the opportunity gaps, the racial opportunity gaps that affect so many children - you have to prioritize early learning and high-quality childcare in order to achieve that goal. And so that's something that I've been passionate about since - in particular - since my young child was of an age where she was getting into childcare. And I learned a lot about it and then have had a passion to try to have all kids have the type of experience that she had.
[00:02:29] Crystal Fincher: Certainly, and I certainly have had my own experiences with childcare with my son, who is now definitely much older than childcare age right now. What do you say to people who say - maybe are an employer - what does childcare have to do with me? Why is this something we should be worried about as a community and as a society?
[00:02:51] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Yeah, that's a great question. Because in many parts of the state - Seattle in particular, but many parts of the state - we're one of the most childless cities in the United States. So lots of people don't have that type of experience where they're looking for childcare, where they even know someone that is seeking out childcare. But it is such an economic driver. And so many of the negative outcomes that we see in society - in all parts of the state and in all parts of the nation - are correlated with kids not doing well in school and then not being successful in life. And so I tell people all the time, whether you are a grandparent that whose kids are no longer in school or a business owner or whatever, there's a huge implication on your life by the access or lack of access to childcare.
[00:03:43] Crystal Fincher: Well, speaking of access - what is the state right now? We hear that it's unaffordable, we hear that it's hard to come by. Is that true?
[00:03:53] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Yes, it is. In many parts of the state, there are families that have to drive great distances in order to find childcare. We call them childcare deserts, where there's such a limited supply of childcare that families are just giving up on that. And in many cases, it affects women - because obviously women are, who would normally be in the workforce are having to make really tough decisions and go back to taking care of kids at home where they would prefer to be out in the workforce and helping to support their families. So it has huge implications, whether you're in one of those childcare deserts or even if you're in a more populated part of the state - because that inability to find any childcare and more importantly to find high-quality childcare has severe implications for families and communities at large.
[00:04:50] Crystal Fincher: Why is it so hard to find?
[00:04:52] Dr. Stephan Blanford: There's a great number of complex factors that lead to the fact that the supply is reduced. The fact that when I sent my kid to childcare - I was also in school in a graduate program - and I was paying more in childcare costs than I was paying for tuition at that time. And that has not improved over the 10 years since I graduated from graduate school. That hasn't changed - where the cost of tuition at the University of Washington is lower than the average cost of childcare in most parts of the state right now. And so - mine is a middle-class family - if you're a low-income family, then the economics of that just do not pan out. And so we are coming to realize that childcare is a public good - it's a public benefit in the same way that K-12 education benefits the community as well as it does the individual child. But we don't have a mechanism by which we can support childcare centers so they can provide this critical service.
And if I could add one more thing that I think is really important and complicates this matter, many of the childcare providers in Washington State and around the country are Black and Brown women. And for some unknown reason that has a lot to do with race and racism, they are undercompensated. It is the third lowest paid profession in Washington State right now. And when we think about the importance and the change in trajectory for kids that having access to high-quality childcare can have, it's unconscionable that that would be the third lowest paid profession. You would think that it would be way up there with doctors and other critical professions - it would be compensated at a rate that is commensurate with its importance in society - but for some reason it is not.
[00:06:51] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And you brought up a great point. It is more expensive to pay for childcare than it is to pay for college, which is really saying something with the inflation that we've seen in higher education prices and along with childcare costs. So in this situation, how is it that costs are so high yet compensation for workers is still so low?
[00:07:18] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Well, there's a big component of it that has to do with ratios. In most childcare centers that are licensed, you have to have a certain number of adults for a certain number of children. And in particular, kids that are 0-3 years old - they require an even more robust ratio to ensure that the kids are safe during that time that they are away from their parents. And so that has a lot of bearing on the cost - as well as a licensed center has to have exits, has to have lots of equipment in the center, has to be safe and obviously secure so kids aren't getting out and getting out into the street or whatever. And all of those costs are borne by the childcare provider, usually a business person who is trying to establish a center that has all the safety measures in place and the appropriate staffing ratios to ensure that kids are safe and learning while they're in their care. And that all of those things together lend themselves to it being a pretty expensive enterprise.
[00:08:27] Crystal Fincher: Now, what does it mean - for a family and for a community - for childcare to be this expensive?
[00:08:34] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Well, we spend a lot of time at Children's Alliance advocating that there is a role that the state government has to play in subsidizing the cost. Because the reality right now is - for low-income families who cannot afford those expensive costs that we've been talking about, that means that their kids don't have access to childcare at all. Or they have access to very low-quality childcare - we're talking about being placed in front of a TV and spending eight hours a day, not engaging in that way - and those are pretty significant, have long term consequences for young children. We believe that there is a role that the state government has to play. It has funded the Fair Start for Kids Act in 2021, which is driving about a billion dollars into the sector. And that's a start, but it is by no means the solution to the problem. So we will continue to advocate for improvements and increased funding to make it more affordable for families - middle- and low-income families - to be able to afford childcare, and also provide support for the providers who are trying to provide the service.
[00:09:49] Crystal Fincher: So, you talk about how it is so challenging for the families to afford it. It sounds like the families who most stand to benefit from high-quality childcare, and who we need to make sure have access, are the ones having the hardest time affording and accessing it. Is that how you see it?
[00:10:09] Dr. Stephan Blanford: That is exactly correct. Yes, that is exactly correct. And so the Fair Start for Kids Act that was passed in 2021 has gone a long way towards making it more affordable, but we don't have enough supply in Washington state. And that lack of supply is impeding the ability of the legislation to provide childcare. Ultimately, if you're a childcare provider and there are subsidies that are available, you're still trying to figure out ways to make sure that all the families in your community are getting childcare. And if you are constrained by the fact that you're only licensed to take care of 15 or 20 or 50 kids, then if there are a 100 kids standing outside your door waiting to get in, then you have to make some difficult choices. And in many cases, the families of those children - those hundred that are stuck outside - they then have to make difficult choices, which include someone staying at home so that there's someone to take care of the children.
[00:11:15] Crystal Fincher: Which again, impacts a family's ability to be economically mobile, to participate fully in our economy, to be able to advance in the workplace. Childcare - for people with kids, communities with kids - is so key to just everybody's ability to function and participate in our society, basically.
[00:11:40] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Right. And it has disproportionate impacts, as I've shared before, on women and their participation in the workforce. There's a study out of Washington State University that says that the gains that have been made in women's participation in the workforce in Washington State have been totally eroded by the fact that childcare is so inaccessible. Women who have decided that they want to participate in the workforce and have made that move and have gotten the training necessary to be able to participate in the workforce - those gains have been eroded by the fact that there is no childcare. And so we're trying to bring that data to legislators and say that we are at a time now where there's need for significant intervention and investment in the childcare sector to ensure that women can participate and children can be served.
[00:12:37] Crystal Fincher: So you talk about there being this shortage and the wages being so low. How do we impact this shortage of childcare workers and pay them a living wage?
[00:12:52] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Well, it has been nice to see - as someone who's kind of a grizzled veteran of advocacy around childcare and other issues - it's been nice to see a coalition of people who are now concerned, who now see the implications of this situation that we're in. So now there are business leaders, governmental leaders who never would have been talking about childcare 5 years ago, 10 years ago. And they now know that it is critically important to the economies of their communities, to business interests, to just every aspect of society. We can't really restart the economy to the degree that it needs to be restarted without a significant investment in accessibility and availability of childcare in the state. It just won't happen. And what it portends - our inaction - is that more and more populations are gonna be disproportionately impacted by that inaction.
[00:14:02] Crystal Fincher: So what else is needed to help address both the affordability and the issues on the business owner's side - like the regulations, which sound like they're necessary to protect kids - and the costs involved?
[00:14:18] Dr. Stephan Blanford: I believe that at some point we're going to have to have a statewide conversation about childcare. And my hope is that that will lead to more significant legislation. And if not legislation, a referendum that is passed or an initiative that is passed by the citizens of the state to tax themselves to be able to afford childcare for anyone who needs it. There are other states that are playing around with the idea of universal pre-K - making sure that every child in the state has access, which means a significant investment in childcare - there's an argument that says that it's a public good and should be funded in the same way that public education is funded. And the economics of it - there's a study that says that for every dollar invested in childcare, there's a $17 return to the economy of the jurisdiction that makes that investment, which is a significant bargain and helps to address some of the biggest challenges that we face around opportunity gaps - racial and economic opportunity gaps. So my hope is that there - we'll continue to have these conversations and get to the point where the voters of the state take this issue up. I believe it will pass. I think enough people are connected to it and understand that they will benefit. And my hope is that we'll see that in the short-term because it's having detrimental impacts right now for families and communities all across the state.
[00:16:07] Crystal Fincher: It absolutely is having detrimental impacts. Barring a statewide initiative being passed - and that's a great idea - what can cities, counties, regions do to try and address this in their own areas?
[00:16:27] Dr. Stephan Blanford: A great question. So I mentioned the fact that I served as a School Board director here in Seattle. And during that time, we were able to create a partnership between Seattle Public Schools and the City of Seattle where there were significant investments and collaboration between the two sectors - the K-12 sector and the early learning sector - to actually have childcare centers based in some of our elementary schools that were under-enrolled. Kids would move directly from the early learning part of the school into the K-12 sector. And there was a national organization that reviewed that collaboration and gave it its highest rating - saying all states in the nation should emulate that type of a model. Because in many cases there are schools that are under-enrolled - so they have classrooms that are unoccupied - and by doing a little bit of work around licensing and changing the structure of the school, they can ensure that kids at all ages in their community from 3 years old to 5 years old, and then from 5 years old to 10 or 11 are served by that elementary school. And I think that's a model that could be emulated in many parts of the state and would go a long way towards solving this problem because there's a significant investment that a business owner has to make in order to secure a space, make the changes in that space before they can open their doors and serve the first child. There are existing buildings - schools - that can solve that problem very easily, but it requires a lot of collaboration and cooperation between schools, cities, and in some cases those aren't easy collaborations to make.
[00:18:25] Crystal Fincher: Definitely, but it does sound promising - obviously, with the review that it received from when it was happening. Is that still happening?
[00:18:34] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Oh yeah, yeah. I was having a conversation with a parent the other day that was talking about the fact that she was able to get childcare and it was just down the street at her local school here in Seattle. And she was just gushing about how important it was and how much it helped her family to be able to have that accessibility and availability so close to their home. And when she got done, I said - Yeah, I was on the School Board, I voted for that, I helped to champion that. And she was really grateful. And it made me very proud because that was a contentious issue - not everybody on the School Board was supportive of that notion. But I know that collaborations between sectors like the early learning sector and the K-12 sector - they go a long way towards addressing some of these very pernicious issues that we've been grappling with for years, like our opportunity gaps, that Black and Brown kids stand to benefit, particularly if those collaborations are set up in the schools that they normally attend.
[00:19:42] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now we also are hearing a lot about school closures right now, about coming deficits, about structural deficits in education. Are these types of partnerships things that can help that kind of situation?
[00:19:59] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Absolutely, absolutely. I think you have hit the nail on the head in that - I hear those stories and I'm really glad that I'm not a School Board director anymore and have to grapple with the declining enrollments that we're starting to see in Seattle and many other school districts. But there's an opportunity there to address the childcare crisis while those schools are going through the challenges that they're going with finance and declining enrollments. I think there's a great opportunity to take some of those classrooms and be very intentional about making them childcare settings. And there's always the possibility that we can be building new childcare settings in communities - and in the short-term, we can redeploy empty classrooms in schools to serve that challenge while we're building those settings 'cause eventually the kids are gonna come back. We know that our enrollments go up and then they go down. And at some point those classrooms are gonna need to be filled by K-5 students. But during that time where we have empty classrooms, why not redeploy them in order to solve the childcare crisis that we are in right now?
[00:21:20] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I think some other things I've heard talked about were challenges with zoning in some areas, challenges with opening up - being allowed to open in certain areas - obviously, in Downtown Seattle and several downtowns who've experienced a lot of growth and the availability of childcare and childcare centers has not grown with them, especially in some of those concentrated areas where it's harder to get real estate, afford a lease, find space. What can be done in that area? Is that something worth addressing and taking on?
[00:21:57] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Yeah, I think so. While I was on the School Board - and I was campaigning 10 years ago, so I've been done with my School Board service for about 6 years - and there was a real push to try to make Downtown more of a living neighborhood and involving having an elementary school being based there, increasing the number of childcare settings. And in many cases, it didn't really pencil out - we have a number of families that are choosing to live in the Downtown area, but not at sufficient numbers to warrant the opening of an elementary school. I don't know if that has changed in the six years that I've been off the board, but we need to make decisions that are based on the data that we have and not use childcare and K-12 as a driver to create that neighborhood. Seattle Public Schools didn't have the luxury of investing, hoping that kids were gonna come. We needed to be sure that kids were already there before we tried to deploy a childcare setting or a K-12 setting there. But the question that you ask, which I think is an important one, has to do with licensing and changing settings to be able to allow children to be served in those settings. And that's a partnership between the City, which can do a lot of the licensing, the state and the school districts in order to work in collaboration to ensure that the spaces are conducive to learning and the safety of the kids that are going to be put there.
[00:23:41] Crystal Fincher: And is there anything within the private sector that employers, especially larger employers, can do to help their employees afford and access childcare?
[00:23:53] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Yes, and many, many employers are starting to do that - either by placing a childcare setting inside of their buildings. And I think in particular, given the fact that there's so many vacancies in office space Downtown - if I were an employer and I was trying to one, get my staff back into the office, and two, help to drive the economy by getting people back to work - I would seriously consider working with a childcare provider to provide their service inside of my building. I can tell you from my own personal experience that I have employees right now who are very challenged by the notion of coming back to work, being back in the office on a regular basis because of the inaccessibility of childcare. And so if there were a site in our offices that was dedicated childcare, I could imagine that those employees would be excited by that notion. They'd be able to hang out with their kid at lunchtime. They would - the transit or the transportation issues that are associated with taking your kid to childcare and then going into the office - a lot of that would be solved because you'd all be in the same place. I have worked for an organization that had onsite childcare, and I know it was a driver - it was something that helped us to attract talent and retain talent because in many cases, people wanted to be in the same building that their kids were getting their childcare.
[00:25:32] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Onsite childcare is an elite benefit for employees with families, certainly. So looking - for average people in the community who recognize that this is a problem, that this is an issue, but maybe aren't seeing the urgency from some of their elected officials or from within their community. What can the average person do to help move policy like this forward, to help advocate for what can help?
[00:26:04] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Well, it's something that Children's Alliance has been working on for quite a while, so I'm gonna be shameless and plug my organization and say - check us out at childrensalliance.org, and you can lend your voice to the many voices that - we have 7,000 members across the state who are all advocating for childcare. We are reaching out to legislators. I have two legislators on my schedule today that I'll be talking to about this issue. And I think it is critical that those who are concerned about this issue, they're reaching out to their legislators and saying the time for studying this is over - we need to take action on it and demanding that type of action. I think that extends to School Board races - here in Seattle, we have School Board races that are occurring right now. City Council races - every opportunity to reach out to your elected officials and share with them why this is a priority. I know from my own experiences as an elected official, childcare is usually way down on the list of things that people think are important. And as we've discussed today, we're now understanding how central it is to so many aspects of life for families and communities all across the state. And so I encourage your listeners to be very active and not just sit on the sidelines around this critical issue.
[00:27:39] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, that's fantastic advice. And even in the candidate world - we've seen candidates in recent years not be able to run or to have to drop out of races for lack of childcare. It really is something affecting everyone. And it also shines a light on the importance of electing people who understand this issue, who have experience with what it's like to deal with this. And hopefully that helps them to be more invested in making some better policy. So I thank you so much for the time that you've taken to speak with us today - very informative, definitely given us a lot to think about, some things to move forward on, and an outlook for and a pathway to get this thing fixed. So thank you so much for your time, Dr. Stephan Blanford.
[00:28:29] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Oh, thank you, Crystal - you ask really good questions and I'm hopeful that we're moving some of your listeners to action.
[00:28:37] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, thank you so much.
[00:28:39] Dr. Stephan Blanford: Thank you.
[00:28:40] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by metro news columnist and opinion editor for The News Tribune in Tacoma, Matt Driscoll!
They discuss numerous counties suing Washington state over behavioral health failures, the importance of a raise for Tacoma City Council and other public servants, Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward’s shady association with Christian nationalist Matt Shea, devastating wildfires and smoke across Washington, and the backstory of Pierce County Village and a recent veto override.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Matt Driscoll, at @mattsdriscoll.
Resources
“Most of Washington’s counties are suing the state for refusing to provide necessary behavioral health treatment under state law” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate
“More than half of WA counties have filed suit against the state for behavioral health failures” by Shauna Sowersby from The News Tribune
“Tacoma City Council is getting a big raise. Think they don't deserve it? Think again” by Matt Driscoll for The News Tribune
“Spokane mayor says she didn't know Matt Shea would be at Christian nationalist concert headlined by Matt Shea's Christian nationalist buddy” by Nate Sanford from Inlander
“Destructive fires swept through Spokane County last weekend, killing two and leaving hundreds without homes” by Samantha Wohlfeil and Nate Sanford from Inlander
“How behind-the-scenes politics helped win approval for Pierce County homeless village” by Shea Johnson from The News Tribune
“In rare move, Pierce County Council overrides executive veto on homeless village zoning” by Becca Most from The News Tribune
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, we are continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: metro news columnist and opinion editor for The News Tribune in Tacoma, Matt Driscoll. Hey!
[00:01:08] Matt Driscoll: Hello - thanks for having me once again - it's always a pleasure.
[00:01:11] Crystal Fincher: Thanks for coming back. We love our super informative and inside look into Pierce County whenever you're on - always a pleasure. I wanna start off talking about something that a lot of counties got together to do this week - and that is sue the state of Washington. Why are they suing and what's happening here?
[00:01:32] Matt Driscoll: It's part of a long-running failure in our state mental health system involving folks who enter the criminal justice system and then get referred, one way or the other, to either competency evaluations or to stand trial, then flipped over to a system of civil commitments. This lawsuit involves 22 counties coming together to sue the state, claiming that the state - at facilities like Western State Hospital - is failing to provide the services to folks who do flip into that civil commitment area. And recently DSHS, Western State has been refusing a lot of those patients because they say they've been working to make room for folks who fall under the Trueblood settlement, which was the State Supreme Court ruling that basically - found that the state has an obligation and needs to do more to provide the competency evaluations and those sorts of things and potential restorative services to make someone able to stand trial. So it all involves folks who enter into the criminal justice system, then get referred to behavioral health, mental health stuff, and basically just the state's long-running failure to be able to provide the kinds of services and beds that those folks need and they deserve. It's all very complicated. It's just another indication of the state's continued failure to provide those services and beds. We've been talking about this for a very long time. It's very clear that it's still a total failure on the state's part, at least in my opinion.
[00:03:01] Crystal Fincher: As you said, we've been talking about failures in this system for years - have heard some shocking and horrifying stories over the years. This is an issue that has been one of the biggest dogging Governor Inslee's administration during this term. And not to say he's absolutely the cause of all of these problems - I'm sure some of them were definitely inherited, there's a lot of challenges within this system. And as they point out, there have been recent investments to try and deliver on that settlement in the Trueblood decision, to try and turn the corner and get out of this crisis. One of the challenges here that they brought up is that there seems to be a conflict in that Trueblood decision - something that essentially is breaking this current system. As the Governor's office pointed out in their response, the Trueblood decision actually prevents them from taking new civil commitment clients. And that's one of the things that the counties are saying - Hey, they shouldn't be doing. So this almost seems like partly a corrective measure or seeking order to say - There's a conflict here - this order is essentially grinding this system to a halt. Once again, we're trying to fix it - we need some order. Do you know if there's some other entity that can take these civil commitments?
[00:04:15] Matt Driscoll: Just to be 100% clear on this, I am by no means an expert on the intricacies of the state's behavioral health system - it's supposed to work and it's not working. That being said, it's another one of these massive gaps that we see so often in our system. You're right about the horror stories, going back to the Trueblood decision - you still hear, to this day, stories about folks who end up in jails for long periods of time, even before they've stood trial, waiting to have services available at somewhere like Western State where they can even get a competency evaluation. Think about the human rights aspects of that - of people being warehoused in jails, awaiting these court-mandated evaluations - that's the problem that Trueblood's intending to fix. On the same token, we've clearly got all these folks who shouldn't be in the criminal justice system. As the governor pointed out and others pointed out - in defense of the state, if you will - the referrals for these civil commitments are way up in recent years. I forget the statistics off the top of my head, but I think it might be like 40%, so we're seeing more and more of these folks being flipped out of the criminal justice system intended to send to the civil commitment system. It's just not working and there's a huge gap. And we can talk about how complicated it all is, and the way it gets siloed, and all the ways it's supposed to work, and the way it's not working - we have a wholly inadequate behavioral health system in our state. Decades and decades of underfunding - we've never acknowledged, we've done some piecemeal stuff. I certainly give the state and the Inslee administration credit for recent investments, but the bottom line is that this is piecemeal drops in the buckets trying to patch up a system that is just wholly unprepared to meet the demands of today. And people are suffering because of it.
[00:05:54] Crystal Fincher: People are suffering, their civil rights are being violated, and some of these are resulting in horrific abuses in these overworked, sometimes unaccountable systems. This is happening against a backdrop of several employees within DSHS calling for the head of DSHS to resign. How does this even get untangled? It's time for major, systemic, urgent action beyond what we've done - clearly, what is already happening is not enough.
[00:06:25] Matt Driscoll: One thing that the counties point out in the lawsuit is because these civil commitments are not being accepted or in some cases being discharged, you've got public safety issues. You have folks who the system has determined would be best served by ongoing treatment and civil commitments essentially being released. And that's, again - wherever you fall on the debates of how the state should be handling the interaction of criminal justice and behavioral health, it's just a bad scene all around. As a state with as many resources as Washington, we should be ashamed - similar to our public education system. A left-leaning state with progressive lawmakers and clear Democratic majorities - the fact that we are so clearly failing on this stuff is a black eye and again, people are suffering because of it.
[00:07:10] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I also wanna talk about a recent decision from a commission in Tacoma that's going to take effect soon to increase the salaries, by a pretty significant amount, of the Tacoma City Council. And you wrote a column about this this week, which I thought was very timely and appropriate and a conversation that a lot of cities are having and more will continue to. And that's - these raises are absolutely justified and should go further when we look at the scope of responsibility involved in these positions. What did you talk about in your column?
[00:07:46] Matt Driscoll: This has been an issue for me for a long time, as someone who's followed City Council government in Tacoma. At the root of the problem, it's that historically - City Council in Tacoma, third largest city in the state - it's considered a part-time job, it's paid as such. The reality of it is that anyone who served in that position knows it's not a part-time job, it's a full-time job. When I started at The News Tribune, councilmembers were making $40,000. Considering the challenges that Tacoma faces, I think there's lots of room for critique. People can see these raises and think about job performance - Do these guys deserve raises? But that's not really what it's about, right? It's about our system of government and who has the ability to run for office and serve under kind of the framework we have set up. We have historically considered this a part-time, low-paying position. If you're an average person in Tacoma with a family or financial responsibilities, the idea of signing up for what you're paid for as a part-time job that's clearly gonna be a full-time job and still trying to meet any of that - it becomes impossible. It severely limits the pool of candidates that are available.
[00:08:56] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - several perspectives are left out. Beyond that, we're asking them to do such an important job. The things we talk about every week on this show - from public safety to economic development to land use policy and educational decisions - every thing that touches your life, we're asking them to do. It's wild to me that in the same society, we will justify $100 million salaries of CEOs of companies, yet cities and organizations with comparable budgets we're asking to settle for $30,000, $50,000. When we look at how important the job is and the expertise and commitment that it really does require, there's no getting around the fact that this is definitely a full-time job, especially - when it's done right, it's beyond a full-time job. I think most people can agree, no matter what your political affiliation, that it's not. We also are talking about shortages in several of these sectors too, so we need to pay people more for the work that's being done if we wanna expect better results.
[00:10:00] Matt Driscoll: And it's like, regardless of what you think about the current council's job performance, what do you want your City Council person to be? Do you want it to be someone who is dedicating 20 hours a week to it and juggling a bunch of other stuff, or do you want somebody who's able to attack it like a full-time job and dedicates the time and energy it takes - both to be responsive to citizen concerns and do the homework that it takes to make good policy decisions? This isn't to call out any particular City councilmembers over the years, but I think if you've closely observed City Council here in Tacoma, you can see folks are learning these issues as they go and they're asking these questions, and a lot of times you'll be - Oh my God, that's a pretty obvious question. Do you want someone who has the time to dedicate to the job? And even more than that, do you want to make this a job feasible for some people to take on, or do you want to make this a job that only a few fairly privileged, essentially wealthy or better off folks can take on? For most people, the question is the latter.
I think historically the idea of making Tacoma City, or a city council, and even the State Legislature part-time is that it would allow average people to serve in democracy - that's one of the ideals there. But in practice, I think what it really does, particularly these days, is it severely limits the type of people who are able to feasibly serve in office. You see that in some of the races that we've got going this year in Tacoma, particularly on the Jamika Scott District 3 race, where she's a local community activist and artist. She's more of an average person - she doesn't have a bunch of money, she's not the executive director at some nonprofit. For an average person to make the commitment to run for office and find the time to doorbell, it's a huge commitment - full-time plus work for part-time pay.
[00:11:50] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - completely agree. I want to talk about another city - the City of Spokane and the activities of its mayor. The mayor and Christian nationalist extremist, former State Representative Matt Shea, attended a TPUSA event where they were just talking about a bunch of extreme, out-of-touch things while the ashes of neighborhoods were still smoldering nearby. What happened here? What is the reaction?
[00:12:23] Matt Driscoll: Mayor of Spokane, Mayor Woodward, appeared at an event - Matt Shea was involved, Christian nationalist organization. She was apparently invited on stage for prayer, and Shea was there and prayed for her. And of course then all hell broke loose because of Shea's background and the backgrounds of some of the other folks involved. Of course, the mayor immediately said - Didn't know Shea was going to be there, wasn't my intention, I'm disgusted by all his views. It turns out maybe she'd been to events with Matt Shea in the past - I think a lot of people really didn't buy that excuse.
But the bigger thing here, really, is yet another instance that illustrates the complexity and tension in the Republican Party. Lawmakers on the right who are "the good ones" or "the saner ones" - and there are a lot of Republicans, on the whole - in Pierce County in particular, Bruce Dammeier, JT Wilcox, leaders that I disagree with fundamentally. This tension between trying to be one of those not-extremist conservatives, but then the votes relies to some extent to courting the more extreme elements of the party. What ends up happening is these leaders awkwardly, unsuccessfully try to find this middle ground where they can not alienate the extreme elements of the party while not appearing extreme themselves, or maybe not even being "extreme" themselves. But it just never works and it ends up looking dumb. And this is just another example of that where they try to have it both ways - they try to disavow the extreme elements of the party, but then they still rely on extreme elements of the party for the support they need to win elections and serve in office. I certainly have no sympathy for the mayor of Spokane. It was very predictable that this would happen. If you find yourself at white nationalist organized events or religious extremist organized events, it's very easy to not get on stage or not do that. She signed up for it. She got what she deserved. I don't think it's probably the last time we'll see something like this either.
[00:14:20] Crystal Fincher: I don't even view the situation as there being extreme elements within the party - that is the party, that is the base, that is now the mainstream of the party. It's beyond local party activists - these are their leaders. There is a nostalgia that I see, especially from national political pundits, wanting to still give credit to those moderates - those moderates are enabling the extremism. They are enabling this extremism that in public they try and distance themselves from. Even though she tried to say - Oh, I had no idea, she's been to an event just like this before. Even if she had no idea Matt Shea was there before, which no one buys, she got up there, saw him there and gave him a hug, and allowed him to lay hands on her and pray. Heard right before - them talk about the "problem with homosexuality" - obviously there is no problem with homosexuality, that's an extreme belief. That is the party - several electeds within the party, donors within the party, the people making decisions about the platform on the party.
I made the bad decision of watching that Republican debate. I saw a lot of people going - Oh, these are extreme beliefs. They're not targeting the average American anymore - they're really fine with disenfranchising the average American. They are speaking to that base that's going to elevate people like this to these elected positions and hope for treatment as moderates in the media. This is an opportunity in Spokane to once again point out that these are extreme beliefs. These are beliefs that our Supreme Court has rejected, our State Supreme Court has rejected - and that we don't want. Clearly she knows that. She wasn't really sad about it happening, or else she wouldn't have appeared with him before and been chummy. They want to be able to do this behind closed doors. And lots of people will cite JT Wilcox, who I know lots of people have good relationships with - people like that need to contend with who the party is today. You're affixing your name to that label? - you can be what you are without that label. If you are attaching that label and participating in that, this is what you are enabling.
[00:16:24] Matt Driscoll: Where do the folks like the JT Wilcoxes or the Bruce Dammeiers go within this party, right? If they are the moderates they claim to be, the Republican Party depends on that support. If they try to find that middle ground, then it ends up working out like this. Again, I don't have any sympathy for it. I wrote a column in the Trump years and I've just halfway defended folks like JT Wilcox and Bruce Dammeier about why they hadn't condemned Trump. What JT Wilcox will tell you - I'm a local guy and I stay out of national politics. And that's fine, I have a lot of respect for JT as an individual. But can you see what's going on? And do you have the backbone to stand up and say - This is wrong, this is not what I represent - even if it means that you might get voted out, or that you might not be in office, or that you might make your life more difficult. What we see most of the time is elected officials, politicians - they're not willing to do that. They're not willing to disavow or distance themselves from this stuff because they don't want to risk their jobs as an elected official or their powers - and maybe some of them genuinely do it out of the hope that if they just stick it out long enough, they'll be able to course correct on that party. That's a flawed idea. Whether you agree with Chris Vance or not, the way he describes it is pretty accurate at this point - it's the base of the party and folks need to make their decisions on whether that's the party they agree with. What we see, more times than not, is folks trying to have their cake and eat it too.
[00:17:56] Crystal Fincher: Chris Vance made the decision to not affiliate with that label - if that's who's standing beside him, then he needs to move to a different place. On both the Republican and Democratic side, that affiliation with the party comes with tremendous resources - an absolute resource advantage over someone who is running as an Independent or with a minor party - everything from voter file access, which is useful, important information about voters from public sources and from private commercial sources, information like that is very helpful to a campaign. Things like donations and structure and endorsements and volunteers - those kinds of things are often built-in to the support of a party. It is a challenge to run outside of a major party. There were some character-defining moments for a lot of these people - maybe if they would have seen this rising extremism take over the mainstream of the party, maybe we don't find ourselves here. That attachment to power also can be corrosive - if you see something that is turning your stomach, it's not okay to stay silent, no matter which party you're a part of.
[00:19:03] Matt Driscoll: Yeah, this continues to be a character-defining moment. These leaders still have the opportunity - they can still come out and say - This is wrong. And continually they don't. I don't really expect that to change. The opportunity still is there for them to take a stand. They don't, because if you alienate the base of the party, you're gonna be out of luck. And Chris Vance, for all his wisdom, is out of luck. He ran for office a couple cycles ago, and he lost badly - can't be a moderate conservative without the support of the Republican Party and if you alienate the Trump support, you're out of luck.
[00:19:40] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, part of what made this so scandalous in the first place and so offensive to people is that this was happening amidst really destructive fires that swept through Spokane County last weekend. We see the 20,000 acres at that time up in flames, 265 structures destroyed, including a ton of homes, two people killed that we know of, lots of people not knowing what to do. Spokane City Councilmember Zack Zappone showed a picture of the street where his parents live - all of the houses were burnt down - his parents lost their home, his uncle lost his home. Just feel for everybody involved in that situation - I can't even imagine - it's just so totally devastating.
[00:20:21] Matt Driscoll: On the human level, on the individual level - that loss, the death toll is staggering - just a lot of thoughts for everyone going through that. For a long time in my life, we talked about climate change and we talked about the problem it presented. It was academic, right? We saw the video of the polar bear with nowhere to go. When I started at The News Tribune, there wasn't really a summer smoke season. And now it's late August - it's the smoke season - it's a reality of life now. And then I think about my kids - I got a 16-year-old daughter, a 12-year-old son, 8-year-old daughter. It's really heavy to think about the impacts that we've seen from climate change and the way it's escalated. History is so long - a lot of times it's difficult to track the change, right? - it feels long. But with this devastation that we've seen that's tied to climate change in recent years and that trend - it's just really depressing - in Western Washington now, and this will probably be our reality moving forward. It's heartbreaking.
[00:21:24] Crystal Fincher: This has not been normal for me my entire life. The warnings from climate scientists - we did not heed them for decades, and here we are - it's scary. The reality is this is as good as it's going to be for a while. This is actually going to get much worse. It's up to us and what we decide to do now - it's gonna get worse before it gets better. Are we gonna choose to make it better or not? This is a tangent - I'm on an age divide - you look at polling, and I'm right there on the divide where opinion splits. I talk to people on the older side of that divide who are more complacent, who don't necessarily feel the urgency. And then those on the younger side - and it's 15, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, especially working in politics - you see things like slogans, "fighting for our lives, fighting for our futures," and those are slogans to some people. What does it look like when you are literally fighting for your life? What does it look like when you don't want to see this kind of destruction happening everywhere? We're not even talking about the hurricane in Southern California and Nevada - this is all wild, and we're seeing increasingly wild things across the globe. This is only going to accelerate. It's decisions like whether to build a new freeway or not. It's decisions like whether to invest in and build out pipelines for gas and coal. At every level of government, at every level of power - decisions are being made every day - we can't afford for more hurt right now. We're seeing activism, we're seeing direct action. These stakes are high, and I just wish more people understood and felt that. It's just really hard right now. There are a lot of different interests. These are the consequences.
[00:23:00] Matt Driscoll: There is one thing that gives me any glimmer and hope in this - is the younger generation. The stakes are exactly as you described for them. I think of my kids and the world that we've left them - the idea that this is baseline. How much worse do you want it to get? I'm not going to chalk this up to human nature, but you mentioned complacency. It's a little crazy how easy people grow accustomed to something like smoke season now. Are we cool with just getting used to this? Are we all right with that? It feels like a lot of people are. Maybe it's just my nature, but I have a lot of empathy for people in general, 'cause it's hard, man. It's hard out there being a person. It's hard to support yourself. We haven't made it any easier in the United States. There's a lot that just goes into surviving. Asking people to think above and beyond that, it's a big ask - and it's also unfair. We lay a lot of this climate change stuff, this environmental stuff on the individual - like you shouldn't be watering your grass, or you should buy an electric car. Those things are good, but it almost gives the real culprit - the governments and the fossil fuel companies - a pass. We end up guilt tripping each other - How long was your shower and stuff? If we really want to do something about this, it's gonna take exactly what you talked about - reimagining transportation, not building freeways, being willing to say - Yeah, traffic's bad right now, we're not gonna build another freeway, we gotta figure this out a different way. Or we have the capacity for a new airport, but air travel's terrible and it's one of the biggest causes of greenhouse gases - we're gonna figure something else out, and it's probably gonna be difficult in the interim, but we just don't have a choice. We never want to make that choice. We always want to push it down the road a little bit, make a little bit of improvements. This incremental change - the incremental change is not going fast enough. It's gonna take drastic measures. It's gonna take major changes to the way our life. It's gonna take just major restructuring of the way we do things. We still get to make the choice. It's just that one of those options results in stuff like we're seeing now.
[00:25:09] Crystal Fincher: The final thing I want to talk about today has been the topic of discussion in Pierce County for quite some time, a hot topic on the Pierce County Council - and they've gone back and forth. It's this Pierce County Village, which is the county trying to solve one of the problems, one of the crises that it's dealing with - homelessness - and looking at building a, what is it, 265-unit building to house and service people who've been experiencing homelessness and try and get them on a path to housing stability. But oh, it is not simple, and there have been some twists and turns. What is this and what has been happening?
[00:25:50] Matt Driscoll: Yeah, it's a very Pierce County story - I really love it for that, 'cause it is very complicated. What the county wants to do - and by the county, I mean the County Executive Bruce Dammeier and his administration - is permanent supportive housing. It's housing designed for chronically homeless individuals. It's not like an apartment building-type situation - it's actually individual homes in a community. The County Executive's office became enamored with this model - it has had some success, from what I understand, in Texas - and they wanted to bring it back to Pierce County. This was a number of years ago. They started the process of potentially looking for a location for it, which proved really difficult because it's a major project. They eventually settled on a piece of land out in the Spanaway area - it's got some wetlands, it's got some concerns around it. They ended up choosing a provider to run it - Tacoma Rescue Mission. What they want to do is use about $21, $22 million in federal COVID money to build this site and then let Tacoma Rescue Mission run it. To make it feasible, they changed some zoning.
Broadly, it's an idea that has widespread support. It's something that the Democrats, liberals have supported for a long time. I support it, I think it's a good idea. Providing permanent supportive housing, 200-some-odd units of it, it's a good idea. But the details of it have become very tricky. There's some questions about - was the Rescue Mission kind of baked in as a provider even before they saw it for applicants? Are they pushing too hard on this specific piece of land? There's challenges now to the zoning changes. It is very complicated. It's moving forward, but it's got some significant hurdles to clear. The most recent development is the County Council changed the zoning to make it possible - that was challenged by a couple of places, and that's where things stand.
[00:27:34] Crystal Fincher: I just want to point out for those who are not familiar with Pierce County politics, Pierce County Council - the Pierce County Executive is a Republican. And what's the split on the Council now between Republican and Democrat?
[00:27:46] Matt Driscoll: It's a slight Democrat majority - I believe it's 4-3. The only reason I hesitate is because Tacoma has nine, Pierce County has seven - I always have to do the math - it's 4-3, 4-3 leaning Dems.
[00:27:56] Crystal Fincher: I always get confused with the numbers. You look at a city like Burien and the mess that they're going through with their majority on their council - this is a different kind of situation. Sometimes where you have a Republican executive saying - Hey, we think this can work, there's a model somewhere, let's go learn about it - actually engaging in trying to have a solution, the conversation is starting with action, and what are we going to do? There was a piece this week in The News Tribune going through public records - looking at this model, one of the controversies starting out was that this trip was taken with the Tacoma Rescue Mission and went on this learning, fact-finding mission to see what Austin's doing up close, to see if it's something that could be feasible here. And the contract to do this that was competitively bid ended up going to the same person, which made - the same organization involving this person - making some people go - Wait a minute. Was the fix in on this contract? - especially looking at some of the scoring of the bidding. That seems like maybe it was cooked a little bit in favor of this, but then you have other people saying - This is a pretty normal way that something like this progresses. How did you see this?
[00:29:09] Matt Driscoll: Yeah, Pierce County is a big county, but just small-town style - I love this stuff, there is so much depth to it. At the center of this, you have the county, which has access to $21, $22 million in federal funds to do something about homelessness. The county executive wants to give that to Tacoma Rescue Mission, which as you point out, won a competitive bid to build this facility. The idea is that through philanthropic fundraising and just what the Rescue Mission does, they'll be able to fund it moving forward. What makes it slightly different is you've got a Republican county executive saying - We have to do something to serve this population, to house this population, and the answer is permanent supportive housing - which is a little outside the box for conservatives. The County Executive's Office believes that, with this one-time investment, the government can step back. Then you get into questions of Duke Paulson from the Rescue Mission going on these trips even before the bids start being taken - lo and behold, the Rescue Mission wins the bid, LIHI was the other bidder. There was a competitive bid process - they did go through steps, but naturally it raises questions of - Was that kind of procedural? Was that legitimate?
When it all comes out in the wash, it's a very Pierce County thing - there's reason for concern of - was this the outcome everyone wanted from the beginning? You can make the answer that - yeah, yeah, clearly it was. I think they went down there, they got this idea in mind, they thought the Rescue Mission would be a good place to run it, and that's where they ran with. On the other end of the spectrum there, I think it's important to keep in mind that the Rescue Mission has a long history of serving homelessness in Pierce County. Regardless of what you believe about the religious aspects of Rescue Mission does, they're a well-respected organization in Pierce County when it comes to serving the homeless. Pierce County is a small place. Should we not expect the County Executive's Office to have a close working relationship with one of the primary providers of homelessness in Pierce County? It raises a lot of questions about backroom deals. It's important to keep in mind at the end of the day, they are trying to do something good. I think it's good that we're asking these questions. It's good that we have this coverage. My colleague, Shea Johnson, just delivered a big package on this this week - it's really well done, folks should read it. It's small-town politics and they're trying to do something good, but there are a lot of questions along the way.
[00:31:21] Crystal Fincher: Including questions about the site that has been determined for this. Siting is always a major issue, especially when it comes to siting things that are going to serve the homeless. People have a lot of feelings about this - some don't want it to happen at all, but a site was chosen. This site that was chosen - in the Spanaway area - there may be some environmental concerns. Sometimes things look very black and white from a simple explanation, but it is not infrequent in these situations where you have multiple issues, multiple interests, multiple people who ultimately want good things having different perspectives and having issues impact these groups and these stakeholders in different ways. Is it okay to move forward on a site? We just talked about having to take urgent action to mitigate climate change, to not - continuous sprawl, destroying local ecosystems - that seems to be the major issue in first passing this and then the repeal of the passage over the veto of the Pierce County Executive of the zoning for the site. They could still move forward, but wouldn't have future flexibility attached to this use without another change.
[00:32:36] Matt Driscoll: You're right. The Rescue Mission has cleared certain hurdles at this point - the reversal of the zoning change wouldn't affect them - they're vested, they can move forward provided they continue to check the boxes in terms of all the sorts of things they'd have to do to make it happen. The ways that this is potentially getting derailed has a lot to do with politics. At the center of what we have going on here is a dispute on the Growth Management Act. And one of the reasons that this was interesting from the beginning is you had a Republican county executive proposing a major facility to serve the chronically unhoused - the most difficult population to serve. He wanted to put that in rural Pierce County. Normally what happens with something like that is it gets smack dab in the middle of Tacoma, right? Because none of these outlying, more conservative areas want anything to do with that. So the very fact that he was willing to acknowledge that it would be advantageous to put a facility like this somewhere in the more rural parts of the county where - assuming his base is out there - that took some guts and there's been a lot of pushback on that.
But you also see attention here where the county executive is saying - Look, in order to build the type of housing we need to serve the unhoused, we need to build facilities like this in areas that are potentially sensitive. That's a broad description, but I think that's what it comes down to. The zoning was challenged and the County Council is getting advice that there might be something to those challenges, particularly the second one has them a little bit worried. They went back and changed the zoning to get out of trouble, to quash those challenges. You have a much broader debate about land use and sprawl and what we should build where, and you've got familiar conservative talking points of - like we need to make it easier for people to build wherever they want. Then you've got kind of Democrats on the Council saying - You know, zoning matters, we have to protect these areas, we have to limit sprawl. But does that then mean that all the stuff that we build ends up being dense, transit-oriented? One of the elements that the county executive's office would say is appealing about this model is because it is more individual homes, it's not a warehousing situation, it's a community. This tension over growth management and how much flexibility should we create to allow this to be built in areas that are designated as sensitive or more rural - I don't know.
[00:35:01] Crystal Fincher: You're doing a fantastic job explaining it. This is a complex issue that takes some time to talk through. One of the reasons why I do this show is so we can talk through it and really come to an understanding. I really appreciated that package in The News Tribune this week that gave really helpful background and context to what's happening. The final element is that the viability and success of this relies on private fundraising - it does seem there's some money out there. The flags raised with this repeal of zoning is that this may make fundraising for this property more complicated, more challenging - seeing as that there may not be the flexibility moving forward, or the seeming collaboration, or green light that some people may have previously thought was there. Who knows what's gonna happen? Do you see this likely being built? What do you see moving forward?
[00:35:55] Matt Driscoll: I'm not exactly sure how much of that I buy from Tacoma Rescue Mission and its supporters - I've got a lot of respect for that agency - I know Duke well. What we're seeing here is they're trying to maintain as much flexibility as possible to move forward from a development standpoint, as advantageous to what they wanna do in the future. The bottom line is they could build what they propose to build, provided they clear the necessary hurdles as it speaks. So I don't know how sympathetic I am to the idea that they need additional flexibility to build even more on sensitive areas or whatever - or we need to change the zoning across the whole county to make this thing possible - but I could be wrong on that. But in terms of its overall prospects, one other thing I would note that makes this interesting is because there is another political element in this question about funding. The Democrats on the Council, to their credit, support such an idea. They really leveraged the County Executive and Republicans' desire to build this thing into passing a behavioral health sales tax, which could potentially go to fund something like this, or something much like this, down the road. That's another element of that - the support for this village ultimately hinged on Republicans being willing to support them and passing that - they needed a super majority. So that's another interesting wrinkle on this. And one of the reasons I love this issue - because it's just so Pierce County - it's politics and power and relationships, but I think everyone is trying to do a good thing. We're trying to build permanent supportive housing. We're trying to protect sensitive areas and limit sprawl.
So your broader question - Will this thing get built? I have no idea. When it initially went through, I probably would have put it at maybe 70/30. The package that Shea Johnson put together really illustrates the desire and the support to get this thing together. It has bipartisan support. Everybody wants to build 200-some odd units of permanent supportive housing. There's the desire locally to do it. I do think that politics in Pierce County requires Democrats and Republicans to work together to do things. There's not a potential here in Pierce County for Democrats to just do everything the way they want to do it - that's not gonna happen - you're gonna have to work together in some regard. And here you have an opportunity to work together to build what could be a really important project for the area.
[00:38:09] Crystal Fincher: Makes sense to me. Well, we will continue to follow that - certainly a lot to follow and a lot left to see as it develops.
And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, August 25th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is the incredible Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is metro news columnist and opinion editor for The News Tribune in Tacoma, Matt Driscoll - always great insight and information from Matt.
[00:38:38] Matt Driscoll: It was wonderful to be here once again - like I think I said last time - I always enjoy the opportunity to come on here and play exotic Pierce County man for the listeners up north. Again, I feel like I - there's so much to get into with the homeless village and I appreciate your time, your willingness to dedicate some time to it and talk about it. I would just recommend folks read the package 'cause I don't really feel like I did it justice - it's very complicated, it's been going on for a long time, but it's really important for this neck of the woods. So thanks for having me on.
[00:39:04] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And we will link that in the resources in the show notes and online. You can find Matt on Twitter @mattsdriscoll. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can find me on all of the platforms @finchfrii, that's two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the podcast - to get the Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show - delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, please leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
For this Friday show, we present Part 2 of the Hacks & Wonks 2023 Post-Primary Roundtable which was live-streamed on August 8, 2023 with special guests - journalists Daniel Beekman, Guy Oron, and Melissa Santos.
In Part 2, the panel breaks down primary election results for Seattle City Council races in Districts 6 and 7 - which both feature incumbents employing different strategies to hold their seats - and explore whether any overarching narratives are on display in the Seattle results. The discussion then moves on to contrasting races in King County Council Districts 4 and 8, before wrapping up with what each panelist will be paying most attention to as we head towards the November general election.
Find Part 1 on our website and in your podcast feed.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s special guests, Daniel Beekman at @DBeekman, Guy Oron at @GuyOron, and Melissa Santos at @MelissaSantos1.
Resources
Hacks & Wonks 2023 Post-Primary Roundtable Livestream | August 8th, 2023
Transcript
[00:00:00] Shannon Cheng: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I’m Shannon Cheng, Producer for the show. You’re listening to Part 2 of our 2023 Post-Primary Roundtable, with guests Daniel Beekman, Guy Oron and Melissa Santos, that was originally aired live on Tuesday, August 8th. Part 1 was our last episode – you can find it in your podcast feed or on our website officialhacksandwonks.com. You can also go to the site for full video from the event and a full text transcript of the show. Thanks for tuning in!
[00:00:42] Crystal Fincher: So also want to talk about the next district here - a race with an incumbent here - Dan Strauss and Pete Hanning. One where there was quite a bit of money in this race, quite a bit of spending. Dan Strauss - this was really interesting because as we touched on before, we saw with Tammy Morales really leaning into her record and a seeming justification and approval of that and almost a mandate from voters to continue on in the same direction based on how she represented herself - different strategy here and someone looking like they're running away from their record a bit or saying - Hey, I'm course correcting here. So do people know what they're getting? Do people know what they're expecting? But still a strong result for an incumbent here, with Dan Strauss currently at 51.77% of the vote in District 6. And then Pete Hanning, who was the Seattle Times-endorsed candidate with 29.32% of the vote, despite almost over $96,000 raised. How did you see this race, Melissa?
[00:01:58] Melissa Santos: I think Dan has probably looked at this a little more closely, but I did find it interesting that Dan Strauss - getting back to Dan Beekman's point earlier - was Dan Strauss was just saying "Defund the Police" was a mistake - he just said it straight up. That's just - he was emphasizing that. And I - that has to be a reflection of his district. And I - gosh, I should be more familiar with the new district lines, but we are talking about a different district than District 3, which is central Seattle, here. We're talking about - I actually mix up the two guys on the council not infrequently, it's super embarrassing - but anyway, so Dan Strauss's district though is very different than central Seattle. It's not Andrew Lewis's district, which is different, but we're talking an area that does have more conservative pockets - conservative as it gets in Seattle in a way. So "Defund the Police" he's saying was a mistake, but then other people - that message hasn't resonated in some of the other races. So we are talking about a district that is very unique, I think, from some of the central Seattle districts in that apparently Dan's doing really well, just completely acting like "Defund the Police" was a discussion that never should have happened. So will be interesting seeing what happens there.
[00:03:16] Crystal Fincher: What do you think, Dan?
[00:03:19] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, I don't know. I think Dan Strauss is definitely benefiting from being an incumbent to the extent that people - they may not feel like they love the guy, although some voters, I'm sure, do - but they know who he is, they know his name, he's been in office. He gives off - or tries to give off - a sort of I'm-just-Dan-from-Ballard vibe, your local guy who you know, a nice guy. Maybe that probably puts off some people, but I think he benefits from that in people just looking at the ballot and they may know The Red Door, but they may not know Pete Hanning's name.
The one thing that I thought - I was looking at - that was most interested in was this is the district that changed most dramatically in redistricting. So it used to be the west part of north of the cut - Ballard, going up all the way up to Blue Ridge, etc, Broadview, and then over towards Green Lake. But now it hops the cut and basically is like Ballard, Fremont, and Magnolia - and looking at sort of the maps, all that's been released mapwise in terms of precinct level results is Election Night, so it's not the full picture, but you get a sense for the pattern. And overall the map, I don't think looks any different from any other Seattle election map, but this is a new configuration for that district and so interesting to see. Dan Strauss did very well in central Ballard, the more apartment-heavy part of Ballard and Fremont. And that Pete Hanning's stronghold, to the extent he had one in the primary, was in Magnolia, which isn't necessarily surprising. But it's just - it's a new map, so it's fun to see a new map.
[00:05:32] Crystal Fincher: It is fun to see a new map. How did you see this, Guy?
[00:05:37] Guy Oron: Yeah, Dan Strauss had a very impressive personal mandate - I think he got the most votes by far out of any of the Seattle City Council races - and this was the only district that reached like 40% turnout. So I wonder if that's in part because of just the demographics - being wealthier, whiter, more middle class. But I do wonder how much of that mandate is just because he's the default, milquetoast, moderate white guy. Or if it's just like people are passionate about him. Or I think a lot of people read The Stranger and voted for him - that would be my guess. And also he's incumbent and he's somehow managed to spin himself as not being that inoffensive. And also, I'm curious about Pete Hanning - if his candidate quality was as high as some of the other candidates in terms of getting his name recognition out there and actually making a mark - and so that would be his challenge going into the general election. But I would be very, very shocked if Strauss doesn't win at this point.
[00:06:59] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it would be unprecedented for someone in Strauss's position, or really someone in Morales's position, not to be successful in the general. The power of incumbency is real. It is really, really hard to take out an incumbent, which is why sometimes you hear with a number of challengers, excitement - that it takes the electorate being in a place where they're ready to make a change and signaling they're going to make a change - and then takes a candidate who can take advantage of that. It looks like some were banking on the electorate being in more of a mood for a change than they actually are, which I think changes perhaps some of the strategy that some of the challengers had going in. But I think this is a case where there's an incumbent and people may have their feelings - I think he does try to be generally inoffensive and it's hard for a lot of the district to really, to very strongly passionately dislike him. But even those who were open to a change, it's one thing to say - Okay, I'm willing to hear other points of view - but it does take a candidate who can really articulate a clear vision and connect with voters to give them something that they can say - Okay, I can say yes to this, there is another vision here that I'm aligned with. And I don't know that voters heard another vision that they're necessarily aligned with unless they were really unhappy in the first place. It just looks like the amount of people who were really unhappy with their own councilmember just is not that big of a number, not one that's automatically creating a shift on the council. And so I think the job of a number of these challengers is a little bit harder than they bargained for.
And I think here in another race - a closer race with an incumbent - in District 7, Andrew Lewis finished with, or currently has as of today the 8th, 43.47% of the vote to Bob Kettle's 31.5%. How do you see this race shaping up, Guy?
[00:09:12] Guy Oron: Yeah. I thought - this was really a little surprising to me that Lewis did so poorly here. He still got the plurality, but he didn't have any challenges from the left, so it was a lot of pretty right-wing candidates or center who were really attacking him for his drug ordinance vote, policing. And I think this is probably the place we can expect a Chamber of Commerce or their successor organizations to pour in a ton of money to unseat him, to unseat Lewis. We also saw very low turnout in part because I think places like South Lake Union have a lot of expats and a lot of folks who are from around the country who don't pay attention to local politics. And so it might be important to have a ground game and activate those voters, and for Lewis just to find new voters instead of trying to look weak and flip-flop on issues. But that's just my two cents.
[00:10:23] Daniel Beekman: Go ahead, Daniel. Yeah. I was just thinking that Guy was making some good points there and in theory, turnout should grow from the primary to the general election just as a rule. So yeah, Andrew Lewis is going to need to go after more voters. And in his 2019 race, he had the advantage of not just, I think, ad spending outside, but he had - I remember because I went out with them - hotel workers, union hotel workers knocking doors, turning out the vote for him on their own through independent work from his campaign, independent from his campaign in that election. And certainly he would hope to get that kind of support to turn out those additional voters in the general or else maybe he's in trouble.
But yeah, I always like to look at the map. It was interesting looking at this one too, where you just had some real clear like top of Queen Anne and Downtown to some extent anti-Andrew Lewis voting or pro his challengers. And then the rest of the district, I think he did fairly well. But if turnout is a lot higher on upper Queen Anne than lower Queen Anne - doesn't matter what the map looks like in terms of space on it.
[00:12:06] Crystal Fincher: Is that how you size it up, Melissa?
[00:12:08] Melissa Santos: Yeah, I just think Andrew Lewis has a lot of work to do going forward to the general because theoretically you expect - I think it's reasonable to expect voters who voted for, for instance, Olga Sagan, the restaurant owner who is very anti-the work of the city council and anti-Andrew Lewis's record - they're more likely those voters are likely to vote for Bob Kettle, I would think in this particular case, than suddenly say maybe he's okay now. So and that would get - that alone - she only got 12% or something like that. But that's a sizable chunk to add to Bob Kettle's total there. And I do notice that Andrew Lewis seems a little worried. I do think he's trying to make sure his name's out there for stuff he's doing on the council right now - which all of them are doing who are incumbents - but I feel like Lewis especially is aware that he has some ground to make up.
[00:13:06] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that Lewis has some reassuring to do of a lot of his base. I think that - right or wrong - but I think that there's cause for it, that there are people wondering if he really is a champion on their issues or can be pressured to not vote a certain way. I think more than other - certainly for the incumbents that are there - I think he's viewed as more of a swing vote than some others, which really says you may not know exactly what you're getting from him if you're in his base. And I think that's a challenge. I think that candidates - certainly incumbents are in a stronger position if they do have a well-defined persona, defined stances - that at least your base knows what they're going to get. And then you try and expand that a little bit. I think he has more of a challenge than the other incumbents there. With that said, I think that he is probably in a stronger position to win the general election. Not that this won't be competitive certainly, but I think if you're looking between the two of them and you're a betting person, he's more likely to be able to consolidate the vote and pick up people who vote in the general who don't necessarily vote in the primary than a more moderate candidate. But I think this is a race that has a lot of attention and a lot of interest, and one where we're likely to see outside spending playing a significant role in this race.
[00:14:44] Melissa Santos: Yeah, and you are right that he didn't just annoy centrist people who wanted to see more prosecution of drug arrests. He actually has annoyed the progressives at various times by flip-flopping - I'm thinking about the capping rent fees as one vote he had where at first he was supporting a higher cap fee on, a higher maximum fee on late rent, than maybe the progressives wanted. And then went back to supporting a lower one - it was like $10 versus $50 or something like that. I think that some of the progressives were - Hey, where is this guy at on this - with that when they wanted to see that cap on late rent fees. I feel like it's hard to me for me to say all those words together correctly, but we wanted to see a very tight cap on how much landlords could charge for late rent. And Lewis was a little more willing, at one point, to consider letting landlords charge a little more for that. And that was something that disappointed progressives too.
[00:15:43] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, and it's - are you threading - he may be trying to thread the needle on some of these issues, but if he can't thread it correctly, does it look like you're flip-flopping or being - are you wavering rather than threading?
[00:15:59] Guy Oron: It does seem like Lewis has been a little less successful with that strategy than Strauss. And maybe that's also because of their districts, but I think he should be worried a little bit about alienating those people who would maybe support him otherwise, for Stranger readers or that labor, for example, are labor unions actually going to come out and bat for him at this point like they did in 2019. So that will be something he has to work on in the next couple months.
[00:16:39] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it is. And so we've covered all of these Seattle City Council district races. Looking at them - is there a narrative to all of these races? Before this, Mayor Bruce Harrell had talked about recruiting against some of the incumbents here, having some candidates here. Do you see this as an acceptance, or repudiation, jury still out on what this says about where people stand in alignment with the mayor based on these results? Guy?
[00:17:18] Guy Oron: I think, firstly, all the races are very competitive. So that was a little different than expectations. I think progressives do have a shot of actually winning back control a little bit, or retaining control, depending on how you define that. But I think the biggest narrative for me is just how low turnout we had. We had only 15% of 18 to 24 year olds vote across King County, so that shows that the political process isn't engaging a big amount of people - which is probably the most concerning fact out of this primary.
[00:18:01] Crystal Fincher: What do you think, Daniel?
[00:18:08] Daniel Beekman: I don't know in terms of big takeaways overall, I guess we wait and see for the general. Some of the - some sort of fundamentals in Seattle politics aren't going to change that much generally from year to year and a lot of that is present in this election. Especially when, as Guy was saying, turnout wasn't high. There didn't seem to be tons of energy, even relative to other City elections, for this primary. And like I was mentioning before, that might not change unless there's one of these sort of big narratives that sort of - and they can be unpredictable like that Amazon money bomb, or who knows, maybe there's going to be another one of these tree protests - that really galvanize the voter imagination at the right moment and, or something around drugs and make it - pull an election out of the normal sort of rut of where you have these two general political factions and electorates in the city that are fairly evenly balanced. So it'll be interesting to see if there's something like that that grabs people and makes this time different in some way.
[00:19:31] Crystal Fincher: What are your thoughts, Melissa?
[00:19:34] Melissa Santos: While I think there's a lot of potential for change on the council, that's mostly - to me - the function of there being four open seats. And then, actually, we'll probably get to this in our last moments, but probably there'll be five seats that change over on the council, it looks like - which is five out of nine, that's a majority. So there's a lot of potential for change. However, it doesn't strike me that the incumbents are in danger of losing necessarily. So the change is just from new people coming in, but not throwing the old people out - is what it looks like. Lewis might be the one exception. He's the closest to potentially losing his seat, but I'm not certain that will happen either. So we could just end up with a lot of new voices and a lot of the incumbents all staying, which - the new voices may be aligned with the mayor, it's hard to say - I was just doing napkin math and looking at vote counts and how it will work out. But to that point, though, we don't know how some of these folks yet would vote on certain issues. So it's even hard to do that. Do I know where Joy Hollingsworth stands on certain, every single vote that the council's had on housing policy and taxing in the past five years? You know - I actually don't. So I don't know how those votes would shake out even if, whichever faction is elected. But I do think the progressive candidates are doing well in a lot of these races, so that will be interesting to see.
[00:20:56] Daniel Beekman: It might just be that the biggest change in dynamic is something that has nothing to do with November, and it's that - no more Sawant on the council. Not that she always gets what she wants - that's hardly the case, but that's just been such a constant dynamic at City Hall for the last 10 years. And that could just change the way things are done and the sort of the whole political landscape up there on the dais at City Council as much as some of these other seats swapping out or who gets in those seats.
[00:21:39] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I tend to agree with that. And I think - once again I hope people, whether you're an organization who's going to be doing forums or examining that or voters as you have opportunities to have conversations with these candidates - that you ask them where they stand and you hold them accountable for stating their position, for stating how they would have voted, for talking about how they did vote when they voted on different things so that you know what you're getting in terms of a councilmember and their vote. I think that there's growing frustration around looking at some of these challenges that we're facing in the City of Seattle and around the region, whether it's homelessness or public safety or climate change or taxation or progressive revenue, that there's been a lot of rhetoric over the past several years but maybe not the kind of change that people would expect based on some of the broad rhetoric that people have heard. And so I think the lesson to take from that is to really drill down and not just have people give you their very rosy, I-believe-the-children-are-the-future type sayings, but when they can't get everybody to agree, when everyone gathered around the table doesn't come up with one solution, what are they willing to step up and advocate for? What are they willing to stand up and say - Okay, I know this may not make everyone happy, but this is what I believe we need to do and how we need to move forward. I think those will be the most enlightening conversations that come out of this general election and will be the most helpful for voters making decisions.
I do want to talk about these King County Council races. And one of these races features a current Seattle City Councilmember, Teresa Mosqueda, in the District 8 race against current Burien mayor, Sofia Aragon. This had a very strong showing - again for a Seattle City Council incumbent - Teresa Mosqueda with 57.56% of the vote right now, Sofia Aragon 37.57%. I don't think it's controversial to say that this is extremely likely to result in Teresa Mosqueda winning this race in the general election. We still have to go through it - nothing is absolutely set in stone, but this is about as safe as you can look as an incumbent. And interestingly enough, another Seattle City councilmember who has been on the forefront of big progressive policy wins - probably at the top of the list, the JumpStart Tax, which has been very consequential for the City of Seattle. What was your take of this race, and what do you think the big issues were or what this says about voters here in this race? - starting with Guy.
[00:24:47] Guy Oron: I think the first outcome, I think, is just it shows how important high quality candidates are. I think Teresa is exemplary qualified. I think she has a lot of connections with local labor organizations, local community groups. And so she was really able to outmatch Sofia Aragon in that. And it also showed that I think that district was looking for more than just platitudes about policing and homelessness. And the third thing is maybe it's also a backlash against Aragon's handling of the recent saga over homelessness in Burien, and just how much the city has intensified vitriol against its unhoused population under her majority control. So those were my three takeaways.
[00:25:45] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And for those unfamiliar, a dramatic saga currently playing out still in the City of Burien, where there have been a number of sweeps that have taken place with some homeless encampments there in the city. Those sweeps have to operate in a constitutionally legal framework. It looks like the City of Burien got outside of that framework - they were warned by the King County Executive that they were outside of that - you can't sweep people without an offer of shelter. But sometimes in cities, a major issue is that they don't have the resources to do that. Uniquely in Burien, King County offered to provide shelter and a number of Pallets [shelters] , a million dollars worth of that basically - Hey, work alongside us and we'll help you work through this with your population. And from the mayor, the deputy mayor on down basically rejected that offer and would rather not take that up, not house the population, and double down on more punitive criminalized efforts, which it seems may not be very popular in the city. And whether people favor more punitive or more evidence-based solutions there - seems like the one thing people do want is action taken. And when it looks like that isn't being taken, that's a challenge - that may have been a factor here in this race. I'm wondering what kind of addition to the council, or what does it look like voters voted for in terms of policy here and in terms of potential budget impacts or taxation? How did you see this, Melissa?
[00:27:32] Melissa Santos: As you mentioned earlier, Mosqueda was really active in getting a tax on big business. This was the Amazon tax that actually ended up passing, after the head tax - kind of was an effort that failed in 2018. Mosqueda picked up the pieces and there were others, too, but she led this effort to actually get a tax on business passed in Seattle, which I think is a pretty big achievement, given how spectacularly that effort fell apart previously. And so she's sometimes been vilified by this - Sawant, for instance, as being too willing to work with people or something. But if you do get an Amazon tax out of it, then that seems to please progressives for the most part. So I think you will get some progressive views on tax policy on the County Council if Mosqueda is elected, which she is likely to be, it looks like.
And Mosqueda is interesting because she is not - she has not, I don't think, walked away from the idea of saying - I don't, the number of police is not necessarily equivalent to having great public safety. I don't think we need all these police. She hasn't really walked back from her statements on that so much as maybe Dan Strauss and others here. And this was a real interesting contrast, because that's exactly where Aragon was going after her, saying - Defund the police has failed. Has the City Council of Seattle actually - did they actually follow through with actually defunding stuff? Not quite exactly, but the discussion certainly happened and that was a side that Mosqueda was interested in - looking at other solutions as opposed to hiring more cops, for sure, that's certainly fair to say. The voters in that area seem to think that's fine - 20 point spread here, it's not close. So I think that the thing that interests me most - I think the County Council is interesting, and then Mosqueda will join that and it will create another progressive voice in the County Council. But then we're going to have a fifth City Council seat that needs to be filled, and that will happen by appointment. And that's wild - voters aren't really going to be involved in that. And again, getting ahead of myself - the election has not happened, but 20 point spread, like we can probably assume there's going to be a fifth opening on the City Council. So that's the fifth seat that we aren't even really talking about on the ballot, which then there'll be people who parade through the City Council presenting themselves for the job. And they will have that happen probably toward the end of this year after the elections are over, or maybe early January, depending on the timing. But that will mean a majority of the City Council is changing over, and it could be not a progressive person replacing Mosqueda on the City Council. They won't be super far right or anything, but you could get a more centrist person than she is in that role because voters don't really have a say in it.
[00:30:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and certainly whoever winds up on the council is going to be very consequential in that decision. What are your thoughts, Dan?
[00:30:31] Daniel Beekman: Oh, I was just looking at the Election Night results map - and I should plug Washington Community Alliance because they did this and then put it out there, so that's what I'm looking at. But the interesting thing - I think it might be a little bit tempting because Sofia Aragon is an elected official - is she the mayor right now of Burien? Yeah, she's a mayor of Burien. So it might be a little tempting to read views into the whole Burien brouhah in this result. And maybe there's some of that. But looking at the map, Burien was actually - relatively speaking, she did decently. And the district also includes the dense part of Capitol Hill and the dense part of West Seattle - and that's where Mosqueda cleaned up. So I think you could a little bit more look at this and say it's the opposite of a repudiation in terms of Mosqueda's work on the City Council. But I would be a little bit more hesitant to read into it all that much about Burien, even though maybe some of that could be going on.
[00:31:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that's an interesting point. And again, I think that the mapping - more mapping options is wonderful. Kind of similar with first night results, I caution people against looking at first night precinct results - those tell a different story in the same way that the numbers tell a different story. So I'm super eager to dive into these when we have full results on those. And looking at that seems to be more enlightening and more accurate as to where things wind up there, but a really interesting view.
And then in the other competitive King County Council race, District 4, where there were three pretty progressive candidates actually in this race in the primary where there was Jorge Barón, Sarah Reyneveld, and then Becka Johnson Poppe. Looking at this in comparison to the City Council races, the other County Council race, this is a race where all three of these candidates were, I think it's probably fair to say most people would consider them all to be progressives. And I've moderated one or two forums for this in the primary election. And these answers were routinely to the left of several of the city councilmembers here. But it looks like - in this race, an interesting dynamic - Jorge Barón got in the race a little bit later. He was previously involved in the legislative session, and so had to finish that up before joining the race, but ended up securing the endorsements of both The Times and The Stranger, which most people don't generally do. Usually there are only select few candidates each cycle who wind up getting both of those endorsements. He did. And it definitely shows in the results with Jorge - usually you don't see someone in an open seat primary getting over 50% - jorge Barón is currently at 50.65%. Sarah Reyneveld also advancing through to the general election at 28.7% here. How do you think this race shaped up and what did you see from this race, Melissa?
[00:34:18] Melissa Santos: Jorge is just such a - has a big, big lead, as you said - and getting, again, this is not an incumbent getting almost 51% of the vote. This is a new candidate. But I do think this speaks to Jorge having done a lot of work. When we go back to 2017 and people rushing to SeaTac airport to respond to President, then-President Trump's ban on travel from certain Muslim countries, Jorge Barón was at the forefront of a lot of work. He was at the Northwest Immigrants Rights Project, I believe - off the top of my head, I think of it as the acronym, so I hope I have the full name correct here - but he's done so much work there where he's gotten a lot of earned media coverage because of doing a lot of work on behalf of people in the community. I think that, even if he hadn't campaigned at all - which I know he didn't just sit on the sidelines - but that did a lot of work before he even started campaigning. And I think that's reflected in the numbers here.
[00:35:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I would agree with that. And to people looking to learn lessons when you're running - this is an excellent example of someone building their profile through serving in the community and people being aware of the work that they're doing, seeing tangible ways that that is playing out in the community. I think Jorge certainly benefited from that and benefited from just people saying - I certainly was a supporter of the work at the Northwest Immigrants Rights Project and so impactful and important in the community. How did you see this, Guy?
[00:35:55] Guy Oron: Yeah, I think it really shows Jorge Barón's ground game kind of making, or rather the opposite of ground game, the networking. And just having served in the community for so long, I think, was probably what got him that endorsement - and familiarity with policy issues for years. Yeah, and I think it's a bit of a unicorn endorsement. I'm very curious what the deliberation was between The Seattle Times and The Stranger editorial boards. And it does show just how much power they have as gatekeepers, particularly in more low-turnout elections like these August primaries.
[00:36:38] Crystal Fincher: How did you see this, Daniel?
[00:36:40] Daniel Beekman: I don't have that much to add - I think Melissa and Guy nailed it. Only one anecdote is that The Stranger/Seattle Times double endorsement is like a unicorn, should be a slam dunk - but actually, Jon Grant in 2017 had both - got defeated, I think, pretty handily by Teresa Mosqueda, who we were just talking about. So it's not an absolute slam dunk always, but in this case, it looks like it probably will be.
[00:37:14] Crystal Fincher: Definite themes of Teresa Mosqueda as a powerhouse in a number of different ways, it seems like. Now, as we've talked about a number of these races and we're almost done with time, so I guess just going around the horn here - What are you paying attention to most? What do you think is going to be the most interesting or impactful thing in the general election, either as a theme for these races or in any particular race that you're following? starting with Melissa.
[00:37:46] Melissa Santos: Oh, geez. Okay. Yeah, I am really interested to know what people think about tax policy and whether they're supportive of new taxes that go beyond the JumpStart Tax because the City does have a budget deficit - not right at this precise moment over the next six months, but pretty big projected budget deficit going toward 2025 - and I'm curious how candidates will respond with specifics about what they'd support to deal with that. And then I'm also interested in where the candidates are on these police issues, because it's again - when you talk about slogans like "defund the police," that isn't even exactly what happened in Seattle. So it's - what are we talking about? And so that's what I'm watching - is what candidates actually have to say about that and what they mean when they say - I don't like defund the police - or, what does this mean? So I think I'm just really, now that there's not 10 candidates in a race, looking forward to actually figuring out where people stand on issues - hopefully.
[00:38:46] Crystal Fincher: And Guy?
[00:38:52] Guy Oron: Yeah, I think I'm looking forward to see if the economy rebounds a bit and if people start feeling a little less burned out from politics - and whether candidates and their ground game can really go upstream and try to convince some of the disillusioned young folks, and especially more of the progressive folks who are not as happy with Biden and are not looking forward to voting, and just convince them that voting matters and that they're not throwing away their time by filling out the ballot.
[00:39:29] Crystal Fincher: And what about you, Daniel?
[00:39:30] Daniel Beekman: I guess in Seattle City Council races, I'm just curious to see, I think the more conservative, moderate candidates - maybe unfair to paint with a broad brush, but that sort of side of things - will probably, whether there are policy solutions that are realistic to go along with these, but they'll bang on - Oh, we need to crack down or get tough with crime and drugs - and that kind of thing. I'm interested to see, though, what the left-wing candidates try to use or wave as the banner, policy-wise. Is it raising taxes on businesses more? Is it the rent control? Is it another minimum wage hike? What is it? Can they find something to latch on to that's going to capture the voter's imagination?
And then I'm also just curious about some of these suburban races, like I was talking about before we went live - about Bothell and Burien and some interesting stuff up there. Bothell has this sort of growing urbanist political streak, and will that continue with one of the races up there? Looks like it could. And Kenmore finding itself dealing with affordable housing issues more and maybe getting a little bit of a lefty push - and will that continue? So I'm going to keep my eye on those.
[00:41:06] Crystal Fincher: What I'm most looking forward to is to see where donors settle in these races. Certainly donors were spread out amongst a variety of candidates in the primary, but in some of these races, it's not super clear at the moment where the candidate stances are on all the issues. Some races it's pretty clear to say that there's a progressive and a moderate, others it's to be determined and the details of that are yet to be determined. So it's going to be interesting to see where donors consolidate - who more corporate-type donors feel are the candidates that are going to be on their side, where they invest - usually they do not donate to places where they don't feel pretty sure they're going to get a return on that investment of the candidates. So that's going to be interesting to see, and I will be paying attention to that throughout the primary, certainly.
And with that, thank you for listening to this roundtable as it now comes to a close. I want to thank our panelists - Daniel Beekman, Guy Oron, and Melissa Santos - for their insight and making this an engaging and informative event. To those watching online, thanks so much for tuning in. If you missed any of the discussion tonight, you can catch up on the Hacks & Wonks Facebook page, YouTube channel, or on Twitter, where we're @HacksWonks. Special thanks to essential member of the Hacks & Wonks team and coordinator for this evening, Dr. Shannon Cheng.
If you missed voting in the election or know anyone who did, make sure to register to vote, update your registration, or find information for the next election at myvote.wa.gov. And as a reminder, even if you've been previously incarcerated, your right to vote is restored and you can re-register to vote immediately upon your release in Washington state, even if you are still under community supervision.
Be sure to tune into Hacks & Wonks on your favorite podcast app for our Tuesday topical interviews and our Friday week-in-review shows or at officialhacksandwonks.com. I've been your host, Crystal Fincher, and we'll see you next time.
For this Tuesday show, we present Part 1 of the Hacks & Wonks 2023 Post-Primary Roundtable which was live-streamed on August 8, 2023 with special guests - journalists Daniel Beekman, Guy Oron, and Melissa Santos.
In Part 1, the panel breaks down primary election results for the crowded Seattle City Council races in Districts 1 through 5 - looking at how vote shares, campaign finances, redistricting, candidate quality, endorsements, and more played a part in who came out as the top two.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of the roundtable releasing this Friday for more election analysis!
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s special guests, Daniel Beekman at @DBeekman, Guy Oron at @GuyOron, and Melissa Santos at @MelissaSantos1.
Resources
Hacks & Wonks 2023 Post-Primary Roundtable Livestream | August 8th, 2023
Transcript
[00:00:00] Shannon Cheng: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I’m Shannon Cheng, Producer for the show. You’re listening to Part 1 of our 2023 Post-Primary Roundtable that was originally aired live on Tuesday, August 8th. Audio for Part 2 will be running this Friday, so make sure you stay tuned. Full video from the event and a full text transcript of the show can be found on our website officialhacksandwonks.com. Thank you for tuning in!
[00:00:37] Crystal Fincher: Hello everyone - good evening. Welcome to the Hacks & Wonks Post-Primary Roundtable. I'm Crystal Fincher, I'm a political consultant and host of the Hacks & Wonks podcast and radio show. And today I'm thrilled to be joined by three of my favorite hacks and wonks - local reporters - to break down what happened in last week's primary election.
We're excited to be able to livestream this roundtable on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Additionally, we are recording this roundtable for broadcast on KODX and KVRU radio, podcast, and it will be available with a full text transcript on officialhacksandwonks.com.
Our esteemed panelists for the evening are: Politics and Communities reporter for The Seattle Times, Daniel Beekman. Staff Reporter for Real Change, covering local news, labor, policing, the environment, criminal legal issues and politics, Guy Oron. And Seattle Axios reporter, Melissa Santos. Welcome everyone.
So I think we will get started talking about Seattle and all of these races for Seattle City Council. This is a year where we had some redistricted council districts in Seattle - we had a number of incumbents decide not to seek reelection, and a few who did - and some really interesting results.
So I think we'll start in District 1, which is in the West Seattle area, where we see a result of Maren Costa with the lead - currently at 33.16% - and the second person getting through the primary, Rob Saka, with 24% here. So I guess just starting out - how are these candidates positioned, and what do you think this primary says about the state of the district and the state of this race going into the general? Starting with Daniel - what are your thoughts here?
[00:02:47] Daniel Beekman: Oh, yeah, good questions - I'm interested to hear what the other folks have to say. I guess the one thing that strikes me about the race is that, like in - I think - every other race of the seven districts, we're going into the general election with a candidate who was endorsed by The Stranger's editorial board and one endorsed by The Seattle Times editorial board - which operates separately from our newsroom. And that's pretty typical for Seattle City Council elections. And maybe even without those endorsements, this race and others would have ended up the way they did - but I think that's something to note in this race and others. The other thing that struck me about this race is two pretty interesting candidates, background-wise - especially to some extent in Seattle politics with Costa. Doesn't really fit the - if there's a typical sort of Seattle candidate, especially in the left lane - the progressive, more progressive lane. I don't know if she fits quite into that. She doesn't come from a - she hasn't worked at the City Council, she doesn't come from the County or State Labor Council, she hasn't been steeped in local Democratic legislative district politics or anything like that, I don't think. She's from the tech world and was an activist in that world. So I don't know - I found that interesting, I don't know if that's a major takeaway - but it's something in that race that I think will be interesting to watch going forward.
[00:04:41] Crystal Fincher: Go ahead, Melissa. What did you think?
[00:04:42] Melissa Santos: I will be curious. It's really hard in a race where there's - what, we have eight candidates here again, or was it actually nine, eight in this one as well - to predict how the votes that the candidates didn't get will shake out. I'm really curious to see where Phil Tavel's votes go because - he ran last time too - and again, more one of the more business-friendly candidates in this race. And I'm just not sure that there'll be a one-for-one accounting for those votes, necessarily, when you come into November. Theoretically, those votes would go to the more central lane candidate, who is Rob Saka. But I don't know that that math is a direct line when there's a lot of time between here and November. And also, they're just - sometimes people are really attracted to someone's personal story in these races, right? We're focused as reporters and commentators sometimes on - who's the moderate, who's the lefty, or whatever. And sometimes I don't know that voters always are. Maybe there's one particular idea they had, that they talked about at the door, that people were into or a percentage were into. And there's also progressive candidates here that had some votes that are not making it to the primary, so I just don't know - I have zero idea how the votes for the non-winning candidates will shake out.
[00:06:06] Crystal Fincher: What do you think, Guy?
[00:06:08] Guy Oron: Yeah, I think to start - with all these Seattle races, I think the biggest message is that most people didn't vote. 64% of folks didn't vote in these elections. And it'll be interesting to see where those people land in the general. It did seem like a very competitive race - all these City Council races - but especially the open ones. And I think Maren was able to really use her credentials as an activist to get a lot of support among progressives, and while the more right-of-center lane was a little more split between Phil and Rob Saka. And it'll be interesting to see how it measures up. I think right-leaning candidates won just about 50%, compared to progressive ones that won about 45%. I was doing some rough arithmetic earlier - it is pretty narrow margin. It'll be interesting to see how it goes.
[00:07:18] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this is a race where it looks like this is going to be a competitive race in the general election. We did see an interesting role that donors played in this race where there were some substantial fundraising numbers from a number of candidates, even several who didn't make it through. I think there were a few who eclipsed $50,000 who did not make it through the general election. And then you have the two that did make it through raising a considerable amount of money, in addition to an independent expenditure on behalf of Rob Saka that made some news - for a Trump-supporting donor included in there and certainly more business-aligned candidate there. How do you see the role of donors and money and the way that the primary election shaped up, and what do you think that says about the general election? - starting with you, Guy.
[00:08:15] Guy Oron: It'll be interesting to see. I think with Democracy Vouchers, it really changes the game and allows people who don't rely on corporate donations to run. And I think that gives Costa an edge there to fight at least an even battle. It'll be interesting to see if this election is more like 2019, where corporate donations sparked a big backlash, or more like 2021 when they got folks like Davison over the line.
[00:08:49] Melissa Santos: The independent expenditures, I think, will be interesting to watch because theoretically the Democracy Vouchers do even the playing field. But once you get all that independent expenditure money in there, it's not limited in the same way. So I do think we'll see this huge flood of outside money going forward. And I am watching how - whether that kind of undermines the intent of the Democracy Voucher program. We've had a few years now where we've watched how this plays out. But particularly this year, I'm looking at that because I just think there will be a lot of outside money. And there already has been in this race in particular - maybe not a lot yet, but more than in other races, of city council races - and that can tip the scales. But like Guy said, there has been backlash before. We certainly saw that with the $1 million Amazon donation to the Chamber's PAC that kind of seemed to have that kind of resurgence of the progressive candidates in protest a few years ago.
[00:09:53] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, I think it would be right to expect big outside spending in this race and some of the other races that look like they could be very competitive - that seems very likely. And one of the sort of quirks of this race in terms of spending in the primary was that there were some candidates - as you mentioned Crystal - like Stephen Brown got under 10%, spent money or raised quite a bit of money. But a fair chunk of that, I think - just looking, $34,000 or something like that was from himself, I believe. So that kind of tips the scales sometimes, or it can be confusing looking at the overall totals. But yeah, this is one of those races where I would be surprised if there wasn't a lot of independent spending in the general election.
[00:10:52] Melissa Santos: You're saying bagels can't buy a City Council seat, Dan? Is that what you're saying?
[00:10:57] Daniel Beekman: I'm just saying that this City - what was it? The mailer - This City deserves better bagels?
[00:11:05] Melissa Santos: Bagels. Yeah, maybe that wasn't effective - maybe a different audience, maybe next cycle.
[00:11:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see. And another race where sometimes people just have a ton of money and they think - I have a ton of money, I can loan myself money, donate to the campaign. But more often than not, we see those predominantly self-funders not necessarily finishing all that well. It actually does take the support of people in the community and those donations are basically a measure of support from people. And that seems to be important in overall results.
I do want to talk about District 2 now, which includes the Rainier Valley, southeast Seattle. And that is where incumbent Tammy Morales is facing Tanya Woo, who will be proceeding through to the primary. And this is one of those races where in Seattle we see numbers shift from Election Night to others - this certainly was no exception, a race that shifted. And as we stand now, Tammy Morales - over 52% of the vote here, 52.26%. Tanya Woo with 42.58%, so about a 10-point spread. This is one of the races where people were wondering if there was going to be a backlash to the council that showed up. Lots of talk going in about - Oh, the council may not be popular or have high approval ratings. I've noted several times, similar to Congressional approval numbers, those don't really have much bearing to individual Congressional results. Here to individual city council results, this is seemingly a strong finish for Tammy Morales as an incumbent here. How did you see this race, Guy?
[00:12:52] Guy Oron: Yeah, I think initially on Election Night - oftentimes media covers it as a definitive - especially not local media, but national media. It did seem close, but the fact that Tammy Morales won by 10% - got over 50% - that's huge for her. And I think it will be very, very hard for Tanya Woo to unseat her at this point. And it shows that Morales has a lot of support from a lot of the district. And so, especially considering the fact that Harrell went really hard supporting Woo and it looks like that didn't work out too well for him.
[00:13:36] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree, Daniel?
[00:13:38] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, I think to an extent. Definitely the race swung a lot - I think more than any other from Election Night to now - although other races did also have a leftward swing with the later ballots. It looks like to stand any kind of a chance, Tanya Woo will have to - she's a first-time candidate and raise her game, her candidate game, in the next couple months. And also it will be interesting to see - what I was looking for on Election Night - will that race be close enough for the people who fund those independent expenditures to decide that they want to get in? I don't know, but maybe they weren't necessarily expecting her to - Woo to come out on top, but maybe they're looking at - Well, is it close enough to make it worth our while to spend? And if I was her, I wouldn't want to hear the race described like that. But I think it's just reality as people are looking in from the outside and they're making decisions about where their money is best, would best be spent. So it'll be interesting to see if - what calculation those folks make - whether people think it was close enough to be worth pouring money in or not.
[00:15:13] Melissa Santos: Because remember - this was one of the least crowded races. It was just Tanya Woo, Tammy Morales, and then Margaret Elisabeth who got less than 5% of the vote. So it's not one of those sort of mystery, how did the vote split situations as much. This one is more likely to be pretty predictive of the general election. And yeah, there's only so much money to spend - even though we talk about tons of money in politics, people don't want to just throw it at nothing. And I don't think it's a lost cause - I think Tanya Woo has a chance - it doesn't look as good as it did on the night of the election for her.
[00:15:47] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. This - to your point, Melissa - more than the others, I think - one, could be viewed through the lens of, Is this a referendum on Tammy Morales and/or the council? And also, this is one where it does pretty much reflect what the race is going to be in the general election. I don't think we've seen a situation before, barring a massive scandal, where an incumbent has finished with over 52% of the vote and lost. To your point, those trying to figure out - there are a number of open seats, there are certainly seats that some people want to pick up - Is it worth spending in those and this one? - is going to be part of the calculation that people make. But this is a harder one - it's hard to see incumbents losing in this kind of a position. How do you see the general election shaping up here, Daniel?
[00:16:49] Daniel Beekman: I think we know what kind of a race Tammy Morales is likely to run because she's - I think she's run similar races to some extent, when she won her seat and then the race before that when she nearly unseated Bruce Harrell. So I think we know what that's going to look like. I think the question is more how Tanya Woo is going to try to make up the vote she didn't get or gain in the general - what that looks like, whether that means leaning into her, more into her sort of community work in the CID [Chinatown International District] , or if it means hammering on a particular issue like public safety or something like that. So I think that's - I don't know - but that's what I would be looking for is where this sort of question lies. But, yeah, I think it's - incumbents don't get knocked off very often. I was trying to think - I probably should have just looked it up, but I was trying to think before this about when's the last time the Seattle City Council incumbent was unseated and I was thinking about Jean Godden losing in the 2015 primary in a crowded race. But I think I could be totally spacing on a more recent one. But that seems like, in my mind, the most recent one and that's eight years ago now.
[00:18:21] Crystal Fincher: Go ahead, Melissa.
[00:18:22] Melissa Santos: I have a barking dog, so I'm trying to spare everyone from that. But yeah - now that I think about it - I was thinking - time is flat to me at this point, but Richard Conlin was a couple years before that. So what you're saying may be very well the most recent. We haven't seen a lot of incumbents go down and have those dramatic flips recently. It has happened, but not super recently. I will say - for Morales, since Sawant is leaving the council, she is, I think, the most - in this traditional lens of going back to who's left and who's center, right? Morales is the sort of furthest left member I think we have up for election this year. So the fact that she did get pretty good results in the primary, it suggests to me that there might not be this huge, huge upswell of being fed up with far-left City Council politics. There's certainly things people are unhappy with - we've seen polling that says people want more action on stuff - housing, homelessness. People want action. They want things to change, but they don't - necessarily voting out the most liberal candidates at this point.
[00:19:31] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And I think, I've talked about it before in other places, but sometimes we hear about polling a lot and it's - Well, people are unhappy. And that's a reflection on people being unhappy with City councilmembers and approval ratings are low. And I think there are a lot of people who are unhappy with the state of things today, but I think sometimes we make assumptions about why that is and assume that that automatically means that they're unhappy with their councilmember. And that's not necessarily the case. I think that this is yet another example of that, where we need to go further and ask - Okay, so you're not happy with the state of things. Is it because - when it comes to public safety, do you want a more punitive and carceral approach, or do you want more intervention and community violence intervention and more addressing root causes? And I think if you look at the people on the ground in Seattle, they do want to do more to address some of the systemic issues that we have, to address some of the root causes, get more to prevention instead of trying to respond to so much after the fact. And I think that these results - almost in this race more than others - where there was a direct contrast between the two and a direct policy difference between the two. And we saw voters basically affirm that the direction Tammy Morales is heading is one that they're, that most are happy with. And especially in a lower turnout primary election, in an off-year, this is where you would expect unhappiness to really materialize if there was a desire to - kick all the bums out, that saying for people who are elected, but that didn't seem to materialize with two of the three incumbents finishing over 50%. And the third with the plurality of the vote there. How do you think this moves forward with that, Guy?
[00:21:37] Guy Oron: Yeah, I do think it's a vindication for some of the people who were in the Solidarity Budget coalition, who are supporting decriminalization and defund, that maybe they see that one of the councilmembers that stood by their side got over 50%. I think they'll be reassured by that. I do think Tanya Woo got a lot of support in the CID and was able to really voice to that neighborhood that has been ignored a lot in the media by policymakers - or used as tokens, but not actually given proper seat at the table. So I think even if Morales wins the general election, that'll be something on the top of her priorities - is to better address the CID. And I think that was something that Woo was able to bring, even if she doesn't win in the general.
[00:22:36] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Go ahead, Daniel.
[00:22:39] Daniel Beekman: Oh, I was just going to say - and there's also sort of the differences district-to-district and candidate-to-candidate where - definitely Tammy Morales had a, looks like a strong result. On the other hand, you saw Dan Strauss trying to distance himself from some of his pro-defund advocacy from back in 2020 - I think I saw a mailer. And so whether he's right or not, he's obviously a little bit concerned about some of that coming back to bite him with voters in his district, so there's some differences district to district as well.
[00:23:24] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I agree with that. Another district - District 3, where Councilmember Kshama Sawant will not be seeking reelection, so this is for the person who will succeed Councilmember Sawant. And so in this race, we have the two making it through - Joy Hollingsworth with 36.89% right now and Alex Hudson being the second, making it through with 36.52%. Another very crowded race - this is a very close result, maybe the closest result. And two very different candidates than the current incumbent. What do you think this says about the district, and what do you think this says about the race? - starting with Melissa.
[00:24:12] Melissa Santos: It is really close - you're less than a percentage point between these candidates now that we've seen the results shake out. And it is another situation where you have Joy Hollingsworth being the Seattle Times Editorial Board-endorsed candidate - not the newsroom, but the editorial board - and Alex Hudson being the Stranger-endorsed candidate up against one another. However, it's interesting to me because Alex Hudson is then - would be in the camp of being this more progressive candidate, right? - which in certain ways, she is. She's a long-time transit advocate and is - I remember, one time, her doing a video of confronting Tim Eyman, the anti-tax initiative pusher. And so she's done those sorts of things, but she's also someone who's worked a little bit more within the establishment than - certainly than Sawant, for instance - lobbying, building coalitions. So we're not seeing, and this has been said a lot about this race and I'm not the only one to say it, but we're not seeing anyone who wants to burn the barn down here in this race in the same way. We're not seeing a Socialist candidate in the same way even, and I'm actually - I haven't talked to these candidates as much as Dan and Guy probably have, but I actually think they're closer together on some issues than maybe it appears from those divergent endorsements. And I think some of that is likely to come to light during the general election, and it's possible that their positions don't as neatly line up necessarily with this sort of pro-business and labor/left activism, although in some ways they do.
[00:25:45] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree, Guy?
[00:25:48] Guy Oron: I definitely agree that it's a huge change from Kshama Sawant and either one of the candidates won't be Socialists. And so I think that'll be something for Seattle left to think about - how do you build momentum for a more broad base, long-term institutional victory - to get five council seats at least instead of just one. And that's - they have to go to the drawing board and think about that long-term. But in terms of Hudson and Hollingsworth, I think Hudson started off a little slow, but managed to snag some important endorsements - and that's credit to her and her long-time presence in the policy world in Seattle. And I think Hollingsworth also is a very compelling candidate - I've seen her at so many different events in the community. She really shows up - for example, when Nurturing Roots was closing back in March, not even in her district, but she was the only candidate to show up and show support. So I think that's credit to her and really cultivating her base in the CD [Central District] . And I definitely think it will be a tight race. Progressives did - all the progressive candidates together did win about 4 or 5% more than the more moderate candidates, so it'll be interesting to see if Hollingsworth can manage to build a coalition of moderate liberals and especially in the CD, turn out folks who aren't voting just to get over the line.
[00:27:30] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree, Daniel?
[00:27:32] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, I guess this is a race where Bruce Harrell has endorsed Joy Hollingsworth, right? So it'll be interesting to see what kind of impact that has, if any, that can be discerned - Mayor Bruce Harrell. Alex Hudson has a varied background, but coming out of the Transportation Choices Coalition - which is transit advocacy but labor-aligned - and in the world of the big players in Seattle politics and been a policy and politician factory. Rob Johnson, a councilmember, was the Executive Director there. And Jessyn Farrell, former state lawmaker, and other people - so it's been churning out folks into government, so that's interesting. But I think Melissa and Guy covered a lot of this, so I don't have a whole lot to add. I had noticed just on social media a little bit - and I should say that I'm not, I should shout out my coworker Sarah Grace Taylor, who's been doing a lot of the coverage of the City Council races this year for us rather than myself, so I'm not the expert - but just on observing on social media, I feel like I've seen a little bit of different emphases in how the two candidates are positioning themselves. Joy Hollingsworth trying to emphasize her community ties. And Alex Hudson - I just saw on the way over to do this - talking up transit as an issue. Obviously because she's - that's some of her background. But also she must think it will play well with voters saying - in that district that's pretty transit reliant.
[00:29:32] Melissa Santos: In theory, Joy Hollingsworth would be the candidate who's newer to politics - in theory - if you look at them. However, Joy is coming from a family of sort of political legacies in a way as well. Her grandmother Dorothy was the first African American woman elected to the Seattle School Board - and I think that's part of her community story a little bit that Joy is playing up - being from the Central District, being part of the legacy of people making change and pushing forward, which is interesting since she's the more establishment candidate endorsed by the mayor. But that's why the dynamics of this race are a little interesting to me. Because the narrative is not as clean as what we've looked at - races in the past where it's, again, lefty versus more business friendly Democrat kind of races in Seattle.
[00:30:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that's spot on. And this is a district where there's a Socialist as an incumbent. This is arguably the most left district in the city that doesn't quite have a candidate that speaks to that far left end that Kshama Sawant does. And I do agree that there are potentially a number of overlaps or places where the policy differences may not be as clear from the very beginning. So I think this is going to be a race where it's going to be important to examine where the candidates stand. It's going to be important to understand where the differences are and to really understand what they're bringing in terms of - not just votes, but where they're willing to lead and push, perhaps, the council. What are going to be their signature issues? And what are going to be the issues where they may just be an additional vote? I think that there's a lot that people still don't know, and this is going to be one of the most interesting districts for trying to ferret out what those differences and contrasts are.
Also notice that fundraising in this race - again, a lot of money raised throughout the district. This is a race - we saw the result being very close - also the amount raised, both raising about $94,000 there. And so this is another race where both seem to have a lot of fundraising capacity. Is this going to be a race where outside entities get involved? And I also think those outside entities are going to be listening for cues from each of those candidates. Who do funders see as their ally on the council? Who does labor see as a stronger ally on the council? I think that there's still more that they're figuring out here. And those donations, those types of donors and those endorsements, are also going to do a lot of speaking for these candidates about where they stand and how they're likely to govern.
[00:32:26] Melissa Santos: I was surprised that - based on just fundraising - that Alex Cooley didn't do a little bit better because they raised $95,000 as well. I don't know if any of you can explain what happened there, because I expected a better showing for that amount of money - I thought, I don't know - just looking from the outside at it.
[00:32:42] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, I didn't follow it close enough to know - was it mostly Democracy Vouchers?
[00:32:46] Melissa Santos: Yes, must be. Yeah, it's a mystery to me.
[00:32:50] Guy Oron: He was the only candidate to run on a platform of only taking Democracy Vouchers and he didn't accept private donations, which I think is an interesting platform and could prove compelling if you think about - I'm not beholden to any interests, only the people. But I think his ground game was strong, but he didn't have a lot of institutional support from people like The Stranger, and so that's why he fell short.
[00:33:22] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, and to pick up on something that you mentioned when you introduced the race, Crystal - it's interesting to think about - Sawant won her seat in 2013, so 10 years ago. And to think about how much District 3 - those neighborhoods, like Capitol Hill and the CD, have changed in the last 10 years. And think about is that why we didn't get someone with Kshama Sawant's politics in this race? Or is it because people are tired of her personally and that's soured them? But they narrowly voted down a recall just recently, so they're not that sick of it. I don't know, I find that interesting to ponder on whether the fact that there are two very unlike-Sawant candidates and two non-Socialist candidates going into the general election has anything to do with her or not, has anything to do with changes in the electorate or not. I don't have the answer, but I'm intrigued by that question.
[00:34:37] Crystal Fincher: I don't have the answer to that one either, but I do think this is a race where endorsements mattered a lot because it was hard, just on the face, to see some of the automatic differences between the candidates in a way that you can in some of the other districts perhaps. And so this is another one where we talk about the importance of The Times and The Stranger endorsements and that certainly carried through here, in people looking at The Stranger as a cue to see who is considered to be the most progressive. Lots of times people are doing the same thing with The Times on the other side, if they want a more moderate presence on the council. And so I think those endorsements really mattered - in this race in particular - but in several of them overall.
Also want to talk about the District 4 election. Now this is a district where - we talk about change over the last 10 years - this is certainly a district where I think recent results that we're seeing there reflect an evolution of the district and a change in this district. And so both with redistricting here and in this race, probably one of the cleanest lines between what is considered traditionally someone in the progressive lane and those traditionally in a moderate to conservative lane. How did you see this race shaping up, Guy?
[00:35:59] Guy Oron: Yeah, I think it echoes the last 2019 elections, but now Ron P. Davis is number one instead of Alex Pedersen, so that's a good sign for him. And he is the strongest non-incumbent candidate in Seattle, winning 45% of the vote. It does seem like, with more development and just growing density, there are changing demographics. So it could be an opportunity for a pretty dramatic swing towards the left in this district. But still, the more moderate conservative candidates won about 55% of the vote together - Wilson and Maritza Rivera. So it'll be very competitive, and I think it all relies on if Ron can turn out all the students to vote for him who tend to lean more progressive.
[00:37:04] Crystal Fincher: How do you see this race, Melissa?
[00:37:07] Melissa Santos: Theoretically, it would make sense to add together those sort of more centrist candidates and say - Oh, they got 55% - and I don't disagree with doing that, Guy. The thing that was weird to me is - and I wish I had in front of me at the moment - but there was a mailer that went out and Crystal, you saw this and I just think Dan, you also probably saw this - but where it didn't, it seemed like Wilson was going after Rivera, who was closer to him politically, than he was going after Davis. And there were checkmarks and it's like Davis got more checks being aligned with Wilson than Maritza Rivera did on this particular advertisement and mailer. And I don't know if that kind of communication is going to then make some people think that Davis is more aligned - people who voted for Wilson - if they're going to think, go forward thinking Davis is more their guy than Rivera. Or there's a lot of election communication still yet to happen, so I guess all of that can be reset. But it seemed like that was one of the primary communication that's happening in that district. And it may have disrupted the dynamic in a way of the sort of candidates and saying - Oh yeah, this is now my candidate since mine got knocked out since they're the most similar. And so I'm not sure how that will carry out forward going with this election into the general.
[00:38:23] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, that's interesting - whether that mailer will stick in anyone's mind and sour them on Rivera when they might not otherwise be. I think probably what Ken Wilson was going for there was just looking and assuming that - Well, Ron Davis is getting through, it's between me and Maritza Rivera about who's getting through on the other lane, and so let's see if I can make that happen without - like we were talking about - one of these newspaper endorsements. And it didn't work as much as he needed to, at least.
Yeah, District 4 is interesting. Shaun Scott ran - I think running as a Democratic Socialist to some extent in 2019 - ran Alex Pedersen really close in District 4 in that year. And I guess my sort of what I'll be watching for in this one is how Ron Davis moves forward - whether he tries to draw really sharp contrast between himself and Maritza Rivera and he thinks that's the key, or if he tries to tack to the center a bit to try to win over some of those maybe slightly more moderate voters or Ken Wilson voters in some way. And I'll just tell a sort of funny story. I went out on Election Day to do some just person-on-the-street voter reporting. And it was funny because I was in District 4 and District 5 for a while talking to voters. And I had two voters - one was this sort of like older boomer, typical Seattle boomer voter, and to some extent - whatever that is. And I said - What are you thinking about? And most of the people I talked to didn't have some sort of mega-narrative about the Seattle election cycle, like we're going to throw out the lefties or we're going to do this. It was more - they're kind of grasping at straws a bit in my little unscientific sample size. But this somewhat older voter said - Well, I care about trees and I went to this tree protest in Wedgwood for Luma the cedar tree. And Ken Wilson was there and he seemed to care, so I'm voting for him - that's a big reason. And then I talked to a voter - more lefty-seeming voter in her 20s, I think - elsewhere, I think in the U district. And they said - Well, I care about climate change and I went to this protest for the cedar tree. And Ron Davis was there, so I'm voting for him. So I don't know if that means anything, but it just goes to show - yeah, so it will be interesting to see, does Ron Davis lean into the tree protest? Or does he lean into let's densify and tax big business?
[00:41:30] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this is going to be interesting. And those anecdotes are always so interesting, and I think underscores just from the inside-a-campaign candidate perspective - three quarters of the job, three quarters of the work is in showing up, whether it's on someone's doorstep, whether it's at an event. People want to see that you're actively engaged in the community and in the issues that they care about. So I would just encourage all of the candidates to do that. And the more you can talk to regular voters, the better.
But this is an interesting race here. This is another race where we also saw an independent expenditure on behalf of, or in favor of, Maritza Rivera here. And it is an interesting race where - I don't know that this race, these votes consolidate cleanly pre-mailer in the way that they would expect. On top of that, this is a district that, a similar district, just last year elected Darya Farivar. And you think that the general election electorate is going to look more similar to what we saw in an even-year election then - that certainly is more progressive than that district and that area has been for a while. So are we seeing a shift in the preferences of a district? Are we seeing a shift in the issues that are concerning people? Certainly housing affordability is a major issue throughout all of Seattle, but also playing out in this district where I think the previous calculus and assumption was that this is a district full of NIMBYs and they seem to be voting in the opposite direction now. So this is going to be a really interesting race to pay attention to and one that may attract a lot of outside money because there are clearer lanes with a moderate in the race seemingly and a progressive - and looking to really pick up the seat for one or the other.
Also want to talk about the District 5 race, which is another interesting, exciting race and was a pretty close race. So we have Cathy Moore here - close overall, especially for the second and third place finisher here - so Cathy Moore finishing with 32.26% of the vote, ChrisTiana ObeySumner - they're finishing with 21.38% of the vote here. How did you see this vote shaping up in the primary? Nilu Jenks is finishing currently in third place, just outside of making it through the primary. Guy, how did you see this developing?
[00:44:19] Guy Oron: Yeah, I think the District 5 race was by far the most fractured and we had, I think, tied for the most amount of candidates. And so people - I think a lot of people voted for their first choice and I think ChrisTiana was able to be a sort of dark horse and come out on top. I think a lot of people were expecting Nilu Jenks to win, and so now those voters will have to decide whether they prefer Moore or ChrisTiana - and I think that will decide which way the district goes. But I think North Seattle is not usually thought of as a progressive stronghold, but I think it is surprisingly pretty progressive in terms of where people are voting. And I think people have all sorts of politics, like chaotic politics, where they support trees and density - and how do you reconcile those two, and I think that's up to the candidates to show that they're more well-spoken and have a stronger vision about integrating these various contradictions.
[00:45:32] Crystal Fincher: What do you think, Melissa?
[00:45:34] Melissa Santos: I was just reviewing some of the candidates' sort of statements and where they're coming from - it does encapsulate to me a little bit - you have Cathy Moore talking about public safety. All the candidates are talking about safety and should be talking about public safety probably, but she's coming at - literally in her voter guide statement says - I'm the pragmatic solution - very much very focused on capturing that center lane, people who might want to see a little bit more timely police response is a huge part of her platform. And again, everyone wants the cops to probably, I think, to respond to emergencies probably. I don't think there's too many people saying - well, okay, I retract my statement. It's a very complicated issue, actually. But I mean emphasizing that - as opposed to emphasizing housing and upstream solutions to homelessness, which is where ChrisTiana was doing with her statements. I just think we have a lot of contrast between people talking about housing, to be honest - housing, housing, housing on one side and then people talk about public safety sometimes when you get - in the more traditional races where you get those center lane candidates.
And housing is a message that's resonating with people. People, I think, want housing to be a thing. And again, for instance, we had this Social Housing measure pass earlier this year and I think that kind of - Tammy Morales, again, who is leading in her race and getting good, has really been supportive of that social housing measure and finding money to actually implement it. And as far as District - back to District 5 - I think ChrisTiana ObeySumner is also talking about those sorts of things more so than cops and hiring more police, and I think that there's people who want to hear them talk about that. And there certainly were other candidates in this race talking about different solutions to some of the sort of agreed upon crisis we see - maybe homelessness and housing - but I think those sort of holistic solutions, people are listening to that in an interesting way in some of these races. And this is an example of that to me.
[00:47:48] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this is a race where I think there was a broader range of viewpoints represented in this race across the spectrum that we see in Seattle. There was Tye Reed also in this race, who was very involved in the Social Housing initiative and that passing, and taking up a left mantle. But a number of progressive candidates - I think, yet again, this was another race where people were trying to figure out who was most aligned with their beliefs and that may have been not as easy as some people would have thought at first glance. And so another race where I think the endorsements from The Times and The Stranger were once again consequential. But I also think this is one where - a lot of times, I think we underestimate sometimes just individual candidate attributes, individual candidate performance, how people are connecting. And especially with how close this race was, particularly between the second and third place finishers - ChrisTiana ObeySumner and Nilu Jenks - I think ChrisTiana did a more effective job at clearly articulating where they stood on issues. And that was more of a challenge for Nilu Jenks, where some people left with some impressions based on what they said and they said things that gave other impressions to people. And so voters trying to reconcile who these candidates are and what kind of votes to expect, endorsing organizations trying to ferret out what kind of votes should they expect from these - I think that this is an example of being clear about where you stand is helpful in getting through to establishment people, getting through to voters, and making the kinds of connections that get you through to the general election. What do you think, Daniel?
[00:49:50] Daniel Beekman: I was going to say - yeah, I don't have a lot to add, I don't think, about these particular two candidates. But I spent some time on Election Day - again, my very unscientific sample size, by the Lake City Library and a lot of people were talking about homelessness and people were talking about public drug use. And it will be interesting to see how these candidates navigate some issues like that. I do think that the questions about prosecuting people for using drugs in public - that has been in the headlines recently at City Hall, so that will likely in this race and others be something that is talked about. But Guy mentioned Darya Farivar's - or maybe you did, Crystal, or both of you - that election that she ran and won last year. And I would think that candidates in both District 4 and District 5 might want to be looking at that - and some of it is just about a candidate and their personality and what they have going for them. But if you're a smart candidate in those districts, you're looking at that race and - what did she do? And also just reminded me that - in terms of sort of some changes politically - is that on issues like criminal justice or the legal system, on issues around housing - both zoning, which is traditionally very much a city issue, but also on funding affordable housing - it seems like there are more of those conversations and more action happening in Olympia than there was some years ago. And I don't know if that sort of makes some of these City races feel a little bit less urgent for folks, but it's something that's occurred to me where - some years ago when there was just nothing happening in the State Legislature, when people are looking for help or for change, it made City elections that much more high stakes, but maybe that's been changing a little bit.
[00:51:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I also think this is an interesting race just because of the expanded representation that could potentially be coming to the Council - non-binary person, disabled BIPOC person - and that kind of representation being really important. We're seeing so many other members of the community deal with challenges and access issues related to that, that some lived experience could be very enlightening and helpful in crafting solutions that meet the needs of everyone in the City. So I'll be interested to see that explored throughout the general election. And just figuring out, once again, where these candidates stand on issues. There's going to be a lot that the City Council is going to be dealing with over the next several years. And so I hope that there really is an attempt to figure out where the candidates stand and what solutions they feel - not just that they're willing to vote for, but that they're really willing to lean on and try and craft solutions with their colleagues on this for.
[00:53:06] Shannon Cheng: You just listened to Part 1 of our 2023 Post-Primary Roundtable that was originally aired live on Tuesday, August 8th. Audio for Part 2 will be running this Friday, so make sure to stay tuned. Full video from the event and a full text transcript of the show can be found on our website officialhacksandwonks.com.
The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can follow Crystal @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thank you for tuning in!
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattle political reporter and editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett!
They discuss the latest in Burien’s non-addressing of homelessness, new revenue options presented for Seattle, whether primary results mean Seattle City Council incumbents are doomed or safe, and how candidates who support police alternatives led in primaries. The episode continues with how Mayor Harrell’s $27M for drug diversion and treatment adds no new funding, Seattle adding new protections for app-based workers, and signs of a late-summer COVID surge.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica Barnett, at @ericacbarnett.
Resources
“No Solutions for Unsheltered Burien Residents After Another Contentious Council Meeting” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“Proposals to Close City Deficit Prompt Immediate Backlash from Businesses, Business-Backed Council Members” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“The Seattle Process Strikes Again” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
Final Report of the Revenue Stabilization Workgroup | City of Seattle
“Are Incumbent City Councilmembers Doomed? The Seattle Times Sure Hopes So!” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“Candidates who support police alternatives lead primaries in Washington cities” by Scott Greenstone from KNKX Public Radio
“Harrell's "$27 Million Drug Diversion and Treatment" Plan Would Allow Prosecutions But Add No New Funding” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“Seattle City Council adds more protections for app-based workers” by Sarah Grace Taylor from The Seattle Times
“Early signs suggest WA could see a late-summer COVID wave” by Elise Takahama from The Seattle Times
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state, through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show, today's co-host: Seattle political reporter and Editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett.
[00:01:08] Erica Barnett: It's great to be here.
[00:01:09] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you back and certainly a number of things to talk about this week. I think we'll start off talking about the City of Burien and the continuing saga - and kind of city crisis - surrounding their handling of people who have been camping because they are homeless. There was an offer of assistance made from the County, there was some work going on - and this is happening with a fractured Council majority and Council minority, usually voting 4-3 in these things. There was a meeting that happened this week. What happened at that meeting and where do things stand now?
[00:01:48] Erica Barnett: At the meeting, there were no decisions made, but there was a long discussion of the timeline of what has happened so far. The City Manager presented his version of events in which the City of Burien is held harmless, did nothing wrong, has tried earnestly to come up with alternatives for these folks - and it is a few dozen people - but has just failed or been thwarted at every turn. Several dozen people have been moved from place to place since they were originally swept from a site outside City Hall and the Burien Library. And now they are living at a couple sites - or until this week, were living at a couple sites - in Burien. A group of people were swept out of a site next to a Grocery Outlet and across the street from a Family Dollar by a private company that has gotten a lot of positive attention from the Council majority, which is run by an individual named Kristine Moreland and offers what their website refers to as sweep services - removing people - and this group claims that they have housed folks. What appears to have happened, and I'll be writing more about this later this week - on Friday, probably as you're listening to this, it might be up - what appears to have happened is that they have been relocated into a hotel for a week or so with no apparent plan to do anything beyond that. As I wrote this week, there's no real solution in sight and the County's money is contingent on them finding a location in the City of Burien or getting another city to agree to take Burien's homeless population on. That money could go away.
[00:03:20] Crystal Fincher: It's a shame that the money could go away. Something that struck me as unfortunate this entire time is, as you say, this isn't about thousands upon thousands of people. This is actually a situation where it seems like it's possible - working with partners, working with the resources that the County has provided in terms of cash and tiny homes - potentially house most or all of this population, to work through this. This seems like something that is fixable and achievable, and something that Council could be looked at as an example of how to work through this and manage this issue in your city. It appears that they just continue to run from that and double down on these criminalized solutions that have just moved people from literally one lot to another, sometimes across the street from each other. This is in a pretty small area of the city where these encampments and sweeps have taken place. And so just watching the City continue to not try to solve this problem is exceedingly frustrating.
[00:04:24] Erica Barnett: To be fair to the City - I try to be fair always, but to take the City's perspective - I can see an argument that a million dollars is really not enough. You can't house people for a million dollars. You can shelter them temporarily. And that is what the County has proposed. But that is a small caveat to the fact that the City, right now, is showing a lot of mistrust for traditional partners that actually do this work and are telling them there is no housing, that it's incredibly hard to house people, and they have to go through a whole process. And they're showing a lot of mistrust of LEAD and REACH, which have been working down in that area for a long time, and showing a sort of almost naive trust of this new organization that is run by one individual who says that she can solve all of their problems and that it's easy. One thing I didn't mention is they put on the table the idea of contracting with this organization run by Kristine Moreland - it's called The More We Love - it's a private group, it's not a nonprofit. So they're talking about spending money on her group because she has said that it is very easy to house people.
[00:05:25] Crystal Fincher: Wow. That would be an interesting use of public funds.
[00:05:29] Erica Barnett: There's a lot of questions about whether they can actually do this, like where the funds would come from. If they would take away REACH's money, that's federal money - she would need to have a lot more assurances and perhaps a nonprofit, which as I said she does not appear to have, to do that. They've started going down that road. The mayor proposed last week that they start working on looking into contracting with this group. It is very much on the table and could happen or could start to be discussed seriously within the next couple of weeks.
[00:05:58] Crystal Fincher: Very interesting. We will continue to follow this, as we have been doing. I also wanted to talk about significant news this week in the City of Seattle, where a revenue workgroup presented options for potential progressive revenue options in the City of Seattle. What happened with this and what options are on the table?
[00:06:18] Erica Barnett: This workgroup has been meeting for a while - it consists of folks with the mayor's office, City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda is the co-chair, then some business groups, some labor groups - including the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, which had an interesting reaction this week. But the workgroup eventually came up with a set of policy options - they're saying they are not recommendations - and they considered 63, they narrowed it down to 9. And the top three are the ones that the City could move forward with right away. Those are, in order, increasing or changing the JumpStart payroll expense tax and letting those monies flow into the general fund, implementing a City-level capital gains tax - which the City believes it could do without a ballot initiative or permission from the State Legislature. And then a new tax on CEOs that have a very high ratio of pay compared to the average employee in a company - essentially a surcharge on the JumpStart Tax to companies that have extremely well-paid CEOs. I should mention this is all to close a pending revenue gap in 2025 and beyond of hundreds of millions of dollars. They've got to figure out a way to narrow this gap either by cutting spending, by increasing revenues, or most likely some combination of both.
[00:07:39] Crystal Fincher: These are certainly interesting options. You noted that these are not recommendations, they're simply presenting options - which makes me wonder about the coalition that was at the table here, the participants in the workgroup, the elephant in the room of sometimes these workgroups are really just attempts to get the business community on board with a tax. It doesn't look like they accomplished that here. What are the dynamics of the groups who were involved in putting these options together?
[00:08:10] Erica Barnett: Yesterday, a member of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce sent out a statement saying - Seattle revenues are at an all-time high and spending is unsustainable - repudiating the idea that we need new taxes and suggesting that the real problem is the City Council is just spending frivolously. The report the revenue stabilization task force put out talks about spending and notes that the amount the City has been spending has been going up roughly in line with inflation and labor costs. There's some mandatory COLAs [cost-of-living adjustments] and pay increases that have happened that have been very necessary to keep folks more in line with the private market to actually keep people working for the City, which has faced problems with hiring just like every other workplace. There isn't necessarily a lot of evidence that the City is spending out of control, at least according to this report that the Chamber itself signed off on, but they have indicated that they're gonna come out hard against it - not clear in what way, but they certainly have sued over other taxes, including the JumpStart Tax in the past. More to come, I'm sure, but they have indicated that they are not on board with these options, which would tax businesses essentially and tax some of their members.
[00:09:24] Crystal Fincher: As you mentioned, they opposed the JumpStart Tax, they opposed previous taxes. Here, they frequently act as an organized opposition to taxation, particularly taxation that involves the business community. Lots of people talk about Seattle process and how we will workgroup and task force something to death - that certainly is the case. But when a number of candidates run, or when we've heard in press conferences with the mayor and talking about One Seattle - and if we can just get everyone seated around the table and get everyone talking, surely we can hammer out something and agree and be able to move forward in community and coalition and with buy-in. The problem is that other people are too contentious and they wanna do things without the buy-in of everyone, but I will get everyone together and do that. That's certainly not unique to Bruce Harrell - we heard that from Mayor Ed Murray, from Mayor Jenny Durkan, from several City councilmembers - they just needed to get people together. In another one of these workgroups, they did bring everyone to the table and the same disagreements, the same lack of alignment that was evident before this was put together surfaces now. It's time to make a decision for a lot of people. If everyone doesn't agree to do something, then it's on pause, it just doesn't happen. Or is it going to be moving forward with options that may have the support of the general public? Certainly a number of these options poll well and the candidates who have advanced them are winning most of these elections. Are they willing to move without the support of the business community or potentially setting up another showdown with the business community? That's a question that has yet to be answered.
[00:11:10] Erica Barnett: I would not dismiss this necessarily as just another example of Seattle process going nowhere. I think the last revenue stabilization task force, of course it was called something else but, came up with the JumpStart Tax, which is a payroll tax on highly-compensated workers at extremely large employers - that has brought in hundreds of millions of dollars a year and really addressed the revenue shortfalls during COVID. I think that business community aside - and Alex Pedersen, City councilmember who is an ally of the business community, sent out a press release poo-pooing the proposals or the policy ideas - this will probably lead to some action by the council. They have to do something. They are facing a really grave situation. There are other task forces that have met and not really done much in similar situations. The council and the City - the mayor and the council have to pass a balanced budget every year. If they've got a $250 million shortfall in a budget, they've got to address that. Looking at and talking to Teresa Mosqueda, the chair of the committee, one of the co-chairs of this task force, and the Chair of the Finance Committee yesterday, they're looking at those first three options very seriously. There's probably a council majority right now to support one of those options. Depending on how fast they move on this, it could be a new council that may be less friendly. We'll see. They have to do something. I don't see cutting that much of the budget as an option.
[00:12:28] Crystal Fincher: The Chamber is staking out the position that the only thing that they are willing to discuss - from their perspective right now - is cuts and not focusing on the revenue-generating options, some of which were considered more progressive than others by many people. So what are the next steps here?
[00:12:46] Erica Barnett: Council Central Staff is going to do an analysis of these options, probably - again, with the emphasis on those ones that the council can do on its own. Then there will be policy recommendations and legislation, presumably, to pass some version of one or more of these options. There are six other options, some of which would require the Legislature to pass legislation allowing the City to implement some of these taxes - that's a longer-term strategy that the council says it's going to engage in. The short-term perspective is they're going to start working on this stuff. When it comes to the Chamber, they are not all-powerful - their job is generally to oppose taxes on their members. They did that last time - they lost in the court of public opinion, and they also lost in court - now we have the JumpStart payroll tax. I don't know if that experience is going to make them reluctant to challenge an expansion of that tax or any of these other taxes. They have not been successful so far in preventing taxation to close these revenue shortfalls, to pay for housing and homelessness solutions - their opposition just means the business community is against this. It doesn't mean that it's not going to happen.
[00:13:53] Crystal Fincher: That's a very good point. Also want to talk about a piece you did in PubliCola this week as a response to some at The Seattle Times suggesting the three incumbents in Seattle City Council races that are running again - each of whom lead their race, two of whom with over 50% of the vote - are somehow not safe. Did that pass the smell test?
[00:14:18] Erica Barnett: They presented a theory in this editorial - described as a hopeful theory on their part - that the incumbents are in trouble if they end up with less than 55%. They said that this was just the general consensus of election watchers. I don't know - I'm an election watcher, you're an election watcher - this is not my consensus. And nor, when I look back at the numbers, is it reflected in reality. An incumbent might have a somewhat tough race if they are under 50% of the vote in the primary. There's just so many reasons - among which is, as you said, they're all above 50% now. The primary electorate tends to be more conservative. The incumbents that The Seattle Times wants to defeat are all more progressive than their opponents. The primary election turnout was incredibly low. Some of these folks in the races with lots and lots of candidates where there wasn't an incumbent were winning by a few hundred votes. The Times really is hopeful they will be able to finally rid themselves of candidates, or of City councilmembers like Tammy Morales, who is very much leading her Seattle Times-endorsed opponent, Tanya Woo, Dan Strauss, who's leading Pete Hanning. And Andrew Lewis, who actually is looking the weakest right now - he is under 50%. His opponent, Bob Kettle, is unlikely to get a bunch of business community backing in District 7, which includes downtown. All the incumbents are looking strong right now.
[00:15:41] Crystal Fincher: That seems to be the consensus from the election watchers I'm aware of, many of whom are actively involved in several elections. Incumbents just don't lose from this position. We rarely, if ever, see that. It's rare to see, even in open seats, for people to finish over 50% and then not win, which doesn't mean that - barring scandal or something wild happening, there are a lot of unknowns - to suggest that this indicates trouble is really stretching it. We will continue to follow those elections. We just did a Post-Primary recap show, which we will also be releasing on the podcast - you can hear more about our thoughts on those.
[00:16:22] Erica Barnett: The one example I was able to find in history where it came close to what The Times was saying was Richard Conlin, who I think ended up under 50% in his primary against Kshama Sawant. And Sawant won by a very narrow margin in her first election. It does not illustrate The Times's point because Sawant is obviously far to the left of Richard Conlin, who was a standard moderate Democrat liberal. They really just don't have any examples to back up these kind of sweeping conclusions that they're making.
[00:16:51] Crystal Fincher: They don't. They're having a challenge reconciling the results of the race. They were setting it up, from an editorial perspective, that Seattleites are really unhappy with the council and that unhappiness meant they wanted a change and more moderate candidates, they were unhappy with the direction of the City. I've talked about several times - the City doesn't necessarily have a direction - you have a mayor who is more moderate, you have some councilmembers who are more progressive, others who are more moderate depending on the day of the week. You need to get into an examination of the issues and where Seattle voters generally are on issues is more progressive than what The Times usually articulates. It'll be interesting to see how they evaluate these races and their endorsed candidates and their chances. What do voters really expect to see? What do they not want to see? What do they find unacceptable? Questions that oftentimes are left unexamined by seemingly the parties who could do well to examine them the most.
Also want to talk this week about an article that actually talked about candidates who support police alternatives are leading primaries, getting through to the general election. Some of those candidates really want to focus on those alternatives. Many of them want those alternatives in addition to police or to be able to dispatch a more appropriate response - whether it's a behavioral health crisis, someone dealing with substance use disorder, homelessness - dispatching responders who may not be armed police, but who are equipped to handle the problem at hand, which oftentimes even police will tell you they are not the best equipped to handle things that are not of a criminal nature. What did this article find?
[00:18:27] Erica Barnett: People are interested in alternatives to police. There has been a lot made of the idea that there is this backlash to "Defund the Police." The City of Seattle did not defund the police. In 2020, there was a real movement for change that organized under that name. They were advocating for funding alternatives and using some of the money that is currently used for armed police officers. When you frame it in a way that does not use those words - "defund the police" - that is what people want. I do not cover cities outside Seattle, which this article focused on, but I think that is definitely what we've seen in Seattle where folks who have said they would ensure that there are 5-minute response times to 911 calls, like Maritza Rivera in District 4, or folks who have run on an expand-the-police platform, like Olga Sagan, who was a primary contender against Andrew Lewis in District 7, and I think ended up with 19% of the vote and is out. Those folks did not fare as well as people who said - I want to fund alternatives and come up with a way to respond to crisis calls, for example, without sending out cops.
[00:19:35] Crystal Fincher: Voters do want to be safer and feel safe. They recognize that conversation about public safety and how we keep people safe is a lot bigger than just policing. If you listen to elected officials speak or you listen to campaign rhetoric, you would think it was either we invest in hiring a ton more cops and keep doing that, or we do nothing and lawlessness reigns. No one wants lawlessness to reign. No one is proposing to do nothing. There are alternative solutions, there are other responses, there are cities implementing this. One of the things in this article is that this is not just a Seattle phenomenon. In fact, many other cities - Bellingham, Spokane, Tacoma - other cities around the region who are moving forward with this and who have candidates really wanting to examine how to best keep people safe and prevent crime in addition to responding to it, taking a more comprehensive look at how do we address all of these issues. It's another signal that voters want to hear more comprehensive plans for how people plan to keep the community safe, want to use more tools at folks' disposal. And I hope candidates see that and recognize that and come with some real serious proposals to help their communities become safer.
[00:20:54] Erica Barnett: I think too, it speaks to some failures of the media - and we're talking about The Seattle Times - but broadly the debate about policing has been misrepresented as defund the police versus public safety. Everybody wants to feel safe in their communities. And the people who have advocated for reforms and for funding other alternatives are just as interested in public safety and community safety as "Refund the Police" or "Overfund the Police" crowd. They clearly outnumber that crowd. There are a lot of nuances within that first group of folks who want community safety, but would like to see alternatives. It is much larger than just the police can and should do everything alternative.
[00:21:37] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Also want to talk about something that you covered that we didn't get to last week because of all the election news, but I think is important to talk about since we are trying to deal with issues like drug addiction, substance use disorder - this may fall underneath an alternate response. But the City of Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell announced $27 million for drug diversion and treatment options as a new attempt to implement the drug prosecution legislation that previously failed on the council. What is he actually proposing?
[00:22:12] Erica Barnett: The coverage of this was so frustrating to me, including in outlets that I think ordinarily do a very good job of breaking stuff like this down. I did write about the $27 million and I asked - What is this $27 million? - because it's not in the legislation. The Seattle Times said that it was in the legislation - that is not true. The legislation itself essentially just reintroduces the drug criminalization ordinance, which would allow Ann Davison, the City Attorney, to start prosecuting drug users and adds a phrasing that says the police department must adopt a policy in the future that prioritizes diversion when people are arrested for drugs. $27 million was a separate announcement that Harrell made as part of announcing this legislation. And what it is, in fact, is $7 million in underspending, so money that the City failed to spend in previous years, will be put forward to some kind of capital investment. So like a building - unclear what that will be, but it'll have something to do with treatment. So very vague, but $7 million in money that the City has left over. The other $20 million is funding from the two opioid settlements with the companies that the Attorney General of the State of Washington secured earlier this year - that $20 million trickles into the City of Seattle over 18 years. The rate of inflation being what it is - in 2034 or 2035, $1 million is not gonna buy a lot. It doesn't buy a lot now. It's really overstating the case to say that this is $27 million. It's two different kinds of money - one is this tiny trickle of a little bit of money that's gonna come in every year for the next 18 years.
[00:23:49] Crystal Fincher: When I first saw that announced, my initial questions were - Where is this money coming from? We saw something similar to this back with the Compassion Seattle Initiative - okay, we tried to advance some legislation, it failed. So let's add some money to it to make it seem compassionate, that nods to the things that actually do have broad public support. It's money that is in other buckets that we're transitioning to this bucket, and it's looking big, but we're gonna be spending it over a long period of time - so it's not really an investment of a rounding error over what we're doing right now. Certainly looking at the scale of the problem - doesn't seem like it has a chance of doing much to meaningfully impact that at all. In fact, it seems like it might be an inefficient way to spend this money. Maybe this would be an area where you could look at what would function more effectively. But it seems like it's acceptable, with policy that we've seen coming out of this mayor's office, to cobble together these kinds of funds and announce it as if it's - Hey, we're making a significant investment here. Look at the details and they're underwhelming. I hope that there is more to the plan than this.
[00:25:05] Erica Barnett: I should correct myself on that $7 million - it's actually not probably gonna be spent on new buildings. The mayor spokesman told me that it'll provide capital funding to prepare existing facilities to provide care and treatment services for substance use disorders. Again, very vague - not a lot of money spread over, potentially, a lot of different facilities. And as we discussed, the City has this huge looming revenue shortfall. They don't have a lot of money. They don't have $27 million to put into anything new. And so I think this speaks to the fact that we are actually going to address the problem just of opioid addiction. It is going to cost a lot of money and it would require actual new funding. It's not something that the City is generally responsible for - public health is the responsibility of the County primarily. The City is out here claiming to have the solutions in hand and it's really incumbent on reporters and just on the public to be aware of what this really means, which is not a whole lot.
[00:26:03] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it will be interesting to see how this lands - with the council taking this up, where this is gonna go. I would love to see significant funding put in this and enough where it looks like it could make a difference in the area. We'll see how this shakes out.
Also wanna talk about a positive thing - I think to many people, myself included - that happened this week and that is the passage of new protections for app-based workers in the City of Seattle. What did this legislation do?
[00:26:32] Erica Barnett: Yeah, the City has been working for months, it feels like years, on legislation to help protect app-based workers - folks like Uber drivers, grocery delivery app workers - from being deactivated in the apps and effectively being unable to earn a living. The workers have argued they are subject to unfair deactivation by companies, retaliatory deactivation, this sort of thing. The legislation would say they have a right to appeal if they are deactivated. It also sets out some guidelines for deactivation. It is a first step toward protecting folks who are working as "gig workers," who have few labor protections. It's not a lot different than being a freelance writer or a contractor, but with low hourly pay and without the protections that you have being an employee of one of these companies. It's a BS job designation, but the gig economy operates on workers who have very few protections, very low pay, and has insisted that their workers are not employees because that would afford them protections that most people with jobs have. City of Seattle is taking steps to try to give them some of those protections, although they're still not employees and still don't have the protections that they deserve as members of the labor force.
[00:27:50] Crystal Fincher: An important element here is how these platforms and gig work companies advertise themselves to people who could work on their platforms. They do signal - Hey, this is a way to achieve financial stability. This is almost like building your own business or a new way to have more freedom, yet still be able to pay your bills and live the life that you want. But the way that you could get kicked off of these platforms could be completely arbitrary with no recourse. And as you said, this is really about having a way to appeal these decisions that sometimes are made without the involvement of any person - some algorithm determines that something didn't go well and it could get that wrong. We see plenty of times where automated decisions, whether it's an algorithm or AI, do not make the just decision. And having someone's livelihood that depends on that should come with more protections, more assurances, or at least a consistent process that could be followed. So I am happy to see this pass. This is continuing to grow and a really substantial area of our economy and a lot of our neighbors rely on this kind of income - having that be more predictable and stable with more of a process for people to understand how it works and how they can operate within it is a positive thing.
[00:29:11] Erica Barnett: Firing a writer because of negative comments in the comments section of a blog - the customer is not always right - and in a normal job, if you've got a complaint from a customer, you would have the opportunity to state your case to your employer. In this case, as you said, it's determined by algorithms that are not transparent. You really have no recourse.
[00:29:29] Crystal Fincher: Legislation was crafted with the input of these app companies too. I think Lisa Herbold was quoted as saying, she made some modifications to make sure - after hearing feedback from these companies - to do all that they could to make sure that they were being explicit about action taken to protect people's safety or those kinds of urgent situations. This is really getting at the element of people being able to understand the rules and the processes they have to adhere to.
And finally this week, I wanna talk about a story that maybe a lot of people are seeing anecdotally. We've been seeing news across the country about wastewater detection of COVID increasing. It looks like we are going to see a late-summer COVID wave here in Washington state. What's going on with the 'VID?
[00:30:21] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I know tons of people who've gotten COVID recently. It's very alarming. People are slacking off, or have been slacking off for at least a year or so, with COVID thinking that it's over, the pandemic emergency being declared over and people aren't wearing masks. There's obviously a surge. I read a really alarming story about the impacts of long COVID, which we really have yet to reckon with. It was a story about just how much it affects your cardiovascular health and the rate of heart attacks going up in younger people. It's very alarming and it's still a very serious disease - even if you aren't showing symptoms, even if you're showing mild symptoms, it's very scary. I traveled recently and I was guilty of not wearing my mask as much as I probably should have. And I was lucky I didn't get COVID, but it's still coming for all of us.
[00:31:09] Crystal Fincher: It is still coming for all of us. I did travel recently, was masked during travel. Doesn't happen to everyone, but a significant percentage of people who have mild initial infection can come with all of these side effects. We just don't know yet. This COVID has not been around long enough to know what the long-term impacts are. My biggest learnings during COVID is how viruses operate overall and how it's not unusual for a wide variety of viruses to be an initial flu-like illness, like how HPV is tied to cervical cancer. I'm certainly not an MD - look this up yourself, follow guidance. It does seem like we should be more cautious about transmitting viruses overall, COVID or not. If wearing a mask can keep me from having that, I think that's a positive thing. We need to continue to focus on responses that make shared spaces safer, looking at ventilation and air filtration and treatment. I hope those conversations are still ongoing in policy circles - certainly they're important. It's unfortunate that we have relaxed masking in places where people don't have a choice to be, like on public transit or in healthcare settings, where they're more likely to see more sick people and the people who are there are more likely to be vulnerable. You can't not go to the doctors when you need help or you're relying on treatment.
[00:32:33] Erica Barnett: One reason I am less vulnerable is because I work from home. The City is currently still debating whether to and how much to force people to come back into work at the City of Seattle. Amazon - I saw a story today that they are monitoring people using their badge swipe-ins to police whether people are following their work-from-the-office mandates. There's so many benefits to letting people work from home. I find it very discouraging that part of the debate seems to have been settled in favor of the you-must-work-at-the-office crowd. It is protective to be at home and not be out in crowds of people who may be less cautious and getting you sick.
[00:33:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. I'm definitely a proponent of working from home - I am doing that as we speak - that's a privilege I have that a lot of people don't have. If you do come down with something, you can test for whether it's COVID or anything else. And employers making sure that they are giving their employees leave, which is a big problem, particularly in service industries.
And with that, I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, August 11th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng, who is incredible and amazing and talented. Our insightful cohost today is Seattle political reporter and Editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett. You can find Erica on Twitter at @ericacbarnett and on PubliCola.com. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. You can find me on all platforms @finchfrii, that's F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical interview shows delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, please leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full text transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank!
They run through results from Tuesday’s primary election for Seattle City Council, Seattle School Board & King County Council, and then take a look at Tacoma City Council, Spokane City elections, and the recall of gubernatorial candidate Semi Bird from the Richland School Board. The show concludes with reflection on the influence of editorial boards and their endorsements, particularly those of The Stranger.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank, at @cruickshank.
Resources
“RE-AIR: The Big Waterfront Bamboozle with Mike McGinn and Robert Cruickshank” from Hacks & Wonks
“Backlash to City Council incumbents doesn't materialize in primary” by Melissa Santos from Axios
“Seattle Public Schools primary election results 2023” by Dahlia Bazzaz and Monica Velez from The Seattle Times
“3 things we learned from the Pierce County primary, from council races to tax measures” by Adam Lynn from The News Tribune
“Voters favor recall of gubernatorial candidate Semi Bird from school board” by Jerry Cornfield from Washington State Standard
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Transcript
Coming soon
On this re-air, Crystal chats with former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and his former Senior Communications Advisor Robert Cruickshank about the missed opportunity for generational impact through how decisions were made about Seattle’s waterfront and the SR99 tunnel. Mike and Robert review how the vision of the scrappy People’s Waterfront Coalition, centered around making a prized public space accessible for all while taking the climate crisis on by transforming our transportation system, nearly won the fight against those who prioritized maintaining highway capacity and those who prioritized increasing Downtown property values.
The conversation then highlights how those with power and money used their outsized influence to make backroom decisions - despite flawed arguments and little public enthusiasm for their proposal - leaving Seattle with an underutilized deep bore tunnel and a car-centric waterfront. Some of the decision makers are still active in local politics - including current Mayor Bruce Harrell and his current advisor Tim Burgess. With important elections ahead, Crystal, Mike and Robert discuss how political decisions tend to conflict with campaign promises rather than donor rolls, how proven action is a better indicator than value statements, and how today’s dense ecosystem of progressive leaders and organizations can take inspiration and win the next fight.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii, Mike McGinn at @mayormcginn, and Robert Cruickshank at @cruickshank.
Mike McGinn
Mike is the Executive Director of national nonprofit America Walks. He got his start in local politics as a neighborhood activist pushing for walkability. From there he founded a non-profit focused on sustainable and equitable growth, and then became mayor of Seattle. Just before joining America Walks, Mike worked to help Feet First, Washington State’s walking advocacy organization, expand their sphere of influence across Washington state. He has worked on numerous public education, legislative, ballot measure and election campaigns – which has given him an abiding faith in the power of organizing and volunteers to create change.
Robert Cruickshank
Robert is the Director of Digital Strategy at California YIMBY and Chair of Sierra Club Seattle. A long time communications and political strategist, he was Senior Communications Advisor to Mike McGinn from 2011-2013.
Resources
“Seattle Waterfront History Interviews: Cary Moon, Waterfront Coalition” by Dominic Black from HistoryLink
“State Route 99 tunnel - Options and political debate" from Wikipedia
“Remembering broken promises about Bertha” by Josh Cohen from Curbed Seattle
“Fewer drivers in Seattle’s Highway 99 tunnel could create need for bailout” by Mike Lindblom from The Seattle Times
“Surface Highway Undermines Seattle’s Waterfront Park” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
“Seattle Prepares to Open Brand New Elliott Way Highway Connector” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I am very excited to be welcoming Robert Cruickshank and former Mayor Mike McGinn to the show to talk about something that a lot of people have been thinking about, talking about recently - and that is Seattle's new waterfront. We feel like we've spent a decade under construction - from a deep bore tunnel to the tunnel machine getting stuck - that's not even covering all the debate before that, but all of the kind of follies and foibles and challenges that have beset the process of arriving at the waterfront that we have now. And now that we are getting the big reveal, a lot of people have feelings about it. So I thought we would talk about it with one of the people who was at the forefront of criticisms of the tunnel and calling out some red flags that turned out to be a very wise warning - several wise warnings that have come to pass, unfortunately - for not listening to them. But I want to start early on in the beginning, both of you - and I had a short stint in the mayor's office - worked on this, talked about this on the campaign, really got it. But when did you first hear that we needed to replace the viaduct and there were some different opinions about how to make that happen?
[00:02:06] Mike McGinn: Okay, so I'm sure I can't pin down a date, but the really important date was, of course, the Nisqually earthquake in 2001. And so it gave the Alaska Way Viaduct a good shake - the decks weren't tied into the columns, the columns were on fill, which could liquefy - and everybody understood that if that quake had been a little stronger and harder, the elevated would come down. Now you might think that that would call for immediately closing the roadway for safety reasons, but what it did call for was for reconstructing it. And you have to remember that highway was really one of the very first limited access highways - it was built long ago and it was just at the end of its useful life anyway. Certainly not built to modern seismic standards or modern engineering standards.
So the conversation immediately started and I don't know when everything started to settle into different roles, but the Mayor of Seattle Greg Nickels, was immediately a proponent for a tunnel - and a much larger and more expensive tunnel than what was ultimately built. And it would have been a cut-and-cover tunnel along the waterfront that included a new seawall. So they thought they were solving two things at one time - because the seawall too was rotting away, very old, very unstable. But it would have gone all the way under South Lake Union and emerged onto Aurora Avenue further north, it would have had entrances and exits to Western and Elliott. And I seem to remember the quoted price was like $11 billion. And the state - governor at the time was Christine Gregoire - they were - No, we're replacing the highway. We don't have $11 billion for Seattle. And of course had the support of a lot of lawmakers for obvious reasons - we're not going to give Seattle all that money, we want all that highway money for our districts. And those were immediately presented as the alternatives.
And so much of the credit has to go to Cary Moon, who lived on the waterfront and started something called the People's Waterfront Coalition. I think Grant Cogswell, a former City Council candidate - now runs a bookstore down in Mexico City, but wrote a book about the Monorail, worked on the different Monorail campaigns before that - they launched something called the People's Waterfront Coalition. And the basic proposition was - We don't need a highway. This is a great opportunity to get rid of the highway and have a surface street, but if you amp up the transit service - if we invest in transit instead - we can accommodate everyone. And so that was really - as it started - and actually I remember being outside City Hall one day, going to some stakeholder meeting - I went to so many different stakeholder meetings. And I remember Tim Ceis saying to me - he was the Deputy Mayor at the time - You're not supporting that Cary Moon idea - I mean, that's just crazy. I was - Well, actually, Tim. So the Sierra Club was - I was a volunteer leader in the Sierra Club - and the Sierra Club was one of the first organizations - I'm sure there were others, I shouldn't overstate it - but the Sierra Club was persuaded by the wisdom of Cary's idea and supported it in that day. And so that was really how the three different options got launched - no public process, no analysis, no description of what our needs were. The mayor went to a solution, the governor went to a solution - and it was up to members of the public to try to ask them to slow down, stop, and look at something different.
[00:05:42] Crystal Fincher: And Robert, how did you first engage with this issue?
[00:05:47] Robert Cruickshank: For me, I had just moved to Seattle the first time in the fall of 2001 - so it was about six months after the Nisqually quake - and I came from the Bay Area. And that was where another earthquake had damaged another waterfront highway, the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco. And that was where San Francisco had voted - after that quake had damaged their viaduct beyond repair - they voted to tear it down and replace it with the Embarcadero Waterfront, which is a six-lane arterial but they built a lot more transit there. So they did the - what we might call the surface transit option - and it worked really well. It was beautiful. It still is. And so when I came up here and started to learn a little bit about the place I was living and the legacy of the Nisqually quake, I thought - Oh, why don't you just do the same thing here? It worked so well in San Francisco. Let's just tear down this unsightly monstrosity on the waterfront and replace it with a surface boulevard and put in a bunch of transit - San Francisco's made it work successfully. And the more I learned about Seattle, I realized there's a legacy of that here, too. This is a city where we had a freeway revolt, where activists came together and killed the RH Thomson freeway, which would have destroyed the Arboretum. They killed the Bay Freeway, which would have destroyed Pike Place Market. And so I naturally assumed - as being a relatively new resident - that Seattle would stay in that tradition and welcome the opportunity to tear this down and build a great waterfront for people, not cars.
But as we'll talk about in a moment, we have a lot of business interests and freight interests and others who had a different vision - who didn't share that community-rooted vision. And I think at numerous points along the way, though, you see people of Seattle saying - No, this is not what we want for our waterfront. We have an opportunity now with the fact that this viaduct nearly collapsed, as Mike mentioned, in the Nisqually quake - we have an opportunity for something really wonderful here. And so I think Cary Moon and then Mike McGinn and others tapped into that - tapped into a really strong community desire to have a better waterfront. I wasn't that politically engaged at the time in the 2000s - I was just a grad student at UW - but just talking to folks who I knew, anytime this came up - God, wouldn't it be wonderful down there if this was oriented towards people and not cars, and we took that thing down? So I think one of the things you're going to see is this contest between the vision that many of us in Seattle had and still have - this beautiful location, beautiful vista on Elliott Bay, that should be for the people of the city - and those in power who have a very different vision and don't really want to share power or ultimately the right-of-way with We the People.
[00:08:05] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. And I was involved in some things at the time - some curious coalitions - but definitely I was around a lot of people who favored either rebuilding the viaduct or the tunnel. Definitely not this roads and transit option - there's no way that's workable. That's pie-in-the-sky talk from those loony greenies over there. What are you talking about? But as this went on - I think no matter what camp people were in - there was always a clear vision articulated and people really focused on the opportunity that this represented, and I think correctly characterized it as - this is one of these generational decisions that we get to make that is going to impact the next generation or two and beyond. And there's an opportunity - the waterfront felt very disconnected with the way things were constructed - it was not easy just to go from downtown to the waterfront. It wasn't friendly for pedestrians. It wasn't friendly for tourists. It just did not feel like a world-class waterfront in a world-class city, and how we see that in so many other cities. You talk about the decision with the Embarcadero, Robert, and looking at - that definitely seemed like a definitive step forward. This was sold as - yeah, we can absolutely take a step forward and finally fix this waterfront and make it what it should have been the whole time. As you thought about the opportunity that this represented, what was the opportunity to you and what did you hear other people saying that they wanted this to be?
[00:09:38] Mike McGinn: Yeah, so I think there are - I think that's really important, because I don't think there was a real discussion of what the vision was. People will say there was, but there really wasn't. Because what was baked in and what you're referring to is - well, of course you have to build automobile capacity to replace the existing automobile capacity, right? In fact, this state is still building more highways across the state in the misguided belief that more highway capacity will somehow or another do some good. So this idea that you have to replace and expand highway capacity is extremely powerful in Washington state and across the country. And there were very few examples of highway removal, so that was just a real challenge in the first place - that somehow or other the first priority has to be moving automobiles.
For me, at that time I had become - the issue of climate had really penetrated me at that point. And in fact, when Greg Nickels took office and the Sierra Club endorsed him over Paul Schell - I was a local leader in the Sierra Club and a state leader in the Sierra Club - and my goal was that Mayor Nickels would do more than Paul Schell. And Paul Schell, the prior mayor, had done some good things. He had made Seattle City Light climate neutral - we'd gotten out of coal plants and we didn't purchase power from coal plants. He was really progressive on a number of environmental issues and we wanted Mayor Nickels to do more - and Mayor Nickels had stepped up. So we put on a campaign to urge him to do more. And he had stepped up to start something called the Mayors' Climate Protection Initiative - which was the City of Seattle was going to meet the standards of the Kyoto Protocol, which was like the Paris Agreement of its day. And that was - it set an emissions reduction target by a date in the future. And that was really great - in fact, over a thousand cities around the country signed up to the Mayors' Climate Protection Initiative. And I was appointed to a stakeholder group with other leaders - Denis Hayes from the Bullitt Foundation and others - to develop the first climate action plan for a city. Al Gore showed up at the press conference for it - it was a big - it was a BFD and a lot of excitement.
And one of the things that was abundantly clear through that process of cataloging the emissions in the City of Seattle and coming up with a plan to reduce them was that our single largest source of emissions at that time was the transportation sector. We'd already gotten off of coal power under Mayor Schell - we received almost all of our electricity from hydroelectric dams. We had good conservation programs. Unlike other parts of the country, transportation was the biggest. Now what's fascinating is now - I don't know if I want to do the math - almost 20 years later, now what we see is that the whole country is in the same place. We're replacing coal and natural gas power plants. And now nationally, the single largest source of emissions is transportation. So how do you fix that? If we're serious about climate - and I thought we should be - because the scientists were telling us about heat waves. They were telling us about forest fires that would blanket the region in smoke. They were telling us about storms that would be bigger than we'd ever seen before. And flooding like we'd never seen and declining snowpack. And it was all going to happen in our futures. Honestly, I remember those predictions from the scientists because they're in the headlines today, every day. So what do we do to stop that? So I was - I had little kids, man - I had little kids, I had three kids. How are we going to stop this? Well, it's Seattle needs to lead - that's what has to happen. We're the progressive city. We're the first one out with a plan. We're going to show how we're going to do it. And if our biggest source is transportation, we should fix that. Well, it should seem obvious that the first thing you should do is stop building and expanding highways, and maybe even change some of the real estate used for cars and make it real estate for walking, biking, and transit. That's pretty straightforward. You also have to work on more housing. And this all led me to starting a nonprofit around all of these things and led to the Sierra Club - I think at a national level - our chapter was much further forward than any other chapter on upzones and backyard cottages and making the transition. So to me, this was the big - that was the vision. That was the opportunity. We're going to tear this down. We're going to make a massive investment in changing the system, and this in fact could be a really transformative piece. That's what motivated me.
That climate argument wasn't landing with a whole bunch of other interests. There was certainly a vision from the Downtown and Downtown property owners and residents that - boy, wouldn't it be great to get rid of that elevated highway because that's terrible. There was also a vision from the people who still believed in highway capacity and that includes some of our major employers at the time and today - Boeing and Microsoft, they have facilities in the suburbs around Seattle - they think we need highway capacity. As well as all of the Port businesses, as well as all the maritime unions - thought that this highway connection here was somehow critical to their survival, the industrial areas. And then they wanted the capacity. So there were very strong competing visions. And I think it's fair to say that highway capacity is a vision - we've seen that one is now fulfilled. The second priority was an enhanced physical environment to enhance the property values of Downtown property owners. And they cut the deal with the highway capacity people - okay, we're here for your highway capacity, but we have to get some amenities. And the climate folks, I'm not seeing it - never a priority of any of the leaders - just wasn't a priority.
[00:15:44] Crystal Fincher: How did you see those factions come into play and break down, Robert?
[00:15:48] Robert Cruickshank: It was interesting. This all comes to a head in the late 2000s. And remembering back to that time, this is where Seattle is leading the fight to take on the climate and the fight against George W. Bush, who was seen as this avatar of and deeply connected to the oil industry. Someone who - one of his first things when he took office - he did was withdraw the U.S. from the Kyoto Protocol, which is the earlier version of what's now known as the Paris Agreement - global agreement to try to lower emissions. And so Seattle, in resisting Bush - that's where Greg Nickels became a national figure by leading the Mayors' Climate Action Group - not just say we're going to take on climate, we're going to do something about really de facto fighting back against Bush. And then Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Al Gore comes out with An Inconvenient Truth. And by 2007, people in Seattle are talking a lot about climate and how we need to do something about climate. But then what you see happening is the limits of that - what are people really actually willing to do and willing to support?
The other piece that comes together, I think - in the 2000s - is a revival of the City itself. Seattle spends the late 20th century after the Boeing bust - since the 70s "Will the last person out of Seattle turn out the lights," recovering in the 80s somewhat, recovering in the 90s, and then the tech boom. And by the 2000s, Seattle is a destination city for young people coming to live here and living in apartments and working in the tech industry. I think that unsettles a lot of people. One thing that really stood out to me about the discussion about what to do on the waterfront was this vision from old school folks - like Joel Connelly and others - we've got to preserve that working waterfront. And it's very much the sense that blue collar working class labor is under threat - not from corporate power, but from a 20-something millennial with a laptop working at Amazon who comes to Seattle and thinks - Gosh, why is this ugly viaduct here? It's unsafe. Why don't we just tear it down and have a wonderful waterfront view? And those who are offended by this idea - who are so wedded to the 20th century model that we're going to drive everywhere, cars, freedom - this is where you see the limits of willingness to actually do something on climate. People don't actually want to give up their cars. They're afraid they're going to sacrifice their way of life.
And you start to see this weird but powerful constellation come together where rather than having a discussion about transportation planning or even a discussion about climate action, we're having this weird discussion about culture. And it becomes a culture war. And the thing about a culture war is people pushing change are never actually trying to fight a war. They're just - This is a good idea. Why don't we do this? We all say these - we care about these values. And the people who don't want it just dig in and get really nasty and fight back. And so you start to see Cary Moon, People's Waterfront Coalition, Mike McGinn, and others get attacked as not wanting working class jobs, not wanting a working waterfront, not caring about how people are going to get to work, not caring about how the freight trucks are going to get around even though you're proposing a tunnel from the Port to Wallingford where - it's not exactly an industrial hub - there are some businesses there. But dumping all these cars out or in South Lake Union, it's like, what is going on here? It doesn't add up. But it became this powerful moment where a competing vision of the City - which those of us who saw a better future for Seattle didn't see any competition as necessary at all - those who are wedded to that model where we're going to drive everywhere, we're going to have trucks everywhere, really saw that under threat for other reasons. And they decided this is where they're going to make their stand. This is where they're going to make that fight. And that turned out to be pretty useful for the Port, the freight groups, the establishment democratic leaders who had already decided for their own reasons this is what they wanted too.
[00:19:11] Mike McGinn: It's important to recognize too, in this, is to follow the money. And I think that this is true for highway construction generally. You have a big section of the economy - there's a section of the economy that believes in it, as Robert was saying, right? And I do think the culture war stuff is fully there - that somehow or another a bike lane in an industrial area will cause the failure of business. Although if you went to the bike - outside the industrial building - you'll find a bunch of the workers' bike there, right? Because it's affordable and efficient. So there's this weird belief that just isn't true - that you can't accommodate industry and transit and walking and biking. Of course you can. And in fact, adding all the cars is bad for freight movement because of all the traffic jams.
So there's that belief, but there's also a whole bunch of people - I mentioned Downtown property owners - that gets you to your Downtown Seattle Association. The value of their property is going to be dramatically enhanced by burying, by eliminating the waterfront highway. But then you also have all of the people who build highways and all of the people who support the people who build highways. Who's going to float $4 billion in bonds? It's going to be a Downtown law firm. And by the way, the person who worked for that Downtown law firm and did the bond work was the head of the greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce at that time. So you have the engineering firms, you have the material providers, and then you have the union jobs that go with it. So really at this point - and this isn't just about the waterfront highway, this could be any highway expansion - you've captured the business community because a big chunk of the business community will get direct dollars from the government to them. And you've actually captured a significant chunk of the labor community as well, because labor fights for labor jobs. In the big picture, service workers are taking transit, service workers need housing in town, and you can start to see a split - like in my ultimate run for mayor, I won some service worker unions, never won any construction trades. In fact, they held a rally my first year in office to denounce me, right? Because I was standing in the way of jobs. So that's a really powerful coalition.
And I think what you see today in the country as a whole - as you know, I'm the ED of America Walks, so I get to see a lot more - this is a pattern. Highways aren't really supported by the public. They don't go to the public for public votes on highways anymore - the public wouldn't support it. And in fact, the data suggests the public gets that building more highway lanes won't solve everything. But you've got a big, big chunk of the economy that's gotten extremely used to billions and billions of dollars flowing into their pockets. And they need to protect that in every year. So you get that level of intensity around - Look, we're talking about $4 billion on the waterfront and a bunch of that money's coming to us. Better believe it's a good idea, and what are you talking about, climate?
[00:22:03] Robert Cruickshank: You talk about public votes, and I think there are three crucial public votes we got to talk about. One is 2007, when these advisory votes are on the ballot - and they're not binding, but they're advisory. Do you want to rebuild the viaduct or build a tunnel? They both get rejected. And then the next big vote is 2009, the mayoral election, where Mike McGinn becomes mayor - in part by channeling public frustration at this giant boondoggle. And then ultimately, the last public vote on this, 2011 - in June, I believe it was, it was in August - about whether we go forward or not and the public by this point, fatigued and beaten down by The Seattle Times, decides let's just move on from this.
[00:22:43] Mike McGinn: There's no other alternative. And it is worth returning to that early vote, because it was such a fascinating moment, because - I think the mayor's office didn't want to put his expansive tunnel option in a direct vote against the new elevated, fearing it would lose. So they engineered an agreement with the governor that each one would get a separate up or down vote. And by the way, Tim Ceis, the Deputy Mayor at the time, called in the Sierra Club, briefed us on it, and one of our members said - What would happen if they both got voted down? And Deputy Mayor Ceis said - by the way, Tim Ceis has got a big contract right now from Mayor Harrell, longtime tunnel supporter. Tim Ceis is the consultant for most of the business side candidates. Tim Burgess, another big supporter of the tunnel, now works for Mayor Harrell. Oh, and Christine Gregoire has been hired by the biggest corporations in the region to do their work for them as well. So there's a pretty good payoff if you stick around and support the right side of this stuff. But anyway, Mayor Ceis, Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis, when said, What happens if they're both voted down? He goes - Well, that would be chaos. You don't want that, do you? And I remember all of us just kind of looked at each other - and we all went out on the sidewalk, there were like six of us. And we went - We want that, right? And so we joined in and supported the No and No campaign. And The Stranger came in really hard. And I think Erica Barnett wrote the articles. And Cary Moon was in on it. And the defeat of that, for the first time, opened up the possibility - Well, let's think about something else.
And so a stakeholder group was formed. Cary Moon was appointed. Mike O'Brien was appointed. The waterfront guys were appointed. And the Downtown folks were appointed. And the labor folks were appointed. And I think a really important part of the story here is that it was advisory - they weren't making the decisions, it was advisory. But they got to a point at which the head of the State DOT, the head of the Seattle DOT, and the head of the King County DOT all expressed to their respective executives that surface transit worked and was worth it. And this was extremely distressing to the business community. So they mounted a big lobbying push and went straight to Gregoire. And Gregoire, for the first time, became a tunnel supporter. And they were promised that this new tunneling technology - the deep bore tunnel - would solve the cost issues of the deep bore tunnel. And not only that, the state's commitment, which to date was $2.4 billion - they had committed $2.4 billion to a rebuild - the state wouldn't have to pay anymore, because the Port would put in $300 million and they would raise $400 million from tolling. And coincidentally, the amount they thought they could raise from tolling was the exact amount needed to meet the projected cost of using the deep bore tunnel boring machine. So the deal was cut and announced. And the whole stakeholder group and the recommendations from the DOT heads were abandoned. And that occurred, basically, late 2008, early 2009 - the deal was made. And that was about the time that I was contemplating - well, I think I'd already decided to run, but I had not yet announced.
[00:26:14] Crystal Fincher: And this was an interesting time, especially during that vote. Because at that time, I had an eye into what the business community was doing and thinking, and it was clear that their numbers didn't add up.
[00:26:26] Mike McGinn: Oh my God - no.
[00:26:28] Crystal Fincher: But they just did not want to face that. And what they knew is they had enough money and resources to throw at this issue and to throw at a marketing effort to obfuscate that, that they wouldn't have to worry about it. And there was this sense of offense, of indignation that - Who are these people trying to come up and tell us that we don't need freight capacity, that we don't need - that this extra highway capacity, don't they understand how important these freeways are? Who are these people who just don't understand how our economy works?
[00:27:02] Mike McGinn: They were the grownups who really understood how things worked. And we were the upstarts who didn't understand anything. But there's a great line from Willie Brown talking about - I think the Transbay Bridge, and Robert can correct the name, in California, which was way over budget. And people were lamenting that the early estimates had been made up. And he goes - Look, this is how it works. You just need to dig a hole in the ground so deep that the only way to fill it up is with money. I think that's pretty much the quote. So that's the strategy. You get it started. Of course you have rosy estimates. And then you just have that commitment, and it's the job of legislators to come up with the cost overruns, dollars later.
[00:27:43] Robert Cruickshank: And I think it's so key to understand this moment here in the late 2000s, where the public had already weighed in. I remember voting - it was the last thing I voted on before I moved to California for four years. I'm like no - I was No and No. And that's where the Seattle voters were. They rejected both options. And then you start to hear, coming out of the stakeholder group - Okay, we can make the surface transit option work. And I left town thinking - Alright, that's what's going to happen, just like the Embarcadero in San Francisco and done. And the next thing I hear in late 2008, early 2009, there's this deal that's been cut and all of a sudden a deep bore tunnel is on the table. And this is Seattle politics in a nutshell. I think people look back and think that because we are this smart, progressive technocratic city - those people who live here are - we think that our government works the same way. And it doesn't. This is - time and time again, the public will make its expression felt. They'll weigh in with opinion poll or protest or vote. And the powers that be will say - Well, actually, we want to do this thing instead. We'll cook it up in a backroom. We're going to jam it on all of you, and you're going to like it. And if you don't like it, then we're going to start marshaling resources. We're gonna throw a bunch of money at it. We'll get The Seattle Times to weigh in and pound away at the enemy. And that's how politics works here - that's how so much of our transportation system is built and managed. And so people today, in 2023, looking at this monstrosity on the waterfront that we have now think - How did we get here? Who planned this? It was planned in a backroom without public involvement. And I think that's a thing that has to be understood because that, as we just heard, was baked in from the very start.
[00:29:11] Mike McGinn: Well, Robert, the idea of a deep bore tunnel was brought forward by a representative of the Discovery Institute, who you may know as the folks that believe in creationism.
[00:29:21] Robert Cruickshank: Well, and not only that, the Discovery Institute is responsible for turning Christopher Rufo from a failed Seattle City Council candidate in 2019 into a national figure.
[00:29:31] Mike McGinn: The Discovery Institute, with money from local donors - major, very wealthy local folks - they actually had a long-term plan to turn all of 99 into a limited access freeway. It's like - we need to get rid of that First Avenue South and Highway 99 and Aurora Avenue stuff - all of that should be a freeway. So they were the architects of the idea of - Hey, this deep bore tunnel is the solution. But Robert's point is just right on - transportation policy was driven by power and money, not by transportation needs, or climate needs, or equity needs, or even local economy needs really. When you get right down to it, our city runs on transit - that's what really matters. Our city runs on the fact that it's a city where people can walk from place to place. The idea that our economic future was tied to a highway that would skip Downtown - the most valuable place in the Pacific Northwest, Downtown Seattle. No, that's not really what powers our economy. But it certainly worked for the people that were going to get the dollars that flowed from folks and for the people who own Downtown property.
[00:30:42] Crystal Fincher: And I want to talk about money and power with this. Who were the people in power? What was the Council at that time? Who made these decisions?
[00:30:50] Mike McGinn: The Council at the time was elected citywide. And I think some people have concerns about district representation, but one of the things that citywide elections meant at the time was that you had to run a citywide campaign, and that's expensive. There's no way to knock on enough doors citywide. I did not have a lot of money when I ran for mayor, but at least I had the media attention that would go to a mayoral candidate. A City Council candidate would kind of flow under the radar. So you had people come from different places, right? They might come from the business side, they might come from the labor side. But ultimately, they would tend to make peace with the other major players - because only business and only labor could finance a campaign. They were the only ones with the resources to do that. So the other interests - the environmentalists, the social service folks, neighborhood advocates of whatever stripe - we chose from amongst the candidates that were elevated by, they would unify - in some cases, the business and labor folks would unify around a candidate. In fact, that's what we saw in the last two mayoral elections as well, where they pick a candidate. And so this doesn't leave much room.
So when I was mayor, almost the entire council was aligned with the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce at that time, either endorsed by them or had made their peace with them so the challenger was not being financed. So Robert said something about those outsiders - I went under the radar screen as a candidate at the beginning of my campaign. When I entered the race, nobody was running because everybody thought that Greg Nickels had the institutional support locked down.
[00:32:33] Crystal Fincher: But then a snowstorm happened.
[00:32:35] Mike McGinn: Well, it was even before that - honestly, everybody thought that he could win. And long before the snowstorm, I was like - We're getting a new mayor. And I was actually looking around to try to figure out who it was going to be - because I wanted a mayor who actually believed in climate, who had my values. But nobody - I was looking through who the people were that might run, and it dawned on me - Well, nobody's going to run. But we're going to get a new mayor and I have my values - and I've actually run ballot measure campaigns and had a very modest base of support. So I was really the first one in the race that got any attention. So I got some great media attention off that. Then my opponent in the general, Joe Mallahan - whatever else you may think about Joe Mallahan - he actually saw it too. He saw that there was an opening. And then we were joined by a long-time City Councilmember, Jan Drago. And I remember the headline from The Seattle Times or the comments at the time was - Okay, now it's a real race. But it just really wasn't. So I was really under the radar screen in that race because they were disregarding me. But there was in fact a lot of anger about the tunnel. There was a lot of just - Greg, for whatever his positives or negatives that history will deal with - and by the way, I actually think Greg did a lot of good. I just was disappointed in his highway policies and his climate policies at the end of the day - I have a lot of respect for Greg Nickels, but he wasn't going to win that race. And I came out of the primary against Joe Mallahan.
And all of a sudden we had these two outsiders and the business community's freaking out. All of it - I remember watching it - all of the support, the business support shifted to Joe. It took about a month, it took a few weeks. But all of a sudden - there was actually one week where I think I raised more money than he did, that was pretty unusual - and then all of a sudden all the money was pouring in. And boy, did Joe believe in that tunnel. And did Joe believe in what the Chamber of Commerce wanted to do. In fact, he believed in it so much that he believed that Seattle should pay cost overruns if there were cost overruns on the tunnel - an admission I got from him during the televised debate, I was shocked he admitted to it.
[00:34:41] Crystal Fincher: I remember that debate.
[00:34:43] Mike McGinn: Yeah. So you were kind of asking about how politics worked. It was really something. Yeah - here's another memory. About two weeks before the election, the City Council took - three weeks before the, two, three weeks, four weeks - they took a vote to say that the tunnel was their choice. Even though there's a mayoral election in which the tunnel is on the ballot, so to speak - in terms of the issues of the candidates - they took a vote for no reason to say it was a done deal. And then WSDOT released a video of the elevated collapsing in a highway, which is the first time a public disclosure request from a third party was ever given straight to a TV station, I think, in my experience in Seattle. I had Gregoire and the DOT folks down there working on that campaign too - their tunnel was threatened. So it really was something how - I indeed was kind of shocked at - it was such a learning experience for me - how much the ranks closed around this. I didn't appreciate it. I had my own nonprofit, I had been on stakeholder committees, I'd worked with a lot of people that weren't just Sierra Club members and neighborhood types. I'd worked with a lot of business people, many of whom had supported my nonprofit because they liked its vision. But they were very clear with me that as long as I supported the surface transit option, there was no way they could be associated with my run for mayor in any way, shape, or form - even if they liked me. It was a complete lockdown - right after the primary where Greg lost the primary and it was me and Joe, I was - Okay, open field running. I can now reach out to these people. There's no incumbent - maybe some of them can support me now. And they were abundantly clear on all of those phone calls that - Nope, can't do it. Until you change your position on the tunnel, we just can't do it. We have business in this town, Mike. We have relationships in this town. We cannot do that. So it was a real lockdown - politically.
[00:36:38] Crystal Fincher: That was also a big learning experience for me - watching that consolidation, watching how not only were they fighting for the tunnel against you and making the fight against you a fight about the tunnel, but the enforcement to those third parties that you were talking about that - Hey, if you play ball with him, you're cut off. And those kinds of threats and that kind of dealing - watching that happen was very formative for me. I'm like - Okay, I see how this works, and this is kind of insidious. And if you are branded as an outsider, if you don't play ball, if you don't kiss the ring of the adults in the room - which is definitely what they considered themselves - then you're on the outs and they're at war. And it was really a war footing against you and the campaign. Who was on the Council at that time?
[00:37:30] Mike McGinn: Oh my God. Let me see if I can go through the list. No, and it really, it was - your point about it was a war footing was not something that I fully, that I did not appreciate until actually going through that experience - how unified that would be. Excuse me. The City Council chair was Tim Burgess at the time. Bruce Harrell was on the Council. Sally Clark, Richard Conlin, Nick Licata. Mike O'Brien was running on the same platform as me with regard to the tunnel and he'd just been elected. Jean Godden, Sally Bagshaw. I hope I'm not leaving anything out - because -
[00:38:04] Robert Cruickshank: Tom Rasmussen will forgive you.
[00:38:06] Mike McGinn: Tom Rasmussen. Yeah - because City Councilmembers would get really offended if you didn't thank them publicly - that was another thing I had to learn. You have to publicly thank any other politician on stage with you or they held a grudge. Yeah. So I had - I didn't know all the politicians' rules when I started.
[00:38:25] Crystal Fincher: There are so many rules.
[00:38:27] Mike McGinn: There are so many, there's so many rules. But really what you saw then was that the Council tended to move in lockstep on many issues - because if they all voted together and they all worked citywide, there was protection. None of them could be singled out. So it was very - and it's not to say that some of them didn't take principled votes and would find themselves on an 8-1 position sometimes, but for the most part, it was much, much safer to be - it was much, much safer to vote as a group. And they tended to do that. And they had coalesced around the tunnel, except for O'Brien. And that could not be shaken by anything we brought to bear.
[00:39:04] Robert Cruickshank: And this is wrapped up in not just the electoral politics, but the power politics. Because Mike McGinn comes in - mayor leading the 7th floor of City Hall, the head of City government - and smart guy, nice guy, willing to talk to anybody. But is not from their crew, is not from that group. And as Crystal and Mike said, the ranks were closed from the start. This is - again, 2009, 2010 - when nationally Mitch McConnell is quoted as saying, It's his ambition to make Obama a one-term president. I don't know if he's ever caught on record, but I would be quite certain that Tim Burgess would have said the exact same thing - that his ambition was to make Mike McGinn a one-term mayor. As it turned out in 2013, Tim Burgess wanted his job - one of the candidates running for it. So these are all people who have a reason to close ranks against Mike McGinn and to use a tunnel as a bludgeon against him to do so.
[00:39:58] Mike McGinn: There were other bludgeons. After I won the general election and before I took office, they passed their annual budget - they cut the mayor's office budget by a third before I even took office. Just boom - I know - they were determined, they were determined. And so that was when the planning - that council then and with WSDOT - that was when basically the contours of the waterfront were locked into place, including what we now see as that very wide surface road. That was that Council. So if you're wondering, if you're looking at that going - Okay, wow, who decided that and where did it come from? Again, our current mayor and his current advisor and others - they've always been for that. Building that big surface road has always been the plan to go along with the tunnel, because highway capacity was their highest priority. And the park on the waterfront, along with a lot of money into the aquarium and into these new structures - that's their signature thing for so many other people. But the idea that you should, that there was an opportunity to transform our transportation system and transform our city to make it more equitable and climate friendly was never a priority in this process. Just wasn't.
[00:41:20] Crystal Fincher: It was never a priority. It was never seriously considered. And to me, through this process - lots of people know, have talked about it on the show before - I actually didn't start off Team McGinn. I wound up Team McGinn - didn't start off that way. But through that - and you won me over with logic - it was you being proven right on several things. You pointed out that their projections, their traffic projections were just so far out of left field that there was no way that they were going to come close. And they even had to come down on their projections before we even saw the traffic - the actual traffic turned out to be lower. You were right on that one - the laughable -
[00:41:59] Mike McGinn: They're under 40,000 cars a day - for a highway that was carrying 110,000 cars a day beforehand. So even as a traffic solution - to put that into context, 40,000 cars a day is like the Ballard Bridge. And I can guarantee you the replacement costs of the Ballard Bridge is not $4 billion or $3.1 billion. The E Line, I think, carries 15,000 people a day. Metro carries 220,000 people a day. What you could do with that $3.1 billion or $4 billion in terms of bus lanes, bike lanes, rolling stock for Metro, maybe pay raises for bus drivers so that we could actually have service - you could do so much with those billions of dollars. And we put it all into moving 40,000 cars a day? It's just pathetic. That's three Rapid Ride lines we could have had for a 10th of the cost, or even less. I think the investments in Rapid Ride lines are about $50-100 million a line to make the capital investments to make it work. So the waste - even if you don't care about climate, the waste of dollars - and who's paying those taxes? To a great degree, we have the most regressive state and local tax system in the nation.
And we'll have a ballot measure soon, and I know a lot of environmentalists will be out there if the package spends for the right thing saying - Hey, we need money for local streets. Imagine if we'd taken that gas tax money and the Legislature had allowed cities and towns to use it to improve their streets - which they can do. I know that the constitution says highway purposes, but when you read highway purposes, it says roads and bridges. It includes everything. You can use gas taxes for anything that improves the road. And they do. WSDOT has used gas taxes to pay for bike lanes and sidewalks. It's legal. That's a choice. So we're driving around potholed streets. We have - we're putting up little plastic dividers because we care more about the car getting hurt than the bicyclist on the other side of that plastic divider. We're watching our transit service melt away because we can't pay bus drivers enough. But hey, man, somebody's got a really rapid - 3,000 people a day get to skip Downtown in their private vehicles. Where are our priorities for equity? Where are the priorities for economy, or even just plain old-fashioned fiscal prudence? None of that was there - because all of those dollars were going to fund the needs of the most powerful people in the City. And they captured those dollars - and all of us will pay the taxes, all of us will breathe the smoky air, and all of us will watch our streets deteriorate and our transit service evaporate.
[00:44:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And to me, it was such a foundational lesson that the people that we have making decisions really matter - and that we have to really explore their records, their donors, their histories - because over and over again, we look at the decisions that wind up being made that frequently conflict with campaign promises, but that very, very rarely conflict with their donor rolls.
[00:45:16] Mike McGinn: And yes - and every one of them knows how to make the value statements. So if I had any advice for people in this year's election - everyone is going to say they care about housing, everyone's going to say they think biking safe. I don't - one of the things that I came away with - I don't care about the goals you put into some policy anymore. Show me the hard physical action you will take that might piss somebody off, but you're willing to do it because it's right. And if you can't do that, then your value statements are meaningless. So take a look - who actually, and that's the question I always ask candidates for office - Tell me about a time you did something hard that might've caused you criticism, but you did it because it was right. Or that you made somebody who was an ally or friend upset, but you did it because it was right. Tell me about that time.
[00:46:04] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's a challenge. And to your point and learning through just watching how people operated through that and some other processes - but that certainly was a big learning for me - is the role of coalitions, the role of accountability, and understanding. You have always had your finger on the pulse of Seattle, really - you're extraordinarily good at that. You're actually - both of you - are great strategists. But our political class is so detached from that sometimes - certainly I'm feeling frustration at some recent actions by our Legislature - we just had our special session day where they increased criminalization of substances, personal possession of substances - just reflecting on legislation to provide school, kids with free meals at school, things that seem like really basic and foundational that we should be able to land this. If we can call a special session to hand Boeing billions of dollars, we should be able to feed kids, right?
[00:47:00] Mike McGinn: At the time we were cutting school budgets - when we found money for that. But I don't want to be too gloomy. And then I want to turn it over to Robert to get a last word in here, 'cause I just loved - his analysis is so awesome. I don't want to be too gloomy because - I look at what happened in the Legislature this year on housing, that we're finally going to allow housing, people to build more housing in places so people can actually live closer to their jobs and live more affordably. 10 years ago, we would have thought that was impossible. There's a lot of hard organizing that did it. At America Walks, we're the host of the Freeway Fighters Networks - there are people in 40 cities or more around the country that are organizing to remove highways. And while it's just a small amount of money compared to the amount going to highway expansion, there's actually federal funds to study and remove highways. So it's a long, hard slog. What felt for us - for Robert and me and Cary Moon and others fighting this - which felt like an impossible fight at the time is a fight that is now winning in places. Not winning enough - we're not winning fast enough - but it can change. And so that's - I don't want to be too negative. They got money, but organizing and people - and we actually have the public with us on this, just like we have the public with us on housing. So we just have to do more. We just got to keep at it, folks - got to keep at it. We can win this one. Don't allow this story of how hard it was to deal with the unified political class in the City of Seattle for their climate arson - should not deter you. It should inspire you, 'cause I actually won the mayor's office and we actually did do a lot of good. And the next fight is right in front of us again today, so get in it people. We need you.
[00:48:46] Robert Cruickshank: I think that's spot on. And I remember coming to work in your office at the very beginning of 2011, when it seemed like the tunnel was just dominating discussion, but not in the mayor's office, right? When I joined, I fully expected to be like - roll my sleeves up to take on that tunnel. Instead, I'm working on the mayor's jobs plan, the Families and Education Levy, on transit. That's the stuff that was really getting done, and I think McGinn left a really great legacy on that. But we didn't win the tunnel fight. And I think we've diagnosed many of the reasons why, but one thing that really stands out to me as I look back from 12, 13 years distance is we didn't have the same density of genuinely progressive and social democratic organizations and people and leaders in Seattle that we have now. I think that matters because Mike's been talking about what's the next fight. I think one of the big fights coming up next year - when it comes time to renew that Move Seattle Levy - that's nearly a billion dollars that's going to be on the table. And we keep getting promised - when we are asked to approve these massive levies - that a lot of that money is going to go to safe streets, it's going to go to protect vulnerable users, we're going to do something to finally get towards Vision Zero. And instead it all gets taken away to build more car infrastructure. At what point do we finally stand - literally in the road - and say, No more. Do we look at the broken promises on the waterfront where we were promised a beautiful pedestrian-friendly waterfront and got another car sewer? We're going to have to organize and come together. We have many more groups now and many more leaders who are willing to stand up and say - We're not passing this levy unless it actually focuses on safe streets, unless it focuses on pedestrians and cyclists and transit users, and gives iron-clad promises to make sure stuff gets built so that some future mayor can't just walk in and start canceling projects left and right that we were promised. That's the lesson I take from this is - we're better organized now, we have more resources now, but it's still going to be a slog, and we're going to have to stand our ground - otherwise we get rolled.
[00:50:34] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I thank you both for this conversation today - reflections on the tunnel fight, how it came to be, what it was like in the middle of it, and the lessons that we take moving forward in these elections that we have coming up this year, next year, and beyond. Thanks so much for the conversation.
[00:50:50] Mike McGinn: Thank you, Crystal.
[00:50:51] Robert Cruickshank: Thank you - it's been wonderful.
[00:50:52] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Washington State government reporter for McClatchy, Shauna Sowersby!
They discuss the failure of an anti-trans referendum campaign, a self-proclaimed white nationalist country musician playing at the Washington state capitol, new state laws going into effect, AG Ferguson continuing to avoid disclosing his donors, and another lawsuit filed against the Washington State Legislature for withholding public records under “legislative privilege.” The conversation continues with federal pandemic relief aid getting funneled into police surveillance technology, no-notice sweeps being ruled unconstitutional by King County Superior Court, and an audit showing that the Seattle Police Department could do more with existing resources to address organized retail crime.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Shauna Sowersby at @Shauna_Sowersby.
Shauna Sowersby
Shauna Sowersby was a freelancer for several local and national publications before joining McClatchy’s northwest newspapers covering the Legislature. Before that, Shauna worked for the US Navy as a photographer and journalist.
Resources
“PRIMARY WEEK RE-AIR: Teresa Mosqueda, Candidate for King County Council District 8” from Hacks & Wonks
“PRIMARY WEEK RE-AIR: Becka Johnson Poppe, Candidate for King County Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks
“PRIMARY WEEK RE-AIR: Sarah Reyneveld, Candidate for King County Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks
“PRIMARY WEEK RE-AIR: Jorge Barón, Candidate for King County Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks
“With referendum failure, WA just dodged a bullet of hype and hate” by Danny Westneat from The Seattle Times
“‘Heretic’ group to offer unbaptisms at WA Capitol Campus” by Shauna Sowersby from The Olympian
“New Washington state laws go into effect Sunday. Here are some of the key ones” by Shauna Sowersby from The Olympian
“WA AG Bob Ferguson should come clean about donors” by The Seattle Times editorial board
“WA judge fines AG’s office, DSHS in ‘cavalier’ withholding of lawsuit evidence” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times
“New lawsuit alleges WA state Senators were ‘silently withholding’ public records” by Shauna Sowersby from The Olympian
“Federal aid is supercharging local WA police surveillance tech” by Brandon Block from Crosscut
“Summary judgment in ACLU case could end ‘no-notice’ sweeps in Seattle” by Tobias Coughlin-Bogue from Real Change
“Audit: Police Could Do More, Without Hiring Extra Cops, To Address Retail Theft Rings” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Transcript
Coming soon
On this Primary Week re-air, Crystal chats with Jorge Barón about his campaign for King County Council District 4 - why he decided to run, how 17 years at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project has prepared him for the role, and his thoughts on generating progressive revenue for county services, drug possession and substance use disorder, addressing overcrowding in the King County Jail, improving frontline worker wages and workforce issues, air quality and climate change, and the importance of oversight and genuine community engagement in policy implementation.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Jorge Barón at @jorgebaron.
Jorge Barón
Jorge L. Barón has spent his legal career advancing and defending the rights of marginalized communities, and has served as executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project for more than 15 years. Jorge has fought egregious policies like the Muslim Ban and family separation as well as built coalitions that drove significant policy change and generated hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for immigrant communities. Jorge has had the honor of being awarded the King County Council’s MLK Medal of Distinguished Service and served on the Joint Legislative Task Force on Deadly Force in Community Policing. Jorge is originally from Bogotá, Colombia, immigrating with his mom and brothers at the age of 13. Jorge is a graduate of Yale Law School and Duke University, a proud former union member, and public school parent.
Resources Campaign Website - Jorge Barón
Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I am excited to be welcoming a candidate for King County Council District 4 - Jorge Barón. Welcome to Hacks & Wonks, Jorge.
[00:01:03] Jorge Barón: Thank you so much for having me, Crystal. I'm pleased to be here.
[00:01:05] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - we're pleased to have you here. I guess just starting out - what made you decide to run for King County Council?
[00:01:12] Jorge Barón: Yeah, it's a great question because I think for me, this is a new adventure that I'm embarking on. I think if you'd asked me 10 years ago if I was going to run for elected office, I would have said no. But I think what's happened over the last - since that time - is that I've seen, of course, working in the immigration field for the last 17 years, I've seen a lot of bad policy, but during the Trump administration, I saw a particular period of really egregious attacks on communities that I'm a part of, that I care about, and that I was working on behalf of. And I also saw how state and local government played an important role in protecting people. And I also saw people, frankly, that I've considered mentors and people who I admire - like Representative Pramila Jayapal and Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda - who also went from being advocates on the outside of government to go inside and to actually work on policy issues at the government level, and saw how effective they've been in creating some policy change in a progressive direction.
So that gave me an inspiration, and of course, I've continued working here at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, but last year I made the decision to step away from this work that I've been doing for now 17 years. And when I started thinking about what would come next, I thought that working at the local government level would be an avenue to further some of the same social justice issues that I've been pursuing for nearly two decades, and that gave me the inspiration. And of course, when Councilmember Kohl-Welles announced that she would be stepping down, saw an opportunity to put myself forth and to share with folks in District 4 - where I live - that I would be a good advocate for the social justice values that I've been pursuing for a long time now.
[00:02:46] Crystal Fincher: How do you think your work at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project has prepared you to run and serve?
[00:02:52] Jorge Barón: Yeah, no - it's a good question. And I've been very fortunate, of course, to have had the privilege of serving in this role. And for a long time, I thought that something else would pull me away from leaving here, and it - nothing better came along, but I felt like it was a good time for me to allow other people to step into leadership roles here and for me to take a break and do something new. But the experience that I've had here, I think, has prepared me for this role in a couple of different ways. First of all, obviously, I've had the opportunity to be the chief executive here at this organization - that we've been able to grow into now the second-largest nonprofit law firm in the Pacific Northwest, and I think that experience of being a leader in that role has given me an opportunity to learn a lot about how to manage organizations and how to run an effective organization.
And I think the other part that's been really important in the work that we've done here that I think will be helpful - very important at the county level - is that I have been able to work in partnership with many stakeholders in building coalitions that have enabled important policy change at the state level. And one of the things that has inspired me to run at the County Council level is seeing that right now the county is facing a very difficult period because of the limitations that the state government has placed on - particularly on the revenue side - and I think we need people who are going to be able to build the kind of coalition to push the State Legislature, to work in partnership with our state legislators to make sure that we get some changes - that I think a lot of people recognize are needed - to the way that the county is funded, to make sure the county can actually operate effectively and carry out its responsibilities. So that kind of coalition building - working with state legislators in making actually progressive and important changes happen at the state level - which is what I've been able to do here, is something that I feel is going to serve me well if I get the privilege of serving on the council.
[00:04:41] Crystal Fincher: When you talk about the issue of revenue, which is very important - and as we talk about this and the things we'll talk about as we continue, lots of them will require additional revenue. More money is needed. But as you talk about, the progressive revenue options that exist at the county level are limited. What progressive revenue options will you pursue, if any, and how will you go about doing that?
[00:05:04] Jorge Barón: Yeah, no, I think it's important to talk about it because that's absolutely one of the key things that I think we need to discuss and make sure that voters understand. And I've seen it, and it's been frustrating to me actually, from - in my role at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, we've been advocating before the councils - at least myself, I've been advocating before the council since around 2008, 2009. And even since that time, the conversation had been that the county was in an unsustainable fiscal path, right? That we had this structural deficit, and particularly because of the 1% tax lid that restricts how much property tax revenue the county can collect, that we were in this unsustainable path. And in some ways, I feel like we haven't - as a community, we haven't felt the actual impact of that because inflation has been relatively low during that period, because there have been different periods of COVID relief money, for example, that came in the last couple of years that in some ways mitigated the full impact of that situation.
But we're starting to now, and the upcoming budget cycle - we're facing, as a county, $100 million shortfall. And so I think now we're gonna start feeling the direct impact of those changes. And so I think we radically need to restructure how the county is funded and move away - I don't think we're gonna be able to move away completely, obviously - but at least shift some of the burden that currently is impacting particularly low income and even moderate income households here in King County and make sure that we create the opportunity. And again, this is one of the challenges - is that it's not something the county directly can do, but we will need to work with the state legislators to provide those opportunities for some changes so that we become less reliant on things like the sales tax and the property tax. And we have opportunities to have the revenue come from sources that have greater ability to pay. Obviously this is not only an issue for the county. Obviously at the state level, we also need to be working on that because we have the most regressive tax structure in the country. And so at all levels of government, we need to do this.
And my hope is to be able to bring new energy to this conversation, to help talking about it all the time that - my campaign have been trying to talk about it - that's the first thing I always talk about because I think a lot of people don't understand the situation that we're in and that we're gonna be facing in terms of county services having to be drastically cut at a time when we see so much need in the community and people are saying - Why aren't we tackling these issues? Why aren't we tackling housing affordability, the homelessness crisis? - all kinds of issues that we can talk about. And those things - we need more investments to be able to make progress in those areas. And so the regressive revenue options need to be something that we absolutely put top of mind in talking to voters and talking to state legislators.
[00:07:46] Crystal Fincher: Right, and you talked about how to handle issues in terms of public safety, behavioral health, and how important that funding is. In the wake of the State Legislature increasing criminalization of possession of drugs and public use of drugs - making it a gross misdemeanor. And in the wake of the Seattle City Council weighing this issue themselves and currently still searching for a path forward on how to approach drug use and abuse in the City of Seattle - how do you view this in King County? Where do you stand on the criminalization of public drug use, and what do you think needs to be done to address this crisis?
[00:08:23] Jorge Barón: Yeah, Crystal - I'll be very clear that I do not support criminalizing substance use disorders. I believe that we have - what I try to tell people about this issue is that we need to look at this the same way that we talk about - for example, when we talk about climate justice, a lot of people in this community - I guess I would say most people in this community, I know there's some people who are still climate skeptics out there - but most of us believe the science and we talk about the importance of believing the research and following the science. Same thing with public health, right? Most people in this community say we need to believe the science around public health and COVID and vaccines, right? And why don't we do the same thing with regard to public safety and the criminal legal system, right? There is abundant research when it comes to how to address the serious issues - and I wanna say it's important to note that the issue is not about doing nothing about the fact that people are experiencing substance use disorders. And obviously, it's a crisis in the fact that we have so many people in our community who are dying because of that. So the question is not, should we do something? We absolutely should do something. The question is, what should we do? And for me, the response of trying to punish people and putting people in jail because they're experiencing substance use disorders is not the solution. And I think the evidence and the research conclusively proves that that is not the path that is going to result in people actually being safe.
And I'm concerned - some ways - that particularly right now, some of the debate is framed as in, we're trying to protect people by putting them in jail. And if you look at the evidence, that's not the case - at least if you look at overall numbers. And I know people will say - Well, there's this one example, this anecdote where this person got better because they went to jail. And I appreciate that there may be cases like that, but we can't do public policy based completely on anecdotes. We need to look at the research. And the research to me is very compelling in that, for example, with people who are experiencing substance use disorders with things like fentanyl, that you will end up increasing the risk that they will die if they go into jail. It's pretty dramatic - the statistics and the data on increasing the risk of overdose in those situations. And so I am concerned, I think we need to be thinking about what is best approach long-term - and particularly because the criminal legal system is also a very expensive system, right? And so when we're talking about investing limited public resources in a time of austerity in terms of the fiscal situation that we were just talking about - to me, it doesn't make sense to continue to invest in a system that has not proven to have, for lack of a better term, return on investment - when we see that there are programs that are currently underfunded, that we're not putting enough resources in, that do have an impact in terms of reducing peoples experiencing substance use disorder, and that will actually put them in a pathway to recovery.
So I think we need to really rethink how we're approaching things. I think we've learned lessons for decades of using the criminal legal system to try to address substance use disorders. And I think we have been doing important things here in this community, and I think it's important to recognize that there's been programs like the LEAD program here locally, that have been seen as models for other places, but we've never sufficiently resourced those. And right now, of course, the need has only escalated because of the impacts of the pandemic and so many things that disrupted the lives of so many people. So I think we need to be investing in the things that actually have a return on investment.
[00:11:54] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, you make a great point about our jails - one, not being a source of treatment, but they're not equipped to do that right now. And in fact, they're not equipped to do a lot of things that people think they do and things that they have done before. We've seen outcry from everyone from the ACLU to the guards and workers at our jails saying - Things are overcrowded, we're understaffed, we don't have adequate services, facilities, we don't have the tools to do the job that you're asking us to do and the way that you're asking us to do it, and the overcrowding is really making issues harder. In order to address that, the King County Council voted to initiate a contract with another jail provider - the SCORE Center in Des Moines - to transfer some inmates over there. Would you have voted to do that? And do you think we should do what Dow Constantine suggested and closing the jail? What is your plan for this? Would you have done what the County Council did? And where should we move forward after that?
[00:12:56] Jorge Barón: Yeah, Crystal - that's a good question. So the answer to your question about the SCORE jail is that I would not have voted to enter into that contract and to transfer people, primarily because I think at the time - and I think still to this point, from what I understand - the concerns that a number of people raised, and particularly the public defenders who represent people in the facility, in the jail, that the issue of access to counsel and access to family was not adequately addressed at the time. And to me, this is a particular issue that I care a lot about, just because I've had a lot of experience being an attorney and starting my career at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project as a staff attorney working with people in the Immigration Detention Center in Tacoma. I did work during law school in the criminal legal issues and prisons in the South. And this issue of being able to access attorneys is a really important one that we as a community should be absolutely standing up for - because when people are put into jail pending a charge, we have a strong presumption in this country of being presumed innocent until we're proven guilty. And one of the key ways that people can have that right be enforced is through access to counsel. And so if we're gonna undermine that, I think that's a serious issue.
I absolutely, to be clear, do not think that the conditions at the King County Jail are adequate, and we absolutely need to take steps to address the overcrowding. I think people in the community may not always be paying attention to this, but it's remarkable that we have groups that don't normally align on this - like the public defenders on the one side and the correctional workers in the jail - calling for the same steps because of how bad the situation was. And so we should be listening to people who are working most directly with people in there. And obviously we should be deeply concerned about the fact that multiple people have been dying in our care. I've been telling people that we need to think about, as a community - when we take one of our neighbors into custody because we determine that they need to be held in jail, we become responsible. They become our responsibility, and we need to make sure that we have the staffing and the resources to adequately care for them. And if we see that people are dying at the rate that we've seen, we're not living up to that commitment. And so we need to take steps, and I would support, at least as an interim measure, the call from the public defenders and from the correction officers of having booking restrictions that will limit the number of people who are gonna be in the jail until we know that we can actually take care of people.
I know it's a complex issue because I think part of the challenge has also been that the state has failed in its obligation to make sure that we provide treatment and assessments for and evaluations for people who have behavioral health issues, and that's also exacerbated the problem in terms of people being able to be released. But we need to address this with more urgency because literally people are dying in our custody, and it shouldn't be - even if you're accused of a crime, this should not be a death penalty situation where we're putting people in fatal consequences because they're accused of a criminal offense. And so I think we need to be taking very significant steps to move that. And again, the SCORE Jail - I understand the intention, but we also need to be respecting the right for people to be able to defend themselves in court.
[00:16:19] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I do wanna talk about housing and homelessness. And it's been an issue that has been on the top of mind of everyone, basically. One thing that it's a big challenge for our community to deal with, and another because so many people are struggling themselves. One issue called out by experts as a barrier to our response is that frontline worker wages don't cover the cost of living, and that services provided by frontline workers, especially those with lived experiences, are necessary to effectively reduce the amount of people who are homeless. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for our area? And how can we make that more likely with how we bid and contract for services at the county level?
[00:17:04] Jorge Barón: So Crystal, I absolutely agree that nonprofits have a responsibility to make sure that their workers are adequately compensated. It's something that I've been working on here at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and I think one of the things that I see frequently at the county level - and I think a lot of people don't realize that a lot of the human services that the county provides is actually done through nonprofit entities that the county contracts out with. And so the county does have a responsibility to make sure that we're structuring the contracts in ways that are going to incentivize our nonprofit partners to do the right thing. I've seen practices where, for example, we have contracts where there's lesser amount of funding year-over-year for a nonprofit partner. And of course, that doesn't help when we have a situation where the cost of living is increasing. I've also seen situations where there's this pressure of - well, you're not delivering enough services per FTE, and so it incentivizes employers to try to do it as cheaply as possible in kind of a race to the bottom that actually hinders the ability of organizations to be able to adequately compensate their employees.
And so I definitely think that the county has a responsibility to make sure that it's structuring its practices to incentivize for people to be paid well. And I think part of the problem is that sometimes we think of short-term - how many services we can provide in the very immediate term - but we lose sight of the fact that when we don't compensate people well, we end up losing those workers. And so you get into the cycle where people, the attrition rate is very high, the experience that we get from workers - it's lost. You spend a lot of energy and time with recruiting and hiring and training new employees. And so I think people need to understand that there is actually - it's a better investment to compensate people well. Even in the situations where that might mean - in the very short term, you might not be able to do as many services. But in the long term, you're actually gonna be able to serve people better and more fully if you invest in the workforce so that they will stick around. Because particularly in a place - obviously the cost of living is increasing, it's all connected - housing affordability is limited. So we need to make sure that the people who are providing services to county residents can also themselves be able to be county residents - because I hear that from a lot of people that they're having to, they can't even live in the county that they work in because of the high cost of living. So I absolutely think that needs to be a responsibility that the county plays a role in doing better from its part.
[00:19:35] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And as you talk about, there are shortages everywhere, there are staff shortages even in the county. And this impacts how the county is able to deliver services. There's been lots of coverage about staffing crises in a variety of government agencies, school districts, just seemingly at every level. And these people are crucial to programs and services that people count on, that have been around for decades, and that are now in jeopardy. King County has done hiring and retention bonuses for deputies in the Sheriff's department. Should we be doing that for other workers in other departments? How do we address this?
[00:20:11] Jorge Barón: I do think that we should look at those options. I do wanna work and wanna be very proactive in engaging labor partners that represent workers and finding what they think would be best for their workforce. 'Cause I wanna be very respectful of the role that they play in channeling the voice of the people who are working for the county. Because I know sometimes that can create some tensions for people who have been working there for a long time and then money is being invested to attract new workers. And so I wanna make sure that it's done in a way that we're engaging people who are already part of the workforce and who have devoted a lot of time to serve the community. So I think that is important.
But Crystal, one other thing that I was gonna mention when you talk about workforce issues is important role - and again, how lots of these things are connected - is childcare issues. That's one topic that I've heard a lot from community members that is making these workforce development issues more difficult, and in terms of attracting and incentivizing people to join the workforce is the high cost of childcare. And particularly the way that our current subsidies are structured at the county level, we have the situation where if you make above a certain amount, you then don't qualify for any subsidy at all. And that makes it difficult because then if you're considering - Well, okay if I take this job and maybe it's a good union paying job, but it actually will put me above the income level that qualifies for the subsidy. And then when I start doing the math, it turns out that doesn't make sense for me to take the job because I'll end up paying more on childcare than would make the job worth it. And as a parent who had three children go through the childcare system, who's gone through the public school system, I felt that very directly. And I've been fortunate to be able to have the resources to make that happen, but it was a big stretch. And so for a lot of people in the community, that's gonna be something that I think has made it more difficult for people to be able to join the workforce. And that impacts us all, right? We can talk about, for example, the challenges that the Metro Transit is having and the fact they're having to reduce routes - and it's not because of lack of money, it's because of the fact that they can't find enough drivers and they've had challenges there. So I think we need to be able to connect those dots and realize that investments in those areas are important to make sure that we have an adequate workforce. And it's also a good social equity and racial equity issue to make sure that we're investing so that folks can get the support they need to make sure they can not fully be participants in the community.
[00:22:40] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and thank you so much for bringing that up because that is a major factor in just the affordability of our community, the ability for people to participate in our workforce and our economy, to be upwardly mobile, and to get out of poverty. So thank you so much for talking about how important it is to help make affordable childcare accessible. I also want to talk about health, and especially with the county doing the heavy lifting when it comes to public health, really, and being the source of delivery for so much of it. I wanted to talk about something that we've been dealing with increasingly, whether it's because of COVID, which is still around and still here, and trying to reduce transmission and mitigate the impacts of it, or wildfire smoke, which we have to contend with, and that is extremely unhealthy to breathe and be in the midst of. Or other illnesses, viruses that are all around - trying to just reduce the prevalence of illness in our community. And it's become more apparent that how we treat air, how important air is to health, and how air filtration and ventilation is important to public safety. Do you have a plan for, would you advocate retrofitting, ensuring that all of our public buildings have the recommended air filtration, air turnover, healthy air systems for our community? And how can we help private businesses and spaces do that?
[00:24:08] Jorge Barón: Yeah, I absolutely support that. And I think it's an important - and I think there will be some important opportunities with some of the investments that are coming through the Inflation Reduction Act that - mostly focused on energy efficiency, but there could be opportunities where some of those resources could be used at the same time to make sure that we're improving air quality inside buildings, homes, and businesses as well. And it's interesting 'cause I think one of the things that I think about when I think of this - when you're talking about the community health - one of the things that's most disturbing to me and one that I absolutely wanna continue to focus on if I'm given the opportunity to serve in this role, is the disparities that we see in life expectancy in our communities. I'd encourage people to look up some of the research that's publicly available where you can see the life expectancy disparities in census tracts around the county, around the region. And I think to me, it should be disturbing to all of us that there are census tracts in South King County where the life expectancy is 17 years less than census tracts in other parts of the county - just a short drive away. And of course, when you dig into the reasons for that - and of course, there are many - but issues of pollution and of all the social determinants of health are driving a lot of those disparities. And that is something that we should not find in any way acceptable at this point of time in a county, particularly a county that we renamed in honor of Dr. King. I always think of what he would think about those kinds of disparities and obviously, he would find them unacceptable and I find them unacceptable.
And so addressing those issues and looking at the reasons that the impact - that all kinds of issues are impacting people's health, including air quality, both inside and frankly outside would have. And so when we talk about that and of course, with the ongoing impacts of climate change and the climate crisis, we're gonna be needing to tackle that even more - because unfortunately, we're gonna continue as we work in the long-term strategy, obviously, of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, but we also have to mitigate the impacts that we're seeing day in and day out with now the wildfire season that we see where the smoke is impacting people. And of course, many of us may have the fortune of being able to work inside and protect ourselves to some degree, but a lot of other people can't. And so we need to be addressing on multiple levels - ensuring that all community members and of course, particularly the most directly impacted communities, which of course overwhelmingly are people of color, immigrant refugee communities - that they're being given the tools and the protection to make sure that we don't see the level of disparities that we're currently seeing across the county.
[00:26:47] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And following on that - talking about how exposed people are - climate change is a major factor in this. And on almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals, while experiencing some of the devastating impacts that you just talked about - from wildfires and floods and cold and heat. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet the 2030 goals?
[00:27:10] Jorge Barón: I think there's a number of things. So one of our major drivers in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, of course, is our transportation system. And so a lot of that has to be focused on stopping our reliance and reducing our reliance on cars. And trying to build a transit infrastructure that is gonna be reliable, it's gonna be safe, and that it's going to be such that people can rely on it to get to work and to get to other places in the community. So for me, that's important. I think it's important - obviously, I appreciate and support the efforts to electrify our bus fleet and would do anything I could to expedite that and move forward on that. But the challenge is that if we can have the buses be electric, but if people are not using them and they're still relying on their cars, that's not gonna help us achieve the targets. So that's gonna be really important.
I think the other sort of big sources is obviously our infrastructure and our buildings and homes. And as I mentioned earlier, there is gonna be some opportunities for credits and investments through federal resources in the coming years that we need to make sure that we as a county are promoting and incentivizing and fully tapping into so that we can further reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and we can get closer to reaching the goals that we've set for ourselves. So I think that's gonna be an important work that we need to do in the community. And this is, again, where a lot of things are connected to - also how we build and how we structure our communities is gonna be important, because as we talk about transit - I fully support what the legislature did to create greater density 'cause that has a significant impact on climate justice goals. And so that's something that I think we are going to need to also monitor - as these new changes that the legislature made - how those are implemented will have an impact in our long-term strategy to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. So I think this is gonna be an important period of time for us to really step up in our commitment to addressing what is a very urgent issue.
[00:29:12] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. One issue impacting, I guess a major issue that impacts residents is how we implement policy - state level, county level, federal level really. There's been some great, helpful policy passed, but when it comes to the implementation of it, there's been a lot that has been desired in some circumstances - including those where some partners may not understand what needs to be stood up at the county level to deliver services. The county is pretty visible in this 'cause a lot of times the county is the entity responsible for the ultimate disbursement of funds or provision of services that come through the state or county level. And there seems to be sometimes a disconnect between what the county has capacity for, what it's capable to do and what legislation or funding or program calls to be done - leaving a shortfall in service delivery, things getting delayed, things not turning out as intended. What can be done to better improve the implementation of policy so that more people can receive the benefits that were intended?
[00:30:17] Jorge Barón: I completely agree, Crystal, 'cause I've seen that myself in terms of being able to get policies done both at the local level and at the state level in terms of changes to policy. For example, we did some work many years ago on the connection between immigration enforcement and local law enforcement - and we achieved a victory of getting an ordinance passed at the county level. And then time went by and the actual implementation of that was not happening. And we later found out that some of the things that we had thought that the policy had changed had not changed. And so I've definitely seen that situation play out. And I think what it takes is constant oversight and very intense focus from entities like the council. I think the council has a particular responsibility and a duty to be the one who is providing oversight as the elected officials who are responsible for making sure that the policies that are in place are actually being implemented. 'Cause oftentimes what I see in those situations is that things get passed and then you move on to the next thing, but if the implementation and the oversight is not there, then changes aren't actually playing out on the ground level. So that's an important thing.
I think the other thing that I think is important is a genuine engagement with communities that are going to be served. And I think that's another element that I would like to bring to the council is the fact that I have been working for nearly two decades now with marginalized communities throughout the state, particularly here in King County, and have built those relationships with people. And I would wanna be very proactive. I often tell people - Sometimes people say, I'll have an open door. And that to me is not really a good way to approach it because that still means that people have to come to me and my office. I wanna be very proactive in being out there - as I have been in my work here - of being out in community, talking to people, seeing how things are actually playing out on the ground level, and being engaged, and having genuine relationships with people so that you can actually assess how those policies are being implemented because that's what it takes. It's not just about receiving a report in council chambers, but it's about discussing with people how is this actually playing out. And that's how we've found things out here in my work at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project - has been working with community members - hearing how is this actually playing out on the ground level? How is this policy that looks nice on paper, on the King County Code, actually being impacted or being reflected on what people are experiencing in the community? And that's what it's gonna take to make sure that implementation is actually - that things are being done the way that we've intended them to be done when there's been changes in policy.
[00:32:54] Crystal Fincher: Definitely. As we move to close today, I just want to give you the opportunity to share with voters who are going to be making a decision between you and a couple other candidates in the primary election. What differentiates you from your opponents most of all, and why should voters choose you?
[00:33:14] Jorge Barón: For me, I think I hope voters will look at the track record that I've built over the last two decades working as a civil rights and human rights leader, working directly on behalf of marginalized communities with a deep commitment to equity and justice. I think that to me is really important because it's the work that I don't just talk about, I have done that work. And also the fact that I had the experience of working at the state level - building coalitions with community members, with allies - in a range of issues to make actually proactive and significant progressive change to policies that have impact marginalized communities across the state. And I hope to bring that same level of expertise and skill of building coalitions to impact policy that will make the situation for the county and county residents better.
And then finally, again, the fact that I've had this experience and I've been fortunate to have this experience of leading a nonprofit organization, building an effective organization that has delivered, that's widely recognized as delivering strong services. And that puts me in a good place to be able to provide that oversight, to be able to ask the tough questions, to make the tough decisions because I've been in that kind of executive role before. And be able to make sure - because I think this is an important component of county government, and I think something that will help us build the case for more investments is - I think one of the things that people in the community rightly are concerned about is - are our tax dollars being invested well in various programs that the county funds? And because I've been a nonprofit leader, seeing how to properly allocate and distribute and make resources be spent effectively, I'm in a good position to be able to evaluate those things when those issues come up at the County Council. And so all of those experiences that I've had - I've been very privileged to be able to play that role - have prepared me well for this role. And I hope the voters in the District 4 will give me the opportunity to represent them in the council.
[00:35:12] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much for joining us today and for helping us learn more about you, and certainly wish you the best.
[00:35:17] Jorge Barón: Thank you so much, Crystal - it was great talking to you.
[00:35:19] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Primary Week re-air, Crystal chats with Sarah Reyneveld about her campaign for King County Council District 4 - why she decided to run, the experience she brings as a public sector attorney and community advocate, and her thoughts on addressing frontline worker wages and workforce issues, the need for upstream alternatives in the criminal legal system and substance use crisis, how to improve policy implementation, climate change and air quality, and budget revenue and transparency.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Sarah Reyneveld at @SarahReyneveld.
Resources
Campaign Website - Sarah Reyneveld
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Hello, I'm so excited to be welcoming to the program today King County Council candidate, Sarah Reyneveld. Hello.
[00:01:01] Sarah Reyneveld: Hello, Crystal. Thank you so much for having me today - I'm excited about the conversation.
[00:01:07] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I guess just starting out - we have seen you run for State Legislature before. I'm wondering why you're choosing to run for the County now, and what do you hope to accomplish in that position?
[00:01:18] Sarah Reyneveld: Yes, I think that King County Council and the King County is really at a critical point in time, and I'm excited to bring my lived experience as a working parent, a Seattle Public School parent, a transit rider, a union organizer - I helped organize my union of Assistant Attorney Generals - and also my experience as a public sector attorney who has fought for workers and our environment, and as a community advocate working with communities across King County to really make transformative change for workers, working families, and our environment on the King County Council. So for some background - in 2016, I became King County Councilmember Kohl-Welles' appointment to the King County Women's Advisory Board where I had the opportunity to work with communities throughout King County and the King County Council to help advocate for and secure investments in affordable housing, in behavioral health, childcare, and services to support survivors of gender-based violence. I started this work and became the Chair of the King County Women's Advisory Board before the pandemic - and I had two young kids at the time - and we had struggled like so many parents with access to affordable childcare, and the board at that time decided to take up that issue. So we worked on recommendations to expand childcare access for working parents and were able to work together with communities across King County, and the Executive, and King County Council to help reinstate a childcare subsidy, to expand access to childcare for working families, and establish a wage provider boost to help increase pay for childcare providers who are disproportionately women and BIPOC women and immigrants. And then the pandemic hit and I continued to do this work and it really laid bare - staggering inequities and injustices in King County that disproportionately impacted women and our communities of color and immigrants and other marginalized communities, who are more likely to be on the forefront and were experiencing disproportionately - unemployment and financial loss and illness.
So as I continue to work on these issues, I saw what an important role King County played in not just responding to the pandemic and now the shadow pandemic, but in really providing public health, and behavioral health, and public transit, and helping with food security and housing. So I'm running for King County Council because I've been doing this work with community and I think the status quo is no longer good enough. We need bold and transformative action to really meet the urgency of this moment. We have a really unique opportunity to create a more equitable economy and a sustainable future for all workers and working families in King County. And I think that King County can and must do more - and my priorities are to create more truly affordable housing to help better meet the behavioral health needs of our neighbors in crisis, to really tackle the climate crisis and protect our environment for future generations, to provide accessible and frequent public transit for all, and to really look at what we can do to reimagine our public safety and criminal legal system. So I'm excited about the opportunity.
[00:04:46] Crystal Fincher: I see. Now you covered a lot there. In there, you mentioned caring for workers, addressing housing. One thing called out by experts as a barrier to our homelessness response is that frontline worker wages don't cover the cost of living. Do you think our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for our area? And how can we make that more likely with how we bid and contract for services?
[00:05:10] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, absolutely. I absolutely think that our nonprofits have a duty to pay more in terms of adequately funding - not just contracts - but ensuring that those contracts lead to an equitable living wage and union jobs. And that includes cost of living adjustments and other supports for workers. So right now we have a really high turnover rate for frontline workers and particularly those workers that the County contracts with - I've heard 40-60% turnover rate. And I think we need to address the underlying issue of why those workers are turning over. And the underlying issue - one of them is pay equity and not ensuring that we are paying, particularly our frontline workers, adequately or providing them with the supports that they need. So it's about equitable pay, it's about cost of living adjustments, and it's about ensuring that those workers have access to affordable housing and transit in King County as well - so they can really afford to live where they work. And so I see this issue as very intersectional and something that King County can do more to address. And I would just say, generally, I think we as a society tend to lift up certain sorts of workers - the CEOs of companies, for example. And those people that are really doing the real work of caring for our community - of building our housing, of connecting us through transit, of providing behavioral health services - we don't invest equitably or sufficiently in those workers. And so starting with contracting is critically important, but we need to do more to ensure that we're investing in living wage jobs, and workforce housing, and bonuses, and ensuring that these workers have the supports that they need. And that is part of my vision for building back better and creating a more equitable economy that really centers workers and working families in King County.
[00:07:13] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Now, would you have voted to approve the transfer of inmates to the SCORE jail to alleviate a lot of the issues plaguing the King County Jail, including overcrowding, lack of water, inadequate healthcare, illnesses, understaffing? Would you have voted in the same way that the King County Council did?
[00:07:31] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, I think that's a great question. I want to start with just the conditions at the King County Jail. So the six deaths in 2022 in the downtown jail and kind of the subsequent ACLU lawsuit, I think, show that King County is failing too many criminally involved individuals, particularly our Black and Brown community members and those with chronic behavioral health and substance use issues. I am really concerned about what is happening in terms of inhumane conditions at the jail that include excessive use of solitary confinement, and lack of transportation to medical appointments and court appointments, and delays with mental health and other medical appointments. And I think King County, which is the oversight body of the King County Jail, needs to do more to address these concerns and ensure safety. And these really poor conditions at the jail didn't happen overnight. They are partially caused by lack of adequate staffing - that's been an issue for decades and was exacerbated since COVID. And also issues with an antiquated, really obsolete building. And lack of access to medical care and treatment, as I was stating.
So on the King County Council, if elected, I want to work with disproportionately impacted communities and fellow King County Councilmembers to urgently address these issues. I think we need to invest more in restorative justice. And when the King County Council took that vote in terms of transferring those incarcerated folks to SCORE, I think they noted that we need to do more in terms of investing in restorative justice and upstream alternatives to really reimagine our criminal legal system. So first I think we need to prevent and reduce incarceration through investing in upstream - investments in youth and vulnerable adults. And that means doing more to expand effective diversion programs, such as the Law Assisted Diversion Program and Co-LEAD, which has been really effective in diverting folks out of the criminal legal system and out of the King County Jail to begin with. I think we also need to move towards actualizing King County Executive's vision and so many activists' vision of really closing the downtown jail and reimagining and reducing the size of the King County facilities.
So in terms of the SCORE vote, I don't think either option were good options. The King County Council arrived at that vote because there had not been enough, really, work done on restorative justice and on the underlying issues around staffing and overcrowding at the jail. And I think keeping vulnerable incarcerated people in a downtown jail that had significant understaffing and overcrowding issues and a lack of access to medicine, or transferring incarcerated people to a facility that had potentially access-to-justice issues is not - neither one of those are good options. And so that's why I want to roll up my sleeves and ensure that we're really investing sufficiently in diversion programs and alternatives - to invest in folks to prevent them from becoming incarcerated in the first place and also move towards reimagining our system. And I will say that I don't think King County Council can address this issue alone. In 2022, there were over, I think, 100 people in King County Jail that were deemed to be incompetent to stand trial in King County that were awaiting a treatment bed. So if we work with our state partners to really fund mental health and ensure treatment for vulnerable populations like this, then we won't have to make these sort of decisions.
[00:11:00] Crystal Fincher: So am I hearing that you would not vote - disagreeing with this vote? If in the future a vote were to come up to extend or expand this SCORE transfer or transfer to other jails, does that mean you're a No vote on that?
[00:11:13] Sarah Reyneveld: I think that we need to, like I said, invest in alternatives and upstream alternatives to the criminal legal system. So like Councilmember Zahilay and Councilmember Kohl-Welles said - the transfer to SCORE was really not addressing the root cause of the issue. We need to be investing in upstream alternatives and staffing and ensuring that folks within our system are safe.
[00:11:36] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Now you talked about substance use disorder being so key in treating upstream issues to really address the root causes of what is leading people to criminal behavior. We're dealing with a conundrum. The governor just called a special session following our State Supreme Court invalidating personal substance possession as a crime. Our Legislature took action a couple of years ago to recriminalize it - that has a sunset provision. They were not able to decide on any statewide policy before the session ended, so they're going to be taking that up in a special session. There are conversations about - should drug use be criminalized at all? If it should, is it a misdemeanor, gross misdemeanor, felony? Where do you stand? Where should personal possession of substances be dealt with? How would you handle that?
[00:12:27] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, I think this is an issue that the Legislature has been grappling with and it's really an important issue. And I think we need to be moving away from criminalization of drug possession. Specifically, we moved away from criminalization of drug possession for marijuana - we need to do the same thing with psychedelics and other sorts of drugs that have medicinal and other positive effects. I think when it comes to addressing our fentanyl and heroin crisis, I think that if I were a legislator, I'd probably move in the direction of ensuring that we're looking at the lesser of any sort of crime - which would be a misdemeanor - and looking at pathways to treatment for that use. And I think we have to think about how we can connect folks that are in crisis because of substance use disorder with services. And so to me, it's about what more can King County do - because I'm not sitting in the place of a legislator - to ensure that we're investing in upstream solutions and treatment. And so I think helping to implement the King County Crisis Care Center Levy and ensuring that folks that are in - particularly a substance use crisis, whether - we know that we have a fentanyl crisis. I have worked on litigation to sue Purdue Pharma and understand just the addictive effects of those drugs. And we need to make sure that there's - those folks are connected to Medicaid-assisted treatment on demand, that they're connected to services. And so looking at what more we can do to scale up the crisis centers in an equitable way and preserve and restore beds that are primarily aimed at treating the underlying causes - I think it's critically important.
And so one of my priorities, if elected to the King County Council, will be to look at how we're implementing these crisis care centers, how I'm working potentially with the Legislature for additional treatment beds for substance use disorder. I have, as so many people have had, someone in my life that has experienced a substance use disorder issue. And I think it's so hard to navigate the system to even find detox or substance use treatment for someone like me that knows how to navigate systems, much less someone that could be either at-risk at being involved in the criminal legal system or becoming unhoused or dealing with a substance use crisis. And so finding ways in which we can ensure that those that are affected are obtaining treatment, I think is critically important.
[00:15:07] Crystal Fincher: You raised a number of important issues there and you touched on helping to get the Crisis Care Centers Levy - which passed - implemented.
[00:15:16] Sarah Reyneveld: Yes.
[00:15:17] Crystal Fincher: There have been some criticisms and challenges with implementation of programs - at all levels of government, really, but including with the County - and issues of staffing that may not have been foreseen, or challenges run into, communication issues. Do you think there's an opportunity to improve implementation of policy and programs overall? And how do we need to do that? What needs to change in order for that to happen?
[00:15:42] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, I think that's an excellent point. And I absolutely think there are opportunities to improve policy implementation at the County. One of the things that I really appreciate about King County's work and that I wanna bring as a lens to my work is that I do believe that the best public policy is made - I think Councilmember Zahilay says this in his views and paraphrasing him, but - by those that are closest to the injustice. And so we really need to invest in community-based solution to a lot of our largest challenges in King County. And so I appreciate that on all issues of County government and all levels of County government, whether it be addressing the gun violence crisis or the behavioral health crisis or childcare, we're really investing in community-based solutions. So I think that's critically important, but I think we also have to have a way to measure outcomes in terms of what is the County doing that's working and what is the County doing that's not working. And if we have, for example, a health through housing facility that we have stood up, but it's not being adequately staffed and we're not adequately utilizing it, and really ensuring that vulnerable populations can access housing and those services - we need to look at what more we can do to ensure that that is being used appropriately and we're really maximizing opportunities to make good use of public dollars. So I think we absolutely need to be working with communities and listening to communities and centering their voices. And then I think King County, as a body, needs to work with those communities to make sure that the investments that were being made are working on the community level and that we're really scaling up things that work. And I, as someone who's taught at the Evans School of Public Affairs and has been a policy wonk for years, am really interested in working with community and my fellow councilmembers in doing that work.
[00:17:38] Crystal Fincher: So on almost every measure, we're behind our 2030 climate goals. You've talked about addressing climate change and mitigating the impacts of that on people being one of your priorities. We've experienced the impacts from wildfires, heat and cold, floods, et cetera. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet our 2030 goals?
[00:17:59] Sarah Reyneveld: Yes, thank you for that excellent question. As an Assistant Attorney General that works to protect our environment and public health, this is an issue that is critically important to me because of the urgency of action and the need to really address this challenge - centering communities in a just transition. So first, I think we need to electrify transportation and invest deeply in transit. We know that to meet our carbon reduction goals, we have to get people out of cars and into transit. And yet we have seen that Metro Transit service has languished since the pandemic and ridership has fallen by half. And those transit delays - I'm a transit rider to work, I take my little boy to daycare downtown with me - and they're disproportionately affecting transit riders, which are working families, BIPOC communities, low income communities, youth, seniors, and others that rely on transit. And it's a transit justice issue. So I have already been doing some of this work, but if elected to the King County Council, I want to continue this work by working with a coalition of transit riders and groups like the Transit Riders Union and Seattle Subway and The Urbanist and others to pass a county-wide transit revenue package to fund a King County Transportation Benefit District, which would supplant the city one and really help us restore an increased Metro Transit service to deliver faster, more frequent, reliable, and zero-emission service that connects all our community members. I think the measure should also ensure that transit is free to those who are cost-burdened. Right now, one of our impediments to increasing transit service and getting people out of cars is the shortage of transit operators and mechanics. And part of this funding package, or looking at other funding sources, has to be to address that issue of recruiting and retaining Metro bus drivers. And that has to include a living wage and additional incentives and supports, including safety supports, to build the workforce of Metro operators. Now, I just spoke to Metro operators at ATU last week, and they told me they're facing significant workplace safety and pay and other challenges that are really contributing to job stress and attrition. So we have to address that underlying issue if we're gonna get people out of cars and into transit.
I also think we need to do more to decarbonize our built environment, which is probably the largest carbon emission in King County, through the adoption and strengthening of commercial building codes that will require communities to reduce energy use and also center communities in initiatives such as the Climate Equity Capital Pool to electrify their homes, for electric appliances and retrofits and solar panels. I think there's a lot of opportunities that we can leverage on the federal level to use grants and incentives and rebates to really update the building codes - and achieve these energy efficiencies and decarbonize our environment and our built environment - while bringing workers along. And I think we need to look at passing stronger provisions and incentives to transition off natural gas in a way that brings people and workers along and hastens this just transition to a clean energy economy - because we know that natural gas use in commercial and residential buildings accounts for a really large percentage of greenhouse gas emissions.
I would also say that we need to do more to sustainably manage our forests and our working lands to ensure climate-friendly forest management and farming to mitigate climate change impacts and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and look at how we can promote carbon storage in soils and increase the use of green space. I would also say, probably lastly, a large percentage of the carbon emissions in King County result from our food system. So I wanna lead in ensuring that all communities have opportunities to become food producers, to access urban and rural farmland, and that we're really centering disproportionately impacted communities and empowering them to become farmers - particularly in food deserts and ensuring that tribes have access to their traditional food sources and cultural resources.
And I've talked a lot to labor about this, and I would say that I believe that we can work towards a just transition to a clean energy economy that really centers workers and equitable pathways to green jobs and apprenticeships, but it's gonna take us building a coalition. And I'm committed to really rolling up my sleeves and working with our labor partners and folks that are disproportionately impacted and our community members to build that just transition towards a clean energy economy and a sustainable community that addresses our climate crisis.
[00:23:01] Crystal Fincher: You talked about needing to address the staffing issues in our public transportation department, certainly an issue in Metro that is urgently in need of addressing. We've seen in several other departments - with sheriffs, certainly with municipal police departments in the County - that they're giving retention bonuses, hiring bonuses to help attract people. And what we've seen is - although they are on record saying that that isn't really moving the needle and may not, there are a lot of people in other departments saying that would absolutely move the needle here. Do you support retention bonuses and hiring bonus and some of the things that we've seen for folks working in public safety for other workers?
[00:23:40] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, I think that's an excellent question. I think we really need to listen to workers, and my platform is all about lifting up and centering and listening to workers. And to me, hiring bonuses are not gonna address the root cause of the issue. And the root cause of the issue is really living wages and supports for drivers. But if hiring bonuses will help certain segments of workers - I did talk to, for example, an ATU bus operator that said that they had hiring bonuses in Pierce County and that they had not yet received any sort of retention or hiring bonus. And so if that's something that's going to help workers feel valued, I think that we do have to look at that as an option. However, it doesn't really address the root cause. And that is we need to support our frontline workers and give them a living wage. So we need to increase base pay for workers. We need to give them benefits - adequate benefits - flexibility, and the working conditions that they deserve. And for some frontline workers, that's gonna mean more investment in safety measures or hazard pay. And for other frontline workers, that may include a bonus. But I think we need to listen to workers, we need to center workers, and we really need to give them living wages, benefits, and the working conditions they deserve.
I think you are absolutely right to say that the workforce issue is huge in King County, and we have to do more to address it. When I talk to workers - everyone from grocery store workers to our bus operators, to behavioral health workers - they're really struggling to make a living wage to afford to live in King County, and save for retirement, and raise their kids. And they're really the sheroes and heroes of, I think, responding to the pandemic or the shadow pandemic, but also just of taking care of our communities. And they're really bearing the brunt of our crises - our unhoused crisis, the opioid crisis, the behavioral health crisis. So we at King County have to do better to support them, and that includes living wages, benefits, and working conditions. And I am interested and very committed to doing that work to center workers.
[00:25:56] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and you're completely correct that they are bearing the brunt of that. Another issue that kind of delves both into addressing climate change and mitigating the impacts of it and public health is air and clean air within buildings. And this has been increasingly talked about - especially as we've learned more about airborne pathogens, and as we've dealt more with wildfire smoke, and how much we've learned about how pollutants and pollution impact health, impact life expectancy. There are areas in Seattle that have life expectancies years shorter than other areas in the same city. Does the County have a responsibility to provide clean and safe air within its buildings and to try and incentivize that throughout other privately owned buildings and businesses in the County?
[00:26:45] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, I absolutely think the County has a responsibility - working with our state regulators as well as our federal regulators and policymakers - to ensure that everyone has access to clean air. I see this as an environmental justice issue - you pointed out that disproportionately - communities that live in areas with higher rates of pollution and that are more impacted, disproportionately impacted by climate change are experiencing poor air quality. And I think we have seen through the effects of climate change and really rampant wildfires and other issues, that these are disproportionately impacting our frontline communities and communities that are already overburdened. So I think that one thing that we can do at the King County level is really urgently lead on addressing the climate crisis. And our air quality is just gonna get worse as the climate crisis and the impacts increase. And so I think we need someone that's gonna really roll up their sleeves and provide strong leadership to really address these underlying issues around air and water pollution and to address the climate crisis. And so I wanna do that work with disproportionately impacted communities, and part of that work is really getting people out of cars and into transit. So really think having a strong vision for what that looks like and how to center frontline communities is really critically important.
[00:28:18] Crystal Fincher: Looking at the state of this race, you're in a competitive race this time - you were last time, too - but this time you're part of a competitive race. What do your endorsements say about you, and what are you most proud of?
[00:28:33] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, I think I am - just to get back to my roots - I am a public sector attorney, I am a working parent, I am a community advocate, and I have lived in the 4th Council District for 25 years, and really have dedicated my 15-year public service career to advancing progressive policy, legal, and budgetary solutions to some of our most pressing challenges. And I have worked in community to drive progressive policies forward, and I think my endorsements reflect the work that I've done in community. I have endorsements from five members of the King County Council, including Councilmember Kohl-Welles and Councilmember Zahilay, who I've worked with directly around securing access to more childcare, to addressing gender-based violence, to doing more for affordable housing. And I think my endorsements really speak to the depth of work and the way that I have worked to elevate community voices in community and doing that work. I would say that one of the endorsements I'm most proud of is Councilmember Kohl-Welles' endorsement because she's been a mentor to me and I have worked with her on a number of issues to improve the lives of women in disproportionately impacted communities in King County. And I'm also proud of the endorsement from my boss, A.G. Bob Ferguson. I have dedicated my career to being on the frontlines, to helping enforce workers' rights to fair wages to equal pay, to protect our environment. And I've done this work in the Attorney General's office and the fact that I have the support of my boss as I'm running for King County Council, just like he ran for King County Council, and that he's been helping me out on the campaign trail. And ensuring that I'm running a strong grassroots campaign really means the world to me.
[00:30:20] Crystal Fincher: Now, we've also talked about how important it is to enact a lot of policy, to take care of people - obviously, we need to address staffing. All of the things that we've talked about today - a lot of them require revenue. We just ran a big levy because we needed the revenue. The list of things that everyone says is necessary, evidently costs more than we have in the budget, so new revenue is needed. What progressive revenue options exist at the County level today, and will you pursue any of them?
[00:30:50] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, so I have a long history of advocating for progressive revenue, including the capital gains tax as a citizen advocate and board member of Washington's Paramount Duty. And so I have fought with, alongside a coalition of folks that are really pushing for progressive revenue reform at the state level. I still think there's so much more we can do and look forward to being a strong partner in that work. King County is projected to face revenue shortfalls and has constrained revenue sources. I do wanna fight against austerity budgets and look really critically at how we can obtain authority from the Legislature to pass truly progressive revenue sources that center working people. I think we also need to look at potentially lifting the 1% property tax lid if we can provide exemptions for homeowners and fixed income seniors. But I think the kind of frustrating thing about the County is it is revenue-constrained and that we need to work hard both on the County Council and in partnership with communities to figure out what more we can do to obtain authority to pass truly progressive revenue sources, whether or not that's taxing business or looking at more progressive revenue sources other than property tax and sales tax and some of these use fees. So I'm dedicated to doing that work in partnership with community and I'm really looking forward to that.
[00:32:26] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. And with the budget, King County does incremental budgeting making it difficult for the public to understand - making it difficult for some people in government to understand, but especially the public - to understand how King County funds are allocated in the base budget. What can be done to make the budget easier for the public to understand and influence?
[00:32:47] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, I think that's an excellent question. We need more transparency in the budget process and we need more participation from community at the County level in the budget process. I have testified, for example, funding for the mental health counselors under MIDD. I have testified for affordable housing. I've testified for more childcare funding. And sometimes it's difficult, as the budget comes over from the Executive, to know what's different about the budget, right? And so I find generally that through this work as a member of the King County Women's Advisory Board and as a citizen advocate that King County budgets are not as accessible, for example, as legislative budgets. And more needs to be done to ensure that they're more transparent and accessible, and also that we're ensuring that the public is engaged in the budgeting process and understands it. So I think one of the things that we can do, and Councilmember Zahilay has done such a great job of this, is just explaining the King County budget process - how the budget comes over from the Executive, what the budget looks like, and how to understand the budget. I think another thing we could do is helping to really center folks that historically have not had a seat at the table in the budget process and have been excluded from power structures in developing policy and budgetary proposals - so that those folks are actually involved in the collaboration process through working groups and meetings and collaboration so that we're moving more towards participatory budget models, where constituents are not just involved in testifying, but really involved and actively involved every step of the process and ultimately in the decisions that impact them. So I'm really interested in working with all communities, and particularly frontline communities that are disproportionately impacted by these issues, and to really look to see what we can do towards more participatory budgeting. But first, of course, we have to make that process more transparent.
[00:34:49] Crystal Fincher: Now, as we said before, you have at least one opponent now - the filing deadline isn't for a few weeks, couple weeks, few weeks here. So as you're talking to people who are considering who they're gonna vote for in this race, why should they vote for you over your opponents?
[00:35:08] Sarah Reyneveld: Thank you. I'm running because I wanna continue the work that I've done with community and elevate community voices here in the 4th Council District and beyond to advance bold and transformative action for workers, for working families, and our environment on the King County Council. And as I said before, I think we're in a critical moment of time, and I am really committed to working with our most impacted communities to ensure that we are building back better and really creating equitable economic recovery that centers workers and working families and leads to a more sustainable future. Like many in our district, I'm a working parent, I'm a public school parent, transit rider, community organizer, and I have really dedicated my career to advancing progressive legal policy and budgetary solutions to some of our most pressing challenges - and I think we've really gotten results. As a member of the King County Women's Advisory Board, I have worked in partnership with community and the King County Council to secure investments in affordable housing, behavioral health, childcare, and services for survivors of gender-based violence. And I really wanna build on that track record. And I think I have the skills to do so - to really center community voices and to advance really bold, progressive solutions.
I think there's three things that I would highlight to voters about why they should choose me in a competitive race. One is community - I'm running for the community and have demonstrated a history of leadership in my community, which is really reflected in our campaign's range of endorsements from elected officials to community leaders and labor. And I have lived experience as a mom and union member and transit rider that is not only reflective of my district, but I feel can be valuable on the King County Council. And lastly, I have a demonstrated history of leadership in my community working to build coalitions to deliver on progressive policies for workers and working families. And I think I've demonstrated that I'm unafraid to grapple with and do the real work of really advancing transformative solutions that are necessary at this critical moment in time. And I really look forward to the conversation on the campaign and hopefully to working with my community to ensure equitable economic recovery that really centers workers and working families and creates a more sustainable future for all.
[00:37:37] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:37:40] Sarah Reyneveld: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:37:42] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Primary Week re-air, Crystal chats with Becka Johnson Poppe about her campaign for King County Council District 4 - why she decided to run, the skill set she brings from overseeing half of King County’s $16 billion budget, and her thoughts on addressing human services sector wages, issues plaguing the King County Jail, housing and homelessness, drug possession and substance use disorder, climate change and air quality, and budget transparency and efficiency.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Becka Johnson Poppe at @votebecka.
Becka Johnson Poppe
Becka has been putting progressive ideas into action across our region’s largest public entities for more than a decade. Currently, Becka oversees half of King County's $16 billion budget and leads a team that works to advance environmental, transportation, and racial justice priorities. Previously, at the University of Washington, she promoted equitable access to higher education and led state budget and policy analysis as the Director of Policy, Planning & State Operations. Becka volunteers as a Director on the Board of YouthCare, working to end youth homelessness, and chairs the Race Equity Justice Committee. She also volunteers on the Board of Doney Coe Pet Clinic, supporting the animal companions of people experiencing homelessness. Becka is an elected Precinct Committee Officer, a member of the Jackson Foundation Leadership Council, and has served on the King County Democrats Endorsement Committee. She previously worked in mental health research for Stanford University and has mentored students from diverse communities over the last two decades. In her free time, Becka enjoys traveling with her spouse and their cat, Edgar, as well as spending time outdoors and cheering on the Mariners.
Resources
Campaign Website - Becka Johnson Poppe
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
I'm very pleased to have King County Council candidate Becka Johnson Poppe joining us today. Welcome to the show.
[00:01:01] Becka Johnson Poppe: Thank you so much, Crystal. It's really nice to be here.
[00:01:04] Crystal Fincher: Great to be here with you. So I guess just starting off - what made you choose to run for this King County Council position?
[00:01:12] Becka Johnson Poppe: Thank you. Yeah, so I've lived in District 4 for over a decade. I was born and raised here in the Puget Sound region. I'm the granddaughter of two veterans, daughter of two public servants - and they really taught me what it meant to be tough and what it meant to serve the community. Growing up, I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, but I knew that I wanted to take care of my community. I studied biology and psychology in college and spent a couple of years doing mental health research at Stanford after that. While I was there, I volunteered as an after-school program leader in a low-income community - and between my work and my volunteering - I saw a lot of challenges that people were facing with navigating mental health issues, economic injustice, the first effects of climate change, and really all the societal structures and policies that do an unfortunately impressive job of inhibiting social mobility and access to basic services. In many cases, the only thing keeping people afloat was having a supportive community around them. And that really hit home for me - I realized I wanted to get back to my community and work on these issues back at home.
I am honored to be part of this community in District 4 and in King County. There are a lot of incredibly dedicated, creative, supportive people who have made careers out of finding ways to make the world a better place - and like I said, the community that you have around you can really make all the difference. A dear friend of mine was living out of their car in King County not that long ago, and I think about them when I think about the 50,000 people who were unhoused in King County last year. I think that there are moments in life that many of us have had where you can see how close you are to going from making it work to not making it work. For a little while, I was working three jobs and had a bank account with two digits. I had tons of support around me, so I was fine - but I was in a precarious spot and if I hadn't had that support, it could have looked really different. I think that there is so much work that needs to be done to create communities that truly support each other. I think we can all agree we have a housing crisis, a behavioral health crisis, a climate crisis - and to take on these issues, we need someone who can bring people together and make progress right out of the gate. So over the last decade, I've led budgets and policy development for some of the region's largest public entities. I've gone from a bank account with two digits to overseeing half of King County's $16 billion budget. Really, a budget is about our values - it's about our priorities and how we make those real, and that's a unique skill set that I bring.
I really see three priorities connecting everything that the County does - protecting the environment, advancing equity, and stimulating the economy. These three E's - the environment, equity, and the economy - all intersect, and I'm really committed to centering our community's voices and our community's needs, because I've seen firsthand what that looks like and what that can do. I think we really have an opportunity to show the state and the rest of the nation what it means to be a community that is diverse and inclusive and dedicated to solving the most complex issues. King County is bigger than 15 states, and so we have the opportunity and the responsibility to lead in taking on the existential threat of climate change, and creating more housing that's affordable for more people, in delivering universal childcare, improving our transportation experience. And all of this is going to take centering the voices of people most affected, creating accessible career pathways with family-sustaining wages, moving big capital initiatives faster and more equitably, and making sure that everyone feels safe, respected, and supported. And I've spent my career turning progressive ideas into progressive action - with the voices and votes of our community, I'm really excited to hit the ground running.
[00:04:59] Crystal Fincher: All right - you talked about the three E's. Those three E's are absolutely impacted, as you talked about, by housing and homelessness and how accessible or not those are to people. One thing called out by experts that's a barrier to our homelessness response is that frontline workers are short-staffed, they're overworked, and their wages are not covering the cost of living for this area. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages, and how can we make that more likely with how we bid and contract for services?
[00:05:32] Becka Johnson Poppe: Yeah, thanks Crystal. So there was a recent UW research study that showed that social service staff are underpaid by 37%. And with a combination of lagging wages, rising cost of living, and just the really challenging work that folks have to do in these spaces - that's created a real workforce crisis in the human services sector. In King County and Seattle, this kind of work is primarily performed by nonprofits, like you pointed out, in contracts with government agencies. So we really need to make sure that, as a government, that we are using the tools that are available to us to make sure that nonprofits have the ability to pay their employees more. And where we're really seeing this hit home is for social workers, for people working with youth, for intake specialists, for people who are doing that really tough human services work. Women account for - it was 79% of all human services workers in King County. And that same UW study showed that it's workers of color who are overrepresented in the lowest paid human services job, including frontline care work. So when we're looking at what we can be doing as a county to make sure that nonprofits can increase the minimum pay for folks, to be providing inflationary wage adjustments, to be improving non-wage benefits - that's all gonna come down to how we as a government can be supporting that work. So I think we absolutely need to be doing this, not just for the sake of our work in our homelessness communities, but for the sake of work in so many different spaces.
[00:07:05] Crystal Fincher: Public safety is top of mind for so many people - and just what it means to be safe, what comprehensive public safety means. And a focus on addressing root causes - really getting to the heart of people being victimized and reducing it - people have been asking for that for quite some time. Part of this process and part of what King County is responsible for is operating multiple jails, really. And the main jail has been having a number of problems - from overcrowding, they had a lack of water for a while, inadequate healthcare, shortages. Would you have voted to approve the transfer of inmates to the SCORE jail to try and alleviate the issues plaguing the King County Jail, or would you have a different plan?
[00:07:51] Becka Johnson Poppe: Yeah, so a close family member of mine was incarcerated, and this is something that is really near and dear to my heart. I think the human experience in our jails is something that we really have to focus on. We didn't prioritize, the County didn't prioritize COVID vaccines for this population. And we are seeing a behavioral health problem that's manifesting in our jails with the suicide numbers. This is really concerning. I am worried about the fact that SCORE doesn't have options for in-person visitation. I'm worried about folks in our jails not being able to access their legal representation, support from behavioral health professionals. I'm worried about the experience for people who are trying to do that critical work to support their clients - who need interpreters, who need that in-person access to just do basic things like pass documents back and forth. And what this really comes down to is making sure that we are keeping folks out of jail in the first place - that we're looking at equitable, human-centered, criminal legal strategies. And these takes the form of things like community courts, community diversion programs, and scaling that up is really critical.
It is a fact that we don't have enough staff to fill our jails right now. We don't have enough people to even escort folks from the front desk to meet with their clients, and that is - that's really unacceptable. We need to be looking at those staffing shortages and making sure that we are being efficient with our resources. If we're paying people to do work but they aren't even able to access their clients, that's not efficient - let alone the human experience that's going on for the people in our jails. So investing in those holistic solutions to keep people out of jail in the first place is a big part of this, and I'm hopeful that the behavioral health levy that was recently passed is going to be part of this solution. I think we also need to be looking at our community courts - and one thing that I want to spend more time looking at is misdemeanor cases, which are not currently eligible for community court. Just really making sure that we are taking a step back and paying attention to the human experience and also how to keep people from being in that situation in the first place.
[00:09:57] Crystal Fincher: Should we close the King County Jail?
[00:09:59] Becka Johnson Poppe: I think that we should absolutely be moving toward that - and doing that in concert with all of these holistic services, and making sure that we are having alternatives to that jail that are going to be better suited to the community needs.
[00:10:14] Crystal Fincher: And I may have just missed it, so would you have also voted to - you talked about a number of other things that were absolutely crucial and critical, and people who are incarcerated having connections to the outside is critical to lower chances of recidivism and them able to integrate back in the community successfully. Would you have voted to approve that SCORE contract?
[00:10:35] Becka Johnson Poppe: I would not have voted to approve that SCORE contract.
[00:10:38] Crystal Fincher: Okay, and so I assume that if it comes back, which some people think that it will - and need to be extended or expanded - that you would be a No vote on that too.
[00:10:46] Becka Johnson Poppe: That's right.
[00:10:47] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. So we talked about homelessness, affordable housing, about the need to increase pay for frontline workers and that being crucial to being able to solve this response. What are your top priorities for taking action to reduce homelessness and increase the affordability of housing?
[00:11:06] Becka Johnson Poppe: Yeah, thank you. So I mentioned earlier that a good friend of mine was living out of their car in King County not that long ago and so this hits home for me. And I've also been working to end youth homelessness as a volunteer for . YouthCare, and as a volunteer for a really small nonprofit that provides care to the animal companions of people who are experiencing homelessness. And one of the things that I've observed is that we really need to be leveraging partnerships to support the needs of the community and making sure that we are not missing handoffs. We need to make sure that we are communicating between the systems, making sure that we're providing a safety net for the community. And the fact is a lot of our contracts right now don't allow for resources to be used flexibly for wraparound support. So that's one thing I want to work on.
And as we were talking about, keeping the team is really critical. When I'm volunteering for YouthCare, it's our frontline staff who make all the difference for our unhoused young people. I've advocated for wage increases because it's the right thing to do - and because the bottom line is if we don't take care of our people, we lose them and we lose the vital individual connections that make the work matter. I think in order to take care of our community, we really need to take care of our people. And whether you care about any of that or not, which I hope you do - I know that you do, Crystal, and I hope that all of our listeners do here - if we are constantly losing people and having to navigate that turnover, it's just really inefficient from a resource standpoint. Those hiring processes - going through that over and over - that's tapping into scarce resources that we could be using for so many other important things. So it's about leveraging those partnerships, it's about keeping the team together.
And then how we pair this with affordable housing - it is really hard for people to afford to live here and rents are at all-time highs, housing prices are really tough. Having a comprehensive approach that addresses zoning, affordability, that links housing with transportation - it's not only going to be critical to help with equity, to help with the economy, but also with the environment - getting back to those three E's - to make sure that we have diverse communities while we're mitigating the impacts of climate change by pairing housing where transportation is. I'm really for making sure that we have more housing that's affordable to more people, and doing that with what I would consider a 'Yes, And' approach. So making sure that we have mixed-use development where housing is built alongside commercial and retail spaces, making it easier to build with permitting, with design review - really taking a look at those processes - finding ways to support first-time home buyers as well. And I get kind of excited about this, but talking about the full life cycle of these projects - everything from land acquisition - the timing of land acquisitions with our budget processes, that is a big challenge right now. Building capacity in the community to do these projects so that we have culturally competent developers, making sure that we move construction faster and more equitably to get these affordable housing units created, making sure that we have green building features that are part of this construction and these plans from the start, thinking about the jobs that we're creating - good union jobs as part of this. And incentivizing the creation of affordable housing that isn't just tiny units - that is available for multi-generational households, which are often folks from immigrant communities.
And all of this is going to get back to those multi-benefits of how we are supporting the environment, equity, and the economy simultaneously. I could nerd out here a little bit talking about a program at the County around transfer of development rights, which is something that we use to preserve open space by transferring the development potential of that land to areas where we can have more density because the services and utilities are available to support that. And this is something that I think is really cool because the revenue that we generate by selling these development credits allows us to then purchase more open space, and be preserving those open spaces. So these multi-benefits, I think, are where things can get really cool. And how we can be using those incentives to make sure that we have green building features, and even access to childcare services where people live and not just wherever it makes sense to build them otherwise. This is going to make everyone's lives easier, healthier, and better. So I get really excited about this stuff.
[00:15:30] Crystal Fincher: Makes sense. Now, drug decriminalization is a big topic of discussion locally and at the state legislative level right now. We had our legislators working on legislation to try and establish a new policy for personal possession of substances, after our State Supreme Court invalidated the law that criminalized that. Legislature did that, but put a sunset provision in the first go-round that they did - after they made it a misdemeanor, tried to fund some infrastructure across the state for treatment and diversion, those types of programs. But they weren't able to come to a new agreement in this session. Governor Inslee recently called a new special session to address this, and we'll see if they come up with a solution after that. But if not, it's going to be up to counties, cities, and towns to figure out what policy is the right policy for them. Should we be criminalizing simple possession of substances? And if not, what should the plan be?
[00:16:31] Becka Johnson Poppe: Yeah, thanks Crystal. We need to be making sure that folks are getting the help that they need rather than punishment. Historically, we have just not seen evidence that shows that punishment works, and it's disproportionately affecting Black and Brown communities. There needs to be a fix that happens at the state level because I don't think that it's a great solution to have 40 different rules with 40 different jurisdictions - where people have to wonder if they step across one line, if they're going to be treated differently than if they're hopping over here. And so I'm really hopeful that the state comes through with a fix. If they don't, we really need to be focusing again back on the root issues. What is resulting in people having substance abuse disorder, having these challenges in the first place? Possession - drug possession is not the biggest public safety threat facing our communities right now. And we have scarce resources to devote to public safety so prioritizing that differently is an imperative, while recognizing that substance abuse is a big problem. Fentanyl death rates are growing year over year, we've already exceeded the 2022 death rates so far - and we're only a few months into 2023 - but we absolutely cannot prosecute our way out of the problem. Prevention, treatment, long-term care - these are all critical pieces - and data gathering to support that.
Another really important thing that I've noticed is that this is hitting the people who are experiencing homelessness the hardest. I think we need a healthcare team that is really dedicated to supporting people who are experiencing homelessness. And recognizing that if people refuse treatment - that's part of the disease, that is part of the process. So we still need to have that treatment available - we need to help folks work through that part of the disease that presents as refusal, and not just giving up on folks. So I am really hopeful that the state comes through with a fix - and I think at the County level, we need to be prioritizing our scarce resources in a way that is going to help people, rather than try to prosecute them.
[00:18:38] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely makes sense. Now, you talked about another one of your Es, the environment. On almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals but we're experiencing impacts from climate change more than we ever have before, whether it's extreme weather events with heat and cold, wildfires, floods. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet our 2030 goals?
[00:19:02] Becka Johnson Poppe: Yeah, it's really important to be recognizing that climate change is a threat multiplier that burdens communities already facing public health and economic disparities. I think that we can be looking at ways to center community voices in how we are working to address climate change, and this is something that I've had direct experience with. A couple years ago, I created the County's first Climate Equity Bond - it's a $20 million pool of funds - and in doing so, had the honor to sit with frontline communities experiencing the first and worst consequences of climate change. I met with them for seven months and found a way to make their priorities a reality. I really want to scale up that work at the County and do even more of this - and make sure that we are not being performative about the way that we are involving community voices, but really doing that deliberately - and balancing that need to move quickly, but making sure that we are not leaving folks behind.
Another really critical piece to this is moving our big construction initiatives faster by breaking down barriers to delivering on those initiatives. So much of what we need to do to address climate change is going to come down to how we can deliver on our capital projects - whether it's installing electric vehicle infrastructure, whether it is creating big solar fields, affordable housing that's close to transportation - these large-scale energy projects, these large-scale construction initiatives are gonna be key. This is something that I've been working on at the County - is figuring out how to break down the barriers that all of our construction initiatives are facing right now, which are around permitting, procurement, supply chains, labor shortages. And this is something that I'm really excited about because there are things that we can be doing to break down those barriers and move these projects faster and more equitably for the sake of the environment. Another thing that I've been working on related to our big capital projects is making sure that when we are making decisions, we are doing that in a way that recognizes the carbon emissions from our buildings will harm future generations. This is called social cost of carbon. It's a real dollar amount that we can actually be applying to calculations about which alternatives we should pursue when we're looking at different construction projects and construction options - and bringing that into our decision-making is really critical.
We also need to be going after federal and state funding. There are huge opportunities right now. The Inflation Reduction Act, Federal Infrastructure Bill, Climate Commitment Act, Clean Fuel Standard, the EPA has a $5 billion grant option opportunity for climate pollution reduction. We have a huge opportunity right now to be going after those dollars in a coordinated manner that those grant opportunities - actually, in some cases, demand that we be coordinated across the region. And the County - one of the biggest things that the County can do is bring people together to bring that coordination. And then a huge part of this is transportation. We need to have a coordinated plan for installing electric vehicle charging infrastructure, working with our neighboring jurisdictions and private entities. We need to be electrifying our bus fleet, but recognizing that if no one is riding our buses, it doesn't really matter if they're electric if everyone's using their cars instead. So we need to be bringing people back to our buses, and if it's reliable, accessible, and safe, people are going to use it.
[00:22:25] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, one related item is the air that we breathe - you talked about reducing the pollution there. Certainly, air quality impacts everything about our lives - from life expectancy, to whether we're experiencing asthma, heart disease, lung disease, many things like that. What role does the County have to play, or what responsibility does the County have, to ensure that clean air and appropriate ventilation happens in public buildings? But also, we're seeing a lot of new construction - just passed some legislation that will probably spur construction of housing units. How should the County be enforcing air standards, or should it?
[00:23:05] Becka Johnson Poppe: Yeah, well, to start off here, a really critical piece of this is transportation, because the biggest source of emissions in the County is emissions from transportation. So to expand on that a little bit, we really need to be bringing people back to our buses. And as I was saying, if it's reliable, accessible, safe, people are going to use it. Right now, our buses are arriving late, on reduced schedules, too many of our neighbors who are in crisis are having episodes on buses completely unsupported. And I think if we asked a big room of people - how many of us have had an uncomfortable experience on a bus - we'd probably all raise our hands. So to be reducing our emissions, we need to bring people back to our buses. And I think we can do that by making our experience safer, by having an on-demand care team, where our Metro operators who have such a tough job already - my neighbor actually is a Metro operator, he's in his 80s, he is one of the toughest people that I know - and we can make a system where those Metro operators can flag down a care team to meet them en route and provide human-oriented holistic support to people who are in crisis on our buses.
We also need to recognize that the traditional commute isn't the main reason that people are using buses anymore. So to get people to transition away from single-occupancy vehicles, we need to have transportation that's available around the clock and not just in those traditional commute hours. We have the Metro Connects vision to help us move toward that vision, but there's a big funding gap and it was put together in 2016. So we need to refresh that data with post-pandemic data to make sure that we're moving toward the right solutions and the right targets here. We have a lot of one-time funding that we can be using right now to make sure that we are staffed up with Metro, to make sure that we're improving that safety and that ridership experience. We also need to be pursuing long-term solutions. So I think all of this is going to be really key to improving our air quality and making sure that we have better air quality for everyone.
And in terms of our buildings, it gets back to those choices that we're making about how we construct and factoring those emissions - those long-term emissions - and the effects of those into our decision-making. We also can be making sure that, when we have these wildfire incidents and smoke, that we have spaces for people to go where they can escape that. There are not enough places right now where people can be safe from the effects of our wildfire season, which is really what it is right now, unfortunately - it's a season of the year that we've become pretty familiar with. There are things called - I might mispronounce this here - Corsi–Rosenthal Boxes, which are quick ways to clean the air for folks. It cleans the air by up to 60%. And that's something that we can use in a lot of different settings to essentially retrofit spaces that aren't already constructed in ways that allow folks to be able to breathe clean air. And we really need to be engaging people at every stage of the process in conversations about indoor air quality. We've learned this through COVID - we can be leveraging those same learnings to move forward and be ensuring that as the climate continues to warm and as we continue to have more wildfire smoke, that we are not having that impact all of us. But really that - if we look at the maps of air pollution where folks are most affected by this, it's the same regions of the County that are disproportionately impacted by existing public health disparities, by economic disparities, by gun violence, by so many different things. And recognizing where needs are greatest is going to be key in making sure that we are improving the air quality in meaningful ways.
[00:26:44] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, you manage half of the County budget. You talked about how huge the County is - it is large, it is formidable - so that is quite the undertaking that you have. But when it comes to that budget, King County does incremental budgeting - making it really difficult for people to understand how funds are allocated in the base budget. Being that this is one of your strengths and an area you are very familiar with, what can be done to make the budget easier for the public to understand and influence?
[00:27:15] Becka Johnson Poppe: Yeah, this is something I get really excited about. Few things are more important than how we use our resources and transparency from a lot of different angles is critical - the funding sources, how that funding is being used, how communities are being involved in those choices, and in the implementation of things that get funded. I've been working on this at the County and on the campaign trail so far - just demystifying the budget process. It doesn't have to be complicated. Everyone understands income coming in, expenses going out. We budget for ourselves individually in ways that align with our values and priorities. If you really care about cooking, maybe you're going to spend a little bit more on the supplies that you're using or the ingredients that you're using. Those are your priorities reflected in your own personal budget. And that same thing happens at the County. There are opportunities that we're using - that I've been using right now - to really try to make this easier for folks to be involved in and to understand. And part of this is meeting people where they're at. It's great to have town halls, it's great to have office hours, it's great to have presentations - but thinking about the timing and location of those is really critical. If we're holding space for folks to engage with these processes at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday, you're going to get a very different set of people than if you have it at 7 p.m. And it's - for me, one of the most fun parts of the campaign so far has been knocking on doors and literally engaging with folks where they're at - at their home, where they don't have to go anywhere. They can just share their thoughts with me when I come up and ask for a few minutes of their time. But I think the bottom line here is - it doesn't have to be complicated. There are ways that we can be putting that information online to make this more accessible to folks, to make it easier to understand. It's not about sharing more data - that can just be overwhelming, that can be more cumbersome. It's about presenting that data in ways that people can access and understand, and really going to people to make sure that they have their voices heard in the process.
[00:29:23] Crystal Fincher: Now, the list of things that everyone says is necessary and a lot of the things that we've talked about today cost more money than we appear to have in the budget, so new revenue is needed. What progressive revenue options exist at the County level and will you pursue any of them?
[00:29:39] Becka Johnson Poppe: Yeah, we are unfortunately heading into lean times at the County. The state did not pass a revenue fix that we really needed. So as a little bit of background - right now, so the General Fund for the County is our most flexible source of revenue that funds a lot of the critical things that the County does. The biggest source of funding for the General Fund is property tax revenue. And right now, revenue from our property tax is capped - the growth of that revenue is capped at 1% per year, plus the cost of new construction. This comes out to essentially about 2% per year, or a little bit more. And I think we've all seen that inflation has been going up by way more than 2% per year. So we have more money going out the door than we have coming in. And this means that to even just sustain the level of service that we have now, we are going to need way more than that 2%. So we're headed into lean times because the state did not lift that cap on property tax revenue growth. And I think that voters deserve someone who has the budget experience to think creatively about how to avoid cuts and maximize the dollars that we have.
So as I mentioned - as you mentioned - over the last few years, I've been overseeing half of the County's budget and this has given me some insight into some of the tools that we can be using. We talked earlier about going after big federal dollars - that's an opportunity that we have to help shore up the work that we're doing. We have opportunities to be multiplying the dollars that we have with matching funds, with pilot projects that make the County competitive for larger dollars. We can also be getting more aggressive with our bonding strategy. So right now the County has a AAA rating, which is great. And you don't need to know anything about bonds to know that AAA is the best - it's really freaking good. We can be taking that down a notch - and still getting pretty much all of the benefits that we have at our AAA - with something that's just a smidge lower than that, but freeing up a lot of dollars to meet urgent needs now. These needs are only going to get more expensive the longer that they're left unaddressed, so this is actually a fiscally responsible solution. If we use that bonding authority right now to get more dollars right now, that's gonna help in the long run.
And then base budget. So you mentioned earlier that we budget at the County on an incremental basis, and this is absolutely true. This is true of a lot of local jurisdictions. And what this means essentially is that when we have new money coming in, we decide what to do with those new dollars, but we don't take a lot of time to dig back into the resources that were decided upon in the past. And those resources were guided by different values and priorities than we have now. We're talking decades of decisions. And that means that the values and priorities that we have now - that are really intentionally centering racial justice and equity - that's great for the way that we're using our resources now, but that's not what was guiding resource decisions in the past. So we have a huge opportunity to not only free up dollars and reprioritize those dollars to help as we're headed into lean times, but to also undo systemic racism by reevaluating the way that we have used resources in the past and reassigning those dollars to meet where needs are greatest. We need to keep getting dollars out into the community and recognizing that King County taxpayers can't be the only ones to shoulder this burden in perpetuity, but we can be the ones to model this work and how we can do this correctly and creatively - to then work with our colleagues at the state and federal levels to find sustainable progressive funding solutions for the long-term.
[00:33:21] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and anyone who knows me in real life has probably had a conversation with me about how crucial and important bonding is - and using it in times like now is to be able to solve problems at the scale that we're experiencing them.
Now, you're in a competitive race. This position - District 4 is a contested race. The filing deadline is May 19th, so who knows if anyone else is gonna get in the race. But at this point in time, people are trying to evaluate the differences between candidates and who you are, and how you may vote. What do your endorsements say about you, and what are you most proud of?
[00:33:59] Becka Johnson Poppe: Yeah, thank you. I am really proud to be endorsed by a lot of folks who really represent the community - small business owners, nonprofit leaders, people who are out there doing the work in the community. I'm also proud to be endorsed by State Representative Liz Berry, State Representative Kristine Reeves, County Councilmember Joe McDermott - these are folks who I really respect because of the way that they've led our community toward progressive solutions to some of the most complex issues. And I recognize that I haven't been working toward a specific elected office for a long period of time, and so - I have, though, been operating in the community, connecting with my community, and I think that my endorsements really reflect that.
[00:34:50] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Now another thing that you covered was talking about - with the budget - that how we deliver projects is as important as the overall goal of it, and can influence the quality of it. This has been a continued issue that we've seen at many levels of government, including the County, where great policy is passed that's gonna help a lot of people, but it experiences some challenges in the implementation. What can we do to improve how we implement policy at the County level?
[00:35:19] Becka Johnson Poppe: That is such a big question, and I really appreciate that question. There is so much that we can be doing to improve how we implement policy - it is really up to our elected officials and our governments. We have the opportunity and the responsibility to be undoing the status quo and replacing it with something better, to be centering the voices of people most affected, to be understanding the racial justice impact of policies and programs by using data carefully and intentionally - and this really factors into how we roll out those policies. As a County Councilmember, part of my job will be recognizing the maps showing where needs are greatest - whether it's gun violence, public health disparities, urban heat - and making sure that we are involving the voices of folks in those areas where needs are greatest. We need to be forming partnerships to be implementing our policies effectively - partnerships with frontline workers, partnerships with labor, partnerships with nonprofit organizations - and really paying attention to the experience of people who are doing the work and the expertise of people who are doing that work.
We were talking about moving big capital initiatives faster. So much of what the County does is constructing things, building things - and so I've seen firsthand the importance of our capital design and our construction work. And if we move capital projects faster, we create more jobs, more union jobs, we sustain those jobs, and we get that value out into the communities faster. As I mentioned, our big capital initiatives are facing barriers around permitting, procurement, supply chains, labor shortages. We need to be paying attention to that because those problems probably aren't going away, but there are ways that we can be breaking that down by really making sure that we are using all of the tools in the toolbox. With procurement, for example, there are alternative processes with design-bid-build, that - and a whole bunch of different options here - where we can be staffing in a way that allows us to be creative, that will actually save us more money in the long run if we staff up in ways that will allow for that creativity. And sometimes this work is going to be more complex at the outset, but it's going to save us money and save us time in the long run, and so thinking about those trade-offs and thinking about how we can be making fiscally responsible investments, investments and policy implementation plans that really involve people at every step of the way - it's all going to end up being better for us in the long run. This is such a big question. I feel like there's so many things that we could talk about here, but this is really critical to the work that the County does.
[00:38:03] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, as we conclude today - as we talked about - there are lots of voters and residents in this community who are trying to figure out not only what's happening, but who you guys are and where you stand, what the differences are, and how to make their decision on who they're going to vote for. When you talk to people like that, what do you tell them?
[00:38:25] Becka Johnson Poppe: Yeah, I tell them - I've spent my career turning progressive ideas into progressive action. And whoever gets elected is going to have a lot to navigate. We have 50,000 unhoused neighbors, we have public safety issues, we have land conservation challenges, transportation issues, backlogs in our criminal legal system. If we are going to take on the biggest, most urgent issues in the region, we need someone who can make progress right out of the gate. We're headed into lean times at the County, and I think voters deserve someone who has the budget experience to think creatively about how to avoid cuts, how to maximize the dollars that we have. And I have that experience, and that's a unique skillset that I bring. I'm excited to bring my experience not only with budgets, but with moving construction projects faster and more equitably, with centering community voices, and turning those asks and those values into tangible outcomes. My experience doing mental health research - understanding data and science - my experience volunteering working with our unhoused neighbors. As I said earlier, King County is bigger than 15 states. We can show the rest of the state and the rest of the nation what it means to be a community that is diverse and inclusive, and solving the most complex issues. We can lead in taking on the existential threat of climate change, in creating more housing that's affordable to more people, in delivering universal childcare, improving our transportation experience. And I'm really committed to this community - to the region I grew up in - and I'm really excited to hit the ground running.
[00:39:53] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much, Becka Johnson Poppe, candidate for King County Council District 4, for spending this time with us and helping us get to know you better today. Really appreciate it.
[00:40:02] Becka Johnson Poppe: Thank you so much for having me here, Crystal. I am a huge fan, and this is a huge honor. Thank you.
[00:40:07] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Primary Week re-air, Crystal chats with Teresa Mosqueda about her campaign for King County Council District 8 - why she decided to run, the experience and lessons she’ll bring to the County from serving on Seattle City Council, and her thoughts on addressing progressive revenue options, public service wage equity and morale, housing and homelessness, public safety, transit rider experience, climate change, and budget transparency.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Teresa Mosqueda at @TeresaCMosqueda.
Teresa Mosqueda
As a Progressive Labor Democrat, Teresa Mosqueda is committed to creating healthy and safe communities, investing in working families through job training, childcare and transit access, and developing more affordable housing for all residents. She brings a proven track record of successfully passing progressive policies and building broad and inclusive coalitions. Teresa was named one of Seattle’s Most Influential People 2018 for acting with urgency upon getting elected, received the Ady Barkan Progressive Champion Award from Local Progress in 2019; and earned national attention by leading the passage of JumpStart progressive revenue to invest in housing, economic resilience, green new deal investments, and equitable development. Prior to elected office Teresa worked on community health policies from SeaMar to the Children's Alliance, and championed workers’ rights at the WA State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, where she helped lead state's minimum wage increase, paid sick leave, farmworker protections, workplace safety standards, and launched the Path to Power candidate training with the AFL-CIO.
Resources
Campaign Website - Teresa Mosqueda
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
I am very excited today to have joining us - current Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, who is a candidate for King County Council District 8, which covers Seattle - including West Seattle, South Park, Georgetown, Chinatown International District, and First Hill - as well as Burien, part of Tukwila, and unincorporated King County - in White Center and Vashon Island. Welcome to the program - welcome back.
[00:01:22] Teresa Mosqueda: Thank you so much for having me back - I appreciate it.
[00:01:25] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So I guess the first question is - what made you decide to run for King County Council after being on the Seattle City Council?
[00:01:35] Teresa Mosqueda: I've been really, really honored to be able to serve the full City of Seattle - 775,000 residents at this point - to be able to pass progressive policies like progressive revenue through JumpStart, Green New Deal and affordable housing that it was funding, to be able to quadruple the investments in affordable housing, to expand worker protections. But the truth is, we know that much of the population that I was elected by - the folks that I really center in my public policy - also work and have family outside of the City of Seattle. And in many ways, I want to build on what I've been able to accomplish in Seattle - investments in affordable housing, investments in new career pathways, good union jobs, to expand on the childcare and working family supports that I've centered in my work on City Council. But in order to reach the broader population of working families who are just outside of Seattle's borders but may work in Seattle and come in and out of the City - I want to create greater equity and stability across our region - the County is the place to do it. And in terms of stability, the County is the only place that has purview over public health, has the purse strings for behavioral health investments. And so if I want to complement efforts to try to house folks and create long-term housing stability, especially for our most vulnerable community members, the County is the place to do that - through investments in behavioral health, by sitting on the Public Health Board, by being directly involved in the budget that has purview over public health and behavioral health investments. I see it as an extension of my work at the City to create housed and healthy communities. And it actually goes full circle back to my roots where I started my career in community health. It is exciting opportunity, and I see it as a growth and expansion of the work that we've done in Seattle.
[00:03:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You talk about progressive revenue - the JumpStart Tax, which is a really, really important source of revenue that has been so helpful for businesses in the City, for residents, so many people in need - and has been a benefit to the City, especially in this time of a budget downturn in that the JumpStart Tax helped to bail out a budget shortfall there. So this revenue seemed to come just in time. You had to fight for it. You led the fight for it. What lessons do you take out of that fight to the County, and what progressive revenue options are there at the county level that you would be willing to pursue?
[00:04:05] Teresa Mosqueda: I think one major lesson is how I've approached building these big progressive policies that have not only earned the majority of votes, but the vast majority - if not unanimous vote sometimes - that have withstood the test of time, have not been overturned, and have not been overturned by legislative councilmatic action nor by the courts. I will take with me to King County the ability to build these broad coalitions. And think about JumpStart - who was there when we launched it? It was ironworkers and hardhats, along with business entrepreneurs from both small and large business, with community and housing advocates standing collectively together to say - We will not only stand by this progressive revenue, we will stand by it knowing that it's five times the amount of the previous policy and it's twice as long. That's a huge effort that took place to try to get people on the same page, and we had to - with growing income inequality, growing needs, an increase in our population. There was no other option. This had to succeed, and so I will take that same approach to King County Council.
So much is on the needs list right now in the "wake" of the global pandemic. We have the ongoing shadow pandemic. We have increased needs for mental health and community health investments. We have increased needs for food security and housing stability. There is not an alternative. We must invest more and we must do it in a way that withstands the test of time, like I've done on Seattle City Council. So for me, it's the how I bring people together that I will bring to King County Council. And I think it's also the what - not being afraid to push the envelope on what's possible. Many people said it was impossible to pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights - and we got sued, and we won. People said it was impossible to legislate having hotel workers get access to guaranteed healthcare at the gold level, protections from retaliation, maximum workload. We not only passed that in legislation, but we withstood that in the court. And the same is true of JumpStart. We withstood multiple litigation attempts to try to take away JumpStart, and it's withstood the test of time. And I'm excited to see what else we can do in a city that sees so much growth but incredible inequity across our region - to bring people together to address these pressing needs.
[00:06:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You talked about housing and homelessness, and one thing called out by experts as a barrier to our homelessness response is that frontline worker wages don't cover their cost of living. Do you believe our local service providers, a lot of whom are nonprofits, have a responsibility to pay living wages for the area? And how can we make that more likely with how we bid and contract for services at the county level?
[00:06:54] Teresa Mosqueda: Yeah, two things I would say. One is - absolutely, we need to make sure that folks who are working on the frontline as human service providers - think folks who are the counselors to youth, or people who have mental health or substance abuse needs that we need to help address so that they can get stably housed, think about services to our vets and seniors. These are workers on the frontline who rely on relationships and have skills, expertise in the human service category. They need to have investments in these deeply needed services. And in order for us to create greater stability, we need to be paying them living wages. I say "we" - because this is not about the nonprofits needing to pay them more. It is about we, the public entities, needing to increase our contracts to these organizations who then employ people to be on the frontline. For better or worse, we have a human services system that has largely relied on contracting out critical services that are arguably public services. They are supported by public dollars, and we, public officials, have a responsibility to pay those organizations enough so that they can invest in the wages for frontline workers.
That is what I have tried to do at Seattle City Council. The first year that I came in at Seattle City Council, the Human Services Coalition came to me and said - We have not had a cost of living increase in 10 years. To not have a COLA in 10 years for most workers in our region and across the country is unheard of, but it's especially unheard of for the very folks on the frontline trying to address the most pressing crisis in our country right now - and that is housing instability and homeless services. So we worked in 2019, and we passed the Human Services cost of living adjustment - that is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what needs to be addressed. The historic and chronic underfunding of these positions still needs to be addressed. We are not going to be able to close this gap of 40, 50, 60% turnover in our critical organizational partners, organizations, if we don't address the wage stability issue. So I think actually going to the County and bringing that experience of having worked directly with the human service providers and hearing their stories about why it was so critical not only to have a cost of living adjustment, but to get at this chronic underfunding is going to be really coming at a pivotal moment. Seattle does have a cost of living adjustment. I want to bring that cost of living adjustment to King County and collectively with Seattle, I want to work to address the underpayment for human service providers as well.
[00:09:26] Crystal Fincher: There's been a lot of action when it comes to addressing housing and homelessness from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to new legislation, and potentially even more legislation coming out through the end of this legislative session. We're currently recording this in mid-April, so it may come out a little bit further when there's a definitive answer for everything that happens. But amid a lot of this work that is currently being implemented or has just been authorized, there's a lot in process but still seemingly a lot more that needs to be done. What would your top priorities be to make a noticeable and meaningful difference in both homelessness and housing affordability if you're elected to this position?
[00:10:11] Teresa Mosqueda: Resources for housing is critically needed across King County. Resources will help local jurisdictions be able to implement the new requirements that are going to be coming forth from our State Legislature, which - I want to thank our State legislative members - every year they go to Olympia and every year we ask them to be bold - be bold on housing solutions, recognizing that housing is the solution to being houseless. Housing helps people who have multiple compounding factors get healthy, get stable, and be productive members of our community. Housing is the solution to this biggest crisis that we see, not only in Seattle and King County, up and down the West Coast, but across our entire country. We have not built enough housing to house our current population plus the population who will continue to come to our region. So one of the things that I think I can take to the County is the desire to make sure that local jurisdictions, whether it's Burien or Tukwila, or unincorporated areas like in Vashon and Maury Island or in White Center - that they have resources as well to help build the type of housing that's being requested from the State Legislature - to do so in accordance with their Comprehensive Plan so that people can implement it in the time frame that works for those local jurisdictions, but to help them take away the barrier of not having enough resources. Seattle is unique in that we have pushed forward different resources. We have different types of tax revenues - thanks to JumpStart, for example - but in areas that don't have those type of resources, I hope the County can continue to be a good partner, in addition to the state, to build the type of diverse housing that we're now going to be required to build and hopefully we can do even more.
The State Legislature is actually creating a new floor. We should be building upon that, and where we can go higher and denser - that is good for the local environment, it is good for the local economy, it's good for the health of workers and small businesses. And it's what I've heard from Vashon Island to Tukwila - people have said, "We don't have enough workforce housing." Small business owners have said, "I don't have enough workers in this area because they can't afford to live here." So I want to hopefully break down misperceptions about what type of housing we're talking about. We're talking about housing for seniors and vets, kiddos, youth, workers. We're talking about supporting the creation of that housing with additional revenue - that's one of the things I'd like to bring to the County. And to also recognize that when we have diverse economies that are prosperous, it's because workers can live next to their place of employment. Workers can walk to their childcare. We don't have time to spend two hours in the car commuting back and forth - that's not good for our health, our family's health, and it sure isn't good for the health of our planet. So it's a win-win-win, and I think that's something that I can really bring in as a County Councilmember - the knowledge that these local jurisdictions want to do more, but sometimes are limited with their resources. And wherever I can, I want to help step up and provide that support.
[00:13:08] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Public safety has also been an area where the County continues to make a lot of news, has a lot of responsibility - they operate a jail, and that has itself made a lot of news. Over the past couple years throughout the pandemic, some of the employees of the jails - the guards - other people, the Public Defenders Association have called out overcrowding conditions, unsafe conditions in the jail. There's been times where the jail has not had clean water, several illness outbreaks, people not being treated correctly. It seems to be a really bad situation. Recently, the King County Council just voted to extend a contract to rent additional beds from a SCORE facility in Des Moines. This, during a backdrop of events where the King County Executive has made a promise to close the King County Jail, but it seems like we're getting further away from that, or at least not getting closer to that. Would you have voted to extend the SCORE contract? And should we close the jail? What is your vision for the short term?
[00:14:17] Teresa Mosqueda: I think that the move to close down a jail that's both outdated and unsafe is not only good for the inmates, it's good for the folks who are working there. I think this is another example of where there's a false perception of sides. People who work within the jail, as well as those who are incarcerated, have expressed their not only horror when seeing mold and deterioration of the building, but it is extremely unsafe as well - as you mentioned - due to overcrowding. There's a few things that I think we can do. Number one, we should address upstream - who was being sent to these facilities in the first place. In a presentation that the Seattle City Council received from the City Attorney's Office, there was a large number of people who were initially booked and jailed, and ultimately were released because there was no grounds to put forward charges. And I think we need to stop the habit or the practice of putting folks in that situation to begin with. Even if they are not incarcerated for long periods of time, the fact that people are being jailed - especially youth - creates consequences down the road, mental health consequences, consequences for your housing, for your livelihood, your employment. And the negative impact of just being booked in the first place - both for the physical health of somebody, but also the trajectory of their life - is quantifiable. It is known, and we should stop that practice early.
I agree with the effort to move folks into a situation that is healthier, but I also want to continue to look at how we can reduce the chance that someone is ever incarcerated in the first place, invest more in restorative justice practices. I'm optimistic by some of the conversations I've heard from folks in the community, specifically in Burien, about the ways in which some of the initial conversations have taken place with the Burien City Police Chief Ted Boe, and some of the commitments that have been made to try to look at restorative justice differently. And I think that holistically we need to look at what leads someone to be in that situation in the first place and back up to see what additional community investments we can be making so that people can have greater access to economic security, community safety, and reduce the chance that someone ever interacts with the carceral system to begin with.
[00:16:40] Crystal Fincher: What do you think, or for people who are considering this voting decision and who are looking around and who are feeling unsafe, and who are not quite sure what the right direction is to move forward, or what can be done but feel like something should be done - what is your message to them? And what can make us all safer?
[00:17:01] Teresa Mosqueda: There's a few things that I think have really come to light, especially during the pandemic. We tell people to stay home to stay healthy. Well, if people don't have a home, they can't stay healthy. If we can think about the increased situation where many of us have probably seen loved ones in our lives - whether it's family members or friends - who have turned to substances to cope, to self-medicate with the stress, the trauma, the isolation that has only increased during the pandemic. I hope there's greater empathy across our community and across our country for why people may be self-medicating to begin with. And I think if we think about these recent examples of where we have seen people become more unstable in their housing situation or turn to substances because of increasing stress and pressure, that hopefully there's greater empathy for why it is so critical that we invest upstream. It is not an either/or - it's creating greater balance with how we invest in community safety, in what we know equals the social determinants of health. When we invest in housing, it helps reduce the chance that someone is going to engage in criminal activities later in life. When we invest in early learning, in job opportunities, in youth interactive programs, when we invest in even gun reduction and youth violence reduction strategies, it helps create healthier individuals and healthier populations, reduce the chance that someone ever interacts with an officer to begin with. These are public safety investments, and they shouldn't be seen as a separate silo from "traditional safety." It actually saves lives, and there's a huge return on investment when we make some of these upstream program policies a priority. I think it actually creates healthier communities, and for those who are looking at it through the economic lens, healthier economies - knowing that that return on investment has been proven time and time again. And it's good for individuals and community health as well.
[00:19:02] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, there's a shortage of workers across the board - certainly King County is included in this shortage of county workers in several areas, including in many front-line positions that impact public safety - maintenance, care, health - all of those that are crucial to delivering services and help that the residents of the County need. We've seen hiring, retention, and referral bonuses for public safety employees. Do you think we should be considering those for other employees?
[00:19:39] Teresa Mosqueda: Absolutely. This is part of the conversation that I raised while at Seattle City Council. There is, I think, a detrimental impact to workplace morale across public servants when we're not uniformly treating people the same. It's not what I feel, it's not that that's my perception - that's actually coming from workers within the City of Seattle who completed a survey that our Human Resources Department, in addition to Seattle Police Department and other Seattle agencies, completed to ask, "What would you like to see? How would you feel if certain employees got a hiring bonus or retention bonus?" And overwhelmingly, workers in public service said that they thought that this would hurt morale - if existing public servants weren't treated the same. I mentioned that in the Human Services category, there's a 40% to 60% turnover rate for our nonprofit organizations who are helping folks on the frontline. There's a huge turnover rate, as well, within our Human Services Department - we've had to freeze the hiring, and reduce hours, and reduce positions. Public libraries, community centers are front-facing programs for the community during COVID and we are slowly starting to scale those back up, but they're nowhere at capacity right now. And what workers themselves have said within the City of Seattle is - they want to see greater strategies for retention. Investments in childcare keeps coming up. Investments in more affordable housing keeps coming up. And if you want to look specifically at the Seattle Police Department, the officers themselves said that they did not think that hiring bonuses was the way to address retention and morale issues - that played out in their comments in the press, as well as the survey results that we saw.
I think that there's a more equitable approach that we should be taking. I think that we should be looking at how we recruit and train and incentivize people to come to public service overall, whether that means you're coming in to work as a firefighter or a police officer, or whether that means that we want to recruit you to be serving the public in libraries or as a lifeguard - which we don't have enough of - or as a childcare provider, which we don't have enough of. We should be looking across the board at these public service programs and figuring out ways to both address retention and morale, and to do so equitably. And to listen to what workers have said - they want housing, they want childcare, they want regular and routine transit. And they want us to, especially within the City of Seattle, address disparity in wages for folks of color and women compared to their counterparts. Those are some things that I think we should be taking on more seriously.
[00:22:17] Crystal Fincher: Definitely. Now, you talk about people saying they want regular and routine transit. Lots of people want that. Lots of people - more importantly - need that, are relying on that. And there's been lots of talk about the rider experience around safety on transit, but also about the availability and accessibility of service and all-day service - not just some of those commuter-centric commute-time service bumps that we've seen. What would your approach to Metro be as a councilmember?
[00:22:50] Teresa Mosqueda: So I appreciate that you raise safety because it is an issue that comes up for riders as well as the drivers. Members of ATU, who drive buses around King County, have expressed increased concern around their safety. Whether they're driving in the day or night - given COVID has increased interpersonal violence across our country, they are on the receiving end of that as well. So I'm excited to talk with ATU, with members who have been out on the frontline as our bus drivers, as well as riders to talk about how we can improve safety for everyone. That is - again, on the preventative side, trying to figure out ways that structurally and through public policy we can ensure that riders and drivers are safe.
There's also two things that drivers have talked to me about and folks within King County Metro. They say there's a lot of focus on new routes and how do we expand routes - routes, routes, routes - which I also agree with. But they've also brought up that we need to continue to invest in the people, maintenance, and operation to make sure that there's enough people to be working on existing routes and new routes to come. Similar to housing, we don't want to just build units. We want to make sure that for those who need personnel in those units to make sure that folks stay stably housed, we're investing in the workforce to ensure that that housing, that that unit is successful. We need to be looking at investments in the workforce, recruiting folks to come to these good living wage union jobs, and to be thinking about how we improve retention and stability as well. And for as far as maintenance is concerned - thinking more about how we can invest in greener fleets, greener maintenance opportunities, and ensure that those vehicles are running well and routinely. So those are two of the things that have come directly from the frontline drivers themselves.
And then more broadly - workers. You mentioned all-day services. I would also argue all-night services to the degree that we can add additional stops, because many of the childcare providers who are coming in early in the morning, construction workers who are coming in early in the morning, janitors who might be going out late at night, talk about how they have to rely on vehicles because there are not times that the buses are showing up to get them to work and back home in time. So I think that it's multi-prong. But again, I think the common ground here is that the workers in this sector are agreeing with the recipients of the service. And collectively, I'm hoping that we can address safety, workforce needs, and increase routes as well.
[00:25:23] Crystal Fincher: Definitely, and I really appreciate you bringing up the workforce needs. I know a couple people who use transit regularly but ended up getting vehicles because of the unpredictable cancellations due to staff shortages, whether it's maintenance or drivers, just making it unreliable to get to work on time. And already the time taken to commute that way is a lot, so that would improve the experience greatly - definitely appreciate that. Transit is also very, very important to achieving our climate goals. And by most measures, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals - while we're experiencing devastating impacts from climate change, including extreme heat and cold, wildfires, floods. What are your highest-priority plans to get us on track to meet our 2030 climate goals?
[00:26:17] Teresa Mosqueda: One thing might surprise folks in that category - probably not a huge surprise for folks who have heard me talk before - but I think if we can invest in additional housing, dense housing across our region, it will actually reduce CO2 emissions. And it's really common sense, right? We are the third-highest mega-commuter city or region in the nation. We have more people who are commuting back and forth to work than most of the country. And the reason is because they can't afford to find a house near their place of employment. If CO2 emissions from cars - single-occupancy cars - is the number-one contributor to pollution in our region, I believe that is at the top of our list for helping to reduce our carbon footprint across the country and across the globe. We should be increasing density. We should see it not only as a good economic stimulant, what's right to do for workers and working families, but it is one of the best things that we could also do for our climate. I think that there's - again, a misperception or a false divide between folks who are environmentalists and want to see more trees, and their perception that additional housing or density takes that away. It does not. We can both create setbacks for higher buildings and use the airspace to create living opportunities, while we plant additional trees and preserve old growth. I've gone to at least three ribbon-cutting ceremonies for Habitat for Humanity, who created - basically - townhouses connected altogether. We don't have a lot of row houses in Seattle, but row houses, if you will, around trees created in the shape of a U with old-growth trees in the middle - allowing for greater shade, and a play area for kiddos, and a place to sit for elders. It is very much possible to build dense housing options and preserve old growth while planting new trees.
So I think in addition to creating density, we can plant more trees. We can do more to incentivize good living-wage jobs in industries that are cleaner. I heard from our friends in Georgetown Community Center that they had to beg and plead for one of the local industries to incorporate more greener options for a glass manufacturer down there. And we should simultaneously be seeing the opportunity to promote good jobs as a requirement for also promoting good green jobs. And I worked very hard with members of both the environmental community and the labor community in the past to push Just Transition policies - to ensure that as we transition to greener economies or greener manufacturing strategies, that we're preserving good living-wage jobs and, even better, preserving good union living-wage jobs. So I look forward to making sure that we have denser cities, that we have greener cities, and that we have greener industries.
[00:29:13] Crystal Fincher: Now, King County does incremental budgeting, making it more challenging for people to understand how county funds are allocated in a base budget. The budget is known as one of your areas of strength. What do you think can be done to make the budget process easier for the public to understand and influence at the county level?
[00:29:35] Teresa Mosqueda: I've been really proud of what we've been able to accomplish in Seattle. And coming from working the halls of Olympia on behalf of the Washington State Labor Council for eight years and then for three years before that with the Children's Alliance, I was used to this concept of having these biennial budgets that needed to be seen in full, that you could see the red line to know what was the investment from last year versus the upcoming year. Unfortunately, the City of Seattle doesn't have such a budget document. It's basically like single pages - page after page of narrative descriptions of what the dollars will do. That's fine for some budget notes, but what I think we are working towards in the City of Seattle - a preview for folks who love budget talk - is we're going to one day have a true biennial budget and an actual budget document where you will be able to see the red line, either additions or subtractions to specific programs so that everyone knows what is being invested in, how funding is changing, and where priorities are showing up in the budget. I am excited about being able to build on that work that I've done in Seattle, especially as Budget Chair, in some of the most pressing economic times in recent history, starting in 2020. And have been able to not only allocate millions of dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act, but also to create greater transparency in how we budget.
One of the things that I think is maybe misunderstood out there is the way in which we've helped to provide transparency in the entire budget, but specifically the Seattle Police Department. It had not been exposed year-over-year that Seattle Police Department actually had about $40 million that was rolling over year-over-year on top of funding that the chief, that the mayor, that the department had acknowledged they could not use. And in a time where we saw an economic crisis on the horizon, growing needs in our community, and knew that that was $40 million that was not going to be put to use, not going into direct services for the community - and for those who wanted to see additional officers, wasn't even going to be able to use to increase the hiring plan. It's good budgeting to be able to make sure that that funding is transparently accounted for in the General Fund - and where we can deploy it to things like food, housing, childcare, economic security for small businesses that we do so. That's something I'm really proud of - that we were able to show what the full picture was, not only for that department, but for all departments. And to make some important investments in mental health services, behavioral health services, youth violence, gun violence reduction strategies - things that similarly invest in community safety, but we were able to show where those line items move.
I will bring to King County Council the ability to structurally push for greater transparency for members of the public, encourage us as the legislative branch to own the separate but equal branch of government that the council is as the legislative branch, and ensure that the public has an opportunity to dive into the proposal that comes from the executive, just like the proposal that comes from the governor to the State Legislature. You receive that, you dissect it, you talk to community about what it means - and then ultimately the legislative branch reconvenes, reconfigures the budget, and presents it to the executive for a signature. It's good governance, it's good transparency. I think it's understandable from folks across whatever political spectrum - it's important to have budget transparency and accountability, and that's what I've been able to accomplish in the City of Seattle.
[00:33:02] Crystal Fincher: It is, and I think there are a number of people, especially listeners to Hacks & Wonks, who do enjoy budget conversations, who would definitely look forward to more budget transparency at the County level, like you've been working towards at the City level. As we close here and as people are going to be making the decision about who they're going to be voting for for this County Council position, what is your message to voters and people listening about why they should choose you?
[00:33:30] Teresa Mosqueda: I'm very thrilled to be in this race for King County Council. I think I have not only proven that I'm an effective legislator at the council level, but that I know how to center folks who have been left out of policy conversations in the room, but more importantly - follow the lead of those who've experienced the injustices over the years. We have been able to move historic, monumental, national-headline-grabbing policies within the City of Seattle in my now going into six years in Seattle City Council. And it has been done, I believe, in a collaborative way, in a way that has made transformational change, and in a way that I think has always centered - been centered on my progressive commitments to investing in working families, folks of color, and the LGBTQ community, workers to ensure that there's greater opportunity and prosperity. And creating housing and stability - that is something that is good for our entire community. I do this work because it's all about how we create healthy communities. You have to have investments in good living wage jobs and housing stability and opportunity education to have self-determination and control over your own life and your own decisions. And I think through public policy, through investments with public resources, we can create greater opportunity across our county.
I am excited, as well, to be coming to this race as a woman, as a Latina, as a Chicana - poised to be the first Latina ever elected to King County Council. And with a King County population that is made up of half people of color and a quarter immigrant and refugee, it is critical that we have more voices with folks who have the lived experience coming from communities of color serving in these positions. I think that's why I've been able to effectively and efficiently move policy through so quickly - because I have put at the front of the line many of the community members who are often left out of policy discussions. I hope to bring in my commitment to working with folks who are workers, women, folks of color, members of the LGBTQ community to hear more about what we can do at King County Council. I know I have big shoes to step into with Councilmember McDermott and his commitment to public health, working with the LGBTQ community, his tenure in the State Legislature - and I'm also excited to add to that and serve our broader region and our growing needs.
[00:35:59] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much, Councilmember Mosqueda, for spending this time with us today and having this conversation. Sincerely appreciate it, and we'll certainly be following your campaign eagerly over the next several months. Thank you.
[00:36:13] Teresa Mosqueda: Thank you so much - I appreciate it.
[00:36:15] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Publisher of The Urbanist, Doug Trumm!
The show kicks off with a rundown of The Urbanist’s primary election endorsements, followed by discussion of a Federal Way shooting that raises lots of questions, the Burien council majority’s continued failure on homelessness response, Ed Murray being spotted at political events, a court ruling that Seattle’s primary encampment sweeps tool is unconstitutional, and a Mayor Harrell change of heart on South Lake Union light rail stations.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Doug Trumm, on Twitter at @dmtrumm.
Doug Trumm
Doug Trumm is Publisher of The Urbanist, where he has contributed as a writer and editor since 2015. He graduated from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at UW in 2019 with a concentration in urban policy. As a car-free renter living in Seattle, his policy focuses include improving transit and street safety and tackling the housing affordability crisis. His cat Ole is a national treasure.
Resources
“Carrie Barnes, Chair of the King County Democrats” from Hacks & Wonks
“2023 Primary Election Endorsements” from The Urbanist
“The Stranger’s Endorsements for the August 1, 2023, Primary Election” from The Stranger
“Seattle Times editorial board endorsements: Aug. 1, 2023, primary” from The Seattle Times
Endorsements from PubliCola
Progressive Voters Guide from Fuse WA
2023 Policing and Public Safety Voter Guide - Seattle City Council from People Power Washington
“Person killed during drive-by shooting in Federal Way, police say” by Lauren Girgis from The Seattle Times
“Burien still can’t decide whether it’ll take homelessness offer” by Anna Patrick from The Seattle Times
“After Refusing Shelter Offer from King County, Burien Proposes Camping Ban” by Erica Barnett from PubliCola
“Seattle Mayor Ed Murray announces his resignation on September 12, 2017.” by Nick Rousso from HistoryLink.org
“City’s Primary Tool for Sweeping Encampments Without Notice Ruled Unconstitutional” by Erica Barnett from PubliCola
“Harrell Advances New Denny Station Options That Could Delay Ballard Link” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
“Transit Advocates Push to Save South Lake Union Light Rail Station” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
Ballard Link Extension: South Lake Union Stations Webinar #2 | Sound Transit
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
If you missed our Tuesday topical show, I chatted with Carrie Barnes, Chair of the King County Democrats, about how the county party engages in local elections and politics to improve lives in our area. Today, we are continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Publisher of The Urbanist, Doug Trumm. Hey.
[00:01:20] Doug Trumm: Hey, good to see you - thanks so much for having me.
[00:01:22] Crystal Fincher: Very, very happy and excited to have you. And as we sit here, people have ballots at their homes - you should have received your ballot - if you haven't, you should pursue getting another one or tracking down where that is. But primary election is in full swing. The primary election end date is Tuesday, August 1st. And wow, there have been a lot of endorsements, including endorsements from The Urbanist. Who did The Urbanist decide to support in several different races? And what was the approach The Urbanist took to making these endorsements?
[00:01:58] Doug Trumm: Yeah, we are excited to announce our slate. I'll, I guess, start with how we got there, which was a painstaking process - we've done it the same way, going back six, seven years. And that involves - first, the questionnaire to get people on the record about some issues important to urbanists and Safe Street advocates and housing advocates. And then after they've submitted their questionnaire, we invite them in for actual interviews that are now happening over Zoom - which has been convenient, I think, for everyone, since we're covering a wide area. We probably should have been doing this the whole time - save the candidates time and you get through more candidates. And it's about a 25-minute interview and you learn a little bit more - when you get a vague response in a questionnaire or some issue becomes relevant that maybe wasn't when you sent out the questionnaire. And then we debate what we felt about it. And luckily we didn't have any big fights this year, but obviously some disagreement.
And I guess I can start with the Seattle City Council. We also endorsed in Bellevue this year, but where we endorsed, there's not a primary - so not the big fireworks that rolled that one out, but there will be more in the general. But we'll start in order. District 1 in Seattle - Maren Costa, we liked. She's a climate activist and clearly had the best housing platform. A slam dunk as far as what urbanists are looking for, I think, as some of the other candidates were much more wishy-washy about how much housing are they going to allow and how many ways are they going to allow to block it. Costa was pretty clear - I want housing. And then in [District] 2, we liked the incumbent, Tammy Morales. She's been the most strident Safe Streets advocate in the council, so we need someone like that 'cause it's very hard to get Safe Streets projects done. And her district is also in most in need of it, and she's been very clear about that. So it just seems like we need a strong voice, especially in that district. D3, we went with Alex Hudson. We thought she had the most policy chops experience - a lot of progressives in that race, but we thought Alex had the most ability to get it done. In D4, we liked Ron Davis. Didn't really seem to be anyone else who wanted the progressive mantle in that race, and maybe that's a credit partially to Ron Davis being a strong candidate. And we think he is really clear about where he stands and not very politician-y in that way, which is refreshing - was very clear about he wanted a lot of housing in the Comp Plan update that's due next year. Just to underscore that it's a really consequential election because that Comp Plan update is happening next year and a lot of big stuff happening next year, so definitely don't sit out this election. And Ron seems like the person clearly who actually believes in urbanism, believes in 15-minute cities, and things that can make it easier to get around the city as well. Competition just isn't very good. Then in D5, we went with Nilu Jenks. And that is interesting, right - so maybe I get your take on that rather than keep grandstanding here with our endorsements - but we liked Nilu a lot, but then it turned out The Stranger went with ChrisTiana ObeySumner, who we didn't get a chance to interview, otherwise we might have been so inclined potentially - just couldn't get that scheduled. So we ended up going with Nilu, who is pretty strong on most of our issues - was clear she was for housing abundance. And we didn't love some of her police takes, but we thought she was the best candidate we interviewed. And then The Seattle Times went with Cathy Moore. D5 is a weird race because Cathy Moore is now the de facto business chamber candidate, but there aren't as clear of lines. Did you have anything on that or should I keep going?
[00:05:18] Crystal Fincher: I think you should keep going and I will chime in at the end. But I do agree that is a race with a number of very interesting candidates that I think are all worthy of looking into. And I think looking deeper into, particularly ChrisTiana ObeySumner and what they're doing is warranted.
[00:05:36] Doug Trumm: Yeah, we're gonna continue to try to get that interview scheduled, so there's always potential in the general - it can be different. Also, who knows who's gonna make it through that primary, so it could be a very interesting field - there's a lot of candidates who have a decent shot. Tye Reed also has the Transit Riders Union endorsement and some other progressive endorsements, and is running probably farthest to the left. We wrote in our write-up that we liked Tye as well, but we just thought Nilu had the stronger chance in the general and also a little bit more of a bridge builder. Then moving on to D6, we went with Dan Strauss. We weren't terribly excited about it. He's been someone who's definitely tacked to the center and to the right. And his district has too, so maybe that's just survivalism, but we don't think those votes are good - I'm thinking of his recent vote that gave Ann Davison the power to lock poor people and drug users on the street. It just seemed like a forced vote - there wasn't actually a treatment plan and a diversion plan offered, but on pinky swearing - I don't know how you would take that pinky swear from Ann Davison. So that was a culmination of a continuing slide to the right, especially on safety. And he's been all right as Land Use Chair, but also has moved fairly slowly. But compared to Pete Hanning, his main competition, Dan's still clearly better so we went with Dan. And then D7, we went with Andrew Lewis. We thought Andrew Lewis and Dan Strauss were very similar - they both reflected as progressives and there was always questions about how progressive they really are, but I think Andrew's done a better job than Dan at defining himself and taking some brave votes here and there - he's been more accessible in explaining his waffles, rather than waffle-and-hide - I think that waffling is indicative of his kind of process to get somewhere. I'm not sure, always, what Dan's thinking. So we went with Lewis. The people running against Lewis also are all running pretty far right. It wasn't like there was someone who was gunning for The Urbanist endorsement in that race. But I think Lewis, as Chair of the Homelessness Committee, has done some good stuff and been very clear about trying to set up a alternate response and really hammering on that, so he's definitely worthy of a second term.
We also endorsed in King County Council. One really hard race for us to endorse - because we had so many candidates we liked and we really went back and forth about how to do it - we ultimately decided not to do a dual. But in District 4 of the King County Council, which is Northwest Seattle, we went with Becka Johnson Poppe. And she works at King County now as a Budget and Policy Director, and that experience pushed her over the top for us. She's someone who already can hit the ground running. She knows this stuff inside-out and she has credibility - she is a progressive and has pushed on stuff. And one thing we're really watching on the King County Council is Metro Transit service - it's not where it was pre-pandemic, there's less frequency. And she's someone who's been clear about county-wide Transportation Benefit District, which could fund bus service and get us back to that pre-pandemic level eventually. Oddly, the King County Council's been dragging their feet on that and letting obstacles stand in the way rather than solve those obstacles, which is always frustrating to see. I think getting some new people in there, maybe they can take more of a problem-solving approach rather than - We can't get enough bus drivers, so I guess we're gonna accept mediocrity from our transit delivery.
[00:08:32] Crystal Fincher: If that would have been a dual endorsement, who would have been the other?
[00:08:36] Doug Trumm: Probably Jorge Barón. The vote didn't go that way, so I couldn't say for certain how it would have went. We liked all three candidates in that race, so I think it would probably have been Jorge - who got in late, but has an incredible record as far as leading [Northwest] Immigrant Rights Project. He's led that organization, has done incredible work. We certainly heard from him how he was going to apply that background to advocating for people of color communities in the county and understanding their issues better. And even though you're not gonna be determining that policy at the county level, you are doing a lot of policy that still affects people's livelihood. So liked Jorge Barón - he ended up getting The Seattle Times endorsement, he's pretty progressive for a Seattle Times endorsement. It might just be a reflection of three pretty progressive people in the race. Did The Stranger also go with Jorge?
[00:09:19] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, he nailed what many candidates don't usually nail, which is getting both The Times and The Stranger endorsement. That doesn't happen that often, but when it does, it is usually a very encouraging sign for that candidate. But you're right, this is a race where there are only good choices. And so it just depends on your personal preferences and who you think can best carry out the vision - three solid candidates, each with impressive resumes and impressive experience.
[00:09:49] Doug Trumm: Yeah, the third being Sarah Reyneveld, who got the Transit Riders Union endorsement, and I think a handful of labor endorsements. And has also been someone who's been active on transit issues - that countywide Transportation Benefit District, or other funding measures, to get the county back on track. Another open seat in the County Council in District 8, a more West Seattle-type area all the way to Burien and Tukwila. We went with Teresa Mosqueda, which was an easy choice for us, especially after her main competition - Burien Mayor Sofia Aragon - has been on this get-the-homeless-people-out-of-our-city-and-not-provide-services tangent now. So Teresa Mosqueda has been a great City Councilmember in Seattle, and obviously it'd be tough to see her go. She has a clear plan of how she's going to continue working on these issues at the county - transit, housing, healthcare, and childcare kind of being the pillars of her platform. And yeah, she's just someone who got a lot done, including JumpStart, which was the biggest step forward for progressive tax reform in Seattle in maybe ever. So I think that kind of resume is tough to beat.
[00:10:49] Crystal Fincher: And that makes sense. There are a number of races for people to choose from this year - definitely going to be reshaping what the Seattle City Council looks like, with so many vacancies and so many open seats and new candidates that are going to be coming aboard. I think it's a solid group of endorsements. There are arguments that can be made for some other candidates in some of those races. I think District 5 is one of those where there are a number of good choices. You talked about Tye Reed, who was instrumental in the passage of social housing in Seattle - making that happen, getting that passed, and has been an organizer for a while around a number of different issues in the city. No one can question Tye's dedication to these issues and real personal investment - and making sure it can get better. We talked about ChrisTiana ObeySumner and Nilu Jenks, so we'll see how that race turns out - that's going to be another interesting one to check out. So we'll leave that there. We'll probably include links to other endorsing entities - just as you try to make up your mind as a listener and a voter - just to give you resources there to assist with those.
Also want to talk about a number of other things, but we will go to this brief story about a drive-by shooting - evidently, sheriff deputies were on-site. There's not much that's been reported, and it really seems like the reporter dictated an initial statement from the police and didn't ask any questions. I'll read it to you, and then we can talk about it. Title - Person killed during drive-by shooting in Federal Way, police Say. A person was killed during a drive-by shooting while King County Sheriff's Office deputies were performing a wellness check early Saturday morning in Federal Way. Officers were attempting to check on the person seen behind a property in the 3900 block of South 320th Street shortly before 3 a.m. when two vehicles sped off and two shots rang out. Sheriff's spokesperson, Sergeant Eric White said the person was hit by gunfire and died at the scene. Deputies followed the two vehicles but they got away. No arrests had been made as of Saturday afternoon. Several businesses are located in the area of the shooting.
That's the whole story. That's quite an interesting tale. What is your initial reaction to this, Doug?
[00:13:16] Doug Trumm: Yeah, it's a head scratcher - have a story, we don't have a lot to go on. It tears down the mythology of what policing can do, especially with us rolling back our police chase limitations and letting police go hog wild in these chases again - at this past session at the State Legislature - because of pushback from the police lobbying forces. Theoretically, they were gonna do these chases and catch people exactly like this. They saw someone doing a drive-by shooting and they were in their cars, conceivably - this is the perfect time to do that chase. And yeah, it didn't work out, so it just underscores that using police chases is such a uncertain and certainly dangerous type of way to try to apprehend criminals when you can easily just ID the car and catch up with them later. And there's so many pedestrians and other bystanders that die in these chases - there really has to be a good chance of a good outcome, like some sort of win, to deal with that collateral damage. That's the first thing that popped into my mind. And the drive-by was apparently someone else. All these police press releases, reported with very little critical eye - when police are involved, they put it in passive voice and passive action. But because of that way they write the press releases, you wonder - Did the police open fire? Did they do anything? - we don't have that information yet. It was reported as a drive-by, so one would assume it wasn't just police opening fire during a wellness check. Were these people involved in the wellness check at all? - you end up with more questions than you have answers. In real-life situations, you realize there's so much that could go wrong.
[00:14:42] Crystal Fincher: So many questions I have - a person was killed during a drive-by. Okay, so King County Sheriff's Office deputies were performing a wellness check. First thing, Federal Way has its own police department - doesn't contract with King County for its deputies. So these deputies, for some reason, responded instead of the Federal Way Police Department. Was it in response to a call? Who called it in? But they decide to go by themselves. Why were they on scene? So they were attempting to check out a person behind a property, they say, when two vehicles sped off and two shots rang out. I notice it doesn't say those shots came from the vehicle - it's vaguely worded and isn't useful, especially when there's so much that can be consequential, based on their characterization of what happens. Then the Sheriff's spokesperson said the person was hit by gunfire and died at the scene - I'm wondering if this reporter did anything but dictate this statement - did they ask anything about this? This is just a very vaguely worded statement. Deputies followed the two vehicles, but they got away. Again, this is a situation where even with the police pursuit law, they would have been able to follow them, but they said they needed a rollback to be able to catch criminals like this, and evidently that's not the case. What happened here? So no arrests have been made, no information has been shared that we've seen. What was the make and model of the car? Any description of the people inside the car? What came of that whole thing? There's no information.
So if we take what they say at face value, what a spectacular failure in public safety. You have two officers on-site, and a person still gets murdered according to this account? All the excuses of they need more officers, they need more funding, we need to be able to have the officers nearby, on-site to protect people - there were two here, and they couldn't protect one person. How does that happen? Why does that happen? What was the situation? Was something missed? Did they not see people prowling in the area? What a failure. They assume that the shots came from this vehicle that killed this person. How do we not have a description of the car, a license plate, the people inside, any followup on that? Where does this case stand? None of that information provided. If police departments want to restore trust, if they want to have people work for them - those are the kind of answers that people want to see. Do people want to work for a department that can't stop a murder when two deputies are on scene, that can't apprehend a perpetrator when they have a zero-second response time and they can immediately respond? What is the purpose and utility here? And are they doing the work to figure out how to keep this from happening again, to figure out how to actually ensure safety? Unfortunately, too often that is not the case. And that's if you take everything just at face value here. It would be great to see some supporting information - some dash cam, body-worn camera video - just to see what happened, how this happened, and does the evidence match up with the narrative here? There is work that the Federal Way Police Department needs to do, that many departments need to do, and that the King County Sheriff's Office needs to do to rebuild trust within the community.
[00:17:54] Doug Trumm: Why even run the story if you have so little information? It plays right into the police narrative.
[00:17:59] Crystal Fincher: Yep, definitely a decision that The Seattle Times should dive into and ask themselves a lot of questions - about how this came to be published and what information they were relying on.
Also wanna talk about the City of Burien and their continuing shame, really. The council majority deciding that not only do they wanna refuse the offer of shelter - the million dollars, 30-some odd Pallet shelters on provision, 100-ish parking spaces to backfill some space that a dealership was using. They are turning all that down and moving towards just a blanket camping ban in the city, which we've seen fail in so many other cities, but they are determined to do it themselves. This again is happening on a 4-3 council vote. The council majority, unfortunately, is winning this. What do you see happening here? What's your reaction to this, Doug?
[00:18:57] Doug Trumm: Yeah, it's pretty sickening. I don't know that folks necessarily saw this coming. We saw some progressives elected onto the Burien City Council, so there was some hope that they were actually going to be looking towards making progress on this issue, doing things that actually work in the long term - rather than sweeping it under the rug and pushing it to other cities. But the four centrists on Burien City Council continue to hammer on this issue - they're not taking this offer of help that very few other cities in the region have, with so few strings attached, to a million dollars worth of housing for their homeless people. It's the type of thing that makes your head explode because - if you're mad about homeless people, having more roofs over the people's heads is the most direct way of dealing with that. And they had a million process complaints, like - Oh, what's gonna happen in five years or whatever? We're gonna be on the hook. It's just that type of thing that they wouldn't ask for any other offer of a million dollars from the county - suddenly they want a 20-year plan for this when they have no plan themselves. It's really, like you said, shameful.
They've lost the majority of their Burien Planning Commission, as you've talked about in this podcast before, because of this move when the mayor decided to remove the head of the Planning Commission and then some other Planning Commissioners quit in protest. We all covered all that, but the one thing that's gonna happen if that commission continues to be unfilled is it's gonna slow down the production of housing in Burien - large projects have to go to that commission. If that happens, you're exasperating your housing shortage - they're creating the problem that they're complaining about. It's maddening, it's not treating these folks as human beings - I think it was Stephanie Mora referring that they should poop in doggy bags like they're dogs - it's clearly dehumanizing language. I think should be disqualifying for holding this office, but hopefully they lose their seats. For now, they're the people making policy for a city of about 50,000 people - it's crazy.
[00:20:43] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it absolutely is. And as you talked about, Mayor Sofia Aragon, Deputy Mayor Kevin Schilling, Councilmember Jimmy Matta have been part of making these decisions that are unconscionable. This is really a depiction of this soft, kind of progressive rhetoric with a wink and a nod. In previous statements, they had talked like - We definitely want to sweep, but we'll do it in a nice way, in a compassionate way, in the progressive way. But when it comes down to it, they really weren't interested in that at all. They just wanted to get people away and using very dehumanizing language. The real tell is - the place where they usually make an excuse and get away with it - We don't have the money. We don't have the resources. If we could, we would, but we just can't - we don't have anything, I'm sorry. So the only choice we have is to sweep because we just don't have the choice to do anything else. King County basically called that bluff and said - Okay, we've got a million dollars for you. We've got Pallet shelters ready to go. We've got a location that we can partner with. And hey, this dealership is gonna be impacted? We'll provide 100 parking spaces, which is larger than their inventory. - every objection, every excuse, every hurdle that they had was basically responded to by the county. And by the way, kudos to Dow Constantine and his office for taking a stance and for trying to constructively work with the City of Burien. There sometimes have been criticisms for Dow doing that in South County. He is doing it here.
And Burien and the Council majority - they turned all that down. They could have already housed the people there. This would make a meaningful, visible, substantial difference in their situation overnight - once this is implemented - and they just decided not to. They're just looking for a ban. Bans are wholly ineffective, as the prior sweeps were wholly ineffective. And they just moved people from one location to another and making, as you said, the problem they're allegedly trying to fix even worse. This is just a continuing shame and negligence from the council. These people are their constituents - whether someone has a home or not, these are Burien residents - and their job is to help them and to serve them. And they refuse to do so. And it's shameful. It's pathetic.
[00:22:59] Doug Trumm: Hopefully they come to their senses - this 4-3 split has been pretty durable.
[00:23:03] Crystal Fincher: We will see what the primary elections hold. Sofia Aragon is running currently for King County Council against Teresa Mosqueda. I don't think anyone really expects Sofia to win this race. But it is really important to make sure people don't just rest on their laurels and sit on the sidelines. And even in this primary, even when it seems like one person is clearly more qualified than the other, you actually need to vote and make your own choice.
[00:23:28] Doug Trumm: These are like conservative trial balloons - they're testing the waters - can Democrats get away with very conservative Trump-esque rhetoric, dehumanizing homeless people, pandering to cops in completely unaccountable ways? They want to see if that works. I don't know if Sofia is connecting these two - it seems like she would be when she declares for office for the King County Council race. But maybe her calculation is this makes her more popular. And I think it's really incumbent upon people who don't agree with that to actually turn out to an odd-year election, because it's validating that approach. And you're going to see more and more of it if people get rewarded for that.
[00:24:05] Crystal Fincher: That's blatantly the calculation that they're making. Kevin Schilling has an opponent - Patricia Hudson - running against him right now, who is the progressive choice who is endorsed by King County Democrats. I mean, they received a very unusual letter of rebuke from the King County Executive's office, also from the 33rd District Democrats, which encompasses part of Burien. And the other part of Burien is the 34th, who also submitted an open public letter of rebuke. Anyone who calls themself a Democrat on record, locally, is outwardly opposing it. And it hasn't stopped them. In fact, they seem to be using that as cred. So this is important. These are still the people in office. They do need to be held accountable, and people need to make their voices heard.
Another disillusioning development we've seen over the past couple of weeks is Ed Murray evidently popping up at political events around the region and definitely catching a number of people off guard. There seem to be some people who are okay with it. But just as a reminder - Ed Murray, former legislator, former mayor of Seattle, had to resign in disgrace as mayor of Seattle after credible allegations of molestation of underage people who were under his care and also potentially a family member. Also troubling was his response using someone's background against them - they were going through hard times as unhoused youth working with LGBTQ youth, who oftentimes very unfortunately are disowned by family, kicked out of the house, and left in very vulnerable positions - to then cite that vulnerable position as a reason why someone may not be believed was really victim blaming. The entire community, who has so many people who have been victimized - was a re-victimization to hear that. But he's been out of the public eye for a while and seems to be doing a soft launch to get back in. What's your reaction to this?
[00:26:04] Doug Trumm: With someone like that who's had such a long political career, they don't start going to political events just for fun. They're plotting getting back into politics. He's clearly testing the waters here, seeing if he can get back into politics. He's seeing if he can get acceptance enough to the point where he can run for something again or be a campaign manager. I don't think it should happen. And it's also not a pleasant experience for folks who did have a negative reaction to his handling of that situation - making it very hard for his accuser to come forward because he was using the whole weight of his office against that person. That's not how you handle it if you're a leader - you don't victim blame. Luckily, he finally resigned, but he was going to hold on to that office with everything he had.
[00:26:44] Crystal Fincher: I also think that's a low bar. It's wholly inappropriate for him to be in these. There's been no atonement. There's been no acknowledgment of what he's done. And while I don't believe in throwing people away forever, there has been nothing to indicate that he acknowledges what he's done, that he's attempted to make amends to his victims. In fact, that seems quite the opposite. He's just hoping to pick up where he left off. I think it is going to be really interesting to survey who is okay with him being at political events, and at their political events, and who is not - and what that says about different people as candidates. Who is finding this troubling and who is finding it just fine? I'm curious about where he does feel welcome and why, and what that says about those spaces. We will see how this continues to unfold throughout the city. And if you spot Ed Murray, shoot me a message.
Also, a pretty significant court ruling this week came in about encampment sweeps, particularly about the City of Seattle - Seattle has been sweeping too broadly and is unconstitutional in its application. When there's clearly a risk to public safety or they are blocking completely a sidewalk, there is cause for encampment sweeps. But they've been doing it too much and for reasons that are too broad - they need to effectively offer shelter and provide shelter if they're going to sweep people. Without that provision of shelter, there's nowhere else for someone to go. It is illegal to say you can't exist here - in essence, you're saying you can't exist anywhere. And this court ruling was powerful with some pretty clear statements calling the current policy dehumanizing, destabilizing, and counterproductive. How did you see this?
[00:28:31] Doug Trumm: The two individuals who brought it - their story was so tragic - they mentioned losing wedding rings, family heirlooms, because they've just been repeatedly swept while they're getting services or going to work or whatever. One person mentioned losing their work boots and then that jeopardized their employment and that sunk them deeper into the spiral of homelessness. They kept getting these last-second-notice sweeps because they were supposedly an obstruction. If the definitions are broad, they don't have anywhere to go. The ruling says the two main ways they were bending this rule is they were defining the blockages - 50% blockage, it becomes 100% blockage in their eyes, or even a 30% blockage - because some of these sidewalks in downtown are fairly wide. And unfortunately, some sidewalks in our city are pretty narrow. Often folks aren't trying to block the whole sidewalks. They're trying to go somewhere they can and not fear that their stuff's gonna get snatched up and taken away. They lost all these valuable possessions, including their wedding ring. What are we doing here? This cruel unusual punishment that rises to a constitutional violation and this judge issues this ruling.
Now the City's gonna have to rethink how they do this. The other main way they avoid the Boise ruling, Martin v. Boise, is they say that anything in the park is an obstruction - because someone wants to use that particular part of the park, even if it's some secluded, say in the forest, in a large park when 99% of the park is still accessible. Part of Mayor Harrell's campaign pledges to clear the parks. Some of the parks are clearer than they were when he took office, but others still have encampments and it goes to this whack-a-mole approach of you're constantly chasing people around the city at great expense and great suffering to some individuals, like the two that brought the suit, and we haven't made durable progress.
[00:30:11] Crystal Fincher: Another event this week with Sound Transit - Mayor Harrell is up for a Denny Station on West Lake Avenue again. How'd this happen?
[00:30:19] Doug Trumm: Hey, I gotta give credit to grassroots organizers there - there's a lot of people involved. Seattle Subway sent, I think, over 6,000 letters via online petition. Uptown Alliance got a lot of letters because they were also very dismayed to see that the station on the eastern edge of their neighborhood was suddenly gonna disappear - at a whim - six, seven years into this process. And what was happening here, if you didn't follow this story, is there's gonna be obviously this new Ballard Link Light Rail line that will go from Downtown to Ballard. And on the way, it's gonna pick up Denny Triangle, it's gonna pick up South Lake Union, it's gonna pick up Uptown. And these were gonna be really high-use stations, but there's one problem in that some of the corporations and real estate interests in Denny Triangle were not excited about the station location. Folks like Amazon, Vulcan, were lobbying against this location because they didn't like the closure of Westlake Avenue, they said, which South Transit at this point in this process was estimating a full closure of four years. They're putting the station right under Westlake so they do have to mine it, it's gonna be closed for that part. But they realized that they could put decking over the top - they didn't propose that initially 'cause it's more complicated and expensive. But they realized they could do that, obviously, if the alternative is putting some station two blocks to the west, which is what the proposal that came forward out of this last-minute wrangling - wasn't in the DEIS, the draft environmental impact statement. So that means it requires more planning and process. So there's two public meetings online that Sound Transit is hosting - I think one of them is today and the other one is a couple of days from now - we can link to that in the notes maybe.
But because this shifted-west alternative came forward late in the process, was proposed as a way to alleviate these concerns from corporations and real estate - they had to do this process. The mayor backed it at a meeting last month, I think it was, but then last week he walked that back. He said - You know what? We really need to keep the South Lake Union Station because what happens with shifting the station west is it gets super close to the other station on Aurora, which is a major bus artery. - so that's where a lot of people were going to transfer from bus to rail. And it would put you closer to Uptown too if you're headed to the eastern part of Uptown. So the shifted-west alternative consolidates the two stations into one. And that's what sort of set off all these alarm bells with Seattle Subway and Uptown Alliance and the urbanists and others that - Hey, why are we dropping a station? And they presented to Uptown Alliance - Sound Transit did two days ago, I think it was - and apparently the consolidating those two stations, they shared their ridership analysis, which was new information. It's gonna cost about 10,000 riders - someone who was at that presentation told me. And that's a pretty big deal - 10,000 daily riders.
So the mayor didn't have that information last week when he made his statement - he said he was still waiting for ridership to confirm his decision, but he said he's starting to lean Westlake and just wants a good mitigation plan, which I don't know why we couldn't start there from the first place - because we're seeing across, especially the Ballard Link Station, that there's lots of changes that are happening because people don't like the construction period and don't think the mitigation plan is very good. And there may be something to that. The mitigation plan should be really good, but rather than focus on the mitigation, we've been just tossing around all these different ideas and extending the - what that means is you have to do a whole new study and that delays the whole project. So maybe small progress there on the Denny Station decision - we can focus on how to do that right and get a good construction mitigation plan, rather than last-minute options that are un-vetted and are going to require another year or two of study.
[00:33:51] Crystal Fincher: And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, July 21st, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful cohost today is Publisher of The Urbanist, Doug Trumm. You can find Doug on Twitter @dmtrumm, that's two M's at the end. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. And you can find me on all platforms - Bluesky, SPILL, Twitter, all of them, Mastodon - @finchfrii, that's two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Tuesday topical show, Crystal chats with Carrie Barnes, Chair of the King County Democrats, about how the county party engages in local elections and politics. Reflecting on the importance local races have on people’s daily lives, Carrie highlights how the party focuses on - especially in low-turnout odd years like this one - voter education and engagement through their endorsements and Get Out the Vote work. The conversation then dives into what is a Democrat and who the party is for, the relationship between different local party organizations, how electeds are held accountable when they don’t live up to their campaign promises, and the importance of Precinct Committee Officers (PCOs) as the backbone of the party.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii, find Carrie Barnes at @carriesbarnes, and the King County Democrats at @kcdems.
Carrie Barnes
Carrie Barnes is the current Chair of the King County Democrats. She previously served as Communications Chair for the party. Along with communications, in that role she has been responsible for engagement with the Executive Board, PCOs, Legislative Districts, KCYD, Elected Officials, and financial supporters. Carrie’s primary focus has been to provide timely and valuable information about the work of the party to its stakeholders, while also organizing volunteer engagement, recruiting, and retention for the King County Dems.
Carrie was also previously the Chair of the 37th Legislative District Democrats, one of the most diverse LDs in Washington, serving as the 37th’s 2022 Delegate Chair for the Washington State Caucus Convention. She is a long-distance runner who spent the most recent election night handing out pizza to voters who were still waiting in line after dark. She loves to cook and host fundraisers for Democratic candidates at her home that she shares with her husband, 3 teenagers and their bulldog Lola.
Resources
King County Democrats
2023 Endorsements | King County Democrats
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, today, I am thrilled to be welcoming Carrie Barnes, the Chair of the King County Democrats, to the show. Welcome, Carrie.
[00:01:02] Carrie Barnes: Thank you so much for having me. I'm just thrilled to be here today - thank you.
[00:01:07] Crystal Fincher: Well, thrilled to have you. We talked to your predecessor before - Shasti Conrad, who was Chair of the King County Democrats, now is Chair of the Washington State Democrats, the State Party - and you are succeeding Shasti in this role. So I guess just starting out - who are the King County Democrats and how did you get involved in this work which led you to become Chair?
[00:01:34] Carrie Barnes: That is such a perfect question. I'm going to back up and talk a little bit about myself - how I got into this work. I've always considered myself a lifelong Democrat. I was raised by my grandparents - grew up right outside of Butte, Montana, moved to Spokane. And I considered myself a really good Democrat because I wrote the check, I attended events - but then something happened after Trump got elected and I was a little confused. I didn't know, really, where I belonged in the party. I just couldn't see myself participating. It was just really disorienting. And then in 2018, I was diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer and my world stopped. But the only thing that really kept me going - believe it or not - was just finding out about just the travesty of what the Republican Party had been doing to the systems and structures nationally.
And then when Brett Kavanaugh got put on the Supreme Court, a switch just flipped in me and I said - It is enough. I need to get involved. It's not enough to write the check, to talk to my friends about politics. And through that, I became a grassroots volunteer for a presidential campaign where I met a really great guy, Tom Schmidt, who had been - he was a Precinct Committee Officer coordinator. So he said - You should become a PCO where you live. And I said - What's a PCO? And he walked me through the importance of - what a precinct, a legislative district - how we self-govern and extrapolated that to King County. And that is where I really found my purpose. I joined the 37th Legislative District Democrats as a PCO and then a Second Vice-Chair doing events. And then we had COVID, so I then ran as First Vice-Chair of the 37th Legislative District and then Chair while I was working at the county. And the whole purpose and joy - the joy it brought me - is connecting voters and volunteers to the elected that they believe in, that will make the policy change that will improve human beings' lives - in our area, in our county, in our neighborhoods. And since then, I continue the work that Shasti Conrad and her team have really framed out for us to build upon - and that is several different factors across the county I'm happy to go into. But my story is I absolutely love what I do. And it is very fulfilling - and meeting voters, meeting candidates, meeting elected officials - there's work to be done to get the change that we want.
[00:04:16] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. One thing I think that a lot of people struggle with is they hear about national politics - they hear about the national Democratic Party - predominantly the news covers things at the federal level. And sometimes we just don't talk about politics and the party at the local level, and what is happening. So I guess just looking at the difference or the division between the national, the state, the local - what is the sphere and responsibility of the King County Democrats. How do the local parties differ from the national party?
[00:04:52] Carrie Barnes: Thank you - that is a super good question. We've got the national party, we have a state, and then we look at county and local. If you look at the lowest level, that is the local city government. And those are housed in different areas across King County - jurisdiction - they can cover two legislative districts. And a legislative district is an area where you live that will have your State Senator and your two State Reps. So at a local level, you will have your State Senator, your two Representatives. And then at a city level, you could cross two different legislative districts. So a local city government - I'm gonna use Bellevue as an example - there are two legislative districts that are encompassed in Bellevue. The local races - your city council, your planning commissioners - these are the folks that affect so much of what we see and what we want at our local level. At a state level with your State Representatives and your State Senators, that is where we get our bills in our state representation. And then you've got our state executives - so then you've got our governor, our lieutenant governor, our soon-to-be-elected attorney general, and the executives across the state. For King County, we are one of 49 [39] counties. So the state sees all the counties, the counties contain the legislative districts. And below that, you've got your city council - that can cover two - and your commissioners. It is so important that we highlight how important our local races are - they are historically low-turnout races that have enormous effect on daily lives to make those decisions. And again, we're not in a presidential year, we're in an odd year - so turnout is down. And one of the things that the County Democrats - what we look as a charter is that voter engagement - making sure that voters know there is an election. We endorse our Democratic candidates, so they know who we've endorsed. And we really focus on Get Out the Vote. It's a huge focus, and it's a really needed one.
[00:07:08] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, it's a very big focus. And I don't know that the local party has had such a focus, or the level of focus or engagement, in past years that it has had in recent years. There's been a huge effort to increase representation from people in precincts - basically neighborhoods - and getting that representation done. There's been an increasing amount of engagement in those local races. How do you approach recruiting, working with PCOs, the importance of PCOs? How do they participate in the party and what does that enable and achieve?
[00:07:51] Carrie Barnes: Thank you - it's a super good question. The engagement that we, at the county, broadly look at is how we're working with our local party organizations and how we help with data. So what that means is - within so many precincts in a legislative district, having a Precinct Committee Officer walk your neighborhood, be this Democratic - hey, here's what's going on - being that force and function of a local community organizer means reaching out to folks who live in these areas and expanding on the purpose of what we're doing. What that means is we are saying - We're a party that - here's our values - we are looking for progressive solutions. We are working to bring that awareness, that voter contact - and it is knocking on doors, believe it or not, with data in these areas that we historically haven't had a Precinct Committee Officer. We have this really great success story of one of our real super volunteers - and she's amazing - who looked at her legislative district and wanted to grow the outreach of Precinct Committee Officers representing the community. And in two weeks, knocking on doors, she had recruited 51 Precinct Committee Officers engaged in the party. And taking that model throughout the county is exactly our purpose. Sometimes people can't see themselves in local government until you tell your story - that I was nervous when I first started walking my neighborhood - I didn't know what to do, but the support system and the support of folks that I got to know made it so easy. And very like-minded - there you had someone to talk to - and we really want to take that throughout each of the different local LPOs, the local political organizations, and just have it across the county. So we're really looking to build and recruit.
[00:09:49] Crystal Fincher: Which is really important - I've had the conversation - certainly, I'm not the first one to say it, but local politics is organizing. Local politics is community engagement and connection with people. When you have conversations with folks about why it's so important to get involved at the local level, what do you tell them?
[00:10:10] Carrie Barnes: I tell them they have a voice. I tell them - when they come to get involved in the local party, they are part of how we are defining what it means to be a Democrat - that means actually solving problems, supporting solutions that really work, working on provable outcomes - what does that mean. Other cities, other states - what has been leveraged and how do we champion that with your voice for recruiting candidates, for supporting our candidates, for getting out the vote, for the solutions that are leading with data-driven results. We take a compassion in our approach. Change is hard. If you've always lived in the exact same street, in the exact same house, change is hard to realize it will look different. It needs to look different - being compassionate towards our unhoused, leading with the approach of we're gonna work to solve problems - that we all agree to. And when I talk to people about the party, that's what they want. They wanna work for these things. And it's really fun to have a volunteer join and get involved. And for me, it's really fun to see what particular passion brings them joy working in the party.
[00:11:23] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. When you talk about those issues - and here in King County, we have a bit of a different composition than a lot of areas in the country in that we are bluer than a lot of areas - not that there are no Republicans or that there's no red, there certainly is. But a larger percentage of Democrats, which creates interesting situations - especially locally - in that Democrats and Republicans aren't the only parties. Locally, we have the Democratic Socialists, we have People's Party, we have people who identify as various things on the left. As you're moving through this and looking at who defines a Democrat - what is a Democrat and who is the party for?
[00:12:06] Carrie Barnes: Really good question. We're engaging in what it really means to be a Democrat by putting our efforts and focus on solving problems, leveraging data - not short-term comfort, tough love, that by contrast we know empirically doesn't work, has never worked. We are - it's not just saying things without doing the things. And we're working in local communities to address systemic inequities around affordable housing - looking at our lack of quality affordable housing, which can exacerbate social issues - we know homelessness, poor educational attainment, and mental and health conditions. The Democrats, we - as definition, defining it - are working for solutions. And sometimes those solutions will take longer than a tough love approach, but staying in it and telling the story to voters about why it will take longer - because it is a true solution, not a quick solve - is where we are defining who we are. It's a nuance when you have a Democrat-on-Democrat race, but our values of equity - our values that we agree there is a social agreement we have when we have this experience of local government is to provide services, education, safety, and opportunity. And getting to those core principles that every constituent and every resident has a voice and needs to be heard and seen is one of the - how we are defining what it means to be a Democrat.
[00:13:40] Crystal Fincher: And in those races where there are, certainly, Democrats running against each other - when there are people who seem to be aligned on values, but aren't officially Democrats, how do you approach that? And are they welcome? Are they endorsed? How does that work?
[00:13:58] Carrie Barnes: That is a individual and nuanced question with and I'm - with the county, our endorsements, we endorse one candidate per race. And at the county level - King County has 17 different legislative districts - and those are 17 legislative districts that we ask, for our endorsement, to send two representatives and two backup. So our endorsement is a true compilation of what our county looks like. And they get together, and this committee just does the yeoman's work - how it ties back to a Democrat, are they, are they not - is we do have bylaws and rules that say you have to attest to be a Democrat. It's tricky because there are folks, and it's their right to do so, who attest to be a Democrat but maybe have in the past maxed out their contributions to very controversial Republicans. On the other end, we have a candidate who represents our values, who has done the work, who is - what I mean by done the work, they have doorknocked for Democratic candidates, they are involved in their local legislative district, they have worked for equity, they have seen marginalized communities - bringing them to the table - but they're not a stated Democrat. What do we do? We look at each individual candidate and say - Does the city benefit if we endorse this person? Whose lives will get better if we hold to our values and endorse this candidate? It's super important to take it as a case-by-case, not a blanket statement - the county's not a monolith, saying you're attesting to being a Democrat is not a monolith. So we take a really hard look and we will, at times in certain situations, really back what the city needs based on our Democratic values.
[00:15:54] Crystal Fincher: That's a really good point. And you mentioned that there are - you said, 17 legislative district organizations within King County. I think one thing that may not be that well understood is that the Democratic Party is not really a top-down organization. It is not like a headquarters with multiple branches. Even on the local level, sometimes people think - Oh, well, the legislative districts answer to and they do whatever the King County Democrats say and they do whatever the state party and the national party says - but these are all independent organizations. Can you detail how that works?
[00:16:32] Carrie Barnes: Yes, of course. So King County encompasses 17 different legislative districts - local party organizations. And each of these legislative districts have an executive board - their hyperlocal organization. Within your hyperlocal organization - and I'm just gonna show off on the 37th legislative district, which was my, I'm still in the 37th, but the organization I used to chair - are the PCOs. So all of those Precinct Community Officers I mentioned in the beginning are housed within a legislative district, and that is who - as a PCO - those are the officers. And from a local party structure, these PCOs - and I highly recommend to become a PCO and if you have any questions, please reach out because I would really love to have Democratic PCOs - who are field organizers per se. They walk their neighborhood, they talk about what the Democrats are doing - they're the ones who vote for leadership. So it is from the bottom up. You can become a member or a PCO, but the PCOs vote for leadership in your local party organization. And leadership then - they set the agenda. They put on the barbecues, the festivals, the Get Out the Vote. At the county, we work with all 17. And our - what we do is we support from an educational standpoint. So I look at - our charter's to educate, to advocate, and to activate at a broad scale. So we're sister organizations, but we also have this ability that - because we're an all-volunteer organization, volunteers come and go - to be that older sister, stable sister per se, that has historical knowledge. If a chair in a local party organization needs to take a new job and move to Olympia, what do I do? We will connect you with another chair for mentoring - because we all, working together, is what really moves the dial on policy, on initiatives, and on candidates when needed. So it's a relationship, it's a sister relationship - 17 local organizations - the county encompasses all of them, and we all work together.
[00:18:39] Crystal Fincher: Now that is a really good point. You do work together, you have done a lot of the training function. Another thing PCOs get to do is quite significant - and that is play a major role in the appointment of new legislators. I don't know what the number is now, but usually it's around a third of the legislators in our State Legislature originally get their positions via appointment. And if a vacancy opens up - someone has to move out of state, someone moves to a new position, new role, someone decides to retire or step down - then the legislative districts play a major role. And PCOs, in particular, play a major role in the appointment of someone new. How does that work?
[00:19:26] Carrie Barnes: It's a real fabulous scenario we could be looking at in 2024. So if there is a vacancy for a state - either a State Representative or a State Senator - the PCOs in that legislative district vote. Only the PCOs who have been elected or appointed then vote for the replacement of the either senator or representative. So only the PCOs vote in that legislative district, which is in our constitution, and then they take the top three candidates. And an example I can pull up is when Pramila Jayapal won her US Congressional race - in the 37th, then her Senate seat was, she had vacated her Senate seat - and the PCOs in the 37th voted for three people that then get sent to the King County Council and for final appointment. It is a monumental way to have your voice and your vote heard - in a really local level - by having that vote, having that privilege to then vote for the appointment, replacement of the elected official. And Rebecca Saldaña, our amazing Senator from the 37th, is just the right person in the right moment for that appointment - and the PCOs were the ones who vote. And just to highlight how many PCOs are in a legislative district, it varies from 29 all the way up to 111 - I think we've got one LD that has quite a bit more, so I'm going off old news, but just as an example - it's a very honorable, worthy vote that you get to have as PCO.
[00:21:04] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And so now these people get into office - whether it's the appointment, or being elected, or they're running for office - how does the party support its endorsed candidates who are running for office?
[00:21:19] Carrie Barnes: That's our job. So our endorsed candidates - we just finished our endorsement process - and what we're doing is to, at its core, empower candidates with data to help them better target their voters, which is harder in nonpartisan races. An example is the county, myself - we've got a committee chair, his name is Alexander Erickson, who works at the county, engaging with that local party organization, and we say - We're working with the campaign, the local party, and the county. What do you need? Where can we support you? - again, to empower candidates with data to engage our voters in the most important races, to ensure that we elect a slate of Democratic leading candidates up and down the ballot. We reach out to all our endorsed candidates, and we will be doing door knocking canvasses, Get Out the Vote. With our candidates that have the primary - they're our focus - and we will be out door knocking for our endorsed candidates, we'll be bringing in our coalition partners to help us. And then after - the general - it will be a weekend of action. It is having a weekend - the four weekends leading up into the general for our endorsed candidates - these are the folks that need our support, and we are out there at a very data-driven level to really point them in the right direction, point us in the right direction to really move that dial - without overlapping with the campaign or the LD, so we're bringing them all in together. This is the first time we've really taken this approach at such a local level, and I just look forward to the success and to continue it in '25 and '27.
[00:22:53] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And so you're supporting this candidate - they get elected. Does the party also get involved in issue advocacy and trying to advance local policy and ordinances? Does the party hold people who it's endorsed and other elected officials accountable to what they promised when they were running? How does that work?
[00:23:16] Carrie Barnes: It's a really exciting question. The answer is yes. The elected official - just making up a story, just for example - we want to give them political will to continue the promises that they ran on to get elected. And we hold incumbents to a higher standard, especially because they have committed and are in office - we expect acumen, we expect solving for solutions. And as it happens - maybe an elected isn't living up to that promise that we endorsed on - what will typically happen is either a letter from a local party gets supported by the county and conversations happen. It is important to live your truth of why you ran - representing Democratic values. Does that change? Possibly. But our job is to say - How do we support the voters that voted you in office? - whether it is through advocacy, through letter, or through initiative. It is really important that we all come together and we are all on the same page - and at the county, we work with that local legislative district, and we can take it countywide - really, how do we use and leverage our voice as County Democrats to push or pull on those levers to get that needed change from an elected official?
[00:24:36] Crystal Fincher: How, generally, is the reception from elected officials to that? Is that something that people generally work through? Does it result in the severing of a relationship, a revocation of an endorsement? How has that process worked?
[00:24:50] Carrie Barnes: So, I'd have to look in the past if there's been a rescinding of an endorsement. Rescinding of endorsements has happened - there's maybe - social media didn't get checked enough and it's a quick pull. How it is met - it depends on the elected official. I think that some are more resistant than others. Some are absolutely gobsmacked that they didn't realize that the voters and the constituents weren't feeling seen or heard, and it's a conversation - that they're not bringing up through their own storytelling what their individual process or plan is. And voters who don't hear - we make up stories in our heads without that information - they're not representing us, they're not talking. So, I would not say it's always with welcome arms, but that's okay - getting the truth about where the vision of why you were elected - and are you living that, are you communicating with your constituents is really important for an elected official. And also for the voters because, at the end of the day, what voters, what PCOs, what committee members want is to solve the issues we all agree are important.
[00:26:03] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, when it comes to those issues, making progress - people are like - Well, does the local party really make a difference? What does the party do? When people ask you - What difference can the local party make? What policy have you engaged with and advocated for and gotten passed? - what do you tell people?
[00:26:26] Carrie Barnes: I say it makes a difference because it's a collective. It is a collective of Democrats. It is having a voice. An example is a resolution. If there's a resolution that you need scale at - from a community group, and I'm just using an example, who - they want a service or an opportunity that they are not getting from their city council member. The local party - we are a collection that - they bring a resolution, we will sign on to it. Their voice is not the 17 people who need that help. Their voice is now the membership of the 37th legislative district - it includes 117 PCOs, the membership of 350 members - who are signing on - on behalf of this community group, where it is a scale. We are saying - We support you, and we will further this. You have the ability, by working in a local party, to get engaged personally with your elected official who comes to meetings - who you can ask your question. You could say - My property tax is too high. Can we have our King County Assessor John Wilson address our membership so we understand those changes better? And then to go out into our coalition partners and either share the recording. But it's a way - the local party and getting engaged is a way to not only get yourself involved into what questions, what issues, what passions you have, how do we advocate for those that need it - and as a collective voice, how do we further that change? So a local community group that's looking for services in the 37th - the 37th signs on to a resolution - they can bring it to the county, they can bring it to the other LDs - where now you have the King County Democrats, you have multiple local political organizations and LDs signing on, which then becomes over several thousand folks backing your ask for a specific service or a specific action to support what you need.
[00:28:27] Crystal Fincher: When considering what's on the table now in terms of candidates, in terms of policy - what are the top priorities for the King County Democrats to address?
[00:28:39] Carrie Barnes: So I'll start with candidates, and then I'll go to initiatives. Right now, in our local election, we have some amazing candidates who have been doing amazing work - very progressive work that is around housing, around parks, around public safety, around even pandemic response. And I'll just talk about Bothell. We've got a really great group of previously endorsed Democratic candidates in Bothell, who now have pretty well-funded competitors because - as with just human nature, when things are going well and progressing, there's also a group of opposition who's - I just want to keep things the same. I just want to keep my city the same way it has been since whenever. And the priority for the county is to support those candidates that are making the best change for the most human beings in their city. Crisis solutions, really working with the - I said public safety - but really working with creating a community core, providing body-worn cameras for police. These are really - I mean, they're common-sense solutions, but they're also viewed in some opposition as too much, too fast. And so our priority are making sure that these incumbents are re-elected. They can continue to do their good work. And we've got really great candidates in Kirkland, as well. We have candidates in Burien. These are where, as Democrats - who we have endorsed and are doing solutions based on data, but have some strong opposition that is organized - that we support them so that each of their priorities are fulfilled.
[00:30:18] Crystal Fincher: When it comes to continuing to build the party, working with local party organizations - what are the things that are most important or at the top of your list that will help with that?
[00:30:32] Carrie Barnes: Building the party is absolutely getting people connected. With COVID, it felt very like we were - and we still are, to a certain extent - a little disengaged. And it is telling the story of Democrats - of how your voice can make a change. When we talk about recruitment, that is bringing in our community groups and our neighbors. I look at party building as outreach. With any volunteer organization, you have some that have never left - they're amazing, there are stalwarts. And there are some people who don't know that they have a legislative district of Democrats. They can really have this amazing conversation all about politics, all about local politics, so that they're not annoying their husband like mine. I can have these conversations - my husband's like, Ugh, too much - but I love that community. It is letting people know there is community space with local Democrats who share those values and visions. How does the county do that? We've got to support our local, progressive candidates we've endorsed, asking for volunteers to join us - but to meet like-minded Democrats to create these opportunities and spaces. And coming up into a presidential year, it's really, again, telling our story - that if you are a mom with two kids and Zoom is perfect for you, come to our meetings, but also come to our social. We would love to have your engagement reaching out to our community groups and labor. It's really a lot of outreach and a lot of in-person conversations. And it will look different after COVID. We will have next year - for the Democratic Party in King County, we will have an all-county convention. So anyone who's thought about - What do these guys do? - this will be a month-long introduction into building the party.
[00:32:24] Crystal Fincher: Sounds good. And as we part, if people are interested in getting involved, how can they do that?
[00:32:33] Carrie Barnes: I would love for anyone who wants to get involved to send an email to info@kcdems.org. We have volunteer coordinator who will have a conversation with you and give you all the happenings, where everyone is meeting in the county. You can pick and choose. And let's have a conversation about where your passion for public service is and make sure that we're aligning you with that community.
[00:32:58] Crystal Fincher: All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Carrie Barnes - appreciate your time today.
[00:33:03] Carrie Barnes: Thank you so much - I appreciate you.
[00:33:06] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Founder and Editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn!
They discuss a Hitler apologist on The Seattle Times Editorial Board, problematic items on display in a Seattle Police Department break room, complaints filed against Bob Ferguson’s opaque transfer of campaign funds, and WA Republicans wanting to make the long-term care tax optional. The conversation continues with Kshama Sawant’s push for a rent control trigger law, dueling tenant-protection laws on the Tacoma ballot, and former US Attorney Nick Brown’s entrance into the Attorney General race.
UPDATE: After the show was recorded, The Seattle Times fired David Josef Volodzko.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Lex Vaughn at @AlexaVaughn.
Resources
“Business Perspectives with GSBA’s Gabriel Neuman” from Hacks & Wonks
@finchfrii on Twitter: “Wonder why the Seattle Times endorsements are the way they are? Here’s a member of their editorial board:”
@finchfrii on Twitter: “Do you stand by this, @SeattleTimes ? Are you keeping a Hitler apologist and genocide minimizer on your editorial board?”
“New Seattle Times Columnist Believes Hitler Wasn't as Bad as You Think” by Charles Mudede from The Stranger
“Deep! Hole Seattle Times Editorial Board Writer Digs After Nazi-Apologist Comment Officially Reaches Hitler’s Bunker” from The Needling
“Seattle police kept mock tombstone for Black man, Trump flag in break room, video shows” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times
“Complaint pushes for Ferguson to reveal donors of $1.2M in campaign transfers” by Jerry Cornfield from Washington State Standard
“WA Republicans propose making new long-term care tax optional” by Claire Withycombe from The Seattle Times
“Seattle Democrats Snub Sawant After Request to Endorse Rent Control Trigger Law” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
“Tacoma voters to decide on dueling tenant-protection measures this fall” by Heidi Groover from The Seattle Times
“Former U.S. Attorney Nick Brown launches 2024 campaign for Attorney General” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate
“Former U.S. attorney Nick Brown announces bid for Washington AG” by Joseph O’Sullivan from Crosscut
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and the Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
If you missed our Tuesday topical show, I had a conversation with Gabriel Neuman, Policy Counsel and Government Relations Manager for GSBA, about the organization's work as Washington's LGBTQ+ Chamber of Commerce. Today, we are continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome to the program for the first time, today's co-host: Founder and Editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn.
[00:01:22] Lex Vaughn: Yay, I'm so glad to be here.
[00:01:24] Crystal Fincher: We are very big fans of The Needling over here, so really, really excited to have you on. And we have no shortage of topics to talk about this week. We will start with an odd development that was not on my bingo card, but we have evidently a newer Seattle Times Editorial Board member who is a Hitler apologist, genocide minimizer?
[00:01:53] Lex Vaughn: They hire him to make the rest of them seem less conservative - that's the only thing I can think of. And I can't believe that his comments have been online for almost a week now or so, and he hasn't just been fired - 'cause he's not apologizing and the way he tried to clean it up was so much worse. He had a follow-up tweet saying - I guess I should have said Pol Pot or Leopold II.
[00:02:19] Crystal Fincher: What did he actually say? What happened here?
[00:02:23] Lex Vaughn: I feel like it's important to look at the exact quote - which I should bring up. So first of all, he's taking on this tacky - or hacky - article about the statue of Lenin in the center of Fremont. And everybody has a moment when they move here when they're - Is that Lenin? I thought it was a fisherman at first, I'm - It couldn't possibly be Lenin. And there's always a moment when you're new here, you're - Explain. But I think people who've lived here for a long time are - I'm tired of explaining, figure it out - Google exists, dude. So first of all, just funny that he's even taking this really tired argument. And then the way he tackles it - to make it original - is to say, somehow, Hitler was better?
[00:03:13] Crystal Fincher: He's not a fan of Lenin, as many people aren't - I don't think that's a controversial opinion at all. However, he decided to make his point by comparing him to Hitler. His argument was - at least Hitler wasn't that bad. Then went into all of the ways that, in his opinion, Hitler wasn't bad. And like you, I feel like I need to pull up the exact words - because if I paraphrase, you're gonna think I'm exaggerating and it's that bad.
[00:03:41] Lex Vaughn: I have it in front of me. Okay, I guess what his intent was was to just illustrate how bad Lenin was, but no one usually tries to prop up Hitler in doing that. The exact quote from one of his tweets is, "Hitler only targeted people he personally believed were harmful to society whereas Lenin targeted even those he himself did not believe were harmful in any way."
[00:04:08] Crystal Fincher: Which is wild. So this is unfolding on Twitter - he shared his article, he's sharing this perspective on Twitter. And obviously Seattleites' jaws are dropping in unison and many replies back to him. But one of the replies was, "The big problem with genocide is whether or not you sincerely believe the people you're genociding are harmful to society." To which Josef Volodzko - is the reporter's name - replies, "I'm not talking about genocide." To which that man replies, "Is genocide not a key part of Hitler's 'targeting people,' bud?"
[00:04:44] Lex Vaughn: Oh my God.
[00:04:45] Crystal Fincher: To which he replies, "Yes, but I wasn't talking about genocide. Did you bother to read what I wrote?"
[00:04:52] Lex Vaughn: It's just amazing that the statement itself is so bad on its own. And then when you look at all of his replies, you're just - How does he think he's making this better? He's making it worse?
[00:05:04] Crystal Fincher: Just FYI to everyone everywhere - anytime you're talking about Hitler, you're talking about genocide - there's so many problems with this. But predictably, he has shared other very questionable opinions on his timeline. As a Black woman, I have frequently seen people minimize the American slave trade. A popular talking point on the West was - but other people did it worse. And so he has a tweet talking about - Well, the Arab slave trade was much longer and basically worse than the American one. And I have never seen people who have those two opinions and will share them with no nuance. If you're in an academic setting and you're studying it, obviously you're gonna talk about historical genocides and all of that - you can have those conversations in context. But here - the context you've heard, and there isn't much of it, and it's very, very troubling. And usually people with those two opinions, who especially are not afraid to share them publicly, have a whole lot of other troubling opinions there.
The bigger issue here to me, aside from the fact that it's wild that The Seattle Times is evidently fine with this perspective, is the fact that it's a relatively new journalist hired by The Seattle Times - moved here from, I believe, it was rural Georgia - hasn't been here for long, but somehow still made it onto the Editorial Board, which is just a very questionable practice by The Seattle Times in the first place. Do you want someone to be familiar with the area, with the people? - because this article is just so off. The reason why that Lenin statue hasn't been removed - and there have been efforts to remove it - is because it's on private property. Unlike a lot of other statue, monuments that have been removed elsewhere - those were on public property, so it does become a public concern to remove them. That's why the conversation has not been a conversation. Seems like he's trying to characterize the left as somehow loving Lenin in Seattle - that is not a thing - not a thing!
[00:07:03] Lex Vaughn: And there's just no better way to, I think, make yourself seem like a dumb transplant - 'cause it's a whole culture around that statue of - it's seen as this thing that just got shipwrecked in a part of the city. Nobody wanted it. Nobody asked for it. Just this weird, giant, heavy thing on private property that people have just decided to cope with the best way they can. As a former reporter at The Seattle Times, I know there's gotta be reporters who are very pissed off right now - I know that the Editorial Board did things that we even petitioned against when I was there. And it's so frustrating when the Editorial Board is destroying, or getting in the way of, the better work that the real journalists are trying to do at the newspaper. I've always found it ridiculous that so much money is even dedicated to that stupid Editorial Board - when you could be funding better reporting that actually makes your publication stand out and be valued here. That publication is surviving despite the Editorial Board, not because of it, and instances like this just make it - wow.
[00:08:14] Crystal Fincher: It is wild, it's a problem. And the premise of it doesn't make sense, and there's arrogance about it too - it's just so weird. And no one has to mount a defense of Lenin at all, period. We certainly don't need to mount a defense of Hitler to underscore that Lenin was harmful. So - What you doing, Seattle Times?
[00:08:37] Lex Vaughn: It's not even about, necessarily, a political disagreement. The logic of this guy is completely off. There's a line in the column about Lenin where he literally says - Do you think that statue would still be there if he owned even one Black slave? - you just moved to a state named after George Washington, who died with 317 slaves.
[00:08:59] Crystal Fincher: It makes no sense - completely out of touch, does not reflect the population here. Somehow they thought he would not only make a good reporter, but a good member of the Editorial Board. And we just talked about, on a recent Hacks & Wonks, how problematic - aspects to a number of the political endorsements made by The Seattle Times Editorial Board and the logic used. And wow, this helps to explain why it really, really damages the credibility - there is no apologizing for Hitler - that is never necessary, it is never appropriate, and he just found a way to double and triple down. The Seattle Times has been silent about it. Plenty of people have been contacting them, calling them.
[00:09:43] Lex Vaughn: Honestly, it's nothing, I think, that Editorial Board isn't used to. It's just they have this narcissistic idea that they're doing something brave. And they're actually just doing something very stupid by having people like him publish on their behalf.
[00:10:00] Crystal Fincher: This is certainly a reputational hit. I think lots of people don't see this as merely a difference of opinion, but a minimizing of genocide and some deep-seated need to find redeeming characteristics for Hitler. Someone was talking about - What about this about Lenin? And he's - Well, you know, Hitler fed hungry children and had a program for that - as a comeback.
[00:10:25] Lex Vaughn: At this point in time where, unfortunately, Nazi sentiment and racist sentiment is becoming sadly more overt and shameless - unfortunately, there are some conservative readers of The Seattle Times and that Editorial Board that think parallel to what this guy is saying in his tweets.
[00:10:46] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, so we will keep an eye on that.
Also this week, The Seattle Times reporting side broke news that a tombstone for a man killed by SPD and a Trump flag was on display in an SPD break room. This was caught by officer-worn body camera footage and seen. And it just seems like an absolute mockery of the City and its residents, the reform process that has supposedly been underway - just terribly disrespectful and problematic. How did you see this?
[00:11:26] Lex Vaughn: I'm sure a lot of us weren't shocked that's the kind of interior decoration a precinct had, especially because we had six officers who were there at January 6th. A lot of us are already very aware and not shocked that there's some shameless white supremacy and racism within the ranks of the police department. And I think I'm almost frustrated - people acting surprised. Why isn't it being taken more seriously that there needs to be as little tolerance for - the tombstone, itself, is such a especially grim, violent thing - being proud of killing someone that lived here, that's really sick.
[00:12:08] Crystal Fincher: And keeping, in essence, a trophy - which unfortunately, is not unusual. We've seen this at other departments across the country. It's very troubling, it's very violent. It's not a healthy culture at all. And just in a larger conversation - one, it was pointed out by many people, you keep talking about the financial stuff, and wow - there's been lots of money thrown at recruitment efforts and salary efforts. And they're very well compensated - just another report came out recently about how many officers are clearing $200k/year. But this is why people are not joining the office - most people don't agree with this - this is disgusting. This is not within the realm of what the public wants from policing. And who wants to join this? This is toxic. This is the kind of culture - if you're celebrating your killing of someone, if you're maintaining a trophy and basically mocking it, that's not the protect and serve impression that people who want to help their community are going after. And so there has to be an addressing of culture here. We can't continue to ignore it.
The other thing that is so striking to me - and continues to be - is that it's like we forget what the structure of the City is. This is a department that Bruce Harrell is in charge of. He is the executive who is in charge of this department - the buck stops with him. There's a chief that answers to Bruce Harrell. The chief gave some nonsensical justification here, but Bruce Harrell doesn't appear to have even been asked about this, particularly with his pronouncements on the campaign trail before he took office and early in his term that he was gonna ensure that the culture was appropriate. And at times he made some weird statements in - making them watch a video and sign a statement saying that they agree to something else. Is this the culture of policing that Bruce Harrell is comfortable with? His silence would indicate that, but it would be nice if a member of our press would ask that question.
[00:14:20] Lex Vaughn: Mayor Harrell is so good at talking the talk and not walking the walk. We all know he's not gonna really do anything about it, but he's not even talking about it. In too many US cities, including Seattle - no one's gonna say it, but I think a lot of these political leaders are just - Yeah, cops are now a bunch of racists. Well, what are you gonna do about it? That's been something people are asking for. What they're not saying is they don't have the balls to really punish these people, or they don't wanna go through the process of punishing these people - which if we look at the City of Kent, they did fire a guy, right?
[00:14:56] Crystal Fincher: We had a literal Nazi cop assistant chief - and I say literal because it came with a Hitler mustache, and SS insignias on his office door in the department, and anti-Semitic jokes, really bad stuff. Initially, the mayor decided to suspend him for two weeks - that became public knowledge and then they asked him to leave - these contracts make it challenging to fire officers. They ended up paying him - I think it was half a million dollars - to retire. And it's a mess.
[00:15:31] Lex Vaughn: Even in that case, it's like that's the most accountability we could exercise on people - this is just a really large payout to get them to leave - wow, that's not an incentive. Aren't we supposed to create a lack of incentive for this? So that guy lost his job, but he got a nice severance package. And it's just too much of a pain to deal with the guild or the union behind him to just straight up fire him?
[00:15:55] Crystal Fincher: Like with many union positions, there are rules and regulations, there are protections and policies. And with police, there are so many establishing precedents for keeping people in problematic situations that it's now hard to fire someone for things that are justified. The officer who was reinstated for, I believe, punching a woman in the face and breaking her jaw in SPD - who was actually fired by Chief Diaz, but reinstated after arbitration. So these contracts and what is set up by them, and the precedent of letting things slide, only make things worse moving forward. But also, we have a lot of leaders who are afraid of - one, legislation, any legislation at all - and sometimes you do need to push the envelope 'cause sometimes those firings are still sustained. And you should try to sustain them because that's the right thing to do. But they're a very powerful political lobby and they use tactics on the ground to reinforce their political point - we just saw in the Chicago municipal election that the police basically threatened to walk off the job if the candidate that they didn't like was elected. Now the city was - No, we want that candidate and elected him. Of course that was an empty threat, right? And they've tried that before in New York when they did stop policing - crime actually went down, calls actually went down - that's an interesting thing to talk about at length.
But yeah, there are a lot of leaders who are afraid of taking them on. And even not taking them on, but just standing for some common sense reform. Even if you weren't saying - We don't want any cops. Just - Hey, we want some standards for ethics and behavior that we wanna stick by - that has not been received well. And they have gone after people, with their sizable war chests, who have tried to live up to their campaign promises to work on fixing the culture. And to have any hope of doing that - for those who think that's a viable option - if this is posted in the precinct, what message do you think that is sending to people who may not be comfortable with keeping trophies for people who are killed?
[00:18:11] Lex Vaughn: Even if you are a good cop in that office, you know what you're up against. And it's a popular phrase that all cops are horrible. But even when there are cops that do have integrity, that job is so much harder for them to do with integrity when they have to work with people like that. I'm very frustrated that there really isn't any true accountability for our police departments. And I think a lot of people underplay just how much sociopathy we're enabling with our own taxpayer money.
[00:18:43] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And how much we expect from everyone else - we expect minimum wage service workers to do a better job of deescalation than our highly paid police force - and that is backwards. We hold low wage workers to higher standards of behavior and accountability, and it just doesn't make sense. And we need to do better. I hope people ask Bruce Harrell what his plan is to deal with this and make it better. This is his responsibility. Ultimately, the buck stops with him.
Also wanna talk this week about a development in an ongoing story about our gubernatorial race that is shaping up - lots of people in there. This story concerns Bob Ferguson and donations that he received. So background, Bob Ferguson is our attorney general - is running for governor now. And had a bunch of donations over years - a couple million dollars in donations - to his attorney general race and campaign fund. Our campaign finance laws say that you are allowed to transfer money from one campaign to another if you get the permission of the donor. So lots of paperwork going on - lots of writing and tracking who said what, there's a big database there. And what actually came about is that the law - which has been in place this whole time, which hasn't changed - says that we have campaign donation limits. Our Public Disclosure Commission initially said - Okay, yeah, you can transfer things over - but didn't address the naming of donors or ensuring that in that transfer that people don't exceed the donation limit. 'Cause he already had people donate, and basically donate the maximum, to his gubernatorial campaign. They may have also, and likely there are people who - some of those same people who donated to his attorney general campaign.
[00:20:43] Lex Vaughn: So they might be able to double that.
[00:20:44] Crystal Fincher: So if they transfer that money over - yeah, then they essentially can give double the campaign contribution that they're supposed to give - that is against the law, but that wasn't made clear by the Public Disclosure Commission until recently. Now, when the Public Disclosure Commission announced - Oh, we're gonna clarify our interpretation of this law and we're gonna make it clear that people have to stick within the donation limits. And they said - And we'll do this at our next meeting - basically. So the Ferguson campaign said - Uh oh. Literally the next day after they announced it said - Oh, we're transferring this over now. It's technically before the deadline, so we don't have to abide by the disclosure for that meeting. So if you look at Bob Ferguson's campaign finance disclosure right now, there're about almost $1.2 million of this dark money. And when you compare that to the money that all of his opponents have - they don't have anything close, right? - so this is giving him a humongous fundraising lead, which in our current political system really matters and is a definite advantage. But it's likely that there are donations that are beyond the limit. The tricky thing here is the law - the actual law - has not changed, so this has technically been against the law the whole time. The tricky thing is the Public Disclosure Commission gave perhaps an incorrect or incomplete interpretation of this law - it's usually who people go to for guidance.
So there's a new complaint, basically asking Bob Ferguson to unmask his hidden donors - the donors that are not reported right now - to ensure that he is in compliance with campaign finance donations, because it doesn't make sense. And also, especially for someone who said that they aren't gonna take corporate gifts, that they aren't doing that - well, we don't know. We don't know what this money is - it is dark money. And Bob Ferguson has previously railed against and sued, for example, Facebook and Meta for lax campaign finance information collection and reporting, right? So this is an issue that he has engaged with before. And they do have all of the information to report. You have to do all of that work in order to get the authorization to transfer the money from the people, so they have the information. It's not like it's this big administrative burden to track this information down - that work was done in order to transfer the money. So the question would be -
[00:23:12] Lex Vaughn: Okay, so they flat out wouldn't be able to transfer that money without those donors signing that -
[00:23:18] Crystal Fincher: Giving their consent - right - so you basically have to contact the donor.
[00:23:22] Lex Vaughn: Why isn't that public record - just those documents?
[00:23:26] Crystal Fincher: No requirement for it, currently. I have not seen campaigns violate this honor system. Most campaigns do abide by the letter of the law. And really the Ferguson campaign is arguing - Well, we abided by the interpretation that the PDC gave us. And so at the time of the direction, we did what the direction said and no more - and that it should be legally fine. But certainly the spirit of the law here is a challenge, and they're going through court for the substance of the law. But I do think it's really interesting. And especially from someone coming from the position as the chief attorney of the state, that it seems like it would make sense to do this. It seems like it flies in the face of small-d democracy to do that, but there is an argument there and there was confusing guidance - you can't deny that - that happens sometimes. So the question is - The law hasn't changed this whole time and the law says what it says. So was he in violation of the law?
[00:24:27] Lex Vaughn: He's basically - I think I can get away with it, so I'm gonna try. Bob Ferguson has done some great things as AG - I like some of the things he's come out against and taken initiative on fighting, but there's moments where he's very disappointing as well.
[00:24:43] Crystal Fincher: To me, what I see from this is - there's just a lot that we still have to learn about everybody's records. We know who Bob Ferguson is in terms of his work as attorney general, certainly he has a lengthy record that we can examine in his time as attorney general. And I'm certainly, as someone on the left side of things - there's a ton that he's done that I've appreciated, that I agree with - lawsuits against the Trump administration and other federal actions that were egregious that he stood up against. And that other Western and Democratic attorney generals and governors have been standing up against. There's a lot more to do and a lot more that he's going to be responsible for as governor - and we don't know what that is yet. Similarly, we don't know what that is with a number of the other candidates. So I think a lot of this, especially the news about his touting the endorsement of former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best, raised a lot of eyebrows - but that invited a lot of curiosity and questions from people, I think, and really underscored - we need to pay attention here. Though there may be a significant financial advantage, there may be more to the story. But similarly, there's a lot of other candidates and we have to figure out what's going on with them too. I just hope that people thoroughly examine who people's relationships are.
And part of that story is who people's donors are. One thing I can say - working in politics for 15 years now - is people's donations do have a stronger correlation than the promises they make on the campaign trail. So pay attention to who those donors are. But that advice, which I've talked about on the show plenty of times before in many different contexts, is more challenging when there's over a million dollars of dark money sitting there in a campaign - that just doesn't sit well with many people, I don't think. And it seems like there's an easy way to remedy that. I also - can it be that much money that's over the limit? It feels like you could still name who these donors are, and as long as they aren't contrary to anything that you've already promised - I'm not gonna take money from these types of interests - maybe a million bucks is over there. But even if it's a couple hundred thousand bucks that's over the limit, you still have a dominant financial lead. So why not do that? is the question I have, but we'll see how this continues to unfold.
I also want to talk about news this week that Washington Republicans want to make the long-term care tax optional. Now this long-term care tax comes about - lots of people have heard about it as Washington Cares - amid a long-term care, elder care crisis that we're really having. Looks like the majority of Americans are going to, at some point in time in their life - and a majority of Washingtonians - require long-term care. A lot of that is elder care scenarios, people falling ill for a period of time - people are living longer, and with that often came living with more ailments that required more intense care. But this is something that the majority of Washingtonians are anticipated to need, but that is really expensive and that is causing bankruptcies, it's causing financial hardship for a ton of people. And like many things like retirement and social security, like other insurance, when you know that it is likely you're going to incur an expense and you don't have the money saved up for it, you look at the population and it is going to be a financial crisis for most of the people it encounters, it then becomes in the interest of the state to take action to say - We need to make sure that this really expensive service that people need is going to be available to them.
Hence, the Washington Cares program and a tax, I think, that averages about $29 a month for someone making $60,000 - I think that was what I saw reported - we'll link the article in the show notes and the resources, obviously. But it is something that came about because of a need. And if you know people, as I do, who have required long-term care without the money and it has bankrupted them, or they've had to become a ward of the state to get into a nursing home or something like that - it's financially devastating and generationally financially devastating. And as we're talking right now - with as many people going through financial hardship, with inflation of so many other things, there are more people who are vulnerable to this. And so this initially passed, it then essentially repealed and passed in a more compromised version. But like many insurance programs, it requires that lots of people pay in in order to fund the benefits for everyone paying out. So what making this optional will do - and Republicans know this - is basically break the program.
[00:29:35] Lex Vaughn: Is this a thing where people get to opt out of certain payroll taxes? That whole concept to me is strange. Are there other optional payroll taxes?
[00:29:44] Crystal Fincher: Not really, especially for something like this where it is a state-funded benefit. Like social security, like other things, most legislation isn't just passed and then that's it. Many legislation goes through many tweaks over the years. Our favorite benefits and entitlements have, so there are likely to be other tweaks coming up to this. One that was just made, or that may be upcoming, is allowing benefits to be used if someone moves out of state, for example - so they're continually listening to feedback. But what is not workable - financially and just operationally - is just allowing people to opt out. Also, I think Senator Karen Keiser mentioned that it does not appear that they have the votes for this - it's more of an anti-tax talking point. And if it's Washington Republicans, they're gonna have an anti-tax talking point.
[00:30:35] Lex Vaughn: Yeah - you're in deeper in your knowledge of our state politics. What chance does this stand of happening? Are there enough people that would make that happen? What floors me sometimes, especially when it comes to state politics, is both houses are Democrat controlled. I know that Republicans do succeed in some of their missions like this, but part of me is - Why are we even worried about it? Who's gonna betray us?
[00:31:02] Crystal Fincher: Just looking at Senator Keiser's quote - this doesn't appear to have the votes. And now I will say that it did get repealed and basically redone because there were Democrats that had concerns - that they heard from enough people that they felt had concerns about it, that they did basically take another shot at it - and edited it to make it better and respond to some of the concerns that they had. Because what I don't wanna minimize, it's not $30 a month - this is something that is really, especially amid other inflation that we've experienced - although inflation is now slowing, post-Inflation Reduction Act actually, but it still happened. People still are under tight budgets. And so $30 a month can be felt by people. The balance is really what benefit are you getting from that $30 a month? And the evaluation here is that eliminating the chance for financial catastrophe and a loss of life savings, basically, later in life - or even just if you need some long-term care there is worth the benefit. That there are so many people suffering from that right now - that this would alleviate more harm than it creates, is really what the evaluation is. And frankly, that evaluation is the case for a lot of legislation and taxes or revenue that's gonna be raised. So I don't think this has a chance unless there were more Democrats that were going to be concerned, but I think that most concerns were addressed with this latest iteration.
And I do think that it's positive. People do require long-term care - how many people do you know that have been sick for extended periods of time, or that whether it's COVID or cancer - I think it's necessary, I support it, I think that it would be bad to repeal. But Washington Republicans are banking on something else - they try to run against this in prior elections and were not successful - I would anticipate the same thing happening. So I think Republicans are trying to spin up some fear from voters, and I'm sure they'll have some receptive ears from more conservative or traditionally anti-tax voters.
[00:33:12] Lex Vaughn: What we have seen, in a positive shift in the last few years in general, is nationwide Republicans had to give up on campaigning against Obamacare because enough time has passed that people of all political backgrounds have benefited from it. Maybe the Republicans who offered this up need to understand that more people are in favor of better healthcare coverage. And it's becoming a little more accepted that the whole community needs to step up and better fund a bunch of things like this.
[00:33:45] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. One of the things that's making everything hard to afford these days is the cost of housing, the very high cost of housing locally. There's been talk from a number of people about the ban on rent control in our state and lifting of the ban. Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant has sponsored a rent control trigger law that basically, for Seattle, would enact some rent control measures if and when our legislature decides to end rent control. Councilmember Sawant wrote to members of our legislative delegation, including Representative Gerry Pollet and Senator Jamie Pedersen, asking for their support of this law. Got back some responses that were a little snarky, basically said - Now we ain't heard from you in all this time, and now you're calling up asking us to support this.
[00:34:39] Lex Vaughn: At the last minute - this is her trying to cram it in at the last minute.
[00:34:42] Crystal Fincher: Yes - Gerry Pollet saying - I sponsored legislation to do this - now that legislation didn't make it out of committee or have a hearing. Jamie Pedersen essentially chastised Councilmember Sawant for not working with them in other things that they passed. Councilmember Sawant responded by saying - Now, I don't know where you've been, but I have over several years been advocating for this, have passed resolutions in support of this, have previously indicated my support for a legislative solution to this. So I'm on record, have communicated before that I am supportive of efforts in the Legislature. And the reason why you didn't see me in the Legislature supporting your bill that you introduced, Gerry Pollet, is because you didn't even get it far enough to have a hearing. So there was no opportunity to weigh in - it didn't go anywhere. But you also failed to answer the question - Do you support this effort in Seattle?
[00:35:41] Lex Vaughn: Such a weird deflection.
[00:35:42] Crystal Fincher: Yes, so there is some acrimony between the sides there. I think Nicole Macri also weighed in and said - There does appear to be acrimony and I need to look more specifically at it. Clearly, we can look at this last legislative session and there were not enough votes, unfortunately, to advance renter protection rent control measures. We absolutely have to mitigate against rent increases, the high cost of moving and living.
[00:36:14] Lex Vaughn: And I mean - can we get real? The average Democrat was not really actively recruiting people like Kshama Sawant. Give me a break.
[00:36:23] Crystal Fincher: Yes, and Kshama Sawant is notoriously not a Democrat and very critical of Democrats for inaction on things like this. And she took the opportunity to be critical of Democrats in her communications here. Now, do I think that a rent control renter protection should pass? Absolutely. Do I think the ban should be lifted at the legislative level so that cities can choose to do what they feel is best? Yes. But it's going to be interesting to see how this proceeds. I would hate to see an effort that may have a chance get torpedoed because of personality conflicts.
[00:36:59] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, when we're talking about - yeah, something as critical as housing for people - get past all of this personality BS. Especially when you're all on the kind of left end of a political spectrum - focus on where you have common ground and get something done. I don't know who enjoys seeing unproductive arguments like this. To me, it highlights just how cowardly most Democrats are in Washington state when it comes to topics like rent control. And that it's still such a touchy topic here - because not to pull the California card, I'm from California - and there's a lot of really great rent control laws in California that I grew up with and had in the first cities that I lived in as an adult. And they were so prevalent that I thought everyone had rent control and I didn't get it until I left. And I can't believe that in 2023, you still got Democrats here in Washington state going - Oh, I don't know, I'll be called a socialist if I support this, I don't know. Ugh, Jesus - it's just pathetic that really the only person who's really forcefully, I think, promoted rent control is Kshama Sawant. And Democrats should be ashamed that - yeah, a socialist has led that, not Democrats.
[00:38:15] Crystal Fincher: Certainly at the local level. Yes, I think there are others who have indicated support of this over the years - and there are some more progressive Democrats who have been supportive and some legislation that was introduced to do this, but certainly the majority of the delegation does not agree or else this would be law right now.
Also, housing costs are a big topic for everyone across the state. The City of Tacoma just decided to put dueling rental protection initiatives on the ballot for November. I don't know if you've been following this, but there is an effort in Tacoma to pass some pretty comprehensive renter protections - allowing notice for people who are moving, capping late fees at 10%, providing rental assistance if - tiered rental assistance based on the amount of increase if someone can't afford it for moving into another location - extended notice. Now they've been pushing for this, they have had a lot of momentum behind this. However, there are a lot of landlords and interests who have been lobbying against this and basically lobbying the City to pass a watered down version of this. And what the City decided to do was not only put the more comprehensive version on the ballot, but also put the watered down version on the ballot - which would cap late fees, not to the degree that the other more comprehensive initiative would, it would provide for more time to notice, but doesn't have some of the really helpful provisions that some of the other legislation has there. And what a number of people are saying is by putting both on the ballot, you're really doing both to defeat instead of giving people a clear choice between - do you want to do this or not? It's much harder and it's a much more confusing set of issues to get your arms around and choose between them. And so this is not a move that a lot of people received with excitement and definitely feel that this hurts the prospect of anything passing. And then there are some who say - Well, people deserve a choice. How did you see this?
[00:40:25] Lex Vaughn: That's probably the desired effect of the people who volunteered the watered down option - is just to make it seem too confusing and get people to not do their research and go - I don't know - throw up their hands. 'Cause I think the more voters feel like they have to heavily research things, the more they feel - Oh, I don't know if I should even vote. Just your average humble person is - Oh, I don't know. I didn't do my research. I don't - it's probably not a big deal if I don't vote at all, 'Cause I don't know what this is. I'm not gonna research the difference between these two things. What was the ballot item in Seattle? I forget. I forget - it was like -
[00:41:06] Crystal Fincher: It was approval voting versus ranked choice voting.
[00:41:08] Lex Vaughn: Yes, that's the one - that's the one - that was so confusing. Even as somebody who thinks of themselves as pretty politically informed, at least more than the average person, I had to really spend an afternoon going - What? I had to do some homework to know what I was voting on there.
[00:41:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah.
[00:41:29] Lex Vaughn: I guess this is a tactic, right? Where it's like - you're euphemistically giving people more options, but really you're just confusing people so much that they don't even wanna vote at all.
[00:41:44] Crystal Fincher: Confusion is usually not helpful for initiatives. Usually if there is voter confusion, they don't vote, they vote No on everything - that happens more than not. It's not like it can't be overcome, as we did see with ranked choice voting.
[00:41:59] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, people did get interested.
[00:42:00] Crystal Fincher: But it usually takes more money, more communication to do so - so the job did just get harder.
And in our last piece of news today, we have a new entrant into the race for attorney general to replace Bob Ferguson. Former US Attorney Nick Brown has announced that he is running. What is your read of this?
[00:42:23] Lex Vaughn: He follows The Needling, so he must be a good option, right?
[00:42:29] Crystal Fincher: I do have a better opinion of people who follow The Needling than those who don't.
[00:42:34] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, he's getting the real fake news.
[00:42:36] Crystal Fincher: State Senator Manka Dhingra has announced that she also intends to run. I made a comment in another publication that we do have a record to examine with Manka Dhingra - whether you agree or disagree with it, there is a record there to examine and that is a helpful thing. Nick Brown is largely an unknown for a lot of people - certainly has a record as a US Attorney, has been visible and active within Seattle - I've seen him in press conferences with Mayor Bruce Harrell talking about, and he's talked about - Hey, we can't arrest ourselves out of these crises, that type of thing. Now the policy, the politicians he was beside - effectively were trying to and continue to try and arrest themselves out of some things - but that wasn't his decision.
[00:43:26] Lex Vaughn: There's only so much he can do in that decision.
[00:43:27] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, so I'm eager to hear - and if you look at what he said when he announced, I'm certainly curious to learn more. He does seem to have a distinguished resume and although he hasn't been in politics and doesn't have a record there, that doesn't mean that you're not qualified and capable to run for office and have gained valuable experience in what you've done. So I just think there's a lot to be explored and I think it is healthy to have several options here.
[00:43:57] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I'm glad to see him join.
[00:43:57] Crystal Fincher: Here we have two Democratic options. Because I do think that we should have a robust debate about what that role is, what it entails, and what our approach is going to be. So really just - I'm curious and will definitely be staying tuned.
[00:44:13] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I think early on in some of these contests, it's - when you haven't done the complete deep dive on every candidate yet, you're kind of - Oh, it's good to have some options here. And I know that I personally need to do more research on both of them before I make a call on who I support. But yeah, it's good to have options. And I do think that - I don't know what will happen, but I honestly think that office, AG, is almost as important as the governor's office to me. 'Cause it's like they're really - they're interpreting the law and really holding people accountable, which is, I think, a huge deal. It's one thing to come up with laws and sign things, but it doesn't matter if no one's holding people accountable. I like that Bob Ferguson did go after some people pretty strong and I liked seeing it. And I hope that the next AG has that same fire 'cause we'll need it.
[00:45:11] Crystal Fincher: I agree. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, July 14th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks, and really the wind beneath my wings, is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is Founder and Editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn. And if you are not following and into The Needling - woe to you, fix it, make it right. You can find Lex at @AlexaVaughn, that's V-A-U-G-H-N. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. You can find me on all platforms, any and all platforms basically, at @finchfrii, that's F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, please leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - and we'll talk to you next time.
On this Tuesday topical show, Gabriel Neuman, Policy Counsel & Government Relations Manager for GSBA, has a conversation with Crystal about the organization’s work as Washington’s LGBTQ+ Chamber of Commerce. With a focus on community building and inclusion work, GSBA stands out from traditional business-oriented organizations in the support and services they provide to their member businesses. Crystal and Gabriel then discuss the business perspective and how GSBA is getting involved on challenges faced such as business taxation, workforce development, childcare accessibility, public safety, housing and homelessness.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find more about GSBA at thegsba.org.
Gabriel Neuman
Gabriel Neuman (he/him) is GSBA’s Policy Counsel & Government Relations Manager. Gabriel began working as GSBA’s Office Manager in 2019, when he was attending evening classes at Seattle University School of Law. He has been thrilled to continue to serve GSBA after law school in the public policy world. Now, he collaborates with GSBA membership and local leadership to understand community needs and transforms those perspectives into advocacy. Prior to joining GSBA, Gabriel worked in the legal field and studied Political Science and Public Affairs, also at Seattle University, while collaborating with grassroots organizations on improving child welfare policy. Outside of work Gabriel enjoys crocheting, gardening, reading sci-fi, and live music.
Resources
GSBA
GSBA and CHBA Present: District 3 Candidate Reception on Thursday, July 20, 2023, 4:30-6:30p
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
I am excited about today's show and to be welcoming Gabriel Neuman, who is Policy Counsel and Government Relations Manager of GSBA. Welcome.
[00:01:02] Gabriel Neuman: Thank you - I'm excited to be here.
[00:01:04] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much - great to be able to have this conversation with you. I think I just want to start out by helping the listeners understand - who is GSBA, what does GSBA do, and what brought you to this work?
[00:01:18] Gabriel Neuman: GSBA is Washington's LGBTQ+ Chamber of Commerce. We started in the '80s as a way for LGBTQ folks in Seattle to find organizations and businesses that will accept them and provide a safe space for them. And over the years, it's evolved to form this big organization we have now. We have a scholarship program, which we began in the '90s, and we provide four years of recurring funding for students that are LGBTQ+ and allied. In addition to that, our chamber focuses primarily on serving small local businesses. And so through our chamber programs, we have a ton - we have a Business Academy, which is small business support through classes, and then we have one-on-one consults - so we help you create and sustain a business through questions and support. We have our networking and business connections pieces of our chamber - we host a lot of events under that. And then we also have our advocacy wing, which really focuses on trying to create a sustainable economic landscape for LGBTQ folks in Washington. So that's kind of GSBA in a nutshell - there's a whole bunch more.
And for me personally - why I decided to join this work - I actually started to work at GSBA as office administrator, where I worked full-time while I was in Seattle University School of Law part-time during evening classes. And I came to GSBA because I really wanted to do something within my community. And I stayed because policy has always been a passion of mine and something that I wanted to do in a career. And GSBA was really supportive in providing that opportunity for me, and it just kind of ended up working out, so excited to be here.
[00:02:59] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And so for a lot of people listening, sometimes on the news you hear a lot about the Seattle Chamber, Downtown Seattle Association. There are a number of business-oriented organizations throughout the city, county, and state - what really differentiates you and the work that you do at GSBA, and some of the results or work that you've done with members that you're particularly proud of?
[00:03:26] Gabriel Neuman: Yeah, I think there are quite a few kind of different touch points. The Seattle Chamber and DSA are fantastic organizations, and we work well with them. But I would say that GSBA is focused a little bit more on the community-building aspect. And so we understand that to foster a collaborative environment and a business community that is sustainable for everybody, that means that everybody in the community needs to come and be invited to that table. And so GSBA really focuses on centering underserved communities in our work, and in connecting folks to each other in order to build and expand in that capacity. And then in addition, I think that a lot more of our work is centered on LGBTQ, but social justice initiatives in general - so we do a lot of DEI work, we do a lot of inclusion work for LGBTQ folks. And so it's really the kind of expertise we provide in that landscape that really differentiates us from those other orgs.
[00:04:20] Crystal Fincher: In terms of policy, what have you been advocating for and have helped to pass, and what are the top things that you're working on now?
[00:04:27] Gabriel Neuman: Yeah, last year was a fantastic year for LGBTQ rights in Washington state. Unfortunately, nationwide, we did not have the same results. And so in Washington this past year, a lot of our legislation was built to support our community - both in Washington and then also to support folks who are coming from other states in which they experience discrimination - and making sure that they're safe here in Washington. So what that looks like is GSBA - so we have a Policy Council that consists of folks from our community. And if anybody is listening and might be interested in that, please let me know - it's open to the public. So we have a Policy Council that serves in an advisory capacity for us, so that we can hear from our members in our community directly. And then we prioritize based off of what we think GSBA, as both a business organization and a social justice organization, can take the lead on - which ones we can support, but make sure the leadership resides within the organizations that are better fitted for it and then which ones are more like tertiary support. So there's a ton of support for LGBTQ legislation that was taken and led by other organizations, but GSBA supported them through testimony and through connecting our members to testify.
So what those bills look like are we have a fantastic Shield Law that was just passed. And what that means is that folks from other states who are coming here to receive gender affirming care or reproductive care will not be able to be prosecuted in their state - that our Washington resources will not be used to prosecute them for receiving those services. And so that's gonna be really helpful - again, to provide that shelter and that opportunity for people coming here, but then also it protects practitioners in Washington who provide those resources from facing persecution in those other states. So that's really fantastic. Another bill that we advised on was the privacy bill - there was multiple privacy bills, but this one protects - helps to protect - healthcare data and making sure that your information about your gender identity, and your sexuality, and your reproductive history cannot be sold or used by organizations that may not want to, might not have your best interest at hand. So we are really excited about those. Some additional ones are there's a bill that made it easier for folks to seal their name changes - so if you're trans and you want to seal that name change due to fear of backlash from the public, we now have the ability to do that. And I worked on that as a community volunteer before I came into this position, and so I was really excited to see that one pass as well. So that's the LGBTQ side.
On the business side, we were really happy to support a bill that makes it - basically, it makes it easier to set up ownership sharing programs - so giving employees a stake in the company - and that has been shown to produce a much better work quality of life for employees. But it also makes it easier for - if you're an LGBTQ business owner and you want to make sure your business stays in the hands of the employees you worked with for 20 years, or it stays in community - you have more freedom to do that now. So we're really excited about that one. And then a lot of kind of trying to get an increasing in our tourism budgets and providing additional funding for things like that. So we've kind of been - had our hands in a lot of different pots here - but it's been a busy year.
[00:07:42] Crystal Fincher: And that's something that I have noticed - in really over the years - is that you do have your hands in a lot of different pots and are doing a lot of that work. And it does look different than you sometimes might expect from a purely business organization. You do a lot of the social work, more of a focus on equity, hearing from your members - seems like more comprehensively than a lot of other organizations may. I want to talk about some specific issue areas, revenue starting off - big conversation, always a conversation both locally and at the state level. One big piece of really consequential legislation was the JumpStart Tax for Seattle, which GSBA was in support of. And there have been conversations about maybe redirecting that perhaps, maybe changing what we're doing with it. What's your evaluation of the JumpStart Tax - how it has been performing, especially for small businesses, and where would you like to see that go?
[00:08:38] Gabriel Neuman: Yeah, so from my understanding, the Seattle JumpStart Tax was intended to fund public housing - or affordable housing - and reinvest in our Green New Deal, and be attributed to some specific areas that our city needs additional funding towards. But right now, our general fund in the City is at a deficit, so we need more money in our general fund. And so they've been using the JumpStart Tax funds to help rebuild that deficit in the general budget. So what that means is that instead of the JumpStart funds being used for what the voters voted on them to be used for - affordable housing, Green New Deal-type things - it's instead being used to just furnish the general budget. That needed to happen - our city programs need to be funded. But it can't happen continually. It cannot be used as a continual, as a way for our city to lean on this tax in order to fill that shortfall - because there was so much political support brought behind this, and so many different people lent their voices into creating this tax and architecting it so that it would fill this very specific void in affordable housing that we have. And when it gets passed and that funding is not being used in the way the public thought it would be used, that results in a lack of - the public loses their confidence in our officials to delegate and to be able to actually reflect on those conversations they have with their constituents. And that really creates a compounding issue of how can we make sure that - that civic engagement and trust continues to exist, because that's literally the heart of our democracy.
And so right now, I know the City has created a Revenue Stabilization task force. The goal of that is to find ways to basically fully furnish the general fund so that it does not have to pull from the JumpStart Tax. That task force - it'll be interesting to hear the results of the task force - they'll be releasing a paper to the City Council in July, outlining their plan and their suggestions. But there are some interesting conversations with participants on that task force around - the goal of the group was initially to just find ways to increase funding to the general fund. But some other folks in the group want to see if there are ways to cut current spending so that we can have a mixture of both taxes and spending cuts, so that we're not just increasing taxes on our businesses. And so there's a little bit of discussion there and I'm very curious to see how that'll play out. But -
[00:11:07] Crystal Fincher: Is GSBA in favor of cuts, along with expansions of the tax?
[00:11:13] Gabriel Neuman: Yeah, I think that we would be interested in understanding where those cuts would go and what that would look like, and see if there are avenues in which we can try to lower the amount. Because the reason that our general fund has all these additional programs that are underfunded right now is because when COVID started, we got a huge influx of federal funds and that money was used by the City to create a bunch of programming to help support and sustain our community during the pandemic. And a lot of those programs were very successful and we want to continue those programs, but we're not receiving that federal funding. And so I think that, just in the interest of having a well-rounded and well-researched perspective on where our budget is in general, we do support the idea of looking into all aspects - including spending cuts and different taxes, but - so we're interested to see what the City is gonna do.
[00:12:07] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. One of the biggest areas of spending in the general fund is in public safety. Would that be an area that you would be looking to find some room in through cuts?
[00:12:17] Gabriel Neuman: Yeah, I think that - public safety is a major issue for our members. And what our members are wanting to see is - they're wanting to see some sort of reassurance of their safety - and that's just not happening right now. People don't, they don't feel like those bases are being covered. And GSBA - we follow evidence-based approach to our policy - and the evidence right now says that increasing public health programming, increasing behavioral support for folks that need mental health support, and increasing resources like rehabilitation services that are supportive of folks that go through them, those are the types of things that promote a safe environment. And so GSBA is in support of programs like that that don't take a punitive approach to public safety, but rather a community-oriented and person-focused approach. So if that means less budgeting allocated towards the more punitive policy approaches within Seattle, then yes, we are in support of that. Yeah.
[00:13:19] Crystal Fincher: Which is interesting 'cause it does seem like the City is increasingly moving in that direction. At the time of this recording, we have recently heard about the recent departure of Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell, perhaps about some differences in opinion on how things should proceed in this way. So are you actively advocating for more evidence-based investments and policies at this point in time?
[00:13:45] Gabriel Neuman: Yes, we are - so GSBA is - we're currently researching the different policy proposals that have been introduced and voted on and voted down by City Council. We're planning on - I'm going to be polling our members, and I'm gonna be using that poll as a way to create a letter from GSBA and from our membership to submit to City Council that demonstrates our members' experiences and what they would like to see changed in order to make their environments better. So we're currently planning and preparing that. And in addition to that, a lot of our conversations around public safety have been done more at the community level. And so what that's looked like is we've hosted - our Capitol Hill Business Alliance has been really on board with trying to prepare our businesses to protect and to basically just secure their own premises. And so what that looks like is we've had a lot of events with non-police related trainings - and so that looks like public defense trainings, personal defense. We've had events where we have private security folks come in and show businesses what are the best practices for environmental security, where should you put your lights and your cameras, and things like that. And we've had just a lot of different - we've been trying to promote a lot of different ways for community to help support each other. So on Capitol Hill, for example, we're creating a Slack channel for businesses to communicate amongst each other - where if there's an area of concern, or if there's an employee that needs additional help like walking to a bus stop after their shift or something like that - that businesses can talk to each other, and to connect in that way, and have that kind of additional safety net. So a lot of our response so far has been kind of community-based and creating those types of networks, but we're looking to, and we're wanting to expand, those conversations more into the sphere with our elected officials.
[00:15:33] Crystal Fincher: That sounds good, and we'll definitely be looking forward to that letter also. I also want to talk about the issue of revitalizing the economy. Certainly businesses of all types struggled to get through the pandemic - the pandemic is still here and happening - and businesses are facing a number of challenges from hiring and retaining employees, to understanding benefits, to just dealing with this larger economy. What are you hearing from your members are the biggest issues businesses are facing right now and what would help?
[00:16:06] Gabriel Neuman: One of the big issues is going back to the earlier topic of taxation - is that businesses pay a ton in business and occupation tax. As you know, Washington has the most regressive tax system in the nation - and so instead of relying on an income tax, a lot of our taxes come from B&O, or business and occupation tax, which is directly placed on our business owners. In fact, in Seattle, our business owners pay around 70% of Seattle taxes, so a ton of money goes in there and it's hurting folks. And so we're trying to find ways to promote a more equitable tax structure so that our businesses can continue to thrive and that our government is working to support that. So that's one thing on the advocacy space.
In addition, a big thing that we see is - are gaps in workforce development. There are a lot of positions that are open that people just are not applying for and that there are just not enough - that people, that the skills related to those careers are just not being offered at or made available at an economic rate for people. And so they cannot get those skills and so they cannot work at those jobs. So we have been really going forward with workforce development - this has been one of our big platforms for this year - is really trying to find ways to support our community in entering into those spaces. So there are expected needs for a lot of totally niche and really cool industries, like maritime officers - they need people to run the ferries, or people to do mechanics on our buses in King County, or folks to work at the airports - really cool stuff. So through our scholarship program, we just created a new source of funding that supports folks going through certificate programs. So now you can sign up, you can apply to our scholarship - and if you're wanting to go through a certificate program, then we can work with you to find out funding for that and through that route. And then in addition, we're also creating a workforce portal to allow folks to - who have gone through our programming - to connect to our businesses. And so we're doing a lot of promotion and facilitation for our members to be able to have the skills they need to enter there.
But then there's, on the flip side, there's also a component of - we need to make sure that these industries are ready for our community, that they are ready to support and to accept LGBTQ folks. And so - because we want to make sure that we're sending people into a work environment that's gonna be successful for them. So we have an amazing LGBTQ inclusion program that we offer for organizations - where we go in and we, first we meet with the org, and see what type of support is it that you need? What do you want that to look like? And then we help with making a plan, and we have presentations where we can come in and speak with you and your employees and just give you the one-on-one on how to welcome LGBTQ folks into your org. And so we're building out that program much more and we're really proud of that. And then in addition to the kind of presentation and consulting piece, we're also creating a suite of actual products that businesses can use - for example, a guide on how to deal with name changes in the workplace, how employees and bosses and colleagues can all support that and different things like that. Another thing is helping employers to understand what a trans-friendly healthcare plan looks like for employees. So we are trying to take the extra step of not just saying - Make sure that you have a DEI statement - but instead going deeper and saying - What is the infrastructure that you have set up right now? And what can we do to make it a better environment for folks who are going to be joining your industry? So those are two areas in workforce development that we're helping with, but this is a statewide issue and it intersects with many other issues that are also impacting Washington.
Kind of the third thing that employers are facing is that childcare, or the lack thereof, is also having a huge hindrance on their employees and on workforce retention. Because how are you supposed to take care of your kids, and work at a job, or go get your training, or do these things? And so AWB - the Washington Chamber - Association of Washington Business says that childcare is going to be one of the biggest issues going forward in the business advocacy front, just because of how substantially that impacts. So we're doing some research into better understanding that piece as well and how that affects our members.
[00:20:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And those are all really important - glad to hear that they are in the priority. And it really does bring home the point that businesses do have to contend with societal issues and the impacts on their employees, potential employees, other people in the community. So things like you talked about - just the absolute evil and hostile legislation against - starting against the trans community, but it seems to be expanding against everyone. It is just so challenging. And you talk about the important work and really helpful work of helping your members in the greater business community really structurally and institutionally set up processes that will sustain equitable treatment of everyone.
When it comes to a wide variety of businesses - certainly small businesses are facing a lot of challenges. Do you find that with issues like the B&O tax, taxation overall, that small businesses are being burdened more than larger corporations?
[00:21:34] Gabriel Neuman: I cannot - I am not too familiar with the full tax scheme of larger corporations, but I can say that small businesses are facing huge crises with what they're dealing with in terms of taxation. There's, like in Seattle, they pay 70% of our taxes here. And there's just this kind of gap where we're seeing - well, they're paying - while folks are paying these taxes, they're still not seeing a lot of their essential services getting covered, at least in Seattle. So for example, we field a lot of concerns around excess trash in certain areas in the neighborhood, or we're seeing businesses have to respond to behavioral health crises in a way that hopefully a medically trained person employed by a state agency would be able to better respond to. And even things like our roads not being sufficient for bikers or for walkers being able to go to those places. These issues continue, these kind of basic infrastructure issues continue to impact businesses, and so when they're paying these taxes and they're not seeing these kind of basic things being done in their neighborhoods - there's this question of, What am I, what is this for? And again, that kind of feeds back into this lack of trust in our institutions and it exacerbates this dynamic - this kind of us-versus-them dynamic that we really don't want to see and it's not helping anyone. So I think that it's the amount of taxes people pay, but then also just what are the actual material results that they're seeing out of this? And so that's what kind of, we're trying to do a lot of work with our City government to help them understand that issue and to expand programming and support into those areas that - the kind of bread and butter of our communities.
[00:23:23] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Another issue that everyone is contending with is housing and that absolutely impacts who can live in an area, dictates who can work in an area, and whether employers can retain employees, and what kind of wages are competitive. Are you active in housing advocacy?
[00:23:42] Gabriel Neuman: We are not active in housing advocacy right now, but that is something that I want to get advocacy going on in the upcoming year. This is my first year in this position. And so there are a lot of areas where we really, for my first year, wanted to focus on setting the stage as a business organization and focusing really on the kind of business issues. But now that we are facing the intersection of all these things - housing is a business issue now, childcare is a business issue now - businesses are having to have opinions on and stances on things that they never had to before. And so GSBA, as a result, is now expanding into more of these different areas too. We want to make sure that we're educated and that we're having - that our analysis is reflective of the evidence. And so I've been doing a lot of research and trying to understand the housing issues from multiple different lenses, and as well as our Policy Council as well, so that we can have more of an engagement with that next year. But that is another - that is one of the major issues for our businesses - is housing, because how are you supposed to find employees? Again, harking back to that workforce development issue, how are you supposed to find folks that can afford to live near your business, or can afford to drive - transport to your business - and who have the skills to do that? Like it's just incompatible - something needs to change. So yes, we're going to be entering that field a lot more.
[00:25:14] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So we're in the midst of City Council elections in the City of Seattle - you have a lot on your docket and you have a lot of advocacy that you do within the City - it's a major economic engine for the county and the state. Are you engaging in these City Council elections?
[00:25:33] Gabriel Neuman: Yeah, so we are - we're working with Capitol Hill Business Alliance, which is the Chamber of Commerce on Capitol Hill. They also are under the GSBA umbrella, so they're part of our org. We're collaborating with CHBA on a District 3 reception, and that will be a space for - we're inviting all the candidates that are running for District 3 to Optimism in a very kind of casual atmosphere where folks can come and they can have those one-on-one conversations and meet those people as people. So we're really excited about that, and that'll be on July 20th. And then after the primaries are over, we're partnering with Seattle City Club to host a series of four debates in the contentious elections. And as someone who's done debate for more than half my life, I'm very excited to help with that. So yeah, we're really focusing on trying to get the word out about those elections and increase engagement 'cause it's really important.
[00:26:25] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Are you seeing any specific policy directions that your membership or that you could say your membership is looking for, leaning towards from these candidates?
[00:26:38] Gabriel Neuman: Yeah, I think that we - our members want something - they want to see, they want a representative that will listen to them and that will come to them and say - I'm your representative, here's who I am. What can I do for you? They want a representative that listens to them and that will - that wants to incorporate that perspective. Because every neighborhood in Seattle is unique and every neighborhood has its own character, and that's important for representatives to embody that and to reflect that. And especially in Capitol Hill, businesses want to know how they can stay safe and they want to be able to know that their neighborhood is going to retain the aura of safety so that folks will continue to go there. But again, they also do not want to see that reflected as more uniformed police officers walking around Capitol Hill. They want to see a community-oriented solution to this. And what that means is a representative that really understands the community and that knows how they can talk to the community to come to ways to bridge these issues. So definitely someone that's willing to come to the table on that.
So I definitely say public safety and business taxation as well. There's a recent - recently Councilmember Pedersen brought forward the idea of a potential capital gains tax in Seattle, which would again impact the business community. And we're still - right now we're trying to find ways to enter that conversation and explain and try to find ways to make sure that that taxation doesn't actually affect our members. They want equitable taxation, is what I'm saying there. And housing - they want people to work at their businesses and that means access to housing, access to transportation. It's interesting, especially over the last few years, I've noticed that a lot of organizations are taking a much more social justice-oriented lens to policy issues because - again, that area of intersectionality is becoming much, much more apparent and it's not something that companies can ignore anymore. And it's been really fun to see this kind of increase in desire for participating in those conversations and how those partnerships can look in the future.
[00:28:53] Crystal Fincher: Sure. Another issue that is top on the minds of residents and businesses both is that of homelessness and the struggle that the entire region is having with this. What do you advocate for at GSBA to try and meaningfully address this issue?
[00:29:13] Gabriel Neuman: Yeah, there's - the one thing that comes to mind is we are trying to help connect those folks to - back to their community. We want unhoused folks to know that they are a part of a community and that they have a space for them. And one part of that looks like initiatives helping businesses to prepare to hire folks that have been involved in the criminal justice system. And so there is a Ban the Box initiative in Seattle and now what we're doing with our business consulting services is making sure that employers are aware of - that they should be hiring folks that were formerly incarcerated, that these people are awesome and still need to be considered as members of our community and helping them to onboard and prepare for that. That's one thing we're doing. Another thing is we are - I want GSBA to get more involved in the local referendums. And I've been in communication to see what we can do to support the new Housing Levy that'll be introduced to expand housing. We were very supportive of the behavioral health crisis levy that was just passed, we're really excited about that. And we're wanting to continue to work with those groups as well so that we can have pipelines of - Okay, if you know someone that wants to work at this, in this industry, in the maritime industry who is unhoused and they're going through your program to get housing, how can they connect with us so that we can support them in the workforce development area? So really trying to bridge those resource gaps and communicate with our community partners in that.
[00:30:49] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Another issue facing the region is that of transit and transportation. We have lots of investments, continue to need more in road maintenance and safety - but also a focus on people who don't drive, or who choose not to drive, or can't drive and who are walking or riding or rolling or on transit. What are the top priorities in terms of transportation and mobility for GSBA?
[00:31:19] Gabriel Neuman: Yeah, transportation is - it really is about being able to get from where you're living to where you're working. And we wanna make sure that there are bus routes that enter into the lesser-served neighborhoods and that transportation options are being introduced and promoted in those neighborhoods, so that those folks that don't have access - that might not have a car - can actually get access to those major transport hubs. So increasing bus access and then also increasing - again, particularly increasing transportation to those major transport hubs, like the light rail stations and things like that, so that people can get into the core area and then go off to where they need to go. That's one aspect. And then another thing that we've been doing is we've been working with our ride share companies in helping to aid them in setting up ride share infrastructure in cities that are not Seattle - having Lime bikes in smaller towns, for example, or in Eastern Washington. Or the scooters, as well - seeing those types of services in smaller areas, because they're fantastic in enabling people, again, to bridge those transportation gaps. And you see a lot of those transportation gaps in smaller towns and smaller areas. And that's where those kind of ride share programs can go a really long way in allowing people just the accessibility and the freedom to move around where they live more. We've been really excited about that.
And then on the LGBT side, working with the ride share companies to understand what are the specific experiences that LGBTQ community has in accessing those services and how can we expand that into, again, into expansion into those smaller towns - like where do queer people go in those towns? Where are the routes most likely gonna be taken and how can we make sure the infrastructure is built up to facilitate that? Lots of kind of little niche things in there that we've been having a great time with.
[00:33:19] Crystal Fincher: That sounds good. And as we close today, are there any thoughts or particularly helpful things that you would leave people with that they should know or that would be particularly helpful in helping and supporting our small business community?
[00:33:36] Gabriel Neuman: Our small business community, I think - honestly, I would say that the best way to have your voice heard is to really talk to your elected officials. And we can help that, we can help facilitate that. Or if you just call or email their office - they want to hear from you and they want to know what it is that you're experiencing. And they literally cannot hear from you unless they hear from you. Please do that outreach and please let them know when they do things that you like as well, because they need that positive feedback. But more than that, just know that you have some really awesome advocates behind you. The GSBA is one wing of a much larger business support network across Washington State. And I've had the pleasure of meeting with a lot of these folks and everybody's in it for the right reasons and they are in it to support you. And that is no ifs, ands, or buts about it. And utilize us as well - not just GSBA - utilize us, but utilize your business support community writ large around you to see what avenues and resources are available for you, because there are so many too that you might just not be aware of. I would say that to the business community.
Can I have a shout out to our LGBTQ community as well? I just want to say, I know this year has been very tortuous and very sad, with the legislation and the legislative attacks that our community has had nationwide. It's just been one thing after another, but Washington has your back. Washington has just passed this suite of transformative policy that will help to shield you if you are thinking of coming here, or if you are here thinking of and have a family that want to come spend time with you, or whatever - Washington has your back. And we are also continuing to build on that infrastructure. And we're continuing to look at these and have a proactive stance and a proactive approach to what is it that people in our community need and what is it that they're not getting, and how can we bridge that? Please know that in spite of what you've heard nationwide, Washington is continuing to be a safe space and we've got you.
[00:35:47] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much for that. And as a queer business owner myself, appreciate the work that you do and that you continue to do and the policy that you're pushing towards. If people want to find out more information about GSBA, how can they do that?
[00:36:01] Gabriel Neuman: You can visit us on our website, thegsba.org. You can also see us on social media - we're just GSBA on Facebook and Instagram and all that. And you can also email me - I'm gabrieln@thegsba.org.
[00:36:16] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:36:18] Gabriel Neuman: Thank you so much for having us.
[00:36:20] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank!
They discuss Dave Reichert’s entry into the Washington gubernatorial race, whether fireworks are worth their consequences, observations about the motivation for and role of endorsements in local elections by powerful media outlets, a school governance model that renders school boards powerless, and Seattle Times poll results that challenge their usual narratives on homelessness and public safety.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank, at @cruickshank.
Resources
“Former Republican U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert files paperwork to run for WA governor” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times
“Fireworks cause at least 2 building fires in Seattle, dozens of brush fires” by David Hyde from KUOW
@waDNR on Twitter: “(deep sigh) All six wildfires in the Pacific Cascade Region this weekend were caused by fireworks.”
“Seattle’s School Board Should Move Away from Student Outcomes Focused Governance” by Robert Cruickshank for The Stranger
“1 in 3 Seattle residents is considering leaving. Costs, crime are to blame” by Alison Saldanha from The Seattle Times
“Seattle police rated as ‘fair’ or ‘poor’ by most residents, poll finds” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank. Welcome.
[00:01:11] Robert Cruickshank: Thank you for having me back on, Crystal.
[00:01:14] Crystal Fincher: Very, very excited to have you back on. And as we start our news of the week, we see a new entry into the race for governor - Dave Reichert. What do you make of this?
[00:01:27] Robert Cruickshank: It's not that surprising, given that he had been apparently poking around the 2016 governor's race, the 2020 governor's race - Republicans didn't really have a leading candidate yet. I think corporate Democrat Mark Mullet was hoping he could de facto become the mainstream Republican candidate. But Reichert, I think, saw an opportunity here, realizing that the Republican candidates who have announced - people like Semi Bird or Raul Garcia - are much further to the right. Reichert himself has a very right wing record in Congress, of course, but he has 20+ years of presenting himself to the people of Western Washington, in particular, as someone who's more mainstream. And I think he saw his opportunity with Inslee retiring, an open seat. And open seat elections for governor in Washington - they're pretty rare these days - we've only had two this century. The first in 2004 was decided by 130 votes. And then in 2012, Inslee beat Rob McKenna, but it was pretty close - I think 51-49%. So Reichert saw his moment - I'm sure he had Republican leaders in the Legislature, corporate backers whispering in his ear, saying - Dude, we need you - there's no way we win otherwise. And even with Reichert in the race, it's still a pretty uphill climb for him, but he's going to have a ton of money and backing behind him for this.
[00:02:39] Crystal Fincher: He is going to have a ton of money and backing behind him, and I do think that it was really an opening. And I think the opening came because of how extreme the Republican candidates are. The leading candidate right now is endorsed by Joe Kent, notoriously so extreme that he lost a traditionally Republican district to a Democrat in Congress - one of the biggest upsets in the country - because he is unhinged. And we're seeing candidates like that bubble up - now it's a reflection of how extreme the base has actually become. So I'm very curious to see what the reaction from the base to Dave Reichert is, because what - the people who were certainly encouraging him to run are looking for a more moderate presence, someone who is not presenting themselves as extremely as some of the other candidates are. But are they going to get any traction in a crowded primary where there are other alternatives that seem closer to that base?
While at the same time, on the other side, I think Mark Mullet was really hoping to be able to capture moderate Republican votes - and has basically legislated as a moderate Republican, but still calls himself a Democrat because Republicans as a party have moved further to the right. But his policy certainly has not been consistent with Democrats in the Legislature or in the base. And so the concerning thing about him, from more progressive people, was that - Okay, if he makes it through against Bob Ferguson to the general election or against Hilary Franz in the general election, that he could siphon some Democratic votes for sure. But also pick up a ton of Republican votes, if Republicans don't feel like - Hey, we don't have one of our people in the general, but this guy is not as much of a Democrat as these other ones. That's a scary proposition in that situation. This really flips that and adds a whole new dimension to this race. So I'm curious - imagining what conversations are like in his camp - and what they're really considering as the impact on their campaigns and the path forward for each of them.
[00:04:43] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, Mullet's team is, I think, trying to win over that sort of centrist Democratic vote. The thing is - it's just not that extensive - there's not very many of them. If you're a Democrat who is somewhat cranky with the status quo, you're not that numerous. Ferguson has won three statewide elections, he's got a strong base of support in King County, and will do well outside of King County as well. Mullet has, I think, really no path at this point. Especially as Reichert left Congress in 2018, so that means he avoided having to be there during both of Trump's impeachments. He avoided having to be there on the insurrection on January 6, 2021. So he is a bit of a relic from the past in many respects. But one of the things is he didn't have to go on record around some of these things and he'll try to play that up.
But I think Bob Ferguson, who has not been running the greatest campaign - we should say, so far - running a front runner campaign, but really light on issues. He did hit pretty hard at Reichert - and correctly so - when he pointed out Reichert is a really right wing voting record on abortion rights in particular. And that matters here in Washington state, because the governor appoints Supreme Court justices in Washington state. And if you have a right wing governor who's trying to prove his anti-abortion cred to a suspicious base - he gets into office somehow - then I think we're going to have a real problem on the Washington Supreme Court. And we've seen what happens when you don't take Supreme Court nominations seriously. A lot of people, 2016, thought - Oh, they will never actually overturn Roe vs. Wade. Well, they did it. And you'll hear conversations here in Washington in 2024 saying - Oh, Reichert may be anti-abortion, he's got an anti-abortion record, but it's so safe here in Washington state, nothing could happen to it. I think we should know by now that anyone saying that is just deluded and has no real conception of the risk that a right wing anti-abortion candidate poses to abortion rights.
[00:06:40] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and that's such an important point. And lots of people think it's safe - it is only safe to the degree that we actively protect it. It is only safe because there have been appointments of our State Supreme Court justices - that follow the law, follow the precedent, and understand that that's critical for personal freedom and autonomy. And the blueprint for how this works, we saw with Trump. Yeah, parrot that - Oh, I'll protect women's rights. Oh, it's settled law. We're not going to mess with it. Meanwhile, just appoint all the judges to do that work for you. The base knows that's how it works on that side - they play along - Yeah, he'll say whatever he needs to say to get elected. Don't worry about it. We know he's going to appoint these judges. That's where really the fight for rights gets usurped, where things that are not publicly popular get entrenched, and get implemented. So it just is a big concern in terms of that. And he gets credit for being a moderate Republican based off of really him not being there while more extreme Republicans were acting more extreme. I don't know that it's a given that he's not that extreme. I'm going to be really curious, especially through campaign stops as he hears the base demand more from him. Does his rhetoric change? Does it become more extreme for that party's base of today, which is different? I'm really curious to see how that race unfolds.
[00:08:05] Robert Cruickshank: Reichert will have to campaign with Trump, either literally or figuratively. Trump will be on the same ballot and his rabid fan base, which is of course now the base of the entire Republican party, will be eager for restoration to power of Trump. And they're going to want to know where Reichert stands on that. And there's no way he actually gets around that. Now this is where - again, Ferguson has, I think, a gift here. He can run against an actual right wing Republican. But Ferguson's also going to have to learn the lessons of 2016, which is that you don't win solely by running against a right wing Republican. You have to have your own agenda that says - here's what I'm going to do differently as governor. Here's what I'm going to do to solve your problems. We haven't seen that from Ferguson so far. He seems content to run a traditional front runner campaign - where he has a poll lead, he touts his endorsements - but no real bold narrative to try to inspire people. He's going to have to do that. Because the lesson we learned in 2016 from Hillary's campaign was she didn't have that at all - she also ran a classic front runner campaign and narrowly lost. You have to have something that excites people about you yourself. Democrats have, for as long as I've been alive, tried to defeat the far right by pointing out how awful they are - sometimes works, but more often than not, it fails. Because the voters need to see from Democratic candidates those solutions to what they want.
[00:09:27] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, could not agree more - and we will keep our eye on that race.
Also this week, we had the July 4th Independence Day holiday. With that came fireworks celebrations - big publicly-funded fireworks celebrations from cities and counties. But also, just a ton of personal firework activity, although it is banned in several cities and counties around the state - that really doesn't seem to be consequential at all. What do you think about the use of fireworks, and is it worth the risk that they present now?
[00:10:02] Robert Cruickshank: I don't know about you, but I remember - as a kid in Southern California - looking forward to the Fourth and lighting up the fireworks in the street and you think not much of it. You think about personal safety - Don't blow off your hand, kid. But I think what we're seeing here is there's a much larger policy problem with these personal fireworks. People talk about the way in which they cause post-traumatic stress revival in combat veterans, people worried about their kids and pets - that all matters. There's an even bigger problem though with the effect on our climate and on air. I think it was the Washington Department of Natural Resources pointed out that all six of the wildfires currently burning in Washington state were caused by fireworks. And Crystal, you've posted in the last couple of days on social media great before-and-after shots from downtown Tacoma - crystal clear blue sky shot of Mount Rainier, and then the day after the Fourth obscured by all the smoke. And we all woke up yesterday to all this smoke, which was caused in one part or another by people lighting off fireworks - whether it's just the actual smoke from the fireworks themselves or the wildfire smoke that it caused.
And I think we have to look really seriously at whether, especially in a climate crisis, we want to be doing this. Our forests in Western Washington are especially dry this year. You go to campgrounds and they will soon, if they're not already, be under a burn ban - and rangers will come and enforce that. But a lot of cities like Seattle have fireworks bans - they're unenforced. And I remember - I think it was in 2011, I was working with Mike McGinn when he was mayor - I used to sit in occasionally on the meetings he had with SPD command staff. And I remember - I think it was July 4th, 2011 - when just fireworks went off all night and we just got flooded in the mayor's office with complaints - This is illegal, mayor, you should be enforcing it. And so the next day happened to be a command staff. And so I went in to help compose our response from the mayor's office and McGinn asked the commanders - What do we do about this? And the SPD brass all said - Yeah, it's illegal, but we have so many other things we're dealing with on the Fourth. We have to make sure that people aren't driving drunk, we're worried about people congregating in big crowds and causing problems, worried about gun violence. And Mr. Mayor, we can't respond to all of these calls. And people know that. Everyone knows that the prohibition on fireworks is never enforced. So we have to figure out what we're going to do about this. I don't think we want cops rolling up and down every street on the night of the Fourth. But is there some way we can more effectively limit the sale and use of fireworks? Because I think this is a clear climate problem. And it's not just the risk of someone blowing off a hand, which is bad enough. Now it's a risk to all of us and our air quality and our lungs. We don't want yet another smoke-filled summer just because people shot off fireworks unsafely.
[00:12:44] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I'm someone like you - especially growing up, when I was young in Southern California - loved fireworks. I loved fireworks here, I loved fireworks displays. There was - probably about 10 years ago, now 15 years ago - where it was similar kind of to the Blue Angels conversation - Yeah, I may enjoy it, but it does have negative impacts on others. Pets are freaked out, it's a nightmare to manage pets with the things. And people - because we have sent so many people to war, there are a lot of people dealing with PTSD and complex issues surrounding things that sound like very large explosions, especially when they're unplanned. And I don't know what things are like where you're at, but where I'm at in South King County, fireworks start long before the Fourth and they last long after the Fourth. And they're random. It just can sound like a random - six o'clock this morning - sounded like a random explosion happening - Did a bomb just go off? No, it's fireworks. And so they do just, themselves, have a lot of challenges.
But they're compounding other huge problems that we're dealing with. You talked about the wildfire smoke that we're already dealing with - we're adding smoke on top of smoke in this situation, when we've learned so much more about how important air quality is to health. We're adding fires on top of fires, when we have our fire departments and our state fire officials trying to fight so many fires already. Skamania County residents were dealing with a water shortage because so much water was being used to fight fires. Is it really worth jeopardizing people's access to water here in Washington state? Is it really worth the days - plural - of horrible air quality directly attributed to that? And on days like today, and this week, when it's really hot out - Okay, we are a state that has very low rates of air conditioning inside, people have to go outside to keep from baking while they're in the house inside and now they've got to breathe dangerous air. I don't know that the cost is worth it.
But also - one, you'd be surprised how many people who are progressive in many ways would like cops driving down every street enforcing fireworks bans. But I think what we've learned from all of these bans is that if the supply issue isn't addressed, I don't know that we get beyond this problem. And we've got to figure out a better way, just community-wise, to work on this. It feels like the cat is so far out of the bag. It feels like, whether it's cars or guns or other things that people just feel such an emotional attachment, and some ties to patriotism - which, if your patriotism relies on fireworks, it's not patriotism. But it's just a big challenge. I certainly am so tired of fireworks at this point in time, but I'm not sure what an effective path forward is.
[00:15:39] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, and one thing to note is that the sale of fireworks is banned in much of Western Washington, but one notable exception is tribal lands. And I think people have the experience of driving through tribal lands and seeing these enormous stands where fireworks go on sale two weeks before the Fourth. And Native Americans have, as we all know, been denied their rights for so long, you don't want to come in and try to pass some ban. At the same time, I think it's worth having some conversation with those communities and say - What can we do about this? How can we find a way to bring down the number that are being sold and really try to crack down on the abuse of privately owned fireworks?
[00:16:18] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. You will not find me advocating for telling tribal communities what to do, sovereign governments what to do. But I do think there is a place for conversation among everyone to try and figure out how can we better manage this, at least.
Also want to talk about some races going on right now. We are coming up on the primary election, which will be on August 1st. We're seeing some endorsements begin to trickle out from a number of outlets. Are there any endorsements that have caught your eye to this point?
[00:16:54] Robert Cruickshank: There's one that came out yesterday, which was completely unsurprising - but still notable, I think - which is The Seattle Times not really endorsing Sofia Aragon for King County Council, but really endorsing against Teresa Mosqueda, who they just seem to loathe. And reading their editorial yesterday, the thing to know is that they don't tell you precisely why they loathe Teresa. They talk about - Oh, defunding police, she doesn't take public safety seriously - none of which is true. The real reason they don't like her is because she's incredibly effective at standing up for working people, standing up for their unions, and especially taxing big corporations. JumpStart, the tax on big corporations here in Seattle, would not have happened without Teresa Mosqueda's leadership. The Times is so anti-tax and wants to cut taxes on big corporations - that's what they really care about.
And one of the reasons why this endorsement matters is because it's a tell - it shows what's really going on when The Times makes their endorsements this year. And you see the pattern across these races in Seattle City Council, they'll say - Oh, we're endorsing this person because they sound good and they have experience, and they're going to crack down on public safety, and they're going to outlaw drug use, and resume the War on Drugs - that's their surface level messaging, because they know that's what resonates with their section of the electorate. But the truth here is they want a city council that will repeal the JumpStart Tax. They want a city council that will either slow walk, or undermine, or not even do a capital gains tax - that is what the Blethen family's cared about, above all else - is taxes. And they're furious that someone like Teresa Mosqueda was able to finally get the JumpStart Tax through, and they want to see her defeated because they don't want her going on the King County Council and continuing her successful advocacy for taxing the rich and big corporations. So I think it's important to read Times endorsements with that lens in mind.
[00:18:44] Crystal Fincher: The corporate money in Seattle politics, I think, is pretty safe to say that it's primarily motivated by anti-tax sentiments. We have talked for years and years about Washington state, Seattle included, having the most regressive tax system in the country - meaning that the people at the bottom spend much more of their money on taxes than the people at the top. We have no income tax, and we're light on a lot of other taxes for the most wealthy individuals and businesses here in the state. They want to maintain that. They love the status quo. Now everyone else is suffering under it - we've seen how that impacts homelessness, poverty, education, other services, seniors - everything else is starved because these people want to maintain their wealth and profits to the detriment of the rest of the community. So when we hear these things and when you hear these wedge issues, the cruelty sometimes that comes to those conversations is absolutely there - but that corporate money really is motivated by who's going to ensure that we're not going to pay more taxes.
And so what I think we've increasingly seen, and I'm definitely noticing this cycle, is that these candidates really are not on record about much. And when you read this endorsements, they don't point to - hardly any specifics - you see things like, They seem like they can bring people together. They have a perspective that can reach lots of people. But what are the details? What have they done? And usually that's not included in these endorsements. And so what is it really about? Not what they're talking about in that article - it's about the taxes. And Teresa Mosqueda has been so extremely effective at figuring out what the community needs, responding to what the community actually desires, and putting together a coalition and a revenue package that addresses the most critical needs that we have in the City. It was extremely popular - so popular that it passed and has been really resilient. People not only liked it before passage, they love it now. And on top of that, it was put together so well and so soundly that the JumpStart Tax bailed us out of an economic shortfall. The JumpStart Tax prevented austerity in the City of Seattle. Bruce Harrell used JumpStart money to help stabilize a lot of his priorities. This has been very helpful to everyone with all interests, because it was there to backstop the volatility that comes with not having more stable progressive revenue.
So it is really disappointing to see that. And it feels like they're talking out of two sides of their mouth because they have benefited from that tax. But it's a tax, so it must be bad. And Teresa Mosqueda understands budgets - she understands where to find money, where money needs to be invested to get the biggest benefit - and is looking to take that to the King County Council, which it's desperately needed there. I don't know if many people pay attention to how opaque the King County budget is, but it is really hard for - even legislators - coming out there to understand. And for the public to engage with, it's really difficult. And Teresa Mosqueda has proven that that's her forte, that she can bring more transparency and accountability to the tax money that's being spent - because I do think there are legitimate questions about - Where is this money being spent? How is it being spent? How does this compare to other times? And I think she's in a unique position to do that. It's just wild to see someone do something that a lot of people thought was impossible, and do it so successfully that it's literally benefited everyone in the City, and have that just not be acknowledged.
[00:22:31] Robert Cruickshank: Your point about what corporate money really wants is anti-tax policy - I know that the Seattle Chamber of Commerce was asking city council candidates this year a question that basically went - Do you agree that we should be wisely spending City money and look to cut spending before we raise taxes elsewhere? It's a very leading question that clearly states their goal. They want to roll back as much of JumpStart as they can. And what they're seeing with JumpStart, as well is the state capital gains tax - it's popular. Not only is it effective at raising money, it raises more money than people thought it would. There's a lot of money to be gained through taxing corporations, through taxing the capital gains of wealthy people. It's popular, it works. Teresa Mosqueda could bring that to King County, where there's a huge crisis with transit - we're losing routes, having a hard time retaining operators, need to pay them better, give them better benefits, put more buses out there. That all costs money. And King County usually goes to property taxes or sales taxes to fund transit. Well, put Teresa Mosqueda on that council and you could see something much more progressive in terms of revenue for our transit system - that sends shivers down the spines of every Seattle Times editorial board member, and that's why you saw this absurd attack on Mosqueda in their editorial yesterday.
[00:23:51] Crystal Fincher: What do you think about the role of endorsements - in Seattle, particularly - so far?
[00:23:58] Robert Cruickshank: It's interesting - I've been talking to a few candidates about this. And a couple candidates - some who have just not really done the political thing before, but who have paid attention to politics. Like most of us who are progressive - we don't know much about a candidate or a race - we open The Stranger and look at their endorsements. I first moved here in 2001. I had no idea about anything related to local politics, but I read The Stranger and I'm - Okay, yeah, this makes sense. And ever since, that's usually how I voted until I started paying close attention to things myself. But talking to candidates, and some of these folks are - Gosh, you know, if I don't get a Stranger endorsement, I'm sunk. My campaign's over. And I try and say - No, that's not true at all - I've worked with candidates, local, state, federal candidates around the country who lose a key endorsement and go on to win anyway because they run a great campaign that gets their message out to voters and talks about things that people really care about. But I think here in Seattle, we've gotten to a place where - even though I strongly agree with The Stranger endorsements 9 times out of 10 - I think these newspaper endorsements - The Stranger, The Times, in particular - have become too influential.
And I don't think this is necessarily the fault of the papers themselves. Newspapers do endorsements all the time around the country. And there are other media outlets here in Seattle that do endorsements - South Seattle Emerald does, PubliCola, Urbanist. But it's these two in particular, Stranger and Times, have outsized influence. And I think we, who are progressive activists, voters, people who - I don't know about you, but I'm the type where family and friends say - Robert, I don't know how to vote on this. What should I do? We need to start doing a better job steering people towards other sources of information, in addition to these newspaper endorsements. One of the reasons being they're small-d undemocratic - you can have candidates that have done great work in their community, who've built up a strong network of support, who've really gone out there and hustled to build grassroots backing, who are running a progressive campaign. And if they don't have a great day in an interview, or they aren't buddies with the Blethens - they don't get an endorsement and their campaign's sunk. You can get around that.
And I think we, who are the progressive activists, need to do a bit better job of helping campaigns and helping inform voters how to run smart campaigns, how to get messages out there, and what those messages are. Because there are great candidates who are going to be overlooked in some of these endorsements. And though, again, I'm assuming I'll agree with 9 out of the 10 endorsements that we see in The Stranger when they come out later this month, I still want to see voters look to other sources as well. And I want campaigns to know that they can still win, even if they don't get this or that endorsement. We're finishing up our endorsement process at the Sierra Club - I want people to look at Sierra Club endorsements and think that they matter, and I think they do. But I also want to be part of a campaign - I wouldn't want anyone to look at the endorsements we're doing and have that be the final word. It all needs to be part of building a movement that's grassroots in nature behind campaigns, rather than having people who we might agree with - or not agree with, in the case of The Times - anointing winners and losers. I don't think that's healthy for a progressive movement.
[00:26:58] Crystal Fincher: I agree with that. And I think endorsements are useful as a piece of information as a data point, not as the determining factor. And it is bad for small-d democracy. To your point, it's not necessarily the fault of the papers. But like with The Stranger - The Stranger is batting a thousand in its endorsed candidates getting through the primary. So basically, if you're a progressive candidate and you don't get The Stranger endorsement in your primary, it's bleak. It is that bleak at this point in time. I think part of it is due to us losing so many reporters at so many other outlets, the decline of local media. We used to have a ton of papers in South King County - now we have a few, and those few are dramatically understaffed. And that's the case throughout the City. We used to have more hyperlocal blogs even in the City than we do today - even that is hard. The revenue needs, it's harder to support yourself as an independent journalist, it's harder for newsrooms to afford to put the amount of reporters on things. And I think what I've seen is there's been a decline in the amount of political reporters. There's been a decline in the amount of coverage overall. And that coverage used to do a better job of informing the editorial policies and the endorsements. Hard to ignore something that was covered on the hard side of your paper that was reported and just not address it, or gloss over it, or not acknowledge it's a problem. That's much easier to do when you just aren't able to cover the things, but the coverage isn't happening. So you get these really ideologically focused endorsements - it's not like they weren't ideological before, but now there's not even reporting to back that up in so many situations.
And really one of the reasons why I started moderating debates was because I just want those endorsements to reflect who those candidates really are. I want voters to understand what the candidates really believe, what they're on record voting for, what they're on record doing. Because so many times these days, these endorsements happen that don't talk about anything that is on the record. People read that, they believe it because it's coming from a trusted paper. Then they get into office and govern consistently with their record and people have the surprise Pikachu face like - I never knew this was going to happen. When it's just like - if endorsements and editorial boards would have done a better job of making sure that endorsement reflected who that candidate was, we wouldn't be in this situation. And so I just think it's a disservice, really, to voters to not have who a candidate is and what they've actually done - good and bad, wherever that falls. Just have it be based in reality, and be based on what they've said and what they've done. And that just seems to be playing less of a role in some of these major endorsements, understandably, because there isn't a lot of coverage there. You have people doing their best to interview people in these situations, but it's a big challenge.
[00:29:56] Robert Cruickshank: We also need to draw distinctions between The Stranger and The Times - not just on ideology, but an approach. Like at least at The Stranger, you've got the reporters themselves, comprising their Election Control Board, doing the interviews themselves. And those interviews are tough - tough in a good way. They ask really good hard-hitting, probing questions and they follow up with hard-hitting probing responses - they don't let people wiggle out of something. They're coming in there with some background, they've done research there, and they're coming at it trying to get a sense of who's going to be the most progressive, who's going to fight for us, who's going to be a champion. I like that and I respect that - that's good. The Times is coming in there with a clear bent and an agenda - 9 times out of 10, they know who their candidate is going to be well in advance. And they're just looking for things in the endorsement interview at The Times that they can quote in the editorial, or they want to get the candidate they really don't like and oppose to say something in the interview they can quote from and bash them over the head with it in the editorial of the other person. So I think those are fundamental differences there.
But I think you said, as usual, a lot of really good things here - one of which is the lack of reporting. And I think we've seen local reporting just fall apart, not just in Seattle, but it's even worse once you get outside Seattle. These smaller towns like Burien or Bothell or Kent or Federal Way or whatever it is, the local coverage is almost non-existent. Or when it does exist, it comes from the right wing. And that's not helpful either when there are huge populations in these cities that are progressive and want a progressive solution. And so I think the lack of reporting on a day-to-day basis really just undermines a lot of our ability to run the democracy the way we want to.
I also want to close by saying I think it's a little bit incumbent on candidates and campaigns and consultants themselves to do a better job running smart campaigns. I think here in Seattle, in particular, some folks have become a little too reliant on getting a Stranger endorsement - counting on that to get them through the primary, counting on that to get them through a general election. Yeah, if you get that endorsement, clearly it's worth a lot. It's valuable. I don't know that Mike McGinn would have been mayor without getting The Stranger in 2009, so that worked out. But I think at the same time, you have to run a smart campaign - McGinn ran a really good campaign in 2009. Stranger endorsement might get you through the primary - doesn't always get you through the general election. You have to have a really sharp ability to get your message out there, mobilize your voters, and talk about things that voters care about in a progressive way. I worry that with the dominance of just a couple endorsement sources, that people aren't running as insightful or smart campaigns as they might in other parts of the country.
[00:32:25] Crystal Fincher: I completely agree with that. I also want to talk about a piece about Seattle Public Schools in The Stranger this week by none other than Robert Cruickshank.
[00:32:38] Robert Cruickshank: It comes back to this question of local reporting. And I was looking at some articles a few months ago about the strike that happened at Seattle Public Schools in 2015 - and just the amount of coverage from so many different reporters and so many different outlets, compared to what we have today, was striking. There's very little coverage now happening in the media about what's going on at Seattle Public Schools. The Times will cover it occasionally, but there's a bent to it. The Stranger rarely - and again, they don't have the resources they need to cover everything they want to cover. It's not their fault. It's - the ecosystem is eroded by corporations and private equity and all of that.
But what I wanted to draw attention to is this issue around how the schools are governed. And there is an effort out there, funded by the Gates Foundation through something called the Council for Great City Schools, to impose a model of governance on the school board and the school district that is rooted in corporations and nonprofit governance - where a school board is really the school district's version of the city council, or the legislature, or Congress, right? That's how it works today and how it should work - they're the elected representatives of the democracy to make sure that everything's going properly, that if there's a problem the board can step in and fix it, to hold the bureaucracy accountable. Bureaucrats hate that, and so do the corporate education reformers at the Gates Foundation - they've always been trying to find ways to limit or eliminate the public's oversight and influence in operations of the school district.
And so what they've come up with lately is this thing called Student Outcome Focused Governance, which sounds great - we all want good student outcomes. But in practice, what it means is this tendency - which already existed - to have the board do less and less work and have less and less oversight over district operations. It now locks the board into a really rigid system where the board essentially becomes rubber stamps. The idea is that they give goals to the superintendent - we want a certain amount of third graders to score well on a test. And guardrails - Oh well, you agree you're not going to violate community norms by doing this. It's all really vague stuff, but there's no enforcement mechanism. And ultimately, what happens is that when a school community comes to the board saying - We have a problem here. You're cutting our jazz program at Washington Middle School - which is nearly a third Black students at Washington Middle School. Franklin High School - You're eliminating our mock trial program - the student body at Franklin, about a third Black. A year ago, the district fired the principal at Cleveland High School, who had done a great job hiring a faculty that looked like the diverse community that attends Cleveland, that had done a great job raising graduation rates, especially among Black students. And they fired her because she violated a district mandate to hide the stats on COVID cases. And so the community - again, a lot of Black families show up at the school board saying - Oh my God, this is terrible, you need to intervene. And the board in all these cases says - No, we're not going to do anything. And part of the reason they say no is they say - Well, we've decided we're stepping back from operations. We're not going to interfere with what the superintendent is doing. And this new model of Student Outcome Focused Governance, where we hand over more and more power and policy to the superintendent, is part of that push. And so it's just adopting this corporate mindset where your board of directors just rubber stamps everything and lets the CEO do what they want - that's not how a school district is supposed to operate.
And the nice thing about Seattle is we're not a place where we have Moms for Liberty showing up at the school board meetings wanting to ban books. Now, that is a problem in Kent and a problem in other places - you have to figure out how you manage that democratically. But here in Seattle, we need a board that is engaged - especially with $130 million budget deficit, especially with closing schools. And we're going to see at tonight's board meeting, some of this play out - where they're reviewing their goals and seeing that actually these goals they set out - of third graders achieving certain test score proficiency - aren't being met. In fact, they're pretty far from being met. And so the question is - All right, what are you going to do, board? Are you actually going to intervene on any of this, or are you just going to let it go?
And the last thing I want to mention on this front is the board is looking at, the district really, is looking at closing schools. They might announce this fall maybe as many as 20 schools they want to close, which will be a huge story, a bomb going off in communities when their core of their neighborhood, their school is closed. And people have been asking - Well, what's the board going to do to have public input? The superintendent's plan is to have a couple of public meetings in August, when people are either physically not here or are checked out for other reasons - they're not engaged in their school community - to have this conversation. And is the board going to do anything about that? Are they going to actually bring in the voices of the communities that are going to be most affected and impacted? Or are they just going to say - Eh, we've ceded all that power. We don't really want to do that work. We're just going to sit here and rubber stamp what the administration says. These are fundamental questions about community involvement and governance, small-d democracy - and the board is going off in the wrong direction with very little oversight from the public and certainly not from the media.
[00:37:30] Crystal Fincher: I'm really glad you wrote that because it's such a big problem. And what was striking to me was a couple of things - as you mentioned, just how frequently the voices of parents and students have just been ignored. Where problems - yes, they exist, yes, it's bad, but it's not our place to intervene, basically. And if it's not their place, then what are they doing? It just doesn't seem to make much sense. And in the context of this current election, where we have school board candidates talking about what they want to do, what their goals are, how things would change - that seems like that would be hard to do under this current structure. It seems like - in order to make any kind of progress, to have anything that they're talking about land in the realm of possibility - we have to change this way of doing things first. So it's a bleak situation currently, but it can be changed. And there just needs to be a focus. And I thank you for writing that to help provide that focus - on everyone saying - Wait a minute, this doesn't make any sense. And really just another thing that is bad for public governance.
[00:38:36] Robert Cruickshank: One of the reasons I wrote it is these are conversations happening among a lot of different parents in Seattle that - there's a whole network of people who are engaged and talking with each other about these concerns and growing increasingly frustrated that they're just not getting media coverage. And this is where I point out - yeah, there's so fewer reporters covering the schools these days. As we said, even earlier in this podcast, while we think it's bad in Seattle, it's so much worse once you get just a couple of miles outside of the City, where there are Moms for Liberty people out there pushing really hard to ban books, to attack trans kids, take down Pride flags. And that occasionally gets covered when it gets bad enough, but the constant drumbeat going on in some of these smaller school districts is just not getting the attention it needs to and it's a problem.
[00:39:26] Crystal Fincher: It's a big problem - in Kent, in Highline School District, in Tacoma. It is in our suburbs. And because it isn't getting much pressure and because information is so siloed, we're seeing alliances form - some people who endorse Democratic candidates falling into this trap and then just spiraling from there. And it's a big challenge, but we won't be able to get on top of it without taking action here. And by having those districts that aren't being afflicted with that set an example, policy-wise, for other districts. Seattle is in such a unique position, as a larger city with a progressive population, to be able to do that. And policies like this - you could almost say they were designed to prevent that, that's how it works on the ground. But it absolutely needs to be changed.
Now I also want to talk about some polling that we saw reported in The Seattle Times this week, that may have been surprising to some Seattle Times readers if they read past the headline. What did you see here?
[00:40:32] Robert Cruickshank: There's some fascinating results, including even in today's Times, where - just starting with the one that appeared today - the headline, "1 in 3 Seattle residents thinking about leaving the City." Okay - another "Seattle is Dying" narrative? Well, you read the actual article and look at the polling results - you see that about 30% of those people saying they want to leave are worried about housing costs - turns out they're renters who love Seattle, they feel safe here, they like the City a lot and they don't want to leave. But they feel like they're being priced out, so they're looking - Maybe I move to Tacoma, maybe I move to Montana, maybe I move to Texas - but they don't want to. Then there's another third of those people who are looking at leaving Seattle, who are the ones who say they're concerned about public safety - turns out, overwhelmingly, homeowners making more than $250,000 a year as a household - these are people who have no actual public safety worries. We have issues in Seattle, but this is a very, very safe city by any stretch of the imagination. And yet these are the people who have the most privilege, the most money and wealth in the City, who are being spooked by the coverage they're reading in The Times and thinking - Oh gosh, maybe I need to move out of here, it's become unsafe. No, it's not. But it's interesting to see who gets attention and who doesn't. The Times caters to that wealthy homeowner and stokes their fears about public safety. While the renter - usually younger, usually more progressive - The Times actually attacks what they need. The Times is notorious for opposing housing bills. The missing middle bill, the Times tried to kill earlier this year from the editorial side.
So it's interesting to see these results even pop up in The Times' own reporting. Earlier this week, they had something on public safety and police - shouldn't surprise any progressive that "defund the police" is now unpopular with pretty much most of the electorate. But what remains highly popular across the board - and this shows up in the Chamber's own polling as well - is standing up alternatives to police. That has huge support. People get it - that we need an alternative to sending an officer with a gun to a lot of these calls. We need to preserve that for violent crime or theft in progress - the things that you might want a cop for. Someone in mental health crisis needs a mental health counselor, not a cop. Suspicious person walking down the street - come on, someone else can respond to that who's not going to escalate that with a gun. And the public gets that. And yet that's not reflected in The Times editorializing. And as we know, City Hall, especially the mayor's office, really dragged its feet on setting up alternatives to policing, even though the public is making it clear in these polls that they want that.
[00:43:07] Crystal Fincher: And notable that - even on this program before - Monisha Harrell, former Senior Deputy Mayor, really wanted to stand those up. And unfortunately, she's not going to be with the administration much longer. And even in this and this public safety poll - it is so interesting how people view polls, approach polls, and how media entities are now using polls. One - now, you want to view the entire poll. And what we've seen increasingly from outlets, including The Seattle Times, is the kind of dripping of information. And okay, you drip information - still talk about your methodology, but they seem to be like - Oh, it's all about talking about this - so that's definitely one thing to note. I'm looking at the headlines on some of these things, which are curious. But when you look at the actual results - my goodness, when asked the question - How would you rate the job the Seattle police are doing in the City? - 60% of residents say it's not good. The choices are excellent, good, fair, and poor - 40% say fair, 20% say poor. If you have 60% of residents in your city saying you're not doing a good job - for everyone else, that gets breathless headlines from The Times saying that they're in trouble, maybe they're on their way out, but here it just seems to not factor into the narrative. And not that The Times is going to say - Okay well, disband - that's not going to happen.
But it can inform questions - like in the last municipal elections, we had a number of candidates running on police reform. Now, some with a more cynical view - myself included - when they saw, say, mailers from Sara Nelson saying that she was going to focus on police reform, didn't really believe that. But hey, everyone gets elected, they have a chance. Now, I don't know what Sara Nelson has done in this time on the council about police reform, but that seems to be the thing - just promise it and never get to it. Or that's basically the - You know, hey, we don't need to do any extreme stuff, but things do need to get better. Once again, if you don't talk about what those things are, what your actual plans are, it really commits you to nothing. And surprise, what we have gotten there is nothing - when the public is really saying - Please do something and we're getting increasingly dissatisfied by not doing something. You talked about how people desperately want alternatives to policing. There are few policy proposals in any issue area that are as popular as that. And so my goodness, stand that up, get the job done. And what this could really spur is an examination of why, when it's so popular, it's not happening and the mayor's office is dragging its feet. It's funded by the Seattle City Council, this is really in the mayor's lap. Why isn't this happening? But there just seems to be no curiosity here. And this, to me, is interesting in just how campaigns use polling. A lot of times it's not for horse race stuff - it's to inform where people are at on issues, how to bridge the gap between where people are at and where you are as a candidate, and where you'd like them to be. It's not a - Well, this is where people are at and this is all we can do about it. It's a piece of information, it's not a determining factor for what will happen. And we see that all the time, because polls move and polls change. And the more you talk about an issue, you see the numbers move on it. So it's not set in stone, but it is a piece of information and it just feels like we aren't using that information effectively.
[00:46:30] Robert Cruickshank: I think you can look at some of the progressive campaigns in Seattle that are being run this year, and I'm not sure in some cases what their overall strategy is. Because there's a clear path here - tax the rich, stand up alternatives to policing. And quickly get people housed without sweeping them, without being violent and destructive, but get our homeless neighbors into housing that is good and housing they want to be in - with a door that locks, for example. That's popular. All those things are super popular and they probably can run on that. And then The Seattle Times candidates are going to have a hard time saying - Oh yeah, me too - because their backers don't want that. But these polls are really fascinating because of what they show, and how they not just complicate but openly challenge the narrative that we're seeing from The Times, from the Chamber, and from some of these candidates, people like Sara Nelson and others. This is not a right-wing city. This is a city that sees some problems out there and wants them solved. And wants progressive solutions to them, as long as progressives are able to truly offer them.
[00:47:33] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And shows that everyone across the board is concerned about these problems. There's this narrative that progressives just don't care about crime. Statistically, we're victims more than anyone else. We're victims of this stuff. We are suffering from it - we don't want it, it's unacceptable. What is infuriating is seeing so much money and time devoted to things that have proven not to solve this and being told - But we don't have the money or resources to actually do the things that will. Well, if you would just stop wasting them on the things that won't - how many headlines do we have to see that community is upset because following this sweep, people came back to next door, right across town. Clearly, and literally I've seen four of those headlines in the past two weeks for our region. And yeah, it's so obvious that just saying - Go somewhere else - and violently imposing that and destroying people's property while telling them - Go somewhere else - just doesn't work. The problem is that they don't have homes. If we aren't doing anything to get them in homes, we are just perpetuating the problem and spending a lot of money to do it - it's just so incredibly wasteful, it's so fiscally irresponsible.
[00:48:46] Robert Cruickshank: What this shows is that candidates on the right, Seattle Times, Chamber of Commerce - people like that - are not actually interested in solving these problems. They're not really interested in housing the homeless. They're not really interested in dealing with people who are abusing drugs, addicted to drugs, and doing so in public. They're not really interested in solving the crime problem. What they're really interested in is taking those problems - blowing them up out of proportion, scaring people about them, and then using that fear to turn people against progressive elected officials and progressive candidates. Because as we talked about earlier in the show, what they really care about is cutting taxes for the wealthy and for big corporations. They know that those taxes are extremely popular, but if they can elect candidates who will roll those taxes back and elect them on other issues by stoking those fears - that's a winning political strategy. And it's worked. It's a strategy that exists for a reason - it's often successful. And so we, who are progressive, have to understand that. And we not only need to just point out that that's what the playbook the other team is using, we have to counter that with having the solutions that people really want. And fight hard and effectively get them. This is where Teresa Mosqueda, again, has been very, very good at this. She had, with the JumpStart Tax, tried to fund affordable housing. The council in 2020 had great efforts - great programs funded and approved to solve visible homelessness. And Jenny Durkan just undermined all of them for political reasons. And so that's the challenge that we face - is often progressives are going to get the blame for things that corporate Democrats and right wingers have blocked them from doing.
[00:50:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, could not agree more. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, July 7th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist, one of the best political minds on the West Coast, Robert Cruickshank. You can find Robert on one of the 11 platforms that people are on, probably, @cruickshank. You can follow Hacks & Wonks and me @finchfrii on all platforms. You can catch Hacks & Wonks wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
This week in review, Crystal is joined by metro news columnist and opinion editor for The News Tribune in Tacoma, Matt Driscoll!
They discuss the first closure of a state prison in over a decade, the new statewide drug law likely to fill more jails than treatment centers, Bruce Harrell’s new Downtown Activation Plan, a new poll found 82% of voters don’t believe highway expansions are the best solution for reducing congestion, Washington receiving $1.2B for affordable and reliable high-speed internet access from the Biden administration, and the King County Council deciding that businesses must accept cash.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Matt Driscoll, at @mattsdriscoll.
Resources
“Cydney Moore, Candidate for Burien City Council Position 2” from Hacks & Wonks
“Washington Department of Corrections to close one of 12 prisons” by Joseph O’Sullivan from Crosscut
“Washington's new drug law was 'designed to fill our treatment centers.' Experts say it won't” by Scott Greenstone from KNKX Public Radio
“Harrell’s Downtown Plan for the Perfect Seattle” by Ray Dubicki from The Urbanist
“Stop The Sweeps Protesters Drown Out the Mayor’s Boring Downtown Press Conference” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
“Americans Are Ready to Move On from Highway Expansion Even If Politicians Persist” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
“Many WA residents still don't have internet access. How much will $1 billion help?” by Shea Johnson from The News Tribune
“King County will require businesses to accept cash” by Melissa Santos from Axios Seattle
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Transcript
Coming soon
On this Tuesday topical show, Crystal chats with Cydney Moore about her campaign for re-election to Burien City Council Position 2, accomplishments from her first term, and her consistent progressive track record. They then dig into the details of Burien government’s recent non-handling of their unhoused population as sweep after sweep has disrupted and endangered lives, caused community division, and failed to solve anything. Highlighting the importance of upcoming elections, a 4-3 majority on the Burien City Council has been unwilling to accept an offer of help from King County and has instead focused on retaliation against those working on solutions.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Cydney Moore at @vote_cydney.
Cydney Moore
Cydney Moore is a mother, activist, and elected representative with a long history of service to her community. Her background includes over a decade of experience in nonprofit leadership, and years of experience as a small business owner, a journalist covering politics, and as an advocate for social justice issues including housing for all, fair wages, women's rights, LGBTQIA2S+ rights, immigrant rights, ending the war on drugs, and more. She has worked on policy issues at the city, county, and state level, and currently holds office as a Burien City Councilmember. Cydney also serves on the board of 3 nonprofits (the Burien Arts Association, Tukwila Pantry food bank, and the Multi Service Center), and is on several regional boards and committees, including the Domestic Violence Initiative Regional Task Force. Her other experience includes acting as a Lead Organizer for ACLU Burien People Power, and volunteering for organizations like the Burien Severe Weather Shelter and Burien C.A.R.E.S. Animal Shelter.
Resources
Campaign Website - Cydney Moore
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
I am very excited today to be welcoming Burien City Councilmember Cydney Moore to the program. Welcome, Cydney.
[00:01:00] Cydney Moore: Hi, thank you so much for having me - I'm really excited to be here.
[00:01:04] Crystal Fincher: Well, we certainly have no shortage of things to talk about, especially with recent news and events in Burien. But I do want to start because you are a councilmember, you are running for reelection right now - is to talk about what led you to run for office, to want to serve, and what have you been spending your time doing in your first term?
[00:01:24] Cydney Moore: Well, I feel like I've always been drawn towards public office. Even as a kid, I used to dream about becoming the first female president. Even as far as third grade - I found some old notes in school folders my mom had stashed away where I had written policy proposals for what I would do - and it's pretty consistent, actually. One of the things that I talked about was everyone will have a home. I guess I've always wanted to serve my community, I've been an activist my whole life, I have been working in nonprofit leadership for over a decade now. So this is my passion, this is what drives me - creating a better community for all of us, creating a better future for our people - that's what gives me joy.
In my first term - it's been a rough go - I took office in January of 2020, right before the pandemic hit, so I had a lot of goals and aspirations for what I wanted to do, and we ended up scrambling to mitigate the harms that were ongoing in the crisis we were all facing. But throughout that, we were able to accomplish some great good. One of the things that we were able to do in Burien that I'm really, really proud of was approve hazard pay for essential workers throughout the pandemic, and we also implemented an eviction moratorium that kept people from losing their homes throughout the entire state of emergency in Washington. I also have been involved with passing a groundbreaking list of renters' protections in Burien. We're leading the charge in some of these areas and other cities are certainly looking to us as an example - I'm incredibly proud of that.
We have launched a new co-responder model that integrates behavioral and mental health professionals and crisis responders alongside police on calls. I am hoping that we can work towards having an individual standalone crisis response team that can call in police if needed, but can operate independently. I proposed an increase in our human services budget, so I'm really, really proud of that - that was just in our last budget cycle and it actually funds a lot of incredible services across our city, including things like rental assistance, utility assistance, education opportunities, mental health support, therapy for children, youth and adults, food banks - just all the good things - doubled the city arts budget. Right now, we are working on passing legislation to raise the minimum wage here in Burien - very, very excited about that, that's something that I started working on initially right after I got into office and that sort of got put on halt due to the pandemic, so I'm really excited to be taking that back up again. I created a lobby effort to King County Council through my work with the Domestic Violence Initiative Regional Task Force, serving as a representative from our council, to allocate additional funding for domestic violence protection order advocates, and proud to announce that we actually got $375,000 allocated to the protection order advocacy program. So, yeah - I think we've done some good, I'm really proud of what we have been able to accomplish. I'm really proud of my track record so far in office, and I'm hoping to continue the work.
[00:04:54] Crystal Fincher: It is an impressive track record, particularly with new councilmembers coming in, dealing with things during the pandemic. But, hey - it sounds like you guys have a totally progressive council - there's no friction or issues in Burien, is there?
[00:05:10] Cydney Moore: You know - it's funny because it's not funny. But if you don't laugh, you cry. So one would think that - forward-facing - our council is progressive. We have people - the majority of our council has claimed to be progressive - they ran on progressive values. And as of late, we're not seeing quite so much of that as we would like. There has been a lot of divisiveness. And I'll tell you - getting positive things passed is like pulling teeth with our council - to put it plainly. It's brutal. It's painful work. And I really wish that we were a little more cohesive and aligned in our goals and our values so that we could do more work because it is slow-going and it's unfortunate.
[00:05:59] Crystal Fincher: It is unfortunate, and we've seen it blow up in the news. So, is it that there's a 4-3 kind of moderate conservative majority on the council now?
[00:06:07] Cydney Moore: Yes, that's very accurate. You can see a pretty consistent 4-3 split on just about everything major, and especially when it comes to passing progressive policies. Absolutely.
[00:06:21] Crystal Fincher: So, Burien has been in the news because of sweeps, a lease, what to do with the unhoused population, and whether to help, how to help, the county has stepped in. This has been an ongoing saga that we have been talking about during the week-in-reviews. But can you walk us through what has been happening and where things stand?
[00:06:42] Cydney Moore: Okay. So, we had a number of unhoused people who were camping on property that is jointly owned and operated by our City and the King County Library system. Our building - the first two stories is our Burien Library, and then the third story is City Hall, and we share a space on the ground floor for city council meetings and multipurpose uses for the library. So, there's a condo association of those two entities that operates this building. We had a lot of campers out there for quite a long time. Some of them had been there for - I'd say, a year, maybe more - and it was fairly mellow. A lot of these people are individuals that those of us who've worked directly with our homeless population have known for, sometimes years. But the condo association decided they wanted to sweep people off the property - and our city council and our city manager essentially took a hands-off approach, deferred to the condo association, and we did not take action to allocate new space for people to go. We directed our contractors that provide outreach services, LEAD and REACH, to go out and offer people what support they can, but it's been abundantly clear there is not shelter space available in Burien - we don't have any significant shelter here. And the shelters in the surrounding area are absolutely full, so we were told outright there aren't shelter beds available for most of these people.
We moved forward with the sweep, and I worked very diligently for the weeks leading up to the sweep to try and find any alternative options for people in terms of places they could relocate to, looking for different property, reaching out to different organizations, and fell short. So the night before the sweep, myself and my dear friend and colleague, Charles Schaefer, who was then the chair of our planning commission, we went out and we told the unhoused people camping there - We don't have anywhere for you to go. Do you have any plans for where you might go? And most of them said - No, they had no idea where to go, otherwise they would have gone there already. Most of them were scared and didn't know what was going to happen to them, and so Charles and I let them know legally they have a right to camp on public property - besides parks, because Burien has a ban on camping in parks. And we have very little public property in the city that is not parks. It's very minimal - and I can say that with a very strong degree of certainty because I've looked, I've looked at length - but we did locate a small piece of public land one block away in our downtown core, and we told people - If you camp here - legally, that is allowed and per Martin v. Boise, the Ninth Circuit Court ruling that says we can't criminalize homelessness, our city will not sweep you until policy changes or they figure out some loophole. We told them straight up - the City doesn't condone this, we're not acting on behalf of the City, the City is not sanctioning this, and quite frankly, people are gonna be upset, and the City is probably going to work to remove you as quickly as possible. But for the time being, until there's some other alternative, you can go here if you choose to - and they did.
And so the following morning, we had a big media circus - lots of people coming out to watch the sweep, see what happens. A lot of people in the area were devastated at the prospect, but there were, alternatively, people who were very excited to see people removed and were under the impression that by removing them from this piece of property, they were somehow going to disappear. Again, many of these unhoused people have been living here in Burien for years - this is their home - even if they don't have a house, they have strong roots here, connections, family even. So there was quite an uproar when people came out the next morning and realized that the problem had not gone away, they didn't solve anything, and people they thought they were going to disperse out of our downtown core moved one block away, and at that point could not be swept. Our city council and our city manager collaborated to take action to lease out that property quickly, and they decided to lease the property to Burien C.A.R.E.S., which is our contracted animal shelter here. They leased the property for $185 a month, which has been speculated as far below fair market value - it's a sizable piece of land in a prime location, so that is of some concern. And as soon as the lease was signed, they conducted a sweep on that property and did not allocate any space for those people to relocate to. I begged them for months, I tried at every city council meeting between the two sweeps to ask our council to consider any option. I made a few proposals - none of them are ideal, but emergency temporary places that people could stay for the time being while we sorted through it - and they denied all asks for taking action.
So they swept the unhoused population again, which had grown in size because people here have, again, close ties, and there are people who I know of personally who typically tend to avoid camps, that realized that that was a safe place, that there was safety in numbers there, that it was someplace they would be able to stay in contact with people like service providers and family members because they were not hiding off on the side of the road or in a bush somewhere - they were centrally located and stable for the time being. So they got swept again, and Charles and I went up there again and informed people - Hey, we've been looking, we still haven't found anything, but we have located some other public property that is big enough for you to camp on if you decide to go there. Charles and I consulted the King County parcel viewer and a number of city maps, and we found a little slice of - patch of grass - that ran adjacent to a park just a few blocks away. And according to the King County parcel viewer and all the city maps we consulted, that piece of land was somehow overlooked or whatever - it just wasn't part of the park, so legally, it would be acceptable for people to camp there.
So many of the people relocated there, and they stayed there for a couple of days until one of our city councilmembers apparently called the police. The police said they wouldn't sweep them because as far as the police could see, that's not part of the park and it's legal for them to be there. She contacted our city manager, who took it upon himself to do some digging, and found one map in our city files that contradicted all the other maps we have and said that it was a park. And so he told the police - This is a park, I'm deciding that this is a part of a park, you have to go remove them. A testament to the ambiguity of the legal status of whether this piece of land is park or not park is the fact that our police will immediately sweep people who are in a park - that's just a policy that's standard ops for them. They did not immediately sweep people. They posted a 72-hour notice, giving people time to get their things together and try and relocate. City council still did not take any action.
So Charles and I went out and spoke to people again, and the options continue to get increasingly worse - the land is increasingly smaller every time that we are finding. We let them know there is a very small piece of dirt that runs along our main downtown strip, right next door to the Library-City Hall building - literally on the next block, and two blocks down from the original lot that they went to after the first sweep - so they're right back where they started, pretty much. But a number of our unhoused people camping out have relocated to this very small patch of dirt. Some people decided to go try their odds camping on some vacant private property that had sat empty for a while - they managed to go unnoticed for a few weeks. But I got a text last Tuesday from one of their mothers - and she's a very kind woman, she does what she can, but she lives in Puyallup and is on the verge of homelessness herself, so she's not able to fully support her son - but she let me know that there were 14 people who were camping on this private lot in the north end of town, and police had just arrived with a trespass order, and they were giving them two hours to get out. So I went out again and tried to get whoever I could to come out and help get people assistance in relocating and getting their stuff, and trying to make sure they could get where they were going to go without losing too many of their important belongings. And some of them decided to come down to the patch of dirt on 152nd and our downtown core and join the others, and some of them decided to drag their tents to a median in the middle of a very busy road just down the block, and it's a really dangerous area in that particular corridor, but they asked the police - Is this public land, are you gonna sweep us? And the police said no, and so they decided that they were gonna take their chances. And so to my understanding, there are still a couple of people who are camping out in a very small island median in the middle of a very busy road.
And to this day, our council has refused to take action. We have had an offer come in from King County of $1 million and 35 Pallet homes, which house two people apiece, to allocate property and help us operate a safe space for people. Our council voted that down.
[00:16:43] Crystal Fincher: And I wanna talk about this for a minute - because you talked about what was happening on the ground, but during this process, the City of Burien received a letter from the Office of the King County Executive, Dow Constantine, from his legal counsel, saying - Hey, it is illegal to sweep people off of public property when there is no shelter available. You basically made it explicit, City of Burien, that there's no shelter available. And your police force are actually county sheriff's deputies who are contracted by the City of Burien, so because they fall under the authority of the county as deputies, we are saying they can't participate in that - which caused quite an uproar. What was the response to that?
[00:17:25] Cydney Moore: People were confused and upset. Some of us were very pleased. I was very surprised when I found out our city got that letter, and I was very grateful to our county for their response and taking a stance that they're not going to violate people's constitutional rights to exist in a public space with nowhere else to go.
[00:17:47] Crystal Fincher: And that's really the crux of it right there - is that time after time, as we've seen in so many other cities, just sweeping someone and saying - Well, you can't camp here - does not do anything to address the issue of homelessness. It doesn't do anything to provide shelter, to provide housing, to address that underlying problem. And so many times, people who come at this problem from the issue of - Well, the people being there, their existence, me having to look at them and deal with them is the problem - when the root of the problem is they don't have a home, and so many other issues become exacerbated, and so many things get destabilized from not having a home. So as you said, they move from one location to another to another, because it's not like there's any attempt to work on housing from the council majority. And also, illustrative of how councils work, you can have people on very different sides, but the majority is going to carry the day. So although there were three people who have been working diligently on the council to try and provide a real solution that doesn't just create the next spot for someone to camp, or once you've made all of the spots in one city illegal, just push them into another city and say it's their problem - it's about really finding a way to provide people with shelter. Because it is not ideal for people to be sleeping outside. As you said, it's dangerous, it's completely suboptimal. So this offer from the county that came in - about three weeks ago now, I think - has the majority of the council done anything to take advantage of the million dollars, the 35 Pallet shelter help?
[00:19:24] Cydney Moore: No, we had that brought before us for a vote, and our council majority declined and they voted it down. And at this point, our next regularly scheduled council meeting isn't until July 17th, and so we are working to take advantage of this gap to rally public support and coordinate with a variety of different organizations in our community to hopefully put pressure on council enough that they will take action. Burien is actually in the middle of a budgetary shortfall - we're facing an impending fiscal cliff if we don't raise taxes and fees and find new revenue sources. And so turning down a million dollars for anything at this point seems pretty irresponsible, but certainly turning down a million dollars to serve our unhoused and vulnerable population is - it's unconscionable in my mind. I can't tell you how many times I've sat there thinking how amazing it would be if somebody dropped a million dollars in front of me to go help the homeless - that's literally the stuff that dreams are made of. And to turn it down is - I just can't fathom why anybody would say no to that.
And like you pointed out, sweeps are dangerous. People living outside - it's dangerous. Unhoused people are disproportionately targeted as victims of harassment and violence. And we have data that shows that sweeps cause a number of disruptions to people's lives - they result in people losing things like documentation, identification, medication - disrupting any kind of progress they are making towards stability. It interrupts their contact with service providers, case managers, family members that serve as a support system. And they increase the mortality rate of unhoused people. It just - they're dangerous. Burien already has a disproportionately high mortality rate for our unhoused population compared to King County as a whole. So we are facing a very real crisis here - our region is facing a homelessness crisis in general, but Burien is finally having to stare that issue in the face and we're failing in our response, our leaders are failing in our response. And our people are suffering as a consequence of that. And it is quite devastating to witness, especially being on the ground in direct contact with these people that some of us have worked with for years. We know their names, we know their faces, we know some of their backstories, some of them I know family members of. It's an ugly thing to witness seeing people who are already in crisis being shuffled around and disregarded and hung out to dry - by leaders who are tasked with protecting the safety and wellbeing of all of our constituents. So it's disappointing, to say the least.
[00:22:05] Crystal Fincher: Very disappointing. And very disappointing that your attempt to help people while following the law, and the law that the Office of King County Executive Dow Constantine very helpfully and forcefully advised the City of Burien that they were running afoul of in their current way, their reaction wasn't to say - Okay, let's pause and reevaluate. Obviously we're getting legal advice that this is illegal. It does jive with the court decision saying that we can't sweep without offers of shelter. We've pretty much just flatly admitted that there aren't offers of shelter. So maybe we pause and talk with some of our partners and figure out ways to get these people housed. No one wants people out on the street - if we can try and work to find a way to get them into shelter, that would be excellent. They decided not to do that. They decided to double down on the way things were going, to basically - I think a fair characterization to the letter from the King County Executive's legal counsel was indignation from the city manager, who then went forward and basically just kept doing the things that he was doing, even appearing to not check with the council before some of the things - although he does have the support of the council majority.
So now we're in a situation where they haven't taken up any of this offer to house people, and people are being harmed by this. People are out exposed to the elements and to a very hostile, activated, conservative, radical element that has been drawn to Burien over this issue. And some of the contentious scenes that we've seen across the region with people just talking in very dehumanizing ways about the homeless population - really not seeing them as people, really just seeing the problem is that they're inconvenienced by having to look at people and not really caring about what that person is going through - that's a challenge. So they haven't had time to address the offer of a million bucks and Pallet shelters. They did have time, however, to hold a special meeting to consider censuring you and to consider removing Charles, who you talked about - the Chair of the Planning Commission - because of your helping and trying to find a solution to this problem. What in the world? What was your reaction to that?
[00:24:16] Cydney Moore: Yeah, I spoke to this during the special meeting when the council was considering removing Charles from the Planning Commission - who I might add, has served our community dutifully for many years and has been serving the homeless directly, I think, for 14 years in our city - so he knows them very well. And what are you going to expect from somebody who's been in that field for so long other than trying to help? But my response is that - throughout history, there is a pattern of punishments being doled out to people who try to help persecuted minority groups, whether that's people based on their race or their religion or who they love - it's a consistent pattern. And history does not look kindly on those who are enacting those punishments against people who try and help. I told our council, I said - Charles is going to have to live with what we do tonight for the rest of his life, or at least until our council makeup changes. But every person on this council is also going to have to live with their decision and this decision may follow you. Are you prepared to answer for it, for what you do tonight? 'Cause I'm very comfortable in my position, but I don't know if later on when people ask you - Why would you do this? - if you'll have justification or excuses enough to explain why you would take such action.
It was very, very clear that what Charles and I have done is try to inform our constituents of what our laws are and how best to comply. And I think that's something that really needs to be noted in these conversations - these unhoused people have been asking how they can follow the law. They're asking - Where is it legal for me to go? Where can I be? Where am I allowed to exist? And our city has offered no real option, but has publicly stated - Oh yeah, you can be on public property - until we find a loophole to take it away from you. And you can be on sidewalks, which obviously is true to the extent of people can stay on sidewalks large enough where they're not obstructing them - you have to maintain a three feet clearance path on a sidewalk and there's not that many sidewalks that are wide enough for people to camp on in Burien without obstructing. So these individuals are literally just asking their leaders - Where can I go? Where am I allowed to be? And we did our best to inform our constituents of what the City's policies are, where they are legally allowed to go, how they can comply with the laws. And that's the duty and obligation of any public servant, especially a councilmember that makes those laws and policies and a planning commissioner, the Chair of the Planning Commission, whose job it is to advise on zoning and land use issues. So arguably we were doing our job to the best of our ability and to the expectation that I think we should all be held.
And our council - the term that has been used by many in our community - used Charles as a scapegoat. They can't remove me - I am an elected official. But Charles was appointed, and they found a target and took advantage of that. And I think it just reflects really, really poorly on our council and on our city as a whole that our leadership would penalize someone for informing people of their constitutional rights and informing people of knowledge that is public, by the way - all of the information that we shared is all public knowledge, it's all easily accessible on government websites. Yeah, I don't know how they felt comfortable doing that. I really don't understand any valid justification for that - and that's what I said.
[00:28:08] Crystal Fincher: Well, I'm gonna hop in here and editorialize. We know there wasn't a valid reason for that - but as we've seen in Tennessee, as we've seen in so many other places - if they feel they have the power to do it, they will. They had the power to remove Charles. I think they initially thought they may have the power to remove you. You were actually, as you said, doing your job. They still have not taken up the offer to house people. Their job is to serve and take care of their constituents. They have constituents who have been out on the street. There's an offer of shelter and money to make that happen available that they just won't do - they would rather just sweep people, just kick them out - knowing how destabilizing that is and knowing how much it has failed directly in the City of Burien. This clearly isn't working. It's really expensive to do - requires a lot of public enforcement resources, law enforcement resources, parks resources - requires a whole lot and it's not making a difference. So one would think that they would stop doing the same thing over and over again - getting failing results - and start to do something that would work. The county didn't just say - This is illegal, you can't do it. They offered an olive branch and said - And we will help you. And they basically slapped that hand away and said - No, we're good. In fact, we're not even gonna deal with that. We're just gonna try and kick out people who disagree with us and enact these really retaliatory actions. And it is really a shame.
But what happened was lots of people saw this and people of all cross-ideological spectrums - I don't think many of the commissioners who wound up taking action would call themselves progressive, but they do call themselves public servants - and were appalled at this negligence and scapegoating and retaliation by the majority on the city council, mayor, deputy mayor, city manager, others, and said - This is unacceptable - and resigned in protest. And the entire Planning Commission resigned in protest and several other commissioners throughout the city - I think 12 in total resigned from their position. So now, Burien is in a crisis - doesn't have a planning commission, has several other commissions short-staffed. Many cities - this is comprehensive planning time where the Planning Commission is doing some heavy lifting - and now there is nothing there, because they decided to act petty and retaliate and not use money offered to them for free to house people. So where do things go from here?
[00:30:35] Cydney Moore: That's a good question. As you said, we don't have a planning commission now, and they were absolutely in the middle of a major project. We haven't heard from our city any official statement in regard to what the plan is going to be to fill these vacancies. So our entire Planning Commission is gone. Our Parks Board has lost their chair, the vice-chair, and another member. We've lost at least one Airport Committee member and arts commissioner. Like we - arguably our city is in a spiral right now, and I don't know what's going to happen next. I don't know what we're going to do, I haven't heard anything from our leadership, I haven't heard anything from our city manager - certainly haven't heard anything regarding plans to move forward. As I said, my goal right now is to work with my fellow progressives on council to lobby as much support as we can and pressure as we can to get the council majority to approve use of this million dollars and designate a safe space for people to go.
Our unhoused population is still waiting for a response and things aren't getting better. And as you said, there is significant anger in the community and there's been a large conservative presence - and the hostility there is not dissipating. I'm aware of people who have - like I said, unhoused people are always disproportionately targeted as victims of harassment and violence, but people have been very aggressive towards our unhoused people here throughout this - throwing fireworks at their tents, stealing their tents, and bragging about it openly. There are people who are openly in public talking about wanting to shoot them and shoot me. So this violent rhetoric has maintained and our unhoused people are out there exposed with nowhere to go, no safety, no walls to hide behind. And so we're going to continue pushing for our council to take action - because we don't have an option not to, honestly - doing nothing is just not an option in my mind and in the mind of many others in our community.
As far as our city operations go - like I said, I really just don't know. We are legally required to have a planning commission and to have a comp plan, a comprehensive plan, and we just don't have the people now. And it usually takes quite a while for us to go through the process of putting out a call for new applicants and going through the screening process, interview process, all of this. And quite frankly, the strain on our staff has been significant - like you said, it takes a lot of resources to engage in things like sweeps. Our staff is already pretty bare bones. Burien operates with some incredible people, but they are stretched thin. And having to call multiple special meetings certainly doesn't help with their workload. Having to engage in sweeps doesn't help with their workload. And now having to add on to their plate - trying to figure out what to do with a whole bunch of empty spaces and an entire empty planning commission - yeah, I don't know what that process is going to look like, or how quickly any of that will move forward. You would expect our city manager to be offering some insight or - the City was really quick to respond to that letter from King County, but obviously not so quick to respond to the fact that we have had a mass resignation from our public servants that we need, we legally have to have. So I'm waiting with bated breath, just like everyone else, to see what happens there.
[00:34:20] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I should note, while they haven't taken up any substantive action at all to try and house people - even though there's an offer of a million dollars, 35 Pallet shelters, they've had meetings to censure and retaliate against their opponents - they also had time to welcome Prime Minister Modi from India, who has taken a lot of heat from the human rights community for human rights violations, free speech violations. They rank very, very low - I think they've dropped from something like 140th to just under 160th out of 180 in the World Press Freedom Index. Certainly seeing a lot of protests - I think there's no one who says - Ah, everything is great. And yes, this is someone we should celebrate and welcome. Although those three Burien city councilmembers did somehow and they found time for that, but not time to take up the ability to house their residents who are without homes right now.
Now, before we close - usually we talk about a lot of other stuff with candidates - this time, I felt it was appropriate to talk about everything that has been happening with the situation in Burien because it has been in the news and is so pressing - and is still just languishing with the council not doing anything at the time that we're recording. But this is happening also while you're running for reelection. And you've drawn several opponents - I think most, if not all, come from the people who are virulently anti-homeless - is the way to say it. They don't seem to have any solutions or care at all about the actual housing - Just get them out of here - seems to be the thing. And they're running to take a hard line on getting those people out of here and getting someone who actually is doing the work to house people out. What can people do if they're looking for more information about your campaign?
[00:36:09] Cydney Moore: I would encourage everyone to check out my website - it's votecydney.com - C-Y-D-N-E-Y. Sign up for updates, sign up to volunteer. Please donate if you can - I run a grassroots campaign, always have - I'm not a particularly wealthy person that's self-funding my operations here, so anything that you can do to help will help us get through this election. I am working very diligently with our partners in the community to build a coalition of support for my campaign. But this is of the people, by the people, for the people - so if you can, please contribute however you are able to. Also, you can always follow me on social media - @vote_cydney on Twitter, Facebook - Cydney Moore for Burien City Council. I welcome any feedback people might have, any input you might have, any ideas for creative campaigning you might have. This is rough - it's a rough time to be dealing with all of these things and running a campaign - and I have drawn out a lot of scrutiny. I guess you could say that I'm a pretty polarizing person at this moment and people are drawing some hard lines. And people aren't always falling on the side of those lines that you would expect. I have had people who don't actually necessarily agree with my position, but do respect the fact that I'm willing to stand up for my position, who have expressed their support. And I have people who you would think are progressive, who you would think would be aligned with me, who are pissed - they're really mad at me for what I've been doing. And so, yeah, I can use all the support I can get at this time.
And what I'll say about my opponents are the most vocal one is avidly anti-homeless and has been actively asking our council to sweep people and seems to be of the mindset that we should let them hit rock bottom, which I guess in my mind means let them die - because if you're outside and have nothing and have nowhere to go and have - barely even have clothes on your back, no food, no safety, I don't know how much more rock bottom it gets than that than just letting them die. And that's what happens. Our unhoused people are dying. So that's certainly concerning and not somebody that I would want representing me in elected office in my city. And my other two opponents - I just have not seen or heard much at all from - I literally just met one of them for the first time the other day. I've never missed a city council meeting in all of my years of serving, and I've never seen those individuals attend a single meeting. I've never seen them out in the public engaging with people, and I'm actively involved in a lot of things - I serve on the board of three different nonprofits in this community, I volunteer for a number of different organizations and causes. And so it concerns me that we have people running that I don't know and nobody that I know who are also involved in the community have ever seen, so I can't speak to their values.
But I'm here and I am present and I'm active and I will remain so. And you can look at my track record - my voting record is available on the City of Burien website and I encourage everyone to look to it - I don't think you're ever gonna find a single vote I've ever taken that is not solidly progressive. So I'm - like I said, I'm pretty consistent in that - and I am adamant about maintaining the fight for positive change in our city. And I would ask and invite everyone who is willing to join me in that. What happens here in Burien has a ripple effect across our region - like I said, we are leading as an example in a lot of different ways for a lot of different policy issues. And so community doesn't end at city limits - what happens here can absolutely impact our neighboring cities and cities across this area and sometimes across the country - there are other cities who have looked at us and our policies from around the country. So please help me because there are a lot of people who are against what's going on here and we need all the help we can get. We need people who will continue to fight for what's right in office and keep things real in local politics.
[00:40:14] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Cydney Moore. And we'll continue to follow the events happening in Burien. Thank you.
[00:40:22] Cydney Moore: Awesome, thank you so much for having me. And I look forward to following your future coverage.
[00:40:27] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
This week in review, Crystal is joined by Seattle political reporter and editor of PubliCola Erica Barnett! They discuss Everett’s OceanGate Inc.’s submersible tragedy, King County Regional Homelessness Authority turmoil, Burien’s continuing crisis, a poll showing residents favor a capital gains tax for Seattle, Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell leaving the mayor’s office, what may happen to the officer who hit and killed Jaahnavi Kandula, and local publications not crediting Erica and Publicola for their work.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica Barnett, at @ericacbarnett.
Resources
“Jorge Barón, Candidate for King County Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks
“Homelessness Authority Distances Itself from Lived Experience Coalition, Won't Re-Bid Entire System This Year as Planned” from PubliCola
“Homelessness Authority Attempts to Wrest Control Over Controversial, Consequential Oversight Board” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“Burien planning commissioner removal is latest in string of encampment drama” by Anna Patrick from The Seattle Times
“Burien Decides to Take No Action on Encampment on Its Property, Opening Path for Private Sweep” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“Poll shows Seattle residents support citywide capital gains tax” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times
“Mayor Harrell’s niece out as senior deputy mayor” by Sarah Grace Taylor from The Seattle Times
“Seattle Police Officer Was Driving 74 MPH When He Hit and Killed 23-Year-Old Pedestrian” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Transcript
Coming soon
On this Tuesday topical show, Crystal chats with Jorge Barón about his campaign for King County Council District 4 - why he decided to run, how 17 years at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project has prepared him for the role, and his thoughts on generating progressive revenue for county services, drug possession and substance use disorder, addressing overcrowding in the King County Jail, improving frontline worker wages and workforce issues, air quality and climate change, and the importance of oversight and genuine community engagement in policy implementation.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Jorge Barón at @jorgebaron.
Jorge Barón
Jorge L. Barón has spent his legal career advancing and defending the rights of marginalized communities, and has served as executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project for more than 15 years. Jorge has fought egregious policies like the Muslim Ban and family separation as well as built coalitions that drove significant policy change and generated hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for immigrant communities. Jorge has had the honor of being awarded the King County Council’s MLK Medal of Distinguished Service and served on the Joint Legislative Task Force on Deadly Force in Community Policing. Jorge is originally from Bogotá, Colombia, immigrating with his mom and brothers at the age of 13. Jorge is a graduate of Yale Law School and Duke University, a proud former union member, and public school parent.
Resources
Campaign Website - Jorge Barón
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I am excited to be welcoming a candidate for King County Council District 4 - Jorge Barón. Welcome to Hacks & Wonks, Jorge.
[00:01:03] Jorge Barón: Thank you so much for having me, Crystal. I'm pleased to be here.
[00:01:05] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - we're pleased to have you here. I guess just starting out - what made you decide to run for King County Council?
[00:01:12] Jorge Barón: Yeah, it's a great question because I think for me, this is a new adventure that I'm embarking on. I think if you'd asked me 10 years ago if I was going to run for elected office, I would have said no. But I think what's happened over the last - since that time - is that I've seen, of course, working in the immigration field for the last 17 years, I've seen a lot of bad policy, but during the Trump administration, I saw a particular period of really egregious attacks on communities that I'm a part of, that I care about, and that I was working on behalf of. And I also saw how state and local government played an important role in protecting people. And I also saw people, frankly, that I've considered mentors and people who I admire - like Representative Pramila Jayapal and Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda - who also went from being advocates on the outside of government to go inside and to actually work on policy issues at the government level, and saw how effective they've been in creating some policy change in a progressive direction.
So that gave me an inspiration, and of course, I've continued working here at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, but last year I made the decision to step away from this work that I've been doing for now 17 years. And when I started thinking about what would come next, I thought that working at the local government level would be an avenue to further some of the same social justice issues that I've been pursuing for nearly two decades, and that gave me the inspiration. And of course, when Councilmember Kohl-Welles announced that she would be stepping down, saw an opportunity to put myself forth and to share with folks in District 4 - where I live - that I would be a good advocate for the social justice values that I've been pursuing for a long time now.
[00:02:46] Crystal Fincher: How do you think your work at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project has prepared you to run and serve?
[00:02:52] Jorge Barón: Yeah, no - it's a good question. And I've been very fortunate, of course, to have had the privilege of serving in this role. And for a long time, I thought that something else would pull me away from leaving here, and it - nothing better came along, but I felt like it was a good time for me to allow other people to step into leadership roles here and for me to take a break and do something new. But the experience that I've had here, I think, has prepared me for this role in a couple of different ways. First of all, obviously, I've had the opportunity to be the chief executive here at this organization - that we've been able to grow into now the second-largest nonprofit law firm in the Pacific Northwest, and I think that experience of being a leader in that role has given me an opportunity to learn a lot about how to manage organizations and how to run an effective organization.
And I think the other part that's been really important in the work that we've done here that I think will be helpful - very important at the county level - is that I have been able to work in partnership with many stakeholders in building coalitions that have enabled important policy change at the state level. And one of the things that has inspired me to run at the County Council level is seeing that right now the county is facing a very difficult period because of the limitations that the state government has placed on - particularly on the revenue side - and I think we need people who are going to be able to build the kind of coalition to push the State Legislature, to work in partnership with our state legislators to make sure that we get some changes - that I think a lot of people recognize are needed - to the way that the county is funded, to make sure the county can actually operate effectively and carry out its responsibilities. So that kind of coalition building - working with state legislators in making actually progressive and important changes happen at the state level - which is what I've been able to do here, is something that I feel is going to serve me well if I get the privilege of serving on the council.
[00:04:41] Crystal Fincher: When you talk about the issue of revenue, which is very important - and as we talk about this and the things we'll talk about as we continue, lots of them will require additional revenue. More money is needed. But as you talk about, the progressive revenue options that exist at the county level are limited. What progressive revenue options will you pursue, if any, and how will you go about doing that?
[00:05:04] Jorge Barón: Yeah, no, I think it's important to talk about it because that's absolutely one of the key things that I think we need to discuss and make sure that voters understand. And I've seen it, and it's been frustrating to me actually, from - in my role at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, we've been advocating before the councils - at least myself, I've been advocating before the council since around 2008, 2009. And even since that time, the conversation had been that the county was in an unsustainable fiscal path, right? That we had this structural deficit, and particularly because of the 1% tax lid that restricts how much property tax revenue the county can collect, that we were in this unsustainable path. And in some ways, I feel like we haven't - as a community, we haven't felt the actual impact of that because inflation has been relatively low during that period, because there have been different periods of COVID relief money, for example, that came in the last couple of years that in some ways mitigated the full impact of that situation.
But we're starting to now, and the upcoming budget cycle - we're facing, as a county, $100 million shortfall. And so I think now we're gonna start feeling the direct impact of those changes. And so I think we radically need to restructure how the county is funded and move away - I don't think we're gonna be able to move away completely, obviously - but at least shift some of the burden that currently is impacting particularly low income and even moderate income households here in King County and make sure that we create the opportunity. And again, this is one of the challenges - is that it's not something the county directly can do, but we will need to work with the state legislators to provide those opportunities for some changes so that we become less reliant on things like the sales tax and the property tax. And we have opportunities to have the revenue come from sources that have greater ability to pay. Obviously this is not only an issue for the county. Obviously at the state level, we also need to be working on that because we have the most regressive tax structure in the country. And so at all levels of government, we need to do this.
And my hope is to be able to bring new energy to this conversation, to help talking about it all the time that - my campaign have been trying to talk about it - that's the first thing I always talk about because I think a lot of people don't understand the situation that we're in and that we're gonna be facing in terms of county services having to be drastically cut at a time when we see so much need in the community and people are saying - Why aren't we tackling these issues? Why aren't we tackling housing affordability, the homelessness crisis? - all kinds of issues that we can talk about. And those things - we need more investments to be able to make progress in those areas. And so the regressive revenue options need to be something that we absolutely put top of mind in talking to voters and talking to state legislators.
[00:07:46] Crystal Fincher: Right, and you talked about how to handle issues in terms of public safety, behavioral health, and how important that funding is. In the wake of the State Legislature increasing criminalization of possession of drugs and public use of drugs - making it a gross misdemeanor. And in the wake of the Seattle City Council weighing this issue themselves and currently still searching for a path forward on how to approach drug use and abuse in the City of Seattle - how do you view this in King County? Where do you stand on the criminalization of public drug use, and what do you think needs to be done to address this crisis?
[00:08:23] Jorge Barón: Yeah, Crystal - I'll be very clear that I do not support criminalizing substance use disorders. I believe that we have - what I try to tell people about this issue is that we need to look at this the same way that we talk about - for example, when we talk about climate justice, a lot of people in this community - I guess I would say most people in this community, I know there's some people who are still climate skeptics out there - but most of us believe the science and we talk about the importance of believing the research and following the science. Same thing with public health, right? Most people in this community say we need to believe the science around public health and COVID and vaccines, right? And why don't we do the same thing with regard to public safety and the criminal legal system, right? There is abundant research when it comes to how to address the serious issues - and I wanna say it's important to note that the issue is not about doing nothing about the fact that people are experiencing substance use disorders. And obviously, it's a crisis in the fact that we have so many people in our community who are dying because of that. So the question is not, should we do something? We absolutely should do something. The question is, what should we do? And for me, the response of trying to punish people and putting people in jail because they're experiencing substance use disorders is not the solution. And I think the evidence and the research conclusively proves that that is not the path that is going to result in people actually being safe.
And I'm concerned - some ways - that particularly right now, some of the debate is framed as in, we're trying to protect people by putting them in jail. And if you look at the evidence, that's not the case - at least if you look at overall numbers. And I know people will say - Well, there's this one example, this anecdote where this person got better because they went to jail. And I appreciate that there may be cases like that, but we can't do public policy based completely on anecdotes. We need to look at the research. And the research to me is very compelling in that, for example, with people who are experiencing substance use disorders with things like fentanyl, that you will end up increasing the risk that they will die if they go into jail. It's pretty dramatic - the statistics and the data on increasing the risk of overdose in those situations. And so I am concerned, I think we need to be thinking about what is best approach long-term - and particularly because the criminal legal system is also a very expensive system, right? And so when we're talking about investing limited public resources in a time of austerity in terms of the fiscal situation that we were just talking about - to me, it doesn't make sense to continue to invest in a system that has not proven to have, for lack of a better term, return on investment - when we see that there are programs that are currently underfunded, that we're not putting enough resources in, that do have an impact in terms of reducing peoples experiencing substance use disorder, and that will actually put them in a pathway to recovery.
So I think we need to really rethink how we're approaching things. I think we've learned lessons for decades of using the criminal legal system to try to address substance use disorders. And I think we have been doing important things here in this community, and I think it's important to recognize that there's been programs like the LEAD program here locally, that have been seen as models for other places, but we've never sufficiently resourced those. And right now, of course, the need has only escalated because of the impacts of the pandemic and so many things that disrupted the lives of so many people. So I think we need to be investing in the things that actually have a return on investment.
[00:11:54] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, you make a great point about our jails - one, not being a source of treatment, but they're not equipped to do that right now. And in fact, they're not equipped to do a lot of things that people think they do and things that they have done before. We've seen outcry from everyone from the ACLU to the guards and workers at our jails saying - Things are overcrowded, we're understaffed, we don't have adequate services, facilities, we don't have the tools to do the job that you're asking us to do and the way that you're asking us to do it, and the overcrowding is really making issues harder. In order to address that, the King County Council voted to initiate a contract with another jail provider - the SCORE Center in Des Moines - to transfer some inmates over there. Would you have voted to do that? And do you think we should do what Dow Constantine suggested and closing the jail? What is your plan for this? Would you have done what the County Council did? And where should we move forward after that?
[00:12:56] Jorge Barón: Yeah, Crystal - that's a good question. So the answer to your question about the SCORE jail is that I would not have voted to enter into that contract and to transfer people, primarily because I think at the time - and I think still to this point, from what I understand - the concerns that a number of people raised, and particularly the public defenders who represent people in the facility, in the jail, that the issue of access to counsel and access to family was not adequately addressed at the time. And to me, this is a particular issue that I care a lot about, just because I've had a lot of experience being an attorney and starting my career at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project as a staff attorney working with people in the Immigration Detention Center in Tacoma. I did work during law school in the criminal legal issues and prisons in the South. And this issue of being able to access attorneys is a really important one that we as a community should be absolutely standing up for - because when people are put into jail pending a charge, we have a strong presumption in this country of being presumed innocent until we're proven guilty. And one of the key ways that people can have that right be enforced is through access to counsel. And so if we're gonna undermine that, I think that's a serious issue.
I absolutely, to be clear, do not think that the conditions at the King County Jail are adequate, and we absolutely need to take steps to address the overcrowding. I think people in the community may not always be paying attention to this, but it's remarkable that we have groups that don't normally align on this - like the public defenders on the one side and the correctional workers in the jail - calling for the same steps because of how bad the situation was. And so we should be listening to people who are working most directly with people in there. And obviously we should be deeply concerned about the fact that multiple people have been dying in our care. I've been telling people that we need to think about, as a community - when we take one of our neighbors into custody because we determine that they need to be held in jail, we become responsible. They become our responsibility, and we need to make sure that we have the staffing and the resources to adequately care for them. And if we see that people are dying at the rate that we've seen, we're not living up to that commitment. And so we need to take steps, and I would support, at least as an interim measure, the call from the public defenders and from the correction officers of having booking restrictions that will limit the number of people who are gonna be in the jail until we know that we can actually take care of people.
I know it's a complex issue because I think part of the challenge has also been that the state has failed in its obligation to make sure that we provide treatment and assessments for and evaluations for people who have behavioral health issues, and that's also exacerbated the problem in terms of people being able to be released. But we need to address this with more urgency because literally people are dying in our custody, and it shouldn't be - even if you're accused of a crime, this should not be a death penalty situation where we're putting people in fatal consequences because they're accused of a criminal offense. And so I think we need to be taking very significant steps to move that. And again, the SCORE Jail - I understand the intention, but we also need to be respecting the right for people to be able to defend themselves in court.
[00:16:19] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I do wanna talk about housing and homelessness. And it's been an issue that has been on the top of mind of everyone, basically. One thing that it's a big challenge for our community to deal with, and another because so many people are struggling themselves. One issue called out by experts as a barrier to our response is that frontline worker wages don't cover the cost of living, and that services provided by frontline workers, especially those with lived experiences, are necessary to effectively reduce the amount of people who are homeless. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for our area? And how can we make that more likely with how we bid and contract for services at the county level?
[00:17:04] Jorge Barón: So Crystal, I absolutely agree that nonprofits have a responsibility to make sure that their workers are adequately compensated. It's something that I've been working on here at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and I think one of the things that I see frequently at the county level - and I think a lot of people don't realize that a lot of the human services that the county provides is actually done through nonprofit entities that the county contracts out with. And so the county does have a responsibility to make sure that we're structuring the contracts in ways that are going to incentivize our nonprofit partners to do the right thing. I've seen practices where, for example, we have contracts where there's lesser amount of funding year-over-year for a nonprofit partner. And of course, that doesn't help when we have a situation where the cost of living is increasing. I've also seen situations where there's this pressure of - well, you're not delivering enough services per FTE, and so it incentivizes employers to try to do it as cheaply as possible in kind of a race to the bottom that actually hinders the ability of organizations to be able to adequately compensate their employees.
And so I definitely think that the county has a responsibility to make sure that it's structuring its practices to incentivize for people to be paid well. And I think part of the problem is that sometimes we think of short-term - how many services we can provide in the very immediate term - but we lose sight of the fact that when we don't compensate people well, we end up losing those workers. And so you get into the cycle where people, the attrition rate is very high, the experience that we get from workers - it's lost. You spend a lot of energy and time with recruiting and hiring and training new employees. And so I think people need to understand that there is actually - it's a better investment to compensate people well. Even in the situations where that might mean - in the very short term, you might not be able to do as many services. But in the long term, you're actually gonna be able to serve people better and more fully if you invest in the workforce so that they will stick around. Because particularly in a place - obviously the cost of living is increasing, it's all connected - housing affordability is limited. So we need to make sure that the people who are providing services to county residents can also themselves be able to be county residents - because I hear that from a lot of people that they're having to, they can't even live in the county that they work in because of the high cost of living. So I absolutely think that needs to be a responsibility that the county plays a role in doing better from its part.
[00:19:35] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And as you talk about, there are shortages everywhere, there are staff shortages even in the county. And this impacts how the county is able to deliver services. There's been lots of coverage about staffing crises in a variety of government agencies, school districts, just seemingly at every level. And these people are crucial to programs and services that people count on, that have been around for decades, and that are now in jeopardy. King County has done hiring and retention bonuses for deputies in the Sheriff's department. Should we be doing that for other workers in other departments? How do we address this?
[00:20:11] Jorge Barón: I do think that we should look at those options. I do wanna work and wanna be very proactive in engaging labor partners that represent workers and finding what they think would be best for their workforce. 'Cause I wanna be very respectful of the role that they play in channeling the voice of the people who are working for the county. Because I know sometimes that can create some tensions for people who have been working there for a long time and then money is being invested to attract new workers. And so I wanna make sure that it's done in a way that we're engaging people who are already part of the workforce and who have devoted a lot of time to serve the community. So I think that is important.
But Crystal, one other thing that I was gonna mention when you talk about workforce issues is important role - and again, how lots of these things are connected - is childcare issues. That's one topic that I've heard a lot from community members that is making these workforce development issues more difficult, and in terms of attracting and incentivizing people to join the workforce is the high cost of childcare. And particularly the way that our current subsidies are structured at the county level, we have the situation where if you make above a certain amount, you then don't qualify for any subsidy at all. And that makes it difficult because then if you're considering - Well, okay if I take this job and maybe it's a good union paying job, but it actually will put me above the income level that qualifies for the subsidy. And then when I start doing the math, it turns out that doesn't make sense for me to take the job because I'll end up paying more on childcare than would make the job worth it. And as a parent who had three children go through the childcare system, who's gone through the public school system, I felt that very directly. And I've been fortunate to be able to have the resources to make that happen, but it was a big stretch. And so for a lot of people in the community, that's gonna be something that I think has made it more difficult for people to be able to join the workforce. And that impacts us all, right? We can talk about, for example, the challenges that the Metro Transit is having and the fact they're having to reduce routes - and it's not because of lack of money, it's because of the fact that they can't find enough drivers and they've had challenges there. So I think we need to be able to connect those dots and realize that investments in those areas are important to make sure that we have an adequate workforce. And it's also a good social equity and racial equity issue to make sure that we're investing so that folks can get the support they need to make sure they can not fully be participants in the community.
[00:22:40] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and thank you so much for bringing that up because that is a major factor in just the affordability of our community, the ability for people to participate in our workforce and our economy, to be upwardly mobile, and to get out of poverty. So thank you so much for talking about how important it is to help make affordable childcare accessible. I also want to talk about health, and especially with the county doing the heavy lifting when it comes to public health, really, and being the source of delivery for so much of it. I wanted to talk about something that we've been dealing with increasingly, whether it's because of COVID, which is still around and still here, and trying to reduce transmission and mitigate the impacts of it, or wildfire smoke, which we have to contend with, and that is extremely unhealthy to breathe and be in the midst of. Or other illnesses, viruses that are all around - trying to just reduce the prevalence of illness in our community. And it's become more apparent that how we treat air, how important air is to health, and how air filtration and ventilation is important to public safety. Do you have a plan for, would you advocate retrofitting, ensuring that all of our public buildings have the recommended air filtration, air turnover, healthy air systems for our community? And how can we help private businesses and spaces do that?
[00:24:08] Jorge Barón: Yeah, I absolutely support that. And I think it's an important - and I think there will be some important opportunities with some of the investments that are coming through the Inflation Reduction Act that - mostly focused on energy efficiency, but there could be opportunities where some of those resources could be used at the same time to make sure that we're improving air quality inside buildings, homes, and businesses as well. And it's interesting 'cause I think one of the things that I think about when I think of this - when you're talking about the community health - one of the things that's most disturbing to me and one that I absolutely wanna continue to focus on if I'm given the opportunity to serve in this role, is the disparities that we see in life expectancy in our communities. I'd encourage people to look up some of the research that's publicly available where you can see the life expectancy disparities in census tracts around the county, around the region. And I think to me, it should be disturbing to all of us that there are census tracts in South King County where the life expectancy is 17 years less than census tracts in other parts of the county - just a short drive away. And of course, when you dig into the reasons for that - and of course, there are many - but issues of pollution and of all the social determinants of health are driving a lot of those disparities. And that is something that we should not find in any way acceptable at this point of time in a county, particularly a county that we renamed in honor of Dr. King. I always think of what he would think about those kinds of disparities and obviously, he would find them unacceptable and I find them unacceptable.
And so addressing those issues and looking at the reasons that the impact - that all kinds of issues are impacting people's health, including air quality, both inside and frankly outside would have. And so when we talk about that and of course, with the ongoing impacts of climate change and the climate crisis, we're gonna be needing to tackle that even more - because unfortunately, we're gonna continue as we work in the long-term strategy, obviously, of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, but we also have to mitigate the impacts that we're seeing day in and day out with now the wildfire season that we see where the smoke is impacting people. And of course, many of us may have the fortune of being able to work inside and protect ourselves to some degree, but a lot of other people can't. And so we need to be addressing on multiple levels - ensuring that all community members and of course, particularly the most directly impacted communities, which of course overwhelmingly are people of color, immigrant refugee communities - that they're being given the tools and the protection to make sure that we don't see the level of disparities that we're currently seeing across the county.
[00:26:47] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And following on that - talking about how exposed people are - climate change is a major factor in this. And on almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals, while experiencing some of the devastating impacts that you just talked about - from wildfires and floods and cold and heat. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet the 2030 goals?
[00:27:10] Jorge Barón: I think there's a number of things. So one of our major drivers in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, of course, is our transportation system. And so a lot of that has to be focused on stopping our reliance and reducing our reliance on cars. And trying to build a transit infrastructure that is gonna be reliable, it's gonna be safe, and that it's going to be such that people can rely on it to get to work and to get to other places in the community. So for me, that's important. I think it's important - obviously, I appreciate and support the efforts to electrify our bus fleet and would do anything I could to expedite that and move forward on that. But the challenge is that if we can have the buses be electric, but if people are not using them and they're still relying on their cars, that's not gonna help us achieve the targets. So that's gonna be really important.
I think the other sort of big sources is obviously our infrastructure and our buildings and homes. And as I mentioned earlier, there is gonna be some opportunities for credits and investments through federal resources in the coming years that we need to make sure that we as a county are promoting and incentivizing and fully tapping into so that we can further reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and we can get closer to reaching the goals that we've set for ourselves. So I think that's gonna be an important work that we need to do in the community. And this is, again, where a lot of things are connected to - also how we build and how we structure our communities is gonna be important, because as we talk about transit - I fully support what the legislature did to create greater density 'cause that has a significant impact on climate justice goals. And so that's something that I think we are going to need to also monitor - as these new changes that the legislature made - how those are implemented will have an impact in our long-term strategy to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. So I think this is gonna be an important period of time for us to really step up in our commitment to addressing what is a very urgent issue.
[00:29:12] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. One issue impacting, I guess a major issue that impacts residents is how we implement policy - state level, county level, federal level really. There's been some great, helpful policy passed, but when it comes to the implementation of it, there's been a lot that has been desired in some circumstances - including those where some partners may not understand what needs to be stood up at the county level to deliver services. The county is pretty visible in this 'cause a lot of times the county is the entity responsible for the ultimate disbursement of funds or provision of services that come through the state or county level. And there seems to be sometimes a disconnect between what the county has capacity for, what it's capable to do and what legislation or funding or program calls to be done - leaving a shortfall in service delivery, things getting delayed, things not turning out as intended. What can be done to better improve the implementation of policy so that more people can receive the benefits that were intended?
[00:30:17] Jorge Barón: I completely agree, Crystal, 'cause I've seen that myself in terms of being able to get policies done both at the local level and at the state level in terms of changes to policy. For example, we did some work many years ago on the connection between immigration enforcement and local law enforcement - and we achieved a victory of getting an ordinance passed at the county level. And then time went by and the actual implementation of that was not happening. And we later found out that some of the things that we had thought that the policy had changed had not changed. And so I've definitely seen that situation play out. And I think what it takes is constant oversight and very intense focus from entities like the council. I think the council has a particular responsibility and a duty to be the one who is providing oversight as the elected officials who are responsible for making sure that the policies that are in place are actually being implemented. 'Cause oftentimes what I see in those situations is that things get passed and then you move on to the next thing, but if the implementation and the oversight is not there, then changes aren't actually playing out on the ground level. So that's an important thing.
I think the other thing that I think is important is a genuine engagement with communities that are going to be served. And I think that's another element that I would like to bring to the council is the fact that I have been working for nearly two decades now with marginalized communities throughout the state, particularly here in King County, and have built those relationships with people. And I would wanna be very proactive. I often tell people - Sometimes people say, I'll have an open door. And that to me is not really a good way to approach it because that still means that people have to come to me and my office. I wanna be very proactive in being out there - as I have been in my work here - of being out in community, talking to people, seeing how things are actually playing out on the ground level, and being engaged, and having genuine relationships with people so that you can actually assess how those policies are being implemented because that's what it takes. It's not just about receiving a report in council chambers, but it's about discussing with people how is this actually playing out. And that's how we've found things out here in my work at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project - has been working with community members - hearing how is this actually playing out on the ground level? How is this policy that looks nice on paper, on the King County Code, actually being impacted or being reflected on what people are experiencing in the community? And that's what it's gonna take to make sure that implementation is actually - that things are being done the way that we've intended them to be done when there's been changes in policy.
[00:32:54] Crystal Fincher: Definitely. As we move to close today, I just want to give you the opportunity to share with voters who are going to be making a decision between you and a couple other candidates in the primary election. What differentiates you from your opponents most of all, and why should voters choose you?
[00:33:14] Jorge Barón: For me, I think I hope voters will look at the track record that I've built over the last two decades working as a civil rights and human rights leader, working directly on behalf of marginalized communities with a deep commitment to equity and justice. I think that to me is really important because it's the work that I don't just talk about, I have done that work. And also the fact that I had the experience of working at the state level - building coalitions with community members, with allies - in a range of issues to make actually proactive and significant progressive change to policies that have impact marginalized communities across the state. And I hope to bring that same level of expertise and skill of building coalitions to impact policy that will make the situation for the county and county residents better.
And then finally, again, the fact that I've had this experience and I've been fortunate to have this experience of leading a nonprofit organization, building an effective organization that has delivered, that's widely recognized as delivering strong services. And that puts me in a good place to be able to provide that oversight, to be able to ask the tough questions, to make the tough decisions because I've been in that kind of executive role before. And be able to make sure - because I think this is an important component of county government, and I think something that will help us build the case for more investments is - I think one of the things that people in the community rightly are concerned about is - are our tax dollars being invested well in various programs that the county funds? And because I've been a nonprofit leader, seeing how to properly allocate and distribute and make resources be spent effectively, I'm in a good position to be able to evaluate those things when those issues come up at the County Council. And so all of those experiences that I've had - I've been very privileged to be able to play that role - have prepared me well for this role. And I hope the voters in the District 4 will give me the opportunity to represent them in the council.
[00:35:12] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much for joining us today and for helping us learn more about you, and certainly wish you the best.
[00:35:17] Jorge Barón: Thank you so much, Crystal - it was great talking to you.
[00:35:19] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by co-founder and general secretary of the Seattle Transit Riders Union, Katie Wilson!
They cover a lot of ground today, discussing Bob Ferguson’s unnamed donors, the Burien Planning Commission resigning in protest over “scapegoating” and “lack of action and missteps” by the city council majority and city manager, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell’s “War on Health,” reflections following the Seattle City Council mobility-focused forums, the Seattle City Council approving an affordable housing levy for the November ballot, Trans Pride barring Seattle Public Library, King County Council considers mandating that stores accept cash in addition to card or electronic payments, and a Saving Journalism, Saving Our Democracy event on Wednesday, June 21st, at Town Hall Seattle.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii, find today’s co-host, Katie Wilson, at @WilsonKatieB, and find the Seattle Transit Riders Union at @SeattleTRU.
On this Tuesday topical show, Crystal learns about north King County’s innovative new Regional Crisis Response (RCR) Agency with its inaugural Executive Director Brook Buettner and Kenmore Mayor Nigel Herbig. Following national guidelines and best practices for behavioral health crisis care, a five-city consortium established RCR in 2023 as part of a vision to provide their region with the recommended continuum of behavioral health care - which includes someone to call, someone to respond, and somewhere to go.
Executive Director Buettner and Mayor Herbig share how the program grew out of a need for a person-centered mobile crisis response, rather than the traditional law enforcement response which is often without the right tools or expertise for the job. They describe the collaborative process of getting buy-in from police agencies, electeds, and city staff to design a service that has evolved from the RADAR co-response program to approaching a 24/7 behavioral health first response. Finally, they cover impressive early results in cost-savings & outcomes and offer advice to other cities looking to bring similar solutions to their own communities.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Mayor Nigel Herbig at @nigelherbig.
Brook Buettner
Brook Buettner is inaugural Executive Director of the groundbreaking Regional Crisis Response Agency, which deploys services to people experiencing behavioral health crisis in the North King County community. She is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and an experienced human services professional with a focus on policy advocacy and program implementation for high-needs populations. During her two decade-long career, she has been focused on transforming systems to meet the needs of individuals who are high utilizers of both criminal legal and health and human services systems. Ms. Buettner holds Masters in Public Administration and Social Work from the University of Washington.
Mayor Nigel Herbig
Nigel grew up in the Seattle neighborhood of Wallingford, attended Seattle Public Schools, and graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in Political Science and Comparative Religion. Nigel and his wife, Tiffany, decided to move to Kenmore when their daughter was a baby as they were looking for a great place to raise their daughter where they could purchase their first home. They have never regretted that decision.
Nigel has worked in broadcasting, fundraising, and politics. He currently works at the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.
Mayor Herbig represents the Council on the Eastside Transportation Partnership (Vice Chair), and the Sound Transit SR 522 Bus Rapid Transit Elected Leaders Group. He also sits on the King County Affordable Housing Committee.
Resources
The Regional Crisis Response Agency | City of Kirkland
“RCR Agency Welcomes Brook Buettner as Executive Director” from City of Kirkland
National Guidelines for Behavioral Health Crisis Care - Best Practice Toolkit Executive Summary | SAMHSA
The North Sound RADAR Program | City of Shoreline
“RADAR: Response Awareness, De-Escalation, and Referral Final Evaluation Report” prepared by the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy Department of Criminology, Law & Society at George Mason University
“North King County cities will broaden mental-health response to 911 calls” by Amy Radil from KUOW
“New Crisis Response Center in Kirkland to Serve North King County” from City of Kirkland
“$500k grant from DOJ to help reduce use of police force in North King County” by Hannah Saunders from Bothell-Kenmore Reporter
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I am very excited to be welcoming Mayor Nigel Herbig - he is the mayor of Kenmore. And Brook Buettner, who's the Executive Director of Regional Crisis Response - a collaboration for a mental health alternative response between the cities of Kenmore, Kirkland, Lake Forest Park, Shoreline, and Bothell that's really innovative and I think a number of cities are looking at this in the region - want to just explore what this is. So starting out with Brook, how did you get involved in this work and what interested you in this?
[00:01:27] Brook Buettner: Thanks, Crystal - I'm so happy to be here with you. So my background is that I'm a licensed clinical social worker and I also have a background in public administration. And most of my social work career has been in service of folks that have chronic behavioral health conditions, are living homeless, and then have some overlap with the criminal legal system - either with the police, or with having multiple charges around poverty, or around homelessness. So this is a really exciting program for me to be able to be involved in.
[00:01:54] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. And Nigel, as mayor of Kenmore, what got you involved in this particular program and work?
[00:02:00] Mayor Nigel Herbig: First, I want to start off by saying that I'm a long-time listener, and I'm excited to be here, Crystal - so thank you for having me. Kenmore entered into this work back in - I want to say 2017 or 2018 - when we joined with other cities and King County MIDD funds and started the RADAR program, which was a co-response model across parts of North King County to give folks other ways to have service calls responded to - without the only response being a police response, because I think we all recognize that a solely police response is not always the right answer and is not always in the best interest of everybody involved. And we did that successfully for a few years. And then in 2021, we started larger conversations with the cities of Bothell, Lake Forest Park, Shoreline, and then we reached out to Kirkland also, about expanding what we were doing with RADAR and making it into a larger regional model. And so our staff and our councils worked for about a year and a half trying to figure out how that would all work.
And what we ended up doing was folding the North King County's RADAR Navigator program with Kirkland's Community Responder program to form a new entity that's regional in nature, is going to have a lot more resources, will be operating more hours during the day - I think we're aiming towards 24/7, I don't think we're quite there yet - and will really be a resource for folks who are experiencing, or decompressing in public, or having some sort of other issues so that they'll get a response that actually meets them where they're at. And gets them help immediately rather than the other alternatives, which are the ER or jail - both of which we know are not ideal for anybody who's experiencing either an issue with drug addiction or a mental health issue. So yeah, it's exciting to see multiple cities all coming together to recognize the issue and working together - 'cause as individual cities, there's no way that we could have done this - little Kenmore could've never done this on our own. But working with other cities, we're gonna be delivering something that I think will be meaningful to folks who are experiencing issues out in the field, and I think we'll be getting better outcomes for everybody. And I think that's something we're very excited about.
[00:04:00] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You talk about how challenging this is for individual cities to address and to deal with. I do think it's notable that there was an attempt, a recognition by Kenmore that this was something that needed to be tackled. There was the RADAR program, previously in place, that you just mentioned - this was built on top of and leveraged with the region. How did the discussions go with the region? How did you get buy-in for taking this collaborative approach? And how did you work through the design of the program? How did that work, Brook?
[00:04:34] Brook Buettner: We're very lucky in North King County that there was already a great deal of support for alternatives to police response for people in crisis. As you mentioned, the commitment to the RADAR Navigator program that had been going on for about four years prior to this conversation and showing really successful outcomes for folks. And across our elected officials, our police leadership, and our community, there was a strong commitment to doing things in a new way for people in crisis. And so it was a matter of not having to bring people on board, but just discussing what's our shared vision - what do we want our community to look like and how are we gonna get there? And so it was a big lift for city staff to come up with the agreement, the interlocal agreement, that governs this entity - but it was done pretty quickly in my experience and very well to where we have a strong and robust infrastructure to start really offering these alternative services to folks in crisis.
[00:05:29] Crystal Fincher: Nigel, what advice would you give to other cities working through this process right now in terms of figuring out the agreements that are going to govern these collaborative approaches, getting buy-in from various stakeholders? How did that work in your experience and what guidance would you give other folks working through this?
[00:05:48] Mayor Nigel Herbig: I think part of what made things work, where we are in North King County, was the fact that we'd already been partnering with other cities with RADAR. But we also have other regional models that we're used to - we're used to doing regional collaboration around here. Kenmore is part of ARCH, which is a regional coalition for housing - which is a multi-jurisdictional affordable housing developer that covers kind of Kenmore and then down to the Eastside. And so we're very used to working in a collaborative manner with our neighbors to address issues that we really can't do, again, by ourselves - we can do affordable housing, but it's very hard for a smaller city, right? It's a lot easier if people are pooling things together. So we already had those models that we were familiar with, which I think really helped some of the conversations - 'cause Kirkland's also part of ARCH, I think Bothell is too. So we're starting from a place where we understand how these models work. I think having trust between the cities is important also. We have good relationships with - I have good relationships with my colleagues in Kirkland and in Bothell and Lake Forest Park and Shoreline - I think that's helpful. And then also having staff that's willing to really dig into the details and work collaboratively with their colleagues is important.
A lot of this came out of the fact that - and I think we all recognize this - the state and the county have largely been underfunding our mental health response for a long time. And even on our council, there was some pushback to - this should be a county response, this should be the county's responsibility. And I don't completely disagree with that assessment either, but I think we all recognize that something had to be done. And at the end of the day, sometimes cities just have to step up and figure out a way forward. And it's nice to see five cities coming together to work together towards a solution, while we try to figure out the larger long-term solutions that are truly regional and even statewide, frankly.
[00:07:25] Crystal Fincher: So can you walk me through what your most frequent calls look like, feel like, what that process is? I think for a lot of people - they're familiar with the concept of alternative response, they're familiar with how important it is, and understanding that police can't do everything and they are not the most effective response for every kind of crisis - so having a tailored response that is most appropriate and most effective is really helpful. How, as you work through this, what does a typical call look like? What does a typical day look like?
[00:07:58] Brook Buettner: In crisis, of course, there's no typical call or no typical day. But we are looking to deploy social workers or mental health professionals on any 911 call that comes in that has some identified component of behavioral health. So that's mental health, or substance use, or some social service need like a homelessness component, a family dynamic issue where it could be helpful to have a social worker there. And then the social workers - we call them crisis responders - the crisis responders are going either in the car with the police officer, or when possible in an independent vehicle and meeting the police officer on the scene. And we are stepping more and more in our community into the space of two crisis responders going to - responding to the scene - without a first responder. And that is really what we call the alternative response model.
And it can be anything from somebody that has called 911 because they themselves, or somebody that they care about, is suicidal - has made suicidal statements or gestures. Or someone that is in a community space and is having mental health symptoms or substance use-driven symptoms that are causing them to be troubling to the other folks in that environment. To, like I said, family dynamics where someone calls 911, for example, because their teenager is so agitated and escalated that they become violent. And our crisis responders are very, very good at identifying what's going on, deescalating folks, bringing them down to a level of calm where they can talk through what's underlying the crisis. And then the crisis responder's job is to figure out what to bring to bear on the situation to alleviate the immediate crisis and then connect the person to the system of care so that they don't fall into crisis again.
[00:09:33] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And it looks like you've structured the program on best practices for the continuum of behavioral health care starting with having someone to call - we have our 988 line, someone to respond - these crisis responders, and then having somewhere to go once it's determined where the appropriate place is for them to receive the help that they need. Especially when it comes to that somewhere to go, we just passed a county-wide behavioral health center levy that will fund a number of those services and staff. But that's been a big challenge in our region. How have you navigated through this in the program, Nigel, and how's it working?
[00:10:14] Mayor Nigel Herbig: Well, I'm really excited. I mean, Kenmore and our partner cities - we're actually out ahead of King County a little bit and had been working in partnership for - I don't know, a little while now, I think going back to 2021 - really reflecting on the lack of a door for people to go to, a place for people to go to when they're in crisis. And working together, we identified funds and we identified a location, we identified our provider, and we will be opening up the first crisis response center for North King County. And again, it's the same cities - it's Kenmore, Lake Forest Park, Shoreline, Bothell, and Kirkland - and we're excited to have this model here. They selected Connections Health Solutions, which is a national innovator in the space. They've done a lot of great work in Arizona, and that model is also what I believe the executive based his models off of. And they should be opening up next year, and it's gonna offer a place for people who are facing any sort of mental health issue or behavioral health issue - a place where they can go and actually talk with somebody, regardless of insurance, regardless of where they live, or any of that. It'll give people a place to go, which right now is severely lacking throughout the county.
[00:11:23] Crystal Fincher: What happens when there is no place to go?
[00:11:26] Brook Buettner: I can kind of speak to that. So in the past, when we encountered someone in the field in crisis, the options were either that they stay where they are, that they go to the emergency department, or an arrest and jail - if it's not safe for them to stay in the community setting or in the home where they are at - safe for themselves or safe for the people around them. And this allows us an alternative to say - Maybe the emergency department is not the right place, and certainly jail is not the right place for somebody in deep behavioral health crisis. We're gonna take them somewhere that we know will accept them, we know will allow them to stay, will provide robust psychiatric and behavioral healthcare, and do discharge planning so that they're walking out with a plan and a connection to ongoing care. Connections, in particular, has a model that has multiple levels of acuity and step-down so that if somebody comes in at the highest acuity, they're in one setting. And as they deescalate, as they get different treatment on board or medications on board, they can step down to a lower acuity setting and even to an outpatient model while they wait to get hooked up with the local behavioral health system of care. And Crystal, you mentioned the behavioral health continuum of care, and I love that you brought that up because this is - North King County is about to have, kind of the first in our state, fully-executed crisis continuum of care when this facility opens up and it's super exciting.
[00:12:44] Crystal Fincher: It's very exciting and so necessary. And I appreciate you all doing the work to get this implemented to be a model for the region. Other areas are looking at this - some areas are eager to adopt this and have public safety agencies, police agencies that are willing partners. Others have some concerns and there's almost a concern of - Okay, is this competition for us? Are they looking to move us out? What feedback have you heard from law enforcement officials, and how have they said it's impacted their job and the work that they have to do?
[00:13:19] Mayor Nigel Herbig: To be honest, I haven't heard anything negative from our police partners - Kenmore, like Shoreline, contracts with the King County Sheriff's Office - they've been great partners in this. I think our chief is always looking for better ways to interact with folks who are in crisis and this gives him another tool. This gives him more resources to address the problem at hand, rather than only having law enforcement resources to fall back on - and I think he views that as a positive. So I have not heard any pushback from our law enforcement community up in North King County around this, and I think they're looking forward to using this as a resource and being partners in this.
[00:13:56] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. For years and years - going back a decade and more - have heard several officers, chiefs talk about how challenging it is to respond to calls where there's a behavioral health component, or there isn't any illegal activity per se but someone is clearly in crisis, or people are being impacted around them and an intervention needs to take place but a criminal or a legal intervention doesn't seem to be the most positive. Brook, what have you heard from officers who have co-responded on these, or who are looking forward to a complete alternative response? How are they saying it's impacting their work and their ability to do their job?
[00:14:37] Brook Buettner: We have been extraordinarily lucky in North King County that we've had support from law enforcement leadership since the get-go. Law enforcement was who asked for this program initially five years ago, saying these are not the kind of calls that we're supposed to be on - we need help, we need support. And so it has been a journey to get all of the responding officers - patrol officers and deputies - socialized to this idea. But once an officer or a deputy sees it in action, it's an easy sell. So what we find is that the more interaction we are having with law enforcement, the more referrals we're getting because they see - wow, that works - or we'll let them know that the follow-up that we did ended up keeping somebody from falling into deep crisis again. And it becomes a really good alternative for them and a good tool in their tool belt. I also am really attentive to making sure that we maintain good relationships on a one-on-one basis with all of our law enforcement partners, so that it's not a pain to have a social worker along but rather a pleasure - to say we're a great team, we work well together. Both sides recognize that each role has something to bring to a highly escalated crisis situation, and both sides recognize where their limits are. And so it's just been a constant growth of support and of buy-in. I've heard from several chiefs that they see shift in the culture - in the willingness to talk about behavioral health in a new way among the community and also within the department - that it opens up conversations that otherwise may not have happened. So it has really been a positive for our five police agencies.
[00:16:05] Crystal Fincher: I think that is really an outstanding observation. And strikes me as important, especially as we hear from several police agencies across the state really that they're trying to recruit, they're short on officers, they're having a tougher time on that - and needing to triage their time and resources, and response times being impacted, other things that they're saying are being impacted. How can this help manage the workload for officers and across the public safety continuum? How has that been working?
[00:16:34] Mayor Nigel Herbig: Speaking for Kenmore, our officers, right - until we had RADAR in place and until we had these partnerships - if somebody was out on the street decompensating, yelling, screaming, doing something like - like you said earlier, that's not illegal, but is disruptive to the community and the person is obviously in crisis - the only response we had was a police response. And I think even our officers recognize that there are better ways for them to be spending their time than dealing with somebody who's decompensating. It's not what they were hired for, it's not what their expertise is in. And this gives them a tool so that they can - working with the social workers - find what the right response is, hand off the person to the social worker, and then get back to catching speeders or investigating break-ins or whatever it is that they could be doing rather than dealing with the guy who is having a breakdown. So I view this as actually an expansion of our response, if you will - it gives us the ability to respond to more calls on both sides of things, both law enforcement and people experiencing a crisis.
[00:17:38] Crystal Fincher: How have you seen that play out, Brook?
[00:17:40] Brook Buettner: It is absolutely allowing officers to focus more on life safety and law - criminal law issues - by kind of carving off this segment of the work that comes into the 911 system and routing it to the appropriate resource, the right tool at the right time. I see what we're doing as a third kind of branch of the first response system. Going back again to the continuum of care, the level of care that someone gets should be based on the acuity of their need and of their crisis. And we have outpatient behavioral health for folks that have behavioral health challenges that are at a low acuity level. We have other systems in place that are secondary responses for people that are in crisis. And when people are in very high acuity crisis and 911 is needed, we now have this first response behavioral health tool in our toolbox - that crisis responders that are skilled and trained and experienced in meeting people that are in the highest acuity level of behavioral health crisis, but still not committing a crime. So it is a 911 call - it's not necessarily a law enforcement need, but there is a need for a very high level response - and we're now able to provide that.
[00:18:47] Crystal Fincher: Did you have anything to add, Nigel?
[00:18:49] Mayor Nigel Herbig: Well, I was gonna say - I think a lot of this came out of the recognition that we've seen over the last 150 years that when your only response is a police response, the outcomes are not ideal. We have seen too many folks who are dealing with a mental health issue - and that is a huge section of our population - it's not something we talk about, but a huge proportion of folks are dealing with some sort of mental health issue. And just because somebody is having a very hard day doesn't mean that they should end up in jail or be put at risk, frankly, of a police interaction. We know that sometimes those interactions can turn out tragically. And being thrown into jail or worse, because you're experiencing a mental health issue, can ruin somebody's life or - and frankly, can ruin not only their lives, but also their kids' lives. When we enter somebody into the criminal justice system, it has long-lasting effects on not just the person impacted, but also their family, their kids, their kids' kids - it can have multigenerational effects on people. And we've seen that play out over the last, well, 50, 100 years. This gives folks, this gives our police officers a different response. And I think it's - that's what I'm excited about - I'm excited that people who are experiencing mental health issues can actually get the treatment they need rather than a pure law enforcement response, because nobody deserves to go to jail because they're having a breakdown.
[00:20:12] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And it's a shift in how we've been doing things. What are the results that you're seeing from this? Obviously, people are looking to justify these expenditures and implement these in their own areas. What results are you seeing when it comes to amount of calls, recidivism? I know in some other cities, they talk about how many calls come in about behavioral health issues that aren't someone breaking the law but that are someone in crisis, as you've talked about, and how much time that takes up, how many repeated calls those spur, and how much time that demands - just the amount, enormous amount, of resources that demands. How are you seeing that impacted and what results are you seeing from this program?
[00:20:55] Brook Buettner: Directly to your question, Crystal, we don't have a lot of data yet on reduction in 911 calls, or 911 dispatch center or officer time. I do have some outcome data though that our King County partners were able to pull together for us for the RADAR Navigator program - that folks that were touched by the RADAR Navigator program - in two years following that program touch, we saw a 67% reduction in adult jail bookings. And that is a tremendous impact. We saw a 60% reduction in behavioral health crisis events. And that is measured by King County's Department of Community and Human Services who oversees the behavioral health system crisis response. They also experienced a smaller 4% reduction in emergency department visits. And of the folks that our program touched, 14% were subsequently enrolled in publicly funded behavioral health services. And I think that's a significant undercount because a lot of the folks in our community do have private pay insurance and so there would be no way to count that. But we know that interaction with this program results in a reduction in jail, a reduction in crisis services, and an increase in engagement with the behavioral health system. And those are all big wins.
And to your specific questions, those are the kind of things we're gonna be looking at in our program analysis as we go on. How is this saving on 911 calls? How is this saving on officer time? My dream is that we capture the cost savings of reduction in jail nights and say - let's put that back into the earlier end of the continuum of care and fund diversion, and ultimately fund a robust system of community-based behavioral health care so that people don't fall into crisis. Again, I wanna say we're extraordinarily lucky that our electeds and our city staff are all so interested and committed to doing this kind of analysis and thinking in this way.
[00:22:37] Crystal Fincher: Thanks - I appreciate that data, that information - it's really, really powerful. And what strikes me hearing that is that when you talk about being booked into jail, emergency room visits - these are the most expensive parts of our system to use and to utilize. And savings on these are incredible - I'm looking at that reduction in the jail number, and that is a budget-altering number right there. Pretty incredible. And I recognize this is a newer program - certainly you've done the work with the RADAR program, this predecessor, and getting the data there. I'm sure more will be rolling in as this continues and you move on, so that's great. Did you have something you wanted to add, Brook?
[00:23:16] Brook Buettner: Yeah, just a thought that this is what we sometimes call a different purse problem - that each of these reductions affects a different financial system. And so part of our work is gonna be pulling together those cost offsets and making sure that the savings are redirected appropriately to meeting people's needs.
[00:23:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that is such an incredible problem in the public sector - yeah, this is saving a billion dollars, but if that's spread across a ton of different budgets in different ways, it's a whole different animal than someone handing someone basically a rebate check for a billion dollars. As you look forward, you talked about moving forward and moving towards a program where it truly is an alternative response where there are one or two crisis responders who respond to these calls without law enforcement initially - they can certainly call them in if it's warranted or they need backup. How do you see this progressing with that change and beyond it? What are the plans?
[00:24:14] Brook Buettner: First, I'll say that the primary challenge that stands between us and a pure alternative response system is the dispatch question - and the ability to understand when a 911 call comes in, what's really going on - and that is often not clear from a 911 call. So we really wanna work through this very carefully with all of our partners and make sure that we're doing the outreach in a way that's safe and appropriate, that meets people's needs, but also keeps our responders safe. And so that is probably my work for the next two years - is digging into - How do we do call receiving? How do we triage? And then how do we appropriately dispatch the right resource? I have kind of been moving from calling it alternative response to thinking of it as a behavioral health first response. Whatever - when someone is in behavioral health crisis - whatever resource is the right resource. And I can see, for example, that being a crisis responder plus an EMT when someone has or has stated that they will take too much medication - and that's a medical plus a mental health need. Whereas if there's maybe a weapon in play, then that's a law enforcement plus a mental health need. And so thinking of it as a first response system with all of the tools that we need available to our dispatchers.
[00:25:27] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Nigel?
[00:25:28] Mayor Nigel Herbig: I think something that Brook kind of glossed over a little bit - but I think is an important thing that we're gonna have to work out - is the fact that we're using multiple different police. We have different police forces, if you will, and different dispatch systems. So like I said earlier, in Shoreline and Kenmore you have King County Sheriff's Office and they're dispatched in one way. And then Lake Forest Park and Bothell, they have their own. And Kirkland, they have their own police officers and they're dispatched differently. And so it does create - it is a complication that I believe we'll work through. And I know with Brook's leadership, that'll get worked out - but it's not as straightforward as just having one dispatch system that we need to educate and get up to speed.
[00:26:06] Crystal Fincher: How is this being funded? How much did you have to come up with as individual cities in this regional partnership? How is the funding talked about? Because this is something that has been kind of thorny when we look at the Regional Homelessness Authority, but with this collaboration, how does this work, Nigel?
[00:26:25] Mayor Nigel Herbig: I can't get into what the specific numbers are we're spending - I do know it's more than what we were with RADAR. Part of that is because we're expanding things from - we're approaching 24/7 is part of the goal. Part of this is also funded by King County MIDD, the Mental - oh, I don't remember -
[00:26:41] Crystal Fincher: I know - I always try to remember what MIDD stands for.
[00:26:43] Brook Buettner: Mental Illness Drug Dependency.
[00:26:45] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
[00:26:46] Mayor Nigel Herbig: Thank you, I was just digging around.
[00:26:48] Crystal Fincher: Very, very useful.
[00:26:50] Mayor Nigel Herbig: No, super useful - and they're the reason why we were able to do RADAR and test out, essentially test out the model, set the foundation for where we are now - is because of the MIDD funding. And we're very thankful to King County and Councilmember Dembowski for his help with that. Our expenses are definitely higher than they were in previous years with RADAR - there's no question around that, and it was part of our budget discussions last year. But I think it's something that we're all committed to because we do see the long-term payoffs - not just on our budgets, but frankly in outcomes - and all the councils seem fairly committed to that. So I believe that they - I wasn't involved in these negotiations, staff was - but I believe that they were negotiating based on population and number of hours that would be required to cover each jurisdiction, and then breaking up the cost and using some sort of formula that we all agreed to. Brook can probably speak a little bit more to that, but we got to a place where everybody was comfortable with the investments that we'd be making.
[00:27:47] Crystal Fincher: Sure, Brook?
[00:27:48] Brook Buettner: Yeah, so like Mayor Herbig said, the MIDD funding has been really foundational to piloting this as the RADAR Navigator Program and even to the expansion. We also have some funding through the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs' Trueblood dollars for Mental Health First, or Field Response teams. And we have had some support from the Association of Washington Cities. And then I'm so delighted that starting this year, we have general fund contribution from each of our five cities. It is per capita-based at this time. We have plans to really keep a close eye on utilization and think about whether some cities have higher utilization and that may affect their contribution rate. But I also have plans to get the payers on the hook for this as well. So when we talked about the wrong purse problem - a 4% reduction in emergency department visits is a big bonus for insurers and for the managed care organizations. And King County Department of Community and Human Services and the behavioral health services organization have been thinking about this as well. How do we get the private insurers to be picking up what they are supposed to be covering for their covered lives around crisis services? There are a couple of folks at the State Legislature that are really thinking carefully about this. And I see us as being kind of a test case outside the traditional behavioral healthcare system to be reimbursed by the health payers for this service that ends up with better outcomes and lower costs over time.
[00:29:07] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. As we move to close this, what advice do you have to other cities approaching this? And what would you tell residents about why this is so useful and so important?
[00:29:21] Mayor Nigel Herbig: I think I would advise other cities to take a look at their 911 calls, talk with their police officers - see what sort of calls they're responding to that maybe they're not the best equipped first responder for. I don't think police officers enjoy these sorts of calls on their own. I also think that you can point towards the outcomes that we will have around better results for the people involved, better results for the community, and frankly, cost savings at the end of the day when it comes to jail days and ER visits. And other cities might be big enough to do this on their own, which will make their lives a little bit easier and all of that. But I think other cities - and if you're looking in other parts of the county, there are places where there are multiple cities all right next to each other that could, if they wanted to, join together and do this sort of work. And I would encourage them to have those conversations and really ask themselves - What do they want the response to be when somebody calls 911 in crisis? Because I don't think anybody actually thinks the right answer is a person with a badge and a gun. And I think people need to really reflect on that, and really think about how they truly serve the people that they are working for, and make sure they're doing that in the best and most responsive and person-centered way possible. And this is, I think, a huge step in that direction.
[00:30:36] Crystal Fincher: Any final words from you, Brook?
[00:30:38] Brook Buettner: I love what Mayor Herbig said - just asking yourselves - What is it that we want people in crisis to get from our first response system? And then from my social-worky side, building relationships across jurisdictions and across sectors to bring - this is very complex - so to bring all the players to the table to offer the kind of response that people deserve when they're in crisis.
[00:30:59] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you both to Brook Buettner, Mayor Herbig - sincerely appreciate you spending time with us today and helping to educate us on what's going on there in the north part of the County. And it's certainly a lot to reflect on and hopefully emulate moving forward. Thank you both.
[00:31:16] Mayor Nigel Herbig: Thank you.
[00:31:17] Brook Buettner: Thank you so much for having us.
[00:31:18] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattle Times politics and communities reporter, Daniel Beekman! They cover the Seattle City Council’s defeat of a War-on-Drugs style bill, a judge ruling that Washington’s ban on assault-style rifles can move forward, new polling from NPI showing Bob Feuson with an early lead in the race for governor, Seattle Councilmember Alex Pedersen proposing a capital gains tax for the city of Seattle, Washington state pursuing permanent rules for working outdoors in wildfire smoke, and 1,000 misdemeanor cases being dismissed after Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison ends the city’s participation in Community Court.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Daniel Beekman, at @DBeekman.
Resources
“Passing Middle Housing and Climate Planning with Futurewise’s Bryce Yadon & Marcella Buser” from Hacks & Wonks
Attorney General Bob Ferguson leads 2024 WA gubernatorial field, new NPI poll confirms
WA ban on sale of AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles can go forward, judge rules | The Seattle Times
Seattle City Council narrowly rejects drug prosecution bill
1,000 misdemeanor cases to be dismissed after demise of Seattle Community Court
Council advances $970M property tax for affordable housing in Seattle
Shoreline legalizes ‘cottage housing’ clusters north of Seattle
Alex Pedersen proposes capital gains tax in Seattle
State taking input on new rules for working outdoors in wildfire smoke | Local | yakimaherald.com
https://fire.airnow.gov/
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Transcript
On this Tuesday topical show, Crystal welcomes Bryce Yadon and Marcella Buser from Futurewise to talk about the For Our Future campaign’s success in passing middle housing and climate planning bills during the 2023 legislative session. Bryce and Marcella share how organizing a broad statewide coalition and sustained efforts by key legislators finally pushed middle housing across the finish line, then delve into the details of implementation, rulemaking, and why the policy appeals to so many.
The conversation continues with diagnosing why a transit-oriented development bill had trouble moving forward and describing what impacts the climate planning bill will have in our communities. Finally, Marcella and Bryce encourage interested folks to get involved and help Futurewise tackle continued action and future legislation around land use in Washington state.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii, find Futurewise at @FuturewiseWA, find Bryce Yadon at @BAYadon, and find Marcella Buser at @marcymarce98.
Bryce Yadon
Bryce started working with Futurewise and as a lobbyist in December of 2014. He has a BA from Seattle University in Political Science and a Masters from Middlesex University in Environmental Sustainable Management. He is a contract lobbyist who works on issues related to land use, housing, and transportation representing and working with a broad range of organizations, advocates, and businesses.
Marcella Buser
Marcella Buser is Futurewise’s State Organizer and has been organizing for the past 5 years in Oregon and Washington. She’s organized thousands of volunteers around efforts to pass missing middle housing and climate planning in the GMA in Washington, and other environmental and public health policies in the Northwest. She grew up in rural Oregon on her parents’ apple farm and in her free time you can find her gardening, cooking, and enjoying live music.
Resources
“2023 Legislative Wrap-Up!” from Futurewise
Missing Middle Housing One-Pager | Futurewise
Climate-Resilient Growth One-Pager | Futurewise
Transit-Oriented Development One-Pager | Futurewise
“Four Vital Housing and Climate Bills Survive the Washington Legislature” by Ray Dubicki from The Urbanist
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
I am excited to be welcoming two folks from Futurewise - Bryce Yadon and Marcella Buser - here to talk about the work that Futurewise and others did on land use and policy bills during the legislature and in general - trying to help our community serve the people who live in it better. So just starting out - starting with Marcella - what brought you to this work and why is it so important?
[00:01:18] Marcella Buser: Thanks for having me on, Crystal. I think what brought me to organizing and what brought me to Futurewise are two different things. I got involved in organizing back in college. I grew up on a farm, so I had never been canvassed before. I really didn't know that activism and organizing were a thing, but I grew up caring a lot about the environment, and sustainable agriculture, and everything related to growing up on a farm. So it wasn't until I was in college that I had my first experiences with organizing and learned that protests don't just happen out of serendipity, but there's a lot of planning and organizing that goes behind it. So I really fell in love with organizing and I thought it was so cool that I could be a part of making my voice heard and passing bills. I was still a teenager at the time - you didn't have to be an expert on the issue and I thought that was awesome. So I absolutely fell in love with organizing, took it on as my career and I've been doing that for the past five years, working on a variety of issues. And really the thing that keeps me so engaged in organizing is knowing that there are still thousands of people out there that, like me, really cared about these issues but have no idea that they can be a part of the solution.
And then with Futurewise - I'm relatively new to the team - I just joined last fall, but I absolutely love it. Growing up, again, on a farm - I always saw cities as these expensive, polluted, scary places. Density was a bad word to me. And it wasn't until I moved to Seattle and started working with Futurewise that I learned - really, if we want to be protecting our farms and our forests and our green spaces, having these dense cities is the solution. This is the way to protect our world. And when you're building cities well, they can be equitable and affordable and environmentally friendly. So I absolutely love still learning more about urban planning and land use - and organizing on these issues.
[00:03:27] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. And what about you, Bryce?
[00:03:29] Bryce Yadon: Thanks for having us on and letting us join. I got my start in Olympia in 2006 - I believe, was my first legislative session, if I'm remembering correctly - it feels like a really long time ago now. And worked my way up to becoming a contract lobbyist in 2009 and 2010. And I represented a few groups and organizations that I didn't always see eye to eye on, and it was a little more difficult to work. So I took a break from politics for a few years, got my master's and came back - in environmental sustainable management - figuring out that really the environment and land use is where my passion lies, just generally. And I got lucky enough to have some friends who worked in and around Futurewise and helped connect me to, at the time, Hilary Franz, who hired me on as the State Policy Director in 2015 - early 2015, late 2014. And really, I have been working on land use, transportation, housing issues since then. And it all really, like I said, stems from 10 years of searching about what I cared about before I fell into the lap of Futurewise. And it's been really exciting to see the organization continue to grow and being able to continue to work on a host of issues that kind of change every year on the land use realm, because there's a lot to do in that space. So yeah, just a long time of slowly working my way into the land use and transportation realm. And now I'm lucky enough to continue to do it.
[00:04:54] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. So like you said, there's so much to do. But there have been some headline issues over the past couple years, culminating with this last session - middle housing, transit oriented development, the GMA climate bill. Starting with middle housing and the coalition - getting that together - the multi-session effort that it took to pass it, but resulting in passage. What was that process like? And why is this so important?
[00:05:21] Bryce Yadon: Yeah, I'll start off with that. It was a multi-year thing, and I do want to mention that there was a couple of different priorities moving in tandem throughout the last few sessions. Representative Bateman, Representative Macri, and others had been working on middle housing for a number of years before Futurewise got involved. We always knew we would eventually be able to really help. But a few years ago, what we started off with was what was called House Bill 1220, which was an update to the housing element of the Growth Management Act. And the reason why that is important is it set the stage for us to take on these larger issues, such as middle housing and TOD. And what that update did was required local jurisdictions to plan differently for housing types. It also required the state to start addressing and issuing housing targets that are a little more specific than they used to be. They used to just be general - you should be allowing this many units. Now we're more in the detailed units. And so from a Futurewise perspective, it started back in 2020 with the introduction of that bill and worked forward. And we had built a small coalition on updating the housing requirements under that - knowing that in 2024, the vast majority of local jurisdictions are going to be updating their comprehensive plan required by law - where all these planning documents come together to facilitate access to housing, hopefully.
So that was - from a Futurewise perspective - that was our first kind of go at trying to figure out what was the preliminary step to take. And then what it allowed us to do then is look at how do local jurisdictions implement this new law? What are the opportunities that Futurewise and the state need to give them to really fully embrace income levels, housing at all income levels, affordable housing, and those important things. And so when we were able to team up with Representative Bateman, she had already built a small coalition that was pretty strong. But over the course of about six months, myself, Futurewise, Marcella teamed up with a very large coalition that cut across areas that normally don't - we had business, we had realtors, we had environmental organizations, we had labor all teamed up, because there's one thing that everybody needs, which is housing. And I think that was a big deal to kind of restructure what the coalition looked like going into the 2023 session. And I think that one of the best and interesting parts about that, when we look at the breadth of knowledge within that coalition - like I said, we had folks - we had realtors who understand what people are looking for in housing these days and what they want to market to folks. We have builders that are seeing where they're getting hangups in where and how they can build. You have environmental organizations like Futurewise that understood that a lot of the density and outcomes we're looking for to protect the environment are around types of new housing, and it's like middle housing - that take up less space, that provide community and those things. And I think that was one of the key aspects at the end of the day was just the coalition having such knowledge in different aspects that really helped push it over the line.
And again, Representative Bateman and others had worked on it for, I think, three or four years prior to Futurewise stepping in and really helping out. So I want to give a lot of credit to the previous work they did. And then the one other thing that I think is extremely important to realize that our coalition and all the work Marcella and everybody else did - one of the things that we can't substitute is hard work from a member. And there was Representative Bateman who was consistently meeting with her colleagues one-on-one, folks like Representative Macri, Representative Fitzgibbon and others meeting with members one-on-one just about this specific bill to make sure that we were addressing policy concerns throughout the whole thing. So I think that was the key culmination for us is - it was a four-year period, there was two different tracks we were taking, and then they lined up at the right time. And again, we think this is one of the policy implementation bills for House Bill 1220 that we passed a number of years ago.
[00:09:27] Crystal Fincher: Got it. Marcella, Bryce covered a little bit about the coalition with this - and it was a broad and varied coalition, but a coalition that even within the housing space didn't agree on all issues - and were working together on some bills this past session, were working in opposition on other bills this session. What did it take, and what was the process of pulling this coalition together and keeping it together throughout this session, throughout the changes in the bill? Can you walk us through what that was like?
[00:09:55] Marcella Buser: Yeah, so I can walk you through the grassroots side of the coalition - because how Bryce and I work together - Bryce is on the inside, working to create a policy that most people can get behind. And then I'm working on the outside with the rest of the state, making sure that we have the people power needed to get these bills over the finish line. So like I said, I started last fall - my very first day on staff was joining one of these coalition meetings and seeing all the different players in the room. My priority was coordinating the grassroots side of the coalition, so bringing together local groups that really cared about these issues, environmental groups, racial justice groups, everyone that had different types of reach and diversity in their interests. I would say how much we cared about missing middle and seeing this bill over the finish line united us way more than any of our differences could have separated us. Honestly, one of the larger challenges, rather than working on these other issues, was just balancing everyone's strengths. Like a local group might have expertise in a certain area but might not know about the rest of the state, whereas a comms team might have really great publications but not a large membership base to reach out to. So I think that was more - the bigger challenge is balancing that and through having really open and honest conversations every week in the meeting that I coordinated, we were able to figure out - okay, where can everyone make an impact? What makes sense for everyone? And how can we keep this bill moving?
[00:11:33] Crystal Fincher: So what comes next? What does implementation look like for this? And what can people in their communities expect to see as a result?
[00:11:42] Bryce Yadon: That's a really good question. Funny enough, we've been having both internal conversations as well as a few conversations with people in the governor's office and the Department of Commerce. So the immediate next step is going to be that the Department of Commerce is going to start a rulemaking process for implementation at the local level. We have a phased approach to this piece of legislation, so the four central Puget Sound counties - so King, Kitsap, Pierce, and Snohomish - have to update their development regulations and implement this piece of legislation by June of 2025, because it's due six months after the comprehensive plan. This gives us a two-year time window to assist local jurisdictions in implementation. So the first thing that we're going to probably start seeing is the Department of Commerce both from a small group area - small groups - calling people in to get feedback and ideas on how this should be implemented, what should the regulations and sideboards should be for implementation of this bill. We're also going to see - because the rulemaking process is public - we're also going to be seeing opportunities for the general public to provide feedback to the Department of Commerce through hearings and other things over the next six months to a year.
[00:13:01] Crystal Fincher: And pausing right here, what does it mean - what kinds of things are being taken up and handled in rulemaking? What is going to be determined there?
[00:13:08] Bryce Yadon: Yeah, that's a good question. So things such as what does the definition of substantially similar to development regulations that apply to single-family homes. So things that we didn't define very well that are going to be required. So again, one of them was you can't have any more restrictive requirements than you have on a single-family zone. So those will be things like matching up your setbacks and making sure that it's clear that we have a - you're either following the law, or not. So I think some of those rules will be very clear - that we think they're clear in the law, but we need to make sure they're there. I also think we'll also see things that will be able to be just adopted out of the rules to a local city's ordinance. And so things, like I said, what do setbacks look like for middle housing comparatively to other types? Or what does open space look like between courtyard apartments - how much is open space needed to create a courtyard apartment situation? What should the average heights, or what could be heights, that would facilitate different unit sizes for each development? What does substantially similar for affordable housing look like? 'cause we do have affordable housing incentives built into the bill. So those are some of the things. But I think it's going to be imperative of us all to think about how broad and how flexible can we make sure that this is, that the rulemaking is so local jurisdictions can really facilitate the development of these housing types. And I think that's one of the things that we want to make sure is going to occur at the end of the day. So those are some of the things - obviously, I'm probably missing a whole host of them because it's such a big piece of legislation and we haven't done this much extensive rulemaking on a bill in a while - like this, I should say, let alone on housing at the state level in a long time.
And then - how's it going to impact the local area after we get through that? Second, you're going to see local jurisdictions taking up public hearings, opportunities to engage. There's multiple pathways for local jurisdictions to comply with the law. There's one that says - you have to upzone 75% of your single-family homes and you can protect 25%. But there's a lot of stipulations within that, so making sure we have folks on the ground that are paying attention to high risk of displacement areas, other areas that might have been formerly redlined. So we obviously need people at the local level to be engaged at the planning process. It also provides folks an opportunity to give feedback on development regulations. Again, another kind of rehash of setbacks, heights, other requirements that might go along with this.
And then in reality, what do I think is going to look like on the ground in four or five years when we start seeing more of these develop is - more community and more homes for people. I live in a townhome - there's 11 units that is on two formerly single-family homes. And I've got a great community - I know my neighbors, I talk to them, we garden together out front - which is really exciting. So what I think we're going to see is just - is more housing options, maybe not always affordable for 80% and below, but more affordable than the single-family home that it replaced, which is really providing housing opportunity. So fits within the character of the neighborhood - the houses next to me look like they belong there and my house looks like it belongs here. And I'm right next to two-story apartment building that's next door to me as well, so it's a really diverse community and it's really exciting to see. So that's what we expect to see on the ground - is more people getting housing, more community being built, and facilitating a walkable environment that really creates and thrives in that community-based planning process.
[00:16:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, thank you for going into detail on what rulemaking means. I think that's a part of the process that is not known to as many people as the legislative process. And so much is determined about the implementation with those - whether it's this legislation or any piece of legislation - it's so important to continue engaging and following through rulemaking. I've explained it before - it's like the difference - the law that was passed is like a script on paper and the rulemaking is what fills in all of those details to actually make it a movie. There's so much more than the words on the paper in the ways that they're interpreted, in the ways that they can manifest in reality. And so making all of those decisions about - What exactly does that definition mean? What does that look like in real life? - makes a big difference. So whether it's this or any piece of legislation, really - if you've been engaged in the fight to get it passed, please continue to stay involved. Or if you want to get involved for the first time, do it within this rulemaking period because it does impact how this will turn out in real life.
Marcella, what was it about this that brought so many people to the coalition? What were some of the concerns that you had to overcome to continue to build this coalition? And what are you most excited to see as a result of this passing?
[00:18:09] Marcella Buser: Yeah, I think so many people were brought to this coalition because regardless of what you care about, there is a reason why missing middle affects you in a positive way. So talking with folks that care about climate change and care about having more walkable communities - great, missing middle is a solution for you. Folks that care about dismantling systemic racism - great, missing middle is for you. I think the biggest barrier that we faced with this bill on the ground was less with the coalition and more with local opposition. So I'm thinking in particular about Edmonds. At the start of session, we saw a lot of letters to the editor against missing middle coming out of Edmonds, and eventually started seeing lawn signs and flyers - all of this work against missing middle. And we learned that this was coming from a group called ACE, or Alliance for Citizens of Edmonds, and they are an organized group that's been around since 2004. And part of their mission is, and I quote "preserving the character of Edmonds." So we knew that if we were going to get this bill passed, but - not just passed, get this implemented - we needed to have a very local and strategic approach to this.
So we started working with our partners in Edmonds. We got connected with CARE, Coalition for Accessible and Resilient Edmonds, and started hosting regional meetings working to get more folks in the area involved. And we saw our engagement double - partially because we were there doing the work we needed to turn these folks out, but also because folks were seeing these lawn signs and thinking - You know, I don't really agree with that. I think I'm on the other side of this. And it ended up being successful. We got all of the representatives and the senators in that district to vote Yes on missing middle. But this was a big lesson learned - that if we want to keep passing zoning reform in the future and if we want to be implementing missing middle, we need to make sure that we're building these massive, stronger bases in these local, typically wealthier, smaller communities and making sure that we have the support needed to keep this work up. So I think that was one of the biggest struggles. And so making sure that our coalition wasn't just the folks that work on the statewide level, but we were working with individual smaller groups that work in these local communities - like Edmonds, Bellevue, Mercer Island, Bainbridge - and making sure that they were a part of this larger movement.
[00:20:45] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And what - looking forward into another bill that you were working on - the transit oriented development bill, where does that stand? And where is it going?
[00:20:57] Bryce Yadon: That's a good question. So just in terms of actual process real quick, it will go back to - I believe it goes back to the Senate. So it'll still be introduced next year, goes back to the last place that it passed, which would be - we have different steps, so it'll go back to the Senate.
[00:21:12] Crystal Fincher: And what would it do? What would that bill accomplish?
[00:21:15] Bryce Yadon: So the bill - it is a complement to the middle housing bill. So the middle housing bill obviously dealt with areas - just your entire city, generally speaking. What TOD, Transit Oriented Development Bill, did was really increase housing availability around our transit investments. So things like light rail, frequent transit service, or bus rapid transit, thinking about - again, King County has the Rapid Ride line, so it would increase development capacity at all the stops along the Rapid Ride line. They have Swift up in Snohomish County. Spokane is getting a number of bus rapid transit-type lines. So really what it would have done is taken areas - many of the bus lines go through a whole host of different zoning types - they go through commercial, they go through multifamily, and they also go through single-family. And what this was saying is the Legislature invested around $3.7 billion into bus transit in 2022 - let's leverage that to create housing opportunity around those things so people don't have to drive - thinking about how we implement our climate plans and meeting our goals for vehicle miles traveled that we have in state law.
So it would have allowed, within a quarter mile of bus rapid transit, a substantial increase in what they call floor area ratio or FAR. FAR is a wonky term to look at your lot size and how much building capacity you can have on top of it. I think most of us would defer to like heights - so we normally see 40-foot heights or 60-foot heights. This does it based off of - how many square feet can you build per lot, depending on the size and location. But I'm going to defer back to like heights and density just because I think it's easier to understand, and I think that's the direction we'll probably inevitably see the bill go because people can envision it better. So functionally it would have allowed something - instead of two stories, it would have allowed something like five stories or six stories and that typically is wood frame construction over concrete that's the cheapest to build when you start talking about multifamily. And then around light rail, it would have done the steel and concrete type of construction, which can be upwards of 70, 80 to 150 feet or any skyscraper in Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma, Everett - those types of buildings - around light rail.
So it would have really increased the development capacity - and instead of thinking of it as a station area, you would think of it more as a transit line. So you would have whole sections following a bus that could be upzoned that might be currently single-family or low-rise development and really increase the capacity. So I think that was fundamentally what the bill did at the end of the day. And I think there was a lot of confusion, even among members and the lobbying team, as I mentioned - FAR and other requirements. So I think there has to be some peel back and look at how can we best talk about it and represent and show what the bill will do. I think that was one of the positives of missing middle - we were able to provide photos and built environment that showed what middle housing is. I think we were having a hard time providing that for transit oriented development because it was a different way to look at how we develop. I think there's three or four cities that use FAR and the rest use height, and we got to probably move back towards that way to get people to see it better.
[00:24:44] Crystal Fincher: And Marcella - when it comes to the GMA climate bill, why was that so important to pass and what impact will it have moving forward?
[00:24:54] Marcella Buser: Yeah, I can't speak on the exact policy, but this bill is huge. Futurewise has been working on this for the past three years and this is going to change the way that we are looking at how we develop our cities. Before this bill, cities didn't need to plan around climate change, but now we are taking that into consideration - and we know that this is one of the top issues that people in our state care about and are looking to see action on. It's great being in Washington - we are one of the climate change leaders in the country, if not the leader, in climate change action - but there's always more that needs to be done.
[00:25:34] Crystal Fincher: Looking at the specifics and through the eyes of a layperson, through the eyes of someone just in the public - what would they expect to see differently and what would it do?
[00:25:45] Bryce Yadon: I'll say a couple of things, and I know that Marcella heard a lot of on the ground conversations - because again, I think one thing that we did well this year was take the stories of people on the ground and turn them into our key talking points and other things. One of the things that we're probably going to see is a better thought process on what does climate resiliency look like for flooding. We know that we're going to see increased storms, we're going to see sea level rise - and sea level rise will impact, obviously, the whole Puget Sound and the coastal areas. So we're going to see better and more thoughtful development regulations and development patterns within those flood zones. We've had a law for a long time that says - You really shouldn't be building in them. But we're also seeing a larger flood zone - they're increasing as time goes on because these are more severe. So I think the first thing we'll probably see is not immediate, but more thoughtful development regulations, exit patterns, access away from areas that are eventually going to be hit with floods and other things. I think another thing that we're going to see - thinking of, say, eastern Washington right away - is the planning and understanding of where development patterns occur and likelihood of wildfires. We've all seen the devastation in California and in some of the small towns in Oregon over the last few years with devastating impacts to people's homes and properties and livelihoods lost. And I think Washington has typically done a good job at trying to create this buffer between development areas and areas that are susceptible to wildfires, but we're going to see more action in that area. And then we're also going to see better plans to prevent wildfires from expanding into these communities. So it might not be immediate on the ground impacts, but it's one of those things.
And I think the second thing I want to mention, within the context of this, is with the GMA climate bill, we added - we made a change to how local jurisdictions plan for travel and transportation - requires vehicle miles traveled to be reduced over time. But in addition to that, it said - when you're doing your transportation plan, you have to plan for a multimodal environment. That means not only are you planning for vehicle traffic on roadways, but you should be planning for - What does transit look like within corridors? What does bike facilities look like in corridors? And what does pedestrian facilities look like in corridors? We know cities have a lack of pedestrian access - there's whole sections of all of our major cities that don't have access to sidewalks. And this is going to put those front and centered and say - You can't only invest in moving vehicles quickly. What you have to do is you have to invest in - safety is the number one priority for all users on the roadway. And you have to figure out how you're going to be investing in all modes of transportation instead of one. So I think what we're probably going to see immediately is a reworking of our transportation system, hopefully - and I think that'll be the most impactful. Hopefully we'll see speeds come down, vehicle crashes reduced, we'll see safety increase, we'll see access to crosswalks and pedestrian facilities that - again, a lot of jurisdictions just haven't invested in because their number one priority has been the speed of a vehicle to get through one singular intersection. So I think in the short term, that's probably going to be one of the major things we're going to see right away, within the context of what the immediate impacts are going to be, which is really exciting - something that we've been working on with partners for years.
[00:29:12] Crystal Fincher: It is really exciting. And so necessary, especially through our - basically a mobility safety crisis that we are in the middle of - and hopefully people will be taking action to address that soon. So now that we're post-session doing this kind of evaluation of everything that happened and looking forward - Marcella, what is necessary in the next year, leading up to this next session, locally and in conjunction with state legislators to pass these bills and continued action as needed? What's needed to bring the coalition together around the continued action to make sure that we can continue moving forward?
[00:29:51] Marcella Buser: Yeah, there's a lot that's needed. I think working through session - some of the best organizing that will set a campaign up for success happens before legislators are even back in Olympia. So really our campaign for next year is already starting now. It takes a lot of effort working in local communities and statewide, finding the volunteers that care about these issues that - again, maybe don't know how to get involved. Or maybe they really care about climate change and housing, but don't even know what land use is - they've never even heard the phrase zoning before. So making sure that we are reaching as many of those folks as possible, getting them involved, teaching them that they can be a part of the solution, and making their voice heard. And then - yeah, working with the coalition - took some time off, recovered from session, but now getting back to working with these groups, finding that common ground of - Okay, maybe we aren't working on missing middle or something else, but where do our interests coincide? And not only working with our past partners, but making sure that we are identifying new groups that want to get involved, making sure that our coalition is very diverse - that we are representing local groups and not just the Seattle area, but we are getting statewide. So there's a lot of work to do if we want to be building up the support that we need to be a really robust campaign, starting in January when bills are getting introduced.
[00:31:19] Crystal Fincher: And if people are interested in joining this effort and getting involved, who can they contact and how can they find out more information?
[00:31:27] Marcella Buser: Definitely get in touch with us. If you go to our website, we have ways - you can fill out a volunteer form and I'll get in touch with you to tell you more. There is a variety of ways for people to get involved. So even if you're hearing this and you're like - I don't have a ton of time for that, but I'm interested - during session, we send out weekly action alerts that take five minutes to email your legislators to vote Yes, or to sign-in Pro for hearings for bills. That's huge - that goes a long way. But we also have great opportunities for folks to get involved if you do have more time - if you want to volunteer, take on leadership, help run things like in-person lobby days. But also even if you don't have any time at all, you can always donate - and that always goes a long way with our campaigns - making sure that we have the resources needed to stay in this fight for as long as it takes to win.
[00:32:20] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much, Bryce and Marcella, for joining us today and helping to inform. Any parting words that you have, Bryce?
[00:32:27] Bryce Yadon: Just thank you for your time and thanks for everybody's engagement in the last legislative session. And I just want to echo what Marcella said, which is - if you're interested, there's millions of ways, both from your local city all up to the state, and happy to help anybody who's excited to do that.
[00:32:44] Crystal Fincher: All right. Thank you so much for joining us.
[00:32:46] Bryce Yadon: Thank you.
[00:32:47] Marcella Buser: Thanks.
[00:32:47] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by a friend of the show and today’s co-host: Executive Director of The Urbanist, Doug Trumm! They discuss Sen. Mark Mullet announcing he’s running for governor, The Amazon employee walk-out, SCOTUS ruling against the Teamsters in a blow to workers’ rights, City of Burien encampment sweep controversy continues, the Redmond Salary commission being abruptly disbanded by the mayor after they considered paying council members competitive salaries, and SPD wasting public money meant for school and pedestrian safety.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Doug Trumm, on Twitter at @dmtrumm.
Doug Trumm
Doug Trumm is executive director of The Urbanist, where he has contributed as a writer and editor since 2015. He graduated from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at UW in 2019 with a concentration in urban policy. As a car-free renter living in Seattle, his policy focuses include improving transit and street safety and tackling the housing affordability crisis. His cat Ole is a national treasure.
Resources
“The Big Waterfront Bamboozle with Mike McGinn and Robert Cruickshank” from Hacks & Wonks
Washington State Senator Mark Mullet launches 2024 gubernatorial campaign
After shootings and new threats, Seattle’s Garfield High cancels in-person classes
Pedestrian Projects Face Delays As School Camera Funding Falls Short - The Urbanist
Amazon walkout to go ahead after 1,700 employees sign on, organizers say | The Seattle Times
Some Amazon employees walk out in Seattle to protest climate, office policies | Reuters
Seattle city attorney will end community court, but some say the reason why is misleading
Emotions run high – but no action taken – at Burien City Council's Special Meeting Tuesday night
Burien Decides to Take No Action on Encampment on Its Property, Opening Path for Private Sweep - PubliCola
SCOTUS rules WA company can sue union over strike-related damage | Crosscut
Redmond mayor disbands commission proposing increased council salaries | The Seattle Times
Pedestrian Projects Face Delays As School Camera Funding Falls Short - The Urbanist
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and his former Senior Communications Advisor Robert Cruickshank about the missed opportunity for generational impact through how decisions were made about Seattle’s waterfront and the SR99 tunnel. Mike and Robert review how the vision of the scrappy People’s Waterfront Coalition, centered around making a prized public space accessible for all while taking the climate crisis on by transforming our transportation system, nearly won the fight against those who prioritized maintaining highway capacity and those who prioritized increasing Downtown property values.
The conversation then highlights how those with power and money used their outsized influence to make backroom decisions - despite flawed arguments and little public enthusiasm for their proposal - leaving Seattle with an underutilized deep bore tunnel and a car-centric waterfront. Some of the decision makers are still active in local politics - including current Mayor Bruce Harrell and his current advisor Tim Burgess. With important elections ahead, Crystal, Mike and Robert discuss how political decisions tend to conflict with campaign promises rather than donor rolls, how proven action is a better indicator than value statements, and how today’s dense ecosystem of progressive leaders and organizations can take inspiration and win the next fight.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii, Mike McGinn at @mayormcginn, and Robert Cruickshank at @cruickshank.
Mike McGinn
Mike is the Executive Director of national nonprofit America Walks. He got his start in local politics as a neighborhood activist pushing for walkability. From there he founded a non-profit focused on sustainable and equitable growth, and then became mayor of Seattle. Just before joining America Walks, Mike worked to help Feet First, Washington State’s walking advocacy organization, expand their sphere of influence across Washington state. He has worked on numerous public education, legislative, ballot measure and election campaigns – which has given him an abiding faith in the power of organizing and volunteers to create change.
Robert Cruickshank
Robert is the Director of Digital Strategy at California YIMBY and Chair of Sierra Club Seattle. A long time communications and political strategist, he was Senior Communications Advisor to Mike McGinn from 2011-2013.
Resources
“Seattle Waterfront History Interviews: Cary Moon, Waterfront Coalition” by Dominic Black from HistoryLink
“State Route 99 tunnel - Options and political debate" from Wikipedia
“Remembering broken promises about Bertha” by Josh Cohen from Curbed Seattle
“Fewer drivers in Seattle’s Highway 99 tunnel could create need for bailout” by Mike Lindblom from The Seattle Times
“Surface Highway Undermines Seattle’s Waterfront Park” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
“Seattle Prepares to Open Brand New Elliott Way Highway Connector” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I am very excited to be welcoming Robert Cruickshank and former Mayor Mike McGinn to the show to talk about something that a lot of people have been thinking about, talking about recently - and that is Seattle's new waterfront. We feel like we've spent a decade under construction - from a deep bore tunnel to the tunnel machine getting stuck - that's not even covering all the debate before that, but all of the kind of follies and foibles and challenges that have beset the process of arriving at the waterfront that we have now. And now that we are getting the big reveal, a lot of people have feelings about it. So I thought we would talk about it with one of the people who was at the forefront of criticisms of the tunnel and calling out some red flags that turned out to be a very wise warning - several wise warnings that have come to pass, unfortunately - for not listening to them. But I want to start early on in the beginning, both of you - and I had a short stint in the mayor's office - worked on this, talked about this on the campaign, really got it. But when did you first hear that we needed to replace the viaduct and there were some different opinions about how to make that happen?
[00:02:06] Mike McGinn: Okay, so I'm sure I can't pin down a date, but the really important date was, of course, the Nisqually earthquake in 2001. And so it gave the Alaska Way Viaduct a good shake - the decks weren't tied into the columns, the columns were on fill, which could liquefy - and everybody understood that if that quake had been a little stronger and harder, the elevated would come down. Now you might think that that would call for immediately closing the roadway for safety reasons, but what it did call for was for reconstructing it. And you have to remember that highway was really one of the very first limited access highways - it was built long ago and it was just at the end of its useful life anyway. Certainly not built to modern seismic standards or modern engineering standards.
So the conversation immediately started and I don't know when everything started to settle into different roles, but the Mayor of Seattle Greg Nickels, was immediately a proponent for a tunnel - and a much larger and more expensive tunnel than what was ultimately built. And it would have been a cut-and-cover tunnel along the waterfront that included a new seawall. So they thought they were solving two things at one time - because the seawall too was rotting away, very old, very unstable. But it would have gone all the way under South Lake Union and emerged onto Aurora Avenue further north, it would have had entrances and exits to Western and Elliott. And I seem to remember the quoted price was like $11 billion. And the state - governor at the time was Christine Gregoire - they were - No, we're replacing the highway. We don't have $11 billion for Seattle. And of course had the support of a lot of lawmakers for obvious reasons - we're not going to give Seattle all that money, we want all that highway money for our districts. And those were immediately presented as the alternatives.
And so much of the credit has to go to Cary Moon, who lived on the waterfront and started something called the People's Waterfront Coalition. I think Grant Cogswell, a former City Council candidate - now runs a bookstore down in Mexico City, but wrote a book about the Monorail, worked on the different Monorail campaigns before that - they launched something called the People's Waterfront Coalition. And the basic proposition was - We don't need a highway. This is a great opportunity to get rid of the highway and have a surface street, but if you amp up the transit service - if we invest in transit instead - we can accommodate everyone. And so that was really - as it started - and actually I remember being outside City Hall one day, going to some stakeholder meeting - I went to so many different stakeholder meetings. And I remember Tim Ceis saying to me - he was the Deputy Mayor at the time - You're not supporting that Cary Moon idea - I mean, that's just crazy. I was - Well, actually, Tim. So the Sierra Club was - I was a volunteer leader in the Sierra Club - and the Sierra Club was one of the first organizations - I'm sure there were others, I shouldn't overstate it - but the Sierra Club was persuaded by the wisdom of Cary's idea and supported it in that day. And so that was really how the three different options got launched - no public process, no analysis, no description of what our needs were. The mayor went to a solution, the governor went to a solution - and it was up to members of the public to try to ask them to slow down, stop, and look at something different.
[00:05:42] Crystal Fincher: And Robert, how did you first engage with this issue?
[00:05:47] Robert Cruickshank: For me, I had just moved to Seattle the first time in the fall of 2001 - so it was about six months after the Nisqually quake - and I came from the Bay Area. And that was where another earthquake had damaged another waterfront highway, the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco. And that was where San Francisco had voted - after that quake had damaged their viaduct beyond repair - they voted to tear it down and replace it with the Embarcadero Waterfront, which is a six-lane arterial but they built a lot more transit there. So they did the - what we might call the surface transit option - and it worked really well. It was beautiful. It still is. And so when I came up here and started to learn a little bit about the place I was living and the legacy of the Nisqually quake, I thought - Oh, why don't you just do the same thing here? It worked so well in San Francisco. Let's just tear down this unsightly monstrosity on the waterfront and replace it with a surface boulevard and put in a bunch of transit - San Francisco's made it work successfully. And the more I learned about Seattle, I realized there's a legacy of that here, too. This is a city where we had a freeway revolt, where activists came together and killed the RH Thomson freeway, which would have destroyed the Arboretum. They killed the Bay Freeway, which would have destroyed Pike Place Market. And so I naturally assumed - as being a relatively new resident - that Seattle would stay in that tradition and welcome the opportunity to tear this down and build a great waterfront for people, not cars.
But as we'll talk about in a moment, we have a lot of business interests and freight interests and others who had a different vision - who didn't share that community-rooted vision. And I think at numerous points along the way, though, you see people of Seattle saying - No, this is not what we want for our waterfront. We have an opportunity now with the fact that this viaduct nearly collapsed, as Mike mentioned, in the Nisqually quake - we have an opportunity for something really wonderful here. And so I think Cary Moon and then Mike McGinn and others tapped into that - tapped into a really strong community desire to have a better waterfront. I wasn't that politically engaged at the time in the 2000s - I was just a grad student at UW - but just talking to folks who I knew, anytime this came up - God, wouldn't it be wonderful down there if this was oriented towards people and not cars, and we took that thing down? So I think one of the things you're going to see is this contest between the vision that many of us in Seattle had and still have - this beautiful location, beautiful vista on Elliott Bay, that should be for the people of the city - and those in power who have a very different vision and don't really want to share power or ultimately the right-of-way with We the People.
[00:08:05] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. And I was involved in some things at the time - some curious coalitions - but definitely I was around a lot of people who favored either rebuilding the viaduct or the tunnel. Definitely not this roads and transit option - there's no way that's workable. That's pie-in-the-sky talk from those loony greenies over there. What are you talking about? But as this went on - I think no matter what camp people were in - there was always a clear vision articulated and people really focused on the opportunity that this represented, and I think correctly characterized it as - this is one of these generational decisions that we get to make that is going to impact the next generation or two and beyond. And there's an opportunity - the waterfront felt very disconnected with the way things were constructed - it was not easy just to go from downtown to the waterfront. It wasn't friendly for pedestrians. It wasn't friendly for tourists. It just did not feel like a world-class waterfront in a world-class city, and how we see that in so many other cities. You talk about the decision with the Embarcadero, Robert, and looking at - that definitely seemed like a definitive step forward. This was sold as - yeah, we can absolutely take a step forward and finally fix this waterfront and make it what it should have been the whole time. As you thought about the opportunity that this represented, what was the opportunity to you and what did you hear other people saying that they wanted this to be?
[00:09:38] Mike McGinn: Yeah, so I think there are - I think that's really important, because I don't think there was a real discussion of what the vision was. People will say there was, but there really wasn't. Because what was baked in and what you're referring to is - well, of course you have to build automobile capacity to replace the existing automobile capacity, right? In fact, this state is still building more highways across the state in the misguided belief that more highway capacity will somehow or another do some good. So this idea that you have to replace and expand highway capacity is extremely powerful in Washington state and across the country. And there were very few examples of highway removal, so that was just a real challenge in the first place - that somehow or other the first priority has to be moving automobiles.
For me, at that time I had become - the issue of climate had really penetrated me at that point. And in fact, when Greg Nickels took office and the Sierra Club endorsed him over Paul Schell - I was a local leader in the Sierra Club and a state leader in the Sierra Club - and my goal was that Mayor Nickels would do more than Paul Schell. And Paul Schell, the prior mayor, had done some good things. He had made Seattle City Light climate neutral - we'd gotten out of coal plants and we didn't purchase power from coal plants. He was really progressive on a number of environmental issues and we wanted Mayor Nickels to do more - and Mayor Nickels had stepped up. So we put on a campaign to urge him to do more. And he had stepped up to start something called the Mayors' Climate Protection Initiative - which was the City of Seattle was going to meet the standards of the Kyoto Protocol, which was like the Paris Agreement of its day. And that was - it set an emissions reduction target by a date in the future. And that was really great - in fact, over a thousand cities around the country signed up to the Mayors' Climate Protection Initiative. And I was appointed to a stakeholder group with other leaders - Denis Hayes from the Bullitt Foundation and others - to develop the first climate action plan for a city. Al Gore showed up at the press conference for it - it was a big - it was a BFD and a lot of excitement.
And one of the things that was abundantly clear through that process of cataloging the emissions in the City of Seattle and coming up with a plan to reduce them was that our single largest source of emissions at that time was the transportation sector. We'd already gotten off of coal power under Mayor Schell - we received almost all of our electricity from hydroelectric dams. We had good conservation programs. Unlike other parts of the country, transportation was the biggest. Now what's fascinating is now - I don't know if I want to do the math - almost 20 years later, now what we see is that the whole country is in the same place. We're replacing coal and natural gas power plants. And now nationally, the single largest source of emissions is transportation. So how do you fix that? If we're serious about climate - and I thought we should be - because the scientists were telling us about heat waves. They were telling us about forest fires that would blanket the region in smoke. They were telling us about storms that would be bigger than we'd ever seen before. And flooding like we'd never seen and declining snowpack. And it was all going to happen in our futures. Honestly, I remember those predictions from the scientists because they're in the headlines today, every day. So what do we do to stop that? So I was - I had little kids, man - I had little kids, I had three kids. How are we going to stop this? Well, it's Seattle needs to lead - that's what has to happen. We're the progressive city. We're the first one out with a plan. We're going to show how we're going to do it. And if our biggest source is transportation, we should fix that. Well, it should seem obvious that the first thing you should do is stop building and expanding highways, and maybe even change some of the real estate used for cars and make it real estate for walking, biking, and transit. That's pretty straightforward. You also have to work on more housing. And this all led me to starting a nonprofit around all of these things and led to the Sierra Club - I think at a national level - our chapter was much further forward than any other chapter on upzones and backyard cottages and making the transition. So to me, this was the big - that was the vision. That was the opportunity. We're going to tear this down. We're going to make a massive investment in changing the system, and this in fact could be a really transformative piece. That's what motivated me.
That climate argument wasn't landing with a whole bunch of other interests. There was certainly a vision from the Downtown and Downtown property owners and residents that - boy, wouldn't it be great to get rid of that elevated highway because that's terrible. There was also a vision from the people who still believed in highway capacity and that includes some of our major employers at the time and today - Boeing and Microsoft, they have facilities in the suburbs around Seattle - they think we need highway capacity. As well as all of the Port businesses, as well as all the maritime unions - thought that this highway connection here was somehow critical to their survival, the industrial areas. And then they wanted the capacity. So there were very strong competing visions. And I think it's fair to say that highway capacity is a vision - we've seen that one is now fulfilled. The second priority was an enhanced physical environment to enhance the property values of Downtown property owners. And they cut the deal with the highway capacity people - okay, we're here for your highway capacity, but we have to get some amenities. And the climate folks, I'm not seeing it - never a priority of any of the leaders - just wasn't a priority.
[00:15:44] Crystal Fincher: How did you see those factions come into play and break down, Robert?
[00:15:48] Robert Cruickshank: It was interesting. This all comes to a head in the late 2000s. And remembering back to that time, this is where Seattle is leading the fight to take on the climate and the fight against George W. Bush, who was seen as this avatar of and deeply connected to the oil industry. Someone who - one of his first things when he took office - he did was withdraw the U.S. from the Kyoto Protocol, which is the earlier version of what's now known as the Paris Agreement - global agreement to try to lower emissions. And so Seattle, in resisting Bush - that's where Greg Nickels became a national figure by leading the Mayors' Climate Action Group - not just say we're going to take on climate, we're going to do something about really de facto fighting back against Bush. And then Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Al Gore comes out with An Inconvenient Truth. And by 2007, people in Seattle are talking a lot about climate and how we need to do something about climate. But then what you see happening is the limits of that - what are people really actually willing to do and willing to support?
The other piece that comes together, I think - in the 2000s - is a revival of the City itself. Seattle spends the late 20th century after the Boeing bust - since the 70s "Will the last person out of Seattle turn out the lights," recovering in the 80s somewhat, recovering in the 90s, and then the tech boom. And by the 2000s, Seattle is a destination city for young people coming to live here and living in apartments and working in the tech industry. I think that unsettles a lot of people. One thing that really stood out to me about the discussion about what to do on the waterfront was this vision from old school folks - like Joel Connelly and others - we've got to preserve that working waterfront. And it's very much the sense that blue collar working class labor is under threat - not from corporate power, but from a 20-something millennial with a laptop working at Amazon who comes to Seattle and thinks - Gosh, why is this ugly viaduct here? It's unsafe. Why don't we just tear it down and have a wonderful waterfront view? And those who are offended by this idea - who are so wedded to the 20th century model that we're going to drive everywhere, cars, freedom - this is where you see the limits of willingness to actually do something on climate. People don't actually want to give up their cars. They're afraid they're going to sacrifice their way of life.
And you start to see this weird but powerful constellation come together where rather than having a discussion about transportation planning or even a discussion about climate action, we're having this weird discussion about culture. And it becomes a culture war. And the thing about a culture war is people pushing change are never actually trying to fight a war. They're just - This is a good idea. Why don't we do this? We all say these - we care about these values. And the people who don't want it just dig in and get really nasty and fight back. And so you start to see Cary Moon, People's Waterfront Coalition, Mike McGinn, and others get attacked as not wanting working class jobs, not wanting a working waterfront, not caring about how people are going to get to work, not caring about how the freight trucks are going to get around even though you're proposing a tunnel from the Port to Wallingford where - it's not exactly an industrial hub - there are some businesses there. But dumping all these cars out or in South Lake Union, it's like, what is going on here? It doesn't add up. But it became this powerful moment where a competing vision of the City - which those of us who saw a better future for Seattle didn't see any competition as necessary at all - those who are wedded to that model where we're going to drive everywhere, we're going to have trucks everywhere, really saw that under threat for other reasons. And they decided this is where they're going to make their stand. This is where they're going to make that fight. And that turned out to be pretty useful for the Port, the freight groups, the establishment democratic leaders who had already decided for their own reasons this is what they wanted too.
[00:19:11] Mike McGinn: It's important to recognize too, in this, is to follow the money. And I think that this is true for highway construction generally. You have a big section of the economy - there's a section of the economy that believes in it, as Robert was saying, right? And I do think the culture war stuff is fully there - that somehow or another a bike lane in an industrial area will cause the failure of business. Although if you went to the bike - outside the industrial building - you'll find a bunch of the workers' bike there, right? Because it's affordable and efficient. So there's this weird belief that just isn't true - that you can't accommodate industry and transit and walking and biking. Of course you can. And in fact, adding all the cars is bad for freight movement because of all the traffic jams.
So there's that belief, but there's also a whole bunch of people - I mentioned Downtown property owners - that gets you to your Downtown Seattle Association. The value of their property is going to be dramatically enhanced by burying, by eliminating the waterfront highway. But then you also have all of the people who build highways and all of the people who support the people who build highways. Who's going to float $4 billion in bonds? It's going to be a Downtown law firm. And by the way, the person who worked for that Downtown law firm and did the bond work was the head of the greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce at that time. So you have the engineering firms, you have the material providers, and then you have the union jobs that go with it. So really at this point - and this isn't just about the waterfront highway, this could be any highway expansion - you've captured the business community because a big chunk of the business community will get direct dollars from the government to them. And you've actually captured a significant chunk of the labor community as well, because labor fights for labor jobs. In the big picture, service workers are taking transit, service workers need housing in town, and you can start to see a split - like in my ultimate run for mayor, I won some service worker unions, never won any construction trades. In fact, they held a rally my first year in office to denounce me, right? Because I was standing in the way of jobs. So that's a really powerful coalition.
And I think what you see today in the country as a whole - as you know, I'm the ED of America Walks, so I get to see a lot more - this is a pattern. Highways aren't really supported by the public. They don't go to the public for public votes on highways anymore - the public wouldn't support it. And in fact, the data suggests the public gets that building more highway lanes won't solve everything. But you've got a big, big chunk of the economy that's gotten extremely used to billions and billions of dollars flowing into their pockets. And they need to protect that in every year. So you get that level of intensity around - Look, we're talking about $4 billion on the waterfront and a bunch of that money's coming to us. Better believe it's a good idea, and what are you talking about, climate?
[00:22:03] Robert Cruickshank: You talk about public votes, and I think there are three crucial public votes we got to talk about. One is 2007, when these advisory votes are on the ballot - and they're not binding, but they're advisory. Do you want to rebuild the viaduct or build a tunnel? They both get rejected. And then the next big vote is 2009, the mayoral election, where Mike McGinn becomes mayor - in part by channeling public frustration at this giant boondoggle. And then ultimately, the last public vote on this, 2011 - in June, I believe it was, it was in August - about whether we go forward or not and the public by this point, fatigued and beaten down by The Seattle Times, decides let's just move on from this.
[00:22:43] Mike McGinn: There's no other alternative. And it is worth returning to that early vote, because it was such a fascinating moment, because - I think the mayor's office didn't want to put his expansive tunnel option in a direct vote against the new elevated, fearing it would lose. So they engineered an agreement with the governor that each one would get a separate up or down vote. And by the way, Tim Ceis, the Deputy Mayor at the time, called in the Sierra Club, briefed us on it, and one of our members said - What would happen if they both got voted down? And Deputy Mayor Ceis said - by the way, Tim Ceis has got a big contract right now from Mayor Harrell, longtime tunnel supporter. Tim Ceis is the consultant for most of the business side candidates. Tim Burgess, another big supporter of the tunnel, now works for Mayor Harrell. Oh, and Christine Gregoire has been hired by the biggest corporations in the region to do their work for them as well. So there's a pretty good payoff if you stick around and support the right side of this stuff. But anyway, Mayor Ceis, Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis, when said, What happens if they're both voted down? He goes - Well, that would be chaos. You don't want that, do you? And I remember all of us just kind of looked at each other - and we all went out on the sidewalk, there were like six of us. And we went - We want that, right? And so we joined in and supported the No and No campaign. And The Stranger came in really hard. And I think Erica Barnett wrote the articles. And Cary Moon was in on it. And the defeat of that, for the first time, opened up the possibility - Well, let's think about something else.
And so a stakeholder group was formed. Cary Moon was appointed. Mike O'Brien was appointed. The waterfront guys were appointed. And the Downtown folks were appointed. And the labor folks were appointed. And I think a really important part of the story here is that it was advisory - they weren't making the decisions, it was advisory. But they got to a point at which the head of the State DOT, the head of the Seattle DOT, and the head of the King County DOT all expressed to their respective executives that surface transit worked and was worth it. And this was extremely distressing to the business community. So they mounted a big lobbying push and went straight to Gregoire. And Gregoire, for the first time, became a tunnel supporter. And they were promised that this new tunneling technology - the deep bore tunnel - would solve the cost issues of the deep bore tunnel. And not only that, the state's commitment, which to date was $2.4 billion - they had committed $2.4 billion to a rebuild - the state wouldn't have to pay anymore, because the Port would put in $300 million and they would raise $400 million from tolling. And coincidentally, the amount they thought they could raise from tolling was the exact amount needed to meet the projected cost of using the deep bore tunnel boring machine. So the deal was cut and announced. And the whole stakeholder group and the recommendations from the DOT heads were abandoned. And that occurred, basically, late 2008, early 2009 - the deal was made. And that was about the time that I was contemplating - well, I think I'd already decided to run, but I had not yet announced.
[00:26:14] Crystal Fincher: And this was an interesting time, especially during that vote. Because at that time, I had an eye into what the business community was doing and thinking, and it was clear that their numbers didn't add up.
[00:26:26] Mike McGinn: Oh my God - no.
[00:26:28] Crystal Fincher: But they just did not want to face that. And what they knew is they had enough money and resources to throw at this issue and to throw at a marketing effort to obfuscate that, that they wouldn't have to worry about it. And there was this sense of offense, of indignation that - Who are these people trying to come up and tell us that we don't need freight capacity, that we don't need - that this extra highway capacity, don't they understand how important these freeways are? Who are these people who just don't understand how our economy works?
[00:27:02] Mike McGinn: They were the grownups who really understood how things worked. And we were the upstarts who didn't understand anything. But there's a great line from Willie Brown talking about - I think the Transbay Bridge, and Robert can correct the name, in California, which was way over budget. And people were lamenting that the early estimates had been made up. And he goes - Look, this is how it works. You just need to dig a hole in the ground so deep that the only way to fill it up is with money. I think that's pretty much the quote. So that's the strategy. You get it started. Of course you have rosy estimates. And then you just have that commitment, and it's the job of legislators to come up with the cost overruns, dollars later.
[00:27:43] Robert Cruickshank: And I think it's so key to understand this moment here in the late 2000s, where the public had already weighed in. I remember voting - it was the last thing I voted on before I moved to California for four years. I'm like no - I was No and No. And that's where the Seattle voters were. They rejected both options. And then you start to hear, coming out of the stakeholder group - Okay, we can make the surface transit option work. And I left town thinking - Alright, that's what's going to happen, just like the Embarcadero in San Francisco and done. And the next thing I hear in late 2008, early 2009, there's this deal that's been cut and all of a sudden a deep bore tunnel is on the table. And this is Seattle politics in a nutshell. I think people look back and think that because we are this smart, progressive technocratic city - those people who live here are - we think that our government works the same way. And it doesn't. This is - time and time again, the public will make its expression felt. They'll weigh in with opinion poll or protest or vote. And the powers that be will say - Well, actually, we want to do this thing instead. We'll cook it up in a backroom. We're going to jam it on all of you, and you're going to like it. And if you don't like it, then we're going to start marshaling resources. We're gonna throw a bunch of money at it. We'll get The Seattle Times to weigh in and pound away at the enemy. And that's how politics works here - that's how so much of our transportation system is built and managed. And so people today, in 2023, looking at this monstrosity on the waterfront that we have now think - How did we get here? Who planned this? It was planned in a backroom without public involvement. And I think that's a thing that has to be understood because that, as we just heard, was baked in from the very start.
[00:29:11] Mike McGinn: Well, Robert, the idea of a deep bore tunnel was brought forward by a representative of the Discovery Institute, who you may know as the folks that believe in creationism.
[00:29:21] Robert Cruickshank: Well, and not only that, the Discovery Institute is responsible for turning Christopher Rufo from a failed Seattle City Council candidate in 2019 into a national figure.
[00:29:31] Mike McGinn: The Discovery Institute, with money from local donors - major, very wealthy local folks - they actually had a long-term plan to turn all of 99 into a limited access freeway. It's like - we need to get rid of that First Avenue South and Highway 99 and Aurora Avenue stuff - all of that should be a freeway. So they were the architects of the idea of - Hey, this deep bore tunnel is the solution. But Robert's point is just right on - transportation policy was driven by power and money, not by transportation needs, or climate needs, or equity needs, or even local economy needs really. When you get right down to it, our city runs on transit - that's what really matters. Our city runs on the fact that it's a city where people can walk from place to place. The idea that our economic future was tied to a highway that would skip Downtown - the most valuable place in the Pacific Northwest, Downtown Seattle. No, that's not really what powers our economy. But it certainly worked for the people that were going to get the dollars that flowed from folks and for the people who own Downtown property.
[00:30:42] Crystal Fincher: And I want to talk about money and power with this. Who were the people in power? What was the Council at that time? Who made these decisions?
[00:30:50] Mike McGinn: The Council at the time was elected citywide. And I think some people have concerns about district representation, but one of the things that citywide elections meant at the time was that you had to run a citywide campaign, and that's expensive. There's no way to knock on enough doors citywide. I did not have a lot of money when I ran for mayor, but at least I had the media attention that would go to a mayoral candidate. A City Council candidate would kind of flow under the radar. So you had people come from different places, right? They might come from the business side, they might come from the labor side. But ultimately, they would tend to make peace with the other major players - because only business and only labor could finance a campaign. They were the only ones with the resources to do that. So the other interests - the environmentalists, the social service folks, neighborhood advocates of whatever stripe - we chose from amongst the candidates that were elevated by, they would unify - in some cases, the business and labor folks would unify around a candidate. In fact, that's what we saw in the last two mayoral elections as well, where they pick a candidate. And so this doesn't leave much room.
So when I was mayor, almost the entire council was aligned with the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce at that time, either endorsed by them or had made their peace with them so the challenger was not being financed. So Robert said something about those outsiders - I went under the radar screen as a candidate at the beginning of my campaign. When I entered the race, nobody was running because everybody thought that Greg Nickels had the institutional support locked down.
[00:32:33] Crystal Fincher: But then a snowstorm happened.
[00:32:35] Mike McGinn: Well, it was even before that - honestly, everybody thought that he could win. And long before the snowstorm, I was like - We're getting a new mayor. And I was actually looking around to try to figure out who it was going to be - because I wanted a mayor who actually believed in climate, who had my values. But nobody - I was looking through who the people were that might run, and it dawned on me - Well, nobody's going to run. But we're going to get a new mayor and I have my values - and I've actually run ballot measure campaigns and had a very modest base of support. So I was really the first one in the race that got any attention. So I got some great media attention off that. Then my opponent in the general, Joe Mallahan - whatever else you may think about Joe Mallahan - he actually saw it too. He saw that there was an opening. And then we were joined by a long-time City Councilmember, Jan Drago. And I remember the headline from The Seattle Times or the comments at the time was - Okay, now it's a real race. But it just really wasn't. So I was really under the radar screen in that race because they were disregarding me. But there was in fact a lot of anger about the tunnel. There was a lot of just - Greg, for whatever his positives or negatives that history will deal with - and by the way, I actually think Greg did a lot of good. I just was disappointed in his highway policies and his climate policies at the end of the day - I have a lot of respect for Greg Nickels, but he wasn't going to win that race. And I came out of the primary against Joe Mallahan.
And all of a sudden we had these two outsiders and the business community's freaking out. All of it - I remember watching it - all of the support, the business support shifted to Joe. It took about a month, it took a few weeks. But all of a sudden - there was actually one week where I think I raised more money than he did, that was pretty unusual - and then all of a sudden all the money was pouring in. And boy, did Joe believe in that tunnel. And did Joe believe in what the Chamber of Commerce wanted to do. In fact, he believed in it so much that he believed that Seattle should pay cost overruns if there were cost overruns on the tunnel - an admission I got from him during the televised debate, I was shocked he admitted to it.
[00:34:41] Crystal Fincher: I remember that debate.
[00:34:43] Mike McGinn: Yeah. So you were kind of asking about how politics worked. It was really something. Yeah - here's another memory. About two weeks before the election, the City Council took - three weeks before the, two, three weeks, four weeks - they took a vote to say that the tunnel was their choice. Even though there's a mayoral election in which the tunnel is on the ballot, so to speak - in terms of the issues of the candidates - they took a vote for no reason to say it was a done deal. And then WSDOT released a video of the elevated collapsing in a highway, which is the first time a public disclosure request from a third party was ever given straight to a TV station, I think, in my experience in Seattle. I had Gregoire and the DOT folks down there working on that campaign too - their tunnel was threatened. So it really was something how - I indeed was kind of shocked at - it was such a learning experience for me - how much the ranks closed around this. I didn't appreciate it. I had my own nonprofit, I had been on stakeholder committees, I'd worked with a lot of people that weren't just Sierra Club members and neighborhood types. I'd worked with a lot of business people, many of whom had supported my nonprofit because they liked its vision. But they were very clear with me that as long as I supported the surface transit option, there was no way they could be associated with my run for mayor in any way, shape, or form - even if they liked me. It was a complete lockdown - right after the primary where Greg lost the primary and it was me and Joe, I was - Okay, open field running. I can now reach out to these people. There's no incumbent - maybe some of them can support me now. And they were abundantly clear on all of those phone calls that - Nope, can't do it. Until you change your position on the tunnel, we just can't do it. We have business in this town, Mike. We have relationships in this town. We cannot do that. So it was a real lockdown - politically.
[00:36:38] Crystal Fincher: That was also a big learning experience for me - watching that consolidation, watching how not only were they fighting for the tunnel against you and making the fight against you a fight about the tunnel, but the enforcement to those third parties that you were talking about that - Hey, if you play ball with him, you're cut off. And those kinds of threats and that kind of dealing - watching that happen was very formative for me. I'm like - Okay, I see how this works, and this is kind of insidious. And if you are branded as an outsider, if you don't play ball, if you don't kiss the ring of the adults in the room - which is definitely what they considered themselves - then you're on the outs and they're at war. And it was really a war footing against you and the campaign. Who was on the Council at that time?
[00:37:30] Mike McGinn: Oh my God. Let me see if I can go through the list. No, and it really, it was - your point about it was a war footing was not something that I fully, that I did not appreciate until actually going through that experience - how unified that would be. Excuse me. The City Council chair was Tim Burgess at the time. Bruce Harrell was on the Council. Sally Clark, Richard Conlin, Nick Licata. Mike O'Brien was running on the same platform as me with regard to the tunnel and he'd just been elected. Jean Godden, Sally Bagshaw. I hope I'm not leaving anything out - because -
[00:38:04] Robert Cruickshank: Tom Rasmussen will forgive you.
[00:38:06] Mike McGinn: Tom Rasmussen. Yeah - because City Councilmembers would get really offended if you didn't thank them publicly - that was another thing I had to learn. You have to publicly thank any other politician on stage with you or they held a grudge. Yeah. So I had - I didn't know all the politicians' rules when I started.
[00:38:25] Crystal Fincher: There are so many rules.
[00:38:27] Mike McGinn: There are so many, there's so many rules. But really what you saw then was that the Council tended to move in lockstep on many issues - because if they all voted together and they all worked citywide, there was protection. None of them could be singled out. So it was very - and it's not to say that some of them didn't take principled votes and would find themselves on an 8-1 position sometimes, but for the most part, it was much, much safer to be - it was much, much safer to vote as a group. And they tended to do that. And they had coalesced around the tunnel, except for O'Brien. And that could not be shaken by anything we brought to bear.
[00:39:04] Robert Cruickshank: And this is wrapped up in not just the electoral politics, but the power politics. Because Mike McGinn comes in - mayor leading the 7th floor of City Hall, the head of City government - and smart guy, nice guy, willing to talk to anybody. But is not from their crew, is not from that group. And as Crystal and Mike said, the ranks were closed from the start. This is - again, 2009, 2010 - when nationally Mitch McConnell is quoted as saying, It's his ambition to make Obama a one-term president. I don't know if he's ever caught on record, but I would be quite certain that Tim Burgess would have said the exact same thing - that his ambition was to make Mike McGinn a one-term mayor. As it turned out in 2013, Tim Burgess wanted his job - one of the candidates running for it. So these are all people who have a reason to close ranks against Mike McGinn and to use a tunnel as a bludgeon against him to do so.
[00:39:58] Mike McGinn: There were other bludgeons. After I won the general election and before I took office, they passed their annual budget - they cut the mayor's office budget by a third before I even took office. Just boom - I know - they were determined, they were determined. And so that was when the planning - that council then and with WSDOT - that was when basically the contours of the waterfront were locked into place, including what we now see as that very wide surface road. That was that Council. So if you're wondering, if you're looking at that going - Okay, wow, who decided that and where did it come from? Again, our current mayor and his current advisor and others - they've always been for that. Building that big surface road has always been the plan to go along with the tunnel, because highway capacity was their highest priority. And the park on the waterfront, along with a lot of money into the aquarium and into these new structures - that's their signature thing for so many other people. But the idea that you should, that there was an opportunity to transform our transportation system and transform our city to make it more equitable and climate friendly was never a priority in this process. Just wasn't.
[00:41:20] Crystal Fincher: It was never a priority. It was never seriously considered. And to me, through this process - lots of people know, have talked about it on the show before - I actually didn't start off Team McGinn. I wound up Team McGinn - didn't start off that way. But through that - and you won me over with logic - it was you being proven right on several things. You pointed out that their projections, their traffic projections were just so far out of left field that there was no way that they were going to come close. And they even had to come down on their projections before we even saw the traffic - the actual traffic turned out to be lower. You were right on that one - the laughable -
[00:41:59] Mike McGinn: They're under 40,000 cars a day - for a highway that was carrying 110,000 cars a day beforehand. So even as a traffic solution - to put that into context, 40,000 cars a day is like the Ballard Bridge. And I can guarantee you the replacement costs of the Ballard Bridge is not $4 billion or $3.1 billion. The E Line, I think, carries 15,000 people a day. Metro carries 220,000 people a day. What you could do with that $3.1 billion or $4 billion in terms of bus lanes, bike lanes, rolling stock for Metro, maybe pay raises for bus drivers so that we could actually have service - you could do so much with those billions of dollars. And we put it all into moving 40,000 cars a day? It's just pathetic. That's three Rapid Ride lines we could have had for a 10th of the cost, or even less. I think the investments in Rapid Ride lines are about $50-100 million a line to make the capital investments to make it work. So the waste - even if you don't care about climate, the waste of dollars - and who's paying those taxes? To a great degree, we have the most regressive state and local tax system in the nation.
And we'll have a ballot measure soon, and I know a lot of environmentalists will be out there if the package spends for the right thing saying - Hey, we need money for local streets. Imagine if we'd taken that gas tax money and the Legislature had allowed cities and towns to use it to improve their streets - which they can do. I know that the constitution says highway purposes, but when you read highway purposes, it says roads and bridges. It includes everything. You can use gas taxes for anything that improves the road. And they do. WSDOT has used gas taxes to pay for bike lanes and sidewalks. It's legal. That's a choice. So we're driving around potholed streets. We have - we're putting up little plastic dividers because we care more about the car getting hurt than the bicyclist on the other side of that plastic divider. We're watching our transit service melt away because we can't pay bus drivers enough. But hey, man, somebody's got a really rapid - 3,000 people a day get to skip Downtown in their private vehicles. Where are our priorities for equity? Where are the priorities for economy, or even just plain old-fashioned fiscal prudence? None of that was there - because all of those dollars were going to fund the needs of the most powerful people in the City. And they captured those dollars - and all of us will pay the taxes, all of us will breathe the smoky air, and all of us will watch our streets deteriorate and our transit service evaporate.
[00:44:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And to me, it was such a foundational lesson that the people that we have making decisions really matter - and that we have to really explore their records, their donors, their histories - because over and over again, we look at the decisions that wind up being made that frequently conflict with campaign promises, but that very, very rarely conflict with their donor rolls.
[00:45:16] Mike McGinn: And yes - and every one of them knows how to make the value statements. So if I had any advice for people in this year's election - everyone is going to say they care about housing, everyone's going to say they think biking safe. I don't - one of the things that I came away with - I don't care about the goals you put into some policy anymore. Show me the hard physical action you will take that might piss somebody off, but you're willing to do it because it's right. And if you can't do that, then your value statements are meaningless. So take a look - who actually, and that's the question I always ask candidates for office - Tell me about a time you did something hard that might've caused you criticism, but you did it because it was right. Or that you made somebody who was an ally or friend upset, but you did it because it was right. Tell me about that time.
[00:46:04] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's a challenge. And to your point and learning through just watching how people operated through that and some other processes - but that certainly was a big learning for me - is the role of coalitions, the role of accountability, and understanding. You have always had your finger on the pulse of Seattle, really - you're extraordinarily good at that. You're actually - both of you - are great strategists. But our political class is so detached from that sometimes - certainly I'm feeling frustration at some recent actions by our Legislature - we just had our special session day where they increased criminalization of substances, personal possession of substances - just reflecting on legislation to provide school, kids with free meals at school, things that seem like really basic and foundational that we should be able to land this. If we can call a special session to hand Boeing billions of dollars, we should be able to feed kids, right?
[00:47:00] Mike McGinn: At the time we were cutting school budgets - when we found money for that. But I don't want to be too gloomy. And then I want to turn it over to Robert to get a last word in here, 'cause I just loved - his analysis is so awesome. I don't want to be too gloomy because - I look at what happened in the Legislature this year on housing, that we're finally going to allow housing, people to build more housing in places so people can actually live closer to their jobs and live more affordably. 10 years ago, we would have thought that was impossible. There's a lot of hard organizing that did it. At America Walks, we're the host of the Freeway Fighters Networks - there are people in 40 cities or more around the country that are organizing to remove highways. And while it's just a small amount of money compared to the amount going to highway expansion, there's actually federal funds to study and remove highways. So it's a long, hard slog. What felt for us - for Robert and me and Cary Moon and others fighting this - which felt like an impossible fight at the time is a fight that is now winning in places. Not winning enough - we're not winning fast enough - but it can change. And so that's - I don't want to be too negative. They got money, but organizing and people - and we actually have the public with us on this, just like we have the public with us on housing. So we just have to do more. We just got to keep at it, folks - got to keep at it. We can win this one. Don't allow this story of how hard it was to deal with the unified political class in the City of Seattle for their climate arson - should not deter you. It should inspire you, 'cause I actually won the mayor's office and we actually did do a lot of good. And the next fight is right in front of us again today, so get in it people. We need you.
[00:48:46] Robert Cruickshank: I think that's spot on. And I remember coming to work in your office at the very beginning of 2011, when it seemed like the tunnel was just dominating discussion, but not in the mayor's office, right? When I joined, I fully expected to be like - roll my sleeves up to take on that tunnel. Instead, I'm working on the mayor's jobs plan, the Families and Education Levy, on transit. That's the stuff that was really getting done, and I think McGinn left a really great legacy on that. But we didn't win the tunnel fight. And I think we've diagnosed many of the reasons why, but one thing that really stands out to me as I look back from 12, 13 years distance is we didn't have the same density of genuinely progressive and social democratic organizations and people and leaders in Seattle that we have now. I think that matters because Mike's been talking about what's the next fight. I think one of the big fights coming up next year - when it comes time to renew that Move Seattle Levy - that's nearly a billion dollars that's going to be on the table. And we keep getting promised - when we are asked to approve these massive levies - that a lot of that money is going to go to safe streets, it's going to go to protect vulnerable users, we're going to do something to finally get towards Vision Zero. And instead it all gets taken away to build more car infrastructure. At what point do we finally stand - literally in the road - and say, No more. Do we look at the broken promises on the waterfront where we were promised a beautiful pedestrian-friendly waterfront and got another car sewer? We're going to have to organize and come together. We have many more groups now and many more leaders who are willing to stand up and say - We're not passing this levy unless it actually focuses on safe streets, unless it focuses on pedestrians and cyclists and transit users, and gives iron-clad promises to make sure stuff gets built so that some future mayor can't just walk in and start canceling projects left and right that we were promised. That's the lesson I take from this is - we're better organized now, we have more resources now, but it's still going to be a slog, and we're going to have to stand our ground - otherwise we get rolled.
[00:50:34] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I thank you both for this conversation today - reflections on the tunnel fight, how it came to be, what it was like in the middle of it, and the lessons that we take moving forward in these elections that we have coming up this year, next year, and beyond. Thanks so much for the conversation.
[00:50:50] Mike McGinn: Thank you, Crystal.
[00:50:51] Robert Cruickshank: Thank you - it's been wonderful.
[00:50:52] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank!
They cover WA gubernatorial candidate Bob Ferguson’s controversial and publicly-mocked endorsement from former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best, an escalating battle over an illegal encampment between the Burien City Manager and King County Executive legal counsel, how a proposed “Renter’s Bill of Rights” from Tacoma for All is gathering signatures in Tacoma for a local initiative, the Seattle City Attorney and a right-wing councilmember’s plan to rush through a restart of the failed War on Drugs, Seattle’s new tree protection ordinance and the first meeting of the Seattle Social Housing Developer Board..
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank, at @cruickshank.
Resources
Sarah Reyneveld, Candidate for King County Council District 4 from Hacks & Wonks
@BobFergusonAG on Twitter: “I'm grateful to have the support of former Seattle Police Chief”
@davidstoesz on Twitter: “I recently had a long email exchange with the AG's office about why they didn't investigate Best's and Durkan's missing texts, a felony”
“King County Executive accuses city of Burien of 'lease scheme' to evict people from homeless encampment” by Nia Wong from Fox 13 Seattle
“King County expresses 'substantial concerns' about City of Burien's intention to sweep campers off city-owned lot; won't allow police to help” by Scott Schaefer from The B-Town Blog
“Burien City Manager responds to King County's letter warning that police won't help with encampment sweep” by Scott Schaefer from The B-Town Blog
“Dueling Tenant Rights Measures Square Off in Tacoma” by Kevin Le from The Urbanist
“Tacoma city officials discuss updates to Rental Housing Code” by Lionel Donovan from KING 5
“Slog AM: Seattle City Council Rushes to Vote on Drug War Reboot, Tacoma Landlords Try to Squash Tenant Bill of Rights, and DeSantis's Twitter DeSaster” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
“Here's how the new drug possession law in Washington is different that what was on the books“ by Jim Camden from The Spokesman-Review
“Washington’s War on Drugs Starts Up Again in July” by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger
“'Real people being represented': Seattle's social housing board is just getting started” by Joshua McNichols, Libby Denkmann & Noel Gasca from KUOW
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
If you missed our Tuesday topical show, I chatted with Sarah Reyneveld about her campaign for King County Council District 4 - why she decided to run, the experience she brings as a public sector attorney and community advocate, and her thoughts on addressing frontline worker wages and workforce issues, the need for upstream alternatives in the criminal legal system and substance use crisis, how to improve policy implementation, climate change and air quality, and budget revenue and transparency. Today we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank.
[00:01:30] Robert Cruickshank: Thank you for having me back, Crystal. It's always fun to be on the show.
[00:01:33] Crystal Fincher: Always great to have you on the show. So this has been an eventful week, but wow - last night, there was a little event that popped up that kind of took the notice of everyone who follows politics basically in Washington state, whether they were on the progressive side, conservative side, or somewhere in-between. That was Bob Ferguson's announcement of his endorsement by former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best. Why did this attract so much attention, Robert?
[00:02:03] Robert Cruickshank: Because Carmen Best is one of the most controversial figures in Seattle right now, coming out of the summer of 2020. And as Alexa Vaughn, for example, noted - she runs The Needling - this was posted on the anniversary of George Floyd's murder. And when Minnesota police murdered George Floyd three years ago, as we recall, it sparked a major wave of protest here in Seattle to demand reforms here. And in that response, that protest, Mayor Jenny Durkan and Chief Best systematically deceived the public, deleted their texts in what ought to be a felony, and essentially got away with it. Carmen Best then left her job as Police Chief of Seattle and is now making a fair amount of money as a TV pundit. And so Carmen Best, coming out of that summer, is seen as one of these leaders who sided with the cops against people demanding urgently-needed reform, and is seen as avatar of we-need-to-get-tough-on-crime policies - who has a very poor reputation among a lot of people in Seattle, including Ferguson's base. And that's what happened yesterday, in the reaction, was Ferguson's base - progressive people in Seattle who've been cheering him on as he takes on Trump, as he takes on big corporations - all of a sudden surprised to see him just bear-hugging one of the most notorious figures in recent Seattle history.
[00:03:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and adding on top of that - the challenges during those protests, the deleted texts that you mentioned, but also the tear-gassing of neighborhoods. I don't think people understand how radicalizing that was for some neighborhoods in Seattle. They didn't tear-gas protesters. They tear-gassed entire geographical areas. People in their homes couldn't breathe, were severely impacted by that. And where do you go at that point in time? There are protests out on the street. You're at home with your kids, with your family, and getting tear-gassed in your home. That's what happened in Seattle, and people have not forgotten that. That was a radicalizing moment. I think you've seen instances afterwards in just relations and demonstrating that the trust with the police department is completely evaporated. Neighbors banding together to question people being detained for what seems like no reason because they no longer view them and the police as being on the same side after that. They felt attacked. You aren't attacked by people you trust - yeah.
[00:04:33] Robert Cruickshank: Well, they were attacked. They absolutely were. And you talk about the stories of tear-gassing the neighborhood. I will never forget hearing at one of the City Council meetings in early June 2020, when this was all going on, a father who lived in an apartment on Capitol Hill talking about how the tear-gas got into his apartment and his newborn baby started crying and having fluid coming from its nose and mouth because it couldn't handle the tear-gas that had seeped in. This is an example of just complete disregard that Carmen Best had for the public. When the Council tried to ban the use of tear-gas, ban the use of blast balls that had been fired at peaceful protesters in June 2020, Carmen Best spoke out against that. So it is a legacy of attacking - with vicious weapons of war - the people of Seattle engaged in peaceful protests during this crucial moment in our City's history. And for Bob Ferguson to tout her endorsement comes off as the state's leading law enforcement guy - that's what he is as Attorney General - embracing Carmen Best and her narrative of what happened.
And I think it's a real wake-up call and a shocking moment that maybe needed to happen. Bob Ferguson has had 11 years in office of very good press. He's fought hard for LGBTQ rights. He's fought hard to ban assault weapons. We talked about his lawsuits against Trump and against big tech companies. And rightly, he's gotten a lot of credit for that. But we haven't seen much about his other views on other issues. He hasn't been asked to take a stand on housing, transit, policing. I don't believe he weighed in, at least certainly not in a loud public way, on the question of what to do about the Blake decision. And so as he's launched his "exploratory campaign" for governor, racking up endorsements all over the place - literally left and right - Pramila Jayapal and Carmen Best. He hasn't gotten a lot of scrutiny yet. I think yesterday's move to announce the endorsement of Carmen Best means he's going to start getting a lot of scrutiny. I think the honeymoon for Ferguson, at least in Seattle, is over. Now that may not be a bad thing in Ferguson's political calculation, but I think you saw the governor's race shift substantially yesterday.
[00:06:41] Crystal Fincher: I think so too. What do you think went into this political calculation to seek, and accept, and publicize this endorsement?
[00:06:51] Robert Cruickshank: I think Bob Ferguson is trying to shore up his right flank. He's probably looking at what he saw south of the border in Oregon last year, where the Oregon governor's race was dominated by questions of public safety. He's seen similar things happen around the country where Democrats are attacked on this. I think he is also seeing that right-wing Democrats, like Mark Mullet, are making noise about running for governor. I think Ferguson feels he has to shore up his position on the right and the way that he can do that is by touting law and order. And in fact, the day before he announced Carmen Best's endorsement, he also announced the endorsement of Federal Way Mayor Jim Ferrell, who had run for King County Prosecutor last year - losing to Leesa Manion. And Ferrell ran on a more law and order right-wing approach, so there's clearly a calculated effort here by Ferguson to show - at least maybe the media and a certain segment of the electorate - that he's not like those other Democrats. He's not a Seattle Democrat who's, in the parlance on the right, soft on crime. He's going to be tough on this stuff, and I think it means that quite a lot of scrutiny now should be directed his way in terms of asking him where he stands and what he believes on the major issues of crime and public policy.
[00:08:03] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. When you see this, especially with such a - at least from the online vocal right - also such a backlash from them. This is one of those where you look at the ratio and people are like, My goodness - there was not a positive reaction to this. It was pretty negative across the spectrum. It was universally negative across the spectrum. Who does this help him with? Who do you think - there's their calculus - but in reality, do you think this helps with anyone?
[00:08:36] Robert Cruickshank: I think that Ferguson has been waging a low-key but significant effort to try to win the support of The Seattle Times. He was a supporter of legislation in Olympia this year that would have created some tax breaks for media companies, including The Seattle Times, and Times lobbied hard for it. The bill was also sponsored in the Senate by Mark Mullet, so I think Ferguson is looking at this - trying to make sure that he has The Seattle Times in his corner, certain right-wing Democrats in his corner. But they're not a huge portion of the electorate. The sense I have is Ferguson wants to try to just clear the field as much as he possibly can in advance of the actual election. But there is a huge risk here because in building that coalition, you can't alienate another piece of it. Now, all of a sudden, he's got Seattle voters, who are pretty shocked by the Carmen Best endorsement, taking a second look at Ferguson. That's going to give an opportunity to someone like Hilary Franz, who launched her campaign but otherwise hasn't had much energy or momentum - gives her an opening to maybe try to win some of those Seattle voters over.
[00:09:42] Crystal Fincher: There's another element of this that I find interesting, and actually this is the element that I would be concerned about backfiring over the long term - that it could play into a narrative that could turn out to be harmful. It's that - while questions were swirling around what happened with the East Precinct and how that happened, finding out the texts were deleted - which is a significant crime, really - and lots of people asking, Hey, Bob Ferguson, why aren't you investigating this? And him saying, I can't. But as has been covered several times - again recently - he has either referred, or spoken up, or suggested that in other instances. And so if a narrative catches on that - Yeah, Bob's tough if he doesn't have a friend doing something - you know, if a friend is doing one of those things that lots of people find objectionable, it's a different story if it's a friend. If it's a different story, if it's a donor, perhaps. It's a different story - that kind of thing. I would be concerned about that kind of narrative catching on. And so that to me is why - I don't understand - realistically - look, if you're trying to project law and order, he could have done what Jim Ferrell did. That didn't work for Jim Ferrell, but it didn't have this kind of backlash where - hey, different police chiefs - but to choose Seattle's Carmen Best, it just - my goodness, that is an unforced error, it seems. Lots of time left, more than a year in this campaign. Who knows who else is going to get in the race? Lots of time, so I am in no way suggesting this is fatal. He obviously financially enjoys a significant advantage and there's lots of time left. We have seen plenty of politicians at all levels step in it and make their way out. So I'm not saying that this is damning, but it's certainly - to your point - is going to invite more scrutiny than there had been before.
[00:11:42] Robert Cruickshank: It is. And I was thinking about this earlier today - we haven't had a contested primary for governor on the Democratic side in Washington state in nearly 20 years. Last time was when Ron Sims and Christine Gregoire ran against each other in 2004. Inslee didn't have a challenge in 2012, and obviously hasn't been challenged since. We might have one now and I think that would be healthy - healthy for the Democratic Party, healthy for the state - to have different ideas out there, candidates running on policy and having to have discussions and debates about that. I think it'd be really helpful. Ferguson has had a lot of momentum early. He's racked up a ton of endorsements, as we've talked about, but he hasn't really been challenged on policy and he hasn't - made very few statements on policy. It was surely a deliberate thing on his campaign's part. That needs to change - that'll make Ferguson a stronger candidate in the general election. And it'll make all of us - whether we're big D, small D Democrats, or just voters who care about the direction of our state - better off when there's a real policy discussion happening in the primary.
[00:12:42] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. We will continue to follow what's going on with the gubernatorial race, but in the meantime, in the City of Burien, there is a really contentious situation going on right now between the Burien - really interestingly - between the City and King County Executive's legal team. Can you just cover what is going on here? In a nutshell, what is the issue and what's currently happening?
[00:13:13] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, the City of Burien - and it seems to be the City Manager in particular in Burien - is trying to sweep a homeless encampment. Now, here in the western United States, we're governed by a Supreme Court - or not, I'm sorry, not a Supreme Court decision, that's important - a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision, which is one level below the Supreme Court, against the city of Boise, saying that you cannot sweep a homeless encampment without having made real good faith offers of shelter to those people you're trying to remove. At some point, one would imagine some city somewhere will try to take that to the US Supreme Court, which would be a nightmare, because I don't think we'd get a good ruling out of that. But here in the western US, we are all governed by that decision - which is binding from the Ninth Circuit - which means you can't just sweep people without giving them a place to go. That doesn't justify sweeps, but that's the legal ruling that cities operate under. Now, what Burien appears to have tried to do was redefine a city park as a dog park - as private park - in order to get around having to actually offer shelter. Because they don't have an offer, they have nowhere to go - that's why encampments exist - they exist because people have nowhere else to go. And so the City Manager said this is the plan we're going to do.
Well, King County Executive's Office slapped down Burien pretty hard and said - You can't do that - that violates the court ruling - and we're not going to provide police support. Burien, like many cities in King County, many smaller cities, doesn't have its own police force. They contract with the King County Sheriff's Office. And the King County Sheriff's Office, after 2020 charter reform, the Sheriff is now appointed by the Executive. So the Executive now has more direct control over the King County Sheriff's Office than it had before. And so what Dow Constantine's office is saying is - We're not going to have police there to help do your sweep. Without police, you're going to have a hard time actually getting people to move. The City of Burien is striking back. The City Manager is disagreeing with this. But interestingly, people like Hugo Garcia, who are on the City Council in Burien, are saying - This is not us. We didn't authorize this. This is the City Manager going out and doing this on his own. And so now you have really a fight over power in Burien and who actually controls these important levers of city government - when it comes to people's shelter - is in question here. So Burien has a lot to sort out.
[00:15:28] Crystal Fincher: A lot to sort out. And a little context further with this is - where the encampment is now - arrived there because Burien did previously conduct a sweep at one location that was city-owned. And because sweeps don't do anything to solve homelessness - housing solves homelessness - in an entirely predictable turn of events, the people who were swept wound up in an adjacent city lot because there's nowhere else to go. There was no offer of housing, no shelter. Where do you think they're going to go? Obviously, they're just moving place to place. We know that's how this works - over and over again - it's been covered several times, just locally here. So that happened. And so the Council in a 4-3 - they kind of have a 4-3 moderate to conservative majority there - they decided to enter into a lease with a private entity, and who billed themselves as dog park caretakers, in an attempt to allow them to trespass the people who are on that property as private owner-operators, basically, in a way to get around the City's requirement to do that. Well, that was just blatantly an end-run attempt, which Dow Constantine - wisely and following the law - decided not to adhere to.
But now this is an interesting situation. As you said, there are councilmembers who said - Wait, wait, wait, this is not happening. The response to the King County Executive's legal advisor is not coming from us. The City Manager decided to respond on their own. The lease with the C.A.R.E.S. Organization - Burien C.A.R.E.S. Organization - is not executed yet. We don't think it should be. We need to reconsider and talk about this. But it's a legitimate issue. And Burien - frankly, there are a number of cities skirting the requirement to provide housing. That's why we see the whole theater around - they were offered housing and they refused, even if they know that the housing is not adequate, even if they know the shelter is available - them trying to check that off as them basically - checking on their list - okay, we have technically done the thing that will not get this sweep called unconstitutional, hopefully. Even though when it has been brought to court, it's been successfully challenged before. So we'll see how this continues to unfold. But it's kind of a - the equivalent of a constitutional crisis, almost - in a city, like a charter crisis. Who does actually have the authority to do this? Can the city manager act, in his capacity, response to this? Can he act independently of the Council on this response? Who knows? They were talking about an emergency meeting. We'll see what results from that. But certainly a lot of people and organizations are paying attention to this. And it is - it's a conundrum.
[00:18:24] Robert Cruickshank: It is. And I think it is another example of the ways in which the regional approach to solving homelessness isn't working right now. The King County Regional Homelessness Authority lost its executive director last week and is spending a lot of money, but what is it showing for it? It's taking forever to get people into shelter. The idea behind the regional approach is - this is a regional problem - let's pool our resources and act quickly to cut through all the bureaucratic silos so we get people into shelter. It's what we all want. It's not happening. And I think - yet again, we're seeing another grand effort to solve homelessness not succeed because we haven't actually tackled the root of it. We're not funding enough supportive, permanently supportive, temporary shelter, whatever it is - it's not being done. The state isn't kicking in the money that's needed. It's hard to get the permitting. It's hard to find the zoning because we've been glacially slow to change zoning. We finally got some of that fixed here in the 2023 session, but - Ed Murray declaring a state of emergency over homelessness in 2015. I remember when I moved to Seattle, a little over 20 years ago, we were in the middle of the 10-year plan to end homelessness. We have these grand efforts that go nowhere. Meanwhile, people are in crisis. People living outside, whether it's in the cold of winter or the heat and smoke of summer, aren't getting their needs met. These are our neighbors who deserve shelter. And government just trying to pass the buck, just trying to appease a few cranky people who don't want to see a tent, but not giving people the help that they need and have needed for a long time. And we need to find actual solutions to get people housed and pay what it takes to do it. Otherwise, we're just going to keep seeing more stuff like this happen.
[00:20:01] Crystal Fincher: We are. And we have to contend with the use of resources here. Burien's in a bind now. If they do buck this - and there's been some early talk - we don't need the Sheriff, we can stand up our own department. The reason why they haven't stood up their own department is because it's prohibitively expensive. And they're already spending a significant portion - I think almost half of their general budget - on policing currently. And so the money that we put into these sweeps, the money that we put into litigation, and the challenges of just working through this is all money that is being spent on things that we know are not going to do anything to make this problem better. At the most, you can make it disappear only in the sense that - yes, you sweep someone from one location, they're going to move to another one. Lots of people hope they just move to another one in another city so they don't have to deal with it, but they do. And now every city - look at housing prices, which are the biggest determinant of our levels of homelessness. Lots of people, employed people, families cannot afford housing. There is nowhere for them to go. So if we continue to waste our resources on the things that don't work, we don't have the resources for the things that do.
And we're hearing excuses - Oh, we would love to do this. We would love to have more supportive housing. We would love to have more behavioral health supports. We would love to have more people to help shepherd them through this. Well, then stop spending the resources on the things that don't work, and start spending them on the things that do. That's not an excuse when you're making the decision to spend the money on the things that don't work and that are harmful - that should be a point of accountability right there. And instead they're using it to excuse and explain their actions - it doesn't fly. And I hope they do have a robust conversation about this. I know there are definitely councilmembers there who want that to happen, who want to focus on providing housing, and working collaboratively with the King County Executive to get that done. But the majority of the council, unfortunately, did not take that position at that time. I hope some come around and see the light.
[00:22:04] Robert Cruickshank: I agree, and I think ultimately this is where the state needs to step in - you talk about how this is a problem everywhere. I took a train up to Vancouver, British Columbia, earlier this year and you could see under overpasses along the entire route, including in Canada, people living in tents, people trying to make - get themselves shelter under an overpass, whether it's rural Skagit County or the suburbs of Vancouver. This is a problem everywhere because we haven't built enough housing. We know that homelessness is primarily a housing crisis. When you don't build enough housing, when you don't have enough affordable housing, you get homelessness. There are the other reasons why an individual may wind up or stay in homelessness - people who have mental health needs, people have drug addictions - and a lot of that develops when you're out on the streets. Plenty of people fall into homelessness without being addicted to a single drug, without having any outward signs of mental illness. But once you're on the street, in what is a fundamentally traumatic situation where you are unsafe and do not have security or shelter, it becomes very easy to develop those other problems. And so housing is that essential piece of solving homelessness, solving addiction, solving all these other things that people need help with. And it's not being done. And asking cities to solve it themselves without giving them the financial support from the state government, or certainly not coming from the federal government - we're about to see massive spending cuts out of the stupid debt ceiling deal. Once again, it falls back on the State Legislature, and ultimately on our next governor, to figure out how they're going to solve it. Because when you leave it up to cities, you're going to get bad decisions. You're going to get things like we're seeing in Burien right now. It has to be solved at a higher level.
[00:23:48] Crystal Fincher: It absolutely does. In another city development, there is an attempt to put a tenant's bill of rights on the ballot in the City of Tacoma. What do they want to do, and what would this mean for renters?
[00:24:01] Robert Cruickshank: It's a really great thing. I think what you're seeing in Tacoma is a group coming together called Tacoma for All. And what they're trying to put together is something they call sometimes a tenant bill of rights. It's also been called a landlord fairness code. You do a number of great things such as requiring six months notice for all rent increases, relocation assistance for rent hikes over 5%, no school-year evictions of children and educators - that's a great thing to do because the last thing you want is for educators and families and students to be thrown out during the school year. It would ban deadly cold weather evictions, so if we're having a cold snap or a bunch of snow, you can't evict people out into the snow. It would cap excessive and unfair fees and deposits and ban rent hikes when there are code violations. Seattle has a lot of these things already, but Tacoma doesn't. And what a number of renters and advocates have seen in Tacoma is the need to bring those protections to Tacoma, especially because the state didn't do it - the state didn't act on a rent control bill that had been proposed earlier this year. So you're seeing a group of people come together with strong support from labor, from elected officials like Yasmin Trudeau and others, to make the Tacoma for All initiative a reality.
They're getting some pushback from the City, obviously, which - the mayor doesn't really want to do this and offered a vague compromise solution but didn't provide details. And the organizers said - No, we're going to go ahead with our own initiative - which I think is the right thing to do. I believe there are three pieces to the stool of solving housing. You need more supply from the private sector. You need more supply from the public sector - things like social housing, public housing. And you also need renter and tenant protections. And Washington has started to add some more private supply, but we need more tenant and renter protections across the state. And so with the State Legislature failing, you're seeing people in Tacoma step up to act on their own, and I think it's a great thing to do.
[00:25:53] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. They're in the middle of collecting signatures - early in the month, they had about half of them that they needed. They need to collect a total of 8,000 by June 15th to submit to the City, and they're actively signature gathering now. The Council could take action to put what they propose on the ballot - like you said, they're signaling that they're going to propose something, obviously. They're feeling the need to do something since there is something on the table right now, but don't know what it is. And it does not go as far - at least the indications based on what has been discussed in work groups so far - do not go as far as the Tacoma For All group's does. And it just doesn't seem like it's going to have the teeth. And so they're prepared to take this all the way, to try and collect all of the signatures - they're recruiting volunteers. And so it'll be great to see this get on the ballot and to have a full conversation about it. I do hope the City tries to take an approach that works because this is attempting to solve a real problem. And completely applaud Tacoma For All for stepping up to really address this problem.
This is not a partisan issue. This is just a straight affordability issue. And it affects all of us, even homeowners who are happy with the way that their home price is appreciating - and it has quite a bit, I think home values have almost doubled in Tacoma over the past 10 years - but it's making sure that the teachers in our community, the pharmacists in our community, our transit drivers, everyone who is our neighbors, everyone who we rely on to make our communities thrive, really, rely on affordable housing. If your kid gets sick, do you want to be short a nurse because they couldn't afford to buy a million dollar home, an $800,000 home on an average salary? Lots of people are facing this and we have to contend with this. Displacement is already happening, especially on the Hilltop - it is an issue. It's not speculative. It's not in the future. It's happening now and it needs to stop. They can take action to help reduce the harm here. And I really hope they do.
[00:28:04] Robert Cruickshank: Exactly. And I love that they're taking inspiration from what has happened in Seattle. A lot of these elements of Tacoma For All come from policies Kshama Sawant has championed. And Sawant, being the very clever strategist that she really is, fought hard for genuine rent control, has been denied it because the State Legislature won't do it. So she said - Okay, I'll go find other ways - any possible thing we can do under the rights that the City has, we're going to do it to protect renters. And it's worked. Not completely, but she can get these policies done and they provide some assistance to renters in Seattle. And Tacoma looking at that saying - Yeah, let's do that too. It's a good example of things we can do with stopgaps, but we still need the state to step in. California and Oregon have passed statewide rent stabilization laws capping annual rent increases. Washington needs to do the same. It is an urgent thing too. You mentioned being a homeowner - I'm a homeowner. My annual rent, so to speak, is capped. If you have a fixed term mortgage - 30 or fixed - that doesn't go up. It might go up a little bit because of property tax changes, but even those are capped - unfortunately, by Tim Eyman. So homeowners have essentially rent stabilization, but renters don't. And I think it's only fair that renters have those same protections too.
[00:29:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now for the City of Seattle - bouncing back here - Seattle is looking to double down on the War on Drugs. What are they talking about, and how did we get here?
[00:29:35] Robert Cruickshank: So this is Ann Davison and Sara Nelson and Alex Pedersen, the right wing of Seattle City government, trying to revive the War on Drugs. They believe that the answer to the fentanyl crisis, and in some ways the answer to visible homelessness downtown, is to criminalize. Let's go back to the War on Drugs - if you're using drugs, if you're a drug addict, the answer isn't treatment, it's jail. The irony here is that a lot of us progressives argue that what needs to happen is - these people need housing, they need treatment, give them a shelter, give them a room with a door that locks. Well, that's what Ann Davison wants to do - she just wants to put them in jail. Jail is a type of housing, but it's not the type of housing that's going to solve someone's addiction. In fact, it's going to make it worse, it's going to add more trauma, it's going to make it harder for that individual to escape the cycle of addiction and whatever other problems they're facing. But there is this desire among Seattle's right, which feels a little bit resurgent - over the last 10 years, the right wing in Seattle was on the back foot as we had a lot of really progressive policies come into place and they were wondering how do they strike back and now, they think they found their answer in really leveraging public concern about public drug use.
But we know for an absolute fact that criminalizing the use of drugs does not solve drug problems, it does not end addiction - it's been conclusively demonstrated. Interestingly, the City Council, rather than put this to the usual committee process, is bringing it directly to a vote early next month. That could be read two ways - it could be read as either the City trying to do this quickly and put it into place before the public can react against it, or it's also possible that you have a majority in the Council that doesn't want to do this and wants to kill it quickly before it gets too close to the primary in August. Who knows? But it's an example of this absurd desire among certain people in Seattle to just go back to Reaganism - it's crack down on homelessness by jailing people for sleeping in a tent, crack down on drug abuse by jailing anyone smoking fentanyl. This is just stuff we thought we left behind, but it's an important reminder to those of us who are progressive that we're always going to have to deal with right wingers, even in our own city, even in a deep blue city like Seattle. People are going to keep trying to find ways to poke that electric fence to see where there's a weakness and where they can try to really roll back the progressive policies that they hate so much.
[00:32:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's - people who listen to the program regularly know how I feel about this whole thing. It is just really a shame. It is also as important as ever for you to contact your councilmembers, contact the mayor - let them know exactly how you feel about this. I think sometimes, especially in Seattle, it's easy to take for granted once progress has been made, that it's settled. Similar to - we thought Supreme Court law was settled, right? Everything is in flux. And there are people working actively to dismantle the progress that has been made. And counting on people being asleep - they know that they're in the minority. That's why they can't say what they really believe loudly and proudly all year long. And they do tend to strike in these ways that tend to minimize public engagement, support, time - trying to rush this through and let's just get it done. We see this done over and over again. And so I just hope that people understand that there really is a threat of this happening - that Seattle isn't above this, it's not beyond this. This is not something that we can take for granted. And I do encourage everyone listening to contact your City councilperson - contact all the Council people - and let them know where you stand on this, because there's going to be an upcoming vote in early June. And right now it looks like - it seems like - they're leaning towards criminalization and seems like they're leaning towards expanding the criminalization options even from where they were before. So please get engaged.
[00:33:43] Robert Cruickshank: I think it's also important to - anytime you encounter a City Council candidate - to make it clear where you stand as well. Because these are - as the campaigns really start to kick into gear here after Memorial Day, as they sprint towards the August primary - we're going to have to tell these people running for the seats, especially where there isn't an incumbent. Quite a few districts like District 1, District 3, District 4, District 5 - let the people know that you are not a fan of criminalizing drugs. You do not want to go back to the Drug War. A lot of Seattle's state legislative representation voted against the gross misdemeanor provisions in the Blake fix that finally came out of the Legislature earlier this month. That was courageous of them - it's a good thing they did. We need to show similar leadership here in Seattle rather than just waltz back down the path of Reaganism.
[00:34:32] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. Also in Council action this week was a tree ordinance that was passed. How did this develop and what ended up passing?
[00:34:42] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, this has been in gestation for a long time. I remember we were talking about tree ordinance back when Mike McGinn was mayor, but it finally came to pass this week. And what the ordinance does - I credit the Harrell administration for this, and I credit Dan Strauss as well for finding a good middle ground that isn't perfect, but a middle ground that tries to harmonize tree policy and housing policy. What's really been going on is a number of people who don't want new density in our city have seized on the idea of trees as the way they can block housing. Oh, we're going to cut down all these trees to build housing. Oh, isn't this terrible? The way we can stop the density that we don't want is to make it almost impossible to remove a tree. And in their mind, a healthy urban forest is threatened not by the climate crisis, but by development. Now, we know this is wrong. The City's own research shows very, very clearly that new development is not a major factor, it's a very tiny factor in the loss of trees in Seattle. The main source of tree loss is in natural areas and parks. And why is that happening? Because the climate crisis. We had, as everyone remembers, that awful heat wave in the summer of 2021. And you saw those cedars go brown afterwards. We then had 120 days without rain in 2022 - that further stressed the trees. And some of these are old, majestic trees planted over 100 years ago in our parks and natural areas that are struggling now to survive in the climate crisis. That's where we're losing trees. Where do we need to get trees, build more trees, plant more trees? In City-owned right-of-way, and especially in southeast Seattle.
So the answer here should be rather than give in to what the NIMBYs want and make it almost impossible to build anything new - you've got to harmonize these things. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, which produces those annual reports, has said numerous times that more urban density is a core element of solving the climate crisis, of reducing carbon emissions. And yet some of these NIMBYs want to use trees to undermine that. Now, we can't have one climate policy undermining another. We need to find ways to bring tree protections and housing construction together. And that's what the Harrell administration and Dan Strauss have tried to do. I know there are some housing advocates, who I respect, who are unhappy with some of the exact details of how this went down. I get that. At the same time, I and the Sierra Club believe it's a reasonable compromise that isn't going to hold back housing production. It'll help us have a healthier urban forest while avoiding blaming new density for loss of trees, right? This is a climate crisis issue. If we want to keep our great firs and cedars and other tall trees we love in the City, we've got to tackle the climate crisis. We have to build higher. We have to build denser. That's how we reduce the carbon emissions that is making everything so much hotter and putting these great trees under stress.
[00:37:46] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And I think we're seeing a part of a trend here, we're seeing a tactic as part of an overall strategy. And that is from NIMBYs and from the right to co-opt progressive language, to co-opt traditionally progressive causes - and use those to try and sabotage development. And so we've seen this manifest in Seattle with different things or to get their way in a public way - we saw it with bike lanes in West Seattle - they're hard to get, but oh all of a sudden now that it could potentially displace some people who are living in campers, we're all for implementing a bike lane and an accelerated delivery timeline right here, right? We see - we've seen ADA regulations used to - in lawsuits - used to stifle transit mobility improvement. And it's really critically important - and you basically said this - to not give in to the - well, no these are more important than disability access, or this is more important than making sure we do have adequate trees. They want to create the friction between these two groups who are fighting for resources and rights and access. And the key thing to do is to basically join together in solidarity and saying both of these are necessities for our community. We need clean air, and we need everyone to be able to access everything required to live, right? So how do we figure that out? Not we just don't do one, or we just don't do the other. We fight and discount what's needed for the true issue. If we actually get together with people who are being used to do this, we can figure out solutions better and cut out the kind of astroturf middleman, who's just using a different group to try and get their way. It's really cynical, it's really just shameful - but we're seeing this happen a lot. And I - some people's immediate reaction is - I really want this, so I'm going to dig my heels in and say that other thing is bad it doesn't matter. And that's a trap that they want you to fall into, and that's a trap that hurts us all moving forward. We have to work together and make sure that we get our needs met and sometimes it's hard to thread that needle perfectly. Sometimes it's going to leave a lot to be desired, but we really need to keep working to make sure that everyone is getting what they need to be supported in this community.
Also an exciting development with Seattle's social housing board having their first meeting. What happened there?
[00:40:23] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah they - after the passage of Initiative 135 earlier this year - it created a new board to oversee the social housing authority. And this board is not comprised in the usual way - like typically a City commission or City board is - the mayor gets to make a bunch of picks the City Council gets to make a bunch of picks and they can pretty much pick whoever they want to. In this case though, the initiative stated that the board members had to come from certain backgrounds - he had to pick someone with urban planning experience, he had to pick someone who understands Passivhaus design which is very environmentally friendly. But most importantly, you have to pick a number of people with lived experience as renters or as unhoused folks - and that is what happened with this board. And it's a majority of people, I believe, who are not homeowners. And the idea here is to have this board represent the people, or at least the type of people, who would actually live in a social housing project once we get it built. So they had their first meeting, came together, they elected their leadership. Councilmember Tammy Morales was there and has been really the driving figure in getting this done, and I think one of the few - unfortunately - people on City Council who's really been strongly behind this. I think other councilmembers have been much more hesitant. But social housing is a key part of the solution - there's a great article in the New York Times earlier this week about Vienna - and Vienna has a ton of social housing, and it works really well in having a mix of incomes together, living in the same building where everyone's pulling together to help build a great community. It also includes space for people who are very low incomes or who are formerly homeless, so I think it's really exciting to see this process get underway - a board that is working well together, at least at the start.
It seems like Initiative 135 is getting off to a great start, but the bigger question obviously going to be - How do you fund the construction of social housing? The people who wrote the initiative were advised, and I think correctly, that they couldn't do both at the same time - they couldn't create the social housing authority and have a funding source. Well now, we need the City to step up - and this is another thing that we're going to have to see City Council candidates talk about - Initiative 135 passed by pretty healthy margin in the City, it passed in every single Council district. So Council candidates should be on board, but if you talk to some of these folks - they're not all on board. So one of the things that I hope becomes a major issue in the City Council elections this fall is - how are you going to make social housing a reality, how are you going to fund it here in Seattle - because the public clearly wants it and there's clearly a huge need for it.
[00:43:00] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. The public does want it - even at the forums that have happened so far - and we know that most people in the public are not tuned into elections yet but there are some who are - and shoring up this early support and making an early impression, especially in a crowded primary, makes a difference. And I will tell you, every forum that I've seen or been at - the public there has had questions about social housing. How are you going to secure funding, how are you going to make sure this implementation goes smoothly? They want to know about it, they want to know how they're going to support it. I fully anticipate this to be a significant issue throughout this entire campaign and beyond. The public voted for it, they want it, they're really curious about it, they're excited about it. And this is something that they feel could potentially put a dent in housing prices and start a blueprint - expand upon the blueprint - of what it looks like to implement this in our state and throughout the region, so really exciting.
And with that, I will thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday May 26, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank. You can find Robert on Twitter @cruickshank. You can follow Hacks & Wonks @HacksWonks, and you can find me @finchfrii, with two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live week-in-review and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, please leave a review. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Sarah Reyneveld about her campaign for King County Council District 4 - why she decided to run, the experience she brings as a public sector attorney and community advocate, and her thoughts on addressing frontline worker wages and workforce issues, the need for upstream alternatives in the criminal legal system and substance use crisis, how to improve policy implementation, climate change and air quality, and budget revenue and transparency.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Sarah Reyneveld at @SarahReyneveld.
Resources
Campaign Website - Sarah Reyneveld
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Hello, I'm so excited to be welcoming to the program today King County Council candidate, Sarah Reyneveld. Hello.
[00:01:01] Sarah Reyneveld: Hello, Crystal. Thank you so much for having me today - I'm excited about the conversation.
[00:01:07] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I guess just starting out - we have seen you run for State Legislature before. I'm wondering why you're choosing to run for the County now, and what do you hope to accomplish in that position?
[00:01:18] Sarah Reyneveld: Yes, I think that King County Council and the King County is really at a critical point in time, and I'm excited to bring my lived experience as a working parent, a Seattle Public School parent, a transit rider, a union organizer - I helped organize my union of Assistant Attorney Generals - and also my experience as a public sector attorney who has fought for workers and our environment, and as a community advocate working with communities across King County to really make transformative change for workers, working families, and our environment on the King County Council. So for some background - in 2016, I became King County Councilmember Kohl-Welles' appointment to the King County Women's Advisory Board where I had the opportunity to work with communities throughout King County and the King County Council to help advocate for and secure investments in affordable housing, in behavioral health, childcare, and services to support survivors of gender-based violence. I started this work and became the Chair of the King County Women's Advisory Board before the pandemic - and I had two young kids at the time - and we had struggled like so many parents with access to affordable childcare, and the board at that time decided to take up that issue. So we worked on recommendations to expand childcare access for working parents and were able to work together with communities across King County, and the Executive, and King County Council to help reinstate a childcare subsidy, to expand access to childcare for working families, and establish a wage provider boost to help increase pay for childcare providers who are disproportionately women and BIPOC women and immigrants. And then the pandemic hit and I continued to do this work and it really laid bare - staggering inequities and injustices in King County that disproportionately impacted women and our communities of color and immigrants and other marginalized communities, who are more likely to be on the forefront and were experiencing disproportionately - unemployment and financial loss and illness.
So as I continue to work on these issues, I saw what an important role King County played in not just responding to the pandemic and now the shadow pandemic, but in really providing public health, and behavioral health, and public transit, and helping with food security and housing. So I'm running for King County Council because I've been doing this work with community and I think the status quo is no longer good enough. We need bold and transformative action to really meet the urgency of this moment. We have a really unique opportunity to create a more equitable economy and a sustainable future for all workers and working families in King County. And I think that King County can and must do more - and my priorities are to create more truly affordable housing to help better meet the behavioral health needs of our neighbors in crisis, to really tackle the climate crisis and protect our environment for future generations, to provide accessible and frequent public transit for all, and to really look at what we can do to reimagine our public safety and criminal legal system. So I'm excited about the opportunity.
[00:04:46] Crystal Fincher: I see. Now you covered a lot there. In there, you mentioned caring for workers, addressing housing. One thing called out by experts as a barrier to our homelessness response is that frontline worker wages don't cover the cost of living. Do you think our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for our area? And how can we make that more likely with how we bid and contract for services?
[00:05:10] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, absolutely. I absolutely think that our nonprofits have a duty to pay more in terms of adequately funding - not just contracts - but ensuring that those contracts lead to an equitable living wage and union jobs. And that includes cost of living adjustments and other supports for workers. So right now we have a really high turnover rate for frontline workers and particularly those workers that the County contracts with - I've heard 40-60% turnover rate. And I think we need to address the underlying issue of why those workers are turning over. And the underlying issue - one of them is pay equity and not ensuring that we are paying, particularly our frontline workers, adequately or providing them with the supports that they need. So it's about equitable pay, it's about cost of living adjustments, and it's about ensuring that those workers have access to affordable housing and transit in King County as well - so they can really afford to live where they work. And so I see this issue as very intersectional and something that King County can do more to address. And I would just say, generally, I think we as a society tend to lift up certain sorts of workers - the CEOs of companies, for example. And those people that are really doing the real work of caring for our community - of building our housing, of connecting us through transit, of providing behavioral health services - we don't invest equitably or sufficiently in those workers. And so starting with contracting is critically important, but we need to do more to ensure that we're investing in living wage jobs, and workforce housing, and bonuses, and ensuring that these workers have the supports that they need. And that is part of my vision for building back better and creating a more equitable economy that really centers workers and working families in King County.
[00:07:13] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Now, would you have voted to approve the transfer of inmates to the SCORE jail to alleviate a lot of the issues plaguing the King County Jail, including overcrowding, lack of water, inadequate healthcare, illnesses, understaffing? Would you have voted in the same way that the King County Council did?
[00:07:31] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, I think that's a great question. I want to start with just the conditions at the King County Jail. So the six deaths in 2022 in the downtown jail and kind of the subsequent ACLU lawsuit, I think, show that King County is failing too many criminally involved individuals, particularly our Black and Brown community members and those with chronic behavioral health and substance use issues. I am really concerned about what is happening in terms of inhumane conditions at the jail that include excessive use of solitary confinement, and lack of transportation to medical appointments and court appointments, and delays with mental health and other medical appointments. And I think King County, which is the oversight body of the King County Jail, needs to do more to address these concerns and ensure safety. And these really poor conditions at the jail didn't happen overnight. They are partially caused by lack of adequate staffing - that's been an issue for decades and was exacerbated since COVID. And also issues with an antiquated, really obsolete building. And lack of access to medical care and treatment, as I was stating.
So on the King County Council, if elected, I want to work with disproportionately impacted communities and fellow King County Councilmembers to urgently address these issues. I think we need to invest more in restorative justice. And when the King County Council took that vote in terms of transferring those incarcerated folks to SCORE, I think they noted that we need to do more in terms of investing in restorative justice and upstream alternatives to really reimagine our criminal legal system. So first I think we need to prevent and reduce incarceration through investing in upstream - investments in youth and vulnerable adults. And that means doing more to expand effective diversion programs, such as the Law Assisted Diversion Program and Co-LEAD, which has been really effective in diverting folks out of the criminal legal system and out of the King County Jail to begin with. I think we also need to move towards actualizing King County Executive's vision and so many activists' vision of really closing the downtown jail and reimagining and reducing the size of the King County facilities.
So in terms of the SCORE vote, I don't think either option were good options. The King County Council arrived at that vote because there had not been enough, really, work done on restorative justice and on the underlying issues around staffing and overcrowding at the jail. And I think keeping vulnerable incarcerated people in a downtown jail that had significant understaffing and overcrowding issues and a lack of access to medicine, or transferring incarcerated people to a facility that had potentially access-to-justice issues is not - neither one of those are good options. And so that's why I want to roll up my sleeves and ensure that we're really investing sufficiently in diversion programs and alternatives - to invest in folks to prevent them from becoming incarcerated in the first place and also move towards reimagining our system. And I will say that I don't think King County Council can address this issue alone. In 2022, there were over, I think, 100 people in King County Jail that were deemed to be incompetent to stand trial in King County that were awaiting a treatment bed. So if we work with our state partners to really fund mental health and ensure treatment for vulnerable populations like this, then we won't have to make these sort of decisions.
[00:11:00] Crystal Fincher: So am I hearing that you would not vote - disagreeing with this vote? If in the future a vote were to come up to extend or expand this SCORE transfer or transfer to other jails, does that mean you're a No vote on that?
[00:11:13] Sarah Reyneveld: I think that we need to, like I said, invest in alternatives and upstream alternatives to the criminal legal system. So like Councilmember Zahilay and Councilmember Kohl-Welles said - the transfer to SCORE was really not addressing the root cause of the issue. We need to be investing in upstream alternatives and staffing and ensuring that folks within our system are safe.
[00:11:36] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Now you talked about substance use disorder being so key in treating upstream issues to really address the root causes of what is leading people to criminal behavior. We're dealing with a conundrum. The governor just called a special session following our State Supreme Court invalidating personal substance possession as a crime. Our Legislature took action a couple of years ago to recriminalize it - that has a sunset provision. They were not able to decide on any statewide policy before the session ended, so they're going to be taking that up in a special session. There are conversations about - should drug use be criminalized at all? If it should, is it a misdemeanor, gross misdemeanor, felony? Where do you stand? Where should personal possession of substances be dealt with? How would you handle that?
[00:12:27] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, I think this is an issue that the Legislature has been grappling with and it's really an important issue. And I think we need to be moving away from criminalization of drug possession. Specifically, we moved away from criminalization of drug possession for marijuana - we need to do the same thing with psychedelics and other sorts of drugs that have medicinal and other positive effects. I think when it comes to addressing our fentanyl and heroin crisis, I think that if I were a legislator, I'd probably move in the direction of ensuring that we're looking at the lesser of any sort of crime - which would be a misdemeanor - and looking at pathways to treatment for that use. And I think we have to think about how we can connect folks that are in crisis because of substance use disorder with services. And so to me, it's about what more can King County do - because I'm not sitting in the place of a legislator - to ensure that we're investing in upstream solutions and treatment. And so I think helping to implement the King County Crisis Care Center Levy and ensuring that folks that are in - particularly a substance use crisis, whether - we know that we have a fentanyl crisis. I have worked on litigation to sue Purdue Pharma and understand just the addictive effects of those drugs. And we need to make sure that there's - those folks are connected to Medicaid-assisted treatment on demand, that they're connected to services. And so looking at what more we can do to scale up the crisis centers in an equitable way and preserve and restore beds that are primarily aimed at treating the underlying causes - I think it's critically important.
And so one of my priorities, if elected to the King County Council, will be to look at how we're implementing these crisis care centers, how I'm working potentially with the Legislature for additional treatment beds for substance use disorder. I have, as so many people have had, someone in my life that has experienced a substance use disorder issue. And I think it's so hard to navigate the system to even find detox or substance use treatment for someone like me that knows how to navigate systems, much less someone that could be either at-risk at being involved in the criminal legal system or becoming unhoused or dealing with a substance use crisis. And so finding ways in which we can ensure that those that are affected are obtaining treatment, I think is critically important.
[00:15:07] Crystal Fincher: You raised a number of important issues there and you touched on helping to get the Crisis Care Centers Levy - which passed - implemented.
[00:15:16] Sarah Reyneveld: Yes.
[00:15:17] Crystal Fincher: There have been some criticisms and challenges with implementation of programs - at all levels of government, really, but including with the County - and issues of staffing that may not have been foreseen, or challenges run into, communication issues. Do you think there's an opportunity to improve implementation of policy and programs overall? And how do we need to do that? What needs to change in order for that to happen?
[00:15:42] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, I think that's an excellent point. And I absolutely think there are opportunities to improve policy implementation at the County. One of the things that I really appreciate about King County's work and that I wanna bring as a lens to my work is that I do believe that the best public policy is made - I think Councilmember Zahilay says this in his views and paraphrasing him, but - by those that are closest to the injustice. And so we really need to invest in community-based solution to a lot of our largest challenges in King County. And so I appreciate that on all issues of County government and all levels of County government, whether it be addressing the gun violence crisis or the behavioral health crisis or childcare, we're really investing in community-based solutions. So I think that's critically important, but I think we also have to have a way to measure outcomes in terms of what is the County doing that's working and what is the County doing that's not working. And if we have, for example, a health through housing facility that we have stood up, but it's not being adequately staffed and we're not adequately utilizing it, and really ensuring that vulnerable populations can access housing and those services - we need to look at what more we can do to ensure that that is being used appropriately and we're really maximizing opportunities to make good use of public dollars. So I think we absolutely need to be working with communities and listening to communities and centering their voices. And then I think King County, as a body, needs to work with those communities to make sure that the investments that were being made are working on the community level and that we're really scaling up things that work. And I, as someone who's taught at the Evans School of Public Affairs and has been a policy wonk for years, am really interested in working with community and my fellow councilmembers in doing that work.
[00:17:38] Crystal Fincher: So on almost every measure, we're behind our 2030 climate goals. You've talked about addressing climate change and mitigating the impacts of that on people being one of your priorities. We've experienced the impacts from wildfires, heat and cold, floods, et cetera. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet our 2030 goals?
[00:17:59] Sarah Reyneveld: Yes, thank you for that excellent question. As an Assistant Attorney General that works to protect our environment and public health, this is an issue that is critically important to me because of the urgency of action and the need to really address this challenge - centering communities in a just transition. So first, I think we need to electrify transportation and invest deeply in transit. We know that to meet our carbon reduction goals, we have to get people out of cars and into transit. And yet we have seen that Metro Transit service has languished since the pandemic and ridership has fallen by half. And those transit delays - I'm a transit rider to work, I take my little boy to daycare downtown with me - and they're disproportionately affecting transit riders, which are working families, BIPOC communities, low income communities, youth, seniors, and others that rely on transit. And it's a transit justice issue. So I have already been doing some of this work, but if elected to the King County Council, I want to continue this work by working with a coalition of transit riders and groups like the Transit Riders Union and Seattle Subway and The Urbanist and others to pass a county-wide transit revenue package to fund a King County Transportation Benefit District, which would supplant the city one and really help us restore an increased Metro Transit service to deliver faster, more frequent, reliable, and zero-emission service that connects all our community members. I think the measure should also ensure that transit is free to those who are cost-burdened. Right now, one of our impediments to increasing transit service and getting people out of cars is the shortage of transit operators and mechanics. And part of this funding package, or looking at other funding sources, has to be to address that issue of recruiting and retaining Metro bus drivers. And that has to include a living wage and additional incentives and supports, including safety supports, to build the workforce of Metro operators. Now, I just spoke to Metro operators at ATU last week, and they told me they're facing significant workplace safety and pay and other challenges that are really contributing to job stress and attrition. So we have to address that underlying issue if we're gonna get people out of cars and into transit.
I also think we need to do more to decarbonize our built environment, which is probably the largest carbon emission in King County, through the adoption and strengthening of commercial building codes that will require communities to reduce energy use and also center communities in initiatives such as the Climate Equity Capital Pool to electrify their homes, for electric appliances and retrofits and solar panels. I think there's a lot of opportunities that we can leverage on the federal level to use grants and incentives and rebates to really update the building codes - and achieve these energy efficiencies and decarbonize our environment and our built environment - while bringing workers along. And I think we need to look at passing stronger provisions and incentives to transition off natural gas in a way that brings people and workers along and hastens this just transition to a clean energy economy - because we know that natural gas use in commercial and residential buildings accounts for a really large percentage of greenhouse gas emissions.
I would also say that we need to do more to sustainably manage our forests and our working lands to ensure climate-friendly forest management and farming to mitigate climate change impacts and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and look at how we can promote carbon storage in soils and increase the use of green space. I would also say, probably lastly, a large percentage of the carbon emissions in King County result from our food system. So I wanna lead in ensuring that all communities have opportunities to become food producers, to access urban and rural farmland, and that we're really centering disproportionately impacted communities and empowering them to become farmers - particularly in food deserts and ensuring that tribes have access to their traditional food sources and cultural resources.
And I've talked a lot to labor about this, and I would say that I believe that we can work towards a just transition to a clean energy economy that really centers workers and equitable pathways to green jobs and apprenticeships, but it's gonna take us building a coalition. And I'm committed to really rolling up my sleeves and working with our labor partners and folks that are disproportionately impacted and our community members to build that just transition towards a clean energy economy and a sustainable community that addresses our climate crisis.
[00:23:01] Crystal Fincher: You talked about needing to address the staffing issues in our public transportation department, certainly an issue in Metro that is urgently in need of addressing. We've seen in several other departments - with sheriffs, certainly with municipal police departments in the County - that they're giving retention bonuses, hiring bonuses to help attract people. And what we've seen is - although they are on record saying that that isn't really moving the needle and may not, there are a lot of people in other departments saying that would absolutely move the needle here. Do you support retention bonuses and hiring bonus and some of the things that we've seen for folks working in public safety for other workers?
[00:23:40] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, I think that's an excellent question. I think we really need to listen to workers, and my platform is all about lifting up and centering and listening to workers. And to me, hiring bonuses are not gonna address the root cause of the issue. And the root cause of the issue is really living wages and supports for drivers. But if hiring bonuses will help certain segments of workers - I did talk to, for example, an ATU bus operator that said that they had hiring bonuses in Pierce County and that they had not yet received any sort of retention or hiring bonus. And so if that's something that's going to help workers feel valued, I think that we do have to look at that as an option. However, it doesn't really address the root cause. And that is we need to support our frontline workers and give them a living wage. So we need to increase base pay for workers. We need to give them benefits - adequate benefits - flexibility, and the working conditions that they deserve. And for some frontline workers, that's gonna mean more investment in safety measures or hazard pay. And for other frontline workers, that may include a bonus. But I think we need to listen to workers, we need to center workers, and we really need to give them living wages, benefits, and the working conditions they deserve.
I think you are absolutely right to say that the workforce issue is huge in King County, and we have to do more to address it. When I talk to workers - everyone from grocery store workers to our bus operators, to behavioral health workers - they're really struggling to make a living wage to afford to live in King County, and save for retirement, and raise their kids. And they're really the sheroes and heroes of, I think, responding to the pandemic or the shadow pandemic, but also just of taking care of our communities. And they're really bearing the brunt of our crises - our unhoused crisis, the opioid crisis, the behavioral health crisis. So we at King County have to do better to support them, and that includes living wages, benefits, and working conditions. And I am interested and very committed to doing that work to center workers.
[00:25:56] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and you're completely correct that they are bearing the brunt of that. Another issue that kind of delves both into addressing climate change and mitigating the impacts of it and public health is air and clean air within buildings. And this has been increasingly talked about - especially as we've learned more about airborne pathogens, and as we've dealt more with wildfire smoke, and how much we've learned about how pollutants and pollution impact health, impact life expectancy. There are areas in Seattle that have life expectancies years shorter than other areas in the same city. Does the County have a responsibility to provide clean and safe air within its buildings and to try and incentivize that throughout other privately owned buildings and businesses in the County?
[00:26:45] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, I absolutely think the County has a responsibility - working with our state regulators as well as our federal regulators and policymakers - to ensure that everyone has access to clean air. I see this as an environmental justice issue - you pointed out that disproportionately - communities that live in areas with higher rates of pollution and that are more impacted, disproportionately impacted by climate change are experiencing poor air quality. And I think we have seen through the effects of climate change and really rampant wildfires and other issues, that these are disproportionately impacting our frontline communities and communities that are already overburdened. So I think that one thing that we can do at the King County level is really urgently lead on addressing the climate crisis. And our air quality is just gonna get worse as the climate crisis and the impacts increase. And so I think we need someone that's gonna really roll up their sleeves and provide strong leadership to really address these underlying issues around air and water pollution and to address the climate crisis. And so I wanna do that work with disproportionately impacted communities, and part of that work is really getting people out of cars and into transit. So really think having a strong vision for what that looks like and how to center frontline communities is really critically important.
[00:28:18] Crystal Fincher: Looking at the state of this race, you're in a competitive race this time - you were last time, too - but this time you're part of a competitive race. What do your endorsements say about you, and what are you most proud of?
[00:28:33] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, I think I am - just to get back to my roots - I am a public sector attorney, I am a working parent, I am a community advocate, and I have lived in the 4th Council District for 25 years, and really have dedicated my 15-year public service career to advancing progressive policy, legal, and budgetary solutions to some of our most pressing challenges. And I have worked in community to drive progressive policies forward, and I think my endorsements reflect the work that I've done in community. I have endorsements from five members of the King County Council, including Councilmember Kohl-Welles and Councilmember Zahilay, who I've worked with directly around securing access to more childcare, to addressing gender-based violence, to doing more for affordable housing. And I think my endorsements really speak to the depth of work and the way that I have worked to elevate community voices in community and doing that work. I would say that one of the endorsements I'm most proud of is Councilmember Kohl-Welles' endorsement because she's been a mentor to me and I have worked with her on a number of issues to improve the lives of women in disproportionately impacted communities in King County. And I'm also proud of the endorsement from my boss, A.G. Bob Ferguson. I have dedicated my career to being on the frontlines, to helping enforce workers' rights to fair wages to equal pay, to protect our environment. And I've done this work in the Attorney General's office and the fact that I have the support of my boss as I'm running for King County Council, just like he ran for King County Council, and that he's been helping me out on the campaign trail. And ensuring that I'm running a strong grassroots campaign really means the world to me.
[00:30:20] Crystal Fincher: Now, we've also talked about how important it is to enact a lot of policy, to take care of people - obviously, we need to address staffing. All of the things that we've talked about today - a lot of them require revenue. We just ran a big levy because we needed the revenue. The list of things that everyone says is necessary, evidently costs more than we have in the budget, so new revenue is needed. What progressive revenue options exist at the County level today, and will you pursue any of them?
[00:30:50] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, so I have a long history of advocating for progressive revenue, including the capital gains tax as a citizen advocate and board member of Washington's Paramount Duty. And so I have fought with, alongside a coalition of folks that are really pushing for progressive revenue reform at the state level. I still think there's so much more we can do and look forward to being a strong partner in that work. King County is projected to face revenue shortfalls and has constrained revenue sources. I do wanna fight against austerity budgets and look really critically at how we can obtain authority from the Legislature to pass truly progressive revenue sources that center working people. I think we also need to look at potentially lifting the 1% property tax lid if we can provide exemptions for homeowners and fixed income seniors. But I think the kind of frustrating thing about the County is it is revenue-constrained and that we need to work hard both on the County Council and in partnership with communities to figure out what more we can do to obtain authority to pass truly progressive revenue sources, whether or not that's taxing business or looking at more progressive revenue sources other than property tax and sales tax and some of these use fees. So I'm dedicated to doing that work in partnership with community and I'm really looking forward to that.
[00:32:26] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. And with the budget, King County does incremental budgeting making it difficult for the public to understand - making it difficult for some people in government to understand, but especially the public - to understand how King County funds are allocated in the base budget. What can be done to make the budget easier for the public to understand and influence?
[00:32:47] Sarah Reyneveld: Yeah, I think that's an excellent question. We need more transparency in the budget process and we need more participation from community at the County level in the budget process. I have testified, for example, funding for the mental health counselors under MIDD. I have testified for affordable housing. I've testified for more childcare funding. And sometimes it's difficult, as the budget comes over from the Executive, to know what's different about the budget, right? And so I find generally that through this work as a member of the King County Women's Advisory Board and as a citizen advocate that King County budgets are not as accessible, for example, as legislative budgets. And more needs to be done to ensure that they're more transparent and accessible, and also that we're ensuring that the public is engaged in the budgeting process and understands it. So I think one of the things that we can do, and Councilmember Zahilay has done such a great job of this, is just explaining the King County budget process - how the budget comes over from the Executive, what the budget looks like, and how to understand the budget. I think another thing we could do is helping to really center folks that historically have not had a seat at the table in the budget process and have been excluded from power structures in developing policy and budgetary proposals - so that those folks are actually involved in the collaboration process through working groups and meetings and collaboration so that we're moving more towards participatory budget models, where constituents are not just involved in testifying, but really involved and actively involved every step of the process and ultimately in the decisions that impact them. So I'm really interested in working with all communities, and particularly frontline communities that are disproportionately impacted by these issues, and to really look to see what we can do towards more participatory budgeting. But first, of course, we have to make that process more transparent.
[00:34:49] Crystal Fincher: Now, as we said before, you have at least one opponent now - the filing deadline isn't for a few weeks, couple weeks, few weeks here. So as you're talking to people who are considering who they're gonna vote for in this race, why should they vote for you over your opponents?
[00:35:08] Sarah Reyneveld: Thank you. I'm running because I wanna continue the work that I've done with community and elevate community voices here in the 4th Council District and beyond to advance bold and transformative action for workers, for working families, and our environment on the King County Council. And as I said before, I think we're in a critical moment of time, and I am really committed to working with our most impacted communities to ensure that we are building back better and really creating equitable economic recovery that centers workers and working families and leads to a more sustainable future. Like many in our district, I'm a working parent, I'm a public school parent, transit rider, community organizer, and I have really dedicated my career to advancing progressive legal policy and budgetary solutions to some of our most pressing challenges - and I think we've really gotten results. As a member of the King County Women's Advisory Board, I have worked in partnership with community and the King County Council to secure investments in affordable housing, behavioral health, childcare, and services for survivors of gender-based violence. And I really wanna build on that track record. And I think I have the skills to do so - to really center community voices and to advance really bold, progressive solutions.
I think there's three things that I would highlight to voters about why they should choose me in a competitive race. One is community - I'm running for the community and have demonstrated a history of leadership in my community, which is really reflected in our campaign's range of endorsements from elected officials to community leaders and labor. And I have lived experience as a mom and union member and transit rider that is not only reflective of my district, but I feel can be valuable on the King County Council. And lastly, I have a demonstrated history of leadership in my community working to build coalitions to deliver on progressive policies for workers and working families. And I think I've demonstrated that I'm unafraid to grapple with and do the real work of really advancing transformative solutions that are necessary at this critical moment in time. And I really look forward to the conversation on the campaign and hopefully to working with my community to ensure equitable economic recovery that really centers workers and working families and creates a more sustainable future for all.
[00:37:37] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:37:40] Sarah Reyneveld: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:37:42] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by the former Director of Progressive Majority who has now transitioned into public service but remains involved in numerous political efforts across Washington, EJ Juárez.
They discuss today being the final day for this year’s candidates to declare their candidacy for elected office, the legislature’s decision to make personal possession of drugs a gross misdemeanor, Crosscut laying off women reporters in a pivot to podcast and video, Marc Dones’ resignation as CEO of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, and Seattle reclaiming the title of America’s fastest growing city.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, EJ Juárez at @EliseoJJuarez.
Resources
Becka Johnson Poppe, Candidate for King County Council District 4 from Hacks & Wonks
King County Council races begin to take shape by David Gutman from The Seattle Times
Washington to Paper Over Drug War with Some Treatment Money by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger
OPINION | In Special Session, Lawmakers Are Hiding Behind a False Moral Imperative to Justify the War on Drugs by Jude Ahmed for South Seattle Emerald
Slog AM: Crosscut Lays Off Five Newsroom Staff, LA Pride Pulls Out of Dodgers Pride Event, Bouncy Castle King Accused of Arson by Nathalie Graham from The Stranger
Regional Homelessness Authority CEO resigns by Greg Kim from The Seattle Times
Why Did Marc Dones Resign? by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
Seattle is once again the fastest-growing big city, census data shows by Gene Balk from The Seattle Times
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
If you missed our Tuesday midweek - our Tuesday topical show - I chat with Becka Johnson Poppe about her campaign for King County Council District 4 - why she decided to run, the skillset she brings from overseeing half of King County's $16 billion budget, and her thoughts on addressing human services sector wages, issues plaguing the King County Jail, housing and homelessness, drug possession and substance use disorder, climate change and air quality, and budget transparency and efficiency.
However, today we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: the former Director of Progressive Majority who's now transitioned into public service and remains involved in numerous political efforts across Washington, EJ Juárez.
[00:01:34] EJ Juárez: Hi, Crystal - thanks for having me back.
[00:01:36] Crystal Fincher: Hey - always excited to have you and your perspective on the show. Today is Friday, May 19th. For people who are involved in or adjacent to politics, this is known as the last day of filing week - the week where candidates officially declare their candidacy to run for a position on the ballot. We have hundreds and hundreds of positions up for election in Washington State. Here in King County, there are some interesting races shaping up. We will see - the deadline is 4 p.m. today - what the official candidate field looks like. We're nearing the end. There's usually a flurry of late additions just before the end of the last day of filing. I guess - what are your thoughts as we head into this final day?
[00:02:24] EJ Juárez: My thoughts are - I love Friday of filing week. It is my favorite day of filing week because you get to go hang out at Elections and watch the folks at 3:50 p.m. that are standing around watching which races don't have anybody filed, so they can get a free pass or where they're gonna jump in. But I think some of the most exciting races out there right now - King County Council is starting to fill up with some late additions to the pack, especially in some races that looked fairly settled where we had clear challengers and clear insurgent candidates - and now we've got a different mix happening. And I would not be surprised if many organizations who were planning to do early endorsements are putting a pause on those plans because of new faces that are getting in - and just the pure number of folks that are running for some of these open seats, whether that is King County, City of Seattle, or some of the suburbs.
[00:03:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. This week, we did see a new dimension in one King County Council race - I believe it's District 4 - to replace Councilmember Kohl-Welles. And already in the race were Sarah Reyneveld and Rebecca Johnson Poppe. This week, we had Jorge Barón join the race, formerly of Northwest Immigrant Rights Project - that's where I'm certainly familiar with him from. And this is gonna be a really interesting race and I don't know how it's gonna wind up.
[00:03:40] EJ Juárez: Yeah, I think of all the King County Council races this year, this is the one that excites me the most - because there are three really great candidates who are bringing such different perspectives and have such different, I think, experiences that they would supplement the Council with. Certainly with Becka - newcomer, bringing a really deep set of experiences from her own personal and professional life. But then Sarah, who I don't think it is a surprise to anybody - who has been fairly widely known to be running for this for quite a while now, and now the opportunity is here. And then Jorge, which was a complete surprise and I think now within the last week has caught a lot of people off guard and really thrown a wrench into - certainly, Sarah and Becka's campaign plans, I'm sure. His decades of advocacy and his quite frankly historic leadership at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project would bring some really interesting perspectives to council as well as that race - representing a part of Seattle that has not always led on some of those issues. And Sarah being an Assistant Attorney General - I am so excited to see what issues bubble to the top and how this plays out. How about you?
[00:04:46] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I'm interested - I'm certainly interested - three people who have formidable resumes behind them in different ways, but certainly all who have, I think, valuable perspectives to be shared. I think a lot of people are going to be wondering - hey, they clearly know what they're doing, they're professional, but what does that mean in terms of votes and how they're going to represent me and fight for the issues that are important to me? To not just be a vote, but to be a leading advocate for the issues that are important to me. How can I trust that? And I think how well each of those candidates addresses that is going to make a difference in how people view them and see them. Because we do have a lot of people who make a lot of promises, get elected, and then the way they vote doesn't quite turn out how people assumed based on their value statements. So it's gonna be really interesting to examine and see - those are not necessarily critiques of anyone in this race at all - just one of those overall things that will be interesting to follow.
[00:05:49] EJ Juárez: It'll also be expensive. I cannot even imagine right now how much money will be spent in this primary, especially given the deep networks of all three of these candidates - I would expect this to be a very expensive seat.
[00:06:03] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that is probably a lock on that one - maybe a historically expensive King County Council District race. We will see. I'm also just curious to see - certainly in the City of Seattle, a number of the larger cities - candidates usually start early. Late filing week doesn't usually - we don't usually get significant surprises today, or people who enter the race and you're like - Okay, they are in a prime position to win this thing. But for most of the suburbs and other cities that are not the handful of large cities, that's not the case. And the Friday of filing week brings just a flurry of activity. Names that pop up - some people are familiar with, some people aren't. But these city council races across the state, school district races - which are definitely extremely important to pay attention to. Don't know that we'll have any Municipal or Superior Court Judge races here in King County, but there certainly are elsewhere in the state. So some of those races that - once again - don't necessarily get top billing in the news, that people are clamoring over and paying attention to. But that are vitally important to just the daily lives of people - where we see sometimes in coverage of national politics and Congress, the debates that they're having in other states, the legislation that they're passing that are obliterating people's civil rights - particularly trans people at this point in time. But the eradication of teaching anything basically, but white-approved material, and not teaching any kind of LGBTQ queer history, any kind of ethnic history - to the people who are here and who've made contributions to our country and our communities. And this is happening here locally. We have people trying to ban books here locally, people talking about taking away funds from public education to go to vouchers and private education and dismantling parts of the system. These are really important races that don't get a lot of attention, but I hope wherever you are listening from - you pay attention to in your community, because they make a big difference and your vote just counts so much more in those elections because so many people don't vote. A few people can make a really big difference. So we will keep our eyes on who files today.
Also this week, there was a one-day special session on the 16th to address legislation - known as Blake legislation - coming out of our State Supreme Court's Blake decision a couple of years back, which invalidated - basically struck down personal possession laws for substances, illegal substances - drugs, basically. This didn't have anything to do with dealing, distribution, paraphernalia - but for simple possession, it said that the existing law was invalid, which made the Legislature act. And at the time - this was either two or three years ago, pandemic time is weird for me - they intervened, made possession a regular misdemeanor. And at the time, the justification for that was - hey, we know that decriminalization is the right thing to do. We don't think we have adequate supports in place yet. So let's double down on providing resources to localities and counties to make sure that they have treatment services, diversion services established so that we aren't doing nothing, that we are doing something to address the problem. And we'll put a sunset in this bill for 2023 so that we can revisit this, hopefully things have progressed as we've intended, and we can then proceed with decriminalization. So they did that - I believe in 2021.
And this year comes around - maybe - it was probably 2020. This year comes around - sunset's happening, they have to deal with this legislation. And during the regular session, they were not able to come to an agreement. There was certainly a significant faction of people who followed evidence and data and said - This should be treated like a public health problem. The War on Drugs has failed - we need to move in a different direction in order to finally address this and improve this problem. Others were in favor of a misdemeanor. Others wanted a gross misdemeanor - which, for people who don't know, gross misdemeanors can actually carry jail time and fines that exceed that of the lowest level felony penalty. As people talk about this, felonies certainly are a different class of crime, and stay on your record differently, and happens differently in background searches. But one of the things we do know is that jail is very destabilizing. And taking someone out of their community, away from their job, away from their family for that amount of time has - as any criminologist will tell you - proven to be more destabilizing than helpful, which is why locking people up for jail is frowned upon by most people who actually study this. It's viewed as counterproductive, making the problem worse and not better. And if we look at the War on Drugs over the past 40 years - I did the DARE program when I was in elementary school - we've only gone backwards in that time after spending billions, if not trillions, of dollars in that time on this War on Drugs. So when we had this decision, it was really viewed this time coming up - hey, they stated their intention when they first passed this legislation, now it's time to continue to work and do the job.
Now - real talk - we did have a pandemic that slowed down some of this implementation, so it's not a shocking surprise that all of the infrastructure wasn't there. But it seemed like it was a time to double down on actually getting that done instead of just walking backwards and moving towards a gross misdemeanor. How did you feel about this?
[00:11:44] EJ Juárez: I had a lot of thoughts. And first and foremost, I think the thought that comes to my mind the most is that - and you brought it up a couple of times - we are collectively still in a pandemic. And during that pandemic, many people's access and proximity to services to help them either in recovery or manage their life sober went away. And at the same time as many of those services and support systems - whether that was a person, or a formal group, or medical assistance - was taken away from people, they became isolated. And the expansion and explosion of addiction and dependency issues is here in our communities. And for as much as I love a good sunset in public policy - just like I love the ability to evaluate if our policies are going well - in this case, this is one of the ones that I think is well-timed to really say - Does this meet where we are as a community and a state right now? How are we gonna make this last and make good policy?
And I think unfortunately, what we saw in this one-day special session from the Legislature was not necessarily the most bold solution and was not a solution that was - I think really, in my opinion - based on helping the most amount of people become the person that they wish to be, but instead was a failure of leadership to count votes within their own caucus. And I think - as much as I think the Speaker is an incredibly historic figure and I think having her leadership has definitely changed the nature of our House - we watched this fail to pass in the regular session, having to come back, and watch Democrats fight other Democrats on a bill that should not have been that contentious.
[00:13:30] Crystal Fincher: And that's such an important point - and especially that this is really about Democrats. Democrats control both the House and the Senate - and the Governor's office - by healthy margins. And sometimes we hear that - Well, Republicans won't let us do that. That wasn't actually the case here. And I'm very curious to hear more information about the negotiation that took place - because there are a couple things that were odd to me. One, the motivation for acting - for why it was so important to step in for the state, for our Legislature to step in and make a law - was that there is a fear that patchwork legislation on-the-ground in cities would create a wild variance between laws in different cities and counties. So - hey, it could be a felony in one place and completely legal in another place, and that could be problematic in people not knowing what the deal is within a particular jurisdiction.
In reality, what actually happened was that there seemed to be a coalescing of opinion on the Republican side - because we saw a number of Republican mayors, county council people step up in the last month or so of session, when it became clear that it was definitely a possibility that Blake legislation may not pass, certainly not during the session. And they said - You know what? If the Legislature doesn't act, we will step in. But what they said they would step in with did not exceed a gross misdemeanor anywhere. In fact, there were some Republicans, including Republican Reagan Dunn on the King County Council, who were proposing misdemeanor. And so I'm wondering who Democrats were actually negotiating with here. It doesn't seem like it was Republicans - because in that situation, Democrats seemingly would have been where the base was at. And the State Democratic Party passed a resolution saying that they favored decriminalization, and as an absolute last-ditch effort in a negotiation - a misdemeanor. Certainly nothing as far as a gross misdemeanor. So as they were negotiating, if that's the Republican starting position - is gross misdemeanor - where were Democrats at? And how did we only wind up at the exact place where Republicans - some MAGA Republicans - were at, right? We have not heard anyone talk about felonizing this. So what was this negotiation? It doesn't seem like we were negotiating with Republicans. And so if this was just where Democrats were at - this seems like this would be the result if this is just where Democrats were at.
[00:16:03] EJ Juárez: Yeah, and I think it's just an important point to really explore - when Democrats are negotiating with Democrats, you have to look at two different places. One, who's recruiting the people that are at the negotiating table, right? And two, the folks that are at the negotiating table - what is their personal ambition? And I think we have a number of people this year that are watching openings coming up for Attorney General or other positions - where taking a vote that would have aligned with the Party that they support and identify as would have, anecdotally, hurt them in their own opinion. The polls do not support that opinion. The population does not support that opinion. And unfortunately we let, I think, individual elected officials' own personal ambition probably influence these negotiations, right? I wasn't in that room. But it is not unreasonable to assume that when you recruit more moderate candidates than the actual party that they identify with and the planks in that party's platform, that they are going to be pulling from the left towards the center - which allows the right much more room to hold on to that gross misdemeanor line that they have in the sand here.
It was particularly telling with the quotes that came - I think that were published in The Seattle Times right after this kind of failure to get across the finish line before sine die happened - that this was a Democratic problem and this was an own goal on Democrats. I'm glad that they did get something done. But again, if it doesn't match the Party, I'm really curious what accountability looks like, especially for those legislators in King County where they do not have either their local LD or their county parties in alignment with perhaps the vote that they took.
[00:17:47] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that's going to be very interesting to see. We have heard some legislators try and justify this by saying - Well, we got some additional money in for some services. And wow, when you look at the actual money that was there and added - one, I would argue that that money was always going to be part of the package. Two, it's so minute in comparison to anything else. If you were negotiating with that, it seems like there would be something more substantial that happened than the money that actually ended up being tacked on at the end. And I don't know that that justifies a wholesale criminalization statewide with no sunset. This is now just the policy moving forward that is, as you say, not in alignment with local parties and is not in alignment with evidence. And we're saying we have limited resources. And this costs money - criminalizing something, arresting people, jailing people, prosecuting people costs so much money. And so the limited resources that we do have are once again being spent in a direction that we know can't fix this, while we're starving the resources and somehow trying to justify throwing some coins in the other direction, saying - Well, this is gonna be part of improving it. It's just really difficult to see how this is really going to improve things.
[00:19:16] EJ Juárez: And I know we need to move on, but my last point on this is really - this is where the lack of a real robust advocacy organization in our state that does this work - that brings in the stories and brings in the experiences at a scale that can hold legislators accountable - their absence is profound in these moments, right? Our ecosystem of advocacy organizations that influence policy has some pretty deep holes when it comes to some of these issue areas, and this is one of them. And I don't mean to discount the groups that are doing great work in this space, but those that are doing hard, (c)(4)-dollar, political expenditures that can engage in political activities is fairly thin. And I can't help but believe that if we had a more robust set of advocacy organizations that were playing in the political side, we would have better policy and we would actually get to the problem of the systems. Because we can't buy our way out of these problems with just more funding for services - we need to change systems, and that starts with how robust our advocacy systems are and how good our candidates are once they get into office.
[00:20:23] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Also in the news this week is a local layoff - a local media layoff. Crosscut - Cascade Public Media, which is Crosscut's parent company, announced that it intends to lay off five newsroom employees - all women, by the way, two of them happen to be women of color, some with seniority over other people there. They're laying them off effective July 1st - in a pivot to video and podcast. This is just reminiscent of the mid-2010s and the really perilous, tragic pivot to video - that wound up being based on gerrymandered metrics - that led to a real decimation of many newsrooms across the country. And we're seeing this - some newsrooms have cited AI, there's recent - MTV News is closing, BuzzFeed News is shuttering. So many local media outlets are struggling and making do with so many fewer staff than they used to have. But this is really curious from Cascade Public Media. They're not saying they don't have the money to continue employment. They're just saying we're shifting directions - we're moving to podcast and video. We're gonna lay these people off and we're gonna replace them with additional video and podcast producers. Joseph O'Sullivan - to his credit - who is a white male reporter there called out online - Hey, curious to see why I'm safe from these layoffs here - I don't have seniority, but I definitely noticed that everyone laid off was a woman, two of whom were women of color - that just doesn't seem like it makes that much sense. Certainly not a good look. How did you see this?
[00:22:09] EJ Juárez: I, and maybe this is the most inappropriate way to articulate this, but every time I have seen or heard a media company say they are pivoting to video and podcasting, I think that is really the death rattle, right? That didn't work for VICE, who just had a historic bankruptcy just this past week. It's not working for BuzzFeed, which is shuttering its newsroom. It didn't work for so many other companies. This is how I think big corporations - and in this case, public media - preserves its assets while it's winding down its obligations. The true cost is - we are in Washington state, I think, at a real critical juncture around how many local reporters we have left covering city halls, school board meetings, library trustee meetings. And all the sites that have suddenly become the most contentious sites of culture wars - we now lack the journalistic infrastructure to actually tell us why those places are becoming so politicized and why they are becoming the place where these fights are happening.
It is incredibly disappointing that Crosscut - to me - has made this pivot because podcasting and video doesn't give you investigation. Podcasting and video doesn't give you the ability to do the long-term relationship building behind the scenes where you're developing sources and you are cultivating broad swaths of information from different people. What it does is it gives you the ability to be on somebody's TikTok as they're scrolling in their bed at night. But I would say the issues that we're facing are much more deep than 30 seconds can provide any one person. And the dearth of long-form reporting is what is going to kill this republic. The fact that we don't have the ability to go deep on why water treatment systems are so difficult to fund and renovate and keep operational - because they're unseen and unsexy, right? So it's incredibly sad to me. And I think it is even more telling that - as Crosscut probably increased their donor rolls on the backs of their highly promoted people of color coverage, are now laying off those very same reporters that brought in new donors. And I don't think that's lost on anybody. I think that this is what happens. You bring in folks to do the racial work, to do the work in communities that traditional media has not been able to do - and then they're first out the door after they've made their profit for the bosses.
[00:24:36] Crystal Fincher: And we've seen this replay in so many different layoff scenarios exactly as you just laid out - whether it's mass media, whether it's news - it's just frustrating. Certainly a lot being talked about in - is AI part of this? We've heard in other layoffs cited that - well, AI can do so much more than it used to do, and we can rely on that for some of this. Or - hey, not lost on us, right? We're talking on a podcast - talking about how a pivot to podcast is not the thing to do, but it's not. That's - it's a different thing. And sure, supplement reporting and coverage with that, but to just replace it - like you said, this is what happens before they die. And it's also not lost on people that this is seeming - this is not the first action that people have felt in this direction. When they cut off their community editorial, guest editorial program - which did a really, really good job - was something that picked up a lot of support and steam, actually talking about on-the-ground solutions to many of the issues that plague us. One of the reasons I do this podcast is because I'm - I get so frustrated with the lack of conversation about actual solutions about what works - Should we address this or not? Not how do we address this? What are the options on the table? And there are usually a lot of options on the table that even people who consider themselves aligned politically can disagree on, different things need to be tested and tried out - there's so much to talk about in terms of how we solve things. And that series was really informative in that reason.
And it was rumored - because of some board leadership or new leadership that came aboard, they felt like that was catering too much to progressive forces where it's - this is Seattle, that this is serving. It is reflective of the community that it is serving. But certainly if you are not living in Seattle, or if you do not interact with many people from Seattle, you may think that it is more appropriate to do that. Wasn't lost on people that - in the Crosscut Ideas Festival, people were platformed with severely anti-trans views, advocating for punitive criminal legal system policies and procedures, the othering of so many people, criminalization of homelessness and poverty. And Michael Cohen was there. Just things that made a lot of people scratch their heads and say - one, what in the world anywhere, but especially in Seattle, what is happening? What's even going on? So it just seems like the people who are making decisions just have a different alignment. And even though they said this decision was partly in place to pursue a younger audience - seemed like they were doing that - and they're getting rid of the people who were successful at doing that.
[00:27:31] EJ Juárez: I think you hit the nail on the head of - this idea of pursuing a younger audience is not always pivot to video. It is reductive to assume that young people cannot consume anything more than 30 seconds. And it also does them a disservice when this is an incredibly politicized set of young people and set of generations that are hungry to understand their world in really complex and nuanced ways, and Crosscut has missed that boat. For me, what I think of a lot when I think of Crosscut now - and especially after the last Ideas Festival, which to me was less about ideas and more about provocative speakers to bolster their brand - was really this idea that you touched on around Crosscut had a moment in which it was super relevant. And that moment of relevancy was incredibly dense, but it was on the upswing and it was with those editorials. It was with the expansion of their reporting. What Crosscut did not do is capture its own growth and capture that moment, and instead pivoted towards a very traditional understanding of how that business needed to be run. They benefited greatly by the Seattle PI shutting down its very last legs of local content. And frankly, at the same time, as The Stranger really losing a lot of its best reporters and watching their own newsroom shrink and the quality is what it is now. But I think there's definitely a market change in both the Seattle and Puget Sound landscape, and Crosscut is such a cautionary tale of watching a group of people not capture their moment.
[00:29:03] Crystal Fincher: Cautionary tale indeed. There was a point in time where - everyone I knew was tuning in to Crosscut, checking out Crosscut and what was there - the coverage was just so relevant locally. You really nailed it. And it's a shame that they moved in a different direction and it's certainly is not what it was, and moving further away - by the day, evidently. The union that represents those employees does say that they do plan on fighting this, that it doesn't seem like this transpired fairly. And so we'll definitely be paying attention to how this unfolds over the next weeks and months.
Also this week, we got news that Marc Dones from the King County Regional Homeless Authority is stepping down and resigning from his position. How do you see his tenure and, I guess, the establishment - 'cause he basically built the thing from the ground up - of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority?
[00:29:58] EJ Juárez: I think this one is so complex. I think there are many reasons why we're in this place and this surprise resignation - that maybe wasn't so much of a surprise. I feel like - for the past year, the only thing we've heard about the Regional Homelessness Authority in the news has been terrible. It has been punch after punch after punch where the nuts and bolts of that organization have left the folks on the ground doing the hardest work waiting to be paid, waiting to get the funds that they're promised. We've also seen, I think in some ways, a somewhat confrontational approach from that organization with the very regional structure that it's supposed to uphold. One of the things I think with this is I think Marc - I do not know Marc - and my interactions with that organization are as a spectator and somebody who depends on them to do the great work that they've set out to do. The vision that that organization set forth is incredible. And unfortunately, I think that in order for any organization to develop on an incredible vision, you have to build a great team. And unfortunately, that's an organization that did not build a regional team in order to execute on that vision. So you can be bold and visionary, but if you don't have the chops and you don't have the ability to bring a team with you - ideas are a dime a dozen, but true organizers and folks that can bring folks with them - I think that is what that organization desperately needs in its next leader.
[00:31:25] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, for me, it feels like this was a challenging task from the outset. And I don't know that there was even the alignment between the regional parties involved that would have supported anything, but what had been happening in a status-quo-type of path moving forward. People who know me have probably had this conversation with me, but - even the formation of this regional homelessness authority felt like - we heard, certainly Ed Murray when he was the mayor, talk about the need for regional solutions. Several people talk about the need for a regional solution. To me, it always felt like that was an excuse and a way to escape accountability for local action, for action in their purview and in their jurisdiction. Certainly there was a lot more that a - Mayor Ed Murray, Mayor Jenny Durkan could have and should have done to address this - that they just didn't. They didn't agree with, they didn't execute on. And here we have now Mayor Harrell. And it just seemed like the vision that Marc Dones laid forth and the vision that you heard from local leaders like Mayor Harrell or some housing providers were never in alignment. And it seemed like there were silos there. It seems like there was some feeling that they needed to protect what they were doing, and maybe the Regional Homeless Authority was gonna take away some of their power or their resources. And a reaction to that was what it seemed like was happening in a few different places.
Certainly Marc Dones talked about doing things in a different way. People didn't always agree with that way. Is that on him, or is that just on a lack of alignment? Certainly they hired him, so it seems they would have hired someone who was closer to what they - the direction that they wanted to go - but it's challenging. And it took - it's hard to build an organization. And what he got dumped on him was a ton of money and said - okay, build it and go. It took longer than anticipated to build it. It does seem like they were achieving some good results, especially recently. But as you said, there were other stories always peppered in there. And for every step forward, it felt like there was a story or something about a challenge that they were facing. And even the issue of - this latest major issue where somehow, because of someone's lack of oversight - and I'm still not sure exactly who that is - this organization wound up overspending its budget by quite a lot, which could leave people evicted, basically, without any place to live through no fault of their own in this situation - was really, was a challenge. And it seemed like that was a result of a lack of alignment, and people operating in silos and not wanting to share or collaborate on what they were doing. And so I certainly hope that this next person who is stepping in can manage those relationships better, or at least level set better. And hopefully these partners will give them the tools that they need and the collaboration that they need to succeed. But we will see how this continues to play out.
Also, we got news - and I guess we will wrap up on this today - Seattle's, once again, the fastest growing city in the country. This is particularly amusing to many people in Seattle because of a long-term kind of insistence in trying to spin a narrative from some very conservative forces - in a documentary a while back that was pretty hyperbolic and exaggerated that "Seattle is Dying." And it's alternating between a city that's controlled by anarchists, that's being burnt down by Antifa, and being overrun by drugged-up zombies and homeless people who they characterize as all criminals and out there due to some moral failing or their own fault, right? And that just does not - it was just false. It is not the reality on the ground for most people. Most people are not fearing for their safety as they're walking throughout Seattle. They're just carrying on about their lives. And sure, there are challenges. And sure, there are people outside who shouldn't be - although the problem with that is the people outside, not people needing to see the people who are outside. And so it just is curious and interesting. And I'm wondering what you think, or why you think Seattle continues to be one of the fastest - or now the fastest - growing city in the country once again.
[00:36:06] EJ Juárez: Seattle's awesome. I think that's - I love Seattle, and I think Seattle has a problem with people saying that they love Seattle. And there is a real culture in the Puget Sound of the other cities' political leaders scoring cheap political points by dunking on Seattle, right? And at some point, the chorus of those other politicians doing that work becomes something. And that has unfortunately permeated into the City, where I wish more people were open about how much they love this place - because that's why people are moving here. That's why people want to be here. And I think especially as we look at this return-to-the-office moment that we're in, Seattle is gonna come back. And I think that the work that the Downtown Seattle Association and the Mayor's office are doing to reimagine what's possible in our downtown, given that we have so many opportunities unlike other major cities - I'm super excited about it. I also think that we might be on the first wave of climate migration. I think that it would be foolish for us not to at least consider - those who have the means and opportunities now to relocate to a place where they are less exposed to natural disasters comparatively from where they might be from, where heat swings - barring last week - are less frequent. So I think that we're well poised for a comeback and I think that this is the first maybe harbinger of that, where we've got folks coming back and we're growing again.
[00:37:44] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a very valid point, especially talking about - now is the time with people - when people of means are making changes based on this. And I've had conversations with people about this, and people are absolutely looking at - What is the weather likely to be? Is there likely to be flooding? Is there likely to be extreme heat waves? On top of that - of the challenges brought by climate change - the challenge is brought by our failure to manage our infrastructure appropriately. Some folks in Texas - not only is it a problem with heat waves or extreme cold, but also their power being completely unreliable when that happens. Or elsewhere in the country - or water being completely unsafe to drink and unpredictable in that way. Different ways that also a failure to manage infrastructure is exacerbating our struggles with climate change and leaving people more vulnerable to that.
I also think that we are - we're, comparatively, a very educated place, a very engaged place. It's a beautiful place to live. It's not - this is one of the easier places for businesses to attract employees to come. And really that's what was behind our incredible population growth in the first place. This is a place, this is a good place to do business. We heard so many times from - whether it's the Association of Washington Cities or the Chamber or Washington Roundtable - these raises in minimum wages or this tax that the city council wants to put on businesses, it's gonna make the sky fall. Everybody's gonna leave. Everyone's gonna move out. And now they're - as the "Seattle is Dying" crowd will be - bad things are taking over Seattle. No one wants to be here. And that is just laughably false and continues to be proven laughably false. Definitely don't wanna give the impression that there are not significant challenges - there are lots of significant challenges everywhere. And the set that we have is, unfortunately across the country, a better set than many people are dealing with in other places. We should do better. We should still be doing better. But comparatively a lot of places are doing worse. Not to mention just attacks on civil rights, and people being able to be people and live their own lives in different places. And we are a place that is welcoming to people - as you talked about before. So I definitely understand why Seattle is at the top of this list and continues to return to the top of the list. I hope we do things to make it even more welcoming and inviting and support the population that is moving here, like making appropriate decisions on housing and renter protections and rent controls and preventing displacement from the continued population growth.
[00:40:40] EJ Juárez: I think a key difference, too, as we look at some of those places that are less hospitable to business - Washington was rated number one best place to open and run a business multiple times here in the last few years, including last year. But I look at places like Florida, where also massive migration to that state and also very large high profile exodus by companies out of that state - because it is so hostile given the conditions for its employees to live safe, prosperous lives within their communities. So to places like that and people that are talking about how great Florida and Texas and all these other places are, I say - Hey, Disney just canceled a billion dollar expansion in Orlando for their employees because they did not believe their employees were safe in how hostile that government was towards them. Hey, come on up to Washington. We like Mickey Mouse, let's do it.
[00:41:39] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, we won't just exact a vendetta against a company because they didn't agree with what the governor said. So it'll be, it's certainly an interesting exercise to go over all the things that do make Seattle a pretty cool place to be - took me longer than many people to warm up to Seattle, but I have arrived, I'm here.
[00:42:06] EJ Juárez: Just wait two years, it changes every two years. You'll like one of them.
[00:42:09] Crystal Fincher: Oh goodness - with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, May 19th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is the former Director of Progressive Majority, who's now in public service and remains involved in numerous political efforts - and you all hear how insightful and intelligent he is when he's on - EJ Juárez. Thank you for joining us.
[00:42:36] EJ Juárez: Thank you.
[00:42:37] Crystal Fincher: You can find EJ on Twitter @EliseoJJuarez. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, it's two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get the full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Becka Johnson Poppe about her campaign for King County Council District 4 - why she decided to run, the skill set she brings from overseeing half of King County’s $16 billion budget, and her thoughts on addressing human services sector wages, issues plaguing the King County Jail, housing and homelessness, drug possession and substance use disorder, climate change and air quality, and budget transparency and efficiency.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Becka Johnson Poppe at @votebecka.
Becka Johnson Poppe
Becka has been putting progressive ideas into action across our region’s largest public entities for more than a decade. Currently, Becka oversees half of King County's $16 billion budget and leads a team that works to advance environmental, transportation, and racial justice priorities. Previously, at the University of Washington, she promoted equitable access to higher education and led state budget and policy analysis as the Director of Policy, Planning & State Operations. Becka volunteers as a Director on the Board of YouthCare, working to end youth homelessness, and chairs the Race Equity Justice Committee. She also volunteers on the Board of Doney Coe Pet Clinic, supporting the animal companions of people experiencing homelessness. Becka is an elected Precinct Committee Officer, a member of the Jackson Foundation Leadership Council, and has served on the King County Democrats Endorsement Committee. She previously worked in mental health research for Stanford University and has mentored students from diverse communities over the last two decades. In her free time, Becka enjoys traveling with her spouse and their cat, Edgar, as well as spending time outdoors and cheering on the Mariners.
Resources
Campaign Website - Becka Johnson Poppe
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
I'm very pleased to have King County Council candidate Becka Johnson Poppe joining us today. Welcome to the show.
[00:01:01] Becka Johnson Poppe: Thank you so much, Crystal. It's really nice to be here.
[00:01:04] Crystal Fincher: Great to be here with you. So I guess just starting off - what made you choose to run for this King County Council position?
[00:01:12] Becka Johnson Poppe: Thank you. Yeah, so I've lived in District 4 for over a decade. I was born and raised here in the Puget Sound region. I'm the granddaughter of two veterans, daughter of two public servants - and they really taught me what it meant to be tough and what it meant to serve the community. Growing up, I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, but I knew that I wanted to take care of my community. I studied biology and psychology in college and spent a couple of years doing mental health research at Stanford after that. While I was there, I volunteered as an after-school program leader in a low-income community - and between my work and my volunteering - I saw a lot of challenges that people were facing with navigating mental health issues, economic injustice, the first effects of climate change, and really all the societal structures and policies that do an unfortunately impressive job of inhibiting social mobility and access to basic services. In many cases, the only thing keeping people afloat was having a supportive community around them. And that really hit home for me - I realized I wanted to get back to my community and work on these issues back at home.
I am honored to be part of this community in District 4 and in King County. There are a lot of incredibly dedicated, creative, supportive people who have made careers out of finding ways to make the world a better place - and like I said, the community that you have around you can really make all the difference. A dear friend of mine was living out of their car in King County not that long ago, and I think about them when I think about the 50,000 people who were unhoused in King County last year. I think that there are moments in life that many of us have had where you can see how close you are to going from making it work to not making it work. For a little while, I was working three jobs and had a bank account with two digits. I had tons of support around me, so I was fine - but I was in a precarious spot and if I hadn't had that support, it could have looked really different. I think that there is so much work that needs to be done to create communities that truly support each other. I think we can all agree we have a housing crisis, a behavioral health crisis, a climate crisis - and to take on these issues, we need someone who can bring people together and make progress right out of the gate. So over the last decade, I've led budgets and policy development for some of the region's largest public entities. I've gone from a bank account with two digits to overseeing half of King County's $16 billion budget. Really, a budget is about our values - it's about our priorities and how we make those real, and that's a unique skill set that I bring.
I really see three priorities connecting everything that the County does - protecting the environment, advancing equity, and stimulating the economy. These three E's - the environment, equity, and the economy - all intersect, and I'm really committed to centering our community's voices and our community's needs, because I've seen firsthand what that looks like and what that can do. I think we really have an opportunity to show the state and the rest of the nation what it means to be a community that is diverse and inclusive and dedicated to solving the most complex issues. King County is bigger than 15 states, and so we have the opportunity and the responsibility to lead in taking on the existential threat of climate change, and creating more housing that's affordable for more people, in delivering universal childcare, improving our transportation experience. And all of this is going to take centering the voices of people most affected, creating accessible career pathways with family-sustaining wages, moving big capital initiatives faster and more equitably, and making sure that everyone feels safe, respected, and supported. And I've spent my career turning progressive ideas into progressive action - with the voices and votes of our community, I'm really excited to hit the ground running.
[00:04:59] Crystal Fincher: All right - you talked about the three E's. Those three E's are absolutely impacted, as you talked about, by housing and homelessness and how accessible or not those are to people. One thing called out by experts that's a barrier to our homelessness response is that frontline workers are short-staffed, they're overworked, and their wages are not covering the cost of living for this area. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages, and how can we make that more likely with how we bid and contract for services?
[00:05:32] Becka Johnson Poppe: Yeah, thanks Crystal. So there was a recent UW research study that showed that social service staff are underpaid by 37%. And with a combination of lagging wages, rising cost of living, and just the really challenging work that folks have to do in these spaces - that's created a real workforce crisis in the human services sector. In King County and Seattle, this kind of work is primarily performed by nonprofits, like you pointed out, in contracts with government agencies. So we really need to make sure that, as a government, that we are using the tools that are available to us to make sure that nonprofits have the ability to pay their employees more. And where we're really seeing this hit home is for social workers, for people working with youth, for intake specialists, for people who are doing that really tough human services work. Women account for - it was 79% of all human services workers in King County. And that same UW study showed that it's workers of color who are overrepresented in the lowest paid human services job, including frontline care work. So when we're looking at what we can be doing as a county to make sure that nonprofits can increase the minimum pay for folks, to be providing inflationary wage adjustments, to be improving non-wage benefits - that's all gonna come down to how we as a government can be supporting that work. So I think we absolutely need to be doing this, not just for the sake of our work in our homelessness communities, but for the sake of work in so many different spaces.
[00:07:05] Crystal Fincher: Public safety is top of mind for so many people - and just what it means to be safe, what comprehensive public safety means. And a focus on addressing root causes - really getting to the heart of people being victimized and reducing it - people have been asking for that for quite some time. Part of this process and part of what King County is responsible for is operating multiple jails, really. And the main jail has been having a number of problems - from overcrowding, they had a lack of water for a while, inadequate healthcare, shortages. Would you have voted to approve the transfer of inmates to the SCORE jail to try and alleviate the issues plaguing the King County Jail, or would you have a different plan?
[00:07:51] Becka Johnson Poppe: Yeah, so a close family member of mine was incarcerated, and this is something that is really near and dear to my heart. I think the human experience in our jails is something that we really have to focus on. We didn't prioritize, the County didn't prioritize COVID vaccines for this population. And we are seeing a behavioral health problem that's manifesting in our jails with the suicide numbers. This is really concerning. I am worried about the fact that SCORE doesn't have options for in-person visitation. I'm worried about folks in our jails not being able to access their legal representation, support from behavioral health professionals. I'm worried about the experience for people who are trying to do that critical work to support their clients - who need interpreters, who need that in-person access to just do basic things like pass documents back and forth. And what this really comes down to is making sure that we are keeping folks out of jail in the first place - that we're looking at equitable, human-centered, criminal legal strategies. And these takes the form of things like community courts, community diversion programs, and scaling that up is really critical.
It is a fact that we don't have enough staff to fill our jails right now. We don't have enough people to even escort folks from the front desk to meet with their clients, and that is - that's really unacceptable. We need to be looking at those staffing shortages and making sure that we are being efficient with our resources. If we're paying people to do work but they aren't even able to access their clients, that's not efficient - let alone the human experience that's going on for the people in our jails. So investing in those holistic solutions to keep people out of jail in the first place is a big part of this, and I'm hopeful that the behavioral health levy that was recently passed is going to be part of this solution. I think we also need to be looking at our community courts - and one thing that I want to spend more time looking at is misdemeanor cases, which are not currently eligible for community court. Just really making sure that we are taking a step back and paying attention to the human experience and also how to keep people from being in that situation in the first place.
[00:09:57] Crystal Fincher: Should we close the King County Jail?
[00:09:59] Becka Johnson Poppe: I think that we should absolutely be moving toward that - and doing that in concert with all of these holistic services, and making sure that we are having alternatives to that jail that are going to be better suited to the community needs.
[00:10:14] Crystal Fincher: And I may have just missed it, so would you have also voted to - you talked about a number of other things that were absolutely crucial and critical, and people who are incarcerated having connections to the outside is critical to lower chances of recidivism and them able to integrate back in the community successfully. Would you have voted to approve that SCORE contract?
[00:10:35] Becka Johnson Poppe: I would not have voted to approve that SCORE contract.
[00:10:38] Crystal Fincher: Okay, and so I assume that if it comes back, which some people think that it will - and need to be extended or expanded - that you would be a No vote on that too.
[00:10:46] Becka Johnson Poppe: That's right.
[00:10:47] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. So we talked about homelessness, affordable housing, about the need to increase pay for frontline workers and that being crucial to being able to solve this response. What are your top priorities for taking action to reduce homelessness and increase the affordability of housing?
[00:11:06] Becka Johnson Poppe: Yeah, thank you. So I mentioned earlier that a good friend of mine was living out of their car in King County not that long ago and so this hits home for me. And I've also been working to end youth homelessness as a volunteer for . YouthCare, and as a volunteer for a really small nonprofit that provides care to the animal companions of people who are experiencing homelessness. And one of the things that I've observed is that we really need to be leveraging partnerships to support the needs of the community and making sure that we are not missing handoffs. We need to make sure that we are communicating between the systems, making sure that we're providing a safety net for the community. And the fact is a lot of our contracts right now don't allow for resources to be used flexibly for wraparound support. So that's one thing I want to work on.
And as we were talking about, keeping the team is really critical. When I'm volunteering for YouthCare, it's our frontline staff who make all the difference for our unhoused young people. I've advocated for wage increases because it's the right thing to do - and because the bottom line is if we don't take care of our people, we lose them and we lose the vital individual connections that make the work matter. I think in order to take care of our community, we really need to take care of our people. And whether you care about any of that or not, which I hope you do - I know that you do, Crystal, and I hope that all of our listeners do here - if we are constantly losing people and having to navigate that turnover, it's just really inefficient from a resource standpoint. Those hiring processes - going through that over and over - that's tapping into scarce resources that we could be using for so many other important things. So it's about leveraging those partnerships, it's about keeping the team together.
And then how we pair this with affordable housing - it is really hard for people to afford to live here and rents are at all-time highs, housing prices are really tough. Having a comprehensive approach that addresses zoning, affordability, that links housing with transportation - it's not only going to be critical to help with equity, to help with the economy, but also with the environment - getting back to those three E's - to make sure that we have diverse communities while we're mitigating the impacts of climate change by pairing housing where transportation is. I'm really for making sure that we have more housing that's affordable to more people, and doing that with what I would consider a 'Yes, And' approach. So making sure that we have mixed-use development where housing is built alongside commercial and retail spaces, making it easier to build with permitting, with design review - really taking a look at those processes - finding ways to support first-time home buyers as well. And I get kind of excited about this, but talking about the full life cycle of these projects - everything from land acquisition - the timing of land acquisitions with our budget processes, that is a big challenge right now. Building capacity in the community to do these projects so that we have culturally competent developers, making sure that we move construction faster and more equitably to get these affordable housing units created, making sure that we have green building features that are part of this construction and these plans from the start, thinking about the jobs that we're creating - good union jobs as part of this. And incentivizing the creation of affordable housing that isn't just tiny units - that is available for multi-generational households, which are often folks from immigrant communities.
And all of this is going to get back to those multi-benefits of how we are supporting the environment, equity, and the economy simultaneously. I could nerd out here a little bit talking about a program at the County around transfer of development rights, which is something that we use to preserve open space by transferring the development potential of that land to areas where we can have more density because the services and utilities are available to support that. And this is something that I think is really cool because the revenue that we generate by selling these development credits allows us to then purchase more open space, and be preserving those open spaces. So these multi-benefits, I think, are where things can get really cool. And how we can be using those incentives to make sure that we have green building features, and even access to childcare services where people live and not just wherever it makes sense to build them otherwise. This is going to make everyone's lives easier, healthier, and better. So I get really excited about this stuff.
[00:15:30] Crystal Fincher: Makes sense. Now, drug decriminalization is a big topic of discussion locally and at the state legislative level right now. We had our legislators working on legislation to try and establish a new policy for personal possession of substances, after our State Supreme Court invalidated the law that criminalized that. Legislature did that, but put a sunset provision in the first go-round that they did - after they made it a misdemeanor, tried to fund some infrastructure across the state for treatment and diversion, those types of programs. But they weren't able to come to a new agreement in this session. Governor Inslee recently called a new special session to address this, and we'll see if they come up with a solution after that. But if not, it's going to be up to counties, cities, and towns to figure out what policy is the right policy for them. Should we be criminalizing simple possession of substances? And if not, what should the plan be?
[00:16:31] Becka Johnson Poppe: Yeah, thanks Crystal. We need to be making sure that folks are getting the help that they need rather than punishment. Historically, we have just not seen evidence that shows that punishment works, and it's disproportionately affecting Black and Brown communities. There needs to be a fix that happens at the state level because I don't think that it's a great solution to have 40 different rules with 40 different jurisdictions - where people have to wonder if they step across one line, if they're going to be treated differently than if they're hopping over here. And so I'm really hopeful that the state comes through with a fix. If they don't, we really need to be focusing again back on the root issues. What is resulting in people having substance abuse disorder, having these challenges in the first place? Possession - drug possession is not the biggest public safety threat facing our communities right now. And we have scarce resources to devote to public safety so prioritizing that differently is an imperative, while recognizing that substance abuse is a big problem. Fentanyl death rates are growing year over year, we've already exceeded the 2022 death rates so far - and we're only a few months into 2023 - but we absolutely cannot prosecute our way out of the problem. Prevention, treatment, long-term care - these are all critical pieces - and data gathering to support that.
Another really important thing that I've noticed is that this is hitting the people who are experiencing homelessness the hardest. I think we need a healthcare team that is really dedicated to supporting people who are experiencing homelessness. And recognizing that if people refuse treatment - that's part of the disease, that is part of the process. So we still need to have that treatment available - we need to help folks work through that part of the disease that presents as refusal, and not just giving up on folks. So I am really hopeful that the state comes through with a fix - and I think at the County level, we need to be prioritizing our scarce resources in a way that is going to help people, rather than try to prosecute them.
[00:18:38] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely makes sense. Now, you talked about another one of your Es, the environment. On almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals but we're experiencing impacts from climate change more than we ever have before, whether it's extreme weather events with heat and cold, wildfires, floods. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet our 2030 goals?
[00:19:02] Becka Johnson Poppe: Yeah, it's really important to be recognizing that climate change is a threat multiplier that burdens communities already facing public health and economic disparities. I think that we can be looking at ways to center community voices in how we are working to address climate change, and this is something that I've had direct experience with. A couple years ago, I created the County's first Climate Equity Bond - it's a $20 million pool of funds - and in doing so, had the honor to sit with frontline communities experiencing the first and worst consequences of climate change. I met with them for seven months and found a way to make their priorities a reality. I really want to scale up that work at the County and do even more of this - and make sure that we are not being performative about the way that we are involving community voices, but really doing that deliberately - and balancing that need to move quickly, but making sure that we are not leaving folks behind.
Another really critical piece to this is moving our big construction initiatives faster by breaking down barriers to delivering on those initiatives. So much of what we need to do to address climate change is going to come down to how we can deliver on our capital projects - whether it's installing electric vehicle infrastructure, whether it is creating big solar fields, affordable housing that's close to transportation - these large-scale energy projects, these large-scale construction initiatives are gonna be key. This is something that I've been working on at the County - is figuring out how to break down the barriers that all of our construction initiatives are facing right now, which are around permitting, procurement, supply chains, labor shortages. And this is something that I'm really excited about because there are things that we can be doing to break down those barriers and move these projects faster and more equitably for the sake of the environment. Another thing that I've been working on related to our big capital projects is making sure that when we are making decisions, we are doing that in a way that recognizes the carbon emissions from our buildings will harm future generations. This is called social cost of carbon. It's a real dollar amount that we can actually be applying to calculations about which alternatives we should pursue when we're looking at different construction projects and construction options - and bringing that into our decision-making is really critical.
We also need to be going after federal and state funding. There are huge opportunities right now. The Inflation Reduction Act, Federal Infrastructure Bill, Climate Commitment Act, Clean Fuel Standard, the EPA has a $5 billion grant option opportunity for climate pollution reduction. We have a huge opportunity right now to be going after those dollars in a coordinated manner that those grant opportunities - actually, in some cases, demand that we be coordinated across the region. And the County - one of the biggest things that the County can do is bring people together to bring that coordination. And then a huge part of this is transportation. We need to have a coordinated plan for installing electric vehicle charging infrastructure, working with our neighboring jurisdictions and private entities. We need to be electrifying our bus fleet, but recognizing that if no one is riding our buses, it doesn't really matter if they're electric if everyone's using their cars instead. So we need to be bringing people back to our buses, and if it's reliable, accessible, and safe, people are going to use it.
[00:22:25] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, one related item is the air that we breathe - you talked about reducing the pollution there. Certainly, air quality impacts everything about our lives - from life expectancy, to whether we're experiencing asthma, heart disease, lung disease, many things like that. What role does the County have to play, or what responsibility does the County have, to ensure that clean air and appropriate ventilation happens in public buildings? But also, we're seeing a lot of new construction - just passed some legislation that will probably spur construction of housing units. How should the County be enforcing air standards, or should it?
[00:23:05] Becka Johnson Poppe: Yeah, well, to start off here, a really critical piece of this is transportation, because the biggest source of emissions in the County is emissions from transportation. So to expand on that a little bit, we really need to be bringing people back to our buses. And as I was saying, if it's reliable, accessible, safe, people are going to use it. Right now, our buses are arriving late, on reduced schedules, too many of our neighbors who are in crisis are having episodes on buses completely unsupported. And I think if we asked a big room of people - how many of us have had an uncomfortable experience on a bus - we'd probably all raise our hands. So to be reducing our emissions, we need to bring people back to our buses. And I think we can do that by making our experience safer, by having an on-demand care team, where our Metro operators who have such a tough job already - my neighbor actually is a Metro operator, he's in his 80s, he is one of the toughest people that I know - and we can make a system where those Metro operators can flag down a care team to meet them en route and provide human-oriented holistic support to people who are in crisis on our buses.
We also need to recognize that the traditional commute isn't the main reason that people are using buses anymore. So to get people to transition away from single-occupancy vehicles, we need to have transportation that's available around the clock and not just in those traditional commute hours. We have the Metro Connects vision to help us move toward that vision, but there's a big funding gap and it was put together in 2016. So we need to refresh that data with post-pandemic data to make sure that we're moving toward the right solutions and the right targets here. We have a lot of one-time funding that we can be using right now to make sure that we are staffed up with Metro, to make sure that we're improving that safety and that ridership experience. We also need to be pursuing long-term solutions. So I think all of this is going to be really key to improving our air quality and making sure that we have better air quality for everyone.
And in terms of our buildings, it gets back to those choices that we're making about how we construct and factoring those emissions - those long-term emissions - and the effects of those into our decision-making. We also can be making sure that, when we have these wildfire incidents and smoke, that we have spaces for people to go where they can escape that. There are not enough places right now where people can be safe from the effects of our wildfire season, which is really what it is right now, unfortunately - it's a season of the year that we've become pretty familiar with. There are things called - I might mispronounce this here - Corsi–Rosenthal Boxes, which are quick ways to clean the air for folks. It cleans the air by up to 60%. And that's something that we can use in a lot of different settings to essentially retrofit spaces that aren't already constructed in ways that allow folks to be able to breathe clean air. And we really need to be engaging people at every stage of the process in conversations about indoor air quality. We've learned this through COVID - we can be leveraging those same learnings to move forward and be ensuring that as the climate continues to warm and as we continue to have more wildfire smoke, that we are not having that impact all of us. But really that - if we look at the maps of air pollution where folks are most affected by this, it's the same regions of the County that are disproportionately impacted by existing public health disparities, by economic disparities, by gun violence, by so many different things. And recognizing where needs are greatest is going to be key in making sure that we are improving the air quality in meaningful ways.
[00:26:44] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, you manage half of the County budget. You talked about how huge the County is - it is large, it is formidable - so that is quite the undertaking that you have. But when it comes to that budget, King County does incremental budgeting - making it really difficult for people to understand how funds are allocated in the base budget. Being that this is one of your strengths and an area you are very familiar with, what can be done to make the budget easier for the public to understand and influence?
[00:27:15] Becka Johnson Poppe: Yeah, this is something I get really excited about. Few things are more important than how we use our resources and transparency from a lot of different angles is critical - the funding sources, how that funding is being used, how communities are being involved in those choices, and in the implementation of things that get funded. I've been working on this at the County and on the campaign trail so far - just demystifying the budget process. It doesn't have to be complicated. Everyone understands income coming in, expenses going out. We budget for ourselves individually in ways that align with our values and priorities. If you really care about cooking, maybe you're going to spend a little bit more on the supplies that you're using or the ingredients that you're using. Those are your priorities reflected in your own personal budget. And that same thing happens at the County. There are opportunities that we're using - that I've been using right now - to really try to make this easier for folks to be involved in and to understand. And part of this is meeting people where they're at. It's great to have town halls, it's great to have office hours, it's great to have presentations - but thinking about the timing and location of those is really critical. If we're holding space for folks to engage with these processes at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday, you're going to get a very different set of people than if you have it at 7 p.m. And it's - for me, one of the most fun parts of the campaign so far has been knocking on doors and literally engaging with folks where they're at - at their home, where they don't have to go anywhere. They can just share their thoughts with me when I come up and ask for a few minutes of their time. But I think the bottom line here is - it doesn't have to be complicated. There are ways that we can be putting that information online to make this more accessible to folks, to make it easier to understand. It's not about sharing more data - that can just be overwhelming, that can be more cumbersome. It's about presenting that data in ways that people can access and understand, and really going to people to make sure that they have their voices heard in the process.
[00:29:23] Crystal Fincher: Now, the list of things that everyone says is necessary and a lot of the things that we've talked about today cost more money than we appear to have in the budget, so new revenue is needed. What progressive revenue options exist at the County level and will you pursue any of them?
[00:29:39] Becka Johnson Poppe: Yeah, we are unfortunately heading into lean times at the County. The state did not pass a revenue fix that we really needed. So as a little bit of background - right now, so the General Fund for the County is our most flexible source of revenue that funds a lot of the critical things that the County does. The biggest source of funding for the General Fund is property tax revenue. And right now, revenue from our property tax is capped - the growth of that revenue is capped at 1% per year, plus the cost of new construction. This comes out to essentially about 2% per year, or a little bit more. And I think we've all seen that inflation has been going up by way more than 2% per year. So we have more money going out the door than we have coming in. And this means that to even just sustain the level of service that we have now, we are going to need way more than that 2%. So we're headed into lean times because the state did not lift that cap on property tax revenue growth. And I think that voters deserve someone who has the budget experience to think creatively about how to avoid cuts and maximize the dollars that we have.
So as I mentioned - as you mentioned - over the last few years, I've been overseeing half of the County's budget and this has given me some insight into some of the tools that we can be using. We talked earlier about going after big federal dollars - that's an opportunity that we have to help shore up the work that we're doing. We have opportunities to be multiplying the dollars that we have with matching funds, with pilot projects that make the County competitive for larger dollars. We can also be getting more aggressive with our bonding strategy. So right now the County has a AAA rating, which is great. And you don't need to know anything about bonds to know that AAA is the best - it's really freaking good. We can be taking that down a notch - and still getting pretty much all of the benefits that we have at our AAA - with something that's just a smidge lower than that, but freeing up a lot of dollars to meet urgent needs now. These needs are only going to get more expensive the longer that they're left unaddressed, so this is actually a fiscally responsible solution. If we use that bonding authority right now to get more dollars right now, that's gonna help in the long run.
And then base budget. So you mentioned earlier that we budget at the County on an incremental basis, and this is absolutely true. This is true of a lot of local jurisdictions. And what this means essentially is that when we have new money coming in, we decide what to do with those new dollars, but we don't take a lot of time to dig back into the resources that were decided upon in the past. And those resources were guided by different values and priorities than we have now. We're talking decades of decisions. And that means that the values and priorities that we have now - that are really intentionally centering racial justice and equity - that's great for the way that we're using our resources now, but that's not what was guiding resource decisions in the past. So we have a huge opportunity to not only free up dollars and reprioritize those dollars to help as we're headed into lean times, but to also undo systemic racism by reevaluating the way that we have used resources in the past and reassigning those dollars to meet where needs are greatest. We need to keep getting dollars out into the community and recognizing that King County taxpayers can't be the only ones to shoulder this burden in perpetuity, but we can be the ones to model this work and how we can do this correctly and creatively - to then work with our colleagues at the state and federal levels to find sustainable progressive funding solutions for the long-term.
[00:33:21] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and anyone who knows me in real life has probably had a conversation with me about how crucial and important bonding is - and using it in times like now is to be able to solve problems at the scale that we're experiencing them.
Now, you're in a competitive race. This position - District 4 is a contested race. The filing deadline is May 19th, so who knows if anyone else is gonna get in the race. But at this point in time, people are trying to evaluate the differences between candidates and who you are, and how you may vote. What do your endorsements say about you, and what are you most proud of?
[00:33:59] Becka Johnson Poppe: Yeah, thank you. I am really proud to be endorsed by a lot of folks who really represent the community - small business owners, nonprofit leaders, people who are out there doing the work in the community. I'm also proud to be endorsed by State Representative Liz Berry, State Representative Kristine Reeves, County Councilmember Joe McDermott - these are folks who I really respect because of the way that they've led our community toward progressive solutions to some of the most complex issues. And I recognize that I haven't been working toward a specific elected office for a long period of time, and so - I have, though, been operating in the community, connecting with my community, and I think that my endorsements really reflect that.
[00:34:50] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Now another thing that you covered was talking about - with the budget - that how we deliver projects is as important as the overall goal of it, and can influence the quality of it. This has been a continued issue that we've seen at many levels of government, including the County, where great policy is passed that's gonna help a lot of people, but it experiences some challenges in the implementation. What can we do to improve how we implement policy at the County level?
[00:35:19] Becka Johnson Poppe: That is such a big question, and I really appreciate that question. There is so much that we can be doing to improve how we implement policy - it is really up to our elected officials and our governments. We have the opportunity and the responsibility to be undoing the status quo and replacing it with something better, to be centering the voices of people most affected, to be understanding the racial justice impact of policies and programs by using data carefully and intentionally - and this really factors into how we roll out those policies. As a County Councilmember, part of my job will be recognizing the maps showing where needs are greatest - whether it's gun violence, public health disparities, urban heat - and making sure that we are involving the voices of folks in those areas where needs are greatest. We need to be forming partnerships to be implementing our policies effectively - partnerships with frontline workers, partnerships with labor, partnerships with nonprofit organizations - and really paying attention to the experience of people who are doing the work and the expertise of people who are doing that work.
We were talking about moving big capital initiatives faster. So much of what the County does is constructing things, building things - and so I've seen firsthand the importance of our capital design and our construction work. And if we move capital projects faster, we create more jobs, more union jobs, we sustain those jobs, and we get that value out into the communities faster. As I mentioned, our big capital initiatives are facing barriers around permitting, procurement, supply chains, labor shortages. We need to be paying attention to that because those problems probably aren't going away, but there are ways that we can be breaking that down by really making sure that we are using all of the tools in the toolbox. With procurement, for example, there are alternative processes with design-bid-build, that - and a whole bunch of different options here - where we can be staffing in a way that allows us to be creative, that will actually save us more money in the long run if we staff up in ways that will allow for that creativity. And sometimes this work is going to be more complex at the outset, but it's going to save us money and save us time in the long run, and so thinking about those trade-offs and thinking about how we can be making fiscally responsible investments, investments and policy implementation plans that really involve people at every step of the way - it's all going to end up being better for us in the long run. This is such a big question. I feel like there's so many things that we could talk about here, but this is really critical to the work that the County does.
[00:38:03] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, as we conclude today - as we talked about - there are lots of voters and residents in this community who are trying to figure out not only what's happening, but who you guys are and where you stand, what the differences are, and how to make their decision on who they're going to vote for. When you talk to people like that, what do you tell them?
[00:38:25] Becka Johnson Poppe: Yeah, I tell them - I've spent my career turning progressive ideas into progressive action. And whoever gets elected is going to have a lot to navigate. We have 50,000 unhoused neighbors, we have public safety issues, we have land conservation challenges, transportation issues, backlogs in our criminal legal system. If we are going to take on the biggest, most urgent issues in the region, we need someone who can make progress right out of the gate. We're headed into lean times at the County, and I think voters deserve someone who has the budget experience to think creatively about how to avoid cuts, how to maximize the dollars that we have. And I have that experience, and that's a unique skillset that I bring. I'm excited to bring my experience not only with budgets, but with moving construction projects faster and more equitably, with centering community voices, and turning those asks and those values into tangible outcomes. My experience doing mental health research - understanding data and science - my experience volunteering working with our unhoused neighbors. As I said earlier, King County is bigger than 15 states. We can show the rest of the state and the rest of the nation what it means to be a community that is diverse and inclusive, and solving the most complex issues. We can lead in taking on the existential threat of climate change, in creating more housing that's affordable to more people, in delivering universal childcare, improving our transportation experience. And I'm really committed to this community - to the region I grew up in - and I'm really excited to hit the ground running.
[00:39:53] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much, Becka Johnson Poppe, candidate for King County Council District 4, for spending this time with us and helping us get to know you better today. Really appreciate it.
[00:40:02] Becka Johnson Poppe: Thank you so much for having me here, Crystal. I am a huge fan, and this is a huge honor. Thank you.
[00:40:07] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
Hacks & Wonks will return next Friday with a regular week-in-review!
In the meantime, please enjoy this re-air where Crystal is joined by Mike McGinn of America Walks and Coté Soerens of Reconnect South Park to learn about their work with the Freeway Fighters Network. Mike shares a broad overview of the movement’s efforts to remove crumbling highway infrastructure while addressing the climate, health, and equity issues these concrete structures have caused. As a resident of Seattle’s South Park, Coté reflects on the throughline of Highway 99 running through the middle of her community – connecting a history of red-lining, displacement, and racism to the present-day impacts on the neighborhood’s livability, pollution exposure, and life expectancy. Mike and Coté call out the lack of imagination exhibited by the country’s attachment to highways and paint a compelling vision that replaces underutilized thoroughfares with vibrant, connected communities.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Mike McGinn at @mayormcginn and Coté Soerens at @cotesoerens.
Mike McGinn
Mike is the Executive Director of national nonprofit America Walks. He got his start in local politics as a neighborhood activist pushing for walkability. From there he founded a non-profit focused on sustainable and equitable growth, and then became mayor of Seattle. Just before joining America Walks, Mike worked to help Feet First, Washington State’s walking advocacy organization, expand their sphere of influence across Washington state. He has worked on numerous public education, legislative, ballot measure and election campaigns – which has given him an abiding faith in the power of organizing and volunteers to create change.
Coté Soerens
Coté Soerens calls herself a midwife to a thriving local coffee shop that has become a hub for community organization and activism. Living in the South Park neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, a community filled with immigrants and people of color where opportunities are limited, Soerens felt called to create spaces of belonging. In 2017, while hosting a dinner for neighborhood friends, Soerens realized that, even without secured funding, she had all she needed to create a local coffee shop, where local youth could find employment and where neighbors could meet to discuss local issues and organize.
Soerens, along with the neighborhood, has even bigger dreams. Reconnect South Park initiative’s dream is to ultimately decommission the highway which cuts the neighborhood in half and to reclaim those 44 acres for equitable development.
Resources
Freeway Fighters Network
Reconnecting Communities Campaign | America Walks
Reconnect South Park
“South Park Joins Growing Movement to Dismantle Freeways” by Agueda Pacheco from The Urbanist
“Seattle residents drive movement to tear out Highway 99 in South Park” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times
“Feds award money to study removing Highway 99 in one Seattle neighborhood” by David Kroman in The Seattle Times
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, today I'm thrilled to welcome two guests to the podcast. The first, Mike McGinn - you're used to hearing him on Fridays, as we do weeks-in-review. But today we are talking about what's in his wheelhouse, really, in America Walks, the organization that's helping to build a nationwide movement to reconnect communities divided by wide roads and overbuilt arterials - that hosts the Freeway Fighters Network, which calls for increased investment in walkable, equitable, connected, and accessible places by divesting from polluting highways.
And Coté Soerens with the Freeway Fighters Network - representing a broad coalition of public and private sector leaders, community activists, and multidisciplinary professionals - dedicating ourselves to championing design, equity, and policy principles that center people before highways.
Welcome to you both. As we get started, I just wanted to start with you, Mike, and what got you involved with this work?
[00:01:53] Mike McGinn: Oh my God, it just depends where you want to start. Probably a big starting point for me was the realization, as a climate advocate, of the role of transportation in climate emissions, which - when I was working in the mid-2000s on Seattle's Climate Action Plan, transportation was 40% of all emissions because we had hydropower. We'd already gotten off of coal. What's fascinating now is that as the nation is getting off of coal, which is great and renewables are the way to go - it's just the cheapest, best way to go - that's now what's happening nationwide. Transportation is now the largest source of emissions. But then once you start getting into it, even the littlest bit, you also see tremendous equity issues, like who has access to the transportation system. Right now it requires a car mainly - and if you have to walk, bike, and use transit, you're denied of a lot of opportunities because we've built a system that's very hostile to getting around that way. And oftentimes it's hostile because it's wide, fast roads, it's freeways that have divided communities, lack of sidewalks, not having bus lanes, they're not prioritizing transit, all of that.
So huge equity issues, huge health issues as well. Apartment buildings tend to be, and residences tend to be near those wide roads - and all the pollutants you breathe in has tremendous negative effects on the health of everyone living nearby. And again, that's an equity issue as well. We intentionally do this. You'll hear people argue for this - the apartment buildings belong next to the arterials to protect the single-family neighborhoods. So in other words, the people of lower incomes need to breathe more pollution so that we, in the leafy green neighborhoods, who are better off can breathe less pollution. It's - yeah, the whole thing is just an extreme failure of public policy, and planning, and building for the future. And of course, it's not even a good transportation system. Obviously when you're excluding a huge portion of the population that doesn't drive because of age, because of ability, or because of income - already it's bad. That's not a way you raise all boats, so to speak. That's not a rising tide that lifts all boats. It's something that divides us, but it's also extraordinarily wasteful and expensive.
Which kind of brings us back to the freeway work as well. We're at the stage now - and the Alaska Way viaduct on our waterfront was an example of that - where after you've had that concrete structure around for 50 or 60 years, it's ready to be replaced. It's gonna fall down. It's gonna take a big expenditure to replace it. And what more and more places are realizing is - Let's not replace it with another highway. Let's replace it with a surface street, or maybe no street at all. And let's put the dollars we would have spent into rebuilding this inequitable, polluting, climate-changing monstrosity of infrastructure - let's put the money into walking, biking, transit, or geez, how about affordable housing? How about letting people live back in communities again - live near jobs and services? And those are all the arguments. We've had no shortage of arguments - good, really good ones - why we should do this. We're starting to see them take hold, but the US still has not let go of its highway-building mania with all its negative effects, but we are starting to see some cracks, so to speak, in the unity that's been around highway building for decades. And we're actually seeing the beginning of a freeway removal moment, and at the very least, we should be stopping highway expansion, and I get to do that work now at America Walks, too.
[00:05:26] Crystal Fincher: And Coté, how did you get involved in this work and why is it important to remove freeways?
[00:05:31] Coté Soerens: Well, I got involved in this work by living in a neighborhood that was cut in two by a highway that was never actually very popular. For residents in South Park, this portion - it's a portion of Highway 99 State Route - was fought very proactively by the residents of South Park back in the '50s, but Washington State Department of Transportation at the time decided to go with it anyway. What I do love about this movement of highway removal and walkability is basically the emergence of a new imagination, nationally, around how life should be lived. It seems that if you look at the time that this highway in my neighborhood was built back in the '50s, the imagination then was - Let's expand car availability - and there were different values that were being worked at the time. And now, 70 years later, we want different things as a society, we need different things. We tried the car designs, urbanism, and we have found that it's not equitable, it's also horrible, and also - it's funny - you have to pay a premium for a walking score of 90. Now it's like a privilege to live in a walkable neighborhood.
So back to the question how I got involved in this. I've lived in South Park for 10 years. I've raised three boys in this neighborhood and South Park, actually, it's a pretty interesting place in Seattle. It's been a red-lined neighborhood back in - if we get a little wonky with history - back at the turn of the century. And then I feel that I find this history of South Park fascinating because it seems to be a history of government consistently missing out on what residents of our community are saying. It seems like - We hear what you're saying, and yet we don't care. We're gonna move forward anyway. So this story has been replicating itself around this highway. Back in the 1900s, South Park was a farming community - it was its own little town in Seattle. And it was a thriving neighborhood of farmers that actually started the Pike Place Market, which is very famous nationally. And it's always been a community after - the Duwamish were here originally in the ancestral lands - then it's been a community of immigrants, and it's been a community of Italian immigrants back at a time where Italians were not considered white. And in the planning map of the town, of the time, South Park is seen as "hazardous," which is a word that has been used in planning before to say it's non-white. And now that it's environmentally challenged, we see the word "hazardous" and would say - Oh wow, yes, of course, there is a Superfund in it - there is the Duwamish River. But if you go back to the time - no, it was a farming community, which changes the meaning of "hazardous."
So at the time, Seattle wanted to annex this little town of South Park into the city with very different expectations than the residents had. So at the time, Seattle City Council thought - Well, there is a river in the park that is really good for industry. So we're going to annex this neighborhood to make it industrial and push out all the residents. The residents, on the other hand, were thinking - Whoa, if we get annexed to Seattle, we can get better permits for our sewer system and other amenities. So they both entered into this "agreement" and with very different expectations. Now, the City of Seattle - wanting to make this place industrial - what got accomplished out of that was the Duwamish River became a Superfund site and then industry was started popping around. And by the time the plans for the highway to cross this residential core were conceived, it was thought of as a very convenient way to discourage the residential - so that we could continue with the work of making this area industrial. So all the protests of the time, in the '50s, of residents were sorely ignored. That highway didn't make any sense and it still doesn't make any sense. It's a very redundant grid. Many people don't know this, but when we talk about removing the portion of Highway 99, people think that we're talking about this other one - this 509 - which is what people use to get to the airport. And it's not that one. You can still get to the airport. It's a portion that connects I-5 and 509 and it goes right connected to it.
So I'm totally not answering your question, Crystal, about how I got involved. So the way I got involved was Cayce James and the City at the time, put together a group of people - stakeholders in the neighborhood - to walk around the neighborhood. And we were making different tours of different places around the neighborhood - the community center, the library. And on every stop, people will be talking about problems caused by this portion of the highway. So I remember looking around to my tour partners and saying - Hey guys, you all realize that all these problems go away if you just shut the dang highway, right? And the reaction was a reaction that I often get, which was to look at me and say - Cute, moving on. They really didn't think of this as a viable solution - to just cut an underutilized highway in order to resolve issues such as pollution, safety, lack of walkability, lack of access for kids to their school, and other problems this highway creates. And what that did for me was to see firsthand the problems with the illusion of permanence. People do see a highway and they think it's been there forever and it will be there forever. They don't think about it like - No, this was actually an expression of certain values that we hold as a society, and when our values change, we can also change our built environment. We can change the highway.
At some point, I remember Cayce James, who hosted this tour around the neighborhood, reached out and we started talking and she said - Hey, you know what? I've been thinking about this too. I think it's possible to remove this highway. So we started talking and then we got connected with the folks from PlacemakingUS, who I just mentioned this idea - Hey, Madeleine Spencer and Ryan Smolar. Hey, how about - I've been thinking about removing this highway. What do you think? They said - Hey, there is a whole movement across the country on highway removal. And we were connected with Freeway Fighters, and then we started learning that across the country, so many communities were having this idea of reconnecting communities, thinking about land differently, really considering the opportunity cost of having a highway crossing the neighborhood.
For us in Seattle, we have had problems with affordability for a long time. The City has not been effective at creating policy that will stabilize the real estate market and actually preserve cultural space, preserve housing, affordable housing - particularly for communities of color. When thinking about this portion of the highway crossing South Park, you can see 44 acres of land that could be utilized in a different way. That, to me, creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity to actually make more land for equitable development. So for all these reasons, I am particularly excited about getting this highway out of our neighborhood. And another thing that I need to mention is that this highway - it's so interesting how it was designed - it goes through every single place where kids play. It goes right next to the community center, the skate park, the library, and the elementary school. It seems to have been designed to cut children's life expectancy by 13 years, which it does. There are studies about this. So I can talk to you for three hours about reasons why this highway needs to be removed.
[00:12:35] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's really important. It makes a difference. And both of you touched on the racialized history of highways and just the impact that this has on communities, on families, and particularly on health. Transportation is the number one polluter in our state, in our area. And what you just talked about - I feel like sometimes people hear statistics and they don't really apply it to people's lives. But when you talk about a life expectancy that is that much shorter - in Seattle - it feels neglectful. It feels criminal almost. It feels wrong that we know that these types of harms are being forced upon our children. And we aren't taking that into account so often when we have these repeated conversations every single year about what highways we're gonna build, expand, put in. And these are conversations that aren't just - they certainly absolutely started in the '50s and we started that whole domino effect rolling. But now we have the chance to review what we're doing to make modifications, whether it's Highway 99 in South Park, whether it's the Interstate Bridge Replacement between Washington and Oregon. We had this out - and Mike McGinn is notorious and has been pretty much vindicated, it looks like - for fighting against the Highway 99 tunnel in Seattle. But we seem to so easily dismiss the negative harms that this has on neighborhoods, on affordability, on health, on just our quality of life. How do you view just the importance of really taking all of these factors into account as we make these policies, Mike?
[00:14:19] Mike McGinn: Well, first of all, I just have to say that as a mayor, you're not supposed to have any favorite neighborhoods. But if I had a favorite neighborhood, South Park would be pretty darn close. I spent a lot of time down there as mayor, but I also spent time there before mayor - my kids played basketball in the rec leagues and I played ultimate frisbee in the schools. And I'd be down there in those playing fields at South Park Community Center. And yeah, you're right next to the highway. And that highway doesn't carry that many cars either. The reason people confuse it with 509 is because it's not really that useful a section of highway, but it certainly carries enough cars for the noise and pollution to be meaningful. And it's also not at all surprising, tragically, that it's a community like South Park that gets a highway like this. What you see is - when you look at where freeways were built across the country, they almost always went through Black or Brown or poor neighborhoods - because that was where there would be the least political resistance to building it. And they oftentimes would get a little more convoluted in the route to avoid wealthy neighborhoods. So it's worth thinking about that - would you - and take a look at where the, take a look at the property values near big bustling highways and the ones further away. I'm not talking about downtown, which has its own economic thing - but even there, the properties right next to the highway were the last to develop. And the ones that are a few blocks away developed faster. And if you look at Seattle, the wealthiest neighborhoods are the furthest from the highway. So we built a system that was designed to speed people in and out of the city at the expense of other people.
And the equity issues are really tremendous. And South Park - it's a textbook case, really, of that - when you see all the highways going through South Park. And then of course they're under the airport and everything else - under the airport flight routes. So you'd like to think that decisions about how to build a transportation system and how to route highways and all the rest were based on rigorous analysis of the data - what's the most public good we can generate from this. And certainly we dress it up that way - that there's a plan and it was done for a certain way. But anytime you dig into it, you found that it's really a reflection of who did have power in the political system at the time and who did not. So we speed the commute of people from wealthier places and we subsidize that with the lungs and health of poor people where those highways go through. And if it were your neighborhood, you wouldn't stand for it. So of course South Park would like to see it removed.
And we're talking about SR 99 here, right - which is kind of a weird route - it's not 509, but they intend to extend 509 to connect with I-5 right now. This is underway. And when that connection is complete - they've been working on this for years - they call it now the Puget Sound Gateway Project, used to be called the SR 509 extension. It's been labeled nationwide as a highway boondoggle - it's a nationally known highway boondoggle - the 509 extension. That's gonna siphon off tens of thousands of cars a day from I-5 to send them to a back way into Seattle, which is not gonna be that fast 'cause that back way is gonna run right into the First Avenue South Bridge, which is always backed up. And so where will that traffic jam be - at the First Avenue South Bridge? It's gonna be in South Park again. I mean, honestly - WSDOT should rip out 99 just as an apology for building the 509 extension 'cause they're actually making it worse right now.
[00:17:55] Coté Soerens: So you do have, yes - the equity issues are so blatant when you look at the highway grid in Seattle. Even if you have wealthy neighborhoods next to the I-5, you have sound barriers and other appropriate ways to mitigate the effects of it. But there are things in the history of this particular portion of the highway that are really painful. For example, the land upon which it was built - it was conveniently left vacant by the Japanese internment. Much of that land was built on homes that belonged to Japanese farmers. There is a house actually that was transported from South Park to the Hiroshima Museum of the Japanese-American Experience. So there are these undertones to this highway that, in a way, make it a monument to racism. And as we are removing monuments across the country, this one might be one of the ones that we can remove.
But also what I find very concerning is the lack of imagination - 'cause that's also part of it. I don't see anybody at Department of Transportation being - Hey, let's be as racist as we can. I think it might be, it is often an issue of - We know to do highways, so we're going to just do highways. And when it came to the decision of building this portion of 99 across South Park, the history of it tells us the story of residents making their case that it shouldn't be built. And Washington State Department of Transportation said - Yeah, we know, but we already started. We have the plans, we're about to start, so we're gonna do it anyway. And it was supposed to be a federal highway, but it was so underutilized - as it is today - that nearly six years later, six years after its completion, it was demoted from a federal highway to a state route, which to us is a smoking gun right there. Yes, it's a very irrelevant piece of highway in the grid. The need for a new imagination, the need for people to think of a better way to live life that does not rely on highways and to be able to invite departments of transportations across the nation to think differently about transportation - I think that's a really great opportunity that this movement has. And I think that Pete Buttigieg has really, really done the movement a favor in the sense of making this idea more mainstream in ways. There is a lot of room to grow, of course, with the Reconnecting Communities Initiative, but I'm actually hopeful about the ability of people in communities to think of new ways about how to build their communities. I'm really hoping that this is a good means for neighborhoods and cities to think differently.
[00:20:34] Crystal Fincher: Now, I want to talk about the how of this really - 'cause there's still a lot of people, and a lot of the general conversation for people who don't follow this for their job is - Hey, you know what? You just said that this highway will take some pressure off of I-5 and man, I'm sick of sitting in traffic on I-5. So isn't that a positive thing? And wow - this is supposed to connect people and help people get from A to B faster? What does it mean to remove a highway? Does nothing go in its place? Where do those cars go? Is it going to be a burden for everyone? How do you answer that, Mike?
[00:21:12] Mike McGinn: Well, the first thing you have to realize is that we've created - if the idea was that by building a freeway system through populated places, we would make transportation work really smoothly - I think we got about 50 or 60 years of evidence that it's a failure. Any economically successful place cannot possibly accommodate all of the mobility needs of its residents through limited access freeways and through single occupancy vehicles. And it's not a question of ideology or even climate or health or anything else - it's really just a question of geometry. A car that holds 1-1.5 people per trip on average - there's not enough room for all the cars, which is why we also saw so many downtowns kind of get the parking crater around their downtown office buildings, where you got - parking lots had to be built to accommodate all the vehicles. And it's not something that can be met.
The other thing you do when you do a system like that is you really encourage everybody to sprawl out over the landscape. Whereas before you needed to be within a closer proximity for transit to work, or maybe walking to work, or streetcars to work - now you can live in more distant places. So those freeways then fill up again, 'cause what you've done is you've filled up the landscape with people that have to drive, right? They have to spread all over the place. So now once you do that for 50 or 60 years, as we've done, it's kind of reasonable for people to go - Well, how could you do something differently? We're now at a point where people, for most of them in their lifetimes, have not lived in an environment in which that wasn't true. But we can look at other places around the globe, or we can look at smaller units of our country, and see where many more people are moved by a combination of walking, biking, and transit - particularly if you put the housing closer to the destinations. So that's what we haven't done.
Now, what we've seen, now let's just - now that may sound all pie in the sky. Well, that'll take forever to build all that transit and do all that housing. But let's take a look at SR 99 on the waterfront. How many times did we talk about the Carmageddon that would come when the viaduct closed, as it did for lengthy periods of time for construction reasons, and it never materialized. And it didn't materialize because actually a lot of those auto trips are by choice. People could choose a different time of day. They could choose a different place to go. They could combine trips, or they could choose an alternative like transit. So what you saw every time the viaduct was closed was that in fact, everything worked a little more smoothly, believe it or not, because people - it turns out people have brains and they will not mindlessly drive into traffic and they will adapt their behavior. And that's what we see happen again and again - not just on the Seattle waterfront, but every place this is predicted.
And those cities that have removed highways, what they find is that the Carmageddons don't materialize, but they regain this land just as Coté was talking about. They regain this land for, really, all these other great purposes. One of the best purposes would be housing - what we know is so many people - our young people, our immigrant and refugee communities, our Black and Brown communities that have been lower income communities, service workers pushed out of the city by higher housing prices. What if we started investing those dollars in making it easier for people to drive from further and further away? We say easier, but you got to own a car for that. You got to pay all the expenses of that. What if instead we put people closer where they could actually use transit and could be taxpayers in the city? What a crazy concept, right? Okay, so for all you fiscal conservatives out there, WSDOT isn't paying taxes to the City of Seattle for all that land. So if you're a fiscal conservative, you should love this idea because you bring a bunch of new housing in there - you got sales taxes, you got property taxes, you've got all the other taxes that people who live in a city pay as taxpayers - and you have all the economic activity that goes along with that. And you've reduced household expenses because people can live in a place without a car. This is - the fiscal prudence of this alone - if you are not convinced by health or climate or anything else, if all you do, if all you care about is hard line, bottom line, dollars and cents considerations, the last thing you want to do is invest in a freeway through a populated part of your town.
[00:25:52] Coté Soerens: That's why this is such a great idea because you have arguments on every side. So yes, we do need - there are more progressive causes that are pushed by these initiatives such as affordable housing and environment. But also fiscally - I really - I'm worried about seeing the City of Seattle consistently spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on mitigation strategies to deal with this highway - that is underutilized. One of the reasons we decided to move forward with this Hail Mary initiative - let's see if we can pull it off - was when we saw the traffic counts. Hey, this is not something that is necessary to anyone we are aware of. Again, there is a feasibility study underway, but so far with the data we have, we calculated that it would maybe add 7 minutes to a commute, which again - compare 7 minutes to 13 years of life expectancy of children. This is the youngest neighborhood in Seattle, but nothing in the built environment will tell you that. Most children live per square foot in South Park than anywhere else in the city. Also there is - particularly in South Park, because of the disinvestment that the City has practiced over South Park - because they want it to be industrial, so we have like 100 years of disinvestment on affordable housing and other amenities - and we pay the same taxes.
There are people - the residents in South Park have consistently had to organize to make things happen in this neighborhood. So you have generations of immigrant families who have really put sweat equity in the development and livability of South Park that now are being pushed out. That to me was a tragedy and something I felt we needed to do something about. So making more land available in this neighborhood for families who have invested their lives here to be able to remain and thrive in place - that, to me, is a big win that this project could bring, among other things. But I love what you said, Mike, about the fiscal aspect of this - the amount of revenue that we will bring as far as property taxes, businesses. Somebody at the Legislature, Washington Legislature, mentioned this opportunity cost that I thought it was a really important point when we think about land being used for cars.
[00:28:06] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, really for cars versus the community. And you're right, it absolutely makes a humongous difference. It is absolutely fiscally responsible and it has a stimulative effect to the local economy. There's just a - gosh, I'm trying to remember this study - I'll find it, I'll try and put it in the show notes resource section. But there was a study done for local business owners, who we all - who employ most people in cities, small businesses employ most people in the area - and they asked them to estimate how many people arrive to their stores and shops via car, versus via foot, on bike. And they all overestimated how many people arrived by car to the tune of 4-5x as much. They estimated 60, 70, 80%, and it was uniformly under 20%. I think people underestimate how much a community connection makes a difference to the local and regional economy. And that's absolutely something that makes a difference. I live in an area close to a freeway that really cuts us off from a significant portion of the city, or just makes it really, really inconvenient. And is a 5 minute detour by car, is a 20 minute detour to 30 minute detour to walk around - and just walk across the street, walk three blocks one way, if there was not a freeway there.
What does it mean to South Park? And you talk about the opportunity with the additional land - South Park is, as you said, the youngest neighborhood in Seattle with almost a third of the residents being under 18. What will it mean to kids and families, and really the future of this area and region, to be able to reclaim that space?
[00:29:54] Coté Soerens: Well, we'll see because - so something that is really important to mention is that the process that we're engaged in right now is a community envisioning process - to provide the opportunity to South Park residents to say what ought to happen in these 44 acres. So we have - because we're part of this neighborhood and we've heard people speak for years - we have a hunch that it will be about affordable housing, first and foremost, but also places for children to play. Infrastructure for kids is not great, and it's actually - compared to other places in Seattle - it's upsetting to see the quality of the community center and the playgrounds. Again, I have three school-aged children and I have stories about the places they have access to play, or the places we have access to bike. It's very dangerous to bike, to connect from South Park and other places. So the opportunity of these 44 acres - to actually let the neighborhood have a say on what the built environment should look like - I think it's incredibly powerful. And it's one of the benefits of engaging a whole neighborhood into a community envisioning process, which now we have just started the contract with the City to begin this process. There will be three or four big meetings and we have partnered with very skilled community organizers and - that do understand the importance of clear communications across the neighborhood and the ability of people to say their opinion in an equal playing field with others about what ought to happen in this 44 acres.
In the Reconnect organizing team, we have shied away from saying what needs to happen because we are basically quarterbacking the project. We are kind of bringing the resources together and bringing the platform together, but the conversation needs to occur within South Park by South Park people. So I have opinions about what I would like to see on this 44 acres, but I think the most powerful work will happen when everyone in the neighborhood is given the chance to say - I would like this to happen, or I'm concerned about that. There's some people who are concerned about - Hey, if we shut that portion, then will the traffic be diverted to 14th Avenue South? How are we going to deal with that? Those are all incredibly important questions. So what is important right now - the way we see it at Reconnect South Park - is the dialogue. How are we able to host a democratic dialogue within the neighborhood is the most important. And then at the end, the story of government completely ignoring the voice of the residents and not being accountable to it, does the story want to change? And also we, as residents, also can use a dose of imagination as well. 'Cause for many of us, it's been like - Oh, there is a highway there, whatever. No, hey - you deserve better. So engaging people in that conversation - that I think it's - I'm a retired therapist, so I see things as therapeutically speaking. So I think that's a nice therapeutic process for this neighborhood's healing.
[00:32:56] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. That makes complete sense. So as we get close to drawing this conversation to a conclusion - Mike, for people who are looking to get involved, who understand the importance, or just want to make their voice heard here - how can they get involved? And also as importantly, as we consider the several city council candidates - including in District 1 in Seattle, which includes South Park - what should we be looking to hear from those candidates, and how can we hold them accountable to listening and serving this community?
[00:33:33] Mike McGinn: Well, the question answers itself, doesn't it? But let's just first start by saying - to celebrating the fact that there is now a grant from the federal government to study this, the Reconnecting Communities grant. But a study is a long way from success. And there will be powerful interests locally that will fight to maintain the highway. We're already hearing from the Port that somehow or another this is essential to them, but I'm sure they're not prepared to pay the costs of all of those shortened lives. It's not worth that much to them. So I think you do have to understand that there will be a fight here. And you'll never be able to push this through the State Legislature in that fight without strong local champions. So first of all, support Coté and everybody down there in South Park in the effort. It's gonna take public demand. Second, let's get people on the record. Do we need a highway in South - do we need that SR 99 in South Park? Get them on the record. And I really think it's not just the city council candidates, but the mayor as well. 'Cause if you can get the City united around that, there'll be a fighting chance with WSDOT. But that's gonna be extremely difficult - because let's be really clear that it is not just the Port businesses. It's a lot of labor unions down there at the Port too that believe in this stuff. They've still got 1950s and 60s outdated notions of what should happen and that highways are good. So against that combined political might, it's really gonna take a significant public demand to move elected officials. And now's the best time to make those demands as elections are occurring.
[00:35:11] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by King Conservation District Supervisor and Seattle sportswriter and enthusiast Brittney Bush Bollay! The talk about several developments this week including Governor Jay Inslee and Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler announcing that they do not plan for reelection and the candidates that are vying to replace them, Gov. Inclee calling for a May 16th special session to address personal possession of controlled substances, a potential trafficking victim found in the Seattle hotel room of a Colorado Avalanche player, interested aligned with the Seattle Chamber fielding a message testing poll to raid the JumpStart tax, and the King County council shortchanging the Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services Levy on a 5-4 vote.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Brittney Bush Bollay at @BrittneyBush.
Brittney Bush Bollay
Brittney is a King Conservation District Supervisor and climate activist who is passionate about the role cities play in preserving the environment. They serve on the city and state boards of the Sierra Club and helped write the organization’s national Urban Infill Policy Guidance. In their spare time, they’re almost certainly yelling at sports.
Resources
Governing as an Eastern WA Democrat with Spokane City Council Member Zack Zappone from Hacks & Wonks
WA Gov. Jay Inslee won’t seek reelection for fourth term | The Seattle Times
Longtime WA Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler will not seek reelection | The Seattle Times
Early WA governor’s race skirmish? Campaign finance loophole scrutinized | The Seattle Times
Washington Republicans believe governor's race is winnable
Inslee calls WA Legislature special session to address drug possession | The Seattle Times
New Drug Law Negotiations Still Messy
Progressive Democrats Want to Compromise on a New Drug Law - The Stranger
Colorado Avalanche player involved in incident at Seattle hotel
Proposal to Make Public Drug Use a Misdemeanor Unlikely to Have Much Visible Impact - PubliCola
Seattle Cop Mocks Trans People, Blames Jan. 6 Riots on Pelosi; County Council Plays It Safe by Proposing Flat Levy Renewal - PubliCola
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
On this midweek show, Crystal has a conversation with Spokane City Council Member Zack Zappone about his approach to politics and policy as a Democrat in a more conservative area of Washington state. Council Member Zappone speaks to the importance of connecting with voters on their issues, the focus he brings to making sure everyone has a fair shot, and how Spokane is leading the way on affordable housing and zoning policy.
Crystal and Zack then dig into public safety - fearmongering and inaccurate perceptions surrounding crime statistics, how best to address open drug use, and concerns about Spokane Police giving special treatment to downtown business owners. The show wraps up with discussion of how an old guard resistant to change stands in the way of progress and how Council Member Zappone is working to disrupt systems with new ideas to make Spokane a vibrant urban center inclusive to everyone.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Councilmember Zack Zappone at @ZackZappone.
Council Member Zack Zappone
Council Member Zappone represents northwest Spokane. He is a sixth-generation Eastern Washingtonian, teacher, and public health worker. He is dedicated to advocating for all people.
Zack saw first-hand that no matter how hard his students worked, they continued to face obstacles to upward mobility outside of the classroom. He saw that the lack of access to healthcare services, safe walking routes to school, or living-wage jobs continued to be a barrier to equity and a stronger community for his students. He currently teaches English part-time at his alma mater, North Central High School.
Zack is passionate about serving our community, volunteering with community vaccine clinics like the Native Project. He also served with the Spokane Food Fighters during the Coronavirus pandemic, witnessing the extent of income inequality and hardship in the community while helping to deliver over 100,000 meals to Spokanites in need.
Zack graduated from Georgetown University and has a master’s in public affairs from Princeton University. Zack is focused on creating ways to lift up working and middle class families, and to serve our community to make sure everyone has a fair shot.
Resources
Zack Zappone for Spokane City Council
“Zack Zappone assumes office as first openly bisexual candidate elected to Spokane City Council” by Ian Smay from KREM
“‘Suddenly, there’s options’: Spokane City Council OKs one-year zoning change allowing multi-family housing, townhouses in all residential zones” by Greg Mason from The Spokesman-Review
“Property crimes are way up, violent crimes are down, and politicians and business owners are waging a war of perception over the safety of downtown Spokane” by Nate Sanford from The Inlander
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today I am very excited to be welcoming Spokane City Council Member Zack Zappone to the podcast. Welcome, Zack.
[00:01:02] Council Member Zack Zappone: Hi, thanks for having me.
[00:01:03] Crystal Fincher: Thanks for being on the program. So you are a Spokane City Council Member. What made you decide to run for office, and what was your path to becoming a City Council Member?
[00:01:14] Council Member Zack Zappone: Yeah, I would say I didn't have the traditional path. I was born and raised here in Spokane, and grew up and attended the same high school as my grandfather. Now I teach at the high school - I'm a part-time teacher still to this day - I teach 10th grade English. I always struggled with pathways to opportunity and inequalities in our system, in the school education system. A lot of my peers and coworkers and students would work really, really hard and there were always more barriers to success and opportunity outside the classroom. No matter how hard we worked, we felt like we were coming up short. There were transportation issues - I had students that would get hit by cars in front of the school - three times in three years and no one at the City felt like they were doing anything. A lack of healthcare and medical needs and dental needs that were being met that were interfering with their school life, or job opportunities, or just all these different issues.
So I got involved in public policy and got my Master's degree in Public Policy and then came back home to Spokane right before the pandemic. And was getting involved in local politics, looking and applying for jobs. And as I was applying for jobs, the pandemic hit. And so that was 2020. I was substitute teaching at the time so there was no need for substitute teachers. So I was unemployed, I was living with my parents. And like anybody else unemployed and living with their parents, I said - What am I gonna do with my life? I'm gonna run for local office. And so I actually ran in 2020 for State Representative - saw my representative at that time didn't match the values that I had and actually was making it a lot more challenging for education and educators. And so I ran against him - I knew it was gonna be a tough race in a swing year district - and came up short but had a really strong race. And then I saw the next year, in 2021, there was a city council race and knew that was gonna be open - the next year was an open seat - and it overlapped with where I was running. So I really did my campaign in 2020 with an eye towards 2021 - just in case. And knew there were a lot of important issues at the local level that we still deal with when it comes to creating opportunity and making sure everyone has a fair shot.
[00:03:04] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And your path is a path taken by several others in that you have a first run. That first run may not have won the race but did a really good job campaigning - built a lot of relationships, built a profile in the community and organized around that, built a bit of a movement - that you were able to leverage into another race. What lessons did you learn, and what do you think was most helpful about running a second time?
[00:03:29] Council Member Zack Zappone: I don't know if I would have won the second time if I didn't run the first time. So the second time for city council - I'm in again the swing district in the city council race, which came down to controlling the super-majority here on council. And so there was tons of outside money that was involved in that second race that really wasn't there in the first race. And a big smear campaign on TV. And the realtors and developers and special interests outspent my campaign - I think it was almost four to one that we were outspent. They spent more money attacking me through the PACs than I spent in my own campaign. And so there was a very different tone in that campaign. And it really escalated when the negative attack ads started on TV towards mid- to end of October. I ended up winning by about 1%. And so I don't know if I would have won if I didn't have - had two years of essentially campaigning.
The other big thing - the irony is I'm an English teacher, but I don't like to spell check or grammar check. And I learned that - not to engage with the trolls on social media. And that was - I think it played a factor, and I was very nervous on Election Night - how big a factor it was. But I made a typo on social media. Once the negative attack ads started happening, it really became tons of trolls and borderline harassment on social media of defunding the police and that stuff. And they were going back and commenting on posts a year ago - on my friend's posts - and they're like, Why are you supporting Zack? He's defunding the police. He's a defunder defunder defunder defunder. And I tried - I woke up one morning, I was still in bed and was writing a response. It was - Once again, let me restate my position. I do not want to defund the police. I want to invest and grow the police force, and reinvent it, and invest in social services and mental health and police accountability and all this stuff. Long, long paragraph. But I forgot a key word which was the word "not." And so they took a screenshot and cropped it and sent out text messages the weekend before the election saying - In his own words, Zack Zappone wants to defund the police. And the police guild was sending it. And when I was knocking on doors, people were getting the messages and they're like - I just saw this, you wanted to do this? And I was like - No, no. And there was no real way to respond and get your message out that late in the game. And this was their message from all along, so it just furthered it. And it's scary - from misinformation side - that this was super dishonest and they knew it was dishonest. And who's to say that it wasn't even Photoshopped and fake information in the first place. And what does that look like for future campaigns? I don't even know how we can protect ourselves against that kind of misinformation. Technically I did write it, but it was dishonest in the facts and what I'd been saying for months - and even in the context of the paragraph. So lesson learned there is - make sure to double check your social media posts or just don't engage.
[00:06:09] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that was a whole thing. Fortunately - somewhat fortunately - it's hard once you have an opponent who is so intent on misconstruing your words, twisting your words, and making it - just wanting to win at all costs basically, even if it means that they aren't being honest. The paper, The Spokesman Review, I think the Inlander covered it and said - Clearly, this was a typo. Clearly he has a long record and has been consistent in what he's been saying all along. But you ended up still prevailing.
[00:06:43] Council Member Zack Zappone: I won.
[00:06:44] Crystal Fincher: Yes - full disclosure - we also, our firm worked on this from an IE perspective. But you were an excellent candidate who really stepped forward with values and said - I'm a Democrat. Spokane is an area, unlike Seattle, that has a vibrant Republican Party and conservative movement - you did have a more conservative opponent. And people wanted to see a change. People were ready for that change. And you had made a connection with a lot of people in your district who, even though they may have been used to something different, were ready to try something new because they saw that the old type of solutions were not working out. What was top of mind for voters, and what is top of mind in Spokane and in your district?
[00:07:28] Council Member Zack Zappone: Yeah, lots of things come to mind right away. But I think on the Democratic side, I am the youngest elected official - the only millennial in the County - that was elected. So I think from our party's perspective, it really was this generational shift. The conservatives - they had another candidate running at the same time who's conservative and a millennial - but this was a generational change. Kate Burke was before me, but she wasn't re-running, and so that was of changing - so it was this kind of generational change. And I heard a lot of people at the doors just saying - We're ready for change. We want young people. We want new energy, new ideas. We want that. There's always this debate in Spokane of how much do you lean into being progressive, and how much do you showcase that? And I don't think I shied away from it. I leaned into it. And we did some things that were untraditional - of doing mailers that were just directed towards Democrats, saying endorsed by Democrats. And that really hadn't been done for a city council race before.
I would also - when I talked to people at the doors, they'd ask you, they always love to ask what party you are. And I'm like - Well, I'm an Eastern Washington Democrat. It's different than a Seattle Democrat because a lot of the attacks were - Don't turn Spokane into Seattle. And so I had one person, only one person that ever - after I left the door, he chased me down, two houses later. He was - I went and talked to my wife - and he said, What's an Eastern Washington Democrat? I was - That's a good question. Thanks for calling me out on that. And so I told him, I was - Well, to me, an Eastern Washington Democrat is caring about working people, and giving people fair opportunities and fair shots. And that's what I'm here for - is making sure that if you work hard, you go to school, you work hard at a job - you get your healthcare taken care of, you're able to have opportunity, transportation's accessible. These are the things that we care about here. And these are the things that I wanna fight for - is making sure everyone has a fair shot. So he said, Okay yeah, that's good. But there's misconceptions, total misconceptions. Other people at the doors would be - Oh, I heard all Democrats are communists. And I'm like that's not true. And we have strong Republican arms that are getting out this misinformation here - Fox News - it sounds like you're coming straight from Fox News.
But it's really connecting to voters on their issues. And I think the surprising thing that came up to me - it was more in 2020 than '21 - 'cause the statewide race, we had more polling than we did at the local race. And one of the polling issues - you're trying to look for what are the weaknesses in my opponent. And the one that I never thought would happen was the biggest weakness - was conversion therapy. And my opponent had supported keeping conversion therapy for youth. And I was - Oh, he didn't vote to fully fund our schools on McCleary fix. Everyone cares about schools. But it was - nope, voters didn't care. It was conversion therapy. And here in Spokane, you're like, What? My attack - not attack - contrast piece showed our values on different things, like fully funding schools, supporting the environment, all these things. And then I added conversion therapy on there and said, Which candidate supports conversion therapy? And it was me and him. And that resonated with people a lot. And they're - That's so like medieval. I can't believe someone would even believe that. I was - I know, right? And he's your elected official. We need someone who matches our values and what we represent. And so some of those social issues are still top of mind for a lot of voters here in Spokane - people don't realize that.
But of course, big issues here in Spokane - like the rest of the state, urban places - homelessness and affordable housing rise to the top, and caring about infrastructure needs too. But there's definitely this division around housing and homelessness, and people feeling like there's been no progress and wanting to see progress on that front. And there's always a need. Our mayor won in 2019 on compassionate accountability. So there is this kind of accountability sense that people feel need to happen here, but they want to see action more than anything. People want to see something changing and something happening. Those are like macro, but there's also super micro things - in their neighborhood. And at the local level, what's super awesome is that people care about this trail around the corner from their street, or their local business district. And how do we get some infrastructure improvements in our local business district to grow and support it? And whether that's streetscape and growing that. So there's all - lots of little issues - but the big macro issues are, it comes down to affordability and working class people having a foot in the door that they can still have that opportunity.
[00:11:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and you've been active working on issues of affordability. Housing has been a big topic of interest, of concern. We just had the middle housing bill pass in our Legislature, which you were a supporter of - and also took local action. What have you been doing in Spokane in terms of housing affordability?
[00:11:56] Council Member Zack Zappone: Yes, we - our Council President loves to say that when Spokane leads, the state follows. And in this case, we here in Spokane definitely believe that we were leading the way on affordable housing and zoning changes on the missing middle stuff. So last year - '22 summer - we passed BOCA, which is Building Opportunities and Choices for All, which upzoned the entire city. We had some debate whether it should be along transit corridors or citywide. And I was the swing there that brought it to citywide. And for me, it was about creating neighborhoods that were accessible to anybody to live in those neighborhoods. And if we kept it in the transit corridors - I'm a teacher - I knew that would impact who would be able to live in certain neighborhoods. And we would have essentially exclusionary zoning - allowing single-family zoning in some areas, while you could allow up to fourplexes in other zoning - and I've seen the impacts of economic segregation in our schools, and I've worked in those schools. And I've worked in schools 90% free and reduced lunch, and a lot of that comes from the zoning policies that the City creates. And I know that a key to opportunity and success is when we have that diversity in our schools. And so I couldn't support something that would not allow anybody to live in any neighborhood in our City. And so we did it citywide up to fourplexes. The state did us one better and said, It's up to sixplexes now if you allow affordable housing. But we were definitely supportive of that. We know that here in Spokane, it goes beyond the city limits. It's a regional issue. So if we were the only ones to do that up-zoning - then Spokane Valley or the smaller towns around the area weren't doing it - we wouldn't be meeting the needs of housing in our entire county. And so we were super supportive of the state requiring that of all jurisdictions - or larger jurisdictions, I guess, is what they did. We supported it from the initial version that required it statewide. So that's one of our exciting policies. I'm proud to say that we've been at the forefront here.
[00:13:49] Crystal Fincher: And this is an area which was - certainly excited to see that progress being made, excited to see the promise of a local elected official who would run, and - hey, who's a Democrat, who's progressive, who talks about living this policy, and then becoming a swing vote to make that policy happen. It seems like definitely a connection to being engaged in your community and on the ground really can usher in change. This is also an issue that Seattle has had its own challenges with and hasn't been able to make the kind of progress that Spokane has been able to make. What advice would you give people in Seattle who are looking to make progress on this? Obviously the state just stepped in and helped jurisdictions really bring in this decision. But overall in learning the lessons and building a coalition, your advocacy for this, facing the opposition - what do you think were the most useful things in successfully advocating for housing progress?
[00:14:47] Council Member Zack Zappone: Yeah, it was really strange that - when it came to the vote, we actually only had one person testify against it. And seeing this in other places - you see tons of people just show up against it, and that did not happen here in Spokane. And I think we took a different approach and tried to do it more as an interim zoning change. So we did a one-year - this is what we passed - and we're like, let's see what this does and let's try that out for a year. And if the world falls apart during that year because of our zoning change, then we can undo it. We didn't think that would happen, and I think that helped build a lot of that community trust in that process is - Okay, let's try this out for a year. We all know the problem and identify that problem. Around missing middle, it actually became a unanimous vote amongst council and the mayor to support that. So it had bipartisan support here and people often joke - Once you go so far left, you're back to the right, it's a full circle. And in this case, we were able to partner up on that. There was division on how far it should go, but everyone thought we needed to take some action and to do that action.
And the division was more really between the neighborhoods - in people who didn't want change in their neighborhoods - and those who want to address the issue. And when I go around the neighborhoods to talk about it, and I hear lots of people who are angry about a new four-story apartment complex that's gonna go in - 60 units in their neighborhood - right along the business district. But I'm - Look, we have to either embrace change and be okay with things to change, or we have to be okay with not having our loved ones nearby us because they're not gonna be able to afford to live here. That means your kids, your parents, other people won't be able to afford to live nearby you and you're gonna have to commute to Idaho to go see them. Is that what you want? Or are you willing to make some changes in your neighborhood so that we're able to do it? What's more important to you - the look of the houses in your neighborhood or the people that you care about? And I think that does resonate with some people - obviously not everyone - but I think it's trying to focus on - What are our values? What is the problem? And how will this help those two together?
[00:16:46] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Another area, just like so many areas across the country, that is an issue of concern is that of public safety. And news that violent crime is down in Spokane, across the board. And property crime, while it is lower than it has been at other times, there has been a recent uptick. Although Spokane is also battling perceptions that differ from that are creating fear and causing people to want varying solutions. Where are you at in public safety? Where is Spokane at? And what do you think is most needed right now?
[00:17:21] Council Member Zack Zappone: Good question. I think there are so many misconceptions and [mis]understandings around public safety. It's even hard for me, as a Council Member, to make sense of this. And I have, I would say, more than most people's information on what's happening. And it's still confusing about what information's being shared and what statistics are being shared. And I've had a lot of challenges with our local law enforcement in getting information and being able to share that information. It's frustrating. I see the mayor and the police chief going on TV frequently to talk about problems. This last week, they were blaming violence on packs of juveniles in downtown. And I'm - Packs of juveniles that are roaming our streets and terrifying us? Interestingly enough, I'm trying to work on creating teen centers. So I guess we can invest in our teen centers and give programming to kids if this is where you're concerned about. But there definitely is this active, constant fearmongering that is being perpetuated. And it's really challenging - there is some truth to it, right? There is people - more and more people are experiencing more car robberies and more things like that. So -
[00:18:30] Crystal Fincher: Crime does exist.
[00:18:31] Council Member Zack Zappone: Yes, exactly. And people see that and then it resonates and they just keep growing on it. But there's things like when the mayor - we had an emergency warming shelter in the convention center right when I started in '21 - and we had 200 and some people that were sleeping on the floors of the convention center. And after that, the mayor's going on TV and briefing us about all the damages caused by these people who didn't know how to sleep or use the bathrooms - they're destroying the carpet. And I was - Yeah, these are nice convention centers. And when we're having 200 people sleeping on the floor, what do you think is gonna happen? We talked about - another Council Member said, If I had 200 Girl Scouts staying the night on the convention center for a week, it's gonna cause damage. This is what happens. But it's this fearmongering that creates more stigma that is not helpful for addressing root problems. And that's been really frustrating.
Right now we're considering - coming forward, the mayor's big proposal is open drug use safety - safe spaces is what they call it - to make it a gross misdemeanor to have open drug use. And there's a lot of questions about how this will be enforced, what would it do? And interestingly enough, we're seeing other places around the state, like Bellingham, just approve the same - they made it a misdemeanor. The state right now, in their Blake decision fix, is considering it. But this is what we hear a lot about is - what are we gonna do about drug use? And how do we handle this? We deferred it because the state might preempt us and what that would do. But if not, I think there is this intentional fearmongering around fentanyl and drugs to try to scare people. And don't get me wrong - nobody thinks that there should be safety issues when you're walking down the street with open drug use - that's not it. But people who use drugs on the street are addicts. And how do we get them the resources that will actually get them off the street and healthy and stable again? Jail's not gonna do that. We know it doesn't do that. The research shows it doesn't do that. So what would this actually accomplish? I don't know.
And we just had in our briefing this week, the police actually have the ability right now to take drug paraphernalia and drugs in possession cases. They have that ability. They admitted it. And then we said, Well, why aren't you doing it right now? And they said, Well, you know when we take those things, it leads to more use-of-force issues. And that causes more incidences between people - 'cause someone's on drugs that are high, they're gonna cause more issues when you're taking stuff away from them. Yeah - no duh. No one wants to have stuff taken away from them. And so the new proposal, and I don't know where this is gonna go, but it said the police shall take drugs and paraphernalia away. It's a requirement. What is that going to do? Is that going to create more escalation in tactics in our City? We don't know. And so there's a lot of concerns around that, but there's a lot of concerns - We gotta do something. We can't keep doing nothing.
So to answer your question, where is public safety? We don't know. There's also big issues with a Police Ombudsman report that just came out. Next week, we'll be looking at a resolution to do an investigation into the police chief and other officials about their actions around records and release of public records that have been used for electioneering - to influence and lobby City Council and influence elections - and whether they're treating people differently. This report had nothing to do with the police chief - it was just discovered, through a different investigation, that the chief had hundreds and hundreds of emails exchanges with downtown property owners. And was giving them special access and reports and information - information that I can't even get as a City Council Member - when I ask for police record updates, it takes me over months and they're giving it to these business property owners within days. Or they're creating new categories within their records because the downtown property owners have asked for it - for this crime, can you label it as a vagrant person - is what they asked for. And then the Chief's - We don't have that. Two days later, he's - Oh, we created a new category. Here you go. And then the person says, Thank you so much for that information. We're going to use that and let City Council know the next time when they need to pass this open drug ordinance, as an example.
And so lots of questions about - is law enforcement being fair to everyone and being responsive to everyone, or are there special access and special relationships established. And I've been in meetings with the police chief with local organization - healthcare organization - where he said, I will not sign a memorandum of understanding to share basic information, like when missing Indigenous women are gone - we won't share that information or have an MOU to share that information - because the leadership of this healthcare clinic has been disrespectful to me, the police chief, I will not sign it. I'm like, What?
[00:23:01] Crystal Fincher: Wow.
[00:23:02] Council Member Zack Zappone: You won't sign it there, but you will give this downtown property owner extra access and create - so we have a lot of questions about - about - just a lot of questions. I don't know how else to put it.
[00:23:13] Crystal Fincher: Lot of questions. And this is playing out - I see it playing out a lot of suburban cities, a lot of major cities across the country - where there's this old guard who's clinging to the way things have been, who's very invested in the way things have been - even though the general public is pretty dissatisfied with the way things have been and they want change. And the resistance to that and the length that people who are resisting it will go to, which becomes particularly concerning when you think about the access and the privileges and the power that these people do have. If you're coming with the force of law and making decisions based on whether you feel personally offended or triggered, it's just really problematic and is not treating people fairly in the community. And it's gonna bring up issues that really make people really concerned about whether they can trust the people who are there to enforce the law. What are the next steps that are happening with that?
[00:24:12] Council Member Zack Zappone: The next step that we're looking into is an independent outside investigation to see if - we don't have the full scope, this was just brought up in a different investigation. So we're just asking, Can you look into what happened and is it being fair? The mayor has said that she's fully supporting the chief and that she thinks it's just a matter of responding and good customer service. And so we're saying - There's just a lot of questions. The community deserves to know answers, and we want to know. And so we're looking at that - it's coming to committee next week and voted on the next week after that.
But to go to your point about this old guard and changing - as a new person on the political scene here, not just at the City, but we sit on other boards and commissions. One is transit, and the transit here in Spokane has been the same people on the board for 20 years. And I've been trying to bring up new ideas and it has come to conflict with some of them. I'm trying to push forward low-income fare fee passes that we don't have in Spokane - similar to ORCA LIFT program, where it'd be income based. We don't have that in Spokane, and I am getting a lot of resistance from other board members and staff about - We just don't do that, that's not something that we do here in Spokane. I'm like - Well, why not? What does it take to do it? Things can move quickly if there's a will to make that move quickly, but I'm seeing lots of barriers and obstacles of people on it. And it's just - Well, why? What is our reasons for not considering these new things to make it accessible and easier for people to make that change? And so we have some other great, great Council Members that I work with and we're looking at how do we institute equity policies that have to be frameworks that we have to operate under. So we're not doing these one-off battles all the time - whether it's the $5 administrative fee for cards that creates a barrier, whether it's certain routes, or if it's how youth are able to access the Zero Fare program, creating barriers of having to go online to sign up, creating language access barriers for people who don't have that - what can we do so we're not picking one-off battles to create a framework that moves these institutions to meet the needs of everyone in our community and create those low barriers and creating more opportunity. And we're getting there, but it definitely hasn't come without some pains and some - there's been incidents where I've been called young by other people lots of times, a disruptor telling people that I don't like systems and stuff like that. So those come up - I'm sure those weren't meant as positive things, but I think it's a good thing. I'm disrupting a system that needs to be disrupted.
[00:26:40] Crystal Fincher: You mean disruptor, Zack Zappone - my goodness. How dare you bring new ideas.
[00:26:47] Council Member Zack Zappone: I know. It's terrifying.
[00:26:49] Crystal Fincher: So what does the state of public transit, access, mobility for people walking, riding - what does that look like in Spokane and what are you working on?
[00:26:59] Council Member Zack Zappone: I think that we're on the cusp of a lot of great things. And there are a lot of great people - as much as I'm talking about some frustrations right now, I think that staff is doing a lot of great work and we're moving forward. So this summer we're gonna be opening our very first bus rapid transit line in Spokane - City Line - that's gonna run across downtown between the community college and Browne's Addition. It's gonna run every 15 minutes to start and then every seven and a half minutes when it's done. And that's gonna increase development along there - we're changing the zoning laws around there to increase that transportation oriented development, creating these pocket neighborhoods, and trying to grow that urban feel. We're working on expanding our neighborhood business districts to use some American Rescue Plan money to invest in our neighborhoods so it's not just downtown - but people can go and stay in their neighborhoods, walk to their neighborhoods, and have that restaurant feel, shopping and not having to go. But it also helps with tourism too, making it more urban.
I've been in talks about how do we look at a free zone on our transportation so people can hop on the bus at one end. If you do park downtown, you only have to park one spot and then you can ride the bus, the City Line. Or trying to look at an event shuttle that would go around the North Bank to our arena and our sports complex and shows, and how that shuttle could be free too. And you can have this dynamic urban life that a lot of people don't even think exists in Spokane. But I'm born and raised here - I love to talk about how great Spokane is, especially for all the West siders who just think we're cow tippers - but there is so much exciting stuff going on that - you can go whitewater rafting out of downtown Spokane. I can see them from City Hall - and you can get on the river and you can go rafting, come back, and you can go to a concert. You could see shows from - Shania Twain's coming next week, Paul McCartney, Macklemore's coming - we get the big shows. Theater - Phantom of the Opera before, but Hamilton, and Wicked I saw last year.
And so we have great urban culture. And then we also have that quick and easy access - within mile of downtown - that you're out in nature. And that, I think, is super unique to other places around the state in that we are investing and growing that. There's definitely a car-centric history here in Spokane and a suburban feel within our neighborhoods. But there is a lot of energy and excitement about how do we do that both for the environmental impact, health impact, the social determinants of health, and how do we create that? And it's just the quality of life - that people don't have to spend more time in their cars. Of course, this comes with affordability issues and we're seeing growth into Idaho - Coeur d'Alene and along the corridor - and that's creating more congestion out that direction. So how do we address our housing so that people don't have to keep moving out that way. And keeping it affordable for builders so that they can continue to build and we can keep making Spokane a more urban, denser, vibrant community. We're investing in our bike infrastructure. We're creating our first protected bike paths here in Spokane. I got another one started up as a starter pilot. So we have one that cuts across downtown and we're trying to go out of downtown into neighborhoods. We're looking at finally getting the infrastructure for plows and street cleaners for bike lanes, getting some full-time employees dedicated to bike lane infrastructure and growing it.
But there's definitely challenges, like anywhere. But I think we are really in the next couple of years - I've learned quickly that things seem to take years in government to build and construct. I think of my own classroom and I'm - If I want to change it tomorrow, I change it tomorrow - doesn't seem to happen in a larger bureaucracy, but that's cool. We have a street mural painting program, taking off a community crosswalk program like Seattle - we're implementing it here. And this June we'll be painting our first rainbow pride crosswalk in Spokane in a full intersection downtown, and trying to create a program that makes our neighborhoods more inclusive and more vibrant and more reflective of the people here.
[00:30:46] Crystal Fincher: Lots of exciting things going on there. Also want to talk about - you mentioned a little bit about environmental and health impacts - know that you, especially in Eastern Washington dealing with wildfire smoke, dealing with all of the issues that we're dealing with, and trying to hit climate goals. What is it like being on a mixed council with both progressives and conservatives there? What is the conversation around reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving health impacts like, and what are your priorities?
[00:31:16] Council Member Zack Zappone: Yeah, that's a good question. They can definitely be a little more contentious. For some reason, it always seems to show up the most in Spokane with our electric vehicles and City fleet. And I think - the state provides a lot of goals and requirements, and so a lot of what we're doing here, we lean on and say, We have to do it. The state is requiring it. And then we have to implement those standards and those goals. And it's also the right thing to do. And so all City fleet has turnover to electric vehicles, but we're just - are getting a lot of resistance from police about turning into electric vehicles. And it becomes a weird thing that now all of a sudden you don't support the police because you don't support the type of car that they want. I don't understand it. And this actually - electric vehicles of the police fleet was an issue that the chief was sending to the business owners to try to get them to lobby us about. Was about electric vehicles of the police fleet. And yeah, I get it. Some models don't work. So we got some Teslas to pilot out and they were too small for officers to fit comfortably in them with their gear and stuff like that. So it's - Okay, great. Find the specs that do and other cities are moving that way too. And so we ordered some Mach-Es and Ford F-150 Lightnings to test those out too, so we can transfer over and hybrids in between. But then we find out - they just keep saying that they don't work and they canceled the order on the Ford F-150 Lightnings 'cause they became more expensive without telling us that they canceled the order. And I'm - That just seems like lack of transparency and more barriers for the administration. I was - You didn't ask us if we would pay for more money. Where's our priorities? And actually, electric vehicles save money in the long term too. And so that's part of it. And so there's a lot of struggles around electric vehicles.
Talking about building code standards and working on those. But also, like I mentioned before, the walkability and less reliance on cars is a big factor too. We're talking about our urban forest canopy and heat zones, and trying to support street trees and growing that especially in neighborhoods that have been under-resourced historically. We have a sustainable action plan that has been developed and supported by - actually - diverse members of our community. And that's a subcommittee out of City Council that brings forward issues. We have a lot of water issues. Our aquifer is great and plentiful, but we haven't - it's very, very cheap. And so people have very large lawns, and in the summers it's really hot and they just water the heck out of it. So we passed an ordinance last year to limit watering during the week to every other day and not during the hottest part of the day - and that was pretty controversial. I don't remember if the mayor - I think the mayor did veto that too, and we had to override the veto. There's just accusations of you're penalizing, and we want to focus on encouraging people to do these things instead of penalizing. It's - Yes, we want to do incentive based program, but we also have to have accountability too sometimes. So it's interesting about when they choose who is accountable and who the conservatives here don't think is accountable. And that shows up both in public safety, but also in environmental policy and other areas too.
[00:34:21] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's always interesting - those conversations around accountability. We hear that word a lot when people want punitive, carceral solutions and - hey, we got to crack down, people need to be accountable. Yet that doesn't seem to apply across the board equally when they don't feel like having it apply. Appreciate you looking into these issues and hopefully the City will get to the bottom of all of that.
I also want to talk to you just about what we're dealing with across the country - we're seeing hate take roots with different communities, particularly the LGBTQ+ community and trans people, seeing legislation being targeted at basically their existence and going far beyond some of these little quibbles. And ultimately with the goal of just not having those people in our community and continuing to go further and further. You made news is the first openly bisexual candidate elected to the Spokane City Council. As we talked about, there is a vibrant conservative movement, MAGA movement. This is the land of Matt Shea and others who agree with him. How do you address people who are trying to limit the rights of others, limit the ability of others to just live their own lives and be themselves and not bothering anyone else - but are being targeted by people in the community in everything from banning books to banning drag shows to targeting just the way people can live their lives. How do you address that and how does the council address that?
[00:35:53] Council Member Zack Zappone: Yeah, it's definitely something out there. I know during my campaign, there was - on the same day, there was a bomb threat at Planned Parenthood and a arsonist at the Democratic headquarters on the same day. And I'm - I go to Planned Parenthood for healthcare, reproductive healthcare, and I'm - Wow, I feel really targeted as a candidate. And last year during Pride, first - one, public - I'm in the Pride Parade and we're getting intel beforehand about issues that might come up and we're getting contact from the state about that. And it turned out it was all Idaho, but we're still here at the frontline and I'm - I'm gonna be up on stage, I'm in the parade, and I'm an out elected official here. I feel a little targeted about it and sometimes do. And we have people come to City Council meetings and they're protesting the rainbow crosswalks and telling us it's a giant waste of money and stuff. And so there are definitely these issues of - we're at the forefront, like I said earlier - you mentioned, in Matt Shea country, and that definitely exists. We just last week had students at a local high school in the Valley that were arrested for threats made towards LGBTQ students in their school that were actionable, and a Snapchat thread of a hate group. And so there's some scary, scary stuff out there.
But I also wanna focus that it's not all that way. There are a lot of out and proud people and safe communities here in Spokane. The high school that I teach at - the principal has a Pride flag in her office, and this is the high school I attended. And when I was in high school, I knew one person who was out. And now we have vibrant clubs for LGBTQ students. We have - during a conference for our freshmen coming in at the beginning of the year, just asking them - Why'd you transfer to this school? What was it? And they're - We heard that this was the best school for LGBTQ students and it was a safe, inclusive space. And that is super heartwarming and felt incredible to hear. And so there is a lot of great people doing great work around this.
Like you mentioned, I am the first out person elected. We had one appointed 20 years ago, and one person came out in office a couple minutes before she left office. So I'm not alone, but I do think it's about continuing to make your presence known. And there is some of that representation that is important and that's why we passed - the first community crosswalk needed to be a rainbow for Pride, to honor that and making that to be known. And there's also the history around painted crosswalks really starting with LGBTQ community and painting rainbows and so there's a lot of history there too. But we're looking at it - as a city, have gender affirmative healthcare that we implemented this last year that - we were already moving that way but I kept pushing the needle, making sure that it happened. And so there are white supremacists and they're very close to us and they're real threats, and they're showing up at community centers and hate flyering neighborhoods. But if you come to Spokane - you West siders, it's not what most people see when they come here. It does exist, but that exists in every community and I think that's a reflection of 2016 and Trump that a lot of these people feel more emboldened and more aware. I know when I was running, I talked to the former Council Member who was appointed in 2001 about what it was like to run as an out candidate. And he said, It was very overt back in 2001. People just emphasize - family and here's my children and my straightness - but it wasn't like ever overt. And he cautioned me and said, You know - I think people are more emboldened now, so be aware. And I actually didn't experience any of that in my campaign - no hate - never really came up in my campaign and I think that was remarkable. I actually ran against another queer person in my primary. Right now in 2023, we have two more queer people who are running for city council in my district. And we're not the South Hill - people are like, What? I was like, Yeah, we're the gay district apparently.
So I think people are feeling there is more representation, there's more ability, but there is always more work to be done. How do we do that? I think is always a good question. We have centers - in graduate school, I had a friend who mapped out incidents of hate and hate crime across the country and mapped it with organized groups that combat hate. And he mapped this across the whole country and found that Spokane was the second area that had the most incidences without the most resources. You would think it'd be the South, but they actually have a lot of resources in the South that are combating it. And we don't really have these institutions. We have a couple - we have Human Rights Commission and the other human rights group that I can't remember the name, that's Human Rights Task Force. And those are incidents of reporting hate and crime and going after it, but it's continuing to represent that, speak out, and not be afraid either. I think that's a key part - is that we still have to represent and not be afraid. And create policies that are more inclusive of all people. And so at City Council, we created an equity subcommittee and are actively trying to recruit different ways to have people from impacted communities represented in giving their voices, we're creating navigator programs to try to reach out to more communities and networks. And trying to show that here at the City and the government - we care about you, we care about your opinion, we care about your experience - and getting people with lived experiences on more advisory committees and groups. And we're trying, and there's always, always more work to be done.
[00:41:22] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I thank you so much for taking this time to speak with us today, to let us know a little bit more about what's happening in Spokane, and we're certainly gonna stay tuned to see how things unfold.
[00:41:34] Council Member Zack Zappone: Yeah, well, thanks for having me and always come out and visit. We got some great stuff going on.
[00:41:38] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I am actually a fan of Spokane and will definitely be back out there. There is a ton to do in Spokane, so yeah - you are a Spokane evangelist and have successfully - have many converts.
[00:41:52] Council Member Zack Zappone: Thank you.
[00:41:53] Crystal Fincher: So much appreciated. Thanks so much, Zack.
[00:41:56] Council Member Zack Zappone: Thank you.
[00:41:56] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by political consultant and urban farmer, Heather Weiner. They talk about the newly uncovered messages that reveal former Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan allegedly ordered the abandonment of SPD’s East Precinct, where the “Blake fix” stands after its failed vote in the legislature, the remaining need to address renter protections after the legislature passed major legislation to address the housing supply and affordability crisis, the success of the King County Crisis Care Centers levy, and the failure of the Kent School District bond underscoring the need for bond reform and for putting school measures on primary and general election ballots.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Heather Weiner at @hlweiner.
Heather Weiner
Heather Weiner (she/her) is a political consultant with 30 years of experience on labor, environmental, LGBTQ, racial justice, and reproductive rights issues. She focuses on ballot initiatives, independent expenditures, legislative, union organizing and contract campaigns. She's a recovering lawyer.
Resources
Teresa Mosqueda, Candidate for King County Council District 8 from Hacks & Wonks
““Please Stop on the Teams Chat”: New Records Expose Mayor Durkan’s Role and Others in Abandonment of East Precinct” by Glen Stellmacher from The Urbanist
“WA Legislature fails to pass new drug law; special session likely” by Joseph O’Sullivan from Crosscut
“No Clear Path Toward Criminalizing Drugs in Washington” by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger
“5 big things Washington's Legislature passed in 2023” by Melissa Santos from Axios
“Final state transportation budget boosts funding for highways, ferries, traffic safety and the Climate Commitment Act” from Washington State House Democrats
“Washington Legislature increases support for free school meals” by Griffin Reilly from The Columbian
“Washington State Rakes In Revenue From Capital Gains Tax” by Laura Mahoney from Bloomberg Tax
“Voters approve King County’s crisis center levy” by Michelle Baruchman from The Seattle Times
“Voters turn down Kent School District bond measure” by Steve Hunter from The Kent Reporter
Find more stories that Crystal is reading here
Transcript
Coming soon
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Teresa Mosqueda about her campaign for King County Council District 8 - why she decided to run, the experience and lessons she’ll bring to the County from serving on Seattle City Council, and her thoughts on addressing progressive revenue options, public service wage equity and morale, housing and homelessness, public safety, transit rider experience, climate change, and budget transparency.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Teresa Mosqueda at @TeresaCMosqueda.
Teresa Mosqueda
As a Progressive Labor Democrat, Teresa Mosqueda is committed to creating healthy and safe communities, investing in working families through job training, childcare and transit access, and developing more affordable housing for all residents. She brings a proven track record of successfully passing progressive policies and building broad and inclusive coalitions. Teresa was named one of Seattle’s Most Influential People 2018 for acting with urgency upon getting elected, received the Ady Barkan Progressive Champion Award from Local Progress in 2019; and earned national attention by leading the passage of JumpStart progressive revenue to invest in housing, economic resilience, green new deal investments, and equitable development. Prior to elected office Teresa worked on community health policies from SeaMar to the Children's Alliance, and championed workers’ rights at the WA State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, where she helped lead state's minimum wage increase, paid sick leave, farmworker protections, workplace safety standards, and launched the Path to Power candidate training with the AFL-CIO.
Resources
Campaign Website - Teresa Mosqueda
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
I am very excited today to have joining us - current Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, who is a candidate for King County Council District 8, which covers Seattle - including West Seattle, South Park, Georgetown, Chinatown International District, and First Hill - as well as Burien, part of Tukwila, and unincorporated King County - in White Center and Vashon Island. Welcome to the program - welcome back.
[00:01:22] Teresa Mosqueda: Thank you so much for having me back - I appreciate it.
[00:01:25] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So I guess the first question is - what made you decide to run for King County Council after being on the Seattle City Council?
[00:01:35] Teresa Mosqueda: I've been really, really honored to be able to serve the full City of Seattle - 775,000 residents at this point - to be able to pass progressive policies like progressive revenue through JumpStart, Green New Deal and affordable housing that it was funding, to be able to quadruple the investments in affordable housing, to expand worker protections. But the truth is, we know that much of the population that I was elected by - the folks that I really center in my public policy - also work and have family outside of the City of Seattle. And in many ways, I want to build on what I've been able to accomplish in Seattle - investments in affordable housing, investments in new career pathways, good union jobs, to expand on the childcare and working family supports that I've centered in my work on City Council. But in order to reach the broader population of working families who are just outside of Seattle's borders but may work in Seattle and come in and out of the City - I want to create greater equity and stability across our region - the County is the place to do it. And in terms of stability, the County is the only place that has purview over public health, has the purse strings for behavioral health investments. And so if I want to complement efforts to try to house folks and create long-term housing stability, especially for our most vulnerable community members, the County is the place to do that - through investments in behavioral health, by sitting on the Public Health Board, by being directly involved in the budget that has purview over public health and behavioral health investments. I see it as an extension of my work at the City to create housed and healthy communities. And it actually goes full circle back to my roots where I started my career in community health. It is exciting opportunity, and I see it as a growth and expansion of the work that we've done in Seattle.
[00:03:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You talk about progressive revenue - the JumpStart Tax, which is a really, really important source of revenue that has been so helpful for businesses in the City, for residents, so many people in need - and has been a benefit to the City, especially in this time of a budget downturn in that the JumpStart Tax helped to bail out a budget shortfall there. So this revenue seemed to come just in time. You had to fight for it. You led the fight for it. What lessons do you take out of that fight to the County, and what progressive revenue options are there at the county level that you would be willing to pursue?
[00:04:05] Teresa Mosqueda: I think one major lesson is how I've approached building these big progressive policies that have not only earned the majority of votes, but the vast majority - if not unanimous vote sometimes - that have withstood the test of time, have not been overturned, and have not been overturned by legislative councilmatic action nor by the courts. I will take with me to King County the ability to build these broad coalitions. And think about JumpStart - who was there when we launched it? It was ironworkers and hardhats, along with business entrepreneurs from both small and large business, with community and housing advocates standing collectively together to say - We will not only stand by this progressive revenue, we will stand by it knowing that it's five times the amount of the previous policy and it's twice as long. That's a huge effort that took place to try to get people on the same page, and we had to - with growing income inequality, growing needs, an increase in our population. There was no other option. This had to succeed, and so I will take that same approach to King County Council.
So much is on the needs list right now in the "wake" of the global pandemic. We have the ongoing shadow pandemic. We have increased needs for mental health and community health investments. We have increased needs for food security and housing stability. There is not an alternative. We must invest more and we must do it in a way that withstands the test of time, like I've done on Seattle City Council. So for me, it's the how I bring people together that I will bring to King County Council. And I think it's also the what - not being afraid to push the envelope on what's possible. Many people said it was impossible to pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights - and we got sued, and we won. People said it was impossible to legislate having hotel workers get access to guaranteed healthcare at the gold level, protections from retaliation, maximum workload. We not only passed that in legislation, but we withstood that in the court. And the same is true of JumpStart. We withstood multiple litigation attempts to try to take away JumpStart, and it's withstood the test of time. And I'm excited to see what else we can do in a city that sees so much growth but incredible inequity across our region - to bring people together to address these pressing needs.
[00:06:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You talked about housing and homelessness, and one thing called out by experts as a barrier to our homelessness response is that frontline worker wages don't cover their cost of living. Do you believe our local service providers, a lot of whom are nonprofits, have a responsibility to pay living wages for the area? And how can we make that more likely with how we bid and contract for services at the county level?
[00:06:54] Teresa Mosqueda: Yeah, two things I would say. One is - absolutely, we need to make sure that folks who are working on the frontline as human service providers - think folks who are the counselors to youth, or people who have mental health or substance abuse needs that we need to help address so that they can get stably housed, think about services to our vets and seniors. These are workers on the frontline who rely on relationships and have skills, expertise in the human service category. They need to have investments in these deeply needed services. And in order for us to create greater stability, we need to be paying them living wages. I say "we" - because this is not about the nonprofits needing to pay them more. It is about we, the public entities, needing to increase our contracts to these organizations who then employ people to be on the frontline. For better or worse, we have a human services system that has largely relied on contracting out critical services that are arguably public services. They are supported by public dollars, and we, public officials, have a responsibility to pay those organizations enough so that they can invest in the wages for frontline workers.
That is what I have tried to do at Seattle City Council. The first year that I came in at Seattle City Council, the Human Services Coalition came to me and said - We have not had a cost of living increase in 10 years. To not have a COLA in 10 years for most workers in our region and across the country is unheard of, but it's especially unheard of for the very folks on the frontline trying to address the most pressing crisis in our country right now - and that is housing instability and homeless services. So we worked in 2019, and we passed the Human Services cost of living adjustment - that is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what needs to be addressed. The historic and chronic underfunding of these positions still needs to be addressed. We are not going to be able to close this gap of 40, 50, 60% turnover in our critical organizational partners, organizations, if we don't address the wage stability issue. So I think actually going to the County and bringing that experience of having worked directly with the human service providers and hearing their stories about why it was so critical not only to have a cost of living adjustment, but to get at this chronic underfunding is going to be really coming at a pivotal moment. Seattle does have a cost of living adjustment. I want to bring that cost of living adjustment to King County and collectively with Seattle, I want to work to address the underpayment for human service providers as well.
[00:09:26] Crystal Fincher: There's been a lot of action when it comes to addressing housing and homelessness from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to new legislation, and potentially even more legislation coming out through the end of this legislative session. We're currently recording this in mid-April, so it may come out a little bit further when there's a definitive answer for everything that happens. But amid a lot of this work that is currently being implemented or has just been authorized, there's a lot in process but still seemingly a lot more that needs to be done. What would your top priorities be to make a noticeable and meaningful difference in both homelessness and housing affordability if you're elected to this position?
[00:10:11] Teresa Mosqueda: Resources for housing is critically needed across King County. Resources will help local jurisdictions be able to implement the new requirements that are going to be coming forth from our State Legislature, which - I want to thank our State legislative members - every year they go to Olympia and every year we ask them to be bold - be bold on housing solutions, recognizing that housing is the solution to being houseless. Housing helps people who have multiple compounding factors get healthy, get stable, and be productive members of our community. Housing is the solution to this biggest crisis that we see, not only in Seattle and King County, up and down the West Coast, but across our entire country. We have not built enough housing to house our current population plus the population who will continue to come to our region. So one of the things that I think I can take to the County is the desire to make sure that local jurisdictions, whether it's Burien or Tukwila, or unincorporated areas like in Vashon and Maury Island or in White Center - that they have resources as well to help build the type of housing that's being requested from the State Legislature - to do so in accordance with their Comprehensive Plan so that people can implement it in the time frame that works for those local jurisdictions, but to help them take away the barrier of not having enough resources. Seattle is unique in that we have pushed forward different resources. We have different types of tax revenues - thanks to JumpStart, for example - but in areas that don't have those type of resources, I hope the County can continue to be a good partner, in addition to the state, to build the type of diverse housing that we're now going to be required to build and hopefully we can do even more.
The State Legislature is actually creating a new floor. We should be building upon that, and where we can go higher and denser - that is good for the local environment, it is good for the local economy, it's good for the health of workers and small businesses. And it's what I've heard from Vashon Island to Tukwila - people have said, "We don't have enough workforce housing." Small business owners have said, "I don't have enough workers in this area because they can't afford to live here." So I want to hopefully break down misperceptions about what type of housing we're talking about. We're talking about housing for seniors and vets, kiddos, youth, workers. We're talking about supporting the creation of that housing with additional revenue - that's one of the things I'd like to bring to the County. And to also recognize that when we have diverse economies that are prosperous, it's because workers can live next to their place of employment. Workers can walk to their childcare. We don't have time to spend two hours in the car commuting back and forth - that's not good for our health, our family's health, and it sure isn't good for the health of our planet. So it's a win-win-win, and I think that's something that I can really bring in as a County Councilmember - the knowledge that these local jurisdictions want to do more, but sometimes are limited with their resources. And wherever I can, I want to help step up and provide that support.
[00:13:08] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Public safety has also been an area where the County continues to make a lot of news, has a lot of responsibility - they operate a jail, and that has itself made a lot of news. Over the past couple years throughout the pandemic, some of the employees of the jails - the guards - other people, the Public Defenders Association have called out overcrowding conditions, unsafe conditions in the jail. There's been times where the jail has not had clean water, several illness outbreaks, people not being treated correctly. It seems to be a really bad situation. Recently, the King County Council just voted to extend a contract to rent additional beds from a SCORE facility in Des Moines. This, during a backdrop of events where the King County Executive has made a promise to close the King County Jail, but it seems like we're getting further away from that, or at least not getting closer to that. Would you have voted to extend the SCORE contract? And should we close the jail? What is your vision for the short term?
[00:14:17] Teresa Mosqueda: I think that the move to close down a jail that's both outdated and unsafe is not only good for the inmates, it's good for the folks who are working there. I think this is another example of where there's a false perception of sides. People who work within the jail, as well as those who are incarcerated, have expressed their not only horror when seeing mold and deterioration of the building, but it is extremely unsafe as well - as you mentioned - due to overcrowding. There's a few things that I think we can do. Number one, we should address upstream - who was being sent to these facilities in the first place. In a presentation that the Seattle City Council received from the City Attorney's Office, there was a large number of people who were initially booked and jailed, and ultimately were released because there was no grounds to put forward charges. And I think we need to stop the habit or the practice of putting folks in that situation to begin with. Even if they are not incarcerated for long periods of time, the fact that people are being jailed - especially youth - creates consequences down the road, mental health consequences, consequences for your housing, for your livelihood, your employment. And the negative impact of just being booked in the first place - both for the physical health of somebody, but also the trajectory of their life - is quantifiable. It is known, and we should stop that practice early.
I agree with the effort to move folks into a situation that is healthier, but I also want to continue to look at how we can reduce the chance that someone is ever incarcerated in the first place, invest more in restorative justice practices. I'm optimistic by some of the conversations I've heard from folks in the community, specifically in Burien, about the ways in which some of the initial conversations have taken place with the Burien City Police Chief Ted Boe, and some of the commitments that have been made to try to look at restorative justice differently. And I think that holistically we need to look at what leads someone to be in that situation in the first place and back up to see what additional community investments we can be making so that people can have greater access to economic security, community safety, and reduce the chance that someone ever interacts with the carceral system to begin with.
[00:16:40] Crystal Fincher: What do you think, or for people who are considering this voting decision and who are looking around and who are feeling unsafe, and who are not quite sure what the right direction is to move forward, or what can be done but feel like something should be done - what is your message to them? And what can make us all safer?
[00:17:01] Teresa Mosqueda: There's a few things that I think have really come to light, especially during the pandemic. We tell people to stay home to stay healthy. Well, if people don't have a home, they can't stay healthy. If we can think about the increased situation where many of us have probably seen loved ones in our lives - whether it's family members or friends - who have turned to substances to cope, to self-medicate with the stress, the trauma, the isolation that has only increased during the pandemic. I hope there's greater empathy across our community and across our country for why people may be self-medicating to begin with. And I think if we think about these recent examples of where we have seen people become more unstable in their housing situation or turn to substances because of increasing stress and pressure, that hopefully there's greater empathy for why it is so critical that we invest upstream. It is not an either/or - it's creating greater balance with how we invest in community safety, in what we know equals the social determinants of health. When we invest in housing, it helps reduce the chance that someone is going to engage in criminal activities later in life. When we invest in early learning, in job opportunities, in youth interactive programs, when we invest in even gun reduction and youth violence reduction strategies, it helps create healthier individuals and healthier populations, reduce the chance that someone ever interacts with an officer to begin with. These are public safety investments, and they shouldn't be seen as a separate silo from "traditional safety." It actually saves lives, and there's a huge return on investment when we make some of these upstream program policies a priority. I think it actually creates healthier communities, and for those who are looking at it through the economic lens, healthier economies - knowing that that return on investment has been proven time and time again. And it's good for individuals and community health as well.
[00:19:02] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, there's a shortage of workers across the board - certainly King County is included in this shortage of county workers in several areas, including in many front-line positions that impact public safety - maintenance, care, health - all of those that are crucial to delivering services and help that the residents of the County need. We've seen hiring, retention, and referral bonuses for public safety employees. Do you think we should be considering those for other employees?
[00:19:39] Teresa Mosqueda: Absolutely. This is part of the conversation that I raised while at Seattle City Council. There is, I think, a detrimental impact to workplace morale across public servants when we're not uniformly treating people the same. It's not what I feel, it's not that that's my perception - that's actually coming from workers within the City of Seattle who completed a survey that our Human Resources Department, in addition to Seattle Police Department and other Seattle agencies, completed to ask, "What would you like to see? How would you feel if certain employees got a hiring bonus or retention bonus?" And overwhelmingly, workers in public service said that they thought that this would hurt morale - if existing public servants weren't treated the same. I mentioned that in the Human Services category, there's a 40% to 60% turnover rate for our nonprofit organizations who are helping folks on the frontline. There's a huge turnover rate, as well, within our Human Services Department - we've had to freeze the hiring, and reduce hours, and reduce positions. Public libraries, community centers are front-facing programs for the community during COVID and we are slowly starting to scale those back up, but they're nowhere at capacity right now. And what workers themselves have said within the City of Seattle is - they want to see greater strategies for retention. Investments in childcare keeps coming up. Investments in more affordable housing keeps coming up. And if you want to look specifically at the Seattle Police Department, the officers themselves said that they did not think that hiring bonuses was the way to address retention and morale issues - that played out in their comments in the press, as well as the survey results that we saw.
I think that there's a more equitable approach that we should be taking. I think that we should be looking at how we recruit and train and incentivize people to come to public service overall, whether that means you're coming in to work as a firefighter or a police officer, or whether that means that we want to recruit you to be serving the public in libraries or as a lifeguard - which we don't have enough of - or as a childcare provider, which we don't have enough of. We should be looking across the board at these public service programs and figuring out ways to both address retention and morale, and to do so equitably. And to listen to what workers have said - they want housing, they want childcare, they want regular and routine transit. And they want us to, especially within the City of Seattle, address disparity in wages for folks of color and women compared to their counterparts. Those are some things that I think we should be taking on more seriously.
[00:22:17] Crystal Fincher: Definitely. Now, you talk about people saying they want regular and routine transit. Lots of people want that. Lots of people - more importantly - need that, are relying on that. And there's been lots of talk about the rider experience around safety on transit, but also about the availability and accessibility of service and all-day service - not just some of those commuter-centric commute-time service bumps that we've seen. What would your approach to Metro be as a councilmember?
[00:22:50] Teresa Mosqueda: So I appreciate that you raise safety because it is an issue that comes up for riders as well as the drivers. Members of ATU, who drive buses around King County, have expressed increased concern around their safety. Whether they're driving in the day or night - given COVID has increased interpersonal violence across our country, they are on the receiving end of that as well. So I'm excited to talk with ATU, with members who have been out on the frontline as our bus drivers, as well as riders to talk about how we can improve safety for everyone. That is - again, on the preventative side, trying to figure out ways that structurally and through public policy we can ensure that riders and drivers are safe.
There's also two things that drivers have talked to me about and folks within King County Metro. They say there's a lot of focus on new routes and how do we expand routes - routes, routes, routes - which I also agree with. But they've also brought up that we need to continue to invest in the people, maintenance, and operation to make sure that there's enough people to be working on existing routes and new routes to come. Similar to housing, we don't want to just build units. We want to make sure that for those who need personnel in those units to make sure that folks stay stably housed, we're investing in the workforce to ensure that that housing, that that unit is successful. We need to be looking at investments in the workforce, recruiting folks to come to these good living wage union jobs, and to be thinking about how we improve retention and stability as well. And for as far as maintenance is concerned - thinking more about how we can invest in greener fleets, greener maintenance opportunities, and ensure that those vehicles are running well and routinely. So those are two of the things that have come directly from the frontline drivers themselves.
And then more broadly - workers. You mentioned all-day services. I would also argue all-night services to the degree that we can add additional stops, because many of the childcare providers who are coming in early in the morning, construction workers who are coming in early in the morning, janitors who might be going out late at night, talk about how they have to rely on vehicles because there are not times that the buses are showing up to get them to work and back home in time. So I think that it's multi-prong. But again, I think the common ground here is that the workers in this sector are agreeing with the recipients of the service. And collectively, I'm hoping that we can address safety, workforce needs, and increase routes as well.
[00:25:23] Crystal Fincher: Definitely, and I really appreciate you bringing up the workforce needs. I know a couple people who use transit regularly but ended up getting vehicles because of the unpredictable cancellations due to staff shortages, whether it's maintenance or drivers, just making it unreliable to get to work on time. And already the time taken to commute that way is a lot, so that would improve the experience greatly - definitely appreciate that. Transit is also very, very important to achieving our climate goals. And by most measures, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals - while we're experiencing devastating impacts from climate change, including extreme heat and cold, wildfires, floods. What are your highest-priority plans to get us on track to meet our 2030 climate goals?
[00:26:17] Teresa Mosqueda: One thing might surprise folks in that category - probably not a huge surprise for folks who have heard me talk before - but I think if we can invest in additional housing, dense housing across our region, it will actually reduce CO2 emissions. And it's really common sense, right? We are the third-highest mega-commuter city or region in the nation. We have more people who are commuting back and forth to work than most of the country. And the reason is because they can't afford to find a house near their place of employment. If CO2 emissions from cars - single-occupancy cars - is the number-one contributor to pollution in our region, I believe that is at the top of our list for helping to reduce our carbon footprint across the country and across the globe. We should be increasing density. We should see it not only as a good economic stimulant, what's right to do for workers and working families, but it is one of the best things that we could also do for our climate. I think that there's - again, a misperception or a false divide between folks who are environmentalists and want to see more trees, and their perception that additional housing or density takes that away. It does not. We can both create setbacks for higher buildings and use the airspace to create living opportunities, while we plant additional trees and preserve old growth. I've gone to at least three ribbon-cutting ceremonies for Habitat for Humanity, who created - basically - townhouses connected altogether. We don't have a lot of row houses in Seattle, but row houses, if you will, around trees created in the shape of a U with old-growth trees in the middle - allowing for greater shade, and a play area for kiddos, and a place to sit for elders. It is very much possible to build dense housing options and preserve old growth while planting new trees.
So I think in addition to creating density, we can plant more trees. We can do more to incentivize good living-wage jobs in industries that are cleaner. I heard from our friends in Georgetown Community Center that they had to beg and plead for one of the local industries to incorporate more greener options for a glass manufacturer down there. And we should simultaneously be seeing the opportunity to promote good jobs as a requirement for also promoting good green jobs. And I worked very hard with members of both the environmental community and the labor community in the past to push Just Transition policies - to ensure that as we transition to greener economies or greener manufacturing strategies, that we're preserving good living-wage jobs and, even better, preserving good union living-wage jobs. So I look forward to making sure that we have denser cities, that we have greener cities, and that we have greener industries.
[00:29:13] Crystal Fincher: Now, King County does incremental budgeting, making it more challenging for people to understand how county funds are allocated in a base budget. The budget is known as one of your areas of strength. What do you think can be done to make the budget process easier for the public to understand and influence at the county level?
[00:29:35] Teresa Mosqueda: I've been really proud of what we've been able to accomplish in Seattle. And coming from working the halls of Olympia on behalf of the Washington State Labor Council for eight years and then for three years before that with the Children's Alliance, I was used to this concept of having these biennial budgets that needed to be seen in full, that you could see the red line to know what was the investment from last year versus the upcoming year. Unfortunately, the City of Seattle doesn't have such a budget document. It's basically like single pages - page after page of narrative descriptions of what the dollars will do. That's fine for some budget notes, but what I think we are working towards in the City of Seattle - a preview for folks who love budget talk - is we're going to one day have a true biennial budget and an actual budget document where you will be able to see the red line, either additions or subtractions to specific programs so that everyone knows what is being invested in, how funding is changing, and where priorities are showing up in the budget. I am excited about being able to build on that work that I've done in Seattle, especially as Budget Chair, in some of the most pressing economic times in recent history, starting in 2020. And have been able to not only allocate millions of dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act, but also to create greater transparency in how we budget.
One of the things that I think is maybe misunderstood out there is the way in which we've helped to provide transparency in the entire budget, but specifically the Seattle Police Department. It had not been exposed year-over-year that Seattle Police Department actually had about $40 million that was rolling over year-over-year on top of funding that the chief, that the mayor, that the department had acknowledged they could not use. And in a time where we saw an economic crisis on the horizon, growing needs in our community, and knew that that was $40 million that was not going to be put to use, not going into direct services for the community - and for those who wanted to see additional officers, wasn't even going to be able to use to increase the hiring plan. It's good budgeting to be able to make sure that that funding is transparently accounted for in the General Fund - and where we can deploy it to things like food, housing, childcare, economic security for small businesses that we do so. That's something I'm really proud of - that we were able to show what the full picture was, not only for that department, but for all departments. And to make some important investments in mental health services, behavioral health services, youth violence, gun violence reduction strategies - things that similarly invest in community safety, but we were able to show where those line items move.
I will bring to King County Council the ability to structurally push for greater transparency for members of the public, encourage us as the legislative branch to own the separate but equal branch of government that the council is as the legislative branch, and ensure that the public has an opportunity to dive into the proposal that comes from the executive, just like the proposal that comes from the governor to the State Legislature. You receive that, you dissect it, you talk to community about what it means - and then ultimately the legislative branch reconvenes, reconfigures the budget, and presents it to the executive for a signature. It's good governance, it's good transparency. I think it's understandable from folks across whatever political spectrum - it's important to have budget transparency and accountability, and that's what I've been able to accomplish in the City of Seattle.
[00:33:02] Crystal Fincher: It is, and I think there are a number of people, especially listeners to Hacks & Wonks, who do enjoy budget conversations, who would definitely look forward to more budget transparency at the County level, like you've been working towards at the City level. As we close here and as people are going to be making the decision about who they're going to be voting for for this County Council position, what is your message to voters and people listening about why they should choose you?
[00:33:30] Teresa Mosqueda: I'm very thrilled to be in this race for King County Council. I think I have not only proven that I'm an effective legislator at the council level, but that I know how to center folks who have been left out of policy conversations in the room, but more importantly - follow the lead of those who've experienced the injustices over the years. We have been able to move historic, monumental, national-headline-grabbing policies within the City of Seattle in my now going into six years in Seattle City Council. And it has been done, I believe, in a collaborative way, in a way that has made transformational change, and in a way that I think has always centered - been centered on my progressive commitments to investing in working families, folks of color, and the LGBTQ community, workers to ensure that there's greater opportunity and prosperity. And creating housing and stability - that is something that is good for our entire community. I do this work because it's all about how we create healthy communities. You have to have investments in good living wage jobs and housing stability and opportunity education to have self-determination and control over your own life and your own decisions. And I think through public policy, through investments with public resources, we can create greater opportunity across our county.
I am excited, as well, to be coming to this race as a woman, as a Latina, as a Chicana - poised to be the first Latina ever elected to King County Council. And with a King County population that is made up of half people of color and a quarter immigrant and refugee, it is critical that we have more voices with folks who have the lived experience coming from communities of color serving in these positions. I think that's why I've been able to effectively and efficiently move policy through so quickly - because I have put at the front of the line many of the community members who are often left out of policy discussions. I hope to bring in my commitment to working with folks who are workers, women, folks of color, members of the LGBTQ community to hear more about what we can do at King County Council. I know I have big shoes to step into with Councilmember McDermott and his commitment to public health, working with the LGBTQ community, his tenure in the State Legislature - and I'm also excited to add to that and serve our broader region and our growing needs.
[00:35:59] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much, Councilmember Mosqueda, for spending this time with us today and having this conversation. Sincerely appreciate it, and we'll certainly be following your campaign eagerly over the next several months. Thank you.
[00:36:13] Teresa Mosqueda: Thank you so much - I appreciate it.
[00:36:15] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by former Pierce County Council Chair Derek Young! They discuss the official end of the death penalty in Washington state, the abortion pill decision from the U.S. Supreme Court, Pierce County & rural students struggling emotionally and socially after covid, how Seattle’s failure to act on housing is hurting other cities, and some interesting political races shaping up in Pierce County.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Derek Young at @DerekMYoung.
Resources
Climate Justice Work with 350 Seattle’s Shemona Moreno from Hacks & Wonks
WA Senate passes bill allowing duplexes, fourplexes in single-family zones | The Seattle Times
Four Vital Housing and Climate Bills Survive the Washington Legislature | The Urbanist
Pierce County students ‘absolutely in crisis’ after COVID, say area superintendents | The News Tribune
Budget committee weighs Inslee's plan to stockpile abortion medicine | The Spokesman-Review
Gov. Inslee buys 3-year supply of abortion pills in case of ban | Crosscut
The Battle for the Seattle City Council, Part 1: The Incumbents | The Urbanist
Find more stories that Crystal is reading here
On this midweek show, Executive Director of 350 Seattle Shemona Moreno shares with Crystal how the organization approaches climate justice work through deep systems change. Shemona outlines a vision for a just transition that moves us from an extractive to a regenerative economy that includes accountability for our impacts on both the local and global scale. 350 Seattle’s current focus on Green New Deal policy yes campaigns and their Electrify Seattle campaign leads to discussion of false solutions such as “renewable natural gas” and carbon offsets. Crystal and Shemona wrap up with tactics used in 350 Seattle’s advocacy and how to get involved with them to make a difference.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find 350 Seattle at @350_Seattle.
Shemona Moreno
Shemona is an activist, leader, changemaker, and the Executive Director of 350 Seattle. A proud Latinx & Black woman, her mother is an immigrant from Mexico and her father a descendant of enslaved African people. These origins ground Shemona’s work in the fierce commitment to amplifying demands of frontline communities hurt first and worst by climate catastrophe. She trusts that cultivating deep relationships among organizations fighting for racial, economic, gender, disability, and climate justices is how we build collective power to interrupt systems of oppression. She also really loves donuts with sprinkles and bright red shoes.
Resources
350 Seattle
Electrify Seattle Campaign | 350 Seattle
Electrify Seattle 1-Pager | 350 Seattle
“Climate activists warn “renewable natural gas” may be the newest form of greenwashing” by Guy Oron from Real Change News
Guy Oron Twitter thread: Latest news on "renewable natural gas" greenwashing
“Cap & Trade Fails Communities” from 350 Seattle
“How Washington plans to spend money from the new carbon-cap law” by Joseph O’Sullivan from Crosscut
“Two Years of Giving Chase…Hell” by Alec Connon from 350 Seattle
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today I am very excited to be welcoming Shemona Moreno, who is the Executive Director of 350 Seattle. Welcome to the show.
[00:01:02] Shemona Moreno: Hi, thanks for having me.
[00:01:03] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I just wanted to start off - wondering what brought you to this work?
[00:01:09] Shemona Moreno: What brought me to 350 Seattle and climate work was some really good friends that were involved first. I had noticed they had started getting more involved in climate work over the summer back in 2016, and they invited me along to one of the events that they were participating in - sharing a little bit more about the work. And I was inspired. I was - Wow, this is really cool - the stuff you're doing here is awesome. How do I get involved? And so I started to show up a little bit more and I attended a new volunteer event that 350 Seattle was holding in the winter of 2016. And I got involved - I basically just thought I was showing up for an information session, but they're - No, you're here to plan an action with us. And I was - Okay, cool. And so that's how I got involved with 350 Seattle.
But my activism and desire for change was instilled in me very young - my mother was very much involved in social justice issues, specifically around police accountability and police, anti-police brutality. And so she was very involved in all that and she brought her kids along with her, so we were very active in the community - worked in various different organizations, like Books to Prisoners, Food Not Bombs, working with socialists organizations. Back in the day, Refuse and Resist was a big organization. And yeah, it's cool to go back and look at pictures of just little Shemona standing on the side of the street saying "Free Mumia," so I have - it's in my blood. And now it's - as the climate movement, specifically around climate justice, is something that actually calls to me a little bit more 'cause the climate crisis is urgent, but I also believe the approach to the climate crisis needs to be thought of in intersection with other justice issues - like racial justice, gender justice, economic justice.
And at 350 Seattle, the approach we take very much considers that - we approach our climate justice work through the idea of deep systems change. 'Cause if we don't change these systems of harm and oppression, then there's no solving the climate crisis - and there's no solving it on its own without addressing all of the issues.
[00:03:26] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and that's part of why I find 350 Seattle so inspiring. Can you tell me just more about 350 Seattle, what it stands for, and what type of work you're involved in?
[00:03:39] Shemona Moreno: Yeah, so 350 Seattle - our mission is we work towards climate justice by organizing people to make deep system change, like resisting fossil fuels, building momentum for healthy alternatives, and fostering resilient, just, and welcoming communities. The main message in there is that we really strive for what we call a just transition - moving our extractive economy and these extractive governments into one that's regenerative - we're lots of community owned, community resilient world. So trying to build that better future that we have. And at 350 Seattle, we have undergone some changes - we started back in 2013 before I even was around. And over the past few years, when the Green New Deal came onto the scene before the pandemic, that we started to invest more in what we call our yes campaigns - community solutions, things we want to say yes to. And so that's - we've moved into saying, doing more work around saying yes to solutions - what solutions can we put in place to move us away from fossil fuel and invest more in housing, transportation, community care, and things like that. And so 350 Seattle's really focused right now for the next three years on Green New Deal policies yes campaigns, but all the while still saying - being in solidarity with issues that are saying no to fossil fuel infrastructure and holding polluters accountable and those that invest in them. So a lot of divestment campaign. So yeah, that's a very small, little overview of what 350 Seattle's doing.
And for me - my part in that - I was recently promoted to Executive Director, I'd say about five months ago. And before that I was Deputy Director. And then before that I was our Equity Director and did some volunteer engagement as well. So I've been slowly but surely - not that slow, it's happened pretty fast - saying yes and taking on more and more responsibility. And I'm excited to be in this new leadership role to really fully realize a lot of the visions that we've created for ourselves and to put ourselves on a path for change and success.
[00:05:50] Crystal Fincher: Another thing is just looking at different organizations - looking at the approaches that they take and how they operate internally, impacting how they're able to impact the community externally. And one of just kind of the pillars in your strategic vision is investing in staff and organizational sustainability. What does that mean, and what does that look like, and why is that important to the work?
[00:06:13] Shemona Moreno: I think it came out of - like most organizations, the pandemic really wiped us out. It challenged us in a way that we were not prepared for. How do we take care of our people? How do we transition actions onto online? It took us a year just to even figure out how do these online tools work? We didn't - 'cause we had never invested in doing any digital organizing. We were always - we're in the streets, we're talking to our community - out and - but at that point when the pandemic came, you couldn't do that because it wasn't safe. And so a lot of our work came to a full stop - there was a lot of things that just stopped. And so we slowly but surely found ways to engage people online. And even though it's not the same, you can't stop. You have to find a way to make it work with the community in the circumstances that they're in.
And so investing, and also to be very real - people got sick. We've had people who passed leave. So you have to - what are we doing to make sure that there is care there? That we all have good insurance, that people - we're doing mutual aid and making sure we're checking in on each other. And so I think it was a big reckoning for us and for a lot of people that we need to really invest in the people here. We need to make sure that the work is sustainable so that people can feel like they can come back to this work at any time and plug in, both on a volunteer level all the way up to staff and board level. And we wanna make sure that the work we're doing is on a path to achieve the greatness that we wanna achieve - there's so much change that you have to make, but in order to do that, you have to make sure the people who are there are taken care of as well. So the investing in staff - what that looks like tangibly was making sure that we're paying people a livable wage - inflation, the rents are sky high in Seattle. And so we wanted to make sure that what we were paying our staff - that they could live in Seattle, they could survive here.
And also just what that looks like is investing in a lot of different tools to make sure that the work we can do is accessible for people, that we're taking in account people's safety and comfort. 'Cause no one wants to do it if they're not gonna be considered - accessibility was also a huge thing that we had to start investing in and paying attention to, 'Cause I think a lot of organizations really don't think about accessibility when they're thinking about equity as well. Usually people tackle one issue at a time, but you have to - there's layers because not one person is - I'm only concerned about this one identity thing. I'll be transparent - our staff and volunteers - we have a lot of people who have long COVID. And how do we take care of those people? How do we make our work accessible so people can still show up in whatever capacity they have? So it was a big goal for us. And I'm pretty proud that we're really chipping away at all of the things that we set ahead of us.
[00:09:01] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I think that's important in a number of organizations who historically have not focused on accessibility are now being woken up to finally on how important it really is, and how we can't really fight for justice if we leave people out of the movement. It becomes counterproductive at that point. Now, some of the values that 350 Seattle talks about, holds are - one, climate change being a profound and urgent threat to all life on the planet, but most especially and most immediately to those in the Global South. What does your work around that principle entail, and how does that shape the work?
[00:09:41] Shemona Moreno: I think over the years, we've done a lot of learning of what that means and what does accountability look like too. As an organization based in the United States, there's a lot of learning that goes into that - understanding the privilege of being in the United States. And also just really thinking about how we fit into a global context of just a lot of - even something not simple, but just like those things of just - a lot of our trash was getting shipped overseas. A lot of the trash that we - people just throw on the ground that gets into the oceans - a lot of the currents - that sweeps up on seas, like in the South. And I've traveled around the world of just in different places, even just witnessing - wow, these beautiful places covered in trash and there's no resources to help clean it up. And a lot of that stuff is because of the United States and even just American investors investing in fossil fuel infrastructure in places all over the world. I know in South Africa, they're - in across Africa, not just South Africa - 'cause I recently came back from there, just learning about the different things and the fossil fuel projects that are happening there - it's American investors helping pay for all of that. And it's - so there is an accountability to the rest of the world, specifically the Global South.
And also to understand that it's not about saving the Global South, it's about listening and being in solidarity. And when there is trust and built allyship, then we can be co-conspirators on change. Like it's not 350 Seattle - we're gonna decide what is good for the Global South. I'm - one, the Global South is such a huge broad term. Who are you even talking about when you say that sometimes? But people have it in their head of what that means. And I think what we really wanna make sure that we're doing education on is - we are accountable and we're accountable by making sure that we are aware of the things that we do and how it impacts not just our community, but the larger global community. That we are doing the education that we need to - what are the ripple effects of all the changes that we make here? Because people look here to see what's happening, what are they doing, and how is that going to affect change in other places? And so making sure we're aware that what we're choosing to do - we're thinking through what potential ripples there might be from that.
And I'll say we're - sometimes this principle gets lost and a lot of the work we do tend to focus hyper locally. And I think recently we have an opportunity to plug in more into the global context - partnering with more organizations that have sister cities or have more connections to - in the Pacific, in Africa, in South America, especially when we're talking about immigration justice. We need to be - we can't really solve that issue on our own here - what does that look like to be in partnership with organizers in other places? And also sometimes it's just about shutting up and - Show me the money, here's some resources, here's the things that we can offer you - we have so much access to money here, especially in Washington. Sometimes all it is is - Yes, we will pay for that. We will support you in this way. Just tell us when and where.
[00:12:45] Crystal Fincher: So now you have this global vision. What is the local action that you have been focused on? What are the biggest opportunities locally, and what have you been working on locally?
[00:12:56] Shemona Moreno: Right now we're in the middle of a campaign called Electrify Seattle. And so this campaign is focused on - we have three major demands - is making sure that the timeline for transitioning off of fossil fuels is moved up. Specifically around our large buildings over 20,000 square feet in Seattle - that those buildings are moved to achieve net zero emissions by 2030 or 2035. And so that's a campaign that we're working on now. And then in that, we wanna make sure we're rejecting false climate solutions around renewable natural gas. We know where it comes from, but it's not natural to be doing that - and because of a lot of the health issues and the air pollution that still comes with using gas. Hence the name Electrify Seattle. We wanna make sure that there's no pay-to-pollute incentives of - where people can be - Oh, you can buy your way out of trouble or shift it to something else. So those are the three demands in our Electrify Seattle campaign.
But it's complex and there's a lot of research that's having to go into that. And it's a campaign that - we're up against some really big targets. Most people don't realize who owns most of the property in Seattle - it's Amazon, Vulcan, it's UW. People are always shocked to find - who actually owns this land and who are we fighting against? These so-called companies that are - Oh yeah, we support climate solutions. We built the Climate Pledge Arena, remember? And I'm - Okay, but what about all the other buildings in Seattle? And we can't wait until 2050 to do that work. We have to invest in that work now and we have to pay for it.
[00:14:38] Crystal Fincher: And that's an interesting point - you talk about some of those false solutions. You talked about natural gas, which is fracked gas. There was a recent controversy for a garbage contractor for the City claiming some very environmentally clean messaging as a reflection of the work that they're doing - it turns out they're using fracked gas as part of this project. And we aren't breathing cleaner air as a result of it - we're breathing dirtier air, unlike their ad copy statements. But it is - it does go to this false solutions. Other things that you classify as false solutions are geoengineering, bioenergy, carbon trading, offsetting carbon taxes.
Now, especially with those carbon offsets and trading, we recently passed a huge piece of legislation here in Washington - the Climate Commitment Act. They've called it a cap and invest system, which is a spruced up cap and trade system - but it has already raised money, will raise money that they say they're going to invest in green energy uses. But the money that it's raising is essentially from people buying pollution credits, or buying the ability to pollute over a certain limit. Why do you consider this a false solution, and how do we move forward in this state with this in place?
[00:16:06] Shemona Moreno: We consider it a false solution because nothing is actually being solved. It's a loophole - they are allowed to keep doing what they're doing and they can pay to keep doing it. And we all think it's better 'cause they're - We're making money. I'm - We're still making money off of the things that are killing us, that are ravaging the planet. The solution is to stop, not to buy our way out of it. You can't - the damage that we do by continuing to use fossil fuels - we will get to a point where it'll be irreparable and we can't, no money is going to fix it. So that is not a solution. And yeah, there is - I guess - the silver lining to - Oh, there's money. And especially with the Climate Commitment Act, I've been hearing people say a lot more money than we thought. And I'm - Isn't that alarming that there is a lot more money? That means more and more people are buying their way to pollute more - that is not something I'm happy about.
And especially, it's sometimes hard to believe that people are going to actually reinvest in the community. 'Cause I don't know - the housing crisis is getting worse and worse. Transportation - I haven't seen improvement. The job market is not the same. I'm just - rent is going higher and higher. More and more people are having to leave the City. And the money that is being raised to reinvest, it's not going to the places that - who need it the most. People who have no responsibility for the damage that's being done to the planet and to the communities. And we're still not investing in them. And I know for sure that there was some - a lot of BIPOC frontline communities were against the Climate Commitment Act, and 350 Seattle was in solidarity with that. But now - all we can do now is just - what is the fight that we need to keep fighting, and keep pushing, and also holding - okay, if we have this money to reinvest, making sure that they are reinvesting it. What is the action? You can't just tell me you're going to do it without any action to do it. So that's where we're at now - is making sure that it is reinvested while also still being - finding a way to be - I don't want to see polluters buying their way out, buying their way out. That is not a solution.
[00:18:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. It's a challenge and it allows them to get credit for reducing harm in a way that doesn't reduce the harm at the point of pollution. I think that waste management example is pretty appropriate because they're claiming that - Hey, some mitigating activity that we're doing in the Midwest is how we can claim that we're producing cleaner air in the Northwest. And no - the air here is just as dirty to people breathing it to the degree that they are, along with other pollutants that we allow, are part of the reason for such a disparity in the life expectancy in different zip codes in the same City of Seattle. We have to focus on the harm that we're doing. And to your point, it's the people who least afford it - it's BIPOC communities, it's lower income communities who are doing the least amount of polluting, but absorbing the harms from pollution the most. Understanding this - accountability is absolutely something that the organization regularly talks about, takes action on - how important is it to hold polluters and our leaders who are writing policy accountable to reducing actual harm done? And what tactics do you take to hold people accountable in this kind of situation, whether it's the Climate Commitment Act or other local investments?
[00:19:47] Shemona Moreno: Yeah, the divestment campaign is - that we work on is, yeah - we call it our accountability work - Hey, you are using money. A lot of that money - it belongs to the people who you're harming. We should have a say in that - is one thing. And a lot of the tactics we use is just trying to get at the hearts of some of these shareholders, customers, managers - I think there are - you try that first and then you try demands. And then you try just - All right, here are - we're gonna be out in the street. Then we try action. And then you do it - it's cyclical of just what you're trying, of the different tactics that you're employing.
[00:20:28] Crystal Fincher: And when you say action, what do you mean?
[00:20:31] Shemona Moreno: I mean nonviolent direct action. In the past, what I've seen - I've participated in showing up and delivering a letter to the bank manager, and we're not leaving until we see you read this letter, and make promise that you're gonna send this letter up the chain, and that you are in - on the side of - Yeah, this is wrong that we're investing this money that could be fixing the roads, housing these people, affordable healthcare. How is it that the drug crisis - people overdosing in the street - how are we not spending as much money as possible to take care of people? And yet using all of this money to just tear down our communities, and not just any community - BIPOC and frontline communities. How is that allowed? And so that's part of the narrative too, of just - why are we letting this happen? We have a moral obligation to these people. We are accountable to our communities to make sure that they're taken care of. And so we're not leaving here until you hear what we're trying to say. And so that's - I support doing that.
And then also it is - on the flip side, it is going in and lobbying and talking to our legislators. And while it is a very complex and disheartening thing sometimes - dealing with the legislative - and the game of politics is just another thing I wish we could change like that. But it's sometimes - you have to find a way in and make yourselves heard in that space too. And sometimes you have to yell - I think we're seeing that across the country, especially with youth showing up in - at their legislators - and demanding change. 'Cause sometimes we've tried letters, we've tried phone calls and emails. We do that - people think we don't. We start there first and we're ignored, and so we have to show up and demand to be heard and we demand change.
And then also it ultimately leads to - for the people who can't show up in person and do that, staying informed and voting. So it's just - that's a hard thing for me - is how many people don't vote. And especially in Seattle and Washington - we make it so easy for you to vote. You don't have to go stand in line for hours. It's mailed right to your door. If you lose it, you could print it out again. And so making sure people are staying informed, and who they're voting for, and why they're voting. And just vote.
[00:22:56] Crystal Fincher: It's important. It's how - I usually say local politics is organizing - it absolutely impacts your day-to-day living conditions, what happens in your daily life. And oftentimes that has more of a tangible effect on our daily lives than voting in the federal elections. We should all vote for it all, but my goodness, not skip the local elections as so many more people even do. When it comes to that, one of the challenges that we have is - it's a bigger challenge with younger people than with older people - but feeling like politics and voting is relevant at all. And in elections where there is a higher amount of younger people engaged, where politicians and leaders are speaking to issues that are important to younger people, we do see higher turnout in there. And 350 overall - definitely 350 Seattle - is an organization that seems to have much higher youth participation than a lot of other environmental organizations or other organizations in that space. How do you think that impacts the work that you do and the type of tactics that you use?
[00:24:09] Shemona Moreno: I think it's a positive impact. It's inspiring. I will say that I think when 350 Seattle and the overall 350 in the US - all the different local groups across the US - are started off pretty - older retiree, white, middle-class. And I think over the years it's been changing and especially since more - honestly, when Trump was elected, I think that was a huge sea change of a moment where people were - Whoa, how did this happen? How do we go from Obama to Trump? It was like an overcorrection of just - Whoa, okay, I can't sit back and do nothing anymore. I think that's one of the reasons why I got involved. I was in my late 20s getting involved at that time. And I think we're seeing that again - with the climate crisis getting worse, housing, transportation, inflation - we're seeing more young people, or as they come into the world a little bit more - What, what is going on? And the threat of they're like - Do I have a future on this planet? What is going to be left for me? Hearing people be - I don't think I'm gonna have kids 'cause I don't think I'm ever gonna be able to afford a house - having to deal with some really hard stuff at such a young age now. And so I'm seeing more and more youth get involved.
And especially in 350 Seattle, we're seeing way more kids from high school, college getting involved where normally it was older retirees who - and so I'm just so inspired and so excited to see the change of people showing up. Also one of our goals is to be a multi-generational, multicultural organization and be truly reflective of all the different communities in Seattle and Washington. And we're seeing that, we're seeing so many more young folks coming in, staying excited, and then scaling up and becoming leaders in their own right and taking on more responsibility. And it's just - I don't know - it's exciting.
[00:26:10] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now locally - whether it's Seattle, whether it's King County - what are the biggest opportunities or biggest areas where we can make an immediate impact when it comes to the environment, greenhouse gas emissions? What are the kind of biggest deals on the table right now?
[00:26:29] Shemona Moreno: Ooh, that's a good question. I think we're - we've been thinking a lot about that. I think that's the hardest part sometimes with this is just - Ah, what do you do? There's so much you can do. And then even in just the campaign that we have now that we started off very excited, but then - we are still excited - it's things are complex, things are challenging. There are so many pieces that fit into it. And so there is the opportunity to make big change here, especially in Seattle, but it's gonna be hard to do that.
[00:26:59] Crystal Fincher: So what's this current campaign?
[00:27:01] Shemona Moreno: Yeah, so the Electrify Seattle campaign - moving off of fossil fuels, particularly gas, which is a big thing in Seattle and electrifying. So yeah, transitioning off of gas - that's such a huge complicated thing, but it is possible if we invest our time and resources in it. And I think the next big thing, I think in Seattle, where you tend to focus just on Seattle - what can we achieve here? And then also thinking about how do we go about that change so it can be basically creating a toolkit for it to be replicated anywhere else in the country. I know they've done this - a lot of this work in New York City, which is where we've been doing some learning from. And what would it be like if other cities around the US did this too? And even outside of that, what other cities in different countries? Obviously there'd be different contexts that you would do this campaign, but that's how we go about doing the work - What can we achieve? What is winnable? What are the resources you need in order to win? And can we scale? What is the scale to that? And so I think opportunities here in Seattle would be electrifying our Port - taking a look at aviation, around they're thinking of expanding the airport. What are the impacts of that? Both environmental and the community - who's gonna be displaced when we do that?
And then also just looking at, in the short term, what or how are we building resilient communities across Seattle and even further outside of that? Our campaign from last year was talking about turning our community centers into climate resilient hubs. So making sure our community centers are - have cooling and air filtration, because when this - we now at the past five years, we've had these huge heat domes and smoke events and - Hey, this is Seattle. This is Washington. Most people don't have air conditioning or air filtration. We're just suffocating in our homes - where do people go? Where do our elders go? Where do our children go to breathe clean, cool air? And so how are we preparing ourselves for the effects of climate change? So turning our community centers into resilience hubs, making sure our libraries - places where people congregate naturally or go in emergencies - how are we making sure that they are prepared?
[00:29:11] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - that completely makes sense. Now you talk about electrifying the Port. Is that all of the Port facilities? Is that cruise ships themselves? What does that look like?
[00:29:24] Shemona Moreno: And even that's - electrifying the Port - that's, like you said, there's so many possibilities there. In the past, we have done some work on cruise ships and being - We don't want this to be a place where we have these cruise ships the size of gigantic buildings coming in and dirtying up the Sound. It also looks like making sure that the trucks going in and out of the Port, trains - they're not transporting or using fossil fuels. So those are things that you can look at. It's making sure that when boats do come in, that they're plugging into shore power and not just running their engines and all of the toxic waste that just spills out of these boats.
[00:30:03] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, many recent studies have - or some recent studies - have indicated that cruise ships are very, very polluting vehicles. They emit a ton of toxins and pollutants, and they just sit there spewing for a while. And lots of people are starting to take exception to that, being that they're breathing the air.
[00:30:23] Shemona Moreno: They don't need to be doing that. There are - we have resources and I believe even our Port, to some degree, is electrified that they can plug in. But for some reason, I think there are times that they don't. Why is that allowed to happen? What does it look like to expand that to all of our ports? And what does that look like to scale that to other ports - in Tacoma, poor Tacoma - what does it look like to repair a lot of the harm that's happened in these cities and make sure we don't, in the future, that's not happening again?
Yeah, but I'm by no means an expert on what electrifying the Port looks like. So there's still a lot of research and partnership building and reaching out that we need to do. I'm sure there's already a ton of organizations that are focused on that right now. And what does it look like for 350 Seattle to be in partnership with those organizations, and how do we fit in, and what niche do we fill?
[00:31:13] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You mentioned earlier that it's important to recognize how crucial so many other social and economic struggles in our community are, and how fighting climate change is tied to fighting those things. Why is that the case? Why is it so important?
[00:31:36] Shemona Moreno: It's so important because when you think about it, you're - how do you possibly separate anything? Everything is so intertwined - the intersections of so many different issues - it's really hard to solve one without even talking about another. And so the way we need to - and I wouldn't want to - What kind of planet? Yeah, the planet's cool, but if we're all still suffering and causing each other harm, what good is it having this clean air if we're still shooting each other in the streets, or people are dying from drug overdoses, or people don't have a home? We have to be solving all of that together so that when we do achieve this just transition - this regenerative economy - that all of our basic needs are being met, people are doing work that they want to be doing, that they care about doing, and that everyone - it feels like they are part of something that is strong and beautiful. That's what holds me. I want something that's strong and beautiful and that everyone is - there's purpose and power for everyone. And in order to do that, you can't just pick - I'm only gonna worry about planting trees and not care about whether or not someone has a home. Or the fact that just - Oh, I only care about this thing, but totally disregard all these other issues. And also - just as for me and a lot of our organizers is, we're not just - there's not just one thing that I care about, there's many things that I care about. And everyone is that way. And so there's gotta be - we have to approach our campaigns really thinking about the different intersections and the impacts that we have when we fight for them.
[00:33:10] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that absolutely makes sense. And if people wanna get involved in 350 Seattle, or in some of the issues that you've talked about, what can they do?
[00:33:20] Shemona Moreno: Getting involved with 350 is pretty easy. You can find our - on our website, you can sign up to get involved. And we have - right now we do a monthly intro to 350 where we talk a little bit about who we are, where we came from, what our vision and plan is. And ways you can get involved - that looks like joining a campaign, looks like joining a different project that we have. There's also community building spaces that we have that you can join. We have our artful activism crew that create the art and joy for our movement - and not just for 350 Seattle - we create a lot of art for a lot of our partner organizations as well. And it's such a low, easy way to get involved. You show up in a community space - there's music, there's food, and you make art - and there's no skills needed. So that's - I always like - that's the best way to start getting involved 'cause then you start to learn about all the different campaigns in a very low stakes way.
And then we have things for people who wanna do more of the backend stuff. We have a ton of - I call them my spreadsheet nerds - and they are gonna save the world with one spreadsheet at a time. There's ways you can plug in and - I-only-have-a-couple-hours-a-week to I-actually-have-a-ton-of-time and I wanna get involved. And getting involved in 350 Seattle - really we try to make it more of a community space. So it's not necessarily - I'm gonna show up for one day and do my thing and then I leave. No, you kinda get - we wanna encourage you to get to know someone, to learn about the different aspects of all of the work that we do, even if you are just focused in one campaign role. We really wanna encourage people to level up on themselves to become leaders and organizers. Whether you stay with 350 Seattle or not, we wanna skill people up to go out and make change in their communities. But yeah, check us out on our website.
[00:35:14] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Thank you so much for spending this time with us today and informing us, and we look forward to following the work that you do from here on out. Thank you very much, Shemona.
[00:35:25] Shemona Moreno: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
[00:35:26] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank! They start with updates on legislation covering housing, education funding, repeals of Eyman initiatives, and gender affirming care and the budget.
They continue with a chat about the upcoming end of the Department of Justice consent decree with the Seattle Police Department and the context surrounding it, as well as contention between Seattle City Council members over a proposal to limit late fees to $10.
Crystal and Robert finish with a discussion of how confusion and contention within and between organizations and a mismanaged budget may lead to hundreds of people being ousted from shelter.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank, at @cruickshank.
Resources
Standing Up to the Status Quo with Bothell Mayor Mason Thompson from Hacks & Wonks
Final steps for Washington state's middle housing bill
Proposed Senate bill raising property tax cap to 3% angers WA republicans | Washington | thecentersquare.com
Washington lawmakers buck trend of anti-trans bills
WA House passes bill to make drug possession a misdemeanor | Crosscut
With 10 days to go, some bills fall by the wayside in Olympia | The Seattle Times
VICTORY! Washington State House passes NPI's bill to repeal Tim Eyman's push polls
Abolitionists and Reformers Agree on Something! - The Stranger
Council Committee Waters Down Bill to Cap Late Fees at $10 for Renters - The Stranger
As Homeless Agencies Bicker Over Blame, Time Runs Out for Hundreds Living in Hotels - PubliCola
No Clear Solution for Hotel Evictions After Chaotic Homelessness Board Meeting; Budget Decision Postponed - PubliCola
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Bothell Mayor Mason Thompson about what got him engaged in public service, what issues are top of mind in Bothell, and how he approaches making meaningful change when the system is biased to keep things the same.
Mayor Thompson believes that continuing as we always have will only make our current problems worse, that it’s impossible to make everyone happy, and chooses to prioritize real fixes even in the face of opposition from those comfortable with the status quo. He makes the case for diversified zoning in Bothell as a solution to multiple problems his community faces - creating affordable housing, minimizing ballooning infrastructure costs associated with sprawl, relieving upward pressure on taxes, improving traffic conditions, and addressing climate change.
The conversation wraps up with a call to action for those who are empathetic, curious, and driven to make the world a better place - to plug in, to not underestimate themselves, to not overestimate those in power, and to have confidence in listening to and advocating for their community.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Mayor Mason Thompson at @electmasont.
Mayor Mason Thompson
Mason is the Mayor of Bothell. He grew up in the area, went to the University of Washington, and stayed home to raise his family in Bothell. He found politics a few years ago, and after getting involved quickly realized how much local government needs to change and how resistant the system is to change. So he spends a lot of time talking about issues like housing and transportation to highlight how change is not just necessary, it's beneficial. He's finishing up his first term in office and running for his first re-election this year.
Resources
City of Bothell
“Ambitious Planning and a Decade of Growth Are Transforming Downtown Bothell” by Natalie Bicknell Argerious from The Urbanist
“Thompson captures Bothell City Council post by 5 votes” by Jerry Cornfield from Everett Herald
“Bothell Legalizes Duplexes on Corner Lots and Trims Red Tape” by Stephen Fesler from The Urbanist
“Bothell Preserves Main Street Pilot, Discarding Arguments About Hurting Transit” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
“Bothell Finds Its Long-Term Vision for a Citywide Bike Plan” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
If you know me, you know that I'm very excited for our conversation today with our guest: the mayor of Bothell, Mason Thompson. Welcome to the program.
[00:01:04] Mayor Mason Thompson: Thank you, Crystal. It's really fun to be here. I really enjoy listening to the show, so it's cool to be on this side of the fence too.
[00:01:10] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. I appreciate it. I have been following you for quite some time - haven't known you personally, but have followed - as you were running, and what you've been doing while mayor, and have just found it really inspiring and interesting. I think starting out - I'm just curious and I think a lot of people are curious about what got you interested in public service.
[00:01:33] Mayor Mason Thompson: I think it is everybody's responsibility to do whatever they can to make the world a better place. And not everybody can, and this looks different for everybody - it's not an expectation I'm putting on people, but I feel a pretty deep conviction that that's my responsibility. And there were basically two things that got me involved in city politics the first go around. The first is that the City purchased a former golf course, and I thought there should be mountain bike trails there. So I joined the Parks Board knowing that I didn't have any decision-making authority, but it gave me access to the conversation and kind of thought - Hey, what can I do with this? Let's just run an experiment and see if I can make this happen. The other thing that happened right around the same time is Donald Trump got elected. And that's just one of those moments in time that make you realize that there is nobody riding in on a horse to save us. And if we don't all do everything that we can to make the world a better place, then people like him do. So I got involved with the City on the Parks Board because I wanted to see mountain bike trails. And then I got involved with the 1st LD as a PCO because I wanted to get involved on the partisan side as well. And because of reasons, nine months later I got asked to run for city council and said yes, and here we are.
[00:02:50] Crystal Fincher: Nice. So what is Bothell like? What's the lay of the land in Bothell?
[00:02:55] Mayor Mason Thompson: Bothell is a suburb that is far enough from the core that we haven't seen housing prices go up to a point where everybody who wants to change things has mostly been excluded. So we're in a really cool position where we have the ability to do things that are a little different that involve some change. And we've seen this since well before I got involved in local politics - our downtown has changed quite a bit and I wasn't in any way involved in that, but I'm also grateful it happened even though the people that did that aren't my traditional allies. So we have a bunch of people in Bothell that want to change the world and want to actually meaningfully address the biggest challenges we face, which involves change. There's no way to status quo our way out of our problems. So I'm really fortunate that I'm surrounded by a lot of really incredibly talented people up here that want to make change and want to make the world a better place for our kids.
[00:03:51] Crystal Fincher: So what was running for office in Bothell like?
[00:03:55] Mayor Mason Thompson: It was terrible. Running for office sucks. My opponent had every advantage - a lot of money, hired great consultants - I did not have a consultant when I ran. And I knew that the only path I had to success was just to work really hard. So I knocked on doors all year - I set my schedule up so I could do it. And on election night, I was down about 86 votes, I think. And so I had the whole ballot chasing experience - three days before certification, we were actually tied for a day. I get to tell the story about how I was knocking on doors trying to get people to cure their ballots, and somebody said on that exact day - Well, I didn't think my vote would actually make a difference. And I got to tell him - Sir, if you had voted right now, your vote would be the difference in this race because as of today, we're tied and certification is in a couple of days. So I ended up winning by 5 votes - we had two recounts because Bothell is in King and Snohomish County. And I didn't find out I won until the middle of December sometime. So I feel like I got the full experience, and I'm ready for an easier experience this go around 'cause that all sucked - but here we are.
[00:05:04] Crystal Fincher: Here we are. And that's really interesting and really curious - sometimes people have this romanticized idea of running for office and it's tough. It's a tough thing to do. Did you learn anything, or did your perspective change or broaden as a result of talking to so many residents while you were running?
[00:05:24] Mayor Mason Thompson: Absolutely. And I tell candidates now that I think it's the most important thing they can do - not just to get elected, but so you truly understand where your community is at and what people think about things. And the great thing about canvassing and knocking on doors is people aren't self-selected by who shows up to council meetings. So you're not getting the standard group of people that know council meetings exist, that have the spare time to do it, that care about certain issues in the community. You get, I think, a much broader perspective of where your community is at. So when I came on board, I had some pretty decent convictions around where my community was at and that gave me a lot more confidence to actually advocate for change because I think the community is behind a lot of the things I care about.
[00:06:11] Crystal Fincher: So what does the community care about? What are the issues that are top of mind in Bothell?
[00:06:18] Mayor Mason Thompson: I'm gonna back up a second because you said running for office people have this romanticized idea of - and running for office for me was mostly knocking on doors and hearing everybody complain about the things they don't like. That is what running for office was. And the two things that really bubbled up to the top that everybody likes is the fact that housing is really completely inaccessible to almost everybody that hasn't acquired it a long time ago. And whether or not you have housing, you have kids, you have family - you know somebody that's trying to acquire housing right now and no matter how bad you think it is, it's probably worse. The other thing that people talk about a lot is, frankly, the inconvenience of our transportation system. And they don't always say that. They'll say things like, "I can't find anywhere to park. It takes me 20 minutes to get to the freeway. Traffic is terrible." And the inherent inconvenience of everybody getting around in cars is something that everybody recognizes and also something that I feel like we need to address - because we've already paved almost 18% of Bothell for people to drive on, and I think that's enough. And we should do better - not just try the same things even harder than we already have - because those things have caused all of the problems that people told me they don't like when I ran.
[00:07:39] Crystal Fincher: How has the reaction been to the approach that you're taking?
[00:07:44] Mayor Mason Thompson: Not universally positive. Anytime you want to make change, you're going to rile some feathers, especially folks that have been involved in creating the status quo or folks that benefit from it. But honestly, I think that the general electorate is a pretty long way ahead of where most elected officials and most government structures are in terms of the actual things we need to do to change our problems. And when you have a quick second to chat with somebody and you can ask them what they really care about, everybody wants something to change. And all of our systems are set up to bias toward keeping things exactly the same. Mostly, I think people are pretty on board with a lot of the things I want to do and I hope that, because I'm taking everything I learned from them when I knocked on a lot of doors and just putting that into practice.
[00:08:35] Crystal Fincher: So that's interesting that you talk about - whenever you want to change, obviously some people are not going to be happy about it and there's going to be some opposition. We see in a lot of jurisdictions and in a lot of different ways, leaders who run on principles who say they truly believe in making change and they have a vision on what could happen. But when opposition comes, they fold. How do you approach still maintaining your values, working despite opposition to achieve the kind of change that you want?
[00:09:11] Mayor Mason Thompson: The governor recently quoted John Lovick as having said something like, "The only thing we hate more than the way things are is the possibility that those things might change." And change is scary, change people see as loss, and change is unfortunately also the only way that we're going to actually meaningfully address any of our problems. And fundamentally, I think that is the job of every elected official - is to meaningfully address the biggest challenges that we face. But when you try to do that, it requires change and that is always uncomfortable because there are always things that we won't know about what the future looks like with change. And people will bring up all the different things that we don't know that could possibly happen, instead of prioritizing fixing the negative things that are happening right now. So you get all of these voices - some people saying, Do this, some people saying, Don't do this. And the easiest thing to do is to try to make everybody happy. And usually what we wanna hear is - Yeah, I care about all the things that you care about, but I also care about keeping things in a way that you're comfortable with. And it's really hard, I think it's impossible to walk that line. So I just don't try - I am here to make the world a better place.
And I will happily tell people my convictions around righting historic wrongs around climate, around actually fixing some of the problems that we have. And I'm not here to say anything negative about the path that other people take. But I will also say that when you do run for office and you win, there's a significant amount of pressure to go along to get along. There's the cool kids elected club, and you go to different organizations that are groups of cities and everybody circles the wagons. And it's really, I think, a way for people to belong to something, which is important, which is something we all care about. But I keep my eye on the prize and think that my job is to meaningfully address the biggest challenges we face. And there's no way to make everyone happy. So I'm not gonna try.
[00:11:20] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. There really is no way to keep everyone happy, but making changes certainly can keep people happier over the long-term - seems like you're absolutely willing to do that. You talked about housing. What is the current housing situation in Bothell? What's your split between homeowners and renters, and home prices? What is the housing situation in Bothell right now?
[00:11:43] Mayor Mason Thompson: The median single-family - or the median home price, not single-family home - the median home price in Bothell, I think, is just under a million dollars right now. It was a little over a year ago. And if you've got $200,000 to put down and can afford a $5,000/month house payment, that's attainable for you. And if you can't - good luck, I guess - move somewhere else. And we reserve about 65% of our land right now for the most expensive housing type that is the most expensive for the City to upkeep, that pushes tax pressure upwards because the maintenance cost for that built environment is really high. And those areas produce the most children and having children is creating demand for new housing. And we limit our growth mostly to the 35% of the area where we allow different housing types. And I'm working really hard to change that because that's at the root of everything that my community told me they cared about. If you want traffic to get better, the answer is not to push everybody out farther apart and only allow one type of thing in the neighborhood. All that's doing is requiring people to drive farther on your roads, which is more maintenance costs, which is more traffic, and you get all of people's cars and none of their humanity. If we allow people to live there, we get everything that makes us human, including probably a car or two, because that's the way that we've decided we want people to get around.
[00:13:12] Crystal Fincher: That's an interesting talking point. And I think Seattle, certainly in King County - largest city in the county, largest city in the state - and has a finite amount of land that can be built within. That's different than a lot of suburbs in the area where it is possible to build out. The challenges come with sprawl when you build out. What are the economic impacts, the impacts to city infrastructure? What is the cost of continuing to not use your land effectively and efficiently, and continue to expand and build single-family homes and developments seemingly without end?
[00:13:57] Mayor Mason Thompson: Before I get into the costs, I guess I'll just say that everything that we don't like about the way things are is caused by the decisions that we've made in the past. And if we keep everything the way that it is right now, what's gonna happen is all of our problems are gonna keep getting worse. And we have a ton of problems - every city does. I'm not aware of any city that has an actual plan to maintain their roads over the long term. We have what's called a Safe Streets and Sidewalks Levy, and we have enough roads in Bothell to reach to Spokane. And those are just our city-owned roads, not the three or four different state highways that go through town. And those were all built out - about half of Bothell was built out when it was unincorporated. Most of Bothell was built out - '70s, '80s - and we're reaching the end of that infrastructure life cycle. And we have a levy that is around, I think, a third of the total property taxes that people pay to the City. And almost all of that, we're just using to maintain roads - and it's not enough. So the more people drive, the more they are traffic - because traffic is just people driving cars - but there's also a pretty significant infrastructure cost that we're gonna have to find a way to pay for someday.
And when you're in my position, going back to the voters and asking for more money every couple of years - that's not a great, it's not great for your career prospects. So one of the things I'm really interested in doing is trying to solve multiple problems at once - where we allow more housing in between all of the other housing that already exists on roads that we already have an obligation to maintain, and we can realize more tax revenue per acre in the land that we have without requiring any more infrastructure. And so if you can add revenue and reduce the amount of added costs, then we've got a chance at structurally fixing this thing that is broken. And we had a company called Urban3 come out and do a land evaluation for Bothell. And we know that in Bothell, the average fourplex kicks off double the tax revenue per acre that the average single-family home does. And most of those fourplexes were built in 40s, 50s - back when they were legal - and they're old and run down. And the single-family homes are a lot newer, a lot nicer, and that fourplex still outperforms the single-family home from a tax revenue per acre. It doesn't matter - I guess the cost of the road frontage and maintaining it is the same no matter how many people live behind it. And the more people that live behind it, the more hands we have on deck to help pay the bills - and many hands make light work.
[00:16:28] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So what are you doing to try and make and keep housing more affordable in Bothell?
[00:16:36] Mayor Mason Thompson: I guess the first step is simply opening up that 65% of Bothell's residential land that we've deemed untouchable for any future development. We have a middle housing code amendment that's going on in parallel with what's going on at the state right now. And we're paying pretty close attention to what's going on with the state, because - boy, if they pass something, it'll be a whole lot easier for us. But if they don't, we're ready, we're working on it. And honestly, just making more modest housing types legal to build. This isn't a requirement - we're not making it illegal to build a single-family home. But if somebody wants to build something more modest, I don't see why they shouldn't be able to. So we also have some different growth centers in town that we're looking at, and we have our comp plan coming up. And we are looking at different ways to integrate residential and commercial to reduce the amount of times people have to get in their car. 'Cause there's really only two ways to make traffic better - either people take fewer trips in their car, or they have to drive less for the trips that they do take.
So when I look at how to make all of our problems better - allowing infill housing and building more housing in between all the housing that already exists makes housing less expensive and makes traffic better, because people have to drive fewer miles and take fewer trips in their car. It reduces the upward pressure on taxes because we have more folks to help pay the bills. Another thing about infill housing - we are limited in property taxes to raising it 1% per year. Inflation was 10% last year. So the City took a huge haircut, bigger than we normally do. And we need to figure out how we're gonna pay for stuff, and how we're gonna reverse this upward pressure on property taxes that we have 'cause nobody likes that. And when we build new housing - that's not subject to the 1% - we get to take all of that. So we've really got a way to address almost all of our biggest issues - and I haven't even touched on the climate impacts, my gosh. But just by allowing more housing closer to all the other housing, we touch just about every issue that people in Bothell find important.
[00:18:44] Crystal Fincher: Do most people live and work in Bothell? Do they commute out and drive back? What is that situation like?
[00:18:52] Mayor Mason Thompson: Most people commute out and drive back in Bothell. We do have a pretty substantial group that lives in Bothell, but they're definitely a minority - that live and work. And we have people that go in every direction. We have people that go north toward Everett, Snohomish County - think Boeing employees. We have a significant amount that will take 522 into Seattle. And we have a significant amount that work on the Eastside. But we're mostly a commuter suburb, and we have also a significant amount of people that live outside of Bothell that come into Bothell to work. Now, if we can build housing for those people - to me, that looks like a capture opportunity, because we already have their cars. They're already driving here, they're already parking here, they're already adding maintenance costs to our roads every time they drive through it. Why shouldn't we realize some tax revenue and some of their humanity at the same time? One thing I think gets lost in the conversation about adding more residents is that - yeah, when more residents come, they're probably gonna have cars. And they might be traffic sometimes, like you, because they drive them. But that's not all you get from them. You get more kids for your kids to play with. You get more people to go on a walk when you see. You get more folks to hang out on long summer nights, and maybe crack a beer, and chat with a neighbor. People don't just bring the things you don't like. They bring their full humanity, and I think that more people makes for a stronger community not a weaker one.
[00:20:25] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So what approach are you taking to try and capture more of those people? You talk about infill housing, allowing more housing. Is there anything happening on just the attracting businesses front? What does economic development look like in Bothell?
[00:20:43] Mayor Mason Thompson: Economic development - Bothell has decided over the years that we wanted to stay this quiet suburb, that we don't wanna be a place where all the chain stores go. So we don't have - I think, fortunately - as much sort of strip mall retail as a lot of our neighbors do. I'm keenly interested in small neighborhood businesses, or even just small businesses in a downtown neighborhood - and having more small retail space so we can have that incubator where residents who wanna start a business can do so in Bothell. This drives me nuts because we have two residents that I know personally that have started businesses in the last couple of years - one went to Mill Creek and one went to Woodinville. They both wanted to be in Bothell, but we just don't have small, accessible retail space. So I think that's a big part of economic development.
Another part is that we need to go out and tell the story about why people like living in Bothell so we can try to attract larger businesses. Because on a budget economic development side, they make a much bigger difference. We have the Canyon Park Business Center with a huge biotech hub. We have North Creek with a lot of different technology in it. And I want to see more larger companies try to utilize those spaces and take advantage of, honestly, a lot of the different housing opportunities that are coming to Bothell and the fact that people like living here - so we can get more economic development and more money from those folks so we can, again, reduce that upward pressure on taxes that we see from current residents, and pay to make Bothell a cooler, more vibrant city.
[00:22:13] Crystal Fincher: How do businesses respond to attempts to make Bothell more livable, more walkable, suitable for people using all different types of mobility options? Are they pretty welcoming with that? Are they open to removal of parking and more mobility infrastructure? How has that been?
[00:22:35] Mayor Mason Thompson: Businesses follow people and businesses want to land someplace that their folks want to live - that is attractive - because that's gonna help them compete for a scarce resource of talent. And we have a lot of talent in the area, but we also have a lot of companies competing for it. So the folks that I've talked to want a place where their people can afford to live close to home. I forget what the number is, but there's some massive dollar amount difference that you have to earn to have the same level of happiness depending on the length of your commute. So they want to go someplace that is - A) there's enough population nearby that likes living there so that they can have employees that want to work for them and want to take advantage of a short commute.
Parking minimums - I have yet to talk to a business that is really excited about us making them subsidize our problem against their will. And parking minimums are a tax that we place on housing and businesses that we use to subsidize getting more traffic and climate change - they're a bad deal. The promise is that - I'll back up a little bit - nobody likes other people's cars. Their car is the only righteous car, and other people's cars are traffic and in the parking spot that they want to take. Everybody agrees on this. The problem is that when we say our solution is that we're gonna mandate people to give more space to cars, what we get is more cars. If we turned Bothell City Hall into a pizza restaurant and we gave away a thousand pizzas a day, do you think Bothell would eat more or less pizza?
[00:24:14] Crystal Fincher: They would eat more pizza.
[00:24:15] Mayor Mason Thompson: Right? It's pretty obvious. So if we force people to build a lot more parking spots and we force a lot more infrastructure for cars and then we give it away to them for free, do we think people are gonna use more or less of it? It's the same question. They're gonna use more. This idea that there's a fixed amount of demand for people driving is silly because if nobody ever built a road, we would not have any cars because there would be no place to drive them and then we would walk everywhere 'cause it would be easier to get around. So the problem is - is when we expect business to solve our problem of too many people's cars by creating more space for them, we really just make our problems worse. And it's not just the problem that we're trying to solve for there, it's all of our other problems. Because there's a finite amount of space in cities and we have to choose - what do we want here? Do we want parking here? Do we want housing here? Do we want businesses here? And every time you choose one thing, you say no to something else. So we haven't tried to address parking minimums citywide yet in Bothell - I personally believe that they are harmful and shouldn't exist.
[00:25:22] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. Now you referenced climate earlier - what is Bothell doing to try and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and pollution of all varieties?
[00:25:33] Mayor Mason Thompson: We're trying to make it legal to build more housing closer together. And it's not just the middle housing - we have a few different areas that we have recently upzoned quite a bit, like Canyon Park we finished the master plan up for, we've allowed micro housing citywide in the - I shouldn't say citywide - in that 35% that we allow people to do it in.
[00:25:51] Crystal Fincher: So you mentioned climate change earlier and the impacts that not allowing diverse types of housing - restricting development and the impact on both city budgets and climate change that has. What else is Bothell doing to address climate change and pollution?
[00:26:09] Mayor Mason Thompson: I don't want to minimize the impact that building more housing in between all of the other housing that exists has on climate. It is one of the best things that we can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and that's a big part of our strategy. We are also adopting the provisions of what used to be 1099 - I think it's 1181 this year - and we're doing that with a grant from Commerce. And we've also recently - over the last say, 5 or 10 years - preserved a lot of open space in Bothell. We have the Wayne Golf Course that I mentioned earlier, we have the North Creek Forest. There's another organization up in Snohomish County Bothell - there's a parcel land up there, Shelton View, that we haven't acquired but we are keenly interested in doing so if there's a path. So I will say from a preservation point of view, we're working on that. But also just an understanding that building more Bothell in between the Bothell that already exists - isn't just the best thing we can do to address our biggest problems that we see every day as a city, it's also the best thing that we can do for the long-term problem of climate change.
[00:27:14] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. What does homelessness look like in Bothell?
[00:27:19] Mayor Mason Thompson: I wasn't expecting this question. I think homelessness in Bothell looks a lot like it does in every other suburb - where Seattle is the only city that is trying to do something about it, so everybody goes there - we offload our homeless problem to Seattle because there are resources down there, and then we blame Seattle for the problem that we had a hand in creating. There's not a lot of visible homelessness in Bothell - a one-bedroom apartment I think is around $2,200-2,400 right now as a median rent, so the median rent isn't much different than in some of our bigger, traditionally more expensive neighborhoods. But again, homelessness is a housing problem. And I wanna be part of the solution to homelessness, regardless of whether or not there's a lot of visible homelessness in Bothell, because people are suffering and people need places to live. So I will just say that those micro units that we've allowed - those smaller, traditionally more affordable types of housing that don't cost as much to build - are a really, really, really important part of dealing with homelessness.
Because homelessness comes with a lot of comorbid effects - if I lived on the street, I might wanna do something to get away too. And I have an incredible amount of sympathy for those folks and want to build enough housing for them. I will also say that I ran the year Seattle is Dying came out, so I got a ton of questions when I was doorbelling about people that are homeless. And I'll just repeat my stock answer here to that question that I figured out over time - I am a man of faith, I'm a Christian. And if you look at the parable of the sheep and the goats, where Jesus really delineates who's with me and who's against me - Jesus doesn't talk about your theological beliefs, Jesus doesn't talk about how often you go to church. Jesus says - that which you have done to the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done also unto me. So Jesus said - Take care of the people in society that are the most vulnerable and have the most need. So if I see somebody waking up underneath a bridge with a needle in their arm, I see Jesus. And I will support policy that treats that person with all of the dignity and compassion that I would treat God.
[00:29:35] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, I think that's the way to be. We're in a time where there's a lot of people - a lot of people who even call themselves Christians - who don't take that view. And we're seeing attacks on the trans community, the entire LGBTQ+ community, different racial communities - and it is a scary fraught time for a lot of people. And not just in terms of rhetoric, but in terms of policy being passed in a lot of places. What is Bothell doing to make all of its residents feel welcome and included, and how is that going?
[00:30:17] Mayor Mason Thompson: There's always a temptation during interviews like this to highlight the things that you're doing really well, 'cause we all wanna make ourselves look good, right? I'm not sure we're doing enough, to be blunt. We have resolutions - we can make public statements supporting Black and Brown people, supporting the trans community, supporting these groups that are traditionally marginalized - but I don't know that we're doing enough. And that pains me greatly. I could just talk about housing here and how, quite frankly, anybody that is in a traditionally marginalized group typically has less money than people who look like me. So creating more housing is the answer to a lot of questions, but I don't wanna just lean on that all the time and pretend like that's enough. So if anybody's got any great ideas, I'm here for them. And we have a couple of councilmembers that have some lived experience with this, and I lean on them heavily when it's time to make decisions - because they understand this a lot more than I do.
[00:31:16] Crystal Fincher: So if someone is interested in getting involved in the community, involved in policy in Bothell - what advice would you give them?
[00:31:26] Mayor Mason Thompson: If you are empathetic, if you care about other people, if you're curious, if you wanna figure out why things are the way they are, and if you're willing to do the work - both to get elected as well as to change the world once you are - you are completely qualified to run for office. Because nobody has any idea what they're doing. We are all guessing, we are all faking it - because we are all trying to solve problems that there isn't a playbook for. The built environment that we have is less than a hundred years old. We've reached the point in time where we know what doesn't work about it. And this hasn't been done before. We know things need to change, but this isn't a math problem. This isn't two plus two equals four. This is a really messy process - trying to unwind a whole lot of things that are really expensive to deal with and really problematic, and it requires a lot of change that makes people uncomfortable. If you're empathetic, if you're curious, and if you're willing to do the work - do something, do whatever you can do to make the world a better place. And if that looks like bringing a meal to a neighbor when they're having a rough day, do that. If that looks like running for office, do that. But plug in where you can and start doing the work. And if you start doing the work of trying to make the world a better place, other things find you at that point in time. So I would just say to anybody listening - don't underestimate yourself and don't overestimate the people that are already sitting in these seats because we don't know what we're doing. We're trying to figure it out. We're trying to make the best decisions we can to make the world a better place and we need help.
[00:33:07] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I appreciate you bringing that up, especially that - hey, the people sitting in the seats of leadership right now don't necessarily have all the answers. I think a lot of people are used to seeing City of Seattle, our Legislature, Congress, and they see that they have these full staffs and policy people and an office full of people to help them wrap their arms around policy. That is not the case in suburbs - you are rolling up alone. It's considered a part-time job. In reality, if you're doing a good job at it, it usually is much more than a part-time job. And usually there's a stipend of less than $10,000/year, I think mostly less than $5,000/year. Yet we're tasking these people that we elect with managing sometimes multi-billion dollar budgets with that, and people are just rolling up with the knowledge that they have or had and doing whatever they're doing. There is not a lot of guidance. There's no person who has all of the expertise and all of the research and policy documents ready to hand to you. You have to seek that out to yourself, which is also a note - to people advocating for policy, advocacy organizations - that my goodness, if you get involved in suburbs, you can make such a huge difference and so many don't. What advice would you give to electeds at the local level - other mayors, other people on city councils - for the approach that they should take, or advice that you have for them on making the kind of change that they ran to make?
[00:34:42] Mayor Mason Thompson: Oh, you're gonna get me in trouble here. Do your best to meaningfully address the biggest issues we face. There's this idea that there's a difference between local issues and state issues and federal issues. And I have never heard anybody talk about policy that they support by saying - a different level of bureaucracy should handle this. And if we care about meaningfully addressing the biggest challenges that we face, then we are gonna have to change things. But you just laid out all of the reasons why that's so hard and why the system itself is so biased toward keeping things exactly the way they are right now. We hire part-time amateurs to make our most important policy decisions in almost every jurisdiction around here. And if you think about the experts that we're listening to - senior staff who give council their advice - they've been doing this for a long time. If you're a director at a city, you've had a really good career and you're really good at doing things the way that we're doing them right now. And most part-time councilmembers aren't gonna show up on a random Tuesday night and disagree with subject matter experts that have been doing this for decades, even if we know that we have to change things in order to get different results - because we don't know what we're doing, we rely on them. So I guess this isn't really advice, it's more just if you listen - well, this part's gonna be advice. If you listen to your community and you know that things need to change, have the courage to follow through and to actually change things instead of just making sympathetic noises toward our biggest problem and then fighting to keep everything exactly the same.
And I'm incredibly sympathetic to people in different jurisdictions because our job interview process is nine months long, it's all done in public. People will take anything you've ever said and try to take it out of context and use it against you. It requires an incredible amount of privilege. And the more wealthy your network, the easier it is to raise money. The more flexible your job is, the easier it is to both get and do the job. Folks in our community who are struggling just to get by - and there's a lot of them because of the way things are right now - they're busy trying to survive. Everybody should do everything they can to change the world, but if you're busy trying to survive - you can't do anything to change the world and that's okay. So I guess the advice that I would give is - recognize the amount of privilege that you have. And when the voices that we talk to - mostly as people who own homes, people who are comfortable, people who have the privilege to be able to do this work that pays us next to nothing, and will take as much time as you give to it - all of our friends are the same way. My friends are all pretty comfortable in life. So if we listen to the concerns of the comfortable and we only address the concerns of the comfortable, we're missing the biggest problems we face as society. Because all those big problems that I talk about, I don't face them - my life's pretty good. But we wanna actually make change, we have to make change, and we're gonna have to make some people uncomfortable - but I think it's really important that we talk about why, and we talk about shared values, and we talk about who we want to be rather than what we want to do.
Because I'm really petty and what I want to do is not always who I want to be, but who I want to be is somebody that cares about the people in society who need it the most. I wanna be bold enough to be able to make change that's necessary. I want my kids to be able to afford to live in Bothell - if they want to - down the road. I want to leave them a habitable planet. The way things are have caused all the things that are wrong with it. And this idea that we can nibble at the edges and not fundamentally change the way we do things and expect different results is wrong. So I don't even remember what question I was talking about - I was rolling and you didn't stop me - but I guess just have the courage to make change. And I know that it's really hard, and I know that people show up and yell at you in council meetings - and I don't know every other community, so I am really reticent to criticize any other elected official. But if there's one thing that I wish I had more company with, it's the comfort in actually being with people that are comfortable to actually change the things that are causing the biggest problems we face. And that is unfortunately in short supply.
[00:39:28] Crystal Fincher: Completely agree. Thank you so much for your insight today, information - glad we get to learn more about you and Bothell. Thank you so much, Mayor Mason Thompson.
[00:39:40] Mayor Mason Thompson: It's still weird to hear that title, but thank you very much, Crystal. And thank you for the work you do - I really appreciate it and I really enjoy listening to the show, and I'll probably listen to this one with a little more critical eye than most of them.
[00:39:52] Crystal Fincher: Much appreciated. Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On today’s Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by political consultant and principal partner at Prism West, Riall Johnson!
Crystal and Riall discuss a controversy in Burien following a homeless encampment clearing, because another encampment (predictably) reappeared a block away because the people without housing still lacked housing, and homelessness is caused by a lack of accessible or affordable housing. The King County Council approved a $3.5M contract to rent 50 beds from the SCORE facility in Des Moines, WA, despite Executive staff saying that it won't make much of a difference. They also discuss the seemingly lackluster results from the new bonuses designed to attract more SPD officers. They end with a discussion of the over 30 Seattle City Council candidates and how the upcoming election might unfold.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Riall Johnson, at @RiallJohnson.
Riall Johnson
Riall began working in political campaigns in 2012 after he retired from a 9 year career as a professional football player. His first campaign was as a field organizer in Cincinnati, Ohio for President Obama's re-election campaign, which was also where he started his professional football career when he was drafted to the Bengals in the 6th round in 2001. Riall's focus in politics has always been on the field side of grassroots campaigns. He has knocked thousands doors for campaigns in six different states, organized the collection of over 900,000 signatures, and created grassroots volunteer groups that are still self-sustaining today.
For the past few years, Riall has been focusing his work in his home state of Washington, where he has led impactful campaigns focused on gun violence prevention, police accountability, and criminal justice reform. After directing ballot initiative I-940, Riall founded Prism West (formerly Prism Washington) in 2018 to focus on getting progressive candidates of color in office to increase representation in government and bring real transformative policy to fruition. Many of his clients have broken many barriers by becoming the first of their demographic to be elected to their offices. He is currently working on bringing rent control back to the State of California.
Resources
The Case for the Crisis Care Centers Levy with King County Executive Dow Constantine from Hacks & Wonks
After Removing Encampment, Burien Considers the Options: Provide Shelter, Ban Camping, or Both?
Burien faces hard choices around homeless encampment | The Seattle Times
King County Commits Millions to Make Jail Slightly Less Crowded - The Stranger
Slog AM: Trump Indictment Drops Today, Harrell Drags on Police Alternatives, Election Day in Other Places - The Stranger
Slog AM: SPD Hiring Lags Despite Big Bonuses, WA Stocks Up on Abortion Pills, More Cringe from Elon - The Stranger
On this midweek show, Executive Dow Constantine fills Crystal in on why King County voters should support the Crisis Care Centers Levy by voting Yes on Proposition 1 this April. The proposed levy would raise funds to address our urgent behavioral health crisis by building five new crisis care centers across the County, stabilize and restore residential treatment beds, and cultivate the behavioral health workforce pipeline.
Crystal and Executive Constantine discuss how the levy is critical to our overall public safety and public health response in that people who currently may end up in jail or the hospital as a result of a mental health crisis would instead have an appropriate and effective place to go to seek help. The win-win of implementing this upstream resource is that people will receive much-needed care and our strained criminal legal and healthcare systems will be relieved of cases they are ill-equipped to handle. The conversation then digs into the practical details of building a sustainable workforce and shoring up community-based facilities for those with significant behavioral health challenges.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find more information about the Crisis Care Centers Levy at https://yeskcprop1.com/.
Resources
Crisis Care Centers Levy Fact Sheet
Building Behavioral Health | Yes on King County Proposition 1
“King County Council votes to put tax funding crisis centers on April ballot” by Michelle Baruchman from The Seattle Times
“King County measure would put $1.25 bn over a decade toward behavioral health crises” by Guy Oron from Real Change News
“To Help Kids Like Mine, Pass the King County Crisis Care Centers Levy” by Brittany Miles for PubliCola
“King County proposes moving people from Seattle, Kent jails to Des Moines site” by David Gutman and Sydney Brownstone from The Seattle Times
“ACLU sues King County over Seattle jail conditions” by Sydney Brownstone from The Seattle Times
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
So today I'm thrilled to welcome King County Executive Dow Constantine to talk about a very important levy that's going to be on all of our ballots this April - the Crisis Care Centers Levy. Welcome, Executive Constantine.
[00:01:08] Executive Dow Constantine: Thanks, Crystal, for having me.
[00:01:09] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So what is this levy? What does this do?
[00:01:13] Executive Dow Constantine: So there's a need - an unmet need in our community. We all see it - in our families and with our friends, in the streets, in the justice system. There is no walk-in treatment available for people - either mental health or addiction crisis - collectively behavioral health crisis. Further, we're losing the long-term residential treatment beds that were built, that were set up when the large state hospitals began to shut down in the '70s and '80s. And then we're really losing a lot of workers. Now I know this is a common story across the whole workforce right now, but behavioral health work has long been low-paid and it's always high stress. It demands a lot of you emotionally. And so people are not able to hang in there, especially on the wages that are paid.
So we have a behavioral health levy - the Crisis Care Centers Levy - and it does three things. First, it builds five walk-in clinics - crisis care centers for those in behavioral health crisis - one of them exclusively for youth. The rest would be distributed geographically around the county so that everyone could have access. Second, it begins to rebuild the stock of those residential treatment beds where you can stay indefinitely as you get treatment and begin to chart a path forward in life. And third, it supports the workforce by increasing wages and bringing apprenticeships and training and other supports that people need to dedicate themselves to this important work. Because as we say over and over, it takes people to treat people - buildings and programs are not enough. You have to have the people - educated, dedicated people - to do this work.
[00:02:49] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and that's so important. And talking about the need - you summed it up - this is critical for our overall public safety and public health response here. I know I have been in the situation - so many people have been in the situation - where we see someone who's clearly struggling with a behavioral health issue, but it doesn't seem like police are the appropriate response. They're not breaking the law, but they're clearly in crisis. Maybe they're scaring people around them. Maybe they're going through an episode and scared themselves. In a situation like that, how would it work with this new system - instead of someone being diverted to a jail, or calling the police, or using that kind of response?
[00:03:33] Executive Dow Constantine: Right. Right now, people may end up getting arrested and taken for booking - if in their crisis, they act out in a way that is illegal. They can end up being taken to the hospital emergency room - taking themselves, taking others - not the right place for people in behavioral health crisis, but many people end up essentially staying there and boarding - I call it - at the emergency room for long periods of time. They can end up often in the streets, and we've seen this time and again. When people are in crisis, they're no longer able to do the work that's required to stay housed and they can suddenly end up sleeping outside, which of course then just tends to exacerbate the problems that they're struggling with.
We're putting together a system where whether you decide that you need to go in and get help, or perhaps you're picked up for a petty crime and the police determine that what's really going on here is you seem to have a behavioral health challenge, or your family is desperate and needs a place to find you help because they're afraid you're gonna hurt yourself or others - they have a place to take you. And it's a place where for the first day, the first 23 hours, you can begin to get re-centered. They have experts there who can help you get past the immediate crisis, and then move into the other wing of this crisis care facility - where for the next two weeks, you can get diagnosed, understand what kind of treatment's going to be available, begin to plan your path forward. And that's - it's a no wrong front door approach. Anywhere you enter the system, somebody can bring you to this place and you can begin to get the help you need.
I will add one more thing, since you mentioned the criminal legal system. In Maricopa County, Arizona, they have a clinic like this - this is something that local governments are taking up in spots around the country because of the failure of the federal and state governments to step up. In Maricopa County last year, the police dropped off 28,000 people at the crisis care clinic - people who otherwise might have gone to jail or might have ended up out in the streets. And that is a really significant number. And we expect those kinds of numbers here as well.
[00:05:37] Crystal Fincher: Those are huge numbers. And I think most people at this point are looking around in our communities and saying, "Yeah, I can see where there's that kind of need." Will these centers be able to handle that kind of capacity? As you've mentioned, this is a result of longstanding decisions and policies that have gotten us here - neglecting systems or not investing appropriately in systems over decades, really. So we have this large backlog of need, pent up need, and an increasing ongoing need. Will this be appropriate to handle all of the need that exists?
[00:06:14] Executive Dow Constantine: I think it will be appropriate, but probably still insufficient - at least at the beginning. Remember, there's a lot of - as you say - pent up need. There's a lot of unmet need out there. Yes, in the streets. Yes, in the criminal legal system. Yes, in the hospitals. But also in homes across the county, in communities - rich and poor. Folks are struggling everywhere, and a lot of people find that they really have nowhere to turn. Even people of means, even people with insurance, even people with connections don't have a place for their loved one to go. So at the outset, it will not be enough - this is as much as we believe we can do as a county. I will say that two weeks ago, we were able to break ground on a new center in Kirkland that's modeled - it's on the same model. That one was funded by the state with some county money - ahead of this levy. And it's my hope that that will be able to - rather than being one of the five - that will be able to be a sixth clinic. But we're cobbling this together as best we're able - recognizing again that behavioral health challenges do not stop at city or county or state borders, and this should really be a national effort to meet a clear need of the people.
[00:07:22] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I saw the news of that facility - the groundbreaking on that facility in Kirkland. It looks like all of the surrounding cities are very excited about it and eager to get it going because the need is so great in the area.
[00:07:34] Executive Dow Constantine: Can I just mention something about that? 'Cause we often hear about communities or cities opposing the siting of human service facilities in their jurisdiction. And we're having battles over homeless housing, and battles over all sorts of things. But this seems to be a service that - across the political spectrum - is recognized as needed, as necessary, because everyone has this experience in their personal life. And I have to tell you that as I've been calling around raising support to get this levy passed, everyone I have talked to eventually gets to a personal story. My child, my sibling, my parent, my best friend had this thing happen to them - this crisis - and we didn't know what to do, we didn't know where to turn. Or we finally randomly found a lifeline and were able to get help for them, but that should be available for everyone. So the cities, like Kirkland and those northern cities, are really interested in having this facility sited locally.
[00:08:27] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I think - as you talked about in other situations - there have been varying responses to cities being excited or not excited about the location of services or hotels for the homeless. And developing that response and then having sometimes not positive feedback about where things are sited and located. But it seems like, with the five separate centers, that this is something that is gonna be geographically distributed and able to meet the needs of cities around this county. Was that part of the calculation as you were putting this together that went into looking at the variety of centers?
[00:09:05] Executive Dow Constantine: Very much - the need is everywhere. The upsurge in mental health challenges coming out of the COVID crisis is everywhere - it's across the county - fentanyl, and before that the prescription opioid and heroin challenges everywhere. And although it's visible in the homeless population, it's visible in the people who come into contact with the criminal legal system, you cannot find a community where there aren't stories of struggle and suffering - and yes, tragedy - anywhere in this county or in this country. And so this is something that - yeah, again, cities are excited about and we were excited to make sure that this was not just centered in Seattle, but it was going to be able to serve everyone across the county - 2.3 million people.
[00:09:48] Crystal Fincher: Now will this reduce strain? You talked about before - right now these people are winding up on the streets too often. They're also being caught up in the criminal legal system, which - with a behavioral health issue - doesn't really have the tools to address the root causes of behavioral health issues. Emergency rooms, and we hear all throughout our healthcare systems - they're being overburdened and people waiting longer and longer just for general or specialized appointments. Do you anticipate this easing the burden on some of those other systems?
[00:10:20] Executive Dow Constantine: Yes, it has to. And this clearly is a logical and sort of utilitarian response to these overburdening challenges of the hospital system, the justice system, the emergency medical telephone system, and the challenges we're seeing on the streets. But it's not only about that, because there are an awful lot of people who have a behavioral health challenge who don't fall into any of those categories - who've not come into contact with any of those systems, but they also have nowhere to turn. And there is this - again, quiet suffering happening in families and communities everywhere. I will tell you that this is the obvious missing element in a lot of the other work, frustrating work, that we're trying to do. How do we reduce the jail population? A huge percentage of people in jail have either an addiction or a mental health challenge, or very often both. How do we reduce homelessness? A lot of folks who are on the streets don't have a diagnosable challenge, but a very large percentage do. And to be able to get them the help they need so that they can get centered, get clear, and begin to exercise agency over their lives again is absolutely critical to solving this. The hospitals are constantly asking us for help because they are really overburdened. They cannot provide the services they're supposed to provide because so many people, because of a lack of options, are showing up at their door.
There's one crisis care center that is not open access in King County right now - it's run by the Downtown Emergency Service Center. You can be brought there by the police, or you can be brought there from a hospital - checked out of a hospital and checked in there. You cannot self-refer, your family can't bring you, your human services counselor can't bring you. And it doesn't have anywhere near the capacity that either the hospitals or the police would need to be able to deal with the challenge. I talked with an emergency medical worker - a firefighter - last week, and he was saying that just a huge percentage of the calls they receive are ultimately people who are simply in crisis. They're decompensating, as they say in the psychiatric world. They're having either withdrawal or overdose challenge. And these folks need somewhere to take people - they can't just continue to either bring them to the hospital or show up and then leave without providing them help.
[00:12:42] Crystal Fincher: So I think those are excellent points. I actually think you're right on target that it will reduce reliance on hospital system - on so many of our systems - that are overburdened, that we're trying to manage and deal with. We did hear recent news about a lawsuit from the ACLU for King County Jails, a new potential SCORE - Des Moines facility - contract for some spillover capacity with the Seattle Jail, King County Jails there. Do you anticipate this helping to reduce the need for those facilities and the inmates that we're sending to those facilities?
[00:13:19] Executive Dow Constantine: Yeah, yes. First of all, the highest priority is to relieve the suffering - to provide the help regardless of where you're interacting with the systems. But we have this enormous challenge with being required to accept people being booked into jail - ordered into jail by the courts, booked into jail by the cops from different jurisdictions - and we are overwhelmed. We don't have the personnel to be able to do what we agreed to 20 years ago under the Hammer agreement. Now we've been working with the ACLU - we believe we're in compliance with the agreement in the sense that we're doing everything we can to hire and accommodate people. But that has forced us to go out and try to rent more space - and the personnel that comes with it - to move people around in order to be able to comply with their demands.
The fact is that we have about a hundred people in the jail on any given day who are supposed to be in state custody because they've been ordered over for evaluation and restoration of their competency to stand trial. But the state doesn't have the capacity to take them - so they, instead of being out of our jail within a week, as is required by law - some people have been there for 7, 8, 9, 10 months and they're not getting better while they're there, they're not getting the services to restore their competency to stand trial, and they're causing our jail to be overcrowded. And it is just unacceptable. It's also costing us $10 million or more per year to deal with that state failure.
These are all results of the underinvestment in the behavioral health system. And also, if you want to broaden the aperture, underinvestment in the upstream measures that will cause people not to come into contact with the criminal legal system in the first place - including the work we're doing - Best Starts for Kids, diversion programs and other. It is - this is probably the single most obvious glaring void in the system - the lack of crisis care and long-term treatment capacity. And if we do this, I think we're going to be a long way down the road towards solving the problem with the jail system.
[00:15:19] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now you say - rightly - that you have to compensate and make up for the lack of capacity elsewhere, that is costing King County money. But with public health being such a core responsibility of the county, what went into making this a levy as opposed to funding it out of the budget?
[00:15:38] Executive Dow Constantine: Yeah, there's just no money. This would raise $1.25 billion over six years - that dwarfs anything we can do in the tiny sliver of the general fund that is available for discretionary spending. Most of the general fund - three quarters of it - is devoted to criminal legal system work mandated by the State of Washington. So we're left with about a quarter of our discretionary money to use for the elections process, the assessor's office, all the public health work that we do, all of the diversion to move people away from the criminal legal system, sexual assault and domestic violence victims' programs - all of the things that we, collectively as a community, think are important to do instead of using the hammer of the criminal legal system. And yet those are the things that are on the chopping block if we don't have enough funding in the general fund - because they are not required by state law.
[00:16:29] Crystal Fincher: How do you respond to people who say, "Okay, we're required to do some things by state law, but not everything. Maybe we opened up too many jail facilities, and maybe we're jailing too many people. Is there something that we can do with our sizable public safety budget to make some room?"
[00:16:47] Executive Dow Constantine: Yes - first off, we're not in charge of that - the courts order us to hold people and that is our job. The executive doesn't get to by fiat decide that some people leave the jail - the exception being when we had to maintain the jail population at a certain level because of the COVID emergency that I declared. But absent that emergency and the need to prevent overcrowding to prevent the spread of COVID in the jail, I'm outside of my authority to send people home. What we need to do is create these alternatives - starting with making sure that people are getting behavioral health treatment instead of booking at the jail - but also diversion programs, sending people into a setting where they can actually deal with their underlying challenges, and perhaps compensate their victims rather than going through an empty process that doesn't change them or the outcome for the person they victimized. And if we have enough of that capacity, we can begin to get the cops and the courts and the prosecutors and everyone else to start reducing the demand on the jail system.
I've said many times and I say it again - we have to close the downtown Seattle jail. It was opened in the 1980s. It was obsolete in terms of the model on which it was built the day it opened. It's very obsolete now and it is in the wrong place. You've got this jail - hulking jail - on one of the most valuable real estate opportunities in the entire Northwest. There could be hundreds of units of housing for people with varying incomes on that site. And instead there's this jail that adds nothing to the urban fabric and is built on the wrong model to start with - we've got to do better. And building this kind of capacity that we're talking about today is an essential, indispensable element of doing that.
[00:18:28] Crystal Fincher: I see. And so I want to talk a little bit more about - you said this does three things - creating the five new regional crisis care centers, preserving the residential treatment beds that are necessary, and growing the behavioral health workforce pipeline, which is crucial and critical. We can build buildings, but if we can't staff them and don't have the appropriate people to provide the services, it's all for naught. So how does this go about increasing the workforce and preparing the workforce?
[00:18:59] Executive Dow Constantine: So the idea is - first - that all of these human service agencies that receive government funding to provide behavioral health services are very strapped. They get reimbursed based on very unrealistic rates from the state and federal government - rates that often don't reflect the higher cost of living in Seattle and King County. So we will add to that funding to help raise up the floor for people and essentially change the standard for what the industry pays. This is the same thing we're having to do in childcare, for example, and elder care. All of these caring professions have been historically underpaid, historically disproportionately peopled by women and people of color. And they've been really not given the compensation that they need or deserve. And it is a matter of changing expectations. Changing expectations also means raising more money, which is what we're talking about doing here.
It's not just the compensation. It is also the path into this. You shouldn't have to go deeply into debt to be able to enter this profession. You should have some certainty about - once you commit yourself to this, having a job that you can work in. You should be able to progress in the profession if you choose to do that. And so we want to provide apprenticeship programs - we've already begun one with Service Employees International Union 1199 - they represent a lot of these workers. They will have continuing education investment. And then in the implementation plan for this, we'll be looking at the specific conditions, talking with workers about - What is it you really need? Do you need housing subsidy? Is that the thing that's most important? Do you need to be near transportation? What - is it about insurance? What are the things that could cause you to be able to take up this work and be able to do it sustainably?
[00:20:38] Crystal Fincher: And I guess follow-up question is that - that is all absolutely necessary. And these centers, in my opinion, certainly seem like they will help and help to fill this gap that so obviously exists. I have seen people question - okay, we get these centers and someone can get there and stabilize overnight. They can even potentially get a couple weeks of services, but some people are dealing with some significant challenge they're gonna take a while to work through. And so there needs to be some kind of handoff if we're gonna continue care and people are gonna get better. How does that process work, and does that capacity exist? Does this help address that capacity too?
[00:21:17] Executive Dow Constantine: So some people who leave a center will be going home to their family. Some people who leave a center may need to go to just simply affordable housing - housing that has artificially been made affordable. Some people may need to go to long-term residential treatment. And I mentioned that - that's the second leg of this three-legged stool here. Those are the facilities that replaced the big hospitals as they began to close. And although Western State still exists here, it's not what it once was - and there used to be three state mental health hospitals. There were never enough of these community-based facilities built. Most of them are now 40 or more years old and they've never had reinvestment in the infrastructure. And so the little nonprofits that are running them - that are getting by day-to-day on inadequate compensation from the federal and state governments - aren't able to put the new roof on, aren't able to replace the wiring or the plumbing, and they're locking the doors and walking away. So the county, with help from the state, has been scurrying around trying to prop up this house of cards over the last few years to keep as many beds as possible. Still, we've lost a third of our capacity just since 2018 - half of our capacity over the last couple of decades. So this begins - this stops the outflow and then it starts to rebuild the capacity. And the immediate commitment here is to rebuild to the 2018 level, which was about one third, so it'd essentially be adding 50% to the base that we have now.
[00:22:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, we gotta stop digging if we're ever gonna climb out of this hole. And 2018 levels are a good start - certainly we saw a lot exacerbated throughout the pandemic and more cracks exposed that were already there and just made worse over that time. But this seems like a good start. Can you talk to me about the timing of this? When would these centers be built and coming online? When will these services be available for the community?
[00:23:03] Executive Dow Constantine: Yeah, so as I say, we advanced funding to get the Kirkland center started even before the levy is presented to voters or passes. Assuming it passes, my understanding is that we would be able to begin collecting this funding on January 1st of next year. We are in a very bad budget situation. The State Legislature has failed to act on the 1% lid on property taxes for the 20th year in a row. And with 8% inflation and a 1% lid, you can imagine that things are pretty dire. But we're gonna be looking for ways to jumpstart this even before the tax receipts start coming in. I am not committed to only building new - if we find a building that will work and that's cheaper and faster, we will go that direction. And that is true for the crisis centers, it's true for the residential treatment facilities. We want to be sensible, we want to act boldly and quickly. And I think still, as with the homeless hotels, one of the major impediments is going to be the ability to hire - that has just been a tremendous challenge in everything we do over the course of the last three years or so. And so we gotta get started on that with Service Employees International 1199 immediately.
[00:24:09] Crystal Fincher: Makes sense. So this looks like it will cost the average King County homeowner about $10 a month, based on the assessment there. As they're considering this and thinking about their various obligations and commitments and bills, what do you say to them as they're pondering this decision - when they get their ballot - to just reinforce why this is worth it?
[00:24:31] Executive Dow Constantine: First off, let's all acknowledge that Washington State has about the worst state tax system in the country. And I once again call upon the Legislature to fix it so that we are able to pay for what is needed with everyone contributing as they are able. Now, as - among the taxes that exist, the property tax is perhaps slightly more progressive than the others, like the sales tax. A person who owns an $800,000 house, which is the median home in King County, would pay about $10 a month. For that homeowner, I would ask - Have you ever had anyone in your life who's experienced a behavioral health challenge, an addiction or mental health challenge? Or in your community, are you seeing the results of the failure to provide service on the streets - in petty crime, et cetera? I think you can make a very clear, rational, unemotional argument that it just makes sense to invest this small amount of money to deal with what is obviously a huge societal problem. Because of that, I've actually taken on the responsibility of co-chairing a National Commission on Mental Health and Wellbeing on behalf of the National Association of Counties - met with the surgeon general and the president a few weeks ago. We're going to be advocating for a renewal of federal commitment to this challenge. And we have a national crisis of mental health and addiction and we just cannot afford to neglect it anymore.
[00:25:55] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And with that, we will leave it there. And thank you so much for sharing all of the details about the Crisis Care Centers Levy that will be on our ballots in April - we'll be receiving our ballots here coming up pretty soon, so we're all getting prepared for it. Make sure we share the word just because - this is not when people are used to voting all the time - we really need to make sure that we are all turning out and spreading the word that this is a necessary vote and that these crisis care centers are helpful. Thank you so much, Executive Constantine.
[00:26:27] Executive Dow Constantine: Thank you.
[00:26:27] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On today’s Hacks & Wonks week-in-review the editor of PubliCola, Crystal is joined by Seattle political reporter Erica Barnett!
Crystal and Erica discuss the City of Seattle’s first-in-the-nation legislation to provide paid sick and safe leave for gig workers, Mayor Bruce Harrell’s $970 million housing levy proposal, a story about the lack of progress building tiny homes leads to a discussion about the difference in responsibilities between the city council and the mayor - who bears the responsibility to implement programs and policy that has been funded.
Then they discuss the recently discovered $280,000 contract given to a Harrell associate to seemingly spin the narrative that his preferred Sound Transit station proposal is community led, and a political tactic used by monied interests that exploits language and concerns voiced by marginalized communities to influence policy.
Erica and Crystal also cover the Department of Justice moving to end the consent decree with the Seattle Police Department and the Seattle City Council candidate facing accusations of non-payment from former staff and volunteers.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica Barnett, at @ericacbarnett.
Resources
https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/blog/megan-burbank-reproductive-healthcare | Hacks& Wonks
Sound Transit Board Adopts Major Last-Minute Changes to 2016 Light Rail Plan, Skipping Chinatown and First Hill - PubliCola
Sound Transit Board Backs Last-Minute Proposal to Skip Chinatown and Midtown Stations | The Urbanist
Mayor Harrell Unveils $970 Million Housing Levy Proposal | The Urbanist
City Paid Consultant Tim Ceis $280,000 to "Encourage Agreement" and Build "Community Consensus" for Harrell's Light Rail Route - PubliCola
City Asks Judge to End Consent Decree; Outstanding Issues Include Protest Response and Accountability - PubliCola
Matthew Mitnick’s Campaign Meltdown - The Stranger
Andrew Lewis announced a fundraising plan to double Seattle’s tiny houses. So, where are they?
Seattle passes first-in-the-nation paid sick leave for gig workers | Crosscut
On this midweek show, Crystal welcomes reporter Megan Burbank to talk about the status of reproductive healthcare in Washington state after last year’s Dobbs decision removed guarantees for abortion access on the national level. The conversation starts by highlighting barriers that already existed prior to Roe v. Wade being overturned such as the Hyde Amendment and a slew of state-level restrictions, then delves into the realities of why the issue is important for maternal health, family planning, and economic mobility.
Despite Washington having more state-level protections than other parts of the country, Megan and Crystal discuss the challenges our state does face with fallout from abortion restrictions in other states, the increase in religiously affiliated hospital mergers, and inconsistent access to services depending on one’s location. Finally, Megan shares her thoughts on how people can get involved - through state legislation working its way through Olympia as well as helpful and non-helpful ways to engage with the issue.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Megan Burbank at @meganireneb and http://burbank.industries/.
Megan Burbank
Megan Burbank is a writer and editor based in Seattle. Before going full-time freelance, she worked as an editor and reporter at the Portland Mercury and The Seattle Times. She specializes in enterprise reporting on reproductive health policy, which she has covered locally for Crosscut, the South Seattle Emerald, and the Seattle Times, and nationally at The New Republic and NPR.
Resources
“Roe v. Wade was never the whole story” by Megan Burbank from Crosscut
“Long uncertain, young people's access to abortion is more complicated than ever” by Megan Burbank from NPR
“‘Ask for Jane:’ Who were the pre-Roe underground abortionists?” by Megan Burbank from Crosscut
“A landmark study tracks the lasting effect of having an abortion — or being denied one” by Megan Burbank and Emily Kwong from NPR
“Who is traveling to Washington for abortion care?” by Megan Burbank from Crosscut
“Abortion rights in WA fall into limbo at religious hospitals” by Megan Burbank from Crosscut
“Students lobby for WA bills on abortion and gender-affirming care” by Megan Burbank from Crosscut
“New Yakima clinic to expand abortion access in Eastern Washington” by Megan Burbank from Crosscut
“How a Texas ruling on abortion pills would affect Washington” by Megan Burbank from Crosscut
HB 1469 - Concerning access to reproductive health care services and gender-affirming treatment in Washington state
HB 1340 - Concerning actions by health professions disciplining authorities against license applicants and license holders
SB 5242 - Prohibiting cost sharing for abortion
HB 1155 - Addressing the collection, sharing, and selling of consumer health data
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
So today I am thrilled to be welcoming Megan Burbank, who's a writer and editor based in Seattle. Before going full-time freelance, she worked as an editor and reporter at The Portland Mercury and The Seattle Times. She specializes in enterprise reporting on reproductive health policy, which she's covered locally for Crosscut, the South Seattle Emerald, and The Seattle Times, and recently at The New Republic and NPR. Have appreciated her coverage - really comprehensive coverage - of reproductive healthcare, which spurred wanting to have this conversation just to talk about what the status of reproductive healthcare is here in Washington in the backdrop of the Dobbs decision and abortion access not being guaranteed from a national level. Welcome so much, Megan.
[00:01:43] Megan Burbank: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:01:44] Crystal Fincher: So just starting off, what got you interested in covering reproductive health policy?
[00:01:49] Megan Burbank: Yeah, it's a good question. So I began covering reproductive health policy in 2011 when I was a news intern at The Stranger. And there was a bill introduced in the Legislature that would regulate these centers that are called crisis pregnancy centers that are often set up near actual abortion clinics, but they're operated by a centralized, evangelical-affiliated organization that is designed to dissuade people from having abortions. And so I was part of an investigation of those centers when I was a young and impressionable news intern with The Stranger, and it really opened my eyes to a lot of the ways that abortion access was complicated even before we were even talking about Roe v. Wade being overturned. And also I would say that I just have always been aware of it on a personal level. I grew up knowing about Roe v. Wade, and I thought of it as something that - the older generation had secured this freedom for us and it was just not something that I questioned. And then when I became an adult and started actually reporting on it and realized the systemic barriers to people actually accessing that type of care, even under Roe, I realized that there was a lot that needed to be reported out about that.
[00:03:02] Crystal Fincher: I think you've done a good job really diving into covering the difference between - yes, I can technically access this service, I have the right to do it, it's healthcare that is available in places, but it's not always that simple that something that is technically available is accessible to everyone. Even before, as you talked about, Roe v. Wade being overturned, what were some of the barriers and challenges that people were facing when it came to accessing these services?
[00:03:33] Megan Burbank: There were so many of them. There are so many of them. I think the thing that we often forget about abortion access is that women of means - wealthy white women - have always had the option to have an abortion. Before Roe v. Wade, it was common for people with the finances to travel to do that - even to travel to other countries for care. And so when we talk about abortion access, I think it's really important to build in this sort of class piece to it - it's expensive, right? It's expensive to have an abortion. It's typically - it's not always covered by insurance. It is here in Washington because we have a law that mandates that, but that's pretty unique. And another thing to note is that we've got the Hyde Amendment, which was enacted in 1978, so shortly after Roe v. Wade was overturned. This essentially bans public funding for abortion, so if you're on Medicaid, Medicare, any sort of military healthcare plan, if you're in the Peace Corps - there are a lot of different scenarios that are impacted by this - you don't have abortion coverage through your insurance. And what that means is that, especially for low-income women, for people of color, for folks who are young - young people - they've been left out of this access picture for quite a long time. And actually that's how that amendment was designed. I think one of the things that people find so horrifying when I talk about this is that Henry Hyde, the lawmaker behind that policy, said explicitly that he wanted to ban abortion access for all women, but that low-income women - what was available to him through legislation through Medicaid.
So I think that was a barrier that cropped up shortly after Roe v. Wade was decided. And then of course, we've got just an influx of state-level restrictions that began around that time and have really snowballed since. So we see things like basically bans based on gestational age - so like 15-week bans, that kind of thing. We see things like parental notification laws, which can be really complicated for young people who perhaps are caught up in the foster care system and trying to access care or for other reasons, cannot ask their parents for support in them making their decision. There are also things like 24-hour, 72-hour waiting periods. And those types of restrictions were commonly enacted in the states before Roe v. Wade was overturned. And so the upshot of that is essentially that even though we had the legal backstop of Roe during that time, access could look pretty spotty already based on wherever you were in the country. And then in Washington, we have very robust state-level protections for abortion, but that is not the norm and has not been the norm elsewhere.
[00:06:12] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely true. And even though it was ruled to be a constitutionally protected right at that time, there's just a lot of red tape that you're able to put in front of people's ability to be able to access abortion - whether it's having to visit doctors in-person when you might not otherwise have to, whether it is extra requirements for the prescription, and availability of medication that can help with a medicated abortion or preventing implantation, that type of thing. And it really has been used to manipulate people's access to this. Why is this such an important issue overall? You hear people say sometimes - If you don't wanna get pregnant, then don't have sex. And - People can just keep their legs closed and avoid this whole thing. Why does that not tell the whole story?
[00:07:06] Megan Burbank: When I hear people say things like that, it just makes me think of the conversations that I had with this woman named Judith Arcana, who was a part of the Janes in Chicago before Roe vs Wade - this group of women who were activists, who essentially established a network to help people seeking abortions access care. And they were successful because they were able to secure training in abortion. And they also, by Judith's telling, I feel like they were very underestimated and so it was easy for them - not easy, but it was possible for them to get away with this for a long time. And I think one of my major takeaways from that conversation was just that - if someone wants to have an abortion, it's not really this thing that they're gonna take or leave, right? If you're in that situation, you're desperate. You're gonna make it happen, and you're gonna make it happen legally and safely, or you are going to make it happen through whatever underground economies are available to you.
And so I think the reality of that is just that people can feel however they want about abortion, but the fact of the matter is that someone in that situation is going to seek out care to the extent that they can. And I think the idea behind laws that are protecting access is just that - wouldn't it be better for them to do this in a way that's safe? And that's the difference. And I think when you look at reporting from the pre-Roe era, you can see that that's really true - that women commonly died from abortions that were obtained through these extra-legal networks, and it was more dangerous for them too. One of the things that I heard about in my reporting for that piece was just that people who sought abortions in the pre-Roe era were often subjected to things like abusive behavior from the people they sought support from. There was often a threat of sexual violence, and they often didn't know what kind of care they were getting or what the credentials of the person performing it were. And they also - they had to pay for it, it was expensive. So you'd have to come up with this large sum of money and just trust someone who you had no reason to believe was actually a doctor to perform this procedure. Women did it anyway. When I talked to Judith, one of the things she told me was that nobody ever changed their mind. And I think that that's something that's just really important to remember because it's not really a choice between no one having abortions ever and people having abortions. It's a choice between people having abortions in safe, medically appropriate environments or having abortions in situations that are much more harmful.
[00:09:40] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I think another thing that has happened during this conversation and greater awareness about how perilous the right to abortion is and how impactful it is - is not just the conversation about how important the ability to choose when and how you have children impacts your social and economic mobility, ability to participate in the workforce, but that just being pregnant is a very, very difficult and traumatic thing on someone's body. You're essentially displacing all of your internal organs, massive hormonal and body changes. And this is not something that is without consequence, or simple, or without challenges for people who are pregnant - and this is a big deal and comes with a lot of risk. I'm a Black woman, certainly very familiar with mortality rates for Black women who are pregnant - an issue that goes beyond issues of access into just straight racism - and just overall with maternal health in this country, we don't do a great job. So it is a really challenging issue. And even though abortion, which is really a routine procedure for most people - and on the risk of things out there, it doesn't seem like it's an outlier in the way that you would think, given all the regulations about it. But what does it mean to be able to have efficient, safe, affordable access to contraception, and how far away are we to be able to provide that for everyone?
[00:11:23] Megan Burbank: I think we're pretty far from that, Crystal. I think that what it means is that people have a sense of self-determination and autonomy. And I would say a sense of psychological safety too, because one of the things that often comes up around abortion when I do my reporting on it - you were talking about pregnancy. And pregnancy statistically is much more of a health risk to take on than to have an abortion, especially an abortion early in pregnancy, which is when most abortions occur. When I talk to providers, they will often tell me that - actually - remaining pregnant is pregnant, especially as you pointed out in the United States where we have these huge racial disparities in terms of maternal, perinatal outcomes and maternal morbidity and mortality, that kind of thing. I think that it's the ability to not put yourself in that level of risk - can be really life or death for many people. And I think that having access to abortion and birth control - it allows people to space their pregnancies. One of the things that I think is often forgotten in this conversation is that I think it's something like over half of people seeking abortions are already parents. And so they are making a decision that allows them to care for, and provide for, and have the economic supports to raise the children that they already have.
The other thing that I think is really crucial to note here is that there's been some really excellent research on the consequences of being denied an abortion. And there is an excellent study called the Turnaway Study that was conducted over a number of years among people who had sought out abortions and been turned away, not due to state laws, but because of gestational age of their pregnancies. And it follows them in the outcomes that they had. And what it found is that for the people who did not receive abortions and carried to term, they didn't regret carrying to term - but if you looked at the outcomes in their lives in terms of their financial and emotional wellbeing, they took huge hits because they weren't able to access care. And so having access to an abortion is something that can prevent someone from being caught up in a cycle of poverty, which is why I often think that it's useful to frame it as an economic issue because the impact is such that being able to get timely care means that someone is able to care for their family in a way and remain afloat financially. And not being able to do that can mean the opposite - raising a child is expensive.
[00:13:57] Crystal Fincher: Very expensive. And in a state like Washington, you mentioned we do have a lot of protections, but that doesn't mean that everyone has access to abortion and abortion care. What are the types of challenges that we face in Washington state?
[00:14:12] Megan Burbank: One of the things we're dealing with now is just the fallout from abortion restrictions in other states. And so what that means is that there has been this gradual influx of patients from out-of-state, which focuses more demand on clinics. That can be complicated because it can create more delays for folks trying to access care in Washington. And I wanna be super clear that this is not just tied to Roe v. Wade - this was happening before Roe v. Wade was overturned, with the passage of legislation like Texas's Senate Bill 8, which is the six-week ban that includes this provision that allows people to have these sort of vigilante lawsuits against ordinary citizens or doctors for facilitating abortion care. And so after that law went into effect, what happened in states like ours is that we began to receive an uptick in patients from states like Texas and surrounding states. Because when a state bans abortion, people seeking care will go outside of that state, which creates a delay at clinics in states around that state. And then that sort of creates a ripple effect all the way up to states like ours. So I think it's easy to say - We're in Washington, access isn't a problem here. But when access is restricted elsewhere, we feel the effects of that.
And then I would also say that one of the things that I think is important to remember is access is not universal here either. Especially if you live in rural areas, your options may be really limited in terms of finding a provider. I think it's something like 50% of counties in Washington don't have an abortion provider. And so that means that simple geography can be a barrier. And then I would also say we have - Washington has a policy which essentially allows for state Medicaid funds to pay for abortion. So if you're on state Medicaid here, you can - having an abortion is covered. And that's pretty rare. We're only a handful of a number of states that have that sort of policy. So we have these sort of state-level protections that can serve to mitigate some of the federal policies that have impacted access in other states. But that doesn't mean that we have a super clear, facile approach here. I think one of the things that I also see is - in Washington, we've had so many hospital mergers over the past decade between secular healthcare systems and religiously affiliated institutions. And often when that happens, it results in limitations on what reproductive healthcare is available in those hospitals. And so that may mean that even though you're in Washington, the institution where you are accessing care may not provide abortions.
[00:16:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and this is a major issue here. And these are healthcare systems like Franciscan and Providence and names that are pretty well known throughout the region. I don't think people necessarily always recognize that these are religiously affiliated hospitals and they frequently restrict access in a way that matches the religious convictions. But with these mergers, these may be the only hospitals that are available for someone in an emergency situation needing abortion care. And again, I think lots of people have been exposed to by now - that abortion is not always something that just happens, as people elect. There are lots of different situations where someone needs an abortion, including when a fetus is no longer viable and it can be a significant risk to a mother's health to not receive prompt medical care and a prompt abortion in that kind of situation. It can kill the mother - it's a big, big risk - and to not have that available, or not something that hospitals choose to offer really puts a lot of people in danger. We've seen this in areas where abortion access has been restricted and these stories have made the news - but this is something that doesn't always make the news - but these issues of access are really important. Is there anything happening legislatively, anything happening to help improve the access situation in this religious hospital merger situation, or just in rural areas who have lost healthcare capacity?
[00:18:40] Megan Burbank: Yeah, there's been several legislative attempts. There was a law passed, I believe in 2021, called the Protecting Pregnancy Act. And this was drafted in response to scenarios like the one you're describing - where someone would present with an emergency situation related to pregnancy, like an ectopic pregnancy or a miscarriage, and would need abortion care as treatment. And there was a case in Bellingham where a woman was turned away several times while having a miscarriage, which can be quite dangerous. An ectopic pregnancy also, as you rightly pointed out, is - that can be an emergency situation. People can die from that if they don't receive timely care. And so this law was drafted with the intent of protecting providers who are in institutions that may have internal bans on abortion - that allows them to perform a procedure, an abortion procedure, in that type of situation and to be legally protected while they do it. I think it's not clear how useful this law has been in practice, if it's really expanded access in any meaningful way. I spoke with a provider about it this year, or in 2022, and she said that it was pretty hard to gauge how much of an impact it had. And she also told me that it was still common for patients in that type of situation to be transferred to a hospital like the University of Washington that does provide abortions and is known for that. So I think that's one piece.
And then the other is this law called the Keep Our - or this bill - called the Keep Our Care Act that has been introduced in the Legislature. It was brought up this session and last session as well. And this would impose more stringent reporting requirements when healthcare institutions merge. And the focus of this one is not just on reproductive health but also on end-of-life care and gender affirming care, because those are the types of care that are often impacted by these mergers. And that bill appears to be stalled in committee - I don't think it made the cutoff. So we'll see what happens with that - I'm tracking it. But I think there have been these legislative approaches to address that type of situation where someone presents at a hospital in an emergency and can't receive care based on the ideology of the hospital they happen to be in. Which honestly is not something that - I think if I were in an emergency, I don't know that I would be checking the religious affiliation of the hospital. I think I would just want to go to the closest one.
[00:21:07] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and get the care I needed to survive and recover. Absolutely. You mentioned that you're tracking these bills and they can overlap and impact gender affirming care, other care - which is definitely true - we use abortion care as an umbrella term, similarly to contraception as an umbrella term. But this can impact a lot of different types of care. We certainly - after Roe v. Wade was overturned, heard of several situations where people had been prescribed medication that could be used for abortion, but that is used for treating a variety of other ailments, chronic conditions, and that's just necessary for healthcare in their situation that isn't related to an abortion at that point in time. But that medication's still being restricted because it has the potential to cause an abortion. Are we seeing these impacts in Washington state? And overall, what does it mean that reproductive health can be restricted, but also conflated with so many other conditions and treatments?
[00:22:15] Megan Burbank: It's complicated. I think one of the things that has been interesting to follow is just - abortion care has often been siloed medically. And I think that we're seeing the same thing happen in real-time with gender affirming care, where it's treated as this separate thing that is not part of traditional healthcare. At the same time, it's something that is crucial for the people who seek it out. And one of the things that I have found to be interesting is that a lot of attempts to restrict gender affirming care resemble, policy-wise, restrictions on abortion. They have the same sort of mechanisms. There was a law recently introduced that really resembles Texas's abortion ban, but is focused on gender affirming care. And so I think that there is a nexus between the two. Another thing that I think is worth noting in this area is that - so Cedar River Clinics, which operates a number of clinics in Western Washington and they have one in Eastern Washington now that recently opened, they have provided gender affirming care for a long time. It's part of their practice. They also do abortions and provide other sort of basic healthcare services. And when I spoke with their communications person in 2022, we were talking about abortion - one of the things that she said was that people have been traveling to that clinic for decades because - they have been traveling there because it is a place where they can access later abortions, but it's also a place where they can access gender affirming care that may not be available in the state where they live. And so I think it is interesting to see these types of care sort of siloed and treated as separate from the rest of healthcare, even though people - they're critical treatments for the people who need them. And I think when you look at abortion, it's such a common procedure. I think it's something like one in four women before age 45 - it is a very normal part of healthcare in that sense, just looking at the numbers. And so I think that it's important to look at that and to look at where that - what agenda is animating the sort of fight against these types of care.
And then the other thing I would note is that - you had mentioned abortion medication - and one of the things that we're following right now is the lawsuit in Texas that could potentially take one of two commonly used abortion drugs, mifepristone, off the market. And that's an example of a situation where - mifepristone is not just used in abortions, it's used for other things as well. But it has a REMS designation, which is a restriction that includes a lot of complex dispensing requirements - and so it's been at the center of a lot of debate for a long time for that reason. And I think one of the things that I found pretty alarming in a lot of the coverage of that case was that there were headlines saying that it would ban abortion pills across the country, which is technically true - it would ban, it would affect access to this one abortion pill. But the way that that framing exists, it suggests that there would be no medication abortion available to anyone, which isn't true. Providers in Washington, if that decision goes the way that it's likely to go, are prepared to pivot to a different dispensing protocol where they would use one abortion pill, misoprostol, which already is part of that typical protocol where people take both misoprostol and mifepristone. They work better together but misoprostol does work by itself and there is a lot of data, especially in countries where abortion is banned, that shows that it's effective in ending pregnancy on its own. And so I think it's just - when we look at the way that these drugs are regulated, it's really important to have that context and to see that it does not necessarily mean that all access is going away. It often means something a bit more nuanced that still is going to be hugely impactful on people, but I think that's a situation where clarity in reporting is really important.
[00:26:24] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I really appreciate you bringing that up - because to your point, I saw a ton of headlines that said - Medication abortions are going to be illegal if this court case is decided in a way that it looks like that judge is inclined to decide it. And lots of people hear that - certainly if I wouldn't have read beyond the headline, I would have been under that impression. And so I appreciate you bringing that up. I also really appreciate you bringing up how similar the political and policy playbooks are for the regulation of abortion care and gender affirming care - how we seem to artificially silo them in ways that don't come from the medical profession. These are not experts and doctors doing this. These are politicians saying - We need these extra requirements, extra red tape, extra reporting guidelines, extra waiting periods, extra requirements. And this is not coming from doctors, this is not coming from experts across the board, whether it's abortion or gender affirming care.
And how subjective we get when it comes to gender affirming care, just as you said, subjective when it comes to the types of medications that are considered for abortion, not for abortion, and there can be a crossover there certainly - that's the case with gender affirming care. People need the healthcare appropriate to their situation, whether it reinforces their gender or not. There's certainly a lot of things that fall into the bucket of gender affirming care that we see as normal, everyday things - that the amount of people who have BBLs and breast enhancements and are taking hormones for a variety of reasons. There are so many people on hormones to treat a variety of ailments, but we act like it's just the scariest, most wrong thing in the world when it comes to trans people or people who need that kind of care. So I appreciate just the calling out and knowledge that there really is a similar playbook here being employed, and we're seeing a lot of the same tactics being used to place barrier after barrier. And the way that they get these things through - I think with both abortion and the gender affirming care - is they aren't going after outlawing the entire thing all at once, but just one more barrier, one more waiting period, one more regulation. And when you make people repeatedly jump through all these hoops, they eventually just get tired out, worn out, and not everyone makes it through all the hoops. And they know this and this is how they restrict access, even though there technically may be the ability to get it if everything aligns perfectly and you have enough money and time and the ability to take off work and that kind of stuff, which so many people don't have. So as we move forward, what should we be looking at and what can the average person who's interested in ensuring that reproductive access remains available and accessible to most people - how can people make a difference in their own community and what can they do to help this?
[00:29:38] Megan Burbank: So there are three laws, or three bills, that have been introduced that have made it past the house of origin cutoff. One is a shield law that would protect providers of abortion care and also gender affirming care from being prosecuted for doing their jobs, essentially. There's another bill that would prevent licensing boards from retaliating against clinicians for providing care like abortions and gender affirming care. And then there's a third bill which would prohibit cost sharing for abortion. This is a really interesting bill because what it means is that if you are seeking abortion care - we have this law in the state of Washington that requires insurance plans to cover abortion if they cover maternity care, but that doesn't always translate to abortion being affordable because you may have high deductibles, your copay may be high. So this policy would essentially make it so that if you are seeking abortion, you don't have any coinsurance responsibility for it as a patient - which is a pretty wonky thing, but what it means is that you'll be able to get care without paying a high copay. You'll be able to just go and receive the care that you need. And so those laws are pretty instrumental in expanding protections for abortion access in Washington. And I think it's important, if this is something that people care about, to follow these pieces of legislation and just make sure that you're informed about it.
I would also say - one of the issues that I've heard from activists since Roe v. Wade was overturned was that there's been a huge interest in their work and it's overwhelming. And I've also seen, I've also heard that there's been a lot of doubling up on existing activism. I think probably the most insidious example of this is like the camping meme that was going around after Roe v. Wade - of people in blue states being like, "Come camping with me, I'll help you get an abortion." Which is - I think comes from a good place of wanting to really help - but the thing is there are existing networks in the United States called abortion funds that have been around for a long time. And they exist to help people access abortion care and pay for things like travel expenses and childcare and their procedures. And so I think instead of doubling up on the work that already exists, it's really important to seek out the activist organizations that are already doing the work - because what I hear from them is that they see their work being redoubled in this way that's not really informed in the long shadow of the movement. And so it's really important to find out who is already doing the work and if you wanna be part of it, how can you support them rather than starting your own thing?
But yeah, I think also - one of the things that I often say to people is if you care about abortion access and the policies that impact it, that should be a year-round activity. That shouldn't just be something that happens whenever there is a particular piece of legislation in the news - you should be following coverage of this on an ongoing basis because it's deep and complicated and wonky and it really helps to immerse yourself in it and to look into who are the players, who are the people that are advancing this legislation, and how is it gonna impact you? I think that's really important. And I think that there's been a lot of emphasis on things like stocking up on abortion pills and offering to drive people to their appointments. Again, I think it comes from a really good place, but I think it doubles up on existing work in a way that is often harmful to people who are actually already really immersed, on the ground, in that work.
[00:33:21] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I guess finally, for people who are just living their lives, who may need abortion care at some point in time, but who currently are using period tracking apps, fertility apps, that type of thing. And while we see headlines like Meta or Twitter or other companies turning over data to authorities that may be looking to prosecute people or determine who is seeking abortion care, contraception. We see in Florida - for girls to participate in sports, they have to report their period dates and activity. And concerns about privacy, the technology, all the stuff surrounding that. How would you advise people as they navigate through these times that come with potential legal ramifications?
[00:34:17] Megan Burbank: Yeah - I'm not a lawyer. I do talk to them a lot for my work, but I just want to preface this by saying that. But I would say it's a good idea to, I would say, be careful about what sort of social media channels you may be using for this type of information. Because it's very rare to actually be prosecuted for something like purchasing abortion pills, but it has happened. And often it involves an Internet trail of someone having purchased the drugs online. So this happened in Pennsylvania - I think it was in 2014 - a woman was prosecuted because she had purchased abortion pills for her daughter, and they went to a hospital because her daughter's miscarriage was incomplete so they were seeking care. And they were essentially reported on by someone who saw them when they came for care. When I speak to lawyers about this, it's unlikely. It's not, there's not a huge amount of precedent of people being prosecuted for the things that they do and say online, but it's also not impossible. There is precedent for it, despite the fact that it's not super robust. And so I think it's important to be careful about how you're engaging in that type of behavior.
And then I would also say - we talked about a slate reproductive health bills going through the Legislature. There is another one called the My Health, My Data Act, which is focused exactly on this. And it's about setting up privacy protections for people using things like period trackers and doing online searches, that kind of thing. And so this is a piece of legislation that's meant to address sort of the gap between private health data that is protected by HIPAA and private health data that an app might have access to, where they don't have the same sort of legal responsibilities. And so I think this type of policy can actually help to protect people in those situations. And I don't think anyone should ever be afraid of knowing about their body or seeking out medical care that they need. I think that's really crucial. And I think that we may well see more attempts to protect that type of information in these types of laws moving forward. And I think they'll probably become more important because it's not something that we've seen a ton of precedent for in terms of prosecutions, but that's all changing right now because we no longer have the legal backstop of Roe. And so I think that means there are a lot of questions that we're gonna see play out over the next decade.
[00:36:50] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And some attempted prosecutions happening right now involving some of that data, so we will certainly see how this plays out. Thank you so much for spending this time with us today, for helping to educate us about the state of reproductive access in Washington state right now. And we'll continue to follow this. Thank you very much, Megan.
[00:37:11] Megan Burbank: Thank you, Crystal. This has been great.
[00:37:12] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, political consultant and host Crystal Fincher is joined by Guy Oron, Staff Reporter for Real Change! The start with a discussion of Friday’s Washington Supreme Court ruling that the capital gains tax is constitutional and what that means for the state’s residents. Then they discuss a tragic eviction in Seattle and a court ruling that landlords can ask about criminal records.
They chat about Howard Schultz stepping down early as the CEO of Starbucks, workers protesting before their annual shareholder meeting, and some shareholders’ and white dollar workers’ desire for Starbucks to improve their behavior and relations with unionizing workers. They follow with the Seattle Chamber of Commerce’s desire to gut JumpStart tax funds for downtown, despite the popularity of the tax and need for continued investment in other neighborhoods and small businesses.
They close with a discussion of where the Sound Transit CID station debate stands, as well as talk about the significance of Pierce County passing a local tax to fund housing services.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Guy Oron at @GuyOron.
Guy Oron
Guy Oron is the Staff Reporter for Real Change, covering local news, labor, policing, the environment, criminal legal issues and politics. His writing has been featured in a number of publications including the South Seattle Emerald, The Nation and The Stranger. Raised in Seattle, Guy brings a community and student organizer perspective to their journalism, highlighting stories of equity and justice.
Resources
Dahlia Bazzaz and What’s Happening in Washington Education from Hacks & Wonks
WA Supreme Court upholds capital gains tax | The Seattle Times
Seattle landlords can ask about criminal records, court rules - Seattle Times
Seattle DSA Statement on the Death of Eucy Following the Attempt to Evict Her by King County Deputies - Seattle DSA Councilmember Invites Landlord Who’s Suing City to Lead “Housing Provider” Panel - PubliCola
Howard Schultz Will Step Down From Starbucks to Spend Less Time Getting Owned by Union Organizers - The New Republic Starbucks workers protest before annual shareholder meeting - KXXV Starbucks shareholders to vote on proposals for labor probe, succession planning - CNBC Comptroller Lander and Coalition of Investors File Shareholder Proposal at Starbucks on the Rights of Workers to Organize - NYC Comptroller Will City Hall give downtown Seattle a tax break?
Placement of future CID light rail station sparks heated debate, strains relations | Mar. 22-28, 2023 | Real Change
What We Know About Sound Transit’s Alternatives to a Chinatown Station | The Urbanist
Sound Transit is Not Ready for Its Big Chinatown Station Decision | The Urbanist
Light Rail Board Members Seek Middle Ground as Plan to Skip Chinatown, Midtown Stations Moves Forward - PubliCola
From the Other Side of I-5: Little Saigon Weighs In On Sound Transit’s Light Rail Expansion In the CID - PubliCola
Preserve Chinatown or Fuck Over Transit Riders Forever? - The Stranger
Pierce County just passed a new tax and funded a homeless village. That's a big deal | Opinion
Pierce County Council votes on sales tax to address housing crisis. Here's the decision
Transcript
Coming soon
On this midweek show, Seattle Times reporter Dahlia Bazzaz returns with a run-down of education issues across Washington state. Dahlia and Crystal review the Legislature’s considerations of special education funding, restraint and isolation in Washington schools, and free school lunch provision. They then cover the lawsuit brought by the Wahkiakum School District against the state, arguing that capital construction costs shouldn’t be entirely borne by local taxpayers through school bonds. Finally, Dahlia and Crystal discuss the shift in enrollment patterns whereby students of color are now the majority in Washington public schools, the rise of direct student advocacy with lawmakers, and a call to action to get involved and educated about school boards and school district budgets.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find our guest Dahlia Bazzaz at @dahliabazzaz.
Resources
“Special education spending, oversight top priorities for WA lawmakers” by Dahlia Bazzaz and Jeanie Lindsay from The Seattle Times
“WA schools still restrain, isolate students often despite state laws, report says” by Lulu Ramadan and Claire Withycombe from The Seattle Times
“Restraint and isolation in Washington schools: What these practices are, how they are being used and what needs to change” | ACLU of Washington
“The next McCleary? Tiny district with decaying school buildings sues WA state” by Dahlia Bazzaz from The Seattle Times
“No clear answers as WA Supreme Court hears case on school construction” by Dahlia Bazzaz from The Seattle Times
“WA legislators scrap plan for free school lunch for all students” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times
“Students of color are now the majority in WA public schools” by Dahlia Bazzaz from The Seattle Times
“WA kids deserve 45 minutes of recess time, new bill proposes” by Dahlia Bazzaz from The Seattle Times
“After fatal shooting in school, Seattle searches for answers to gun violence” by Dahlia Bazzaz & Jeanie Lindsay from The Seattle Times
“In Session: Drug possession bill passes, students make opinions clear on multiple bills” by Drew Mikkelsen from King 5 News
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I am thrilled to be welcoming back to the show: Seattle Times education reporter, Dahlia Bazzaz. Welcome.
[00:01:02] Dahlia Bazzaz: Thanks for having me again.
[00:01:04] Crystal Fincher: Excited to have you back. We talk about education basically weekly on the show. There are so many things happening in the realm of education - in our schools, with our kids and students. It's so impactful in so many ways. Right now, we're in the middle of a legislative session where they're taking up a lot of issues that will be impacting education. And I thought we would start off by talking about what is currently in play, what is happening legislatively when it comes to education in our schools. So what is top of your mind with what the Legislature is working on?
[00:01:43] Dahlia Bazzaz: Yeah, I think to set a little bit of context - this was one of the first sessions post-school closure and we didn't have any sort of form of remote schooling happen this year. So we're coming out of a lot of federal money that was offered to schools - a historic amount of federal money - as well as a lot of enrollment challenges affecting school districts and their budgets. So we came into the session hearing - lots of school districts facing financial challenges, and there's also been some topics that have crept up that have been on legislators' minds since before the pandemic. The most recent session before the pandemic started in 2019, the Legislature really took up special education and that was a huge topic. And it appears that has resurfaced again because that's been probably the biggest thing that's come up in terms of education legislation.
One thing to note here is that this particular focus on special education is mostly related to funding. And one of the things that lawmakers are working through - today was the cutoff for bills to make it out of the house of origin, so out of the House or the Senate. And some of the bills that have survived include one bill in the House and one bill in the Senate that seek to address the same problem, which is that the state funding that goes to school districts to support disabled students is capped at a certain enrollment rate. So if you have more than 13.5% of your students receiving special education services, the state will not fund beyond that in its formula. You can seek to apply for a set of funds called safety net funding, but that's an additional barrier and paperwork, and it's basically an as-needed type of pot of funds. So the bill in the House proposes gradually decreasing that funding cap until 2027, when it's eventually removed. And it also proposes increasing the - what they call a multiplier - it's basically a per student rate. So for every student, let's say if you have - for every general education student, the state will give you $2,000. If you have a disabled student, they might give you an extra $900 on top of that. So this bill would also seek to increase that multiplier. It's not the exact amount, but let's say like instead of $2,900, they're giving you $3,500 per student receiving special ed.
[00:04:23] Crystal Fincher: This is really an important thing because we already have districts who are above and beyond that cap right now. We're hearing from teachers across the state that more students are in need of more services. Certainly it takes more resources, it costs more money to educate students who have disabilities. And it's a responsibility of the state. It's a responsibility of each of these school districts to do so - we've had so many school districts talk about, They just don't have enough money to do it. They don't have enough educators, para-educators to do this. So does this look - it's continuing to move on - does it look like this is going to meaningfully help a lot of these districts who are in this situation right now?
[00:05:09] Dahlia Bazzaz: Districts do, by and large, support this legislation. I think - I've watched enough legislative sessions to know that when things come down to the final budget writing, that what makes it in can be very different from what was going through the different chambers. So as it is, I think I've heard most people who are really in the education world support getting rid of that cap completely. There have been other proposals, including the one from the Senate, that just propose increasing that cap to 15% instead of 13.5%. So it does seek to put a lot of additional funds - we're looking at for the House bill, about $410 million over the next four years. The Senate bill would add about $771 million extra dollars over the next four years. So it's a significant amount of money, but time will tell about what actually makes it in in terms of concrete policy and funding changes.
[00:06:09] Crystal Fincher: Got it. What else is being looked at?
[00:06:11] Dahlia Bazzaz: So within special education and things that are affecting disabled students, there's also a bill out that would ban isolation and isolation rooms for students. It's a pretty big problem across the state. It was documented in a recent Seattle Times investigation as well. Essentially, this bill would seek to ban isolation rooms, which is a space that educators or school staff would put a student with a behavioral problem. It has a lock in which the student cannot unlock themselves, so basically it's just locking a student in a room. There are really not many provisions about what these isolation rooms look like, and a lot of research has shown that it's very harmful for students and kids and it can actually worsen behavior and worsen school avoidance. So this legislation would seek to ban these isolation rooms by 2025. It also would prohibit mechanical and chemical forms of restraint, so think of things like different medications used to sedate students or things like handcuffs that are used outside of a criminal justice type of environment - so these are all sort of ways to regulate the response to students with any behavioral problems at school.
[00:07:32] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. This is really important. I actually - just yesterday, I believe it was Kendrick Washington from the ACLU, who I know is involved with advocating for that bill actually posted a picture on social media about some of these isolation rooms. And it looks like a prison inside of the school. And this flies in the face of evidence about what actually does work to improve behavior and integration within schools. These types of tactics are used disproportionately against BIPOC students. It just - this doesn't seem appropriate for school settings at all, and for kids at all. This is not productive discipline, it's not effective. And so I really hope this is something that does make it through.
[00:08:23] Dahlia Bazzaz: Yeah, and I'm remembering a case out of Spokane - I believe a few news outlets covered it in Spokane - where a student who is nonverbal was locked in a room that didn't have any sort of padding or whatsoever. And the student ended up hitting herself against a few walls and really injuring herself to the point of needing medical care and attention. So it's a pretty huge issue and it can cause physical harm to students.
[00:08:47] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. So we'll be keeping our eye on that one. Is there anything else that you've been tracking in the Legislature?
[00:08:54] Dahlia Bazzaz: One other big issue is capital construction costs, which is something that I think we don't talk about enough within the K-12 sphere. But right now, the State Supreme Court is hearing a case that could be the next McCleary, except on the school construction side. So McCleary was the big school funding case that changed the way that teacher salaries and all these operational parts of a school are funded - really increased how much the state was spending versus how much local taxes we're collecting from voters. And so this case came up because a tiny school district in southwest Washington called the Wahkiakum School District sued the state. It hasn't been able to pass a bond in 22 years. And when you are a district that cannot pass a bond in Washington state, you don't have a ton of options to get funding for school construction. You can't apply for the biggest state program that offers assistance, which is called the SCAP [School Construction Assistance Program] program. This program only allows you to apply for funding if you pass a bond. So you're locked out of a lot of options. And so the same attorney that won the McCleary case for the plaintiffs has taken on this case for Wahkiakum, and they're coming at it from the same angle, which is that the State Constitution says that it is the state's paramount duty to amply fund education. And they are arguing that school construction that is essential to the safety of students is - falls under that umbrella term.
So there are a couple of bills floating out there that try to address this problem. One of them is from State Representative Joel McEntire, who is an alumnus of Wahkiakum, I should say. And it is very specifically tailored to these very small school districts that struggle to raise money through bonds. It would provide about half of the construction costs for school districts that are 1,000 students or fewer. As of right now - 1:25PM - it has not passed out of its chamber of origin. But i have seen things come up in the budget out of the dead before in the final weeks of the session, so can't say for sure whether or not that's going to come through. There's also some proposals to redirect revenue from timber harvests over to school districts - also not sure where that's going to end up. But I think a fair amount of legislators see this issue as a problem - they think the state should provide more funding for school construction. But there are many who also believe that local taxpayers should be fronting most of that cost. And they don't really agree with a model like school operations where you would get, let's say, a certain amount of funds per student for school construction every year. So that's been a big topic.
The hearing for that case, the first and only, is going to be next week on Tuesday. And I have a story publishing about the Wahkiakum School District this weekend, and it just takes a look at their school facilities. I went down there. The buildings are in some dire need of some improvements. The floors of the high school are lined with asbestos that are sealed in by a layer of wax. Their fire alarm system is from the 1960s and if it's activated, you have to use a leather welding glove to disable it - it gets really hot. There are lots of broken sinks in their science classrooms - they can't do experiments inside, they have to go outside, sometimes sitting in the rain to do any sort of chemistry labs. And yeah, they haven't been able to pass a bond in 22 years. So as you can imagine, there's a lot of outstanding maintenance and leaky ceilings and just crumbling infrastructure around the buildings. So look for that story coming up this weekend.
[00:12:43] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And we record before people hear this aired, so they may not hear this for a couple of weeks - but we are recording this at the moment on March 8th. So by the time people hear this, we'll be well past this - we'll know what definitely made it out of the chambers of origin. And we will absolutely share the upcoming article that you have in our resources in the show notes so people can have all of that context.
And this is such an interesting conversation. The McCleary decision was such a big decision - messy process throughout that decision in even getting the Legislature to comply with that decision after it was made - was just its whole dramatic tooth pulling endeavor. But this is really a necessary continued part of this conversation. So many school districts across the state are reliant upon bond and levy revenue - they're reliant upon local voters opting in to fund these things throughout the district. And there was just a Marysville school levy election last month that if they wouldn't have passed that, they would have had to take immediate major steps to cut to fit within their limited budget. And so if it truly is the paramount duty of our state to fund education - whether it's special education, whether it's school funding in these capital costs - it really seems like there's a long way that we still have to go. And regardless of how this court case turns out, it seems like there is a responsibility for the Legislature to reckon with and fund this in a better and more sustainable way.
[00:14:29] Dahlia Bazzaz: Yeah, that's certainly what Wahkiakum would like to see. And there have been other proposals to - let's adjust the bond approval rates - right now it's 60% with a certain percentage of voter outcome. And for Wahkiakum, the last bond they attempted - they only got 30% approval. So it's very challenging even without making those really substantive adjustments to the law. And there's also the issue of how much the districts can tax - when you have a really small school district and you have a really poor property valuation, you're not going to raise as much money as districts that are really well-to-do. So it would take - you would tax at a way higher rate to make a third of what Mercer Island or Bellevue would make if you were Wahkiakum. So it's also another sort of issue that lawmakers, Supreme Court justices will have to contend with.
[00:15:21] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And we have to ask ourselves - what are we setting ourselves up for and what kinds of patterns are we allowing this to fall into? If people coming from districts that already don't have the financial resources that others do, then aren't able to fund new building construction costs and are not able to provide a quality education or even a quality environment for people to learn in. If they aren't able to pass levies that provide some of what lots of people would consider to be educational basics and necessities - providing things like nurses and libraries and things like that, that we expect to be part of a traditional school experience. If we are setting ourselves up to make sure that people in lower income districts just cannot enjoy, just cannot have these types of things - seems like we're just further setting in stone cycles of poverty, because we're not enabling people from these areas to have a good education - who are more reliant on that education for mobility socially, economically, and otherwise. So I hope that this gets the attention that it deserves.
[00:16:34] Dahlia Bazzaz: I hope so too.
[00:16:35] Crystal Fincher: Is there anything else in the legislature that we should be looking at?
[00:16:38] Dahlia Bazzaz: Just a couple of other things. There's a school lunch bill that would essentially extend, in a modified way, extend a Biden administration policy that expired last school year - which would offer free school lunch to all students. This state substitution would lower the threshold for when schools are required to offer free lunch to all students, regardless of income eligibility. So currently it's at about 40% or more students that would get, if they qualify, for free and reduced lunch at the elementary school level, then the entire school has to provide it for all students. And this would bump it down to 30% qualifying. So it would help a lot of schools that kind of straddle that 30-40% line, but it's not free lunch for everybody. And there's also a different graduation pathway option being proposed. So basically a different way for students to graduate high school.
[00:17:37] Crystal Fincher: Well, yeah. And certainly if you follow me online, if you have listened to prior conversations - the bill, the original bill that would have just provided free school lunch to all students in Washington, sponsored by Senator T'wina Nobles, was something that I was very excited about, that lots of people were very excited about. To me, it seems - hey, if we're mandating kids be in this space, we can provide meals. Especially with what we learned throughout the pandemic in providing this additional school meals, with the addition of SNAP funds - that actually also just expired - we made such improvements, such dramatic improvements in childhood poverty reduction and in hunger reduction. And these are such basic things. If we cannot feed our kids, if we cannot keep our kids from being hungry, what are we even doing - just as a society - is basically where I'm at. And so especially the SNAP benefit boost ending and people essentially receiving a $95/month cut after we've seen so much food inflation in the first place. We know this cut is going to be made by making choices between food, medication, and rent, and clothes. And they're going to be more kids who are hungry - who just may not have as much food as they had before to eat. And we know that that impacts students' ability to learn. I can't sit through a meeting and pay attention well if I'm sitting there hungry and then I get hangry. And to think of kids going through this in school, it just seems like we can do better. But we have a number of people who said - Hey, there just isn't the money in the budget to do that. So as I said in other settings, I will say again - if that is the case, if that is the truth, then I sincerely hope that we see these legislators who said that we couldn't afford it fighting for the revenue to be able to afford that as soon as possible. Because it just doesn't seem like we're doing our job as a society if we're enabling kids to go hungry when we have the option to do better.
[00:19:45] Dahlia Bazzaz: Yeah, I'm just sitting here and thinking about those first few months of school closures when school districts just turned into these food banks - and they were passing out food to anyone who came by - didn't have to be a student in a lot of these places. I remember talking to a lot of school districts in central Washington and South King County, and I was there when they were distributing a lot of food and goodies. And it was just a line constantly from 8AM to 5PM, so it's crazy to see the difference between now and then, and the transformation of what schools are doing.
[00:20:22] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So we've talked about what's happening within the Legislature, but what else is happening, or what else is making news in the state of education here in Washington?
[00:20:34] Dahlia Bazzaz: A little bit at the top, but there's the enrollment patterns that emerged after the pandemic. Some of it is undefined, but we've lost a lot of students in Washington state - we've lost more than other states have on average. And a lot of districts are feeling the crunch because, of course, funds are tied to that student enrollment. And there is a bit of hand-wringing going on right now among school districts about school closures, about possible layoffs - Seattle Schools has warned about that. There could be school closures happening around the Seattle area and other parts of Washington state. And so I think that state officials, state education officials have been pushing for funding to help cushion that blow. And a lot of this is related to the pandemic federal aid running out, or the deadline coming out. They still have a couple of years to spend all those funds, but a lot of districts invested that money in salaries, and short-term positions, and then to fill budget gaps. So this is the result of all of that pandemic-era spending, and also a realization that students need more resources for mental health and counseling and social services. And so there's been a lot of addition of staff to school districts even as enrollment has been declining. And so this is kind of a crunch point right now for school districts.
I wrote recently about a landmark that we just hit - we hit it last year technically, but it's also on the books this year - but students of color are now the majority in Washington state. And this is not unique across the country - we're actually a little bit behind the rest of the nation when it comes to this, but officially now make up the majority of the state. And it's been interesting digging into the enrollment patterns within those changes because not all student groups that are nonwhite have increased. In fact, we've seen some decrease over the years. And so I wrote a story about that recently as well. And it's been interesting seeing how districts are adapting to that new reality.
[00:22:35] Crystal Fincher: And did I see that Black students were one of the groups that were decreasing?
[00:22:39] Dahlia Bazzaz: Yes, Black students and Native students are among those that have decreased - and white students.
[00:22:44] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Another issue that is important - just in terms of childhood development - is how much unstructured play time kids have and that's something that I think you wrote about, too. And paying close attention to the Legislature - this is the time of year that just hurts my feelings the most, because even the good things - they just get hacked to pieces and -
[00:23:06] Dahlia Bazzaz: I know.
[00:23:07] Crystal Fincher: - that hurts my feelings. And so I try to just not pay attention to - I'm not working on any legislation at the moment. So it's just like - I just want to not look, just let me know what survives and what doesn't, and I'll try and -
So we've also seen a lot of advocacy directly from students talking about what they need, whether it is mental health, special education services, or even feeling safe on campus and what they need to do that. What have you seen from students and heard directly from them about what they say they need?
[00:23:40] Dahlia Bazzaz: A lot of students have taken their advocacy directly to the state and to lawmakers. They recognize that violence on school campuses is a direct consequence of whatever laws there are in the state around who can own a weapon. And I think a lot of students are cognizant that the violence that happens on school campuses is just a microcosm of what happens outside of school campuses. So mostly they have been advocating for gun control law changes. They've also been advocating - as they have been for several years and for many different reasons - more mental health counseling, more social and emotional support and help, violence, de-escalation education in their classes. So a few different things. And even going back to 2018, 2017, we had those March for our. Lives movements that brought a lot of Seattle area students out - walking out of their schools and classes. So it's been something they've been thinking about a lot, and especially in light of the recent fatal shooting at Ingraham High School.
[00:24:42] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now you have a perspective that is unique in the state - as someone who's covered education for a while thoroughly, who has seen things with her own eyes in a variety of different environments and circumstances, districts across the state - for people who really care about public education and who want to improve conditions but don't quite know where to start or what types of things would make the biggest difference, what would you say to someone who says, I want to help, but I'm not sure how. What would make the biggest difference?
[00:25:18] Dahlia Bazzaz: Pay attention to your school board meetings. I think every year there's a city council election, there's a school board election. And when I see the turnout differences in Seattle - and in any other city, honestly - when I see the turnout differences between a city council race or a mayor race and then the school board elections, it always makes my heart fall a little bit because these folks are in charge of a lot of money and a lot of decisions that affect students. And there just isn't the same type of advocacy and accountability for these bodies. And journalists do the best they can, but there are 300 school districts in the state and not that many news organizations covering all of them. I know reporters that double up and they cover like 20 different school districts out in central Washington. There's no way you can watchdog all of those school districts at the level that is required to really catch everything.
So I would say - get really involved in the school board politics, show up to meetings, testify to school board members - they have a lot more power than you think they do. And it is a, I think, a largely ignored body of policymakers as well, because they don't get paid very much - I think the law caps it at $4,000 in compensation. And people have been trying to change that because it can be an equity issue where only people that can sustain themselves and don't have to work a full-time job can take those positions. Do have the rare school board member that is a teacher at the same time, or can make the time or set it aside for school board activities. But it is - it is a full-time job for many people. And so I would say make sure to vote in those elections - I know that a lot of the time people ask for solutions and we just shout "Vote" at them, and it can be an incomplete answer. But I think in these cases, it's especially important to vote - because they can be separated by just like 20, 30, 40 votes - your vote really does matter in those elections.
And just read through all of the documents that they're working through. They're required to record those meetings in minutes, so definitely pay attention to what is happening on the policy level. And if you can get a school board member to partner with you, they can introduce different policies and pass them at the school board level. I think more people are becoming cognizant of that - unfortunately, because of how much chaos has erupted in school board meetings over the past several years. But it's important that even outside of these huge controversies with masking, with CRT, that we're paying attention even when it's not dominating the headlines.
[00:27:58] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I think that is such wise advice, and I just second everything that you said. Especially because hardly anyone engages with school board races, school board meetings - so few people vote in those elections, are aware of who the candidates even are or what they stand for, that it really - because they can operate under the radar and without notice. People may be shocked to see the egregious things that are happening in school districts that they think are fine and safe and "normal" - and to see, whether it's conversations about book bans, about allowing all members of our community, including people in the LGBTQ community, all different cultures, ethnicities - it is just so important to engage in these races. And I have personally seen some shocking and alarming things happen at school board candidate forums and school board meetings. And I tell you, it just takes - three people showing up to a school board meeting can completely change the trajectory of things. It can make them reverse votes. I've been involved in movements to do that successfully, and it just doesn't take much. It just takes paying attention and engaging and getting involved. So whatever your local school district is, I think you are absolutely right in encouraging people to stay engaged, pay attention, make sure to vote in those elections. But also stay engaged throughout the rest of the year to make sure that you see what's going on - to make sure if some elements are trying to come in and usurp power or take over the district, that there are people who see that and who organize against it. Because right now a lot of it's flying under the radar and people may not notice until it's too late.
[00:29:50] Dahlia Bazzaz: Absolutely. And I would also add to that - trying to gain a knowledge of how school districts budget and just the essentials of education finance, because - and I hear this a lot and I love this phrase, but - a budget is a moral document. And if you want to know where a school district puts its values, then you just have to look at what they're spending, and where they're spending it, and on which students they're spending it on. So if you show up for those days where they're going through the budget, going through their fiscal strategy - all those things can really pay off and give you a better understanding. Don't just show up for the policy days, show up for when they're actually putting the money behind those policies.
[00:30:33] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Thank you so much for taking this time again with us today to help educate us on what is happening in education across Washington state. Thank you so much, Dahlia.
[00:30:44] Dahlia Bazzaz: Thank you for having me, Crystal - it's fun.
[00:30:46] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, political consultant and host Crystal Fincher is joined by defense attorney, abolitionist and activist Nicole Thomas-Kennedy!
Crystal and Nicole discuss a number of news items this week, including new data showing a change in commute patterns for Seattle workers, as well as a new poll showing Republican Pierce County Executive Bruce Dammeier and Democratic Attorney General Bob Ferguson as the two leading candidates to succeed Jay Inslee as governor, should Inslee decide against seeking an unprecedented fourth term.
They also delve into the details of the ACLU lawsuit against King County over Seattle jail conditions and examine the rising demand for the state's 988 hotline, how important non-police responses are for public safety, and the potential for new funding to help support mental health resource. Following Tacoma’s State of the City address by Mayor Victoria Woodards, Crystal and Nicole also note the progress Tacoma is making in a more holistic approach to public safety with a Behavioral Health Crisis Response Team and an unarmed Community Services Officer Program, which would increase the level of response and bring support to non-emergency situations that are not an active threat to life or property.
They review an encouraging update from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority about their work with the Right of Way Safety Initiative moving a total of 189 previously unsheltered people inside to a shelter or housing option that meets their needs. They also discuss a contentious debate surrounding the location of a new Sound Transit station.
The conversation wraps up with a discussion of the recent train derailment on the Swinomish Reservation and the tribe's upcoming court case against the railway company for allegedly running trains in violation of a 1991 easement agreement that the tribe says limited the length of trains allowed to pass through.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Nicole Thomas-Kennedy at @NTKallday.
Resources
How Highway 99 Removal Would Reconnect South Park with Mike McGinn and Coté Soerens from Hacks & Wonks
“Your old workweek is extinct, Commute Seattle data shows” by Mike Lindblom from The Seattle Times
“Bruce Dammeier (R), Bob Ferguson (D) lead hypothetical 2024 gubernatorial field in WA” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate
“The Exodus of Inmates from the King County Jail Continues” by Amy Sundberg from Notes from the Emerald City
“ACLU-WA, Director of Public Defense Call Out Conditions in King County Jail” by Alison Jean Smith from South Seattle Emerald
“ACLU sues King County over Seattle jail conditions” by Sydney Brownstone from The Seattle Times
“Washington state may boost 988 hotline funding as demand grows" by Taija PerryCook from Crosscut
“New facility will provide crisis response services for Washingtonians in north King County” by Shane Ersland from State of Reform
“‘Our best days are ahead of us.’ Mayor Woodards relays optimism in State of the City” by Liz Moomey from The News Tribune
“Safety, homelessness, recovery top priorities in Tacoma State of the City address” from KIRO 7 News
“Homelessness Worsens in Older Populations as Housing Costs Take Toll” by Dan Frosch from The Wall Street Journal
“Constantine Backs ‘North of CID’ Light Rail Station, Bypassing Chinatown and Midtown” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
“Incomplete Analysis Overlooks Rider Delay Caused by Skipping Union Station Hub” by Stephen Fesler from The Urbanist
Coalition Letter opposing 4th & 5th Ave locations: WSBLE station location in the Chinatown International District
“Balducci Wants a Good Transit Option for Chinatown” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
“BNSF train derails on Swinomish Reservation as tribe readies court case against railway company” by Isabella Breda and Vonnai Phair from The Seattle Times
Transcript
Coming soon
On this midweek show, Crystal is joined by Mike McGinn of America Walks and Coté Soerens of Reconnect South Park to learn about their work with the Freeway Fighters Network. Mike shares a broad overview of the movement’s efforts to remove crumbling highway infrastructure while addressing the climate, health, and equity issues these concrete structures have caused. As a resident of Seattle’s South Park, Coté reflects on the throughline of Highway 99 running through the middle of her community – connecting a history of red-lining, displacement, and racism to the present-day impacts on the neighborhood’s livability, pollution exposure, and life expectancy. Mike and Coté call out the lack of imagination exhibited by the country’s attachment to highways and paint a compelling vision that replaces underutilized thoroughfares with vibrant, connected communities.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Mike McGinn at @mayormcginn and Coté Soerens at @cotesoerens.
Mike McGinn
Mike is the Executive Director of national nonprofit America Walks. He got his start in local politics as a neighborhood activist pushing for walkability. From there he founded a non-profit focused on sustainable and equitable growth, and then became mayor of Seattle. Just before joining America Walks, Mike worked to help Feet First, Washington State’s walking advocacy organization, expand their sphere of influence across Washington state. He has worked on numerous public education, legislative, ballot measure and election campaigns – which has given him an abiding faith in the power of organizing and volunteers to create change.
Coté Soerens
Coté Soerens calls herself a midwife to a thriving local coffee shop that has become a hub for community organization and activism. Living in the South Park neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, a community filled with immigrants and people of color where opportunities are limited, Soerens felt called to create spaces of belonging. In 2017, while hosting a dinner for neighborhood friends, Soerens realized that, even without secured funding, she had all she needed to create a local coffee shop, where local youth could find employment and where neighbors could meet to discuss local issues and organize.
Soerens, along with the neighborhood, has even bigger dreams. Reconnect South Park initiative’s dream is to ultimately decommission the highway which cuts the neighborhood in half and to reclaim those 44 acres for equitable development.
Resources
Freeway Fighters Network
Reconnecting Communities Campaign | America Walks
Reconnect South Park
“South Park Joins Growing Movement to Dismantle Freeways” by Agueda Pacheco from The Urbanist
“Seattle residents drive movement to tear out Highway 99 in South Park” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times
“Feds award money to study removing Highway 99 in one Seattle neighborhood” by David Kroman in The Seattle Times
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, today I'm thrilled to welcome two guests to the podcast. The first, Mike McGinn - you're used to hearing him on Fridays, as we do weeks-in-review. But today we are talking about what's in his wheelhouse, really, in America Walks, the organization that's helping to build a nationwide movement to reconnect communities divided by wide roads and overbuilt arterials - that hosts the Freeway Fighters Network, which calls for increased investment in walkable, equitable, connected, and accessible places by divesting from polluting highways.
And Coté Soerens with the Freeway Fighters Network - representing a broad coalition of public and private sector leaders, community activists, and multidisciplinary professionals - dedicating ourselves to championing design, equity, and policy principles that center people before highways.
Welcome to you both. As we get started, I just wanted to start with you, Mike, and what got you involved with this work?
[00:01:53] Mike McGinn: Oh my God, it just depends where you want to start. Probably a big starting point for me was the realization, as a climate advocate, of the role of transportation in climate emissions, which - when I was working in the mid-2000s on Seattle's Climate Action Plan, transportation was 40% of all emissions because we had hydropower. We'd already gotten off of coal. What's fascinating now is that as the nation is getting off of coal, which is great and renewables are the way to go - it's just the cheapest, best way to go - that's now what's happening nationwide. Transportation is now the largest source of emissions. But then once you start getting into it, even the littlest bit, you also see tremendous equity issues, like who has access to the transportation system. Right now it requires a car mainly - and if you have to walk, bike, and use transit, you're denied of a lot of opportunities because we've built a system that's very hostile to getting around that way. And oftentimes it's hostile because it's wide, fast roads, it's freeways that have divided communities, lack of sidewalks, not having bus lanes, they're not prioritizing transit, all of that.
So huge equity issues, huge health issues as well. Apartment buildings tend to be, and residences tend to be near those wide roads - and all the pollutants you breathe in has tremendous negative effects on the health of everyone living nearby. And again, that's an equity issue as well. We intentionally do this. You'll hear people argue for this - the apartment buildings belong next to the arterials to protect the single-family neighborhoods. So in other words, the people of lower incomes need to breathe more pollution so that we, in the leafy green neighborhoods, who are better off can breathe less pollution. It's - yeah, the whole thing is just an extreme failure of public policy, and planning, and building for the future. And of course, it's not even a good transportation system. Obviously when you're excluding a huge portion of the population that doesn't drive because of age, because of ability, or because of income - already it's bad. That's not a way you raise all boats, so to speak. That's not a rising tide that lifts all boats. It's something that divides us, but it's also extraordinarily wasteful and expensive.
Which kind of brings us back to the freeway work as well. We're at the stage now - and the Alaska Way viaduct on our waterfront was an example of that - where after you've had that concrete structure around for 50 or 60 years, it's ready to be replaced. It's gonna fall down. It's gonna take a big expenditure to replace it. And what more and more places are realizing is - Let's not replace it with another highway. Let's replace it with a surface street, or maybe no street at all. And let's put the dollars we would have spent into rebuilding this inequitable, polluting, climate-changing monstrosity of infrastructure - let's put the money into walking, biking, transit, or geez, how about affordable housing? How about letting people live back in communities again - live near jobs and services? And those are all the arguments. We've had no shortage of arguments - good, really good ones - why we should do this. We're starting to see them take hold, but the US still has not let go of its highway-building mania with all its negative effects, but we are starting to see some cracks, so to speak, in the unity that's been around highway building for decades. And we're actually seeing the beginning of a freeway removal moment, and at the very least, we should be stopping highway expansion, and I get to do that work now at America Walks, too.
[00:05:26] Crystal Fincher: And Coté, how did you get involved in this work and why is it important to remove freeways?
[00:05:31] Coté Soerens: Well, I got involved in this work by living in a neighborhood that was cut in two by a highway that was never actually very popular. For residents in South Park, this portion - it's a portion of Highway 99 State Route - was fought very proactively by the residents of South Park back in the '50s, but Washington State Department of Transportation at the time decided to go with it anyway. What I do love about this movement of highway removal and walkability is basically the emergence of a new imagination, nationally, around how life should be lived. It seems that if you look at the time that this highway in my neighborhood was built back in the '50s, the imagination then was - Let's expand car availability - and there were different values that were being worked at the time. And now, 70 years later, we want different things as a society, we need different things. We tried the car designs, urbanism, and we have found that it's not equitable, it's also horrible, and also - it's funny - you have to pay a premium for a walking score of 90. Now it's like a privilege to live in a walkable neighborhood.
So back to the question how I got involved in this. I've lived in South Park for 10 years. I've raised three boys in this neighborhood and South Park, actually, it's a pretty interesting place in Seattle. It's been a red-lined neighborhood back in - if we get a little wonky with history - back at the turn of the century. And then I feel that I find this history of South Park fascinating because it seems to be a history of government consistently missing out on what residents of our community are saying. It seems like - We hear what you're saying, and yet we don't care. We're gonna move forward anyway. So this story has been replicating itself around this highway. Back in the 1900s, South Park was a farming community - it was its own little town in Seattle. And it was a thriving neighborhood of farmers that actually started the Pike Place Market, which is very famous nationally. And it's always been a community after - the Duwamish were here originally in the ancestral lands - then it's been a community of immigrants, and it's been a community of Italian immigrants back at a time where Italians were not considered white. And in the planning map of the town, of the time, South Park is seen as "hazardous," which is a word that has been used in planning before to say it's non-white. And now that it's environmentally challenged, we see the word "hazardous" and would say - Oh wow, yes, of course, there is a Superfund in it - there is the Duwamish River. But if you go back to the time - no, it was a farming community, which changes the meaning of "hazardous."
So at the time, Seattle wanted to annex this little town of South Park into the city with very different expectations than the residents had. So at the time, Seattle City Council thought - Well, there is a river in the park that is really good for industry. So we're going to annex this neighborhood to make it industrial and push out all the residents. The residents, on the other hand, were thinking - Whoa, if we get annexed to Seattle, we can get better permits for our sewer system and other amenities. So they both entered into this "agreement" and with very different expectations. Now, the City of Seattle - wanting to make this place industrial - what got accomplished out of that was the Duwamish River became a Superfund site and then industry was started popping around. And by the time the plans for the highway to cross this residential core were conceived, it was thought of as a very convenient way to discourage the residential - so that we could continue with the work of making this area industrial. So all the protests of the time, in the '50s, of residents were sorely ignored. That highway didn't make any sense and it still doesn't make any sense. It's a very redundant grid. Many people don't know this, but when we talk about removing the portion of Highway 99, people think that we're talking about this other one - this 509 - which is what people use to get to the airport. And it's not that one. You can still get to the airport. It's a portion that connects I-5 and 509 and it goes right connected to it.
So I'm totally not answering your question, Crystal, about how I got involved. So the way I got involved was Cayce James and the City at the time, put together a group of people - stakeholders in the neighborhood - to walk around the neighborhood. And we were making different tours of different places around the neighborhood - the community center, the library. And on every stop, people will be talking about problems caused by this portion of the highway. So I remember looking around to my tour partners and saying - Hey guys, you all realize that all these problems go away if you just shut the dang highway, right? And the reaction was a reaction that I often get, which was to look at me and say - Cute, moving on. They really didn't think of this as a viable solution - to just cut an underutilized highway in order to resolve issues such as pollution, safety, lack of walkability, lack of access for kids to their school, and other problems this highway creates. And what that did for me was to see firsthand the problems with the illusion of permanence. People do see a highway and they think it's been there forever and it will be there forever. They don't think about it like - No, this was actually an expression of certain values that we hold as a society, and when our values change, we can also change our built environment. We can change the highway.
At some point, I remember Cayce James, who hosted this tour around the neighborhood, reached out and we started talking and she said - Hey, you know what? I've been thinking about this too. I think it's possible to remove this highway. So we started talking and then we got connected with the folks from PlacemakingUS, who I just mentioned this idea - Hey, Madeleine Spencer and Ryan Smolar. Hey, how about - I've been thinking about removing this highway. What do you think? They said - Hey, there is a whole movement across the country on highway removal. And we were connected with Freeway Fighters, and then we started learning that across the country, so many communities were having this idea of reconnecting communities, thinking about land differently, really considering the opportunity cost of having a highway crossing the neighborhood.
For us in Seattle, we have had problems with affordability for a long time. The City has not been effective at creating policy that will stabilize the real estate market and actually preserve cultural space, preserve housing, affordable housing - particularly for communities of color. When thinking about this portion of the highway crossing South Park, you can see 44 acres of land that could be utilized in a different way. That, to me, creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity to actually make more land for equitable development. So for all these reasons, I am particularly excited about getting this highway out of our neighborhood. And another thing that I need to mention is that this highway - it's so interesting how it was designed - it goes through every single place where kids play. It goes right next to the community center, the skate park, the library, and the elementary school. It seems to have been designed to cut children's life expectancy by 13 years, which it does. There are studies about this. So I can talk to you for three hours about reasons why this highway needs to be removed.
[00:12:35] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's really important. It makes a difference. And both of you touched on the racialized history of highways and just the impact that this has on communities, on families, and particularly on health. Transportation is the number one polluter in our state, in our area. And what you just talked about - I feel like sometimes people hear statistics and they don't really apply it to people's lives. But when you talk about a life expectancy that is that much shorter - in Seattle - it feels neglectful. It feels criminal almost. It feels wrong that we know that these types of harms are being forced upon our children. And we aren't taking that into account so often when we have these repeated conversations every single year about what highways we're gonna build, expand, put in. And these are conversations that aren't just - they certainly absolutely started in the '50s and we started that whole domino effect rolling. But now we have the chance to review what we're doing to make modifications, whether it's Highway 99 in South Park, whether it's the Interstate Bridge Replacement between Washington and Oregon. We had this out - and Mike McGinn is notorious and has been pretty much vindicated, it looks like - for fighting against the Highway 99 tunnel in Seattle. But we seem to so easily dismiss the negative harms that this has on neighborhoods, on affordability, on health, on just our quality of life. How do you view just the importance of really taking all of these factors into account as we make these policies, Mike?
[00:14:19] Mike McGinn: Well, first of all, I just have to say that as a mayor, you're not supposed to have any favorite neighborhoods. But if I had a favorite neighborhood, South Park would be pretty darn close. I spent a lot of time down there as mayor, but I also spent time there before mayor - my kids played basketball in the rec leagues and I played ultimate frisbee in the schools. And I'd be down there in those playing fields at South Park Community Center. And yeah, you're right next to the highway. And that highway doesn't carry that many cars either. The reason people confuse it with 509 is because it's not really that useful a section of highway, but it certainly carries enough cars for the noise and pollution to be meaningful. And it's also not at all surprising, tragically, that it's a community like South Park that gets a highway like this. What you see is - when you look at where freeways were built across the country, they almost always went through Black or Brown or poor neighborhoods - because that was where there would be the least political resistance to building it. And they oftentimes would get a little more convoluted in the route to avoid wealthy neighborhoods. So it's worth thinking about that - would you - and take a look at where the, take a look at the property values near big bustling highways and the ones further away. I'm not talking about downtown, which has its own economic thing - but even there, the properties right next to the highway were the last to develop. And the ones that are a few blocks away developed faster. And if you look at Seattle, the wealthiest neighborhoods are the furthest from the highway. So we built a system that was designed to speed people in and out of the city at the expense of other people.
And the equity issues are really tremendous. And South Park - it's a textbook case, really, of that - when you see all the highways going through South Park. And then of course they're under the airport and everything else - under the airport flight routes. So you'd like to think that decisions about how to build a transportation system and how to route highways and all the rest were based on rigorous analysis of the data - what's the most public good we can generate from this. And certainly we dress it up that way - that there's a plan and it was done for a certain way. But anytime you dig into it, you found that it's really a reflection of who did have power in the political system at the time and who did not. So we speed the commute of people from wealthier places and we subsidize that with the lungs and health of poor people where those highways go through. And if it were your neighborhood, you wouldn't stand for it. So of course South Park would like to see it removed.
And we're talking about SR 99 here, right - which is kind of a weird route - it's not 509, but they intend to extend 509 to connect with I-5 right now. This is underway. And when that connection is complete - they've been working on this for years - they call it now the Puget Sound Gateway Project, used to be called the SR 509 extension. It's been labeled nationwide as a highway boondoggle - it's a nationally known highway boondoggle - the 509 extension. That's gonna siphon off tens of thousands of cars a day from I-5 to send them to a back way into Seattle, which is not gonna be that fast 'cause that back way is gonna run right into the First Avenue South Bridge, which is always backed up. And so where will that traffic jam be - at the First Avenue South Bridge? It's gonna be in South Park again. I mean, honestly - WSDOT should rip out 99 just as an apology for building the 509 extension 'cause they're actually making it worse right now.
[00:17:55] Coté Soerens: So you do have, yes - the equity issues are so blatant when you look at the highway grid in Seattle. Even if you have wealthy neighborhoods next to the I-5, you have sound barriers and other appropriate ways to mitigate the effects of it. But there are things in the history of this particular portion of the highway that are really painful. For example, the land upon which it was built - it was conveniently left vacant by the Japanese internment. Much of that land was built on homes that belonged to Japanese farmers. There is a house actually that was transported from South Park to the Hiroshima Museum of the Japanese-American Experience. So there are these undertones to this highway that, in a way, make it a monument to racism. And as we are removing monuments across the country, this one might be one of the ones that we can remove.
But also what I find very concerning is the lack of imagination - 'cause that's also part of it. I don't see anybody at Department of Transportation being - Hey, let's be as racist as we can. I think it might be, it is often an issue of - We know to do highways, so we're going to just do highways. And when it came to the decision of building this portion of 99 across South Park, the history of it tells us the story of residents making their case that it shouldn't be built. And Washington State Department of Transportation said - Yeah, we know, but we already started. We have the plans, we're about to start, so we're gonna do it anyway. And it was supposed to be a federal highway, but it was so underutilized - as it is today - that nearly six years later, six years after its completion, it was demoted from a federal highway to a state route, which to us is a smoking gun right there. Yes, it's a very irrelevant piece of highway in the grid. The need for a new imagination, the need for people to think of a better way to live life that does not rely on highways and to be able to invite departments of transportations across the nation to think differently about transportation - I think that's a really great opportunity that this movement has. And I think that Pete Buttigieg has really, really done the movement a favor in the sense of making this idea more mainstream in ways. There is a lot of room to grow, of course, with the Reconnecting Communities Initiative, but I'm actually hopeful about the ability of people in communities to think of new ways about how to build their communities. I'm really hoping that this is a good means for neighborhoods and cities to think differently.
[00:20:34] Crystal Fincher: Now, I want to talk about the how of this really - 'cause there's still a lot of people, and a lot of the general conversation for people who don't follow this for their job is - Hey, you know what? You just said that this highway will take some pressure off of I-5 and man, I'm sick of sitting in traffic on I-5. So isn't that a positive thing? And wow - this is supposed to connect people and help people get from A to B faster? What does it mean to remove a highway? Does nothing go in its place? Where do those cars go? Is it going to be a burden for everyone? How do you answer that, Mike?
[00:21:12] Mike McGinn: Well, the first thing you have to realize is that we've created - if the idea was that by building a freeway system through populated places, we would make transportation work really smoothly - I think we got about 50 or 60 years of evidence that it's a failure. Any economically successful place cannot possibly accommodate all of the mobility needs of its residents through limited access freeways and through single occupancy vehicles. And it's not a question of ideology or even climate or health or anything else - it's really just a question of geometry. A car that holds 1-1.5 people per trip on average - there's not enough room for all the cars, which is why we also saw so many downtowns kind of get the parking crater around their downtown office buildings, where you got - parking lots had to be built to accommodate all the vehicles. And it's not something that can be met.
The other thing you do when you do a system like that is you really encourage everybody to sprawl out over the landscape. Whereas before you needed to be within a closer proximity for transit to work, or maybe walking to work, or streetcars to work - now you can live in more distant places. So those freeways then fill up again, 'cause what you've done is you've filled up the landscape with people that have to drive, right? They have to spread all over the place. So now once you do that for 50 or 60 years, as we've done, it's kind of reasonable for people to go - Well, how could you do something differently? We're now at a point where people, for most of them in their lifetimes, have not lived in an environment in which that wasn't true. But we can look at other places around the globe, or we can look at smaller units of our country, and see where many more people are moved by a combination of walking, biking, and transit - particularly if you put the housing closer to the destinations. So that's what we haven't done.
Now, what we've seen, now let's just - now that may sound all pie in the sky. Well, that'll take forever to build all that transit and do all that housing. But let's take a look at SR 99 on the waterfront. How many times did we talk about the Carmageddon that would come when the viaduct closed, as it did for lengthy periods of time for construction reasons, and it never materialized. And it didn't materialize because actually a lot of those auto trips are by choice. People could choose a different time of day. They could choose a different place to go. They could combine trips, or they could choose an alternative like transit. So what you saw every time the viaduct was closed was that in fact, everything worked a little more smoothly, believe it or not, because people - it turns out people have brains and they will not mindlessly drive into traffic and they will adapt their behavior. And that's what we see happen again and again - not just on the Seattle waterfront, but every place this is predicted.
And those cities that have removed highways, what they find is that the Carmageddons don't materialize, but they regain this land just as Coté was talking about. They regain this land for, really, all these other great purposes. One of the best purposes would be housing - what we know is so many people - our young people, our immigrant and refugee communities, our Black and Brown communities that have been lower income communities, service workers pushed out of the city by higher housing prices. What if we started investing those dollars in making it easier for people to drive from further and further away? We say easier, but you got to own a car for that. You got to pay all the expenses of that. What if instead we put people closer where they could actually use transit and could be taxpayers in the city? What a crazy concept, right? Okay, so for all you fiscal conservatives out there, WSDOT isn't paying taxes to the City of Seattle for all that land. So if you're a fiscal conservative, you should love this idea because you bring a bunch of new housing in there - you got sales taxes, you got property taxes, you've got all the other taxes that people who live in a city pay as taxpayers - and you have all the economic activity that goes along with that. And you've reduced household expenses because people can live in a place without a car. This is - the fiscal prudence of this alone - if you are not convinced by health or climate or anything else, if all you do, if all you care about is hard line, bottom line, dollars and cents considerations, the last thing you want to do is invest in a freeway through a populated part of your town.
[00:25:52] Coté Soerens: That's why this is such a great idea because you have arguments on every side. So yes, we do need - there are more progressive causes that are pushed by these initiatives such as affordable housing and environment. But also fiscally - I really - I'm worried about seeing the City of Seattle consistently spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on mitigation strategies to deal with this highway - that is underutilized. One of the reasons we decided to move forward with this Hail Mary initiative - let's see if we can pull it off - was when we saw the traffic counts. Hey, this is not something that is necessary to anyone we are aware of. Again, there is a feasibility study underway, but so far with the data we have, we calculated that it would maybe add 7 minutes to a commute, which again - compare 7 minutes to 13 years of life expectancy of children. This is the youngest neighborhood in Seattle, but nothing in the built environment will tell you that. Most children live per square foot in South Park than anywhere else in the city. Also there is - particularly in South Park, because of the disinvestment that the City has practiced over South Park - because they want it to be industrial, so we have like 100 years of disinvestment on affordable housing and other amenities - and we pay the same taxes.
There are people - the residents in South Park have consistently had to organize to make things happen in this neighborhood. So you have generations of immigrant families who have really put sweat equity in the development and livability of South Park that now are being pushed out. That to me was a tragedy and something I felt we needed to do something about. So making more land available in this neighborhood for families who have invested their lives here to be able to remain and thrive in place - that, to me, is a big win that this project could bring, among other things. But I love what you said, Mike, about the fiscal aspect of this - the amount of revenue that we will bring as far as property taxes, businesses. Somebody at the Legislature, Washington Legislature, mentioned this opportunity cost that I thought it was a really important point when we think about land being used for cars.
[00:28:06] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, really for cars versus the community. And you're right, it absolutely makes a humongous difference. It is absolutely fiscally responsible and it has a stimulative effect to the local economy. There's just a - gosh, I'm trying to remember this study - I'll find it, I'll try and put it in the show notes resource section. But there was a study done for local business owners, who we all - who employ most people in cities, small businesses employ most people in the area - and they asked them to estimate how many people arrive to their stores and shops via car, versus via foot, on bike. And they all overestimated how many people arrived by car to the tune of 4-5x as much. They estimated 60, 70, 80%, and it was uniformly under 20%. I think people underestimate how much a community connection makes a difference to the local and regional economy. And that's absolutely something that makes a difference. I live in an area close to a freeway that really cuts us off from a significant portion of the city, or just makes it really, really inconvenient. And is a 5 minute detour by car, is a 20 minute detour to 30 minute detour to walk around - and just walk across the street, walk three blocks one way, if there was not a freeway there.
What does it mean to South Park? And you talk about the opportunity with the additional land - South Park is, as you said, the youngest neighborhood in Seattle with almost a third of the residents being under 18. What will it mean to kids and families, and really the future of this area and region, to be able to reclaim that space?
[00:29:54] Coté Soerens: Well, we'll see because - so something that is really important to mention is that the process that we're engaged in right now is a community envisioning process - to provide the opportunity to South Park residents to say what ought to happen in these 44 acres. So we have - because we're part of this neighborhood and we've heard people speak for years - we have a hunch that it will be about affordable housing, first and foremost, but also places for children to play. Infrastructure for kids is not great, and it's actually - compared to other places in Seattle - it's upsetting to see the quality of the community center and the playgrounds. Again, I have three school-aged children and I have stories about the places they have access to play, or the places we have access to bike. It's very dangerous to bike, to connect from South Park and other places. So the opportunity of these 44 acres - to actually let the neighborhood have a say on what the built environment should look like - I think it's incredibly powerful. And it's one of the benefits of engaging a whole neighborhood into a community envisioning process, which now we have just started the contract with the City to begin this process. There will be three or four big meetings and we have partnered with very skilled community organizers and - that do understand the importance of clear communications across the neighborhood and the ability of people to say their opinion in an equal playing field with others about what ought to happen in this 44 acres.
In the Reconnect organizing team, we have shied away from saying what needs to happen because we are basically quarterbacking the project. We are kind of bringing the resources together and bringing the platform together, but the conversation needs to occur within South Park by South Park people. So I have opinions about what I would like to see on this 44 acres, but I think the most powerful work will happen when everyone in the neighborhood is given the chance to say - I would like this to happen, or I'm concerned about that. There's some people who are concerned about - Hey, if we shut that portion, then will the traffic be diverted to 14th Avenue South? How are we going to deal with that? Those are all incredibly important questions. So what is important right now - the way we see it at Reconnect South Park - is the dialogue. How are we able to host a democratic dialogue within the neighborhood is the most important. And then at the end, the story of government completely ignoring the voice of the residents and not being accountable to it, does the story want to change? And also we, as residents, also can use a dose of imagination as well. 'Cause for many of us, it's been like - Oh, there is a highway there, whatever. No, hey - you deserve better. So engaging people in that conversation - that I think it's - I'm a retired therapist, so I see things as therapeutically speaking. So I think that's a nice therapeutic process for this neighborhood's healing.
[00:32:56] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. That makes complete sense. So as we get close to drawing this conversation to a conclusion - Mike, for people who are looking to get involved, who understand the importance, or just want to make their voice heard here - how can they get involved? And also as importantly, as we consider the several city council candidates - including in District 1 in Seattle, which includes South Park - what should we be looking to hear from those candidates, and how can we hold them accountable to listening and serving this community?
[00:33:33] Mike McGinn: Well, the question answers itself, doesn't it? But let's just first start by saying - to celebrating the fact that there is now a grant from the federal government to study this, the Reconnecting Communities grant. But a study is a long way from success. And there will be powerful interests locally that will fight to maintain the highway. We're already hearing from the Port that somehow or another this is essential to them, but I'm sure they're not prepared to pay the costs of all of those shortened lives. It's not worth that much to them. So I think you do have to understand that there will be a fight here. And you'll never be able to push this through the State Legislature in that fight without strong local champions. So first of all, support Coté and everybody down there in South Park in the effort. It's gonna take public demand. Second, let's get people on the record. Do we need a highway in South - do we need that SR 99 in South Park? Get them on the record. And I really think it's not just the city council candidates, but the mayor as well. 'Cause if you can get the City united around that, there'll be a fighting chance with WSDOT. But that's gonna be extremely difficult - because let's be really clear that it is not just the Port businesses. It's a lot of labor unions down there at the Port too that believe in this stuff. They've still got 1950s and 60s outdated notions of what should happen and that highways are good. So against that combined political might, it's really gonna take a significant public demand to move elected officials. And now's the best time to make those demands as elections are occurring.
[00:35:11] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, political consultant and host Crystal Fincher is joined by Seattle Axios reporter, Melissa Santos! Now that the Washington state legislature has passed a major bill cutoff deadline, Crystal and Melissa discuss a long list of bills that died and those still fighting to survive - including landmark gun safety and housing bills.
They also discuss Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell’s still-unfulfilled promise to advance alternate 911 response programs that can make our streets safer and help mitigate the SPD staffing crisis that the mayor says we have. They also discuss Mayor Harrell’s decision to postpone the removal of cherry trees at Pike Place Market after community pushback.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Melissa Santos at @MelissaSantos1.
Melissa Santos
Melissa Santos is one of two Seattle-based reporters for Axios. She has spent the past decade covering Washington politics and the Legislature, including five years covering the state Capitol for The News Tribune in Tacoma and three years for Crosscut, a nonprofit news website. She was a member of The Seattle Times editorial board from 2017 to 2019, where she wrote columns and opinion pieces focused on state government.
Resources
Shasti Conrad, Newly-elected Chair of the Washington State Democratic Party — Hacks & Wonks
Rifle ban, housing bills and more advance in the WA Legislature by Joseph O'Sullivan & Donna Gordon Blankinship from Crosscut
WA House votes to ban assault weapons by Jim Brunner and Claire Withycombe from The Seattle Times
Ban on selling assault weapons clears state House by Melissa Santos from Axios
Bills aim to protect abortion patients who travel to Washington by Melissa Santos from Axios
WA’s Missing Middle Legislation Threatened by Grab Bag of Municipal Excuses by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
High-Speed Police Chase Bill Still Unpopular Among State House Democrats by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger
WA police a step closer to resuming pursuits under bill passed Wednesday by Senate by Shauna Sowersby from The Olympian
State Democrats Stiff Renters Again by Rich Smith from The Stranger
Legislative Cutoff Fizz: Police Pursuit Bill Moves Forward While Tenant Protections Die by Andrew Engelson and Ryan Packer from Publicola
The Olympia Waltz Continues for Middle Housing and Other Vital Legislation by Ray Dubicki from The Urbanist
Seattle's alternative 911 response program falls behind schedule by Melissa Santos from Axios
Removal of Seattle cherry trees near Pike Place Market paused by KING 5 News
On this midweek show, newly-elected Chair of the Washington State Democratic Party Shasti Conrad joins Crystal for a conversation on what the role entails, lessons learned from the previous Chair, and her plans for continuing forward as a strong and effective political party. As leader of an umbrella organization for local party organizations across the state, Shasti acknowledges the futility of a top-down approach and the need to listen and to understand what resonates with Democrats from different areas. Discussion of her plans to broaden the Party’s appeal includes creating inclusive spaces, expanding the base, messaging Democratic wins, and showing up and investing in rural areas.
Crystal and Shasti then tackle the question of “who is a Democrat” and the dilemma faced in sharing Party resources with: those who are ideologically aligned but not labeled as D, versus those who self-label as D but are not ideologically aligned. Finally, Shasti shares her dream of strengthening the Party through bench building of candidates and support staff by making campaign work attractive, which includes taking seriously the violence and hostility predominantly targeting Black candidates and staff members, building sustainable pipelines for careers in politics, and encouraging good working conditions through unionization.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Shasti Conrad at @ShastiConrad and the Washington State Democratic Party at @washdems.
Shasti Conrad
Shasti Conrad was elected as Chair of the Washington State Democratic Party in January 2023. She is the first woman of color and youngest chair of the Washington State Democrats! She is also the first South Asian woman to lead a state party in the entire country! Previously, Shasti was the Chair of the King County Democrats from 2018-2022, making her the first woman of color chair in the org’s history. She is a versatile strategist and thought leader with a broad range of political, policy and operations experience within government at all levels and throughout the private and non-profit sectors. She launched her own consulting firm in 2016 to support government, campaign, and business clients looking to better our world. She was named to the American Association of Political Consultants’ 40 under 40 list and Seattle Met’s 100 Most Influential List (top 10 in politicos category).
Resources
Washington State Democratic Party
“Washington State Democrats Elect Shasti Conrad as Party Chair” from Washington State Democrats
“WA Democrats choose Shasti Conrad as new leader” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times
“Building Resilient Organizations: Toward Joy and Durable Power in a Time of Crisis” by Maurice Mitchell for Convergence Magazine
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
I'm thrilled to be welcoming back to the program, the now-Chair of the Washington State Democrats - Shasti Conrad - welcome.
[00:01:01] Shasti Conrad: Hi Crystal, it's so great to be here.
[00:01:03] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you here. So you were just recently elected as the chair of the Washington State Democrats, after a pretty notable tenure as the Chair of the King County Democrats. Starting off for a lot of people who may not be familiar - what does the Chair of the Democratic Party do?
[00:01:24] Shasti Conrad: That is a great question and one that I have been getting quite a bit. So the State Party Chair, basically - I see it - job number one is to win elections for Democrats up and down the ballot. That's job number one. Job number two is really studying the vision and strategy for what the Democratic Party looks like, how it works, how it's built here in Washington State. We're here to work with our allies in labor and to build winning coalitions across the state and across the progressive movement. I've often described the party as - we are the steady drumbeat - we are here to make sure that candidates and campaigns have the resources that they need, that they have the volunteers, that they have the - they know the relationships, the community leaders. And then the candidates in the campaigns - they bring the jazz, right? They bring the energy, the nuances that match the different communities that they're representing - and we're here doing all year-round organizing to make sure that we're ready for whoever steps forward to run for office - that we can support them and get them across the finish line.
[00:02:36] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. So now you are taking over after Tina Podlodowski stepped down after a pretty successful run, by those metrics, as the Chair of the State Party. What lessons did you learn from Tina, and what are you carrying forward from her?
[00:02:53] Shasti Conrad: I think that Tina deserves a ton of credit for the successes that we have had here in Washington state for the last six years. We had the three most successful cycles in terms of delivering Democratic wins across the state. We elected the most diverse State Legislature - each cycle we just kept improving and growing our majorities - this past cycle was probably one of the most successful cycles that we've had, certainly one of the best for Democrats in probably at least 20 years. We now have control of - the Democrats are in office for all of the statewide offices. We finally got a Secretary of State for the first time in, I think, 56 years as a Democrat in Secretary Hobbs. And so much of that credit does go to Tina. I think Tina really built the State Party as an organizing machine - she invested in it. We talked about doing this multi-cycle organizing, all year-round organizing. She helped to move the Party from it being - there were times when I think the Party was a bit of a social club - it was a bit about just who of our friends were gonna run for some of these different offices. And Tina really, especially in the Trump era, really built up the resistance and helped us make sure that we were winning.
We can't lose any of that ground. Tina was a great ally for me these last several years while I was Chair of the King County Democrats, and so I learned a great deal from her. And we're not gonna go backwards, that's for sure. I think Tina would be the first one to say this, which is - now that we've built such a solid organizing foundation, in my tenure my hope is that we get to grow and expand it, particularly in bringing in more diverse folks into the Party. And that's inclusive of young people, that's inclusive of people of color, communities of color - and really helping to get more people into these leadership roles. The Washington State Democrats - we're comprised of 88 different local party organizations, so there's a lot of different regionality, diversity - but I think across the Democratic Party, we have our work cut out in trying to make sure that we are fully reflective of the state. And there's some of that work that I think I definitely wanna grow upon what Tina has built.
[00:05:17] Crystal Fincher: Now you mentioned those local party organizations - like county party organizations, legislative district organizations, affinity caucuses, that type of thing. I think a lot of people don't realize necessarily that those are not branches, those are not subsidiaries of the State Party - they're actually their own independent organizations, their own bylaws, and can do what they want. They can't in most situations be told what to do by the State Party - it doesn't work like that. So basically it's a big statewide coalition of Democratic organizations. In that kind of structure, how do you galvanize and expand the organizing footprint in the entire state - in more metropolitan areas like King County, in rural areas in Central and Eastern Washington, Southwest Washington - and lots of different areas, different needs, different representation, different issues that they may be dealing with. How do you approach that, or how will you approach that across the state?
[00:06:19] Shasti Conrad: Yeah, it's definitely a tall order to try to get all oars in the water rowing in the same direction. I have found that it's - we can be unified in our values, but it's important for us to be localized in our messaging. We're certainly seeing this here in Washington state, but I think this is something that the entire Democratic Party writ large is dealing with, which is that urban and rural divide and really thinking about - the ways in which we talk about things in King County and Seattle doesn't necessarily work in Spokane or in Walla Walla. And I look at Washington state as a microcosm for national Democratic Party politics. In Washington state, we have Pramila Jayapal, who is the Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. We now have Representative Suzan DelBene, who leads the DCCC, which is more moderate arm of trying to make sure that we are helping Democratic Congressional members get re-elected. And then you have our newest member of the Congressional delegation in Marie Perez. And Marie ran in - down in Southwestern Washington - as a very working class, working mom Democrat that was able to work with Republicans and get Republicans to support her. She won by just a couple thousand votes against a complete MAGA Republican. And so that's a big spectrum. And that is what I, as Chair, have to try to make sure that folks along that full spectrum feel that the Democratic party is theirs.
And so like you said, each of the different party organizations are their own entities. It's not a top-down approach. We, as the State Party, are somewhat of an umbrella organization, but we're here to work alongside those different party organizations. And so it's a lot of just - it's a lot of listening, it's a lot of really making sure that folks are feeling that their lived experience is valued, that their perspective - that they know their neighbors, that they know what's gonna work with talking to their neighbors and moving them along. And that there's space for that, that it doesn't just come down from on high. One of the things that I've spent the last several years having to do quite often is unpacking when people say - Oh, the Democrats. It's like - Okay, but who are you actually frustrated with? Are you frustrated with the DNC, which sets the national stage and national messaging? Are you frustrated with the Senate Caucus or the House Caucus? Are you frustrated with your local party organization? What are these different pieces, and how do they all work together in this big ecosystem? And how can we help? How can we address your concerns? And a lot of that, I think, comes down to just people-to-people canvassing and organizing in those conversations, as well as really making sure that the messaging is resonant in those particular communities.
[00:09:15] Crystal Fincher: So you talked about expanding the organizing apparatus - certainly something that you've talked about. In your tenure as Chair of the King County Democrats, was participating in all elections - not just the even-year elections right now that are legislative statewide, but also in what are currently - hopefully not for much longer - but currently odd-year elections for school boards, city councils, mayors, county council positions. Those elections haven't traditionally seen a lot of participation or engagement from the Democratic Party and local party organizations. What is gonna be your approach to that?
[00:09:58] Shasti Conrad: Definitely. I think we saw, particularly in the last several years, the ways in which the Republican Party was doing a better job at building the bench than we were. They were having their folks run, and they were - run for these various seats, like you just said, like school boards and city council seats and whatnot. And they were going unchallenged. Democrats were not running for them because we just weren't paying attention in a lot of ways - we weren't indexing what all of those opportunities were. When I was Chair of King County Democrats, in an odd year, we had over 300 seats that folks could run for. And folks just didn't know that. And as soon as we started to talk about that, and started to actually really recruit, and also demystify the process - people didn't even know - how do you run? What does it take to run? How do I get onto the ballot? And once we started saying - Actually, there's a filing week in May where you go to - for King County Elections, or whatever your local county elections office is - and you can file online. Sometimes they have different fees, but they range in size - and you get your name on the ballot, and then you get to know your neighbors, and you encourage folks to vote for you.
And so already this year at the State Party, I have asked our data team to look at opportunities where - what are the races across the state that we could win, that are at a nice edge. And one of the - really excited about this - so one of the things we just found when we were looking at the data this past week is that in the town of Sunnyside, which is in Yakima County, there are three seats that are up that are currently held by people that are leaning Republican. All three of those people won by less than 100 votes when they ran last time - one won by one vote. All three of them are men and they lean Republican. Sunnyside is a city that is 70% Latino. If we do the organizing work, if we get a Spanish language organizer, if we encourage those people to register to vote, we get some great candidates who represent the community - we could get those seats. And we could really make a difference that then, once those folks have some experience - their name's already been on a ballot - then in a couple of years, maybe they decide that they run for the next level of government. Maybe they even run for the State Legislature. And people have gotten to know them, they've been able to build up a resume. And that's the type of investment and engagement that I think is gonna be really important and a real opportunity for us to change up, particularly in these places that when you look at the map, they just look red. But then when you can get underneath that, there might be some opportunities where we can actually make a difference, pick up some of those seats, and start changing who's representing these folks.
[00:12:51] Crystal Fincher: And part of that is also recruiting candidates. You talked about recruiting great candidates - that's been an area where there have been some excellent successes and there's still a lot of opportunity, some things haven't quite been mined yet for opportunity. What do you see the Party's role in developing leaders, and what can the Party do to help that happen?
[00:13:12] Shasti Conrad: Yeah, I think - for years, we've talked about developing campaign-in-a-box - having some of these templates of - it's just people just don't, they don't know, right? They don't know - how do I find a treasurer? How do I set up a website? How do I - do I need to put a mailer together? How do I call people? How do I do all of these things? And for those of us who've been in this work, we do this year after year, but most people just - they're living their lives, they're not paying attention to the ins and outs of political work. And so I think that's something that we can develop the resources and the tools - there's been, especially in the Trump, post-Trump era - there've been a number of outside organizations that have developed really solid candidate training programs like Emerge, Institute for a Democratic Future, there's Run for Something, She Should Run - there's a bunch of these different organizations that are doing a great job. And I think that that's where we can partner with those folks. We've had our own candidate training program at Rise and Organize in the State Party.
I am really passionate about training up the next generation of staffers and campaign managers and doing that type of leadership as well, because I also think that that's partially what we're missing in the ecosystem - is all of that support. So you get someone who's gonna step forward and decide to run, but they need help - they need a Crystal Fincher in their support system. And we need to be developing more of us that can help them do that, so I think that's something that we'll tackle in this next cycle as well, if the State Party is developing that training and organizing training. And then on the candidate recruitment side, it's really, it's just, it's finding those gems of talent. There are such great community leaders who - they're really active in their churches or they're really active - they're a nonprofit leader. They're doing this great work, but they just never thought about running for office. But talking about the impact and talking about - Okay, you're able to do this great work in your community or in your job. Let's take it to the macro level. Let's help you be able to do it for cities, and school boards, and the State Legislature, and things like that.
[00:15:20] Crystal Fincher: Another issue that I think people on the ground, who may not pay close attention to party politics but they look around and they look at who Democrats are nationally, looking locally who are Democrats - wondering - there's lots of talk about - Okay, should Democrats be trying to win voters who may be disaffected from the Republican Party, or focus more on turning out people who may not be motivated to vote often for whatever reason. Do you do both? Do you do neither? What is that? And who is the base? Who is the party? Who is a Democrat? How do you approach that? Is this a big tent party that takes anyone? Is this a party that has strict ideological boundaries? What do you think that is and what will your approach be as Chair?
[00:16:12] Shasti Conrad: Certainly, and I think that those answers are different in different places throughout the state, throughout the country. We are certainly a big tent. We have to create a space where the Party feels like it's welcoming, feels like it's inclusive, feels like it's a place where folks can make it their own. We need to be clear and aligned in our values - which is that we stand up for human rights, we stand up for people who are vulnerable, we're about choice, we're about freedom. These are the things that we are clear about. But there are some places where - I go back to CD3 because of just, it's the most, it's the biggest example of where that was a real opportunity for growth for us, because Marie Perez really did have to have conversations with folks who had been supporters of the Republican Party, who had voted for Jaime Herrera Beutler. But as the Republican Party has become more and more radicalized - where they are - they're not speaking for folks who maybe are a little bit conservative in their, some of their values, but for the most part are just trying to feed their families, get to work, pay the bills. The Republican Party has abandoned those folks too. And we have to be able to say the Democratic Party will make space for you if you are willing to recognize that there are some of these lines that will not be crossed, which is that we believe that everyone has right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and all of that.
And then I also think that we have to expand the base. And that means really making investments with - into communities of color, young people - I think the Party is dealing with a relevancy problem when it comes to young folks, right? Young people have seen across their entire lives the ways in which our biggest challenges keep not being addressed. And at times, on both sides of the aisle, politicians have paid a lot of lip service but nothing changes. You can feel that, you can feel the lack of movement, and then this prioritizing of incrementalism over actually doing big, bold changes - transformative work. And so we have to demonstrate that we actually are going to do the work, that we're going to make the change, that we're going to not just talk the talk. Joe Biden wasn't my first choice as president several years ago, but he has - you have to give him credit for the fact that he has been a very progressive president. We have done big things underneath his leadership the last several years, and we're not doing a good job of talking about that. We're not doing a great job of actually messaging to say - Look at what the childcare tax credit was able to do - it halved childhood poverty, it made a big difference. We are delivering and bringing infrastructure projects back into the state - money is getting moved, things are improving. The economy has been tough, but we're making it through. That's under Democratic leadership. That is without Republicans helping. And . We believe in climate change. The Republicans don't. And these are big issues, particularly I think for young people as they're looking at a future that feels like it might be worse than their parents'. So we've got to do that work. And I think we've got to actually make it action oriented too. And that's a big part of what my job will be and what we will be trying to set with the State Party is that direction and that - those changes to make the Party feel like it is a much more welcoming place and a place where people can do good work and see change happen.
[00:19:55] Crystal Fincher: I think that's spot on, really smart to recognize. Younger people actually are - definitely are feeling disaffected, trying to find reasons why they should trust institutions or institutional power after seeing so many examples of it not being helpful. And that you have to have an action-oriented approach that enables people to see the change around them without relying on rhetoric or seeing that rhetoric unfulfilled. With that, how do you play a role in messaging what Democrats are doing on a national and statewide level? How can the party improve that?
[00:20:34] Shasti Conrad: One of my frustration points from the last several years is I have felt we spent a lot of time identifying and speaking about our values in reaction to the other side. And you heard me probably just do it just a few minutes ago. And so often we put ourselves against - because that's who they are, we are this. And I think it's important that we start to make the shift where we start to take some of the power back and start to control the narrative by saying - This is what it means to be a Democrat. And this is what Democrats are delivering. This is what Democrats are doing. Like I said, we are the party of choice and freedom and opportunity and optimism. We're more than just the fight, right? And also I think a lot of times we just talk about winning and losing elections, but I wanna take us also to the - how are we making a difference in people's lives? What does it mean to win? Because just winning - sure, we pat ourselves on the back, we get to run up the score and be like - Look, we have this many more than them and good for us. But is it actually making a change? Are people actually feeling like they are better represented, that their lives are improving because we have the majority in the State Legislature here in Washington state?
I think that's true, but we have to make sure that we're talking about that. When things are getting passed through the State Legislature, when we're taking up the middle income housing bill, when we're taking up gun safety bills, when we are looking at the wealth tax - these are things that are going to actually make an improvement on people's experience, what their time on this earth is gonna be like. And that, I think, is really important for us to talk about and take it to that next step. And I think folks are tired - they're tired of the - we get these emails where it's like urgent, deadline, biggest fight of our lives. And it's hard because it's true - every election is, feels like it's the most important one - but at some point that just, it's burning folks out. And so we've got to just be able to be honest and level with folks - Hey, I don't know if this is gonna be radically different, but this is the right step that we need to take. It's like I-135 - I was so happily surprised that it did as well as it did. It's a step in the right direction. Is it gonna solve the housing and homelessness crisis in Seattle? No, but it is going to help us move in a direction where we can actually start to look at some solutions. And so I'm grateful that folks decided to step forward and vote and participate and do, especially in an off-cycle, odd year election. And again, it's we just have to be - we have to be able to level with folks. And that, I think, is a change in tone that I hope I can help to bring to the Party here in Washington state.
[00:23:22] Crystal Fincher: I think Seattle's Initiative 135 for social housing is a really great and instructive example for how we can organize and what the opportunity is. We saw seniors who were afraid that they weren't gonna be able to age in place. We saw young people who wanted to make sure that there was gonna be a space for them in the community - urbanists, communities of color. The DSA was canvassing in support. We saw local democratic party organizations - from the King County Democrats, 46th District Democrats, and a number of folks and coalitions coming together. Some elected leaders, community leaders, activists - all coalescing around this. And really willed that to victory, as you said, during an off-year - not in those higher turnout elections that have Congresspeople and the president on the ballot. And in February, no less - I'm still excited by that.
But it does bring up some interesting questions going back to - Okay, who is a Democrat and who is the Democratic Party there to serve? Because in Washington state, particularly to a degree that a lot of other states don't, there's an interesting dynamic here in that it's not just the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Certainly we have very competitive Democratic and Republican races - we've both been involved in quite a few of those. But also in several areas in King County, especially in Seattle, Washington - Republicans aren't as much of a competitive party to Democrats as the DSA, Democratic Socialists of America, or the People's Party. People who predominantly skew younger and don't necessarily find themselves completely aligned with the Democratic Party - a lot of times due to national issues - but are saying, I am aligned with these values. I am finding more action and I feel that there is more honesty about those values outside of the Democratic Party in something like the DSA or other organizations. And that playing out in interesting ways, whether it's access to the Party database and VoteBuilder, endorsements in local party organizations, and so on and so forth. How will you be going about defining who is a Democrat, in ways that are consequential when it comes to running for office or advancing policy and the utilization of State Party resources?
[00:25:52] Shasti Conrad: You have to be able to say that you're a Democrat, right? You have to be willing to identify as a Democrat in order for us to be able to share those resources. It's like any other kind of club or organization - you have to be willing to sit with us at the lunch table and say that you're willing to work with us to be able to do that.
But I am clear that, particularly in urban areas in Seattle and King County in particular, that we as a Democratic Party - we have been losing out folks to alternative parties. You mentioned DSA, Working Families Party, the People's Party - we have been losing out. And particularly young people are finding that moving to some of these other parties is where they feel like they identify better, that they feel like they're being seen, that they feel like they're able to get more work done. And I think that's something that we have to address. We talk a lot about recruitment. We talk a lot about trying to get people to come into the Party. But I don't think we've spent enough time really talking about - what is the experience of being in the Party? It's the retention piece of it - it is the experience of when you come into a party organization - who are you being met by? Are our folks being welcoming? It's not a secret that a lot of our Party spaces are - it's mostly run by folks that are older, it's retired folks - because they have the time. And I value that work - so I've learned from so many of our elders, who have been organizing and doing this work since the '60s, right? And they have committed their lives to doing this. And that is something that I value and appreciate and respect.
But you look at any kind of organization, company, brand - and if your workforce was all 65 and older, you would say - That's probably not a sustainable brand. We've got to figure something out. And so I think making room to create these intergenerational communities where younger people can see themselves - and not just as tokenized members, but as leaders. I'm the first woman of color in this role. And I'm also the youngest Chair - I'm under 40, and that makes me the youngest Chair in Washington State Party's history. And I think that I'm a marker of showing what - this next generation of leadership - that it's time. It's time for us to move into these roles and into - both in terms of the visibility, but also in just the change in perspective and the ways that we organize. And that's something that I think is - we're gonna have to show that. We do a lot of telling, but we're gonna have to really demonstrate that those changes are gonna happen. And that - particularly those younger folks that are choosing to go to other spaces, that they can see themselves in the work.
Really quickly, I'll just say Maurice Mitchell, who's the head of the Working Families Party nationally, wrote a really beautiful article a couple months ago where he talked about what was needed for continuing the work in the progressive movement. And he talked about the need to be able to meet the moment, to build winning coalitions, and to bring joy into the work. And what I say to that is - I agree 100% - we are in alignment there. It's just maybe a little bit of a difference in tactics and in institutions. My sense is that the Democratic Party is what we have and what will be here, and that it needs to be built and transformed from within - to be able to meet the moment, to be able to build winning coalitions. And we've got to infuse it with more joy - to push back against the institutional burnout that is happening everywhere. And my hope is by doing that, folks will see that we, the Democratic Party, can also be a part of where they can do their organizing work. It can be a part of the coalitions that they want to be a part of, and that they'll see themselves as members of the Democratic Party, alongside maybe some of these other organizations.
[00:29:49] Crystal Fincher: And following up on that - just because this has come up in so many different situations and circumstances here in Washington state, so you say - Okay, you need to be a member of the Party. Can someone align themselves with more than one party? If they say - Hey, I'm in DSA and I'm a Democrat? Do you feel that that counts as membership in the Democratic Party? Does it have to be exclusively the Democratic Party? I know some local party organizations have different approaches to this. What is the State Party approach?
[00:30:21] Shasti Conrad: It is a case-by-case scenario. Again, as we talked about earlier, each of the party organizations have their own rules, their own sets of how they do things. And so I don't think that it's right for us, at the state, to go against what some of those different organizations have said. So it is case by case, but I will always just advocate that I want folks to feel proud to be a Democrat and so it is important - to be able to have access to resources and whatnot - that they are willing to say that and are willing to come and be a part of the work. And we have wonderful volunteers that are part of this Party that are doing great work. And I hope that folks who maybe have been a little bit wary of getting involved in the Party will just come and give it a try, and will see that it's a new day and folks are, I think, a bit more willing to work with people who come from different backgrounds and different perspectives.
[00:31:17] Crystal Fincher: Definitely. And it is a very King County-centric issue to be having to negotiate through - Okay, we seem to be aligned on values, but this person says they're in the People's Party and we're Democrats - and working through that. But what has happened in situations where there is a clear lack of alignment, whether it be from people who are self-labeling themselves as Democrats - but who are predominantly supported by Republicans, or just officially endorsed by the Republican Party, have a history supporting and donating to Republicans. And that has been called out by your predecessor, Tina Podlodowski, in a few different situations - revoking access to the Party database, or preventing access to Party resources, and standing behind the refusal to endorse from several organizations. Do you anticipate that continuing? What's your approach to people who seem to be clearly misaligned, but who insist on calling themselves Democrats?
[00:32:22] Shasti Conrad: Certainly, this is - probably at times I was somebody who was like - Hey, Tina, what do we do here? And maybe was pushing her in some ways on some of these issues. And now, as I'm in the role, I understand better what the challenges are - 'cause it's nuanced. To be able to set one policy that works for the entire state, it's difficult because the issues here in King County are - this person wants to organize with the Working Families Party, can they also be considered a Democrat? In other parts of the state, it's - No, this person is a full Republican, but we don't have any Democrats that are running. Can we endorse the Republican? And then we even had a case last year in King County where somebody was running as a Democrat who was on a - that was for a white supremacist rally. And those are our data we have to be so careful with. This is people's personal private data that we are responsible for, and so we have to be careful about how that is shared. And so that is something that I take very seriously. And I think that there's a lot more that we could be doing to ensure privacy and security for our candidates, for our elected officials, for our members, for our volunteers, and whatnot. And so these are things that I now think about when making these types of decisions - that it was easier when I wasn't in the catbird seat to be able to say - Hey, why can't we do X, Y, and Z? And it's - Now I'm on the inside, I get it. So these will be things that we'll get and review as they come up, but it is certainly a challenge and I think making sure that our folks are safe is the number one priority.
[00:34:06] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. There was - speaking of folks being safe - several notable instances of predominantly Black candidates and staff members of those Black candidates being targeted for violence and hostility during campaigns. Several of those instances made news, several more didn't - but certainly a concern among people who are volunteering and who are turning out in the Party apparatus to help their local and federal candidates. What is the Party's responsibility in keeping candidates safe, especially those candidates who have shown to be targeted at a higher rate than others? And what more can the Party do to address that?
[00:34:50] Shasti Conrad: Absolutely, yeah. It's candidates - it's also their staff and their volunteers. We had a number of cases this last year where a Black campaign manager was targeted. We had volunteers who were followed and whatnot. Already, I've talked with members of our Black Caucus to say - Let's be proactive. 'Cause one of the things that I've heard quite a bit was - these things would happen, and then after the fact, there'd be some kind of - Okay, now what? But then action maybe wasn't taken. And we know that the environment that we are in right now is - it's very heightened. And that's particularly, it's even though that white hot light is even harder on people of color - we just know that particularly Black people. So I definitely want to be proactive in making sure that we have thought through safety and security plans as folks are starting to get back out on the campaign trail, that we have talked through what kind of security support we can provide. I think it's something that needs to be tackled by the ecosystem, so that's something that needs to be worked through with the caucuses as well - the House and the Senate - because they also support folks that are running for those seats. And working with the specific folks to make sure that this is something that they actually want.
And yeah, I take it very seriously. And I think about it too - I'm a woman of color who - I live in south Snohomish County and I've got white supremacists in my neighborhood. And I know that feeling - both in terms of there's a physical threat, but there's also the psychological, the emotional, the mental, like all of that - of just knowing that these folks that are right here, who want to destroy what we believe in and want to hurt us, right? They see us as the enemy, so I take all of that very, very seriously. And I think that's something I would love to maybe come back - and if you can help me put together a group too - to talk through what that looks like and how we can build solid safety plans for our folks.
[00:36:48] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - have been involved in those conversations - happy to be helpful in any way I can. You talked about Marie Gluesenkamp Perez earlier who, in the Third Congressional District, won what was probably the biggest upset in the country last November - in winning her race over Joe Kent for the seat previously held by Jaime Herrera Beutler. What do you take away as lessons from that race, and how will Democrats be showing up in rural areas in your tenure?
[00:37:18] Shasti Conrad: I think it was clear - we can't miss these opportunities. We can't take them for granted. We have to do the direct people-to-people organizing. And I think it's particularly true in rural communities, but I find that it's true also in communities of color where - in these places where they have often felt left behind, dismissed by the Democratic Party, we have to build trust - and it takes showing up, not just showing up only in the fall of an even year, but it takes showing up throughout the year, being there. And it's being neighborly. It's like - How are you? What do you need? What's going on in your life? It's asking and actually getting to know folks. Something a lot of people don't know about me, but I actually grew up on a farm. I grew up in a small town in Oregon. I grew up on a farm - we had ducks and chickens and sheep. My task as a small kid was to go get the eggs from the chicken coop every day, and I talked about this a lot as I was campaigning and whatnot. My grandmother really taught me how we would trade the chicken eggs with the neighbor down the street who had a beehive and we would get honey from them. And then you'd have the neighborly conversation of - Hey, how are you? How are the kids? You'd get to know - okay, if you wanted to meet up with so and so, the best time to see them was at church. Or everybody would go to the local Shari's and go after church. Or if you wanted to talk to Bob, you'd see him at the local pub on Wednesday nights - and that's where you would find these folks. And so getting to actually know them, talk to them - that it takes this people-to-people, conversation-by-conversation relationship building to be able to demonstrate that you are a real person who cares and wants to make their lives better. And because they know you, and you're saying - I believe that Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is gonna make the difference - then they'll trust you. And that just takes time. You have to operate at the speed of trust. And that's particularly true, I think, in rural communities - but I am finding that to be the case in the Latino community, in the tribal communities, Black community, Asian API community - this is true just with organizing and with people, but particularly with folks who have felt like they've been sold a bill of goods before by many politicians.
So yeah, so I think this type of organizing is what matters. I just heard about - last week, there was a house party for Marie and 140 people showed up - and that's exciting. And in February of an even year - folks are excited - they want to help. They wanna make sure that we return Marie in two years and that she has the support. Marie held the first town hall that that district had had in years because Jaime Herrera Beutler wasn't doing town halls. And she's talking to people who didn't vote for her. And she's talking to people who didn't think that she would represent them. And she's demonstrating - no, I represent this whole district and I'm gonna show up - even if you're gonna tell me you don't like me, I'm here. And that is what we have to do. And it's gonna take several years probably for some of these districts to change, particularly in Central and Eastern Washington. But if we make the investment, we do the organizing work - we have to be ready for when an opportunity presents itself for us to get that and flip those seats.
[00:40:38] Crystal Fincher: So I know we're right at the beginning of your tenure - you're just starting out, learning everything, getting your feet underneath you. But what might that look like operationally and in practice? Is that more satellite offices across the state and in rural areas? Is that hiring a different kind of organizer underneath a different kind of model? What can that look like?
[00:40:59] Shasti Conrad: Everything costs money, and so I have to go raise the money to go make this happen. But my dream is to develop a organizing pipeline that is particular to rural communities, and maybe even developing an organizing fellowship at some of the rural colleges, community colleges throughout the state - where we can actually develop folks who come from the communities to get the right training, but then get hired into the organizing jobs - onto the Coordinated Campaign where we can actually keep them and support them so that they're not only there for a few months at a time, but actually are building these relationships over several years. And then when we have a Coordinated Campaign and that's over, that we have a place to be able to move those organizers - to go work with the unions and do union organizing when it's not high campaign season and then move them over to us, getting them into internship programs with different agencies and things like that.
I benefited from the fact that I was a college student who graduated into Barack Obama running for president back in 2008. And had I not had those opportunities early in my life, early in my career - I would not be here today, I would have picked another job, I wouldn't have stayed in politics. But there were opportunities that presented themselves - and the mentors and people supporting me - and then one job turned into another and suddenly it's been 15+ years and here I am. And I just think that there's so many Shastis out there. There's so many folks, but they just haven't had the opportunity and the support. And like the rest of the country and so many other industries, young people are like - How am I gonna take care of myself? How am I gonna pay the bills? And if politics and working for a local government and whatnot doesn't pay the bills and those opportunities aren't there - they're gonna leave their home communities, and they're gonna take jobs with Amazon, or they're gonna take jobs that are steady paychecks, and we're gonna lose them for a generation. They're gonna - it's hard to get off those trains when you're on them. And so we've got to build those opportunities, and we've got to - one of the things that I'm really excited about potentially doing is I really wanna work with the youth councils on the reservations to really talk about job opportunities in the political sector - and running for office themselves - but also being a campaign manager, being an organizer, finding those opportunities. So that they can see that there's this whole other world of opportunities and jobs that could help them to stay in their own communities, but also take them around the world to work on other campaigns all over the place if they would like to.
[00:43:42] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. And thank you for spending all of this time with us, being generous with your time. As we begin to wrap up, I want to draw inward a little bit. We've talked about what the Party will be doing within the community and your approach to that. But I also wanna talk about staff, really - of the State Party, of campaigns, of Democratic electeds serving in office - and this conversation that we've been having, that's been evolving, about unionization, working conditions, supporting workers in that. We have lots of labor partners, as a Party entity, and alignments there. But there has been, frankly, a mixed reception from a lot of people when it comes to the unionization of campaign workers, for campaigns across the board - this is something that has certainly made it to legislative and congressional campaigns. There may be conversations about that in some local campaigns - we have seen a few instances of that. But also within the Party, legislative staffers just had a battle to get some of that kicked off. Do you think that campaign workers should be able to be represented by a union? And what guidance and examples are you providing for local electeds and other progressive organizations?
[00:45:02] Shasti Conrad: 100%. I actually believe that the State Party - under Tina's leadership, to give credit where credit's due - was the first State Party to unionize. And that's not without its challenges, right? People have been figuring it out as they go - we've been building the plane as we flew it, and so I think that's been - some of the trying to find the right home for Campaign Workers Union, trying to work through the particular seasonal working issues that come with being on campaigns and whatnot. But I think it's incredibly important. I remember what it was like as a young person where I was in unpaid internships - I was certainly working way more than 40 hours a week at times on campaigns and didn't have much recourse of things were happening, where to go to. And so I think it's a vast improvement of where we were 10 years ago, 20 years ago - certainly the last couple of years. So yeah, I think we will certainly encourage the candidates that come through that they should unionize their staff, depending on the size, on all of that - but I think it's really important.
I did the Pathway to Power program last year that's put on by the Washington State Labor Council and learned a lot about labor issues, but learned a lot also about - in the role of candidate or chair or whatnot, how to leave room for your staff and workers to be able to unionize and the ways to show support. But also that means sometimes taking a step back and allowing them to take the lead and not having - you now have to see yourself as a manager, and not putting yourself on both sides of the table and things like that. So there's things that we're still working through to have all of this stuff figure itself out, but I think it's incredibly important. I was excited to see that I believe the - nationally, I believe that the Democratic Congressional staffers unionized and I think here in Washington State, we're gonna continue to see those unionizing efforts happen in all parts of our ecosystem, and I think it's a really exciting thing. As I've been talking to labor union leaders - particularly the last few weeks, like I've just said - some of the best progressive wins of the last several years have been labor wins. And so we have to be good partners, and that includes unionizing efforts of our own staff, our own teams.
[00:47:16] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, completely agree. And thank you for spending this time with us today. We'll be following along as things progress and look forward to speaking with you again. Thanks so much, Shasti.
[00:47:26] Shasti Conrad: Thank you so much - always a joy to see you and spend time with you. Thanks so much.
[00:47:29] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, political consultant and host Crystal Fincher is joined by elite advocate, member of The Urbanist Election Committee, and Political Manager at the Washington Bus, specializing in legislative advocacy and electoral organizing with young people, Jazmine Smith! They catch up on legislative updates from Olympia, including free school meals and other education bills, housing and transportation, public safety, voter rights and name change legislation. They also discuss the legislature’s desire to exempt themselves from many public disclosure requirements that other elected officials are subject to.
They also discuss the state’s first auction of carbon pollution allowances after the passage of the Climate Commitment Act and what that might mean for green investment and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, several school districts planning school closures and layoffs because of funding shortfalls that require legislative funding to solve, the impact of SNAP food assistance benefit reductions for families.
Crystal and Jazmine conclude with a discussion of speed camera traffic safety enforcement in response to the need to improve safety on our streets and the impacts of police increased surveillance within BIPOC and lower-income communities, as well as some proposed mitigations to those issues.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Jazmine Smith at @jazzyspraxis.
Jazmine Smith
Jazmine Smith is the Political Manager at the Washington Bus, specializing in legislative advocacy and electoral organizing with young people.
She also is an urbanism organizer, serving on the Urbanist’s Election committee, with the Queen Anne Community Council as the Transportation Committee co-chair, the Uptown Alliance’s Land Use Review Committee and is a WSDCC Rep for the 36th LD.
Resources
“Marc Dones and the State of King County’s Homelessness Crisis Response” from Hacks & Wonks
Alternative Response in Seattle is Behind...Again by Amy Sundberg in Notes from the Emerald City
Seattle Schools notifying employees of possible layoffs by Monica Velez in Seattle Times
WA proposals to address wealth gap die in Legislature | The Seattle Times by Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks in Seattle Times
What’s still on the table for traffic safety in WA Legislature? | The Seattle Times by David Kroman from Seattle Times
Feds award money to study removing Highway 99 in one Seattle neighborhood by David Kroman in Seattle Times
Reconnect South Park
Member of WA’s ‘Sunshine Committee’ quits, cites lawmakers’ inaction | The Seattle Times by Claire Withycombe from Seattle Times
WA legislators scrap plan for free school lunch for all students | The Seattle Times by David Gutman in Seattle Times
Seattle has ignored concerns over SPD use of surveillance technologies, community members say by Guy Oron in Real Change News
SDOT releases ‘top-to-bottom’ Vision Zero review to lukewarm reception by Guy Oron in Real Change News
Washington’s Middle Housing Bill Is Still Alive with Further Amendments by Stephen Fesler from The Urbanist
SDOT’s Top to Bottom Review of Vision Zero Barely Skims the Surface | The Urbanist by Ryan Packer in The Urbanist
Additional pandemic-era SNAP benefits to end March 1 by Bridget Chavez from KIRO 7 News
WA enters new era of putting a price on greenhouse-gas pollution | The Seattle Times by Hal Bernton from Seattle Times
New Drug Possession Bill Emphasizes Coercive Treatment by Andrew Engelson in Publicola
As Density Bills Move Forward, It's Statewide Housing Goals vs. "Local Control" - PubliCola by Ryan Packer in Publicola
Defensive Vision Zero "Top to Bottom Review" Recommends More of the Same - PubliCola by Erica Barnett in Publicola
Peninsula School District estimates $12 million deficit without staffing, program changes by Aspen Shumpert in The News Tribune
Cap-and-trade takes Washington businesses, ratepayers into the unknown | Climate Changed | capitalpress.com by Don Jenkins in Capital Press
Everett schools may slash 140 jobs to deal with $28M deficit | HeraldNet.com by Jerry Cornfield in Everett Herald
First auction held for ‘licenses to pollute’ in Washington by Bellamy Pailthorp from KNKX
WA's government transparency committee is ready to call it quits | Crosscut by Joseph O'Sullivan in Crosscut
The Washington Bus
On this midweek show, Crystal welcomes back Marc Dones, CEO of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, to catch up on how the response to the homelessness crisis is faring since their previous conversation. Marc highlights the success of using a Housing First strategy with three authority-run program centers that have moved 1,600 households inside in the last six months. The discussion then touches on the challenges of standing up the authority from scratch, building a nimble team informed by lived experience and capable of iteration in an environment that often views a pivot as failure, all while managing expectations of immediate results. Finally, Crystal and Marc talk through what’s needed to scale solutions up to address the true magnitude of the problem - improving the system’s durability of stay, addressing public safety in encampments through a public health approach, engaging and integrating available federal resources, and facing the necessity of compensating human service workers appropriately.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii, find Marc Dones at @marcformarc and the King County Regional Homelessness Authority at @KC_RHA.
Marc Dones
Marc Dones (they/them pronouns) is a social entrepreneur, policy strategist, and social justice activist with over 10 years of experience in equitable systems transformation. Prior to taking on the role of inaugural CEO for the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, Marc was the founder and Executive Director of the National Innovation Service (NIS), a consulting firm that helps governments redesign their approaches to supporting marginalized populations. Marc has also held leadership roles in social impact, policy and program design, and continuous improvement at the Center for Social Innovation (C4 Innovations), and is a faculty member at the School of Visual Arts (SVA). Marc holds a degree from NYU in Psychiatric Anthropology and is an experienced equity trainer.
Resources
King County Regional Homelessness Authority
Year In Review: 2022 | King County Regional Homelessness Authority
Draft 5-Year Plan | King County Regional Homelessness Authority
“Ending homelessness in King County will cost billions, regional authority says” by Greg Kim from The Seattle Times
“The Cost of Solving Homelessness: Dones Calls the Bluff” by Kevin Schofield from Post Alley
“Study: Human Service Wages Are Even Worse Than You Imagined” by Erica Barnett from PubliCola
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today I am excited to be welcoming back to the program, the CEO of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, Marc Dones. The Homelessness Authority is tasked with the coordination, funding, and creation of policy for homeless response services in Seattle and King County. Welcome to the program, Marc.
[00:01:12] Marc Dones: Thanks for having me, Crystal.
[00:01:14] Crystal Fincher: So as the CEO of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, you have had quite the task on your hands. This is a crisis that we are dealing with here - that so many areas across the country are dealing with - and so many intersecting issues are at play here. Since the last time we spoke, what has been working and where does the work stand right now?
[00:01:39] Marc Dones: It's a great opening question. I think what has been working predominantly is the authority's sort of all-hands-on-deck approach. So we have really only three new things that we are currently running that are fully conceptualized and deployed by authority current staff. And the first is our emergency housing voucher program, in partnership with the three housing authorities. The second is our Partnership for Zero work, which is focused on addressing unsheltered homelessness in the downtown core of Seattle. And then the third is our right of way work, which is focused on encampments that are in state rights of way and was funded out of proviso that the Legislature and Governor Inslee crafted in the last legislative session. Most other programming, other than some sort of nips and tucks - so to speak - around the edges are largely functioning as they have functioned for the last five, six years - as the authority prepares to rebid all of those things this year, at which point there will be substantive changes in how those things function.
But what we're seeing in those three new program centers is quite a bit of success. The big differences, I think, are that we have oriented the engagement that we do with unsheltered folks to bringing them directly either into housing or emergency housing. And I know that sounds like a - why wasn't that happening? But for a lot of reasons that are confusing and wonky, the outreach teams have not historically been well connected to shelter availability, let alone housing placements. And so by restructuring these program centers to have an explicit focus on - how does the conversation you're having translate to someone coming inside, preferably to permanent housing, we have seen a really significant shift.
And so with our emergency housing voucher program, for example, we have the most successful - really in the country. We've utilized all of the vouchers that were allocated. We are in fact oversubscribed. A lot of that was through a really innovative approach to how we executed our initial over-80 MOUs with community serving organizations, some large service providers, some very tiny sort of mutual aid style groups that were right there. They were already talking to people, right? So rather than setting up a more centralized disbursement mechanism, like doing a very standardized bureaucratic thing of saying, You come to me to get your voucher. We said, No, let's just go where people are already talking about housing needs and then put a voucher there. And the result was stunning. And then additionally, and just a shout out - our housing authority partners were really, really, really incredible. They offered the most innovation I've seen out of move-to-work housing authorities in my career. They were really flexible. They reduced their contracting barriers. And the result is that 1,385 people - or households, I should say, so it's more than people - have come inside through that program.
Through our state right of way work where we are equally again focused on - how does this conversation bring you inside? We have attached a couple of different things. The first and most important is about 80 units of emergency housing. And that has been really a game changer, because what it means is that if your situation is quite complex and it's actually going to take a little bit to unwind some things or get you the identification, maybe you're undocumented and so getting identification is not just let's replace it from DOL, maybe you have a complex criminal legal system involvement and so we need to work to resolve that so that you can be housed effectively. That has been really, really significant because it has let us say, Great, we don't have to solve that today. You can still move inside. And that sort of frictionless move into that emergency housing space has really then teed us up to then resolve whatever those issues are and support people in moving on to their permanent destination. That said, we continue to have the same Housing First orientation that says - if we can get you into something permanent from outside, that's what we should do. And the reduction of the interim step and making sure that the interim step is not the default maneuver has actually been, I think, the most successful component across these three program centers. And so as a result - in that initiative, we've seen 120 folks come inside. And again, a number of those have gone already into permanent housing. I was present at one of the largest encampment closures that we have worked on - at what was called the Dearborn Encampment or Jungle 2 - and which people said to me, That'll be there forever. And I was like, I don't understand how that - that doesn't make sense to me. That feels like we've just abandoned people and we don't do that. But on the day of closure, I was there and I was watching people pack up their stuff and get in some of the moving vans that we'd contracted and drive to their apartments. So that was really beautiful to see.
And then similarly through our Partnership for Zero program, the same orientation - working with folks who are chronically homeless and saying, Can we get you leased up and into an apartment? And if not, is there an interim step that we need to take that is still going to be housing style in its orientation? And through that, 152 people have come inside. So all told, we've got about 1,600 households moved inside just through these three program centers in the last - really - six months. And so that I think is the - that's where this can go. If the whole system starts working like these three centers and has the level of integration between outreach and services and housing that we have constructed in these three centers, there's no reason that we can't see really significant throughput systemwide. So that to me feels like the success.
[00:07:52] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I do want to talk a little bit about what it took to build this apparatus that can now do this work, because it wasn't without controversy - as you alluded to, it was not the standard way that things were done. You came in. Obviously, they selected you for the job because you had the appropriate experience, expertise, and plan. But then when you're like, OK, time to do the plan - they're like, Wait, wait, wait. That's not how we've done things. That's different. You want to give other people a voice and power and control. And we usually do that internally and here with us. On top of just challenges building out this new authority, basically an entirely new organization - what was the process of working through those issues and building this apparatus, and what can we learn from this process that is now working?
[00:08:50] Marc Dones: Another great question. One, I will just say - I have never - I've run startups before. I've launched agencies - small agencies. I've launched departments. I've launched projects. I once had a career coach who is like - You know you're kind of a startup guru, right? That's your thing. And I was like, What do you mean? I hate it. It's so stressful. And she was like, But it's literally all you do. And that was a real mirror moment for me. But what I will say is this has been some of the most complex build-the-plane-while-you're-attempting-to-fly-it that I have ever been involved in - would not have been possible without the incredible team that we have managed to put together here at the authority. And to your point about power sharing - that roughly 60% of our staff have lived expertise with homelessness, with the systems that we are interacting with - I think has actually, frankly, served as one of the best ways that we have short circuited some of the discussion. Because rather than having to enter into fact finding, a whole bunch of people who work here are - No, I already know how that works. And I know how it works, not just from the theory of the policy that's written down, but I know how it works - I tried to use it and it doesn't work. And that I think has been really significant.
I think the other thing that I would just lift up is that when we started this, we really didn't have any infrastructure. We didn't have a general ledger system. We didn't have phones. We didn't have - I didn't have an email address for a while. And I've told that story before, but I think that when we think about, again, this is now roughly a 100-person agency managing well over $200 million - that's not normally the speed of any startup. And you look at these sort of startup incubators that spend a year just with their CEO, sort of like nursing an idea, let alone trying to go fully to field with those concepts. And so putting all that infrastructure together in one place - to be fully candid - I would never try to do again in the speed that we have done it. And I think that it is, again, a testament to this team. But also I think it was because the team recognized this is a crisis and we don't have the luxury of - Let's put it together slowly and yada, yada, yada. So there have been - I think we all admit - bumps, and there have been things that if we were doing it again, we wouldn't do it the way that we did it.
But we got here, really just trying to - Okay, how do we chart through this? And getting on a whiteboard, or getting on a call and saying what is the plan going to be? And if we need to iterate, how is that iteration going to happen? And I will say that one of the things that I think we don't lift up is - when the organization was being formed, there was a lot of discussion about - we want an organization that's nimble and is rooted in crisis response principles and can be, Oh, that's not working, right? And pivot. But normally in the language of government, a pivot or a reaction to something that isn't working or rapid and agile - de-risking of things is considered failure. And what I want to lift up in this discussion is I don't think our organization feels like that's failure - to acknowledge that something is not working and make a change as quickly as we acknowledge it's not working.
And so even with our Partnership for Zero work, for example, we have done significant restructuring of that process because about two months in we were like, This isn't catching the way we need it to catch. And so we worked with our HUD-TA partners and our internal staff and said, What has to change? We rolled out an entirely new team structure, a new way of doing matches, we introduced new tools. And now we are really seeing those things catch hold. And so I think there's an opportunity here for us to globally step back and ask, What is modern governance and what might it look like to translate some of our frankly more old models of governing into 2023 and ask questions about how do complex problems get solved? What are those structures? And they are not often the structures that traditional governance is locked into.
[00:13:07] Crystal Fincher: So you covered a lot there, a lot valid - I really appreciate the point that you make about what is failure and really what is effectiveness. And the ability to continually evaluate what is going on, how things are performing, and to say that is not performing up to expectations - what are the challenges? Can we make a change? And then to make that change is a sign of effectiveness. That's a great thing to be responsive to challenges that you face. So I guess overall, you've talked about how you had to build this plane as it was flying. You're walking into this position in the middle of a crisis, a legitimate crisis, where we have thousands and thousands of people living outside who are in danger, who are facing threats from a variety of places. This is not an optimal situation for anyone - on the top of residents' minds, certainly. And people saying, Okay, there is an authority that exists. Here is some money - not all of the money that you asked for - but here's some money. All right, so where are the results? Not quite an overnight thing. It has taken a while, but where do we stand in terms of getting to zero? Where do we stand from where we were at to where we are now in terms of comprehensively addressing this issue?
[00:14:26] Marc Dones: I think we - we're not where we need to be. And I think that one of the things that I would say about that is - when I say that, it's not because - again, the team working here is not doing their best work. It's because we are trying to claw our way out of a crisis that is like 30 years in the making. And so the overnightness of some of the expectations or even the way that we frame what can be done, I think, needs to always be inside that reality. And Mayor Harrell recently was saying that he's not happy with things and said something along the lines of, I'm not happy, and I won't be happy until everybody's housed, and I'm pretty sure Marc thinks the same thing. I'm like, Yes, I do. So I think that there is a alignment amongst a number of regional leaders that our situation is unacceptable. But we have to be really clear that it's unacceptable because of 30 years of policy failure, at a minimum. We could, frankly, extend that timeline and say it's more like 50. And if we add the racial dynamics, it's hundreds. So there is no fix to that depth of failure that takes a year, or two years even.
And instead, we have to start, I think - our perspective is that we need to be able to meet complex problems with complexity, both in our action and in how we message and talk about it. And so this sort of - Where is the light switch we can flip? - those are, in all candor, those kinds of problems have largely been solved by the society that is this technologically advanced. We've solved our light switch problems. What remains are deeply ingrained, frankly, societal failures that we now have to turn the course on - and that is not a light switch problem. And we must maintain a fierce urgency about the fixes. And so I think that when we have this discussion and when I think through - okay, so what might we talk about in terms of the next steps of fixing - to me, it is being really clear that through these three program centers and also looking across a number of our other funded programs that we've inherited, the seeds of success are there. And so the idea that there's just nothing that we can use, that's not quite correct. And many of the frontline staff across the funded agencies would say - I know how to do this thing. I just can't do it at the volume that I need to be able to do it at. And so much of the discussion is about how do we eliminate the things that we know don't work, either because of evidence or because what we hear from the people being asked to do them. How do we consolidate and amplify the things that do work and then scale them? And so much of what the authority is discussing in our draft five-year plan is a question of scale and is about what is necessary, both technically and from a funding perspective, to scale a crisis response that is able to meet the needs of the tens of thousands of people who are experiencing unsheltered homelessness every year.
[00:17:45] Crystal Fincher: So how many people remain outside that need to be housed, and what are the biggest challenges they're facing right now?
[00:17:54] Marc Dones: I would say that on - just the number - our estimate is that there is a rough 23,000 people who experience unsheltered homelessness every year, and that about 60,000 people experience homelessness of some type over the course of the year. What we are going to tighten our focus on is that 23,000 - we want to make a reality in this region where no one sleeps outside. We just can't continue in this. It is, from I think my personal perspective, one of the greatest human rights crises of our time - that we have allowed, in the wealthiest nation on the planet, this many people to have to endure living outside. When I woke up this morning, it was 30 degrees. The authority is currently running severe weather. I've lost count of how many severe weather operations we've ran since I've come on board, but that's lethal cold and we just can't accept that people are being forced to live outside. So that's where that sort of numbers are right now.
And so what we need to generate is a system that can match that. So what I'm saying here - okay, so in the last six-ish months, we've been able to get about 1,600 households inside. What I need to be able to say is that in the last six months, we've been able to get about 10,000 households inside - in order to be on track then to bring in 20,000 over the course of a year. So we're far away from that, in candor. And where I think we need to focus is acknowledging that how we have constructed our shelter system in the past is not producing the - frankly - durability of stay that we need to see. So that when someone goes into some of our old-style congregate shelters - in a lot of instances, they're not staying for a whole host of reasons. They're returning to unsheltered homelessness. We need to make sure that the system is able to, for lack of a better term, hold on to people and to make sure that they are getting to that permanent housing destination. So that I think is where we have to be laser focused in the next little bit.
And then to your sort of second part of that question of what are the risks out there? Obviously the weather at any point in time during the year, if you live outside, could kill you - that is just a reality. But increasingly, I think we are - or at least again, I will speak just for myself, I won't drag the rest of the agency behind me on this one - I'm really concerned about public safety. And I'm really concerned about an increasing prevalence of organized criminal elements that my field teams are running across in - hiding in encampments. And it is not uncommon - in the last week, for example, we had two structures identified in one of the resolutions we're currently running. One had a small meth lab in it that actually caught fire, it was also full of guns and money. And then another was just a bunch of guns. These are not structures where people are living. These are drug-running and gun-running structures that organized crime is using, because they know that they're not going to get found out if they're inside an encampment, because the discussion has become - all people experiencing homelessness are the root of crime, instead of what we know statistically to be true, which is people experiencing homelessness are more likely to be the victims of violent crime than the perpetrators.
And so if we cannot create a clear path to safety - that is for everybody housed and unhoused - I have really significant concerns. And the authority's role in that safety would really be from a public health perspective. And we are absolutely pursuing that. And we are also looking at what partnerships we need to stand up with law enforcement agencies or anybody, frankly, who can do the tight focus on those organized criminal elements. And I would just lift up for listeners that - imagine if you lived next door to a active meth lab where there were lots of guns, and you did not feel there was anyone you could reach out to for help. That is a terrifying situation.
[00:22:13] Crystal Fincher: I really appreciate you bringing this up. And I just want to highlight - these organized criminal elements - they're not part of the unhoused community. These are not low-level people trying to do this to get necessities that they need - these, we do have organized crime, these are organized crime elements. And they're preying upon this very vulnerable community - as we see in other situations - we see people prey upon the undocumented community because they recognize that they have fewer rights in this country and may be less likely to turn to law enforcement or others for help. So it's basically an area they know they can get away with operating. In terms of the rhetoric and vitriol that we've seen aimed at our unhoused community, and to your point, they are statistically much more likely to be victims of crime. But so much rhetoric, especially from certain elements of our community, saying that they're responsible for crime, calling for them to be swept, people looking at an encampment and immediately associating it with crime or drugs or something else - when it's not like there aren't issues that people deal with, as they do in all of society. But to be much more likely to be victims, and then to have something happen that is endangering your safety, and to be blamed for it by the surrounding community, by oftentimes law enforcement, and then to be punished for it through being swept, losing your belongings, being surveilled more, often is really challenging. How do we shift this focus, or what kind of partnerships would you look towards that could positively impact this situation to make the entire community safer?
[00:24:05] Marc Dones: I think that what we need to do on the authority side with our provider partners is really start having safety discussions with our unhoused neighbors, and using the trust that our incredible outreach workers and field teams have developed to say, I want to, I notice - and again, I've been doing this for a long time, I'm very grown up - I know that not everyone that we serve is an angel, and I also know that if I was living next to a gun-running meth lab, I might also want a weapon, right? And I didn't feel like I was being protected. And so what we need to do is have the discussions with our unhoused neighbors that say, Hey, I notice you've got a weapon - talk to me about what safety concerns you have, right? What are you mitigating by having this? And then we need to figure out a way to act on that information collectively. And I don't know actually what that looks like yet. But I do know that we need to hear from our unhoused population - what is leading you to feel so unsafe? And how do we manage that the same way that we would look to our housed population and say, Hey, what are you seeing? What can we do? And really using data to drive these discussions, both quantitative and qualitative, we can look at things like where shots are fired, where they cluster - use that data to drive discussions about - it seems like there's an active threat to our housed and unhoused neighbors here, let's find out what it is.
And then the other thing that I think that the authority directly needs to be more involved in, and we are stepping up our operation on this front - is increasing from a public health perspective, the safety in encampments on a number of fronts. And so from our perspective, that is around the weapons front - again, it's having safety discussions, why do you need this weapon? How can we have a discussion that would lead you to feeling safe enough that you could surrender the weapon? On a fires front, which I know has - there's been a lot of fires lately, as people have tried to keep warm - again, it's when I woke up, it was 30 degrees, people are trying to stay warm. And so we are expanding a body of work that is promoting fire safety. And then also working with encampments that we are very active in to collect and dispose of propane tanks, flammable materials, etc - so that as folks are again - doing the life saving thing they need to do, we are helping them dispose properly of the refuse that still has some risk attached to it.
And then the third thing from a public health perspective that we're going to be really focused on is hygiene and folks' ability to maintain some level of sanitary living condition to reduce the risk of infection and reduce the risk of a disease, reduce rat infestations - these are the things that really, really harm both our unhoused neighbors and our housed communities, and that is a place where the authority needs to directly play a role.
[00:27:11] Crystal Fincher: I really appreciate that and a focus on public health. And I was stunned - I'm trying to remember right now - but I was reading an article and it was talking about the average lifespan of an unhoused person and it was under 50. That is rough and just really goes to underscore how vulnerable this population is. And safety and health are two absolutely crucial elements that have to be addressed.
I do have kind of a related question - when it comes to issues, whether it's public safety, whether it's substance abuse, and are society's problem - that certainly is not a problem limited to any particular community. But we are collectively facing a shortage of services across the board to address that - to help people out of addiction, substance use disorder, issues related to that. We also have an affordability crisis overall, which is number one underlying cause of homelessness. And we are exiting pandemic mitigations which have prevented people from being evicted - those are starting again in an area that has become really unaffordable for the majority of people in the region. How effectively can you impact this problem if we have these other mitigating factors in society? Are we effectively trying to mop up the ocean here? Are we throwing more people out onto the street from these various causes and people just unable to afford to live in the area? How are we doing on that front and are we putting more people out on the street than we are moving into housing? Do you have a sense for where we stand on that?
[00:28:56] Marc Dones: I don't have updated numbers on inflow. I think we'll see the impact, frankly, over this year - as some of those COVID-centric protections more completely unwind and what the rates of evictions, for example, et cetera look like. I do think again, in keeping with what I said earlier, that homelessness is a policy problem 50 to 100 years in the making that we as a nation - so this isn't on the region. As a nation, we have to look at what we have done to the social safety net. As a nation, we have to look at how we have not protected people's access to housing. Some of that - in particular, I look at things like the constitutionally enshrined right of the federal government to regulate interstate commerce and then look at how that interstate commerce and international commerce impacts housing markets and housing speculation. And say that is for the federal government to intervene in and to have a very clear stance on - Hey, speculate, but our people got to get in first - which I think would be a very reasonable position for the federal government to take. But every administration has been silent. There's not even an administration to point to on what needs to be done in this space in order to more adequately protect and enshrine access to housing for folks who are living in the United States.
I will also say that in terms of the ability of us to effectively get people out of the experience of homelessness, I think so long as we stay with the data and stay with what is the number, how do we scale to meet that number, and then use as much as possible housing-style interventions, we set ourselves up for success. So one of the reasons why the authority is very interested in pursuing models of shelter that are non-congregate is that from an infrastructure perspective, if we get out of the crisis, we can convert a lot of that infrastructure into housing. And we've seen that with Executive Constantine's Health Through Housing initiative that has taken hotels and motels, turned them at times in a temporary shelter, and then retrofitted them into permanent supportive housing at some point in their life. That is a smart and effective way to use public money because you get two uses out of it. And so we really have to be clear that inside our scarcity of resources, we can still be smarter and it is the responsibility of this agency to be smarter wherever possible.
[00:31:38] Crystal Fincher: For those who are unaware, why is it important to move away from congregate shelter towards non-congregate shelter?
[00:31:45] Marc Dones: I think that the two biggest reasons are - one, just that congregate shelter has been reported by people who are experiencing homelessness as really, really traumatizing. And again, I think that if we're going to name what's in front of us as the human rights crisis that it is, as the tragedy that it is - how we respond to that tragedy also matters. And I find it difficult to articulate a response to a trauma that is in and of itself traumatizing, and feel as if that is the correct policy decision. And what we have heard from folks who have experienced homelessness and are experiencing homelessness is that - again, in congregate shelter, there's often a lot of safety concern. Folks do not feel like they are stabilizing, right?
Which in turn feeds into the second big point from our perspective, which is that when you look at the utilization rates of congregate shelter, they are significantly lower than the rates of utilization of non-congregate shelter - which functionally means people are voting with their feet. And so if what we want is a system - one, we can't be wasting money like that, let's just call that out. We can't be out here saying, We don't have the resources, we don't have the resources. And we have a system that has lots of unutilized space in it. That doesn't make any sense. And so we have to have some focus on what I've started calling the durability of the placements, which is to say that if we assist someone in getting into an interim housing solution, we need to make sure that they stay there and that they're not going to return to homelessness in relatively short order, so that we then have to figure out how to help them get back inside again and again and again and again. That's again, a waste of public resources, it's not the smart thing to do. And I was actually just looking at data from 2022 and the overall difference across the congregate and non-congregate portions of the shelter system is about a 10-point jump. And so across the year, we saw an average utilization of the congregate system of about 80% and an average utilization of non-congregate spaces of about 90%.
So again, I wear two hats - there's the part of me that is charged via legislation, via my own life experience with housing instability to say - We just got to be person-centered. And sometimes that has to be a good enough answer that - I don't know - this is not good for people and this is good for people. But with my public administrator hat on, I would also say, Do you want me to waste this money or not? Because there is a way that it continues to be poured into settings that are not going to be optimal. And then there is a way that we get the utilization out of the beds that we have and get the utilization of the money, the public money, that we are spending.
[00:34:45] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. And certainly I think the move towards non-congregate shelter, oftentimes utilizing current or former hotel spaces, people that can - you have a room that locks, that you feel secure in - as any of us would - is really important in the journey to stable permanent housing. There has been some feedback and I don't know that this is a result of the homelessness authority or just issues across the board that - particularly in South King County - hearing from regional leaders that there have been challenges with communication and getting on the same page sometimes. Have heard feedback that for different cities and looking at shelter space that is available in cities - that they want to see more of their own unhoused population placed in those local spaces and are not feeling that that's happening to the degree that it should be. How would you address that?
[00:35:49] Marc Dones: I think one of the things that our communities across the county can look forward to as we continue to modernize coordinated entry is some specific attention on, for lack of a better term, what I'll call local control. And I do believe - a lot of the policy that the authority is implementing is place-based and tries to pay attention to where people feel community, what people's sort of natural space for healing is. I think we do want to make sure that, where possible, we are not jettisoning someone across the county because that's the available thing. When, if they're saying, Hey, like I'm from Kent, I want to live in Kent, like that's where I'm from - then yeah, I support that. And the agency has really leaned into that through our sub-regional planning team led by our director there, Alexis. Our coordinated entry system led by Alex Ebrahimi is undergoing some pretty significant shifts as well. And one of the things that we're going to introduce in the near term is going to be some clarity about apportionment, for lack of a better term. And from my perspective, we have to make - it's a balancing act - we need to allow a certain amount of space to have a right of first refusal, so to speak, for the local jurisdiction to say - Oh, here's a person who is from our community who wants to stay here and so can we use this unit? And the answer should be yes. And then we also still have to continue to act as a region and to say, If I have someone in Bellevue who needs a place to stay and there is a place that is open in Auburn - and it may be a bed that is right of first refusal for the jurisdiction, but it's not, it hasn't been filled - we need to be able to move that person from Bellevue to that space - with their permission, of course - so that they can be inside. And so we have to figure that out. I think some of that will be complicated discussion, but I think it's fundamentally doable. There are other systems that we can look to that have tackled similar things before and looked at, okay, so what is the right sort of percentage of bed, so to speak, that should be allotted to each thing? And then what is the time limit that a local jurisdiction might have to fill those beds before they are activated inside the regional pool - those are things that I think are just very answerable from a policy perspective.
[00:38:16] Crystal Fincher: One thing that we spoke about in our last conversation on the show was the challenge, frankly, with staffing with frontline workers - and that challenge being caused by insufficient compensation. Asking people who are tasked with hard work and especially those with lived expertise and homelessness, which to your point earlier, absolutely helps streamline the response because you're dealing with people who are familiar with how things work in practice and not just in theory and having to get familiar with the tangled web of navigating through all of that. How are we making progress with that? Has that been a conversation that we have contended with throughout the region? And do we have the kind of staffing to scale up in the way that you referenced earlier so that we can move 10,000 people into housing and launch that to 20,000 people?
[00:39:15] Marc Dones: Yeah, I think we are continuing to make progress on having the discussion and that - that's not necessarily money in people's pockets, but it's something. And we're seeing that at the local level, the Seattle Human Services Coalition is putting together wage equity analysis work. The authority continued to look at wage equity - it's embedded in our five-year plan at the state level, through stipends and et cetera. That has also continued to be a discussion. I think that - what I feel, and this was actually said in a meeting I was in yesterday by one of our provider partners - it's maybe not what I feel, but what I'm stealing from someone who said it better than I did, is that we don't have a talent problem. We do have a pay problem. So we are able to source talent - that's a thing that's doable. But I think to the point that you made, Crystal, people are burning out in those jobs after a year, two years max - because they are starting to look at - it's incredibly complex work. It's very hard. The work that they are doing oftentimes in other systems would be classed as high-grade clinical. But for some reason in our system, it is understood as frontline, whatever - entry level - and paid as such. And I don't think, again, what I hear from our provider partners is that everyone understands that this doesn't make sense, but the question is - How are we going to modernize our payment rates so that they are able to compensate people appropriately?
And this is another space where I will say - with all candor - there's a role here for the federal dollar. And when we talk about paying people - if I look at just some of the modeling necessary to expand the services infrastructure, we're talking about a lot of money. B's, right? Not M's. And to that point, we have to think more - I won't even say creatively - I think it really is modernly, about how we are accessing certain entitlement funding streams that should be supporting services for our population. And I think that there is a way to do that. And I think that the authority needs to help everybody get to that.
[00:41:33] Crystal Fincher: Certainly, in my opinion, the progressive revenue conversation across the board at local and the state level is very important in addressing this and has been referenced as such. I do want to talk about, though, your funding - reported and well known that you had put together the homelessness authority, that the entire team had put together. And other people looked at it and said, Yeah, it's a good plan, a plan to be able to address this with a funding request for what would be necessary to do it. And that funding request was not granted in full - It was okay, we'll give you part of it. I don't know that the expectations were tempered at all for what you were supposed to accomplish, but the budget certainly was. So where do you stand in terms of having the resources that you need to address the problem? Because really - funding is to get those resources. We know that we have a shortage of them. We have shortages all over the place, really. This is no exception. So this is not a unique problem. This is not a problem that just exists with homelessness. We know in other areas - certainly we have had lots of conversations when it came to - Hey, we need - Bruce Harrell is saying we need more police. They're throwing signing bonuses and different things and addressing that issue head on. This conversation has been different. So as you look to be able to scale, as you look to the funding that you have received, do you have the funding to be able to make the impact that is expected - to be able to get 10,000 people housed and to really continue the progress that you are now making, now that you've built out the infrastructure to be able to do that? Do you have what you need and if not, what do you need?
[00:43:16] Marc Dones: Straightforwardly, no - we do not have what we need. I think it would be - the draft five-year plan really clearly lays out some of the cost models necessary in order to do the things that are operating at the tens of thousands numbers instead of in the "just the thousands" - and that's in air quotes for people who can't see me. Because the "just the thousands" is still an incredible feat, right? That is - I never want to come across as denigrating the incredible work that happens inside the system, particularly now that we have built some of the integrations that are necessary to really drive some of that throughput. However, again, going back to what I was saying previously, it's this question of the seeds of the solution are here. It's are we going to water them? And to that point, I do think that we don't have a path that does not involve better utilization of federal funding streams. We do not. And I say that because I think that - when I look, for example, at the various revenue forecasts that are coming out, revenue looks like it's trending down for a lot of things. And so there isn't a local revenue stream that is going to meet this need.
I'm really heartened to continue to see the state contemplate big, bold housing-related action. The other thing about the authority modeling that is true is that it's based on assumptions about what is happening in the housing production side of things. And so if that accelerates, we will need a lot less. And I think that that's always really important to be clear about. However, if we're going to be sustainable and scale what we are currently doing, we do need to think very strategically about how we hook portions of the system to, again, the entitlement dollars. And when I'm talking about that, I'm thinking about SNAP and WIC and various CMS funding streams that fund services and supports, whether it's housing navigation or tenancy support. Some of that is available currently under the 1115 waiver the state has - spokane has done an incredible job of utilizing that resource. And so we just we have to head in that direction.
And the last thing that I'll say about that is just - you mentioned earlier that some of the COVID protections are unwinding. I think it's also important that we acknowledge that the COVID money is unwinding. And so currently, this system has about $55 million in what is functionally one-time money. It was multi-year, but it's one-time money that does not have a renewed revenue source at the federal level, likely will not - given sort of the state of play. And so we have to be incredibly smart about, again, not just talking about the scale we got to go to, but how do we replace the funding for what we're currently doing? Because that is paying for real services, real people's salaries - real people supports into housing are being paid for with that money. And so if we're not being - not just clever, but profoundly innovative about how we move the homelessness system more completely into, I think, the broader public health and health infrastructure, then we are leaving money on the table that we simply cannot afford not to have.
[00:46:43] Crystal Fincher: That's a really important point. And thank you for making it - a lot to consider there. So for people who are considering that - and we're in 2023 now, and especially this year where there are so many local elected official positions up for election - candidates are making their cases to voters. Some candidates aren't saying much, others are. But what would you say both to candidates and to voters considering those candidates, who across the board acknowledge that addressing homelessness is near the top of the list, if not at the top of the list of priorities that they need to have. What action can they take or should they take? What should we be looking for? What will be most impactful? And where should the conversation be throughout this year for the people who have the power to dictate this policy locally?
[00:47:43] Marc Dones: I think from our perspective, the more the discussion can center on the core fact that housing is the solution to homelessness, the better we all will be. I am really disheartened by the amount of sort of media that comes across my screen that is framing homelessness as everything but a housing problem. And the simple fact is that at the core, the problem is in the name. You don't have a home and that is the thing we need to be focused on fixing. And so what I would offer is that we as a region, as a nation, do have to fundamentally consider, wrestle with, and answer questions about affordable housing, about density, about how we are addressing some of those core issues that drive the need. And the authority is legislatively - it's one of the reasons why I feel very comfortable saying what I'm saying here - we are legislatively required to advocate for housing with a focus on permanent supportive. So we got to have it, it is the solution.
The other thing that I would say is that - and this is important, I think, particularly for the general public - is that no one, least of all me, a person who was psychiatrically hospitalized twice, is saying that services or care is not necessary. What I think we need to be focused on, though, is that you can't deliver that care literally under a bridge. That's just not how that works. And when I think about my own mental health management, I do telehealth visits with my psychiatrist, and then there's a lot of stuff that goes into keeping me healthy and whole. And I am able to accomplish all of that because I know where I'm going to sleep. And I'm not worrying about that too. And I have access to the things that I need in order to access those people who are going to help me. So yes, we need services. But the reason Housing First is called Housing First is - it's not absence of services - it is literally, but you need to house people first. And so that focus has to be really, really clear in how we articulate our path out of a hundred years of failure.
[00:50:19] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much for that focus. It's not housing only, but it is Housing First. Absolutely necessary in these conversations that we have about who our leaders are going to be and what they're going to do. I thank you so much for taking the time to share so much with us. Thank you for all the work that you and the entire team and your partners are doing to address this crisis and get people housed. Thank you so much.
[00:50:46] Marc Dones: Thanks for having me.
[00:50:47] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, political consultant and host Crystal Fincher is joined by Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola, co-host of the Seattle Nice podcast and author of Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery, Erica Barnett!
During this Seattle-centric episode, they discuss Mayor Bruce Harrell’s State of the City speech, the SDOT Vision Zero report about traffic safety, the passage of first in the nation caste legislation, what’s next for social housing, questions from the oversight board for the scope of King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s five-year plan, an increase in violence against unsheltered people, and the outlook for downtown Seattle.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica Barnett, at @ericacbarnett.
Resources
- The State of the City is Vibes by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola
- In State of the City, Seattle Mayor Harrell emphasizes crime, downtown by Sarah Grace Taylor from Seattle Times
- Vision Zero | Our top-to-bottom review provides a roadmap and new actions to reverse challenging trends in traffic safety by Seattle Department of Transportation
- Seattle must do more to prevent traffic deaths, report says by David Kroman from Seattle Times
- Councilmember Tammy Morales responds to the release of SDOT's vision zero review: "this report stops short of calling for dramatic or swift action to combat the unprecedented number of collisions, injuries, and fatalities on our streets, particularly in District 2.” by Tammy Morales on Twitter
- Seattle becomes the first city to ban caste discrimination by Lilly Ana Fowler from KNKX
- Opinion: Confessions of an American Caste Traitor by Prashant Nema from South Seattle Emerald
- What’s next now that Seattle’s Social Housing Developer initiative has passed by Capitol Hill Seattle
- Study: Human Service Wages Are Even Worse Than You Imagined by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola
- Violence Against Unsheltered People Spikes, Social Housing Moves Into Startup Mode by Publicola
- Plan to Eliminate Visible Homelessness Downtown is “Clearly Behind Schedule,” but Backers Remain Optimistic by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola
- Oversight Board Questions Price Tag, Exclusion of Tiny Houses from Homeless Agency’s Five-Year Plan by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola
- As Downtown recovers, Seattle reimagines what it could be by Josh Cohen from Crosscut
-
ThePostman - D’Vonne Pickett Jr. Memorialized With Street Sign in the Central District by Cesar Canizales from Converge Media
- Qualified Immunity Bill Passes Key Hurdle as Other Criminal Justice Reforms Stall Out by Andrew Engelson from Publicola
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, political consultant and host Crystal Fincher is joined by Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank! They discuss the landmark passage of Seattle’s Social Housing Initiative 135, what it says about Seattle voter preferences and expectations of candidates running for local office.
They also discuss the continuing candidate announcements for Seattle City Council, with two moderates announcing their intentions to run this week. Several candidates in the field have avoided sharing their positions on the issues most important to Seattle voters. Crystal and Robert analyze how that may impact their races and what voters are expecting from candidates this year.
In the wake of a pedestrian in a crosswalk being killed by an SPD officer who was responding to an overdose call, Robert and Crystal discuss whether it’s appropriate for police to respond to every overdose call in addition to the fire department, especially while the department says they are short-staffed. They also cover the advancing bipartisan legislation that aims to expand the conditions under which police can pursue fleeing vehicles despite their continued harm to innocent bystanders, while Democratic Reps. Reed and Farivar and Sen. Dhingra oppose this bill in favor of an evidence-based approach that prioritizes increased safety for everyone.
Robert and Crystal close the show with a discussion of the woeful state of education funding in Washington state. Despite the McCleary decision that affirmed Washington state’s paramount constitutional duty to fully fund public education, districts are still relying on levy funding to address existing funding shortfalls and considering closures of schools, while experiencing chronic understaffing in several areas and considering destabilizing school closures. As Robert discussed in The Urbanist op-Ed he wrote, this is a result of legislative inaction on school funding and the taxation of extreme wealth, the failure of all levels of government to address increasingly unaffordable housing, and too many school board directors who are failing to act in the interests of students with urgency.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank, at @cruickshank.
Resources
Social Housing Is Winning by Rich Smith from The Stranger
Seattle Mayor and Majority of Council Mum on Social Housing by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
Who's running for Seattle City Council in 2023 by Melissa Santos from Axios
Andrew Ashiofu Stresses Lived Experience in D3 Seattle Council Pitch by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
Tech Lawyer Rob Saka Announces Bid for Seattle City Council District 1 by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
Seattle Subway Leader Efrain Hudnell Announces D3 City Council Bid by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
Twitter thread from Rep. Julia Reed (D-36) exposing the fault lines around police pursuit policy
Overdose Patients Can Become Violent”: Fire and Police Respond to Questions About Pedestrian Death by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola
In pursuit of good policy: Washington legislators debate validity of the data used to justify 2021 police reforms by Guy Oron from Real Change
Opinion: Everyone (Especially Urbanists) Should Care About the Crisis Facing Seattle Schools by Robert Cruickshank from The Urbanist
Gov. Inslee weighs in on potential Bellevue school consolidation by Farah Jadran from KING 5
Lawmakers in Olympia narrowing down which bills will move forward by News Staff from KIRO 7
On this midweek show, Ryan Packer returns for a round-up of regional transportation issues with Crystal. Ryan’s efforts to raise public awareness around traffic safety issues through in-the-minute reporting of cars hitting pedestrians and bicyclists sparks conversation about the Legislature’s aim of changing driver behavior through bills currently under consideration and their funding of bike and pedestrian safety improvements in last year’s transportation package. They then address the issue of the Columbia River Crossing Megaproject being pushed forward with a decades-old scope, an uncertain funding plan, and non-consideration of climate change or equity. Finally, Crystal and Ryan highlight the disconnect observed in two regional planning bodies with the Puget Sound Regional Council adopting a transportation plan unaligned with our 2030 climate goals and the Sound Transit Board making decisions uninformed by transit rider experience.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Ryan Packer at @typewriteralley.
Ryan Packer
Ryan Packer has been covering transportation and land use at The Urbanist since 2015. Their work has also appeared in the Seattle Bike Blog, BikePortland, and PubliCola. They don't own a bike.
Resources
“State Proposals Aim to Lower Traffic Deaths by Improving Driver Behavior” by Ryan Packer from PubliCola
“Navigating the Move Ahead Washington Transportation Package with Ryan Packer” from Hacks & Wonks
“Washington State Is Losing Control of the Columbia Interstate Bridge Replacement Megaproject” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
“Adopted Regional Transportation Plan Isn’t Aligned With 2030 Climate Goals” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
“Elected Leaders Must Press Forward With Study of SR 99 and I-5 Everett Link Alternatives” by Stephen Fesler from The Urbanist
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I am excited to be able to welcome Ryan Packer to the show, who's been covering transportation and land use at The Urbanist since 2015. Their work has also appeared in Seattle Bike Blog, Bike Portland, PubliCola. They don't own a bike, but they cover transportation and related issues as well or better than anyone else in the region - an absolute impactful reporter that we have here. Welcome to the show, Ryan.
[00:01:07] Ryan Packer: Thanks so much for having me.
[00:01:09] Crystal Fincher: So what got you interested in the first place in reporting on these issues in particular?
[00:01:16] Ryan Packer: Basically it was being a transportation user in Seattle. I worked for a restaurant company close to downtown and lived in Capitol Hill, and basically all the ways to get to work that the City was trying to encourage people to use - walking or transit - were unpleasant or infeasible basically. And once you start picking at threads as to why that is, you quickly learn all the different elements of the transportation system that most people aren't aware of - what I like to call the government ecosystem around transportation - and all the ways that it's very broken.
[00:01:59] Crystal Fincher: Definitely very broken. One of the things that you've become known for is the unique style of reporting that you have for pedestrian-involved collisions by cars and other vehicles. How did you get started doing that? And what is the kind of feedback that you've received about your reporting there?
[00:02:22] Ryan Packer: Yeah, so I basically started noticing that there wasn't a lot of in-the-minute reporting on people getting hit by cars, basically - people walking or biking. Essentially The Seattle Times, or daily newspaper even - in Washington or elsewhere - is only going to cover someone getting hit when ultimately it leads to someone's death. And I started to think about how this leads to a disproportionate - started to think about how this leads to a wrong perception in public at large, in terms of how safe it is to walk around and bike around. Obviously it's not intended to scare people or make people not want to walk or bike, but just to give people an accurate read of how often this is happening. Because the information is out there and once I started pulling it out and realizing this is happening right around the corner from me - I might not have even known this had happened - the reception has been pretty positive in terms of people wanting this information, wanting to know what's happening particularly on their own neighborhood streets.
[00:03:41] Crystal Fincher: And there's a lot of action being talked about in response to the crisis that is pedestrian and bike safety. What is being talked about - I guess we'll start off at the state level - just in terms of safety, and then we can talk about general, other transportation-related issues, but what's on the docket there?
[00:04:04] Ryan Packer: This session is not a big transportation year, but the traffic safety crisis is the big transportation issue. And so there are a number of bills that are being considered and most of them are trying to directly go after driver behavior. And so we have a lot of bills that are aimed at, say, specific types of drivers. There's a bill to lower the blood alcohol content threshold for a DUI from 0.08 to 0.05 - making people think a little bit more closely about how much they're drinking when they get behind the wheel of a car. There's a bill to target 18 to 25-year old drivers who don't have to take a driver education course - 18-year old doesn't have to take a driver's education course that their 17-year old sibling does. It doesn't make a lot of sense and it shows in the data in terms of the crash rates for young adults like that don't end up taking that course. There's a bill to target older drivers - a little bit less prescriptive - but there's some data that suggests that once you hit a certain age, your capabilities behind the wheel should be assessed a little bit more frequently. A bill to give people a warning label on their car, before they purchase it, in terms of - This vehicle is large and more likely to severely hurt somebody walking or biking if you hit them. And that bill would also impose an additional fine if you were involved in a crash like that. And so all these bills are looking at individual behavior, what I would call bad driver targeting. Ultimately this is just one aspect of the sort of national best practices that everyone's moving toward in terms of what's called a safe systems approach.
But the important thing to note - while everyone's talking about driver behavior this session - last session was the transportation investment year. And you actually had me on the program to talk about the Move Ahead Washington package last year. But just to go through what we know about it since then and what it's going to do, it includes a lot of money for cities to ask for for bike and pedestrian safety. The problem with that is it is relying on people to raise their hands and also doesn't require that the funds go to the most impactful areas. So for example, a city like Kent doesn't have to request funds for the intersection, say, that the most people are getting hurt at. They can say, Oh, we want to do a project over here. And there's not a lot that the state can say, Oh, you should do something different. They have to pick the projects people are asking for. But there's another very important provision in that bill, which is a new complete streets mandate for state highways. And so we're getting into a mandate - sort of a blanket change - it's going to be much more impactful. It basically says that any time that the State Department of Transportation goes out to fix, or repair, or maintain a state highway - they have to look at whether or not that state highway is up to current standards - whether or not it has sidewalks, bike lanes, and whether drivers are currently driving really the appropriate speeds on that highway. So the Legislature allocated $1.5 billion in Move Ahead Washington to overall highway maintenance, so it's a lot of money but it's also not a lot of money in terms of how much maintenance our state highways need. But since the passage of that law, the State Department of Transportation has announced that they expect to use about half of that amount to upgrade safety infrastructure for people walking and biking on state highways - about $750 million, which if it ends up coming to pass would be the biggest investment in safe infrastructure in statewide history - possibly in a lot of states.
[00:08:42] Crystal Fincher: And that was some positive news, hedged positive news. Seems like we're making progress but there is so much to do that sometimes it feels like we're trying to mop up the ocean a little bit. You talked about some of the best practices and some of the bills going after one dimension of that, which is driver behavior. What are the other recommended best practices? What are things that legislators should be talking about?
[00:09:12] Ryan Packer: One element that has not quite made it to the Legislature is vehicle design in terms of - I talked a little bit about that warning label - but in terms of actually requiring that cars not be designed to hurt people is one aspect of this sort of safe systems approach - the actual design of our vehicles. It's gotten larger over the past couple decades - the trend toward SUVs, which has led to negative direction in terms of the pedestrian and cyclist injuries and fatalities. And so when you're talking about that, you're talking about something that would impact everyone on the road as opposed to the so-called bad driver. Even if you're putting a warning label - that's putting the onus on individuals like - Oh, you bought this car so you should know what it's like, as opposed to this car is on the market and it's a systemic issue in terms of offering these for sale. And so, but once you start to get into sort of how many different drivers would be impacted, the political will to actually make the changes is diminishing. For example, in terms of driver's education - when you talk about making drivers age 18 to 25 do the driver's ed course, that's one change but a 24-year old who is tested in another state can also just go ahead and transfer their driver's license into Washington without having to do that driver's ed course. Or a driver who's 35 and maybe needs to have that driver course again. Roger Millar, the State Secretary of Transportation, likes to note that the last time that he was tested for his driver behavior was in the 1970s and that there's been a couple of changes in state laws since that time - and that's true for a lot of people on our roads. But once again, that would apply to a lot of people getting back in the queue for driver's testing.
[00:11:10] Crystal Fincher: Does road design play a role in the safe systems approach?
[00:11:15] Ryan Packer: Absolutely road design plays a role. It's a key component, and that's what I was getting at with the complete streets requirement doing a systemic look at whether our state highways are designed to standards. There's not really a requirement for local jurisdictions to do that - cities like Seattle have complete streets ordinances, but there's a lot of ways that they can get around those. But you're talking about the need to - number one, make sure that people are driving at the appropriate speeds - one of the biggest factors in terms of whether or not someone is likely to be hurt or even killed in a crash is the speed that they're going. And you often have cities lowering speed limits, but the design speed - the speed that drivers feel like they can appropriately go on a road - may still be a lot higher. And so you have a lot of streets where those speeds remain very high. And then you also have the issue of distance for crossings for pedestrians - whether or not someone is likely to be able to safely cross that street is a big determinant of how safe it is, and whether or not there's safe infrastructure for people to walk along it or bike along it. One thing I like to always notice is - one of the biggest impacts that adding protected bike lanes to urban cities is - is the impact on pedestrians. You're often - one, separating cars from pedestrians with another lane in between them which is always great and makes things safer, but you're also adding protected turns - making sure the drivers aren't turning across the bike lanes - also great for people walking. So these kind of have these compounding effect, where it improves everything for everyone on the street not just someone on a bike.
[00:13:15] Crystal Fincher: Now there are a few other things going on in the Legislature, even besides some of these pedestrian-related and safety-related enhancements. One of those issues is one that they thought they dealt with and maybe mostly wrapped up last year, but that has come back with a vengeance - that a lot of people are looking at with concern - and that's the Columbia River Crossing Megaproject. Where does that stand, and what has happened that they need to tackle now?
[00:13:48] Ryan Packer: So this project has been around for almost two decades - it's a needed project to replace the two spans of the I-5, between Washington and Oregon - one of which was built in the 1910s. The previous attempt to replace this bridge, which is called the Columbia River Crossing, included seven miles of highway expansion, five interchanges, light rail as a component - several sort of huge projects within projects - that made the project very expensive and expansive. Ultimately in 2013, it was the Washington State Senate that didn't want to pony up the money for that project - in part because of light rail's inclusion, in part because of a opposition to having tolls from the Washington side to go into Oregon. That project languished for several years until it was restarted by Governor Brown and Inslee in 2019, and has been moving forward - but the key thing to remember with this is that we're still using the federal approval from the Columbia River Crossing, even though we've now rebranded it with a very flashy campaign called the Interstate Bridge Replacement, or the IBR. It has the environmental approval of the Columbia River Crossing and that includes the scope - and so the seven miles of highway, five interchanges - it basically is still in there. And we went through a whole process to look at how we might tweak that, whether or not we might include climate change as an actual purpose and need to address with this project, or whether we might want to include equity as an actual thing to address. Ultimately they decided that that would disrupt the project schedule - they're very intent on replacing this, starting construction by 2025 - it's not entirely clear that's going to happen, it being 2023 already, but that's what they're aiming for. And at the end of last year they just came up with a new project cost estimate based on all the new tweaks that they want to do to this thing, and it could end up costing about - $7.5 billion is the high end estimate. It would ultimately be the most expensive single highway project in the Pacific Northwest and among the top 10 in the nation. And so the question is whether the scope is too wide and expansive for - what we're talking about is a very needed bridge, not a highway.
[00:16:55] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And with that expanded cost estimate and the now inflated cost that we've seen, that puts them at least a billion dollars under budget - and there's a question about where that billion dollars is coming from. Where does that stand?
[00:17:11] Ryan Packer: So they have a financial concept plan that assumes that they're going to get a lot of money from the federal government - the bipartisan infrastructure bill included a mega-grant program, kind of orchestrated by Washington Senator Maria Cantwell, that kind of had the IBR in mind when they were looking at this grant program. And so they're counting on an incredible amount of money from the federal government - around $2-3 billion - which is wild. They've already gotten $1 billion from the State of Washington in last year's Move Ahead Washington package, but they're banking on Oregon chipping in another billion dollars this year - which would get them to have that matching funds for the federal grants. Interestingly enough, new governor of Oregon Tina Kotek released her budget very early this year and didn't actually have a billion dollars in it for that project, which is very interesting because it was a very big priority of her predecessor, a very big priority of sort of her old colleagues in the Oregon Legislature - and so she clearly sees it as not one of the top priorities. She's currently allocating a lot of money for housing and not highways.
[00:18:41] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, an interesting conundrum which has definitely been scrutinized and continues to be challenged - because of the broadness of the scope - does it require that many lanes, that much impact on the local area? You talked about equity being put aside in terms of - because they wanted to stick to their timeline. And certainly people in that region who are familiar with the impacts of the type of pollution that's created by cars being spewed in the neighborhood and what those health impacts, like asthma and other things, are for local communities and schools there in that area.
[00:19:25] Ryan Packer: So that also gets into the issue of tolls, which I mentioned were a sticking point with the old project. They're banking on a lot of money also coming in from tolls. The first point with that is obviously we don't quite know what the actual impact on traffic volume on the bridge is going to be from those tolls, and so it has a - do we need to have all that capacity to - if we're going to put the tolling on the bridge, what is that relationship going to look like? But also, as we've seen in Washington with the SR99 tunnel and some of the other tolling programs that the state has undergone in the past couple years, sort of banking on a high number of toll users to pay back your project is not necessarily the most sound financial plan.
[00:20:20] Crystal Fincher: It is not, as we have learned in those other situations that you referenced. I also wanted to touch on one of our regional bodies at the moment - the Puget Sound Regional Council. And we have a number of bodies that are involved in transportation planning, a number of regional bodies - this is one of them - but a number of these have also talked about their commitment to addressing climate change, to reducing greenhouse gases, setting targets and we have a 2030 target that they're attempting to hit. And recently they announced that they are not on track to hit the 2030 climate goal. Where do they stand on that, and are they talking about anything that will put us back on track to meeting those targets?
[00:21:09] Ryan Packer: Yeah, so this is a body that not a lot of people pay attention to - it's the four county - King, Snohomish, Pierce, and Kitsap County - regional planning body. Its biggest role is figuring out where to allocate federal funds, and so it's a conduit for a lot of federal money - and so that's how it's how it gets the power that it does. Ultimately they have to approve a regional transportation plan that kind of looks at the entire region's goals around transportation. They did that last year, and originally it was just looking at the climate impacts by 2050 - sort of the long term goals around reducing transportation emissions. Thanks to a lot of the leaders on the regional council, including the president - King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci - they were like, Hey, we should actually be looking at 2030 to see if we're on track or we have to do a lot more work. And that analysis just came back and shows a pretty big gap in terms of where we're expected to be - 13%, which is a huge emissions gap. It doesn't sound huge, but it's - when you talk about the emissions of the entire region. And they also looked at sort of some models around how to fill that gap. And that's the frustrating thing about their models - which is basically they showed that transit, expanding transit, is not really going to close the gap. And in terms of - because our growth strategy as a region is not quite going to catch up to where we need to be by 2030 in terms of having actual people close to transit. First of all, should give some direction to our local leaders in terms of what they should be doing around transit access and station planning. But also the model seems a little bit behind the times in terms of being able to actually account for sort of the actual behavior of people. It also noted that if we put a hold on sort of the roadway expansions - which add capacity, add cars, add emissions - that it would - their models are showing that that wouldn't have an impact. And a lot of people are questioning that, including Claudia Balducci
[00:23:48] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, a lot of us questioning that - with some of the justification that they're giving essentially being we add lanes but that's gonna help traffic. And if people spend less time in traffic, then that's going to neutralize the emissions that come from the increased traffic somehow.
[00:24:05] Ryan Packer: The same arguments that we've been hearing for a couple of decades - just haven't borne out.
[00:24:09] Crystal Fincher: Yeah - kind of challenging there. Also Sound Transit, another regional body that is very involved in our regional transit system - they operate our light rail and heavy rail Sounder system. Where do they stand in terms of climate goals and their kind of overall operation?
[00:24:33] Ryan Packer: Ultimately, Sound Transit isn't really charged with making sure that the region's holding to its climate goals. They're being asked to build a regional spine to our transit network, which is - it's very expensive. It's gonna be a lot of years of work to get that sort of spine from Everett to Tacoma. And ultimately, it's not going to be as impactful as it could be if regional government - cities, counties - don't do the maximum to ensure that people are living by the stations, people can access those stations. And so that's one way that the sort of siloed system of our transportation ecosystem in central Puget Sound is not optimizing outcomes in terms of climate and also just all those other more immediate impacts - livability, air quality, things like that. Sound Transit is tasked with building the system, and the way that its political board is structured - the incentives are basically to make sure that your community is getting some transit and not that the region as a whole is set up for success. One way that that's epitomized is the planned deviation over to Paine Field in Everett - that a lot of people are questioning the sort of utility of making a detour on light rail to go to an airport that not a lot of people are really going to be able to utilize by the time it's done - and so, it's adding a couple like 10 minutes to every trip to Everett, as opposed to other ways to serve that. But it's seen as - taking away that would be seen as bad for Everett.
[00:26:30] Crystal Fincher: And this is a challenge that we see with this board overall and some of the confounding decisions that are made. What is the composition of this board, and what kind of investment do its members have in - personal investment - in public transit?
[00:26:47] Ryan Packer: The board is made up of local leaders from around the region, so ultimately you have people whose investment in transit is tied directly to their own performance as an elected official, not necessarily their own experience as a transit rider. It's not clear how many of our transit board members are actual daily transit riders or, in terms of their ties to the overall transit community. And so, like I said, it's all about making sure that you're delivering the projects for your city. And so there's just a lot of sort of bartering and siloing.
[00:27:26] Crystal Fincher: Overall, with your perspective on transportation and transit in the region, what do you think are the most important things, I guess, on the docket for people to address and ways to address them? What would your words of wisdom be for those involved in the policy making?
[00:27:45] Ryan Packer: I think the first thing I would say is that people involved in transit decision making should get out and ride transit - see what it's like - use that experience to actually make decisions. And get away from the map on the screen, in terms of looking at the actual impacts. I think a lot of people are getting very cynical about the decision making processes in central Puget Sound at all levels of government - from the City of Seattle to the highest echelons at Sound Transit - in terms of where the priorities of the decision makers are. I do think we see that party shifting a little bit, possibly - even at the City of Seattle level - toward people-centered projects, but ultimately the status quo bias is so embedded into - a lot of these - I don't want to say infrastructure, but the actual decision making processes - that it's very hard to turn that ship very quickly at all.
[00:29:05] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much, Ryan, for your time today. Thank you for just enlightening us - and your coverage - it's just been so impactful. I know that even for people who follow these issues and like you talked about - looking at the data, seeing maps on the screen and this happening - it's just impactful in a different way to see it reported in live time. And just the way that you get around our region and connect the dots on how what we do across the region impacts each other, and how we should be addressing transit and transportation overall. So thank you very much.
[00:29:48] Ryan Packer: Well, thanks so much for all that you do, Crystal.
[00:29:50] Crystal Fincher: Thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler, our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Post-Production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can follow me @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, political consultant and host Crystal Fincher is joined by friend of the show and today’s co-host: metro news columnist and opinion editor for The News Tribune in Tacoma, Matt Driscoll! They look at the battle over a potential Pierce County airport, racist housing covenants, pushback against expanding ballot access to people in Washington state jails, WA police pursuit legislation, and the ongoing debate over middle housing.
In Pierce County news, Matt outlines how potential plans for a new airport in the area seem to have been squashed by their opposition for now, but the needs for a new airport remain. He also informs us about the existence of thousands of racial housing covenants, homes that were originally built at the exclusion of people based on their race, in the region. It’s a grim reminder of the racist history of our country, and how discriminatory practices continue today.
In election news, Khawla Nakua from Bolts did some excellent reporting last month revealing that, despite the creation of new state funding to bring voting access to eligible voters in WA jails, only a handful of counties have applied for the funding, and some local officials have blocked attempts to utilize the funds.
In public safety news this week, the WA legislature is currently debating over whether to expand the situations in which police officers can utilize vehicular pursuits. While there are many anecdotes or concerns about restricting officers’ ability to chase suspects, data shows that vehicular pursuits are inherently dangerous to all involved.
Finally, Matt and Crystal close the show looking at the current state of Washington’s battles over middle housing. They discuss recent successes for pro-housing legislation in Olympia and a poll that shows the majority of Washingtonians are ready for housing reform, despite what critics claim.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Matt Driscoll, at @mattsdriscoll.
Resources
“RE-AIR: Restoring the Right to Vote with Cyril Walrond and Kelly Olson of the Washington Voting Rights Restoration Coalition” from Hacks & Wonks
“Are plans for a new Pierce County airport already dead? It's starting to feel that way” by Matt Driscoll from The News Tribune
“Pierce County Adopts anti-airport resolution. Here's what the Council wants to happen” by Sea Johnson from The News Tribune
“Seattle needs a new Sea-Tac-sized airport. No one wants it near them” by Dominic Gates from The Seattle Times
“There are 4,000 racist housing covenants in Pierce County. You can find them on a map” by Matt Driscoll from The News Tribune
“Efforts to Expand Ballot Access in Washington State Jails Face Local Pushback” by Khawla Nakua from Bolts Magazine
“Don't believe the smears. A fact-based police pursuit law makes Washington safer” by Rep. Sharlett Mena and Sen. Yasmin Trudeau from The News Tribune
“Middle housing bill passes major milestone in Olympia” by Joshua McNichols from KUOW
“Poll: WA residents want more multifamily housing in their neighborhoods” by Claire Withycombe from The Seattle Times
“Poll: Strong Majority of Washingtonians Support Middle Housing Options” from Sightline Institute
“OPINION | I-135 Isn’t Just About Housing, It’s About Our Students Too” by Otis Golden from The South Seattle Emerald
Transcript
Coming Soon
On today’s midweek show, Kelly Olson and Cyril Walrond of the Washington Voting Rights Restoration Coalition join Crystal to talk about the importance of voting rights and the successful effort in the 2021 legislative session to pass HB 1078, which restores those rights to all formerly incarcerated people in Washington and took effect on January 1, 2022. They discuss the impacts that historic disenfranchisement has had on marginalized communities, how democracy that purports to represent all people needs to hear all people’s voices, and how the coalition lived that philosophy by including impacted people in their leadership. Kelly and Cyril provide insight into the effective strategy used in navigating the convoluted legislative process, the critical need for education about voting rights restoration, and what we need to fight for next.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find information about the Washington Voting Rights Restoration Coalition at freethevotewa.org/.
Kelly Olson
Kelly Olson is Policy Manager and a member of the Leadership Team for the Washington Voting Rights Restoration Coalition.
Cyril Walrond
Cyril Walrond is a member of the Leadership and Steering Committees for the Washington Voting Rights Restoration Coalition.
Resources Washington Voting Rights Restoration Coalition
HB 1078 - Restoring voter eligibility for all persons convicted of a felony offense who are not in total confinement under the jurisdiction of the department of corrections
“Washington must allow everyone in the community to vote” by Sarah Eichhorn from Real Change Opinion
“WA Senate must restore voting rights for formerly incarcerated people” by Christopher Poulos from Crosscut Opinion
“Washington State Senate Passes Voting Rights Restoration Bill” by abigail from Washington Voting Justice Coalition
“Bill restores voting rights to Washingtonians with felonies upon release from prison” by Joseph O’Sullivan from The Seattle Times
“What It Feels Like to Have Your Voting Rights Restored” by Alyssa Knight from The Stranger
Questions about how to vote after a felony conviction?
Resources - Washington Voting Rights Restoration Coalition
“A guide to voting after a felony conviction in Washington State” from ACLU of Washington
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
I am very excited about this show that we're doing today - it's about a very important issue. We talk about campaigns, we talk about issues, but really - people being able to make their voice heard is the most important fundamental right that we have. And we have guests today from the Washington Voting Rights Restoration Coalition that I am just thrilled to have - so we have Kelly Olson, who's a Policy Manager and member of the Leadership Team, and Cyril Walrond, who is also on the Leadership Team and a member of the Steering Committee, with us today. Welcome!
[00:01:14] Kelly Olson: Thank you - it's good to be here.
[00:01:15] Cyril Walrond: Yeah, thank you - glad to be here with you today.
[00:01:17] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So I guess starting with Kelly - who is the Washington Voting Rights Restoration Coalition? What work do you do? And for both of you, what brought you to this work? We can start with Kelly.
[00:01:30] Kelly Olson: So the Washington Voting Rights Coalition is, as the name implies, a coalition of a bunch of different organizations and individuals who are interested in voting rights and making sure that everybody has their right to vote. And in particular, we were focused on restoring the right to vote for people who have been formerly incarcerated. And so this group came together a couple years ago to work on restoring the right to vote for - the way that it works in Washington State, or the way it did work, is that for those - once you leave incarceration and as long as you're paying on your fees and fines, you have the right to vote unless you are under community custody. So if you get out and are in work release or have some sort of probation or community custody officer, you did not have your right to vote restored until you are off community custody. So the coalition came together and felt that people who are out there in the community and working really should have their right to vote. We actually believe that the vote shouldn't be - the right to vote shouldn't be taken away in the beginning. But we're started with this and so - I, myself, am formerly incarcerated and left prison in 2007. And that's a big reason why I am involved in this and other justice, criminal justice-related causes - is to break down that stigma and the barriers that we face as we're released.
[00:03:09] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. And what brought you to this work, Cyril?
[00:03:12] Cyril Walrond: What brought me to this work is that I too am a directly impacted person. I was incarcerated for almost 17 years - since the age of 17 - and so I was incarcerated before I had the opportunity to engage in our democracy or even allow my voice to be heard, particularly on things that directly affect me and my community. And so when I think about the impact that this had on myself, as one who was incarcerated at such a young early age - I realized that we as a community too often give our power away. And the way for us to reclaim our power is by taking our power back by our voice, and making sure that our voices are heard and represented at these decision-making tables. And furthermore, to create tables for ourselves. But when I think about that, I just want to make sure that through this work and through my engagement with it, that others can see themselves in this work - other young people, young Black men who have been captured within this system, the criminal justice system, to realize that their voice matters, their experience matters. And for other BIPOC people to realize that we don't need to continue to allow ourselves to be marginalized by a system that been set up to marginalize us, but we have ownership and stake that we can put in at wherever we are and whatever our experiences may be.
[00:04:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely - it's so important. And one thing I think is that a lot of people don't realize how many people are currently and formerly have been incarcerated.
[00:04:34] Cyril Walrond: Oh yeah, for sure.
[00:04:34] Crystal Fincher: And how many people are disenfranchised, have been disenfranchised - are caught up in this system. How does this impact the community and how many people are we talking about here?
[00:04:45] Cyril Walrond: I believe that I saw a number that this piece of legislation that we helped to pass - House Bill 1078 - was going to restore the right to vote for about 20,000 people. And I believe that when we look at that number, that's 20,000 people who are community members that were disenfranchised. And particularly when we think about voting and elections on a municipal level or the local level, that has significant change because the margins for these votes are so small and so tight. But what's even more shocking to me is how the place that our most commonly marginalized, when it comes to the vote or the greatest disparities, are often some of the - we have epicenters of disenfranchisement within our communities and that's where the brunt of this number comes from.
[00:05:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. Why is this so impactful to you, Kelly?
[00:05:40] Kelly Olson: The big reason for me is just understanding the racism that was involved in taking the right to vote away in the beginning. It was meant to suppress the vote of marginalized communities, specifically the Black community - and understanding that and fighting for it, I think, is really what got me interested in it. And making sure that we get the right to vote back to as many people as we can and we'll continue fighting until we can stop it from being taken away in the first place.
[00:06:14] Crystal Fincher: So that House Bill 1078, Cyril, that you talked about - passing and successfully passing through the Legislature. It is not easy to pass legislation. It is not easy to go through the creation, to go through the confusing and often dramatic process of it going between committees and all of the hearings and all of that. What was the process like for you in passing this legislation? And looking at that experience, how do you think you going through that helps you moving forward?
[00:06:47] Cyril Walrond: So for me, the experience was a learning experience. I had not been actively engaged in politics or in this arena. And typically when you have these structures of systemic power, they speak a language that excludes those who are impacted by those decisions. And so for me, being in this position and being able to have the privilege of engaging in this work, I realized that I was learning a new language, right? And through learning this new language, I was trying to share this language to my brothers and my comrades and my counterparts who were also co-laboring with me in this work. And in doing this, I was able to say, Hey, well, this language may sound one way, but in reality this is all that is saying and this is all that it means. And so really, while they're trying to push us out and exclude us through that - No, in reality, no. We speak just like this in our own language and now let us find our voices to push back.
[00:07:41] Crystal Fincher: For you, Kelly, what was this process of going through the legislative process with this effort like for you?
[00:07:48] Kelly Olson: Like Cyril said, it was a real learning experience. I did intern at the Legislature a few years after prison, and so I learned a lot about it then. And our director at my job, which is the Civil Survival Project, is a state legislator and she was the prime sponsor of the bill and also formerly incarcerated. And so I think that brought a lot of power to the bill, but also brought somebody who is from our community as far as being formerly incarcerated and somebody who really could speak to why this is so important and help us understand the process. And we had a lot of people in the community that have been around - lobbyists and other people - that really helped us understand the language, understand the unwritten rules of the Legislature - which is the hardest rules to learn - and I think just making those connections and building a network. And it did take a couple legislative sessions - so I worked on this bill for two years - two different legislative sessions to get it passed. So we learned a lot - in the first session when we pulled the bill off the Senate floor, the debate got ugly - they used horrible language. And we ended up saying, Just pull the bill - and we started over for the next session.
[00:09:15] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I remember that. It was a very, very ugly debate and really showed how important it is to have people who are directly impacted and who do have experience with this to talk about how impactful it is and what it definitely means. And not this caricature that some people have in their minds from the decades of misinformation surrounding issues like this. So in this process - the process of passing legislation can be challenging. Having a legislator like Representative Tarra Simmons, who was able to understand some of the experiences that you've had and bring her expertise and experience to this has been important. But it also took community to do this. What was that effort like and what was the community effort like in passing this legislation?
[00:10:07] Cyril Walrond: Yeah, I believe that the community effort in passing this legislation was relentless. There was a commitment throughout the state of different stakeholders and committed community members who were devoted to seeing the passage of this piece of legislation. As we had our coalition calls and our meetings - and in fact during this time, I was actually calling from inside of prison myself while I was still in custody - but while we're doing this work, we see regularly that people are championing within their own districts, that people are writing letters and engaging with legislators, that there was a collective push and effort to make sure that we were moving to put pressure on our individual legislators, but also to make sure that the broader work was being done. And the values and principles that the collective was standing on were very well in line, so as we got to the point of the legislative session - that we all were in agreement and alignment and knew - with clarity - where we wanted to go and how we wanted to get this done. And so that it was accountable to those who it would be impacting.
[00:11:10] Crystal Fincher: And what was the experience like working with Representative Tarra Simmons?
[00:11:14] Cyril Walrond: The experience working with Representative Tarra Simmons was quite the experience. Having a representative who experienced not only incarceration, but disenfranchisement, and to have her champion this bill was an incredible asset and just a great way to leverage the bill and the momentum that community was pushing forward with this. She was able to bring in her experience and, even as a young legislator, had the zealousness behind her and just a commitment and effort to do things that many other legislators wouldn't have done. And in particular, I think about the way in which she tried and attempted to move accountably with community and for community, particularly those who are impacted by this piece of legislation. That was something that I recognized that she did. And honestly, nobody's perfect, but I believe that the way that she went about it was a shift in a new direction of how things can go and how we can move towards more accountable representation in the legislative process.
[00:12:17] Crystal Fincher: Kelly, you talked about this being a multi-session effort, that this wasn't successful on its first time. What was that process like? How did you stay organized and keep the momentum going after the setback in the prior session? And how did you organize for the successful push in this past session?
[00:12:39] Kelly Olson: Yeah, I think a big part of it was - the first year that I worked on it, I was really just a member of the coalition and not super - not quite as engaged. And in the second year, we really pushed to have directly impacted people at the leadership. And so there was actually four of us who were formerly incarcerated and then Cyril who is currently incarcerated, that took over the leadership in the second year. And I think that really helped with the grassroots organizing and getting people directly involved. We also worked hard to understand who - where some of the opposition was. And we worked hard in particular to get the county auditors on board. A lot of the pushback on the opposition and some of the things that we really stood strong on was we wanted a really clean bill. We didn't want to have what's called a carveout, where we say - well, people committed of this crime are worthy to vote, and people committed of this crime are not worthy of vote. We believe that you go through the criminal justice system, you have your hearing, you get judged - and we shouldn't be judged every time where we turn around. And so one of the things that I think was also helpful was getting the county auditors on board - they actually preferred a really clean bill, which they call "a bright line" - if you wanted to carveout for certain offenses, then you have auditors having to look into people's criminal records and decide what kind of crime they have, do they qualify, do they not qualify? But early on, and Cyril was a big part of this too, we set our values and we really had held strong to - we were not going to - we didn't want to see a bill pass that had any carveouts based on a type of crime. It was either all of us, or none of us. And so that was a really big thing. And I think having the momentum of Rep Simmons in there and having that lived experience to help us on the inside helped. But as Cyril mentioned, the grassroots organizing on the outside was really important.
[00:14:54] Crystal Fincher: So as we look at - the legislation was passed, now it's been implemented - people are eligible. How are you working to get the word out to communities? Because I would think that there's still a lot of people who are just learning that they're eligible - I know I certainly learned this too long after the fact. And speaking to other people, they're still getting out. What efforts, Cyril, are being made now to make sure everybody who is eligible to vote knows that they are?
[00:15:28] Cyril Walrond: There's a number of different efforts that are taking place through the work of our coalition and in other spaces to inform community - to our returning community members, such as myself, that their voices matter and that their right to vote has been restored. For myself - real quick - I actually was released August 1st, and by August 2nd, I not only was a registered voter, but I actually had voted for the first time. And when I did that, I was able to share my experience with those who I engage with and let them know - if I can do this a day out of prison, after almost 17 years, you can do this, right? And explain to them and educate them on their rights, educate them on just the history of voter disenfranchisement, and furthermore our need to get engaged. So there is the organic and individual work that's being done by the work of the credible messengers, who was a part of this coalition and individually lived experiences, who actively engage in educating community and host different events. There's work that's being done through the Communications Committee and working on art installations and different ways of actively engaging with community artists, with those who are storytellers, on how to share this message and build the narrative on the importance of voting rights.
But there's many, many things that are being done actively. Let me not forget the work that's being done around jail voting. When it comes to jail voting, many people are - they feel that they're disenfranchised pre-trial. But in reality, you still have your right to vote even before or up until you get convicted of a crime. And we are doing work to educate people - going into jails, letting them know what's taking place, how people are able to be registered while in jail, as well as once they get out of prison have their rights restored. So there's education, education, education - making sure people know and that people are learning these things at every level and every step of the way.
[00:17:40] Crystal Fincher: And that's so important. Thank you for mentioning that because it is so true - people are innocent until proven guilty. And we just recently did a show on bail reform and talked about how many people are detained pre-trial without having been convicted of a crime. So yes, they are in jail, but they have been convicted of nothing. They still have their rights, but the access to ballots, to be able to vote is so severely restricted that it is a challenge. And so thank you for bringing that up and for the work that you're doing on that. Kelly, as now you're looking, moving forward - what are other things that this coalition is advocating for?
[00:18:24] Kelly Olson: Right now our focus is really on education. In addition to just educating people on this bill, there has also been a lot of misinformation that has been part of the history of voter disenfranchisement. We have talked about wanting to do full restoration. There is some research and strategy going on around that, but it's a little bit on the back burner as we focus on education up to this next election. And then I think that we'll start to talk a little bit more about what does full restoration look like. There is fighting going on at the federal level as well to do full restoration. Full restoration is a little more complicated than just passing a bill. It needs an amendment to our State Constitution, so that makes it just a little bit more complicated and something I still need to learn more about.
[00:19:19] Crystal Fincher: Cyril, looking at the work that you've done - through all of the education, through the legislative process - certainly there have been lots of misconceptions and misunderstandings that have been brought up to you. What are the most frequent misconceptions that you encounter?
[00:19:36] Cyril Walrond: There are misconceptions that we, as incarcerated individuals and formerly incarcerated individuals, often deal with. First, the stigmatization of incarceration or having been justice impacted. With that, there is the belief of - lack of desire, lack of interest, or even lack of ability to be involved in a system or in the right to vote, right? To be able to go up, to show up, and to have your voice heard. Many people think that they're excluded because they don't understand how this system is worked, or how it's set up, or structured to work. But the reality is - what I found - is many people incarcerated are actually much more civically engaged and civically educated than many people that I've encountered in community in returning. And so it's many of us who are coming from incarceration that are educating community on what our experiences have been, and what some of these nuances are within the legislative process, as we have directly been impacted by it.
I also think another misconception is that people who - the right to vote is something that only belongs to some, right? But I believe that the reality of this is - if we believe in a democracy that represents all people, then all people's voices should be heard. But when we intentionally, or for whatever reason, exclude the voices of some - then as Kelly mentioned before, it's all of us or none. A democracy that represents some people cannot serve the interest of all people. And making sure that through the things that we do, through this work and through the acknowledgement of those misconceptions and the educating against those misconceptions, but more importantly educating to know the reality despite those misconceptions, I believe that we're able to change the narrative and allow people to see that we are lacking in the power of community and the power of our democracy because everybody's not being represented.
[00:21:39] Crystal Fincher: Excellent points. And Kelly, what are the biggest misunderstandings that you encounter?
[00:21:44] Kelly Olson: I would say that some of the biggest misunderstandings are that, especially for those of us doing this work, that we can only speak to our lived experience as being formerly incarcerated - that that's the only voice or lens that we bring to this, where we actually have a lot of other lived experience. And so a lot of times - you might be on a panel with other experts and they might ask the lawyer the policy question when I could very well answer that same question. But the question that will come to me is something about being formerly incarcerated. So remembering that we can speak on multiple topics and have a lot of depth to us - our incarceration is just one small part of our story. And actually - maybe a big part of our story - but regardless, there's a lot more depth to us than our experience of incarceration. And so just remembering that we can speak on many levels, many topics - whether it's related to incarceration or not.
[00:22:55] Crystal Fincher: Such an important point. And I have seen that personally play out in so many meetings and panels and discussions - and they're worse off for it. So a great reminder and really useful to remember that. Is there anything else you would add to that, Cyril?
[00:23:12] Cyril Walrond: I would like to add - in addition to that - that there is the belief that democracy can be monetized, that there are some who are proponents of making sure that LFO fines and different things are paid off. And I know we were able to get around that with this bill and were able to push to make sure that once an individual is returning to community, that they have their rights restored. And that was one of the areas that they really were trying to push carveouts - it's saying that legal financial obligations must be paid for. And in doing so, that goes back to and points a bright light at the racist history of voter disenfranchisement, particularly by way of Jim Crow law, Black codes, and even poll taxes. And so when we look at the origins of how there has been a history of disenfranchisement, a history of suppressing and oppressing the voices of Black and Brown people, we have to also look at how is this mechanism being done? And then question those misconceptions that are often being raised.
[00:24:11] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for that - that's important and true. Now, moving forward, I guess just as we conclude here - what advice, Kelly, would you give to people organizing - whether it's with regard to voting rights or whatever is happening in their community - what advice would you give to people about how to get involved in the processes that control how their community functions and how to make their voice heard?
[00:24:38] Kelly Olson: That's a great question. I think that getting involved with a local organization that's aligned with the work that you want to work on, paying attention to - a lot of times people don't get very involved in some of the smaller local elections, and I think it's important to get to know who your representatives are, not just at the state level, but at the local level. So, meet your elected officials, talk to them, find out what are the issues that they are working on. And letting them know what issues are important to you is really important. We've got an election coming up. I think it's really important to be educated about who the candidates are, getting involved if you can, research them, and then finding organizations. If you're formerly incarcerated, Civil Survival Project is - works on different legislation. You're welcome to reach out to our organization to get more involved and there's other organizations out there too. But I think one of the biggest things is getting to know your elected officials and getting to know the issues that are out there and that you want to work on.
[00:25:43] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. And Cyril, what advice would you give to people who want to make a difference and make their voices heard?
[00:25:50] Cyril Walrond: The advice I would give to those who want to make a difference and make their voice heard is that you can make a difference and make your voice heard. It doesn't take much, right? When we think about just the power to impact and influence change and to be agents of change within our lives and within our communities, within this country, everybody has within themselves to do it. And what you bring to the table as an individual can very well impact the collective. I think that it's important to not do it in isolation, right? There's an African proverb says, You want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And making sure that you connect with organizations that are moving accountably, that are committed to this work, that are grounded in principle and particularly principles and values that are life-affirming and humanizing and recognize the value of the individuals that that they seek to serve. Many spaces come with the mindset or concept of saviorism, as opposed to being able to cultivate and share in community together. Realizing that one thing that affects one, affects the other. And so when I think about what people can do is get out, get involved, look up and research different spaces and organizations doing this work, connect with different people that are doing this work. And more importantly, understand that if it's not there in your community, if you live in a small pocket where those things don't exist, I guarantee you that there's other like-minded people who are also impacted by the same issue. That you can begin the process of mobilizing, organizing to affect change in this area and in whatever area is affecting our community.
[00:27:37] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much for that. Thank you both - Cyril and Kelly - for joining us and sharing with us today. Very important information. You're doing excellent work educating the community. Kelly, if people want to learn more information about the coalition or get involved themselves, how can they get in contact?
[00:27:55] Kelly Olson: The best way would be through our website, which is freethevotewa.org. There's all kinds of materials on there and resources. So again, that's freethevotewa.org.
[00:28:09] Crystal Fincher: All right - thank you both and we appreciate what you are doing and we'll continue following along ourselves. Thank you very much and thanks for listening. Thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Post-Production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can follow me @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, political consultant and host Crystal Fincher is joined by friend of the show and today’s co-host: Executive Director of The Urbanist, Doug Trumm! They look at WA traffic policy discussions, middle housing arguments, the Working Families Tax Credit, Shasti Conrad as the new WA Democrats Chair, King County and Seattle Council elections, and new Durkan/Best controversy news.
This week, Washington state lawmakers met to discuss ways the state can work to decrease traffic deaths, mostly focusing on education and traffic enforcement, as well as banning turning right on red at certain intersections. Lawmakers also spoke out against the legislature’s middle housing bill. 46th LD Rep Gerry Pollet, and Seattle City Council Member Alex Pedersen have come out against the push to increase housing density. Also this week, lobbyist Cody Arledge wes barred from the Capitol campus after a judge found he was stalking State Rep. Lauren Davis of Shoreline. Despite this not being his first issue with stalking and threatening behavior, Arledge had some big clients, including the City of Seattle.
The Working Families Tax Credit went live this week! Please look at the resources below to find out if you’re eligible and apply. Automatic tax programs like TurboTax might not automatically alert you of eligibility for the tax, so be on the lookout.
Washington State Democrats elected Shasti Conrad as their new chair last Saturday, following Tina Podlodowski’s successful run in the role. Meanwhile, Seattle councilmember Tammy Morales announced that she will be running for re-election on the Seattle City Council, while councilmember Teresa Mosqueda announced her run for King County Council. This news continues to show that this year’s elections will bring major change to our state and council leadership.
In other election news, King County voters have until February 14th to vote in the race for King County Conservation District board. Crystal and Doug break down what the board is and why it’s an important decision. Voters in the county will also be voting this April on whether the county will implement a $1.25 billion levy to fund crisis care networks.
Finally, Crystal and Doug wrap up the show with a new update on the controversies surrounding Former Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and Former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best. New reporting from Carolyn Bick of The South Seattle Emerald shows that Durkan might have pushed the OPA to delay its investigations into Best, deepening the number of violations the former mayor performed.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Doug Trumm, on Twitter at @dmtrumm.
Resources
“How the SPOG Contract Stands in the Way of Police Accountability with Shannon Cheng” hosted by Crystal Fincher at Hacks and Wonks
“State Road Safety Push Overlooks Design, Dwells on Enforcement” by Gregory Quetin from The Urbanist
“Pollet, Pedersen, and Blethen Assail State Housing Push” by Ray Dubicki from The Urbanist
“Prominent lobbyist barred from WA Capitol after ruling he stalked state representative” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times
“Applications for the WA Working FAmilies Tax Credit are live. This is who is eligible” by Jared Gendron from The News Tribune
“How to sign up for WA’s new Working Families Tax Credit” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times
“WA Democrats choose Shasti Conrad as new leader” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times
“Incumbent Tammy Morales seeks re-election in Seattle District 2” - by Josh Cohen from Crosscut
“Mosqueda Announces Run for Vacant King County Council Seat” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
“King County voters to decide on Crisis Care Centers Levy in April” by CHS from Capitol Hill Seattle Blog
“Meet the candidates for the little-known King Conservation District board” by Guy Oron form Real Change News
“Fmr. Mayor May Have Pushed OPA to Delay Investigations Into Fmr. Police Chief” by Carolyn Bick from South Seattle Emerald
Transcript
Coming Soon
On this midweek show, Shannon Cheng of People Power Washington joins Crystal to dive into the intricacies of how the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) contract stands in the way of police accountability. With negotiations already underway, Crystal and Shannon talk about what we should be looking for in the next SPOG contract and why police accountability is important. An overview of the historic difficulty bargaining with SPOG highlights how the City has been left with a lacking accountability system, how the community has struggled to have their interests represented at the table, and how the Seattle Police Department has fallen out of compliance with its consent decree. With little insight into the closed-door negotiations with SPOG, Crystal and Shannon look for signs in recent agreements with other local police unions where progress in accountability reforms was paired with officer wage increases.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Shannon Cheng at @drbestturtle and People Power Washington at @PeoplePowerWA.
Shannon Cheng
Shannon Cheng is the Chair of People Power Washington, a grassroots volunteer organization which champions policies that divest from police and reinvest in community-based solutions and alternate crisis response, decriminalize non-serious offenses, and implement accountability and enforceable standards for police officers and agencies. People Power Washington was instrumental in the passage of the 2020 King County charter amendments to reform public safety, and continues to be involved with public safety advocacy in the City of Seattle, King County, and Washington State Legislature.
Shannon holds a Bachelor and Master of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She continued her graduate work at MIT and earned a PhD in Space Propulsion with a Minor in Geology/Geophysics because she loves rocks.
Since graduating, Shannon has been working on computational lighting technology with her husband, becoming a passionate orienteer, and organizing in support of civil liberties — from immigrants’ rights to voting rights to criminal justice reform. She is thrilled to bring her diverse experience to Fincher Consulting and Hacks & Wonks.
Resources
Sign up for the People Power Washington mailing list
“Police Management Contract, Which Includes Concessions, Could Serve as Template for SPOG Negotiations” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
Timeline of Seattle Police Accountability | ACLU of Washington
“As negotiations with city loom, Seattle’s police union has had an outsized influence on police accountability measures” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times
Public Employees' Collective Bargaining Act | Revised Code of Washington
“Officials Announce Changes to Police Union Negotiation Strategy, But Accountability and Bargaining Experts Say More Should Be Done” by Paul Kiefer from PubliCola
“New King County police contract increases pay, body cams, and civilian oversight” by Amy Radil from KUOW
“King County strikes deal with union for bodycams on sheriff’s deputies” by Daniel Gutman from The Seattle Times
“Seattle police union elects hard-line candidate as president in landslide vote” by Steve Miletich and Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times
“Seattle approves new police contract, despite community pushback” by David Kroman from Crosscut
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I am thrilled to be welcoming a crucial clutch member of our team and absolute talented woman in her own right, Dr. Shannon Cheng. Welcome to the show.
[00:01:05] Shannon Cheng: Hi, Crystal - excited to be here.
[00:01:08] Crystal Fincher: Excited to have you here. Now, you wear many hats. One of those is as Chair of People Power Washington - Police Accountability. Can you just let us know a little bit about the organization and what brought you to the work?
[00:01:21] Shannon Cheng: People Power Washington - we're a volunteer-run, grassroots group focused on bringing equitable public safety and police accountability. We focus on several geographic areas - we started off working in Seattle - we also do work in King County as well as now Washington State. We're working at different levels of government because our experience was - working at the city level - we found out there were some things that really had to be taken care of at the state level and vice versa. We started off in 2017, right around when the Seattle Police Accountability Ordinance was passed, and that's how we got involved more deeply and have continued. And then in 2020, when the summer protests were happening, a lot of people came out of the woodwork really wanting to get involved with this issue in particular. And so our group's really expanded and that's why we added on King County to some of the work that we do.
[00:02:14] Crystal Fincher: When it comes to police accountability, really wanted to have this show because over and over again, no matter what direction we come at it from, it seems like one of the biggest barriers to accountability that we always hear is the police union contracts. And we hear from the police chiefs, from the mayors that, Oh, that would be great to do, but we can't do it because of the contract. Or we hear about discipline that has been taken, that is then reversed after arbitration, because of things having to do with the contract. So I really wanted to talk about and examine that, especially because that contract is currently being renegotiated. So why is this so important and what's at stake?
[00:02:59] Shannon Cheng: As we have been working on trying to get better police accountability in Seattle specifically, what our group kept running up against - any kind of progress that was trying to be made, any solution that was being suggested to try to improve the system - the barrier we kept running up against and being told was, Well, that has to be bargained in the SPOG contract. And SPOG is the Seattle Police Officers Guild - they're the police union in Seattle that represents our officers and sergeants. There's another police union also - the SPMA, the Seattle Police Management Association - which represents the lieutenants and captains. But SPOG is the main one that is constantly standing in the way.
And so I think one thing that - I think when we talk about police accountability, it's helpful to think about are there are these different branches of accountability and we have obstacles along all of those paths. So when we talk about police accountability, I think it's important to realize there's several different tracks that we can try to hold police accountability and then understanding what are the obstacles that are in each of those tracks. So the first one would be criminal accountability. This is where the state would charge an officer. And we have seen a lot of issues with that where we don't have an independent prosecutor who is willing to bring charges against a police officer. Oftentimes the investigations that are done that would lead to charges being brought are not being done in a way that doesn't have conflicts of interest. So that's something that's being worked on. There's also civil liability, where a person who has suffered distress at the hands of a police officer would be able to bring civil charges and get redress in that fashion. On the federal level, that is what is blocked by qualified immunity. People may have heard of that, where if the case is not exactly been decided with this exact same parameters in a previous precedent, then people are not able to get their case through. Another avenue of accountability is regulatory, which would be decertifying a police officer who has fallen beneath the standards that have been set for what a police officer should do.
And then the final one that I think that many people think about a lot is what I would call administrative accountability. And this is done at the local level in our local police departments - and it has to do with how we can impose discipline on police officers at the local level. So when the police chief - as you were saying, Crystal - decides that an officer was acting in a way that they need to be disciplined, then that's what we call administrative accountability. And so the reason that the SPOG contract is so important is that it basically dictates how the City can impose accountability onto our officers. And so everything that ever happens that has to do with looking into how the officer may have behaved, or deciding whether that was within policy, and then if it was not within policy, what kind of discipline can be imposed, or even whether that discipline sticks - all of that is tied up into what is agreed upon between the City and the Seattle Police Officers Guild in their contract.
[00:06:29] Crystal Fincher: So when we hear accountability being talked about, there are actually specific policies and things that - many people have looked at this contract process and best practices around the country and have come out with. What are the recommendations that are specifically being made for the next SPOG contract? What should the public be looking to get out of this?
[00:06:54] Shannon Cheng: Yeah - I think at a minimum - the next SPOG contract should be in alignment with the recently negotiated contract with the Seattle Police Management Association. We were able to get things such as subpoena power for the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General through that contract. We also were able to restructure the disciplinary review process so that it was less biased towards officers getting discipline overturned in arbitration. I think there was also a clear definition of what honesty means for police officers, which is very important. So yes, minimum is what happened in the SPMA contract. And then beyond that, it should go further and not block anything from the 2017 accountability ordinance - so things such as being able to civilianize the Office of Police Accountability so that we don't have the conflict of interest of officers investigating other officers. And then I think a broader conversation that the City has been trying to but has been hampered is talking about what kind of alternative public safety response that we might want to be able to have other than sending an armed officer. I think there's been a lot of concern that the SPOG contract, as written, could lead to an unfair labor practice claim by the union if Seattle moves forward with any kind of pilot. And so this is what has been holding us back in ways that a lot of other cities around the country have been able to move forward.
[00:08:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And cities in our area have been able to move forward. Seattle appears to be behind the curve when it comes to things like the holistic types of responses - to be able to send an appropriate response to whatever the emergency is, which isn't always an armed police officer - it may be a social worker, someone who can address substance use disorder, or different things to address those issues that just can't be handled by a police officer with a gun or through our criminal system.
So I think having those things in mind is really important as we continue to move through this in this conversation. And this is a really challenging issue for people to deal with because of the messaging environment and the way that the politics of the situation has unfolded. Because there are some folks - we've heard repeatedly from the head of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, who has been known for making incendiary statements before, and this kind of feeling or proposition that police accountability is inherently anti-police. When I think - on the ground - most people, even if they don't mind having the police show up and seeing them all over the place, is that we all have standards for our jobs, for our performance, how we should deal with other people, and there are rules. And if those rules are broken, there should be some kind of accountability attached to that. If you are not doing what you're supposed to be doing, if you're abusing others on the job - that, in every other circumstance, is grounds for usually immediate termination. But we're finding nearly the opposite in terms of the police. I think a lot of people are challenged by the notion that, Hey, why am I held accountable for being able to de-escalate a situation, follow the rules and regulations of my job. Yet people who have control over other people's human and civil rights don't have that and a big challenge having to do with that. So as we navigate this - I guess starting off - how do you think of and characterize and do this work, and refute those kinds of accusations and challenges?
[00:11:07] Shannon Cheng: I think it's important to remember that police officers and law enforcement are given special extra powers that a lot of the rest of us don't have. They have state-sanctioned power to take away life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. So they have direct control over the civil and constitutional rights of people in situations. And we trust them to uphold the Constitution and not overstep bounds - and that's what we would expect to see. Unfortunately, that's not what happens a lot of the time and that's where we do need accountability to come into play - when people's rights have been violated.
[00:11:55] Crystal Fincher: Okay, so we've talked about the different types of police accountability. We've talked about administrative accountability. I just want to review where we're at in this process, specifically, when it comes to the Seattle Police Officers Guild contract.
[00:12:12] Shannon Cheng: Okay, so the current Seattle Police Officers Guild contract expired at the end of 2020. So currently the officers are working without a current contract and the City and the union are under negotiations for the next contract. We don't have much visibility into when the next step is going to happen and we don't know what parameters they are going to be bargaining.
[00:12:43] Crystal Fincher: So right now they're operating without a contract and that means the current contract continues. And we had this conversation, or we had a public conversation about this - not many people were probably tuned into that conversation - before the last contract negotiation. What went into that contract negotiation and how does that tee up what's at stake in this contract?
[00:13:05] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, the previous contract negotiation was finished in the end of 2018. And so that contract had already been overdue for several years. And one of the reasons it took so long to negotiate is that the City of Seattle has been under consent decree since 2012 - so 10 years - and what that means is that the Department of Justice came in, did an investigation into officers at the bequest of many community organizations, and found that there was unconstitutional policing happening in the City of Seattle. So basically the federal government is providing our local law enforcement oversight and trying to bring them back into compliance with the Constitution. So as part of that - in 2017, the City of Seattle passed an ordinance that established a police accountability system that at the time was hailed as being a landmark accountability system, that had three branches - people may have heard of them. There's the OPA, which is the Office of Police Accountability - their job is to do investigations and suggest discipline that the chief will then apply. There's also the OIG, which is the Office of Inspector General, which is observing and making systemic recommendations to the system. And then finally there was the CPC, which is the Community Police Commission, and their role was to bring community voices in - it was the community that originally brought up issues with how policing was being done in Seattle, and so this was to continue to let them have a voice into how we rectify the system.
So the issue is that that ordinance passed into City law in 2017, but it was not actually implementable until the next SPOG contract was negotiated with the officers. And in 2018, 18 months after that landmark law got passed, a SPOG contract got ratified which basically rolled back a lot of the provisions from the police accountability ordinance. And so there was a lot of community outcry - many groups came out, including the CPC, to ask that the City Council and the mayor reject that contract because it basically did not honor what - all the work that had been done to try to put a workable system into place.
[00:15:43] Crystal Fincher: We're picking up this contract negotiation again here - that's currently being negotiated. I think a lot of people are looking at this - looking at the conflicting statements that we've heard from the mayor between what was said while on the campaign trail and what has been said after he was elected to office, in addition to some leaked comments. So in this particular contract, what are the things that are important to get out of it to ensure the kind of accountability that we've talked about, to ensure that people are treated in accordance with the law, in accordance with regulations. And that's not to say that they can't do their jobs, just that they should be able to do it correctly. What are the most important things to consider here?
[00:16:36] Shannon Cheng: I think the contract really needs to allow us to see what a robust accountability system could do. I think there's this assumption that because we have the existence of these three bodies - the CPC, the OPA, and the OIG - that we have a working accountability system, and people often blame that system for not imposing the accountability. But the truth is that that system has not been able to be fully implemented because of the restrictions put on it by the 2018 SPOG contract. So since that contract passed, we've had incidents where the federal judge overseeing this consent decree ruled the City out of compliance on the issue of accountability specifically. There was a famous case where an officer's discipline got overturned in arbitration because the arbitrator decided that the chief's firing wouldn't stand.
[00:17:32] Crystal Fincher: So that must be really a fundamental challenge that really speaks to the culture of the department. If you're trying to weed out - as they would call it - bad apples. They are constantly saying, This doesn't represent all of the officers and all that kind of stuff. Well, if it doesn't, then this is an issue of culture and you have to be able to weed out those bad apples in order to avoid spoiling the whole bunch, as the rest of that saying goes. But if those people are still winding back on the force - was that the case where an officer was - punched a handcuffed woman and broke her jaw, which is not supposed to happen as most people can deduce - and was actually fired by the chief, which is a high bar to clear. They cleared that bar, but were put back in the job through arbitration. What does that do to other officers? What does that say to other officers, especially when you hear the kinds of things coming from the head of the union - that come from them - and some of the really inflammatory things that really make it hard to believe that police are viewing every member of the public equally and doing their job impartially, and really putting the health and safety of the public as their primary priority.
As we go through this, many people aren't familiar with union negotiations overall. This is a very different category of union, seeing that they have special privileges and abilities granted to them by the law. They get to impact other people's civil rights and lives. So in just the mechanics of negotiating this contract - it's hard because these negotiations are private - but what is the process of negotiation? How do people go about getting the kinds of concessions that are necessary to ensure that we're all safe?
[00:19:35] Shannon Cheng: I think it's important to first understand that - in Washington State, public sector unions are given the right to collectively bargain under state law. This is the Public Employees' Collective Bargaining Act. This is where a public employer and a public sector union and their exclusive bargaining representative will sit down at a table and hash out personnel matters such as wages, hours, working conditions, as well as grievance procedures. Under this state act, police guilds and associations fall into a special category - they're classified as uniformed personnel, and so they are considered vital to the welfare and public safety of the State of Washington. So what this means is that - if in the course of doing the collective bargaining with one of these unions they can't reach an agreement, that union is not allowed to go on strike. Because of that, the Public Employees' Collective Bargaining Act then gives them the opportunity to instead go to a third-party arbitrator to decide the disputes about the contract. And then the Washington Open Public Meetings Act is what says that all these negotiations for collective bargaining are behind closed doors.
So effectively, what this means is that the public has very little insight into what's happening. And for many unions that's reasonable, but as we discussed before - for police unions in particular, they have a lot of power and influence and impact, and they deal with the public nearly day to day in their jobs. And so how that happens and when things go wrong, the public has a deep interest into making sure that our interests are represented. So the way that - practically speaking - these negotiations happen at the City is that the two parties are the City of Seattle and the Seattle Police Officers Guild. So on the City side, we're represented by the Labor Relations Policy Committee. In the past, this was effectively only representatives from the mayor's office or direct reports from under the mayor. After getting burned so badly with that 2018 SPOG contract, there's been a lot of effort to change that so that other bodies have more input. So for example, the City Council has five representatives that sit on that committee and they have been able to get a City Council staffer to be able to be at the table for this round of negotiations. In addition, because accountability has been such a difficult point for them to negotiate at the table, they wanted to have an outside expert - with specific technical expertise about the accountability system - to be also present at the table. So that didn't quite happen. Instead, what they are having is representatives from our three accountability bodies able to be present only for the part of negotiations about accountability. So that's who's sitting at the table from the City side. And then SPOG has their representatives to represent the police union.
So as I said, the public has very little input into how these negotiations are proceeding. The City Council did hold public hearings back in the fall of 2019 - ahead of the start of these negotiations - to get input into what the public would be interested in seeing. The issue is - 2019, at this point, is several years ago, and a lot has happened since then in this area, and the conversation and discourse has changed, I think, fueled by what happened in the summer of 2020 and all the protests that broke out. But collective bargaining is a lengthy process. It takes a long time. It's going to take several years. We expect to hopefully see a tentative SPOG contract come out sometime in this next stretch. But until it does, we really have very little insight into what is happening and what is being traded back and forth between the two sides.
[00:23:54] Crystal Fincher: Okay. And just going through what the - continuing through what the process would be once they do come to an agreement in the negotiation - what are the steps to then get it approved officially?
[00:24:08] Shannon Cheng: Right. So if a tentative agreement is reached, then the members of the Seattle Police Officers Guild will vote to see whether their guild would accept the contract. If a majority of them agree, then the tentative collective bargaining agreement would be sent to City Council for ratification. A majority of City Council members would have to vote for that. And if it passed out of City Council, then the mayor would have to actually sign the agreement. And then that would make the agreement official.
[00:24:39] Crystal Fincher: Okay. And if they can't come to an agreement, what happens?
[00:24:46] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, so if they can't come to an agreement - under state law, it could go to interest arbitration. And so this is where a third party arbitrator would make a binding decision on the topics of the contract that they have not been able to come to agreement with. I think historically - going to interest arbitration has been considered risky for the City because these arbitrators would look at like agreements from around the country to make their decision about what seemed fair or not. And this problem is not just in Seattle where we're having difficulty having good contracts with our police union - this happens around the country. So I think the sense has been that if we looked at other contracts, those would tend to lean towards the police union and not be in our favor. I think there are some who feel that - after the protests of 2020, that situation may have changed a little bit. And another note is that that other police union we talked about in Seattle that represents the captains and lieutenants, the SPMA - they recently negotiated a contract that did include more of the progress we would want to see in accountability. So it's possible that if SPOG had to go to arbitration and they looked at this other contract from the same city, that they would agree that SPOG should do the same.
[00:26:16] Crystal Fincher: So what are the signs and signals that we're getting from this current negotiation? Where does it look like things stand? It's hard because so much of the process is opaque, but what have you been able to glean?
[00:26:31] Shannon Cheng: Yeah. So about the specific SPOG negotiations themselves - that as they're happening now - very little. It is very opaque, as you said. But so instead we can try to look at these hopeful signs of other police guilds that have had their contracts negotiated in the recent past. So as I just said, the Seattle Police Management Association contract - that was bargained and passed and accepted this past summer in June 2022. From that contract, SPMA got wage increases that went back retroactively and are pretty in line with sort of the consumer price index. And what Seattle got was that we were finally able to get some of the elements that were missing from that 2017 police accountability ordinance. One thing that has been not available is that our accountability bodies have not had subpoena power over the police department. And so in the SPMA contract, they just didn't mention subpoena power at all - and so because of that exclusion of that term, then it is now granted under the accountability ordinance.
Other improvements that happened was handling how badly arbitration can go sometimes for the City. So trying to - we can't get rid of arbitration as a route for disciplinary appeal, but we can put some guardrails around it. So what they were able to negotiate was that officers couldn't bring new information into the appeal decision. Previously, the initial investigation would happen, the discipline would be decided - and then in the officer's appeal of the decision, they could bring up new information that was not available to the original investigators. And so it was like having another investigation all over again. So they have now said, No, the officer needs to provide all of the information up front and that all needs to be considered first at the first investigation. They also have decided that the arbitrators have to decide whether the chief-imposed discipline was arbitrary or capricious - and if not, they can't overturn the chief's discipline. So these are all positive things that we've seen in the Seattle Police Management Association contract and we would definitely hope to see the same put into the upcoming SPOG contract.
Then in King County, our sheriff's office - they recently reached an agreement with their deputies just this past November and got similar wins. In exchange for pretty generous wage increases, the County has finally been able to get the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight the authority to actually conduct independent investigations as well as subpoena power. These are things that County voters had passed overwhelmingly in charter amendments and then got enshrined in county ordinance, but again, those were being blocked by the police officers guild contract not accepting those changes. So those have both moved forward and I think those are very positive signs that it is possible to sit down at these difficult negotiations with our police guilds and give them fair wage increases. And in exchange, have them accept reasonable accountability measures.
I think unhopeful signs - that I think about - is just how SPOG historically has been a very difficult union to negotiate with. We've just seen that they are much more - they're less willing to give unless they get something in exchange. For example, when we wanted them to start wearing Body-Worn Cameras, we had to pay them extra in order to do that. So things like that give me pause in terms of how negotiations with SPOG would be going - because they have been difficult. I think also their current leadership, the SPOG president, has been very antagonistic and unaligned with a lot of the efforts have been made to try to improve public safety.
[00:31:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I agree with the evaluation of not being aligned. You just mentioned the county-wide vote for increased accountability and restructuring the County Sheriff's department to make that possible. Seattle has voted over and over again, both for statutory improvements and for candidates who have promised on the campaign trail to increase accountability measures. Yet there has been really inflammatory positions and statements made that seem to suggest that they think the public just wants to reject that, and you have to hate police in order to want any kind of accountability, and it's just unacceptable to even think about. And over and over again, the public in opinion polls and in elections says the opposite. They do want people to be accountable for performing on the jobs much like they are. We shouldn't expect people - service workers making minimum wage - to be able to de-escalate situations that we don't expect of police, who that's supposed to be one of the things they're trained and expected to do. So I think a definite misalignment between what the public wants and expects, and what SPOG is willing to entertain and discuss.
So since we're in this time without a contract, what are possible outcomes that could happen short of getting a contract, or that could inhibit contract negotiations moving forward?
[00:33:03] Shannon Cheng: I think what's really going to be important with these upcoming negotiations is that the City is taking seriously what the public has over and over said that they want to see - which is we need to have a robust police accountability system that hasn't been watered down and that is allowable by the SPOG contract. In 2018 - at that City Council hearing where they ratified the problematic contract - there were masses of community members who came out. Groups, citizens, many people came out saying, We agree that SPOG has the right to have pay increases, they've been working without a contract for a long time - they deserve to have fair wages and benefits - but not at the cost of throwing out all the work that we've done under the consent decree and trying to put together a system where we have an accountability system that will help build community trust in what this office, this department that is supposedly here to protect and serve us is doing. And unfortunately the other side came out to that same City Council hearing and everybody was just talking past each other. They were just saying things like, We deserve to have raises. If you don't pass this, it means that you think we don't deserve raises. And that is not what the community was saying. They were saying, You deserve a raise, but in exchange, you need to give us accountability. And they just left out the accountability piece completely.
And so I think it's really important that - as the City moves forward, that they listen to what the public has been saying and make sure that we get that accountability this time, not at the expense of this argument of, Oh, well, the officers have been working without a updated contract for too long. Because these negotiations - we know they take a long time - historically they have been. This is not an unknown, they should have been prepared for that, and to know that this would be an argument that was going to be made. So absolutely, they need to tie any increase or benefits that they give - which is our leverage over the police guild - to getting what we want back, which is full implementation of the 2017 police accountability ordinance. At the minimum, they should have the same things that were negotiated and agreed upon in the SPMA contract in the SPOG contract. And then they should go beyond. Right now, we have an issue where the Office of Police Accountability is restricted in the number of civilian investigators that they can have and what kinds of cases those civilian investigators can manage. We have a situation where we have cops investigating cops. And it's cops who then get put back into the system where maybe they're the ones under investigation again. So I think just anybody can see that there's a huge conflict of interest there where - an officer assigned to be an investigator maybe wouldn't want to do the best job of the investigation because they're going to be back working with these same people in a short time period. So we need to really button down and get our accountability system into a situation where it is more in line with what had been celebrated as this groundbreaking, new way of approaching the issue. Because right now, the current system is just really broken.
[00:36:41] Crystal Fincher: It is really broken and I appreciate all the work that you've done, that other organizations have done to - one, highlight and help people see what are the processes and policies behind this brokenness, and what is the path to being able to have more accountability in this system.
I guess heading into - closing this and final words - if people are interested in making a difference in this issue and trying to make sure that we have accountability, it seems like there are a couple different options. One big opportunity is with the elections that we have coming up. You'd mentioned that it's going to take a majority of the council to ratify whatever contract does wind up happening. We will have several open seats coming in this City Council election. So what are the kinds of things that people should be looking to hear from candidates in order to have confidence that they are going to act on the kind of accountability measures that are necessary?
[00:37:51] Shannon Cheng: I think first and foremost, hearing from people that they recognize that there is a problem with the current system. And that they deeply understand that just because we have a system in name, it doesn't mean that the system is working. And that this is all tied up in these contract negotiations. I don't know if by the time elections happen, whether the negotiations will have moved forward or not. But I am sure that whatever contract does come out, more work is going to be needed to be done for the future one. So setting ourselves up for success and having people that even recognize that there is a problem. I think that so often - police officers are given the benefit of the doubt sometimes, and they don't like receiving criticism. Nobody does, but police officers in general get very defensive and it can be hard to stand up to that and push back, especially with a lot of the mainstream narratives that are going around - but somebody who is going to be bold and willing to stand up for what the public wants in the face of all of that pushback.
[00:39:05] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. What are other ways that the public can help push this in the right direction?
[00:39:10] Shannon Cheng: I think being in touch with your electeds - City Council is important, but honestly, I think the mayor is the one who holds the keys to a lot of how this plays out. So if anybody has the ability to figure out how to tell the mayor that this is absolutely what we want and we will not accept a contract that does not bring our accountability system up to snuff, that's important.
Our group is going to be monitoring and watching for when this contract does get negotiated and comes out, and we'll be looking at it and try to analyze it. We don't know exactly how much time we will have between when that contract comes out and when the City Council vote and mayor signing will happen, but we will be on alert. And so if you're interested and want to receive updates about when that happens and when is an effective time to make your voice heard, you could sign up for our mailing list. If you go to wethepeoplepower.org/join-us, there's a form there where you can sign up. As I said, we also do work at the King County and state levels, but you can have an option to only receive alerts about the areas that you're interested in.
[00:40:24] Crystal Fincher: Thanks for helping us understand the really intricate and confusing process with the contract. And thanks so much - we will be following up on this as we get more news about it.
[00:40:35] Shannon Cheng: Thanks, Crystal.
[00:40:36] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, political consultant and host Crystal Fincher is joined by Associate Editor of The Stranger and noted poet, Rich Smith! They look at tragic traffic deaths in Seattle, track leg updates on free school meals and minimum wage for incarcerated workers, discuss the Washington Supreme Court’s hearing on our capital gains tax, outline County Prosecutor Leesa Manion’s changes to the office, update us on Seattle’s social housing initiative, and react to candidates running for Seattle City Council.
Crystal and Rich start the show by covering this week’s tragic traffic deaths, including the death of 23-year old grad student Jaahnavi Kandula, who was hit by a police vehicle. The number of these incidents is a horrific reminder that these fatalities aren’t due to random chance, but are the result of numerous policy priorities and choices by elected officials and institutions.
Turning to the state legislature, our hosts give overviews on a bill to give free lunches to all public school students in Washington state and a bill that would provide minimum wage to incarcerated individuals for their labor. In state Supreme Court news, this week the court heard arguments for the suit over our state’s capital gains tax that the legislature passed last year. We’ll be keeping an eye out to see when we finally get a decision on this case.
King County’s new Prosecuting Attorney, Leesa Manion, outlined her new approach to the office, including the creation of a gun violence prevention unit and a division focused on prosecuting gender-based violence. Rich also updates Crystal on the Stranger’s Election Control Board’s endorsement of Seattle’s social housing initiative I-135, which will be on the ballot for the upcoming February 14th election. Finally, we end the show catching up on the newly announced candidates for this year’s Seattle City Council elections, and ask why some candidates are announcing their campaigns without a clear vision of why they want the seat.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host Rich Smith at @richsssmith.
Resources
“Evaluating the Role of Incarceration in Public Safety with Criminologist Damon Petrich” - Hacks & Wonks
“Casual Friday with Crystal Fincher & Besa Gordon” by Patricia Murphy & Brandi Fullwood from KUOW
“Officer Responding to Overdose Call Killed Woman In Marked Intersection Where City Canceled Safety Project” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola
“Three pedestrians taken to hospital after collision in South Seattle” by Amanda Zhou from The Seattle Times
Follow Ryan Packer twitter: @typewriteralley
“Prevent traffic deaths with proven solutions for Seattle streets” by Gordon Padelford from The Seattle Times
“WA bill would make school meals free for all students” by Ruby de Luna from KUOW
“WA lawmakers consider minimum wage requirement for incarcerated workers” by Libby Denkman & Sarah Leibovitz from KUOW
“Supreme Court Ruling Could Allow Washington to Tax the Rich” by Will Casey from The Stranger
“Public safety is focus of new prosecutorial units” by Christine Clarridge from Axios
“Vote Yes on Initiative 135” from The Stranger
“Who's running for Seattle City Council in 2023“ by Melissa Santos from Axios
“Formerly Unhoused, Andrew Ashiofu Wants to Fight for Housing Progress on City Council” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
“Central District Resident Joy Hollingsworth Is Running for City Council” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
“Urbanist Alex Hudson Enters Council Race to Replace Sawant” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
“Assistant Attorney General Sarah Reyneveld Is Running for King County Council” by Rich Smith from The Stranger
Transcript
Coming Soon
On this Hacks & Wonks midweek show, Crystal has a robust conversation with Damon Petrich about his research at the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. As lead author of the seminal work “Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Damon performed an extensive analysis of 116 research studies looking at the effect of incarceration on reoffending. The review’s finding that the oft-used policy of imprisonment does not reduce the likelihood of recidivism sparks a discussion about how the United States ended up as the world leader in mass incarceration and the disconnect between conventional assumptions about what prisons provide versus reality. Noting that the carceral system does a poor job of rehabilitation - while eating up budgets across the country and exacting significant societal costs - Damon and Crystal talk about how to design and evaluate programs that do work to deliver greater public safety for everyone.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and reach Damon for more information about his research at dpetrich@luc.edu
Resources
“Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review” by Damon M. Petrich, Travis C. Pratt, Cheryl Lero Jonson, and Francis T. Cullen for Crime and Justice
Scott Hechinger Twitter thread
“Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022” by Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner from the Prison Policy Initiative
“Risk-need-responsivity model for offender assessment and rehabilitation” by James Bonta and D. A. Andrews for Public Safety Canada
“Let’s Take a Hard Look at Who Is in Jail and Why We Put Them There” by Alea Carr for the ACLU-WA blog
Book - “Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect” by Robert J. Sampson
Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation Program - “Police Legitimacy and Legal Cynicism: Why They Matter and How to Measure in Your Community”
“Polls Show People Favor Rehabilitation over Incarceration” by Matt Clarke for Prison Legal News
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, I am excited to welcome Damon Petrich, who's a doctoral associate in the School of Criminal Justice at University of Cincinnati and incoming assistant professor at Loyola University Chicago. He was the lead author of a recent article, "Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review," along with Travis Pratt, Cheryl Lero Johnson, Francis T. Cullen. Damon's research focuses on the effectiveness of corrections and rehabilitation programs, desistance from crime, and the impact of community violence on youth development. Thank you so much for joining us, Damon.
[00:01:13] Damon Petrich: Thank you very much for having me on, Crystal. I'm excited to talk a little bit about my work and the implications of that and all that, so thanks again.
[00:01:20] Crystal Fincher: I'm very excited to talk about this and it's extremely timely - has been for a while. We have conversations almost every day in the public sphere having to do with public safety - this is such a major component of it. And so I'm hoping as we have this conversation, it'll help us to better assess what the costs and benefits are of custodial sanctions and incarceration, and alternatives to that - to have a conversation that kind of orients us more towards public safety. Sometimes we're so concerned with metrics around police and how many they are, and what the length of a sentence should be. And sometimes we focus on things that take us off of the overall goal of keeping us all safer and reducing the likelihood that each of us are victimized and to hopefully prevent people from becoming victims of crime. And just to have accurate conversations about how we invest our public resources - what we're actually getting from them, and then how to evaluate as we go along - what we should be tracking and measuring and incentivizing. As so many people talk about taking data-driven approaches and create all these dashboards - that we're really doing it from an informed perspective. So just to start out - what actually were you studying and what were you seeking to find out?
[00:02:47] Damon Petrich: Yeah, so the main purpose of our meta-analysis, which I can explain exactly what that is later on if you have questions, but the main purpose was to understand what happens when you take one group of offenders and you sentence them to something custodial like prison or jail, and then you sentence another group of similar offenders to something non-custodial like probation. How do those two groups differ in terms of whether they reoffend? So does prison actually deter recidivism, or does it make people more likely to commit crime afterwards? So that's sort of what we were looking at and so we considered all of the available research on that, in this review.
[00:03:29] Crystal Fincher: Got it. So right now we have gone down the path of mass incarceration - that is the default punishment that we, as society, have looked to for crime. Hey - sentence them and many times it's, Hey, they're going to jail. Sometimes they get out of jail and they have supervision that continues, but jail is really focused, where we focus a lot of our effort and where we put people and hope that that'll straighten them out and they come out and everything is fine. How did we get here and where are we in terms of how we're approaching incarceration in our society, in our country?
[00:04:11] Damon Petrich: Yeah, so there is a lot of public uproar around a lot of issues, like race issues, and there was crime spikes and concerns over social welfare - and there's all this confluence of issues in the '60s and early '70s. And we decided to - as a country, not everyone, but politicians decided that we should tackle the crime problem by A) incarcerating more people, and then B) once they get there, keep them there for longer. So we enacted things like mandatory minimum sentences, where the judge really has no discretion over what happens - the person gets automatically a sentence of incarceration if they've committed a certain type of crime. You had habitual offender laws where if you're - like California's three strikes policy - where if you have two prior felonies and you get a third, no matter what it is, you're going to jail for life. Michigan had the "650 Lifer Law," where if you get caught with 650 grams of heroin or cocaine, you're automatically going to prison for life. And then we got rid of parole and stuff like that in a lot of states.
So all these things lead to more people going to jail and then for longer, and those laws came to be in the '70s and '80s. And over that time, our incarceration rate ballooned up by about 700%, so by the early 2000s, we were at over 2 million people incarcerated and another 7-8 million people on probation or parole. So it's a pretty big expansion - the United States has 5% of the world's population and a quarter, or 25%, of the prisoners, so it's a little ridiculous. The crime rate here isn't nearly as high, or nearly high enough to justify that huge disparity. So yeah, it's a whole confluence of factors led us to be the world leader in incarceration.
[00:06:14] Crystal Fincher: And what attitudes or what justifications are the people who have the power to enact these policies and continue these policies - how are they justifying them?
[00:06:25] Damon Petrich: So there's a few reasons why you might want to incarcerate somebody. One is just because you want to punish them or get revenge on them, so that's more of a moral reason. But the main focus of politicians were twofold - one was incapacitation, so that one means that because you're keeping somebody locked up in a cage, obviously they can't be out in the community committing crimes. So the thought is that you're going to reduce crime that way. The research on that is a little squishy even now, and I can talk a little bit more about that later if you want. But the other reason, and the one that we focused on in our review, was that prison deters people from going back to crime after they get out. So the idea there is that prison sucks - you go in there, you're cut off from your job, from your family, from your friends, or from just having hobbies or things to do. And you're not going to want to go back, so when you get out of prison - you think real hard, and you think how much prison sucks, and you decide not to go back to crime. That's the thinking behind that deterrence hypothesis anyway.
So those two - incapacitation and deterrence - were the main drivers of those increase in laws and stuff during the '70s, '80s, and '90s, but there really wasn't any evidence for either of them - in the '70s and '80s in particular. So most of the research evaluating whether prison actually does deter recidivism has popped up over the last 25 years or so.
[00:08:05] Crystal Fincher: And as you took a look at it - all of the studies that have popped up over the past 25 years had varying degrees of rigor and scientific validity. But as that body of research grew, people began to get a better idea of whether incarceration actually does reduce someone's likelihood of reoffending. How big was that body of work, in terms of studies, and what were you able to look at?
[00:08:40] Damon Petrich: So in our particular review, we looked at 116 studies, which is a pretty sizable number. Most people - when you read through an article and a literature review might have 10 studies or something that they just narratively go through, but we looked at 116. And then within those 116 studies, there were 981 statistical models. So 901 different comparisons - or 981 different comparisons - of what happens to custodial versus non-custodial groups. So we looked at a pretty big chunk of literature.
[00:09:20] Crystal Fincher: And in that, in the reliance of - that's a really big number - and I think, people now are maybe more familiar, just from a layperson's perspective, of just how big that number is. As we've seen throughout this pandemic that we're in the middle of, studies come out - people are looking at one study, and wow - study number two comes out and we're feeling really good about it. And man, we get to five studies and people are like, okay, we know what's going on. To get beyond a hundred is just a real comprehensive body of study and analysis. What were you able to determine from that?
[00:10:05] Damon Petrich: So I should probably explain upfront what a meta-analysis is and why it's useful. So like you were just saying - like in the COVID pandemic, for example - one study will come out and it'll say, oh, Ivermectin reduces symptomatic COVID cases by X percent. And then the next study will come out and say, Ivermectin makes people way worse. So any individual study can be kind of misleading.
A good analogy for what a meta-analysis does would be to look at baseball, for example. So let's say you're interested in some rookie player that's just come out, he's just joined Major League Baseball and you go to his - you want to know how good this player actually is? You've never seen him play, you've only heard rumors. So you go out to his first game, he gets up to bat four times and he gets no hits. So you walk away from that game thinking, wow, this player is terrible, the team wasted all their money recruiting and paying this guy's salary. But that could have just been an off game for many reasons - it's his debut game so maybe there's just first-game nerves, maybe the weather was bad, maybe he was having personal problems in his life, or he had a little bit of an injury. So there's a number of reasons why looking at his performance from that one game is not going to be representative of who he is as a player. Ideally, you'd want to look at all the games over a season where he might go up to bat 250 times. And over those 250 times, he gets 80 hits, which is a pretty good batting average - it's over .300. So with that amount of data, you could come to a more solid conclusion of whether he's actually a good player or not.
And with that amount of data, you could also look at what we call moderating characteristics. So you could look at, for example, whether he plays better when it's an away game or in a home game, whether it's early or late season - you could look at all these sorts of things. So this is essentially what we're doing with research as well, in a meta-analysis.
So if you look at studies on incarceration - one might show increases in recidivism after people go to prison, the next might show decreases, and the next might show that probationers and prisoners reoffend at about the same rates. So just like in the baseball analogy, in a meta-analysis, we're looking at all of the available research. We're combining it together and determining A) what the sort of overall or average effect of incarceration is, and then B) whether these moderating characteristics actually matter. So in other words, is the effect of incarceration pretty much the same for males as it is for females, or for juveniles as adults, or when the research design is really good versus when it's not so great. So that's basically what we did in this meta-analysis is again - looked at 116 studies and from those 981 statistical estimates.
[00:13:13] Crystal Fincher: Very helpful. Totally makes sense with the baseball analogy, and I especially appreciate breaking down with all the statistical models and not just kind of thumbs up, thumbs down - the binary - it either increases or reduces the likelihood of recidivism. But under what conditions are - might it be more likely, less likely that someone does? What are some of those influencing effects on what happens? And so you were just talking about the justification that people used going into this, and now that we have data coming out - does it turn out that people go into prison or are incarcerated in jail, they think - wow, this is horrible. Some in society are like the more uncomfortable we make it in jail, the better we want to make sure it's a place that they never would want to come back to - that it's so scary and such a bad experience that they are just scared straight for the rest of their lives. Does it actually turn out to be that way? Do they take a rational look at - this was my experience, I don't want to go back again, therefore I will not do any of the things that I did going in.
[00:14:28] Damon Petrich: I would not say that's the conclusion - no. So again, based on the 116 studies that we looked at, which is again a lot, people who are sentenced to incarceration - so jail, prison - they commit crime, they reoffend at about the same rates as if you'd sentence those same people to probation. So in other words, they're not being deterred by being sent to prison. These effects are the same for both males and females. So in other words, prison doesn't reduce reoffending for one group versus the other. It's the same whether we look at adults versus juveniles, it's the same regardless of what type of recidivism we're interested in - rearrests or convictions. It's pretty much the same across the board. There's some slight variations in research designs, but even within those, prison either has no effect or it slightly increases recidivism. We don't find any conditions under which prison is reducing reoffending or deterring these people from going back to those lives.
[00:15:35] Crystal Fincher: So from a societal perspective, a lot of people kind of make the assumption that, Hey, we arrest and we incarcerate someone - whew, our streets are safer. They get out, and now they can choose to reintegrate themselves into society hopefully - they do and we're all safer because of it. But it looks like impressions that some people may have that, Hey, we're letting someone off easy. And suggestions - there's so much media coverage around this - and suggestions that because we're letting people off easy, that we're making it easier for them to reoffend, or they don't feel sufficiently punished enough and so that becomes an incentive to reoffend. Does that seem like it tracks with what the studies have shown?
[00:16:33] Damon Petrich: Not really - so there's some studies that actually ask prisoners and offenders whether they'd prefer going to prison or probation. And a lot of them will say, oh, I'd rather do a year in prison than spend two or three years on probation. So it's not like they view probation as just being super easy. And they're not saying this because they received time off their sentence for being in the study or anything like that. Probation's not easy either - and you have to also think that while these people are on probation, they're able to stay in close touch with their family, they're able to maintain connections with work or find work, they're able to participate in the community, they can pay taxes - that I know a lot of people who are pro-prison love.
So there's all sorts of reasons why - beyond just them reoffending at the same rates as if they'd gone to prison - there's a lot of reasons why we might want to keep these people in the community. And it's not like we're saying, let everybody out of prison - so the nature of this research - you want to compare apples to apples. So in this research, comparing prisoners to probationers - these have to be people who are getting - they could either legitimately get a sentence of jail or probation, or prison or probation. So these are going to be first-time offenders, people who are relatively low-level - they've committed low-level crimes and all that. So we're not saying - there's not going to be a situation where a murderer just gets probation - that sort of thing. So I know that might be a concern of some people - they think that's a natural argument of this analysis, but it's really not.
[00:18:24] Crystal Fincher: Well, and to your point, we're really talking - if we're looking at all of the crime that gets people sentenced to prison time, a very small percentage of that is murder. A very small percentage of it is on that kind of scale - you can wind up in jail or prison for a wide variety of offenses - many of them, people perceive as relatively minor or that people might be surprised can land you in prison. Or if someone has committed a number of minor offenses, that can stack up - to your point in other situations - and increase the length of detention or the severity of the consequences. As we're looking through this and the conversation of, okay, so, we sentence them, we let them out - it's not looking like there's a difference between jail or community supervisions, things like probation - what is it about jail that is harmful or that is not helpful? What is it about the structure of our current system that doesn't improve recidivism outcomes for people?
[00:19:42] Damon Petrich: Probably the main one is the rehabilitation is not the greatest. So just as an example, substance abuse is a very strong predictor whether people are going to reoffend, unsurprisingly. About 50% of prisoners at the state and federal level in The States meet the DSM [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders] criteria for having a substance use abuse disorder - so they meet the clinical criteria for substance abuse disorder. So half of them, and then more than that just use substances, but they don't meet the criteria for a disorder. But of that 50% who has a substance abuse disorder, only about 20% of those actually receives treatment for it while they're incarcerated. So, you're not dealing with a root cause of reoffending while they're in prison - so you're not deterring them, but you're also not rehabilitating them - so you're really not doing anything.
And then in the rare cases where these people are provided with rehabilitation or reentry programming, it's often not based on any sort of evidence-based model of how you actually change people. So there's a lot of psychological and criminology theory and research on how you actually elicit behavioral change, and these programs really aren't in line with any of that. And I could give examples if you wanted, but -
[00:21:17] Crystal Fincher: Sure. I think that's helpful, 'cause I think a lot of people do assume, and sometimes it's been controversial - wow, look at how much they're coddling these prisoners - they have these educational programs, and they get all this drug treatment for free, and if they don't come out fixed then it's their own fault because they have access to all of these treatment resources in prison. Is that the case?
[00:21:43] Damon Petrich: No, I wouldn't say so - first of all, they don't have access, a lot of them, to any programs. And then, like I said, the programs that they do get really aren't that effective. So the big one that everybody loves to argue for is providing former inmates with jobs. If you look at any federal funding for program development, like the Second Chance Act or the First Step Act - I think that was one under Trump - and then under Bush, there was a Serious [and] Violent Offenders Reentry Initiative - pretty much all of these federal bills will be heavily focused on just providing offenders with jobs. And almost all of the evaluations of these programs show that they don't reduce reoffending.
And it's not really that hard - again, if you go back to the literature on behavioral change and, criminology literature - it's not really that hard to understand why just providing a job isn't going to reduce or lead somebody away from a life of crime. A lot of these people have spotty work histories where they've never had a job at all, they believe and know that it's easier to gain money by doing illicit work than it is legal work, they have things like low self-control so they're very impulsive, they don't know how to take criticism or being told what to do by a boss. They live in neighborhoods with very poor opportunities for good jobs and education, and maybe there's a mindset around there that illegal work or whatever is just a better way to go - that's sort of ingrained. So there's a lot of different reasons why just handing somebody a job isn't going to lead them away from crime, 'cause they have all these other things that need to be dealt with first.
So ideally, a rehabilitation program that's comprehensive would deal with all of those other background factors and then provide them with a job. Because if you make them less impulsive, better able to resist the influence of their antisocial friends, and get this thought out of their head that other people are being hostile towards them when they're really not - all these sorts of cognitive and behavioral biases that they have - if you deal with all of those things and then you give them a job, they're more likely to actually latch onto that job as something worthwhile doing. And then they're going to go on to get out of a life of crime. But if you just give them a job and you haven't dealt with any of those issues, you can't really expect that to work. And that is the model that we currently do - is something that we don't really expect to work that well.
[00:24:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that's - it's really interesting and I don't know that a lot of people actually know that, Hey, giving someone a job isn't sufficient - which is why I think it's so important to talk about studies like this, because some of what has become conventional wisdom, really is not accurate or reflects what has been studied and discovered. And I guess in that vein, what are the factors - you just talked about a few - but what does increase someone's likelihood of reoffending or recidivism, and what reduces it?
[00:25:08] Damon Petrich: So those are probably two ends of the same, or two sides of the same coin, but this is pretty well known in criminology - a model called the risk-need-responsivity [RNR] model was developed by a couple of fellow Canadians, named James Bonta and Don Andrews, along with some of their colleagues in the '80s and '90s. And they, through again, other meta-analyses just like we did, found certain categories of characteristics of people who are more likely to reoffend. So you have things like having antisocial peers - so that one's pretty obvious - if you have a bunch of friends that are involved in crime, it's going to be pretty hard for you to get out of that life because you're surrounded by those people. Same with family members. If you have what are called criminal thinking patterns - so again, you might have what's called a hostile attribution bias, things like that, where somebody says something a little bit negative to you and you take that as a huge insult and you retaliate with anger and aggression - things like that. Or being impulsive - so you're again quick to anger, you're swayed by small little enticements in the environment and that sort of thing - so you're easily swayed one way or the other. Things like that are strong predictors of reoffending. Substance abuse - it's what I mentioned earlier. If you don't really have any sort of proactive leisure activities, like hobbies and stuff like that. So there's a bunch of well-known things that we know are strongly associated with recidivism, and a rehabilitation program should ideally deal with them.
Now this model that Andrews and Bonta and all these other people came up with - this RNR risk-need-responsivity model - the risk part says that we should give people a risk assessment when they're entering prison or leaving prison and determine what level of risk are they from reoffending. And we assess these different criteria, like criminal thinking patterns and antisocial friends and substance abuse. So we determine what those factors are and then we design them a treatment program that actually deals with those factors at the individual level. So we're not just giving a blanket rehabilitation program to everybody, and you're providing the most amount of care to the people who most need it or who are the most likely to re-offend.
And then once we've done all that, we need to make sure that we're addressing these problems in some sort of a format that we know actually works. The most well-known one, but not as often used, the most well-known within the sort of psychologist and criminological literature is cognitive behavioral therapy [CBT]. So this is pretty popular for dealing with depression and all sorts of eating disorders and substance abuse problems in non-offender populations. Well, those programs also work in offender populations and they work pretty well. So the research shows - again meta-analyses - that when you deal with all these three factors - risk, need, and responsivity - you can reduce reoffending rates by about 26%. So it's a pretty sizeable amount - it's much greater than you're getting by just sentencing people to prison without doing anything.
[00:28:42] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and I think you cover in your paper - those things are absolutely true. And you just talked about several administrations' attempts to implement programming and resources to try and help people get jobs, potentially - hey, there's even a CBT treatment, but if that treatment has twice as many people as are recommended being in a session and occurs over half the time that it's supposed to, you really are sabotaging the entire process or really setting it up for failure. And it just seems to be an expensive exercise that we aren't really getting anything out of. Does that seem to be consistent with how you've seen the attempts at introducing this programming within prisons and jails?
[00:29:40] Damon Petrich: Yeah, for sure - this is a pretty common finding too - so it's not just about preaching that you're going to do these things. You actually have to implement them well. So just like you said, there's a number of studies that show this - so you've designed some really great program that deals with all of these risk factors that lead people back into reoffending, you give it to them in a cognitive behavioral setting. So all seems good on paper, but in practice, like you said - one of the famous studies there - can't remember the names of the authors offhand right now - but one of the famous studies there showed that they're providing it to people in groups of 30, as opposed to 15, and they're delivering it in a really short amount of time. And they're not maybe giving it to the highest-risk people - so they're just mixing random people in there at varying levels of risk. So when you do all these sorts of things - you implement the program poorly - you can't really expect it to work.
And this is often the case - is the government pays people to come up with these great programs, and then not enough funding is provided to actually make sure that they're implemented and evaluated well. So the amount of funding that actually goes into that - developing the programs to begin with - is small, but when you do do that, you're not making sure that you're actually implementing things well. So it's just sort of shooting yourself in the foot, and probably making people come to the conclusion that these things don't work - when they do work, if you just implement them well.
[00:31:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and there's also a lot of rhetoric - and you discuss this - there's a lot of rhetoric coming from the government, even coming from leadership within the Bureau of Prisons or leadership in our carceral system, saying we do want to rehabilitate people. We are trying to implement programming that does this. You see - we have these educational opportunities and we are doing evaluations of people. And it may be happening while they're understaffed or other challenges, but one of the biggest, I guess, red flags is that none of the evaluation of their programs and none of the incentives that arise are in any way tied to what is the actual result of what happens. Are you actually succeeding on reducing someone's likelihood for reoffense? It does not seem like any compensation is tied to that, any kind of evaluation of positions or regular reporting - to say, is this program having its intended effect? And if not, what do we need to do to correct for that? Is that what you found?
[00:32:33] Damon Petrich: I would say that's probably a pretty fair assessment. A lot of the programs that are implemented are never evaluated at all. And then the ones that are - it's usually once - there's one evaluation of those programs. And then, like you said, there doesn't really seem to be a lot of self-reflection - I don't know what other word you would use - but these programs don't really change on the basis of these evaluations. So, it's kind of disheartening to hear about, I guess.
[00:33:14] Crystal Fincher: It feels very disheartening to live in the middle of - and one of the big things about this is that this - we have these conversations and we talk about these studies and we're saying, yeah, it actually - we're not doing anyone any favors right now when it comes to reducing recidivism. And having these conversations oftentimes detached from the cost associated with what we're paying for these. And my goodness are we paying to incarcerate people? It's not just, well, we do lock them up and we keep them away. Or we do a good job of keeping them in - they reoffend, they go back to jail. And lots of people are like, we did our job, they went back to jail - boom, everything is fine.
But we are paying through the nose and out the ear for this - just here, we're in the state of Washington, and right now the state spends about $112 per day, or over $40,000 annually, to incarcerate one individual - that's the cost per inmate. In King County - the county that we're in - they spend $192 a day, or $70,000 annually, to incarcerate an individual. That is a huge amount of the tax dollars that we spend - these come out of our general fund, meaning that these are dollars that every service, everything that is not a dedicated source of revenue, is competing for. So when we talk about things and have conversations like, well, we don't have the budget for that and we don't have the money - that is related to how much of that money we're spending on other things. And my goodness, I would think that we want to get our money's worth for that level of expenditure. And it really appears that if we're saying the goal of jail is to get people on the straight and narrow path and becoming contributing members of society and all of the implications of that, it doesn't seem like we're getting our money's worth. And so, if those aren't the goals and if we just want to punish people, it's not like we're punishing people for free. We're punishing people at the cost of $70,000 per day [year], and at the cost of all the other services and infrastructure needs that we have.
So it really seems like we're punishing ourselves as much, or more, as others - particularly if we're bringing people back into society that are likely to reoffend in one way or another. And so if our goal is to keep our community safe and that is the North Star, it looks like we need to realign our processes and our expenditure of resources. I guess my question to you, after all that, is - how should we be moving forward? What should we be looking to do? What is shown to work?
[00:36:24] Damon Petrich: Well, I would say - yeah, $70,000 a year as just a revenge cost per person seems like a lot. $80 billion in the country as a whole, for a revenge cost, seems like a pretty high price to pay, given we're not reducing reoffending. You could make the argument that these people aren't offending while they're in prison, but that's - there's other reasons why that might not be completely accurate, which I could talk about too, but -
[00:36:59] Crystal Fincher: Well, I'm interested in that. Why might that not be accurate?
[00:37:03] Damon Petrich: So, obviously the person - if you incarcerate a particular individual, obviously they can't be out in the community committing crimes. So that's obvious, but there's a number of reasons why that might not, en masse, actually reduce crime a whole lot. The research on it - this is a little bit squishy - in terms of whether incarcerating more people leads to lower crime rates, because one influences the other. But for example, if you look at illegal drug markets - a lot of the homicides in the United States and other violent crime that people are really concerned about, and it's plastered all over the media is - homicides, gang-related stuff. So if you take key gang members out and you put them in prison, what ends up happening is that there's competition in that market to take over that person's place, either within the gang or other gangs coming in. So what ends up happening oftentimes is a spike in violence. So that's one reason why just incapacitating, particularly high-crime individuals, might not actually lead to lower crime rates overall. Again, you're lowering crime for that one person, but you might be increasing crime on a more systemic level.
Beyond that, these things have broader societal and community level impacts - incarcerating a lot of people. Again, research shows that when you're incarcerating a lot of people in a particular community - so there's a bunch of really good work by Robert Sampson - he has a book that came out a few years ago called Great American City. And he looked at these individual neighborhoods in Chicago over time, and what he finds is that in communities where there's a higher number of people incarcerated in a particular community, this ends up increasing what's called "legal cynicism." And this is done in some other work as well with David Kirk and Andrew Papachristos - but they show that this increases legal cynicism, which means people are skeptical of police helping them out, the police doing a good job. And what ends up happening after that - when people are more cynical of the legal system, they're less likely to report crimes to the police, they're less likely to cooperate with the police. So what ends up happening? You incarcerate more people and people in that community end up being less willing to cooperate with law enforcement. And this leads to sort of an endless cycle where things sort of get out of hand. So there's all these unintended and nonfinancial consequences of incarcerating a lot of people that could potentially end up leading to more crime.
[00:40:03] Crystal Fincher: Well, and - speaking as a Black woman - obviously, looking at the impacts of mass incarceration in the Black community and in neighborhoods around the country - where it is almost like the community is responding to the actual outcome and that, Hey, this actually isn't making my community any better. I'm experiencing traumatic impacts from this - whether it's my relative went to prison or a sole breadwinner in the family and now we're thrown into poverty, or I'm in a situation where I don't have a parent who used to be there - who now is no longer there. Or causing instability and impacting the education that people get and the kind of job opportunity, watching someone who's come out have to struggle and be ostracized. And it looks like, Hey, this is just the first step on a long cycle of traumatic and undesirable events - and I don't want to participate in a system that is doing that.
With that, as we look forward, and I think this is also related to conversations about just fundamental trust in our criminal legal system and relations with police and throughout the system. It's - if we think about how to turn that around - to me, seems related to thinking about the question of how do we get better outcomes for everyone? 'Cause it seems like right now where we're investing a lot in poor outcomes for people who were already, usually, in pretty poor spots leading to themselves being incarcerated, coming out and not necessarily improving, definitely not improving. And if anything, a chance that it gets a little bit worse. How do we change that entire outcome? And I know you're looking specifically in the incarceration space, but what should be, what could be done differently? Or do we just need a fundamental restructuring of the way we do this?
[00:42:17] Damon Petrich: I don't know about a fundamental restructuring - I don't, I'm not great at that high-level thinking stuff, but what I do know is that - we're probably going to continue to incarcerate people. That's something that's done in every country and people seem to love here. So if we actually want to use prison for public safety - because 95% of inmates eventually get out - if we actually want to use it for public safety, then let's actually try wholeheartedly to rehabilitate them while they're in there. And again, there's a lot of theory and evidence-based principles on how we can do this, like the risk-need-responsivity model that I talked about earlier, cognitive behavioral therapy more broadly. If you use these types of things and continue to work on them and develop them over time, then yeah - prison might actually be helpful if people are going there and getting the help that they need. But that's not what's happening currently. So that's one level in incarceration terms - that's the area that I know best.
So that's one way you could potentially alleviate some of this stuff is - if people are actually getting resources and stuff when they're in prison, and then when once they're reintegrating, they're not only going to reoffend less, but maybe they're going to contribute to their community more. They're going to be better able to connect with their family and stuff like that. So rather than being a hindrance, it could potentially be a help. Obviously, again, it's not ideal to remove people from their communities and their family and friends. And like I said earlier, if you have the option to sentence them to something community-based instead, I think that's the better route to go. But if you are going to send people to prison, which I think we're going to continue to do a lot of the time, then let's rehabilitate them while they're in there is the main point. And do so based on what actually works to do that.
[00:44:23] Crystal Fincher: It's really the investment in the people who are there, and we're - I think up against a lot of societal attitudes and resistance where it just feels wrong to a number of people to be providing services and shifting that investment to things that are seemingly helpful for the inmate, because everything about how we've been conditioned to understand our prison system has been - the punishment is kind of the key, and they'll make rational decisions afterwards to avoid prison based on how bad the punishment is. When it comes to community supervision, things like probation, what are the differences there? If there are better outcomes from that, what accounts for the better outcomes when it comes to probation versus incarceration?
[00:45:23] Damon Petrich: I wouldn't say the outcomes are better - they're just pretty much the same as they would be if they're sentenced to prison. So, probation costs less and then it also enables the people to be out in the community doing community things, like being with their friends and families and all that. I mean, you can't quantify, based on a recidivism percentage, what their family members and friends and employers are getting out of it. So that's something we can't really look at - or I guess you could, but something we don't often do - but so there's intangible things that you would get by keeping people in the community. Plus it doesn't lead to all that other stuff I talked about where people become cynical of the legal system and it leads to this cycle of whatever.
[00:46:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and so if we're were doing this programming in prison and helping people, I think your research shows it's extremely important to do both the structural, Hey, you need a place to live, you need to be able to pay your rent and your bills - so having a job, having housing, having healthcare, getting those very basic needs met is critical. But also addressing a number of the mental or behavioral health issues that are common among the incarcerated population - and dealing with that is as important. And basically those two things both need to happen hand-in-hand. How do we do a better job of that in our current system?
[00:46:57] Damon Petrich: Well, first of all, I'd like to say that you're right there - I think maybe when I was talking earlier about employment, it might sound like giving people jobs is just a waste of time, but that's not the case. It needs - the two things need to be paired - you need to deal with the cognitive and behavioral problems in addition to giving them jobs and housing support and all that. In terms of how you actually go about doing that, there are examples in the literature of programs that do this, so there's examples out there.
I think if you're a state or local or even federal correctional department and you're interested in doing this - implementing something that's evidence-based - or if you're just a concerned citizen that wants to rally your local officials to do that - go and talk to researchers like me, or people at universities that have criminology departments or criminal justice departments, because this knowledge is out there. It's widely available. You just have to go and seek it out. So at my university, for example, we have the University of Cincinnati Corrections Institute and under the guidance of Ed Latessa, he was - now passed - but he was, over the last 30 years, responsible for disseminating a lot of this evidence-based practices to some of the state and local criminal justice agencies. And they helped with implementation and evaluation in a lot of these places, so the help is out there. You just have to look for it a little bit.
[00:48:38] Crystal Fincher: And another question I had - your analysis seemed to suggest that when we're talking about low-risk, medium, and high-risk offenders - or people who have done relatively minor crimes versus those who have done more serious crimes - that these interventions are particularly effective the more serious the offense or crime has been. And that perhaps even sometimes treating someone who is a really low-risk as if they're a high-risk, can worsen the outcomes for that person. Is that the case?
[00:49:21] Damon Petrich: Yeah, that tends to be a finding in research - we're not exactly sure why, but providing a lot of really intensive services to people deemed to be low-risk can actually be harmful rather than helpful. We don't know based on research why, but there's a lot of pretty good hypotheses about why. So a low-risk offender is going to be somebody who's a first-timer who's committed some not-that-serious crime. So they probably have a job, they probably have pretty strong connections with their family and all that. So if you're taking them and you're putting them in a program where you have to be there 40 hours a week, they're probably going to get fired from their job, it's going to be harder to stay in contact with friends and families that are sort of tying you into a non-criminal life. And then you're probably going to be associating with all kinds of people who are high-risk, and maybe they're going to draw you towards, oh yeah, I could earn four grand going out tonight and stealing some laptops. There's a lot of reasons why just taking low-risk people and putting them in these programs is going to be harmful rather than helpful.
[00:50:31] Crystal Fincher: And so with that in mind, and you talk about, Hey, if we're trying to influence local electeds - one of the interesting things about having a podcast and radio show that caters to extremely politically and civically inclined people is that we actually do have a number of policymakers and politicians who listen, and people who are enacting and in control of this policy. If you were to talk to them and give them advice about how to move forward, especially in the current environment that we find ourselves in, where over the past few years has been increasing awareness of some of the defecits of our system and pushes to change those. And also, as we have seen more recently, a real strong pushback from a lot of people who are invested in our current system saying, Hey, let's not change things too much. Maybe we need to jail more and for longer. And maybe we're just not doing enough incarceration, and that's the answer. In that kind of political environment, what would you tell people who are in charge of this policy, who may be facing pressure to keep going forward with the status quo, about how they should evaluate how they should move forward and the kinds of things that they should do?
[00:52:07] Damon Petrich: I know a lot of these politicians get lobbied by correctional officer groups or whatever, and that's whatever, but ultimately you get voted in by voters. So, I'm not an expert on public opinion - I have other friends who are more into that kind of stuff, but I do know from talking with them and from reading that literature, that the public actually does support rehabilitation. So they have for a long time and it's shifted more towards being in support of rehabilitation over time. So right now, most Americans support providing rehabilitation programs to prisoners and offenders. So this is something that's going to please your constituency, people want this kind of thing. And it's not like you're going to be losing all kinds of jobs by getting rid of prison - there's going to be a need for skilled people who can provide these programs and probation officers and all these sorts of things. So it's not a net loss when you're getting rid of prisons. There's a lot of reasons to sentence people to community supervision and things like that - provide rehabilitation. There's public support for it, there's jobs involved, there's cost savings - big time, obviously - it's way cheaper to keep somebody out of prison than it is to keep them in prison. So there's a lot of different reasons why you would want to do that as a politician.
[00:53:43] Crystal Fincher: I think that makes sense. Certainly it's a lot cheaper to keep someone out of prison versus in prison. I mean, we talked about the annual costs - in the state of Washington over $40,000, King County over $70,000 - comparing that to how much we invest in a student of $11,500 a year. If we focus more on investing in people, both inside and outside the system, it seems like we set ourselves up for a safer community, fewer people being victimized, and more people leading thriving, productive, tax-paying lives. And we're all happier than we are right now, I would think, I would hope - it seems like the research points in that direction. So I certainly appreciate you taking the time to speak with us about this. Is there anything else that you want to leave with us, in thinking about this study and your research?
[00:54:55] Damon Petrich: I think we covered it pretty well. Just to circle back to something you just said - I know this might put me out of a job since I focus on what happens when people's lives go awry, but you really are better off to invest in early prevention programs and giving people a good start on life than trying to correct the program or the problem afterwards. So yeah - politicians spend some money on prevention programs. I know the good effects of that are a long way out, but they're actually good on a societal level. So I guess I would add that, even though it's not good for criminologists, maybe, to put themselves out of a job like that.
[00:55:40] Crystal Fincher: Well, much appreciated, and thank you so much for having this conversation with us today.
[00:55:45] Damon Petrich: Yeah, thank you very much for having me on. I'm glad that there are people out there interested in this stuff, so thanks again.
[00:55:51] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, political consultant and host Crystal Fincher is joined by Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola, co-host of the Seattle Nice podcast and author of Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery, Erica Barnett! They catch up with all of the news out of the legislature this week, as well as Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant not seeking re-election, a dodgy push-poll, South King County pedestrian fatalities on the rise, and lawsuits against the Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI).
Breaking down the flurry of news out of the legislature this week, Crystal and Erica discuss proposed legislation for a wealth tax, middle housing, lowering the blood alcohol limit for driving, limiting rent increases, reducing the disparity between products advertised towards women versus men, alternatives to jail for behavioral health crises, and a potential expansion of law enforcement's ability to conduct vehicle pursuits.
The trend of current Seattle City Councilmembers announcing they won’t seek re-election continued this week when councilmember Kshama Sawant revealed she won’t again this year. With four of the seven open seats on the council this year without incumbents, this years’ election is guaranteed to bring a large change to the city’s leadership.
A seemingly non-scientific push-poll designed to show support for a potential ballot measure to fund more police hires and spending was sent to a number of Seattle residents. They use it as a jumping-off to discuss manipulative polling and how it’s used to justify unpopular policy.
Crystal and Erica also discuss the alarming increase in pedestrian fatalities in the region, especially in south King County. The data supports the need to make wide-spread improvements to our pedestrian infrastructure to truly make our cities safe for people who walk and bike.
Crystal and Erica end this week’s show looking at two lawsuits against the Low Income Housing Institute. A former resident has sued the organization, claiming that LIHI illegally evicted them by not giving proper notice. The case hinges on whether LIHI’s housing is emergency shelter or transitional housing, the latter requiring stronger resident protections. LIHI is also facing accusations that the conditions of their tiny house villages are not adequate to support their residents.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host Erica Barnett at @ericacbarnett.
Resources
“Tackling Poverty with Misha Werschkul of the Washington State Budget & Policy Center” - Hacks & Wonks
“WA lawmakers trying again to tax wealth, as part of nationwide effort” by Claire Withycombe from The Seattle Times
“Two State-Level Housing Bills Aim to Stabilize Rent and Protect From Rent Gouging” by Vee Hua from The South Seattle Emerald
Washington Coalition for Police Accountability’s letter on vehicle pursuit bills SB 5352 and HB 1363
“State Proposals Aim to Lower Traffic Deaths by Improving Driver Behavior” by Ryan Packer from Publicola
“Washington lawmakers discuss an alternative to jail for mental health crises” by Doug Nadvornick from KUOW
“Seattle City Council Member Kshama Sawant Will Not Seek Reelection” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
“Why I’m Not Running Again for City Council” by Kshama Sawant from The Stranger
“South King County Sees Alarming Jump in Pedestrian Fatalities” by Andrew Engelson from The Urbanist
“WALeg Wednesday: Saldaña Drops Bill to End Jaywalking” by Ray Dubicki from The Urbanist
“Former Tiny House Village Resident Sues Nonprofit, Alleging Unlawful Eviction” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola
“Homelessness Authority, LIHI Clashed Over Reporting of Two Deaths at Tiny House Village” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I am Crystal Fincher and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast, get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, we are continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola, co-host of the Seattle Nice podcast, and author of Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery, Erica Barnett.
[00:01:08] Erica Barnett: Hello, hello.
[00:01:09] Crystal Fincher: Hello, hello - and welcome back. Always a pleasure to have you and your information and insights. Think today we will start off just talking about the week in the Washington Legislature, now that our legislative session is off and running. What did you see this week?
[00:01:28] Erica Barnett: There's a lot going on as always. This is a long session, so there's a lot more policy legislation coming our way. There's a proposal to revive a wealth tax that has moved forward but then floundered in previous sessions - it would be a 1% tax on intangible assets like stocks and bonds - and so we'll see how that goes this year, maybe third time is the charm. Legislation is moving forward to allow sixplexes around the state in areas that are ordinarily or that are traditionally single-family only - that's Jessica Bateman's bill - and that too has been proposed in the past, but it may have a better chance this session because one of the sort of obstructionist legislators, Gerry Pollett, is no longer in charge of the committee that determines whether that bill goes forward.
There's a bill that would reduce the limitations on police pursuits. Police say that they, that legislation from - I believe it was either last year or 2021 - limiting the instances in which they can go after somebody in their car to violent crimes and sex crimes is inhibiting their ability to chase what they call criminals - people committing property crimes and things like that. So that proposal is up and it has a lot of support from the right-wing pundit class. And I'm missing a lot of other stuff - there's a bill to lower the blood alcohol limit for driving while intoxicated to 0.05 percent like Utah, which has been really effective in that state in reducing drunk driving deaths and a whole lot more.
[00:03:18] Crystal Fincher: I think that's a good start. There's lots of things just getting out of the gate and people trying to figure out what does have the momentum and the support to move forward versus what doesn't. I think another one that I was looking at - in addition to the middle housing bill, which came out with a ton of support in a hearing that it had earlier this week - are also some bills aiming to stabilize rent and to protect people from rent gouging. So looking at capping rent increases between 3 and 7% annually, depending on the rate of inflation. There's lots of conversations about, absolutely, the need to increase housing supply - there's widespread agreement on that, and that certainly is necessary to long-term affordability. In the short-term, things like rent stabilization policies are going to be critical for reducing displacement, evictions, and can make more of a difference in the short-term than increasing the housing supply. So lots of people sometimes have either-or conversations about those. I personally love the opinion that both are necessary and useful. I've talked about before - I've had neighbors with rent increases over 40%, had rent increases personally of over 30%. And that is just completely unaffordable for so many people, and contributing to the amount of unhoused people that we have - so definitely looking at that as another one.
There was another bill that just was a cool thing - with Senator Manka Dhingra, who works with students and youth in the area to introduce legislation. And they suggested legislation, which she has introduced now, which seeks to bring equity between pricing for products marketed towards men versus women, and how frequently the same exact product marketed towards women will cost more for no apparent reason. And so a bill trying to address that - I think that was most of it. There was another interesting one this week about an alternative to jail for people experiencing mental health crises. Instead of going to jail - which really doesn't address the root cause - talking about a kind of a 24-hour cooling off center where instead of being an environment that is not helpful at de-escalating or calming situations, that a place that is not jail that can seek to maybe stabilize or calm down a situation to hopefully get a person in a place where they're either stabilized or in a place where they can seek services. It sounds like that is in the beginning stages of conversation - does not have funding attached to it yet, that would be necessary - but those are the things that have been on my radar.
[00:06:32] Erica Barnett: That last bill that you mentioned, also from Senator Dhingra - it's based on a similar program in Arizona - and I'm getting this from KUOW's coverage. And it's interesting. I really want to read up more about it because it's a 23-hour hold, essentially. And we have various types of involuntary and voluntary mental health facilities. 23 hours - my immediate response is - what happens after that 23 hours? Do we just release people back to the streets with no care plan? I'm assuming that is not the intent, and I'm assuming that 23 hours actually must come from some limitation in the law. But at the same time as this bill is moving forward, there is a proposal that's going to be on the ballot in April in King County to create crisis care centers where people can just walk in and - voluntarily or be brought there by police, I suppose - to receive crisis care. And it's for a longer period than that 23 hours, so it feels like there is an emphasis right now on trying to get an entire continuum of care for people in crisis. And none of this has passed yet. As you said, the bill in the Legislature does not come with funding. But there is more discussion of this than I've ever seen in the state, and that's really encouraging because right now, primarily what we do is put people in jail when they're experiencing a crisis that is causing a threat or perceived threat to public safety - and that really can be extremely destabilizing for people.
[00:08:17] Crystal Fincher: And then you had talked about the vehicle pursuit legislation that is being worked on this week - and really interesting dynamics in between those. There certainly are folks led by a lot of law enforcement organizations who are saying that they're being limited - lots of times we can't chase people, or crime is on the rise because we've been essentially handcuffed from going after "bad guys." Senator Dhingra talked about it - we did an interview with her on Hacks & Wonks and in a Democratic media availability this past week - talked again about there's no data showing a linkage between a rise in crime and the limitations that were placed on police pursuits before. Now they're asking for an expansion of those. It is unclear why that would make a difference according to their logic. One, they actually are still allowed to pursue those most serious cases and have been. We've had several stories over the past few weeks of pursuits that have happened. And this is really a question of is it worth pursuing something, someone - no matter what - if someone stole some Tide detergent, is it worth a high-speed pursuit on residential streets where people are being put at risk and innocent bystanders are frequently harmed and killed in these situations. In fact, in the city of Kent, a police officer was killed during a high-speed chase. These are actually really dangerous events that happen. And there's a real question about - is it worth the loss of life, when frequently if you can identify the person you can find and pick them up - which has happened frequently - after the fact without risking the lives of everybody in the area. So that's going to be an interesting conversation moving forward. Senator Dhingra chairs the Law & Justice Committee and is not eager to bring this up for a hearing, but there are certainly Republican legislators and some Democratic ones who are in favor of expanding the ability to conduct these pursuits. And so that conversation is definitely going to be one that we follow throughout this session.
Looking at events this week in the City of Seattle, one notable announcement came earlier this week about a councilmember who is not going to be running again. What was announced?
[00:11:06] Erica Barnett: Kshama Sawant - I laugh because this was just so widely covered compared to other councilmembers who are not running - part of a trend of councilmembers on the current council saying that they are not going to seek re-election, but Kshama Sawant will not be running in District 3. She's going to be starting some sort of labor-related organization, and I say that vaguely because there wasn't a whole lot of detail in her announcement about what this group will do, but it's called Workers Strike Back. And what it will not do, apparently, is pursue elected office for its members. Sawant's organization, Socialist Alternative, is a small, Trotskyist offshoot of the socialist parties in America, and it's definitely one of the smallest. And they have not had a lot of success at getting people elected around the country. Sawant was really their shining example of a member who actually made it to elective office and was in there for three terms, for 10 years - one of those terms was a two-year term. And so they're going on and they're saying that they're going to start a workers' movement worldwide, so it remains to be seen what will happen with that. But Sawant will no longer be on the council, and a lot of people are already lining up to try to replace her.
[00:12:42] Crystal Fincher: There are. I saw a couple of candidates have declared already, which has also received a lot of coverage. You are right - we got some kind of brief mentions for prior councilmembers, including Lisa Herbold and Alex Pedersen, announcing that they are not running. But there seems to be strong opinions about Councilmember Sawant and therefore strong reactions in both directions - people sad to see someone who has been a fierce and unabashed advocate for issues about workers' rights for a long time. Councilmember - Mayor Harrell also said one thing he never doubted was her fierceness and advocacy. But this is definitely going to be a change on the council, and she has definitely left her mark - coming to office following the $15/hour initiative in the City of SeaTac that was run by a number of unions and advocates and folks. Following that, she ran in the City of Seattle as a dramatic underdog who people didn't really take seriously for almost all of the campaign - running on 15 Now, $15/hour in the City of Seattle - and running successfully, making Seattle one of the first cities - major cities - in the country to pass that minimum wage. And we've seen minimum wages increase across the country since then, with first SeaTac and then Seattle. So really interesting, certainly has been a lightning rod for a lot. So we will see who is going to wind up replacing her and how those campaigns take shape. What do you see as - just how this election season in the City of Seattle, with so many open seats - may unfold?
[00:14:52] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I was just doing the math in my mind - because I have to do it every time - and four of the seven seats that are going to be up are definitely going to be open seats. Open seat elections are always more interesting in my mind because you don't have that built-in power of incumbency that sometimes keeps people away, but often we re-elect incumbents. So we'll see what - Andrew Lewis has already said that he is going to be running for re-election in District 1. I believe Tammy Morales will be running for re-election - I would put money on that at this point - not a lot of money, but a little money. And Councilmember Dan Strauss also seems to be showing signs that he will run for a second term up in District 6. So still, with four open seats, that's going to be - that's a number that could swing the tenor of the council if there's any kind of trend in whether those seats swing left or right.
But importantly, one thing that happens when you have massive council turnover is you both get a sort of breath of fresh air, but you also lose a lot of institutional knowledge. I think, and I said on Seattle Nice, I think Sawant's actual influence on legislation has been somewhat overstated. She didn't achieve $15/hour in Seattle - that was very much a union effort that she got on board with, and it was a process of collaboration and compromise. Her thing was, as you said, it was 15 Now - just do it now and screw anybody that opposes it. But she also has institutional knowledge and institutional memory, as does Lisa Herbold who's been there for - been in the council milieu in some capacity for 25 years. It's going to be a loss of that kind of institutional knowledge, and I think that that is important when you're a city council going up against a mayor who - and I say going up against because they often clash. Historically, the council and the mayor are often on opposite sides of issues. When you don't have that institutional knowledge of how processes work and how legislation gets done and how the budget gets done, the mayor can roll you over. Bruce Harrell has a lot of experience himself being on the council for a long time, so it'll be interesting to see how that affects the power dynamic between the mayor and the council as well.
[00:17:36] Crystal Fincher: It absolutely will be. I'm also interested in something else that we saw this week that flew a little bit under the radar, but definitely was noticed in a number of political circles - which was a public safety online poll that was sent to people via text, several people this week. In fact, so many that it really didn't seem like it was a randomly targeted poll. It looked like someone got a hold of some political lists and sent it out, but what did this poll seek to ask and what was it comprised of?
[00:18:10] Erica Barnett: Yeah. Unfortunately, nobody sent me this poll - which if you're listening to this and you want to send me poll information, please do - but from what I gather, it's a push poll designed to elicit the feeling that Seattle is less safe and needs more police. The goal seems to be gauging support for a potential public safety funding initiative at some point in the future. And again, I don't know anything more about the idea behind this initiative, but it would essentially - or at least according to the poll - get the police department up to 1,450 officers within five years. The premise behind this is pretty flawed, which is that all we need is to pour more money into the police department and they will magically be able to hire 500, 600 new officers - when the police department itself has said that's not the issue. Now, they would define the issue as people don't want to be police officers in Seattle because there's insufficient support for police in institutions like the City Council. I would say police departments across the country have had trouble recruiting in the last three years and this is just a sign of that. But the police department has a lot of money - they fund tons of, hundreds of vacant positions every year - and so I don't think a massive increase in their budget is going to have a whole lot of impact because their budget is not really the problem. However you define the problem, it's not that we aren't funding police sufficiently.
[00:19:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And this was really interesting - and for those who have listened and who know me, thank you for capturing this poll and sending me all of the screenshots. Just FYI - always do that with polls - take screenshots, send them on over if you get called for a poll, note what it is and all of the questions. Really interesting to see what people are asking, how people are asking. And with polls like this, I would not be surprised to see - obviously someone is thinking about this initiative - but looking at something like this, sometimes we see these announcements or stories in the media which cite numbers from vague polls. And this is not a real poll - this is someone sending around some surveys, very non-scientific, and the questions are almost comically skewed and written here. So it'll be interesting to see if someone uses this to try and signal support for the poll. I would also be interested just in seeing the raw numbers because traditionally, folks in the City of Seattle do not react well - even if this was a scientific poll - so this is going to be really curious to follow, but obviously someone is thinking about running a public safety initiative - really a police hiring initiative, which this really is. And it really does seem to be misguided. If there is one thing the City has definitely been trying to do for the past couple years, it's hire more police officers. How many times have they tried to increase hiring bonuses? They're advertising everywhere. This has been a monthly conversation in the City for, I feel like, two solid straight years - and if money could fix the problem, it would have. But we'll see how this continues to unfold.
Another unfortunate bit of news that we have seen reinforced over and over again - but that has been made official - is just the increase in pedestrian fatalities and what kind of impact that is having. Some unfortunate news that we've seen, which has been reinforced repeatedly in news that we've seen, is pedestrian fatalities across the board have been increasing. There's been great coverage in The Urbanist about an alarming jump in pedestrian fatalities in South King County - just, it's really bleak. Really looking at the data put together by the State Department of Transportation - since 2013, the total number of crashes resulting in death or serious injury to pedestrians has climbed from 33 in 2013 to 95 in 2021. And that number continues to increase, and it is really alarming. And looking at the areas that are the most dangerous - Highway 99, also known as International Boulevard or Pacific Highway South, is one of the most dangerous roads for pedestrians in addition to Benson Highway or 104th - these go through several south County cities - but it's basically a high-speed highway in the middle of these cities. I remember they did work related to RapidRide Line A - a revamping of Pacific Highway South and International Boulevard - and unfortunately, one of the features that we saw was that there are long stretches of road with no pedestrian crossings. And mixing that with speeds that are 50 mph in some places is just a recipe for a disaster - when you're forcing people to sometimes take a - choose between walking directly across the street, which would be categorized as jaywalking, or taking a 10 to 15 minute detour to walk down to the nearest light or crossing and then walk all the way back, which is challenging for people with mobility issues - there are a lot of age and the disabled people, there are a number of services and health clinics on these roads. And so predictably, people are going to attempt to cross the road to avoid those really long crossings. To me, this was foreseeable just because of the design in these areas - and just mixing such high speeds in such high traffic pedestrian areas - and so it's unfortunate.
These cities have recognized the problem, but some of the solutions that they've presented for the problem have been challenges. In fact, there was coverage of a meeting by Ryan Packer, actually, at the state where some City of Kent officers, at least who've been involved in traffic enforcement, really seemed to almost victim blame in the situation - talking about they would do emphasis patrols to help stop jaywalking, which is a cause of this. I would say that's more predictable impact of design there and people making a choice because sometimes they can't walk that distance. And also characterizing people who are on foot or even on bike as unhoused people or people in poverty, as opposed to lots of people who are commuting. This is a site where several accidents have - several fatalities and crashes that have injured and killed pedestrians have taken place. It's going to be - a new light rail station is in process of being built there. This is a very high traffic area, lots of commuters, it's near a Park and Ride - and so there's a whole cross-section of people, lots of professionals. I used to be frequently on transit as I was commuting to work via Metro in Seattle daily. It's just disappointing to see a lack of recognition of what some of these challenges are. The Urbanist addressed some of these in that article, but it is really, really challenging, and I wish the conversation in terms of solutions and increasing safety would focus more on things that didn't blame the victim or seek to target them, instead of help keep them safer.
[00:26:51] Erica Barnett: Yeah. The idea that our roadway problems and our pedestrian and cyclist fatalities are because of individual behavior - it goes both ways, right? There's also an emphasis on people driving too fast, and this report does talk about people going - this report in The Urbanist talks about people going 80, 90 mph - and that is a huge problem and people should not be driving that fast. And two, these roads are designed for that. And the only way that you can make it possible for people to cross the road without "jaywalking" and the only way you can get people to stop speeding - and even driving the speed limit is often more than fast enough to cause fatalities - is you've got to put crosswalks in, you've got to slow down traffic. And the way you do that is through road design. And some of these - you can't necessarily go and narrow a highway - you can, but it's expensive and controversial. You can put in stoplights, you can put in bus lanes, you can do things that slow down the flow of cars - and I would say that it's not just that these things cost money, it's that they cost political will, and they're just - in a lot of these cities, and in the state, and including in Seattle - there is not the political will to do something that will slow down motorists. I remember - I don't live on Rainier anymore, but I lived right on Rainier for many years, or just a couple blocks off it - and I would use the 7 to get everywhere and run errands. And I am somebody who is physically capable of running across the street, and let me tell you - I did not go half a mile in one direction, walk across the approved pedestrian infrastructure, and walk half a mile in the other direction, just because that's what the road was telling me to do. I would run across the road. So people act rationally - and in that situation, it is rational to run across the road and just risk it, because I didn't have time to spend 30 extra minutes crossing a street that traffic engineers had decided was a highway through the middle of a neighborhood. And that causes really risky behavior. And the only solution, and the solution that obviously we haven't taken - because traffic fatalities are going up and not down everywhere - is to change our roads and to inconvenience drivers a little bit in order to save some lives.
[00:29:32] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and I do just want to underscore - between 10 and 15 years ago, the conversations about traffic calming in Seattle and hearing pushback, and - Oh my gosh, this is going to change my commute and things are going to take forever, there's a war on cars. And the impact to cars and drivers was really negligible - literally talking about differences of one and two minutes, which can have such a powerful impact on safety and truly save lives. We really do have to ask ourselves the question, Do we really believe cars should be able to just go as fast as possible and have absolute priority in anything that might slow them down? It's bad even if it costs lives and money and so much. Or can we spare a minute? Can we spare two minutes to spare some lives? It really does come down to that, and I wish we would more openly have that conversation - because there are so many people who are walking, and who are riding bikes, who are in proximity to that. And it has to be part of the solution to public safety, people being safe on the roads. I just wish we would be in a different place with that.
I do want to definitely talk about some great coverage in PubliCola this week about the Low Income Housing Institute, also known as LIHI, being sued for unlawful eviction. What happened here?
[00:31:11] Erica Barnett: This is one of a couple of lawsuits actually that have been filed against LIHI. One was dismissed at the court commissioner level, but this one was just filed this past week by a guy who lived in a tiny house village - actually in Olympia - run by LIHI. And he was kicked out after an altercation with one of the staff. And the lawsuit essentially is asserting that this was an eviction, that LIHI's tiny house villages are housing. This guy lived in the tiny house for more than two years when he was kicked out, and LIHI said - You have to be out within 48 hours, take all your stuff, goodbye. And he did vacate, but he's saying this was not legal, and it was an eviction, and the tiny house was his home. And I think as a matter of law, what is interesting - there's a couple of things that I think are interesting about this case - as a matter of law, LIHI has long been classified, or was long classified - their tiny house villages were classified as encampments. And they got an upgrade during the pandemic - the city, and then eventually the federal government, now considers them enhanced shelter. But what they're saying is that it's essentially transitional housing, and it meets these definitions of transitional housing that were adopted by the State Legislature just a couple years ago. So there's an interesting legal argument there about - once you have four walls, a door that locks - is that everybody who supports LIHI likes to say - is that housing? And does LIHI have more obligations to give notice and to give reasons and to allow people in some cases to rectify whatever is wrong? LIHI says that they are not transitional housing and that if you started defining their tiny houses that way, it would create a situation where every type of enhanced shelter would start looking at the people they take in differently because they wouldn't want to have to keep people around if they were causing a problem in the community. And if you had tenant rights, that would create a situation where people could live there for a long time while continuing to cause problems. So if it goes forward, that would be an interesting legal discussion.
And separately, I think that there's been a lot of complaints from residents of the tiny house villages that the conditions there are not always the greatest. One thing that this gentleman who's suing brought up to me was that they have these kind of outdoor kitchens, that he said the nutrition is really bad, there have been times when the washing machines have been broken so they can't wash their clothes, where there's been no hot water for a month on end in this particular village. And so I think there's questions too about the quality of life at tiny house villages. And so those are not really being litigated, but they're being discussed and I think that that will continue to be the case. LIHI is under a microscope with funding from the new King County Regional Homelessness Authority, whose CEO Marc Dones has never been a big supporter of tiny house villages. So I think they are under fire right now, and their CEO Sharon Lee is definitely someone who fights back and you can read my coverage for her comments on that.
[00:34:59] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this is an interesting situation. I think it really brings up a lot of issues to a lot of folks that just because someone does not have shelter, if someone is responsible for providing them shelter or housing - and some of these people can be housed for months in tiny home villages - does that mean that they are not entitled to the same kinds of protections that everyone else is entitled to? And it seems like the argument against that is that - Well, this is a more challenging population and if we're going to serve them, providing those kinds of protections is dangerous for us as an organization and maybe we couldn't do it overall. When I think there are a lot of people who would love to talk about, Okay, what are ways that we can ensure that there isn't abuse or exploitation, more dangerous conditions? Just because someone does not have the means to pursue a lot of recourse or is coming from a bad environment, does that mean that we're fine with letting them settle for any old thing and any old treatment? And that is not to say that this is not a challenging and complex issue. Certainly this is a population that because they have been unhoused and out on the streets, they've been made more vulnerable to a host of challenges - whether it's health problems, safety issues, mental health issues, substance use disorder - the things that afflict society at large afflict this population also, and they're at risk for so many other things. And so I just hope we have a conversation that really does start from a place of how can we keep this population as safe as possible? And how do we keep people accountable to ensure that there aren't abuses? I feel like it's a risky place to be to say - If we aren't here, no one's going to be. And so take it or leave it with whatever there is, or not being introspective about how services can be provided in a better, safer, more equitable manner. I know that's what I thought when I first saw the coverage. What kind of reaction are you seeing from people?
[00:37:20] Erica Barnett: It's interesting. I think there is a lot of opposition to LIHI right now that I'm seeing in places like Twitter. I did want to say - just to flip your comments a little bit - I've also heard lots of complaints over the years from people who live at encampments but also in tiny house villages, that the environment can also be made unpleasant and challenging by other residents. People talk about - because tiny house villages - many of them are low-barrier and they allow people to use drugs and alcohol. People talk about that creating a bad environment in some tiny house villages. And when you have a population that is largely actively using, it can be really challenging for people who aren't. I don't want to discount the fact that when you are completely low-barrier, that creates challenges in itself - if somebody's trying to stay sober and they're in that environment, for example. But there can be lots of challenges in these communities - they're communities of people who are all struggling with different things. I just wanted to signpost that a little bit. Like I said, I think there's pushback to LIHI right now. It receives a lot of contracts from KCRHA and people are starting to really put a spotlight on them more than on other organizations. My coverage has been pretty factual, I think, so I'm trying not to reflect a bias one way or the other. And people can read into it their own biases and opinions and are doing so.
[00:39:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. And it'll be interesting to see - I think one of the issues is that this is one provider who is doing so much of this work, and almost has a monopoly on the ability to provide these services. And are there - I certainly don't want to suggest that there are not challenges and that residents may not be, safety issues and sometimes, and thank you for bringing that up. I do think that it would be interesting to see what other similar shelters are doing and if they're in line with this. I do not know if they are in line with what other shelters who provide similar services or other tiny home villages are providing, but I hope that that is being looked at.
[00:40:02] Erica Barnett: I will just say - really briefly - compare it to another enhanced shelter, the Navigation Center. Navigation Center kicks people out all the time. We don't necessarily talk about that as much because it's not as high profile. People aren't - the Navigation Center doesn't have an Andrew Lewis on the City Council constantly singing its praises and inviting criticism, but shelters do kick people out. It happens a lot for behavioral issues, so people should not be under the impression that this is uncommon.
[00:40:34] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And with that, we will thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, January 20th, 2023. Happy birthday, Terrance. Hacks & Wonks is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. Our insightful co-host today was Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola, co-host of Seattle Nice Podcast, and the author of Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse and Recovery, Erica Barnett. You can find Erica on Twitter @ericacbarnett and on PubliCola.com. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks and find me on Twitter @finchfrii with two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our mid-week show delivered to your podcast feed. And if you like us, leave a review. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On this midweek show, Misha Werschkul of the Washington State Budget & Policy Center talks with Crystal about the opportunity this legislative session to align the laws and budget of the state with our values and provide bright futures for all Washingtonians. As legislators prepare to set the State Budget for the next two years, Crystal and Misha discuss how important issues like housing and homelessness are receiving a lot of attention in contrast with less fanfare around education, before diving into impactful cash assistance programs targeted at addressing the wealth gap such as Guaranteed Basic Income and baby bonds. They then turn to the subject of ending Legal Financial Obligations, as it is a practice of wealth taking from the least-resourced to fund our court system, and have a philosophical discussion on unpacking the question of - what does real public safety look like? Finally, they cover progress on much-needed reform of the tax code - the long-awaited launch of the Working Families Tax Credit, movement towards implementation of the capital gains tax, and the anticipated introduction of a wealth tax proposal.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii, find our guest Misha Werschkul at @mishaanne and the Washington State Budget & Policy Center @budget_policy.
Misha Werschkul
Misha (she/her) is a leading voice shaping the debate in Washington state on budget priorities and economic policies.
She’s a policy wonk at heart and a relentless believer in the importance of people joining together to make change. She has more than two decades of policy and legislative experience and is eager to build on this experience with an openness to new ideas and approaches, especially about how to bring racial equity into policymaking and organizational processes.
You’re most likely to find Misha working with partners to craft policy proposals and build coalitions around statewide progressive revenue, economic, and racial justice issues. She also serves on the board of directors of Balance Our Tax Code and the SEIU Benefits Group.
In her spare time, Misha tries to be outside as much as possible. Some of her favorite activities are gardening in her taxpayer-supported neighborhood community garden, backpacking with friends in the publicly funded Olympic National Park, and paddleboarding in Lake Washington.
Resources
Washington State Budget & Policy Center
2023 State of the State Address: Bold actions for building a stronger Washington | Washington Governor Jay Inslee
“Washington Should Tax the Rich to Save Our Public Schools” by Robert Cruickshank for The Stranger
“The U.S. Could Help Solve Its Poverty Problem with a Universal Basic Income” by Michael W. Howard for Scientific American
“How Tacoma’s yearlong guaranteed income experiment fared” by Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks from The Seattle Times
HB 1045 - Creating the evergreen basic income pilot program
“To address wealth gap, WA to consider $4,000 ‘baby bonds’” by Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks from The Seattle Times
“Budget funds key first step in State Treasurer’s wealth gap initiative” by Adam Johnson for Office of the State Treasurer
SB 5125 | HB 1094 - Creating the Washington future fund program
“A tragic Seattle story explains the decline of American welfare” by Shaun Scott for Crosscut
“Getting rid of legal financial obligations can protect the economic security of thousands of Washingtonians” by Evan Walker for Washington State Budget & Policy Center
“It's Time to Reform Washington's Harmful System of Fines and Fees” by Evan Walker & Andy Nicholas for Washington State Budget & Policy Center
“Beyond Policing: Investing in Offices of Neighborhood Safety" by Betsy Pearl for The Center for American Progress
“The Working Families Tax Credit will reduce hardship across Washington” by Margaret Babayan for Washington State Budget & Policy Center
Working Families Tax Credit Coalition
“In Washington State, the Left Won a Major Victory for Taxing the Rich” by Galen Herz for Jacobin
“Share the Wealth, Washington!” by Carolyn Brotherton for Economic Opportunity Institute
WA Possible - podcast about what is possible for economic justice in Washington state by Washington State Budget & Policy Center
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today I am excited to be welcoming Misha Werschkul, who's the Executive Director of the Washington State Budget and Policy Center - welcome.
[00:01:01] Misha Werschkul: So glad to be with you, Crystal. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:04] Crystal Fincher: Thanks for joining us. I just want to start off by talking about - a lot of people are familiar with the Washington Budget and Policy Center, but for those who aren't, what is it? What do you do? And what brought you to this work?
[00:01:14] Misha Werschkul: Thanks so much for starting with that. The first thing that I just want to share is - at the Washington State Budget and Policy Center - we're a nonprofit advocacy organization, so we're not part of State government. We actually work doing research and analysis, work in coalition with other organizations. And really, our goal is to make sure that the laws and the budget of Washington State are in alignment with the values of our state and really setting up a bright future for all Washingtonians. So we primarily work on state policy, although we do a little bit of work on local issues from time to time and federal issues. And all of our work is, as I mentioned, in coalition partnership - so we work with other organizations that do grassroots organizing and power building, communications, more political work - and really work together to try to make sure that when the Legislature comes together, as they are right now, that they're doing the things that match the values in our community. So it's really actually super fun work that allows us to bring those skills of research and analysis in what we hope to be service for social justice.
A little bit about me is just - I came to this work really through a path of advocacy work. So prior to being with the Budget and Policy Center, I worked with a labor union in our state that represents home care and nursing home workers, and had a chance to be a frontline lobbyist down in Olympia trying to advance the interests of the long-term care workforce. And I saw through that work the incredible impact of the Budget and Policy Center, the power of the team here, and the importance of working on structural issues like the state budget, tax policy, economic justice - and now get the chance to work still in collaboration and partnership with organizations like the labor union that I worked with.
[00:03:12] Crystal Fincher: You talk about the structural impact that can be made - and so much of that is impacted at the state level. What are you looking to have accomplished in this legislative session that just started?
[00:03:24] Misha Werschkul: We always talk about the most important piece of legislation that the Legislature tackles each year is the state budget. And that is hundreds of pages of decisions - embedded in the state budget - around what are we going to spend money on, and how are we going to collect the revenue that pays for those things. And so our state has been really in a good situation with being able to receive federal dollars through all of the COVID relief that has happened over the past few years. And we've been able to do a lot - our legislators have - to be able to invest in our communities and help, really, us weather a really horrific pandemic. And this year, the Legislature is going to be putting together the budget for the next two years, so the end of 2023 through 2025. And I would say, always, that the most important thing that they can do is put together a budget that really meets the needs of communities, reflects community input, and ideally collects the revenue to pay for those investments in an equitable way. So there's millions of things within the state budget that matter to folks all across our state, and that's something that we'll be watching super carefully this legislative session - and frankly, every legislative session.
[00:04:44] Crystal Fincher: What are the most important things you believe are going to be the components of the budget that will make a positive impact for the state?
[00:04:52] Misha Werschkul: Some of the things that are getting a lot of attention and are going to be really important are really what is the level of investment in housing and homelessness. That's something that - I live in Seattle - that is something we're talking about a lot in Seattle, but is also really an issue all across the state - folks in rural communities, other urban areas, suburban areas - dealing with the homelessness crisis and the lack of access to affordable housing. And so this year, the governor has proposed a really big investment in housing and homelessness services - much bigger than has been talked about in previous years - and really, I think, embraced the need for a statewide solution that really matches the scale of what the crisis is that folks are experiencing. And so we're going to be watching that really carefully to see what can be done in that area. The governor is also talking about behavioral health as an important area for investment, climate change. One area we'll be paying attention to at the Budget and Policy Center is education - that is actually the biggest part of the state budget - is funding for public schools. And we know that schools all across our communities - kids need to be invested in, right? And that that is something that is going to be important this year - special education, how are we supporting teachers, what are we really doing to make sure that kids' mental health are taken care of. There's a lot more to do in that area and a lot of conversation to be had in the next 100-ish days of the legislative session.
[00:06:29] Crystal Fincher: Certainly a lot of conversation to be had. And while we have heard a lot of talk, fortunately, about taking action on housing and homelessness, we haven't heard as much about education after, surprisingly, seeing so many teachers and educators bringing to the fore the crisis, basically, that we're facing in terms of funding, special education resources, and the ability to really give kids the education that will equip them for their future and that we're constitutionally obligated to give them. What are the prospects for action and what do you think is possible this legislative session?
[00:07:06] Misha Werschkul: I think the Legislature is going to step up and do something for our kids. So there hasn't been as much talk about it - there are a number of different challenges that the Legislature is grappling with, a number of different things the Legislature is dealing with. But ultimately, education is the most important thing when it comes to the state budget and the paramount duty of Washington State. And so last year there was investment in counselors and other types of support professionals in the schools - that's going to be rolling out and making a difference for kids this year, but more has to be done. And I think that that is an area where we're hearing folks - really from both political parties - talk about the need to invest in education. And so I'm actually pretty hopeful about what's going to be done in that area for kids all across the state because the need is really present. And as you mentioned, the calls that teachers made at the start of the school year, folks' experience of the first few months of the school year, kids back to school in January - the needs there are very visible. And I think legislators will listen to that.
[00:08:23] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You have also, and the Budget and Policy Center has done a lot of work and highlighted a lot of research about the importance of cash assistance policies in addressing poverty and strengthening communities. Starting with Guaranteed Basic Income, that we've heard a lot from Representative Liz Berry on - what is that? What kind of record does it have? And why is it important?
[00:08:48] Misha Werschkul: I love that you're asking about this because I think this is actually one of the most important things the Legislature can and should act on this year. So the idea of Guaranteed Basic Income is really a concept that's really been brought forward by - historically by Black leaders, Black women, also by tribal governments - as a way to really recognize the inherent dignity of people and the fact that people can make the best choices with resources that can meet the needs of themselves individually, their families, and their communities. And it's really a rejection of the paternalistic approach of a lot of policy approaches where - too often - you have government agencies really making decisions on behalf of people and taking away that ability for people to make their own decisions. And so this concept of Guaranteed Basic Income has been around for a long time. There has been a dramatic emergence of local pilots of Guaranteed Basic Income programs all across the country in recent years - and huge successes of those programs. The Magnolia Mother's Trust is one of the first, the Stockton SEED [Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration] program - also those two pilot programs really sparked action in every part of our country, including right in Tacoma where there's been a pilot that Mayor Woodards led with United Way of Pierce County. And so we're seeing a lot of success historically and even in the last few years of really the approach of getting cash to people in a way that's not restrictive and that lets people make choices that meet their own needs and the needs of their families and communities.
The opportunity this year - and what Representative Berry is talking about - is the opportunity to really move that from local pilots to state policy. And she's proposing a statewide pilot that is limited in certain ways in scope, but would be the first state in the country to really have a statewide program for Guaranteed Basic Income. And it's an opportunity to take all of the things that we know from all of the local pilots and the past work on Guaranteed Basic Income and really try it out in a new context of a state program. That bill has gotten a lot of excitement and energy, and hopefully we'll see it get all the way to the finish line this year because it really is, I think, a transformative way to think about the role of state government and a move away from what really are pretty failed paternalistic policies that we've had in the past towards - one, policies that recognize the inherent dignity and the ability of people to make choices for themselves.
[00:11:52] Crystal Fincher: Another program that is really interesting and that you have talked about is the Baby Bonds savings program. What is that?
[00:12:01] Misha Werschkul: Okay, so the Baby Bonds program is something that I think is complementary to Guaranteed Basic Income, and also complementary to other approaches like the Working Families Tax Credit and existing public benefits, like TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] and the Housing and Essential Needs program. So it's important to think about it as a complementary, not a replacement for any of these other programs. But the idea of Baby Bonds is really a concept that was developed by an economist, Darrick Hamilton, to think about how do we really address the issue of wealth disparities - primarily by race - that exists. And we know that little bits of money, changing people's income doesn't actually get to that core issue of how people build wealth over time and how people build wealth intergenerationally. So white folks like me, in a lot of cases, have been able to build wealth in our families that we passed down through generations. And I, for example, was able to go to college because my parents were able to help me pay for the cost of going to college. The idea of Baby Bonds is how could we really give every Washingtonian the opportunity to have that little additional seed investment to be able to invest in themselves and their future.
And so the State Treasurer, Mike Pellicciotti, has championed this approach for our state. Other states are already moving forward on this, but the idea would be to create an account for every kid who's eligible - to be able to have a little bit of resources that grow over time that they could then use to invest in college, to invest in starting a business, or to invest in buying a home. And really start to move the needle on those intergenerational inequities around wealth. In and of itself, Baby Bonds isn't going to fix everything - it is a piece of the puzzle but is an important one. And it's been exciting to see bipartisan support for that proposal and a lot of energy from local communities to really think about really a proposal that isn't going to have a huge impact in 2024 or 2025, but is setting kids up for success over the long-term and giving people the access to opportunity.
[00:14:31] Crystal Fincher: So this is an interesting area. So we talked about Guaranteed Basic Income, which is something that definitely has an immediate impact, Baby Bonds savings, which is a long-term impact - both of which are direct cash assistance. And we are so used to, in our society, and hearing pushback on - Well, just giving people cash, are they going to just waste it? How do we know that they're not going to spend it on different things? People are in poverty - as some people say - because they're bad at managing their money, so we can't just hand it over. We need to really prescribe how it can and can't be used. How do you battle that mindset and address those kinds of worries?
[00:15:15] Misha Werschkul: I think for us at the Budget and Policy Center, it comes back to - what does the research say? And those narratives that exist are just not supported by anything that we see in the research. And so what we've seen is that programs that are out there that give people direct cash - that folks use it in ways that really do meet the needs of themselves and their communities. And I can't remember the number right now, but I feel like there's something like more than 100 local pilots that have operated around Guaranteed Basic Income in the last several years. And so we're not talking about just one example - we are talking about example after example after example. I also think it is actually really important to tackle those narratives a little bit head-on and talk about - where do those narratives come from, and why are they so compelling for some folks? And these ideas of - for example, with regards to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program and welfare and the dialogues over the years around that program - the kind of myth of the welfare queen - that is a created story that serves a particular purpose. It's not rooted in any sort of reality and we have to actually talk about, we have to actually name those myths that are out there, name those narratives, and call them out for what they are. Because so often it's deeply rooted in racism, deeply rooted in classism and sexism. And to be able to - our hope at the Budget and Policy Center, and other folks play different roles in this, is that by really looking at actually what does the research say and what are the facts on the ground, that that will help to begin to dismantle these narratives that have been built over time. So that's our hope at the Budget and Policy Center - is showing the success of the local pilots, showing what works, and really building some different narratives out there that actually are more rooted in reality.
[00:17:42] Crystal Fincher: So another thing that you've talked about that is really important is the impact of Legal Financial Obligations on poverty and people's ability to get out of poverty. What are Legal Financial Obligations and what can the Legislature do about it?
[00:17:57] Misha Werschkul: This is such an important area that hasn't been actually talked about as much when it comes to the upcoming legislative session, so I'm really glad you're asking about it, Crystal. So Legal Financial Obligations are essentially fines and fees that are put on folks based on their interactions with the criminal legal system. And it is one of the primary ways that we actually currently fund our court system. It is probably obvious, as I'm saying this, how inequitable this system is and how ineffective it is, but I'll just elaborate just a little bit. So basically what happens is that folks who are interacting with the criminal legal system - through those interactions - are building up debt over time that oftentimes folks don't have the ability to pay, so that - and there's an expectation that folks will pay those debts in the future. Most of the time, as I said, folks don't have the ability to pay - the money can't be collected. And so really what you have is a situation where folks are shouldering this debt that carries with them after their interaction with the criminal legal system. And the courts don't get the resources that they need to actually fund their operations. So it's a super ineffective way to fund operations - based on trying to collect money from people who, for the most part, really don't have any money to pay those fines and fees.
Our goal at the Budget and Policy Center, and in coalition with a lot of other organizations, is to really end the practice of Legal Financial Obligations. There are infinite number of better ways to fund our court systems than through the collection of fines and fees. So the goal - the big goal - is to actually end the practice of Legal Financial Obligations as a whole. Not surprisingly, that's not something that's likely to happen in one legislative session. We do have legislative champions who are working towards incremental changes to Legal Financial Obligations, a greater recognition of ability to pay in terms of how fees are assessed and collected - and there we hope to see some progress this legislative session. But in the work around trying to end poverty, people talk about not just the importance of giving people money to be able to afford their basic needs, but actually stopping the practice of wealth taking, which is basically what Legal Financial Obligations are - is another way that any resources that people have are taken from them and that folks are in a system of indebtedness based on an interaction that is already deeply racialized with the criminal legal system. So Representative Tarra Simmons is really leading a lot of that work in the Legislature, groups like Civil Survival and Living with Conviction - want to lift up their work.
And I also will just, as I'm answering this question, take this opportunity to say I am so appreciative to be able to be here and share this information with you, and I'm also doing that work on behalf of an amazing team of folks at the Budget and Policy Center - so Evan Walker is the person on our team who leads the work on Legal Financial Obligations, Emily Vyhnanek and Tracy Yeung lead the work on direct cash assistance, and other folks are leading other pieces of the work. So I just want to take the opportunity to celebrate their deeper work in each of these areas and how they engage with our coalition partners, even though I'm the one here sharing it with you.
[00:21:49] Crystal Fincher: And I really appreciate that, and appreciate the work of your entire team - and the work over years that you've been doing - this is not work that you or the Budget and Policy Center is new to. It's really been just a long-term labor, and so really appreciate that. And also just appreciate the importance in you working on issues like Guaranteed Basic Income, Legal Financial Obligations - because we're so used to hearing sometimes in common discourse - things like, If you do the crime, then you do the time. If you don't want something, you should follow the law. Now you got to pay up. And viewing it as we need to hold people accountable and really focusing on a lot of the punitive and punishment aspects of these things, when really we're all losing as a result of those - trying to implement these punitive policies are creating worse outcomes for everyone in every way. When you look at the percentage of our budgets going towards supporting the court systems and jails, clearly fines are not cutting it. And also we say that we want a safe community. We say that we want people to be able to make a mistake, to do their time, fulfill their obligation, and then become a productive member of society - we commonly hear. But we do things that really impair their ability to do that and trap them in cycles of criminalization and poverty - and it just is counterproductive and we wind up paying for it as a community. How do you address people who focus on the punitive aspects - and really wanting to hold people accountable or punish people - and not realizing the other impacts that come from that?
[00:23:40] Misha Werschkul: I think that's such a big question and I don't know if I have the full answer to it. I will say I was listening to the governor's State of the State address, and he said some things that I really agreed with and then some things that I didn't agree with as much. But one thing he said that I thought was interesting was - he talked about public safety, which we know is a term that means certain things to, and maybe different things, to different people. And he talked about how we actually need to unpack what public safety is and recognize that there's a lot of different aspects of that. And then he actually talked about the work around gun responsibility as an aspect of public safety. And it got me thinking about - just these terms and how they're code, in a lot of ways, for certain things - like public safety is code for policing. And how can we actually really talk about public safety for all of us? And what does it actually look like for all of us to be safe in our communities? And policing - heavy policing - is clearly not providing safety for all of us. In fact, I don't think it's really providing safety for any of us. And if we can think about - what is that aspiration around safety and what does that value for us in our lives and for our families and communities? How do we actually build that together? And a lot of times that does mean a lot of different things - it actually means people having the resources to be able to afford their basic needs so that they can put food on the table, it means that people have shelter - that people are not homeless. It means talking about gun responsibility. And I think a lot of times we fall into, again, these sort of narrative traps of - Oh, yeah, like crime - punish - yeah, if you do the crime, you have to do the time. And sort of believe in a way that that is going to make us safer. And actually I don't know that - it doesn't.
And so I think just - I don't know, I think we just have to have those conversations in a real way - because, as a white person, a white woman, doing this work, I did believe for a long time that having a police presence was a way that my safety was - was about my safety. But actually, as I unpack that - it's not true, even for me as the model person that the police are here, supposed to protect. And I think we have to just actually talk about that a little bit more and actually have a higher aspiration for safety for all of us, because sometimes it's like walking around certain parts of maybe cities with a heavy police presence might make someone feel - it might make someone feel a little bit safe in the immediate term, but I actually hope for something a lot more. I hope that we can get to a place where - I don't know - safety, just - it's not actually true safety. And so I'm just trying to get at - what is that higher aspiration of safety that we could be striving towards and building towards, and not feeling like our only definition of safety is having armed police officers walking around - to what - shoot someone if something happens? That actually doesn't make me feel super safe - to think about people wielding guns on the streets shooting people to protect me. And so I think that's just something we need to be talking about and grappling with. But I do think - I really appreciated Governor Inslee starting to peel open that conversation a little bit. Now, he then did go on - I want to acknowledge - to talk about the importance, I think he did go on to talk about the importance of investing in policing as well. So he still has that as part of his solution. But I think at least he was starting to unpack - what does public safety look like and maybe open up a different conversation.
[00:28:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I appreciate your thoughts on that. And unpacking what public safety looks like, unpacking what accountability looks like, and really trying to reduce harm all the way around. We don't want people to be victimized. We don't want people to be trapped in cycles that create and produce harm. What does accountability look like if it's not our court system and jails, which are not doing an effective job. What does public safety look like if it's not only police officers who, I think everyone agrees, can't do the job alone. If not, other models being more successful and effective. The final thing I want to talk about and cover today is what our tax code looks like. It is so foundational to everything in society. It is underneath, it impacts the revenue that we collect that enables every public service to be possible, which public services are possible, and to what degree. There's been lots of talk about how regressive our system has been, how much needs reform. Where do we stand on that? What needs to happen? And what's possible this legislative session?
[00:29:56] Misha Werschkul: My favorite topic, Crystal - at the Budget and Policy Center, we love talking about taxes. And the reason is because it is super important how we collect revenue as a state and local government. And there are a lot of policy choices embedded in - a lot of values embedded in how we collect revenue. So I think probably most of your listeners know that Washington State has the most inequitable tax code in the country, meaning those with the lowest incomes pay the highest percentage of their income in state and local taxes. And in fact, we're way out of sync with most other states on this. So low income people in Washington State are paying basically double someone with a similar income in Oregon, simply because of the structure of our tax code. This is obviously a pretty bad deal for most Washingtonians. It's a super good deal for the wealthiest Washingtonians who are paying a minute share of their income in state and local taxes. And this is a big problem. This is not something that there's a quick and easy fix for, but there is some really exciting stuff happening.
So in 2021, the Legislature took two big actions to start to make progress to reform our state tax code. One is they passed a capital gains tax to fund early learning investments in education. The other is they passed a Working Families Tax Credit set up to benefit 420,000 households in Washington State with direct cash sales tax refunds. Both of these policies are happening. So the Working Families Tax Credit launches February 1st. I'm so nerdy excited about this - it's not even funny. But starting very soon, people - 420,000 households - will be able to apply to be able to get a refund check of up to $1,200 in our state. We have been talking about this for so long, it feels like - and the day is finally almost here where this is happening. It is a step in the right direction of balancing our tax code in and of itself. It's not enough. It needs to be expanded. We'll be working this legislative session to try to expand eligibility to younger adults, so folks who are 18-24 and actually older adults as well - 65+ - who aren't currently eligible for the Working Families Tax Credit - to basically bring them in and allow them to be eligible. There's a great website called wataxcredit.org, I think - I hope it's org now - that has a ton of information about this. And I want to just share that out so folks know to spread the word because folks do need to actually proactively apply. One way to think about it is - really anybody who's eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit is going to be eligible for the Washington Working Families Tax Credit too. Plus anyone who files their taxes with an ITIN number who is being excluded right now from the EITC will be eligible for the Working Families Tax Credit. So I'm super excited. It's happening soon. There's going to be action in the Legislature on this, but more importantly, the policy is happening. Folks can get the money if they take the step to apply with Department of Revenue.
Capital gains tax is being challenged, not surprisingly, by wealthy individuals who would pay the tax. They're trying to get the court to basically intervene and rule that the tax is unconstitutional. The State Supreme Court is hearing that case on January 26th and this is a wonky legal issue that needs to get sorted out before the tax can be fully implemented. And I could go on and on about the legal part of it, but I will stop because you actually asked about also what's happening this legislative session. And I will just pitch the efforts that some of our partners, especially Economic Opportunity Institute and Balance Our Tax Code, are leading with regards to a wealth tax and really thinking about big solutions that make a real difference in making our tax code more equitable. We have to get to the root of it, which is wealth. And so it's exciting to see this proposal coming forward this session that Representative Noel Frame has been a huge leader in.
[00:35:01] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely and appreciate that. We will include the wataxcredit.org link in our episode notes to make it convenient for people to visit. And also thanks for mentioning your partners - we did have a conversation with Summer Stinson of the Economic Opportunity Institute, and she did talk a lot about that court case and how important it is to have a capital gains tax, what it really means, how few people it actually impacts - it is the wealthiest portion of the wealthy - and we'll see how this court case turns out. I really do appreciate you joining us today. If people want to learn more about the organization, where can they visit?
[00:35:51] Misha Werschkul: Our website is www.budgetandpolicy.org so you can check us out on the website. We're also on social media - I'll share those links with you for the show notes hopefully. And I also will share - April Dickinson on our team has led the effort just to launch a new podcast called WA Possible that we hope is a great complement to Hacks & Wonks and a bit of a deeper dive into some of what could be possible when it comes to economic justice in Washington state. There's a great episode there talking about the Black Women Best framework that some national partners launched and some of the policies we talked about today, so just would share that as well.
[00:36:37] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much, and April Dickinson is awesome. Thank you for all the work. Thank you for joining us today and we'll talk to you all next time.
[00:36:44] Misha Werschkul: Thank you so much Crystal - appreciate you.
[00:36:46] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, political consultant and host Crystal Fincher is joined by long-time communications and political strategist and Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, Robert Cruickshank! They cover Governor Inslee’s State of the State address, the legislature's responsibility to provide urgently needed resources for public education, plans to address our state’s housing crisis in the 2023 legislative session, multiple controversies involving Walgreens, Seattle Public Schools suing social media companies, and why the "refusal" of services by people experiencing homelessness is largely a reflection of those services' inability to meet their needs. Governor Inslee’s State of the State address focused on housing and homelessness, following a mandate from voters in last year’s elections to solve with progressive reforms. Crystal and Robert discuss how our state’s housing crisis is fueling displacement and homelessness, and talk about proposals pending in the legislature that could help.
Alongside this, Washington’s public education is straining under a lack of funding, and needs more resources to hire essential teachers and public health professionals. Both housing and education could be better solved by the legislature if they enact progressive revenue, such as a wealth tax, to fund new programs and battle a potential revenue shortfall. A debacle occurred over the preservation of a Seattle Walgreens building that’s been designated as a landmark. The council reversed a decision last week and significantly limited new construction in order to preserve parts of the building, which will limit the ability to develop the remaining property into much needed housing, and seems misaligned with the city's stated goals of rapidly increasing housing stock and reducing harmful emissions. A Walgreens executive also made news when they had to apologize for overstating the impacts of shoplifting on its stores. Exaggerated crime narratives like these, pushed by candidates and media outlets, were used to undermine progressive reforms in recent elections, even though they were never supported by real data. Returning to education, Seattle Public Schools announced their plan to sue various social media companies for the negative impacts on students’ mental health caused by social platforms. While social media has a role to play in our national youth mental health crisis, some students and parents argue the district’s resources would be better spent on acquiring more direct mental health support for students. Finally, Crystal and Robert look at some excellent reporting from Tobias Coughlin-Bogue at Real Change News, explaining why services are refused by people experiencing homelessness. Refuting narratives that people living on the streets don’t want shelter, the data show that in fact, when offered private, non-congregate shelter and housing, they largely accept it. Congregate shelters that lack privacy and security are often unable to meet the needs of people experiencing homelessness, often lacking the ability for people to bring their possessions, partners or pets with them, and are most frequently cited as creating harmful or negative experiences for the people who use them.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host Robert at @cruickshank.
Resources
“Seattle's I-135 Social Housing Initiative with Tye Reed and Camille Gix from the House Our Neighbors Campaign” - Hacks & Wonks
“Gov. Inslee leans into housing and homelessness in 2023 State-of-the-State address” by Dyer Oxley from KUOW
“Washington Should Tax the Rich to Save Our Public Schools” by Robert Cruickshank from The Stranger
“How WA's legislature is addressing the housing crisis in 2023” by Josh Cohen from Crosscut
“In Reversal, Council Poised to Preserve Landmarked Drive-Through Walgreen's” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola
“Walgreens executive: "Maybe we cried too much" about shoplifting, thefts” by Herb Scribner & Hope King from Axios
“Seattle Public Schools Sue Social Media Companies for Detrimental Effects on Youth” by Vee Hua from South Seattle Emerald
“Seattle Public Schools sue TikTok, Meta for youth mental health crisis” by Julie Calhoun from KING5
“Service refusal is not a myth, but it is surrounded by them” by Tobias Coughlin-Bogue from Real Change News
Transcript
Coming Soon
On this midweek show, Tye Reed and Camille Gix from House Our Neighbors fill Crystal in on why Seattle should vote Yes on Initiative 135 this February. In describing the four pillars of I-135’s social housing approach - publicly-owned, permanently affordable, cross-class communities, and resident-led - House Our Neighbors tells us how their effort to create a new Seattle social housing developer is different and complements the existing players in the current nonprofit low-income housing landscape. With working examples from around the world as well as here in Maryland, their model envisions a self-sustaining cycle that creates the social housing desperately needed to address our housing and homelessness crises.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Tye Reed at @themobilepauper, Camille Gix at @CamilleGix, and House Our Neighbors at @houseRneighbors.
Tye Reed
Originally from Kansas City, Tye Reed (she/her) is a community organizer in Seattle focused on homelessness advocacy and direct aid to encampments. She is the Co-Chair of House Our Neighbors and a member of the Seattle Transit Riders Union.
Camille Gix
Camille Gix is a steering committee member for Initiative 135, a policy intern at Real Change, and finishing up her Masters degree in Public Policy at UW, focusing on social policy analysis and housing studies.
Resources
House Our Neighbors | Yes on I-135
Public Development Authorities (PDAs) from the Municipal Research and Services Center
“Seattle to vote on ‘social housing’ initiative in special election” by Amanda Zhou from The Seattle Times
“Social Housing Measure Qualifies To Run on Seattle Ballot Next Year” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
“Public Housing For All” by Paul Williams in NOĒMA Magazine
“Social Housing in the U.S.” by Oksana Mironova & Thomas J. Waters from Community Service Society
“Growing Social Housing in Seattle” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it.
Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today I'm really excited to be welcoming two people from Initiative 135, the Social Housing Initiative in the City of Seattle. We have with us Tye Reed, who's originally from Kansas City, and she's a community organizer in Seattle focused on homelessness advocacy and direct aid to encampments. She's the Co-Chair of House Our Neighbors and a member of the Seattle Transit Riders Union - fellow member. Camille Gix is a steering committee member for Initiative 135, a policy intern at Real Change, and finishing up her Masters degree in Public Policy at UW, focusing on social policy analysis and housing studies. Welcome, both, to the program.
[00:01:32] Camille Gix: Thank you.
[00:01:32] Tye Reed: Thank you, Crystal. Thanks for having us.
[00:01:34] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. So I just want to start out by getting an overview - people have now probably heard that social housing is a thing, but what is it? What will this initiative do? What kind of change will people see?
[00:01:47] Camille Gix: Yeah, I can take this first question. So social housing - we can define through four pillars. So one is that social housing is publicly owned, it is permanently affordable, it promotes cross-class communities, and it is resident-led. So diving into each of those just a little bit more - the public ownership is really key. Social housing, as it's been practiced around the world, is on public land - it is considered a public good and something that we really haven't seen in a large way in the United States, except for one county in Maryland. The permanent affordability component means that regardless of a person's income, it will always be affordable - it will never go over 30% of a household's income in rent payments. The cross-class communities is how the financing for social housing works. You have people who make a lot more money living in the same communities with people who make a lot less money, and the people on the higher end of the income spectrum are able to cross-subsidize those on the lower end of the income spectrum - meaning that they help to cover the operations and maintenance costs of the housing in a way that communities that only have lower income people isn't able to meet. And then the cross-class communities is also important because of our country's history of segregating low-income and Black and Brown communities, and so the social housing works against that historical narrative that we have with low-income housing. Then the resident-led component is the idea that residents in the buildings and in the housing have say over what happens to their housing, so not only do they make up a substantial part of the board of directors of what we're doing here, but each building will also have a governance council that makes decisions for their specific buildings.
And so basically, just to sum up, the initiative itself is the culmination of all four of these pillars of social housing. It is creating what will be known as the Seattle Social Housing Developer, which operates under Washington State's Public Development Authorities models, and the initiative establishes this developer which will own, develop, and maintain housing that is modeled after social housing - so cross-class, resident-led, permanently affordable, and public in perpetuity.
[00:04:21] Crystal Fincher: So Tye, why did you decide to bring this initiative forward now, and why is it so important?
[00:04:29] Tye Reed: Yeah, the now aspect, as I feel like most of us in Seattle can understand, it's - this isn't something that we needed now, this is something that we needed 30, 40 years ago. The social housing models that we've used to build up what we want in this initiative - Vienna, Singapore, all these other places, even places with a lower amount of social housing - they've been doing it for far longer - decades - they've just built housing for a really long time. So right now is because we're really behind. And I think that politically - personally, in 2021, after the No campaign to - No to Compassion Seattle - that was really formative to this Yes, right? I did not know and did not come to be with a lot of the people in House Our Neighbors - including Camille Gix, including my Co-Chair Tiffani McCoy - until we had something to say No to. And then as we've built this energy and this movement and got people talking about why aren't we doing more for the housing crisis and the homelessness crisis, then we had an opportunity while people are all together to say Yes. So I think the why now is just like kismet, just like whatever - it had to happen eventually.
But the reason that it's important is a lot of the things that Camille named are so fundamentally different from not just the way that we've built and developed housing, but the way that people in Seattle, people in the United States build communities together, right? We don't build communities in mind that renters have power. We don't build communities in mind that poor and rich people should be living together, and that your income shouldn't really have a bearing on the amenities that your housing has, right? So I think a lot of it is - it's important morally and ethically and ideologically that we actually start building a city, infrastructure, housing, education networks that model better morals than what we have today. So that we are able to actually create community. So I don't want to say it's a highly moral thing - I think it's also super pragmatic. But for me, the description of social housing with those four pillars is fundamentally different from how I grew up. As a poor person who grew up almost exclusively on Section 8 or living in public housing, you know you're poor. And you feel it every day - everybody around you is poor - you have that sense of feeling everywhere and your neighborhood is specifically poor. We're talking about creating neighborhoods where people don't have to feel the existential dread of poverty just by existing. And so I think that there's a lot of political reasons why we should do it now. And I think our homelessness crisis is why we should do it now. And our housing crisis - and all of the units that we know we're missing in the City. But I also think that we're talking about fundamentally changing the way Americans, the way people in Seattle, relate to each other and think of each other as community.
[00:07:18] Crystal Fincher: Which makes sense and we're at a moment now that is a different moment than we've been in for a while in Seattle. I feel like there is more recognition than there ever has been before and more motivation for action to address the housing crisis, and people really recognizing that the housing crisis is making the homelessness crisis worse. And that people are not able - to enter into the housing market, certainly, is extremely difficult - but even the rental market in the City of Seattle has excluded and displaced so many people and will continue to unless something very different happens. So I guess the next question is - when it came to figuring out what the different thing that needed to happen was, we've heard conversations about, Hey, there are a number of publicly-funded nonprofit Public Development Authorities, developers that currently exist in the City of Seattle. Why go this different route with social housing rather than invest more in the existing public housing infrastructure?
[00:08:34] Tye Reed: I'm sure Camille has a lot of response to this. She did a lot of research for this. But I think the fact that housing nonprofits, the housing industrial complex itself has existed for decades, proves that those models aren't working and that just really investing in models that have very limited scope exclusively isn't going to work for us. Obviously, those things like the PDAs that exist in Seattle - especially the ones that are meant to undo historical marginalization or address historical marginalization - those things are super needed. But a lot of what we see here, once again, is reinvesting in this public housing model where we're talking about short-term or limited amounts of housing being on the market for public housing and this - not mixed-income communities. I think that's important and I want to hammer into that more than anything is that the models that we've seen before aren't creating mixed-use communities that are able to actually thrive and not create segregation and displacement. We're finding that, yes, you can create a PDA and get a certain group of people inside housed, but not at the scale that we need. We're also talking about scale. We're hoping to develop a citywide, non-neighborhood specific, which is what we have a lot - we have the Pike Place PDA and the Chinatown PDA - that is citywide, that is saying that this whole entire city needs to be, for one, rezoned. And also needs to have the kind of housing, the level of housing that certain neighborhoods already do, so that we're not just forcing housing into the same neighborhoods over and over. So I do think the fact that this is a citywide program that is meant to actually address the scale of - estimating 40,000-60,000 people experiencing homelessness in King County - we need to be building at that scale and I don't think the PDAs that we have currently, as useful and as important as they are, are at that level quite yet.
[00:10:31] Crystal Fincher: And what are your thoughts, Camille?
[00:10:32] Camille Gix: Yeah, I think that Tye did a really great job at explaining the citywide component of this particular thing. And then I think as far as the social housing - and bringing it back to how social housing is a really new concept for us in the United States - I think if you look at Vienna, for example, is the one that people tend to talk about the most because it has the longest history of social housing. But like Tye was saying, nonprofits on their own haven't gotten us to where we need to go - and it's not to say that they haven't done a lot of important work, but we're not to the numbers of housing units that we need to keep everyone affordably housed. And Vienna is a city where they do have a very large nonprofit sector, and the nonprofit sector is doing its part to house people. But the majority of the housing in Vienna is publicly-owned, and it is this publicly-owned social housing component that has made them one of the most affordable housing cities in the world and kept people affordably housed across the income spectrum.
And then I think the other really important thing to note here is just to reiterate this sort of cross-class mixed-income component of social housing, and why the existing Public Development Authorities that we have within the City of Seattle are not necessarily going to get us to where we need in a sustainable way - because the nonprofits and Public Development Authorities that currently exist are limited very much by federal financing mechanisms like the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and things that are provided to them through the Housing and Urban Development Department of the United States. And this department is - it keeps people at a very low income - it requires that all units are for very low incomes and this causes this lack of financial stability and financial sustainability. Because if you only have people with very low incomes in an apartment, you're not going to be financially stable because there is going to be this idea of operations and maintenance that will not be able to be met by the rents of very low income people. And so when you have higher income people in the same apartments as those who are very low income, then you're able to meet the maintenance and operations costs of a building and still maintain this financial sustainability component.
[00:13:08] Crystal Fincher: So I think what a lot of people are wondering is how this social housing initiative is set up to have a more sustainable funding mechanism and be more able to address the scope of the challenge that we're facing in terms of this housing crisis. One of the things that seems to be a challenge is not necessarily that the existing programs are somehow bad, but that they lack funding. And that they just aren't able to address the scale of the housing problem because they're reliant on limited federal funding - for as good as their projects are, they just aren't able to do enough of it. How would social housing address that and how can it provide a more sustainable funding source that can address the scope of the problem that Seattle is facing?
[00:14:07] Camille Gix: Okay. So to talk a little bit about the financial model of social housing - as it's been done in Montgomery County, Maryland, which is the only existing social housing developer in the United States right now - and it's the model that the Seattle social housing developer and a lot of what we've been doing is mostly based off of. This model of social housing starts with a relatively small capital grant of anywhere from $5-10 million. So the capital grant can come from a variety of sources - the city budget, state budget, and non-restrictive federal funds outside of the Housing and Urban Development Department. And this $5-10 million is - again, like I said - relatively small. So in comparison to the amount of capital that a nonprofit would need, it is very small because the majority of the funding for social housing is coming from debt. So that means very low interest municipal bonds - the City of Seattle provides about 4% interest municipal bonds if we're getting into the details, which is the low interest debt that it pays off over time. And because of the mixed income component of social housing, the higher income rents are able to make sure that the debt is able to be paid off over time. And after the term of the loan, so usually 30 to 40 years, the debt is now paid off and the rents are now able to go towards new buildings. And so every rental payment after a loan for a specific building is paid off is then going into the developer to create new buildings. And this is a cyclical process that allows for the developer to be sustainable, not only within a specific building, but also to be sustainable in creating more and more housing over time. And the more buildings it owns and the more residents it is renting out to, the more it is able to grow - and it's this exponential growth that it's able to see. And in this process, it doesn't require these rental subsidies, which most nonprofit development requires because you're only renting to low income people - so you need, in order to pay off debt or make maintenance costs, you need these subsidies that keep people in their housing. But with social housing, it has this cyclical nature to it.
[00:16:51] Crystal Fincher: Okay. So you talked about the funding, if this is approved, could come from a variety of sources. So is this reliant on a budget allocation from an external entity, or is there a funding mechanism to start built into this initiative?
[00:17:05] Camille Gix: There is no funding mechanism built into the initiative. This is something that we did initially hope to do and set out to do, but we learned pretty quickly in the drafting process of the initiative that it is not legal within Washington state law for Public Development Authorities to have taxing authority, so we weren't able to direct any specific funds from the city or state budget to this developer. What we are doing simultaneously to running this campaign is looking for options to funding - so it will require allocations to come in the form of city or state budget allocations, but we do have a number of state legislator endorsers of the initiative who are working with us to make sure that we have a budget proviso in this upcoming session to create some funding from the state budget. And then as far as the city budget, we are also looking into possibilities there. And something that we've been very open about throughout the campaign is that if we are unable to get money from the city or the state, we will run another initiative as a coalition to create a funding source that's able to fund social housing.
[00:18:22] Crystal Fincher: Okay, and in this process as - so working on getting that budget proviso - there is funding provided, and I think you said in the neighborhood of a few million dollars? Did I have that correct?
[00:18:35] Camille Gix: The initiative does stipulate that the City of Seattle will have to provide 18 months of in-kind support to the developer - and this will mostly look like staff time for the initial staffers as well as office space for the initial entity to get up and running. And so that's going - I believe during budget discussions, the City Council determined that this would be about $750,000 over 18 months, just for the startup costs. But then as far as the initial capital money that the developer will need, that will be found on the side through staff time and grant writing.
[00:19:14] Crystal Fincher: And then how are the properties going to be acquired? Are they going to be built? Are they going to be bought? How does that process happen?
[00:19:24] Camille Gix: Yes, and - so they can be constructed - so Public Development Authorities in the City of Seattle have a history of partnering with other public entities like Sound Transit to build housing near transit hubs. And so you have a light rail station and all of the airspace above it, so housing could be constructed on these public lands. And it can also then acquire housing off of the private market, and this is something that we imagine - we don't know for sure - and it'll very much depend on the board and the staff and what is available on the market once this is up and running, but you have lots of buildings that are going up on the market every day. We have a building which recently sold in the Capitol Hill neighborhood called the Madkin Apartments - this was what a lot of people would consider naturally occurring affordable housing - and the apartments were sold to an LLC. And the building will likely increase its rents to the point where most of the residents will have to move out. And so the Seattle social housing developer will be able to acquire buildings like that to keep them affordable for their current residents.
[00:20:35] Crystal Fincher: And will that require additional funds, allocations? Is this basically just a municipal authority entity that will need allocations - like any other entity - to perform their functions, I'm assuming?
[00:20:51] Camille Gix: Yeah, exactly. I think that as it first gets started up, it will require allocations from the city and state to be able to purchase these buildings, but again - they're also, even if it's purchasing a building that is already in existence, it would be much like an individual family purchasing a home. It can work still primarily off of debt - meaning that if it has enough for a down payment, then the rest of the funds would come through these municipal bonds, which would allow it to pay off the amount of the building over time. And then again, as the entity has more and more assets, it then has more funds to be able to acquire buildings without the need for city and state grants over time.
[00:21:37] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. So tell me more about how you're looking at the sustainability of this model when it comes to some people who may be of much lower incomes needing some form of subsidy - it looks like the plan is from other higher income residents in these buildings. Is that currently working? Is there a model where you're seeing mixed income public developments that are self-sustaining?
[00:22:06] Camille Gix: Yeah. So this is where it's really great to have this model in Maryland. So Montgomery County - their Housing Opportunities Commission is doing just that. They have been doing that for a number of years and recently have started an uptick in their production - because the county saw what they were doing and said it was great and they've started allocating more funds to their Housing Opportunities Commission, so they're growing at a higher rate now. And they have these buildings which are - they have the mix from very low income, the 0-30% Area Median Income levels, all the way up to market rate housing. And the market rate housing is - the rents from those high income earners are going back into the Housing Opportunities Commission to help to subsidize the 0-30%, 0-50% AMI earners - and it has been a very successful model. They've also built to Passivhaus standards, which is a standard of green building, that we've also written into our initiative. And they're just getting started, but over the last six to seven years, they've done a really wonderful job at building a large amount of housing to house people from this wide range of incomes.
[00:23:26] Crystal Fincher: And what are your thoughts, Tye?
[00:23:27] Tye Reed: Yeah - I love Camille a lot because she has so much knowledge about this initiative and she has just given us a really good overview of what this could be and how this could work. But I would like to say that the caveat to what she just described - and mentioning Maryland - is that there's a political will to do it. I think that one of the things we talk about a lot at House Our Neighbors - about the decision of about anything we do is - once this gets set up, there's nothing we can do to make it actually work. There's nothing that we can do to get the City to invest - if the City, if this actually gets passed and when this gets passed - and the City could see a recognized mechanism for actually building affordable housing - because we all are admitting we have a housing crisis - we could be having a budget allocation from lots of other places in the city budget that are going to waste. I would say the police department gets a blank check. But the idea of using not even experimental, but innovative housing solutions for our crisis that we're in - I think that's the caveat to what she's saying is - regardless of the numbers, regardless of how right it sounds, or what could or could not happen, I think that a lot of this is about the political will to actually invest in a solution that isn't only what we've been doing. And I commend Maryland County - or Montgomery County, Maryland - for actually seeing that this is something that they needed to invest in, and hopefully they continue to invest in it over the years to get that payout of actually housing people and maintaining housing affordability.
But once this gets passed, nothing that House Our Neighbors does is going to actually make it actually happen. We have to get people in office who are fighting to get some kind of capital investment in the budget every year. We have to have people in office who are willing to set aside some funds, who are willing to invest in the project, who are willing to have City lands be used to build upon, we have to have people in office willing to rezone the City so we can actually be building that kind of housing more. And so a lot of this is not just about what the mechanism is that we're putting in place. A lot of it is what's the political landscape of Seattle right now, which is of course a whole another discussion. But I wanted to add that on top of Camille's excellent explanation of this initiative.
[00:25:41] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much for that. And I also just want to talk a little bit more about the impacts on the ground. So we're talking about percentage of annual income. In terms of numbers and salary, what does that mean? Who would this potentially impact in the City of Seattle and what kind of difference can it make?
[00:26:02] Tye Reed: I'm sure Camille has more of the exact numbers, but when we're talking about housing people from 0-120% income - I think one of the criticisms we get online, so who knows whether it's valid or not, is that we shouldn't invest in anything that supports people who make 120%, just outright. And that doesn't really make sense, right? Because those are teachers, social workers, nurses, myself - people in the range of 80-120% aren't mega-rich people who have a lot of ability to choose anywhere that they live, especially if you're talking about people who are raising families. And so we're going to see a lot of this open up possibilities to actually making the city affordable, so that people aren't always paying 60% of their income, 70, 50% of their income on housing, right? It's about making it lower so that you can actually have a higher quality of life. Large swaths of the city are not making $150,000 and so they have some sort of flexibility in where they live. Everybody should have the right and have the ability to choose where they live in the city. And right now for lower income people, it is very limited. And this initiative hopes to change that and to stop displacement as well.
[00:27:16] Crystal Fincher: So Camille, what does that equate to in terms of an average, an annual salary for people in Seattle?
[00:27:23] Camille Gix: Yeah, so the 100-120% of the median income right now for an individual is just under $100,000. And so you have - it varies from household size - so if you have 1-4 people, it's going to change. But if you're an individual making about 120% of - sorry, $120,000/year - you would qualify to live in this housing. And like Tye said - this is nurses, this is some public school teachers who've been in the system for a long time - and these are people who currently don't qualify for any form of affordable housing. People who arbitrarily are denied affordability because they make an arbitrary - above an arbitrary threshold of money per year - and so you have that. And then there's also the component of - what I would just add to what Tye said as well - that right now a lot of our affordable housing programs, if you are currently - if your last year you made 75% of the Area Median Income, or about $75,000, you qualify for your affordable apartment. But you get a raise and you go up to 80% of the Area Median Income, or about $80,000/year, you're kicked out - you don't qualify for that apartment anymore and you have to go find something on the private market. And so what this is doing also is saying that - You change your income? Great. You stay in your housing and maybe your rent might adjust to your new income, but you don't need to go and find an entirely new apartment and pay market rates just because you're making a little bit more. And so I think that this not only applies to those people who are currently making 80-120% AMI, but it also applies to people who have denied raises or decided to work fewer hours in order to maintain their benefits in their apartments.
[00:29:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And Tye, the point you made just about how many people this does impact - that both of you have made about how many people this does impact - we are talking about shortages in teachers and nurses and drivers - and just so many people everywhere - transit workers. And those oftentimes are the types of people who are falling into this income bracket - the people who we rely on to make our community vibrant and beautiful and work. And we're excluding so many people from that and displacing so many people from Seattle. How will this make a difference? Do you anticipate that this is something that is a long-term solution that we need to get started on now? Is this something that can have a quick impact? How do you see this playing out if it's passed?
[00:30:15] Tye Reed: So a lot of that goes back to political willingness, right? I think that social housing, as we've described it, is objectively without question a long-term project. We should have built dozens of thousands of units years ago, and there's just no way to make up for that - even - there's just no way to do that by tomorrow, by next year, we've just made up that huge gap. But we have to start today. And even if - I don't think it's not going to pass, but say this doesn't pass - House Our Neighbors is dedicated to doing something this year then to make sure it happens - because this is a long-term project. This is a movement to stop displacing people. It's a movement to say that housing should be affordable to everybody, not just people who can afford to move here with a degree that grants you access. And so I think that it can happen pretty quickly - once it's set up, you have a team working on finding buildings to acquire, finding sources of funding. One of the things Camille didn't mention that I think will probably make leftists a little prickly, but I personally don't care, is that we could go after - this PDA could go after private donations, right? There's nothing stopping them from getting money from anybody who wants to provide those funds in order to start acquiring buildings and getting them into position to be part of the social housing network. And so I think that if we have councilmembers and we have a mayor who's interested, there's nothing stopping us from dumping money into this and just buying up - as every unit that comes onto the market - making sure everybody's part of this, getting people - I don't know the word for "grandfathered in" is - but really turning our housing market around and getting these units off of the private market so that they can actually be owned forever by the City. I think that that just depends who's in office and who has the interest.
And aside from all of the electoral power that I think people have - people power - how are we going to press people, once this is passed, to make sure that they're enacting it, that they're taking this seriously, that they put the right people on the board who are going to make sure that we're acquiring buildings quickly, making sure that we are buying buildings quickly, making sure that we have a financial advisor on that board who's going to be making bold decisions about what we can use our funds on. So there is no real answer to how this acts on its own. It is all going to be up to - what are elected officials willing to do? And when they don't do it, what are the people in the City willing to do to make them do it?
[00:32:51] Crystal Fincher: And that raises a big question. You talk about building political will - obviously, passing policy on the ballot is a significant undertaking. So what is the plan to actually communicate with the 150,000-200,000 people it's going to take to pass this, especially on a February ballot?
[00:33:15] Tye Reed: Luckily, the one thing we've encountered is that most people are on board. If you're talking about our Field team that's out canvassing and tabling - door knocking and all that stuff - a lot of people, once they've heard of it, are on board. I think a lot of people recognize that we are in a housing crisis and the City hasn't done anything to relieve it at all. So a lot of it has just been having conversations with people and talking to them about what their rent is and how things could be different. So getting people going - we've just had a really extensive field operation that started all the way in January, or basically - when did we file, March or whatever of last year - building that movement up. When we first launched ourselves, nobody really knew what we were doing or what we were talking about. And in the year that we've been working on this - two rounds of gathering signatures, hiring staff in order to make this operation go - we've been talking to more and more people, we're reaching out to more groups, getting more folks involved. And so - like I said before about this being like a movement, this is not just one thing that House Our Neighbors is working on and this isn't just one thing, one initiative that will be passed. It's about having conversations about - how do we make this city affordable through taxes, through rezoning, through minimum wage increases - whatever that might look like - we need to all be engaging in that conversation and working on it politically. And so House Our Neighbors and this initiative has started that conversation for a lot of people and propelled it for a lot of people who are already involved.
And so I think we've seen an increase in interest in this initiative, especially from people outside of the state who are really interested in making this happen. People want this to happen in other states and other cities because this is not unique to Seattle - no matter what people will tell you, this is happening nationwide. And so hitting up doors, talking to people in person - we have a lot of partners from different unions and organizations who have been putting their people on the streets with us and having conversations, putting our word in their newsletter. A lot of it has gone really far in order to educate, and most people - they hear about it - are not a No. So I'm sure we'll get some No votes, but I don't think it's going to be the hardest fight Seattle's ever seen for sure.
[00:35:27] Crystal Fincher: Do you have anything to add to that, Camille?
[00:35:29] Camille Gix: I think Tye did a great job at summing it up. And I think one of our volunteers said a few weeks ago after a canvass is - not a lot of people know about the initiative relative to the city population, but every person that we talk to about it - the vast majority, 90+% - are very enthusiastic about it when they hear about it. I know one of our field organizers was out yesterday and came across one of the first sort of tough conversations that he's had to do on this campaign. I was talking to some folks who are maybe a bit skeptical and - but after that door knock and that conversation, they both ended up signing pledge cards to pledge - they pledged to vote Yes on the initiative. And we definitely have skeptics out there, but I think that the enthusiasts far outweigh the skepticism.
[00:36:25] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. So are you looking at primarily continuing the field plan through the campaign? Is there also a communications plan happening? How does that look?
[00:36:36] Tye Reed: Yeah. I'm sure Camille will talk about that - Camille is very involved on the communications side. Yeah, the Field team is going strong. We have a launch coming up, actually, in three days. I don't know all the locations - Camille, you made the graphics, you probably do. We've got five or six locations that we're going to launch at to do a big canvass with different partners across the city. I think most - maybe if not all districts - most districts throughout the city to have that big Get Out The Vote launch. But we have been campaigning for weeks, right? We've been doing that for a long time already. And so there is a huge communications plan - we've gotten new flyers, we're working with a new graphic designer to create door knockers - which I'd never worked on a campaign that had door knockers, they're actually really cool - we have window signs, we're talking about yard signs. So that thing that Camille said about most people not knowing and - but when they find out they're supportive - our biggest campaign, other than going door to door, because that's only - that's limited to some degree - is making sure that people know about us on social media and through ads in different ways.
[00:37:42] Crystal Fincher: And did you want to add to that, Camille?
[00:37:44] Camille Gix: Yeah. Our biggest mission is - through our field and communications plan - is to raise awareness. That's our biggest task. The persuasion part has not been too difficult - there's not a lot to be persuaded on - people understand the crisis that we're in and people feel it personally. We have so many people who have told us their stories throughout this campaign of their - the rent gouging and being priced out of the city. And so the persuasion part is not our biggest issue. It's just raising awareness. And so we've got lots of really wonderful endorsers who are helping to write op-eds and send out mailers. And I think - yeah, we've got these different work groups of field and communications that's really just hoping to raise the awareness component of this initiative.
[00:38:33] Crystal Fincher: All right. And if people want to learn more or get involved with the initiative, how can they do that?
[00:38:39] Tye Reed: Volunteer! Go to HouseOurNeighbors.org, get involved. Like we said, we have canvasses and tables, but we also have lower key things like communications, which Camille does a lot of. There are so many things that House Our Neighbors is involved in and ways that people can plug in. We deliberately designed it that way so that folks who cannot canvass, who cannot do traditional campaigning, are able to be involved. So if you like phone banking, text banking, data entry, fiddling around improving our website - like whatever it is that you think you want to do to actually contribute to this movement, this growing movement of people fighting for social housing, fighting for housing affordability - you can participate, right? You can reach out. If it isn't something we're currently doing that meets your needs, we'll figure out some way to start doing that thing. And so I would say - a lot of the volunteers that we've had have actually become paid staff members because we are so deeply invested in working closely with our volunteers and hopefully maintaining this group of volunteers throughout the campaigns that House Our Neighbors does. So I would say go to HouseOurNeighbors.org. I think there's a Get Involved button that you can click on, sign up for newsletters, even if you're not interested in getting involved because we're gonna need to be reaching out to people and communicating a lot. So definitely go to the website.
[00:39:52] Crystal Fincher: All right. So thank you so much - to both you Tye, and you Camille - for joining us today. And we'll continue to follow this as it proceeds through its February election.
[00:40:04] Camille Gix: Thank you so much for having us.
[00:40:05] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks Week in Review, political consultant and show host Crystal Fincher is joined by fellow political consultant and urban farmer, Heather Weiner, for an enthusiastic conversation looking ahead to the 2023 Washington state legislative session, reviewing key announcements from a party leader and a city councilmember who aren’t running again, and discussing what makes for effective political mail.
Crystal and Heather start the show looking at what’s coming in the 2023 state legislative session. They highlight housing, drug possession laws, childcare, and education as key areas that our representatives will be working on in Olympia, and point out the mandate voters gave our leaders by electing for fighting for progressive reforms last November.
This week, state Democratic Party Chair Tina Podlodowski announced she will not be running for state chair again. Crystal and Heather review Podlodowski’s accomplishments as chair and compare her tenure to other state parties like New York. In more local news, Seattle City Councilmember Alex Pedersen announced he will also not be running for re-election this year, meaning that now three city council seats will not have an incumbent in their race.
After a brief discussion about Seattle’s I-135 Social Housing initiative, which will be decided on a February 14th ballot, Crystal and Heather have an in-depth conversation about what makes for effective political mail. It’s an informative discussion from two highly-accomplished experts in the field that you won’t want to miss!
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host Heather Weiner at @hlweiner.
Heather Weiner (she/her) is a political consultant with 30 years of experience on labor, environmental, LGBTQ, racial justice, and reproductive rights issues. She focuses on ballot initiatives, independent expenditures, legislative, union organizing and contract campaigns. She's a recovering lawyer.
Resources
Hacks & Wonks twitter - 2022 Stats
“Inslee Rolls Out ‘Substantial and Audacious’ Housing Agenda in Budget Proposal” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
“Voters sent clear message to WA leaders for 2023 Legislative session” by Andy Billig from The Seattle Times
“In 2023, WA lawmakers will decide the legal future of drug possession” by Joseph O’Sullivan from Crosscut
“Missing Middle Housing Reform Returns for 2023 Legislative Session” by Doug Trumm, Stephen Fesler, & Natalie Bicknell Argerious from The Urbanist
“What WA voters want to see from the 2023 legislative session” by Joseph O’Sullivan from Crosscut
“WA Democratic Party Chair Tina Podlodowski stepping down” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times
“Alex Pedersen Not Seeking Second Term on Seattle Council” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
“WA Supreme Court clears way for state to collect capital-gains tax” by Claire Withycombe from The Seattle Times
House Our Neighbors website - I-135 Overview and Text
“Catch Up on Seattle’s Social Housing Ballot Measure at Our January Meetup with Tiffani McCoy” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
Transcript
Coming Soon
On today’s midweek show, Crystal welcomes Senator Manka Dhingra, Chair of the Senate Law & Justice Committee, to preview the tough issues her committee will take on in the upcoming legislative session. Senator Dhingra walks through her data-driven and community-informed approach to legislating and how this lens guides her thinking on revisiting the Blake decision fix, a temporary solution put in place by the Legislature in 2021 when the Washington Supreme Court struck down the state’s drug possession law as unconstitutional. Despite widespread recognition of the need for a public health approach to substance use disorder, Crystal and Senator Dhingra lament the unfortunate political truth that the public is often ahead of elected officials and that the Blake fix will likely not be based on best practices.
The two then discuss the pushback from some in law enforcement interests in response to bills that restricted their use of high-speed vehicle pursuits and sought to hold officers liable for taking wrong actions. Senator Dhingra stands by these policies that solve the issues of unnecessary bystander deaths and community demands for reduction in police violence. Finally, the show wraps up with what a trauma-informed criminal justice system could look like, where implementation of the 988 crisis system is, and Senator Dhingra’s delightful tradition of introducing legislation from teenagers in her district.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Senator Manka Dhingra at @Dhingrama.
Senator Manka Dhingra
Manka Dhingra is Deputy Majority Leader of the Washington State Senate. She brings two decades of experience as a prosecutor to her role as Chair of the Senate Law & Justice Committee. She also serves on the Senate Health & Long Term Care Committee and Senate Ways & Means Committee.
In November 2017, Dhingra was elected to the Senate by the constituents of the 45th Legislative District, the first Sikh legislator in the nation. Since then, she has sponsored and passed legislation addressing a wide range of issue areas, including: curbing domestic violence and sexual assault, preventing firearm violence, providing property tax relief for seniors and people with disabilities, prosecuting financial fraud, and reforming the criminal justice system with an evidence-based approach.
During her time in the Senate, Dhingra has helped pass legislation and funding to transform the Washington State behavioral health system, reorienting it around prevention rather than crisis response. She continues to strive to ensure that Washingtonians with behavioral health needs get the treatment they need and deserve.
As a member of the Special Committee on Economic Recovery, she is helping the state craft an economic plan to lead an equitable recovery from the COVID economic downturn. She also serves on several task forces dedicated to reducing poverty, reforming the criminal justice system, improving equity in state government, and providing a sound and fair fiscal footing for the state.
Dhingra continues to serve as a Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. As Chair of the Therapeutic Alternative Unit, Manka helped develop and oversee the Regional Mental Health Court, the Veterans Court, and the Community Assessment and Referral for Diversion program. As a mental health and crisis intervention expert, she has also been an instructor at the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission for the 40-hour Crisis Intervention Training for law enforcement officers to reduce the risk of tragedy and improve the response to people in crisis.
Outside the courtroom, Dhingra is a community leader and anti-domestic violence advocate on the Eastside. She co-founded Chaya, an organization that assists South Asian survivors of domestic violence and led the organization’s work to end systemic violence through education and prevention. She also serves on the board of Hopelink.
Resources
Senator Manka Dhingra | Washington Senate Democrats
“With Dhingra’s Win, Democrats Take Control of the State Senate” by Hayat Norimine from SeattleMet
Q & A: The Blake Decision | ACLU of Washington
“In Last-Minute Move, Legislature Adopts New Approach to Drug Possession” by Paul Kiefer from PubliCola
“WA lawmakers try to thread needle on drug possession, to mixed reviews” by David Kroman from Crosscut
“Washington Voters Want to Decriminalize Drug Possession and Fund Substance Abuse Resources” by Anika Dandekar with Data For Progress
State v. Blake: ESB 5476 and behavioral health expansion | Washington Health Care Authority
“Not all crimes merit high-speed chases that risk bystanders’ lives” by Manka Dhingra in The Seattle Times
“Pursuits and Fatalities in WA since 2015” by Martina Morris from Next Steps Washington and Washington Coalition for Police Accountability
2021-2022 Washington State Legislature Policing Bills Explainer | People Power Washington
“State leaders prepare for implementation of the 988 call line” by Shane Ersland from State of Reform
“Meet the students who fought for free menstrual products at Washington schools — and won” by Sara Gentzler from The Olympian
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
So today I'm absolutely thrilled to have joining us the Deputy Majority Leader of the Washington State Senate, Manka Dhingra. Welcome.
[00:00:47] Senator Manka Dhingra: Thank you so much. It is such a pleasure to be here with you.
[00:00:50] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely a pleasure to have you - have followed your work and admired your work for quite some time. So you are also the Chair of the Senate Law & Justice Committee, you've done a lot of work. I just wanted to start off with - what was your path to the State Senate and what have you been working on?
[00:01:11] Senator Manka Dhingra: So I'll just say my path to the State Senate has been extremely unusual. I don't know anyone else who came into politics the way I did. I, as a young person, knew very early that I wanted to go to law school and that I wanted to be a prosecutor. I got involved in gender-based violence early on because my grandmother used to help survivors of domestic violence back in India. And so I went to law school, became a prosecutor with King County. I actually created and ran the first ever Therapeutic Alternative Unit where we really took a look at alternatives to incarceration, crisis intervention. I helped train law enforcement in the 40-hour crisis intervention training at the Criminal Justice Training Center. And I considered myself a good Democrat because I voted.
And then we had our 2016 national election. And for the first time in my life, I was actually having an Election Night party at my house because I really wanted my children to see the face of the first U.S. woman president. Clearly the night did not go as I had planned. And so I went to my first Democratic Party meeting that December. And when I went there, I can tell you that the room was full - packed - with women. When I looked around that room, I recognized so many of the PTSA moms. And most of us were there, again, for the very first time because we felt we had to do something. And I didn't know what that something would look like. And a very good friend of mine who was on city council saw me there and she said, We have to have coffee. And so we sat down for coffee and her first question was, Do you want to run for office? And my response was, I don't think I'm qualified. And she literally fell off her chair laughing. And later I realized what a cliché my response was because apparently that's what all of us women say - we think we're not qualified. So she kind of worked on me and we had a Senate seat that was available. And February 14th, I announced I was running for the Senate. So my entire political engagement from the time from my first meeting to me announcing for Senate was two months.
[00:03:25] Crystal Fincher: Wow. Well, and then you ran in a district where your victory was certainly not guaranteed - very competitive race - where you were successful and victorious and a first yourself, the first Sikh member of our state Senate. How did you use all of your lived experience in the Senate and how was your first term?
[00:03:56] Senator Manka Dhingra: So the election was exciting because my seat actually flipped our State Senate. So our Senate was controlled by the Republicans and when I won, Democrats got in control. So the first session was actually pure chaos because we'd had gridlock in Olympia for so many years because we really couldn't pass meaningful bills. We had a session that would go into special session year after year because budgets couldn't be agreed upon. The year I was running, there were three special sessions and they still did not have all their budgets passed. And so when I won, normally people have orientation or some kind of onboarding. But when I won - because of the change - we had new Chairs, all this legislation that had been blocked for so many years like the flood gates had opened. So it was a very exciting time because I think we just passed such amazing progressive legislation and really were this beacon of light for the entire country on what a progressive legislation could look like or what a progressive state can look like. But I got to tell you, I was kind of lost in the mix there. But luckily I was able to hold my own and was very proud of the nine bills I passed my first session.
[00:05:16] Crystal Fincher: And what were some of those bills?
[00:05:17] Senator Manka Dhingra: So a lot of those bills were things that had really irked me for a very long time as an attorney and as a prosecutor. So there were a lot of bills around helping survivors of domestic violence, there were bills around sexual assault, around trafficking, and I had a Medicaid fraud unit bill, work around behavior health because I have been very concerned about mental illness and substance use disorder in our state. And normally when you're a first-time legislator, they do this thing on the Senate floor where your first bill - people actually kind of tease you a little about it or kind of give you a hard time. And when they looked at all my bills, they were all of such serious matters that they couldn't figure out which one should be my first bill. And so actually the Medicaid fraud unit was my first bill because that was the least serious about my other bills. But this was legislation that I knew that had to be fixed and we needed to do it. And frankly, I think the reason why I was so successful is because most of my bill ideas come from people who do the work and are able to really articulate what the problems are and then have the solutions because they're the experts in that field. And so I have maintained that manner of doing my work - is really making sure I hear from the people on the ground doing the work.
[00:06:42] Crystal Fincher: And you have built that reputation of being very in touch with the community, of reaching out to stakeholders for your various bills, making sure that you speak with, inform, get feedback from people who are involved with and impacted by legislation you're proposing and the issues you're trying to address. One such issue was spurred by the Blake decision - that the Supreme Court found in our state - that essentially decriminalized personal use possession. And because of some challenges that that presented, like a potential patchwork of different laws passed by different cities all throughout the state, the Legislature decided to take action to try and pass one uniform policy all across the state. What was your approach to that and where did that end up?
[00:07:30] Senator Manka Dhingra: Thank you. That is really the issue and the question that has been - people have been interested in for the last two years. Any time legislation is required, my question always is why? And what you gave in your question was really one of the reasons why we knew that legislation - is because we wanted a uniform way of making sure enforcement is the same for people, that they're not treated differently because they're using at a different intersection down the street. So that's why we wanted to make sure we had state legislation. This decision came out in the middle of session, so the timing was not optimal.
And then it was very important to me to have a solution that is based on best practices and that is practical. So the original bill that I had was actually based on what the policy of the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office was, along with a lot of the other prosecuting attorney's offices around the state. Because what we found at that time is - a lot of people doing this work had realized - that dealing with substance use disorder, it's not a criminal justice issue, it's a public health issue. And treating it like a criminal justice issue is what has really led us to where we are today. But you have to make sure you're focused on getting people into the treatment that they need. And so I was really trying to come up with a solution that said you have to have public health lead. And you also have to understand that while using the substance shouldn't be illegal, if there's criminal activity around that - like theft, criminal trespass, possession of weapons - that is still a criminal offense, but really being able to focus on treatment. So after a lot of negotiations, because I'll tell you, elected officials are very nervous of criminal justice issues. And I come from it differently because I practiced for 17 years. And we unfortunately did not get a bill that was based on best practices. We came close, but not quite.
So what became the law of the land is that law enforcement was going to offer diversion the first two times that they came into contact with an individual. And then only after that would they refer that for a criminal case. And we took this opportunity to really provide a lot of resources for treatment - so we ensured that we had substance use disorder navigators who can help get people into treatment, we provided funding for treatment like Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, to wraparound teams like HOST - Homeless Outreach Stabilization Teams, PACT - these assertive community treatment models. So really making sure that those resources go hand-in-hand, because if people have no place to go and they don't have treatment, nothing's going to really work.
I also wanted to make sure that because we were creating this in the middle of session, that we had an expiration date. So I insisted that this law expire in three years. And we created a committee or task force made up of a wide variety of individuals - people with lived experience, people in the treatment community, housing people, law enforcement, prosecutors, defense - everyone who deals with this issue to come together to come up with recommendations. So those recommendations have officially been made. And our law expires this 2023, so we as the Legislature have to actually pass another substance use disorder law to make sure that we're, again, pushing ourselves to doing things that are based on - with best practices.
[00:11:16] Crystal Fincher: Now the bill did not end up - at that time what passed - was not what you were ultimately happy with and didn't earn your vote at that time. But you did say that - because of some of those things that were funded, you really wanted to focus on getting those implemented and working across the state, because it's important to - if someone is going to make a referral for treatment or for services, that those services be available. And we were in a situation where those were not available in sufficient quantities around the state and people may not have been able to get their needs met. Where do those stand today? How far have we made it in terms of implementation and availability of services?
[00:12:02] Senator Manka Dhingra: So I'll just say - on paper - the funding, the availability of services looked amazing. And then COVID hit. And one of the biggest barriers became COVID, because we weren't really able to implement everything that we wanted to. We had inpatient treatment services that had to be dramatically reduced because of social distancing - they had to limit their bed capacity. And so it's very challenging to talk about how successful or not successful this program could have been because it was greatly hampered by COVID. And we know from years and years of data and just knowing how humans behave - that when there is a huge incident like COVID - people do tend to self-medicate because of anxiety and depression. And we saw that. We saw use of alcohol and drugs go up exponentially because people were dealing with trauma. And so the combination of factors made it a lot more challenging. And so the resources weren't able to be deployed as timely as we would have liked. Now we're in a position - with this summer, we were able to do statewide deployment of the substance use navigators, so now they're around. We have funded a lot more options for law enforcement assisted diversions. So we have this program set up, but unfortunately we also had a lot of inpatient treatments that actually closed - because of COVID and their not being sustainable.
The other issue also became is - there are a lot of individuals who really feel that there has to be an option for court-directed treatment - the court has to force you to do treatment. And so one of the things we had talked about is - if you want the option of that, you still have that through Drug Court, Mental Health Court, Veterans Court - if people engage in other criminal activity in addition to substance use disorder. We also have a civil commitment statute - we have Involuntary Treatment Act - we have assisted treatment where if you really want it to be court-ordered, you can do it through the civil system. And so we were really hoping to ramp up our civil system to do that. And again, due to COVID and what happened with our judicial system, we weren't really able to get there.
So I would say where we are now from when the bill was passed - not as far along as we would have liked. And we simply haven't had the time to give these programs the setup that they actually needed. So in an ideal situation, I would have liked to see one more year of us working under this bill to really see what's working and what's not, and then come up with a different solution. But unfortunately we don't have that time and COVID did make things more challenging in terms of implementation.
[00:15:00] Crystal Fincher: So in terms of these programs and what was funded and addressing the capacity and now increased staffing issues with a lot of these services, is there going to be a push for increased funding? Does the existing funding already cover the implementation? What action needs to be taken from the legislature to ensure that in another year's time we are where we do want to be?
[00:15:24] Senator Manka Dhingra: So absolutely the funding needs to continue and it will. The cities and the counties that do have the programs up and running - because it was a gradual start - have actually shown really positive results. We are seeing individuals getting the help they need. We have had law enforcement in those areas actually appreciate the resources that have been provided to the community to do this work. We also have to take a look at - how do we staff inpatient units? The way we pay them for per bed usage doesn't really work when you have pandemics because a third of the beds can't be used. So if you're only paying them for the beds, they can't do full staffing if they're not allowed to use a third of their beds. So we really have to rethink what that payment for treatment looks like. And there've been some really interesting ideas on integration, and paying for the whole person, and paying for programs rather than for each beds. And that's what COVID really taught us - being really creative on how we are supporting some of our community clinics, so I think you're going to see some really exciting stuff coming in on more integrated community-led efforts. Our federal government, in the last two years under President Biden, has really made a lot of federal dollars available for us to do this work. And Washington is really set up very well to take advantage of these federal dollars. I think it's still an exciting time and - it always gets darkest before the light, but I do think we are going to be turning the corner on the opioid epidemic.
[00:17:06] Crystal Fincher: I hope so. And so now you're going to be taking up this legislation again - you're forced to - and many people were supportive of the sunset and revisiting of this legislation this session. It looks like there, once again, is a mixed variety of opinions on the right way forward this session. And it looks like there are a growing amount of people, supported by what looks like changing public sentiment, or absolutely a number of polls in support of a public health approach as opposed to a criminalized approach to substance use disorder and possession of personal amounts. Is there the opportunity this session to move towards a full public health approach and move away from criminalization of personal possession of substances?
[00:17:59] Senator Manka Dhingra: I wish I could tell you there was. This is unfortunately the truth in politics that I've learned - is that normally the public is way ahead of elected officials. Over and over again, I've heard from the public that when they see their loved one, their neighbor, their friend, or even the stranger struggling with substance use disorder, they want treatment. The first response isn't to send someone to prison. And so the recommendation out of this committee - it's actually called SURSAC [Substance Use Recovery Services Advisory Committee] - was for decriminalization of personal use. And so the bill that I will be sponsoring is based on the committee's recommendation, because I think it's really important to honor that work. That work and their conclusions are based on best practices, it's data driven through looking at what has worked around the world - not just in the United States - because we know this is a worldwide problem. We don't have the votes for that in the Senate or in the House. So I'll have my bill, which is based on best practices and data. We are going to have another bill by Senator Robinson, who is going to take a lot of the treatment recommendations coming out of that group, but it does make possession of personal use a gross misdemeanor. It encourages diversion, but that's where it's at. We're going to have other individuals who may want to make it back as a felony - I don't think there's appetite at all to have it be a felony because that has failed so miserably. And I know there's some interest in making it a misdemeanor. All of those have issues, right? No one is going to agree on one version of it, but I think the best decisions are always the decisions that are made when they're data-driven. I don't think our legislature is there. I don't think the Blake fix is going to be evidence-based or data-driven. It will criminalize personal drug use with a lot of options for diversion. And the hope really is that the prosecutors, the judges are in a position to make those referrals. The hope really is that community resources come in and are able to help people outside of the criminal justice system. I'm a little disappointed, but that's human nature. All you can do is continue to make the case on trying to do things that work.
[00:20:40] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely.
[00:20:41] Senator Manka Dhingra: But people are driven by fear.
[00:20:43] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And appreciate your continued work to continue to make the case and for standing by that when it comes to voting. Is there the opportunity with this to implement another sunset - for as you said, as we get more infrastructure set up around the state, accounting for the COVID delays and challenges, that maybe we get to revisit this in another couple of years?
[00:21:08] Senator Manka Dhingra: You know, I'm not sure about that - we'll have to see how it works. The reality is you can have whatever laws you want - it depends on what implementation looks like. So when the Blake decision came out, the current individuals who were charged with drug possession cases - all those cases had to be dismissed. And if they were in custody, they had to be released. Now, I was very curious to know how many of those individuals currently existed, because I had heard and know that most of these cases weren't being prosecuted - that they were actually being deferred. And that was actually true. People thought the Drug Courts would close - they didn't. There were very few Drug Courts that actually had individuals that were only there for drug possession cases, because the culture of enforcement has changed so much. Because the people that do that work know that having someone go through the court system or look at incarceration does not improve the substance use disorder. It actually makes it worse. And so practically, there were not people in Drug Court to any significant degree when this decision came out. And that's why I tried to tell people - that there was already that recognition in our criminal justice system that said, We're not prosecuting these individuals, they're being offered diversions at the time of booking. Or they end up pleading guilty to a reduced sentence and finish that time in jail and leave. So there is a disconnect between the laws on our book and what is being implemented. And I think all we can do is actually make that community treatment program really robust and provide those resources, and destigmatize substance use disorder so that people can actually feel comfortable going for treatment and acknowledging that they have a problem.
[00:22:56] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. Another issue that has been an issue that has been talked about throughout the community has been those surrounding police pursuits. High speed vehicle chases - I suppose some may not be at high speeds - but pursuing people who they suspect of fleeing because of some crime or being wanted for a reason. And lots of talk in the community and data and evidence about the injuries and deaths caused by police pursuits - and really weighing whether the risk of pursuit is worth it in cases where someone is not wanted for a violent crime and people's health and wellbeing seem to be in immediate jeopardy, as opposed to a property crime or something else like that. What is the work that you've done on that? And do you anticipate that being an issue? Where do you stand on that?
[00:23:53] Senator Manka Dhingra: I go back to the way I deal with legislation - I start off with what is the problem you're trying to solve? So when it came to police pursuits, the question was - what is the problem we're trying to solve? And the problem we were trying to solve is data that came out that said 50% of the people that are killed during police chases are individuals that have nothing to do with the incident. These are innocent bystanders who get killed. And that number is at 50% in the state. That is an unacceptable number. So we took a look and said, OK, how can we reduce that number? And so the police pursuit bill that was passed by the Senate and the House and signed into law is one that's actually based in best practices. It was based on a policy that very closely mirrored what a lot of our cities were already doing. So we do have some cities that had very similar policies and others that frankly were not good partners in doing this work. And so we passed that. There were a few cities who didn't really have to change their policies because that is what their official policy was. And there were others that were forced to change their policy. And this is exactly what you mentioned, Crystal - it is about doing that analysis. We made sure that if it's a domestic violence case, you can pursue the vehicle. If it's a case involving violence, you can pursue the vehicle. If it's a DUI, you can pursue the vehicle. But when it comes to property, we said, No, you can't - because there are other ways to catch an individual in today's day and age. And guess what? We haven't had innocent people dying since this policy was enacted. So did we solve the problem of not having 50% of the fatalities be uninvolved? We absolutely did. We do not have innocent people dying in vehicle pursuits.
And I've heard criticism that, Oh, people are just fleeing and not getting caught. And I've asked the question, Are they not getting caught in that instant? Are they getting arrested the next day or a few days later? Guess what? They're being arrested, they're just arrested a few days later. And now they're being charged with a felony - attempting to elude - because they fled. So I know that there are cities and law enforcement agencies that want us to go back on our vehicle pursuit bill. And I have asked them for data - because I do tend to be data-driven - and I've said, Show me how many people have not been caught because of this data. The only data they can show me is the number of pursuits is up. And I'm like, And what happens the day after? Because when they share the stories with me, they always end with, Oh, yes, and we caught the guy two days later or the next day. And so again, I think for those who want us to change our policy, I come back with what is the problem you're trying to solve and where is the data supporting that? And I have not seen the data that tells me that this is the wrong policy.
[00:26:53] Crystal Fincher: Well, and I appreciate the approach you take in being very data-driven because really - there's a lot of conflicting information out there. There's a lot of people who sometimes are scared just by change. And so looking at what the situation actually is based on evidence makes a lot of sense. This was an issue with a number of bills around public safety in prior sessions where there - in 2020 - where a number of accountability bills passed. And then following that, some seeming cold feet amid pushback from some law enforcement officials and others saying, Well, you have prevented us from being able to do our jobs and you're putting public safety at risk by holding us more accountable. What was your take on that, and on some of the legislation that rolled back some of the accountability progress that was made?
[00:27:53] Senator Manka Dhingra: When people started saying - Oh, the Legislature prevented us from doing our work, my question was - No, we made sure you can be held liable for taking wrong actions. If they choose not to act because they're afraid of liability, that is not the Legislature preventing them from doing their job. It's that they have to relearn how to do their job. Or go back to best practices that they were taught - but over time, those practices have kind of gone away because you just kind of start doing what everyone else does and not really focus on best practices.
And the bottom line is this. We had to do all of that work because of George Floyd. And the years and years and years of Black people telling us that they're being killed at the hands of law enforcement and frankly, the world not listening - until we had COVID, was stuck in our house, didn't have any new Hollywood movies coming out or new TV shows coming out - and we had to watch the video that was captured. And finally acknowledge and say, Yes, what people have been saying is true and real. We, as elected officials, have to do something about it. So it comes down to, again, what is the problem that we were trying to solve? And the problem is that Black and Brown men and women are treated unfairly with law enforcement. And when you see that so blatantly and so starkly that you cannot make excuses for it anymore, like we have been for decades, you have to do something and you cannot do business as usual. There has to be accountability. And like you said, change is hard. People don't like making change. But unless they do it themselves, it is thrusted upon them and that is - the job of electeds and the Legislature is to make sure we are standing up for each and every human being. I represent cities like Duvall and Woodinville, Redmond, Kirkland - each and every one of these cities had a Black Lives Matter protest - down in Duvall, Woodinville, Redmond, Kirkland. I was there at all of them. This is something that our population demanded and the Legislature provided. And it's going to take a while for people to make the changes, but these are changes that are needed. We are an outlier in the United States when it comes to fatalities at the hand of law enforcement. No other country has that rate like the US does. And it's time we took it seriously and put in practices that are going to prevent it.
[00:30:46] Crystal Fincher: Agreed. And as you talked about before, lots of times the public is more in tune with data and reality - because they're living it - than some of the elected officials. We just saw in these past elections in November where we had a county prosecutor race where people with two very different views were running. One focused on more punitive punishment measures, focused a lot on criminalization and focusing on that. Another one who's saying, Okay, we're not going to not follow the law, but we need to follow the evidence and start to pursue policies, or continue the path of pursuing policies like diversion that have been shown to be more successful in helping people get on a productive path to not commit any more crimes and to reduce the amount of people who are victimized. As you continue through this path of various legislation in this session, what is your message to people who do say that police accountability gets in the way of public safety?
[00:31:54] Senator Manka Dhingra: And I just say that is absolutely not true. Holding someone responsible for bad actions has nothing to do with public safety. Public safety is about your perception of safety. You can talk about domestic violence and I can tell you, and I'm going to say mostly women - because we are talking mostly women who are victims or survivors - they have not felt safe in their house for decades. And people will not say that that is a public safety issue because they're thinking about what happens when they walk down the street, not what is happening in their own home. When we talk about sexual assault, it's a different concept of public safety. When we talk about trafficking, it's different. And so we have to - when we talk about public safety, it's not about property crimes. It's about individuals feeling safe - at home, in their school, or out in the street. And so we have to be focused on human safety and them feeling safe in whatever environment they're in. Right now when people talk about public safety, they're only talking about car thefts, and thefts from businesses, and graffiti, and seeing people using drugs on the street - that's not public safety. Those all tend to be public health issues and systems that aren't funded appropriately. And frankly, the systemic racism that has occurred in this country for generations that has allowed these wealth inequities.
So we have to talk about public safety as the human feeling safe. And I can tell you - it is women, women of color who are most at risk of being victims of public safety, but we don't talk about that. I do. And that is how I frame these issues is - we have done a terrible job when it comes to investigating, reporting, prosecuting sexual assault. Same thing about domestic violence, same thing about trafficking. And when you take a look at the ills in our society, it comes down to gender-based violence. It comes down to our children being raised in households where they see domestic violence, the trauma that occurs through there. So public safety is a lot more complicated than seeing there's a rise in their concerns about public safety - because when you really take a look at the holistic concept of public safety, there isn't. And I'll just say for decades, crime in our country has been reducing. Then the last three years, because of the pandemic, you've seen a rise in violence and a rise in crimes, but overall, when you take a look at trend over decades, we are at a downward trend. It is still the best time to live in America right now than it ever has been. That is actually true. Technology is there to help us, we have more access to resources, there are more people being fed, and there are more people who are actually safe. So let's try to change that conversation on public safety because the sound bites are not based in reality.
[00:34:55] Crystal Fincher: They really aren't. And it looks like by these - once again - most recent election results, the public recognizes that and wants to move towards more evidence-based solutions. I also want to talk about - you talk about who are most often victims of crime. And when we talk about victims, so often it's in the context of, Well, victims would want this person punished. And what are you going to say to the victims if this person doesn't spend a whole bunch of time in jail? But it seems like we engage less on - how do we actually best support victims? How do we do that? And how can we do better?
[00:35:32] Senator Manka Dhingra: That is such a great question. Thank you so much for framing it the way you just did because that's absolutely true. People - because of TV shows - mostly have this image of this victim who's like this innocent, fragile, vulnerable person who has never done anything wrong in her life. That is not who the victim is. Victims are as complicated as any single human being. And many times when you take a look at a victim of crime, especially in our society, they're not strangers. You normally know the perpetrator of violence, and there's that connection. And so when you talk about what the victim wants, it isn't necessarily punishment or prison time for 20 years. It is much more nuanced and much more complicated. As I mentioned, I used to run the Therapeutic Alternative Unit, and we really used to make sure - we were the first in the country, actually, to not have any criminal history that's a bar to participate in this program. But I insisted that part of this program, we have a victim advocate. And that when there were crimes involving victims, that the victim's voice would be part of what the resolution is. And I cannot tell you - over and over again, when you provided victims the resources and the services and you explained the program, they wanted that defendant to go through that program. Because they want that person to get better, they want to make sure that what happened to them doesn't happen to anyone else. And when the victim feels supported and has resources on their own, they can actually deal with their own trauma and move on - because no one wants to hold on to that hurt and that anger. It is not good for anybody. But unless we as a society can provide those resources and that support, the victims aren't going to get better. And when they don't, you just have that cycle over and over again.
And one of the bills that I'm really proud of - I passed a couple of years ago - and it was about making sure that if you are a survivor of domestic violence, sexual assault or trafficking, when you are on your path to recovery, you can get your criminal history, your convictions expunged. And the reason I really wanted that bill is because - trauma exerts itself as a reaction, not just as a memory. And so there are so many people in the criminal justice system who are survivors - they're survivors of violence. And they're engaging in the criminal justice system because of that trauma. And we don't have a criminal justice system that is trauma-informed. We're trying to get there. But being trauma-informed means you have to understand that anyone coming into that system may and most probably has suffered trauma. And unless you deal with that underlying trauma, you're going to continue on that cycle. So I think there's a lot more work we need to do in being trauma-informed throughout our criminal justice system.
[00:38:31] Crystal Fincher: Well, I appreciate that and appreciate your work. And also, your work on the 988 system. Can you explain what that is and where that stands in terms of implementation?
[00:38:43] Senator Manka Dhingra: Absolutely - you're asking about my favorite bills. I've been working with the mental health community for a very long time in my other job as a Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney. And one of the things people have wanted for a very, very long time is a mental health crisis line. Because it's not illegal to be mentally ill, yet we call 911 and have law enforcement show up. And so 988 is a national number that went live in July. And we took this opportunity in the state of Washington to create an entire crisis system around 988. So right now, if anyone who needs help - if they're suicidal or in crisis, that's a mental health substance use disorder crisis - they can call 988. The 988 phone number is actually staffed by mental health professionals - individuals who are trained in how to deescalate and help with situations. And so we made sure that we provided funding for the people responding to the calls - that they had the credentials needed to do this work. We made sure that these hubs of 988 are actually going to - in the next few years, they are going to have a mobile response team that is made up of community mental health professionals along with peers. We are connecting 911 and 988 in the sense that there's cross-training - because a lot of the calls that come to 911 are actually mental health calls. So we want them to be able to transfer those calls through 988. And there may be times when a call comes into 988, but there's a weapon involved or a gun involved, and they need that help from 911. So we're working on cross-training and some kind of cross-mobilization.
But what we have found is - from other states that have done some of this work - is that when you have a mental health professional answering these calls, 90% of the calls are able to be resolved. The 10% that need someone to show up for them - 7% can be handled with a mental health professional going out along with a peer, and only 3% need law enforcement. And so being a lot smarter about how we are responding to people in crisis - because they don't need to go to jail, most of them don't even need to go to an emergency room. We also took this opportunity to set up a structure where we can have more technology and data. We would love to do a bed tracking system, so someone who needs help - the 988 operator can take a look and know that there is a bed available for them, that they can connect them to treatment. Come January, our state mandates next-day appointments. So if you call the crisis line, your insurance or Medicaid - whatever it can be - is mandated that the next day you are going to go see somebody. And that's going to be a game changer because you're making sure people get the treatment they need when they need it.
So I am super excited about this system. More work to be done on it, but we are well on our path to do it. We - normally, in the state of Washington, while we can be proud of so much, we are not the state that is in the top 10 for mental health services, but our 988 bill is the national model in the country. And I have to say, I was very proud - with Representative Orwall who sponsored the bill, and I - both of us got an award, actually a national award, recognizing us for our 988 bill. So very, very exciting time and so much more to come on this.
[00:42:20] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. And what do you say to people who are concerned that - who are trying to avoid a situation that may be escalated, especially with some of the challenges that law enforcement have in responding to and deescalation, deescalating situations - whether it's people of color, or disabled people, or people in crisis - that calling 988 could result in a law enforcement response or an involuntary confinement for behavioral health treatment.
[00:42:53] Senator Manka Dhingra: When I said the numbers on the percentage of calls and the manner in which they're dealt with, what you find is when you have the right resources right at the beginning, you don't need law enforcement, you don't need civil commitment because you are able to, again, use your motivational interviewing skills. You're able to offer people services and support. That next-day appointment is critical. Because if they're willing to go see someone - a doctor, a nurse, a mental health specialist, whoever that person may be - they don't need to be involuntary treatment, ITA'ed as they call it, because they're going in for treatment. So you have to make early intervention options available as much as possible. There are always those individuals who may need a high level of care, so you have to make sure that you are able to meet them wherever they are - but you got to make sure you're providing early intervention. I will have a bill next session that actually sets up these facilities called 23-hour facilities. And so the hope really is that those individuals who can't wait for the next-day appointment, that we are actually able to take them to these 23-hour facilities where the hope really is that they're there for 23 hours - because they can't stay there longer than that - and then you have to have a transition plan on how you're going to get them connected to other services and support. And that's what we have found is that - the right intervention at the right time - really, people want help, that's why they're calling. They're not calling because they actually want to kill themselves. It's because they're like, Help me, I'm afraid I'm going to do this. And so you have to provide the help that they're asking for.
[00:44:31] Crystal Fincher: Much appreciated. I appreciate you taking the time to go through all of this with us today. As we close, I wanted to talk about one of my favorite things that you, or any legislator does - and that is working with youth. How do you do that? And what were you able to accomplish?
[00:44:49] Senator Manka Dhingra: I love working with our youth. When I first ran for office five years ago - at that time, my kids were 13 and 15. And I used to coach Destination Imagination, and Math Team, and a lot of teams. And so I had to tell them that, Hey, I'm going to run for office, so I'm going to have to step aside from coaching these teams. And the teens were like, Can we help? And I'm like, Yes. So I had 250 teenagers helping me on my first and second campaign - no one had heard, seen so many teenagers working on a campaign. And so my promise to them was - I will continue engaging with them. So I sponsor bills that have been brought to me by teens every year for the last five years.
And my favorite bill for next session is going to be one - is one - that's been brought to me by teens in my district. And that's around eliminating gender-based pricing. They literally went to Target and Costco and took pictures of a bike helmet that's pink in color and the exact same helmet - same company, same everything - that's blue in color. And the blue helmet is for $20 and the pink helmet is for $25. And they even did that with adult diapers. I didn't know this, but apparently women's adult diapers are much more expensive than men adult diapers - no clue why. So I'm going to have that bill next session - I'm super excited about it. But these teens are the ones that made sure we now have menstrual products in all our schools and college bathrooms. We no longer, in Washington, pay taxes on menstrual products. And it's not just this stuff they care about - they care about access to mental health treatment and services, and substance use disorder, and criminal justice reform. You name it, and these teens want to make positive changes. And I cannot tell you how excited I feel looking at the next generation.
[00:46:44] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And this isn't even the first bill that they've brought to you. In fact, we have better access to menstrual products because of youth bringing up legislation, correct?
[00:46:54] Senator Manka Dhingra: Absolutely. They really want to make sure that they can change the world. And that bill came about because of a conversation I was having with some of the teens. And the teens in the Redmond High School said they have menstrual products in their school. And I knew that teens in Kent and Moses Lake did not. And they started talking about how that's just not fair - that our school districts in more affluent communities are actually providing menstrual products than schools that are not in affluent areas. And guess who needs it more? And so just the fact that these teens think about access - and think about who is getting services and resources and who isn't - is just heartwarming for me. And the fact that they're willing to fight for others. So yes, all schools in Washington and colleges provide menstrual products in bathrooms now.
[00:47:51] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And if people want to learn more about the work that you're doing or support legislation that you have, what's the best way for them to get engaged?
[00:48:00] Senator Manka Dhingra: The best way is to email my office, or get a hold of me on social media, and subscribe to my newsletter. If anyone is interested in any particular bill or issue, my office can help you get connected to how to get more information. But check out our website, leg.wa.gov - they have a lot of resources on how you can follow a bill, how you can sign up to testify. Our hearings are all hybrid, so you can testify on an issue from the comfort of your home or your car - as long as you're not driving. And if you don't want to testify, you can send in written testimony or simply show your support for a bill or opposition to a bill - and all of that gets counted. And democracy is not an individual sport - it is a team sport. You got to play and you got to be part of a team - and that's the only way we make our world better.
[00:48:56] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much today, Senator Manka Dhingra, for joining us and for sharing all of the work that you're doing.
[00:49:02] Senator Manka Dhingra: Thank you so much. This was a great conversation and I loved absolutely chatting about these tough issues with you.
[00:49:09] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you and we will stay in touch.
Thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Post-Production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can follow me @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week in review, political consultant and host Crystal Fincher is joined by the former Director of Progressive Majority who has now transitioned into public service but remains involved in numerous political efforts across Washington, EJ Juárez.
Crystal and EJ start the show discussing the challenges Washington’s infrastructure faced over the last week because of extreme weather and violent actors. Seattle was hit with a major ice storm late last week that caused widespread transit cancellations that showed severe limitations in our infrastructure’s resilience that need to be addressed through accountability and investing for future climate emergencies. Meanwhile, electrical substations in Pierce County were attacked on Christmas, cutting off power for thousands of residents in the area. These attacks, along with the arrest of a man suspected of placing a pipe bomb in a SODO parking garage, have not yet had motivations revealed by law enforcement officials, but they reinforce both the rise of domestic terrorism and the vulnerabilities in our state’s infrastructure.
In infrastructure news further south, the team overseeing the replacement of the Columbia River highway crossing reported earlier this month that the cost of the project has increased by more than $2.5 billion, moving the projected cost to a range of $5.5 billion to $7.5 billion. This increased cost again raises the question of whether the original assumptions behind the project are accurate, and whether policymakers will be willing to rein in scope and cost of the plan.
A newly proposed King County measure would implement a modest property tax to provide $1.25 billion towards behavioral health supports. Unfortunately, the funding doesn’t cover all of the county’s needs, and it would be decided by an April ballot, which will be a challenge electorally.
To end the episode, Crystal and EJ discuss a Real Change News story revealing multiple instances over the past two years where city officials knew that there wasn’t enough shelter to offer Seattle’s homeless citizens, and, despite that, continued to sweep homeless encampments. The current approach of sweeping encampments without getting people into stable housing is widely recognized as ineffective, expensive and inhumane.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host EJ Juárez at @EliseoJJuarez.
Resources
“Bus Service Suspended, Only Light Rail Forging On As Seattle Area Blanketed in Ice” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
“Massive winter storm brings rolling blackouts, power outages” by Jill Bleed and Heather Hollingsworth from The Seattle Times
“What motivated the Pacific Northwest substation attacks?” by Hal Bernton and Sydney Brownstone from The Seattle Times
“Man arrested in connection to pipe bomb found in Sodo parking garage” by Daisy Zavala Magaña from The Seattle Times
“Washington State Is Losing Control of the Columbia Interstate Bridge Replacement Megaproject” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist
“King County measure would put $1.25 bn over a decade toward behavioral health crises” by Guy Oron from Real Change News
“Earlier this year, encampment removals continued despite an acknowledged lack of shelter” by Tobias Coughlin-Bogue from Real Change News
Transcript
Coming Soon
Note: In light of the growing body of news and evidence that the King County Jail is dangerous and ineffective at improving safety, the Hacks & Wonks team decided to re-air this illuminating episode about the harm that jail and the current bail system causes our community.
On this Hacks & Wonks midweek show, Chanel Rhymes, Director of Advocacy at the Northwest Community Bail Fund, joins Crystal Fincher to discuss our desperate need for bail reform. The NCBF is dedicated to ending cash bail and pretrial detention in Washington state. They do advocacy for reform, court watching to hold the system accountable, and they raise funds to provide bail for people who can’t afford it on their own.
Chanel explains the difficulties that jailing people prior to a conviction causes for people before they’re even convicted of a crime, and dispels criticisms of bail funds as being dangerous for the community, rather than being a correction against systemic inequality. Crystal and Chanel also breakdown recent data on bail reform that shows that bail reform and eliminating pretrial detention for misdemeanors actually reduces crime in the long run, and doesn’t negatively impact whether people show up to court.
You can find information on the Northwest Community Bail Fund and resources for its court watching program in the links below.
Chanel Rhymes
Chanel Rhymes is the Director of Advocacy for the Northwest Community Bail Fund. Prior to joining the Northwest Community Bail fund, Chanel served as the Court Program Analyst for the Washington Supreme Court Minority and Justice Commission, executing the mission of ensuring that all courts in the state of Washington remain free of bias so that justice might be adjudicated in a neutral and fair manner. Previously, she was a Program Manager for the Freedom Education Project of Puget Sound where she developed and coordinated college courses for women seeking to attain their AA degrees while incarcerated at the Washington Correction Center for Women.
Chanel has worked with the Council of State Governments Justice Center, supporting their work on national criminal justice reform. She also has legislative experience as a Political Field Organizer and as a Legislative Liaison for the Washington Student Association, where she lobbied for the interests of students in higher education around issues of affordability, administration transparency, and accessibility. Chnel was raised in Tacoma, Washington, and received her BA from Evergreen State College with a focus in Law and Government Policy.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii, find the Northwest Community Bail Fund on Twitter at @NWCBailFund.
Resources
Northwest Community Bail Fund website
NCBF - Court Watch Resources and sign-up
“The Effects of Misdemeanor Bail Reform” from Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice
“No More Police: A Case for Abolition” by Mariame Kaba & Andrea J. Ritchie
Washington state court’s Criminal Rule 3.2
“A Seattle man began the night in crisis. Then, a sudden death in restraint” by Sydney Brownstone and Greg Kim from The Seattle Times
“In a Sign of Worsening Conditions, Understaffed King County Jail Has Lacked Water for a Week” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“Public Defenders Union Joins Jail Guards’ Call to Address COVID Crisis” by Paul Kiefer from PubliCola
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher and I'm a political consultant and your host. On the show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm very excited about this show, where we get to talk with Chanel Rhymes, who is the director of advocacy at Northwest Community Bail Fund. Thank you so much for joining us.
[00:00:51] Chanel Rhymes: Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
[00:00:54] Crystal Fincher: Excited to have you on. Have been a follower of the organization for quite some time. Obviously, this has been a topic across the country, and really globally. We're behind a lot of the globe on this. But in our country, a topic especially in the past few years, and looking at just what we're doing in terms of our criminal legal system, all of the challenges within it, and what can be done to make our communities more safe, keep our communities more safe, and really move towards a world and communities where we meet basic needs and we don't choose punishment over healing injustice. So I guess starting out, can you tell me just what the Northwest Community Bail Fund is and does, and what brought you to this work?
[00:01:46] Chanel Rhymes: The Northwest Community Bail Fund is a nonprofit organization. We post bail for those during pre-trial detention. A lot of folks cannot afford to access the services of a bail bond agency, whether they don't have the means or collateral, so we are here to fill in those gaps. Ultimately we would hope to see an end to pre-trial detention and cash bail, but, because we know that is gonna take time, in the meantime we work to reduce harm. So we post bail as well as just, make sure that the community is not harmed and folks can fight their cases from a position of freedom, which they're entitled to through the constitution and the Washington state constitution.
[00:02:33] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely.
[00:02:34] Chanel Rhymes: I myself came to this work in- I've been doing criminal justice reform work for a long- or, excuse me, criminal punishment reform work, for a long time. I, myself, am formally incarcerated. I am very passionate about those that have done their time and served their time be- the opportunity to go back into society and be a contributing member. I personally believe, though, that we need to stop trying to fix things after and start things from the beginning. Kind of like the, the babies in the river. I'm not gonna keep taking the babies out. I'd rather let's not put the babies in. So I'm trying to, we, myself and our organization, is trying to work to so that folks are just not incarcerated. And a lot of times folks are incarcerated just because of not having means.
[00:03:25] Crystal Fincher: And this is such an important conversation. One, just as we talk about right now, we're sitting here in the midst of a crisis as defined by our public defenders, staff at jails. We had a historic letter earlier this year where both public defenders and corrections officers
are saying, "hey, we can't handle the population here at the King County jail. It's unsafe. It's beyond what we can tolerate." And I don't think a lot of people realize that a lot of people who are in jail have not been convicted of anything. This is a pre-trial detention. They've not been sentenced. They're not serving a crime. They've not been found guilty of anything. It is simply because of a financial reason that they are sitting in jail and all of the challenges that, that presents. What does it mean and what kind of challenges does it pose when we detain people before their trials?
[00:04:25] Chanel Rhymes: Oh, plethora. You could risk losing your housing. You can lose your children, custody of your children. You can lose your employment. And with all that comes, a rippling effect of other things, whether that be financial instability, just the trauma itself of going to jail. A lot of people that, say "lock them up," or "they just need to go to jail," never seen the inside of a jail. It's one of the most horrific places. On top of, with us being in a pandemic, you could potentially die, ultimately, from sitting in jail because there are still COVID outbreaks in jails every week. And so ultimately you could lose your life for something you haven't even been convicted of yet. And that's no way to bake it. That's not the way our system is designed. It's not supposed to be set up that way. Or at least they say that.
[00:05:24] Crystal Fincher: At least they say that. It is certainly not what we've been sold. And so it's such a challenge. It is very destabilizing. And even in the case that someone does wind up pleading guilty or serving time, we're relying on them having the means to pay whatever fines they're going to be charged to do all that. And so if they don't have a job, if they have lost, as a result of being detained, all of the ability to fulfill the terms of whatever punishment they've been handed, that's a challenge in and of itself. And the bottom line is, a lot of people think putting people in jail makes us safer. If we didn't have this, they would be out committing crimes. And every now and then there's a case that gets publicized where they say, see, look, this is- bail reform caused this. Is that the case?
[00:06:24] Chanel Rhymes: It's not the case. Number one, judges decide what bail is. Number two folks have a constitutional right to bail. The purpose of bail - and our Washington Supreme Court has said this - the state is not in the primary interest of collecting bail bond forfeitures. It is more concerned with folks showing up to court. That is what the purpose is. That, whether somebody is released or not, does not make us safer. There are tons of people who are arrested for violent crimes and don't spend a day in jail because they have the means to bail themselves out. Where are the folks asking about them? I think it's very interesting that bail reform and, nonprofits, people who don't make money off of this business, are the ones under the microscope, but yet bail bond agencies make millions of dollars every day bailing people out that sometimes do go on to commit new crimes. We don't hear about those in the news. We only hear about the less fortunate, which is those folks that are coming to a community bail fund or, mutual aid fund, and it's because we demonize poverty in this society. And it's just bizarre to me, in a sense, that we've gotten to this point. As if folks don't understand that wages have been stagnant for 40 years. The cost of living is going up. People can't make it can't survive. And so putting them in jail, and then if they are convicted or plead guilty just to get out, they now have a criminal conviction. So then that creates barriers to getting employment. And the other thing that you need, housing, that is the first, one of the major things that disqualifies most folks for housing, is a criminal conviction. So if we're also criminalizing homelessness, locking people up, then convicting them, and then they get out and they can't rent anywhere, and then we're like, "why are you homeless?" We are just creating this cycle and it's really a cycle of abuse.
[00:08:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and one really has to ask is the offense that people really are in jail for whatever they've been accused of, or is it just that they're poor and can't afford bail? And even just the issue of bail overall, for some reason, we have landed in a place where we think that a dollar amount is indicative of whether or not someone is in danger or is safe regardless of what they have been accused of, regardless of what kind of flight risk someone may be deemed to be. Hey, if you have enough money to, if you're rich, and and you can pay for whatever, it really doesn't matter. You're not gonna be in jail. And, we have seen several examples of people who are, just a small misdemeanor accusation which, often can result in dropped charges overall for lack of evidence, for just not being worth it to pursue in the system, yet they have been in jail and have experienced, like you talked about, the loss of job, the loss of housing, and that being destabilizing. And in fact that increasing the chance that someone is likely to be involved in their criminal legal system in the future, as opposed to if they were able to maintain their connections in community. And then also on the back end, just about everyone we're sending into jail is going to come out on the other end. So don't we have an interest in making sure that we are doing all we can to set people up for success and to not drop them into another pit, which it seems this just sets up people to do. What do you tell people when they're like, "it's there to make sure they come back and if they don't have bail, then they won't come back. So bail is necessary and if they can't afford it, then you know, they could just leave and never come back anyway?" what do you tell people who just say bail is necessary to get people to show up?
[00:10:48] Chanel Rhymes: They can find us anywhere. The world we live in now, if they wanna find you, they really can find you. But, ultimately, most people do wanna get this resolved. Nobody wants this hanging over their head. A lot of times people don't show up, not on purpose. People, don't FTA, or Failure to Appear, on purpose. Life happens. There's life circumstance. Also, too, people wanna get it taken care of because they probably didn't do it. People aren't really decking and dodging. I will add though that even if we have a lot of folks saying people they need to go to jail or they need to do this, a misdemeanor? It's max fine, like 90 days in jail. So I think too, people have a misconception of what our punishments, our sentencing structure is, and the difference between jail and the difference between prison, and misdemeanors, gross misdemeanors, and felonies. Even with our gross misdemeanor, the max jail time is a year, up to a year, but after that, okay, they serve their time, they're back out, what are we going to do to help folks? What I tell people is how is this solving anything? Why would you want your tax dollars just to be wasted to keep doing this? And wouldn't you want your tax dollars to be used to help people. So they're not back in this situation? The amount of money that we spend on criminal punishment and police is just ridiculous when you compare it to what we spend on education. So if we really wanted to make changes, we would be investing our money in education, healthcare, mental healthcare, reproductive rights, all of those things. Never in our 40 years of plus doing this whole drug war or anything, have cops, police, arrest helped make us any safer or do any type of harm reduction. There's tons of studies out there that show when you reinvest that many within the community and provide people's services, recidivism goes down. I think it's odd that we just keep having to have this conversation over and over again, because we obviously know what's not working, but we are very, afraid to try what some people or some municipalities and governments have done that work.
[00:13:11] Crystal: Well. And it feels like, for people who've looked into this, for the people who are the loudest on this issue on either side, they do know what the data says. They do know that the evidence shows conclusively, repeatedly - there was just a new study that came out and reiterated this just last month - that bail reform, not relying on bail and releasing people pre-trial, not subjecting them to all of the harms that result from that, doesn't hurt people appearing in court over people who have been detained, doesn't hurt their likelihood of committing a crime again, over people who have been in bail. So there is actually no advantage safety-wise. There's no advantage in the court system. It's not, "hey, a lot of people were failing to appear - weren't failing to appear - now they are with bail reform. It is actually the opposite. This is working to keep people safer. This is working to help people show up and we are not contending with how expensive this is to us as a society financially and in terms of just our safety and our health within the community. My goodness, courts are expensive to run and administer. Prisons and jails are so expensive to run and administer. All of the staff, all of everything required to do that is so costly. We're sitting here talking about upcoming budget shortfalls here in, the city of Seattle, throughout the state in different cities, yet when you look at the city's budget, such a huge percentage of it and their county's budget, such a huge percentage is dedicated to locking people up. And especially pre-trial, what benefit are we getting out of it? Why do you think people are so resistant to saying, "wow. Number one, we aren't getting the results that we want from our current system. It would actually save us money that we could invest in areas that we all know need it." Yet, lots of people still aren't there. Why do you think that is?
[00:15:22] Chanel Rhymes: Because people are being misinformed, and fear-mongered by their local news and reporters, who I'm shocked at the things that they write and put out. And it's clear that a lot of reporters locally here have no clue about criminal law or criminal procedure. They are flat out lying to the public. And so then folks see that on TV, they read it in their newspapers, they read it online and they think that the sky is falling. Everything is super dangerous. I also think poverty is a lot more visible now. So people, their senses seem to think "oh, it's bad, it's more." And it's no, just more people are hurting and you're seeing it more. It's not hidden. It's coming into your neighborhoods. I truly believe it's miseducation, misinformation, and 30 years of watching Law and Order that people think they know the system and how things work. I blame our media to be quite honest, because they're just not being truthful. And most of the information that, it seems to me, that they're getting are coming either straight from prosecutors or straight from police. They are refusing to talk to anybody from the other side.
[00:16:42] Crystal Fincher: And even, not from either, quote unquote side, there are actual experts on crime. They're called criminologists. We have lots of them at our wonderful universities, research universities here in the area, who are able to speak on what the evidence and research shows is and is not effective and useful and working in terms of keeping people safe, keeping people from committing crimes. And over again, they are coming up with data that says detaining people pre-trial just because they cannot afford to get out of jail does not keep us safer. Does not do anything to help our system to help reduce crime. It just doesn't do that. In fact if it had, if it has, any effect, it's the opposite effect. It actually makes outcomes worse. It makes people more likely to do that because they have been made more unstable and put in a more precarious position because of that. So if you were to talk to a lot of the local media, what would you advise that they do?
[00:17:53] Chanel Rhymes: Educate themselves on the way that criminal law, that criminal procedure, works before just going with conjecture and their feelings and how they feel. There are laws, there are court rules, reasons why things are done. Ultimately too, the fact that they're saying, "okay, so we're holding people because they can't afford it." If they were so dangerous, no bail would be set. Obviously, a bail has been set, so that judge has deemed them safe enough to go back into the community once they pay that money. So you can't have it both ways either, it's completely they're there because they're a danger or is it really they're there because they can't afford it? Because if they were such a danger, then why is there a dollar amount that they could pay that says they're not dangerous? It just doesn't make any sense. I mean the argument of it makes us safer- it just doesn't. And I just think we've just been recycling the same thing over and over again. And then also, too, people, the internet, your phone, every social media, people are getting lots of just different images and things like things are horrible. "Seattle is dying, oh my gosh, they've closed my Starbucks." And it's really like people are homeless and hungry and that's, what's really- The fact that too, we are still within a pandemic and we have a lot of people in charge that want folks to just keep on going just out. "No, everything's fine." people are still financially hurting. We also hear a lot about, I'll just say that, media's writing a lot about retail. Nobody writes about wage theft. More money is stolen in wages than it is in deodorant. What does that tell you? I'm reading a police report and somebody is charged with stealing body wash, deodorant, razors. They're trying to survive. Those are essential items. Like we need to look at that. Like what services can we get that person so they don't have to steal the basic needs just to be a human and live in this society?
[00:20:12] Crystal Fincher: I'm with you, I'm with you. So as we look moving forward, right now, you and Northwest Community Bail Fund are filling in this gap in our current system. Obviously there's a lot of changes that would be more effective if we made them. In terms of bail, what is it that you would like to see changed about our current system? Would you like to move to a system where judges just make the decision as they have in some other localities across the country? "Hey we're not really doing bail. We are making the determination about whether we feel this person is a flight risk or a threat to society. And if yes, we're detaining them and if, no, we're not." And throwing the idea of bail out the window in lieu of that? Or something different? What would you like to see in terms of bail in the system we're in?
[00:21:10] Chanel Rhymes: There should be no bail. There should be no pre-trial detention. Folks are innocent until proven guilty. There's no reason for anybody to be caged. That's what they are, is caged. Before they have been convicted by a judge or jury of their peers. They've just been accused. We should be moving completely away from that. I would say, even just to start, we could have judges actually, follow court rule 3.2, which says you need to use the least restrictive means to release people. So that would be a start. We do court watching in courts around the area, particularly Seattle Municipal Court. We watch arraignment hearings. We, we take, track, demographic data, race, perceived age, age, date of birth. But we also track if court rule 3.2 is brought up by judges, by the prosecutor, or by the defense. And we recently had our data analyzed and it was only 13% in all of the cases that we had listened to that it was brought up. That's a very low number for a court rule to not even be mentioned during arraignment. And that has to do with whether folks are, public safety issue or, the means to pay to get out. So I think one, first thing is if y'all going, institute these rules and create these policies, you should follow them first. You're not even following your own policies, so can you accurately say if it's working or not? I don't think so, but ultimately it's a no. I'm an abolitionist. Get rid of them all. I just got my no more police book. I just started on that. This, it's not working. All we're doing is harming people and it's not sustainable and it costs too much. We could be investing those dollars in so many other ways that would actually give us a better return on investment because all we're doing is churning out more debt, ultimately, because if they can't get a job, they can't get housed, we're still gonna end up having to pay for it another way.
[00:23:27] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. We're paying for it no matter what, just depends on whether it's an investment that's gonna yield a return later on. If we're dealing in, education and health and mental health and behavioral health support and treatment that do yield benefits for our entire community or whether we are dealing in the aftermath of pain and harm and paying to keep people in prison and incarcerated, which is just so terribly expensive and costly financially, and to our community, to that person, to the community, to everyone involved. What would you say to the people who- Obviously we always hear examples of violent crimes, horrible crimes, some horrible crimes happen that should never happen. And they see what someone has been accused of. They hear evidence against them and they're like, "that person is not safe on the street." And say, "we're afraid of what can happen. That they're a danger to society and based on what they've done, they should be detained." What do you say to people in that circumstance?
[00:24:50] Chanel Rhymes: You have no proof that evidence is actually evidence that is true, or that can convict him. People are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, not public opinion. There's a process that you go through during criminal procedure where the judge gets to decide what evidence gets to come in and what doesn't. We don't just get to decide oh, that's true. That piece of evidence that the reporters said right there is true. Also, we all know police lie all the time. We're just gonna take the word of police because that's who most reporters are getting their information from, they're just reading it from police reports and statements or their, communications officer or whoever it may be. So how is it that untrained people in law, just the regular general public would be able to determine who's safe and who's not? I also think if a judge has set bail, who are you to say that, better than that judge about the case? I don't understand that. Either we believe in these systems and y'all want these systems to do their job, or y'all just want to do it out in the public. Are we going back to that? Where we just doing the public, in the public square, and then everybody we decide how things go? No. To me, it's just bizarre that somebody be like this is what happened. You really don't know that's just what it was reported. People have to be convicted in a court, not in public opinion, it's just not the way it works.
[00:26:24] Crystal Fincher: Which is true. And once again, this most recent study in Houston, which backs up prior studies, under consent decree where more people had to be released within 24 hours of a misdemeanor arrest, there was a 6% decrease in new prosecutions over the three years that followed that they followed those defendants. They said, "okay, everybody's saying we need to see whether or not people, are really gonna show up. We need to see whether you letting people out is really going to, make things safer as these people claim, let's follow these defendants. Let's follow these people." Over a period of years, not even beyond, not even stopping at, okay this one case, their current case was adjudicated, whatever happened, they went beyond. Eliminating bail, taking that out as a factor, releasing them and not detaining them simply because they can't afford bail, resulted in a decrease over the existing system. Meaning that locking people up made it more likely that someone was going to commit a crime again. Made it more likely that things would be less safe in our community. I'm for what makes people more. We talk about all of these things. A lot of it is punishment related. And I think in so many of these conversations, we have to decide whether we are going to prioritize punishing people or whether we're gonna prioritize keeping our community safe, because they really are at odds. And punishment is not working for us, any of us, and it's really expensive. It is so harmful to the person involved, it's harmful to the community and it's so costly. And we talk about funding for jails. We talk about funding for police. There is only a certain amount of money in the whole bucket. So if we're giving more to one area, we're taking it from somewhere else or preventing it from being invested in somewhere else. And I'm sure everyone listening to this thinks, "hey, we need, we do need more behavioral health support. We do need more substance use disorder. Treatment and accessibility and availability. We do need to make sure people have access to these things without having to be involved in the criminal legal system to get clean or to get healthy." And so it's just such an important issue and I thank you for just being vocal about this. For helping people in this organization and doing something that is making our community safer. Really appreciate it. If people want to learn more or to get involved or donate to the Northwest Community Bail Fund, how can they do that?
[00:29:11] Chanel Rhymes: You can go to our website, which is N-W- C-O-M-B-A-I-L-F-U-N-D.org So nwcombailfund.org. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram. I'm so grateful to have this conversation with you and inviting me on to talk about the organization that I dearly love, and we truly do wanna make our community safer and we wanna stop harming folks.
[00:29:42] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. Wanna stop harming folks. One thing that I do have to mention: I saw a report that you produced, and I feel like this was last year at some time now. You're not only doing this work, but you are, as an organization, being accountable, being transparent about the activity that's going on. You are showing results for what you're doing in a way that goes be above and beyond a number of others that I've seen. I appreciate that transparency in this organization. And then also wanted to mention, you brought up your court watching, also, earlier, which is such a useful and valuable tool. And just enlightening and informative because, to your point, lots of people don't know what happens in court. People have very limited experience, maybe someone contests a parking ticket or a speeding ticket or something. Lots of people have never stepped foot in one. And so have this idea from TV shows what it's like. It's nothing like what on TV shows. And so I sincerely appreciate that too. We're gonna link those court watching resources in the show notes, also for people to be able to access and follow.
[00:31:05] Chanel Rhymes: Thank you. That is also available on our website, we're always looking for more court Watchers. We really need folks to go in person to courts. Seattle Municipal Court and Tacoma Municipal Court offer virtual courts so people can actually court watch from the comfort of their own home. If you're interested in court watching with us, please go to our website and fill out an interest form.
[00:31:25] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much for all of your information today, for what you do. It's been a pleasure to have you on Chanel.
[00:31:31] Chanel Rhymes: Thank you.
[00:31:32] Crystal Fincher: Thank you all for listening to Hacks and Wonks. The Producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler, our Assistant Producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Post-Production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks, and you can follow me at @finchfrii spelled F I N C H F R I I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type Hacks & Wonks into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe, to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.
On today’s very special Friday show, Crystal welcomes Phil Gardner to spill all the details behind the drama of Washington’s Third Congressional District race from his vantage as the campaign manager for now-U.S. Representative-elect Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez. As we hear about the nailbiter of a race in Southwest Washington between a rural Democrat and a right-wing fascist, Phil outlines the strategy memo he wrote that propelled an untraditional and underestimated candidate to flip a seat that had been held by Republicans for 12 years. With little to no support for the campaign from the establishment, Phil tells how a scrappy campaign fought for every vote by leveraging volunteer enthusiasm and connecting with voters in every place across the district. He and Crystal then reflect on lessons learned, possible downballot impacts, the need for continued vigilance against anti-democratic forces, and the hope that is manifested by engaging and being active.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Phil Gardner at @gardnerphil.
Phil Gardner
Phil Gardner is a Washington state political strategist and the campaign manager for U.S. Representative-elect Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez. He spent this fall working in Southwest Washington but normally lives in Tacoma.
Phil's managed successful campaigns for federal, state, and local office, including those of Superintendent Chris Reykdal, State Auditor Pat McCarthy, Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards, and State Rep. Jessica Bateman's first campaign for Olympia City Council.
Phil previously served as Chief of Staff for Lt. Governor Denny Heck. He also served as Heck's District Director and Communications Director when Heck represented the South Sound in Congress.
Phil went to college in Washington, D.C. and worked on Capitol Hill where he developed a strong preference for living and working back home in the better Washington.
Resources
“Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler concedes; Perez will face Kent for the 3rd District” by Lauren Ellenbecker from The Columbian
Phil Gardner August 9th Strategy Memo - Can Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez win? Yes.
“Kent, Perez brawl over two different Americas in WA congressional race” by Joseph O’Sullivan from Crosscut
Straight Talk bonus round: Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Joe Kent from KGW News
Election To Watch: Marie Gluesenkamp Perez on the Verge of Upsetting Pro-Trump Candidate Video edited by Meg Herschlein from More Perfect Union
“Why aren't national Dems bankrolling WA's 3rd Congressional race?” by Joseph O’Sullivan from Crosscut
“Congressional candidate Joe Kent wants to rewrite history of Jan. 6 attack” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times
“In Washington state, controversial ties and rhetoric are upending a House race” by Claudia Grisales from NPR-KQED
“How did Marie Gluesenkamp Perez pull off the upset of the year in Southwest WA?” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times
“The Future Is … Doorknocking?” by Alexander Sammon from Slate
“Marie Gluesenkamp Perez Is Going From An Auto Repair Shop To Congress” by Daniel Marans from The Huffington Post
“Party reps say Gluesenkamp Perez won House seat, not Democrats” by Brennen Kauffman from The Daily News
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, this is an exciting show for me. I'm very excited to be welcoming Phil Gardner to the show. Now, Phil Gardner is known by a lot of people who are in political circles, Democratic circles - but for those who aren't, he is a political strategist and was the campaign manager for Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez, who is the newest Congressperson in Washington's Third Congressional District, which a Democrat hasn't won in how long?
[00:01:13] Phil Gardner: 12 years.
[00:01:14] Crystal Fincher: 12 years. And beat Joe Kent in one of the longest-shot victories that we saw this cycle, if not the longest-shot victory that we saw this cycle in the nation. So very excited to talk to Phil and talk about this race. Welcome to the show.
[00:01:33] Phil Gardner: Thank you, Crystal. I'm really glad to be here - appreciate you noticing what we did.
[00:01:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely - hard not to notice, but definitely noticed that you were making some moves even before the conclusion of the election. I guess just starting off - getting a little bit more familiar with you - what is your background and what was your path to get to Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez's campaign?
[00:01:58] Phil Gardner: Yeah, so I grew up in Pierce County outside Puyallup, graduated high school in Tacoma. So I'm from, consider myself from the state - I was actually born in Texas, but I'm a Washingtonian - and have worked in and out of politics on the Democratic side, both here in the state and back in Washington, D.C. I worked for Lieutenant Governor Denny Heck as his Chief of Staff in Olympia and also back on Capitol Hill as his Communications Director. And then have done a bunch of different campaigns in either manager or general consultant roles, like Superintendent Reykdal's 2020 re-elect for our statewide School Superintendent, the mayor here in Tacoma - I was a part of her first election in 2017, Jessica Bateman - her first run for City Council. So I have had my hand in a bunch of different political and campaign things all over the state. And actually the first federal race I was ever involved with, I was an intern on Denny Heck's 2010 campaign in the Third Congressional District against Jaime Herrera Beutler, which was the last time the seat was open. So it's not quite a full circle moment because - obviously Jaime Herrera Beutler lost in the primary and this - sort of a very different tone than what that campaign was like, but it has been an interesting sort of 12-year journey for me to find myself back down there.
[00:03:30] Crystal Fincher: Back down there and in a situation where - for quite some time, Jaime Herrera Beutler looked like a comfortable incumbent. But then this year happened - and after Trump happened and MAGA Republicans - seeing a different blend of Republicans in the district, certainly around the state, and a crowded Republican field. How did you get connected with Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez and how did just starting the campaign unfold?
[00:04:04] Phil Gardner: Yeah, so this was an absolutely wild ride that I only got on maybe two-thirds of the way into it for a lot of people that were involved pre-primary - like Marie, most significantly. But I guess to think of the timeline here - for these federal races, they're really two-year affairs at this point just because of the amount of money involved and such. And Joe Kent declared his candidacy against Jaime Herrera Beutler shortly after the January 6th insurrection, so way back in early 2021. And then he got the endorsement of the former president and that sort of propelled him into the leading anti-Jaime Herrera Beutler Republican. And I was watching all of that as anybody checking the news was aware of it. I assumed in the end that Jaime would make it through to the general election one way or another because there were also many, many Democrats running. And I just figured that she's lost a lot of support from within her party, but surely there's enough of a base to get her through against widely divided opposition.
But little did I know that Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez had much different plans for what was going to happen. She jumped in the race in February, which is quite late to jump into a Congressional race - February the year of. But as she said many times, she saw a bunch of Joe Kent signs going up around her county where Jaime Herrera Beutler signs used to be. And it reminded her in 2016 when she saw all these Trump signs appearing. And she felt that if this guy really beat Jaime, and there was a good shot at that, that the Democrats didn't have a good candidate who could beat Joe Kent. So she got in in February while she had a - I guess at that point - he was a six-month old at home, running a small business with her husband. But yeah, yeah. But she felt that this was - we needed somebody to go up against this guy if the worst were to happen.
And a lot of people didn't really take her very seriously. I think that it's fair to say that - because people didn't think Jaime was likely to lose the primary, they didn't want to do anything to - they wanted her to be able to run the race that she wanted to run. And so I think there was a lot of Democratic establishment players in the state who were not as helpful down their pre-primary. Again, not saying that they were supporting Jaime necessarily, but they just didn't see it as a priority. And there were others who were helpful, but because of that, it was - I think for Marie, it was a kind of lonely primary in a lot of ways - because a lot of people just didn't understand and see the district as she did. And in the end, they were able to clear the field. There was some negotiations and talks between the Democrats down there and that sort of got itself sorted out. And she was the only major Democratic candidate on the ballot in the primary. And she advanced and got 31% of the vote.
And then as we all saw, it turned out Jaime was in a lot more trouble than I think any of us really understood. And ended up coming in very narrowly behind Joe Kent, by about a thousand votes, but that's all it took. And again, I didn't see it coming. I was watching this as anybody was - but I did have a friend, Delana Jones, who is a mail consultant, and I worked with her on Victoria Woodards' campaign - and she did Marie's mail as well. And I remember - I think it was the Thursday after the primary, and I was actually sitting in my office at the State Capitol because I was Lieutenant Governor's Chief of Staff at the time - just sort of looking at the numbers. And Joe Kent was not ahead yet, but based on the trend from what was coming in, it was just obvious that he was going to pull ahead once they actually finished counting all these votes. And I texted Marie's consultant and I was like - This is going to happen. OMG, what the hell are we going to do? And we got to talking - and I had actually been planning to take the fall off and reset my career and sort of think about what I wanted to do because I've been doing nonstop Congressional service or campaigns since Trump took office, basically, and was pretty burnt out.
But Marie, prior to the primary, had one paid staffer - and she did a great job in what she was able to do, but she had no campaign experience. She just graduated from college. And all of a sudden you're in this tightly, tightly nationally competitive race, if you could get the resources into there. So I said, Well, it's a less than 100-day thing. I know it'll end. And Marie's great - I'd never met Marie before, but I knew Joe Kent was a fascist and we could not let someone like that win a seat in Congress from our state. And we certainly could not do anything less than give everything we could to try and stop it. So I took a detour - I was actually in Taiwan for a lot of August because I had a prearranged trip to do that. So there was a lot of nights of working on candidate questionnaires while I was in Taiwan and then during the day - anyway, so I finally got back onto the ground in Southwest Washington - it was Labor Day weekend. And so for me that - yeah - that is in my mind when my direct involvement began, but that's how I ended up at that point. So it was not a plan, but when Joe Kent wins the primary, you got to scramble the jets.
[00:10:09] Crystal Fincher: Got to engage.
[00:10:11] Phil Gardner: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:10:12] Crystal Fincher: Wow. So looking at just even Marie deciding to run, I completely get feeling the alarm of looking at Joe Kent, feeling that he could win, and the history of the district saying - and he could win it all. What made her think she could win?
[00:10:37] Phil Gardner: Yeah. She gets her district, she gets her community. She lives 45 minutes from anywhere, God bless her. I've been out there to that house on that gravel road and it is rural - she gets her water from a well, her Internet from a radio tower. And out there in Skamania County in the Columbia River Gorge, communities are just different when you live that far away from large population centers. And your local government - the resources are just nowhere near what they are in other places. And I think she knew that a lot of communities in the district were a lot like that. And that's true about a third of the population that lives outside of Clark County, and even parts of Clark County are a lot like that.
But I also think beyond that dynamic, I think she knew - in this community, but I think all over the country - that Democrats had not done a good job of recruiting candidates who really look like America or really look like their base. The sort of prototypical, let's-go-candidate-recruiting is - Can you find somebody who has won an office before? Can they self-fund? Can they raise a bunch of money from a pre-existing donor network? Do they not have family obligations that are going to get in the way? Can they take time off to work, or do they not even work anymore? And Marie doesn't check any of these boxes, which is why when parties go to recruit, they often - in fact, very, very, very rarely come up with moms who run small businesses, and live out in rural areas, and who have a father from Mexico. But just because of the circumstances of this, she didn't ask for an invite to be the candidate. She stepped up because she saw it needed to be done. And then she won the primary and came up against Joe Kent - and that usual sort of screener for who are we going to run in really competitive races that just didn't occur because it wasn't even on the radar of the folks in DC.
But I think she could see that was so necessary in order to connect with people like her - who work in the trades, with Latino voters - who in some parts of the country, we've had a ton of difficulty in the Trump years, with a lot of sort of conspiracies and misinformation that goes around, but nevertheless has struggled in places like Florida and South Texas. But also in the wake of the Dobbs decision, having a woman who had recently had a miscarriage and who was having a family and planning to grow her family, be able to talk about the real consequences and impacts of Joe Kent's nationwide abortion ban with no exceptions. So I think she was - for Joe Kent - a particularly good foil, but she is also, I think, as anybody who has watched her, she is just a very gifted and talented public servant. I think it's wonderful that this is the way in which people have come to learn about her, but she has been down there in Skamania County really doing that work. She ran for County Commissioner in 2016. And Hillary Clinton, I think she outran Hillary Clinton by eight percentage points in a rural red county. So she knows what she's doing. I guess that is one message - I don't want to leave people with this notion that what happened here was a fluke or unexpected or not. It happened because she knew that this opportunity was there and then decided to take advantage of it. And slowly everybody came on board, or at least enough to get us over the finish line.
[00:14:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And that was apparent for a while. This - one, it takes a great candidate to win, period. Even if you have a great team around you, if you don't have a candidate who does connect with people, who does understand the district, and who is really - feels a personal responsibility for making things better, it doesn't connect, certainly not at this level. So she was a great candidate - saw the opportunity, stepped up thankfully, and was ready to run. But it absolutely took a great strategy, which you put together. You shared publicly a strategy memo that you put together basically saying, Hey, can Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez win? Yes, she can. And this, in detail, is how. What did you identify? What was in that plan?
[00:15:13] Phil Gardner: Yeah. So I wrote that back in August when it was - there were sort of two camps that happened right after the primary. There was a bunch of people who were like, Oh my gosh, this is obviously competitive. We have to jump at this. Let's do this. And then there are others who were like, We've got no shot. This just is not going to happen. And so I said, Okay, then I guess we need to explain to people who I don't think should have needed explanation, but did, that this is how we're going to win this race and just show beyond a doubt that we could. And so there are three components to it. The first is making sure that every Democrat knows who Joe Kent is and turns out in votes. And not just partisan Democrats, but progressives, working class folks, everybody who lives in Vancouver and Clark County - which is the most Democratic area - just very mobilize your base. This is stuff that Democrats, when they're on their game, know how to do - and devoting the resources and the attention to making sure that was going to happen.
The second was in the rural areas - the six counties outside of Clark County - which run from where Marie lives in the Columbia River Gorge, all the way out to the Pacific coast, and then all the way up into Thurston County, nearly to the State Capitol. There are some cities in there that we knew we could maybe win, but - and then Pacific County, we thought we could win and we did win. But broadly speaking, we knew in those rural areas - we're probably not going to win a lot of these communities. But it makes a huge difference if we are getting 35% of the vote there versus getting 30% of the vote there. And I think that is something that Democrats have all too often written off about rural areas is - it's sort of, Well, we're going to lose those areas by a lot, so we shouldn't even try. And losing them by 10 points less than you lost them is a bunch of votes that could be your winning margin, depending on the sort of nature of the district or the state. So we wanted to take that really seriously. And we knew that Marie was a really great candidate to connect with those folks.
And then the third aspect of it was - and these folks lived in all kinds of geographies - but making this very direct appeal to Republicans and Independents, who - anyone who supported Jaime Herrera Beutler, and just really could not stomach Joe Kent. And that was one of the most apparent things coming out of the primary. And the initial sort of looking at - who can Marie win - started with - who cannot stomach Joe Kent. And that is a very long list of people because Joe Kent often seems like he is intentionally trying to exclude and ostracize. And in fact, he is very intentionally trying to do that much of the time. But people can actually hear what he has to say and don't like the things he's saying. And I still don't think he's really ever caught on to that. But we knew that there were a bunch of people who supported Jaime Herrera Beutler, who maybe voted for Mitt Romney, but really didn't like Trump and the sort of direction the party was going under that. But these were not people who would typically vote for a Democrat, or really even consider a Democrat, unless you went out and made this very specific case to them and made it - not try to trick them, just be very honest, which was that - Look, Joe Kent is terrible. Here's all the terrible things in case you weren't aware. I'm Marie, I'm not a Republican, but I believe in democracy. I am going to listen to you. I'm going to hold town halls. I'm not going to embarrass you on the national stage. And asking those Republicans and those conservatives even to - again, not necessarily become Democrats, but just lend us your vote in this election against this guy, so we can beat him. That's basically what it said on paper. And then of course, the challenge is doing all of that all at once, and raising the money as you're spending it and etc, etc. But yeah, but that was the core. And we stuck with that through the end.
[00:19:11] Crystal Fincher: And so that is really interesting. An experience that I went through - you talked about letting people know who Joe Kent is - it is actually hard to do justice to how bad and scary he is by just explaining. And was in a number of situations with - did the KIRO election coverage, right? So talking to people there in the newsroom, another Republican consultant, right? It's just - trying to explain how just problematic he is. And they're just like, Well, maybe well, I heard it was moderating in the general election and he's moving that direction. And I'm like, No, you don't understand. And I had watched a number of his video clips, just researching going into there. It's just like - Okay, I just need you - sit down, watch this. And they watched a clip of him just - it's like he was not in the same reality as other people. Just conspiracy theories - denied - like January 6th was some CIA conspiracy, just all these things. And one, just - my goodness, Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez also sitting there next to him and having to debate someone who's not making sense in the same kind of reality that you are, but also trying to explain things. But after watching him directly, they're just like, Oh, okay, I get it. It was so alarming. Even Republicans there were alarmed. And so there absolutely was an opportunity to mobilize people and to get votes from people who traditionally didn't vote for Democrats. Now with that, how did you negotiate and how did you move forward and talk through - Marie is a Democrat, she has Democratic values - making that appeal to Republicans. How do you broaden a base while maintaining consistency with your values?
[00:21:13] Phil Gardner: Yeah. And it was a daily balance and a sort of figuring it out as we went. A lot of it was based on - well, it was mostly Marie's instincts. That's another - she did a lot of press during the election and afterwards. And as a communications professional who has prepped a lot of candidates for interviews, she does not require much at all. We chat about sort of the points she may want to make and if there's sort of one way she's explaining something and I'm like that may be misinterpreted, but by and large, she just knows what - she can smell what's good and what's off. And I think she knew what the media in her district was going to be. So using her as a guidepost - you know, she - right to repair, which is this issue that she talks about a lot, which is this sort of basic concept of if you own a piece of mechanical equipment or electronic equipment, you should be able to repair it. And there's home medical devices, tractors, iPhones, there's this long litany of things. And I will admit when I first heard her talking about this, I was like, This is, I don't, this is not a top of mind issue for voters. And it isn't - yet. I think it's becoming, partly because she is talking about it more and more in national media. But what was so interesting about it is people took it seriously. And it was very different from what they'd heard, not just a Democrat, but any sort of candidate talk about. And it did feel, the more they thought about it, more relevant to their day-to-day life than Joe Kent's latest vaccine gene therapy conspiracy or something.
She also talked a lot about the dangers of microplastics, which is something that there's a bunch of research that - there's just more and more presence of these almost-permanent plastics in very small quantities in placentas and fish and just anything you can measure. And what better way to replace all that plastic packaging than with paper and cardboard products grown in Washington's Third Congressional District. She took this very, again, not something that was in the headlines or a lot of people were talking about, but managed to connect it right back into voters lived experiences and daily lives, and talk about in a way that was different from Democrats. So she wasn't trying to sound like a Republican. She was just trying to sound and be like a different Democrat. And it is working,
[00:23:44] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, no. And I did notice that - the first thing I noticed was in the broader conversation about how Democrats, how the country sometimes is becoming more polarized - that bluer places are becoming bluer, redder places are becoming redder, and a number of Democrats are not performing well in rural areas. And to your point earlier, lots of times Democrats are not trying to compete in rural areas - thinking, Man, I just saw the margin in these other races when someone else tried to run, there's no way I'm gonna win there. So what's the point? But you saw the point. Hey, if you improve performance and you win in other areas, that's a win altogether. And one, her being a rural resident period and understanding the different context of life in rural areas, which is different. And I think a lot of people who do not live in rural areas, are not familiar with, or haven't spent a lot of time in rural areas - underappreciate just how different day-to-day life can look and be. It can be very, very different. And some of the things that you talk about in a metropolitan context, just there is no context for that thing out there. So talking about it just does not connect. It's not relevant. And I feel like, especially with a lot of Democrats not showing up in rural areas, that they are hearing lots of things from Democrats that they just don't see in their daily lives or that address their specific challenges. And Marie was able to directly speak to that, based on her own experience and really caring about making it better.
And showing up and the campaign showing up - showing up is - you can't win without it. You got to do that. You did it well. You got the message out. But also trying to pull together a campaign, a Congressional-sized campaign, without a lot of external help was a challenge you had to deal with. There was lots of coverage about the national party not helping as much as they did in some other close races - whether it's because they didn't consider this being close enough to engage with or not - not receiving the kind of support that you, seeing it as a competitive race, probably hoped for. What was that experience like and how did you manage your way through that?
[00:26:31] Phil Gardner: Yeah, it was excruciating at points. It was very frustrating, because we had an internal poll that we released publicly as far back as late August that showed Marie ahead by two. And this was at a time in national politics when the generic ballot was a little bit better for Democrats. And then there was this sort of whole freak out during the fall. And then I guess it turned out to be not quite that bad. But we had polling done by a very reputable pollster - I know people are trained to be skeptical of internal polling, but we hired a very reputable firm that everybody back in D.C. knew. And -
[00:27:08] Crystal Fincher: By the way, most campaigns do.
[00:27:11] Phil Gardner: Yeah. Like the campaigns - one, they're not going to spend all this money on research that's bunk. But it was, I think, two things. One was this knowledge that this district was - I don't think you'll find this in writing anywhere, somebody will say it on the record - but the district was drawn to elect a Republican. It's part of how our redistricting system works - is there's an incumbent protection that goes on. And this was Jaime Herrera Beutler's district. And in order to forge an agreement, they agreed to keep the incumbent safe. So with that knowledge that this district was drawn to elect a Republican, the notion that it could flip to a Democrat in a midterm with a Democrat in the White House, just - I think no matter what sort of facts you tried to put in front of people, they just could never get past that. But I think also that - I think people didn't - if Marie had been some, a man with a nice haircut - I just think there was something about who she was, and the fact that she was a young mom, and had never run for federal office before that people just thought, Well, surely she can't be putting together a campaign that could actually win. This is a novelty that's happening out there. And that was frustrating.
But I could also see, as we were trying to convince people of our credibility, that our fundraising was going extremely well, especially online. We've - driven by a lot of that media coverage, but then also the long list of people who are horrified by Joe Kent. In the end - third quarter, the third fundraising quarter - Marie raised $2.2 million in the third quarter, which was more than any other Democrat challenging for an open seat or against a Republican incumbent, except for the guy running against Marjorie Taylor Greene. But Marie outraised Democratic incumbents in frontline districts. And I thought at that point, surely they will now see that this is not some fly-by-night scam we're running out here - it looks non-traditional because it must be, but surely now. And even at that point - no, Marie was never named one of the DCCC's Red to Blue candidates. And we asked for that - we knew that there was, it was unlikely that we were going to get air support that we can't legally coordinate, but we just wanted the designation so that when we called donors in other states, they would know we were - because there's a lot of these donors who, if you don't, if you're not Red to Blue, they don't think you're a serious candidate. And that would have cost the DCCC nothing and they wouldn't give it to us. And, of course now it's - they're apologetic and such, but I don't know - I try not to dwell on it and be bitter about it because in the end, we won.
And I do think there's a silver lining in that because it wasn't on the DCCC's radar, the national Republicans also did not really get it on their radar. The national Republicans never spent anything for Joe Kent, which - we had always anticipated that as soon as we had our big fundraising quarter and started running our ads, they would come in with all these negative ads to slime Marie, and it just never came. And I don't know whether that was because the Republicans never really believed it was competitive, or because they just really didn't actually want Joe Kent in their caucus. And their attitude was - Well, if he doesn't make it, it's not our fault. It's his fault. And we've got a lot of other people who aren't so difficult that we're going to spend on. So I don't know, but it was - and he himself had a terrible, he was basically unable to raise any significant amount of money after the primary. Because I think once he had defeated Jaime Herrera Beutler, there was just not a lot of energy. And he was going around telling people that he had this under control - it was a safe Trump seat. And by the time he tried to pivot, it was too late to get his donors to notice or care.
So that is one thing - I actually, I think Joe Kent ran a terrible campaign in the primary. He just had Trump's endorsement and that was enough. And then they continued that terrible campaign into the general and it finally caught up with them. But, yeah, it was still on the inside - it was, and if you were on the ground there, anybody who was able to come - it felt very competitive. We could see that obviously we had all of the Democrats - anyone who voted for Joe Biden was behind us. And we were picking off these - elected Republicans were willing to appear in TV ads to support Marie. And it's - well, surely there's some amount of people who are coming along with this because we can see them. It was just not clear whether it'd be quite enough. But the notion that on Election Night, it leaned Republican - I think if the rankers who had put it in that category been on the ground, I think they would have felt very differently. Because it was not a surprise that it was competitive to folks who were in the picture.
[00:32:09] Crystal Fincher: Right. It was absolutely competitive - I think, just looking from the outside, it was - Hey, this is going to be close. Is she going to get enough? But especially in that situation, I think part of my personal frustration with some of the national establishment is that we also have to be willing to fight, and that we can't only engage when we feel like it's a sure thing. And if anything was worth fighting for, surely it was worth fighting - even if you hadn't yet engaged with how good of a candidate Marie was, you certainly could see how terrifying the prospect of having Joe Kent as a Congressperson is and was just unacceptable. And he was so far outside of what so many people consider acceptable or moral or decent. And we certainly have seen Republicans as a whole become more extreme, but he was like tip-of-the-spear extreme and proud of it and resistant to any kind of advice to do anything else. And so I am so thankful that you saw that opportunity, that we don't have Joe Kent as a representative.
But also hope that the things that you talked about, the reasons why maybe they didn't support Marie - create a lot of people a lot of reflection - and people who do have the ability to influence the people and the ability to influence where resources are spent locally and nationally, starting from just who an ideal candidate is. We've talked before on this show looking, hearing - Oh man, they're a great candidate. And a lot of times that's code for a guy who's a military veteran, a guy who is a business owner. And really it's code for this person has a profile that could be a Republican, but they're a Democrat. And reality is so much broader than that. The community is so much broader than that. And the things that people are struggling with today just throughout everyday life are felt by so many more people. Even who is considered the working class a lot of times is coded as just white people. And it's so many people. And so having a young mom who is running - family running an auto shop, living in rural Skamania County - was someone who was absolutely relatable. And I hope we learned those lessons - certainly at the legislative level, candidates who look more, who are like Marie, or who are candidates of color or LGBTQ candidates are actually outperforming and increasing turnout to greater degrees than candidates in majority communities are. So I really do hope we take out the filter that sometimes prevents us from seeing the people who are the most connected within their communities and who do understand them the most.
Going in and just how you went about defining who Joe Kent was and how you went about defining who Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez was - to people who maybe they realize an election is happening when they get the ballot in the mail, they were not tuned in throughout the months prior in the campaign, and you've got to reach them somehow, maybe not in person. How did you go about doing that? And what was your strategy there?
[00:35:41] Phil Gardner: Yeah. In running against Joe Kent, this was one of the challenging things because as you alluded - well, you had said earlier - it's hard to understand how bad he is unless you sit down and really take the time to - Oh my God, he really - he really thinks that. And of course, we don't have the luxury of voters actually mostly having the time or interest to do that. So it was a real - what are the worst things of the terrible things he's said and done that we're going to be able to bring up? And we had some polling to help with this, but we also just used some intuition behind what was easy to explain and what was really going to click. And so we narrowed around a top five hits on Joe Kent because we would spice it up a little.
But one is his national ban on abortion with no exceptions, which was his stated stance. Another was he told the New York Times that he wanted to put Anthony Fauci, they wanted Fauci arrested for murder. And there was one part in a Rotary that never got reported because it was a private event - but I was there - and someone stood up and said, Do you really believe this - that Anthony Fauci should be indicted for murder? And Joe Kent's response was, Well, he'll get a trial. This is what this man actually believes.
[00:36:52] Crystal Fincher: Geez. Yeah.
[00:36:54] Phil Gardner: Then there was the election denial, January 6th stuff - I guess that was actually - we mostly talked about that for the framework of Joe Kent wanting to abolish vote-by-mail. We found that was something that polled very terribly because - and I was a little skeptical to use it because I thought it would just be so unfathomable to people at this point that they wouldn't really believe anybody could or would do that. But it really did click. I'm glad we leaned into that.
He wanted to ban immigration for 20 years to establish a white majority. And that's a conversation stopper in a lot of rooms. And what was interesting is that is the one that more than anything else, Joe Kent would react very emotionally negative to. The other stuff, he wouldn't really try to dispute it. But that one he would. I don't know exactly why that is. I think on a certain level, he may know how messed up and horrific and toxic - and he may just know that he definitely doesn't want his brand to actually be associated with the people sort of spending every day of their lives pushing for that policy, which are people who exist in white nationalist circles that Joe hangs out in - but yeah, it was -
Oh, and then the fifth one, which he started talking about in the campaign - and he went to the right - was this whole defunding the FBI. Which, as a Democrat running in a Trump district, obviously we thought a lot about how was she going to talk about law enforcement because it's a top issue in any district, but especially when you're trying to win Republicans. And then Joe Kent just comes in and says, I think we should get rid of the FBI. And bunch of moms in Longview and Centralia, if you tell them - Are you going to sleep better at night with the FBI gone? - that's just not something that resonates with a lot of people in the communities that we needed to win over from the Republicans.
So that was the sort of cornucopia of awful-Joe Kent. But there was even terrible stuff that doesn't even make that list. He wanted to legalize machine guns. He doesn't believe people should watch professional sports because it's emasculating to watch other men. Yeah, no, this is an actual thing.
[00:38:51] Crystal Fincher: I didn't even know this one. Oh my gosh.
[00:38:53] Phil Gardner: Yeah. His tweets are just - there's just so many, there's just so much - but a lot of it, it's can we really turn this into a mail piece or a TV ad? Probably not. But it is just so weird.
And then with Marie, it was a lot of biography, but then basically just doing the counterpoint to a lot of what Joe was doing. She supports abortion rights. She believes in voting rights. She is not focused on these bizarre cultural conspiracies. And Joe said and did horrible, horrible mailers and statements regarding healthcare for trans people. And there was a debate in Longview where there was an audience participation point and they clearly organized to have his people come up and try to bait Marie on all these sort of cultural things about sports and bathroom. And this part never aired, I think, because the host realized that he had completely lost control of the room. But Marie would not yield an inch on any of those issues, and doesn't on any LGBTQ issues, and doesn't on any core rights issues - because that's who she is and what she believes. And that authenticity is what really matters and not engaging on these things that are so clearly just meant to divide. It was both mirroring him and just not swinging at the pitches that she didn't want to swing at.
[00:40:09] Crystal Fincher: And that's so important. One, I think people in rural and even suburban situations that I've been in - there are people who understand that they may disagree with you on some things. But they want to be able to trust you. They want to know that you're going to stand by your word and that what you see is what you get. And so her having the courage to stand by her convictions, I think helped - even with people who - Hey, I'm a Republican, you're a Democrat, but I can see that you seem to want to help, that you seem to understand the challenges that we're facing, and you get things done. Am I going to agree with you a hundred percent? No. But do I think that you understand how to help me? I do. I think you can help. I think that makes a big difference. And just the campaign not taking the bait is a good thing and not engaging earnestly with bad-faith tactics and calling out the bad-faith tactics, instead of trying to fact check or engage in all the minutiae and all that was a smart decision. And one I hope other people see how you handle it, see how others handle it, and do the same thing.
So now, we're at the point of the election. You have done a good job communicating who Joe Kent is, which - I really don't think people understand how challenging that is - even, some people think, Well, he's horrible. It must be really easy to run against him. It's hard to convince people - people who are horrible in a special way, impressively horrible, unusually horrible. It's hard to make people believe that someone actually is that horrible. People's first thought - Surely he doesn't believe that, man, this is a misstatement. This is an exaggeration. So you did that very well. Going through, turning out the votes, turning out the base, how did you approach just getting everyone to get their ballot in?
[00:41:59] Phil Gardner: Yeah, well, we tried to work the mobilization messaging into those same persuasion messaging that we were doing, like the vote-by-mail. We would say, Hey, not only are we reminding you to get your ballot in and that your ballots coming in the mail, but you should be aware the other guy, Joe Kent - he wants to get rid of this whole system. He wants us to go back to standing in line at polling stations. So if you'd ever like to vote in another election by mail again, we would really appreciate your support for Marie.
But it was a mix of very traditional mobilization operations. I guess with the voter mobilization, this was one of the challenges coming in after the primary was - to really do a lot of voter mobilization programs well, it requires money and investment and time. It's always put to the side by a lot of campaigns so they try to start it in July or something. To really have it really effective, you really need to have it in place starting pretty early in the year, depending on the size of the race. That just wasn't really present as much. There was a Coordinated Campaign presence from the State Party because Patty Murray was on the ballot, but there was nothing at the scale that we would have liked or would have been considered proper. But I thought that there was - the only option that – well, another thing is we couldn't really hire staff at this point from other place because any sort of top-field talent is generally already on a campaign at this point.
But there was a lot of energy from volunteers, and we noticed that. And so we tried this – it goes by a lot of names – the snowflake model, where you're really taking volunteers and giving them job duties and responsibilities that in a lot of campaigns would really be paid staff - and I think ideally should be paid staff, or at least people should be compensated for work that they're doing that they're not volunteering on. But it's a complicated model because if people just lose interest or don't have the enthusiasm, it doesn't really gel together. But there was enough, I think, both positive enthusiasm for Marie and antipathy for Joe Kent that - our field director had never worked in politics before. He'd never worked on any campaign before. He was a friend of Marie's from college, who had just run a restaurant for five years that had gone under because of some supply chain issues. But he was very, very organized and very good at logistics. We hooked him up with a brilliant strategist in Oregon named Hannah Love, who knows all sorts of field and mobilization stuff, and she transferred knowledge. Eventually, we had 500 people coming out to canvasses. So it was a lot of traditional stuff like that, but in a sort of non-traditional way - mixed with our messaging.
And then there were very specific communities who we wanted to go and talk to and make sure that they understood who Joe Kent was. One was the Ukrainian community, which is quite large in the Portland metro area, including on the Vancouver side. A lot of the members of the Ukrainian community here in the Pacific Northwest - it originated with folks who were fleeing the Soviet Union because they were evangelical Christians or Baptists and were being persecuted for their religious beliefs. Not everybody who's come over here since then is also a pastor or something, but they have family or friends - and so it's a very religiously conservative community. But they knew what Joe Kent's stance was on support for Ukraine, which is - Joe Kent doesn't think there should be any. In fact, he thinks it's all sort of a conspiracy theory to start World War III that Biden and Obama are all-in on and such. They didn't agree with Marie on a lot of things, but they knew that. Marie came and showed up and talked to them and looked them in the eye and said, I'm not going to abandon you and your family. And I think that really resonated.
And then also up in Pacific County, the Chinook Indian Nation, which has lived in the mouth of Columbia since time immemorial - they have been seeking federal recognition for many, many decades. There's no real question that they have all the necessary paperwork, and people should look into this online if they want to learn more about it, but it really is a travesty that they've not yet been federally recognized. Marie met with the Chairman and learned about this and heard - and we put out a statement making very clear that she supports recognition and would fight for it in Congress. I know that the Chairman and members of the Chinook indian Nation made sure that everybody who lives in the district knew that. It's a lot of this very targeted outreach that - the cookie cutter appeals and mass appeals are necessary and good - but we knew we were going to have to squeeze every - look under every rock or every mountain, whatever metaphor you want to use. It's not just one thing, but it was a mix of things.
[00:46:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and you did a great job. So now we're to Election Night. What did it feel like when you got the results?
[00:46:25] Phil Gardner: It felt really good. I guess we all lived through this, but how I was looking at it is - because our results didn't come until 8pm and I think the results from the East Coast were not looking quite as bad for Democrats as I think we had feared. And so I was like, Oh, okay, well, maybe we could do this. Because for all that we did, just so much of this is just national tides that you ultimately don't have first-hand control over, but -
[00:46:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I should mention - going up to the results on the East Coast, that there was a lot of talk about races narrowing in the final weeks. There were a lot of internal polls that showed races narrowing in the final weeks of the campaign. So there was a big question about - are things falling out of our grip democratically? And so there was cause for a little bit of relief at least. And especially as we got further from the East Coast, further West - things were looking pretty good. And then 8 o'clock hits.
[00:47:20] Phil Gardner: Yes. So we're there in the Hilton - at the Clark County Democrats, their Election Night party usually is. And we knew that what we got on Election Night was going to be the highest that we were going to get. It was going to be our high-water mark - because Joe Kent, one of his conspiracy theories was that everybody should return their ballot on Election Day so then they know, they can't figure out how many fake ballots they need to create if we vote late. It's just bonkers stuff. But as a consequence of that, we knew that he was going to gain in these later counts. So I said, If we're not ahead on election night, then that's probably ballgame, folks. But even so, we needed to be ahead by a big margin. We needed to be ahead in Clark County by more than 10 points. And it came in, and I think we're ahead by 12, 12 and a half. And it's a little more exciting in these districts with multiple counties because there's some suspense where it's - Oh, okay, but what are we going to get in Lewis and what are we going to get in Pacific? And they just kept coming in, and they kept coming in and hitting those marks. And I was just like, Marie was just - we always knew that it could happen, but then for it actually to be happening - it just felt very surreal and out-of-body. And she was just overjoyed. And of course, very quickly composed herself to go get the speech done, and do - I think she did 9 or 10 interviews that night. But it was, it felt really good.
But at the same time, we also didn't feel like we could truly celebrate because we did know it was going to narrow. And so the race ended up getting called - Saturday night after the election was when all the media outlets came out. But I personally felt confident that I no longer had worry bugs crawling around my head that we were going to win - I felt that way on Wednesday night. And that was when I knew how many ballots had come in and I could see what the margins were. And I could also see - using these analytic models on the back end, I could essentially see the uncounted ballots - what those were probably going to be like. Because the ballots are roughly counted in the order they're received. So at that point, we know that there's this whole big batch of Election Day votes for Joe Kent, and I knew they would be better for him - but you look at the partisan modeling and I'm like - that's really not going to be quite enough for him. But there's one thing to know that and one thing to actually say it publicly, because you want to respect the process and that tiny chance you could get egg on your face. But that was, that was almost, that was excruciating in a sense. I mean, it was nice to have that internal confidence that we knew, but it was still maddening to go that many days after - but much better than obviously the alternative outcome. And they called that race Saturday night. And Sunday morning we were on a plane to DC. So she got to new member orientation just in time, but - not a day too late.
[00:49:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I saw that. I was like, that was quick.
[00:50:01] Phil Gardner: Yep, it was interesting. They had invited Joe Kent, but they had not invited Marie at first.
[00:50:07] Crystal Fincher: Interesting.
[00:50:08] Phil Gardner: Yes. And then what they do in a lot of these races that are close, they invite both of them. And so then we were both invited and then Joe Kent was uninvited. But the materials for him were still lying around - I was at one point accidentally handed Joe Kent's parking pass for Capitol Hill. And I was - I'm sorry, this is actually not the person who won that election. And they were very apologetic and I get their - so it was just odd, almost - seeing the physical artifacts of this alternative reality that could have happened.
[00:50:37] Crystal Fincher: I'm glad we are not in that timeline - that would be a very bad timeline. We have more than enough challenges in this timeline that we do have, but that was such an exciting and uplifting race.
So now, because no one can ever rest and because Congressional campaigns start as soon as they end - now there's talk about, Okay, so can she hold the district? Can she get re-elected? It's one thing to have an aberration like Joe Kent on the ballot, but maybe that doesn't happen next time. How do you think she should be approaching these next couple of years? How can she hold a seat?
[00:51:12] Phil Gardner: Yeah, I think the starting point is to understand that she can. There are Democrats who represent districts that are more Republican or voted for Trump by a wider margin. Mary Peltola up in Alaska is the most recent example, but there's also a member from northern Maine named Jared Golden, who has a very timber-friendly, very rural district that shares some similarities to the Third. So we know it can be done, so we're not trying to do something nobody's ever done. But it's going to require her basically doing what she said during the campaign. There's not going to be some giant pivot - it's the same person she's been.
I think without - well, first of all, I think it's quite likely that Joe Kent runs again. I think Joe Kent is her most likely 2024 opponent because Joe Kent was planning on winning and then running again. And we didn't even get into this, but he apparently has no actual job - so he's not busy doing something else during the day other than running for office. So I anticipate he will run again, and I think he may have the name ID to be the Republican nominee again. But even without that, in the eventuality that Marie ends up running against somebody who is less conspiratorial on the Republican side, I think that voters are going to give her a chance. I think a lot of these Republican voters who originally voted for her because they were soured on Joe Kent - I don't think, at least from the conversations I've had with them and then some of the community members who have supported them - they are still with Marie. There will be a Republican. I don't know who it'll be. I don't know exactly how that'll impact how people make their choices down there.
But it's at this point an opportunity for Marie to show that she is that independent voice, that rural Democrat, that Democrat from the trades, working mom - and show people what a sort of different kind of politics and different kind of Democrat is. One of the first decisions Marie has made so far - back in Congress, there are these sort of ideological caucuses. There's a Progressive Caucus, and there's the more conservative one called the Blue Dogs, and then there's one sort of in the middle called the New Dems. And Marie's decided not to join any of them. She's joining the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, who was supportive during the campaign too. But I think she doesn't feel like she fits into a box really well, and her district doesn't really fit into a box well. And she's gonna need to be seen and be different from the sort of Puget Sound-area Democrats in the delegation and figure out exactly what that path is with her district. Because the nice thing is she showed up not owing anybody any favors, because so few people believed in her. So I'm just very excited to see - she's 34. She's born in 1988. It is just so amazing that we have, from our state, this just incredible public servant who really does represent generational change and change in a lot of ways, and is doing it in a seat where we beat a fascist. I'm just so excited and delighted to see what she's able to do.
[00:53:52] Crystal Fincher: I love it. And obviously, you did an incredible job on this campaign. You did great work. What other staffers or volunteers should we be on the lookout for from the campaign who are also superstars?
[00:54:05] Phil Gardner: Great question. So we had at maximum five staff. Tim Gowen, who was our Field Director, is going to be joining Marie's district office. Peter Sandifer, who is our Political Director. Julian Chapin, who read Michelle Goldberg's New York Times article, emailed us and said, I'd love to drive across the country and come work for you - and that's how you get to become a Deputy Field Director on our campaign because that's the kind of world it was. And then Madeleine Newton, who was the staffer before the primary and stayed on as the Deputy Campaign Manager. And then a whole suite of consultants from around the Seattle area and some back in DC.
I'm also just excited to see a lot of these volunteers who were engaged for the first time - what they end up doing. We had a lot of people who said they voted for Jaime Herrera Butler in the primary and then knocked on doors for Marie - it was the first candidate they ever knocked on doors for. It was, there are certain campaigns - they're usually presidential campaigns - but there are certain campaigns that really just leave a lasting impact on the people who were a part of them. And I think for a lot of people in Southwest Washington, this is going to be one of them. And I'm excited to see where that goes.
[00:55:06] Crystal Fincher: I'm so excited about Southwest Washington. It's politically, in my opinion, the most exciting area in the state and the area with the biggest opportunity in the state. Just looking legislatively, there are districts that are so close that have been so close that have been on the other side of 48-52%, 49-51%, 49-50% races over the past couple few cycles. With a Democrat in Congress, new people engaged in the district, people hearing from Democrats and talking to Democrats who maybe just hadn't before - presents so much of an opportunity. What do you see the opportunity being downballot moving forward?
[00:55:47] Phil Gardner: Yeah, well, I do think there - in Clark County especially, which this is the biggest county in the district, 61-63% of the vote where Vancouver is. But then there's a band of suburbs right around Vancouver as well. And Marie won by 10 points there. And it is one of those counties, like the suburbs of Atlanta or the Dallas suburbs, that once Trump came on the scene, there was a lot of moderate suburbanites who were - I don't know about this direction that this party's going. And so in addition to Joe Kent sort of accelerating that and Marie being appealing, there has been this phenomenon over the last six to eight years down there, where those Clark County suburbs are becoming much more friendly towards Democrats. And I think that, like you said, we keep getting real close. We redrew two of them pretty significantly and got up to 48%, 47% in a few of these. But I think it will be interesting and I'm optimistic that - there's almost a tipping point in a lot of these communities, where once the sort of prevailing cultural norms become more progressive, become more open-minded, become more friendly to folks on the Democratic side of the aisle - that that just keeps going. And I don't quite know where it stops. I think it'll take some time for it to happen, but I think it's going to keep going in that direction. And I think that's going to create some real opportunities for Democrats in those - in the 17th and the 18th, especially. But also need to run great candidates - candidates who are going to work hard, who know districts. And I will leave that to the folks working in state politics to figure that out. But I think that candidates who fit profiles that we know voters are going to like, we know this person is compelling, we know there's so much about them that fits in with our messaging, really making the person the message. I think we should look more seriously at those sort of opportunities and maybe not so much at what do we think is always going to be the best sort of candidate based on what's always been done.
[00:57:43] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Any parting thoughts that you would leave with people about things that you learned from this campaign or how people should be operating moving forward?
[00:57:53] Phil Gardner: Gosh, I both feel like I've learned so much and had no time to really stop and process at all. But I guess I'll go as big picture as we can get because that was a motivator for me in this, which is that I - sure many people listening to this - have felt very deep fear and concern that we're slipping into a sort of very anti-democratic culture and government. And this creeping fascism that we see all around us in different forms - the trajectory is really, really, really concerning. I believe Joe Kent represents that, and that was a big motivating factor for why I was willing to throw up everything to go and do this. And then it turned out Marie was fantastic as well, and so we get sort of a twofer out of it.
But I think after this election - because Joe Kent lost, because so many of these election deniers around the country lost, I do think we should feel heartened that there is apparently a bottom for a bunch of voters. And there are consequences to saying these things. But I also still feel that history is a long time and this is just one election cycle and we can't rest on our laurels. So as I look forward into 2024 and beyond, I would love love nothing more than to get back to the days where we're just fighting and trying to advance progressive causes on the sort of traditional D versus R axis that we may have known. But I think at least for the time being, there is also this very dark anti-democratic force that is out there and very present - and it's going to require more than I think what is typically thought of as being necessary. The careerists are not going to be able to solve this. It is a problem beyond the people just clocking in to work on campaigns. And we all work very hard and I think there are many brilliant people, but this is a force beyond what we have dealt with before. I spend a lot of time thinking about how we make sure that doesn't grow and doesn't go on. And again, I think we gave it a good bop on the nose this time, but I think it may be back and don't take our eyes off that ball. So that was a little darker than I intended, but I do think it's important.
[00:59:55] Crystal Fincher: But real. I spend quite a bit of time thinking about that. It's real, but there is hope. There is cause for hope.
[01:00:04] Phil Gardner: Yes.
[01:00:05] Crystal Fincher: And I think that in so many circumstances, I needn't look any further than my own family history - that that has been the only thing that has got people through some of those times - engaging, being active, doing what you can, and just holding onto that hope, and continuing to push. So appreciate so much you joining us today to have this conversation. Thank you for saving us from Joe Kent. And for putting Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez on our radar and in our Congress.
Just such a huge win. Such an exciting win. I know some - Election Night - I'm just like, Look at the Third District. People are like, Okay, what were you working on? I'm like, But look at the Third District. And stuff that I was working on turned out really well, I was really excited about that. But this was as exciting, I think, as a result gets because - I'd shared with people before - certainly felt that this race was worth engaging in, and fighting for, and knew it should be close. Didn't know if it could be. So had thought about the reality of Joe Kent and allies having significant control in our country and it was terrifying. So yeah, just so excited to be able to talk about this race with you, and such a great job on both the strategy and execution. And I also love hearing that your Field Director was new to politics and knocked out of the park anyway. And you were just a scrappy bunch who fought through without any - very little establishment support - and just made a way. So really good job, really exciting. And thank you for joining us today.
[01:01:43] Phil Gardner: Thank you. Absolutely. Thanks for having me on.
[01:01:45] Crystal Fincher: Thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng and our Post-Production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks and you can follow me @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On today’s midweek show, Representative Jessica Bateman of the 22nd Legislative District joins Crystal for an in-depth discussion on housing policy in Washington State. After laying out the Department of Commerce’s 20-year projection of a needed million homes of which half need to be low-income housing, Representative Bateman walks through plans to address issues of supply, stabilization, and subsidized housing in the 2023 Legislative Session. Crystal outlines common opposition arguments to addressing the housing crisis - such as pushing growth into rural areas and maintaining local control - and Representative Bateman debunks these claims as not rooted in reality or equity. The two then make hopeful observations of the urgency of the problem being reflected in a tone shift in the conversation as well as the election of younger and more diverse legislators with closer ties to the matter - as a result, the House is redoing their committee structure and a broad coalition of stakeholders is coming together to elevate solutions to an issue that affects all of us.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Representative Jessica Bateman at @jessdbateman.
Representative Jessica Bateman
Representative Jessica Bateman lives by the commitment that no one should be left out or left behind.
A lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest, she grew up in a single-parent, working-class household. Watching her mom work hard to provide for her family deeply shaped Jessica’s worldview and later motivated her advocacy for those most vulnerable in our communities.
Since then, Jessica has dedicated her career to serving the 22nd Legislative District, where she envisions an inclusive, equitable future for all who call this region home. As an organizer and coalition leader, Jessica has worked to create affordable housing, assist struggling families, and empower at-risk youth. Jessica also worked to pass a Sanctuary City Resolution in Olympia and is a passionate advocate for accessible health care.
Jessica is a first-generation college student who earned her master’s degree in Public Administration from The Evergreen State College and her bachelor’s degree in environmental science. She currently works as a health care policy analyst, and served on the Olympia City Council and as staff in the House of Representatives.
Resources
Washington House Democrats: Representative Jessica Bateman
“What Washington's housing legislation could look like in 2023” by Joshua McNichols from KUOW
“Poll: Strong Majority of Washingtonians Support Middle Housing Options” from The Sightline Institute
“What Will It Take to Get Statewide Housing Reform?” by Matt Baume from The Stranger
“18 Reasons Why Washington Should Legalize Middle Housing” by Dan Bertolet from Sightline Institute
Representative Bateman Twitter thread on creation of new Housing Committee
Futurewise: We work across Washington to create livable communities, ensure clean healthy waterways, and protect farms, forests & habitat for this & future generations.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
So today I am really excited to be welcoming Representative Jessica Bateman to the show to talk all things housing. How are you doing?
[00:00:48] Representative Jessica Bateman: I am fabulous. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:00:50] Crystal Fincher: Well, I'm really excited to talk about this. Obviously, housing affordability has been a major issue on the minds of a majority of people across the state. Going through election season, we see polls and we hear about what are the most pressing issues that voters are thinking about and that people are facing in their communities - and consistently the cost of housing and affordability comes up as one of the predominant concerns. Housing is usually people's biggest expense that they have, and the cost of housing has just been skyrocketing and has caused a lot of problems that people are trying to figure out how to deal with. You have been working on that.
So I guess starting off, I just want to back up a little bit and talk about what brought you to the Legislature - I mean to politics, you were on the Olympia City Council and then the Legislature - and what got you so passionate about housing?
[00:01:46] Representative Jessica Bateman: Well, I worked on housing on the Olympia City Council for five years during my tenure there, but I'll go back even further. When we talk about housing policy, we can get really into the weeds and we're on a show right now that has "wonk" in the title - so I definitely can go there and have those conversations. But I think it's really important for us to remember - when we talk about the need for housing - abundant housing and housing options for everyone, housing that's affordable for families - we're talking about people. Because every single person and every single family has to have a home and a place to live.
And for me, it's personal. My mom grew up in poverty - she was born and raised in a trailer park in rural Montana. She moved out here to get a job and after having me, she was able to get a job at the county, King County, working as a janitor. And that job was a union-paying job and it helped provide the economic security for her, healthcare benefits - to buy a home as a single mom for $117,000 in Maple Valley. She took the equity that she built in that home and helped me buy a home when I was in my early 30s. I was able to sell that home, pay off all my student loans, and buy a second home with financial security and stability. Fortunately for me, I was one of the lucky ones. I went on to earn my Master's degree, ran for City Council, and now I'm in the Legislature. I want every family to have that opportunity - and right now with the current conditions that we are experiencing with housing, that is not the reality for people across Washington state. And my major concern is that the status quo is not working and we have an obligation - a moral obligation - to make changes so that that opportunity is available to everyone.
[00:03:30] Crystal Fincher: Completely makes sense. It mirrors the story of so many people in our communities right now. So what are you working on? What is the fix? What do we need to do to get this issue under control?
[00:03:43] Representative Jessica Bateman: I don't want to imply that there is a single solution, or that this is an easy problem to solve. The reality is that it has been decades in the making. It's also multifaceted. We've seen construction after the last recession - we saw a lot of people exit that workforce and we haven't seen them come back since then. So we've got a workforce issue underlying what is a barrier to the construction of housing. The fact of the matter is that the majority of cities across Washington state only allow one type of home to be built - single-family homes - in the vast majority of the residential land use areas. So when we're experiencing a shortage of housing - the numbers that we've been talking about in the last year are the quarter of a million homes that we're behind. We've now got estimates from the Department of Commerce - what our housing need is over the next 20 years - it's a million, and half of those - 500,000 - need to be homes that are affordable for people earning 0-50% AMI [average median income], which would be considered low-income housing.
So we have this desperate need to build housing commensurate with our population growth - that's really what we have not been able to do. We've been growing as a state, growing as an economy with jobs, job recruitment. You in Seattle definitely know and see that every day. While we do that, we also have to - must - allow for the construction for homes for those people to live in. Because when we don't have enough homes, the supply imbalance creates this environment - because everyone needs a home. People - what we saw in the last year with the astronomical prices - people in Seattle bidding $200,000 over asking price - really just eliminating the option for middle-income families right out the gate. People that were buying homes in this last year were people that had wealth.
So what we're trying to focus on going into the 2023 session is focusing on the multifaceted nature of this issue - triaging the issue of housing - because we know one single solution will not solve it. So it's about increasing supply - making sure that we have homes available to Washingtonians of all shapes and sizes. So that's meeting you where you are and what your needs are and what the demand is. If that's an ADU for a senior that wants to live on the property of their children so they can age in place and provide childcare. If that's a college student that would like to work at the record store down the street and be able to walk to work every day. That's a duplex, if you want to be able to buy into a home and build equity - or a sixplex or a fourplex or a cottage home - we should have all of these options available to us. There's also additional barriers and we have to make it legal to build those homes - we have to lift the bans on those homes. We also need to do things like make it easier for lot splitting - so if you have a piece of property, you can split that line and you can actually sell it - making that equity yourself, that profit. And you can also allow someone else to buy it - build a duplex - so they can then have that opportunity. We're also focusing on things like condo liability, permitting, impact fees. We can get into all those details, but there's all these other things that impact our ability to impact supply.
We also want to focus on stabilization because ultimately it is much more effective to keep people in the homes that they're in. So that's weatherization support for low-income people. That's rent stabilization - helping people stay if they're getting behind on their rent. It's also increased notice for people when rent increases are going to happen. We had a bill last year that would have required six months' notice for a tenant if the rent increase was going to be 7% or more. That bill did not make it out of the House last year. We can talk more definitely about the challenges of a bill like that. I also think we'll have a rent cap bill. So actually keeping a cap on rent - maybe similar to what we saw in Oregon, which was a 7% or inflation, but it could be - like in a case where we have inflation, it could be higher. And then also the last tier of that stool is subsidized housing. So that's the public investment in permanently affordable housing. You can call it social housing, you can call it public housing - but it's subsidized housing by the government to keep it affordable in perpetuity. And there's a number of different ways that we do that. Primarily at the legislative level, it's through the Housing Trust Fund. We need to vastly increase our investment in that. So the numbers that I started off with - the 500,000 that are 0-50% AMI - that's very difficult to build considering how expensive it is to build housing, with the cost of land, infrastructure, materials, workforce, permits, timeline, all the things, impact fees. So we really do need the government to step up and help support the subsidized lower-income housing. Over the last 40 years - since 1986 - the Housing Trust Fund has only built 55,000 homes. So if we're looking at a 20-year horizon of a need of 500,000 homes - that is pretty simple math for the common person to just say that does not add up. So we've got a significant gap in the need and what we're investing. That number just came out recently - I had been telling my colleagues we need to add a minimum double our Housing Trust Fund investment. Now that those numbers have come out, it tells me we need to make a significant investment, much more than double. So that's just the start of what I'm thinking for 2023.
[00:09:15] Crystal Fincher: Well, and that does certainly seem like it would make a significant difference and addresses many of the different elements of challenge in the whole issue. When I hear people - who have been less excited about this bill, or about taking on housing challenges, or even in opposition to - saying things, there are a few things that I hear. One is just, and I think there was a local meeting last night where it was expressed - hey, this is all growth. Why do we need to accommodate people who are coming here? Somewhere else can accept the growth. That's for big cities and not necessarily for all of the other communities. What would you say to-
[00:10:00] Representative Jessica Bateman: I would say that is not a factual statement. It's not based in reality or evidence or fact. Cities in Washington state - when you take an oath to serve the Constitution of Washington state - you take an oath to obey its laws and to fulfill them as a local elected official. And in our state law - under the Growth Management Act - we are required as local municipalities to plan for future population growth. It's a requirement. We can't just opt out of that and say no - although I have heard that before. I've doorbelled and had someone tell me - let's just build a wall around our city and tell people they need to move somewhere else. I think it's a fantastical idea. It's convenient to think we just don't have to welcome people into our community - I like it exactly how it is. The reality is that's not an option. If it's not an option and we know population growth will happen and that we have to accommodate it, our choice and opportunity is, what do we want that to look like? What do we want our community to look like?
[00:10:57] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. And I think the entire business community would be pretty unhappy with just saying - no, we don't want anyone else in this community. Definitely would not be a community that thrived.
[00:11:10] Representative Jessica Bateman: If you walk through that argument - think about doctors, nurses, construction, waitresses, waiters. Our lives depend upon people being here, people working here - solutions, creative thinking, schools, everything we have - we want people to be here.
[00:11:30] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. What do you say to other people who - there was another recent local meeting where folks were - well, we're supposed to absorb growth within these existing boundaries that - in either special districts or existing areas where there are homes. But there's all this other land that we have out in these suburban and rural areas and we can, instead of "burdening" single-family neighborhoods, we can just build new housing elsewhere. What do you say to people who say that?
[00:12:02] Representative Jessica Bateman: Also a fantastical idea about reality. Going back to the Growth Management Act, which stipulates that we concentrate population growth in our urban environments, in our cities - for good reason. That's where the infrastructure already exists. It's much more cost effective to build there. And because we want to retain green spaces, habitat conservation for our environment, for farmland, for habitat for endangered species and different animals - we have to have those green spaces. That's why the Growth Management Act stated its intent to have cities - population growth to occur in cities. Cities have processes for annexing and for expanding out, but there's a process for that as that's not something that happens every day and it's complicated. The reason is because we know we have to abide by the law and that population growth has to occur in our cities.
[00:12:53] Crystal Fincher: Last session, we heard from a number of cities - through a number of advocacy organizations and lobbyists - that cities don't want a one-size-fits-all solution for the state. They want to be able to come up with their own solutions for their own cities on their own. Unsurprisingly, not many cities have figured out that solution, despite the fact that this has been a growing crisis for years and years. What do you say to those who say - we need local control?
[00:13:24] Representative Jessica Bateman: I think local control is a 20th century ideology - it's outlived its use in this conversation. And it's vastly inadequate as a defense when we're looking at not enough housing for the people in Washington state to live in. The argument just falls incredibly flat. In addition to that, I would say I heard it for five years when I was on the Olympia City Council. We passed middle housing there - legislation, ordinance - after years of work, after 44 public meetings, after 1200 pages of written comment, after 3 public hearings. We went through it and we passed it anyway because we had - fortunately, an organized group of residents that were supportive and wanted livable, walkable communities. And we also had about a half that were really vocal and opposed, which is traditionally the people that show up at City Council meetings. We have data that tells us in fact that people that show up at City Council meetings are predominantly older, whiter, male property owners - so I would argue that the very process that we go through to receive public input on things like zoning changes and proposed zoning changes - where we're considering whether or not we want to grow as a city, which means allow more people to live here and be here - and the people that show up are the people that have the investment, the financial stake in maintaining the status quo is not equitable. And as government, as elected officials, we should - especially as Democrats, with our values - we should be looking at this system and analyzing - is it equitable? Who is benefiting from this?
We have to think of the future that we want. When I think of the future that I want and the problem that we're currently experiencing where we have not enough homes for the people that are here resulting in homelessness, resulting in people spending a third to half of their income on their housing, being vulnerable to falling into homelessness, not buying basic necessities like medicine because they cannot afford their needs because their rent is so high, or people that are terrified of a rent increase over a hundred dollars - the stress that that causes. When I hear those things and that's the problem that I'm trying to solve and a city comes to me and says - but I want to maintain local control. That's why it falls flat. And the data doesn't lie - the vast majority of cities do not allow middle housing. 5% of the permits in Washington state for new construction are for middle housing. The data doesn't lie. The consensus among social scientists - people that study this work - doesn't lie. There's, at the local level, not a lot of incentives for individual residents to support new housing. That's just a fact. It's not a judgment. I'm not judging people. I think it's a very natural inclination to say - I want things to stay how they are when you give a choice. Like I mentioned before, the way that we go about getting public input for these decisions really is inherently getting input from people that are already housed, not the people that are working two jobs, single moms, or someone that speaks English as a second language, or someone that has a reaction to an institutional setting like a City Council meeting. We need to be aware of that and we need to be thinking collectively about the good of Washington state. I would also argue that we've got over 220 cities in Washington - the vast majority of them are small ones. Does it make sense when we have something that's impacting cities across the state that we would want them to be doing it on an ad hoc individual basis across the state? I would argue that we would want a floor statewide, and then if they want to add additional incentives and additional density increases - that they can do that.
[00:16:54] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense to me. I think one interesting thing that I've noticed, as this conversation has taken place over the last several years, is that there's been a hesitance on behalf of a lot of elected officials because of what you just described - in hearing from the most vocal people who, as you talk about, usually are wealthy landowners who are profiting handsomely on the status quo, being vocal and saying - no, we don't need this. We don't want this. This isn't the right way to go. We don't need to grow. Just leave things the way they are. And a real hesitance from a number of elected officials to take action because they feel like it will come with a lot of pushback. However, I think what has been really encouraging to see is that over the, especially the last couple electoral cycles, we have seen voters in districts where this has been a big topic of conversation - in a number of districts where some of the most outspoken critics or people who have been hesitant to take action on this have been - and their districts and their jurisdictions, overall in voting, when this has been an issue in the election - and basically where candidates have taken opposing views on the ballot - voters have voted overwhelmingly in favor of candidates who are saying - hey, this is not sustainable, we have to take action, we need to implement middle housing, we need to make housing more affordable, we need to protect renters and just make sure people can afford to age in place, live where they are. Hearing from a number of parents who have raised kids and who were not paying attention so much, but now their kids are in college and in early careers - and they're seeing through their kids' eyes a lot of times how hostile this housing market is, how hard it is to get your foot in the door as a homeowner, and how hard it is just to afford rent year after year - and that creating a different kind of a sense of urgency and need than we've seen before. This issue is affecting everybody, everywhere. Do you see a change in perspective among some of your colleagues in the Legislature after seeing so many voters vote in favor of a new direction?
[00:19:16] Representative Jessica Bateman: Yes. I have noticed the tone change on this particular issue - because I've been working on it for eight years now - and it's significantly different today. I noticed it a lot last session when I was working on the middle housing bill. We even had an article, I think in the Auburn paper, where when they presented the middle housing bill, it was pretty - they didn't try to burn anyone at the stake with their description of the bill. It was pretty balanced - I was surprised. And what that tells me - and also the anecdotal stories that I hear from people talking to members in their district, from what I hear from my colleagues - is that as Washingtonians get more squeezed by this housing shortage, the more people it impacts, the more real it becomes. Like my little sister - my dad worked at Boeing 40 years, something like that. My little sister is the baby of the family. She's a nurse. She can't afford a home in King County. She makes a good living at her wage. She has a partner too that makes a decent living. But the median home price last year when I was working on this bill, or earlier this year, was $830,000 - which they just cannot afford. They want to live near downtown because they don't want to spend an hour commuting every day and it's just impossible - there's no way that they can do that. So they're postponing starting a family, postponing building equity, building a future, getting roots in a community.
That's happening all across the state, so we're seeing people that have children, like you mentioned, that are experiencing that. We're also seeing people that have relatives - like parents - that are stuck in these big suburban homes that are going - I would move to a smaller home if there was an option for me, and there aren't. Because we're not seeing the construction of - those smaller homes and condos really aren't being constructed. They're being constructed at a very low rate. So because it's impacting more and more people, I think you're seeing that dialogue change. Also, the younger and more diverse our legislators are, the more connected they are to this issue. It's pretty simple. And just this recent year, our freshmen incoming class is the most diverse class - both racially, lived experience, and economically. So I'm very optimistic that we're going to take this issue seriously, that we're going to work on solutions for the people of Washington, and that we're going to get some major things accomplished this next year.
[00:21:30] Crystal Fincher: All right. So talking about getting things accomplished - is middle housing going to pass this year?
[00:21:36] Representative Jessica Bateman: I am very hopeful. So a couple of things have happened. First, we have changed our committee structures. Every two years, we evaluate our committee structures and the jurisdictions within them. And so going into 2023, we heard from our members in the Democratic caucus on the House side that housing was the number one issue that they wanted to focus on. So we took a look at the committees and we decided to create one committee that's just housing and everything housing. That might seem like an obvious choice, but it wasn't. Before that, the current committee structure - until the end of this year - I'm on the Housing, Human Services and Veteran Affairs Committee, which includes veteran affairs, developmental disability, social services, and housing. So we're putting everything other than housing - we're pulling it out - and then we're going to take zoning and GMA out of Local Government and put it into the Housing Committee. Makes sense because we want to look at not just the symptoms of not having enough housing - like the need for rent stabilization, for instance. We want to look at the cause, the root of the problem, and look at all of those things together - condos, HOAs, rent stabilization, Housing Trust Fund dollars, and above all, supply. Because to be honest, we have not been focusing very much on the supply side of this problem. It's almost been like a dirty word amongst politicians. And I think there may be subconscious reasons for that - it's really easy to vilify developers. When we get into the nitty gritty of why housing is so expensive, it's because it's expensive to construct housing. And actually the government's responsible for a lot of that. So we need to be honest about that - it's the first step in coming to terms with a solution is being honest and accepting the current conditions. So we need to look at those things and figure out how are we going to solve them. And I'm very enthusiastic and excited about this committee. We'll decide later on this week who will serve on committees and it will be adopted by our caucus next week. But I think that indicates that we're really taking this seriously and want to put a concerted focus, like I mentioned before, triaging the issue of housing.
I'm going to be bringing back my middle housing bill this year. It will be more ambitious than it was last year. It will be impacting cities - last year it was cities 10,000-20,000 duplexes everywhere, and cities 20,000 and up fourplexes everywhere, basically. And this year we're starting at cities of 6,000 or more - and it will be legalizing fourplexes on every current residential lot. In addition, if two units are affordable, there's a density bonus and they could have a sixplex. So on any current single-family residential lot, a sixplex could be allowed if two of the units were affordable - up to 80% AMI. And then in addition to that - same as last year - allowing sixplexes within a half a mile of transit. So that's the basic gist of the bill. It will impact - oh, and cities that are contiguous with any city larger than 200,000, which will impact some of those smaller cities that are up close to Seattle and larger cities in King County.
And so we have a coalition working on it this year - Futurewise, which is an environmental organization that's been focusing on Growth Management Act policies, land use, protecting and conserving the environment - they're making this a priority this year, along with House Bill 1099 from last year, which is a climate change bill requiring cities to adopt climate change policies in their comprehensive planning processes. I'm thrilled that these two bills are together a priority, because we often don't talk about the connection between climate change and land use. But the reality is we will not accomplish our climate change, our carbon reduction goals in Washington state if we do not change land use. Because utilization of public transit and multimodal transportation is predicated on density. And that means we have to do infill. And so having those two priorities and bills together and talking about them together is my dream come true. Because ultimately this is about solutions and we need solutions that actually work. And these two really are - the intersection of climate change with all of the things that we want to focus on - equity, racial justice, conserving and protecting the environment, economic stability, all those things. It all works together, housing and climate. And so I'm happy to have them on board and working the issue. And working on getting more and more support from my colleagues - I had a good number of colleagues that co-sponsored the bill last year, I'm hoping to have even more this year. We've been doing a lot of work over the interim and I'm excited.
[00:26:11] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, when you talk about you've been doing a lot of work and the coalition that you've been able to put together with this - how have you gone about this? How have you involved stakeholders in the process? How did you get to where you are today with this bill?
[00:26:26] Representative Jessica Bateman: So last year was my first - I sponsored it in 2022. But prior to that, Representative Nicole Macri, who is my housing shero, sponsored that bill. She asked me to take it over last year because she had a lot of other bills she was working on and I was happy to do so. It was Governor request last year, and there's a process for Governor request - they have to go through their whole internal process. So this year is different because I'm drafting it on my own. Last year, the public engagement process was kind of me on Twitter - that was the extent of it, which I really didn't use before that bill. But the response that we got was overwhelming. The number of people that signed into the bill last year - I've got it on a sticky note - 548 people signed in Pro on the bill last year, which is phenomenal. And we had quite a few people that were signed up to support it - I think 37 people were signed in to actually comment. That's a lot of people for a bill, especially a wonky land use bill. So what that tells me is that this is impacting so many people - that they're motivated to come and talk to their legislators about it and to sign in to support a bill, they're engaging on social media, they're listening to podcasts - and we did interviews and news and all the different things - that's happening because it's an issue. It's top of mind for people - that's the only reason why this issue continues to be focused on - is because the people in Washington are saying - fix this, we need a solution.
And so after session ended and the bill died, I got together with my labor stakeholders and advocates, environmental advocates, some racial justice advocates and said - this is something that intersects all of these issues. We need to work together and we need to work together on a package looking at this holistically. What are all of the things that impact our ability to create housing and enough housing for Washingtonians? And then how do we keep people stable in the homes that they have, and how do we build enough subsidized low-income housing that will only be built by the public because the private sector won't be able to make it pencil out? And so in doing that, we saw - over the summer, the Washington State Labor Council passed a resolution stating that they supported ending exclusionary zoning because it impacts working families and their ability to take those wage gains that they've earned - hard-fought over years - they just dissipate when the cost of rent and homes go up so much. We've also seen the environmental organizations and supporters come on board and say - this is impacting climate. And the Black Homeowner Initiative has a 7-point plan for creating homes - and included in that is legalizing middle housing. So what we really saw was a consensus among these stakeholders and organizations that this is something that they want to focus on in 2023. They really see the intersection and the connected nature of these issues. And that's really enabled us to work and educate lawmakers. We held a town hall last night - a webinar for folks to learn about this package proposal. And then I think what we're going to see is - Democrats working with Republicans - I think this is going to be a bipartisan issue, at least the supply side of this package. Ultimately, that package that includes supply stabilization and subsidy, there will be people or organizations that cannot support certain bills or certain tiers of that stool. But they also recognize that all of those things are included in a solution. So some people might opt out of certain parts. But I think in terms of the supply conversation, we'll see some bipartisan support.
[00:30:12] Crystal Fincher: So in terms of the stabilization issues, are there any conversations about lifting the ban on rent control?
[00:30:21] Representative Jessica Bateman: Yes. So the bill I mentioned before, that we had last year in Local Government, was just simply providing advanced notice - six months' notice. And that bill was killed. The people that were opposed to that were successful in that bill never making it to the floor. My impression, having been there for two years, is that rent control remains politically very, very difficult to take away - to give cities the ability to actually to have a rent cap, or rent control, or even doing it statewide. I don't actually understand why that is because it's very popular politically. People, my mom included - over the summer, we were garage saleing and we were talking about housing and I said - Mom, does it make sense to you that we can't put a cap on rent? She was like - Nooo. So I think we're going to see probably a rent stabilization bill - a bill that will allow for a cap on a 7% inflationary increase - so with inflation, with a couple extra percentages just as a buffer for things like maintenance or if you need to do some upgrades on the unit, but within reason. Some kind of a stabilizing - you can see and predict how much and it's not excessive. They did that in Oregon when they passed their middle housing legislation a couple years ago, and I really like the combination of the two of those. We'll probably see just one that's straight rent control. Whether or not those can pass - I think it's a really heavy lift and I haven't seen evidence of a coalition organizing around that in a strong way.
[00:32:00] Crystal Fincher: What can people do to help organize around that and middle housing and funding - increasing funding for the Housing Trust Fund? How can the public engage, get involved with this, and help make sure their Representatives and Senators are in the right place on this?
[00:32:18] Representative Jessica Bateman: I think - and it's tough when I hear that question, because I know having been a renter and a person earning minimum wage and living in poverty, poverty wages - it's really hard to tell people - take time out of your day, your stressful life, and put the onus on them to then contact their elected officials. However, I do think that those stories really resonate with people in the Legislature. Personal stories are the most important. I was a legislative assistant years ago before being elected to City Council. And I can tell you, even as a staffer, those personal stories really resonate and they do far more than a fact sheet does. That being said, I know it's difficult for people. So even - if you have a tenants' union, they probably have legislative priorities. You can sign on to bills and track bills and just sign your name - that's important. Also, the Low Income Housing Alliance has a legislative priorities - they're very, very organized and they have a really great outreach and engagement with their members to tell those stories. Ultimately, we need more people that are directly impacted by our housing shortage and rent increases.
I'm surprised - because when I go out to my community, I hear from seniors - like this summer, the senior resources center in my community - the woman who manages that told me she gets two or three calls a day from a senior that says they can't afford their rent increase. And she looked at me and she said - you know what I tell them? What I give them? And I said, what? She says - I give them the phone number for homelessness services because that's all I have. There's no resources for them. There's no bucket of money for them. Nothing. That's all I have. And she has to do that every day - because there's no special funding for seniors. And seniors are on a fixed income - it's so obvious. But then, we hear these stories - $400 increases, $500, $1,000 increases. People can't afford it. So that's the reality of our constituents across the state. And it's a huge problem - both from a humanitarian perspective, also from a cost-effective perspective - because once you're unhoused, it is so much more expensive to get you back into housing and the destabilizing impact that has on you, your family, your children, school, for everything.
[00:34:40] Crystal Fincher: What else can be done to help stabilize, or what else is on the agenda this session to help keep people in their homes, to help people be able to manage the rent increases? I have a neighbor who this past year had their rent go up over 40%. And just really, really hard to manage and negotiate through. Obviously, their income did not go up at all and trying to squeeze that in. And there just seems to be no kind of incentive for landlords - many of them corporate landlords or corporate entities, not even people you can talk to - doesn't seem to be any kind of incentive for them to slow down or moderate the rent increases. It seems like it's going to have to happen through regulation or it's not going to happen - and we'll continue to pay the consequences until then.
[00:35:33] Representative Jessica Bateman: I agree with everything that you said. And I think what we're going to see is a big push for a significant increase in the Housing Trust Fund. And I know that sounds vague. It's the beginning of a conversation around what does that look like and what does that entail? There's a couple - so when we say an increase in investment in the Housing Trust Fund, we have to identify where that money comes from. And we have to identify what revenue source because there's a lot of reluctance to move money that's going towards something now into something else. We don't want to have a scarcity mindset where we cut things that are really important in order to fund other things that are important. Revenue is a tricky thing for us to address. It takes a little bit of organization and demonstrated support. A lot of things have to kind of line up in order for that to happen. I have heard of two revenue sources. First is an additional local REET option for cities to pass that they can use for affordable housing. Cities have -
[00:36:38] Crystal Fincher: And is the REET a real estate investment tax?
[00:36:41] Representative Jessica Bateman: Real estate excise tax.
[00:36:42] Crystal Fincher: Excise tax - thank you.
[00:36:44] Representative Jessica Bateman: Yes. And cities have a couple of different tools in their toolbox right now. They have a 1% property tax or sales tax that they can implement for the use for affordable housing. They also have a sales tax that they can get back from the state as a form of credit - that was a June Robinson bill from before I was in the Legislature that I cannot recall right now. It's not a significant amount of funding, but it would add to if they were to do the Home Fund - which is what we call it in Olympia - the 1% sales tax. Those are two revenue sources. Not all cities are doing that - a handful are and counties. First, I would say the Low Income Housing Alliance has been really great about educating local electeds to know what revenue options they have. We need cities to be a partner in this. In addition to that, we also need to identify revenue sources at the state level so we can make a big investment. It'd be really lovely if we had a sense of urgency and investment from our federal partners as well. I'm not going to bank on that. However, I have a fabulous Congresswoman, Marilyn Strickland, who's working on that. So REET local option.
Also, we have a progressive REET - we changed it a couple of years ago. For the higher properties, there's a discussion about lowering the threshold for when the higher rate would apply, which would increase the amount of revenue that we're collecting from that. There's also discussions about wealth tax - that was something we considered a couple of years ago when we passed the capital gains excise tax. A wealth tax is very popular amongst Washingtonians, and it makes sense to have the wealthiest Washingtonians paying their fair share. However, going into what some people might call a recession - we're feeling recession, inflation - we're hearing a little bit of talk about that. I think that it remains very politically popular and feasible, so I would push us to do that. We do need to increase our investment in the Housing Trust Fund for the reasons you identified. We need to have rent stabilization. We have a doc recording fee Rent Stabilization Fund for the first time - that was created last year or the year before - and that goes directly into rent assistance for people. We need to provide more investment in that and we need to vastly increase the number in the Housing Trust Fund. The Association of Washington Cities is advocating for a billion dollar a year increased investment in the housing trust fund.
[00:39:09] Crystal Fincher: That is significant.
[00:39:11] Representative Jessica Bateman: That's six times what we're currently investing right now, so it's significant.
[00:39:16] Crystal Fincher: I would love to see it. I think the final thing I just want to cover - you had mentioned that government does have a role to play in how expensive it is to build housing and challenges. We hear challenges about design review and the time it takes to permit, just the time it takes to build and all the different factors involved with that. Are you looking at anything to address those issues?
[00:39:42] Representative Jessica Bateman: We are. First, there's going to be a bill on eliminating minimum parking requirements near transit, which would save - I think in Seattle the last time I heard, it adds an additional $75,000 per unit. In addition to that, an impact fee deferral bill. As a developer, when you go to start building, you can defer out the impact fee until after you sell the property. Permit streamlining in Washington state - cities are supposed to turn around a permit in 120 days. There's no accountability or action that happens if they don't meet that timeline. We need to provide them with resources and support so they can actually honor that timeline and hold them accountable if they don't. There's another bill for condos that will allow condos of 12 units or less to be subject to residential energy code and residential building code instead of commercial - will significantly reduce cost. I know Representative Duerr is working on a bill that's similar to that for middle housing, but it's going to be a study to get them to come up with a plan for how to do that - so we can have middle housing only have to go through the residential building codes, which would reduce the costs as well. Those are just a handful of the bills that we've talked about so far. I think there will be more, but there is a significant area of interest in reducing the cost and our role in creating the high cost of constructing housing.
[00:41:17] Crystal Fincher: Sounds good. Then the issue of just some notoriously bad actors who are landlords - and hearing from cities that code enforcement resources are short, seeking funding for that - are you looking at anything to help hold bad landlords accountable for illegal and negligent actions?
[00:41:43] Representative Jessica Bateman: That hasn't been an issue that has been brought to me. I'm happy to work with folks and see additional revenue that we could provide for cities. I know - in the city of Olympia, we have code enforcement, so if you've got a violation of a code, I guess it would depend upon how active the code enforcement department is. In Olympia, it's pretty active and if you have - I've called them before - and they come pretty quickly. If cities are saying they need more resources to enable them to actually take those complaints and actually go out and investigate, I'm happy to have that conversation. Because while we focus on making sure there is housing available, we want to make sure that it's healthy housing for people.
[00:42:23] Crystal Fincher: Makes sense. How can people follow the work that you're doing throughout the Legislature and just stay up to date on what you're working on?
[00:42:33] Representative Jessica Bateman: So first, my email - you can reach me at jessica.bateman@leg.wa.gov. You can also follow me @jessdbateman - B-A-T-E-M-A-N - on Twitter. And you can also find me on Facebook - I have a legislative Facebook account. It's frozen right now, I think, because of the elections. I think it'll be active starting next January. I would say that the most fast-paced information is on my Twitter account, and I will be posting updates on my middle housing bill as I introduce it, which should be happening in the next week. I was really hoping to drop it today on my birthday, but it didn't work out that way. So I'll be posting information for people so they can get engaged. Also, Futurewise, I'm sure, will be doing that. And Futurewise has an account as well on Twitter.
[00:43:29] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. Well, thank you so much for taking this time to explain all this to us, for working so hard on this for so long. I wish you a very happy birthday. Thanks for joining us.
[00:43:42] Representative Jessica Bateman: Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure and thank you so much for hosting the opportunity to have this dialogue about this really important issue.
[00:43:50] Crystal Fincher: Thanks so much.
[00:43:51] Representative Jessica Bateman: Thanks. Bye.
[00:43:52] Crystal Fincher: Thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng and our Post-Production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can follow me @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
For this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by returning co-host: Seattle political reporter and editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett! The show starts with yesterday’s acquittal verdict of embattled Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer whose trial followed familiar narratives of an officer fearing for their life, leading to a disappointing but unsurprising outcome. The release of Governor Inslee’s proposed budget hints at Democratic priorities in the upcoming legislative session such as housing affordability, expansion of mental health services, and education. Meanwhile, with Washington state on track to hit a 25-year high in traffic deaths, Crystal and Erica discuss the need to address road design and a possible lowering of the legal blood alcohol content (BAC) level for meaningful improvements in road user safety. Finally, the two talk about the decisions of Seattle City Councilmembers Debora Juarez and Lisa Herbold to not run for re-election as well as a recent King County auditor report showing insufficient data collection by county diversion programs and plans for a 2023 assessment of the traditional criminal legal system for comparison.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica C. Barnett, at @ericacbarnett. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Jury acquits Sheriff Troyer of false reporting in case involving newspaper carrier” by Jared Brown from The News Tribune
“Ed Troyer beat the rap, but can Pierce County’s sheriff outrun the mistrust he’s sown?” by Matt Driscoll from The News Tribune
“Housing, homelessness, and behavioral health: Here are some of Inslee's 2023 budget priorities” by Shauna Sowersby from The News Tribune
“Washington traffic deaths on track to hit 25-year high” by Christine Clarridge from Axios
“The Urbanist’s Ryan Packer Discusses Worsening Traffic Safety Crisis on KUOW” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
“Seattle City Council President Debora Juarez won't seek reelection” by Josh Cohen from Crosscut
“Seattle Councilmember Lisa Herbold will not run for reelection in 2023” by Dyer Oxley & David Hyde from KUOW
“King County jail diversion programs not collecting enough data” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times
Transcript
Coming soon
On this midweek show, Crystal welcomes back Katie Wilson of the Transit Riders Union to walk through the wildly successful Raise the Wage Tukwila Initiative, which was approved with over 82% of the vote in last month’s general election, and will increase Tukwila’s minimum wage to $18.99/hour for large businesses starting next July. Katie details the broad, community-based coalition that was built and the thoughtful legwork and preparation that set the initiative up for success at the ballot box - from community surveys to signature gathering to Get Out The Vote, the campaign provides a template for how to build power through civic engagement. Crystal and Katie then talk about lessons learned, key takeaways, and what’s next on the horizon for the Transit Riders Union.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Katie Wilson at @WilsonKatieB and the Transit Riders Union at @SeattleTRU.
Katie Wilson
Katie Wilson is the general secretary of the Transit Riders Union and was the campaign coordinator for Raise the Wage Tukwila.
Resources
Raise the Wage Tukwila campaign website
What’s on the ballot: City of Tukwila Initiative Measure No. 1 | King County Elections
“Tukwila voters approve minimum wage hike” by Melissa Santos from Axios
“Tukwila minimum wage hike passing by huge margin” by Seattle Times staff from The Seattle Times
“The minimum wage movement is more mainstream than ever” by Guy Oron from Real Change News
“Transit Rider’s Union Leads Coalition Seeking to Raise Tukwila’s Minimum Wage” by Andrew Engelson from The Urbanist
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
So today, I'm very excited to be welcoming back to the program, Katie Wilson of the Transit Riders Union. Welcome.
[00:00:46] Katie Wilson: Thank you, Crystal.
[00:00:47] Crystal Fincher: I am very excited to talk about the Raise the Wage Tukwila initiative, which was wildly successful and you played a really big role in. So I think just to start off - just recapping what the initiative was aiming to do.
[00:01:07] Katie Wilson: Sure. So Raise the Wage Tukwila basically set out to, as the name suggests, raise the minimum wage in the City of Tukwila. And toward the beginning of this year, we did a lot of outreach to workers, to local businesses, to residents, to community organizations to put together our measure. And we decided to basically try to bring Tukwila's minimum wage up to more or less match the minimum wages in the neighboring cities of SeaTac and Seattle.
[00:01:40] Crystal Fincher: Makes sense. And so when you were going about - I guess - the planning for this, the idea for this, how did this begin?
[00:01:49] Katie Wilson: So the Transit Riders Union, which is the organization that I work with and for - we started thinking about something like this campaign in the middle of last year. And at that point, we were doing a lot of work on renter protections with another coalition called Stay Housed, Stay Healthy. And as part of that work, we were trying to get cities all around the county to do more to protect renters, both with emergency protections and permanent protections. And that really got us thinking about what it would look like to do some deeper organizing in South King County. And so we began talking to lots of ally organizations and doing some outreach - and eventually settled on this idea of doing an initiative in the City of Tukwila.
And the City of Tukwila is a really interesting place. It's a small city - it only has about maybe 20, a little over 20,000 residents. But it's a really big job center - so you have the Southcenter Mall down there and all of the retail jobs around there - so a lot of low wage workers are basically commuting from all over South King County and beyond to work at jobs in Tukwila. And so - we also thought that because Tukwila is nestled in between SeaTac and Seattle, it made a lot of sense to propose raising the minimum wage up to parity with those neighboring cities.
[00:03:22] Crystal Fincher: Now who is the coalition that you began this with?
[00:03:25] Katie Wilson: Yeah, it's a really broad coalition. So there are a lot of community organizations that do work in Tukwila, especially with the many immigrant communities in Tukwila. So for example, there's the Congolese Integration Network, which was very involved, and African Community Housing and Development. And the Washington Community Action Network and Working Washington both really stepped up on helping us with some of the signature gathering and Get Out The Vote. And a number of labor unions who have members in Tukwila and South King County also really stepped up and helped out - including UFCW, including SEIU Local 6, Teamsters 117. So it was really a kind of a broad community and labor coalition that came together.
[00:04:18] Crystal Fincher: Really strong coalition. How did you, or how did the coalition, go about writing the initiative and determining exactly what was right for Tukwila?
[00:04:28] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so that process really began more than a year ago. And we basically talked to - on the one hand - policy experts, people who worked on minimum wage and other labor standards campaigns in Seattle and other places, even around the country. And we did a lot of talking to workers at Southcenter Mall. We did a couple of surveys where we had about 100 workers responding to survey questions about the issues that they face at work. And then of course just talking with all the organizations that were starting to come together in this coalition. We also did some door knocking just to Tukwila residents to take people's temperature on how they felt about something like this. And so through all that - and then I guess outreach to local businesses was an important part of that too - so we talked to, we would just walk into pretty much any local Tukwila business that we could find and try to talk to the owner about what they thought about this.
And so through all that, we came up with our policy, which is pretty simple. It's basically raising the minimum wage to match SeaTac. There's some small differences in how we do the inflation adjustment, so it's going to go up year after year based on cost of living. And it's going to be a little bit on its kind of own trajectory, but very similar to SeaTac. And we have a graduated structure so that the new wage, which will be $18.99 next year, will go into effect on July 1st of 2023 for large businesses - ones with over 500 employees worldwide. And then we have a three-year phase-in for smaller businesses so that they'll be going up and basically match the large employer rate in 2025. And then there's an exemption for the very smallest businesses, with up to 15 employees and up to $2 million in annual revenue. So that really came out of those conversations. And then the other piece of the policy - which is important - is access-to-hours policies. So that basically means that employers have to offer available hours of work to existing part-time employees before they hire new employees or subcontractors.
[00:06:55] Crystal Fincher: Which is actually a really big issue - there and across the board - and was really happy to see that addressed in the initiative. So going out - so now you've written the initiative - qualifying to get on the ballot involves getting a certain number of signatures from residents in the city. How did you go about that process?
[00:07:20] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so we began signature gathering around the end of March of this year. So our team - Transit Riders Union - we had two full-time people that we brought on to be organizers for this campaign. And we planned basically a campaign launch event around the end of March - brought together people from our coalition, Transit Riders Union members, volunteers - and so that was the kickoff of our signature gathering effort. And then after that, every Saturday we would have a big volunteer day where people would gather in the morning and we would send people out knocking on doors, gathering signatures. And then we also did more signature gathering during the week. So it was a pretty big effort.
And in Tukwila, signature gathering basically means door knocking. So if you're doing an initiative in Seattle, there's a lot of big public events and public spaces, like outside the light rail station, where you can stand there outside and just talk to person after person as they walk by and ask them to sign your petition. The thing about Tukwila is that there's not really many public spaces where you're going to find Tukwila residents. So you could go to Southcenter Mall, but the vast majority of people that you talk to don't actually live in Tukwila. They're there for shopping or they're there for work, and they live somewhere else. So if you want to efficiently gather the signatures of Tukwila residents, you really have to find people at home. And so it was almost all door knocking.
[00:08:59] Crystal Fincher: Which was really exciting to see, to watch from afar. And is, as you said, different than we've seen in a number of big cities and frankly, from a number of campaigns that have been really well-funded - is focusing a lot on tabling and transit stations, and going to those large events. So as you were planning the door knocking associated with this, were you taking advantage of that time to also educate the renters and homeowners on what this was, what it meant? What was that process like?
[00:09:43] Katie Wilson: Yeah. I think part of the great thing about doing an initiative is that when you're out gathering signatures, you're also talking to the same people whose votes you're going to need in the fall. And so we were definitely - yeah, obviously talking to people about why this was important and also asking them questions like - do you work in Tukwila? Do you know anyone who will benefit from a minimum wage increase? And so building those relationships with Tukwila residents and voters right off the bat, I think, really helped us when it came to the fall because a lot of people remembered having signed the petition in the spring, so they were already aware that this was happening and we got to come back to them and say - hey, remember that thing that you signed? We got enough signatures, so it's going to be on the ballot for you to vote on, right? So there was an opportunity to talk to the same people multiple times during the campaign. And we also did some registration of new voters too. So we were able to knock on doors and talk to people who maybe had just moved from another city and needed to update their registration to be able to vote in Tukwila, or someone who was an immigrant who is just newly eligible for voting. So we were able to do some of that as well.
[00:11:00] Crystal Fincher: So was this a largely volunteer signature gathering effort? I think you said that there were paid canvassers involved. Were there other financial supports involved? How did this look financially and volunteer-wise?
[00:11:18] Katie Wilson: Yeah, it was really a mixture. So we had a lot of volunteer signature gathering - again, like TRU members and volunteers who had just gotten involved in the campaign. Also, a lot of other organizations would bring out volunteers - the Seattle DSA - mostly during the Get Out The Vote portion of it, but definitely came out canvassing with us a number of times. And then we also had, on TRU's side, two staff organizers who were doing a lot of signature gathering as well. And then Washington Community Action Network has a canvassing team and they put in some time as well. So it was really a combination, I would say, probably roughly about half and half signatures gathered by volunteers versus signatures gathered by staff.
[00:12:08] Crystal Fincher: Makes sense - and then other people are looking at this, other organizations who may be considering initiatives to help improve things in their own communities. What are the biggest lessons that you learned about the signature gathering - going through this process - and what advice would you provide?
[00:12:25] Katie Wilson: Yeah, I think one thing is just that it is a lot of work. So yeah, don't underestimate how much work it is to go and gather what sounds like not a lot of signatures, right? We gathered over 3,000 signatures, but you have to expect that your validity rate is going to be very low, especially in a city like Tukwila, right - where you have a lot of - big proportion of renters, so people tend to move a little bit more often. Lots of non-citizens, so people might not realize that they're not able to sign it. And so we gathered over 3,000 signatures and we had plenty to qualify, but I think we had a little over 1,700 valid out of that. And door knocking is really intensive work, so you could spend basically all day knocking on doors gathering signatures and maybe you get 15-20 signatures at the end of that - just in terms of signatures per hour, signatures per day - it's a much slower process than it is, for example, in Seattle when you're just outside the Capitol Hill light rail station talking to 30 people an hour, right? And so that's one thing - is just don't underestimate the amount of work it is. But also, I think that - obviously our results in Tukwila were very, very good and there are, I think, a lot of reasons for that. But I do think that running an initiative is an opportunity to really just do some deep talking to voters and setting yourself up really well for people to come out and vote and know what they're voting on in the election itself.
[00:14:12] Crystal Fincher: So thinking - you get to the point where you do get enough signatures, you do qualify - I guess one other question, just with the validation - because with these signature gathering processes, valid signatures have to come from registered voters, so you have to meet all the qualifications and be registered. How did you go about the validation process for making sure that out of the signatures that you collected, you determine which ones were actually valid?
[00:14:40] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so it's ultimately - it's King County Elections that does the official validation. So you turn your signatures into the City Clerk and the City Clerk transmits them to King County Elections. And then King County Elections basically checks each signature, each entry against their voter file and the signature that they have on file for each voter. And what we were doing - before we turned in our signatures - we did our own rough verification process where basically we would - and we had an excellent volunteer data entry team from among TRU's membership who were doing this process, where basically they would - we would scan the petition sheets after we collected them. And then for each entry, we would check them against the Washington State voter file, which is a public document that you can download for purposes like this, and try to find that person to at least verify that they actually are a registered voter in Tukwila. Now, of course, we don't know what their signature looks like, right? So we can't actually match the signature that we got against the official signature, but we can at least try to find that name and that address and say - okay, yes, this is the person who is a registered voter at this address. And so that gave us a pretty good idea of how many valid signatures we had. And it also - what it allowed us to do - is then we had a list of hundreds of entries where we didn't find that person in the voter file. And so we were able to do some follow up with those people to, for example, try to help them get registered to vote if they were eligible, but not registered - or if they needed to update their voter registration information.
[00:16:35] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. Okay, so you qualified. Now it's time to - knowing that you're going to be on the ballot - to make sure that voters know that this is going to be on the ballot and why they should vote for it. How did you go about putting together how to communicate this to the residents of Tukwila?
[00:16:58] Katie Wilson: Yeah, I think we did all the things that campaigns do. And so we prepared over the summer. And then after Labor Day, we kicked off our Get Out The Vote campaign. And we - the centerpiece of it, of course, was just more door knocking, right? And we had pledge-to-vote postcards that we were inviting people to sign - that we would then mail back to them when ballots dropped. So they would get an extra reminder from themselves to look for their ballot. And we also made refrigerator magnets that are - they look like a campaign button, except it's a magnet on the back instead of a pin. And so we would give people reminder-to-vote refrigerator magnets. And we also did door hangers, which we would leave at the door if no one answered. We did some mailers - we didn't do mailers to everyone because it's pretty expensive, but we carved out a subset of voters to do mailers for. We did a bunch of texting people. So yeah, really just all of the above - everything that you do to get the word out. We did a few yard signs.
And really, I think we were expecting, when we went into this campaign, that we were going to have really strong, well-funded opposition from some of the business associations. And so we planned accordingly and did all the things that we would need to do in order to effectively fight a No campaign. We also got lots of media coverage, right? So we'd be in touch with all the TV news and the reporters trying to get news coverage of the campaign. So we did all those things. Of course, in the end, we actually had no opposition, which was kind of amazing, but we still did all the things. And I think that's part of the reason why we had 82% vote in favor of the measure.
[00:19:11] Crystal Fincher: Right - and I just want to pause for a moment and just talk about 82% - which is just an eye-popping number for a minimum wage initiative. We haven't really seen a result like this before. And as I look at it, it has a lot to do with how you went about the strategy and putting together this initiative from the very beginning. The strength of the coalition that you put together - it was broad, it was inclusive, it wasn't necessarily - hey, we're coming from the outside to tell you what we think would be best, or we already know exactly what we're going to do and we're just transplanting it to the city. You really did involve people who were there and looked at what would make the big differences for them locally - incorporated that into the legislation, talked to business owners there in the city. And it seems like that doing the legwork upfront and really understanding who your stakeholders were, understanding how this impacted people, and including the people who would be impacted made a big difference. What do you see as the reason why you were able to get such a huge amount of people in support?
[00:20:32] Katie Wilson: Yeah - well, thank you. I would love to believe that it's - we just ran such a great campaign, that's why we won by so much. But I do think that there were some other elements of it that were important, which were less due to what we did. One thing that we did do that I think was a good strategic decision that made a big difference was - in designing the measure - having it really explicitly say we are raising Tukwila's minimum wage to match next door in SeaTac, as opposed to just choosing a number, right? If we had said $19/hour, right - now it amounts to the same thing, it's going to be $19/hour. But I think that it just sounds so ridiculously reasonable that Tukwila should have the same standard as the city next door - that I think just that framing and having that be the way the legislation was written, rather than putting a number on it - I think was probably really helpful. It's just really hard to argue that - no, Tukwila should not have the same minimum wage as SeaTac - when you have people doing the same jobs right across the street from each other in the two different cities, who are getting paid different amounts, right? So I think that was good.
But I do think a couple of other things. I think that kind of the moment that we're in, right? We're in this moment where there's high inflation and just the cost of living - from food to gas to rent - are going up so rapidly. I think that ended up helping us. And I kind of thought that maybe it would hurt us because people would look at cost increases and say - well, if you raise the minimum wage, prices are going to go up even more. And we heard that fear a little bit, but I think mostly what the inflation and the high cost of living did was it just made it really undeniable that people who were making the statewide minimum wage or just a little bit more are not able to afford to live here anymore, right? And so I think that really on balance helped us. And I think also the fact that we've experienced this really tight labor market this year has meant that a lot of large employers have actually needed to raise their wages for the time being just to get workers in the door and to keep them there. So you've seen in the news - a lot of major corporations have just announced - okay, our starting wage right now is going to be $17 because otherwise we can't hire people. And so I do think there was an element of some corporations that might normally be inclined to fight something like this were already having to pay significantly more than the statewide minimum wage. And so it just wasn't worthwhile to them to fight it. And so I think that really helped. And that moment is not necessarily going to last, right? There's almost certainly going to be a recession next year. Probably we're going to enter a period where some people are being laid off and employers don't really need to pay more than the minimum wage to get people in the door. And so in that sense, I think we lucked into a window of opportunity where there just wasn't a lot of fight back.
[00:23:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and certainly windows of opportunity are real and even if you have a great initiative with a great team - timing and just those larger conditions make a difference. But I do want to go back and talk a little bit more about your strategy for canvassing and even having those conversations throughout the signature gathering process - going back and revisiting people afterwards. Were you planning to visit most voters who you identified as likely to support the initiative?
[00:24:31] Katie Wilson: Yeah, our fall door knocking strategy - I think we ended up pretty much just knocking every - knocking all registered voters' doors in the fall and only taking out doors where, during the signature gathering, someone had refused to talk to us or didn't want to be bothered. So we - yeah, which was a very small minority of people. We really just ended up knocking everyone. Tukwila is a small enough city and we had enough people power in the fall, especially with many of our coalition allies stepping up and helping out, that we were able to knock, I think, everyone's door at least a few times. So we weren't terribly selective. I think after ballots dropped, we became maybe a little bit more selective in trying to knock the doors of like likely voters who hadn't voted yet. And even low-propensity voters - people who maybe voted once in the last four years or something. So we got a little more selective, but it ended up being the most efficient thing just to knock everyone.
[00:25:47] Crystal Fincher: So basically if you were a resident in Tukwila, you got a knock from the campaign at least once and most people got it multiple times. Even if it did - slightly - it was for good reason and a very beneficial result. I do think that door knocking is an area of a number of campaigns, especially initiatives sometimes, where a lot of campaigns overlook it. And they think - okay, we just need to make sure we have an adequate communications budget to be up with commercials and in people's mailboxes and online where people are at. But really focusing on having those conversations with voters and utilizing the opportunity to get a signature as not just a signature gathering opportunity, but one - to have a conversation to build understanding and support, and to really inform how you move forward - was a really smart and effective one that I would love to see more campaigns really being intentional about investing a lot more in. I guess looking at overall lessons that you came out of this with - what are the biggest lessons you learned, or biggest takeaways from this campaign for you?
[00:27:12] Katie Wilson: I think to say something a little more on the negative side - and where I think we and other people who are thinking about doing campaigns like this should think about how to do better - one of the most heartbreaking things for me was when I was doing some door knocking really close to Election Day, like the last couple of days. I talked to people at several doors where they had signed our petition, they were super supportive, but they had probably never voted before and they just didn't make the connection between - Oh, this is - there's an election, this is on the ballot, and you're going to get this thing in the mail which is your ballot, and you actually need to do something with that. And there's a deadline. And so I went to one household where there was a bunch of people living there in an apartment, and they had signed the petition, and they were excited about it. And they're searching for their ballots and finding their primary ballots, but not the - and I'm just like, Oh god, okay, it's just too late - the one person's ballot who we actually found wasn't there and wasn't going to be home. And so I think that Tukwila, year after year, has just rock bottom voter turnout compared to other cities in King County. And we still need to do an analysis to see to what extent our efforts moved voter turnout. And I think they probably did a little bit, but not hugely. So Tukwila - still this year - voter turnout compared to other cities in King County was very, very low. And so that - that I think is disappointing and just speaks to the structural factors which make that the case - we didn't shift those in a huge way. And so I think that's something to kind of think about for future campaigns is - okay, what is it going to take for these people who are registered to vote and a 100% there on the issue, but just are not practiced at this kind of civic engagement and no one is really helping them with that in a really deep way. So what is that going to take? So that's one thing.
And I guess just in terms of more positive overall lessons - obviously, raising the minimum wage is really popular, so we should do it more. There's a lot of other cities in King County that could do this. And so that is one thing that we're thinking about as we look at next year and beyond - is what are the opportunities to get this done in more cities around the county? Because I would imagine that it is very popular everywhere.
[00:30:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, really popular. And just on the point you made - I think, especially for people who are inclined to listen to this show on the radio, via podcast are more passionate about voting and civic engagement than the average person. But really important to understand that the average person is not necessarily excited at all, and probably doesn't know what there is to be excited about or mad about or ambivalent about - that it's just not on the radar for a lot of people. And even though it seems like it's consuming our lives or the news or anything like that, it's just not reality on the ground for a lot of people. And I think one of the things is - I look at my work - it's really the prolonged and repeated engagement that moves the needle there. And a silver lining on the cloud is it actually - a couple of percentage points really does change an election. Boosting turnout by 5% is a humongous amount in the quantities that we measure, and that completely changes the complexion of campaigns. So even the work you did - and again, we're still going through results and precinct-level results and figuring that all out, but clearly made a difference. And I hope there is continued engagement on the ground - in Tukwila specifically - and in areas where we do activate, whether it's through a candidate campaign or through an initiative, to keep that going because it really is the repeated engagement and people being able to see that something from the formation and policy prospect that - hey, they did get excited about, and then it did happen, and then they're receiving a benefit. And - oh, I see that what I sign and actions that I took resulted in something that actually benefits me, or people that I know, or family that I have, or whatever the case is makes a big difference. I guess as you're - you said you're considering looking at what's on the menu moving forward - what is next and what are you considering?
[00:32:31] Katie Wilson: Yeah, and I think that's exactly right - it's what you said - just that a one-off campaign is not enough to move that needle. And people need to have the experience of - oh yes, wow, I voted and something happened and it's actually something that makes a difference in my life. And so as we're looking at what to do next - as I mentioned, I think there's a lot of potential for other cities to do minimum wage raises, so we're looking at that. But we had our Transit Riders Union membership meeting in November and had a discussion about this, and I think heard really strongly from our members that we need to keep organizing in Tukwila specifically. And so we are kind of in the process now of figuring out what that could look like. And so we're having - actually tonight, we're having a meeting with some Tukwila renters to talk about what it might look like to push for stronger renter protections in Tukwila, right? Because while we were door knocking, we talked to many, many people who were getting large rent increases, and this was part of the sad thing too - is you'd talk to someone in the spring and they'd sign the petition. And then go back in the fall and they'd moved out because - they no longer live there - because they got a $300/month rent increase, right? And so I think one possibility is to push for stronger renter protections in Tukwila next year - basically working with a lot of the people that we met during this campaign this year.
And then I think we're also looking at how to keep organizing with workers in Tukwila, and specifically at and around Southcenter Mall. And the new law is going to go into effect next July. And so I think one project is making sure that everyone who works in Tukwila knows about that - knows the law, knows their rights - both on the minimum wage side of things, but also the access-to-hours policy. And the City is going to have to do some rulemaking to decide how to actually put those policies into practice, what to require of employers in terms of reporting and informing their employees. And so there's the details that have to be figured out. So we're going to be involved in that process and we're going to try to get Tukwila workers involved in that process. And yeah, I think also just continuing to talk to workers at the mall about what other issues they're facing - maybe there are other labor standards issues that workers in Tukwila want to do something about. So we're figuring that out now. We're in the space where there are so many possible things that we could do next year that sound worthwhile. And so we're going to have to figure out where there's the most interest and energy to move forward.
[00:35:30] Crystal Fincher: I just can't tell you how excited I am to see what you're doing next. I just have so much admiration for how you went about this. You nailed the strategy and the execution of this. And it really is a model for other coalitions to follow - that can really be community-based, community-led and bringing about the kind of change that people need in their own communities. So thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:36:02] Katie Wilson: Oh, my pleasure - it's great to be here.
[00:36:05] Crystal Fincher: All right - thanks so much.
Thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Post-Production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can follow me @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
For this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, political consultant and host Crystal Fincher is joined by metro news columnist and opinion editor for The News Tribune in Tacoma, Matt Driscoll! They start the show reviewing the criminal trial of elected Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer. Troyer is charged with false reporting and one count of making a false or misleading statement to a public servant in relation to his alleged harassment of Black newspaper carrier Sedrick Altheimer. This week, the trial revealed discrepancies in Troyer's account of the incident compared to the police report. This case hinges on whether the state can prove Troyer's actions were criminal, and it’s anticipated that the trial will be sent to the jury next week.
Next, Crystal and Matt recap a new investigative report from ProPublica and The Seattle Times that reveals how deeply the state's schools are failing students with complex disabilities, sending many of them to for-profit entities with little oversight, leading to instances of mistreatment and abuse.
In housing news, the Pierce County Council will vote next Tuesday on an affordable housing sales tax. The county needs more funding for affordable housing, and even though a sales tax is a regressive tax, it’s the best available option the council has to generate additional revenue for affordable housing projects. The tax will require five votes to pass from the Council that includes four Democrats and three Republicans. In other Pierce County Council news, Crystal and Matt discuss the retirement of Council Chair Derek Young. They explore his political career, talk about his impact, and share their appreciation for how he handled the responsibility of being an elected leader.
The trend of dangerous, sometimes violent protests against drag shows and drag story time events came to Renton this week, which saw a local brewery get shot at before their Drag Queen Story Hour event on Thursday. It’s part of an increase of anti-LGBT and antisemitic hatred and violence happening across the country. The incident in Renton comes alongside concerning reporting from KUOW revealing that the electrical grid in Oregon and Western Washington has been attacked six times since mid-November, with at least two of the attacks resembling the incident in North Carolina last Saturday. It's a foreboding sign of the rise of domestic terrorism in this country fueled by right-wing hate.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Matt Driscoll, at @mattsdriscoll. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“TPD officer testifies that Troyer reported no death threat to him. Next, defense's turn.” by Jared Brown from The News Tribune
“WA’s schools are failing students with complex disabilities. It’s happening in Tacoma too.” by Matt Driscoll from The News Tribune
“‘Kids Seem to Be a Paycheck’: How a Billion-Dollar Corporation Exploits Washington’s Special Education System” by Lulu Ramadan, Mike Reicher and Taylor Blatchford from ProPublica
“At Washington special education schools, years of abuse complaints and lack of academics” by Mike Reicher & Lulu Ramadan from The Seattle Times
“Pierce County needs an affordable housing sales tax. Will it get one next week?” by Matt Driscoll from The News Tribune
“Pierce County Council Member Derek Young Retires from Politics for Unknown Future” by Sara Thompson from Key Peninsula News
“Renton Brewery Shot Up before Drag Queen Story Hour” by Will Casey from The Stranger
“String of electrical grid attacks in Pacific Northwest are unsolved” by Conrad Wilson & John Ryan from KUOW
Transcript
Coming soon
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Representative April Berg about her re-election campaign for State Representative in the 44th Legislative District - her path to elected office, running as a progressive Black woman in a swing district, and how she managed the transition to becoming a legislator during COVID. Representative Berg talks about bills she successfully passed in her first term to address student poverty and to enact common sense gun policy around public meetings and places where democracy is practiced. She then shares her vision and priorities for the 2023 legislative session - student safety, addressing disproportionate ballot rejection rates, and modernizing the legislative calendar to allow legislators to work full-time and address community issues in real-time.
NOTE: This episode was recorded before incidences of racist vandalism and harassment against Representative Berg’s campaign, which is why they aren’t addressed on the show.
For more information - “A new push to combat harassment of Black candidates and staff” by Melissa Santos from Axios: https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/07/25/black-candidates-washington-harassment
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Rep Berg at @RepBerg.
Resources
Campaign Website - April Berg: https://www.aprilberg.com/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. So today I am very excited to be welcoming Representative April Berg to the program today - hello.
[00:00:45] April Berg: Hi Crystal - thanks so much for having me.
[00:00:47] Crystal Fincher: Thanks for coming on - appreciate it. I want to start off just by letting folks know who you are, what your path to office was, and then we can talk about what you've been up to since you've been in office. So just starting out - what was your path to office? What were you doing and what motivated you to run?
[00:01:10] April Berg: Yeah, thank you for that. And it's - my path was probably not the most direct path to office. So I was a student activist in college and I proudly served as the first Black Student Body President of Oregon State University. I was also one of the youngest - or the youngest - to ever be elected to that position. I was passionate about equity, student diversity, inclusion - and so I decided to go ahead and run for that position. I won that, I served as a junior, and then my senior year, I served on the State Board of Higher Ed for the State of Oregon. And then I came up here to Washington to work for Boeing and start a family - and took about 20 years or more off from politics. And so I started getting more active in my kids' schools and that led me to the school board position in Edmonds and eventually to running for school board in Everett and eventually to the State House for our great state - so a little bit of a windy path with a big break, but that was my path here - came through student activism.
[00:02:20] Crystal Fincher: And it's really exciting, it has been really fun to - I became aware of you when you were a school board member and doing cool things - and then you decided to run, were successful. What was it like running in really a swing district that you have turned blue right now, but is absolutely a swing district - had been known for even the Democrats that it had with Senator Hobbs - certainly known as a moderate, part of the Roadkill Caucus, and certainly not viewed as a progressive. But you coming in with your values and running as who you were - what was that like in a district that sometimes elects Republicans?
[00:03:09] April Berg: Yeah, and I'll tell you that is a great question. And because of the Roadkill Caucus - I smiled when you mentioned that caucus, it's been quite some time since they've been in power in the House and Senate. And so, coming from a district that was seen, that is seen, as very swingy - 'cause it has been swingy - being a progressive, a Democrat, a Black woman with locked hair, being an unapologetic Black leader in a community that's seen as swing was interesting. It was interesting because part of the myth around swing districts is that you have to be moderate, you have to not not lean too far into your values - and what my race did, what my campaign did for our district is to show that everybody in our district had the vision of shared prosperity and it wasn't about what someone looked like, it wasn't about - issues that people thought were controversial weren't controversial. I'm a pro-choice candidate, I am a candidate that believes in common sense gun laws, and I'm a candidate that's passionate about progressive tax reform. And I could run unapologetically on all of those issues and have voters support me because the voters in this district believed in the shared prosperity around those issues.
That said, running as a Black woman in a swing district during a public health crisis was not at the top of my bucket list. And to be frank it added some other elements of - I won't say surprises, but just challenges that turned into opportunities. And one of the things that my district - that I can say about my district and about my community is that my daughter's high school was the first one in the country to have a COVID-positive student. And so as a school board director and as a mother, I was on the frontlines of COVID and that was - a lot of the leadership I had to show in those moments led me to wanting to become a larger part of the policy community, the policy leadership community in our state. And that's why I said yes to running for this position.
[00:05:28] Crystal Fincher: I'm so happy you said yes to running to that position. And the things that you just spoke about were so evident and really exciting. And I think there is - we continue to have conversations, we record these shows sometimes a little while before they air - but we saw some Congressional elections recently where there were moderates and more progressive challengers from the left in red states and purple states. And really the people who did run unapologetically were much more successful. And it was really interesting, as a political consultant, hearing the conversations around your district and around your candidacy for the Legislature and conversations about who the ideal candidate has, which in politics oftentimes is code for like white male business owner, some veteran - and while those are people with valuable things to contribute to our community, our community is so much more diverse and rich and varied than that.
[00:06:39] April Berg: Yes.
[00:06:39] Crystal Fincher: And it's so wonderful to have more people who represent and speak for, and have experiences consistent with more of our community - and seeing you just embrace that, to be unapologetic while some people were clutching their pearls going - oh my goodness, is this possible in a swing district. And you, and so many others, showed that not only is it possible, it is the winning formula for where you were at and so many other districts and encouraging more people to do the same, who then went on to win. It was just really exciting to watch. But I do hear you that man, you dealt with a lot - a lot - while you were running and going into office. What was the transition like from being a school board member and a mom starting off dealing with COVID, going into the Leg and dealing with COVID? What was that like just for you becoming a legislator, and how did those other things that you had to deal with that you didn't necessarily sign up for impact how you approached the job and what you got out of it?
[00:07:54] April Berg: Yeah, and that's - that's a great question. And it's funny, Crystal - I always forget you've got the lens of the consultant, right? You've got the inside baseball lens. So as I was grinding it out in my district, you probably were hearing things. You were probably hearing the audible clutching of pearls as a candidate like myself was making my way through campaign season. And I'll tell you - I'll start there and land about how it is to transition to the Legislature. But as I was running the campaign, there was a very distinct point - there's lots of distinct points 'cause of the public health crisis - but one distinct point was the George Floyd tragedy. And I know we're literally upon the second anniversary of that tragedy and for my campaign, there was pre-George Floyd and there was post-George Floyd. And pre-George Floyd, the very much open conversation was that I didn't look like my district. How could I represent, how would anybody vote for me? I don't look like my district. And it was just a weird thing to hear, 'cause I'm used to running on policies and issues and being very prepared. And when someone hits you with you don't look like your district - what do you do with that? And when you're a candidate, what you do with it is you sit with it. You can't really do much else. That said, post-George Floyd - there was a lot of apologies and that's when I really got the opportunity to communicate with folks about my vision and my values and my leadership. And that was really a turning point for me because I didn't understand how much of a box I had been put into - all with the - we were around that box of it's a swing district, so we gotta be careful - we can't take any chances. She doesn't fit that mold that you just laid out.
That said, being successful in the campaign at both the primary level and of course the general, led me into this transition point. I had thought it might lead into a transition off the school board - it didn't. I'm still a school board director for the Everett School District. I will be leaving that role on June 1st, but I say that because it was important for me to keep my word to voters, especially during COVID and the crisis that we were having in all of the schools. But I felt like my institutional knowledge of districts - that was something - it was a responsibility for me to stay in that role.
But as I transitioned into becoming a legislator, it was a 100% virtual and that was difficult on a lot of levels because as a politician, I love, I thrive on talking to people, being face-to-face with people, understanding their issues, seeing body language to help me use context clues to really understand what people need and how I can help. And part of that has become my learning style. And so having to do things on Zoom, to be onboarded to a role as big as state representative was difficult, to say the least. But I will say - I believe I was successful in that transition, taking in everything that was given to me in terms of mentorship and help and training and resources. And that first year in the House, I was able to write five bills, sponsor those five bills, and see all five bills signed into law. So that transition I'd say -
[00:11:25] Crystal Fincher: You sure did.
[00:11:27] April Berg: - it was a successful transition, so I can't complain. But I will say it was hard 'cause it was virtual.
[00:11:34] Crystal Fincher: That was also exciting to watch - just someone who, just hearing the rumblings that - you are risky - that didn't know if you were the right "fit" for the district - to watch you not only be the definition of electable and popular, but then to so successfully and effectively transition into legislative leadership and just work in conjunction with your colleagues to advance the things that you talked about while you were running was really encouraging. And I guess I want to talk about some of the stuff that you were able to do and just your thoughts about the last session overall and what you were able to accomplish.
[00:12:31] April Berg: Yeah, and it was a - clearly a historic session and I look at it in two parts, it's a biennium, right - so we've got 2021 and 2022. And I was really fortunate that my colleagues saw my vision for how we need to come out of the pandemic. And so two of the bills that I sponsored my very first year were very important to me. One was on menstrual equity - making sure that all menstruating individuals have the products they need in all of our K-12 and beyond institutions. So this applies to colleges, community colleges, technical colleges, public, private, throughout - so when a young person that's menstruating enters that restroom, the products they need are available. Very important to me because of the impact period poverty has on our youth and our students specifically. The second bill that was really, I was very passionate about was the reduced price fee elimination bill. So when we have students that are on reduced price lunches, they have to pay a 40 cents fee - and this 40 cents is absurd. It's difficult because these students are in abject poverty - our free and reduced price meals - the income qualification levels are not regionalized. And so folks making that income in our area is - they're in abject poverty and to ask them for that 40 cents, five days a week for multiple kids just seem horrific, especially coming out of a public health crisis. So I had a bill to eliminate that. And so as we move into next fall, students who normally would pay that 40 cents will not have to pay anything and they'll be fed.
So I was fortunate because my colleagues saw the need. And when I say colleagues, we're talking about Republicans and Democrats. And when I talk about people can lean into their values as candidates and running on things like shared prosperity, it doesn't mean that we're not gonna find areas of compromise or find areas where we can agree. And so all of my bills have been bipartisan. They've all been embraced by both sides of the aisle, because they're all important for everyone in the community - not just Dems, not just ours. I think it's important to really think about that because so many people want to put politicians into boxes, labels - and so you're conservative, you're moderate, you're progressive, you're this, you're that. For me as a politician, my mantra has always been, and it's been like this for these bills, is how do we get to yes. And how getting to yes helps everyone in the community. So that said, I was able to do some amazing work that helped communities all over our state, lean into my unapologetic-ness in terms of my values, and hopefully I can keep doing the same in 2023.
[00:15:32] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I also want to talk about another group of bills - that you were able to pass - or a bill that you were able to pass specifically trying to prevent gun violence, which we have just seen over and over and over again. We're having this conversation shortly after two, just absolutely horrific mass shootings - one in a church, one in an elementary school - and everybody is demanding that more be done. And with, at this point, even more than frustration, just growing infuriation that we know the things that reduce the likelihood of gun violence and specifically mass shootings - and more guns does not help this situation. And you took action, you were not afraid in your swing district which, again, on this side of the things in politics - hear constantly people wonder - in swing districts if it's safe for them to do something about guns, people take 'em so seriously. And being afraid to act - you weren't afraid. What did you do?
[00:16:56] April Berg: Yeah. And I - it's interesting you ask me that. I will tell you - in the moment - crafting that bill, sponsoring the bill - it was 1618 and it was to keep our places of democracy safe from gun violence. It did not seem like a controversial, heavy lift. And being in my district - funny enough, the folks in the 44th - we don't walk around calling ourselves swing districters. We just say we live in the 44th. So this was an issue for my community. I wrote a bill and moved it forward. I was actually surprised when I heard from colleagues and other individuals that they were worried about me sponsoring a bill dealing with gun rights or gun legislation.
So that said, it was what led me to that point - it was a no-brainer. I went through, even though I handily won my election in 2020, there was a Republican requested hand count. That was fine. If folks remember after my election in 2020, or during it, I broke my back in a car accident. And so I wasn't able to attend my own recount. It just wasn't physically something that was gonna happen, so I sent my husband instead and he came back from that experience a little shaken. He described what I later saw pictures of, which was these amazing ballot counters, these election workers sitting in a cage surrounded by chain link fence. And you're able to come in as representatives of the campaign and the folks who asked for the hand recount - 'cause mind you, they had to pay for that since it was not close at all. They came in and they outnumbered my husband, like by many. And they started pushing and shoving and getting as close as they could to those chain links and staring at those election workers, making sure they weren't doing anything wrong. And he was just describing this 'til at one point someone in leadership had to say - Hey, the Berg campaign deserves a chance to witness this as well - 'cause they had crowded him out. And so they looked at him, someone snarled and said - oh, you can't see - or just something like that. And so he got up there, he saw it, and he just came home shook - that was a lot of negative energy, that was a lot of vitriol for something that literally came down to the exact same numbers as the machine count, as the hand count. So all for nothing, if you will.
The auditor later on reached out to me and said - because it wasn't just my race, it was many others that were - this recount was requested and there was same level of tension and animosity at all of those. He said - my election workers just aren't feeling safe, they're sitting in literally chain link cages - and he's describing it to me and then he shows me a picture. I laughed because the picture he happened to snap to show what conditions they're working in - you could see my husband watching my recount. So when I said - yep, that's what I heard. And so he said - oh, that's your husband. It was just a - it's funny, but it's not funny, right? That there was definitely tension in the air enough to where my husband, representing me in that moment, felt it. And the auditor, representing his workers in that moment, felt it and said - April, something has to be done. And so he said - could we make this a gun-free zone? Just like we have at schools. And I said - yes - yes, we can. And so his office came up with some language, my staff came up with some language. We ended up with bill 1618. I talked to other auditors around the state. They had similar concerns and brought up the fact that in a lot of counties, our ballots are counted in courthouses that do not allow guns, so inherently those workers are kept safe. So it seemed not just a safety issue, but a parity issue. You shouldn't have to work for Snohomish County and be less safe than another county that has ballots counted in courthouses.
So we wrote this bill, got the typical pushback from folks saying - we're taking away rights and so on and so forth. In the meantime, my colleague Tana Senn wrote a bill that I co-sponsored - and she co-sponsored my bill - but hers talked more about city council meetings, school district meetings - other municipal places, other places where democracy's being done. And after the hearing, it became obvious that you had the same folks pro and against, so we decided to combine the bills. And so the bill that passed includes all of those areas. So we're keeping everywhere that democracy is had, is practiced, is done - we're keeping all of those areas safe - your city council meetings, school board meetings, ballot counting sites. It passed the House, it passed the Senate, it was signed into law by the governor. It was before the horrific tragedies that we've seen just over the last two weeks - in Texas yesterday, and of course in Buffalo. And it shows - it was - it's a bill that's needed and I will continue to fight for common sense gun legislation to keep everyone in all of our communities safe.
[00:22:02] Crystal Fincher: And I appreciate that, I'm thankful that we have people like you in the state willing to do that 'cause like you said, there were some of your colleagues who get nervous by that. Which is - from my end - is frustrating. It's so popular. It is common sense. It really is uncontroversial to regular people living in our communities. And it really is a fight from some specific special interests who are just not in alignment with what is going on across our country and what people are expecting to be done in their communities. And we should be safe. We should be able to elect people and have them participate in meetings and work on our behalf without someone brooding over them with a gun, without staring at a high-powered rifle all the time - those things just don't belong in areas where democracy is done. So I sincerely appreciate that and hope your colleagues learn that that is something that's not controversial, that is actually quite popular when it's done. As you look forward now to what needs to happen as you are running your current campaign - you'll be on the ballot this year - what are you prioritizing and what do you most want to get done?
[00:23:33] April Berg: Yeah, and that's a great question. So I think for this next cycle - and I'm just going to go out there and say that this is, it's gonna be a successful campaign season for me - and I know a lot of candidates like to wait to talk about what they're gonna do until after the Election Day, but it's - sometimes that's a little bit too late. So a couple of things that I'm focusing on during the interim to really think about what we want to do in the 2023 session - one is student safety. How do we keep our students safe, healthy, and whole? And I think there's gonna be a lot of conversation around the prototypical school funding model and the gaps that it has, because it really is a model that's fully-funded, but it's a model that does not fully address what's actually happening in our schools. So how many counselors and nurses and other support staff we need to make sure our kids are healthy, safe, and whole - as they go in and come out of school.
Another issue that I want to, and I'm actually looking forward to a study that's coming out by the UW - that is coming out by the UW Evans School - is on our ballot rejection rate. There was a report done by our Joint Legislative Audit Committee that found four times as many Black ballots - ballots from African American individuals - were thrown out as white ballots. And the numbers, for all of the different BIPOC community categories - they were higher, there was a higher rate of rejection - and so the question is why. And as we looked the report, there were things that were adjusted for - so this was not just a bad actor or like a oopsie in a county - this was across the board, which means that there potentially is a systemic problem and that's where we can get into legislative action, policy action once we figure out what that problem is. So we're looking at the UW Evans School to - we had a little bit of money in the last budget to have them really dig deep and do some data disaggregation and say - where are the problem points? What are the issues that we can potentially fix so that we don't have this disproportionate rate of rejection for ballots from communities of color?
And then lastly, the other thing that my office is looking at and that I'm looking at working on is real hard conversations about how we function as a legislature. And what I mean by that is we, as legislators, we have a budget of about a half billion dollars for our state that we appropriate each biennium. Our bienniums consist of a work year of a 105 days and then 60 days. That calendar was set when we were an agrarian economy and I had to get out of Olympia to go tend my crops. Since that's no longer the case, I think that it's time for a conversation about modernizing the legislature and specifically the legislative calendar so that when things like a public health crisis happen or historic inflation, among other tragedies and oddities that happen within the working life of a state, that we're able to be at least available to take action. And whether that action be legislative, or oversight, or just using our power to convene in a formal way - I think that we need to really look at how we do business as a state to make it more representative and responsive to current day activities and realities. Those are the small, itty-bitty issues we're looking at - I'm looking at specifically tackling - it's just a small step.
[00:27:20] Crystal Fincher: And I appreciate you - I appreciate looking at some of the systemic issues that impact everything that you're able to do, how you govern, and how you're able to serve the state. And certainly - right now, having a part-time legislature - one, is a barrier for the types of people that can afford to serve in that office. It is not an easy situation to have something three or four months out of the year that demands - it's beyond a full-time job at that point in time - you are putting in very long hours, specifically at this one job. And the rest of the year - yes, there are some meetings and stuff, but there's nothing else going on. And your pay is part-time pay, to be clear. And it is not the kind of pay, especially right now median income in Seattle is over six-figures, we are in the midst of a housing affordability crisis - and most people can't afford to only work for that period of the year. And most people don't have jobs flexible enough where you can just take four months off.
And so it really does impact who is able to serve. A lot of people who are coming from more wealthy, privileged, comfortable backgrounds that represent only a segment of our society and that is leaving out so many other people. And life experiences don't cover the gamut of communities, so some issues that significant portions of our communities are dealing with are just invisible to people who sometimes are just not in proximity to, or have no familiarity with, a different kind of lifestyle or different kinds of challenges. And so really making sure that we get people elected who come from our communities and who reflect our communities and the wide variety of experiences, whether it's someone who's a renter, or a parent, or someone from the LGBTQ community, or someone disabled - all of those experiences are so necessary to formulate policy that does serve everyone. And we count out so many of those people - when you just look at the pictures of legislators on the wall, you see some folks have traditionally been included and others haven't.
And so moving to a full-time legislature - one, seems like it would increase the amount of people and increase the representation and ability to serve the community. On top of that, it does give you time to learn about our community, to work on legislation in ways that aren't rushed or you get cut off when you're almost at a breakthrough or you don't have time. How many times have we heard - we wanted to get to that, but it was a short session and we just ran out of time. It happens so much. So thank you so much for taking that on. I sincerely appreciate it. And what can people do to help with that effort?
[00:30:39] April Berg: And thank you for that, 'cause I - first off, I've been socializing it with both community members, as well as folks who are in organizations, that would potentially have an opinion about us moving to a full-time legislature. I think what folks can do is really support it and really talk to their legislators about it. I'll tell you this didn't come from me. Despite having so many colleagues deciding not to come back and despite even myself saying, having to look at the challenges of what it means to return to this role. This idea actually came from a constituent, who in a town hall said - Hey, why can't we have a gas tax moratorium, like some other states are passing? And this is, this was probably in March, late March. We had just finished sine die - it's a short session. Had it been a long session, we would've still been there. And I said - well, the one reason why we can't vote on it is 'cause I don't go back to work until January 2023. And I don't know where inflation will be, but if it's where it is now and if gas prices are doing what they're doing, then I would definitely want to look at something like a gas tax moratorium to give you - me talking to this person - to give you relief at your kitchen table for something like gas in the moment. Because that's what's important to people right - in the moment - right now they're feeling that financial pinch. I don't go back to work 'til January 2023.
Needless to say, that constituent's response was - well, why? Are you not back to work because you don't feel like it? Because you think about it - you and me, Crystal - we play that inside baseball, we understand how these things work - but to a mom working two jobs and kids in school and feeling the pain at the pump, they're not looking at our legislative calendar. They're like - Rep Berg, get back to work. And I'm telling them I can't. And so that's where the idea started coming from. And luckily in our state, when we talk about things like salary for legislators, we don't dictate our own salary. So for me to say, I want a legislature that's full-time - that is gonna be - salary decisions will be made by a commission. What I like to hear from voters and why I think all voters should talk to their legislators about is - do they want them there full-time working, making decisions, and representing them real-time and in the moment?
Because right now, just to give you another perspective and to give folks listening another perspective, as a legislator - right now, because we're in campaign season, I cannot communicate officially with my constituents. So if we have a tragedy in the community, a - let's say, even the heat dome, right? Where do you go to have a cooling area? And let's say you follow me on Facebook and you're like - Rep Berg, I get some great information for you on Facebook, we've got this heat emergency and I want to tell you exactly where the cooling centers are in the 44th. I legally cannot do that, because we're in the "election cycle" and so I can't communicate with constituents via Facebook right now in the moment when there's a crisis in our community. And that's really hard - I think people are used to getting information, they're used to getting information from their representative officials. They - maybe they don't want to follow me on some of my personal social media platforms. They want to interact with me as their public official that their tax dollars are going towards. And they want to know officially what is my - what am I going to do for them and help them in that moment. I cannot communicate legally with them.
And that's one of the - that's where some of this comes from. And so I think as folks are in the community, listening and saying what can we do to get our legislators in Olympia full-time doing the people's work on a traditional calendar - talk to your legislators, write me notes, tell me that it's a good idea, tell me that's a bad idea. But that's gonna be the input that we need, that I need, as I move forward trying to get this idea across the finish line in terms of the House and the Senate. Because I think my colleagues are gonna be somewhat surprised that folks want us to work full-time in Olympia to get stuff done. So that would be my biggest thing - asking people to communicate.
[00:35:00] Crystal Fincher: Will do - my legislators will hear from me, certainly.
[00:35:04] April Berg: Thank you.
[00:35:05] Crystal Fincher: Who I'm a fan of and they're always really receptive to conversations, fortunately, here in the 33rd Legislative District where I am currently at, but appreciate you doing that. As we conclude today, is there anything that you would just tell voters as they're seeking to make a decision about how they're gonna vote, or trying to figure out how to best engage in their community to meet their needs? What would you say to them about who you are, and how you can help, and how they can engage?
[00:35:44] April Berg: Yeah, and I would say - for voters, especially in this moment in the times that we're living in, the biggest thing is first off to make sure you're registered to vote, make sure your friends are registered to vote. And then the second thing would be really getting involved with - and when I say involved, it's not - it'd be great if you want to volunteer on someone's campaign that shares your values, or giving any type of time or treasure - those are great things. But the biggest thing is really making sure that you are actively seeking leaders that are authentic and that believe in your values. Because I think sometimes we get caught up in - that person's more moderate, or that person's more progressive - or, Crystal - that person voted for Hillary, but that person voted for Bernie. We hear that a lot, and you want to just go and that means, they mean they want this, this, and this. No, we have to - we really have to put that aside and talk to people about values. And as you engage with candidates - are they gonna support common sense gun reform? Are they gonna support women's reproductive rights? Are they gonna support student equity in schools and allowing students to be a whole student, to be a whole in their social, emotional, as well as their academic activities? And so making sure that you're supporting candidates who have your values. And it's, unfortunately, not as easy as just checking D or R - it really is engaging with candidates about what's happening in your community. So that would be my tip, my ask of folks listening. And honestly, for a candidate like me, that's what got me over the finish line - was engaging with voters not as a progressive, not as a moderate, but as a Democrat that shares their values for a prosperous, safe, happy, educated, lively community. And so that's that's the most important thing in my opinion.
[00:37:47] Crystal Fincher: Completely agree. Completely appreciate you taking the time to speak with us today and just continuing to serve your community and the state as well as you are. Thank you so much for joining us, Representative Berg.
[00:37:59] April Berg: Thank you for having me, Crystal, and thank you for providing this amazing platform for information. So it really is a gift to have you on-air and a gift to be talking with you.
[00:38:10] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much. I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On this week’s Hacks & Wonks, Crystal is joined by Executive Director of The Urbanist, Doug Trumm. Crystal and Doug quickly run through news items about progress on Washington state’s capital gains tax, a discussion on the worsening traffic safety crisis, and labor stories about Amazon’s questionable fulfillment of a court order and the federal government’s blocking a railway workers strike ahead of the holidays. Public safety news out of Pierce County includes the start of embattled Sheriff Ed Troyer’s criminal trial and troubling news about an officer charged in Manuel Ellis’ death having been flagged for violent behavior during their academy training. Doug and Crystal then discuss the gulf between reality and rhetoric that has appeared in media reporting on crime and law enforcement and how it reaches into electeds’ handling of issues like decriminalization of simple drug possession at the State Legislature, outcry over a miniscule portion of the Seattle Police Department budget not being funded in the City of Seattle budget process, and the campaign messaging of the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s race. On a hopeful note, Leesa Manion’s solid win in the King County Prosecutor’s race and her strong performance - across the county, across cities, and across legislative districts - serves as a referendum for voters rejecting punitive measures and signifies an appetite for root cause-addressing, data-driven solutions that work.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Doug Trumm, on Twitter at @dmtrumm. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“WA Supreme Court clears way for state to collect capital-gains tax” by Claire Withycombe
from The Seattle Times
"The Urbanist’s Ryan Packer Discusses Worsening Traffic Safety Crisis on KUOW" by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
“Labor board blasts Amazon's "flagrant" attempt to flout court order“ by Emily Peck from Axios
“Biden signs rail agreement into law, thwarting strike“ by Shawna Chen from Axios
“Criminal trial begins in Sheriff Ed Troyer’s false-reporting case” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times
“Academy warned Tacoma of violent training episode by officer later charged in Manuel Ellis’ death” Patrick Malone from The Seattle Times
“Washington should be a leader in ending the War on Drugs” by Mark Cooke from ACLU-WA
“Nelson, Pedersen, and Sawant Dissent Ahead of Final Vote on Seattle Budget” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
“Public Safety Politics and the Even Election Reckoning” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
Trascript
Coming Soon
On this midweek show, Seattle City Councilmember Tammy Morales stops by to discuss Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan with Crystal and how this roadmap, which determines the manner in which the City accommodates growth, plays a critical role in issues that affect our day-to-day lives. Councilmember Morales fills us in on how the Comp Plan and its impending update is an opportunity for us to create a vision for what our communities look like, whether it be addressing historic inequities, tackling climate change, or realizing sustainable, healthy, connected neighborhoods across the City. The show wraps up with details on how to get involved with the Comprehensive Plan update and guide what Seattle looks and feels like in the future.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Councilmember Morales at @CMTammyMorales.
Councilmember Tammy Morales
Councilmember Tammy J. Morales was elected to the Seattle City Council in 2019.
As an experienced community organizer and advocate, Morales worked for the Rainier Beach Action Coalition and served as a Seattle Human Rights Commissioner.
Morales is trained as a community and regional planner, and has spent her career working with frontline communities on local issues including food security, displacement in low-income neighborhoods and community-centered development.
Morales previously served as a Legislative Director for a state representative in Texas, as a city budget analyst in New York, and ran a successful consulting firm on food access research and programming, with clients such as the City of Seattle and King County.
Morales has been a Seattle resident for nearly 20 years. She is a mom with three kids - two in the Seattle Public School system and one a proud Viking at Portland State.
Resources
“Seattle Reveals Rezoning Concepts and Invites Scoping Comments for Big 2024 Update” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
Seattle 2035 Comprehensive Plan | Office of Planning & Community Development
One Seattle Plan | Office of Planning & Community Development
Seattle Within Reach - Presented by Councilmember Tammy Morales - A town hall series about how we build a Seattle in which everyone has the ability to live, work and play - within reach
One Seattle Plan Community Meeting Series - In-person community meetings throughout Seattle
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I am so thrilled to be welcoming back to the program, Seattle City Councilmember Tammy Morales. Welcome back.
[00:00:47] Councilmember Tammy Morales: Hi, Crystal. I'm so happy to be here.
[00:00:49] Crystal Fincher: So happy to have you here again, thankful for all of the hard work you've been doing, and how you've been pushing throughout the budget process in Seattle - very helpful, and I think especially those connected to community and community organizations - have been appreciating how you've been listening and trying to move in concert with community. And hopefully things turn out well on the backend. But today we're actually going to talk about the Seattle Comprehensive Plan, which is a whole undertaking. So I guess starting out, what is the Comprehensive Plan? What is this thing and why do we do it?
[00:01:36] Councilmember Tammy Morales: Sure. So the plan is really a guide for us about how, as a city, we plan to accommodate growth - where that growth will go. It's really a vision and kind of a roadmap for where we plan to locate housing, where we think job centers should go, also how we invest in transportation, where we might put parks, utilities. It is technically a requirement from the State Legislature. In 1990, the Legislature adopted the Growth Management Act, and that does require the City to prepare a Comprehensive Plan really for how we will grow over the next 20 years.
So we update this - every plan has to include what they call elements, which is basically different chapters that need to be included. So ours includes land use, housing, transportation, parks and open space, utilities - there's a couple others in there - capital facilities, port because we are on a port. And it really does regulate development so that we can curb sprawl. It was really intended to be a way to help protect environmentally sensitive areas surrounding urban areas - in our case, to make sure that we are protecting our farmland, our waterways in King County. So we are required to do this, and it is also a way for us, importantly, to be very intentional about how we plan to grow as a city.
[00:03:27] Crystal Fincher: Very good points. And I want to just dive a little more into the issue of sprawl. It's a buzzword that I think a lot of people have heard, but maybe don't understand completely or why sprawl is such an issue. What is sprawl and why do we try to avoid it?
[00:03:48] Councilmember Tammy Morales: So sprawl is really where we start to grow - we start to build housing, business parks, warehouse space, all kinds of ways that cities tend to grow - outside of what might be their seeming boundaries. And it is problematic for lots of different reasons. As I said, in our case, because we could potentially start to grow into our farmland and Washington is a very important agricultural producer and we do rely heavily on our own agricultural production just for our own consumption. It's also important because we are trying to address the very urgent crisis of climate change. And so it's important that as a city, we really try to grow in a way that allows us to have more compact neighborhoods, that really relies on public transit so that people can get around. And it's really also an attempt to try to reduce our carbon emissions as a city so that we can curb what is increasingly really problematic greenhouse gas emissions.
[00:05:17] Crystal Fincher: Great point - all valid. And then, especially with sprawl - sprawl is expensive. I think we see a lot of this - it's a little more challenging in the City of Seattle, which is built out to a lot of its boundaries - and a lot of what we're talking about is how to redevelop stuff, but you can really see it in a number of our suburbs and rural areas. South King County used to actually be a very fertile agricultural area. Kent used to be known as the lettuce capital of the United States.
[00:05:53] Councilmember Tammy Morales: Indeed.
[00:05:54] Crystal Fincher: But - I'm here for your Kent history facts - but as the city grew and houses took over that, industrial lands took over that - warehouses, commercial space - and really paved over agricultural land, which I think some people might reconsider if they had to do it all over again today. Certainly not all of it, portions of it, would have been nicer to preserve - but wetlands, environmental areas, and just growth is expensive. This is city infrastructure that you have to build out, that has a cost, and then you have to maintain. And we talk about needing to handle our existing infrastructure and build more of - and complete the infrastructure, like sidewalks -
[00:06:44] Councilmember Tammy Morales: Absolutely.
[00:06:45] Crystal Fincher: - and bike paths to help everyone get along. And now we're building out further and basically expanding the map of what the City is responsible to do. And oftentimes that's not captured in the cost of development, and that's not captured in the existing tax scheme. So that just ends up adding additional costs, additional responsibilities to the City - which we want to avoid. So coming out of this Growth Management Act - basically mandate underneath it - it's a way to strategically manage growth - which happens. We can't stop it despite weird debate questions that I hear about like - Should we stop growth? That's not really an option. People move to the area. We can't stop them from moving to the area. Usually not a good sign when people don't want to move to the area. So good things are happening. Good things attract people. And that's what we've seen.
Now, the City adopted the current 2035 plan as of 2016. So is this going to be redoing this plan? Is this revisiting this plan? What is happening with this?
[00:07:51] Councilmember Tammy Morales: Yes. So we - as I said, the requirement is to do these for every 20 years. And so it is our time to update our plan. And this is a real opportunity for us, because one thing that we have seen as a city - that our Office of Planning and Community Development has made clear, that our City Planning Commission has made clear - is that the way we have used this Comprehensive Plan in the past has really contributed to some of the inequities that we see in the City. And this is an opportunity for us to update the growth strategy that we have had in the past. It's a chance for us to address the displacement that we have had in the City. And really create a vision for a sustainable city that supports healthy neighborhoods, that creates safe places for people - so it is an important opportunity for us. And we have begun those discussions, which I'm sure we'll talk a little bit later about how folks can get involved, but it's important for us to take a look at this periodically because as we've discovered now, the current Comprehensive Plan really created an equity gap in housing and jobs. And this is an opportunity for us to address that.
[00:09:21] Crystal Fincher: How did it create that equity gap? What in it made that happen?
[00:09:27] Councilmember Tammy Morales: As a city, I will say we have a history of planning without real consideration for communities of color and how they will be impacted. The Chinatown-International District was split when I-5 was put in. We have a history of redlining in the City that really kept Black families and Jewish families and others from purchasing homes in most of the City. Even the very founding of the City on unceded land - over time, all of these decisions compound the effect on communities and really have a negative impact on the ability of these families and their children to grow generational wealth. It affects the ability of these communities to stay intact and has contributed to displacement. So there's a lot of reasons why we need to take a look at this.
So part of the reason for these problems is that we have a 25-year-old strategy that is really centered on this idea of urban villages and urban centers. Effectively, what that means is that multifamily apartment buildings - the ability for them to get built - has really been squeezed into corridors - major transit corridors, arterials, and these urban villages. So that's where we put all of our apartments, while most of the City is reserved for single-family homes. And this has really created a tale of two cities, if you will, where wealthy homeowners can live in mostly single-family neighborhoods, and lower-income or even middle-income people get pushed into these corridors where apartments are allowed. There's all kinds of reasons why that is problematic, not the least of which is that it creates environments where lots of housing and the people and children and elders living in that housing are on, in many cases, dangerous roads exposed to higher auto emissions. It just creates this cascade of problems for the people who are living in those areas. So there's, as I said, an opportunity for us to rethink that particular strategy and rethink how we can create a more equitable array of options for where people live and what they're able to afford.
[00:12:21] Crystal Fincher: So what are the options, the alternatives being considered?
[00:12:25] Councilmember Tammy Morales: We've got several. There are five different options that the Office of Planning and Community Development are looking at. All of them are intended in some ways to address this. I will say - I think part of the priority for this phase that we're in right now - we're in this kind of research phase called the Environmental Impact Statement that they are drafting, and that will be looking at five different options. The first is basically No Action, so just continue to follow the existing plan that we have - putting most of our housing in urban centers and urban villages. There's one that they're calling Focused. Each of them basically offers slightly broader perimeters around these urban centers where different types of housing can be built. And so that is the conversation that we will be having over the course of the next year is - what do these different alternatives mean? What's the difference between an urban village and an urban center? What does it mean to build along a corridor versus building more broadly throughout a neighborhood? Does my neighborhood have an industrial center? - because that's another piece of the decision making that happens here. And so throughout the next year, we will be talking about the different ways that we could be building. How broadly do we want to move into what is now - well, it used to be called single-family zoning - now everything is called Neighborhood Residential zoning. So how much do we want to change the kind of housing that's allowed in these different areas? And that will be the discussion.
We know that we have grown so fast as a city, faster than I think anybody anticipated. And we didn't plan for that. We grew by almost 130,000 people between 2010 and 2020, but we only built 70,000 new homes in that same time period. So as an example - I know a lot of people think there's housing going up everywhere, we're building too much - but the reality is that we are short over 20,000 units of apartments that would be affordable for middle-income folks - and I think that's the key. The way we have grown, the housing that we've produced has not been housing that is affordable for working class families. And so that needs to be a really key part of the discussion, because one thing we know for sure is that Seattle can't keep looking the way it does right now if we're serious about addressing equity.
[00:15:42] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:15:44] Councilmember Tammy Morales: And so part of the discussion - we'll just have to ask ourselves what kind of changes need to be made so that everyone can find housing that they can afford in the City.
[00:15:56] Crystal Fincher: So now we're in a place where we're reexamining this, there are some other options - does it pretty much look like no matter what happens that we're going to be expanding the areas that new housing can be built in? Does that look like a uniform feature of the options moving forward?
[00:16:15] Councilmember Tammy Morales: Yes, absolutely. The real question and the conversation will have to be about how far we push. I think there is an interest in allowing more - not just more types of housing, allowing it in more places, more parts of the City - but also allowing a mix of uses. So one of the things that we've been talking about, I've been talking about a lot in my office, is the need to make sure that we have better access to essential services so that we have not just - I'm not interested in just building more units of housing. I think it's important for us to contemplate how we build healthy neighborhoods. And that means that we have small businesses allowed - we allow for more neighborhood commercial space so that everyone can have easy access to a corner store or a small grocery, to childcare, to healthcare, to your bank - credit union, to a neighborhood hardware store. These are the things that help people navigate through their neighborhoods, have access to the essential goods and services that they need - without having to get in a car. And that's how we have the kind of healthy, more vibrant neighborhoods that can also lead us to the climate goals that we have - by reducing our reliance on getting into a car to do everything.
[00:17:58] Crystal Fincher: Which makes a lot of sense. And as we go through this plan, obviously considerations about how we do need to proceed while reaching our climate goals is very, very important. I'm also curious about - talking about building those communities, which those - evidence shows that those are healthier communities, safer communities when they are built like that all the way around. I'm also thinking about just the environmental injustices that have been created by the current way the community is designed and situated, where we have places in Seattle that have average lifespans six and seven years shorter than other areas in the same city - but because of proximity to pollution, because of all of the other factors just from an environmental external perspective that are weighing on these communities, whether it's proximity to pollutants or carcinogens or things that exacerbate asthma, whether it's being in close proximity to roadways and freeways, underneath flight paths - those things all take tolls on health. How, as you move forward in this Comprehensive Plan, are you also looking to make sure that we mitigate environmental harms that have been done and move to prevent future harm?
[00:19:20] Councilmember Tammy Morales: Sure. You make a really good point, Crystal. And I have many of the neighborhoods in my district that do suffer from those health disparities. Georgetown and SoDo and Beacon Hill, the Chinatown-International District - all of these neighborhoods are literally under the highways or along the Duwamish, where air and water quality are affected. And look, the truth is we just can't keep building housing in unhealthy neighborhoods, and the idea that we should build apartments along busy arterials and make low-income people live there does not promote equity and it does not promote public health. So we really do need to be looking at how we reduce emissions, how we support climate resiliency. One of the things that we're working on right now in the budget process is creating Resilience Hubs, so creating the ability in some of our community centers for people to go and be safe during an extreme heat event or a smoke event. So we are planning for these kinds of climate disasters, and we can't at the same time acknowledge that we have to take those steps and still allow for our growth management strategies to include restricting people's ability to find housing only to arterials. So I think there will need to be some analysis of our internal consistency in some of our different city policies, but absolutely climate change is one of the elements for our Comprehensive Plan update and needs to be a part of what we think about.
Another important piece of that is transportation. Something like 30% of our City households are not within a 10-minute access to transit. And I will say - in this particular case, it is not necessarily a racial equity issue because the truth is that it is often fairly exclusive neighborhoods that have less bus service. But for the purpose of meeting our carbon emission reduction goals, we absolutely need more bus service in those neighborhoods too. And we really just have to move from this idea of isolated urban villages to a city of neighborhoods that are well-connected, that are within a walkshed of high-capacity transit, frequent reliable buses. We need safer sidewalks. We need protected bike lanes. We really have to encourage people to get out of their cars. But the truth is that as long as they don't have a safe, easy alternative, people will keep driving. And so we need to make alternatives the easy choice. And I think that has to be part of our conversation over the next year - is how do we create a city that is more sustainable and that protects both the climate and our public health?
[00:22:48] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that makes perfect sense. And to your point, this is the opportunity, I think, to really think about and imagine what your neighborhood could be, to really think about the potential that lays ahead and how to capture it. So many times we're forced to think about settling for so many things. Yes, we don't have current transit service that is sufficient - so if I am going to get to work, and pick the kids up from daycare, and make it to a sports practice, or something like that - I have to have my car right now. That's what the current conditions force. But if we are looking ahead to - okay, how can we design our city and how can we design a blueprint that we can build upon that enables these better things? - Why don't we implement that? Why don't we do that? And I think it's a really exciting thing. I'm also a former land use and planning board member, so this is exciting to me. I know a lot of people initially look at it and go - okay, this sounds so boring.
[00:24:08] Councilmember Tammy Morales: No, I can totally geek out on this.
[00:24:11] Crystal Fincher: Yes! But it does impact the way your community, the way your neighborhood looks today - from where and how you park or don't have to park, to what traffic looks like, to what school drop off and pick up, which if you have done that, it's usually a trial and a tribulation, to where your daycare is, to what your commute is - all of those things. If you have to fit in a doctor's appointment, do you have to drive 20 miles away or is it right in the neighborhood? Just all of those things are so key to quality of life, so key to being able to have time for yourself, for your family, for your own pursuits outside of just working and coming home, but even just how you work and then go home, or maybe you're working from home - is all impacted by this design. And so this is an exciting thing for people within the City to get engaged in. And there are a lot of mechanisms built in for engagement with people in the community. What are those?
[00:25:24] Councilmember Tammy Morales: Sure. I'm going to give a shameless plug for a series of conversations that I've been having to try to help folks understand this. It's called Seattle Within Reach. We've had, I think, five conversations with folks about some of these different topics. It's not just me, it's people from around the country - actually around the world, a couple international folks too. So you can find links to those conversations on my Seattle City Council website. But we are also - the City is doing a series of community meetings that I do think it's really important for people to participate in. This will be a chance to learn more about the plan itself, to talk with City staff, and other folks from the community. There are several community meetings. The next one is going to be Thursday, December 1st at Langston Hughes at 6 o'clock. There's one at South Seattle College, December 8th. There's one December 12th - so there are several. They're all in the evening from 6-8 PM in different parts of the city. And we can provide a link on my website, or you can go to the City's Office of Planning and Community Development website and get more information there. But this is just the next set of community conversations.
There is going to be a lot of community engagement for this process. Our Department of Neighborhoods is working closely with the Planning Department as well. We're working with interpreters, with community-based organizations, particularly those who work with immigrant populations to make sure that they get materials that are interpreted, that there are folks who speak different languages who can provide information. So I would say - please reach out to my office. If you don't live in the South End, reach out to your own councilmember to learn more about ways to get involved. But this is going to be a really important opportunity for neighbors to weigh in on what they want the city to look like, the kind of changes you want to see, and the things that you really think should be prioritized in how the City plans for the next 20 years.
[00:27:53] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. So as you're looking through this process, is there anything in particular that you're looking to make sure happens, or any specific changes that you're really trying to implement in this process?
[00:28:09] Councilmember Tammy Morales: As I said earlier, I am really interested in this idea of mixed communities. This is a chance to set a vision for healthy, resilient neighborhoods, to rethink how we grow so that our kids and our elders, and really just our neighbors, can enjoy their own neighborhood without having to drive. I think we have a chance to really increase the kind of housing that we have - this crazy real estate market has been driving a lot of the displacement, so we need to take land out of the speculative market and keep it in community land trusts, for example. We can also take City land off the market and lease it for social housing development, and this would really help keep housing permanently affordable. Because the idea there is that the construction of the housing would be on City-owned land, so it helps ensure permanent affordability. So there are a lot of really interesting ideas that we can start to talk about. We're already talking about some of them in this budget process. I'm not saying it's going to be easy to make some of these adjustments to how we think about growth and about the systems that we have in place now, but that's the point of the Comprehensive Plan - is to rethink the systems that we've been using - to see how we can use them better. And I think in our case, it really is about setting a 20-year plan for a more equitable, more sustainable city so that our kids can grow up in a healthy Seattle.
[00:30:00] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much for all the work that you have been doing, all the work that you will do on this. We will share in our show notes and on the website all of the opportunities to engage in this process. And please feel free to keep us updated as things proceed.
[00:30:15] Councilmember Tammy Morales: Great. Thank you so much, Crystal. It was really nice to talk to you again.
[00:30:18] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
Thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Post-Production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can follow me @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Friday show, we present Part 2 of the Hacks & Wonks 2022 Post-Election Roundtable which was live-streamed on November 15, 2022 with special guests political consultants Dujie Tahat and Kelsey Hamlin. In Part 2, the panel breaks down election results for State Legislature seats in the battleground districts of the 26th, 30th, 44th, and 47th LDs, where Democrats prevailed despite fears of backlash from passage of police accountability bills in 2021. They then dive into how the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s race embodied many of the election cycle’s themes - how fearmongering and punitive approaches to public safety lost to positive messaging about addressing root causes, and how the media and editorial boards attempted to drive narratives out of touch with the nuanced conversation voters are ready to have. Finally, the roundtable wraps up with a look at how established organizations and their history of relational organizing won successful initiatives to bring ranked choice voting to Seattle and a higher minimum wage to Tukwila.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-hosts, Dujie Tahat at @DujieTahat and Kelsey Hamlin at @ItsKelseyHamlin. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
Hacks & Wonks 2022 Post-Election Roundtable Livestream | November 15th, 2022
Transcript
[00:00:00] Bryce Cannatelli: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I’m Bryce Cannatelli – I’m the Post Coordinator for the show. You’re listening to Part 2 of our 2022 Post-Election Roundtable, with guests Dujie Tahat and Kelsey Hamlin, that was originally aired live on Tuesday, November 15th. Part 1 was our last episode – you can find it in your podcast feed or on our website officialhacksandwonks.com. You can also go to the site for full video from the event and a full text transcript of the show. Thanks for tuning in!
[00:00:43] Crystal Fincher: Okay, okay, okay. Did you do work in any legislative races? I know you did a lot of work, but I don't know if you did any legislative work.
[00:00:52] Dujie Tahat: We didn't do legislative work this year.
[00:00:53] Crystal Fincher: Okay.
[00:00:54] Dujie Tahat: Yeah. We weren't even planning on doing really a bunch of any electoral work and then, you know, suddenly we got a phone call. Yeah, exactly - it was like August and then we got six phone calls and I was like, oh, yeah, all right - sure.
[00:01:10] Crystal Fincher: Nice. In these races, there were some interesting ones. One, legislatively, the 10th Legislative District, which is still too close to call - the lead flipped yesterday, it flipped again today. That one of the legislative districts there got a little dramatic in one of those races. Dave Paul actually looks safe in that race - I think it's safe to say that he is going to win. But whether Democrat Clyde Shavers or Republican Greg Gilday carries the day is still to be determined.
Another huge district, battleground district, and one that people were not at all clear on how that was going to end up was the 26th Legislative District - out in Pierce and Kitsap County, with Emily Randall in a race defending her Senate seat against Jesse Young, who was a Representative. And it looks like Emily Randall has won that race. I would definitely put Emily in the category of people who are in community, connect with community, and leading boldly - not afraid to say where she stands, not afraid to make the case, and take the case to people in her district - and talk with people who agree with her, talk with people who may not agree with her. But I think what we saw there, and what she found, was that she was able to find places of agreement. And people understanding that she's operating in good faith, and even if they don't agree with everything that they heard from her - on the Republican side, that they know that she listens and is willing to act and is willing to fight for a lot of things that just benefit everybody, that don't really have a Democrat or progressive label on it, but just wanting to get people cared for and healthy in the district is a big deal. That certainly was one, but a lot of people were not sure how that was going to end up, but ended up turning out well.
The 30th legislative district and the 44th - two interesting races - full disclosure, did work in those legislative districts, but saw - I think what I noticed in the 30th District especially - this is in South King County, this is mainly Federal Way, some of Auburn in the 30th Legislative District. But you had Jamila Taylor there and you had Kristine Reeves running for the seat that Jesse Johnson ended up leaving. Both were successful, but Jamila actually had a Federal Way police officer running against her in that office - and Federal Way is the city where Jim Ferrell is the mayor. He was certainly - him running for King County Prosecutor - unsuccessfully - but really talking about that punitive - as they call it, law and order - but really punitive punishment-focused rhetoric and rallying against some of the accountability measures that the Legislature took, trying to really blame that on Jamila and others there. And that really just seemed to fall flat - and pretty solid, comfortable victories there for all three candidates in that district - Senator Claire Wilson, Kristine Reeves, and Jamila Taylor. So that was an interesting one where people were wondering - okay, is there going to be a backlash? I saw an article today, I think from Scott Greenstone, where he wrote about - hey, that backlash that people were wondering if it was going to appear, just related to public safety, very much did not appear. And the 30th Legislative District was one of those districts where they really tried to hammer the Democratic candidates with that and make a case on the Republican side, and it just didn't seem to come through.
Similarly in the 44th Legislative District, but had an interesting result there - John Lovick, previous representative, now won his race to be the senator there, along with Brandy Donaghy, who was appointed to the seat, was running for this new term, as well as April Berg, who is a continuing representative there. But again, in that district that used to be a swing district - that used to be the district of former moderate Senator Steve Hobbs, as well as John Lovick, and for years they insisted that - hey, it takes a moderate to win this seat, this is a purple district, they won't elect a progressive Democrat. And then April Berg came along and said, Really? Watch this. And then it seemed to have continued, and what was once a purple district now seems to, as you both talked about before, now seems to be pretty safely blue for the time being. And just an interesting development there, because there was so much in flux at the beginning of the cycle, and now it just seems to be so definitive that they're there.
[00:06:57] Kelsey Hamlin: Can I - oh, okay. Go ahead.
I was going to say, because you touched on it a couple of times - around leading boldly with Emily Randall. And for that matter, like Jamila - and the races really that you just went through - these candidates who lead boldly actually are the ones that get the turnout, that get the motivation from voters that we were talking about earlier. And at the end of the day, they're also being a person, they go and talk to people, they're not just relying on ads that show up on people's TVs to just get people to feel one way or another. But you had mentioned this backlash narrative around, ultimately, police accountability measures that were passed two legislative sessions ago, and a lot of the narrative was - ooh, is there going to be backlash during this midterm? Is this going to impact electability of sitting legislators? And as a result, because that question was even posed, because we're operating from a place of fear, because we're not willing to lead boldly, except for the few great folks of, some of which you just named - that actually really, really impacted the immediately next legislative session, this early 2022 one that just finished. And so those bills were rolled back - all in the name of electability politics - but at the end of the day, when you look at the races of the people who are not involved in that rollback, who in fact opposed it, those are the folks that really pulled the ticket, brought it home. So I'm just really curious around your take of just even the framing of backlash in general, about who we're giving power to for actually taking bold action. Is it backlash, if we're actually doing what is clearly voters' will? So I'm just curious around that conversation in general, because it's played over the course of the past two to three years.
[00:09:11] Dujie Tahat: Can I also add a follow-up question, because I think I was going to ask a similar question - in terms of backlash - because I think there's also the relationship, I think, between sort of local politics, local elections, and then the nationalization. So I think we can definitively say last election cycle last year, when it was all city and county races, was a kind of backlash to - elected a bunch of conservative city council members and city attorneys. And at least in Seattle, in the Seattle area. I'm curious if there's a difference, if there's a meaningful difference between how voters behave in an off-year versus a not-off-year, and then particularly, like the voting for a state legislator versus voting for your mayor in the context of public safety and crime and police, in particular.
[00:10:08] Crystal Fincher: Okay, a few things. One, so even on just last year - and certainly for people in Seattle, they felt that there was a backlash because of the mayoral race and the city attorney race - I think that there were some other fundamentals and pretty clear fundamentals at play. And the other issue is that when you look in the suburbs, we had a number of suburbs elect some of the most progressive city council people that they ever have before. And so I think really what we had was a story of candidates. And I think that especially in the City of Seattle, where the media plays a role in elections in a different way than they do in some of the suburban and rural areas, that that also impacted some races. I think that fundamentals pretty well favored Bruce Harrell, right? I think just looking at voter communications, spending on direct voter communication - the Nicole Thomas-Kennedy race and some of the other races - they were just massively outspent and outdone with direct voter communication. So anytime that there's that much of a lopsided communication delta, it is hard to prevail in that situation. And then when you have unknown people who - it's up to you to define yourself or the opponent to define you - and in those situations, the opponent had a lot more resources to try and define those, that that impacted those races in a different way in Seattle than we saw in some of the suburbs.
But I do think that when it comes to the backlash narrative - our public conversation, the media conversation about public safety is in a very different place than people on the ground. In 2020, with the King County Charter Amendments that brought forth more accountability measures and offices, in addition to appointing instead of electing the sheriff - that wasn't just the only thing that brought forth accountability measures. And despite those charter amendments being dramatically outspent and there being opposition against them, they were passed. And they were passed in just about every council district in the county, right? So this was not - this never has been, as sometimes it is characterized, as well - just those super lefties in Seattle care about like comprehensive public safety and addressing root causes of crime and issues like that. Over and over again, we have seen at the ballot box and in polling - that voters across the county do care about accountability, that whether or not they want more police or not, they all - and I'm using the term all in a near literal sense - 80+ percent when folks at the ballot box are saying, but we also want alternate responses. We understand that - hey, even if I have no issue with an officer, and I think that it's appropriate to call an officer at some period and at some point in time - that when it comes to an issue of someone having a behavioral health crisis, or if someone is unhoused, or if someone is dealing with complex family issues - that sometimes an armed police response is - they're just not equipped to do that, right? And I think that the public conversation in the media has been - well, is it defund or not? Do you back the blue or not? - and it's very binary, shallow conversation. But most voters recognize that it's not an either or most of the time it's an and situation. And what we have done is invested a lot in some portions of the necessary public safety puzzle and have starved other areas. And so we better get to taking action on addressing some of these root causes, on enabling appropriate response.
Just yesterday, there was someone near where I lived, clearly having a behavioral health crisis, right? And there's this helpless feeling that calling the police on this is not - it won't help anyone. It won't help anyone in this situation. But there isn't anyone to call, there is not a resource available to appropriately handle this - and it's frustrating. And it makes you feel helpless. But that's what's missing. And I think lots of people see and feel that and understand that we need to buffet our infrastructure. I think being very defensive and playing into that shallow conversation - is it defund or is it not - that is such an elementary point to start the conversation. Because there's such broad acknowledgement that we do need other things, that we better pay attention to that. So painting that as some controversial lever of what side are you on, does not represent where most people in the public are at. And over and over again, they keep saying - we want you to deal with this more comprehensively. We want to do the things that evidence shows will make these issues better and not keep trying the same failed solutions. We seem to have a few leaders who are dead set on just doing the same old things regardless of the failed continued results. And some media who seem to be very interested in pushing that narrative. I think it is really hard to do that credibly right now, given - once again - the results that we saw so conclusively in the King County Prosecutor's race, the judicial races, some of these county races, these legislative races. And I do think that people understand that - really - public safety is a local issue. And Tiffany Smiley trying to blame Patty Murray just clearly fell flat. But people understand that Patty Murray isn't deciding whether or not to deploy your local policeman, right? That's a local decision. But I also think that the part that's missing is that people have to be held accountable for results there too. And then as we look at the effectiveness of some of these alternate response projects and pilots, and we're looking at metrics, and whether there's a dashboard available and what are they doing - we better be doing that with all of our emergency response, police response and making sure that we're getting out of it a justification for the money that we're putting into it. And if we're not, let's do something that's actually more effective. People's safety is at stake. And I just feel that this political conversation that has enabled a perpetuation of these failed policies that have not stopped people from being victimized are just hurting us all. That was a very long-winded answer, but I have feelings about that. What are your feelings about that?
[00:18:06] Kelsey Hamlin: I also do think there's a level of accountability that needs to happen, even on the consultant side. Who told our legislators that enacted police accountability that was complex, that was like - hey, let's not do vehicle chases anymore at really high speeds because people pretty much always die and you almost never catch anyone. Who decided that that's the thing we want to roll back? These aren't these binary conversations that led to these laws happening in 2020, 2021 and then getting rolled back in the very next year. And getting rolled back in the name of electability, right? Who is using their power to tell our legislators that they should actually in fact hold back on their boldness, that they should not enact these rather complex and very clearly data-driven laws behind not just police accountability, but public safety in general. At the end of the day, it comes down to - hey, let's maybe kill less people this year.
[00:19:06] Crystal Fincher: That was always bad advice. I don't - clearly there was some advice given with that, but - look, Democrats, Republicans are going to call you lawless, criminal-loving, all of that - regardless of what you do. And as - we talked about it on the show before, I think lots of us have talked about this - it was absolutely predictable that even though they did roll those back, Republicans attacked Democrats as if there was no rollbacks and as if nothing had happened. So instead of acting defensive and scared of what you are doing, do the right thing. Make the case for doing the right thing. Take the case to the voters. If you are actually connected to community, you can do that with credibility, right? And with success. But just looking at a poll and going - uh oh, this looks scary, we better backpedal and - yeah, that was a frustrating thing to watch happen.
[00:20:17] Dujie Tahat: And now to take it back to the start of this conversation, it's like - you didn't need to do it. We didn't need to do it because we increased majorities, despite all of the contextual historical indicators pointing to us losing majorities. We actually gained them - so we didn't need to do it.
[00:20:37] Crystal Fincher: Didn't need to do it. And yeah, that was very unnecessary. I hope there are lessons learned from that. There need to be lessons learned from that.
Just wrapping up some of these legislative races, we talked about the 44th. The 47th, which we actually did quite a bit of work in, was an interesting race. And I think the 47th Legislative District holds a lot of lessons for a lot of people there. This was a district - and it's part of Kent, Covington, part of Auburn, Maple Valley - that area in South King County. But there was - starting off - two Black Republicans - one - and then a third running in that district who was a Ukrainian refugee. There were two open seats, an open Senate seat, an open House seat, and then one incumbent running - Debra Entenman on the Democratic side. On, for the Democratic challengers, we had a primary with Carmen Goers that - it was a Black woman who was a Republican active in the Chamber of Commerce against Shukri Olow and Chris Stearns on the Democratic side in the primary. And in the Senate seat, you had Bill Boyce a Black Republican, who's currently a Kent City Councilmember, running against - in the primary - Claudia Kauffman and Satwinder Kaur. Claudia Kauffman had formerly been a Senator and then Satwinder Kaur was a sitting Kent City Councilmember. And so just - this was interesting - it's in South King County, one of the most diverse areas in the country, an area where the school district has more languages spoken than almost any other district in the country. But what we saw here was the Republican Party making some inroads with non-white candidates, at least. And the Republican Party being active on the ground and active in school board races and active in faith communities, whether it's mosques or gurdwaras or churches, and activating on the ground in a way that I don't think a lot of people have been paying a lot of attention to. But we need to, and we need to be showing up in those areas as progressives if we want to continue - to engage and continue to win and continue to advance policy in these areas. This manifested in - during, in the school district races, we have had votes in the Kent School District from people who called themselves Democrats to ban books with queer content, right? This is a weird time and a weird kind of mishmash of people and issues and interests.
Fortunately in this race, Claudia Kauffman wound up prevailing on that side in the primary. In the one House seat, that open seat, a Republican actually didn't even make it through - there were three Republicans who did not make it to the general election, the two Democrats did. Chris Stearns ended up winning that race. So this was a district where candidates ran hard. There was a lot of money spent in this district, a lot of electioneering going on. But - and it wound up still fairly close in that Senate race. And so the help and the village was needed, as it is in so many areas, to get this race across. But this is - this turned out well, but we cannot take our foot off of the gas. We can't take our eye off of the ball - because the Republican Party is organizing in ways that we're used to seeing the Democratic Party doing. And we can't take that for granted and need to be in all the spaces - and not cede faith spaces to Republicans and not cede rural communities to Republicans. And to make sure that what we're talking about helps and brings value to those people in those places, as well as everywhere else. And so just an area where good things happen - I think this is another district that moving forward is going to be more reliably blue. But it's not going to be - I think in most of these - they're going to continue to need work. These aren't places where we can be - ah, we won, we're safe. We don't have to do anything else. This is when the work begins and when action is needed - I think that is the case. Any other thoughts on the legislative races from either one of you?
With that, I just want to talk about the King County Prosecutor race for a moment. What did you see here, Kelsey, in terms of this race and why it turned out, how it turned out?
[00:26:05] Kelsey Hamlin: Oh my goodness. I think everything we've talked about tonight is - was culminated, more or less, in that race, right? Whether you want to go look at the media and the narrative going on there - and this just false take that Ferrell was going to be as high and mighty as he was prophesized to be. And whether you're looking at polling, or whether you're looking at media and some articles that came out on him, or whether the framing is the backlash that's going to happen - is literally Jim Ferrell culminated in real-time with the person. And at the end of the day, I just - I didn't see his work as fruitful. I didn't see it based in community. I know Leesa Manion's been showing up in spaces continuously - she's not a new face to me. And it just didn't - the narrative writ large didn't really track with what I felt in my gut. And it's always interesting to see it play out, given the context of NTK as a prior race - it happened locally and how big of a deal that was. And so it's really satisfying to see it turn out the way that I had felt it in my gut. And it - yeah, I just think the boldness is where it's at. And as long as you make your values clear, as long as you're clear about it and you're a real human being to fellow people - the job is not as hard as we make it out to be - if you just try and get those things there. Dujie, what was your take?
[00:27:52] Dujie Tahat: Yeah, I think for me - I'm really struck by King County voters just generally being happy with King County, like the government of King County. Leesa Manion represents an extension of the current prosecuting attorney and people seem really happy with Satterberg. And I think to our point of having, being able to hold two competing thoughts at once and not giving into the binary, I think Satterberg is actually a pretty good exemplar of somebody who's started off as a Republican during the era of punitive - just punitive - policy, to someone who is advocating very much for diversion programs. And you're seeing this also coming off of a King County electorate that just passed a bunch of charter amendments to improve policing in 2020. So you're seeing, I think, an electorate that is primed to have these nuanced conversations in a way that is totally divorced, I think, from the coverage. Like you pointed out, the narratives are what they are, but the electorate is continuing to have a more nuanced take and make it really, really abundantly clear that it actually - it's not even either-or, and it's not even really all that close, right? I don't, I can't think of - this is the closest race that I can think of at a county level that has to do with the criminal justice reform, or the executive, or the prosecuting attorney. People, I think, are just like generally pretty happy.
[00:29:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah - it's really - this is interesting. This is also a race that we did work in with our firm. And I don't know that the - that voters were really happy with the way that things are, but they're definitely unhappy and do not like the punitive approach. And are really saying - okay, I hear from, I'm hearing one thing from Jim Ferrell - very punitive, very punishment-based, but punishment does not equate to safety. And really, it seems like voters do want action that equates to safety and have come to the conclusion that just punitive punishment does not, as the evidence shows. And I think what helped Leesa was an articulation of an expansion of some stuff, an expansion of some strategies from where they were - with the city attorney, with the prosecuting attorney's office for quite some time - but really an articulation of - okay, we are moving forward there, we do want to keep people more safe. But we're going to have to address some root causes of these issues and just throwing people in jail is not, as we have seen, is not going to get the job done. So we better have some other strategies to address gun violence, to address intimate partner violence, to address just the range of things that we're seeing and dealing with - from property crime to violent crime. And I think that she just articulated a vision that was closer to what King County voters feel is the solution. So I think - I think there were just two different visions and voters made a clear choice of where they want to be and what they want to see. And I think - also in this one - now it's time for action. And I know that she's planning on hitting the ground running, has - is very familiar with the office and this role. I also think that people valued just the familiarity and experience there. And understanding what it's going to take to make some of these changes and shifts within that office and managing people and going through that was helpful.
But I think that - I really do hope that just in the media ecosystem overall, that there is an acknowledgement that clearly we have some media entities that were really hoping for the punishment narrative to take hold, but it just hasn't, it's not a thing. Can we please move on and talk about all of the different issues, all of the different possibilities and solutions now - because there's a ton to talk about, there's a ton to explore. And if we start covering that, exploring it - we're all going to be better off and help everyone understand where we're moving, and where we can move to, and how to make people more safe.
[00:33:00] Kelsey Hamlin: Yeah. And let's name too, that it's not even just media at large, but specifically editorial boards and these columnists - that are sticking with that status quo punitive narrative that doesn't actually resonate with people, and still trying to drive that home where it's not there. I'll also name too, 'cause editorial boards have a lot of power, but I'll also name too that Leesa's message was just positive - more positive about change - and Ferrell's was the exact opposite. But that's a messaging statistic and stat and tactic that we know very well - that if you just have a more positive message, it will resonate more with people.
[00:33:42] Dujie Tahat: And I think that you are also touching on - you've made more clear what I meant, which is - it is not that maybe people are happy with the conditions as they are right now, as much as I think the county is more primed to have the conversation of where we go from here, as opposed to some of the narrative setters - I think that people generally - people have voted, specifically voters in King County, because of what has been on the ballot lately - understand that there is a more nuanced set of choices and that there's actually an alternative to the sort of binary punitive or abolish everything.
[00:34:19] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I think you are exactly right. And so now I want to talk about a big City of Seattle election that you two had a little bit to do with there - the choice before Seattle voters to change the way that they voted. And if they did want to change the way that they voted, was it going to be approval voting or ranked choice voting? How did this play out and how did ranked choice voting prevail?
[00:34:57] Dujie Tahat: I think people wanted it - I think that's ultimately at the end of the day what happened, right? I think people understand that our democracy is not working as well as it could be. I think people in Seattle have a history of willing to make improvements that strengthen our democracy, like Democracy Vouchers and stronger campaign finance laws. And despite everything editorial boards can do to throw barriers at not changing the way we do things, people still saw through that and voted for it - not for nothing. Editorial boards were wrong on democracy - The Seattle Times editorial board was wrong on Democracy Vouchers too, they were wrong on ranked choice voting. The position that our democracy is just fine - we shouldn't do anything to tinker with it - is at best intellectually dishonest. And I think a lot of people understand what ranked choice voting is - over 50 jurisdictions across the country already use it - Alaska just elected a Democrat because of it. New York City elected a mayor and the most diverse city council it's ever had. It's pretty obvious and intuitive. The process was maybe a little complicated, and it was - it was frankly, complicated - but that shouldn't be a reason to not do the right thing, which was so often the sort of biggest argument against the campaign.
[00:36:32] Crystal Fincher: Now in this, you talk about editorial boards - you had both The Seattle Times and The Stranger editorial boards recommending a No on the first question - saying don't change the way things are voting. I think The Urbanist recommended Yes and for voting for ranked choice voting, but The Seattle times recommended a No vote and just leave the second choice about which one blank. The Stranger said a No vote, but choose ranked choice voting. Urbanist had a Yes vote and ranked choice voting. So in that kind of a situation where you have, especially entities like The Times and The Stranger that have been so consequential in elections with how they've made their choices, how did you fight against that and prevail?
[00:37:30] Kelsey Hamlin: Yeah. I think a component of it is RCV as a kind of movement and a - RCV being ranked choice voting - as a kind of movement and thing that's come up from the ground across the country, it's not just in Washington, has had the benefit of having just an organic group of people already there waiting. This isn't as if it popped up out of nowhere, at least on the ranked choice voting end. There's the same people that have advanced mail-in ballots, that have fought for same-day voter registration, that fought for Democracy Vouchers - are the same exact people that are behind the campaign asking for ranked choice voting to be on the ballot for voters to choose. A lot of that groundwork was already there and that helped us out at the end of the day. The margin isn't the biggest margin in the world for that first question about change. It's funny to me the way the endorsements landed because, just on the common sense front, it - the question is, yes, do you want change or no, we don't want change - everything's fine, democracy is fine - not crumbling at all. Like writ large it's silly on its face, but at the end of the day, the process question - the one and two - we haven't seen since - someone had pointed out today - since 2014. It's that preschool question of you have to vote Yes, and then you have to vote which thing you want. And that's really the only kind of comparable instance that we have to compare how we did to another instance that had the same setup. It was a confusing layout, but RCV itself is not confusing - Dujie has movie nights with his kids all the time, and it's always - hey, let's pick our first, second and third choice for which movie we want to watch tonight. And then you phase them out and have another go around - it's not hard. You can do it with kids. We do it intuitively when we go to any ice cream shop, or restaurant, or go to the grocery store. At the end of the day, there was a lot of organic movement in the first place that helped us out.
And there was a lot of field efforts across the board, thanks to that organic volunteer presence and people that were ready, where we did a lot of field effort across Seattle and not just centric to one area that we thought was strong or not. As far as patterns go for the results, I find it painfully accurate that a lot of the pro-ranked choice voting crowd, pro-let's-improve-our-democracy folks and votes tend to be with renters - it's with younger folks and with renters - that's the strongest demographic that had voted for ranked choice voting. And it also matches the core arterials that you see on land use, the multifamily zoning that you see in land use. And we see this pattern over and over again in a place like Seattle, where the more progressive voters are with renters, are in those districts that are more dense and not exclusive and more affordable. So you see this really multifaceted thing coming out in the voter results if you try to take a closer look at it.
[00:40:46] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:40:49] Dujie Tahat: And to get at what you're saying, Crystal, in terms of what do we do once we have these endorsements that are - malpractice, to put it nicely, I think for us it became about - okay, we have more voices than the editorial board has to make a better case for the editorial boards. And we basically wanted to overdrive, to flood the ecosystem with really good op-eds basically and LTEs to sort of supplement the paid voter contact we were already doing, to supplement the organizing that was happening. And I think - we placed a lot of them in the last in the last 10 days of GOTV, and I think that those are really meaningful and really important - because in terms of - we've been having a conversation all night about narrative setting and who gets to set narrative. And I don't, personally and just as a firm, I don't think that shouldn't be left to editorial boards, right? Especially if what we have and the issues that we're representing and the communities that are going to benefit from the solutions we're proposing has a greater set of people, then what we're going to do is flood the ecosystem with those voices. And we'll do everything we can to shift that narrative. We're not maybe going to have the same symmetrical set of powers, but it's certainly - it's certainly important - we don't show up, we should. Or we don't - we don't not show up.
[00:42:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. There is one last initiative, as our time is coming to a close, that I did want to talk about, that was very exciting, and I thought was very well executed. And that was the Raise the Wage Tukwila initiative to raise Tukwila's minimum wage. As you watch this play out, what were your thoughts about it?
[00:42:42] Dujie Tahat: I think that this is another sort of example of where fundamentals really bore out, right? I think that - and it's a continuation of - the Fight for $15 happened in South King County, it's only natural that South King County pushed that even further. You had the Transit Riders Union, Washington CAN - organizations who had been organizing, just doing relational organizing for years, not just showing up for this single campaign - turn on their networks for this one campaign that is a part of this broader set of things that they're advocating for. And I think, again, related to the conversation we've been having, it's like how much - people, I think what I love about our conversation, is that we all recognize that voters are pretty smart and they all actually know that if you're just showing up this one time because of a moment of self-interest, or if you're here every single day to talk to me about what my life is like, and that you're offering a solution that will actually meaningfully impact that. And that's where, how that campaign ran. I'm really interested in, and this was also a little bit modeled in the RCV campaign, but there's a distributed organized canvassing model. And trying to see how that model might apply in different parts of the state and how that might scale - I haven't had a chance to look at the numbers yet. I think there's a really interesting promise there too, and implications for other races. But all of that too is only made possible by the years of relational organizing and showing up every single day too - that's not a thing you can just build in August for your GOTV operation in six to eight weeks.
[00:44:24] Crystal Fincher: Completely agree. What'd you think, Kelsey?
[00:44:28] Kelsey Hamlin: Yeah. I mean, this - just like Dujie said, had come up after the Fight for $15. I also believe there was a SeaTac fight for wages as well, right before that. And so I think this is just a culmination of a lot of work on the ground that had already been there in the first place. So again, just like we've been talking about when you're in community, when you're showing up, when you're present and you're listening to people and not just telling them - that is when people will show up for you in return - because it matches, because it lines up, because you're on the same page. And at the end of the day, like the fight for wages and the discussion on inflation, the discussion on abortion rights, and this discussion on unaffordability and housing - these things are all connected at the end of the day. And people, voters realize that - and a lot of campaigns that oppose changes like this and even opposed ranked choice voting and don't want a minimum wage - I remember Seattle Times way back, when it first started, was very skeptical even after a study came out on it. A lot of the people that pose these types of things - one, pop up out of nowhere and then two, aren't connecting the dots between just these issues that in our real lives we experience every single day. And that's just the connection that we have to be making when we're talking to people on their doorstep. So yeah, I think it's a really great celebration and a fight that deserves a lot of applause on behalf of the organizations that are involved in them, especially Seattle Transit Riders Union and Washington CAN - they've been around for a very long time and I'm very proud of them.
[00:46:15] Crystal Fincher: I agree and well said.
And with that, the roundtable comes to a close. I want to thank our panelists, Dujie Tahat and Kelsey Hamlin, for their insight in making this an engaging and informative night. To those watching online, thanks so much for tuning in. If you missed any of the discussion tonight, you can catch up on the Hacks & Wonks Facebook page, YouTube channel, or Twitter where we're @HacksWonks. Special thanks to essential members of the Hacks & Wonks team and coordinators for this evening, Dr. Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. If you missed voting in the election, or if you know someone who did, make sure to register to vote, update your registration, or find information for the next election at myvote.wa.gov. And as a reminder, even if you have been previously incarcerated, your right to vote is restored and you can re-register to vote immediately upon your release, even if you are still under community supervision. Be sure to tune in to Hacks & Wonks on your favorite podcast app for our midweek interviews and our Friday week-in-review shows or at officialhacksandwonks.com.
I've been your host, Crystal Fincher - see you next time.
On this midweek show, we present Part 1 of the Hacks & Wonks 2022 Post-Election Roundtable which was live-streamed on November 15, 2022 with special guests political consultants Dujie Tahat and Kelsey Hamlin. In Part 1, the panel breaks down general election results with discussion of why the feared Republican red wave did not materialize and what lessons Democrats should learn and act upon to maintain and increase the structural advantages they now hold across Washington state. The example of Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez’s surprise win in the 3rd Congressional District can be a roadmap for Democrats looking to expand into other areas, and the increase of Democratic majorities in the State Legislature point to the importance of institutional support for candidates outside the conventionally-accepted norms who aren’t afraid of being bold. Stay tuned for Part 2 of the roundtable releasing this Friday for more election analysis!
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-hosts, Dujie Tahat at @DujieTahat and Kelsey Hamlin at @ItsKelseyHamlin. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
Hacks & Wonks 2022 Post-Election Roundtable Livestream | November 15th, 2022
Transcript
[00:00:00] Bryce Cannatelli: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I’m Bryce Cannatelli – I’m the Post Coordinator for the show. You’re listening to Part 1 of our 2022 Post-Election Roundtable that was originally aired live on Tuesday, November 15th. Audio for Part 2 will be running this Friday, so make sure you stay tuned. Full video from the event and a full text transcript of the show can be found on our website officialhacksandwonks.com. Thank you for tuning in!
[00:00:38] Crystal Fincher: Good evening and welcome to the Hacks & Wonks Election Roundtable - Post-Election Roundtable. I'm Crystal Fincher - I'm a political consultant and the host of the Hacks & Wonks podcast. And today I'm thrilled to be joined by two of my favorite hacks and wonks to break down what happened in this 2022 general election.
We're excited to be able to livestream this roundtable on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Additionally, we're recording this roundtable for broadcast on KODX and KVRU radio, podcast, and it will also be available with a full text transcript on officialhacksandwonks.com.
Our esteemed panelists for this evening are Dujie Tahat. Dujie is CEO and Managing Director of DTC. He's a political and cultural strategist with deep expertise across emerging and established nonprofit advocacy organizations, legislative and electoral campaigns, and Fortune 500 companies. They've developed countless strategic messaging and narrative guides that center Black, Indigenous, and people of color, immigrants, queer folks, elderly Washingtonians, and those experiencing homelessness across a range of issues from environmental justice to housing and labor rights. Informed by their background organizing in the Yakima Valley then among artists and social justice advocates in and around Seattle, Dujie has built a career ensuring people at the margins are pulled to the forefront of political power building, organizational priorities, and communication strategies. Welcome, Dujie.
[00:02:17] Dujie Tahat: Thanks, Crystal - that sounds very impressive.
[00:02:19] Crystal Fincher: It does sound very impressive, doesn't it?
Kelsey Hamlin is a Principal Consultant at DTC. She's a communicator, organizer, and researcher who worked for four years as a journalist across the Puget Sound before switching over to nonprofit and campaign work. Much of her skillset centers writing, strategic messaging, design, and politics. She's both covered the Legislature and worked to advance policies through it, coordinating with legislators and lobbyists, gathering data and research, and organizing testimony across coalitions that position proposals for the best success as conditions change. Kelsey's personal advocacy, chosen journalistic coverage, and work focus on social justice and the moments, legalities, and policies that touch people's everyday lives. She treasures keeping things accessible to all in spite of deliberately convoluted and racist systems. Welcome, Kelsey.
[00:03:16] Kelsey Hamlin: Thank you, and thanks for having us both here.
[00:03:18] Crystal Fincher: Yes, and we were going to have Djibril Diop join us this evening, but he actually had an emergency pop-up, so we are thinking about him and his family and wish them the best. I'm Crystal - I'm a political consultant. I also have the Hacks & Wonks podcast and am excited to get to breaking down and talking about what happened on Election Night.
We will start with the Congressional races and one of the biggest upsets, if not the biggest upset, in the country with - in the Third Congressional District, Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez defeating MAGA Republican Joe Kent. So we now see that this is - the race has been called for Marie, she is back in Washington DC now doing her orientation - but this was a long shot. Looking at this race, why was she able to be successful, Dujie?
[00:04:17] Dujie Tahat: Yeah, I think that Marie Gluesenkamp - I think that coming out of Election Night, John Fetterman, the new senator from Pennsylvania, got a lot of headlines for progressive populism and running a campaign of good fundamentals. I think everything that got him to the Senate, you could say about Marie's campaign as well. It was really strong in terms of messaging. She came up against an opponent who was clearly unfit for the office that they were seeking. And I think, not for nothing, voters are smart enough to see through that. The fundamentals for that campaign were really, really good. I think the ecosystem, the progressive ecosystem, also came together and rallied around Marie Gluesenkamp, which is a really fantastic thing and obviously, every little bit mattered for her race in particular. I'm really, really interested in seeing her brand of progressive populism begin to take hold within Washington state in particular. I think that our Democratic Party infrastructure is a little bit afraid to go left sometimes. And I think she's laid out a pretty strong and compelling case for what it might actually look like to lead, to be really, really forward with your values. I'm really excited by that campaign and the implications for future races.
[00:05:44] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely - and Phil Gardner, who managed that campaign and did an excellent job, talked about this not being a fluke. This wasn't a chance. This wasn't a shock to them. They had a plan. They nailed strategy. They nailed execution - just from the outside looking in. And their take on it, just seeing what Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez said - how did you win this race? What did you do to win people who may not have always voted for Democrats, may generally vote Republican? - and it really is two parts. They made sure they knew how awful - they made sure that everyone knew how awful Joe Kent's views were, and they were extreme. And they gave them an alternative they can be enthusiastic about. And I think, to your point, Dujie, that is the key. It wasn't just, hey, this guy is really bad and scary bad - and to be clear, he was scary bad. But that's not enough, and you have to paint a vision of what you're going to do for people in the district, how you can help people. This is a district that is both suburban and rural, and she had to reach people in all of those areas. And really, it was her strength in the rural areas that allowed her to hang on in this race - when we've seen in prior years, late ballots have allowed Republicans to overtake Democrats in this area. As you looked at this race, Kelsey, what did you see?
[00:07:20] Kelsey Hamlin: Yeah, we definitely had a couple of folks in Clark doing other campaign stuff. And when push came to shove, once Marie made it through the primary, a lot of folks on the ground were - point blank - we're going to pivot and focus on this campaign, because that's where the movement needs to happen and that's what we're going to focus on, because it's that important. So on the ground, you just saw door knocking, you saw volunteers really putting their feet in and digging in their heels to make sure that she made it. And ultimately, that's because she went out there and talked directly to people. You see that with AOC, you see that with Fetterman - and so at the end of the day, what matters is these conversations that Democrats choose to have with people or not with people, and where they choose to have those - because Marie was popular across Clark County, not just in the specific town hubs or city hubs. She was popular in various setups and demographics and in different land use areas, so it wasn't like she stuck to one place and called it good.
[00:08:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And in part of a plan, part of a memo that Phil Gardner shared was a breakdown of just kind of what it's going to take to win. And it says to beat Kent and win the election, Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez needs the resources to accomplish three goals. The first one was maximize Democratic turnout in vote-rich Clark County - certainly maximizing in the more Democratic areas was necessary. But also number two - show up everywhere and make the race closer in rural areas. One third of the voters in the district live outside of Clark County in rural areas, and so improving on past performance was absolutely vital. Marie hails from one of those counties, knows how to connect with those voters. She is a rural voter and has talked about her frustrations of being painted with a broad brush as either nonexistent or only concerned with a narrow set of issues. And she talked about everything passionately from abortion to health care coverage, to the economy, to the extremism - back and forth. And then the third thing on the list was build a cross-party coalition for this unique election, recognizing that there were going to be a lot of disaffected people who had traditionally voted Republican, but never for a Republican like Joe Kent, and really giving them an alternative - to her point - that people could be enthusiastic about, not just - well, let me choose between the lesser of the evils. But someone who actually painted a vision for what life could be and how life could improve in that district. And mission accomplished in that way, and so that was absolutely exciting to see - was as excited about that race personally as any of them that I worked on this cycle - just really incredible to see.
And then, we've talked through on the show a lot of times, but we had the Senate race with Patty Murray and Tiffany Smiley. We had another competitive Congressional race between Kim Schrier and Matt Larkin. As you look at those, as you heard some of the rhetoric about whether a red wave was coming, how close this may be, seeing some of the polling showing it being a very close race - how did you evaluate this race and were the results surprising for you, Dujie?
[00:11:01] Dujie Tahat: Yeah, I think my main takeaway - and I think Schrier's race was a good sort of object lesson and - is that some of the fundamental structural advantages the Democratic Party has in Washington state are set. All the polls had Schrier winning by 6, even though she wasn't securing a majority - and basically all the entire undecided block came over to the Schrier camp and she ended up winning by 6. I think that for decades now, everybody whose job it is to elect Democrats focused on swing districts, particularly suburban white women. And as the sort of national politics has gotten really rancorous and Republicans have basically turned off that block here in Washington state, I think that block is increasingly more and more entrenched, and I think you see that come through in all of these national races. I think when we dig into some of the legislative races here shortly, too, I think you see the same thing bear out. But I think Schrier, I think for a number of reasons - because of the district she represents in particular, because of its historic swinginess, because of I think also the decisiveness of that outcome, she won by over 6 points, which I think holds with what everyone predicted - all of the FiveThirtyEight projections were around that same mark. I think that that's a really good bellwether in terms of where we're at, and I think it also provides a really interesting opportunity to think about - all right, what's our job now? If that stuff is true - if it's true that we have the sort of structural advantage, now what do we need to do? And I'd like to echo back to showing up everywhere, which is how Pérez won her district.
[00:12:51] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. What about you, Kelsey?
[00:12:55] Kelsey Hamlin: Yeah, I'm really proud of our firm for kind of calling out and seeing that the entire red wave rhetoric was really just fluff. It was just fluff and nice things to say for the GOP to get out there - that a lot of folks were rather mindlessly just proliferating out into the ether and making a big sensation of it across a lot of outlets and polling places. And yeah, I think we were pretty clear that it wasn't going to be as dramatic as it was painted out to be. At max, there are about 2-4 places where we were really watching to see and knowing it was going to be close. But outside of that, we weren't worried about Democratic majorities here in Washington state anyway - and especially too with our Legislature - I know there was a lot of moving parts for our state, but yeah - we saw the whole red wave thing and saw right through it for what it was. Dujie namely had a post about that from our firm pretty early on, and I think as soon too as the primaries came in - once you collected the votes along party lines for how that was going to play out in the general, it practically played right along party lines - with the only time that that did not was in the 42nd LD. So I think Washington is - Washington Democrats have more space for growth and Washington Republicans have hit their ceiling at this point, which is really good news for us as long as we decide to capitalize on it instead of just repeating talking points from the other side.
[00:14:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I absolutely think that is correct and the framing of this and these races especially is curious. And I think moving forward, there is some introspection about who we listen to, what kinds of polling firms and what kinds of polls do we take to be serious and credible, exploring - okay, is what I'm talking about backed by data? Do we see anything besides a couple of firms with strong house effects saying something, or is this shown across the wider spectrum and ecosystem of polling and conversations? - so interesting to see. In these races, certainly abortion - humongous issue with the Dobbs decision - was it just about that or was it about other issues too?
[00:15:40] Kelsey Hamlin: Yeah, I feel like it's silly that we silo abortion the way we do. I think that, as a topic of conversation, has come up more and more in the past couple of weeks. But it's never only about abortion. Abortion itself isn't only ever about abortion. The decision to keep or not keep a would-be child is an economic decision at the end of the day. It's a very - do I have enough money to put food on the table for a whole another person in my life? Do I have enough money to put them in daycare when I have to go to work if I'm a single mom, or if I'm a mom who already has three kids? These decisions are ones that people make in very highly contextual situations that are not solely about abortion. So when we're talking about whether or not we're going to force people to have births and carry them to term no matter what's happening to them, that conversation is pretty silly and detached from reality. So when it comes to voters, the top of my things were inflation - we can't talk about inflation and abortion as if they're separate. They have to do with each other. We're not sitting here in our lives and being like - hmm, am I going to invite another child into my life, but then not thinking about the fact that food costs so much more now, and rent costs so much more now, and insurance costs so much more now - all these things are what we as everyday people factor into our lives about all of our decisions. So it's never just about abortion at the end of the day.
[00:17:12] Dujie Tahat: Yeah, I think Kelsey is sort of spot on, right? I think that abortion is a - one, it is protecting the right to abort if you want that. But it is also a placeholder for, I think, fundamentally an attack on freedom. I think about all of the ways that like Republicans have basically ceded freedom as a core value as they've adopted proto-fascist policy positions. And I think - and related to what Kelsey was saying, I think nationally the second and third top-of-mind issues for voters in some early exit polling was abortion and threats to democracy. And I think the thing that threatens both of those are just our core fundamental freedoms, like the choices that we get to make about my own body and then what we as a collective sort of decide for ourselves. And I think, related to also - Republicans have hit a ceiling here in Washington state. It's because they've ceded - to the extent that's true - it's because they've ceded a lot of that ground. Now, it's up to us on the left, it's up to Democrats to actually take that and then paint a positive vision. What does it actually mean to be a party of freedom? And with progressive values - bundle that up with other progressive values and tell a different story, beyond abortion access. What does abortion access actually get us? What is that future and how are we going to get there?
[00:18:40] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. Now we have a slew of legislative races, and the Legislature - this is really interesting this year. Because early on this year, there was a lot of talk about being very concerned about a number of these races, a number of these districts across the state and control of the State Legislature. So we have - in the beginning of the year, it was just like - okay, the 5th, 10th, 26th, 28th, 30th, 42nd, 44th, 47th - several battleground districts. And at the end of the day now - as we looked at the primary results in those, they were certainly encouraging. But even throughout the general, pretty hard fought general elections - a lot of these races had - were very competitive, had quite a lot of spending in these legislative races. I guess looking at a number of them, what overall was your take in the Legislature? And then we might talk about some of these individual races. But overall, how did you see that shaping up early on, and what is your take on how things wound up?
[00:19:59] Dujie Tahat: Yeah. I think a good starting point is contrasting the results of 2022 with 2014, which is the equivalent midterm during a Democratic President. And in 2014, the Senate majority, Democratic majority flipped 25-24, even though it was not a real majority because Rodney Tom was doing his majority caucus thing with the Republicans. They lost the majority. At the same time, the House majority shrank from 54 to 40, setting the table for basically a decade of prioritizing political decisions protecting swing districts over maybe doing the right thing. And that was the context in which I think people were walking into this year. And people were afraid - we have bigger majorities than we had in 2013. And everyone is, and we have a historically unpopular president. You have this increase - a really high enthusiasm, even though it's a small sliver - of far-right noisemakers - we'll call it that. And the most amazing thing is that we increase majorities in both of the houses, right? The - I think for me, and I think that in addition to and maybe on top of just increasing majorities on both houses, I think looking at the Senate side in particular, because that's the highest leverage races is - of the 25 Senate races total that happened this year, Democrats only lost seven of them, five of which a Democrat didn't even run in, right? So you want to talk about showing up everywhere, I think it starts right there, right? There's a - I think there's another, based on some analysis Kelsey did - of the 120-something races in the Legislature, a full third of them had no Democrats running. Republicans had twice, nearly twice as many, first-time candidates running. I think we have to get - we have some structural advantages here, but it means nothing if we don't get back to the fundamentals and one of those fundamentals is showing up everywhere. Because it has a compounding effect of - we had some races and we worked out in Eastern Washington. I grew up in Eastern Washington. And when you don't run races, if you don't show up over and over again - when you show up finally with an argument, it doesn't actually land. And so I think that there is this - to my mind, having the structural advantage is great. We have that now. We prioritized that because everybody has been afraid of 2014 repeating again. We have baked that in over the last decade. But now, again, everybody's job whose it is to elect Democrats has to really have some introspection and some self reflection about - what does it mean now that we have these majorities? Now that these things are set - at least our base is - the people who we thought were persuadables have more or less become our base. Who now is the next set of persuadables? Because we need to keep growing that, otherwise we're going to be in the same position as the Republicans are in.
[00:23:06] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that is - I think that makes a lot of sense. And coming into this year, I think you're right - people were in a different mindset - obviously looking at trying to hold on and feeling like they're going to be more on defense. Especially with more of a traditional midterm election field - just those oftentimes are tougher for the party in power. But to your point, the map seemingly has expanded. And Republicans look like they may have challenges with recruiting and being as competitive as they have been in all of these districts before. So it seems - one, it's a mandate for action. People elect people to do things and to make things better, so certainly voters are expecting action. But to your point, this allows the party, organizations, allies to really look at the state and look at how things are on the ground. I look at the 17th and 18th Legislative Districts, which didn't wind up being winning districts for Democrats. But these are districts that have been close and that are still close - 48%-52%, 49%-51% races. And that if there is sustained activation on the ground, if there are candidates running at all different levels, if there are field programs even in off-years, and just real engagement with voters in those districts - in two years, that's ripe for turning blue in a number of these districts across the state. I think that needing to show up and talking with voters, we have a blueprint right there with what Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez just did. Showing up is half the battle. And really connecting and talking with voters there really makes a difference. What did you see here, Kelsey?
[00:25:11] Kelsey Hamlin: Yeah, along a very similar vein - you mentioned the 17th and 18th LDs - what I noticed when I ran a lot of data right before, and then right after the primaries - something as a pattern that I noticed was that in these districts where Democrats and Republicans along party lines were - where there was a ton of candidates - they were really close at the end of the day. But then you look at the funds that are given to the Democratic candidates in those districts, and it's comparatively really low. So I'm looking at, again, post-primary finalization election going to general numbers. You're seeing someone who got 45% have about $7k at the end of the primary and their challenger has $92k at the end of the primary - at the same time. And you're seeing a lot of situations where these are winnable districts - they are really close with people that do not have the funds to make it closer. And at the end of the day, you need funds on a campaign - a lot of people don't know this because campaigns are a black box in the public's eye, but the amount of money that it takes just for sheer voter outreach, just for calling people, just for texting people, just for getting to the doors with some literature for folks to look at and reference for later costs a lot of money. And so does all the postage that you add to for all of the mailers that you send to people - costs a lot of money. And so $7,000 at the end of the primary isn't even going to reach one-third of the voters that you need with mail. So it's stuff like this where I really wish, as a pattern, the Democratic Party was a lot more willing to invest funds in candidates who are showing up in these districts with or without the party backing them - have cropped up and said, I'm going to do this because it needs to happen. And then we need to meet them where they are and show up to make sure that it happens and it pushes through at the end of the day. You see that also in Skagit County - there's a race there that's really close, but not maybe not the best narrative set, but regardless - a 49.99%-47.64% race right now. And that's against - I might be looking at the wrong numbers - but very close.
[00:27:29] Crystal Fincher: Is that the Shavers race in the 10th?
[00:27:31] Kelsey Hamlin: Yes.
[00:27:31] Crystal Fincher: Yeah.
[00:27:32] Kelsey Hamlin: Yeah - that's a Republican and a Democrat. And to me - I come from Skagit County, so I've always known that on the ground, it had every potential to shift blue. And we know too, with the last presidential primaries, that that was an overwhelmingly pro-Bernie district. So there's places where all of these patterns are happening, we can see on the ground and in data numbers that this is a place where Democrats can expand - and then it's not happening on the money side and it needs to. We need to quit operating with fear and with gatekeeping to only fund people that don't even need the funds at the end of the day - some of them are operating without a challenger and they still got more than some of our swing candidates. So that's a pattern that I see.
[00:28:17] Crystal Fincher: Well, and, that's a flip one, because there was actually a lot of Independent Expenditure spending in the 10th Legislative District and a number of these others. And part of the - part of, as you talk about, campaigns are like a black box to a lot of people - and it actually takes a village to elect a candidate is kind of the thing. It takes the campaign and all of their supporters, all of their donors and their operation. In legislative races, the State Party with the Coordinated Campaign often works in conjunction with them, also with the Congressional races. And then there's Independent Expenditures - I work a lot with Independent Expenditures - and that's where that these organizations, who can't coordinate with the campaigns directly, but can participate in electioneering activity in these districts. And so when you see commercials sometimes and you hear "No candidate authorized this ad, this was paid for by some other entity" - that is an Independent Expenditure and there was a lot of Independent Expenditure spending in this district and a number of other districts - to your point, because keeping them is so important and really activating in these districts is so important.
I think another thing that was notable to me, just overall, before we talk about some individual races was just looking at the candidates that were running. And I don't know about you two, but I certainly have heard more than my share of statements like - this guy's an ideal candidate. And by that, they mean - usually - older guy, business owner, veteran, well-off, often - just this is someone Republicans can like and warm up to - it feels like code for that. And it's usually just a version of some veteran business owner - someone who they feel can connect with white, suburban, and rural America. But what we're actually seeing is that candidates who are Black, Indigenous, people of color, queer candidates are actually activating voters in suburban and rural areas to a greater degree than some of those white male business owner veteran type candidates. Higher turnout, higher percentages that they're getting, so they seem to be activating the base needed to win to a greater degree. And now whether that's because they're oftentimes more willing to speak more strongly to issues, more boldly to issues, many issues that they may be closer to feeling the impacts to than other people in the community and understand the urgency of addressing some of those things - whatever that is, voters and all types of voters, whether they're, white, Black, Brown seem to respond at this point in time, at least in over the past couple of cycles, to those candidates as much as anyone. So I do hope that as, especially as consultants, and we have these conversations and we're talking to candidates who are interested in running, that we don't discount someone who may live in a rural area but is Black, someone who may be in a suburban area but is Latino, someone who may be in an area but is queer - those are the candidates who are energizing voters and pumping up turnout and building the winning coalitions of today. That's my two cents on that one.
[00:32:14] Dujie Tahat: Can I ask you a question, Crystal?
[00:32:15] Crystal Fincher: Yeah.
[00:32:16] Dujie Tahat: I'm thinking - even in hearing what you're saying, I think - as an ecosystem - IEs, the party apparatus - everybody's job is to elect Democrats, right? I think we overcorrect and over rely on voters with a high propensity for voting, right? So and you're seeing that, I think, in Washington state - that would be places like South King County, east of Lake Washington, basically the outer Seattle metro area. And it feels like we're maybe at a point potentially where that is now, like what I'm saying earlier, that's maybe part of our structural advantage now, maybe we've done that. I'm curious what you see as what would it take, framing-wise, courage implications - what would it take for all of our various apparatuses to be like - okay, now we have to maybe shift towards motivating - instead of propensity to vote, it's likelihood to vote if they're motivated, right? Give them something to vote for in other places like Skagit or in Yakima, or just some of these places where we haven't built much of an infrastructure.
[00:33:27] Crystal Fincher: I think - to your question, right now is the perfect time to be having those conversations, because I do think that we're at a point where we can pivot to basically offense, and offense everywhere on the ground in the state. And I do think that - I think for the Democratic Party's survival overall - that if we only focus on talking to people who have been frequent voters, that we're missing out on so many others. And there are plenty of reasons why people don't vote and don't vote with regularity. And the worst thing we can do is sit from a place of judgment, which I don't think - I know that you guys are not, but there have been others in this ecosystem who have - and understand that we better be coming to people with solutions that improve their lives on a daily basis and change they can feel. So some of that - talking about action in the Legislature, action from people who have been elected - so they come back and they say, you put your faith in me to make a positive change, here is that change. And that they're doing things that people can feel on the ground, which won't be everything that everyone does all the time. Sometimes people do things that affect different people and different populations, and sometimes I may feel it and sometimes I may not. But there better be things going on that everybody can feel, there better be something you can point to and be like - okay, I heard you, I see what you're going through, and I have taken action to ease a burden that you were feeling and to make things better. So I think it really starts with governing for everyone in the district now. And whether people are documented or undocumented, whether people are of voting age or not of voting age, and whether people are regular voters or not - that you're governing for everyone in the district and taking tangible action that they can see. And connecting with those people and being in community and conversation, I think, is a very important thing. We see turnout increase when people are engaged. We've seen turnout increase, sometimes not even attached to a candidate, but attached to an initiative or an issue in an area, and people turning out for something that they can see - okay, this makes a difference.
But we also have to contend with some of the reality that people have heard a lot of rhetoric from a lot of people for a while. And sometimes they're just like, okay, everybody promises something. Until I see something, I'm going to tune out. And there's a lot that's not easy to see, right? And sometimes there's inaction that makes it easy not to see anything. So I think it is really action coupled with connection and community. And listening - I think that we have a mandate to listen as much as we do to act, and to be in community and just to say - okay, what are you going through? I'm not in your specific situation, but tell me what you're feeling, tell me what your challenges are, and let's see if we can do something about it. The more that people are doing that in community - and I think of Emily Randall, I think of Jamila Taylor, I think of April Berg, I think - there's so many that I can name that I know do a great job of that now. And that's just a model to emulate for even more people. Did that answer your question?
[00:37:15] Dujie Tahat: Yeah. Yeah, totally. I love the - govern first. Do good things.
[00:37:21] Crystal Fincher: Do good things.
[00:37:22] Dujie Tahat: Yeah - good things. Take the credit for it, show up and talk to everybody - yeah, fundamentals.
[00:37:31] Crystal Fincher: And lots of people think that political consulting and like we're sitting here, you know, with wizard hats on in the background and crunching numbers and coming up with magical stuff - and really it's just about trying to inform people about who someone is. And to let people know that there is someone who wants to help, but also making sure that they're out there and talking to people and in community. And I guess I will also say - for people who are political consultants - that we also have a responsibility in this whole thing. And who we choose to work for, who we choose to work with, the people who we lend our time and talent to help get elected - that matters, and the candidates that we choose to work with matter. It's really consequential and so, there's also just accountability to be had on our part too for what we put out there, who we help do things, and all that. I do think that that is valid and that we all have to answer for what we're doing and what direction we're moving.
[00:38:57] Bryce Cannatelli: You just listened to Part 1 of our 2022 Post-Election Roundtable that was originally aired live on Tuesday, November 15th. Audio for Part 2 will be running this Friday, so make sure to stay tuned. Full video from the event and a full text transcript of the show can be found on our website officialhacksandwonks.com. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Production Coordinator is Bryce Cannatelli.
You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can follow Crystal @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered straight to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thank you for tuning in!
On this week’s Hacks & Wonks, Crystal is joined by friend of the show, defense attorney, abolitionist and activist, Nicole Thomas-Kennedy! They start catching up with the Seattle City Budget. The City Council revealed their proposed budget earlier this week, and in general it proposes putting back funding for programs that were originally given fewer resources under Mayor Harrell’s proposal - most notably restoring the raises for frontline homeless service workers, which were cut in Harrell’s budget. The Council’s proposal also uses JumpStart funds as originally intended, cuts ghost cop positions, and eliminates funding for the controversial ShotSpotter program.
After the horrific incident last week that involved a shooting at Seattle’s Ingraham High School, students staged a walkout and protest on Monday to ask city leaders for resources to help prevent gun violence. The students are asking for anti-racism and de-escalation training for school security, assault weapon bans, and more school counselors and mental health resources. What they have made clear they don’t want is more cops in schools, but despite that Mayor Harrell and some of his advisory boards are advocating for an increased police presence in schools.
Housing updates this week start with positive news: Mayor Harrell is asking for affordable housing to be exempt from the much maligned design review process. Allowing affordable housing to skip design review will encourage developers to build affordable housing, and will help us battle our housing shortage faster than we could otherwise. In frustrating housing news, KING5 released some upsetting reporting outlining some overt racial housing discrimination against Black families in Seattle, including one story about family who received a significantly higher appraisal when they dressed their home to look like it was owned by a white family.
Carolyn Bick from the South Seattle Emerald reported on potential City and State records laws violations by the Office of Police Accountability. The OPA has been manually deleting emails, or allowing them to automatically be deleted, before the two-year mark prescribed by City and State laws. It’s another example of a city office failing to hold itself accountable to basic records standards.
The Seattle Department of Transportation seemed to once again be more responsive to concerns about administrative liability than community concerns about pedestrian safety amid rising fatalities. When locals painted an unauthorized crosswalk at the intersection of E Olive Way and Harvard, SDOT workers removed the crosswalk within 24 hours. This is happening while many people and business owners, most notably Councilmember Sara Nelson, have been placing illegal “eco blocks” without removals or consequences.
Finally, the Chair of Washington State Democrats is being criticized for threats to withhold resources against Washington House candidates if they showed support for nonpartisan Secretary of State candidate Julie Anderson. This is a high-profile extension of a question that party groups–big and small–are dealing with: how do we handle Democrats’ support of nonpartisan or third party candidates?
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, on Twitter at @NTKallday. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“City Council’s ‘anti-austerity’ budget package: Aiming JumpStart back where it belongs, preserving parking enforcement’s move out of SPD, nuking ShotSpotter, and giving mayor his ‘Unified Care Team’” by jseattle from Capitol Hill Seattle Blog
“Morales Hopes to Resurrect Social Housing Amendment That Didn’t Make Balancing Package Cut” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
Learn more about how to get involved in Seattle's budget season at this link.
“Care, Not Cops” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
“Seattle proposal would free affordable projects from design review — and give all developers path to skip public meetings” by CHS from Capitol Hill Seattle Blog
“After a low appraisal, Black Seattle family 'whitewashes' home, gets higher price” by PJ Randhawa from KING5
“Why housing discrimination is worse today than it was in the 1960s” by PJ Randhawa from KING5
“OPA May Have Broken City and State Records Laws By Not Retaining Emails” by Carolyn Bick from The South Seattle Emerald
“SDOT Decries Tactical Urbanism While Allowing Eco-Blocks All Over the City” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola
“Rent a Capitol Hill apartment from one of these companies? You ‘may have rights under antitrust laws to compensation’ as lawsuit alleges price-fixing violations in Seattle” by jseattle from Capitol Hill Seattle Blog
“Scoop: State Democratic Party chair under fire for alleged threats” by Melissa Santos from Axios
Transcript
Coming soon
Washington Supreme Court Justice Helen Whitener returns to catch up with Crystal about the last two years on the state’s highest court and her bid for re-election this November. The two talk about Justice Whitener’s path to the Supreme Court, how coming from a marginalized background with an intersecting lens impacts her time there, and the impacts COVID has had on making the courts accessible and navigable by everyone. The Supreme Court’s “June 4th Letter” from 2020 sparks conversation about addressing systemic injustice and Justice Whitener shares two recent decisions she wrote about shackling and restrictive covenants. The show wraps up with discussion of the future of the court system and what to weigh when choosing Supreme Court justices.
Note:
This episode was recorded before the end of filing week in May. The candidate filing deadline passed without any challenger filing to run against Justice Whitener, so she will appear unopposed on the November ballot and serve another term on our state’s highest court.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii.
Resources
Campaign Website - Justice G. Helen Whitener: https://www.keepjusticewhitener.com/
Previous appearance on Hacks & Wonks (Sept 15, 2020) - Justice Whitener: The Law, Representation, and Becoming a Supreme Court Justice:https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/crystal/HW20200911JusticeWhitener_mixdown.mp3
Washington Supreme Court - “June 4th Letter”:https://www.courts.wa.gov/content/publicUpload/Supreme%20Court%20News/Judiciary%20Legal%20Community%20SIGNED%20060420.pdf
“Washington Supreme Court Announces Prohibition Against Blanket Shackling Policies at Pretrial Proceedings” by Anthony Accurso from Criminal Legal News: https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2020/nov/15/washington-supreme-court-announces-prohibition-against-blanket-shackling-policies-pretrial-proceedings/
Washington Supreme Court - State v. Jackson - Slip Opinion: https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/976813.pdf
Washington Supreme Court - In re That Portion of Lots 1 & 2 - Slip Opinion: https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/995982.pdf
“Washington Supreme Court reverses its 1960 ruling that allowed Seattle cemetery to discriminate against a Black family” by David Gutman fromThe Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/washington-supreme-court-reverses-its-1960-ruling-that-allowed-seattle-cemetery-to-discriminate-against-a-black-family/
Justia - Price v. Evergreen Cemetery Co. of Seattle: https://law.justia.com/cases/washington/supreme-court/1960/34854-1.html
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I am absolutely thrilled to welcome back to the program Justice Helen Whitener, Justice on our Washington Supreme Court. Thank you so much for joining us again.
[00:00:50] Justice G. Helen Whitener: Thank you and nice to see you and be with you again, Crystal.
[00:00:54] Crystal Fincher: Excellent to see you and be with you again. Well, this time two years ago, around this time, we had a conversation - you were running your campaign to win your first election after being appointed as a Supreme Court Justice. And it's been so phenomenal for so many people who have watched you throughout your illustrious career and followed you - just to give people a bit of a background, and we talked about this on the prior show - but you have an unusual breadth of experience coming behind you, which reminds us of a certain new Supreme Court Justice in our country. But she actually reminded me, when I first learned about her, of my conversation with you in that - wow, just so much experience and much more varied experience than we normally see for your justices, now your colleagues, and who we've seen before. What was your path to the Supreme Court?
[00:02:02] Justice G. Helen Whitener: Well, as you know I've been a former prosecutor, public defender, and I had my own law firm - I was a managing partner of that firm. I have pro-temmed on the City of Tacoma Municipal Court level and on the Pierce County District Court level, I've also been a Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals judge. I got appointed by the governor to the Superior Court in Pierce County in 2015, and then five years later I got appointed to the Supreme Court. Both times I got appointed and subsequently had to run to retain my seat. So I'm happy to still be here and to come back and have this discussion with you.
[00:02:49] Crystal Fincher: Well, and I'm thrilled that you're back to have this discussion with me. In your first couple of years on the bench, what has been most surprising to you?
[00:02:57] Justice G. Helen Whitener: Well, my experience on this bench is quite different than I think anyone who has ever sat on this bench, because it occurred during the pandemic, the COVID-19 pandemic. So my entire experience with my colleagues have been on a virtual platform, which is unusual. So, when I talk about my experiences, just keep that in mind. What's been wonderful, as I've indicated, is the advocacy - the level of advocacy on this level - and then being able to review the trial level records that I used to create as a prosecutor and public defender, and then presided over those trials as a trial court judge. So it's really different to review the work of the trial level courts, because I've been so intimately involved with that level.
[00:03:52] Crystal Fincher: Well, and you bring, as you talked, so much experience - both just professional experience, also lived experience. You are a Black woman, an immigrant, a member of the LGBTQ community. You have so many different experiences that have shaped who you are and that impact just how you experience the world. How has that impacted your time on the Court?
[00:04:25] Justice G. Helen Whitener: And I think one of the other personal characteristics I have is I identify as someone with a disability. So I come to the Court with a very marginalized background and intersecting lens. And I got there in April of 2020. And May of 2020, we saw the killing of George Floyd. And June 4th, 2020, the entire Supreme Court - all of the justices - signed off on what we now call the "June 4th letter," which was a directive to attorneys and judges and those working within the criminal justice system or the justice system as a whole to do better, because now we do know a lot of things have occurred that were unjust and different facets of our community were being unjustly treated.
So I tend to think being at the table with my colleagues, and I'll also point out - when I joined the Supreme Court, it's my understanding it became the most diverse Supreme Court in the country, which I hadn't really thought about at the time. But we already have - and presently we have - a Chief Justice who is Latino male. We have seven female justices - normally it's predominantly male. We have the first Native American Supreme Court Justice. We also have an Asian and Mexican heritage and first LGBT Supreme Court Justice, I'm the second. So here I came in and I'm the immigrant and the Black woman, and I also identify as someone with a disability. So our discussions are really in-depth, and our view is trying to make a law more encompassing of the majority of people in our community, through all of our intersecting lens. And it's a beautiful process, challenging at times, because certain labels that we belong to conflict with the other, but we try to ground our decisions in the law.
[00:06:38] Crystal Fincher: Throughout this pandemic, how have those kinds of conversations been? Have they been more challenging because of the pandemic and being limited in being together, and limited via just seeing each other online? How have those discussions been in a remote environment?
[00:07:01] Justice G. Helen Whitener: You know, it's the only environment I know - dealing with this then. And there are challenges, even with oral arguments, because sometimes there's that delay in timing because of the platform. I love it, but there's a tradition that goes with the highest court. I haven't experienced the tradition, but I know about the tradition. And I think some of my colleagues miss that - they miss the in-person congeniality between each other. I think it's a cold platform at times, so sometimes when we have conferences it's open to misunderstanding, but then it also allows us to repeat and we can see and engage a bit more than we probably would feel comfortable in-person. So I think there are pros and cons in regards to this platform. And for me, I came from running a courtroom by myself to now having eight colleagues to decide something, so that in and of itself has been an adjustment. But it's an adjustment I would hope I'm doing well with.
[00:08:20] Crystal Fincher: Are we doing a good enough job with making the courts accessible and navigable by everyone - especially through these pandemic times - but overall, how are we doing with that?
[00:08:35] Justice G. Helen Whitener: I think we're doing as best as we can with the infrastructure we have in place. Washington state is not a unified court system, so that means even though the Supreme Court can issue directives, many of the directives are open to the discretion of the lower courts when it comes to procedures and policies and things like that. Many of our courts have been in-sync, but each court and level of court has its own management style. And what was interesting to me is everyone really pivoted in trying to make their particular court accessible to all because it became an issue. I think for the first time, just like with the killing of George Floyd, it woke some individuals up to what people of color have been saying for a while. I think the pandemic woke our courts up in regards to how we have been dealing with justice and dispensing justice and making it accessible to all. So I tend to think of it as - well, the court has now had to deal with this issue that is impacting all levels, all different kinds of people in the same way. Because the pandemic and the virus didn't have any biases - it'll take you however it can get you, and address, deal with you that way - whereas the courts, and we're aware of this, had implicit biases built - well, biases built within it. Some were, I guess you can say implicit, and many were explicit, but at least the conversation is occurring and people are listening.
[00:10:34] Crystal Fincher: Yes, and you brought up that June 4th letter, which I was proud to see. And was really a nation-leading letter from - signed by all of the members of the Court, really recognizing that - it says the devaluation and degradation of Black lives is not a recent event. It's a persistent and systemic injustice that predates this nation's founding and just really acknowledges - explicitly - racial injustice within our system and the responsibility to address it. I just really appreciate it - it is a well-established fact. As we do navigate through those systems, what do you as a justice do, and how do you approach wrestling with that?
[00:11:30] Justice G. Helen Whitener: Well, speak up - that's one important thing. Share my experiences - personal as well as professional experiences. Making sure that people understand that you're not asking for any special treatment or special privileges - that what you're asking for is to be seen and treated respectfully and justly like everyone else. What's interesting to me about the June 4th letter - it raises the issues faced by Black Americans, Black individuals - slavery, the devaluation of how we have been treated. And from that came all these different committees and task forces looking at inequities within our system. The way I deal with it is making sure I make my voice part of that discussion and make it an authentic discussion by sharing truthfully how I see things and how I believe people are affected.
And when I say that, remember I indicated our bench is very diverse and everyone brings their own lens to bear on discussions. When it comes to race and equity issues, each group deals with it differently, has had different experiences. And that's why it's BIPOC and not just POC. So Black people and indigenous people have a different experience than people of color. And sometimes that's a difficult thing for others to hear and understand - we're not to be lumped as one. My indigenous colleague on the bench shares from time to time her personal experiences, and sometimes there are similarities and sometimes there are not. So my purpose in these discussions is to make sure I am authentic 'cause like I like to say, I wear the robe at work, but when I take that robe off - that black robe that garners respect - you're looking at a Black woman walking out and into society and being treated as a Black woman in society. And those experiences don't go away because people don't know who I am. So making sure my colleagues are aware of these real lived experiences.
[00:14:01] Crystal Fincher: And I appreciate that so much - I appreciate your lived experience. It seems like a lot of people in organizations appreciate just the professionalism that you bring to the bench and sharing all of your experiences. Just since you've been on here last, you've received some awards - including the ABA Stonewall Award, which recognizes members of the judiciary and legal professions who have affected real change to remove barriers on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and who have championed diversity for the LGBT community. The 2020 and 2021 International Association of LGBT Judges President's Award. The Public Official of the Year by the Evergreen State College's Master of Public Administration Program for your legal aid and judicial careers, which have centered on a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion that is a model for other judges and public service professionals - in their words. You also were awarded the Western Region of the National Black Law Students Association Judge of the Year Award.
And in addition to being rated "Exceptionally Well Qualified" by 14 bar associations - think a lot of people just became a lot more acquainted with how important that is and what that really means, especially after the approval of Justice Brown. And similarly, just you are rated "Exceptionally Well Qualified" by just about everybody. And endorsed by all of the other State Supreme Court justices who come from varied backgrounds and have a lot of different experiences, but all recognize you belong there on that bench in their opinion.
Looking at all that, and as you discuss different cases like the Blake decision - where we wrestle with issues similar to that so much in society - do we take a public health approach to things like substance use disorder that often accompany charges for possession? What were the conversations around that and obviously you're wrestling with what's in the law and what's not there, but how do you connect wrestling with your decision versus the impacts that it may have on society and in our community? Do you weigh the impacts on that, or is it just strictly the letter of the law?
[00:16:45] Justice G. Helen Whitener: Well, every justice and judge has a different approach. For me, it's the letter of the law - I stay within the confines of the law. If I cannot do anything that is within the rule of the law, then I make sure I flag that in my opinion, or my decision, to the legislative branch. And it's a good thing that we have some good legislators that pay attention and try to address the inequities. But we have three branches of government. There are some judicial officers who are more policy driven and do things a bit different. But for me - I can only speak for me - I stay within the rule of law. Yet I have been able to address in my decisions, and I have many 9-0 decisions - I'd like to think my litigation background assists me in presenting my case to my colleagues. But I've written a number of decisions that touch on social issues.
The first case was State v. Jackson, a shackling case - the inhumanity of that - making sure as I write that decision, it is clear that the dignity of the individuals before us should not be lessened because of the type of cases that come before us. These are still people and we still have a responsibility as judicial officers to treat them as such.
My most recent decision that was release filed - I call it May v. Spokane, but it's called In re Lot of something. It deals with covenants - restrictive covenants - and yes, we still have those in our state. And this one was in Spokane and the individual, the homeowner, wanted to remove that restrictive covenant, which basically said, don't sell to Black people - something along those lines. And to think that we still have those laws still there - those things are still out there that we have to deal with. Many individuals who looked at it, including my law clerks at the time, thought - and the lower court judges attempted to address it. But thought that they would have to and could not keep the original document if you took the restrictive covenant off. And I was very clear that - no, no, no, no, you don't get rid of history, because then later on there's nobody who can - when they're making the discussion - have that supporting data. History is very important for a number of reasons, even derogatory and abhorrent history. It's history. So don't destroy it - archive it for future generations to see, and to understand what this type of restrictive covenants did to a group of people.
So it comes like the Price case that was mentioned in the June 4th letter, where a Black family could not bury their child in a cemetery where they had these separate burial areas and a whole number of different racist things. So my position was don't destroy that history - I don't like it, it's derogatory, it's abhorrent - but don't destroy it, please. Because the next generation or the generation after that - 'cause these things are cyclical until we find a solution, and racism has been a problem in this country so a solution may not arise in my lifetime. But let's keep that history, and let's make sure it's there for the future generations. But here's what we can do - we can create a new document for the individual and this way the racist covenant does not go forward and still exist. So those are the types of ways I deal with issues in the law that - I have to stay in my lane. And the interesting thing about the last one, the May v. Spokane case, is while that case was before us and I was writing the decision, the Legislature came with a fix and the fix matched very closely what I was saying in my decision. So I was really happy to see that, but yeah - it's making sure that you don't lose the authentic voice that you brought to the bench. You need to share it and give your perspective and then follow it up with well-reasoned arguments to your colleagues. And I'm thankful that they're very receptive to that.
[00:21:54] Crystal Fincher: Which is good - I'm also thankful for the same. There was another decision that you wrestled with that was very visible, especially within the political and policy-making communities, dealing with redistricting and just untangling a number of issues there, including whether the process they followed was in line with what they were supposed to do. And it actually wound up before our State Supreme Court. How did you go about determining whether the Court should be involved, to hand it over to the Legislature? What was that process?
[00:22:39] Justice G. Helen Whitener: Well, the interesting thing about the law and especially at the Supreme Court - we don't discuss issues that can come back before us. So that is one of those situations that - it's not over yet - it deals with redistricting, it deals and has impacts on things like elections and voting and a whole myriad of things. So that one I can't give you more than what you already have, because it's still working its way through the Court. Just like some of the remote platforms and holding trials on this platform - there are constitutional questions that still can come before the Court and are likely to come before the Court. And you touched on one of them.
[00:23:31] Crystal Fincher: Well, I guess we will have to stay tuned. And it's always interesting in those situations, especially looking at redistricting, in that we're looking at potentially voting within these new districts while there may be legislation, while there may be court challenges or issues making their way through the system. So it'll be interesting to see if and how that proceeds.
I do have a question with - looking at across the country, and how we've seen some of our federal courts transform lots of conversations about a lot of conservative nominees appointed by Trump - a number of them not receiving "Exceptionally Well Qualified" ratings and in fact, a number receiving "Unqualified" ratings, but now they're on the bench seemingly for life. And now we have a conservative Supreme Court, which has a lot of people worried about the maintenance of some really basic human rights. As we look at the situation across the country and everything - from abortion rights to civil rights and equal protection under the law - just kind of everything. Do you feel optimistic? Pessimistic? How would you advise people who are worried to think about this, and what can people do if they are worried?
[00:25:02] Justice G. Helen Whitener: Well, first and foremost, it's understanding the courts and the court system. State courts - the judicial officers are elected. So, even though they may make decisions that are favorable or not favorable, they have to stick or try to stick very close to the the law that they're interpreting. Federal court is a little different - they're appointed for life. It is also very partisan in how that is dealt with. So they're two very different systems. And at the end of the day, it's what the framers wanted for our system. Think about it this way - you may not like the Court as it's set up right now, but hopefully you can believe in the system and hopefully you can get some decisions that fall within your values. It is a completely different system and I - it is just so sad that it is so politicized. Because to me, the law is the law and should apply through equitable lens to all.
And I think at the end of the day, the justices on that Court start off struggling with that. But they come in all ready, and that's how they are elected, and that's how they're nominated, and that's the process they go through, and that's how they're seen. So you can probably - and I think that's why there is concern - you can probably figure out how they're going to deal with cases based on what they've done in the past. Because they're there for life - you can't do anything about it. That's why it was such a big deal in getting certain people to the bench during a particular time. But that has been historical - that is nothing new. So, all I can do is hope that the decisions that come out from the highest court covers most of the constituents of the United States at any given time. They're not going to cover all, and I hope they get more or less the arc - you have that bow and you have extremes on both ends and the majority falls in the middle - and hopefully that'll be the case, but that's how the law works. And I try not to get too caught up on that. I love the restrictions the Constitution - the State Constitutions - can place on those type of decisions because we can look at our constituents and make decisions that we believe are best, even though the Supreme Court has precedent. Those precedents can be viewed narrowly on the state constitutional interpretation.
[00:28:02] Crystal Fincher: So as people are considering, as they're going to be voting for Supreme Court Justices in our state this year, what do you think should be the most important things that they weigh?
[00:28:15] Justice G. Helen Whitener: I think, especially since it's the highest court, one of the most important things is experience - not necessarily experience writing decisions or anything - but the varied experience, the quality of the experience. And I think it's really important - last election cycle, which was two years ago, my opponent had just basically passed the bar, but our constitution allows for a newly supported individual, a new attorney that has taken the oath to run for the Supreme Court. It's the only court that that can happen. And you have to remember the decisions this Court makes impacts everyone and impacts everyone in a very meaningful way. It's not necessarily a case-specific thing, it's a lot broader than that. So, look at the experience, do the homework, and make the decision - the best decision - that you believe falls in line with your views.
[00:29:24] Crystal Fincher: Gotta say it really was something last election to look at someone who did really just pass the bar, seemingly to run against you, up against all of your experience. That was a very audacious decision, in my opinion. And just -
[00:29:45] Justice G. Helen Whitener: But it's a right that he had. And going through the campaign and having him on various platforms, I was very much aware of his lack of knowledge of how the courts works. But I thought, this is his right. It might be his bucket list thing to tick off, but this is his right. And why not? So, he did. And thankfully, I think for our courts and our legal system, the voters responded in favor of me because of my experience and what I bring to the bench. But at the end of the day, it was his right.
[00:30:30] Crystal Fincher: It was his right, he exercised it, he tried it. Voters made the decision on the side of experience and breadth of knowledge. As you're talking to voters this cycle, what do you tell them when they're asking, why should I vote for you? At this point, you don't have an opponent, you could still draw one. Why should they vote for you?
[00:30:58] Justice G. Helen Whitener: Well, I think I bring something to this bench that has never been at this bench. And it's not just my personal background, but my professional background - I believe the fact that I've been a prosecutor, public defender, done private defense work, I've been a judicial officer on all three trial level courts - and I mean all three positions in all three trial level courts - is important. It gives me a very intimate knowledge of the types of cases that come before our courts. I represented individuals, so I understand the defense arguments that are coming. I understand the prosecutor's position, and I also understand the private bar perspective as well. I also, as a Board of Industrial Insurance appeals judge had to deal with people who were injured and at their most vulnerable, so I've been able to maintain that empathetic lens and air as I interpret the law.
And when it comes to now the appellate work, I'm very proud of the cases that I've made decisions on, the opinions that I've written. Many of them have been majority opinions, meaning all nine justices signed. And those that I dissented on - I've not concurred on anything yet - but I've dissented on, I believe, three or four is because I believe in the position I took on those. So my lens is truly different and I'm not afraid to stand if I have to stand alone, if I believe my decision is well-reasoned. And it will always be an independent decision that I make, not based on anything else but my interpretation of the law through my intersecting lens.
[00:32:47] Crystal Fincher: Well, I certainly appreciate that. If people want to learn more about you, do you have a website they can visit?
[00:32:54] Justice G. Helen Whitener: Yes. It's keepjusticewhitener.com, or you can Google Justice Whitener - there's so much information out there on me, you can just find me. Just Google Justice Helen Whitener, or keepjusticewhitener.com, or keep Whitener for justice. And you can find me - you can find information about me and the work that I'm doing. I just recently returned this week - I'm somewhat exhausted - from an invitation I received from the United Nations, based on my human rights interest and environmental law. And that was very, very intense and again, keeping abreast of what's important out there. And our environment surely is.
[00:33:48] Crystal Fincher: It surely is. Well, I sincerely appreciate you taking this time to speak with us today. You are so highly decorated and awarded - so much experience. We have been fortunate to have you on the Court and as voters make their evaluation on who they want to keep, they certainly have some excellent choices on the ballot this year. And just thank you so much for speaking with us - we will stay updated on your race and wish you the best.
[00:34:24] Justice G. Helen Whitener: Thank you. And thank you again, Crystal. It was a pleasure, at least, getting a chance to chat with you again. And we'll see what happens. I'll keep my fingers crossed and keep the bar high as I proceed on this year.
[00:34:38] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
To break down all of the news from the 2022 election, Crystal Fincher welcomes political strategist Robert Cruickshank back to the show! They review key results from the election, starting with the race for Congress in Washington's 3rd Congressional District where Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez currently leads MAGA Republican Joe Kent in a race that's still up in the air, and the blueprint this race provides for Democrats for winning in rural areas while maintaining their values. Our co-hosts discuss the King County voters repeated rejection of punitive-punishment based measures, and the clear mandate from voters for action on comprehensive public safety reforms and alternate responses that address the root causes of crime with Leesa Manion's decisive victory over the punitive "law-and-order" candidate Jim Ferrell in the King County Prosecuting Attorney race, and the comprehensive public safety and alternative response measures passed in Redmond and Shoreline.
They follow with a look at the Oregon gubernatorial race where Democrat Tina Kotek beat a well-funded Republican opponent in a close race, as well as a review of key Democratic legislative victories in swing districts across Washington by candidates who are younger and more diverse, and who leaned into strong progressive messages instead of being hesitant to talk about them. They discuss the results of King County even-year election vote and Seattle’s opportunity for Ranked Choice voting reform in the near future if it doesn't prevail in its current close race. After breaking down the incredibly successful Raise the Wage Tukwila campaign, Crystal and Robert end the show by predicting how the resounding success of progressive Democrats this year will impact next year’s Seattle City Council races and beyond.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank, on Twitter at @cruickshank. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
Institute for a Democratic Future 2023 applications are live! The final application deadline is November 13th.
Hacks & Wonks is hosting a Post-Election Roundtable this Tuesday, November 15th at 7:30pm! Stream it live on our Twitter, Facebook or Youtube account.
“Gluesenkamp Perez, Schrier maintain leads in WA congressional races” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times
“$19 is the new $15: Lessons from Tukwila’s Minimum Wage” by Katie Wilson from The Stranger
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank - hey.
[00:00:55] Robert Cruickshank: Good morning, Crystal. Thank you for having me on again.
[00:00:57] Crystal Fincher: Good morning. Excited to have you on again in this election week 2022. We have a lot to cover.
Before we get into that, I just want to give a couple reminders. We've talked about the Institute for a Democratic Future before - how it's been instrumental to my career in politics - just a great education and network. The deadline for applications is this Sunday, November 13th, so we'll include links to the website information about applying in the program if you are interested. And feel free to reach out to me directly on Twitter, via email if you have any questions about the program.
I also want to mention that we are having a Hacks & Wonks Post-Election Roundtable - a live show Tuesday - this coming Tuesday, November 15th at 7:30 p.m. We're going to be streaming live on all platforms. It's going to include Dujie Tahat, Kelsey Hamlin, and Djibril Diop, who is the Director of Government Relations for Washington Education Association and played a very consequential role in a number of the elections and battleground districts around the state - just breaking down the results of this year's general election - expanding upon the conversation that we're going to have today from consultants' point of view and the view of people who were involved in the work being done. So please tune in Tuesday, November 15th at 7 30 p.m. - Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, all of the platforms - we'll share that information in the show notes.
So now getting into election results - there was a lot that happened. We will go through a number of them. I think I want to start off talking about the Third Congressional District. What happened in this race, Robert?
[00:02:56] Robert Cruickshank: So this is a fascinating, and I think potentially really important, race where we started off with the incumbent Jaime Herrera Beutler, one of the few Republicans to vote for Trump's second impeachment, and that made her a target. Joe Kent, a openly fascist Trump supporter, declared his intention to run against her and take the Republican nomination away from her. In response to that, we had Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez, who is a rural working class Democrat. She and her husband own a auto repair shop, they live in rural Skamania County in a house they built themselves. She's been active in Democratic Party politics as someone who wants to bring rural working class folks back into the party. And she saw, with increasing alarm, Joe Kent getting traction, getting support down there in Southwest Washington. And she decided she would step up and run, especially since it looked like the National Democratic Party wasn't going to take this very seriously, wasn't going to do much. And so she did step in and she and Joe Kent made it through the primary. And now, as of Friday - at least Friday morning - she's leading Joe Kent by a margin of just about 51% to 48%. She, depending on - today's ballot drop may be the final decider as to whether she hangs on and actually wins. And this would be a big victory not just to stop Joe Kent, which is important in and of itself.
But Marie is a really smart, sharp person who's been working hard to bring, a populist, working class, rural voice back into the Democratic Party and do it in a way that's also economically progressive and socially progressive. And seeing the campaign she ran, the ads she ran, I think potentially point to a direction forward for Democrats as they really try to figure out what do they do about rural America. She's winning right now because she has a huge lead in Clark County by double digits, but she's holding her own in the rural parts of the county. She's at 45-46% in Kelso-Longview area out on the rural Washington coast. She's not going to win this race without running up decent numbers in the rural parts of the district. And so I think there's a lot Democrats can learn from here.
[00:05:16] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And really cannot be overstated how almost miraculous it is for a Democrat to be leading in any situation in this district, given what you just talked about in some of those rural areas - that's better Democratic performance than we have seen in I don't know how long. I don't know that we have. And so even accounting for the fact that Joe Kent is a fascist, not in touch with reality, completely taken with conspiracy theories, white nationalist rhetoric, all of that stuff, she did have to run a positive campaign. It wasn't enough for Joe Kent to be bad. We saw candidates across the country who sounded like him, some of whom won. And we didn't see that here because she was such a strong candidate. She did connect with voters throughout the district in both rural and suburban areas. And it really does seem like it points to the path to victory. First of all - showing up, having a belief that you can, being willing to talk to all kinds of voters, but really connecting the issues that she's talking about - the issues that are important to people in their everyday lives - to the progressive values that actually do improve things materially on the ground and for those families. Just really, really exciting to see. I do hope that as votes continue to come in, she does hang on. We are recording this before we're receiving results on Friday, but I think it is fair to say that the Joe Kent race - if they're hanging their hopes on a comeback, was certainly hoping to see returns that would have been more in their favor yesterday than they actually were. So that is pointing to some signs of hope. We won't know until we see results today, but the ballots did not trend as hard right as they certainly could have yesterday.
[00:07:21] Robert Cruickshank: That's correct. And what Marie has done is, in some ways, reclaimed Southwest Washington. There were Democrats representing it in Congress off and on. At the state level, Southwest Washington used to be more reliably Democratic than King County, for example. Like in 1980, Ronald Reagan carried King County, Jimmy Carter carried a lot of Southwest Washington - those old school, rural, logging Democrats, Union democrats had been abandoned by a large swath of the Democratic Party who just gave up. And that outraged Marie. And I know that because I've worked with her personally before within the Democratic Party. And she was one of these leaders who stepped up and said, we can win these places back, but we have to win with authentic values that are rooted in these communities. She ran ads talking not just about working class values, about inflation - she also talked about abortion without hesitation, talking about how important reproductive rights were. And you would hear from Democratic consultants around the country that - oh, if you're in a district like this, you probably shouldn't be doing that. She proved them completely wrong. Even if she narrowly loses at the very end, the fact that she made it this far, that she made it close, and potentially even wins - proves her theory of change in rural America correct. And I think Democrats going forward need to listen to Marie and people from her campaign and people like her about how we reclaim these districts. Again, she may win ultimately based on votes in Vancouver and Vancouver suburbs, but she's not going to be close without running up some good numbers in rural parts of the district. Democrats like John Fetterman in Pennsylvania did the same thing. There's a model here that the party needs to learn from.
[00:09:12] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And as you alluded to, this has impacts potentially down the ballot. We are seeing super close races in the 17th and 18th Legislative Districts. These are areas that are potentially in play for Democrats, if they do invest in expanding on the strategy that Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez has started. These areas are ready to vote for Democratic policies if people just connect with them and talk with them, listen, and understand how to communicate how these values can be helpful. I certainly hope to see much more Democratic investment, Democratic engagement on the ground next year in the off year, the year beyond, in the next cycle - these are areas that we can win if we put in the effort and if we put in the resources. And so I am certainly excited and anticipating a significant effort to continue to turn Clark County and beyond blue.
[00:10:18] Robert Cruickshank: I would hope so. That's going to take the established structures of the party to take it seriously. Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez has had to do this without that support - the Democratic campaign structures of the House didn't show up, they put in maybe a small token amount of money towards the end. But Marie built this herself with a great campaign team around her. This is not something where DC consultants parachuted themselves in. In fact, they've tried that in this district before in the recent past and lost. So I think another key piece of this is that those party leadership, those folks in leadership from Pelosi on down need to do a better job of listening to the voices of Democrats on the ground who know how to win, know how to win without compromising our values. That's, I think, one of the most important things Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez has shown - we can win on our values with authentic voices, especially authentic working class Democratic voices in the rural parts of the country. May not win everywhere, but if you run up some better numbers, you make a lot of things possible.
[00:11:23] Crystal Fincher: There were a number of other races that we saw - races that people were expecting to be close. Of course, Patty Murray versus Tiffany Smiley was not at all close. We saw some polling results that a number of people doubted and cast some doubt on. One polling firm had this polling on a one-point race a week before the election, which just never passed the smell test, and they certainly have a lot of answering to do. But this was a race where Tiffany Smiley and the case she was trying to make was pretty soundly rejected. And certainly, I think Republicans - I know Republicans genuinely thought they had a message that was resonating, particularly with suburban voters. And wow - suburban voters just flatly rejected just about everything they were throwing out - from the fearmongering about crime that was not at all attached to reality or evidenced-based practices about what actually does make streets safer, to the economy, to health care, and absolutely with abortion. That affected the Kim Schrier versus Matt Larkin race. Several races here where it just seems that what they had fell flat. And so just a pretty sound drubbing by Democrats to Republicans across the board - certainly in the Senate and in many of the Congressional races that were originally anticipated to be close.
Now, the King County Prosecutor race is another interesting one. What did you see here?
[00:13:14] Robert Cruickshank: Again, this is another one of those races that - going into the election - if you listen to some of the observers in the media, was expected to be very close, expected to be an example of backlash to efforts to reform criminal justice. Jim Ferrell, very much running on the Ann Davison platform of cracking down on crime and homelessness and things like that. Leesa Manion, running not as a bold reformer, but running certainly as a reformer - someone who wants to do criminal justice correctly and certainly better than it's done now. And the assumption was that Jim Ferrell would either make it very close or win outright. That's not what happened. Leesa Manion has won convincingly, and won throughout King County. This is not just a Seattle victory. Her victory is countywide. And I think that's a pretty big rebuke to the "law and order" politics that someone like Jim Ferrell has been running on, that The Seattle Times has been trying to push hard, that KOMO has been trying to push hard. King County voters aren't there - that's not what they're looking for in terms of how we address public safety.
[00:14:20] Crystal Fincher: That's not at all what they're looking for. And once again, we saw a sound rejection countywide - certainly not limited to the City of Seattle - in every corner of the county, saying that, no, we don't want these punitive politics, punishment that is not at all connected to public safety, making the streets safer, reducing the amount of people who are victimized. And that really is the ultimate goal. There's a lot of talk about punishment. There was a lot of support from very conservative forces, a lot of talk about - hey, we need to enforce the law and put these people in jail and calling into question bail reform, any kind of criminal justice reform, any kind of alternative response that does not include police. We saw police unions rally around this campaign and really see this as a vehicle for increasing their footprint and moving away from some of the things that have been asked for for voters for quite some time.
In 2020, we saw with the King County Charter Amendments that - once again, countywide - voters want accountability in terms of public safety. Voters want to address the root causes of crime. They understand that even those who are saying, hey, I'm fine with the amount of police that are there, I have no issue with increasing the amount of police, but we know they can't do everything. We know they don't have the tools to address homelessness. We know criminalizing homelessness doesn't make the problem any better. We've seen them try and fail repeatedly. It's time to do things a different way that actually do have a shot at making this issue better. We know that police don't have the tools to address behavioral health issues, mental health issues - and those services are too hard to find, completely underfunded, and not at all in the shape that they need to be to adequately address this problem. We need to invest in and expand those services and the availability of that. We know that simply throwing people in jail, especially when the issues are poverty, their health, they're related around education - that that doesn't help them and it doesn't help the community. It doesn't reduce the chance that they're going to commit another crime or that people are going to be victimized. We need to do the things that reduce the likelihood of those things happening. We need to do the things where there is evidence and data to show what the path forward is. We've seen plenty of examples of those in pilot programs in Seattle and in King County and have been promised that that was the way things are going - to only see, especially with recent administrations, including the current ones, moving in the opposite direction.
And not only in King County, but we also saw propositions in Redmond, in Shoreline that also reinforced that people want accountability and investing in root causes and responses to issues that do need help, issues that do need intervention. If someone is having a behavioral health crisis, if someone is out on the street, that absolutely needs intervention - but by someone who can address the issue. And that's not a policeman in those situations. And so we need mental health professionals, we need service providers, we need all of those. We saw both in local initiatives in Seattle suburbs throughout the county and countywide that this is what voters want. I really hope that our leaders listen this time. I really hope that our media listens this time. And we stop having this conversation that is such a disservice to voters and members of this community that simply focuses on - are we recruiting, are we hiring, are we doing policing? Policing is not the whole picture of public safety. We have to address those other issues. We've seen many cities increase funding and address policing, but have left everything else unaddressed. And voters are practically begging our leaders to take action on a holistic view of public safety to keep us all safer where we all benefit. And I really do hope we start seeing coverage of what's going right, of what voters are saying - beyond whatever police union has the bully pulpit for the day. Talk to people on the ground. Voters are in a much more nuanced place in this than we hear in a lot of the public rhetoric and media. It is, certainly for me, been a source of frustration that this has been pretty obvious for a while and we keep not listening as a whole. I hope finally people will start to listen to what voters keep trying to say.
[00:19:24] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, I think what you said resonates with voters, Crystal. It's also something we've seen in the election results. When you were talking, I was thinking of the signs I saw from a Republican candidate in the 32nd Legislative District up in Shoreline that said - at the top of her signs - Make Crime Illegal Again. She got a whopping 18%. You talk about the public wanting investment in alternatives - I think of a young man named Kenneth Mejia who ran for Los Angeles City Controller. He put up billboards all over LA and very prominent places showing with bar charts how much money was being spent on the police and how much was being spent on things like mental health services, and how the police were overfunded yet no one was feeling safe. And he ran against a conservative law and order type guy, and won by 20+ points. The public is making it very clear - they do want crime addressed, but they want violent crime to be addressed through solutions of root causes as well as an officer showing up in the right appropriate moment. And the public recognizes that sending a officer with a gun to a mental health crisis is not the right answer. Sending an officer with a gun because someone's in a tent somewhere is not the right answer. There are other solutions we need to be looking at and the public wants those.
I think also what we're seeing is that candidates who address this issue, who don't try to duck it and hide from it, do better. Again, Fetterman was a good example of this. But we saw Leesa Manion here as well and we can even look at Oregon. When Democrats start talking about this, the public will listen. When they address it and say, yeah, I hear you and here's a solution, we're not going down this ridiculous law and order path that hasn't worked. Here's what we're going to do instead, and the data shows this works and this matches our values. Democrats do pretty well. And I think that's a lesson for Democrats in local state and federal races going forward.
[00:21:22] Crystal Fincher: We also saw, in a neighbor of ours, down in Oregon a really interesting race for governor. How did this shape up?
[00:21:31] Robert Cruickshank: It was a race that was dominated by conversation about crime, homelessness - Portland got hit harder by the pandemic and certainly by Trump than we did in Seattle. Whereas we had a short amount of protests here in the city, Portland was where Trump sent in the Department of Homeland Security, picked people up off the streets, there's reports that he was trying to manufacture terrorism cases, working with local officials. They had 100+ nights of battles with protesters and police in the streets. What this led to was - you go to downtown Portland today and it's taking a lot longer to recover than downtown Seattle. There are real issues with folks living unhoused and not getting support services they need. And Republicans, who have come close to winning the Oregon governor's race in the past, thought they could capitalize on this. And certainly didn't hurt that Republicans had Phil Knight, the Nike founder and billionaire, funding them to the tune of millions of dollars. And Tina Kotek, who was the Democratic Speaker of the House from Portland, was being blamed for this. And the media and the Republicans and Phil Knight were all saying - it's your fault, Tina, that all these awful things are happening in Portland. Portland is dying.
And what Tina did was she turned into it and said, here's actually what we're going to do, here are the solutions we're going to talk about. Yeah, we're going to get everybody housed and we're going to get everyone's needs met, because that's what Oregon is and that's what we do in Oregon. And she pulled out a victory. She won Multnomah County, which is where Portland is. She won Washington County, which is where the most populous suburbs of Portland are. It was called the day after the election. People thought that Kotek would lose outright or win very narrowly. She's won fairly, by a wider margin than people thought. Another example right there of - when Democrats take this stuff seriously, don't hide from it, but turn and talk about it and root it in our values, they can win. So I think looking at that victory there in Oregon with someone who has been very progressive as a Speaker of the Legislature in Oregon, who'll be a great governor, who's done a lot on housing policy, a lot on other issues as well. Tina's going to be a great leader for the West Coast - something we can learn from in Washington as we have our own governor's race coming up in two years.
[00:23:49] Crystal Fincher: Now locally in Seattle, there was an issue on the ballot about how Seattle is going to vote. There was also an issue in King County on the ballot for how King County is going to vote. What is going to happen with how Seattle and King County run their elections?
[00:24:06] Robert Cruickshank: We can start with the clearest outcome, which is King County. King County has very clearly - it's settled - voted to move elections for the King County Council and the King County Executive to even-numbered years - that'll start in 2026 - rather than having them in odd-numbered years. And what this will do is increase turnout. City of Los Angeles did this a few years ago - this was the first even year that their mayoral election happened and turnout is significantly higher. Higher turnout means more voters are involved in the process. Candidates have to speak to more voters. They can't just go talk to the old white folks who always vote. They got to talk to everybody. So that's good for democracy right there.
In Seattle, the vote came down to a decision between approval voting and ranked choice voting. Ranked choice voting is the clear preference with 75% support. But the first question that got asked is, do you want to change anything at all? No is very narrowly leading on that. I think that's partly due to - voters are still learning about things like ranked choice voting. You also have both The Seattle Times and The Stranger recommend a No vote for different reasons. The Stranger said they support ranked choice voting, but they wanted a different process to get there. But I think coming out of this, there is a very clear mandate from Seattle voters. We want ranked choice voting. The Legislature needs to figure it out, City Hall needs to figure it out. And in next year's legislative session, they're going to need to give not just Seattle, but other jurisdictions, more freedom and leeway to do something like that.
[00:25:40] Crystal Fincher: This is coming, in one way or another, to the City of Seattle, clearly. That is a very clear message sent by the voters. Now, I do think there is a fair point to be made about the process by which it happens, just having some more time to really educate and give information about it - I think that's going to be helpful. But really figuring out the how of the implementation to make sure that it's smooth, to make sure there is sufficient outreach and education for voters beforehand, and to make sure that the voters are able to vote in a way that is fair, that there is a - with the Secretary of State - that they're adequately supporting Seattle and any other jurisdiction that wants to make this change and to help make these implementations consistent and successful. So I'm looking forward to seeing how this proceeds.
I'm really looking forward to even-year elections. The difference that this makes in turnout is so clear and obvious. Again, you brought up Los Angeles. We are seeing the difference that that is making - so many more people are engaged in elections down there. Even in the primary, so many more people have been engaged and it has shown. And candidates who are not engaging with the public and relying simply on the old tried and true way of just speaking to a narrow slice of special interest supporters and having a big war chest of finances are not having the time that they thought they were. They're actually struggling in this election, and those candidates who have engaged with a broader selection of the public are much more successful this cycle. So I also think this is a positive thing just in terms of not just turnout, but in how candidates need to engage with the public and need to be accountable to their constituents. I think this is a very positive development that we've seen in Los Angeles, and I am excited to see it implemented here with county races and really hope that it expands. There's a bill also to do this in the Legislature. I hope we see that the success of this, and just the very wide margin of passage and support for this, really does help this get through in the State Legislature statewide.
[00:28:03] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, I think it's a pretty strong mandate from King County to the Legislature as well - that we want that bill to pass to give local jurisdictions the ability to move their elections to even years. One thing you see in some of these small cities around even King County, going into the late 2010s - you had a lot of right-wingers controlling these city councils - Tukwila, Burien, SeaTac had Trump supporters sitting on their city councils in 2017, 2018, even as late as 2019. And even-year elections help mitigate against that because you get more people involved in the process. That's good for small D democracy. I think it'll also make the outcome more progressive, which is good for those who care about that. There's no guarantee that that happens. Ultimately, candidates have to speak to more people, and that's always a good thing.
[00:28:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And in Los Angeles, we are seeing a very, very close mayoral race. As you said, this doesn't guarantee the progressive outcome, but there are a lot more people engaged. Turnout is increased - it's taking time to count those votes, but we'll stay tuned on what's happening there.
Also here, we saw across the state, legislative races in these battleground districts turn out, frankly, much better than initially anticipated. For a midterm year, it's not just in Congress where the party in power traditionally struggles. And we just did not see the outcome that many feared at the start of this cycle. There were people wondering across the board, both in political circles and outside - are Democrats going to maintain the majority in both chambers of our legislature? And the resounding answer is yes. What did you see in a number of these races? I'm thinking of the 26th Legislative District, which is a district that is absolutely a battleground district - progressive senator there with Emily Randall, but who has been constantly under attack by extreme Republicans. The 42nd Legislative District in the north part of Washington, the 47th Legislative District where - full disclosure, we did work in that race - but here in King County, in one of the most diverse areas of the county, but one which is a purple district that has elected both Republicans and Democrats. What were your takeaways and what did you see in these races?
[00:30:38] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, I think we're seeing Washington become a more stable blue state. And I think the Republican Party is in a permanent downward trend - doesn't mean they'll never win again. I want to make that clear. But right now, the fundamental trends favor Democrats, especially in the entire Puget Sound region. You mentioned the 42nd District way up in Whatcom County, all the way down to the South Sound - Democrats are winning consistently, and it's not just a rejection of the far right. You saw people like Chad Magendanz, who used to be a more moderate-ish Republican State Representative in Issaquah, in the 5th District. He wanted his seat back. And so he ran against Lisa Callan, thinking there's a Democratic woman I can easily beat her. No, you can't. He's losing by 10 points. He had the Seattle Times endorsement. The Seattle Times endorsed another fairly moderate-ish Republican to take on Manka Dhingra in the Redmond area - Manka's winning by a huge margin. You mentioned the 47th District, where Claudia Kauffman is winning against a more moderate Republican. And Republicans even got bounced out of the open State House race there. Federal Way is becoming much more safe for Democrats when it wasn't that long ago - 2014, 2015, 2016 - the most expensive races in the state for Legislature were happening in Federal Way - it was that close. You look at Emily Randall, who's done a great job representing the Kitsap Peninsula and that part of Pierce County out there - Gig Harbor area - really responsive to constituents, running on an unabashedly progressive agenda and winning. It's close, but she's got a pretty strong, stable lead.
I think what you're seeing here is a Democratic party that is increasingly responsive. The people who are filling these seats are increasingly younger, more diverse, more representative and inclusive. And I think it is giving Democrats a more stable majority. Republicans are having a really tough time right now - finding a path to a majority. Now, that means Democrats have to deliver. They keep getting these victories at the State Legislative level, and then they fall a little short delivering on things. They did great stuff on climate, they had some good reforms on policing in 2020, which they then stepped back from the next year, which was a big problem. But there's a lot that they need to do on housing, right? Housing legislation died in the 2022 session - that's going to have to come up. We may be entering a recession and they're going to have to solve taxes.
I think honestly, one of the most important victories is Noel Frame becoming State Senator. She's a huge upgrade over Reuven Carlyle. Reuven Carlyle spent his time working behind the scenes to undermine or kill progressive priorities left and right to help corporate power. Noel Frame, on the other hand, is leading the way to fix our broken tax code. And I think 2023 is the year finally for Democrats to fix that broken tax code. Now Senator-elect Frame has been leading the Tax Structure Working Group - they're expecting a report on what a new structure for the state could look like that's more progressive and brings in a bit more money. 2023 is the year to get it done - because going into a presidential election year, Democrats are not going to have a whole lot of seats at risk if they do something big in 2023. And given the fiscal forecast, they're going to have to. We have schools that need more funding, school mental health services that need more funding, a healthcare system in crisis. The Legislature needs to step up. Democrats now have majorities where they're not going into each election worrying about whether they're going to lose those majorities. They can keep them if they deliver. And now I think it's going to be on the rest of us who aren't in the Legislature, who are advocates and representing communities, to speak up and organize and make that Democratic legislature deliver in 2023.
[00:34:25] Crystal Fincher: And I think you're right on - in addition to just one, being elected and having those majorities - Democrats have a mandate. We saw to a degree that we haven't before - to your point earlier - that Democrats ran hard on their values. And those who did and talked about a holistic view of public safety and bringing comprehensive public safety, who talked about housing being a human right, who talked about the absolute need to expand healthcare coverage, to house people - not simply temporarily shelter, but get people into housing reliably, to control out-of-control housing costs across the board - that these are things that Democrats across the state in battleground districts ran on and won handily on these things. Where there was some question - I know from some consultants, from some Democrats even in leadership - whether they did have a mandate to act on that, whether the public would support those things. We heard a resounding yes from voters. We saw candidates who pledged to take action on these things succeed.
And we have leaders who are ready to take on progressive revenue that's going to be necessary to address all of these other issues, particularly in the event of an economic downturn, in the event of budgets going in the other direction. And I do think that we have a helpful blueprint here in the City of Seattle, who recently did implement new progressive revenue with the JumpStart Tax - that is now being used by people who originally opposed that to bail out the City from the consequences of an economic downturn, from budget shortfalls. That is actually providing the necessary revenue, providing stability throughout this downturn period. Progressive revenue really is the key to make sure that the City can continue to deliver services, to make sure that the City can continue to provide residents with the support and assistance needed, to handle infrastructure, to really start to address homelessness in a way that solves this problem, that gets people housed and doesn't just move them from place to place like sweeps do. Progressive revenue really is the stabilizer and the responsible way to handle this. And what I was gratified to see was that opponents, prior opponents of this have now come around and are embracing the JumpStart Tax, are embracing progressive revenue, and recognizing that this is a necessary element of budgets moving forward. I think that there's a lesson to be learned here, as we look at the county budget and as we look at the state budget, that progressive revenue really is the stabilizer here.
[00:37:32] Robert Cruickshank: It is. And I think we can also add in the capital gains tax, which the Legislature finally got done last year. And Republicans and their billionaire friends thought, first, that they could repeal it at the ballot box. So that fizzled out. It became really clear, both in terms of their slow going in terms of signature gathering, as well as the polling - no, the public supports taxing the rich to fund education and other priorities. The Democratic elected officials who voted for it haven't paid any price for it. Why would they? The voters want that. They support that. So now you have going into the 2023 session, where they're going to have to figure out how to fund programs and add more funding for things like public education, solve health care problems, and deal with overall budget - the public supports wealth taxes. Senator-elect Frame had a wealth tax proposal that she proposed in 2021 and 2022 - that should be a centerpiece of the discussion in 2023 and her larger Tax Structure Workgroup solution. There is no political downside to making this tax code more progressive. The public wants it. The public supports it. Democrats will face no political cost for doing it. They have no excuse for failing to act. And I think what you point out about Seattle is even people who were skeptical or opponents now understand this is a popular and useful source of revenue that can help solve some problems.
[00:38:54] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And I'm definitely looking forward to this coming legislative session and seeing people take action. And I also just want to call out that we saw more diversity in all kinds this past cycle in winning candidates. There has been lots of chatter that I've heard over the years, and even in this past cycle, talking about ideal candidates and candidates who fit their district - even by Democratic consultants. And usually that has been code for - this is an older white male who is a business owner, or a veteran, or previously a police officer. And really it sounds like code for - this is someone who Republicans can like, this is someone who looks like a Republican. And really if we focus on who looks like the community, who is in the community, who reflects the full diversity of the working class, who can speak to and connect with those issues. And we saw younger candidates. We saw candidates of various ethnicities. We saw candidates of various sexualities. We saw people who can speak to the communities of today who are not stuck in some of the old paradigms that are just not fruitful or productive and haven't been for anyone.
If we don't make a case on what we need to do when we're running for election, we can't then govern on that. We can't then pass that legislation. And I think we have seen in prior sessions that being a sticking point and a barrier to governing. Yeah, you can have a Democratic majority, but if it is full of people or has enough people who oppose progressive revenue, who oppose comprehensive public safety, healthcare, education funding that's adequate and appropriate - all of these issues that we're facing - then we have just as much of a barrier than if we elected people from the other party. You have to build a coalition around the action that you need to take. You have to build the case for that action in campaigns. I'm so glad that we saw that done by so many candidates who were successful across the state, and that this can then motivate action on the mandate that they've been handed.
[00:41:25] Robert Cruickshank: I think that's right. And I think we may and I think we need to see a reckoning within the Democratic caucuses in Olympia on this. The Democratic caucuses have often been led by mostly older white men or older white folks, who have a lot of privilege and who spend their time telling these newly elected legislators who represent their communities more authentically and look like those communities, telling them - no, fall in line, you have to do what we say, you can't deliver on your promises. And that's been, frankly, a source of a lot of toxicity. You saw Kirsten Harris-Talley step away from being in the Legislature after only a single term and wrote a public letter in the South Seattle Emerald saying that the leadership lacked integrity. You've seen others like Jesse Johnson step away, Emily Wicks step away - but more folks keep coming in who represent those communities, who look like those communities, who aren't the older white folks of the past. And I think we who are outside of Olympia need to do everything we can to help change that dynamic, put the pressure on leadership - the old ways of standing on the tracks and saying, no, isn't going to work anymore. We've delivered the votes. We've delivered stable majorities. Now you have to deliver. We are not accepting no for an answer.
[00:42:43] Crystal Fincher: Now there is another local race that we've talked about on the show before that is absolutely exciting and an example of what true grassroots organizing, true connection to the community, and what direct action and community action can do. And that's the Raise the Wage Tukwila campaign that was wildly successful. We have not seen a minimum wage initiative be this successful yet here in this state. This was something that included leaders from the business community in Tukwila, labor leaders in Tukwila, the Transit Riders Union leadership, and just a bunch of people who are really passionate about making sure that workers get paid fairly. What happened that you saw in this race?
[00:43:43] Robert Cruickshank: I think what we see is that, again, King County - and it's not just Seattle - strongly supports higher wages for workers. You see worker organizing from Starbucks to Amazon is popular and people get it. Working folks are struggling. They're struggling before pandemic, struggling before inflation. And those two factors have made it only more important and more popular to raise the wage. And it's interesting that we've almost come full circle here. I think the national Raise the Wage movement took off in SeaTac in 2013, and grassroots organizations got the $15 an hour minimum wage passed there. And it was a very close vote. That was not a resounding victory by any means. And then grassroots folks led by Kshama Sawant and others in Seattle went 15 Now. And they got that done in part by gathering signatures to say - we don't have a solution that we like - we'll take you to the ballot and we'll win. Now what you're seeing - going to Tukwila - saying, 15 was a good start. It's not enough. We need to keep raising that wage. And voters are responding very, very strongly. And you can see this across the country now, even in deep red states like Arkansas, Missouri - initiatives to raise the minimum wage pass pretty easily. Voters understand that the wages are too low, that people need to be paid better for the work that they're doing, especially those in what have often been underpaid service sector jobs. The public is there. The public wants it. And again, here's another place where Democratic majorities should act. You look at the federal minimum wage, which has not budged since 2009, it's still stuck at $7.25. If Democrats hang on to the House and hang on to the Senate, one of the first things they do in 2023 should be to raise that wage.
[00:45:27] Crystal Fincher: It absolutely should be. And it's something that they should move to advance, even if they don't take control of the House. Because to the point that you just made, we saw in a deep red state this year and on the ballot box, just this week, a minimum wage increase pass. We've seen these pass in deep red states. Progressive policy is actually popular with workers. It does materially improve the wages and the lives, living conditions of working people - regardless of what their political ideology is. And they recognize that and they support these things. If Republicans were smart, they would see that their voters, their constituents that they need to win, support this and they should also. And if not, then once again, they're going to be voting against the will of their constituents and something that could materially improve their lives immediately. So this is something that should be ripe for action from Democrats across the country in every state legislative house, every state legislative chamber, every - in Congress - just people from far and wide, from cities and counties on up. We need to see action on this. It's time. The federal minimum wage is pathetically and shamefully low. We can't support anything on that. It's at this point of poverty wage, and we need to do all that we can to move people out of poverty. We need to stop this exploitation at a time when we see record corporate profits with so many corporations and organizations. There is no excuse to be paying workers poverty wages at all. And communities agree.
I also just want to call this one out because sometimes these efforts are kicked off and started in coalition with some really heavily moneyed interests that have positive change in mind. But sometimes they come with - it's a small group of people, the same group of people here and some individual interests doing this kind of across the board. This, to me, was really inspiring because we really saw this generate from the ground up. We really saw community activists, people with an interest in Tukwila, people who lived in Tukwila, people who worked in Tukwila deciding to do this, making sure that it worked for everyone in the community, all of the different stakeholders, really doing the work in canvassing and talking to voters. And that is critically important, and I think helped this initiative and is why we see it being so resounding - is having those one-on-one conversations with people at doors makes the biggest difference that can be made. This was a very intentional campaign. They knew that they had to do that work, planned to do that work, executed that work well, and it showed and it paid off. And so I certainly hope to see this model replicated across the state for a variety of things.
My goodness, we can run initiatives to build sidewalks for people to be able to get around their communities, to advance transit, to take climate action, to address healthcare, alternative response public safety. These are all things that we can move on on the ballot box locally with initiatives. And what a great blueprint to be able to study and follow. And I really hope people do that.
[00:49:19] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, I think Transit Riders Union and other folks who did a lot of that work in Tukwila really pointed the way forward for a lot of different types of organizing. Hats off to them for stepping up and getting this done.
[00:49:31] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I'm just absolutely inspired and thrilled. And again, hope people really take a look at the work that was done, the planning that was done, and how they executed it - because that's the way to get it done.
Okay, so overall, we saw Democrats have just a really successful cycle here in 2022 in Washington. My goodness, Republicans are struggling. What does this mean for both parties as they move forward?
[00:50:06] Robert Cruickshank: I think what we're seeing is potentially a light at the end of the tunnel out of 12 years of the Tea Party/MAGA/Trump movement - this huge backlash to progressive policy, a backlash to a Black President, a backlash to a woman presidential nominee, a backlash to social change. We may be starting to see the other side of that. Democrats picking up seats in places like Ohio is promising. There's still a lot to be done. Things didn't go well in Texas. Things went really badly in Florida for Democrats. New York was a problem, but that's also partly because of the Democratic Party structure there that's ossified and really problematic. But the United States is a center-left country, but we have a Republican Party that is trying to use the laws and the courts to undermine that through things like gerrymandering, undermining voting rights, things of that sort. And it's really a problem. And I think if we're able to have a center-left majority represented in this country - now's a good time for Democrats, especially in Congress, to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, to step up and make sure the right to vote is protected, that gerrymandering is ended. Because what you can do with that then is have a stable Democratic majority in the Congress. We can keep the Tea Party, MAGA, Trump movement at bay and finally start to make some movement on the political, social, economic challenges of this country. So I look at this election as a really hopeful moment. I know a lot of us went into it with a lot of anxiety. I know I did.
Coming out of it, I think we should feel hopeful about the possibilities that exist. There's still a ton of work ahead. Maybe we turned a corner - I don't know. We'll see. Trump may announce he's running for president next week, but I feel more hopeful right now about the direction of the country than I felt in a little while. I think that's a positive outcome.
[00:52:12] Crystal Fincher: I also think it's a positive outcome. I do also see cause for hope. Obviously, we can't, we don't know what's going to happen with control of the House or Senate yet. We don't know what is in store there. But we did see a sound rejection of people who are that extreme. We did see a sound rejection by voters of some of the most extreme policies there. And so let's take that as a starting point and understand that entertaining those, entertaining any of that kind of talk, painting any of that as a both-sides issue, just doesn't work and is not acceptable. I think from the media to different candidates, we don't have to treat that as valid and reasonable at all. We saw a lot of that in the lead up to this election. And I hope that one of the lessons that we learned is that it's just absolutely unacceptable. So given all of the election information that we saw, with everything that happened in these races, what does this mean for 2023 races, particularly in the City of Seattle?
[00:53:31] Robert Cruickshank: There are folks out there from the mayor, to The Times, to other observers and consultants who think that 2023 is going to be a more conservative year in terms of City Council elections. I think these election results challenge that. I think you can see that - even in Seattle, where in a place like Northeast Seattle, the 46th district - Darya Farivar, the more progressive candidate, is winning and winning clearly over her more conservative opponent. You see The Stranger's endorsed candidates winning all throughout Seattle legislative races. I think that what this suggests is that voters going into 2023 are not in the same place they may have been in 2021. I think that you're going to see voters want solutions on criminal justice, on public safety, on homelessness that are responsive, holistic, that treat people as whole human beings - not law and order politics. It's not going to be a year where Ann Davison clones are going to do well.
I also think there are other issues that are going to come to the fore - you see Darya, Emily Alvarado doing really well because in part, they're strong supporters of building new housing and solving the housing crisis. Someone like Alex Pedersen in District 4 is going to have a real problem - a district that overlaps the 46th - Alex Pedersen being a hardcore NIMBY, deep opponent of new housing, opponent of bike infrastructure, opponent of transit. He's going to have his hands full in 2023. You have an open seat potentially if Debora Juarez retires in District 5. I think even Dan Strauss is going to have to figure out whether he wants to be more progressive or more conservative with his new district. And you see pundits say, oh, it's going to be more conservative district. Will it? That is potentially an open question. I think that going into 2023, there's an opportunity for progressive Seattle here to lay out solutions that the public wants, that are responsive to engage on these issues - not hide from them, but tackle them all directly, and speak directly to voters' concerns, and point the way forward to building a better city that we all know we can have. Some of these races may be very close, but then Alex Pedersen very narrowly won in 2019. If I'm progressive Seattle, I'm looking at 2023 as an opportunity, not as a time to have to play defense, but a time to go on offense and show voters what we have to offer.
[00:55:57] Crystal Fincher: I think that is absolutely correct. And I think you're right to point to the 46th Legislative District results as a perfect example of why. This is a district in Northeast Seattle that a lot of people considered to be one of the most moderate in the City of Seattle, to be a NIMBY stronghold, to be the place where - other places in Seattle, other districts in Seattle, other areas may elect Kshama Sawant, may elect more progressive candidates, but that doesn't work north of the Ship Canal. That doesn't work in those areas where we have more established, higher income, single-family neighborhoods, and they don't want that to be destroyed. There have been a small number of very loud voices that have come from those neighborhoods traditionally. And we have seen in this election, really, a sound rejection of the arguments that they were advancing. We saw that rejection on all levels, from legislative races to the county races to the Senate races - the types of arguments and the type of change that they have said was going to be damaging, that they directly took on in these races, just did not land with the voters. And voters sent a clear message that they want to move forward in a different way.
Absolutely a message to both progressives and moderates that this is a different day. And it's not good enough to just say, you know what, I want to listen to everyone, bring everyone together. We just need not to be divisive. We don't need to do anything big or dramatic. Let's just stay the course. No one is happy with the course that we're on. No one is happy with continued inaction on housing while prices continue to just escalate and rise to levels that people can't afford. Everyone is being affected by this in one way or another. We're seeing the symptoms of inaction and I think people are recognizing that. And so people who are building a strong case for what action needs to be done and saying - I'm going to be willing to do the hard work in getting this passed and getting this through - are going to be successful.
The role of progressive revenue in these races and seeing forces who fundamentally don't want taxation for extremely high income earners, whether it's landlords or people who are making money in speculative gains, to the heads of these major corporations, to the corporations themselves that have reaped windfall profits especially through the pandemic and beyond. And their workers are still struggling or they're battling unionization efforts. Seattle and these districts are on the side of the workers conclusively. They're on the side of our community. And I think there needs to be a broader recognition of that across the board - from leaders to current politicians to our media - and really get connected with what voters are saying today. It's different.
And so I'm really interested to see how these 2023 races shape up. I'm frankly interested to see what even the mayor of Seattle takes away from these elections, because he had previously said in some different venues, some in some leaked commentary that he's recruiting against these candidates. He signaled that he wanted to and was aligned with a more punitive punishment approach, that he was skeptical of some of the things that passed without any kind of controversy in this past election by voters. And so is he reconsidering the direction he's taking? Is he reconsidering those candidates who he is setting up to run, perhaps with platforms and advancing policies that were just soundly rejected? And is he reconsidering how he is aligning and allocating his budget that is currently being discussed now - from the sweeps that we're talking about to asking for frontline service workers' compensation to be reduced to just a variety of different things here - is he reconsidering that? It looks like he did start to reconsider progressive revenue, because he certainly relied on that to bail out parts of his budget and to keep it from being underwater and in a deficit. So it looks like there is acknowledgement that that was the right way to go and that we're going to have to rely on that revenue for stability. Hopefully he sees that moving forward. But I'm really interested to hear what our local leaders and existing leaders' takeaways are from this also.
[01:00:53] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And the public wants homelessness solved - people in a tent are our neighbors - they need help, need housing, not punitive solutions. People want crime addressed, but they don't want it addressed with punitive hardcore law and order solutions. Sometimes that may be necessary here or there, but they want the root causes addressed. And I think that this is not a year, and next year will not be a year where sort of Eric Adams-style approach is going to work in Seattle. I think it's a real opportunity for progressives. If they speak directly to the issues, hear people's concerns, and show that we have better answers. And I think certainly comes down to questions of police accountability as well - SPOG contract is becoming an important issue that will come up very soon. And I think you're going to have to see candidates declare themselves. Are they going to be for tough reforms on the police department that hold them accountable? Or are they going to try let them off the hook? And I don't think voters want to see the police let off the hook in terms of them doing their jobs and doing their jobs responsibly, constitutionally, and with accountability.
[01:02:06] Crystal Fincher: And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on today, Friday, November 11th, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Production Coordinator is Bryce Cannatelli. Our insightful co-host today is chair of Sierra Club Seattle, a long time communications and political strategist, an excellent political mind, Robert Cruickshank. You can find Robert on twitter @cruickshank. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get all of our shows. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On this midweek show, Crystal has a delightful conversation with Washington Supreme Court Justice Mary Yu about her path to becoming the first Asian American, first Latina, first woman of color, and first LGBTQ+ justice on the court. They discuss the importance of state supreme courts in light of recent decisions that threaten people’s rights on the national level, how that translates to why we should scrutinize judicial elections, and common misconceptions people have about the state Supreme Court. Justice Yu then shares about efforts to make courts more accessible and equitable to everyone, what she’s most proud of in her career, and how people can be involved in restoring confidence in the justice system.
Notes:
This episode was recorded before the end of filing week in May. The candidate filing deadline passed without any challenger filing to run against Justice Yu, so she will appear unopposed on the November ballot and serve another term on our state’s highest court.
This episode was also recorded before the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, hence the reference to the leaked draft about overturning Roe vs Wade.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and Justice Yu at @JudgeMaryYu.
Resources
Washington Supreme Court Bio - Justice Mary I. Yu: https://www.courts.wa.gov/appellate_trial_courts/supreme/bios/?fa=scbios.display_file&fileID=Yu
Campaign Website - Justice Mary Yu: https://justicemaryyu.com/
“Who's Marrying the First Gay Couple? Judge Mary Yu” by Dominic Holden from The Stranger:https://www.thestranger.com/blogs/2012/12/08/15483647/whos-marrying-the-first-gay-couple-judge-mary-yu
Justice Mary Yu On Jimmy Kimmel Show: https://vimeo.com/673039715
State of Washington Commission on Judicial Conduct: https://www.cjc.state.wa.us/
Washington State Court Rules: Code of Judicial Conduct: https://www.courts.wa.gov/court_rules/?fa=court_rules.list&group=ga&set=CJC
Civil Right to Counsel or “Civil Gideon”: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/legal_aid_indigent_defense/civil_right_to_counsel1/
June 4th Letter - Washington Supreme Court:https://www.courts.wa.gov/content/publicUpload/Supreme%20Court%20News/Judiciary%20Legal%20Community%20SIGNED%20060420.pdf
Washington Leadership Institute: https://www.law.uw.edu/academics/continuing-education/wli
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, I'm once again just so excited to welcome to the program another very distinguished State Supreme Court Justice - Justice Mary Yu is with us today. Thank you so much for joining us.
[00:00:51] Justice Mary Yu: Oh, Crystal, thank you for the invitation. I really appreciate your interest and I'm looking forward to having a fun conversation.
[00:01:00] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And so I just wanted to start off talking and ask you - what was your path to the Supreme Court?
[00:01:08] Justice Mary Yu: Well, I came from the trial court - so I was a trial court judge in King County Superior Court for 14 years - that felt like a lifetime in many ways. And prior to that, I was a prosecutor in the King County Prosecutor's Office. And then before that, I was just frankly very proud to be working, doing some organizing work in social justice in Chicago. So a little crooked path, but nevertheless, it's what brought me to the court here.
[00:01:38] Crystal Fincher: Well, and I have found that those crooked paths are sometimes the most useful and oftentimes give you such helpful perspectives because you're not just coming from one point of view, you've seen things from different perspectives, have walked in different shoes, and have been able to see that. And you're actually the first Asian American, first Latina, first woman of color, and first LGBTQ+ justice on our State Supreme Court. What has that meant to you and how do you think that impacts the work that you do?
[00:02:08] Justice Mary Yu: Gosh, Crystal - being the first sometimes can be a real burden in the sense that I know that I worry about not messing it up for others. I'm worried that, really, my path will create more opportunities for others. And so I'm aware of the fact that when people see me, they see all of what you just described. And I think at one level for our community, there's a lot of expectations that others will be able to follow, that this has opened up the door for all of us. On the other hand, I know that with that comes a lot of assumptions about it - our community - some will be positive, some will be negative. I think some people in their own mind wonder or not - I have a packed agenda or am predisposed to do something or decide a case in a particular way because I'm first. And I don't think that that's true, other than I do bring a level of sensitivity to what it's like to not have resources, what it's like to be other, what it's like to be an outsider. And frankly, I see that that's an asset at our table because there are nine of us and it means nine different viewpoints. And frankly, I think the viewpoint that I bring of the other, the outsider, a person of color, a person with little economic resources growing up - they ought be at the table too, not to control, but to contribute.
[00:03:33] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, that's such a great point. A lot of people are just now figuring out how important our courts are, our supreme courts are - not just at a national level, but especially if we lose rights at the national level, our states are really our firewall and the only thing standing between a lot of people and their rights. So right now, when we are basically looking at the overturning of Roe vs Wade - there was the leaked draft that looks like it's going to become official at some time soon. How do you view the state of not only abortion rights, but the ability to be covered by contraception and just access to healthcare for everyone. Where do we stand here in the state? And where do you stand, as a justice, in how you approach these issues?
[00:04:33] Justice Mary Yu: Yeah, well, Crystal, I think you're right in the sense that a lot of these issues are going to be decided eventually by state supreme courts. And so state constitutions are pretty important and state supreme courts are important around the country. Each one of us is different, if you will, because our constitutions are different. So there really is no exact pattern of what this all means. In the State of Washington, I think we've already had the executive and the legislative branches indicate that they intend to protect the right to abortion, that they intend to protect healthcare rights for all people. And our branch - we don't declare policies, right? We will wait for a case to come to us. So at one level, it's inappropriate for me to comment on what are we gonna do when that happens. And yet at the same time, I can say is - our court is very protective of our own State Constitution. In our own state, we have had a long history of protecting privacy and individual rights. It's a long track record that our court's not gonna step in and undo. So I think Washingtonians can feel very comfortable that our court's going to follow precedent, our court's going to continue to protect the rights of Washingtonians as we have done for the last couple of hundred years, in some ways - even the territorial courts.
So, it's right to be concerned. I can see the concern that people would have of what does this all mean when you look at the United States Supreme Court? But my understanding when I have reviewed the opinion - it really is seeming to indicate that these issues should be decided at the state level. And of course, I think they would be decided by the legislative branch.
[00:06:19] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. I think one thing that surprises people still sometimes - for as much as people who are involved in politics and who do this know all of the rules and policies and everything surrounding elections - I think a lot of people, talk to a lot of people who see our federal Supreme Court being appointed, and then being very surprised that we elect our Supreme Court justices in this state. How do you think that impacts just how we should be looking at the Supreme Court, how we should be looking at these elections, and what is at stake with our State Supreme Court elections.
[00:07:01] Justice Mary Yu: First of all, I do think that everybody ought to scrutinize all judges in all judicial elections. I think it's really important that Washington State has retained the right to vote for their judges. Now, what's interesting is we have a hybrid because when there's a vacancy, someone is appointed to fill the vacancy before they're subject to election. For example, I was appointed initially by Governor Locke to the Superior Court. At the Supreme Court, I was appointed by Governor Inslee and then stood for election. So in many ways we have part of the same process in terms of an appointment, but the check on it, if you will, is elections. And elections are an opportunity for the electorate to really evaluate someone and decide whether or not they want to retain that individual as a justice in our state.
Unfortunately, people drop right off in the sense that they don't vote all the way down ballot. We are always at the bottom of the ballot and most people would say - I don't know anything about judges. There is an interest this year - because of all these issues that you mentioned, people are suddenly looking and saying who's on our court and what does it mean? And what's their track record and who are they? I think that's a good thing. I think it's really important for people to educate themselves, take another class on civics, and understand who's on our court - how many, who are they, what have they written, what have they said? Because they will - ultimately may be the decision makers on these important matters. It's not only in terms of healthcare, perhaps abortion, but it really includes questions related to race, incarceration, the death penalty - all the things that are important to people and touch them in every single way. So, I hope that people will pay attention, that they will bother to actually invite us to come and speak, invite us to come into classrooms, into forums. All of us are always willing to answer questions about what we do.
[00:08:59] Crystal Fincher: And I do have to say - in our interactions with you, you have been exceedingly willing to talk and to share and just wanting to help people understand how the process works, how they can access and be a part of the process. And I really do appreciate just talking about how critical it is to engage in judicial elections at all levels. And even when it comes to just same-sex marriage and rights that people have to love the person who they love without penalty or consequence - was looking back, it was super fun - back in 2012, after the long and hard fought battle for marriage equality was won, you were actually on Jimmy Kimmel doing [Perfectly Named People] and you officiated the first same sex marriages in Washington State. What does it feel like - just the euphoria of that time and winning rights that so many had fought for so long to secure, to landing back where we are right now, where that looks to be in jeopardy once again?
[00:10:15] Justice Mary Yu: Yeah, it's really interesting because when we talk about crooked paths, it was a crooked path to get to the place where same-sex marriage would be legal in the State of Washington. Unfortunately our court went - it had the opportunity to decide the matter, decided it incorrectly - and then it went to the people and it was really the vote of the people. It was a popular vote that really granted us the right to marry the person that we love. Again, another check on all of our systems. For me, I have to admit that my bailiff, who was a young Japanese man whose parents had to go to someplace else to get married because they lived in DC and could not marry because they were an interracial couple, said to me - Judge, we shouldn't wait one more moment for people to marry who they wanna marry, so let's start to do weddings at midnight, as soon as the law takes effect. And it was, as you described, it was a joyous moment. It was something to celebrate because finally we had equal rights, right? The right to marry who you love.
I would say, Crystal, I don't think that's in jeopardy in the State of Washington, given that it is the law and there hasn't been a challenge to that law. And regardless of what may happen at the federal level, that's not going to really jeopardize the law in the State of Washington as it exists now. Now, if there's a challenge to it because of some federal action, that's a whole different matter - then it would make its way through the legal system, and perhaps somebody might challenge the law that was enacted by the citizens somehow, but that's not the pattern everywhere in the country. And despite the fact that we have a little comfort in the State of Washington, I think we should be concerned because we care about other people, and we care about other people in other states where they don't have a state protection and they did rely on federal law to grant them the right to marry someone. So what we're developing, which should be a concern to everyone, is just this big checkerboard in the country of rights being different, depending on where you live. That's a serious concern, especially for people who are transient - for example, those who are in the military - should their families have certain rights in one state and yet when they move, not have those same rights in another state. And we know that those military personnel will be moving around to different states, so it's a real concern.
[00:12:46] Crystal Fincher: It is an absolute concern. One other concern that I've heard a number of people raise is just looking at the quality and the qualification of judges - there being a number of concerns at some of the judges that have been appointed, particularly in the last administration, who aside from questions of partisanship, just on questions of - do you understand the law as it is, in order to protect it. And people may have different perspectives on how to protect the law, how to decide if a case is consistent with it, but truly understanding and being just qualified enough to sit there and make those judgements is a different issue than partisanship. You happen to be rated "Exceptionally Well Qualified" by several bar associations, you're endorsed by all of the other State Supreme Court justices, and just so many people. I could spend, literally five minutes, just talking about all of the awards and accolades that you've been given.
But when it comes to some of our local judicial elections that don't receive a lot of scrutiny, where a lot of times newspapers that used to cover those and that used to look into the backgrounds of judges - they've lost a lot of resources - and so there is a fear that there could be people who land in our courts here in this state that just aren't qualified, that are coming with an incorrect perspective of what the law is, who the law protects, and how it should operate. And that especially given this national climate and with some of the just extremism that we have been enduring, that that poses a real danger for local communities, potentially even when we do have a State Supreme Court that is doing its job correctly. How do you view that risk?
[00:14:58] Justice Mary Yu: It's a real risk to begin with - what you described isn't something that's sort of a sci-fi movie. It's a real risk, but that's why people like you play an important role, as well as other media outlets. You do invite people to come and speak and talk with you. You have the opportunity to ask some questions and to help educate the electorate. As long as Washington remains a populous state where elections are important, you will always face the risk that there could be somebody who's not qualified or not competent to serve. It's the risk we take, it's the price we pay for the right to vote, the right to selection, the right to have a voice, and not to give up citizen power. But I would hope that the bar associations and other people would continue to try to make themselves available to rate judges, to ask questions, and to try to educate the broader community about who these people are.
[00:15:54] Crystal Fincher: What do you think are the most common misconceptions that people have about the court?
[00:15:58] Justice Mary Yu: Sometimes I wonder whether there are misconceptions or frankly realities, because I think a lot of people think that our courts are bureaucratic, insensitive, do not treat people of color fairly. And as much as I wanna be defensive about ourselves, I think some of that is very real - is we have to do a better job of becoming more accessible, of becoming a little less bureaucratic and simpler in our procedures. And we're trying to get there. I think some of the other unfortunate misconceptions are - is that we are groupthink or that we decide decisions together just to get along. And yet, if anybody studied our opinions, they would see that is hardly - hardly - the reality is it's hard fought, we sometimes will split 5-4 on some cases. We do our job best when we are in disagreement. So we're not a groupthink entity - none of our courts really, I would hope, are just stamping just to go along and create an assembly line.
Every so often you might have a judicial officer that brings shame on the rest of us - somebody who has done something imprudent. I know there are a couple in terms of some sexual assault allegations and that's harmful because it hurts the whole judiciary when something like that occurs. But I think overall, we have a really functional system in the State of Washington and it may be because we're very transparent and open, and people can walk into our courtrooms anytime and watch the proceedings.
[00:17:31] Crystal Fincher: You do bring up an interesting issue where there are a couple of judges that are the subjects of investigations or controversies, currently. There was just a recent situation where a judge had used the N-word and had some other behavior that their colleagues thought was inappropriate. Do you think our system of discipline and accountability for judges at all levels is sufficient?
[00:17:59] Justice Mary Yu: I do. I do think it is. The Judicial Conduct Commission has the ability to investigate if there is a complaint. And I can say from personal experience, they are robust in scrutinizing judges and trying to really enhance confidence in terms of what we do. I think it's pretty robust and it's a very open process - anybody can file a complaint - that person's identity is protected, so there's no risk to them because judges can - right - they can punish, they can be coercive, they can manipulate. I think it's really important to protect people who would file a complaint, and we have that process. I think probably publicizing the rules might be a good thing in the sense of more people should know that in the State of Washington, we have a code of judicial conduct. We do have a code that governs how we should do what we do. We have a code that really guides us in terms of when we should recuse or not. We have a really strong board of ethics that will provide an opinion if a judge needs specific advice on a particular circumstance and probably the public does not know that. And I would say we might do a better job of letting people know.
[00:19:16] Crystal Fincher: That is certainly very helpful. I do think a lot of people don't know. I'm also wondering what more can be done to help people, even if they don't come with a lot of resources, to participate in our judicial system and to be protected by it at all levels in our state. There are so many situations where - not so much at the Supreme Court, even though people are still trying to figure some stuff out there - but where a defendant may be up for eviction and they're in a tough situation, and coming in and they don't know all the rules, their landlord knows all the rules, seems to be very chummy with everyone else in there, 'cause they own a lot of properties and it seems like the system is working for them. They're all familiar with it, they're doing the same song and dance that they do all the time to the detriment of someone who still has rights and protections under the law. What more can be done to help people, especially those who are not familiar with the system or who don't have the money to hire people who are, to be able to receive all of their protections that they're entitled to.
[00:20:30] Justice Mary Yu: We've been working really hard to try to increase civil legal aid. And that is to try to ensure that people have representation on the civil side as well. We've received a lot of money from the Legislature this past year to really offer representation to individuals who are being evicted. That's just one particular circumstance, but I have to admit that I'm very sensitive to the fact that there are a lot of hearings where people not only are at a loss in terms of housing, but their jobs, benefits, the inability to access healthcare at times. There are a host of issues where people need representation, so I have to admit that I'm a fan of civil representation 100%. I would love to have a case come to us that gives us the opportunity to do the same thing we did on a criminal side. And that is "Civil Gideon" - is to say that everyone deserves the right to be represented by an attorney, regardless of your income. I know it would be expensive, and yet the rights that are at risk in the civil arena are great, right? It is to be homeless, to be without a job, to be without benefits - are very real things for individuals. So we're trying, I think - our court and along with others are big advocates of trying to ensure that there is civil legal aid available to individuals.
[00:21:54] Crystal Fincher: That would be tremendously helpful, and certainly would cost more. I do hope that we get better as a society. And as we - we're having legislative elections and conversations right now, but that we also examine the cost of going without it and what it means to potentially push someone into homelessness, or out of a job, or into financial crisis because they don't have healthcare or the services that they need - it is so costly. And often in ways that can't be compensated or reimbursed. So I just - I completely agree with you and thank you so much for bringing that up. What are other challenges you think the Court is suited to address within the justice system?
[00:22:48] Justice Mary Yu: Well, I would say two areas I know that I have spent a lot of energy on that I think are very important is - one, has to do with funding of our courts. As you may know, our courts charge for everything, and you have to pay a filing fee, we also use monetary sanctions. And why do we do that? Because we have to fund ourselves. So I'm a big advocate that some day - there has to be some heavy lifting - and our courts really should be part of the general fund, so that we are not the cash registers. So we don't have to collect the funds in order to pay for the services that we're providing. We're a branch of government that ought to be, again, accessible and available to everyone. I know of no other branch where you have to pay before you get served, and yet that's what happens in our court systems. I know the judges, who are in our municipal courts or in our district courts, feel awful about having to constantly collect money in order to sustain therapeutic courts or any other kind of court that serves people. So that's one that I think is really important and we're working very hard on.
The second is we're really wrestling with how do we eradicate racism from our system? It's systemic, it's institutional, and it's taking a lot of work to invite everyone to say - how do we do this better? How do we examine ourselves and our practices and how do we change? So we look at jury diversity, we've looked at legal financial obligations. We are trying very hard at every level to say - this is our responsibility, it is our duty to ensure that every single person can be guaranteed truly not only access, but a fair process. So we're doing a lot of education at this point. And as you may know, in 2020, our court issued a letter to the entire legal community inviting everyone to join us in examining our systems and to eradicating racism at every level. So we're doing that heavy work - those are the two things that I have as a priority, and that I think are important.
[00:24:54] Crystal Fincher: And I appreciate that in our recent conversation with Justice Whitener, we talked about that letter and just how important it was in the role that our court took in leading the country, really and acknowledging that and stating plainly this is a problem that we are responsible to solve. It is widely acknowledged - I certainly believe we can't start to solve problems until we acknowledge them, and so having that acknowledgement and having people who are, who seem to be doing the work to fix it is something that I appreciate and I'm thankful for.
You - again. I could go on about all of the accolades that you've received for quite some time. You received the 2019 Crosscut Courage in Elected Office award. You recently, just late last year, had your portrait unveiled at Seattle University. You have - my goodness, there's so much - you received the 2020 Latino Bar Association Trailblazer Award, the "Established Leader" Pride Award from Mayor Jenny Durkan in the City of Seattle, the 2018 "Voice of Social Justice" from the Greater Seattle Business Association, the 2017 "Lifetime Achievement" - and I'm telling you, I - this is literally about a sixth of the things that I could list from you. As you look at your career, what are you most proud of?
[00:26:34] Justice Mary Yu: It's a hard question. It's hard because when I think about my life and not just a career, I think I am most proud that I think I fulfilled my parents' dream. And that's because both of my parents came to this country very, very poor with nothing. My mother was a farm worker. My father grew up on a ship that just floated around the world for years - he was a boy without a parent. And their dream when they came together, I think, was simply to provide an opportunity for their children to have food on the table, to have a decent job, and to maybe have an education. So when I look back and I look at my life, I think I'm most proud that I fulfilled their dream of in one generation, having the opportunity to be successful.
When I look at my career, I would say the thing that I'm most proud of is having been a mentor to so many young people of color who have grown up and who are now judges. I am proud to be the co-chair of the Leadership Institute with Mr. James Williams, where we have graduated 196 lawyers from our leadership program and our focus is on underrepresented lawyers. And what we do is just really enable and empower them to see their gifts and talents. And we have a lot of them who have become judges. And we have one who is the US Attorney for Western Washington - Nick Brown was one of our graduates. So I would say I'm most proud of those acts because it's about giving back and it's about enabling others to do this work, so I would be very happy to rest on those laurels, is to say - you paid it back, Mary, and that's what it's all about.
[00:28:33] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and they would be so proud and that you are also helping to enable that for so many other people in this state - I certainly appreciate. And I guess as we are looking forward and your continuing service on the court, assuming you're going to be re-elected, assuming all of us get out there and vote to make sure that happens. What do you most want to accomplish moving forward?
[00:29:06] Justice Mary Yu: I wanna continue to do what I am doing, 'cause I think that's really important. And I'd like to put some more energy into restoring confidence in our courts. I'm trying to respond to Eric Liu's call to be concerned about the health of our democracy. His call has really resonated with me that we can't live with just accepting polarization - this is not the future of our country and the future of who we are. And that all of us, as judges and lawyers, we should be very, very concerned about keeping our democracy alive, keeping it healthy, and frankly being engaged.
[00:29:47] Crystal Fincher: And if you give people some advice on how they can help ensure that within our judicial system, what would you say?
[00:29:57] Justice Mary Yu: Crystal, can you pose that question again? I'm sorry.
[00:29:59] Crystal Fincher: Oh, sure - no problem. If you were to give folks, one piece of advice for how they could engage with our judicial system, or something that they could do to help it be more equitable and healthier and to restore that trust - what advice would you get for people for what they could do to help that?
[00:30:19] Justice Mary Yu: I'd say come to jury service - come to jury service and be a part of the decision making. Restore confidence in what we do - when I was a trial judge, I remember talking to the whole pool of jurors, 70 people who were just dying to get outta there. And I would just say before you raise your hand and ask to leave, I just want you to imagine and think about this - that if it were you, would you not want somebody like yourself to be sitting there to be the decision maker? Because all the people who come into our court system, they're there because there's something really important to them. The things that they hold most near and dear - and it could be innocence in a criminal trial, injury that they haven't been compensated for, some unfair contract, whatever it might be - it's something important to those individuals. And who would you want to be seated, sitting there, listening to this. Would you not want somebody like yourself? And I'd just say - just pause and think about that. And I'd have to say hands went down and people became a little embarrassed and thought - well, yeah, I guess I could do this. I can't do it for 10 weeks, I could do it for two days or three days.
So I would say to everyone is - please, if you have the opportunity to serve as a juror, do so. You become the fact finder, which is the most important part of a trial - is somebody who determines what is true and what is not, or what you wanna believe or what you don't wanna believe. It doesn't even matter if it's truthful or not. What do you believe and how do you determine credibility should rest in the hands of other people? So I would say that's something everyone can do - is please come to jury service when you can. And if you get that summons, that's the beginning. From there, you'll be able to see the rest of the flaws and then maybe you can help us figure out the rest.
[00:32:17] Crystal Fincher: Great advice. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today - sincerely appreciate this conversation and all of the work you've done and continue to do. Thank you so much, Justice Yu.
[00:32:29] Justice Mary Yu: Crystal, thank you so much.
[00:32:31] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
With Election Day looming and ballots due in a few days, this week’s show is a Ballot-In-Review! Crystal is joined by perennial favorite Mike McGinn along with the rest of the Hacks & Wonks team - Bryce Cannatelli and Shannon Cheng - to discuss the recent political climate, break down the context of down-ballot races and why your vote matters. Listen in as the crew opens their ballots and thinks their way through the important choices in front of them.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s ballot party attendees: Mike McGinn at @mayormcginn, Bryce Cannatelli at @inascenttweets, and Shannon Cheng at @drbestturtle. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Time Stamps
Washington State Advisory Votes - 05:57
King County Charter Amendment 1 and Proposition 1 - 08:25
Federal Races - 16:54
Washington Congressional Races - 18:00
Secretary of State - 32:00
Washington State Legislature Races - 33:13
- LD26 - 33:27
- LD47 - 35:30
- LD42 - 36:57
- LD30 - 38:09
- LD44 - 38:22
- LD46 - 38:55
- LD36 - 39:45
- LD37 - 39:56
- LD34 - 41:05
King County Prosecuting Attorney - 41:32
City of Seattle Municipal Court - 52:40
City of Seattle Proposition Nos. 1A and 1B - 1:01:48
Reminders
Don't forget to vote! Visit votewa.gov for voting resources.
Institute for a Democratic Future 2023 applications are live! The initial deadline is November 2nd, and the final deadline is November 13th.
Learn more about how to get involved in Seattle's budget season at this link and about King County’s budget timeline here.
Student debt relief sign-ups are live! Visit this link to enroll.
Resources
Washington State Advisory Votes:
“Tim Eyman’s legacy of advisory votes on taxes hits WA ballots again” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times
King County Charter Amendment 1 and Proposition 1:
“King County considers moving most elections to even years” by Joseph O’Sullivan from Crosscut
King County Proposition No. 1 - Conservation Futures Levy
Washington Congressional Races:
“Congressional candidate Joe Kent wants to rewrite history of Jan. 6 attack” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times
Straight Talk bonus round: Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Joe Kent from KGW News
“Rep. Schrier, challenger Matt Larkin clash in debate over who’s extreme” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times
Secretary of State:
Hacks & Wonks Interview - Julie Anderson, Candidate for Washington Secretary of State
Hacks & Wonks Interview - Steve Hobbs, Candidate for Washington Secretary of State
Hacks & Wonks - Secretary of State audiograms - Addressing Democratic criticism of Julie Anderson
Hacks & Wonks - Secretary of State audiograms - Thoughts on Ranked Choice Voting
Hacks & Wonks - Secretary of State audiograms - Experience to manage the broad portfolio of the SoS office
Washington State Legislature Races:
LD26 -
“New ad highlights Washington candidate’s past behavior against staffers” by Shauna Sowersby from The News Tribune
Sign up to volunteer for Emily Randall’s campaign here on her website.
LD47 -
Hacks & Wonks Interview - Claudia Kauffman, Candidate for 47th LD State Senator
“Boyce, Kauffman vie for WA senate in swing district with Kent, Auburn” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times
LD42 -
“Sefzik-Shewmake forum highlights abortion, health care” by Ralph Schwartz from Cascadia Daily News
LD44 -
Hacks & Wonks Interview - April Berg, Candidate for 44th LD State Representative
LD46 -
Hacks & Wonks Interview - Darya Farivar, Candidate for 46th LD State Representative
LD36 -
Hacks & Wonks Interview - Jeff Manson, Candidate for 36th LD State Representative
Hacks & Wonks Interview - Julia Reed, Candidate for 36th LD State Representative
LD37 -
Hacks & Wonks Interview - Emijah Smith, Candidate for 37th LD State Representative
Hacks & Wonks Interview - Chipalo Street, Candidate for 37th LD State Representative
South Seattle Emerald 37th LD Candidate Forum
LD34 -
Hacks & Wonks Interview - Emily Alvarado, Candidate for 34th LD State Representative
Hacks & Wonks Interview - Leah Griffin, Candidate for 34th LD State Representative
Hacks & Wonks Elections 2022 Resource Page
King County Prosecuting Attorney:
"PubliCola Questions: King County Prosecuting Attorney Candidate Leesa Manion" by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
"PubiCola Questions: King County Prosecuting Attorney Candidate Jim Ferrell" by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
"Leesa Manion, Jim Ferrell tied in the 2022 contest for King County Prosecuting Attorney" by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate
"Leesa Manion Holds Razor-Thin Lead in King County Prosecutor Race, NPI Poll Finds" by Douglas Trumm from The Urbanist
Washington Supreme Court:
Hacks & Wonks Interview - Washington Supreme Court Justice Mary Yu
Hacks & Wonks Interview - Washington Supreme Court Justice G. Helen Whitener
City of Seattle Municipal Court:
Hacks & Wonks City of Seattle Municipal Court Judge Candidate Forum
"Defense Attorneys Say Harsh Sentencing Decision Reveals Judge's Bias" by Will Casey from The Stranger
City of Seattle Proposition Nos. 1A and 1B:
City of Seattle - Proposition Nos. 1A and 1B
Ranked Choice Voting vs. Approval Voting from FairVote
The Stranger - City of Seattle Propositions Nos. 1A and 1B
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I am Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant - a busy one - and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full text transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we are continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host - and we're adding a little twist. So first, we want to welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: activist, community leader, former mayor of Seattle, and Executive Director of America Walks, the popular Mike McGinn. Welcome back.
[00:01:03] Mike McGinn: Not quite popular enough - Crystal - you have to acknowledge that, but I think we need to go to the other guests on the show today.
[00:01:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, so we're coming with you with a full Hacks & Wonks crew today. We have the incredible Bryce Cannatelli, who coordinates everything with the show and holds it down. Pleased to have her with us today. Hey, Bryce.
[00:01:29] Bryce Cannatelli: Hey, Crystal.
[00:01:30] Crystal Fincher: And we have Dr. Shannon Cheng, who is here to enlighten us also with her wisdom and insight, along with Bryce. Hey, Shannon.
[00:01:39] Shannon Cheng: Hey, Crystal - super excited to be here.
[00:01:42] Crystal Fincher: You could probably hear the sarcasm in that - but this is going to be fun. We are having a Hacks & Wonks little ballot party - we thought it may be helpful - because we talk about several things on the ballot, we talk about several races. But a lot of times we open up the ballot and there are things on there that we haven't seen, haven't heard of, and are trying to figure out. So we thought we would all just open up the ballots, go through them together - some of us in this call are later-voting people because we like receiving all of the voter communication until the last minute, so we haven't turned them in - but we encourage everyone to turn in their ballots as soon as possible. As we go through this ballot, we will add timestamps and let you know when we discuss the different areas of the ballot. So if you have a particular question about a particular area, you can just go to that portion in the show and figure out that, because we actually have taken some time to discuss what is in this ballot and on this ballot. So good luck. Make sure you get your ballot in. If you can't find it, if something happens to it, if you have questions, votewa.gov, V-O-T-E-W-A.gov is a resource. Or hey, just @ the show @HacksWonks to reply to us and we will try and chase down any answers to questions that you have. So vote, make sure everyone you know votes. This is really important and a lot is at stake locally and nationally. And what we do locally is going to dictate what happens nationally.
And with that, I will give a few reminders today. And yeah, number one is vote. Don't forget to vote. The election - Election Day is Tuesday, November 8th. You can go to votewa.gov, that's V-O-T-E-W-A.gov to get all of the information about voting. If something has gone haywire, if you can't find your ballot, if you're not sure what you need to do, if you need information about accessible voting, or if you need to figure out about how to register to vote - which you still can do in person if you haven't registered to vote or changed your address or anything like that - go to votewa.gov and you can get all that figured out.
Also, the Institute for a Democratic Future is accepting applications for this coming year's new class. The deadline is November 13th and so make sure to get those in there. I've talked about this before on the show, the Institute for a Democratic Future is great for people who lean left and who want to learn about making a difference in their community, who want to learn about politics and policy, or potentially even having a career - it's responsible for my career in politics. So if you want to learn more about that, feel free to hit me up or visit the website, which we'll link in the show notes.
Also, it is budget season around the state - and including in Seattle - and so we're going to include resources for the Seattle budget process as well as King County in our show notes, so stay tuned with that and make sure that you get involved in making your priorities and needs known to your elected officials who are allocating money for the next year or two there.
Student debt relief - signing up is happening now. Don't forget to do that. Don't wait to do that. We'll put a link to that in the show notes.
And Daylight Savings Time ends this Sunday at 2 a.m. We're falling an hour back. We're moving into darkness in dismay and it's a very sad time for some of us here at Hacks & Wonks who like the extra sunshine in the evening. So here we go into the dark months of winter.
[00:05:31] Mike McGinn: But Hacks & Wonks will be on every week to bring some sunshine into your life.
[00:05:37] Crystal Fincher: We will try. We will try.
[00:05:40] Mike McGinn: Stay tuned in on a regular basis. Yeah.
[00:05:43] Crystal Fincher: So let's open up our ballots, crew. Let's see what we have here and start to talk through - for those of you who still have to vote - some things that may be useful, helpful.
So the first things we see on this ballot that we've opened up are Advisory Votes. Man, these Advisory Votes on every freaking ballot. We have two Advisory Votes here. How did we get into this Advisory Vote situation, Mike? What is this going on?
[00:06:15] Mike McGinn: This was part of the Tim Eyman Full Employment Act where he was trying to find yet another ballot measure to put in front of the people. So what this one does - it is passed by the people - and basically they have the opportunity to have a second opinion on every tax that's passed by the Legislature. So that's why you always have all these Advisory Votes at the top. But everybody approves to-date, the public approves the votes that are passed by the Legislature. It's why we elect people, send them to the Legislature. It's really just turned into extra space on the ballot, which costs money and makes the ballot a little longer. And so we could all save a little space on the ballot if the Legislature changed this. In the meantime, don't upset that budget that your Legislature worked to craft - just vote to approve.
[00:07:08] Crystal Fincher: I completely agree with that. I cannot wait until we get to the time where we get the opportunity to repeal this. It makes our ballot longer. It confuses people. This is just anytime there is basically revenue passed, it has to appear as an Advisory Vote, which does not have any force of law. It doesn't actually do anything. It is basically a poll about something that has already happened. So yes, vote to approve. But also I would really like a movement to vote to eliminate these Advisory Votes. One thing it does is it makes the ballot longer, which is not pleasant for a lot of people. What do you think, Bryce?
[00:07:49] Bryce Cannatelli: Yeah, I wanted to hop in just to say that the choices are Repealed and Maintained. And so the suggestions to vote to approve them are to Maintain them as the maintain option. But yeah, no, I definitely agree. We've talked about it in past shows. We talk about it off the air. Getting people to vote down-ballot is always a challenge. And these Advisory Votes just get in the way of that. I think we'll have more to talk about when we get to the Proposition Nos. 1A and 1B question on the back of the ballot about what length might do to people answering those questions.
[00:08:25] Crystal Fincher: All right. So we are here in King County. We all have King County ballots. The next thing I see on my ballot - I think you probably see the next thing on yours - as we travel down from the Advisory Votes, is actually King County, a County Charter Amendment. Charter Amendment No. 1 - even-numbered election years for certain county offices. Question: Shall the King County Charter be amended to move elections for the county offices of Executive, Assessor, Director of Elections, and Councilmembers from odd-numbered years to even-numbered years? Why is it important to move from odd-numbered to even-numbered years according to the advocates for this charter amendment, Mike?
[00:09:10] Mike McGinn: The single most important thing you can do to improve voter turnout. When you look at election results in the state of Washington, Oregon, anywhere else around the country, so many more people turn out in an even year because you also have congressional elections or presidential elections. It's just a more momentous ballot than the odd year elections. And so if you think people should vote more, if you think democracy is a good thing, moving it to an even year is great. The county has the option to do that. Cities can't just do it on their own - they need a change in state law. Representative Mia Gregerson has been pushing for that and others have pushed for it. In addition to getting more people to vote, it also really improves the demographics of the ballot. We're getting more young people, more people of color, more immigrant refugees - who are here and can legally vote. We're just getting so many more people voting that we're getting a more representative ballot. So I've been a big proponent of this. You just get a different electorate. You get a better, more representative electorate. And if what you care about, and I do, is more affordable housing - if you get an older, more conservative electorate, they're going to oppose new housing and they're going to oppose new taxes for affordable housing. They're going to be more likely to say, keep the car lane and don't make it easier to walk or bike or use transit. So we need to get an electorate and get elections in even years where we have an electorate that more reflects where we need to go. And hearing from more people, if you believe in democracy, it's great. So big kudos to King County Council for - and Girmay Zahilay, in particular - for championing this. And hopefully we can move all the elections to even years. By the way, we'll save some money too. We'll have fewer elections that the elections offices have to step up for.
[00:11:15] Crystal Fincher: I'd love to see it. What do you think about it, Dr. Cheng?
[00:11:18] Shannon Cheng: I'm really excited. We talk a lot about - on this show - about how local elections really matter and that local government is really where you feel the actual changes and impacts in people's day-to-day lives. And so having some of more of our local elections in a year where more people are going to be paying attention to it, I think it will be super helpful. I know I talked to somebody recently who felt like they were in Washington state and so their vote didn't matter. And, we're going to get to these other races. And I was trying to tell them, no, we have things on our ballot that really do matter, like the King County Prosecutor and judges and all that. And I think just combining it in a way where people are going to be paying more attention to these things that really matter in their lives will be super helpful.
[00:12:03] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well said - I agree. Next up on the ballot for King County is Proposition No. 1, the Conservation Futures Levy. So the King County Council passed Ordinance 19-458 concerning funding to protect open space lands in King County. The proposition would provide funding to pay, finance, or refinance acquisition and preservation of urban green spaces, natural areas, wildlife, and some salmon habitat, trails, river corridors, farmlands, and forests. And would reauthorize restoration of the county's Conservation Futures property tax to levy a rate that will be assessed for collection in 2023 and use the dollar amount from 2023 for the purpose of computing subsequent levy collections. So should this be approved or rejected?
There are some really compelling statements about this, but this is really important for protecting open space lands in King County. There have been lots of conversations just about the preservation of land, the preservation of open and undeveloped land, and how important that is. These are conversations related to sprawl, related to just air quality, related to just people having the opportunity to recreate near where they live and not selling or developing all available land and the consequences that potentially come from that. So it is important, I think, widely acknowledged as important from people all across the aisle. It's important to maintain all of this. I see a statement submitted by Sally Jewell, who I believe is a former CEO of REI and served in a presidential administration, and De'Sean Quinn, who is a Tukwila City Council member, as well as Dow Constantine. And really, we have to take this action to protect climate change, to protect these last best places throughout King County. So far, this program has safeguarded over 100,000 acres of land, including Cougar Mountain, the Duwamish Waterway Park, and Sammamish River Trail. And they can accelerate that with this proposition.
Statement in opposition to it really basically says that, hey, parks are having challenges being maintained, and we've already done enough. I don't know that there's a lot of people here in King County feeling that we've done enough to address climate change or that we've done enough to protect local land. Protecting farms and fresh water, and open space seems like a priority to so many people in this area - and what makes this area so desirable to the people living here and those who visit and eventually come here. What do you think about this, Mike?
[00:15:08] Mike McGinn: It's a parks levy. I'm for parks levies, generally. I actually got to run one once, and it was just great. And there's so much more in it than you might think. And if we talk about community - that to me is ultimately what this is about. There's clearly the environmental protection, but that's the quality of life and the community gathering places as well. So yeah, and it's a renewal. It's an expansion and a renewal of an existing levy. And I think every time you get to go to a great county facility, you just have to remember that the money came from somewhere, and this is where it comes from. They really have to pass these levies to make it work, given the way finances work for county and municipal governments.
[00:15:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And so this will cost the average homeowner about $2 more per month. There is relief available to qualified low-income seniors and other households. And the funding recommendations are made by an independent advisory committee and subject to external audit. So it's not just, hey, willy-nilly stuff happening here. There is accountability and oversight - looks like it is endorsed by the Nature Conservancy, Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust for Public Land, the Wilderness Society, Seattle Parks Foundation, REI, Dow Constantine and council members - just a lot of support there. I find those arguments to be particularly convincing. But this is an important one that's flown under the radar for a number of people, I think. I've gotten a lot of questions from people saying, whoa, what should I do with these county amendments and this proposition? And so just wanted to make sure that we went through that.
Next on my ballot are the federal races, which have gotten a ton of coverage. I think if you listen to the show, odds are you probably know if you're going to be voting for Senator Patty Murray or her challenger, Tiffany Smiley, but that is at the top of the ballot right now. Do any of you have anything to chime in with about this race?
[00:17:22] Mike McGinn: It's really fascinating to watch how this race is starting to become part of a national narrative about whether or not there's a red wave - going to hit the federal elections. And then there's some counterarguments. And we could pundit all afternoon on this one. And I'm sure a lot of you, if you're politically oriented, have really been watching the national news about what will happen in Congress. Will the Senate remain Democratic or will it turn Republican? Is the House going to flip? Most pundits say it will flip to Republican control, but there are still some folks out there holding hope that it might not. So I think the real message just is - if you cared about the national scene, you have an opportunity to play locally too. There's a Senate election in the state of Washington as well.
[00:18:15] Crystal Fincher: All right. And next up on people's ballots - is going to vary based on where we live. It's going to be the congressional races. So I actually live in the Ninth Congressional District. We have a very competitive Eighth Congressional District race between Kim Schrier and Matt Larkin. Kim Schrier, the Democrat, Matt Larkin, the Republican. We have other races. Who's on your ballots? What congressional districts are you in?
[00:18:43] Mike McGinn: I've got Seven, which is Pramila Jayapal and Cliff Moon.
[00:18:46] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think all three of you are in Seven there. Those races are a bit less competitive. I think two of the most competitive races here are going to be Kim Schrier versus Matt Larkin. And then down in southwest Washington, actually - in the Third Congressional District - between Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and extremist Republican, MAGA Republican Joe Kent, who is just... It's hard to do justice to him by describing him because I've tried to do it and then I've been like, okay, I can't do this. Here, watch this clip of him and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in this sit-down with a reporter, just answering questions. And it is wild. He does not think January 6th happened in the way we all saw it happened with our eyes. He thinks that it was a CIA false flag operation. He doesn't think that police officers were killed as a result of that. He's deep into conspiracy theories, deep into the election denial of the 2020 election. Just deep into so many things - eager to cut social security, eager to cut so many things, eager to defund Ukraine between Ukraine and Russia, eager to do all sorts of things at the border. This is someone who eagerly and has multiple times appeared on Tucker Carlson. This is not Jaime Herrera Beutler. This is not the type of Republican that people are used to seeing in this district, or even as people think about Republicans in this country now - even the more extreme version that people are getting familiar with. This is the tip of the spear of the most extreme. He models himself after Marjorie Taylor Greene, says he looks up to her and wants to do that, does not want to work across the aisle, doesn't see a point to it. Rarely does media outside of the conservative bubble, does not want to debate Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. This is a race where a lot is at stake. Jim Brunner just wrote an article about it this morning in The Seattle Times. Actually, he shared it - I'm not sure if he wrote it. But this is an important one for people to get engaged in. We've talked about the importance of - even if you don't live in a district, hey, why don't you adopt a district, make some phone calls, do some phone banking, get down there and canvass - do what you can. Don't let this slip away without doing everything possible. The Third Congressional District is traditionally a Republican district, but it's traditionally a Republican district that has elected Republicans like Jaime Herrera Beutler, who were nowhere near as extreme as Joe Kent. This is a closer race than we've seen there in quite some time. If enough people get involved and if enough people get engaged, who knows what could happen? Democrats seem energized down there. This is one where - don't let it go by without everyone pitching in and doing what they can to engage in that race. Any thoughts that you have on that one?
[00:22:10] Mike McGinn: This race, yeah, it does highlight just where the Republican Party has been going. I think you see some of this in the Murray-Smiley race as well. I've been really impressed by the campaigning of the Democrat in the race and the way in which she's approaching the race. This is a district that is - it's a swing district, but it's a lean-R swing district, if that makes sense. It has the Portland suburbs, but it also has more rural areas as well. Yeah, maybe this - if this were on the East Coast, people would be looking at this as a bellwether of which way the trend is going in national politics. Who knows? Maybe we'll be able to tell a little bit from the East Coast about how this race might work out by the time they start announcing results from this coast. But really, I think the D in this race - she's run a really solid race, speaking directly to people's economic concerns as a small business owner as well.
And there's this thing where reporters want to talk about partisanship or polarized politics or divisiveness. And yeah, I would say the electorate is polarized - there are a hell of a lot of folks nationwide who are going to pull the lever for candidates because they want to see Republicans have charge of the chamber, regardless of the shortcomings of the local candidate. It's a really fascinating phenomenon that's going on. But I'm going to make an argument that it's - the Democrats look a lot like candidates I've seen in the past running. And the Republicans don't, in my mind, in terms of the extremism that we start to see on whether or not the election was stolen. The number of election deniers that are out there for the last election - there's just no credible evidence that there was any voter fraud. It went in front of numerous, numerous courts. It went in front of judges appointed by Republicans and Democrats. There's just no evidence for this. And I don't know that the media knows how to handle this - that when you have one side that just denies reality and the other side is still operating mostly within the frame of U.S. politics, as I've seen it in the years I've been involved in U.S. politics, but they both-sides it so much. And I think this raises a great illustration of that. The Democrat is really a right down the middle-of-the-road type of politician, and the Republican here is espousing things that just aren't so, and it's one hell of a tight race down there, according to all the polls. And portraying this as Americans are divided or the politicians are polarizing doesn't capture what's going on.
[00:25:19] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that is a good point. What do you think, Bryce?
[00:25:23] Bryce Cannatelli: Yeah, I just wanted to weave back in something that Shannon mentioned earlier, which is that there are still people who live here and who vote here, who think that they live in Washington - they live in Western Washington - they're pretty safe from things. And I think this race is an important reminder that there are people running with these extreme views. There are these people running here in the state with really far-right priorities and goals. And this is a federal race, so it's gotten a lot of media attention, but it just highlights how important it is to pay attention to local races as well - races that for the State House and for State Senate and other positions - and just pay attention to what people are running on and making sure when we see people coming with extreme and dangerous views, that that's called out, that we let people know. Election Day is still in a few days. There's still opportunities to inform voters in this district about the candidates. There are still opportunities for voters who are really worried about rhetoric like this and candidates like this to get out there and talk to voters and inform them about this race.
[00:26:32] Crystal Fincher: This conversation reminds me of one other thing, and actually was having a conversation about this as we were punditing on Kiro the other day. And there are some Republicans who are going - well, they're calling everybody extreme. Yeah, they're calling Joe Kent extreme, but they're also calling Tiffany Smiley extreme. And they're not the same extreme, but they're painting them with the same brush - you're hearing that for everybody, all the Republicans. If you say it about everybody, it's meaningless. And the challenge is, and the thing that the Republican Party has set up, is that they do have these extremists who are out further than a lot of the other Republicans that are elected, at least outwardly, right? And saying things that have been openly covered as white nationalism, Christian nationalism, that have been anti-Semitic, that have been racist, that have been homophobic, anti-trans, anti-gay - just very openly blatant right? And that is absolutely extreme. And no, not every Republican is outwardly openly saying that. They leave that to the Joe Kents and the Marjorie Taylor Greenes. But what is striking to me is how they have not been reined in by the people who have previously been considered as moderate and have previously been considered as the adults in the room. Those adults in the room are doing nothing to contain that extremist element in the party, and in fact, have given them more power, more visibility. The Republican Party, all of their caucuses have pumped money into these campaigns. Their allied PACs and supporters have pumped money into these campaigns and have been apologists for them. So if you will not rebuke when you hear those things said, if you will not stand up and say, you know what, I'm standing for these principles, and that person is not doing that, and we're both carrying the same label - I don't want to carry the same label as a person who is saying that - that is not what I stand for. We're not standing shoulder to shoulder. We're hearing none of that. We're hearing silence. And there are some people who want to interpret that silence as, well, clearly they don't agree. And when I talk to them, they sound perfectly reasonable, and they've been moderate in the past. We're hearing some of the most troubling things that we have in a while. Just the open anti-Semitism, the open racism, the open homophobia and transphobia that we're seeing is alarming. They're passing laws against it. This is not theoretical language. And we're seeing political violence as a direct result. That, of course, was predicted, right? When we hear speech like that, it incites violence. We have talked about it inciting violence, and it incited violence in multiple places, in multiple ways. And we've seen that just in the past couple of weeks - from January 6th to Nancy Pelosi to the Michigan governor - we're seeing this all over the place, right? And so silence is enabling violence. Silence is not moderation. It's enabling this extremism and violence. So yes, when you hear them all being painted with the same broad brush, it's because they're doing nothing to stop this rapid descent into this cesspool that we're on the precipice of, and that some states have already fallen to, right? It's important to vocally stand up against this, against hate, whenever we see it. And that's not a partisan statement.
And if a party is trying to say that when you say that you need to call out violence, that you need to call out political violence, that you need to stand up and talk against anti-Semitism and call it what it is, and somehow they're putting a partisan label on that, be very wary of a party that says that speaking against those things is speaking against their party. They're telling you what the party is about if those things they're labeling as a partisan attack. I think that's very important to be said. This is so far beyond a Democratic and Republican issue, and we have to be aware that these Republicans are caucusing together, right? They're voting together for a national agenda, and we've heard this national agenda articulated. We've heard the things that they're queuing up. We've seen the types of policies that they're passing in places like Florida and Texas. We have the preview of what's coming there, and it is ugly, right? And ugly to people who used to consider themselves Republican. So to me, this is beyond the conversation of just Democrat and Republican. This is a conversation that we have to have before we even get to issues, because if we're leading with that hateful rhetoric and we're leading with that extremism, it really doesn't matter what someone is saying about issues, because the things that they are saying about people in their community is already excluding people and already doing that. I think that's extremely important to say, that we can't say that enough, and that trying to dismiss this extremism, and dismiss criticisms of it, and dismiss the refusal to call it out for what it is - is extremism itself.
All right. So next on our ballot, we have the state races, starting with Secretary of State, which is a lively race. Now, we have talked a bunch about the Secretary of State race, and have also been posting a lot about it on the Hacks & Wonks Twitter account this week. So for that, between Democrat Steve Hobbs and Non-partisan Julie Anderson, we're going to refer you to those other shows. We'll put links in the show notes. We'll put links to the little audiograms and snippets that we have of the candidates' takes on different things. Steve Hobbs was a longtime Democratic senator known as a moderate for quite some time - and Julie Anderson actually just released a new ad that talks about that and him as a moderate. And then Julie Anderson has been the Pierce County auditor in Pierce County for 12 years, I believe now, and has built relationships around that area. So that's an interesting race to follow. We'll put those links in there, but that's the next one on the ballot.
And then we get into the legislative races, which are going to be different depending on which legislative district that you're in. I just wanted to mention a few of the battleground districts here in the state. So one of them is in the 26th Legislative District Senate race - very important - between Emily Randall, Senator Emily Randall, and current Representative Jesse Young, who's running for that Senate seat. Emily's a Democrat with a strong record and has been representing that community and been in the community for quite some time. Jesse Young is one of the more extreme Republicans in our legislature, has - in the mold of the Matt Sheas, who made a lot of news for his activity in domestic terrorism. And if you think that sounds like a euphemism or like a stretch of the truth, I mean literal domestic terrorism like running a camp training people for war and putting tracking devices on law enforcement vehicles, and making threats to political opponents - extremism - and advancing bills to outlaw abortion in Washington state under threat of putting doctors in prison - that kind of extremism. And Jesse Young, as we talked about last week with Pierce County Council Chair Derek Young, has actually been suspended from working with legislative staff because of his past behavior and harassment or abuse. He is no longer permitted to have legislative staff, which is certainly hobbling in one's ability to get their job done. They lean very heavily on those staff. And so not being allowed to have one and having to do or not get done all of the administrative work, preparation work, ability to meet with constituents, ability to review and prepare legislation and represent the community is absolutely hobbled by that. But that is actually a really close race. Another one where it makes sense if you can adopt a race, that 26th Legislative District is a really important one where people can get involved with and make their voices heard.
Also, the 47th Legislative District is a hotbed of activity - a competitive Senate race there - open seat left by the exiting Senator Mona Das and is being competed for by former State Senator, Democrat Claudia Kauffman and Republican Bill Boyce. This has been a purple district, a swing district, has elected both Democrats and Republicans. This district has a history of extremely close races. And so we have a race here where we're seeing some of the dynamics that we see in Democrat versus Republican races. Choice is a huge issue here. Bill Boyce - being bankrolled by far-right Republicans - has been giving really mushy responses about what he thinks about a woman's right to choose. And so that is certainly on the ballot, as well as just the history of corporate giveaways, tax - as was quoted in the paper - tax breaks and sweetheart deals given to rich developers and donors. And so certainly looking at the donor rolls there, you get a different story of who those legislators would be based on the activity there. So another very important partisan race.
42nd Legislative District, a very competitive race between Sharon Shewmake and Simon Sefzik - another Democrat versus Republican race - very important here for the Senate and just a variety of things. And again, we're seeing just greater space between the two parties. Here in the state, we, I think, have seen Republicans who have considered themselves moderate and who have been less eager to engage in some of the social wedge issue rhetoric that sometimes we see on a national basis. There have been Republicans who wore it as a badge of honor previously to say, no, that's not me. I'm focused on these other issues, but stand up. And whether it's being pro-choice, whether it is standing up for marriage equality. There have been some before here who have done that, some who haven't, but some who have. We are not seeing that now. Things are following the direction of some of the national races. And so we have that there.
30th Legislative District with Claire Wilson and Linda Kochmar, as well as the race between Jamila Taylor and Casey Jones are close - and so engaging in those is important. And then the 44th Legislative District with John Lovick, the Democrat who was previously a representative, currently a representative, now running to be a Senator, against Republican Jeb Brewer. Republican Mark Hamsworth for the House seat versus Brandy Donaghy, who was appointed to that seat and is running to fill the term, this new term. And then April Berg versus her Republican opponent. So pay attention to those races. Please make sure that you're engaging in these battlegrounds.
And then we also have just Seattle races and - that we've covered. So in the 46th Legislative District, we have a classic Seattle moderate versus progressive race. Even though those, when you get into it, the labels might be a little bit simplistic, but certainly someone who seems more resistant to taxation, more resistant to change in Lelach Rave versus Darya Faravar, who wants to take more of an active approach in addressing issues like homelessness, housing affordability, and public safety - and move more in the direction of things that we've seen with the history of working versus those that have not. So that's a choice that we have there. We also have previously interviewed Darya, and so we'll link that in the show notes for your information.
The 36th Legislative District features a race between Democrats Julia Reed and Jeff Manson. We've also interviewed both in that race. And we'll link that in the show notes.
The 37th Legislative District is one where we did a primary candidate forum, have interviewed both of those candidates there - Democrat Chipalo Street and Democrat Emijah Smith. And we also did a debate in partnership with the South Seattle Emerald and others - hosted by the South Seattle Emerald - an in-person debate, actually. And we will link those there. I think that there are some interesting issues in that race, notable differences. We will also share kind of the lightning round stuff. But also, hey let's make sure that we're recognizing the full humanity of people and that we are not treating people who are in the LGBTQ community any differently than others. And that is an issue of difference in that race. So I encourage you all to do your homework about that and make sure that any candidate that you're voting for fully stands up for the rights of all people in our community. And that you communicate with the candidates about that and make sure all of your candidates know how important that is to you.
And then we have the 34th Legislative District with Democrats Leah Griffin and Emily Alvarado. We've interviewed both of them. We'll link both of those shows in the show notes. So there are contested races throughout Seattle. Encourage you to vote in those races and make your choice. If you need help, refer to our show notes or to officialhacksandwonks.com. We have an Election 2022 page there and we'll put all of the resources on there.
Next, we go to the County Prosecuting Attorney's race here in King County, that is between Jim Ferrell, who is the mayor of Federal Way, and Leesa Manion, who's the current Chief of Staff in the Prosecuting Attorney's Office. Jim Ferrell has been endorsed by folks like the King County Republican Party, some mayors, King County Council member Pete von Reichbauer, like the Covington and Algona mayor. Leesa Manion has been endorsed by the King County Democratic party, former governor Gary Locke, local labor unions. So there's a little bit of a difference in the profile of their supporters that kind of indicates the approach that they're looking to take. One, being more in line with some of the data that we're seeing in the most effective approaches to addressing crime and accountability - that has yielded some results in what we've seen, especially with youth crime and youth intervention, which seems to be particularly effective with Leesa Manion and her managing this office and hundreds of staff and attorney, which is certainly in line with what the County Prosecuting Attorney needs to do. Jim Ferrell, coming from the mayor of Federal Way, has talked about more of a punitive approach to this and is talking about cracking down on some of the things that we have been seeing as successful. It's interesting in how this race is shaping up and what the candidates are talking about and what they aren't talking about with them. Certainly Leesa has been leaning into her experience, the type of coalition that she's building, whether it's people who are in support of more common sense gun reform and making sure guns don't proliferate on the streets, to those who are looking to maintain accountability but make sure that we're doing the things that give folks the best chance of reducing recidivism, or people returning, or revictimizing people who are committing further crimes. Jim Ferrell seems very focused on trying to apply longer sentences, lengthier sentences, talking about a more, again, punitive approach, prosecuting more, longer sentences - that type of stuff. So with that, what do you think? What is your take on this race, Shannon?
[00:44:01] Shannon Cheng: So this race is between Leesa Manion, who's the current Chief of Staff for the outgoing King County Prosecutor, Dan Satterberg - she's been in that position for quite a time. And her opponent is Jim Ferrell, who is the current mayor of Federal Way. So when I look at this race, I see - with Leesa Manion who - it's a continuation of what King County has been doing, which I would characterize as incremental reform of the criminal legal system to be more fair and equitable. I think this can be embodied in initiatives they aspire to, such as declaring racism as a public health crisis or the goal of Zero Youth Detention. So I think with Manion, you will get a continuation of the slow work that the county is doing to try to make our criminal legal system more equitable and fair. Whereas with Ferrell, I see this as a candidate who's trying to throw us back to punitive tactics that have been proven to be ineffective. He wants to be more tough-on-crime and is riding this wave of Republicans pointing to crime as being the reason not to support the Democratic candidate. I think that Ferrell has specifically spoken about being against and wanting to roll back some of the diversion programs that King County has started to try to use, especially for youth. And I also - even if you don't - if you agree on this punitive approach, I think it's also worth considering that right now the legal system is kind of at capacity. So what Ferrell is suggesting is going to put even more strain on it. The courts are already - have backlogs coming from the pandemic and the jails are full and not functioning well and not providing people humane conditions to be in there. So I just fear that that will lead to a lot more suffering for many people across our county. And I think this is a really important race to look at and think about.
[00:46:12] Crystal Fincher: So Mike, what's your take on this?
[00:46:14] Mike McGinn: It's interesting to see the contrast here. It's a local version of this national debate that we have now seen - that the proper response to crime is to crack down harder. And we're seeing this here as well. I worked with Dan Satterberg and he was a really interesting elected official. And honestly, to me, I may not have agreed with him on every decision - I know I didn't agree with him on every decision he made. But he was a civil servant first and foremost. He was trying to figure out what was the right path forward. He was engaged in the discussion. He led on things like Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, people returning to the community from jail - getting their records cleared and restoration of rights. So he was really, and it's interesting, he was elected as a Republican, moved the race to a nonpartisan race and then was elected as a Democrat. So he clearly was somebody who was willing to go where the evidence led and not go based on ideology. So that's the experience we've had from that office, which is, I think, what you want in a prosecutor's office. It's a pretty important position. The effect it has on people's lives is immense. I think that really says something that we see someone looking to continue that tradition. And then we see someone coming in with - if only we punished people more. How's that been working? Really? We have some information on that, which is it doesn't really work. It takes a combination of the judicial system and community systems to really try to deal with root causes of crime, to deal with recidivism, to deal with the issues here. And I think that this is a little bit of a bellwether here. Are we going to try to be a progressive place, a progressive county that adopts and looks at new approaches? Or are we going to go to a more regressive approach to this? Because, yeah, that's worked so well in solving crime over the decades.
[00:48:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think so. What's your take, Bryce?
[00:48:37] Bryce Cannatelli: Yeah, I don't know how much more I have to add to this other than just the importance of this race and the importance of making sure we have somebody who's really thinking about the - not just people's emotional concerns about crime, but the actions and the strategies and the programs that have been proven to address the things that actually lower crime. We've talked on a number of different episodes throughout this year about programs that have successfully reduced recidivism. And those are programs that often get criticized by people who claim to be tough on crime. And I just think that's something to interrogate our candidates about for this position, because the county prosecutor has a lot of influence in terms of how the county addresses crime in a way that's going to impact real people in big ways.
[00:49:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I agree. I will chime in and say that we just got a new public poll here that was just reported on, I think yesterday, showing that this race is basically statistically tied. So turnout is going to be really important. Lots of people talk about - they look at the federal races - they wonder if their vote matters. They're going, okay millions of people are voting. Why does mine make a difference? Really what makes a difference are these down-ballot races, are these local races. If you care about the issues of homelessness, justice, equity, affordability, what our community looks like, who it serves - our criminal legal system is an essential part of that equation. And we're talking about, in so many of these conversations, how we intervene and address victims. And most people who have perpetrated crimes have been victims of them. And how we intervene when people are victims, especially early, and especially when they're young, dictates how their future goes and whether they end up on the path to criminalization and poverty or a better path. So the way we intervene in that makes a difference. The way we treat and handle these cases that come through and how we address accountability depends on whether our streets are made safer, whether our tax dollars are used in a way that makes it less likely that people are going to commit crime and less likely that people are victimized or more, right? And we're seeing the impacts of the status quo of a more punitive approach. And either we choose to keep doing the same thing, and polls keep showing that no one is satisfied with the condition of things today. And so we do need to consider that when we are making these choices. And I hope you take a long, hard look at that. And most of all, get engaged and vote, make sure other people vote. And talk about these races, talk about the county attorney races, talk about the judicial races that we're going to talk about in just a moment, right? These are very important.
Turnout is not where we would love it to be. It's lagging behind some previous years here locally, especially among younger people. And I know that is concerning to some. So the more that people can do to make sure that everyone can - and the most impactful thing you can do is just text those close to you, call those close to you, talk to them. Hey, coworker - hey, did you get that ballot in? What are you doing for this race? Remember, this is important. Hey, cousin, hey, brother, sister, mom - it's those connections close to you and those personal contacts that actually make it more likely for those people to vote. External organizations can try and do all the voter mobilization that they can and that work is valuable and good and should happen. But hearing from someone who you care about and who cares about you saying, hey, make sure you do this, you have any questions, you need help - is one of the best things you can do to make sure that people actually turn out to vote.
So with that, we can talk about a couple of these judicial races, which are next on the ballot. Now we see the state Supreme Court races and we see Justice Mary Yu, who - you probably hear affection and admiration in my voice because I have affection and admiration for Justice Mary Yu. We also have a great interview with her from a few months back that we will post in the episode notes. Justice Barbara Madsen, also wonderful. Justice Helen Whitener, who is just - look, I'm going to just go ahead and get personal. Justice Helen Whitener is everything. I just need everyone to know that Justice Whitener is everything from - just everything. Her experience - vast, broad experience - in so many elements and areas of the law. The thoughtfulness, the lived experience, the outreach into the community - just a beautiful human being and an effective and intelligent justice. I am a fan of Justice Helen Whitener and we've done a couple interviews with Justice Whitener. And fortunately this time she isn't being challenged by anyone mediocre like she was last time, so this is an uncontested race. And when I say mediocre - I mean just got his license to practice law in order to run against someone with a resume as vast and deep as Justice Whitener's.
And so now we'll talk about the contested municipal judge races in the City of Seattle between Damon Shadid, who is the incumbent in that one seat - has been endorsed by a number of Democratic organizations, received Exceptionally Well Qualified by a number of organizations, and is standing on his record. And a new challenger from the City Attorney's Office, Nyjat Rose-Akins, who is endorsed by the King County Republican Party and Jenny Durkan, and is wanting to make changes to some things and talking about the record of Community Court and changes that she wants to make there. In the other race, we have judge Adam Eisenberg, who has been rated Exceptionally Well Qualified by a number of the local and ethnic bar associations, but also has received a high number of negative feedback and surveys from the King County Bar Association and concerns about management and whether women are treated fairly under his management. And then Pooja Vaddadi, who is a newcomer and a new challenger, who has been - received a number of Democratic endorsements, but also has not received any ratings from local judicial bar associations because she has chosen not to stand in front of them for ratings. Bryce, how would you characterize those races?
[00:55:42] Bryce Cannatelli: Like Crystal said, we got to hear from all of these candidates in a forum. I'll start with the Damon Shadid and Nyjat Rose-Akins portion of it - they're running for Position 7. Damon Shadid has been a judge in this position for quite a while. And the main point of difference between the two is Nyjat Rose-Akins often talked about during the forum criticisms of Community Court and her interest in making a lot of changes to the Community Court system, whereas Judge Shadid has defended what that court has been able to do and hopes to see it continue in its current direction. As far as Pooja Vaddadi and Judge Eisenberg, that's another kind of longtime incumbent in the position - I can't remember how long he's been in that role - and a newcomer. And Pooja Vaddadi brought up concerns about the way that Judge Eisenberg has handled himself in the courtroom. You can hear her talk about that in our forum specifically at the end - is something that her campaign has been highlighting as of late, but also just the need that she claims there is in the municipal court for some changes.
[00:56:52] Crystal Fincher: What's your take on those races, Shannon?
[00:56:55] Shannon Cheng: So I think - so for the Judge Eisenberg and Pooja Vaddadi race - Pooja Vaddadi is a practicing public defender. And I think her experience in being in the court with somebody such as Judge Eisenberg presiding - it was a maybe not great experience for her. And so she saw a lot of injustice there and felt called to try to step up and bear witness and call out what was happening and how she has a different vision for how that court could be run. I personally appreciate that because I think judicial races are just very low information. It's really hard - as Crystal just went through, there was a long list of uncontested judges on the ballot - and I often look at those names and I have no idea who those people are. And so it has been interesting in this race to get a window into how courts work. And I know for me, it's been very educational. And I continue to aspire to learn more about how courts are run and what matters. And yeah, so for the Damon Shadid and Nyjat Rose-Akins - as Bryce said, I think it comes down to the vision of how Community Court will be run in the future in Seattle. Whether you want somebody from the City Attorney's Office driving the vision of how to handle low-level offenses in the city versus the path that we had been on to to try to support people in need and not further entangle them in a system that kind of - a system that can snowball on people's lives.
[00:58:41] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that's right on. And I think in these races, we are seeing a little bit of a difference. There has been a lot called out by Pooja Vaddadi's campaign. But in fairness, I think you referred to Pooja talking about how she was partly moved to run for this position based on some of the injustices she saw. But one of the issues in this race that has been brought up is that Judge Eisenberg was the recipient of the highest number of - basically highest amount of negative feedback. King County Bar Association does an anonymous poll of its member attorneys for judges and the highest percentage of attorneys returned negative responses for Judge Eisenberg - higher than all of the other judges and gave that feedback. Judge Eisenberg didn't seem to feel that that had any validity. And he talked about how he had been rated Exceptionally Well Qualified, which is the highest rating given by a number of different bar associations. And it being pretty standard that judges go before different bar associations and get interviewed and they evaluate their fitness for judicial office and provide a rating from Exceptionally Well Qualified, I think Very Well Qualified, just on there. And so he had a number of highest ratings. And Pooja Vaddadi decided not to sit in front of those. And she said it was because she felt that it was biased or tilted or they would automatically give high ratings to incumbents, but not give high ratings to people who weren't incumbents. So she didn't feel the need to sit before them, which is a bit different. A lot of first-time candidates do go before those bodies and are evaluated and come out with decent ratings. I'm trying to think if I recall first-time candidates getting Exceptionally Well Qualified - I think I recall a couple, but also some who haven't. So I don't know, there very well may be a role that incumbency plays in that, but that was an element in that race that came through. As well as prior coverage about whether Judge Eisenberg potentially gave someone a harsher sentence for exercising their right to a jury trial instead of accepting a plea deal. And that being a wrong thing - that is a right that people have to exercise. And whether someone pleads guilty to a charge on a deal or is found guilty on that charge, penalizing someone simply for choosing to go to trial is not something that should happen and is certainly frowned upon. And so there was some coverage in question about that. We can also link that in the show notes. So those are certainly interesting races. And I think Shannon summed up really well just what's at stake moving forward in the Damon Shadid and Nyjat Rose-Akins race.
So now let's get into the meat of a Seattle big-time initiative - Propositions 1A and 1B, which are on the City of Seattle ballot. They are not on my ballot, but we've got ballots waving with Shannon and Bryce and Mike over here talking about this question.
[01:02:10] Mike McGinn: Do you want me to take a shot at it?
[01:02:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, go ahead. Take a shot at it, Mike McGinn.
[01:02:16] Mike McGinn: Okay. We all know how ballots work - you get a choice between - in the primary, you normally get a whole lot of candidates to vote for and you pick one. And what this is proposing is that in the City of Seattle, whether you want a different way to vote that will give you more choices. So the first question is, and let me tell you what the two choices are. One is called approval voting. So you'd look at your ballot and you'd have multiple people on the ballot and anyone that you approved of, you'd vote for. So you could vote for one, two, three, four, to approve as many as you want. And the idea there is that you don't want to have to restrict your vote to one candidate. And I have to say there have been times when I've had multiple friends on the ballot - I just want to be able to say I voted for all of them. But there are other good reasons to want to maybe approve multiple candidates. The other style is something called ranked choice voting. So in that case, you'd rank the candidates - one, two, three, four, five. And they'd add up the votes, and whoever the lowest vote getter was would get dropped off. And so let's say - I'm standing here with Bryce and Shannon and Crystal - let's say I had ranked them Crystal first, and then Bryce, and then Shannon. If Crystal was the lowest vote getter, she'd be off the list. And my vote would now go to Bryce - my second vote would be counted. And you do this by a process of eliminating the lowest-ranked candidate until you get to a winner. And we'll probably get more into why - what are the differences between the two systems and why they're better. And there's a whole world of election nerddom, which is substantial - what is the best way to represent what the voters really want, but you're going to get to choose here.
So the real question is, do you want to keep the existing system - and that's the first question on the ballot - or do you want a new system? And if you vote Yes, I want a new system, you'll also be asked - well, actually, no matter how you vote on whether you want a new system - you're then asked, which one do you like more, approval voting or ranked choice voting? So yeah, it is pretty dense and complicated. You probably want to sit down and look at this. But if I could break it down for you - if you think you want more ways to have your vote count and have more discretion in how to award it to people, you'll want to vote Yes on the initial question. And then you'll get to weigh in and decide which one of those two - approval or ranked choice voting - you like more. And that'll tee it up for people to offer their opinions on what they like more on the rest of the podcast. How was that? Did I do okay, guys, in getting the description out?
[01:05:13] Crystal Fincher: You did! You did, in fact, do okay of getting the description out. And I think also just the - functionally on the ballot - what you said was really important and I just want to reiterate. So this - we're talking about - okay, there are two choices there, approval voting and ranked choice voting. But when you get your ballot, you're going to see that it is constructed in a way that's not just that simple choice. There really is an initial question and then a secondary question. The initial question - why don't you just read what's on the ballot?
[01:05:47] Bryce Cannatelli: Yeah, I could do that. I can also hold it up to you, so you can see the wall of text that happens beforehand. Shannon is shaking her head on the video feed, because - Seattle voters will know it if they've opened their ballots - there's a lot of text that goes before you can actually answer the question. So please read your ballot from top to bottom to make sure that you vote for everything. But the way that it's formatted is we get an explanation of both of the individual propositions. So it says Proposition 1A, submitted by initiative petition number 134, and Proposition 1B, alternative proposed by the city council and mayor, concern allowing voters to select multiple candidates in city primary elections. Proposition 1A would allow voters in primary elections for mayor, city attorney and city council to select on the ballot as many candidates as they approve of for each office. The two candidates receiving the most votes for each office would advance to the general election consistent with state law. The city would consult with King County to include instructions on the primary ballot, such as vote for as many as you approve of for each office. As an alternative, the city council and mayor have proposed Proposition 1B, which would allow primary election voters for mayor, city attorney and city council to rank candidates by preference. In the first round of processing, as Mike just explained, each voter's top preference would be counted. The candidate receiving the fewest would be eliminated. Successive rounds of counting would eliminate one candidate each round - counting each voter's top preference among remaining candidates until two candidates remain to proceed to the general election. King County would include instructions on the ballot for voters. And then the first question: Should either of these measures be enacted into law? Question number two: Regardless of whether you voted yes or no above, if one of these measures is enacted, which one should it be? And then you get to choose between Proposition 1A for approval and Proposition 1B for ranked choice.
[01:07:48] Crystal Fincher: Okay, excellent. So now as you look at this, Shannon, what do you make of this question and what should happen with it?
[01:07:56] Shannon Cheng: This is really confusing. You just heard the wall of text Bryce read us and I looked at my ballot and - if these voting reforms are supposed to make voting easier or more representative, the way that we're getting to it does not feel like it's an example of what it's trying to do. I am not an election nerd, but I am a nerd. And I guess when I looked at ranked choice versus approval, there's just something about approval that doesn't feel right to me. I guess I think about it as - when you look at the total number of votes that end up getting counted in an approval situation, it feels like there's more votes than people. As Mike was saying, if there were - let's say, 10 people on the ballot, I could vote for one person and the next person could vote for 10. And so then when you add everything up, there's 11 votes and the other person would have gotten 10 votes and I would have only gotten one. Whereas I feel like in ranked choice, it at least preserves the one vote per one person. And yeah, I guess for me, just being and looking at this from the outside nerd-like person, that's how I feel about it. But I'm sure Mike has opinions otherwise.
[01:09:14] Mike McGinn: No, no - I'm not here to argue with it. The first thing is just to hopefully shed more light - we'll see if I can pull that off. The first thing is that it does sound confusing. And I think, personally, I think that having more choice is good. And I think both of them are designed to solve the edge - the case where - in the case of ranked choice voting, where you end up in the general election with two candidates under our current system, and maybe there was an acceptable middle-of-the-road candidate who might have done well, might have been a second choice for everybody, or might have been an approval for everybody, that might have emerged. But you tended to get maybe some more passion from either end of the spectrum, giving you choices from the ends. The other thing I've seen, and we've seen this statewide a couple of times, where you have two Republicans on the ballot and five Democrats, and the two Republicans end up being the two highest vote-getters in the primary and advancing to the general, and something like approval voting or ranked choice voting might have elevated a different set of choices. So I think they both have this kind of moderating influence. They're meant to have a moderating influence and let candidates acceptable to more people have a chance to get through and not have it be run by the passion from, say, the edges of the electorate in races with lots and lots of candidates. And I'll stop there - I think both of them are good in that way at - and giving you more choices, more opportunities to express preferences of who you like. I think that ranked choice voting feels good to me in the sense of, oh, I get to put them in the order I like. And this is where I'm not going to be a good representative by their campaign. I think both campaigns will make a claim that there's a set of circumstances where, in this case, you might not get the best candidate if you have this type of profile of candidates. And both sides will make those arguments. I tend to think they're edge cases, and I encourage people to look at what they think they like most out of those two systems. But I think both sides tend to overstate the negatives of the other person's approach, as opposed to the positive of having the ability to, as opposed to the positive of having more choices, which is - I lean towards, yeah, definitely vote Yes, we should get more choices on how to vote. And then pick your pony. And many people are, have picked their pony. And there's a lot of folks leaning in saying ranked choice voting is the way to go. Obviously, the approval voting folks got enough signatures to put it on the ballot - they got some proponents. So read their arguments as to which is better. But I think both are better than the current system, personally.
[01:12:19] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And so this is an interesting thing. So because we have two questions or three questions - kind of three questions in two questions - we have had both The Seattle Times and Stranger weigh in with their endorsements on this race. Interestingly, both The Seattle Times and the Stranger urge a No vote for changing - hey, stay the course, with varying reasons for that. But both recommending a No vote. And the Times says, hey, just vote no. And then don't even do anything else. Just leave it alone. Leave it blank. Stranger saying, okay, vote No. But if you vote No, also vote for ranked choice voting, because how this will be tabulated is - for the first question, should Seattle change the way it votes or not - that Yes or No question. If the answer turns out to be Yes, if a majority of the people vote Yes, even if you personally vote No, then it does move to the next question to decide what method that change is going to be. And so even if you're voting No, if it turns out that a majority of the people vote Yes, do you want a say in what that change is going to be? If so, then you need to fill out whether you want it to be 1A or 1B, ranked choice voting or approval voting. So I just want to make it clear that there is a difference voting No on the first question can make and that you don't - if you vote No, means that you can tell me - if you vote No, it means that you can still say No, but still have a voice in what happens should enough people say Yes. And I think you would want that to count more, your voice to be able to count more in this election. So Stranger's argument really basically says, hey, they love ranked choice voting, but they really want to make sure that approval voting does not pass. And voting No makes it absolutely clear that approval voting should not pass and hopefully ranked choice voting can pass later.
Lots of conversation about the type of funding and the people behind approval voting. A lot of tech money in Seattle Approves - as The Stranger says - California tech bros. And it qualifying from paid signature gatherers - and realistically everything qualifies using paid signature gatherers if it qualifies - just about nearly everything. So it's also been implemented in a lot fewer places than ranked choice voting has and it just seems like it doesn't have the type of evidence behind it. Hey, maybe it's a good thing, but I think they're saying we don't have enough to see that it actually achieves the kind of change that we're trying to achieve. And I will just throw in personally, there's a lot of talk about look at the results in Seattle did elected - I mean, in New York it elected a moderate mayor who I'm not sure that a lot of actual Democrats are eager to claim as a Democrat. In Alaska, it elected a Democrat where previously there were Republicans and looking at the results. I actually think looking at results is not the right way to look at this thing. It's - does this enable more people to participate and really feel like they have their voice heard better? I think the argument for change, whichever way it goes, is made stronger by - right now, especially in crowded primaries, you may find three out of seven people to be really desirable and acceptable and four to be unacceptable, right? And who knows if your personal preference makes it through, but right now people are forced into making some concessions many times because they're like - it's a crowded primary - I really like candidate A, but it looks like candidate B is going to win, and there's a big challenge from candidate C who I don't like. So I'd rather B win than C. So I'm going to go ahead and vote for B even though I really like candidate A. I've heard so many variations of that in just my time talking to people. And it really is a shame because it doesn't allow people to vote their conscience, to vote their true beliefs. And then it gives us a warped idea of what the public is really saying. You've got a bunch of pundits who look at - well, this candidate won and that must mean that every single thing they said is popular with voters. And what challengers were saying were not, right? And that's not ever the complete story. This actually enables the views of the public to be better heard and to be better represented and to give potentially the chance for - I think of Tammy Morales's first run against Bruce Harrell and how that was a really close race that a lot of media did not pick up on. And because it wasn't covered a lot, a lot of people just didn't pay attention to it, didn't vote it, and she lost by just a little bit. If people would have known that or if they would have felt like, hey, in this primary, this is an important thing to do, if they could have voted - hey, Tammy plus someone else - we could have had a different result in that race and could be in a different place in the City of Seattle right now. But that - those are the kinds of things that are interesting. What do you think, Mike?
[01:18:05] Mike McGinn: I really like your description of the strategic voting problem that we face, right? That you just feel like, yeah, you have to get behind the bandwagon of somebody, otherwise your vote is wasted. And both the approval voting and the ranked choice voting, in different ways, give you the opportunity to still be heard in that regard. A couple of other observations. One is that, and this seems to be broadly true, there are two sides usually in Seattle. The business side usually finds itself a candidate and there's a progressive side that finds - but the progressive side doesn't find a candidate - we find four or five and the business side picks one. So you know you're going to get a business side candidate out, and - because they'll get enough votes to push it through. And unfortunately, on the progressive side, that choice is often made by The Stranger, which wants to keep the current system. If you look at the history of races and primary races in Seattle, odd year election, low turnout, not necessarily a lot of information - almost always it's The Seattle Times endorsed candidate and The Stranger endorsed candidate. And those are the only two candidates that come through. And you have to make a choice - what are you going to do as a primary voter in that scenario? And I think that approval voting, ranked choice voting gives you an opportunity to say, yeah, I'll go with The Stranger candidate, but I also want to go with someone else. Or I want to put The Stranger endorsed candidate as my second or third choice in ranked choice voting. I think it takes a little bit of power away from those people who really can put their thumbs on the scales, and I think that would be a good thing in Seattle races. And again, I go back to where I am, where I've looked at races, where it's yeah, there's three progressives I can vote for in a year in this race. And who knows, maybe if I'm lucky, the one I really love will break through under this system, as opposed to the one that the weight of opinion is getting behind, that's decided long before I get to look at that ballot.
[01:20:13] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that is smart. And definitely makes sense. What do you make of it, Bryce?
[01:20:19] Bryce Cannatelli: Yeah, again, I agree with what a lot of people have been saying. It's not helpful to make voters think about these votes in such a strategic kind of politico way, instead of letting them vote the way that's truest to their beliefs about what's best. I think especially if you're - if you voted in the 2020 Democratic primary, you had to make a lot of those decisions - and you're really familiar with how that really compromises your views when it comes to actually voting. And I also just agree with the concerns about approval voting. There are benefits to that system for sure. But also when it plays out, you're still motivated to vote for only one candidate, because unlike ranked choice voting, your vote gets diluted across all of the people that you approve. So I think that's the most common criticism of approval voting as a system that I've seen. But I also think emphasizing what other people have brought up today - that the approval voting campaign is not really a grassroots campaign. It's not really coming from the majority of the people in Seattle. Ranked choice voting has been here for a while, it's been getting some buzz. But approval voting is kind of coming out of left field. So it's understandable that people are wary of it. And I understand where The Stranger is coming from with their recommendation on how people should vote on these questions.
[01:21:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that's it. And I think you just characterized what my personal concern would be. Like my first choice, I want to be my first choice. My second choice, I want to be my second choice. I want my choices weighted with my own ranking. I want to let it be known that this is my preference. And so if this doesn't make it, then okay, fine. You can go to my number two. I would not want all of the votes to count equally because, 90% of the time out of all of the choices, I don't like all of them or dislike all of them equally. Usually there's a scale and a range there, so I would want my vote to reflect that. I will also say, and I've talked about this before - whatever happens, whenever there's any kind of change, it is absolutely critical for there to be a ton of voter engagement and education before this change, like a year's worth - in all different formats, in all different languages, in all different venues, in person and online, in community centers, in language, in all of the settings that people are in. Just going all out on the outreach and education to make sure that people understand that this is different. Think about all the talking that we're having to do with just this differently formulated question and how confusing this one differently formulated question about how we're going to vote is. And then multiply that to get to how challenging or disorienting it may be for someone who is not expecting a change to see it and who doesn't understand that. And I just want to make sure that - I think a lot of people who listen to this program have a variety of types of privilege, as do I, right? And we're very online, we're connected to information, sometimes more than other people. These are very - the show is called Hacks & Wonks for a reason - hacks and wonks definitely listen to this show and we're paying attention to all this stuff more than most other people are. We are weird. But normal people are not engaging with this on a regular basis. Normal people realize that there's an election when they get their ballot and they're like, oh, okay. When the rest of us are like, we've been talking about this for months and have seen all the ads and all that. Regular people don't do that. So I just want to make sure that we are acknowledging that no matter what happens, even if someone does get their preference, that it is critical that we engage with the need to educate everyone and reach into the people who are the least connected and least able to find this information on their own.
All right. And with that, I think we are wrapping up our Ballot-in-Review with Hacks & Wonks. So thank you so much for all of this. And thank you for taking the time to go through this ballot. I know this was - this ended up taking longer than we thought, but I think it's valuable. Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, November 4th, 2022 - my brother's birthday, happy birthday, Tyrell - the producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng and our Production Coordinator is Bryce Cannatelli. Our insightful co-host today was activist, community leader, former mayor of Seattle and Executive Director of America Walks, the popular Mike McGinn. You can find Mike on Twitter @mayormcginn with two n's. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. And you can find me on Twitter @finchfrii with two i's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks wherever you get podcasts or type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Subscribe to get the full almost-live show on Friday and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. Leave us a review if you like us and you can get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you soon.
Today’s episode is a recording of a live forum between Seattle Municipal Court Judge candidates - Judge Adam Eisenberg and Pooja Vaddadi for Position 3, Nyjat Rose-Akins and Judge Damon Shadid for Position 7. The forum was live streamed by Hacks & Wonks on October 12, 2022 and moderated by Crystal Fincher.
Resources
Find links to the YouTube video and transcript here
Campaign Website - Judge Adam Eisenberg
Campaign Website - Pooja Vaddadi
Campaign Website - Nyjat Rose-Akins
Campaign Website - Judge Damon Shadid
Register to vote, update your registration, see what’s on your ballot and more here
Past felony conviction? Information on re-registering to vote at the Washington Voting Rights Restoration Coalition
Transcript
[00:00:00] Bryce Cannatelli: Hello everyone. This is Bryce from the Hacks & Wonks team. Today’s episode is a recording of our City of Seattle Municipal Court Judge forum which was originally streamed live on October 12. You can find video from the event as well as a full text transcript on our website officialhacksandwonks.com. Thank you for listening!
[00:00:34] Crystal Fincher: Greetings, everyone. My name is Crystal Fincher. I'm a political consultant and the host of this candidate forum tonight. Welcome to this Hacks & Wonks 2022 Primary Candidate Forum for City of Seattle Municipal Court Judge Positions 3 and 7.
For those who need a refresher, the Seattle Municipal Court handles all misdemeanor and gross misdemeanor crimes, civil infractions, and other offenses authorized under the Seattle municipal Code and Revised Code of Washington statutes.
Misdemeanors are crimes where the maximum sentence is 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Gross Misdemeanors are crimes that carry a maximum sentence of 364 days in jail and a $5,000 fine, including offenses such as driving under the influence, domestic violence, theft, and trespass.
Infractions are acts that are prohibited by law but are not legally defined as a crime, like parking tickets and traffic or non-traffic infractions.
And Civil Offenses are filed with the court when the City of Seattle seeks enforcement of its fire code, housing, and other city ordinance violations.
The majority of the Seattle Municipal Court Judges' time is dedicated to jury trials and pretrial hearings. They also hear sentencings, arraignments, reviews, non-jury, or 'bench' trials, and can perform marriage ceremonies.
Seattle Municipal Court has seven judges who are elected to four-year terms. Every other year, the judges select one judge to act as the Presiding Judge for a two-year term. The Presiding Judge's responsibilities including: overseeing the magistrates, lead the management and administration of the court's business, recommend policies and procedures that improve the court's effectiveness, allocate resources that maximize the court's ability to resolve disputes fairly and expeditiously, and determine judicial assignments.
We're excited to be able to live stream this forum on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Additionally, we are recording this forum for rebroadcast and later viewing.
We invite our audience to ask questions of our candidates. If you're watching a live stream online, then you can ask questions by commenting on the live stream. You can also text your questions to 206-395-6248, and that number will scroll at the bottom of the screen.
The candidates running for City of Seattle Municipal Court Judge Position 3 with us right now are - in alphabetical order - Adam Eisenberg and Pooja Vaddadi. And for Position 7 we have - again, in alphabetical order - Nyjat Rose-Akins and Damon Shadid.
A few reminders before we jump into the forum. I want to remind you to vote. Ballots will be mailed to your mailbox starting Wednesday, October 19th - that's this coming Wednesday. You can register to vote, update your registration, and see what will be on your ballot at MyVote.wa.gov.
I want to mention that tonight's answers will be timed. Each candidate will have one minute to introduce themselves initially, and 90 seconds to answer each subsequent question. Candidates may be engaged with rebuttal or follow up with questions and will have 30 seconds to respond. Time will be indicated by the colored dot labeled "timer" on the screen. The dot will initially appear as green, when there are 30 seconds left it will turn yellow, and when there are 10 seconds left it will turn red. You will be muted when time is up.
Now we'll turn to the candidates who will each have one minute to introduce themselves, starting with Adam Eisenberg. Then Pooja Vaddadi. Next Nyjat Rose-Akins. Finally Damon Shadid.
So starting with our first candidate.
[00:04:13] Judge Adam Eisenberg: Good evening. Municipal courts present a unique opportunity for restorative justice and diversion. For many of the people who come before me, this is their first stop in the legal system - I want it to be their last. I grew up with an abusive father and I know that treatment is critical to healing survivors, families, and abusers. That's why I helped create the Domestic Violence Intervention Project, a community-based program that serves as an alternative to jail. DVIP provides individualized treatment to break cycles of abuse and trauma. I'm proud to be the only LGBTQ+ member of the Seattle Municipal Court bench. Before being appointed in 2017, I had 25 years of experience as a prosecutor, civil defense attorney, magistrate and commissioner. I believe my diverse background is why I've been rated "Exceptionally Well Qualified" by the King County Bar and four minority bar associations. It's also why I've been elected Presiding Judge by my peers and why I have the support of Supreme Court Justices Yu, González and Whitener, local district Democrats, the unions that represent our court clerks and many more. Thank you.
[00:05:11] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. And next.
[00:05:17] Pooja Vaddadi: Okay, sorry - thank you. My name is Pooja Vaddadi and I'm running for judge in Seattle to serve the community that raised me and bring about a positive change in the culture of Seattle Municipal Court. I'm a career public defender and my platform is centered on a recommitment to fairness, compassion, and restorative justice. At this time, I've been endorsed by every Democratic organization in Seattle and King County that has endorsed in this race, as well as the Washington Young Democrats, the Democrats for Diversity and Inclusion and the National Women's Political Caucus. Aside from three legislative districts, these endorsements are exclusive. I always planned to run for judge, but I wish that I didn't have to run right now. Practice at Seattle Municipal Court showed me a toxic and biased judiciary acting against the interest of public safety and undermining the institution of the court. I'm running now because it is urgent that we change direction. This campaign is about the people of Seattle. As a public defender, I came to understand the specific challenges that prevent misdemeanor defendants from interacting productively with the criminal justice system. I'm running to bring the court back in touch with the law and with the circumstances of those it serves.
[00:06:17] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Nyjat Rose-Akins.
[00:06:21] Nyjat Rose-Akins: Thank you. Good evening. My name is Nyjat Rose-Akins and I'm running for Position 7 on the Seattle Municipal Court bench. I love Seattle. I became a U.S. citizen here, but I've seen the breakdown in collaboration across the city. I'm running to help repair that breakdown to improve the community's confidence in the court and to return to an individualized approach to judicial decision-making. I'm running because I've spent the last 12 years working with victims and managing relationships - the community relationships with police. In my 12 years at the City Attorney's Office, I've partnered with businesses, government officials, community members, and law enforcement. I've seen firsthand that issues affecting communities are rarely resolved in silos. Real change takes collaboration from all those involved, a willingness to listen, and the ability to have the courage to say when things are not working. I am running for Seattle Municipal Court to make it better. Thank you.
[00:07:20] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Damon Shadid.
[00:07:22] Judge Damon Shadid: My name is Judge Damon Shadid. I've been a judge at Seattle Municipal Court for the past eight years. For the past four years, I've been presiding over the majority of Seattle Municipal Court's therapeutic courts - including Community Court which I helped found, Mental Health Court which I helped expand, and the Consolidated Calendar which I was able to create in partnership with other criminal legal system organizations. All of these programs have one thing in common. Accountability is best sought through rehabilitation, not through holding people in jail. Without rehabilitation, we are not going to make our community safer - and that's what all of my programs do. It is an individualized approach to find out what people's barriers are and to help them connect with the vital social services that will help them exit the criminal legal system. I'm proud to be endorsed by the Progressive Voters Guide, by The Seattle Times, by nine Supreme Court Justices, by many labor organizations, as well as community leaders, including -
[00:08:31] Crystal Fincher: Thank you, I believe that's your time.
Our first question will begin with Nyjat Rose-Akins, then follow up with Damon Shadid. What is your evaluation of the Community Court system? What is working and what's not working?
[00:08:46] Nyjat Rose-Akins: Thank you for that question. My evaluation of the Community Court system that is run out of Seattle Municipal Court is that it is not working. I have been partnering with members in the community as well as businesses and really trying to understand what is happening in that court. As a prosecutor - when I initially started at the City Attorney's Office in 2010 - I worked in Community Court. So I understand how the program is supposed to work. And currently I do not believe it's working because right now it seems as if it's a very indiscriminate approach to low-level crime, meaning it seems as if all types of crimes can come in regardless of what that individual may be doing in the community and whether or not that individual continues to commit crime even after being in Community Court. For instance, an individual - me reviewing the docket in the court, the court dockets - I've seen individuals with six, seven, eight crimes all at one time in Community Court. That shows me that that is not working. And low-level crime should be something very small. However, I'm seeing crimes where individuals are stealing thousands of dollars, $970 from businesses and Home Depot and Target. So my issue with it is that it doesn't seem to be working and we continue to just recycle people in and out without any real solution.
[00:10:19] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Judge Shadid.
[00:10:22] Judge Damon Shadid: It's interesting. My opponent has never appeared in Community Court, which I founded - she was in a prior iteration of Community Court. But let me give you some numbers to show you how Community Court is working. 80% of the graduates of Community Court have no further criminal law violations - 80%. That's over two years that we ran the numbers and the graduates are not coming back in the criminal legal system - that is results that work. Let me tell you something else - now, Community Court was created in a collaboration with the City Attorney's Office and with the Public Defender's Office. We meet every two weeks, we tweak the program, we make it better. And in all of these meetings - my opponent has never come to the meeting, has never offered any sort of critique of the court, but instead has come from the outside where she's only reviewed dockets, but never actually been in the court, never been in the meetings. If she had been in the meeting, she would know that they work. She would know that we're collaborating and she would know that what we are trying to do is bring accountability through rehabilitation and it is working. Of the people who come to court, 90% of those people enter Community Court. Of those 90%, 75% graduate. And of those graduates, 90% don't re-offend in the next two years. Those are real numbers. Those work and we should keep going with Community Court, make it better, and expand it.
[00:11:48] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Pooja Vaddadi.
[00:11:54] Pooja Vaddadi: Thank you. I believe a lot of Community Court is working. I've had a lot of clients that cycled in and out of Community Court and have been met with very many resources through that court. What I've noticed that hasn't been working is that a lot of roadblocks have been set up by the City Attorney's Office and a majority of the judges have more or less gone along with what the City Attorney proposes - and that is to exclude everybody off the High Utilizer Initiative list. That list is made up of people who have severe mental illnesses and people who are homeless and struggling with desperation and poverty. And I believe those people are the people that would benefit the most from a court like Community Court. Certain people on that list are also part of the Trueblood class and should just not be capable of being prosecuted because of the severity of their mental illness as well. And so Community Court obviously would not be the right place for them. But again, prosecution or keeping them off of any kind of diversion list is not going to help people who just cannot be prosecuted because of a mental illness. I believe that the Community Court can work better if the City Attorney, the Public Defenders and the Judges - again - decide to work together and come to a policy that works for everybody on the same page. I don't think it's working right now because people are butting heads in the court and in the Public Defenders and the City Attorney. People need to be on the same side and that's the side of public safety and helping prevent poverty and homelessness. Thank you.
[00:13:24] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. And Adam Eisenberg.
[00:13:27] Judge Adam Eisenberg: Yes. So the thing that's most important to understand about Community Court is it's a triage court. It's meant to get people in the court system and out of the court system as quickly as possible, hook them up with social services, give them - if we can get them to housing, get them to housing - and move them on. The reality is some folks don't fit in Community Court. And while I don't necessarily agree that coming up with a list of 109 people or 110 or whatever is the best solution, the reality is that we need to figure out a way of addressing the folks who commit very low-level crimes, but don't succeed in Community Court. That's what this group is about. The group that doesn't succeed that keeps coming back. So while there's a great success rate as Judge Shadid talks about, how do we address the folks that don't fit? There is a dispute between the prosecutors and the public defenders - the prosecutor has discretion, judges have discretion as well. And I think over time we'll see that those folks will try to figure out more services that we can provide them with. But the reality is not everybody fits in Community Court and that group is the group we have to figure how to target. Thank you.
[00:14:31] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Nyjat asked for some rebuttal time.
[00:14:36] Nyjat Rose-Akins: Thank you. I just wanted to address the 80% of people who go into Community Court graduate. That number is very skewed because when you do review the court docket, there are also a number of people who fail to appear or don't even show up for court. So I believe that is a skewed number based on the fact that there are multiple Community Court offers, but a number of people who do not show up for court. Additionally, the City Attorney tried to negotiate and opt some people out because they felt they -
[00:15:12] Crystal Fincher: That is time there and just another reminder - rebuttal is a 30-second period. Does anyone else want any rebuttal time, or are we good?
We will move on to the next question. And we'll start with Judge Shadid. We have seen news of overcrowding in jails, asks from various jail employees - including corrections officers and public defenders - saying that they don't currently have the staffing to safely man the jails, asking to reduce the population. Should that be taken into account by judges when imposing sentences?
[00:15:51] Judge Damon Shadid: Well the short answer is "No, but..." And there's a big but there - and that is that the criminal legal system should be steering away from incarceration because we know incarceration doesn't help people... the criminal legal system. And as a deterrent, it is very, very controversial of whether or not a jail deterrent is actually effective. What we need to do is be expanding programs for diversion, expanding programs for rehabilitation - that's what I've spent my career doing. That's why I created the new Community Court. That's why I brought together a Consolidated Calendar where people who are already working in the community with case workers can come on one-stop shopping to a court and can resolve their cases many times without the need of jail. That's why I've expanded Mental Health Court - so that we can create release plans for the most dangerous, most vulnerable in our community - people who need close supervision, and so we can release them with very close supervision with the aid of a court clinician. This is the direction the court should be going. Accountability should come from rehabilitation, from a person's willingness to engage with the social safety net services. I am proud to say that Seattle Municipal Court has not been booking people in jail up to the level of beds that we have available. We consistently come under that and we have lowered that number every year. And one of the big reasons, of course, is because of our diversion programs and I'm very proud of that fact.
[00:17:20] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Next up is Nyjat.
[00:17:26] Nyjat Rose-Akins: Yes, there has been a lot of issues with King County Jail, and as Judge Shadid stated, the court is not in charge of the jail and can't necessarily tell the jail what to do. I do think the court does have to factor that in when people are trying to be admitted into the jail and the jail is closed. So I think those are definitely some considerations that should be made when you are looking to maybe sentence someone to jail or determine whether bail is warranted. But I think that is done on a case-by-case basis.
[00:18:03] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Adam Eisenberg.
[00:18:08] Judge Adam Eisenberg: Thank you. I think the reality is judges are very much aware of the crowding in the jail. The job that we have is to decide - in this particular case, is this person a safety threat to the community? And that's really what drives most of the decisions to whether someone is going to be in jail or not. Is there substantial likelihood they're going to commit a violent crime? Are they going to interfere with the administration of justice? And then to a lesser extent, whether they're going to show up to court or if they've failed to show up multiple times. We are very much aware of the limitations of the jail. And there's also issues with staffing in general - because of COVID, they're not able to staff as well. So it's very challenging. We are booking fewer people - we've been doing that ever since COVID started. So I think that that shows that judges are very much aware of it. But at the end of the day, it comes down to - in this particular case, is this person a danger to the community or not? That's the primary driver of why someone's held in jail. And the judge has to make a decision based on that. Thank you.
[00:19:06] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. And Pooja.
[00:19:09] Pooja Vaddadi: Thank you. I do agree with Judge Shadid. The court should be steering away from incarceration. And so while over-crowding for sentencing should not necessarily be taken into consideration, I do think that sentencing needs to be, that culture around sentencing needs to change dramatically. Studies have shown that public safety is not improved with increased rates of incarceration. In fact, a lot like what Judge Shadid was saying as well, studies have shown that diversion programs really do help to promote public safety. With the increased rate of incarceration, with the increased rate of jail sentences between 15 to 60 days - all it does to the individual is destabilize them. Their mental health deteriorates significantly when in jail. They're faced with the overcrowding problem. They're faced with dealing with individuals that they'd never encounter in the system. And they're also cut off from all resources. I've had clients that have had a lot of problems getting their mental health meds or any other kind of medical assistance while in jail. And all it does is cut them off from the resources that can help them re-enter society more effectively, that can help them not reoffend in the future. We should focus more on diversion programs. We should teach individuals who do touch the criminal justice system to reincorporate with society a little bit better. That is what improves public safety.
[00:20:40] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. And for this next question, we will start with Adam Eisenberg. What factors do you consider in granting and setting bail amounts for defendants? Should it strictly be based on whether or not someone is dangerous to society or a safety risk, therefore kind of making bail irrelevant, or does bail have a role to play in your court? How do you evaluate that?
[00:21:06] Judge Adam Eisenberg: So judges are guided by Criminal Rule 3.2, which does provide that the least restrictive means is what's appropriate. And in order to set bail, you have to decide that there's a substantial likelihood someone's going to commit a violent crime if they're released, substantial likelihood that they will interfere with the administration of justice or witnesses - which could be violate no-contact orders, or continue to drink and drive after they've been charged with a DUI, or fail to appear. That is the legal requirement that we have. We're also supposed to consider whether the person has the ability to pay or not. The bail system was created over 100 years ago in our state through statutes that seem very out-of-date and don't really apply to the modern world, because clearly people who have financial means are able to bail out easier than those who don't. Although there is the Northwest Bail Fund, which actually is able to bail people out who aren't able to afford it up to a certain level. As a judge, those factors are the factors that are the ones that I'm guided by. In looking at a particular case, is this person a danger to the community? That is the primary concern that I have. The bail system is not a perfect system. California is experimenting with a no bail or bail, so you either decide to hold someone or you release them and there's not an option to bail them out. I don't know if that's a better system or not, but I'm guided by the rules and I apply it in a case-by-case basis. Thank you.
[00:22:32] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Next up will be Pooja. I'll just repeat the question. What factors are considered in granting and setting bail amounts for defendants and what do you believe should be the primary consideration?
[00:22:46] Pooja Vaddadi: Thank you. So that's correct - the setting of bail is determined by CrRLJ 3.2. It is what needs to be considered when determining whether a person should be released or not, or what the terms of that release are. It does need to be the least restrictive means. What I believe that a lot of judges do frequently forget though, is that the presumption of all pretrial release is actually release. Bail is not at all presumed. What this means is that unless the prosecutor can meet a very high burden in proving that that person is either a danger to the community, at risk of interfering with the administration of justice, or a risk for failure to appear - that person needs to be released from jail. The problem with bail right now is that the danger seems to be - the level of whether that person is a risk to community safety seems to be driven by how much that person can afford. The bail system, as everybody knows, is not perfect. In fact, it is incredibly flawed and it seems to incarcerate more people who simply are poor rather than anybody else. The bail and the setting of bail is also guided by the constitution and it never should be excessive. A judge needs to consider whether the setting of bail is going to do more harm than good. I've seen a client that was bound for diversion and dismissal made homeless by a capricious application of unnecessary bail in this court and I do think that the individual needs to be taken into consideration with this. Thank you.
[00:24:19] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Damon?
[00:24:23] Judge Damon Shadid: The plain fact of the matter is that all cash bail discriminates against poor people. That is just a fact. There's no getting around it. If you set bail on somebody, a rich person can afford to pay to get out, but a poor person can't. And that's why judges need more tools when it comes to release. That's the whole point of the Community Court, the Mental Health Court, and the Consolidated Calendar - is to give us more tools to allow people to be released on structured release programs that help them connect with services - even predisposition - so that they're safer in the community. Now, I've also started a larger project called the Jail Release Toolkit that I plan to start in Seattle and provide - and that's to try to give judges more options for structured release plans that conform with Rule 3.2, to allow us to follow the laws. Now, it also can't be ignored that the Supreme Court, when COVID started, very much told the judges that we need to only hold people in jail pretrial if they are a substantial risk of committing a violent crime. And so we've been following that, and we've learned really important things from that - and that is we don't have to hold as many people in jail pretrial as maybe we thought we did. And I think a lot of judges have learned from that as well, and so we're really in a great place right now where I believe judges are open to alternative structured releases that can make the community safer instead of just using jail.
[00:25:55] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Nyjat?
[00:25:57] Nyjat Rose-Akins: Yeah, so the presumption of release is where I start when reviewing a person's case. However, as everyone has said, the court is bound by looking at Rule 3.2. And other than whether or not someone is likely to commit a dangerous offense, you also will have to look at whether or not someone is actually going to come back to court. And if someone has a very high failure-to-appear rate, you have to maybe consider - if I release this person, will this person come back to court? For misdemeanor cases, the point of having alternatives and other types of programs is that these cases need to be addressed relatively quickly, and we can get the services to the people who need it. So in addition to maybe looking at someone's failure-to-appear history, maybe some other examples of things that can be done is maybe electronic home monitoring and/or day reporting, because the point is to make sure that people do not lose contact with the court. And how can we increase contact with people who are committing crimes in our community?
[00:27:08] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much.
And we will start this with Pooja. If you observed a party in your courtroom being poorly represented by an unprepared or ineffective lawyer, how would you handle the situation?
[00:27:22] Pooja Vaddadi: So a judge cannot get in between a client and their attorney. It's not my position to do that. All I can do is preside over the law. Now I'll have to rule, however - everything presents in there - and hopefully one of the attorneys speaks up in objection to the way that the representation is going on, but I can't let my personal bias get in there. Just because I think I might do the job differently doesn't mean that I would do it better than the attorney that's doing it right then and there. I should never be the one, as the judge, to substitute my own judgment for how an attorney is handling their case. They have the personal experience with their client. They have the personal experience with their particular case - the victim of the crime, the police officer, whatever it is that they're dealing with - they have that experience to know how to handle that case. Now if I do think that somebody is being unethical or anything like that, that might be a different situation where a judge might have the ability to rule on a particular ethical violation - something that is bound by the law. But again, I would never replace my own judgment nor question the authority of an attorney when they're dealing with their own case - that undermines the credibility of every attorney in that courtroom and it undermines people's confidence in the court. Thank you.
[00:28:37] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Adam?
[00:28:40] Judge Adam Eisenberg: Thank you. Well, I think that generally what Ms. Vaddadi has said is correct - the judges are not to interfere. However, there are certain circumstances - one day when I was a prosecutor actually, the defense attorney was drunk in the middle of a trial and her own attorney - the client is like, Your Honor, my attorney is drunk. And then the judge said, Judge Eisenberg - or sorry, Adam Eisenberg, I was his prosecutor - do you notice that she's drunk? Well, I'm sitting fairly close by and it put me in an awkward position, but the bottom line is that case resulted in a mistrial. And so there are circumstances where - and they're very rare, honestly - most attorneys that appear in front of us do a really good job. They may make tactical decisions that you might go, Why did you make that tactical decision - after the fact. But that's the area where the judge absolutely cannot invade. If you make a tactical decision to enter, submit evidence or not submit evidence - that's totally within the discretion of the attorney and the judge has to back away. If you have a situation where an attorney is obviously drunk in court or otherwise incapacitated in a way that's severe, you have to take some action. The nicest thing to do is reach out to the supervisor, ask the supervisor to come down, talk to the attorney, see if they can gauge what the situation is. In the case of the drunk attorney, that resulted in a mistrial. So that's an extreme case, I've only seen that once in the 30 years I've worked in the court system, but those things do happen. Thank you.
[00:30:08] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Nyjat?
[00:30:14] Nyjat Rose-Akins: Yeah, I think if I see someone in the courtroom that is treating their client badly and I'm on the bench - and it seems as if it's more than just a tactical decision, maybe it just seems as if it is just treating someone inhumanely - I would likely take a sidebar or maybe take a recess and take both prosecutor and the defense attorney into chambers and just basically explain what I'm seeing because judges can't have ex parte contact. So I would probably make a note of it to the attorney - that this behavior is not appropriate - especially again, if it's outside of trial tactics and it's just behavior that's just inhumane or treating their client disrespectfully, I would likely address it in chambers.
[00:31:19] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. And Damon?
[00:31:22] Judge Damon Shadid: We are very lucky in Seattle Municipal Court to have a very high level of representation both from the private bar, the Department of Public Defense, and the City Attorney's Office. I never stop being impressed with the level of representation that we have, but that doesn't mean that sometimes there doesn't come an attorney who comes and is doing a poor job representing their client. And what we have to avoid here is we have to avoid - one, the client not getting a fair shake. And number two, a setup for ineffective assistance of counsel so that all the work that went into that trial, all the jurors, all the court staff, and everyone else who spent days trying to go through this trial only to have it overturned because there was ineffective assistance of counsel. Now, I'll tell you what I wouldn't do. I certainly wouldn't take them into my chambers - I think that would be unethical. It needs to be on the record - everything you say needs to be on the record so the public can hear it. I would very much try not to embarrass the attorney in front of their client, and that's when a sidebar may be appropriate as long as it's recorded. But if the attorney doesn't seem to be catching on, then the case has to be continued so that they can get prepared. Or, as Judge Eisenberg said, sometimes it will rise to the level of a mistrial. So while I would normally keep hands off as much as I can, I'm not going to let a defendant and my court be misrepresented by an attorney.
[00:32:55] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much.
I now have a question submitted from the audience during this forum, and it's a two-part question really. One, do you consider any types of crimes to be victimless? And for those that aren't, how will you work to assure that victims are listened to and considered when imposing a sentence or adjudicating a case? And we will be starting with Nyjat.
[00:33:23] Nyjat Rose-Akins: I apologize. I didn't hear the last part. Do you consider any types of crimes victimless? And I didn't hear the last part of the question?
[00:33:30] Crystal Fincher: Sure. How does each candidate work to assure that victims are listened to and considered when imposing a sentence or adjudicating a case?
[00:33:42] Nyjat Rose-Akins: So do I think any crime is victimless? No, I do not. I think some cases are definitely going to be more impactful to victims. But I believe when people are committing crimes, even low-level crimes - if it's a crime that continues to be done every day, it is impacting the community. The community is the victim if people are calling the police or observing this behavior. So even though all crimes are not going to be created equal, some crimes are definitely going to be more severe than others and impact more people. But I think for - to make sure that victims are being listened to, I think the main thing is to make sure that they have a seat at the table, they understand the process, they understand what the court is doing. What I've realized over the last number of years is that a lot of people really don't understand how the court functions or how it works. So I think the prosecutor's office - they have victims advocates that - I think it's good for them to talk with the victims to make sure that they understand the system and what and how things are happening. And even make sure that they come to court to see the process.
[00:35:06] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Damon Shadid?
[00:35:13] Judge Damon Shadid: Sure, there are some victimless crimes - failure to transfer title, driving with license suspended in the third degree - I have trouble figuring out who would be a victim there. But I, in general, agree with my opponent that it's a matter of impacting - how does it impact the community? How does it impact the individual? Now in Washington, we have a Victims Bill of Rights. It used to only apply to felonies, but now it applies to misdemeanors as well. But I've always followed it, even before it applied to misdemeanors. If a victim comes into my court and wants to speak at any level of the prosecution, I will allow them to speak because it's difficult to come into court. It takes a lot of bravery to speak to the judge and to face the person who may have abused you. And so that person should be given a high amount of respect. But on the flip side of that, that person should be given a lot of respect if they, for instance, do not want to continue with prosecution. So you have to listen to both sides of it. As far as community crimes like that, there's a reason why we call it Community Court. And the way that we have people give back to the community is through things like community service work, or things like that that are going to actually give back to the community that's been taken from. So yes, victims will be listened to at all stages of the proceedings, and I have tried to do that.
[00:36:40] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Pooja Vaddadi?
[00:36:44] Pooja Vaddadi: By definition and in general, no crime is going to be completely victimless and especially not in a strictly criminal court. I do agree with Judge Shadid - there are certain crimes like driving while license suspended or any licensing-type situation that is a failure to pay fines - I find it hard to believe also that there would be a real victim attached to that. But property crimes, thefts, whatever - the ordinary administration of justice is the tool by which we address these wrongs. However, the temptation for any judge is to substitute their outrage for the narrow bounds of sentencing permitted under the laws - and it's a challenge that we must rise to be impartial. It's essential not to misapply the law or you do risk revictimizing everyone through a second trial. That includes oversentencing, because you as a judge may think that a certain crime is particularly outrageous, but the worst thing that can happen is for that case to come back to court for a second time for a retrial or a resentencing where the victim has to, again, readdress the court to get any kind of recourse. That's traumatizing for anybody involved in the system. I do think it's important to listen to victims as well, especially when the court is trying to help that individual. Sometimes there are victims that come into court that wish to have the no contact order lifted so that their partner can support their lifestyle and their children. And I've seen this court deny administratively those requests to rescind the no contact order. And I would like to prevent that. Thank you.
[00:38:20] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Adam Eisenberg.
[00:38:24] Judge Adam Eisenberg: Thank you. Yes, as everyone has mentioned, there are a few categories of crimes that perhaps are victimless, but most of the crimes that appear in front of us have some sort of victim. I'm most involved in the domestic violence cases. And one of the things that's unique about the Domestic Violence Intervention Project, which is the diversion program that I've described in my opening that is an alternative to jail for domestic violence offenders, is an individualized approach and a multidisciplinary team that includes victim advocates. So the voices of victims, not necessarily the victim of the particular crime, but victims - community victims or community advocates who are very familiar with the survivors of domestic violence are able to provide input into how to manage the intervention. The goal, of course, is to make it safer for the victims. We take victims very seriously - I know all my colleagues do when they come to court and wish to explain what they experienced. Sometimes they have to do it through the trial, sometimes they have to do it at sentencing. But I think even low-level crimes - if the victim wants to come to court and present, certainly the Revised Code of Washington provides for that - for them to be able to explain. And I think the court has to hear and consider their opinion, their concerns along with the other evidence that they've heard when they make a decision. So victims' voices are very, very important in our court. Thank you.
[00:39:45] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. And thank you to the audience for that question.
This next question will start with Judge Shadid. We've had several high profile incidents in Seattle where police officers' accounts of events may have differed from video evidence and other things turned up in subsequent investigations. Do judges have any responsibility or role in interrogating the honesty of police and law enforcement in the court?
[00:40:12] Judge Damon Shadid: Well, that is a very difficult question because it depends on what stage of the proceedings that you're in - whether or not you're in a pretrial, a motion, or a trial - and what would be appropriate in each case. What I will say is this - if a police officer breaks the law by perjuring themselves in court, that police officer should be subject to the laws just like any other person who comes into the court and they should be prosecuted. I've never actually seen a police officer prosecuted for perjury, but I have seen police officers lie on the stand in my eight years. And that's pretty shocking to me - police officers not only should be held to the same standard as everyone else, but they should be held to a higher standard. And they should not be coming in to lie in order to get somebody convicted. They need to be able to prove their case just based upon the truth. What I will say is that - at least the prior administration of the City Attorney's Office regularly dismissed cases when they saw a discrepancy between the police officer's testimony and contravening evidence. I think that's the right move. But unless it meets a very high standard, a judge is not able to dismiss the case themselves, it is incumbent upon the prosecutor to do so. If there is a motion to dismiss, then the defense attorney would have to make their proof based upon the rules, particularly 8.3.
[00:41:42] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Nyjat Rose-Akins.
[00:41:49] Nyjat Rose-Akins: Sorry. I agree with my opponent that everyone has a role when it comes to the court, and the court cannot necessarily just summarily dismiss a case that has been brought by the prosecution. I will say that the court can - there are many points in a case - for instance, if there is information about an officer, for instance, they call it Brady information - so it's information that the prosecution has to turn over and if they do not turn that over, then the court can entertain motions to dismiss because that is a huge violation. So if an officer has been found to have lied on the stand or any other behavior that has been deemed under Brady that needs to be disclosed to defense. So those are some ways that the court can, I guess, intervene when there is an issue with an officer specifically. But yeah, so that is the main thing - I would say that as I myself have actually prosecuted a police officer - because I truly believe that we all should be held to the same standard.
[00:43:15] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Judge Eisenberg.
[00:43:19] Judge Adam Eisenberg: So you asked the question, can judges interrogate? Well, it's not really our role to necessarily interrogate. However, in certain hearings, we do have the opportunity, as the fact finder of the hearing, to ask questions. I can give you an example of a stage where I did find there was not probable cause for arrest and it was based on how the officer behaved. The officer saw the defendant driving late at night at a high rate of speed - that was pretty clear. He pulled him over and he asked him to step out of the car and he said - I smell some alcohol, I would like you to do some field sobriety tests. The defendant was very polite - I don't want to do any field sobriety tests because I know what happens next. If I do field sobriety tests, you take me to jail. And the officer's like, No, I'm not going to do that, but I just need to know. And what happened was 15 minutes of the officer trying to cajole the defendant to take field sobriety tests and the defendant clearly didn't want to. The defendant was Black, the officer was not. There was some question as to whether this was racially biased or not - it wasn't 100% clear, but it was very suspicious. And at the end of the probable cause hearing, I determined there wasn't probable cause for the arrest - the officer did not have enough information and the case was dismissed. Unfortunately, the officer left the courtroom before he could hear my ruling, but it was a very troubling situation. And that's a circumstance where a judge can see what an officer is doing because my job is to determine whether there's probable cause. And at that point, I could say the officer was inappropriate in what he did.
[00:44:46] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Pooja Vaddadi.
[00:44:50] Pooja Vaddadi: And so I agree with pretty much what everybody else has said already. It's not necessarily a judge's role to take it upon themselves to litigate a case where an officer maybe is lying or engaging in any misconduct. But I have seen, as a public defender, police officers engaging in racially biased policing, which in my opinion is bad and sometimes in a lot of cases worse than perjury in court. The judge is a gatekeeper for evidence and has the power to address Brady issues or entertain motions to dismiss under circumstances that Ms. Rose-Akins actually described. And they should. There must be some distance between judges and the police so that they don't enjoy a special relationship and show any kind of bias towards any officers that are in that court. I've taken a case to trial actually in which a white officer investigated a scene for 40 minutes before releasing one person and then pretty much deciding that he smelled alcohol on my client's breath. The officer in that situation was a white man. My client was a Black driver. Such a case would raise a suspicion for me, although there is not much I can do in that situation unless the defense attorney does raise a type of motion. And then we are then faced with the ability for me to make a decision on whether that officer should testify or whether there needs to be some other kind of hearing to exclude that kind of testimony. Judges are bound by the law and that is how they need to operate. But we shouldn't let people with a lot of authority just get away with blatant disregard for the law.
[00:46:26] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much.
This next question, we're going to start with Adam Eisenberg. What do your endorsements say about you and what do you think your opponent's endorsements say about them?
[00:46:41] Judge Adam Eisenberg: Well, I've been endorsed by The Seattle Times, eight of the nine sitting justices on the Supreme Court, retired Justice Bobbe Bridge, judges across the state who I've worked with on committees on statewide issues related to domestic violence, related to how do we have a jury trial in the middle of COVID - which I was assigned to be on the task force for that - on various rules that I have been engaged with. And I've also been endorsed by the union that supports our court clerks, I've been endorsed by public defenders, prosecutors, defense attorneys - male, female - and I've been rated Exceptionally Well Qualified by the bar associations I listed. I think that says that I try to do the best job I can and it seems like the legal community recognizes that. My opponent has been endorsed by a lot of the - I've been endorsed by some of the legislative districts, she's been endorsed by all of them. And she's been endorsed by, I believe, a lot of the progressive diversity groups. I don't really have a thought on what that says, but I'm very proud of the endorsements that I've gotten, including The Seattle Times - and including former Governor Christine Gregoire and many, many other Seattle City Councilmembers and County Councilmembers. So I feel like I have a pretty diverse background of support. Thank you.
[00:48:07] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Pooja Vaddadi.
[00:48:11] Pooja Vaddadi: I believe that my endorsements, which are all of the Democratic organizational endorsements - I believe that they say that people are looking for a change in Seattle - they're dissatisfied with the way that the judiciary has been operating, they're dissatisfied with the way that the City is being policed right now. What they see is an increase in crime and a decrease in the amount of services that are there for the people of Seattle - there has been an increase of homeless people on the streets, there has been an increase of encampments. And the judiciary and the leadership in Seattle has been doing nothing about that. And people are ready for a change - people are ready for the type of perspective that I bring there. My campaign is staffed by dozens of defense attorneys who are actually afraid to publicly endorse, or who aren't permitted by their leadership to endorse. My opponent's endorsements do tell me that there are two versions of him. There's the version of my opponent that his personal friends see - I'm sure he is a great friend. But there is a version of my opponent that I know there. And unfortunately, a lot of people are not able to speak publicly about some of the behavior that they've seen on the court. And I have their support and their volunteer, I have their support in private. But I do have the support of a lot of organizations that are looking to make a change in Seattle right now and I plan on doing that.
[00:49:44] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Judge Shadid.
[00:49:48] Judge Damon Shadid: I am proud to be endorsed by every civil Democratic organization and every one of those are sole endorsements. I'm proud to have the endorsement of eight current and former Supreme Court Justices, and community leaders, elected officials like Larry Gossett - who is my personal hero - Girmay Zahilay, Representative Sharon Tomiko Santos, Senator Rebecca Saldaña, City Councilperson Teresa Mosqueda, Tammy Morales, Andrew Lewis, Debora Juarez. I'm very proud - I've also got community leaders, including the president of the statewide NAACP endorsing me, 75 judges - elected judges across the spectrum. And I've actually gotten The Seattle Times and the Progressive Voters guide to agree that they should endorse me solely, which I don't know how many of us can brag that. So I'm very, very pleased with my endorsements - I think it's great. My opponent's been working hard. She's gotten some endorsements from judges and from former Mayor Durkan - who was a former prosecutor - as well as former Governor Gregoire, another former prosecutor. Her support definitely comes from the prosecution - that is clear - and she's been a career prosecutor all her life and so that makes a lot of sense to me. You go to the people that you know and who you've worked with in the past. But my support comes from across the spectrum - it's not single-focused.
[00:51:20] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Nyjat Rose-Akins.
[00:51:23] Nyjat Rose-Akins: I think my endorsements say that I'm not a politician. My endorsements say that I decided to run for this office because I believe that I am qualified. I'm endorsed by people who know my work and know what I have done and what I've done for the City for the last 12 years. I've been basically behind the scenes for the last 12 years, and this is my first time saying - I am going to put myself out there and be in the forefront because I know that I can make Seattle Municipal Court better based on all the work that I've done over the last 12 years collaborating and partnering with communities and with government officials. So I believe that's what my endorsements say about me. In regards to my opponent, I believe - he's been a sitting judge for the last eight years, so he has made those relationships. And usually, in all honesty, judicial candidates have difficulty because judges do not like to endorse against a sitting judge. So I think the fact that I've been able to get some endorsements from judges and retired judges - and mainly some Seattle Municipal Court judges, retired Seattle Municipal Court judges - I think that shows that I am more than capable of fulfilling this position.
[00:52:52] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much.
Now, we also asked each candidate to submit a question to ask their opponent. We will cover some of those questions right now. We will begin with a question from Judge Adam Eisenberg to Pooja Vaddadi - and I will read it verbatim.
Candidates for judicial positions usually get vetted by the King County Bar Association and the minority bar associations. It's a rigorous process in which each bar association reaches out to more than 30 attorneys familiar with your work on the bench, and conducts individual interviews with the candidates. I've gone through the vetting process and have been rated "Exceptionally Well Qualified" for Seattle Municipal Court by a number of associations. Why have you chosen not to be vetted?
[00:53:43] Pooja Vaddadi: So the answer to this question comes in two parts. I'm running a lot earlier than I meant to because it's urgent to bring change in the leadership in SMC. The court has been failing the people of Seattle. I saw that when I was a public defender in that court and I'm still seeing it right now. I enjoyed my career as a public defender and I was not planning on doing this quite this soon in my career, but here we are and I'm needed. Second, from what I've seen, judicial ratings seem to measure nothing more than tenure. Tenure and how often you've pro temmed in the court or tenure on how long you've been on a bench. They obviously don't look at practitioner surveys, they don't look at staff reviews and complaints, overturns on appeal for constitutional violations, or courtroom demeanor. I don't know if these bar associations have sat in my opponent's courtroom for a lengthy period of time. I don't think that I would have had a fair shake in front of these judicial ratings because they would have held my lack of tenure against me. I know I can do this job and I know I will be good at it. Thank you.
[00:55:01] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
Now I'm going to ask a question for Judge Adam Eisenberg from Pooja - verbatim. There's nothing more stressful than representing a client who is innocent and falsely accused; or when an innocent defendant insists on pleading guilty to get out of jail or to avoid a penalty for going to trial. Can you tell me about a time that these have happened in your courtroom and how you were personally impacted??
[00:55:55] Judge Adam Eisenberg: If someone's entered a guilty plea in front of me, I have to read the facts - and if there's a basis to support the plea, I have to accept the plea - so I'm not really sure there's - I understand the perspective of being a defense attorney and having a client who's doing something perhaps that you don't agree with or wish they would make a different choice. But people do make these choices to plead guilty for a variety of reasons and I don't often have - I very seldom have any understanding of why they're doing it specifically and their attorneys don't share that information with me. When someone enters a guilty plea, I try to give - if it involves a jail sentence, I try to give an appropriate sentence. If it's a guilty plea, the vast majority of times I agree with whatever the sentence is because it was a negotiated plea between the defense and the prosecution. If the defendant has agreed to a negotiated plea, I have no basis to disregard that. The perspective of a defense attorney isn't the same as the perspective on the bench when you hear someone entering a guilty plea. That's what I would say. Thank you.
[00:57:07] Crystal Fincher: Pooja has asked for a rebuttal to that.
[00:57:13] Pooja Vaddadi: Oh, sorry. I guess I needed to unmute.
I just want to tell a brief story. I had a client in Snohomish County that was held on a DUI. It was a second lifetime DUI and he was held on a substantial amount of bail, a decision that a judge made. There was no blood test results yet and so we did not know what his Blood Alcohol Content was or if he had any drugs in his system. The prosecutor offered him a sentence that would have taken - and trial would have taken a lot longer to go. The point is - I'm running out of time - the point is he did have to plead guilty -
[00:57:49] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Judge Eisenberg has also asked for a rebuttal.
[00:57:55] Judge Adam Eisenberg: I just wanted to say that I'm really sorry about this situation that happened with her defendant that she represented in Snohomish County, but that doesn't really have anything to do with me or my court.
[00:58:06] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
Now I'm going to ask a question from Nyjat Rose-Akins to Damon Shadid. How does the court monitor a participant's connection with meaningful services if multiple cases are dismissed within 14 days of entering into Community Court?
[00:58:28] Judge Damon Shadid: Each individual who comes into Community Court is vetted by a judge for their appropriateness to enter the court. They have certain - we call them connections - that the person has to make in order to graduate from the court. There are different levels of connections - 2 weeks, 30 days, and 45 days that the person goes through. But here's what's really important to remember. This is a predisposition court. We connect people with services and then it's the City Attorney who moves to dismiss the case. This is what the City Attorney has agreed to. The City Attorney has never sought to change when they dismiss the case and it is their discretion to do so. We monitor to make sure they've made their connections, to make sure they've done a life skills class, to make sure they've done community service. We individually structure the program to make sure that we're addressing their specific barriers. But this is really important - it takes multiple connections to services for them to take. And so this criticism that - Oh, you're not holding them there long enough - well, how long do you expect someone to keep coming to court for a trespass or for a theft of socks? The actual rehabilitation has to match the crime has been committed and that's what we're trying to do. If a person's not willing to make those connections, they are prosecuted in mainstream court to the full extent of the law.
[00:59:59] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
I now have a question for Nyjat Rose-Akins from Damon Shadid. When I ran for Judge 8 years ago, I ran with specific plans for expanding and revitalizing Seattle's Therapeutic Courts. Over the past 8 years, I've delivered on those promises. I've not seen or heard any specific policy proposals that you would enact if you became a judge. Please give specific details of a policy proposal you would enact if elected.
[01:00:28] Nyjat Rose-Akins: Thank you. So - when elected, I plan to revamp Community Court - reset the standards of accountability and requirements, review individual case history to determine if they are currently a good fit, limit the number of cases that can be addressed at one time, review the types of cases that are eligible, and redefine what is considered low-level crime. With doing that, I'd like to incorporate more probation and social services support to track and assist with program progress and participant needs. Also collaborate with more social service providers to bring them to the court to create a one-stop shop for individuals. I also want to collaborate more with nonprofits, other government agencies to create a pipeline - a proper pipeline for housing, mental health treatment, and job placement. I also would like to work more with probation services and resources, renew day reporting options - which would allow maybe Zoom options for people to check in with probation and not always have to come into court. And also maybe get more funding - not maybe, really try to get more funding - on electronic home monitoring for indigent defendants. So those are a few of the things I plan to do once elected. Thank you.
[01:01:55] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Judge Shadid has asked for a rebuttal.
[01:02:00] Judge Damon Shadid: Sure. So the one policy proposal my opponent has is to reform the court that I created, which is very interesting because she works for the City Attorney's Office and she has never come to a meeting [garbled] in court. She's never bothered to actually get to know what the court is. Instead, she's read a few dockets and she thinks she has an opinion on it. But why hasn't her boss ever asked for these changes? They haven't. So if she had been in the court for the past eight years, she'd know that we're already doing these things and that her policy is not policy.
[01:02:37] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Nyjat, you have rebuttal time.
[01:02:42] Nyjat Rose-Akins: Thank you. I think it is somewhat disingenuous to say that the City Attorney's Office has never asked to make some changes to Community Court. I believe the City Attorney's Office requested trying to opt some people out because they had way too many cases and my opponent said no. And that is why there was an issue with the high utilizers. Aditionally, revamping Community - we had 90 seconds to speak - I brought up one specific thing in regards to Community -
[01:03:19] Crystal Fincher: I will allow a second round of rebuttals for both of you since we are in this conversation here. Judge Shadid.
[01:03:26] Judge Damon Shadid: Community Court took two years to negotiate. My opponent doesn't seem to understand that all changes to Community Court have to come through negotiation. Her boss came to me with a requested change, which I disagreed with. That is how you negotiate. That requested change then went to the full bench and the bench voted to adopt the change. That's what negotiation is and that's how you create programs.
[01:04:00] Crystal Fincher: And Nyjat.
[01:04:01] Nyjat Rose-Akins: Yes, thank you. I also had the opportunity to review Community Court outside of Seattle. I went to Auburn Community Court and that program is a model structure for what a community court should be - where individuals actually engage with resources - it's a one-stop shop where they can come in and actually get the services they need and actually check-in with the court, check-in with their defense attorney, and check-in with the prosecution on a weekly and sometimes bi-week, bi-monthly basis based on the type of court.
[01:04:37] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
Now, these probably will be quick questions, but we'll see - two short ones - and we will begin with Nyjat Rose-Akins. Have you ever been disciplined by the bar association or state commission on judicial conduct?
[01:04:53] Nyjat Rose-Akins: Have not.
No, I have not.
[01:04:56] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. And Damon Shadid?
[01:05:00] Judge Damon Shadid: No.
[01:05:02] Crystal Fincher: And Pooja?
[01:05:05] Pooja Vaddadi: No.
[01:05:07] Crystal Fincher: And Judge Eisenberg?
[01:05:09] Judge Adam Eisenberg: No.
[01:05:10] Crystal Fincher: Okay.
Next question - are there any specific types of cases in which you know you'll have to find it necessary to disqualify or recuse yourself? We will start with Damon Shadid.
[01:05:28] Judge Damon Shadid: There have been times when I've had to recuse myself. I was a public defender for quite some time before and I've had clients come into my courtroom who I represented in the past and I certainly recused myself from those cases. There have been times when I've made mistakes and I've agreed to recuse myself from a case. It happens to the best of us. It's very important to me that there is not only the fact of an impartial judge, but the appearance of one as well. And so if I even suspect that somebody is perceiving me as not being impartial, I'll recuse myself most of the time, unless I think that the attorney is forum shopping. So yes, a judge should be ready to recuse themselves whenever they feel that it's in the best interests of both the community and the defendant.
[01:06:19] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Nyjat?
[01:06:23] Nyjat Rose-Akins: Yes, I think the fairness is very, very important in court, so I would likely - I have not had to recuse myself as I've been pro temming in court, but I believe I would likely recuse myself from friends and/or people that I have worked closely with in the City Attorney's Office or even in City government.
[01:06:49] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Adam Eisenberg?
[01:06:55] Judge Adam Eisenberg: There have been some cases where I've had to recuse myself because I either knew some of the parties, or there was an incident with my neighbor that was reported to the police and I was actually a witness. So I made sure, right out of the gate, that when the case came to our court - because I suspected it would, based on the charge - I went and talked to the Presiding Judge and said, I can't have anything to do with this case because I saw the police arrive last night at the house. So those things happen - obviously, that happens very, very rarely. But otherwise, recusal is normal when you know parties or you have information about the case that you shouldn't have had, you heard - because of a neighbor talking or whatever. But there's not a particular type of case that I recuse myself from. It's really a - it's a case-by-case circumstance based on if I know the players or witnesses or whatever. Thank you.
[01:07:49] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Pooja Vaddadi?
[01:07:53] Pooja Vaddadi: Oh, I imagine I would have to recuse myself pretty often, at least in my first year as a judge, seeing as I was practicing in that court most recently. Unlike most of the bench, I'll have been a public defender within the last decade, so I imagine that I would recognize a good number of people that come through that court. I also agree with a lot of what was stated here. If you do recognize parties, probably best to recuse yourself. And certainly at any point when a defense attorney or a prosecutor does motion for me to recuse myself, I agree with both Judge Damon and Ms. Rose-Akins that the appearance of impartiality is important. And if any party believes that I need to recuse myself and they make - go so far as to make a motion - I think it would be important to hand the case off to a different judge at that point, too. I think the confidence in the judiciary is definitely elevated when judges do take their role of impartiality very seriously, and don't take it personal when an attorney does motion for the judge to recuse themselves in that court. So that would be the only cases I can imagine myself having to recuse myself from.
[01:09:02] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
I have a submitted question for Judge Adam Eisenberg. You've received survey results from the King County Bar Association survey for attorneys who have appeared before you. Respondents rated you lowest amongst your colleagues for impartiality, and you had the highest percentage of people respond to the survey call. In coverage of this, you said it could be explained by the fact that people are more likely to respond or survey if they have negative feedback. But do you feel you have a responsibility to look more deeply into these concerns, and possibly uncover the root of biases that you may not be aware that you have that may be impacting the trust and integrity of your court?
[01:09:45] Judge Adam Eisenberg: So the King County Bar Association poll that they're talking about is simply an anonymous poll. And I feel that the six bar associations that do very detailed vetting, which my opponent says she's not done because she didn't have time - although I did it this summer - once I knew I had an opponent, I got my ratings renewed. That process is extremely detailed. You have to fill out an application with many essays, you have to list the last 10 attorneys who appeared opposite you, you have to list 10 more attorneys who appeared in front of you, you have to list 10 more attorneys who are aware of your work, you have to list the last 5 trials that you've done with both the prosecutor and the defense attorney, and 6 more people who are aware of your work. And the bar associations - each bar association calls these people up and asks for their opinions - confidential, which I have no knowledge of. And so they're hearing from vast number of attorneys that have appeared in front of me and they're actually hearing them, it's not an anonymous poll. And through this process, I've been rated "Exceptionally Well Qualified" by the King County Bar Association, the Loren Miller Bar Association which represents African-American attorneys, the Latino Latina Bar Association, the Joint Asian Bar Association Rating Committee, and QLaw the LGBTQ+. And each one of these panels has men and women and prosecutors and defense attorneys on it. And so I feel like that is a much more accurate rating of my performance. Thank you.
[01:11:10] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. And a follow up question from me, actually. In that situation, notwithstanding your Very Well Qualified ratings from several bar associations, do you dismiss any criticisms that have mounted there, or any validity of that concern? Or do you feel the need to look into that further to potentially provide more confidence in those people who responded that way?
[01:11:36] Judge Adam Eisenberg: Whenever I - over the years, if an attorney has expressed some concern about how I've been in court, I've met with them personally and asked for their feedback and incorporated that into how I handle my courtroom. So an anonymous poll is an anonymous poll. So it's really not something you can actually respond to. There's no one to call and say, Hey, why did you say that? But if an attorney in the past has expressed concerns, I have reached out to them and asked them, Can you talk to me about this and maybe I can learn from it. And I feel like I have - any time that's been brought to my attention.
[01:12:13] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much.
And I have another round of questions submitted for Damon Shadid and Nyjat Rose-Akins by each other. And I will start with this question from Damon to Nyjat.
Most, if not - many, if not most of the people your employer, the City Attorney, calls "High Utilizers" in the criminal legal system have significant needs in untreated mental health issues, addiction, housing, and employment. If these people, most of whom are people of color, are held in jail pending trial - without being connected to services for these needs - how would you propose that the issues that led them to being repeatedly incarcerated would be any better when they are finally released?
[01:13:01] Nyjat Rose-Akins: Can you read that one more time, please? That's a very compound question.
[01:13:05] Crystal Fincher: I can. Many, if not most of the people your employer, the City Attorney calls "High Utilizers" in the criminal legal system have significant needs in untreated mental health issues, addiction, housing, and employment. If these people, most of whom are people of color, are held in jail pending trial - without being connected to services for these needs - how would you propose that the issues that led them to being repeatedly incarcerated would be any better when they are finally released?
[01:13:38] Nyjat Rose-Akins: Okay. So what I will first say in regards to the High Utilizer Initiative that the City Attorney has brought forward over the last few months - the only thing, I guess, I would say that the request from the City Attorney was that these individuals are not screened in Community Court. As the question states, these individuals have significant needs - housing, addiction, all of those things - and Community Court, where you only have 14, 30, or 45 days to interact with the court, was likely not serving these individuals in the first place. So that's first and foremost. Additionally, the court is who sets bail or who keeps someone in jail. So the prosecution can make a bail request. However, ultimately, that decision is made by the court in regards to whether or not someone is going to be held on bail or what the release conditions should be. So the court is the ultimate gatekeeper and the decision maker in regards to what happens to High Utilizers. The question for the City Attorney was that they no longer thought High Utilizers or individuals who are committing large amounts of crime should be...
[01:15:17] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Judge Shadid, you've asked for rebuttal time.
[01:15:20] Judge Damon Shadid: This is an incredibly misleading answer that my opponent just gave, and it's a little shocking actually. The City [Attorney's Office] went behind the judges' backs and reserved beds in the jail for High Utilizers without even telling the court they were going to do it. They have provided no other solutions for High Utilizers other than holding them in the jail beds that they reserved for those High Utilizers. They excluded High Utilizers from the specific program that was meant to help them and refused to change the program in order to...
[01:16:02] Crystal Fincher: Looks like we arrived at time there. Nyjat, did you wish for a rebuttal?
[01:16:11] Nyjat Rose-Akins: I'm not sure - I'm in the criminal division. I am a City Attorney and I do speak with my colleagues, but again, I don't know what was misleading about saying that the court is the one who makes the bail determination, not the City Attorney. We ask and we make a request, but ultimately the court decides whether or not to set bail, not the City Attorney.
[01:16:38] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Additional rebuttal time - Judge Shadid.
[01:16:45] Judge Damon Shadid: For her to pass the buck - the City Attorney is the one who is requesting bail of the judge, so it's a two-way street. But Community Court was specifically engineered to connect people to services instead of holding them in jail. This is what the City Attorney's Office has stopped their so-called High Utilizers from doing without any review of the disproportionate impact on BIPOC people, of the Trueblood class of people, who have mental health issues and so many other issues. They ignored all of it in this catch-all program.
[01:17:18] Crystal Fincher: And Nyjat?
[01:17:23] Nyjat Rose-Akins: There's no ignoring of anything. There are still a number of people in Community Court that have multiple - 5, 6, 7+ cases - that are still in Community Court and not considered High Utilizers. So my opponent is shifting the blame to the City Attorney when everyone has a role and the court cannot say now that they're not going to be the one setting bail or setting bail. That is the court's role - is to...
[01:17:57] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Looks like time is up.
Now this question, we will start with Pooja Vaddadi. Do you believe the current system for disciplining lawyers and judges is effective?
[01:18:17] Pooja Vaddadi: Oh, that's a complicated question. No, I think, might be the short answer. How to fix that - I'm not sure. But I have seen attorneys engage in pretty unethical behavior in terms of holding fines or fees from clients that had not yet been granted to them, holding money that they've recovered from civil forfeiture claims and depositing it into their own accounts - and getting something as simple as six months of suspension on their license. I think the system is working in such a way to prop up the careers of attorneys and judges sometimes, despite what kind of ethical violations that they've broken. I think judges need to be held to a much higher standard, especially when it comes to whether or not they are acting impartially in their courtroom. I've seen judges act in a biased format, I've seen judges not check their biases in the door before presiding over a matter - and I don't think that should happen. I think there needs to be a better oversight for judicial discipline or even attorney discipline as well. How to fix that? I'm not entirely sure right now, possibly a little bit more oversight - people actually coming into the courtroom and watching lengthy calendars, much like the SMC Court Watch. But that would be my solution.
[01:19:46] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Adam Eisenberg.
[01:19:49] Judge Adam Eisenberg: So attorneys are monitored by the Bar Association, judges are monitored by the Judicial Conduct Commission. And I think our state has a very, very high bar of judicial conduct investigations. So we're bound by the Code of Judicial Conduct and the Judicial Conduct Commission does investigate judges when there are complaints. A lot of complaints the judge never hears about because the commission dismisses, which is also true with the Bar Association. But when they investigate and find that a judge has done something inappropriate, or an attorney - in both cases, these commissions take them to task. And I've had colleagues on the bench be reprimanded by the Judicial Conduct Commission for various behavior. And I know that they take their role very seriously. I know that judges throughout the state - because we have conferences - we have representatives come and talk to us about ethical issues. I know that I certainly take the Judicial Conduct Commission very seriously, as I think my colleagues do. And I think it's actually one of the most effective judicial conduct commissions in the nation. So there is something there. Yeah.
[01:21:04] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Nyjat?
[01:21:08] Nyjat Rose-Akins: I agree with Judge Eisenberg that I believe the Washington State Bar and the judicial ethics committees - that they actually do a good job. I mean, I've known of a number of people who have been sanctioned or reprimanded through the bar. And it's been because of their interaction with one client. So I believe if there is a complaint made to the bar or to the judicial board, I believe they do investigate those claims robustly and do try to hold attorneys and judges accountable.
[01:21:53] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Judge Shadid?
[01:21:57] Judge Damon Shadid: Well, it works when it works, but there are some serious flaws in both. And the biggest flaw that I see is that there's a lot of deference to power. Let me tell you - eight years ago, when I ran against an incumbent judge, the judge was caught red-handed in an ethical violation. And the Judicial Conduct Commission refused to say anything about it until after the election was over. And after the election was over, that's when they decided to discipline him by saying that he could never be a judge again. Now, that's not right. They obviously should have let the voters know that there was an issue, but they refused to do so. They also seek to make examples of certain judges. Supreme Court Justice Mary Yu was made an example out of for speaking out on a topic that she was passionate about. And sometimes I think that judges are held to too high a standard when balanced against their First Amendment rights. I also think that a lot of the problems with prosecution also happens with judges and lawyers, where the judges and lawyers are threatened with much harsher sanctions if they don't cooperate with the different committees. So even though I've never been sanctioned as a lawyer or a judge, I think there are some serious flaws with the way the systems work.
[01:23:12] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
And this question from Nyjat Rose-Akins to Damon Shadid. Does the court impose a limit to the number of cases participants can bring into Community Court?
[01:23:24] Judge Damon Shadid: So this was a big part of our negotiations and the City Attorney's Office decided that they would allow cases to be bundled, and there is no upper limit. However, each of these bundles of cases has to be individually approved by a judge in order to come into the court. And so although they're referred to Community Court for their first appearance, the judge has to say, Okay, this is appropriate. Now, there have been times when bundles of cases have come before me where I've said, No, these cases do not belong here, there's been too much of an impact on the public and these need to go through mainstream court. And sometimes the defense attorney and the prosecution will then work together and come back to me with a new package that they think will work better for that individual. So it's a case-by-case basis - the judge has to decide on a case-by-case basis whether or not a bundle of cases is appropriate to come into the court.
[01:24:22] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
And for our last question this evening, we will start with Nyjat Rose-Akins. Why should the public vote for you instead of your opponent?
[01:24:34] Nyjat Rose-Akins: Thank you. And thank you for this opportunity. The public should vote for me because I understand what is happening in the community. I have worked for the City of Seattle for the last 12 years - and not only as a prosecutor in the criminal division for the first 6 - but for the last 6 years, I've been meeting with community. Meeting with people in the East Precinct, in Chinatown ID, in Downtown area - so I understand the issues that are happening on the ground. I see those issues, I talk to community members and understand - and businesses - and understand some of the issues that they are seeing. I get emails from community members and businesses that are closing and community members that feel they can't go outside because of the issues in their communities. And that's why I decided to run - because I know what is happening and I have the qualifications to do this job and to actually put forward a program that can actually work and help people. As I said, working and going to the Auburn Community Court and working in Community Court myself when I started at the City Attorney's Office in 2010, I understand how the program is to work. It's to provide services and connections for people, not to just shuffle them out because that shows that they're 98% or 80% completed the program. We need meaningful programs. And that is why I...
[01:26:12] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Judge Damon Shadid?
[01:26:17] Judge Damon Shadid: As we found out with the latest appointments to the Supreme Court - United States Supreme Court - sometimes candidates will say things that then don't come true when they get appointed or elected to the bench. And that's what's lucky about me - I've been here for eight years. I have a proven history. I have a proven record of collaboration, of breaking down silos, of creating programs that actually help people, that actually get people out of the criminal legal system instead of sitting and rotting in jail, that actually make our community safer, but also help defendants get better. And that's what we need more of. If you want more of the same, then yes, you could vote a career prosecutor onto the bench who hasn't even stepped foot on the court for six years. Or you can look at my record, you can look at my endorsements, you can look at everything that I've done - including the testimonials that I posted on my website - and you can see that I am a judge who delivers results. Sometimes I have to fight for those results. Sometimes I have to beat my head against a wall, but I never stopped fighting - I think that Judge Eisenberg will agree with that. So that's why I should be here. I think I've earned four more years and it's just going to get better if I get re-elected and I'd appreciate your vote. Thank you.
[01:27:32] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Pooja Vaddadi.
[01:27:35] Pooja Vaddadi: Thank you. I love being an attorney. I love being a public defender because I felt purpose in protecting the most vulnerable from an indifferent system. I've managed caseloads as large as 200 and I've taken 11 cases to trial and prepared hundreds more. I believe that Seattle Municipal Court has the power and potential to promote public safety with tools like treatment, diversion, and other intervention programs - without which the court does nothing but contribute to the revolving door of crime. If elected, I will dedicate my career to public safety through the faithful application of the law and the rigorous implementations of programs that are proven to help the most vulnerable and end the cycle of incarceration. The stakes of this election are very high. I practiced in this court and it was the urgency of what I saw in that court that drove me to run this election term. I've said that many times, but I think now is the time to raise an issue that elevated my urgency even more, as I learn more about the people that Judge Eisenberg does interact with. A number of women leaders from Seattle Municipal Court are watching this program tonight and have been waiting for the question to be asked. Judge Eisenberg, how have you taken personal responsibility as a leader for the staff morale crisis, staff exodus, actual or threatened employment litigation by former staff that named you, and related settlements? If you're watching this podcast, you should understand the stakes of this election. The institution of Seattle Municipal Court is in tatters caused by a pattern of abuse and sex-based discrimination.
[01:29:16] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Judge Eisenberg.
[01:29:23] Judge Adam Eisenberg: I'm not sure how to exactly respond to that last claim. I became Presiding Judge in July of this year and there have been many administrative decisions that have evolved over the last several years, as the court goes, and so I'm not exactly sure what specific allegations are being labeled against me. I've been Presiding Judge since July, and I'm trying to lead the court the best I can. I focus on three things - restorative justice, which is recognizing systemic racism that we have, and trying to come up with alternatives to traditional models of jail, like my DVIP program, the Domestic Violence Intervention Project - that's an alternative to jail. I also focus on the individuals - the people who come in front of me, as well as in the DVIP program - it's an individualized treatment program. I believe that's the best way to help people heal and move on from the court system. And third, I try to move the needle of justice, and I do it in various ways. I'm on committees. One thing I did is GR 22 - GR 22 is General Rule 22. It protects family court records and guardianship records from disclosure on the internet, from public disclosure. Four years ago, I proposed that we expand GR 22 to protect chemical dependency evaluations, mental health evaluations, and any time a court orders treatment of a defendant, those records should be protected so that they can't just appear on a public portal. This summer, the Supreme Court unanimously approved my rule change, and now those records are protected effective September 1st. That helps the defendants, that helps the community, that's the kind of judge that I am and I appreciate your vote. Thank you.
[01:30:54] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. And with that, this forum comes to a close. I want to thank our candidates for participating and making this an engaging and informative event. To those watching online, thanks so much for tuning in and sending in questions. If you missed any of the discussion tonight, you can catch up on the Hacks & Wonks Facebook page or on Twitter, where we're @HacksWonks. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii. Special thanks to the coordinators for this evening, Dr. Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli, as well as our fabulous volunteer, Ilona, who works incredibly hard to put on this event this evening.
Most importantly, I want to remind you to vote. Ballots will start arriving in your mailboxes next week and are due on November 8th. You can register to vote, update your registration, and see what will be on your ballot at myvote.wa.gov. Be sure to tune into Hacks & Wonks on your favorite podcast app for our midweek interviews and our Friday week-in-review shows, or at officialhacksandwonks.com.
I've been your host, Crystal Fincher. We'll see you next time.
This week, Crystal is joined by Pierce County Council Chair, Derek Young! Looking at Washington’s Secretary of State race between Democratic incumbent Steve Hobbs and nonpartisan challenger Julie Anderson, Derek talks about his views on Anderson, who’s tenure as Pierce County’s County Auditor has given him insight into her values and priorities. Anderson’s been taking criticisms from some Democrats while others Dems have stood up to defend her and her record. Hobbs has been running on his experience in the role since assuming the position last year, and has stayed out of the mud-slinging in this race. He has his own previous reputation as a moderate Dem that is coloring some voters’ opinions of him.
26th LD Representative Jesse Young’s behavior and extreme political views have become the subject of news again as his race against State Senator Emily Randall for the State Senate seat continues. Young has a history of aggression against staffers, to the point that he has been banned from having legislative staff, has co-sponored legislation to limit abortion rights, and has supported local Republicans who have been involved in domestic terrorism.
In other troubling news out of this race, a PAC, Concerned Taxpayers of Washington State, sent a mailer that made a derogatory reference to Emily Randall’s sexual identity. It’s another disturbing example of anti-LGBTQIA rhetoric and sentiment in mainstream political circles.
Derek recommends Pierce County listeners pay attention to the race between Robyn Denson and Paula Lonergan, who are running for Derek’s seat on the City Council now that he’s hit his term limit. He also points to the race between Councilmember Marty Campbell and challenger Nancy Slotnick.
Finally, a Pierce County project to build a homeless housing project has hit a major road bump in the form of zoning conflicts. Derek provides insight into the specifics of the project, its goals, and what its future looks like after this setback.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Derek Young, on Twitter at @DerekMYoung. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
Don't forget to vote! Visit votewa.gov for voting resources.
Institute for a Democratic Future 2023 applications are live! The initial deadline is November 2nd, and the final deadline is November 13th.
Learn more about how to get involved in Seattle's budget season at this link.
Student debt relief sign-ups are live! Visit this link to enroll.
“Democrats split over nonpartisan secretary of state candidate” by Melissa Santos from Axios
Hacks & Wonks’ Interview with Secretary of State candidate Julie Anderson
Hacks & Wonks’ Interview with Secretary of State candidate Steve Hobbs
“New ad highlights Washington candidate’s past behavior against staffers” by Shauna Sowersby from The News Tribune
Emily Randall’s response to the homophobic mailer against her - watch on TikTok here
Sign up to volunteer for Emily Randall’s campaign here on her website.
Hacks & Wonks’ Interview with Robyn Denson.
“Pierce County prefers this site for a big homeless housing project. Why it might not work” by Shea Johnson from The News Tribune
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show, today's co-host: Pierce County Council Chair, Derek Young. Welcome.
[00:00:52] Councilmember Derek Young: Thank you for having me.
[00:00:53] Crystal Fincher: Excited to have you here again, especially - to get to focus on Pierce County and talk about Pierce County. There's a lot going on. I guess starting off - we're in election season, ballots are in people's hands - remember to get those ballots turned in. Vote by November 8th, but even better, just vote as soon as possible - get that in and done. There are some close and exciting races in Pierce County and with some Pierce County angles.
I think we'll start off talking about the Secretary of State's race, which is a statewide race, but with current Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, who was a former State Senator and then after Kim Wyman moved to Washington [D.C.] and left the job, Steve Hobbs was appointed by Governor Inslee, and a challenger, Julie Anderson, who is a county auditor and now running for the statewide Secretary of State race. What have you seen in this race lately?
[00:01:56] Councilmember Derek Young: I will say this. The race has not gone as I assumed it would, which would be more a debate between Anderson and Hobbs that was about the office and the ideas. And has now evolved into something where we have this strange situation where we have a lot of Pierce County Democrats, like myself, who are defending Julie from attacks from our State Party Chair. And that's been strange - I think it's particularly difficult for those of us that have been around and know Julie well to see the attacks turn into "she's some sort of secret MAGA Trump Republican that" - she's been around a long time and so with those of us that know her, that's a very strange experience to have. So rather than focusing on the office, we found ourselves in a defense mode trying to say - Hey, that's not the Julie that we know, support Steve all you want - that's all fine, I get it. He's running as a Democrat and she's running as a Nonpartisan, which makes things way more difficult. The race has turned into something - the election itself is almost a sideshow of the controversy that has developed around it.
[00:03:30] Crystal Fincher: Some controversy, definitely. I wonder how visible it is to the general public. Certainly people - politicos, the hacks and wonks who are around - are very caught up in this just because it's a different dynamic than we normally have. This has been a partisan office. It's been the only statewide office that Republicans held recently. It was previously held by Republican Kim Wyman - has been a partisan office -when she left and this race came up, people generally assumed - okay, there's going to be a Democrat and a Republican. A Democrat, a Republican, and a Nonpartisan ended up running and Julie Anderson ended up edging out the Republican candidate in the primary, so this is a general election that a lot of people did not anticipate. And the dynamic between a Democrat and a Nonpartisan - and Julie has said that she prefers the term Nonpartisan instead of Independent - is certainly different than - a lot of people - hey, you're familiar with who a Democrat is, you're familiar with who a Republican is. And that has a lot to do with how you view those - that's a significant lens to view a candidate through, and most people see that as a significant driver of a decision and are more aligned with one party and/or tend to vote for the candidate of that party. In this situation with Julie Anderson being Nonpartisan, there has been a lot of questions. And from the Democratic Party and some opponents - have basically said, Hey, she's aligned with Republicans, she looks like she may be an undercover Republican.
I should mention that Hacks & Wonks did interviews with both Steve Hobbs and with Julie Anderson. We actually talked very directly about this issue. Julie and Steve both offered their opinions and explanations on all of this, and so you can find those shows and we'll link those in the show notes. But it's that attack on Julie Anderson that has been controversial - that we saw an Axios article from Melissa Santos about this week, lots of online posting and opinions and takes about this, but hey, is it actually accurate that Julie Anderson is basically a closet Republican or has she worked well with all people, sincerely views herself as a Nonpartisan? Are her views consistent now after getting some Republican support than they were before? It appears that they are, and she has stood up afterwards and say - Hey, I still believe our elections are secure, and believe in how they've been, and for voter amendments and those kinds of things. But then other people are saying - hey, especially at a time when we have these battles between Republicans and Democrats, we can't risk having a Nonpartisan in there. We need to have a Democrat in this office. How do you weigh that decision and how do you think voters can view their decision in this race?
[00:06:42] Councilmember Derek Young: Yeah, it's a fair question and I'll be honest - it would have been so much easier if she was running as a Democrat because you have the backing of the Party and all the resources that brings with it. Obviously, in this case, that wouldn't have been the way it went down because we have an incumbent who was appointed last year. But - what's the saying about Ginger Rogers and having to do all the things that Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in heels? That's the kind of obstacles that Julie, by choosing this, put in her way. I don't know how voters are going to react as a result. The one thing I do note is that she believes this in her bones. This is a genuine conviction that the position of auditor at the local level and Secretary of State at the state level should be Nonpartisan because you can't assume that everyone will look at election and have faith in it if they view the person administering it as aligned with one of the teams. I actually think I agree with that sentiment, particularly in these times, and I kind of understand where people are coming from when - at a time when so many Republicans are calling into question the veracity of our elections, can we have someone that's on the sidelines, so to speak, that isn't actively pushing back on that from the Democratic point of view? I tend to agree with Julie more in that the way you build trust and faith in the system is by having someone who is fulfilling a more ministerial role and calling balls and strikes not aligned with one of the parties.
And I've seen how that works firsthand in Pierce County. One of my jobs as Chair of the Council is I sit on the Canvassing Board and so each election, there's a group of folks who are election observers from each party and independents that come in - and every time, these very partisan folks have nothing but praise for Julie and her team and the transparent and accountable system that she's built. This is also a woman who literally tried to get rid of her office. She proposed to me, and I agreed, that the role of auditor should be an appointed position because it is administrative and ministerial. Electing the position is actually not a great idea - similar for the offices of sheriff and assessor. So I had charter amendments to propose for each of those. But being Julie, she wrote an editorial saying - you should get rid of the job I just completed. And I just have nothing but admiration for someone who's not only learned the role, but determined that - if she designed the ideal world, this position would not even be elected. But if you're going to have an elected person in it, you should have someone that is not beholden to one of the parties.
The last thing I'll just say is that prior to her time as auditor in the county, she was on the Tacoma City Council. While city council races are also nonpartisan, you get a sense for people's values. Julie Anderson is a very progressive person. And I think there's - so for those of us that are from Pierce County, this has been this just very strange experience to watch. And how that plays out in the rest of state, I just don't know. But I have to imagine that the tension drawn to it by the Party has probably actually been good for her to get that message out there. I don't know that the rest of the non-very-online, very-hooked-in crowd is paying that much attention to the race, so we'll see how it goes.
[00:11:14] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, we'll see how it goes - this seems to be a race, I think I commented earlier, I know other people have - where this is not a race that seems to be attracting much attention. People are kind of looking at those party cues. Hey, if I'm a Democrat, I see a Democrat, I'm voting for the Democrat. And that seems to be how things are going with people who don't really pay attention to local party politics, all of the stories, the ins and outs of the campaigns to the degree that people who work in politics or policy or heavily involved in advocacy do. But for those who are, this has been one of the toughest decisions and have been some of the toughest conversations that people have had in a bit - because there is this tension. And I think another dimension of this is that we're talking about Senator Steve Hobbs, who has been known as a moderate and has certainly provoked a lot of emotion over the years. He has taken different stances than a lot of other people in the Party on transportation policy and different things. And so I think for people who have been involved in politics for a long time, they have this view of him in their head as a moderate. And that's a positive thing for some people - some people may feel that that's pragmatic. For others, they feel that that's obstruction. But for people who do have an impression of Steve Hobbs, whether positive or negative, I think that colors how they're coming into the opinions of this race and that conversation. And also just the recognition that that's a very small slice of people who are paying attention to that degree. So I don't know how much this makes it out into the world of people who take the time to vote and who care about it, but who don't really follow politics closely. It'll be interesting to see how this continues to play out and how the information continues to flow over the next two weeks.
[00:13:19] Councilmember Derek Young: Steve has also - to his credit - is not behind a lot of the nastiness that has come up in this race. In fact, I have not heard anything bad about the way he's conducted himself in the office. And so my feelings - and they're personal feelings in the race, I think for a lot of others - it's actually less about Steve Hobbs and more about our feelings for Julie. I will also say, for those of us from South Sound, there's a little bit of folks from other parts of the state telling us what we should think about this. And so you have a little bit of good old-fashioned Tacoma getting its back up about one of our own. And I think there's some of that going on as well. So I just wanted to be clear that I think the candidates themselves are conducting an admirable race.
[00:14:15] Crystal Fincher: I think that's fair. There's another race where I don't think one of the candidates is conducting an admirable race, and that's an extremely partisan race in your neck of the woods - in the 26th Legislative District - between Democrat Emily Randall and very extreme Republican Jesse Young. Now you have been down there and observing the ins and outs of Jesse Young, who's now running for State Senate, but was a State Representative, is a State Representative before this. Man, this man has issues - and this week there was a news story that that talked about his very problematic treatment and harassment of staff. What did he do?
[00:15:02] Councilmember Derek Young: There's a pattern of abusive behavior to not only staff, but other legislators. For example, his Republican seatmate, Michelle Caldier - they're not supposed to be in the same room together without at least one other person because they got in an argument that was so loud that security had to show up. So this is someone from his own party and his seatmate in his district. And I will just say that it fits a pattern for him. And he would not be the first politician that has had difficulties with staff, but when he was found to have done these things and was instructed to go to some anger management counseling, he refused to do so. And so as a result, to this day, he's not allowed to have legislative staff. And some of the reports were pretty awful - calling a woman by a particularly vulgar name and screaming fits - and to the point where at one point the staffer referred to their weekly meetings as "the weekly beatings." So his behavior is obviously a problem and makes him particularly ineffective because how someone does the job of legislator without staff is kind of beyond me.
All that said, it's not just his behavior that's problematic. He has rather extreme political positions. This was a man who was close allies with and stuck by Matt Shea - many of your listeners will remember as the radical Eastern Washington Republican who literally organized the militia takeover of the Malheur.
[00:17:02] Crystal Fincher: Yeah - he was involved in domestic terrorism.
[00:17:04] Councilmember Derek Young: Yeah, he put tracking devices on sheriff vehicles to monitor people, he planned insurrection, runs a training camp for militia activities. And this is someone who - when he was under fire for these behaviors and Republicans were trying to figure out what to do - leadership in their caucus removed him immediately from the caucus. Well, maybe not immediately, but got to it pretty quickly. He stood by him the entire time and organized opposition to Minority Leader J.T. Wilcox's actions that removed him from the caucus and expedited his eventual departure from the Legislature. So, his positions on abortion are for criminalization.
Just really strange out of the mainstream type of behavior, and I'll leave you with this one other more recent anecdote that I am more personally knowledgeable of. During the aftermath of George Floyd's death, some teenagers in Gig Harbor decided that they were going to organize protests and showed up at this one corner that's particularly - I don't know, for whatever reason, it's become our protest area - I think it's because it's got a lot of traffic. And so hundreds of kids and some adults showed up there to protest and demand reforms for law enforcement. And Jesse showed up with a group of men carrying long guns because they claimed that these were Antifa and they were going to burn the shopping mall next to it to the ground. He stuck by this ridiculous story for so long, he even claimed that the local police chief, who happens to be a friend, had covered up the story and that he witnessed the chief grabbing gas cans that were planted ahead of time to burn the strip mall down. When in reality, what the police chief had seen was a gas can that had fallen on the roadway from someone with a landscaping truck and he was just picking it up to get it out of the road. He continued to lie about this on conservative talk radio for weeks. And this is our police chief - he's a known, trusted person that's been on our force and lived in our community for decades. And Jesse's out there lying about him because he wanted to justify his appearance there with a group of men and long guns to a protest organized by teens.
[00:19:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and that was a scary time. This was in 2020 - we were working with organizers on the ground, canvassers on the ground in the district at the time in another effort. And it was a really scary thing even detached from it - hearing, hey, there are reports with men driving around with guns, men arriving at this place with guns, some of these assault rifles, right? And just not knowing what's going to happen, hearing the extremist rhetoric, knowing the history of some of those - especially in the context of his palling around with domestic terrorists, Matt Shea - did not know what direction this was going to go in, but he clearly felt really entitled to do that and to intimidate everyone in that area, everyone in those neighborhoods. And that's just really fundamentally not okay. The treatment of staff is just really fundamentally not okay. And there are some people who sometimes view these things as partisan attacks. And Republicans certainly have their own record on what they've permitted within the ranks of their party. But I think in this state, especially among Democrats - we had a conversation, had many conversations about Insurance Commissioner, Mike Kreidler - that treatment - so many people have called on him to resign and continue to, finding that's not acceptable. He's not going to find support when he - it would be really unwise to choose to run for re-election - but if he would, he's not going to find support there. There have been other people whose resignations have been called for in the wake of treatment like this. This is something that is not partisan. This is something that Democrats have been not hesitant to call out people in their own ranks. And this also applies to Republicans. He has not had a legislative assistant since, what was it, 2016?
[00:21:59] Councilmember Derek Young: Something like that, yeah.
[00:22:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, for quite some time. And as you said, how do you get any work done? The people in the 26th have had hobbled representation. And if people found any fault with what's happening, you kind of have to ask - how is Jesse Young able to show up and do his job? Other legislators have beyond full schedules - needing a legislative assistant to juggle all of that, juggle all their communications, schedule meetings, coordinate with their constituents. And so that's just not possible to do and to fully do your job. And to have the reason for that being that you can't be trusted to be around subordinates is really just an indictment on the fitness for office.
And there's a clear choice in terms of the issue of abortion rights in this race. You have Emily Randall, who is a staunch supporter of personal freedom and privacy and reproductive choice. You have Jesse Young, who has taken really extreme stands on abortion - and hey, it shouldn't just be a ban, there should be criminal penalties involved in this - just really troubling. And the election conspiracy denial - he went to Arizona, with the denialists in Arizona, to a Cyber Ninja audit that they called it. And it was just really a gathering of these conspiracy theorists. Why are we entertaining a conversation of electing a guy who is doing this kind of stuff? This is just beyond me and really beyond the conversations of how do we even get to policy? How do we even get to what you're going to do in the job when you're doing things that prevent your ability to even do the job? How are we debating about issues when he can't adequately legislate? He can't adequately hear from, meet with, represent constituents. He can't adequately conduct himself in public and not intimidate people with guns - teenagers - with guns in public. We can't even get to the conversation of legislating. This guy is just fundamentally unfit. It's a challenge. And I imagine you're sitting there looking at this race and going - oh my goodness, I wish more people really knew who this guy was and what's at stake.
[00:24:34] Councilmember Derek Young: It is hard because it is my community. We are the - 26th district for those that aren't familiar - it's basically the Kitsap Peninsula, so half of it's in Pierce County in the Key Peninsula and Gig Harbor area and then Kitsap going up to Bremerton. And it's a swing district. Even calling it a swing district might be generous to the Democratic side. They've been pretty successful here for the last decade or so. And things didn't change that much with redistricting. But yeah, even setting that aside, I get that at least half of our district prefers the Republican side and that's fine. But in this case, you have someone who is so clearly a great representative for us, or a senator for us, and is very effective - almost shockingly so. As a first-term Senator, Emily Randall really was a standout amongst that group in terms of being effective, being thoughtful, doing the hard work. I know within my association, because I've been for a number of years leading our legislative efforts, very often bringing her up as someone to champion things that we're working on because we know her as a worker and fair-minded and well-respected. And then you have the opposite of that challenging her and really just having some basic integrity challenges in addition to his volatility, so I don't get it. This shouldn't be close.
I understand why some of the other races are the way they are - we actually had a surprise with Adison Richards doing exceptionally well in the primary of one of the House seats, against a fine candidate on the Republican side who I know pretty well - Spencer Hutchins, who was formerly on the Gig Harbor Council. So those are the races where I understand everyone's got a choice and it's harder to understand why the Senate race is this close.
[00:27:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's worrisome, but this is definitely a race. We've talked before about - there's a lot of people in the Seattle area who listen to this race and a lot of the races that they're going to be considering are Democrat versus Democrat legislative races, some of them are uncontested at all. And so it presents an opportunity to say, okay, we know your seat is going to be in Democratic hands and certainly stay active and involved where you're at, but make a point to adopt a race somewhere externally, whether it's a district like the 26th Legislative District down in South Sound, whether it's the 47th Legislative District down in the Kent, Auburn, Covington area. Or up north in the 10th or 47th or 42nd districts. Pick one of these districts where we know that races there are consistently close and competitive, that it's always within a hair of which candidate wins, and help put the Democratic candidate in this situation, but help put the candidates that align with your values over the top.
[00:28:19] Councilmember Derek Young: And do it - if for no other reason - to help out me personally. We're two guys from Gig Harbor named Young and working in politics, so lots of people confuse it. And I think in particular, my dad takes exception because people think his son is Jesse.
[00:28:36] Crystal Fincher: Oh, yikes. Yikes and yikes. Yeah, I do not envy you as being another Young in politics there, but hopefully this is something that won't be an issue for you that much longer. So as if all of the other stuff wasn't enough, there was a mailer that arrived this week that was really troubling and obviously intentional. The background here is that Emily Randall is a queer woman - has been open about that, wonderful about that. And a mailer arrived and you talked about this, so I'll let you describe it.
[00:29:22] Councilmember Derek Young: Basically - and I hadn't noticed the mailer, I don't know that I was the target audience - but Emily posted a video where she shared it because she received it. And the message says, Let's set the record straight. Now, that term is one we're all familiar with in political context and journalism and such. The problem was that they put a special emphasis - underlined and red-bolded the "straight" part. That is a winking notation of her sexual identity and a pretty ugly one, I think. It's a - we are in a divided district, so we know that there is some people who will be uncomfortable with LGBTQ rights and Emily's never hidden from it. But the IE that ran this - I think there's no question they knew exactly what they were doing, and it's really worthy of calling out. And I'm glad that Emily did herself, because she's her own best advocate and I think that's important. But I think it's also important for all of us to say - We know what you were doing. And this isn't some PAC that just popped up for a single purpose to hide identities. This is a - what is it - Concerned Taxpayers? I forget their exact name, but it's a mainstream PAC that's very active in a lot of races. Their major donors are Master Builders and Realtors. And so this is a group that should know better and did something -
[00:31:17] Crystal Fincher: That does know better and decided not to do it. That is - this isn't a fringe group - this is a major mainstream regular supporter of the party, closely aligned interests of the party. They're allies of the party and they're consistently there for those interests. And it clearly was intentional. I mean, as - you have worked on political communications certainly, as have I. And I think sometimes political operatives do the thing where we know exactly what we do. And I'm saying, I do not do this and try very hard not to do this - but I've seen Republicans and I've sometimes seen Democrats do this - but rely on the public not realizing what our work actually is and how we actually do it, to just excuse it. And what you see in political communications, what you see on mail is very intentional. The words are poured over. There are several levels of approval, certainly on - if you're working with a good team, as you are anywhere, you want to make sure that you're conveying the message that you want to and that you are not conveying any message that you don't want to. So anything that can be borderline - I don't really want to say that - then you don't say, then you change something to make sure that it doesn't give that impression, that it doesn't say something - especially something that is harmful or offensive. And at a time when we have a very conservative Supreme Court who is tearing down rights, who has basically put the right of marriage equality on notice. And the Dobbs decision - it didn't just strike down Roe vs Wade - it also laid the path that a number of them want to take moving forward, which is striking down protections for contraception, privacy, marriage equality - type thing. So we know this is on deck. We've heard several Republicans in the state and across the country say that they believe that - just marriage between only a man and a woman should be legally valid, others should be illegal again - who want to roll back the rights that were won.
And this was an ad targeted at a conservative audience. It is not a secret that when you have "straight" in big, bold, red letters that are then underlined - and that's the only word on the page that it's treated like that - you're sending a message. And it's unacceptable. And I am glad she called it out. And to your point, I'm very glad that everyone has the opportunity to say - No, this is unacceptable, and this is a preview of the type of harmful hate that is coming if we allow more of this. I mean, it just is another one of those - before we get into conversations about policy, we're dealing with some really fundamental human decency - really ability to adequately and peacefully participate in society and allow other people to participate in that same society to the same degree. It is just egregious, received news coverage for being egregious. And it's just what we're contending with. It is not at all rare to see these dirty hits come out during this time where ballots are out and mailers are flying. And I don't know what else they have planned, but if this is what they're doing early, I shudder to think what they think they can say when they feel that there isn't the type of penalty or time for scrutiny attached to it. So it's just - get involved in this race, get involved in this race.
[00:35:27] Councilmember Derek Young: And I think it's worth saying that - it's not just gross from a political standpoint. Given the trajectory of rhetoric around LGBTQ rights and life in this country, it's dangerous in the literal sense. That's why, I think it's important to - often there's this, especially amongst Democrats, this tendency to worry about should we call attention to an attack or is that making something more visible to the public. And I think there are these cases where - whether it's around election validity, people's basic rights, and just decency - we have to have some ground truth, some shared reality that we all exist on that's beneath where the politics of the situation is going. Let's get back to the point where we can have these fierce debates over policy. But right now we have to have some common cause for just existing in the same society, I think. And saying that these things are out of bounds and there will be a price that you pay for doing it, I think is important.
[00:37:02] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I completely agree. And that hesitance to - should we bring it up, should we talk about it? Yeah, we have to, because the other side is. How many times in the past week have we heard hateful comments about the trans community, hateful anti-Semitic comments, hateful white supremacist comments. And I'm just thinking about this week, right? This is unfortunately creeping into mainstream society. These are not limited to rarely visited corners of the internet that hardly anyone visits. These are some of the biggest celebrities, some of the richest people, and some of the most powerful party members. These are - we're hearing this from elected officials now and party leadership. We have to take a stand and say this is unacceptable because the silence is enabling this. It is going to take an effort of everyone confronting this when they're seeing it and rejecting it - rejecting it in their communities and their conversations with friends - and yes, family - and on the ballot. I mean, rejecting it on the ballot is the easy part - that should be an automatic. We have more work to do to confront this in our everyday lives, in our societies, and the people who we interact with. So I again, just urge people to get involved and to call this stuff out whenever and wherever you see it. That is the most powerful thing that we can do, especially when it's with people you know - it makes a difference. Certainly encourage everyone listening - we'll put information in the show notes - do a phone bank, do a canvass session. If you absolutely can't do those things, donate, but sometimes we talk about money in these races and money certainly helps buy resources and the things to make those happen. But really the time that you can spend - to put in to talk to other voters in that district and to help educate those voters and tell them why you're supportive and why you're taking your time to do this - is really impactful to a lot of people and encourage people to get involved that way. So thank you for that. Are there any other races in Pierce County that you think people should be tuned into, thinking about, looking at?
[00:39:34] Councilmember Derek Young: Yeah, we have a couple of council races that are - I think headed in the right direction - but important to keeping the council majority that we managed to get in Democratic hands. One being replacement for me, as I'm term limited and leaving office at the end of the year. And her name is Robyn Denson. Her opponent is a Republican named Paula Lonergan - for folks in Pierce County that name may sound familiar because her husband is the Assessor-Treasurer and used to be a Tacoma City Council member. But that race - things are going fairly well - she's running a pretty traditional Republican campaign. And Robyn is - in fact, you may - I believe you actually did have her on.
[00:40:21] Crystal Fincher: Yep, we interviewed her. We'll also link that in the show notes.
[00:40:24] Councilmember Derek Young: And she certainly fits the model of wonk. She's a former nonpartisan policy staff down in Olympia, specializing in housing in particular, which is obviously something that's super critical throughout our region, but especially right here in Pierce County. And is just a really thoughtful person. She's currently on the Gig Harbor City Council, and I think the world of her and really recruited her hard to run for my seat, to make sure we kept this in Democratic hands. Because until I ran, we hadn't won this seat really before, so it was important to me to find a suitable replacement.
The other is Marty Campbell, who's an incumbent council member. His opponent, Nancy Slotnick, is a Republican. And while that race hasn't been as hot - I think it's flying a little bit under the radar - and Marty's district changed the most out of the council districts during redistricting. And so he's had to introduce himself to a large group of voters who may not be as familiar with him, and so that's presented some challenges, I think. And unfortunately, his partner also has some health issues at the moment that they've been public about - I'm not sharing any inside information - so he's juggling a lot right now trying to be my Vice Chair, which is a challenge even in itself. So we're hoping to push Marty over the line as well.
[00:42:00] Crystal Fincher: All right. Sounds good. We will be paying attention to those and seeing how those turn out. In non-political news this week, there was some news in Pierce County about zoning restrictions getting in the way of a planned homeless housing project. This is something that is definitely needed, but it looks like it may have run into a snag. What's happening?
[00:42:25] Councilmember Derek Young: Yeah. So this was - I will say, even though it wasn't my fault - as someone in Pierce County government, it's embarrassing. So we have this concept that we are essentially stealing from Austin that - they have a wildly successful program called Community First! Village that's for folks that are unhoused and chronically unhoused. This is the population of homeless folks that have the most barriers - typically will have some disabilities or been homeless for a very long time, may have some behavioral health challenges, you name it - there's something in their way that's keeping them from becoming housed and so they're living on the streets. This model starts with the physical infrastructure - it's essentially micro homes or tiny houses, however you want to refer to it. Their units tend to be very nice by comparison to - sometimes when we talk about tiny houses, we think of some of the garden sheds basically that you see popping up in some communities. These - it looks more like a trailer park - is the way I would describe it. But the secret sauce in this is not just getting people housed - that's the big barrier. The second is that they deliver really intentional services to these folks that are all onsite. They even have volunteers that live onsite. And there's a strong effort to build community, which is something that I think is missed from a lot of permanent supportive housing models you see elsewhere.
And I was skeptical at first, but when it clicked - I was talking with someone who has worked in homelessness for a long time. And he said, we typically buy an apartment complex or maybe a hotel and turn that into permanent supportive housing. But think about - because he knew I lived in an apartment - how many of your neighbors do you know? And embarrassingly, I know probably half my neighbors - I know their names and their families. But otherwise, once you get home, you're closing the door and you're not really interacting with them that much. This is the opposite - it's intended to help rebuild those social connections. There's onsite work that can be done. They actually do pay rent - it's heavily subsidized. But the idea is to rebuild those social skills. For some people, they will always live there, and that's fine. But for others, they can then take those steps to getting back to a life that maybe doesn't require as much support.
So we're all very excited about this model, and we think it's going to be a hit. One of the first questions I had last year was - okay, we'll appropriate this money, but why don't you tell us if you can find any properties that are available that will have suitable zoning? Somehow that didn't happen. And so the site that they got under contract before approaching the council, it turned out that the zoning, because it's surrounded by wetlands, is Residential Resource, which doesn't allow for this much density. So we were set to approve and they wanted to close on the property by the end of the year - that's just not going to happen. What this looks like going forward, I don't know. But the trick here is that this is a new idea - not only for us, but really for the region. And as a result, we cannot fail. This has to work. Because if we're going to replicate it elsewhere in Pierce County and around the region, we have to get it right. If we fail, people will look at it and go - well, that didn't work - and that's not something we want to have happen. So like I said, it's embarrassing, but it is what it is and we have to figure out a solution.
[00:46:46] Crystal Fincher: What's on deck for solutions?
[00:46:48] Councilmember Derek Young: I don't know yet, because we just found out. And so the executive still believes that we can go through with this property and just do a rezone. I will say that just doing a rezone is never a simple thing, particularly when what you have planned for the site is now very public. The other possibility is start looking for other locations. The problem is that - this was always my concern - is that the sites that are affordable for a project like this are also going to be challenged. In this development environment, if it's zoned for density, it's going to be pretty valuable. The other challenge that we had with this site was that it doesn't have sewer adjacent to it. This is kind of on the outskirts of our urban growth area, so while there's urban development around it - and it's right off what was going to be the Cross-Base Highway - it still lacks some basic infrastructure. So all that's why we were getting it for a song and why other developers had looked at it for housing projects and couldn't make it work. But I think we're back to square one in terms of site selection, and we need to start looking around. But it's possible we'll have a proposal here that's fairly straightforward. The most annoying part about this is that we literally had - because this concept is so new - we didn't really have a use allowed for this in our zoning code. So we actually passed a bill two months ago to change zoning code in order to allow for this. We still somehow came up with a site that it doesn't work for.
[00:48:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's a challenge. And this is new, so I'm asking you questions - I understand you may not have the answer yet. This was reported in The News Tribune day before yesterday, I think, on October 26th. And there did seem to be a little bit of - I don't know if I'd call it tension - but difference in opinion on moving forward about the ease or feasibility of that zoning change option. The Pierce County Executive did make it seem like it's something that is definitely doable, even if it's not - hey, we'll take care of it next meeting - in the near future, certainly had the impression that it could be resolved with that. What challenges would prevent that from - from being able to pass a zoning change soon?
[00:49:28] Councilmember Derek Young: Yeah, I'm unclear what he's referring to because there was a quote in the newspaper and I called him about this after seeing it that said that we think this may be a 15 or 30-day delay. I don't know what he's talking about. This would require not only a zoning map change, but we believe a comprehensive plan change. So for those that aren't aware of local land use policy, it's - a comp plan change - you're only allowed to touch your comp plan once per year. We've already started our process and so we couldn't add it to this. The next time you could do something is literally over a year from now because you can only make adjustments once per year. If it's just a zoning change, that's what's referred to as an Official Control under our planning rules. And so we have to notify the Department of Commerce with a 60-day comment period. That's just the minimum - maybe nothing comes up and they don't care - but it's still a 60-day period. And then after that, you need to be going to the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission has their own process. And then it finally comes to the council. Our charter requires at least three weeks just to run a bill and that's under ideal conditions. So yeah, I'm not sure what he's talking about there, but this is not a simple change by any means. All that said, I don't think there would necessarily be opposition coming from the council. We were certainly comfortable with the idea before finding the problem, so it's just a matter of the rules that we all have to follow.
And what was kind of frustrating about it is hearing him trying to figure out ways around them when he vetoed an emergency ordinance that we passed for Safe Parking a few months ago. And one of the reasons he vetoed it, even though the emergency ordinance is temporary and involves no construction - if you decide you're not going to do it there, you can move the cars - so there's no permanent problem. And yet he used that as one of the objections to the emergency bill. And in this case, we're literally going to spend millions and millions of dollars building a permanent housing development. And we're going to skip the process? I don't see that working. So the council's of one mind on this - the sponsors all pulled their signatures so that we didn't have to - we didn't want to vote to turn it down, that just is a bad look. So everyone's on the same page on the council that this has to be done right.
[00:52:27] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Well, that little nugget sounds encouraging - that you decided to move forward with it, and so it is rules that have to be followed. So could it be potentially - no, this is not a three-week endeavor, but it may be a few months of diligent work and following through the steps and the ability to accommodate the necessary changes then. If it does take a few months or however long that that takes, does that impact the project? Does that impact the cost or anything with that?
[00:53:01] Councilmember Derek Young: It will have some impact. It's hard to quantify because everything in the economy is so weird these days, so we will see. But so one thing we had to do, for example, is at the end of the year, our proviso expires, allowing the appropriation that we budgeted for - it's supposed to go back to other homeless services - because at the time we were pretty skeptical that this could work. I see no objection from my colleagues to changing that proviso so that we will stay committed to this. And again, we know we have a problem, like everyone. So we've got this innovative solution. It seems to work really well. The performance in Austin is exceptional compared to other programs. So, the more I've learned about it, the more eager I become. I just think in this instance, it's possible the executive and his staff were a little too eager and didn't do some kind of basic homework.
[00:54:09] Crystal Fincher: Well, hopefully you will be there to help him finish that assignment.
[00:54:15] Councilmember Derek Young: Unfortunately, I think my successor may need to finish this up for me, but -
[00:54:22] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. So it doesn't look like there's a chance by the end of the year, I guess. I guess that looks unlikely. But hopefully the newly composed council is as dedicated to this as the other one was. And with bipartisan support - this was not something that was necessarily squeaked through.
[00:54:39] Councilmember Derek Young: No, in fact - it's noteworthy that this was really coming from the Republicans. This was their conception. And so I think that's really good - because to have bipartisan comity on an issue like homelessness is not - it's not common. So I think it's important for us to try to stick together on an issue like this.
[00:55:07] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and to your point - to get going with a model that could be an example for other cities to follow - I think that's a very important thing. And especially for local government - one of the things that I really like about local government and policy - is that everyone has to live in these conditions, everyone has to see. There's more pressure to get away from rhetoric and to actually do something that's addressing the issues that people are seeing with their own eyes and that you're seeing with your own eyes. So there is more of, I think, a motivation to act, especially outside of - sometimes big city politics can get super politicized, but other entities don't always get bogged down by the spectacle of it all. And you're working towards some solution and there's - Hey, there's evidence that this model is working elsewhere, let's give it a go. We certainly need to figure out something that works, other things haven't like they've needed to. So sometimes challenges happen, and sounds like there's cause for optimism that this can be worked through, even if it's with the newly composed council and hopefully we get this up and running. If you work through all this - who knows if it alters the timeline - what was the original timeline for this being built and operational?
[00:56:43] Councilmember Derek Young: Yeah, I think the schedule was construction next year and have the first units available at the beginning of 2024, if I'm not mistaken. I may have that a little bit wrong, but by the time you do site development - depending on the season, it can get tough. But that was the hope - is that it would be - the first phase of the project would be fairly soon. And that it is a phased project. So eventually would house 257 units, give or take. Obviously, there may be some site development challenges. And the hope is that everyone sees that this works and then we'll want to throw money at this as an - because that's what's happened in Harris County, Texas, where Austin is. They essentially have the private sector throwing money at them to do more. And they've got a couple thousand of these units that are housing people, and their success rate in terms of rehousing folks in traditional housing is in the 60% - I mean, that's just unheard of in this space.
[00:57:59] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I hope - I hope that we still see this coming online in 2024. Seems like that could be doable, but we'll stay tuned and keep people updated on what's happening.
And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this friday, October 28th, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Production Coordinator is Bryce Cannatelli. Our insightful co-host today is Pierce County Council Chair Derek Young. You can find Derek on Twitter - and he's a good Twitter follow - @DerekMYoung. That's D-E-R-E-K-M Young. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks and you can find me on Twitter @finchfrii - it's two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of all of our shows and our Friday almost-live show to your feed. If you like us, please leave a review wherever you can. And you can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at OfficialHacksandWonks.com and in our episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in and we will talk to you next time.
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Julie Anderson about her campaign for Washington Secretary of State - why she decided to run, how partisanship affects the office, and the experience she brings to manage the Secretary of State’s broad portfolio. With regard to managing elections, they discuss her plans to increase voter turnout, her stance and approach to local jurisdictions potentially adopting alternative systems such as ranked choice voting, and how to handle misinformation that creates mistrust in our elections. Crystal then gives Julie an opportunity to respond to the many attacks from her detractors before switching gears to dig into her thoughts on managing the state archives - both preserving historical records and ensuring that the Public Records Act is administered efficiently and effectively.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Julie Anderson at @nonpartisansos.
Resources
Campaign Website - Julie Anderson
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, I am very excited to be welcoming to the show - Julie Anderson, who is a candidate for Secretary of State, which is one of the most important and consequential offices in the state and going to be up for election on your November ballot. Welcome, Julie.
[00:00:55] Julie Anderson: Thank you, Crystal - and thanks for acknowledging that the Secretary of State's office is really important. It's nice to meet somebody who's excited about picking leadership for the important office. That's - thank you.
[00:01:07] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So what made you decide to run for Secretary of State?
[00:01:12] Julie Anderson: Well, I certainly wasn't expecting to do this in 2022 - but definitely the importance of the office. I'm one of the end users of the office - the Secretary of State is my authorizing agency and leader for elections on the county level and also for document recording - so it's an important office to me and I know it's important to the other 38 counties as well. So when Kim picked up and left, I jumped right in. And I was also inspired to do it because I wanted, I saw this as an opportunity to make a shift in the office and run as a Nonpartisan and to hopefully create a little bit of an air bubble in the office and normalize the idea of hiring professional election administrators who aren't associated with the political party. So that's why I'm running.
[00:02:10] Crystal Fincher: And that has been a difference this cycle that we've seen - just that people are not familiar with. This office has been held by a Republican for several years, the only statewide office that was previously held by a Republican. With the appointment of former Senator Hobbs to now being Secretary Hobbs, which - a lot of people were advocating for your appointment in that seat, citing your experience for that - but he is there and a Democrat. But you have decided to run as an Independent. Why do you think being Independent is so important to the office? And do you think that we've suffered from having it be a partisan office in the past?
[00:02:53] Julie Anderson: One quick thing - I'm making a real point of calling myself Nonpartisan rather than Independent - because as you've noticed in Chris Vance's race, he calls himself an Independent and he has designs on creating an independent third party. I have no designs on creating a group or a party and - I don't have a group - so I am literally nonpartisan. Have we suffered by having partisans in that office before? I think that we've been really lucky with Sam Reed and Kim Wyman taking the job very seriously and performing the job in a nonpartisan fashion. I do think, however, that their party affiliation dragged some unnecessary drama into the office and made their work more difficult. It is a political office and so the opposing team is always looking for a way to knock you off at the end of your term, and is always positioning to put their best candidate forward doing that. So there's always a little jockeying around depriving the incumbent of oxygen and victories so that they're less credible whenever they run for re-election. And then in the electorate, there is also skepticism because we live in an increasingly hyper-polarized political environment, people are just naturally suspicious of somebody that holds a political party that they don't belong to. So those are two reasons why I think that partisanship in this job does not help or add value to the work. And I don't think that having a party affiliation does add value to the policy work or the operations of the office.
[00:04:38] Crystal Fincher: Now you have talked a lot about the experience that you bring to this office should you be elected. Can you talk about what your experience has been as Pierce County Auditor and how you feel it's going to be beneficial as Secretary of State?
[00:04:51] Julie Anderson: Sure. So for over 12 years - 13 in November - I've been the nonpartisan county auditor for Pierce County, which is our state's second largest county. Which means I've conducted hundreds of elections in Washington State and have also presided over a recording document program - making recording documents, preserving them, and making them accessible to the public - and then also business registry and licensing. So with that experience, I'm familiar from the bottom up with Washington State's votewa.gov election management system because my team was part of, really, building it along with other lead counties and obviously the Secretary of State's office. I sat on the Executive Steering Committee while that was under development and when it launched and went live in 2019. So having that background, I think helps, puts me in a position to better help the county auditors and the election administrators using that system. It also helps me to design and implement policy proposals for the Legislature to consider since I know how the system works. And it also puts me in a position for visioning how to modernize the office, what the needs are to go the next step, and where the gaps are. And when we're talking about elections - where the gaps are specifically - we don't have a lot of residual gains left to make in Washington State, but the ones that we do need to make are going to be the most difficult and challenging. And I think that's where experience matters.
[00:06:33] Crystal Fincher: It absolutely matters - and it matters for more than just the elections too. The elections are certainly the most visible part of what the Secretary of State does, but it has such a broad portfolio of responsibilities. And just recapping those briefly for people who may be unfamiliar. In addition to supervising local elections, filing and verifying initiatives and referenda, and distributing the Voters' Pamphlets - also responsible for registering private corporations, limited partnerships and trademarks; registering individuals and organizations, and commercial fundraisers involved in charitable solicitations; administering the state's Address Confidentiality program, which is critically important for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking - so very important too, public safety really - collecting and preserving the historical records of the state and making those records available for research; coordinating implementation of the state's records management laws, which are constantly in the news for one reason or another; affixing the state's seal; regulating use of the seal; filing and attesting to official acts of the governor; certifying what the Legislature does; and sometimes even called upon to represent the state in international trade and cultural missions and greeting dignitaries. There's so much under that umbrella, each of which seems like it could potentially be its own office really, but so broad. How has your experience as an auditor helped to prepare you for the full portfolio of what you're going to be managing if you're elected to be Secretary of State?
[00:08:07] Julie Anderson: I would say it's auditor plus my whole professional portfolio. So I come with public and nonprofit leadership experience in human services, criminal justice, and economic development. I was notably the Executive Director of the YWCA in Tacoma-Pierce County, so that speaks to the sensitivity and understanding of the Address Confidentiality Program, and I can tell you how I would apply that to expand that program. And then in economic development, I was a Senior Policy Advisor for the State Department of Commerce, where my portfolio included workforce development and developing a green economy and also innovation zones. But that body of work in the public and nonprofit sector means that I'm really tuned into the importance of community, and the unique conditions in community, and understanding that I have to have a partnership in community to do any of those things well. A top-down management model or staying isolated in that executive position is not going to make the organization better or better connected with the citizens and residents of Washington. And we don't just serve citizens, we serve the residents of Washington State. So I think that my community connections and my work on the 2020 census, for example, I have some great ideas about how to engage community in each of those programs, whether it's talking about voter turnout, access for people living with disabilities, or how we are talking about curating the heritage and history of Washington State to make sure that we don't disappear people and cultures and make sure that we're doing culturally relevant screening of our collection and portfolio and working in partnership with community to do that.
[00:10:04] Crystal Fincher: So now you mentioned voter engagement and turnout - you've talked on a few occasions about efforts to increase voter registration, and increasing voter registration is not necessarily consistent with increasing voter turnout. What do you propose to do to increase voter turnout, to increase the amount of people who are participating in our government and democracy, making their voices heard? And how are you going to go about that?
[00:10:32] Julie Anderson: Well, it's my belief that election administrators are facilitators, not catalysts. And looping back to community, I'm going to leverage community a lot. For example, I think you have to pay attention, first of all, to data and trends. We know that the four-year election cycle has really unique peaks and valleys that are pretty darn predictable. In a presidential election cycle, we probably don't need a lot of help with getting the word out. But in these off-year elections and in local elections, we need a tremendous amount of help because that's when voter turnout is the lowest.
One of the things that I would propose doing is partnering with local government and with schools to focus on municipal elections and pooling resources and having - the Secretary of State can certainly provide materials and infrastructure, but the execution of how that gets delivered in a community is going to be unique in every community. But I can see municipalities all focusing their energy on a one-week period where we're getting voters prepared to vote, getting them to develop a plan, and helping them if they need reminding about what their local government does for them and with them. And then partnering with schools in that same one-week period where you're doing some education in schools about local government and then challenging kids to go home and talk to their parents about the election, so they can have a dinner table, a kitchen table conversation about it. So there's concentrated energy in just one week, it's hyper-localized - because strategies that are going to work in Asotin County is going to be completely different than King County - and locals know best. So I see myself as being a facilitator and having local communities tell the Secretary of State how I can help. But at least laying out a plan and applying some leadership to get everybody pulling in one direction, concentrating on one week, I think would be helpful.
You have probably visited my website and you also know that I plan a VOICE Program, which is Voter Outreach and Innovative Civic Engagement, where I'd be replicating some really successful strategies from the 2020 Census, pooling philanthropic dollars with government dollars, and then having a very low-barrier granting program where communities can propose their own voter outreach and engagement programs. And again, I can't wait to see how creative people are, and it's going to get very - we're going to get some very niche products, but yeah.
So those are a couple of ideas, but I would say that the first thing is really paying attention to the data, not just the trends that I talked about - which elections have low turnout and don't - but also geography. One of the great things about the Washington State Voting Rights Act that has been proposed - we already have a Voting Rights Act, but what I think of as Phase 2 that's been proposed - is it came with money and authority for the University of Washington to hold data and they're going to be getting electoral inputs, like candidate filing, rates of voter registration, rates of ballot return, and combining that with demographic data. And doing basically heat mapping and analysis so that we can also look at geographic areas and populations that have low voter turnout or low levels of engagement. So let's pay attention to the trends, let's pay attention to what that Washington State Voting Rights Act data tells us, and start developing strategies in response to that.
[00:14:28] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense, and the ideas that you have - especially that one week, I'd love to see that implemented - that would be exciting. There are also efforts to increase turnout through some structural changes to the ways that we vote, and there are changes that are on the ballot in several jurisdictions right now in our state, including ranked choice voting, approval voting, a number of different things. Are you in favor of ranked choice voting, approval voting, some of these changes? Do you support those?
[00:14:55] Julie Anderson: I support the local option bill for ranked choice voting that has been kicking around in the Legislature for about six years now, and I look forward to supporting local jurisdictions that want to adopt ranked choice voting. I think it is head and shoulders the leader in electoral reform proposals, and it seems to be particularly popular among young voters - and Gen Xers and Millennials are going to be the biggest share of the voting population by 2028 - if we're talking about increasing voter turnout, we've also got to look at youth and really change the way we talk with youth - not talk at them, and not using government channels. I look forward to harnessing some of that young adult leadership and having them tell us the best ways to engage with young voters, and one of the things that they're saying is ranked choice voting. There's a lot of disenchantment with our primary system, and I think that they're really looking for alternatives and wanting untraditional candidates and maybe minority party candidates to have a fighting chance in the primary. So I think they're excited about that, and if your community decides to take it on, I'm ready to support. There's a load of work to be done to make ranked choice voting successful, and there's a lot of rulemaking that falls on the Secretary of State, so one of the first things I'm going to do is gather together a cohort of communities that are seriously talking about this and start working on the rulemaking so that we have a chance of having some standardization as this rolls out.
[00:16:32] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and one component of that that I think is particularly important - I'm wondering what your perspective is on it - is the voter education component. Whenever there is a change - we struggle with our existing system to make sure everyone understands how to make sure that everyone understands how to vote, and even something like - hey, remember to sign the ballot - still slips through the cracks for a lot of people. Several things can seem very intuitive, but maybe not actually be for everyone for a lot of different reasons. When we're making a major change, the importance of education is that much greater. How do you propose, when there are changes, to make sure that we do have an adequate amount of voter education in all of our communities across the state so that people aren't intimidated or disenfranchised by the change?
[00:17:23] Julie Anderson: First, taking a clue with other states that have been doing this a while - I've been through several webinars and in-person visits with jurisdictions that do it. But instead of just copying what somebody else does, I want to do usability testing. Assume nothing. Let's get that cohort together, let's get stakeholders and end users together. Do mock ballots, do mock voter instructions. And actually test it through scientific usability testing and find out where the errors are going to be made and what we can do to change it. And that includes - ranked choice voting ballots that may need to be translated for people that don't speak English well, or different types of ranked choice voting - that's the other thing that's not well understood is - the local option doesn't force you to combine a primary and a general election and just have one election. It's an option. It also leaves open the opportunity for applying a ranked choice voting ballot and using proportional representation elections. There's all sorts of different ways that a ranked choice voting ballot can be applied depending on what the jurisdiction is trying to achieve. We need to do usability testing in all of those forms.
[00:18:44] Crystal Fincher: Looking at that and the coordination that's necessary for that, your opponent has talked about - hey, there's a lot of misinformation and disinformation out in the current environment. Now's not the time to make changes, we're experiencing enough of a crisis with trust from some people in our current systems - it's going to require a lot of education, may disenfranchise people. Do you think that's reason enough to not move forward with things that could potentially increase turnout or help better represent communities?
[00:19:17] Julie Anderson: Name a reform that didn't have opposition. Name a reform that didn't have barriers and reasons not to do it. Reform is hard in the beginning, and I think we need to have more confidence than that. We need to approach it carefully. We need to do that usability testing. We need to do lots of voter education. Tactically, one of the things that I would like to do - you've noticed on my website, one of the things I propose with transparency is - I want to find a secure way to have voted ballots and cast vote records visible to the public. Other states do it. There is a way to do it. We may need legislation - because paramount is preserving voter privacy, right? That goes without saying. We absolutely can't do it if we can't guarantee voter privacy. But if there is a way that we can, and I believe that there is, and if we can get rules made by the Secretary or legislative fixes, then making those available is really going to help demystify people who don't trust a ranked choice voting ballot and the algorithm that gets used to reallocate votes. If we can make cast vote records public, there is open source software available where they can run the records themselves and retest the vote allocation if they want to. So, I want to look at things like that not only because there is a lot of public interest in auditing elections, but because it also is an enabling feature to making ranked choice voting more understandable and independently auditable. And there is some really neat communication tools that other jurisdictions have used in terms of color coding the reallocation of votes between each round, and they've gotten good results.
[00:21:13] Crystal Fincher: And the issue of trust overall is one that you will have to contend with.
[00:21:17] Julie Anderson: Always.
[00:21:17] Crystal Fincher: We are dealing with an environment where there is certainly disinformation and people who are just spreading information that is false, whether it's denial of the 2020 election federally, or in our state and local elections, who question the security of vote by mail, of ballot dropboxes, of a variety of things that we have implemented successfully. And what they cite about them is false. That's a bad faith effort. But because of that bad faith effort, there are a lot of people who genuinely believe that there are problems - from all sorts of backgrounds, for all sorts of reasons. So how, in this environment where there is disinformation, do you help increase trust in our voting systems and our electoral system with people who frankly just don't have faith in it currently?
[00:22:13] Julie Anderson: First of all, not acting defensively, and not acting aggressively, and having a nonpartisan message. The best thing that we can do to maintain and increase confidence is to keep doing what we're doing, which is running error-free elections that are auditable and serve the people. We can do some minor things that I've suggested on my website for transparency. We can do additional risk-limiting audits. Doing a statewide risk-limiting audit, I think, is a good idea. We currently have audits in counties that are called by the political parties, but they're not statistically valid batches of ballots that are being hand counted, and every county is counting a different race. To the Loren Culps of the world, who are just mystified by how the top-of-the-ticket candidate could lose, while the down-ballot candidates prevail, a statewide risk-limiting audit would be really helpful. And by the way, I would be proposing this as a best practice, even if we weren't currently getting pushback from candidates and parties.
But to loop back to your question about confidence. Crystal, this is where I think that the nonpartisanship really helps. There's a good study out there that shows that you can, by double digits, move - and this is a phrase I do not like to use, but for shorthand's sake, let's say an election denier, somebody that really believes that the 2020 election was stolen. Even among that group, you can move them by double digits into the confidence tally by simply talking about the due process and the ability to challenge an election. Instead of acting aggressively and defensively about the accusation that it's stolen, just calmly educate them and inform them how elections can be challenged, the due process, how they can challenge individual voter registrations, and repeat how interested we are in any evidence that they have, and that we don't even need them to go to court for them to present us with evidence. I'm still waiting in Pierce County to get some of that canvassing work that the communities say - the door-to-door stuff that they're doing. They're not doing it in Pierce County, but I'm waiting for that because we can sit down and walk through the data with them. And almost always, it's a misconception of - either they're missing pieces that they don't know, or they're misinterpreting the data - and we can walk through it. And occasionally, I would expect to find a correct case. Occasionally, I would expect them to find, among 4.7 million voters and voter registrations, an error in a voter registration record - and we want to know about it and need help fixing it.
[00:25:30] Crystal Fincher: Now, you talk about it - that seems reasonable, that is encouraging data and research, and there's certainly a lot that we can talk to people about with that. And it does seem like not being a partisan may be helpful in explaining that - the trust and faith that people have there. But you've been under attack from the Chair of the Democratic Party over this past week. It looks like saying that - oh, no, no, no, Julie Anderson is a partisan, she is a Republican, has a - I will read it and allow you to respond. I see - testified against bills expanding voter accessibility, against election officials promoting voter outreach and education, office sent flawed ballots, takes no position on campaign finance laws, accountable to no one, have talked about having a consultant and campaign staff or consultants who are Republicans and have supported Republicans. Now, I will say - there are quite a few Democrats that I saw question this and say - especially from Pierce County - saying, well, we've regularly seen Julie Anderson in Democratic events also. But some people countered with - well, now we're looking at her with JT Wilcox. I guess starting with the partisanship, and now you're actually associated with Republicans - and I think Rob McKenna has notably talked about endorsing and supporting you - you have been at those events. Can people credibly see you as a Nonpartisan when they see these associations and these endorsements?
[00:27:16] Julie Anderson: Sure. I'm a Nonpartisan because I don't belong to any political party, which is different than not talking to anybody. I am not soliciting or accepting any endorsements from any political party, and I'm also not soliciting or accepting any money. But I regularly ask to be introduced. I try to break into legislative meetings and PCO meetings of both parties. Sometimes they'll let me in to introduce myself, sometimes they won't. I asked JT Wilcox if I could crash his salmon bake because I wanted to meet Republicans, and he said yes. And I'm sure that he got a rash of - from his supporters - for having me there. But just not belonging to a party doesn't mean that I don't talk with people, and I think that's important for the Secretary of State to do. One of the critiques is that I'm accountable to no one - I'm accountable to voters, and I've been re-elected overwhelmingly three times as an election administrator in Pierce County, so I have earned the trust and the votes of the residents of Pierce County who have seen me in action. I think it says something that the political parties don't run opponents against me. Presumably if I'm bad and bad for their party's interests, they're going to run somebody against me.
The people who are working on my campaign - it was very difficult to find any consultancy that would take me on as a client because there were both credible Republicans and credible Democrats running in the race, and here comes this Nonpartisan lady wanting a contract with them. That's a business model and a relationship they didn't want to ruin, and so it was very hard to find somebody. I ended up getting a referral from Mary Robnett, who's the Pierce County Prosecutor who ran as a Nonpartisan, and I said, who were your consultants? And she introduced me to Josh Amato, and he has been associated as a Republican, I don't even know if he's still a Republican - I'm imagining that he is - and he has worked on Republican campaigns and Nonpartisan campaigns. This is an income-constrained campaign. I do not have a lot of money. I have been having to run this campaign the way I'll run the Secretary of State's office, which is modestly and judiciously. So I had to wait until the general election to hire a staff person, and when I did, I chose a young gentleman who came from the Derek Kilmer campaign, and had worked on Emily Randall's campaign, and worked with the Alliance for Gun Responsibility. It is true that I contracted with an independent vendor for PR in the primary, and she had Republican roots. But my detractors are cherry-picking - they also failed to notice that I hired a fundraiser who is very progressive and comes from the non-profit community, so I think I'm pretty balanced in who vendors, what kind of vendors are helping me. But most importantly, the vendors don't boss the candidate around. I'm the one that's responsible for every single policy position that you hear me talk about. Do you think the Republican consultant was happy about me saying I support ranked choice voting in the Washington State Voting Rights Act? No, he thought that that was a crazy thing to do - but I'm the boss, not him. I've lost track of the attacks. What other attacks do we want to look at?
[00:31:07] Crystal Fincher: Well, I think one worth addressing is testifying against bills expanding voter accessibility - and I think that one, maybe for voters, is probably a concern. If looking at Republicans - hearing the attacks on seemingly democracy, partisanship - hey, we want to stop same-day registration, we don't like vote by mail, we need to reduce the amount of drop boxes, and the types of reforms that we have embraced here in Washington State - and is that going to impact where you stand on those issues and how much of a leader you are there?
[00:31:47] Julie Anderson: So, in testifying, I had a leadership role in the statewide Association of County Auditors. So, I was either the Legislative Co-chair on the Legislative Committee or the President. And 39 counties come to a consensus on what their position on bills is - and because of proximity or leadership position, I was often asked to represent the association on those bills. Crystal, name for me a legislative proposal that is perfect on the first day that it's introduced.
[00:32:18] Crystal Fincher: Well, I can't do that. I can't do that.
[00:32:20] Julie Anderson: Not many. Many of them need to, in the legislative process - through testimony, stakeholder engagement, and the amendment process - needs to be changed. And often county auditors, who are the ones that have to operationalize good ideas and bad ideas, have feedback and have concerns. Most of that testimony was done at a time when the state wasn't paying for state elections, and it was all falling back on county general funds. It wasn't until 2020 that the state passed a bill to start funding their share of state elections, and it didn't take effect until 2021, which does us no good - it's really going to make an impact this year. So, a lot of the testimony was driven by our concerns about resources, time, money, and staffing to get done some complicated things. In other cases, it was technology. So, same-day registration only became viable when we had VoteWA up and running so that we had real-time visibility on registration and balloting transactions around the state. And I will say - again, cherry-picking, my detractors are - in as early as 2015, I was personally advocating for the Washington State Voting Rights Act well before it got passed, even though the association either had a neutral stance or they had constructive feedback and testimony. So, I am a strong supporter of vote-by-mail, strong supporter of same-day registration, strong supporter of just about every electoral reform that's taken place since 2016.
And the expansion of ballot dropboxes - I know that one piece of feedback that's been fluttering around is my opposition to dropboxes on college campuses - again, in my role as, in the Association of County Auditors. And - like in Pierce County, at that time, I was really struggling for expanding dropboxes, period, in my community. And I knew, using that geographical and demographic data and that voter turnout data that I used to make decisions, I knew that there were pockets in my community that really could have benefited from a ballot dropbox - as opposed to the University of Washington of Tacoma, which is a commuter school, not a residential school with young people far-flung from all over the United States that might be confused about how to get a ballot or how to register. It's a commuter school. And having a ballot dropbox on that campus, where people are driving to and from their homes to classes, and not being able to install a box at the Housing Authority or at Manitou, which - anyway, you don't know my neighborhoods.
[00:35:35] Crystal Fincher: I know a little bit.
[00:35:37] Julie Anderson: Okay. All right, all right. So that didn't make a lot of sense to me, and I stand by that. I really think that the control of where ballot dropboxes go should be local, using local intelligence and local needs. I completely support the threshold, like population standards. And by the way, all of this wraps around to why I support the Washington State Voting Rights Act, and the expanded version that's going to come up in session again this year. Right now, we have a Voting Rights Act that is really specifically tailored or focused on vote dilution and that helped us get through redistricting safely. But we are now talking about vote denial and vote abridgment. And I support it strongly for this very reason. If you're going to give local election administrators control over where to place ballot dropboxes, we need to make sure it's not at the detriment of protected populations and that it's doing the most good. And I like that kind of structure.
[00:36:47] Crystal Fincher: And I hear you there. I guess the questions that pop up for me personally when I hear that are - one, for me, ideally, shouldn't we be able to find a way to place them in more places, period? And should being a commuter location or a commuter school, given that we aren't limited to returning ballots in a jurisdiction where we're registered, where we vote - a lot of people do commute there, which means a lot of people are there. It's a convenient place to be able to vote. It's an enfranchising thing, even though it may not be for the particular precinct that that ballot dropbox is located in, or neighborhood. Do you factor those things in to making your decisions there?
[00:37:34] Julie Anderson: Oh, yeah - I'm making a rookie mistake getting into an argument with the host. So it made perfect sense when I was able to place it at the transit station on the street of Pacific Avenue, just outside of UWT, as opposed to inside a pedestrian plaza not accessible by an automobile and not visible to the general public. And also, by the way, very hard to geolocate on Google Maps for people that are searching for a place to drop their ballot. I do think that the number of ballot dropboxes is increasing - the number is worth looking at, especially because we don't know what's going to happen with the United States Postal Service. By the way, I would work hard as Secretary of State to work with letter carriers to preserve door-to-door delivery. But if that doesn't happen and Congress continues to privatize that service, we need to be prepared and with more dropboxes. And you know something - the Voting Rights Act and UW's data collection that they're going to be doing is going to be very informative about whether we have enough ballot dropboxes and if we have them in the right place. So I'm completely open to it - I just don't like the Legislature deciding where they go. I want to be holistic, data-driven with local intelligence.
[00:39:05] Crystal Fincher: That absolutely makes sense. The other one I just want to get to - just talking about accuracy - we've actually seen errors in a number of jurisdictions in a number of ways - from misprinted Voters' Pamphlets, ballots that have to be reprinted. There was talk you provided voters false information and lost 100 cast ballots. What happened there?
[00:39:30] Julie Anderson: Okay, two separate incidents, and you're right - errors happen all over the state and all over the country - reminding us all that elections is a human process. We leverage technology a lot, but it requires expertise and a lot of proofreading and sometimes things slip through the crack. In one case, the vendor that Pierce County - well actually, the vendor that is used by over 60% of the electorate in Washington State, K&H - made an error when we mailed out ballots to our military voters and 88 voters out of 550,000 were impacted. What happened was they shuffled the return envelope with the mailer so that 88 people got a ballot packet on time, but the return ballot had somebody else's name on it. When we found out about that, we immediately contacted the voters, reissued the ballots, and immediately sent out a press release. That's what you can count on from me - is tattling on myself, telling people, taking corrective action, and doing whatever we can to make sure it doesn't happen again. In that case, I amended the contract with the provider that said next time you have a machine stoppage and you've got a set of quality control procedures that you use - this is like using your Xerox in your office or your home where you have a paper jam, and then by the time you finish ripping everything out, you've got to figure - do I reprint the whole document or do I figure out what page I left out on? The quality control at that plant is to reprint the whole darn thing, and somebody on the line decided that would be wasteful and they didn't do it. And so I amended the contract to say there's going to be consequences if you deviate from your own quality control.
In the infamous case in 2016 where Pierce County urged voters to, if they were going to use the United States Postal Service, to do so - let's see, I think it was 5 days before the election - but if they were going to use a drop and to please use a dropbox otherwise. The allegation says that we were sued - we were not sued. There was a threat of a lawsuit and at the end of the day - what the Democratic Party wanted was for me to mail out a postcard to voters saying that's advice not a requirement, and they wanted me to make that clear on our website. And so that's what we did. And at the end of the day, the attorneys agreed we did nothing illegal. And we haven't done it again since because it created such a stir and so much upset. So we don't even give people advice anymore about - if they're using the Postal Service to do it early, but you should.
[00:42:45] Crystal Fincher: Well and yeah - that's the complicated thing. And as someone who is interested in making sure people not only vote, but that their votes get counted and they arrive on time, we are experiencing more challenges with the United States Post Office. There is some uncertainty and certainly at the time, during the 2016 election, there's lots of conversation about potentially challenges with mailing things. So I do generally advise people to mail as early as you can if you're going to do that, but yeah - so I am glad we have gotten some clarity on a number of these issues, but also want to ask about some other things. I guess one of them is talking about preserving the historical records of the State and making them readily available to the public. What are your plans there and how can you make those more accessible and available to researchers, to the public, to everyone?
[00:43:41] Julie Anderson: A couple of things. One, the Secretary of State's office, I think, is behind in terms of digitizing paper records and getting them indexed and available. I do believe that my opponent has invested in additional scanning equipment, so that's a good thing. I don't know if they have sufficient FTEs to do that - I'll have to look at that when I get there. But my big concern is looking towards the future government - so our state archives hold all of the records that are produced by local and state government that have permanent retention value all the way from territorial days to right this minute. And in the last 10 years, government has been producing a heck of a lot of digital native, digital born documents that never were a piece of paper. And in my experience, our state archives still has a paper mindset because they're used to working with precious ephemera and paper documents. But we've been producing tons of native, digital born documents that are complex and interactive. Is the Secretary of State's office ready to ingest a high volume of digital records that are interactive and richly indexed, and turn them around and make them accessible to the public? I don't think so, and that's a project that I want to tackle right away. If you think about everything that just happened with redistricting - with all of those maps that were generated, so many different versions - and if you tracked it, you know that that was highly interactive data, right? You could move lines around. That is a record. Is it being preserved in that state, that interactive state, or are the maps being preserved? So those are the questions I'm interested in and want us to be forward thinking about. I am a certified public records officer, so I am very passionate about public access to public information and one of the things that the Secretary of State's office needs to do - there's two things - is provide more training to local records officers and maybe even a camp for requesters. I think that would be a good idea.
[00:46:05] Crystal Fincher: No, I think that's excellent and was leading into - the next thing I wanted to talk about was document retention and how closely linked it is with records requests. And we're seeing challenges in that area in jurisdictions across the state - one, in properly retaining the correct records. But the purpose of that retention is so that they can be accessed and provided to people who are entitled to see them, including the public. And we are seeing and hearing reports from a number of reporters and people making requests in jurisdictions across the state who are receiving increased wait times, increased estimates of wait times - sometimes comically long, decades long wait times - for some of those requests potentially. Hearing that localities are short staffed - it's challenging to respond to these kinds of things. And even getting into accusations of bad faith use of the public disclosure request system and records request system - some people trying to do that. Or on the flip side, people just being unhappy about receiving a request and having something looked into and calling things a bad faith attack and looking to delay the process, maybe unnecessarily, in those. How can you help make that process more consistent, help localities handle those in a more consistent way so that people can request and receive public documents when they're entitled to them?
[00:47:46] Julie Anderson: Two things - I'm going to be the Secretary of State that's known as a "Clean your closet, kid" Secretary of State. Government is producing more records than ever and they don't know what to do with them. If you don't know how to store them, then you can't find them. So record retention is about record management. The Secretary of State's office used to have a pretty good training program for records officers about that. That needs to be rebooted and redoubled and it needs to have a modernized context. I cannot tell you how many emails are generated hourly by government. We don't know which of those are important or not until you have a sorting and classification system that you maintain constantly that marries emails with the associated documents, right? So that's something that we did in Pierce County. I want to take that passion with me to the Secretary of State's office and hire somebody that's an expert at this to help train local government. And I'll also be an advocate for resources for local government. There are some jurisdictions that are literally drowning and they're also having turnover issues. So I do want them to have resources, but first of all they got to know how to clean their room.
[00:49:10] Crystal Fincher: So as we close and as people are trying to figure out how to make this decision - they hear from you, they hear from your opponent, lots of outside groups, and a lot of noise. When you are talking to someone who is considering making this choice between you and your opponent, does not know which direction they're going to go, what do you tell them to help make that decision?
[00:49:32] Julie Anderson: That like them, I love Washington State's election laws - want to preserve them, make them even better. And for the first time in history, they have a choice of hiring somebody that's a professional administrator with expertise in these subjects without party strings attached.
[00:49:52] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today, join us today, and letting the voters just get more familiar with you. Much appreciated.
[00:50:01] Julie Anderson: Thank you. Thank you for the questions. And I love that you're a fan of the Public Records Act.
[00:50:06] Crystal Fincher: I'm such a fan of it - and if it's follow up and organizations being accountable to adhering to it. But yes, thank you so much.
[00:50:16] Julie Anderson: You're welcome - bye bye.
[00:50:18] Crystal Fincher: Thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Post-Production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can follow me @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with current Secretary of State Steve Hobbs about his campaign for Washington Secretary of State - why he decided to run for re-election, the threat of misinformation campaigns and cyber attacks on Washington’s elections, how partisanship affects the office, and whether partisan attacks on his opponent are warranted. On the topic of elections, they discuss how he builds trust in the system in an environment of disinformation, addressing issues with disproportionate rates of signature rejection across the electorate, his plans to increase voter turnout, and his stance and approach to local jurisdictions potentially adopting alternative systems such as ranked choice voting. The conversation continues with the experience Secretary Hobbs brings to manage other components that fall under the Secretary of State’s large umbrella and his vision to create greater accessibility for experiencing the state archives’ historical records, resources for corporate and charity filings, and requesting governmental documents via public disclosure requests.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Secretary Steve Hobbs at @electhobbs.
Resources
Campaign Website - Steve Hobbs
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I'm thrilled to be welcoming a candidate and the current officeholder for one of the most important roles that we have in our state - Secretary of State. Welcome, Secretary of State Steve Hobbs.
[00:00:51] Secretary Hobbs: Thank you. And thank you for saying it's very important. Thank you - I appreciate that.
[00:00:56] Crystal Fincher: It is extremely important. And I think a lot of people are recognizing just how important it is now perhaps. Many more people are recognizing that than they have before because of how much talk we've had over the past couple of years about how important elections and election integrity are. But also, in addition to elections, all of the other things that the Secretary of State is responsible for like archives and records management and all those different things. And we're seeing an increasing amount of news stories and coverage in issues and challenges in those areas. So with all of that, what made you decide that - one, you wanted to take this on in the first place, and two, that you want to run for a new term?
[00:01:41] Secretary Hobbs: Well, first of all, I've always dedicated myself to public service - starting at the age of 17 when I enlisted in the Army Reserves - then, and then going on to active duty shortly after that. So this was a nice transition from serving in the State Senate, which I did for 15 years, into this role because it's a nice little Venn diagram - you know how you have the two circles there? So one is defending democracy in my role in the military and the other is serving in the State Senate. And this is a great overlap because right now, as and your listeners would know, our elections have been under attack. Our democracy has been under attack.
[00:02:30] Crystal Fincher: Sure has.
[00:02:31] Secretary Hobbs: And so having that background that I have in the military - serving in the National Security Agency, being a Public Affairs Officer - having been in that role and defending elections in both Kosovo and Iraq, this is a great fit for me. And I enjoy it, I love it - but it of course has its challenges, which we have had several this year with three misinformation campaigns and a cyber threat that has occurred already just this year alone.
[00:03:04] Crystal Fincher: So how do you defend against those? And what is the plan to combat all of this misinformation and the targeted attacks?
[00:03:12] Secretary Hobbs: Well, it first started when I got into the office and there was an outbriefing by former Secretary Kim Wyman, who is now working for the Biden administration. And in that outbrief, she had told me there were several thousand - thousands - of attacks, cyber attacks, on elections and 180 instances of misinformation and disinformation. We all know about what happened in January 6 in our nation's capital, but some of you may not know or remember - there was an attack on our own State capital. We had to deploy the National Guard there. In fact, several of my soldiers had to go on that mission to defend our capital. And so I started by looking at the budget that was submitted by Kim Wyman and pulled it back and resubmitted it. And what I did was expanded the cyber security team. So we had a cyber team of four, now we've gone to eight. We're strengthening our relationships with the Air National Guard that we call upon for cyber security when we are overwhelmed. We are looking into doing exercises - one step up from a tabletop exercise, but actually a full-blown exercise in 2023, where we'll be having folks who are trying to penetrate our system through cyber and through misinformation, disinformation - a closed system there where we can react to it. We have created a team that would combat misinformation and do voter outreach and education, because some of the vulnerabilities that we have of people not having trust in our elections is because they simply don't know how we do elections here in Washington State. So we've got to do a little more education of that. And then creating a team of outreach to our disenfranchised and underserved and underrepresented communities that we're doing. Sorry, I went on, but there's a lot to do. And there's a lot that we have done so far in trying to push back on some of the misinformation campaigns that happen and the cyber threat that happened this year.
[00:05:23] Crystal Fincher: Well, and it's really important - there is a lot going on. And I guess one of the more fundamental questions that people are asking themselves is - with the nature of the office and because this is a little bit different this year in that you're running against someone who identifies as an Independent, not as a Democrat or a Republican, what is the role of partisanship in this office? Is this an office that should be a partisan office? Is there any advantage or disadvantage to being a partisan in this office? How do you view that?
[00:05:53] Secretary Hobbs: Well, in my personal view, I can operate in this office if the Legislature deems that it should be a nonpartisan office. Now, in order for that to happen, you have to pass a bill to do that. I doubt that will make it out of the Legislature since the Legislature is controlled by Republicans and Democrats and I don't see that happening any time soon. I think what you have to do is look at the individual who's occupying this office. How do I say this? Well, I go back to a motto - when I'm serving an infantry battalion, all infantry battalions have mottos and mine was, or ours was - "Deeds, not words." So look at what I've done, not what I say. And you'll see that I'm a person that works across the aisle. You'll see that I'm a person that can get things done. And you look at the list of endorsements that I have - I have Republican endorsements, Democratic endorsements. I have the endorsement of the Association of Washington Business and the Washington State Labor Council. And having a label on there - it doesn't do anything if you're going to be a bad person. So the last three Secretaries of State were partisan - Sam Reed, Kim Wyman, and Ralph Munro - and they were trusted with the public and they got the job done.
I will say - in this day and age, though, people tend to trust Democrats running the elections, because they know where they're coming from. And I'm not going to back away from the fact that I am a Democrat. I'm proud that I'm pro-choice. I'm proud that I'm pro-labor. I'm proud that I support the environment. I don't think those are bad things at all. Whatever the Legislature decides - if they want to make this a partisan office - or nonpartisan office - that's fine. But I can operate in any environment. And I don't think it really matters anyway, at this particular time, but I'm not going to back away who I am. I'm a Democrat.
[00:08:05] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. No secret here. I think the values that you listed are very good. And that the people, in this day and age - given the harboring of anti, disproven, disinformation about elections and campaigns that they see coming from the Republican Party are comfortable - more comfortable - with the Democratic Party in this position. But with that said, there have been - I don't know that any of this has come directly from your campaign. But the State Party and the leader of the State Party has attacked the other candidate, your opponent Julie Anderson, for her associations with some Republicans, or the Republican Party. Given that - you just talked about, hey, it's about who you are, it's about what you do - do you think those attacks are warranted or fair?
[00:08:57] Secretary Hobbs: Crystal, you did bring up a couple of points that have been brought up recently in this campaign. And all I can say is - to the listeners out there, look into it, right? So she did show up at the fundraiser of the minority party in the House who wants to take control of the House - that's JT Wilcox, Representative Wilcox. If you're calling yourself nonpartisan, I'm not sure why you would go to that fundraiser, representing a party and some folks out there that want to put these elections back to poll voting and eliminate vote by mail. And the same group of folks that fan the flames of misinformation and disinformation. She does have a political consultant that's Republican, and a communications team that's Republican, and a treasurer that's Republican. But I'm not here to bash on her. I'm just saying to the listeners out there - do your own research on it. But yeah, that's true that there are, she's - has some ties there.
[00:10:07] Crystal Fincher: You mentioned your willingness to work across the aisle. Could that just be her attempting to do the same types of things that you were talking about in reaching out? To that, it does look like she has also, in the past - I don't know if she has in this general election - but met with Democrats and Democratic organizations. Do you put that under the same umbrella? Or is that different than just trying to work in a bipartisan manner?
[00:10:33] Secretary Hobbs: I think it's an attempt to look at this race and go - okay, well, Steve's got the Democrats, so maybe I'll go get the Republicans. Because there are Republicans out there that simply just don't want a Democrat in office - and doesn't matter if that person's a good Democrat or not - they just can't stand the fact that there's a Democrat occupying that office. And so - she's going to reach out to those folks, it's just a campaign strategy. But again, I stress to the listeners - look at the backgrounds and see the deeds of the person and see what they can bring to the office. Again, I've been in the office so far for almost a year. And you got to ask yourself - is anything wrong with what's going on? And if not, why change horses at this particular moment in time?
Crystal, I mentioned the three misinformation campaigns and the cyber threat - these are real things. These are real threats to democracy - I would say that you'd want someone who understands how to counter those threats. There was a story in NPR All Things Considered about a recent misinformation campaign that we pushed back on. And that happened in February - and it had to deal with one of the cybersecurity devices known as an Albert sensor that Homeland Security asks every government agency to have on their system network so that they can be warned when there's a suspicious IP address that data is coming from and to - because that's what an Albert sensor does - it tells you where the data is coming from and to. And you're not going to believe this, but the misinformation campaign directed at the Albert sensors was trying to tie the Albert sensor to George Soros. I'm not making this up.
[00:12:30] Crystal Fincher: Well, unfortunately, I do believe it, but it is wild. That is - the attempt to tie everything - my goodness.
[00:12:39] Secretary Hobbs: Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:40] Crystal Fincher: I'm sure lots of people are shocked to hear that what they've been working on is somehow masterminded by that person. But yeah, there have been wild and malicious attacks and just an outright denial of what has happened in elections. And I actually think you raise an excellent point that we don't talk about a lot - in that you brought up even - we see this stuff happening on the national level and even January 6th on a national level. But that we did experience that in our own state at that time - both in-person and the attacks on our voting system. And so I guess one of the questions I have is given that we're in this environment of not just misinformation, but malicious disinformation, and people with an agenda to erode and degrade trust - how do you build trust in our electoral system? Because although there are absolutely people who are intentionally misleading people, there's a lot of people who sincerely believe we have issues within our system - and for a variety of different reasons and from different perspectives - this is not just Republicans, it can be a variety of people. In an environment where there is so much disinformation, how do you build trust and credibility with voters in this state?
[00:13:58] Secretary Hobbs: Oh, it's a long-term campaign that you have to start right away and not only be aggressive on, but consistent on. So for example, the misinformation campaign on the Albert sensor, you have to - we brought together all the county auditors and we brought, we invited county commissioners, and we brought in Kim Wyman, Homeland Security and FBI to inform the county auditors - hey, don't believe this misinformation. It's not true. The Albert sensor is simply a device that protects you, not a George Soros machine. Unfortunately, one county removed that system and now we're still working with that. But we are right now launching a major voter information campaign called "Vote with Confidence" - we launched it yesterday. It'll be out on TV and probably when you're pumping gas - sometimes you see those video screens that are up that's showing commercials - and on social media platforms. And basically we're going to do more than just remind people to vote because we've done a great job of reminding people to vote. Myself and the county auditors have have all done that, but what we haven't done a good job of is letting you all know what happens to your vote and how it is secure, transparent, and accessible. You may know this here, Crystal, because you're familiar with politics - that you can go to your county auditor and witness the process. You can see these ballots come in, you can see them get counted, you can see every signature being checked. But the average person doesn't know that and that's what we need to start doing.
We need to start telling people - even things that are somewhat technical - that this state is part of the ERIC system, the Elections Registration Information Center, where our state is connected to other states and different databases so that if you were to move to another state and register there and fail to cancel your registration here - guess what? We're going to know about it. Don't try to vote multiple times in the same election by trying to register in different counties because guess what? We're going to catch you and we have caught people doing that. This whole myth about dead people voting - that's just not true and when it does happen on very rare occasions, it's because a spouse votes for a recently deceased loved one and maybe that spouse, before they died, said who they were going to vote for and they voted for them and they signed their ballot and guess what? We catch that. We find that out, but we have to do more though - we have to let people know what happens with their ballot and we haven't been doing that.
[00:16:49] Crystal Fincher: Well, and one question I have - we have seen, and there have been reported on, inconsistencies in how rigorous people are in either checking signatures or even potentially malfeasance in checking signatures. And we saw in a report on a county in our state where people with Latino surnames had signatures that were rejected at a much higher rate than those with other names, even though it appears they were valid voters, that everything else was in order - but they seemed to be disqualified visually with the commonality that they did have a Latino surname. And questions about whether racism was at play and bias within our electoral system - what role can you as the Secretary of State play to make sure that we're implementing process and executing processes across the state, throughout all of the counties, in a consistent way? And how do you hold counties accountable to that?
[00:17:48] Secretary Hobbs: Yeah, thank you for that. That was a study that came out of the State Auditor. And she had - it's very shocking - Blacks were four times as much rejected, Hispanics three times as much, Asians twice as much. Young men were actually rejected at a slightly higher rate. And our role on that one is we're taking action on it. So already we're working with the Legislature. Now we know about this data, now we got to find out why that is - and so we're doing another study with the Evans School at the University of Washington. But we're not going to stand idly by and wait for the study. There's some actions that we can take already to try to mitigate that. And one of the things that we are doing, though it won't come online for probably another - probably not 'til next year - and that is text messaging the voter the moment their ballot is rejected. Because the main reason why ballots are rejected - it actually has to do with not signing the ballot. A lot of folks just fail to sign it because they - maybe they didn't see the signature block. Or, especially those where English is not their first language, they just didn't read it because it was in English. And so you have ballot rejections happening because people fail to sign. And right now the current system is we send you mail, which - not very efficient. Counties might call you. But what we're thinking about doing and what we'd like to do is - hey, send a text message out to them right away so that they know their ballot is rejected and so they can do something about it before, and sometimes even before the Election Day. Because right now most people get their ballots cured - and the term cured is used when your signatures don't match, or you failed to sign your signature - is there's a close election and a bunch of people go into a particular Legislative District or jurisdiction and they're curing ballots because there's a campaign - the campaign is trying to get their candidate across the finish line.
[00:20:12] Crystal Fincher: So now - with that, and you're trying to get voters there, you're trying to make sure every vote counts. Do you also see one of your core roles as getting more people to vote - increasing turnout and participation? And if that is, how do you plan to do that?
[00:20:30] Secretary Hobbs: Oh, absolutely. I think it's very important. I think we have to constantly try to do that. It's a struggle because sometimes voters just - oh, this election is not important, so I'm not going to vote. Well, we have to constantly remind folks that, hey, elections are important, it's part of the democratic process. That's why I'm happy that the Legislature gave me the funding to not only do this voter information campaign letting people know how their ballots process, but also reminding them again - hey, don't forget you got to vote, there's an election coming up. One thing that we are trying to do to increase voter turnout and increasing the amount of people getting registered - because there's a lot of people out there who are eligible to be voters but haven't done it yet - is getting at young people before they even turn a voting age. And so we're looking at, and this is theoretical this moment, but we're going to try to really push it in the next - if given the opportunity to serve out the rest of the term - a mobile gaming app targeted at young people. Maybe it is where they vote in a fantasy setting, they vote for imaginary folks - we throw on some civics questions, and maybe they get points, and they level up - to get them jazzed up, if you will, about voting and participating in our democracy. And looking at our curriculum, because we do provide curriculum to the elementary, middle school, and high school about elections - and so maybe there's a way we can make that more exciting, maybe we team up with our local tabletop game companies here in the State of Washington and send out - in a form of a game. The other thing we need to do is reach out to our underserved communities out there.
And so taking a great idea from King County, the trusted messenger program - hiring folks that come from a particular community - knowing the language, knowing the community, knowing the culture. They go out there and do the outreach necessary to get people registered to vote, and teaching them and informing them about the process of voting. I can't hire enough people to do that, so we're already looking at - well, maybe we also contract out to different organizations that do that already. I was talking to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce a couple weeks ago - maybe that's an opportunity there out in the Tri-Cities - I'm going to go visit them again on the 18th of October. But we just have to do more. I was very excited - we started because COVID is slowly getting manageable - we were able to go to the July 4th naturalization ceremony in Seattle and we registered about 300 new citizens. And that is exciting - we're going to be at those events as well.
[00:23:41] Crystal Fincher: So in a debate early in this race, you shared your view that we shouldn't change our electoral process to ranked choice voting, which is on the ballot in a handful of jurisdictions in our state, or approval voting - because you had concerns that some people already have issues with trust in our system and making changes might make that problem even worse. Is not making changes because of a fear of misinformation a valid reason not to explore changes? Or should we be investing in things that help make the process more clear to people, especially if it's going to update them on a voting system that should increase turnout? How did you come to that decision?
[00:24:19] Secretary Hobbs: Well, Crystal, it basically - it comes to the fact that I've been in this job for a while, I've seen the amount of disinformation that's going out there. There's a King 5 poll that showed 35% of Washingtonians didn't trust the 2020 election - that's Washingtonians. And looking at the voter turnout - right now our system is pretty easy - you vote for the person that you like and it's one vote. Under ranked choice voting, you have an algorithm, you rank people. And at this particular moment in time, when you have this amount of disinformation going on and you have the situation in our own - US capital and or state capital - really now is not the time to do something like that. But one thing that I get very concerned about, and this is my own personal connection to this, is that you're asking people to vote in a foreign way, something completely different. And that we have a huge population of people where English is not their first language. And so now you are going to disenfranchise a group of people. And that's something we certainly do not want to happen. I think about my own mother who naturalized to this country - English is not her first language - and I can't imagine if you go back in time and all of a sudden you said - hey, vote ranked choice voting, and you didn't have a voter's guide or any explanation to her in her language, it'd be very difficult. I also think about my son. I have a - my middle son, Truman, who's got a cognitive disability. It's very easy for him to vote because I show him the ballot and I show him the voter's guide and I go - hey, Truman, all you do is you color in the bubble to the person that you like. And for Truman, a lot of it's visual - he's going to look at the picture, he's not going to do a lot of reading. And by the way, he has every right to vote. If you have a disability, that shouldn't prevent you from voting.
[00:26:29] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely.
[00:26:30] Secretary Hobbs: He is going to have a hard time doing ranked choice voting. It's just not possible for him. And so I know the advocates out there pushing the ranked choice voting, but let's not disenfranchise a whole group of people out there. They may not be the majority, but they're out there and we shouldn't disenfranchise them. Also, I don't know what this is solving. I really don't. We have the most diverse legislative body right now under the current system of voting, a very diverse city council if you live in the City of Seattle. I'm not quite sure what this is trying to solve. But I will say this because I know that there has been - people say, oh, well, he's not going to help us out when we do ranked choice voting. That's not true. My job as Secretary of State is to support the elections in the state and local municipalities. And that is exactly what I'll do if a municipality or county chooses to do ranked choice voting. But I am telling you and I am asking the citizens, please pause and think about it before you choose ranked choice voting, because there are other people out there that may not get it. It may be difficult to understand. Let's not leave them out in the cold and let's think about our democracy right now with the amount of misinformation that's out there.
[00:27:59] Crystal Fincher: Well, and I guess I should ask a clarifying question because ranked choice voting is certainly one reform or change that is on the ballot. There's also another change currently on the ballot in a jurisdiction this year - approval voting. We see different methods of voting - one, just in our neighbor to the south in Portland - there they have a different type of voting on the ballot for their city this year. We're seeing a number of different types. So is your opposition strictly to ranked choice voting or to any of the kinds of changes, whether it's ranked choice or approval voting or any kind of change that would be made?
[00:28:36] Secretary Hobbs: It's right now - this particular moment in time - is any kind of change, unless you can find a way where you're going to get the word out to those individuals where English is not their first language, where they've got cognitive disabilities, and the fact - hey, is this vulnerable to a misinformation? Because right now, if there's a close election, you just count out the votes and whoever has the most votes wins. That's how it's done, right - in close races. But let's say it's ranked choice voting or preferred voting - it gets slightly complicated. In ranked choice voting, you're basing it upon an algorithm. And so now, what's going to happen? Well, what's going to happen is you're going to have a group of individuals who didn't get their way, and they're going to say, oh, this algorithm got hacked, which is not true. This algorithm, written by George Soros, and again, not true. But that's what's going to happen.
[00:29:36] Crystal Fincher: Well, I don't know that I would call it an algorithm, but a different method of tabulation and rounds of tabulation.
[00:29:42] Secretary Hobbs: Well, that's what we call it - it doesn't make it a bad thing. It just - that's what it is. There's nothing wrong with it. I'm just saying to you that you just leave yourself vulnerable to misinformation that could attack it.
[00:29:59] Crystal Fincher: I got you - but I think the underlying, as you pointed out, related concern is they are on the ballot and those changes may be made in places. And so the role of - again, in the implementation of these things - certainly there can be a lot of challenges that are introduced with implementation - how well just the system itself is implemented, and how well residents are trained and informed and educated before it happens. Do you plan on playing a role in that and being an advocate for voting and participating in the system should one of those be implemented?
[00:30:41] Secretary Hobbs: Well, we have to - that's the role. I can't not do that as Secretary of State. I have to make sure that these - if a local jurisdiction chooses this form of election, then of course, we're going to be there to support it.
[00:30:59] Crystal Fincher: And so I do want to talk about - we've talked about elections - and that's, to most people, the most visible thing that you're involved with as Secretary of State. But my goodness, you have a lot more responsibilities than that - just going down the list, aside from dealing with elections and initiatives and referendums - producing and distributing the Voters' Pamphlet and any legal advertising; registering private corporations, limited partnerships and trademarks; registering individuals, organizations and commercial fundraisers involved in charitable solicitations; administering the State's address confidentiality program, which is really important for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking; collecting and preserving the historical records of the state and making those records available for research; coordinating implementation of the State's records management laws; affixing the State seal and attesting to commissions, pardons and other documents to which the signature of the governor is required; regulating use of the State seal, which came in handy in another state - there was a whole thing about - that is an important and relevant thing. Filing and attesting to official acts of the Legislature or governor and certifying to the Legislature all matters legally required to be certified. You're also frequently called upon to represent the State of Washington in international trade and cultural missions, and greet and confer with dignitaries and delegations visiting the State of Washington from other countries. This is a big, big job and my goodness, you have your hands full with just elections, but there are so many other things underneath the umbrella of your responsibility. How do you both focus on elections and all of the other stuff? And how has this gone so far?
[00:32:47] Secretary Hobbs: Well, I've got a great staff and I got great people who manage these different divisions. Thank you for mentioning those other things because sometimes my employees that are in libraries and corporations and nonprofits and legacy - which is history of Washington State - not to mention our CFD, our Combined Fund Drive - sometimes they feel neglected. My Secretary of State's office is about nearly 300 people and 22 people occupy Elections. There's a lot more that we do than just elections and I love it. I actually love the other side. It's very therapeutic to me because there's not the controversy that's involved in those other aspects. Libraries are near and dear to my heart. In fact, we have libraries in every state institution - our state prisons and our state hospital. I'm proud to announce that we're actually going into our state juvenile detention facilities, which we haven't done, and I'm glad we're doing that. It's about time - they should be in there. What I'm going to do and what I'm starting to do is use our state libraries as a place for rehabilitation - getting folks who are incarcerated, giving them the skills necessary when they leave the prison. We really haven't done that in the past and I'm looking forward to doing that. I get it's not going to be a lot of people, but you know what? Let's not let that space go to waste.
I'm also excited using libraries as a place where we can provide therapy for the incarcerated. I'm working with, or talking with, some of the tabletop gaming companies - the use of RPGs and gaming as a form of therapy is an opportunity for us - to have that in our state libraries, so I'm looking at that. We team up with rural libraries and community libraries out there in Washington State - we're looking at doing more of that - creating game libraries out in the rural communities. They do it in Vancouver and in Spokane - they actually have game libraries where you can go and play games and it's an opportunity to create a safe space for young people out there in rural communities where a library is the only place where they can go to.
And of course, corporations, charities - you had mentioned that. We are on the verge of creating satellite offices so that you don't have to drive all the way to Olympia if you have a problem with your corporate filings and your nonprofit filings, so I'm looking forward to that. People shouldn't have to drive to Olympia if they're having major problems. And there's a lot of people out there just - it's hard for them to navigate the internet, especially those who are older. So we're doing a lot out there with the other agencies of my office, so thank you for bringing it up.
[00:35:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And so there are a few things - so many things we could talk about - these are all things that have areas, they're crucially important, they require deep expertise. You are there, and as in many departments and in many areas, there are very professional, dedicated, experienced staff who keep this running between and across administrations who are crucial to the work. But there are conversations about how important having a leader with experience in these types of work is. And that's been one of the areas that your opponent, Julie Anderson, has talked about as an advantage that she has in this race - as an auditor who, in addition to dealing with elections, also deals with a broad portfolio of responsibilities - that she has experience with many of these things, in addition to elections. And decades of experience she talks about, and that it's important to have that kind of experience in elections and in these other areas in the office, and saying you don't have it. How do you respond to that?
[00:37:06] Secretary Hobbs: Well, I would say that clearly she doesn't know my background. And again, I offer anyone to look at my background, but I've been in the military for 33 years. And I've had varying levels of experience in the military leadership - commanded recently a 750 joint task force dealing with COVID support operations in Western Washington. That is far more employees than I even have now as Secretary of State, far more than what Julie Anderson has in her office doing multiple tasks. And that's just not just one thing - commanding companies and commanding battalion-level units - multiple people in a unit. Also, the the fact that I'm doing it right now. I've been running the Secretary of State's office for almost a year, and no complaints - I really haven't heard any major complaints from anybody. And it's been a blast doing it, using my skills - not just in the military - but having a Master's in Public Administration, my service in the State Senate. It's not easy being Chair of Transportation and managing that very large budget and navigating legislation. So I have more than enough skill, right now, in this office. Again, I just invite you to look at the backgrounds of each of us.
[00:38:41] Crystal Fincher: Which makes sense. And so within those, what are you doing to preserve historical records, which is one of the things within the state - especially as we see in some areas, there are people who are much less interested in the preservation of historical records. And sometimes challenging that and attacking that at the federal level, bleeding down to other levels. And how do you make those records more readily available to the public than they are today?
[00:39:09] Secretary Hobbs: Ah, yes. Well, so one of the things that we're doing - and it's challenging, because we just have so much paper records right now - digitizing all those records. So we're trying to provide more, hiring more people to do that, hiring better equipment. Just as I got into office, I traveled all - most, pretty much all the state archives buildings, except for one - talking to rank and file there. When I went to Bellingham, I talked to the archives folks there. And they were telling me, Hey, we need a large scanner to be more efficient, because right now we got to take - so you got to scan sometimes larger maps and stuff, you got to send it all the way to Olympia. It's well, let's see if we can purchase and get you a scanner so that you can do it there to make things more efficient. So those are the things I've been looking at.
And of course, being able to have access to that online is very important to me. And digitizing our records is just one small part in keeping our records, but also telling the story about our state. As the state archives, I have the - we have the State Constitution, we have these old documents, and they shouldn't be behind a vault, a dark vault. People should see this, so I'm again, this is theoretical, and hopefully I have to get the Legislature's funding approval on this. But I'd like to bring these artifacts out, this history out, and travel the state and show people, show young people - visit, maybe, the high schools and elementary schools - hey, this is the history of our state. We're building a new library, and we're going to put a lot of info - not just our archives in there and books, but the state's history and the state's culture - let's tell the story about, especially in my community - I'm an Asian American, there's the Japanese that were put into camps. Let's talk about that story. Let's talk about Native, our Native peoples in this state - how we took their land and how they were struggling, and now they've become a political power in this state and how great that is, and how they have educated us on the environment - saving salmon. We need to tell these stories, and I've been looking at using our archives and our libraries to develop - not competition with you, of course - but doing a podcast.
[00:41:35] Crystal Fincher: I'm all for it. I'm all for it.
[00:41:38] Secretary Hobbs: Yeah, and talk and do it in the style of YouTube and Twitch, so there's interaction there at the same time. And I'm going to go on a bit of a tangent here, because I forgot to mention this, but - the listeners out there, if you're really into podcasts, there's one called Ear Hustle, which is a podcast ran by those incarcerated in the California penal system. And I want to do that here in the State of Washington. I want the prisoners to do their own podcasts to talk about how they got there, and how is life behind bars, and how they're changing themselves for the better. No, I really want to bring to life, light, what is going on in Washington State.
[00:42:26] Crystal Fincher: So is it fair to say that you would want to - we have our physical libraries, we have our archives across and around the state - that you want to also create a digital library that is accessible to researchers, to the public - to see these artifacts. I was on a different site reading treaties, actually, that are incredibly interesting - to see what was promised and agreed to, and what actually wound up being delivered - which are in most cases, two very different things. But is that what you're looking to do - to be able to have people access, have access to these things - to view, to see - virtually as well as in-person?
[00:43:08] Secretary Hobbs: Oh, yes, absolutely. You can do some of that already. But man, we have so much - so much archives. I was up in, again, the Bellingham one, and I pulled out this old, dusty, large leatherbound book. And I opened it up - a lot of the pages were empty. I just kept on turning the page, turning the page, and finally a page came up, and there was this story. It was very funny - it was nice handwriting - it basically said something like, Laura Smith marries David Hamilton, and two chickens, a cow, and some land was exchanged, or something like that. That, I don't know, I geek out over that. I think that's totally cool. It was a story of, obviously, a wedding, because we counties always record marriages, and that was recorded before the days of statehood in our territorial days. So all that needs to be preserved, that needs to be digitized, and we all need to see it. I think that's fantastic.
[00:44:09] Crystal Fincher: All right - so we have heard from several municipalities, several reporters in municipalities about challenges with record management. And this is another part of your portfolio - records management across the state, which is also really related to the ability to deliver on public records requests, public disclosure requests - the ability to do that. And how many challenges there are within the system - hearing from municipalities and from reporters across the state that wait times for documents, for discovering whether something exists or doesn't exist, for records that should have been retained that have been deleted - creating lots of challenges for - really the goal of retaining a record is so you can be able to access the information. And so people who are entitled to that information, including the public, can access their information. We are seeing so many challenges with that right now - in the length of time it takes to fulfill requests, in the consistency of how records are retained and managed. What can you do to improve that?
[00:45:15] Secretary Hobbs: Well, just like I said last time, I just got to get more people to do the digitization of our records and better equipment - especially the older documents - to have that scanned in. But the other thing that we've been noticing, Crystal, and maybe your listeners out there might know this - is the weaponization of the public records requests, where you have somebody making an outrageous request of a government agency to simply overwhelm them. And we have seen the rise of that as well, which is unfortunate, because that is not what the public records laws were meant to do. It was meant for transparency, not to overwhelm a local government with a frivolous request. Which is unfortunate - local governments and our own state government are struggling to try to keep up, but we have to be transparent, and that's what we constantly are trying to do.
[00:46:19] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and even that area is a big challenge. For the person making the request, it's always interesting, but I think there have been some instances - certainly that I can recall - where someone who disagrees with the nature of the request, or maybe it's from some political - people who disagree with decisions that they've made before, or reporters who are simply investigating what is going on - being characterized as malicious, but seemingly making some standard requests. Now, there are certainly bad actors out there, but that is not the entirety of the issue. And so for - looking at implementing records management processes across the state, assisting municipalities with that - is there anything that can be done? Is it a situation where truly - sure, we have these retention policies, we have to save this, but if we don't have the staff, then that's just it. And ultimately, then the public does not get access to information that they're entitled to. Are we really relying on allocations of funding from the Legislature and from other levels of government to be able to deliver upon this really basic entitlement that the public has?
[00:47:32] Secretary Hobbs: Well, there's certainly attempts and technology changes to make this easier, but it does come down sometimes to people. And so that is a struggle. But we've done a really good job of meeting the public records requests ourselves in our own - we're a separately elected agency - but some of these small towns and cities are, they're having some challenges out there.
[00:48:02] Crystal Fincher: Well, as we get close to wrapping up our time here, as voters are considering who they're going to choose in this election and trying to weigh - okay, I'm hearing arguments on one side, I'm hearing arguments from the opponent. Why should I choose you, and what am I going to see that's different, or what will I not see that's different - if they vote for you? What do you say to voters who are undecided as they consider this decision?
[00:48:33] Secretary Hobbs: What I would say to them is the Office of Secretary of State has changed. It has changed across the United States and those offices as well. It's not one that it just simply works with the counties to manage, oversee, and support elections. It is now one where you have to protect democracy, you have to protect elections from threats of misinformation and cyber threats. And I am the only candidate that has the background to do that - with my background in the military, having served in the NSA, with my background of being a Public Affairs Officer, being a graduate of Department of Defense Information School, knowing how to combat misinformation and combat cyber threats. Also, the fact that I can work across the aisle and have done so in my 15 years in the State Senate - it's the one of the reasons why I have Republican endorsements and why I've been endorsed by organizations that typically oppose each other, like the Association of Washington Business and the Washington State Labor Council. Also, we need to have somebody that understands and can speak for those communities that are underserved and underrepresented. I'm a son of an Asian immigrant. I am the first API member that's ever been Secretary of State, and I'm the only statewide official who's a person of color. We need to have somebody that represents them as well. And lastly, I ask you this - because in all these elections, when you're trying to get rid of someone, is that person just not working for you? Are they not doing a good job? I've been in this office for almost a year. Are there any complaints? If the horse is getting you to the place where you need to go to, and the horse is a good horse and strong and improving, why change horses? We've done, like I said, we've handled three fairly large misinformation campaigns that - reported in NPR and NBC News. We've had two special elections in a statewide primary, and those have gone smoothly. And then you've heard in this episode here about what I want to do with other aspects of the office, such as libraries and corporations and legacy. So if you're happy with those things, there's really no need to change. And so I'm hoping that you will give me a chance to do the full term. And just to think of the improvements that I can do in the next two years. And of course, I'm always going to be there to defend democracy, defend elections, because I did it for real in Kosovo and Iraq, and I'm doing it now as your Secretary of State.
[00:51:34] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much for joining us today, for having this conversation, and for letting the voters get to know you a little bit more. Much appreciated. Thank you so much.
[00:51:42] Secretary Hobbs: Thank you.
[00:51:43] Crystal Fincher: Thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our post-production assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can follow me @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week’s Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattle political reporter Erica Barnett to delve into Seattle City Councilmember Dan Strauss’ “unforced error” at a public meeting, as well as interesting results from a recent Seattle Chamber of Commerce poll on homelessness. They then break down the convoluted question Seattle voters will see on their ballots around voting reform, what happened with King County’s about-face on expansion of the SoDo shelter, and why the terrible wildfire smoke conditions the region has suffered through for weeks needs to be treated as a real ongoing issue. The show wraps up with good news about Seattle redistricting and a victory for the Redistricting Justice for Seattle coalition!
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica C. Barnett, at @ericacbarnett. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Reminders
Don't forget to vote! Visit votewa.gov for voting resources.
People Power Washington 2022 Public Safety Voter Guide covering Washington State Legislature, King County Prosecuting Attorney, and Seattle Municipal Court
Institute for a Democratic Future 2023 applications are live! The initial deadline is November 2nd, and the final deadline is November 13th.
Learn more about how to get involved in Seattle's budget season at this link.
Student debt relief sign-ups are live! Visit this link to enroll.
Resources
"A highly charged public meeting in Seattle's Greenwood - but don't you dare record it" by Isolde Raftery from KUOW
"Chamber Poll On Homelessness, Public Safety Shows That It Matters How You Frame the Questions" by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
"Seattle voters to consider 'approval voting' vs. 'ranked choice' voting; here's the difference" by Sarah Grace Taylor from The Seattle Times
"Under Pressure, County Executive Constantine Cancels Plans to Expand SoDo Shelter" by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
"The Persistence of Seattle's Smoke Show" by Ray Dubicki from The Urbanist
"What does Seattle need for coming smoky summers? Clean air shelters, new rules to protect workers, and patience" by AGPhoto from Capitol Hill Seattle Blog
"In Dramatic Turnaround, New City Council Map Splits Magnolia to Keep Other Neighborhoods Whole" by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full text transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a cohost. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's cohost: Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola, cohost of the Seattle Nice podcast, and author of Quitter: A Memoir Of Drinking, Relapse and Recovery, the excellent Erica Barnett.
[00:01:00] Erica Barnett: It's great to be here, Crystal.
[00:01:01] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you back. And just a few reminders that we've talked about in prior weeks, but the biggest reminder - it is time to vote. You should be receiving your ballot. Voting is opening up today. Ballot dropboxes are now open. You can fill out your ballot. You can vote. Vote - absolutely take this opportunity to vote. We talk a lot about, we hear a lot about politics at the federal level. This is a show where mostly we talk about stuff on the local level, but especially this year - where I think it's become much more visible and real to people that just because there are or were rights at the federal level, doesn't mean that they're going to stay that way. And who our local elected officials are in our state legislatures, in our county councils, city councils - everything at the local level really matters in terms of how we are able to continue to live and exercise our rights, or not. The type of prosecutor that we elect in our counties can impact whether women are prosecuted, and people are prosecuted for the decisions they make about whether or not to be pregnant and healthcare decisions that they're making. The types of legislators we elect will determine whether they move to restrict abortion in our state. Issues like preventing religious hospital mergers where, even though - yes, we currently have the right to abortion here - it's just not accessible in many areas and could be accessible in even fewer because there are only religious hospitals that refuse to perform abortions. Voting rights are at stake. Just people - we see the trans community under attack and under assault. Really just so many areas that are essential to people being able to live their lives, to exercise who what they want, make their own choices, and fully participate in our society. We have to have people at every level pushing in the right direction and your voice is needed to make that happen. So I hope - sometimes I look at stuff at the federal level and get really frustrated and irritated - and I understand how sometimes that can make people wonder whether or not their vote matters. It absolutely does on the local level, and we routinely have races here that are decided by fewer than a hundred votes. We have people up for re-election who won their initial elections by fewer than a hundred votes. So please take the time, fill out your ballot - should be arriving today. And if for some reason you haven't received it or there's a delay, you can get a replacement ballot, you can track that down. So please do that.
Also, I want to remind people that the Institute for a Democratic Future has opened up its application for the new coming cohort. Great program - I've talked about it before. If you're interested in advocacy - either professionally or on a volunteer basis - learning more about politics and policy in a Washington State and building a a great network, but really equipping yourself to make a difference in your community - that application is open. We'll put the information in our show notes, but the initial deadline is November 2nd for applications. The late deadline is November 13th. I've talked before - this organization is largely responsible for my career in politics - probably would not be working in politics without it. So I encourage people who are interested in the same to do it. And feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or want to talk about it.
Student debt relief is here. Sign up for that - do that soon because you don't have forever to do that. We'll put that link in the show notes. And also it is budget season all over the place, but in Seattle and King County - and we have just a reminder about that is happening now - and dates and details about that process will also be in our show notes.
We will also include helpful resources for voting - voter guide info - as well as the People Power Washington 2022 Public Safety Voter Guide, which covers the Washington State legislative races, King County Prosecuting Attorney race, and the Seattle Municipal Court races. Useful resource, make sure you check that out - especially 'cause some of those races don't have a ton of information about them elsewhere.
Any reminders you want to give, Erica?
[00:05:35] Erica Barnett: Yeah. So just a reminder to - when you're filling out your ballot, fill out those advisory votes. There's a bunch of votes at the top of the ballot - Tim Eyman, a right-wing activist, passed a resolution or passed an initiative that got those votes on the ballot. So we have to vote Maintain to maintain laws that are already on the books. So I know it's annoying, but there's a bunch of them on every single ballot, but go ahead and fill those out - vote to maintain the laws that are already on the books and and then move on with your day.
[00:06:06] Crystal Fincher: We've got a number of things to discuss this week. One interesting development was with Seattle City Councilmember Dan Strauss making an effort to keep a public meeting essentially private. What happened here?
[00:06:21] Erica Barnett: Yeah, this came to the attention of everyone via some reporting by Isolde Raftery from KUOW. And basically it was a public meeting in Greenwood at Taproot Theater - and apparently there were more than 200 people there and press releases went out. And at the very last minute, according to Isolde's reporting, Dan Strauss, councilmember for District 6, said - Nope, no reporters are going to be allowed inside, and also no one can record. So people were trying to record this meeting and he - members of the public - and this City councilmember said - No, this has to be private. And Isolde reported about this on Twitter, was understandably and justifiably outraged and a whole thing ensued from that. And Strauss sort of apologized, sort of didn't, and said people can come to a Town Hall, which I believe happened last night. But really inadequate response from Strauss and an outrageous thing to do in the first place.
[00:07:30] Crystal Fincher: It was outrageous. And these are public meetings - these are, this is a public official, this is about public policy. These are designed to be public by design. And in fact, there are potentially legal ramifications for not allowing these to be public and accessible by all, viewable by all. Dan Strauss said, "I'm an elected official. I know I have signed up for public scrutiny and accountability. However, the community members present did not. My intention was to foster an environment where people, neighbors of mine who have real profound concerns about safety in our community could have a place to speak freely. I apologize for any miscommunication or misunderstanding and that this event unfolded in this way." I guess a number of things - lots of people had lots of stuff to say about this. Clearly this was, should have been a public meeting. But it - most of all just was notable to me that - wow, it just occurred to him in this setting that these people may have wanted privacy. It just seems like it is very exclusive and selective that he is moving to essentially protect this group of people with these opinions, but there have been lots of other opportunities with people of other opinions - that this just never occurred to him. So it just really speaks to me about whose opinions he's prioritizing, whose opinions he considers to be real and profound valid concerns about safety. It's just disappointing, I think for me, just to see that reinforced.
[00:09:07] Erica Barnett: And to be clear, this meeting was about public safety - a security guard in an apartment building was wounded in Greenwood - he was shot and wounded in Greenwood. And this is one of those hot topics that tends to produce meetings where people are yelling and complaining and being mean to their elected officials and whatever. But the thing is - you actually - if you, as a member of the public, go to a public meeting and speak in public and give public testimony, or if you even write to your City councilmember - all that information is public. I can request emails from, emails to Dan Strauss about a certain topic and I can get them. And people need to know that there is no presumption of privacy when you are effectively lobbying a City councilmember or elected official. And there's a reason for that - we don't want certain selected people to have undue influence outside the public eye. And and so it's equally outrageous, although I understand that members of the public may not understand the law quite as well as a City councilmember should, but it's equally outrageous to think that you should be allowed to take a giant group of your neighbors and lobby a councilmember on an issue and not have that be something that happens in the public eye. So I just think there's so much blame to go around here, but ultimately it falls on Strauss to understand the law, respect the law, and follow the law. And I think this is just such an unforced error too - just letting the media in and letting people record would have been an extremely easy solution - even though it wouldn't have allowed him to act in private as a City councilmember.
[00:10:51] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, really easy solution. Definitely an unforced error. And I just wonder how this will impact how he's going to proceed in the future. I hope he has learned that this was a very, very unwise thing to do. But we'll see how he proceeds after this. But hopefully a good reminder for everyone that public meetings are public and all that that implies - very interesting development. Also this week, we saw a poll from the Seattle Chamber on homelessness. What did this show?
[00:11:28] Erica Barnett: So this is - yeah, this is the Seattle Chamber's poll that they do every year. They ask a bunch of questions about public safety, homelessness, et cetera. And the interesting thing about the conclusion is that they found on homelessness this year is that concern with/frustration about homelessness has gone down a little bit. I think that part of the reason for that is that public safety concerns have gone up - I think people really conflate those two things. And so to me, that indicates that people are maybe more angry about homelessness and angry about some of the issues that they see on the streets rather than people are - people believe that homelessness is getting better. The report or the - sorry, the survey - also found that people are generally supportive of the idea of more housing in their neighborhood, which is an interesting finding that they also found last year. So people are willing to allow duplexes and triplexes - and I guess I should put "allow" in big air quotes - in their neighborhoods, but the poll didn't really ask about denser housing. And of course these questions are intimately related because building apartments is the thing that keeps people off the streets, so interesting findings. I think that the questions as always are a little bit skewed to produce a certain result that is friendly to the Chamber's political interests, but it's an interesting tracking poll because they do it every single year and you can see opinions on different subjects change over time.
[00:13:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it is interesting. And I do think that it's most useful for that element - just because it is a tracking poll, so they're asking things consistently. How they ask things is always, how you construct questions can definitely influence how you get answers - so that's always a topic of conversation. But it is tracking consistent answers to these questions over time. I do think it's notable, especially in the questions about housing, that public sentiment seems to be definitely ahead of where our public officials are at. I think that there is a predominant assumption among many elected officials that - well, we're just, we're going to catch a lot of heat if we try and push for more housing, more density. If we talk about putting a duplex or a triplex in a single-family neighborhood, my voters would not stand for that. And I think what we've seen, not only in primary results, but also in these polls is that the public is ahead of where they're at. And whether it's because there is such an affordability crisis that so many more people are feeling, or the fact that as long as something fits within a neighborhood, how many people live in a residence actually is irrelevant and it's not some eyesore like many McMansions are - that it would, that it's fine. It really doesn't impact their neighbors or quality of life in a meaningful way. And that some of the opposition frankly is from people who don't have a problem with the building, but have a problem with potentially the people who would be coming into the neighborhood who weren't there now. So voters are ahead of this. I hope people who can pass policy are paying attention because this is a key policy area that is afflicting many people in the region. And there's an opportunity to take action that's going to be broadly supported and really move people forward. So that was exciting for me to see - to continue to see - reinforced in this.
And then I agree with everything that you just said on how people are viewing homelessness overall. And I think we continue to see - people want action taken and being dissatisfied with the action that has already been taken. So as our leaders continue to roll out policies, roll out rehashes of old policies, and continue to double down on the same kinds of policies and solutions that they've offered - I think the public is saying it hasn't worked, I don't see how you think it is going to work - will you please try something new that has a chance of making this better? We're frustrated that you keep doing the things that have not fixed this.
[00:15:56] Erica Barnett: One thing I would also point out about this poll that was really interesting - it's 50/50 renters and homeowners, which is not the crowd you typically see, say, at a pitchfork public meeting. It's not typically the folks who are able to show up to meetings and take time out in the middle of the day. And so I think this is actually a more representative poll than a public meeting might be or a public comment session might be. And so in some ways, this is - you're right. This also points out that the general public, which is half renters, has a very different opinion on some of these issues, particularly housing, than the crowd that you'll see at a public comment session. And I think City councilmembers and other elected officials are really influenced by those public comment sessions that may feature 10, or 12, or 20 people all saying the same thing. But when you do a representative poll of the City - this is 700 people, a hundred in each Council district - you get a very different response and see very different attitudes.
[00:17:01] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely correct. Also this week, we saw a lot of coverage about the upcoming choice that residents in Seattle are going to have about how they're going to vote in the future. Lots of conversation about voting reform. What is going to be on the ballot? What is at stake here?
[00:17:18] Erica Barnett: Oh my gosh - I got my ballot last night and and this question - I even, I know what the question is, I've written about it - but it's so confusing. If you get your ballot, there's going to be - there's a very long question at the end of the ballot in Seattle - if you live in Seattle. And the first part is, Do you want a new system of voting, essentially? And you can say Yes or No. Then on the second part they ask, Which voting system do you support, regardless of whether you said Yes or No on the first. So the first option is an option called approval voting, which is supported by, it's backed by a bunch of money out of California. It's kind of the technocrats preferred solution and - well, solution - preferred change. I don't know if it's a solution to anything. But it would allow you to vote for as many people as you want. So you just look at your ballot and if there's 10 people there, you can vote for 1, you can vote for 10, you can vote for as many as you want on that ballot. The second option is ranked choice voting, which is probably a little more familiar to most people. That's where you just pick the people that you like in order of preference. If there's 10 people and you like 5 of them, you just rank them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And both sides say that this would solve a lot of problems in elections, make people feel that their voices are being heard more. And generally speaking, the left supports ranked choice voting, the kind of centrist left - or whatever you want to call them - supports approval voting. And there's also a campaign to do neither and stick with our current top-two primary system.
[00:18:59] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's really interesting. And I think even the dividing line, or the camps that support approval voting versus nothing - that is even a blurry line. We've seen the campaigns for each one - one, The Seattle Times has come out in support of just none of the above - just vote No, don't do anything else, we shouldn't make any changes.
[00:19:25] Erica Barnett: So is The Stranger.
[00:19:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. We do see from - a lot of tech money, it looks like a few, very determined, very rich people who really want approval voting. Is that - I don't even know if that really covers the center left. And we've also got a ragtag coalition for ranked choice voting. And some people are looking at it and going, yeah, people on the left definitely want this and others are saying we've actually seen some decent results from this for people in the center and even sometimes on the right. I think - one, I think it's a good idea to look at participation as opposed to results. As we talk about this, I think anything that does meaningfully increase participation is good, is going to be more representative and sustainable in the community - as opposed to trying to engineer a result, 'cause that generally just doesn't turn out well and is not sustainable. But really interesting to see how this proceeds. Certainly ranked choice voting has been - there's been grassroots momentum for that in Washington for years. It's on the ballot in a few different counties here this year. So we're going to see how people in - across the state - feel about this. And they've been communicating - I know people have gotten mailers from them and so it'll be interesting to see how this turns out, but certainly we have some, a lot of communication saying, now is not the time to make a change. And it'll be interesting to see if anyone can overcome that.
[00:20:58] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I think those endorsements - who knows the true power of endorsements at this point, but there's really only two big endorsing "newspapers". One is The Stranger, which is an online site now and the other is The Seattle Times - and they both for different reasons endorsed a No vote on the first part of this and to just keep the the old system.
[00:21:22] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And certainly in situations like this, where there's a confusing question for a lot of people - this is not the same, formatted in the same way that most questions are on a ballot. It's going to make people look twice at it and go, wait what am I supposed to do here? And where they're not sure what the details of the proposals are, usually No has the advantage in those situations anyway. We'll see if that carries through, but sometimes that's really hard to get beyond.
[00:21:52] Erica Barnett: And of course, PubliCola will be endorsing on Monday.
[00:21:54] Crystal Fincher: Monday is when we get to see - okay, we will be looking forward to that. Also this week, there has been an interesting and new development in a story that we've talked about before - with a proposed SoDo shelter expansion being canceled by the county. How did they make this decision and what happened?
[00:22:14] Erica Barnett: The answer to the first part is, I don't know. There's all kinds of rumors flying, but they - I think the most likely reason, and kind of the reason that County Executive Dow Constantine said that he canceled the shelter expansion, is there's too much opposition from the community. Now, there was opposition to this shelter expansion from groups in the Chinatown International District - it is in SoDo, which borders the CID, and the proposal would have added 90 shelter beds total, plus a sobering center - and there was opposition. There was also - in addition to grassroots opposition, a very concerted effort by right-wing provocateurs, the King County Republican Party, and outside actors - the Discovery Institute - to try to kill the shelter, characterizing it as a megaplex. Again, this is a 270-bed shelter that exists currently today that would have 90 new beds, Pallet shelters, and a high-acuity medical shelter, which would have taken a lot of the most "problematic" people off the streets and gotten them medical and behavioral healthcare. But at any rate, I thought Dow was probably going to cut some parts of this and maybe do half the beds, or announce beds elsewhere in addition to the ones there. But that's not what happened. He just said, Okay, fine - screw it. I'm just not going to do it at all. And the sort of outside actors, in addition to some of the grassroots folks, celebrated this. But I will say that I think the people who are - who actually live in Chinatown and the organic opposition is pretty disappointed that this was just - the decision was essentially to just wipe the whole proposal off the map as opposed to A) addressing the problems that they see in their neighborhood and B) coming up with a solution in collaboration with the community. I think they have said that they didn't mean for the whole thing to just get canceled. They just wanted to be included in the conversations. So pretty disappointing result all around.
[00:24:33] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Very disappointing. And actually seems like a continuation of the problem where once again, he - the County - did not seem to listen to what people in the community were actually saying. And it sometimes can be a tough situation where you have both good faith criticism and bad faith criticism. There have been, as we talked about before, there has been a failure to include the community on so many projects - that has actually been the norm in that area, and there's cause for frustration. And we repeatedly hear people say, Hey, we're not opposed to progress, but we do feel like you're disproportionately expecting us to absorb harms from certain things. The decisions that you're making seem to not include us and our feedback while we watch feedback from other areas in the City be very carefully considered and implemented in policy. And we don't see that in the same way here. And hey, we can help you do this better than you can do it alone. We could actually make this more successful if you include us and make this work in a way that we know can in our community. And, just project after project, and they've talked about many of them - that hasn't been the case. Seeing these other actors that have been involved in this, who just are opposed to anything that's not further criminalization, sweeps of homelessness, anything that they can almost just use as a wedge issue and as media fodder is unfortunate. And they're happy to come in and view any tension or existing dissatisfaction and amplify that, but for their own ends and to use as part of their own message, which is not reflective of what the community thinks. And it seems like - okay, you guys say you hate it - well, we're done. And the bad faith criticism was listened to without, once again, listening to the community, including the community, and moving forward. So I just - there's so many opportunities to learn lessons here and from this. And I hope people just pause and think, what if we did actually include people from the community? And not to say that they didn't do anything and I know they've said, Hey, we had meetings before and we talked to people - but maybe that's a signal to expand beyond the people who you've always talked to and the groups that may be most visible there, and really do some deeper and more expansive outreach into residents that are currently there, businesses that are currently there, groups that are currently there on the ground. And start talking to some people who you haven't talked to yet, start really moving through the community and making a concerted effort. I think that's possible to do. I think that there are people interested in doing it. I hope that leadership will start to prioritize that, but it'll be interesting to see. So where do we go now - has there been any signal that we're going to start this process again, that we're going to look and see where we can site it. What's next?
[00:27:48] Erica Barnett: I have heard nothing so far. I think - except that the money that was going to go toward the shelter is going to go to other purposes. And so there's City money that's wrapped up in this, there's a lot of County money that was wrapped up in it. The lease for the existing shelter that's there has already been signed, so that's going to continue to operate. But no plans that I'm aware of to restart this conversation or relocate these particular beds. The high-acuity medical shelter is something that the King County Regional Authority has been asking for a long time and that has been necessary and needed for a really long time, because there aren't really places for some folks who have really high medical needs to go. And so they're on the streets not getting help - very, very sick people with physical and behavioral health needs. And so I think that should be the top priority. I don't know that it will be, but there's a lot of needs out there that are not going to be met now, or that are going to be delayed because of this kind of capitulation which I think was - which I agree with you, Crystal, was totally - we're talking about unforced errors. Here's an unforced error. This could have gone a different way. And I'm frankly surprised that it didn't, but right now - no visible movement.
[00:29:19] Crystal Fincher: Disappointing. I hope that there is soon. I do think that there were probably decent intentions from people trying to move forward, but intentions really don't matter if impacts on the community are going to continue to be disproportionately harmful. And continuing to ignore that is only going to make things harder instead of easier. So hopefully there is a path forward that Dow and the County will be taking soon and that the County Councilmembers will assist him with that.
I want to talk about something we've all been dealing with this whole week - and I'm hoarse, and have had headaches, and my eyes have been burning and stinging because of our horrendous air quality. All of the smoke-filled air, toxic unhealthy air that has caused unhealthy air warnings. It has been - literally warned that it's dangerous to breathe, especially for groups that are more vulnerable - advised not to spend time outdoors, to close windows, to hopefully stay in a filtered environment. And great for those who can, but there's also a lot of people who can't. So this week, as we have all dealt with this, what have you seen in terms of school districts, organizations and how they have either moved to mitigate some of this harm or how they haven't?
[00:30:49] Erica Barnett: If I can talk about - just in order not to talk about things that I don't know about - if I can just talk about the impact that it's had on people experiencing homelessness, I think it goes without saying that people who actually live outdoors are going to be the most impacted. And these are folks with a lot of chronic medical needs, as we mentioned. And historically the City of Seattle, which oversaw shelters for a really long time has done very, very little - I remember Jenny Durkan being flummoxed at the idea that homeless people would need a place to go during the smoke and saying that - well, we also have COVID and so it's not safe for folks to be indoors when it was imminently, and in that moment, much less safe for them to be outdoors. The King County Regional Authority, the Homelessness Authority, has taken over shelters and they really - I hate to ding them during their first smoke emergency, but they haven't stepped up in a mass and meaningful way. They've offered beds at one shelter - the Compass Center downtown - which is a pretty big shelter, but it's not big enough to shelter all the people who might want to come in from the smoke. And it's in one location that not everybody can get to, there's people experiencing homelessness all over the City and they can't all crowd into one Pioneer Square shelter to to get out of the smoke. So I think that the response to this, and I'm sure this is true in other areas as well, I'm just talking about the thing that I know the most about - the response has been really inadequate to both the current situation with this year's big smoke emergency. But the future of our city, which is going to have events like this multiple times every single year, and we need to figure out a way to deal with this. This is not the first year that we've had a smoke emergency. It's - I don't know, the third, fourth, fifth? It's - because the smoke goes away, I think we don't take this seriously and plan for it in a meaningful way after it's gone. 'Cause we move on to the next emergency, but we really gotta - 'cause this is not going away.
[00:33:10] Crystal Fincher: You're exactly right. It's not going away. This is unfortunately the new normal. This is going to happen. We know it is. It's predictable, it's foreseeable. And as we've talked about with extreme heat events, extreme cold events, our government does have a responsibility, a core responsibility, to keep residents safe. We know that we have residents outside, living outside. We recognize and acknowledge that responsibility through cold weather shelters and hot weather shelters. Because for someone just to be left to the elements outside is cruel and inhumane, will result in harm - and sometimes irreparable harm, right? So we have to do better. I know it takes extra time to plan, but that is actually the responsibility and role of government - to make sure that we are preparing for these emergency events that are happening now, that we know are going to happen with increasing frequency as - in the coming years. So we just have to do better at all levels. And especially organizations like the state and the county, who do so much heavy lifting in terms of emergency management overall - even when individual agencies or organizations handle certain elements of an emergency plan - they have got to step up and start to help the jurisdictions within their bounds plan for and provide shelter in these situations. We had school districts in our region who had kids playing outside at recess, like nothing was happening. We have employers who have employees who have to work outside where this wasn't even discussed. We have to do better as a region. This is a significant health risk. We do see increased health emergencies result from extended breathing of toxic air and are learning more and more just how harmful it is. So this is another area where I know we have not had to contend with this in past decades. I know a lot of the people in power have had decades where this hasn't been a thought that they've needed to be concerned with, or - it's been coming, lots of people have been warning that's been coming - but one that they have gotten away without heeding for years. The time is here, we're dealing with this now, and it's very visible. And more and more people are not only impacted by, but noticing the lack of leadership and the lack of concern for just the general public's health and safety here. We have to do a better job.
[00:35:58] Erica Barnett: Absolutely. I was going to ask you about the schools and I - and again here, I'm a childless, childless wretch over here - it's just, I don't follow the schools, but that is outrageous that they were having children play outside in this. My - you were talking about your eyes hurting and your headache. I have been inside for days, barely going outside, and I have all those symptoms too. And that's sitting inside my house. So I I can't imagine and I empathize with anybody who has to be outside for any period of time for their job, for their school, for whatever, 'cause it's just awful.
[00:36:34] Crystal Fincher: It's awful. And there have been some districts - I think the Seattle School District advised that recesses be short, that PE - physical education - be less strenuous, trying to mitigate some of this. But I wish it wouldn't be left up to individual school districts. And frankly, some with a lot more resources than others, to even be able to plan this in the midst of everything else that they're doing - that this is something that is part of strategic plans, annual planning, budget conversations from the state level on down to make sure that there are protocols and that there's an easier way to implement this, that there are standard recommendations that can just be implemented and turned on - because this does impact people's health. And we're just really, really behind in preparing for this and mitigating this. Just we have the conversations about masking with COVID - why are we not also having these major conversations and providing this with wildfire smoke? I actually had N95 masks initially because of the smoke events we were having.
[00:37:43] Erica Barnett: Yeah. Same.
[00:37:45] Crystal Fincher: And when the pandemic started, I had a supply on-hand because - was trying not to breathe wildfire smoke where I was at. So it's - we have to talk about this in a lot of different ways. I really hope we have conversations about air filtration in public spaces, in schools, in public buildings. There's so much more that we can do that we know is going to be necessary for facing the challenges that are here and that are going to be impacting us with increasing frequency. So that's me on my soapbox, just pleading with people to take action where they can.
Also this week, we saw a significant development in Seattle's redistricting process. What happened?
[00:38:28] Erica Barnett: I'm glad we can close with some kind of good news. The Seattle Redistricting Commission, which was deciding basically all the new boundaries for the City Council districts, which have to be redrawn every 10 years to line up with population shifts and things like that. There was a big debate over whether to keep the peninsula of Magnolia in one piece and sacrifice Fremont by dividing it up into three different districts, as opposed to the two it's in now. And after a lot of back and forth, the Redistricting Commission voted to split Magnolia at a - what I would consider a pretty natural point along the top ridge of that neighborhood - keep the bottom half of the neighborhood in Andrew Lewis's District 7. And keep Fremont basically as it is now. So no massive, huge changes except in Magnolia where there's going to be a split. But I think that result is a lot more equitable. It was supported by a group called Redistricting Justice for Seattle. And I think that is a really good example of activism and advocacy working on the commissioners who, I think a lot of whom, really changed their minds after hearing feedback from a very large group of supporters saying, look, this is more equitable to every part of the City and let's not serve only the special interests at the top of Magnolia and in the Magnolia business district, but let's divide up the City equitably for the next 10 years. So I think that was a really positive result. Only former mayor Greg Nickels voted against it.
[00:40:05] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that was really great to see. And this is after a prior vote that made it look like it could be likely that the - I don't know if I want to call it a capitulation, but really seems like the interests in Magnolia who were advocating to stay together had a disproportionate voice. And there were so many groups in the community and so many advocates and residents who had said, Hey, we've actually, through several redistricting processes, have gotten the short end of the stick here. And it is time to actually correct those wrongs and institute more equitable boundaries that better reflect who the City of Seattle and the communities within it are today. So it is great to talk about good news and things that seem to better reflect the will of the community and what people on the ground are saying is best for them. So very excited to see that. And please stay engaged in this process, continue to make your voice heard, and to encourage those who have now voted to institute these new maps to continue along this path. I think sometimes it's very easy to criticize - and that's absolutely necessary, accountability is necessary - but also we have to remember to recognize when people do make those good decisions, because that also helps those to happen more often. And see people that - it really does help to show that making the right decisions also pays off, that people are also paying attention to that, and that they can continue to serve and have positive things happen when they do a better job of serving the community. So appreciate that and happy to see that - we'll continue to follow it along.
And with that, I thank you for listening to today's Hacks & Wonks on Friday, October 21st, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng and our Production coordinator is Bryce Cannatelli. Our insightful cohost today is Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola, and cohost of the Seattle Nice podcast, and author of Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery - which is still available for purchase anywhere where you want to buy books - Erica Barnett. You can find Erica on Twitter @EricaCBarnett, that's Erica with "C's" and PubliCola.com. You can buy her book, Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery anywhere you buy books. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks and you can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts - just search for "Hacks and Wonks." Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, please leave a review wherever you listen. You can get full transcripts of this episode and links to resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Chipalo Street about his campaign for State Representative in the 37th Legislative District - why he decided to run, how he would approach legislating and his thoughts on addressing issues such as housing affordability and zoning, data privacy, public safety, homelessness, and climate change.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Chipalo Street at @ElectChipalo.
Resources
Campaign Website - Chipalo Street
South Seattle Emerald’s 37th LD Representative Position 2 Debate (October 4, 2022) - Moderated by Crystal Fincher
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I'm excited to welcome Chipalo Street, who is running for 37th Legislative District State Representative. Welcome to the program, Chipalo.
[00:00:49] Chipalo Street: Thank you for having me.
[00:00:50] Crystal Fincher: Excellent - so what made you decide to run for office and what are you bringing to this race?
[00:00:57] Chipalo Street: Yeah - the two second answer is I came to this race through a program called Institute for a Democratic Future. But I think - as I look back on even how I got to IDF, which is the shorthand term for Institute for a Democratic Future -
[00:01:12] Crystal Fincher: Which we are well aware of - and I am on the board of, as are you, full disclosure.
[00:01:18] Chipalo Street: Yes, it goes back to how I have tried to give back to different communities throughout my life. And so - I grew up in D.C. and was very lucky to have a family that valued education - going to college was not a question for me. I actually got to go to my grandmother's college graduation because she had to drop out to have my dad and his family, but education was so important to her that she then got a job at Akron University and took night classes slowly to graduate, even though her kids had already gone to college and graduated. So when - I think I was in junior high school, going to my grandmother's graduation - whether I was going to go to college or not was not an option for me. But I didn't really understand why I wanted to go to college or what I would do with that degree. And so my parents had made sure to get me into the best public schools in D.C. And I was thankful for that because by the time I got to high school, I was in a school - the only public school in D.C. - that had a computer science department. And that's where I really learned that I loved computers, loved programming. And then that sort of motivated me, and I knew what my purpose was for in college.
Went to Brown University and realized that there weren't a ton of people in engineering that looked like myself. We had a lot of folks in pre-med that had created a group that would support each other through the pre-med process, but we didn't have that at Brown University. And so I co-founded our chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers so that we had that support group to help folks go through engineering. After I left Brown, I came out to Seattle and again, realized there weren't many people that looked like myself in computer science. And so I worked with a woman named Trish who founded Technology Access Foundation - and myself and three other Microsofties created a computer science curriculum down at TAF and taught that for six years to a school in South Seattle. And that sort of pattern is - finding ways where I can use my time to give back to the community, but also leverage it. I think there's a 100% place for direct service, and I am so grateful for folks who do direct service. But for myself, I've always tried to figure out - hey, if I put an hour in here, how do I get five hours out? If I put two hours in here, how do I get 10 hours out? And so starting our chapter of National Society of Black Engineers, creating curriculum and teaching that at TAF - I thought would create a legacy that lived on past me.
Again, then start looking around - hey, these state laws and policies really impact and shape our society - how can I help get involved in that? And so I went to United Way of King County - served on their Public Policy Impact Council. And while we did advocate for laws and policies, it was frustrating because that's a very - we had to advocate for very middle-of-the-road policies because we didn't want to alienate our more conservative donor base, and so that felt like my time was not best used. At that same time, I was going through this program Institute for a Democratic Future - they were really pushing for progressive policies and training a next generation of Democratic leaders. And so - I loved that program and then started serving on the board after that point. So I've been on the board for maybe six or seven years - and that has been a very fulfilling experience because I love the work that they did, but one of the things I did not see was as much equity and inclusion. So I've been trying to push for more board members of color, and also more fellows of color, and also geographic diversity - because we are a statewide program and so having folks east of the mountain is really important.
And that's a long way of saying that's how I've gotten actually to this opportunity because through that board service - when this opportunity came up - some of the board members approached me and said, Hey, you match the district really well, you should consider running. I was like, Oh no, you got the wrong guy - I love my full-time job - I don't think I'm ready to take on that type of extra work, my ego couldn't take the loss if I was to lose. And so we talked about all my bad reasons not to run. Senator Nguyen - he serves in the Senate, he works at Microsoft - he's able to do it. So talk to him, talk to your boss, see if they're both supportive of that - they were, that conversation went well. And I was like, Oh well, you just retired from being a pro-soccer referee, you have some extra time - so what about that? I was like, Yeah, I know - the work is an excuse, I always do a good job of what I do - I will put my all into it. It will be fine. But my poor little ego couldn't take a loss. And they're like - Look, ego-based decisions aren't how you should be making your decisions. And even just running would help the community - you'd learn it better, you'd expand your network. And we think you'll win because you have great experience. It's - Man, I'm not really excited to do this - it's changing my plans for all of my summer and fall. So since then, I've just been knocking on doors, fundraising, attending candidate forums, talking about the different experiences that I think I can bring to this district. And we could go into that, we could go somewhere else - all these things are great. And I know that was a long-winded way of answering your question.
[00:06:22] Crystal Fincher: And so I'm wondering what are you running to accomplish?
[00:06:25] Chipalo Street: Yeah, for sure. So there are things that - there's some really major issues that are affecting everyone, and then specifically the 37th. So for example - housing. I think housing prices are going up across the country, but it is impacting the 37th District in specific ways. So we're a historic district - we have been generally a district - we were the most diverse district in the country for quite some time. However, as those housing prices are rising, folks are getting displaced, neighborhoods are getting gentrified, and it is having unique impacts on our district. So fixing housing, I think, is super important. And the way I think about that is - three buckets of solutions. One is how do you stop harm now? How do you get more units on the market in the long term? And then how do you tide ourselves to the point where those units are on the market?
So stopping harm now looks like anti-displacement measures - so we can't stop people from moving to the 37th. However, we can make sure that the folks who live here have an opportunity to take part in the evolution of that community. So seniors who are on fixed incomes - making sure they have tax breaks so that as the property values rise, they can afford the taxes. That generational homes that have been passed down through families - those families can afford the taxes and aren't forced to sell. And then we also need increased renter protections. There's some pretty crazy things that landlords can do from the types of fees they charge, to who they provide housing to, and who they discriminate against based on prior felonies or involvement with the criminal justice system. Or even just lifting the statewide ban on rent control so that municipalities have different tools in their tool belt to address housing affordability. So that would stop harm right now.
Investment in low-income housing through the Housing Trust Fund will get more units on the market and that's something the State has to do. There's also - we need to figure out something around workforce housing. We underpay our teachers, but even two teachers living together can't afford housing in the area. And then we also need to invest in mass transit so that we can increase density. Mass transit gets us towards a greener climate future, which is a whole 'nother set of issues that we can talk about. But also increasing density around that transit allows more units to get on the market. And those are three things that are going to take a while to come to fruition. And so we also need means to tide ourselves there. So increasing temporary rental support, I think, is important so that a short-term hardship doesn't snowball and turn into someone losing their house - makes it harder for them to work, makes it harder for their kids to go to school. And then making sure that we have a robust voucher program so that working people can live in existing market rate units without spending their full paycheck.
So housing is super important - it's the number one issue I hear at doors. Then there's things around criminal justice reform. Climate justice is really important in that, again, if we don't have a habitable world to live in, it doesn't really matter. But the 37th itself gets disproportionately impacted by our environment - like we have planes flying over Beacon Hill, one of our large borders is created by I-5 - and so we have air pollution, noise pollution that impacts our district on top of all of the other things like climate change and global warming and stuff like that.
And then there's some unique experiences that I bring that I think are necessary for our society. For example, I work at Microsoft. I think it's really important that we have people who understand technology in the Legislature. And we could snicker about that - six months ago, where you'd see federal hearings where you have senators saying, Why didn't my tweet go to my inbox? And it's just, Oh, God - no, you should really understand this. But with the Roe decision, we're getting tangible examples of how our data can be used against people. So I think it's really important that we don't have our data used to go after folks who are seeking abortions, but it also applies to our providers as well, right? Telehealth is a thing - providers can work across state lines. And if they're working in a state that has banned abortion, what does that mean for their ability to be sued, to be subpoenaed, to possibly lose their license? So making sure that we can protect everyone involved in the abortion ecosystem through our data and technology legislation, I think, is really important. It's given us a tangible reason why this is so important to us today. So that's a quick way of saying there's many issues - I would love to support on all of them, and then bring unique experience and to solve things and apply them to things like data privacy.
[00:11:13] Crystal Fincher: So now you mentioned housing, you mentioned a number of things, lifting the ban on rent control and rental assistance. There is a bill that has been attempting to make its way through the Legislature, the middle housing bill, to address the housing shortage - up-zoning in single-family zoned areas, which would impact several neighborhoods around the City, including those in the 37th district. Do you support that bill? Would you be a yes vote on that bill?
[00:11:39] Chipalo Street: Yeah, you're talking about Jessica Bateman's bill - the missing middle one. Yeah, I think that's a great bill. What's interesting with any of these conversations is understanding how it will impact the existing communities and my impression is that that will not have a disproportionate negative impact on the 37th - because Seattle has already done some pretty progressive zoning reforms in terms of land use, in terms of ADUs and detached - with DDUs, or ADUs and DDUs - but what's really important about that bill is that it enforces it statewide, right? So that we can't just allow Seattle to increase density. And then when Seattle increases density, it really gets pushed into a neighborhood in Seattle because certain enclaves within Seattle say, Oh, no density in my backyard - let's push it down into - usually communities like Black and Brown communities. And so doing it at a statewide level makes sure that we're all in density together. And understanding what those impacts are, I think, is really important. And luckily, I don't think it would increase displacement given the existing zoning laws of Seattle, but that is the one area that I would want to dig into that bill and make sure that we aren't, again, increasing displacement within the 37th. But at a statewide level, it's 100% necessary.
[00:13:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely at the statewide level. And some would argue that within the City, as you - I think - alluded to, that there are disproportionate impacts of development and the 37th Legislative District is being more negatively impacted to date than others are. And the 37th having accepted more density already, already having a lot of development and redevelopment that has resulted in the way that it's done in displacement. And so how do you balance looking at that within the district and the need to build more housing in the city overall, but to do so equitably throughout the city - and other districts that have a much higher percentage of areas zoned for single-family and that are basically exempted under current zoning laws from additional development and not having to deal with some of the impacts of that the 37th is? How do you manage wanting more density, but making sure it is equitable throughout the city and doesn't displace more people in the 37th?
[00:14:04] Chipalo Street: Yeah, I think this is an example where the devil's in the details. So here's my understanding, and I would love to make sure that my understanding is correct as I move into the Legislature. But one of the things that has been so harmful to the 37th is upzoning. And so let's separate upzoning from, say, increased density on single-family lots - whereas upzoning is, Hey, here is a small area that we can build extremely tall buildings on. Generally, I believe they've been called urban villages - I think there are four or five areas within the city that were zoned for urban villages. Compared to - okay, any single-family lot can be built up to four units - you can put a very small garden apartment there or a set of townhomes on there. So Jessica Bateman's bill is the latter, the any single-family home can be built up to four or six units, whereas serious upzoning for urban villages is large apartment buildings. And the difference there is - our current tax code taxes property based on highest and best use. And so the tax on the highest and best use for something that's zoned for an apartment building is different than zoned for a single-family house, even if single-family house includes a small fourplex. And that's where a lot of people have been displaced because the CD contained one of those urban villages. And so everyone who was within that urban village - their property value skyrocketed and they had to figure out a way to pay the taxes. And so - why I'm hopeful that Jessica Bateman's bill won't exacerbate that is that Seattle already has allowed ADUs and DDUs on single-family lots. And so I don't think that should make the tax rate jump as much as upzoning did for these urban villages. And so I don't think we should necessarily be having urban villages in the 37th - additional ones - unless that comes with a way to allow existing homeowners to afford the taxes. And so understanding the difference between urban villages and additional density on single-family lots, I think, is important. And that's how I would start to think about that equity, because to your point - those urban villages aren't equally distributed around the city.
[00:16:27] Crystal Fincher: And also, relying on just urban villages to increase density does not seem like it would get enough housing stock on the market to eventually make a difference. So it seems like allowing single-family, currently single-family zoned areas citywide, would be more of an equitable solution - not just areas that are disproportionately in the 37th district - might help to, if people with higher property values can have a higher and best use, and not just people clustered in the 37th or other already very dense areas, then that helps to spread out the development and where more dense development can happen. But appreciate hearing your thoughts on that. I'm also curious - we had a legislative session this past session where there were rollbacks of a number of public safety policies that had been previously passed. Do you agree with those rollbacks? What was your evaluation of the session and those rollbacks?
[00:17:33] Chipalo Street: The thing I do agree with is some of the processes that went into it - I was very happy to see Representative Johnson do ride-alongs with police to understand how the new legislation impacted their ability to provide public safety. I personally have a hard time believing that I would have voted to roll them back.
[00:17:52] Crystal Fincher: Well, I guess that is the question. Would you have voted to roll them back?
[00:17:56] Chipalo Street: I don't think so. I would - that said, I did not do those ride-alongs, I did not, I have not sat there and listened to debriefs on exactly how the minutiae of these policies are implemented or did it impact the police's ability to provide public safety. But what I will say is - the reason I say I have a hard time believing I would roll them back is because I think those types of policies would have saved me from the situation I went through. So when I was at Brown, myself and my best friend were walking around campus, which was a public campus, so anyone could be there. We were actually walking from campus onto a public street. And Brown police asked us for our IDs. And it was like, Hey, I'm on a public street. I didn't do anything. Why do I need to show you my ID? I kept on walking. My friend actually stopped, showed him his ID, and told the police who I was. So they knew who I was, I hadn't done anything wrong. So it should have ended there. It didn't. They called out an APB for me - Providence police picked it up. And they beat me so badly that I ended up in the hospital before they took me to jail. And so I believe that the regulations that were implemented and rolled back would have prevented the police from even having that interaction. And so that is something that's near and dear to my heart. And one of the reasons why I say I think it does provide trust with the police to make sure that there are - when we are having interactions with them, that it is for a valid reason and it's not based on a hunch, it's not based on a best guess by a police officer. But that said, I also do realize that the legislation that we passed has unintended consequences. And so working with the police department to understand what those were - I am open to the option that I could have voted to roll them back, but without some very, very strong reasons to do so, I don't think I would have.
[00:19:54] Crystal Fincher: Okay. So looking at the issue of homelessness, which is related to housing affordability - but also because it has been so criminalized, also related to public safety. In your capacity as a legislator, what would you do to reduce the amount of people living without homes?
[00:20:15] Chipalo Street: This is one of those issues where understanding different populations of our unhoused people, and then making sure that we are targeting money at solutions that are needed by each of those populations is really important. Whereas just sometimes we throw money at issue and say, Hey, we upped homeless funding by 10%, but we didn't see a drop in 10% - what's happening? It's probably because we didn't really understand where that money was going or fund the right programs. And when we look at our different populations - the supports that someone needs who has addiction issues is different than the support that, say, a family who just got evicted needs, right? Cash assistance to the family will probably go a lot farther than cash assistance to someone who has an addiction issue. Or someone having mental health issues needs different support than say, an LGBTQ teen that got kicked out of the house, right? They all need different support. They all need shelter, but the shelters that they need are probably different - I don't think teens need the same shelter as someone going through mental health crises either. Or families shouldn't be staying with folks with addiction issues and may choose not to have shelter if they are all housed together. So really understanding the different populations of our homeless brothers and sisters, and then making sure that the money that we're providing actually is going towards services that address the root cause of their issues, I think, is important.
And then making sure that these are sort of buckets that pour into each other. If we start with a Housing First solution, then that can start to stabilize people. Once they either get clean or can address some of their mental health issues, then they can move into a different type of shelter with other folks. And making sure that we have a sort of pipeline that can bring them back into being productive members of our society, I think, is really important.
[00:22:07] Crystal Fincher: So as we look at that, there's obviously lots of different kinds of programs, as you just talked about, that could be helpful in stabilizing people and taking a Housing First model. Right now, there seems to be a lot of competition between money and resources being allocated towards criminalization that could be used, and would otherwise be used for things like providing housing first and allowing people to be stabilized. So in terms of where your votes would be to appropriate money, would you appropriate or vote for anything that advanced criminalization before providing housing?
[00:22:46] Chipalo Street: No, to your point - in some ways, we are going to provide housing in one way or the other. Either we provide it in a humane way, or we provide it through the criminal justice system, which doesn't address any of these issues and is super expensive. And so I think that making sure that - as we look at housing and criminal justice reform in a more comprehensive way - towards what are the things that get us the outcomes that we want. Even if they haven't been necessarily labeled as housing or criminal justice in the past, I think, would be really - Republicans do great jobs at labeling things, and I think Democrats do a horrible job at it. But there's so many ways that we could think of expanding criminal justice or "criminal justice" or "homeless housing" or funding for homeless and homelessness and housing that would get us to these better outcomes. And wouldn't then end up paying on the backside in the form of increasing people in jails - the number of people in jails - and the very, very large cost that goes along with that. So I think solving those root problems is the first thing that we should be doing, and then we'll see the savings in other systems. And just understanding how we're appropriating that money is really important.
[00:23:59] Crystal Fincher: Okay, so you would not vote for any appropriation of money that would go towards criminalization or penalization of homelessness.
[00:24:06] Chipalo Street: I don't think so - what are some examples of some of these? We can easily talk about bills, but no, that does not make sense. I would rather prevent that so that it's not even a question about - are these people criminals or just trying to live and get by?
[00:24:24] Crystal Fincher: So you also mentioned environmental justice. Obviously we are facing significant challenges in both the mitigation of climate change, the impacts that are disproportionately felt in the 37th Legislative District. As you evaluate the Climate Commitment Act, do you think it goes far enough? And if not, what additional steps or what other things should we be doing right now to meet our climate goals and mitigate the harm being committed right now?
[00:24:52] Chipalo Street: Climate, for me, is something like racial justice and economic justice. I think we should use a climate lens for all the bills that we pass because there is no one or two things that we can do to solve climate - that ship has sailed a long time ago and it's like a all-hands-on-deck mission. And it's critical that we understand how to get ourselves out of this. There are certain things I love to see - like in the HEAL Act, there is additional money for collecting data so that we understand what harm has been done so that we can target again the money in better ways to undo that harm and move towards a greener climate future. I was glad to see that we passed our carbon tax - making sure that gets implemented and stood up, I think, will be one step towards moving the business community towards a greener future. We need to invest in mass transit like we had mentioned before so that we have places where we can increase density and people can access that, but also because it's towards a greener climate future.
I personally am a proponent of trying to get out of cars as much as possible. I've tried to bike to work twice a week and that sort of exposed the patchwork of dangerous roads but really nice bike trails. And making sure that any transit network is well connected, I think, is really important. Even roads - people wouldn't use roads if we had dead-end roads to nowhere, so why are we surprised that people don't use bike trails or other types of mass transit when they don't connect? We have a monorail that goes from downtown to a stadium a few blocks away. What are we doing? Why are we surprised no one uses it? We have streetcars that finally are starting to connect to stuff but for quite some time the different lines didn't connect to anything else - so they were set up for failure in the first place. So making sure that all of our transit infrastructure is designed in a way that people will use it is really important.
And again that sort of overlays on the 37th again - when we're talking about getting people out of cars and increasing bike safety and pedestrian safety. We have two of the most dangerous roads in the city in MLK Way and Rainier Ave. And so making sure that those areas are safer is paramount. We have 10 or 11 schools around there so that's protecting our children. I think it's another place where we could gain common ground with business community because there's studies that show that businesses that are in walkable and bikeable areas get more foot traffic which leads to more sales. And especially for businesses that are small businesses - like restaurants and things like that that are especially common in immigrant, refugee, and BIPOC communities - creating a great business environment for folks to create these legacies is really, really important. And something that you see in the 37th and which is why people are moving here because we have great culture. We have a diversity of food, a diversity of people, a diversity of shops and small businesses. So I think that's another area where we can marry climate, business, safety for our kids - all in one go.
[00:28:06] Crystal Fincher: Well and this is another area where there are tensions in different areas of funding. Absolutely - I agree with the urgent need for more transit, better transit that better serves more people, that is more accessible for more people. But it is competing for funding currently with highway expansion. And obviously we need to maintain the roadways that we have, but there are still projects being planned and even - there was just coverage of one in South Park the other day that may jeopardize healing the division and the cleaving of that community basically with a highway. And so, highway expansion projects which lots of people talk about - well, we need to address traffic. Unfortunately, it has been shown that expanding highways does not reduce traffic. In fact, it does increase it. So would you vote for any package that does expand highways, I guess, first off?
[00:29:11] Chipalo Street: No, with the exception of instances where it helps freight mobility - we need - freight mobility helps union jobs, and so making sure that if there's something that helps the Port, I think that's really important. I think keeping our highways intact as people get displaced outside of the urban cores - that just adds to folks' commute, unkept highways adds to car maintenance and things like that. So no I don't believe in highway expansion. We should be funding transit and to your point, there's competing funds within transit like as we do light rail expansion. Again affects the 37th - we're talking about light rail expansion through the CID. How are we going to do that? Are we going to do a deep bore tunnel or are we going to do that at grade? Doing deep bore is, I think, 30% more expensive - however, it doesn't disrupt the CID, a community that has been disrupted multiple times with the streetcar going through it, with I-5 going through it - just continually disrupted. But it costs more and so the question always is - at what expense are we going to do this? And so something like that, I think we should go deep bore - we should make sure that this community that continually bears the brunt of expansion and transit-related issues can not be disrupted yet again even though it will cost a little bit more.
So that's one thing - I think another issue, or many issues, that vie for funding - that comes back down to our most regressive tax code in the country, despite how progressive and liberal Washington State, we claim we are - we have the most regressive tax code. We force our tax burden onto people through sales tax. We force our tax burden onto homeowners through property tax. We force our tax burden onto small businesses through the B&O tax and then let larger corporations get away with not paying much through tax loopholes. And so that's another area that I would love to improve is - closing our tax loopholes so that corporations pay their fair share, but also implementing - ideally an income tax - that is not either super popular or necessarily doable through constitutional issues, but I do think income tax is the best way to balance our tax code because a income tax is predictable, it can be withheld, it has been done before. But given all of the barriers to it, we'll probably have to try something like a billionaire tax so that every individual and business does pay their fair share to fund the services that are important for our state.
[00:31:52] Crystal Fincher: So now in terms of transit - just one more question there - Sound Transit and the plans that they have, plans around the state for increasing transit - a number of them are suffering from delays and setbacks which obviously is a challenge towards adoption. If people are not getting what they're paying for or already being taxed for, it creates more opposition to transit, frankly. Would you support making legislative investments to accelerate light rail transit implementation, bus rapid transit connectivity?
[00:32:29] Chipalo Street: Interesting - I assume you would do that as part of one of the big transportation packages? Yes, it seems reasonable. I am not 100% clear about how all these things are funded - that's one of the things I'm really interested, when I and if I get into the Legislature, of understanding where money is coming from and where it's going to. One of my lifelong models is follow the money and you'll get answers. And so really understanding all those funding mechanisms is important. It does seem like something that would be valuable. However, I could imagine the pushback that we may get outside of the Puget Sound region for folks wondering why their perceived taxes are going to light rail within the Puget Sound region, even though when you look on net, my impression is that tax dollars actually flow out of the Puget Sound region to the rest of the state than vice versa - but sometimes perception is reality and that may end up being a harder sell for a large number of legislators outside of Seattle, King County, Pierce County.
[00:33:35] Crystal Fincher: I guess that opens up a philosophical question in how you see your role and what your approach is. Do you generally see yourself as - Hey, you're operating based off of data, we know that these things would be helpful - you talked about more transit is beneficial, we need to invest more, we need to have more. And so if there's opposition elsewhere, do you view your role as compromising with what other people think, or maybe addressing - just anticipating - what their challenges may be and stripping down your proposal to something that may be palatable to your colleagues in other parts of the state? Or do you see your role as being more of a spearhead, I guess - would be there and saying, This is right, this is what we need to do. I need to figure out how to build the coalition, how to bring my colleagues along - and maybe not everybody is coming, but can I build a coalition to pass it? Are you starting from - we need transformative change and I need to push for that, or we need change and we need to get what we can given challenges that other colleagues may have from it? Lots of people see pros and cons with either approach - what is your approach?
[00:34:56] Chipalo Street: I don't know if this is a cop-out - hopefully it's like a And - quite frankly - I think there are certain issues where I could be that spearhead, where I hopefully can help influence and it may end up taking a longer time to get to where we want to go without compromise. Whereas there are other issues that I think are - I want to say better-suited for data - one of the things I do pride myself on is bringing a data-oriented solution to things. I think we need to elect more scientists because we are trained to use data in decisions. But there, I think, incremental compromise is a lot easier. And I'll give you examples - so we talked about the police reforms. There, I see myself on the tip of the spear there - I've gone through this, I know people who've gone through that, it affects my community specifically. I want - we need a productive relationship with the police force, but that doesn't mean that I can't push for exactly what we need to do - racial justice - we had parole rolled back in 1984. Why can't we bring back the option of parole? Why aren't we doing a better job of training people as they come out of the correctional system so that they have a chance to be members of our society - productive members of our society? Why are we discriminating against them and not allowing them to get housing easily? I think those are things that we can be the tip of the spear and push for and fight for hard, whereas other things we can do more incremental change and work based on data.
And I think if you have both of those - when we're compromising and working based on data, we are also building relationships with the folks that may completely disagree with us on the issues that we are tip of a spear. And that gives us a better opportunity - if we have a relationship with them - to start to change their hearts and minds on those issues. So I really think it's - it can - I hopefully think it can be a And - judiciously choosing what issues we fight for and want to get to what is just and right right now versus slow incremental change, I think, is important based on who's being impacted and what the harm is being done.
[00:37:16] Crystal Fincher: And I guess that leads into another question just based off of what you talked about earlier - as you were considering running - Hey, my ego may not be able to take it. This is hard and rough. And campaigns are rough and it's a very brave thing to stand up and run, but sometimes I think it's - you're so stuck in this that it's easy to miss that governing is tougher.
[00:37:45] Chipalo Street: For sure.
[00:37:46] Crystal Fincher: And the pressures get magnified and you talk about hits to the ego - you got special interest groups looking over your shoulder and are in your ear and saying good and bad things about you publicly. As you're going through legislation, you have pressure from within the caucus to vote the way that the caucus wants you to vote. You have pressure from the community, you have pressure from your donors and businesses. And so as you think about even the consideration of - I don't know if my ego could take losing - and you win, so you don't have to deal with that in the campaign - how do you deal with the pressures of governing? And how do you navigate the different pressures from people who were part of your winning coalition and the community and those in the Legislature versus what your community needs?
[00:38:46] Chipalo Street: Yeah, yeah - I think it's a good point where the ego consideration is a point in time of did you win the election. And then how you deal with the wear and tear on your heart is very different as you govern because there are so many things - the power to change our society lies in the Legislature and the policies that shape our state. And not getting to where we want to go in Day One and seeing the effect of that on people in the community, I think, is going to be very hard. And the folks in the community want change immediately - rightfully so - and talking about how we are getting there and maybe we won't get there immediately on every issue is going to be hard. And so I think for me, it's number one - understanding where I come from, understanding that I am part of these communities that I am trying to help serve. And then also understanding the wins that we get and seeing the progress that we make so that it is not just a futile effort of - hey, we are advocating for what's right, but not actually making any change - I think is really important and quite frankly one of the things that scares me is how much compromise is good? The legislative process is built around - to be slow - and you have to compromise, but at some point you can compromise out of any progress at all and you can start to compromise out of your morals and things like that. And so really understanding where you come from, what you're trying to change, what progress you have made - so that you understand that you are making progress towards your goal - and who's being impacted, I think, is what will get me through it because I - when I look at professional experiences - people in general tend to focus on the negative and what we can do better. But when you take a step back and say, Okay, let me look at everything that has gone right and has gone well - that adds wind to your sails - and so making sure that we have that comprehensive view of what has gone well, as well as where do we need to go - I think will make that journey give you stamina to continue that journey and continue fighting. And if you get to the point where you don't care anymore and it's just - okay, we have one more session, then I think that's the time when you need to get out - you need to have that fire and it should be wearing in some degree, because if it's not wearing then you probably don't care enough, quite frankly.
[00:41:25] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it makes sense. So now as you talk to voters and people are trying to make a decision between you and your opponent Emijah Smith, what do you tell them in terms of the advantage that you offer as a candidate, what sets you apart, and how their life will be different if you are elected to be their State Representative?
[00:41:46] Chipalo Street: Yeah, the thing I say is - we are lucky, we're in the 37th, we're a very Democratic district so we're only going to elect a Democrat. So I just start with being thankful for that baseline because it's more than can be said in many districts. However, once you get to that point then it really becomes who's going to be the most effective legislator and I think there's some specific examples - I have experience that the other candidate doesn't with tech - and we talked about earlier how it wasn't quite clear how - it was clear that technology was impacting us, but it wasn't really clear exactly how it impacted our daily lives. With Roe, I think it's really important that we have people in the Legislature making sure that folks who are either providing or accessing abortion care are not persecuted because of that, or prosecuted because of that. I am the only candidate who's been a member of a union - I stood with that union during a work stoppage, so that provides evidence that I will strongly support all of our other working brothers and sisters as they're trying to improve compensation, benefits, working conditions. I have lived experience with our criminal justice system unfortunately, and so that really - it is near and dear to my heart - Emijah is a Black woman - she has sons, so she also understands it as well. That is no takeaway from her lived experience as well, but that is something that is core to how I've come up in my worldview. And then I say these next things in half-jest, but part of the job of a legislator is establishing trusted relationships with your other legislators so you can move them towards your point of view. And that's especially important in the Democratic caucus as our majority is likely going to be narrowed - everyone in the Democratic caucus doesn't vote the way we want them to and so our ability to move their points of view really impacts how what type of legislation we can move through Olympia. And that's exactly what my job at Microsoft is - I advise our executives on emerging technology. I don't control their headcount - I don't control how many people they have to work on stuff - and I can't tell them where to put their people, so the only way I can get them to try and do the things that I would like them to do is by establishing trusting relationships with them and then moving them towards my point of view. That's exactly what you have to do in Olympia and it - that's also what I did as a professional soccer referee in some ways - there's one thing that 22 players on that field can agree on is - is that you suck and so my effectivity as a referee increases drastically if I can quickly establish relationships with these 22 sometimes prima donnas at the pro level and get them to understand that - hey, I am trying to ref this game fairly and objectively and that is what you want. So we are in this together and being able to admit my own mistakes helps build those relationships with them because if I can't be objective about my own performance, how am I going to be objective about their performance? But my relationship with those 22 players on the field really does have an impact as to how I can officiate that game and get it to - get them to play in a manner where it is safe, where it is enjoyable for the crowd, and really just and also abides by the laws of the game. So these - this relationship building is something that I do daily and I think will be very important in Olympia as well.
[00:45:21] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much for joining us today, Chipalo - much appreciated.
[00:45:24] Chipalo Street: Thank you for having me.
[00:45:25] Crystal Fincher: Thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler, our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Post-Production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks and you can follow me @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
Today’s episode is a recording of a live debate between 37th LD Representative Position 2 candidates, Emijah Smith and Chipalo Street. The debate was hosted by the South Seattle Emerald on October 4, 2022 at the Rainier Arts Center. Hacks & Wonks’ very own Crystal Fincher moderated the debate.
Resources
For links to the YouTube video, summary of lightning round answers and more, visit the debate’s page on our website.
Campaign Website - Emijah Smith
Campaign Website - Chipalo Street
Register to vote, update your registration, see what’s on your ballot and more - click here.
Past felony conviction? Information on re-registering to vote - Washington Voting Rights Restoration Coalition.
Transcript [00:00:00] Bryce Cannatelli: Hi everyone – this is Bryce Cannatelli from the Hacks & Wonks team. Today’s episode of the show is a recording of a live debate between 37th LD State Representative candidates Emijah Smith and Chipalo Street. The debate was held on October 4, 2022 and was hosted by the South Seattle Emerald and was moderated by Hacks & Wonks’ very own Crystal Fincher. We hope you find it informative and thank you for listening.
[00:00:41] Crystal Fincher: Welcome! Welcome everyone to the South Seattle Emerald's 2022 General Election Candidate Debate. My name is Crystal Fincher. I'm a political consultant and the host of the Hacks & Wonks radio show and podcast, and I'm honored to welcome you all to tonight's debate. I'm also excited to hear from our guests running for State Representative Position 2 in the 37th Legislative District.
Before we begin tonight, I'd like to do a Land Acknowledgement. I would like to acknowledge that we are on the traditional land of the first people of Seattle, the Coast-Salish Peoples, specifically the Duwamish peoples, past and present. I would like to honor with gratitude the land itself and the Duwamish tribe.
We'd like to thank all of our partners here this evening, including the League of Women Voters of Seattle & King County for their support as well.
Tonight's in-person show is following numerous COVID precautions. All in-person audience members, volunteers, staff, and candidates have either provided proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test upon entry, and all audience members in attendance are wearing masks.
We're excited to be able to live stream this event on Facebook and YouTube. The debate also features questions from our audience members and voters like you. If you're watching the livestream online, you can submit audience questions by going to seattleemerald.com/debate.
If you're in-person, you can write audience questions down on the note cards that have been handed out to you - or will soon be handed out to you - that will be picked up partway through the show. Volunteers will collect written questions at 8:00pm, right after the lightning round, and again at 8:30pm. Please keep questions to one question per card.
A few reminders before we jump into the debate: I want to remind you all to vote. Ballots will be mailed to your mailbox starting Wednesday, October 19th, and you can vote anytime until election day on Tuesday, November 8th. You can register to vote, update your registration, and see what will be on your ballot at VoteWA.gov - that's VoteWA.gov. I also want to remind you that if you've had a previous felony conviction, your right to vote is now automatically restored after you serve your prison term, even while on community supervision. You do have to re-register to vote, but your right to vote exists. Go to freethevotewa.org for more details, and help spread the word.
The candidates running for the 37th Legislative District State Representative Position 2 with us tonight are Emijah Smith and Chipalo Street - and we'll welcome them up to the stage right now as I explain the rules.
So tonight's debate will begin with candidate introductions. Each candidate will have one minute to tell us about themselves.
After introductions, we will enter a lightning round of yes/no questions, which candidates will answer silently by using paddles that indicate their answer. Just double-checking that you both have your paddles. Excellent, it's going to be a robust lightning round. Following the lightning round - at the end of the lightning round, each candidate will be allowed 90 seconds to explain anything you want to about what your answers were.
Following the lightning round, we'll enter into the open answer portion of the debate. Each candidate will have 90 seconds to answer each question. Candidates may be engaged with rebuttal or follow up questions and will have 30 seconds to respond.
Times will be indicated by a volunteer holding a sign in the front of the stage - right here. When a candidate has 30 seconds remaining, you will see the yellow "30-second" sign - right there. When a candidate has 10 seconds remaining, you'll see the orange "10-second" sign. And when time is up, the volunteer will hold up the red "STOP" sign, and I will silence the candidate.
So now, we'll turn to the candidates who will each have one minute to introduce themselves, starting with Emijah Smith and then Chipalo Street. Emijah?
[00:04:51] Emijah Smith: Welcome everyone. Thank you for being here. Thank you to all who are watching through the YouTube streaming. My name is Emijah Smith, please call me 'Mijah. I am raised and rooted in the 37th. I am a mother, I'm a grandmother, and a daughter of this district. Ever since I was a teen, I've been doing advocacy and community organizing - really seeing firsthand in real time that failed War on Drugs that is still continuing now, really seeing the devastation in my community. It was at that time that I said I want to bring healing, restoration, and resources back to the community. So my vision is healthy families and healthy communities, and in doing so, we have to look at multiple issues - prioritizing housing, fully funding education, pre-K, health equity, and really centering racial justice. I just want to highlight very briefly some sole endorsers within the 37th - Senator Saldaña, Girmay Zahilay - our King County Councilmember, Tammy Morales, Andrew Lewis, Kim-Khánh - thank you so much.
[00:05:58] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much. Chipalo Street.
[00:06:01] Chipalo Street: Good evening. I'm an innovative problem solver, and I've been giving back to the South Seattle community for 15 years. We have some really pressing issues facing us, and we need to send a proven leader to Olympia to solve them. Housing prices are out of control, and it's displacing generational families and making renters pay more of their paycheck to skyrocketing rents. People are struggling to make ends meet, and the pandemic has only made this worse. The recovery, or so-called recovery from the pandemic, hasn't been felt evenly by all of us, and we need to protect working people so that we all come out of the pandemic better than we went into it. The pandemic's also made our schools worse and exacerbated existing issues. Just recently, Black and Brown kids tested three and a half levels behind their counterparts, and I want to make sure that all kids have a great public education system like the one that I went through. So I'm glad to be here tonight, and I'm honored to discuss how we move this district forward.
[00:07:01] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much. Also, it's a useful reminder that while you do have 90 seconds to answer, you aren't obligated to always take 90 seconds. Feel free to take it if you want to, but you will not be penalized for finishing early if you desire.
So now, we will move on to the lightning round - making sure you both have your paddles in hand and ready. All right, we've got a number of questions to go through.
So we will start talking about homelessness and housing. First question, are there any instances where you would support sweeps of homeless encampments? Yes or No?
Looks like Emijah is waffling there, or landed on No. And we have Chipalo with No.
Next question, will you vote to end single-family zoning to address housing affordability?
Chipalo says Yes. Emijah says No.
Would you vote to end the statewide ban on rent control and let localities decide whether they want to implement it?
Emijah says Yes, as does Chipalo.
Will you vote in favor of Seattle's social housing initiative, I-135?
Both Emijah and Chipalo say Yes.
Do you favor putting 400 additional units of housing and services for the unhoused in the CID?
We've got a waffle with Emijah and a No with Chipalo.
Do you rent your residence?
[00:08:52] Chipalo Street: Sorry - as in, do I - am I a renter?
[00:08:55] Crystal Fincher: Yes, are you renters?
Both say No.
Do you own your residence?
Mortgage or outright.
Chipalo and Emijah both say Yes.
Are you a landlord?
Emijah says No. Chipalo says Yes.
In public safety, would you vote for a law ending long-term solitary confinement?
Both say Yes.
Would you vote for a law prohibiting traffic stops by armed law enforcement officers for low-level non-moving violations such as vehicle registrations and equipment failure?
Both say Yes.
Do you support establishing an independent prosecutor for cases of criminal conduct arising from police-involved deaths?
Both say Yes.
Do you support investments in the ShotSpotter police surveillance tool?
Yep, it is in Mayor Harrell's budget that he just announced - so both say Yes.
Do you think police should be in schools?
Both say No.
Would you vote to provide universal health care to every Washington resident?
Both say Yes.
The Legislature just passed a law that will cap insulin costs at $35 per month. Would you vote to expand price caps to other commonly used drugs?
Both say Yes.
Will you vote to ensure that trans and non-binary students are allowed to play on the sports teams that fit with their gender identities?
Emijah waffled and Chipalo says Yes.
[00:10:58] Emijah Smith: I waffle but I say Yes.
[00:10:59] Crystal Fincher: Emijah waffles but she says Yes.
For people wishing to change their name to match their gender, do you support removing the cost and need to see a judge for legal processing, name changes, and gender marker changes?
Both say Yes.
Will you vote in favor of an anti-extradition law that protects queer people, including children and their families, who flee to Washington from states where their gender-affirming care is punishable by law?
Both candidates say Yes.
Will you vote to increase funding for charter schools?
Both Emijah and Chipalo say No.
Will you vote for continued investments in anti-racism training for staff and students in Washington schools?
Both candidates say Yes.
Washington is facing a school staffing crisis and a funding crisis, especially with special education. Will you vote to increase funding in both of these areas?
Both say Yes.
Will you vote to enact a universal basic income in Washington?
Both candidates say Yes.
Our state has one of the most regressive tax codes in the country, meaning lower-income people pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than the ultra-wealthy. In addition to the capital gains tax, will you vote for a wealth tax?
Both candidates say Yes.
Will you vote for any bill that increases highway expansion?
Chipalo says Yes and Emijah is waffling.
Would you vote to allocate state dollars to help accelerate the delivery of Sound Transit and other regional rail projects? Would you vote to allocate state dollars to help accelerate the delivery of Sound Transit and other regional rail projects?
Both candidates say Yes.
Will you vote to enact state investments and updating homes with more environmentally friendly utilities?
Both say Yes.
Have you taken transit in the past week?
Chipalo says Yes. Emijah says no.
Have you taken transit in the past month?
Chipalo says Yes.
Emijah says her family has, but not her personally, so that's a No.
Elections. Potential changes in the way people vote for elections in the City of Seattle will be on the November ballot. Will you vote in favor of changing the system in Seattle elections?
Both candidates say Yes.
Will you vote in favor of ranked choice voting for Seattle elections?
Both candidates say Yes.
Will you vote in favor of approval voting for Seattle elections?
You can only vote for one. So both candidates say No.
Will you vote to move local elections from odd years to even years to significantly increase voter turnout?
Chipalo and Emijah say Yes.
In 2021, did you vote for Bruce Harrell?
Emijah says Yes. Chipalo says No.
In 2021, did you vote for Lorena González?
Emijah says No. Chipalo says Yes.
Did you vote in the general election in 2021?
Emijah says Yes. Chipalo says Yes.
In 2021, did you vote for Nicole Thomas-Kennedy for Seattle City Attorney?
Emijah and Chipalo say Yes.
Will you be voting for Julie Anderson for Secretary of State?
Correct - she's running against Steve Hobbs. That is correct.
Both candidates say No.
Will you be voting for Steve Hobbs for Secretary of State?
Both candidates say Yes.
Will you be voting for Leesa Manion for King County Prosecutor?
Both candidates say Yes.
And that means that you will be voting No - you will not be voting Yes for Jim Ferrell.
Correct - both candidates will not be voting for Jim Ferrell.
Have you ever been a member of a union?
Both candidates say Yes.
Will you vote to increase funding and staffing for investigations into labor violations like wage theft and illegal union busting?
Chipalo and Emijah both say Yes.
Have you ever walked on a picket line?
Both say Yes.
Have you ever crossed a picket line?
Both candidates say No.
Is your campaign unionized?
Both candidates say No.
If your campaign staff wants to unionize, will you voluntarily recognize their effort?
Both candidates say Yes.
That concludes our lightning round. Thank you very much for that - helps to level set for the open-ended questions, but before we get to those, each candidate will have 90 seconds to explain anything you want about any of your answers. We will start with Chipalo.
[00:16:40] Chipalo Street: Sure. I think the only one that I would like to explain is expansion of highways. The reason I answered Yes to that is the qualifier of is there any reason that I would do that. In general, no, I do not support the expansion of highways. However, if it is to help freight mobility that helps our unions, then that would be something that I would consider. If it comes back to our economy and helping union jobs, then we should definitely consider that. But in general, no, I would not vote to expand highways.
[00:17:10] Crystal Fincher: And Emijah?
[00:17:11] Emijah Smith: So I think there was a couple of questions there that I waffled on. And for me, when it comes - because I center racial justice - I'm an anti-racist organizer, I have to always look at what are the unintentional consequences of any decisions that's made. So there's this yes or no - we have to bring context into the conversation. So if it unintentionally or intentionally causes more inequities and more harm to people of color and those marginalized, I have to look more deeply into that before I could just say a quick, simple yes or no. So I just want to share why there might have been a waffle there. And also, if I don't fully understand something and I need to learn a little bit more and lean into community organizations and lean into the community - we talked about the ID - that's a very diverse community, they're not a monolith. So if there's an issue that's happening in the ID, I need to lean and learn from that community before I just make a decision as a legislator to do so. So I definitely - my style, my servant leadership is definitely to listen from community, learn from community, and be accountable to community. So I don't just do yes or no. Thank you.
[00:18:13] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. So now we'll start the open answers portion. Our candidates will get 90 seconds to answer each question and they may be engaged with rebuttal or follow up questions and will have 30 seconds to respond.
So starting out - in the Dobbs decision that obliterated the right to abortion - in Justice Thomas's concurring opinion, he identified decisions he felt should be re-evaluated after their ruling in Dobbs, cases that established our right to same-sex marriage, rights to contraception, and rights to sexual privacy. What can our State Legislature do to proactively protect these rights? Emijah?
[00:18:55] Emijah Smith: Thank you for the question. And I definitely do not agree with the decision that was made. I think as state legislators and state leaders that we have to go directly and correct our Constitution to prevent these type of things from happening. Washington does a lot of talk. I think that our community, particularly in the 37th, is really intentional about our racial equity and about equity overall and fairness and all the great words. But we have to be actionable about that. And so putting something in the written language in our Constitution, we have to move in that direction. And I believe that our legislature for this 2023 session will be centering and very active around the Roe v. Wade and the Dobbs decision.
[00:19:36] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Chipalo?
[00:19:38] Chipalo Street: Yeah, what I found interesting about Justice Thomas's dissent or concurrence was that he did not also include same or biracial marriage into his writing, even though that is based on the same logic of the other cases. Ironically, he is in a multiracial marriage. So the hypocrisy there, I don't think is lost on anyone. And I'm a product of a multiracial marriage - and so making sure that these rights are protected is deeply important to me. In terms of gay marriage, I am glad that we have a strong legislature and that passed marriage equality. In terms of Roe, I think we should fund clinics to take care of the increased traffic that we'll see in our state from the states that have - around us - that have banned abortion. I have background in technology. I would love to make sure that our data isn't used to go after people searching abortions or providing abortions. There's plenty of providers who provide telehealth. And if they are consulting with someone across state lines into a state that has banned abortion, I would be super scared about whether I could be sued, whether my data could be subpoenaed, if I could lose my license. And so making sure that we protect our data and protect our providers, I think, is paramount. Also making sure that we have security around our clinics - just as we'll have more traffic from people looking for abortions, we'll have more traffic from people protesting abortions. So those are some of the things that I would do to protect gay rights and the women's reproductive rights.
[00:21:12] Crystal Fincher: And I just want to circle back to one thing for both of you in a 30-second rebuttal. Specifically when it comes to contraception, is there anything that strikes either of you - we'll start with Emijah - that you think the Legislature could do to help ensure and guarantee access and availability?
[00:21:31] Emijah Smith: Well, definitely education. I definitely think that we need to ensure and continue to make sure that we're educating our youth in schools and making - contraception needs to be available. It needs to be available to all birthing parents, but we also need to make sure that we are including and not fighting to have education for our youth to understand sex education. And so that's been a big deal before the Roe V Wade issue had came up, so I'm a supporter of making sure our families are talking to each other, because this is a family issue. It's not just a woman's issue. It's not just anyone's issue. It's an issue about our bodies and our rights of what we want to do.
[00:22:06] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Thank you very much. And Chipalo?
[00:22:08] Chipalo Street: Yeah, I agree. Education is a big part of this. Funding is also another part. Making sure that contraception is available to anyone who wants it. Making sure that preventative medications like PrEP is available to anyone who wants it as well - that goes a little bit past reproductive rights and into sexual rights for our folks, but making sure that it's just available to everyone, I think, is very important.
[00:22:31] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Next question. What will you do when you're -
[00:22:35] Emijah Smith: We need some call and response in here - this is, you know -
[00:22:40] Crystal Fincher: What'd you say?
[00:22:40] Emijah Smith: I need some call and response. We in the 37th, we are very diverse - this is how we move, so I'm just - go ahead, sorry.
[00:22:48] Crystal Fincher: What will you do in your capacity as a state legislator to help small local businesses? Chipalo?
[00:22:55] Chipalo Street: So, I'm a small business owner myself and I understand the problems of balancing books, the stress that the pandemic has put on different small business owners. And so - number one, making sure that when we look around at other types of businesses - like we have incubators for tech businesses, we have incubators in high-tech businesses. Why don't we have incubators for smaller businesses, for communities of color? Access to capital is one of the issues that holds businesses back - where I think we saw in the video - the guy who founded WeWork completely did a scam and then got another $350 million to go start Lord knows what. So making sure that we have access to capital in community is really important. Working with organizations like Tabor 100, who provide incubation-type services is really important. And then working to make sure that our communities foster businesses - so for example, businesses that are in walkable and bikeable areas get more traffic. Not only will that increase business to those businesses, it will also get us towards a greener climate future if we have an environment and community that encourages us to get out of single-occupancy vehicles.
[00:24:11] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Emijah?
[00:24:11] Emijah Smith: Thank you. I am a member of Tabor 100. And one thing I've learned - I've been a member for a number of years - is oftentimes the resources only go to a couple of places, right? So a lot of our small businesses are pop-ups. So a lot of, even through COVID, the money that's coming from the federal government or from our local government agencies are not making it to the small businesses. Similar to what Chipalo was saying, you need capital to even get a loan, but also the money that was coming to support the businesses, it wasn't reaching those businesses. It seems like the same million dollar companies, people who always were getting the money kept getting the money. And also, when I think about the displacement that's happening in our community, I would like to see some restrictions or some policy that is not targeting our small businesses in neighborhoods or communities that have been historically gentrified and displaced. Similarly like the Central District, but all throughout the 37th - all the constant building could be harming - it has harmed our communities, most marginalized, but it also, in some ways, makes it harder for them to start up and rebuild. So there's education and awareness. Sometimes small businesses do not find out about the funding until it's too late. And so I'm hearing from business owners all the time about they're seeing, they feel like it's a scam. They feel like even though they've had some opportunity to try to start something up in cOVID, that it's gonna go away. It's gonna be the same old, same old people getting it all the time, the same status quo. So we gotta figure something out. We have some small business owners here in the neighborhood. Even in my campaign, I learned, the small businesses cannot unionize because it costs so much money. We should be figuring out a way to make sure our small businesses can get themselves the access in the door.
[00:25:49] Crystal Fincher: And that is time.
[00:25:50] Emijah Smith: You said we can keep going. It wasn't a penalty, correct?
[00:25:53] Crystal Fincher: No, the red is stop.
[00:25:55] Emijah Smith: Okay.
[00:25:56] Crystal Fincher: You get a 10-second sign. That 10-second sign is like, okay, we gotta wrap up.
[00:26:00] Emijah Smith: Well, thank you very much. That's call and response. I just want to say that I definitely value our small businesses. I stay aware and I try to stay connected as much as possible. And I would do any and everything I could in my role as a legislator to make sure that those investments are being made in our small business community, particularly the 37th and people of color. Thank you.
[00:26:18] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Chipalo.
[00:26:21] Chipalo Street: Oh, sorry. Do we - I think we took a fair amount of time.
[00:26:24] Crystal Fincher: Oh, yeah, we just did. Sorry.
[00:26:25] Chipalo Street: I didn't necessarily have a rebuttal there.
[00:26:26] Crystal Fincher: Okay.
Next question. Washington State has seen an explosion of traffic violence in the last two years with an extraordinarily disparate impact on those who live in our districts - the 37th district. For example, there are major Sound Transit investments coming online in the district at Judkins Park that are surrounded by unsafe freeway entrances on Rainier Avenue. It's not if, but when that folks in the 37th will be injured or killed by cars at that station entrance. And I should clarify, this is an audience question submitted before. What will you do as a member of the legislature to ensure that our streets are safe for pedestrians and cyclists? Emijah?
[00:27:07] Emijah Smith: I appreciate that question. Living here in the 37th, living here near MLK where the light rail has been placed on top, when the community organized to have that light rail put underground. And the community won that fight, but with promises of housing and business investments and all the things that did not happen from Sound Transit, we have it on top. And so there's been - I see, oftentimes, those accidents. I see those fatalities. My heart goes out to the family of the mother who was killed at the Mount Baker station. I knew her before she was a mother. So these things are near and dear to my heart. When I think about traffic safety, I think that we have the data - Sound Transit does. They have the data that we should be - as things are being built and created, they should be co-designed with community, and then we should be making decisions while we're implementing these light rail stations, these new highways, whatever, it's not a highway, but these new ramps. All that should be taken into consideration in the beginning because the lives that are being lost mainly are BIPOC lives, Black and Indigenous people. And so our lives are being sacrificed for something that we never even asked for here in South Seattle. But I also want to think about traffic safety. I think about when our young Black men, who are the most targeted to even get on Sound Transit, being harassed because they're looking for ID or for payment - that to me is a safety issue. That's why oftentimes you may see me driving or driving my children somewhere because it's a safety issue because they may be harassed by the police, as well as those who tend to cycle.
[00:28:41] Crystal Fincher: That is time.
[00:28:42] Emijah Smith: Thank you.
[00:28:43] Crystal Fincher: I just want to double check just to be clear. So we got that yellow 30-second sign, the orange one - okay.
[00:28:50] Emijah Smith: Thank you.
[00:28:51] Crystal Fincher: Cool. Chipalo.
[00:28:53] Chipalo Street: So bike and pedestrian safety is something that I lived on a daily basis. Before the pandemic, I tried to bike to work from the CD all the way to Microsoft two times a week. And that exposed me to some very nice bike trails, but also some very dangerous streets. And so if I'm elected into the legislature, I would want to make sure that we have a comprehensive network of connectivity. So regardless of what type of transportation network it is, it needs to be connected. We built a monorail from downtown to the stadium - like Climate Pledge - that doesn't do much. For a long time, our two streetcar networks weren't interconnected, which means people didn't want to use it. So we need to make sure that all of our infrastructure is connected. We need to invest in bike transit and infrastructure. And this is particularly important to the 37th, because we have two of the most dangerous streets in Rainier Ave and MLK Way, 40% of the injuries there are pedestrian. And I think this is a place where we can, I mentioned before, find a win-win with business, because businesses that are in bikeable and pedestrian-friendly areas get more business. So I believe this is a way that we can build a coalition around fixing the problem of safe streets in the 37th. And it's also an issue for our kids, because we have 10 or 11 schools that are on both of those two most dangerous streets. So we can make sure that our kids are safer today as well.
[00:30:22] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Next question. One of the biggest things we can do publicly to fight the spread of all airborne illnesses, including COVID and the cold and flu, as well as protect against poor air quality days because of wildfires - which we've seen over the past few weeks - is to improve ventilation and filtration in public buildings. What will you do to ensure that public buildings, including schools in the 37th district, meet recommended air circulation and filtration standards for good health? Chipalo?
[00:30:57] Chipalo Street: To me, that sounds like a question - if I could be appointed to the Capital Budget, where we have the power to change our physical infrastructure. I would love to set aside money for that. When I look at committee assignments, we can start all the great programs that we want, but if we don't fund them correctly, they will not have the desired outcome. So making sure that whoever comes from this district gets put on Appropriations or gets put on Capital Budget is really important so that we can bring the money back to the district to make sure that it is used in community to make us better.
[00:31:30] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Emijah?
[00:31:32] Emijah Smith: Thank you. In my experience being in Olympia, we can make the decision. So Senator Saldaña, of course, is leading the HEAL Act - that's an environmental justice issue, but it's about implementation. So it's easy - it's one thing to put in a law, then you do have to fund the law, but you also have to implement it. So when it comes down to the other municipalities locally, sometimes they're stuck. So we have to make sure we're following the legislation all the way down to the community or to the district that you want and make sure that it's being implemented in a way, in a timely fashion as well - not three years, four years, five years down the line, but immediately. That should be part of the planning. So of course we have to fund it, but if we're not able to implement it, it's just words. So I would like, in my leadership role, is to make sure that there's language in the bill that makes it more accessible to our municipalities so that they can actually do something about it. If you put in the bill and it can't be ambiguous, it needs to be really focused and maybe restricted funding to air quality in the schools, rather than just saying, Here's some money to your school for air quality. Because they'll use that money any way that they choose to use it if the legislature does not direct them with restricted funding. So I would target it. Thank you.
[00:32:48] Chipalo Street: Can I provide an example of how we would do that?
[00:32:51] Crystal Fincher: I will give you both 30 seconds to rebut. Go ahead, Chipalo.
[00:32:53] Chipalo Street: So a good example of how we can do that and how that has been built into some of the laws that have been passed is - recently, we passed the cap and trade bill. And one of the things I liked about that bill is that it built equity into it, so 30% of the funds that are created from the cap and trade go back to investment in BIPOC communities and an additional 10% go into investment in our Native nations. So that is a source of revenue that we could use to improve air quality in our schools and I think aligns to the point of that funding.
[00:33:26] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Emijah?
[00:33:28] Emijah Smith: Yeah, my follow-up with that would be - I just want to also say I'm solely endorsed by the Washington Conservation Voters. So they're looking at this issue across - and so I would definitely, again, lean into the organizations and to the leaders to help direct being a servant leader into doing this work. But nevertheless, what I have found in my experience - when there's a law passed - it takes the community to still apply the pressure on the entities and organizations to make something happen. So I have that experience, that organizing experience, and building those partnerships on the ground level to make sure it's being implemented. Because once they move it from the state, the state lets their hands go. So they need more guidance and direction, and that direction needs to come from community. Thank you.
[00:34:09] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Next question. How will people tangibly feel your impact as their legislator? What is one concrete thing that people will be able to see is different by the end of your term should you be elected? Emijah?
[00:34:28] Emijah Smith: So are you asking what has been done already or what you plan to do going forward?
[00:34:31] Crystal Fincher: No - if you are elected, what will people see is different by the end of your term than it is right now?
[00:34:38] Emijah Smith: I think people will continue to see - at least for me - they'll see a continuation of the work. It's not something I'll start to do, it's something I will continue to do. So first and foremost, I think, doing racially justice-centered justice reform work - and that's all interconnected. So when I think about our healthcare and the doulas, the doulas have been seen as a medical profession led by Kirsten Harris-Talley, but we need to put money in the budget to make sure that they're being reimbursed for their services. I think in these two years - that you will see that that definitely happens. My granddaughter was born during COVID. My daughter almost lost her life during that birth. It is a well-known fact that Black women are three times as likely to lose their life during childbirth. So having a doula, having somebody there with culturally relevant care will make sure that the lives are not being lost. In addition to that, I am a board member of the Tubman Health Center - this is another place - making sure that we have capital investments to make sure that we create a clinic that is going to center Black and Indigenous community and bring culturally relevant care, and that will also serve our LGBTQ community. That's something that you will see, I believe, and I strongly believe within the next two years as a representative, if I am honored to earn your vote. Thank you.
[00:36:00] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Chipalo?
[00:36:03] Chipalo Street: So technology has been changing our lives from the way we communicate, to the way we move about the city, to how we get health care, or even go about banking. And I'm excited to bring my expertise in the tech industry to make sure that technology opens doors for all of us, but also prevent technology from rolling back the rights that we have. So I mentioned earlier that one of the first things I would do is work to make sure that our data is protected so that it can't be used to go for people looking for abortions or providing abortions - that is something I would start with. And then continue to do the work that I have done in the tech space. When I got out to Seattle, I volunteer taught computer science at a school in South Seattle. We started with a Intro to Computer Science program and then over six years built it up to an Advanced Placement program. So I would make sure that we distribute the wealth of tech to make sure that everyone in this community can take part in the industry that's been changing our region. The 37th has also been a strong supporter of kinship care, and so I would build on the work that Eric Pettigrew has done to make sure that kinship care and kinship providers are funded at the same rate as a foster care parent.
[00:37:12] Emijah Smith: May I follow up?
[00:37:13] Crystal Fincher: You may. I'll give you both 30 seconds to follow up.
[00:37:16] Emijah Smith: Thank you. I, first and foremost, want to say that I would love to learn the school that you served, 'cause I think that's a wonderful thing that you've done. But just being a resident in the 37th and living in South Seattle for a number of years, it's important for me to know what school you're mentioning. Also with regard to kinship care, I've held relationships throughout the years with our grandmothers for taking care of their kids every single day. And so there has been a gap of care and service for our kinship care program once Representative, our former representative, Eric Pettigrew had stepped back.
[00:37:50] Crystal Fincher: And that is time.
[00:37:50] Emijah Smith: So I've been in relationship with the community and I am definitely going to continue to serve that community. Thank you.
[00:37:56] Crystal Fincher: Chipalo?
[00:37:57] Chipalo Street: So the school is Technology Access Foundation - it was started by Trish. When I was working there, it started on Rainier Ave - right on Rainier and Genesee - and now they have bought a building down a little farther south in South Seattle. So it is a very well-known technology -
[00:38:14] Emijah Smith: It's not a school.
[00:38:14] Chipalo Street: Excuse me?
[00:38:15] Emijah Smith: It's not a school.
[00:38:16] Chipalo Street: Technology Access Foundation is a school. Technology Access Academy is the school.
[00:38:21] Emijah Smith: Yeah, it's not in South Seattle. And actually they started right up here.
[00:38:24] Chipalo Street: It started on Rainier Ave.
[00:38:26] Emijah Smith: But -
[00:38:26] Crystal Fincher: Let's allow Chipalo to complete his answer.
[00:38:28] Emijah Smith: Okay.
[00:38:29] Chipalo Street: So, okay -
[00:38:29] Emijah Smith: I just wanted -
[00:38:29] Chipalo Street: Technology Access Foundation is the foundation that started Technology Access foundation Academy, which is a school that started on Rainier Ave - which is in the 37th - and then was moved down farther south, which is still South Seattle, and serves people who have been displaced in the 37th. So it is still serving our community. I served there for six years, which is a long time, to go from a start of an Intro to Computer Science to an Advanced Placement Computer Science program.
[00:38:58] Emijah Smith: I just want to -
[00:38:58] Crystal Fincher: And we'll call that at time, and that is the rebuttal time that is there -
[00:39:00] Emijah Smith: Okay, but they're not a school though and my daughter went to TAF Academy -.
[00:39:03] Crystal Fincher: Emijah, please respect the time limits.
[00:39:06] Emijah Smith: We're going to center time, or we're going to center the issues that are really in the 37th. I live in the 37th. I raised my daughter here next door.
[00:39:13] Crystal Fincher: I have a question from a resident in the 37th that I'm going to ask.
[00:39:16] Emijah Smith: Okay, I'll be respectful, but I also want us to bring - let's bring the real issues forward.
[00:39:21] Crystal Fincher: So how would you help address the affordable housing crisis? Starting with Chipalo.
[00:39:27] Chipalo Street: So when I think about housing, I think about three buckets of issues. This is something that we hear at every door when we go out and canvass. We were just talking to an elderly gentleman who is part of - he was a state employee, and so he has one of the oldest pensions, but we have not funded that pension so that he cannot keep up with the rising housing prices. So when I think of housing, I think of how do we stop harm, how do we get more units on the market, and how do we tide ourselves to the way there. So stopping harm looks like anti-displacement measures, so making sure that seniors can afford the rising taxes, making sure that - right now what we have is we allow seniors to defer taxes, but once they die, then they have to pay all of those back taxes, which essentially forces a family to sell the house, unless you have $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 lying around. We also need to increase renter protections - landlords can do some crazy things. Even though I'm a landlord myself, I live that business through progressive values, so we can't allow felons to be disqualified from having housing. I have a tenant who's a felon, he's one of my best tenants. We should lift the ban on rental control, we should - rent control statewide. We should limit the types of fees that a landlord can charge their tenants. In terms of long-term measures, we need to invest in low-income housing through the Housing Trust Fund. We need to figure out something about workforce housing because even two teachers who are underpaid already - if they're living together, they can't afford housing in the district - and we need to invest in mass transit to increase density around it to get us towards a greener climate future and have more houses.
[00:41:04] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Emijah?
[00:41:05] Emijah Smith: Thank you. So what I've been doing and currently been doing is really - with community members, locked arms, going to Olympia, going to our state-level Washington Housing and Finance Commission - and demanding that they release the funds in our community. So what I have done with community, because it's a team effort, is to release the funds to make sure Africatown Plaza has been funded. Community development for us by us - the Elizabeth Thomas Homes of Rainier Beach, the Ethiopian Village here in South Seattle - these are all housing developments - low-income, stable housing opportunities in the 37th. That's one thing. The second thing is - I agree - lift the ban on rent control on the state level. Number two is definitely providing increasing - no, lowering the income level for seniors to qualify for these tax deferments. I've talked to multiple seniors who are living on Social Security and who cannot qualify for King County's tax exemptions or deferments, and so that's a hardship on our seniors. In addition to that, I do agree with middle housing, but what I want to see is that we're not continuing to displace community as we're bringing more density in. We need to be more equitable and look at the houses in the communities on the north side of the Montlake Bridge - let them carry some of the weight of some of the housing developments, because what we don't want to do is continue to keep displacing folks. But I've been doing the real work - I sit on coalitions that are looking to remove the barriers for felons or any person who's just trying to rent. But rent should not be our goal - home ownership is the goal in order to create generational wealth. Thank you.
[00:42:41] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Next question - from the audience. What is the State Legislature's role and responsibility on digital equity and addressing the digital divide? Emijah?
[00:42:54] Emijah Smith: This is a multi-pronged question or answer and solution, because it's around making sure that our kids' education is fully funded. Because in order to close the digital divide, which I have done and supported as a co-convener of the Black Community Impact Alliance. We have just recently did our open house in the William Grose Center - that is a hub to make sure that we have a think tank and provide opportunities for our youth for the tech world. But that took community building, going to the City's office to get the land transferred - that took organizing. It also means you have to make sure that our children are prepared for kindergarten and making sure their reading and their math is on par at third grade. Making sure our freshmen are finishing their freshman year. So really being an advocate in Seattle Public Schools, making sure the strategic plan and the resources are going to those furthest from educational justice. That's what I do in real time. But the William Grose Center is what the community locked arms and myself as a leadership on co-convening the Black Community Impact Alliance - that's what we've done for the digital divide. And my children have benefited from the opportunities from coding, from change makers, from all the different things that our public schools do not offer. And our school system needs to be fully funded, particularly making sure those who are receiving special education services get a real opportunity - because you can't close the divide if you're dropping out of school or they're sending our kids to prison. You can't get the opportunity if you're not graduating. So that's my goal - is to make sure that we're fully funding our education and utilizing our education system and doing community building at the same time to make sure we're closing this. Thank you.
[00:44:32] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Chipalo?
[00:44:35] Chipalo Street: Yeah, I agree. There's a ton that we can do for education. I'll speak specifically about what we can do to close the digital divide. It's crazy to think that more than 50% of our students aren't competent in math and sciences - that is just plain scary. And we have to change that. And that's in high school. And so we have to make sure that we improve our STEM education. We have to make sure that we do public-private partnerships to bring tech education into our junior highs and high schools. It's an embarrassment that we have so many resources here in this area, but yet our tech education lags behind many other places in the country and the world. When we also look at STEM and tech, we can't only afford to have people getting a good job out of tech. We need multiple ways for people to get good jobs. So to me, that looks like creating pipelines to the trades. For too long, we've sort of said, Oh, you went into the trades because you can't hack college. No, you went into the trades maybe because you like to work with your hands, or you want a job that can't get offshored, or you want dependable hours - two of my best friends went through four-year college, got jobs, hated them, came back, became journeymen electricians, get paid more than those jobs that they had going to college. One's about to start a business. And so making sure that the trades are a respected option for our kids is important, just like it should be an option to go into technology. And then we should also fund free two-year college. Free four-year college is great - we should definitely get there. However, we need to start with free two-year college, just like the Seattle Promise, because 50% of Seattle graduating seniors applied for that, and 1,000 took part in it.
[00:46:09] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much.
[00:46:10] Emijah Smith: Can I follow-up?
[00:46:11] Crystal Fincher: I'll give you 30 seconds each for a rebuttal - go ahead.
[00:46:13] Emijah Smith: Thank you. I just wanted to also add - on the state level - that determines the college-bound scholarship money, right? And right now, it's saying you need to have at least a 2.7 GPA - it keeps going up every year. But also is saying that a young person cannot have a felony on their record. And so I really, truly want to get that removed, because how are we going to expect our youth to graduate and get to these opportunities, but we're already setting them back because they made a mistake? And we understand the brain science and the development there is that their brains are not fully matured. So we're kind of setting them up for failure, so that's another place I would like to work on.
[00:46:49] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Chipalo?
[00:46:50] Chipalo Street: She's right. And it shouldn't only be our youth, it should be our brothers and sisters getting out of jail. We should not be limiting the professional licenses that people getting out of jail can attain. And then we should also make sure that University of Washington is funded with the Allen School. We have great resources there - or teachers and staff - but we don't have the resources to scale it out the way we would like to.
[00:47:13] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Another audience question. Crime has been increasing across the state, and people are concerned about their safety and whether the right things are being done to address current levels of property and violent crime. Given that the Legislature has already voted to increase public safety funding, largely devoted to policing and prisons, do you feel that we need to invest more in that area, or would you also take a different approach? And we are starting with Chipalo.
[00:47:45] Chipalo Street: So I think we need to think about public safety comprehensively as more than just police. This is something that is near and dear to my heart. When I was at Brown, we had an open campus - me and my best friend were walking around campus onto a public street and Brown police came and asked me and my friend for our IDs. I didn't do anything wrong, so I continued to walk. My friend stopped, told him who I was, showed him his ID, but that didn't stop Brown police from calling out for backup. Providence police got that call, caught up with me and beat me so badly that they had to take me to the hospital before they took me to jail. Despite that experience, I still think police are part of public safety, but we have to be able to hold the police force accountable, or we're not going to have trust with the police force. I want to work with them to make sure that we set them up for success, so that we are sending a mental health counselor out to mental health crises - because they are trained to deal with these situations - and the person receiving a service will get a better service than sending three or four cops. We don't need cops in schools, we need counselors in schools. And so I think if we think more comprehensively about public safety, then we'll get better outcomes for the community and a better relationship with the police force. We should also fund like violence preventer programs. We should get guns off the streets - one of the sad things about gun violence prevention is that there are very, very common sense gun laws that 60, 70, 80 percent of people agree on. However, federal legislators can't get their act together, so we need to make sure that those laws pass here in our state.
[00:49:14] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Emijah?
[00:49:16] Emijah Smith: Thank you. When I think about public safety, I think about community safety - it's not just a conversation just about what the police are doing in community. It's also about how does the community feel safe - with the police. So there has to be an accountability conversation. So on the King County Community Safety Violence Prevention Task Force that I've served on, really it came down - of all their research and all their conversations and co-design - it really came down to families needing their basic needs met. Housing, education, food security, the basic needs - they believe that that's what it's gonna take to really bring prevention. So our state has already been working at some things with regard to guns and taking, looking at how many bullets, a clip - I don't know, got so many words coming - reducing how many bullets that you can have. I think that we need to make sure that every person who gets a gun needs to have a class - similar, if you want to get your driver's license, you need to learn how to drive - we need to learn how to use a firearm. You also need to make sure that it is locked up. Again, I am solely endorsed by the Alliance for Gun Responsibility. So community safety, also - we need to look at the funding that's coming from the State Department - so there's federal money that was brought down to the state, they've started a new division. We need to work with that division to make sure that it's meaningful in the 37th, because the 37th has different issues. We're not looking at machine guns and going into the schools in that way. What we're looking at is handguns that we gotta get removed and get them off the street. Thank you.
[00:50:53] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much.
Next question - from the audience. Washington State funds only about half of what Seattle Public Schools spends on special education and only about one-third of what Seattle Public Schools spends on multilingual education. What is your commitment to fully fund public schools, particularly special education and multilingual education, and how would you get that done? Starting with Emijah.
[00:51:20] Emijah Smith: We gotta get out, we gotta go on the state level, we have to be loud and proud, and we have to make sure that the funding is fully funded. Of course, special education is not being resourced. Our special education students tend to be the main students that are getting pushed into the prison pipeline. So I am definitely gonna be loud and proud up there to make sure that that occurs, because we can't waver there. But Seattle Public Schools is also advocating to our state legislators right now, because the issue is that there was a tweak in the formula - that Seattle Public Schools is not getting as much money that it needs, but we also want to make sure our teachers are getting livable wages. And so it's coming to a point that if something's not addressed and more funding doesn't come into the education system, then maybe the public education here at Seattle Public Schools may falter. They're not sure what to do, teachers may go onto a strike. So we will have to figure it out, and we're gonna have to figure it out without taking away our children's basic needs - we should not be taking healthcare out of our schools, we should not be taking our social workers and mental health counselors away from our students. We have to do all the things, and we just have to figure it out and get creative. There are some great leaders there around education, but I'm a fierce advocate as well, and I don't think we should leave any student behind, especially those who are receiving special education services. Thank you.
[00:52:34] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Chipalo?
[00:52:35] Chipalo Street: So currently there's a funding cap on how much Seattle Public Schools gets reimbursed for special education funding, and if we were to remove that, Seattle Public Schools would get another $100 million that it would be able to put towards that. That is just a start. We - McCleary got us closer to funding education, but we do not fully fund it, and this becomes a revenue issue. Washington State has the most regressive tax code in the whole country, despite how progressive and liberal that we claim we are. We need to make sure that every corporation and person pays their fair share - so that looks like closing corporate tax loopholes, making sure that we keep our capital gains tax, which is - the revenue from that is used to fund early education, which is a necessary part of the education system - and then also implementing a wealth tax. Personally, I would prefer an income tax because an income tax is - you can withhold that. It's been tried before, we know how to implement that - however, there are constitutional issues with that. So in lieu of an income tax, we should be able to try a billionaire tax. And the thing that gives me hope is while things get stymied on the federal level, we've seen localities and states try out new things, and so maybe this is something that we can pilot here in the state, and at the end of the day, a billionaire tax and an income tax aren't mutually exclusive. We can still work towards an income tax, even if we have a billionaire tax.
[00:53:58] Emijah Smith: May I follow-up?
[00:53:59] Crystal Fincher: Yep. You each can have 30 seconds.
[00:54:02] Emijah Smith: Thank you. What I want to share is that our community - I agree - Washington has the worst tax setup and structure. And we have been, in Washington State, been trying to bring forth initiatives multiple times to the state to address this issue so that we can make our wealth more equitable. And our community members and residents and citizens have been voting it down. So I'm thinking with this inflation, with the impact of COVID - but now it could be a really great time that more of our citizens and our residents will see that this is really necessary and will vote in their best interest instead of voting it away. Thank you. As well as our legislators making a move in our best interest.
[00:54:43] Crystal Fincher: Chipalo?
[00:54:45] Chipalo Street: I'm good.
[00:54:46] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Next question. What is your connection to unincorporated Skyway? If elected, how will you support the development and investment in this neighborhood? Starting with Chipalo.
[00:55:00] Chipalo Street: So if I was to be elected for this State Rep position, I would basically be one of three elected representatives for Skyway. So Skyway is unincorporated - that means it does not have a city council person to whom they can go for local issues. That basically means that myself, Representative Santos, Senator Saldaña and Councilman Zahilay would be the elected representatives for that area. So I would love to work with them in partnership to understand what development needs they would like to see. It was great to see that we went through a community budgeting process where folks were able to actually vote on how money was spent. And so supporting community involvement in how money is spent, making sure that we can advocate to get money set aside for Skyway because we know that it is not going to come through the City of Seattle, it's not going to come through the City of Renton. Those would be the ways that I would partner with the community to make sure that we develop it in a way that the community members see fit.
[00:56:00] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
[00:56:01] Emijah Smith: Thank you. I love that question - yeah. So I'm connected with Skyway for the simple fact that I shop at Grocery Outlet, I get my taxes done over there, I patron the restaurants over there. My mom has recently moved, but had lived there for about 15 years - family's there, people use the post office there, banking there, utilizing the library there - Skyway is my community. And so that's my relationship. Second part to that question is - again, part of being Chief of Staff with King County Equity Now and just having relationships in that community - making sure that we got money from the state level to support Petah Village - early learning development, and also just the new outside - door - preschool, right? There's leadership there, there's expertise there, there's churches there, there's a nail shop - there's all the things that are near and dear to my heart, to be honest. That community is mine - not mine, but it's shared. I was on the Community Investment Budget Committee for King County's participatory budgeting to make sure that money was stored in a way that was definitely led by community members and getting the input from community members to see how they want to move that and looking to make sure that King County does it again in the future. So that was $10 million. We had a celebration about a few weeks ago, naming the projects that were funded. So yeah, this is near and dear to my heart - has been neglected, Skyway has been ignored. I'm thankful to King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay, another sole endorser, for the leadership that he's had there, as well as Senator Saldaña, KHT - Kirsten Harris - I gotta stop, but all the legislators who have been pouring into that district. And let me shout out to Cynthia Green Home there - Center.
[00:57:45] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Another audience question. Will you use your position at elected office to uplift more progressive voices in the office? And that question goes to Emijah.
[00:58:01] Emijah Smith: Will you repeat that please?
[00:58:03] Crystal Fincher: Will you use your position in elected office to uplift more voices into office, and how will you do that?
[00:58:09] Emijah Smith: Yes, most definitely. I see this opportunity as being a bridge builder, right? If I'm in Olympia, you'll have a space in Olympia. The work that I've done over the years has definitely been providing workshops, not only in my professional capacity but in my personal capacity, to make sure that our everyday people understand how a bill becomes a law, right? Also the nuances - how to effectively communicate with your legislators - how do I go into those spaces and really center racial justice, knowing that I am a descendant of stolen ones in this country? I can't go into those spaces and just talk A, B. I have to go in there and really give them the nuances, the impact of what it means to be a Black mother in this community and navigating these systems. So I share that expertise and I share that knowledge with others, as well as being a pTSA president - always constantly talking to families about how they can strengthen their partnerships with their teachers, strengthen their partnerships with their principals. That's just the natural work that I do. So in order to be successful in this role, I need the community to come along with me. I need y'all to be the wind behind my back and be in locked arms. That space is our space. That's my plan - if I'm there, they comin'.
[00:59:18] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much.
[00:59:19] Emijah Smith: Thank you.
[00:59:19] Crystal Fincher: Chipalo?
[00:59:21] Chipalo Street: For sure. Building a pipeline of people to come after is something that I've always done in everything that I've done. So for example, when I got to Brown, I noticed that the pre-med students had a great support group to help other students of color get through pre-med, but we did not have that in the engineering. So I restarted our chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers so that we had a community to not only get us through, but also pull in the next class of freshmen and sophomores to get them through. I've continued to do that in Seattle. I serve on the board of a program called Institute for a Democratic Future where the goal is to increase the Democratic Party across the state. I loved that program when I went through it, but one of the reasons I joined the board was to make sure that we had more equity in the fellows and the board members. And in my six years, we have dramatically changed what the class makeup looks like, both racially but also geographically, so that we have a stronger Democratic Party across the state so that we can win in every district. And then on the board itself, we have drastically increased the number of people of color and women of color on the board. And we actually now have our first woman of color who is the Board Chair. So this is something that I've been doing in all aspects of my life - even at Microsoft, equity was a huge thing for me. I required that we interview a person of color or underrepresented minority for every opening on the team that I led, and we ended with a team of 40% people of color or underrepresented minorities. So yes, I would continue to do that in Olympia.
[01:00:55] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
[01:00:55] Emijah Smith: Follow up, please.
[01:00:57] Crystal Fincher: You can have 30 seconds - yes.
[01:00:58] Emijah Smith: Yes - I also wanted to just include that - in my organizing and advocacy work, it's definitely bringing the youth along. My children have been in Olympia with me since they were in preschool - up there advocating for better school lunches - really understanding that process and understanding that they too, at one point, will be there in a leadership role. So I wanted to also include - it's not just - families include the children and includes the elders in that space. Thank you.
[01:01:25] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
Next question. What is the most important climate legislation that should be passed by Washington in the legislature? And what climate organizations will you partner with to make that happen? Starting with Chipalo.
[01:01:43] Chipalo Street: So I am glad that we have passed cap and trade. I think the next hurdle there is to implement cap and trade, especially the equity measures around the money that is brought in through the tax on carbon. So making sure that we implement that holistically - and groups that I'd work with are folks like Washington Conservation Voters, Sierra Club, the Environmental Climate Caucus - those are all groups that understand what's going on and can provide guidance and have been working to move this legislation through Olympia for multiple years. I'm also glad to see that the HEAL Act passed - and one of the things I loved about the HEAL Act is that it specifically called out that we need to gather data. As a scientist, I have a background in using data to address problems and for too long we've just sort of waved our hands at issues and hoped that they would get better. But with this data, we can actually understand where the harm is being done and then go remedy that with the money that we bring in from things like cap and trade and the set-aside that we have set for equity.
[01:02:46] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Emijah?
[01:02:48] Emijah Smith: Thank you - I would definitely want to support Senator Saldaña with the implementation of the HEAL Act. How I move as a servant leader is I'm going to lean into those who have the expertise and who've been leading the charge for the most part - this is Got Green, this is Puget Sound Sage, this is the Washington State Conservation Voters - again, who I'm sole endorsed by, as well as Sage Leaders. I want them to tell me how I need to prioritize and how I need to move. What I want to share with you is that my value is that I definitely support environmental justice and climate justice. I live in the 37th, I live on MLK which is also used as a highway - the air pollution is ridiculous, the soil pollution is ridiculous. So myself and my children have asthma - that stuff impacts us all the time. So not only for myself but educating other families about how to make their environment as safe as possible with health conditions - I'm definitely a strong advocate. But I want to look to the leadership who's already been moving it because we want to center the racial justice aspects of that. Why is the 37th most polluted? Why is that? It's because most of the people of color have been pushed here and redlined here. So I have to look at all those impacts and structures that are in place and figure out what's the best route to go. Because if we just tax corporations and they just keep making more money and they can pay the tax, how are we really resolving the issue? So I want to work in partnership with collective voice and listen to community and let them inform me about how best to move. But I trust Senator Saldaña and I'll definitely lean on her leadership. Thank you.
[01:04:25] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Now with that question, you both mentioned legislation that had already passed - with both the cap and trade act and the HEAL Act. Starting with Chipalo for 30 seconds - is there anything besides those two - or what would you do aside from those two things - new legislation that would need to be passed in the Legislature?
[01:04:43] Chipalo Street: Sure. I mean, I have been very grateful for having the warmest September I can remember here. However, as we've seen with these clear days, we have a ton of smoke. And so I think we need to fund our Department of Natural Resources to have wildfire prevention and resilience because that is something that is affecting our state. And so the - how climate change is showing up for Washington State is through fires and through smoke. And so making sure that we are protected and we are being good stewards of our forests, I think, is very important.
[01:05:16] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
[01:05:16] Emijah Smith: Is this question relevant to environmental justice or any other issue?
[01:05:19] Crystal Fincher: Environmental justice, what's - basically a follow up to the last question, same question as I asked Chipalo - what aside from the Climate Commitment Act and the HEAL Act needs to be done to help address our climate crisis?
[01:05:32] Emijah Smith: Well, again, implementation of these acts, but what I want to really make sure that we target isn't - stop cutting down our trees - we need to save our trees and preserve our wetlands. Currently in my neighborhood, we're petitioning with other neighbors because they're about to build a five-story complex that's not for low income housing, it's not for stable housing, it's market rate. And they are also looking to cut down the wetlands. The wetlands protects from the flooding, the wetlands protects from keeping our - and the trees protect our habitat, and the wetlands also keep our air as clean as possible. So I would really want to make sure we focus on protecting our trees. Thank you.
[01:06:10] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. And the next question that we have here is a follow up on one of the waffles. Can we get more insight into the candidate views on trans children in sports, considering Emijah holding partial commitment in her earlier answer? Do children deserve to play on the sports teams that match their gender identity? And if you can't give a wholehearted yes, what harm do you think supporting trans kids in this way would cause?
[01:06:43] Emijah Smith: I don't know if there's harm that's being caused, but I want to get more education. I don't want to make a decision without really being fully informed. So what I do is I lean on Surge Reproductive Northwest, and I make sure that they're constantly educating me about non-binary people, right, and definitely around birthing rights. But that's what I try to do - is educate myself as much as possible. I don't have a child, I don't have a family member who is dealing with this issue, but I definitely have loved ones - I definitely have people that are family in my community. We have create cousins - I definitely have family members that I love dearly who are trans and non-binary, but I need them to help me and educate me to better understand. But I don't see right now where there would be harm to that, but there needs to be more education - for me. As a PTSA president, there was a mother who came - and her child, she felt, was being bullied. I supported to make sure that our students and that whole school community understood what identity safety really meant, not just for the LGBTQ+, but also any person who's being othered or who needs to be shored up to not be bullied or be teased about their identity. My son was teased for multiple years just because of his weight. I know those two things don't compare, but I do understand the impact of what happens when our children are targeted and othered. And I do not support bullying, I do not support the othering. I believe in bringing everybody along, and I believe in seeing each other and our humanity - tapping into that, so I'm open to learn.
[01:08:21] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much.
[01:08:22] Emijah Smith: Thank you.
[01:08:22] Crystal Fincher: And I'll also ask Chipalo if there's anything you want to talk about in terms of trans children and your support of trans children playing in sports that match their gender.
[01:08:32] Chipalo Street: I think we should make sure that everyone has the opportunity to take part in sports, and making sure that people can take part based on their gender or how they identify as their gender is perfectly fine with me.
[01:08:47] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. And so now we have a yes or no question from someone in the audience. Do you support restoring the right to vote to folks who are currently incarcerated? Chipalo?
[01:09:00] Chipalo Street: Yes.
[01:09:00] Crystal Fincher: Yes. And Emijah is also a Yes. Thank you for that.
Another audience question. How do you intend to balance caucus priorities versus your legislative priorities? And what will you do when there is tension? Starting with Emijah.
[01:09:19] Emijah Smith: Well, there's always going to be tension. So in my experience - I've seen that where we're moving some, me as a collective in community and we're trying to move some legislation forward and when it's time to go on the committee - if it is a legislator who wants to be accountable to the community, they will come back and talk about what they have to deal with. And so as a community member and being part of that collective work - trying to support the legislator - to give them messaging opportunities, how to help educate those who are in the caucus to try to move something forward because we know it's vital for the community members outside of the Legislature. So it's just really doing the same thing, but also I see myself and my leadership as making sure I'm connected to a base of community folks who are impacted by the issue, making sure those with lived experiences' voices are at the table, and taking that forward into the caucus. Because too often - I'm here to do transformational, change the status quo - and too often the people who are in the back rooms are not connected to the real impacts of what they're making decisions about. So using that collective voice, making sure people are being informed and they're informing me, and moving that back to the caucus - that's the way I plan to move because I've seen success happen from that. I've seen us as community members say, You need to talk about this from a racial justice angle. Go back and do it. Oh, you are not communicating with community - that's why this legislation is having some issues. You need to make sure you're connecting more with us. So I've learned in that process and my experience to be better at that and to know what the community needs. Thank you very much.
[01:10:49] Crystal Fincher: Chipalo?
[01:10:51] Chipalo Street: So I think as a legislator, relationships are very important and that's something that I have experience with. My day job at Microsoft is I work for the Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft and I have to advise our executives on emerging technology. But I don't have any power over these executives - I don't give them headcount, I don't tell them where they're going to put their resources. And so my effectivity in my job is based on how well I can build a relationship with them and bring them towards my point of view. And so I think that is a very similar thing to what we have to do in the Democratic caucus because everyone in the Democratic Party doesn't vote the way we want them to. And so if we can create trusting relationships with them - I can use my lived experience, I can bring feedback from the community to show them why they may not be voting in the best ways. And through that - I think the first thing to do is get ahead of the problem in the first place - the question was, how would I work if we were in conflict with caucus? First, let's try and bring the caucus into synchronization on what needs to be done. If that can't happen, then we can start to bring other voices from outside to more forcibly show them why this is wrong and make a case that there is a groundswell that supports a certain way of voting - to make sure that they understand they're not going to get voted out, that they are supported, that this is the right way to go, and that the public wants us to vote in more progressive legislation.
[01:12:17] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Emijah?
[01:12:19] Emijah Smith: Yeah, I would love to follow up. I just want to highlight that sometimes a conflict is not within the caucus. Sometimes the conflict is that you're having to deal with the other side as partisan politics. So sometimes it might be around the strategy. And so some things are going to get cut out or be less prioritized than the other. I definitely have relationships in Olympia with multiple legislators - if you check my website, ElectEmijah.com, you will see the multiple representatives and senators that I already work with. Sometimes it's about the strategy - and I would love to see that our Democratic Party go hard, be more courageous when we're dealing with on the other side of the aisle, because they are not caring about our strategy. They're going hard.
[01:13:02] Crystal Fincher: All right. Thank you very much. Anything you'd like to add, Chipalo?
[01:13:07] Chipalo Street: Yes, while there are certain subjects that we have to fight the Republican Party on, like the right to choose, there are also instances where there may be a member across the aisle that I disagree with on 90% of stuff, but I will work with them on that 10% to move that issue forward - and then we can go back and fight about the other 90%. So while I think it's very important that we understand where we're coming from, working across the aisle is deeply important to me. And not flaming them, in certain instances, so that we can make progress on the small that we agree on - a small bit that we agree on - is important so that we can make that progress.
[01:13:44] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Next question. Would you support bail reform? If so, what changes would you make? Chipalo?
[01:13:55] Chipalo Street: Yes, we should - I thought we got rid of cash bail - I may be misinformed on that, but yes, I would be supportive of not having cash bail. I would also be supportive of returning parole - the option of parole - which got taken away in 1984. It's clear that we have far too many people locked up and that increased jail sentences don't lead to more public safety. Just in COVID, we let out 11,000 people into home confinement and there were only 17 re-offenses, one of which was violent. If that's not enough evidence to show that we are keeping too many people in jail, I don't know what is. So not only in terms of bail - bail is one means of keeping people in jail, but also is parole. We should bring back the option of parole and we should look for any option that we can get to get non-violent offenders out, because data shows that they are not necessarily going to re-offend and we don't need to be keeping them in prison. We need them to be back home with their families so that we have sound communities.
[01:14:54] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
[01:14:55] Emijah Smith: Can you repeat that question, please?
[01:14:56] Crystal Fincher: Yep, it is - would you support bail reform? If so, what changes would you make?
[01:15:02] Emijah Smith: I definitely would support bail reform. I agree with Chipalo about the no cash bail, but I also believe there's some language in the bail language that you can - if somebody is supportive and around you that they can go be with you, like back in community - I don't know the exact details of the language, but I would love to support something like that. I'm definitely a justice reform advocate, so bringing parole back - of course - making sure people are not dying in prison, making - if it's not in the interest of justice, then we need to be able to allow people to have an opportunity to come back and be reconnected with their families and community. Families and community connections are the number one - it's the number one thing that makes sure people are not going back and committing crimes, other than having their basic needs met, of course. I also want to think about the time bar - people don't talk about that, but our society - and those people are really set up, they do not know the legal system, and they only have one year after they are sentenced to try to work that legal system to have an appeal. Well, I think that that needs to be expanded multiple years, if not eliminated, so that as our laws change and as we, our policies are coming to the morality of how we're thinking and our healing in society, we need to make sure that people who are innocent have an opportunity to come out and be resentenced. Thank you.
[01:16:26] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Next question. What can you do as a legislator to better support victims of crime? Starting with Emijah.
[01:16:37] Emijah Smith: I love that question, because when I think about restitution - when someone's sentenced, they oftentimes have legal financial obligations - which people shouldn't be penalized and needing to go back to jail because they have a legal financial obligation - but also there's restitution. And oftentimes when they're collecting those fines, it's supposed to go to restitution, but oftentimes it's not prioritized. So first and foremost, restitution needs to be prioritized. When there is a fine to be paid or our courts are getting that money, prioritize the victims to make sure they're getting it - oftentimes it's also being prioritized towards the courts. Another aspect of that is we need to listen to the victims, because it's about restorative justice. So healing needs to happen for those who've been harmed, but healing needs to also happen for those who have harmed somebody. And so having a restorative justice opportunity - I found, being a victim myself, that if I decide what I want to see happens in that justice system, they don't listen to victims oftentimes. They don't listen to how we want to move that restorative process, because how we want to do our healing in community might look different than what the legal system wants to do. So more victims need to have choice about how they want to do that. There's a redemption or opportunity that people want to come back to that person who violated, and they should have the opportunity to do that. So making sure that restitution is happening - the finances go there. Making sure that victims, if they choose, have an opportunity for healing, and they should be able to decide what that process needs to look like for their healing. Thank you.
[01:18:07] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Chipalo?
[01:18:10] Chipalo Street: Yeah, I completely agree that victims should have a voice in determining or possibly moderating the type of sentence that is passed down. But there's also some structural barriers in our society that possibly put victims in harm's way. So for example, domestic violence victims can't break lease without penalty. And so I would 100% support allowing a victim of domestic violence to get out of a lease immediately so that they can find new housing and reduce the chances that they have another instance of domestic violence committed upon them. And so I think there's lots of these unintended consequences of our laws and systems that we can analyze through a victim's point of view to make sure that not only is the original crime addressed, but they don't fall victim to subsequent crimes after that.
[01:19:09] Emijah Smith: May I follow up?
[01:19:10] Crystal Fincher: Yep, go ahead.
[01:19:11] Emijah Smith: Yeah, and also I just want to highlight implementation, again, around that restitution. Our courts need to be advised or something needs to be - they know what they need to do, but for some reason, there's some disconnect or miscommunication around how things are supposed to happen. And too often, communities have to have all the information to direct the court, so there needs to be more implementation conversation. I also want to share that maybe it's not leveled across the state, and I definitely want to level domestic violence type of supports across the state. But I know here in King County, and particularly in the 37th, if you are violated by domestic violence, you can break your lease without penalty. But victim defendants is also something that we need to address, and that King County right now is providing services for those who might be victim defendants, and I would love to see that leveled up.
[01:19:58] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
[01:19:58] Emijah Smith: Thank you.
[01:19:59] Crystal Fincher: You want to add anything, Chipalo?
Tonight - for the final question this evening, we're going to start with Chipalo. What have you learned from Emijah during this campaign?
[01:20:11] Chipalo Street: I really admire Emijah's heart, the amount of work that she's put in with the community, her integrity. Both her and I have sat down multiple times during the campaign - before the primary, after the primary - and we both agreed to run a positive campaign. I know I've done that, and I've seen the similar things for her. We have both talked about things that we didn't necessarily like from the other campaign and we have both changed those, and so I appreciate the integrity that she has brought to this campaign.
[01:20:38] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
[01:20:40] Emijah Smith: Thank you, Chipalo.
[01:20:40] Crystal Fincher: And the question to Emijah - what have you learned from Chipalo during this campaign?
[01:20:45] Emijah Smith: Well, I learned that Chipalo is definitely steadfast, right? I've learned that Chipalo wants to make this happen, so I've kind of watched some of the strategies, even if we haven't talked about it. But the one thing I want to say is - I do appreciate that you did come and have the conversations when I initiated those invitations. I appreciate that, because we don't know each other. We didn't know each other before this event, and so all we're learning is how we're moving through this candidacy. So the biggest thing for me is to make sure I always see your humanity and not allow this competition to make me think less of you as a person and vice versa.
[01:21:18] Crystal Fincher: Do any one of you want to follow up to anything on that?
Excellent. Well, with that, the debate comes to a close. I want to thank our candidates for participating in making this an engaging and informative event. To audience members here and online, thank you so much for tuning in and for submitting such excellent questions. I really did appreciate that.
Thanks again to the Rainier Arts Center for allowing us to host the debate here tonight. A huge thank you to our media partners - KNKX, KVRU and Maurice Jones, Jr., Real Change News, and the Hacks & Wonks podcast and radio show. And thank you to the Seattle Foundation, King County Elections, and the League of Women Voters of Seattle & King County for their support as well.
Special thanks to all of the volunteers and coordinators this evening - this would not have been able to happen without them. And to the South Seattle Emerald and its staff for putting this event together.
I also want to remind everyone again to vote. Ballots will be mailed to your mailbox starting Wednesday, October 19th. You can register to vote, update your registration, and see what will be on your ballot at MyVote.WA.gov. That's MyVote.WA.gov. I also want to remind you that if you had a previous felony conviction, your right to vote is now automatically restored after you serve your prison term, even if you're on community supervision. You just need to re-register. Go to freethevotewa.org for more details.
Thank you for tuning in - have a great evening.
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Emijah Smith about her campaign for State Representative in the 37th Legislative District - why she decided to run and her thoughts on addressing issues such as community representation, housing affordability and zoning, homelessness, public safety, mismatch between passed policy and subsequent implementation, education funding, and climate change.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s guest, Emijah Smith, at @ElectEmijah.
Resources
Campaign Website - Emijah Smith: https://www.electemijah.com/
South Seattle Emerald’s 37th LD Representative Position 2 Debate (October 4, 2022) - Moderated by Crystal Fincher: https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/sse-37th-ld-debate-2022
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I'm very excited to have a guest joining us from the 37th Legislative District who's a candidate for State Representative. Thank you so much for joining us today, Emijah Smith.
[00:00:49] Emijah Smith: Thank you - I'm happy to be here.
[00:00:51] Crystal Fincher: Happy to have you here. I guess just starting out - I would love if you could just share what experience you're bringing to this race and why you decided to run for office?
[00:01:03] Emijah Smith: As you know, I'm a mother, I'm a grandmother. I'm raised and rooted, been living in the 37th my whole entire life basically. I have historical context of the community, as well as current context. I chose to step into this role because I've been in Olympia for over 10 years - locked arms with families, bringing our youth forward - to really advocate for meaningful change that we want to see in our community. Advocating for universal preschool, advocating for stable and affordable housing, food security, the broken tax system, racial justice - you name it - the things that are important to really ensure that our families are healthy and our communities are healthy. So I've been doing the work and I want to - I'm here to be a bridge builder, really - to say, I'm in Olympia, this is your space. I'm told when I'm out here canvassing all the time that we really - the 37th wants to transform status quo. So people are like - I'm a great champion for the voiceless, they know I have the credibility and the consistency of doing the work. So having that current real lived experience of the lives of the 37th, having demonstrated experience in Olympia, and really having some really powerful relationships with families and our children in the 37th is the reason why I step into this opportunity.
[00:02:29] Crystal Fincher: And it is a unique opportunity and you bring up something important - which you talk about - the context of how the community used to be versus how it is today, which is different. The district has grown, it has changed, the composition of people who are there are different. As you look at how the 37th Legislative District has changed, what do you think is the most important thing you as a representative can do to connect with the community today, while not displacing any further the community that has been left out and preserving the culture and heritage and history of the district?
[00:03:10] Emijah Smith: Thank you for asking that question. I am from the historic Black community of the Central District - raised there, grandparents there, parents there - and really seen firsthand, really, the love and the investment in our community. Although it started out with redlining, that's how the community came to be. It's been a very joyful childhood experience that I had there - it felt safe - until that failed War on Drugs came into the community. And I believe those policies - steeped in racism, the over-policing, the criminalization of addiction, and the lack of resources - just as a young person, I was committed and committed myself to say, I'm going to go to college, I'm going to do any and everything I can to bring resources to the community, bring healing to the community, as well as restoration. So in that process of those policies, I believe that's really key to what started the displacement and the gentrification - because of those poor policies that were just really targeting a community that I believe was vulnerable at the time.
And so being - having the privilege to stay in my community, I have not been pushed outside of Seattle - doing all that I can to ensure that me and my children can stay in place with regard to the taxes and things. I have really seen and built relationships with the new faces in community - so through my, as a PTSA president at my children's elementary school as well as my kids' school currently, really seeing the families that are coming in, having the opportunity to learn some of the issues that they care about. But in addition to that, along the way - again, since as a youth - been advocating for community building and development and making sure that folks can stay in place. So fighting for or advocating that taxes can be reduced for low-income communities - a Black community's average income in Seattle is around $50,000, probably a little bit less. How can one - how can anyone - survive and live in Seattle with the rents and the cost of living? It's impossible. And so our elders and our seniors are just holding on.
But I will say - going to Olympia, really, with King County Equity Now and other organizations in our ecosystem - really holding the Washington Finance and Housing Commission accountable to ensure that our dollars were coming back to community so that we can get the developments like the Africatown Plaza, Ethiopian Village, Elizabeth Thomas Homes, Petah Village - these are all community investments that are in the 37th. And so to be on the frontline doing that work is what we have to do, is what I do. This is a people's campaign, this is about people-powered policy. And I have found along the way, although I have a Master's in Public Administration - seen on the professional side of the academic side of how to move policy - I have found the most meaningful policy has always come from community voice and community's power.
[00:06:09] Crystal Fincher: I would agree with that. And you talk a lot about the need to make sure people can afford to stay in there. You just talked about the average income of Black families being around $50,000, which is half - less than half now - of what the median income is in the entire City of Seattle. So there is a huge gap, with historical reasons behind that, and that absolutely needs to be addressed. When it does come to housing and just the ability for people to continue to live where they've been living, to stay in the housing that they currently have, to age in place - what are the most impactful things you can do to help to keep housing affordable?
[00:06:52] Emijah Smith: Again, it's - there's a few things. I currently sit on state-level housing justice coalitions and Housing Trust Fund coalition - really speaking to those policy teams in Olympia designated by the governor to look at housing, really speaking - so this is a statewide collective, but we speak directly to the barriers that are at hand. We speak to the historical racial injustice and marginalization as well as policy that has created such barriers and marginalization. We bring the real lived experience of folks of - this is the barrier to even applying for housing, these are the reasons people are denied housing. But your system, through the Department of Commerce, also has these barriers because it's set up for organizations that oftentimes don't look like the most marginalized to get the funding because they've had the decades of opportunities to build the capital or had the experience. And right now, in order to develop housing from communities that are marginalized, they have to - in order to apply, you have needed to have already built some housing. Well, how does one do that if the resources are barred, or I won't say that they're scarce, but they're limited. So we're trying to talk to the Department of Commerce and really advocating there - those are the things that I'm doing.
Also looking at taxes, right? Too many seniors have reached out - just trying to stay in place, they're on limited incomes - either retirement, social security - and they just cannot afford the taxes that keep going up in prime areas, particularly like the Central District. But I would love to say that all of the Seattle proper, the taxes keep rising because property values keep rising. I'm even speaking with families who are new, who are the new faces who've come in and bought a home and they're like - they're concerned if they can even keep the current home that they've had maybe for the past five years because the taxes just keep rising. And when taxes rise and you're a property owner, of course you're going to pass that on - most do - to the renters. So property taxes are definitely to be in place, we need to look at incomes - provide a level of income of how much your property taxes need to be, some things need to be exempt - particularly for our seniors. The cost of living is already so high - people are having to choose between prescriptions, food, or rent, or mortgage, or paying those huge taxes.
So those are the things that I'm looking into. My value is that everyone should have a home. No one should be unhoused. And I know people are making choices due to other reasons to choose if they should be housed or not. But nevertheless, housing should be available. I'm heartbroken to even share, but just two weeks ago I came across a family - a mother, two children, 4 and 10, living in tents just - not too far, maybe a couple miles from my home - and not for me seeing the child being rejected to going to the bathroom maybe to wash up. I was like, Can I speak to your mom? The mom was willing to share the story and I immediately reached out to some people I know who professionally work sheltering families and luckily they answered the phone, then they called someone else and that person answered the phone, and we were able to get the family into at least some emergency shelter. But I'm telling you, a 4-year old and a 10-year old out in the woods in tents - that is unexcusable and that was in the 37th. And I'm willing to do any and everything that I can to ensure that that's not happening to anyone else. But the reality is I know that it is.
[00:10:41] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and there are a lot - there are a lot of things that need to be done to address this issue. Legislatively, in your capacity as a legislator, certainly legislation that is in process that could potentially help a lot of other things that are needed. I guess one of the things that will be coming up in this upcoming session, should you be elected, is the missing middle housing bill, sponsored by Representative Jessica Bateman, to address the shortage of housing supply which experts say is a necessary component of addressing this, not necessarily the only component, but one of the necessary components. Do you support that missing middle housing bill?
[00:11:20] Emijah Smith: I do support missing middle housing. I also support some level of rent control. We have to create a pause - again, I'm meeting single people who are afraid of - what can I do? So yeah, I do support that. I think that those things are happening. I've also talked to families just in general throughout my years of engaging in community - where there's low-income housing - there's not enough low-income housing, first and foremost, so people can even apply for that. But there's a lot of low-income working class families in the 37th who need to stay in place. Then there's also affordable housing and if you need to make $80,000 or more just to try to get into that one-bedroom, things are impossible. So middle housing is definitely needed.
Whenever I look at legislation, I have to look at the racial equity impact of that legislation. I don't like to jump on anything without understanding the unintentional harm, 'cause we don't want to create more inequities. We don't want to increase the disproportionality on anyone. So that - one thing about me as a leader, as a legislator, in that role representing community will definitely be looking at the fuller impacts, not just quick looks, let's just move and make a quick decision. 'Cause what we don't want to do is invest a lot of time and a lot of money and still causing more harm in community.
[00:12:41] Crystal Fincher: And then in terms of addressing housing, we need to get people sheltered - first and foremost - no matter what people are dealing with. I think you have expressed several times that people do deserve housing, period - even if they're dealing with an addiction, dealing with behavioral health issues. Not only do they deserve that, but that's helpful in stabilizing or getting to the point where they can stabilize the issues that they're dealing with. We do have challenges with availability of services to help people - whether it's behavioral health services, substance use disorder treatment - we do wait for people to fall through all the cracks and maybe even become involved in the criminal legal system before they have access to any kind of intervention and then it's much harder to address that problem by that time. How do you plan to address the availability of those services?
[00:13:39] Emijah Smith: Wraparound services are definitely necessary. I have family members with behavioral health issues and recovering from addiction. And what I have found to be successful is that people can have stable housing, have stability at least for a year, have something stable to be able to address some of the other issues. I've spoken with firefighters who are concerned that they're going to the housing that is being developed for folks with the multiple issues that have disability, mental illness, whatever - there's different issues - but they're being called for something that's not oftentimes a fire or a heart attack or a health issue, and so there's these reservations. Clearly it's showing that we need more investments - we need more investments in our mental health across the board. And we definitely need more wraparound services for those who need it.
And I also would include those who are re-entering from the carceral system - they're given $40 of gate money. If they are not - have a strong support family or community network that could provide housing, oftentimes those folks are really right out in the streets and they're unhoused - and that doesn't support success, that supports recidivism. So the things that I'm looking at is how do we increase vouchers for those who are coming out - it was increased from 3 months to 6 months - but I am a believer in a year's time for stability because I've seen firsthand what it did for family members and community members to stay stable and in place.
I also think about our children. When COVID first happened, there was a lot of children who were even in these tiny homes - they might be sheltered, but how can one learn in such a small space in our weather? So as you know, that just really touches my heart. So we have to utilize the revenue, we have to address our backwards and broken tax system to create the dollars and bring them there. I love Washington State - I'm not someone who wants to leave and go to another state and live. It is vibrant here and I want to do everything I can do to invest - not only in Washington, but in the 37th - we have the revenue, we have the marijuana dollars. So I was advocate last session that provided that $400 million to come to our communities, to go to organizations that can also continue to keep investing in community. So we have the revenue, we have a broken tax system that if corrected, or repaired or fixed - whatever you want to use - we can make some serious change. And if we center that revenue on our basic needs - housing, healthcare, education - our families can be healthy, our communities can be healthy. So that's my mindset. These are some complex issues because of who holds the purse strings, but also who's in place to make those decisions. But my value is where I share with you before - everybody deserves housing, healthcare, education, and I do any and everything I can do to champion and support to ensure that happens.
We also have to look at the policy language, though - that becomes the issue. These big values and these big systems - who's going to disagree? No one would disagree. But oftentimes our institutions are working in silos instead of working together. So a quick decision can come from housing, but you didn't look into Department of Corrections to see - can that really work. And so again, there's unintentional harms that are created and then we have to go back and it takes a long time to keep going back. So we have to be better at talking with each other and looking at the language that's going to make sense for our state and for those people who are most marginalized. And the way that you do that - to save us some time and save us some money - is you talk to the people with that lived experience, 'cause those who are closest to the problems are the best ones with the solutions.
[00:17:30] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely agree - and that feels relevant to some of the challenges that our legislature is having in terms of passing legislation, but sometimes not quite landing the implementation of that legislation in a way that can delay funds getting to the people who it was designed to help, the building of infrastructure to deliver that - where certainly good intentions were there and the policy itself may be sound, but the actual implementation - the how do we deliver this help to the people - has some missing elements that make some complications. How do you think your experience can help address that issue?
[00:18:12] Emijah Smith: I'm a - not to be a pause - to me, the first step is always making space and allowing space for people to be at the table, co-designing with community. I do agree with implementation 'cause once the law is happened and it's going to be sent down to the next group to try to figure that out. We should be having conversation to whoever's going to be sent down to. I think about some of the housing projects that are in the 37th and when they started to change - think it was HOPE VI or HOPE IV - and that started to change. The things that weren't considered at the time is like credit history - when you push people out of where they're staying right now, where are they actually supposed to go? There was housing vouchers that were provided, but the new system of how the people will get the housing wasn't taken into account - first and last month deposit. If you have those type of conversations from start to finish, where can we - that's implementation - so what are some of the the barriers or some of the the snags that we can work out along the process? We would've saved ourselves some hardship, and I think that although with the best of intentions of creating and designing these spaces and building community, we also created a lot of unhoused people. We also pushed people into the carceral system because we weren't talking with each other.
So the way that happens and another example, I believe, is the LFOs - these are called legal financial obligations. There was a lot of advocacy on the state level to ensure that those who were coming out - the big fines - to reduce some of the interest there. Because if someone still has interest and their legal financial obligations were not complete, they could still almost be put right back into jail - and not almost - some people can go back and be jailed for not making payment. Well, how can you make payment if you're just trying to enter? You already can't - might be limited on the job that you can receive, the housing you can receive, you can't even get stable because of that. The implementation once the law changed was that you have to understand how to ask for that when you were being sentenced. And a lot of people did not know - that's part of the implementation. It has to be addressed at sentencing, not after the fact. 'Cause if you try to appeal it, then you can be denied of those legal obligations being removed. Legal obligation interest has somewhat, has been changed - it's being improved as we're moving along, but what does that look like for the people on the ground - that's a whole 'nother story.
So that's - those are the examples that I want to share around implementation. I also think about implementation for our education dollars. There might be some dollars that were sent out to some districts, but if that money is not specified to that department and really restricted to say - family engagement - then the district can use it any way it likes. So the language in the bill has to be very clear and legislators who are representing their communities have to really fight for that language versus families like me - in Seattle Public Schools, we were fighting for family engagement dollars, but the district had put it into other places where there was a priority and a need, but there was a miscommunication, clearly, or implementation issue because we're saying, You have this money you can invest here - where they're like, Well, actually it wasn't restricted - we were able to do what we wanted to do with it.
[00:21:29] Crystal Fincher: That makes a lot of sense. And you also bring up a good point about the district and public schools, which certainly have their own issues, but the State - the Legislature - plays a big role in how education is ultimately delivered because they're funding it. And even though there are some issues with how that funding is allocated, part of the problem is that there is too little funding - and so choices are being forced in some situations that shouldn't be choices at all. And usually it's the kids with the least, the kids in areas where they don't have parents with a lot of generational wealth and excess income that are donating to their kids' schools, and education can look a lot different in different areas of the district and even things like turnover of teachers and administrators is unequal in different parts of the district. And especially in the 37th, those schools are paying for it. In your capacity as a legislator, if you're elected, what can you do to increase funding for schools? And where is that in terms of a priority for you?
[00:22:43] Emijah Smith: Oh, it's a top priority. It's a top priority. It's top three, top four priority. Education has always been a huge issue - because when I was that teenager in school watching my community, the devastation from that failed War on Drugs - when I committed myself to advocacy, I committed myself to making sure that people had an opportunity in education because I believe that education is an opportunity to change your circumstances. But I also understood that education - the system that I saw - can also track you into the prison pipeline. So I did everything that I could to educate myself about the education system - so as an undergrad, as well as getting my master's in Public Administration. I studied Seattle Public Schools - how money funnels down, what those disparities look like for the new teachers versus senior teachers, what the budget looks like, how budgets are created. And really engaged myself in Seattle Public Schools, to be honest, as a parent, because it became really apparent once I had my own children what it looks like to navigate that and what money followed your child. If your child is special education, then there's certain dollars that come from the federal government that's supposed to provide you more resources, but actually it goes into a fuller budget of a school's budget, as well as a district's budget.
So when I think about those things, I think about central offices that tend to carry a larger portion of the budget. How can we try to balance that out? How do we support our teachers to make sure that they're properly trained and well-equipped and want to be in "Title I" schools, which tend to be in the 37th, because those are schools that tend to have higher free reduced lunch. With the population changing, less schools are Title I, but nevertheless you still see this pattern of teachers coming in and leaving and then going back maybe to a North Seattle school, a school that seems to have less diversity, maybe learning styles, what have you. And that's an issue - and to me, I look back at the systems - that is a design system, and we have to work to see how we can make things more equitable. And the PTA right now are looking at how they can share funds, right? My PTA Mercer - I'm the president of the Mercer PTSA - and we're sitting there, we're talking about what schools - do we want to apply to join with these schools to put on certain events and then they split the money. So that those schools who have less revenue with regard to PTSA can have more of an opportunity to support the families that are there.
So I first wanted to say that - from a parent perspective, I've been advocating on the special education taskforce at Seattle Public Schools, which helped bring the recommendations forward - what they're negotiating with the SEA in Seattle Public Schools. I've been on the OSPI, which is a state-level education department around bringing in ethnic studies for our students. I'm a strong proponent with regard to apprenticeship opportunities for those families who may not want to jump right into college, can't afford college but want to invest in having livable wage employment for their student. Education is a serious issue. In every way that I can be involved, I am. I also was a catalyst for the current strategic plan at Seattle Public Schools to really look at equity, ensuring that our students furthest from opportunity are being supported. Also with the McCleary Act - to make sure we're fully funding our education - we have a long ways to go and particularly the gap is with special education students and services. So I'm a strong proponent there. I think if we can properly fund our schools, we won't have the same disproportionality that's going on with retaining teachers and retaining good administrators and staff and making sure our children are doing well.
A big issue that comes up on the state level, like you said, is the general fund. If you take money here, where you're going to get it from? 'Cause it might come away from our mental health services, it may come away from our health services, it may be something you want to look at for food - and hungry kids can't learn. If kids aren't getting the services, they can't learn. So we as leaders in the state capital - and I say we, because families are leaders and our voice is strong and because of our voice, we have made some meaningful changes. I particularly think about the pre-K and getting working more access to childcare - that has come from really fierce families that say, We need this, we have a ways to go, but we're making progress. Community has to continue to keep advocating for the needs and say, Don't take away our healthcare, don't take away our nurses in school, don't take away our counselors. COVID has allowed this to be a much bigger issue across racial backgrounds, I would say. Before someone might think of it, Oh, it's just more marginalized communities. No, it's all of us, it's all the families. And I love that my leadership and my advocacy has such a strong background of diverse bodies - from, I would say, from white families to Asian American families, Black families, you name it. What I love about my leadership though, is I'm going to make sure we're going to bring forward that Black and Indigenous nuance that oftentimes is ignored and neglected. But from immigrant, refugee, English language learners - I'm an advocate for all of us, not just for my job, but for all of our children, because it's our children who are our future now. 'Cause me - that high schooler whose passion and commitment has me here today. So there's a lot more stories, there's a lot more I can say - it is a complex issue, but at the end of the day, we must fund and invest strongly in our public education to ensure that our children have an opportunity and have a chance to thrive.
[00:28:47] Crystal Fincher: I'm also looking at - we have the conversation about climate change. It really is a conversation about equity injustice, because no matter what element we're talking about, it is BIPOC communities, low-income communities, those who are most marginalized, who are experiencing most of the impacts right now and will continue to be without intervention. And this is - we're seeing this happen right now - it's not something to come. These are consequences that are happening right now, whether it's exposure to extreme heat or cold, whether it's exposure to pollution and particulates that contribute to asthma and heart disease and lung disease. We have life expectancies that are years shorter in some areas of the city - some of those in the 37th Legislative District - than there are in other areas of the city. So reducing pollution, greenhouse gas emissions are critical to everyone, but in particular BIPOC communities being able to thrive and live a healthy and productive life. How do you plan to address greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, and pollution?
[00:30:05] Emijah Smith: Definitely a supporter and value climate change and environmental justice. I truly understand that it's really steeped and centered around - it's a racial justice issue. It's been an issue and we've had guidance - I feel like, from forever - from our Indigenous brothers and sisters and community members around this issue telling us and warning us about the importance of what's going to happen in our lives if we do not take care of the land. So I just want to first give honor and recognition there. I, myself, and my children - I was diagnosed with asthma at the age of two months. I live - what I designate as South Seattle - if you're not, if you haven't been here a long time, it's really - it's not quite Rainier Beach, it's a little bit past Franklin High School. Just really aware of the air quality here. The soil quality is poor. Today the smoke is ridiculous - I just think something's burning wherever we are. I'm needing to have to stay inside and keep the door closed, and still the air quality is an issue. I'm a neighbor and a community member that's fighting to keep our trees - Beacon Hill - the more that we build, because density, keeping housing and keeping people in place is important. But if it's at a cost of tearing down the trees which are helping a habitat, which is helping clean our air - that's an issue. Senator Saldaña, who's a sole endorser for me, is leading on the HEAL Act. I would support that. There's legislators out there doing that, there's organizations - I've been endorsed by SAGE Leaders also, I take leadership from Got Green, South Seattle Climate Advocates - they have a network - really listening to those who've been really leading this charge.
But I will say that I'm not one to get in the way. I do see that a lot of things that are coming up oftentimes are saying, Fine, fine, fine the big companies that are causing a lot of the pollution and the problems. But we have to be thoughtful about some of the other ways because the more that they make the money and pay the fine and keep doing the thing, it doesn't stop the harm that's being caused. Most of the issues are complex because we talk about 'em as issues and oftentimes we don't talk about 'em as a racial justice issue. We don't talk about it from a place of normalized anti-Blackness or the steeped racism of how this country was even started. We don't talk about that sometimes, we kind of leave it to the side - so we have to be willing to talk about the issue, be willing to fund the issue, be willing to bring in more green jobs because we're doing a lot of repair. So we need to do the repair of these issues, but at the same time, we need to be creating policies and implementation in a way that is equitable, that is going to change the dynamic that's happening in this country.
So for me, this stuff is strongly intersected, but yeah, I'm not one that's going to be in the way. I'm here to support the crew for the cruise ships, the airplanes - there's a lot of issues that have been targeted in the 37th, and why? Because it's been historically a traditional place where people have been pushed to go there because they - we've been othered. 'Cause before it was Black folks, there was Jewish folks here. But people who were being pushed here were othered. And othered meant you had less value, so then you can come here too. Oh, you're an immigrant, you're a refugee - we're going to push you over here into these housing projects. Instead of looking at - this is a great place to be. I love the diversity, the power, the vibrancy of it all, but it comes with a lot of detriment that we have to constantly keep fighting. And for some reason they want to just keep neglecting and ignoring what the community is calling for. And really, we're calling for health. We're calling for - we want our communities healthy, we want our families healthy, we want to be safe.
So I'm just sharing with you my values around it. I'm sharing with you that there's work. I'm in the community petitioning with my neighbors now to sign something to say, Let's not - if you're going to build this 5-story, market rate building over here in our community, why would you do it in the 37th anyways? Doesn't seem equitable. But if you're going to do it, don't cut down our trees. If you're going to do it, let's make sure we're implementing something here to make sure our streets are safe. Engage with us, understand that we're powerful, understand that we are deserving - and we don't have to beg you to be deserving, but we need to - but the way this is set up, you make us force and demand for you to pay attention. So I'm locking arms with Puget Sound Sage, I'm locking arms with the other environmental justice organizations that also center racial justice in these issues, and utilizing the power of my vote and the leadership representing the 37th District to move us forward.
[00:34:52] Crystal Fincher: Now as we wrap up today, there are a lot of people who are struggling to make a decision in this race, who are looking at you and your opponent and saying, Okay, what are the differences? Why should I make the choice for one over the other? What is your message to those voters as they're trying to decide who they should vote for in who's going to represent them in the 37th?
[00:35:21] Emijah Smith: I would say to the voters that there is a clear distinction. There's a distinction of a people's campaign versus a status quo campaign. I've been engaged, vetted, incredible in the 37th. I've been here my whole life and I'm currently demonstrating the work that it takes to do legislative advocacy - not only do I lock arms and go to Olympia with families and community members, I also provide the training to help families and community members understand the process there - how a bill becomes a law, how do you effectively talk with your legislators? Like I'm arming, we're gearing each other up. I'm also a parent and a grandparent who's lived the lives of our community, who understands sacrifices that are being made to make sure our community's thriving. To me, that's what's really clear - I'm here at a campaign to really transform status quo. The 37th, across all the backgrounds - our community has said we don't want status quo. So I'm here to represent not status quo. My campaign is based on people-powered policy. It's to have a bridge to make sure that those who feel voiceless have a voice, for those who want true representation of our lived experience understand that that is myself. So I can provide you with the education, the demonstrated experience - but I also have the relationship that's important across our bases.
So that's what I would share. I would also want to share with y'all that I have sole endorsements from current 37th leaders - our Senator Rebecca Saldaña, King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay, our City Councilmember Tammy Morales. Kim-Khánh Van, who's a Renton City Councilmember, 'cause the 37th does have a sliver of Renton. I have sole endorsements - One America Votes, the Washington State Labor Council, Pro-Choice Washington. These are coming because of the work that has been demonstrated by me, because of the consistency, because of the commitment around us as community. And you can check out my website at ElectEmijah.com to see more of the leaders and endorsers that I have. I do want to also add the Honorable Larry Gossett - he's a sole endorser. And I have others - Dr. Ben Danielson. There are others, but I just wanted to share that people are putting their name behind me because they see the work that's done and they understand that status quo has to change in order for us to really advance to a place where we're really tapping in and seeing the humanity for each other and really caring about each other and caring about our community. It'll be an honor to have your vote - thank you.
[00:38:17] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - we will include the link to your website for people who want to learn more information in the episode notes. And thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today.
[00:38:28] Emijah Smith: Thank you - it was an honor, again, for the invitation. Thank you and have a wonderful day.
[00:38:32] Crystal Fincher: Thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Post-Production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can follow me @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week’s Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal Fincher is joined by transformative justice advocate, community organizer, writer, and sociologist Evelyn Chow.
We start off the show with a reminder that Crystal will be hosting a candidate forum for the Seattle Municipal Court Judge Positions 3 and 7 races, featuring Position 3 candidates Adam Eisenberg and Pooja Vaddadi, and Position 7 candidates Nyjat Rose-Akins and Damon Shadid. The forum will be streaming live on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube on Wednesday, October 12th at 7:00pm. See our blog for more details: https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/blog/municipal-judge-forum-october-12-2022
Also, starting this week, applications for the Institute for a Democratic Future (IDF)’s 2023 program are now live! You can find more information at IDF’s website at https://democraticfuture.org/.
In national news, President Biden has announced his administration is pardoning people who have received federal simple possession charges for marajuana. In the announcement, Biden asked state governors to do the same for state charges, and requested the secretary of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Attorney General to review how marijuana is scheduled under federal law. This is a big step that will help many people, and will hopefully be emulated by the states, but it has its limits - pardoning doesn't equate to ending prison sentences and doesn't include expungement, which has logistical and financial hurdles for people to climb.
In county news, while we've heard stories from other parts of the country facing issues with clean water access, King County is facing its own water crisis. For the past week, the King County Jail in Downtown Seattle has been without clean water. People in the jail have been forced to use water bottles, and the schedule at which they can refill them is unclear. This is another terrible example of how our jails do not provide rehabilitation, and instead subject people to inhumane and dehumanizing treatment. This story also follows many other instances of horribly under-resourced and under-staffed King County jails leading to outrageous conditions for people staying in the jails. We have to do better. This is inexcusable.
This week saw some very informative reporting following up on Harrell's proposed budget putting $1M into the controversial ShotSpotter program. Amy Sundberg from Notes from the Emerald City and Melissa Santos from Axios both put out stories, linked below, covering the program's history - which shows it's not only ineffective in its purpose of catching gunfire as it happens, it's also incredibly wasteful of police resources. ShotSpotter has no positive impact on gun crime or public safety, and none of its alternative surveillance programs are any more effective.
It’s budget season! Evelyn gives us an in-depth explanation of the City of Seattle's participatory budgeting process, and encourages folks to get involved and make their voices heard! If you want to speak your mind about the city’s budget, you can send written emails to the City Council at this email: council@seattle.gov. You can also attend Budget Committee meetings in-person and remote on October 11th and October 25th at 9:30am. In addition, there will be public hearings on the budget, also remote and in-person, on October 11th at 5:00pm, November 8th at 9:30am, and November 15th at 5:00pm. See here for more info: https://www.seattle.gov/council/committees/select-budget-committee
In local homelessness news, we look at the on-going story of King County's planned expanded enhanced shelter and behavioral health services hub in the SoDo neighborhood, which has seen a lot of pushback from local residents. This is a complicated story about providing care to those who need it, while at the same time making sure that the county works with local communities about what happens in their neighborhoods. The CID has faced heavy burden during the pandemic, and has dealt with a number of government projects that have been pushed through with little community engagement. If a community is telling us there wasn't enough engagement, there wasn't enough engagement, and we need to remember not to dismiss these grassroots community voices just because there are bad faith actors trying to take advantage of them.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at@finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Evelyn T Chow, at @evelyntchow. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
Hacks & Wonks is hosting a Seattle Municipal Judge Candidate forum on October 12th at 7:00pm! Please see the link here for more details: https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/blog/municipal-judge-forum-october-12-2022
The Institute for a Democratic Future is now accepting applications for its 2023 program! The Early Application Deadline is November 2nd, with an application fee of $35, and the Final Application Deadline is November 13, with a fee of $75. See their site for more details: https://democraticfuture.org/
“Biden Pardons Thousands Convicted of Marijuana Possession Under Federal Law” by Michael D. Shear & Zolan Kanno-Youngs from New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/06/us/politics/biden-marijuana-pardon.html?auth=login-email&login=email
“In a Sign of Worsening Conditions, Understaffed King County Jail Has Lacked Water for a Week” by Erica C. Barentt from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/10/06/in-a-sign-of-worsening-conditions-understaffed-king-county-jail-has-lacked-water-for-a-week/
“Proposed Surveillance Tech Can Lead to Biased Policing” by Amy Sundberg from News From the Emerald City: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/amysundberg/issues/proposed-surveillance-tech-can-lead-to-biased-policing-1383779
“Seattle mayor budgets $1M for controversial gunfire detection tech” by Melissa Santos from Axios: https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/10/07/mayor-million-shotspotter-gunfire-detection
“$30M Seattle participatory budgeting effort gears up with staff, workgroups, and a steering committee” by CHS from Capitol Hill Seattle Blog: https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2022/10/30m-seattle-participatory-budgeting-effort-gears-up-with-staff-workgroups-and-a-steering-committee/
Learn more about how you can get involved in the Participatory Budget process here: https://www.seattle.gov/council/committees/select-budget-committee
Seattle Solidarity Budget: https://www.seattlesolidaritybudget.com/
“Chinatown International District pushes back at expanded homeless shelter. Officials ask where else?” by Greg Kim from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/chinatown-international-district-pushes-back-at-expanded-homeless-shelter-officials-ask-where-else/
“OPINION | Hooverville Then and Now: Who Is Worthy of Space?” by Caedmon Magboo Cahill from The South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2022/10/03/opinion-hooverville-then-and-now-who-is-worthy-of-space/
“King County planning expanded enhanced shelter and behavioral health services hub in SoDo with new lease“ from King County’s Press Office: https://kingcounty.gov/elected/executive/constantine/news/release/2022/March/23-SoDo-Enhanced-Shelter-Transmittal.aspx
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, we are continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome to the program for the first time today, our co-host, Evelyn Chow. Hello!
[00:00:51] Evelyn Chow: Hi, thanks for having me.
[00:00:53] Crystal Fincher: Hey, I am excited. Just so people understand who you are - you're a transformative justice advocate, community organizer, writer, and sociologist. You were born and raised in Hawai'i, moved to Seattle 7 years ago where you received your degree in Sociology from Seattle University. Currently work as the District Director to Councilmember Tammy Morales, representing Seattle City Council District 2. Previously, they worked for non-profits Real Change and Ingersoll Gender Center, and did communications work for several local and state political campaigns. You are a force to be reckoned with.
[00:01:34] Evelyn Chow: I appreciate that praise. I don't feel like such, but -
[00:01:41] Crystal Fincher: I am so thrilled that you are here on the show today 'cause I have appreciated and admired your work for a bit here. So I'm excited.
[00:01:51] Evelyn Chow: Thank you, Crystal, for having me.
[00:01:53] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Before we get into all of the stuff, there are two reminders, or upcoming things that are coming up. One is the Municipal Judge Forum that we are putting on next week - it's a live candidate forum that will be streamed via Twitter and Facebook - and it will be a Municipal Court judicial forum. So the two contested seats are Position 3 and Position 7 - Adam Eisenberg vs Pooja Vaddadi and Nyjat Rose-Akins vs Damon Shadid. So we will be hashing it out, talking about what they believe in, want to do on Wednesday, October 12th - that's this coming Wednesday - at 7:00 PM, which will be live streamed online. So pay attention to that.
Also want to remind you about something we've talked about before on the program. The Institute for a Democratic Future, or IDF, is opening its application period. This is a six-month program, with about 10 weekends over those six months across the state of Washington and in Washington DC, covering politics and policy from all vantage points throughout the state - how policy passed is actually implemented and impacts the people on the ground. Great network, great education - it's responsible for my career in politics. Just a great preparation, whether you want to work in the political sphere as a candidate or staff, policy - wide variety of options there, even in the nonprofit or advocacy space. Just great preparation - helps you get a great understanding and connections to people in a great network. So if you're interested in that and - you don't have to want to work in politics, but maybe you just want to advocate for policy or explore what options may be - I highly recommend the Institute for a Democratic Future. We'll include the information in our show notes. Feel free to @ me, email me if you have any questions, but just wanted to make sure that is on everybody's radar and the application deadline is in November, so you have a little bit of time. But now is the time to get started on that if you're interested.
Now we'll get to the news of the week. So there's a lot that has happened in a lot of different areas. We had a couple chaos days with news this week of every kind, but looking at politics and policy in the state - want to start talking about some big news that broke yesterday with Joe Biden pardoning federal simple possession of marijuana. What did you see as the most important takeaways from this settlement?
[00:04:33] Evelyn Chow: What we saw yesterday - huge news, in terms of Joe Biden setting his agenda by making the statement that, on a federal level, simple possession convictions of marijuana will be pardoned. And I think across the board we've seen a lot of different parties, people, interests react. On my end, while I'm really hopeful that states will follow suit across the US and do the same thing, which will impact more people, I also want to. acknowledge also that pardons don't mean, necessarily, released from prison. Nor are they expungements of criminal records. And the administration does say that about 6,000 people will be pardoned. And which is really again, huge - it means you're forgiven - but it's still on paper. I would love to see the expungement of it from records, though we also know, just from doing work in community, that expungements are costly. Lawyers have to file the expungement, on top of cost of filing, and they know that this is a cost that a lot of working class people might not be able to afford. And the method becomes like a fiscal generator for municipalities.
Sorry, now we're going down the rabbit hole of the negative or maybe the under-the-surface, but I think on the surface this is really huge. I do hope to see more states follow suit in that - this is not nothing. For a lot of, I think, abolitionists and criminal legal system reform advocates, I've seen a lot of this just kind of brush through. And I understand where that sentiment comes from and at the same time, this is not nothing. This just - it's a something that will hopefully evolve.
[00:06:31] Crystal Fincher: It is, absolutely - I think that's exactly right. It's something that is positive, that hopefully continues to evolve here in Washington State - we've been more fortunate than a lot of other states in the country. There are states where you can go to jail for possessing a joint, where there is no legalization at all. We're used to the ability to go to the store here and pick out our selection of weed - that is not the case in a lot of the country. And there have been recent - pretty pointed - efforts on behalf of the Republican Party in several states to roll back marijuana legalization. So it is not even like legalization, in one form or another, is even safe in places where it has been implemented. So I think this is important - one, as you said, in setting the agenda and really urging states to move down the path of decriminalization, which I think is important, and just puts a little bit of external pressure on different states.
I was surprised to hear about this just because of the news, previously, that Biden didn't have the friendliest marijuana policy for his own administration and looking at issues with that. But I do think that this moves the conversation forward across the entire country. We're ahead of the conversation a little bit in Washington State, but a lot of people are not there and this is meaningful for a lot of people in states where the population - the people there - want this change, but they have leaders who are very, very resistant. Also, looking at the rescheduling of this - to keep it from being classified similarly as heroin or fentanyl - it clearly is not. All the public health data shows that, and it's a barrier to research and a bunch of other things. So this is a step in the right direction, I think. Still have a lot more to go, but it's a fight that Biden is willing to take on even before we get to these elections. It's a winning issue and it's the right thing to do. So if you can - absolutely, if you can win on an issue and it's the right thing to do, should be moving forward with it. And I'm glad to see that this happened.
So in other news this week, we saw that the King County Jail is lacking water. They've lacked water for a week. This is a story that PubliCola broke on Thursday, I believe. And we've seen news and lots of people have made their opinions known about the water crisis in Jackson - sometimes it's just, Oh my goodness, that's horrible there, it could never happen here. It's happening here. It's happening in a place where people have literally no other choice, no other option about what to do. They're being given bottled water instead of being able to access the water, because there are currently health issues. And there are questions about whether people are even getting enough water - it looks like they're having to choose between hydration and hygiene. What do you see with this?
[00:09:52] Evelyn Chow: I have a status as a volunteer at the women's prison down in Purdy, in Tacoma. And was a volunteer for a few years until COVID, in which - none of us have been able to get back in for programming, except for a few of the churches - which is a discussion for another time. But, I think often the way that we see punishment in this country is, in a way, a just sweeping things under the rug - putting people in prisons and jails is this. And when you put people there, there's that perception of - all of the stigmatization of what you put on a population that has often done things that maybe you have also, but maybe I've had the privilege of not being caught for. And what happens to those people is they get forgotten, or they get put into conditions that we would never ourselves want to be in, regardless of any of the harm that we have caused as individuals. I think in this issue - sorry to get philosophical with it, I just needed to set that context of -
[00:10:59] Crystal Fincher: No apologies necessary.
[00:11:01] Evelyn Chow: This is not, obviously, the first time in the US or even across the world where prisons, people who are getting placed into prison, are experiencing extremely degrading and violent circumstances, right? From the article, we hear that there are women in the jail who are getting their period and they're unable to get a change of underwear for the week. And this is also something that is across the board even pre-COVID, pre-pandemic times, of people needing to spend the very limited resources they have on hygiene products - things that should be guaranteed rights for people. It's inhumane, it's also just a clear liability for the county.
[00:11:47] Crystal Fincher: It's infuriating. It's infuriating because - one, this could have, this started and went on for a week before it even caught notice. And thankfully for PubliCola's reporting, it did - otherwise it would've gone on longer - that inmates often have no voice in our community. We make it so hard for people who are incarcerated to communicate, to advocate for anything. They frequently face punishment for just bringing up issues of clear illegality, or challenges just in terms of health, violations of policy - and too many people in the community who just feel like we can discard rights of people who are incarcerated or that somehow they're deserving of it. And if someone is incarcerated, the sentence is the incarceration. That does not in any way absolve all of us because they are being held, on behalf of our society with our tax dollars - this is a community responsibility to make sure they are treated as humans. One, because it's the right thing to do. They should not be subjected to harsh, inhumane, insufficient - facilities, supplies, regulations, any of that. We should be treating them and making sure they have all of the provisions they need. And it's wrong morally not to do so, it's also highly ineffective and increases the chances that they're going to come out when they get released - because everybody's, just about everybody's getting released - and are not going to be able to successfully integrate into our society and contribute to the problems that so many people then complain about on the other side.
We have to invest in people, treat people, make sure they have resources - access to education, access to therapeutic programming, arts, lots of different things. We need to make sure that they come out more whole than they go in, if they are going in. That is what's best for our community, that's what's best for the safety of everyone, that's what's best for legal liability resources. And so this is just infuriating. And on top of this, the jails are understaffed. And so there's a big question about - are people dehydrated right now? They don't have a way to tell us most of the time. They are limited to receiving one bottle of water at a time - I'm assuming these are small, 20-ounce bottles of water that we normally see - because they're afraid of affiliated, associated safety concerns. They can exchange an empty bottle for a full bottle. How frequently is that opportunity to exchange? Why are we rationing water to people? It just doesn't make sense, we have to do better - this is - we have to do better. And so this is on Dow Constantine, this is on all the employees there, this is on every elected official - the King County Council. We have to do better - this is inexcusable.
[00:15:22] Evelyn Chow: And I'd also, if I could Crystal, just point out - this recent, this ongoing water shutoff is only the most recent example of the different types of problems that they've been experiencing at the jail over the past few years, if not since the jail has been there. We've been hearing from folks there that they are getting limited access to medical care, to their attorneys, to even spend time calling people like family members and loved ones. All of this has been exacerbated by COVID, but is a statement of the existing conditions at a lot of these jails and prisons. So I agree - there has to be a better way of - people need to do better, our electeds need to do better.
[00:16:04] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and these are public resources that are being spent or misspent in these ways. We need to demand better. They must do better. And to your point, this is the latest in a litany - and as a reminder, both public defenders and the corrections officers in our King County jails came together earlier this year to ask King County to release more prisoners 'cause they're woefully understaffed. This is a safety issue for the corrections officers, it's a safety and health issue for the people who are incarcerated there. It is working for nobody and ignoring this is only allowing those conditions to get worse. Someone is going to end up injured, ill, or worse. And this is entirely preventable.
In other news, more discussion this week about Mayor Harrell's budget proposal, including part of the proposal that he has to address gun violence with the ShotSpotter surveillance program. What is this program and what is your perspective on this?
[00:17:12] Evelyn Chow: Shotspotter is a private program and it's - over the past years - been marketed to dozens of cities across the US. However, they've proven to have little investment on their return. So the description of what they are proposing that this technology does is - it's a microphone system and it triangulates the location of where they would hear supposed, or alleged, gunshots. And that would allow first responders, specifically the police, to show up to that scene quickly and supposedly de-escalate the situation or apprehend whoever had fired a gun. I think the system, as we've seen in cities across the US like in Charlotte and in others that have actually used this technology - we've seen that the system generates a lot of notifications when the sensors are triggered. But there's very little evidence that that data leads to any arrests, convictions, or even - most importantly - victim assistance. Cities across the US have already been canceling their contracts with ShotSpotter for the past few years, citing the poor results. And I think even in New York City, the system had triggered enough false positives that the NYPD Deputy Commissioner a few years ago was like - this is an unsuccessful system and it just logs noise. It was logging things like an exploding volleyball - like a popped volleyball - or a car backfiring.
And so I think, before we choose to invest a million dollars in this upcoming budget cycle in a technology that is proven time and again and again that it doesn't work - perhaps that million dollars could be better spent in other places that will actually promote community and public safety. And I just also want to make the point that there is already increased surveillance technology equipment in SPD, especially around South Seattle communities, but citywide. And the data that it collects is not transparent in any way. With existing technologies and this new proposed, or not necessarily new, but proposed technology - we need to, at least - the public deserves to know how that data will be used and who will have access to it. I know a few years ago, when the ShotSpotter was being proposed, they talked about how it, as a private entity company, owns that data. And so there's a lot of repercussions that I can see coming up with - if the city decides to move forward with implementing ShotSpotter. And I also hear a lot of people who have very fair questions, candidly, about whether this is going to be effective at all. And, my answer is no.
[00:20:17] Crystal Fincher: Your answer is no. And so many different entities' answers are no. An AP investigation earlier this year found serious flaws with prosecutors using ShotSpotter for evidence - noting, as you said - it can miss live gunfire next to its microphone, but misclassify the sounds of fireworks or cars backfiring as gunshots. A study published last year in the peer-reviewed Journal of Urban Health found that ShotSpotter appeared to have no significant impact on firearm-related homicides or arrest outcomes in 68 large metropolitan counties from 1999 to 2016. It has no impact on gun crime, it has no impact on public safety. A separate study on Philadelphia's use of SENTRI, a ShotSpotter alternative - and it's important to note that there are different alternatives - they all experience these problems, so if they substitute another one with ShotSpotter, these surveillance programs that are essentially trying to hack public safety and hack a solution to gun violence are just not effective - that found that the technology increased police workload. At a time where they keep complaining that they're overworked, that they don't have enough police to address public safety concerns - it increased police workload by sending officers to incidents where no evidence of a shooting was found.
So once again, we're in a situation where Bruce Harrell has the opportunity to define what his plan for public safety is going to be and we're hearing things, that not only have no evidence that they're going to work, they have evidence to the contrary. While lots of people are suggesting things that are backed by data, backed by evidence - when he came in office, he said, Look, I'm going to be evidence-based, data-driven. People are like, So here's that evidence that you said you wanted, and here's this data that you had said you wanted - let's do this. And it's, No, let's go to this thing that has been demonstrated not to work. And we do need public safety solutions. We do need to make our streets safer. We do need to reduce the amount of people who are being victimized urgently. And we can't afford to waste this time and money on solutions that have proven not to make people anymore safe. We just can't afford this. And I am asking, I'm begging public officials to - yes, follow the data. There is so much available that shows what is helpful and useful to do. And I will note that some programs - Bruce has defunded, that have been effective in doing this this year, so it's just frustrating to see.
And I wonder - this is me wondering, obviously - a lot of people have moved here over the last 10 years and may not remember Bruce Harrell being on the City Council. He was for quite some time. And I think that we are hearing a number of proposals that were talked about 10 years ago when he was on the council. And he was on the council for several years - for a decade, basically.
[00:23:39] Evelyn Chow: I think three terms - yeah.
[00:23:41] Crystal Fincher: Yes, and so it's like we're bringing back the hits from 2010, 2012 - and sometimes, there was even some promise for some of those things at that time. Wow - they've been implemented in so many cities across the US, we've had the opportunity to gather data and figure out what has evidence of effectiveness and what doesn't. And that just doesn't seem to enter into what they're proposing. It's really confusing and we're waiting - we're waiting on proposals that will make people more safe - and more than just hiring more police, which can't even happen until next year. What is going to happen now to make people more safe? It's frustrating, as I am sure you deal with in a very immediate and present way on a daily basis.
[00:24:35] Evelyn Chow: Yeah, absolutely. Everything you said - public safety, community safety is an urgent issue and they keep trying these tried techniques, right? Tough on crime didn't work in the nineties, it's not going to work now. And investing in all of these things that are scientifically, with data and evidence, proven not to work is just not the way we need to move forward. And I think similar to King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay's op-ed in the Times, I think a few weeks ago now, talking about how public safety is not about scoring political points. I think the executive put out this proposal with a very specific - I guess, his specific base in mind. And that does not encompass the lived realities of a lot of people across, especially South Seattle, but across the City as well.
[00:25:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. So we'll continue to keep our eye on that. Also, it's budget season in the City, in the County - which you are in the middle of and steeped in. And so, there was an article in Capitol Hill Seattle this week covering the $30 million Seattle participatory budgeting effort that is now gearing up. What is happening with this, and what is happening just in the budget process overall?
[00:25:53] Evelyn Chow: The mayor gets eight months to put together his proposed budget and then it comes to Council - it came on September 27th, a few weeks ago now - and we get about eight weeks in the council to splice and dice that budget. And you brought up participatory budgeting - I am glad to see that - I think the context, to just set a little bit of groundwork for participatory budgeting - this was money that was allocated in September of 2020, following the protests that sparked nationwide after the police murders of George Floyd, of Brianna Taylor, of too many others. And it really came as a demand from community to the council to direct money into community-led safety initiatives. And this is an opportunity for the community that's most impacted, that's usually furthest away from being able to make decisions about how their money is spent, to be engaged in that process. And the Seattle City Council allocated $30 million into this participatory budgeting process, and this is going to be the largest undertaking in, I believe, North America with a similar initiative. And so just a little bit more of groundwork before I get to where we're at - King County Council did the same allocation on a smaller scale of $11 million. And they've already executed their contracts and that money has gone out into community. I believe it was about $11 million to 45 different community-based organizations.
And where we are now - it's been a couple of years since the money has been allocated, and I know that some people are starting to ask - what's the status update? And I know in the Neighborhoods, Education, and Civil Rights Committee on the Seattle City Council - we recently held presentations to get that status update from the King County Council and the Seattle Office of Civil Rights, where that contract is now housed. And so - I believe they're in the design process and that they are working to make sure that community engagement is really steeped in this step and every step along the way to direct this funding. I think at this point, it sounds like the group that got contracted from the City is called the Participatory Budgeting Project. They're a national organization and they are currently working to hire local staff to help on their steering and working group committees, which will in turn shape and launch this effort. So I'm excited to see - I think at a time when we're talking about the budget season in Seattle, on the county level - and a lot of folks are feeling particularly enraged at several of the proposed line items in the mayor's budget around these new technologies, around the caps for service workers on their raises. This is an opportunity - participatory budgeting - to put funds towards, quite frankly, where the executive is not going to invest right now - in these types of solutions that we know community has already been working on, for years, to address violence on an interpersonal and on a state level. So I'm excited to see this continue to be underway.
[00:29:42] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I'm excited too and I'm broadly in favor of the community being actively engaged, actively involved in allocations that impact them and that they should have a voice. All neighborhoods in Seattle should have a voice. Traditionally, some have had much more of a voice than others. And there are some that have had many more resources, that have had close relationships, the time and ability, and frankly privilege, to get familiar with budget processes, engagement processes - which can be very exclusionary and hard to figure out how to even become a part of it. And they're not necessarily friendly to someone just walking up trying to figure out what's happening. Making sure that we reach out to every single community in the City and that they have a voice in shaping the investments is really important. I'm also excited to see this, excited for this money to get distributed and for this process to actually get started. And then for the budget process overall - so we've talked about this participatory budgeting, but this is in the context of the larger budget process overall, which is a big process - lots of resources there. I guess we'll talk about specific hearings and stuff in a moment, but what would your personal advice be, if people are looking to become more involved in budget decisions in the City, and how money is invested and where it's involved?
[00:31:26] Evelyn Chow: That's a great question because it's - I don't see it enough, especially in communities where there's intentional, whether implicit or explicit, ways to de-incentivize people from being civically engaged. Where I've seen the people build the most power - and we saw this in 2020, as well as when people with their specific values and interests come together - and really work on contacting their elected representatives, setting up meetings throughout the year, making sure they're being held accountable to the votes they're taking in committees, in Full Councils and being like - here are the updates that I see on the ground, as people who are doing work as - at community-based organizations and non-profits, etc. And here's the needs that we see emerging in our communities, and here's what you can do about it in the budget season.
[00:32:16] Crystal Fincher: So I'm glad that participatory budgeting is hopefully going to be getting underway. At least they're hiring - hopefully the money actually gets distributed soon. Engaging in budget processes is always complicated overall. I'm sitting here - I've worked in politics for a while, I've worked with tons of people who've worked with budgets - and budgets are so opaque and so complicated, and so - these are documents over, that are thousands of pages long, oftentimes. You have to have a deep and intimate familiarity with everything to even understand what they are. You can see the numbers on the paper, but is that more than I spent before? Is that less? What does that mean? Where did this money come from? Is this continuing? It's a complicated and convoluted thing. And we have this budget process, which is at a certain period of time during the year.
One, I always just want to reiterate and reinforce with people, 'cause we don't talk about this enough, I don't think - is that a lot of the groundwork, whether it's budget, whether it's legislation, or anything - there's a period of time where there are hearings and everything to discuss it and that's valuable. But a lot of the groundwork, a lot of what actually shapes that - happens long before that process. And so the importance of engaging within community, within organizations that are familiar with the budget and advocating there, being familiar with your County Council person, City Council person, mayor and keeping that line of communication open - and anyone can call your elected representatives. They are your elected representatives. If you are a resident - you don't have to be documented, you don't have to be anything else. If you live in whatever jurisdiction, they represent you and they should be responsive to you. But you can ask questions, you can do all that kind of stuff and start there. That's always helpful to do and sometimes that helps to get an understanding of things so that when these processes do officially ramp up, that you know where everything stands and can be prepared to advocate for what you want - hopefully already getting that and how it's shaped in there. But if you don't, you're prepared to advocate. For people who are getting engaged in this process now - now that this process has spun up - what are ways that people can get involved, whether it's hearings or anything else?
[00:34:43] Evelyn Chow: Couldn't have said it more eloquently - thank you, Crystal. I can give a vague overview, or I can give a timeline of the budget process. Anyone in the public gets to provide feedback on the budget. You can call your representatives, you can send emails into their offices. I will say that mail form responses don't receive as many individual responses as just a personal - Hey, I'm concerned about this - you know what's going on. The Seattle City Council does have public hearings. There will be three in the next few weeks. The next one is coming up next week on October 11th, which is a Tuesday, at 5:00 PM. And then in November there will be two public hearings on November 7th and November 15th. The Select Budget Committee will be meeting throughout these weeks. And on the first meetings of the Select Budget Committee, I believe there will also be public comment allowed. Now this is a shift from, I think previous years where, people could give public comment at each committee hearing, and so I've definitely heard some pushbacks on there. I think a lot of the reasoning is just that - we are still in COVID but - yes, there will be those public hearings. And folks are able to give feedback in public comment during the Budget Committee hearings. And the first one had already happened on September 28th. There will be another one coming up on October 11th, similarly, but in the morning. And those Select Budget Committee meetings are happening all week.
And next week is when the Council is going into, going to deep dive into basically every issue area with the Central Staff. And so it starts next Tuesday - I believe Tuesday is just going to be a general overview of the General Fund and Capital Investments. And then each day throughout the week - Wednesday, Thursday and Friday - they'll be covering several different issue areas, whether it's SPD, homelessness, Office of Planning and Community Development. And so - folks are really encouraged to stay on top of the Budget Committee meetings as well - there is a link on the City of Seattle's website to stay on top of when these committee meetings are happening throughout the weeks. So just to summarize, there will be Budget Committee meetings that folks can give either remote or in-person public comment to - for the Select Budget Committee, which is just made up of members of the Seattle City Council. And there will be public hearings on the budget specifically. The first one is set for next Tuesday, and then there will also be on - November 8th and November 15th. And at any time throughout the budget process, folks are encouraged to reach out to their elected officials, to stay on top of their representatives - either social media, newsletters, mail - all of the different forms to get information. And partnering up and joining up with these organizations that you specified, Crystal, that have been doing this type of advocacy work and have dedicated staff people to dissect those year-round. Just a number of ways -
[00:37:56] Crystal Fincher: There are - number of ways - not the simplest process to follow, but there are ways to get engaged. One of those groups with the Seattle Solidarity Budget - we'll include all of this information and all of the dates that Evelyn just talked about in our show notes - Solidarity Budget is another effort involved in this budget process, a more community-focused budget that they're advocating for. The website will also link to - has information, ways to advocate, you can look through that - also, ways to help - social media stuff - with alt text provided for the social media graphics that they provided, which I appreciate. But just a lot of different things. So I encourage people to get involved because we all talk about the impacts and effects of there's not enough funding here, and we need to do this, and why aren't we doing this? And this is how these decisions are made, this is where those funding decisions are solidified, and this is the time to engage if you have an opinion about what is happening within your city. That's a lot there. It's a lot to go through, but definitely worth it.
I also want to cover news - it's been making news throughout the past several weeks. Just talking about the SoDo shelter expansion and some pushback from within the CID. Starting off - what is happening, Evelyn? And then we can talk about some thoughts about what's happening.
[00:39:32] Evelyn Chow: Yes, I'm happy to give a quick overview of that. King County is planning to expand their - this enhanced shelter, that is currently housed in SoDo. It's right along the bottom edge of the CID, under where the Uwajimaya is on the south end. And the proposal is to expand the shelter - it currently has 269 beds, they want to add an additional 150 beds - mind you, these are congregate shelter. And they want to expand into having a behavioral health services center, as well as support for RV residents and Pallet shelters, which are essentially tiny homes. So that expansion of 150 that has been talked about by the executive - King County Executive - is going to bring the total number of people at that site to approximately 419 people. So that's just a high-level of what's happening.
[00:40:36] Crystal Fincher: And it's also known as the Megaplex, correct?
[00:40:39] Evelyn Chow: Yeah, I guess a lot of folks have been trying to call it the Megaplex. Yes.
[00:40:44] Crystal Fincher: But just for people's familiarity, if they happen to hear that term - this is what that's in reference to.
[00:40:49] Evelyn Chow: Yes. Yeah. I didn't really like that term because I feel like it dehumanizes the people who live there.
[00:40:54] Crystal Fincher: It does.
[00:40:55] Evelyn Chow: So I just call it the SoDO shelter.
[00:40:56] Crystal Fincher: Yes.
[00:40:57] Evelyn Chow: But you are correct that that is what it's being called by a lot of more clickbait media. The Seattle City Council allotted funding from their federal ARPA - the emergency, the American Rescue Plan Act - funding towards this. And last year, I believe that Councilmember Tammy Morales did propose an amendment to divert that funding from where it currently is to the Salvation Army Shelter, to instead Chief Seattle Club for them to build a unit or several units of non-congregate shelter. But that amendment did not pass. And towards the late summer of this year, I think around September, is when we heard of the plans for expansion. That is when the county had announced, more fully to the public at the CID Public Safety Forum, and there are claims of doing community engagement before these plans started moving forward. The county claims to have done community engagement prior to the implementation of these plans. And I think a lot of community folks have pushed back being like - No, we actually didn't hear about this at all. They have their list of people that they've reached out to and we've heard some critiques be - Yes, we did hear about a plan to expand a shelter, but I think if we had known the size of this project, we would've had more engagement. And so I think, just on the government side, there hasn't been a lot of authentic community engagement with folks in the CID.
And there are other players in this situation, namely some right-wing think tanks of the Discovery Institute that have been trying to co-opt what is happening in the CID for their political agendas. And so it's created this extremely tense environment to be able to talk about the dynamics of - yes, everyone deserves housing, everyone deserves shelter - I think there's no doubt there. There are indeed some people who don't believe that, who are part of the pushback. And the CID is a really small neighborhood, it's also the third CID that the City of Seattle has seen, right? They've already relocated two times. And throughout the pandemic, a lot of folks in the CID have burdened a lot of the the impacts of the pandemic. And businesses have been slow to open back up if they have it all. There's boarded up windows everywhere and people generally have really valid concerns around public safety in the neighborhood. There are a lot of other government projects that are taking place in the neighborhood that have been plowed through without also similar meaningful community engagement. Most recently, the Sound Transit expansion of the West Seattle Ballard Link extension, where their proposed Fifth Ave or Fourth Ave options still do propose closing businesses - and all of this to say, and I'm sure there's more to say - there's a lot of moving factors around what's happening in the CID right now. I think some of the bottom lines are that the community there does not feel like engaged in these decisions that are being made. Going back to our conversation earlier around participatory budgeting, it's really important to have dedicated forces of people who will meaningfully take what people have to say and propose solutions, have meaningful dialogue.
And people also need to be housed and it's an urgent crisis. So this is where we're at. I will say, just in the blog put out by the King County on this project, they stated that the lease renewal for that site in SoDo, which currently encompasses the Salvation Army Center as well as the surrounding block - it is supposed to be a one-time lease for five years. If they did not use the funds they secured to renew this lease, they would've had to close this already-existing 270-bed shelter which seems like a terrible ultimatum to give in a lease - it's like they had to renew the lease and take that additional property. And so now they're trying to find uses for that property - and so that's where I've seen the county's messaging come through.
[00:46:03] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for that overview - it's good kind of level setting for the conversation. I guess thinking about this - one, I've seen a lot of reactions to this. I've seen a lot of commentary. And a lot of it has just been dismissive in one way or another. And looking at the situation and - Oh, these are people, this shouldn't be anywhere and this isn't the solution. Or these are NIMBYs just not wanting this there. And I think we have to be real. And sometimes, oftentimes, these conversations aren't simple. One, as you said, engagement is so important. You just talked about the West Seattle Bridge extension - even with the deep bore tunnel and that issue was hard on that community - that community homes so many services and service centers overall there - just so many different things involved there. And we keep asking a small percentage of the communities in Seattle and in King County to bear the majority of the brunt of infrastructure challenges, infrastructure disruptions - public safety concerns aren't being held, or being heard, or being dismissed. And yes, there are challenges everywhere in the City, including there, with people who need housing. Yes, there are challenges there and so many places in the City with people feeling unsafe in their neighborhood. But there seems to be a divergence between how those concerns are heard and what is done in response. And what I continue to hear from people in the CID, people in the Rainier Valley, people in other places are - Hey, people in Magnolia are saying this and we are saying this. And they keep getting listened to over there and somehow projects always get diverted away from there and then land here. Projects always get picketed somewhere else and then land here. And we have been doing our fair share and other people have not. And so once again, you're asking us to bear the brunt of this without even having a conversation with us first. And kind of news flash - if the community is saying you haven't done adequate engagement, you haven't done adequate engagement. That is the community that wants you to engage with them. You gotta go deeper than the organizations that you have - like that's a flag and a signal to the organization - you have to go wider and deeper than you have before, clearly.
At the same time, there are also people with bad faith criticisms. There have been some King County GOP efforts - they showed up with picket signs and basically astroturfed some stuff and are joining onto this effort to try and get publicity to try and characterize it in their own way. And so certainly, that's a bad faith effort and they're not coming with the same concerns. They're not rooted or invested in that community and they're exploiting that community. But that does not give us the right, or I guess the moral authority, to then ignore the concerns that are genuinely rooted in that community. And so there should have been better engagement, there needs to be more engagement clearly. There need to be more alternatives cited. There need to be invest - we have to look into how we determine where potential sites for this are. We talk after the fact - well, these requirements or specifications for a desirable location say it can't be near this, and it has to be that, and it can't be near this. Well, yeah - they're written that way to exclude certain communities. How do we make this impact more equitable? How do we make sure that we don't unduly burden individual communities and ask people to continue to bear the brunt of what other neighborhoods say that they don't want. And how do we make it work all over the place?
So I do think this is not a simple solution. We do have a crisis of people on the street and they do need to get housed. We need to take action on that quickly. We can't do that without listening to community, and we can't shortcut this process by just saying, Okay, we'll just put it over here again. We can do it over here and maybe they won't yell as loud as some people in other neighborhoods, or maybe because they may not have enough financial resources, that they won't be, they won't have enough time to engage and they won't be as much of a "headache" to us as other people will consistently - it's just not good enough. And we have to engage with that reality. We have to talk within communities. And that doesn't mean that those communities are automatically NIMBYs for that, right? They have valid concerns that we have to listen to and work through.
[00:51:34] Evelyn Chow: Yeah, and something else on this issue that I just, I really wish I was seeing more of - from both the county and other local partners on this - is engagement with the actual people who are living unhoused by that shelter. I think in terms of the the people who are involved in these decisions, that's one entity. The people who are housed in the neighborhood, or provide services, or have businesses in the neighborhood - that's another one. Also, I want to hear also directly from the people who are living outside - what their thoughts of - a lot of, and I won't say this is either in good or bad faith, but we've been seeing protests outside of the existing Salvation Army shelter for the past few weeks now, since the news broke. And the shelter is right next to a large, I guess, unsanctioned encampment of folks who have to listen to these protests day in, day out about just the circumstances that they're under in life. And I can't imagine what the relationship would continue to look like or evolve between those who are living there because they seemingly have no other options currently - and that site is also close to other services that they are receiving - and the residents and business owners of the neighborhood, many of whom have developed extremely tense relationships and antagonistic relationships with each other over the past years, especially since COVID when just socioeconomic conditions across the nation have worsened. And I just think, in moving forward with these conversations, the engagement has to be inclusive of the whole CID community. I think a lot of the folks who are very vocal now are the ones who are also historically vocal in a lot of decisions. And that's not to say it's a good or bad thing, it's just there's a lot more to folks in the CID than the three dozen people who show up to protest because they have that time every week.
[00:53:54] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - well said. So I hope that engagement does happen with this - continued and for all the future stuff. And we have to look at why we keep having to have these conversations in the exact same communities and they're telling us that, repeatedly - Hey, there hasn't been enough engagement and now you are just implementing something, ramming it through, and we're paying the price. We're happy to do our fair share but why are we doing the majority of it when the rest of the City exists? And that's with this issue, that's with so many issues. It's with issues surrounding public safety, around environmental and climate change, impacts around education, around so many things. And the reasons why are related and share the same root cause. So I hope there are better conversations about this while also - no need to entertain the bad faith conversations, but engage with community.
[00:54:57] Evelyn Chow: Unfortunately, the bad faith conversations are really good at co-opting narratives right now. So I think it's on -
[00:55:02] Crystal Fincher: Yes, they are.
[00:55:03] Evelyn Chow: - people with, it's on people to, if they don't already have existing relationships, build those and continue to show up, especially our elected leaders. To make sure that everyone is being served in the best possible way.
[00:55:17] Crystal Fincher: And with that, I want to thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, October 7th, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Production Coordinator is Bryce Cannatelli. Our insightful co-host today is Evelyn Chow. You can find them on Twitter @EvelynTChow, E-V-E-L-Y-N-T-C-H-O-W. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just search "Hacks and Wonks." Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thank you for tuning in - and we'll talk to you next time.
On today’s midweek show, Kelly Olson and Cyril Walrond of the Washington Voting Rights Restoration Coalition join Crystal to talk about the importance of voting rights and the successful effort in the 2021 legislative session to pass HB1078, which restores those rights to all formerly incarcerated people in Washington and took effect on January 1, 2022. They discuss the impacts that historic disenfranchisement has had on marginalized communities, how democracy that purports to represent all people needs to hear all people’s voices, and how the coalition lived that philosophy by including impacted people in their leadership. Kelly and Cyril provide insight into the effective strategy used in navigating the convoluted legislative process, the critical need for education about voting rights restoration, and what we need to fight for next.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find information about the Washington Voting Rights Restoration Coalition at freethevotewa.org/.
Kelly Olson
Kelly Olson is Policy Manager and a member of the Leadership Team for the Washington Voting Rights Restoration Coalition.
Cyril Walrond
Cyril Walrond is a member of the Leadership and Steering Committees for the Washington Voting Rights Restoration Coalition.
Resources Washington Voting Rights Restoration Coalition: https://www.freethevotewa.org/
HB1078 - Restoring voter eligibility for all persons convicted of a felony offense who are not in total confinement under the jurisdiction of the department of corrections: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=1078&Year=2021&Initiative=false
“Washington must allow everyone in the community to vote” by Sarah Eichhorn from Real Change Opinion: https://www.realchangenews.org/news/2021/02/03/washington-must-allow-everyone-community-vote
“WA Senate must restore voting rights for formerly incarcerated people” by Christopher Poulos from Crosscut Opinion: https://crosscut.com/opinion/2021/03/wa-senate-must-restore-voting-rights-formerly-incarcerated-people
“Washington State Senate Passes Voting Rights Restoration Bill” by abigail from Washington Voting Justice Coalition: https://wavotingjustice.org/washington-state-senate-passes-voting-rights-restoration-bill/
“Bill restores voting rights to Washingtonians with felonies upon release from prison” by Joseph O’Sullivan from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/inslee-signs-bill-restoring-voting-rights-to-washingtonians-with-felonies-upon-release-from-prison/
“What It Feels Like to Have Your Voting Rights Restored” by Alyssa Knight from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/guest-editorial/2022/09/13/78465879/what-it-feels-like-to-have-your-voting-rights-restored
Questions about how to vote after a felony conviction?
Resources - Washington Voting Rights Restoration Coalition: https://www.freethevotewa.org/file-share
“A guide to voting after a felony conviction in Washington State” from ACLU of Washington: https://www.aclu-wa.org/pages/voting-rights-restoration-washington-state
Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
I am very excited about this show that we're doing today - it's about a very important issue. We talk about campaigns, we talk about issues, but really - people being able to make their voice heard is the most important fundamental right that we have. And we have guests today from the Washington Voting Rights Restoration Coalition that I am just thrilled to have - so we have Kelly Olson, who's a Policy Manager and member of the Leadership Team, and Cyril Walrond, who is also on the Leadership Team and a member of the Steering Committee, with us today. Welcome!
[00:01:14] Kelly Olson: Thank you - it's good to be here.
[00:01:15] Cyril Walrond: Yeah, thank you - glad to be here with you today.
[00:01:17] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So I guess starting with Kelly - who is the Washington Voting Rights Restoration Coalition? What work do you do? And for both of you, what brought you to this work? We can start with Kelly.
[00:01:30] Kelly Olson: So the Washington Voting Rights Coalition is, as the name implies, a coalition of a bunch of different organizations and individuals who are interested in voting rights and making sure that everybody has their right to vote. And in particular, we were focused on restoring the right to vote for people who have been formerly incarcerated. And so this group came together a couple years ago to work on restoring the right to vote for - the way that it works in Washington State, or the way it did work, is that for those - once you leave incarceration and as long as you're paying on your fees and fines, you have the right to vote unless you are under community custody. So if you get out and are in work release or have some sort of probation or community custody officer, you did not have your right to vote restored until you are off community custody. So the coalition came together and felt that people who are out there in the community and working really should have their right to vote. We actually believe that the vote shouldn't be - the right to vote shouldn't be taken away in the beginning. But we're started with this and so - I, myself, am formerly incarcerated and left prison in 2007. And that's a big reason why I am involved in this and other justice, criminal justice-related causes - is to break down that stigma and the barriers that we face as we're released.
[00:03:09] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. And what brought you to this work, Cyril?
[00:03:12] Cyril Walrond: What brought me to this work is that I too am a directly impacted person. I was incarcerated for almost 17 years - since the age of 17 - and so I was incarcerated before I had the opportunity to engage in our democracy or even allow my voice to be heard, particularly on things that directly affect me and my community. And so when I think about the impact that this had on myself, as one who was incarcerated at such a young early age - I realized that we as a community too often give our power away. And the way for us to reclaim our power is by taking our power back by our voice, and making sure that our voices are heard and represented at these decision-making tables. And furthermore, to create tables for ourselves. But when I think about that, I just want to make sure that through this work and through my engagement with it, that others can see themselves in this work - other young people, young Black men who have been captured within this system, the criminal justice system, to realize that their voice matters, their experience matters. And for other BIPOC people to realize that we don't need to continue to allow ourselves to be marginalized by a system that been set up to marginalize us, but we have ownership and stake that we can put in at wherever we are and whatever our experiences may be.
[00:04:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely - it's so important. And one thing I think is that a lot of people don't realize how many people are currently and formerly have been incarcerated.
[00:04:34] Cyril Walrond: Oh yeah, for sure.
[00:04:34] Crystal Fincher: And how many people are disenfranchised, have been disenfranchised - are caught up in this system. How does this impact the community and how many people are we talking about here?
[00:04:45] Cyril Walrond: I believe that I saw a number that this piece of legislation that we helped to pass - House Bill 1078 - was going to restore the right to vote for about 20,000 people. And I believe that when we look at that number, that's 20,000 people who are community members that were disenfranchised. And particularly when we think about voting and elections on a municipal level or the local level, that has significant change because the margins for these votes are so small and so tight. But what's even more shocking to me is how the place that our most commonly marginalized, when it comes to the vote or the greatest disparities, are often some of the - we have epicenters of disenfranchisement within our communities and that's where the brunt of this number comes from.
[00:05:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. Why is this so impactful to you, Kelly?
[00:05:40] Kelly Olson: The big reason for me is just understanding the racism that was involved in taking the right to vote away in the beginning. It was meant to suppress the vote of marginalized communities, specifically the Black community - and understanding that and fighting for it, I think, is really what got me interested in it. And making sure that we get the right to vote back to as many people as we can and we'll continue fighting until we can stop it from being taken away in the first place.
[00:06:14] Crystal Fincher: So that House Bill 1078, Cyril, that you talked about - passing and successfully passing through the Legislature. It is not easy to pass legislation. It is not easy to go through the creation, to go through the confusing and often dramatic process of it going between committees and all of the hearings and all of that. What was the process like for you in passing this legislation? And looking at that experience, how do you think you going through that helps you moving forward?
[00:06:47] Cyril Walrond: So for me, the experience was a learning experience. I had not been actively engaged in politics or in this arena. And typically when you have these structures of systemic power, they speak a language that excludes those who are impacted by those decisions. And so for me, being in this position and being able to have the privilege of engaging in this work, I realized that I was learning a new language, right? And through learning this new language, I was trying to share this language to my brothers and my comrades and my counterparts who were also co-laboring with me in this work. And in doing this, I was able to say, Hey, well, this language may sound one way, but in reality this is all that is saying and this is all that it means. And so really, while they're trying to push us out and exclude us through that - No, in reality, no. We speak just like this in our own language and now let us find our voices to push back.
[00:07:41] Crystal Fincher: For you, Kelly, what was this process of going through the legislative process with this effort like for you?
[00:07:48] Kelly Olson: Like Cyril said, it was a real learning experience. I did intern at the Legislature a few years after prison, and so I learned a lot about it then. And our director at my job, which is the Civil Survival Project, is a state legislator and she was the prime sponsor of the bill and also formerly incarcerated. And so I think that brought a lot of power to the bill, but also brought somebody who is from our community as far as being formerly incarcerated and somebody who really could speak to why this is so important and help us understand the process. And we had a lot of people in the community that have been around - lobbyists and other people - that really helped us understand the language, understand the unwritten rules of the Legislature - which is the hardest rules to learn - and I think just making those connections and building a network. And it did take a couple legislative sessions - so I worked on this bill for two years - two different legislative sessions to get it passed. So we learned a lot - in the first session when we pulled the bill off the Senate floor, the debate got ugly - they used horrible language. And we ended up saying, Just pull the bill - and we started over for the next session.
[00:09:15] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I remember that. It was a very, very ugly debate and really showed how important it is to have people who are directly impacted and who do have experience with this to talk about how impactful it is and what it definitely means. And not this caricature that some people have in their minds from the decades of misinformation surrounding issues like this. So in this process - the process of passing legislation can be challenging. Having a legislator like Representative Tarra Simmons, who was able to understand some of the experiences that you've had and bring her expertise and experience to this has been important. But it also took community to do this. What was that effort like and what was the community effort like in passing this legislation?
[00:10:07] Cyril Walrond: Yeah, I believe that the community effort in passing this legislation was relentless. There was a commitment throughout the state of different stakeholders and committed community members who were devoted to seeing the passage of this piece of legislation. As we had our coalition calls and our meetings - and in fact during this time, I was actually calling from inside of prison myself while I was still in custody - but while we're doing this work, we see regularly that people are championing within their own districts, that people are writing letters and engaging with legislators, that there was a collective push and effort to make sure that we were moving to put pressure on our individual legislators, but also to make sure that the broader work was being done. And the values and principles that the collective was standing on were very well in line, so as we got to the point of the legislative session - that we all were in agreement and alignment and knew - with clarity - where we wanted to go and how we wanted to get this done. And so that it was accountable to those who it would be impacting.
[00:11:10] Crystal Fincher: And what was the experience like working with Representative Tarra Simmons?
[00:11:14] Cyril Walrond: The experience working with Representative Tarra Simmons was quite the experience. Having a representative who experienced not only incarceration, but disenfranchisement, and to have her champion this bill was an incredible asset and just a great way to leverage the bill and the momentum that community was pushing forward with this. She was able to bring in her experience and, even as a young legislator, had the zealousness behind her and just a commitment and effort to do things that many other legislators wouldn't have done. And in particular, I think about the way in which she tried and attempted to move accountably with community and for community, particularly those who are impacted by this piece of legislation. That was something that I recognized that she did. And honestly, nobody's perfect, but I believe that the way that she went about it was a shift in a new direction of how things can go and how we can move towards more accountable representation in the legislative process.
[00:12:17] Crystal Fincher: Kelly, you talked about this being a multi-session effort, that this wasn't successful on its first time. What was that process like? How did you stay organized and keep the momentum going after the setback in the prior session? And how did you organize for the successful push in this past session?
[00:12:39] Kelly Olson: Yeah, I think a big part of it was - the first year that I worked on it, I was really just a member of the coalition and not super - not quite as engaged. And in the second year, we really pushed to have directly impacted people at the leadership. And so there was actually four of us who were formerly incarcerated and then Cyril who is currently incarcerated, that took over the leadership in the second year. And I think that really helped with the grassroots organizing and getting people directly involved. We also worked hard to understand who - where some of the opposition was. And we worked hard in particular to get the county auditors on board. A lot of the pushback on the opposition and some of the things that we really stood strong on was we wanted a really clean bill. We didn't want to have what's called a carveout, where we say - well, people committed of this crime are worthy to vote, and people committed of this crime are not worthy of vote. We believe that you go through the criminal justice system, you have your hearing, you get judged - and we shouldn't be judged every time where we turn around. And so one of the things that I think was also helpful was getting the county auditors on board - they actually preferred a really clean bill, which they call "a bright line" - if you wanted to carveout for certain offenses, then you have auditors having to look into people's criminal records and decide what kind of crime they have, do they qualify, do they not qualify? But early on, and Cyril was a big part of this too, we set our values and we really had held strong to - we were not going to - we didn't want to see a bill pass that had any carveouts based on a type of crime. It was either all of us, or none of us. And so that was a really big thing. And I think having the momentum of Rep Simmons in there and having that lived experience to help us on the inside helped. But as Cyril mentioned, the grassroots organizing on the outside was really important.
[00:14:54] Crystal Fincher: So as we look at - the legislation was passed, now it's been implemented - people are eligible. How are you working to get the word out to communities? Because I would think that there's still a lot of people who are just learning that they're eligible - I know I certainly learned this too long after the fact. And speaking to other people, they're still getting out. What efforts, Cyril, are being made now to make sure everybody who is eligible to vote knows that they are?
[00:15:28] Cyril Walrond: There's a number of different efforts that are taking place through the work of our coalition and in other spaces to inform community - to our returning community members, such as myself, that their voices matter and that their right to vote has been restored. For myself - real quick - I actually was released August 1st, and by August 2nd, I not only was a registered voter, but I actually had voted for the first time. And when I did that, I was able to share my experience with those who I engage with and let them know - if I can do this a day out of prison, after almost 17 years, you can do this, right? And explain to them and educate them on their rights, educate them on just the history of voter disenfranchisement, and furthermore our need to get engaged. So there is the organic and individual work that's being done by the work of the credible messengers, who was a part of this coalition and individually lived experiences, who actively engage in educating community and host different events. There's work that's being done through the Communications Committee and working on art installations and different ways of actively engaging with community artists, with those who are storytellers, on how to share this message and build the narrative on the importance of voting rights.
But there's many, many things that are being done actively. Let me not forget the work that's being done around jail voting. When it comes to jail voting, many people are - they feel that they're disenfranchised pre-trial. But in reality, you still have your right to vote even before or up until you get convicted of a crime. And we are doing work to educate people - going into jails, letting them know what's taking place, how people are able to be registered while in jail, as well as once they get out of prison have their rights restored. So there's education, education, education - making sure people know and that people are learning these things at every level and every step of the way.
[00:17:40] Crystal Fincher: And that's so important. Thank you for mentioning that because it is so true - people are innocent until proven guilty. And we just recently did a show on bail reform and talked about how many people are detained pre-trial without having been convicted of a crime. So yes, they are in jail, but they have been convicted of nothing. They still have their rights, but the access to ballots, to be able to vote is so severely restricted that it is a challenge. And so thank you for bringing that up and for the work that you're doing on that. Kelly, as now you're looking, moving forward - what are other things that this coalition is advocating for?
[00:18:24] Kelly Olson: Right now our focus is really on education. In addition to just educating people on this bill, there has also been a lot of misinformation that has been part of the history of voter disenfranchisement. We have talked about wanting to do full restoration. There is some research and strategy going on around that, but it's a little bit on the back burner as we focus on education up to this next election. And then I think that we'll start to talk a little bit more about what does full restoration look like. There is fighting going on at the federal level as well to do full restoration. Full restoration is a little more complicated than just passing a bill. It needs an amendment to our State Constitution, so that makes it just a little bit more complicated and something I still need to learn more about.
[00:19:19] Crystal Fincher: Cyril, looking at the work that you've done - through all of the education, through the legislative process - certainly there have been lots of misconceptions and misunderstandings that have been brought up to you. What are the most frequent misconceptions that you encounter?
[00:19:36] Cyril Walrond: There are misconceptions that we, as incarcerated individuals and formerly incarcerated individuals, often deal with. First, the stigmatization of incarceration or having been justice impacted. With that, there is the belief of - lack of desire, lack of interest, or even lack of ability to be involved in a system or in the right to vote, right? To be able to go up, to show up, and to have your voice heard. Many people think that they're excluded because they don't understand how this system is worked, or how it's set up, or structured to work. But the reality is - what I found - is many people incarcerated are actually much more civically engaged and civically educated than many people that I've encountered in community in returning. And so it's many of us who are coming from incarceration that are educating community on what our experiences have been, and what some of these nuances are within the legislative process, as we have directly been impacted by it.
I also think another misconception is that people who - the right to vote is something that only belongs to some, right? But I believe that the reality of this is - if we believe in a democracy that represents all people, then all people's voices should be heard. But when we intentionally, or for whatever reason, exclude the voices of some - then as Kelly mentioned before, it's all of us or none. A democracy that represents some people cannot serve the interest of all people. And making sure that through the things that we do, through this work and through the acknowledgement of those misconceptions and the educating against those misconceptions, but more importantly educating to know the reality despite those misconceptions, I believe that we're able to change the narrative and allow people to see that we are lacking in the power of community and the power of our democracy because everybody's not being represented.
[00:21:39] Crystal Fincher: Excellent points. And Kelly, what are the biggest misunderstandings that you encounter?
[00:21:44] Kelly Olson: I would say that some of the biggest misunderstandings are that, especially for those of us doing this work, that we can only speak to our lived experience as being formerly incarcerated - that that's the only voice or lens that we bring to this, where we actually have a lot of other lived experience. And so a lot of times - you might be on a panel with other experts and they might ask the lawyer the policy question when I could very well answer that same question. But the question that will come to me is something about being formerly incarcerated. So remembering that we can speak on multiple topics and have a lot of depth to us - our incarceration is just one small part of our story. And actually - maybe a big part of our story - but regardless, there's a lot more depth to us than our experience of incarceration. And so just remembering that we can speak on many levels, many topics - whether it's related to incarceration or not.
[00:22:55] Crystal Fincher: Such an important point. And I have seen that personally play out in so many meetings and panels and discussions - and they're worse off for it. So a great reminder and really useful to remember that. Is there anything else you would add to that, Cyril?
[00:23:12] Cyril Walrond: I would like to add - in addition to that - that there is the belief that democracy can be monetized, that there are some who are proponents of making sure that LFO fines and different things are paid off. And I know we were able to get around that with this bill and were able to push to make sure that once an individual is returning to community, that they have their rights restored. And that was one of the areas that they really were trying to push carveouts - it's saying that legal financial obligations must be paid for. And in doing so, that goes back to and points a bright light at the racist history of voter disenfranchisement, particularly by way of Jim Crow law, Black codes, and even poll taxes. And so when we look at the origins of how there has been a history of disenfranchisement, a history of suppressing and oppressing the voices of Black and Brown people, we have to also look at how is this mechanism being done? And then question those misconceptions that are often being raised.
[00:24:11] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for that - that's important and true. Now, moving forward, I guess just as we conclude here - what advice, Kelly, would you give to people organizing - whether it's with regard to voting rights or whatever is happening in their community - what advice would you give to people about how to get involved in the processes that control how their community functions and how to make their voice heard?
[00:24:38] Kelly Olson: That's a great question. I think that getting involved with a local organization that's aligned with the work that you want to work on, paying attention to - a lot of times people don't get very involved in some of the smaller local elections, and I think it's important to get to know who your representatives are, not just at the state level, but at the local level. So, meet your elected officials, talk to them, find out what are the issues that they are working on. And letting them know what issues are important to you is really important. We've got an election coming up. I think it's really important to be educated about who the candidates are, getting involved if you can, research them, and then finding organizations. If you're formerly incarcerated, Civil Survival Project is - works on different legislation. You're welcome to reach out to our organization to get more involved and there's other organizations out there too. But I think one of the biggest things is getting to know your elected officials and getting to know the issues that are out there and that you want to work on.
[00:25:43] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. And Cyril, what advice would you give to people who want to make a difference and make their voices heard?
[00:25:50] Cyril Walrond: The advice I would give to those who want to make a difference and make their voice heard is that you can make a difference and make your voice heard. It doesn't take much, right? When we think about just the power to impact and influence change and to be agents of change within our lives and within our communities, within this country, everybody has within themselves to do it. And what you bring to the table as an individual can very well impact the collective. I think that it's important to not do it in isolation, right? There's an African proverb says, You want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And making sure that you connect with organizations that are moving accountably, that are committed to this work, that are grounded in principle and particularly principles and values that are life-affirming and humanizing and recognize the value of the individuals that that they seek to serve. Many spaces come with the mindset or concept of saviorism, as opposed to being able to cultivate and share in community together. Realizing that one thing that affects one, affects the other. And so when I think about what people can do is get out, get involved, look up and research different spaces and organizations doing this work, connect with different people that are doing this work. And more importantly, understand that if it's not there in your community, if you live in a small pocket where those things don't exist, I guarantee you that there's other like-minded people who are also impacted by the same issue. That you can begin the process of mobilizing, organizing to affect change in this area and in whatever area is affecting our community.
[00:27:37] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much for that. Thank you both - Cyril and Kelly - for joining us and sharing with us today. Very important information. You're doing excellent work educating the community. Kelly, if people want to learn more information about the coalition or get involved themselves, how can they get in contact?
[00:27:55] Kelly Olson: The best way would be through our website, which is freethevotewa.org. There's all kinds of materials on there and resources. So again, that's freethevotewa.org.
[00:28:09] Crystal Fincher: All right - thank you both and we appreciate what you are doing and we'll continue following along ourselves. Thank you very much and thanks for listening. Thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Post-Production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can follow me @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by the former Director of Progressive Majority who has now transitioned into public service but remains involved in numerous political efforts across Washington, EJ Juárez.
This week, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell announced his proposed budget for 2023-2024, and there are a number of questionable decisions that reveal where the mayor's priorities lie. Beyond moving parking enforcement back to the SPD, the budget invests in a police surveillance tool called ShotSpotter, which has been a failure in other cities where it's been implemented, resulting in lead to police overreach without a reduction in crime.
At the same time, Harrell's budget is calling to lower the cost-of-living increases for the city's human services workers, a choice that would require a change in law. At a time when inflation is hurting everyone, especially our lowest earners, and we're dealing with a number of public health crises and staffing shortages, the decision to effectively cut the pay of essential workers who are doing crucial work stands in stark contrast to the large hiring bonuses being offered to police.
King County Executive Dow Constantine and other leaders announced a new property tax that would provide $1.25B to help create new behavioral health crisis centers to help those in need receive necessary support. This proposal will need to be approved by the King County Council before being voted on in an April special election. We'll keep checking in on this plan as it develops.
In a new update on the controversy surrounding former mayor Jenny Durkan's missing text messages, a forensic analysis has found evidence that these messages were intentionally deleted, not accidentally removed. As EJ reminds us, these public records concern an issue that resulted in someone's death, and their deletion has prevented their family from getting closure. If it's determined that these messages were in fact intentionally deleted, the implications are criminal. We'll keep paying attention to this story for updates.
In the 42nd LD in Whatcom County, a State House race has seen a terrible, but not so shocking, revelation. GOP candidate Don Johnson attempted to scrub his social media feeds of racist, misogynist, and anti-semitic posts, but failed to do so before the Bellingham Herald recorded them. The Herald reported on the unacceptable posts this week, revealing a history of dangerous rhetoric and misinformation that Johnson hopped to hide.
Another reminder that Crystal will be hosting a debate between 37th LD State Rep candidates Emijah Smith and Chipalo Street on Tuesday, October 4th at 7:00pm at the Rainier Art Center and streamed live. See seattleemerald.com/debate for more details!
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at@finchfrii and find today’s co-host, EJ Juárez, at @EliseoJJuarez. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Harrell’s Budget Would Move Parking Encforcement Back to SPD, Add $10 Million to Homelessness Authority, and Use JumpStart to Backfill Budget" by Erica C. Barentt (@ericacbarnett) from Publicola (@PubliColaNews): https://publicola.com/2022/09/27/harrells-budget-would-move-parking-enforcement-back-to-spd-add-10-million-to-homelessness-authority-and-use-jumpstart-to-backfill-budget/
“Harrell budget proposal steps back on Seattle reforms including larger SPD, new plan for big business tax” by jseattle from Capitol Hill Seattle Blog: https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2022/09/harrell-budget-proposal-steps-back-on-seattle-reforms-including-larger-spd-new-plan-for-big-business-tax/
"City of Seattle and King County Reveal Proposed Budgets for Input" by Vee Hua from The South Seattle Emerald (@SoSeaEmerald): https://southseattleemerald.com/2022/09/28/news-gleams-city-of-seattle-and-king-county-reveal-proposed-budgets-for-input-renton-arts-grants/
“The Mayor Wants to Pay Human Service Providers Less” by Hannah Krieg (@hannahkrieg) from The Stranger(@TheStranger): https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/09/28/78543620/the-mayor-wants-to-pay-human-service-providers-less
Information on public comments for the budget from The South Seattle Emerald: Written public comment on the city's 2023-2024 budget will be accepted at all meetings of the City Council's Budget Committee. Comments intended for the full council can be sent to council@seattle.gov. There will be three public hearings on the budget at City Hall on these dates:
- Tuesday, Oct. 11, at 5 p.m.
- Tuesday, Nov. 8, at 9:30 a.m.
- Tuesday, Nov. 15, at 5 p.m.
"Seattle's Left Proposes Defunding the Police, Stopping Sweeps, and Building Housing in Solidarity Budget" by Hannah Krieg (@hannahkrieg) from The Stranger(@TheStranger): https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/09/23/78520829/seattles-left-proposes-defunding-the-police-stopping-sweeps-and-building-housing-in-solidarity-budget
“New Tax Would Fund Behavioral Crisis Centers” by Erica C. Barentt (@ericacbarnett) from Publicola (@PubliColaNews): https://publicola.com/2022/09/27/new-tax-would-fund-behavioral-crisis-centers-things-to-look-for-in-harrells-first-budget-proposal/
"‘Spoliation of Evidence’ - CHOP lawsuit judge asked to rule against City of Seattle over deleted texts” by jseattle from Capital Hill Seattle Blog- https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2022/09/spoliation-of-evidence-chop-lawsuit-judge-asked-to-rule-against-city-of-seattle-over-deleted-texts/
The Bellingham Herald(@BhamHerald)’s story on Dan Johnson’s hateful social media history [story is behind a paywall]: https://t.co/Xtbq2D6BKD
Tweet thread with information about Whatcom County State House Candidate Dan Johnson's hateful online history: https://twitter.com/finchfrii/status/1574794894807539712?s=20&t=Kn1jkKibpz1cn_fNJUBMzg
Next Tuesday, October 4th, at 7:00pm, join Crystal live or in-person as she hosts a debate between 37th LD State Rep candidates Emijah Smith & Chipalo Street! See seattleemerald.com/debate for more details!
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we are continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a cohost. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's cohost: the former Director of Progressive Majority who's now transitioned into public service, but remains involved in numerous political efforts across Washington - EJ Juárez. Welcome!
[00:00:57] EJ Juárez: Thanks for having me back.
[00:00:58] Crystal Fincher: Excited to have you back - got tons of feedback from people who are listening and have appreciated your insight on prior shows, so just very much appreciate everything that you contribute. So I guess starting off - real big news in the week - it is budget season. And so Mayor Harrell has announced his proposed budget for the City and it was an interesting one - had a number of different elements. He - it talks about moving parking enforcement back to SPD, adding $10 million to the Homeless Authority, using the JumpStart tax funds to plug holes in the budget, implementing ShotSpotter - a lot of things. So starting with moving parking back to SPD, what are your thoughts on the budget and just starting with the parking issue - how do you think that is going to turn out?
[00:01:59] EJ Juárez: I think this is, sadly, a little expected, right? This is not out of left field for the mayor in terms of how he ran and the kind of mayor he has, I think, sought to become. In that - with all of that community activism, with tens of thousands of people on the streets of Seattle 24 months ago, demanding a different way to fund and allocate resources in our City away from the punitive enforcement of policing - we are now taking the most symbolic of kind of low stakes movement that was won and putting it right back for no clear reason. It's not surprising to me that we also don't have a justification for that move. I think this is a signal - this is a signal definitely to the base of voters that Bruce services to say - Hey, I'm coming in, I'm gonna make sure that folks don't win who want to reallocate resources in a more equitable way.
[00:03:03] Crystal Fincher: And to me it seems like it just gives more depth to the leaked comments from that meeting that he had with SPD that had contradicted things that he said before. His actual budget, his actual policy in action seemed to be in line with what he was saying behind closed doors, not necessarily what he had said as he took office. While he was campaigning, he had talked about wanting to have responders to different issues that if they didn't require a police officer - things like parking, behavioral health crisis issues - those kinds of interventions that aren't quite public safety, but that we have asked public safety people to pick up the slack because we don't have that infrastructure built up elsewhere. He indicated that he was open to that, wanted to do that, implement that - that could potentially be part of his Public Safety Department. And it just seems like we're moving in the opposite direction. And it's a little confusing.
[00:04:02] EJ Juárez: It's confusing and it's also mind-boggling that - time and again, we're watching the mayor say one thing in private to supporters of increased police funding, supporters of a punitive state and the carceral state, and then building budgets that are framed as if they are supposed to be progressive. Because we're being misdirected - the hoopla around the Green New Deal, the hoopla around other pieces of this budget that actually are incongruent with a complete story about who we are as Seattle and also who Bruce Harrell is as a mayor. I'm particularly interested in this idea that - in this budget, the mayor has framed what he values and that value is the police. Every other aspect is a pretty decent departure from past administrations, as well as what the community has been saying is important to them. And unlike previous Mayor Jenny Durkan with her text messages, I think that we have a situation where - at least with the Durkan administration, you would have big, bold ideas being proposed with no funding source. With Bruce, you're having no big, bold ideas and you are actually returning to a Seattle of the 90s - a very traditional idea of what the City should be funding.
[00:05:23] Crystal Fincher: It is confusing - and to your point, just an actual misdirection based on what he has said publicly and the conflicting statements of what he said privately. Another thing that is - even to people who want increased funding for police - he also proposed implementing the ShotSpotter surveillance program, which I wonder how this started. I think to myself sometimes - this is one of those technologies - we hear a lot of times, Oh there's - tech has hacked their way into a solution to this societal ill and all we need to do is implement it, this is gonna solve the problem. So this is a technology that was sold as a way to detect where gunshots are coming from. In the front end, it was actually sold as a way to get away from biased policing and this is purely just objective data that can pinpoint where shots are coming from and help to make everybody safer. As it turned out, it did not do that. It rarely resulted in the detection of actual gun violence - ton of false positives, led to a lot of preemptive police stops and searches in, surprise, overpoliced communities, which are predominantly communities of color, lower income communities. There have been cities forced to withdraw evidence based on ShotSpotter data because the information was deemed unreliable. In implementations of this across the country, it has been a failure and has caused liability issues, problems and has led to the violation of people's civil rights.
So this is something that - 15 years ago, 10 years ago - before it was implemented in places, people thought, Hey, this could legitimately be a way of addressing this problem. But it was implemented and it was a failure and a problem. And so it's just really confusing that we arrive here - after so many highly publicized issues across the country with it - and asking, as we're looking at trimming budgets elsewhere and using JumpStart Tax money to plug holes in the budget, to say this is something that we should spend millions of dollars on. Just confounding. What do you think?
[00:07:43] EJ Juárez: It's confounding for a number of reasons. First and foremost, there's no doubt that - if we're trying to address gun violence through the tools that the mayor has allowed to do so, he has chosen the police force as the primary vehicle to do so. We also have to assume that every time ShotSpotter detects this moment that would require police, they have to go to that site - they have to get in their cars and go there. And in Chicago and other places, time and again, false alarms have wasted countless hours of police time heading out to non-events. So it, to me, it's a nonsensical moment of - we're gonna invest in this tool, when we are under-resourced, that produces all of this waste. Second part of this for me is just - the instinctual reflex to surveil communities of color in moments under the guise of their own protection - I find particularly distasteful, especially from a mayor who used to represent that district. It is - I'm looking for the justification for increased surveillance when this tool has not proven that it actually is more beneficial than harmful in a meta sense.
[00:09:07] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. There are so many options that we have that are being implemented across the country to deal with this. And to be clear, we have to deal with gun violence, we have to deal with all of these offenses against people, we do have to deal with crime. This is actually a very urgent thing, which is why it is so frustrating to see investments in things that have been proven not to work instead of in a multitude of other things that have data supporting us. We have research universities in the state, in our area, in the city, that have criminologists, that have dedicated a ton of research that can be great resources to the mayor and his administration with this. We have lots of organizations on the ground who have data behind the work that they've been doing, who've been getting excellent results. Some of them have been defunded by the mayor himself, so it's just - I don't understand. When we look at - when we take away what his words are saying and we look at what he's proposing in terms of policy, it just seems that we keep doubling down on things that even the police are saying, This ain't it. Because the retention bonuses - where the cops were like, Yeah, it's not gonna make a difference. And yet they fought to provide that for them anyway.
And contrary to another line in his budget, which is cutting the cost of living increases for frontline workers who are dealing with things like homelessness and people at-risk of homelessness, where it's been highly publicized how overworked and underpaid they already are, how short staffed they already are. And now instead of trying to attract more with better pay and benefits and this is an area of priority for the City - it's been a declared emergency - we're trying to cheap it out? I just - another very confusing thing.
[00:11:02] EJ Juárez: This one caught me off guard. It was incredibly unexpected to see a mayor of a major city in this country, on the heels of a pandemic, advocate for a change in law to pay his employees less. Public servants are some of the most underappreciated folks in this country already. They have kept this nation going throughout this pandemic and they're doing the hard work of making sure that vital services are performed while the rest of us are at home taking precautions. And it's striking that - in a moment in which we are now emerging and our habits are changing - that we would basically say to our employees, I'm gonna cut your pay. And even though inflation is going up at incredible rates every week, I'm still gonna pay you less. This one - I - this one truly blows my mind because it just is so out of left field and it is, again, another illustration of where this administration places its importance in how the City should operate. If it doesn't carry a gun and it doesn't have handcuffs, it doesn't deserve to be paid a living wage apparently.
[00:12:17] Crystal Fincher: Couldn't say it better myself. Absolutely agree. Just - it is frustrating 'cause this is a real problem and people are waiting to see progress here and it just doesn't look like we're going to get it. Now, I brought up the Green New Deal earlier and the investments in those - I absolutely think we need to be doing more, should be doing more. I do think it's a positive thing to see the steps taken in that direction. I feel that way across the board - whether it's the legislative, the federal action, or this City of Seattle action that's been taken. I think the investments and the changes are positive, especially seeing so few investments in what look to be forward-looking, build-a-better-future type stuff. So that gave me some hope that we can use that to build on different things. And hopefully with action, combined with action at the legislative and the federal level, we can really make some quick progress in our greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution - everything from soup to nuts - but we'll see how that turns out. And what actually winds up funded - we'll continue to follow this, but very interesting this Harrell budget - will continue to follow through, will also add in the episode notes the opportunities for the public to engage in this budget.
There is a proposed people's budget, which definitely does a lot more to address root causes of the issues that we're seeing, whether it's homelessness or crime - doing things that are more in line with what evidence shows is effective for preventing and reducing that. So I definitely look forward to that. In terms of King County, there were announcements about significant proposed behavioral health investment. What happened there?
[00:14:19] EJ Juárez: So we're watching another levy being proposed, but this time to address one of the most heartbreaking elements of what's happened after this pandemic, where our mental health system has absolutely begun to collapse. In King County, we have 2 million people and we have 43 beds for folks that are in mental health crisis. And we saw Dow Constantine propose two points, or excuse me, a $1.25 billion levy to support a number of things, which would include building five new centers to support people in crisis having mental health issues, preserving treatment beds at existing facilities, as well as two important pieces that meet the structural elements of what's happening here around workforce recruitment and development as well as putting mobile sites where the need is versus asking the public to go to their service. This is a pretty massive announcement. It's also, in my opinion, incredibly welcome. It's just so thoughtful to say, Look, we recognize there is a systems problem here - that we have to build, we have to provide facilities, and there's also the workforce element. We have to make sure that the folks that are providing treatment are not themselves living in poverty and living in crisis. I'm super excited about this. It's gonna be on a April special election, and I sincerely hope that this is the first in many steps towards fixing this broken system.
[00:15:51] Crystal Fincher: I absolutely do. So much of our conversations about this leave out the importance of this resource, or we talk about people who are currently criminalized who are doing things that are potentially harmful to themselves or others. And once again, we're relying predominantly on police to fill this gap and - I don't know so much about now, but it wasn't that long ago where they were loudly and proudly saying, We aren't equipped to deal with this. We talk about the importance of people getting treatment, about jail not being able to solve anything like this - yet we just plain don't have the resources to deal with this problem. And we're seeing the results of that in all areas of society. So we have to do this. I do wish, and you've talked eloquently about this before, that we would look at our system as a whole and look at instead of just trying to piecemeal things here and there - which I appreciate the piecemealing at this point in time because it's better than nothing - but to look at how we can take a more systemic view of this issue, and how we can do a better job of service provision and delivery from beginning to end.
[00:17:13] EJ Juárez: Absolutely. I think a lot about the fact that in King County, if you need a bed and you are in crisis, the average wait time is 44 days. And 44 days is a hell of a long time, regardless of what kind of health treatment you require. Voters are gonna have the chance to weigh in on this in a special election, which is less than ideal but it is what it is. The proponents of this have been incredibly clear that this is not an immediate fix, that we're not gonna see the results on Day One, that this is something that's gonna take a while to ramp up. But the best, most-lasting solutions to some of our hardest problems take time, so super excited about this.
[00:17:54] Crystal Fincher: Yep, and no time better than the present to start on things that are going to take a long time - we have to get started right now. And we got news of a lawsuit that actually uncovered some new information about the infamous deleted texts from former Mayor Jenny Durkan, from former Police Chief Carmen Best, and others. And despite statements to the contrary before, this investigation turned up new evidence that texts were actually intentionally deleted. The reason why this is such a big deal is that these are public documents - as we're seeing play out on a national stage with Trump before - these are public records, these are subject to public disclosure. It is actually a law that everyone who works in the public sector is trained on, is aware of. Jenny Durkan, as a former federal prosecutor, was aware of this in her profession before running for office, was trained on it when running for office, after a violation received a retraining before this happened. No question that there was a repeated awareness that this shouldn't have happened.
Yet, after a lot of things that we saw in the 2020 protest that did not look right and that were controversial, certainly, and they knew would be - it looks like they intentionally deleted texts from that time period after giving a story - I dropped my phone in some salt water, required a reset, somehow a setting to automatically delete those texts got into being so it just automatically deleted them, I don't know what happened, they were lost. And now a report is alleging that they were, and they have evidence that they were, intentionally deleted. What do you see with this?
[00:19:46] EJ Juárez: I would see a former mayor probably sweating a lot right now. I don't want us to lose sight of the fact that someone died during a critical moment in this City's history. People were injured, there were crimes committed, there were whole neighborhoods gassed for days on end - in this City. The public records relating to those activities directed by the mayor and the chief of police are gone. And now this forensic analysis proves that the mayor, who had on many occasions made very definitive statements about not manually deleting texts, in fact did manually delete the texts. This was not some update of a phone. As many folks who have worked for the City and worked for government, myself included - when we delete off of our phones, when we delete messages, it requires us to take a deliberate and thoughtful action. It is not accidental. So for many of us, we knew that rang hollow. We knew that was highly dubious if true. And now the forensic analysis have proven that to be the case.
The other piece of this that's really, I think, sad for us as a city, is the fact that we had a former US Attorney as mayor who destroyed evidence. Evidence that would help bring closure to a family who lost a loved one. Evidence that could help people in Capitol Hill, who were tear gassed in their own homes for nights on end, getting justice. I find the whole situation very sad and I hope charges are brought. It is important for our democracy and it's important for public confidence in our leaders that no one is above the law, especially - somebody who practices law at the very highest levels should know better than to destroy public records.
[00:21:37] Crystal Fincher: Should know better, and I'm also disappointed in the seeming lack of interest and accountability by so many people who have had the power to intervene in this. People who could have referred this for investigation, people who were her allies, but are in power and just took a silent approach to this. And - maybe if we ignore it, it'll go away. We are - several of those people having made comments about Donald Trump and how we have seen him destroy evidence and being up in arms about that. That the problem isn't doing that when you're a Republican, the problem is doing that period. And so to see it takes so long for any kind of accountability when this blatant violation, when as you perfectly described, that so much is at stake really. And understanding the decisions that were made and who made those decisions - did - really, there were questions about did SPD go rogue? Did they receive direction to abandon their precinct? Did they just leave? Just - there are still questions of a very fundamental nature that haven't been answered, that these texts could. And lots of people assume they would be enlightening about what took place during that time. And so it's - has just been frustrating to see this slow trickle of information come out and so much money spent by the City to - seems like half-heartedly - be able to say, Hey, we're doing something to look into it, but we're not asking the contractor that we've hired to look into it some very key fundamental questions that could get to the bottom of this. Some of the issues about the manual deletion, which are key and central to potential criminal felonious liability here - just the contractor that we hired said, Oh, they didn't ask me to look into that, so I didn't.
[00:23:51] EJ Juárez: I think there's something to be said for - you dance with the one that brung ya, right? And when Jenny Durkan ran for office, she brought many of Ed Murray's - excuse me, the alleged sex offender, the proven predator Ed Murray - many of his people went with her in that campaign. Many of the folks who worked in her administration came from that administration. And once again, the City is on the hook for massive legal bills related to misconduct, related to impropriety, related to corruption. So when Seattle is electing its leaders, they should really take a hard look at the crew that they run with. It's frustrating that once again - it's like the Ghost of Ed Murray's crew here with Jenny Durkan coming back to cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars for potentially criminal activity.
[00:24:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it just seems like it's hard to get away from this. So it'll be really interesting to see how this progresses. We will certainly be following what happens next. I think one of the other things that I just wanted to mention - there was some drama afoot in the 42nd Legislative District, which is in Watcom County, northern Washington. It's one of the most competitive legislative districts in the State of Washington. This is a battleground district. It's one that - Democrats and Republicans look really tight, but Republicans may have a slight edge. And so a number of these issues that we're talking about - from abortion to financial issues, people just trying to pay their bills and make it, tax fairness - are all on the table. And as candidates are talking about how they propose to deal with this problem, some news came out about one of these candidates. And basically, State House candidate Dan Johnson thought that he had scrubbed his Facebook, his podcasts. And he did scrub it, but not before The Bellingham Herald archived his numerous sexist, racist, and anti-Semitic posts.
I'm sure people can imagine an extremist, right-wing candidate. We've all heard lots of the rhetoric and this is certainly consistent with a lot of those types of things that we're used to seeing. But everything from sharing memes that sympathized with cult leader David Koresh, white separatist Randy Weaver, anti-government activist Cliven Bundy, comparing the armed sieges at Waco, Ruby Ridge and the [Bundy] Ranch to the 1970 Kent State massacre of students at a nonviolent peace rally. He shared memes from the National Association of Gun Rights, that FactCheck.org said were completely fabricated - quotes from that. A Facebook post from 2013 saying a criticism - basically there were unruly children at a Bellingham supermarket - him saying, "If they were my kids, I would have put them in the ground years ago and started over." Several of his - it's a lot, and it's a lot of a wide variety of stuff. Several of his posts have been flagged by Facebook as being partly false, totally false, or misleading.
He had advocates on his show appearing to advocate for the political assassination of - advocate for political assassinations - in discussion of the Second Amendment. He talked about, The right to bear arms is necessary today as it was 200 years ago. Our government gets more out of control, our citizenry, better known as a well-regulated militia, may someday be needed to put the elected officials back into check or remove them entirely. Given what we've seen, it's scary - after an attempted coup - that that talk is escalating now. A post that features a Star of David - once again, comparing the Holocaust to the vaccination requirements and cards - just a bunch of things. He has since apologized for anti-Semitic posts - and more of an I-got-caught apology than an actual apology - didn't address the misogyny or racism.
But just wanted to make sure, 'cause unfortunately this article was in The Bellingham Herald and behind a hard paywall with that, so hard to see just the numerous vile comments that he made. But State House candidate Dan Johnson is a problem in the 42nd district, and we absolutely need to be making sure voters there are aware of who their candidates are, what their history is, and what they've been saying.
[00:28:46] EJ Juárez: I'll just jump in real quick. Thank God for local journalism that's doing journalism, right? Had The Bellingham Herald not uncovered this, this probably would not have come to light except for in circles of, I don't know, Republican homes across Whatcom County who knew and celebrated this. But great reporting there to pull this up to make sure this is available for voters. But again, I'm - sadly, the state of the Republican party - this is not shocking. This is seemingly very on-brand and good for him for his message discipline of xenophobic racism - very much in line with the Republican party these days.
[00:29:27] Crystal Fincher: Very in line, very consistent over the past several years and yeah, just a problem. Also wanted to give a reminder that I am going to be moderating a South Seattle Emerald electoral debate between 37th Legislative District candidates Emijah Smith and Chipalo Street on Tuesday, October 4th, from 7:00-9:00 PM - it'll be at the Rainier Arts Center at 3515 South Alaska Street. It'll also be simultaneously streamed online live, as well as available to watch after the recording. Doors open at 6:30 PM. RSVPs are encouraged for the show. All guests will be required, who are attending in person, to wear masks and provide a proof of vaccination or a negative rapid test. Tests will be provided at the venue as well as masks. You can RSVP for the show and find out more information at seattleemerald.org/debate and you can also submit questions that you want me to ask at that link. So would love to hear what you want to know from those candidates - what's on the top of your mind and what would be helpful for you as you try and make the decision between Emijah Smith and Chipalo Street. So again, that is going to happen on Tuesday, October 4th - this coming Tuesday - from 7:00-9:00 PM at the Rainier Arts Center and streaming online. @ me if you have any questions.
And with that, I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, September 30th, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler, our assistant producer Shannon Cheng, and our Production Assistant is the fly Bryce Cannatelli. Our insightful co-host today was the former Director of Progressive Majority, who's now transitioned into public service but remains involved in numerous political efforts across Washington State, EJ Juárez. You can find EJ on Twitter @EliseoJJuarez and we'll put that in our episode notes. You can also find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks and you can find me @finchfrii. You can catch Hacks & Wonks anywhere you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek shows delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full text transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Darya Farivar about her campaign for State Representative in the 46th Legislative District - why she decided to run and her thoughts on addressing issues such as homelessness, housing affordability and zoning, healthcare accessibility, progressive revenue and effective spending, education funding, climate change, and ballot access.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s guest, Darya Farivar, at @DaryaForHouse.
Resources
Campaign Website - Darya Farivar: https://www.daryaforhouse.com/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. So today I am excited to welcome to the program a candidate for the 46th Legislative District in Northeast Seattle running for State Representative - welcome, Darya Farivar.
[00:00:49] Darya Farivar: Thank you so much for having me, Crystal and Bryce. I'm really excited to be here and to talk with you all about my campaign and the issues that are important to me and what I want the 46th to look like. So thank you for a warm welcome.
[00:01:01] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Thank you for joining us. The 46th doesn't have competitive races very often - it's been a decade basically since the last one, so this is a big opportunity for everyone in the 46th. I'm very happy that people are getting the chance to know you better. Just starting off - what is your background and what made you decide to run for office?
[00:01:25] Darya Farivar: Yeah - there are a lot of different things that pushed me towards this decision to run. First and foremost is that the 46th is my home - I've lived here my whole life - I grew up here, I went to grade school here. My parents - when they fled Iran because of the revolution, they actually met at Roosevelt High School, which is my high school. And it's a very sweet story about how they met, but I'll spare you the details. They ended up putting down roots in the Lake City neighborhood and we've been there ever since. And I love this community fiercely - it is such a tight-knit community, a strong community. But it's also one that's been struggling pretty significantly over the years. In Lake City, I'm not really able to go anywhere without seeing folks who are experiencing homelessness, housing instability, mental illness, and substance use - and seeing folks get pulled into the criminal legal system when they don't get the help that they need.
Those are my top priorities for this race - not just 'cause I see folks who are struggling every day, but also because it's the work that I'm doing in the Legislature right now. I'm the Public Policy Director at Disability Rights Washington, so I spend my days working on civil rights legislation, mostly at the intersection of challenges that Lake City is experiencing. I think it's really critical that we're electing folks who have a strong understanding of how to navigate Olympia successfully. My entire job relies on me being able to do that successfully - managing an organization's legislative agenda and legislative strategy. And I don't think that can be underlined enough - Olympia's a difficult place to participate and try and get bills passed.
And I think it also relies on folks having a deep understanding of how these issues and this policy really translates to on-the-ground work. And I have some understanding there as well - I'm really lucky to have been part of a team that's overseeing 12 different behavioral health diversion programs across the state. There are programs that are doing well - well enough that they've been funded by the Legislature to keep going. And they're doing that really hard work of trying to meet people where they're at and provide help as soon as help is needed. And I know that we can create a state system even beyond just behavioral health that's built on that concept. And that's what I'm looking to do.
[00:03:43] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. And I have definitely appreciated the work that you and others have been doing with Disability Rights Washington and the wins that you've been able to achieve, the work that you continue to do to try and make our state more equitable and help it serve everyone. You have talked - I've heard you talk before - about those challenges facing Lake City and the district at-large. And there are more homeless people now, more people struggling with being able to pay rent, to find shelter than there have been - than we've seen before. What can be done to help people stay in their homes and to get off of the street? What are your plans for that?
[00:04:28] Darya Farivar: Yeah, it is certainly easier to keep folks in their homes at the beginning, rather than wait for folks to - for example, you have to be homeless for a night in order to access a lot of housing services. And that just doesn't make sense - to wait for someone to lose absolutely everything before intervening is not okay. It's not helpful. It's incredibly traumatizing to the individual. And it's also just not a good use of our funds too, and the very little resources we have as a state. So building up supports and tenant protections and making sure that - if it's a hundred dollars between someone experiencing homelessness or being able to stay in their home, making sure that we can find that to keep folks there, making sure that we've got those rental subsidies available for folks.
And then also looking at folks who, unfortunately, did make it to that point and crisis, where they did end up on the streets - trying to look at what the underlying reasons that pushed them over the edge. And for many folks, it's disability. National numbers show that 40% of folks who are experiencing homelessness actually identify as having a disability. Now we can have a whole conversation about identifying as having a disability versus actually being diagnosed as having a disability - and very often, a lot more folks meet diagnosis criteria than actually identify with it - especially folks who are having behavioral health challenges. And so when I look at what's happening there, I see disability and I see behavioral health as a big part of it. And so I look at our behavioral health system - and our behavioral health system is missing the entire front end of it. We're waiting for folks, again, to fall through every last crack in the system before even attempting to provide help. And that's not working, right? There's so many folks that are struggling and suffering because of that - because either themselves or their loved ones have reached out for help and they haven't been able to get it. And leaving folks to access our last-resort behavioral health options and using those as the cornerstone of our system is not working. And so really focusing on diversion and intervention and making sure we're building up things like our newly established 988 hotline - making sure there's services to go along with that. Mobile crisis teams, options to have behavioral health professionals actually responding to crisis and getting folks into things like pure respite and crisis stabilization - that's what we need to be investing in.
[00:06:58] Crystal Fincher: That certainly makes sense. And you're right - it is critical to keep people in housing and to intervene before we get to the point where they're at-risk or at the point where they're losing it. Affordability is a major, major contributor to homelessness and it's a big challenge that we're facing statewide - really countrywide - but definitely in this district. One big item that is attempting to help is Representative Jessica Bateman's missing middle housing bill that didn't successfully make it through last session but is coming back - looks like it has momentum. Do you support and will you vote for the missing middle housing bill?
[00:07:40] Darya Farivar: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. We are missing something around 250,000 units of housing across the state. That is a huge and terrifying number, right? And the way that we're gonna be able to address that is by making meaningful changes in the way that we're looking at density. I think - one of the things that I'm seeing a lot along the campaign trail is that folks have been pushed into this kind of false choice between extremes. It's either single-family zoning or it's apartment buildings, and folks don't see a lot of what's in the middle - and what's in the middle is where that conversation is happening or where it should be happening at least.
The reality is that we need density. We need density now. And what that density's gonna look like is going to be different neighborhood to neighborhood. And we have to be flexible in allowing for that individualization and reality of the landscape we're working in. Seattle neighborhoods are just very different neighborhood to neighborhood - they look and feel different and the capacity that they have for density is going to vary. And so we have to stay open to that and have to push back against this all-or-nothing approach. There is so much that we can do in the middle.
[00:08:50] Crystal Fincher: I think you're absolutely spot on with that. There are people who think that - okay, I'm gonna have some 20-story building - anytime someone talks about absorbing density. But also there are issues, as we saw in this last session, about what is the middle and where does it stand? Are you talking more in terms of sixplex and anything in middle like that? Are you talking higher density? What does the middle look like to you?
[00:09:19] Darya Farivar: I think it depends on the neighborhood and the folks that we're talking about. I think sixplexes are a great place to start. I will never pretend to be an expert on that legislation. I'm always the first person to jump up and say, this is an issue I need to learn more about. I am no expert in housing zoning and how that policy is shaping up, and I'm really comfortable saying that because I know that the experts are around me. And I know that there are people that I can call on who are having much more in-depth conversations around this and understand the nuance and the detail with that.
For me, it's about talking to folks who are being displaced and figuring out what's gonna keep them in the neighborhood. That's what the middle is to me. How do we keep folks, for example, in a neighborhood like Lake City that is seeing a lot of new development and growth, how do we make sure the long-term residents - like my family, like my parents - are able to age in place and stay in the neighborhood that they have chosen and grown to love.
[00:10:11] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And when it comes to that, you talk about zoning being essential and important. Is that the only thing that's necessary for keeping rents down, or do we also need to be looking at other policies beyond missing middle housing in order to make sure that we can stabilize rents and keep our communities affordable?
[00:10:30] Darya Farivar: I think it's definitely part of it. I don't think that it's all of it. I think there are a lot of creative conversations happening about what we can be doing - not just to increase density, but actually put land and housing back in the hands of, again, folks who have been in these communities longest. Lot of conversations around building up nonprofit housing, which is really interesting and exciting to me. Trying to talk about land co-ops and joint ownership models - where if you can't afford to own all of the home that you're living in, you can own a piece of it. Really interested in having some more conversations about these grassroots solutions - things that communities of color have been talking about for a long time and trying to find ways for the state to support that. Not insert ourselves in the middle of it, but find a way to support that sort of mutual aid that's already happening naturally in a lot of different communities.
[00:11:27] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that's wise to look at. I also wanted to talk about - you have such a deep background in disability rights, which is so tied to our healthcare system. And you talked about some of the things you want to accomplish there. We are at a crisis point in many ways where we're looking at staffing shortages in basically every element of our healthcare system. I just read news that a intermediate transport company - taking people from the hospital to different appointments or to other care centers that are necessary and routine - is just shutting down. We have shortages of nurses, of frontline people, of ambulance drivers, just everywhere in the system. What can you as a legislator do to help address our capacity issues, our staffing issues across the healthcare system? And what else would you do to make sure better healthcare is more available to more people?
[00:12:28] Darya Farivar: When I look at the workforce shortages across the system, especially in caregiving fields, two things really come to mind. And I'm really drawing from my experiences working with those diversion programs across the state. And they had two major challenges to address - how do we, where is the place to divert someone to housing? And also how do we keep our staff? And the fact that that was one of the biggest concerns, along with housing, is not a fun conversation, right? Because ultimately it comes down to making sure staff feel appreciated and they're being well taken care of. And the reality is that the rates just aren't there - this last legislative session, the Legislature increased rates by about - I believe it was 4% - though I'm probably getting this number wrong now that I haven't looked at the bill for months now. But we increased it just a little - oh, I think it was seven, 7% - that's right, because Massachusetts also increased their rates, but about 15%. And that is much closer to where we need to be. If we want to make sure that folks are gonna get the services and care that they need, we have to take care of the people who are caring for those individuals. And right now, I don't think we're doing that in Washington. The reality is we can think up all of the fabulous new programs that we want to see, but until we have folks to fill them, those are all just dreams and ideas. And it does come down to making sure people are paid a thriving wage - not surviving, not just barely scraping by - a thriving wage.
And, the other issue that comes up here is that - especially in behavioral health, folks are really sick. Folks are - again, we're waiting for the system - we're waiting for folks to fall through every last crack in the system before engaging. And so by the time folks get into a place where they're receiving care from a healthcare provider, behavioral health professional - they're in a really, really bad state and it's really hard to help that individual. That can't be said enough. So to help our workforce situation, we have to cough up the money, we have to pay people better. And we need to not wait for folks to fall through all the last cracks in the system. We have to actually intervene earlier so that it is easier, and in a lot of situations safer for staff to intervene and provide the care that folks need.
[00:14:58] Crystal Fincher: And obviously we're having so many of these conversations, whether it's about trying to get our unhoused neighbors into housing and the frontline workers that we're relying on doing that, or within the healthcare system. How much we are paying and taking care of these people is part of every conversation, which also gets back to a conversation about revenue. And do we have enough to take care of everyone we need to take care of? And the general consensus is - generally no. And a lot of conversation about implementing more progressive revenue measures in order to do that. Do you support more progressive revenue? And if so, what kind - what are you in favor of?
[00:15:46] Darya Farivar: Absolutely. There's no way around it. We need more revenue and it has to be progressive revenue. We have to figure out a way to establish a state income tax. And I know that there are really brilliant people who are working on that. We - I'm really supportive of the capital gains tax, of the state excise tax. I'm really interested in finding ways for folks who are making a ton of money to really just pay their fair share - we're not asking for anything earth shattering. We're asking for folks to pay what is fair and for folks to really make sure that we're not putting the burden on folks who are ultimately accessing the social services that we are paying for - that they are ultimately paying for. That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. We have the most regressive tax structure in the country and that is something for us to be deeply ashamed of. So there's no way around it. We absolutely have to have progressive revenue.
And at the same time, we also need to keep having this conversation about - are we spending our money wisely? Are we working with what we have the best we can? And I think the answer is also no. I don't think we're spending our money the best way we can possibly spend it. And looking at the behavioral health system is where I see one of those examples so clearly. One of the things that comes with waiting for folks to fall through the cracks in the system is that it is really expensive to get them into the care that they need. And sometimes - oftentimes - they tip over that line, over the line where you get care and into a really expensive system, which is the criminal legal system. And we are dumping so much money into that system as a way to try and compel people into getting care - when we could have been intervening earlier and saving money and saving lives and saving trauma. And we're not doing that. And so I think that there is - I think we have to keep having that conversation as well. When we want to pay for something or we feel that we have to pay for something, we find the funding for that. And in that system it has become really clear that we are spending the vast majority of our money on the criminal legal system and on expensive, really in a lot of ways ineffective institutionalization, when we could be doing a lot more earlier.
[00:18:11] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Expensive, ineffective, inefficient. And it's just not accomplishing what we need it to - I completely agree with you there. Another option that's currently being discussed is Representative Noel Frame's wealth tax that she had proposed that has some broad support. I assume you also are in favor of implementing that?
[00:18:33] Darya Farivar: Absolutely.
[00:18:34] Crystal Fincher: Makes complete sense. Also in the conversation - just about education and public schooling. We are in the Seattle School District - kids are just getting back to school after a teacher strike. And there's so many issues that teachers brought up that they're facing that are - that they're struggling with - and fundamentally boil down to still receiving insufficient funding at the state level from just where we're at in terms of class sizes, special education funding - those class sizes, the staff, just the ability and training to implement those programs and support kids in the way that they need to be supported. Counseling resources, which are more necessary now than they've ever been. In your role as a legislator, what can you do to help increase the amount of funding for schools and to make sure that we're doing the best job to educate our kids and prepare them for a successful life?
[00:19:37] Darya Farivar: Yeah, yeah. So school funding, man, this is the kind of forever conversation, right? This is our paramount duty and we are failing pretty significantly. And one of the areas that you see this really clearly is in special education, is with disabled Black and Brown students especially. When I look at the way that we are funding education and - yeah, when I'm looking at the way we're funding education overall, right? The fact that we are funding based on enrollment is a problem. And we're seeing that more and more show up today - especially like in Seattle Public Schools. And so we really need to rethink that and really make sure that we are funding, I think, based on need, based on where that need is and how much that need is. And it's just not working - what we've been doing is not working, so changing the way that we are funding education fundamentally - it needs to happen.
The other area that I look at in funding - for special education specifically - is around inclusion. We know that isolation and segregation and restraint leads kids into the school-to-prison pipeline. And yet our funding formulas encourage it. Our funding formulas say that you get more funding for students who spend time in a segregated classroom setting. It directly encourages against inclusion and that's not working either. And we need to flip how we are funding inclusion and special education as well. And this is another area where there's a lot of great experts working on this, right? A lot of folks who have been having these conversations about whether we stick to the prototypical model for funding or do we change it up. And it's another area where I really want to get in and listen to the folks who have been working on this, who have been the experts working in the community on this as well, and listen and figure out what can I do best. For every issue that is not my expertise, I'm really interested in listening and learning and taking direction from folks who know much better than I what's going on and how I can get in there and be the best ally I can to push these issues along in a way that really keeps folks, and in this case students, who are furthest from opportunity, which I really think are Black and Brown students with disabilities at the center of these conversations. And make sure that what we set out to do, which is support these students, ultimately carries through and our end result really does support those students.
[00:22:21] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that absolutely makes sense. And I appreciate your candor. Sometimes we hear politicians who - I have every answer, only I can implement the solution. And reality is no one ever does. And even those who think they do inevitably encounter some things that noone ever could have anticipated - like a pandemic, or things like that where it's just new - and having an infrastructure set up to be in communication and in community with people most impacted, people on the ground while bringing your principles, your perspective, your own experience through there is really important. And so I just appreciate you being candid about that and being willing to listen and learn. I think that says a lot about a candidate who does take that perspective.
[00:23:16] Darya Farivar: Thank you.
[00:23:17] Crystal Fincher: Sure.
[00:23:18] Darya Farivar: I'm really glad to hear that. I will just also offer - working in a co-governance model is what I'm interested in. That's how I work with legislators when I'm lobbying and trying to bring advocates in. And I think because of that, we need more organizers as legislators. And that's exactly what I'm trying to do. We need to be co-governing - these decisions - we're elected to represent the people, our constituents, but ultimately we're making decisions that are gonna impact them directly. And so we have to stay in constant communication with folks who are gonna be impacted by it.
[00:23:48] Crystal Fincher: In another area where - right now - folks who are least able to mitigate the impacts of climate change are most impacted by it. We're seeing it here locally, whether it's people being exposed to and endangered by extreme heat and extreme cold. Just today as we're recording this, it's another dangerous air advisory because of wildfire smoke and that being a direct threat to people's immediate health with asthma and increased heart attacks, lung irritation. These are all things that are impacting our communities and communities that are most vulnerable. What are your priorities for mitigating the current impacts the climate change on these communities and addressing just greenhouse gas emission reduction overall?
[00:24:41] Darya Farivar: Yeah, I think it all comes back down to holding corporations accountable for the pollution that they have created and put on these underrepresented marginalized communities. It comes down to making sure, again, we're holding people accountable in a lot of different ways. And so there's just no way around that. We need to do a better job of doing that. The Climate Commitment Act is here, which is exciting and it's making some progress. It does seem to really rely on cap and trade measures, which is a start - but cap and trade measures also allow for folks who have the money to pay off those fines and keep producing pollution as they have been. And that's not the kind of accountability that we so desperately need. It's a start - it's a good start - but if we're really gonna be meeting these climate goals, we need to be a lot more aggressive about it. And say - that's enough, you need to stop producing and operating as you have been, because it is deeply harming the world and these communities that we say that we're trying to do right by. And so again, making sure that those communities have a direct line of communication into this process - that they're not just actually - beyond having a line of communication, making sure that they're at the table is gonna be really critical, especially indigenous communities.
I am really interested in getting involved in transportation as a climate justice issue. That's the angle that I am also most familiar with - Disability Rights Washington has an incredible Disability Mobility Initiative, and I've been able to learn so much from the work that Anna Zivarts is doing there, and I hope to continue. And hope that we can build on that work. We know that cars and trucks are our number one cause of pollution. And so we have to address that head on and what that means is making sure that public transit works for everybody. It has to work for the folks who are relying on it - for example, folks with disabilities who don't have another option, public transportation is it .And also making it efficient enough so that folks who do have cars and can make the choice see it as the more efficient option, see it as the better option for them in every way. And there's a lot that we can be doing there. In the 46th, we've got some brand new light rail stations, which is really exciting. I'm a big fan of the light rail - used to take it to work every day before COVID - and they're closer now. But we gotta make sure that those are connected up with our bus routes as well. We gotta make sure that it is safe to get from point A to B to C.
And I think an area that - it doesn't always get the attention that it really needs when thinking about transportation - is also pedestrian safety infrastructure. That is, at the most basic level, sidewalks. In any Seattle neighborhood - if you walk around that neighborhood, there is going to be a problem with the sidewalk you're walking on. There's gonna be a route that's like trying to climb out of it - there isn't gonna be a curb cut, it's gonna be some issue with it. And that's an issue that DRW has been working on over the years, which is really exciting also. Just recently we were getting some of this construction and new sidewalks put in in Lake City - fabulous - always one of the last neighborhoods to get improvements like this, but I'm excited. It's just down the block from me now - there's a real sidewalk there and I can safely walk on 35th, a really, really busy street. Making sure that there are sidewalks where there haven't been, repairing those sidewalks, and also having that hard conversation about whose responsibility is it as well - 'cause right now it's the homeowner's responsibility to figure out how to improve their sidewalk. And that is not equitable. We talk about all of our regressive taxes and the burden we are putting on property tax as a way to fund and fix everything. It's really difficult for a lot of the homeowners, at least in my neighborhood, to be able to stay. And just adding sidewalk repair as one other additional thing is not going to help. And frankly, folks aren't doing it - it's not working, folks aren't repairing it. And folks who are trying to access transportation are bearing the brunt of it. Folks, whether they're walking or rolling, are having to go into the middle of the street to get to where they need to go. And I digress from your original question, Crystal, but I think that it is a huge part of making sure that our transportation system is genuinely accessible and safe for folks to access, to get folks out of cars.
[00:29:31] Crystal Fincher: No, you're absolutely right. And our transportation system is most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions - out of all of the different sectors, it's transportation. Highways are conversation there - historical conversations about - oh, there's traffic, let's widen a freeway - without regard for the reality, the fact that widening freeways actually worsens traffic and it worsens greenhouse gas emissions. Will you be voting for a transportation package that includes further highway expansion?
[00:30:05] Darya Farivar: No, absolutely not. I will not be - there's so many other better ways that we can be spending our money. It's incredibly expensive and I just think that we can do better. And our public transportation system really needs that funding - and that's the future, right? I think transit and technology is the future, so we need to embrace it now and not later. Seattle has a very interesting history when investing in city infrastructure, especially transportation infrastructure, and we've seen the results of waiting and waiting and delaying and delaying - the future is here. We gotta invest in it now.
[00:30:43] Crystal Fincher: I completely agree. In terms of just - obviously, you talk to lots of people, lots of groups who are sitting here and I've asked you questions. What issues do you see - issue or issues, do you see flying under the radar that you aren't asked about very often, or that people don't regularly invite you to talk about, but that you feel are necessary to talk about and address?
[00:31:07] Darya Farivar: Wow. I would say overwhelmingly people want to talk about public safety. That's the number one thing that people want to talk about. And I am always happy to talk about it - it really is a lot of what my priorities make up - is that kind of topic area and conversation. There are a lot of issues that are flying under the radar as a result of that. One that I am really interested in that I haven't been able to talk a lot about is access to the ballot and voting. We have seen that it really makes a difference. You need to be able to show up and vote - in my race, we saw that made a difference, right? We ended up with 32% of the vote - we won the primary. That's huge - we're really excited about that. And I think one of the reasons we did that was because we were so committed to going out and earning every single vote, and just trying to engage people who haven't been engaged in this process before. And voting advocacy has been a significant part of my work at DRW and something that I really want to continue to work on - making sure at least, first and foremost, folks have access to the ballot. There's some really interesting conversations happening about electronic ballot return which would be an absolute game changer in Washington to make sure that folks are able to vote even easier. And make sure that people who are ultimately gonna be most impacted by these decisions that our lawmakers are going to make have a voice and a vote into this process. I'm really interested in doing work around making sure that that ballot is accessible.
In Washington, we've got mail-in voting, which is great and it increases access for a huge population, but not everybody. Many folks with disabilities are not able to access it still because you need to be able to read and write and see the ballot. And that leaves out a huge chunk of people. And these are the same people who are also relying on our public transportation system and are gonna have a hard time getting to a vote center as well. So what can we do to make sure that folks really truly have a voice in this process? It's an issue that's really important to me, especially as a first-generation Iranian - coming from a background, a family history where your vote didn't count, your voice didn't matter. It was in fact dangerous for you to speak up. This was one of the appeals of coming to the United States for my family - is that you actually get to participate in this process. And that someone like me, from my background, is able to actually run for office and do it without a target on my back as well. So I think it just can't be talked about enough. There's a lot of work to be done there. I'm really excited to be working on it through my role at Disability Rights Washington and hopefully more to come in the upcoming sessions to really improve it.
[00:34:11] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And as now - voters are listening to you and will be trying to make a decision between you and your opponent on November 8th - as you consider this race and your position making it through to the general election with a very unique accomplishment in that all of the opponents who did not make it through to the general election have endorsed your candidacy, which does not happen very often. Obviously they took stock of both candidates and decided you were the clear choice. As you make your case to voters, what do you tell people who are trying to make that decision between you and your opponent, and how will their lives be different if they vote for you when you're elected?
[00:35:06] Darya Farivar: Yeah, we are so excited and I'm really proud of the momentum we have built and the support we've been able to gain. It's been really, really humbling. And in some ways surprising, right? I ran into this thinking - I'm going to do this because I want to win. And most importantly, because I want to make sure that the issues that are important to me see the light of day, and that we have these important conversations about behavioral health in the criminal legal system that I think need to be elevated. And I guess what I would tell folks - I think that there are actually a lot of differences between me and my opponent. I think some of it comes down to professional experience, some of it comes down to lived experience, some of it comes down to philosophy as well. Again, being Public Policy Director, you get a look into the system that many folks do not get. It's a really important part of the process to show up and testify and meet with legislators. But that's about 15, 20% of what's actually happening. Most of that work is happening behind-the-scenes, it's happening at those negotiating tables. And I've been sitting at those tables. I've been a part of those negotiations, right? I've been a part of this kind of maneuvering and trying to figure out - oh, it's 11:00 PM and some random amendment got dropped on your bill. How do we defend against this now? And that is a very, very different look.
We have some really tough issues to address - the ones I'm running on being front and center, really, I think for the entire state. And whatever else the Supreme Court is gonna throw at us. We need folks who can hit the ground running. And we need folks who are going to do it with a particular lens, because what we've been seeing has not been working. We need to make sure that folks who are underrepresented have a voice and a part of this process. I think that not only my professional experience points to that - starting as an organizer working - I started out working with immigrants and refugees who have loved ones with developmental disabilities and trying to figure out how do I uplift their voices and make sure they are front and center in these conversations. And so that experience, but also my own personal experience as being a young, first-generation, Iranian American woman. I really understand what it's like to not have my voice heard because I've been silenced over and over and over again. It's not easy to do this work in Olympia with a lived experience like mine, but I'm going in eyes wide open and with some strong allies in there who are going to help, or are going to be committed to these progressive priorities and trying to move the needle on these issues. And they also recognize that how to do it is by lifting the voices of communities who are most impacted.
Now, figuring out what that looks like is the next challenge. And I have, I think, really demonstrated throughout my career and through my campaign that this is my priority, this is my pillar, this is my kind of north star - is to make sure that communities that haven't been heard are heard in this process. And I just - I can't underscore that enough. I think the way that your career looks and also the way you run your campaign is gonna say a lot about how you're going to legislate as well. And I think I have proven in the team that I have - I have a team of all young women from different backgrounds - from the LGBTQ community, women of color, immigrant women, women with disabilities - you name it, we've got that different representation captured in our team. And like I said at the beginning, these are people who felt left out of the process that now feel like they have a voice in this process, that feel like this is something that they can believe in. And I think that speaks volumes to the Legislature that we're ultimately trying to create.
[00:39:03] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much for speaking with us today, for helping people to get more acquainted with you, and best of luck on the campaign trail.
[00:39:12] Darya Farivar: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the chance to talk with y'all.
[00:39:16] Crystal Fincher: Thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler, our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our post-production assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can follow me @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-i. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Hacks & Wonks’ very own Production Coordinator, Bryce Cannatelli!
The show starts with some new polling from Crosscut/Elway looking at November’s upcoming general election. Current Senator Patty Murray is maintaining a fair lead against challenger Tiffany Smiley, who released a new ad this week that sees her pushing a “Seattle is Dying” narrative, filmed in front of the closed Starbucks along E Olive Way.
In police news, mayor Bruce Harrell has chosen his SPD Chief, and it’s the same interim chief we’ve had for a while: Adrian Diaz. Diaz represents a status-quo pick from Harrell, and the decision seems to promise more of the same emphasis on police hiring and department budgets that we’ve been seeing from the administration.
The upcoming Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) contract negotiation is a real test for Harrell and Diaz’s commitments to police reform and accountability. People Power Washington put out recommendations for what they would like to see in the contract, including numerous oversight and discipline requirements already present in the Seattle Police Management Association (SPMA) contract. We’ll be paying close attention to the final contract to see which reform measures the Harrell administration will push for.
Next Tuesday, September 27th, Mayor Harrell will announce his budget proposal for the city, and we all have a chance to have our voices heard! From September 28 to November 22nd, the public can provide feedback on the budget. You can submit your comments on the budget to the City Council via their email, Council@Seattle.gov, and public comment will be accepted at all meetings of the Council’s Budget Committee.
In other interesting police-related decisions from Mayor Harrell, Notes from the Emerald City reports that, during an August 17th Community Police Commission meeting, the mayor spoke of working to get officers back into schools, without mentioning the potential to worsen the school to prison pipeline or risk the health and safety of students. The Mayor is also vouching for a parks budget that would pay for 26 additional rangers in the city’s parks. Seattle’s Solidarity Budget coalition is criticizing this move as paying for “soft-cops” to enforce harmful policies on homeless and marginalized people using the parks.
In some positive news this week, we look at the Green New Deal Proposals from Mayor Harrell, which promise to take some necessary steps to both lessen emissions from city buildings and prepare for the consequences of climate change through the creation of resilience hubs.
We also have some exciting, and much needed, financial relief programs for immigrants in the county. The Department of Community and Human Services (DCHS) announced the launch of two new programs: one that will help immigrants pay fees associated with applying for legal status, and another that will provide financial assistance to immigrants disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic but are ineligible for federal assistance because of their immigration status. Please look at the links below for more information, and share this information as much as you can to get the word out.
Finally, a reminder that Crystal will be moderating a debate between 37th LD State Representative Pos. 2 candidates Emijah Smith and Chipalo Street on October 4th at the Rainier Arts Center at 7:00pm. See the links below for information on how to RSVP and how to ask questions ahead of the show.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Bryce Cannatelli, at @inascenttweets. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Poll Watch: Elway finds solid lead for Murray; Steve Hobbs barely ahead of Julie Anderson” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate:
https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2022/09/poll-watch-elway-finds-solid-lead-for-murray-steve-hobbs-barely-ahead-of-julie-anderson.html
“‘So much crime that you can’t even get a cup of coffee from the hometown shop on Capitol Hill’ — Republican Senate candidate takes on Murray over E Olive Way Starbucks closure” by jseattle from Capital Hill Seattle Blog:
https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2022/09/so-much-crime-that-you-cant-even-get-a-cup-of-coffee-from-the-hometown-shop-on-capitol-hill-republican-senate-candidate-takes-on-murray-over-e-olive-way-starbucks-closure/
“New SPD Chief, Same as the Old Chief” by Will Casey from The Stranger:
https://www.thestranger.com/cops/2022/09/20/78504249/new-spd-chief-same-as-the-old-chief
“Harrell Picks Diaz for Police Chief” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/09/21/harrell-picks-diaz-for-police-chief-as-expected-council-park-district-alternative-would-keep-park-rangers-raise-tax/
People Power Washington’s 2022 Seattle Police Officers Guild Contract Recommendations:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RIpYL98qo2mEeB5yAZN9Y53sbm3i2Jomv0sVrj10tWY/view
“City of Seattle’s Fall Budget Cycle Is Nearly Upon Us: Your Participation Is Needed!” by Vee Hua from the South Seattle Emerald:
https://southseattleemerald.com/2022/09/19/news-gleams-det-cookie-chess-park-reopening-council-passes-6-5m-for-seattle-green-new-deal/#City-of-Seattles-Fall-Budget-Cycle-Is-Nearly-Upon-Us
“Mayor Asks for CPC’s Assistance in Bringing Cops Back into Seattle Schools” by Amy Sundberg from Notes from The Emerald City”:
https://www.getrevue.co/profile/amysundberg/issues/mayor-asks-for-cpc-s-assistance-in-bringing-cops-back-into-seattle-schools-1359958
Seattle Community Police Commission (CPC) August 17, 2022 Meeting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D-JtHPKuQQ
“Seattle Solidarity Budget coalition opposes funds for what it calls 'soft cops'” by Amy Radil from KUOW:
https://kuow.org/stories/seattle-solidarity-budget-coalition-opposes-funds-for-what-it-calls-soft-cops
“Det. Cookie Chess Park Reopening, Council Passes $6.5M for Seattle Green New Deal” by Vee Hua from The South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2022/09/19/news-gleams-det-cookie-chess-park-reopening-council-passes-6-5m-for-seattle-green-new-deal/
“King County launches new programs to support immigrants” from Northwest Asian Weekly:
http://nwasianweekly.com/2022/09/king-county-launches-new-programs-to-support-immigrants/
- Call for support: 1-844-724-3737 (Monday to Friday from 9 a.m.–6 p.m.)
- Contact Aimee Zhu at 206-393-2110 or aimeez@cisc-seattle.org
“$340M WA immigrant relief fund plagued by monthslong delays” by Melissa Santos from Crosscut:
https://crosscut.com/politics/2022/03/340m-wa-immigrant-relief-fund-plagued-monthslong-delays
“Delayed immigrant relief fund now accepting applications” by Melissa Santos from Axios:
https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/09/20/delayed-immigrant-relief-applications-washington
- Apply through: immigrantreliefwa.org.
- The application portal went live Monday and will remain open through Nov. 14. People will be notified as soon as December whether their application was accepted. Checks or pre-paid cards are expected to be mailed by January 2023.
37th LD State Rep. Pos. 2 Debate - Tuesday, October 4th at the Rainier Arts Center: officialhacksandwonks.com/blog/37th-ld-debate-state-representative-october-4-2022
- RSVP here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/south-seattle-emerald-2022-electoral-debate-tickets-412293840977
- Submit audience questions before the show here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdQlF7kRixWh_GnFInZ7UxDdKXK59LONGKAsQ1WBXgm3lysRA/viewform
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we are continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a cohost. Talk about talking to people who do the work - today, we are welcoming for the first time our co-host: my colleague, Bryce Cannatelli, who is the Production Coordinator for the show also. Welcome Bryce.
[00:01:00] Bryce Cannatelli: Hey, Crystal - thanks for having me.
[00:01:02] Crystal Fincher: Excited for you to be on - you are in the trenches with me every day in the work that we do - our day jobs - this podcast is like the side hustle. But you are brilliant and intelligent and always helpful and insightful and savvy and wise, so I'm excited to have you on the show today.
[00:01:27] Bryce Cannatelli: Oh, thank you so much. That's very kind of you.
[00:01:31] Crystal Fincher: Okay, so we should start off talking about - hey, some new polling dropped. We are in the midst of a general election with a lot of races on the ballot, including a senatorial race at the top of the ballot. And so what did these poll findings conclude?
[00:01:52] Bryce Cannatelli: Yeah, so this new Crosscut/Elway poll, that was published yesterday, was a statewide poll and confirmed one of the things that we took away from the primary election earlier this year, which is that the red wave that was much talked about is not happening the way that a lot of people anticipated. Looking at the statewide races from this poll, we see that US Senator Patty Murray is still leading against Tiffany Smiley 50% to 37% with 12% undecided, which is a comfortable lead for Murray.
And maybe more interesting from the polling - looking at the Secretary of State's race between Steve Hobbs, who was appointed to the position last year, and independent challenger Julie Anderson, where Hobbs received 31% in the poll, Anderson got 29%, and 40% of the voters were Undecided. And maybe even more surprising than that was Hobbs only getting 42% in his home county of Snohomish County, which shows that there is definitely a pathway for Julie Anderson here to become an independent Secretary of State, which would be a first for Washington in a very long time.
[00:03:04] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it would be. And the Cascadia Advocate, which is a publication of the Northwest Progressive Institute, had a nice analysis and breakdown of this. I think this is consistent with what we have seen with prior polling for Patty Murray and Tiffany Smiley - it looks like Murray has a comfortable lead. Smiley is definitely trying to throw out all the stops - we've seen Smiley go hard about her being pro-life in the primary, try and scrub reference to that and revise her messaging in the general - that doesn't quite seem to be landing. Recently shot a "Seattle Is Dying" style - and that's a reference to previous hyperbolic documentary-style programs that have largely mischaracterized the state of homelessness and public safety in Seattle, conflated different reasons and root causes. And is really just viewed comically by people in Seattle, but unfortunately often taken seriously by people outside of Seattle - both in our suburbs here in the state and nationally. And so it's a narrative that doesn't land inside the City, but we'll see if maybe they think they can make some inroads using that kind of tactic. Capitol Hill Seattle had some coverage of that earlier this week, but I was not surprised to see anything about that.
It looks like the Secretary of State's race is a race. It does look like it is a competitive race. I know that there are some people who - Hey, this thing is done. We will see. And, it may turn out not being as close as current polling reflects. Obviously we are sitting here in late September - most of the communication that campaigns are going to do is yet to come. And so there's still some defining of the candidates - their name IDs aren't very high statewide for either of them. So that may change some minds. There's a chunk of undecided people who still have to get familiar with them and get to know who they are. So it's an interesting dynamic because this is a position that has been held by Republicans for a long time. With Steve Hobbs' appointment, he's the first Democrat to be in that position in several years, but being challenged by an independent. And so - in campaigns, who you are aligned with can also influence how much money and resources you have access to. Steve Hobbs, you would think, is going to be supported by some Democratic organizations and independent expenditures by Democrats. It remains to be seen whether Julie Anderson gets that kind of independent support and other organizations communicating on her behalf to see what that race is gonna be like. So stay tuned, but that certainly looks to be a competitive race.
Certainly more competitive than what currently looks to be the case for Patty Murray or Tiffany Smiley. But that is not to say that that should be taken for granted certainly. Voting is important, getting involved is important. And so we will continue to follow what the polls continue to say and what the campaigns continue to do. Also this week, we had a big announcement from Mayor Bruce Harrell, mayor of Seattle. Bruce Harrell naming that he selected his interim police chief as his permanent police chief. So basically person's doing the same job and their title changed, but it looks like we are going to be in for more of what we have gotten - very much a status quo pick. How did you see this, Bryce?
[00:07:04] Bryce Cannatelli: Yeah, I definitely see it as a status quo pick as well. It seemed like there was a preference for Diaz early in Harrell's administration, but Harrell was required to do a national search for a new police chief. The three finalists that were highlighted were Adrian Diaz, SPD Assistant Chief Eric Greening - two people who have been working with and in the SPD for a long time. And the third pick was the assistant police chief out of Tucson, Kevin Hall. And the pick for Diaz really does highlight this commitment to the status quo, to the same strategies that we've been having when it comes to public safety and the role of police in public safety. Now, all three finalists did at least speak to some elements of reform, to some elements of alternative response, or evaluating the role of police in public safety and how to improve the relationships between police and communities. But it was really Kevin Hall out of Tucson who spoke the most in that regard, who talked about programs that he had been a part of in Tucson to try to circumvent people going directly to jail, who pointed out issues with the intense hiring focus strategy that the Harrell administration has been leading - pointing out that there is a nationwide shortage, or at least a long time, hiring troubles for police. And that in Seattle, specifically, we have bottlenecks within our police training system that make it such that hiring a police officer today means they won't be on the street for about a year. It is not a quick fix.
And the Harrell administration ultimately choosing Diaz runs a little counter to Harrell's own talks about really rolling up his sleeves and figuring out how to change the culture of the SPD, how to add a little accountability - seems like we're really just strapping in for more years of the same approaches we've been seeing, which as you pointed out, the "Seattle is Dying" narratives that people like Tiffany Smiley like to use to try to rile people up outside of the City are overblown, but public safety is still an issue here. And our police-focused, or police hiring focus, strategies just have not been helping that.
[00:09:40] Crystal Fincher: This is an interesting choice. As you just said, public safety is a concern. Rising violence is a concern. Any violence is a concern. And there is a problem within the City. I don't think anyone is disputing that some types and categories of crime have decreased, others have increased. But I think we all have an interest in making sure that fewer people are victimized, that we reduce violence. And there's just about no one who is satisfied with the direction things have been going in support of that effort. People may have different reasons for being dissatisfied, but pretty much there's universal agreement that the status quo has not been working.
So this being a status quo pick is a curious choice in that regard. And to your point, it does seem to run counter to some things that Bruce Harrell has said, and even just lip service to how he views accountability. They talked about - Hey, they're gonna prioritize addressing violent crimes, the staffing shortage, and improving the culture within the department. Well really - they're gonna focus on addressing violent crimes? This is the same person who decided to stop investigating sexual assaults of adults - without telling many people evidently - but what is worth investigating if that isn't worth investigating? That actually often comes with more evidence unfortunately than a lot of other types of crimes. And to just wholesale make a decision that you're stopping doing that - seemingly just to deploy more people on patrol - doesn't seem in line with this. Bruce is this police chief's boss and if he is holding people accountable for their decisions, what was the outcome of that? Was it just - oh, please don't do that again. Why didn't I know about this? It seems like there is an endorsement of the things that have happened with this decision, and I question a number of the things that have happened and whether they are consistent with this goal of reducing violent crime and how we're measuring that.
And so it'll be interesting to see how this plays out, but just - I don't know that - it seemed like there was a big effort in the press conference to sell this as - Hey, we're turning a corner, this is a new day. We're gonna start focusing on these things. And really it's the same people focusing on the same things, making the same kinds of decisions. And I just - in terms of reactions, whether someone is progressive or conservative, it just seemed to have fallen flat. Whether that squarely lands on the head of Diaz or Harrell is - can be questioned, but certainly from an outside perspective and just at a glance, it's - okay, we're continuing to do the same thing, and it seems like there's universal agreement - same thing isn't working. So would be very eager to see some differences in approach and in decision making to give people confidence that there is going to be something done to address violence.
And also to your point, something done to address it today, this year - because hiring isn't that. Even with the money that has already been approved, and additional money that has been approved, to hire, to retain people, to search across the country - despite officers continuing to say that they don't think that's the most effective use of money and won't be effective in keeping people on the force. That can't result in any additional officers until next year at the earliest, because it does take a long time for someone to go through the hiring pipeline, then to go through the training pipeline, then to land on the street. So if that's what you're counting on, that won't start to make a difference until next year. And we have a public safety problem right now. We have people getting victimized right now. And so would love to see the plan for what are you going to do right now.
With that - influential in that, and also talking about - just still in the realm of public safety, especially accountability. A lot of that goes beyond the chief or the mayor, and is largely dictated by the Seattle Police Officers Guild, or SPOG, contract. And what did we see happen this week?
[00:14:26] Bryce Cannatelli: This week we saw an open letter of contract negotiations from People Power Washington, talking about what they would like to see happen with this year's SPOG contract. And this SPOG contract really represents a major test for what we've been talking about for how serious Harrell and Diaz are about adjusting the culture, introducing accountability, improving relationships between police officers and the City. What People Power Washington are asking for here is establishing greater methods of accountability, of making sure that the disciplinary review process mirrors what happens in the Seattle Police Management Association contract, making sure that there are methods of actually holding police officers accountable for problematic and illegal behavior. They want to see restrictions so that SPOG doesn't allow in-uniform off-duty work for police officers, which is definitely a problematic occurrence. They want to see that any contract with SPOG provides alternatives for, or provides alternative community-based emergency response programs. And a lot of other requests that are, quite honestly, things that we've seen in other cities in other areas really make a difference in community public safety. And especially programs like alternative community response - when City leaders are really hounding us again and again on the lack of police - you brought up sexual assault cases not being investigated. It is a very reasonable request. And it seems like in everybody's best interest to try to figure out some of these alternative community response programs.
[00:16:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely that. And these are - I think it's worth going through these things, 'cause a lot of times people are just like - okay, we need reforms, but what are those reforms? And yes, this contract is important but what are the things that we need to make sure that are in here? Sometimes it's not the most accessible information. And so I do think it's important to talk about - and not just things that have made a difference in other jurisdictions, but with the baseline set by the Seattle Police Management Association contract from earlier this year, making sure those types of provisions are included in here.
So I'm gonna go through some of these things, especially what was in the Seattle Police Management Association contract - at minimum, the things that were included in there that should be included in the Seattle Police Officers Guild contract - providing subpoena power to both the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of the Inspector General so that they can get all information relevant to their investigations and to complaints to make their findings. Establishing the standard of proof as a preponderance of evidence for all disciplinary action, requiring OPA records to be retained for the length of employment plus six years regardless about whether the findings are sustained or unsustained - because we've had problems with records disappearing, officers unfortunately repeating that conduct, but no paper trail to be able to better root out who is creating problems. Defining dishonesty as providing false information which the officer knows to be false or providing incomplete responses to specific questions regarding material facts. Right now that definition is not that robust - pretty common sense, but it's not. Including layoff language in the management rights section of the CBA - allowing the city to decide the necessity for layoff without having to bargain. Requiring public disciplinary review meetings, phase out additional pay for the use of body worn cameras, establish a disciplinary review process mirroring the one defined in the recent 2022 SPMA contract. Allow for the 180-day clock to be stopped whenever a criminal investigation is conducted, regardless of where the alleged criminal activity occurred or what agency is conducting the investigation. And place the burden to establish any reason to deny an extension of the clock based on a good use, a good cause on the union. Empower the OPA to make assignments based on the skills and abilities of the investigator, rather than whether they are a civilian or a uniformed sergeant. And allow the OPA to communicate with the criminal investigators and prosecutors from any agency about the status and progress of a criminal investigation.
These are really common sense things, things that are not out of bounds. These are already in a Seattle Police Management Association contract. They should absolutely at minimum be included in the SPOG contract.
Also, wanting to remove barriers to civilianize certain public safety functions and provide alternative community-based response as you talked about - it shouldn't include any guaranteed minimum of staffing that might impede efforts to civilianize or limit the possibilities for reenvisioning public safety in Seattle. The mayor, the police chief, the council - all of our leaders in Seattle - have made commitments in this direction and tying their hands preemptively limits what they're able to do and what voters voted for and expect. Requiring SPOG - the contract should not allow in-uniform off-duty work for police officers, nor should it require the City to pay any part of the Seattle Police Officer Guild President's salary. It's pretty unprecedented. And in a time where we're heading into budget shortfalls, where other departments in the City are also dealing with this, that's not an arrangement that we see with other unions within the City. So let's bring that in line with other unions.
And broader changes to the accountability system that'll close loopholes and remove barriers to accountability. Specifically, discipline should not be required to be foreclosed within a certain timeline - in other words, 180 days. The OPA should have the ability to refer criminal investigations to the agency of their choice and be able to oversee those criminal investigations. Requirements should be instituted for the OPA to retain records permanently for investigations related to excessive force, dishonesty, criminal conduct, or where underlying allegations were concealed. Limitations should be removed as to how many of OPA investigators must be sworn versus civilian, so we can progress towards civilianizing OPA and stop the practice of officers investigating other officers which is an inherent conflict of interest. There shouldn't be any language barring the ability of complainants to appeal disciplinary decisions, a process that should be developed by the CPC as a top priority. And there should also be no language preventing the transparency of and ability to adapt standards of discipline so the public can evaluate these standards and participate in changing them as expectations around public safety change.
I wanted to go through those just because it is important for us all to know what we should be looking for in this contract, what is at stake, and what desperately needs to change. And so I appreciate People Power Washington engaging in this, so many community organizations engaging in this, and look forward to seeing what comes of this and what the mayor is comfortable with in this contract, as well as the city council.
Other big upcoming element - and this is all wonky stuff, but it's wonky stuff that material impacts the day-to-day lives of people in these cities. So the budget process for the City of Seattle is coming up and that is going to determine a lot of what is - everything in the City - every service that the City provides, every function that the City has - is addressed in the upcoming budget. I just want to review the timeline real quick, so people know what to be on the lookout for. Coming up next week, the mayor's going to deliver the proposed budget on September 27th. The mayor's gonna outline his priorities, what anticipated spending levels on different things are. The council is going to review the mayor's proposal starting on September 28th throughout October. The public will be able to provide feedback on the budget between September 28th and November 22nd. Councilmembers will propose changes in October, the Budget Chair presents a balancing package - basically a response to the mayor's proposed budget on November 8th. Councilmembers may propose further revisions up to November 21st, and the council will vote to adopt the budget on November 22nd. So the months of October, really in the month of October, there's going to be a lot of work being done, and that's the time to engage with your councilmembers, to engage with the mayor, make your voice heard on what this budget is going to bring. And there are a couple elements that kind of preview a couple things that are on deck. One being - looks like the mayor is going to ask for the Community Police Commission, or CPC's, assistance in bringing cops back into Seattle schools. What is happening here?
[00:24:26] Bryce Cannatelli: Yeah, so this was pretty interesting. During an August 17th meeting between Mayor Harrell and the Community Police Commission, Community Police commissioner and Officer Mark Mullens pointed to defunding as overstepping. And removing resource officers from schools - people don't have the visual, but I put quotes over defunding - and Mayor Harrell did respond, saying that resource officers and police officers needed to earn the trust and right to get back into schools. But also said that he's working with Superintendent Dr. Jones and Chairman Brandon Hersey to rebuild these relationships and is working to get officers back into school - suggesting that the Community Police Commission could be an invaluable asset in this space. It's interesting because in all of this, no mention was made about how this would affect - or could affect - students detrimentally, how it could contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline, how it would affect students' health and safety, which again just calls into question or at least runs counter to these spoken commitments to trying to find a more up-to-date view of police's role in public safety. In the same meeting, he also suggested that the CPC help recruit new officers for the Seattle Police Department.
[00:25:57] Crystal Fincher: I don't think that's in their given roles, is it?
[00:25:59] Bryce Cannatelli: Yeah, no, not at all. It's definitely not. So it was a really interesting meeting and it seems to go against what a lot of communities are concerned about when it comes to the role of police officers in school, especially how it affects students of color and other marginalized students.
[00:26:19] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I'm curious to see what the Seattle Public School Superintendent has to say about this, what Seattle Public School's board members have to say about this. And what their intentions would be and what they find acceptable in this area - is this something that they are looking to incorporate, or is this something that the mayor is suggesting that does not align with what they want? I'm very curious to hear what their takes would be on that. Also, another thing that was - that will be - that Bruce Harrell previously announced will be something that he's looking to include in the budget is a new park ranger, basically expanded park ranger hiring, and maybe some expanded duties. What are the details there?
[00:27:04] Bryce Cannatelli: Yeah. Harrell proposed to pay for 26 additional rangers in Seattle's parks. And during the announcement did stipulate some - tried to preemptively defend this by defining the differences between these park rangers and police - they're not supposed to be involved in sweeps. But this decision has still gotten a lot of pushback. The Solidarity Budget - the Seattle Solidarity Budget coalition is leading the effort here in criticizing this - calling the park rangers "soft cops" because park rangers can still issue trespass citations and can still end up funneling people into jail and into other areas of the criminal justice system, even if they're not armed, even if they don't fulfill the same exact roles as police officers.
[00:28:16] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and so this is gonna be interesting to follow. Bruce Harrell is rolling this out, seemingly, as a public safety initiative, which immediately invited questions. Okay - what public safety role do these play and which talks, basically brings it into the "soft cop" conversation - they can issue citations, they can introduce people into the criminal legal system or reintroduce them into it. And so that being a concern - the council is looking at taking this up and potentially narrowing the scope of what they can do. The council looking at, as you said, preventing them from engaging with sweeps or anything like that. It'll be interesting to see where this lands, but again, make sure you make your voice heard. There was an article in KUOW this week that we will link discussing the Seattle Solidarity Budget coalition and what they have talked about and what they're also proposing. And they certainly are talking about - it would be more effective, according to evidence and data, to invest more in addressing core needs, things that are more closely tied to the root causes of crime to prevent it - instead of operating around the edges perhaps. So we will see where that lands and continue to follow that.
We talk about Seattle a lot. We talk about Mayor Harrell a lot and certainly have some bones to pick with a number of things that are happening within the City. But one positive thing, I think, that was just announced by Mayor Harrell was the City unanimously passing a $6.5 million Green New Deal. Last week, the Seattle City Council unanimously passed legislation requested by Bruce Harrell, I believe, for setting up a Seattle Green New Deal Opportunity Fund. And this is something that Bruce Harrell talked about on the campaign trail, this is something that is desperately needed in Seattle and beyond. We have to address greenhouse gas emissions, we have to address pollution in all of its forms, and mitigating the effects on all of our communities, particularly those hit worst and the hardest, which are usually BIPOC, low-income communities that are dealing with the brunt of this. So what are the specifics of what's going to be happening, Bryce?
[00:30:47] Bryce Cannatelli: Like you said, this is exciting and definitely points towards the City, both looking at how can we reduce emissions, but also how can we battle the impacts that climate change has on people who are really vulnerable. So looking at the breakdown, which we'll link in the show notes - the South Seattle Emerald did a really great breakdown of it. These funds are going to new resilience hubs to help during climate emergencies like extreme heat or other weather-related events like wildfire smoke and flooding. We're gonna see $1.78 million go to upgrading community facilities to foster resilience. Another, a little over a million dollars, for centers in the Duwamish valley to provide cooling, air filtration, other programming. And almost half a million for a citywide resilience hub strategy, focusing on communities that are impacted, as they say, first and worst by climate injustice.
We're also going to see some upgrades to municipal buildings for electrification, cooling, heating, and air quality upgrades to Seattle's 650 owned buildings, including its 27 public libraries. We're gonna see over $2 million going to accelerating Seattle's transition of City-owned buildings off of fossil fuels by 2035. Providing heating, cooling, clean air to some library branches and over half a million for building electrification. We're also going to see, and this is pretty exciting as well, investments in fossil fuel free affordable housing - affordable housing for low income residents, which will give about $2 million to supporting affordable housing projects that are underway to be free of fossil fuels and avoid really inefficient and costly upgrades that we would have to do later just to make them more climate friendly and energy efficient. They're also funding a climate and community health indicator project, which hopes to get accurate local and reliable data for addressing climate change. Developing a carbon pollution and community health indicators to inform how we plan around climate change. Money to go to supporting community and public health partnerships to look at cumulative health impacts of climate change. Trying to acquire new transportation energy data to figure out where electrification needs to happen first.
And there's also a hundred thousand dollars going to supporting community engagement to inform the climate element of the One Seattle Comprehensive Plan, which is hoping to develop Seattle's climate resilience and environmental justice goals over the next 20 years. This money is going in a lot of different directions - some of it proactive, some of it reactive - but it is really encouraging to see the City really taking this seriously and putting funds that came from the JumpStart program actually into making the City a place where people are safer and healthier. Especially if they're already in a part of a town or in a community that's especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
[00:34:25] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So good work. Keep it up. Also wanted to make mention this week - King County is launching new programs to support immigrants, which is a big deal. There is now, which was just announced, this launch of two new programs that started earlier this month to provide financial support, including a King County immigration fee support program to help immigrants pay eligible fees associated with applying for legal status - including fees with US Citizenship and Immigration Services and Executive Office for immigrant review. And also immigrant applications costs vary from a couple hundred to thousands of dollars per applicant. So if you are living, working, going to school in King County, or currently detained in ICE facilities, but previously living, working, or going to school in King County - you are eligible for support. And that's up to $3,000 per individual and $6,000 per household, depending on the fees incurred or expected in 2022. So we will link that - in the system, oftentimes people are listening who may not be in that situation, but maybe you know folks who are. It's also common to know folks who are, but not know that they're in that situation - 'cause there is, often people are not excited to disclose that they may not have all of their papers in perfect order. So just the more people can do to spread this word throughout all of our communities in every area, in person and online - the more we can make sure people are connected to resources that are going to be helpful. So I was very encouraged to see that as well as there's another related piece of welcome news this week - in that some long overdue relief looks like it is finally going to get out. What is happening here?
[00:36:23] Bryce Cannatelli: Washington's Legislature approved of $340 million in aid for undocumented immigrants last April and there have been a lot of delays on this program, this money not reaching its intended recipients. But this week we did get some good news. Applications are now open for a fund that are gonna provide financial aid to undocumented immigrants in the state. People who need the support can apply to receive a check or a prepaid debit card through the website immigrantreliefwa.org - we'll put that link in the show notes and it'll be on our Twitter as well. This application portal went live on Monday. It's gonna be open until November 14th. So just like the other story that we just talked about, this is gonna be really good to share as much as you can. The Department of Social and Health Services says that each eligible person will get a minimum - a minimum - of $1,000 with the total award to each person depending on the size of the applicant pool and other factors. If you qualify - you have to be over 18 years of age and you must be ineligible for unemployment benefits or federal stimulus payments due to immigration status.
[00:37:44] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and this if we recall, back then was necessary because although there was a wide variety of relief made available to the majority of residents living here, there were some very notable carveouts for immigrants. And that - immigrants are part of our communities, they're working in jobs just along with the rest of us and in need of support. And so this was meant to fill the gap. Obviously would've been great to get the money out earlier as intended, but it is now available, so please spread the word. The online application is available currently in Spanish, English, Chinese, Korean, and Tagalog. Make sure you spread the word - support and help is available. And we are fairly sure that there are definitely a lot of people who need it, so making those connections is a very helpful thing.
And as a reminder, I'm going to be moderating a 37th Legislative District candidate debate on Tuesday, October 4th, from 7:00 to 9:00 PM. Doors are gonna open at 6:30. This is an in-person event that will also be streamed online. It's gonna be at the Rainier Arts Center. So the programming starts at 7, doors open at 6:30. They are going to be checking vaccination cards, masking is required, they will also offer rapid testing for those who are not vaccinated. Again, all will be required to wear masks, but hope that you come down, make your voice heard. You can also submit questions. We'll put a link in the show notes that you can use to ask questions. You can also @ me on Twitter if you wanna do that, shoot me what you're thinking, we'll try and incorporate that in there. This is being put on by media partners, including Hacks & Wonks, KNKX, KVRU, and Real Change with support from King County Elections, the Seattle Foundation and League of Women Voters. So excited about that. Excited about hearing from both of those candidates. It's gonna be an important choice that residents of that district are going to make. So look forward to seeing you there.
And with that, I think that is our show for today. Thank you so much for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, September 23rd, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler, assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Production Coordinator is my co-host today - Bryce Cannatelli.
[00:40:21] Bryce Cannatelli: Thank you so much again, Crystal. It's a lot of fun.
[00:40:24] Crystal Fincher: And so thanks to Bryce for being our insightful cohost today. You can find Bryce on Twitter @inascenttweets, spelled I-N-A-S-C-E-N-T-T-W-E-E-T-S. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, as you do. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere you can get podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, please leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full text transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
This week on the show, Summer Stinson, Executive Director of the Economic Opportunity Institute (EOI), stops by to talk about the amazing work EOI has been doing and the benefits that progressive revenue presents across the state.
Our tax system affects all aspects of life. How we tax income equitably in inequitably, what programs we invest in, have significant impacts on whether individuals and families will struggle or have access to necessary resources. Because of our lack of an income tax and reliance on sales tax, it’s the poorest Washingtonians’ who spend the most of their income on taxes, rather than the richest. Plans for progressive revenue would fix this by creating a tax system that taxes people closest in proportion to their income, instead of levying the same taxes on everyone regardless of their wealth.
For EOI, one of their top priorities for the next legislative session is a wealth tax, a bill for which was introduced by Representative Noel Frame, which would start 1% tax on an individual’s accumulated wealth beyond a certain amount - discussed amounts range from $15 million to $1 billion as amount you can own before having to pay the tax. This 1% tax would only impact a portion of the wealth of a handful, 4,000 to less than a hundred, of Washingtonians, but could fund programs that benefit everyone.
Money earned through a wealth tax could fully fund special education across the state, provide adequate mental health staff for schools, let Washington start to develop guaranteed basic income programs, support people with developmental disabilities, and so much more.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Summer Stinson, at @Summer_Stinson. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Summer Stinson
Summer Stinson is a product of public schools from kindergarten to law school. After graduating law school, she clerked for the Honorable Johnnie B. Rawlinson, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Summer has over 25 years of experience in human resources and labor, employment, and disability law. Most recently, Summer worked for the Social Security Administration for over a decade where she developed and led national trainings on the Americans with Disabilities Act. She worked pro bono on immigration cases, defended people facing eviction, and wrote numerous pro bono amicus briefs arguing for Washington to amply fund public schools.
In 2015, Summer co-founded Washington’s Paramount Duty (WPD), a non-partisan, grassroots group of over 10,000 parents and allies across Washington advocating to provide every child equitable access to amply funded public schools with new progressive revenue. In 2021, Summer became the Executive Director of the Economic Opportunity Institute, a nonprofit public policy think tank that uses research, education, and advocacy to advance policies to build an economy that works for everyone.
As EOI Executive Director, Summer is co-leading the Share the Wealth campaign to the legislature for a wealth tax. For too long, Indigineous, Black, and Brown Washingtonians have been paying their share of taxes but not seeing the investments and funding in their communities. It’s time for the very wealthiest Washingtonians — who are primarily white — to pay what they owe so that we can ensure all of our communities have an equal opportunity to send their kids to excellent and well-funded public schools, to put food on the table, and to build a home where their families can live in dignity.
Summer has published in the University of Oregon Labor Education Research Center Monograph and the University of Washington Education Law and Policy Review. Her most treasured accomplishment is being a mom to a Seattle Public Schools high schooler. Summer and her son adopted a rescue black lab from Texas and love taking him for urban and rural hikes in Washington. Summer is also a huge fan of progressive t-shirts, which she wears to walk or lift kettlebells and then sews t-shirt quilts with her favorite t-shirts.
Resources
Economic Opportunity Institute:
https://www.opportunityinstitute.org/
Keep Our Care Act from ACLU Washington:
https://www.aclu-wa.org/KOCA
Washington State’s Paid Medical Leave program from Economic Opportunity Institute:
https://www.opportunityinstitute.org/research/paidleave/
“Washington state’s tax system is worsening income inequality” by Melissa Hellmann, Ashley Clarke, & Joe Yerardi from Crosscut:
https://crosscut.com/equity/2022/09/washington-states-tax-system-worsening-income-inequality
“Share the Wealth, Washington! A state wealth tax on extreme wealth is the missing link in Washington’s tax code” by Carolyn Brotherton from Economic Opportunity Institute: https://www.opportunityinstitute.org/research/post/share-the-wealth-washington/
“Reykdal calls for WA Legislature to fund free school meals for all” by Jeanie Lindsay from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/reykdal-calls-for-wa-legislature-to-fund-free-school-meals-for-all/
“Funding Progressive Services through Progressive Tax Reform” by Economic Opportunity Institute:
https://www.opportunityinstitute.org/research/tax-reform/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On the show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show were always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today on the program, I'm thrilled to be joined by Summer Stinson. How are you . Doing?
[00:00:45] Summer Stinson: I'm great. How are you Crystal?
[00:00:47] Crystal Fincher: I'm doing great. And I'm excited to have you on, and I want to tell people who you are, what you've been up to. I'm just gonna read your bio so people understand why I'm excited that you're on. Summer Stinson is a product of public schools from kindergarten to law school. After graduating from law school, she clerked for the honorable Johnnie Rawlinson U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Summer has over 25 years of experience in human resources and labor employment and disability law. Most recently summer worked for the Social Security Administration for over a decade where she developed and led national trainings on the Americans With Disabilities Act. She worked pro bono on immigration cases, defended people facing eviction, and wrote numerous pro bono amicus briefs, arguing for Washington to amply fund public schools. In 2015, summer co-founded Washington's Paramount Duty, a nonpartisan grassroots group of over 10,000 parents and allies across Washington advocating to provide every child equitable access to amply-funded public schools with new progressive revenue. In 2021, Summer became the Executive Director of the Economic Opportunity Institute, a nonprofit public policy think tank that uses research, education, and advocacy to advance policies to build an economy that works for everyone. As EOI Executive Director, Summer's, co-leading the Share The Wealth campaign to the legislature for a wealth tax. For too long, Indigenous, Black, and Brown Washingtonians have been paying their share of taxes, but not seeing the investment in funding in their communities. It's time for the wealthiest Washingtonians, who are primarily white, to pay what they owe so that we can all ensure our communities have an equal opportunity to send their kids to excellent and well-funded public schools to put food on the table and to build a home where their families can live in dignity. Summer's Published in the University of Oregon Labor Education and Research Center Monograph, and the University of Washington Education Law and Policy Review. Her most treasured accomplishment is being a mom to a Seattle public school's high schooler. Summer and her son adopted a rescue black lab from Texas and love taking him for urban and rural hikes in Washington. Summer's also a huge fan of progressive t-shirts, which she wears to walk or lift kettlebells, and then sews, t-shirts quilts with her favorite t-shirts. That's a lot. You have done a lot, Summer.
[00:03:13] Summer Stinson: I feel like I still haven't done enough. I'm always trying to do more.
[00:03:17] Crystal Fincher: You certainly are working more. Lots of people are familiar with Washington's Paramount Duty. You're one of the co-founders and then served on the board for quite some time. Built such a huge movement that resulted really in the McCleary decision, which is a pretty landmark decision by our Supreme court that finally required our legislature to adequately fund public schools. Forced them to make dramatic improvements from where they were at. Still more improvements necessary. But you have been doing this work for so long, in so many different ways and advocating for a lot of people in a lot of different ways. So one, I was just thrilled when you became the Executive Director of EOI and I'm thrilled at the work that you're doing right now. So I guess, starting out, what got you into this work, what drives you and how did you land at EOI?
[00:04:13] Summer Stinson: Great questions. And actually like what got me into this work was, back in 1990, I was a sophomore at Oregon State University. And we had what was called measure number five down in Oregon, that would completely change our property tax system. And it was pushed by big landlords, especially corporations with lots of land, and it ended up gutting our public school system as well as our university programs. And I helped lead a lot of rallies. We even took over the president's office at Oregon State University. We slept there for the whole evening and had quite a rally in March just to say, "look divesting from the public good so that certain individuals can get tax breaks is or certain corporations, is not what Oregon is about." and unfortunately it passed and Oregon is still facing the ramifications of that decision, of that passage. What happened was that overnight after it passed, tuition doubled at many of the universities. Gonna date myself here, but when I started at Oregon State University, it was, I think, $494 for tuition for a quarter. Not including all the student fees and things like that, but then it doubled. Which still, I think many people today would gladly take a thousand dollars a quarter for tuition. But has just continued to escalate from there. Other things that happened from that were that friends who were in programs such as journalism, or programs such as teaching, all of a sudden the state board of higher education decided that we didn't have the money anymore, oregon didn't have the money anymore, to support degrees at different schools. So that if the University of Oregon already had journalism, there was no way that Oregon State should also have journalism, et cetera. So the degrees were slashed. Like entire degrees and programs were just slashed overnight. And so seeing how that affected people who were at school and the fact that a lot of people had to drop out or take a second job to be able to stay in school, or had to figure out whether to transfer, either to a different school or to a different program, was really my first awakening that taxes matter and actually affect our lives every day. And I think I was 19 years old at the time and it's still true today. We are so affected by our tax system, by the fairness or inequities in our tax system. And it truly does affect us, our children, our neighbors, coworkers, et cetera, every single day. And that is just such a touchpoint for whether we can live happy and healthy lives, is whether we are collecting re revenue equitably and whether we are investing in programs and communities equitably as well.
[00:07:06] Crystal Fincher: And so that's really important work. It does have to do with everything. How does EOI go about advocating for that? And what is everything that the economic opportunity Institute works on?
[00:07:19] Summer Stinson: We work on quite a bit of different things, not just progressive revenue. We also work on healthcare, major things that we have been working on, and this is through - we have this amazing policy team. So when I say we, it truly is we. We have just a tremendous staff, which we are almost gonna be nine here very soon. We have another person joining us at the beginning of October - and so for healthcare, some of the big pushes have been to address the consolidation of hospitals and the consolidation of our healthcare, which is critically important, not just when you look at the cost of healthcare, but also when you look at the healthcare available at certain hospitals. Because not all hospitals, unfortunately, have the same commitment to a woman's health and women's reproductive health, and also a woman's right to choose and to provide abortions whether chosen or whether they're required for the health of the mother. And so that's a very big issue that we have worked on that we have not been able to fully move forward in Washington state, I'm sure it'll be on our agenda again, and has never been more important than since after the Dobbs decision. Also, we are working with many other organizations, including unions and many other nonprofit organizations on capping costs and reducing costs for both pharmaceuticals and also for the medical procedures. Because, as we know, the costs are just continue to escalate and yet we don't see nurses getting paid more. We would think that we'd have a very robust system rather than just profits by hospitals or by providers at this point, but that's unfortunately what we're seeing. For paid family medical leave, which is another one of AOIs huge wins, and that was so important in the state where we were able to get, with many other organizations, paid leave for Washingtonians to care for themselves or their families. And then a very progressive program where it's not just family, that the U.S. government considers you related to, but it's also chosen family, which is very nice and broad, and also really matters to so many people, especially to communities, queer communities, that we can take time off for our chosen family. And we've done a lot of work to make sure that those programs are really accessible right now. Unfortunately, the application is only in English online, which makes no sense in a state like Washington. So that's another thing we're working on, making sure that there's more language accessibility for people who do not speak or write English to be able to apply for these programs that are very important for them to be able to access as well. And then of course, we've worked for a long time now on progressive revenue, which I know we're gonna talk more about as well.
[00:10:09] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And so I do wanna talk about that a little bit more. Progressive revenue is a term that is frequently used among insiders among people doing policy work and political work, but that a lot of people, who aren't super paying attention to things may be real familiar with what that actually is. So what is progressive revenue and why does it matter?
[00:10:33] Summer Stinson: So we are currently, Washington, the most regressive state when it comes to our revenue collection. And again, that sounds, maybe, like a little bit of word salad, but what that means is that we rely on taxes as a percentage of income. We rely on taxes and we more heavily tax the people at the bottom of the earning spectrum. People who are poor, people who are barely making it, working families pay a much higher rate of their earnings than do the really wealthy among us. And in a state like Washington state, where we have almost a hundred billionaires and yet one quarter of our Washingtonians live in poverty, we have just this enormous gap already between the haves and the have nots. But then when you layer our inequitable tax system, regressive tax system, on top of that, where we're taxing the people who are the have nots at the highest rate, it means that we are really unfair in how we're doing this. And let me remind you, we're more unfair than Mississippi, we're more unfair than Texas. We are the most regressive of all 50 states. And this is even after capital gains tax was enacted. We're still the most regressive. It has not changed that. We have not even moved up one number yet. We are still 50th when you look at states in terms of who has the least regressive tax system. We are still number 50. We just have an incredibly unfair tax system.
[00:12:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And that's such a tremendous challenge. And our state, we don't have an income tax. And sometimes people look at that and they think, "oh, so taxes must be really low. There's no income tax. It's a cake walk." It is not a cake walk. And what that means is that instead of people paying proportionally according to what they earn and their ability to pay and a percentage of that, we have sales taxes and use taxes and BNO taxes and fees for everything. And so all of these other taxes are jacked up, but they're not taxes that are in any way correlated with people's income or ability to pay. So we have people at the bottom paying as much. Or more in some cases than people at the top. And it just doesn't make sense. And in an area where the public investments and the public infrastructure that have been provided and, businesses and individuals have been able to reap the benefit of that great public investment, of our great infrastructure, of our educational investments, enrich themselves, and then not continue that cycle of paying back into the system through taxes is just really not working is the bottom line. And we have seen, in many ways, how it doesn't work what are some of the impacts of having such a regressive tax?
[00:13:44] Summer Stinson: And I thank you for laying it out that way, because one of the impacts, if you're gonna take it on a really personal level, is that, if you have, say, a millionaire parent who goes into buy some diapers for their child and they're paying the sales tax and they grab whatever brand of diapers off the shelf, they're paying the same tax for those diapers as a parent who is every single diaper counts, every single dollar counts, and they really need those diapers for their children and they may be working two jobs. And so the fact that the sales tax is not any way an equalizer because yes, you have these two parents who are paying the same amount, no matter what they bring to the table, no matter how much they're counting those dollars for those diapers, trying to make them last. So that's on a personal level, the impact. The impact for our students and for all Washingtonians, especially when you look at our Washingtonians most in need, like our disabled Washingtonians, is that we have cut and cut so many programs that are absolutely needed. We are not even back to most of the spending rates that we had for people very much in need. And for our basics, we are not even back to the spending rates that we had before the recession from 2008 to 2011, which I think was called the Great Recession, which just feels awkward now since we've, had a pandemic since then. But yeah, even in a pandemic, we have not gotten back to those levels because we've also had some infusions from the federal government and also our state government that are not- The investments while they're amazing, just yesterday, Biden had a bill signing, amazing investments, but many of them will tap out. They are investments for a year or two. Examples are the child tax credit that was very popular. Lifted millions of families out of poverty across the entire U.S, and yet, was discontinued at the beginning of this year. Another example is the federal government and state government making sure that all meals at public schools were free, universally free, was another thing that ceased, though Washington state is trying to figure out how to continue to make universal meals at schools still of reality. So even just like where the rubber meets the road, and actually, roads. Let's talk about how many bridges do we talk about need to be fixed? I saw that they're finally doing some testing on the West Seattle Bridge. But then we talk about the Magnolia Bridge and the Ballard Bridge. And just our simple infrastructure, we have not been keeping up with the investments we need and the testing and the reinforcing that we need to be able to continue the society that we already have.
[00:16:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. It's so important and so critical. And so, in the state, we've had a lot of conversations about, "okay, so what kind of revenue does that mean?" we just talked about an income tax, but we hear an income tax in our state is unconstitutional. We also hear people trying to characterize lots of different types of wealth taxes as an income tax. So what is actually permissible and what is possible?
[00:17:05] Summer Stinson: So what the Washington state constitution has a ban on is any sort of graduated property tax. So that would mean the more expensive the house, taxing that at a higher rate. Which. I think we should not be having to deal with that constraint of not being able to have a progressive property tax, but unfortunately that would require change from the legislature as well as from our Washingtonians. But what the Supreme Court did in the 1930s cases was say that, income was akin to property, and that because income was property, or so they ruled, and this was a pretty conservative court at the time, they overturned a Washington voter initiative to have a progressive income tax. And so, there's this interpretation from the 1930s Supreme Court, which is now almost a hundred years old, that interpretation that income is property. First of all, there's no prohibition on an income tax anywhere. The only rulings we have are that income is property and therefore it can't be, we couldn't have, a progressive income tax. I do think that it is a great time to challenge that at the Supreme Court level and see if this current Supreme Court would reexamine that, because income is very different than property, as we know. Wealth, property, income, those are all different types of terms. And we could talk about that. So there's no prohibition, but it is also just considered that third rail that a lot of people don't wanna touch in Washington state. And in my thinking, and many others' thinking, is that, "okay, income actually, isn't as progressive." People who are relying on income to work, where they're not making money in their sleep, they're putting their work, their thought, they're writing briefs, working out at a construction site, where they're somehow doing something to be able to earn money that is that is still an exchange.
[00:19:15] Crystal Fincher: So you bring up a good issue here. That's good to talk about. The idea of income versus wealth.
[00:19:22] Summer Stinson: Yes.
[00:19:22] Crystal Fincher: And talking about this, a lot of people are like, "wealth? Does that mean that Ms. Tech executive who is making well into the six figures? Is that who we're talking about?
Are we talking about billionaire? Are we talking about that?" And it really has to do with how are you making your income? What income are you living off of? If you are working and earning a wage, that wage could be minimum wage, that wage could be a really healthy salary. But if you are earning money from working, exchanging your labor, exchanging a service, exchanging your intellect and providing expertise, that's work. That's an income. And that's a completely different conversation than someone who is earning money passively on interest from an investment, on gains from an investment, on other people's work, or collecting wealth from other people. And some people talk about landlords or different things where it's not- you actually aren't working for the money, your money is earning money at that point in time. And you're making money from investments, not necessarily from work that you're doing or expertise that you are providing. Those are two very different things. And really when we're talking about, in Washington, this wealth tax, the number is so large and the amount of people that it covers is such a tiny minuscule percentage, that it's a different thing. How do you view this income versus wealth conversation?
[00:20:58] Summer Stinson: I think, thank you very much for that framing, because I would also add, if you are able to make money in your sleep, if you can collect rent, or if your stocks are continuing to go up, or if you own a business and others are working for you but you are not having to lead that business but you have that investment, you're able to nap or sleep or do other things with your time and you don't have that exchange there. And that is where, when we look at the gap between those haves and have nots, it's not just income, though income is very important, but the wealth gap. The wealth gap is immoral in Washington state. The wealth gap that some people do not have a roof over their heads at all, do not have secure food, are not able to buy their children clothes for school, and yet we have almost a hundred billionaires in our state. Many of them that are on the dared names are on the tip of our tongue. And we could even just start naming them here. And that we have that in Washington state, which is amazing prosperity, but we also have people who, one quarter, who are not sure where their next meal is gonna come from, do not have secure housing are basically living very moment to moment without the support they need and without the programs they need, and without being able to earn the wage that they deserve.
[00:22:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And really just fundamental fairness. Someone who is worth a billion dollars, our a hundred or so billionaires in the state, paying the same amount of tax, basically, same rate as someone who is struggling making a minimum wage at a full time job, trying to support a family, doing the best that they can just is not fair and is illogical. And is counter to the way that we have traditionally done things in the United States and this state also, which I feel like we should talk about more. Right now we're out of balance and people talking about, "hey, let's make our tax system more progressive" are really talking about let's return to the way that it used to be and get closer to that instead of where we have landed where tax rates are so much lower than they have historically been. And we see, societally, the impact of that.
[00:23:29] Summer Stinson: Absolutely. We had two things that we had huge investments in our public infrastructure. We really funded the public good. We had library systems, we've had much stronger transit systems, public transit systems, we have had public schools with many more options. And this is in sometimes just our recent past, not even, in long ago, days, but very recent past. And yet smaller class sizes, et cetera. And yet what we also have is this nonstop chipping away at all the different revenue sources that we used to have. Very über wealthy people used to pay taxes at a much higher rate and still engage in philanthropy on top of that. Philanthropy does not equal taxes. Philanthropy is directed giving. Often it comes with tax breaks. It often comes with lots of strings attached. It often comes with, "hey, think about how I'm thinking," says the rich person, "about class sizes, whether they're important or not. Or school sizes. Or how important types of curriculum are." And yes, I may be thinking of a couple examples here, but, those strings and that investment from philanthropy is not the same as funding our communities. It's not the same as funding our children's future. We should be doing that based on taxes. It should be stable year to year. It should grow year to year. We have seen 10% increase in the CPI, in the inflation, here in Washington state. And yet I bet most workers have not seen a 10% increase in their wages. Schools have not seen a 10% increase in their budgets. We're being asked, essentially, whether it's our family, or our schools, or our transit systems, to do more with less. Which we have also been asked to do that for at least the last 50 years, if not more. And there just comes a point where you cannot do anything with less. There comes a point where you're barely scraping by. I think that the IRS as a institution is a perfect example of that. Where the IRS, people realize now, had been so chronically underfunded and Social Security, those two programs had been so underfunded that we have to take some time and a lot of money to bulk them back up again, just to do the mission that they were asked to do and that we expect them to do.
[00:25:58] Crystal Fincher: Just to maintain a level of service that we're used to from so many of our public institutions. We are just on the heels of the end of a Seattle Public School strikes, the end of strikes in a number of different cities, and things like class sizes we're such a huge issue. They're so much bigger than they used to be. That's an effect of not having adequately funded schools. The size of the supply list that you have to get for your kid when you're sending them to school is now so much longer than it used to be. That's an example of things that used to be publicly funded now being the private responsibility or forced that burden onto private residents, when that used to be something that we all acknowledged was needed by our students. And so clearly schools would provide. Even looking at different programs available in school, different curriculum, different options and electives, that used to help provide a well rounded education, and frankly do a better job, I think, of preparing people for living in the world that they were gonna land in after graduation. Those things are not automatic anymore. And we have to pass a school levy locally or do something else to make up for the funding that used to be provided through taxing people who were very wealthy. Now we stop doing that. We're still taxing people at the bottom of the ladder and in the middle, but we took very high income earners out of the equation. Things like, just seeing the bridge closures that we've had, the kinds of potholes that we've had, managing these wildfires and forest, so many different things that our parents, that even it doesn't even have to be that long ago, just 10 years ago, were normal and standard are now no longer. And then more things are being forced onto private citizens to pay instead of everybody in this community and society. And so it's so important. There are lots of things that have been talked about. An income tax is one thing and one element that's a little bit trickier. But there are other things, like the capital gains tax, that has passed. There are several other types of taxes, a wealth tax proposed by representative Noel Frame, that politically now are more achievable than they have been in decades, really. There's such an increasing acknowledgement by more people in the public, that looking around and saying things are broken, whether it's the inability to address our housing crisis and our affordability crisis, or just provide clean water to all of our communities and our schools, so many different things. What are the options that you're working to, and that look possible in the coming legislative session?
[00:28:56] Summer Stinson: Thank you. That's a great question. We are most focused, our biggest priority is, the wealth tax. And working with Representative Frame and also with Representative My-Linh Thai and Representative April Berg on the wealth tax. So, it was introduced two years ago at a billion dollar threshold, meaning Crystal, your first billion that you have in wealth and my first billion that I have in wealth would be not taxed. Which means-
[00:29:22] Crystal Fincher: Wait, you're not a business hater, an economy hater who wants to take all of my wealth? You don't want my entire- But like, I can have my first billion free is what you're saying?
[00:29:35] Summer Stinson: That we are suggesting to lower that to probably about 50 million, but yes. 50 million or 15 million. Those are pretty high numbers still. And then, even after that, it would only be a 1% tax because it would not be graduated because of the current constitutional prohibition on any sort of progressive property tax. So this would just be a straight 1% on intangible property. So much of our financial system is really now about stocks and bonds and all of these other types of assets, which often if there are stocks and bonds that are traded on wall street, then they're already going to have a worth attached to them. Some types of businesses that are not public might not have a worth and so that they would need to be assessed. But we already all have our houses assessed. We all get that little postcard, for people who are homeowners, get a postcard of how much our house is worth. And people who our homeowners often check out Redfin and Zillow. So the whole assessment of a certain type of wealth is already a really common standard practice, especially when we talk about real property. So when we're talking about intangible property, we would be applying that same appraisal system. That same assessment system. And that the difference between this, a wealth tax, also, and a capital gains tax, is the difference between a real estate tax and a tax when you sell your. So you pay real estate, property tax every single year, whatever you do with that property, but then anytime you sell it, then there's the tax for the exchange of that property. And so the wealth tax would be akin to the yearly property tax. So that would be for people who have intangible property of over 15 million or 50 million, wherever the threshold ends up being in the bill, then for that amount and over, there would be a 1% tax every year annually, that's very similar to our property taxes. Then capital gains tax is for the exchange. When somebody sells a stock or realizes gains, that's when then capital gains tax comes in. So they're different, just as we have different taxes in the real estate world.
[00:31:59] Crystal Fincher: Okay. So we know how to assess this. We know what kind of system this is. We are not recreating the wheel. Many other states do this and taxing wealth is a normal, traditional American thing. As far as how many people this is going to impact, is this really a small percentage of people or are you trying to tax everybody in the state, Summer Stinson? Is this just coming for everybody? What is the deal with who this does impact?
[00:32:29] Summer Stinson: That's a great question who this impacts is just less than a hundred taxpayers if we're at a billion dollar threshold. If we're at a hundred million threshold, it reaches a whole 2,000 taxpayers. And at a 50 million threshold, we are reaching 4,400 taxpayers. And these numbers did come from the Washington Department of Revenue Modeling that they have done this year. So these are very up to date numbers. These come from our Department of Revenue and from the modeling that they've done. And so we are also working on trying to make sure that we set a threshold where we do not get individuals who have most of their wealth held up in a family business, people who are very entrepreneurial and have a family business that maybe doesn't have the same cash flow to be able to pay this. We're not trying to catch up everybody or every type of wealth. We are really trying to get to the absolutely most über wealthy. Which again, even if out of 50 million wealth exemption amount, is 4,400 Washingtonians.
[00:33:33] Crystal Fincher: So out of almost 8 million Washingtonian, 7.8 million residents in the state, we are talking about 2000 people that this impacts. And 2000 of the richest Washingtonians who control just an outsized percentage of the wealth in this state. What is made possible when we do tax the we of the über wealthy? What kinds of things does that buy and enable?
[00:34:05] Summer Stinson: One of the big things, and this was something that we've been pushing a lot already, is actually fully funding special education. And this was something that I've been writing about and talking about and working on with representative Frank Chopp and others before the most recent school strikes that we've seen in different school districts, seattle's as well as others. Because this state does not amply fund education at public schools, but they really do not pay the actual cost of special education even today. They have a very low cap on the number of students, the percentage of students, in each district who can be identified as in need of special education. And they have very outdated, insufficient formulas for figuring out how much each student should receive or how much each district should receive for different students. And especially when we have the mental health issues that we see from the pandemic across the entire country. And as in recently reported, especially depression and anxiety in kids here in Washington state where it's been a larger issue than even in the rest of the country where those rates are increasing really rapidly. We need to have more counselors, nurses, special education supports, social workers, librarians in our schools. We absolutely need that. If we have a true commitment to having culturally responsive and support for students in need, rather than going to heavy discipline measures and wrap around supports, then what we really need is to be able to invest in those. It's hard to tell teachers or administrators that they have to do something with nothing. We really need to be able to support our teachers, our administrators, and also have the proper number of bodies, which is a nurse in every school. The fact that is something that we, that is no longer a given is, really it's bananas. It's unthinkable, truly. There are some schools that only I see a nurse once a week and the state legislature did just invest more in nurses, but it's gonna be over a three year period. And it's a very slow, the investment in nurses and counselors is still, also very slow to build. And we really need to be able to have one in each school. Other things that we need to be able to support is cash for families. There was a great article in the New York times on GBI programs, Guaranteed Basic Income programs and how they, there have been various different pilots around the entire country. We've also had a pilot here in Washington state and the Department of DHS-.
[00:36:45] Crystal Fincher: DSHS.
[00:36:46] Summer Stinson: DSHS, thank you - did a great report on how uplifting that pilot program was. And we need to be able to have the money in Washington state, have the investment to take these pilot programs or trials to scale them up, to make them actually real programs that can help everybody in Washington. GBI is an amazing opportunity for helping Washingtonians most in need and Representative Liz Berry has been sponsoring that bill. Another thing that I think many people don't know is that in Washington state, we do not support people with developmental disabilities nearly as much as we need to. Any sort of support for developmental disabilities means that individuals have to be on a waiting list. Our waiting list. 15,000 people right now in Washington state who are on a waiting list for needed support, just to be able to live their lives and for their families to be able to live their lives with a disabled person in their family. This would be akin to say, going into social security administration and saying, "hey, here's I, I'm trying to get my disability or trying to get my retirement benefits" and somebody basically telling you that somebody else has to go off the list, possibly even die, before you can get your benefits. It is morally reprehensible that we have such a long waiting list for people who need help with their basic daily living. So that's the type of thing that we could fund. All the programs and services needed for those 15,000 people on that waiting list. We could also provide homes for people with disabilities, including mental disabilities. Because many of the people who are most homeless and need a stable roof over their head have disabilities, including mental disabilities. We could also do a lot more recruiting training and retention of our needed workforce, right now, the counselors and the therapists and the public access to the support that they need. Those therapists themselves are often could qualify for housing support because they make so little themselves. Think about that. These are crucial jobs, and yet, just as crucial as safe firefighters, and yet we do not pay these people, a living wage. So there's so many things we can invest in that we absolutely should be investing in because right now, by not taxing, the most wealthy among us, we are leaving severe deficits in places that most need it in our communities that most need it in Washington state.
[00:39:18] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. Things from childcare, to the transition to clean and sustainable energy, to managing wildfires. There's so much. If you just think of what is publicly funded, this is what is impacted by the amount of taxes that we collect and then how we distribute them. So it, it is so impactful and so important. If people wanna learn more about the Economic Opportunity Institute or getting involved in movements for progressive revenue, how can they learn more information and get involved?
[00:39:53] Summer Stinson: Thank you. That's a great question. The Economic Opportunity Institute has an entire website with information, including Dr. Carolyn Brotherton, who is our Policy Associate for Progressive Revenue, just wrote an amazing article on Share the Wealth Washington talking about how a Washington state wealth tax on extreme wealth. It's the missing link for Washington's tax code. And there's even interactive charts where you can see who's gonna pay and at what levels and where they reside and whether or not they reside in your legislative district. So you can play around with lots of different things. I will give you a hint about that in that 41st legislative district, which includes Medina and Bellevue and Mercer Island, it does have the most, the highest number of, payers of any legislative district in the state of Washington. So you can go there to our website. Also, people can email me at summer@opportunityinstitute.org. And we always have lots of opportunities for people to learn either about wealth tax, we're gonna be having some sessions coming up about that, we're gonna be putting out some videos that we're working with Fuse on. And we will have a legislative session preview in early January. The first week of January. Because session starts January 9th.
[00:41:11] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. So we will include all of these links in there in our episode notes so you can refer to those, just, wherever you get the show. We will also be paying attention to what candidates on the campaign trail are saying about this issue, all of these issues, and making sure that if this is something that you care about, that the people up for election in your legislative districts are supportive of this. And you should ask them about this and engage with them about this and let them know that it's a priority to you. That's another way that you can help ensure that this winds up on their priority list to tackle in this upcoming legislative session. And for, even people in the County Prosecutors races and County Council races, that they know that progressive revenue is needed in all of our jurisdictions to make sure that we can take care of our entire community in the way that we deserve. And that people in the middle and at the bottom, aren't paying more than their fair share, like that needs to stop. Thank you so much Summer for joining us today. Sincerely appreciate it.
[00:42:24] Summer Stinson: Thank you, Crystal. It's been delightful to spend time with you as always. And thank you so much for inviting me on.
[00:42:32] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. And thank you for everyone for listening. Talk to you soon. Thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks. The producer of Hacks and Wonks is Lisl Stadler, our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng and our post-production assistant is Bryce Cannatelli you can find Hacks and Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks, and you can follow me at @finchfrii spelled F I N C H F R I I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts., just type Hacks & Wonks into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacks&wonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by former Seattle mayor and current Executive Director of America Walks, Mike McGinn! Starting with the local strike news, Seattle teachers ended their strike earlier this week, and Seattle public school students returned to classes on Wednesday morning. The strike was successful in getting district negotiators to the table, and getting some of their concerns accounted for. Beyond pay, teachers were fighting for manageable class sizes, special education and mental health resources, and adequate non-teacher staff like nurses and counselors.
In strike news on a national scale, the railroad workers strike has been averted by a tentative agreement between unions and railroad companies with the help of the Biden administration. Railroad workers were fighting for better time off policies, to not be penalized for taking sick days, and for reduced workloads, which ballooned due to staffing shortages.
These strikes, and others happening across the country, come at a time when unions have a decades-high approval from US citizens. Inequality has continued to worsen in this country, affecting more and more of us, and our appetite for collective action and unionization has grown as a result. At the same time, large corporations are engaging in increasingly harsh anti-union tactics.
Also this week, King County Council Member Girmay Zahilay published an op-ed in the Seattle Times about the politicization of crime disguising solutions that actually lower crime. He argues that the push for more police and more arrests won't solve our crime issues, and points out that research shows us that other solutions like Restorative Community Pathways are actually more effective in reducing recidivism. And as hiring bonuses fail to bring the new police the city was expecting, it seems more and more unreasonable to promise that ‘more police’ is the solution we need.
In the police alternatives conversation, the city council is working on a plan for an alternative 911 response pilot program in Seattle, but the Public Safety and Human Resources committee responsible for the plan has felt the need to create a "term sheet" agreement between the council and the Mayor's office. The need for this term sheet shows how frayed the relationship between the mayor and the council in Seattle, a relationship that has been worsening since the Durkan administration.
The business community has been pushing this media narrative that the council inhibits the mayor's ability to tackle issues like crime and homelessness, but this doesn't track. The mayor is the executive, responsible for seeing policy carried out and for helping to craft the policy itself. The mayor leads the city's major departments, and is responsible for coordinating them to solve the city's problems - they should be held primarily responsible for meeting their goals.
On October 4th at 7:00pm, Crystal will be moderating a debate, run by the South Seattle Emerald, between 37th LD State Representative candidates Chipalo Street and Emijah Smith! for more information, see this link: https://southseattleemerald.com/2022/09/14/news-gleams-seattle-teachers-union-strike-is-over-emerald-to-host-debate-with-37th-congressional-district-candidates/
A quick reminder: the Seattle Municipal Court will bring court and social services to Rainier Beach Community Center on Monday, September 19th from 10:00am to 6:00pm. Tell your friends! Also next week is the Week Without Driving! Everyone is invited to refrain from driving themselves in any vehicle, for any activity, for a week in order to increase awareness of the needs of non-drivers.
Finally, in eyebrow-raising news, The Royal Esquire Club, where Harrell was board president for six years, received almost $800,000 from the city through the Economic Development Initiative. While Mayor Harrell may not have been involved in this specific decision, it reinforces the concerns people have about his priorities and where he's putting resources after his controversial comments to SPD the other week.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Mike McGinn, at @mayormcginn. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Seattle Educators Vote to End Strike, Classes Begin for the School Year” from The South Seattle Emerald:
https://southseattleemerald.com/2022/09/14/news-gleams-seattle-teachers-union-strike-is-over-emerald-to-host-debate-with-37th-congressional-district-candidates/#Seattle-Educators-Vote-to-End-Strike
“National Railroads Labor Dispute Affects Northwest Passenger Rail, But Full Shutdown Has Been Averted” by Stephen Fesler from The Urbanist:
https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/09/14/national-railroads-labor-dispute-affecting-pacific-northwest-passenger-rail/
“U.S. railroads, workers avert shutdown, but work remains to finalize contract deal” by Lisa Baertlein from Reuters:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-railroads-workers-avert-shutdown-hard-work-remains-finalize-contract-deal-2022-09-15/
"U.S. Approval of Labor Unions at Highest Point Since 1965" by Justin McCarthy from Gallup:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/398303/approval-labor-unions-highest-point-1965.aspx
“Public safety is about solving tough problems, not scoring political points” by Girmay Zahilay from The Seattle Times:
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/public-safety-is-about-solving-tough-problems-not-scoring-political-points/
“Seattle May Get Its Alternative Response Pilot in 2023 After All” by Amy Sundberg from Notes from the Emerald City:
https://www.getrevue.co/profile/amysundberg/issues/seattle-may-get-its-alternative-response-pilot-in-2023-after-all-1346048?via=twitter-card&client=DesktopWeb&element=issue-card
Seattle Municipal Court Social Services Event:
http://seattle.gov/courts/about/community-engagement/outreach-events
“State and Local Leaders to Participate in Week Without Driving Challenge” by Natalie Bicknell Argerious from The Urbanist:
https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/09/14/state-and-local-leaders-to-participate-in-week-without-driving-challenge/
“Harrell Announces Grants that Include $800,000 to Private Men’s Club He Chaired For Years” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola:
https://publicola.com/2022/09/13/harrell-announces-grants-that-include-800000-to-private-mens-club-he-chaired-for-years/
"A Closer Look at City Grant to Social Club Harrell Headed” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola:
https://publicola.com/2022/09/15/new-sdot-director-talks-scooter-streetcar-and-sweeps-a-closer-look-at-city-grant-to-social-club-harrell-headed/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks and Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening and what you can do about. Full text transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program friend of the show and today's co-host, activist, community leader, former mayor of Seattle, and executive director of America Walks, the popular Mike McGinn.
[00:00:58] Mike McGinn: I appreciate the popular, but I think that's always up for, that's always up for question, how popular I am at any given moment. I've had good days and bad days over time, Crystal
[00:01:09] Crystal Fincher: Popular and increasingly vindicated. We had, we didn't even talk about this before the show, but there was actually a Supreme court, a state Supreme court ruling this week, ruling that insurance companies are not liable for some of the cost overruns on the tunnel. We are still in 2022 talking about the cost overruns that the leaders from 12, 14 years ago swore would not exist.
[00:01:32] Mike McGinn: "There will be no cost overruns," I was repeatedly informed. There will be no cost overruns, right?
[00:01:39] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And not only were there cost overruns, there were incredible delays and they're still fighting over it. So now it's figuring out who's gonna pay for that. You tried to warn us. You try to warn us.
[00:01:55] Mike McGinn: I did my best. And if you'll- I'll go on one more. We also know that so few cars are actually using the tunnel that they can't pay off the bonds they floated for the tolls to pay for it. So it's, it's- we were also told the economy of the city would collapse without that tunnel and it turns out that nobody actually, very few people are even using it. So much for the economic argument too.
[00:02:22] Crystal Fincher: Yes.
[00:02:23] Mike McGinn: This is, without getting too deep into it, it's one of the things that you just have to look for. Is the project about the public good or is it about sending a bunch of money towards some favored interests in the system? And that one was about sending money towards people who really wanted that money going to their businesses, et cetera. So you really, it's a warning to all of us: what is the program really for here?
[00:02:48] Crystal Fincher: I completely agree. So some big news this week was in the labor realm and the strike realm, one of which is a end to the Seattle teacher strike, which is a really big deal. Seattle public school students return to school on Wednesday, which I'm sure is a big relief to a lot of parents in the district. But finally, after a lot of delays from the district and their negotiators, they did come to the table with the teachers and wound up striking an agreement. So I'm sure everybody is relieved. I don't know if you talked to anyone who had kids out of school, but it was certainly a trial for a number of people, Mike.
[00:03:31] Mike McGinn: My, my kids are beyond that age, but yeah, it's a really big deal. It disrupts everyone's lives and there's so much pressure on the school system from so many different angles right now with both pandemic response, with funding issues from the legislature. And it's been- so this is on top of what I think has been a really unsettling time for parents and kids.
[00:03:56] Crystal Fincher: Yeah.
[00:03:57] Mike McGinn: As well as teachers themselves, who've had to work in an, extraordinarily difficult situation.
[00:04:04] Crystal Fincher: Extraordinarily difficult situation. Deal with a range of issues that they probably never anticipated when they took the job, and just the amount of flexibility, and going above and beyond that they've had to do throughout this pandemic and managing remote learning and in-person learning, sometimes a hybrid of the two, it's just a completely different model. And they're trying to do the best that they can. And issues in this teacher strike are not just pay - they certainly deserve the pay - but also issues related to some real fundamental structural issues that are happening in so many districts that are impacting class sizes, which are much larger in many areas, especially in special education, staffing ratios, staff like counselors, that are so important. And as we get more news that, coming out of this pandemic, children and students need more support, mental health support, lots of stuff going on there, but those staffing ratios are so much worse than they used to be. Class sizes are getting larger and larger, school supply lists for parents are getting longer and longer, and less is getting funded. There are fewer teachers there. Teachers are leaving the profession. Educators. There's a bus driver shortage. There are kind of shortages everywhere. And so just managing through this is a difficult thing that's going to take school boards like Seattle Public Schools being very involved. And so this contract, by all accounts, is not perfect. It's certainly an improvement on what would've happened had the teachers not gone on and striked, but, there's still a number of things that need to be handled. Great that everybody is back into school and learning, but what do you see in the long term in addressing these staffing issues?
[00:06:03] Mike McGinn: I think being a school board member's gotta be one of the worse jobs in politics, right? Perhaps even worse than mayor. It's because, at least as mayor, you're in an executive position where you have some types of- where you have taxing authority, where you can actually take actions to balance your budget somewhat. Their money is really derived by the state. And so they're put in the very difficult position of how do you allocate that money. And I'm not trying to let school board off the hook, they have a hard job, but the school board also doesn't have very many staff, right? It's really the school district administration that that staffs this as well. So we just gotta look upstream to the legislature and the emphasis and the dollars that are put into education. I just think is hugely critical to, resolving these issues. And all three of my kids went through Seattle public schools and we saw this period of time where seattle was closing schools, a number of years ago, because they're, declining population. Then we had the reverse, where it, we had to open up more schools and, Lincoln High School was brought back into the rotation after having been closed decades earlier. So that was to me that was a positive sign, because it, it meant that parents were returning to the school district and we were getting a more diverse student body. We're getting a student body that included better off parents as well, who would abandon the school district. And now we're seeing, once again, the decline in enrollment starting in the school. So it's just a real rollercoaster. And maintaining a consistent and high level of investment in the school district is so defining to what neighborhoods are about and what the city is about and we talk about all these things, and we hear about the business community talking about what they need, but really, investing in education, investing in our schools - I think we can extend this up to the higher education system too. The fact that there are so much competition for the spots in the state system and the cost of going to the state system has gotten more and more expensive - so all of these things are things that need to be address.
[00:08:28] Crystal Fincher: Certainly need to be addressed. We have legislative candidates up for elections campaigning right now. And so educational funding is certainly an issue that they should be well-versed in and speaking about and also talking about how they can contribute to solving these issues. In related strike news, it looks like the country may be avoiding a national railway strike. Looks like there is a tentative agreement that has been negotiated by leaders with a lot of intervention from the Biden administration to come to an agreement between railroad companies and a group of unions, whose challenges that they're facing are really tough. And they're absolutely justified in getting to the point where they're like, "look, this is unsustainable. Being on call sometimes seven days a week, 24/7, frequently 24/6." Meaning that there's only one day a week that you can use for personal stuff where you are not obligated to be available immediately to come in. A and as many of the members said that one day a week, sometimes, if their job on the train took them to a distant location, they would spend that day off driving back home, which can take several hours. So even the day off isn't quite a day off. One, it's not sustainable when people don't have days off. It's not sustainable when people work all the time. And then also not being able to have sick days, being penalized for taking sick days, which are all unpaid, anyway. Just a really tough situation. They're also experiencing shortages. Have been experiencing increased workloads while being on call almost all of the time. So they had reached a point where they were going to strike. Obviously that impacts every single thing. Our country runs on rail. Commerce runs on rail. That's how we get goods across the country, largely, once they're coming from ports or within the United States. So this was going to be a very big deal that impacted everything. Everything that we buy, lots of things that people sell. This was gonna be a really big deal. It looks like, a tentative agreement has been reached, but there's still... we'll see if that agreement goes far enough for each individual union to actually ratify this. And those are coming up. Those votes will be between the end of September and mid-October so still to come. I think the news here is that, I think it's a little early for folks to be doing victory laps. It looks like these votes might be closer than a lot of people are assuming. And so let's just make sure that hurdle clears before everyone exhales or lets their foot off the gas or, moves on as if this totally isn't going to be a thing. There certainly is more news to come. How do you see this, Mike?
[00:11:41] Mike McGinn: Workers, if you look at long term trends, we understand how much inequality has been growing in the country, and, income distribution, wealth accumulation, the decline of the ability of a worker to afford housing and college educations, as we mentioned, and other things. It's been really dramatic. So the pressure has been building obviously, to try to reverse that. I think and now we're in a position- in a point of high unemployment, so workers have more leverage than they have had before and high inflation as well, cutting into the wages they already have. I'm also really struck by the fact that Gallup, the Gallup poll, people, have been asking the question of, 'do you approve or disapprove of labor unions?' according to this graph, since at least 1937. And 10 years ago, 15 years ago, it was about evenly divided. Today, 68% of Americans approve of labor unions, 28% disapprove.
You have to go back to the mid sixties to find an approval rating that high. And really you have to go back into the fifties or the great depression to find it higher than that. So it's really, to me, this strike, the Starbucks unionizing efforts, you're just really seeing a public acceptance and support for unions that you just haven't seen before. And that, that also makes a difference in how these things get resolved. Granted, it's a negotiation between the business and the workers, but the context, the public context, that it's operating in and the ability of elected leaders to show approval or disapproval to the companies that are holding out on their workers can make a difference too. So it's quite a change from where we've been in terms of public acceptance of unions and it is at a point in history where workers need to gain some of the wealth and income that's generated by their work that they've not been gaining, as that's all been flowing to the top, when you look at where all of the profits from productivity gains over the last 50 years have gone.
[00:14:08] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And it has gotten so upside down and inequality has grown so much that this is impacting most families in the lower and middle classes, and even in the upper middle classes, not growing their wealth at the same rate as the über wealthy are. The gains that are made from the labor from workers are predominantly going to the top, not even 1%, but like 0.1%. And it is causing issues is as people face their own struggles, they're going, "okay, why am I sitting here struggling, while, someone is continuing to be enriched and amass more money than they can possibly spend in their lifetime?" Something has got to give. When we have railroad workers who can't take a full day off, who are on call 24/7, who can't take a sick day, who if their kid winds up in the ER, can't take a day off for it, if they do, they get penalized, and paying for that day, hasn't even entered the conversation yet, like that's so backwards and so upside down. Especially when their bosses are swimming in sick days and time off and having a great time. So it is just upside down and unsustainable. We're seeing that right now. And yeah, public opinion has changed and people aren't buying the same lines that we've heard for a long time: "the strikers are making this difficult on you" and using the threat of, "hey, supply chain disruptions. This is gonna make your life harder." I think, what they, what a lot of corporations and business leaders and people like Howard Schultz were not prepared for, is people saying, "okay, I can go without this for a little bit if it means that it's going to materially, improve working conditions for my neighbors and people I care about, people I see every day, people who are serving me my coffee and delivering the goods that I'm counting on. We can take a little hit. It's necessary to do this." Because I think there's also the recognition that an increase in wages and standards in other sectors helps everybody. That spreads. And the more we can standardize these gains, the better. I also think corporations are looking at this, like the Amazons and the Starbucks and the Petcos of the world, and fighting back really hard and really viciously and in many illegal ways. The amount of complaints that these companies have in front of the National Labor Relations Board just continues to seemingly grow by the week. And sustained findings of things that are illegal just keep coming like dominoes. So they're mounting up and fighting hard against any kind of gains from labor using really dirty tactics, sometimes illegal tactics. And so this is going to be a battle that is going to be waged in many sectors, but I think is really important for people to show solidarity for workers here. This helps everyone.
[00:17:33] Mike McGinn: And with regard to public acceptance, the argument from the employer is, "hey, the union will make it harder for you. It'll be better off for you without a union." And when you start seeing that much public acceptance, that argument just isn't flying the same way with the public. So it will make it easier for the union, for the effort, for those working to unionize more places. Is that they're operating an environment that's much more favorable to them.
[00:18:03] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So we will keep our eye on that in the coming weeks. I also wanted to talk, this week, about an op-ed that we saw from King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay that talked about public safety, and I thought was a really excellent op-ed. You'll see it in the show notes to the show. What did you think about this?
[00:18:24] Mike McGinn: His basic point was, if I can really summarize it, is we are politicizing an issue that actually requires us to look hard at what works and what does not work. And the specific example he gave was he was getting emails from members of the public about, "how can you? You should be jailing more people.
If you care about crime, there should be more punishment." And Girmay pointed to the fact that diversion programs are reducing recidivism, doing a better job than the recidivism of those that have been, that have gone to jail. And he points to this as being, "don't we wanna do what works,?" But he doesn't wanna just argue about that point about what's the best course and how do you decide what to apply. But he's really making a plea for, "can we look at what works? Can we have a broader discussion and just not immediately go to more punishment, more jail, more police officers as being the only indicia of whether somebody is tough on crime or working to solve the problem. I'm struck by the way in which those southern governors DeSantis and Abbott are sending immigrants to Kamala Harris's home and Martha's vineyard, just to rile people up, like, using people as paws here. And not look- it's just a horrible thing they're doing. But we're gonna have immigrants, so how do we handle the people that are coming to the border? When do we grant asylum? How do we integrate people into our society? These are real questions. And immediately going to score political points on this stuff means we're gonna be mired in a ridiculous debate and not actually get at the source of it. And I've said this on this show, a number of times: The city cannot possibly hire the number of officers it wants to hire. It has the budget, it has signing bonuses, but it is still losing officers faster than it can hire officers. So if you're gonna stand up as an elected official, or as an advocate, and say, "just hire more officers," you're not talking about the planet we live on, okay? That's not gonna happen for a couple of years. So what's your plan to actually deal with crime? I think this is a really serious issue, and I think Girmay, is really putting his finger on it. There are lots of different ways we can deal with crime. So can we start talking about what actually works and have a rational discussion about that, and not just use this to score political points and try to get your favorite people into office because the other side is insufficiently tough on crime. It's just a ridiculous argument.
[00:21:22] Crystal Fincher: It's a ridiculous argument. It's disingenuous. And it's one we're seeing play out right now in the King County Prosecutor's race and, frankly, and lots of prosecutor races across the country, where you've got, one side - and also some sheriffs races - they're saying, "hey, crime is bad and we're gonna solve it by enforcing the laws. We're gonna take a law and order approach. We're gonna, charge people with crimes. They do. And if they're guilty, we're gonna send them to jail. We need to punish people. And if people understand that they're gonna be punished, that's going to prevent crime." And as we continue to see in study after study and evaluation after evaluation, when you compare that approach, which has been our main approach - which has gotten us where we are today, which you would think would make people question it a little bit - to diversion programs and other programs, it just fails. It does not make us more safe. You talked about the difference between the two. People going through this Restorative Community Pathways program, which is one of the diversion programs, meaning that they focus on, it's not, "hey, go we're not doing anything. It's okay." You committed a violation of some sort, but instead of just sending you to jail, not doing anything to address what may have contributed to making that happen, they say, "okay, so what is it? Is it that you need a job? Is it that there's an education gap? Is it that- What are the root causes of this? And let's actually make sure we address the root causes." And there's accountability tied around addressing those root causes. They have mandatory meetings. They have to do that. And they're making progress. That has resulted in. In almost half the rate, more than half the rate actually, of recidivism than those youth who are traditionally charged and sent to jail. People who are traditionally charged and sent to jail, youth comparable to the ones who were in the diversion program, went on to commit offenses another 20% of the time compared to only 8% of the youth who went through Restorative Community Pathways. So if the goal is keeping people more safe, if the goal is making sure people are no longer victimized, if the goal is reducing crime on the streets, there's a clear winner here. There's something that is clearly working better than the other thing. And to reduce things to soundbites and, "oh, we just gotta lock them up," is not only disingenuous, it's making things less safe. And so if you're seriously interested in this like I, I so appreciate Councilmember Zahilay writing this and continuing to talk about this. We have to push to do what makes us safe. If we actually do care about public safety, and this is critically important, we have to continue to move in the direction of the things that actually reduce crime, that stop people from committing crime, and stop them from doing it again in the future. We would like to move in that direction. A lot of momentum against that direction. And we've gotta fund those programs in that direction. And so a lot of work to do, but we've gotta get real about these conversations that we have and about holding people accountable to discussing facts. And when we hear that misinformation, especially when people in media and people who are talking to elected officials hear that misinformation, following up:
"Oh, we need to enforce laws."
"Okay. How exactly?"
"Oh, we need to send people to jail."
"So the actual professionals who were staffing the jail said, 'hey, we can't take anymore.' So what do you do then?"
"Well we hire more of them."
"Okay, that doesn't happen for another year and a half. So what do you do then? What are you doing now?"
And you find that there actually aren't any answers, there's just rhetoric. We need to understand what people's plans are for now, we need to hold people accountable to plans for now, because we are having a public safety crisis. We've gotta get through.
[00:25:37] Mike McGinn: It's fascinating to watch, and you can probably explain this a little better, but apparently the city has been working to try to stand up some type of alternative response on 911 calls. That sending a police officer is not always the best response to a 911 call. And there's been very little progress made on it. So as I understand it, the city and, excuse me, the city council and the mayor's office, have been negotiating a work plan to help develop the alternative response, whatever they're gonna do in this, and then they're gonna sign what they've been calling a term sheet. Which to me is really fascinating, because it demonstrates, and trust me, I understand something about the challenges of working with the city council and with the city council working with the mayor. They're separate branches of government. They have different roles. And a lot of Councilmembers would like to go on and become mayor. So there's a natural tension built into the system, and it's built into the system for accountability. And you have to accept that no matter what, no matter where you sit in that system. But, to have to publicly negotiate a work plan as to how you're gonna work together, is really a sign of just how broken the relationship has become. That's the type of stuff that should be able to be worked out in conversation and there should be some level of trust in that. I think that the council is a little burned by their relationship with the former mayor, Durkan, who viewed council actions as a suggestion, and budgets as a suggestion, that didn't necessarily have to be followed. And they don't want to go down that road again. But I'd love to hear your take on this Crystal.
[00:27:31] Crystal Fincher: Just getting into kind of the nuts and bolts of the issue real quick and then I'll give you some thoughts on it also. So this term sheet between the mayor and the council, the executive and legislative branches, is about alternative 911 response. And the reason why this is a thing is that, as the city looked at calls to 911 and evaluated them, they found that the majority of them are not actually calls for emergencies that require a police response. You got the cat in the tree, you have maybe a mental health challenge. There, there are lots of things that aren't actually crimes or criminal activity that people are calling 911 for, so to send an appropriate responder out to that, which is important if you're talking about police are short staffed, so don't, you wanna be more efficient with what you do send them to? And if they aren't needed somewhere, then we want to send appropriate tools in that direction. So this is an agreement to deal with that and will allocate money in the 2023 budget for a new alternative response that will be implemented in 2023. So this is a next year thing, they're trying to plan for this right now. A report will be presented on Tuesday, September 27th, from the SPD risk management demand analysis report proposal for special event staffing will be available for analysis in 2022. And the policy document outlining the framework for a permanent response model in the general by the end of 2022. So there is actually a plan that is trying to be moved forward. And to your point, it's unusual to spell things out because the roles and responsibilities of the council and the mayor are different. And this seems to be something that gets confused a lot, even among media sometimes, where the council can't actually implement policy. They're not the ones doing operations. They aren't the ones hiring. They aren't the ones implementing stuff, actually taking the money, and making it work. They allocate the money. They may allocate a framework for that money to be spent in, but it really is up to the executive to take the money and actually do the thing. To implement a plan, to move forward with hiring, to staff, to manage a program, to see through the implementation of stuff. If he has a plan that money is allocated to, he's got to stand that whole thing up. He's doing the hiring, the entire program, that's underneath the purview of the executive. So usually council, "Hey, this money is available for this. And then it goes to the executive, the mayor and the departments, to then make happen." This is unusual, because they're dictating much more upfront then they normally they do. And to your point, I think it is a sign of broken trust. But I think it's a sign of much more recent things. We're in September now, getting ready to head into October, and we're still waiting to hear some public safety plans,
we're still waiting to hear plans around the city's response to homelessness, aside from the regional response. We're waiting for a number of things. I think there was some optimism and eagerness early in the administration. Bruce talked initially saying, "hey, we're gonna be looking at things in the first three months and then like making some rapid determinations and plans and moving forward on a public safety plan." And aside from sweeps and a brief hotspot stint, people are waiting for a lot of things here. We aren't really seeing much. And I guess, to be fair, that the recent park ranger proposal also, that was just announced. So-
[00:31:36] Mike McGinn: No, it's, you raise, you raised some really good points here. And obviously you pointed out the difference in roles of: the council sets the policy and sets the budget, and it really is up to the mayor to implement. And it really shouldn't be a question. Budgets and policies are not a suggestion from the council. They're, indeed, the law. And that was something that I found very troubling. There are times when a mayor discovers that spending the money is difficult for for various reasons or that there needs to be a tweak to the policy, but that's usually done- you report back to the council and you let them know. "Hey, I wasn't able to spend all the money. Here's the reasons why. Let's talk about what to do moving forward." So there's a little bit more of a back and forth and a give and take, because there's gotta be a little bit of flexibility in the system. But what we saw under Durkan was just, money would just be sequestered and not spent and policies wouldn't be followed. And that's extremely challenging because the council cannot run the departments. It can't be done. So this idea that, somehow or another, council is the reason why there are issues is a media narrative that's generated by, it turns out, the business community, which has supported the last three mayors now and has not been happy with the council and has not supported a majority of the Councilmembers for some time now as well. If it were reversed, and by the way, I have an example of when it was
reversed-
[00:33:10] Crystal Fincher: It was yes.
[00:33:12] Mike McGinn: And guess what? It turned out when I was mayor and most of the Councilmembers were supported by the business community, crime was the mayor's fault. Now that the business community candidates are in the minority on the council and they've held the mayor's office now for three straight terms, it's now the council's fault, not the mayor's fault. So that's a media narrative people really need to look at. I think there's another mayoral responsibility here that go in that list, which is even though council has the job of setting policy, the development of policy is very much an executive branch action because you have all of the agencies and the experienced individuals within the agencies. So if there's a problem you will call - I would, and I'm sure mayors before me and mayors after me - you call in your agency, heads, you call in your policy people. You say, "what could we possibly do? What are the things we're already doing that we might enhance? How much would that cost? How many people would you need for that? How could we, if you have some new ideas, how would we stand that up?" It's a type of operational understanding the workings of the machinery of government and having access to all those resources means that on big policy issues, the mayor really does have to lead. It's much, much harder for the council because they don't have access in the same way. And there's just practical things that you want to hear from the people that have been doing the work about how do we do more of the good stuff and how do we change what we're doing. And so the point you are making of, we're nine months in, and where's the plan, there is a reason that people look to a mayor to develop the plan. The mayor is just in a better position and has the resources to generate a plan, send it to council, and then, go through that accountability of having the legislative process and hearings and hearing from the public about what they think and what should be the final product. But a lot of it starts with the mayor, both in developing policy ideas and proposing a budget to fund it. And I think if you don't have that, you see the council trying to fill that role. But the physics of how the legislative process works and how managing government works, it just doesn't allow council to really fully fill that role. It's just too hard to do from the council. It really does require a mayor. Leaning in and leading.
[00:35:40] Crystal Fincher: It really does. And the council can't hire people. They can't. They can't put people out on the street. Like they, that is solely-
[00:35:52] Mike McGinn: Or the city council can't have nine of them calling in all the department heads one at a time in hearings to try to develop a comprehensive plan. This is a thing where you call the staff in, you call them the heads, you put together a working group, and you get to work. And, and when we do that in the mayor's office, there were times where we would say let's make sure we include this Councilmember and their staff in the process, because we'll want their- that's their committee, we'll want their support when this proposal goes down to council. Like, we want to hear from people, we wanna hear from them too. We don't just wanna spring things on them. And there were times we did spring things on them. We developed things and sent it down, but there were other times where we called them in to work with us. And it's not a, it's not a thing where you should have to negotiate how you're gonna work together before you start working together.
[00:36:44] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And I think the hope was that they could start off doing that. And to be clear, even beyond how things traditionally happen and what the roles are, Mayor Harrell said he was going to be presenting plans for this mayor, Harrell laid out his own path. And I think part of the complication is that what he laid out and what he had communicated to council is a lot different than what we heard recently from him.
[00:37:08] Mike McGinn: Yeah.
[00:37:09] Crystal Fincher: In that meeting with SPD which when we're at a crisis point in terms of homelessness and public safety, and everyone is accountable for getting this solved, it really does make council say, "okay let's get specific then. Since we aren't exactly sure what your intention is, since we seem to be running behind on what your original schedule and plans were for a rollout here, and now that we're getting really mixed signals, let's make sure that we're straight about what this money allocation is going to and come to a defined agreement." Because I think his statements have created a lot of uncertainty. And in the time, since he's made them, he's done nothing to clarify the discrepancy between what he's said to these different groups. So it, this is gonna be interesting to see rollout. We're also not far from budget season and, to your point, the mayor's budget really is a policy proposal for the year. And he's going to be submitting a budget to council. They're gonna do what they do with it. And they'll ultimately come up with a budget for 2023 but we'll see how this continues to proceed. But I think we see it from the council. I think we've seen it from other entities. They're being a bit more careful and intentional and explicit with, "okay. So exactly. What is it that we're doing here?" Because solely relying on the word of Mayor Harrell seems like it may not get people where they want to go or, they don't know where he stands.
[00:38:58] Mike McGinn: Well, and there was obviously there was suspicion generated about what he did or did not support from a policy perspective. And he also said it basically, he was gonna be out there recruiting people to run against the council. So just another level of tension to the mix. But big picture I think what we see is that the council is trying to develop a plan, and they're trying to develop that plan because they're not seeing the plan come from the executive first and that they then respond to. And that's just, I think, a challenging place. But let's hope that they can find a way to find some common ground and start standing up some alternatives to the idea that they're gonna be able to just hire their way out of the problem.
[00:39:44] Crystal Fincher: It'll be interesting to see and follow along. And just a few news tidbits. There's going to be a 37th Legislative District debate, so basically the representatives running in Southeast Seattle, that's gonna be held on October 4th. It's gonna be in person and stream live. I'm going to be moderating it. This is being put on by media partners, Real Change News, KVRU, KNKX, and Hacks and Wonks. And so we'll have a great conversation, but it's gonna be from seven to nine at the Rainier Arts Center on Tuesday, October 4th. Feel free to come on down and learn more about what Emijah Smith and Chipalo Street are planning to do if they are elected as the Representatives in the 37th Legislative District. Also want to make sure that people know about a Seattle Municipal Court in the Community event on Monday, September 19th, so this coming Monday, from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM, this is a big deal because sometimes people get tickets that it takes them a long time to pay. Sometimes they're in different situations. Some people get warrants for different things. They need medication assistance, public defense assistance, mental health screening, and services. Stuff like that is going to be available on Monday. September 19th from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM at the Rainier Beach Community Center. Lots of people are ashamed to talk about this in public. So you may have friends, you probably know people, who could use some of the services here, who need to settle something with the court, settle a fine or a payment, or they forgot to show up or something, there's a warrant. Make sure that you are spreading the word about this into the community or people who are in need of a variety of things. There will be a meal provided there. Onsite services include help with unpaid tickets to renew vehicle tabs, ticket payment and community service plans, warrant recalls, and quashing, free smartphones and data for people to qualify, public defense screening, medication assisted treatment info, mental health screening, and resources, mental health services, and resources, excuse me, and free hygiene kits and more. Get people here, make sure people know about it. Lots of people need to know about it. We'll of course, link to this in the show notes. Also big deal coming up this next week, starting on Monday, September 19th, is the week without driving challenge that's put on by the Disability Mobility Initiative, which I know you're familiar with, Mike, and which invites people to refrain from driving in any vehicle for any activity for a full week in order to increase awareness about what it's like to navigate the world is a non-driver. For reasons ranging from age ability, economics, about one quarter of our population in this state is unable to drive, but most transportation and policy investments continue to prioritize the needs of people in vehicles over those who rely on walking, rolling in transit to get around. What do you think participating in something like this does for an elected official?
[00:43:00] Mike McGinn: I've always thought that every elected official should just have to take the bus, because at least some of the time, because if you did, you'd change your mind about how much money should go into buses and frequency of service, dedicated lanes, all of the things that can make public transit a great system. I think the Week Without Driving is fabulous and disability mobility Initiative is really leading the way. We've been, at America Walks, we've been popularizing it for people to adapt in other places and take the same challenge. We've designed a transportation system, and built a transportation system, over the last, 75 years, in which really an entry into community and economic life for so many people requires buying a car and that's really expensive, besides being polluting and and dangerous to people outside of vehicles. It's just not a sustainable transportation system. I'd ask people to imagine the opposite. Imagine if we designed places, we planned and built places where you put the needs of non-drivers first. Like what amazing places those would be. You'd be able to walk to the store. There'd be frequent, reliable bus service. There'd be curb cuts and you may not need that curb cut now, but there's a point in your life where you might really appreciate that the curb cut is there. And so building places for all ages and abilities, putting things close enough to each other, building abundant housing. So many well off people go to Europe and travel around and go,
"this is amazing. Why can't American cities be like this," when they go to. European city or town, which is delightful with lots of people space. And then they come home and it's "we can't possibly change here in America." We could, it's a choice. And I think what the Week Without Driving really does is drive home to people how many people were excluding from the community. That means we're excluding their contributions to our community. But I also hope people can look at the other side and just imagine how great it would be to be on the other side of that. And what we see in places like Seattle is the neighborhoods that are closest to that ideal are the most expensive places to live. People pay a premium, to live in those types of neighborhoods. And it's not like it's a rare thing that you have to search all over the world to find this rare mineral or something. We make this stuff. We control every aspect of how a place is built. It's just, we've chosen not to. So yeah, Week Without Driving is fabulous. And if it inspires elected officials to say, "maybe we could do with one fewer interchange and build sidewalks in the entire city," that would be a pretty awesome deal.
[00:46:05] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And I'm looking forward to seeing who participates. Hopefully a lot of our state and local elected officials will be participating. We'll try and see if we can get together a list and talk about that next week and continue to follow up on that issue, but it's just so important and fundamental to how we're able to move around and connect within our communities. Last thing we'll talk about today is news that came out this week about an organization, the Esquire Club, that Mayor Harrell used to be on the board of, that received quite a bit of grant funding that was announced this week. So there were 20 financial grants that were given in the city. And one of the largest grants, totaling almost $800,000, went to the Royal Esquire Club which is a private Black mens club in Columbia City, where Harrell was on the board. Harrell was board president for six years. The mayor's spokesperson, Jamie Housen actually told Publicola that Harrell resigned from the club in November and was not directly involved in choosing the recipients of these equitable development grants and that he had no role in deciding which organizations would receive the awards. This is the fourth largest grant among 20 groups. The club was one of only eight organizations that received the full amount that they requested. In contrast for example, the Tubman Center for Health and Freedom, which is building a south Seattle health center, which is necessary, for BIPOC patients, asked for $2 million for property acquisition and received $1 million. According to a presentation on the awards from the office of planning and community development, the Royal Esquire Club will use the $800,000 to support rehabilitation of existing cultural space. In 2019, according to the groups, most recent IRS filing, the club's total revenues were $359,000. So this certainly raised a lot of eyebrows with people. One, he had made news previously with that club and it's something that had previously been in the news, but then to have an award go to an organization that he was affiliated with certainly gets a lot of people's attention, makes people wonder what the process is. They've said, "hey, he resigned from the board. He was not involved in this decision. We're planning on being transparent." Publicola has requested the grant applications for all of the organizations and more information on that. How do you see this? And do you see any issue with this or do you feel like it's just nothing?
[00:48:50] Mike McGinn: An advisory community board or some type of system is set up to evaluate grant funding. For example, the Neighborhood Street Fund or the Neighborhood Matching Fund in particular. And it's pretty rare for a mayor to change anything. They're ultimately approved by the mayor and then sent on to the council so they can see it as well. But you don't wanna mess around with that if you're the mayor because a whole bunch of people put the work in. This wouldn't be a story, or it might not be a story, but for a couple of other things. I think one is, Mayor Harrell was accused of using his role as a City Councilmember to speak to the Office of Labor Standards when it was investigating the Royal Esquire Club for wage theft. So there's a pattern that the reporters think they're seeing here. "Aha. Here was favoritism. Is this another example of favoritism?" So the question's raised. And I think we also saw- , I would hesitate to say that whoever the advisory board members who looked at this were trying to curry favor with the mayor or trying to avoid retribution from a mayor. People have been known to worry about that. But you don't know. And that's, I think part of the problem. People start to, to worry about it. And I always felt nervous as a mayor, whenever anything that went to Greenwood came up because I'd been president of the Greenwood Community Council for years. So it's a spot that requires the most exacting standards to ensure that no conflict of interest is presented to the public.
[00:50:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that's a big thing. And people who knew me 10 years ago or so probably recalled me telling them, because I wasn't involved with you and your campaign early on it, it came later on, just going, oh my gosh, these people bend over, further backwards than any other people I've seen in government to avoid any conflict of interest. In fact, it gets in the way of some work. These people are squeaky clean which is a good thing. And, oh my gosh, returning to a world of squeaky cleanness is great. And the lowewt crime rates in the past 40 years. But anyway what I think is the issue here. I think it's probably the case that he wasn't involved in this decision. There are processes in place. There, there are things like that. And so there's what the rules say. The thing that I think we see in, in lots of layers of government that is of concern, is the implicit suggestions and the implicit pressure. We're familiar with this when we talk about abuse and like the implications of different things and, power dynamics. And so what we know from what was previously reported, there was an allegation that the Esquire Club was improperly withholding pay from employees and they were subject to an investigation about that. And it was reported that Mayor Harrell called the investigator to tell them that, and he was on the council at the time, the council and mayor control their budget. Which seemed like a threat that, "hey, if something happens, if you have a finding of something improper, illegal, happening here, you may find yourself without funding and without a job. Certainly not the kind of call that we want public officials making. And that was reported on. We also saw recently reported on in the leaked comments from his SPD roll call meeting him explicitly saying, "why am I gonna give these people funding if they're criticizing me? I think these people, are not agreeing with me or out to get me and talking about defunding them. So again, more conversations where if he is not satisfied with an outcome, one of the remedies appears to be removing money from that organization, taking money away. And so if you are someone working in the city, someone sitting on this committee, know that he has been involved with this club for so long and that it's important to him. Do you feel some pressure, more than you would otherwise for other programs, to at least provide some funding or all of the funding? "Hey, just let it go through. We're doing several others also. Let's just make sure we include this." I can tell you those conversations - I can't speak about this specific situation - but in similar situations, those conversations happen. Those pressures are absolutely felt. And so that's the kind of thing that gets introduced when you have organizations that are affiliated with elected officials that are then standing to receive funding from the jurisdiction that the elected official is serving in or has control over others in. That even though they may follow the letter of the law, we may not be accounting for all the pressures. Now, is this the only situation in which this has ever happened in the city? No, but I do think it's something that needs to be acknowledged and talked about and considered as future and further decision making and policy happens.
[00:54:43] Mike McGinn: Agreed. I think that this is, and again, just that issue of conflict of interest is, and it comes up in more than one place in government, but it goes directly to trust in government. And if there's one thing that we have a lack of in our society right now is it's an abundance of trust, right? Government requires trust, community requires trust. And a lot of trust has been broken at a lot of different levels of government, right now. And, I know I'm broadening the aperture here and looking at a lot more things than just what's happening in city government when I say this. But, city government operates within that framework. Most people aren't paying that close attention to city government. They're judging it based on everything they're hearing about governments at all levels and at things that are happening in society as a whole. And when you have that, when you have these types of levels of distrust and concern and distress about where we're heading as a country, it just puts an even higher premium on elected officials, on how do they work to rebuild trust with the public. And I think that's the challenging one here. And moving forward, I think that, as you point out, given that some of Mayor Harrell's comments were expressing his concern about people that didn't endorse him or his concern about putting money in the budget for groups that he felt weren't doing what he thought was best, some of that is just policy but it had a feel to it that really wasn't appropriate for this point.
[00:56:31] Crystal Fincher: Agree. And it does boil down to trust. As you said.
With that, I thank everyone for listening to Hacks and Wonks on this Friday, September 16th, 2022. The producer of Hacks and Wonks is Lisl Stadler, our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng and our post-production assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. Our insightful cohost today is activist, community leader, former mayor of Seattle, and executive director of America Walks, mike McGinn. You can find Mike on Twitter at @mayormcginn. You can follow Hacks and Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. And you can find me on Twitter at @finchrii. You can catch Hacks and Wonks on iTunes, spotify, wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type Hacks & Wonks into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks, you can also get a full transcript of the episode and links to the resources reference in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks midweek show, the Chanel Rhymes, Director of Advocacy at the Northwest Community Bail Fund, joins Crystal Fincher to discuss our desperate need for bail reform. The NCBF is dedicated to ending cash bail and pretrial detention in Washington state. They do advocacy for reform, court watching to hold the system accountable, and they raise funds to provide bail for people who can’t afford it on their own.
Chanel explains the difficulties that jailing people prior to a conviction causes for people before they’re even convicted of a crime, and dispels criticisms of bail funds as being dangerous for the community, rather than being a correction against systemic inequality. Crystal and Chanel also breakdown recent data on bail reform that shows that bail reform and eliminating pretrial detention for misdemeanors actually reduces crime in the long run, and doesn’t negatively impact whether people show up to court.
You can find information on the Northwest Community Bail Fund and resources for its court watching program in the links below.
Chanel Rhymes
Chanel Rhymes is the Director of Advocacy for the Northwest Community Bail Fund. Prior to joining the Northwest Community Bail fund, Chanel served as the Court Program Analyst for the Washington Supreme Court Minority and Justice Commission, executing the mission of ensuring that all courts in the state of Washington remain free of bias so that justice might be adjudicated in a neutral and fair manner. Previously, she was a Program Manager for the Freedom Education Project of Puget Sound where she developed and coordinated college courses for women seeking to attain their AA degrees while incarcerated at the Washington Correction Center for Women.
Chanel has worked with the Council of State Governments Justice Center, supporting their work on national criminal justice reform. She also has legislative experience as a Political Field Organizer and as a Legislative Liaison for the Washington Student Association, where she lobbied for the interests of students in higher education around issues of affordability, administration transparency, and accessibility. Chnel was raised in Tacoma, Washington, and received her BA from Evergreen State College with a focus in Law and Government Policy.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii, find the Northwest Community Bail Fund on Twitter at @NWCBailFund.
Resources
Northwest Community Bail Fund website:
https://www.nwcombailfund.org/
NCBF - Court Watch Resources and sign-up:
https://www.nwcombailfund.org/es/courtwatch/
“The Effects of Misdemeanor Bail Reform” from Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice:
https://www.law.upenn.edu/institutes/quattronecenter/reports/bailreform/#/
No More Police: A Case for Abolition by Mariame Kaba & Andrea J. Ritchie:
https://thenewpress.com/books/no-more-police
Washington state court’s Criminal Rule 3.2:
https://www.courts.wa.gov/court_rules/pdf/CrR/SUP_CrR_03_02_00.pdf
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher and I'm a political consultant and your host. On the show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm very excited about this show, where we get to talk with Chanel Rhymes, who is the director of advocacy at Northwest Community Bail Fund. Thank you so much for joining us.
[00:00:51] Chanel Rhymes: Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
[00:00:54] Crystal Fincher: Excited to have you on. Have been a follower of the organization for quite some time. Obviously, this has been a topic across the country, and really globally. We're behind a lot of the globe on this. But in our country, a topic especially in the past few years, and looking at just what we're doing in terms of our criminal legal system, all of the challenges within it, and what can be done to make our communities more safe, keep our communities more safe, and really move towards a world and communities where we meet basic needs and we don't choose punishment over healing injustice. So I guess starting out, can you tell me just what the Northwest Community Bail Fund is and does, and what brought you to this work?
[00:01:46] Chanel Rhymes: The Northwest Community Bail Fund is a nonprofit organization. We post bail for those during pre-trial detention. A lot of folks cannot afford to access the services of a bail bond agency, whether they don't have the means or collateral, so we are here to fill in those gaps. Ultimately we would hope to see an end to pre-trial detention and cash bail, but, because we know that is gonna take time, in the meantime we work to reduce harm. So we post bail as well as just, make sure that the community is not harmed and folks can fight their cases from a position of freedom, which they're entitled to through the constitution and the Washington state constitution.
[00:02:33] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely.
[00:02:34] Chanel Rhymes: I myself came to this work in- I've been doing criminal justice reform work for a long- or, excuse me, criminal punishment reform work, for a long time. I, myself, am formally incarcerated. I am very passionate about those that have done their time and served their time be- the opportunity to go back into society and be a contributing member. I personally believe, though, that we need to stop trying to fix things after and start things from the beginning. Kind of like the, the babies in the river. I'm not gonna keep taking the babies out. I'd rather let's not put the babies in. So I'm trying to, we, myself and our organization, is trying to work to so that folks are just not incarcerated. And a lot of times folks are incarcerated just because of not having means.
[00:03:25] Crystal Fincher: And this is such an important conversation. One, just as we talk about right now, we're sitting here in the midst of a crisis as defined by our public defenders, staff at jails. We had a historic letter earlier this year where both public defenders and corrections officers
are saying, "hey, we can't handle the population here at the King County jail. It's unsafe. It's beyond what we can tolerate." And I don't think a lot of people realize that a lot of people who are in jail have not been convicted of anything. This is a pre-trial detention. They've not been sentenced. They're not serving a crime. They've not been found guilty of anything. It is simply because of a financial reason that they are sitting in jail and all of the challenges that, that presents. What does it mean and what kind of challenges does it pose when we detain people before their trials?
[00:04:25] Chanel Rhymes: Oh, plethora. You could risk losing your housing. You can lose your children, custody of your children. You can lose your employment. And with all that comes, a rippling effect of other things, whether that be financial instability, just the trauma itself of going to jail. A lot of people that, say "lock them up," or "they just need to go to jail," never seen the inside of a jail. It's one of the most horrific places. On top of, with us being in a pandemic, you could potentially die, ultimately, from sitting in jail because there are still COVID outbreaks in jails every week. And so ultimately you could lose your life for something you haven't even been convicted of yet. And that's no way to bake it. That's not the way our system is designed. It's not supposed to be set up that way. Or at least they say that.
[00:05:24] Crystal Fincher: At least they say that. It is certainly not what we've been sold. And so it's such a challenge. It is very destabilizing. And even in the case that someone does wind up pleading guilty or serving time, we're relying on them having the means to pay whatever fines they're going to be charged to do all that. And so if they don't have a job, if they have lost, as a result of being detained, all of the ability to fulfill the terms of whatever punishment they've been handed, that's a challenge in and of itself. And the bottom line is, a lot of people think putting people in jail makes us safer. If we didn't have this, they would be out committing crimes. And every now and then there's a case that gets publicized where they say, see, look, this is- bail reform caused this. Is that the case?
[00:06:24] Chanel Rhymes: It's not the case. Number one, judges decide what bail is. Number two folks have a constitutional right to bail. The purpose of bail - and our Washington Supreme Court has said this - the state is not in the primary interest of collecting bail bond forfeitures. It is more concerned with folks showing up to court. That is what the purpose is. That, whether somebody is released or not, does not make us safer. There are tons of people who are arrested for violent crimes and don't spend a day in jail because they have the means to bail themselves out. Where are the folks asking about them? I think it's very interesting that bail reform and, nonprofits, people who don't make money off of this business, are the ones under the microscope, but yet bail bond agencies make millions of dollars every day bailing people out that sometimes do go on to commit new crimes. We don't hear about those in the news. We only hear about the less fortunate, which is those folks that are coming to a community bail fund or, mutual aid fund, and it's because we demonize poverty in this society. And it's just bizarre to me, in a sense, that we've gotten to this point. As if folks don't understand that wages have been stagnant for 40 years. The cost of living is going up. People can't make it can't survive. And so putting them in jail, and then if they are convicted or plead guilty just to get out, they now have a criminal conviction. So then that creates barriers to getting employment. And the other thing that you need, housing, that is the first, one of the major things that disqualifies most folks for housing, is a criminal conviction. So if we're also criminalizing homelessness, locking people up, then convicting them, and then they get out and they can't rent anywhere, and then we're like, "why are you homeless?" We are just creating this cycle and it's really a cycle of abuse.
[00:08:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and one really has to ask is the offense that people really are in jail for whatever they've been accused of, or is it just that they're poor and can't afford bail? And even just the issue of bail overall, for some reason, we have landed in a place where we think that a dollar amount is indicative of whether or not someone is in danger or is safe regardless of what they have been accused of, regardless of what kind of flight risk someone may be deemed to be. Hey, if you have enough money to, if you're rich, and and you can pay for whatever, it really doesn't matter. You're not gonna be in jail. And, we have seen several examples of people who are, just a small misdemeanor accusation which, often can result in dropped charges overall for lack of evidence, for just not being worth it to pursue in the system, yet they have been in jail and have experienced, like you talked about, the loss of job, the loss of housing, and that being destabilizing. And in fact that increasing the chance that someone is likely to be involved in their criminal legal system in the future, as opposed to if they were able to maintain their connections in community. And then also on the back end, just about everyone we're sending into jail is going to come out on the other end. So don't we have an interest in making sure that we are doing all we can to set people up for success and to not drop them into another pit, which it seems this just sets up people to do. What do you tell people when they're like, "it's there to make sure they come back and if they don't have bail, then they won't come back. So bail is necessary and if they can't afford it, then you know, they could just leave and never come back anyway?" what do you tell people who just say bail is necessary to get people to show up?
[00:10:48] Chanel Rhymes: They can find us anywhere. The world we live in now, if they wanna find you, they really can find you. But, ultimately, most people do wanna get this resolved. Nobody wants this hanging over their head. A lot of times people don't show up, not on purpose. People, don't FTA, or Failure to Appear, on purpose. Life happens. There's life circumstance. Also, too, people wanna get it taken care of because they probably didn't do it. People aren't really decking and dodging. I will add though that even if we have a lot of folks saying people they need to go to jail or they need to do this, a misdemeanor? It's max fine, like 90 days in jail. So I think too, people have a misconception of what our punishments, our sentencing structure is, and the difference between jail and the difference between prison, and misdemeanors, gross misdemeanors, and felonies. Even with our gross misdemeanor, the max jail time is a year, up to a year, but after that, okay, they serve their time, they're back out, what are we going to do to help folks? What I tell people is how is this solving anything? Why would you want your tax dollars just to be wasted to keep doing this? And wouldn't you want your tax dollars to be used to help people. So they're not back in this situation? The amount of money that we spend on criminal punishment and police is just ridiculous when you compare it to what we spend on education. So if we really wanted to make changes, we would be investing our money in education, healthcare, mental healthcare, reproductive rights, all of those things. Never in our 40 years of plus doing this whole drug war or anything, have cops, police, arrest helped make us any safer or do any type of harm reduction. There's tons of studies out there that show when you reinvest that many within the community and provide people's services, recidivism goes down. I think it's odd that we just keep having to have this conversation over and over again, because we obviously know what's not working, but we are very, afraid to try what some people or some municipalities and governments have done that work.
[00:13:11] Crystal: Well. And it feels like, for people who've looked into this, for the people who are the loudest on this issue on either side, they do know what the data says. They do know that the evidence shows conclusively, repeatedly - there was just a new study that came out and reiterated this just last month - that bail reform, not relying on bail and releasing people pre-trial, not subjecting them to all of the harms that result from that, doesn't hurt people appearing in court over people who have been detained, doesn't hurt their likelihood of committing a crime again, over people who have been in bail. So there is actually no advantage safety-wise. There's no advantage in the court system. It's not, "hey, a lot of people were failing to appear - weren't failing to appear - now they are with bail reform. It is actually the opposite. This is working to keep people safer. This is working to help people show up and we are not contending with how expensive this is to us as a society financially and in terms of just our safety and our health within the community. My goodness, courts are expensive to run and administer. Prisons and jails are so expensive to run and administer. All of the staff, all of everything required to do that is so costly. We're sitting here talking about upcoming budget shortfalls here in, the city of Seattle, throughout the state in different cities, yet when you look at the city's budget, such a huge percentage of it and their county's budget, such a huge percentage is dedicated to locking people up. And especially pre-trial, what benefit are we getting out of it? Why do you think people are so resistant to saying, "wow. Number one, we aren't getting the results that we want from our current system. It would actually save us money that we could invest in areas that we all know need it." Yet, lots of people still aren't there. Why do you think that is?
[00:15:22] Chanel Rhymes: Because people are being misinformed, and fear-mongered by their local news and reporters, who I'm shocked at the things that they write and put out. And it's clear that a lot of reporters locally here have no clue about criminal law or criminal procedure. They are flat out lying to the public. And so then folks see that on TV, they read it in their newspapers, they read it online and they think that the sky is falling. Everything is super dangerous. I also think poverty is a lot more visible now. So people, their senses seem to think "oh, it's bad, it's more." And it's no, just more people are hurting and you're seeing it more. It's not hidden. It's coming into your neighborhoods. I truly believe it's miseducation, misinformation, and 30 years of watching Law and Order that people think they know the system and how things work. I blame our media to be quite honest, because they're just not being truthful. And most of the information that, it seems to me, that they're getting are coming either straight from prosecutors or straight from police. They are refusing to talk to anybody from the other side.
[00:16:42] Crystal Fincher: And even, not from either, quote unquote side, there are actual experts on crime. They're called criminologists. We have lots of them at our wonderful universities, research universities here in the area, who are able to speak on what the evidence and research shows is and is not effective and useful and working in terms of keeping people safe, keeping people from committing crimes. And over again, they are coming up with data that says detaining people pre-trial just because they cannot afford to get out of jail does not keep us safer. Does not do anything to help our system to help reduce crime. It just doesn't do that. In fact if it had, if it has, any effect, it's the opposite effect. It actually makes outcomes worse. It makes people more likely to do that because they have been made more unstable and put in a more precarious position because of that. So if you were to talk to a lot of the local media, what would you advise that they do?
[00:17:53] Chanel Rhymes: Educate themselves on the way that criminal law, that criminal procedure, works before just going with conjecture and their feelings and how they feel. There are laws, there are court rules, reasons why things are done. Ultimately too, the fact that they're saying, "okay, so we're holding people because they can't afford it." If they were so dangerous, no bail would be set. Obviously, a bail has been set, so that judge has deemed them safe enough to go back into the community once they pay that money. So you can't have it both ways either, it's completely they're there because they're a danger or is it really they're there because they can't afford it? Because if they were such a danger, then why is there a dollar amount that they could pay that says they're not dangerous? It just doesn't make any sense. I mean the argument of it makes us safer- it just doesn't. And I just think we've just been recycling the same thing over and over again. And then also, too, people, the internet, your phone, every social media, people are getting lots of just different images and things like things are horrible. "Seattle is dying, oh my gosh, they've closed my Starbucks." And it's really like people are homeless and hungry and that's, what's really- The fact that too, we are still within a pandemic and we have a lot of people in charge that want folks to just keep on going just out. "No, everything's fine." people are still financially hurting. We also hear a lot about, I'll just say that, media's writing a lot about retail. Nobody writes about wage theft. More money is stolen in wages than it is in deodorant. What does that tell you? I'm reading a police report and somebody is charged with stealing body wash, deodorant, razors. They're trying to survive. Those are essential items. Like we need to look at that. Like what services can we get that person so they don't have to steal the basic needs just to be a human and live in this society?
[00:20:12] Crystal Fincher: I'm with you, I'm with you. So as we look moving forward, right now, you and Northwest Community Bail Fund are filling in this gap in our current system. Obviously there's a lot of changes that would be more effective if we made them. In terms of bail, what is it that you would like to see changed about our current system? Would you like to move to a system where judges just make the decision as they have in some other localities across the country? "Hey we're not really doing bail. We are making the determination about whether we feel this person is a flight risk or a threat to society. And if yes, we're detaining them and if, no, we're not." And throwing the idea of bail out the window in lieu of that? Or something different? What would you like to see in terms of bail in the system we're in?
[00:21:10] Chanel Rhymes: There should be no bail. There should be no pre-trial detention. Folks are innocent until proven guilty. There's no reason for anybody to be caged. That's what they are, is caged. Before they have been convicted by a judge or jury of their peers. They've just been accused. We should be moving completely away from that. I would say, even just to start, we could have judges actually, follow court rule 3.2, which says you need to use the least restrictive means to release people. So that would be a start. We do court watching in courts around the area, particularly Seattle Municipal Court. We watch arraignment hearings. We, we take, track, demographic data, race, perceived age, age, date of birth. But we also track if court rule 3.2 is brought up by judges, by the prosecutor, or by the defense. And we recently had our data analyzed and it was only 13% in all of the cases that we had listened to that it was brought up. That's a very low number for a court rule to not even be mentioned during arraignment. And that has to do with whether folks are, public safety issue or, the means to pay to get out. So I think one, first thing is if y'all going, institute these rules and create these policies, you should follow them first. You're not even following your own policies, so can you accurately say if it's working or not? I don't think so, but ultimately it's a no. I'm an abolitionist. Get rid of them all. I just got my no more police book. I just started on that. This, it's not working. All we're doing is harming people and it's not sustainable and it costs too much. We could be investing those dollars in so many other ways that would actually give us a better return on investment because all we're doing is churning out more debt, ultimately, because if they can't get a job, they can't get housed, we're still gonna end up having to pay for it another way.
[00:23:27] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. We're paying for it no matter what, just depends on whether it's an investment that's gonna yield a return later on. If we're dealing in, education and health and mental health and behavioral health support and treatment that do yield benefits for our entire community or whether we are dealing in the aftermath of pain and harm and paying to keep people in prison and incarcerated, which is just so terribly expensive and costly financially, and to our community, to that person, to the community, to everyone involved. What would you say to the people who- Obviously we always hear examples of violent crimes, horrible crimes, some horrible crimes happen that should never happen. And they see what someone has been accused of. They hear evidence against them and they're like, "that person is not safe on the street." And say, "we're afraid of what can happen. That they're a danger to society and based on what they've done, they should be detained." What do you say to people in that circumstance?
[00:24:50] Chanel Rhymes: You have no proof that evidence is actually evidence that is true, or that can convict him. People are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, not public opinion. There's a process that you go through during criminal procedure where the judge gets to decide what evidence gets to come in and what doesn't. We don't just get to decide oh, that's true. That piece of evidence that the reporters said right there is true. Also, we all know police lie all the time. We're just gonna take the word of police because that's who most reporters are getting their information from, they're just reading it from police reports and statements or their, communications officer or whoever it may be. So how is it that untrained people in law, just the regular general public would be able to determine who's safe and who's not? I also think if a judge has set bail, who are you to say that, better than that judge about the case? I don't understand that. Either we believe in these systems and y'all want these systems to do their job, or y'all just want to do it out in the public. Are we going back to that? Where we just doing the public, in the public square, and then everybody we decide how things go? No. To me, it's just bizarre that somebody be like this is what happened. You really don't know that's just what it was reported. People have to be convicted in a court, not in public opinion, it's just not the way it works.
[00:26:24] Crystal Fincher: Which is true. And once again, this most recent study in Houston, which backs up prior studies, under consent decree where more people had to be released within 24 hours of a misdemeanor arrest, there was a 6% decrease in new prosecutions over the three years that followed that they followed those defendants. They said, "okay, everybody's saying we need to see whether or not people, are really gonna show up. We need to see whether you letting people out is really going to, make things safer as these people claim, let's follow these defendants. Let's follow these people." Over a period of years, not even beyond, not even stopping at, okay this one case, their current case was adjudicated, whatever happened, they went beyond. Eliminating bail, taking that out as a factor, releasing them and not detaining them simply because they can't afford bail, resulted in a decrease over the existing system. Meaning that locking people up made it more likely that someone was going to commit a crime again. Made it more likely that things would be less safe in our community. I'm for what makes people more. We talk about all of these things. A lot of it is punishment related. And I think in so many of these conversations, we have to decide whether we are going to prioritize punishing people or whether we're gonna prioritize keeping our community safe, because they really are at odds. And punishment is not working for us, any of us, and it's really expensive. It is so harmful to the person involved, it's harmful to the community and it's so costly. And we talk about funding for jails. We talk about funding for police. There is only a certain amount of money in the whole bucket. So if we're giving more to one area, we're taking it from somewhere else or preventing it from being invested in somewhere else. And I'm sure everyone listening to this thinks, "hey, we need, we do need more behavioral health support. We do need more substance use disorder. Treatment and accessibility and availability. We do need to make sure people have access to these things without having to be involved in the criminal legal system to get clean or to get healthy." And so it's just such an important issue and I thank you for just being vocal about this. For helping people in this organization and doing something that is making our community safer. Really appreciate it. If people want to learn more or to get involved or donate to the Northwest Community Bail Fund, how can they do that?
[00:29:11] Chanel Rhymes: You can go to our website, which is N-W- C-O-M-B-A-I-L-F-U-N-D.org So nwcombailfund.org. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram. I'm so grateful to have this conversation with you and inviting me on to talk about the organization that I dearly love, and we truly do wanna make our community safer and we wanna stop harming folks.
[00:29:42] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. Wanna stop harming folks. One thing that I do have to mention: I saw a report that you produced, and I feel like this was last year at some time now. You're not only doing this work, but you are, as an organization, being accountable, being transparent about the activity that's going on. You are showing results for what you're doing in a way that goes be above and beyond a number of others that I've seen. I appreciate that transparency in this organization. And then also wanted to mention, you brought up your court watching, also, earlier, which is such a useful and valuable tool. And just enlightening and informative because, to your point, lots of people don't know what happens in court. People have very limited experience, maybe someone contests a parking ticket or a speeding ticket or something. Lots of people have never stepped foot in one. And so have this idea from TV shows what it's like. It's nothing like what on TV shows. And so I sincerely appreciate that too. We're gonna link those court watching resources in the show notes, also for people to be able to access and follow.
[00:31:05] Chanel Rhymes: Thank you. That is also available on our website, we're always looking for more court Watchers. We really need folks to go in person to courts. Seattle Municipal Court and Tacoma Municipal Court offer virtual courts so people can actually court watch from the comfort of their own home. If you're interested in court watching with us, please go to our website and fill out an interest form.
[00:31:25] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much for all of your information today, for what you do. It's been a pleasure to have you on Chanel.
[00:31:31] Chanel Rhymes: Thank you.
[00:31:32] Crystal Fincher: Thank you all for listening to Hacks and Wonks. The Producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler, our Assistant Producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Post-Production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks, and you can follow me at @finchfrii spelled F I N C H F R I I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type Hacks & Wonks into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe, to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal Fincher is joined by Seattle political reporter, editor of Publicla, co-host of the Seattle Nice podcast, and author of Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery, Erica C. Barnett! They start the show discussing the teachers strikes happening across the state. Schools all over Washington are facing unreasonable class sizes and under-resourced necessary programs like special education and mental health assistance. Despite claims from districts that teachers are just fighting for better pay, educator’s priorities for these strikes are securing the resources to lower class sizes and improve special ed resources. In a victory for teachers, Kent Educators successfully negotiated with the Kent School District after district negotiators were forced to come to the table when two Kent School Board members prevented an injunction from the district against the striking teachers - Lelsie Hamada and Joseph Bento voted against the injunction, while Awale Farah and Tim Clark voted for it.
In other school news, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Chris Ryekdal, is submitting a proposal for the state to provide free lunch to all students. The proposal would cst the legislature $86 million a year, and would feed the over 300,000 students that don't currently qualify for free or reduced-priced lunches. Since we know that kids' education suffers if they don't get sufficient nutrition, this is an impactful proposal that we will be keeping an eye on.
For elections, Erica breaks down the election reform and status quo campaigns in this year's general election. This November, voters will have the option to choose if they would like to change the way we vote, and whether we should adopt Ranked Choice Voting or Approval Voting for local primary elections. Recently, a campaign to maintain the status-quo is starting to take shape, funded primarily by local business leaders. Meanwhile, Ranked Choice Voting's formal campaign is just starting to raise money, while the Approval campaign has raised over $400,000.
While there will be a lot of different talking points shared around this vote, it's essential that the media frame this issue around what will help most people get involved and make their voices heard, and which system will help communities be accurately represented. We also need to ensure that there is a proper voter education rollout if our elections change. We saw in Pierce County the danger of what happens when you ask people to use a voting system hasn’t been properly explained to them.
Catching up with Mayor Harrell's data dashboard, it's clear the data is incomplete, and the mayor's promise of an effective approach to homelessness is not being met. Sweeps have increased since the pandemic, we do not have the 1,000 pieces of "emergency shelter" that Harrell promised to build, and a surprisingly low number of people are being referred to shelter. And despite early vows to not play the blame game, he continues to point to past administrations, the King County Regional Homeless Authority, and the City Council as reasons he hasn't achieved his goals.
We've seen examples of cities and districts applying legitimate housing- and services-first models and finding measurable success, yet Harrell's administration continues to focus on sweeps as the answer to our homelessness crisis. Harrell's current approach runs against his promises during the election to prioritize housing and treatment, and aren’t proving effective at actually reducing homelessness.
We wrap up the show looking at a recent press conference from Seattle-area law enforcement leaders, which, while advertised as an announcement of a crisis in the city's police force, was really an endorsement announcement for King County Prosecutor Candidate Jim Ferrell. While he's running as a Democrat, Ferrell's embracing an endorsement from SPOG and Mike Sloan, which represents a real divide between Ferrell's approach to police and public safety versus most Democrats' views. It's the latest in a line of moves and positions from Ferrell that run counter to his self-given Democrat label.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica C. Barnett, at @ericacbarnett. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources “Kent teachers strike ends as union ratifies contract; students head to class” by Daisy Zavala Magaña and Christine Clarridge from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/kent-teachers-strike-could-end-soon-as-union-reaches-tentative-deal/ “Seattle Teachers Strike” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/09/07/78442506/seattle-teachers-strike “WA teachers strikes highlight school funding, staffing woes” by Venice Buhain from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/news/2022/09/wa-teachers-strikes-highlight-school-funding-staffing-woes “Reykdal calls for WA Legislature to fund free school meals for all” by Jeanie Lindsay from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/reykdal-calls-for-wa-legislature-to-fund-free-school-meals-for-all/ “Anti-Election Reform Campaign Emerges” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/09/06/anti-election-reform-campaign-emerges-next-years-election-starts-shaping-up-new-sdot-director-says-hell-take-vision-zero-down-to-the-studs/ City of Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission - 2022 Campaigns: http://web6.seattle.gov/ethics/elections/campaigns.aspx?cycle=2022&type=contest&IDNum=201&leftmenu=expanded “Harrell’s Homelessness ‘Data Dashboard’ Shows Plenty of Sweeps But Little Progress on Shelter, Housing” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/08/30/harrells-homelessness-data-dashboard-shows-plenty-of-sweeps-but-little-progress-on-shelter-housing/ "How would mayoral candidates Bruce Harrell and M. Lorena González tackle homelessness in Seattle?" by Scott Greenstone from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/how-would-mayoral-candidates-bruce-harrell-and-m-lorena-gonzalez-tackle-homelessness-in-seattle/ "Seattle Might Soon Defund a Promising Police Alternative" by Will Casey from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/06/23/75477450/seattle-might-soon-defund-a-promising-police-alternative “Seattle-area law enforcement union chiefs push for Jim Ferrell in prosecutor race” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/seattle-area-law-enforcement-union-chiefs-push-for-jim-ferrell-in-prosecutor-race/ “Slog AM: Mayor Announces SPD Chief Finalists, ‘Doomsday Glacier’ Melting, Trum in More Trouble” by Will Casey from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog-am/2022/09/09/78452663/slog-am-mayor-announces-spd-chief-finalists-doomsday-glacier-melting-trump-in-more-trouble "Misdemeanor Prosecution" by Amanda Y. Agan, Jennifer L. Doleac, & Anna Harvey from The National Bureau of Economic Research: https://www.nber.org/papers/w28600 Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show were always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host, Seattle political reporter, editor of Publicola, co-host of the Seattle Nice podcast, and author of Quitter, A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery, Erica Barnett.
[00:00:58] Erica C. Barnett: It's great to be here, Crystal.
[00:00:59] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you back, lots to talk about this week. And I think we will start off talking about teachers striking, really across the state, and one strike that just ended in Kent. What is going on in the world of teacher strikes?
[00:01:15] Erica C. Barnett: I'm gonna defer to you a little bit on the Kent strike, but this is, you mentioned, this is a statewide situation - it's really a national situation. Schools are having trouble keeping up enrollment across the country. People are moving away. People have enrolled, wealthier people have enrolled, their kids in private schools. And so that's creating, a financial crunch for a lot of school districts. And frankly teachers and parent educators and other school staff across the country are saying, "look, we're being asked to do more. We're not being compensated commensurate with inflation." Or the or cops, frankly, and we can talk more about that. But yeah, it's happening across the country and across the state. In Kent, you mentioned before we came on mic, Eatonville, seattle, lots and lots of places, we're seeing these school strikes. If you live in Seattle and you're reading the newspaper and you think that Seattle's the only district where this is happening, that is very much not the case.
[00:02:29] Crystal Fincher: Very much not the case. And we are in a pretty precarious situation, to your point, nationwide. And education, a lot of districts are dealing with staffing issues, problems, and challenges, and sometimes the issue, like there is in Kent, where some schools have seen declines in enrollment where other schools, like here in Kent, Kent-Meridian is actually seeing a pretty dramatic increase. And what do you do with that? Having to shift staff? That's an issue that Seattle has had to deal with before. And just shortages across the board, especially in programs like special education, which seems to be an issue across the board. This is an issue that's under discussion in every strike that is happening, or that has been authorized in the state, where it seems like there has just been staffing losses, or increased need, a combination of the two in special education classes. And these classes are far beyond the staffing ratios originally intended for these. And that's on the list of things that teachers are striking for: to bring these classes back within the recommended ranges that they're supposed to be. In Seattle, one parent was talking about, they were looking at a class size of 30 to 40 kids for their special education student, which is far beyond what it should be. Another thing that was a big issue in Kent and also across the state and the country are mental health resources, school counselors. In Kent, it was an issue where the staffing ratio recommended pre pandemic was one counselor for every 250 students. As was frequently discussed throughout the pandemic, the needs that students have in terms of support have only grown since then. Yet, the current staffing ratios that were presented were one for every 500 students. I don't even know how that's manageable. Certainly doesn't meet the need, if anything, we needed to be moving towards even lower ratios than what was recommended before. So these are resources for students. These are the conditions for learning. These do dictate the types of outcomes that kids are going to be receiving through school, which dictates the rest of their life, really. You know, how someone performs in school does have a predictive measure on how things look for the rest of their life. Not absolutely determinative, but certainly influences it. So these are really serious discussions. This has to do with, the future. These are future residents and neighbors and employees and everything that we need to make our society work. We are planting these seeds right now in these classrooms. And if we make sure that they have what they need to succeed, we're all better off.
[00:05:31] Erica C. Barnett: Yeah, I think, to, to your point about counselors, that is also an issue in Seattle. I think that there are, I'm not a parent, I don't have public school kids or anything like that, but but I believe I read that some schools don't have full-time counselors. And to your point about special education, that, is one of the major sticking points in the strike in Seattle. The teachers and the employees that are striking, want to have set staffing ratios for special education. And the district is essentially saying, "we'll deal with that later and trust us." And I think that there, there is not a lot of trust there between the district and educators. On that point, just because class sizes have grown so substantially, so you know, those are all really important issues. A lot of times people look at a strike and think, "they just want more money." And look at the the amount that teachers are making, which is still quite low compared to what a lot of other public servants make such as police. And in Seattle, it's low compared to some surrounding districts. And teachers can't afford to live in the city. And so those are all really important considerations, but there are also, real considerations that affect the education that kids are getting. If you're in a class with 30 or 40 students, you are not getting the kind of individualized attention that a lot of parents I think would hope their kids would have. So there's a lot of different issues at play in all of these strikes. And we're recording this on Friday morning. I don't know how long the strike is gonna go on, but but there's still quite a lot to be hammered out beyond just the issue of wages and benefits.
[00:07:23] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And the issue of the negotiation, the bargaining is a big one, and whether or not the districts and the representatives are bargaining in good faith. There has been a lot of consternation in Seattle because the district's negotiators there have just not shown up on some days. And even in their announcement that was sent out to parents yesterday, heard a number of parents saying, "they're saying that if an agreement is not reached tomorrow, we'll get an update by Monday," which seems to indicate that they don't plan on meeting over the weekend, which the union negotiators are willing to do, were willing to do last weekend. And it just seems like the district negotiators are dragging their feet are hoping that some public pressure coalesces and maybe externally gets the teachers back. But I think negotiating in good faith is the best way to do that. But I think we just saw that in Kent, who just settled their strike - kids are back in classes now - where they actually considered suing the teacher's union to seek an injunction, to force them
back to work, and it failed on a split vote in the council with, surprisingly, the former chair of the 33rd Democrats, who is now a school board member. Tim Clark voted in favor of suing the teacher's union as did Awale Farah, who had a lot of progressive endorsements. So certainly surprising to see those anti-union votes from those two people. But it did appear that, that the negotiators were dragging their feet saying, "maybe we won't have to do anything. We'll wait for the lawsuit to take place." But as soon as that was shot down, an agreement was reached pretty quickly thereafter. What the teachers are asking for wasn't out of bounds, it wasn't too much, it wasn't unreasonable. And once they started negotiating seriously, they reached an agreement pretty soon. I hope the Seattle district follows suit and really does start negotiating in good faith to end this because this is a hardship on parents and families. It is not easy to take care of kids when you weren't counting on that, when you have a job, when you have different things you need to do. So I hope they get this over with, get this done, settle with the teachers as quickly as possible.
[00:09:48] Erica C. Barnett: Absolutely.
[00:09:49] Crystal Fincher: With that, we will move on to another item that came out yesterday: the Superintendent of Public Instruction for the state, Chris Ryekdal, is calling for free school meals for everyone. What did he propose?
[00:10:04] Erica C. Barnett: I think you said it. He's saying that the legislature needs to pass legislation to fund free school meals for the remaining, I believe it was 330,000, students who don't qualify. And I think my number may be off, I'm going for memory, but I think it was about $86 million a year to to pay for all these meals for kids. And I imagine, this was just announced. I imagine there will probably be some reaction from the right to this proposal, from the Republican saying that it is unnecessary or that we shouldn't be doing these giveaways to children or parents or whatever. But man, it just, it seems a no brainer in a lot of ways to make food available to all kids, particularly with rising food costs right now. If you've been to the grocery store lately, it is shocking. So yeah, this seems like a very timely announcement and a timely proposal to me.
[00:11:16] Crystal Fincher: It does. And we would join a few other states like California, Vermont, and Massachusetts who are doing this. To your point right now, about half the school- half the kids in the school, are covered by free lunch. But like those requirements sometimes are- not everybody who qualifies actually seeks it and gets it. There is absolutely the issue of child hunger. It's getting worse. This is a plan that is interesting. Again, we know that kids not being hungry in school makes their ability to learn better that when they're not facing issues like hunger that they, their educational outcomes do improve. So we want to do everything to make that a possibility, and this seems like a good idea and interesting to see where it goes. He's asking for an appropriation from the legislature, so this would be something that would have to be taken up during the legislative session, and we'll see what the response to it is.
[00:12:16] Erica C. Barnett: One thing that doesn't get talked about when all the time in these discussions about school, about school lunches and it's free food at schools is there is there's a real stigma, still, to being a kid who has a free lunch as opposed to kids who are able to purchase their lunches. And I think this will also even the playing field for parents and kids, too, if it's just universally, you go to school, you get a lunch. That's again, to me, that seems like a no brainer. I realize there is a cost associated with it, ultimately it's not millions of kids. It's hundreds of thousands of kids. And I do think that, anything that can reduce stigma for for lower income kids in school is also good for their education.
[00:13:02] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Great point. Completely agree. I also wanna talk about a story you wrote this week about the election reform campaigns that are starting to develop. What's taken place?
[00:13:15] Erica C. Barnett: So there is gonna be a measure on the ballot in November. It's a three part measure. It's one of those kind of confusing proposals where you can choose Yes or No on, "do you want to change the way that we elect local officials?" And whether you say Yes or No, you can then choose between two different options. One is Ranked Choice Voting where you, list you essentially rank, each person that you like in order of preference. And you don't have to rank everybody. If there's 20 people on the ballot, you can rank however many you want. And the second is Approval Voting, where you fill in the bubble for everybody that you approve of, and they're essentially ranked equally. And so these are both election reforms that their advocates say will, result in more representative people being on the city council. And they're just for primary elections - the general election would go on as it currently does. So yeah, so campaigns are shaping up. There's a Ranked Choice Voting campaign that does not have a lot of money yet that just formed. There is an Approval Voting campaign that has hundreds of thousands of dollars coming in from advocates for for that voting system, which is little tested and well funded. And then there is also, now, and this is what I reported this week, an emerging campaign against all of the above, "let's stick with the status quo." And that is funded by a bunch of local and quasi-local business interests. And I say quasi-local, because a lot of the folks who are funding it are from out of town, around Seattle, Issaquah, Bellevue, et cetera. So it's gonna be, I think, this is gonna be an incredibly heated campaign for something that is, essentially, a very nerdy debate over what kind of elections are most representative and are we getting the best candidates we can? Are we getting the best elected officials we can? And would changing the system change the results?
[00:15:30] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's really interesting to see, especially this 'vote no on everything campaign.' From the political perspective, it's interesting. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, because when there's a choice between no change and some change, and you have choices on what kind of change, oftentimes just saying, "okay, just all those options are confusing. You have to learn about them. Just say no, and don't change anything," sometimes is the easiest. Not saying that it's right, but sometimes it's the easiest, argument to make and to have carry. And so it's interesting to see this take shape. To your point, you were talking about a number of local business leaders: the CEO of HomeStreet Bank, the Costco co-founder and former CEO, Mariners co-owner John Stanton, developers who are involved with that, starbucks president, a former Starbucks president. So it's a lot of entrenched interests who are lining up in funding this no campaign, which looks like it will have, based on the people involved with it, kind of bottomless resources and able to go up against the pretty formidable resources of the Approval Voting Campaign, which is new to our area. I have no idea how this is gonna play out, what's gonna happen, and how it's going to interface with the Rank Choice Voting campaign, which has a much longer grassroots history in our state, and has had a lot of advocates on the ground. It's actually on the ballot in Clark county and in San Juan County, I wanna say, this November. And so there've been lots of conversations about it. Lots of advocates who have been in favor of it over the past several years and more momentum growing, and we've seen examples of it across the country being implemented. But that the formal campaign for the city of Seattle ballot question is just forming and we'll see what shape that takes and what kind of resources they wind up with.
[00:17:43] Erica C. Barnett: Yeah. I think Ranked Choice Voting has happened all across the country, and we saw, in Alaska, helped defeat Sara Palin. I will say one difference here is that we already have an election reform, or what other places consider an election reform, in place, which is the top-two primary. And this would be Ranked Choice Voting or Approval Voting plus a top-two primary, which is a little confusing. Usually Ranked Choice Voting, it's essentially, like instant- it's also called instant runoff voting. And it's supposed to result in one winner. And here, we would be doing it in a weird, and I don't know if it's unprecedented, but highly unusual way of using it for the primary, and then the top two go through and we vote on them three months later in the normal way. So anyway, it'll it'll be interesting, if we do adopt it, to see how it works and in what ways it is compatible and incompatible with the way that we already do our elections, which have, been reformed pretty recently with the top-two primary.
[00:18:48] Crystal Fincher: I hope, as we continue these discussions, that we really do focus on voter turnout and what gets more people involved and not necessarily what is going to achieve the desired result, but what gets more people engaged and able to vote, engaged in voting, and having a voice in shaping their own community and in choosing their own leaders. That to me should be the goal, and so I hope that we focus on that, as well as making sure that no matter what is implemented - regardless of this vote, I think it is pretty apparent that we're gonna see voting reforms implemented with more frequency across this state and country - that we do invest the appropriate resources in educating the public about what's gonna happen. We saw in Pierce County the failure to do that had bad consequences and lead to a backlash. If people aren't prepared for this change, then it's going to disenfranchise people. It's gonna confuse people. When people are confused, they frequently don't vote. They get really cranky. And sometimes I see dismissive statements, especially online, with this may be hard for people to understand and being like, "no, it's really easy to understand. You just rank the people." And that is, is such an oversight and really dismissive. Lots of people do have challenge. Look at the amount of people who have, who don't realize that they need to sign their ballot right now with our current system. So just even changes that seems simple and obvious to some just are not to everyone. And we need to do reaching out in person. We need to do reaching out in all of the languages that people vote in, in all areas of community, different income levels, whether people are online or offline, really make a concerted effort to do that. So that's, if you know me and we have talked about this, you have heard this from me before. I'm most interested in making sure people have the information they need to vote and that we do what makes it easiest for them to do that and don't risk disenfranchising people. So we'll see how this plays out. We'll link, but you can see the filings and how these continue to shape up on the Seattle Ethics and Elections website. I think some people may not realize, who are used to now, got used to looking up on the PDC for a lot of other races across the country: in Seattle races, there is- Seattle has its own regulations, its own authority, and so you can look up all of the Seattle election information on Seattle's Ethics and Election website. You can see all of the disclosures filings, all of that, there. So very useful. We'll link that and continue to follow along with those races. Also this week, you did some great reporting on the state of mayor Harrell's homelessness data dashboard. What's up with it?
[00:21:56] Erica C. Barnett: Yeah, the mayor has, three months ago, he announced with a lot of fanfare, that he was gonna be tracking data on homelessness, and specifically on homeless encampments in a more or less live fashion on this data dashboard. And the dashboard has not been updated for three months. I think they're gonna be, I think realistically, they have said it's gonna be every three months. If you look at the the dashboard itself, it's not really a dashboard. It's really more of a static website that has a couple of elements that change a little bit, including a map that's intended to show, essentially progress on closing encampments. And, Harrell has said, and for some reason he's adopted this as a motto, he said, "we don't do sweeps. We treat and we house." And that is, that statement, is false in a lot of different respects. The city has really ramped up sweeps even from, previous mayor, Jenny Durkan. And and they're happening nonstop across the city. Both planned sweeps and and unplanned sweeps. Both sweeps where people are engaged and connected to shelter, and those that are done at the last minute because the city decides there's an obstruction or a danger. And so, that's false. We're also not providing treatment to anybody. The city doesn't do that. And the city also doesn't house people directly from encampments except in exceptional circumstances. So this dashboard is also very incomplete, doesn't really provide a lot of information, but if you look at it without, if you squint your eyes and don't look at the data, you can see a lot of dots on the map that make it look like the city's really doing a lot to address unsheltered homelessness, which, frankly, it is not. We don't have more money for that, the city has relinquished a lot of control to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority which also doesn't have a lot of money for that. And so we're at the same point that we were at any point during the homelessness crisis except that sweeps have ramped up since the pandemic emergency ended and since Harrell came into office.
[00:24:32] Crystal Fincher: Yeah it's really interesting, and it looks like they really tried to make it look like they were doing stuff but as you broke down the numbers the city said they counted 814 tents and 426 RVs citywide, made a total of 191 offers of shelter in June out of 616 in the second quarter in 2022. And so based on how it looks like the numbers are calculated, estimating that 30% of shelter offers during the same period resulted in a person enrolling in a shelter for at least one night - we could have a long conversation about how one night of shelter after removing the place where they were leaving is insufficient - but really what that means is that about only 72 people from those 814 tents and 426 RVs spent any time at all in a shelter bed. And what just such an insufficient number and completely opposite to what he said. It just- we just don't appear to be making progress, and even making progress according to the goals that Mayor Harrell set for himself and what he said he was gonna do. And so measuring by his own stick, he's failing and he's not taking the action that he said he would be doing. Which is really interesting because he seems to be saying, "none of this is my fault and I have no nothing to do with any of this. And, I'd rather change the council than, acknowledge that there's anything that I have control of to do in this situation."
[00:26:21] Erica C. Barnett: Yeah. There are caveats to to all of these numbers and I do think that the the baseline number of tents and RVs is probably very much underestimated. The number of people who went to shelter may also be slightly underestimated just because of how they calculate and how they gather information. But I think that Harrell, and maybe this is a successful tactic because people don't dig into the numbers and they pay attention to the top lines, to use poll speak, but, I mean, his insistence, his mantra, that we treat and we house, it just, it drives me a little bonkers. I don't think that Bruce Harrell is an uncompassionate person, but I also think that, when you say that we are giving people treatment and we are giving people housing and it is not true, it's incumbent on people like, like me and you, Crystal, to, to point out this is not true. This is not what's happening. What's happening is they're offering people shelter when tiny house villages become available. They're offering people those. Mostly they're saying here, you can go across town, and relinquish all your stuff, give up your spot, give up the people that you know, and stay in a mass shelter. It may not be a quote unquote mat on the floor, but these are still mass shelters and that is your choice. And people don't stay in those shelters for very long because they don't offer hope for housing and they're crowded and you don't have a lot of privacy or rights. I just think we need to hammer home that this shelter, this we house and we treat stuff, is that's not what's happening.
[00:28:10] Crystal Fincher: It's not what's happening, and it flies in the face of what evidence does show works, which is giving people support and housing. Sweeping people moves people from one location to another. It doesn't solve the issue of homelessness. And really it doesn't even solve the issue of visible homelessness, which some people view as being the problem. Not that people are outside, but "I have to look at people who are outside and that makes me uncomfortable without engaging with how uncomfortable it is to be living without shelter." And there's been a lot of local reporting even on, "hey, people swept from one location, wind up at another location. And hey, we've tracked people from this sweep location, then they move over here, and then they move over there." And so we're just playing this really twisted and dark game of musical chairs and expecting some kind of result. And he seems to just be doubling down on what's happening, especially when considering his leaked comments in the SPD roll call meeting. It seems like there's no consideration of anything different. And we see in Houston that, hey, people are making more progress when they take a housing-first issue. Yesterday, Mike Bonin, who is from the city of LA, just announced in his district they made the most progress in the city,
and he is someone who has taken big heat for really going all-in on a housing-first model, focusing on services and housing. The one thing that everyone who is homeless has an in common is that they don't have shelter. Housing is a necessary component to solving homelessness. You can't only focus on, hey, treatment. Lots of people wanna think about "people did something to deserve being outside. They made bad decisions and they are dealing with addiction. And so we don't need to help them or they need to figure out how to get it together before they're worthy of help." And that's just not how it works and it's expensive and inhumane to expect that to work and to continue to force that on people. When we allow people to stabilize in secure housing, the rest of the stuff becomes much more easy to do, and not easy, but easier, to deal with. And to help people get into a place where they can find permanent housing and really get off the streets for good. You have to do that work. And it seems like there's just a lot of cosmetic and really shallow sweeping going on and we're waiting for a real plan to address homelessness. We're still waiting for this plan. And man, do we need it.
[00:31:06] Erica C. Barnett: Absolutely.
[00:31:07] Crystal Fincher: This is an issue that is a source of frustration for me if you can't tell. Like my-
[00:31:13] Erica C. Barnett: Oh, me too. Me too. It's, you know...
[00:31:15] Crystal Fincher: We are spending so much money doing these sweeps. And if we put this money in a different direction, we could be making more progress than we are making. And all of us wanna see it.
[00:31:25] Erica C. Barnett: And yeah, not just doing the sweeps, but also staffing the sweeps with police officers, who have become a really dominant presence at sweeps again for a while. Before before this mayor, they were part of a navigation team, which meant that they act actively, did sweeps along with workers from the city. And now, they faded into the background for a while, and now they are a very active presence at the larger removals. Actually at every removal. But I was reading in a records request last night that I filed on a different subject, that there were, there was something like, or they were, the SPD requested something like 50 police officers to be at the the Woodland Park removal earlier this year. And that was not all of Woodland Park, it was a small part of Woodland park, and there were, maybe 30 people left by the time they they actually showed up to remove the last people. So it's just just a tremendous amount of resources go into moving people around and around the city and occasionally doing it a better way and actually getting people into shelter that they want to be in like tiny houses.
[00:32:42] Crystal Fincher: And again, just to point out, Bruce set this bar. Sometimes I get frustrated because there seems to be, just, collective amnesia about what Bruce Harrell said as he was running for election and what he said early in office. And these aren't external expectations being placed on him. Voters voted for him based on what he said and how he was gonna handle it. And he previously said that he didn't want police on the outreach teams that go into encampments, but he would staff it with more social workers and behavioral health clinicians. When he was running for office and when he first took office talked about this. He did talk about housing and services and leaning in hard to that. And he is doing the opposite of what he said he would do. People are not getting what they bargained for here and he seems to be doubling down on it. And I would just like, at least- And it's not like people never, ever change their mind either, but then explain it. Then explain how you decided, "you know what? We are not gonna take an approach where we involve clinicians and support staff and people who can help with services. We are going to staff it with police." Be publicly accountable for the choices that you make and how you're leading the city, and say, "I decided not to do that for this reason." He should have to explain that. Especially with a lack of progress being made. It seems like if he were to stick with his original plan, we would be making more progress. So why did he change it and why is he sticking with that direction? I would love to hear him answer those questions. I would love to hear people ask him why he is deviating from the plan that voters voted for. That to me is an important question.
[00:34:33] Erica C. Barnett: Yeah. I think Harrell would, I think a lot of people who voted for Harrell, frankly, voted for him on the assumption that he would be sweeping encampments and that he is doing exactly what he said he would do. But I agree with you that he certainly paid lip service to a more compassionate approach. And I do think, in fairness, there are things that are happening, like JustCARE is actively working - it's a program from the Public Defender Association - is actively working to put people in, in hotels and and get them into housing. Good things are happening. It's not all sweeps, but the problem is that sweeps have ramped up to such an extent that it is making hard for the good things to happen, because it's hard to find people because people are traumatized because they don't trust the city to act in their best interest. And it's all it's very counterproductive to do a little bit of the social work, healthcare-oriented, housing-oriented stuff and then do a whole lot of, the sort of compassionless, cruel sweep. Because there, it's not just mixed messages, it's mixed practices that make- the bad stuff makes the good stuff harder to do.
[00:35:50] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And I do think you're absolutely right. There have been excellent programs, especially through JustCARE, about helping people through that. And even in the realm of public safety. The challenge is some of those programs have been defunded by Mayor Harrell and he's indicated, and his deputy mayor for public safety has indicated, that more of that should be expected. And as they, perhaps, stand up their internal department, public safety department, and internal supports, but it is just- it just seems like we're moving in this opposite direction. I would love to see more programs like that funded, them accelerate and ex and expand that. There's lots of evidence that we have from that program to show that it is effective, and I would love to see an expansion of that rather than an expansion of these sweeps. We will continue to keep our eyes on how this turns out. You've, for years and years, have done an excellent job reporting on this and have had some of the best information available in the city, which lots of other reporters rely on for their work also, so appreciate your continued coverage of this. And as we wrap up, I just wanted to also talk about public safety and law enforcement lining up and expressing their support in another race for the county prosecutor. What happened this week?
[00:37:16] Erica C. Barnett: It will not surprise you to hear that I was not invited to this press conference. But the TV news and The Seattle Times reported on a press conference by the Seattle Police Officers Guild, which is headed up by an incredibly controversial figure, Mike Solan. And the press conference was apparently billed as, "we're gonna have a major announcement of some sort. We're gonna inform you of this dire situation that's going on." And, in fact, what it appears to have been was a fullthroated endorsement of Jim Ferrell for King County Prosecuting Attorney. I suspect that it's not so much that there was a nefarious bait and switch or anything like that, I just think that SPOG is not great at media relations, and why blame- when incompetence will do, why look for other motivations? But in any case, Ferrell accepted their endorsement, and I think this is really interesting because Jim Ferrell has been torn in two directions. Earlier this year, the state Democrat's leader, Tina Paul Ladowski, said that he was not a Democrat. He has been very insistent that he is. If you go to endorsement meetings by Democrats and progressive groups, the first thing he says is, "I'm know a lifelong Democrat." But, in aligning himself with SPOG,
he is sending a very different message. SPOG has been associated with defending cops who participated in the January 6th riots. Mike Solan has made some incredibly controversial statements, let's say, in the past.
[00:39:02] Crystal Fincher: And straight up false.
[00:39:03] Erica C. Barnett: What's that?
[00:39:04] Crystal Fincher: I said, "and straight up false."
[00:39:06] Erica C. Barnett: Yeah. And false, sure.
[00:39:07] Crystal Fincher: He's bit of source of misinformation also.
[00:39:09] Erica C. Barnett: Of course, of course. He's not universally popular among cops because he is so far to the right. This is a real statement, I think, by Jim Ferrell, that these are his people and he's he's gonna try to take down Dan Satterberg, the current prosecutor's Chief of Staff, Lisl Mann, who is running for this position as well, by coming at her from the right and painting her as some kind of radical wildlife leftist, which she is not.
[00:39:41] Crystal Fincher: She definitely is not. This is a really interesting race and you're absolutely right. This does send a message accepting this endorsement from the Seattle Police Officers Guild. There are other candidates who will accept endorsements from guilds sometimes excepting the Seattle Police Officers Guild, because they have been, and their leader has been so extreme, and, to your point, even controversial within police circles and with the rank and file because they've attracted negative attention and maybe you're not completely aligned with what they feel is the core of what they're trying to do. But Jim Ferrell has insisted he's a Democrat, but the reason why Tina pad Ladowski was like, "yeah, but you're not," is because local Republicans are also touting him and appearing at events for them and, being someone who was aligned with their values which they posted about, they publicly did so. And frankly, you can say you are whatever you want in our state, but there have been- lots of people have not necessarily viewed Jim Ferrell as a Democrat for several years. He self-identifies as whatever he wants. But I think in looking at the substance of who is supporting him, who his donors are, who his endorsements are, a lot of them align with Republican candidates. And, he even tried to use his consultant before, as, "I even have a democratic consultant," and the most recent thing that democratic consultant did was elect Republican City Attorney, Ann Davison. So it's an interesting thing to see, and, when party resources are at stake. And you have to prove yourself to be a Democrat, it does take more than just saying it yourself. You do have to show receipts and his are lacking.
[00:41:45] Erica C. Barnett: Yeah. And he's, I, that's interesting about- I didn't actually know that about his consultant, but I was gonna say he's running a very Ann Davison-style campaign. He's claiming that Satterberg and, by association, Manion, left this huge backlog of felony cases on the table, which is exactly what Ann Davison accused her predecessor, Pete Holmes, of doing. And I think that in the case of Davison and Holmes, she had more of a case to make that Holmes had let a lot of stuff fall by the wayside. With Satterberg, I don't think that it's gonna work quite as effectively because Satterberg has receipts and is not, could not, be accused of being lazy. He is, he used to be, a Republican himself, and there's a time when you could say you're Republican and that's just a difference of opinion, but since Trump, you are aligning yourself with with Republicans or Republican consultants is a very different thing than it was when Berg was first elected, and of course he changed parties to the Democrats, in part because of what the Republican party means now.
[00:42:50] Crystal Fincher: You know, you certainly cannot, in any kind of good faith or with any kind of credibility, paint Lisa Manion, as this super leftist, super abolitionist. She is continuing in, basically, the style of Dan Satterberg, endorsed by Dan Satterberg, is not taking the hardcore, purely punitive, fill up the jails approach as Jim Ferrell is. But there's also- that approach has failed. That approach is not working, and all of the available data from criminologists and people who study this and who have all of the evidence say that is actually harmful and not the way to go and that does not decrease crime and more likely increases it. So we will see how this race shapes out. We'll see how much of a voice these endorsements carry and how he continues to proceed. But, one thing that I do notice is that Republicans, overall in the primary, Republican candidates for the legislature tried to hit Democrats hard on some of these same issues and saying, "public safety is a real problem and it's Democrat's fault, and these policies are not working." And voters seem to pretty soundly reject that. Those did not land and produced worse results than Republicans were bargaining for. And so it'll be interesting to see if this continues in that vein or not, but this'll be an interesting one to continue to pay attention to.
And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks and Wonks on this Friday, September 9th, 2022. The Producer of Hacks and Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our Assistant Producer is Shannon Cheng and our Post-Production assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. Our insightful co-host today with Seattle political reporter, editor of Publicola, co-host of the Seattle Nice podcast, and author of Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery, Erica Barnett. You can find Erica on Twitter at @ericacbarnett, that's Erica with a C also, and on publicola.com. And you can buy her book, Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery. You can find me on Twitter at @finchfrii, and you can follow Hacks and Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere where you get your podcasts. Just type Hacks & Wonks into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe, to get our full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full text transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.
Sean Goode and Rebecca Thornton from Choose 180 stop by to share how to transform systems of harm and injustice - by supporting young people impacted by them as well as their own staff in doing this work. They discuss a better world where neighborhoods are resourced, generative programs are co-created, and the humanity of those accused of causing harm is centered alongside the healing of those who are harmed. Such a world is not as far off as one may think, but does require the transfer of power to those closest to the pain and a long-enough runway to have lasting effects.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii, find Sean at @GraceNotGuilt, and Choose 180 at @ICHOOSE180
Resources
Choose 180: https://choose180.org/
“A King County nonprofit raised all staff salaries to $70,000 minimum. Will more organizations follow?” by Naomi Ishisaka from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/labor-shortage-or-living-wage-shortage-one-king-county-nonprofit-is-taking-a-different-approach/
"Disparities in Wealth by Race and Ethnicity in the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances" by Neil Bhutta, Andrew C. Chang, Lisa J. Dettling, and Joanne W. Hsu for FEDS Notes: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/disparities-in-wealth-by-race-and-ethnicity-in-the-2019-survey-of-consumer-finances-20200928.htm
“Closing the racial wealth gap requires heavy, progressive taxation of wealth” by Vanessa Williamson from The Brookings Institution: https://www.brookings.edu/research/closing-the-racial-wealth-gap-requires-heavy-progressive-taxation-of-wealth/
“The economic impact of closing the racial wealth gap” by Nick Noel, Duwain Pinder, Shelley Stewart, and Jason Wright from McKinsey & Company: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/the-economic-impact-of-closing-the-racial-wealth-gap
“An Unjust Burden: The Disparate Treatment of Black Americans in the Criminal Justice System” by Elizabeth Hinton, LeShae Henderson, and Cindy Reed for Vera Institute of Justice: https://www.vera.org/downloads/publications/for-the-record-unjust-burden-racial-disparities.pdf
“Prosecutor-funded program helps kids do a 180, avoid charges” by Sami Edge from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/prosecutor-funded-community-effort-helps-kids-do-a-180-on-jail-bound-route/
King County Prosecuting Attorney - Choose 180 Youth Program: https://kingcounty.gov/depts/prosecutor/youth-programs/choose-180.aspx
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I'm very excited to have joining us Sean Goode, the Executive Director of Choose 180, and Rebecca Thornton, who's the Office Manager and bookkeeper for Choose 180. Thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:00:50] Sean Goode: It's an honor to be here, Crystal. Thanks for the invitation.
[00:00:52] Rebecca Thornton: Thank you for having us.
[00:00:55] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. So as we get started here, I just want to open up with you talking about what Choose 180 does and what brought you both into this work. And we can start with you, Sean.
[00:01:09] Sean Goode: Yeah. Our organization exists to transform systems that cause harm, systems of injustice, and support the young people who've been impacted by those systems. And what that looks like is we partner intentionally with folks like prosecutors to co-create programming that exists outside of the traditional criminal legal system and alleviates the need for them to continue to prosecute young people.
So in practicality, it's a young person lives in a neighborhood that's overly policed, their behavior's criminalized, the police send that referral to the prosecutor - but because of our relationship with them, they get community instead of a criminal conviction. And for the young people who engage in our traditional programming, over 90% of the time, they don't return to the criminal legal system within 12 months of participating in our programming. And so that's an example of one of our many models of service, but all of them have a genesis point of partnering with systems to transform the way they administer justice and supporting young people as an outcome to help alleviate the harm that those systems cause.
My brother was incarcerated as a 13-year-old boy until he was a 21-year-old man and how he was stigmatized as a problem. And yet how, when he was released, saw me beginning to engage in some of those same problematic behaviors, but saw the possibility that lived within me and was able to call that out from a dark place and show me, by the way of his light, that there was something else that I could become.
[00:02:30] Crystal Fincher: And what brought you to this work, Rebecca?
[00:02:33] Rebecca Thornton: About six years ago, I was looking for just some way to donate my time, because I just felt I had survived so much and that was just a way I wanted to give back. And I stumbled upon what was the 180 Program at the time. And they were like, "Hey, do you want to come and share your story at one of our workshops?" And I agreed, and I just jumped right in, and I just kept coming back. And about maybe eight months in, Sean ended up coming on and I got to watch that whole process. And then the team started to grow. And then about two years ago now next month, I came on full time as the Office Manager and bookkeeper.
And I stayed with Choose 180 because of my lived experience with drugs specifically. I hold this core belief that especially young people should not be criminalized for their behavior because so much of it comes from the things that have happened to them in their lives and the circumstances in which they lived, because that's what happened to me. And I just want to give back in that way so that people don't have to take as long to turn their life around like I did.
[00:03:46] Crystal Fincher: You actually made news last year for something that we don't see often, and that was for deciding to make sure everyone at Choose 180 is making at least $70,000, who's there full-time, which is a huge part of a discussion that we're having just around paying people a living wage in the first place and making sure people who are around us that we work with can also afford to live within our communities. But also particularly in the nonprofit space, where, so often, we are used to hearing about thin budgets and even thinner salaries, and there's just not that much money to go around. And this is a pursuit that people get into, not for the money, but for serving the community. How did this conversation start within Choose 180? And how did you arrive at the place where you decided to say, "You know what, everyone deserves to have a fair wage and to have the ability to live where they're working."?
[00:04:47] Sean Goode: Yeah. Thanks for that question, Crystal. I think I want to start by saying we're fortunate to serve in a community where there's organizations like Collective Justice, Creative Justice, and Freedom Project, who have all done work around wage equity. And some of them have started the organization out flat, or paying already close to or living wage. And so we're fortunate to be able to have examples like that ahead of us that make the journey that we're traveling easier.
And fortunately, we had a couple of our team members speak up who were asking questions about, well, how does it work around here? How do we determine what people make? And how does one get a raise? And do we do things by merit? Do we do things by a degree? And what we didn't want to do is provide any one-off answer and fix one person's situation. We wanted to go about it in a way that addressed it holistically. We convened a committee from our board to assess our compensation philosophy, and they spent time interviewing our team members and listening to their voices. And then they brought their recommendations to me. And their recommendations were many. There were things like, how do we value lived experience? How do we value college degrees? How do we value time served at the organization?
But a throughline that was consistent was living wage. And I heard the report, I looked at the report, and I said, "Yeah, that sounds good, but we're at a nonprofit and we're already paying above market rate in many of these positions. So I don't know what more people want from me." And I thought the conversation was done there. I thought, at that point, I was finished and we could move on, but then we had to build a budget out for the next year. And as the story goes, one of our team members was working on their budget and I told them to dream big. And if we need to add to staff, consider what that might look like, which is where I always start budgeting - to think big. And she came back to me and said, "Well, if we're thinking about adding staff, I can't do that and not have our teammates who are currently here making less than a living wage." And then it became a back-and-forth conversation where I still didn't really get what it was I was being asked to do. And at the end of that conversation, she said, "Look, we work to support young people and their families in escaping the material conditions they're living in that are contributing to the harm that they've experienced. Could it be that we're resourcing our team to live in those same material conditions?" And that cut deep. And so -
[00:07:18] Crystal Fincher: That cut deep, didn't it?
[00:07:20] Sean Goode: Yeah. Yeah. And then I went to Rebecca, because she was in the office that day, and I tugged on her and I said, "Rebecca, do you ever think about buying a home for Maddie?" And Rebecca, you can go ahead and talk about what that was like for you.
[00:07:33] Rebecca Thornton: Well, I laughed at him. Maddie is my daughter - she's kind of the office kid, honestly. Everyone is just in love with her - she's eight. But Sean pulled me aside and he asked me if I was able to save money or if I had plans to ever buy a house, and I laughed at him. That was my first instinct because that's never been in my plans
[00:07:54] Crystal Fincher: From your end, as you're following this process, Rebecca, a lot of times we hear about this as employers and people who hire people and determine how much people get paid - we frequently hear this conversation from their perspective. But for someone who's working in that condition and you are not dictating what your salary is, but you're living there, and as you said, it was laughable to you that thinking about saving for a house, or anything like that, was a possibility. What was this conversation like as someone working for the organization?
[00:08:28] Rebecca Thornton: Well, I know a lot of my coworkers were of the stance of, "Yes, we deserve this. We're going to fight for this." And I was more of Sean's thinking. I'm just so used to making below a living wage that that's kind of all I knew and kind of a core belief of all I thought I deserved. So for this to be on the table, I didn't believe it. I was like, when it's in my bank account, then I might believe it. And it was also odd because here I am, a white person in a Black-led organization. Do I deserve to make that kind of money at the same time? I don't know. There's a lot of - it gets down to all the core beliefs I have in making sure that I know that I deserve that. And it comes - I didn't have a lot of education, and I'm working on my degree and things like that. It's just, it brought up a lot of emotions in me, honestly, more than I thought it would. And I'm glad I had stronger coworkers that could keep the faith in it for me because I don't know - I was a little more pessimistic about it, I feel.
[00:09:52] Crystal Fincher: But I think you get to the root of something that a lot of people face - if they're just used to something and you think this is just how it is and there's not really a possibility for it to get any better, you just kind of accept the conditions and go along with the flow. To me, it seems like there's such a synergy between conversations and beliefs that you are bringing into the community, and this conversation that you had within your organization, which is something I feel a lot of organizations need to do. And there is a tension between what they're saying their values are, what they're saying they're working for in the community, and what they're perpetuating through their practices and their budgets. We talk publicly - budgets are moral documents. They're also moral documents within nonprofit organizations and businesses.
So what got you to the point, Sean, where you were like, okay, this is something that we can make happen? And how did you work through that?
[00:10:50] Sean Goode: Hearing from Rebecca and another one of our co-laborers here - just, it hurt because I care deeply for our team. And then I had this moment of realization, Crystal, where I recognized the only thing getting in the way of this happening is me. And there's also holding attention of this opportunity to build wealth and I know very well, as a multiracial Black man, that the wealth gap between Black Americans and white Americans is 95 cents to the dollar. So for every nickel that Black Americans hold, white Americans hold 95 cents. One of the principal ways to close the wealth gap in our nation is through home ownership. If I am an employer that's largely employing Black and Brown people and not paying them a rate that allows them to build wealth, then I'm perpetuating a historical harm on the very people who I believe are entitled to benefit from the same system that they've suffered from for 400 plus years.
[00:11:58] Crystal Fincher: I think that is so important - appreciate you being transparent about the tensions. I think that a critical part of this conversation is acknowledging that those tensions exist, talking through how you work with it. And to your credit and to your team's credit, Rebecca, the willingness to say this is possible and, hey, we believe in better and we're going to stand in this belief while you catch up. And for you, Sean, we talk about empathy and compassion. Those things, to me, are only useful as verbs. And I believe to my core that that enables people to work more effectively, to carry the message more effectively, to intervene effectively, and those in the community to see, okay, you actually mean what you're saying. It's like a bridge to build trust. And so I do want to talk about this work.
And so in that context, how do you start conversations with people who start out with that belief - "Hey, someone does the crime, they do the time. And looks like that fixes the problem to me."
[00:13:01] Sean Goode: What I'd love to do is this - I'd love to start back and say, hey, let's talk about slave patrols. And then let's talk about abolition, which then led to vagrancy laws, which meant that Black folks could be criminalized for standing on street corners - being unemployed because they weren't employable because the white farmers, who were no longer enslaving them, wouldn't hire them unless they could be servants again - would then be arrested. And then when they are arrested, they would be leased out as convicts, which then put them back on the very same plantations that they were supposedly liberated from. I would love to be able to dive into the prison industrial complex and talk about how for-profit prisons have driven an industry and a practice towards incarcerating people. I would love to highlight the fact that there's more Black people incarcerated today than were ever enslaved at any point of time in our country.
I would love to talk about the disproportionate policing and how policing is focused in impoverished areas that are highly under-resourced and undersupported and frequently neglected, where there's not access to quality education, quality healthcare, quality schools. I would love to talk about the many depravities that are present in the places where young people aren't allowed to have behavior listened to before it's criminalized.
I would love to bring all those things to the forefront, but what I know to be true is most people who don't understand this reality, are too distant from that place that - for them, that seems like history and not present. And it's difficult for them to draw a throughline. Where I do believe we can start at is a simple conversation around cause and effect. If historically, policing behavior would lead to a decrease in behavior that causes harm, then we should be seeing, year over year, a decrease of the number of people who are incarcerated. We should be seeing a decrease in violent crime. We should be seeing a decrease in property crime. If these systems were preventative measures that were persuading people away from making these types of decisions, then after all these years, it should have had an impact that demonstrates that things are getting better in that regard.
Everything we look at would tell us otherwise. Either it doesn't work, or humanity is so inherently evil that no matter how much we police behavior, it'll never change. I don't believe that humanity is so inherently evil. In the work we do, the majority of the folks that we're supporting are people who are committing - whose behavior's being criminalized because they're living in poverty. If someone steals from the Goodwill, it's not because they're some sort of malicious criminal. If somebody's stealing from Target, it's not because they're looking to make some sort of substantial come-up off of what it is that they've taken. So as a result, it's upon us to begin to think outside of our traditional pathways and lean in with the lens of empathy and grace, and understand that we can't police our way out of poverty.
[00:16:13] Crystal Fincher: I couldn't agree more with every single thing that you just said. So with that conversation and people going, well, okay, yeah, we see that there were problems with what we've been doing, but I still don't see what the solution is. You're talking about all this compassion stuff, and you're talking about let's treat people better and not put them in prison. What is the answer that you have and the programs that you are working on that are okay, so what is that different thing?
[00:16:41] Sean Goode: The work that we do and the work that we do in community with others creates an off-ramp from the criminal legal system and an on-ramp into community where both the young person who is accused of causing harm is invited to be on a healing journey of accountability, and the person who was harmed is also made whole and invited to be on a journey where they're healing. And we've had terrific impact because we center the humanity of those that we're serving - and not a humanity that's absent of being accountable to what you've done, but a humanity that doesn't limit the person to what it is they've done and creates a pathway to what it is they can do, and then provides them with the resources they need to fully lean into that possibility.
[00:17:21] Crystal Fincher: Focusing on the stopgaps, what types of programs are there and how do they compare? Because a lot of people are still, I think, having challenges contextualizing - well, yeah, recidivism rates are high, but we see what happens when, okay, someone's arrested, they're sentenced, they go to prison, and then they come out. They see something happening and they're like, "Okay, that is something." It's not as visible to people yet - what the interventions are outside of the criminal legal system that are like, okay, this is the process of healing, this is the process of justice, this is how we work to prevent further harm from happening and also work on healing people who have been harmed - which, to your point, is usually everybody involved in the scenario. What do those look like? And what are those programs? What are those processes?
[00:18:21] Sean Goode: Yeah. They look like eviction moratoriums, which keep people housed and not living on the street. They look like the County buying up hotels in places that are inconvenient for some homeowners, but necessary for those who can't afford to live in a home. They look like investing in mental health services at a statewide level, which is something that we failed to do for a very long time in Washington. They look like re-examining our tax code and considering more ways to be able to raise the resources necessary to meet the needs for the collective us, instead of prioritizing the needs for those of us that have already established the foundation of wealth. They look like initiatives like Best Starts for Kids in our region that allow organizations adjacent to ours and like ours to be able to stand up innovative programs that can serve as a stopgap to alleviate some of the hurt and harm that's been caused.
They look like many things similar to what it is that I'm sharing. They look like - how do we make sure we get more farmers' markets and healthy foods into neighborhoods that haven't had access to them historically? How do we make sure that people who have access to those healthy foods have the time and space to prepare them because they're not on public transit hours a day going to and from work for a less-than-a-living-wage job and picking up their kids from childcare, and then finally getting home at an odd hour where it's cheaper to buy a Happy Meal than it is to make a meal? Right? These are all contributing factors to the spread of this disease of violence.
So it's so multifaceted, but also, if you're wondering and you're listening to this - well, that sounds ambitious. That sounds huge. That sounds like a wonderful utopian society, but how do we deal with what it is we're dealing with today? I'd say, just imagine for a moment, close your eyes and - picture the suburbs - picture places where you can walk to the grocery store, like a gentrified Columbia City, picture places where you have access to green spaces and parks and healthy foods. I know it seems like it's abstract when we put it in the context of underserved neighborhoods, but in neighborhoods where people are paying $1.5 and $1.8 million for houses that were initially purchased for a couple hundred thousand dollars because they were dilapidated in squalor because the areas were underinvested for decades - if we just take a minute and imagine, how do we make sure people have equal access to those type of services, then we wouldn't be having a conversation about violence at all. We'd have a conversation around how do we make sure that there's equitable distribution of services, equitable access to quality healthcare and quality foods and quality education.
This is not a profound innovation that we're talking about. It is a profound effort only in the context of the fact that we've historically neglected those that have suffered, hidden them away, and hope that they disappear, and as we all should eventually benefit from a system of capitalism. We are still here. We still persevere, but we could thrive if people saw our humanity and began to make sure we had living wages. I mean, this goes right back into the wage conversation that we began with. If organizations - I was reading a book about the economics in Black community and one of the things that it stood up was that the middle class of Black folks across the country is largely comprised of people who work in social services. So we are the ones who are serving those of us who are impacted, and simultaneously impacted because the majority of our jobs don't provide a living wage that allows us to build wealth to benefit from capitalism, to build up communities that aren't living in the conditions that are causing the harm that's leading to the crime that people are complaining about because they don't want that to be present in their neighborhood. And then where are we supposed to go?
[00:22:22] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And absolutely valid and another - so many of those conversations about - as people explain the difference between Columbia City and an area that has been underinvested and under-resourced for so long - we can talk about Skyway, we can talk about a lot of different areas - it really comes down to the value that people place in those communities. To your point, about most Black people in the middle class being in the - basically serving and helping others, and that our value or people's value being tied up into their labor for others. And if you are laboring, then you have some value - not too much, but some, we'll recognize some. And if you don't, then we don't just value you. These are ultimately investment decisions based on value judgements of who deserves what and who deserves how much. And we repeatedly see and have a lot of empirical evidence about the judgements that our society has made about who is deemed worthy and who is deemed unworthy just for existing. And who has to do all of these shows of worthiness and value and labor to be considered worthy. And who just kind of gets that - because they exist.
Now, kind of circling back around to Choose 180 - within Choose 180, you talked about earlier partnering with prosecutors, partnering within the system. Certainly, these are stopgaps and not the entire solution, but what do those partnerships, programs, interventions look like?
[00:24:12] Sean Goode: Yeah. It begins with a genuine effort to connect with the people who are generally at the forefront of perpetuating harm, right? So the work with the Prosecuting Attorney's Office in King County goes back to 2011 when Dan Satterberg, now outgoing King County Prosecutor, was engaged with Doug Wheeler, community leader, and said, "Look, we're failing our Black and Brown children. Can you help me?" Right? And because Dan reached out to Doug - together, they created what at that time was called the 180 Program with other community leaders, and stood up an alternative that's continually alleviated the need for juvenile prosecution in our region. It begins with a willingness of those who are holding power to understand that their ability to hold power isn't going to transform the harm. It's their ability to release that power and give it back to those that put them in power, and allow them to co-create solutions that then serve the needs of those who have been impacted the most.
And our existence is a manifestation of what is possible there, but it takes a lot of deconstructing of narratives. It takes a lot of trust building. It takes a lot of empathy and understanding, and it takes a lot of grace. Grace selectively applied is favoritism. And so what that means is we have to extend the same grace to prosecutors and law enforcement and court folks that we do to young people and families that we serve, because otherwise, we're just doing the same thing that law enforcement and court system and criminal legal system has done historically, which is prioritize people that they're preferential to while neglecting those that they don't care for.
[00:26:00] Crystal Fincher: As the community is looking at programs that are happening through Choose 180 and the diversions that you're doing, as you're working with people to help connect them to resources, to coach them in better ways, provide better examples, and make sure they have the tools and support to sustain a different direction permanently, you talked about your success with recidivism rates. In terms of people sitting back - okay, things are broken, okay, totally not ideal. All right. Great. You have these programs. All right. How are they working in comparison to the traditional system? How do we know what you are talking about is working any better?
[00:26:49] Sean Goode: Yeah. Well, Crystal, what I'm asking the community to do is give us the same runway that we've given the systems that have historically caused harm. Give us the same runway that we give the systems that historically cause harm. If we're only - we've been in practice for 10 years and have had great impact. Our systems of oppression have been in place for hundreds of years and have caused a ton of negative impact. How much of a runway do we get to prove that we can be successful? Do we get a year? Do we get two years? Do we get three years? Do we get four years maybe to stand something up for it to be proven wrong? How many iterations do we get to come up with, right? Are we allowed to have as many moments of reform - calls for reform - as law enforcement has in our nation. Historically year over year, do we get that same grace? That's what I'm asking for.
If you want to stand up an alternative that's going to help deconstruct years upon years of perpetuated harm, then it's going to take more than 24 to 36 months to do that. It's going to take more than 10 years. It's going to take a generation of commitments to innovative ideas that we don't run away with the first time that they don't have the impact that we're looking for, because candidly, Crystal, if we ran away from the criminal legal system every time someone was released to the community and caused harm again, then we wouldn't be using it today at all. We wouldn't be resourcing it today at all, but we do because we believe that that can be fixed and it can be made better. Well, I'm asking folks to carry that same conviction in the community-based alternatives that are being stood up by the people who are closest to the pain points. Just like when it came to our wage conversation as an organization, the folks who are closest to the pain point understood what they needed to be healthy and whole. In community, the people who are closest to the pain point know what they need to experience safety in their community. Why don't we begin to just stand up what it is that folks are asking for and see what happens, and give it a runway like we've given to these other antiquated systems?
[00:28:48] Crystal Fincher: I feel like that is a big thing that we're running into today - that we are sure we haven't had the best results, but we can change, we can fix it. While at the same time, demanding that community-based alternatives - one, present all the data that we need to see that this will fix all of the problems in order for us to consider investing in you at one-tenth of a percent that we invest in the rest of our criminal legal injustice system.
Within there - certainly, goodness, you give it a 50- or 60-year runway, the change that you could see, it's hard for me to envision that change. Because if you just look on the short term, better results when it comes to reoffense and recidivism at the 12-month mark and other month marks - immediate results that are, sure, not perfect, but certainly better than the existing traditional systems. What would you say makes you most optimistic about the work that you're doing? And with this, I would just say also, Rebecca, in this question, what makes you most optimistic about the work that you're doing and the changes that you're seeing throughout the programs that you have, and the people who you're working with in the community?
[00:30:16] Rebecca Thornton: Well, for me, I'm so excited that it's being talked about because it's something that I've always believed in, and I just never believed it was possible. Coming to Choose 180 and starting working full-time and being totally enmeshed into the programs and the people, I've started to look at things differently and looking at ideas differently. Things are possible if you can come together as a group and work for it and have that belief in it. You can make things happen. I've never seen that before. But I come from corporate America - there's no room for that there as well. It's been so cool to see - and that can be applied out in the community as well. If people can come together and they have the will - and like Sean said, the stamina - they can make stuff happen. But they need the tools to be able to do that as well, because I was out in the community on drugs years ago. I had no idea that change could happen for anyone. And I just think of how differently my life would've been had I had access to the things that could be possible in the 50 years that Sean is talking about.
Or the things that my daughter's going to be able to have access to is just so important. My daughter - we have what's like "a broken home." There's statistics and stigma in that, right? So I've worked very hard to make sure that she sees me work hard and surround her with good people and all of that. But at the same time, there's still things in the way there. There's still stigma, right? And I just want to make sure that she knows that anything is possible. And I feel like what we're doing at Choose 180 just shows that, and it's pretty powerful.
[00:32:15] Crystal Fincher: And what makes you most optimistic when you look at the work you're doing and the impact that you're having, Sean?
[00:32:23] Sean Goode: I think about - brief history lesson here for some folks who might be listening. In the 1700s in Boston, there was a smallpox outbreak and there's an enslaved African American man who had established - there was a tribal cure for smallpox, a practice. And he introduced it to his enslaver, but for five years, the people of Boston refused to listen to this cure for smallpox because it was coming from an enslaved African American, from a tribal custom, because they felt like it couldn't possibly be an answer that would come from an enslaved person. It couldn't possibly be an answer. We need the richness of our white dominant medical science to be able to solve for this. And hundreds of Bostonians died because of their failure to listen to this enslaved African American man. I find hope that as a country, over the past 300 years, that we may have evolved past the point of ignoring those who are bringing solutions from nontraditional spaces, and that we may now be at a position, 300 years later, to lean in and say, "Well, if you think you have the cure, let's go ahead and give it a shot, because quite possibly your way could save lives."
[00:33:59] Crystal Fincher: Amen. So I just thank you both for coming on this show, for sharing your experience and your journey and your wisdom, and just encourage people to continue to pay attention to Choose 180, get involved, support. And certainly at a neighborhood and community level, you can do these things where you're at, and that's actually the most powerful place you can activate and get involved. So please make sure that we don't just talk about Choose 180 and other organizations in the abstract, and this is what someone is doing over there, and this is what's possible over there. It is possible everywhere and exactly where you are. And help to be part of what makes that happen. Turn what's possible into what's happening. So with that, I just thank you once again for being here, and hope the listeners have a wonderful day.
I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcast - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
Today on the show, host Crystal Fincher is joined by Robert Cruickshank, Chair of Sierra Club Seattle and a long-time professional communications and political strategist. The episode starts with a look at the most eye-catching story out of Seattle this week: Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell’s leaked comments from a meeting with SPD.
In stark contrast to Harrell’s initially stated “One Seattle” approach, Harrell seemingly contradicted many of his prior statements and promises regarding public safety and homelessness, blamed several people and organizations for the lack of progress on his administration’s watch, threatened to defund organizations he felt were critical of him, and said he’s recruiting challengers to City Council members who he felt haven’t supported him. He also stated that he had no part in setting up the King County Regional Homelessness Authority even though Harrell voted to establish it in 2019.
Crystal and Robert discuss how Mayor Harrell’s contradictions and avoidance of personal accountability while blaming others may affect his office’s approach, ability to manage folks in the City who are unsure of their direction, and his credibility with the public.
In an update from last week, the Kent School District’s educators are still striking, and Seattle teachers may be set for a strike of their own. While teachers are fighting for more counseling and mental health resources for students, smaller class sizes, and adequate special education resources, district leaders seem to be emulating the hostile approach that Amazon and Starbucks has taken regarding union relations. The Kent School Board even entertained the uncommon step of suing the union to force them back to work, with surprising anti-union votes from two former local Democratic leaders who previously received union and progressive endorsements: Kent School Board Directors Tim Clark and Awale Farah. That vote failed and the strike and negotiations are continuing.
In some exciting transit news, starting on September 1st, people 18 and under can ride public transit services services for free in King, Pierce, Snohomish and several other counties!
There’s also good news on the health front: new COVID boosters designed to battle the Omicron variant and its sub-variants were approved, and doses should be distributed soon. As public protections against COVID infection (like mask mandates are vaccine requirements) are disappearing while the disease continues to spread, it’s even more crucial to stay up to date on your vaccines.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-hosts, Robert Cruickshank at @cruickshank. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Mayor Harrell Passes the Buck and Unloads on Enemies in Leaked Police Precinct Speeches” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/08/31/mayor-harrell-passes-the-buck-and-unloads-on-enemies-in-leaked-police-precinct-speeches/
“Seattle mayor does damage control after leaked criticism of homelessness agency, City Council” by Sarah Grace Taylor from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-mayor-does-damage-control-after-leaked-criticism-of-homeless-agency-city-council/
“The CEO of Seattle Is Hiring for the 2023 City Council” by Hannah Krieg from the Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/09/01/78415478/the-ceo-of-seattle-is-hiring-for-the-2023-city-council
“Pay Is Peripheral as Kent Educators Strike, Demand a Quality Experience for Students” by Ari Robin McKenna from The South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2022/08/29/pay-is-peripheral-as-kent-educators-strike-demand-a-quality-experience-for-students/
"Proposed injunction against striking teachers in Kent fails" by Theresa Robinson from KIRO7: https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/negotiations-continue-kent-teachers-strike-district-considers-lawsuit-against-union/TRDM5AJD6VHOBFMX24UCU6WEJU/
"Co-signatory on letter to end waitlists for special ed services" by Katherine A. George, Arzu Forough, and Seattle Special Education PTSA: https://seattlespecialeducationptsa.org/news-%26-advocacy/f/co-signatory-on-letter-to-end-waitlists-for-special-ed-services
“Free Youth Transit Pass starts Sept. 1st” from King County Metro: https://kingcountymetro.blog/2022/08/25/free-youth-transit-pass-starts-sept-1/
“Free transit starts today for most youths across WA” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/free-transit-starts-today-for-most-youths-across-wa/
“CDC endorses updated COVID boosters; shots to begin soon” by Lauran Neergaard from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/cdc-advisers-weigh-who-needs-updated-covid-booster-and-when/
Transcript
Coming soon
On this midweek show, Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell joins Crystal for an extensive conversation about public safety in Seattle. Their discussion ranges from how to handle an officer shortage with a long hiring pipeline, the Harrell administration’s approach to encampment sweeps, how safety involves more than just policing, and the thought process on creating a third department (beyond Fire and Police). The importance of negotiating the SPOG contract in removing obstacles to progress is covered, as well as the thinking behind hotspot policing and strategic use of limited public safety resources. The show wraps up with what steps we can all take to help create positive change and make our streets safer.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell at @RuleSeven.
Resources
“Seattle clears Woodland Park homeless encampment after months of trying to place people into shelter” by Greg Kim from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/seattle-clears-woodland-park-homeless-encampment-after-months-of-trying-to-place-people-into-shelter/
“Harrell Outlines Public Safety Strategies: Expanding Policing, ‘Hot Spots’ Focus, Police Response Alternatives” by Elizabeth Turnbull from the South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2022/02/04/harrell-outlines-public-safety-strategies-expanding-policing-hot-spots-focus-police-response-alternatives/
Community Police Commission (CPC) - Police Accountability Recommendations Tracker (PART): https://www.seattle.gov/community-police-commission/our-work/recommendations-tracker
Community Police Commission (CPC) - Accountability Ordinance Tracker: https://www.seattle.gov/community-police-commission/our-work/accountability-ordinance-tracker
Washington State Office of Independent Investigations - Final Bill Report for ESHB 1267: https://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2021-22/Pdf/Bill%20Reports/House/1267-S.E%20HBR%20FBR%2021.pdf?q=20220517001510
“Harrell Touts Arrests at Longtime Downtown Hot Spot in ‘Operation New Day’ Announcement” by Paul Kiefer from PubliCola: https://publicola.com/2022/03/04/harrell-touts-arrests-at-longtime-downtown-hot-spot-in-operation-new-day-announcement/
“Harrell says he ‘inherited a mess,’ will solve crime issues by putting arrests first, social services second” by Sarah Grace Taylor from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/harrell-says-he-inherited-a-mess-will-solve-crime-issues-by-putting-arrests-first-social-services-second/
One Seattle Day of Service - May 21: https://www.seattle.gov/mayor/one-seattle-initiatives/day-of-service
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Well today, I'm pleased to welcome Senior Deputy Mayor of Seattle, Monisha Harrell, back to the program. Welcome back.
[00:00:47] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Thanks for having me.
[00:00:48] Crystal Fincher: Thanks for coming. Well, I suppose this is your first time as the Senior Deputy Mayor - your many, many previous roles and titles and accolades from before this proceeded you - but now you're in the role of Senior Deputy Mayor of Seattle in the Bruce Harrell administration. And how's it going?
[00:01:12] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: It's been a fast four and a half months - I think it's a little bit like dog years - each week feels like a year, and there's nothing like on-the-job learning.
[00:01:27] Crystal Fincher: Nothing like on-the-job learning. Now, what are you doing? What are you responsible for?
[00:01:33] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: So my portfolio includes Fire, Police, Office of Emergency Management, Office of Intergovernmental Relations, Budget, and HR.
[00:01:51] Crystal Fincher: And nothing else - that's it?
[00:01:55] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: I have a few things. I have a few things in the - I say anything that'll wake you up in the middle of the night is in my portfolio. It's helpful to have all those things in one place, and we're trying to envision the future of the City. There's a lot of work that has followed me from my previous experiences that I now have an opportunity to be able to put some of that visioning into practice in helping to lead the City, so it's exciting. I like it. It's a new take on some work that I've been doing for a long time.
[00:02:32] Crystal Fincher: Well and you've certainly worked in several areas of the public safety spectrum in several different roles. Now this is part of your portfolio in this role. So I do want to talk about just the - a number of things - starting in terms of public safety and the conversations that we're having - that are lively and starting off conversations, just this week, with regard to staffing in SPD and moving forward. And I think, as we're looking about it, certainly we've talked on the program before about it - whether or not people agree with the need for more SPD officers, the City is moving forward with hiring more SPD officers and talking about that being part of the solution, or your plan for helping to make people safer. But with that, even if we were to hire 50 people today, that is actually a really long pipeline and those folks aren't going to be making it onto the streets for a while. So if we're talking about public safety, that might be a solution for the fall or next year, but what - short of adding more officers, which can't happen - can be done right now to help intervene in the rising crime levels.
[00:03:58] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Yeah, that's a good question. We have to prepare for the short-, mid-, and long-term. And so one of the things that we've been doing in the short-term is civilianizing some positions that were previously certified positions. And so that helps us to be able to spread out our resources a little bit more - taking some internal positions, be they administrative or other, where we've asked - does this position need to be a law enforcement officer, a certified law enforcement officer, or can this be a civilian or a civilianized position and moving those to civilianized positions? So that is a short term solution - we are currently working on that, the chief has currently been working on that for the last several months. And so we're working through extending our resources through that.
And that's a great long-term solution as well - analyzing what has to be a certified position and what can be a civilianized position. In the midterm, we do have to recruit folks to be willing to go into the academy. And policing across the country - there's a shortage of officers across the country. I don't know one department right now that is fully subscribed, that has all of the officers that it needs. We have seen a lot of people, especially officers, leaving the workforce over the course of the last couple of years. It's been a toll. It's been a toll on absolutely everybody. And in particular, as we've been having discussions - deep, deep discussions - around policing and the future of policing, some people in the profession have taken a look at whether or not they want to continue in that line of service. Some have been retirement age and some have decided that they want to take different paths - but those are all culminating in this moment. We have people - good people - who have reached an inflection point in their life and want to do something different. Some of them may turn towards policing, many of them have turned to other ways to support and help the community.
So we have to talk to - and on the long end of the pipeline, it's talking to a lot of our young folks and seeing if there are people who want to be part of the future of what policing will be. And not looking at what it is now, but looking at what it could be for the future - and being a part of that, and being willing to step into something that is wholly uncertain at this moment. What policing is today is different than it was 10, 20 years ago, will be different than what it will be 10, 20 years from now. And so there has to be a willingness to embrace some of the uncertainty and wanting to be - and be willing to be - a part of what it could be in the future and shaping that.
[00:07:15] Crystal Fincher: So is it possible to make people safer in the existing staffing footprint that we're going to be dealing with for the near term?
[00:07:25] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Safer is - I think safer involves more than just policing. Safer involves getting more mental health support, safer involves better conflict resolution solutions beyond guns, safer is never going to be a police-only solution - and so we have to, candidly, be able to walk and chew gum in terms of yes, working on our policing shortages and working on shoring up our mental health systems, our physical health systems. Acknowledging that even if we have community members who had food on their table, a roof over their heads, jobs to attend to, their financial needs - the last couple of years haven't left many people in better mental and physical health than they were prior to 2020. And so even those who have had all of the means are still going to be unstable in some way and need help and need support. So safety really looks like - how do we build a larger support system and safety net to even catch those who wouldn't otherwise be considered vulnerable?
[00:09:12] Crystal Fincher: Well, you know I agree with that. And I guess that's why it has been confounding in some of the actions that have been taken, whether it's some of the hotspot policing or the sweeps of encampments, where there certainly has been a lot of talk about having those kinds of supports and interventions and people reaching out to be there, but that being absent in so many of those situations where we are seeing predominantly public safety-led, and some of those situations only law enforcement-led, sweep or intervention. And looking at whether that can effectively address the problem and whether that's really delivering on the vision that you laid out. How do you explain that?
[00:10:06] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Absolutely. So I think that people only see a portion and it's really hard. People only see a portion of what we're doing - of what any administration or any government agency is doing. Some of the things that are not as readily accessible is how much transitional housing we have actually opened up and made available over the course of the last few months - we have done an amazing job in terms of making transitional housing available and getting people into that transitional housing. In terms of some of the encampment removals, we've made a tremendous number of referrals and we've gotten people help and support that have been on the streets for years. Some of these stories of people being living on the streets for five years - that is never going to be a success. It's not a success that somebody lives in the street in the same spot for five years. That is an absolute dead end, and we should never be satisfied with somebody having that as an outcome and that as an option. And we have done quite a bit, this administration has done quite a bit, in terms of getting resources to many of those folks.
[00:11:27] Crystal Fincher: So are you disputing that some of those have taken place without that outreach taken, done at first? Are you saying that that has occurred with all of them?
[00:11:39] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Every person has been given the opportunity for support services - they're offered that. They don't always take it, and some people might not be in a place to be able to take it at that time period. I will talk a little bit about the Woodland Park encampment removal. There were, I think, 85 referrals made from the Woodland Park encampment. And those are real offers of help that we're getting out to folks in that we're making spaces available for them to be able to come indoors. Not everybody is ready for that, and certainly there were - there have been more people who have come on site who have needed help and support, and we're still working on getting supports for those folks. But when we have something open, we're trying to get people in it.
[00:12:41] Crystal Fincher: So would it then be a fair characterization to say, in the case of an encampment sweep or a hotspot enforcement, if - or I guess that's a different situation - looking at encampment sweep. If a person there hasn't had contact with a, whether it's a caseworker or service provider - someone with a connection to services available to them if they are ready to go, that meet their circumstances, that they meet the qualifications to go into. If that doesn't happen, that is not your policy, that would be something going wrong in the process and not what you had ordered to be carried out?
[00:13:32] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: So we don't have as many resources to allow people to pick their exact type of transitional housing. There have been times where we've said, there is a tiny home available and people might decline that because they would rather have a hotel, or there might be a tiny home available within a particular village and they don't want to go to that area of town. We don't have control over all of the inventory available, but we make something available.
[00:14:09] Crystal Fincher: So something is always available for someone?
[00:14:13] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: When we are doing - when we are doing removals, we make offers of support. There is a crew that goes out in advance that makes an offer of support prior to the removal.
[00:14:26] Crystal Fincher: And so one of the issues, and it's been covered - in looking at offers of support. There seem to be some disconnects in what is available and what people need. And some really understandable and justifiable reasons why people may not be able to go to a shelter. Sometimes the situation may be - hey, shelter requires people be in by 7:00 or 8:00 PM, I have a job that requires me to be there later or to leave earlier. And so I can't keep my job and both go into the shelter. Obviously, keeping the job is something that preserves a pathway into housing. In those situations, does the City have a responsibility to find something more suitable, or to wait on sweeping them until there is something more suitable available?
[00:15:25] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: So the removals are based on a number of different criteria and we'll be sharing more about that criteria in the coming weeks. There are some occasions where there is a safety reason to need to engage in a removal. And some of those safety reasons might be if there is a lot of - if there are some gun violence in that area or if there has been - and I'm just going off of specific instances that have increased the need for removals - if there was a sexual harassment, sexual assault incident within an encampment. There are any number of reasons - a number of fires that have been occurring in an encampment - those might be public safety reasons where we would prioritize dispersement in those cases. And so we use all of the resources that we have available - doesn't mean that we're going to have exactly what they need at that moment. We do our absolute best. Some people will be able to tell us what they are hoping for and if there's a match, we will try to match it.
But this is also where the Regional Homelessness Authority comes in. This is part of taking the regional solution - we have 84 square miles in the City of Seattle to be able to accommodate folks. There is more housing available outside the region, and we want to make sure that there are options available for folks all over. That's part of why, when I refer to something like the Woodland Park encampment - we had services for everybody that was at Woodland Park during the time that we took the inventory of the area. Those people received housing and new people came in because they knew that the people at that encampment were able to access housing. And so we're trying to get to as many places and as many people as we possibly can, and we need the support and the help of the regional authority to be able to bring their resources to bear, to be able to get more transitional housing faster.
[00:18:05] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. In terms of just community-based interventions overall, certainly some of those are useful in and addressing some of the issues that the unhoused population is dealing with, others are direct interventions to help prevent crime and people from being victimized - with lots of evidence to show that they're very effective interventions. And the Harrell administration - you have talked about the intention to establish that - it looks like the last place where that left off was Mayor Harrell saying that there was an evaluation of some of the partners and service providers that you would potentially be working with. Where does that stand and what is that evaluation based on?
[00:18:58] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Yeah, we're asking a lot of our providers to share with us what they've been doing with the resources that they are being provided by the City. And we're looking at the effectiveness rate - the rates with which people are able to support the community based on the resources provided. We had two - I don't want to call them necessarily summits, they weren't really summits - but they were information fact-gathering sessions with the providers who are doing that work - to be able to let them tell us how they're able to use their resources, and what else we could do to support them in their work.
[00:19:53] Crystal Fincher: So what are you hearing from that?
[00:19:56] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: We are hearing a lot of need, quite candidly. There is a lot of need, particularly in and around as we spoke about earlier, mental health supports, emotional supports. Some folks are meeting communities' need to just be connected with one another in order to better manage their challenges. And we're really trying to assess who has set up systems to be able to make greater advances with more resources if they were provided to them. There are certainly some services that I think people have heard quite a bit about that have had pretty good levels of success, and we're trying to figure out how to get some of those organizations more resources. And there are some organizations candidly that didn't fare as well through the pandemic, where their organizations might not be as strong as they were before and they may be in a position where they have to regroup before they're ready to receive more supports from the City. So we're evaluating all of those things, but we've seen a lot of really good things out there. Organizations like JustCare, for example, they've been able to remain pretty steady and and do some great work across the City. And certainly they've been resourced to do some great work, but we're looking at all of the, all of our providers out there who have a part of the puzzle piece that we need in this moment.
[00:21:51] Crystal Fincher: So in short - taking a look at, hey, you've had resources. Have you demonstrated that you have used the tax dollars that you've received to further the mission and deliver results, when it comes to tangible increases in prevention of crime, interventions, reduction of recidivism - metrics like that.
[00:22:18] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Absolutely. And then also looking at whether or not we've got the right mix. Do we have enough across the spectrum of the needs that are required? Do we have enough in the healthcare arena, both mental and physical? Do we have enough in the internship and apprenticeship arena to ensure that particularly folks have access to being able to set up their futures for themselves? Those are all of the things that we have to look at because we have a finite number of resources - as a city, we have to manage and take care of all of our basic functions. And then what we have, we have to be really - we have to really pay attention to - are we using these dollars effectively because we don't have the endless pot that we would want.
[00:23:11] Crystal Fincher: Right. So basically, are you getting a bang for your buck, is the money that you're spending resulting in safer streets?
[00:23:20] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Exactly. And not just safer streets, but prosperity for those who have access. Part of safer streets is - there are components of economic justice that are related to that. I don't think people - if they have to resort to any sort of stealing, I don't think they do it because they want to do it. I think they do it because there is a need that's not being met, so how else can we meet that need? Is it through additional education? Is it through apprenticeships? So stronger work opportunities, better paying jobs, access to education - we have to look at that whole ecosystem because it's not one lever. If it was one lever, somebody would've pulled it a long time ago.
[00:24:13] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. And as I look at it, especially with - looking at the money that we're putting into community-based interventions, it is not an unlimited budget, need to make sure that that money is delivering a result. It makes sense to do the same thing with the police department, doesn't it? Are you using that same kind of evaluation to determine if the police department should receive more funding, if we should pull back and redirect to other areas?
[00:24:42] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: And that's exactly what we were doing when I mentioned earlier - looking at positions and seeing which positions can be civilianized, looking at the job functions and trying to evaluate whether or not those job functions need to be certified in order to be effective. And so we're looking at the whole ecosystem of that. One of the things that I think we talked about before was the third department that would be on par with Police and Fire. What does that third department look like? What services still need to be met in an emergency situation that we need to dispatch, where Police or Fire are not the solution in that instance? We've talked about the history of EMTs and EMS, where you would no longer send police to a heart attack, but there was a time period where that's exactly what you did. And so we're looking at what are the calls that don't need a a law enforcement response or a fire response? What are the needs that are not being met and how do we put that department together? We're working on that - our goal, our hope is to have a white paper and structure for that third department by the end of this year, that we would then begin to structure in 2023 for a 2024 deployment.
[00:26:16] Crystal Fincher: So then am I hearing that it's a possibility that some of those community-based interventions, non-law enforcement-based interventions may be made functions of the City within a public safety department that doesn't have a sworn officer. So you're looking to build up that infrastructure. So that actually may not occur from service providers that you're partnering with today? That may be an internal thing?
[00:26:45] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Absolutely. It's also part of - what I will say is - we are looking at the functions that are provided and of course, if that's the case, the third department will be just, will be a professional entity, just like fire and law enforcement - where there will be a curriculum and a program and the proper certifications for whatever is needed within that body of work. It will be a professionalized entity that is able to respond to 911 calls that meet their unique skillset.
[00:27:20] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Have you received - which makes sense - have you received pushback from SPD on civilianizing parts of it? There were some - there was a recent report about responses to 911 calls potentially being handled by alternate responders that they recently pushed back on. Are you hearing that, and how are you working through that?
[00:27:44] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: I think that's natural and I think that's to be expected. It is part of - would I want that? No, I want everybody to work together and I think by and large people are working together. But it's the job of their police union to push and try to negotiate and try to get as much for their members as they possibly can. We know that some of it is founded, and some of it is just part of what they have to do in trying to negotiate for their next upcoming contracts. What they see is - they might see - well, that used to be a body of work that pertained to us, and we don't want to lose that body of work. But the truth of the matter is policing is many different professions rolled under one title. They're not all the same. Somebody who is on a beat isn't necessarily trained to be an effective detective. Somebody who might be doing homicide might not be right for a domestic assault. There are different skillsets, there are different trainings - and depending upon the line that an officer wants to go into, they might need a different career development path.
So we really have to look at the body of work and whether or not it fits in with solving some of those crimes and getting justice in that way and if not, there might be instances where the presence of a uniform could escalate a situation. And there's somebody who has not got a weapon on the other side - then we don't want to send a certified officer into that particular situation - that might not be a best fit for them. We know that labor will want to negotiate that and those are some things that we'll have to address. And there are some where labor might want to negotiate that and we say - but that's not, that's not within the purview of your scope anyway. So it's a conversation.
[00:30:18] Crystal Fincher: It's a conversation. And as you just brought up, that conversation is about to be codified into a new Seattle Police Officers Guild contract, and you will be at the negotiating table. And there there's been lots of discussions in the greater conversation about the role that police officers have and the larger public safety conversation and how and whether their interventions do result in people being less likely to be victimized. Lots of conversations about what is appropriate, what's not appropriate to be in a contract, what oversight should be more independent and not internal. So I guess starting out, are there, especially in light of the prior public safety ordinance that had a lot of reforms in there - some of them rolled back with the contract - are you looking to reimplement those? What approach are you taking in this negotiation?
[00:31:27] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: So our prioritization is absolutely on accountability. We have to move forward aggressively on accountability for many different reasons, not not the least of which is we have a consent decree that - at this moment, it's not benefiting the City or the people of the City to still have this as an operating standard or practice for the City. It reminds me of - there's this old Thomas Jefferson quote that kind of refers to - if you wear the clothes, if you try to wear the clothes that fits you as a boy as a man, it doesn't work. And to me, that's where we are with the consent decree - we are 10 years into this and those clothes no longer fit - we have moved well beyond that. And if we want to get to what the future of policing is, we need to move past this past that is not even close to the picture of where we want to be.
And so it has to be a prioritization on accountability - that has to be everything. And I know some people - going back to the other part of what we were talking about - some people will want to jump ahead and say, well, let's negotiate what the third department looks like and the trading off of those roles. The police contract is only three years and we're already one year into a three-year contract. We can negotiate the roles of that next contract in the next cycle. We're one year into a three-year contract, so we have to focus on accountability - that has to be our number one goal. And then once we get the right accountability measures in place, within the next contract we can start negotiating roles and responsibilities as pertains to what might be a third public safety department.
[00:33:45] Crystal Fincher: There've been several recommendations related to collective bargaining from lots of entities, including the CPC. Some of those including fully implementing the reforms in the accountability law, removing limits on civilianization of OPA and ensuring civilian investigators have the same powers as their sworn counterparts, removing clauses in the contract that take precedence over local laws including that accountability ordinance, the police being empowered to place an employee on leave without pay, and ensuring OPA has authority to investigate allegations of criminal misconduct. Do you agree that those should be implemented in this new contract?
[00:34:37] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: You named so many that I just want to say that the answer is yes. But let me - that's bad radio to be like, the answer is just yes - but the answer is yes. And I'll just pull out a couple of them that are of particular interest - civilianization of investigators at OPA - I think that is something that we need to seriously explore for many different reasons, but let me just go on a couple. One of which is - the statewide Office of Independent Investigations that we'll eventually move to - it was envisioned to eventually be a civilianized body so that there were no conflicts of interest in those investigations. And we have to look at the same thing for SPD - that these are officers that are being forced to investigate their fellow officers. That can't be a good place to be. It can't be a good place to be to - you're working in one department and you're working alongside your team, and then you move and have a rotation to the next department. And in that next rotation, you're having to investigate the people that you were just working alongside of.
And I use this example because - no matter how many firewalls you put up, there is always going to be the potential - and a strong potential - for conflict of interest. Crystal, you and I have known each other for a really long time and - we're not that old, we've known each other for a little while - and we would both do our jobs if we had to do an investigation. And yet I think that the way that we've crossed paths over the years, it would be really hard to be an absolutely unbiased independent investigator if something were to come up, because I know you're a good person. And I wouldn't believe that you would do anything terrible, so it would be hard for me to say and now I want to investigate you. And then when my rotation in this department is over, now I just want to go back to working alongside you. That's a tough place to be. And I think that exploring the civilianization of investigators at OPA - it protects us from some of those potential conflicts of interest, and we really have to take a hard look at that.
[00:37:04] Crystal Fincher: And not just civilianization, but giving them - removing the limits to make sure that they have the same power and authority in all instances of investigation. Because I think that's been a frustrating part - to be like, well, I'm not part of the police department - even the elements that are civilians just being kneecapped and not having the authority to fully investigate or to make any recommendations that hold any weight. Is that part of your vision, and what you plan to negotiate is also providing them with that authority?
[00:37:47] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Absolutely. And again, following the statewide model of the Office of Independent Investigations that will follow the same path. We'll see who races each other first to that finish line, but very much following the same model. And the one thing I want to just clarify for folks - sometimes people hear the term "civilianization" and they think sloppy or not as professional - we are talking about professional investigators that just may not be certified officers. And there are a ton of highly trained professional investigators in a lot of different professions that could have skillsets that apply to the work that would be needed for these types of investigations. I'll give you an example is - there's always forensic auditors for things like financial accounting crimes - they may not be law enforcement officers, but they are trained professionals in forensic accounting who can help with some of this criminal problem solving. There could be people who are forensic anthropologists or other such things, who know how to contain a crime scene and who know how to collect the evidence. When we say civilianized, we're not talking about anything less than the highest level of professionalism. It just means that they are not trained officers in the way that they would respond to an immediate and imminent crisis.
[00:39:28] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense and is certainly valid. We've seen that operate very successfully in similar areas. And I think an even bigger deal - we're seeing the current system not working, so a change is in order. So is that a red line for you in this negotiation? Is that something that you're starting with as a foundational this is where we need to be?
[00:39:54] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: It will probably take us, it will take us more than this contract to get to a fully civilianized team, investigative team at OPA, but we certainly want to begin to move in that direction where we have very professional civilian investigators available to us for that work. And I believe that there's going to be a bigger demand for that particular career going forward. I do believe that sometimes Seattle is on the frontline of a lot of this work, but where and how we make these things successful, we will see them roll out in other areas across the state and across the country.
[00:40:44] Crystal Fincher: So it's possible that we walk out on the other side of this contract and there are still situations where the police are investigating themselves.
[00:40:53] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: For certain things. So, as the Office of Independent Investigation gets set up, they will take all lethal use of force - that will go to the state regardless - that body of work will go to the state. As pertains to any accusations of sexual harassment or sexual assault, that will go to the state. So we are going to, we absolutely will honor state law. And quite honestly, I think folks should be grateful that the state is doing that work. I think that what they're setting up will be revolutionary in order to ensuring that we have unbiased, less-biased investigations. And do I believe you can eliminate bias 100% entirely? I would love to say yes, I don't know if that's ever completely possible, but I think we can get to a system that is more accountable and more transparent for everybody involved.
[00:42:02] Crystal Fincher: As we look forward in the short-term and some of the interventions that are going, do you expect a continuation or more deployments of the hotspot policing strategy?
[00:42:18] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: I think that while we have limited resources, we have to be really strategic about where and how we deploy them. And so, I wouldn't call it hotspot policing because it's a little more nuanced than that, but what I would say is when you have limited resources, you have to be really, really strategic about where and how you deploy them. And that's what we're having to do - we're having to look at the areas that are in the greatest need and providing resources to those areas in those moments. And so we look at things like - what are the big events coming up in and around the City and how do we deploy in order to make sure that yes, we can cover the Mariners game, the Sounders game, a concert at Climate Pledge, because we are short-staffed and that there's no quick way to make up for that.
This has been a while in the making and even if we had all of the body signed up right now, we still only have one Criminal Justice Training Center to run all of the state's recruits through. So we're going to have to be strategic for a little while - we can't, we don't have the staffing at every precinct and in every neighborhood that we would want to have. And so that means looking at what is on our social calendars, trying to get people back to normal, right? This is - it has been many years since we've had a full cadre of parades and outdoor events, and we want people to be able to get back into life again and get back into life safely. So how do we have the Torchlight Parade with such a limited number of officers available to staff? How do we have one of my favorites, the Pride Parade, with a limited number of officers to staff? So we really have to be a lot more strategic and it means that we really have to look at the chess board. I think what people see are hotspots and it's not as much hotspots as we have to be more predictive about where we go and strategically plan for that.
[00:45:01] Crystal Fincher: And I can see that - I guess the challenge, as you articulate that, the mayor certainly articulated certain spots that were spots of emphasis that were going to be receiving increased patrols and resources and have folks stationed basically there full-time to, I think as he talks about, calm the area. So it seems like there have been point - that kind of thing has been referred to by lots of different terms, whether it's a hotspot or an emphasis patrol or however we want to characterize it, we are focusing our admittedly limited number of resources in a concentrated area. And are we expecting, are you expecting to deploy resources in concentrated areas, not talking about surrounding events that may happen, but on day-to-day, as we saw before - Tuesday through Friday in a place - is that part of an ongoing strategy, or have we seen the last of that?
[00:46:16] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: It has to be a little bit of both. And so I'll give you an example - some of where people have seen us focus have been in areas where there have been increases in gun violence - and so Third Avenue is an example. So what people saw is they saw us move the mobile precinct to the Third Avenue area right after we had two incidents - two pretty painful incidents - of gun violence deaths in that area. And what that additional patrol allowed us to do was to be able to add more investigative resources to both of those cases. And we've made - we have two suspects that have been arrested for both of those shootings on Third Avenue where - it was an area that there was an increased amount of gun violence. And two, all murders are painful. It is particularly challenging when one of them is really just a child, a 15-year old. And because of the police work that we - the police and the officers were able to put in that area - to be able to canvass and collect the camera information from in and around the area, we were able to bring forth two suspects in both of those murders. And so, that is part of the job. It's not just about patrolling for what is happening in the moment. It's also patrolling and doing the detective work to solve crimes that we know have been happening in that area, that families will want answers for.
[00:48:14] Crystal Fincher: Well, I think that's an excellent point. I actually think there's a very strong case to be made for increasing the deployment of resources in investigative roles. It seems like that's actually an area of unique specialty and opportunity, and results that come from that can yield long-lasting results. So it feels like people in the City see that, it seems like that's been widely acknowledged. However, when we have these conversations about - hey, we're short staffing, the conversations are - we have to move people out of these investigative roles, these victim liaison and services roles - a lot of things that get at preventing behavior from people who are currently doing it. So does it make sense to continue to move people away from those investigative roles onto patrol, especially in these conversations as we continue to identify areas where patrol doesn't seem like the most effective intervention?
[00:49:29] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Yeah, we need both. It's - this is the Catch-22. We need both. We have to find ways to be able to, in some ways, tamp down ongoing incidents. And sometimes the presence of a mobile precinct can do that, can be a little bit of what just helps take some of the fire out of the air. There's some things that we've done over the course of the last few years - back in the olden times when people used to go out, for example, and they talked about - well, instead of everything closing at the same time every night, what if we were to stagger release hours from some of the different clubs and bars? For the young people listening, who don't remember what clubs and bars are, and that was a way to not push everybody who might have a little bit of alcohol in their system out into the street at the same time. So we are having to do a little bit of column A a little bit of column B because we have imperfect resources.
[00:50:40] Crystal Fincher: Well, and seem to be saying - we need to do all we can to meet patrol numbers, and we will take from other areas to deploy on patrol - that's what the chief was saying. Should we continue taking, or should we rebalance, because both are going to happen. Should we be deploying back in the detective arena and investing more in actually trying to solve some of these crimes and find some of the people who are doing them?
[00:51:16] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: For those people who are trained to be detectives, we are doing everything we can to get them back to their primary functions. And in the meantime, taking a try to do-no-harm approach, which is in not letting people continue to get victimized as we're trying to do that. And that's why I said it's gotta be a little from column A and a little from column B, because we have to solve crimes that have occurred and we have to do what we can to prevent additional crimes from occurring. Not everybody is trained to be a detective, but for those who have those trainings and have those skills, we want to be able to give them all of the resources we can to get them back on those jobs.
[00:52:05] Crystal Fincher: And you've been very generous with your time - we are just about to wrap up. I think the last question - we could cover a ton - but appreciate getting through the chunk that we did today. You talk about some of those emphasis patrols or areas where more resources are being deployed - whatever name it's going by. With those, there was a press conference that even Chief Diaz seemed to acknowledge that those increased patrols and having the mobile unit nearby does have an effect on that area during that time. But he brought up instances in this current iteration, and certainly we've seen in prior iterations, where the result isn't that the crime stops, it moves to other neighborhoods.
And it sets up a situation where it looks like - for moneyed interests, for downtown interests, they're getting super special police deployments in the name of safety. And sure it may improve things on that block while those police are there, but it actually is moving that activity elsewhere in the City. And he said they were working on trying to track that. And are we succeeding? Is that the best expenditure of resources if that's the result that we're getting, which is seemingly - hey sure, maybe a win for those businesses on that block, but a loss for the neighborhood and the residents that are receiving that activity. Should we - is that the most effective way to address that? Is that the most equitable way to address that for everybody in the City?
[00:54:03] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: I would say that there is still a benefit to having those resources visible and available. And think about when somebody - there might be an area where people are used to speeding and then they put up the electronic board that says you're going this fast, and it reminds people to slow down. Sometimes the visual cues that we use for some of the public safety is just - you're in this area and you might have something that might pop off, but just calm down. It's a visual reminder to calm down, a visual reminder. And that doesn't necessarily always move someplace else, but it can be a reminder to - this is not your time and this is not your moment.
We can't stop every single incident from occurring, but we certainly want to be able to give people pause before they might do something that would be regrettable later. So, it's not the perfect system. It's certainly not the perfect system, but there are benefits across the board if we can get people to think about how they might seek help, or how maybe just the presence can calm people down, or how we can even regain a sense of normalcy to an area that might draw in more foot traffic - and where there is more foot traffic and more positive activity than in the absence of nothing which can create some negative activity. We're bringing people back to an area that would allow us to get some good activity back on the streets. One of the best approaches for public safety, quite candidly, is for people to start going out again - filling up those spaces with positive activity, filling up those spaces with positive engagement - because where you have more eyes and positive activity, you actually need less policing.
[00:56:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely true. And I guess my question is, even in a situation where - okay, you do that, you intimidate someone away and they aren't doing that there. In the instance that they're then moving somewhere else, we have not necessarily successfully intervened in their activity, but have moved it.
[00:56:49] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: I don't think it's a hundred percent though. I do think that there are places where you can put in positive activity and attract positive activity response. So I think about some of our young folks where the hours where they would get in the most trouble would be those immediate hours after school. If they are in a space that is filled with positive activity, then perhaps they will adopt and take on that positive activity. If they're in a space where there is negative activity, then they can take on that negative activity. That's the case where it's not just it would move to a different place. It's - you're giving idle hands an opportunity to do something more productive. And that's what I'm talking about filling that positive activity space - not everybody would necessarily fill that space with the sort of activity that we wouldn't care for if we get more more positive engagement in those areas.
[00:57:47] Crystal Fincher: I certainly agree about the benefit of positive engagement. I am certainly hoping that maybe we can envision a time where we actually deploy resources surrounding positive activities and positive connection to opportunities - in that kind of emphasis patrol and intervention that we have. But I appreciate the time that you've taken to speak with us and help us understand better what's going on in the City and what you're up to, and certainly look forward to following as we continue to go along.
[00:58:27] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Well, this is a conversation, it's a dialogue. We've got a lot of work to do. There's no one group that has all of the answers, and so I appreciate the opportunity to come on and speak with you. And I know we get a lot of feedback and that's good, because we listened to the feedback and we'll make adjustments as we go along, but we're trying to do everything we can to make sure that we get the City back on track.
[00:58:54] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Okay, I'm going to sneak in one more question. You talk about you get a lot of feedback - is there something that people can do, or a way to engage that you think is a great opportunity to get involved in making a difference, helping to create positive change, helping to keep our streets safer? Is there one thing that you would recommend that they could do to be a part of that?
[00:59:14] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: I'm going to give you two things. So the first thing is I'm going to mention our One Seattle Day of Service on May 21st, and just say that it's more than about just cleaning up some aspects of our city and helping us put some positive activity out there. It's also about a sense of building community with one another - that we're really hoping that everybody who comes to the Day of Service will find somebody new that they haven't connected with, that they haven't built community with and be willing to reconnect with society in doing some positive work together. So I'll talk about that because I think that there are significant benefits to our mental health - to rebuild positive social skills and positive social relationships. So that's one thing that if people were like, I don't have a lot of time on my calendar, but I can commit to a couple hours on one day.
And then the other thing that I would say is - we need to return to the old scripture - being our brother's keeper. And that may mean reaching out to nonprofit organizations that are doing this great work. We will help their dollar stretch farther when we provide them resources through serving on boards, through providing hands-on activity or volunteer opportunities to help them further their missions. And so anything that we can do to pitch in and to add - whether or not that is - maybe even it's reaching out and having lunch with a young person and providing them paths that they might not have otherwise thought of, letting them know young or old - quite candidly in this one - that somebody out there cares and will listen to them. We have a lot of - our older folks - and I know you are wrapping up, I'm sorry - but I'm just gonna make this one last pitch. We have a lot of older folks who've actually struggled through this pandemic. They have suffered from withdrawal because their social structures have been pulled from them, and older folks who withdraw from society have higher instances of high blood pressure and hypertension - all of those things that result from depression and not having a social network around you, can result in physical health loss as well as mental health loss. And so being a part of - I know it's a tough time period because COVID is still out there, but the ability to reconnect with one another as humans - social skills deteriorate a little bit when we're not with each other. And so just taking these moments to rebuild our social skills, having some patience with each other, but rebuilding them together. When our City gets healthier in all aspects, especially mentally healthier, we'll be able to help each other better.
[01:02:26] Crystal Fincher: I agree with that. Thank you so much for your time, Monisha.
[01:02:30] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Thank you.
[01:02:31] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
Follow us on our new Twitter account at @HacksWonks!
Today on the show, Crystal is joined by political consultants Dujie Tahat and Kelsey Hamlin, from DTC Consulting and The Poet Salon Podcast. They start the show discussing the King County Prosecutor race, looking at the candidates' views on the Youth Diversion Program, and breaking down the candidates' views and approaches to public safety. This race shows how party affiliations get blurred in prosecutorial races, and is an interesting example of how social justice, public health, and police reform are framed in political conversations. In housing and homelessness news, Crystal and co. look at the upsetting reports that the city of Seattle is using the creation of protected bike lanes as an excuse to remove and prevent homeless encampments, and how this represents a trend of homeless-hostile property owners adopting climate-friendly language to implement inhumane policies. This issue sparks a discussion on the popularity of progressive policies like Rep. Bateman's middle housing bill, even in places like North Seattle. The show wraps with a look at the Kent teachers' strike, breaking down the issues teachers are facing with resources and staffing.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-hosts, Dujie Tahat at @DujieTahat and Kelsey Hamlin at @ItsKelseyHamlin. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Jim Ferrell Turns Youth Diversion Program into a Political Football” by Will Casey from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/08/19/78033079/jim-ferrell-turns-youth-diversion-program-into-a-political-football
“Progressives Unite Behind Manion for King County Prosecutor” by Will Casey from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/elections-2022/2022/08/25/78248649/progressives-unite-behind-manion-for-king-county-prosecutor
“Illegal concrete blocks removed, bike lanes to be built in Delridge” by Amanda Zhou from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/illegal-concrete-blocks-removed-bike-lanes-to-be-built-in-delridge/
"Slog PM: No Gas-Powered Cars by 2035, Bike Lanes Weaponized Against the Homeless, Trump Basically Tried to Make Mar-a-Lago the Capital of the US" by Charles Mudede from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog-pm/2022/08/25/78249246/slog-pm-no-gas-powered-cars-by-2035-bike-lanes-weaponized-against-the-homeless-trump-basically-tried-to-make-mar-a-lago-the-capital-of-the
"Bike Board Member Asks for Encampment Ban Near Bike Lanes, Poll Tests Streetcar Popularity; Council Clarifies "Z-Disposition" for 911 Calls" by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/06/28/bike-board-member-asks-for-encampment-ban-near-bike-lanes-poll-tests-streetcar-popularity-council-clarifies-z-disposition-for-911-calls/
“Seattle Council Approves Police Hiring Bonuses Topping Out at $30,000.” by Natalie Bicknell Argerious from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/08/18/seattle-council-approves-police-hiring-bonuses-topping-out-at-30000/
“Kent teachers strike on the first day of school” by Monica Velez from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/kent-teachers-strike-on-the-first-day-of-school/
“How student loan forgiveness affects Washington” by Melissa Santos from Axios: https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/08/25/student-loan-forgiveness-washington
“WA will ban new gas-powered cars by 2035, following CA’s lead” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/wa-will-ban-new-gas-powered-cars-by-2035-following-cas-lead/
“West Coast states band together to fight methane pipeline expansion” by Kim Malcolm & KUOW Staff from KUOW: https://kuow.org/stories/west-coast-states-band-together-to-fight-methane-pipeline-expansion
"King County sheriff's office investigating missing texts of Durkan, Best." by Lewis Kamb from Axios: https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/08/19/sheriffs-office-missing-texts-durkan-best
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks and Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher. I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight in to local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work - the good work - with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Follow the show on our Twitter at @HacksWonks. Today, we are continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with cohosts. Welcome to the program for the first time today's cohosts, political consultants, Dujie Tahat and Kelsey Hamlin of DTC Consulting and The Poet Salon Podcast. Welcome.
[00:00:59] Dujie Tahat: Hey Crystal. Thanks for having us.
[00:01:00] Kelsey Hamlin: Likewise.
[00:01:01] Crystal Fincher: Hey, excited to have you both. Both doing excellent work with DTC Consulting. Good things going on all over the place, and so excited to have you on. There's a lot that has been happening this week. I think maybe we can start off just obviously we're all political consultants here. There is a race, a really important race, here in King County that was not on the primary ballot but will be on the general election ballot: the prosecuting attorney race for the county, between Jim Farrell and Lisa Manion, and they have some different views. This week in The Stranger, there was a story about youth diversion and the perspective on that. What happened there and what did you see?
[00:01:53] Dujie Tahat: To my mind? It's a continuation of the criminal justice reform conversation we've been having for, at least in a mainstream way, a few years since 2020, at least about punishment being an adequate form of accountability or rather being an inadequate form of accountability. And I think you're seeing that crop up around this program, which has been wildly successful even before the county, I think it was in 2020, when the county made it an official program. What Dominic Davis has been doing with Community Passageways, he was doing before he had any funding to do it. Just putting kids in his car in the middle of the night and taking them home. And it's a really wildly successful program precisely because it doesn't have judicial oversight and it is actually run by people who care about the kids and and have like real deep relationship with them. And I think it, it is totally natural that you're seeing Jim Farrell, who is supported by the police unions and traditional institutional heads make some criticisms that don't make a ton of sense. And then you have Lisa Manion who who has the support of progressives and folks who are rethinking the way the criminal justice system works and support of expanding a program like this.
[00:03:23] Crystal Fincher: So Kelsey, Jim Farrell made some criticisms of the current youth diversion program and structure. What were those, and do those hold water or not?
[00:03:34] Kelsey Hamlin: Yeah, it's always interesting when I hear self-identified Republicans try to undermine a program that is documented to be incredibly successful. Usually their arguments tend to be straw man arguments really, and things that just align with a base of people that already have these sentiments and don't need to look at a study to make a decision on how they feel about it. So his arguments ultimately were that the program leads to no accountability specifically because they can't be punished. And again, this program largely deals with kids, right? Like youth. And the whole point of the program is to not put things on people's records in a way that will harm them for the rest of their life. That leads to homelessness, that leads to struggles with housing, that leads to struggles with attaining a job because of what you have on your record. So ultimately what Farrell is advocating for is to keep people in a cycle of harm and in a cycle of what usually leads to poverty. Largely for a lot of kids that start off in already disadvantaged backgrounds. It's really sad and disheartening to hear him say that and make these straw man arguments, but it's also the same arguments that we've heard for decades.
[00:04:56] Crystal Fincher: It is. And Lisa Mannion has talked about this before as has Dan Satterberg, but diversion, particularly with youth is actually really effective and successful. And Dujie, you just talked about the issue of, just how punitive this is. We really do have to focus on whether we primarily care about public safety or punishment, because if we actually do care about safety, then we have to do the things that make it more likely that people won't re-offend, which largely have to do with making sure their basic needs are met - that most people who are committing crimes have been victims of trauma in one form or another, and need that worked through and resolved. And so connecting people with resources to address that and getting them on a path that more assuredly provides stability and healing does more to keep us safe, to reduce crime, than just locking someone up. And there's so much data that addresses that. I do appreciate Will's reporting - Will Casey's reporting - in The Stranger article, and he's made a point, not just to - sometimes we read these articles and they're so one sided where, there's just a quote from police or just a quote from a prosecutor - and he has made the effort to talk to criminologists, who are actual experts on crime and not just one individual element within it that they may have an investment in or be benefiting from. And so really getting an accurate view of what are the things that do keep us safer, which I wish we would center this conversation on instead of these cheap little points of, "what can I say, that's like really simple soundbitey that, that sounds like it may have something, but so much data opposes." So I guess, as you see this continuing to unfold in this race, how do you think this plays out for the rest of the general and what do you think this race is gonna look like? And this conversation is gonna look like through November?
[00:07:03] Dujie Tahat: I think it'll be really interesting to see, I think last year we saw a little bit of a backlash against people advocating for a different form of accountability, abolition and, defunding the police. And Seattle is a really big thing. And the local elections didn't bore out some sort of backlash against that. So I think it's interesting to see if that happens again with a larger electorate in a even year election. I think one thing that I haven't quite figured out, I'd actually be interested to hear both of your takes on it, is this really weird way where, you know, up until the Trump years, Dan Satterberg was a Republican. And he's the one who's come around the youth diversion program. And his his deputy now Lisa Manion who has a ton of progressive support is up against the self-identified Republican who is taking on some of the, like, maybe earlier Soderberg positions as a way to win this race in 2022. So, just from a pure partisanship perspective, this feels particularly complicated because of Satterberg's trajectory, which makes it hard for me to read. So I'm curious how you all might see that.
[00:08:28] Crystal Fincher: And one thing: Jim Farrell officially calls himself a Democrat still. Which is interesting because he has aligned with Republicans, been touted as a featured guest, by Republican organizations - Republican party and candidates that he's been alongside. Certainly his basic support with police unions looks a lot like that. And he's been stripped of party access to the Democratic party database because of that and his views and statements, but he continues to insist that, "but I'm a Democrat," largely because one might suggest that, in the city that he's currently mayor of, it's really hard for Republicans to get elected. And I think the question that you just asked, Dujie, is interesting in that we - these primaries were really interesting that we just had, in that we had a lot of Republicans hitting Democrats very hard, and particularly in Federal Way where Jim Farrell is from. He had been harping hard on the law and order, but very "hey, we're bringing back, punitive punishments and all of this." In addition to there's a police officer running in the 30th legislative district in Federal Way and we saw a number of battleground districts where that was a primary line of attack from Republicans. And it actually seemed to fall really flat in the primary and did not seem to be effective. And it really does seem like people. Recognize that, even if they aren't abolitionists, even if they aren't, "Hey, I'm not bothered by more police, but I recognize that they can't solve all these problems," we have to have mental health treatment, we have to have substance use disorder treatment, we have to have programs that help people get back on their feet to heal, to get stabilized, and police just don't have the tools to do that. So we've gotta expand the conversation regardless. I think most people in the public are there and I think Dan Satterberg changed because if you actually do care about data and results, there's only one direction that data leads you. There's only one direction that things have been successful and improving in. And that is in addressing more holistically what the issue is. Just throwing people in jail, actually, doesn't reduce the likelihood that they continue to commit crimes. In fact, it makes it slightly more likely that they do. And so if we, again are concerned about safety, we have to get beyond this conversation of thinking we can jail our way out of these problems. We've been trying that for decades and it's failed. If that was successful, we would be the safest place on earth and we are not. And so we've just gotta do different. Curious about your thoughts on that, Kelsey.
[00:11:44] Kelsey Hamlin: Yeah, no, I find this race really interesting. Particularly because Seattle had a recent 2020 race with NTK and having this conversation play out on a much more extreme level than it is in this prosecutor race. And prosecutor races in particular always lean more conservative. If you look at who runs for prosecutor across the state, it's almost always Republicans. Prosecutors by their nature are more interested - they fight for the state side of charging people. They're more interested in that law and order conversation. And the pattern typically tends to be that the public really totes that line of, saying that they're Democrats, but then in reality, they're somewhat more moderate and then they become conservative when it comes to prosecutors specifically because that role deals with charging people. So I'm really curious how it'll play out. And it was funny because when I looked at Satterberg's results from 2018, he ran as Republican. He had an R next to his name and he still got like 70.91% of the vote in 2018 against Daron Morris, who was nonpartisan actually. And so I'm really curious to see how it plays out, but because the situation has a pseudo-Democrat, essentially, which we've seen at the legislature - like we've had one person that caucuses with Republicans at the legislature, like every year. He's fortunately not running this year, which I'm super excited about, but it's the same thing where they know their audience. So they're gonna put a D next to their name so they can get further. But in reality, the truth of the story is that they aren't a Democrat. And so what really is important is the framing of that reality. Will reporters actually show that this man is not a Democrat, is not progressive, like really is ultimately Republican, has Republican views and standpoints, or will they just see that he's filed as a Democrat and call that good and run with it and then have the public be completely misinformed by that? So I'm really curious how that will go. And generally I'm hoping that the pattern swaps this year because of the way the conversations have been playing out. The Republican candidate in 2018 won by four points. So it wasn't like a super huge margin when, it came to NTK's race when I'm thinking of the patterns that are at play here. But that obviously was a Seattle-specific race, and this is a larger electorate that isn't necessarily always as left per se. I don't know if it would've been as tight with NTK if it was, this larger scale, but like you said, if you're in Federal Way and you run with an R next year name, you're not gonna get elected. I'm really curious to see how it plays out and if people can read between the lines a little bit in this race.
[00:14:46] Crystal Fincher: And I think we have some interesting guidance from prior countywide races and when it comes to public safety in particular that the King County charter amendments that were on the ballot in 2020, I wanna say, that made the King County Sheriff appointed as opposed to elected and introduced some other accountability and independent investigation. Stuff passed countywide, passed with majorities in every county district but one, and so sometimes, people do "oh, only Seattle cares about that kind of thing. Only Seattle, doesn't want these punitive measures and what Jim Farrell is saying carries the rest of the county," and that actually was not the case in 2020, despite a very well funded campaign against those charter amendments where police unions came in and spent heavy. And so the yes, campaign was outspent by hundreds of thousands of dollars yet still prevailed in every county district, whether it's, north, south the only district they didn't carry was Reagan Dunn's and it was still pretty close. And I think, we're continuing to see shifts there. If we just look at the results from like the 47th district to legislative - 47th legislative district races that we just saw in the primary. Curious to see when those races, just the recent ones covered all issue areas. So if we're just talking about public safety, what does it mean? But certainly I think that looking at all of the evidence and like that was just a public safety vote with the charter amendments that, that has to be encouraging for some people. To look at who are trying to move in the direction where evidence points is most effective.
[00:16:42] Dujie Tahat: And I think actually you're naming something that is helping me think through this race a little bit clearer too, which is, the framing of it really matters. We're hacks and particular communications hacks, and so we're always gonna beat the drum on framing. But the framing of criminal justice reform and restructuring how law enforcement happens as public safety is actually really fundamentally crucial, especially here in King County. And it's actually really helpful to have someone like Satterberg who was a Republican sort of do that on his own. And so you have a county that is primed to think about law enforcement and criminal justice as a public safety concern versus a punishment, versus a punitive issue. Because one of those things is like really isolate is siloed, right? Punishment, you flip the switch, get it out of my sight. I don't have to think about it again. Whereas public health framing is "actually, this is connected to housing. This is connected to employment." Like everything that we're talking about and within the criminal justice system is a symptom of all of these other adjacent and larger systems. And I think, there's not a huge abolitionist community in Skyway, but I bet you that most of those people understand that the systems that are currently in place are like not working and whatever the criminal justice system looks like right now is actually like the symptoms of all these other systems not working. So it's like, let's talk about it like a little bit more holistically. And I think everyone can agree, this thing's not working. We need to try something else. If we keep doing the thing, if we keep doing the punishment thing, it's obviously just gonna lead to more and more of this. So that's helpful.
Thank you.
[00:18:21] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. And this is how we talk about things, just between consultants, sometimes conversations offline, "hey, what do you think about this?" And the types of conversations that we have elsewhere and trying to figure all this out. So appreciate you also doing this here on the show. Wanted to switch gears a little bit to talk about an issue in the city of Seattle. With illegal concrete blocks being removed and bike lanes being built in Del Ridge. And really this is an interesting situation where bike lanes seem to be being weaponized against the unhoused community in order to find a way to evict them from their space, to sweep them and prevent them from occupying a space, in a way that is basically greenwashed and, trying to pit communities that, oftentimes are on the same side of issues, but "hey, you can have justice and fairness for unhoused people and people struggling financially. You can have environmental justice and mobility justice, but you can't have it all.
It's gotta be one another. And you guys fight it out." Feels like it. What, what is going on here?
[00:19:46] Kelsey Hamlin: Ultimately when you're having a rich community, basically, a large, predominantly white, rich community in an area that uses illegal means, really, to defacto evict a homeless person from the place that they're living at, they, one, are allowed to have the reasoning of community concern as validating this illegal act, and most other communities are not given this chance to have an excuse basically to allow for whatever they did to be okay. And then furthermore, to justify that for a city action that essentially still does the defacto eviction for homeless folks in a place where they were living. And this is a pattern that you see predominantly in, often white often rich neighborhoods like west Seattle, where this is, where they can do acts like that, which seem so silly and just very ridiculous. And those will be actually justified for city action and they will use their voices as a white, rich cohort to push the city, to pressure the city into prioritizing this thing that they want them to do. So it's a pattern we see at large in housing or in transportation, pretty much constantly, and those things that intertwine with homelessness. So this story is really frustrating and Honestly, just, really ugly.
[00:21:26] Crystal Fincher: It's frustrating. It's ugly. And just, it's insidious the way that these things roll out. So this is, "Hey, city of Seattle, you've been asking for protected bike lanes for a while and all over the place and we are going to deliver.
Great news. We're gonna build protected bike lanes on Southwest Andover Street. They're coming. This is great news. We're delivering on our promise to make the city more connected, to increased mobility." And the type of announcement that it's like, okay, progress, except when you look deeper. And as many people pointed at there was initially a Times story that kind of just repeated those talking points. Quoted SDOT, "Hhy, this is happening. Wonderful. And those concrete blocks there we'll remove 'em, but we're just, we're gonna build this protected bike lane and it's great." And then others, including The Stranger, folks from The Urbanist, folks online are like, "okay, but hold on. Why are you building it here? This actually seems like it is outside of the priorities that you've established. There's actually a plan. And a priority and a process for moving through the backlog of projects and the list of projects that we have. Others seem to have been bigger priorities, more ready to deploy in areas of potentially greater need." And of course there's a whole conversation to be had, like everywhere needs it. So sometimes putting those needs together isn't great either. Wow, this is happening out of place. This is happening in a way that seems disjointed and sudden. And so what was the motivation for moving here and not moving on the other projects that were detailed, that, they were going to be acting on before? And low and behold, oh, there's a problem that people have been complaining about. They say "hey, these there's encampments here. We've been trying to keep them out illegally. When we can't act illegally, they come back. How dare they? They don't have a place to live. We aren't really primarily concerned with getting them housed anywhere. We just want them gone away from here." So what can happen? And a few months back Publicola covered, someone, an ask basically to say, "hey, can we ban, basically, unhoused people from proximity to bike lanes and considering that. And so I don't know if that had anything to do with this, but lo and behold, this seems to be, in their eyes, a solution to all of this in a way that rids, unhoused people from the area and their view, which is - that to them is solving a problem. It's not housing them, which is the actual solution to the problem. But moving there. So it just seems really cynical. And, playing communities who are in need against each other and not continuing to not fix this problem. How do you see it? Dujie?
[00:24:35] Dujie Tahat: Yeah, I think insidious is the right word for it. There's so many sort of intersections of inequity happening here. We're talking about transportation and housing, which is also a conversation about employment and quality of life, which is like also a conversation about funding and the total lack of it, because we don't have enough revenue because we don't tax rich people. All of that stuff is playing out here. And, instead of trying to solve any one of these areas, because to try to solve one of these areas would force us to have a conversation about all of it, we're doing the piecemeal thing. The city is attempting to do the piecemeal thing and you're, playing whackamole. It's like we're dealing with the... They say that they're dealing with transportation problem, but they're really trying to solve a housing problem with it and then kicking the can down the road for it to become worse later. If we were really, I think the most interesting thing here too, is like, there's one protected bike lane in all of Southwest Seattle, right? If we're talking about really providing alternative, safe, biking routes to places like while west Seattle is disproportionately, is it's like white and wealthy. Like the neighborhood of Delridge is like pretty diverse, and they're pockets still of west Seattle. That look like the rest of south Seattle which has a total lack of both affordable housing and safe and protected bike lanes. That's the conversation we need to be having. And every - anytime that someone wants to tell a story about this particular stretch of protected bike lanes, we have to actually have the broader one because when you try to isolate it, all we're doing is like reinforcing some of the same things. And it just makes the problem so much worse.
[00:26:34] Kelsey Hamlin: I was gonna say, this actually reminds me too, of a story that happened earlier around gorilla gardening that was used as defacto eviction for people that were living homeless in a community neighborhood. And that story was reported in a way that was very like positive framing of gorilla gardening. Really, can you put the word gorilla in front of that? If you like, in all reality, is that how gorilla tactics works? Cause I'm pretty sure it's not. And it's these false solutions that are brought forward by, largely, homeowners that are just wanting to see this problem out of their sight. Like, out of sight, out of mind, don't wanna deal with it. And while it has some concerns, it's very, I think you had used the term earlier, greenwashing to make their agenda happen without any care of how people's lives are actually impacted. And those stories are very connected.
[00:27:37] Dujie Tahat: Yeah. It creates this false choice, that we can either have - we can either solve the homelessness problem or mitigate climate crisis. And it's actually, all these things are connected, right? We can actually do all of them if we up level the conversation enough to do it. And if we have the courage enough to actually challenge those with power and money to solve them. Because, right now, in the constraints that there's only so much money in the Seattle city budget, we can only solve one of those things. And it's then we need to change the constraints. We'd have the conversation about what it looks like to actually have a west Seattle that is connected. That is, that has enough housing so that we don't have to deal with 17 different problems. We can actually do all of it all at once.
[00:28:27] Kelsey Hamlin: We're pretending too, as if the climate crisis doesn't lead to more people being homeless. Like we know that is going to happen. The studies show that time and time again. We will have climate refugees fleeing to wherever is not most impacted by the climate crisis. So by not dealing with this right now, and then pretending using excuse of doing something green to just push homeless people away, is really just sealing our fates later when the climate crisis just becomes even worse. It is already pretty bad right now. And we're setting us up to fail even worse than we otherwise will already, the way that we're set up to.
[00:29:09] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And especially people who care about one or both of these, and particularly for folks within the environmental community, which - there have been lots of conversations over the years about how inclusive and equitable the environmental movement has been. It certainly has not been in many times and places, and fortunately several organizations have grown and become influential, who have that as more of a focus of not leaving people behind or throwing people under the bus. And so it really is incumbent upon all of us, especially those of us who care about making progress environmentally and who view that as urgent, to not just take this quote unquote win and be like, "oh, that's too bad about the, collateral damage. We're gonna do this." If we don't stand up and say, "okay, but no, that's not okay to harm someone else in, trying to get this win. That's actually not a win. We can do this in a way that is equitable. We can do it in a way that helps everyone, that doesn't leave anyone behind or harm anyone. And it's our responsibility to figure that out." We hurt ourselves, ultimately, like you just said, Kelsey, when we don't. And so I really do hope that we hear from environmental organizations, that we hear from local leaders and activists that this is not okay and that we need to find a different way to go about things. And understand that this is a tactic that we've seen used all over the place and that is growing. Whether it's talking about, "oh, allowing more development here is going to have a, harmful environmental impact. Therefore we can't let anyone new into our community," or, "this encampment here is bad for the environment," or like plant, like you said, "planting green trees is great and wonderful and oh no, it just prevents other people from being able to share this public space. That's just too bad." Like we can't allow that to be co-opted and used. We see across the board that conservative movements are co-opting progressive language and progressive messaging to try and get their point across. And it's really incumbent upon all of us to look at the substance and the details of what's actually happening, call it out and not cooperate.
[00:31:39] Dujie Tahat: And I think that the nature... that's like the nature of our party system, our political system, is, I think, whatever progressives say, conservatives are gonna try and take it and repurpose it. That's just, I think the nature of small C conservatism. Once progressivism becomes more mainstream. And so I think it is absolutely all of our responsibilities to do that. And it's also the responsibility of Bruce Harrell and the King County Executive, and the people who have real power in progresses circles to up level the conversation, to not actually accept the framework that this is a choice between bike lanes and housing, but rather like what it actually means for people to belong here. For people to actually live in the city that they work in. It's so much bigger than that. And what I would love more than anything is to see our leaders not be afraid of that conversation and actually be like, "yeah we're gonna, this is a very big conversation. That's gonna require making a lot of people uncomfortable including myself." And that's the point, that's the point of all of this. And I think until then, like they get, they give cover to small C conservatives who are always going to be co-opting their language. They're actually part of the pipeline.
[00:32:54] Crystal Fincher: They are. And like the thing that irritates me, actually, is that should be the sign to people that like, hey, the progressive ideas are actually popular.
And so if someone just stood and fought for them, we could make this happen instead of being like, "oh, that's a sign that things are in trouble." The stereotypical, "oh, Democrats in disarray, no matter what happens. If Democrats win, it's somehow bad for Democrats. If Democrats lose, it's somehow bad for progressives." Everything is frequently spun to be bad for people on the left. Just that framing. And so if the conservative positions were actually popular with people, they would be making the case conservatively. They can't. So many times they actually start out trying to do so, it goes poorly, and then you see them switch up - I'm thinking of a Councilmember on the council right now where, Hey, it started talking about "I'm a business owner, I'm this and that." And then ended up being like, "I'm, fighting for the environment and for police reform and blah, blah, blah." Now we see how they're actually governing, but like - Sara Nelson - but what we're actually talking about is like the progressive viewpoints are popular. They have to mimic them because that's what people want now because we don't have a lot of media coverage, a lot less than we used to and bandwidth.
And so sometimes the conversation is so shallow, unfortunately, and just with everything going on in life, that people don't hear anything beyond the initial soundbite and they're like, "okay that sounds good." And they've got like very high priced, big shot consultants and all of that, they have budgets where they can communicate broadly and frequently. And so they're like, "yeah. I do wanna be compassionate and they're saying they're compassionate. So okay." But we have to hold everyone accountable in this whole ecosystem to be like, "okay, but no, that's actually not accurate. It's not the truth. And this is what that means. And you're not saying that because you know people disagree.
[00:35:15] Kelsey Hamlin: Yeah. And shout out to Sara Nelson also for using those same cement blocks at her place of business to precisely prevent homeless people from being around. So does all of these things intertwine and connect and it's so painful and ironic that these are so intertwined that someone who has a seat on council has literally done this exact act at her place of business to harm homeless people. And like you said these conservative folks have to co-op the messaging of progressives because it is popular and they need to use that to cloak their actual acts, to allow them to do those acts. The close ties when you think of particularly cement blocks and the ways they're used when it comes to someone on council who did that exact thing, and then that happening now - like you have to laugh because it is so painful, ultimately.
[00:36:14] Crystal Fincher: Dujie, you were even just talking about the name of them, which is -
[00:36:18] Dujie Tahat: Ecoblocks! Ecoblocks, which is like - all of this is also framing, right? Which is, what we were talking about previously. It's like ecoblocks is a nice way to frame a cement block and make people think that it is like good for the environment, right? That's all you've effectively done. You've called on this, like green future where we all can live happily and the air is clean and we're all good, but it's it's just a cement block. And what do you use the cement block for? If you're using it to hurt people, then you're hurting people. It doesn't really matter if it's an ecoblock and that's what sort of, small C conservatism is and does, it's very good at. It's like it understands what is popular and then frames the tactic that they want to deploy in what is popular. Something that we could learn on the left is - or I don't even - I wouldn't even go as far as say that - people with power who run as Democrats who are Democrats could learn from is the power of framing. Because it's exactly what I was saying. It's you don't have to accept the premise that this is about bike lanes. You don't even have to accept the premise that this is at all about encampments, right? Bruce Harrell could not say anything about encampments and just uplevel all the conversation about housing and where the money comes from to house people. And you could probably do it in a way that would ensure majorities in almost every neighborhood in the city. But that would also require doing something really different. That would also require like maybe alienating some of the people that help you get where you are. And that's the part where power, where power for the self versus power for the people, is is the fundamental crux. And I hope that yeah, that's my, that's our job as Hacks is to keep beating that drum.
[00:38:08] Crystal Fincher: It is our job. And man we're beating, this podcast is beating, that drum. But it's not pie in the sky stuff. What I find most frustrating is the support is there. We are so invested in acting like it's not. Even in conversations, like we, we are, we're talking about housing. We're talking about the middle housing bill in this last legislative session and that being, certainly not the only thing that needs to happen to make housing more affordable, but a necessary component. And one of the legislators that was actually most responsible for it not passing was Gerry Pollet in the 46th legislative district. And there was just acquiescence and acceptance to where "districts like his just don't support that. Yeah, sure, maybe downtown and like maybe Capital Hill, in South Lake Union are okay with that, but not north Seattle, like not those - come on. Regular quote unquote neighborhoods and normal people, are not quite there." Yet, we just saw primary north Seattle where, 60 plus percent of residents voted for candidates who are strongly in favor of middle housing, who have straight up said, yes, we need to increase zoning in single-family zoned areas. This is not something that people are looking at and going "I'm gonna vote against that if that happens." There are people who think that in their minds. There are lots of people in power who think that and who are under that impression. I think Gerry Pollet was under that impression. I think that they actually do think "the majority of people are with me," but when you look at how votes actually turn out, that's not the case. And I just wish we could act- we could have a conversation with that foundation and say, "okay, given where voters are at right now, what can we accomplish?" Because right now we're not giving people even what they're asking for or what they're ready for. And to me, that is creating frustration. In the same way, like we saw, we've talked about it before here on, on this show: the poll that's like, 90% of Seattle residents are like, "yes, please invest more in root cause stuff. Give us more funding for substance use disorder, treatment, behavioral health treatment, do all of that. We need more of that." And we still have, and we're still passing, bigger bonuses for police and different things. When voters are literally saying, "you ask me how I want you to spend my tax dollars with public safety. And I'm saying, 'spend it on, like treatment and services' because that's, what's missing. And until we do that, this whole scenario doesn't get better." If you listen to the show, you're probably familiar with how frustrating this is. To me. It's just the lack of acknowledgement of our present reality.
[00:41:15] Dujie Tahat: It's like a lack of acknowledgement of our present reality, and the most cynical view of voters as like not being actually able to understand or want something that makes sense. And the total inability to believe in your own best argument too. Of course people want housing to be affordable. In every single neighborhood, they wish they paid less for housing. Everybody wishes that. That's a thing you can sell. That's actually not that complicated.
[00:41:42] Crystal Fincher: It really is not right.
[00:41:44] Dujie Tahat: Like I think, like everyone gets convinced that "oh, this comes to represent X, Y, and Z and whatever." Then go out and do the work of making sure that's not what it happens. Like you, you and your constituency have a particular relationship, you make a promise to them that you can make housing affordable for everybody. Sell it in a way that the consolation of people . Who support that are also - they're in the coalition with it's boundaries.
[00:42:11] Kelsey Hamlin: There's multiple things at play too. And at so many points in this conversation in my brain, I was like "money, money, money!" Cause there's just- like that is just at play. And we can't deny that. And not only is money at play. When you think of police units, when you think of all these actors that have money, their hands and disposal to put forward against you when elections happen again. But you also have money at play when it comes to privilege. When it comes to the bias of people who are elected, who sit in these roles that aren't actually paid that well and so that means that people who take up these roles of power have to already be sitting on wealth in order to obtain that position and make those decisions. And of course the people who get set up for that, like Gerry Pollet who are older, who are white, who are male, they tend to have these predispositions already in place in their mind, regardless of what they think about their electorate preferring, of what they feel is not necessarily viable, but just it makes sense to them. So when you have someone like Gerry Pollet in this position who, by all circumstances, didn't necessarily think he was going to be running opposed in the election, in fact, it turns out in the primary, his opposing candidate dropped out. And this is true, not even with just Gerry Pollet but with many Democrats who know that they're not going to be opposed by anyone the next election, so really they could make the choice that would actually benefit people regardless of whether they were worried about their elected odds or not in the next round. We have these people that are sitting in these positions who already feel like they have the answers to housing and what the problems are and what the solutions are when in fact that is not actually where the data lies. And yet this pipeline of course of wealth, that just impacts that concept that legislators and, city councilmembers and everyone in the any elected position already have in their head.
[00:44:18] Crystal Fincher: This is always such an interesting dynamic. We're talking with consultants, we talk. And so there's a lot that happened this week, but we're like 45 minutes into this show now and probably need to start wrapping up, but I did wanna mention Kent teachers are on strike. The school year was supposed to start, but it is actually starting with a teacher strike. This is important. I hope people are familiar with this, and big issues going into this strike are: we hear about teacher shortages and staffing shortages across the board in the education system nationwide. This is an issue. And the lack of support, growing class sizes, and an increased burden on workload. And here, we understand, especially coming out of this pandemic - some of the teachers are mentioning some kids haven't even really gone to middle school because of the pandemic and now they're arriving at high school and what's involved with that. Kids need more support, need mental health support. And unfortunately, the state baseline is one counselor for every 250 students. Right now, the KM counselor has about 500 student. That baseline doesn't even account for the increased needs from the pandemic. Special Education classes are much larger than they should be and are supposed to be. They're trying to call in educators who are not trained at all in special education to help and it's just impacting the kids' education. Even just, basic safety functions. "Hey, there's a fire drill to evacuate kids," and in special education classes, kids that need to be escorted or assisted out, and they're just not being enough staff to even evacuate kids safely. So this is a big issue. Sometimes people try and flatten issues of teachers being on strike to just, "they just want more money. It's all about them." And one, they deserve more money. I think many parents who've been at home with their kids are understanding the value of competent teachers and a competent education system. But the conditions for teachers are their conditions for kids. They're in the same environment. And so making sure that teachers are well prepared and supported in a classroom that is not overcrowded and that they're trained to serve the kids that they're teaching is crucially important. And the Kent school district has work to do to get there and end this strike. And so I hope people educate themselves about that. Find out ways to vocalize support of teachers. You can certainly reach out to the school board. And throughout this process, several years back, Kent previously, the Kent school district sought an injunction against striking teachers. They ended up ending the strike before that. I don't know if that discussion is on the table now or not. I hope not. That would be a significant hostile action and escalation, but I hope people pay attention to this and get engaged.
[00:47:53] Dujie Tahat: Two things that came to mind for me, when I saw this story was the way that the pandemic surfaced, like schools as a service beyond just education. I mean like the, one of the first immediate things was like, how are we gonna feed students? Cause that's a primary service that schools provide, right? And then the second one is that the Kent school district has, 70% students of color, a 60% are low income, free and reduced lunch. And it's everything, all of the stories we've talked about today, disproportionate, the downward trends of these large and equitable systems disproportionately put so much pressure on the shoulders of young children of color. And it's, of course, the teachers were going to strike. Of course somewhere, the teachers were going to strike, and of course it was going to be in a school district like this. And I think to your point, Crystal, it's like, it's really such a shame that we have, not we, but certain pockets of people for whom it is beneficial, have made teachers striking, have pitted teachers against students, as if teachers are not actually advocating for students as they strike.
[00:48:56] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. Keep paying attention, figure out if you or someone you know, is able to get their student loans forgiven and then continue fighting for more loan forgiveness and debt cancellation because that helps everyone in our economy. Gas powered cars are gonna be banned by 2035. That happened in California. We actually tied ourselves to California's requirements. So that's now a requirement in Washington. Our attorney general is fighting methane pipeline expansion. And they're investigating Durkin's and Best's texts in the King County Sheriff's office. Few things going on. I don't know if you have any final words about those or anything else, Dujie or Kelsey.
[00:49:49] Dujie Tahat: More justice, please.
[00:49:51] Kelsey Hamlin: Yeah, honestly. A couple of things with the 2035 clean, cleanliness, whatever. Little late in my opinion, but whatever, moving on as is the status quo, these things. Otherwise for the methane fighting, I do want to know, or ask, that people look more into the background of the process around that. It's been happening for years, especially in our state, because it comes from Canada, this pipeline. And there was an entire, like years-long process of an environmental impact statement for this exact pipeline where community did show up. Where, Washingtonians showed up and asked for it not to be placed around them or in their backyard or impact their waterways. So this conversation is really a lot larger than just this moment where the AG is deciding to step in, multiple state refugees are deciding to step in. That's just the point at the process that we're at right now, but there's so much beforehand where communities and people on the ground did step in and voice how much they did not want this. So I just want to uplift that work.
[00:50:54] Crystal Fincher: Exactly. And we would not be here without that work that was necessary and essential. Any final words from you Dujie?
[00:51:00] Dujie Tahat: Thanks for having us. This is for all of us here, but also everybody who's listening, keep fighting the good fight. I think the closer you can, the more support you can provide to the, exactly, the folks we're talking about who are doing the difficult and arduous day to day work of just activism and living. That's the only reason any of this exists. So thanks for having us. Keep going.
[00:51:26] Crystal Fincher: Thanks for being on, I really appreciate it. And thank you all for listening to Hacks and Wonks on this Friday, August 26th, 2022. The Producer of Hacks and Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our Assistant Producer is Shannon Chang and our Post-production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. Our wonderful co-hosts today we're political consultants, Dujie Tahat and Kelsey Hamlin of DTC Consulting and The Poet Salon Podcast, which we will link in the episode notes.
You can find Dujie on Twitter at @DujieTahat that's D U J I E T A H A T and Kelsey at @ItsKelseyHamlin. That's K E L S E Y H A M L A N. Follow the show on our new Twitter account at @HacksWonks. You can find me on Twitter at @finchfrii. Now you can follow Hacks and Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Just type Hacks & Wonks into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe, to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources that we've referenced at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in.
Talk to you next time.
Marc Dones, CEO of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, and Crystal have an in-depth, honest conversation about addressing homelessness. They talk through the critical need to acknowledge the lack of appropriate housing supply, the harm our system has traditionally perpetuated on those it aims to serve, and the desperate state of a chronically underfunded service infrastructure. Though the scope of the problem is daunting, they discuss how the solutions are mostly straightforward, but hinge on a real commitment to resourcing them.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal on Twitter at @finchfrii, Marc at @marcformarc, and the King County Regional Homelessness Authority at @KC_RHA.
Resources
King County Regional Homelessness Authority: https://kcrha.org/
“King County head of homelessness may be an ‘impossible’ job, but Marc Dones is optimistic” by Scott Greenstone from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/king-county-head-of-homelessness-may-be-an-impossible-job-but-marc-dones-is-optimistic/
“Why does prosperous King County have a homelessness crisis?” by Benjamin Maritz and Dilip Wagle for McKinsey & Company: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/why-does-prosperous-king-county-have-a-homelessness-crisis
“Seattle homelessness nonprofits struggle to hire, complicating plans to expand shelters and housing” by Scott Greenstone from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/seattle-homelessness-nonprofits-struggle-to-hire-complicating-plans-to-expand-shelters-and-housing/
“A Literature Review of Single-Room Occupancy (SRO) Supportive Housing Structures in the United States: An Assessment to Ascertain the Viability of SROs to Address the Needs of Homeless and Vulnerably Housed Populations in New York City” by Ashwin Parulkar and Daniel C. Farrell for HELP USA: https://www.helpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/A-Literature-Review-of-Single-Room-Occupancy-SRO-Supportive-Housing-Structures-in-the-United-States.pdf
“Building the Capacity of the Homeless Service Workforce” by Joan Mullen and Walter Leginski for The Open Health Services and Policy Journal: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=D7337FB9BA53EC10246DDFB46B6B37AE?doi=10.1.1.457.1884&rep=rep1&type=pdf
“Frontline Workers: Urban Solutions for Developing a Sustainable Workforce in the Homeless Services Sector of Los Angeles County” by Vanessa Rios from Antioch University Los Angeles: https://www.antioch.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/RIOS-VANESSA.-URBAN-SOLUTIONS-FOR-DEVELOPING-A-SUSTAINABLE-WORKFORCE.-.pdf
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I'm thrilled to be welcoming this person to the show. Today, we have joining us, the CEO of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, Marc Dones. Thank you so much for joining us.
[00:00:52] Marc Dones: Thanks for having me.
[00:00:54] Crystal Fincher: Well, I wanted to have this conversation - we have talked about homelessness, what the unhoused population needs, providing housing, services - throughout several shows here on Hacks & Wonks. But it's a conversation that is so rich and there are so many facets to it, we really can't talk about it enough. I was really excited to see you take the helm of the Homelessness Authority - and just listening to you in various venues, just the vision that you're bringing to it. So, I guess, just to start out for people who may not be familiar with who you are and what this job entails, what brought you here and what is the work that you are charged with doing?
[00:01:42] Marc Dones: Well, for folks who aren't familiar with me - one, I'm jealous. You're living a great life and I encourage you to keep living it. You have managed to escape having to know about me or any of the things that I have to worry about, most of which are the worst things that our culture produces. So, kudos to you and teach me your ways.
What brings me to the work to some degree is my life - I'm a queer, non-binary Black person, I have some significant mental health issues - I have been psychiatrically hospitalized twice - I did some couch surfing. And when I began my nominal professional career, I was, as most young people are, fascinated most with myself and I wanted to understand - I remember being in my early 20s and trying to understand how it had kind of worked out for me, right? And my work and my research really led to the fact that it was kind of luck - that statistically speaking, this is not likely. And so, I think that part of the reason why I have done this work for as long as I have and what I'm trying to do is - to make a world where luck is not the mediator of a positive outcome for a person who's like me - where we are able to rely on the government and our social structures and our safety net, to produce the kinds of outcomes that we deserve as opposed to having to luck out.
So that's why I'm here, and I think that the work of the Authority - in a sentence - is to end homelessness. And homelessness is complicated, it is complex - I've said every which way to Sunday - there is no silver bullet here. There's just actually nuanced work, and it's just the one thing - that's all we got to do - is end homelessness in the county.
[00:04:14] Crystal Fincher: Simple phrase, hard work. So, what does it take to end homelessness?
[00:04:22] Marc Dones: It takes a couple thing - from my perspective, for our region and just broadly in this country, it takes a couple things. One is, we have to have a very serious conversation about housing. And it's critical we start every conversation with a conversation about housing, because for too long, frankly, we've started the conversation with everything but housing. And so, we've become obsessed with formulating homelessness through the lens of crime, or just of mental health, or all this service infrastructure without ever thinking about the roof. I say all the time that - with reverence and deep respect for the social workers I work with and know - no number of social workers becomes a home. It's not like you get assigned six case managers and they sort of Transformer-Autobot into a house.
And so, in this country, we have done a terrible job of producing and maintaining low-income housing stock. And in particular, for wonks, that's the 0-30% AMI - so Area Median Income is the index we use - it's got a lot of flaws and we can talk about those, but it's a good barometer of how much money you need to make in order to live in a region without being cost burdened. For our truly lowest income residents, that 0-30% AMI, we don't produce anything for them.
And I think what's really critical there is that 0-30% AMI - folks in their minds often, I think, picture - I don't know what people picture anymore actually. But the point that we should make is that 0-30% AMI is in many instances a barista, it is - a senior on fixed income is 0-30% AMI. And I'm not saying this in an effort to create the other thing we often do, which is the poor people we can empathize with and so, therefore we're worried about helping. I'm saying this just to be really clear that there was a time when getting to 0-30% AMI actually was hard to do because of the level of destitution it required. Now, you can work full-time or be attached to what's supposed to be our nation's greatest benefit structure and still be in that income bracket.
The other thing that I think we really need to talk about when we talk about ending homelessness is - the harm the system does when it is attempting to house you.
[00:07:18] Crystal Fincher: Yes.
[00:07:18] Marc Dones: In all honesty, part of the reason that much has been made about our shot here at really implementing a system that centers the voices of people with lived experience and who are currently experiencing homelessness, is it gives us this opportunity for the first time to be like, These things do more than just not help - they hurt, right?
[00:07:42] Crystal Fincher: Yes.
[00:07:43] Marc Dones: And so much of our system has been organized through these punitive and paternalistic and carceral lenses that they really create - not just like, "Oh, this was unpleasant." - they create trauma. And that trauma disincentivizes people from engaging in whatever the supportive services they might need. It also creates really significant - I've been playing with this idea for a number of years - this attachment theory, but for housing. That by the time you get to housing, the process has been so traumatic that you attach to it poorly. And so, as a result, are more likely to then experience homelessness again, because of the psychological damage that getting to that housing has caused.
And then the last thing would say is just that services are really important. We do need to support people who have experienced different kinds of trauma - whether it's intimate partner violence or war - and for reasons are or for those reasons, I should say, are experiencing housing instability. And our service infrastructure is awful - it is - we don't have it.
[00:09:09] Crystal Fincher: Right.
[00:09:10] Marc Dones: I think I would be remiss not to be clear that that is also racialized and classed in its construction. The vast majority of folks who do the frontline service work in the homelessness system are women, and in particular, women of color. To me, then it feels like no accident that it has been okay for 30, 35 years to pay them $27,000, while we ask them to manage people who are, in some cases, actively decompensating with psychotic spectrum disorders. Again, I say that not disrespectfully because I have been the person who's been decompensating with a psychotic spectrum disorder. It's hard to manage and we don't compensate those folks the way we compensate white men who do the exact same work, but with a different credentialing, because they had access and yada yada yada. For me, there is a really clear connection between ending homelessness and ending the poverty that we impose on the staff we are asking to do that work.
[00:10:28] Crystal Fincher: Such good information with all of that. I want to start off with what you talked about with housing - and such a critical point of the need to start these conversations with housing. I want to ask about the lowest end and I forget - there was an article that I read a while back that was talking about what we used to have but don't have anymore - like one room rentals, day rentals. And that being a way that a lot of people made it back on their feet or actually prevented themselves from winding up on the street - hey, this is suboptimal and I ultimately want a different, larger place to stay, but this is shelter that I can afford. This is my place that I can afford, and in a room, and single-occupancy type thing - but those used to be here. We used to have more of that supply and don't. Do you see that as part of the issue? Is that a more minor missing part of it? Do you think that we also need to increase the amount of really low-income stock that we have?
[00:11:37] Marc Dones: I think it's a huge part of it. I mean, let's be clear. America navigated two previous homelessness crises brought on by the two previous World Wars, largely through SRO [single room occupancy] stock. I mean, it was a known thing that vets could come back and get a room at the Y - that was just how we navigated that. And certainly before the passage of the GI Bill, that was it, that was literally it. With the passage of the GI Bill, we see vets having access to other kinds of monetary supports and financial tools to purchase homes in some instances. Although, we should also note that the GI Bill implementation was certainly quite racialized and so, who got access to those financial tools is its own story. Somebody's book, not mine. But I will be really clear that we lost those SRO units and other low-income housing units in the great suburbanization wave that begins at the end of the 40s and then pushes into the 50s and 60s.
So, with the creation of the suburbs, we begin to see a corresponding almost unraveling, frankly, of a lot of what had been that standard low-income housing stock. And it then leads to, in particular, with the 60s and some of the work that happens inside the Civil Rights era - we then see a sudden reinvestment in low-income housing. But now, it's taking the form of the Projects and of these other forms of architectural investment that are much more family-oriented than they are for single adults. They're supposed to be stable long-term apartments and then we see the advent of certain kinds of programs like Section 8, et cetera, or voucher programs.
But all of these post-suburbs conversations have at their core the same thing they're trying to solve for, which is a lack of the housing for people to access just on their own. In reality, again, if I think about most folks experiencing homelessness that I've known, most people could find their way to a thing and rent it themselves if it existed. They don't need my help to do that - that's demeaning. The only reason our voucher programs exist, the only reason we run the system we run is because that naturally occurring low-income stock is not available to people to find and get to on their own.
[00:14:40] Crystal Fincher: I hope we do a better job collectively of prioritizing and addressing that because it's a mess. Also, the service delivery system has a number of challenges and this is an issue. I heard you speaking somewhere before on a panel, and it really struck me just - hey, we can throw millions of dollars at this today. That does not mean that tomorrow we are in a position to spend that millions of dollars and implement stuff based on that. I don't know that a lot of people have visibility into that part of the system. People just hear of services and they think people are operating shelters or some places for people to live. And there are some social workers who maybe connect people to mental health resources. And these things are offered to people every time there's a sweep on the street and they get to opt-in or opt-out. They opt-out and so - hey, we did our best and I guess we got to sweep them now - is where a lot of people are at. What actually happens within this system and what is the current state of our service infrastructure?
[00:15:59] Marc Dones: Okay, so what currently happens, if we're being just very candid is - up until the pandemic, we offered you typically at best a mat on a floor with hundreds of other people. You needed to be in for the night, typically no later than 7 or 8 [PM], and out by around 5 or 6 in the morning. There was very little place for the storage of your personal belongings, if there was any place for the storage of your personal belongings. You couldn't - if you have a pet or had a pet, that - tough, no space for that. We oftentimes - well, actually in the vast majority of instances, not oftentimes - also run or ran those shelters, I should say, on the sole basis of gender. And so, if you are trans or non-binary, that can be a real uphill walk.
Or if you are a couple and were like "I'm in a heterosexual relationship" - I mean, I am not, but if you were in a heterosexual relationship and wanted to - which no disrespect to heterosexual relationships to be clear, it's just it's not the one I am in. But if you were in a heterosexual relationship and wanted to go to a shelter as a couple, that's not a thing. If you are a family, you need to be a family that we understand - meaning that you have to be, typically, a biological parent with children. Those kids certainly can't be over 18 - they probably can't even be in their teens - because oftentimes if you're trying to access shelter and have teenage children, particularly teenage male children, then they will be sent to the adult male shelter far away from wherever you are.
And that kind of goes on, actually. I could keep going through the many, many - frankly, to my mind - cruelties that we have imposed on people experiencing homelessness just to try to be inside for the night for decades. And so, when we say "we offered you shelter" that's what we've been saying. We didn't offer you - even a room - we have offered you kind of a place to be.
In this community, in this region, we have worked hard over the last three-ish years to move many of our shelters towards what's called an enhanced shelter status, which means you might have greater service connectivity, or some small expectation of privacy, but that's really it. With the pandemic, suddenly we couldn't do that to people anymore. I just got to be honest - if it takes a world-altering deadly disease to force us to realize that our treatment of other human beings was so inhumane and so beyond the pale unacceptable that we couldn't contain disease spread, that's something.
Since then, we have done a lot of work. Now, you see that hotel-motel shelter model - all of a sudden things that were not possible are suddenly possible. Certainly, now that I am in this position - let me just be very clear - we will continue to drive towards a model of shelter that is like SRO. That should be the minimum for what is considered shelter - a door, a key, dignity, the ability to mind your own business, to sleep when you want to sleep, to come and go when you need to come and go. Because the other thing I'll add, sorry, just because I think it's important is, we said to people, "You have a 7 PM curfew, you got to be out by 5 [AM]" and then told everybody to get a job, so heaven forbid they have the night shift.
[00:20:57] Crystal Fincher: Yeah.
[00:20:58] Marc Dones: What's the plan? There's no plan for that.
[00:21:00] Crystal Fincher: There is no plan - right.
[00:21:03] Marc Dones: That, I think, is what has been happening and I think it's really important for listeners to have that actual reality in their heads of the humaneness that we have pretended we have been operating with is - it should embarrass us, frankly.
[00:21:24] Crystal Fincher: It absolutely should and that bare minimum of humaneness, to your point - if someone had a job, someone doesn't have a traditional family, which many people are kicked out of their homes as teens for a variety of reasons - because their parents didn't agree with their sexuality or lifestyle or whatever it is. And finding people who help them to survive that are a family and trying to stick together and that not being possible. So much of what is actually reality on the ground outside is not acknowledged as an acceptable reality for our services system and for shelter and that leaving so many people out. And so, hearing, "Well, they refused services," has been - I just remember when I realized that, "Oh no, actually - being offered services doesn't actually mean being offered services for that person." It could be services that don't apply, that they are not eligible for, that they can't fit into - and then just too bad.
I guess, how do we get from, "Too bad, we can't accommodate you, this doesn't work," to being able to at least accommodate folks in shelter, to get people housed and on the path to becoming stable?
[00:22:50] Marc Dones: Well, I think part of it is - the portion of your question around, what is the state of our system from a services perspective and why can't we just spend $20 million because it was given to us? The reality is that - you could give us $20 million - there's no one to spend it. It's like, yes, it is now in an account, cool. But spending it means it has to pay somebody's salary, or pay for the benefits of a person, or pay for a property. It has to do something and the capacity of the system, because it has been chronically underfunded at the staffing level for 30 years, is, I mean, we're worse than at the bone at this point. We are actually - this is a slow crumbling. I have agencies in the system right now that have north of 200 vacancies and no pipeline to fill those vacancies - because we too have been hit by the great wave of resignations as people are like, "I don't want to live like this." No one wants to hear this because it somehow - I don't know why it feels so weird - but we have to pay people more. I'm just going to keep saying it until it gets just really in people's little noggins, I guess. Because if we don't pay people more, then we continue to see these turnovers, we continue to see these vacancies, and more money can come and more money can come and it won't mean anything. There will be no one to do anything with it, full stop.
And we have to spend more money. There are at least 45,000 people experiencing homelessness in the county. We don't have the budget - our budget, if I tried to divvy that up across everybody, it essentially turns into about $3,000 a year per person. Or what that translates into is a little over $10 a day, which is just - that's not doing anything. When a permanent supportive housing unit for scale costs about $24,000 per year - that's inclusive of services. Not everyone needs permanent supportive housing, but the difference then between PSH and where we are now is $20,000 per person. We have to put more money in the system, but in order for the system to be able to use that money, we really have to have the people who can do the work. The thing that I want to be really clear about is - this whole system - all of that, we use the word "system" and we use all these words that make it sound, I don't know, make it sound some type of way. I don't know.
But at the end of this - this, all of this, is people helping people. That's what's happening - it is people who have chosen - because of their own lives, because of what they see, because of where they feel called in life - to help somebody else. If they can't do it because they can't afford to do it, then there's no help. I'm a big fan of technology, I think technology can do cool stuff - but you ask people how they got into stable recovery, it's not an app. They work with other people who've been on that journey, who can talk with them about it, who can be like, "Yeah. I know it's very hard actually." When we don't provide for that kind of support, when we create through our staffing models such incredibly high turnover, the reality then becomes that you're never able to build a relationship. You can never have that honest conversation. The first time I wanted to have a conversation about like, "I think I might have some very serious mental health problems." - I had to work up to - there was a lot of trust, there was a lot of like, "Oh, maybe I'll flirt with telling someone, maybe I won't." All of these things take time and trust to disclose, to begin to actively work on. We have created these positions that have such high velocity of turnover that no one can build the trust. No one can hold those relationships.
And so, so much of what I'm trying to do and what my team is trying to do is - honor the fact that it's the relationships that do the work. And to turn this system into one that is relationship-oriented instead of always focused on these transactions. I guess, the last thing I would say is just that, in that vein, I think it's really critical that we be clear that this is not just some wacky notion I have. The first paper on the impacts of staff turnover on housing the chronically homeless came out in like 2010, I think. And noted that an initiative that the Feds started in 2003 to end chronic homelessness didn't get that done - largely suffered, largely suffered, because the implementation sites couldn't maintain staff. I mean, this is a question of, do we actually want to do this or not? The path is bright and clear. There are no tremendous unknowns. It's just a question of, do we actually care? Or is it just a thing that it makes us feel good to talk about?
[00:28:26] Crystal Fincher: Right, or feel good to fund and not actually be concerned about the end result, which is what I feel like we set ourselves up for sometimes by saying, "Okay, we have a great appropriation. Boom, here, let's go. Solve it, Marc."
But I also think it's helpful when we talk about service providers - I think some people envision this system of people and, "Hey, let me look up - someone needs shelter, let me dial up the shelter directory and ooh, I can see on my screen, there's a vacancy there. Let me send them here," where there is no cohesive system. We're talking about nonprofit organizations, we're talking about mental health and health organizations, we're talking about a huge hodgepodge of charities, nonprofits, health and mental health service providers who have some joint contracts, some individual contracts, but really it's just this patchwork of things all over the place. And I don't even - I think it was en vogue for a while to talk about - well, we just need a streamlined dashboard to have everybody just on the same page and see. I mean, that's been tried and has failed and several iterations in several places - because there are so many different providers. It just seems these are not people on one standard system, one standard way of doing things.
But to that, these organizations have a model that is really not able to handle what is being asked of it. Unless those models change, it seems pretty apparent - unless frontline workers are paid more - we're asking them to de-escalate and mediate more than police officers and firefighters do. They're doing it oftentimes with more trauma behind them if they have lived experience. And being asked to do it while living in poverty - which doing anything and everything while living in poverty is harder. Also, these organizations are understaffed, so you have people making minimum wage who are also doing the job of two and three people and being asked to do as much as they can bear until they burn out. Until we engage with that - and there have been some conversations within some organizations - but it seems like until there's a much wider conversation about that and acknowledgement of that and pressure to address the needs that we have today in our system, that it's not a realistic expectation that if we provide the money or if we - certainly, money can do a lot in a lot of different areas, especially if we just give it to people directly. But for looking at the system of service providers, we really have to ask - if your model is not working today, then what is it serving and who is it serving? How do we reorient that towards the people who actually need the help the most? I really hope we have more of that conversation among here.
I guess, looking forward, what do you think it's going to take to help some of those conversations along? Have you seen progress in any areas, or any models that can be followed for looking at how to align our provision of services to the actual needs of the people who need shelter?
[00:32:17] Marc Dones: I mean, this is the scary part - is, I think we're actually the farthest down that road in the country. We're the only system - I report to someone who lives in a shelter. One of my board chairs lives in a shelter right now. Half of my staff, myself included, identify as people with lived experience. No other system can say that and so, we are the next great experiment. I think about what it means to not just say we're centering people with lived experience or to say we're centering the voices of people who are actually trying to use the stuff, but to have that be structural and not tokenistic and really, really embedded. I mean, there are so many things that - we should talk for hours.
[00:33:05] Crystal Fincher: I know - I'm looking at the time going - man, I could ask you 17 more questions right now - yes.
[00:33:05] Marc Dones: I think - there are so many things in which you just said that I want to talk about. The thing that I want to really lean in on is - I do think, and I have seen it personally - I've seen people change over the course of the pandemic and realize how bad some of the congregate shelters were and have to be like, "We can't go back there." People who I've had arguments about it with in the past were like, "Actually, no, this is terrible." I do have hope and when I think about how we move forward and how we as a region can maybe be the proof point for why it is successful to center people - this is hokey, but I think it is about the community conversation. And I want to disaggregate that from the media conversation. I'm on a podcast, but still.
[00:34:24] Crystal Fincher: I'm just a political consultant. I am not media.
[00:34:27] Marc Dones: There we go, but I think that we got to talk to each other more than be talked at by media. I love my journalist colleagues and I have great respect for what they do and, frankly, the work they do to hold government accountable and all the ways that that must be done. But the way we talk about homelessness in the media is broken. It is bereft of that fundamental humanity and is tied to almost every single misconception that I can name. And so, when people ask me, "How can I make a difference?" I say, "Look, we just had a really great conversation. I feel like you asked me some questions, you got some different information. In some cases, I was informed by one of your perspectives. Invite your neighbor over and have this conversation with them, host a little dinner for your block. If you're part of a Rotary Club..." And I really mean that because unless we, as the community, start to have a different conversation about homelessness, we cannot expect either at the elected official level or the budgeting level - we can't expect those things to change. If this is a democracy, for as long as we can try to hold onto that -
[00:35:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that's a whole other show, isn't it?
[00:36:02] Marc Dones: - then, it's incumbent on us to be having the conversation we want to see leadership have. I try very hard to take my cue from the community so that I can just be like, "Look." I remember I got into a dust-up about some stuff a couple months ago and I remember calling my board chair who lives in a shelter. I was like, "Am I wrong? Tell me if I have lost my mind and I will stop. This is what I see, and if you tell me or the community tells me that I'm out of line, then we'll end this right now."
And that's what I think we need to be doing, is really focusing on building that community conversation, building that community will. I say this all the time and I mean it - I don't say no to anything - I have been to Rotary Clubs, I have done little dinners to talk about homelessness, because I want us to hold the nuance and compassion necessary to build the system that will get this job done.
[00:37:08] Crystal Fincher: Well, I certainly appreciate you taking the time to talk about this today and to shed some light on this for us. You are welcome back anytime - there's so much more we could talk about, but we are at time today. I just want to, once again, thank you, Marc Dones, CEO of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority for just helping to enlighten us. We are certainly going to keep an eye on how things unfold. Thanks so much.
[00:37:36] Marc Dones: Well, thank you for having me - glad to be here, I'll come back. We'll talk about democracy.
[00:37:40] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcast - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
On this Friday show, we present Part 2 of the Hacks & Wonks 2022 Post-Primary Election Recap which was live-streamed on August 9, 2022 with special guests EJ Juárez and Doug Trumm. In Part 2, the panel breaks down primary election results for State Legislature seats in the battleground district of the 47th LD and in Seattle-area Democrat vs Democrat races in the 36th, 37th, and 46th LDs, The historical importance of The Stranger endorsement in the progressive path out of the primary is discussed as well as Doug and EJ’s thoughts on other races in the 42nd LD and for Secretary of State.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-hosts, EJ Juárez at @EliseoJJuarez and Doug Trumm at @dmtrumm. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
Hacks & Wonks 2022 Primary Election Recap Livestream | August 9th, 2022: https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/august-2022-postprimary-recap
Transcript
[00:00:00] Bryce Cannatelli: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I’m Bryce from the Hacks & Wonks production team. On this show we talk with Policy Wonks and Political Hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work, with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening and what you can do about it.
You’re listening to part 2 of our 2022 Post-Primary Election Recap, with special guests EJ Juárez and Doug Trumm, that we live-streamed on August 9th, 2022. If you missed part 1, you can find it as the previous episode of your podcast feed, or you can find the audio and transcript for the full recap on our website, officialhacksandwonks.com. Thank you for listening!
[00:00:59] Crystal Fincher: Another very interesting district is the 47th Legislative District, which is half of Kent, Covington, Maple Valley, parts of Auburn - again, a very purple district - one that sees two open seats - an incumbent remaining in Representative Debra Entenman, but an open Senate seat after Mona Das announced that she was leaving and an open House seat after Pat Sullivan retired. And so we had competitive Democratic and Republican primaries going on here with open seats, just a lot of questions about what is going to happen here in the 47th - very hard to predict. But we saw some really interesting results. Again, this is one of the districts that Republicans said was one of their top targets - definitely in the top two or three targets that they felt were there for pickups and turning these seats that were held by Republican [Democratic] incumbents and two of them now open seats into Republican pickups.
And what we saw was in the one seat with Debra Entenman, she finished comfortably with 55% against a Republican candidate, Kyle Lyebyedyev. There was another Republican contesting in the race, but Debra made it through fairly comfortably. We had a Senate race with Satwinder Kaur and Claudia Kauffman as Democrats against Bill Boyce, the Republican. Bill Boyce, who is a City Councilmember in the City of Kent, a Republican, also a Black Republican that's running here is - has 45.58%. And then a very, very, very close race between Claudia Kauffman and Satwinder Kaur. Currently, Claudia Kauffman is leading with 27.23% over Satwinder with 27.02%. This is a race that is under a hundred votes separating the two and it looks like Claudia Kauffman is going to squeeze and squeak through here. This is a really interesting race. And again, you look at the combined percentage of the Democratic vote - they're above, they're like 54% there. That's a great result that we see on the Democratic side, but wow, what a really closely contested race.
And then in the other seat, we saw two Democrats - Chris Stearns with 33.4% against Shukri Olow, another Democrat, who is making it through - both Democrats making it through the primary - Shukri with 19.6% against three Republicans. One of - again, a party pick for the Republicans - Carmen Goers raised $200,000 in the primary, spent the bulk of it. She actually finished in last place. This was another Black Republican here with two other Republican white male opponents who finished with 15.1% and 17.4%, respectively, with Ted Cooke and Barry Knowles. Very interesting result. I don't know that many people - I certainly did not call that there was gonna be a Democratic shutout in one of these seats in this purple district, or that the other results looked so strong in favor of the other ones. What do you see when you see this 47th Legislative District race, Doug?
[00:04:37] Doug Trumm: Yeah. You can't get any bigger with them not even making it to the primary. So having two Democrats in that Position 2 seat - that is going to be an exciting race, but not for the Republicans. But we'll circle back to that, 'cause I do want to talk about that race more, but I suppose we should talk about the other races more a little bit too. Mona Das retiring - I think that certainly led to some nervousness that we're not gonna have the incumbent advantage and that didn't seem to be an issue with the result. And it does look like it'll be Claudia Kauffman, so again - an established name - but someone I think who seemed to do a good job, so someone I'm actually glad to see coming back. I'm not always thrilled when you get people who keep going back for many decades, but I think that one is an exception.
But yeah, and going back to the 30th as well - on the Democratic side, I guess over all those years of not having that many Black - and apologies for my cat making all that noise - not having that many Black candidates, I guess assumption was they would do worse than the white candidates that people were putting forward, or just maybe wasn't even a thought. But it's pretty clear that those Black candidates are doing just as good as any of the white candidates, if not better, because we see these results in the 30th and in the 47th and all across really the metro area where we're seeing voters really resonating with these folks. If anything, it appears to be an asset. And yeah, it just clearly is a district that is slipping away from Republicans and they don't seem to be doing very much to fix that. And as you mentioned, Carmen Goers finishing fifth when she had the support of the party at, I think, all levels. And then additionally, she had The Seattle Times endorsement, which didn't appear to be worth the paper it was written on - which I don't know if that's true of every race, but in the 47th that's a really embarrassing finish for the Seattle Times. And as EJ alluded to - a Viking funeral for $200,000 worth of cash - that's gotta be one of the only times that's happened in Washington history - that a candidate has raised $200,000 in a primary and then finished fifth, at least at the state legislator level.
[00:07:14] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. What did you see here, EJ?
[00:07:19] EJ Juárez: I saw - I think one of the most exciting things for me is that this actually might be the first time where we have two Native people representing the same district in the House in Washington State. And I think that is incredible - the opportunity and the history making moment of those candidates' ascension if they are the victors in November. I really think that is the underreported takeaway of this cycle in that these are two candidates, although one has - both of them are previously elected in other offices - that's a big deal, right?
On the other end of that spectrum, it is wildly confusing to me the uneven field game that has occurred in the 47th. We have some candidates who were deeply knocking on doors every weekend, huge volunteer turnout. And then we have some candidates who really focused on media and focused on really traditional electronic - I don't even know if that's the way to put it, "traditional electronic" - they weren't at the doors, they weren't making a ton of phone calls, and they were pretty open about it. So I think there's a lot of questions to be answered in terms of how people got through and the vote share. So when you're looking at Rep Position 2 with Shukri and Chris, Shukri outraised Chris and really produced not very many votes for that. And when you look at the per dollar spend on per vote, it doesn't really - the math doesn't quite work out the way you would expect. Now, a D-on-D race in that is going to be pretty - there will be fireworks, right? Because you have to make up a considerable amount of points and the clock is reset for both of those candidates. So I'm watching them really closely. I'm excited. I think they're both great candidates. I think they're both folks who, as they move towards the general, are going to start to distinguish themselves to voters.
I think when you look at that Senate race, I cannot help but think if I was a Republican strategist and fundraiser, I would've wanted to pour a lot more money into that race supporting a Black Republican versus some of the white Republicans, which received much higher proportions of spend from caucus accounts and from PACs associated with Republicans. There's probably some obvious reasons for that on that side that don't need to go too much into depth on, but it is shocking that in a three-way race, the Republican still only musters 45%.
[00:10:06] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that's all valid. And I even think - actually in this district in the 47th, it has been an interesting one. This is actually - I live near the border of the 47th - the 47th and the 33rd District border. And in the 47th, actually, we've traditionally seen Black candidates, visibly non-Christian candidates - whether it's someone with a hijab or a turban - underperform compared to spend a number of times here. And so it's interesting to see these results come through. I don't know what role that played on the Republican side also, but that's just another dynamic in this race that has been interesting. I do think that this sets up - just for the candidates that are there, that are gonna be in the general - really interesting matchups and comparisons. And I do think that Democrats - all of the Democrats in these races - do need to be out on the doors, do need to work through the general. Certainly a favorable result in the primary, but another one where they can't rest at all and need to continue to push forward.
But one where I think - this was an area where people were wondering - Hey, where's the public safety conversation gonna be? And are Republicans gonna be able to land some hits here and are people hyper-worried about inflation? I think, yet again in this district, I think people saw that the conversation on public safety on the ground is a lot more nuanced than it is in the media - I think is safe to say. So many times we hear the conversation between more cops and "Back the Blue" and - hey, we're - no candidates are actually running on this, FYI - but like "Defund Everything." There's not actually a candidate saying that right now, but the perception is out there - that that has been there. And people aren't there - even people who favor more police, who are not bothered by more police - are saying - but what we really need are behavioral health services, are substance use disorder, addiction treatment services, are housing for people. We have to address these root causes. If there's an issue with someone who is going through a crisis, police just don't have the tools to solve that. I think that's pretty universally acknowledged and not a controversial statement. And when polling goes beyond just some very basic questions and probes into those, we repeatedly see the public saying - yeah, of course we need those things. And so it was very interesting to see some of these attacks - whether it's in the 30th, or throughout the state, in the 47th - on those issues and they just fell flat. And even on the inflation issue, people are worried and people are absolutely squeezed, but looking at - okay, so what are you gonna do about it? And I think Democrats told a better story about - okay, here's the plan. This is what we plan to invest in and this is how we plan to help. I think working people felt that Democrats had a plan that was more tailored to their needs from Democrats. So just an interesting result that we saw there.
We will pivot a bit to the Seattle races, which are different than all of these battleground races that we've been talking about. And these are in the City of Seattle - Democrat versus Democrat races. We saw a number of open seat races that have happened here. And so we can start with the 36th District, which had a pretty stark and conclusive result, I think, in the open seat race that was there, where there was a contested primary that had five Democratic candidates there - different shades of there, from more progressive to probably on the most moderate end with Waylan Robert. But we saw Julia Reed, who received The Seattle Times and The Stranger endorsement take 55% of the vote, followed by Jeff Manson who is making it through the primary with 13.5% of the vote. And then followed by Nicole Gomez, Waylon Robert, and Elizabeth Tyler Crone. Looks like that is a race that is Julia's for the taking, I think realistically, just looking there. And certainly benefited from both The Times and The Stranger endorsement.
There's another race in the 37th in South Seattle where Chipalo Street got both The Stranger and The Times endorsement, but that was a much closer race where we saw Chipalo with 41% of the vote - 41.53% - and Emijah Smith making it through the primary with 35.37% of the vote - a much closer race. We saw in the 46th Legislative District - Darya Farivar make it through in first place, the progressive candidate in the race - she currently has 31.61% of the vote and Lelach Rave finishing in second, making it through the primary at 28.06% of the vote. And then we saw in the 34th Legislative District, in that open seat there, Emily Alvarado with 54% of the vote to Leah Griffin's 31.2%.
I'll kick this off, as we discuss these Seattle races at-large. It's been talked about so many times before - how in Seattle, how consequential the Seattle Times and The Stranger endorsements are. On a previous post-primary recap, Michael Charles put it very succinctly - saying there are two political parties in Seattle - The Seattle Times and The Seattle Stranger. And actually went back and looked at the numbers - and for races in the City of Seattle, for legislative districts in Seattle, for candidates on the ballot, for the past decade - candidates endorsed by The Stranger have made it through to the primary a 100% of the time. It actually seems like, particularly for progressive candidates, the path requires going through The Stranger - requires that endorsement to make it on to the general. How consequential is that, and what do you think we saw overall in general in these races, Doug?
[00:16:50] Doug Trumm: Yeah, I think that Stranger endorsement - it's really huge, particularly in a primary in Seattle - I think the 46th is where we really saw the test of that. In Seattle the Urbanist Elections Committee, which I'm a member of, is lucky enough to talk to most of the candidates. And when people skip - usually it's a sign that they're either running in that centrist lane, or they just got the race together so late that they didn't really have time or put it together enough to respond. But we agreed with The Stranger and The Seattle Times with Julia Reed - I think there's a unique case where there's just a candidate that was so - just polished - and any other candidates had some promise, but there just weren't really compelling case to say - but why not, Julia Reed. And I think that's a testament to running a really good race and being a good candidate. And hopefully everyone's right about that, 'cause I don't think you see all three of us agree very often.
In the 46th, on the other hand, we did end up endorsing Melissa Taylor and really liked what she brought to the table in housing. But we were also - really thought that Darya Farivar was a fantastic candidate as well. And particularly around the issues of transportation - being Policy Director at Disability Rights Washington, which is a great partner of us and a great leader on all these climate and climate justice issues at the state level and the local level. So we were happy with both candidates and great to see Darya go through and being several points ahead of Lelach where - we didn't get a chance to talk to her. And I think she's more in the Sara Nelson lane of the party who endorsed her, if you will. How that race shakes out will have, I think, pretty big bearing on just what is possible on some issues like housing, where it seems like someone like Rave is staking out a very moderate position there and not really being upfront about - Hey, we need to do something about exclusionary zoning, we need to make our zoning more inclusive and be able to fit more people into parts of the city - where Northeast Seattle is so wealthy, so much opportunity, so many good schools and good parks and everything, and it's a part of the city that's pulled up the drawbridge a little bit. Maybe she will change her tune on that position a little bit, but I think - although Darya didn't talk about housing a lot, she's someone who on the questionnaire was pretty clear - she's on that same page around ending exclusionary zoning and promoting missing middle. It's an issue that we track really closely - polling shows that Washington voters are increasingly focused on that. And I think it's because people are smart and you get that the whole world's experiencing inflation - you can't really blame one party for that. You maybe can blame Putin for that a little bit, but no one can control Putin. But what are you gonna do to help people control their costs? And one - the hugest thing is housing. It's just - it's a massive cost in our region. And if you don't have a solution that both gets at promoting affordable housing through investment and also dealing with our zoning and policies that just make it really restrictive to create more housing, you're not really tackling that problem. And I think for some voters that's really starting to hit home, which could give a candidate like Darya the edge. And I will let EJ break down some of the other races, as I've gone on long enough. But it definitely was a reassuring result in that sense.
[00:20:45] EJ Juárez: Yeah, so I - one, I appreciate being on a show with Doug because Doug is so smart about so many things. And as he is talking, I'm writing down things - oh, I need to look into some of that. For me, back to the question around endorsements and the power of The Stranger. I think Michael Charles was absolutely right around the two-party system now. I also feel like it is incredibly disingenuous for anybody who works in politics to be surprised if the candidate who gets The Stranger endorsement gets through. I think it shows a lack of context around just how much that means to people, both as a key part of many people's own political maturity within the city, right? The Stranger serves as this thing that people learn about Seattle from, learn how Seattle operates - and discounting the weight of that endorsement is done at one's own peril.
I think how we get, how we've gotten to this place - and many of these endorsements and many of the races bear this out - is that there are a couple of things at play. Media consolidation has removed many of the other endorsing organizations that had typically seen - excuse me, typically been seen as nonpartisan, right? We no longer have The Seattle PI, we no longer have many of the regional or neighborhood papers that were also doing this for many years. The lanes of engagement have also changed for people who are coming into elected office. The salaries that we pay people to do public service no longer match the cost of living in many of our cities. So therefore, you are narrowing the field more and more and more as this goes. I think the two remaining factors that I think of when you think about just the power of these - of The Times and The Stranger's endorsements - are the policy hegemony, right? The lane in which we talk about policies is so locked in and narrow in the full spectrum of possibility. So the process of differentiating - if we're looking at the 36th - 7 candidates, is it 2, 4, or 6 candidates who have minor policy differences and may only sell that difference with enthusiasm or gusto differently, but are 99% aligned - is more and more difficult for voters to actually judge on policy versus performance.
And I think that gets to the last piece here of - the opposition that is understood in Seattle politics has become more and more clear around - there is the folks that are trying to do good and the folks that are trying to do bad. And the folks that are trying to do bad - when I started working in politics here, that was - you could name 50 different organizations, 50 different people off the top of your head. And now it feels like every campaign has really locked in on - the bad guys are Amazon, the bad guys are the tech bros, the bad guys are X, Y, and Z, but it's really focused on small pockets of opposition. And for many reasons, some of those groups earn that label - I will say that - but in many ways it limits the amount of discourse that happens. And I'm going on a little bit long, but I think it can't be overstated that many of these factors inform how we got to a place where two newspapers informed so much of our political success in the City.
[00:24:25] Crystal Fincher: Yeah - to your point - the reason why Hacks & Wonks exists is because of the frustration with how narrow and shallow some of those conversations can be, with so much consolidation and with the thinning of just the amount of people covering these races, the amount of visibility that races and policy have, the lack of accountability that we see with so many of our leaders - not just federally, but in the City of Seattle - we're still wondering what happened to texts that disappeared at a really pivotal time in the City. So it is challenging to work through that and deal with that. And I just think that this is a time where I hope lots of community organizations lean in and engage and try to connect their own memberships, their own spheres of influence to the process. One thing that I found really exciting about these results that I haven't really seen talked about was - there's a lot of public polling available, but the primary is a spectacular, actual public poll. And when we talk about inclusive zoning and making progress on affordable housing, the vast majority of voters in every single district - from the 46th to the 37th - voted in favor of the candidates who said we're taking on exclusive zoning, we're going to make it more inclusive, we're going to vote for that missing middle housing bill, and that spoke strongly in favor of it. That they voted overwhelmingly for candidates who talked about strengthening the social safety net, who talked about addressing behavioral health services, substance use disorder services, supportive housing and wraparound services - and not just focusing on the - well, we just need to lock people up and do what we've been doing that has landed us here today. They're really talking about addressing a lot of these root causes and taking substantive - not incremental, but pretty dynamic - change in many of these areas. And voters were right there, so I think that that was encouraging to see. And I would just wonder and hope that we're going to see that reflected and responded to throughout the general election.
Full disclosure - I worked for Melissa Taylor, I've paid close attention to the 46th and a number of these races - and am excited to see a strong progressive get through in that race - and Darya Farivar, especially with a lot of the work that she's done in disability justice, which is critical. And so it's just gonna be really interesting to see as these general election races go by, and I think the 37th Legislative District looks like a very competitive race that could go either way right now, that it's gonna be really interesting to hear in these opportunities where it's not quite a Democrat versus Republican conversation that does get flattened a lot, but hopefully we can get into some of the meatiness of issues. There's a lot of policy space in the Democratic arena, in the progressive arena to really talk through - what are your plans for fixing the issues that are challenging people? How do you plan to make people's lives easier and simpler and what are you going to stand up for? Where are your red lines? What are you gonna lead on? Are really interesting and exciting things to see, that I see there.
So I think that the entire media ecosystem from The Urbanist playing a crucial role, the South Seattle Emerald, Real Change - just a lot of community media. Community organizations have a lot of power just because there just aren't many people covering or talking about this - and this is an opportunity for them to talk about what's important to them, their members, people they serve, their community. And we need it now more than ever - as we finish thinking about these Seattle races and just other races across the state, is there anything that you think is flying under the radar that's notable or things that we haven't discussed tonight that you feel we should be paying attention to? And I will start with Doug.
[00:29:05] Doug Trumm: Oh, so many things - I think, just to add another thought about the Seattle races is - again, I think what was another case with Chipalo Street, where we endorsed him as well and I think that's another race where Seattle Times and Stranger - we agreed. And I think that may have partially been just an advantage of him having his game plan set when he announced and it seemed like Emijah Smith was a little bit more still trying to catch up - announcing a little bit later, I think. And we didn't get a chance to talk to her, so that was part of our decision - she didn't return a questionnaire. But he was someone who was really good at talking about housing. So again, I think that fits the theme and Emily Alvarado doing better than Leah Griffin, who we endorsed - but we like both candidates, we were very clear that you have two great options there - again, someone with housing chops was doing a little better. I don't know - I might be stretching this theme a little bit much, but it definitely seems like credibility on that issue is a huge asset. And that should be good news. Unfortunately we're gonna have people like Gerry Pollet getting re-elected, but they might look at this and go - maybe I've been doing this a little bit wrong if I really want to continue getting re-elected.
But I guess one race we didn't talk a lot about - but we shouldn't shy away from the bad news, which is the 42nd did not go well for Democrats. You had hope of a Senate pickup there and it's still not completely impossible, but Sharon Shewmake, who is an incumbent House representative, getting 47% in that district - that's not a great result against two Republicans. And one of 'em did have kind of that name ID - Simon Sefzik, or however you say that - so that might have helped him, but does look like he'll be the one through. So she'll continue to face that in the primary. And then we have actually - two of those seats are Democratic held, so the people lower on the ticket did a little bit better. But these could be the two seats we lose, but I do think we make that up maybe in LD10 where Greg Gilday, the Republican incumbent, isn't doing well at all - is down like four points. And also in the 26th, as we've talked about a little bit, with having Adison Richards potentially being a pickup there - it might end up coming out in the wash.
But I don't know what's going on in the 42nd - I thought that district was drifting a little bit blue, but - and the redistricting is really odd because it's such a huge district - all the changes happened within the sort of Bellingham scope. And I guess they must have just carved out a little bit of Bellingham that was keeping that district where Shewmake was winning. And it's also - I guess, maybe Shewmake wasn't as strong of a candidate as maybe some of - her seatmate Alicia Rule doing a point and change better. I don't know if that's just the money in that race or what, or if it really should have been flip-flopped who tried to grab that Senate seat, but it might have been for naught if that district is just now a +3 or something Republican - you really have to run a really good race maybe to win that. And with Republicans pouring money in there, it's not as favorable terrain - which kind of brings us back to redistricting - it's a weirdly drawn district and I guess we left it that way, but why? Maybe I'll leave it at that for now and let others jump in.
[00:32:44] Crystal Fincher: Go ahead, EJ.
[00:32:45] EJ Juárez: I think I'll start with the 42nd. I think this is a district that is an opportunity for Democrats to begin with, right? If it were not for the death of conspiracy theorist, COVID-denying Doug Ericksen, who loved to work for dictators - I think we wouldn't even be in this situation. Any Democrat who is putting up numbers right now - it was an uphill battle - and I think that the points are valid around just how hard that was going to be for just about anybody, given the challenges of where the lines are gonna be and all these things.
I think in terms of other stuff that is top of mind for me is the real tragedy of Julie Anderson's run for Secretary of State - incredible underperformance, not even carrying her own county of Pierce County, running as an independent against the incumbent Steve Hobbs - is something that I can't, I keep coming back to where I'm like - all right, that does not make sense in my head yet. Given everybody's enthusiasm of keeping Steve Hobbs as far away as possible from actually legislating - that part does. But the lack of challenge to his ascension into the Secretary of State's office seems a bit odd. It is almost certain that the Democrat will hold that seat for the first time in 60 years, and I think that is something that is to celebrate. I think that is a good thing for Washington, even as oddly as we have arrived at that fact. Some of the other quick things on my list is - as long as you're asking for that grab bag - I'll go back to the complete lack of strategy on the Republican side, in terms of how they are planning on taking and building a majority in this state. Still top of mind for me - it is the bright, shiny object of - are they going to produce a strategy at any point in the next decade? I don't know.
And then lastly, where Democrats have made long-term investments, they are starting to yield the results and the rewards of that - whether that's Federal Way, whether that's in the 26th out in Gig Harbor - Democrats are getting those rewards for decisions and investments that they made 8-10 years ago. And the multiple cycle layering of those massive multimillion dollar investments in voter turnout, in improving the data on who lives in those areas, and making the case to those voters is making their job easier. And when you look at places that have not enjoyed that investment that are continually looked at as opportunities and pickups, especially when you're looking at the kind of "demographics as destiny" argument that gets made, we don't see perennial investments in places where there are large populations of color that are ascendant to majorities. We haven't seen the multi-layered approach in Yakima. We haven't seen that multi-layered approach in the Tri-Cities. And frankly, the results show - Democrats are not moving forward in many of those primaries and the lack of investment from the party shows. But where they have done it, it has been an incredible reward for them.
[00:36:03] Crystal Fincher: Completely agree. And with that, this recap comes to a close. I want to thank our panelists - EJ Juárez, Doug Trumm - for their insight and making this an engaging and informative event. To those watching online, thanks so much for tuning in and for sending in questions. If you missed any of the discussion tonight, you can catch up on the Hacks & Wonks Facebook page or Twitter, where we're @HacksWonks. Special thanks to essential members of the Hacks & Wonks team and coordinators for this evening, Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. If you missed voting in the primary, you still have time to make your voice heard in the general elections coming up on November 8th. If you need to register to vote, update your registration, or find information, you can go to MyVote.wa.gov. And as a reminder, even if you've been previously incarcerated, your right to vote is restored and you can re-register to vote immediately upon your release, even if you are still under community supervision - so that's new this year. You can vote if you are not currently incarcerated - you just need to re-register at MyVote.wa.gov. Be sure to tune into Hacks & Wonks on your favorite podcast app for our midweek interviews and our Friday week in review shows or at officialhacksandwonks.com. I've been your host, Crystal Fincher - see you next time.
[00:37:27] Bryce Cannatelli: Thank you for listening to part 2 of our Hacks & Wonks 2022 Post-Primary Election Recap. If you missed part 1, you can find both parts of the livestream in our podcast feed or you can find the video and text transcript for the full recap on our website at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Thank you for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this midweek show, we present Part 1 of the Hacks & Wonks 2022 Post-Primary Election Recap which was live-streamed on August 9, 2022 with special guests EJ Juárez and Doug Trumm. In Part 1, the panel breaks down primary election results in the 3rd and 8th Congressional Districts before moving on to battleground districts for State Legislature seats in the 26th and 30th LDs. Stay tuned for Part 2 of the recap releasing this Friday for more primary analysis!
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-hosts, EJ Juárez at @EliseoJJuarez and Doug Trumm at @dmtrumm. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
Hacks & Wonks 2022 Primary Election Recap Livestream | August 9th, 2022: https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/august-2022-postprimary-recap
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I’m Crystal Fincher, and I’m a political consultant and your host. On this show we talk with Policy Wonks and Political Hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work, with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening and what you can do about it.
You’re listening to part 1 of our 2022 Post-Primary Election Recap, with special guests EJ Juárez and Doug Trumm, which we live-streamed on August 9th, 2022. You’ll get part 2 in your feed this Friday, August 19th, in place of our regular week-in-review episode. You can find the audio and full transcript for this recap on our website, officialhacksandwonks.com. Thank you for listening!
Good evening, and welcome to the Hacks & Wonks Post-Primary Election Recap. I'm Crystal Fincher - I'm a political consultant and the host of the Hacks & Wonks podcast. And today I'm thrilled to be joined by three of my favorite Hacks and Wonks to break down what happened in last week's primary election.
Before we begin tonight, I'd like to do a land acknowledgement. I'd like to acknowledge that we are on the traditional land of the first people of Seattle, the Coast-Salish peoples, specifically the Duwamish People, past and present. I would like to honor with gratitude the land itself and the Duwamish Tribe.
We're excited to be able to live stream this recap on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Additionally, we're recording this recap for broadcast on KODX and KVRU radio, podcast, and it will be available with a full text transcript at officialhacksandwonks.com.
We invite our audience to ask questions of our panelists. If you're watching a live stream online, then you can ask questions by commenting on the livestream. You can also text your questions to 206-395-6248. That's 206-395-6248, and that number will scroll at the bottom of the screen.
Our esteemed panelists for the evening are EJ Juárez. EJ is a public servant who remains involved in numerous political efforts across Washington. In his day job, he's the Director of Equity and Environmental Justice for the Department of Natural Resources. He leads that agency's work to reduce health and economic disparities through environmental justice practices. He previously served as the first Public Policy Manager for the Group Health Foundation, where he led the work to create that organization's political and legislative portfolio after serving in leadership posts at the Seattle Library and as the Executive Director at Progressive Majority and ColorPAC, organizations dedicated to recruiting, training, and electing progressive champions in Washington and Oregon.
Thank you so much - welcome.
[00:03:01] EJ Juárez: Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
[00:03:03] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. And next we have Doug Trumm. Doug is the Executive Editor of The Urbanist and serves on The Urbanist Elections Committee, which crafts the organization's endorsements. An Urbanist writer since 2015, he dreams of pedestrianizing streets, blanketing the city in bus lanes, and unleashing an eco-friendly mass timber building spree to end the affordable housing shortage and avert our coming climate catastrophe. He graduated from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington. He lives in East Fremont and loves to explore the city by bike, foot, or bus.
Welcome, Doug Trumm. Great to have you - so we are having a little bit of technical difficulties with Doug, he will join us back again as soon as he's able, but we'll get started with EJ Juárez.
Starting off - I think we can start with the Congressional races, where just yesterday - in the 3rd Congressional District, which is in Southwest Washington - we saw Jaime Herrera Beutler concede. And so Joe Kent, the Republican, is finishing in second place in the primary - proceeding to go to the general election against Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who is the Democrat in that race and finished first. What did you see happening in this? Did you expect Joe Kent to make it through? And what does this mean for what this race is gonna look like in the general election?
[00:04:37] EJ Juárez: So I'll be honest and say no - I did not expect Joe Kemp to make it through. I think I had more faith in Southwest Washington, honestly. This is a situation where - I think conventional wisdom had most of the energy focused on Jaime - how were folks going to make the case that Jaime needed to be replaced? And unfortunately for Jaime, that meant everybody was really against her and the results prove that. My big concern moving forward - and I think things that I'm gonna be watching for is - is this a Democratic operation in that district that can pull through and actually deliver a field strategy, that can deliver on the fundraising and the hopes of the strategy of what the national Democrats have been doing - is supporting these Trump conspiracy theorists over more moderate candidates in the hopes that Democrats pull through and take them out in the general. This is one where it's really gonna be - is Nancy Pelosi's strategy gonna play out the way they hope.
[00:05:42] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this is gonna be really interesting. There was a lot of late money that came in in support of Jaime Herrera Beutler. There was a lot of talk that she wasn't very visible throughout the end of that campaign and so it - that may have had something to do with it. But I think the GOP electorate is pretty fractured. And this is one - we'll talk about several others coming up - but one of a number of races where the party establishment made it known what their preference was, put resources and a big push behind their candidates, and it actually didn't quite land. Their voters said that's actually not our choice and went a different direction and Jaime Herrera Beutler has been known as - it's interesting to say "moderate Republican," but more moderate than her counterparts, I think is fair. She had that reputation, but had been pushed further to the right kind of in response to where the base is this time, but not far enough. Joe Kent is in the race, he's Trump-endorsed, he is a frequent guest on the Sean Hannity program, he thinks that Jim Jordan should take over as leader of the party in place of Kevin McCarthy, he said that he's going to immediately call for Joe Biden's impeachment and investigate the 2020 election, he does not believe in support for Ukraine, defended calling President Zelenskyy a thug - just has a number of beliefs that seem like they aren't in line with where the GOP has traditionally been, certainly different than where the majority of residents in the state are if you look at all available polling. But he cobbled together a coalition that made it through the primary. Do you think that Republicans are going to coalesce behind him, Doug?
[00:07:40] Doug Trumm: I think ultimately they will. And I guess it depends how many people are dyed-in-the-wool Republicans in that district, because I think the sort of structural problem maybe that the state GOP is running into is just that the more they make their brand true to that base that elected Joe Kent, the less that they're appealing to the swing independent voters. So I don't know what to make - I think Republicans ultimately might come home, but they might lose a few folks who just - disgusted about the whole thing about her losing her seat. But it seems like there's been an incredible amount of brand loyalty throughout a near coup, so I don't know when to expect a huge exodus, but just a little bit of bleeding in that district would - could end up being costly.
[00:08:35] Crystal Fincher: Do you think they're gonna be able to effectively moderate, EJ?
[00:08:42] EJ Juárez: I'm gonna go with no. I'm sitting here thinking of what it must be like to be a Republican who shows up to your county Republican meeting in this moment where you have such dissatisfaction - both with your options, your party apparatus and strategy - where literally, there is no consensus. And when we talk about - how are Republicans gonna activate their base, I'm not convinced Republicans know who their base are in this moment. And it shifts in every district based on every candidate and the lack of consistency there - one, makes their money less effective, right? You're not operating in scale and you're not operating with the mass kind of penetration that you can get when you have a consistent messaging strategy that is born out of multiple cycles of races. So I think it's messy, and I think that this race in particular really is a great illustrative moment for what happened in the legislative races and what we're seeing across Washington State right now - where you cannot get Republicans on-brand, which is so wild to me given the past 30 years of rigid brand management.
[00:09:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. It's going to be very interesting to see just how that turns out. And I've certainly been asked recently - well, Joe Kent is a different kind of Republican, not the traditional kind of Republican we've seen elected here in Washington State. Does that mean that Marie Gluesenkamp Perez has a chance to win this race? This is a district where Jaime Herrera Beutler previously won it with 56% of the vote, I believe it was. Donald Trump won it with just under 51% to Joe Biden's around 48%. So this is certainly a district that at least leans Republicans if not more. Does the Democrat have a shot, do you think, Doug?
[00:10:42] Doug Trumm: Absolutely. A lot of race still to happen, but I would not be feeling confident if I was just assuming that was going to be a safe R seat. Just the impact of that particular issue - and Jaime Herrera Beutler's been there a long time, so I'm sure there's some loyalists who are a little bit offended that that's how her career ended. So I don't know - it's just, like you said, it's messy. And the brand is just murky right now and so much of it's driven just by anger and backlash - that's a very crude tool to wield. It's effective in motivating people, but you don't know which direction they're gonna go. And if just the conservative media apparatus is just - it completely runs on that type of thing and it's unwieldy.
[00:11:40] EJ Juárez: I'll just jump in briefly - I agree with Doug. I think the challenge here is that in any other year, if you were gonna look at the Democrat in that race and say you pulled less than 34%, that's not a good number to build from. And that's a really tough place to find a strategy and a foothold. I think that given the uniqueness of the challenger who's making it through to the general, it throws that playbook out. And we're gonna see over the next month - I think these next 30 days are gonna be really telling over just how much get up and go those local Democrats have in order to make up those percentages.
[00:12:20] Crystal Fincher: I agree. And so we'll move to the 8th Congressional District race, which is a bit further north - parts of a few different counties, including King County - that saw Kim Schrier, who is the current incumbent Democrat, finish with a pretty strong result. And had some strong challengers in terms of Republicans who were duking it out - so you had Reagan Dunn, Matt Larkin, and Jesse Jensen all competing on the Republican side, with Matt Larkin making it through. What do you make of this result, EJ? And what do you think it says about where Republicans are at, even in King County?
[00:13:03] EJ Juárez: I think it says a lot about Reagan Dunn. I really do. I think that to be perhaps the most high-profile Republican in King County and maybe in that entire district and have that showing really shows - I think it says a lot about both his candidacy and viability for further office, but ultimately his track record and what he's been able to accomplish. Matt Larkin, a relatively unknown Republican coming in, being able to beat a sitting County Councilmember in this contested primary - definitely bad news for establishment Republicans in this moment.
[00:13:46] Crystal Fincher: Certainly not what a lot of people predicted. What do you think the general election's gonna look like in this race, Doug?
[00:13:53] Doug Trumm: It does have the makings of a squeaker. When I was looking on election night, I was optimistic and I think - if I'm recalling correctly - that Kim Schrier's lead's just eroded a little bit and maybe that's just the rural parts of the district are seeing less of that traditional King County progressive swing at the end. But she still does have, I think, the upper hand and with the higher-profile candidate not making it through again, you have the case of - is the party going to be really excited getting behind Larkin the way they may have for Dunn, as the anointed dynasty son or whatever. And it just goes to show again - they're just having a really hard time picking candidates in the way that they easily used to - anoint the successor and get a candidate through who had all the connections and all the money. Larkin might find that with this sort of being a high-profile race for control of the House, but it certainly isn't what they'd planned.
[00:15:02] Crystal Fincher: Does not appear to be what they planned. And it seems like Reagan Dunn and Jesse Jensen were really concerned with going after each other and not really paying attention to Matt Larkin. It seemed, or at least he seemed to duck a lot of the crossfire going back and forth. Do you think that might have contributed to him making it through - just that he wasn't in-between the whole mud slinging battle?
[00:15:28] Doug Trumm: Yeah, that seems to be the case. And Reagan Dunn was just doing so much to try to rebrand himself. And maybe that just wasn't a great idea because a lot of the King County Republicans tried to make this moderate brand that they thought would be - and probably that would play - better in the county. But then knowing that he had this primary, suddenly he's taking these votes where he's reaffirming he's anti-abortion, anti-choice and taking these County Council votes where, if he wasn't in that race, you feel like he might have voted differently. And I don't know if voters also just react negatively that kind of like finger-to-the-wind opportunism. Just be yourself sometimes can get you some points that being a little too smart by half might actually cost you.
[00:16:24] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think so. I think this was interesting - also the Senate race with Tiffany Smiley and Patty Murray was interesting - in that, especially this 8th Congressional District race, was one that Republicans really thought was - they were going to have, I think certainly a stronger showing than this, that they were expecting Kim Schrier to be a little bit more vulnerable than she turned out to be. And looking at some of these other races where they thought - Hey, these are big opportunities for pickups - and not only did it not turn out very well percentage-wise, but their preferred candidates didn't even make it through. I think both of you alluded to some of the message discipline challenges that they're having. And a lot of times we've talked about - Hey, Democrats' messages are, may have some issues and stuff. They seem to actually be pretty effective that the Democratic results were fairly strong compared to what expectations were going in, and Republicans seemed to struggle. And you just talked about Reagan Dunn having a challenge with talking about where he's at in terms of abortion rights. He before had tried to be a moderate, this time it seemed like he really initially and in the middle there felt like he needed to say - yeah, absolutely I'm pro-life, I personally don't believe in abortion and don't want that. And with the Dobbs decision - Republicans could say that before, certainly more than if you had - I don't think that Washington residents, feeling that they had protections federally plus in the state, really felt like there was a vulnerability and so just let that slide. I don't think that was the case this time. And I heard Reagan Dunn in one interview say - yeah, that happened federally, but here in this state, abortion is settled law - which is literally what we heard Justice Kavanaugh say, what we heard a number of Congresspeople say before that right was eliminated at the federal level. So there just isn't confidence or comfort that that is settled law and it seems like Republicans are a bit flatfooted. And realistically, just not in-step with the 65 or so percent of the public that strongly favors abortion rights. How do you think they handle that issue in the primary? And what does that say for how things will look in the general?
[00:18:59] EJ Juárez: I'll jump in first here. I think it feeds into this idea that I think Republicans have been happily beating the drum on of - everything's fine, except for we're gonna oppose everything that might not make it fine - in this divorced-from-reality narrative of - as long as we hold the line, it can't get worse and we're not actively participating in that. And at the same time, 65+%, 78+% of the actual electorate are saying - we are totally on the other side of this issue than you, and you've missed the boat. And it doesn't take much for a voter to look at candidates, frankly like Reagan Dunn, who have that record or others who have public statements like Matt Larkin to say - actually, you've not done that, you've not done anything, you've chosen not to take an action here. And I think Kim Schrier was expertly deploying her messaging on the other end of that by - whether it was her TV ads or her radio spots and her visibility were always spot-on - bringing in the Republican mayors of Wenatchee, the mayors of Issaquah highlighting the fact that she was on the ground being active, not playing into the Republicans' assumption that voters would just be defense-oriented.
[00:20:22] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and she's been active throughout her term on the ground and building those relationships and really delivering for the people in all of the areas of her district, which I think a lot of people questioned initially - Hey, is she gonna represent all of us? Is she gonna get out to the various counties? Is she comfortable in this really diverse district that is both urban, suburban, and rural - and that stretches nearly from the coast to the mountains. It is really an interesting district and a microcosm of the state, and she seems to have navigated that very well.
So I think we will proceed to a number of the legislative district races. And we'll start with a few - I think overall, it's fair to say that Democrats finished very strongly. Certainly at the beginning of this cycle, there was a lot of excitement from Republicans here in the state, legislatively, and concern from Democrats saying - Hey, this could be a tough year. We have a lot of seats that we may need to be defending. We've got redistricting. We're not knowing how that's gonna turn out. And so is this going to be a year where Democrats potentially lose a number of seats? It's a midterm that a lot of times is challenging for the party in power - just that's the way it's traditionally gone. And these results turned out pretty favorably for Democrats across the board. Thinking about things overall before we get into specific districts, are there thoughts that you have, Doug, on just how things look for Democrats across the board legislatively?
[00:22:07] Doug Trumm: I think we can pretty safely say that Democrats are still gonna have control of the State Legislature. There might be a swing of a seat or two in either direction - and that can include Democrats getting more seats, which if you believe all of the coverage - but leading into this election, it was just a lot of reprinted Republican press releases about how there was a wave coming and you better tremble. They might lose a seat or two but given where they're at right now, which is if you haven't been following along - that's 57-41 advantage in the House, it's a large advantage in the House. And then the Senate, there is a 28-21 advantage for Democrats. So they got a little cushion, so if they lose a seat or two - becomes a little bit more of a headache from time to time, as far as whipping the votes. But they're ultimately still setting the agenda, controlling the committees. So at the end of the day, the hope of controlling one of those chambers and stopping all this string of legislation - and, Crystal, I know we've criticized the Democrats here and then for some of the stuff they weren't able to get done, but let's take a moment to acknowledge that there has been a pretty steady stream of major legislation coming from this last few years of having Inslee in the governor's seat and having both chambers controlled that - including a major climate bill and including a major transportation package - neither of them are perfect, but they're definitely a lot better than doing nothing.
So anyway I don't know if that's partially a reflection of voters realizing - Hey, this is working out decently for us to let one party with a fairly clear vision and passion for what they're doing lead things. And then on this other side, we have a pretty honestly all-over-the-place message - and other times just really simple to the point of ad nauseam, just hating taxes every time. Well, sometimes we have to pay for stuff. So I think it's a favorable result and it'll be interesting to see some of those close races actually end up coming the Democrats' way.
[00:24:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Any thoughts that you have, EJ?
[00:24:29] EJ Juárez: I've been thinking a lot about what it must be like to be JT Wilcox right now - the man who's running the Republican House strategy, the guy who's raising all this money in his caucus - for what purpose? And I kept believing that the strategy would become clear, that we were going to get indications of how all that money was going to be used on that side. And ultimately, they might as well just put that in a vault, and set the vault off to the ocean, given it a Viking funeral - because it did not produce. And there is nothing more damning in politics than being able to spend that much money with no results. And so I think the big takeaway for me looking at these legislative races, and I largely agree with Doug, is that Democrats who had controlled both chambers and the governor's office for so long and had really legitimate critique around not delivering on the biggest issues for Washington for many years from all sides - passed some big stuff and started to do big things and voters rewarded them by bucking what was supposed to be a very bad year for them. And so I hope that at least many of those Democrats, especially the incumbents maybe who aren't on the ballot this year, are watching that going - okay, here's the data point, let's keep going, let's do more, and see if this holds if voters will continue to reward us for delivering on the things that we know are important to them.
[00:26:09] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I would completely agree with that. And to your point, to both of your points - they have taken some substantive moves, particularly at a time - we're seeing some significant action taken congressionally recently, that they're just making some progress with some major legislation. But even on issues that, federally, congress has been stuck on, our State Legislature has been able to act and move - things like a $35 cap on insulin for families was something that was passed by Democrats this past session. As you just talked about, Doug, record investments in transportation and transit and mobility and helping people be able to safely get through their communities and handle their daily tasks, even if they don't drive. And even areas where - Hey, there's highway expansion - that may be a little bit controversial. They moved on an issue that had been stuck for over a decade and getting through and getting past the I-5 bridge connection between Washington and Oregon. And so it is something where they have done some big things. They do appear to have been rewarded - particularly those that have stood strong. And there was, I think, a question in some of these swing districts that have gone between Democrats and Republicans, that have been repeatedly extremely close, whether Republicans were gonna be able to land some arguments that stuck, whether some of those criticisms from a couple years ago, or four years ago were still valid today. And it seems they fell flat, flatter than they have for a long time.
So I think just starting with a few legislative districts - starting with a big focus in the Senate, which I know Republicans were looking at as one of their potential biggest pickups. In the Senate, where the margin is closer than it is in the House, in the 26th Legislative District down on the Kitsap Peninsula with Senator Emily Randall facing a very strong challenge initially from Republican Jesse Young, who is a state representative running for that Senate seat. And Emily has finished - I think stronger than most people anticipated. I think this is one of those races where Republicans - to your point, EJ - invested a ton of money. Jesse Young was one of the biggest fundraisers - outraised, outspent Emily Randall - but Emily finished with over 50% of the vote. She's at 51.5% right now to Jesse Young's 44.3% - certainly not the result that Republicans were looking for and I think frankly, a better result than Democrats were expecting. What happened in this race and why do you think Emily finished so strongly, Doug?
[00:29:20] Doug Trumm: I think basically that that part of the state, which is just across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge from Tacoma - it's behaving a lot more like part of the Seattle metropolitan area. And that means it's, I think just generally, it's shifting to the left. And there's a lot of specific things - there was the big thing they were gonna try to hit Emily on - was they wanted to lower the toll on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. And that ended up being a huge football this session, but ultimately Democrats got to a place where they were okay with slightly moderating that toll, but maybe there was some thought that that left them vulnerable. But it appears that if that was gonna be their dark horse issue or whatever, voters went - well, that seemed like the responsible thing to do. You still do have to pay for that bridge and you have to pay for roads in general. You can't just suddenly go - everything's free. As much as we would love that, that means it's coming out of sales tax and other even more regressive sources that are farther from the use case. I guess I just bring that up since I do focus on transportation issues a lot, but I do think that getting around the district is a big one - and they did get a upgrade to the Gorst interchange as well in the transportation bill. And as urbanists, we maybe don't love that widening, but in that district - solving that bottleneck for them might have been something they look at Randall - she's getting stuff done.
And certainly we already talked about abortion, but I think in that district it's likely to be a very big issue that's motivating turnout. And with Jesse Young being a pretty extreme right Republican - that's just not a good matchup as they maybe thought it was on paper, just because he has name ID from being a representative and raising a lot of money. At the end of the day, it's just not the right messenger or the right message. So it's not a gimme, by any means - she has 51.5%, I think you said - but that's certainly a good, strong position to be into and barring some sort of real stumble, I think she'll get re-elected and rightfully so.
[00:31:44] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and helping a potential seatmate in the Representative open seat currently there - Adison Richards, the Democrat, also finishing with just over 50% against Spencer Hutchins, the Republican candidate. And I think, particularly with Spencer - they tried to paint him as pragmatic, just worried about what people would call kitchen table issues traditionally. I think people talk about a lot at the kitchen table, including issues of values and rights - but really tried to focus on an economic message. They certainly tried to hit Emily Randall when it came to taxes, they were also talking about gas prices. And I think there was a recognition that - one, as they talked about with Biden sometimes, this is a bigger problem than just Washington State or even the United States when it comes to gas prices. There are some other major geopolitical forces at play there that influence that. And I think as you mentioned, Doug, it's not that most people are actually anti-tax - they just want to get their money's worth, I think is the bottom line. And I think with a number of the things that Emily Randall, that Democrats have really talked about being important to invest in, people are feeling that money is being spent in the ways that they feel is valuable and useful and they can see a case to be made for that. What do you see in this district, or what do you think this says about just competitive districts overall, EJ?
[00:33:31] EJ Juárez: I'll start by - I think every time we talk about Jesse Young, we also have to talk about the fact that he was barred from talking to his own legislative assistants by the Legislature. This is a man who faced credible and serious allegations of being hostile and intimidating to staff. This is also a man who mixed his professional staff with his campaign staff and was campaigning with state resources on state time, so every opportunity -
[00:34:00] Crystal Fincher: Which is illegal, which you cannot do.
[00:34:05] EJ Juárez: - had to get that in there 'cause good governance, good - excuse me - good government is important. The second thing is the 26th gives me big 30th LD circa five, six years ago vibes. This is a pattern where we gradually saw Federal Way - that region - transfer to a much more solidly Democrat district, or at least more reliably Democrat district than we have. I think we're watching in real-time, the 26th make a similar transition - probably not apples-to-apples, but it's close enough where we're seeing this trend line of more Democrats consistently showing up. And our candidates, regardless of fundraising ability, doing better and better. That is not to take anything away from Emily because that woman is a rock star, right? She is working really hard. She is in the field and she's actually addressing the least sexy issues of many districts, right? It is the retail politics of where are your sidewalks, let's talk about the farmer's market, let's talk about land use in your neighborhood and the park down the street. And unlike many other legislators, this is something that's popping up again and again on her socials and in her campaign ads and how she is moving through the world. So I think this is a case of an incredibly hard-working Democrat incumbent, who is earning potentially this reputation of somebody who can hold super hard districts and I think raise a bunch of money at the same time. While she may have been outraised, she's pulling in sizable donations and has been a consistent, I think, player in her caucus.
[00:35:46] Doug Trumm: Yeah, that's dead on. And I just want to add in quick to that - in addition to her just being clearly a rising star in the party, this district has a fast ferry to Seattle and it's close to Tacoma - this is a place where people are going to escape really high housing prices in Seattle. That is where the working class is moving and that's where your barista lives, maybe. So it's certainly someplace where it's easy to see that trend continuing because Bremerton is building a good amount of housing - they're embracing that to some extent and that's gonna change who's in the district - it's gonna be a younger district for that reason.
[00:36:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and to your point - Bremerton has, Gig Harbor has made important strides on zoning housing action, building enough housing to house the people who are moving there, who are living there, and really taking steps to address the housing affordability crisis that we've been seeing - and making progress in those conversations and taking action in ways that I think is surprising sometimes to people in Seattle, and that Seattle is lagging behind areas in Pierce County and in Spokane, when it comes to taking definitive steps to build more housing supply, address the housing crisis, and move there. It's really interesting. I completely agree that this does remind me of the 30th Legislative District around the Federal Way, Auburn area of a few years back, of the early to mid-20 teens that we saw there and that it is progressively coming more blue. And I do think that is because we're seeing a lot more people, displaced really, from Seattle and more expensive areas to those areas, discovering how they are - those areas or are organically growing also. And so we're seeing a number of the Pierce County suburbs shift to be a little bit more blue as well as suburbs in King County.
And so it's a really interesting phenomenon that we're seeing - which we might as well move to the 30th Legislative District results. This was another really interesting district, especially with redistricting - a lot of people wondering is this going to be a district that's a challenge? There's been a lot of talk about public safety, there's been a lot of talk about economic issues. And this is another area where Republicans invested a lot of money and tried to attack the Democrats in this district for taking action that was popularly supported by voters in the district before, seems to have been a vindicating vote in that area where Claire Wilson is at 54% ahead of Linda Kochmar, who was a known Republican name in the area. Jamila Taylor finishing above 54% against Casey Jones, who's actually a policeman, an officer in the area. And then with an open seat - the one vacated by Representative, or that's being vacated by Representative Jesse Johnson - Kristine Reeves, who is a former State Representative who left to run for Congress and now is running again for this seat, finished with just shy of 43%. And that was a competitive Democratic primary - so between Kristine Reeves 43% just about, Carey Anderson, the other Democrat in the race, at just about 14% - a really strong Democratic showing in that seat against the Republican who made it through to the general election with 37% of the vote. 55+% is what people would love to see. This used to be a district with Republicans there - very purple, not reddish purple - that has just continued to move solidly blue. I think to that point you have legislators here with Jamila Johnson [Taylor], who's the head of the Black Legislative Caucus, and Senator Wilson who are great retail politicians, great in the community, doing the work on the ground to get this through. What does this result say to you, starting with EJ?
[00:40:23] EJ Juárez: At the risk of being a little too snarky, I think what this says is Federal Way and Auburn love a good repeat candidate. We've got Linda Kochmar, who has run how many times now? We've got Kristine Reeves coming back to serve in the House. And by no means is it a single value on any of these also-rans and multiple-time candidates. It is that - one, the bench there is producing the same types of candidates, but the difference is the Democrats are doing better every time, right? These are not radically different candidates than that have been running in the past. What I'm interested in is - you've got Representative Johnson, who had done incredible work on criminal justice reform. Voters clearly were not buying the hype from the media on just how controversial this must have been when it's actually not - that would've been borne out in the vote share - that is a clear correlation, there would've been some level of backlash.
I think the other piece here is that turnout was not good in that region. And when you look at King County overall and you look at who's voting specifically in the 30th LD, there is much work to be done. And so while it is impressive that Democrats are putting up 44, or excuse me, 54+% in each of these races, I don't think they can rest. And I think that if they do their - while I don't think it's enough for the GOP to come back and pull one of these seats, it would be a disservice to the nearly decade of massive investments that that caucus and the party has made in that region - that is full of renters that is full of young families, and people that - to Doug's point earlier - escaping housing prices who are sandwiched between Tacoma and Seattle now. So I think it's a fascinating place with lots to watch still.
[00:42:18] Crystal Fincher: Very fascinating - a ton to watch. You are absolutely correct - turnout there, in many areas in South King County really, is bad. It's poor. And everyone has to do a much better job of engaging voters where they're at. We have to meet them on the doors. We have to meet them in the community. We have to do the work to make sure that we're reaching out to everyone and listening and hearing what they need, what's concerning to them, what they're saying is needed in their neighborhoods and their communities, and responding and addressing that to make sure that government and their representation is relevant to them. I think there's work to be done there and just the continued communication. So I think this is certainly one where I agree that it probably is not going to flip, but a lot of work just needs to be done in the community. And the more the community is engaged and galvanized, the more they're going to be able to do and lead.
This seems like such an opportunity in this district - where sometimes we look at for Democrats, the Seattle districts and say - okay, this is just a safety seat. These people can lead on groundbreaking policy on things that we know are the right thing to do and that just need more proof of concept, more data from implementations on the ground, and people can say - okay, they implemented it there. It wasn't scary. The sky didn't fall. We can expand this. We've seen that with $15 an hour minimum wage. We've seen that with a lot of paid leave legislation. Even renter protections in Federal Way - they were among the leaders in passing a local initiative there that then we saw replicated across the state and legislative action taken on. So it's - I just see this as such a district of opportunity, if they really can engage and connect with the community to be able to do that.
Thank you for listening to part 1 of our Hacks & Wonks 2022 Post-Primary Election Recap. Part 2 will be in your feed this Friday, August 19th. You can find the audio and transcript for the full recap on our website, officialhacksandwonks.com.
The Producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our Assistant Producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Post-Production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. Our wonderful co-hosts for the recap were EJ Juárez and Doug Trumm – that’s two m’s at the end. You can find EJ on Twitter at @EliseoJJuarez, and you can find Doug at @dmtrumm. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii and now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks.
You can follow Hacks & Wonks on itunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type “Hacks and Wonks” into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows, and our mid-week show, delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks.
You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com, and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Axios reporter Melissa Santos. They start off looking at the larger trends from this last week’s primary, including why the predicted ‘red wave’ didn’t materialize. Next, they talk about Olgy Diaz’s appointment to the Tacoma City council, discussing her impressive credentials and watershed status as the first Latina to serve on the Council. In Seattle City Council news, Crystal and Melissa look at the two recent abortion- and trans-related protections the council passed this week. For updates on public health, our hosts look at how Washington state is lifting most of its COVID emergency orders, where the state is at with its COVID response, and what our outlook is for MPV and its vaccine. After that, the two discuss the redistricting plans for the Seattle City Council, and different neighborhoods’ responses to the proposed new district lines and close the show by looking at the state of behavioral health crisis response in our neighborhoods, discussing the county’s plans for an emergency walk-in centers, the county’s plans to improve its behavioral health response, and our lack of crisis response staff.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Melissa Santos, at @MelissaSantos1. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Our blue legislature bucks GOP trend” by Melissa Santos from Axios: https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/08/12/washington-state-blue-legislature-gop-trend
“Tacoma City Council selects its newest member. She’s the first Latina to serve” by Liz Moomey from The News Tribune: https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article264330356.html?taid=62f470bf1a1c2c0001b63754&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
“Seattle passes protections for abortion and gender affirming care” by KUOW Staff from KUOW: https://kuow.org/stories/seattle-passes-protections-for-abortion-and-gender-affirming-care
“MPV cases doubling nearly every week in WA, as U.S. declares public health emergency” by Elise Takahama from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/monkeypox-cases-doubling-nearly-every-week-in-wa-as-us-set-to-declare-public-health-emergency/
"US will stretch monkeypox vaccine supply with smaller doses" by Matthew Perrone from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/us-will-stretch-monkeypox-vaccine-supply-with-smaller-doses/
Washington state says goodbye to most COVID emergency orders” by Melissa Santos from Axios: https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/08/09/washington-end-most-covid-emergency-orders
"New map would redraw Seattle’s City Council districts, with changes for Georgetown, Magnolia" by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/new-map-would-redraw-seattles-city-council-districts-with-changes-for-georgetown-magnolia/
“Racial Equity Advocates Like Seattle’s Newly Proposed Political Boundaries. Magnolia Residents Do Not.” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/08/04/77339585/racial-equity-advocates-like-seattles-newly-proposed-political-boundaries-magnolia-residents-do-not
“County Plans Emergency Walk-In Centers for Behavioral Health Crises” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/08/11/county-plans-emergency-walk-in-centers-for-behavioral-health-crises/
"Local Leaders Announce New Coalition to Address Behavioral Health Crisis" by Will Casey from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/08/11/77680008/local-leaders-announce-new-coalition-to-address-behavioral-health-crisis
“Designated crisis responders, a ‘last resort’ in mental health care, face overwhelming demand” by Esmy Jimenez from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/designated-crisis-responders-a-last-resort-in-mental-health-care-face-overwhelming-demand/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review because it helps a lot. Today, we are continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a cohost. Welcome back to the program today's cohost: Seattle Axios reporter, Melissa Santos.
[00:01:00] Melissa Santos: Hello, thanks for having me.
[00:01:01] Crystal Fincher: Hey, thanks for being back. We always enjoy having you. So there were a number of things that happened this week. I think we'll start off just talking about the elections real quick. We got more results this week. Things are looking more conclusive - a couple of late-straggling races have been decided, including one of the congressional - two, really of the congressional district races. It looks like in the 47th Legislative District race that Republican Bill Boyce will be facing Democratic candidate Senator - former Senator - Claudia Kauffman. And that in the 47th House seat, that Democrat Shukri Olow and Democrat Chris Stearns will both be getting through and Republicans will actually not be making it in that seat, despite that race including three different Republicans - one the pick of the GOP that raised over $200,000, Carmen Goers, who actually finished in last place. So a number of things got settled, but overall, as you look at these elections, what are your takeaways, Melissa?
[00:02:16] Melissa Santos: On the legislative side, really things look mostly similar to what they looked like on primary night, in the sense that a lot of the races that Republicans had hoped to pick up, I think Democrats still look really strong in. And that's in a lot of those swing districts in the suburbs - in Island County, the Democrats have pretty strong performances in some House races that I think Republicans have been eyeing for a pickup in the 10th District. The 28th Legislative District looks pretty much like the incumbent Democrats are in really good shape there - that's around Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Lakewood, University Place. And I think that the Republicans not having someone in that 47th District open seat is maybe not what people would've predicted when talking about a red wave coming this year, and that Democrats have been saying - we're just trying to defend what we have, we're not really planning to add seats here. But they look like they're in a pretty good position to defend the seats.
The only place where things look like it'll be rough for Democrats are seats up in the 47th - sorry, the 42nd Legislative District in Whatcom County, I think, have some disappointing results for Democrats when it comes to trying to get the former - the State Senate seat formerly held by Republican Doug Ericksen. That's gonna be a tough race where it looks like the State House Democratic Rep who's running for it might have a really tough race to fight in November. She wants to pick up that seat for the Democrats. But again, Democrats were trying to just defend mostly this year. So I think they look like they're in a pretty good position to do that.
One thing that's a little bit interesting is a lot of the fringier types in the Republican legislative caucus in the House are actually not going to be returning to the legislature next year. And some of that's just because they ran for Congress in some cases, like Brad Klippert.
[00:04:15] Crystal Fincher: And Vicki Kraft.
[00:04:16] Melissa Santos: Yes, and Vicki Kraft. So I'm interested to see how that plays out. There are some races where legislative candidates who are being accused of being RINOs [Republicans In Name Only] actually have advanced through the primary. And I am wondering if some Republicans - are they more moderate or just hoping that they beat the more Trumpy Republicans essentially. So that's something I'm watching actually going forward is - while we certainly have situations across the nation where Trump-endorsed Republicans are getting through - we see this in the 3rd Congressional District race, here in our state, where Jaime Herrera Beutler who voted to impeach Trump will not be getting through to the general - that was finalized this week. But locally in legislative races, I'm not sure that the more far-right candidates will win out in all these races in November. So I'm watching that - how does our state picture, when it comes to the Republican party, compare to what we're seeing nationally. And it's always interesting to see how Washington does 'cause we're a little bit different sometimes as a state in how we vote versus the rest of the country.
[00:05:25] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And that sets up an interesting dynamic for Republicans, I think, in that it is really helpful when - just from a campaign perspective - when everyone is consistent with the message that's being delivered for the party, what priorities are in terms of values. And so there have been - legislatively - some more moderate Republicans making it through. There are certainly some real extremists. And again, "moderate" is an interesting word for Republicans 'cause - when it is gonna come to some of these caucus votes, I think moderation is gonna effectively fly out of the window. Or being afraid to speak out on certain things that challenge some of the more extreme elements in the party, which essentially in my opinion, enables that element of the party.
But with Joe Kent higher on the ticket and being so visible, being a frequent guest on Hannity, Trump-endorsed, and really vocal about a number of things like opposing aid to Ukraine, about wanting Jim Jordan - who is extremely problematic and has been accused of ignoring sexual assault allegations on his watch under his responsibility - wanting him to replace Kevin McCarthy as the leader of the party, certainly moving in a much more extreme direction. A number of those things are gonna be inconsistent, I think, with what some of the other Republicans, I think legislatively under JT Wilcox certainly, Republicans are gonna wanna be talking about. So there may be just a bit of a mismatched message there and it will be interesting to see how the party navigates that, but especially coming from a place where the extremism - you look at the primaries - certainly did not land. And some of, even the criticisms just legislatively, of Republicans who were on the message that they wanted to be on, did not turn out to be very effective at all - that presents a challenge for them in the general.
[00:07:40] Melissa Santos: I think that was interesting in the Federal Way area. I think everyone, including Democrats, were saying - yeah, there's a lot of voters concerned about public safety there. I think everyone thought maybe the Democrats might be a little bit more vulnerable from attacks from Republicans in that area in South King County around Federal Way, with Republicans say - Hey, Democrats passed all these bills that hamstring police, so they can't keep you safe. I think everyone thought that line of argument might work better in some of those areas in South King County than it did. And so I'm wondering if Republicans will change their approach or not, or if they're just gonna stick with hammering Democrats on public safety. I think that maybe we'll see just more talk about economy and inflation and maybe a little less of the public safety attacks - possibly - based on those results.
[00:08:29] Crystal Fincher: And they certainly hit hard on both of those. It is interesting to see - particularly - so you have Jamila Taylor, who is the incumbent representative there, there's another open House seat, and then Claire Wilson in the Senate seat. Jamila Taylor, who's the head of the Legislative Black Caucus, did play a leading role in passing a lot of, number of the police accountability reforms that police, a number of police unions, and people who are saying "Back the Blue" and these were problematic. She actually has a police officer running against her in that district. And also, the mayor of Federal Way, Jim Ferrell, is running for King County Prosecutor on a hard line, lock 'em up kind of message. They've been working overtime to blame legislators, primarily Jamila Taylor, for some of the crime that they've seen. And holding community meetings - really trying to ratchet up sentiment against Jamila Taylor - helping out both her challenger and Jim Ferrell was the plan. And again, that seemed to fall flat. Jamila Taylor finished with 54% in that race and the most votes out of any Democrat. You saw Democrats across the board, both Claire Wilson and Jamila Taylor, get 54% and 55% of the vote. In a primary, that is certainly where you would want to be and that's really a hard number to beat in the general. And then in the other open seat, you had two Democratic candidates combine for, I think, 55% of the vote.
So it is - where they attempted to make that argument the hardest, it seemed to fall almost the flattest. And it goes to - we talked about this on the Post-Primary Recap a little bit - I think it goes to show that the conversation publicly - certainly the political conversation about public safety - I think is too flat and does not account for where the public actually is. I think people are absolutely concerned about crime and rightfully so - we have to attack gun violence, we have to attack property crime and violent crime. We have to do better than we're doing now. But I think people are recognizing that the things that we have been doing have not been successful. And we have been trying to lock people up and people see that there's a need for behavioral health interventions, for housing, for substance use treatment and that those things are absent. And that you can send a policeman to do that, but they don't have the tools to address that even if they were the appropriate responder. And there's a lot of people saying they aren't even the appropriate response for a number of these things. So I just think regular voters - regular people - just have a more nuanced and realistic view of what needs to happen.
[00:11:42] Melissa Santos: I also think that message - we could talk about those races forever, probably - but I think that message might land especially flat in communities like South King County that are predominantly people of color in many of these communities. They want to address - well, okay, I should not group everyone together, let me back up here - but I think a lot of people see the effects of crime on their communities and their family members and want support, not just a crackdown. And I don't know if that - I don't know - I'm generalizing here and I shouldn't, but I think that maybe that -
[00:12:09] Crystal Fincher: I think it's across the board. I feel like - we saw polling in Seattle where, even if you break it down by Seattle City Council district, whether it's North Seattle or West Seattle which are predominantly white areas, in addition to other areas with higher percentage of people of color - they're saying near universally - when given, asked the question - where would you allocate more of your tax dollars in the realm of public safety to make a difference? They start off by saying behavioral health treatment, substance use disorder treatment, treating root causes. And then "more officers" trails those things. So it's - and even before more officers, they're saying better training for officers so they do a better job of responding when they are called. So I just think that across the board, there's - Republicans have gotten far and have done a lot by talking about the problem. And I think what the primary showed is that you're gonna have to do a better job of articulating a logical and reasonable solution to the problem. 'Cause people have heard talk about the problem for a long time, this isn't new. They're ready for someone to do something about it and they want to hear something that sounds credible, with some evidence behind it, that'll make a difference. And I don't think Republicans articulated that at all. And I think Democrats are talking about things more in line with where voters are at.
But certainly, we could talk about those election results forever, but we will move on to other news. Speaking of newly elected people, we have a new appointment of a person on the Tacoma City Council - Olgy Diaz was just unanimously appointed as the first Latina member of the Tacoma City Council last Tuesday night. She was one of 43 applicants to apply, ended up making the shortlist, and then was officially appointed on Tuesday night. What did you take away from this? You previously covered - based in Tacoma, covered Tacoma previously, worked at The News Tribune. What does Olgy bring to the Council?
[00:14:41] Melissa Santos: Olgy is really experienced in politics, I want to say. For way back when - I think I started talking to Olgy years and years ago - she was, definitely in her role with leading One America, she's done a lot of policy work at the state level for a long time. She worked in the Legislature, so I talked to her in that capacity. And she brings a lot of experience to the table - I think more than a lot of people who apply for vacancies on city councils, for sure. But I honestly was also just - I was blown away to read - I didn't realize the Tacoma City Council has never had a Latina member before and that really blew my mind, given the diversity of Tacoma and given that that's a community where you have people who just weren't represented for such a long time. I worked in Tacoma for eight years at the paper and I didn't - I guess I didn't realize that was the case.
So Olgy - separately - brings just a ton of experience. She leads the National Women's Political Caucus of Washington now as president and I talked to her for stories in that capacity, and she's always very knowledgeable and really thoughtful. But yeah, that's just - in terms of representation, she brings a lot to the Council that apparently it hasn't had - in terms of experience and lived experience as well. I didn't watch the whole appointment process every step of the way, but it seems like that is a very solid choice, given that you have someone coming in possibly that has way more, broader political knowledge than a lot of the sitting councilmembers in some cases. And that's not a knock on the sitting councilmembers, but you just have someone really, really versed in politics and policy in Washington State coming onto that city council.
[00:16:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and an unusual amount of experience. I think, to your point, not a knock on anyone else. Olgy just has an unusual amount of experience on both the policy and political side. She's the Government Affairs Director for Forterra, she's president of the National Women's Political Caucus as you said, on the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Coalition and Institute for a Democratic Future board. She's previously been on the city's Human Rights Commission. She just has so many, so much experience from within, working within the legislature and elsewhere. And if - full disclosure - Olgy Diaz is not just a friend, but also worked for Olgy as her consultant and love the woman. But just completely dynamic and if you know Olgy, you know she reps South Tacoma harder than anyone else just about that you've ever met. She deeply, deeply loves the city, particularly South Tacoma, and has been an advocate for the city in every role that she's had. So just really excited to see her appointed.
In other local news - this week, Seattle, the Seattle City Council stood up and passed protections for abortion and gender affirming care. What did they do?
[00:17:52] Melissa Santos: They passed something that makes it a misdemeanor for someone to interfere, intimidate, or try and threaten someone who is seeking an abortion and they also have some civil rights protections that they passed. Those are especially - you might not think that's necessarily an issue in Seattle all the time, but I think that - certainly the misdemeanors for trying to interfere for someone getting treatment or getting abortion care, I think that is something that could actually be used and called upon sometime in Seattle with certain individual cases. And I do think it's - not necessarily in a bad way - but a messaging bill on both of them - in a way saying - care is protected here. Even though in Washington State we do have some state law protections for abortion - better than in most states - I think it's partly about sending a message to people that your care will not be interfered with here. And maybe even a message to people in other states - that they can come - actually that is part of it - is that you can come to Seattle and get care and you will not, we will support you. And so that's part of why they're doing it - both on a practical level, but also sending a message that we will not tolerate people trying to dissuade, to discourage people who decided to get an abortion from getting the care that they are seeking.
[00:19:18] Crystal Fincher: And I know Councilmember Tammy Morales has also said that she plans to introduce further legislation to prevent crisis pregnancy centers from misrepresenting the facts, misleading people - which has happened in other situations with pregnancy crisis centers, which sometimes bill themselves as abortion care providers. A person seeking an abortion finds them, goes, and unexpectedly is - in some situations - heavily pressured not to have an abortion. And there's been situations where they have been found to have been coerced into not having an abortion. And so that would just seek to make sure that everybody correctly represents themselves, and who they are, and what they are attempting to do. Lots of people do, to your point, look at Seattle and say - okay, but this - things were safe here anyway. I do think the first one - we see a lot of counter-protestors - of people making points in Seattle, going to Seattle to protest different things, because it has a reputation for being progressive, where progressive policy is. So it attacks people who really dislike those policies and moving in that direction. I think this is helpful for that. And it serves as model legislation. There are some very red areas here in the state. There are other localities - we may have neighboring states that - the right to abortion is coming to an end. And so having legislation like this that has passed in the region, that has passed nearby, that is in place, that survives legal challenges against them makes it easier for other localities to pass the same. And so I think that it is a very positive thing for Seattle to take the lead passing model legislation. Certainly aren't the first to pass, but having it in the region is very, very helpful. So glad to see that.
Also this week - some challenging news. One - monkeypox, now referred to as MPV, cases have been doubling nearly every week in Washington and has been declared a public health emergency. Where do we stand here?
[00:21:37] Melissa Santos: I think that right now, we have about 220 cases - and that's what I think I saw on the CDC website just earlier today. And last week, it was 70 fewer than that, at least - we have been seeing, especially early on, every week or so the cases were doubling in our state. And we remember how COVID started in a way - it was small at first and things just can really expand quickly. This isn't spread the same way COVID is - and I'm not saying it is - but we do definitely have a vaccine shortage here for this and that's a huge concern. I asked the State Department of Health - actually, I have not put this in the story yet, but I was like - how many people do you feel like you need to treat that are at high risk? And they said it's almost 80,000. And took me a long time to get that number, but I think we only have - we only are gonna have something like 20-something thousand vaccines doses coming in, maybe 25,000, through at least early September. So there's a lot of potential for this to spread before we get vaccines to treat the people who are most at risk. That's a big concern.
And so I haven't checked in our state yet - this sort of decision that we can stretch these doses further by divvying them up and doing, making each dose into maybe five doses - that could really help here. So I need to check whether in our state we're going forward with that and if that meets the need or not. But we still need a second dose for everybody, even beyond that. So it looks like the math just doesn't work and we're still gonna be short. And in that time, how far will it spread? Because it's not just - it's not a sexually transmitted disease that only is going to spread among LGBT individuals - other people are getting it and will get it. So that is - and also that community needs as much support as they can get anyway, regardless. But this is not something that just affects someone else, for instance, if you're not a member of that community. It's something that can affect everybody, and it's - everyone's afraid of another situation like we had with COVID - could it spread before we get a handle on it? And I think it's still an unknown question right now.
[00:23:57] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, big unknown question. And to your point, it was - the CDC just announced that the vaccine supply can be stretched by giving one-fifth of the normal dose, so stretched five times what we thought we previously had. But that was just announced, so our local plans for that are probably in progress and process and hopefully we'll hear more about that soon. But haven't yet as that information was just announced - I want to say yesterday, if not day before. With that, to your point, it is - some people are under the mistaken impression that this is a sexually transmitted infection. It is not. It can spread by just skin-to-skin contact. If two people are wearing shorts and at a concert, or have short-sleeve shirts and are rubbing against each other, it can be spread just by touching especially infected lesions, by surfaces if there's a high enough amount on a surface. It is pretty hardy - lasts a long time on a number of surfaces or clothes or different things like that. Certainly a lot of concern with kids going back into school, kids in daycare that we may see an increase particularly among children - just because they are around each other and touching each other and playing as they do and that is how this virus can spread. So certainly getting as many people, starting with the highest risk people, vaccinated is important. We are short - there are just no two ways about that and running behind. Testing capacity has also been a challenge. So hopefully with these emergency declarations that we've seen locally and nationally that we fast forward the response to that and get prepared pretty quickly, but we will say that.
Also this week, most COVID emergency orders have been ended. What happened here?
[00:26:08] Melissa Santos: Some of them are still getting phased out, but the governor just very recently announced in our state that he's going to be - he's ending 12 COVID emergency orders. And so I went - wait, how many are left then, 'cause I don't think we have that many. And the governor's office - there's only 10 - once these mostly healthcare, procedure-related orders are phased out, will only be 10 COVID emergency orders left. And honestly, some of those have even been scaled back from what they were. They're - one of the orders relates to practicing some safe distancing measures or certain precautions in schools - that's really a step back from having schools be completely closed, like we had at one point. So even those 10 aren't necessarily as stringent as the orders we were seeing earlier in the pandemic.
What does that really signify? I think that the governor has said - because we have good treatment options available, it doesn't mean that COVID is no longer a threat, but we have better ways of dealing with it essentially. It's not like early in the pandemic when nobody was vaccinated. We have a fairly high vaccination rate in our state compared to some others. And we have some treatment options that are better. And at least right now - well, I say this - our hospitals aren't pushed completely beyond capacity. Although, however - this week Harborview actually is over capacity, so that's still a potential problem going forward. But we just have better ways of dealing with the virus than we did. It doesn't mean it's not a threat, it doesn't mean that people aren't still getting hospitalized and even dying - because they are. But we're moving to a different stage of this pandemic where we're just not going to have as many restrictions and we're going to approach the virus in a different way.
[00:27:51] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Yeah, that pretty much covers it there.
[00:27:56] Melissa Santos: The thing - I do think for public - I've asked the governor a couple times - what is your standard for lifting the underlying emergency order? 'Cause we still are in a state of emergency over COVID and that does give the governor, if something comes up, quick power to ban some activity or something. And if there's a public health risk, he could order, for instance, indoor mask wearing again if he wanted. He has not indicated he plans to, but it gives him a little more power. Republicans are still mad about that, but in effect, there aren't that many orders actually in place anymore. We're just not living under as many restrictions as we once were.
[00:28:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. So the protections are going away - there are lots of people who are very concerned about this. This does not seem tethered to - earlier in the pandemic - in some situations when cases were spreading at a lower amount than they were in some areas then than they are today - they tied it to certain metrics and to hospital capacity and different things. So there seemed like there was an underlying data-based justification that would dictate what the appropriate health response was. This seems untethered from all of that. And I think a lot of people's criticisms of this are - the actions that are taken, or realistically the actions that are no longer being taken, the justification behind that seems to be driven by convenience or by a desire just to get back to normal or fatigue. And instead of what health precautions dictate would be wise.
I think at the very minimum we would be a lot better off if - we were very late in, from the CDCs perspective, in acknowledging that this is an airborne virus. And so air quality, air purification, air turnover in indoor spaces is extremely important, especially given how helpful that is for wildfire air mitigation. We're having a higher, more low-quality air days than we have before. Focusing on indoor air purification - I wish there were more of a push for that, more awareness for that, more assistance for that. Because it just seems like - given this and monkeypox, which has evidence that it is spread also via airborne -
[00:30:37] Melissa Santos: Or at least droplets in close - yeah, at least like close breathy, breathing-ey stuff.
[00:30:44] Crystal Fincher: Yes - that air purification is important. And so I wish we would make a greater push because still - that's not really aggressively talked about by most of our public health entities. And there's just not an awareness because of that, by a lot of people who are not necessarily being, saying - no, I don't want to do that - but just don't understand the importance of that. And many businesses that could take steps, but just don't know that that's what they should be doing. Sometimes it's still here - well, we're sanitizing all of these surfaces, which is going to come in handy for monkeypox certainly, but is not really an effective mitigation for COVID when - hey, let's talk about air purification instead of you wiping down surfaces. Just interesting and this may ramp up again, depending on what happens with MPV infections and spread. So we'll see how that continues.
[00:31:47] Melissa Santos: But this time we have a vaccine at least - there is a vaccine that exists. Remember the beginning of COVID - of course, everyone remembers - there was no vaccine. So this feels like - theoretically, we should be able to address it faster because we have a vaccine, but there's just a shortage nationwide of the vaccine. So that's, I think, an extra frustrating layer of the monkeypox problem - is that we have a tool, but we just don't have enough of it. In COVID, we just were all completely in the dark for months and months and months and months - and anyway.
[00:32:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and unfortunately the effect on the ground of not having enough is the same as not having any.
[00:32:23] Melissa Santos: Right. Yeah.
[00:32:24] Crystal Fincher: And so people are left with greater exposure to the virus and to spreading the virus than there would be otherwise, because we don't have the adequate supply of it. Which they say they're working on, but of course those things - unless you are prepared beforehand and making an effort to be prepared beforehand, it takes a while to get that ramped up. I think they're saying the earliest we could anticipate additional supply would be in the September timeframe, and oftentimes that's when it starts to trickle. And so it could be October before we see a meaningful amount of additional supply or longer. Just stay on top of information, be aware out there, and we will see.
Very important thing happening within the City of Seattle - is Seattle City Council district redistricting, and what's happening. There have been some good articles written recently - both in The Seattle Times, especially in The Stranger by Hannah Krieg - about racial equity advocates actually being happy about the newly proposed political boundaries for council districts. But some residents of Magnolia, the expensive and exclusive Magnolia community, who have been known to advocate against any type of growth, or development, or any change to their community, other people getting greater access to their community and the political power that comes with who they've been and their ability to have an outsized voice, realistically, in local politics. They're not that happy. What's happening here?
[00:34:16] Melissa Santos: The proposal that at least is moving forward at this point would split Magnolia, right? So this is something that communities of color have argued as being - Hey, in other areas, our communities are split and that dilutes our voice. And now it's interesting that Magnolia, which is not historically an area where - that has been predominantly people of color - every district in Seattle is changing - safe to say that it's been a whiter area. They're saying - Hey, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa - wait, we're gonna get split, that's gonna dilute our voice. So it's an interesting dynamic there.
And what's also interesting - and it makes sense because the same organizations have been working on city redistricting and state redistricting, to some degree - we're seeing this movement to really unite and ensure communities in South Seattle are not divided. So in this - this was something that they really were trying to do with congressional districts - is make sure that South Seattle communities of color have a coalition and aren't split. And especially having the - well, let's see, and at least in state redistricting - making sure the International District is connected in some way to other parts of South Seattle and Beacon Hill. That was a priority in one of the congressional district redistricting for some of these groups that are now working on Seattle redistricting. One of the things that it would do is put South Park and Georgetown in the same district, which is interesting because I think those two communities work together on a lot of issues that affect the Duwamish and affect - again, a lot of people of color that live in those districts - there are issues that really would affect both of them. And so putting them in the same district, I could see why that would make sense. And you also have - I want to make sure I have this right, but I think - making sure Beacon Hill and it is connected to South Seattle as well. I'm gonna check here - is it also the International District here we're talking as well? Oh, Yesler Terrace - that's right.
[00:36:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, so CID and Yesler Terrace will be in District 2 - kept them both in District 2 - that those were some really, really important considerations. And large percentages of those communities have talked about how important that is. You just talked about Georgetown and South Park being in that district. Looking at Lake City, Northgate, and Broadview in District 5. Also keeping growing renter populations together in South Lake Union and Downtown together there has been making a difference. Both communities of color and, as we talk in the larger redistricting conversation, communities of interest - and now with more than half of the City being renters - renters have been largely overlooked in terms of redistricting and City policy until now. And really what a number of these organizations are saying is - we've been overlooked, we have not been absent, but we've been ignored in this and communities and voices from places like Magnolia have been overrepresented and have been catered to this time. And there's a saying - when you're used to privilege, equity looks like oppression. And so Magnolia is saying - we're losing our voice - and kind of collectively, interests from the rest of the City are saying - no, what you're doing is losing the ability to speak over our voices. But now that we're all at the table and all have a voice, it's time for us to also be recognized as valid and important and worthy of preservation and continuity and representation and not have it broken up in favor of predominantly wealthy homeowners who are saying - well, we're a historically important community. Well, are you historically important and the change that the rest of the City has seen hasn't come to your district because you have fought so vehemently against it. And then turn around and say - and that's why you should cater to us and keep us together because we continue to fight against any kind of change. And realistically saying - hey, other districts have changed and boundaries need to change in those other areas to accommodate that.
And so this does - certainly not all that advocates have asked for, but some meaningful progress and some promising boundaries, I think, for a lot of people in the City, for a lot of people who are not wealthy, for people who are renters no matter what the income is - because of the challenges that just the rental population is facing. And to your point, neighborhoods who have worked together and who share interests, who now have the opportunity to have that represented politically within the City? I think that's very helpful and I definitely hope people stay engaged. In this redistricting process. And as the voices from some of those communities who have had greater access to an ability to participate in these redistricting and City processes, and who've had the inside track and who have been listened to to a greater degree than others, that you add your voice to the conversation to make sure that it isn't drowned out by anyone else.
Looking at a recent announcement - and kind of announcement is a better word than a new policy or a plan - because it is just announced and announced the intention to take action, but we have yet to see. There was a press conference yesterday about emergency walk-in centers for behavioral health cases, addressing our regional behavioral health crisis here. What was announced and what is the deal?
[00:40:32] Melissa Santos: What exactly is going to happen remains a little bit unclear to me exactly, but basically King County Executive Dow Constantine announced a plan to just expand services for people who are experiencing a behavioral health crisis. And it's going to be part of his 2023 budget proposal, which isn't coming out 'til next month. So the idea is having more short- and long-term treatment - so more walk-in treatment that's available and more places to send people who have acute mental health needs. He was talking about how the County's lost a third of its residential behavioral healthcare beds - Erica Barnett at PubliCola reported on this pretty extensively - and there's just a concern there just won't be enough. I was surprised by the stat that there's only one crisis stabilization unit in the County that's 16 beds - that's not very much, especially when we know people suffer mental health crises more frequently than that small number of beds might indicate. So what's interesting is we want to put more money in somewhere so people aren't getting treated in jails, that they have a better place to go, but we're not quite - we don't know exactly the scope of this, or how much money exactly we're talking about to put toward more beds. I guess there's some plans to do so - is what I got from the executive.
[00:42:06] Crystal Fincher: Certainly from a regional perspective, we saw representation from the mayor's office for the City of Seattle, county executive certainly, county council, regional leaders in behavioral health treatment and homelessness - all saying that - Hey, we intend to take action to address this. Like you said, Dow said that he will be speaking more substantively to this in terms of details with his budget announcement and what he plans to do with that. Universal acknowledgement that this is a crisis, that they lack funding and resources in this area, and say that they intend to do better with a focus, like you said, on walk-in treatment and the ability to provide that. But we just don't know the details yet. We'll be excited to see that. And you covered this week, just the tall task ahead of them, because we've spoken about before and lots of people have talked about even in this press conference, a problem that we almost require that people - the only access that people can get to treatment sometimes is if they've been arrested, which is just a wildly inefficient way to address this, especially when it plays a role in creating some of the problems with crime and other things. But even with the newly rolled-out intervention system with an attempt to - if someone who previously would've called 911 now can call a dedicated kind of other crisis line to try and get an alternative response - but even that is severely underfunded. What's happening with that?
[00:44:00] Melissa Santos: So with 988 - this is the three-digit number people can call when they have a mental health crisis and they'll be connected to a counselor who can help talk them through it. The idea is ultimately for that system to also be able to send trained crisis responders - largely instead of police in many, many cases - meet people in-person, not just talk to them on the phone. But we just don't have enough of these mobile crisis response teams. There's money in the state budget to add more over the next couple of years, especially in rural areas that just don't have the coverage right now. They just don't have enough teams to be able to get to people when they need it. That's something they want to expand so there's more of a response than - that isn't a police officer showing up at your door. So that's the ultimate vision for this new line you call - 988 - but it's not fully implemented right now. You still will get some support. And if you call, I'm not trying to say people should not call the line, but they don't necessarily have all the resources they want to be able to efficiently deploy people - I shouldn't say deploy, it sounds very military - but deploy civilian trained helpers to people who are experiencing a crisis. So that's where they want it to go and The Seattle Times had an article just about how some of those designated crisis responders right now are just stretched so thin and that's just not gonna change immediately, even with some new state money coming in to add more people to do those sorts of things. And designated crisis responders have other duties - they deal with actually to getting people to treatment - some involuntarily in certain cases. Again, it's different than a police response and right now there's just not enough of those folks.
[00:45:55] Crystal Fincher: Which jeopardizes the willingness of people to continue to call. Certainly the possibility that a police response can ultimately happen from someone who was requesting a behavioral health or another type of intervention response. And that is still a possibility which some people find challenging or - hey, they expected to avoid that or have something different if they call this and that might not always be the case. But it's certainly a challenge and I think one of the things that was talked about yesterday, which kind of wraps this under a whole umbrella, is there needs to be a lot more done in terms of infrastructure and capacity from - with there being someone to call, someone appropriate to call for whatever the challenge is, an appropriate response. If that is a behavioral health trained person, a crisis intervener, someone like that - and places to take people. Someone does respond and then can connect that person to services that exist. We have problems in a number of areas saying - yeah, we offered services or services are available and they aren't, or they aren't appropriate for the crisis that's there. They don't meet the needs of the person and their situation. So certainly a lot to build out. I think it is a positive step that we're hearing acknowledgement of this and a unified plan to take action, but still need to see what actually results 'cause sometimes we hear big fanfare to start and don't get much substantive on the back end. Certainly I hope with a number of the people involved in this that we do get some substantive progress and I hope to see that, I would expect to see that - but I'm looking forward to it. With that, I think that wraps up this show today.
Thank you so much for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, August 12th, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler, assistant producer is Shannon Cheng with assistance from Bryce Cannatelli - we have an incredible team here at Hacks & Wonks - just want to continue to say that it is not just me, it is completely our team and not possible without this full team. Our wonderful co-host today is Seattle Axios reporter Melissa Santos. You can find Melissa on Twitter @MelissaSantos1. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on the new Twitter account @HacksWonks, you can find me on Twitter @finchfrii (spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I). Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show deliver to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show and Election 2022 resources at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks midweek show, Crystal has a robust conversation with Damon Petrich about his research at the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. As lead author of the seminal work “Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Damon performed an extensive analysis of 116 research studies looking at the effect of incarceration on reoffending. The review’s finding that the oft-used policy of imprisonment does not reduce the likelihood of recidivism sparks a discussion about how the United States ended up as the world leader in mass incarceration and the disconnect between conventional assumptions about what prisons provide versus reality. Noting that the carceral system does a poor job of rehabilitation - while eating up budgets across the country and exacting significant societal costs - Damon and Crystal talk about how to design and evaluate programs that do work to deliver greater public safety for everyone.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and reach Damon for more information about his research at petricdm@ucmail.uc.edu
Resources
“Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review” by Damon M. Petrich, Travis C. Pratt, Cheryl Lero Johnson, and Francis T. Cullen for Crime and Justice: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/715100
Scott Hechinger Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/ScottHech/status/1447596444886523911
“Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022” by Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner from the Prison Policy Initiative: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html
“Risk-need-responsivity model for offender assessment and rehabilitation” by James Bonta and D. A. Andrews for Public Safety Canada: https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/rsk-nd-rspnsvty/index-en.aspx
“Let’s Take a Hard Look at Who Is in Jail and Why We Put Them There” by Alea Carr for the ACLU-WA blog: https://www.aclu-wa.org/blog/let-s-take-hard-look-who-jail-and-why-we-put-them-there
Book - “Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect” by Robert J. Sampson: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo5514383.html
Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation Program - “Police Legitimacy and Legal Cynicism: Why They Matter and How to Measure in Your Community”: https://www.lisc.org/media/filer_public/05/0b/050ba3aa-044f-4676-bc1e-6e2b6c48412c/091317_bcji_resources_police_legitimacy_fundamentals.pdf
“Polls Show People Favor Rehabilitation over Incarceration” by Matt Clarke for Prison Legal News: https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2018/nov/6/polls-show-people-favor-rehabilitation-over-incarceration/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, I am excited to welcome Damon Petrich, who's a doctoral associate in the School of Criminal Justice at University of Cincinnati and incoming assistant professor at Loyola University Chicago. He was the lead author of a recent article, "Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review," along with Travis Pratt, Cheryl Lero Johnson, Francis T. Cullen. Damon's research focuses on the effectiveness of corrections and rehabilitation programs, desistance from crime, and the impact of community violence on youth development. Thank you so much for joining us, Damon.
[00:01:13] Damon Petrich: Thank you very much for having me on, Crystal. I'm excited to talk a little bit about my work and the implications of that and all that, so thanks again.
[00:01:20] Crystal Fincher: I'm very excited to talk about this and it's extremely timely - has been for a while. We have conversations almost every day in the public sphere having to do with public safety - this is such a major component of it. And so I'm hoping as we have this conversation, it'll help us to better assess what the costs and benefits are of custodial sanctions and incarceration, and alternatives to that - to have a conversation that kind of orients us more towards public safety. Sometimes we're so concerned with metrics around police and how many they are, and what the length of a sentence should be. And sometimes we focus on things that take us off of the overall goal of keeping us all safer and reducing the likelihood that each of us are victimized and to hopefully prevent people from becoming victims of crime. And just to have accurate conversations about how we invest our public resources - what we're actually getting from them, and then how to evaluate as we go along - what we should be tracking and measuring and incentivizing. As so many people talk about taking data-driven approaches and create all these dashboards - that we're really doing it from an informed perspective. So just to start out - what actually were you studying and what were you seeking to find out?
[00:02:47] Damon Petrich: Yeah, so the main purpose of our meta-analysis, which I can explain exactly what that is later on if you have questions, but the main purpose was to understand what happens when you take one group of offenders and you sentence them to something custodial like prison or jail, and then you sentence another group of similar offenders to something non-custodial like probation. How do those two groups differ in terms of whether they reoffend? So does prison actually deter recidivism, or does it make people more likely to commit crime afterwards? So that's sort of what we were looking at and so we considered all of the available research on that, in this review.
[00:03:29] Crystal Fincher: Got it. So right now we have gone down the path of mass incarceration - that is the default punishment that we, as society, have looked to for crime. Hey - sentence them and many times it's, Hey, they're going to jail. Sometimes they get out of jail and they have supervision that continues, but jail is really focused, where we focus a lot of our effort and where we put people and hope that that'll straighten them out and they come out and everything is fine. How did we get here and where are we in terms of how we're approaching incarceration in our society, in our country?
[00:04:11] Damon Petrich: Yeah, so there is a lot of public uproar around a lot of issues, like race issues, and there was crime spikes and concerns over social welfare - and there's all this confluence of issues in the '60s and early '70s. And we decided to - as a country, not everyone, but politicians decided that we should tackle the crime problem by A) incarcerating more people, and then B) once they get there, keep them there for longer. So we enacted things like mandatory minimum sentences, where the judge really has no discretion over what happens - the person gets automatically a sentence of incarceration if they've committed a certain type of crime. You had habitual offender laws where if you're - like California's three strikes policy - where if you have two prior felonies and you get a third, no matter what it is, you're going to jail for life. Michigan had the "650 Lifer Law," where if you get caught with 650 grams of heroin or cocaine, you're automatically going to prison for life. And then we got rid of parole and stuff like that in a lot of states.
So all these things lead to more people going to jail and then for longer, and those laws came to be in the '70s and '80s. And over that time, our incarceration rate ballooned up by about 700%, so by the early 2000s, we were at over 2 million people incarcerated and another 7-8 million people on probation or parole. So it's a pretty big expansion - the United States has 5% of the world's population and a quarter, or 25%, of the prisoners, so it's a little ridiculous. The crime rate here isn't nearly as high, or nearly high enough to justify that huge disparity. So yeah, it's a whole confluence of factors led us to be the world leader in incarceration.
[00:06:14] Crystal Fincher: And what attitudes or what justifications are the people who have the power to enact these policies and continue these policies - how are they justifying them?
[00:06:25] Damon Petrich: So there's a few reasons why you might want to incarcerate somebody. One is just because you want to punish them or get revenge on them, so that's more of a moral reason. But the main focus of politicians were twofold - one was incapacitation, so that one means that because you're keeping somebody locked up in a cage, obviously they can't be out in the community committing crimes. So the thought is that you're going to reduce crime that way. The research on that is a little squishy even now, and I can talk a little bit more about that later if you want. But the other reason, and the one that we focused on in our review, was that prison deters people from going back to crime after they get out. So the idea there is that prison sucks - you go in there, you're cut off from your job, from your family, from your friends, or from just having hobbies or things to do. And you're not going to want to go back, so when you get out of prison - you think real hard, and you think how much prison sucks, and you decide not to go back to crime. That's the thinking behind that deterrence hypothesis anyway.
So those two - incapacitation and deterrence - were the main drivers of those increase in laws and stuff during the '70s, '80s, and '90s, but there really wasn't any evidence for either of them - in the '70s and '80s in particular. So most of the research evaluating whether prison actually does deter recidivism has popped up over the last 25 years or so.
[00:08:05] Crystal Fincher: And as you took a look at it - all of the studies that have popped up over the past 25 years had varying degrees of rigor and scientific validity. But as that body of research grew, people began to get a better idea of whether incarceration actually does reduce someone's likelihood of reoffending. How big was that body of work, in terms of studies, and what were you able to look at?
[00:08:40] Damon Petrich: So in our particular review, we looked at 116 studies, which is a pretty sizable number. Most people - when you read through an article and a literature review might have 10 studies or something that they just narratively go through, but we looked at 116. And then within those 116 studies, there were 981 statistical models. So 901 different comparisons - or 981 different comparisons - of what happens to custodial versus non-custodial groups. So we looked at a pretty big chunk of literature.
[00:09:20] Crystal Fincher: And in that, in the reliance of - that's a really big number - and I think, people now are maybe more familiar, just from a layperson's perspective, of just how big that number is. As we've seen throughout this pandemic that we're in the middle of, studies come out - people are looking at one study, and wow - study number two comes out and we're feeling really good about it. And man, we get to five studies and people are like, okay, we know what's going on. To get beyond a hundred is just a real comprehensive body of study and analysis. What were you able to determine from that?
[00:10:05] Damon Petrich: So I should probably explain upfront what a meta-analysis is and why it's useful. So like you were just saying - like in the COVID pandemic, for example - one study will come out and it'll say, oh, Ivermectin reduces symptomatic COVID cases by X percent. And then the next study will come out and say, Ivermectin makes people way worse. So any individual study can be kind of misleading.
A good analogy for what a meta-analysis does would be to look at baseball, for example. So let's say you're interested in some rookie player that's just come out, he's just joined Major League Baseball and you go to his - you want to know how good this player actually is? You've never seen him play, you've only heard rumors. So you go out to his first game, he gets up to bat four times and he gets no hits. So you walk away from that game thinking, wow, this player is terrible, the team wasted all their money recruiting and paying this guy's salary. But that could have just been an off game for many reasons - it's his debut game so maybe there's just first-game nerves, maybe the weather was bad, maybe he was having personal problems in his life, or he had a little bit of an injury. So there's a number of reasons why looking at his performance from that one game is not going to be representative of who he is as a player. Ideally, you'd want to look at all the games over a season where he might go up to bat 250 times. And over those 250 times, he gets 80 hits, which is a pretty good batting average - it's over .300. So with that amount of data, you could come to a more solid conclusion of whether he's actually a good player or not.
And with that amount of data, you could also look at what we call moderating characteristics. So you could look at, for example, whether he plays better when it's an away game or in a home game, whether it's early or late season - you could look at all these sorts of things. So this is essentially what we're doing with research as well, in a meta-analysis.
So if you look at studies on incarceration - one might show increases in recidivism after people go to prison, the next might show decreases, and the next might show that probationers and prisoners reoffend at about the same rates. So just like in the baseball analogy, in a meta-analysis, we're looking at all of the available research. We're combining it together and determining A) what the sort of overall or average effect of incarceration is, and then B) whether these moderating characteristics actually matter. So in other words, is the effect of incarceration pretty much the same for males as it is for females, or for juveniles as adults, or when the research design is really good versus when it's not so great. So that's basically what we did in this meta-analysis is again - looked at 116 studies and from those 981 statistical estimates.
[00:13:13] Crystal Fincher: Very helpful. Totally makes sense with the baseball analogy, and I especially appreciate breaking down with all the statistical models and not just kind of thumbs up, thumbs down - the binary - it either increases or reduces the likelihood of recidivism. But under what conditions are - might it be more likely, less likely that someone does? What are some of those influencing effects on what happens? And so you were just talking about the justification that people used going into this, and now that we have data coming out - does it turn out that people go into prison or are incarcerated in jail, they think - wow, this is horrible. Some in society are like the more uncomfortable we make it in jail, the better we want to make sure it's a place that they never would want to come back to - that it's so scary and such a bad experience that they are just scared straight for the rest of their lives. Does it actually turn out to be that way? Do they take a rational look at - this was my experience, I don't want to go back again, therefore I will not do any of the things that I did going in.
[00:14:28] Damon Petrich: I would not say that's the conclusion - no. So again, based on the 116 studies that we looked at, which is again a lot, people who are sentenced to incarceration - so jail, prison - they commit crime, they reoffend at about the same rates as if you'd sentence those same people to probation. So in other words, they're not being deterred by being sent to prison. These effects are the same for both males and females. So in other words, prison doesn't reduce reoffending for one group versus the other. It's the same whether we look at adults versus juveniles, it's the same regardless of what type of recidivism we're interested in - rearrests or convictions. It's pretty much the same across the board. There's some slight variations in research designs, but even within those, prison either has no effect or it slightly increases recidivism. We don't find any conditions under which prison is reducing reoffending or deterring these people from going back to those lives.
[00:15:35] Crystal Fincher: So from a societal perspective, a lot of people kind of make the assumption that, Hey, we arrest and we incarcerate someone - whew, our streets are safer. They get out, and now they can choose to reintegrate themselves into society hopefully - they do and we're all safer because of it. But it looks like impressions that some people may have that, Hey, we're letting someone off easy. And suggestions - there's so much media coverage around this - and suggestions that because we're letting people off easy, that we're making it easier for them to reoffend, or they don't feel sufficiently punished enough and so that becomes an incentive to reoffend. Does that seem like it tracks with what the studies have shown?
[00:16:33] Damon Petrich: Not really - so there's some studies that actually ask prisoners and offenders whether they'd prefer going to prison or probation. And a lot of them will say, oh, I'd rather do a year in prison than spend two or three years on probation. So it's not like they view probation as just being super easy. And they're not saying this because they received time off their sentence for being in the study or anything like that. Probation's not easy either - and you have to also think that while these people are on probation, they're able to stay in close touch with their family, they're able to maintain connections with work or find work, they're able to participate in the community, they can pay taxes - that I know a lot of people who are pro-prison love.
So there's all sorts of reasons why - beyond just them reoffending at the same rates as if they'd gone to prison - there's a lot of reasons why we might want to keep these people in the community. And it's not like we're saying, let everybody out of prison - so the nature of this research - you want to compare apples to apples. So in this research, comparing prisoners to probationers - these have to be people who are getting - they could either legitimately get a sentence of jail or probation, or prison or probation. So these are going to be first-time offenders, people who are relatively low-level - they've committed low-level crimes and all that. So we're not saying - there's not going to be a situation where a murderer just gets probation - that sort of thing. So I know that might be a concern of some people - they think that's a natural argument of this analysis, but it's really not.
[00:18:24] Crystal Fincher: Well, and to your point, we're really talking - if we're looking at all of the crime that gets people sentenced to prison time, a very small percentage of that is murder. A very small percentage of it is on that kind of scale - you can wind up in jail or prison for a wide variety of offenses - many of them, people perceive as relatively minor or that people might be surprised can land you in prison. Or if someone has committed a number of minor offenses, that can stack up - to your point in other situations - and increase the length of detention or the severity of the consequences. As we're looking through this and the conversation of, okay, so, we sentence them, we let them out - it's not looking like there's a difference between jail or community supervisions, things like probation - what is it about jail that is harmful or that is not helpful? What is it about the structure of our current system that doesn't improve recidivism outcomes for people?
[00:19:42] Damon Petrich: Probably the main one is the rehabilitation is not the greatest. So just as an example, substance abuse is a very strong predictor whether people are going to reoffend, unsurprisingly. About 50% of prisoners at the state and federal level in The States meet the DSM [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders] criteria for having a substance use abuse disorder - so they meet the clinical criteria for substance abuse disorder. So half of them, and then more than that just use substances, but they don't meet the criteria for a disorder. But of that 50% who has a substance abuse disorder, only about 20% of those actually receives treatment for it while they're incarcerated. So, you're not dealing with a root cause of reoffending while they're in prison - so you're not deterring them, but you're also not rehabilitating them - so you're really not doing anything.
And then in the rare cases where these people are provided with rehabilitation or reentry programming, it's often not based on any sort of evidence-based model of how you actually change people. So there's a lot of psychological and criminology theory and research on how you actually elicit behavioral change, and these programs really aren't in line with any of that. And I could give examples if you wanted, but -
[00:21:17] Crystal Fincher: Sure. I think that's helpful, 'cause I think a lot of people do assume, and sometimes it's been controversial - wow, look at how much they're coddling these prisoners - they have these educational programs, and they get all this drug treatment for free, and if they don't come out fixed then it's their own fault because they have access to all of these treatment resources in prison. Is that the case?
[00:21:43] Damon Petrich: No, I wouldn't say so - first of all, they don't have access, a lot of them, to any programs. And then, like I said, the programs that they do get really aren't that effective. So the big one that everybody loves to argue for is providing former inmates with jobs. If you look at any federal funding for program development, like the Second Chance Act or the First Step Act - I think that was one under Trump - and then under Bush, there was a Serious [and] Violent Offenders Reentry Initiative - pretty much all of these federal bills will be heavily focused on just providing offenders with jobs. And almost all of the evaluations of these programs show that they don't reduce reoffending.
And it's not really that hard - again, if you go back to the literature on behavioral change and, criminology literature - it's not really that hard to understand why just providing a job isn't going to reduce or lead somebody away from a life of crime. A lot of these people have spotty work histories where they've never had a job at all, they believe and know that it's easier to gain money by doing illicit work than it is legal work, they have things like low self-control so they're very impulsive, they don't know how to take criticism or being told what to do by a boss. They live in neighborhoods with very poor opportunities for good jobs and education, and maybe there's a mindset around there that illegal work or whatever is just a better way to go - that's sort of ingrained. So there's a lot of different reasons why just handing somebody a job isn't going to lead them away from crime, 'cause they have all these other things that need to be dealt with first.
So ideally, a rehabilitation program that's comprehensive would deal with all of those other background factors and then provide them with a job. Because if you make them less impulsive, better able to resist the influence of their antisocial friends, and get this thought out of their head that other people are being hostile towards them when they're really not - all these sorts of cognitive and behavioral biases that they have - if you deal with all of those things and then you give them a job, they're more likely to actually latch onto that job as something worthwhile doing. And then they're going to go on to get out of a life of crime. But if you just give them a job and you haven't dealt with any of those issues, you can't really expect that to work. And that is the model that we currently do - is something that we don't really expect to work that well.
[00:24:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that's - it's really interesting and I don't know that a lot of people actually know that, Hey, giving someone a job isn't sufficient - which is why I think it's so important to talk about studies like this, because some of what has become conventional wisdom, really is not accurate or reflects what has been studied and discovered. And I guess in that vein, what are the factors - you just talked about a few - but what does increase someone's likelihood of reoffending or recidivism, and what reduces it?
[00:25:08] Damon Petrich: So those are probably two ends of the same, or two sides of the same coin, but this is pretty well known in criminology - a model called the risk-need-responsivity [RNR] model was developed by a couple of fellow Canadians, named James Bonta and Don Andrews, along with some of their colleagues in the '80s and '90s. And they, through again, other meta-analyses just like we did, found certain categories of characteristics of people who are more likely to reoffend. So you have things like having antisocial peers - so that one's pretty obvious - if you have a bunch of friends that are involved in crime, it's going to be pretty hard for you to get out of that life because you're surrounded by those people. Same with family members. If you have what are called criminal thinking patterns - so again, you might have what's called a hostile attribution bias, things like that, where somebody says something a little bit negative to you and you take that as a huge insult and you retaliate with anger and aggression - things like that. Or being impulsive - so you're again quick to anger, you're swayed by small little enticements in the environment and that sort of thing - so you're easily swayed one way or the other. Things like that are strong predictors of reoffending. Substance abuse - it's what I mentioned earlier. If you don't really have any sort of proactive leisure activities, like hobbies and stuff like that. So there's a bunch of well-known things that we know are strongly associated with recidivism, and a rehabilitation program should ideally deal with them.
Now this model that Andrews and Bonta and all these other people came up with - this RNR risk-need-responsivity model - the risk part says that we should give people a risk assessment when they're entering prison or leaving prison and determine what level of risk are they from reoffending. And we assess these different criteria, like criminal thinking patterns and antisocial friends and substance abuse. So we determine what those factors are and then we design them a treatment program that actually deals with those factors at the individual level. So we're not just giving a blanket rehabilitation program to everybody, and you're providing the most amount of care to the people who most need it or who are the most likely to re-offend.
And then once we've done all that, we need to make sure that we're addressing these problems in some sort of a format that we know actually works. The most well-known one, but not as often used, the most well-known within the sort of psychologist and criminological literature is cognitive behavioral therapy [CBT]. So this is pretty popular for dealing with depression and all sorts of eating disorders and substance abuse problems in non-offender populations. Well, those programs also work in offender populations and they work pretty well. So the research shows - again meta-analyses - that when you deal with all these three factors - risk, need, and responsivity - you can reduce reoffending rates by about 26%. So it's a pretty sizeable amount - it's much greater than you're getting by just sentencing people to prison without doing anything.
[00:28:42] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and I think you cover in your paper - those things are absolutely true. And you just talked about several administrations' attempts to implement programming and resources to try and help people get jobs, potentially - hey, there's even a CBT treatment, but if that treatment has twice as many people as are recommended being in a session and occurs over half the time that it's supposed to, you really are sabotaging the entire process or really setting it up for failure. And it just seems to be an expensive exercise that we aren't really getting anything out of. Does that seem to be consistent with how you've seen the attempts at introducing this programming within prisons and jails?
[00:29:40] Damon Petrich: Yeah, for sure - this is a pretty common finding too - so it's not just about preaching that you're going to do these things. You actually have to implement them well. So just like you said, there's a number of studies that show this - so you've designed some really great program that deals with all of these risk factors that lead people back into reoffending, you give it to them in a cognitive behavioral setting. So all seems good on paper, but in practice, like you said - one of the famous studies there - can't remember the names of the authors offhand right now - but one of the famous studies there showed that they're providing it to people in groups of 30, as opposed to 15, and they're delivering it in a really short amount of time. And they're not maybe giving it to the highest-risk people - so they're just mixing random people in there at varying levels of risk. So when you do all these sorts of things - you implement the program poorly - you can't really expect it to work.
And this is often the case - is the government pays people to come up with these great programs, and then not enough funding is provided to actually make sure that they're implemented and evaluated well. So the amount of funding that actually goes into that - developing the programs to begin with - is small, but when you do do that, you're not making sure that you're actually implementing things well. So it's just sort of shooting yourself in the foot, and probably making people come to the conclusion that these things don't work - when they do work, if you just implement them well.
[00:31:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and there's also a lot of rhetoric - and you discuss this - there's a lot of rhetoric coming from the government, even coming from leadership within the Bureau of Prisons or leadership in our carceral system, saying we do want to rehabilitate people. We are trying to implement programming that does this. You see - we have these educational opportunities and we are doing evaluations of people. And it may be happening while they're understaffed or other challenges, but one of the biggest, I guess, red flags is that none of the evaluation of their programs and none of the incentives that arise are in any way tied to what is the actual result of what happens. Are you actually succeeding on reducing someone's likelihood for reoffense? It does not seem like any compensation is tied to that, any kind of evaluation of positions or regular reporting - to say, is this program having its intended effect? And if not, what do we need to do to correct for that? Is that what you found?
[00:32:33] Damon Petrich: I would say that's probably a pretty fair assessment. A lot of the programs that are implemented are never evaluated at all. And then the ones that are - it's usually once - there's one evaluation of those programs. And then, like you said, there doesn't really seem to be a lot of self-reflection - I don't know what other word you would use - but these programs don't really change on the basis of these evaluations. So, it's kind of disheartening to hear about, I guess.
[00:33:14] Crystal Fincher: It feels very disheartening to live in the middle of - and one of the big things about this is that this - we have these conversations and we talk about these studies and we're saying, yeah, it actually - we're not doing anyone any favors right now when it comes to reducing recidivism. And having these conversations oftentimes detached from the cost associated with what we're paying for these. And my goodness are we paying to incarcerate people? It's not just, well, we do lock them up and we keep them away. Or we do a good job of keeping them in - they reoffend, they go back to jail. And lots of people are like, we did our job, they went back to jail - boom, everything is fine.
But we are paying through the nose and out the ear for this - just here, we're in the state of Washington, and right now the state spends about $112 per day, or over $40,000 annually, to incarcerate one individual - that's the cost per inmate. In King County - the county that we're in - they spend $192 a day, or $70,000 annually, to incarcerate an individual. That is a huge amount of the tax dollars that we spend - these come out of our general fund, meaning that these are dollars that every service, everything that is not a dedicated source of revenue, is competing for. So when we talk about things and have conversations like, well, we don't have the budget for that and we don't have the money - that is related to how much of that money we're spending on other things. And my goodness, I would think that we want to get our money's worth for that level of expenditure. And it really appears that if we're saying the goal of jail is to get people on the straight and narrow path and becoming contributing members of society and all of the implications of that, it doesn't seem like we're getting our money's worth. And so, if those aren't the goals and if we just want to punish people, it's not like we're punishing people for free. We're punishing people at the cost of $70,000 per day [year], and at the cost of all the other services and infrastructure needs that we have.
So it really seems like we're punishing ourselves as much, or more, as others - particularly if we're bringing people back into society that are likely to reoffend in one way or another. And so if our goal is to keep our community safe and that is the North Star, it looks like we need to realign our processes and our expenditure of resources. I guess my question to you, after all that, is - how should we be moving forward? What should we be looking to do? What is shown to work?
[00:36:24] Damon Petrich: Well, I would say - yeah, $70,000 a year as just a revenge cost per person seems like a lot. $80 billion in the country as a whole, for a revenge cost, seems like a pretty high price to pay, given we're not reducing reoffending. You could make the argument that these people aren't offending while they're in prison, but that's - there's other reasons why that might not be completely accurate, which I could talk about too, but -
[00:36:59] Crystal Fincher: Well, I'm interested in that. Why might that not be accurate?
[00:37:03] Damon Petrich: So, obviously the person - if you incarcerate a particular individual, obviously they can't be out in the community committing crimes. So that's obvious, but there's a number of reasons why that might not, en masse, actually reduce crime a whole lot. The research on it - this is a little bit squishy - in terms of whether incarcerating more people leads to lower crime rates, because one influences the other. But for example, if you look at illegal drug markets - a lot of the homicides in the United States and other violent crime that people are really concerned about, and it's plastered all over the media is - homicides, gang-related stuff. So if you take key gang members out and you put them in prison, what ends up happening is that there's competition in that market to take over that person's place, either within the gang or other gangs coming in. So what ends up happening oftentimes is a spike in violence. So that's one reason why just incapacitating, particularly high-crime individuals, might not actually lead to lower crime rates overall. Again, you're lowering crime for that one person, but you might be increasing crime on a more systemic level.
Beyond that, these things have broader societal and community level impacts - incarcerating a lot of people. Again, research shows that when you're incarcerating a lot of people in a particular community - so there's a bunch of really good work by Robert Sampson - he has a book that came out a few years ago called Great American City. And he looked at these individual neighborhoods in Chicago over time, and what he finds is that in communities where there's a higher number of people incarcerated in a particular community, this ends up increasing what's called "legal cynicism." And this is done in some other work as well with David Kirk and Andrew Papachristos - but they show that this increases legal cynicism, which means people are skeptical of police helping them out, the police doing a good job. And what ends up happening after that - when people are more cynical of the legal system, they're less likely to report crimes to the police, they're less likely to cooperate with the police. So what ends up happening? You incarcerate more people and people in that community end up being less willing to cooperate with law enforcement. And this leads to sort of an endless cycle where things sort of get out of hand. So there's all these unintended and nonfinancial consequences of incarcerating a lot of people that could potentially end up leading to more crime.
[00:40:03] Crystal Fincher: Well, and - speaking as a Black woman - obviously, looking at the impacts of mass incarceration in the Black community and in neighborhoods around the country - where it is almost like the community is responding to the actual outcome and that, Hey, this actually isn't making my community any better. I'm experiencing traumatic impacts from this - whether it's my relative went to prison or a sole breadwinner in the family and now we're thrown into poverty, or I'm in a situation where I don't have a parent who used to be there - who now is no longer there. Or causing instability and impacting the education that people get and the kind of job opportunity, watching someone who's come out have to struggle and be ostracized. And it looks like, Hey, this is just the first step on a long cycle of traumatic and undesirable events - and I don't want to participate in a system that is doing that.
With that, as we look forward, and I think this is also related to conversations about just fundamental trust in our criminal legal system and relations with police and throughout the system. It's - if we think about how to turn that around - to me, seems related to thinking about the question of how do we get better outcomes for everyone? 'Cause it seems like right now where we're investing a lot in poor outcomes for people who were already, usually, in pretty poor spots leading to themselves being incarcerated, coming out and not necessarily improving, definitely not improving. And if anything, a chance that it gets a little bit worse. How do we change that entire outcome? And I know you're looking specifically in the incarceration space, but what should be, what could be done differently? Or do we just need a fundamental restructuring of the way we do this?
[00:42:17] Damon Petrich: I don't know about a fundamental restructuring - I don't, I'm not great at that high-level thinking stuff, but what I do know is that - we're probably going to continue to incarcerate people. That's something that's done in every country and people seem to love here. So if we actually want to use prison for public safety - because 95% of inmates eventually get out - if we actually want to use it for public safety, then let's actually try wholeheartedly to rehabilitate them while they're in there. And again, there's a lot of theory and evidence-based principles on how we can do this, like the risk-need-responsivity model that I talked about earlier, cognitive behavioral therapy more broadly. If you use these types of things and continue to work on them and develop them over time, then yeah - prison might actually be helpful if people are going there and getting the help that they need. But that's not what's happening currently. So that's one level in incarceration terms - that's the area that I know best.
So that's one way you could potentially alleviate some of this stuff is - if people are actually getting resources and stuff when they're in prison, and then when once they're reintegrating, they're not only going to reoffend less, but maybe they're going to contribute to their community more. They're going to be better able to connect with their family and stuff like that. So rather than being a hindrance, it could potentially be a help. Obviously, again, it's not ideal to remove people from their communities and their family and friends. And like I said earlier, if you have the option to sentence them to something community-based instead, I think that's the better route to go. But if you are going to send people to prison, which I think we're going to continue to do a lot of the time, then let's rehabilitate them while they're in there is the main point. And do so based on what actually works to do that.
[00:44:23] Crystal Fincher: It's really the investment in the people who are there, and we're - I think up against a lot of societal attitudes and resistance where it just feels wrong to a number of people to be providing services and shifting that investment to things that are seemingly helpful for the inmate, because everything about how we've been conditioned to understand our prison system has been - the punishment is kind of the key, and they'll make rational decisions afterwards to avoid prison based on how bad the punishment is. When it comes to community supervision, things like probation, what are the differences there? If there are better outcomes from that, what accounts for the better outcomes when it comes to probation versus incarceration?
[00:45:23] Damon Petrich: I wouldn't say the outcomes are better - they're just pretty much the same as they would be if they're sentenced to prison. So, probation costs less and then it also enables the people to be out in the community doing community things, like being with their friends and families and all that. I mean, you can't quantify, based on a recidivism percentage, what their family members and friends and employers are getting out of it. So that's something we can't really look at - or I guess you could, but something we don't often do - but so there's intangible things that you would get by keeping people in the community. Plus it doesn't lead to all that other stuff I talked about where people become cynical of the legal system and it leads to this cycle of whatever.
[00:46:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and so if we're were doing this programming in prison and helping people, I think your research shows it's extremely important to do both the structural, Hey, you need a place to live, you need to be able to pay your rent and your bills - so having a job, having housing, having healthcare, getting those very basic needs met is critical. But also addressing a number of the mental or behavioral health issues that are common among the incarcerated population - and dealing with that is as important. And basically those two things both need to happen hand-in-hand. How do we do a better job of that in our current system?
[00:46:57] Damon Petrich: Well, first of all, I'd like to say that you're right there - I think maybe when I was talking earlier about employment, it might sound like giving people jobs is just a waste of time, but that's not the case. It needs - the two things need to be paired - you need to deal with the cognitive and behavioral problems in addition to giving them jobs and housing support and all that. In terms of how you actually go about doing that, there are examples in the literature of programs that do this, so there's examples out there.
I think if you're a state or local or even federal correctional department and you're interested in doing this - implementing something that's evidence-based - or if you're just a concerned citizen that wants to rally your local officials to do that - go and talk to researchers like me, or people at universities that have criminology departments or criminal justice departments, because this knowledge is out there. It's widely available. You just have to go and seek it out. So at my university, for example, we have the University of Cincinnati Corrections Institute and under the guidance of Ed Latessa, he was - now passed - but he was, over the last 30 years, responsible for disseminating a lot of this evidence-based practices to some of the state and local criminal justice agencies. And they helped with implementation and evaluation in a lot of these places, so the help is out there. You just have to look for it a little bit.
[00:48:38] Crystal Fincher: And another question I had - your analysis seemed to suggest that when we're talking about low-risk, medium, and high-risk offenders - or people who have done relatively minor crimes versus those who have done more serious crimes - that these interventions are particularly effective the more serious the offense or crime has been. And that perhaps even sometimes treating someone who is a really low-risk as if they're a high-risk, can worsen the outcomes for that person. Is that the case?
[00:49:21] Damon Petrich: Yeah, that tends to be a finding in research - we're not exactly sure why, but providing a lot of really intensive services to people deemed to be low-risk can actually be harmful rather than helpful. We don't know based on research why, but there's a lot of pretty good hypotheses about why. So a low-risk offender is going to be somebody who's a first-timer who's committed some not-that-serious crime. So they probably have a job, they probably have pretty strong connections with their family and all that. So if you're taking them and you're putting them in a program where you have to be there 40 hours a week, they're probably going to get fired from their job, it's going to be harder to stay in contact with friends and families that are sort of tying you into a non-criminal life. And then you're probably going to be associating with all kinds of people who are high-risk, and maybe they're going to draw you towards, oh yeah, I could earn four grand going out tonight and stealing some laptops. There's a lot of reasons why just taking low-risk people and putting them in these programs is going to be harmful rather than helpful.
[00:50:31] Crystal Fincher: And so with that in mind, and you talk about, Hey, if we're trying to influence local electeds - one of the interesting things about having a podcast and radio show that caters to extremely politically and civically inclined people is that we actually do have a number of policymakers and politicians who listen, and people who are enacting and in control of this policy. If you were to talk to them and give them advice about how to move forward, especially in the current environment that we find ourselves in, where over the past few years has been increasing awareness of some of the defecits of our system and pushes to change those. And also, as we have seen more recently, a real strong pushback from a lot of people who are invested in our current system saying, Hey, let's not change things too much. Maybe we need to jail more and for longer. And maybe we're just not doing enough incarceration, and that's the answer. In that kind of political environment, what would you tell people who are in charge of this policy, who may be facing pressure to keep going forward with the status quo, about how they should evaluate how they should move forward and the kinds of things that they should do?
[00:52:07] Damon Petrich: I know a lot of these politicians get lobbied by correctional officer groups or whatever, and that's whatever, but ultimately you get voted in by voters. So, I'm not an expert on public opinion - I have other friends who are more into that kind of stuff, but I do know from talking with them and from reading that literature, that the public actually does support rehabilitation. So they have for a long time and it's shifted more towards being in support of rehabilitation over time. So right now, most Americans support providing rehabilitation programs to prisoners and offenders. So this is something that's going to please your constituency, people want this kind of thing. And it's not like you're going to be losing all kinds of jobs by getting rid of prison - there's going to be a need for skilled people who can provide these programs and probation officers and all these sorts of things. So it's not a net loss when you're getting rid of prisons. There's a lot of reasons to sentence people to community supervision and things like that - provide rehabilitation. There's public support for it, there's jobs involved, there's cost savings - big time, obviously - it's way cheaper to keep somebody out of prison than it is to keep them in prison. So there's a lot of different reasons why you would want to do that as a politician.
[00:53:43] Crystal Fincher: I think that makes sense. Certainly it's a lot cheaper to keep someone out of prison versus in prison. I mean, we talked about the annual costs - in the state of Washington over $40,000, King County over $70,000 - comparing that to how much we invest in a student of $11,500 a year. If we focus more on investing in people, both inside and outside the system, it seems like we set ourselves up for a safer community, fewer people being victimized, and more people leading thriving, productive, tax-paying lives. And we're all happier than we are right now, I would think, I would hope - it seems like the research points in that direction. So I certainly appreciate you taking the time to speak with us about this. Is there anything else that you want to leave with us, in thinking about this study and your research?
[00:54:55] Damon Petrich: I think we covered it pretty well. Just to circle back to something you just said - I know this might put me out of a job since I focus on what happens when people's lives go awry, but you really are better off to invest in early prevention programs and giving people a good start on life than trying to correct the program or the problem afterwards. So yeah - politicians spend some money on prevention programs. I know the good effects of that are a long way out, but they're actually good on a societal level. So I guess I would add that, even though it's not good for criminologists, maybe, to put themselves out of a job like that.
[00:55:40] Crystal Fincher: Well, much appreciated, and thank you so much for having this conversation with us today.
[00:55:45] Damon Petrich: Yeah, thank you very much for having me on. I'm glad that there are people out there interested in this stuff, so thanks again.
[00:55:51] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
Follow us on our new Twitter account at @HacksWonks!
Today on the show, Seattle Times politics and communities reporter Daniel Beekman joins Crystal to talk through results from this week’s primary election! They discuss how the often-predicted “red wave” failed to materialize and the various possible factors that might have caused that, as well as results in several legislative districts that were anticipated to be competitive battlegrounds that could potentially flip from Democrats to Republicans.
They discuss the race for U.S. Representative in the 3rd Congressional District, where Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez finished in first place, while Republican incumbent Jamie Herrera Beutler and Trump-endorsed Republican Joe Kent are in a close battle to determine which one will advance to face Gluesenkamp Perez in the general election. They review the Secretary of State race, where Republicans might end up being absent during the general election this November thanks to nonpartisan candidate Julie Anderson.
They spend some time looking at the 8th Congressional District race, then Dan discusses where he’s seen a lot of independent money getting spent this election.
They end the discussion by going over ballot initiatives that voters may get a chance to vote on this November.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Daniel Beekman, at @DBeekman. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Larkin to face Schrier in WA congressional race, as Dunn concedes; Kent closes in on Herrera Beutler” by Jim Brunner from the Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/larkin-will-face-schrier-in-wa-house-race-as-dunn-concedes/
“How WA’s ‘jungle’ primary may have saved Herrera Beutler” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/how-was-jungle-primary-may-have-saved-herrera-beutler/
“Republicans could get shut out of secretary of state race” by Melissa Santos from Axios: https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/08/03/democrat-steve-hobbs-washington-secretary-state
“No red wave in sight after early returns in key legislative race” by Joseph O’Sullivan from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/politics/2022/08/no-red-wave-sight-after-early-returns-key-legislative-race
“Red wave or blue wall in WA? InSeattle suburbs, this race could be ‘real bellwether’” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/red-wave-or-blue-wall-in-wa-in-seattle-suburbs-this-race-could-be-real-bellwether/
“These are the issues that matter most to Washington state voters, new poll indicates” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/these-are-the-issues-that-matter-most-to-washington-state-voters-new-poll-indicates/
“Larkin advances, Dunn concedes in 8th Congressional District” by David Hyde from KUOW: https://kuow.org/stories/larkin-advances-dunn-concedes-in-8th-congressional-district
“Key results from WA primaries as control of the Legislature hangs in the balance” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/wa-legislative-election-results-key-outcomes-for-the-2022-primary/
“This is where big money is flowing and ads are attacking in the battle for control of WA’s Legislature” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/this-is-where-big-money-is-flowing-and-ads-are-attacking-in-the-battle-for-control-of-was-legislature/
“Democrats declare ‘no red wave’ in legislative swing districts” by Melissa Santos from Axios: https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/08/03/washington-democrats-red-wave-legislative-districts
“With November Ballot in Question, Seattle’s Social Housing Campaign Soldiers On” by Ben Adlin from South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2022/08/02/with-november-ballot-in-question-seattles-social-housing-campaign-soldiers-on/
“Seattle City Council Puts Ranked Choice Voting on the Ballot” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/07/15/76479670/seattle-city-council-puts-ranked-choice-voting-on-ballot
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at the recently refreshed officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. You can also follow the show on the new Twitter account @HacksWonks on Twitter. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live show where we review the news of the week with a cohost. Welcome back to the program today's cohost: Seattle Times politics and communities reporter, Dan Beekman. Welcome back.
[00:00:59] Daniel Beekman: Thanks for having me again.
[00:01:00] Crystal Fincher: I am excited this week to talk about the results of the primary election that we had. Lots of the results we have are final and conclusive, a few of them aren't. So I guess as we start off looking at the results across the state, what catches your eye as some of the most interesting races and results?
[00:01:23] Daniel Beekman: I think there's just the sweep or the totality of the results and trying to watch - even though in many state legislative races was a foregone conclusion who would advance, though not all, in those and in the congressional races. And the Senate race - trying to get a grip on is there a cliche red wave coming predicted by many or not - and maybe a takeaway in the totality that we don't see major evidence of that at this point. So that's one thing. And then just some of the races that are still up in the air from the 3rd Congressional District down in southwest Washington to the the 47th Legislative District and trying to wait and see which Democrat is gonna go through to the general election there in south King County. Those are some of the big ones. I think people are still waiting on - also Secretary of State, which we could find out about today. Obviously, the incumbent - appointed incumbent - Steve Hobbs through easily, but the possibility that the general election could feature no Republican after the state's voters had elected a Republican to the office every 4 years for almost 60 years or something like that.
[00:03:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, those are certainly some that are catching my eye. Just going - the 3rd Congressional District is the race where Jaime Herrera Beutler is the incumbent. Lots of talk leading up to this because Jaime Herrera Beutler was one of the Republicans who voted to impeach Trump - drew a number of primary challengers. Primarily, they cited primarily that reason - that she was not supportive enough of Trump, and that is one of their litmus test issues for a lot of them. And so drew a few different challengers - one of whom, Joe Kent - endorsed by Trump, frequent guest on Hannity, just really extreme, does not care about any of the norms or anything even for the Republican Party, and is just really one of those far right-wing extremist Republicans - and he's proud of it. So a lot of lead up, a lot of independent spending going in that race, a lot of money raised by those campaigns. And so on election night - looked like Gluesenkamp Perez, who is the Democratic candidate, consolidated the Democratic vote and so those all went there. And then the Republicans split the vote amongst themselves. And Jaime Herrera Beutler was up more on election night, but as each day has passed, her lead has whittled down and whittled down. And looking at the percentage of vote the Joe Kent is bringing in, especially yesterday - looking and projecting that today with the amount of ballots left, it can be a very close race and certainly too close to call who is ultimately going to make it through.
[00:04:46] Daniel Beekman: My coworker went down there and wrote a story about how the "jungle" primary might save Jaime Herrera Beutler, which was interesting and it might still be the case. And she might be in even more trouble if we didn't have our different kind of primary system.
[00:05:04] Crystal Fincher: I think that's gonna be an interesting race. Lots of people are waiting on today's results to see how that shakes out. Certainly, as you talked about, the Secretary of State race, which that has been - one, basically the only statewide wide race that Republicans have been able to win in recent years. And a Republican previously held that until going on - resigning in the middle of the term - to work for the Biden administration. And Governor Inslee, as you said, appointed Steve Hobbs in there. And it - right now - it looks like Julie Anderson has the edge - again, very close and still waiting to see if she's going to make it over the Republican. But yesterday her lead widened and that suggests that that trend will probably continue today as we see how the late ballots are composed and splitting. And so today will be another day that we look to see - does that race look more conclusive in favor of Julie Anderson getting through or not? And then that - whether or not Julie Anderson as an Independent or the Republican gets through - changes the dimension of that race. I think, as we've seen across the state that, as you said, the red waves certainly did not appear. And Steve Hobbs would absolutely seem to have the advantage over a Republican challenger. I don't know that that's the case with an Independent challenger. And so it just changes the dimension of that race in ways that are interesting. Lots of people will be paying attention to that to see - in some ways, people may think - okay, Julie Anderson is gonna have an easier time consolidating both a Republican vote and maybe drawing away some Democrats to be competitive. In another way, she may face some challenges raising the campaign funds necessary to execute a general election campaign not being attached to either one of the parties. So that's gonna be an interesting race to see.
Legislatively - my goodness, the 47th Legislative District, which is here in my backyard - it's the eastern half of Kent, Covington, some of Auburn. And really close results. Both parties have said that this is one of their top targets for Democrats to defend, for Republicans - they thought that this was basically their number one takeover opportunity in the State Legislature with two open seats. One after Senator Mona Das decided not to run again in the seat that before her was held by Republican Joe Fain, before that was held by Claudia Kauffman. And so this time for this Senate seat, you have a Republican who's a city Councilmember - Bill Boyce - running as a Republican in that seat. And then you have two Democrats - Satwinder Kaur who's a Kent City Councilmember and Claudia Kauffman, who is a former State Senator in that seat. And a hotly contested primary among Democrats. And that is still too close to call - with Claudia Kaufman, I think, widened her lead a little bit yesterday. And so we'll see if that continues today.
But when you look at the percentage that Democrats got in all of those races, they're hovering around 55% of the vote, which is certainly very encouraging for Democrats saying that, especially heading into the general, that it looks like they have a definite advantage moving in there. And some of the support that Republicans thought was going to materialize just did not. And in fact, in the House seat, one of - the open House seat - where it looks like two Democrats are actually making it through and all of the Republicans, including the party-picked Republican Carmen Goers who raised like $200,000, isn't even making it to the general election. And Chris Stearns and Shukri Olow, both Democrats, look to be making it through. So just a result that Republicans certainly did not anticipate that they would not make it through, that their number one pick Carmen Goers wasn't even the top-finishing Republican in the race. She's currently in fourth place, not even third. So just really interesting results there. What did you see go into that, and what do you think happened in the 47th district?
[00:09:43] Daniel Beekman: I wrote a story on the Senate race there back in - about a month ago or a little bit less than a month ago - just thought it was really interesting, partly because the district is so multifaceted because it, as you know very well - you and I even talked about it - having urban, suburban, and semi-rural areas, all kinds of folks in terms of income, in terms of race and ethnicity background. Just - you got everything in there and it's a little bit of a microcosm of America because it's so finely balanced politically. And you can tell - I went back and looked and you can see that Senate seat went from Republican to Democrat in 2006, to Republican in 2010, to Democrat again in 2018, and then the Republicans this year in 2022 were saying this - they're number one, if not - or at least one of their top targets in the state, maybe their top target for Senate seats and could it flip again? And I think that's partly what made it interesting, besides that obviously the people of the district care about who's representing them, personally. But I was, I have been interested in the results showing that combined the Democrats have, like you said, above 50% and trying to see which one might get through. Satwinder Kaur obviously had the support of the Democratic party, despite not being the former seat holder in that race. But Claudia Kauffman is ahead, I think, by 65 votes right now and that's interesting that she may make it through, despite not having the backing of the Party, although I assume the Party would come and support her in the general.
And I also wrote a story - The Seattle Times and a number of other organizations - King5 and schools at UW and WSU - commissioned a poll that we wrote a whole bunch of stories about different results in the last few weeks, including - I wrote one about what are the issues, what's the most important issue to voters? That was one of the questions that was asked and they were given a whole range of topics and the clear number one and two - number one was inflation, number two was - number one was abortion, excuse me. Number two was inflation. And I believe abortion was very high with suburban voters as well as inflation. But the Democratic suburban voters - I think it just could point to, who knows, but looking at these results, it could - the 47th district could be an example among many of where the Supreme Court's decision on abortion really fired some people up on the Democratic side of things in some of these swing races.
[00:13:14] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And it's an area where it's hard for - a lot of Republicans certainly try to make the case if you look at their literature, their advertisements and mailings - that they're moderate and reasonable and pragmatic. That's really hard to sell when they're anti-choice. And that is just out-of-line with so many of these districts and voters, certainly looking across the state - out-of-line with where Washington voters are generally. And I think a lot of Republicans faced challenges for being pro-life, not being really able to explain that - and I think that's an area where Republicans have gotten a pass before. Some of these same candidates have in previous years expressed similar sentiments, but I think a lot of people didn't necessarily connect it to reality, feeling like we were safe as they continue to try and say - I saw Reagan Dunn say recently in an interview - it's settled law here in Washington State. People heard "it's settled law" from Justice Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court and heard "it's settled law" from Congressional Republicans. And it was not settled at all. And they keep seeming to move in a more conservative direction and now talking about same-sex marriage, contraception, and a number of different things. And so that's scary to a lot of people - those are fundamental rights that people have - count on and build lives on and that shape the direction of people's lives. And so it's just so out of step and extreme for the general population here, it's hard for a lot of people to get past.
And also looking at these races, Republicans tried to make arguments saying that Democrats don't have solutions for public safety, they're soft on crime, blah, blah, blah. And it actually does not look like those attacks landed at all. And I think voters are at the point where - okay, we see there's a problem - whether it's inflation, whether it's not feeling safe - but we've talked about this problem. What is actually the solution that we have for it? And I think they heard a lot of the same things that they've seen put in practice that haven't necessarily made a difference from Republicans. And I think - certainly people are absolutely concerned about public safety - we have to attack gun violence, we have to attack violent crime, property crime across the board. But people also recognize and polling has underscored this - that police can't do it all by themselves. Even if you think more police are part of the equation, hardly anyone thinks that's the entire equation. And investments in behavioral health, investments in some of the root causes of crime and ability to help people stabilize are necessary components of these things that Democrats are talking about and Republicans aren't. And I think that played into that not landing in a way that Republicans were really thinking it was gonna land.
And similarly with inflation - lots of people are hurting, but who is prescribing things that are different. You hear Democrats talking about middle-class tax cuts and relief and taxing the wealthy to pay for programs and services that benefit those who are not wealthy. And not hearing that from Republicans. And so I think those are some of the - you look at the arguments that were made, the messaging that was in the primary - and it just looks like, from beginning to end, it felt like it didn't land. And certainly choice is part of it, but I don't even think it accounts for all of what we saw. How did you see that?
[00:17:17] Daniel Beekman: I was just speculating that abortion rights could have played a big role in this, in many swing districts, and could continue to. But certainly not the only thing. I think that there was, like you said - you could see it in the advertising on the Republican side - a big play ahead of this election to point to inflation, gas prices - which are maybe coming down a little bit now, but were so high. And also crime - pointing the finger and saying - the Democrats are in charge here in Washington State, the Democrats are in charge in DC and you're hurting. And in their sort of making the play that voters would take out their frustrations and their pain on Democrat in their ballots. And I don't know - it doesn't, it definitely doesn't seem like that's happening conclusively. Also in the background is January 6th and all of that. And I guess what's interesting is, you look at where is a surge happening, or where's the dynamic on the Republican side. If Joe Kent is able to take out Jaime Herrera Beutler, or - like we were talking about - or at least get close, the energy there is coming from the Make America Great Again sentiments and the Joe Kent type of politics that you were talking about is not necessarily maybe as much coming from those bread-and-butter inflation and crime issues, I don't know. And maybe there's a takeaway that you might have from the 8th Congressional District and what we're seeing there in terms of Matt Larkin moving forward rather than Reagan Dunn or Jesse Jensen. I don't know whether, what that could tell us. And also how Kim Schrier did, being a Democrat, tell us about what's happening.
[00:19:51] Crystal Fincher: That's such an interesting race - one, just the beginning result - Kim Schrier finished really strongly. And in, I think, in a stronger position than a lot of people were expecting. Certainly choice had to do with that and all the issues that we talked about. It's interesting - with Dunn and Jensen - who spent a lot of the primary attacking each other. And so it is part of the question - were they so focused on each other, and Matt Larkin was just there not taking any heat and therefore seemed a better option and made it through? Is it that the Republican base is splintered and that Dunn's reputation as a moderate over time is just too moderate for today's GOP? They certainly - Jensen attacked Dunn for his prior DUI, for his substance abuse disorder issues. Dunn finished relatively strongly in King County, it looks like. But I don't know how that's landing in the Republican base, obviously. I actually don't think that, especially given his advocacy for treatment for substance use disorder - that has actually been an issue he's been okay on and not toeing the - "just lock 'em up" line for all of that. I don't know that he pays a price for that in King County, or that's an effective attack for him in the general election, like they were suggesting - saying that he's vulnerable, he's had these issues in the past and that makes him a liability in the general election. I don't know that that would've landed in the general, but maybe just Republicans thinking about that accusation were uncomfortable. Probably a mix of those things. But just really interesting to see where they were at.
But it's certainly - based on where Kim Schrier finished - she has gotta be eager about the general election and I think that this is certainly a seat that Republicans nationally had in their sites as a prime takeover target. I think nationally, they probably felt that their chances were better with Reagan Dunn versus Kim Schrier and so I think one of the questions is going to be - does this attract national investment, a lot of the PAC money that would come in here. We saw a lot of spending in the primary - does that continue in the same way in the general, or does this drop down a tier and is not gonna be attracting all of the money from everywhere on those? Certainly this is not a foregone conclusion - Kim Schrier has to execute a good general election campaign, I'm confident she will - not taking this for granted at all, but it does look like Democrats have an advantage here. And I think that's hard for Republicans to deny and just gets a little bit tougher with someone who has no name ID from prior races in the district. Is that how you see things, or are there any other factors that you think are at play there?
[00:23:14] Daniel Beekman: I know that Larkin did campaign hard on crime and -
[00:23:22] Crystal Fincher: "Make crime illegal again."
[00:23:23] Daniel Beekman: Right. So I don't know if that continues in the general, or what sort of approach he takes - I'm guessing that Schrier would, like we were talking about - talk about choice among other things because I believe Larkin has anti-abortion views. And would expect that to play a role.
[00:23:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And it's - across the state - some interesting results. Just other ones - a lot of, certainly a lot of people are looking at the 26th Legislative District, it's a very competitive district. Republicans also have that one as one of their top Senate pickups - pickup opportunities - and Emily Randall finished strong with over 50% of the vote. Certainly that makes the general election look real favorable facing Jesse Young, a Republican - currently a House member who's running for that Senate seat now, who raised a lot of money, who is well-known from his time in the House. But Emily Randall handily beat him - again, not a foregone conclusion, but certainly looks to have the advantage going into the general election.
The 10th Legislative District, the 5th Legislative District, 30th Legislative District - all those were Republicans - and Democrats - were wondering are these gonna be really close races or not? And looking at 55% of the vote for Democrats and others, so those look like they're pretty handily in the Democratic column. Again, still need to get through the general election, still need to campaign hard - but if they do campaign hard, run great general election races - looks like they have the advantage there. 42nd District was, is a district that was close and that looks like it could be a toss up, but really a lot of the talk initially was like - there are a number of purple districts, swing districts potentially that could be really close and a number of these seats could flip. And it looks like we're down to one right now, that looks like maybe there's the opportunity for it to flip. The 42nd District in northern Washington with Sharon Shewmake running for the Senate seat up there - she's currently a State Rep. And then you have State Rep candidates there, but it's not out-of-hand, certainly, but looks to be a competitive general election race that will attract a lot of attention and investment because that's a toss up right now. Are there any other races across the state that caught your eye?
[00:26:19] Daniel Beekman: One thing that's interesting is - I did a story leading up to the election about independent spending - spending by PACs independent from the candidate campaigns, and - just as a way to get a measure for - okay, where are the hot races? Because that's where the money generally goes. And this is money from the Democratic Party and big Democratic funders. And then even more, when I checked at least, on the Republican side from the Republican Party and large companies and business interests. And many of those districts that you mentioned - and what was interesting was I talked to some people and it was pretty clear that there was even more independent spending this year than in past years in the primary. Usually it really ramps up for the general, but here even in the primary, we're seeing pretty big numbers of dollars pouring into these races. And even in some districts that - even with this idea of it could be a red wave year and some big Republican spending in districts that have been pretty clearly blue recently, and it was suggested to me by a couple folks that that's the Republicans probing and saying - okay, do we even have a shot here in the general? And let's see what the primary results look like because they're a better poll than any poll. And then we can decide and maybe we'll be surprised on the east side, or in one of these other districts, and we'll see that we have a shot. And then we can really pour money in for the general election. And so some of it may have been somewhat speculative - some of the spending - but in other districts, like the 26th you mentioned, there was just a ton of money going there. I don't think that was as much speculative as let's go for this. And so it'll be interesting to see also with the big money spenders, how that shakes out - do they give up on the Republican side on some of these districts in the general, or do they double down? So that'll be something to watch.
There was a race up in the - now I've gotta remember what district it is - the Bellingham district, legislative district that includes Bellingham, where there was a Democrat on Democrat - there's going to be a Democrat on Democrat general election. And there was in the primary as well - a competition there between an incumbent - as far as I understand it, an environmentalist-minded lefty incumbent - and a Democratic challenger with some labor support and some other support and challenging. And there was a question of - would that be competitive? And I believe Alex Ramel, the incumbent, really did well in the primary. And that could continue to be interesting in the general, but that was interesting to see and I'd like to learn more about that race.
[00:29:33] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it was interesting to see. There was a basically a moderate - Democratic moderate - group that went in spending against him and his environmental record and others. And that effort seemed to fall flat 'cause he finished extremely strongly - I think he was in the 70s. Just absolutely conclusive. That was interesting to see and full disclosure - I have been a part of some of those Independent Expenditure efforts in south King County in the 47th and the 30th Legislative District. I think, just even in Seattle - a lot of people listening to this are going to be in Seattle - these aren't D versus R races necessarily, but just a couple things that were notable to me. One, in the 46th Legislative District - which also I was working with Melissa Taylor in, who did not make it through, which is sad, but - right now, Darya Farivar is in first place in that northeast Seattle district - a strong, progressive candidate who I think people - and I'm giving air quotes here for "conventional wisdom" - but the "conventional wisdom" for - Hey, northeast Seattle - it's somewhat more conservative, it's not the Capitol Hill area or south Seattle where they'll elect a socialist and all that kind of stuff. But the more moderate people who prefer the other things are in northeast Seattle. And the numbers are not showing that right now. Representative Gerry Pollet, who made news this past legislative session for opposing the middle housing bill that was there and not being a proponent of upzoning single-family areas, moving forward with inclusive zoning - appears to be in the dramatic minority there. It looks like around 70% of the votes in that district went to candidates who conclusively supported - vocally supported - inclusive zoning, expanding the allowable building in single-family areas. And so I just think that the political ground is shifting - that we are in a housing affordability crisis that's talked about a lot in the City. And we've seen recent activity from the Seattle City Council being more cautious - especially with Sara Nelson, Bruce Harrell - and it looks like the City has moved forward and is saying - okay, it's time to get to work on some of these solutions, looks like these things are happening. And they're not wild - Spokane and Tacoma have moved forward with things like that and Seattle's kind of fallen behind. But I just thought that was very, very notable.
Julia Reed finished with a really strong result. Emily Alvarado finished with a really strong result. And it looks like the 37th Legislative District race in southeast Seattle is gonna be a closely contested general election race, with Chipalo and Emijah proceeding through to the general election. So exciting stuff to come, we're still waiting to see if the social housing initiative is gonna qualify - that's in a signature gathering phase, the extra, extended signature gathering phase. There's certainly been calling for volunteers this weekend to help get that on the general election ballot. We're gonna have ranked-choice voting versus approval voting - that choice on the general election ballot. So some interesting and exciting races to come in the general election in Seattle. And I think if you take labels off of issues like "progressive" and "moderate," and just look at what - in a primary election in Seattle - where usually the result is a little bit more moderate than you see in the general election - voters are speaking loudly and clearly about where they're at on issues and what they want to see.
[00:33:42] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, I think it can be a little bit difficult to parse out what's going on in some of those - the 36th and the 46th House races in Seattle had five Democrats in them, I think. And so it's a little bit hard to parse it out maybe, but yeah - with Darya Farivar moving ahead, how does that square with reputation, political reputation, of that district - northeast Seattle? I think could be partly - district is changing somewhat - maybe getting a bit younger and there's been some development in Roosevelt, for example, places like that. So the district is changing in that way, maybe. And it'll be interesting to see - I think she's from the district. I saw she went to Roosevelt High School so she's a local person, even though she's a bit on the younger side. And it'll be interesting to see whether she - I know her background is - I think she works for Disability Rights Washington - that's the sort of the policy focus, but it'll be interesting to see whether she leans into those urbanist issues you were talking about or not in the general election. And you were making the case that that could be important. So it'll be interesting to see. I don't know how much she, how hard she went on that stuff in the primary. So it'll be interesting to see in the general how that shakes out and whether that becomes - with Lelach Rave - a wedge issue in that race or not.
[00:35:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it will be interesting to see. But it looks like there is going to be a contrast between Lelach Rave, who has definitely taken up moderate stances and signaled that - hey, I'm very intentionally not being progressive here - and taking stances that we've typically seen with that. Versus Darya, who is really talking about issues from beginning to end that lots of people have concerns, and trying to bring solutions for affordability and keeping people safe that reflect what people have said they want in the district. So very eager to see how that turns out, but I'm really excited at the prospect for electing someone who wants to move forward and take action to address some of the challenges that we have, and is bringing some solutions to the table with a deep policy background for how to do that in a way that includes everybody.
With that, we are at time - we thank you for listening to this Hacks & Wonks episode on Friday, August 5th, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistant producer Shannon Cheng, who is assisted by Bryce Cannatelli. Our wonderful co-host today - Seattle Times politics and communities reporter, Daniel Beekman. You can find Dan on Twitter @DBeekman that's B-E-E-K-M-A-N. You can follow the show on our new Twitter account @HacksWonks on Twitter. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you want to get your podcast - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live show and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced on the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Representative April Berg about her re-election campaign for State Representative in the 44th Legislative District - her path to elected office, running as a progressive Black woman in a swing district, and how she managed the transition to becoming a legislator during COVID. Representative Berg talks about bills she successfully passed in her first term to address student poverty and to enact common sense gun policy around public meetings and places where democracy is practiced. She then shares her vision and priorities for the 2023 legislative session - student safety, addressing disproportionate ballot rejection rates, and modernizing the legislative calendar to allow legislators to work full-time and address community issues in real-time.
NOTE: This episode was recorded before incidences of racist vandalism and harassment against Representative Berg’s campaign, which is why they aren’t addressed on the show.
For more information - “A new push to combat harassment of Black candidates and staff” by Melissa Santos from Axios: https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/07/25/black-candidates-washington-harassment
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Rep Berg at @RepBerg.
Resources
Campaign Website - April Berg: https://www.aprilberg.com/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. So today I am very excited to be welcoming Representative April Berg to the program today - hello.
[00:00:45] April Berg: Hi Crystal - thanks so much for having me.
[00:00:47] Crystal Fincher: Thanks for coming on - appreciate it. I want to start off just by letting folks know who you are, what your path to office was, and then we can talk about what you've been up to since you've been in office. So just starting out - what was your path to office? What were you doing and what motivated you to run?
[00:01:10] April Berg: Yeah, thank you for that. And it's - my path was probably not the most direct path to office. So I was a student activist in college and I proudly served as the first Black Student Body President of Oregon State University. I was also one of the youngest - or the youngest - to ever be elected to that position. I was passionate about equity, student diversity, inclusion - and so I decided to go ahead and run for that position. I won that, I served as a junior, and then my senior year, I served on the State Board of Higher Ed for the State of Oregon. And then I came up here to Washington to work for Boeing and start a family - and took about 20 years or more off from politics. And so I started getting more active in my kids' schools and that led me to the school board position in Edmonds and eventually to running for school board in Everett and eventually to the State House for our great state - so a little bit of a windy path with a big break, but that was my path here - came through student activism.
[00:02:20] Crystal Fincher: And it's really exciting, it has been really fun to - I became aware of you when you were a school board member and doing cool things - and then you decided to run, were successful. What was it like running in really a swing district that you have turned blue right now, but is absolutely a swing district - had been known for even the Democrats that it had with Senator Hobbs - certainly known as a moderate, part of the Roadkill Caucus, and certainly not viewed as a progressive. But you coming in with your values and running as who you were - what was that like in a district that sometimes elects Republicans?
[00:03:09] April Berg: Yeah, and I'll tell you that is a great question. And because of the Roadkill Caucus - I smiled when you mentioned that caucus, it's been quite some time since they've been in power in the House and Senate. And so, coming from a district that was seen, that is seen, as very swingy - 'cause it has been swingy - being a progressive, a Democrat, a Black woman with locked hair, being an unapologetic Black leader in a community that's seen as swing was interesting. It was interesting because part of the myth around swing districts is that you have to be moderate, you have to not not lean too far into your values - and what my race did, what my campaign did for our district is to show that everybody in our district had the vision of shared prosperity and it wasn't about what someone looked like, it wasn't about - issues that people thought were controversial weren't controversial. I'm a pro-choice candidate, I am a candidate that believes in common sense gun laws, and I'm a candidate that's passionate about progressive tax reform. And I could run unapologetically on all of those issues and have voters support me because the voters in this district believed in the shared prosperity around those issues.
That said, running as a Black woman in a swing district during a public health crisis was not at the top of my bucket list. And to be frank it added some other elements of - I won't say surprises, but just challenges that turned into opportunities. And one of the things that my district - that I can say about my district and about my community is that my daughter's high school was the first one in the country to have a COVID-positive student. And so as a school board director and as a mother, I was on the frontlines of COVID and that was - a lot of the leadership I had to show in those moments led me to wanting to become a larger part of the policy community, the policy leadership community in our state. And that's why I said yes to running for this position.
[00:05:28] Crystal Fincher: I'm so happy you said yes to running to that position. And the things that you just spoke about were so evident and really exciting. And I think there is - we continue to have conversations, we record these shows sometimes a little while before they air - but we saw some Congressional elections recently where there were moderates and more progressive challengers from the left in red states and purple states. And really the people who did run unapologetically were much more successful. And it was really interesting, as a political consultant, hearing the conversations around your district and around your candidacy for the Legislature and conversations about who the ideal candidate has, which in politics oftentimes is code for like white male business owner, some veteran - and while those are people with valuable things to contribute to our community, our community is so much more diverse and rich and varied than that.
[00:06:39] April Berg: Yes.
[00:06:39] Crystal Fincher: And it's so wonderful to have more people who represent and speak for, and have experiences consistent with more of our community - and seeing you just embrace that, to be unapologetic while some people were clutching their pearls going - oh my goodness, is this possible in a swing district. And you, and so many others, showed that not only is it possible, it is the winning formula for where you were at and so many other districts and encouraging more people to do the same, who then went on to win. It was just really exciting to watch. But I do hear you that man, you dealt with a lot - a lot - while you were running and going into office. What was the transition like from being a school board member and a mom starting off dealing with COVID, going into the Leg and dealing with COVID? What was that like just for you becoming a legislator, and how did those other things that you had to deal with that you didn't necessarily sign up for impact how you approached the job and what you got out of it?
[00:07:54] April Berg: Yeah, and that's - that's a great question. And it's funny, Crystal - I always forget you've got the lens of the consultant, right? You've got the inside baseball lens. So as I was grinding it out in my district, you probably were hearing things. You were probably hearing the audible clutching of pearls as a candidate like myself was making my way through campaign season. And I'll tell you - I'll start there and land about how it is to transition to the Legislature. But as I was running the campaign, there was a very distinct point - there's lots of distinct points 'cause of the public health crisis - but one distinct point was the George Floyd tragedy. And I know we're literally upon the second anniversary of that tragedy and for my campaign, there was pre-George Floyd and there was post-George Floyd. And pre-George Floyd, the very much open conversation was that I didn't look like my district. How could I represent, how would anybody vote for me? I don't look like my district. And it was just a weird thing to hear, 'cause I'm used to running on policies and issues and being very prepared. And when someone hits you with you don't look like your district - what do you do with that? And when you're a candidate, what you do with it is you sit with it. You can't really do much else. That said, post-George Floyd - there was a lot of apologies and that's when I really got the opportunity to communicate with folks about my vision and my values and my leadership. And that was really a turning point for me because I didn't understand how much of a box I had been put into - all with the - we were around that box of it's a swing district, so we gotta be careful - we can't take any chances. She doesn't fit that mold that you just laid out.
That said, being successful in the campaign at both the primary level and of course the general, led me into this transition point. I had thought it might lead into a transition off the school board - it didn't. I'm still a school board director for the Everett School District. I will be leaving that role on June 1st, but I say that because it was important for me to keep my word to voters, especially during COVID and the crisis that we were having in all of the schools. But I felt like my institutional knowledge of districts - that was something - it was a responsibility for me to stay in that role.
But as I transitioned into becoming a legislator, it was a 100% virtual and that was difficult on a lot of levels because as a politician, I love, I thrive on talking to people, being face-to-face with people, understanding their issues, seeing body language to help me use context clues to really understand what people need and how I can help. And part of that has become my learning style. And so having to do things on Zoom, to be onboarded to a role as big as state representative was difficult, to say the least. But I will say - I believe I was successful in that transition, taking in everything that was given to me in terms of mentorship and help and training and resources. And that first year in the House, I was able to write five bills, sponsor those five bills, and see all five bills signed into law. So that transition I'd say -
[00:11:25] Crystal Fincher: You sure did.
[00:11:27] April Berg: - it was a successful transition, so I can't complain. But I will say it was hard 'cause it was virtual.
[00:11:34] Crystal Fincher: That was also exciting to watch - just someone who, just hearing the rumblings that - you are risky - that didn't know if you were the right "fit" for the district - to watch you not only be the definition of electable and popular, but then to so successfully and effectively transition into legislative leadership and just work in conjunction with your colleagues to advance the things that you talked about while you were running was really encouraging. And I guess I want to talk about some of the stuff that you were able to do and just your thoughts about the last session overall and what you were able to accomplish.
[00:12:31] April Berg: Yeah, and it was a - clearly a historic session and I look at it in two parts, it's a biennium, right - so we've got 2021 and 2022. And I was really fortunate that my colleagues saw my vision for how we need to come out of the pandemic. And so two of the bills that I sponsored my very first year were very important to me. One was on menstrual equity - making sure that all menstruating individuals have the products they need in all of our K-12 and beyond institutions. So this applies to colleges, community colleges, technical colleges, public, private, throughout - so when a young person that's menstruating enters that restroom, the products they need are available. Very important to me because of the impact period poverty has on our youth and our students specifically. The second bill that was really, I was very passionate about was the reduced price fee elimination bill. So when we have students that are on reduced price lunches, they have to pay a 40 cents fee - and this 40 cents is absurd. It's difficult because these students are in abject poverty - our free and reduced price meals - the income qualification levels are not regionalized. And so folks making that income in our area is - they're in abject poverty and to ask them for that 40 cents, five days a week for multiple kids just seem horrific, especially coming out of a public health crisis. So I had a bill to eliminate that. And so as we move into next fall, students who normally would pay that 40 cents will not have to pay anything and they'll be fed.
So I was fortunate because my colleagues saw the need. And when I say colleagues, we're talking about Republicans and Democrats. And when I talk about people can lean into their values as candidates and running on things like shared prosperity, it doesn't mean that we're not gonna find areas of compromise or find areas where we can agree. And so all of my bills have been bipartisan. They've all been embraced by both sides of the aisle, because they're all important for everyone in the community - not just Dems, not just ours. I think it's important to really think about that because so many people want to put politicians into boxes, labels - and so you're conservative, you're moderate, you're progressive, you're this, you're that. For me as a politician, my mantra has always been, and it's been like this for these bills, is how do we get to yes. And how getting to yes helps everyone in the community. So that said, I was able to do some amazing work that helped communities all over our state, lean into my unapologetic-ness in terms of my values, and hopefully I can keep doing the same in 2023.
[00:15:32] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I also want to talk about another group of bills - that you were able to pass - or a bill that you were able to pass specifically trying to prevent gun violence, which we have just seen over and over and over again. We're having this conversation shortly after two, just absolutely horrific mass shootings - one in a church, one in an elementary school - and everybody is demanding that more be done. And with, at this point, even more than frustration, just growing infuriation that we know the things that reduce the likelihood of gun violence and specifically mass shootings - and more guns does not help this situation. And you took action, you were not afraid in your swing district which, again, on this side of the things in politics - hear constantly people wonder - in swing districts if it's safe for them to do something about guns, people take 'em so seriously. And being afraid to act - you weren't afraid. What did you do?
[00:16:56] April Berg: Yeah. And I - it's interesting you ask me that. I will tell you - in the moment - crafting that bill, sponsoring the bill - it was 1618 and it was to keep our places of democracy safe from gun violence. It did not seem like a controversial, heavy lift. And being in my district - funny enough, the folks in the 44th - we don't walk around calling ourselves swing districters. We just say we live in the 44th. So this was an issue for my community. I wrote a bill and moved it forward. I was actually surprised when I heard from colleagues and other individuals that they were worried about me sponsoring a bill dealing with gun rights or gun legislation.
So that said, it was what led me to that point - it was a no-brainer. I went through, even though I handily won my election in 2020, there was a Republican requested hand count. That was fine. If folks remember after my election in 2020, or during it, I broke my back in a car accident. And so I wasn't able to attend my own recount. It just wasn't physically something that was gonna happen, so I sent my husband instead and he came back from that experience a little shaken. He described what I later saw pictures of, which was these amazing ballot counters, these election workers sitting in a cage surrounded by chain link fence. And you're able to come in as representatives of the campaign and the folks who asked for the hand recount - 'cause mind you, they had to pay for that since it was not close at all. They came in and they outnumbered my husband, like by many. And they started pushing and shoving and getting as close as they could to those chain links and staring at those election workers, making sure they weren't doing anything wrong. And he was just describing this 'til at one point someone in leadership had to say - Hey, the Berg campaign deserves a chance to witness this as well - 'cause they had crowded him out. And so they looked at him, someone snarled and said - oh, you can't see - or just something like that. And so he got up there, he saw it, and he just came home shook - that was a lot of negative energy, that was a lot of vitriol for something that literally came down to the exact same numbers as the machine count, as the hand count. So all for nothing, if you will.
The auditor later on reached out to me and said - because it wasn't just my race, it was many others that were - this recount was requested and there was same level of tension and animosity at all of those. He said - my election workers just aren't feeling safe, they're sitting in literally chain link cages - and he's describing it to me and then he shows me a picture. I laughed because the picture he happened to snap to show what conditions they're working in - you could see my husband watching my recount. So when I said - yep, that's what I heard. And so he said - oh, that's your husband. It was just a - it's funny, but it's not funny, right? That there was definitely tension in the air enough to where my husband, representing me in that moment, felt it. And the auditor, representing his workers in that moment, felt it and said - April, something has to be done. And so he said - could we make this a gun-free zone? Just like we have at schools. And I said - yes - yes, we can. And so his office came up with some language, my staff came up with some language. We ended up with bill 1618. I talked to other auditors around the state. They had similar concerns and brought up the fact that in a lot of counties, our ballots are counted in courthouses that do not allow guns, so inherently those workers are kept safe. So it seemed not just a safety issue, but a parity issue. You shouldn't have to work for Snohomish County and be less safe than another county that has ballots counted in courthouses.
So we wrote this bill, got the typical pushback from folks saying - we're taking away rights and so on and so forth. In the meantime, my colleague Tana Senn wrote a bill that I co-sponsored - and she co-sponsored my bill - but hers talked more about city council meetings, school district meetings - other municipal places, other places where democracy's being done. And after the hearing, it became obvious that you had the same folks pro and against, so we decided to combine the bills. And so the bill that passed includes all of those areas. So we're keeping everywhere that democracy is had, is practiced, is done - we're keeping all of those areas safe - your city council meetings, school board meetings, ballot counting sites. It passed the House, it passed the Senate, it was signed into law by the governor. It was before the horrific tragedies that we've seen just over the last two weeks - in Texas yesterday, and of course in Buffalo. And it shows - it was - it's a bill that's needed and I will continue to fight for common sense gun legislation to keep everyone in all of our communities safe.
[00:22:02] Crystal Fincher: And I appreciate that, I'm thankful that we have people like you in the state willing to do that 'cause like you said, there were some of your colleagues who get nervous by that. Which is - from my end - is frustrating. It's so popular. It is common sense. It really is uncontroversial to regular people living in our communities. And it really is a fight from some specific special interests who are just not in alignment with what is going on across our country and what people are expecting to be done in their communities. And we should be safe. We should be able to elect people and have them participate in meetings and work on our behalf without someone brooding over them with a gun, without staring at a high-powered rifle all the time - those things just don't belong in areas where democracy is done. So I sincerely appreciate that and hope your colleagues learn that that is something that's not controversial, that is actually quite popular when it's done. As you look forward now to what needs to happen as you are running your current campaign - you'll be on the ballot this year - what are you prioritizing and what do you most want to get done?
[00:23:33] April Berg: Yeah, and that's a great question. So I think for this next cycle - and I'm just going to go out there and say that this is, it's gonna be a successful campaign season for me - and I know a lot of candidates like to wait to talk about what they're gonna do until after the Election Day, but it's - sometimes that's a little bit too late. So a couple of things that I'm focusing on during the interim to really think about what we want to do in the 2023 session - one is student safety. How do we keep our students safe, healthy, and whole? And I think there's gonna be a lot of conversation around the prototypical school funding model and the gaps that it has, because it really is a model that's fully-funded, but it's a model that does not fully address what's actually happening in our schools. So how many counselors and nurses and other support staff we need to make sure our kids are healthy, safe, and whole - as they go in and come out of school.
Another issue that I want to, and I'm actually looking forward to a study that's coming out by the UW - that is coming out by the UW Evans School - is on our ballot rejection rate. There was a report done by our Joint Legislative Audit Committee that found four times as many Black ballots - ballots from African American individuals - were thrown out as white ballots. And the numbers, for all of the different BIPOC community categories - they were higher, there was a higher rate of rejection - and so the question is why. And as we looked the report, there were things that were adjusted for - so this was not just a bad actor or like a oopsie in a county - this was across the board, which means that there potentially is a systemic problem and that's where we can get into legislative action, policy action once we figure out what that problem is. So we're looking at the UW Evans School to - we had a little bit of money in the last budget to have them really dig deep and do some data disaggregation and say - where are the problem points? What are the issues that we can potentially fix so that we don't have this disproportionate rate of rejection for ballots from communities of color?
And then lastly, the other thing that my office is looking at and that I'm looking at working on is real hard conversations about how we function as a legislature. And what I mean by that is we, as legislators, we have a budget of about a half billion dollars for our state that we appropriate each biennium. Our bienniums consist of a work year of a 105 days and then 60 days. That calendar was set when we were an agrarian economy and I had to get out of Olympia to go tend my crops. Since that's no longer the case, I think that it's time for a conversation about modernizing the legislature and specifically the legislative calendar so that when things like a public health crisis happen or historic inflation, among other tragedies and oddities that happen within the working life of a state, that we're able to be at least available to take action. And whether that action be legislative, or oversight, or just using our power to convene in a formal way - I think that we need to really look at how we do business as a state to make it more representative and responsive to current day activities and realities. Those are the small, itty-bitty issues we're looking at - I'm looking at specifically tackling - it's just a small step.
[00:27:20] Crystal Fincher: And I appreciate you - I appreciate looking at some of the systemic issues that impact everything that you're able to do, how you govern, and how you're able to serve the state. And certainly - right now, having a part-time legislature - one, is a barrier for the types of people that can afford to serve in that office. It is not an easy situation to have something three or four months out of the year that demands - it's beyond a full-time job at that point in time - you are putting in very long hours, specifically at this one job. And the rest of the year - yes, there are some meetings and stuff, but there's nothing else going on. And your pay is part-time pay, to be clear. And it is not the kind of pay, especially right now median income in Seattle is over six-figures, we are in the midst of a housing affordability crisis - and most people can't afford to only work for that period of the year. And most people don't have jobs flexible enough where you can just take four months off.
And so it really does impact who is able to serve. A lot of people who are coming from more wealthy, privileged, comfortable backgrounds that represent only a segment of our society and that is leaving out so many other people. And life experiences don't cover the gamut of communities, so some issues that significant portions of our communities are dealing with are just invisible to people who sometimes are just not in proximity to, or have no familiarity with, a different kind of lifestyle or different kinds of challenges. And so really making sure that we get people elected who come from our communities and who reflect our communities and the wide variety of experiences, whether it's someone who's a renter, or a parent, or someone from the LGBTQ community, or someone disabled - all of those experiences are so necessary to formulate policy that does serve everyone. And we count out so many of those people - when you just look at the pictures of legislators on the wall, you see some folks have traditionally been included and others haven't.
And so moving to a full-time legislature - one, seems like it would increase the amount of people and increase the representation and ability to serve the community. On top of that, it does give you time to learn about our community, to work on legislation in ways that aren't rushed or you get cut off when you're almost at a breakthrough or you don't have time. How many times have we heard - we wanted to get to that, but it was a short session and we just ran out of time. It happens so much. So thank you so much for taking that on. I sincerely appreciate it. And what can people do to help with that effort?
[00:30:39] April Berg: And thank you for that, 'cause I - first off, I've been socializing it with both community members, as well as folks who are in organizations, that would potentially have an opinion about us moving to a full-time legislature. I think what folks can do is really support it and really talk to their legislators about it. I'll tell you this didn't come from me. Despite having so many colleagues deciding not to come back and despite even myself saying, having to look at the challenges of what it means to return to this role. This idea actually came from a constituent, who in a town hall said - Hey, why can't we have a gas tax moratorium, like some other states are passing? And this is, this was probably in March, late March. We had just finished sine die - it's a short session. Had it been a long session, we would've still been there. And I said - well, the one reason why we can't vote on it is 'cause I don't go back to work until January 2023. And I don't know where inflation will be, but if it's where it is now and if gas prices are doing what they're doing, then I would definitely want to look at something like a gas tax moratorium to give you - me talking to this person - to give you relief at your kitchen table for something like gas in the moment. Because that's what's important to people right - in the moment - right now they're feeling that financial pinch. I don't go back to work 'til January 2023.
Needless to say, that constituent's response was - well, why? Are you not back to work because you don't feel like it? Because you think about it - you and me, Crystal - we play that inside baseball, we understand how these things work - but to a mom working two jobs and kids in school and feeling the pain at the pump, they're not looking at our legislative calendar. They're like - Rep Berg, get back to work. And I'm telling them I can't. And so that's where the idea started coming from. And luckily in our state, when we talk about things like salary for legislators, we don't dictate our own salary. So for me to say, I want a legislature that's full-time - that is gonna be - salary decisions will be made by a commission. What I like to hear from voters and why I think all voters should talk to their legislators about is - do they want them there full-time working, making decisions, and representing them real-time and in the moment?
Because right now, just to give you another perspective and to give folks listening another perspective, as a legislator - right now, because we're in campaign season, I cannot communicate officially with my constituents. So if we have a tragedy in the community, a - let's say, even the heat dome, right? Where do you go to have a cooling area? And let's say you follow me on Facebook and you're like - Rep Berg, I get some great information for you on Facebook, we've got this heat emergency and I want to tell you exactly where the cooling centers are in the 44th. I legally cannot do that, because we're in the "election cycle" and so I can't communicate with constituents via Facebook right now in the moment when there's a crisis in our community. And that's really hard - I think people are used to getting information, they're used to getting information from their representative officials. They - maybe they don't want to follow me on some of my personal social media platforms. They want to interact with me as their public official that their tax dollars are going towards. And they want to know officially what is my - what am I going to do for them and help them in that moment. I cannot communicate legally with them.
And that's one of the - that's where some of this comes from. And so I think as folks are in the community, listening and saying what can we do to get our legislators in Olympia full-time doing the people's work on a traditional calendar - talk to your legislators, write me notes, tell me that it's a good idea, tell me that's a bad idea. But that's gonna be the input that we need, that I need, as I move forward trying to get this idea across the finish line in terms of the House and the Senate. Because I think my colleagues are gonna be somewhat surprised that folks want us to work full-time in Olympia to get stuff done. So that would be my biggest thing - asking people to communicate.
[00:35:00] Crystal Fincher: Will do - my legislators will hear from me, certainly.
[00:35:04] April Berg: Thank you.
[00:35:05] Crystal Fincher: Who I'm a fan of and they're always really receptive to conversations, fortunately, here in the 33rd Legislative District where I am currently at, but appreciate you doing that. As we conclude today, is there anything that you would just tell voters as they're seeking to make a decision about how they're gonna vote, or trying to figure out how to best engage in their community to meet their needs? What would you say to them about who you are, and how you can help, and how they can engage?
[00:35:44] April Berg: Yeah, and I would say - for voters, especially in this moment in the times that we're living in, the biggest thing is first off to make sure you're registered to vote, make sure your friends are registered to vote. And then the second thing would be really getting involved with - and when I say involved, it's not - it'd be great if you want to volunteer on someone's campaign that shares your values, or giving any type of time or treasure - those are great things. But the biggest thing is really making sure that you are actively seeking leaders that are authentic and that believe in your values. Because I think sometimes we get caught up in - that person's more moderate, or that person's more progressive - or, Crystal - that person voted for Hillary, but that person voted for Bernie. We hear that a lot, and you want to just go and that means, they mean they want this, this, and this. No, we have to - we really have to put that aside and talk to people about values. And as you engage with candidates - are they gonna support common sense gun reform? Are they gonna support women's reproductive rights? Are they gonna support student equity in schools and allowing students to be a whole student, to be a whole in their social, emotional, as well as their academic activities? And so making sure that you're supporting candidates who have your values. And it's, unfortunately, not as easy as just checking D or R - it really is engaging with candidates about what's happening in your community. So that would be my tip, my ask of folks listening. And honestly, for a candidate like me, that's what got me over the finish line - was engaging with voters not as a progressive, not as a moderate, but as a Democrat that shares their values for a prosperous, safe, happy, educated, lively community. And so that's that's the most important thing in my opinion.
[00:37:47] Crystal Fincher: Completely agree. Completely appreciate you taking the time to speak with us today and just continuing to serve your community and the state as well as you are. Thank you so much for joining us, Representative Berg.
[00:37:59] April Berg: Thank you for having me, Crystal, and thank you for providing this amazing platform for information. So it really is a gift to have you on-air and a gift to be talking with you.
[00:38:10] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much. I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On today's Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Associate Editor of The Stranger, Rich Smith. They start this week discussing the heatwave currently affecting western Washington, and how despite the real risks to some of our most vulnerable neighbors, the city moved forward with a sweep of a homeless encampment. Rich points out that there’s not actually adequate housing for all of those hurt by the sweep, and discusses how legal action might be the necessary catalyst to get the city to change its behavior when it comes to handling our homelessnes crisis. In specific races, Crystal and Rich discuss the Congressional race in Washington’s 8th Congressional District, where three Republicans are vying for the chance to take Kim Schrier’s seat. They next follow-up on the horrifying pattern of Black electeds, candidates, and campaign staff being harassed, threatened, and attacked, and the lack of resources and support from the HDCC to protect candidates of color. Next, they look at the 47th legislative district’s Senate and House races, both of which have very competitive D-on-D races happening during the primary. Rich explains the Stranger’s Editorial Control Board’s struggle to pick who to endorse in the 34th’s State Rep. position 1 race. Crystal and Rich talk about the disproportionate amount of money going to D-on-D races in districts that are safely Democrat, and what needs to be done to make sure campaign finance needs are less of a barrier for candidates. After that, they go over close-looking races between Democrats and Republicans across the state. Finally, they remind you to VOTE! Ballots are due August 2nd. Make your voice heard!
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Rich Smith, at @richsssmith. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
WA Voting Resources
Ballot and replacement ballot information: https://voter.votewa.gov/WhereToVote.aspx
Ballot Box and voting center locations: https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/research/drop-box-and-voting-center-locations.aspx
If you’re an eligible voter with previous felony convictions, you CAN vote as long as you’re no longer confined. For more information, see here: https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/voters/felons-and-voting-rights.aspx
Resources
“Seattle removes homeless encampment in Sodo during heat wave” by Greg Kim from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/seattle-removes-homeless-encampment-in-sodo-during-heat-wave/
“A new push to combat harassment of Black candidates and staff” by Melissa Santos from Axios: https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/07/25/black-candidates-washington-harassment
“Republicans vie for swing-district shot at defeating WA Rep. Kim Schrier” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/republicans-vie-for-swing-district-shot-at-defeating-democrat-rep-kim-schrier/
“Northeast Seattle House race features 5 Democratic candidates and big money” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/northeast-seattle-house-race-features-5-democratic-candidates-and-big-money/
“Seattle voters have a slew of choices in Legislative races” by Joseph O’Sullivan from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/politics/2022/07/seattle-voters-have-slew-choices-legislative-races
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks and Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show, as well as our recent forums, are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week. Welcome back to the program today's co-host: Associate Editor of The Stranger and - never forget - noted poet, Rich Smith.
[00:00:55] Rich Smith: Hi.
[00:00:55] Crystal Fincher: Hey, so it's been a hot week. We're in the middle of another heat event, climate change is unrelenting, and we're feeling the effects of it. It's been a challenge.
[00:01:09] Rich Smith: Yeah, I'm against it. I don't think it should be happening. Seattle really is dying, as is the rest of the globe, is my understanding.
[00:01:19] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. We just saw Europe go through this right before we did. And I'm sure we're all going to be going through it with increasing frequency, which makes one thing that happened this week, just particularly - not just unfortunate, but really infuriating to a lot of people - and plainly harmful. It's that the City of Seattle decided to move forward with sweeps of encampments for the unhoused in the middle of this heat wave. What went on here?
[00:01:50] Rich Smith: Yeah, they - Bruce Harrell has made a point to deal with visible homelessness by employing a tactic that has not worked, which is sweeping people around the City, and in the middle of a heat wave, he swept a city, or a spot a little bit south of downtown. I wasn't - I'm not quite sure on the address. I think there was about 30 people there. And first thing in the morning - sun was heating up, these people had to put all their belongings on their back, and move across town, or find a cooling shelter or - in the heat. And it was just cruel and unfortunately, not unusual. And I can't even blog in this heat, let alone move all of my earthly possessions across town, just because somebody doesn't want to see me there. So that's what happened.
[00:02:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and it is - a lot of people understand that this really makes no sense to do - it's harmful, it's against public health guidance. We're still in a pandemic - even though people want to be done with it, it's not done with us. We have more challenges in that direction coming our way, which we might touch on a little bit later. But even with this, there were a lot of community members who reached out to the mayor's office when they heard about this and heard that it was upcoming. This is on the heels of last summer - the heat dome event being the most deadly weather event that Washington has ever experienced. We know how lethal extreme heat is. And so for people who don't have any kind of shelter to be put through this at this particular time, and as a lot of activists talked about and actually Councilmember Tammy Morales called out before, since and after - there's not enough shelter space, there's not enough housing space to get all of these people in shelter. To which Bruce Harrell and his administration replied - well, there's space at cooling centers and we can get them vouchers to go there. But those aren't 24/7 - that's a very, very temporary solution. So you know that you're throwing people out, certainly at night, and tomorrow when there's extreme heat again - 90+ degree temperatures - where do they go then?
And they have even less to work with in order to do that. It's just - as you said in the very beginning - it's ineffective, this doesn't get people in housing. Some people talk about homelessness being primarily a problem of addiction or of mental health resources - that's not the case for everybody, but the one thing that everyone who is - does not have a home - has in common is not having a home. Housing is the one thing that will, that we can't do without to solve homelessness. We have to start there. And so to act as if this is doing anything different, when over and over again, we see when they sweep a location, the people who were there just move to different locations in the City. We don't get people housed, we're doing nothing but making this problem worse while wasting so much money in the process of doing so. It's just infuriating and I really hope it stops. There's not really a reason to believe so, based on the track record in this area of this administration, but it's wrong and there's really no two ways about that.
[00:05:25] Rich Smith: Yeah, and just to hop on that Tammy Morales point and the reporting that The Times did on the ground, there's this - the administration thinks that they're offering everybody shelter, they say that they're offering everybody shelter. And then reporters go there and ask around and people say - nobody offered me anything. A couple people said - I'm gonna take this tent down the road, I'm not gonna get to that shelter. And so I just think that the City needs to start getting sued for this stuff. I just - if a referral system is clearly adequately not functional, and we're not supposed to - under Martin v. Boise - sweep people unless we have adequate shelter to put them in. And if we haven't created a system that gets people into adequate shelter that meets their needs, then how is it legal? is my question. And I don't think that this is gonna stop until there starts to be legal consequences for the City.
[00:06:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and like you said, there is precedent - that's a fairly recent decision, that we seem to be acting - in Seattle and in other cities - in direct defiance of, so I hope along with you that it is challenged in court. It's a big problem that continues. We're doing nothing to solve this issue that everyone recognizes is a crisis, and it's time we start doing things that actually work to make the problem better instead of wasting money on things that just perpetuate the issues that we're having.
So this week, we're - Friday, July 29th - we are just days before this August 2nd primary on Tuesday, which means if you have your ballots, you better fill them out and get them in. Have any questions - feel free to reach out to us here at officialhacksandwonks.com, us on Twitter. You can go to MyVote.wa.gov if you are having issues with your ballot - I know there're places like Ferndale in the state that're experiencing extreme post office delays and some people still haven't received their ballots up there. But any issues that you're having can probably be addressed by starting out at MyVote.wa.gov, but do not pass up this opportunity to make your voice heard. There is so much at stake. As frustrated as sometimes we can be with how things are happening federally, whether it's the Supreme Court or seeming inaction in Congress - although we may have gotten some encouraging week this past week, encouraging news this past week - it is really important to act locally.
Especially with things being in disarray at the federal level, the state and local level is where we protect the rights that we count on. It's where we shape what our communities look like. And the fact that they can look as different as Forks and Sequim and Seattle and Bellevue and all the rest just is a testament to how much power communities have to shape what they look like. So get engaged, be involved and - just starting out, we've seen just a slew of activity. We'll start the conversation around the Congressional districts, the Congressional races. What is happening in the 8th Congressional District where Kim Schrier is the current incumbent?
[00:08:46] Rich Smith: This is - yeah - the front of the national red wave in Washington, to the extent that it crashes down here or gets held, it'll be in the 8th, which is east King County District now. It got changed around a little bit with redistricting - picking up some pieces of Snohomish County, but also some rural areas that it didn't have before. And Schrier faces a challenge from three Republicans minimum - there's a bunch of other people who aren't viable, but the major ones are Reagan Dunn, a King County Councilmember who's also a Republican and whose mom represented the district - I think in the 90s and early '00s - so a little bit of a legacy candidate there for Dunn. He has, as a brief aside, been also awarded by me just now the trophy of using his personal or his professional press release apparatus through the County Council in the most abusive way I've ever seen. This man sends out a press release about some kind of Republican red meat he's doing on the council, literally every eight hours, and it has been for the last year. If this is what he thinks doing his job on council means, then he hasn't been doing it since before this year. But anyway, Reagan Dunn is one of them.
And Matt Larkin, a failed Attorney General candidate, who's going for the red meat Trump vote more openly than the other two are at least is is also running. He's got a bunch of his own money in - I wanna say north of $500,000, but maybe it's just $300,000. And and then we've got Jesse Jensen who ran last time. He's a veteran and a tech manager and he almost - he lost to Schrier in 2020 by four points. And so the Republicans are bickering amongst themselves with Jensen spending some, or a PAC on behalf of Jensen spending some money bringing up Dunn's - his struggles with alcoholism, and his divorce, and a bunch of drama related to that. And Dunn pushing back against that and calling it cheap blows. And Matt Larkin just trying to pick up any pieces that fall from that spat and capitalize on it. Schrier will, I suspect, will get through and it'll just be - which of these icky guys is gonna challenge her.
[00:11:31] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's really interesting to see. And the theme of our congressional primaries and many of these races is - yeah, Republicans are fighting amongst each other in some really interesting, sometimes entertaining, but also vicious ways among each other. And so in this race it's been interesting to see, I think particularly just as people who live in King County and who have seen Reagan Dunn operate for a while - for a while he used to kind of court and relish his - the impression of him being a more moderate Republican, or Republican who can be elected in King County and touted that for a while. But now the base is different than it used to be when it comes to Republicans - they are not in the mood for a - someone who's moderate enough to be elected in King County and his votes, his rhetoric, the way he operates has completely reflected that. Including voting against women's reproductive rights, against abortion rights and access - really is, as you just talked about, trying to appeal to the Trump-loving red meat base and prove that he is conservative enough to do that. And just speaking a lot differently than he did before.
But I think this is just reflective of - there are no - really, there is no such thing as a Republican moderate. Because everyone who has called themselves a moderate on issues of any kind of importance - at most - is silent. They won't oppose their party on things that they know are blatantly wrong, whether it's the lie of the 2020 election and the conspiracies surrounding that or vaccine issues - all this kind of stuff. Or you've seen them go the direction of Dunn and we recently saw, in a vote against same-sex marriage in Congress with Jaime Herrera Beutler, that they're voting against those things. And it's absolutely in opposition to a majority of Washington residents by every public poll that has been done. And so it's just interesting to see how that dynamic has played out throughout that. Again, it should be Schrier and we'll see who her opponent is gonna be, but that's gonna be a race to continue to pay attention to throughout the general election.
So there's - you talk about a lot dealing with the 9th CD - there's a lot of legislative districts in the 9th CD - some of them very big battleground districts. And before we get into talking just a little bit about the legislative candidates, I did want to talk about an issue that The Stranger covered, that Axios covered this past week - and it has been the escalating incidences of harassment and violence against Black candidates, some of which are in the most competitive races in the state that we've been seeing lately. There have been lots of incidences that have been reported on that we know of throughout the state of Black candidates having their signs and property defaced - that's happened to a number of them, having their staffs harassed, followed, threatened from people in the community - and we saw that happen last week, one week before last now.
And then that same week a candidate in the 30th Legislative District, which is Federal Way, Algona area, was shot twice with a BB gun. And when you're getting shot by BB gun, you don't actually know necessarily that it's a BB gun - and so you just know that you're getting shot at. Very scary situation and with those, certainly, I know that candidate Pastor Carey Anderson feels like that seems like a down payment on more violence, that seems like a type of harassment and targeting that's like - we are coming after you, we're harassing you. It's just very, very scary. And so throughout this process - and again, we saw these instances in 2020, we're now in 2022 seeing them - these campaigns have had to make considerations adjust their field plans and their canvassing plans in ways that soak up more resources, soak up more money and time, and it's just worrisome to be doing this. And realistically, this has been - continues to be a systemic problem.
And so as I shared before, a number of people have - the parties should have an impact in fixing this. And specifically, I don't know if you're - I know you are - but people that are listening - the campaign apparatus when it comes to a state party - there's a state party. They do the Coordinated Campaign, which is the volunteer arm for a lot of the candidates in the state, they do a lot of supportive canvassing, phone calls, especially for - from the top of the ticket in the state on down. So Patty Murray being at the top of the ticket this year to candidates, especially in battleground areas. But the entities that are most responsible for dealing with campaigns are the House Democratic Caucus and the Washington Senate Democratic Caucus - that the House caucus and the Senate caucus are actually very frequently in contact with campaigns. They exist solely to support the political campaigns of their members. And so they provide information, guidance, infrastructure for the most competitive races against the opposing party. They're actively involved in these races and they basically act like co-consultants and adjunct staff for these.
So there is a very close relationship and those are the two entities - House caucus for House candidates, Senate caucus for the Senate candidates - who are already doing that work in general. And so it has not escaped a lot of people's notice that this has been, as I was quoted saying, a glaring omission in what they've talked about. And it's not the first time the party has heard about this or confronted it. There have been conversations about this before. They've not resulted in action up until now. And so that article was particularly troubling to me. And this situation is particularly troubling to me because although everybody was asleep before then, we've seen the State Party basically say - yeah, we do have a responsibility to handle this and to try and work on a solution. We've seen the Senate caucus say - yeah, we do and we're working on a solution. And we have not seen that from House caucus leadership. And it was - we don't see this often for anything in any issue, but you had three candidates, two of them members in some of the most competitive races in the state saying - Hey, this happened. April Berg - this happened to me earlier this year and I asked the House caucus for help, I didn't get any - and now we're sitting here asking again and we're waiting. And Jamila Taylor, the head of the Legislative Black Caucus, saying essentially the same thing - we're waiting for help, we're asking, we're waiting.
And then Pastor Carey Anderson, candidate in the 30th, saying we asked and we haven't - and these candidates are feeling like they're left alone and being left high and dry. And their campaigns are wondering - is it safe to be out there - and to not even have the caucus back them up like that is really something. And if Black lives do matter in this state, then we gotta do a better job of showing it, starting with these candidates. And this is - attacks on these candidates are really foundational - saying, we don't think you deserve a voice in this society, in our democracy, we're gonna try and intimidate and harass you out of it. And really, no one's really doing that much to stop it, so let's keep going. And not having support going through that is a really challenging thing. Will Casey for The Stranger also did an article on it this week. So I guess as you're looking at it, what does it look like from your vantage point?
[00:20:11] Rich Smith: Yeah - well, in their defense the HCCC - or whatever, I don't know what they call it - just found out about structural racism this year, so they're hopping on it. They're also just figuring out racism as well. We might give 'em a chance to catch up. No, I was - the Rep Berg, whose canvasser was one of the people who got yelled at by a white guy who slammed his bike to the ground and did the "get off my lawn" racism up in Mill Creek, I wanna say, I can't remember where it was. But anyway, she and Rep Taylor pointed out that this - if you want to expand the number of people into your party, you want to have a big umbrella, if you want to diversify your party, which has been white for a very long time - then you're gonna want to provide some protection for people. You're gonna at least want to get a phone tree - set up some kind of protocol so that the party knows when this stuff happens and can act accordingly. The fact that we didn't have one means that we didn't prioritize it. And the fact that they didn't prioritize it means that there's not enough people in high places who are thinking about this stuff. And the fact that this has to come from the candidates who are not, who are running to be part of the party, is inexcusable because we've known that this has been happening for a long time. So yeah. It hurts recruitment for that party and it's inexcusable that they haven't done anything - they haven't done anything about it until now.
[00:22:05] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and even then until now - we're waiting, we're waiting.
[00:22:09] Rich Smith: Yeah.
[00:22:09] Crystal Fincher: We're waiting to see -
[00:22:10] Rich Smith: Did the Senate put out some recommendations, but the House hasn't?
[00:22:13] Crystal Fincher: Yeah.
[00:22:14] Rich Smith: Okay, I see.
[00:22:16] Crystal Fincher: And as well as the State Party - they've worked in conjunction. So it'll - we're waiting to see - I hope that we see more action, but it has certainly been disconcerting, worrisome. Frankly, infuriating -
[00:22:31] Rich Smith: Pramila's getting yelled at.
[00:22:32] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and beyond yelled at - life threatened by dude outside of her house with a gun - telling her to go back where she came from and threatening to kill her. It's - and we saw an organizer this past week with a continued campaign of harassment from someone who already has a restraining order against them for this. It's just a worrisome time and it's gonna take everybody engaging, especially white people, to get this to stop. Relying on the victims of harassment and the victims of assault and the victims of stalking to be able to engage and solve their whole problem, when a lot of their energy is spent just trying to keep themselves safe, is not realistic and not what we can count on in order for it to change.
But also, in other news - so south King County has got a lot of races. There haven't been many that have been covered. The Stranger has covered them and even engaged in a recent endorsement in one of the most competitive legislative districts in the state, which is the 47th Legislative District. And so there is one incumbent in the House seat running - Debra Entenman in that seat. And then there is a competitive Senate race and a competitive House race, both of which have open seats. And interestingly, both are D vs R races, where we're in a pretty competitive D primary, not so competitive R primaries. Well-funded Republican opponents - both of those Republican opponents are also Black, against a number of Black candidates running. So you have Shukri Olow and Chris Stearns running for one seat. You have Satwinder Kaur, who's a Kent City Councilmember currently, running against a former State Senator, Claudia Kaufman, in the other seat - running against another current Kent City Councilmember, Bill Boyce, who's a Republican. And then Carmen Goers for that other seat, who's also a Republican. So how did you - just going through that race - you made endorsements and recommendations. In that, what did you come out with?
[00:24:52] Rich Smith: Yeah. In those races - yeah, first of all, the 47th is huge. It's a bellwether district. Everyone's gonna be looking at it and analyzing it on election night to figure out what it means for the general election and whether or not the Democrats are gonna be able to hold their majority in the State House and - or break even in the Senate, with Mullet as the swing - lord help us. But yeah, in the race - starting from the Senate race - that's the one that is Kaur and Kauffman vs probably Boyce - or yeah, Bill Boyce -
[00:25:33] Crystal Fincher: Bill Boyce - yeah.
[00:25:33] Rich Smith: Kent City Councilman. Yeah, we came down on Kauffman there, mostly because Kaur had lied to us, basically, in the course of the endorsement process. She said that - we asked about whether or not she wanted to put cops in schools and Kent, they recently - Kent School District and City Council approved recently - put cops back in the school so that they could handcuff mostly kids of color when they get out of line, and or when they say they get out of line.
[00:26:13] Crystal Fincher: And a long history of that happening in the district.
[00:26:15] Rich Smith: Yes, and Kaur's initial response to that was - that wasn't my, our jurisdiction, that was a decision that the school made, the school district made, yada, yada. Kauffman stepped in and said - excuse me, you voted on that. And then we were like, what? And then she's like - yeah, the City Council approved the budget that put the cops back into the schools in Kent and also, you all deliberated about it. There's a meeting - you talked about this. It was not only within your jurisdiction, but you joined a unanimous vote to put cops back in the schools. And then she's like okay - yeah, that happened. I was like - well, why did you say it didn't happen? Or why did you suggest that it was out of your jurisdiction? And so you didn't have anything to say about it? So that kind of - that didn't - that wasn't cool. We didn't like that. And we also didn't like that the vote to put the cops back in schools because, and when we questioned her on that, she said she had mixed feelings about it personally, but she voted for it because this was something the community asked for. But scratch the surface a little bit, and the community also asked for the school not to put the cops back in the schools. And so it was - she was representing people in the community, some people in the community, and dismissing - or not really dismissing - but pretending as if other people in the community didn't exist. She wanted to represent the interest of those people and not those people, so that was - otherwise they were pretty, pretty close on the issues, but her handling of that situation initially and the substance of it, I think, was what pushed us toward Kaur. We recognize that it's a moderate district, or a purple district, in a lot of ways and maybe that comes back to to haunt Kauffman, but Kaufman also just had a really forthright, blunt, straightforward way of talking. She held her ground, said what she said. And we were like - that's, there we go. There was just less triangulation, it felt like, happening. And so those were the things that pushed us there.
Olow and Stearns was also really tough for us - because love Stearns' work on Treatment First Washington and his history with - him foregrounding treatment and wanting to get in - we really, would be great to have a champion in there, someone to join Rep Lauren Davis on her crusade to try to squeeze something out of that body to build a treatment infrastructure in the first place and a recovery infrastructure at the state level. I'm sure Stearns would've done that.
[00:29:07] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, full disclosure - I was also part of that coalition - appreciate his work on that, definitely believed in that.
[00:29:14] Rich Smith: Well, and he had been elected to Auburn City Council. And so he has a constituency he can tap - he's familiar. Olow though - we endorsed her against Upthegrove when she ran for County Council and she aligned with everything that Stearns was saying, or agreed with everything that Stearns was saying, and just has a lot of expertise in youth development and education and that's something where we need as many of those champions in the Legislature as humanly possible. And she had just had a - it looked like at the time when we were making the endorsement - just a better campaign infrastructure and so probably would've done, we thought would've done the best, will do the best against the Republican challenger.
[00:30:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, really well-funded Republican challenger. Yeah.
[00:30:15] Rich Smith: So that's what went into our thinking in those races.
[00:30:18] Crystal Fincher: Yeah - no, made sense. Shukri has been doing work for the Best Starts for Kids program, which is very big in the district. Got her doctorate in education after starting out as a girl in public housing in the district. Has just - she really is someone who knows the district really well - grew up there, has certainly given back a lot, and so - know them both, appreciate them both. And just know that in both of those races, it's gonna be really tough for the Democrat vs the Republican. So whichever way that goes through, I hope listeners continue to pay attention and engage in those 'cause it's going to take help from folks who don't live there to make sure that the Democrat does get across the finish line. 'Cause, man - lots of these - Republicans are trying extra hard to put a moderate face on themselves, whether it's the 5th District talking about their bipartisan support and they're moderate and they're socially progressive and fiscally responsible - is how they're trying to present it. Whether it's in Emily Randall's district, or in the 5th district against Lisa Callan in that area. And it's just - we've got a lot at stake on this ballot. And so I really - and it's not inconceivable that Democrats could lose the majority here. With hard work, hopefully not, but it is within the realm of possibility and Republicans are looking to move backwards a lot of policy and are saying some really alarming things on the campaign trail with every - and it's not rhetoric. They're intending to move forward with repealing all of the rights that are in danger at the national level, and really being in alignment with what's happening there. And so things could go the other direction really fast.
[00:32:17] Rich Smith: It's scary. It's also - is it within the 9th Congressional District as well?
[00:32:21] Crystal Fincher: Yep. I think it's split between the 8th and the 9th, actually. I need to double check that post-redistricting, which is another thing - when you talk about just the 47th district, everything about everything in that race is just nonstandard. We don't know how this district, as this is the first time that we're gonna be voting within these new boundaries - so how it actually performs. You've got an interesting composition of people who - some have been on ballots plenty of times there, some haven't, some have but have been unopposed so people don't really pay attention to it. You've got two Black Republicans who are leading and the standard bearers - they're trying to portray themselves as - one of them, Bill Boyce, sent out this mailer of him and Martin Luther King. And there's nothing Republicans love more than throwing out a Martin Luther King quote that he would've thrown back in their face. But anyway, talking about that - which was, I know a lot of Black people in the Kent community looked, gave a side eye to that one really hard. But it'll be really interesting to see.
And then there's a chunk of races in Seattle that are these D vs D races that are not gonna be key to the composition of the caucus and the majority, but that may help define what the agenda is in the Legislature and what's able to pass, especially when we talk about issues like progressive revenue and some very basic things that people are trying to tick off - in the healthcare realm, in the climate action realm, whole transportation package, what that kind of would look like. And so just a variety of races across the City that people will be voting on. Make sure to get that ballot in by Tuesday, either in the drop box or in the mail - you don't have to use a stamp on the envelope.
But I guess as you're looking there, I see a lot of people - there's been a lot of coverage of the 46th, which full disclosure - I am working with Melissa Taylor on. In the 36th, a crowded race. There's an open seat in the 34th which hasn't quite gotten as much attention, I don't think, as the other two races. What do you see in that race?
[00:34:52] Rich Smith: In the 34th? Great sadness and because it was - they're both really good. If you're - you're talking about the Leah Griffin and the Emily Alvarado -
[00:35:03] Crystal Fincher: Yes.
[00:35:03] Rich Smith: Yeah - what are you, what am I, how - we were all, we talked about this for 45 minutes, an hour. Okay, so our choices in this are somebody who is - we're in a housing crisis and Emily Alvarado ran Office of Housing, is - clearly knows what she's talking about. That's exactly what she wants to do when she gets to the State Legislature, and exactly how to do it, and exactly the coalition she wants to build - Latina and is - voted for Bernie Sanders - and is also impressive candidate who knows her sh*t. Speaking of, Leah Griffin - tremendous - tremendously overcame personal tragedy and didn't just keep that to herself, but used it in part as a catalyst to make real change to help everybody, contacted everybody in the Legislature and Congress - even Patty Murray - and got some responses and helped push an idea that eventually became legislation that got slipped into the Violence Against Women Act that would increase access to more sexual assault kits. So this is a person who has done tremendous work from her couch in Seattle, as she'll say. And so yeah - the choice there is between somebody who is gonna be a strong - and she's up on the news about criminal justice and is in the intersection there between how do we - what's the best way to get fewer rapes - to stop people from rape. She's a really good person who knows the answer to that question and can push for that kind of change in the 34th.
And yeah, the question facing voters is - do you want somebody who's an expert on housing and is gonna do all the right things on housing and lead there and join a housing coalition in the House, which we desperately need. Or do you want somebody who is going to lead on the intersection of criminal justice and protecting survivors in the House, which we also desperately need, which is also - it's an impossible decision. I don't - we came down, the group came down at the end on Emily because of the housing crisis, but that's how I feel about that. We were all - could have gone either way.
[00:37:46] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it is - it's rough. And there's a lot of rough choices actually in Seattle - these are two great candidates. It's been tougher than prior years in some, where there were more clear choices in a lot of them. In City races, there's more differentiation between, at least among all the candidates a lot of times. And there just are some really hard choices and people across the board that - even if they don't make it through, you really, really, really hope that they continue to be involved and they step up to lead in different areas and really consider continuing to seek leadership. Because both people in this race, people in a number of races - there are some really, really exciting people who are running. You can only choose one. And so we'll see what continues to go through. And we can only choose one, we're gonna run a general election - ultimately there will be one who prevails, but yeah, it, this - I could definitely see that being a hard choice.
[00:38:54] Rich Smith: If anybody wants to start some GoFundMe to help move some of these candidates around, would love somebody to move up to Shoreline and challenge Salomon, Jesse Salomon, up there - be a Senator. And could - someone could have jumped into the 46th Senate race too - would've been nice. A guy, Matt Gross, did - got a housing focus, that's great. Didn't do it for us even though - just 'cause his ideas were half baked - would've been nice to have a challenge up, a serious challenger to Javier Valdez too. Valdez is a nice guy, but there's a lot of room for improvement up there. Yeah, there was a lot of races where - would've been cool to see stronger challengers, progressive challengers. And then there were a lot of other races, and then the rest of the races were - oh, look, these people are great. Four great people running for one open seat. What are we gonna do here? So yeah, that - it was tough.
[00:39:57] Crystal Fincher: Yeah - and with that, obviously, there's a ton of people who live in Seattle. And so there's going to be more people competing for what wind up being fewer positions. And you see a lot more engagement and attention being paid and candidates for those open seats. And it's - we are still contending with the disparity in resources between those in kind of safe D - Democrats are going to be elected in all of these positions. And seeing a stark difference in spending and donations for other races in the state that could go either way. And it's challenging. Again, I generally don't work with candidates. I'm working with one this year and it's a high - there are three of the top fundraisers in the state. I literally think the top three on the Democratic side non-incumbents in that race - there's a lot of money there. There doesn't need to be that much money in there, but given the composition - just like with Congress, right - especially the representatives basically have to spend all of their time fundraising. And while we desperately need more campaign finance reform, it should not take that. And a system that requires that is a broken system and you're making people make a lot of tough choices. The barrier for people being able to get in these races is challenging, 'cause you have to have enough time to devote to the fundraising and to talking to voters and the other stuff. And it's really hard to do without resources. And even if you don't have the most, you still have to have a substantial amount no matter how you look at it.
So I do think there is a glaring need for some really foundational statewide campaign finance reform - also at the federal level - but Democracy Vouchers, does it solve every single problem related to everything? No. But I think it does make things more accessible, forces people to talk to more residents to get the - even if it's just in search of vouchers - hey, it's putting you in contact with more people that you have to directly deal with, which I think is always a good thing for candidates. But it's a problem, it's a challenge. And so many resources are dedicated to Seattle in the political sphere when there are so many needs for lesser-known races throughout the state. How do you see that?
[00:42:39] Rich Smith: I agree. I don't know if - I don't know about Democracy Vouchers as a solution, but campaign finance reform for statewide races is great. Yeah - Melissa Taylor's raised what - $200,000 or something almost in that race - like the top, some of the top -
[00:42:55] Crystal Fincher: Well, and she's the number two -
[00:42:56] Rich Smith: She's the number two.
[00:42:58] Crystal Fincher: - behind Lelach. And then, Nancy Connolly is also - there's a lot - now, Melissa doesn't accept corporate donations or anything, but still that's a lot of work, it's a lot of time. And not everybody has the ability to do that and that should not be a requirement of running for office.
[00:43:23] Rich Smith: No. Yeah, I agree. And yeah, that's - it's as much as Stephanie Gallardo has raised against - for one House seat. Yeah, than for one US House seat, but yeah - it's crazy, it's a huge high barrier to entry, and we should do something to change it.
[00:43:43] Crystal Fincher: We should. So I guess if you are - lots of resources, will link all of this in the comments of the show. As we do that - for just races across the state that may not be on people's radar, the Congressional races - is there anything that you would throw out there for people to consider that's not getting much attention right now?
[00:44:05] Rich Smith: Yeah. You wanna do something over the weekend? You might try knocking doors for Emily Randall up in Kitsap - in Bremerton, Gig Harbor area - she's facing off against the Legislature's biggest brat, as Will Casey called him in a piece on the 26th Legislative District there. That's another one of those important races - Randall won by 108 votes or something last time she ran. So it's gonna be a close one. It would be great to have a pro-choice Democrat rather than a Trumpian weirdo in the Senate up there.
[00:44:37] Crystal Fincher: Super Trumpian - he is one of the most extreme Republicans in the state, currently a House member running for the Senate seat to challenge her. They tried to put what they felt was one of their best, most resourced people on their side against her and she needs everybody's help. That is absolutely a race for people in Seattle to adopt and do something to help emily win.
[00:45:03] Rich Smith: Yeah. If you wanna - if you're closer to the South End, you might try going down to the 30th LD - helping out Jamila Taylor with her race, figuring out what to do with, or helping Claire Wilson in her race. She'll - maybe save those for the general 'cause they'll probably get through. There's some sh*t going down in the 30th as well - is that also the one where Chris Vance is taking on Phil Fortunato -
[00:45:29] Crystal Fincher: That's the 31st.
[00:45:30] Rich Smith: 31st - that's right. That's just outside -
[00:45:32] Crystal Fincher: So like Enumclaw, just to the east. Yep.
[00:45:35] Rich Smith: Yeah, just outside. Yeah - so that's gonna be funny - I don't know, it'll be interesting. Phil Fortunato is a freak and a climate arsonist and a genuine weirdo. And I don't know if we're placing him with a centrist Republican, I guess, if Chris Vance is - will be much of an improvement, but it will be interesting to see the extent to which Trump base is being activated in these races in Washington, or whether there's some kind of independent, high Republican sh*t movement going on in the suburbs that really wants to moderate the Trumpers. So that'll be one area where I'm looking looking at that and yeah, but those would be two races that I would highly -
[00:46:33] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, no, that absolutely makes sense. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you everyone for listening - this is Friday, July 29th, 2022. Thanks for listening to Hacks & Wonks - the producer is Lisl Stadler and assistant producer is Shannon Cheng with assistance from Bryce Cannatelli. Our wonderful co-host today is the Associate Editor of The Stranger, Rich Smith. You can find Rich on Twitter at @richsssmith. You can find me on Twitter at @finchfrii. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Our revamped website has access to all the shows - all of the transcripts to everything is all included, and the forums that we did in the 36th and 37th are also included there. While you're there, if you like - hop on and can leave us a review on something, please do. It helps us out. You can also just get everything and we'll include all the resources and articles we talked about today in the show notes. So thanks for talking with us today.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On this bonus episode, we present our Hacks & Wonks Candidate Forum with Andrew Ashiofu, Nimco Bulale, Emijah Smith, and Chipalo Street - all running for State Representative Position 2 in Seattle’s 37th Legislative District, which includes Beacon Hill, the Central District, Rainier Valley, Columbia City, Rainier Beach, and Skyway. This was originally live-streamed on Facebook and Twitter on July 11th, 2022. You can view the video and access the full text transcript of this forum on the 2022 Elections page at officialhacksandwonks.com. We hope you enjoy this forum, and please make sure to vote by Tuesday, August 2nd!
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii.
Resources
Register to Vote, Update Your Registration, See What’s on Your Ballot: MyVote.wa.gov
37th LD Primary Candidate Forum Video and Transcript: https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/37th-ld-candidate-forum-2022
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Hello everyone, this is Crystal Fincher, host of Hacks & Wonks. This is a bonus podcast release of our Hacks & Wonks Candidate Forum with candidates for State Representative Position 2 in Seattle’s 37th Legislative district, which includes Beacon Hill, the Central District, Rainier Valley, Columbia City, Rainier Beach, and Skyway. This was originally live-streamed on Facebook and Twitter on July 11th, 2022. You can view the video and access the full text transcript of the forum on the 2022 Elections page at officialhacksandwonks.com. We hope you enjoy this forum, and please make sure to vote by Tuesday, August 2nd!
All right. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the Hacks & Wonks 2022 Primary Candidate Forum for Legislative District 37, for State Representative Position 2.
We're excited to be able to live stream this series on Facebook and Twitter. Additionally, we're recording this program, this forum, for rebroadcast and later viewing.
We invite our audience to ask questions of our candidates. If you're watching a livestream online, then you can ask questions by commenting on the livestream. You can also text your questions to 206-395-6248. That's 206-395-6248, and that number will intermittently scroll at the bottom of the screen.
All of the candidates running for 37th Legislative District State Representative Position 2 are with us tonight. In alphabetical order, we have Andrew Ashiofu, Nimco Bulale, Emijah Smith, and Chipalo Street.
A few reminders before we jump into the forum: I want to remind you to vote. Ballots will be mailed to your mailbox starting on July 13th - that's this week, you will be receiving your ballots on Thursday or Friday of this week. You can register to vote, update your registration, and see what will be on your ballot at MyVote.Wa.gov.
I want to mention that tonight's answers will be timed. Each candidate will have one minute to introduce themselves initially and 90 seconds to answer each subsequent question. Candidates may be engaged with rebuttal or follow up questions and will have 30 seconds to respond - I will indicate if that's so. Time will be indicated by the colored dot labeled "timer" on the screen. The dot will initially appear green, and then when there are 30 seconds left it will turn yellow, when time is up it'll turn red.
I want to mention that I'm on the board for the Institute for a Democratic Future. Andrew and Chipalo are both IDF alums and Chipalo is also on the board. We've not discussed any of the details of this campaign or this forum and are expecting a lively discussion from everyone tonight.
In addition to tonight's forum, Hacks & Wonks is also hosting a 36th Legislative District State Representative Position 1 candidate forum this Wednesday, July 13th at the same time - 6:30-8PM.
Now we'll turn to the candidates who will each have one minute to introduce themselves, starting with Nimco, then Chipalo, next to Emijah, finally Andrew. Nimco.
[00:03:19] Nimco Bulale: Hi, thank you. Good evening and thank you so much for the opportunity to speak to you all. My name is Nimco Bulale and I'm running for the open seat in the 37th Legislative District. I immigrated to Seattle from Somalia at the age of eight, a child of a single mother of nine. I know the importance of education, opportunity, and being supported by a strong, safe and nurturing community. I'm a lifelong community organizer, small business owner, university educator, and education policy expert working every day to help marginalized people in communities. As a woman of color, I'm acutely aware of the issues facing Black immigrant people of color communities and I'm excited to bring a systematically underrepresented perspective. I've spent my career working with marginalized communities and focused on creating a more inclusive, multicultural education system. I've largely worked in education policy, so this is where most of my experience on the issue lies. However, as a legislator, I will have the unique opportunity to look at this issue through a much broader lens. I am the co-founder and CEO of South Sound Strategies, a consulting firm focused on -
[00:04:26] Crystal Fincher: That was time. Next we are headed to the next candidate - go ahead.
[00:04:41] Chipalo Street: And I'm running here because I want the 37th to have the most effective representation possible. I've seen what education has done for my life and I want every kid to have the same opportunities my education has provided me. Police accountability is near and dear to my heart - during college, I was beaten by the police and so I want to make sure we have an accountable police force, while still working with them to make sure that we increase public safety. I've been a union member, so I would stand with our unions as they fight to make sure that working people can increase their compensation and benefits. In my professional life, I work for Microsoft for the Chief Technology Officer, where I advise our executive leadership on emerging technology. I think it's important we have legislators who understand technology, especially so given Roe, so that we can make sure that data isn't used unintended for people who are trying to get abortions. Serving in the legislature would allow me to magnify my efforts to improve our community. As a former union member, I understand the value of empowering the labor movement. As a BIPOC community member, I have experience with the important issues of our times like education, housing, technology, and interactions with the police.
[00:05:50] Crystal Fincher: That is our time - next Emijah.
Oh, you need to unmute, Emijah.
[00:06:01] Emijah Smith: I was told that your staff would be muting us and unmuting us. So thank you. So my time starts now, or am I using my time?
[00:06:12] Crystal Fincher: We'll start now and a reminder to everyone that if you mute yourself, we can't unmute you. If we do the unmuting, then we can unmute you.
[00:06:20] Emijah Smith: Thank you. My name is Emijah Smith. I am a lifelong resident of the 37th Legislative District. I have the historical and current perspective of the 37th. I am a mother and I am a grandmother. I am focusing here on - ooh, this is good - I am focused on education policy ever since I was a senior in high school, surviving the War on Drugs - growing up in the Central District in South Seattle, I made a commitment to make sure that we get resources to our community to heal the harms. So I've been doing that - I'm the Mercer PTSA president, I'm the chief of staff of King County Equity Now, and I sit on the board of Tubman Health. So I've been doing the work currently in the Legislature for many years - going to Olympia with families, utilizing the power of our voice to bring meaningful change into our community. I walk with integrity - the integrity I walk in the community doing this work as a community leader - I will take that to Olympia. I have championed and been alongside the families that got us some current wins that is community reinvestment dollars for marijuana. Thank you.
[00:07:28] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - and Andrew.
[00:07:31] Andrew Ashiofu: Hi, my name is Andrew Ashiofu. I'm coming to you from a lived experience. I'm from - I was born in Houston, Texas and my family's Nigerian. When I came out, I lost my comfort zone. I got kicked out, lost my house due to depression, I couldn't keep up at work, and I was diagnosed with AIDS. And that was a - it was a tough process because I had to navigate ideologies and policies not created for people like me. I always say it was a good Samaritan that gave me accommodation. I have lived the experience currently in Seattle - I'm a coach of the Seattle LGBTQ commission. Here in the 37th district, I sit on the Harborview Medical Community Advisory Board, I am on the Seattle-King County HIV Planning Council. I have done immigration, LGBTQ rights advocacy on a local and global level with the Department of Homeland Security. For me, it's - we talk about healthcare, it's very important. I'm a renter also, so housing is important. But I have lived the experience, I have advocated in that experience and I'm here to serve you. Thank you.
[00:08:37] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much. And with those introductions, we will get to the questions. We're gonna start by talking about housing. Housing affordability is not very affordable these days. We are at a crisis level. Lots of people are losing their housing, people are facing this all over the place. So beyond extending - beyond ending exclusionary zoning and making further investments in the Housing Trust Fund, what else do we need to do to address housing affordability and to prevent displacement? And as a reminder, everyone has a response time of 90 seconds. And we will start with Chipalo.
[00:09:19] Chipalo Street: So a bunch of things we can do - in the short term, we can add housing vouchers so that working people can live in existing market rate housing without spending their full paycheck on their shelter. We should have short-term rental assistance so that a temporary hardship doesn't end up in a situation that snowballs - like once you lose your house, it's harder to go to work, it's harder for your kids to go to school - that just gets worse. In addition to those, we need more renter protections. And so some tenant protections that I support are preventing landlords from using past criminal history to discriminate against prospective tenants, limiting the types of fees that can be charged by landlords. And David Hackney has a great bill that would provide recourse for tenants against a landlord who's looking to take some kind of action against them - you can already do that, but it takes a long time and so what's the point of taking action against the landlord if they've evicted you already. The harm has been done, we need to make sure that tenants can make sure that landlords are treating them well. Looks like I have more time, so those would be the main things. What would be some other things that we could do - I think you mentioned the exclusionary zoning - lifting the ban on rent control statewide would also be another option that would allow different municipalities and give them another tool in their tool belt for fighting housing costs.
[00:10:44] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. And next we're gonna head to Nimco.
[00:10:47] Nimco Bulale: Thank you for that question. I believe housing is a human right. As somebody that had to - when we moved to the United States to Seattle specifically, that was pushed out of the 37th and more specifically the Seattle Central District - I'm keenly aware of the precarious of housing affordability, similar to many folks. The cost of housing is a major crisis facing working families in Washington State. Affordability is an issue, not only for persons facing or at risk for homelessness, but working families also struggle to ensure that they have secure housing as costs increase, especially around job centers. There are many actions that the state can take to address this. We've already mentioned the Housing Trust Fund, we've talked about land use regulations, encouraging low income and working workforce housing, as well as protections for tenants. But I also want to say that it's necessary to update, as mentioned, our land use laws to move past zoning that privileges single-family homes. Additionally, I think that we need wraparound services such as behavioral health, substance abuse services, as well as providing resources to local jurisdictions to bring their services to scale. I read recently that Black renters can't afford 93% of the zip codes in the top US cities and I think that that's a travesty. I think that those are just some of the ways that we can think about it. And also knowing that 16% of zip codes in the list, on the list had rents that were unaffordable to Latinx households - again, that is unacceptable. And when I do get to the Legislature, I believe that there's things that the state can do.
[00:12:31] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much - next we're headed to Andrew.
[00:12:35] Andrew Ashiofu: This is very personal to me. That's why my campaign - we signed on to the Initiative 135 - social housing is a key. One thing I've been privileged is to see social housing work in Europe and in Amsterdam, they have the 40-40-20, where 40% of the building is social housing, and another 40% is affordable mid-level housing, and 20% is commercial or community space. I'm big on community space because I play dodgeball every Tuesday in the community space. But it's also very important that we protect - in the 37th district - we protect our housing through preventing gentrification. Property tax for the elderly and people living with disabilities should be eliminated - that's where I'm coming from. But also we have a lot of land in Washington state in cities where the downtown is empty, with population of less than a hundred - we should, we can utilize that to create social wraparound services for teenagers and youth at-risk, for domestic violence victims, for people going through mental and drug addiction. We need to invest in those kind of services as well. Thank you.
[00:13:49] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much - and Emijah.
[00:13:52] Emijah Smith: Thank you. As we've heard that housing, healthcare, food are human basic rights. And so the way I would look at how we have to address housing, which is a very complicated issue, but when I think about being a survivor of the War on Drugs, the gentrification displacement that happened in the Central District and has been happening throughout the 37th currently, we have to look at the policies. The home I grew up in was taken from my grandfather due to some bad crime bill policies, but also we want to look at the Housing Finance Commission, most definitely, to make sure there is enough money in there that can come back into the community for housing development. And not just affordable housing, but stable, affordable housing. We have Africatown Plaza, Ethiopian Village, as well as Elizabeth Thomas Holmes - that came from community voice that I was part of to make sure that that money was sent down to the community. It wasn't gonna come to the community a couple years back without the power of our voice. In addition to that, we need to look at the barriers that are in the Department of Commerce, in terms of the application process, to even provide housing developments that could be stable for our community. There's so many loopholes that oftentimes it's the BIPOC and marginalized communities that don't get access to those resources. And although shelters and emergency housing is important to get someone off the streets immediately, it is important that we can provide some stable housing - if it's gonna be temporary, it needs to be temporary for at least a year. As a payee for my uncle who was dealing with addiction, it was because I was able to provide him stable housing for that year that helped him get stable. Thank you.
[00:15:28] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Just a reminder to everyone that you do have 90 seconds to respond. It's up to you whether you choose to use that entire 90 seconds or not. If you want your answer to be shorter, feel free. We welcome that. The next question is we've seen - excuse me - significant increased investment in programs meant to reduce homelessness, but a lot of people are saying that they're not seeing the problem get any better despite the increase in funds. A lot of people attribute that to the continuing affordability crisis. Do you agree that this crisis is not improving? And if so, what needs to happen to get results? And we are starting with Emijah.
[00:16:11] Emijah Smith: Thank you for that question. I think that's an ongoing issue and I think it's an ongoing issue that has to do with our regressive tax system, our property taxes - people who are being pushed out are low-income working class families that cannot afford the rent, right? So it's a cycle of an issue that is occurring. When that cycle occurs, it's like - the burden of property taxes going up fall onto the renter who is then also gonna continue to be pushed out. So how are we solving the problem if we're not addressing some of the root causes of the issues. The root causes of the issue is also about having fair wages and wages that - where people can actually live in the 37th and pay the mortgages, buy the homes. So also these temporary three-day opportunities just - they're not long enough. And we're pushing people more into being renters who are carrying the burden of even homeowners who want to rent rather than providing stable housing, like I said, for at least a year in some place - so that people can build themselves up, not just go for three three days and then you have to transfer and go to another place, and eventually you're gonna get pushed out of the 37th going south, which is actually having its issues as well as our homeless population. We have the resources, we have the money, the 37th and Washington State can correct this issue. We need to correct the issue and we need to address the root causes of homelessness, not just providing people a three-day motel stay here or there or putting people in tiny home villages. Thank you.
[00:17:44] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Chipalo.
[00:17:47] Chipalo Street: Yeah, I also agree that it's an issue. And it's great that we're increasing funding for it, but I don't think the funding is keeping up with the magnitude of the issue. There's many things that are contributing to this - like Emijah mentioned, home costs for someone who's trying to buy a house are skyrocketing. That's pushing up property values, which then increases someone's tax burden. So if you're a low-income person and your property taxes rise, you have less spending power. If you're a senior on a fixed income, you have less spending power and sometimes get forced into selling. We also have insufficient tenant protections. And so if you lose - if you're a renter and you lose your housing, then you end up on the street and that snowballs. You can't go to work, your kids can't go to school, and the issue gets worse. So not only do I support all of those, or means to fix all of those, I also would like to see better paying jobs. So for example, I think it's crazy that after K-12 school, we don't elevate the trades. The trades provide a great means of well-paying stable jobs for everyone. And traditionally we have denigrated the trades like - oh, you went to the trades 'cause you can't hack it. No, these are great jobs that people enjoy. Two of my best friends from junior high school went through four-year college, hated the jobs they got, came back, became electricians, and now love those jobs and get paid more than they did before. So I think this - we need to think of this comprehensively, not only in how do we fix the housing market, but how do we increase job stability and the paying of jobs?
[00:19:16] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Nimco.
[00:19:19] Nimco Bulale: Thank you for that question. Homelessness affects all of our communities in Seattle and King County and as mentioned before, it is a very complicated issue, but I think that we all have a role to play. Homelessness represents a multisector, multi-system failures and requires a whole of community solutions. Many of the strategies, connections, and services needed to support individuals experiencing homelessness are managed outside of the homeless service system or in geographically separated systems. So I think as a solution, we need to think about creating long-term institutional alignment across systems serving people experiencing homelessness. We must also ensure that community leaders in business, philanthropy, and those who have lived experience with homelessness and advocates can coordinate and align with regional and state level homelessness initiatives to cultivate share and promote solutions to homelessness. I think, while at times, efforts to support the unhoused in Seattle can appear scattered and disorganized - oftentimes initiatives and task force are renamed, replaced, discontinued. I think that every day we encounter people who are living on the street, often without a reliable place to store possessions, clean clothes, take a shower, and get a solid night of rest. Moving forward, I think that we must continue to invest in housing, supportive housing for people with serious mental illness, emergency housing, and affordable housing. The solution to ending homelessness is to provide more options for housing and that Seattle and King County will need private business to take an active role in housing the unhoused if efforts to end homelessness must be -
[00:21:01] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - and next Andrew.
[00:21:07] Andrew Ashiofu: Thank you for this question. As I said earlier in my introduction, I was able to come out of being homeless by someone giving me somewhere to stay. We've been approaching homelessness in - we'd say one-size-fits-all solution and that's wrong. Homeless has various degrees - from mental health to drugs, to PTSD with the vets, to domestic violence, to people like me that lost their jobs, to youths that are kicked out for coming out. We have a huge problem in the LGBTQ community. The first thing I think we should do is - I'm not a fan of shelters because it's just for overnight. Again, we need more. So we need things like investing in transition housing. We just had one open up right here on 12th. We need to, again, back to wraparound services, housing. We have the space, but we also - people talk about density. We have a lot of high-rises apartments coming. The problem why it's not affordable is one, it's not affordable. Also, it doesn't - it's all one bedroom studios and two bedroom. What about families? What about town homes? We don't have that kind of investment. So we need to create legislation that brings about things like right to return, but also invest in multi-family units, not just one bedroom or studios. We need more, more, more. Thank you.
[00:22:37] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. So families have been facing increased financial pressure. The cost of necessities like rent and childcare has been skyrocketing for years. More recently, gas, food and other prices have noticeably increased and people are having to make financial sacrifices. What can you do in your capacity as a state legislator to provide tangible relief to people who are struggling with bills? And we are starting with Andrew.
[00:23:05] Andrew Ashiofu: The first thing is we need a tax relief for low-income families, working class families. Two, I think we need a gas tax break - for now - because of the high prices of gas. When it comes to childcare, we - I always say we need childcare vouchers, but also making it applicable whereby people can give what I call family, friends and neighbor - a part of childcare, but it's highly overlooked. So we need to create those vouchers as - oh, I can pay my family, I can pay a friend, I can pay a neighbor to help me take care of these kids. In campaigning, we see childcare as a huge need for people campaigning with children. We have that law that they cannot even use campaign phones for childcare. And a lot of people, especially women, have to drop out for running for office because of things like childcare. So we need that. And for - I think we need transportation, free public transit. I'm a transit - I use the transits occasionally. I've been endorsed by the Transit Riders Union, but we also need to invest in accessible transit and make it free for people to move around and reduce dependency on gas. Thank you so much.
[00:24:25] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Emijah.
[00:24:29] Emijah Smith: Thank you. I think on a state level, the state can provide some relief. They can give credits of some tax credit - we need to address our regressive tax code, period. That will give a lot of relief. Our state is receiving revenue of our marijuana tax dollars. We have the money to make some different choices and we really need to release the burden off of our low-income and working class families. So I definitely just think that there should be some type of package that is offered. But I do agree that I think that things are starting to be cut back because of COVID, coming out of COVID. So we should still be making sure that our students are receiving free breakfast, free lunch - that should not be something that's gonna be cut - the feds are cutting it, the state needs to pick up on that. The state is doing a great job by supporting covering some of the healthcare costs and help for the insurance, but that needs to be extended. It needs to be covered because just to try to buy some food, to go in there and just try to buy fruit and be healthy - the 37th has a lot of food deserts. It costs a lot of money to be healthy and to thrive in this community. So our basic necessities, I think that the state should utilize some of that revenue and give us all some level of a break based on our income. I am a single parent, I have raised my kids, I have found innovative ways to survive and get through that paying through childcare. Definitely advocating for childcare, increasing the income levels for families to be able to access that - this screen is killing me, but - the state can do it. We have the money, we need to take care of our basic needs we need to give food vouchers to our community members. Thank you.
[00:26:13] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Chipalo.
[00:26:15] Chipalo Street: Sure. So one of the places that childcare is provided is in the schools. We have a program for early childhood learning. I think it would be great to expand that, not only because that would provide some relief for childcare, but also the earlier we get a kid into education, the better the outcomes. I think there are some other good ideas thrown out there around like a gas tax holiday, but a gas tax holiday is really a short-term band-aid on the solution where we really need progressive tax reform. Washington State has the most regressive tax code in the country, which is crazy given how fortunate we are in this state to have very good-paying jobs and we need to make sure that everyone pays their fair share. So I would love to see income tax implemented. Unfortunately it seems like there's some issues with that in the constitution, so we need to fight to keep our capital gains tax. There's some corporate tax loopholes that we could close and in doing so, we could then reduce some of the sales tax, which contributes to our regressive tax code. So I think we should look at this a little more holistically in terms of progressive tax reform, because so much of it comes down to where we fund different programs in our state.
[00:27:23] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Nimco.
[00:27:26] Nimco Bulale: Thank you for that question. I believe that Washington's economic climate is one of the best in the nation. And this is because unlike other states, our minimum wage is more reflective of the current economy and workers are offered generous employment benefits. However, this is often negated by the fact that we do have the most regressive tax code in our country. Our economy only works for the top, our economy works the best for the top 1%. I believe that workers and small businesses are fundamental to the health of our economy. I think that as a small business owner, we need to create an economy that fosters the growth of these businesses. And we need to invest in apprenticeship programs and strong unions to grow our economy and safe, living-wage jobs. At the same time, we desperately need to reconsider, like I said, our regressive tax code, which exploits working people by lowering taxes on low-income earners. And by requiring the wealthiest in our state to pay their fair share, we can spur economic growth and relieve this population of its economic burden. As a woman of color, centering the voices of Black, Indigenous and people of color is of the utmost importance to me. I'm committed to explicitly centering the perspective and the needs of marginalized groups who are so often underserved by being left out in the policy I work to craft. In addition to this, I support policies that specifically or functionally address the racial wealth gap, including affordable housing that helps people of color generate generational wealth, as well as the universal basic income, which has been shown to reduce the racial wealth gap. I think in addition to cutting taxes, we also - in addition to creating more taxes, we need to also cut taxes for low-income workers.
[00:29:05] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. We are sitting here after the Dobbs decision that struck down reproductive rights protections and the right to an abortion for women. According to Axios, 41% of hospital beds in Washington are located in religious hospitals. So although we are not one of the states that has an abortion ban immediately occurring because of the decision, we do have some issues with access. Would you vote to make the continuation of abortion services a requirement of mergers involving religious hospital networks? And we are starting with Nimco.
[00:29:49] Nimco Bulale: Can you repeat the last part of the question?
[00:29:52] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to make the continuation of abortion services a requirement of hospital mergers, which we're having a lot of - involving secular or religious hospital networks. And what more can we do to protect abortion access?
[00:30:08] Nimco Bulale: So I don't have a paddle, but I will say absolutely Yes, I would support that. I'm pissed - I think access to healthcare, reproductive, and gender-affirming care are at the forefront of my campaign as our nation continues to face an onslaught of threats to the rights of people of marginalized genders. And this is not okay. I think that we need to work harder to make this part of our constitution - the right to bodily autonomy is fundamental and I will always fight to protect these rights, especially in a state like Washington, which is soon to become a safe haven for birthing people in states looking to outlaw abortion entirely. As a longtime education policy activist, I understand the need for comprehensive sex education and I will continue to fight for that when I'm elected in office. I'm firmly committed to creating a world in which all people can decide when, if, and in what manner they decide to have children. Reproductive justice means we must also work to create a world in which those children are born into communities that are safe, healthy, and just.
[00:31:09] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - and next we're going to Andrew.
[00:31:15] Andrew Ashiofu: It's a Yes for me - we need to protect the right to choose. And we also need to call a special session to codify this in our constitution and create bills that would protect anyone that comes into our state to seek an abortion - currently there's been an increase. Now, when it comes to hospitals' merger, we need to protect the right to choose as part of this merger. And this is not just - this covers - because some of these hospitals also could choose not to treat me as a gay person because they believe - they might say - because of anti-LGBTQ rhetorics in some of these places. We need - healthcare is very important for everyone. We all deserve healthcare and there should be no barrier against healthcare. I have done a lot of advocacy, I have fought for my right to survive, and I know the red tape and the obstacles. We don't need that now. We need to create access. As a state, we need to call - I call on Governor Inslee to call a special session to codify abortion into our constitution here in Washington State. Thank you.
[00:32:30] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Emijah.
[00:32:33] Emijah Smith: Thank you for the question. And just going directly to it - healthcare is a right and I believe having access to abortion is part of our basic healthcare. And so I definitely believe that we would have to interrogate, and I think that with this merger, those type of access - abortion access - should be available to all - to birthing parents and birthing people who need that. I also am in agreement with our Washington State really looking at our constitution and making sure that if we say we're gonna support and having access to abortion and it is a right for people for that choice, then we need to lock that in now and not be worried about a session or two here and somebody trying to undo that. That's the world that I grew up in and I totally support that no matter what I would choose in terms of if I want to have a child or not. I also want to just say healthcare equities are real. And particularly for Black women, we have the highest risk of death at birth. So this is a real issue for us around trying to have choice and just getting care in general. COVID just lifted up the top of how these he health equities are a real problem in our healthcare system. And too often, some of our healthcare systems are just moving for profit. We need to be moving for health. It is a basic right for our community. Thank you.
[00:34:00] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Chipalo.
[00:34:03] Chipalo Street: Yes, I'm a hundred percent supportive of this. If we didn't have enough issues at the state level to deal with before, the Supreme Court has given us a whole host of new issues to deal with, abortion access being one of them. I would love for my first bill to be a bill to enshrine protections for the right to choose into our constitution. Above and beyond that, I think we also need people who understand technology in the Legislature. So I work for the Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft and I think having folks who understand technology is incredibly important, especially for things like Roe, where we don't - where we want to make sure that companies' data can't be inadvertently, or even maybe specifically, used to target people seeking abortions. And then I also agree with Nimco that we need to increase funding for our abortion centers, because we will have an influx of folks coming from our surrounding states where they do not have access to it anymore. So we have to make sure that our folks have it, we have to make sure that we are a beacon of light for other surrounding states so that we can make abortion a option that people have when they consider their overall healthcare.
[00:35:09] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. So this next question is a little bit of a question. So crime has been increasing across the state. People are concerned about their safety and whether we're doing the right things to address the current levels of property and violent crime. According to a recent Crosscut/Elway poll, Seattle voters were asked what they think are major factors in the crime rate. The top three answers were lack of mental health and addiction services - that was 85% of Seattle residents gave that answer. Second answer was homelessness at 67%. And the third answer was economic conditions at 63%. When asked specifically if they could direct where their tax dollars were spent, the top three responses were at 92% addiction and mental health services, at 81% training police officers to deescalate situations, and at 80% programs to address the root causes of crime. Those were Seattle residents' top answers. Given that the Legislature has already voted to increase public safety funding, largely devoted to policing and prisons, do you feel that we should increase funding for these things that Seattle voters have requested like behavioral health resources, non-police intervention services, and rehabilitation services before passing further increases for police spending? And we will start with Chipalo.
[00:36:34] Chipalo Street: Yeah, public safety and police accountability is a issue that is near and dear to my heart. In college, I was beaten by the police for not showing my ID so bad that I had to be taken to the hospital before they took me to jail. It was so bad that a student who was watching it said that she was traumatized. And so I, 100%, believe that we need an accountable police force. That said, I think police are part of public safety. They should be partners that we can work with and should not be afraid to call to come to violent crimes, to solve robberies. They are part of public safety and I want to work with them to make sure that we have a - we have more public safety. I also encourage our society to think more holistically about public safety - we ask police to do too much and things they're not trained for. So we should have counselors in schools, not cops. We shouldn't be sending police to respond to nonviolent mental health crisis, we should be sending professionals who are trained to do that. And so I think that reflects a lot of what you're seeing Seattle voters say is - yes, we need more addiction counseling, we need more mental health funding - so that we first prevent these issues from starting. And then if they do happen, we want a person who is trained to deal with that issue responding to it. So I would 100% support more of these services to get at the root causes of some of these issues while making our police accountable, just like any other professional accountability. We have professional accountability for lawyers and doctors. We should have the same thing for police.
[00:38:07] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Nimco.
[00:38:10] Nimco Bulale: Thank you for that question. Regarding public safety and police, I absolutely believe that we need more law enforcement jobs that need to be reassigned to social workers and other service providers. I believe that the police are equipped with limited and largely punitive tools to handle many of the crises they're called to address. I support protecting our public safety by investing in broader emergency response teams trained to handle mental health, interpersonal, and addiction crises. Additionally, the police have jeopardized the public safety by systematically inflicting violence, surveillance, and fear on communities of color. I support deescalation, crisis intervention, and accountability in service of protecting public safety. I believe we need a justice system that makes our community safer and healthier. We need proactive policies that emphasize crime prevention and support for vulnerable communities instead of reactive policies that emphasize punishment. I also support setting up effective systems for crime prevention, including mental health and addiction resources, policies that tackle scarcity, and social work. Effective public safety comes from community and requires community healing when harm is done.
[00:39:27] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Andrew.
[00:39:30] Andrew Ashiofu: Thanks. I'm gonna talk from the other side - from someone that has walked through the shoes of the other side, where people think otherwise about you. I tell people I had a mental crisis in 2020, and 'til now I'm still on a wait list to talk to a mental specialist. And what does that tell me is - we don't have enough trained, diverse mental health specialists even in our clinics that are affordable and accessible to many people that really need them. Most of them work for very expensive hospitals or clinics or practices. We, as a state, we need to invest in that form of education. And also when it comes to drug addiction, I tell people I am for safe injection or safe sites. And people say why? I said, because one, it brings these people to a place where you could personally reach out to them. And it also reduces diseases and spread of blood-borne diseases. And our police force - I think we've invested enough. We need more civilian engagement, more social workers, more people that are not violent. We need the police to go back and address sexual assault victims. We need more civil engagement. That's what I think we need in Washington State. Thank you.
[00:41:04] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Emijah.
[00:41:07] Emijah Smith: Yes, thank you for the question. We definitely need - our state needs to invest, provide mental health investments. As a PTSA president at my son's middle school, every year we check in with the families and ask them - what type of resources, what do you need? And for the past few years, especially with COVID, everyone a hundred percent has prioritized social, emotional health and wanting some mental health support for our youth. So mental health supports go across the gamut - I know you were speaking to public safety, crime, and what the poll had indicated, but I want to say it's across the board. Recently had spoke with the leader of the If Project - a police officer who was also sharing - in the past that our police officers weren't even getting properly mental health care. And so how we're trying to look into how they are trying to look and making sure that police officers are getting behavioral health. So the behavioral health is across the board. We, as families have been impacted. And so our state should invest regardless - whether it's those who are having addiction issues, who are untreated or others. And if our youth are not being serviced well, then people are gonna go try to self-medicate and it's going to create a cycle. And we wanna interrupt that cycle of harm. We wanna interrupt that cycle of being untreated. I definitely believe that we need to make sure our resources are equitable, right? So the police force budget is way much larger than our education budget. And so we need to take a look at that. So I definitely believe in police accountability - all the things - deescalation, all the things, the training that's needed.
[00:42:49] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Next, we're going to go with a question from a viewer. I'll read it verbatim. We've just found out that Starbucks is closing our CD neighborhood location on 23rd and Jackson due to crime concerns. That's a quote from them. I would be interested to hear candidate thoughts on this decision and how this loss affects a community gathering space. And we will start with Emijah.
[00:43:19] Emijah Smith: I appreciate that question - you probably see my eyes. I'll honestly say I'm a little bit heartbroken about what's happening in the Central District. I was just talking with the new development complex about looking at that parking lot just this morning, saying the result of the people who are in that parking lot is a result of the poor policies that have come when you displace and gentrified a whole community. This is a place where people find to be their community. This is sometimes a place where people who are unhoused feel most safe - in that space - because someone will come and smile at them. So crime and different things are happening across not only our City, across the 37th, but across our nation. So to remove something as a community space that we need - so people can come together, come problem solve, come be a support in some way or another - I think that that is not the best move. I think it's like you came and you put your footsteps there, but then you're gonna step away and leave the problem. You need to resource the issue, bring in investments. I would rather Starbucks do that, especially when you look at the racial justice context and how they maybe even came into the community. So I'm disheartened about it, but at the same time, we as community and advocates work in solidarity - are working to address that issue. But I will say I've talked to those people in that parking lot, I've seen people I've grew up with in that community, and I know even a unhoused, homeless woman sleeping in the bench there said that was the safest place for them because they're amongst at least their own community. Thank you.
[00:44:53] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Chipalo.
[00:44:55] Chipalo Street: Yeah - if they wanna leave, they can leave - and I don't understand why they would leave for safety concerns. What I hope is that we can have another community business come in and take that spot - let's have Boon Boona Coffee, who has a place down in Renton and a place down on 12th Ave, come in and take that shop because I believe you can do good business in that location without vilifying the people who are in the parking lot. There are definitely issues with unhoused populations choking out businesses. You can see that down on 12th and Jackson where they've moved in front of Lam's Seafood and there's EBT fraud going on there. I would not put 23rd and Jackson in that same bucket. I quite frankly, wouldn't be surprised if there's a little bit of bias or racism going on in that decision to shut down. And Starbucks has shown that they want to do some union busting in other places, so losing Starbucks - to me - isn't the end of the world. I'll bet you that a better business will come in and replace it really soon because that's a booming area - they just opened up a bunch of housing around there. Yeah, that's their decision, that's fine. We'll get a better business in there.
[00:46:01] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Nimco.
[00:46:04] Nimco Bulale: I'm disheartened by the closing, to be very honest - I remember as a young child growing up and meeting my grandfather at that Starbucks because he lived right at a senior center close by. And so I'm gutted to hear that that's happening. And it's unfortunate that - we know that oftentimes communities of color, the ones that are disproportionately impacted by these travesties and by gun violence and public safety - as a representative, I will lead with racial justice being central to the fight to end violence and specifically support policies that are common sense and that reduce police interactions and increase accountability for our communities. I think, as Chipalo mentioned, this could be an opportunity to have a community cafe there, an opportunity to really invest in the Central District and in that area. And I think it's a missed opportunity for Starbucks to leave in this condition and to say that it's because of safety concerns. I would've hoped that they would be a part of that solution in really being able to continue to invest and rehabilitate the community. Yeah, so it's unfortunate, but I think there's more opportunities to be - to really invest in that corner of our community.
[00:47:22] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Andrew.
[00:47:25] Andrew Ashiofu: I'm going to address this in various forms for - when they say public safety, I think I go again with what everyone said - is based on racial bias. I really hope Brian of Tougo Coffee down here at Yesler opens another branch there. But also - I, as a frontline worker that has been working hard to be unionized at my airline, I think this is also a form of union busting, as Chipalo said, because we've seen that nearly all the stores that unionize at Starbucks - they close it down. And there's a huge - this is the time, the moment for the unions to come together. And Starbucks is - Okay, we're going to punish you. But also, I think as a state representative, or as on the state level, this is why we should invest in small businesses and among minorities and Black communities, immigrant communities, because - I used to say those are our safe space, even the LGBT community, but reality - those are our brave spaces where we could be who we are. We could be - so we need to invest in small business there and take back what was ours. Thank you so much.
[00:48:38] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Next we are going to a question about the Dobbs decision that eliminated the right to abortion. But in Justice Thomas's concurring opinion, he went further and he identified decisions he felt should be reevaluated after their ruling in Dobbs - cases that established our right to same-sex marriage, rights to contraception, and rights to sexual privacy. What can our state legislature do to proactively protect these rights? Starting with Andrew.
[00:49:13] Andrew Ashiofu: Ooh - as a gay person and someone involved in the LGBTQ+ community and advocacy, this is really hard. It brings back memories of when I was kicked out, it brings back memories of being bullied and being called a fggt. As a state, we need to create constitution that protects all those things. Contraception is part of healthcare - it's important, it's not an option. You can't tell me that - as a states we need to provide - contraception should be free, condoms should be free, Plan B should be free, IUD should be free, menstrual pads and all those tampons should be free - should not be for profit. We need to protect and make it accessible, not affordable - accessible for free - because again it's criminalizing minorities. Then when it comes to privacy and this is the whole LGBTQ witch hunting all over again. In this day and age, we need to create that as a protective class in our constitution, in our schools, we need to protect them in our workplace. We need to protect them - I want to walk down the streets and not have someone call me a fggt. So this is something very dear to me. And I would walk hard to codify all that into protection in Washington State. Thank you.
[00:50:39] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Emijah.
[00:50:41] Emijah Smith: Thank you. This is an opportunity for Washington State to really walk its talk. We talk about being progressive, we talk about all the things, and this is an opportunity for us to get in front of it. This is why I want to go ahead and be a state representative - because I do not wanna see us go back, turn the clock back. I'm there to push, hold the line, and take us forward - because this type of it's - I have no understanding for it. I'm triggered, right? We're here in the 37th and we talk about the progressiveness and I'm tired of talk and we need representation and leadership that will hold the line and also push the line forward. This is about safety in my opinion. This is a safety issue. If a person cannot show up who they are, then how can they be safe? They're going to be a target of violence. This to me is policy violence, and this is not acceptable. So this is who I am and how I wanna show up moving forward. We leave this place better than the way we found it. I do not need my children or my loved ones, or my neighbors, fearful of their own safety, because they cannot show up as who they need to be - because they don't have the proper resources or then we're gonna be stereotyped in some form or fashion, then more policies and that systemic racism will fall on those who are most marginalized. It's this type of rhetoric that has to come to an end. You have to be about action. Thank you.
[00:52:21] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Chipalo.
[00:52:24] Chipalo Street: Yeah, I can't agree more with what folks are saying. To me, what's interesting about this and ironic is that this is an example of extreme privilege. My understanding is that he left one issue out that is also built on Dobbs, which is interracial marriage, and he is married to a white lady. But yet he cited every other thing that he wants to take back. So why is it that this person in a position of power over so many people can just selectively exclude it? So I think it hits home for all of us in very many different ways. Personally, this hits home because I'm half Black, half white. And so even though he didn't include it in there, you know it's next - it just means that you can't trust what they say. And it means that you need to elect leaders to state representatives, to Supreme Court - I guess we can't elect people to Supreme Court, but Senators who confirm justices up and down the ballot - who support everyone's right, to see people as equal, who are with us on this march towards equality.
[00:53:31] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Nimco.
[00:53:32] Nimco Bulale: Thank you so much for that question. I don't wanna re - I agree with what everybody said. I think additionally, Washington State needs to be in the business of justice. And when I say justice, I really mean the complete physical, mental, spiritual, political, economic, and social wellbeing of all people. It can only - I think that this can only be achieved when everybody has that economic, social, and political power, as well as the resources to make healthy decisions about their bodies, about their sexuality, about their reproductive - reproduction - for themselves, their families, and their communities in all areas of their lives. I think that this is the kind of foresight that we need to have as a state and we really need to lead in these issues. If we say that we are beacon for supporting reproductive rights and other rights of all people, I think that we need to be leading in that. And we need to show the rest of the country that we are an example of folks that take that business of justice seriously.
[00:54:36] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. And with that, we are actually gonna take a short two-minute break to give our candidates a chance to grab some water - it's a hot day. And grab their Yes and No paddles because we're going to be back with a lightning round. So two minutes is starting now and we will see you on the other side.
All right. We are getting ready to begin our lightning round. So you all have paddles with - that are green on one side, red on the other. Green is what you show to face - that faces the camera - if your answer is Yes. The other side - red, if it's No. We will do these in rapid succession. And following the lightning round, following all of - the totality of the questions - everyone will have one minute to explain any of the answers that you want to. But we will go through this quickly, so I'll ask the question and then ask you to hold up for people to clearly see the Yes or No to the answers to these questions.
So we're starting out - regarding housing and homelessness, are there any instances where you would support sweeps of homeless encampments? Yes or no?
It looks like we have two either giving a No or a thumbs down for No. Looks like everybody is a No on that question.
Next question. Will you vote to end single-family zoning in order to create more housing density and affordability? Yes or no?
Everyone is a Yes.
Next question. Would you vote to end the statewide ban on rent control and let localities decide whether they want to implement it? Yes or no.
Everyone is a Yes on that question.
Next, do you support Seattle's social housing initiative, I-135? Yes or no.
Everybody is a Yes.
Would you have voted for the legislature's police reform rollbacks in the last legislative session? Yes or no?
A mixed answer. So keep your paddles held up for that. So Emijah is a Yes, everyone else is a No - that's Chipalo, Andrew, and Nimco.
Next, should the legislature pass restrictions on what can be collectively bargained by police unions? Yes or no. Repeating the question - should the legislature pass restrictions on what can be collectively bargained by police unions? Everyone is a Yes in that question.
Would you vote for any bill that increases highway expansion? Yes or no?
Chipalo is a Yes. Emijah, Nimco, and Andrew are No.
Do you support calling a special session this year to codify reproductive rights and access into law? Yes or no?
Everybody's a Yes.
Would you have voted this past session - for the session before last - for the Climate Commitment Act? Yes or no?
Everybody's a Yes on that question.
Do you think trans and non-binary students should be allowed to play on the sports teams that fit with their gender identities? Yes or no.
Everybody is a Yes.
Will you vote to enact a universal basic income in Washington? Yes or no.
Everybody is a Yes on that question.
Our state has one of the most regressive tax codes in the country, meaning lower-income people pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than the ultra-wealthy. In addition to the capital gains tax, do you support a wealth tax? Yes or no?
Everybody with quick Yeses to that.
Do you support implementing ranked-choice voting in Seattle? Yes or no.
Everybody is a Yes to that.
Do you support implementing approval voting in Seattle? Yes or no.
These are slow answers. We've got some waffling. We've got a lot of waffling. The only clear answer was Andrew with a No.
Do you support moving local elections from odd years to even years to significantly increase voter turnout? Yes or no?
Quick yeses for that.
Is your campaign unionized? Yes or no?
Every - I can't see your answer there, Andrew. Everybody's a No.
If your campaign staff wants to unionize, will you voluntarily recognize their effort? Yes or no.
Everybody is a Yes.
Would you vote to provide universal healthcare to every Washington resident? Yes or no?
Everybody is a Yes.
That concludes our lightning round. Now we will give each candidate one minute to explain anything they want to explain about their answers or their waffles. And we'll start with Nimco.
[01:00:47] Nimco Bulale: About my waffles?
[01:00:49] Crystal Fincher: About any of your answers or the answers that were a non-answer - is there anything that you'd want to explain?
[01:00:56] Nimco Bulale: Yeah - maybe if I didn't vote on the question - it wasn't the ranked-choice question, it was the question after that. I wasn't familiar unfortunately with that idea. And so my only explanation is - is that I need to learn a little bit more about - can you explain, can Crystal, can you repeat what that question was?
[01:01:15] Crystal Fincher: It was about an approval voting initiative that had been collecting ballot signatures, may appear on the ballot. However, we actually just got some breaking news today that there may be an effort from Councilmember Andrew Lewis to actually put ranked-choice voting on the ballot, which would supplant the approval voting process. So tune in there, but there is a possibility for approval voting, which is where you just vote for everyone that you like. And we've discussed it certainly, there's other people discussing it - lots of lively conversation about - the people and interests supporting and opposing it, and the differences between the two. But just an interesting question there.
[01:02:02] Nimco Bulale: Yeah - I just will commit myself to learning more about that. Obviously I support ranked-choice voting and will get myself knowledgeable about approval voting.
[01:02:13] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Andrew.
[01:02:17] Andrew Ashiofu: Yeah. I am not in support of approval voting. I'm more in support of ranked-choice voting. Also this very initiative has had a bit of scandal while gathering the signatures and all that - I've heard from them, I've listened to their ideology, which I truly appreciate in creating more voices in - more voices of the people voting in the approval, but I think ranked-choice voting is the right way to go.
[01:02:55] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Emijah.
[01:02:59] Emijah Smith: Yeah. I wanted to share more information about my answer with regard to the rollbacks, when you spoke about the police legislation initiatives. I define rollbacks as taking us backwards, so I'm not sure how you were defining rollbacks, but when I think about the fact that there's Terry stops now - from the past legislative session, there are now Terry stops. Terry stop is where a person can just be pulled over, asked for their ID, they can be interrogated by the police - without probable cause. And I think that that's a huge problem. And so I'm not in support of things like that - the use of force - and how those things are defined. So I will - I push and want to champion police accountability that's going to make us more safety and bring more balance, not take us back to the 80s, 90s, and 2000s that I'm surviving from right now with overpolicing in our community.
[01:03:58] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Chipalo.
[01:04:00] Chipalo Street: Sure. So I think the one that I was different from folks was highway expansion. I think the key word to me in that question was "any" - there are times where I could believe you need to expand highways for freight mobility and those support our union jobs. So I would want to make sure that we could at least consider that. In general, I don't think we should be expanding highways. We should be investing in mass transit. But I do want to make sure that we can support our unions and freight transit, 'cause that is - that diversifies our economy and it's one of the strengths that Seattle has. Approval voting - yeah, similar to Nimco, I had no idea what that was. It'll be interesting to learn more about that. And then the police accountability stuff - I have a hard time believing I would've voted for it. The thing that I think that went really well is that Jesse Johnson did ride-alongs with the police - I think we have to be their partners, we have to understand the impacts of our legislation. And so I'd be open to partnering with them to understand how that impacts them and their ability to provide public safety. But given my experience, I have a hard time believing that I would've. But I do believe they're are partners and would like to partner with them to improve public safety.
[01:05:05] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. We'll now move on to our regular type of questions. We're currently not on track to meet our 2030 climate goals, and I'm going to ask a question from someone who's watching because of that and because transportation is the biggest polluting sector. They're asking - how can we shift people out of cars while making sure we don't hurt those working class people whose commutes are too long for transit or bikes? And we will start with Chipalo.
[01:05:38] Chipalo Street: And one more time for me, please.
[01:05:41] Crystal Fincher: Sure. How can we shift people out of cars while making sure we don't hurt those working class people whose commutes are too long for transit or bikes?
[01:05:52] Chipalo Street: For sure. So I think one of the things that we have to do, that we saw last cycle when we passed Move Ahead WA, was investing in transit and forms of non-single-occupancy vehicles into our suburbs and rural areas. Mass transit is great, but we can't just focus on our cities because there are people who have longer commutes that need to get to jobs. Often, these are working people who have been pushed and displaced out of cities and into suburban and rural areas. So I want to make sure that whatever we do for transit thinks about the state comprehensively in conjunction with cities and our exurbs.
[01:06:36] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Nimco.
[01:06:37] Nimco Bulale: Thank you for that question. I believe that to quickly reduce transportation carbon emissions, we need to fundamentally shift our planning, our policy development, and infrastructure investments to prioritize public transit, walking, and biking over personal vehicles. I think often communities of color and working class communities lack access to reliable forms of public transportation or live in areas where bus systems lack sufficient funding. As legislator, I will support any and all legislation that helps expand public transit to be more reliable, accessible, and affordable for Washingtonians, especially for those who currently live in areas with limited access to public transportation and are forced to be more reliant on cars. I think that this will not only reduce carbon emissions, but it'll also help mobilize our communities and promote fuel efficiency. I do support a just transportation package to ensure that when planning transportation systems, there is a focus on people disproportionately harmed by our current transportation choices. No one should be burdened by pollution from transportation or unable to access - unable to access groceries or school without a car. This package must be a catalyst towards protecting future generations from the climate crisis today.
[01:07:59] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Andrew.
[01:08:03] Andrew Ashiofu: One, I think is - we need to invest in the expansion of public transportation. There's no rail from here to Tacoma, there's no rail from here to Olympia - that's a red flag right there. We also need to invest in hiring public transport workers, especially bus drivers, to help us with our interconnection with cities, with urban areas. We also need to create incentive for environmental friendly rideshare programs. I have to give a kudos to a company like Microsoft, where they use economic, environmental friendly buses to commute their workers. But we - not just the private sector, but we also have to look at cities in a public sector. In the city of Houston, they actually have what they call mass transit where people in suburbs drive to the car park and they use environmental friendly electric buses to take them downtown and to various places. We need to invest in things like that - invest in our ferry system, invest in hiring workers, and investing in green initiatives in form of transportation. Thank you.
[01:09:20] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Emijah.
[01:09:26] Emijah Smith: Thank you. I definitely agree with what has already been shared. I just want to say that it's imperative that we do reduce this carbon imprint. As a healthcare worker out of high school, I worked in the asthma and allergy clinic. I was diagnosed with asthma myself as well as my children, so I understand the impacts and who tends to have higher rates of asthma in our City and across the country. And as our Black and Brown and low-income families who happen to have to live in spaces and places that are impacted - so the 37th is definitely impacted on - MLK is a, it is a way that a lot of our trucks pass through. So our air quality here is poor as well as our soil quality is poor. So not only looking at - I love the buses and making sure that transportation costs are lowered for families. The Sound Transit, I believe, is moving to not only Tacoma, but also towards Olympia now - but it's on top, so it makes the driving a little more hazardous. So people wanting to get out of cars - sometimes being in a car is more safe than being on public transportation because too often the fare enforcement officers target young Black males and then they end up being arrested and getting records for just trying to get from A to B. So I wouldn't wanna see those inequities increased as we increase public transportation, but I'm a firm advocate for increasing our public transportation options. And I'm also thinking about the density that's coming into the 37th, where they're knocking down our trees and we need our trees to keep our air quality good. So I'm an avid proponent of that as well, trying -
[01:11:10] Crystal Fincher: And that is time. Next question is - sometimes the reality of being a legislator is that you'll be put in positions where you'll be asked to put aside your stance on an issue in order to get legislation passed. There might be moments where you have to advocate for something you feel is right, even when leadership or your fellow legislators feel differently. Is there a time you can tell us about when you stood up against power of those around you instead of saying silent and not making waves, and how do you think that will help you stand up for what you believe is best for your district while still maintaining good relationships in the Legislature? And we will start with Emijah.
[01:11:52] Emijah Smith: Thank you. When it comes to justice reform and our tough on crime policies, that's always the place where people have to question their values. And so for me as a community advocate and going there with families and understanding the issues and being a strong voice around justice reform - I will refuse to settle when it comes to doing what's right around justice reform and racial justice - and really moving us forward. Now it's a majority vote, you only get one vote up there - so I think utilizing your voice and utilize your power for what's right to allow us to walk our talk - we need to do that. And then you need to - I will be checking in with the base in the community that I have relationships with, 'cause it's not about me - I'm there to represent the 37th, so I need to check in with the constituents and who are representing me and get advice about how to move when the going gets tough up there. The Legislature needs some transformation, like a lot of our institutions need transformation, and that's why I believe I'm the perfect representative to go there to be that bridge for voice from our community. Because if we just do status quo, the status quo is going to continue to put the foot on our neck, the knee on our backs - and that's not what we want. We're looking for progression. And I think that our community members want to see that in Olympia and would champion me forward. Thank you.
[01:13:20] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Chipalo.
[01:13:22] Chipalo Street: Yeah, so when I was a professional soccer referee, the union that I was with went through a strike. And so while management, the people who assigned us games, wanted us just to continue working and not advocate for increased compensation, better benefits, and better working conditions - I realized who I represented. I represented myself, I also represented the people who come after me. And so I wanted to make sure that I took a stance to make sure that my compensation was improved and that the folks who came after me, their compensation was improved as well, even though it hurt my chances for getting games at higher levels. So after that strike, you could see differences in assignments. And so despite that possible backlash towards me I stood up against our bosses. I stood with other people who I saw as constituency that I shared with, which were the other referees and the people coming behind me to do what I thought was right. And I think that's what you have to do in the Legislature as well.
[01:14:22] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Nimco.
[01:14:26] Nimco Bulale: Equity has been at the heart of my work as a community organizer, and I believe as legislator I will remain - it will remain at the forefront of my advocacy in Olympia. I will fight for the resources my constituents need, and I will also always make sure that I'm checking back and making sure that I continue to keep the perspectives and experiences of my neighbors at the center of my advocacy. I think that equity work is what drove me to run for state representative, and I stand firm in my solidarity with marginalized communities and ensuring our students, workers, and the elderly have access to the basic necessities that they need for a quality of life that all Washingtonians are entitled to. I think an example of that is actually in Olympia, when I was able to help pass a community-based pathways budget proviso for childcare workers who are mostly immigrant women and who are oftentimes not compensated adequately for the work and the important work that they do to keep our economy going. We know that during the pandemic we saw how important childcare and childcare investments were, and I was able to work with legislators across the board, both bipartisan, in order to pass these investments so that we can fight for low cost, if not free, community-based pathways for certification for childcare providers.
[01:15:45] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Andrew.
[01:15:46] Andrew Ashiofu: Oh my gosh - I love challenging status quo. Even me running for office is challenging status quo because I've been told you're not from here, you don't have roots here. I love challenging status quo. My survival is based on that, but a very good example is when I joined the Seattle King County HIV Planning Council, one thing I kept on hearing from people living with HIV that needed help was food. It might be - mind you - oh, food is important when it comes to healthcare. And I kept on hearing from my, especially the immigrant community, how they don't get - have access to the food they could identify and they need. And people with direct needs didn't. And so every meeting I would bring it up, every meeting would be like this is how it's always been - we have the food banks, we have the this, and I kept on. For two, three months I kept on bringing up food. So finally they were like - Okay. We created a special food committee for six months, where I was the chair, to do analysis, data, and research on food. And at the end of the day, we now have a policy that all food providers for people living with HIV should have food - special food based on ethnic needs and dietary needs - because I challenge the status quo. I love challenging status quo because that's how you create change.
[01:17:17] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. The next question - we asked candidates to submit some questions to ask to the other candidates. And this is one such question, and it's gonna go to everybody. What changes can be made at the state level to increase access to quality healthcare in the 37th district, for those who are currently not receiving it? And we will start with Nimco.
[01:17:42] Nimco Bulale: Can you repeat that one more time?
[01:17:44] Crystal Fincher: What changes can be made at the state legislative level to increase access to quality healthcare in the 37th district for those who are not currently receiving it?
[01:17:57] Nimco Bulale: I think one thing that I think about is - as a Type 1 diabetic, I think about how increasingly inaffordable insulin is. I think that there are a lot of healthcare factors and social determinants of health that contribute to that. In the 37th, we have higher rates of of diabetes, of things like that - and I think as a person that is experiencing that firsthand, I think that the cost of life-saving insulin is something that I would be very interested in making sure that we have more of. I want to make sure that folks that are having health conditions such as that are being supported and that the state is taking care of that. Same thing with the elderly - making sure that medication is something that continues to stay affordable and that it is not a burden on folks' fixed incomes.
[01:18:55] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Andrew.
[01:18:58] Andrew Ashiofu: One thing I - this is where I figure things out to make a quick one. We need more access for - language access to healthcare - not just we need affordability and accessibility, but we also need language and ethnic access to healthcare. Two, we need to be realistic. We live in a very diverse district and we need to acknowledge and accept non-Western form of healthcare. A lot of communities, immigrant communities, depend on other forms of healthcare that are safe, but once we identify it, we can also help regulate it to make it safer. Like we did doula this last year. Another problem is accessibility to healthcare. We need more health centers in the district - not just First Hill. We need more health centers and we need more education around healthcare to communities, and we need to improve on the Apple Healthcare program we have on the states to make it more, to bring more to create more access to healthcare. We need also to create a state prescription affordability program - my medication amount is $3,500. I am privileged to have a job, but healthcare should not be tied to having a job. Thank you.
[01:20:18] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Emijah.
[01:20:21] Emijah Smith: Yes, thank you. As a board member for Tubman Center for Health and Freedom, I do understand the necessity of having more healthcare clinics in the 37th and also across the state that will allow for culturally relevant care, that will allow for community to be safe, be welcomed and be - their healthcare needs taken care of. And we're - as a board member - we are hoping to bring that here, not only to the 37th, and create it as a model across the state. That is the goal. Also, I believe that our healthcare, which - I was part of being a champion for Apple Health for kids, which now has been moved to Apple Healthcare for adults - it needs to include dental care. And people need to also have - be able to utilize that healthcare for their mental health and behavioral health services. So we offer that for our young people, our children - but we need to offer that for the adults as well - because our teeth and our mouth is part of our whole body. I also want to share with regard to - I agree with the medications and we need to, the state needs to have a program available. So not only our seniors, but our low-income and working families can have access to medication. With the inflation, everything's going up and you shouldn't have to choose, like myself, needing an inhaler or paying a bill. Or somebody needing to get their diabetes medications and strips, or paying their light bill. That should not be our burden to carry. In addition to that, around the healthcare pieces - my time. Thank you.
[01:21:59] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Chipalo.
[01:22:00] Chipalo Street: Yes. I completely agree with the topics that folks have brought up, like prescriptions drugs cost too much - whether it be insulin, whether it be medications for HIV or other expensive medications. Healthcare also shouldn't be tied to employment, so I think the biggest thing that we can do to facilitate all of those and move to a better future is exploring a single payer healthcare system that would allow that system to negotiate drug prices with large drug companies who will price gouge individual customers. It makes sure that healthcare isn't tied to employment, and so I would love to look at that sort of comprehensive system that will improve healthcare outcomes for everyone. We just got done with the pandemic, right? Public health requires healthcare, regardless of whether you're working, regardless of whether you can pay for it, regardless of whether you're getting a stipend from the government to be a part of ACA. So single payer healthcare to me seems like the most interesting option to comprehensively look at healthcare.
[01:23:05] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. And with that, the forum comes to a close. I want to thank our candidates for participating and making this an engaging and informative event. To those watching online, thanks so much for tuning in and sending in your questions. If you missed any of the discussion tonight, you can catch up on the Hacks & Wonks Facebook page or on Twitter where we're @finchfrii. Special thanks to the coordinator for this evening Shannon Cheng, to Bryce Cannatelli who is on the Hacks & Wonks team, and to our wonderful volunteer Ilona. Most importantly, I want to remind you to vote. Ballots will start arriving in your mailboxes in just the end of this week and we are due to have this election - you must vote by Tuesday, August 2nd. You can register to vote, update your registration, and see what will be on your ballot at MyVote.wa.gov, that's MyVote.Wa.gov. Be sure to tune into Hacks & Wonks on every Wednesday and Friday, subscribe to get the midweek and Friday show in your inbox, and if you want more information, you can visit officialhacksandwonks.com. I've been your host, Crystal Fincher, and we will see you next time.
On this bonus episode, we present our Hacks & Wonks Candidate Forum with Tyler Crone, Nicole Gomez, Jeff Manson, and Julia Reed - all running for State Representative Position 1 in Seattle’s 36th Legislative district, which covers northwestern Seattle, including the neighborhoods of Ballard, Magnolia, and Queen Anne. This was originally live-streamed on Facebook and Twitter on July 13th, 2022. You can view the video and access the full text transcript of this forum on the 2022 Elections page at officialhacksandwonks.com. We hope you enjoy this forum, and please make sure to vote by Tuesday, August 2nd!
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii.
Resources
Register to Vote, Update Your Registration, See What’s on Your Ballot: MyVote.wa.gov
36th LD Primary Candidate Forum Video and Transcript: https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/36th-ld-candidate-forum-2022
Hacks & Wonks - Julia Reed, Candidate for 36th LD State Representative (April 26, 2022): https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/blog/julia-reed-candidate-for-36th-ld-state-representative
Hacks & Wonks - Nicole Gomez, Candidate for 36th LD State Representative (May 10, 2022): https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/blog/nicole-gomez-candidate-for-36th-ld-state-representative
Hacks & Wonks - Jeff Manson, Candidate for 36th LD State Representative (May 24, 2022): https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/blog/jeff-manson-candidate-for-36th-ld-state-representative
Hacks & Wonks - Tyler Crone, Candidate for 36th LD State Representative (June 21, 2022): https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/blog/tyler-crone-candidate-for-36th-ld-state-representative
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Hello everyone, this is Crystal Fincher, host of Hacks & Wonks. This is a bonus podcast release of our Hacks & Wonks Candidate Forum with candidates for State Representative Position 1 in Seattle’s 36th Legislative district. This covers northwestern Seattle, including the neighborhoods of Ballard, Magnolia, and Queen Anne. This was originally live-streamed on Facebook and Twitter on July 13th, 2022. You can view the video and access the full text transcript of this forum on the 2022 Elections page at officialhacksandwonks.com. We hope you enjoy this forum, and please make sure to vote by Tuesday, August 2nd!
Hello everyone. We are here for the 36th Legislative District candidate forum. My name is Crystal Fincher - I'm a political consultant and the host of the Hacks & Wonks podcast, and I'm honored to welcome you to tonight's candidate forum. I'm so excited to hear from our guests - all running for State Representative Position 1 in the 36th Legislative District.
Before we begin tonight, I would like to do a land acknowledgement. I would like to acknowledge that we are on the traditional lands of the first people of Seattle, the coast-Salish peoples, specifically the Duwamish people, past and present. I would like to honor with gratitude the land itself and the Duwamish Tribe.
So welcome to the Hacks & Wonks 2022 Primary Candidate Forum for Legislative District 36 Position 1. We're excited to be able to livestream this series on Facebook and Twitter. Additionally, we are recording this forum for rebroadcast and later viewing.
We invite our audience to ask questions of our candidates. If you're watching a livestream online, then you can ask questions by commenting on the livestream. You can also text your questions to 206-395-6248. That's 206-395-6248, and that number will scroll intermittently at the bottom of the screen.
The candidates running for 36th Legislative District Representative Position 1 with us tonight are - in alphabetical order - Tyler Crone, Nicole Gomez, Jeff Manson, and Julia Reed.
A few reminders before we jump into the forum: I want to remind you to vote. Ballots will be mailed to your mailbox starting today - ballots were mailed. You can register to vote still, update your registration still, and see what will be on your ballot at MyVote.Wa.gov. So please take advantage of that and double check that everyone you know is also.
I want to mention that tonight's answers will be timed. Each candidate will have one minute to introduce themselves initially and 90 seconds to answer each subsequent question. Candidates may be engaged with rebuttal or follow up questions and will have 30 seconds to respond. Time will be indicated by the colored dot labeled "timer" on the screen. The dot will initially appear as green, then when there are 30 seconds left it will turn yellow, and when there are 10 seconds left it will turn red. You will be muted as soon as time is up.
I want to mention that I'm on the board for IDF or, The Institute for a Democratic Future. Jeff Manson is an IDF alum and Nicole Gomez was the program director for the most recent IDF class. We've not discussed any details of their campaigns or of this forum.
In addition to tonight's forum, Hacks & Wonks is also hosting a 47th Legislative District State Rep Position 2 candidate forum, in South King County, for next Wednesday, July 20th at the same time - 6:30-8p.
Now we'll turn to the candidates who will each have one minute to introduce themselves, starting with Tyler Crone, then Nicole Gomez, then Jeff Manson, finally Julia Reed. And we will proceed immediately to a lightning round of Yes/No questions following that. So starting with Tyler Crone.
[00:04:14] Tyler Crone: Hi, I'm Tyler. I'm a global public health leader, human rights advocate, public school parent for 14 years and counting, and a mama bear of three. I'm not an ordinary candidate and this is not an ordinary time. The stakes are extraordinarily high. We are at an inflection point for shared prosperity and progress. We continue to live through a pandemic. We are experiencing an historic rollback of our rights, self-determination, and even our collapse of our church and state separation. COVID-19 has shown us that global health is local and public health is essential. Advancing sexual reproductive health and rights has been what I have done throughout my career and it is needed now more than ever with the overturn of Roe. And ultimately I had to jump into this race as transgender kids and their families, just like mine, are being criminalized across our country. I spent my lifetime making a difference for others, partnering with impacted communities, and centering those most impacted. And so I look forward to your questions and I see this as the leadership our state needs now. Thank you.
[00:05:20] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - and next.
[00:05:26] Nicole Gomez: Hi everyone. Hello, I'm Nicole Gomez and I'm a mom, an advocate, a community leader, and I'm running to be your next State Representative here in the place I'm really proud to call my home and where I've chosen to raise my family, the 36th District. I'm running to be the next State Representative of the 36th because I would like to help create an economy that works for everyone. And that means addressing our regressive upside-down tax code, healthcare for everyone, fully funded public education, affordable housing, addressing the climate crisis, and so much more that's important right now in the 36th and across the entire state. At age five, I went from living in a secure house and lifestyle to quickly losing a home simply due to the illness of a parent. And from that moment I learned everything I can to navigate complex systems. And so I've been quietly doing this work behind-the-scenes through my healthcare nonprofit that works on transformative policy. I currently sit on the Universal Healthcare Commission and I'm the Executive Director of IDF, and I look forward to talking to you more.
[00:06:27] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - and now Jeff.
[00:06:31] Jeff Manson: Hi everyone. I'm Jeff - I'm a state administrative law judge, labor leader, and disability community advocate. And as an administrative law judge, I see every day how state laws and budgets affect people and I'm tired of underfunded government that tends to prioritize the wealthy and corporations over working people and the most vulnerable in our state. And although administrative law judges are state employees - for almost 40 years, we did not have the right to collectively bargain. So a few years ago, I organized my colleagues to successfully lobby the Legislature to extend collective bargaining rights to us. And then we formed our new union with 85% of my colleagues signing union authorization cards. I'm endorsed by the King County and 36th District Democrats, the Washington State Labor Council, the Environment and Climate Caucus of the Washington State Democrats, and Mary Lou Dickerson, who represented this district in the house for 18 years. And for those who are watching who are registered voters in the 36th - would be honored to have your vote.
[00:07:30] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Julia.
[00:07:32] Julia Reed: Thanks - my name is Julia Reed and I'm running for the State House to advocate for a Washington State where everyone can belong and everyone can have a place. I'm a workforce policy expert, an advocate for youth and racial justice, and a lifelong Seattleite - and I love my hometown. I love the 36th District. But I know that if my public school educator parents were moving to Seattle today, they couldn't afford to live here. As a millennial, my peers and I are living the housing crunch, the high cost of living, lack of childcare, and the threat of climate change. These aren't policy hypotheticals to us, it's about fighting for the future - for our future and the future of other young people. I know we can make different choices in Olympia that will build a vibrant, empowering, equitable economy, where everyone can participate and everyone can thrive. As someone who bridges old and new Seattle, I wanna help create a future of shared prosperity and possibility for generations to come and I'm excited to get your questions.
[00:08:41] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much. So now, we are actually gonna start right off with the lightning round portion. Candidates - get your Yes/No paddles ready to respond to questions. After the lightning round is complete - with all of the questions - you'll each get one minute to provide any further explanation of any of your votes or waffles or anything that happens like that. So we've got a number of questions to dive into - they go pretty quickly and we will attempt to announce the votes as they happen, so if anyone is listening along, you can hear that.
So starting off - first question, do you support calling a special session this year to codify reproductive rights and access into law? That is a Yes from everyone, and it looks like we have some background interference with green in that, for those of you who have that. So please make an extra effort to make sure that your green check is visible, but everybody appears to be a Yes for that.
Are there any instances where you would support sweeps of homeless encampments? I see Nicole Gomez, Julia Reed, and Jeff Manson have said No. Elizabeth Tyler Crone has said Yes.
We'll move to the next one. Would you vote to end single-family zoning to address housing affordability? I see that - I see Nicole Gomez and Julia Reed have answered Yes. Jeff Manson, Elizabeth Tyler Crone have answered No.
Would you vote to end the statewide ban on rent control and let localities decide whether they want to implement it? Everyone has answered Yes to that question.
Would you vote in favor of Seattle's, or will you vote in favor of Seattle's social housing initiative, I-135? Everybody is a Yes vote for social housing.
Would you have voted for the Legislature's police reform rollbacks in the last legislative session? Everybody is a No.
Should the Legislature pass restrictions on what can be collectively bargained by police unions? It's taking a long time to get those Yes and Nos up. This is - looks like everybody's waffling on this - so you can address this in your one minute afterwards. So we have a districtwide waffle on this.
Should we continue to limit the circumstances under which law enforcement is authorized to perform vehicular pursuits? Everybody is a Yes.
Do you support a state law that would remove obstacles, like qualified immunity, when suing police officers for violating a person's civil rights? Everybody is a Yes on that.
Should we offer tax credits or rebates for the purchase of electric bikes? Another Yes from everybody.
Would you vote for any bill that increases highway expansion? Nicole Gomez is a No and the only one to answer definitively so far. Julia Reed says No. And Jeff and Tyler look like they have a more nuanced answer to this.
Will you vote to ensure that trans and non-binary students are allowed to play on the sports teams that fit with their gender identities? Everybody is a Yes.
For people wanting to change their name to match their gender, do you support removing the cost and need to see a judge for legal processing name changes and gender marker changes? Everybody is a Yes.
To provide relief from inflation, should we temporarily suspend the gas tax? I see everybody as a No.
Would you vote to enact a Universal Basic Income in Washington? Everybody is a Yes.
Do you support a wealth tax? Nicole, Julia and Jeff are Yes. Tyler was a little bit after the Yes, but it's a Yes.
Should we increase taxes on large corporations? Everybody's a Yes.
Should we increase taxes on small businesses? Everybody's a No.
Should we lower taxes on small businesses? Everybody is a Yes.
Do you support implementing ranked-choice voting in Seattle? Everybody is a Yes.
Do you support moving elections from odd years to even years to significantly increase voter turnout? Uniform Yes.
In 2021, did you vote for Bruce Harrell? We've got three Nos, except from Julia Reed who just came in with a No.
In 2021, did you vote for Lorena González? We have uniform Yeses.
In 2021, did you vote for Nicole Thomas-Kennedy for Seattle City Attorney. I've got a Yes from Nicole Gomez, a No from Jeff Manson, No from Tyler Crone, a Yes from Julia Reed.
In 2021, did you vote for Ann Davison for Seattle City Attorney? Nicole Gomez, Tyler Crone, Julia Reed, and Jeff Manson all say No.
Is your campaign unionized? We've got uniform Nos.
If your campaign staff wants to unionize, will you voluntarily recognize their efforts? Everybody says Yes.
Would you vote to provide universal healthcare to every Washington resident? Everybody says Yes. There's more uniform agreement than I thought we were gonna have.
The Legislature just passed a law that will cap insulin at $35 a month for out-of-pocket costs for Washington residents. Would you vote to expand price caps to other commonly used drugs? Uniform Yeses.
Will you vote for a budget that increases funding for charter schools? Everybody is a No.
Right now, money raised by PTAs and parent organizations can be donated to their individual school. Should we require that this money instead be distributed equally across all similar schools in the district? Nicole, Jeff. Okay. So Julia and Jeff are Yeses, Nicole Gomez and Tyler Crone say No. That concludes our lightning round today.
So thank you - just kicks off, sets a baseline for where folks are and what they have. So moving into these questions, and we will begin the questions starting with Nicole Gomez. First question is we've seen significant increased investment in programs meant to reduce homelessness, yet people are saying they're not seeing the problem get much better despite a significant increase in funding. Do you agree that our homeless crisis is not improving? And if so, what needs to happen to get results? Starting with Nicole.
[00:17:00] Nicole Gomez: Great. I think that - so the homelessness and -
[00:17:08] Crystal Fincher: Oh!
[00:17:08] Nicole Gomez: Wait, did we get to respond to our answers before we move on?
[00:17:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, you did. I totally forgot that - thank you for that reminder, Jeff Manson. Yeah, you guys get to explain your waffles and there were a number of them. I just jumped into the other section. So pause on that, Nicole - thank you so much for your flexibility in that. And we will start the explanations starting with Nicole on that one. Anything you wanna clarify about your answers, waffles, your unique Nos?
[00:17:35] Nicole Gomez: Sure. So I think the only one that was a unique No was the requiring PTAs or PTSAs to distribute equally to other schools as a requirement. I believe that individual PTAs should be allowed to make that decision. And the only reason is that back when my kid was at Salmon Bay K-8, that did come up as a topic. And so we were really interested in exploring it further and were able to vote on it together as a team. Parents have kids in their schools and so sometimes they would like to donate the money to their school specifically and other times not. So I think it's more democratic process to allow them to have that opportunity to vote. We ended up with a vote to share.
[00:18:32] Crystal Fincher: Thank you, and now we move to Jeff.
[00:18:36] Jeff Manson: Yeah, so a couple answers I'd like to discuss. One was collective bargaining rights for police officers. There have been a couple things that have been addressed. One is making the collective bargaining sessions open to the public, which I am opposed to, because I think that would undermine public sector unions beyond just police officers. And I don't think the benefit we would get would be worth that risk. It's been a right-wing, anti-union idea for years and I think we'd just be handing them something if we did that. In terms of - the other thing that's been discussed is the discipline process. I do think that law enforcement are in a unique position of power that other public employees like myself are not in. And so if we're careful about how it's written, there could be some aspects of the discipline process that we could look at. The other is highway expansion - should be our lowest priority, but wouldn't absolutely vote No.
[00:19:36] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - and Tyler.
[00:19:39] Tyler Crone: Yes, so the collective bargaining - I do not know enough to make a sweeping statement on that. Regarding eliminating single-family zoning, I think we all agree that there needs to be more density. We have affordability and housing as a middle-class crisis, but I am not in favor of eliminating single-family zoning all together. It needs a more thoughtful approach. The sweeps piece - I couldn't make an absolute statement to say, I would never agree to that, because there have been instances where there are encampments in schools and other places where children and families need to go and we need our civic space. Regarding the PTAs and the schools, we need to fully fund education so that our PTAs do not provide our specialists, our librarians, our counselors, our nurses, our arts. So I will fully support fully funding education. I understand that parents are desperate for options around -
[00:20:35] Crystal Fincher: It looks like that is your time. And we'll go to Julia.
Oh, Julia, you're gonna have to unmute yourself - there you go.
[00:20:47] Julia Reed: Oh, sorry. There we go, I'm unmuted. I was just gonna say on the police bargaining question, I think that I have seen from working in City Hall, the challenges and obstructions that can come from police unions and sometimes that run counter to police officers' own wishes around wanting to implement reforms. So I'd like, but I'd also as someone who's endorsed by the Washington State Labor Council, I wanna be sure that any actions we're making regarding collective bargaining or something that the labor community feels is right and is not going to undermine overall labor rights across the board. And I thought Tyler's answer just now was excellent on the need to fully fund public education, so I feel like I wanna change my position on that question. She definitely convinced me, made a great argument. I think that fully funding our schools is essential. We shouldn't be relying on PTAs to fill the gap.
[00:21:46] Crystal Fincher: And that is the time. Thank you so much.
And now - thank you for your flexibility. We are heading into the general question portion. So restating the question and we will start this time with Jeff, we've seen significant increased investment in programs meant to reduce homelessness, but people are saying that they're not seeing the problem get better yet despite the increase in funds. Do you agree that the homelessness crisis is not improving? And if so, what needs to happen to get results?
[00:22:24] Jeff Manson: Yeah, so I think we have - the City and the County make a lot of decisions about homelessness programs and contracts and parcel by parcel, but the state provides a lot of the funding for shelters, for tiny homes, for permanent supportive housing, for low income housing. And I think the - what the pandemic in the last few years have shown is that we've underinvested in these areas in recent decades. I do think that the services and the housing options are getting better. I just think during the pandemic, the lack of housing was rising faster than the services for homeless could keep up. So I think we're heading in the right direction, I think we are slowly seeing improvements, I think we're finding models that work. I think having peer navigators start with people when they're on the streets and looking through the whole process, I think tiny house villages are a good first stop for people. I think we've relied too much on our emergency shelters. As a housing option, they're great when it's subfreezing or 108 degrees but not as much as a night-to-night housing option. But a tiny house village is a good first stop and the majority of people there are placed in permanent housing within a few months. And I think permanent supportive housing is the gold standard. It's permanent housing, but with mental health therapists and other social workers on site for people who can't fully live on their own. And the Legislature put money in for about 2,000 more units statewide this last session, which should be coming online later this year, which is great, but it's not enough. We need a round two.
[00:23:56] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much. And now we head to Tyler.
[00:24:04] Tyler Crone: Thank you. I know that the issue of homelessness is top of mind. I was out door knocking today in Ballard and that's the major concern. I have seen us spend a ton of money. I do not know what the results are and we've been calling it a protracted crisis for a very long time. I think it is the moment to accelerate and strengthen our partnerships at a city, county, and state level. Coordination was one of the key takeaways from an article in The Seattle Times about what we needed to strengthen our response. One, housing is a human right - we do not currently have enough shelter to put those who are unsheltered on the streets somewhere safe overnight. We need more immediate shelter options. Two, that long-term work towards affordable housing is critical. Right now, housing insecurity now is a middle class issue. Three, we do not have a sufficient mental and behavioral health system. That is top of mind for me - that both, we need to have a place where people can go and people can be safe, but we also need to be taking care of those who are most vulnerable amongst us. And currently our sweeps are happening without necessarily a place for people to go and that is not okay, so circling back to an earlier point that I made. The last piece I'll make is that it needs to be a regional approach. Thank you.
[00:25:33] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much - now Julia.
[00:25:36] Julia Reed: Yeah, I think that - so when I was working in City Hall, one of the things that I remember - what came up in the conversations we had around the original start of the Regional Homelessness Authority was that actually the system within the greater Seattle area is exiting thousands of people and thousands of families from homelessness every year. The challenge is that tens of thousands of more are entering homelessness every year because of the high cost of living, the shortage of affordable rental property, the stagnant wages that we experience all across our country that mean that every person is really just one medical emergency or one sudden event away from finding themselves homeless. I understand that people's frustration is that we put money into it, it seems like it's getting worse. But I think that we invest comparatively little in our homelessness response. If you look at the billions of dollars we might put into roads and bridges, we don't invest a comparable amount in our human infrastructure in our state. And as a legislator, that is gonna be one of my big focuses - not just housing, mental healthcare - but also human infrastructure, like childcare, green spaces, access to healthy food. All of these things contribute to a safer, healthier community for everyone and particularly contribute to addressing our homelessness challenge in a permanent and lasting way.
[00:27:09] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - now Nicole.
[00:27:11] Nicole Gomez: Sure. So I think of homeness as a phenomenon that also should be contextualized with systemic issues, right? Racism or ableism, education access - there's a lot of different things that go and contribute to homelessness. So while it might seem like our numbers have been increasing, we've also been in the middle of a pandemic. And that, in addition to the high cost of housing overall, has been - exasperated the problem. Our unhoused individuals are carrying an immense amount of pain and trauma and we need to be looking at the programs that are also supporting - we've been underfunding a lot of them for decades. And so it's really time for us to think about what our true north is again - and make universal housing a goal - making sure that we are housing everyone and make it a priority. And I think that we're on the right track, we just need to get there in the long run. It's an issue and a problem for a really long time and it's gonna take a while to fix.
[00:28:40] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. For the next question - last year, Washington experienced a natural disaster in the form of our record breaking heat wave that left hundreds dead. Due to human-caused climate change, we're guaranteed to see more disasters like this. What will you do as a legislator to prepare our state and your district for future crises? And we are going to begin this question with Tyler.
[00:29:13] Tyler Crone: Thank you. So to prepare our state for future crises - this is an urgent and top-of-mind response issue for me - accelerated climate action and the climate impacts must be embedded into all of the decision making we make. One of the things that was top-of-mind related, Crystal, to the heat dome question as I entered this race was how smoke season has come up as a issue in the very short time that my youngest child has been alive. I see a way forward as - one, bringing my public health expertise and prioritizing that as what are the health impacts of these climate emergencies and how are we centering frontline communities? Two, the UN report on the climate crisis has suggested a very important strategy and that is something that we have an abundance - is centering Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous leadership. That is another key priority and approach of mine. Three, it is again about planning and coordination. Do we have the systems in place to keep people safe and healthy? Four, there is a piece of - do we have the funds available to help people recover from these climate emergencies and navigate them? And five, I would say it is about leaning into the bold innovation and leadership across our state so that we are all working together. As a young student said to me, "It's Earth Day, and I don't know what to do to make a difference." Thank you.
[00:30:50] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - and next we're headed to Julia.
[00:30:53] Julia Reed: Thanks. When I was working in City Hall, a group of Parks Department staffers came to me early in the spring and said, "We really wanna work on getting ready for wildfire season early. Can you help us?" And as a mayor's policy person, I was able to help elevate that issue. We created the first ever Smoke Ready Communities Day, which was a four-countywide event across King, Pierce and Snohomish county that tried to create awareness and information about preparing for wildfire smoke, especially for low-income communities, because these climate emergencies - they touch all of us, but they hit our low-income communities, our communities of color, our working people who have to go out to work the hardest and first. It's one of the reasons I'm proud to be endorsed by Puget Sound Sage and one of the reasons why I've been talking about wildfire smoke resiliency from the start of my campaign. I really want to see the state use some of our cap-and-invest funding to create a grant program for small cities to increase their climate resiliency and to help create a strategy for those cities as well - because large cities like Seattle have the staff and the expertise to create their own filtration systems as we did when I was in the mayor's office, but smaller cities and towns don't have that support and their folks are suffering right now and they need the state to step in and help them understand what to do and help them afford to make the retrofits to keep their community safe.
[00:32:22] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Nicole.
[00:32:25] Nicole Gomez: Sure. Our communities are being attacked, are being destroyed every day by the climate or impacts of climate change. And we're seeing this in the forms of the flooding, the wildfires, droughts and we're being threatened by the inaction that's been not taken. So I think Washington should lead on reducing the carbon emission through more sustainable, like transportation, construction and consumption. Also, one of the secret weapons - I've read articles - one of the secret weapons against climate change is affordable homes. And it's a problem that I think that if we think about it in a more holistic way and look at the larger overarching systems, I think we can come up with some really good ideas for tackling our goals, our climate goals. And then also with the creation of the HEAL Act that's just been put into place - and that's engaging community through our state agencies and being able to make those recommendations from the bottom-up will really help also with that environmental justice aspect as well.
[00:33:52] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - now, Jeff.
[00:33:54] Jeff Manson: Yeah, I agree with what everyone else has said. I would just add, in addition to smoke season that we have now and the heat waves, which are gonna be more common, we also have a water crisis that's coming - and that's both our drinking water, it's our agricultural water, it's our electric power. So we need to be preparing for not only the disasters we're already experiencing, but the ones that we should be anticipating 5, 10, 20, 30 years from now. And we also need to keep leading on preventing these worse outcomes. Washington - the good news is Washington State has been a leader among states and among countries in terms of pushing our pro-climate policies to reduce our carbon footprint. The bad news is it's not enough. Even if every jurisdiction in the world copied exactly what we're doing, they're not gonna meet - none of us are gonna meet our climate goals of halving, cutting in half our carbon emissions by 2030 and even more by 2050. We had some low-hanging fruit this last legislative session - we had electric vehicle subsidies, which we can bring back - also support the electric bike subsidies, redoing our building code to promote electricity over natural gas. There was also a bill to include climate effects in the Growth Management Act comprehensive plans. So it's easy, low-hanging fruit to pick up next session, but we need to keep investing in green infrastructure and clean energy to prevent the worst from happening.
[00:35:28] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Our next question will be an audience-submitted question. Pat in Greenwood wants to know what actions can the Legislature do to protect reproductive care with the Dobbs decision coming down from the Supreme Court, but our right already codified in state law here - but a constitutional amendment seems unlikely given the makeup of the chambers. So what actions can happen to protect reproductive care? And we are going to start with Julia.
[00:36:04] Julia Reed: Yeah, I think that I want to just push back a little bit against the concept that a constitutional amendment is unlikely. I think that it'll be challenging - maybe we can do income tax and reproductive rights in the same push. But I think that we have to start thinking about a constitutional amendment. Our rights are legally protected, but that law is only as good as long as we have Democratic majorities in the Legislature and a Democratic governor. And that could change and I don't feel comfortable leaving our rights up to that kind of risk, especially not in this day and age. I also think another thing we can do is - in Washington State, we have legally protected access to abortion. But in many parts of the state, there are no accessible abortion clinics and hospital systems have merged with Catholic hospital systems that restrict access and information about abortion. So there are people in Washington State who have legal access to abortion, but they lack actual access to abortion. I think it's really critical that we ensure that we're regulating state hospital mergers and Catholic hospital mergers to ensure that everyone's access continues to be protected in our state. And I also think helping to support and create funding for people who may be coming here from other states - I want to applaud the governor's work limiting the State Patrol's ability to be pulled into investigations of people coming to seek abortion care in our state.
[00:37:37] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Nicole.
[00:37:40] Nicole Gomez: Yeah, so since the start of the campaign, I've been talking about the Keep Our Care Act, which is something that I worked on last session and I'm looking forward to continuing the work on it in the upcoming session. And that's similar - it's the bill that would ensure those health entity mergers, acquisitions, and contracting affiliations to improve rather than harm access to that affordable, quality care within the community. And it would, like Julia mentioned, put that prohibition on those consolidations that diminish that access to affordable quality care, including our reproductive rights. That is one very small thing that we can do right now. As Executive Director of Institute for a Democratic Future, one of the things that I heard a lot about when visiting the areas along neighboring states like Idaho was that we're going to need additional funding for those health providers that are right along the border there in order to appropriately have that intake of new, potentially new patients coming into the state to seek care. And so that's something I look forward to continuing to work on in the future.
[00:39:10] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - and Jeff.
[00:39:12] Jeff Manson: Yeah - again I agree with what both Julia and Nicole have said. I do agree that we need to push for a constitutional amendment. We, at the federal level - I think a lot of people thought that Roe was settled law, Roe v. Wade was settled law and we had a constitutional right to abortion access. And it took the right wing 50 years, but unfortunately they were successful and I don't think we can take anything for granted here. I feel rather confident that our current legislature is in the right spot, our current Supreme Court's in the right spot, but you never know what's gonna happen 5, 10, 20, 50 years from now - so we should push for a constitutional amendment for an explicit right to abortion access. In terms of what we can do, this last legislative session the Legislature did pass a bill to expand the types of providers who can perform services, anticipating that Roe may fall, which is great. That helps expand access, but I really think funding is gonna be a major issue. We need to make sure that we are fully funding our clinics and other providers 'cause people are already - even before Roe - people from Texas were already coming here for services as they were being further restricted across the country. And we should be a safe haven for people, we should be a place that people can come and feel safe, no questions asked and have access to services. And if that means also funding for their stay or transportation, I'm open to that as well. And I also agree that we need to -
[00:40:48] Crystal Fincher: Oh, thank you - and now Tyler.
[00:40:55] Tyler Crone: I've served on the board of Cedar Rivers, which is an independent feminist abortion provider in our state and one of the best in the country. I've also been on the frontlines of advancing safe, legal abortion around the world. This is an urgent moment, it is an all-hands-on-deck moment and is one of the key reasons why I'm running. One, we have to codify Roe - we have to do it. Two, we have to invest in the infrastructure of care - the services, the providers, the clinics. We have a desperate shortage in eastern Washington and in the 36th legislative district, you cannot get abortion care at a hospital because of the mergers. Just so you know, it is here at home that you cannot get the care you need. I also am deeply invested in increasing and expanding the funding that has already been initiated by Dow Constantine, by the governor, by our mayor to overcome barriers and to ensure access to care for everyone who is seeking abortion care in our state. We also have to think about upstream - let's ensure that we're scaling up our access to reversible, long-acting contraception such as IUDs - that will take the burden off of our limited clinic and service facilities. We need to invest in training - all of these rollback of Roe means that all those states where abortion is not legal, you cannot train to provide that care. And I guess I would like to say one last point - this is just the beginning. I hope you look to commentaries by my law school classmate, Melissa Murray -
[00:42:30] Crystal Fincher: Appreciate that. And for the next question - the pandemic exposed our healthcare system's limited capacity - which has grown even worse, continues to grow worse and more limited - and our state's unequal access to health services. What action do you propose to increase our state's capacity to respond to a health crisis, including behavioral health crises, and what will you do to make sure that our response supports our most vulnerable communities? And we are going to start this with Nicole.
[00:43:03] Nicole Gomez: Oh, Crystal - can you please repeat the question one more time?
[00:43:06] Crystal Fincher: Sure.
[00:43:07] Nicole Gomez: Thank you.
[00:43:08] Crystal Fincher: The pandemic exposed our healthcare system's limited capacity and our state's unequal access to health services. What action do you propose to increase our state's capacity to respond to a health crisis, including behavioral health crises, and what will you do to make sure that our response supports our most vulnerable communities?
[00:43:28] Nicole Gomez: Okay, thank you. One of the - I work on healthcare policy quite a bit at the state level, that's what I do. And one of the things that we have done to help increase access to medical care has been, like this last session, we got additional funding to help cover our undocumented population and we're seeking additional funding for that. So that was something that that was done during the pandemic because we saw the huge inequities in the way medical coverage and care is provided. I've been working on the Universal Healthcare Commission - I was appointed by Governor Inslee there - and so we are in the current talks of trying to figure out what the nuts and bolts of a comprehensive healthcare plan for Washington State would look like. [Noise of object hitting ground] And I just dropped my little thing. At any rate, we are currently in the process of doing that right now - to ready the state for a potentially single-payer program. And that's something that my nonprofit has been working strenuously on, and I'm hoping that by being there as an elected official, I'd be able to continue that work in a different capacity.
[00:44:56] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Jeff.
[00:45:00] Jeff Manson: Yeah. I support universal healthcare, universal coverage, health insurance coverage. Ideally the federal government would take the lead on this, but we can't and shouldn't wait for the federal government to get its act together and need to do it here in Washington. I supported the creation of the Universal Healthcare Commission and I want to give a shout out to Nicole for all of her great work on this issue. If elected, I'll be relying on her on healthcare access issues. We need to take the lead here and if federal government maybe could follow our example in how we set things up here. But we don't just need health insurance coverage. I do Medicaid hearings as an administrative law judge. These are people who are covered by Medicaid, which was expanded under Obamacare, which is great. But often there are not sufficient providers for a lot of different types of services, including behavioral health services. And often, I think they would say the reimbursement rates aren't high enough to be able to cover people. So we need to not just provide universal coverage, we need to be providing the funding so that the actual services are available for those with insurance coverage. So it's attacking it from all angles and really it comes back to - are we gonna raise progressive revenue through progressive revenue sources in order to fund the services that people need and deserve.
[00:46:28] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Tyler.
[00:46:34] Tyler Crone: First, I want to start with where you started - the pandemic exposed - the pandemic is not over. We need to be learning from where we fell short, what we did right, what we do better next time - that is the first pillar of continuing to navigate and recover from COVID-19. Too many of us are sick, too many of us have had our lives disrupted. A key piece of this, for me, is bringing that pandemic expertise coupled with investment and fortification of our public health systems, our public health leadership, and our public health infrastructure. A next piece of this for me, that is top-of-mind, is about how are we taking care of those who keep us healthy? We have an incredible nursing staffing shortage in our state, our healthcare workers are exhausted and overstretched, and we need to keep that top-of-mind if we're thinking about how we're navigating a crisis and who takes care of us. Likewise, we have frontline responders who are overstretched, such as our firefighters. I'd like to make sure those stay top-of-mind as well. I think the piece that I will close with here is how I would legislate and how I lead. I lead from behind centering those who are most impacted. A key question you asked is about how would those who are most vulnerable not be excluded - they would be partners in the solutions. Thank you.
[00:47:59] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much - Julia.
[00:48:03] Julia Reed: I'm really proud to just recently have been endorsed by SEIU 1199 Northwest, which represents thousands of nurses and behavioral healthcare workers all across the state. It's an honor after all of the work that they've put in to keep us safe, that they've put in to keep us safe every day to have their support in this race. And one of the - we talked about two things in the endorsement process. One is the essential need for safe staffing. Too many of our hospitals in healthcare settings are being run at staff-to-patient ratios that are unsafe - that put the medical staff at risk, that put patients at risk, that put care at risk, that put our whole system at risk when there are stresses like pandemic. The other thing we talked about is the really important need to grow our healthcare workforce pipeline. I'm one of the only candidates in this race who has worked on and built workforce development programs and that includes having done work with the Somali Health Board to try to advocate for greater access for immigrant and refugee doctors. We have a lot of excellent medical, trained medical personnel in our state who, because of government regulations, aren't able to do the work that they're trained to do. And I want to work with SEIU 1199 Northwest Multi-Employer Training Fund to help grow our next generation of healthcare workers, especially women and people of color. Because to ensure they aren't excluded, we have to have, you have to have providers available who come from your community, who look like you.
[00:49:40] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. According to a recent Crosscut/Elway poll, Seattle voters were asked what they think are major factors in the crime rates. The top three answers were: at 85% lack of mental health and addiction services, at 67% homelessness, and at 63% economic conditions. And when asked specifically if they could direct where their tax dollars were spent, the top three responses were: at 92% addiction and mental health services, 81% said training police officers to deescalate situations, and 80% said programs to address the root causes of crime. Given that the Legislature has already voted to increase public safety funding, largely devoted to policing and prisons, do you feel that we should increase funding for behavioral health resources, non-police intervention services, and rehabilitation services before passing further increases for police spending?
And we will start with Jeff.
[00:50:45] Jeff Manson: Yes, I do. I think in terms of where we have underinvested in recent years, mental health and behavioral health services and interventions is where we are the farthest behind, where we need to invest the most. The Legislature did increase some funding this past year, but I think it's just a start, it's just a drop in the bucket. And I was trying to type up the numbers and I'll have to look it up later - and I think I generally agree with the respondents to the poll. I think mental health and addiction is a major contributor to criminal activity, and we need to make sure that we have these services available and that we are directing people who enter the criminal justice system into services, when they're properly identified to need those services. Drug Court is a huge success, other alternatives to incarceration for those with addiction issues and other mental health issues have been a real success story. But there are stories of Drug Court telling prosecutors not to - don't send as many referrals, we don't have enough providers to provide services for as many people who are wanting to come over to Drug Court. So we need to make sure that we're providing that funding so that the services are available. I do think that is the - one of the main causes of criminal activity and the cheapest way to reduce it.
[00:52:12] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Tyler.
[00:52:18] Tyler Crone: Investing in the criminal legal system does not work. It does not help us solve the problems of today. I'd like to put forward and agree with many in Seattle who do feel concern, grave concern, about our public safety situation at present and push you back, Crystal, a little bit and say it has to be nuanced. We are currently facing a public health and public safety crisis. And so I am not going to pit two things against each other of saying - absolutely, we need to be investing in mental health, we need to be investing in behavioral health. And those are some of my key priorities - bringing forward a public health and a harm reduction approach to both. But you said - would you say you would do this rather than - I'm not sure we're at a moment where we can say rather than. As much as I'd love to put forward public safety as public health, I recognize we have Starbucks closing down, I recognize that my child who worked at Majestic Bay had to shoo out a person using drugs from the entrance who lurched at them and they had to call out a manager. And my daughter last night had someone break a bottle on her car. So just to say we are facing a moment that is complex and nuanced and is going to take a lot of integrity, thought, and care to center human dignity and put the services that we need to prevent these types of scenarios. So thank you so much.
[00:53:49] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. And just clarifying the question - it's would you fund those things before passing other ones, not necessarily instead of. With that, we will go to Julia.
[00:54:05] Julia Reed: I think safety, public safety, is the issue we hear about on the doors - all of us - the most every day. I think everyone deserves to be safe, but I think we can see that doubling down on our current system, which is broken, is leading to the results we're having in our streets. As someone who's worked in government my whole career, I really try to be led by data in making decision making. And I think the data shows us that we have solutions that work here in our City. I'm proud to be endorsed by Dominique Davis, the CEO and founder of Community Passageways, which is one of the leading examples of community-based, evidence-backed, non-incarceral, non-police-related solutions to public safety that create lasting safety in our City. I've also been a longtime board member for the YMCA Social Impact Center which sponsors the Alive and Free program, which similarly is a community-based program, community-based response to crime that has shown real measurable results. I want to see us investing in the solutions that work. I want to see us investing in things like Community Passageways, Alive and Free, greater access to advocates for victims of violence, of sexual assault, and addressing the scarcity and poverty that drives a lot of low-level crime, including the lack of mental and behavioral healthcare.
[00:55:33] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Nicole.
[00:55:37] Nicole Gomez: Yeah, so on the topic of behavioral health, I actually will - first, to answer the question - yes. But on the topic of behavioral health specifically, the Legislature just recently put in a really large package of behavioral healthcare funding because it is a top issue - top-of-mind not just here in the Seattle area, but across the entire state and nation, quite frankly. And there still needs to be additional investments. This past session - something that I'm proud to have helped pass was this budget proviso that one of my, one of the local nonprofits came to me and said, Hey, can you help with this? And we ended up passing a proviso for a pilot program that - mental health providers were coming to them and saying, Hey, I would love to volunteer my time, but there's no way that we can figure out how to pair patients with providers. There needs to be a screening process that's easy for us to manage. And so we helped pass that through, so it's a pilot in King, Snohomish and Pierce. And with innovative ideas like that, if it works - let's see if we can continue to do it, especially now that we have telehealth, that could potentially help get providers across the state specifically in the areas where there's a lack. There's a huge lack of mental health providers statewide.
[00:57:15] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. And with that, it's 7:30, it is a hot evening, there's a lot going on. We are going to take a quick two-minute break just to give people the chance to grab some ice, refill water, do whatever you need to do. So we will start that two-minute countdown now, which goes by pretty quick. So we will start that break and then be back shortly.
Excellent. So it looks like we are back - I'm waiting for, there we go - we're all back. So this next question is a combination of two - a combination of a preexisting question and one sent in from a viewer. Starting off - Washington's facing housing affordability crisis - lots of conversation about ending exclusionary zoning, making further investments in the Housing Trust Fund, but also balancing concerns of different constituents. One in particular writes in asking, citing a King 5 story where Seattle has lost 11,500 rental property units in the past year, mostly smaller locally-owned properties, according to this and suggested by the King 5 article. They're wondering if you're gonna pursue similar regulations at the state level, which they feel greatly disfavor and disincentivize mom-and-pop landlords. So that's question one. And question two - in addition to what you plan to do for landlords or not, what needs to happen to address this housing affordability crisis beyond expanding zoning and investing in the Housing Trust Fund? And we are going to start with Tyler.
[00:59:07] Tyler Crone: Thank you. So I think that the first question piece was about these smaller landlords and what are we doing to find strategies that work? I think that we are at a extraordinarily difficult moment because one, we're facing a homelessness crisis that will only be exacerbated when we lift an eviction moratorium. This eviction moratorium is placing a disproportionate burden on some of these small landlords who are an important part of the solution. And so what I would look to do would be to one, bring these stakeholders around the table to see where have our actions had unintended consequences, or that article, Crystal - I just saw it on Twitter before we hopped on - where we're losing critical space where people are selling their units and it is impacting our housing availability. So one, that partnership with landlords looking for practical solutions, exempting small landlords from some of these onerous regulations. To that piece of affordability, we have to be finding smart ways forward around density, around building with that urban village model, increasing density along our secondary arterials and seeing it as a strategy for inclusive, safe, healthy neighborhoods.
[01:00:38] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Julia.
[01:00:41] Julia Reed: Yeah, it's hard for me to speak to that specific article without having read it and dug into the data a little bit more. I, like I said, I like to be driven by the data and I know sometimes television news can can create packages for clicks as opposed to things that are more nuanced. I am very concerned about the loss of rental property in our City and the lack of affordable rental property. The University of Washington researchers just put out a book that I've been deeply reading for this process called Homelessness is a Housing Problem - the thesis is in the title of the book. And one of the things that they identify is that the lack of affordable rental property is the number one most determinative factor in the rates of homelessness in a particular area. So it's a huge concern. I'm really focused on this rising trend around LLCs and corporations buying up homes as investment properties to increase corporate profits. I want to explore what that looks like in our state and see if we can regulate that to ensure that our market can remain something that individuals can buy into for their own ownership. And that's really gonna be, I think, a big focus of mine in the Legislature.
[01:02:04] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Nicole.
[01:02:07] Nicole Gomez: Sure. So like others, I have not had an opportunity to read the article that was posted, but what I would say is that this is exactly the reason why we need different options for housing. Aside from being able to lift the ban on rent control or something of that nature, we would also need to look at limiting predatory fees. There's other ways in which we can work through making sure that we have more affordable housing. I was thinking about an article that I read - I think it was regarding Amsterdam and there's a 40-40-20 rule that they use there. And so essentially what that is - is you have 40% of regulated rent, and then you have another 40% of medium-term rental, and then 20% would be an expensive rent option. And looking at other countries who are tackling this problem and are doing it in a successful manner could be helpful in helping guide the work that we do. We're in a - oh, there's time. Thank you.
[01:03:34] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - and Jeff.
[01:03:36] Jeff Manson: Yeah, our housing affordability crisis, I think, is related to a lot of the issues we all hear at the door and I think we're all experiencing ourselves. I think in terms of the role the state can play in that - there's twofold - one is direct state investment at the lower end of the market. This would be the Housing Trust Fund, other direct investments. The other is we need more density. We need - we're tens of thousands of housing units behind where we need to be. People are moving here faster than we're building new units and that's causing the - one of the main reasons that prices are rising. Seattle has taken steps in recent years to increase density - it could do more - but other cities in the region haven't done nearly as much. I think another thing is people who are wanting to build more housing units are having a lot of trouble with just basic things like permitting. I hear, of course, at the doors about Seattle's process and we need to make sure that our municipalities have the resources, are able to raise the resources they need to process permanent applications expeditiously. In terms of small landlords, I also haven't read the article. I would say my overall approach is that we need to respect tenant's rights, but also need to make sure that we aren't disincentivizing providing rental units so much that we don't have any housing for everybody. So I do think it's a balance and it's complicated. But those are the two things I would be looking at in any of this legislation.
[01:05:07] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. Now we go to a audience-submitted question. What would make Washington's tax code more fair for the poor and working families? And how much funding would you look to raise for needed services in Washington? And we're gonna start with Julia.
[01:05:28] Julia Reed: That's a great question. One of the things that makes our tax codes so regressive is that poor and working families who purchase more of their goods and consumables are paying a lot of money in sales tax. Tons of money in sales tax. Also, we talked about the gas tax earlier in the lightning round. People who have older cars, less fuel-efficient cars are paying more in gas tax than people who are buying - well, people who are buying Teslas in general aren't paying gas tax. So it's just another example of how working families are carrying the load for our parks, our roads, our schools, our infrastructure - and wealthy folks are getting a free pass. I think what we need to do in our state is - I'd like to see us create a statewide income tax. While we are working towards that, dealing with constitutional issues, I really support the wealth tax that Noel Frame who held this seat before has proposed - which she proposed a 1% tax on wealth over a billion dollars. I think you could even bring that threshold down a little bit. I also would like to see us increase the estate tax on large estates and use that as an opportunity to lower the estate tax on smaller estates so that families of color can afford to create generational wealth and that all working families can try to bring some generational wealth to the next generation.
[01:07:01] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Nicole.
[01:07:04] Nicole Gomez: This is the billion dollar question. So I've been working with the Balance Our Tax Code coalition over the past few years. And we've been working in detail on this very issue. There's a lot of different ideas that are floating out there. We did pass the capital gains tax, so that was one effort. I do think we need to tax excessive wealth - that is something that we've been working on and will continue to work on it. That 1% tax on the value of stocks, bonds, and the other financial intangible assets over $1 billion, which again, I do also think that should be lowered. And I believe that they're working on a number that might be a little - a different number perhaps, or a different way of looking at it - but that only affects like a hundred people in Washington State. It's time that the wealthy do pay their fair share. There's also other ideas like a guaranteed basic income program I've seen out there. Baby bonds has also been floated where you're giving funds to - I think the bill was like $3,200 to give funds to people, to kids who are on the state's Medicare Apple Health program. And then that money grows over time and they get it when they're an adult, which is a good way to eliminate or to address the wealth gap. And I have so many more - I could talk about this topic for hours. So thanks.
[01:08:36] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Jeff.
[01:08:39] Jeff Manson: Yes - as I'm sure this is a very informed audience and everyone's aware that we have the most regressive tax structure in the whole country. It is by far the worst, and we're really feeling it right now with inflation and the affordability crisis - the sales and property taxes that are so regressive. That's one thing I hear at the doors all the time. So I support capital gains tax and am cautiously optimistic our State Supreme Court will find it constitutional. Same with higher earners income tax and a wealth tax. We need to be pursuing all of these progressive revenue sources. And once we raise enough money to fund the services that we say that we need, then we could provide some relief from the more regressive taxes. The second part of the question was how much more revenue do we need? I don't know if I can put a number on it, but it's definitely in the billions - like billions and billions. Think about all the things that we've all been talking about, we mostly agree on that we need - we've been talking about healthcare, we've been talking about behavioral health and mental health, we've been talking - we haven't talked about childcare, but that's really expensive and requires direct state subsidies. We're talking about low-income housing and Housing Trust Fund and permanent supportive housing - and fully funding education. All of these things cost money besides the basic government services that we already have - often, which are not acting at full capacity. So we have not enough revenue and the revenue that we have is being collected too aggressively. So we need more -
[01:10:20] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - now Tyler.
[01:10:24] Tyler Crone: Thank you. My approach to this question, which is a critical question, is that we need to be closing corporate loopholes. We need to put our weight behind a move to an income tax. And I would like to see that income tax ultimately reduce our sales tax or move us away from sales tax, which I think Julia made a really good case of how that disproportionately impacts working people and people with less income. I am also very concerned about how our property taxes are affecting our seniors, our single moms - it's a concern that's raised to me, time and again, at the doors of how do we manage this and provide the supports we need with such an upside-down tax structure. A question that has been raised to me when I've asked it to colleagues is about a wealth tax. Will people move out of state? Is that something that we need federal leadership around or is it something that Washington can lead on? That's an outstanding question for me, but I just want to underscore the critical, critical need to fully fund our schools, to increase our investments in making high-quality childcare, and a strong start in life available - that we have and we see, as we've talked about throughout this call, a need to lift kids out of poverty and a need to really reinforce our behavioral and mental health systems and services. Thank you.
[01:11:49] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. You just talked about childcare a bit, Tyler and Jeff. You were a little bit prescient in saying we haven't talked about childcare yet, but this question is about childcare. We are experiencing a childcare crisis. It was already out of reach for many Seattle families - exceeding $1,600-1,800 a month in the City of Seattle per child for many families and only got worse during the pandemic, with many counties in this state reporting a 40% loss of childcare providers since the start of the pandemic - causing costs to rise even further and access to lower and become even harder. What can be done specifically to make childcare more affordable and more accessible to all parents in Washington? And we are starting with Nicole.
[01:12:41] Nicole Gomez: Yeah, so I recall this - even pre-pandemic - my nine years, wait how old is my son now? Oh my gosh - he's 12 - 12 years ago. When we first started looking for a daycare for him, there was none to be found. We actually had to find a family friend who was willing to watch him for us until we made our way through the wait list. This is something that a lot of parents have been experiencing. There's not a lot of ways where - there's no discounts for multiple kids in a lot of cases here in Seattle, so you're paying that price for each child. For Washington State specifically, I think we can look at different options. For instance, this guaranteed basic income idea - it's putting money into people's hands - the Working Families Tax Credit - putting money into people's hands. So there's ways that we can do this in a way in which allows people to spend where they are needing it most. And what would that look like? And that's something that I think a lot of people can - I think the Legislature's already been looking at this for a while. It'd be wonderful if we could offer childcare for free. And that's my time.
[01:14:08] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Jeff.
[01:14:11] Jeff Manson: Yeah, it's really reached a crisis point. It's been a crisis that's been growing for years but I think since the pandemic, is really just out of control. I do - one of the hearings we do as administrative law judge is unemployment benefits hearings. And one of the main reasons that people are unemployed is 'cause they don't have childcare. They used to work or they wanna work, but they can't 'cause they can't find anyone to take care of their child and they - daycare centers were closing down or they had a relative who was providing care who's no longer available, possibly because of COVID. It's just become a real problem. And many people who are providing childcare are often leaving that industry because they can't afford to continue 'cause they're not getting paid enough. So when you're in this position where consumers can't afford to pay the going rate and the providers can't afford to stay in the business, that is a textbook example of where the government has to step in with subsidies. And we need to treat childcare more like we treat public education - as a basic service that the state provides - that way, not only are the kids being taken care of and having their early learning needs provided, but the parents have the ability to be part of the workforce and everybody's having trouble hiring now - it's a win, win, win, win, win - and we need to invest in it this coming session.
[01:15:40] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much - Tyler.
[01:15:45] Tyler Crone: A dad told me that childcare was his one and only issue that he was gonna vote on in this election. I have had three kids and played those childcare Olympics where you don't know if you get to go to work, you don't know what wait list you're on, you have to call - it is extraordinarily hard. Anyone who has had a kid can tell you - Nicole is nodding her head - childcare currently, just to underscore and make sure that everybody who's watching knows, costs more than it does to pay in-state tuition to the University of Washington. A voter in our district talked about how her childcare bill is more than her law school tuition and $1,800 is a low-ball figure for those who are going to private childcare providers, such as those that service Amazon or Gates where it's considerably higher. The things we can do - one, we must treat childcare as the social good and the economic imperative that it is. We have to be investing in accessibility and affordability across the state. We have to be investing in thriving wages for our childcare providers. The people who take care of our kids should be well paid with great benefits, and that cannot be subsidized by those workers and that cannot be subsidized by those parents. We also have to be looking at the regulatory framework so that it is easier to provide care - and it's not just childcare, it's eldercare too. Thank you.
[01:17:14] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - and Julia.
[01:17:16] Julia Reed: Yeah, I'm really proud to be endorsed by SEIU 925, a union that represents thousands of childcare and early learning providers across the state. This is such an essential issue - I'm not a parent, and one of the reasons that I've chosen to put off having a child has been the immense cost of childcare. And I remember being in Washington, DC just really talking to all of my working friends about how we couldn't afford to have a child unless we lived near family who could help us take care of it. And I think that's true for a lot of millennial families, a lot of millennial women. And I think that we absolutely need to be investing in making childcare a reasonable profession. It is a factor of systemic discrimination and the fact that women's labor is systemically and historically undervalued in our society that we treat, that we think it's okay for childcare workers to make poverty wages. That's what drives in-home childcare providers out of the system. That's what makes it impossible to restart childcare businesses, especially in such a tight labor market. We absolutely need to be thinking about how we make this into an effective economy that works for people who need care and works for people who are providing care.
[01:18:42] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much. We will head to the last question of the evening, which is from one of you. We asked candidates to submit questions to ask the other ones, and the question we selected - which you can all answer and we will begin with Jeff is - which of your endorsements are you most proud of and what do you think it says about you as a candidate and how you lead?
[01:19:09] Jeff Manson: Great question. Thanks colleague - whoever the colleague was, who submitted that. I would say I'm most proud of my endorsement by Mary Lou Dickerson, who was the State Representative from the 36th for 18 years. I've worked with Mary Lou when she was in the Legislature and continued to know her during her retirement, during my time as Chair of the 36th District Democrats. She was a true champion for the most vulnerable in our state. She's a social worker by trade and was really, as a legislator and as still as a retired legislator, working for the most vulnerable. I'm a disability community advocate myself, and the area of law that I adjudicate as an administrative law judge is probably best described as poverty law. So she and I have really bonded over that - and I think recognizing my expertise in state government and how state laws and budgets affect people and understanding the 36th district and the constituents. I was blown away when I got her endorsement and very proud to have it. I think she knows better than anyone who's endorsed anyone in this race what it takes to be a legislator from the 36th.
[01:20:28] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Tyler.
[01:20:31] Tyler Crone: Thank you. Running in this race is an honor and privilege - I've gotten to call the 36th home for nearly two decades and the endorsements that I am most proud of and the feedback and enthusiasm is that my neighbors, those I meet, are all in and they're excited to see me run as a political outsider, as a first-time candidate. And as someone who is going to bring global experience and expertise, life as a parent, as someone who has been in these public schools, who has been a part of the fabric of these neighborhoods to the high-stakes decisions we need. And so for me, the biggest endorsement is the folks who say to me - this is the first time I've ever given to a political campaign because I believe in how you stand up for those who have been most marginalized, for the people who say - I've never put a yard sign in my yard before and it matters to me that you are running with a community perspective, with a desire to serve others, to center people over politics, and to be a part of solutions, not just kicking the can down the road. So I am delighted to be partnering, to be inviting people in, to be hearing that nuance and rigor and accountability and leadership from behind is what people want right now. And I thank you for the chance, Crystal, to share that perspective and to say how honored I am to have my community's support.
[01:22:00] Crystal Fincher: Thank you - Julia.
[01:22:05] Julia Reed: I'm gonna be really cheeky and give a few different things that I'm proud of. I'm really proud to have the endorsement of Sage Leaders - it's the 501(c)(4) organization of Puget Sound Sage, which is an organization I've hugely admired. It's an organization of young people, people of color who are fighting for healthy communities and for environmental justice. I think that it is a huge honor to have their badge, as well as the support of Dominique Davis that I mentioned from Community Passageways. I'm also really honored to have, to be - not only am I the fundraising leader in this race, but 75% of my $121,000 that I've raised has been in denominations of $150 or less. Our campaign is powered by over 700 donors who believe in us and I'm extremely proud and honored to have their support. And finally, it's not an endorsement, but I'm proud to be recognized as a Gun Sense Candidate by Moms Demand Action and to have a 5/5 rating of approval from the Alliance for Gun Responsibility - I think that that is a hugely important issue in our state and I'm proud to have the highest approval rating of anyone in the race and to have been the first candidate to receive the Alliance for Gun Responsibility's seal of approval.
[01:23:28] Crystal Fincher: That wasn't quite an answer to the question, but thank you very much, Julia. Nicole, go ahead.
[01:23:34] Nicole Gomez: Oh gosh, it's really hard to decide, but I think I'm gonna have to go with the one that was the toughest on me. And that would be Mayor McGinn, former Mayor McGinn. He has endorsed me after a very rigorous discussion about all the things that I cared about and why I was considering a run in the first place. So sorry about that - I really respect him and I'm really appreciative that he would be a constituent of mine and I have followed his work over so many different, so many years - and he does this work because he really cares. And I cry because he saw that in me. And it's - he's a leader with the Sierra Club, former mayor of Seattle, he has been working hard on environmental policy and transportation and housing and - all things that I care about as well. And on top of that, he's just a super cool, nice person. And that's the kind of leader I would like to be.
[01:25:00] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for that. And coincidentally, former Mayor McGinn is going to be our Friday week-in-review guest on Hacks & Wonks this Friday, so tune in to that show and you'll get to hear from him. Obviously, I'm a fan of his and have learned a ton from him too.
And with that, this forum comes to a close. I want to thank all of our candidates for participating and for stepping up to lead, for being so thoughtful about your service - sincerely appreciate that - and for making this an engaging and informative event. To those watching online, thanks so much for tuning in and for sending in your questions. If you missed any of the discussion tonight, you can catch up on the Hacks & Wonks Facebook page or on Twitter, where we're @finchfrii. We will also have this released on the podcast and in further content that people can digest in smaller bites and as a whole. Special thanks to the coordinators this evening, Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli, who are part of the Fincher Consulting and Hacks & Wonks team, and make me look fabulous. None of this is possible without them - not just this forum but also the Hacks & Wonks show and just a lot of the work that I do. So thank you so much for that. And to our fabulous volunteer Ilona who is with us once again this year and keeps everything running smoothly, kept the timer running smoothly, and got me back in-line with that. So appreciated. And they've all worked incredibly hard to put this event on this evening. Most importantly, I want to remind - once again - everybody to vote, it is really important. Our rights depend on it - especially now that we are losing our rights at the federal level, we have to act at the state level. We have to proactively take action. We can't just rest and do nothing at the state level to make sure that our rights are protected in this state. So ballots are gonna start arriving in your mailboxes in the next few days and are due on August 2nd. But vote soon - as soon as you can - you can register to vote still and update your registration still and see what's on your ballot at MyVote.Wa.gov. That's MyVote.wa.gov. Be sure to tune into Hacks & Wonks on your favorite podcast app for our midweek shows, including interviews with all of the candidates you've heard from tonight, and our Friday week-in-review shows, including this Friday with Mayor McGinn or at officialhacksandwonks.com.
I've been your host, Crystal Fincher - see you next time.
Washington Supreme Court Justice G. Helen Whitener returns to catch up with Crystal about the last two years on the state’s highest court and her bid for re-election this November. The two talk about Justice Whitener’s path to the Supreme Court, how coming from a marginalized background with an intersecting lens impacts her time there, and the impacts COVID has had on making the courts accessible and navigable by everyone. The Supreme Court’s “June 4th Letter” from 2020 sparks conversation about addressing systemic injustice and Justice Whitener shares two recent decisions she wrote about shackling and restrictive covenants. The show wraps up with discussion of the future of the court system and what to weigh when choosing Supreme Court justices.
Note:
This episode was recorded before the end of filing week in May. The candidate filing deadline passed without any challenger filing to run against Justice Whitener, so she will appear unopposed on the November ballot and serve another term on our state’s highest court.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii.
Resources
Campaign Website - Justice G. Helen Whitener: https://www.keepjusticewhitener.com/
Previous appearance on Hacks & Wonks (Sept 15, 2020) - Justice Whitener: The Law, Representation, and Becoming a Supreme Court Justice: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/crystal/HW20200911JusticeWhitener_mixdown.mp3
Washington Supreme Court - “June 4th Letter”: https://www.courts.wa.gov/content/publicUpload/Supreme%20Court%20News/Judiciary%20Legal%20Community%20SIGNED%20060420.pdf
“Washington Supreme Court Announces Prohibition Against Blanket Shackling Policies at Pretrial Proceedings” by Anthony Accurso from Criminal Legal News: https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2020/nov/15/washington-supreme-court-announces-prohibition-against-blanket-shackling-policies-pretrial-proceedings/
Washington Supreme Court - State v. Jackson - Slip Opinion: https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/976813.pdf
Washington Supreme Court - In re That Portion of Lots 1 & 2 - Slip Opinion: https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/995982.pdf
“Washington Supreme Court reverses its 1960 ruling that allowed Seattle cemetery to discriminate against a Black family” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/washington-supreme-court-reverses-its-1960-ruling-that-allowed-seattle-cemetery-to-discriminate-against-a-black-family/
Justia - Price v. Evergreen Cemetery Co. of Seattle: https://law.justia.com/cases/washington/supreme-court/1960/34854-1.html
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I am absolutely thrilled to welcome back to the program Justice Helen Whitener, Justice on our Washington Supreme Court. Thank you so much for joining us again.
[00:00:50] Justice G. Helen Whitener: Thank you and nice to see you and be with you again, Crystal.
[00:00:54] Crystal Fincher: Excellent to see you and be with you again. Well, this time two years ago, around this time, we had a conversation - you were running your campaign to win your first election after being appointed as a Supreme Court Justice. And it's been so phenomenal for so many people who have watched you throughout your illustrious career and followed you - just to give people a bit of a background, and we talked about this on the prior show - but you have an unusual breadth of experience coming behind you, which reminds us of a certain new Supreme Court Justice in our country. But she actually reminded me, when I first learned about her, of my conversation with you in that - wow, just so much experience and much more varied experience than we normally see for your justices, now your colleagues, and who we've seen before. What was your path to the Supreme Court?
[00:02:02] Justice G. Helen Whitener: Well, as you know I've been a former prosecutor, public defender, and I had my own law firm - I was a managing partner of that firm. I have pro-temmed on the City of Tacoma Municipal Court level and on the Pierce County District Court level, I've also been a Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals judge. I got appointed by the governor to the Superior Court in Pierce County in 2015, and then five years later I got appointed to the Supreme Court. Both times I got appointed and subsequently had to run to retain my seat. So I'm happy to still be here and to come back and have this discussion with you.
[00:02:49] Crystal Fincher: Well, and I'm thrilled that you're back to have this discussion with me. In your first couple of years on the bench, what has been most surprising to you?
[00:02:57] Justice G. Helen Whitener: Well, my experience on this bench is quite different than I think anyone who has ever sat on this bench, because it occurred during the pandemic, the COVID-19 pandemic. So my entire experience with my colleagues have been on a virtual platform, which is unusual. So, when I talk about my experiences, just keep that in mind. What's been wonderful, as I've indicated, is the advocacy - the level of advocacy on this level - and then being able to review the trial level records that I used to create as a prosecutor and public defender, and then presided over those trials as a trial court judge. So it's really different to review the work of the trial level courts, because I've been so intimately involved with that level.
[00:03:52] Crystal Fincher: Well, and you bring, as you talked, so much experience - both just professional experience, also lived experience. You are a Black woman, an immigrant, a member of the LGBTQ community. You have so many different experiences that have shaped who you are and that impact just how you experience the world. How has that impacted your time on the Court?
[00:04:25] Justice G. Helen Whitener: And I think one of the other personal characteristics I have is I identify as someone with a disability. So I come to the Court with a very marginalized background and intersecting lens. And I got there in April of 2020. And May of 2020, we saw the killing of George Floyd. And June 4th, 2020, the entire Supreme Court - all of the justices - signed off on what we now call the "June 4th letter," which was a directive to attorneys and judges and those working within the criminal justice system or the justice system as a whole to do better, because now we do know a lot of things have occurred that were unjust and different facets of our community were being unjustly treated.
So I tend to think being at the table with my colleagues, and I'll also point out - when I joined the Supreme Court, it's my understanding it became the most diverse Supreme Court in the country, which I hadn't really thought about at the time. But we already have - and presently we have - a Chief Justice who is Latino male. We have seven female justices - normally it's predominantly male. We have the first Native American Supreme Court Justice. We also have an Asian and Mexican heritage and first LGBT Supreme Court Justice, I'm the second. So here I came in and I'm the immigrant and the Black woman, and I also identify as someone with a disability. So our discussions are really in-depth, and our view is trying to make a law more encompassing of the majority of people in our community, through all of our intersecting lens. And it's a beautiful process, challenging at times, because certain labels that we belong to conflict with the other, but we try to ground our decisions in the law.
[00:06:38] Crystal Fincher: Throughout this pandemic, how have those kinds of conversations been? Have they been more challenging because of the pandemic and being limited in being together, and limited via just seeing each other online? How have those discussions been in a remote environment?
[00:07:01] Justice G. Helen Whitener: You know, it's the only environment I know - dealing with this then. And there are challenges, even with oral arguments, because sometimes there's that delay in timing because of the platform. I love it, but there's a tradition that goes with the highest court. I haven't experienced the tradition, but I know about the tradition. And I think some of my colleagues miss that - they miss the in-person congeniality between each other. I think it's a cold platform at times, so sometimes when we have conferences it's open to misunderstanding, but then it also allows us to repeat and we can see and engage a bit more than we probably would feel comfortable in-person. So I think there are pros and cons in regards to this platform. And for me, I came from running a courtroom by myself to now having eight colleagues to decide something, so that in and of itself has been an adjustment. But it's an adjustment I would hope I'm doing well with.
[00:08:20] Crystal Fincher: Are we doing a good enough job with making the courts accessible and navigable by everyone - especially through these pandemic times - but overall, how are we doing with that?
[00:08:35] Justice G. Helen Whitener: I think we're doing as best as we can with the infrastructure we have in place. Washington state is not a unified court system, so that means even though the Supreme Court can issue directives, many of the directives are open to the discretion of the lower courts when it comes to procedures and policies and things like that. Many of our courts have been in-sync, but each court and level of court has its own management style. And what was interesting to me is everyone really pivoted in trying to make their particular court accessible to all because it became an issue. I think for the first time, just like with the killing of George Floyd, it woke some individuals up to what people of color have been saying for a while. I think the pandemic woke our courts up in regards to how we have been dealing with justice and dispensing justice and making it accessible to all. So I tend to think of it as - well, the court has now had to deal with this issue that is impacting all levels, all different kinds of people in the same way. Because the pandemic and the virus didn't have any biases - it'll take you however it can get you, and address, deal with you that way - whereas the courts, and we're aware of this, had implicit biases built - well, biases built within it. Some were, I guess you can say implicit, and many were explicit, but at least the conversation is occurring and people are listening.
[00:10:34] Crystal Fincher: Yes, and you brought up that June 4th letter, which I was proud to see. And was really a nation-leading letter from - signed by all of the members of the Court, really recognizing that - it says the devaluation and degradation of Black lives is not a recent event. It's a persistent and systemic injustice that predates this nation's founding and just really acknowledges - explicitly - racial injustice within our system and the responsibility to address it. I just really appreciate it - it is a well-established fact. As we do navigate through those systems, what do you as a justice do, and how do you approach wrestling with that?
[00:11:30] Justice G. Helen Whitener: Well, speak up - that's one important thing. Share my experiences - personal as well as professional experiences. Making sure that people understand that you're not asking for any special treatment or special privileges - that what you're asking for is to be seen and treated respectfully and justly like everyone else. What's interesting to me about the June 4th letter - it raises the issues faced by Black Americans, Black individuals - slavery, the devaluation of how we have been treated. And from that came all these different committees and task forces looking at inequities within our system. The way I deal with it is making sure I make my voice part of that discussion and make it an authentic discussion by sharing truthfully how I see things and how I believe people are affected.
And when I say that, remember I indicated our bench is very diverse and everyone brings their own lens to bear on discussions. When it comes to race and equity issues, each group deals with it differently, has had different experiences. And that's why it's BIPOC and not just POC. So Black people and indigenous people have a different experience than people of color. And sometimes that's a difficult thing for others to hear and understand - we're not to be lumped as one. My indigenous colleague on the bench shares from time to time her personal experiences, and sometimes there are similarities and sometimes there are not. So my purpose in these discussions is to make sure I am authentic 'cause like I like to say, I wear the robe at work, but when I take that robe off - that black robe that garners respect - you're looking at a Black woman walking out and into society and being treated as a Black woman in society. And those experiences don't go away because people don't know who I am. So making sure my colleagues are aware of these real lived experiences.
[00:14:01] Crystal Fincher: And I appreciate that so much - I appreciate your lived experience. It seems like a lot of people in organizations appreciate just the professionalism that you bring to the bench and sharing all of your experiences. Just since you've been on here last, you've received some awards - including the ABA Stonewall Award, which recognizes members of the judiciary and legal professions who have affected real change to remove barriers on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and who have championed diversity for the LGBT community. The 2020 and 2021 International Association of LGBT Judges President's Award. The Public Official of the Year by the Evergreen State College's Master of Public Administration Program for your legal aid and judicial careers, which have centered on a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion that is a model for other judges and public service professionals - in their words. You also were awarded the Western Region of the National Black Law Students Association Judge of the Year Award.
And in addition to being rated "Exceptionally Well Qualified" by 14 bar associations - think a lot of people just became a lot more acquainted with how important that is and what that really means, especially after the approval of Justice Brown. And similarly, just you are rated "Exceptionally Well Qualified" by just about everybody. And endorsed by all of the other State Supreme Court justices who come from varied backgrounds and have a lot of different experiences, but all recognize you belong there on that bench in their opinion.
Looking at all that, and as you discuss different cases like the Blake decision - where we wrestle with issues similar to that so much in society - do we take a public health approach to things like substance use disorder that often accompany charges for possession? What were the conversations around that and obviously you're wrestling with what's in the law and what's not there, but how do you connect wrestling with your decision versus the impacts that it may have on society and in our community? Do you weigh the impacts on that, or is it just strictly the letter of the law?
[00:16:45] Justice G. Helen Whitener: Well, every justice and judge has a different approach. For me, it's the letter of the law - I stay within the confines of the law. If I cannot do anything that is within the rule of the law, then I make sure I flag that in my opinion, or my decision, to the legislative branch. And it's a good thing that we have some good legislators that pay attention and try to address the inequities. But we have three branches of government. There are some judicial officers who are more policy driven and do things a bit different. But for me - I can only speak for me - I stay within the rule of law. Yet I have been able to address in my decisions, and I have many 9-0 decisions - I'd like to think my litigation background assists me in presenting my case to my colleagues. But I've written a number of decisions that touch on social issues.
The first case was State v. Jackson, a shackling case - the inhumanity of that - making sure as I write that decision, it is clear that the dignity of the individuals before us should not be lessened because of the type of cases that come before us. These are still people and we still have a responsibility as judicial officers to treat them as such.
My most recent decision that was release filed - I call it May v. Spokane, but it's called In re Lot of something. It deals with covenants - restrictive covenants - and yes, we still have those in our state. And this one was in Spokane and the individual, the homeowner, wanted to remove that restrictive covenant, which basically said, don't sell to Black people - something along those lines. And to think that we still have those laws still there - those things are still out there that we have to deal with. Many individuals who looked at it, including my law clerks at the time, thought - and the lower court judges attempted to address it. But thought that they would have to and could not keep the original document if you took the restrictive covenant off. And I was very clear that - no, no, no, no, you don't get rid of history, because then later on there's nobody who can - when they're making the discussion - have that supporting data. History is very important for a number of reasons, even derogatory and abhorrent history. It's history. So don't destroy it - archive it for future generations to see, and to understand what this type of restrictive covenants did to a group of people.
So it comes like the Price case that was mentioned in the June 4th letter, where a Black family could not bury their child in a cemetery where they had these separate burial areas and a whole number of different racist things. So my position was don't destroy that history - I don't like it, it's derogatory, it's abhorrent - but don't destroy it, please. Because the next generation or the generation after that - 'cause these things are cyclical until we find a solution, and racism has been a problem in this country so a solution may not arise in my lifetime. But let's keep that history, and let's make sure it's there for the future generations. But here's what we can do - we can create a new document for the individual and this way the racist covenant does not go forward and still exist. So those are the types of ways I deal with issues in the law that - I have to stay in my lane. And the interesting thing about the last one, the May v. Spokane case, is while that case was before us and I was writing the decision, the Legislature came with a fix and the fix matched very closely what I was saying in my decision. So I was really happy to see that, but yeah - it's making sure that you don't lose the authentic voice that you brought to the bench. You need to share it and give your perspective and then follow it up with well-reasoned arguments to your colleagues. And I'm thankful that they're very receptive to that.
[00:21:54] Crystal Fincher: Which is good - I'm also thankful for the same. There was another decision that you wrestled with that was very visible, especially within the political and policy-making communities, dealing with redistricting and just untangling a number of issues there, including whether the process they followed was in line with what they were supposed to do. And it actually wound up before our State Supreme Court. How did you go about determining whether the Court should be involved, to hand it over to the Legislature? What was that process?
[00:22:39] Justice G. Helen Whitener: Well, the interesting thing about the law and especially at the Supreme Court - we don't discuss issues that can come back before us. So that is one of those situations that - it's not over yet - it deals with redistricting, it deals and has impacts on things like elections and voting and a whole myriad of things. So that one I can't give you more than what you already have, because it's still working its way through the Court. Just like some of the remote platforms and holding trials on this platform - there are constitutional questions that still can come before the Court and are likely to come before the Court. And you touched on one of them.
[00:23:31] Crystal Fincher: Well, I guess we will have to stay tuned. And it's always interesting in those situations, especially looking at redistricting, in that we're looking at potentially voting within these new districts while there may be legislation, while there may be court challenges or issues making their way through the system. So it'll be interesting to see if and how that proceeds.
I do have a question with - looking at across the country, and how we've seen some of our federal courts transform lots of conversations about a lot of conservative nominees appointed by Trump - a number of them not receiving "Exceptionally Well Qualified" ratings and in fact, a number receiving "Unqualified" ratings, but now they're on the bench seemingly for life. And now we have a conservative Supreme Court, which has a lot of people worried about the maintenance of some really basic human rights. As we look at the situation across the country and everything - from abortion rights to civil rights and equal protection under the law - just kind of everything. Do you feel optimistic? Pessimistic? How would you advise people who are worried to think about this, and what can people do if they are worried?
[00:25:02] Justice G. Helen Whitener: Well, first and foremost, it's understanding the courts and the court system. State courts - the judicial officers are elected. So, even though they may make decisions that are favorable or not favorable, they have to stick or try to stick very close to the the law that they're interpreting. Federal court is a little different - they're appointed for life. It is also very partisan in how that is dealt with. So they're two very different systems. And at the end of the day, it's what the framers wanted for our system. Think about it this way - you may not like the Court as it's set up right now, but hopefully you can believe in the system and hopefully you can get some decisions that fall within your values. It is a completely different system and I - it is just so sad that it is so politicized. Because to me, the law is the law and should apply through equitable lens to all.
And I think at the end of the day, the justices on that Court start off struggling with that. But they come in all ready, and that's how they are elected, and that's how they're nominated, and that's the process they go through, and that's how they're seen. So you can probably - and I think that's why there is concern - you can probably figure out how they're going to deal with cases based on what they've done in the past. Because they're there for life - you can't do anything about it. That's why it was such a big deal in getting certain people to the bench during a particular time. But that has been historical - that is nothing new. So, all I can do is hope that the decisions that come out from the highest court covers most of the constituents of the United States at any given time. They're not going to cover all, and I hope they get more or less the arc - you have that bow and you have extremes on both ends and the majority falls in the middle - and hopefully that'll be the case, but that's how the law works. And I try not to get too caught up on that. I love the restrictions the Constitution - the State Constitutions - can place on those type of decisions because we can look at our constituents and make decisions that we believe are best, even though the Supreme Court has precedent. Those precedents can be viewed narrowly on the state constitutional interpretation.
[00:28:02] Crystal Fincher: So as people are considering, as they're going to be voting for Supreme Court Justices in our state this year, what do you think should be the most important things that they weigh?
[00:28:15] Justice G. Helen Whitener: I think, especially since it's the highest court, one of the most important things is experience - not necessarily experience writing decisions or anything - but the varied experience, the quality of the experience. And I think it's really important - last election cycle, which was two years ago, my opponent had just basically passed the bar, but our constitution allows for a newly supported individual, a new attorney that has taken the oath to run for the Supreme Court. It's the only court that that can happen. And you have to remember the decisions this Court makes impacts everyone and impacts everyone in a very meaningful way. It's not necessarily a case-specific thing, it's a lot broader than that. So, look at the experience, do the homework, and make the decision - the best decision - that you believe falls in line with your views.
[00:29:24] Crystal Fincher: Gotta say it really was something last election to look at someone who did really just pass the bar, seemingly to run against you, up against all of your experience. That was a very audacious decision, in my opinion. And just -
[00:29:45] Justice G. Helen Whitener: But it's a right that he had. And going through the campaign and having him on various platforms, I was very much aware of his lack of knowledge of how the courts works. But I thought, this is his right. It might be his bucket list thing to tick off, but this is his right. And why not? So, he did. And thankfully, I think for our courts and our legal system, the voters responded in favor of me because of my experience and what I bring to the bench. But at the end of the day, it was his right.
[00:30:30] Crystal Fincher: It was his right, he exercised it, he tried it. Voters made the decision on the side of experience and breadth of knowledge. As you're talking to voters this cycle, what do you tell them when they're asking, why should I vote for you? At this point, you don't have an opponent, you could still draw one. Why should they vote for you?
[00:30:58] Justice G. Helen Whitener: Well, I think I bring something to this bench that has never been at this bench. And it's not just my personal background, but my professional background - I believe the fact that I've been a prosecutor, public defender, done private defense work, I've been a judicial officer on all three trial level courts - and I mean all three positions in all three trial level courts - is important. It gives me a very intimate knowledge of the types of cases that come before our courts. I represented individuals, so I understand the defense arguments that are coming. I understand the prosecutor's position, and I also understand the private bar perspective as well. I also, as a Board of Industrial Insurance appeals judge had to deal with people who were injured and at their most vulnerable, so I've been able to maintain that empathetic lens and air as I interpret the law.
And when it comes to now the appellate work, I'm very proud of the cases that I've made decisions on, the opinions that I've written. Many of them have been majority opinions, meaning all nine justices signed. And those that I dissented on - I've not concurred on anything yet - but I've dissented on, I believe, three or four is because I believe in the position I took on those. So my lens is truly different and I'm not afraid to stand if I have to stand alone, if I believe my decision is well-reasoned. And it will always be an independent decision that I make, not based on anything else but my interpretation of the law through my intersecting lens.
[00:32:47] Crystal Fincher: Well, I certainly appreciate that. If people want to learn more about you, do you have a website they can visit?
[00:32:54] Justice G. Helen Whitener: Yes. It's keepjusticewhitener.com, or you can Google Justice Whitener - there's so much information out there on me, you can just find me. Just Google Justice Helen Whitener, or keepjusticewhitener.com, or keep Whitener for justice. And you can find me - you can find information about me and the work that I'm doing. I just recently returned this week - I'm somewhat exhausted - from an invitation I received from the United Nations, based on my human rights interest and environmental law. And that was very, very intense and again, keeping abreast of what's important out there. And our environment surely is.
[00:33:48] Crystal Fincher: It surely is. Well, I sincerely appreciate you taking this time to speak with us today. You are so highly decorated and awarded - so much experience. We have been fortunate to have you on the Court and as voters make their evaluation on who they want to keep, they certainly have some excellent choices on the ballot this year. And just thank you so much for speaking with us - we will stay updated on your race and wish you the best.
[00:34:24] Justice G. Helen Whitener: Thank you. And thank you again, Crystal. It was a pleasure, at least, getting a chance to chat with you again. And we'll see what happens. I'll keep my fingers crossed and keep the bar high as I proceed on this year.
[00:34:38] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On today’s Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Co-Founder and Editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett. They start off the episode looking into King County Elections’s request to the sheriff’s office to investigate a GOP ballot-box ‘surveillance’ program, which critics claim is disguised voter intimidation. Also in elections, Crystal and Erica discuss the alarming intimidation, harassment, and direct attacks on Black candidates and staff, and what we need to do to keep candidates of color safe. Erica then breaks down the packed Secretary of State race, and what the consequences of this race are on elections in Washington. In housing, Crystal and Erica look at the recent news of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority successfully housing 786 homeless households, and Erica explains the challenges of housing people in Seattle. They also talk about the political motivations behind Amazon’s recently-touted contributions to the City’s housing efforts. Finally, the two look at the failure of Seattle’s leadership to develop non-police responses to 911 calls and the poor toll revenue of the SR-99 tunnel.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica C. Barnett, at @ericacbarnett. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“King County Elections asks sheriff to investigate GOP activists’ ballot-box ‘surveillance’ as potential voter intimidation” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times: “https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/king-county-elections-will-ask-sheriff-to-investigate-gop-activists-ballot-box-surveillance-as-potential-voter-intimidation/
“Washington Democrats sound alarm over incidents against Black candidates” by Austin Jenkins from KUOW: https://kuow.org/stories/washington-democrats-sound-alarm-over-incidents-against-black-candidates
“Democrats, Republicans, and “Nonpartisan Party” Candidate Face off for Secretary of State; Council Takes Up Abortion Bills” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola: https://publicola.com/2022/07/18/democrats-republicans-and-nonpartisan-party-candidate-face-off-for-secretary-of-state-council-takes-up-abortion-bills/
“King County Regional Homelessness Authority Houses 786 Households” https://kcrha.org/nearly-800-formerly-homeless-now-housed/
“How Houston Moved 25,000 People From the Streets into Homes of Their Own” by Michael Kimmelman & Lucy Tompkins from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-people.html
“Amazon’s Housing Fund Sends a Political Message” by Katie Wilson from PubliCola: https://publicola.com/2022/07/12/amazons-housing-fund-sends-a-political-message/#more-28230
“Seattle Was Supposed to Create Alternatives to Police for 911 Calls. What Happened?” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola: https://publicola.com/2022/07/13/seattle-was-supposed-to-create-alternatives-to-police-for-911-calls-what-happened/
“SR 99 Tunnel is Bleeding Money as Toll Revenue Forecasts Plunge” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/07/22/sr-99-tunnel-is-bleeding-money-as-toll-revenue-forecasts-plunge/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola, co-host of the Seattle Nice podcast, and author of Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery, Erica Barnett.
[00:00:58] Erica Barnett: Hey Crystal.
[00:00:59] Crystal Fincher: Hey, Erica. Well, here we are - it is July 22nd. Everything is happening all at once in the world. Everything is wild and out of control. And we're just going about our daily lives and we have an election coming up on August 2nd. Ballots are out - you should have your ballot. If you don't visit MyVote.wa.gov and you can get a replacement there, which will invalidate your initial ballot but make sure that you vote, that you make your voice heard. There's a lot at stake in this election and a lot happening - starting with an effort from Republicans and aligned forces to essentially surveil and monitor drop boxes and a number of events that have happened in the interim, including the King County Elections asking the Sheriff's department to investigate. What's going on with this?
[00:01:56] Erica Barnett: Yeah, The Seattle Times reported on this. There've been a bunch of signs put out in front of ballot boxes saying that this ballot drop box is under surveillance and then there's a QR code that takes you to the Republicans' website. It's unclear - I didn't do any reporting on this myself - but it's unclear from the reporting, whether there's actual surveillance going on or whether this is just - which seems more likely - an attempt at voter intimidation. But either way, it is illegal to intimidate voters and to try to restrict people from casting their ballots and exercising their rights. King County Elections got involved, the Republicans who put these out immediately said - no, no, no, we didn't mean to break any laws and walked back these efforts, but it's interesting to see this sort of thing happening in King County, a place where we have pretty good ballot access. We have - it's easy to vote compared to other places, and you just don't think of King County as being a place where there's voter intimidation and efforts to keep, specifically Democrats, from voting. So it's the kind of thing that might not be shocking in another state where there's all kinds of efforts like this going on - is pretty shocking here.
[00:03:18] Crystal Fincher: It is pretty shocking here. And there is, especially in the suburbs - I don't think it's as visible in the City of Seattle, but certainly in the suburbs - there are energized, extremely right-wing Republicans and conservatives who are trying to flex their power and all of these. And I think this is a reflection of just the increased radicalization and the absolute acceptance of these conspiracy theories about elections and election fraud, which repeatedly - in fact again, just recently, has been proven false and that there is certainly no widespread voter fraud. And in fact, it's so rare to have fraud associated with voting overall, but particularly mail-in voting, but there is an effort and even Republicans - Republican office holders and candidates who are running on a platform of - Hey, we wanna get rid of this mail-in voting. It should just be on Election Day and we vote on Election Day.
[00:04:28] Erica Barnett: Yeah. The Secretary of State's race has - that's come up, that's come up quite a bit - both allegations of fraud, or maybe not fraud but improprieties. And then let's return to the inconvenience of in-person voting.
[00:04:42] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And there are a number of competitive Democrat versus Republican races that we have going on in the state, including in King County. In Southeast King County, in the 47th district, 5th district, 44th district - where these are highly contested and competitive races - by no means is a lock for Democrats at all. And so they are seeing a chance to take action and it looks like they've gone beyond just campaigning and are getting into the realm of voter intimidation and are gonna be, hopefully, investigated over this. But it's very concerning. Certainly people - hearing reports that they may be surveilled will make people think twice about using a ballot dropbox, will make people perhaps wary - are they going to be intimidated and harassed, like we've seen in so many videos or what that deal is. So this is really unacceptable. It is not something that we've seen before in this coordinated effort and we'll see what results from this but certainly disillusioning to hear.
With that also comes some - perhaps related news, but really scary news - in that we continue to see incidences of harassment and violence against Black candidates running for office - both those who are elected and running to be elected. We had just another incident in this past week with Representative April Berg's district - she's a Black woman from the 44th Legislative District, which includes the Mill Creek area, and just an absolute harassment and intimidation of one of her canvassers. They don't want them in that neighborhood - Hey, you need a permit - which is not true. And just - We don't want you here. And basically just trying to run them out of the neighborhood, which is a scary thing. And on top of that, Pastor Carey Anderson, who is running in the 30th Legislative District, which is the Federal Way, Auburn, Algona area was shot twice with a BB gun as he was out canvassing this past weekend. And just absolutely terrifying and just imagine - you're a candidate, you're a volunteer and you just find yourself getting shot. At the moment, you don't know it's a BB gun. You just know that you're getting shot at, you're getting hit, and just trying to figure out what's going on and everything that results from that.
[00:07:30] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I think it actually - these things are all related, I think - the voter intimidation and this individual intimidation by people who say - this is my neighborhood and you don't belong here. It's just, it's part of a climate of just a miasma of fear and anger and resentment that bubbles up. And these incidents don't have to be coordinated - there doesn't have to be a coordinated campaign to intimidate canvassers and to tell people to go around shooting candidates with BB guns. It happens because there is this atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion and just all the kind of terrible stuff that's bubbling down from the national level to allegations of voter fraud. It's all related. You can look at the stories about these incidents and say these are all just isolated incidents and who knows if it has to do with with this or that, or with the candidate's race, or with their political beliefs, or whatever. But it's all just kind of part of the same miasma that is hovering over all these elections right now and just the heightened sense of just - of terror and suspicion and everything that the Republicans have been trying to inculcate at the national level - is trickling down to us as well.
[00:09:06] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and it's here - it's arrived in full force and it does seem to be racially motivated with these. These are not at all isolated incidences. There have been other incidences this year. There have been prior incidences around the state in 2020, including here in King County and Clark County - similar situation with a canvasser being harassed and chased by someone who didn't want them in their neighborhood. And to me - and I talked about this earlier this week online - this is a systemic problem. This is a - there is an escalating incidence of harassment and violence against these Black candidates. And right now, they've been left to fend for themselves each individually in a campaign. And I don't know if people understand what this means for a campaign, but if you have to have special considerations for your safety as a candidate, or the safety of your volunteers and canvassers, you're doing things like sending them out in pairs instead of individually, having check-in points and times, buying T-shirts and buttons and clipboards and explanations. And it actually takes both money and time - it is a wear on the resources that campaigns have - and so not only are these Black candidates just having to deal with the threat or reality of this violence and harassment, but they're also having to expend more resources and time than other candidates right now to keep themselves safe, to keep their canvassers safe, and to do their own due diligence to do this.
And there really is no reason why they should be left to fend for themselves. This is a situation where the Party has to act. And when it comes to campaigns, there's the State Party but even more consequentially, there are the caucuses, which are the campaign extension of the House Democrats and the campaign extension of the Senate Democrats. And they actually interact frequently with campaigns and they provide a lot of information, they help to manage and steer these campaigns, especially the top priority ones key to maintaining control of the House and Senate. And up until now, there just hasn't been any kind of support or even acknowledgement that this is a systemic problem, or attempts to help, or help guide campaigns when it comes to this. And so there have been conversations happening this week to try and address that. The State Party has been active in trying to get those conversations started and everyone talking too. The Senate caucus has been willing to take action to do this, but once again we have a situation where the House caucus and that leadership is lagging behind. And so I'm going to be paying attention to see what results from this, but certainly it should not be the continued isolation and basically abandonment of these Black candidates while they're facing this scary, scary situation. So we'll see what results from that. Also this week, you talked about a bit the Secretary of State race and you actually covered this in PubliCola. What is happening with the Secretary of State's race here in the state?
[00:12:39] Erica Barnett: So it's a position that's held right now by a Democrat for the first time in God knows how many years - decades - Steve Hobbs was appointed to the position. And so there's now essentially - not a runoff, but there's an election - he's one of the candidates and he's defending his position. There are, I believe six candidates - and sorry, eight candidates - for this position which oversees elections, it oversees registration of corporations and nonprofits, things like that. But it's very hotly contested. And so as I mentioned before, as we were talking about some of the candidates, some of the kind of fringier candidates in this race are making allegations of voter fraud, insisting that people return to voting in-person. A couple of the candidates say that we should have to have IDs to vote - voter IDs. And then there's the two probable front runners - one is the Pierce County Auditor and the other is, as I mentioned, Steve Hobbs. Pierce County Auditor Julie Anderson is running as a member of the Nonpartisan Party, trying to make a point about the Secretary of State's office needing to be nonpartisan. And Steve Hobbs is running as a Democrat. There's also Mark Miloscia, who was a former state legislator, and he's - very conservative Republican who runs the Family Policy institute, which argues essentially that being gay is demonic, that perverts are coming after our children. He's written a lot of articles about so-called grooming. He was pretty fringy as a state legislator and has become even fringier as a - becoming a perennial candidate now - he's run for other offices as well. So it's an entertaining race to watch, but it'll most likely come down to Hobbs and Anderson.
[00:14:40] Crystal Fincher: It will, and there have been interesting conversations just about the qualifications of the different candidates, how important is it to have a partisan versus a nonpartisan person running this office, and conversations about - this shouldn't be a partisan seat. Others saying that this is how it's been and critical, and let's just look at people's qualifications and see what's happening now. You talk about Mark Miloscia - certainly an extreme right-wing Republican who has argued for a long time the things that people are finding shocking today that are coming from the Supreme Court and things like Justice Clarence Thomas's concurring opinion saying that - Hey, not only should we be striking down abortion access, but hey, same-sex marriage, privacy rights for even any kind of same-sex or relationships deemed improper or unholy by whoever has them, the further co-mingling of church and state, interracial marriage - are all things that he has supported and suggested and is in agreement with aligned forces and it's pretty concerning. Looking at these conversations that are happening - obviously, the Secretary of State runs elections. They're not involved in passing legislation. What does, perhaps a partisan identity, indicate about what kind of policy they may or may not pass if they're elected?
[00:16:23] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I think if you are - and I actually tend to, on principle, agree that this should not be a partisan position, but it is a partisan position historically and it's historically been held by Republicans. So I think if you are identifying yourself as a Democrat, one of the things you are, one of the statements you're making is - Look, I do not believe that voter fraud is the primary problem facing people in elections now. And perhaps that a bigger problem is access to elections - access to the ballot box, access to information about the candidates and that sort of thing. So I think it's a kind of, it's a signaling to say - I'm a Democrat - and that what goes along with that is just a whole host of things that Democrats tend to believe in. And I think in contrast, saying - I'm nonpartisan in a partisan race - naturally raises some suspicions about how nonpartisan are you actually? Are you actually saying that you are aligned with the Republicans? I think that - I've listened to Julie Anderson speak about this and I don't disagree with some of the points she's making. It is a job that oversees elections. It would be, in an ideal world, a position held by somebody without strong partisan affiliations one way or another. But we don't live in an ideal world. We live in a world where one party believes there's widespread voter fraud and people are stealing elections. And the other is trying to maintain access to the ballot box and keep elections fair. I think in that world, identifying with the Democrats send some really important signals.
[00:18:03] Crystal Fincher: Completely agree with that, and we will continue to keep our eyes on that race. This week, we actually received some good news when it came to the issue of how we're making progress getting people who are currently unhoused - living outside - into homes, and in fact, permanent housing. What happened this week?
[00:18:23] Erica Barnett: Yeah, the King County emergency housing voucher program was - actually the King County Regional Homelessness Authority announced that the vouchers have gone out to almost 800 households. These are emergency vouchers that were issued in response to COVID in 2021. And so this has been - this has been a real issue. So these are essentially vouchers that allow people to get apartments and it's been bogged down in process, and it's sometimes very hard for people to find apartments that they can afford and that will accept these vouchers. And so the news was basically that more than half of the vouchers that we received in King County have actually been used and people are moving into apartments. That is good news. I do think there's a little, I would sound a note of caution here though, and say that is only 800 out of 1,300 that we received. And there are still many, many, many vouchers that are unused. And this is always a problem with any kind of voucher that you give people to move into market rate apartments by and large. It's hard to find housing because housing is expensive here. And so you get a voucher, you go out, you work with Housing Connector, and hopefully you find a place that you can continue to afford after your voucher runs out, that your voucher doesn't overextend you in terms of what you can pay for. So it's - I would say it's mixed news. It's good news for those 800 households, certainly, but there's still many, many vouchers that have been unused for more than a year now.
[00:20:02] Crystal Fincher: There are definitely. And these are people who were formerly unhoused and moving into not just shelter or temporary housing - this is permanent housing, which is absolutely the goal. Now, permanent, as you just said, with an asterisk in that these are rentals so it's not guaranteed that - hey, they're stable, they can stay there for years and years and years. We've talked a lot and lots of people are familiar with the challenges that we are having in our rental markets with rents steadily rising and being much higher than they used to be. But with these vouchers, it does make it attainable, and these people are housed in permanent housing, not just a temporary shelter situation, which is a big win.
You just talked about - there are challenges with just the percentage of these. One thing that was noticeable is that, as you said, all of - just an inherent issue with voucher programs, period, and across the country - are that they aren't all used. And they mentioned that the national average is around 36%. King County is at 58%. It's much, much higher than the national average on the amount of, I don't know what the technical term is, but like conversions of vouchers into vouchers that result in permanent housing. And so it seems - hey, we have significantly, coming close to doubled the effectiveness that, of these voucher programs that we've seen before - which they seem to attribute to establishing partnerships with organizations and using people who have experienced being homeless, who have a deeper understanding of the challenges that are faced and the kind of help and support that people need to get through programs and paperwork and jump through all of these hoops to do that. And it looks like that is resulting in better outcomes. And so while this certainly is a very limited program - we have tens of thousands of people who are unhoused in our region that we need to get to - but this does seem to indicate that this is a model that is building on what had been happening before, that is improving outcomes, and signaling a direction that we need to move. And that as we design local programs - to do more of what is happening here than what we have previously done, or what is happening across the country. So I thought that was overall encouraging, certainly could be a lot better and we still have a lot more to do. But in this situation, it's - we're looking for any signals out there to - what can we be doing differently? What should we be doing? What kind of action should we be taking and what should we stop doing? And action that we should stop taking, that's not effective. And this - it seems gets us closer to the course we should be on.
[00:23:01] Erica Barnett: Absolutely. Yeah. With all those caveats, we need to be doing more of everything.
[00:23:06] Crystal Fincher: We absolutely need to be doing more of everything. And there's an article, not that long ago in The New York Times about - the city of Houston, Texas housing 25,000 people with the Housing First approach. And it certainly makes you feel like if Texas can do it, why can't Seattle?
[00:23:24] Erica Barnett: Hey, now - I'm from Houston.
[00:23:26] Crystal Fincher: I know, I know - which is why I'm bringing it up. But you know what - a bright shining example of what can happen if you take the right kind of action.
[00:23:38] Erica Barnett: Well, it definitely - if I can just, if I can just make one sort of - I did just say I'm from Houston, but I will, as a Houstonian, I will say - the big difference between Houston and here, the main difference, is that housing is so much cheaper there. And so when you're getting a voucher for a thousand dollars a month here, you may be looking at a $2,000/month apartment, as opposed to that covering your rent in Houston. It is harder here for a whole lot of reasons, but one is that we just don't have affordable housing here.
[00:24:11] Crystal Fincher: And a very important point. And also why we have to address housing affordability as, in order to address homelessness, we - if we don't address that, we are allowing more people to fall into homelessness. And so just trying to bail out a ship that - it has holes from all sides and it's - we're getting new people who are being forced out of housing as we're trying to get other people in - we have to stop the flow of people into homelessness. And that takes addressing just the housing affordability situation.
Related to this, or in the same subject of housing, Katie Wilson of the Transit Riders Union - who is just doing great work all around the region, including with the Raise the Wage initiative in Tukwila - wrote an op-ed about Amazon's Housing Fund sending a political message this week. What did she write?
[00:25:13] Erica Barnett: So she wrote - this is in PubliCola. Katie wrote a piece about Amazon getting an awful lot of credit for creating housing with a series of loans and grants to nonprofits locally that total around 23 - nonprofits and for profits - a total around $23 million. And that is - I would say - this isn't Katie's term, but that is budget dust in terms of Amazon's total net worth and net value and what they could be doing. And her point, more broadly though, was not just that this isn't a lot of money from Amazon. It's also that Amazon is paying a tremendous amount of money into the JumpStart fund through the payroll tax that they very much opposed. And so what's actually been more effective at getting money from Amazon is taxing them against their will. Again, I am summarizing - these are not Katie's words - but basically they are getting credit and getting a lot of publicity, including The Seattle Times, for doing the right thing when in fact, what is more impactful locally is that we passed a tax on 'em that they didn't wanna pay. And they're buying good will now, maybe against the next tax increase. So there is a tactical nature to these contributions and the amount that they're ultimately giving to these various groups is pretty small in the scheme of things.
[00:26:48] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Extremely small, especially considering the impact that they have had on the increase in housing prices. I'm not sure if this is still the case - I'm inclined to believe that it is - but just a few years back, there was no city that had as much property owned by a business as Seattle had owned by Amazon. And certainly the influx of very high-income workers to the region, fighting against tax increases during that time - which would have helped address some of the impacts of having such an influx come in that have resulted in displacement of communities from within Seattle - lots of people, skyrocketing rents that have exacerbated income inequality and poverty and homelessness and everything that's resulted. Seattle, certainly feeling this acutely, was on the front end of saying - no, actually Amazon's responsible for this and should be paying a tax to deal with this. Certainly Amazon felt that that was unfair and that they were being targeted and that was anti-business - and a lot of that ensued. And we even had other cities in the region saying - Hey, Amazon, why don't you come over here and we'll treat you better, we won't tax you. So I did find it to be amusing - I think earlier this week or last week, there - the Bellevue City Council actually brought up - Hey, maybe it's time to tax Amazon as Amazon has expanded their footprint in Bellevue and they're feeling the impacts of that. So it's just an interesting situation all around, but certainly we can do a lot more to address these systemic issues without having to rely on good will maybe popping up from a corporation. If we can plan, mitigate these issues, provide much better services just through a system of taxation - instead of relying on sometimes, some basically good will coming out of a marketing budget is really what it seems like it's doing. Great article - we will also link that in our show notes.
This week there was also action taken in the Seattle with the Seattle City Council to address abortion access. What did the Seattle City Council do?
[00:29:15] Erica Barnett: There were a couple of bills that are gonna be - that have been presented and will be voted on and presumably approved. One is from City Councilmember Sawant to essentially make Seattle a sanctuary city for providers who are at risk of prosecution for providing abortions in other states. And the other two are from City Councilmembers Tammy Morales and Lisa Herbold - and basically they do two things. They make it a misdemeanor to interfere with access to a facility that provides an abortion or a hospital that provides an abortion - so protestors that are standing in the way - they essentially make it a local misdemeanor which puts it in line with state law. And there is another bill that would prevent discrimination or prohibit discrimination based on a person's perceived pregnancy outcome. So if an employer thinks that their employee got an abortion, they cannot fire them or penalize them in any way because of that.
[00:30:28] Crystal Fincher: And I'm happy to see the Seattle City Council take action. I continue to hope that there is a special session called and - which is possible after the November elections too, as it was raised to me last week. But certainly waiting until the new session where we don't know what the balance of power is going to be at this point - look, we cannot leave our rights up to chance, there's just so much at stake. Also, you wrote this week about an issue that has been on the minds of a lot of people, which is Seattle is supposed to create alternatives to police for 911 calls, but it doesn't look like anything has happened so far. What is happening there?
[00:31:11] Erica Barnett: Yeah, there's there's been efforts - movement - to create alternatives specifically for the percentage of 911 calls that everyone agrees don't have to be - don't require police response. That momentum slowed down very, very quickly in 2020, in 2021 - it just never got off the ground. There was a proposal from former Mayor Durkan to do a kind of pilot program called Triage One which would be added onto Health One, the mobile integrated health unit. So basically three vans to go out and respond to people when they're like persons-down calls and the kind of calls that, frankly, don't always get a response now. And years have passed, nothing has happened. And now we have a new mayor who's come in and said - we need to do a whole new study to find out which calls can really really be answered by non-police responders. And, they have said that they are acting with urgency on this. I will say that urgency to them looks like a program maybe in 2024.
[00:32:26] Crystal Fincher: Yes.
[00:32:26] Erica Barnett: So I'm not sure - I'm not sure how they're defining urgency - that's an awfully long time. And in the meantime, they're putting everything through - all the 911 calls through this matrix. And we've talked about this before, but they came up with around 42,000 different kinds of calls that they then need to dissect, which is a lot of analysis, no matter how you look at it. Meanwhile, there's thousands of calls that the police don't even respond to at all now. And Councilmembers Lisl Herbold and Andrew Lewis are starting to push back and say - look, we aren't even answering these calls. Can we just do a pilot where we send somebody out who's not a cop to respond to these calls that we're not answering now, these low-level, sub-crisis calls? And so that's happening - they've put some money in the 2022 supplemental budget to do that - but spending that is up to the mayor's discretion. He could decide that he would rather spend it - to rather set it aside and spend it closing the budget gap next year - which frankly, seems fairly likely because we are facing a very large budget hole in 2023. But yeah - just a lot of push and pull between the Council and the mayor. And this is one of the first issues that we've really seen the Council, I think, push back significantly on the mayor's agenda - they've been pretty handholdy and friendly - and I think the Council is starting to get rather frustrated on this one.
[00:34:01] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and it's a frustrating situation. And the Council is certainly hearing from their constituents that they want them to do something now to address crime, to help people be safer and feel safer. It's so interesting - this conversation just throughout the City and region - in understanding just the role of the Council and the mayor. And Council basically sets, policy funds things - but the mayor's office, the office of the executive, is the one in charge of implementation and making things happen. Council can allocate funds, but it's up to the mayor's office to actually spend it, use it in service of doing something. And as we saw with Jenny Durkan and we look like we're beginning to see with Bruce Harrell, they can choose not to do that unfortunately. And so a lot of these solutions that we're hearing, as you talked about are - Hey, this is a 2024 solution by the time they get around to it. Hiring cops - trying to do that - it's a year pipeline from when someone gets into the training system to when they're on the street. So we're talking about all these things that may make a difference in 2023 and 2024 and beyond, but we're in 2022 right now - halfway through it - and it just seems like we aren't hearing much of anything to do with increased safety now. There was the brief focus on hotspots which seemed to move issues to other areas, but that in and of itself doesn't seem to have made a difference. Meanwhile it appears that they've defunded a different alternative response - that one JustCare program - so people are just looking and saying - what are you trying to do right now to address this? And patience is wearing thin, especially when it seems like the focus just is not on things that can happen now. So it's a bit confusing, and it looks like this is resting in the lap of the mayor and he needs to choose to do something. The Council is trying to say - we can do this, please work with us, let's figure out a way to make this happen. And it just doesn't seem like there's the willingness from Mayor Harrell and his office to move on things that are more immediate and that can make a more immediate difference.
[00:36:29] Erica Barnett: Yeah. As I was saying to someone last night - talking about this stuff - it sure is a good thing we have a new mayor every four years to come in and reinvent the wheel. We know - this is the problem is - you get a new mayor and every single time they think that whatever the last mayor did was idiotic and they want to completely start over. And this is just the nature of having mayors not be in office for very long, whereas the City Council - people, individual people - may not last for years and years and years, but you have some continuity of effort. And so it's just built into both our system and the fact that we like to kick mayors out pretty quickly, at least in recent years, that you get a new mayor in and they think that they've discovered solutions that nobody's ever thought of before. And it happens every time. This isn't even - this isn't a knock on Harrell specifically - it's just the nature of bigheaded politicians who run for executive offices, like mayor, thinking they're the smartest guy in the room or gal.
[00:37:39] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I would say - this is going back and I'm old, but -
[00:37:44] Erica Barnett: I think we are about the same age.
[00:37:49] Crystal Fincher: And I was thinking - but I was actually reading PubliCola at this time way, way back then - and reading about some of this then. But Mayor Nickels seemed to do a better job than many on continuing programs and initiatives that were started by his predecessor and continuing those. Mayor McGinn in continuing initiatives that were started by Greg Nickels. And to me, it looks like there was a departure starting with Ed Murray and he - we didn't vote him out - he resigned in disgrace under pressure, but it does seem like - I don't know that this is a universal across the board problem, but it does seem like there are some things that have happened that have worked but that have been contrary to some downtown big donor interests. And that seems like it is overridden - some of the more evidence-based and - programs that have been successful on the ground in combination with exactly what you said, which is basically politicians wanting to claim credit for something themselves and have their name stamped on something.
And I know that the Harrell administration is working on that their own Department of Public Safety to stand up some of this internally, which - hey, that may turn out to be a fine thing in the long term, but people are being victimized right now, and worried and concerned right now, and wanting answers right now. And what we keep hearing is - are things that are getting worse and police department isn't investigating sexual assaults - they're moving people out of investigative and detective positions and task forces onto patrol. They're not answering a whole lot of calls. Things are being de-escalated in priority. And it seems like things are moving further in the opposite direction. And this is Bruce's call. The police department works for him, the police chief reports to him - he's the executive and he has power here. And it seems like that isn't - whether it's not acknowledged or not understood - it seems like the Council is certainly saying - Hey, it's time to act. And they're hearing people still thinking that the Council can deploy these resources on the street and that's really up to the mayor. So we'll see what happens, but it is frustrating to watch and I'm sure it's frustrating to endure.
The very last thing we'll talk about today is news that came about the State Route 99 tunnel. What was, I guess, announced this week?
[00:40:39] Erica Barnett: There was a Washington State Transportation Commission meeting, which I watched and will be writing about today for PubliCola, but basically total revenues on the 99 tunnel - no surprise if you've ever driven in there and enjoyed the emptiness of the road - are not coming in as forecast. People are not driving in the tunnel, they are using other routes to avoid paying tolls, which are - they start at a $1.20, they go up from there, I'm not sure what the cap is, but there are easy ways to get around the tunnel if you don't wanna pay that $1.20 and people are doing that. So their revenues are way off and this is - yes, COVID obviously has permanently perhaps changed traffic patterns - it certainly has for the last few years, people are not commuting to work. And that was a big part of the assumptions that they made - was that people were going to use this tunnel to bypass downtown to get to wherever they're going and pay for the privilege. At the same time though, pre-COVID tolling revenues were also off. People use a tunnel when it was free - as soon as it started costing money, people were like - eh, it's fine to take five more minutes to get where I'm going. This was predicted by opponents of the tunnel in the first place, this is not a surprise at all. People - this tunnel was never necessary, it was always a boondoggle. And now, you can see the continuation of the boondoggle - and I am very much editorializing here, but I've editorialized on this many times - you can see the continuation in the surface street, which is right now as we're recording, down to two lanes above the tunnel on the waterfront. It works fine and they're expanding it to between four and nine lanes. Why does this nonsense continue? Because it was approved and because there's funding for it and because we just have not in this state adopted new paradigm for roads. And we think that if you build it, they will come - and sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't.
[00:43:01] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and the political end of this does make a difference. Why are we doing it? Because we have a - a big portion of our media apparatus - I'm thinking about the conversations, certainly Mike McGinn was very notable for talking about this, but Cary Moon, Mike O'Brien, and plenty of people, and you were talking about this and covering this at the time with PubliCola also is - hey, this is not a fringe theory. But The Seattle Times, we had evening news covering people saying the traffic projections for this tunnel are not looking right, insisting that it will be impossible for cost overruns to happen, let alone Seattle voters beyond the hook for them - is just not something that's possible. These are just obstructionist and extremists and these super left wing ideologues - similarly that we hear today about some issues. And it turns out that exactly what they were saying is what came to be. And it is frustrating to look at this and to see a lot of the same forces, certainly Mayor Harrell and Tim Burgess being among them, who were insistent that this tunnel was gonna be great, we were gonna open up the waterfront, and no, we weren't gonna have cost overruns. Yes, it was financially solvent. And it's just not, it's just not. And it is plain as day. And so when are we gonna start contending with the fact that building highways is not the solution to moving people around. And expanding those highways is not the solution to moving people around. And that we have to build infrastructure for today that will carry us into tomorrow. We need to be strengthening transit, we need to be building communities that are more friendly to people walking and modes that are different than driving. There is not a major metropolitan area that's not contending with the same thing. And we seem to be behind the times in this and are getting lapped by other cities that a lot of times Seattleites will look down their noses at but - hey, they're actually taking the action that we should be taking.
So it's just frustrating to see this continue yet again. And Ryan Packer wrote about this in The Urbanist also and drew a parallel that I certainly see with the Columbia River crossing project on I-5 and the big expensive highway widening that we're doing there. And it looks like we're just doing the same thing over and over again. And when are we actually going to get the political will to stop this? When are we going to start demanding that people talk about the facts surrounding these things and us move in a different direction? I'm certainly frustrated by this. I appreciate your coverage of this for years and years and years - but man, we gotta do something different.
[00:46:09] Erica Barnett: Yeah, and real quickly - I just wanna add - the planet is burning and WSDOT and the state are banking on more people driving. And to hear that contrast between reality and their hopes and dreams is really stark. Supposedly the state is in favor of fighting global warming and reducing emissions, but all their plans rely on people driving more.
[00:46:36] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Just does not make sense and does not get us where we need to be, set us up for a future where we aren't facing these calamities. And we've got another massive heat wave coming up next week - and driven by climate change - and we just cannot continue to contribute to making this problem worse. So hopefully we will change course, but thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks today on this Friday, July 22nd, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler and assistant producer Shannon Cheng with assistance from Bryce Cannatelli. Our great cohost today is Seattle political reporter and editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett. You can find Erica on Twitter @ericacbarnett - that's two T's and Erica with a C and on PubliCola.com. You can also buy her book, Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii and now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksdot - my goodness, at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Claudia Kauffman about her campaign for State Senator in the 47th Legislative District - why she decided to run again for a seat she previously held, what it’s like to run in a swing district, how the last legislative session went and her thoughts on addressing and prioritizing issues in the LD47 community such as housing affordability and zoning, COVID-19 impacts on education, making schools more welcoming, and protecting fundamental privacy rights.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Claudia at @SenClaudiaK.
Resources
Campaign Website - Claudia Kauffman: https://www.voteclaudiakauffman.com/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today we're pleased to be welcoming to this program, a former senator who is now running again for State Senate in the 47th legislative district, here in South King County, Claudia Kauffman. Welcome to the program.
[00:00:53] Claudia Kauffman: Thank you for having me.
[00:00:54] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much. So I guess I just wanna start off by asking what made you decide to run again?
[00:01:03] Claudia Kauffman: First, I am Claudia Kauffman - I am a member of the Nez Perce Tribe, I grew up in Seattle, I have lived in South King County for about 22 years - raised my family, my children went to the Kent School District, and I am deeply involved and engaged in my community. I am a homeowner and a mother and a grandmother, so I'm engaged and I'm involved and I'm invested in the community. Both my professional and my elected experience positions me well to be running for this seat at this time. I worked over 20 years for Muckleshoot Indian Tribe in government relations - working on government relations on the local state, federal levels and working on legislative agendas and working with consultants and helping to identify strategy behind the agendas. But I also, as you had mentioned - former State Senator of the 47th legislative district.
Given those two wonderful aspects in my life that an opportunity has come forward with an open seat in my previous position that I held and I thought it was an excellent opportunity to go back and continue the great work that I did when I was in the State Senate before, and having the understanding and knowledge, experience. I thought this was a fantastic opportunity, and I loved working in the State Senate and being a State Senator - I just loved everything about it. And it's all about serving community.
[00:03:05] Crystal Fincher: So it has been eight years since you were in the Senate - do I have that right? And the district has been a swing district, it remains a swing district even after redistricting. And with this open seat, there's a quite competitive primary race going on, with another Democratic opponent, a Republican in the race. It is really one of the races that people across the state are looking at and that may determine the balance of power in at least one chamber in our legislature. And so, as you were looking at this and considering running and having represented the district before, what is it like? Especially for people who are used to living in safe, blue, Democratic districts - what's it like to be running a race in one of our state's top battleground districts, where you have heated Republican rhetoric, at this time when there is so much at stake? What is that like?
[00:04:12] Claudia Kauffman: It's true that the 47th district is a swing district and it has gone back and forth and back and forth. Before I was first elected, there was a Republican State Senator for 12 years. And then I got in and then Joe Fain, a Republican, got in. And then Mona Das, a Democrat, got back in. And so it does swing that way. And it's true - this is not a safe blue district like in Seattle - you don't walk up and say, Hello, I'm a young, progressive woman of color. It's just - that doesn't reflect what this district is. There are some large cities - Kent and Auburn and Covington are included in the 47th, but that also includes rural areas. And there are a lot of farms - local farms in the district - and as well as manufacturing, so incorporates a tremendous amount of variety and diversity in terms of the work and the population and the people. But it also is diverse in things that are valued. And so this is a district - and you can't, I think, just put out a number of measures on the ballot to increase taxes to do such things as repair and reconstruct, or even rebuild the Kent Police Department - has always been turned down. There have been measures for taxing to increase support in the water system and that's been turned down. So this is a different district and, as such, there are Democrats and there are Republicans, but there is a huge middle that is more independent and works that way. And so knowing and understanding the district, I think, is very important in this race. And I have that experience, I come with all that knowledge.
[00:06:34] Crystal Fincher: It does take knowing the district - it's different, I think - a lot of times when people are here - I live almost on the border of the 33rd and the 47th and have - very familiar with Kent and Covington and elsewhere. So how, as when you're running and there is such a wide variety of people, diverse population in every single way - how do you stay true to your values as you are talking to people who may feel very different ways? How do you stay grounded and how do you stay principled when you're talking to all of those voters?
[00:07:17] Claudia Kauffman: For me, I convey that the values that I was raised with are taking care of your children, having respect and dignity for your elders, honoring your veterans, and serving your community. These are some core tenets that I was raised with and this is something that really translates and embraces voters - that we do need to take care of our children and our elders and our veterans and serving the community is very important. And so my - I don't go forward in terms of coming in with a real progressive agenda - it's really about taking care of our community.
[00:08:10] Crystal Fincher: So we just came out of a legislative session where some great things happened, some not so great things happened - which is true of a lot of legislative sessions. What was your evaluation of this past session?
[00:08:25] Claudia Kauffman: I was - there was a lot of work done on the plastic bags - and so a lot of people are asking me who led that and why did they do that? And that was our State Senator in the 47th, and I'm not sure that those things were the priority of the voters of the 47th legislative district. I think it was a statewide issue, but it became a signature issue for that particular person. And I think it's important that we get back to understanding the basic needs around our children, such as investing in early learning or addressing issues since the pandemic - when children were in school, outta school, in school, outta school and it created a lot of issues around the social and emotional and the mental health issues for the children, as well as the educational needs. I think if we refocus back on some of our basic needs within our communities - would be very important. And I wasn't quite convinced that we needed to send over a hundred million dollars and whatever it was from operating to transportation. And then in transportation, they also increased a number of fees and was a very large transportation budget. When we talk about what our needs are - how are you gonna fund them - well, stop sending operating dollars away. We need to address the needs within our communities.
[00:10:28] Crystal Fincher: So with that, I guess we're looking at the transportation budget, which had record investments in transit funding, in mobility improvements and enhancements, including in the 47th district. Are you saying that was a mistake to do? And that we should just focus on maintaining roads and not necessarily investing in transit or other infrastructure? What about that strikes you as excessive?
[00:10:59] Claudia Kauffman: Okay, I apologize if that came across the wrong way - I am not saying that I just wanna invest in expanding highways - that's not what I meant at all. We need -
[00:11:14] Crystal Fincher: Or even if it's not expanding highways, is it that - I do not wanna put words into your mouth and so just seeking clarification - you were talking about focusing more on the basic needs. What falls outside of the basic needs that they were dealing with in the Legislature when it comes to transportation?
[00:11:37] Claudia Kauffman: So I obviously didn't make all that clear, so let me go back. When we're looking at the basic needs for our communities - in running for office or being a state legislator, people always ask - how are you gonna fund that? Where are you gonna get the money to fund that? And what I'm saying about, because you asked me about this last session, was they took out money from operating and they put it into transportation. That's nothing to say about transportation, that's just to say about operating. And imagine the possibilities that we could have, if we had the full money in the operating, to help address more issues within our community.
[00:12:23] Crystal Fincher: What would you address in the community?
[00:12:25] Claudia Kauffman: Increase early learning, I would increase money going to the Housing Trust Fund to create more affordable housing, I would increase the income threshold for more seniors and veterans, people with disabilities to qualify for property tax relief. There are a number of things that could have went that way - investing in small businesses, having a comprehensive review of the impacts of COVID-19 on our students, on our teachers, our paraeducators. I think there's a number of things that we could have done with that money. And so I'm just talking about the fact that they moved the money from operating and they put it in transportation.
[00:13:21] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. And so with some of those investments that you mentioned, especially in early learning and education and the schooling system, you were known as a champion for education when you served before - certainly, I recall a lot of educators just really being thankful and supportive of the stances you took in a variety of areas. And we're having a time in our local school districts here, including the Kent School District - one of the largest school districts in the state - and an issue that we're hearing about nationally, we're dealing with right here at home with book bans being talked about and a number of issues from some very conservative right-wing elements trying to push that into our schools. Where do you think, what do you think the school should be doing? Do you think the school board is doing the right thing? Do you think we should be reevaluating which books we're looking at in our schools?
[00:14:28] Claudia Kauffman: I really think we should be evaluating the impacts of COVID-19 and how our students are doing. Being a mother, I became a fierce advocate for my children's education and I did those things, and I joined the PTAs, and I went to the meetings, and I'll bake the cookies and made cupcakes. And really wanted to have the data - what does the data show for our students? And when I was finally able to get the data, they had data for every racial group except for American Indians. And I said why - you're not providing the data, I said - Go back, just some basic things and what's happening? What is the graduation rate while we're talking about American Indian students. What is the graduation rate for American Indian students? And it was only 36%. And I said - Okay, that should be a priority - that should be a priority for everyone, not just me, not just the native community. Everyone should make that a priority that there is a particular group of students - only 36% graduation rate.
And at the - they just recently voted to put in police officers at every school district. Now I'm all for safety and safety is very important. But I also want to have public schools to be an open and welcoming institution in which students are - come in and not being fearful or harassed or intimidated at the atmosphere in which they're placed at, in which they need to walk by every single day. To me, it needs to be more open and accepting and welcoming. When I was in the State Senate, the Kent School District had hired private security at every school, and the school board allowed them to use force and to handcuff children and a little five-year old was handcuffed for not walking down the hall too fast - you're taken down and you're handcuffed if you talk back. And so when I was in the State Senate, and then I tried to work on - can't handcuff children if you're not a law enforcement officer - I received a lot of backlash from the Kent School District on that. And so I said - okay, show me reports - start reporting every single time you use force on children. How many times do you handcuff them? How many children handcuffed? What are the reasons for them being handcuffed? What's the location? What was the - give me some data on the student, demographic data on the students. And that just demonstrated the complete lack of any standards when it comes to that.
[00:17:43] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and maybe time has proven -
[00:17:44] Claudia Kauffman: And Kent School District - yeah, Kent School District is doing it now with police officers in every single school. So I have concerns about what they're doing and how they're doing it. And I know that they just hired a new superintendent, so I'm hoping things will improve in that area. I think they hired a great superintendent.
[00:18:09] Crystal Fincher: I certainly hope things will improve in that area. I do wanna circle back to the original question. And you made mention about wanting kids to feel safe and welcome in school - there are some kids questioning right now, because of some of the books that are being targeted for banning and the reasoning that's being given with them - do you think that any of those book ban discussions should be on the table? Or do you feel like it's inappropriate?
[00:18:36] Claudia Kauffman: No, I'm not in favor of the book ban and especially - I was asked recently about how do we help students in the LGBTQ community. And I said - You need to have them to feel welcome in the public school system. And if you're banning books that deal with that, it's not gonna feel very welcoming and you're gonna feel targeted.
[00:19:08] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And in that vein, we're sitting here at a time not too long after the Dobbs decision that eliminated a woman's right to reproductive health and also signaled - from the dissent from Justice Clarence Thomas - that there is an intention and a welcoming of also eliminating rights to same-sex marriage, same-sex relationships, privacy, contraception. What can we be doing now in our state to protect against these coming attacks - the existing one that already happened with the Dobbs decision and these coming ones on some of our fundamental rights. What can you do as a legislator to help protect against that?
[00:20:04] Claudia Kauffman: I think that we can start working on some privacy issue - I know that there are a number of apps on phones in which you can, women can track their menstrual cycles and when they have a doctor's appointment. And if we don't have privacy around our own technology, there's opportunities for that information going out. And other states that now offer $10,000 rewards for naming those who get an abortion or those who assist in abortions is really scary. And it's not just ensuring we have the right to make our own medical decisions, it's the privacy issue that everyone's gonna know that you - and I can't believe the amount of information and data that is out there. When I was in the State Senate, I had the bill that prevented the Washington State Patrol from pulling up your car in an accident and downloading your vehicle's data, 'cause they did that all the time without your knowledge or permission. And so my bill was to stop that - it's my car, it's my data, you can't have that, you can't have my cell phone, you can't have anything. And I got a lot of pushback from the Washington State Patrol, but it's all about privacy and consumer protection. And so us as consumers and - 'cause everyone needs to seek medical attention for one reason or another throughout their lives, and we need to have privacy around that.
[00:22:05] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely agree. Do you think we should call a special session to do that? There's certainly conversation about - hey, if we do have a number of these competitive races and battleground districts and we aren't sure what the composition of the legislature is going to be, potentially waiting until next session could jeopardize our ability to codify some of these protections into law. Should we be calling a special session to deal with law to protect abortion access in addition to these other things?
[00:22:41] Claudia Kauffman: That's certainly up to leadership to decide that and I don't believe that the Senate is going to - they have a comfortable lead in terms of their numbers, the Senate Democrats do. And so I don't believe that's going to - they will lose all those in one swoop.
[00:23:04] Crystal Fincher: But if the House did - even if you passed it through the Senate, it potentially wouldn't make it through the House. Do you think it's, do you think it's just probably likely that Democrats will retain control and so we might as well wait to get it done, or do you think it is more urgent than that?
[00:23:24] Claudia Kauffman: It might be more urgent, given the redistricting that's happened and what's happened with the Redistricting Commission. That was a real disappointing, 10-year -
[00:23:38] Crystal Fincher: That was a lot of things.
[00:23:39] Claudia Kauffman: Yeah, so -
[00:23:43] Crystal Fincher: Certainly not an ideal process, and we're still waiting to see what the ultimate outcome of the redistricting is, but certainly questions about fairness - whether a variety of districts across the state adhere to the Voting Rights Act. But it looks like we're gonna be voting in these districts right now, so if it were up to you, would you think we need to move on a special session or take some more time to plan and wait until regular session?
[00:24:16] Claudia Kauffman: Yeah, maybe - wait until after, because even after the election, people are not in until they're sworn in - and that's in January. I think they'll have a better idea after the elections.
[00:24:33] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. And now you made mention about taking action to make housing more affordable. Lots of talk across the country and the state, in Seattle and elsewhere - we are certainly no exception to this housing affordability crisis. And the cost of housing has skyrocketed - certainly, a lot of people's property values and home values have skyrocketed. And as people are looking at the equity that they have grow, sometimes that makes people feel wonderful. At the same time, that's creating - with strained housing supply, lot of investment property buying, and increased percentage of renters that we're seeing - people are having a harder and harder time managing the rents that are rising faster than they have before. And on an individual basis, rising year-over-year at higher percentages than we've seen them. What should the Legislature do to make housing more affordable in this district?
[00:25:43] Claudia Kauffman: I think we can do a few things. One, as I mentioned earlier, invest additional money into the Housing Trust Fund so that more dollars, state dollars can go out for affordable housing. I also believe that the state should invest and look at investment in community developments - community-led, like El Centro De La Raza is a perfect example. They could build housing, so it's not just the for-profit developers who are going out and getting land from cities to develop housing. It really should be community-led, community-driven and build that capacity within our communities - non-profit organizations 'cause nonprofits - they work hard within their communities. So I think if we invest in the capacity building and invest in community-led non-profits - in their vision for their community to create more housing, more affordable housing as an option. Transit-oriented housing - we have the Sounder train that goes straight through Kent and Auburn. And then increasing opportunities - training, technical assistance for home buyers, provide down payment assistance on a realistic level - since the housing market has been so high, we need to be able to match that in a real sense - so that is meaningful in a down payment assistance program.
[00:27:40] Crystal Fincher: Should we be increasing zoning, including in single-family areas to help broaden the ability to build more supply and have more options for people in our communities that are more affordable?
[00:27:55] Claudia Kauffman: I grew up on Beacon Hill in South Seattle and in a single-family neighborhood. And I really just loved it - and loved all the houses, individual houses on the blocks and blocks and the alleys and the number of neighbors that we had. And given Seattle's history of redlining - is all, mostly all communities of color. And I just love that neighborhood. And so I understand the desire to preserve that neighborhood as single-family. But I also don't want to have undue laws on local cities that say that you have to do that. I think there's a - I think there should be an opportunity to involve communities, neighborhoods, and cities to help identify how we can have additional housing units that provide that density. And a lot of people do it without even realizing that - I was at an event the other day and one of the candidates was like - yeah, I got a mother-in-law house and I rent out this house. I said - See, you're already doing it, you're already creating that middle housing.
[00:29:23] Crystal Fincher: That is exactly middle housing, but unfortunately that's exactly the kind of thing that is not permitted in many of the single-family areas without an increase in zoning. And I think one thing that people are trying to contend with is certainly - I've also lived in single-family neighborhoods and a sense of community, wonderful, lots of nostalgia from childhood and thinking about wanting to preserve that - but because of the constrained supply, what was the neighborhood, the neighborhoods that we grew up in 20 years ago are very different today. And the average home values in those same neighborhoods - in Beacon Hill is approaching, it's over $800,000 now, in a previously redlined area and a diverse area. But an area that's seen a lot of gentrification and a lot of displacement because those same homes cost quadruple what they did even 15, 20 years ago. And cities have had this much time to take action themselves and to work together with their neighborhoods and haven't. So do we expect that to change in the short-term without any additional action or prompting, by the state, or do we feel like we need to take more definitive action to help people to be able to stay in neighborhoods, afford them there? How do you balance that and what should be done?
[00:31:00] Claudia Kauffman: I think it's a great opportunity - thank you for the question. I think it's a great opportunity to invest in communities, to have more community organizing and community development programs that can work specifically so there is reduction in the gentrification of a neighborhood or a community. And work with the community to reinvest state dollars to improve local area and providing more assistance to homeowners that are there for updates and repairs. But I also think that it's an opportunity to work with the cities to develop those programs and you don't want it to turn into a big fight of "not in my neighborhood."
[00:32:08] Crystal Fincher: Which is where, how it's been, which is how it is - actually.
[00:32:13] Claudia Kauffman: Yeah.
[00:32:13] Crystal Fincher: And so do we continue to just say - okay, they're saying they don't want it and so let's just keep things rolling as they are, or - you did talk about community investment and development. Do you think that is enough to address the crisis that we're facing with just affordability overall?
[00:32:47] Claudia Kauffman: Yes. And I think no - I think, sorry - I'm saying - is words coming out of my mouth? I'm saying - yes, I agree with you. Not, yes.
[00:32:56] Crystal Fincher: I gotcha, I gotcha.
[00:32:57] Claudia Kauffman: I was like - yes, that's perfect. So - no. So that's why I think the state needs to work with the local cities to find a solution. What went through the State Legislature did not pass, but it did create a tremendous amount of concern from the local state governments about their involvement in the decision that would have a direct impact on cities. But there is a need, there is a housing crisis - we need to have housing and housing availability, and I would get back again to community and community organizing and having it being community-led. But if you do that, if there's also a large demand for duplexes and fourplexes within areas, then I think they should be able to do what they wanna do with that.
[00:34:07] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I think that's part of the issue and especially speaking with a lot of candidates who are out on the trail and existing legislators, including Jessica Bateman, who had that middle housing bill. There is fear that when you say - Hey, we're gonna upzone this - that someone's gonna have a humongous apartment building and there's gonna be a 20-story building that gets built next door. But in reality, some duplexes and triplexes, fourplexes are really indistinguishable from other housing - you wouldn't know it's there. And so it's always an interesting discussion hearing that, because it seems like there's a lot of preconceived notions and a lot of fear that's existed. And people afraid of new people coming in or what they have changing, and what seems to get lost in that discussion a lot of times and you talked about it - was just that it already is changing. And we just have to dictate the kind of change that we want. And do we want to build change that enables people, a wide variety of people, diverse people, people of different incomes and backgrounds to be a part of the community? Or are we going to keep moving in the direction of change where it's becoming more exclusive and harder to afford and really limits the diversity of people, the type of people that can live within a community? So I'm sure there'll be a lot of discussion of that heading, moving forward.
I guess as we are getting ready to wrap up - being that this is a competitive race, you are gonna be on the primary ballot. You are running against a sitting Kent City councilmember, Satwinder Kaur - two sitting Kent City councilmembers - Satwinder Kaur, who's a Democrat, and Bill Boyce, who's a Republican. As you're talking to voters, what do you tell them as they're considering who to vote for, what the differences are between you, what will be different about their lives if you're elected versus your opponents?
[00:36:37] Claudia Kauffman: First of all, I'm Claudia Kauffman, I'm a former state Senator. I've been in government relations for over 20 years. I bring a wealth of experience and understanding, plans, purpose. I have developed relationships with state legislators, local leaders - in those relationships, I cultivate and I work and I maintain good working relationships with a number of people. And so for me, I will hit the ground running - knowing my district and knowing the needs of our community. My priorities will be based on the values that will honor the 47th district.
And I've been deeply concerned about recent decisions that the Kent City Council has taken - the recent $1.5 million settlement for assistant police chief. And they had to return or pay a developer $750,000 because they sold him a property so he can develop on it - and only to find out - no, you can't do that, that was a park, you can't just sell a park. And so it was - there's just some decisions that have been happening. Also, they all voted for police in the schools. I'm concerned about just the overall interaction - that the police chief's wife is the head of the PR media for the City of Kent. I think that creates a direct conflict. But that's the operations and that is also the atmosphere in which people feel comfortable doing those things. And so for me, I don't believe that they have set any kind of tone to how you need to operate and what your values are. I haven't seen anyone stand up and say - oh, this was wrong. And so there's a lot of things that have been happening within the City of Kent that are disturbing or concerning to me. You have to be fiscally responsible for your government and your government's money - because you talk about growing economic wealth for everyone, but you can't do that as a city if they're constantly paying out millions of dollars in settlements and then expect to have it be brand new and better this time around. I don't see that happening and that's concerning.
[00:39:57] Crystal Fincher: I hear you - thank you so much for joining us today. We will continue to keep an eye on this race and see how this turns out. And I'm sure we'll be talking about this more throughout this election and into the general election. Thank you so much for joining us today, Claudia.
[00:40:14] Claudia Kauffman: Thank you.
[00:40:15] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by former Seattle mayor and current Executive Director of America Walks, Mike McGinn. Mike starts off discussing what he looks for in candidates. Then Mike and Crystal spend time talking about the Seattle City Council putting ranked choice voting on the ballot, how that impacts the conflicting approval voting initiative, and the differences between both systems. Next, they break down reporting on how the lack of housing is actually the leading cause of homelessness, and what it will take to properly make an impact on our state’s homelessness crisis. Finally, Crystal and Mike ask why elected leaders continue to politicize, ignore and defund public safety programs that have proven to be effective.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Mike McGinn, at @mayormcginn. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
Vote by August 2nd! Need to register to vote or update your registration? Go here: https://vote.wa.gov
“People Power Washington’s 2022 Policing and Public Safety Voter Guide” https://www.wethepeoplepower.org/wa-state-legislature-2022
Available now for State Legislature primary races! https://www.wethepeoplepower.org/washington-state-legislature-candidates-2022
“Seattle City Council puts ranked-choice voting on the ballot” by Melissa Santos from Axios: https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/07/15/seattle-city-council-ranked-choice-voting-ballot
“Cause of homelessness? It’s not drugs or mental illness, researchers say” by Gary Warth from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/cause-of-homelessness-its-not-drugs-or-mental-illness-researchers-say/
“Homelessness is a Housing Problem,” by Gregg Colburn & Clayton Page Aldern
“Mayor Harrell Wants to Give Cops an Extra $30,000 to Work in Seattle” by Hanna Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/07/13/76404101/mayor-harrell-wants-to-give-cops-an-extra-30000-to-work-in-seattle
“King County Expands Public Health Approach In Response to Rising Gun Violence” by Natalie Bicknell Argerious from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/07/14/king-county-expands-public-health-approach-in-response-to-rising-gun-violence/
“Seattle Might Soon Defund a Promising Police Alternative” by Will Casey from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/06/23/75477450/seattle-might-soon-defund-a-promising-police-alternative
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today we are continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a cohost. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show - one of our favorites - activist, community leader, former Mayor of Seattle and Executive Director of America Walks: the popular Mike McGinn.
[00:00:57] Mike McGinn: I think we need to add a little more to that intro - I think we need more, I think we need more. Glad to be here, thank you so much.
[00:01:05] Crystal Fincher: Glad to have you here. This past week, we actually hosted a couple of candidate forums - one in the 37th legislative district, another in the 36th legislative district - because ballots are arriving, you should probably have your ballot, or get it tomorrow if you don't have it yet because the election on August 2nd is upon us. In one of those forums, one candidate that you had endorsed got emotional talking about your endorsement meaning a lot to them, so certainly popular with a number of people - largely, just because of the work that you have done. So appropriate that we're here talking to someone who has gone through many campaigns himself, right as we have so many people going through that same process, and everyone is receiving their ballots so they can vote. What's your take on ballots dropping? What are you looking out for? What are your thoughts?
[00:02:08] Mike McGinn: Yeah, it's so I - number one, I'm appreciative and maybe I shouldn't advertise this, but when people call me and ask me about running for office, I almost always speak with them. I guess - call me before you announce is my one thing - as I tell people, there's only two times when you're pretty much guaranteed coverage in a race - when you announce you're in it and when they announce the election results. So you really wanna get out the gate well, and I think a lot of people tend to think - well, I just need to get in the race, I need to start telling my friends, and I need to start raising my money - they haven't really thought through what it is they're doing and why they're running. And that's the thing I look for the most in a candidate - is there values - and I think we have a tendency, and sometimes Democrats in particular have this tendency, to look for the policy positions and someone's depth of knowledge on policy issues.
And I think that's important, but to me, the policy positions are usually important because they're gonna reveal something about the underlying values of the person - what really matters to them, what do they choose to highlight, and how do they choose to approach it? So I don't expect, particularly first-time candidates for office, to have depth of knowledge on a wide variety of issues. I think that's unrealistic, and I think you're just rewarding the facile mind or the person who reads the - the policy wonk type who reads everything all the time. I'd be looking for who's the person who really has been engaged and has put their values into action, shown where their heart lies by what they've chosen to work on and how they've chosen to work on it. And you might be able to forgive a little policy difference here or there if you feel like their heart's really in the right place, 'cause people can tell you the right thing when they're running 'cause they know what'll ring the bell, but what will happen when it gets hard? What will happen when the pressure hits? Will they stick with that, or will they move somewhere else?
And so that also leads to one of my favorite questions for a candidate - tell me a time you did something hard, even if it might have been unpopular. Tell me, and what was, it? And that's another thing I look for. So it matters to me what people have chosen to work on over the years and where they come from, and that's what I tend to base my endorsements on. Are they gonna be able to do something hard when the pressure of office gets in there? 'Cause if you don't do something hard before you get elected, you're probably not gonna do it after you get elected - the pressure's too much.
[00:04:48] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, you will not do it after you get elected. And we've talked about this a bit before, but absolutely that, and a lot of times people look at running as - oh, this is really hard, once I just win this election, then I can to the work of governing and - but no, it gets harder, it gets much harder. The work begins once you finish your campaign, which is a scary thought for people going through all of the ups and downs and work of - it's certainly a lot - but it does not get easier, the scrutiny and the accountability only grows from there. And so I'm similar - after all of the time that I've spent just paying attention and watching candidates up close and seeing how they operate before they run, during the campaign - translates to how they govern. 'Cause a lot of the things that you do when you're actually running for office don't translate to the job of governing and meeting the needs of your constituents.
And it really is this issue that I think we're facing all over the place - how can we have Democratic majorities, Democratic governor, leadership House and Senate, Congressional majorities, yet be stuck on what we need to pass, even on things just like - hey, we need to act to codify women's right to abortion services, people's right to privacy in law - and we don't have the votes to do that in Congress. And even calling a special session here, within a Democratic majority, and so a big question is not just - Hey, are you progressive? Are you a Democrat? Do you know what the right policy is? - 'cause every single one of those people running and people we see running in the state do know the right answers, right? The answers that will make people nod their heads and agree with them and - okay, they like it. But when Congressional leadership and House leadership is saying - Hey, we're close to passing this bill, we just need - this isn't gonna fly - so-and-so member over here doesn't want this provision that is key to serving people in your community who you know need it, we just need you on the Yes vote, don't hold this up, don't be difficult, don't do that, you're not playing that kind of stuff. Are you going to say - No, this is important and I'm a No without that, or I'm going to need this in, or how do we work this in, we can continue to talk but this needs to be in and we need to figure out how to get there - where those things are not going to be compromised away.
Because we've done a lot of the easy stuff - a lot of the problems that continue to get worse, like housing affordability, we're seeing rights recede, we're seeing income inequality continue to get worse. And the action needed to solve those problems, the action needed to solve homelessness, the action needed to solve to make our streets safer - that's the hard stuff. That's the stuff where there is not uniform agreement among Democrats or progressives. That's the stuff where there is not agreement from leadership in these bodies to say - okay, let's do that. That's the controversial stuff. And we need people who will stand up and say - We have compromised that away before - we've taken action on all that other stuff, it's time to move on this stuff that we know is critical to making our future better and not just perpetuating these same things. That's my feeling.
[00:08:38] Mike McGinn: Well, we've got this - you're previewing an issue that we're gonna talk about - housing and homelessness - I almost wanted to jump right in there with that, but I'm also really intrigued by what has happened with, as folks may know, there was signatures collected to put approval voting on the ballot this year. Meaning a change in the system by which candidates are elected in Seattle would be put into the City Charter and apply in future elections. And the basic concept of approval voting was that in the primary you could select every candidate that you approved of. And that has a certain appeal when you have, as we do here in legislative races or City Council races coming up next year, you'll have seven or eight candidates and you don't wanna waste your vote on someone that doesn't stand a chance of winning. And so that was the appeal. And as background, there's a sizable contingent of folks who've been proponents of ranked-choice voting and who've opposed approval voting. But they have spoken to the City Council, and the City Council is now - City Council has a choice when something collects enough signatures to go on the ballot - the City Council can either just put it into law, they can send it to the ballot, or they can send it to the ballot with an alternative. And the City Council has approved an alternative, which is to use ranked-choice voting, to select your top two.
So you get to select, I don't know how many ranks they're gonna put in, but you'll be able to rank the candidates in the race. And the lowest-ranked candidate - they count multiple times - so everybody goes like 1-5 for their candidates, or whatever the number is here. And once they tally the first round of votes, the lowest-ranked candidate gets knocked out and everybody who voted first for that person, you look to their second-choice votes and add them in. And you keep doing that until somebody - until in this case - until you reach top two for the primary. So in one case you just - everybody I like. In the other case, you go - here are the people I like in the order I like 'em, and that will end up picking our top two. And it's just - I'm sorry, I know I'm doing a lot of explaining here - but the other part of it that's fascinating is the way the ballot is is - Do you think we should do something different? is the first question. Should we consider an alternative? And if you say yes, then they will ask - Which one do you like? Do you like the approval voting or do you like the ranked-choice voting? So we're gonna have a great discussion here about - 'cause let me tell you something - ranked-choice voting advocates and approval voting advocates both really, really care about why their system is better than the other. So we're gonna hear a ton of that, but I think there's a fundamental question, which is - Why change what we have? Because that's the first vote. And so -
[00:11:44] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that is the first vote.
[00:11:45] Mike McGinn: That's the first vote. And I don't know - I'll put my cards on the table - I'm definitely voting Yes, that let's change what we have. We can talk about why. And I don't know - I wanna hear all the arguments about which is better than the other as this debate progresses, because I do think - I personally think both would be better - that's my take.
[00:12:07] Crystal Fincher: I have a different take. We talked about this a little bit before in the program - I do have a different take. We have been discussing ranked-choice voting, there's been a movement for ranked-choice voting for quite some time in our state from a lot of community advocates in a lot of areas across the state. This is something that has had support on the ground from within different communities and different counties across the state. I will tell you that I do like ranked-choice voting and if the vote were up to me, I would choose to do that. But I will also say that we've tried ranked-choice voting in Pierce County before and it didn't go very well. And not because there was a flaw with ranked-choice voting, but because we need to invest in the voter education that it takes to do that.
It's one thing for very online people - people who live and breathe politics and policy who are going through and know what the ballot question is gonna look like from the Council, and we got the update on the Council decision. Most people do not have the time, or even know where to begin to look, or have the inclination to figure all that out, right? And they're dealing with elections pretty much when they see their ballot arrive in their mailbox. And there are lots of people in different situations - there are lots of people who do not have home internet access - the majority of my neighbors do not have home internet access where I live. They're looking at stuff on their phones, they're doing different things, but it's not like they're getting a lot of information online. And for people who are not plugged in online and getting all of the alerts from government - there actually isn't great outreach person-to-person, through the mailbox, people - hey, this is gonna change. And if someone gets a ballot and they don't know what to do with it, the decision that they most often make is not to vote. And that confusion is just a bad feeling for people who do want to vote. And that causes a - hey, what what do I even do with this, I don't know.
And so I think ranked-choice voting is excellent. And I think that we have to make sure that there is a planned investment and strategy to make it work, to outreach to every community, to reach out to people in language, to work through community centers, to work through churches, to work through everywhere - to make sure that the community understands that this change is coming and this is how to work through it. And not just a - hey, we're gonna have some news coverage as ballots drop and that kind of thing. But months and months beforehand to do that - that is what it takes to really enfranchise people. Or else we're gonna see really low-turnout elections and a lot of frustration and a lot of pushback that reflects on the system, when really it's a reflection on the implementation. And that would be the case for either one of these initiatives, really - that's not just tied to ranked-choice voting. I think that was a lesson that we learned that would apply to any kind of change. So I personally would just implore anyone working on this to have a plan that isn't reliant on the news getting the word out, that isn't reliant on people learning online what to do - that you are going out and educating the people about the change because in order to empower the people and to enfranchise the people who are most frequently left out, that step is critical.
[00:15:45] Mike McGinn: I think that's absolutely right. And a few different thoughts - one is that there is that threshold question of why change. And one of my fears in this process is that the proponents of either approach will focus on the - why is my - what's the difference? And it's natural in campaigns for - just campaigns don't like gray, they like black and white. And so the opportunity here for the proponents of one to say that the other one would in fact be an unmitigated disaster, if approved, is gonna be really strong. But that leads to a really interesting point because - what is the goal of the proponents of each? Is it to get a change, or is it to actually - or would they prefer that the voters not approve the threshold question? And I don't know, I'm not trying to - I'm not, this isn't coming from any place of knowledge, of motivations of anybody - on my part. But that could be a concern - is that the voters could say - we're just gonna vote No to the change at all. And that would put the idea of change further in the rear-view mirror, or further off in the horizon to actually get a different system in the future.
I do think the advantage of both - just to go to the threshold question - is just in fields where you have five or six candidates who feel like there are gradations of difference, or maybe there's a couple in that camp and a few in that camp - the ability to say these are the people in my camp that I would be happy with. And again, under the system, you can just bullet vote approval voting - I'm just gonna vote for one, I'm not gonna vote for anyone else 'cause I don't wanna - this is the one I really want and I don't wanna help anyone else. Or you could say three or four are acceptable - I suppose in ranked-choice voting you could do the same - I'm just gonna vote for 1, 2, 3.
[00:17:50] Crystal Fincher: You can choose to not rank.
[00:17:50] Mike McGinn: Yeah. Or you can choose - I'm just gonna vote for one, I'm just gonna bullet vote for one 'cause I really don't wanna help anyone else. But that's less likely 'cause you probably wanna show who you're saying your choices are - yeah. And so I think that gives - I think that puts more power in the hands of the voters. It is a little discouraging that it's in August of an odd-year - so it's a small number of voters expressing their preference, as opposed to a general election or at least an even-year election where you've got a big turnout for Governor or President or Senator or Congress and the like, compared to the odd-year.
[00:18:31] Crystal Fincher: Well, I think the approval voting forced that hand because I do think that, and I think lots of people and the Council made the case when they approved this yesterday - that the people, especially for the length of time that people have been advocating for ranked-choice voting here in this area, that people do deserve a choice. And we were at the point with approval voting that they may not have had a choice about the kind of change that they wanted. So hey, if we're gonna vote on a change, let's actually have a conversation about the change. And I do think that the approval voting making it on the ballot helped that.
You talk about, you mentioned - what is the motivation, do people actually want the change, do people not? I think that's a multi-layered and very interesting question. And I think, as we've talked about with candidates lots of times, and I think applies here is - well, who supports it? Where is the support coming from? Who is launching these initiatives? Do they have a history in this community? Is it external? Are these big-money interests who have a history of donating to causes and you can see their alignment with you or not? I think a lot of people are questioning, I know a lot of people are questioning that with the approval voting initiative. And the question about - do we want change? I think a lot of people are questioning, given some of the really big-money interests involved, is that - are they enacting change now to prevent further change? Is really one of the big questions, saying - Hey, we see the polling about where age groups are, where the increase of renters, where increasing number of people are not just getting more progressive, they're like, okay we gotta flip this system, and we need to fundamentally transform a lot of these systems that we're seeing. That is not a negligible percentage in Seattle and it's on the precipice - they can win City Council seats. We have a Socialist winning City Council seats, we have other very strong progressives winning City Council seats, and they're getting closer and closer to being able to win Mayor once again. And so I think that everyone sees that coming, and we're seeing a national movement in the same way that they see demographic shifts happening that makes it less likely that the Republican Party would maintain control without enacting legislation that limits things that expand the numbers of people who are enfranchised to vote. I think this is similar in that we see this change coming and it's unnatural - Let's make a change and make it sound progressive and do that - that's certainly what a lot of people are talking about.
[00:21:25] Mike McGinn: I hear that, I hear that - but sometimes what people think they're doing and what they're actually doing aren't the same thing. And I would think about district elections in the City of Seattle. Do you remember who brought us district elections - turned out to be, it was Faye Garneau and it was Eugene Wasserman and -
[00:21:46] Crystal Fincher: Wasserman - that's right. And another Ballard -
[00:21:50] Mike McGinn: Yeah, and these were - they were business-aligned people who - I knew all of them, of course, 'cause they were really active in their communities and in ways that were positive, even if I didn't agree with -
[00:22:10] Crystal Fincher: Positive and negative - I agreed with them on some stuff, disagreed on others.
[00:22:12] Mike McGinn: Disagreed on others, but yeah - Eugene Wasserman didn't didn't like the bike lane on Nickerson - he represented the North Seattle Industrial Association. But he did appreciate - he was trying to, he was working to protect businesses in Ballard and that was his motivation and it was a fine motivation. But I think that - the reason I bring this up and I really do appreciate that those individuals - is that they were in some degree responding to the fact that the downtown business community had so much influences compared to the local, the business districts and business people outside of downtown. And it had that effect, but it also had the effect then of reducing the influence of the Chamber of Commerce, even though they're spending tons of money still - in fact, the reason they're spending more is 'cause they have to spend more to deal with the fact that somebody can get elected in a City Council race by knocking on a lot of doors and having a better grassroots effort and it costs less money. So I think that while they were hopeful it would lead in one direction, it actually led in a somewhat different direction. So I tend to look more closely at what would happen under approval voting than what might be the motivation.
And I almost regret bringing up motivation because I think it puts people in a hard spot - I think what I was trying to get at earlier was, if you're campaigning for ranked-choice voting, are you okay with nothing getting through and we'll come back with ranked-choice voting later, or do you really want to get a Yes on the first vote and get it through. And I think the same thing is true of the approval voting advocates - are you okay with getting the Yes vote on the threshold question of, Should we change?, even if it means that ranked-choice voting comes in as opposed to what you prefer. And I think that that might change how either side approaches that threshold question in the case they make. Will they be more interested in saying what's wrong with the other guy's approach or the other person's approach, as opposed to really laying the groundwork for why we need a better system and why we should be looking at the two of them?
[00:24:27] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that's interesting. I also think - and I don't know how that's gonna turn out, I think it's gonna be fascinating to see what the goal is. I do think it's telling, looking at the strategy, that certainly approval voting felt more comfortable on the primary ballot than in the general just to get it over the finish line in a lower turnout election. I do, even on that one, I do think there's - I don't think the business community is a monolith. I absolutely think there's value in not letting our mega-corporations that happen to reside here dictate policy, because that does contradict what a lot of neighborhood business associations, local business associations, what small business wants, which - there are lots of small business organizations and Seattle Chamber organizations that support the JumpStart Tax - it has a ton of help in there for small businesses. However, Amazon has a different take on it. And so those interests are not often aligned. And while looking at the amount of businesses that are facing lease increases and citing that as a reason that they're going outta business, there is an income inequality conversation in the business community that is very similar to the one in the personal community. And I do think we should talk a lot more about that, just in general, 'cause those interests are not - they're not aligned and small businesses are increasingly saying we're being harmed by the practices and impacts of big corporations and what they're doing and the effects that their practices are having within the community. That said, we'll continue to follow this - I think it is gonna be a lively conversation and I do appreciate the points that you raise about it. And it is true - sometimes people think they're doing something and it turns out a little bit differently. So it'll be interesting to see. And I think -
[00:26:35] Mike McGinn: I think it's a worthwhile debate too. I think this is a good debate to be had really between the two systems and I've heard points from both sides that are worthy - everybody's worthy of taking consideration of. I have to just say - I guess I'm just, as a pure primary voter in Seattle myself, I like the idea of being able to pick more than one person in a race or rank them in a race. I just like having a little more agency in this selection process than picking one outta seven or eight candidates and hoping that I made a good, hoping I made a strategic vote as opposed to being able to vote a little more with my heart.
[00:27:16] Crystal Fincher: I also like the idea of having more agency. If I could choose between nothing, approval voting, or ranked-choice voting, I would choose ranked-choice voting. You mentioned politics likes black and white, but reality is in shades of gray. And to me that's another difference between approval voting and ranked-choice voting. And it allows you to know everybody - generally people don't like everyone equally, and you might have - oh, there's a couple who I really like and a number of others that aren't there, or a situation where the person who I like does not look viable and I do actually want progressive policy to pass. And that can be a different situation. But in just a binary approval - binary voting - like, Hey one Yes - you're only voting for one person and that's it. You do have to make additional considerations to say - my vote - I may be able to get maybe not my first choice, but my second choice across the finish line - they, I think, can win. But if I vote for this other person I'm really taking away a vote from the person who can win. With ranked-choice voting, you could say - I know my first choice may not be the person who is on top of the polls right now, but this is who I prefer, this is who my heart says to vote for, they're my number one. And my number two, if they don't make it, I can at least know that my vote wasn't wasted and not going towards a candidate who could take down the moderate-industrial complex. And my interests and where that would be, it would be - I can still have a number two and I know that my vote will still count and not go towards not getting a more aligned interest across the finish line. So I like - I have a ranking, I wanna reflect that ranking. It's my thing.
[00:29:23] Mike McGinn: Okay. Where to next?
[00:29:25] Crystal Fincher: Well, let's talk about this article that was written this week in The Seattle Times by Gary Warth - the cause of homelessness - it's not drugs, it's not mental illnesses. Researchers say it's the lack of homes, which probably if you're listening to this podcast, probably if you've been involved in this kind of policy for a while, you're going - okay, we knew this. But if you look at the general conversation of the public and what we see on the evening news and what we see in headlines in our local papers and the recall elections for progressive district attorneys going on, there certainly is a strong narrative countering that - oh, it's addiction. It's people who are just lawless and who can't follow the norms of society. It's people who are beyond help. It's a choice that people are making. And no, not everybody who is homeless is in that situation. The one thing that everyone who is homeless lacks is a home - that's the biggest issue. It seems obvious, but there are so many things that seem obvious that unfortunately are not believed by some powerful and big-money interests who can control a lot of narratives and characterizations. And so I think the more we talk about this, the better.
[00:30:52] Mike McGinn: It's a - first of all, the authors of the book just deserve a lot of credit because they really dug into the data and what the data showed them. And it's one of those things that you really dig into the data and then you get to the finish line and it then sounds obvious. But the work matters when you do this, which is that - it turns out that there's not dramatic differences in mental illness or substance abuse rates amongst different cities. So the single most explanatory factor was housing prices. Detroit has extremely low housing prices because it's lost jobs and it's been a - people have been leaving town. Now this is a place where you'd think that addiction and mental health issues would be serious, right? People are struggling, people are dealing with hard things - but they don't have the homelessness issue because whatever means of support are out there for people are sufficient for them to afford housing in a way that's not true in Seattle. We have people in Seattle who are working and can't - and are living in their car, they can't cobble something together to get shelter.
And I think we also forget the way in which it works in the opposite direction. That if you don't have housing, if you don't have stability in your life - to escape for a little while into alcohol or drugs - geez, those of us with housing and with an income don't mind having a glass of wine in the evening and forgetting everything and just enjoying the moment. What must it be like for somebody who's struggling on a day-to-day basis? And so it's - I think it's just this - we do this thing as humans where when we see misfortune fall upon another, we wanna try to figure out why it's occurring to them and not to us and so we look to some type of personal behavior factor. Well, that's happening to them because of something they did. And I'll - I won't do those things and it won't happen to me. And it blinds us, I think, to the larger systemic factors that - so I grew up in the New York area, I'm a little older, and I just remember people in New York explaining why they didn't get mugged. Because they had a unique set of walking in the city skills, in terms of being alert and looking around and exuding confidence and fearlessness. It's just, they're just making stuff up, right? They're just making stuff up - it is something that could happen to them if - in certain circumstances. I think we tend to do that - attribute our good fortune to our behavior and other people's bad fortune to their behavior, and in so doing blind ourselves to the systemic factors at play.
So again, real kudos to the researchers here for saying - look, we've looked at the data, multiple cities - looked at all the potential causes. And the one thing that really has a high degree of correlation is housing prices between - correlation between homelessness rates and housing prices. And it also then becomes an excuse for us to not allow more housing, right?
[00:34:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah - to not act, to do anything to fix it.
[00:34:14] Mike McGinn: Right. It also enables us to say - well, we don't have to fix this, we don't have to allow an apartment building or backyard cottages or mother-in-laws. We don't have to allow, we don't really - for some people, in this case, this would be more the well-off corporations in town - we don't have to pay more for affordable housing for people who live in a nice neighborhood. There'd be like - well, this is just a problem of individual behavior and my opposition to new housing in my neighborhood has nothing to do with this. And so it's just a way to blame the victims and avoid accountability and responsibility for the systems we've built. And again, real kudos to these researchers for laying it out and I hope more people can be moved by that and have the logic of that overcome, I think, what is just our human nature. I just hope we can rise above that.
[00:35:13] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and we will link this book in the show notes - it's "Homelessness is a Housing Problem" with co-authors Clayton Page Aldern and Gregg Colburn, who've done a great job. And your point about - we love making excuses for why the things that we see with our eyes that are horrible problems that should not happen are things that we don't have a responsibility to help to fix, because someone did something wrong to wind up in that position. And it really reminds me, as we talk about COVID, as we're still in this pandemic - well, you didn't do this and you didn't do that. And someone's choosing to do this and either - well, this person can just choose to do something different. I don't need to take a precaution because I'm gonna be fine and if you don't feel like you're gonna be fine, you can choose to stay home. So that's a choice that you have and we don't have to take any other action in order to fix that. Or even with sexual assault - so frequently focuses on the actions of the woman. Well, what were you wearing? Why were you even in his hotel room or around him at that time? Did you lead him on? Well, you were out on the - why did you start to do anything with them? And it has nothing to do with the person who has been sexually assaulted - so the cause of rape is rapists. It's not anything that the woman is doing. It's the person who is perpetrating that sexual assault and our focus is so often in the wrong direction. Or victims of domestic violence - well, did you make him mad? Did you - what did you do?
We're always looking for what someone did to wind up in that situation to basically justify why they deserve to be there, why they are not worthy as a person of anything better. And often that then goes to tying it - so since you are an unworthy person, since we have deemed you somehow immoral or undeserving, then you need to do these menial works and jump through all these hoops to prove to us - to basically purify and cleanse yourself back into worthiness again. And then - which is how we get means testing, it's how we get all of these programs that - well, you can't be in the condition that you are now, you're gonna have to clean up and take these classes and go to church service if you are going to be worthy of a spot in housing for us. Otherwise you're just kinda stuck out on the street. So it's - we have to get beyond blaming individuals for what research repeatedly shows are systemic problems. And this is a problem with homelessness, this is a problem with public safety, this is a problem with our public safety net, and issues like that. So I just - I'm happy this came out, I'm happy this is being exposed to more people. Lots of people when they encounter this are just immediately - obviously, this is the case. Or no, it's not - these people are choosing to be blah, blah, blah, blah, all the stuff. But there are people who are just like - okay well, I see that it's wrong. And if there is something that we can do to fix it, why wouldn't we do that? It's to all of our benefits.
[00:38:37] Mike McGinn: And I think one of the things that deserves to be mentioned in here too is that stable housing turns out to be an extraordinarily great treatment for people with mental health or substance addiction issues. 'Cause I think another piece of just the throwing up of the hands - what can you do with somebody who has mental health issues who doesn't want housing? What can you do with somebody who's fallen into addictive patterns? We all know how hard it can be to change that behavior for an individual, whether it's a personal experience with people closer to us. Well, stable housing does a hell of a lot to help with that and that's - the data shows that as well - that that alone, without any other supportive services, can be extremely helpful to changing somebody's trajectory and how they deal with the world.
[00:39:30] Crystal Fincher: You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right.
[00:39:32] Mike McGinn: And lot more cost effective than the systems we have.
[00:39:35] Crystal Fincher: Well, absolutely. The city of Houston in Texas - we know that Texas is dealing with a lot and their leadership has a lot of challenges. But Houston, Texas housed 25,000 unhomed people with a Housing First policy with exactly that - they know that housing is a stabilizer, they know that if we can get people into housing, it actually increases the likelihood that they can successfully address any other co-occurring complicating issue. Getting 25,000 people off the street in Houston, Texas - you're telling me Texas can do this and Seattle can't? Washington can't? We see these examples of success all around us and we're really willing to throw up our hands and say - Ugh, it is happening elsewhere but not here, but let's enact this sweep and invest all of this money into doing that when we know these people just wind up at another park, in another encampment, and further destabilized from this. It just doesn't make any sense and these things do need solutions, but we need to stop doing things that we know don't work and start moving towards where the mountains of evidence point to success. It is possible to do this. It is possible.
[00:40:57] Mike McGinn: Well, it seems to me, you've segued into our third topic here.
[00:41:00] Crystal Fincher: We have definitely segued into our third topic and it is - in the realm of public safety, as we were just talking about, this week news came out that Mayor Harrell wants to give cops an extra $30,000 to work in Seattle - an article in The Stranger written by Hannah Krieg talking about further investments in trying to address the shortage of police that Seattle is saying it has and trying to do this. And in this - one, there's lots of conversation about - is this even an effective intervention for the police hiring problem? Even if it was, this is - we can't hire cops and have them on the street for at least a year. This is a solution - even if this were to work to make people safer, even if - hey, this is what we need to do - this isn't a solution until late 2023, 2024. And we have gun violence escalating, we have all sorts of crimes and people being victimized, and people rightly justifiably saying - We need action taken now to make our streets safer, to make - to keep people's property from being broken into, to keep people from being victimized. And we keep talking about things like hiring police that have nothing to do with improving public safety today.
And on top of that, this is coming on the heels of news that gun violence is extremely high - there was an article this week by Natalie Bicknell Argerious in The Urbanist. And also on news that Seattle is actually defunding an alternative response to public safety that actually was working and making people safer. The JustCare We Deliver Care program resulted in a 39% reduction in 911 calls - people on the ground are seeing things improve, there's less things happening that need intervention. This - if the police department was achieving these numbers, we would get that touted in every news release in the world, right? If any program was doing this. There was something that was working and it's being defunded. Why are we defunding public safety that works? I do not understand that - to then invest more in things that don't even have a chance to work for a year at best. It just is - I don't understand why we continue to invest in this.
And the people in Seattle - we've seen that poll where when asked where - public safety is on the top of people's minds. And they're saying - what do you want done about it? If you could invest your money, where would it be? They're saying in behavioral health and addiction treatment services - treating the root cause of these issues. The people understand what is really needed and they understand the deficits, but it seems like we have this administration and several of them, frankly, that are just refusing to acknowledge or respond to that.
[00:44:21] Mike McGinn: I would love to see the City Council hold hearings on and bring in experts on what are the most effective ways to reduce shootings and look at this from multiple perspectives. 'Cause what you see is when shootings go up or when crime goes up, it's just the pounding the fist on the table of we need more police. And we spend so much on police and we see where we're at. Let's try, let's really try the spending on the other things. I was looking at the statistics on this - the number of young people that are showing up in emergency rooms with gunshot wounds has just skyrocketed in King County. And what happened to the youth violence prevention initiatives that were started under Greg Nickels, expanded under - during my administration. We've had a lot of reporting on the number of police officers, or 911 response times, or why the police are unhappy and disgruntled, and whose fault it is that the police feel underappreciated? Is that the fault of the public for protesting or the fault of the City Council for suggesting that things should be defunded? Just 10% of that ink was spilled on what works to reduce shootings - okay, I'll ask for 50% of the ink be spilled on that. What really works? What are the proven programs? What's not working? And putting some of that pressure on the elected officials to show progress on this.
And I think that the debate of number of police officers, and again, I believe personally that you do want an officer to respond in a timely way to a crisis, but that's not the only function of policing and it's certainly not the only thing of public safety. We also see - not surprising during a pandemic where people's lives were turned upside down, where people were stuck at home - we've seen a rise in domestic violence. So what are the strategies here? What would effective interventions look like? And I don't have an answer to that off the top of my head, but I tell you - if I were in this position, whether City Council or Mayor, that's what I'd be calling people in. Not debating the size of the bonus, right? And the amount of time we've spent in hearings on this question - 'cause it plays, I get it, it plays. But really calling folks in. And I think I'm repeating myself here, but this is a great place for Mayor Harrell to call a summit across the spectrum. What will it take to do this and call in the people in the City who are on the frontlines of working with youth, working with those in distress, working with domestic violence victims - and really just let's get all of the strategies on the table and let's start putting price tags to those. Tell me the programs that you think are working, tell me the programs that you think we don't have, tell me the programs you think that are not as effective as they could be, right? Or just tell me your needs and we'll invent a program for that need.
This is the time really and it's - when there's a crisis like this and it is a crisis - the number of shootings in the City is a crisis. When you have this many gunshots, when you have this many people being wounded, there's a lot of pressure on elected officials to have the answer, to come forward - I've got something for you. But the danger of that is, is if you come forward and you say - I have an answer and we're gonna do this thing - it may work in the moment with the media or with the voters - Oh okay, well he's acting on it or she's acting on it. But if it doesn't actually change the trajectory of the issue, then it's just gonna come back around and get you as an elected official a couple of years later. And that's - and will also the effect the issues of trust in government and right track/wrong track. And we already have a lack of trust in institutions - the right track/wrong track numbers nationwide are horrible, last mayoral election they were terrible in this City. I don't see anything that's turned that around. And so this is a place where if you're gonna build trust and start moving those, start moving more people - those right track/wrong track numbers to a better place - this is really - this is not the time for - I've got the answer that plays well today in the media. This is the time for - I've got an answer that's gonna work over a longer term.
So, public safety summit - pull everybody in and make it real, not for the cameras, make it real, make it multiple sessions and really come out with a series of initiatives around that - would be my recommendation to the mayor. And the City Council can jumpstart that by holding in-depth hearings on these topics - topic at a time, bring in the experts, really start building the pressure for looking at this.
[00:49:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that's really important. And I think your point about - look, this is not for the cameras. This is not the time to score political points. You can take it completely out of the political realm. It doesn't have to be where the mayor's at versus where the council is at. We happen to have a wonderful university smack dab in the middle of Seattle - more than one. And the University of Washington is a tremendous research university with criminologists who study this, whose job it is to look at the data. And as we talk, and as Mayor Harrell talks about how important it is to examine the data about what works - public safety is broader than just policing, it's broader than just community response. It involves a lot and to have people and to always include the voice of people who are truly experts on public safety and everything that encompasses - that's not an interview with the police actually, in the same way it's not the interview with a councilmember or an interview with the mayor. That's an interview with experts in crime and what reduces crime. And experts in safety and what increases that. So why do we not see criminologists quoted more frequently in The Times or interviewed by our evening news? Why are we not seeing that happen more frequently - that to your point - we have hearings and interviews and advisory groups and summits with people who are truly experts who understand and can share what is working across the country. What is working globally? What has worked locally and what is not working? What kinds of results, what kind of investment, what kind of return are we getting financially and in terms of safety and benefit to the community?
I get frustrated that we keep this conversation so small and so limited and just this tiny focus in and repeated focus, unfortunately, right now on - well hiring, just hiring and there's so much more to it than that. Even if that is an ingredient, there's so much more to it that we just are ignoring while people are dying, while people are being victimized, while there's problems getting worse. And it's time someone actually steps up - just take this out of the political realm, talk to the experts and act.
[00:52:21] Mike McGinn: I would include - when I say experts, I would include the community members who are - I think this is really important.
[00:52:29] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely.
[00:52:29] Mike McGinn: I think this is something we have to remember - that police are not the only guardians of the community. There are lots of people in communities who are acting as guardians - not in the sense of walking around with a gun and the opportunity and the monopoly on the use of force. No, in the sense of we care about the people here, we're trying to figure out how to help young people mature and get good jobs, in terms of we're trying to make sure that our neighbors are fed, that we're welcoming new immigrants into the community and helping set them on their feet and move forward. There are all of these people who really dedicated themselves to the idea that their community should be a better and stronger place. And they are - they have a lot of knowledge. They have a lot of knowledge and are experts as well in this regard. And bringing them in - and I think that's something we forget - is that public safety is a partnership between all of the guardians of the community.
And when we're in this situation right now where - and this is one of the reasons why excessive use of force by police, or biased policing, or let's be really clear - or the public calling for biased policing, right? There are elements of the public that are calling for - we need to move the homeless out of downtown. Or I see somebody in my neighborhood who doesn't look like he belongs, which often means that they might be a Black person walking through a white neighborhood. All of these things where the public calls upon the police to do these things - that breaks down trust between community and police. And I think that's another piece of that - of restoring the partnership - it's why the police department needs to be different than how it is. And it's critical to success. And I think this reliance on policing as the guardians of the community is just destined to failure because it's just not how the world works. We don't - policing alone does not keep community safe. It cannot keep community safe by itself, yet that's the discussion we have when public safety comes up and we don't have a meaningful discussion about all the other elements.
[00:54:55] Crystal Fincher: I completely agree. So we will continue to keep an eye on what's happening at the City. I hope the conversation does expand. I do completely agree with your call for a summit - bring in experts from within communities in Seattle, make use of the experts at the University of Washington, and get down to what actually does make people more safe. And goodness, don't defund things that we have wonderful evidence are doing the exact kinds of things that people are calling for to happen that make people more safe. And that frankly reduce the workload for SPD. We talk about a 39% reduction in 911 calls at a time when 911 calls are being cited for a reason that police, that Seattle police, are not investigating sexual assaults, they're not processing rape kits. This is a crisis. Why in the world would we defund something that is helping and making that more possible? It just seems like we are determined to run in the wrong direction to placate people's sense of retribution through punitive solutions that really are just backfiring in a way that won't be good politically. This is not the kind of record you wanna run on - what's going right now - you wanna have something that you can say - we did invest in the things that were working and it's paying off. And so it'll just be interesting to see how this conversation evolves.
[00:56:35] Mike McGinn: And one of the articles you referenced at the beginning here, which is the police alternative program called We Deliver Care - that's exactly what we're talking about. These are people acting as guardians of the community, who aren't police officers but through their relationship with people who are experiencing homelessness or that are in distress - yeah, they've reduced 911 calls because they are able to deal with it through the services they directly provide. Yeah, this is - let's just put aside whether you're compassionate or not compassionate, whether you think one approach, where your ideology starts about what you think is the right thing or not. If this is delivering better results for less money, let's - maybe that'll move you, right? If this is delivering results, then let's do this. And that's I think what the We Deliver Care folks have been showing 'cause it's expensive to respond to 911 calls. It's expensive and if we can free up those officers for other work - solving crimes, getting through the backlog of cases that they need to investigate, breaking up burglary rings, breaking up theft rings - there's work that police can do that they're better suited for. And for people who are dealing with folks that are homeless - that are in distress and need help - let's get the right people for the job for that too.
[00:58:08] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, July 15th, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistant producers Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. Today, we are thankful that our cohost Mike McGinn, who is an activist community leader, former mayor of Seattle and current Director of America Walks - you should totally follow America Walks, great work happening - he's here. We're thankful that he was here with us today. You can find Mike on Twitter @mayormcginn. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, and now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever podcasts are - we are there. Just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our midweek show and our Friday almost-live shows delivered to your podcast feed. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this midweek show, Crystal has a delightful conversation with Washington Supreme Court Justice Mary Yu about her path to becoming the first Asian American, first Latina, first woman of color, and first LGBTQ+ justice on the court. They discuss the importance of state supreme courts in light of recent decisions that threaten people’s rights on the national level, how that translates to why we should scrutinize judicial elections, and common misconceptions people have about the state Supreme Court. Justice Yu then shares about efforts to make courts more accessible and equitable to everyone, what she’s most proud of in her career, and how people can be involved in restoring confidence in the justice system.
Notes:
This episode was recorded before the end of filing week in May. The candidate filing deadline passed without any challenger filing to run against Justice Yu, so she will appear unopposed on the November ballot and serve another term on our state’s highest court.
This episode was also recorded before the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, hence the reference to the leaked draft about overturning Roe vs Wade.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and Justice Yu at @JudgeMaryYu.
Resources
Washington Supreme Court Bio - Justice Mary I. Yu: https://www.courts.wa.gov/appellate_trial_courts/supreme/bios/?fa=scbios.display_file&fileID=Yu
Campaign Website - Justice Mary Yu: https://justicemaryyu.com/
“Who's Marrying the First Gay Couple? Judge Mary Yu” by Dominic Holden from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/blogs/2012/12/08/15483647/whos-marrying-the-first-gay-couple-judge-mary-yu
Justice Mary Yu On Jimmy Kimmel Show: https://vimeo.com/673039715
State of Washington Commission on Judicial Conduct: https://www.cjc.state.wa.us/
Washington State Court Rules: Code of Judicial Conduct: https://www.courts.wa.gov/court_rules/?fa=court_rules.list&group=ga&set=CJC
Civil Right to Counsel or “Civil Gideon”: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/legal_aid_indigent_defense/civil_right_to_counsel1/
June 4th Letter - Washington Supreme Court: https://www.courts.wa.gov/content/publicUpload/Supreme%20Court%20News/Judiciary%20Legal%20Community%20SIGNED%20060420.pdf
Washington Leadership Institute: https://www.law.uw.edu/academics/continuing-education/wli
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, I'm once again just so excited to welcome to the program another very distinguished State Supreme Court Justice - Justice Mary Yu is with us today. Thank you so much for joining us.
[00:00:51] Justice Mary Yu: Oh, Crystal, thank you for the invitation. I really appreciate your interest and I'm looking forward to having a fun conversation.
[00:01:00] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And so I just wanted to start off talking and ask you - what was your path to the Supreme Court?
[00:01:08] Justice Mary Yu: Well, I came from the trial court - so I was a trial court judge in King County Superior Court for 14 years - that felt like a lifetime in many ways. And prior to that, I was a prosecutor in the King County Prosecutor's Office. And then before that, I was just frankly very proud to be working, doing some organizing work in social justice in Chicago. So a little crooked path, but nevertheless, it's what brought me to the court here.
[00:01:38] Crystal Fincher: Well, and I have found that those crooked paths are sometimes the most useful and oftentimes give you such helpful perspectives because you're not just coming from one point of view, you've seen things from different perspectives, have walked in different shoes, and have been able to see that. And you're actually the first Asian American, first Latina, first woman of color, and first LGBTQ+ justice on our State Supreme Court. What has that meant to you and how do you think that impacts the work that you do?
[00:02:08] Justice Mary Yu: Gosh, Crystal - being the first sometimes can be a real burden in the sense that I know that I worry about not messing it up for others. I'm worried that, really, my path will create more opportunities for others. And so I'm aware of the fact that when people see me, they see all of what you just described. And I think at one level for our community, there's a lot of expectations that others will be able to follow, that this has opened up the door for all of us. On the other hand, I know that with that comes a lot of assumptions about it - our community - some will be positive, some will be negative. I think some people in their own mind wonder or not - I have a packed agenda or am predisposed to do something or decide a case in a particular way because I'm first. And I don't think that that's true, other than I do bring a level of sensitivity to what it's like to not have resources, what it's like to be other, what it's like to be an outsider. And frankly, I see that that's an asset at our table because there are nine of us and it means nine different viewpoints. And frankly, I think the viewpoint that I bring of the other, the outsider, a person of color, a person with little economic resources growing up - they ought be at the table too, not to control, but to contribute.
[00:03:33] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, that's such a great point. A lot of people are just now figuring out how important our courts are, our supreme courts are - not just at a national level, but especially if we lose rights at the national level, our states are really our firewall and the only thing standing between a lot of people and their rights. So right now, when we are basically looking at the overturning of Roe vs Wade - there was the leaked draft that looks like it's going to become official at some time soon. How do you view the state of not only abortion rights, but the ability to be covered by contraception and just access to healthcare for everyone. Where do we stand here in the state? And where do you stand, as a justice, in how you approach these issues?
[00:04:33] Justice Mary Yu: Yeah, well, Crystal, I think you're right in the sense that a lot of these issues are going to be decided eventually by state supreme courts. And so state constitutions are pretty important and state supreme courts are important around the country. Each one of us is different, if you will, because our constitutions are different. So there really is no exact pattern of what this all means. In the State of Washington, I think we've already had the executive and the legislative branches indicate that they intend to protect the right to abortion, that they intend to protect healthcare rights for all people. And our branch - we don't declare policies, right? We will wait for a case to come to us. So at one level, it's inappropriate for me to comment on what are we gonna do when that happens. And yet at the same time, I can say is - our court is very protective of our own State Constitution. In our own state, we have had a long history of protecting privacy and individual rights. It's a long track record that our court's not gonna step in and undo. So I think Washingtonians can feel very comfortable that our court's going to follow precedent, our court's going to continue to protect the rights of Washingtonians as we have done for the last couple of hundred years, in some ways - even the territorial courts.
So, it's right to be concerned. I can see the concern that people would have of what does this all mean when you look at the United States Supreme Court? But my understanding when I have reviewed the opinion - it really is seeming to indicate that these issues should be decided at the state level. And of course, I think they would be decided by the legislative branch.
[00:06:19] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. I think one thing that surprises people still sometimes - for as much as people who are involved in politics and who do this know all of the rules and policies and everything surrounding elections - I think a lot of people, talk to a lot of people who see our federal Supreme Court being appointed, and then being very surprised that we elect our Supreme Court justices in this state. How do you think that impacts just how we should be looking at the Supreme Court, how we should be looking at these elections, and what is at stake with our State Supreme Court elections.
[00:07:01] Justice Mary Yu: First of all, I do think that everybody ought to scrutinize all judges in all judicial elections. I think it's really important that Washington State has retained the right to vote for their judges. Now, what's interesting is we have a hybrid because when there's a vacancy, someone is appointed to fill the vacancy before they're subject to election. For example, I was appointed initially by Governor Locke to the Superior Court. At the Supreme Court, I was appointed by Governor Inslee and then stood for election. So in many ways we have part of the same process in terms of an appointment, but the check on it, if you will, is elections. And elections are an opportunity for the electorate to really evaluate someone and decide whether or not they want to retain that individual as a justice in our state.
Unfortunately, people drop right off in the sense that they don't vote all the way down ballot. We are always at the bottom of the ballot and most people would say - I don't know anything about judges. There is an interest this year - because of all these issues that you mentioned, people are suddenly looking and saying who's on our court and what does it mean? And what's their track record and who are they? I think that's a good thing. I think it's really important for people to educate themselves, take another class on civics, and understand who's on our court - how many, who are they, what have they written, what have they said? Because they will - ultimately may be the decision makers on these important matters. It's not only in terms of healthcare, perhaps abortion, but it really includes questions related to race, incarceration, the death penalty - all the things that are important to people and touch them in every single way. So, I hope that people will pay attention, that they will bother to actually invite us to come and speak, invite us to come into classrooms, into forums. All of us are always willing to answer questions about what we do.
[00:08:59] Crystal Fincher: And I do have to say - in our interactions with you, you have been exceedingly willing to talk and to share and just wanting to help people understand how the process works, how they can access and be a part of the process. And I really do appreciate just talking about how critical it is to engage in judicial elections at all levels. And even when it comes to just same-sex marriage and rights that people have to love the person who they love without penalty or consequence - was looking back, it was super fun - back in 2012, after the long and hard fought battle for marriage equality was won, you were actually on Jimmy Kimmel doing [Perfectly Named People] and you officiated the first same sex marriages in Washington State. What does it feel like - just the euphoria of that time and winning rights that so many had fought for so long to secure, to landing back where we are right now, where that looks to be in jeopardy once again?
[00:10:15] Justice Mary Yu: Yeah, it's really interesting because when we talk about crooked paths, it was a crooked path to get to the place where same-sex marriage would be legal in the State of Washington. Unfortunately our court went - it had the opportunity to decide the matter, decided it incorrectly - and then it went to the people and it was really the vote of the people. It was a popular vote that really granted us the right to marry the person that we love. Again, another check on all of our systems. For me, I have to admit that my bailiff, who was a young Japanese man whose parents had to go to someplace else to get married because they lived in DC and could not marry because they were an interracial couple, said to me - Judge, we shouldn't wait one more moment for people to marry who they wanna marry, so let's start to do weddings at midnight, as soon as the law takes effect. And it was, as you described, it was a joyous moment. It was something to celebrate because finally we had equal rights, right? The right to marry who you love.
I would say, Crystal, I don't think that's in jeopardy in the State of Washington, given that it is the law and there hasn't been a challenge to that law. And regardless of what may happen at the federal level, that's not going to really jeopardize the law in the State of Washington as it exists now. Now, if there's a challenge to it because of some federal action, that's a whole different matter - then it would make its way through the legal system, and perhaps somebody might challenge the law that was enacted by the citizens somehow, but that's not the pattern everywhere in the country. And despite the fact that we have a little comfort in the State of Washington, I think we should be concerned because we care about other people, and we care about other people in other states where they don't have a state protection and they did rely on federal law to grant them the right to marry someone. So what we're developing, which should be a concern to everyone, is just this big checkerboard in the country of rights being different, depending on where you live. That's a serious concern, especially for people who are transient - for example, those who are in the military - should their families have certain rights in one state and yet when they move, not have those same rights in another state. And we know that those military personnel will be moving around to different states, so it's a real concern.
[00:12:46] Crystal Fincher: It is an absolute concern. One other concern that I've heard a number of people raise is just looking at the quality and the qualification of judges - there being a number of concerns at some of the judges that have been appointed, particularly in the last administration, who aside from questions of partisanship, just on questions of - do you understand the law as it is, in order to protect it. And people may have different perspectives on how to protect the law, how to decide if a case is consistent with it, but truly understanding and being just qualified enough to sit there and make those judgements is a different issue than partisanship. You happen to be rated "Exceptionally Well Qualified" by several bar associations, you're endorsed by all of the other State Supreme Court justices, and just so many people. I could spend, literally five minutes, just talking about all of the awards and accolades that you've been given.
But when it comes to some of our local judicial elections that don't receive a lot of scrutiny, where a lot of times newspapers that used to cover those and that used to look into the backgrounds of judges - they've lost a lot of resources - and so there is a fear that there could be people who land in our courts here in this state that just aren't qualified, that are coming with an incorrect perspective of what the law is, who the law protects, and how it should operate. And that especially given this national climate and with some of the just extremism that we have been enduring, that that poses a real danger for local communities, potentially even when we do have a State Supreme Court that is doing its job correctly. How do you view that risk?
[00:14:58] Justice Mary Yu: It's a real risk to begin with - what you described isn't something that's sort of a sci-fi movie. It's a real risk, but that's why people like you play an important role, as well as other media outlets. You do invite people to come and speak and talk with you. You have the opportunity to ask some questions and to help educate the electorate. As long as Washington remains a populous state where elections are important, you will always face the risk that there could be somebody who's not qualified or not competent to serve. It's the risk we take, it's the price we pay for the right to vote, the right to selection, the right to have a voice, and not to give up citizen power. But I would hope that the bar associations and other people would continue to try to make themselves available to rate judges, to ask questions, and to try to educate the broader community about who these people are.
[00:15:54] Crystal Fincher: What do you think are the most common misconceptions that people have about the court?
[00:15:58] Justice Mary Yu: Sometimes I wonder whether there are misconceptions or frankly realities, because I think a lot of people think that our courts are bureaucratic, insensitive, do not treat people of color fairly. And as much as I wanna be defensive about ourselves, I think some of that is very real - is we have to do a better job of becoming more accessible, of becoming a little less bureaucratic and simpler in our procedures. And we're trying to get there. I think some of the other unfortunate misconceptions are - is that we are groupthink or that we decide decisions together just to get along. And yet, if anybody studied our opinions, they would see that is hardly - hardly - the reality is it's hard fought, we sometimes will split 5-4 on some cases. We do our job best when we are in disagreement. So we're not a groupthink entity - none of our courts really, I would hope, are just stamping just to go along and create an assembly line.
Every so often you might have a judicial officer that brings shame on the rest of us - somebody who has done something imprudent. I know there are a couple in terms of some sexual assault allegations and that's harmful because it hurts the whole judiciary when something like that occurs. But I think overall, we have a really functional system in the State of Washington and it may be because we're very transparent and open, and people can walk into our courtrooms anytime and watch the proceedings.
[00:17:31] Crystal Fincher: You do bring up an interesting issue where there are a couple of judges that are the subjects of investigations or controversies, currently. There was just a recent situation where a judge had used the N-word and had some other behavior that their colleagues thought was inappropriate. Do you think our system of discipline and accountability for judges at all levels is sufficient?
[00:17:59] Justice Mary Yu: I do. I do think it is. The Judicial Conduct Commission has the ability to investigate if there is a complaint. And I can say from personal experience, they are robust in scrutinizing judges and trying to really enhance confidence in terms of what we do. I think it's pretty robust and it's a very open process - anybody can file a complaint - that person's identity is protected, so there's no risk to them because judges can - right - they can punish, they can be coercive, they can manipulate. I think it's really important to protect people who would file a complaint, and we have that process. I think probably publicizing the rules might be a good thing in the sense of more people should know that in the State of Washington, we have a code of judicial conduct. We do have a code that governs how we should do what we do. We have a code that really guides us in terms of when we should recuse or not. We have a really strong board of ethics that will provide an opinion if a judge needs specific advice on a particular circumstance and probably the public does not know that. And I would say we might do a better job of letting people know.
[00:19:16] Crystal Fincher: That is certainly very helpful. I do think a lot of people don't know. I'm also wondering what more can be done to help people, even if they don't come with a lot of resources, to participate in our judicial system and to be protected by it at all levels in our state. There are so many situations where - not so much at the Supreme Court, even though people are still trying to figure some stuff out there - but where a defendant may be up for eviction and they're in a tough situation, and coming in and they don't know all the rules, their landlord knows all the rules, seems to be very chummy with everyone else in there, 'cause they own a lot of properties and it seems like the system is working for them. They're all familiar with it, they're doing the same song and dance that they do all the time to the detriment of someone who still has rights and protections under the law. What more can be done to help people, especially those who are not familiar with the system or who don't have the money to hire people who are, to be able to receive all of their protections that they're entitled to.
[00:20:30] Justice Mary Yu: We've been working really hard to try to increase civil legal aid. And that is to try to ensure that people have representation on the civil side as well. We've received a lot of money from the Legislature this past year to really offer representation to individuals who are being evicted. That's just one particular circumstance, but I have to admit that I'm very sensitive to the fact that there are a lot of hearings where people not only are at a loss in terms of housing, but their jobs, benefits, the inability to access healthcare at times. There are a host of issues where people need representation, so I have to admit that I'm a fan of civil representation 100%. I would love to have a case come to us that gives us the opportunity to do the same thing we did on a criminal side. And that is "Civil Gideon" - is to say that everyone deserves the right to be represented by an attorney, regardless of your income. I know it would be expensive, and yet the rights that are at risk in the civil arena are great, right? It is to be homeless, to be without a job, to be without benefits - are very real things for individuals. So we're trying, I think - our court and along with others are big advocates of trying to ensure that there is civil legal aid available to individuals.
[00:21:54] Crystal Fincher: That would be tremendously helpful, and certainly would cost more. I do hope that we get better as a society. And as we - we're having legislative elections and conversations right now, but that we also examine the cost of going without it and what it means to potentially push someone into homelessness, or out of a job, or into financial crisis because they don't have healthcare or the services that they need - it is so costly. And often in ways that can't be compensated or reimbursed. So I just - I completely agree with you and thank you so much for bringing that up. What are other challenges you think the Court is suited to address within the justice system?
[00:22:48] Justice Mary Yu: Well, I would say two areas I know that I have spent a lot of energy on that I think are very important is - one, has to do with funding of our courts. As you may know, our courts charge for everything, and you have to pay a filing fee, we also use monetary sanctions. And why do we do that? Because we have to fund ourselves. So I'm a big advocate that some day - there has to be some heavy lifting - and our courts really should be part of the general fund, so that we are not the cash registers. So we don't have to collect the funds in order to pay for the services that we're providing. We're a branch of government that ought to be, again, accessible and available to everyone. I know of no other branch where you have to pay before you get served, and yet that's what happens in our court systems. I know the judges, who are in our municipal courts or in our district courts, feel awful about having to constantly collect money in order to sustain therapeutic courts or any other kind of court that serves people. So that's one that I think is really important and we're working very hard on.
The second is we're really wrestling with how do we eradicate racism from our system? It's systemic, it's institutional, and it's taking a lot of work to invite everyone to say - how do we do this better? How do we examine ourselves and our practices and how do we change? So we look at jury diversity, we've looked at legal financial obligations. We are trying very hard at every level to say - this is our responsibility, it is our duty to ensure that every single person can be guaranteed truly not only access, but a fair process. So we're doing a lot of education at this point. And as you may know, in 2020, our court issued a letter to the entire legal community inviting everyone to join us in examining our systems and to eradicating racism at every level. So we're doing that heavy work - those are the two things that I have as a priority, and that I think are important.
[00:24:54] Crystal Fincher: And I appreciate that in our recent conversation with Justice Whitener, we talked about that letter and just how important it was in the role that our court took in leading the country, really and acknowledging that and stating plainly this is a problem that we are responsible to solve. It is widely acknowledged - I certainly believe we can't start to solve problems until we acknowledge them, and so having that acknowledgement and having people who are, who seem to be doing the work to fix it is something that I appreciate and I'm thankful for.
You - again. I could go on about all of the accolades that you've received for quite some time. You received the 2019 Crosscut Courage in Elected Office award. You recently, just late last year, had your portrait unveiled at Seattle University. You have - my goodness, there's so much - you received the 2020 Latino Bar Association Trailblazer Award, the "Established Leader" Pride Award from Mayor Jenny Durkan in the City of Seattle, the 2018 "Voice of Social Justice" from the Greater Seattle Business Association, the 2017 "Lifetime Achievement" - and I'm telling you, I - this is literally about a sixth of the things that I could list from you. As you look at your career, what are you most proud of?
[00:26:34] Justice Mary Yu: It's a hard question. It's hard because when I think about my life and not just a career, I think I am most proud that I think I fulfilled my parents' dream. And that's because both of my parents came to this country very, very poor with nothing. My mother was a farm worker. My father grew up on a ship that just floated around the world for years - he was a boy without a parent. And their dream when they came together, I think, was simply to provide an opportunity for their children to have food on the table, to have a decent job, and to maybe have an education. So when I look back and I look at my life, I think I'm most proud that I fulfilled their dream of in one generation, having the opportunity to be successful.
When I look at my career, I would say the thing that I'm most proud of is having been a mentor to so many young people of color who have grown up and who are now judges. I am proud to be the co-chair of the Leadership Institute with Mr. James Williams, where we have graduated 196 lawyers from our leadership program and our focus is on underrepresented lawyers. And what we do is just really enable and empower them to see their gifts and talents. And we have a lot of them who have become judges. And we have one who is the US Attorney for Western Washington - Nick Brown was one of our graduates. So I would say I'm most proud of those acts because it's about giving back and it's about enabling others to do this work, so I would be very happy to rest on those laurels, is to say - you paid it back, Mary, and that's what it's all about.
[00:28:33] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and they would be so proud and that you are also helping to enable that for so many other people in this state - I certainly appreciate. And I guess as we are looking forward and your continuing service on the court, assuming you're going to be re-elected, assuming all of us get out there and vote to make sure that happens. What do you most want to accomplish moving forward?
[00:29:06] Justice Mary Yu: I wanna continue to do what I am doing, 'cause I think that's really important. And I'd like to put some more energy into restoring confidence in our courts. I'm trying to respond to Eric Liu's call to be concerned about the health of our democracy. His call has really resonated with me that we can't live with just accepting polarization - this is not the future of our country and the future of who we are. And that all of us, as judges and lawyers, we should be very, very concerned about keeping our democracy alive, keeping it healthy, and frankly being engaged.
[00:29:47] Crystal Fincher: And if you give people some advice on how they can help ensure that within our judicial system, what would you say?
[00:29:57] Justice Mary Yu: Crystal, can you pose that question again? I'm sorry.
[00:29:59] Crystal Fincher: Oh, sure - no problem. If you were to give folks, one piece of advice for how they could engage with our judicial system, or something that they could do to help it be more equitable and healthier and to restore that trust - what advice would you get for people for what they could do to help that?
[00:30:19] Justice Mary Yu: I'd say come to jury service - come to jury service and be a part of the decision making. Restore confidence in what we do - when I was a trial judge, I remember talking to the whole pool of jurors, 70 people who were just dying to get outta there. And I would just say before you raise your hand and ask to leave, I just want you to imagine and think about this - that if it were you, would you not want somebody like yourself to be sitting there to be the decision maker? Because all the people who come into our court system, they're there because there's something really important to them. The things that they hold most near and dear - and it could be innocence in a criminal trial, injury that they haven't been compensated for, some unfair contract, whatever it might be - it's something important to those individuals. And who would you want to be seated, sitting there, listening to this. Would you not want somebody like yourself? And I'd just say - just pause and think about that. And I'd have to say hands went down and people became a little embarrassed and thought - well, yeah, I guess I could do this. I can't do it for 10 weeks, I could do it for two days or three days.
So I would say to everyone is - please, if you have the opportunity to serve as a juror, do so. You become the fact finder, which is the most important part of a trial - is somebody who determines what is true and what is not, or what you wanna believe or what you don't wanna believe. It doesn't even matter if it's truthful or not. What do you believe and how do you determine credibility should rest in the hands of other people? So I would say that's something everyone can do - is please come to jury service when you can. And if you get that summons, that's the beginning. From there, you'll be able to see the rest of the flaws and then maybe you can help us figure out the rest.
[00:32:17] Crystal Fincher: Great advice. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today - sincerely appreciate this conversation and all of the work you've done and continue to do. Thank you so much, Justice Yu.
[00:32:29] Justice Mary Yu: Crystal, thank you so much.
[00:32:31] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by the former Director of Progressive Majority who has now transitioned into public service but remains involved in numerous political efforts across Washington, EJ Juarez. It’s another week of upsetting news, which starts off with a discussion about the jury’s decision in the inquest into the police killing of Charleena Lyles, and how this ruling is yet another example of how we need major changes to the way we handle police misconduct and violent force. In related news, Crystal and EJ discuss why the city’s upcoming agency to investigate police use of deadly force was delayed. In housing, they look at the Seattle City Council’s vote to not override Mayor Harrell’s veto of a bill that would have required landlords to report their rents, and how landlords have been successfully fighting off efforts to oversee their choices for years. Next, EJ explains the origins of Seattle’s approval voting initiative, and how it’s not the local effort it’s been made out to be. Crystal and EJ then look at King County’s plans to handle the anticipated increased need for abortion services in Washington, and talk about what’s needed to curb Seattle’s rising traffic deaths rates.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, EJ Juarez, at @EliseoJJuarez. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Charleena Lyles’ family reels after inquest jury finds Seattle cops justified in her shooting death” by Kate Walters & Catharine Smith from KUOW: https://kuow.org/stories/charleena-lyles-family-reels-after-inquest-jury-finds-seattle-officers-justified-in-her-shooting-death
“New agency to investigate police use of deadly force delayed” by The AP from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/new-wa-agency-to-investigate-police-use-of-deadly-force-delayed/
“Seattle Won’t Make Landlords Disclose Rent Gouging” by Hannah Kreig from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/07/06/76070585/seattle-wont-make-landlords-disclose-rent-gouging
“Seattle’s approval voting initiative, I-134, explained” by Melissa Santos from Axios: https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/07/07/seattles-approval-voting-initiative-explained
“King County takes steps to prepare for anticipated spike in abortion services” by Ruby de Luna from KUOW: https://kuow.org/stories/king-county-takes-steps-to-prepare-for-anticipated-spike-in-abortion-services
“Solving Seattle’s Traffic Death Crisis Demands Citywide Infrastructure Investment” by Jason Rock from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/07/06/solving-seattles-traffic-death-crisis-demands-citywide-infrastructure-investment/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a cohost. Welcome to the program again, today's cohost: former Director of Progressive Majority, who's now transitioned into public service but remains involved in numerous political efforts throughout Washington State, EJ Juarez.
[00:00:57] EJ Juarez: Thank you so much for having me back.
[00:00:58] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much for coming back - so many people responded the first time you hosted and were just thrilled with you and your take, so we're happy to have you back.
But actually not happy to talk about this first topic that we have this week. A lot of people were tuned into the King County inquest jury into the death of Charleena Lyles, a pregnant mother of four who called 911 for help in 2017. And she wound up killed by police. What happened here in this process?
[00:01:37] EJ Juarez: I think what happened here is we got to peek behind the curtain, where this process actually showed that the policies and procedures of that department, which is charged with upholding the law and protecting people, is not actually designed to do that. And so this inquest found that despite all these numerous things that could have been done differently, all of these steps - which weren't taken and which were - resulted in, largely, law enforcement officers following procedure and it still resulting in the death of a person. And I think that's probably the most damning and heartbreaking piece of this - if the policy and procedures for law enforcement are truly designed to be followed the way that they were and it still results in the death of a person struggling with mental health, are those policies and procedures valid? Are they necessary? Are they the right policies and procedures?
I gotta be honest - I think this is, in many ways, traumatizing for so many people, right? It does not matter your proximity to Charleena or Charleena's family, who from my estimation have done everything expected of them in the pursuit of justice every step of the way. And they are still not able to get that justice with the tools and processes that we have here in King County.
[00:03:04] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's just such a cascade of failure and tragedy and it's infuriating. And just illuminates in this situation and so many others where - what is justice, what purpose is being served here? If someone - if a small, slight woman with a paring knife is in a crisis and policy dictates that she be shot and killed, then that policy is wrong, harmful, counter to serving and protecting the public. And there have been so many examples lately - lately, as if it's just lately there have been - but unfortunately there have been so many examples lately that kind of make plain that - no, very explicitly, the primary function of an officer is not necessarily to keep people safe. They're responding and then they have actions and protocols that they're permitted to take, that they're encouraged to take, that they can deviate from with no penalty even if they do take them.
And it seems just completely focused on eliminating any potential - I just hate even characterizing it as a threat to the officer - anything that could be perceived as potentially a threat at any time, in any way, regardless of whether the person can actually wield it. And just - okay, let's use lethal force and there is no sub-lethal force in that situation - they're not trained to wound, they're trained to kill. And if this is our response to every situation, how are we not introducing violence into so many police calls? Clearly we've seen that we are, and just our inability to confront this, to deal with it effectively, to allow - basically a marketing effort - a very defensive messaging and propaganda effort from the unions that we hear and - well, "back the blue," and "gotta keep 'em safe" and all of that. And we're not talking about - what are we even doing here? How is this even serving the officers? Just what are we even doing here? And if this is what policy is and if this is okay, then everything is wrong. Then we need to go back to the book.
[00:05:57] EJ Juarez: Yeah.
[00:05:57] Crystal Fincher: We need to fundamentally just start over. It just - it's - I'm at a loss for words - it's just infuriating. It's demoralizing. It's frustrating. It's all of the above.
[00:06:12] EJ Juarez: As you're talking, it makes me think a lot about - this is a pregnant woman who was shot seven times. And lethal force can be a lot of different things, but at what point do we classify super-lethal force, right? Like what does seven shots into a human body actually classify as? And is that the same as a threat with a pregnant woman with a sharp object? Does it warrant that kind of response? And I can't make it make sense in my mind, I know that there are a lot of people who probably are feeling the same way. And at some point, we have to be able to hold officers more accountable than we currently are. I look a lot at the fact that there were six jurors in this inquest process and they were not unanimous in their findings. They were given a bunch of questions - there was over a hundred questions that they had to respond to - and ultimately, what they did find is the officer forgot, or chose not to, or did not take the taser with them into Charleena's building, right? But yet, that failure to do so - despite training, despite I'm sure having regulations and encouragement to take non-lethal tools with them was - that was a choice that was made. And the consequence for that is minimal compared to the loss of someone's life.
And this is where I think it is just so hurtful for the community-at-large, right - where these choices where folks rely on and retreat to what they've been trained on as the defense mechanism for why they shouldn't be punished, or why they should face fewer consequences for not doing their job to the best of their ability, or making different choices - is not equitable to someone losing their life. I think a lot about the fact that - if you have a family member, a friend, or a neighbor who has perhaps a mental health condition in our City, or you have a child with autism or any kind of neurodivergent life - if you call 911 for a burglary, for any kind of disturbance, you need protection and help, the expectation can no longer be in your own mind that you will be safe with that interaction by default, based on this finding and based on the interaction that happened at the Solid Ground housing complex at Magnuson Park.
And I will just say this is that - I don't think there is enough attention given to the fact that Solid Ground managed that facility and Solid Ground, which is a community action agency in Wallingford, was really acting as landlord in that process, right? They have a lot of folks, they're helping a lot of people, doing really good work - but ultimately have been relatively quiet around the fact that this happened to one of their community members. And I find it disappointing that they have not played a larger role in holding the City accountable, as well as playing a larger role in helping community members beyond their own housing - helping them take action and finding their own voice in this process.
[00:09:41] Crystal Fincher: Completely agree. It's - we've got so far to go, in so many ways. The other thing I would just add is - really adding insult to injury was the behavior of the officers, the attorneys during this process. It is - this is a loss of life. The inability to treat that, even in a situation where it is justified, right? This is the loss of life - and to be joking, to be making snide remarks, to be just flaunting that in the face with the family right there - I just cannot imagine - I cannot imagine being the family and having to see and deal with that. I just - beyond words and it just - it's so insulting. It just seems like there is no acknowledgement or understanding - and this is just day in, day out, this is routine - they can joke and that, in and of itself, is terrifying. That in and of itself is - speaks to the culture and speaks to what we're really contending with and it is not good.
[00:11:06] EJ Juarez: Well, it's a culture of where a SWAT team gets called when there's an altercation - a minor altercation - between the victim's family while this is going on, right? Which the actual administrator of this inquest called excessive, and it was entirely inappropriate for what went down. There is a culture of - if you try to hold people with power accountable and especially law enforcement officials, you will be put in your place, you will be dealt with in a very harsh way. And the regard for the sanctity of the life of your loved ones is of less import than clearing the professional reputation of people that may have killed them.
[00:11:48] Crystal Fincher: Completely agree. It is sad. So, there's no great way to move on or transition from that. We will continue to follow what's going on there and to follow what's going on within SPD and law enforcement proper. There is also, on the subject of public safety - a new agency that was designed to investigate police use of force has been delayed. What is the reason for the delay here?
[00:12:26] EJ Juarez: Big things take time. At least that's what we're hearing from those in charge of setting up this new office. I think this is, unfortunately, a really good example of when the legislature and the governor work to set aggressive timelines for work to happen that is paradigm shifting, that is actually going to do really good, important work. We see timelines being arbitrarily set for political expediency or just for emotive expediency - we all want and need this yesterday, therefore the deadline is gonna be tomorrow. And things like this and like this office - imagine having a two to three-month deadline to set up an entire inquest process for the use of deadly force in the state. We can't rush things as important as this - because victims' families depend on it being right and depend on us getting it right. So basically, you've got an administrator there saying - look, this is gonna take longer than the deadline set before us.
And you don't have to look very far for other examples - the HEAL act is a great one, right? The Healthy Environment for All Act, fundamentally shifting how state government agencies respond to environmental justice and disparities - incredibly aggressive deadlines that don't necessarily take into account the central tenet of what they're asking - community engagement, community consent, making sure that you're going through all of the processes to bringing people along and moving huge agencies. And I think that's what we have here. It is unfortunate - given that we are in the middle of a crisis, given what we just talked about - but they are asking for more time and they are saying it will be delayed.
[00:14:09] Crystal Fincher: Yep, and you raise excellent points and it is important to get it right, most of all. Another event this week - so Seattle is not going to make landlords disclose their rent amounts. This was something passed by the Council, then vetoed by Mayor Bruce Harrell, and was going before the Council again - to see if they were going to override the veto from Bruce Harrell. What happened?
[00:14:40] EJ Juarez: What happened is we had a really critical absence of a councilmember who potentially could have overturned that veto. And we had landlords doing their best bad-acting once again, right? We've got folks doing the mom-and-pop story, we've got folks saying they are doing their best to make sure that their properties are affordable. But ultimately this was a policy that was asking for data. This was, at its core, a data collection bill to measure and assess how displacement was happening in Seattle. And you had champions like Tammy Morales and others who were saying this is necessary to implement some of the future plans that the City had, including Alex Pedersen and others. And then you had Sara Nelson and you had others who were saying - Nope, we're not doing this, where you had Council President Debora Juarez saying this was gonna put too much pressure and time constraints on staff to do this work, when in fact the bill was farming this work out to a university and external partners for less cost than it actually would've cost the City to do it in the first place. But apparently those logical and very clear arguments were lost on both Councilmember Juarez and Councilmember Nelson, who chose to oppose this bill along with the mayor which is really unfortunate.
I think the key here is that this was a really standard operating game plan by landlords of - let's flood public comment, let's flood our elected officials with stories about how onerous and ridiculous this bill will be. And then ultimately scare everyone into this process of - we can't do anything because it's too hard. And once again it won, and it drives me crazy because you would think Seattle is full of mom-and-pop landlords - just Joan and Jim down the road who own a building that are renting it out to college kids and they're doing their best, right? It's actually not the case. We have huge multi-billion dollar conglomerates running a real estate interest in the City, and they are the ones who are running the policy on it. Unfortunately there's - to me, and I'm super passionate about this, so you gotta rein me in on this -
[00:16:58] Crystal Fincher: I'm here with you.
[00:17:00] EJ Juarez: - is that at the end of the day, these are investments. Landlords are making an investment in real estate. And when you have an investment, I really believe that you're gonna do everything you can to make sure that investment is producing reliable and good returns. Unfortunately we have, in public policy, written our laws to ensure that renting and landlord - the landlord business, right - is one where it is more reliable and more protected than any other type of investment. You should be able to take losses - that is a part of an investment. And when you're dealing with people's homes and their ability to be sheltered, it is not an equitable discussion when you're talking about someone's choice to make an investment in real estate versus someone trying to retain in the home that they have built.
[00:17:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and this is absolutely a part of the housing affordability crisis. There is a building in - I'm sure there are several - but one where the tenants are trying to take action, where they've been served with notice that for many of them rent is going to literally double and this is not the only situation where this is happening. And when housing is an investment for others and they're doing all they can to reap the investment, there's no restraint on any of it. They're going after profit and they have no concern whatsoever that - well, this current tenant can't afford it. Well, someone else will - it's a tight housing market because there is not enough housing in the City, so too many people are competing for this housing and willing to settle and overpay - and which causes the displacement of people and often they can't afford to stay in the City. Which means the loss of not only their home, but the community and networks that they've built, potentially their jobs - this is so upending to people's lives.
And we're not even curious about what's behind this? The City and this administration that talks about wanting to collect data for everything, and let's set up a dashboard for everything and let's learn the facts, we wanna make data-driven decisions - yet, we're so un-curious about this, we're bending over backwards to not require the disclosure of information that's disclosed in several other settings - in the middle of a housing affordability crisis, which also is making our homelessness crisis worse. And they are crises, absolutely. It's just - the deck is so stacked in favor of those with wealth and power. And that is increasingly fewer and fewer of us that - and entire communities are suffering.
[00:19:59] EJ Juarez: They're suffering and I think - you say that, you've said that it's stacked against community. I would also say that it's stacked in favor of folks who wanna take an academic view of this, right? This is a city that really rewards the meta-level theoretical approaches and indulges people in this what-if olympics around - well, if we do this, this'll happen and we can't do that, so let's do this. And instead of actually letting it play out and doing - meeting immediate need in the moment when people are unsheltered, when people are being displaced out of the City - we have a dashboard for it like you said. We've got a study coming for it. And this was another study in that vein, but it's one that actually was needed and is already required of the work that is there. Unfortunately, it caught the attention of the landlords and it was killed because of the fact that they have continually played the same playbook over and over and over to actually skirt accountability and skirt the ability for cities to ask them to do more in this process.
[00:21:02] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - so it's a shame. So we continue to go on with no discernible plan on the City level to do anything about housing affordability. Certainly some of the help provided with the JumpStart Tax, which has been upheld in court once again in the past few weeks, does provide some assistance. But as far as this overall systemic problem, there is no one - Bruce Harrell has been cagey when talking about whether there's the need for upzoning, especially in single-family areas for more inclusive zoning, taking the steps that we know will allow for the overall increase in housing supply, in addition to the other steps that are needed to do this. So, just doesn't seem to be a plan, just doesn't seem to be a priority, which is really insulting to the huge numbers of residents who are suffering right now. And especially with all of the other financial pressures that people are facing in every way right now.
Also this week, Melissa Santos from Axios wrote an article about Seattle's approval voting initiative, which will be on folks' ballots as I-134 in the City of Seattle. What is approval voting - who's for it and who's against it?
[00:22:27] EJ Juarez: So I absolutely love this story. I've been looking forward to talking about this because very rarely do we get to talk about stories where there are legitimate billionaire super villains involved. And that's what we have here. So we'll start with approval voting. So imagine you get your ballot in the mail and you've got 20 choices - approval voting basically gives you the option of choosing not just one, you might get to choose three or four different candidates that you're like - generally, here's my squad that I would want to take forward into elected office. Proponents are saying this will give you a much more broad sense and much more broad base of people who are supporting a set of people who are most representative of the voters' will and desires. Opponents are basically saying this is going to give you centrist candidates, this is going to push out people that are ideologically furthest away from the center.
And I gotta say - the folks on each side of this are battling it out on Twitter daily, are absolutely hilarious to watch - but ultimately only one crew here is billionaires with money spending in areas of the country where they've never been. So the folks that are putting this on the ballot - a failed City Council candidate, Logan Bowers, who is essentially making this his hobby, and he got his rich billionaire friends from across the country to put in a bunch of money to put this on the ballot here. Meanwhile, community organizations like the Washington Community Alliance, Fair Vote Washington, others who have been deeply invested working with communities about how to make elections better and more representative from the functional administration standpoint are saying this is a bad deal for everyone. Don't do this. So super excited that we're gonna have this battle royale between folks who don't live here, and we get to hopefully see how this plays out with our community organizations that are saying ranked choice is the way to go, or any number of other fixes that are not approval voting.
[00:24:36] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and this is happening amid talk about several other fixes. We're going to be talking about having elections in even years for local positions and not odd years, there is the ranked choice voting that's also being talked about and looked at in other counties right now and certainly momentum for moving forward. Where did this come from? Approval voting - ranked choice voting has been talked about for years - it's actually been implemented in Pierce County before. Even-year voting has been talked about for years. Approval voting seems to have suddenly popped up this year. Where did this come from? Is this happening in other places? What's going on with it?
[00:25:23] EJ Juarez: This comes from the brain of rich people with nothing better to do. This is the culture of donor-driven politics that has really dominated much of Seattle over the past decade, where folks with money decide on something that piques their interest and then say - I'm gonna place this on the ballot and we're gonna build a coalition around it, versus the other way of actually taking community interest and support and then advancing something to the ballot. They're taking the opposite approach because they have resources and wealth. So this primarily is coming from the Center for Election Science, which is a nonprofit that specifically advocates for approval voting. This is an East Coast outfit - they've put in over $200,000 into this effort. Now, no one from Seattle, no one from the Northwest, was involved with this besides Logan Bowers and a couple of other folks.
So it's really critical to know here that this approval voting scheme is exactly that - this is rich folk who wanna play in elections, who just say that they're on the left - unlike the right, who are playing in elections in a very different way. But they're changing the rules of the game without bringing community and without bringing those that have historically faced suppression, intimidation, and barriers to the ballot box. The other group here is you've got Samuel Bankman-Field, who's this CEO crypto bro, who's put in another $135,000 into the effort. So again, the folks that are trying to advance this proposal are not folks that are experiencing barriers and that are saying - I am not represented given the current way we elect folks.
[00:27:07] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this is interesting. And what I am most moved and concerned by is exactly what you just talked about - if we're trying to make improvements in voting, usually it is to talk about - Hey, these people are experiencing barriers, these people have been disenfranchised and we're trying to help them, to help remove barriers to people voting. We're trying to help improve access, to improve turnout, to get more people involved in the process. And you cannot serve people who are facing barriers without including those people who are facing those barriers. You can't speak for people. You can't do what you think is best for someone if you're completely uninformed about their perspective and if they aren't involved in helping to shape the policy for them. You have to include people who are most impacted in whatever policy is being shaped. And so the absence of that, just to me, is a humongous red flag, in addition to all of this out-of-town money - this is not something that Seattle has been clamoring for and asking for. And you could say that about other things, like even-year elections and ranked choice voting - there's been lots of talk within community for years about that. So I am extremely skeptical, we've talked about this before, we'll see where this how this proceeds. But I'm skeptical. We will see, we'll certainly be talking about this a lot more on this program as time goes on.
Also wanna talk about this week, as we continue to deal with the fallout that's resulting from the Dobbs decision overturning Roe vs Wade and the right to an abortion - which lots of people are like - Well, we're in Washington and everything is wonderful, and we don't have to worry about that. This is creating a number of issues in Washington and in the islands in this country where abortion is still legal. Lots of them have to do with access and there's going to be an influx of people seeking abortion care coming here. We're also facing several situations - I don't think people understand - we have converging factors here. We oftentimes, just with women's health period, have just not cared to do enough research. And so there's lots of off-label uses, dual label uses for things that are primarily classified as birth control or an abortifacient - things that can induce an abortion - that are used for several different things. Hormone therapy is a thing - hormones impact so many things in our bodies - we use them for so much more than frankly just reproductive health, period. And so women are being turned down also elsewhere in the country in a lot of situations for - Hey, there's a medication that's treating rheumatoid arthritis that can also in some situations induce an abortion. Doesn't matter if it's a different dosage, doesn't matter if all of that, but they're having prescriptions being turned down. Some people are - these are life-saving treatments that are making the difference between them living and dying, literally, for services unrelated to abortion. So we're dealing with a lot of fallout here and we do need to take action here in the state. King County is talking about taking some specific action. What is that?
[00:30:50] EJ Juarez: So King County - the Council has approved half a million dollars to go to the Northwest Abortion Access Fund, which is an organization which is supporting clinics and folks all over the Northwest get the care of their choice that they are choosing, specifically to access abortion care. And this was voted by the Council with one dissent, and I don't think it'll take folks too long to imagine who that dissenting vote was - it was Reagan Dunn. But that fund is in coordination with the City of Seattle, as well as other folks who are trying to get as much resource into this organization as possible, so that they can meet the need of the influx that will come as a result of this ban in other states for folks seeking these services.
[00:31:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I have been encouraged by the way that the City and County have been working both individually to be proactive in addressing this and working collaboratively to address this. I would love to see this especially tied to direct action, direct investment. They are making these moves quickly. I think seeing it here also makes - we look at all the other areas that we're dealing with and man, I wish we could take this kind of directed action in other areas and not have it become an absolute crisis where people have lost rights that are putting their lives in danger to motivate it. What if we actually were proactive and worked like this to address homelessness and to address a lot of other things?
[00:32:22] EJ Juarez: I think you're absolutely right. This to me - I was so encouraged and hopeful when I saw this, because I think what this says to me is that - a lot of times in politics and in governing, it's really easy to say who we are not caring about and what we are not caring for. And I think the swiftness of this action, both from the County Council and from the executive around not coordinating with law enforcement services around abortion investigations in other states - this is - we care about folks, regardless of the jurisdictions, regardless of where they are coming from. And I think that is something that King County in particular and the City of Seattle have been really steadfast on of - when you're here, you're here and you are a part of the community and we will do our best to meet your needs. So I was just so encouraged by that.
[00:33:14] Crystal Fincher: So kudos to the King County Council and the King County Executive for this, to the Seattle City Council and the Seattle Mayor for their action to help secure access. And I know that work continues on these issues and am encouraged by seeing that, whether someone is seeking abortion care, gender-affirming care, general healthcare, that we're prioritizing that and protecting people from being retaliated against. If they're coming in other states, that we're protecting people from being investigated and pursued by the legal apparatus of other states who are trying to criminalize leaving the state for abortion care.
And the thing about this - in all of this legislation that is attacking people's bodily autonomy in all of these different ways, is it has a chilling effect on the front end. It's not just - Hey, if I definitely need one. People are delaying healthcare, people are afraid who are - there are so many already stories of providers and of women who have dealt with people experiencing miscarriages being afraid to seek healthcare - Hey, should I go to the emergency room? Should I leave? And these are life threatening situations. Doctors being afraid to care properly for their patients. And so this just has a chilling effect upfront. We already are facing - we have one of the highest mortality rates for pregnant people in the world. We already need to do a better job and this just makes it so much more dangerous to be pregnant, so much more dangerous to need reproductive care overall. And so at least we are trying to make this a place where people feel safe to access care, because that feeling safe has so much to do with how people seek care, whether people delay care, whether people are too afraid and experience horrible complications or even death in this situation - so just making this a welcoming environment matters.
[00:35:28] EJ Juarez: Absolutely. And it has, I think, forced our decisionmakers and our elected officials in this moment to do the maximum that they can with the tools available to them. And they're meeting that moment. And I think that the moment of empathy that has been so lacking in this conversation proceeding this moment is becoming so apparent and real, and we're watching in real-time folks having to hear the true consequences beyond the political back-and-forth. And it is producing at least some results, right? And those some results are material benefits for the people who need them.
[00:36:10] Crystal Fincher: There's one other element of this that we talked about last week, that lots of people are also talking about online, and people calling for a special session in the Legislature to attempt to codify the right to an abortion in our State Constitution. Barring that, which there may not be enough votes for - even though I personally still think they should take that vote - to pass laws that on a state level help make that possible. And so, all of the indications from legislators are that they're absolutely working on this and preparing legislation. The question is - are we good waiting until next session to do that? We are in a situation where Democrats are defending a lot of seats, it is not at all assured that Democrats will control both houses in the Legislature, both chambers in the Legislature. And so it seems like there is somewhat of a risk attached to waiting. We don't know how these elections are gonna turn out. Certainly Democrats are doing all they can to win and trying to rely on other people, regardless of how they feel about politics on a national level, to get engaged at this local level because our rights are being defended at the local level right now. How do you feel about the issue of - hey, should we be calling a special session to make sure that we don't lose the chance to pass these rights, or not?
[00:37:43] EJ Juarez: I love that idea and I love it for so many different reasons. One, we have a governor who is well into his service, who has the ability to say - Come on back and let's get it official. Let's get those hands up and see who's actually on the team here. And I think the other element of this is there is broad and overwhelming support for these services, for a woman's right to choose in this state and across this country. The idea that we would not be able to take that vote as a matter of just regular business is mind-blowing to me, given how much attention and how many of those constituents of every single one of those legislators care about this issue. Because it affects every person. I think it is both necessary and I think it is politically expedient - call 'em back, make the vote happen on the constitutional amendment. Whether or not it passes or fails, it gives you the starting point so that the allies outside of the legislative process can build a plan. It gives the champions on the inside the ability to make that plan. But without a special session, you don't actually get to do that strategy. And you don't actually get to call the question on many people who will put out fundraising emails, send you that text, they're gonna be talking and making fancy speeches at rallies - but that when push comes to shove, get to hide behind their caucus and not take the hard vote. Which actually isn't that hard.
[00:39:11] Crystal Fincher: It's actually not that hard. I know that there is hesitation from people - we're in the middle of the campaign season. If you call a special session, people have to pause their fundraising, it interrupts these campaigns. And to that I would say - you have the opportunity to take action that is supported by the overwhelming majority of the state, you have the opportunity to win - so many other institutions and governmental bodies are stuck in an action in a way that's frustrating everybody - to see you actually moving forward, being proactive, taking the steps that people are begging leaders at all levels to take and prioritizing that. All of the coverage will be on the special session. People will see you doing what they need live, in action. What better thing to campaign on than - Hey, we are actually doing what you need to help you. We are actually ensuring your right to bodily autonomy, we're actually ensuring your right to healthcare.
And my opinion is - we saw them, in this decision - this is not just about abortion care. They signaled same-sex marriage, same-sex relationships. They're absolutely going after gender-affirming care. They're absolutely going after contraception. These are things that have been explicitly stated, this is not conjecture or a rumor, this is explicit. And so why don't we take all the action now when we know we can, when Democrats do control the governorship and the House and Senate, and should have the votes to codify all of this into law. Let's take those steps now and not wait and risk the inability to do it next session. It really truly is a risk. And why are we accepting any more risk than we have with this Supreme Court, with federal Congressional gridlock, and the dysfunction that we've seen in too many institutions - we can't afford anymore risks. We need people to act when they can act immediately, not to wait. And so I think there's a tremendous opportunity. I continue to call, myself - I know several other people are, there's a chorus of community calling for the Legislature to take action now. I hope they do.
The last thing we will talk about today is Seattle's traffic death crisis, and it is a crisis. There was a piece in The Urbanist from Jason Rock talking about the need for citywide infrastructure investment. Certainly we've talked about and really Councilmember Tammy Morales has been steadfast about the need and demanding equitable investment in Southeast Seattle, which has been underinvested in and which is experiencing a disproportionate amount of traffic deaths in the City. And so what is the deal here? What is going on and what can be done?
[00:42:36] EJ Juarez: I think you hit the nail on the head there with - Councilmember Morales, I think, has been an absolute rockstar in advocating and trying to shout, I think, to the rest of the Council just how bad it has gotten in her district. And I think you have others on that council, like Councilmember Mosqueda, who have also taken this up, who have shown leadership on this issue. But ultimately you have no other councilmembers that are looking at the fact that half of all fatal car crashes in the City are happening in District 2. The reason that we get told a lot of why we have citywide councilmembers is they're supposed to be able to jump in on these issues and support the issues of a single councilmember on things exactly like this. And yet we don't have Sara Nelson talking about this, we don't have other councilmembers leaning in and talking about the fact that there is a crisis happening on Rainier Avenue.
There is a crisis happening in communities who are overwhelmingly accessing transit and dying on the roads adjacent to our bus stops, our light rail stops. And we also have drivers going 60 miles an hour on MLK, right? We have an urban highway that in all intents and purposes is a highway because there's so little enforcement on that road. And the folks who have the decision-making power to make that a 25 mile an hour zone are the ones speeding through it at 60 miles an hour. They aren't living in that community. The people they are killing are the folks who are desperate for that mile an hour limit to be lowered.
[00:44:20] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and for infrastructure that supports pedestrians, that supports people on bikes not literally risking their lives - same with Aurora, right? We have to recognize that we need to serve everyone in our community. And it is the most vulnerable people in our community who are most at-risk - whether it's financial, whether it's people aging unable to drive anymore - that people who are walking, people who are trying to take public transit, on bikes, in wheelchairs are facing tremendous challenges. Not to mention people who are - may have low vision and various disabilities who are relying on infrastructure that supports their mobility and ability to participate in society. And it just has not been prioritized. We are prioritizing car infrastructure - driving - to the detriment and the danger of everyone else taking these modes.
And everybody, when it comes campaign time, pays lip service to including all the community and addressing climate change and building infrastructure that supports public transit and all of that. Well, it's actually time to put people's money where their mouths are. It's time to actually walk their talk. We've heard a lot of talk for years, for decades and continue to see new plans that are so car-centric, whether it's what we're talking about in the Comprehensive Plan, whether it's looking at how the waterfront is constructed. When it comes time to actually design our infrastructure, we are not prioritizing the needs of the entire community. And that doesn't mean that there's a war on cars. That doesn't mean that we no longer care about drivers and we're banishing cars from the City, as some people like to get hyperbolic about. It means that they're not the only mode of travel and that they can still get from A to B. It's, realistically - even if we quadruple our investments in non-car infrastructure, cars are still dominating by a huge amount. It just means that we don't put other people's lives at risk, and we don't force people to choose between their safety and potentially traveling somewhere using alternative form of transit.
I'm sitting here down in South King County - me and myself and my electric bike, right? And I'm afraid to ride on the roads. I'm on paths all the time, because literally everyone I know who regularly rides a bike has been hit by a car, some with very serious injuries, others thankfully more minor - but several people more than once. I know several pedestrians who have been hit, I know political candidates and electeds who have been hit by cars, right? This is frighteningly common, and we know what kind of infrastructure prevents this - we just need to build it, we need the political will to build it. I applaud Councilmember Tammy Morales for taking lead on this. As you said, Councilmember Mosqueda also has been, but man, we need the entire council to prioritize this in every piece of infrastructure that's built. And we need to take a lens that includes everyone in the community, regardless of what mode they use to travel and says - we can keep everybody safe. It's okay if we lower a speed limit here, if it means that kids are safe getting to school. It's okay if we put some traffic-calming infrastructure in or protected bike lane, if it means that we have more people who feel more safe using the transit mode of their choice and our community. We can do it. We just need the political will and people who prioritize this moving forward. We can't keep acting like we care and investing and taking action in the other direction.
[00:48:36] EJ Juarez: The thing that I don't wanna get lost in this is there's the underlying belief, I think, by some people in this City that particularly folks who live in these areas, who live in areas with more mixed-income communities who live in areas where there are more people of color - that somehow regulating their behavior is the solution, right - if only they were crossing more safely, if only they weren't speeding, if only they weren't doing these things. This feeds into so many different facets of how race, anti-Blackness, poverty get layered into decision making in ways that ultimately cost lives. We started this podcast episode by talking about the fact that police did not protect, police actually caused harm. We are now potentially ending this episode where policy, police - all these layered things that are supposed to keep people safe, just living their lives, are not doing that. And we lack the actual political will to focus in on this.
And there is a clear throughline between respectability politics, between racism, and why these investments are not happening. That part needs to be said out loud more and more, because the more we allow our city councilmembers and the mayor to not talk about it, the more this actually goes further and further and further into - let me regulate how you move and your humanity to determine how safe you can be versus me fixing the structural spaces that you have to move in to be safe. I am continually frustrated by councilmembers who lack the ability to articulately be vulnerable about race issues in this City and who cannot make the coherent argument, or at least repeat back to community when they say - you have not invested in my area because we are Black and Brown and Asian and Indigenous and all of those things. And it is so frustrating. It is so sad that we are starting and ending this episode with how our government has failed to make the investments and policies and procedures necessary to keep human life safe. But ultimately there's such encouraging work happening from Morales, from Mosqueda, and from others who I think are not gonna let this go by the wayside. And ultimately until the City and the mayor in particular make Vision Zero something more than zero vision, this has to actually move forward.
[00:51:28] Crystal Fincher: Well, I can't say it any better than that. Completely agree and amen. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, July 8th, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler and assistant producer is Shannon Cheng with assistance from the wonderful Bryce Cannatelli. Our insightful co-host today is the former Director of Progressive Majority, who is now transitioned into public service but remains involved in numerous political efforts across Washington - and you can hear why - the brilliant EJ Juarez. You can find EJ on Twitter @EliseoJJuarez, you can find me on Twitter @finchfrii. And you can now follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Melissa Taylor about her campaign for State Representative in the 46th Legislative District - why she decided to run, the importance of stepping up in bleak moments such as now, and her thoughts on addressing issues such as housing affordability and zoning, climate change, public safety, and Washington’s upside-down tax system. The two also converse about Melissa’s extensive experience door-knocking both in her district and across the state, how having conversations with people with different viewpoints helps her develop better policy, the role of fundraising in politics, and what it’s like to run in a race with five community-centered Democratic women.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Melissa at @MelissaWPTaylor.
Resources
Campaign Website - Melissa Taylor: https://www.electmelissataylor.com/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I am so happy to have this guest on our show, who is a long-time friend of mine and a current client of mine, actually - the candidate I'm working with - after I keep telling everyone that I'm getting out of working with candidates and politics. Every time I think I get out, you just reel me back in - it is Melissa Taylor. Thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:01:05] Melissa Taylor: Well, thank you, Crystal. And thank you for letting me reel you back in one more time - I mean, we think.
[00:01:12] Crystal Fincher: Well, yes - I've talked about it before on the show - not an easy thing to do, but as we all know, there is some ridiculous stuff going on, some scary and terrifying stuff going on - and political will is lacking with a lot of people, the understanding of the urgency of this situation is lacking. And so when I have the opportunity to work with someone, to observe someone over years actually walk the talk in ways that I rarely see - that's what gets me back in and that's why we're friends. But I guess I will just start off by helping other people get to know you a little bit better and just - what made you wanna run?
[00:02:11] Melissa Taylor: Yeah - you summed it up really well, just there - it's the urgency of this moment. I have been doing this work on the outside for a really long time, and I am done watching as the problems we face get bigger than the solutions that people are bringing to the table. Every day I'm talking to folks at the doors who are struggling to get by in Seattle and it's not okay. They deserve better, we all deserve better - and I am ready to bring my political will, my experience, my relationships, and my commitment to this community to Olympia to fight for the solutions that fully meet the moment that we're in.
[00:02:55] Crystal Fincher: Well, we're in - this moment that we're in - sometimes we record, oftentimes we record, a few weeks, couple few weeks ahead. But as we're talking, we recently got the decision that overturned Roe vs Wade, we got a decision that further just rolled back voting rights and just re-instituted really ridiculous gerrymandering - harmful, blatant gerrymandering. And we're watching our rights fall like dominoes from a Supreme Court that is eager to tear them down and more are coming - we're expecting a decision that kneecaps the EPA and others - and just such frustration that it's hard to see, at the federal level, our leaders not look like they're doing everything in their power to fight this. And understanding that the consequences that these things are going to have are real - and they're really scary for a lot of people - and we know that they're going to result in harm and death. If you're having an ectopic pregnancy, which can't be salvaged, that cannot become a viable pregnancy - the only thing it can do is endanger the life of the mother. And being forced to carry that, being forced to deal with the trauma every day, just not being able to make a decision about our health and our bodies as women, as men get to, right? It's just - it is harmful.
And so, I hear frustration. I feel frustrated that more people aren't doing more. As you see these situations unfold before us and you hear frustration at the doors, what do you tell people when they're just like, look - I am sick of politicians, I am sick of watching people stand by while we're watching all of these things be deconstructed and burned down basically. What do you say?
[00:05:18] Melissa Taylor: Yeah - me too, right? Me too. And - we can't give up hope. The answer can't be that there's nothing to be done. And there have been really bleak moments in history - one of the things that always keeps me going is knowing that the fight for women's rights - the women who started that fight didn't live to see it end, and the women who finished it weren't born when it started. We are standing on the shoulders of so many people who lived through so much more than what we are living through. This is terrible and we shouldn't have to live through it, and also we can persevere, we will get past this - and it requires us all chipping in and doing the piece that we can do. So for me, the piece that I can do right now is I can take all of the knowledge and experience and relationships that I've built, and I can go to Olympia and bring political will to this moment to say - No, absolutely not. At least here in this state, we can draw lines. We can say - No, we will not tolerate this. No, we're not going backwards. And in fact, this is how we're gonna move forwards.
'Cause it's not even enough - it's not like things were awesome before all of this started happening. We needed to be moving forward before. So it's no going backwards, but also - we have so many big issues ahead of us, whether it is housing or climate change. I've been working on tax reform in this state for almost a decade. So many big issues - still have to fix in this state to allow us to move forward - that we have to absolutely draw the line in the sand and say - not only are we not going backwards, but we're gonna paint a vision of what it can look like, and we're gonna show the rest of the country what it can look like when you do things right. When you take care of people, when you invest in people and you invest in communities, you take care of your environment - that everybody gets better together. That is what we can do in our state, and that's why I am so excited to be running.
[00:07:35] Crystal Fincher: Well, I'm also excited for you to be running - that is a good thing. One other question you were talking about there - and just in this moment, but I think a lot of people are feeling - we're seeing a lot of conversations just looking at, Hey, what can we do? And the answer from some people is - All right, well you'd better just vote in November. Go vote. Vote blue. Is voting enough?
[00:08:01] Melissa Taylor: No, it's never been enough. We have to vote - so I was on the board of the League of Women Voters for four years, I believe deeply in voting and empowering every single voter in every way we can to exercise that constitutional duty and right. And, it's not enough - democracy demands more from us all the time and especially right now. And so for me, that journey really looked like advocacy and then supporting people who are running for office - there are a lot of ways to pick up the piece of work that calls to you. But I really would encourage everyone to pick up the piece of work that calls to you. But most importantly, I would strongly encourage the people who hold the most power in our society right now to pick up the piece of work that belongs to them and do the work that needs doing in our country. The Senate, the House, the President have work that they can and should be doing to make people's lives better today.
[00:09:07] Crystal Fincher: And amen to that. And I feel that deeply. So there's a lot of work that needs to be done. For you - obviously I know this, I'm asking for the listeners - what do you wanna do? What can you get done and how are you going to do it?
[00:09:26] Melissa Taylor: I am really excited to work towards housing everyone - making sure that everyone has a place to live and that it is affordable and not crushing people's souls. Because what I am hearing on the doors is that rents that go up $200, $600, double - are crushing people's souls. They're making it so that they are scrambling to pay other bills, scrambling to pay for healthcare, to pay for car repairs that get them to work. We are breaking people and that's not healthy for a society. We are hollowing out our city. I'm hearing from nurses, teachers, firefighters - people I'm pretty sure we want in Seattle - that they can't afford to live here anymore. And that's not okay. And then I also mentioned climate change - there's no way to fix the number of vehicle miles being driven unless we let people live near where they work. And so to me, all these issues are also really tied together. And so my big thing going to Olympia is - we're missing 300,000 units of housing right now. We're projected to need 600,000 over the coming decades. Where is the plan that gets us there? And how quickly can we create the 300,000 we're missing right now? So really rolling up our sleeves, pulling out all the policy tools to keep people in housing if they're in it and to get people into housing if they don't have it. And just get that whole big problem on the table and then start breaking it into pieces and figuring out how we get every single person in Washington State stably housed.
[00:11:05] Crystal Fincher: It's an urgent need - certainly we talk about that a lot on the program. I know you have an event coming up with Representative Jessica Bateman to talk about this soon and others, but what are some of those policy issues on the table? You say house everyone - does that mean some of the stuff that we hear from some of our local politicians - sweeps and maybe shelter, they've been offered services. Is it even possible to solve, is the visible part of homelessness the problem? What is actually the problem, and what are some of the tools that you plan to work on right away to solve them?
[00:11:46] Melissa Taylor: I like to break things into pieces - big problems are easier to solve if you break it into pieces. So one of the pieces is - our lowest income folks are probably never gonna be served by the private market. We are just watching a private market gone wild. And so making sure that we have sufficient housing, that everybody can afford housing at 30% or less of their income - and especially at the lower ends of income, it probably needs to be less than that - and that it is in every neighborhood where we need people working. And so that really means investing. I love the social housing initiative that Seattle hopefully will have on the ballot and we have our Housing Trust Fund. So it means putting more money into that Housing Trust Fund. I'm also really excited by a model I saw in Singapore that could be funded through our bonding capacity, and building mixed income that then pays back the bond. So I think there are a number of various tools we have to make sure that there's housing available for all of our lowest income folks.
Then the folks in the middle who are feeling so squeezed right now - we need fundamentally just more housing supply and more affordable housing supply. And that's why I was so excited about Representative Bateman's middle housing bill, because I saw so much opportunity there to unlock the potential of every neighborhood to help us solve these problems. To let homeowners who want to split their house so they can afford to stay in the community where they built their life - let them split their house and create more affordable housing for their neighbors. It just - it makes so much sense to me. I'm obviously disappointed and also perplexed how we don't see the opportunity to house people as one of our number one things we should be doing.
[00:13:43] Crystal Fincher: Lots of people are hoping it's the number one thing that gets done. Lot of people are counting on it being something that gets done. But it's really obvious to you - as we know very well, there are other people in your district, who are elected, who it is not obvious to. So part of that is single-family zoning - should we be upzoning single-family zoned areas?
[00:14:09] Melissa Taylor: Yeah, it really - so much is in how you frame things, but single-family zoning is exclusionary. It says that a homeowner does not have the right to split their house, even if that's the only way they can afford to stay in the community where they built their lives - and that's not okay. So yes, we should end single-family zoning and give people the option to split their housing. The thing is - I go to so many neighborhoods right now throughout this district and there are multi-family units that unless you have a list in front of you, like I do, you wouldn't know that there were 2, 3, 4 units there. And so I hear people tell me - oh, I don't want a big, an ugly condo that's eight stories tall going in next to me. I'm like - I hear that, I don't want one of those either. And that's not the only - there are other ways to solve that problem. And also, I don't want a big McMansion, ugly McMansion, going in next to me. The number of people living in the building doesn't impact whether or not it's ugly.
So let's make sure that we're talking about the right things. And also just having priorities. My parents - and my childhood home is really close to the Roosevelt Light Rail - and so they were actually told that their house might need to be part of a development. And is it sad when I think about my childhood home having to be part of a development? A little bit. Is it exciting when I think about who could be housed, including my parents who probably are gonna need housing that doesn't have stairs - also exciting. And so I think part of it is understanding all of the balances, but also embracing it and understand that there's also opportunity there for us to reimagine what our communities look like and how we're connected to each other.
[00:16:09] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And you talked about early on in there how so much is connected and how the way we design our communities, the way we move forward in addressing greenhouse gas emissions and climate change are involved in that. What do we need to be doing to be meeting our climate change goals? What are the biggest steps that we need to take?
[00:16:36] Melissa Taylor: I mentioned the light rail stations. We are fortunate here in the 46th to have just gotten three new light rail stations with a fourth coming. One of the things that I think about is transit-oriented development around those light rail stations, because what we're building there - we're going to be living with for the next 50, 75, possibly even a hundred years. And so again, as I go back to what is the plan to make sure that everybody here has housing, part of that has to be that housing is sufficient for the next 50, 75, a hundred years. And I think that right now - if we look at it honestly, it's not. The other thing is I talk to a lot of people who would love to use light rail, and there's not a great way for them to get to light rail. So I'm excited about some of the investments that were made with Move Ahead Washington in terms of more infrastructure of various types that help us get around without cars. And there's just - there's a lot more of that that we have to invest in if we're gonna make it possible for people to move around without cars.
[00:17:40] Crystal Fincher: One thing that makes it harder to invest in people moving around without cars is continuing to invest in not just the maintenance and upkeep of roads and highways, which is necessary - but the expansion of them. Should we be expanding highways?
[00:17:58] Melissa Taylor: We should not be expanding highways. The thing that we've seen - and I'm a big data nerd, which, you know, but your listeners are about to learn -
[00:18:08] Crystal Fincher: This is an understatement.
[00:18:11] Melissa Taylor: -is if you look at the data, we put in highways to try and address traffic problems and highways don't help traffic problems, they actually create traffic problems. We're seeing a movement across the country for people to remove highways. And so for me, I look at it and I say - what are the problems we're trying to solve? We are trying to solve traffic, we're trying to solve moving people, we're trying to solve climate change, and what are the tools we have to get there? And reinvesting money that could have gone to highway expansion into other infrastructure projects that help people move around without increasing traffic and without increasing vehicle emissions - seems like it would be the natural direction we would be going.
[00:19:01] Crystal Fincher: Does it? Unfortunately, not everyone has gotten that memo. So how do we get there? How do we begin to do that? If a transportation package comes in front of you, that has highway expansion in there - are you voting for it?
[00:19:21] Melissa Taylor: I am not voting for highway expansion. If there are communities that come to us, and they've fully involved the entire community impacted by the highway, and that community comes and says - we have to have additional highway miles, then we need to talk about where we're gonna take highway miles out. But in general, I am very skeptical that we need any new highway miles anywhere in our state.
[00:19:47] Crystal Fincher: So you're running this campaign for State Legislature - this is not a situation where you're a mayor, you're the governor, you're an executive and you can make the decisions - and should be accountable for those decisions you do or don't make locally - we have problems doing that. But in this legislative body, you've gotta get your colleagues to move along with you, you've gotta get a group of people to make this decision. And one of the frustrating things that we're dealing with federally right now is that some of the people who are supposed to be in the group that's in control of the Democrats are not all cooperating together and nothing is happening. In this situation in our legislature, where we do continue to have packages that expand highways, where we do continue to fail to move forward in ways that seem obvious - how do we make that progress when there are people who aren't there yet? How do you move your colleagues? How do we solve that problem?
[00:20:54] Melissa Taylor: Yeah, I think - different for different colleagues. One of the things that I am really excited about, generally speaking, is I will have talked to more everyday people at their doors than many of my colleagues have done in years. And so I am bringing the voices of people who may never have sent a letter to Olympia, who may never have made a phone call. But they care about what's happening in their community. It's just, they're living their lives. And so I get to take all of those voices to Olympia to say - actually, the silent majority is ready for ending single-family zoning, the silent majority wants us to fix climate change, the silent majority is terrified about the future we're leaving for our children. And if you'd like to go knock doors in your district, I would love to come with you - show me that your constituents feel any differently than my constituents. Because I actually don't think that across the entire state - and I've knocked doors across the entire state - I don't think we're as far apart as people wanna think that we are.
[00:21:59] Crystal Fincher: And so - this is so interesting, and this is one of the unique things about knowing you, having insight into your campaign that other people might not - it is one, you are out knocking on doors with voters literally every day for hours, rain or shine. And so you have had thousands and thousands of conversations with people who do not testify or get engaged. Some of 'em don't even vote all the time, right? But they're feeling the impacts of all of these around them. And when you knock on that door and you first start that conversation, it's not like you're welcomed with open arms all the time. You are often greeted with skepticism and - Hey, you're bringing those liberal ideas over here and you're walking past the NRA sign, you're walking past all of that, and they're almost there to challenge you up front. Yet, you're able to stay consistent with your values, you're able to do that and have conversations - I'm thinking of a few conversations that you've had on the doors.
But I guess one of the things that I think is missing sometimes in politics is, and that strengthens you, is that you do talk to so many voters and you do have the chance to have conversations with people who start off disagreeing with you, who start off and who don't always end up completely agreeing with you and saying - ah, you totally have my vote. But who you're able to have conversations with and who you're able to move closer. What is your approach to that - in your conversations with real people and not insider-y insiders? When you walk up to a door and the NRA sticker is there, the door is opened, and it's just - Hey, I'm sick of all this and I'm sick of you. What is your approach and how do you have those conversations in ways that sometimes people don't know how to have, or aren't successful in having?
[00:24:18] Melissa Taylor: A lot of it - this sounds so simple, but a lot of it is listening and asking questions and being curious and be able to stay curious - to say - hey, what brought you to this point? What happened that made you feel this way? And then to help connect them and say - hey, I'm your neighbor over there - I live in this community too, I'm being impacted by some of these same things. It's really terrible to have things stolen, it is really terrible to be afraid to go out. I don't think we should live that way either. And so finding those moments of - getting to somebody to tell you their story and finding the areas of common ground, and then exploring the areas of differences and saying - I came to this conclusion because I went and did research, I've talked to people, and what my research tells me, what the data tells me is that if we do this, this, and this - that's most likely to impact these things that we are both saying that we're concerned about.
And I pretty often can get people nodding their head. For instance, domestic violence. One of the things I talk about is when do we want somebody with a badge and a gun? It's when it's going to make the situation better. With domestic violence, it doesn't make the situation better. And if we want to end violence, if we wanna end especially domestic violence, we really need to be studying the models of what interrupts that cycle of violence, what actually empowers the people in that family to heal their family, to heal the issues - to figure out how to move forward either as a family or separately, right? Not every family's going to stay together, although for most kids it's better if the family can solve those issues and stay together. But it's one of those things where we really need to be thinking about what actually works, what will actually solve the problems that are facing us. And if we look at that data, and I talk to people about the solutions about where they've worked - go back to the homelessness. Occasionally people will talk about whether or not Housing First works. And I love bringing out this new example we have from Houston, right? Where we've got 25,000 people who are housed. If Houston, Texas can house 25,000 people successfully using Housing First, I feel like Seattle should be trying this.
[00:26:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and obviously - anyone slightly familiar with this program and knows that I absolutely believe we should be trying this - we should be trying a lot of different approaches, a lot of things that we're doing are not working. And you were just talking about interrupting cycles of violence - when do we want someone with a badge? Public safety is a huge concern for a variety of reasons - and different reasons for different people - but this public conversation we're having - hey, do you back the blue or do you want to defund? Do you want this, do you want that? And when you look at polling - when you look at stuff there - there is no one saying what we're doing right now is working. And really it's about - there's a lot of fear, there's a lot of being scared - but it's a tough conversation to have because it gets - we've got the police guild saying their stuff, you've got other people saying theirs. So you've got the news covering, some of the TV evening news covering things very sensationally.
And so as we do have crime increasing, as we do have scary things happening on the street and in our schools, and gun violence escalating - and this past weekend in Tacoma, the amount of shootings is - this is alarming. There is justification for being scared. So with that fear out there and hearing just these scary, wild things with people being victimized and hurt - what do we do? How do we address this? People are scared - and should we be doubling down on the kinds of things that we're doing, or what do you talk to people about? What do you tell them when they're like - dude, I'm scared. I don't want my kid walking around alone outside. I just saw something really weird happen at the store. People are different these days out there. What do you say?
[00:29:07] Melissa Taylor: My heart is breaking with each one of these stories. One of the doors I knocked yesterday, actually, talked about a shooting that happened a block away. And that is terrifying. And then we have these shootings across the country, we have these shootings in our neighborhoods - not to mention break-ins - it is so unsettling and so disturbing to feel like you can't be safe in your home, you can't be safe on streets, on the way to work. And I actually - I haven't talked about this much, starting to talk about it a bit more - I actually am the victim of a violent crime. I was stabbed during a mugging and it is horrible, it's not just that it hurts - it's that it impacts you for years. So there's medical issues, there's financial issues, there's mental health issues - and what I want more than anything else is for that never to happen to me or to anybody else again. And the thing that I think we are missing so often in our discussions about public safety is this concept of prevention, right? So often we're talking about what happens after a person gets stabbed, instead of talking about how do we keep people from being stabbed in the first place. And what I want is for nobody being victimized by a violent crime, or even property crime. I don't want people wondering whether or not they're going to be able to get to work in the morning because they lost their catalytic converter. That is terrible.
And the thing again - data nerd - so I've spent a lot of time looking at the data of what really makes a community safe, about what really will stop crimes from happening, what will interrupt the cycle of violence. And we're not doing those things. We might do them in fits and starts, but we aren't fully funding the things that would prevent crimes. We know that we need more mental health treatment, we know we need more behavioral health treatment, we know that we have too much poverty in our state. And addressing those things is actually what most people in Seattle will tell you are the things they want their taxpayer dollars to go to because they know, like survivors of violent crime know, that those are the things that are going to create real long-term sustainable safety for all of us. And so for me - one, I wanna widen the lens of what does it take to make us safe. And then two, make sure that we are funding the things that work, the things that are deeply proven - to make sure that what happened to me doesn't happen to other people.
[00:32:07] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, we've had conversations about this, about a number of things - and it is a perspective that's not being talked about. Safety is so much more than policing. And we see examples of that in so many ways and so many places. We understand, we make projections for prisons based on how people are doing early in life in elementary school and making projections on that. We know the kinds of things that put someone on a path to thriving, or to falling through the cracks. And we know when we make investments that it's helpful - we know early childhood education, we know addressing poverty - we know those things, and they're happening elsewhere. We see this happening elsewhere. And for some reason, I feel like maybe people just don't believe it's possible to get a better result. But my goodness, when you see it working elsewhere and the only difference is just policy, it does make you wanna just fight for it here. So as we move forward and we're looking at more public safety solutions, we're looking at different ones, obviously a lot of people are always talking about - okay, well, where's the money coming from to invest in these things, where do we get the revenue to address some of these very systemic problems? We do address inequality and poverty and meeting people's basic needs - where do we get this?
[00:33:52] Melissa Taylor: Yeah, we fix our tax system. When we started out, I've mentioned that I've spent the better part of a decade working to fix our tax system. We have one of the most upside-down tax systems in the entire country. And what that means is that the folks at the very top of the income scale are paying a tiny percentage of their income relative to the folks at the very bottom. So it's almost 20% that folks in our lowest income brackets are paying in state and local taxes. And that creates a real burden. I was talking earlier about how rent hikes make it hard to afford healthcare and bills and transportation. State and local taxes make it hard to afford those things too. And so when I think about it, I'm excited about the capital gains tax and really hopeful that it is sustained. I am excited about the wealth tax that Representative Noel Frame brought forward. I am excited also about the reforms to the inheritance tax.
And then the other thing that I am really excited about is accountability for tax exemptions. So looking at the tax exemptions that we've carved out of our tax base over the decades and saying - are they still serving us? Are we still getting what we originally intended? What were we intending? Are we getting it? And is it worth the trade-off for not funding housing, not funding education, not funding climate resilience. We are spending money on tax exemptions and we deserve to know what we're getting for it. We have more tax exemptions than any state other than New York, which has a far larger economy. We give away more in revenue through tax exemptions than we bring in. So really looking at those and creating accountability around them to say - is that where our money should best go?
[00:35:46] Crystal Fincher: We absolutely need to do better and to fix our tax system - it does unlock so much more that we have. There's inequality all over the place. And this is probably a weird thing to talk about and we have not talked about this conversation - I would have it, but it is real - we try to talk about real things on this show. Especially just as a consultant and having to confront it - I don't know if you know what I'm about to bring up. But so we're in this situation. Obviously I am a political consultant - this is how I make my living. But man, politics should be more accessible to a lot more people. Running for office should be more accessible to a lot more people. You shouldn't have to be independently wealthy - and you are not independently wealthy - but a lot of people are. Or it's just really tough and you have to have flexibility and grace from your job to be able to do that, you have to have adequate childcare, you have to have all of that - it's really tough.
And it's also really tough to have to raise a lot of money, or to have that demand on you. And so this is a really interesting situation and usually I try to avoid working in Seattle - as we talked about earlier on, I try to avoid candidate campaigns on the candidate side a lot - but this race that you're in in the 46th, there are actually some cool people in this race. Sometimes you have a number of cool people in the race - there are a number of cool people in this race. There are also a number of great fundraisers in this race. You are a great fundraiser and you're actually leading the pack fundraising, you're actually leading the state fundraising - which is really cool. And also I know how hard you work for that and how much time you put into it, 'cause you are not accepting PAC donations or anything like that. So these are people and your average gift is not that big. And so it's taken a lot. There are others in this race who are fundraising juggernauts and also raising a lot, but this is also a City of Seattle Democrat versus Democrat race. And there are other races across the state that are Democrat versus Republican, there are conversations about - hey, we may, it's not a given that these seats are gonna win. There are a number of battleground districts that could be tossups and that we don't know how they're gonna wind up - that are also hurting for money over there. And so how do you think about that process - that you're in a situation where you're trying to run this race and to win this race and to do what it takes. But also you want good government, you want good democracy, you want things to be accessible to a lot of people. How do you reconcile that?
[00:39:11] Melissa Taylor: Yeah, I think there's really two pieces to that. One is what should we do about money and politics? And two is what should we do about the kind of money that's in this race, and what does that mean for me as a candidate and how do I think about where my responsibility is in that? On the side of money and politics, I love how much Democracy Vouchers have opened up the possibilities for candidates from various backgrounds in Seattle. And so I would love to see, and I get people asking me at the doors - Hey, can I give you Democracy Vouchers? I was like I wish you could, because then instead of spending hours every day on the phone calling donors and asking them for money, I could be out knocking more doors every day, knowing that Democracy Vouchers might come with those conversations as well. So I think that's something that we can and should continue to work on in our state - to make this system and these roles more accessible to more people. I also think we need to look at making the State Legislature full-time because it is not reasonable or practical for many people to take two or three months off of a year to be a state legislator - most jobs don't support that.
Then on the other side, looking at this particular race and how much money has been raised in it, part of the reason that I've been able to raise the money I have is because I've been raising money for other candidates and other causes for years. So you and I know from our work together on Persist PAC, I raised hundreds of thousands of dollars that went towards other candidates in some of those swing districts - some of whom won and some of who didn't. So for me, I think about one, what have I done historically that helps balance what I'm doing right now. And I also think about what is my opportunity to do that in the future. I do think that Seattle Democrats have an obligation to our political system to help raise money and fund races in places that are not as resource rich. And some Seattle Democrats do that, and some don't. So being committed to being that person going forward, so having paid off some of that debt - you look backwards and then looking forward to paying it forward - is part of how I think about what that looks like to do the right thing. So similarly to having raised money across the state, I've knocked doors across the state. I have knocked doors in very, very red areas and talked to people across the entire political spectrum, because I think that is so important to making our democracy work. And it's important to me to understand the perspectives of everybody, so that - I think we make better policy that way.
[00:42:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, we do. And one of the things I appreciate about you and that I - we've talked about on the show, I talk about it with other candidates is, I think we just had a conversation about it really with Mike McGinn - understanding how to listen, almost how to pressure test your policy but know where you stand, know where your principles are. And starting from a place where - you naturally start there - hey, you have had your windows broken, that really sucks. As have I - neither of us want that to happen. We know that's not acceptable, we know it needs to stop. And then going into - okay, so breaking it down. It's not that one person just doesn't care that windows get broken or anything. Most people are on the same page that that's an undesirable thing. Then wild stuff and rhetoric happens and people don't talk to each other and people end up with wild ideas about stuff but having those conversations is helpful and it helps build a trust with a candidate - a voter, knowing that you heard them, knowing that you're carrying their story is a really helpful and powerful thing. And the amount of people who I've run into - for you and for other candidates - you know what, okay, so I don't agree with her on every single issue, but she listened and she did her homework. And so at least I know that it's not someone going buck wild and who's not tethered to reality. I can at least see that there's a process there, and there's a thoughtfulness, and there's a caring, and there is a weighing of cost and benefit - and almost everything comes with some kind of cost - and who is better to bear that and we stand firm on that decision.
I think that's really helpful and I think that's really instructive, and I hope other candidates just across the state - I know a number of them do take advantage of the opportunity to talk to voters, to talk to people at their doors, to talk to people who don't vote and to understand why they aren't voting - and the answer almost never is because they're lazy and they just don't care. And just to understand how people are actually living 'cause a lot of us just - I know a lot of people who are very online, I'm certainly a very online person - talk to a lot of people online, but then it's just like okay, so do you know your neighbor? Have you talked to your neighbor, have you talked to a person down the street and those connections, those real-life connections? And talking to people who may be coming from a different place than you are does not have to change where you are, but it can inform what path you need to take to achieve what you're set on achieving.
So I guess through this experience and this is your first time running, this is an open seat, there are other candidates in here - so this is something interesting, actually - we haven't talked much about this either. Man, you're in a race with four other people. I know you told me the other day you had a good conversation, good time with another candidate in this race. How do you view this thing? 'Cause sometimes one of the reasons I dislike, generally, working in some of these Seattle races is that - yes, it's an open seat, all these Dems are running - if you're involved in politics, you're going to know several of them, you're going to have people on different teams. And sometimes it gets really contentious and sometimes people who agree on a ton of things - and we're not disagreeing about who shouldn't enjoy full rights or people's humanity and stuff, but different ways to get to the same place, right? And you have these opponents in the race, but they're also people. And then you're in some places and you're talking policy and you're listening to each other. And then sometimes you're like - oh, that actually sounds really good. What is that experience like and yeah, what is that like?
[00:47:17] Melissa Taylor: I have to tell you - as I thought about running for office, I never anticipated being in a race with five Democratic women who have been working in their community for years. I feel really fortunate to live in a district that has great candidates and great options for voters. When we talk about why people vote or don't vote, not having great choices can impact that. And so, I've spent so many years recruiting and training women to run for office that I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that my success has - not necessarily exactly in this race - but I've ended up in a place with five women running, which I really think is good for democracy. And these are my potential constituents or my potential future State Rep, right? So I also - this is a long game for me. I've been doing this for many years, regardless of the outcome. I'm going to be doing this for many years and relationships matter, how you treat people matters. And so for me, I am always interested in learning. I learn sometimes from people who may be trying to teach me something, and sometimes from people who are just trying to get their way. But I got some advice coming into this that somebody who ran previously ended up being really good friends with other people running, and I can imagine that. I am excited to get to know the other folks running, probably not 'til after we're done running, but appreciated - I got a ride home from an interview from one of the other candidates and I think that's the kind of race I want to run, that's the kind of political system I want to build. So we've been talking about how people get really sick of politics. I think more people want to see politics where one candidate gives another one a ride home because it's the nice thing to do.
[00:49:18] Crystal Fincher: And I think sometimes people might be surprised - I think that happens more than people think sometimes. Certainly as we talk about, especially, most of our conversations are on these nationally defined two sides to an issue, very black and white binary conversations, that it's just - well, your opponent did this or that and we can't agree and I automatically need to dislike you because you're on a different team. And I think it's 'cause I'm - I was about to say, I think it's 'cause I'm old, I am old, I've been doing this for a while, have been around for a while - but one of the first races I managed had a group of candidates that actually got along. And I think it was instructive that we can talk about policy, we can have some differences, we can do this - but we're trying, we're moving in the right direction, and that doesn't automatically make us into - caveat this - this is not a situation where we're talking about someone's humanity or rights that they get to have. We're gonna have a problem in that situation, but - Hey, I'm concerned about gentrification, I'm concerned about what I'm seeing in my community - I'm seeing that we can talk about that. We can talk about that, we want to get to a place where housing is more affordable, we want to get to a place where more people are able to stay in their neighborhoods and have their kids live near them and do that. And I think it happens more often than people think - I hope it does. I think those relationships are healthy and that those are allies and people who are doing their homework, who can be part of building the future we want to have. And I guess we've been talking for a while - we should probably wrap this up a little bit and we've got stuff to meet about later - different stuff. But as we're here and you think about building the future. What does that look like for you? What does that mean to you?
[00:51:55] Melissa Taylor: Yeah, when I think about building the future, I first and foremost think about my kiddo, which I think is a pretty typical reaction from parents. And I look at my kid and all the hopes and dreams that I have, as well as all of the hopes and dreams that she has. And. How do we make those come true? And how do we make those available to every kid - starting with the kids who are struggling the most. And so for me, that vision is that we eliminate poverty, we house everyone, we make sure that when people get hurt they get the help they need to get better. So they don't hurt other people because we know that those cycles - that's where they start. And they frequently start in early childhood. And we make sure that we really are investing in people and a fair and equitable society, which means that we just don't leave people behind. We make sure that everybody gets a fair chance to build a future where they can thrive. And I don't think it's that hard. I think we can look around the country and around the world for places that have done better jobs at solving these problems. It's not like the solutions aren't out there. It's that we need to go put the data together, put the policy together, build the coalition behind it, and pass it.
[00:53:20] Crystal Fincher: And you don't know Melissa, maybe, like I do, but if there's one thing Melissa's gonna do, it's build a coalition and then get after it. You are one of the - someone mentioned the other day, you didn't volunteer someone, you voluntold someone - that was the most appropriate Melissa-ism - like to man, you're such an effective team builder, recruiter - you understand coalitions and just focusing people toward a goal. You roped me into a PCO recruitment project among other things. And here I am working on this campaign. You're very talented at this. But I appreciate that you really care about this. And that you really work for this and you have worked for this. And just for people to have the opportunity that they all deserve and not one that's based on their zip code, or not one that's based on their ethnicity or immigration status or whatever, that there's no reason - it doesn't hurt us for other people to have opportunity. And -
[00:54:34] Melissa Taylor: I would say, in fact, it helps us, right? It helps us.
[00:54:37] Crystal Fincher: It does.
[00:54:39] Melissa Taylor: It is good business. It is good society to have people thriving.
[00:54:44] Crystal Fincher: I'm there. We could, we have talked for a long time, we could talk for a long time, we will be talking for a long time in the future, but as for this podcast episode, I think we'll call it here. I appreciate the time that you've taken to help people get to know you better. If people wanna learn more about your campaign, where can they go?
[00:55:06] Melissa Taylor: Electmelissataylor.com
[00:55:08] Crystal Fincher: That works - and they can see you out on the doors every day in the 46th legislative district. Thank you so much for being you, for being willing to step up and run, and we will talk to you all next time.
[00:55:23] Melissa Taylor: Thanks, Crystal.
[00:55:24] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On today’s week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Executive Director of The Urbanist, Doug Trumm. They start by looking at research that shows Seattle is continuing to grow faster than the suburbs around it. Next, they discuss the future of a Tukwila ballot initiative to raise the city’s minimum wage. In policing news, Crystal and Doug examine the troubling future of funding for non-police public safety and crime prevention programs in Seattle, and how despite the documented success of those programs, the city seems to dismiss their impact. After that, Doug explains what the city’s Comprehensive Plan is, covers why it’s important, and breaks down the various proposals for the plan. Finally, they end the show discussing the State Rep. Position 1 race in Seattle’s 46th LD and how it reflects current debates we’re having across the state.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Doug Trumm, at @dmtrumm. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Outpacing Suburbs, Seattle Grows 20,100 in One Year in Latest Population Estimate” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/06/30/outpacing-suburbs-seattle-grows-20100-in-one-year/
“Initiative for higher minimum wage in Tukwila qualifies for November ballot” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/initiative-for-higher-minimum-wage-in-tukwila-qualifies-for-november-ballot/
Raise the Wage Tukwila: https://www.raisethewagetukwila.org/
“Seattle Might Soon Defund a Promising Police Alternative” by Will Casey from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/06/23/75477450/seattle-might-soon-defund-a-promising-police-alternative
“When Will Seattle Get Police Alternatives?” by Will Casey from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/06/28/75720496/when-will-seattle-get-police-alternatives
“Seattle Reveals Rezoning Concepts and Invites Scoping Comments for Big 2024 Update” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/06/23/seattle-reveals-rezoning-concepts-and-invites-scoping-comments-for-big-2024-update/
“Far-Right Freaks Could Force Washington to Act Fast to Protect Abortion” by Will Casey from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/06/30/75818300/far-right-freaks-could-force-washington-to-act-fast-to-protect-abortion
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in our State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced on the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a cohost. Welcome back to the program today's co-host, Executive Director of The Urbanist, Doug Trumm.
[00:00:49] Doug Trumm: Hi Crystal. Thanks for having me - I'm really excited - there's so much happening right now to talk about.
[00:00:53] Crystal Fincher: I know - we've got a full slate of things to talk about. Starting from the top is news that you covered in The Urbanist this week - in that Seattle's growing a lot faster than its suburbs once again. What's going on here?
[00:01:10] Doug Trumm: Yeah, the Office of Financial Management at the State released their April estimates and Seattle was up a little over 20,000 residents, which was by far and away the biggest gain across the state. All of King County was up about 30,000. So Seattle is again back to taking the lion's share of the county's growth and was also growing faster than Pierce and Snohomish County, so it just dispels that notion that Seattle is in decline, or is dying, or that the suburbs are certainly the place to be.
[00:01:47] Crystal Fincher: That's always so interesting - we've talked about that narrative a lot on this program and candidates who've run talking about "Seattle is Dying" - that whole thing - have never caught on. They've usually topped out at about 15% of the vote in Seattle elections, but there's been a lot of effort put into that narrative and one of the things about a narrative - if someone can walk outside and see that that's not the case, it doesn't quite gain the traction that people would hope. So people in Seattle basically have mocked that the entire time. However, that narrative has caught hold in the suburbs for people who actually don't live in Seattle, visit Seattle, know many people in Seattle - they just take that on faith - it's what they see, have seen on TV, or have heard people mention, or as they're browsing Facebook with all the other stuff on there. They see that and - oh, it's a chaos city, it's burning to the ground, my goodness. And couldn't be further from the truth. Obviously people there keep saying that, and the numbers of people attracted to the City continue to steadily grow. It's just one of those really interesting things where there is a very intentional political narrative that's laughable inside the City, but because it's just been so pervasive and the people have been persistent talking about it, it takes hold outside of it.
[00:03:21] Doug Trumm: Yeah, and sometimes the narrative can be destiny, but that doesn't seem to be the case here, where you'd think this produced narrative of Seattle just being chaotic would eventually lead to people moving to the suburbs. But that's not in the numbers - Bellevue posted like 1,300 population gain compared to Seattle's 20,000. And there are a couple standouts, like Shoreline and Redmond are growing at a relatively fast rate, but most of the suburbs are just growing very slowly. So all this talk of people wanting to ride out the pandemic out in bucolic setting or in a suburb is maybe starting to reverse, and I think some of the numbers obviously is also reflecting the fact that students are back on campus. So places like Bellingham saw a big jump as well.
[00:04:11] Crystal Fincher: Also another - exciting news this week - the initiative for a higher minimum wage in Tukwila, Raise the Wage Tukwila, qualified for the November ballot. This is really exciting. Have you been following this?
[00:04:25] Doug Trumm: Yeah, this has been really cool - Southcenter being in Tukwila - that's a lot of jobs, it's huge job center for south King County - and they qualified with a really healthy cushion. So it looks pretty certain that that's going on the ballot and, I think, in our state, once something like that is on the ballot, usually it passes. So hopeful sign, hopefully good - will be a solid raise for workers if it passes and with the mall being the driving employment center in the area, there are a lot low-wage workers.
[00:05:01] Crystal Fincher: Lot of retail, lots of service - yeah, definitely a lot of lower wage workers. And one of the issues there is surrounding cities have raised their wage - starting with SeaTac, which was the first in the country to go for a $15 minimum wage. And other surrounding cities have also raised the minimum wage. And one of the biggest, as you talk about, job centers in that entire area has been left behind. So even though Tukwila has to adhere to the state's minimum wage, which is currently $14.49/hour, they're comparing with minimum wage at $17.54/hour in SeaTac, Seattle is $17.27/hour for most workers. So just the geography is the differentiation here, and especially with the higher percentage of those low-wage workers, this is really meaningful.
These initiatives have won, but they've won with a lot of work in the campaign and door-knocking and calls with neighbors. So this is one where it's absolutely winnable, but it's gonna take people getting involved, volunteering - this has largely been a volunteer effort - the Transit Riders Union has been a big part of this and in conjunction with people, business owners, community leaders from within Tukwila. So very exciting, but definitely a point to get engaged in this issue - if this is something that's interesting to you, we are linking the information in our episode notes. This was also covered this week by Daniel Beekman in The Times - just always exciting to see a community-led effort successfully gather enough signatures to get on the ballot. So very, very good - congratulations for the qualification and looking forward to seeing how that initiative proceeds throughout this campaign.
[00:07:02] Doug Trumm: Yeah, great work to Transit Riders Union - I'm a member over there, but the leadership team there is just really great - Katie Wilson and all the organizers over there.
[00:07:10] Crystal Fincher: Really, really great. In less great news, I would say, Will Casey from The Stranger, who's been writing some great articles for The Stranger, wrote this week that Seattle might - the defund and movement in Seattle is going along just fine, except it's not the one that everybody keeps trying to complain about. It looks like the City might actually be defunding a really promising alternative response to armed police. What's the deal here?
[00:07:43] Doug Trumm: Yeah, this one's a head scratcher to me - just having tried to cover police as well for the past few years - whenever you're talking about police alternatives, everyone brings up JustCARE - it's almost like a rule. So you would think with everyone name-dropping JustCARE, that they would be ready to fund JustCARE. But it doesn't really seem like that's necessarily the case. And then, the successful program that JustCARE has helped stand up - that offers a police alternative so that when some of these motels and hotels that have been converted to serve homeless folks if there's an incident - canceling this program would just force more calls to the police, more emergency room visits, more things that are really expensive.
If we're looking at brass tacks to the City - so if you do a broader accounting, and a lot of folks who do this kind of work say, you really should be looking holistically at this - you're gonna save this $10 million maybe initially, but you're going to end up paying for it through other ways. So it just seems like someone's - we just have to figure out a way to keep these police alternatives going because $10 million for this program could really go a long way - and the budget is very large for the City and Seattle Police Department's spending far more than that. So if we're serious about funding public safety, I think this is one place to really invest.
[00:09:12] Crystal Fincher: Completely agree. And if we're serious about public safety, we start by acknowledging that public safety is bigger than policing. With - crime has increased - there are things that are happening in our community that are scary, that are worrisome - the rates of gun violence. Just the things that we're hearing about gun violence, assault and there are some crazy things going on. And if we are actually serious about solving that problem and reducing crime, we can't just focus on the responses after crimes have been committed, the response after people have been victimized. The most powerful way to keep people safe is to keep them from being victimized in the first place - certainly I've talked about this before, we've talked about - lots of people have talked about this before. And we talk about alternatives to policing or really just - hey, we're working on preventing problems and victimization and intervening in things before it gets to the point where it's hurting anyone else.
So JustCARE and a local public safety firm called We Deliver Care has been protecting outreach workers who serve people experiencing homelessness - so as they're doing outreach, they're also involved in that. They've been providing de-escalation services for people in crisis, and they've been doing it without the involvement of a uniformed cop. And this is what so many people are talking about - hey, police don't have the tools to, and were never intended to be people who respond to someone in crisis - mental health crisis - and are actually able to do something about that crisis and get that person into a situation where they need help. JustCARE and We Deliver Care are doing that.
And we had a conversation with Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell on this program where they talked about - hey, we're doing a review and analysis of our partner organizations who are doing alternative responses. And we just wanna make sure that they're effective, we wanna make sure that we're getting the results of the money that we're investing. I did make the comment that - I would love to use that kind of analysis across the board, including with the police department and all of our public safety stuff. But the University of Washington actually conducted a study of JustCARE that included findings about the work that We Deliver Care does - their analysis showed a 39% reduction in 911 calls in the neighborhoods where they operate, a 12% reduction in 911 calls from the hotels where the programs provide shelter.
The police department would be celebrating and calling a press conference, I'm sure Mayor Harrell would be celebrating and praising these numbers. So one, this is absolutely a success. If there was a small pilot program - that where they are operating, they're getting these kinds of concerns - a nearly 40% reduction in 911 calls where they are, meaningful reductions in crime and people being victimized and people being worried and anxious and concerned, and unsafe being able to handle crisis situations. This is what we need. This is keeping people safe. We have data showing this is keeping people safe, and this is gonna wind up on the chopping block, while we're increasing funding in other areas that certainly are not getting these kinds of results. It's just, it's really confusing. And it just seems if you're making this move, are you actually serious about keeping people safe, or are you invested in a particular method of, or a strategy - that maybe there's investment or a payoff in continuing that strategy, but it's not anything related to actual public safety. Just really confusing.
[00:13:14] Doug Trumm: Yeah, and are we only going to put our data on public safety through the prism of SPD? Because it doesn't seem like they're really, truly open to looking at these alternatives.
[00:13:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I know they're talking about establishing a Department of Public Safety - certainly did seem like some of the defunding effort of these community prevention and intervention programs may - that funding may disappear in order to stand up this Department of Public Safety. But whether internally or externally, it seems like the point is - do what it takes to keep people safe, do what it takes to make people safer, do what it takes to reduce the calls we - they keep talking about cops are overloaded and not able to respond to 911 calls - well, what would a 40% reduction in them do? This is what this program is accomplishing - seems like that might right-size things according to their calculations and help balance things, so maybe they could stop ignoring sexual assaults and actually start investigating them again.
Just it is - this seems to fly in the face of everything that the public is demanding, everything that they say that they are standing for, and it's just not coming. How do you stop a program that's getting those kinds of results, and then move the money to somewhere that is not? Either we care about keeping people safe or we don't. People are scared and anxious and they want solutions - hiring more police officers is not even something that will - those police officers won't land on the ground until later this year, or next year - that's not a plan for keeping people safe today, and people are demanding a plan to make their streets safer right now. I just don't understand what they're doing.
[00:15:02] Doug Trumm: Yeah, and one thing I'll say really quickly is - as a policy nerd, one really cool thing about the program design is the fact that We Deliver Care is hiring largely from folks who are formerly incarcerated or formerly homeless - you're creating a virtuous cycle there where people get meaningful and gainful employment and it interrupts that cycle of poverty. So it just seems like a really, just a really solid program that we shouldn't be pulling the plug on so abruptly.
[00:15:30] Crystal Fincher: That's a really good point - and really those are subject matter experts. Few people are better poised to be able to understand, connect with, and really help - with appropriate and meaningful help, and not something that people who've never been in that situation feel is best for that community or that group of people - but people who have been through it, who understand a lot of the challenges and ways that other folks don't. And so they can be more effective a lot of times in identifying and connecting people to help. I hope we see an increase and a further investment in that program and not a decreased one. And if you feel the same, it would certainly be very, very good to talk to your City Council people and to let, most of all, Mayor Harrell and his office know that we want to be investing in things that work and not defunding them.
Also this week, scoping for the Comp Plan update is underway - you've been covering this in The Urbanist - what's going on?
[00:16:38] Doug Trumm: Oh, so much - a lot of different advocates and organizations are really spinning their wheels right now trying to get geared up for this, because it's a month long - currently announced as a month-long - scoping period to determine what are the options, what's on the menu for our big Comprehensive Plan update in 2024, which is -
[00:17:02] Crystal Fincher: I'm gonna jump in and pause right here, just to ask you - a lot of people are not familiar with - okay, Comprehensive Plan? What's its purpose? Why does comprehensive planning happen and what does it accomplish?
[00:17:14] Doug Trumm: Yeah, the Comprehensive Plan - it's both kind of opaque and esoteric, but also it's sort of like the Super Bowl of planning. And you certainly can do things between the major Comp Plan updates, but this is when the big zoning changes, the big land use changes, and also the big changes in the related plans - like the Transportation plans and even Parks plans, everything - they try to line everything and get everything, hopefully in harmony, more or less. And there's a lot of debate about - that's really the case - but this happens. Now with the recent reform at the state level, every 10 years - you have to do a major update to your Comp Plan. And every 5 years, there's a minor update. Now if you really get a fire under someone, you can do major zoning changes in between them - and sometimes it's like a station area plan - if you're getting a new bus rapid transit or a new light rail station. So you can do stuff in between, but it's rare and you have to have the staff time to dedicate to it. So really there's a lot of pressure on this 2024 Comp Plan update to be ambitious, to really try to do as much as we can because worst case scenario, we're not gonna get another opportunity to do something really big until the next major update, which is a full decade later.
And this has really gotten the attention of climate advocates, which we would include us at The Urbanist as those, that - okay, well, the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is saying, okay, we need to do a lot of concerted climate action now because if you don't do anything by 2030, our options just get considerably less. If we're not lowering emissions immediately, our pathways just get worse and worse. So land use is the forgotten aspect of climate change for many policy makers, 'cause it's a hard thing to deal with, but it really is crucial to actually decarbonizing our economy and our society. So not to put a ton of pressure on this, but it is a huge moment and a good chance to do climate action through land use, and also through - to connect the Transportation Plan.
[00:19:42] Crystal Fincher: So as they're talking about this plan, they're looking at some different - conceptual alternatives. They've laid out some - and some look more promising than others - what's on the lineup?
[00:19:55] Doug Trumm: So, there's five alternatives currently. And one of them by default is no change alternative - they use as a baseline. So that's Alternative 1. Then there's also an alternative, that is called the focus alternative. I think that's alternative to - apologies if I get this order a little bit off - and the focus alternative uses the concept of urban nodes, so it's sort of like urban villages, but they'd be adding these nodes in between urban villages and other business districts, or existing grandfathered-in areas of multi-family and some commercial. And they'd be adding these sort of urban village-esque aspects - and urban village is just the City's term of art for - it's an urban neighborhood, but because it's Seattle, we have to throw in village to make it feel a little neighborhoody and quaint. But it's basically continued the urban village idea and then, I guess, the implication then is we wouldn't be doing a lot outside of those nodes. So it'd sort of be a truce on single-family zoning outside of those.
[00:21:03] Crystal Fincher: So basically any growth will be happening in these concentrated areas, any absorption of density, increase of density is limited to these new nodes. But most areas outside of that are still going to be high-cost detached homes.
[00:21:20] Doug Trumm: Exactly, and I think you would basically be going along roughly the same in the existing urban villages, potentially with some expansions, which would be nice in some areas where some of the urban villages are very skinny and gerrymandered.
And then there's Alternative 3, which is sort of the opposite approach - which is taking these Neighborhood Residentials, which the city's calling single-family zones now - it's taking these Neighborhood Residential zones and it's adding some missing middle types. And so far the types that OPCD, the Office of Planning and Community Development - it's the City agency tasked with this plan - so far, the types that they're listing are triplexes and fourplexes and that type of - it's on the low end. And so one thing advocates can do, who are looking for more than that - in the State bill, they contemplate sixplexes - is asking for sixplexes, maybe rowhouses, stack flats - more of those denser but still missing middle types that fit it very well into single-family neighborhoods or Neighborhood Residential, if you will. And so that's Alternative 3 - it's looking primarily outside of the urban villages, not necessarily only focus - it would be broad sections of single-family zoning, or you could just redefine single-family zoning to be that fourplex or sixplex zoning, or something like that.
Because this is a scoping phase, none of that's really decided - it's just setting the menu, like how much would OPCD actually study - because what they actually put into the draft is what we then can actually order. You can't order something that hasn't had some of that underlying work, like the environmental impact analysis, because then you get sued and you'll lose. And you will get sued probably anyways.
But we can move on to Alternative 4 now, which is called - I think a corridor approach, or transit corridors, I forget their shorthand name - but it would do more just along transit corridors and they didn't exactly say how wide of a band. So that would be one thing to give feedback on is - if we were to only focus on transit corridors and there's some arguments against that, which we could get into later, but that would be where you focus zoning change. Are we going a quarter mile from the stops, are we going a half mile, are we going only less than that? And if you're going only in a very narrow band, that's when those criticisms really creep in - because many of our transit quarters in this City are along busy, polluted, congested arterials, where you're not really gonna want your kid to be playing outside, you're not really gonna necessarily be breathing that air if you face out into that street. So, I think one concept that advocates are really bringing into this study is we need to be putting housing where people wanna live and it can't only be in the space leftover that single-family homeowners don't want. It also has to be places that are livable.
[00:24:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it has to be everywhere - otherwise we're just redlining by another name, really. It's really interesting - and this is, this is wonky, totally wonky - but as a former planning commissioner myself, it really is the skeleton of a community. This is the thing that the determines the composition of how the community can grow, can evolve, can look, who's going to be there, who's not going to be there, who we're gonna include, how we can be responsive and resilient against climate change. It's - everything about how a city develops is really dictated by this footprint that's established that says - this is what is allowed here, this is what can go here, this is what we wanna encourage in these areas and what we don't, this is what is included and straight up outlawed. This is how we're going to enable this community to become walkable - that this can build that 15-minute city where everything is within walking distance - everyone's basic needs.
So this is basically determining what Seattle's gonna look like in - 20 years from now - is based on the decisions that we make today. And if you think about what Seattle - I'm old, so I remember what Seattle was like 20 years ago - maybe people listening here may have moved here, maybe a lot younger, but it looks a lot different now than it did 20 years ago. And the planning process is what basically started the ball rolling on all of this. So if we think about the conversations that we're having today and what we're looking at in the City right now and saying - this is what we like and this is what we don't like, and this is what we wanna see, or don't see - then engage in this process because this is what will determine Seattle in 2042, and the Seattle that our kids and grandkids live in, or not able to live in - the decisions now determine that.
[00:27:06] Doug Trumm: And it has a big impact on affordability and what housing options and prices are out there. And we did save the best of the bunch proposed so far for last - the concept, Alternative 5 is the combined approach. So basically it sounds like you would stack those three approaches, just described, on top of each other - which makes sense, because like you said, some of these Neighborhood Residential zones - they're attractive places to live, but good luck if you don't have a million dollars sitting around. So it would add more housing options there, which helps folks age in place, while also still doing that stuff around the nodes and around the transit corridors - to focus even more potentially multi-family development or just more options in those areas where they're well served by services and transit. So, of the ones proposed, 5 looks promising, it looks like it would be a huge upgrade. And there's also some talk of there being an Alternative 6 that advocates are - do we need an alternative that sort of even goes beyond the concepts proposed so far? And I haven't seen exactly what Alternative 6 would be, but obviously if it's something even better, then that's definitely something worthy of discussion.
[00:28:28] Crystal Fincher: Well, we will keep an eye on that - certainly we hope you will keep an eye on that and engage, and at least conceptually make your voice known that - I think my perspective, a lot of people's perspective is - yeah, we don't want to constrain where people have the choice to live. People should be able to live in desirable, healthy, attractive, enticing neighborhoods. And we shouldn't reserve that for the most wealthy residents who can buy into them - those should be accessible to all of us.
Another thing this week, I guess leading into that, it is lots of conversations about the City we wanna see - as we were just talking about - and a race in Seattle for the Legislature that really is talking a lot about the kind of Seattle we wanna see. And that's the one between Gerry Pollet and Hadeel Jeanne in the 46th legislative district. What have you seen in this race?
[00:29:29] Doug Trumm: Yeah, this has been a really interesting race - so far this year, there haven't - well, and the deadlines passed, so we see what the field is - there haven't been a lot of progressive challenges of incumbents, like we saw two years ago with a lot of incumbents having to defend the record, which is I think a healthy thing for democracy rather than people just going unopposed for decades at a time. But the exception to this is this Gerry Pollet race where he's been there a good amount of time - he's also has a very important chair, which he's Chair of the House Government Committee - Local Government Committee - which is where many of these zoning bills have to go through. And he disputes this sometimes, but I think the record speaks for itself - we just haven't been able to get a zoning bill through his committee and he always has massive changes to bills, it seems like - rewriting bills like he did to Jessica Bateman's bill which was the big missing middle reform that we've covered in previous shows, I'm sure, and on The Urbanist. That was going to have that fourplex zoning, potentially sixplex zoning in an earlier draft, before - relatedly - Gerry Pollet voted to amend that. So in other words, he's been an obstacle to that kind of reform.
And he represents, now, North Seattle - he used to have Lake Forest Park and kinda more in farther north. But now it's just North Seattle and Northeast Seattle. And I think he's a bit outta step with his district because these are places where people are really concerned about housing affordability, where the idea of a fourplex isn't that scary necessarily - and it's something that he hasn't furthered in his time as a legislator. So he's getting a challenge from someone who's specifically saying - this is a reason why I'm running. We got a chance to interview Hadeel and she's clearly passionate about this issue, she clearly knows a lot about this issue, she's clearly approaching this race from a - much more of a sense of urgency around both climate and housing affordability, and not just doing the things the way we've always done 'em. The Urbanist's Election Committee is still yet to vote and issue its endorsements, but I would say that it's looking promising for Hadeel and that's just a testament to someone having the bravery and the gumption to run against a long-time incumbent with sort of this institutional backing.
[00:32:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it really is gonna be interesting to continue to follow these races. I am working in a 46th legislative district race with Melissa Taylor - that's the only candidate race I'm working on, but that does make it really interesting to watch what's happening in these other seats in Seattle and beyond. And housing affordability, which this conversation is directly tied to, is a huge concern in the district. The stories that I hear from the doors from Melissa, who's out there every day, are harrowing. So many people are struggling in so many different ways - even people who - you drive down to see - North Seattle street, right? You see the homes now - the average home price, it's pretty high in Seattle - and people may look comfortable from the outside, but a lot of them are struggling. A lot of people have had to bring in roommates and extra people to live in their homes. Some of them can't fit any more people in and are at the point where if rent goes any higher, if mortgages go any higher, if costs go any higher, they're not going to be able to stay in their home and stay in Seattle. There's so many people dealing with this - even in single-family neighborhoods - where they're saying something has got to give, we're being squeezed to the point where we have nothing left to give - and it's really displacing people from neighborhoods.
This is a conversation about who do we want to be able to live in neighborhoods - do we want these neighborhoods to be exclusive places where no one ever is able to move in again, unless you are effectively making half a million dollars a year or more? Or places where young families starting out, people graduating from college, the kids of the people in these homes - are they going to be able to move into this neighborhood and build the kind of life that other people have seen, or not? So it's just really interesting to see the different levels of urgency, as you just talked about, 'cause some people are - we're at this point with a number of things - you talked about with climate, the IPCC report saying - look, we get this right and we start making meaningful, tangible progress by 2030, or we're in for a world of pain and consequences. And we get this housing thing right, and this comprehensive planning process right now, or we're in for a Seattle that just does not reflect anything that we've seen before and that's really a playground for the rich, a very exclusive place. The only accessible places are ones that come with harm attached - with pollution and a lot of the consequences of poorly managed growth. And it's just - this is a time where the urgency is now - we need people to act and not continue to kick the can down the road.
[00:35:15] Doug Trumm: Yeah, exactly. And it really speaks to - there's so many legislators who are homeowners and who - many of them are wealthy, and there are not many tenants. And Hadeel would be someone who's bringing a younger tenant perspective to the Legislature at a time when it's really needed. And you would think that legislators who have had that luck - to have bought into the housing market, now have a home that's worth over a million dollars, like Representative Pollet - you would think they would have some sort of empathy or sympathy for folks who are not buying in at the opportune time, who are buying in when the prices of admission is a million dollars. You'd think that they would policy make to try to correct that problem, but it doesn't appear there's that sense of duty or urgency there.
[00:36:10] Crystal Fincher: Yeah - different experiences, different things - and when you look at polling, it's really interesting. And one of the things a lot of people have talked about - yeah, young people are feeling different, and younger people are - they have different voting patterns. But "young" is doing really heavy lifting in that sentence because when you look, the dividing line is 45 or 50 years old. This is not young as in college. This is young as in not senior. Everybody is being squeezed and that line keeps on moving up and up and up, which is why we are seeing different people being elected, different challengers gaining strength and momentum, different kinds of policies that weren't in mainstream conversation even five years ago now moving with urgency. 'Cause when you talk about just the community under 50 - that's parents, that's grandparents, that's a whole big swath of people who are feeling this pain and who understand that we can't continue the way we're going, that we're going to have to substantially change something if we want these results that we're seeing to change.
Another thing I wanted to talk about this week was another article from Will Casey. And it was about - hey, given these continuing Supreme Court decisions - first and foremost, the Dobbs decision overturning the right to abortion from Roe vs Wade - hey, is anyone gonna call for a special session in Washington to address this? What's in this article?
[00:38:02] Doug Trumm: Yeah, that - Will Casey made a really good point there. We've had special sessions for a lot less. The most recent example is, that comes to mind, is the 2013 special session to make a special tax break for Boeing - that was hoping to keep, entice them to keep their jobs in Washington State. And they ended up still moving their corporate campus to Chicago and they've moved also some of their production to the South and other locations in the country. So, we did it for that. But we're not doing it for fundamental rights that speak to the - both the physical and economic security of our population and people who really are scared right now because the Supreme Court really upended what we thought was sort of settled. And obviously we saw this coming for many years, and even if Democratic establishment sort of buried their head in the sand about this. But yeah, it seems like we could call a special session about this. There's a ton of Supreme Court mischief right now of overturning precedents and there are laws that we could pass to lessen the risk there. And really just - it's also important to remind people that maybe if not the federal level of government, but the state and local levels of government can still work how they should. It's a lot harder without the federal government, but I think at a certain point, you also just have to restore faith in our system.
[00:39:43] Crystal Fincher: That's such a great point and it's absolutely true. Lots of people are, myself included, frustrated by federal government, which is why I have a podcast talking about state and local government 'cause I do think we need to talk about that more and so much is possible, still, at these levels. But it's such a challenge when talking about this - so there is - Democratic leadership is all saying that we do need to pass legislation. And they're saying we need to carefully craft this legislation, we're working on it, we'll have it ready for when the January session starts. The risk to that is we have an election before the January session and people are working hard, but it's possible that Democrats lose seats this Legislative Session - to the point where it's possible to lose a chamber in our State Legislature. There are many competitive races here in our state in battleground districts, so it is not a given that we walk into 2023 with the same composition in our Legislature that - and given the current composition, they should be able to pass legislation that does codify abortion protections. I should note we should absolutely be going beyond that because we know that they're going to be attacking contraception, marriage equality, basic privacy rights - we know that's on deck, so we shouldn't wait for that either and that should be ready.
But it's possible that we lose the seats necessary to pass this before that time. Hopefully that doesn't happen, but there's a chance of it. And the one thing that we should never do with basic human rights is leave them up to chance. As you said, we called a special session for Boeing. We've called special sessions for transportation packages. We can do that with such basic, fundamental, necessary protections for Roe - protections for abortion access and the others, as we should say. I will tell you - so what is not talked about upfront - the problem is when you call a special session, it basically forces people to stop campaigning. We cannot campaign while a session, or fundraise, while a session is happening. So leading up to a session, during the session - you basically have to suspend campaigning activity, you have to suspend fundraising - which unfortunately is a necessary part of winning campaigns in our existing political system - would love to change that, but that's part of the existing system. And so, I'm sure there's calculations going - my goodness, we've got these more competitive races than we've seen in quite some time. We do have - we're fighting to defend seats on the Democratic and progressive side, with vigorous challenges by Republicans in several of them. The last thing that people wanna do is to take some time off the campaign trail to do this. We can do it in January.
And my response to that would be - one, it's the right thing to do and you don't leave rights up to chance. So one - morally, ethically, logically, it's the right thing to do. We can do it now, you do it now. You might not be able to do it later, so you do it now. On top of that, there's an opportunity to, as you said, show the State that one, government can work as it's intended. The majority of people in this state, as we've covered in polling and talked about over and over again - want, believe in, are passionate about these protections. You have the opportunity to have all eyes on you as you take action and deliver the protections that people in this state are currently protesting in the streets for. You have the opportunity to have a ton of earned media show that you're responding to the needs of the state. And only one party is willing to do that - you have the media shining a light on who truly is pro-woman, pro-family - pro-life in terms of being able to live, have opportunity, have rights and not be subjugated or treated like a second-class citizen. That's the opportunity ahead of us. And then you can roll after talking about - yeah, we just did take extra steps and take the action necessary to make sure you are protected. You can run on that. People will see that, people believe in that, they're asking for that. This is a humongous opportunity for the Democratic party to demonstrate, in the most clear and present way, that they are serving and protecting the interests of the residents in the state right now.
So I think there's absolutely a case for doing it - I understand that it's not the best thing, but I truly believe that if they were to do that - coming off the other end, they would have a lot of thankful, happy people who are ready to roll in to 2022, to continue to defend the threats that are being brought about by this extremist, far-right Supreme Court, the extremist Republican Party that's looking to gain seats in our federal legislature. The pressing need to defend against Republicans is not going away, so let's not leave any rights at risk and let's put ourselves in the best position to be able to continue defending and then moving forward to pass policies that we know people in the state want.
[00:45:24] Doug Trumm: Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. And it goes to that fundamental critique of our politics, especially as the Democratic establishment party politics, where - issue polling, you can't be scared of your own shadow. You have to design the situation that you want to see, both as a policymaker and as a campaigner. If they're looking at polling and saying - oh no, maybe this won't be that popular in this swing seat or something like that. At a certain point, I think you have to just - A) take a moral stand, like you were saying. But also, have a little faith that people can change their mind, that you can campaign on something and change people's minds, that maybe this poll isn't really reflecting what would be salient in a race or that we'll see - oh, the Democrats took concerted action and that will have, and passed something and did something brave - that might have a bigger impact than whatever they fear for blowback by not apparently calling this sooner and just go charging ahead with this.
Because I think people really need a shot in the arm - just this, I think people are a little dejected right now, and they have a right to be, because we've seen this organized, concerted campaign from conservatives for decades to take over the court system and undo all this legislative work. And in the meantime, we didn't even codify it at the federal level. And now we have a chance to codify at the state level - and eventually, you have to treat this like it truly is - which is an all problem, and conservatives are coming for many of these basic rights. And they're coming for the climate, as we saw with the recent decision announced, I think yesterday, with the Clean Power law. This Supreme Court is on the march, it's corrupt, it has no regard for precedent and they make up their own. And if we're not all hands on deck right now, when are we going to be?
[00:47:39] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - that's a question a number of people are asking. This is not a drill, we are here and it's time to act. We have to, we may not get this chance to act later on in the future, so now is the time.
With that, thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks this Friday, July 1st, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistant producer Shannon Cheng, with assistance from Bryce Cannatelli. And our wonderful co-host today was Executive Director of The Urbanist, Doug Trumm. You can find Doug on Twitter @dmtrumm, that's two M's at the end. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you soon.
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Pastor Carey Anderson about his campaign for State Representative in the 30th Legislative District - why he decided to run, how the last legislative session went and his thoughts on addressing issues such as housing affordability and zoning, homelessness, public safety, LGBTQ+ rights, and climate change.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find more information about Pastor Carey at https://www.electpastorcarey.com/
Resources
Campaign Website - Pastor Carey Anderson: https://www.electpastorcarey.com/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Well, I am just delighted today to welcome to the program, a candidate for State Representative in the 30th Legislative District down in Federal Way, Pastor Carey Anderson. Thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:00:53] Pastor Carey Anderson: Crystal, it's an honor to be with you, and let me just say right off the bat - thank you for inviting me to be a part of this wonderful, wonderful podcast. I'm just elated to be invited today, and I appreciate the work that you do.
[00:01:09] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much. I appreciate the work that you do, my South King County brethren and leader of so many, and just appreciate the time that you've taken to join here. So I guess I wanna start off asking - you've done so much, you've accomplished so much. What is it that made you think - you know what, it is time for me to run for office?
[00:01:33] Pastor Carey Anderson: Well, that's an excellent question. Let me say to our audience - the 30th district is a new district, and I'm running to bring proven new leadership to the new 30th District. The realignment of the boundaries from the 2020 Census shows that Federal Way is a BIPOC-majority city now, the 30th District is growing. I live in Federal Way, I'm the pastor of First AME Church in Auburn and Seattle - Seattle is the mother church. And about 19 years ago, we saw the trend of gentrification and so we started a satellite in the south portion of King County. So, First AME Church is the oldest Black church in the state - 1886 - and so, we see it as a part of our mission to always speak truth to power. So I am running to bring proven new leadership to the new 30th District.
And if I could just take a moment - when we're talking about the crime, we're talking about the homeless, we're talking about the issues of housing, we're talking about funding of our schools, we're talking about public safety. Well, these are things that I have been doing in my entire ministry - 44 years in ministry, 38 years as a senior pastor, 18 years as the pastor of First AME Church - matter of fact, in its 100+ years of existence, I'm the longest serving pastor. My boots have been on the ground, fighting all of those things and addressing all of those things. And I want to do it in this open seat - no one has ever served the new 30th District before. And it is time for proven new leadership for the new 30th District. And I'm sure we'll get into some of the specifics a little later.
[00:03:34] Crystal Fincher: Well, and looking at this new 30th District - you're running for the seat that is being vacated by Representative Jesse Johnson, who has done a lot of work in the community, certainly made his imprint on the Legislature in the time that he was there. Some of that, including police accountability legislation and other legislation that we saw passed in 2020, and then rolled back in 2022, along with a number of other things. We're dealing with a - how we're gonna treat revenue - are we gonna raise more progressive revenue, or move - continue to move - in a regressive direction. Action on the transportation package, stagnation on affordable housing and the middle housing bill there - as you evaluate this past legislative session, what did you think about it? What did you agree with? What did you disagree with?
[00:04:40] Pastor Carey Anderson: Well, first of all, let me commend the work and applaud the work of Representative Jesse Johnson. When he was first running for City Council, we supported him. When he went into the State Legislature, First AME supported him. He came and presented at our church and at both campuses, matter of fact, and we supported him wholeheartedly. I was disappointed to see him leave the seat because we need that type of leadership. And certainly with the police accountability reforms that he pushed through the Legislature - it was a herculean job, but the job is not complete.
And so when we talk about fighting crime, let's just stay right there for a moment. I applaud the work of our police force and law enforcement. However, I don't believe that we should put the entire burden of fighting crime on the police. There are other matters and other variables that go along with property crimes and low-level offenders such as drug abuse, mental health, and some of those types of things that cause an environment for crime. And I am trained as a substance abuse counselor, I am trained - I'm the only candidate trained in mental health. I did it, I've been doing it for some 30+ years. And so these are some of the other things that we must address because when we talk about crime and we talk about housing, it's not enough just to find affordable housing and place people in affordable housing. But many times, if they have mental health issues, if they have, if they're suffering from addiction, we need wraparound services. And so this is going to take critical thinking, it's going to take people that have been in the field to know what to say, how to say it, and drum up the support to build collegiality - to really change our community and change the 30th LD. So these are some of the things that I hope to bring to the State Legislature, as a legislator.
[00:07:00] Crystal Fincher: You talked just a little bit, just now - obviously issues of addiction, in addition to homelessness. Housing affordability is such an important issue and one that a lot of people are struggling with - the cost of rents have been skyrocketing, cost of daycare skyrocketing - so much is making things really hard for people just to survive. They can be working one, two jobs - it's still not enough. Minimum wage is not sufficient for allowing people to live independently and to afford an average rent. What should be done to make housing more affordable in the 30th District?
[00:07:47] Pastor Carey Anderson: Well, thank you for that question - it's really a challenging question, but I do want our audience to know, I've been involved in affordable housing for many, many years, even in my first church in Nevada - we built housing, affordable housing for seniors. First AME Church has been involved in the housing arena through our nonprofit since 1969. And we had three apartment complexes in Seattle, and we formed about five or six years ago - the FAME - Equity Alliance of Western Washington, which is another housing corporation that I serve as the chair of the board. And we just broke ground in January of this year on a $36 million, 119-unit complex - the Elizabeth Thomas Holmes - in South King County. So we're moving down this way - it's an issue that's very personal to me, I've been involved in it. I know that we have to find more housing for struggling families, and the Affordable Housing Trust Fund has money in it. We got to move it quickly and quicker than we have been moving it so that we can build a housing inventory for persons that are really trying to build a home for their loved ones, their children, their families, for sustaining the family unit.
And these are things that I've been involved in, engaged in - and you would not imagine, Crystal, how many people come to First AME Church asking for rental assistance, needing food - which we try to provide on a regular basis, since the pandemic in particular. And we do that because we understand the need - I see it on a regular, regular basis. We even have a home, a parsonage - that we rent it out, bringing it out for, since my time, is 18 years at First Family Church. And so during the pandemic, those families that were living in the home could not pay their rent. And so we elected a moral decision to let them stay and not evict them. Matter of fact, we were - they were part of the persons that came for food every Friday in our Friday drive-by - I'm not talking about shooting, I'm talking about groceries. And so we would feed them, give them groceries - I'm not talking about meat, cheese and milk. I'm talking about more than that - meats, vegetables, wholesome grains - so that the family could be fed a nutritional meal. And also we provided vaccinations for COVID-19, as well as boosters. We continue to do that, and so we boosted and vaccinated over 6,000 people - and fed them as well. So we elected to eat the rent so that these families could stay in their home and not be put out on the street. And the Lord makes a way, somehow. So, we're involved in it and engaged in housing - I will continue to do that as a State legislator.
[00:11:14] Crystal Fincher: One of the big issues this past legislative session was the missing middle housing bill. And you're absolutely right - we need to designate more housing as affordable housing, find affordable housing. One of the big problems is just that there just is not the supply of housing at all - of all different types and at all levels. Here in the state, we have not been building to keep up with the increase in population and the trends in the flow in population. And so allowing more density, more inclusive zoning was put on the table and all of the data shows that's a necessary ingredient of increasing affordability, of helping to stem the skyrocketing costs of rent and housing. Would you have voted for that missing middle housing bill?
[00:12:16] Pastor Carey Anderson: Yes, I would. And let me say this - we have to have more deep-dive conversations for this issue of affordability and housing. And the conversation should center, not so much on - do we wanna build a threeplex or a fourplex in a single-family neighborhood - or what do we really value? If we as a state, if we as people value sheltering and allowing people the opportunity to live a decent life like you are living, then we're gonna have to have those types of conversations. But I believe that there are ways in which we can build housing in single-story homes and two-story homes that are aesthetically beautiful. It would not really disrupt the aesthetic beauty of the community and the neighborhood. These are discussions that I believe would prove to be very valuable instead of just a NIMBY attitude, because today they're homeless, today they're in need - but you miss a couple of paychecks yourself, you get laid off of your job, let another pandemic come and affect and impact your family - you may be the one next in line. And so we have to be very careful at the rocks we throw and the fingers we point because it could easily - you could be up today and you can be down tomorrow. So it's a collective effort - it's going to take collective and courageous conversations so that we could truly address the problem of affordability and density and providing the needed housing inventory for families to live sustained lives.
[00:14:11] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Absolutely well said. We talked about public safety earlier - certainly talked about policing, have talked about the need to intervene in a lot of different ways. Safety is a really big conversation, and right now there are a lot of people in our communities fearing for their safety. Hate crimes are near all-time highs, we're seeing hate and bias-motivated crimes, we're seeing harassment and targeting of the LGBTQ community and others for their ethnic heritage, for their religion. What do you say to people who right now are scared and worried, and who are looking at the two parties going in very different directions, and worried that they can't count on the Supreme Court for safety or rights anymore, and increasingly they're relying on local leadership to make sure that people are safe and respected and protected in communities. What do you see as your responsibility in that area, and how will you lead to make sure that everyone in our communities feel safe?
[00:15:36] Pastor Carey Anderson: Thank you. Excellent question, Crystal. Public safety is a major issue today, and I believe that we have made some major strides, but there's still a long way to go. And as I had said earlier, I believe that - I don't believe that we should put the entire burden on fighting crime left to law enforcement. When George Floyd was murdered and the unrest happened in Seattle in particular - but across the country - the East Precinct in Seattle was overtaken by the protestors. The East Precinct in Seattle is two blocks from First AME Church. I led the charge in convening the mayor and her staff, the Chief of Police at the time and her command staff, and the leaders of CHOP to come to First AME Church - there was about 75 of us in total. We did so with the sole purpose of learning how to talk, learning how to listen to one another. You have to understand - lives had been lost, bloodshed had been spilled on the pavements and on the streets of our cities behind the George Floyd murder. But out of the conversations - without news media, without the news outlets, without reporters - we were able to come and de-escalate the tension. And out of that, we were able to encourage Mayor Durkan, who was serving at the time, to put money into the BIPOC community - $30 million. She formed a task force that I was privileged to be a founding member of - the Equities Community Initiative Task Force - where we put together teams to talk about what are the central and acentric needs of our BIPOC community. Housing was one, entrepreneurship, looking at closing the wealth gap between Black and Brown people against the dominant culture. And so if we were able to do that there, I believe through our State Legislature, we can form ways of bridging some of these issues.
Let me say this, Crystal - every first responder doesn't need to have a gun and a badge. Some of the things that we're dealing with now, we need to put funding into training more officers, law enforcement sensitivity training, cultural sensitivity training. I'm an endangered species as an African American male, even at my age - I'm not 25 - but I'm still an endangered species when pulled over by law enforcement. And so we've got to find ways of how to communicate better, how to empower faith groups, how to empower addiction counselors, how to empower and utilize mental health professionals and social workers to become our first responders. There was a time, a couple of summers ago, when the City SPD, Seattle Police Department, used the United Black Christian Clergy of Western Washington, which I'm a member of, and they would call us in dire situations with street violence amongst gangs. And we were able to find family members, we were able to find gatekeepers to try and de-escalate some of the violence as opposed to law enforcement just going in and pointing a gun and wearing a badge. I think that we must work collectively in this issue, if we're going to really bring about public safety,
[00:19:35] Crystal Fincher: I completely agree with that. And then also talking about people's basic rights and people remaining safe regardless of who they are, what their background is, what their gender or sexuality is.
[00:19:52] Pastor Carey Anderson: And can I say this - when you talk about the LGBTQIA+, we have to understand - they are a part of our community, just like we are a part. There's a collective we, and the Pride Parade in Seattle was right at the Central and the Capitol Hill area - where is First AME Church, right in the Capitol Hill area. We have always been, and there were even members of the 30th LD Dems, who said I was a homophobe. I said, how dare you? If you even Google Pastor Carey Anderson, you will find out that we are a welcoming church, a welcoming faith group. I am certainly not a homophobe - if anybody is, it's you - because we have always had our doors open for any and everybody. And we'll continue to do that - that's who we are, that's our value. God is a God of love. And so we must precipitate that type of love no matter who you are, and whose you are, because we're all children of God.
I have walked with our Jewish brothers and sisters when Temple De Hirsch - our sister congregation right across the street from First AME Church, within walking distance - when they were defaced, their building was defaced, there were bomb threats. I stood with the Jewish brothers and sisters - Rabbi Weiner is a brother of mine from a different mother, we eat together, we worship together. And the Muslim community - we are tight with them - when they were going through threats, bomb threats, defacing of their temples and their mosques, we were right there with them standing by their side. And when Mother Emanuel AME Church back in 2015 lost nine people inclusive of the pastor - this is an AME church. First AME Church was the hub for the Seattle Pacific Northwest area, and we held prayer vigils, we led a 3000-person march through the City, and we engaged peace talks, and with celebratory singing. But we have to stop the killing, and this is what it's about. This is who we must become, and this is what I want to do, as the next voice in Olympia for the 30th District. I'm not talking about what I'm going to do, I'm talking about what I've done and what I continue to do.
[00:22:40] Crystal Fincher: And I guess my question - especially, you've been doing work - in your capacity as a State legislator, particularly at this time where there are so many attacks on people because of their identity. And as we see rhetoric ratcheting up - the type of rhetoric that we know leads to violence - what more can be done to protect our LGBTQ community legislatively, to help protect people's rights, to help keep people safe, to help people just feel loved and seen in our community. What can be done in your role as a legislator?
[00:23:26] Pastor Carey Anderson: Well, first of all, we need to enforce our equal protections under the laws even more. And we've got to not just put it out there in writing, but we must practice it indeed. We must have an open-door policy, we must train the legislators in terms of what a community looks like from people that are other than you. They look different, they have different values and culture, but they're still a part of this community. So I can love you no matter who you are. Although you may not have the same value that I have - just because you're a person, I am obligated to love you, and to stand in your shoes, and to understand your pain, understand your wants, and understand your desires and your hopes. This is what we must do if we're gonna represent all of the people that we are elected to serve.
[00:24:27] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. We also are facing a climate crisis. We are at a point where climate change is happening, we are experiencing extreme heat, extreme cold events, flooding. Marginalized people in our community, lower-income people, BIPOC communities are being hurt worst and first by this climate crisis. And we have work to do to keep it from getting worse, we have work to do to mitigate the impacts that it's currently having. So I guess in - as you're looking at running, as you're looking at legislating, what action would you take to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and pollution?
[00:25:19] Pastor Carey Anderson: Well, first of all, when the dominant culture sniffs, has the sniffles, those who are in poverty, those who are living beneath the poverty line, catch the flu. And so we've got to, first of all, realize the disparities, the health disparities. I'm so thankful for the Governor's supplemental budget, that calls for $64 billion, over $64 billion, of priority areas. One of those areas is climate. And so I would be supportive of the Governor's supplemental budget for 2022. Also, when we look at that, one of the other priorities is that of poverty. One in five persons are living in poverty. There are 1.7 million people in this state that are living in poverty. So when we're talking about climate change and gas emissions and things of that nature - trying to be a 2035 clean air environment, which is a very ambitious goal to meet, but we gotta start somewhere. But when we look at the disparities, 1.7 million are living in poverty. And then when you go a little deeper, you find out over half, or nearly half, are people of color. So we are the ones that are the most impacted, as you have so eloquently said.
So as a State legislator, I would be in support of the Governor's supplemental plan and would be pushing for the implementation of it. I'm not gonna be Black when necessary and BIPOC when convenient. I am who I am, and these are priorities and we've got to speak truth to power. We've got to have these courageous conversations and that's what I'd be willing to do, as your State legislator.
[00:27:16] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - also in this, transportation is the sector most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions in our state. We just passed, as a state, a transportation package that had record investments in transit and mobility - which we all desperately need - but also continue to widen highways and invest billions in doing that. And especially with the impacts, as you just talked about, in the BIPOC community - just people who are in close proximity to roads and highways - the pollution that comes from those are disproportionately causing asthma, heart disease, lung disease in our communities. We now have tons of data showing that widening highways doesn't reduce traffic, it increases traffic and increases emissions. Would you be supportive in future highway packages of highway expansion, or do you think we should cap it at where it's at and focus on investing more in transit and mobility solutions for people who walk, bike and ride.
[00:28:43] Pastor Carey Anderson: Yes, excellent question. I think we need to take a serious look at a moratorium on expansion for our highways and really look at some of the measures to bring public transportation and make that more accessible. Here in the 30th District, the transportation - Sound Transit - is moving this way. And a lot of people, though we may live in the Federal Way, 30th District area, we are working in Seattle - let's be clear about it. And so, once that is really completed - that project - that will help ease some of the traffic flow and the emissions that are going out, because I'd rather spend a minimal amount of time and read a book while I'm traveling quickly and swiftly to my job in Seattle, than being stuck in traffic and then having the propensity to get into an accident or having someone hit me or falling asleep while we're in a dead zone deadlock and gridlock and those kinds of things. So I know that a lot of the transit money has already been bonded out. So it's gonna be a difficult thing to look at, but I'd certainly be in favor of a moratorium.
[00:30:09] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that makes sense. And as you are considering your race, your opponent, just the dynamics of what is happening in Federal Way today and what residents are going through and what they want. Why are you the person who they should choose to represent them?
[00:30:33] Pastor Carey Anderson: Russell Wilson used to say this when he was with the Seahawks - why not me? So, when we look at public safety, when we look at safe neighborhoods, funding our schools, affordable housing, quality healthcare for seniors, clean environment, and issues surrounding equity for all - I'm the only candidate who has been a K-12 public school teacher. And I'm for state funding - I'm the only candidate who has championed $400 million of state funding for immediate reinvestment into our communities. We've got a $200 million allocation that's gonna drop next month. And the RFPs are soon to be online. And so I was one, along with four others, who helped champion that $400 million state funding for immediate reinvestment into our communities. I'm the only candidate who has been using our church as a clinic for patients, for COVID vaccinations and boosters, and feeding people - to the tune of feeding, we've done nearly 15,000. For boosting and vaccinating people, over 6,000. And we continue to do that through partnerships. I'm the only candidate that provides jobs through affordable housing - our affordable housing projects and my church-based nonprofit organizations. And as I had said earlier, our project just broke ground in January 2022, providing 119 units of affordable housing at a cost of over $36 million.
No one else has done that, no one else has been involved in leading the community. I'm just talking about - I'm not talking about Emmett Till, but I am talking about Trayvon Martin, I am talking about Michael Brown, I am talking about the mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. I am talking about George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery. First AME Church, through this pastor and the leadership that I provided for this community - I was the one out in the street, I was the one organizing these marches along with my colleagues, I was the one that's speaking truth to power, I was the one that convened the mayor, the chief of police who has endorsed me. WEA has endorsed me, the Retired Public Employees Council has endorsed me, and we're still getting endorsements as we speak - because my boots are on the ground. You don't have to wait for Day One to start pushing the button - what are you gonna do? I'm gonna continue to do what I've always done. And so this is my pledge, this is who I am as a person - and preaching and politics have never been separated in my book. And from the historical tradition of the African Methodist Episcopal Church - we were the first to seek public office in state and federal levels in our denomination and have led the charge and led the way. The Reverend Raphael Warnock is standing on the shoulders of historical path and I'm standing on those same shoulders.
[00:33:48] Crystal Fincher: We're at an interesting time in our country and there certainly is a lot going on. You're coming to this race as a pastor. Your faith has informed how you have walked through life and how you have chosen to serve others in the community. We also see examples of some people who may be opposing you in this race, and some churches that are much more exclusive, that talk much more pointedly about who is and who is not welcome, who is and who is not moral or just or right in our society, allowed in our society. And we're having lots of conversations about what is the appropriate delineation between church and state. As someone whose faith is important to them, who you are walking into this role as a pastor, what role does faith play in how you serve, and I guess, through this candidacy. And what would you say to people who look around at other examples of religious leadership that they don't feel loved or included by - that you, as a pastor, would be the right choice. What would you say to folks who are thinking that?
[00:35:17] Pastor Carey Anderson: Well, you've asked a series of questions, actually. I would like to start by saying - we sang a song when I was coming up in California and They'll Know We Are Christians by Our Love. And so my faith is rooted and grounded in love - love for neighbor, and love for self, and love for a community. And so, this is what informs my walk, it informs my talk. I want to be able to stand in the shoes of other people. It's not until you stand in their shoes that you understand their pain, and once you understand their pain, then you can begin to have discussions on how to mitigate the pain, how to address the pain, and how to walk with them through the pain. And so this is what I endeavor to do. The Bible says in the New Testament - we walk by faith and not by sight. So faith is what leads me, every morning, to get up. And it doesn't matter to me if you're Muslim, Jewish, atheist, or whoever you may be. You are a person, you are valued, and you are loved. What is it that we can do to help your walk? What is it that we can do to inform your viability, sustainability for you and your family and your loved ones? That's what we should be about.
[00:36:57] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much, Pastor Carey. If people wanna find out more about your campaign or get involved, where can they go to find out more information?
[00:37:06] Pastor Carey Anderson: Google me and go to my, our website - Pastor Carey Anderson or Reverend Dr. Carey Anderson. But our campaign website is electpastorcarey.com and you can go there, and we're still getting lots of hits and the phone number is there 253-296-6370. Well, you're welcome to join us, you're welcome to wave with us, you're welcome to walk with us, you're welcome to phonebank, textbank with us, and to follow us as we follow our call and commitment. So, these are simple ways, but it means so much - reaching people one at a time, one neighborhood at a time, one household at a time, one person at a time. And that's what we're about.
[00:38:05] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much for spending time with us today, Pastor Carey Anderson. Thank you so much - we'll continue to follow you on your journey.
[00:38:14] Pastor Carey Anderson: Thank you for having me, Crystal. It has certainly been an honor, and it's certainly been a joy to see the work that you and your team are doing. And I am not going to turn this off. I'm gonna keep you in my heart and I'm gonna keep the work that you do in my soul. So thank you so much. God bless you and God keep you.
[00:38:37] Crystal Fincher: Thank you.
I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On today’s Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Co-Founder and Editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett. They start off breaking down the Supreme Court’s official opinion on Dobbs, which overturns Roe v. Wade. They discuss how we got here, the immediate repercussions on Washington and the country, and what we can do about it. Next, they look at the motivations behind Seattle Pride’s decision to ask for no uniformed police to participate in this year’s festivities. In housing news, they question Mayor Harrell’s decision to veto a bill from the City Council asking landlords to report how much rent they charge, and look at what’s next for Seattle’s Social Housing Initiative now that it’s gathered enough votes to qualify for the November ballot. Finally, they discuss the reasoning behind Gov. Inslee signaling that he’s not interested in following Biden’s lead in creating a gas tax holiday in Washington state.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica C. Barnett, at @ericacbarnett. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
Abortion Funds:
Northwest Abortion Access Fund - https://nwaafund.org/donate
Planned Parenthood of the Greater Northwest - https://www.weareplannedparenthood.org/onlineactions/cOJVhOyrzkq4uBcxVekXFA2?sourceid=1000065&affiliateID=091810&_ga=2.195968876.195061633.1656097315-413517584.1656097315
National Network of Abortion Funds - https://secure.actblue.com/donate/supportabortionfunds?refcode=nnafwebsite
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“What the end of Roe v. Wade means for Washington state” by Melissa Santos from Axios:
https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/06/24/end-roe-v-wade-means-washington-state
“Democrats seek to stop hospital mergers that limit abortion access” by Melissa Santos from Axios: https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/06/22/democrats-stop-hospital-mergers-limit-abortions
“Seattle Police officers won’t march in pride parade, frustrated chief says” by Anika Varty from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/uniformed-seattle-police-officers-will-not-march-at-seattle-pride-parade/
“Harrell vetoes plan to require Seattle landlords to report the rent they charge” by Heidi Groover from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/harrell-vetoes-plan-to-require-seattle-landlords-to-report-the-rent-they-charge/
“Social Housing Initiative Pushes Forward, Fact Checking-Harrell on Homelessness” from PubliCola: https://publicola.com/2022/06/23/social-housing-initiative-pushes-forward-fact-checking-harrell-on-homelessness/
“A Photo-Finish for Seattle’s Social Housing Initiative” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/06/22/75442679/a-photo-finish-for-seattles-social-housing-initiative
“Inslee signals no interest in WA gas tax ‘holiday’; others skeptical too” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/inslee-signals-no-interest-in-a-wa-gas-tax-holiday-others-skeptical-too/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks and Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. If you like the show, please feel free to leave us a good review. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's cohost: Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola, cohost of the Seattle Nice podcast and author of Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery, Erica Barnett.
[00:01:02] Erica Barnett: Hey Crystal.
[00:01:04] Crystal Fincher: Hey, Erica. Well, it's been a morning.
[00:01:09] Erica Barnett: It sure has.
[00:01:12] Crystal Fincher: Because the overturning of the Roe vs Wade decision is now official. The Supreme Court, with the Dobbs decision, has ended the right to abortion for women in this country and signaled a potential end to other critical rights that are pretty basic and fundamental. And it's just rough. Where are you at with this?
[00:01:44] Erica Barnett: Yeah. I tweeted out this morning, because if you're not on Twitter, do you even exist? I said basically - don't interpret the silence of people who re suffering today and who will continue to suffer because of the end of abortion rights - don't interpret our silence as consent or believing that this is okay. We've been screaming our heads off about this for years and no one listened. And now all of a sudden, everybody is screaming too. Boy, with the way I'm describing this, is way too long for a tweet. I said something much more pithy, but basically - look, I am feeling overwhelmed, but I'm also not in the state of shock that the New York Times Editorial Board appears to be, or a lot of mainstream pundits appear to be, because we knew this was coming. And we knew it was coming long before the Supreme Court even took up this case, and before the the leaked opinion - this is part of the theocracy that I would argue started long before Trump, but certainly accelerated with Trump - an illegitimate president installing Supreme Court justices for life, so I'm feeling - emotionally, I'm feeling pretty numb. But yeah, that is not by any means, it's not meant to imply that I am okay with this, or complacent, or anything of the sort.
[00:03:18] Crystal Fincher: Of course.
[00:03:19] Erica Barnett: I'm very upset. I'm just so upset, I can't - I can barely talk about it.
[00:03:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I think a lot of us are in a similar situation - certainly, there is, I will say there is, some frustration that I feel with people who are shocked about this right now, or even shocked about it when the opinion leak came out. I get how people land there, so I totally get it, but there have been so many people warning that this was coming for years. And this basically became the inevitable conclusion as soon as Trump was elected, and we knew that he was going to be making more Supreme Court picks and making a Roe vs Wade-proof majority on the Court. And so there's - I've also on Twitter, this morning, and have tweeted some stuff about it, been in some group chats about it. But man, I've said this before, listen to the people who are impacted. They know what's coming, they have to be vigilant because they know that they're going to be the people most exposed to the problem first. So yes, they're great at picking up the warning signs before other people are, and yes, they're warning and no, it may not have been on the front page of the New York Times until years later and lots of pundits, especially white male pundits, have downplayed this outcome. But this was so obvious this was coming, and the time to fight against it and to get serious about fighting against it was a long time ago. Does not mean that we cannot still fight and we absolutely need to, but I wish we would get better collectively about listening to people who are in the most impacted, most marginalized groups, most subject to harm - when they warn about things, we need to take it seriously.
[00:05:33] Erica Barnett: Yeah, and I feel like what's gonna happen now is a lot of women, and people who take contraception of any kind, have been warning that contraception is next. There's a lot of things that I think are "next" on the list of rights that the Court's gonna try to strip away, but I think contraception is probably one of the very next. And I think that still, to this day, when you bring that up and you say they're gonna start banning the women's right, people's right, not to get pregnant - that people - you get laughed at, like that's absurd. In the same way that the notion of overturning Roe was absurd, maybe I don't know, back in the 90s when it was still, in retrospect, a fairly new decision, 20, 25 years old. It seemed absurd and now I think everything is just accelerated, and I think the right to access an IUD is going to be next because a lot of sort of Christian-ist right-wing pundits and politicians and people in the Court believe that that is abortion. And I won't go into all the details about their thinking there because it's absurd, but that is going to be next.
And then it's going to be all kinds of rights that the Supreme Court will use this decision in the reasoning to say - that it wasn't in the Constitution and it hasn't been established law - it wasn't established law at the time in the 1800s and before, so it can't be established law now. It's everything from same sex marriage, same sex relationships, interracial marriage. The list just goes on and on and on of rights that could be impacted and probably will be impacted by this decision. So, I feel like also - in screaming my head off all these years, I have tried to say - it is not just women I know that no one cares about women. That is a well-established right, or well-established fact, that I have seen again and again in my lifetime. But this isn't "just women" and people who can get pregnant - it's all marginalized people who are going to have their rights stripped away because of the reasoning behind this decision.
[00:08:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, we're talking about the stripping away of a lot of fundamental privacy rights, really, and that does impact marginalized populations. And this occurring at the same time where we basically have a surveillance-based economy is just really alarming, and people are justifiably scared, and harm is going to occur because of this to lots of different people, not only women. And so it is just - it's a challenge. This morning in a chat I was in, lots of people were - this is hard, distraught, and really troubled and furious. And just feeling the whole range of emotions. And someone asks - well, where is our power in this? - and people just wondering what do we do. And I think that's an important question to ask, I absolutely think the range of feelings that people are feeling are entirely justified - this is hard and rough. I hope people have grace for people that they're around because this is just another thing on top of so many other things that we're dealing with that is just hard and unjust and unnecessarily cruel, but we do still have power and we need to exercise all of our power, all of the levers that we have - because this is so critical and so fundamental, and just the beginning of the attempt to dismantle rights and dismantle privacy for people who they just view as beneath them, or they financially benefit from being beneath them.
So I think it's important to continue to, at every turn, even if federal action has not occurred and they are not jumping to do that now. They do respond to pressure and if we apply all of the levers of pressure to let them know that this is a priority - we've gotta be in the streets, every town hall, every meeting, every fundraiser - people should be asking - Hey, are you, do you support ending the filibuster, do you support taking this vote? We have to codify it. There has to be a vote. We have to do what's necessary, which does involve ending the filibuster for this and so many other things, ways to protect rights - the filibuster is not more important than that. They should be asked about this by Democrats, by everyone, all of the time. They should know that this is front and center on people's minds and that people are not willing to accept anything less than action, urgent action. And so we should be demanding that of them - organizations who do endorsements should reopen those endorsements - and ending the filibuster, calling for a vote should be a basic requirement for an endorsement. It's a different change in process, but part of the signaling of this is an emergency, this is urgent is treating things like that from an institutional and from organizational points of view. Organizations have to signal that this is a right that we can't do without. Even organizations that are not thought of as women's organizations or reproductive rights organizations - this affects everyone who you deal with - this affects our community, this affects people's financial mobility, ability to not live in poverty, to dictate their own healthcare - everyone should be standing in solidarity. Every organization should be saying - okay, you want support, then these are the basic things that are gonna need to happen. You can choose not to, but we need to put our energy and effort and resources towards people who are.
In the State, legislatively - we absolutely need to make sure that our legislators take action to make sure that access is available. We have a lot of areas in this state where there have been mergers - Catholic hospitals, in some cities, are the only hospitals that some communities have access to - who don't provide abortion care. We're gonna be seeing an influx of people coming from other states to get abortion care - those who have enough money to come from other states - we need to be taking action now, legislatively, to ensure that that access is available and that we're supporting just the capacity of our healthcare system to provide that. And Jay Inslee should call a special session to make that happen. He says he wants to, he supports the introduction of a constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights. I think that is a great idea. Even if it doesn't - may be close or they're saying, okay, well, Republicans may not vote for it, it may not hit the threshold - well, let's get people on record and see what they say. Let's actually force the vote. Let's let people know who stands where and what they're voting for 'cause there's been a lot of silence from Republicans in this state. And everyone should be held accountable and everyone should have the opportunity to act to do this and it should happen now. These are things that we absolutely need to do.
And being involved just in mutual aid organizations, supporting those that already exist - abortion care funds - supporting those reputable ones that already exist is absolutely necessary. We're gonna have to be here for each other in community like we have not been in a long time, and organizing starts with your neighbors and being there for one another and building that network out. So just there are things that we can do, that we need to do, that we can demand of our legislators that can help protect and fortify abortion rights and access in this state, while we work hard and apply pressure to get them reinstated federally.
[00:14:18] Erica Barnett: Yeah, and I think also, your point on abortion access right now is really key, because overturning the filibuster and then getting a law and then getting a law that will hold up in court, given this decision, and et cetera, et cetera is a very long process that has many maybes in it. But one thing you can do right now is give money, if you have it, to local abortion funds. And because I was mentioning to you Crystal, before we went on air, that I used to work at NARAL Pro-Choice Washington - we would get a lot of calls from people who were trying to come in from out of state, from Alaska, from Idaho to access abortion because a lot of states that even do technically have access, it is much, much harder to get a later-in-pregnancy abortion. It has been for a long time. So, if you don't have the money early on, if you don't have the access, if you don't have the permission of your parents, all sorts of reasons. And the fact was that people would call and say - can you give me money to get out here? And we didn't do that - we were an advocacy group - so we would refer them to the abortion funds in the state that have very, very limited resources. And so, the way that - there's going to be, there's this notion that there's going to be a flood of abortion refugees to Washington State, and I think that is true - in the same way that New Mexico has become a refuge state for people seeking abortions from Texas. But the fact is that you can't get an abortion out-of-state unless you have the means independently, or you're lucky enough to get funding from an abortion fund that doesn't have enough money for everybody. And so, if you have money, that is a critical place to put it right now.
[00:16:14] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Very well said. Absolutely true. We'll continue to follow this. There is also another piece of legislation that has been introduced, that can be taken up in the special session or soon thereafter, to prevent mergers. We're giving our state's Attorney General the power to deny mergers if it does impact access to abortion and other critical healthcare needs. So there are definitely things that can happen locally, there's pressure that can be applied nationally. This is going to take everybody getting involved, it's gonna take ally organizations signaling that this is critical and an emergency. This is literally a life-or-death situation for some women.
And again, this is the beginning. This is the beginning of - we've seen laws in other states forcing, explicitly saying that women must be forced to carry an ectopic pregnancy. That's a death sentence. And just people who have no understanding of what basic biology actually is, and how women's cycles work and can vary - and they vary all the time - and applying and attaching punishments to things that happen naturally and that aren't preventable at all is - it's terrifying as a person needing healthcare. And I just - we have to hold power accountable. This is not a - hopefully they get to it. This is a - they need to get to it and we need to let them know that votes are at stake.
[00:17:59] Erica Barnett: And can I just say, just real quickly before we get off this topic, that's great that the Attorney General is now concerned to this extent about the mergers of Catholic hospitals, but this is another thing that abortion rights advocates have been absolutely screaming our heads off about for years and years. And it is frankly infuriating to me to see - great, go for it, by all means, better incredibly late than never, I guess. But this is something that needed to happen 10 years ago, 15 years ago. And again, we were told we're hysterical and there's never gonna really be a problem. And there's always gonna be other options you can choose to go to if you're having, for example, a miscarriage and it's an emergency - you can have the ambulance take you to the hospital that you happen to know will actually let you have a managed miscarriage. And we were just told we were hysterical. And it's so infuriating now - and this is why I can't talk about it, honestly, 'cause as soon as I start going down an avenue, I start getting so mad - but this is one that really does piss me off because this is something that was actionable at the State level years ago and the State took no action.
[00:19:17] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely justifiable point and I will say to those listening, there's - I'm a political consultant, I work for Democrats - but hearing the mantra "Vote Blue, No Matter Who," just "Vote Blue, this is wrong - Vote Blue." Well, we vote blue to prevent things like this from happening. We vote blue and we elect a president and congressional majorities and legislative majorities to ensure that things like this don't happen, so that they take action to prevent things like this from happening, so that they do everything in their power to keep women from losing this right. And everything in their power does include ending the filibuster - that's within their power - and just being in the situation where it's like voting rights, disability rights, women's rights, healthcare just falling at the whim of one or two Congresspeople in a filibuster - when we see more energy being applied to sometimes more progressive people for rocking the boat. Well, yeah, we're gonna rock the boat if this is where the boat is headed - we've gotta turn this thing around and you have to earn the ability to say - we vote for Democrats so that this won't happen. You can't let this happen. You have to fight with everything you have and do everything in your power. They have not done everything in their power, right?
So we have to see that - I'm gonna be voting for the Democratic nominee for president, right? I'm going to, but I'm not going to be surprised at low turnout and bad outcomes, if we don't have leaders who are willing to step up and use their power to prevent real, immediate, tangible harm. And in some cases, death, which absolutely will occur, which absolutely will occur. You have to earn this. You have to act. You can't find it easier to give an excuse than to fight to convince people why it's worth taking this vote and taking this fight on. If we spent as much energy collectively making the case for why this needs to happen, instead of coming up with excuses why it can't, and applying pressure - so at least we're doing everything in our power to pressure Joe Manchin to make it happen, in the way that we've seen other people pressured. And not - well, we'll wait for his - when they wanna make life hard for someone, they can. When they want to apply pressure, they can. They choose when to and when not to, and to allow everyone else to experience these consequences while we're watching people in relative comfort not take action, is absolutely infuriating to people being harmed.
They're looking at people, they're like - I hear sometimes - well, why aren't we just mad at Republicans? Trust me, we are. But we know who they are. And Democrats are saying that they're people who stand against this and who fight against this, so we're waiting to see the fight. We need to see the fight. We need to see action now. And I am as frustrated as anyone else by not seeing people do everything in their power to help this, because this has such wide-ranging ramifications immediately. There are several states that have trigger laws that make abortion illegal immediately, or sometimes up to a month in these states. But it is coming and we need action, and we should hold people accountable for taking action. I also get furious about this. You can tell I'm a bit frustrated and trying to moderate the emotion but it's infuriating, it's absolutely infuriating. It's something in a long line of things that are infuriating. Just - I'll leave it there.
With that said, there are some other things that happened this week that we could talk about, including - Pride is coming up, Pride Parade is coming up this weekend. We're coming back together in person, it's an exciting time for a lot of people. But we've had a conversation here locally that has taken place in a lot of different cities and countries - in should police be allowed to march in Pride? Should they be excluded from Pride? What is happening here?
[00:24:33] Erica Barnett: Well, I would say, and perhaps this'll be an odd framing, but I would say that the police department in Seattle has sort of - Pride has asked, the main Pride Parade organizers have asked, have said that they are not, that police officers in uniform are not welcome. The way that I would frame it though, is that the police department then sort of made it into a bigger story than it would've been by issuing a lengthy statement from Police Chief Adrian Diaz, saying that this is unacceptable and almost prejudicial to not allow this. The sort of reasoning, which may be obvious, is that LGBTQ+ rights were were won against the force of the state - Stonewall was a riot sparked by police violence.
[00:25:27] Crystal Fincher: Against police brutality. Yeah.
[00:25:29] Erica Barnett: Yeah, and so it would be inappropriate for armed police officers to be marching in the parade and sort of giving a rainbow sheen to the police department. And so that's what's happened - this is the, I believe the second year in a row, there's been a clash over this, maybe the third year. No second year, 'cause obviously we had a pandemic. But I think the police are being a little provocative. They are still permitted and there are many LGBTQ+ police officers - and I think that is something that is somewhat getting lost in this debate and something that Diaz did attempt to rather clumsily to point out - but the issue is not whether those officers are themselves individually allowed to participate in the parade. The issue is marching in uniform and sort of saying the police are big supporters of LGBTQ rights, and so I think that is the crux of the issue. And ultimately, Pride can say what they wanna say and they can ban who they wanna ban, and what are the police gonna do - show up unwanted? That just seems that would be an act of provocation that would be absolutely outrageous and a distraction, I think, from the joyfulness and the excitement of Pride weekend.
[00:26:54] Crystal Fincher: It absolutely would be, also wouldn't be a surprise to see that happen. But to me it's pretty simple - given the origin of Pride, it absolutely makes sense that you would not want to have armed officers. It was about literally fighting against that, fighting against the harm that it has caused. I think the community being impacted and harmed has the right to dictate their response to that harm. And I - it's one thing if the police want to characterize themselves as wonderful, lots of people wanna characterize themselves as wonderful. But if a person is saying you have harmed me, you've continued to harm me, you've been a harmful force in my community - that's their thing, that's their right, they have experienced that harm. And this is their community celebration. I wouldn't walk into a religious celebration and say - you must allow different people - this is a community that has been harmed, that this celebration came out of fighting to reduce that harm and fighting for themselves and for their survival. And so why are we not centering whatever it is around the concerns and cares of that community and letting this group force themselves, feel entitled to be part of it? It just seems like - they are being provocative.
They're also finding time to meet about this and spending a lot of time talking in the media and everything. Where was this time at, when they decided they couldn't investigate sexual assault?
[00:28:53] Erica Barnett: Well, I do wanna introduce just a tiny bit of nuance, which is that - that no community is is monolithic and to say that LGBT people have certain political beliefs on - or LGBTQ+ people in the military or in the police force are not real members of that community - I know it's not what you're saying, but there is a slippery slope there. And I do think that it is important to acknowledge that the people who are in SPD, who are members of that community, do exist. They are legitimate members of that community. And I understand some of the hurt that they are feeling as well. And I don't wanna just totally diminish that by saying - cops are bad and they shouldn't be allowed to participate because of the origin of Pride. But I do think, but again, that is a bit of nuance - I think that the mutual provocations here are around this issue of whether they should be able to be essentially marching in formation, in military-style uniforms, in the middle of a Pride Parade. And I think - let's just take that off the table and say that's not gonna happen. And how are we going to invite individual officers, not in uniform, to participate in a celebration of their community - that's a more appropriate question and let's just leave the whole possibility of cops marching in formation out of it.
[00:30:32] Crystal Fincher: I would just say two things. One, you're absolutely correct. The community is not a monolith - no community is - and that's evidenced in the variety of Pride celebrations. And we've seen that, and have talked about that in various ways before. But I do think as the organizers of this particular event, if not legally - but certainly seems like they can legally - but just ethically and morally, they get to dictate the terms of participation. And especially if they feel they're centering the safety of the community that they're putting on this event to celebrate.
And the other thing I would say is that I don't think it's always so easy to just dismiss the possibility of the police showing up. People have to prepare for that, because they have in other situations and because that can create harm, it can escalate it. So organizers have to think about that, the community needs to plan around that, people who may be impacted by that do have to think about that. And they have to think about that because of provocations that they've seen in other situations. So it's almost a privilege to not be, to be like - ah, don't worry about it. Because you do have to worry about it - and that's the crux of the problem - that is something that is a known possibility. And that, in and of itself, is its own thing that you have to prepare for that's not that pleasant, and have contingency plans for and all of that, because that is a wild card that could happen. Or some escalation happens, right? So it's - I just don't think it's as simple as - ah, let them be nice. They have a - we see the complaints and the reports and the investigations - there is a history in town here of them engaging in harmful ways, and escalating in situations, and inserting themselves into situations, where investigations of them have found that they have escalated situations. So I think they have to think about it, right? But they shouldn't - it would be nice that they didn't have to.
At the same time, your point that there are people in the LGBTQ community, in the Seattle Police Department and others, is absolutely true. And - hey, if they wanna have a Cop Pride Parade, where they're marching in uniform, they could absolutely do that. I haven't seen those, but that seems like that would be a great thing for the police department, if they are primarily concerned with supporting their community and their officers, that they could do. And yeah, I think that's the thing, but it'll continue - we'll see how it goes.
Also this week, or within the past couple weeks, Mayor Harrell vetoed a plan that would have required Seattle landlords to report the rent they charge. Why did he do that?
[00:34:05] Erica Barnett: Well, this is a really interesting bill, which I covered from the beginning back in March when they first started discussing it, because the original purpose of the bill - and it came from Alex Pedersen, one of the more conservative members of the council - the original purpose was to basically get landlords to provide some information about the rents they charge, in order to essentially demonstrate that small landlords are good and need to be preserved. Because the theory, the hypothesis went that they charge lower rents. And so, during the upcoming comprehensive plan - this is really a zoning bill, weirdly enough - during the upcoming comprehensive plan, they could not make changes that would increase density, so as to preserve these small landlords. So it was conceived as a pro-landlord bill. Then it got support from Councilmember Sawant and Tammy Morales on the left, who are eager to get just this information out there, because it's really hard to know when you're renting an apartment, what the average rent is in that area. You can go on all kinds of websites that tell you all different things, you can sort of look and see what else is available in the area, but that doesn't give you a real sense. And so they were like - this is great, we need more information so that renters can have the same kind of information that home buyers do about mortgages and housing costs.
So, the mayor, to answer your question, ultimately vetoed it 'cause he said it was too anti-landlord and that it would've been too onerous on landlords, it would've violated their rights by requiring them to reveal so-called proprietary information, i.e. what they were charging in rents. And that it would be unreliable because people, landlords would essentially just choose to opt-out or they would choose to lie. So, a whole bunch of what I would call very unconvincing arguments. I think the real purpose was to protect landlords from having to to reveal something that might ultimately have caused them to have to lower their rent because the rents they're charging are unreasonable, and it also would've increased renter's ability to have some information parity, if no other kind of parity with the landlords that charge them rent. So, it was an anti-renter and a pro-landlord veto in very, very short.
[00:36:32] Crystal Fincher: No, I think you summed it up quite well, and in this time where Bruce Harrell loves a dashboard - he talks about data and wanting to get more information. It seems like when there is a widely acknowledged housing affordability crisis that is exacerbating the homelessness crisis, doing everything we can - and the Harrell administration, all of it, all of the plans and all of his announcements have started with we need to gather the data and we'll get a dashboard up and all of that. This seems like a very basic step to do that. Landlords ostensibly advertise their rent when they're doing that anyway, which was one of the very basic things and I think Alex Pedersen - who is one of the more conservative members of the Council - it sounded perfectly reasonable, and he's taking this step to address housing affordability. I love the - funny enough, it comes down to zoning - as a former land use and planning board commissioner - man, everything comes down to zoning.
[00:37:40] Erica Barnett: Yep.
[00:37:41] Crystal Fincher: But it's - this was so basic and common sense, and it just seems - wow, we ask a lot from homeowners. We actually require homeowners to give a ton of personal, extremely personal information to landlords. We require people getting rental assistance and other assistance to give a ton of extremely personal information over to government entities and man, what a difference when it just comes to asking landlords to report what they're charging - which they have to report already in various formats - just really confounding and seems like a very clear and bold statement about where, who's being centered in this policy. And where, if we're talking about this housing affordability crisis, where help is not likely to come from. And it's just unfortunate 'cause if this is hard, then doing the actual things to increase affordability are a lot harder than this. So it's just troubling that that was a hard thing, when it initially would've been very basic - received a lot of pushback from Sara Nelson on the Council, and it looks like Mayor Harrell wound up feeling very similarly to Councilmember Nelson.
[00:39:12] Erica Barnett: Well, it's very interesting that Councilmember Nelson sort of said several times - well, renters can just go and look on Craigslist or whatever - obviously a statement from somebody who hasn't had to rent in a very, very long time. It is so hard to know. It is so hard to even know what the place that you're trying to rent rents for, honestly, because a lot of times it'll be a range, and it'll be five months free or whatever, and then the deposit is huge. So in comparison - you wanna buy a house - you can go see what it's sold for the last five times it sold, you can see what the asking price is, you can see what the adjacent houses sold for - just, there's a tremendous amount of information. And this information, by the way, used to be available - there was a private company that provided it. And that company went out of business and that is what precipitated this legislation. So there's a long precedent of this information actually being available. The fact that it is not available is a new thing, not a longstanding situation.
[00:40:13] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and relevant to so many people in the City - about half of the City's residents are renters. And so this is very meaningful and very impactful for a lot of people in the City. And so we'll see what the next plan is, but action is needed. Housing is so expensive and continues to rise in and around Seattle and the State. So hopefully more action is figured out, or there are questions brought to Bruce Harrell to say - okay, so what is the plan? If we can't gather basic data, what are you going to do to make housing more affordable? Lots of things are on the table, action is needed - what is going to get done?
Also - that we see here - is the Social Housing Initiative turned in their signatures. They exceeded the threshold. What happened here?
[00:41:19] Erica Barnett: So this is the initiative to create a public development authority which would, and I'm sure your listeners already know this - I'm repeating myself, I'm sure - but basically it would create an authority that could build affordable housing, publicly-owned housing, permanently affordable housing. They turned in, I believe, around 29,000-something signatures, and they did not get as many signatures as they wanted. So when you turn in signatures for an initiative, a lot of them tend to get thrown out because they are illegible, they have addresses outside of Seattle, they're not eligible voters, et cetera. So they had hoped to turn in 35,000, they got around 29,000. And I think it remains to be seen, and they said this week at a press conference that it remains to be seen, whether that's going to end up being enough valid signatures. They do have an opportunity if it's just a few, or a few hundred, short to go out and collect those signatures. They get 20 days to do that, so this very well could be on the ballot in November. They did say that if they don't achieve their goal this time, they're not giving up, they're gonna keep pushing for this social housing measure. So either way, it's not gonna go away, but it could be on the ballot as soon as November.
[00:42:40] Crystal Fincher: Well, and the very last thing that we'll cover super quickly - Inslee signaling no interest in suspending Washington's gas tax, as President Biden has signaled a potential easing of the federal gas tax for a period. What is Inslee thinking?
[00:43:03] Erica Barnett: Well, I don't know exactly what Inslee's logic is, but my guess is that, in the same way that the the Biden proposal is not certain to lower gas taxes, neither is a local proposal or a state proposal, and you lose a lot of money. The gas tax in Washington State funds transportation projects and primarily, almost exclusively roads. So you can argue over some of those specific roadway expansion projects, but nonetheless it's a blunt instrument to suddenly eliminate a huge tax resource, without any real guarantee that gas companies won't just further increase the prices so that they make even more profit, since in the same way that this is not Biden's fault - Biden does not hold the main levers to actually decrease gas prices substantially, the oil companies do and they're making record profits. So I think that there's probably some caution about that. Are we gonna cut this tax, lose a lot of money, and gain nothing for consumers - that's a real risk.
[00:44:11] Crystal Fincher: That is definitely a real risk and Biden is certainly receiving some of that feedback on his proposal. Gas prices are up around the world, the percentage increases that we're seeing in the United States are not close to the highest increases that other people have seen in some other countries. A lot of this is a supply problem, which easing the gas tax does not allow, and in fact it could make the supply problem a little worse if it encourages more people to buy gas. And it does rob folks of revenue, it does allow oil companies to - essentially if they wanted to - just pocket the difference and not pass along this to consumers. We're funneling this through essentially Big Oil, who is not known for being really generous and magnanimous and they like a lot of profit for themselves. And if anything - man, this money could be invested in helping reduce our reliance on this, to build infrastructure that enables more people to safely and efficiently use other methods of travel for short or long trips or commutes or all of the above. It just is - it's something, but sometimes doing something, even though it is something - if it doesn't fix the problem, why do it? And so I actually think Inslee is right on on this, because it's not actually a solution to the problem.
With that, we will conclude today's conversation. Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, June 24th, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler - who just had a baby! - and assistant producer Shannon Cheng with assistance from Bryce Cannatelli, and our wonderful cohost today is Seattle political reporter and editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett. You can find Erica on Twitter @ericacbarnett - that's Erica with a "c", and then another "c", Barnett - and on PubliCola.com. And you can buy her book, Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii and all those things. You can find Hacks & Wonks on wherever you get your podcasts - just make sure to subscribe so you get our midweek and our end of week show. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to all of the resources referenced in the show. We will also have abortion fund resources in the show notes also and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Tyler Crone about her campaign for State Representative in the 36th Legislative District - why she decided to run, how the last legislative session went and her thoughts on addressing issues such as COVID response and recovery, public safety, drug decriminalization, housing affordability and zoning, homelessness and climate change.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Tyler at @electtylercrone.
Resources
Campaign Website - Tyler Crone: https://www.electtylercrone.com/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, I'm very happy to welcome Tyler Crone to the podcast, who is a candidate for the State Representative seat in the 36th legislative district. Thank you for joining us today.
[00:00:48] Tyler Crone: Thank you so much, Crystal, for having me. I'm really delighted to be in conversation with you.
[00:00:53] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I'm very excited to have this conversation. And starting off, I'm wondering - what made you run?
[00:01:00] Tyler Crone: That is the question - I never expected to run for office, I never expected to be a candidate. And yet having been part of the HIV movement and having been part of the HIV response, partnering with governments and the UN and the WHO to rise to the other health and social justice crisis of our time, I felt we could be doing better on COVID-19. And I was concerned and invested - as a parent, as a public health professional - that we needed a spotlight on COVID-19, that we were not through yet, and that that was something unique and extraordinary I had to offer at this moment - and that made me take a second look when my husband asked me if I was gonna run for the open seat. And the piece that really pushed me over the edge into saying - okay, I'm gonna do this, is that my middle daughter is trans, and the campaigns of hate and criminalization against kids like mine and families like my own across this country made it clear to me that the stakes were really high for states like Washington to lead. And I am proud and excited to be in it. And every day that I'm in it, the stakes become more clear. And I just thank you for the chance to be in conversation, to share a little bit more about what I'm hearing, what I'm learning, and what I'm thinking. Thank you.
[00:02:22] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And so you talked about your background in global health, referencing the HIV movement. What is it that you feel from your background uniquely helps you be prepared to lead today?
[00:02:40] Tyler Crone: So there are a couple of elements - one, of that pandemic response and recovery piece from HIV - if there's any roadmap for where we are and what happens next, it is HIV and AIDS. The other piece that that experience has provided me has been the opportunity to see what it looks like, and what leadership and durable solutions are when you partner with the most impacted communities. And it is that being on the front lines of the HIV movement, of seeing how activists - those who are living with HIV, impacted communities - came together with decision makers, policymakers, researchers, funders to transform the reality, right? To advance new medications, to take a whole-of-government approach - where we were thinking about the impacts and legacy of HIV on education, on gender equity, the impacts in association and connection to gender-based violence. There are so many ways in which HIV provides us a roadmap to understand how we have to innovate, how we have to reinforce our public health systems, and how we have to take a whole-of-society, whole-of-community approach to partnership so that we are building back with strength, we are reinforcing our public schools, we are reinforcing our public health infrastructure, and we're thinking holistically about what getting back to healthy means.
[00:04:18] Crystal Fincher: There are still a lot of people frustrated at some commonalities with the HIV epidemic, and that right now, it seems like there's a lot of people largely ignoring it, that policy is no longer addressing it, that people have decided to be done and the pandemic is still going on. We just saw headlines today saying that hospitals are saying, "Mask Up," because hospitalizations are increasing, that this is still happening. Should we be doing more right now to be addressing COVID-19, to be protecting people from it. And in the role of a legislator, what would you work to have - what would you work to do to solve this?
[00:05:02] Tyler Crone: So I've been thinking a lot about this this morning. Like you, Crystal, I am concerned that the United States of America is the outlier of wealthy nations in the amount of deaths and cases of COVID-19. I remember, over two years ago, when two mentors that I've worked with - Debbie Birx and Tony Fauci - estimated that the worst-case scenario is that we would have 200,000 people lost to COVID. The worst case scenario. And we have now reached a point in time where we have lost over a million people to COVID. Research coming out of the University of California San Francisco is suggesting that those whose jobs were deemed essential, who could not stay at home - died at twice the rate as their peers. We have not even begun to dress or prepare for what's happening in our long-term care facilities and our nursing homes. As we rev up, modelers are suggesting that we will see another surge with cold and flu season this winter, and that is deeply concerning to me. So what are we gonna do? And what could we do better? And what does this moment of opportunity present us? One, it is about reinforcing our public health infrastructure and leadership so that we have coherent messaging. It is about keeping and ensuring that we are surveilling what happens, we're tracking. Right now, we've closed down a lot of our mass testing sites. It's easier to access an at-home test, which is fantastic, a rapid at-home test, but when we test at home, that data doesn't go anywhere. So we don't know what we don't know. And I think that we need to be investing in and looking at those systems of surveillance as one strategy that's proactive. We need to do a very basic learning from what we did well, where we fell short, and how we get ready for what comes next.
There are some simple strategies that this moment provides a really unique opportunity for, that would have a much greater impact around air quality. If we were investing in improving indoor air quality, we could be impacting cold and flu season, we could be helping those who have allergies, we could be taking toxins out of the air, as well as mitigating COVID-19. And the thing that's great about improving indoor air quality is that it doesn't require individual masking, it doesn't require each of us to take responsibility for our own health. It provides us a context of health and protection. So that indoor air quality piece is something that I would really be paying attention to, and that there was investment made available from the federal government for. Another piece that I would really pay attention to and a conversation we've not yet started is Long COVID, and how are we recovering from that and what is gonna be the impact of that on our healthcare system and on our communities? The estimates now, even if they're very small of one third to one fifth of the people who have had COVID will have long-term health impacts from that, that's a big problem. And we're not yet getting there of what we're going to do about.
And I think that the last piece that I want to underscore here is that there are some really common-sense ways that we can be depoliticizing public health, that we can be ensuring we're up-to-date on access and availability and using the treatments that are available and the preventative tools such as vaccines and boosters, and that we should not be afraid to bring back layered mitigation measures, if and as necessary, to keep our economy open and to ensure our kids don't have any more disruption of school closures. So for example, I still wear my mask when I go grocery shopping, and my kids still wear their masks at school. And we are able to go about, still go out to dinner, still meet up with people, still be part of community. And I just hope that that conversation around COVID-19 is one in the public sphere, because the impacts of who gets disproportionately burdened are those who don't have insurance, are those who are working on the frontlines, are those who are vulnerable with cancer or who are elderly - let alone even talking about how overstretched our healthcare system is already, and how overstretched our nurses are and we're facing a major nursing shortage.
[00:09:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, we are facing major shortages, so certainly addressing healthcare infrastructure needs, staffing needs are very important. Now we recently came out of a legislative session that - there were some great things that happened in that session. There were also some things that disappointed some folks. What was your evaluation of this past session?
[00:10:21] Tyler Crone: I am so proud, as a Washingtonian and as a parent and as someone committed to public health, to see Washington State's leadership on gun safety. Gun violence is a public health emergency - just as we were talking about COVID-19 as a public health emergency, I think that gun safety is top of mind for families and for everyone in our state, as we look at the headlines and as we come through to the end of an intense school year. So I am pleased to see Washington State lead. I would like to see even more leadership and I will be excited to be a partner in that when I am elected and/or as a community advocate and a parent on the outside. I was really excited to see the investment and attention around mental health and school nurses. I know when I'm talking to teachers and principals, that it has been extraordinarily difficult for them to be frontline responders in school settings, it has been extraordinarily difficult for them to navigate the pandemic without school counselors. And now all of that isolation has exacerbated a crisis that we already knew existed - the mental health crisis facing our young people, our kids - and that is top of mind for parents. So that's a piece of the work that happened this past session that I'm excited to see and carry forward into the next.
[00:11:53] Crystal Fincher: In that session, there were some rollbacks of some of the highly touted steps taken to increase accountability and transparency and public safety when it comes to law enforcement. Do you agree with the action that was taken this past session?
[00:12:15] Tyler Crone: I'm deeply troubled by it. I have been in conversation with the elected officials in my district to better understand how public safety is upheld. I believe that we should all feel - we all deserve to feel safe and we all deserve to be safe. And I feel like I am ill-equipped to understand the nuances of why those decisions were taken. Because as an outside individual, it seems deeply troubling to roll back efforts to address police accountability, to address use of force. And what I see from families who have been impacted by police violence is that they don't see those actions addressing the kind of transparency and safety that they look for. So, I have been told by elected representatives in my district that those were important steps to ensure that local communities could make decisions that would make sense for them, that they were important steps to ensure that someone would come when you call 911. I feel ill-equipped to answer because I am - I want everybody to be safe, I want someone to call when I need help. And I know that communities who are Black and Brown are over-policed. I know that my transgender daughter feels afraid when she sees police, and I think that there has got to be a way that we can advance and uphold public safety, which is top of mind for my district, with accountability and with the deep structural systemic reforms that are needed.
[00:14:09] Crystal Fincher: So would you have voted against rolling back those reforms?
[00:14:14] Tyler Crone: I'm pretty sure I would have - yeah. I don't - I, again, I wasn't in it, I am not fully informed, but I would, I'm pretty sure I would've voted against rolling back those reforms. Yeah.
[00:14:32] Crystal Fincher: We're also sitting here near another anniversary of the War on Drugs, which is largely - has been proven not to be effective. We have spent so much money and have invested so much in that approach, and have not received a return on it. Should possessing drugs be a crime, and should we be treating drug possession and use as a public health problem or a criminal problem?
[00:15:06] Tyler Crone: So I wanna agree with you that the War on Drugs has been a failure. It has had incredible harmful impacts. I have worked - in my public health work in HIV sphere - utilizing a harm reduction framework and approach, and looking at issues from a human rights vantage point. I also am a parent and I see that my teen and her peers are inundated with substances that I am concerned about, that they are accessing things that - yeah, I'm alarmed by the substance use amongst my teens' peers. So how do we hold all of this all together? I am keen to learn more about the work that the ACLU - and the initiative and the coalition that they are leading. I have begun preliminary conversations with my friend, Michele Storms, to understand what this initiative is. My husband's organization, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, I understand, is also part of the coalition to advance this work. And I'm eager to understand more - how we are not incentivizing substance use, we're not advancing the addiction crisis we face, but that we are addressing this as a human rights and public health concern, rather than an issue of criminalization - because criminalization lands us not with safe, healthy communities.
[00:16:48] Crystal Fincher: So, is it fair to say that you are not in favor of criminalization and are exploring other avenues for intervention, or do you think that criminal intervention should be on the table?
[00:17:07] Tyler Crone: I think it has to be a nuanced discussion, right? I think my first focus is on using a public health and human rights framework and using a harm reduction approach. I guess I would like to better understand - and this is where I'm on my learning journey as a person running for office - of what are we specifically talking about when we're criminalizing possession? 'Cause I do - it is not helping the person who is using substances and maybe struggling with addiction to criminalize them. It is an extremely costly approach that does not bring us back together and make us healthy and whole, and so I am very keen to learn more and understand those nuances because I - yes I don't think criminalization is an approach that works.
[00:18:02] Crystal Fincher: Makes sense. Another thing that's top of mind for a lot of people is housing affordability and addressing people who are living out on the streets and getting them into housing. In specifically, in your role as a state legislator, what would you do to help both housing affordability and to get people off of the street?
[00:18:30] Tyler Crone: This is a great question and I thank you for asking it. I was able to be in a conversation yesterday where I was learning more about the middle housing movement as a way to grow density, to strengthen livable, walkable, connected communities that have treelined streets and the amenities that we all love, and as a way to increase the housing stock across price points. So there are a number of different elements here to pull apart. And let me try to start, and maybe you can ask me some follow up questions if I go off-the-rails one way or the other. I believe housing is a human right. We currently do not have enough places for all of our unsheltered neighbors. We do not have enough staff to get people who are on the street into the places that we do have, and we don't fix a problem by moving people from place to place. We need to get people into housing. People need a roof over their head and a door so that they can sleep well at night, and so that they can get back on their feet.
Part of addressing our crisis of unsheltered neighbors is also about incorporating and addressing the health, mental health, and addiction needs those communities might have - the behavioral health crisis they face. So that is a key priority of mine as a person who comes at this from a public health perspective. This loops back to not only do we need more housing for people at all price points, and particularly a place for everybody who is on the street to go to call home - we need to be making Seattle more livable, more accessible for everyone. And I think that we can do that with a lot of smarts, and a lot of planning, and more conversation. Because when I listen to my neighbors and I listen to the voters in this district, there is a shared understanding that families and people are getting priced out, that our housing stock shortage is a real problem for our businesses, that families want to live here and benefit from the ability to walk their kid to school, to have playgrounds, to walk their dogs, whatever it is. That seniors want to be able to retire and size down in the neighborhoods that they love, but they can't get out of their big homes 'cause they can't find someplace else to go. So there's a lot of need and a lot of consensus.
The elements that I hear and that aligns with what I'm seeing that's been introduced before in the legislature - and what I was getting a more nuanced understanding around yesterday in the session I was part of, with an architect from Berkeley - is that this idea of smart density, of building up arterials, which is already underway is a shared value and source of consensus. The other idea that we need to be building on and building with is building up, in a thoughtful way, our secondary arterials. For example, in the neighborhood I live in - Queen Anne - Third Avenue West has bus connection all the way through it. We could be smartly changing the - building those areas up where we have bus connections, where we could be creating more housing across the price points that make our neighborhoods more inclusive - that enables us to have more great small businesses, more live and work options. And we can be doing so with planning and - yeah, I think that the missing middle piece is a really smart approach.
I have heard a few concerns raised around some of the ways in which your land would be, the value of your house would be assessed of your property - based on its fullest potential use - that may make it hard for people who have larger lots to continue to stay in their lots. So we have to look at that and figure it out. But I see that middle housing piece as a thing that we can do with intention and with planning that creates vibrant, walkable, connected communities, where like I do - you walk to your grocery store, you walk your kid to school, you can walk to your providers, you can go pick up your dog food, you can drop your cat at the vet. And if we do that, we can start to tackle the housing crisis we face across the board, where we just don't have enough housing stock for everyone. I also think that as a state legislator, we have to be looking at this outside of Seattle too, right? We have to be taking a kind of regional approach to housing.
[00:23:41] Crystal Fincher: So would you have voted for the missing middle bill that was not successful this past session?
[00:23:48] Tyler Crone: So this is a piece that - I would like to understand why it failed, I would like to understand why the Seattle City Council has not worked to change zoning in some areas already. I think that the piece that before I'd say - yeah, hooray, I'll go for that - that I'd want to double check and dig in around more is this assessed value of my, of people's property and what that impact would be for our seniors being able to stay in their homes and what it would - for example, I finally, after renting for 15 years, my landlord died in a pandemic and I was finally able to secure my home that I had rented, which is a little fixer upper, off-market. Otherwise I would not have been able - my husband and I have had social justice careers - we would not be able to live in the part of Queen Anne that we do. But we have a nice lot, we have a nice front yard and a nice backyard, and it would be great to be able to put more units on it, but that takes resources, and complex regulation - navigating complex regulations that we can't, we're not in the position to do right now. But I would wanna know what the impact would be on our taxes, on our property taxes. Because I wouldn't wanna drive unintended consequences that would upend the fabric of our strong neighborhoods.
[00:25:12] Crystal Fincher: Well, I guess one of the questions there - there are two things that were consistently brought up in opposition to that. On one hand, I think you probably heard a lot of reasons in the session that you were just in, about middle housing - how it is a necessary component of ensuring places stay affordable, preventing them from being more expensive, that supply needs to keep up with demand - when it doesn't do that, prices increase. And an area of tension is - well, should single-family, current single-family areas, be zoned more inclusively? Should we be looking at upzoning single-family areas? A lot of the people who live in those - well, I should not characterize that as a lot, 'cause polling actually tells an interesting story. There are some vocal people - a significant percentage, a significant number, even if the percentage is smaller - of people who are saying - no, I don't want to absorb any density, I don't want any change to my neighborhood, I don't want duplexes and triplexes coming in that fundamentally alters my neighborhood, and I don't like it. On the other side, we have a growing homelessness crisis that is being contributed to by people not being able to afford to stay in their housing, people feeling insecure in the housing that they are currently in. And if we want to keep our neighborhoods livable, there is going to have to be livable and affordable. There's going to have to be action taken soon. And if we're - we can talk about rent control, we can talk about a lot of other things - but one component that seems to be universally acknowledged is that we need to have housing to accommodate the people who are moving into these communities. So I guess starting from that point, would you - do you think we should be more inclusively zoning areas that to date have been, that are single-family areas?
[00:27:26] Tyler Crone: So I live in a single-family neighborhood and I see that there are very smart ways that we could be doing more inclusive zoning - that doesn't need - I don't think these have to be necessarily opposed strategies. And this is - what it was so interesting about being part of this session yesterday - learning from other cities across the country, where they have done graduated zoning to create more inclusive zoning, to enable more density, but to do it in a smart way so that we keep - I think people are getting these ideas that more density necessarily means these gigantic buildings or really ripping apart their neighborhoods. What I saw yesterday were models from other cities across the country, where on arterials and secondary arterials that are connected to transportation, we could be inclusively zoning, to be creating more housing options that fit within the character of the neighborhood, but that enable us to have our grandma live next door, or have our teacher be able to live not a 45-minute commute from their public, from the school where they teach, that would enable the young couple to move in or a single professional, or would also - I was talking to a neighbor who is an architect, who lives in a single-family home in Queen Anne, and was saying - I really love the example of Europe, where they have built up that kind of density that doesn't disrupt a neighborhood, but where you can downsize into a smaller flat, and I could still be walkable in my community.
So I do think we need to be looking at and changing some of our zoning, at the very minimum. That the housing piece is one that runs through so many issues that are top of mind right now. Climate, right? If we keep making it such that everybody has to have longer and longer commutes or that we're sprawling, we're not taking the climate action we need. We need smart density as a key component of our climate strategy. It is a piece of, as you were saying, addressing the crisis we have where we are not serving those who are on the street, who don't have a place to call home. And it is not enabling if we don't have housing stock for anyone - we're not able to get ahead of or address the homelessness crisis we face. And we've been saying we've been in crisis now for a very long time, nearly a decade. And we need to take that action.
The piece that I wanna also bring in here, and this is where I'm interested to dig in with more community councils and be in conversations with neighbors, because I think that there are fears for what will happen that don't have to happen. We could be having these community conversations around what communities want, what they don't want, what the buildings could look like, how we could fit this in that would strengthen the fabric of our neighborhoods, not tear it apart. And one of the things I'm mindful of - I grew up in a city, Charleston, in South Carolina, where we had a lot of fear of change. And so what we ended up creating was a city that had such expensive housing that nobody could - no families could live there anymore, no older people could live there anymore. And we ended up with a city of beautiful homes that people came - wealthy people had as second homes to come visit - but we didn't have those thriving, healthy, safe, vibrant neighborhoods. And I think all of us in Seattle, pretty much, probably love our neighborhood. We love our corner coffee shop, we love getting to know who lives next door - and I am convinced that there has to be a way with conversation, planning, thought, care, and community engagement to get this done. I do have to flag up one of the pieces that came up in this discussion yesterday and that I'm seeing all around me in my neighborhood - is when a small house is bought, it's knocked down and there is a gigantic mansion put up, or really, really expensive town homes. And that's not solving our housing issues and that is not creating more attainable housing.
[00:32:07] Crystal Fincher: Well, and it seems like part of that is - there aren't options to build anything in some areas but single-family homes - and true, that is not solving that. And so if more density was an option, that seems like it would be something there. And that at the end of the day, I mean that middle housing bill was stakeholdered, worked on and developed in consultation with developers, business leaders, community members, people from A to Z - unusually so - just to make sure that all of those viewpoints were heard and accepted. But at the end of the day, as with some issues, not everybody is going to agree. And yes, there are impacts that different groups feel - some positive, some negative. And so at the end of the day, you're left with some groups saying - this is key to us being able to remain in our neighborhoods, to age in place, to afford to live near where we work. We have other groups saying I'm afraid of what this may do to my property value, I'm afraid of the type of people who may be moving in the neighborhood, I'm afraid of what this could do in terms of taxation.
And you are then in the position to weigh the pros and cons and to decide what brings a bigger benefit to the community. And so in that, I guess looking at the people who are centered in the conversation, or the ultimate or most pressing problem that you're looking to solve, is it appears that what's held this up is that people, usually on the more privileged end of the spectrum, do have concerns. Now, are those concerns wholly unfounded? No. And are those impacts made up? No. In some cases - in other cases - they have been, but there are different impacts. But I guess if the choice is between - hey, let's enable the possibility and have local governments do what they do and make sure that development happens in a way they feel is appropriate for their own city - and allow that possibility rather than not enable more development. How do you process that?
[00:34:43] Tyler Crone: I think that there are examples from other cities and examples from inside Seattle that we could be drawing from to make a very compelling case to be growing our density, doing it with smart planning, holding - I love the trees in my neighborhood - holding the green and the gray infrastructure together. And enabling a lot more people to call my beloved neighborhood home. And I actually think, and call me an optimist, but when I start to dig into these details and I triangulate that with the conversations I'm having with real estate agents, with people who have lived here forever, with young people, all sorts of folks - I think we all really love the same things, we recognize the need, and there could be - there's some interesting examples. For example, in Magnolia, there's going to be a grocery - the Albertsons is going to be torn down - it's an older grocery store across from the community center and the pool. And the neighbors of that site worked together with developers - they're going to create a really innovative green building, which is going to be on the cutting edge of good environmental practice, it is going to have units across all the price points, it is going to vastly expand who can live in Magnolia and who can walk to the coffee shops and who can walk to their groceries and whatever, walk to school. And the community's really excited about it. So I think that if we were to do this, I'm still hopeful that with planning and community engagement and thought and care, we can get this done. I think that there has been anxiety perhaps, without necessarily understanding on all sides of what connected, livable, vibrant, more dense communities could look like. And I'm excited to be part of those conversations and figure out - do the hard work of making it work.
[00:37:04] Crystal Fincher: Got it. That makes sense. And I guess you brought up a little bit before, but oftentimes we're in similar situations when we talk about addressing our climate crisis - both in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and helping to mitigate climate change, and in reducing the amount of pollutants that are in our communities. And in this state, as with a lot of other places, transportation is responsible for the majority of our emissions. And so when we talk about transportation packages, investments in more transit - and there was record investment in transit and mobility, which was great - something that was not so great is that there was also an increase in highway expansion, which a lot of people find challenges with and obviously creates more emissions and pollution. And so starting off, would you support further transportation packages that did include highway expansion?
[00:38:13] Tyler Crone: So, what I am trying to do my research around is to understand what is the alternative to highway expansion. I'm terrified of driving in the Bay Area, I drove my kid from - who graduated Ballard High School - to UCLA, and it was terrifying with all those lanes. And then I do not like driving in LA - again, it gives me heart palpitations - so many lanes and it's like a game of Frogger. So I don't love the idea of expanding our highway lanes. I also love road trips. My family and I - we love going to national parks, we love going to small town America - we love a road trip and I know that there are parts of Washington State that are just terrible in terms of traffic. So I wanna better understand what are the alternatives that we are propping up to get people from place to place and to get goods from place to place that can take the pressure off our highways so that we don't expand them. I love the idea of high-speed rail - I'm not sure where that is today and that's something again - digging into. I love the train, but right now we can't take the train to Vancouver, correct? Isn't that rail line off? But anyway, that's another topic. I do not love the idea of paving over more, but I also see the traffic - yeah -
[00:39:48] Crystal Fincher: Well, and giving that expanding highways doesn't actually improve traffic, it makes it worse. And there's been that misconception out there for a long time and planners, and especially recently, there've been a ton of articles and talks and discussions about that. And that, unfortunately adding lanes does not help traffic. But getting cars off of the road does help traffic. So with that, do you think that highway expansion is the right intervention for traffic? And I guess if it's not for traffic, is there a reason that you would have to vote for further highway expansion?
[00:40:33] Tyler Crone: So I will say upfront that the ins and outs of the intricacies of this is something that I need to learn more about and be in more conversations, so I can be an informed legislator in this area. My instinct on what I have read to date and being a person who loves transit and loves being in cities, where you can get from place to place without ever getting in a car, a person who loves to walk everywhere and would prefer not to drive. I would love us to be looking at what are those ways we're getting people from place to place that don't require a car, what are the ways that we're getting goods from place to place that don't require our highways. And I remember when I first moved out here nearly 20 years ago, and that every car just had one person in it was shocking. Right? When you come from the East Coast where there is - you can take buses and you can take trains and everything is so connected. And I didn't really learn how to drive until I was almost 30. I think that there are a lot of models to look to where we could be better connected.
I also, though - I wanna put in there one point that my kiddo, who takes the bus everywhere - it takes her an hour and a half to visit friends in another part of the city. We don't - our buses, our transit system - I think maybe for folks who don't, who haven't traveled as much in other cities or perhaps as much on the East Coast or in Europe, where you get on your trolley or your tram or your subway and you're getting places and you're going great big distances - I don't think, I don't know if folks necessarily understand that we don't yet have a transit system that is as efficient and as connected as it could be. I also am hearing from older folks - and this goes to a question that you've posed a bit before and a concern that is top of mind - that neighbors are feeling unsafe riding the bus. So that kind of public safety lens of what are we doing to care for people in crisis, care for people who need a place to call home, care for people who need services that we're failing to provide them - that is part of this as well. That's a kind of way off trajectory, but if we're getting more, if we want more people to be taking transit, it needs to be efficient. It needs to be connected and people need to be safe, to feel safe - I should say - riding it.
[00:43:15] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Do you - are you a bus rider? Do you take the bus to, as part of your commutes and travels?
[00:43:22] Tyler Crone: I do a little bit. I do a little bit. I have not - I find it sometimes difficult, if I'm trying to get kids or groceries or dogs or what have you, to use public transit in this city as I would wish. I loved - I lived in New York City on the Upper West Side, in the 1990s, and I loved it. And I loved the subway - I would love for Seattle to be - it to be easier to get around our city, because I would love to use transit more regularly when I'm trying to get to - oftentimes, I'm trying to get to doctor's appointments that would just have an hour and a half bus commute to get to. So I end up driving the 20 minutes instead.
[00:44:09] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. And I think -
[00:44:12] Tyler Crone: I prefer to take transit. I don't like parking, either - I hate to park.
[00:44:14] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, especially with that experience, does that color how you would invest or what you would prioritize given - you're in that situation, I've certainly experienced that situation - I think a lot of people think I would use the bus, I would like to use the bus, driving isn't exactly fun, it's a necessity, and parking can be downright miserable. If you could get from Point A to B without driving, that would be great - but that's directly related to the investments that we're making in transit, the money that's available out of the transportation budget - highway dollars competing with transit dollars. So I guess that kind of begins -
[00:44:59] Tyler Crone: Oh yeah - I see your point.
[00:45:01] Crystal Fincher: Does that translate into how we need to be looking at funding transit, what we need to be prioritizing, and providing an infrastructure that does make transit an appealing choice for people, an appealing way to get people out of their cars and address the transportation crisis, a way that doesn't force the expense of car ownership, and gas that's sky high right now, on people, and actually have an infrastructure that makes that a doable decision and an attractive decision rather than one that feels burdensome.
[00:45:41] Tyler Crone: Absolutely. I absolutely would love better transit. I would love to be able to get around our city without ever having to park or get into my car. Also, speaking of our cars - our cars are like 17 years old and they're both about to die and this is not a time - when you have college tuition, running for office, and a used car is impossible to find and purchase, that you have to replace either of them. So I'm all - I love being able to get from place to place. It solves a lot of the challenges we face, and I think that I do think we need to keep a Yes, and... approach because people are gonna need their - until we're there, people are gonna need their cars to get around occasionally. But I do think we could do a much better job - and that's something that would work for families, it would work for - I keep meeting a lot of seniors who would love to never, they don't feel safe driving, they don't ever wanna be in a car driving, but they don't, they can't get all the places they need or they don't feel comfortable on the bus at this time. So I think part of how we also get - when you go to other cities and everybody takes the, like in New York, everybody takes the subway. The mayor takes the subway, the person who is selling things at a small bodega takes the subway, your kid, your 12 year old kid who's commuting to school takes the subway. Everybody takes the subway and it's a great unifier. It's a great way of having a very dense city function. And it's a - yeah, it's a smart choice. So I, yeah - I love, I would love to be more connected across the City.
[00:47:26] Crystal Fincher: I guess as our time is coming to a close today, and as you're speaking to people who are trying to make up their minds about who they want to vote for in this 36th district race, for this open seat with no incumbent and a number of people running for this seat, what would you say about you and what differentiates you from your opponents? And how, what a voter would see that is different, what result would happen that is different that they would be able to see and feel in their lives with you elected as opposed to your opponents?
[00:48:05] Tyler Crone: Absolutely. Thank you, Crystal, for this time to be in conversation and for this thoughtful question. There are a few different ways I would look at this question and answer it - of one that my style of leadership is from leading from behind, of creating space for others, and of centering those who are most impacted. I, the piece I have learned from my work in HIV and sexual reproductive health and rights is that when you ask those who are most impacted first, what their solutions, what their priorities are, what they want - when you listen and learn and ask questions first, you get to a much better result at the end. You get to a durable, structural solution. You come up with something that's transformative. And so I think that there is one piece of this that is about my leadership style, which is again from behind, of partnering, of building diverse, inclusive coalitions, of being - a colleague of mine called it a transparent collaborator - and being a convener of someone who brings - I'm not gonna have the answers for everything. And I shouldn't, that's not my job. My job is to bring people together, to bring, to build a big table, to bring diverse expertise around that table, to ensure that those who are most impacted or who have been most harmed or who have been most marginalized, whatever the issue is, are there hand-in-hand working toward the solution.
I think that the other piece that I would really say differentiates me, or that I'm maybe I'll just say - instead of differentiating me, I'll just say that I'm super proud of. I'm super proud of having been on the frontlines of addressing some of the biggest and most complex challenges of our time. And I think that that experience from HIV where we had to build a new roadmap, we had to move the pharmaceutical industry to develop the drugs, we had to save lives, and we did - is something I'm super proud of and it's that sense of possibility, and I don't - no matter how big the challenge is, no matter how complex it is, I'm excited to dig in.
And I think that the other piece that I would say is that human rights are my heart. And I see myself as a person who lives my values. And so particularly in this moment where we see the rollback of Roe v Wade, and we are gonna need more than ever to be thinking about reproductive choice and agency. When we see these campaigns of criminalization of kids like my own and those impacts on broad, more broadly on LGBTQI youth, my husband is an immigrant. These are the, some of the big fights of our day, where we need Washington State to continue to lead and be a shining beacon. And so that piece of what I've learned from the frontlines of rising to complex challenges, that piece of living my values and rising as a human rights advocate, and that piece of being a mom of three kids and having gotten the great joy and privilege of raising those kids across the neighborhoods of this district - are what set me apart. And I'm excited to partner with the constituents of the 36th to bring positive structural change and for a very, very bright future. And I thank you for this chance to be in dialogue, and I'm eager to continue the dialogue I am having with everyone who calls the 36th home.
[00:51:58] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by former Seattle mayor and current Executive Director of America Walks, Mike McGinn. The show starts with a plug for the Institute for a Democratic Future (IDF) graduation party in Seattle this Saturday, 6/18, to celebrate its Class of 2022 completing a program focused on recruiting, training, and promoting the next generation of Democratic civic leaders, and extends an invite to others interested in the program Crystal credits with starting her political career. On the topic of civic leadership, Mike and Crystal note that primary ballots are a month out from arriving in mailboxes and discuss what they each look for in a candidate: where they lie on the urban vs suburban spectrum, whether they hedge or make strong statements on policy, how they demonstrate living the values they espouse, what kind of campaign they run, and a demonstration of being strong in tough scenarios before they are elected. The two then wrap up with a look at the opportunity voters have on the November ballot to make changes to future elections with Seattle set to vote on approval voting and King County Council moving a ballot measure on even-year elections forward.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Mike McGinn, at @mayormcginn. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
Institute for a Democratic Future: https://democraticfuture.org/
IDF Class of 2022 Graduation Party: https://www.facebook.com/events/677339030035686
RSVP for IDF Class of 2022 Graduation Party: https://secure.anedot.com/idf/graduation
“What’s The Difference Between Candidates in the 36th Legislative District?” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/06/17/75176294/whats-the-difference-between-candidates-in-the-36th-legislative-district
“Voters Could Change How And When We Vote This November” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/06/15/75135178/voters-could-change-how-and-when-we-vote-this-november
“Election Nerds Feud Over Whether or Not Approval Voting Violates Voting Rights” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/03/01/67571578/election-nerds-feud-over-whether-or-not-approval-voting-violates-voting-rights
@GirmayZahilay - Twitter thread on even year vs odd year elections: https://twitter.com/GirmayZahilay/status/1537124459080929280
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we are continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a cohost. Welcome back to the program: friend of the show, super popular cohost, activist, community leader, former mayor of Seattle and Executive Director of America Walks, Mike McGinn.
[00:00:57] Mike McGinn: Glad to be here - again - thank you.
[00:01:00] Crystal Fincher: Glad you are here - always a fun time when you are here. So I wanted to start off just by mentioning - we've talked about the Institute for a Democratic Future before, which is pretty much responsible for my political career and the careers of so many people in politics and policy in Washington State and DC. This year's class is actually graduating tomorrow - super proud of all of them. That is actually a public event that people can attend - tickets are on sale and you can attend, so if you're free Saturday, June 18th, in the evening - check out the Institute for a Democratic Future website for tickets - democraticfuture.org. We'll also put a link in the show notes and it'll be available on the website - or just hit me up on Twitter, whatever - would love to see you there, meet some of you. I'll be there. Look forward to that and seeing this current class graduate and a great opportunity just to learn more about the program - see if you might be interested in doing it.
Also, ballots arrive in a month for the primary election. Things are coming in quick, time evaporates really quickly. And so lots of people are trying to figure out who's who, what's differentiating the candidates. The Stranger had an article come out this morning talking about - what's the difference between candidates in the 36th? So starting off, Mike, as you evaluate - how do you evaluate how candidates are different, how are you going to be making the decision about how to vote and who to support? How do you go through it? How do you recommend voters go through it?
[00:02:48] Mike McGinn: Yeah, now this is such a great question in Seattle elections, right? Because one of the real, and we could carry on about this at length, one of the things about Seattle is - Seattle is, by comparison to national politics, a very progressive place. You find that 90+ percent voted for Biden in this city - I think was the number, if you go back. So it's pretty clear - some people will try to make it "what flavor of progressive are you," but everybody's gonna work to sound like they're progressive. And occasionally we'll see - for some reason, we seem to get this more from the Seattle Times and the more right side of the spectrum - "but they're all really the same, aren't they?" And I'll warn you about something - that that's not always the case, or they try to claim it - that well, one side is more ideological and the other side is more pragmatic or reasonable - something like that.
But there is, in fact, a dividing line in Seattle politics that I'd ask people to consider and maybe about where they fit on that dividing line. So nationally, the ends of the spectrum are urban versus rural. In a city like Seattle, I'd suggest to you that it's urban versus suburban and the attitudes that accompany those. Now, of course, Seattle has areas that are suburban in nature - single-family homes on nice, quiet, tree-lined streets and a fair number of the voters come from those precincts. But they have indeed chosen to live in a city, so they're not - there are progressive sensibilities there. And urban is a catchall that could cover a lot of things. But let me see if I can dig into this just a little bit. Housing and zoning - a suburban approach would be single-family houses are great, an urban approach would be we should have lots of different kinds of housing. Policing - a suburban approach might be how do we keep bad people out of the neighborhood and how do we patrol the neighborhood to prevent folks from getting here. And a more urban approach might be - well, bad things are gonna happen. How do we make sure that the police can work effectively with the community and treat 'em fairly? So you see an urban versus suburban divide there. Homelessness - suburban mentality is can we give them a bus ticket to the city - this is an overstatement. An urban mentality is - well, we're gonna have homeless people, what are we gonna do? So I think on every issue that we look at - where do they fit on that spectrum is a way to look at it.
And candidates - we already saw it in that article you showed about the 36th - what would you do about single-family zoning - a couple of whom were hedging, were hesitant. Bruce Harrell, as mayor, when he ran was hesitant - I'm not sure, we shouldn't just rezone the whole City. And then when you look at where they get the votes from, they tend to get the votes from the folks who are more resistant to building more housing and more different types of housing in the exclusive or exclusionary neighborhoods of Seattle. So that would be the first thing I'd look at in candidates - is where do they fit on that divide, and how to ask some hard questions to get at it. Like really pin 'em down - 'cause everybody's for more housing, everybody's for affordable housing - but would you upzone single-family neighborhoods is a hard question. You could ask 'em about what laws they might change in the State Legislature to make it easier to hold police accountable - see where they fall on that. There's a whole bunch of different places you can go to try to pin 'em down on something. So that's my first cut. I have a second cut on that, but Nicole - not Nicole - Crystal! I know you have answers to that one.
[00:06:50] Crystal Fincher: That's so funny - you called me Nicole. My name is Nicole, but yes -
[00:06:56] Mike McGinn: Is it really?
[00:06:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, my family's called me Nicole my entire life - that's my middle name. So yes, lots of people call me Nicole. I don't know if you heard someone call me that, but anyway -
[00:07:05] Mike McGinn: No, I think it's just that Nicole - it's been on my brain from prior discussions.
[00:07:10] Crystal Fincher: Anyway, I think that's good - certainly, housing affordability, the approach to getting people housed - basically, whether you're looking to take a housing first approach and house people primarily. Or if people think the problem is visible homelessness - always a red flag to me when I hear people characterize the problem as visible homelessness - the visible is not the problem, the homelessness is the problem. And a lot of times the characterization of visible homelessness positions people who witness homelessness, or have to see it, as the victims - are somehow harmed - when clearly the harm is absolutely being done mainly to the person who doesn't have a house and who is out there in the elements with no shelter, much more likely to be a victim of crime than most other people in the community. And so that's always something to me. And are we okay with sweeping, even if we don't have shelter available. Or is it - hey, we need to find places for people to stay, we need to create places for people to stay. Are we satisfied with shelter, congregate shelter, which we now have so much data showing that it's really counterproductive in some situations - absolutely as emergency shelter, and some situations better than being on the street and some situations it's actually not. So are we providing people with rooms with a bathroom, a door that locks - somewhere where people can stabilize.
Just especially in these Seattle elections - where they are D versus D races - we can have a lot richer conversations. And frankly, be pickier about who we decide to support. This is not a situation where the choice is between a Democrat and a Republican who is denying the 2020 election, who doesn't prioritize democracy and one person, one vote, who wants to end abortion protections, and all of that - where it's almost a - it's a harm reduction approach at minimum to vote for a Democrat, but the consequence is horrible. So you stop quibbling on issues and policy and we're talking really broad strokes. That's not the case in Seattle. You can make a choice for a progressive person or someone who is aligned with you on policy. There isn't something as - well, we don't know if we can elect a progressive in Seattle. We absolutely can. People can make that choice.
And so one, drilling down further to see - are people hedging? Are they willing to answer strongly? Are people trying to not take a position? Are they saying - this is where I am, and trying to make the case for bringing other people along with them. I think that's a big thing. Another thing I would say is - working in politics for a while - campaigns are actually horrible job interviews for governing. The skills and the stuff that you use on a campaign - lots of them do not translate to governing, and it's just so interesting that we go about things like this. There's a saying that - Hey, we have the worst system except for all the other ones.
Who knows, but I do think that there - one thing that I've seen that has been a consistent transfer is, what are the decisions that people make in their campaigns? How are they choosing - they may not have been in a situation where they were in control of a budget before. They may not have been in a situation where they were making hiring decisions and staffing decisions. Well, now that they are - what are they doing? Are they making decisions in alignment with their values and how they're talking? Are they working with people who are aligned with them, or who are aligned with folks who are doing things very different than what they say they anticipate doing? How are they living their values in this situation, in a campaign, where they are the ones making the calls and making the decisions? How are they using their resources? Just things like that are - you can see how someone is processing information. You can see - hey, you talk about workers - are you paying your campaign staff? Everyone has volunteers, but your campaign manager, other people involved - do you have a diverse staff? Lots of people have pictures with lots of diverse people in them. Who are the people that they're paying. It is a question -
[00:12:17] Mike McGinn: That's such a great observation. Everybody's got the right pictures.
[00:12:21] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. How are they investing their resources? And that, to me, consistently translates into the decisions that they make when they're elected and how they choose to allocate resources. And so look at their campaigns, see what they're doing, what kinds of decisions they're making, who they're hiring. I think who you hire, a lot of times, speaks a lot more than who you work for. Lots of times people are trying to pay their bills, all that kind of stuff. So - hey, I work for - people, I certainly have lots of issues with Amazon, but am I gonna take issue with someone who works for Amazon? Absolutely not. It's hard to pay bills, it's hard to find a job that - so do that, but once you're doing the hiring, that's a different story. Who are you choosing? How are you going about that? How are you living your values? What have you done that gets away from the rhetoric and more to - are you walking your talk?
That is how I look to candidates and campaigns and decisions. I'm looking - this is me, obviously - I'm looking at PDC expense reports to see who they're working with, to see how they're being a steward of the resources in their control. So that would be my recommendation - look and see how they're living the values that they say they're living. That's a good indication of what they're gonna do when they're elected.
[00:13:56] Mike McGinn: Those are all great points. So let me see, I'll come around for my second cut and I'll hit some of the ones you hit too. How they run their campaign - are they - is it a top-down campaign which is money and some consultants, or are they really showing the ability to engage and draw volunteers? 'Cause that gives you a sense of how they will operate in office - who's part of their coalition. That's - I think the next one is endorsements matter and they don't matter. I wouldn't - a lot of the endorsing organizations may be trying to figure out who's gonna win as well as their values. But if you look at their money and everybody's gonna have some - everyone's gonna have a mix of checks, but where's the weight of the money coming from? 'Cause the reality is most people, once elected, are gonna serve the base that got them elected. So where's the political base as can be told from looking at all of the data around endorsements and dollars and then again, how they're running the campaign. So does it appear to be a campaign that's built upon a broad coalition of community members volunteering, or is it being financed by certain industries or sectors of the economy? That'll tell you who they'll speak to. So that's worth looking at.
Your comments reminded me of two other things. One question I asked, and this is now coming from a Sierra Club background and we interviewed people for endorsements. And again, everybody came in, everybody knew what the right answer was for Seattle politics, and people would hedge a little bit - but this is expanding on one of the things Crystal said. And by the way, your LinkedIn is Crystal Nicole Fincher, so I -
[00:15:51] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I usually put all three names.
[00:15:53] Mike McGinn: Nicole is there in a lot of places, so maybe that was there, maybe it was there in my head somewhere. The question is - I would ask - tell me about a time you did something for the environment. Not what's your position on clean air, or what's your position on walking and biking - but tell me about a time you took action because you cared about the environment. And some people have great answers and some people have no answers - and if the answer is, well, I recycle regularly - well, so that's Seattle, right? But if your answer was - oh, I took a summer to volunteer at an animal rescue center or something - okay, this person in their heart really feels something about the world around them. And you could ask that in any number of contexts - tell me a time when you acted on this impulse. The other question I love to ask people and - 'cause people still come to me and ask me for endorsements - and I say, tell me about a time you did something in your life or career that was hard and maybe even unpopular - the time that you had to have some guts and courage. And the reason is 'cause if you don't show guts or courage before you take office, you are not gonna show it once you take office.
[00:17:13] Crystal Fincher: That is the truth.
[00:17:15] Mike McGinn: This is - yeah, because the dynamic, once you're in office, is really pushing you to not take chances, to go with the flow, to not stand out too much - it's the safer place to be. And those forces only get harder and harder, which is why you end up with elected officials who just - you feel like after a few terms, they don't really seem to be doing anything anymore because it's been taken out -
[00:17:43] Crystal Fincher: Ground out of them?
[00:17:44] Mike McGinn: Ground out of them, man - it's like a tea bag that's been dipped into the hot water too many times - there's just not much flavor left after they're in for a long time. So that's my thing - tell me about a time you did something hard, unpopular, tough, but you did it anyway. And why you did it 'cause you do want somebody who's gonna be willing to step up on a hard issue and take a chance. My 2 cents - when we're looking at the challenges we face, incremental changes to the status quo in the face of all the challenges we face - you'd like to see people step up and do something hard and take a risk politically for the right thing. And that's what I'd like to see in a candidate too.
[00:18:27] Crystal Fincher: That's so good. That's absolutely true. I definitely tell candidates and have conversations with lots of people. To your point, it gets harder after you get elected. There's pressure on candidates sometimes to - well, don't offend these people, you might lose this, don't say this, don't say that don't. And the mindset is almost - well, if I just get elected - I just need to get elected and then I can really do the thing I really wanna do. It does not work like that - it gets harder - the stakes are higher, actually. And so you have to be willing to stand by what you believe before you're elected. If, when it comes down to a negotiation and you're going back and forth on - and we're talking about legislative races - with your colleagues on - well, we can keep this in, I'll agree to keep this in if you take that out. What are the things that aren't going to be compromised on, what are the things that you know you can count on them to say I'm a No vote without this. And that's a big deal.
The other thing that I think is really useful and that candidates have to do - they have to be out talking to voters. They have to be out in the community. They have to be knocking on doors. They have to be talking to regular people who are not hacks and wonks, who are not insidery insiders - who are saying this is what I'm dealing with, what are you gonna do about it? And who - you have to talk to them about - I hear you, this is what I think will help - go back and forth, get their feedback on it. Most candidates who are talking to voters regularly - you can tell. And to me, that's the difference between someone who is coming from a philosophical or purely ideological point of view, they may be very online - but you have to engage with your constituents, you have to hear tough feedback, you have to talk to people who are going through rough moments, and you have to see what you can do to help, and explain to them and bring them along with you. You have to actually build a coalition to govern. You have to bring people along to your side. If you want to change policy, you're going to have to change people's minds. And if you don't have practice doing that, if that's not a habit of yours, then it's not gonna happen after you get elected. The pressures to do that lessen after you get elected - schedules get busier. You have to prioritize engaging with people in your district from all different backgrounds, all different walks of life, viewpoints. And if you aren't comfortable with that, if you haven't done that in all of those situations - it does not serve you well as a candidate or as someone who's elected.
[00:21:33] Mike McGinn: It's super hard as a candidate too, 'cause candidates - new candidates, in particular, and I'll toss myself - I was pretty engaged in civic affairs before I ran for mayor, but there were still big chunks of issue areas that I was not terribly sophisticated in my thinking on. And so I may have been better than your average new candidate in some areas, but compared to somebody who'd been in office - and so this is one of the traits you see of someone who's been in office for a while - they've got their talking points on every issue, they know where the safe space is on each one. So there's this learning process that occurs when you're running as well. And going back to your point about talking to people, you're not gonna learn if you're not talking to people. So I do like to see that too. It's funny - we're talking about somebody who can hold their principles, but you also want somebody who can be educated by the people they speak to and begin to understand the complexities of the issues. But also understand what really matters to people, and your point is really a strong one. And then be able to say, 'cause if you're running, you're saying you're the best person for the job. If you don't think you're the best person for the job, you shouldn't be in the race. Well, if you think you're the best person for the job, you're gonna have to start challenging yourself to answer the questions in a way that demonstrates that you're capable of making some forward progress on that issue.
And I hold new candidates, at the beginning of that race, to a pretty low bar - because they're learning and you're allowed to say - well, I'm learning more about the - I don't recommend any candidates say that in any endorsing interview or to anybody - when you run, you're supposed to have all the answers. It's terrible. And then when you're elected, you're supposed to listen to everybody 'cause you shouldn't have all the answers. So that's another dynamic of running and winning. But when you're running, it is okay to keep learning and I see candidates learn and progress. So that's the other thing I look for in a candidate - just is, are they - what their ability to take up issues, identify, and attach a philosophy to it, and actually start making real recommendations, as opposed to simply talking points. And by talking points, I mean - one of the things to look for is - when you're talking to a candidate, are they just giving you value statements? "Affordable housing is really important. We need to care for every person in our community that's homeless." That's a value statement and it's good - I'm glad to hear people's values - but somebody can say, "We need to fight crime and we need to hold the police accountable." Okay, what's your plan? What's your plan to hold police accountable? How far would you be willing to go, or how far is too far for you as a candidate, and what do you think should be done differently to fight crime? What would you support?
So, in a way it's the actual taking a position on an issue. And I also get super suspicious of candidates who don't take a position - who wanna, and I recommend this to candidates too - the way I phrase it now is, if you win votes, sometimes you have to lose votes. If somebody is afraid of losing a vote in the way they talk to you - it's in a way - it's a little bit taking the voter for granted if you're just trying to tell everybody what they want to hear and never take a hard position. Voters can - and I experienced this as a candidate and as a mayor - people will sometimes, people can disagree with you on things and still vote for you. If they like what you say on other issues, or if they like your approach, or if they just think you're coming from the right place, they're gonna work hard to get the right answer even if they don't like your answer then. So don't get hung up on - take a position, particularly on the things that really matter to the voters, so that you can give them some direction.
There is a candidate - this is the thing, though - there is a candidate that can get through without taking positions. And this is why I think voters should be suspicious of those candidates. Those candidates can get through without taking a position, 'cause often they're the anointed candidate in the race. Races tend to end up with only one anointed candidate - that's why they're anointed - sometimes you see multiple people fighting for it. And the anointed candidate is the candidate who's wrapping up all the endorsements from the political insiders and the interest groups and the campaign funders. And with those dollars, and then usually with the support of the Seattle Times - in those races, everybody will say what a wonderful person this candidate is. And they will reflect on that person's personal characteristics. And their goal, their way of getting through the campaign is to present themselves to the world as - well, I'm clearly the best person for the job, look at my resume and my wonderful personality. And they don't wanna take a position, 'cause they're gonna count on that to get 'em over the top. The problem with that candidate is they are so beholden to the interests that helped elect them, that they'll never take a hard stance. Now, if you're not the anointed - a lot of candidates make the mistake, then, of trying to be the anointed candidate - getting all the endorsements and not taking a position, 'cause they look at that candidate and they go - so many of those candidates succeed, that's my path too. But there can only be one of them in a race. So what I'd be looking for in a race is who's somebody who's running on something. This is my personal experience, this is my lived experience, these are the things I've thrown myself into, this is the thing I wanna change in the world. Let me tell you how I'm gonna change it. And then evaluate - are they working on the right thing? Does their plan have a good likelihood of success? And that person at least will be willing to take some risks on change. If you want the status quo, elect the anointed candidate. If you think there are problems and unique change, look for the candidate who's willing to take some risks and potentially lose some votes, but hopefully they're gonna win votes because - hopefully the City believes that there are problems that need to be solved and we should elect problem solvers and not defenders of the status quo.
[00:27:58] Crystal Fincher: I completely agree. Take a stance. You have to know where people stand - your point about value statements, it's so interesting being in a lot of situations where I'm watching how people and audiences react to things or - hey, this person said "Housing is a human right." I believe housing is a human right. Okay, done. And it's like okay, but have they explained how they're going to house people, what they're willing to do and what they're willing to not do, what their priority is, what they will prioritize funding? What are the details of that? What will you actually do?
And there also is sometimes a plague of people, a type of candidate, whose priority is to get elected and who doesn't necessarily understand the type of office that they're running for. 'Cause running - what you can do as a legislator is very different than what you can do as a King County Councilmember or Port Commissioner, it's different than a city councilmember or a mayor - those are all very different things, very different jurisdictions. Your levers of power, your tools of change are very different. So do you understand the jurisdiction that you're running for? Or are you running for Legislature, like you're a mayor or a city councilmember? Those are very different things. And even the conversation on public safety is very different - and what they can do and how they can engage with that - or homelessness is different based on what you're running for - what you can actually do and what you can't do is different based on the jurisdiction. Has someone even engaged with that yet? Or are they just - this is me, I've always wanted to be elected, this open seat popped up, and so I'm running for it. This is not a commentary on anyone who's running right now. That was an example - I'm not referencing anyone specific, but that is a thing that I see often, that I see every cycle. And it's just - this person wants to be elected, they don't actually wanna make change.
[00:30:08] Mike McGinn: So the - yeah, this is - you're reminding me of one of my other favorite sayings - is the candidate - do they wanna be somebody or they wanna do something? And it's a little unfair, 'cause nobody's a 100% one or the other. Like I definitely thought - I was running to do stuff, but it is fun to have people call you mayor, so I'm not immune to that. And I even think the people who I look at and go - oh, they just wanna be somebody, they've just been positioning themselves for the last 15 years to get an elected office, and spent so much time positioning that they haven't actually gotten anything done - they still have a beating heart and there's still things they wanna do. I think it's a mix of both, but where on that spectrum are they - of wanna be somebody or want to do something. And one of the best ways you can tell if they're people who want to do something is the questions we asked earlier - have they made, have they taken hard choices and taken some hits as a result of it? Have they thrown themselves into a cause to try to make change, even if there was no personal gain attached to it or status attached to it. And those can help answer that question of whether they want to do something or just be somebody.
[00:31:22] Crystal Fincher: Makes sense. Well, this - a lot of times Fridays are Weeks In Review, but we have a unique opportunity here, when we're speaking with Mike McGinn, who has so much experience in activism, as an executive of one of the largest cities in the country. And so I do think this is a helpful conversation, as we're going to begin to hear a lot more from candidates - as candidates are gonna be communicating with voters, and your mailbox is about to fill up, and they're gonna be commercials and videos that you see - all that. But looking beyond that, this is always such an interesting conversation. As a political consultant, I'm involved in doing all of that - to be clear - but if you actually do care about this stuff, you actually want it to be with good people. I'm extremely picky about who I work with for that reason, this cycle I'm working with one person - working for other causes and in support of things, but when it comes to working with a candidate, I want a candidate that I know is in it to create change, has a history of walking their talk, is doing those things. And so - I'm working with Melissa Taylor in the 46th legislative district - there are lots of great candidates everywhere. I also still volunteer for candidates, because it's important who we elect to do that.
And it is heartening - I see so many leaders who pass progressive policy, which is a distinction from people who just label themselves as progressive. That's more of a verb - it should be a verb - but it actually matters who we elect and we do have the opportunity in Seattle to not settle because we're scared of how horrific the opponent can be. We have better choices, so let's not settle for the status quo in so many situations - let's move forward, but do it in a way that just applies a little bit more discernment. And I appreciate having this conversation with you, 'cause I think it's really hard for people to figure out how to make this decision.
[00:33:41] Mike McGinn: This will be the final point on this that I'll make, which is - I worked on endorsements within the Sierra Club for 10 years or so, I'm asked for my personal endorsement, I've run for office, gone through everyone else's endorsement processes multiple times. But let me just say - in doing endorsements for the Sierra Club, we got tricked more than once. It's hard. Somebody came in, they said all the right things, they seem to be the right person - but then, and it's really hard in this progressive versus progressive space, and then they get into office and you discover that they're not really with you. And it happens. And so, if you're trying to figure it out, and you find it hard, and you make a mistake, you're not - I can assure you - you're not alone here on this. So we're just trying to give you the best tools we can give you to make what can often be a very hard choice.
[00:34:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it is - I get it - it's actually a big reason why I do this show - to try and - I've seen people in the candidate stage, I've seen 'em in policy, I've seen the intentions of policy and things that seem good and things that I thought were good. And then seeing, time after time, it go through the legislative process and how it ends up. Or, hey, this type of person or this type of profile does well in an election, and this is how it usually turns out when they govern. And you just start to see the patterns. I think it's hard, if you aren't watching this all the time, to pick up on those patterns. And I think that is helpful in trying to determine who actually does - who actually can make change. And a lot of things go into that - having the right principles, but also understanding how to work productively with your colleagues - balancing that line between yeah, absolutely standing by your principles and listening - and that helping to develop your policy. And testing what you're saying - yeah, this is what I believe - and if you encounter something that challenges that, you have to contend with that, you can't just ignore it - does that mean that your policy needs some tweaking or something - all those things. I just hope to contribute to that conversation, to contribute to help people figure out - what's happening, why it's happening, and what they can do about it - who they can vote for to do something about it. But I really appreciate having this conversation. I'm fine with this being this conversation instead of a Week In Review, because hopefully - and there's just tons of news and sometimes -
[00:36:30] Mike McGinn: Well, we gotta bunch of races coming up. Speaking of races, we have different voting methods coming up about or under debate right now. One of the things we've seen is that approval voting will be on the ballot this November. And we also see an effort in King County to move King County elections from odd years to even years, which are big, significant changes.
[00:37:01] Crystal Fincher: Big significant changes - we've talked about even year elections, just the difference - King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay tweeted actually this week - just a chart of voter turnout and it just looks - it's high, low, high, low, high, low, high, low - such a stark difference. And it's just even year, odd year, even year, odd year - 53%, 36%, 83%, 54%, 65%, 47%, 84%, 50% - that's the difference between even years and odd year elections. 2021 turnout was 44%, 2020 was 87%. And you're like - okay, well that was a presidential year, maybe that was the reason why it was different. 2019 was 49% - still less than half. 2018 - 76% - every single year - 2017 was 43%, 2016 - 82%. You're, in some years, almost doubling the amount of people who participate in that. To make an argument that we're okay with the amount of people being half that participate in our elections just does not make sense. And in this situation, I think we need to do all we can to help make sure everyone can vote.
Speaking as someone who works in politics, you certainly see this yourself. It is tough, especially with how much local media has disappeared, how comparatively thin the resources are stretched now than they were 20 years ago - to just let people know that they're - forget a general election in an odd year - a primary election, it's rough and you basically have to pay to communicate with people and let them know. That's part of what drives up the cost of elections. There is almost no way for you to reach a large chunk of the voters without paying to send the mail, paying to target communication at them - that's the only way to let them know you exist. If you are someone who's a non-incumbent or challenging someone, your biggest opponent isn't your opponent, actually. It's just being known, period. So moving these to even years will just do a lot more and hopefully reduce the amount that needs to be spent on elections 'cause they are too expensive. The race I'm working in has - there's a ton of money in this race, which - okay, this is what it takes to win this race, unfortunately now - congressionally. We need to change the system to get some of the money out of it. And it's a tough go, especially for someone who's standing by their principles, not accepting corporate donations - it's rough to be able to try and afford and do those things. And we need to make it easier for people to get engaged without having to pay so much money to make that happen.
[00:40:12] Mike McGinn: Well, if you believe in voter turnout - if you believe democracy is better when more people vote, then conversation should be over for you. But it turns out that there are some people who would prefer that fewer people vote. And so, it was not unanimous on the King County Council. And it goes back to that comment I was making earlier 'cause what we know is - when voter turnout is higher, you tend to have greater, more diverse representation in the voting pool. Similarly, you tend to have more people of lower incomes in the voting pool in high turnout years. More renters, more apartment dwellers, so it's more representative of the population as a whole in high turnout years. And low turnout years are less representative of the population as a whole. It tends to skew older, whiter - which then means also more single-family home ownership.
We were talking earlier about the suburban or urban approach to city issues. Well, that's the - this is a difference between a more urban voting bloc, or one that trends towards the more suburban sensibilities about how cities should work. And, it's funny - I've used this line before - we talk about urbanists, but trust me, there are suburbanists in the City of Seattle that run for office and win. And that's challenging when you're trying to make sure you have enough housing for everybody, or that you want progressive policies towards - more progressive policies towards policing and the like. So, there are people who will argue - well, this enables more focus on the races and people can make more informed decisions, but it's a smaller pool of people. So they're really arguing for a smaller, less representative pool of people.
And if you wanna put this in a national frame - the people arguing for odd year elections, because it does allow for a greater focus - it has the same effect as people who think the electoral college is good because it gives rural voters more say - without them - it's false to say that the electoral college is meant to protect small states and rural voters. Well, the electoral college has the effect of giving voters from smaller states an undue influence in the course of the country, right? The majority of the country believes certain things and that's not reflected in what the majority of the US Senate is, or what a majority of the electoral vote would count. Same thing happens in local elections held in odd years. The people who participate in the elections and the people who get elected don't actually represent the sentiment of the City as a whole, or the county district that they're running in. So moving to even year elections is just the right thing to do if you believe in democracy.
And try to come up with a system to reduce turnout or to favor one population or over another - well, that's pretty anti-democratic, so honestly hope no one would speak up for it, but watch what would happen. I'll make you a bet that if Seattle had the opportunity to do it, state law would have to change. You'd see a whole lot of interests arise to argue that it's wrong, because they're used to helping shape and influence and anoint candidates - we talked about this earlier - their ability to anoint the candidate and push 'em through would be lost in a year in which there was bigger turnout than when holding these in low turnout elections.
[00:43:46] Crystal Fincher: I agree with that. And especially with the momentum that ranked choice voting, which is not on our ballot in King County, at least this year, but there's a lot of support and momentum for here and across the state. It looks like they've actually seen this coming, that they've seen the momentum behind even year elections, ranked choice voting and have launched a preemptive strike in the form of this approval voting initiative, which will land on ballots in the City of Seattle in November. Now Hannah Krieg wrote a story about this and ran into a signature gatherer who told her - hey, ranked choice voting and approval voting are the same thing. That's not true, they're very different. And there's a reason why some of the folks who are supporting the main organization who's supporting this look like it would - this approval voting seems to have appeared out of nowhere. It's not - hey, this is my first choice, second choice, third choice. So that if your first choice doesn't make it, at least you can get your second choice in. And that makes a lot more sense in crowded primaries. This is - just vote for everyone who you like, just vote for everybody - which, in a situation where money counts, pretty much guarantees that the most well-funded candidates will make it through. And I think people have seen a gathering threat, especially in districted elections, and saying - okay, well, hey, the recall against Sawant didn't work, we're seeing these progressives being elected in all these different areas, let's make sure they get through. I am extremely suspicious of approval voting, especially with some of the misrepresentations that some of the signature gatherers have been making. It just strikes me as a preemptive strike against some of these other measures that do seem to be, that do seem like they'll have the result of increasing the amount of people who are engaged in voting these elections.
[00:46:03] Mike McGinn: Well, I may have a slightly different view on this than you. I think that there are people who are totally into what's the best election system, 'cause I've gone down that rabbit hole and people have really strong views about that. I have to say, I think that approval voting has some positives to it, and which are - first of all, I know how I'm going to vote - if I have a clear winner, I'm gonna vote for the person I really like. You only have to vote for one person in approval voting, but boy, I've had races where I would've gladly voted for two or three people and said they're okay, just to show my support for 'em. Particularly they - 'cause here's what we know in Seattle - here's the counterargument for it. And by the way, I like ranked choice voting more than approval voting, but ranked choice voting has to be approved by the State, and it's probably gonna take a few years before we get there in Seattle - and we can always go there.
But right now in Seattle, we tend to end up almost exclusively with candidates that are either endorsed by the Seattle Times or The Stranger. So I kinda like the ability of approval voting to get somebody, to give somebody else the possibility to get through. And I can think of races where I would've voted for more than one person in the race, rather than have to pick The Stranger or Seattle - and by the way, I almost, I pick The Stranger - cards on the table - between The Stranger and Seattle Times, I pick The Stranger. But I looked at these other candidates and said - boy, I'd really love one of them to get through, but they just don't really stand a chance. And I think approval voting would lead to The Stranger having to identify more than one candidate. They don't have to - they could, like me, identify one candidate they approve, but they might also be able to identify two or three that they approve. And I think that might yield better outcomes in terms of the candidates we get.
[00:48:03] Crystal Fincher: It's an interesting argument. One thing - does approval voting, approval voting, does ranked choice voting need to be approved by the State? I don't think it needs to be approved by the State, does it? There are initiatives on the ballot for ranked choice voting in Clark County and maybe one other county right now.
[00:48:24] Mike McGinn: I think counties are different. I think counties are different than cities in what people can do. I think that there's a - and same thing is true of the district election, excuse me, not district elections, odd year versus even year elections. Right now, the voting system for cities - there's a state statute that says what system you must follow, and when you must vote. And I think counties have greater flexibility, for whatever reason, under state law. So you need a law to give cities the authority to choose ranked choice voting and/or move into even years. And there have been efforts to do both in the legislature, both of which I support.
[00:49:10] Crystal Fincher: So I just texted someone for clarification, really - the answer given to me via text, we can obviously clarify this at a further time - speaking from a county point of view, for non-charter counties, they can implement it. As you just said, for charter counties need - should be able to implement county-level, or charter counties should be able to implement it. Non-charter counties can't. Cities - question marks. You probably you're - yeah, I guess I didn't realize that. You probably dealt with this.
[00:49:48] Mike McGinn: I'm pretty sure of this because I've worked on promoting the state legislation that would give authority for this.
[00:49:54] Crystal Fincher: So how can we get approval voting?
[00:49:58] Mike McGinn: Approval voting - just it, that one, I guess, just works differently. It's a good question, but I think it just works differently in the top-two primary system. I don't have legal analysis for you, but I'm sure if somebody did the legal analysis and concluded that it fit under the statutory system in a way that ranked choice voting did not. Yeah.
[00:50:20] Crystal Fincher: Well, very interesting. I'm always learning here, I'm learning every week.
[00:50:26] Mike McGinn: Oh, I was all ready to collect signatures for moving Seattle elections to even years until I discovered the State prohibition. So Mia Gregerson has legislation in the State Legislature. I actually think that a lot of the organizing that was done around odd year, even year elections has helped influence the County. In fact, when I met with Girmay, when he was running for office, I now recall this - I told Girmay - hey, by the way, win or lose, I hope you could support an effort to move elections to even years. We'll see if Girmay remembers the conversation the same way - that was at The Station up on Beacon Hill, at The Station coffee house. And he said, absolutely, I'd be all in for that. So Girmay, thank you for being - not just saying it, but doing it. So really cool - really cool to see the leadership he's showing on the King County Council.
[00:51:25] Crystal Fincher: I would - back to our prior conversation - I would put Girmay in the category of doers. He wants to do something, is not primarily motivated by being someone. So, I appreciate this conversation. Always an interesting conversation with you, former Mayor Mike McGinn, now Executive Director of America Walks - you talked about your Sierra Club days, your City days, just all of it. And just talking about growing over time - look, I'm one of the people who you have convinced on some policies - back when - when you were "Mayor McSchwinn" -
[00:52:08] Mike McGinn: Oh my goodness. And I never even owned a Schwinn - why would they say that? Yeah.
[00:52:16] Crystal Fincher: Oh my gosh. Yeah, I have certainly learned a lot, continue to learn a lot - but, and it's one of those hallmarks of someone who is willing to engage in conversations. We've had conversations about policy - I'm like, red, and you're like, blue - and it's well, you know what?
[00:52:35] Mike McGinn: Well, you've changed my mind, Crystal -
[00:52:37] Crystal Fincher: He's making sense.
[00:52:37] Mike McGinn: You changed my mind on things too, for what it's worth. You've absolutely changed my mind.
[00:52:42] Crystal Fincher: Well, I appreciate it. I appreciate all of you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, June 17th, a month out from when we get our ballots and can start voting in this primary election. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler, assistant producer is Shannon Cheng - Dr. Shannon Cheng is a United States orienteering champion - once again, we've talked about this a little bit before - she is just dominating in every where and every way, and is just extremely amazing and incredible. With assistance from Bryce Cannatelli - also, Bryce is just so great. Bryce is a newer addition to our team here and just oozes competence and is a delight. The Hacks & Wonks team is absolutely a team, I just wanna reinforce that again - you hear my voice most of the time with a guest, but this does not happen without these other people. It would be impossible to get one show a week done, let alone two - the amount of editing, preparation, just everything from soup to nuts - I am eternally grateful to Lisl, Shannon, and Bryce. You can find Mike McGinn on Twitter @mayormcginn, you can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, and now you can follow Hacks & Wonks wherever - wherever podcasts are, Hacks & Wonks is. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live show and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Leesa Manion about her campaign for King County Prosecuting Attorney - why she decided to run, her endorsement by outgoing prosecuting attorney Dan Satterberg, and the experience she brings with 15 years as Chief of Staff in the KC Prosecuting Attorney’s office. They then discuss the responsibility of the prosecutor’s office in building and maintaining relationships with law enforcement partners, the suitability of diversion versus incarceration as paths in the criminal legal system, and what needs to happen to make prison lead to rehabilitation instead of recidivism. The conversation then shifts to how to balance people’s concern about public safety with trust issues with law enforcement and the court system, the ethics of when prosecutors should turn over evidence, her decision to not seek police guild endorsements, and how the system can do better in advocating for victims rather than re-traumatizing them. The show wraps up with the importance of prosecutor accountability and what is at stake in her race against a seemingly more hard-line and punitive opponent.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Leesa at https://www.facebook.com/leesaforprosecutor.
Resources
Campaign Website - Leesa Manion: https://leesamanion.com/
“Juvenile division prosecutor defends Restorative Community Pathways” by Henry Stewart-Wood from The Courier-Herald: https://www.courierherald.com/news/king-countys-juvenile-division-prosecutor-defends-restorative-community-pathways
“King County to continue new juvenile restorative justice program, despite pushback” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/king-county-to-continue-new-juvenile-restorative-justice-program-despite-pushback/
Investing For No Return - Final Report from King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office Reentry Summit: http://clerk.ci.seattle.wa.us/~public/meetingrecords/2013/cbriefing20130225_4a.pdf
Seattle Community Court: https://www.seattle.gov/courts/programs-and-services/specialized-courts/seattle-community-court
Filing and Disposition Standards - King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office: https://kingcounty.gov/depts/prosecutor/criminal-overview/fads.aspx
“WA prosecutors who withhold evidence rarely face discipline” by Melissa Santos from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/news/2022/04/wa-prosecutors-who-withhold-evidence-rarely-face-discipline
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. I am very happy to welcome to the show today: candidate for King County Prosecuting Attorney, Leesa Manion. Welcome to the program.
[00:00:45] Leesa Manion: Well, hello, Crystal. Thank you so much for having me, it's a pleasure to be here.
[00:00:50] Crystal Fincher: Pleasure to have you here. So you have decided to run for King County Prosecutor. What made you decide to run now?
[00:00:59] Leesa Manion: Well, I'm running because I care so much about the work of the office - I care about its importance, I care about its impact on our communities, and I also care about the women and men who have dedicated their careers to public service and are looking for experienced and proven leadership.
[00:01:15] Crystal Fincher: So you talk about proven leadership - our current King County Prosecutor, Dan Satterberg, is leaving the office, but has endorsed you and has worked with you. Why do you think he has endorsed you and he supports you?
[00:01:29] Leesa Manion: I think it is because of my deep level of experience, I think it's because of my proven leadership. I have had a hand in implementing all of the really good reforms that have come out of the office in the past 15+ years that have earned our office a national reputation of being fair, just, and effective. I am definitely a candidate who can hit the ground running - I'm very deep in operations, I also have very deep ties to our community, and I have really good working relationships with our employees in the office.
[00:02:01] Crystal Fincher: So you talk about having a hand in a lot of what has gone on over the past 15 years - what has worked well and what hasn't worked well?
[00:02:10] Leesa Manion: One thing that I think has worked well are all of the juvenile justice reforms that we've made - I'm really proud of the fact that I am a co-founding partner of Choose 180. And I have to say - at the time, Choose 180 was revolutionary in the sense that it was the first time that the prosecuting attorney's office intentionally shared power with community, and allowed the community's voice to shape justice and to be equal to ours. And it led the way for a lot of really good reforms that followed. So I think diversion works really well - it doesn't mean that it's foolproof. We've definitely had some pilot projects that didn't yield the types of results that we wanted, but we continued to refine our process, we continue to refine partnerships, we continue to decide how to offer services in a way that is fully funded and effective.
And in terms of something that hasn't gone well, I would say - everyone has been affected by the pandemic and we, in the prosecuting attorney's office, aren't any different. I think some of our relationships over the course of pandemic have been frayed, I think our relationships with some of our law enforcement partners have been frayed. And if selected, I would be committed to rebuilding those relationships. And it looks something like this - I think that we have to - as an elected, I would have to go to our Police Chiefs and Sheriffs meeting. I've always said to Dan that I thought it was a mistake that he wasn't in the room as an elected. I think, as an elected, you have to be in the room to develop relationships and to be accountable and to build partnerships. So I would be committed to doing that.
[00:03:50] Crystal Fincher: So would you say it's the fault of the prosecutor's office, that there is a frayed relationship?
[00:03:57] Leesa Manion: I think we definitely play a role in it, and I think we definitely can take a leadership role in rebuilding that relationship. And I've been doing that in my current role. For example, just last week I met with our Kent Police Chief and our Des Moines Police Chief and our juvenile leadership team to talk about some of the juvenile justice reforms that have gone on in recent years. And talk about the new juvenile diversion program, Restorative Community Pathways. And that was a really good conversation because we had an opportunity to share information, to air some frustrations, to clarify some misunderstandings, and to really start to build an open line of communication. And I really think that we have a lot of opportunity to do that with law enforcement throughout King County, but also with community partners. I really think that we in the prosecutor's office can serve as a bridge.
[00:04:49] Crystal Fincher: When you talk about that bridge, it seems like there has been some resistance to moving toward diversion, certainly from some entities in law enforcement. We have recently seen an attempt to move some folks away from diversion from the Seattle City Attorney's office. Do you think that there's a possibility that you have of convincing folks like that to move in a different direction and to partner with you in doing that, or do you also see a hesitance?
[00:05:25] Leesa Manion: What I see is a request to partner, I see a request for additional information, I see a request to have a seat at the table to help shape what diversion looks like. And I think that sometimes those questions can be mischaracterized or misunderstood as rejection or maybe resistance. But when I met with law enforcement, I found that they were curious. I found that they wanted to ensure that we were working together. I found that they wanted to ensure that there was some accountability, that if we offered diversion and there were individuals who were not successful - because sadly we will have some individuals who are not successful in diversion, what's the backup plan? What is the next step? What does accountability look like? And I think that we can have those conversations and have some agreed standards of conduct, but in order to do that, we really have to have relationships. We really have to start the conversation. We really have to bring people together to work on a common goal.
[00:06:29] Crystal Fincher: So when do you think diversion is appropriate, and do you think incarceration is appropriate in the cases when diversion is not?
[00:06:39] Leesa Manion: I think diversion is appropriate for low-level offenses. I think that there are individuals, particularly among youth, who make some poor decisions that shouldn't haunt them for the rest of their lives, that shouldn't define who they are as individuals. And I think that we can offer some services that look like getting to the root cause of poor decision-making, that give them tools, that provide some guided opportunities - maybe job training - a way to redirect behavior into something that's more positive and that also increases pro-social behavior. I think for violent crimes, of course, incarceration is definitely appropriate. I think that most people can agree that homicides and violent assaults and violent sexual assaults are the type of behaviors where we would expect that the individuals are processed through our traditional legal system, and if convicted are isolated away from our community. I think that there are a lot of areas in between where we can talk about what's appropriate for diversion. I think that there are some low-level first-time felony offenses that would be right for diversion as a way to keep people out of the court system and into something that is more effective - whether it's actually more response, not less response than what we're getting through our regular legal court system.
[00:08:13] Crystal Fincher: And one question I have - when we talk about locking people up and putting them away, certainly we need action to make our streets safer - there's a lot going on that is unacceptable and not okay. And it really is helpful to focus on what makes the community safer. So with evidence and research - a large body of research - pretty conclusively pointing towards - when people get out of prison, prison is actually making them more likely to reoffend. If the goal is to prevent people from being victimized, how do you square that with incarcerating people and the approach that we're taking now?
[00:08:58] Leesa Manion: Well, I really think we owe it to ourselves to have an honest conversation about prison reform. I am a strong believer in prison reform. I think that we talk a lot about the Department of Corrections being a place of rehabilitation, but we actually do not fund the level of services that are needed to address trauma, to address substance use disorder, to address underlying health conditions, mental health, or behavioral health issues. And until we get honest about that, we won't actually have the results that we want that help people while they are literally a captive audience, have the tools they need to be released better than when they first entered into prison. I think we have to be really honest about the fact that we have, stepping apart from the criminal justice system but through our legislative process, put up a lot of barriers to people who have criminal convictions or former contact with the criminal justice system. And if we expect people, because we say this a lot - you have served your time - then we have to be honest about the fact that they've served their time, they've paid their debt to society. And not continue to ask them to pay in all kinds of ways that are hidden - that prevent people from getting housing, jobs, access to student loans and education.
[00:10:18] Crystal Fincher: I think that's an excellent point. And given that, I'm wondering - they seem to be not the only ones who are paying, that the community is also paying because they - a lot of people coming out of prison and prison itself makes people more likely to reoffend. So until we have those kinds of supports in place that are consistent with people committing less crime, not victimizing people - does it make sense to put people into a system that is creating victims?
[00:10:55] Leesa Manion: Well, I think it only makes sense if we're willing to make the investments to get the returns that we want. I do think that when people commit violent crime, I do think that our community is asking for safety. I think our community is asking that certain individuals be isolated until they have, to be quite frank, have been held accountable - and sometimes that means punishment or rehabilitated. And in order to have rehabilitation, we have to have services. There are on average 8,000 women and men released from Washington State prisons every year back into our community - and unless we equip those individuals with the tools they need to be successful, they will go back to committing crime to survive - out of trauma, out of poor decision-making, out of criminogenic both behaviors and maybe patterns. And as a result, we are creating future victims of crime. So if we want to reduce crime and reduce victimization, we have to make the investment in prison reform and in re-entry.
[00:12:04] Crystal Fincher: Can you impact that investment from your office?
[00:12:08] Leesa Manion: I was really proud to be one of the key stakeholders behind the scenes in our 2012 conversation around re-entry. Dan Satterberg was the name on the door and the elected official who got people into the room, but I was the person who was helping behind the scenes, put all of those reforms into place to help create our report "Investing for No Return," shopping it with lawmakers and legislators, convening voices to weigh in on recommendations. I was meeting with the Black Prisoners' Caucus at Monroe and solicited from them an unedited chapter into the report, because the men and women who are leaving prison are the experts on re-entry and the barriers that they face. So I think I could, as an elected official, continue that conversation. And one thing about being an elected official is that your voice is given a megaphone and you have the power to convene, and convene really important and necessary conversations.
[00:13:12] Crystal Fincher: I completely agree those conversations are absolutely necessary and it is really important to include the voices, as you have, of people who have been incarcerated or are currently incarcerated. I guess my question is - we seem to be in complete agreement and I think most of the community probably agrees - that the current system is broken and we are in desperate need of reform. Until it's reformed, and even if we're all pushing for that, does it make sense to keep putting people into that broken system? Is there an alternative that you see, or do you feel that we don't have an alternative?
[00:13:49] Leesa Manion: Well, I think diversion, for certain cases, is the alternative that we're all looking for. And connecting young people in particular, or people facing their first offense, into community-based resources - not only is it wise, not only does it help people avoid the criminal justice system and the harmful impacts and collateral consequences of criminal history, I think it's more cost-effective. I think we can also agree that there are certain crimes where, when people are charged and convicted, they are going to go away to prison - and we can still offer services to those individuals. I'm a firm believer that we should be offering services and treatment in our community and our jails and in our prison.
[00:14:35] Crystal Fincher: So you talked a little bit about meeting with different departments across the County. You will definitely be working with all of the cities and the counties. How are you going to approach those relationships? And are you asking any of the cities to do anything different than they're doing now?
[00:14:56] Leesa Manion: Right now, we are starting a new partnership with the Seattle City Attorney's office. And it's really about how do we share information on individuals who are cycling in and out of our system. And some of that information sharing is how do we best pivot those individuals into services. And then for some who are systematically preying on individuals and small businesses in our communities, how do we trade information so that we can hold that person appropriately accountable? Whether it's with misdemeanor filings or with felony filings. And again, it's because our community is asking for us to take public safety seriously. They're asking us to look at behavior and to make it stop, and they're asking for accountability. And accountability for people who are systematically preying on individuals and communities can look one way, and people who are committing non-violent offenses over and over again, out of mental health disorder, substance use disorder, or to basically survive - that kind of accountability can look different as well.
[00:16:03] Crystal Fincher: Well, and that brings up a question. It seems like the City Attorney, even for people who may not be committing crimes against other people, she's looking to remove them or to eliminate the possibility of diversion for those and move in the opposite direction. Are you aligned with that belief? Do you think that's the right approach?
[00:16:27] Leesa Manion: I don't know all of the details of Ann Davison's proposal, but my understanding is that she has it very narrowly drawn - those are individuals who have been referred to the system - I believe it's eight times in a year. That maybe those individuals have been given an opportunity to participate in Community Court, but have committed eight offenses within a short period of time and maybe it's an opportunity to try something different. So I think that having the courage to try something new is something that we should endeavor for. And then we should be willing to pivot if it doesn't yield the results that we want.
[00:17:08] Crystal Fincher: Okay. So there have been a wide variety of challenges when it comes to public safety - crime is up, people are very, very concerned - but also people have issues with trust and law enforcement and in the court system. How do you plan to prioritize truth and justice when sometimes there's seemingly a conflict of interest with your relationship with the police?
[00:17:41] Leesa Manion: Again, I'm the type of leader - I like to identify common ground and build from there. And I think, when it comes to police, I think that there's so much common ground in terms of police reform. I think we can agree that when we are afraid and we call 911, we want a response. Maybe the response is from a sworn officer, maybe the response is from a social worker, but we all know that we want a response. And I think we can all agree that if we have officers who are abusing their discretion, we want them off the force. We want that, and I think the police want that too. So when I think about building trust, I really think, again, it begins with building relationships. And as I mentioned, I'm hard at work in rebuilding relationships with law enforcement. I presently have very deep ties within our community, and what I'd like to do is take the trust of the community, that they have instilled in me, and be the bridge into convening some conversations with law enforcement. And I also know and recognize that there are law enforcement officers who have really deep ties in the community. And so can we work together to broaden that circle, broaden those partnerships, and build trust together?
[00:18:59] Crystal Fincher: There was recently a story in Crosscut by Melissa Santos talking about a challenge and problems with prosecutors sometimes withholding evidence improperly in those situations and that being another issue that is a challenge. It was not about the King County Prosecutor's office, specifically talking about the issue as a whole. Do you see that issue and tension, and how do you approach that?
[00:19:29] Leesa Manion: I am really proud of the fact that we have built a model Brady policy. We take that very seriously and we have a conservative filing policy. We endeavor to turn over all evidence as soon as we are able, and I think those practices should continue. One, it's not just about being ethical. It's also about building trust and transparency into our system. And if we aren't transparent, people will never perceive our office as fair. If they don't understand our decision-making, they will never perceive our office as fair. And tying in this issue of fairness and transparency and also talking about trust and our relationship with law enforcement, as a candidate, I have been intentional about not seeking the endorsement of police guilds and it's not because I dislike police, it's because I fought for resources to create a public integrity unit within the office to look at officer-involved shootings and use-of-force cases that are coming to us as a result of I-940. And if I am endorsed by a bunch of police guilds, it doesn't appear to be fair, it doesn't appear to be neutral. And so I just wanted to explain that because it is another action that goes toward trust. And for some people that might seem like a really small thing, but to me it's a really big thing.
[00:21:01] Crystal Fincher: Are there any other items like that, or within your office, that you feel you can do to help restore trust in a similar way, and in that same way? Is there anything else that you think would be helpful, or that you have planned, to increase the amount of transparency and trust in the process?
[00:21:22] Leesa Manion: I'm currently working with our communications team to create a list of frequently asked questions to put on our website, because there's a lot of confusion about the criminal justice system and the various stakeholders and actors in the justice system. For example, there are a lot of people who are really confused about what's the difference between the King County Prosecuting Attorney's office, the City Attorney's office, the US Attorney's office - and being able to have that information that's readily accessible is super helpful. I'm also a big fan of being really transparent in our decision making. We have long had filing and disposition standards that we share and we share openly, but I think that there are opportunities to invite in media to have them read our FADS, to ask questions. We could do that with community groups as well. I think the more that we can have people understand our work, the more that they will begin to trust the work.
[00:22:23] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. That makes sense. Now, a lot of crimes are currently going unreported and victims are hesitant to report - whether it's elder abuse, or intimate partner abuse, sexual abuse - and a lot of people citing that going through the court system and the process of prosecution and investigation is retraumatizing. How would you handle these situations so that further victimization of people, who've already been violated, doesn't happen?
[00:22:58] Leesa Manion: I really care about victim services. And one of the things that I've done is I've added 10 victim advocate positions within the office, including some bilingual advocates, because access and representation really matter. I've also secured funding and created a Director of Victim Advocacy. And that's with the sole purpose of really examining and really challenging ourselves within the office of what does it mean to be a victim. And sometimes the victim is someone who is going through the criminal justice system, sometimes it is a person who might have one loved one who's being prosecuted by the system and maybe lost another loved one to gun violence. Sometimes victims don't report crimes because they don't understand the process. Sometimes victims don't report crimes because they don't feel that they have an advocate or someone who will respect their cultural difference and their view of our US justice system. Sometimes people don't report crime because they really want something that's more restorative - they're not looking for retribution, they're looking for explanation and healing. And so I think we have an opportunity to really expand how we provide victim services so that it's more culturally responsive, more inclusive, more understanding - so that we actually have more voices from impacted individuals who help us shape what that looks like.
[00:24:24] Crystal Fincher: How would that look different to a victim, or what are you proposing that would look and feel different to someone who has previously been hesitant to come forward or fearful?
[00:24:39] Leesa Manion: Well, I think for some individuals, it might be that they need some reassurance that there are not going to be immigration consequences to them reporting their crime. I think for some individuals they're going to need access to an interpreter because language is a barrier. I think for some individuals, they really want to know what's going to happen to the person that they have complaints about. For example, in the realm of domestic violence, I think that there can be some barriers to reporting because maybe the person who's committing the violence is someone who is the father of your children, or it's someone that you care about or love, maybe it's a young person or a sibling or a child. So how can we take this fear - working with communities, because we really have to rely on our communities to help us build those bridges and also to expand the reach of our services. So how can we demystify the process? How can we make it feel more safe?
[00:25:38] Crystal Fincher: How do you navigate - you've talked about so many societal challenges, so many challenges from the pandemic. We are dealing with a lack of adequate support in - whether it's substance use disorder, behavioral health, and mental health resources - with that and basically putting people in the criminal legal system, who are suffering from other issues that may prevent them from acting rationally and having a calculation that we may think - okay, I don't want to experience consequences, so I'm not going to do this. Not everyone is in that frame of mind or maybe going through something preventing that. How do you handle, or what is your approach to people who are clearly suffering and the root cause of the issue is a lack of a basic need not being met in a different area? We can put them in jail, we can send them to diversion, but until those needs are met, we're looking at landing in the same place. What do you do in that situation?
[00:26:52] Leesa Manion: I think in those situations, we really have to rely on alternatives that are therapeutic. I am a really big supporter of our Drug Court, our Veterans Court, or Mental Health Court. Those are collaborative team models where we have all of the actors - we have the court, we have probation, we have designated crisis responders, we have public defenders, and we have prosecutors - really working together to ensure that the person has access to services, that they have access to housing, that their basic needs are being met, and that they have the supports and the structure they need to be successful. So how can we build more of that? And here's an example of an area that I think I'm curious about and I think it's prime opportunity, but it would require a change in state law - in our Involuntary Treatment Act Court. Right now that's an adversarial model where I have prosecutors representing designated crisis responders and hospitals, trying to get someone committed for services. And on the other side of the table, I have a public defender who is advocating for the release of that individual. And often that leads to nothing and sometimes against the wishes of the family. So if we were able to make that a more therapeutic collaborative model, not only do I think that it would offer better outcomes, we could also use our mental illness, drug dependency tax dollars to support the therapeutic court. So I would really love to work with lawmakers and experts and leaders in this field - to launch that conversation, to see if that's something that we could have happen.
[00:28:39] Crystal Fincher: Should we be charging people with crimes related to possession of substances, or is that more appropriately handled in a different way?
[00:28:52] Leesa Manion: Well, as you know, because of the Blake decision, the possession of drugs was declared unconstitutional. And in our most recent legislative session, it was re-criminalized for a period of a year, but we have to offer two diversion opportunities. I will be really curious to see what that year experiment reveals, but personally I think those are opportunities for us to try to get to the root cause of behavior. And I don't think there's anything magical about a jail cell or a prison cell - because, as I mentioned earlier in this podcast, there aren't enough services to really adequately address the amount of need that we're seeing behind bars. So how can we, in a more cost-effective way, offer those services in lieu of jail or prison, but still meet the desire for public safety, to still ensure that those individuals are stopping their harmful behavior, to ensure that those individuals are themselves safe and not creating chaos in our communities.
[00:30:06] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Now we have - you talk about being in that conversation about keeping people safe and that being the ultimate goal. Lots of elements in the criminal legal system - you're one of them, you can't control all of them or all of the societal issues that may be contributing to that - but in your role, if you were to be elected as the prosecuting attorney, what changes, could you make that would have the largest impact on preventing people from being victimized?
[00:30:41] Leesa Manion: Well, I really think that again goes to the heart of partnership and it really goes to the heart of identifying common ground and building from there. I'm a 'Yes, and...' thinker and that 'Yes, and...' thinking has come to me and been shaped by my lived experience. And I want to share just a little bit of a story and a little bit of my personal story, because it helps explain why I'm a 'Yes, and...' thinker. So I know I've shared with others - I was born in South Korea to a Caucasian father and a Korean mother. And when my father brought us to his home state of Kentucky, my mother was met with discrimination and racism. And when I was about four years old, my dad's mother, my grandmother, got into an argument with my mom - threw her out of the house with only the clothes she was wearing. And my brother and I did not see her again for 25 years. And so, that story and that experience taught me a lot about what happens to someone who was marginalized, who doesn't have a voice, who doesn't have advocacy. It also taught me about forgiveness. My grandmother was someone who advocated for me, she shaped me, she taught me about hard work, she loved me, and she was not the sum of her worst decision.
My brother and I grew up in an area where we experienced discrimination and racism - and the disproportionate school discipline, the disproportionate law enforcement contact that so many young men of color experience, my brother experienced too. And when I think about public safety, it means a lot of things to me. It means that we are free of hate crimes that are born out of discrimination. It means that no person is the sum of their worst mistakes. It means that we can offer non-violent young people a second opportunity because sometimes they make really stupid choices. It means that we have to respect that people who live in our community may have experienced law enforcement differently, and we have to build trust, and we have to be able to show that we respect their lived experience before they will come to us with their problems. It also means that we can hold repeat perpetrators accountable, that we can hold violent crime and violent criminals accountable. It means that our victim services have to be responsive. It means that they have to be culturally sensitive. That's a lot of my, 'Yes, and...' So it drives how I approach this work, it drives my desire to create partnerships, it tries my desire to say 'Yes, and...' how can we work together? Yes, we can address the incidents of crime, and we can address the root cause.
[00:33:39] Crystal Fincher: Before we go, also wanted to talk about issues of fairness and frustration that people are having in feeling like - hey, if you are rich or if you're powerful, we're watching you get away with stuff that it looks like other people are not. And that there's a disproportionate focus on people who are at the bottom, people who are struggling or poor or marginalized - while watching people in power seemingly skirt laws without people blinking an eyelash, whether it's watching some Seattle Police Department officers vote from an unauthorized address, or watching text messages get deleted, or watching corporations sometimes flaunt the law and victimize their employees. What can you do, or how would you approach fostering a sense of transparency and fairness as to who you seek to intervene with? Whether they're rich or poor or powerful - are you tracking that? What are your plans? What's your general approach to that?
[00:34:59] Leesa Manion: It really, at the heart of it, is transparency and accountability. And prosecutor accountability in this sense. So that really means, and it starts with how we bring people into the office - what do our job announcements look like? Who has a seat at the table? What characteristics are we looking at? What barriers would be put away so that more people have an opportunity to join the office and have a seat at the justice table? What values do we reward? When it comes to our decision-making, it's really about being very transparent about the disproportionality that's in the system - being honest about that and not pretending that it doesn't exist. But then also inviting others to the table to help us get to the heart of that, and to be really open about what that conversation looks like, what that type of decision making looks like. And it also involves being willing to change our behavior, being able to change our practice around certain areas, and also being willing to admit - if we make a change and it's not successful, then we have to be willing to pivot and try something different. And not hiding that, but really sharing that with our community, sharing it with our law enforcement stakeholders, sharing it with the court. They're all part of our community and we all have to work together to make this happen. It's too important not to.
[00:36:20] Crystal Fincher: It really is. Now you have an opponent who has done some of the things that you haven't been willing to do. He has sought and received endorsements from police unions and from public safety organizations, has taken seemingly a more hard-line and punitive approach - focused a lot on punishment and does not seem to be welcoming diversion to the degree that you do. And just seems to have a completely different perspective. Why, if you're talking to voters, why should they choose you? And what is at stake in this race?
[00:37:04] Leesa Manion: I think the thing that is at stake is that we have this opportunity right now to continue to build this justice system that we should all be proud of. Right now, we have earned a national reputation of being fair, just, and effective. But that doesn't mean that we're perfect, it doesn't mean that we don't have work to do, it doesn't mean that everyone trusts us. So we have an opportunity to build trust. I'm someone who's been doing this work for a very long time. I can hit the ground running, I'm a 'Yes, and...' thinker, representation matters - my lived experience matters. If elected, I would be the first woman and the first person of color to hold this seat, and my perspective and my community involvement and the way I build broad coalitions and the way I collaborate matter. And I think that's why people should vote for me because we have this common ground of wanting things to be fair. We want to feel safe where we work, live, and play. We want to be the community that gives young people a second chance. We want to be a community where victims feel safe, and come forward, and report, and ask for help. We want to be a community that is in this together working toward a common goal.
[00:38:27] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much for spending the time with us today. We will include links to your website for people who are looking for more information and information about your campaign. And just appreciate you taking time to help us get to know you better.
[00:38:41] Leesa Manion: Well, thank you so much, Crystal. Thank you for having me - this was a pleasure and it was a great conversation. Thank you so much.
[00:38:49] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On today’s Week in Review, Crystal is joined by Seattle Times political reporter Jim Brunner. For police news, they first cover an update in the on-going saga of Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer’s harassment of a Black newspaper carrier, then they break down the newest revelations in the controversy surrounding the missing text messages between former mayor Jenny Durkan and former Police Chief Carmen Best. In elections news, Crystal and Jim discuss activist Glen Morgan’s volunteer group that’s going door to door looking for illegal voters, and look at the motivations behind a Sequim lawyer’s frivolous election fraud lawsuit. They then look at the issues that some of Seattle’s houseless population have with LIHI, the sole provider of ‘tiny home’ shelters in the city. Finally, they explain how the end of Roe v. Wade will have major consequences for abortion access in WA state, even though our state constitution gives us the right to it.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Jim Brunner, at @Jim_Brunner. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Court issues no-contact order against Sheriff Ed Troyer citing unlawful harassment of Black newspaper carrier” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/court-issues-no-contact-order-against-sheriff-ed-troyer-citing-unlawful-harassment-of-black-newspaper-carrier/
“Ex-Seattle Police Chief testifies that she deleted text messages in bulk” by Lewis Kamb from Axios: https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/06/08/ex-seattle-police-chief-deleted-text-messages
“Lawyer’s email told all Seattle police employees to preserve texts” by Lewis Kamb from Axios: https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/06/09/lawyers-email-seattle-police-employees-preserve-texts
“Group doorbells WA homes, searching for illegal voters and drawing complaints” by Jim Brunner and Joseph O’Sullivan from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/group-doorbells-homes-across-washington-searching-for-illegal-voters-and-drawing-complaints/
“WA Attorney General files bar complaint against Sequim layer over ‘frivolous’ election fraud case” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/wa-attorney-general-files-bar-complaint-against-sequim-lawyer-over-frivolous-election-fraud-case/
“The Tiny Shelter Monopoly - Residents Want More Options And More Oversight Over Seattle’s Preferred Shelter Model” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/06/07/74780685/the-tiny-shelter-monopoly
“End of Roe v. Wade looms large in Idaho, where women are likely to seek abortions in Washington” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/end-of-roe-v-wade-looms-large-in-idaho-where-women-are-likely-to-seek-abortions-in-washington/
Transcript
Transcript will be uploaded as soon as possible
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Emily Alvarado about her campaign for State Representative in the 34th Legislative District - why she decided to run, how the last legislative session went, and her thoughts on how to address housing affordability and zoning, Washington’s regressive tax structure, homelessness, climate change, public safety, drug decriminalization, COVID response and recovery. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Emily at https://www.facebook.com/emilyforwa.
Resources
Campaign Website - Emily Alvarado: https://emilyforwa.com/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, I'm very pleased to welcome to the show - Emily Alvarado, who is a candidate for the 34th District State Representative seat in Position 1 - welcome to the show.
[00:00:48] Emily Alvarado: Thank you so much, Crystal. It's good to be here.
[00:00:51] Crystal Fincher: Good to be here, great to meet you. I wanted to start off just talking about what made you choose to run?
[00:00:59] Emily Alvarado: Yeah, well, I'm running for the State Legislature because I believe that government has an obligation to meet the basic needs of all people, and because I've spent my entire career in public service fighting for just that. I'm a lawyer - I went to the University of Washington School of Law, where I was a Gates Public Service Law Scholar. I'm a Latina, raised in a multicultural household, and I'm committed to advancing racial equity and defending civil rights. I'm the child of public school educators and the parent of two kids in Seattle Public Schools, and I care about the future of our public education and the future of our environment. I'm also running because housing is a human right - everyone deserves access to safe, affordable housing, and I'll bring over a decade of experience to the Legislature to address housing affordability.
[00:02:00] Crystal Fincher: Well, that is a huge thing - it's a crisis, as you are very aware of. So what should we be doing to make housing affordable, and is part of the solution increasing density in single-family neighborhoods?
[00:02:16] Emily Alvarado: Yeah, thanks for that question. Clearly, our housing system is broken and needs to be repaired. We do not have enough housing choices throughout the state. We have a shortage of hundreds of thousands of homes to meet the needs of people, so we do need to pursue options to create more housing choices in all communities. We need duplexes, triplexes, ADUs in all communities - so we have options for multi-generational households, for first-time home buyers, for seniors to live with their grandchildren, so that we can have inclusion and diversity. We need more density by our public transit investments so that people can have access to their jobs and to transit, and we can address climate change through our housing policy.
We need more from the market, and we also know that the market is necessary, but it's not sufficient, to solve our affordable housing crisis. It has not, and will not, be able to serve the needs of extremely low income people, people with no income, people on a fixed income, people working part-time jobs at minimum wage. So I think we also need significant and deep and sustained investment in publicly-financed, permanently affordable housing - including housing to meet the needs of people experiencing homelessness, like permanent supportive housing, which is the proven evidence-based cost-effective and humane solution to addressing homelessness. And we need deep public investments in housing for seniors, for people with disabilities, for low income working families - we need those investments.
And third, to help take bold action for housing, we need to make sure that we're protecting tenants and homeowners. Tenants cannot be subject to excessive year-over-year rent increases that exceeds the wages and wage increases of normal families. We can't have year-over-year rent increases that really hamstring people on fixed incomes. So I would take action to make sure that we're providing stability and that we're providing access for tenants. We have to make sure that people who have criminal histories have access to housing, so we're not continuing recidivism and a cycle of incarceration. So there's a lot of steps to take on housing, and I'll put together that bold plan rooted in experience, a deep understanding of what all levels of government - local, state, and federal - what we can do to work together. And I'll build coalitions because this is urgent and it's time to take action now.
[00:05:15] Crystal Fincher: You bring a wealth of knowledge with you as a former director of the City of Seattle Office of Housing - you talk about a lot of different tools and we certainly need to be taking a lot of action, varied types of action, to address this crisis. So it sounds like social housing should be on the table, rent control should be on the table - have all of the tools available at our disposal - and those are the types of things that you would be voting to enable or implement if you were in the Legislature.
[00:05:46] Emily Alvarado: Absolutely. We need all of the tools and we need significant resource to invest to make the tools actionable. We know that -
[00:05:57] Crystal Fincher: Where do we get those resources?
[00:05:59] Emily Alvarado: Right. Well, we know that Washington State has the most regressive tax system in the entire country where poor people, low income folks are disproportionately paying a higher percentage of their income to contribute to really critical public necessities - like housing, like education and childcare, like shared investments in transportation and our infrastructure. I believe we need to fix our regressive tax system and we need to do so with urgency. I support a range of strategies to create more progressive revenue, and I think we need to act quickly because that's the kind of scale and resource that it's going to take to solve our most pressing issues.
[00:06:49] Crystal Fincher: I think we absolutely need so many of these things - that you are bringing tools to the table that have been shown, have been proven to help in these crises. Looking at how we've been handling the homelessness crisis - you talked so eloquently about supportive housing being critical - we have seen over the past few years, an approach that - it seems sweeps-focused and the criminalization of homelessness and moving the unhoused population around. Okay, you can't be here - we're sweeping your location without providing those services, or without ensuring that services that are relevant to the people needing them are available. Have we been taking the wrong approach by doing that? And what should we be doing?
[00:07:51] Emily Alvarado: It's not acceptable to simply move people experiencing homelessness from one place to another. What people need is housing, and they need services and supports to live healthy and stable lives. What we're seeing right now are the outcomes of 40+ years of intentional policy from the federal level - disinvestment and privatization that has really exacerbated and created the homelessness crisis that we see today. Housing is one of the issues in our country where - there is no entitlement to housing. At the federal level, if you need affordable housing, if you have an extremely low income, you apply to a lottery to receive a Section 8 voucher. We can't have a lottery system driving the extent to which people are able to meet their basic human needs. We need to ensure that all people have access to housing. And I think first and foremost, that means that we need our federal government to step back up and reinvest in housing, and reinvest in human services and in social services, and in homelessness supports like through the McKinney-Vento Program, like through the Section 8 voucher program, like through investments in public housing and the National Housing Trust Fund and HUD 202 and 811 - so many sources that we've seen disinvestment from. We need the federal government to reinvest.
While they're working on doing that, we need to continue to take action at the local and at the state level to meaningfully solve the problem. And we know what works. As I mentioned earlier, permanent supportive housing works - to move people into a home and give them the necessary behavioral health, substance abuse, social supports that they need to be stable and safe. Unfortunately, we do not have the resources to adequately and sufficiently scale up our permanent supportive housing response to be able to provide the housing that's necessary.
In addition, Washington has one of the worst behavioral health systems in the nation. And so we've seen that people's behavioral health challenges have increased significantly throughout the pandemic, across the board - in our schools, in jails, in hospitals, and on the street - you see this and yet more than half of the people who need support of mental health services can't access those services. There's nowhere to go. And the people who are providing those services are burnt out and there's not enough of a workforce to be providing adequate mental health and behavioral health supports, especially when people are in a time of crisis. We have to invest deeply in our behavioral health system - make sure that it's a one-stop place where people know how to get care and treatment. And I believe that those kinds of investments that I would work deeply on as a State legislator, paired with really thoughtful, scaled investment in permanent supportive housing and other measures to address poverty like universal basic income and other kinds of supports will make a meaningful difference - and we'll actually solve homelessness and provide dignity and stability to people who are suffering.
[00:11:36] Crystal Fincher: So we just came out of a legislative session where some good things happened, some not so good things happened. What was your evaluation of this past session?
[00:11:49] Emily Alvarado: Yeah, well, I think there were some significant record investments in areas in which we have under-investment, and we showed that the Legislature can lead. Good examples are in housing - the Legislature made record investments in housing, both in purchasing and acquiring buildings to help move people out of homelessness into housing, new resources for the state Housing Trust fund to invest in community development, equitable development, and affordable housing projects across the state. New resources in housing, especially to help make sure that frontline human service and homeless service workers have compensation for the hard work that they've done during the pandemic. On that end, there were great strides. Similarly, record level of investments in transportation with a real emphasis on creating investments in mobility, in electrification, in buses and Metro and ferries. Those really show that we're moving in the right direction of knowing where we need to invest our resources.
Unfortunately, I think we didn't make as strong strides on the policy end. And I know that it was a short session and I look forward to entering the Legislature next year with some strong plans to really move the needle, especially on housing policy, but on other issues as well. We need to make sure that we're bringing together coalitions of people and we're establishing policies and plans now, that can help impact generations to come. Another place where generational-level policy is needed is around planning in our communities for growth. It was really unfortunate last legislative session - that we lost the chance to include in our Growth Management Act and in our comprehensive planning policies - a focus on climate change and on environmental justice. We could have said that all communities under GMA that are planning are prioritizing efforts to address climate change, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to reduce vehicle miles traveled. And instead, we were not able to bring that across the finish line. I'll work hard to make sure that, from a policy perspective, in addition to investments, we're planning thoughtfully on issues like climate change, like housing, like healthcare - to make sure that we have strong, progressive, forward-looking policy.
[00:14:44] Crystal Fincher: I think you bring up a number of excellent points. And I do think it was really critical that we saw the types of investments in mobility and transit, and the types of transportation that will move us into a sustainable future. One of the things that a lot of folks talked about and saw was that while we were doing that, which is great, there were also a significant amount of investment in highway expansion and the types of things that - if we take two steps forward with the record transit investments, we take a step back with increasing, continuing to invest in highway expansion. Should we be investing in further highway expanse?
[00:15:31] Emily Alvarado: I don't believe that's our priority. I don't think that investments in highway expansion have ever demonstrated that they serve the needs of community in a way that really focuses on equity, that focuses on mobility, that focuses on livability for communities. I would prioritize continued investments in public transportation, in connectivity, in multimodal transit and mobility - to make sure that people can really access communities in a way that is effective, efficient, affordable, and also people-centered. That's the kind of communities that we need to be building for our climate future - we need dense communities where people can walk, where we can have thriving small businesses, where people can bike, where people can commute with their children safely from one place to another. And as a legislator, those are the kinds of investments I would prioritize.
[00:16:37] Crystal Fincher: I definitely want a legislator who prioritizes those types of things - will make life just better in so many ways for so many people. What more should we be doing to meet our 2030 climate goals? There's a lot of action that has been taken, but it doesn't have us on track to achieve our goals yet. What more do we need to do? And what will you lead on?
[00:17:01] Emily Alvarado: Yeah, well, we obviously have a lot more to do. We have to move towards electrification of our transportation system, and we need to do so urgently and aggressively, and I'd support all of those efforts. As I've mentioned before, affordable housing policy is climate policy. And until we create the policy to build a future of having dense, compact, livable communities, we are never going to address the emissions that come from driving. And we need to prioritize that - one of the things that the state can be doing is to have more alignment in our investment around housing and transportation. I've spent a lot of my career at the local level working on equitable transit-oriented development - really making sure that we're purchasing property or using surplus property by our transit investments to create dense, affordable housing with community facilities, with cultural assets, so that we can both avoid or mitigate or prevent displacement. And also, so that low income people have an opportunity to live in communities by jobs and by transit - many of whom are the most transit-dependent people in our state. So alignment of our housing and transportation investments can make sure that we're creating the dense communities that are needed.
We also know that from a carbon emissions perspective, our housing stock is one of the greatest drivers of carbon. And so we really need to take seriously an effort to not only build towards the future, where we're building buildings that are climate resilient, but also looking at our existing building stock. We need new financing tools, new partnerships to meaningfully upgrade and retrofit our existing buildings to move away from fossil fuels towards electrification. And we need to do so with a prioritization on the people who are low income so that they are achieving the benefits, not only of climate justice, but also of electrification, which can bring air conditioning as we see changes in our weather and climate.
[00:19:32] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely.
[00:19:32] Emily Alvarado: So I'll pursue continued strategies to build climate resilience through our housing policy. And lastly, Crystal, I don't want to move on from this topic without saying that - a focus on our climate justice work has to be environmental justice. We need to be investing in communities that are most impacted by air pollution, by water pollution - whose impacts are often aligned with the same impacts of housing policy, including redlining and racially restrictive covenants. We need to start by investing in those communities through grants and partnerships and resources so that there is genuine environmental justice planning that happens, that helps to build the policy platform and strategies for our future. And those are the kinds of strategies that I would follow and invest in.
[00:20:32] Crystal Fincher: Our Legislature certainly would benefit from an increased focus and centering and prioritization of that, and I appreciate you prioritizing that. We, in this last legislative session - the Democratic majority and the Legislature overall also took some new action, reversed some prior action - when it comes to public safety and police accountability reforms. Do you think they did the right thing?
[00:21:05] Emily Alvarado: I completely support the efforts that were made two years ago to make sweeping reforms in police accountability. And I'm glad that we really took the steps to take meaningful action - it's necessary. I would not have supported the rollback of those laws. That's not the right direction. We need to be intentional and focused on addressing racial bias in policing, on addressing over-policing of communities of color. And I would make sure that we continue to have systems of accountability that can help to repair trust and help to get us back on a path towards real community-led, community-driven public safety.
I think, outside of the conversation about the police accountability and police reform measures, we need to take public safety seriously by investing deeply in communities that have been impacted by violence and by intentional disinvestment for decades. And I would start by making sure that people have access to basic needs of housing, healthcare, education, that we have investments in youth activities, in civic infrastructure, in community facilities - so that we have healthy communities. We know that healthy communities are safer communities, they're less violent communities. That's where I believe that true public safety begins. I also think, as I mentioned before, that we need to be investing in a system of crisis response that's actually meeting the needs of what crisis people are facing. If people are facing a behavioral health crisis, we might want to respond with a behavioral health response rather than a police response - and law enforcement agrees with that. So again, we need investments in those kinds of behavioral health crisis responses so that we can meet people where they are and treat people as they need to be treated.
I also believe that we need to seriously address gun violence in order for our communities to be safe. I appreciate the efforts of the state to create the new Office of Firearms, Safety and Gun Prevention, Violence Prevention. As a legislator, I would make investments in that office. I would scale the work of that office and make sure that they are prioritizing - themselves - investments and a commitment to communities that are most impacted by gun violence.
[00:23:57] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely makes sense. Another area that does impact how safe we are - how we're meeting people's needs who are in crisis - are those who are dealing with substance use disorder. And we've had this War on Drugs that - it's pretty universally recognized as a failure and ultimately as counterproductive. What should the approach to possessing drugs be - should it be treated as a criminal activity or a public health problem? How would you address that?
[00:24:29] Emily Alvarado: Yeah, I would definitely start by treating substance abuse as a public health problem. And we know right now that - one, our laws have primarily been designed in a way to focus on criminalization and to focus on over-policing of communities of color. That's how our drug policy for decades has been designed at the federal level and locally. We need to undo those kinds of policies. We also need to make sure that people who are often caught up in systems of incarceration - that we're putting better interventions in place. People should not go to jail because they have a substance abuse disorder. They should be treated for the substance abuse disorder. And that's an investment in public health, that's an investment in our healthcare systems, and in investing in public health and healthcare in a way that's also meeting people where they are - through community-based health care centers, through street-based outreach and services, so that people can get treatment.
As I mentioned earlier, too, part of the cycle of recidivism and incarceration is because we put intentional barriers up that don't allow people to live healthy, stable lives. We need to take action now on ensuring that people who have criminal history in the criminal justice system can access housing. People need to be able to have safety and security of a home - and without that, there continues to be people who are caught up in systems over and over again. And then our laws on drug possession and others become other tools by which we continue incarceration. I'll oppose those.
[00:26:32] Crystal Fincher: We are still in this time where COVID is spreading, still impacting people. In fact, right now the rates are increasing and even the hospitalizations are increasing. And it seems like a lot of people have just decided to be done with COVID, even though COVID has not yet decided to be done with us. What more should the Legislature be doing to help prevent the spread and mitigate the impacts of COVID?
[00:26:59] Emily Alvarado: Yeah, well, first of all, we need to make sure that our healthcare system, which has been serving and supporting people through the pandemic for three years now - over two years now - has the resources that it needs to really serve people. And we know that right now we have a nursing shortage. We know that many of the people who work in the healthcare industry are burnt out, or are quitting, and are overworked. And we need to address that kind of a staffing issue if we want to provide adequate safety for our community, and we want to provide appropriate health care for our community. So I would work on efforts that didn't move forward last legislative session - to make sure that we have staffing safety for nurses and for nursing workers, so that we can have a strong, robust health workforce. We need that as part of our future.
We also have to continue to invest in the underlying systems that make people feel comfortable taking days off when they're sick and being at home with their children. Unfortunately, we do have so much economic insecurity and job insecurity that people can't be at home. I'll fight hard for safe workplaces and to make sure that we work on policies so that when people are sick, they can be at home. I'm proud to have support from many labor organizations because I'll fight to make sure that workers can put themselves and their health and their safety before overworking.
[00:28:53] Crystal Fincher: Well, and as we conclude this conversation today, I'm wondering - if you're talking to a voter, who's trying to decide between you and your opponent, trying to decide who's most aligned with their values, who they can most count on to fight for what they need - what would you tell them in terms of you versus your opponent and how they should approach that decision?
[00:29:20] Emily Alvarado: Look, I believe that we can build a future that works for all Washingtonians. I am hopeful. I believe that investing in robust housing, in healthcare, in childcare, in education and infrastructure - I believe that's absolutely necessary to build strong communities and a thriving middle class. In a state and a region with incredible opportunity, I believe we can have shared prosperity, I believe we can solve our biggest challenges. The difference between me and my opponent is that I've spent my entire career working for social justice. I've spent my life fighting for families who need housing, for individuals experiencing homelessness, for people who want connection and belonging, and for communities who want safe thriving neighborhoods. I have a track record of not only advocating, but also on delivering, on implementing policies, on investing in housing and services for people who need it, and advancing creative solutions. My track record and demonstrated commitment is clear. My personal commitment to social justice and progressive change is clear, as is my ability to bring people together and solve our biggest challenges.
[00:30:42] Crystal Fincher: Appreciate that. And just final question - as director of the Office of Housing, certainly you have a lot of responsibility. You were working within an administration that some people have a lot of questions about when it came to their commitment, particularly with former Mayor Jenny Durkan, to the same kinds of values that you talk about. How would you characterize your work within that administration, or your work despite that administration - whichever one is more appropriate - when people are trying to figure out how you fit within that and how you were aligned with Mayor Durkan and her approach?
[00:31:21] Emily Alvarado: Yeah, thanks for that pointed question - I appreciate it. I think that the track record that I have of creating progressive outcomes as director at the Office of Housing, at one of the more challenging times of our recent history with tense political tensions, is demonstrative of my success and the effectiveness that I would bring to the State Legislature. I got things done at a time when council and the mayor didn't agree. At a time when I didn't always agree with the mayor, we still moved progressive policy. Just remember - during that time, I was able to make record investments in affordable housing - record investments. I made the greatest number investments in BIPOC-led community-based housing organizations that have ever been made. We implemented a permanent supportive housing pilot to triple our annual production of permanent supportive housing as a COVID response, including by using federal resources. We got more resources to buy buildings and buy land - to move people out of homelessness. We passed record policies on addressing displacement, community preference policy - making sure that communities can stay in place and access affordable housing. I created a rental assistance program during COVID and invested in BIPOC-led, community-based organizations to provide resources to the most impacted communities. I implemented foreclosure prevention policies targeted in communities facing the highest risk of displacement. So outside of the administration, I delivered clearly on the values that I hold dear and I'm transparent about. I worked deeply with community and maintained and built strong, authentic community relationships. And I brought people together to get things done - that's what we need in the Legislature - someone who's going to bring people together and get progressive policy accomplished.
[00:33:45] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much for your time today, for this conversation, and appreciate the time that you spent. Thank you so much.
[00:33:53] Emily Alvarado: Thank you, Crystal - I appreciate it.
[00:33:55] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On today’s week-in-review, Crystal is joined by staff writer covering Law and Justice at The Stranger, Will Casey. After another difficult news week across the nation and locally, Crystal and Will wade through the latest controversies facing Washington’s police departments. They break down the revelation that SPD has not been investigating adult sexual assault cases, and why this is more of an issue of priorities rather than staffing. They also question Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell’s accountability for the actions of the department, which he leads. Next they look into Pierce County Council candidate Josh Harris’s shooting of a man Harris alleges stole from him and ask why Auburn’s police department put the image of an officer accused of multiple murders on their recruitment banner. For housing news, Crystal and Will question the usefulness of Bruce Harrell’s new Homelessness Data Dashboard and ask why landlords are enraged over the Seattle City Council’s proposal to ask them to report the rents they’re charging renters. Finally, the show wraps up with a check-in on controversy surrounding former Mayor Jenny Durkan’s missing text messages, and how it’s one example of why Washington’s Public Records Act needs to be updated to meet our modern era.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Will Casey, at @willjcasey. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Seattle police stopped investigating new adult sexual assaults this year, memo shows” by Sydney Brownstone and Ashley Hiruko from The Seattle Times and KUOW:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/seattle-police-halted-investigating-adult-sexual-assaults-this-year-internal-memo-shows/
“Auburn officer charged with murder featured on department’s recruiting banner” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/auburn-officer-charged-with-murder-featured-on-departments-recruiting-banner/
“This Auburn cop killed 3 and injured others. His department didn't stop him — outsiders did” by Ashley Hiruko and Liz Brazile from KUOW:
https://www.kuow.org/stories/this-auburn-cop-killed-3-and-injured-others-it-took-outsiders-to-stop-him
“Pierce County candidate with pro-law enforcement platform shoots at suspected car thief” by Patrick Malone from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/pierce-county-candidate-with-pro-law-enforcement-platform-shoots-at-suspected-car-thief/
“Seattle greenlights minimum wages for app-based delivery drivers” by MyNorthwest Staff from MYNorthwest: https://mynorthwest.com/3499857/seattle-city-council-passes-payup-legislation/
“Harrell’s New Homelessness Data Dashboard Invites More Questions Than It Answers” by Natalie Bicknell Argerious from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/06/02/the-urbanist-podcast-harrells-new-homelessness-data-dashboard-invites-more-questions-than-it-answers/
“Pedersen Pisses Off Seattle Landlords: Is the rent too high? The City wants to know, but landlords don't want to say” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger:
https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/06/01/74545296/pedersen-pisses-off-seattle-landlords
“Did Our Last Mayor Commit a Felony? Washington’s Public Records Act Needs An Overhaul” by Will Casey from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/06/02/74581748/did-our-last-mayor-commit-a-felony
Transcript
Transcript will be uploaded as soon as possible
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Leah Griffin about her campaign for State Representative in the 34th Legislative District - why she decided to run, how the last legislative session went, her priorities, and her thoughts on addressing issues such as housing affordability and zoning, homelessness, drug decriminalization, public safety, climate change, and COVID response and recovery.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Leah at @voteleahgriffin.
Resources
Campaign Website - Leah Griffin: https://www.voteleahgriffin.com/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, I am very happy to welcome a candidate for the 34th legislative district to the program, Leah Griffin. Welcome to the show.
[00:00:47] Leah Griffin: Thank you so much for having me, Crystal.
[00:00:49] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for coming on. So starting out, what motivated you to run?
[00:00:55] Leah Griffin: Well, I am somebody who never thought that she would run for public office. I am a school librarian - I love being a librarian - getting the right books into the hands of kids at the right time is a really wonderful thing to do with your life. And then in 2014, I was sexually assaulted and what I encountered was a healthcare and legal justice system that was fundamentally broken. Everything about the system that I encountered was flawed. I went to the closest emergency room and they shrugged their shoulders and said - we don't do rape kits here. The police refused to investigate or test the rape kit that I did eventually get, the prosecutors victim-blamed and threatened me if I continued to push. It was really a horrible experience, and so I knew that if the system didn't work for me - a white educated person with access to transportation, no kids, access to information - and I couldn't make this work, then it was absolutely broken and nobody was making it work. It wasn't working.
And I knew that I couldn't let it persist, so I reached out to every single lawmaker that I thought would be able to make a difference - hundreds and hundreds of emails, and very few people responded. This is 2014, this is before the Me Too movement. This is a problem that has persisted from the beginning of time until now. And the first person that got back in touch with me was Senator Patty Murray, and I went into her office and told my story, and she was appalled that there were hospitals in the state that were turning survivors away without being able to care for them. So she commissioned a Government Accountability Office report and we found that only one in five hospitals in the United States were fully equipped to provide sexual assault exams to survivors who came to the emergency room. So together we wrote the Survivors' Access to Supportive Care Act, I traveled to DC a couple of times to lobby for the bill, I ended up getting bi-partisan co-sponsorship with Lisa Murkowski, and after eight years of work we passed the Survivors' Access to Supportive Care Act as part of VAWA [Violence Against Women Act] just this March. So that was pretty incredible. We got $150 million to train and pay sexual assault nurse examiners around the country.
At the same time, I had been working with Representative Tina Orwall and Senator Dhingra on the Sexual Assault Forensic Examination Best Practices taskforce, and we have passed about a dozen reforms, more than a dozen reforms, to transform how survivors interact with the systems that failed me. Police wouldn't test my rape kit, so I made them test all 11,000 of the untested rape kits in Washington. We got trauma-informed training for police officers. We got survivors' rights, the first-in-the-nation rape kit tracking system, so we've been really making transformation. At the same time I worked to organize every Democratic organization in the state, the county, and the LDs for Referendum 90 to ensure that we had comprehensive, age-appropriate, medically accurate sexual health education in Washington.
So this has really become my full-time unpaid job in addition to my full-time job as a librarian. When we passed the Survivors' Access to Supportive Care Act in March, the very next day I got an email from Representative Eileen Cody letting me know that she was retiring. And that timing to me felt like purpose, so I called the consultant that I've been talking to over at Upper Left and we launched a couple of days later. And running this campaign as somebody who just is a real person, who has led with vulnerability and passion and drive to make substantive change is, feels correct, right now.
[00:05:16] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and the timing was right there. And I just want to say thank you for working so hard and for willing to put yourself and your trauma out there to help so many other people. It is - I wish so many people weren't surprised by how the system can revictimize survivors of sexual assault, and it's absolutely traumatic. It prevents so many people from coming forward and seeking justice in the first place, which just makes us all less safe because there's no accountability for folks who do this. And people know that odds are - it's not going to be pursued if you do violate someone, and to be part of turning that tide and changing that is just so important to so many men and women. I just really appreciate all the work that you've done for all that time.
Just looking more at your campaign, just starting with how this legislative session, this past legislative session shaped up - there were great things that happened, there were some not so great things that happened. What was your evaluation of this past session?
[00:06:36] Leah Griffin: It was short, and I think there were some real disappointments. Paramount for me was the un-passage of the Keep Our Care Act because we knew, the people that are in this work knew, that Roe was going to fall. And it - likely, it is. And we have this, I think, misconception that we're safe here in Washington. And I do not think that that is true. And we have a situation right now where religiously affiliated hospitals are taking over our hospital beds here in Washington State. And those religiously affiliated hospitals are limiting access to abortion care, they're limiting access to end-of-life care, and they're limiting access to gender affirming care. And that is dangerous for so many people and tragic for so many people. And this law would have - and I think it was no money either, there wasn't a massive budget implication even - would've given the Attorney General oversight into these mergers so we could prevent more of them from happening. So I think that bill not passing is a tragedy.
The other bill - there's two others that I was really disappointed not passing - was the unionization of Legislature staff. I think that if we're going to have strong government that is working and functioning to make our communities' lives better, those people need to be paid and compensated and treated fairly. And to have our legislative staff making less than minimum wage is just wrong. So I was disappointed in that. And then the third thing that really was a disappointment was the Lorraine Loomis Act didn't pass. Salmon recovery is so important to our ecosystem, to our orcas, to the whole Puget Sound. And to have a bill like that not pass because of a 10% disagreement where farmers didn't want to pay the 10% of the total funding that was going to go into this bill - and I understand that - farmers are struggling too, and it disappoints me that lawmakers couldn't find that extra 10% and move that across the finish line, because I think that's the kind of compromise that we need to do to address the urgency of our environmental problems.
[00:09:14] Crystal Fincher: It makes sense. And I should note that that staffer unionization bill died, but then was resurrected and it came back, and passed - and in a different iteration than was originally there. I think a lot of us definitely preferred the original bill and wish that would have been what passed out. Looking at, just what you're looking to do - what are your priorities?
[00:09:42] Leah Griffin: So my number one priority is access to behavioral health care. When I look at the problems that our society faces with everything - with public safety, with homelessness, with education - so much of our challenges boil down to trauma. And we are not addressing that trauma in a meaningful and substantive way. So in my conversations with community, what I'm finding is that so many people are touched by behavioral health care needs. When I've talked to union reps - the number one issue of the firefighters union, without hesitation when I asked, was mental health care. And so my number one priority is making sure that people have access to the care that they need at the point of need. I know - I'm a school librarian - I see kids in school, especially after this pandemic, really struggling with their mental health. The isolation was hard, what we've experienced is a national trauma. When we look at kids - I saw you tweeted just the other day that Black students are much more likely to die by suicide than white students in our school systems locally, and we have to do something to address that.
So part of the solution is making sure that we're incentivizing education and mental health care practitioners, because we simply do not have enough of them. The other part of that is that we need to embed those mental health care practitioners at the point of need. So one, make sure that they're in schools. In 2014, the people passed by initiative increased staffing, educational support staff and the Legislature never funded it. And we owe it to our kids to make sure that we're funding the support staff that is going to help them succeed. And right now, we - of course, need more librarians - but right now that really means mental health care practitioners. So we need that. I want to embed mental health care practitioners in unions. The suicide rate among labor is massively high - we have to address trauma, or we're going to keep perpetuating the same problems over and over and over until we do. So, that's number one.
The other thing that I really want to lead on is access to abortion care. Like I said before, Roe's falling - talking to Planned Parenthood, we know that we're going to have a 385% increase in pregnant people coming to Washington to receive care. And we have to be ready for that. We have to be ready for that by limiting the acquisition of religiously affiliated hospitals, we have to make sure that we're funding abortions for people who come here - because as the increase happens, it's going to get more expensive because that's how our for-profit healthcare system works. So we need to make sure people can afford it until we can get a single-payer universal healthcare system, which is also absolutely a priority of mine. And we need to make sure that we're training doctors because other states are going to cease training in abortion procedures and we have to pick up that slack here. We have to. So I am fortunate that I've spent the last almost decade working in this space of training for healthcare practitioners and really excited to get in there and make sure that we get that done.
Third, housing. We absolutely need to build more housing. That is the solution to our housing crisis. One of the areas that I particularly care a lot about is the missing middle housing, and it was a shame that that also didn't pass this year. But I'm really fortunate that I was able to purchase my house in 2015 via a HUD program that no longer does it - it's a stagnant program now, but it was a program that took government foreclosures and sold to first-time home buyers who are going to live in that home. So it cut out all of the foreign investors, all of the flippers, other investors and said that this is available for people in the community. So I was able to purchase a house for $225,000 in 2015. And that is the only reason that I, as a school librarian, am able to live in the City of Seattle. And I want that opportunity for more of my neighbors. And the state could be doing more in that regard.
[00:14:48] Crystal Fincher: So should we be increasing density in single-family neighborhoods?
[00:14:53] Leah Griffin: Yes, we have to. The days of - we have to increase density because we are so far behind in having the number of available units that we need in order to house people that if we're not increasing density, we're creating sprawl. And the impact on the environment, the impact on emissions, the impact on the quality of people's lives - is not fair to ask people who are lower income than the high-wage tech workers who live in Seattle to have to have an entirely different type of life because they can't afford to live where they work. I work in the service industry or have - I'm a school librarian, but I don't make enough to support my family. So during the summer, I waitress and bartend every summer until the summer before the pandemic, to earn enough money to be able to afford to live in this city. And my colleagues who waitress full-time or bartended full-time - it was so much harder to be able to make it here. And they should not be having to drive hours away in order to make a living to support their families. And the only way that we can make sure that people don't have to live that lifestyle is to build more housing.
[00:16:39] Crystal Fincher: It makes sense. Related to housing is homelessness and the homeless crisis that we have. A lot of policy regarding homelessness is determined at the local level. What can you do in your capacity as a legislator to reduce the amount of people who are living outside?
[00:17:00] Leah Griffin: At the state level, what I think that we need to do is make sure that we are reforming our tax structure so that we can have a more equitable society. Everything is - every policy is every other kind of policy. That makes sense, so every housing policy is also an education policy is also a climate policy is also a transit policy. So what we can do at the state level is make sure that our infrastructure, that our education system, that our healthcare system is funded and robust. Our for-profit healthcare system is bankrupting families, and that leads to homelessness. So we need to make sure that people can get healthcare without losing their homes. People don't have jobs that pay enough in order to afford housing, so we need to make sure that we have strong apprenticeship programs and strong education. Our number one priority in the Legislature is fully funding public education. That is anti-homelessness policy. And then for the less than a third of people experiencing homelessness who have substance abuse disorder, funding the behavioral health care access is homelessness policy. And those are all things that the state can do.
[00:18:32] Crystal Fincher: Certainly agree with and appreciate you engaging with just the reality that behavioral health care is critically important, substance use disorder treatment is really important. Should possessing drugs be a crime, or is it more of a public health problem than a criminal problem?
[00:18:54] Leah Griffin: I think possessing drugs should absolutely not be a crime. I think that it is absolutely a public health issue and it goes back to what I talked about at the beginning - is addressing trauma. And when we are punishing people for seeking respite from trauma, and we are compounding that trauma, we are compounding that behavior. So I am somebody who has been working in this criminal justice space as a survivor of violent crime. And I think that gives me a lot of privilege and leeway to say that our criminal legal system is horrendous. I know that we both did the IDF program - and as part of the Institute for Democratic Future program, I had an opportunity to tour the Monroe Correctional Facility and it shook me to my absolute core when I walked into that facility. Seeing these men in cages, with their faces through a small glass square just looking out into an empty room, was devastating for me to see. And then to learn that these men were laboring for 32 cents an hour in those facilities is devastating and wrong. So I think that when we think about our criminal justice or legal system, a lot of people want to see people punished and what I would really love, as a survivor of violent crime, is if we could shift the narrative from punishing people for misdeeds to giving people the tools and resources that they need to be better neighbors. And especially when it comes to drug use, that is an area where we can provide people with the tools to meet their needs.
I would love to focus on a system that is less based on a carceral model and more based in the therapeutic model. If we're going to put people and separate people from society, then we need to be giving them the mental health treatment that they need to be better neighbors, the education that they need in order to come back out into our community and get a job, the access to community support that they need to maintain healthy relationships and learn relationship skills. Our neighbors deserve all of those things. And we, the victims of violent crime, deserve a system that is going to actually solve a problem and not just spend a ton of money to inhumanely house somebody for a couple of years and then put them right back on the street no better than they were when they went in. That doesn't serve anybody. So, I forgot where we were going with that, what the original question is, but - no, I don't think that we should be putting people in prison for possessing drugs.
[00:22:27] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I'm with you. And I think you get to the heart of the matter in that what we're doing isn't working right now. It's not working for anyone - you speak so eloquently about how the system is failing survivors of violence of all types, and of crime of all types really. And right now, there is a lot of angst among people looking around and going - okay, well, I'm not feeling very safe right now, I feel like crime is increasing. I can see cops on the street and that seems like something even if I know maybe that is not the perfect solution. What would you tell someone who is saying - yeah, I recognize that what we're doing isn't working, it's not ideal. But how do we transition to a model that does - how do you make them safer?
[00:23:28] Leah Griffin: It is so big, right? It is a monumental task, and that requires so many people in so many agencies and so many governing bodies working together to try to make this change. What I would say is that we have to fund our services and we can only fund our services through tax reform. And I am fully supportive of the Wealth Tax that people are talking, that Noel Frame is talking about. And I am one who is really hopeful about the future possibility of an income tax in Washington State - let me tell you why. What I've learned over the last eight years is that culture and policymaking have to move in tandem together in order to be effective. And how I know this is that I fought for years to end the rape kit backlog in Washington. And it was pushing against a wall for several years because sexual assault victims were not the priority. People did not care - tina Orwall cared, Senator Dhingra cared, Pramila Jayapal cared, Patty Murray cared - but there were people who didn't prioritize it at all. And this is an issue that is not super controversial. Most people would agree - yes, we should test the rape kits of sexual assault survivors. And then the Me Too movement happened, and we were able to pass that bill, we passed other reforms, really make a dent in how survivors interact with our systems.
Right now, I think what the pandemic has done is shown us - us, the people, real working people - that we can have it better. It has shown us that there is opportunity to change systems in meaningful ways if we have the desire to do so. And I think that we see this in the push to unionize in the private sector - we're seeing huge gains there. And I think if we start talking to people, real working people, about what it actually looks like to have a progressive income tax, but also be able to roll back some of our other regressive taxes, like sales tax, like B & O tax. How would that look for people's lives? And I think that we can get enough people in business, that we can get enough people across our society to say - yes, that really makes sense. And we can have the votes to do the constitutional amendment to have a progressive income tax. I think that is possible. I think that is possible sooner than later, because I think people realize that we deserve better and we can have better. And if we work together and we tell our stories - that's my campaign theme - because I know that stories is how you change hearts and minds, connection is how you've changed hearts and minds - that we can have it. So that's what I think that we can do.
[00:26:55] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, no that completely makes sense. And I really appreciate you speaking on your perspective as a survivor. So many times people try and speak for them, and you've spoken eloquently about this before. And really a lot of times what people characterize or try and score political points with by saying - well, think about the survivors - does not match what survivors are actually saying themselves and there are so many.
[00:27:22] Leah Griffin: No, and it drives me - it drives me bonkers when people try to say - we can't have reformed systems because what about rapists? And I think to myself, the rapists are fine. They're not the ones going to jail. It's Black and Brown people possessing drugs, not rapists, and that's wrong.
[00:27:49] Crystal Fincher: It is. Well, another thing that's wrong is our Earth hurdling towards a future that is in jeopardy because of how we're not taking action to address our climate. What should we be doing? What more should we be doing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and meet our climate goals?
[00:28:15] Leah Griffin: We got to cap carbon. We got to stop big polluters from polluting - because we can recycle as many plastic bags as we can as individual consumers, but if we have corporations pumping CO₂ into the atmosphere at monstrous levels, then my plastic bag isn't going to save us. So one, we need to stop polluters. Two, we need to really speed up the shift to clean energy. And that's what's really exciting for me in the 34th, is that we just got in redistricting the whole manufacturing industrial area into the 34th LD. And that to me is a huge opportunity to invest in infrastructure for clean products, for solar production, for wind energy production. There's so much potential there for the shift that I'm really excited to talk with business leaders and look at the potential for that. I think that we need to be working towards a just transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. We need to be training people to work in that industry. We have an opportunity in Washington to really invest in tidal energy which is really exciting. And I think that we should be doing more - more of all of it.
I grew up in the nineties, I'm a nineties kid, and I remember watching Fern Gully. I don't know if you remember Fern Gully - it was terrifying, absolutely a terrifying children's film - and being really scared and angry about what the polluters were doing to our environment. And now I'm 36 and I teach high school and I see that same anger in the faces of the teenagers that I teach. And I think to myself, where were the adults that were supposed to take care of this over the last 20 years? And this is part of why I'm running is because I'm that adult. And let's get it done. Let's stop not passing laws that are going to help restore salmon habitat over a 10% funding shortfall. Let's find that money and do it. Let's invest in energy production. Let's find ways to increase credits for electric cars. Let's increase density 'cause like I said before, every issue is every other issue. Let's increase density so that we have walkable neighborhoods so that people can get out of their cars. Let's invest in transit. I'm honored to have the endorsement of the local Amalgamated Transit Union. Let's get people on bikes, on transit, on buses, trains because good public transit is good climate policy. So many things that we can be doing and should be doing - really impressed with the transportation package last session. That's a highlight that the Legislature did before, so there's so many opportunities to help our planet and I'm excited to pitch in.
[00:31:40] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, there are. You mentioned the transportation package, which did include record investments in transit, in non-car transportation, in building the infrastructure to support that and make it accessible and attractive to people which was really exciting. Some folks were not excited - I'm actually one of those folks who was not that excited - to see more highway expansion also included in that, just because our transportation sector is responsible for so much of our greenhouse gas emissions and it feels taking two steps forward with the transit investments and then taking a step back with - the highway expansion is a step back that we can't afford given the urgency of the action that is needed to mitigate the impacts that are coming. Would you support a package that included further highway expansion? Do you think we should be accelerating advancement and limiting it to our transportation investments into things that do reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
[00:32:55] Leah Griffin: Yeah, I'm with you. But it's also really easy for me to sit here in the 34th legislative district in the City and say - of course, I don't want any highway expansion. Because I don't - there's no need for that here, anywhere close to here. I mean, I think about really rural areas and safety. And as we - unfortunately I do think that there is going to be climate refugees coming to the Northwest. This is one of the best places in the country to live. And, if Washington - Washington can't solve our climate crisis on our own, right? So no matter how much work we do, it is possible that things continue to get worse and people are going to come here. And I think there are universes where there are cities, more cities, more towns in what are now rural areas of Washington, where somebody could make an argument for a highway for safety purposes - being able to get to hospitals - but that's, I think that's like a hundred years out. So I think I can safely say with certainty that I would not support any highway expansions. And wish that that hadn't happened.
[00:34:22] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and it does seem like there's so much, as you alluded to before, just opportunity to build more resilient communities, support communities to upgrade to more resilient infrastructure that reduces emissions, that is healthier for everyone. That that can be a transition that does create so many jobs and so much opportunity there. One conversation that a lot of people are still in right now is about the pandemic and that COVID is still spreading. A lot of people in society are over it and wanting to move forward and get on with it. And - hey, let's just live with it. A lot of other people are saying - I don't think we quite understand yet what living with COVID truly is, and that's a very risky proposition and just preventable. And seems to be having negative impacts on the supply chain, on companies' ability to hire, and just kind of our regional capacity to get things done in the way that we used to. Do you think we're doing enough to mitigate COVID, should more be happening as we work through this and try to move forward in what this new normal is, should the Legislature be doing more?
[00:35:55] Leah Griffin: Yes, there's definitely more to do. I think that there are business owners that are still suffering and struggling because of the impacts of the pandemic. Schools, certainly, are still struggling and suffering because of the impact of the pandemic. Our hospitals, our nurses - my best friend is a nurse down in Burien, and I know that they're still struggling with being able to have sometimes even basic PPE still, which is ridiculous. So I think that - absolutely, we need to be funding our infrastructure. We also need to make sure that that our public health system is fully funded and supported by the Legislature. And this is all going to go back to our tax structure, right? Things cost money. If we want to have nice things, if we want to have systems that function, if we want to have public services that meet the needs of our community, that all costs money. And we need to transform our - we're the worst in the country, it's so embarrassing. Washington State is the absolute last in the country for fair tax structures, and that is priority number one. We have to change that so that we can have the things we deserve. And that includes fully funding education, that includes fully funding public health, that includes making sure that people have access to healthcare in a meaningful way that doesn't bankrupt them - which is why I support single-payer universal health care and think that we're gonna get there. And we need more people that believe that that's possible to get into the Legislature so that we can make it happen, because we deserve it, we can have it. I think what the pandemic also showed us is that when we need to provide every single person in this country with a free vaccine, we can do it. So let's keep doing that.
[00:38:07] Crystal Fincher: I am with you. I'm with you right there. As we wrap up today, what would you tell voters who are considering you, your opponent in trying to make their decision about how to vote? What would you tell them about how their lives would be different with you as their legislator?
[00:38:27] Leah Griffin: I don't know much about my opponent. I know that she's a lawyer and was Jenny Durkan's housing director. But what I know about me is that one, I'm a librarian. And the thing about being a librarian - I think we need a librarian in the Legislature and this is why. We have plenty of lawyers. Librarians, I always say to my students - if you ask me a question, there's a chance I'll know the answer to that question, but there's a chance that I might not, but I know where to find the answer to that question. So when you hire a librarian to work in the Legislature, what you're getting is somebody who knows how to research, who knows how to leverage connections with community and with experts, somebody who is able to bring people together to come to a solution that prioritizes the voices of people most impacted by the problem. You get somebody who is thoughtful, who is empathetic, who cares about you and your story and making sure that your story is represented in the policy that we produce. I am somebody who has put in thousands of hours of unpaid labor to make substantive change just because it's the right thing to do. I have no lofty intentions of moving on to other political office.
I'm running for State Legislature because I love passing laws in the State Legislature. I'm really good at it. I think the other thing to think about is that we had so many people retire this year from the State Leg that - there's a lot of institutional knowledge that is walking out the door this year. And I would urge my neighbors in the 34th to vote for me because you know that I know how this works. I've been involved in the process from the first idea for a bill, to drafting the bill, to working through committees, to testifying, to building coalitions, to looking at what happens to the policy after we pass legislation and making sure that things are working correctly. I know how this works, and so I'm ready to get in there Day One and start passing laws - let's go. So I'm really excited - not only for this campaign that is, has so much momentum - the amount of momentum is overwhelming, the community support has been huge, the support from lawmakers at all levels - state all the way down to the Port of Seattle, who I see huge opportunities to collaborate with. I have relationships from the federal government to the King Conservation District Board, and I value all of those relationships and am excited to work with everybody, including you listener, to make real change.
[00:41:39] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate you taking this time and we'll certainly be following along as you continue on the campaign trail.
[00:41:48] Leah Griffin: Thank you so much for having me, Crystal.
[00:41:50] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by defense attorney, abolitionist and activist, Nicole Thomas-Kennedy. After reflecting on a tough news week across the country, Crystal and Nicole turn back to local happenings with a look at last-minute entries into Seattle judicial races and a breakdown of why these downballot positions are important. They then discuss how cities like Edmonds, Mercer Island and Seattle exacerbate the issue of homelessness by criminalizing camping in public spaces without actually providing adequate shelter or services to those already struggling. The show wraps up with Seattle City Council putting over $1M more towards police and Councilmember Andrew Lewis watering down his own bill to ensure app-based workers are paid a minimum wage.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, at @NTKallday. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
King County Elections - Who Has Filed - 2022 Candidate Filing:
https://info.kingcounty.gov/kcelections/Vote/contests/who-has-filed.aspx
“The Hunger Games of Housing” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/05/24/73946179/the-hunger-games-of-housing
“Edmonds passes law criminalizing camping in public spaces — but lacks local homeless shelter options” by Greg Kim from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/edmonds-passes-law-criminalizing-homelessness-in-public-spaces-but-lacks-local-shelter-options/
“Mercer Island restricts camping on public property in near-unanimous vote” by Paige Cornwell from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/eastside/in-near-unanimous-vote-mercer-island-restricts-camping-on-public-property/
“Encampment at Woodland Park swept on a rainy Tuesday” by Tobias Coughlin-Bogue from Real Change: https://www.realchangenews.org/news/2022/05/18/encampment-woodland-park-swept-rainy-tuesday
“The Seattle City Council Authorizes SPD to Spend Over $1 Million to Hire More Cops, With Millions More to Come” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/05/24/74009467/the-seattle-city-council-authorizes-spd-to-spend-over-1-million-to-hire-more-cops-with-millions-more-to-come
“Seattle City Council OKs more than $1M for police incentives, recruitment despite opposition” by Sarah Grace Taylor from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-city-council-oks-1-5-million-for-police-hiring-incentives-despite-calls-more-law-enforcement-reforms/
Crosscut-Elway Poll - 2022 Seattle Public Safety: https://crosscut.com/sites/default/files/files/crosscut-elway-poll.pdf
“Councilmember Andrew Lewis Guts His Own Policy, Excluding Thousands of App-Based Workers from a Minimum Wage” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/05/26/74095030/councilmember-andrew-lewis-guts-his-own-policy-excluding-thousands-of-app-based-workers-from-a-minimum-wage
“Report shows Seattle’s ‘app gap’ in gig worker pay” by Tobias Coughlin-Bogue from Real Change: https://www.realchangenews.org/news/2022/05/25/report-shows-seattle-s-app-gap-gig-worker-pay
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a cohost. Welcome back to the program today's co-host: defense attorney, abolitionist, and activist, Nicole Thomas-Kennedy. Hey!
[00:00:52] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: Hey, thanks for having me again - I appreciate it, this is fun.
[00:00:55] Crystal Fincher: This is fun - appreciate having you back. We just got done talking for a long time - that could have been a podcast and we're like, we should probably get started recording. There is a lot to talk about - obviously we are here in a week with so much news that is ridiculous and depressing. We generally focus on local politics and policy, but certainly - what can be said about the continuing rash of gun violence, racist violence - just it's a lot, it's a whole lot. And I don't know what to say about it that hasn't been said, but I'm just so, so exhausted and infuriated. And either people need - either policies need to change, or people need to change until we get people who will change policies. That's just where I'm at.
[00:01:52] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. I think everything has been - everything gets watered down to the status quo on the Democrat side a lot of times, or the moderate side - it's the status quo. But the right just keeps pushing things further and further right, both in rhetoric and policy, and I think there was a time when people would be upset - George Bush got a second term, and I remember people saying - I'm gonna move to Canada, I'm going to get out of here. But then also not - there wasn't a connection with everyday life in the United States, I think, the way there is now. And so a lot of people that have been yelling about these conservative policies, or things taking effect that don't seem to have any material effect immediately are now all coming to fruition. And yeah, it's, it's really, really overwhelming.
[00:02:55] Crystal Fincher: It is overwhelming. So, totally get that y'all might be having a rough time just making it through the day and keeping focused and handling all the responsibilities that just don't stop. 'Cause I'm feeling a lot of that too, but we do have other things to talk about today.
In a continuation - filing week was last Friday, it concluded last Friday, there were a lot of candidates. It actually concluded at the end of the day - we record the podcast at the beginning of the day - and so there were a couple of late entries that I found very interesting, that we didn't have the opportunity to talk about. And they're in races that are often really overlooked - judicial races are so important, and a lot of times there are just incumbents who are never challenged. Occasionally a challenger will pop up, but information about them is so sparse, hard to understand exactly what they do have control of, what kind of a difference do they make. Why are judicial races so important?
[00:04:11] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: Judicial races are important because there is - obviously judges have a huge amount of power in how they sentence, basically more or less, and also how they rule over trials. And I'm just talking about from a criminal perspective, but there are judges who are just basically like a second prosecutor in the room - that's how a lot of them are - that will help the state make their case, overlook a lot of their mistakes. And a lot of them get overturned on appeal and it's this gigantic time-waster, it's a waste of resources, but then also people are convicted in the meantime and have to - once something's overturned on appeal for, especially for a misdemeanor trial, that person's already served the sentence. It's good that it's - it's just a huge waste of resources. And judges could be doing so much more, but they're not for the most part. And also most of them are former prosecutors.
[00:05:24] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and just being limited to that one side of law - it's one perspective, but it's missing a lot of perspectives, whether it's a defense attorney or an advocate in other parts of the court system. Having a variety of perspectives and experience and background only helps in how you understand and are able to deal with the people who are appearing before you. And there's just a lot of discretion that people have. Some great follows on Twitter are those who live-tweet court proceedings, and it's really eye-opening to see the disparity between landlords who own a lot of properties and they're routinely in the court evicting people - and they have a great rapport with the judge, they know who they are, the other people in the court - they're all like pal, pal, buddy, buddy. And then there's someone who is obviously in a very hard time in their lives, a tough situation, oftentimes has never dealt with anything like this before, it's an intimidating process - and they feel like an outsider and lots of times they're treated like an outsider. And so it can just make such a huge difference.
So there are two races, City of Seattle Municipal Court Judge Position 3, where the incumbent is Adam Eisenberg, has a challenger in Pooja Vaddadi who is actually an exciting challenger and filed at the very end of filing week. I saw that she just received the King County Democrats endorsement, is certainly talking about an approach to justice that respects and defends the law - but sees people for who they are and understands that the goal is to have an outcome that works for everybody and that makes everybody whole, keeps everyone safe, and is not just focused on punitive solutions that sometimes really backfire when it comes to making people safer, making people whole, and getting people, everyone back on the right track. What's your take on that?
[00:07:37] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: When I think about judicial elections, I think back to when I was in law school and someone said to me - well, everybody in law school is rich, right, because law school costs a lot of money. And I was like - whoa, incredible. And, but it, to some degree, it's true - a lot of people I went to law school with - their parents were lawyers or, you know what I mean? That's just the way of things, and especially when we're talking about the commissioners who oversee housing stuff or the municipal court judges who only oversee misdemeanors, there is no understanding a lot of the times of what leads to these situations. So it always ends up being a personal failing, when what we're seeing is actually a systemic problem. But if you've never dealt with any of those systemic problems - if you've never had a car towed and it's been potentially catastrophic, then you don't understand why this is a problem. You don't understand why - you just don't understand a lot of things. There's no way to - and as defense attorneys, we spend a lot of time trying to explain that to judges. But I think to them, to a lot of them, it just sounds like excuses - and so to have a judge that has some life experience, that has worked with clients, the type of people that would be appearing in front of her - I think it's hopeful.
And it's just something that we don't have - we don't get it very often. And it's so hard with judicial elections to get any real information because no judge in Seattle is going to come out and say - Everyone gets the max, that's my policy - that's not going to be a winning proposition in Seattle. So especially in a race for Adam Eisenberg's seat - Judge Eisenberg talks a lot about and has developed alternative programs for different things, but at the end of the day, if you don't appear in front of him all the time, you don't know that he criminalizes addiction, that he's not progressive, that what he's doing is actually harming people. And what he's doing is actually making sure that we have a system in place that can keep harming people. And that he is - operates like a second prosecutor in the room, helping the state constantly. There's just no way to know those things, and so that's what makes judicial elections really difficult - is because nobody's going to say that they stand for injustice, and so it's hard to parse out who has that experience and who doesn't. But I'm really excited to see that she jumped into the race.
[00:10:32] Crystal Fincher: As am I. There is another contested race on the Seattle Municipal Court in Position 7, with Damon Shadid the incumbent being challenged - and I'm not sure how to pronounce her name, so apologies if I do mispronounce this - Nyjat Rose-Akins is the challenger. Now this is a bit of a different challenger than the last one, it appears. This is an attorney from our current, an attorney within our current City Attorney's office - meaning she's working for Republican Ann Davison right now. And all indications are - that office and those aligned with it are moving in a different direction than a lot of other folks in Seattle, has been a little different than most people are willing to accept within Seattle. So it's just going to be interesting to see what she says - I've actually not heard her speak yet, or seen much from her. So it will certainly be interesting to examine the record, to hear how she compares with the incumbent Judge Shadid - who has been a proponent of Community Court and of diversion and trying to do things that help reduce the chance of people re-offending, and that have a better record of reducing the chance that people re-offend. So running against that would seem that you're running against those things that may not be jail, but that are proven to be more effective in keeping people from committing further crime and getting on a positive path in their life. So that is certainly one to pay attention to.
And so I just encourage us all to be aware, to talk to friends about it - 'cause these races often don't have a lot of money associated with them, they're at the very bottom of the ballot, lots of people overlook them, with so many being unopposed some people just miss the spots on the ballot where they do have an opponent. And these are really, really important decisions, particularly if we care about how things are turning out when it has to do with public safety and our criminal legal system, particularly in the City of Seattle. So those were definitely on my mind to look at and pay attention to.
Another thing I wanted to talk about this week was a couple of developments in cities' policy towards the unhoused. We had a week where Edmonds passed a law criminalizing camping in public spaces, even though they don't have any local shelter options. And Hannah [Krieg] with The Stranger actually wrote a really good article this week titled, The Hunger Games of Housing. What did that talk about?
[00:13:38] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: That talked about how, while the mayor or city council - whether it's Seattle, whether it's Edmonds - is constantly talking about people refusing shelter, but that shelter is actually non-existent. She lays out pretty carefully in the article that, in King County, there's about 40,000 homeless people and without shelter, and in order to get someone into permanent housing, most outreach workers want to get them into temporary shelter first because they have to get an ID, they need documents, things like that. And the sweeps that they're doing actually make getting people housed so much more difficult. So there's this intermediary step of temporary shelter, but 40,000 people without shelter, 3,000 temporary shelter beds. And so when there's this idea that - oh, everybody's just refusing housing, they're refusing housing - and that it doesn't exist. It just doesn't exist and it's a lie. And it always has been, and it's not just housing too - it's services. They say - oh, they're refusing services - but those services, they don't include inpatient mental health treatment or inpatient drug addiction or an alcohol treatment - these are not the things that people are being offered. We don't have these services. We don't have this housing. Those are things that we defunded a long time ago. And pretending as if it's just the problem of people refusing, I think just sets the stage for further abuses of people who already have nothing.
And it's pretty - it's not just horrible, it's also making the problem worse. Because as people get pushed around the City, they're losing things - and I had this with - when I was a defense attorney, I would have a person who was already unsheltered and then they would be in jail over a misdemeanor for a week, a few days, or whatever it was and they would lose everything. And so then they have to go back to DESC, get a new sleeping bag, get a new tent, get new IDs, get a new EBT card - everything about it just made things so demonstrably worse, not just for that person but also for everybody else. The outreach workers that I speak to are - they're exhausted. The sweeps keep - there's just this constant churn that they're dealing with these emergency situations all the time. And at the same time, they don't have anything to offer people other than tents and things to keep them alive, and I think it's a really huge failing on everybody's part to buy into this narrative, but also I really hope people understand that people are not camping because it's a good time - it's not an urban vacation. People don't have places to live, and not just because they don't have money even - we don't have places for people to live. And she talked about how, for permanent supportive housing, one or two beds come up and there's 30 case managers with 70 people on their, or 70 case managers with 30 people on their list and everyone's clamoring for those two beds. It's really - it's a nightmare out there.
[00:17:22] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it is a nightmare and there are so few spots and just imagine that. You are right - there are 70 case managers, each with 30 people that they're trying to get housed. Two spots open up and these things don't happen often. It's not - okay, let's wait until next week when the next two spots open up. This is not a frequent thing. They term it - this happens once in a blue moon - and so does that count as the offering of services and the refusal of services - if all of those people vying for those two spots - hey, this spot is available, try to get you in it. And all of those people except two don't win that lottery. It was referred to as the Hunger Games of Housing, which it truly is. And we just are moving this problem around and making it worse as we do.
And even with the Woodland Park sweep that we saw last week and the excellent Real Change article about what happened there - it happened with a lot of fanfare, Mayor Harrell was there, city councilmembers were there saying - this is the model that we want to use for sweeps here. We got people on a list, we connected them all to services, we were successful with just about all of them. This was a success. What wasn't talked about is that they started that list when they first got there - and I want to say 50 people, I need to double-check that number - so they had those people on the list and they did work that list. What they didn't talk about is - as soon as they got someone out and connected them with housing, that spot was backfilled by someone coming to Woodland Park who had been swept from another location in the City. Except this time, now that they've been destabilized from where they were at before, they're in even worse shape and they're not on a list. They weren't taking any additional names on the list. So you just had a situation where we're backfilling faster than we're pulling people out of the queue. It really is like trying to take a bucket to the ocean and it's just not working. We're just sweeping people from one location to another. 'Cause it's not like they're going home when you tell them to get out of - when you tell them to get out of a spot, they have nowhere else to go. So yes, they're going to another spot where they can be.
And so it's just such a challenge and we see more cities - Edmonds acted this week, Mercer Island acted recently. And lots of people had questions, as did I - okay, well, there's this federal ruling saying that you can't outlaw homelessness, essentially - outlaw sleeping in public areas, living in a public area because you have nowhere else to go, if there is nowhere for them to go. And so these cities seem to be trying to get creative and saying - well, people are either refusing services, or there are services available in another city and maybe we'll just put them on a bus and ship them out there - which I always find really, really interesting because those are the same people who always talk about - homeless people are just coming there because - this is Seattle's problem. And it's not - these are people who were in that community. Meanwhile, they're making their community's issue that they have responsibility to solve some other city's problem.
[00:20:56] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: And I'm sure the City of Everett will bring that up. I'm sure the City of Everett will be like - well, now we have to absorb all of Edmonds' people that they're sending to us as well. But it's just - it's all - it's the same, it's the same thing. It's just moving the problem around and getting it out of certain people's eyeline - is really the goal of things like that. It's not - there's no solution there. You know what I mean? And it's not even masquerading as a solution. There's a solution to the problem of - I don't want to see this - certain people don't want to see this and they shouldn't have to. That's the problem that's being addressed - it's not addressing how many unsheltered people there are, it's not helping people get shelter. It's just saying I don't care as long as I don't see it. And it's -
[00:21:49] Crystal Fincher: That's exactly what it is. It's exactly what it is. And I cringe every time I hear someone characterize the problem as "visible homelessness" - we need to solve visible homelessness. The visible part is not the problematic word in that sentence, it's the part where people don't have a home - let's actually solve that. Because we only make both of those problems worse if we don't address getting people into housing. So we will continue to pay attention to that.
The country is continuing to invest more in policing and Seattle is actually not an exception. So on the day before [after] the anniversary of George Floyd's death - in Seattle, the City approved over a million dollars in police hiring incentives and recruitment efforts. This has been part of developing conversation related to - hey, these bonuses for signing up or retention bonuses don't seem to have much data behind them to show that they're actually effective in keeping police there. Even for people who believe there should be more police, who want more police on the street, this actually is not appearing to be an effective way to accomplish that goal, but it is a substantial expenditure. And it's interesting, particularly in the City of Seattle and the overlooked poll that we talked about last week, where when Seattle residents were asked - hey, if you could tell the City where you wanted more of your tax dollars spent, what would you say? Over 90% of people said - when it comes to public safety, the number one thing I want you to invest my dollars in are addiction treatment and recovery services. 80% of people were like - absolutely want you to address root causes of crime. And further down the list, about half the people were also like - and we want more cops.
One thing that I notice in these conversations is that - the conversation about public safety, it's just bigger than policing. And so, itit gets flattened when peopl - well, do you want to defund or not fund? Do you back the blue or are you just on the other side? And what is a disservice is that a lot of times in the public sphere, in major media publications, our elected leaders are just talking in those pretty binary terms. But as polling continues to show, regular people understand that even if you're like - you know what, I'm happy with a cop coming down my street. They're also saying - but I know they don't have the tools to address everything. And what I see you doing is exclusively addressing policing and hiring while ignoring all of these other things. And we're begging you - there aren't that many things that poll at 90% ever, the fact that 90% of residents when asked specifically about where you want to spend more of your tax dollars and they gave you a list of ideas and interventions - that also happen to be backed by evidence and science. The conversation is just so much bigger.
And even for folks who are just fine with our police and who want more police to come, and they'll get here eventually, it's not an immediate solution, it's going to take a while for them to get there. They're like - but also, we've got to address these other things. And when are we going to start investing in that? I'm asking you, I'm begging you to invest in that. My safety is depending on you investing that, I want to do everything in our power to prevent people from being victimized instead of waiting until they are to then respond. That seems like a pragmatic, logical thing to do that regular people are demanding. Extremely popular things are like background checks for gun purchases and investing in the types of services that help people address their root causes of disorder, dysfunction, all of those.
So I just grow frustrated because we are not having a conversation about public safety when we only are having a conversation about policing. And no matter how you feel about policing, we're not covering half the ground if we're leaving out all of these other things. And there have been plenty of police officers who themselves have said - we don't have the tools to address someone who is in a mental health crisis. We actually don't have the tools to effectively intervene in an intimate partner violence situation. And we're not the right people to deal with people who are unhoused, but that's all on our plate. And so we're acting, we're investing in this, but we're not getting the outcomes that we want. It just seems like such a common sense thing that the public is almost entirely behind. And it's invisible to the folks in power - that's what's frustrating to me.
[00:27:14] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: Yeah. Agreed. And it is that - it's that sort of confusion of police with safety, that the binary flattened thing that you were talking about, where it just doesn't leave any room for anything else. You're right - police say I don't want to be a marriage counselor, I don't want to be a social worker, I'm not trained to do this. And it's great - then let's not have them do it. Then let's not have them do it. But in order for that to happen, we need people who are going to do it, and we just don't invest in those things. And Washington state, I think, is third in the nation for highest-paid police. And Seattle is number one in Washington for highest-paid police. What more do they need? There is a nationwide shortage of officers, people don't want to be cops anymore. And so, just constantly throwing more money, more money, more money at a non-solution is just so frustrating. And to know that's what our money is paying for - nothing that's going to actually prevent something happening to me or my family, but just this performative optics of - since so many people do confuse police with safety, if we just go with that narrative and just get more cops, do whatever we have, then that problem is solved. And it's - nothing could be further from the truth. And I really wish there was more political will to stand up and speak back to that. Because to me, that's what people in leadership should do - is not kowtow to certain interests of the people who have the loudest voices, but really try to figure out how to solve problems. And that's just not what we're doing here at all. And it's - yeah, I agree, it's very frustrating,
[00:29:09] Crystal Fincher: We will see - and so with an issue like that, where a million dollars can accomplish a lot in a lot of different places. And so it was - these dollars are available for us to invest in public safety. And all of these other areas that our residents have identified and are begging us to invest in - that are currently suffering from a lack of investment - we're ignoring once again where we do have evidence and data to show that this actually does make people safer. Instead, we're spending it in a way that doesn't have any kind of a track record of accomplishing what they're saying it's going to accomplish. And so, in a conversation that I recently had on the show with Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell, she talked about - hey, we're undergoing a rigorous review of our partners in the City who are standing up alternative responses to help make people safer. And we're evaluating how effective they are, and basically they need to prove that they're making a difference for them to earn any more funding. I just want to take that approach across the board. And if something is working - yes, let's invest in it. Absolutely. And if it's not, let's move it to where it is working.
So that seems like a common sense approach, that seems like it shouldn't be controversial, that doesn't seem like it's a progressive or conservative approach. Just what makes sense and how we usually go about our daily business when we're making decisions on what we're going to spend on, what we're doing at work - same type of thing. So I just, I find myself continually frustrated and like you, it does seem like there just isn't the political will, and there is a detachment that some folks in power have that we're not talking about the entire gamut of public safety, that we do have to talk about more than policing. And even if policing is part of it, we've got to talk about more than that. Even for people who think that, it's not the only ingredient that is necessary to keep people safe.
[00:31:31] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah - I don't know that I've ever talked to someone who was like - I don't want to invest in preventative measures. I'm not interested, I'm fine being the victim of something as long as the cops respond to it. I've never heard anyone say that thing, and so - but it just gets so obscured, I think, in the very simplified conversation that we have.
[00:31:59] Crystal Fincher: It does and you bring up a really good point in that - people don't talk about - people are, again as polling reinforces, people are open to that. And when regular people have conversations, and you've had a ton of conversations with people, residents in the City of Seattle about public safety. I've had a number of conversations with residents in Seattle about the same. And when they talk about it, they're not talking about - well, how many officers and what is the bonus? Usually when regular people are talking about this, they're just saying - hey, my car was broken into and I don't like that, I don't want that to happen again. Or I am really uncomfortable going out at night, I'm scared. How are you going to help me? Or I'm worried about my kid walking to school and even being in school with school shootings and violence going on. They're just concerned about their safety, and they're looking for you to do something to keep them safer.
Policing is certainly visible and most associated and known for public safety. So lots of people do acknowledge that, but they also acknowledge - yeah, but that doesn't keep me from being victimized and that's what people want most of all - is not to have to deal with it at all. If they need to - yes, they want someone to respond to their call, but they would rather not have to make the call. And if we engage in that conversation, and starting with - what are people really asking us for? What are people really worried about? Instead of getting caught up in these numeric conversations that are really driven by people invested, one way or another, in our current system and keeping it that way instead of centering the residents in the City and what they're asking for, and just trying to do all you can to keep them safe.
And that is a range of things that has to be done. So we could have this conversation for hours - we've had it before. There's developments every week that talk about it, but I do think that it's worth continuing to talk about this and to put this in context in the City, because it's missing - a lot of context is missing in a lot of these conversations that we see and hear in major media, and I do think it's important just to understand where the residents of Seattle are coming from, and what they're demanding, and what they're very clearly saying they want from the mayor, from the Council, from their legislators, from leaders across the board. They want people to keep them safe and use all the tools at their disposal to do it.
[00:34:46] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: Right, yeah. I've talked to so many people, and the thing that I ran into a lot is that people thought that the common sense thing to do, whether it's someone stole a sandwich, so maybe they're hungry, let's address that problem. Or addiction issues or mental health issues - I think a lot of people have this idea that the common sense solutions are already taking place, and so the problems that we're seeing are - people have already been dealt with, they've already been offered this - it's the same as the services conversation. People support common sense things, but also don't realize that those, like I said, they've been defunded a long time ago. We don't put money into those things. And so, to keep throwing more money at policing instead of those programs that have a proven track record - it just, it's really sad. It's really sad, because I don't want to be the victim of crime, I don't want my daughter - nobody wants that. Literally nobody wants that, so why don't we do things that will prevent that from happening?
[00:36:04] Crystal Fincher: I'm right there with you. Well, another thing that happened this week was Seattle City Councilmember Andrew Lewis wound up gutting the bill he was originally a proponent of, which had the result of excluding thousands of app-based workers from a minimum wage. This was a proposal that would have helped a lot of workers in the City. This would help out a number of workers - whether it's DoorDash, or Rover, or Uber Eats, just a variety of app-based workers - who currently, because of some of the wiggling between regulations that these app companies have, are making much less than minimum wage. When all of their responsibilities and obligations are considered, the cost of gas is going through the roof as everyone knows. A lot of times tips are supposed to supplement a lot of the salary, and it just winds up not happening and they're making less than the minimum wage. This proposal was supposed to fix that, Andrew Lewis was a proponent of it. But late in the process, he actually seemed to back away from that and put in a really significant exemption that took a lot of workers out of this policy and is leaving them in the same situation that he seemed to acknowledge it was critical be fixed. What's going on?
[00:37:34] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: Yeah, it's a little bit mind-boggling. But at the same time, I feel like that's how sort of an incremental moderate politician works - is getting forward - it just never gets to the root of who are the people that are most affected? Who have the least protections? Those people are almost always cut out of everything. And I said before, when Sara Nelson got elected to the Council - to me, I saw that as the end of a progressive council, because we know how Juarez is going to vote, we know how Pedersen is going to vote. And I know Andrew Lewis, and I know that he's going to go whichever way the wind blows. And so now that there's more conservative people than progressive people on the Council, he's going to go with the popular, what seems popular in the circle that he's in. So it's really, really not shocking to me that this happened.
[00:38:37] Crystal Fincher: We're always getting spicy with NTK in this. This was action taken in the Public Safety and Human Services Committee, so this was a five-person vote. This will go for - but in this, just five people - and so Andrew Lewis actually aligned with Councilmembers Alex Pedersen and Sara Nelson. And this article by Hannah [Krieg] in The Stranger referred to as "the council's corporate bloc." But this had been stakeholdered - this had been worked on with input by workers, by these app companies and platforms. This didn't just appear upfront, and while there are concerns that no one had ever heard before, and therefore we need to make a change - these companies were at the table, along with the workers, in these situations. It's like - hey, we need to do this. We don't want to create any undue burden, but we do need to make sure people are getting a minimum wage.
The concerns that were brought up are not new. Some of the platform-based services that are a little bit different than some of the app services that allow workers to negotiate directly, like a Task Rabbit, where I'm hiring someone to do a specific task and there's more interaction between the worker and the person requesting the services. It is a bit of a distinction between something like Uber Eats, where you're putting in your order and basically everything about how that job is going to be performed is already decided and dictated by the app company. And so the exemption was saying - well, on these other platforms, these marketplace workers, where there is more interaction between the end user and the worker - they might need different rules, this may penalize them too much, this may be too harsh for them, and they're different. They're different enough that they should qualify for some tweaked rules that really don't do the same thing and enable people to receive a minimum wage.
Working Washington, an organization that is working with workers was like - whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa, hold up - wait a minute. No, everyone deserves a minimum wage. And this exemption is something that these companies specialize in modifying their business models to achieve. And what it appears is that this exemption does not say you have to only have a marketplace model, but just if marketplace services are in your portfolio as an app. So there could be, and there is an app that does have mostly non-marketplace services - they have a few marketplace services that would qualify them for this exemption, from how my understanding from how this is being covered. So it just seems to set up a pretty significant loophole.
[00:41:46] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: And loopholes are what are always exploited by business. That's considered good business - is exploiting those loopholes and finding ways to get around paying taxes and paying workers and paying for all sorts of things. That's what people consider to be good business. And so, writing in a loophole - writing in just a loophole you can drive a truck through - it just doesn't make any sense. Gig workers are some of the most vulnerable workers in our city, and when the most vulnerable are not protected, it ends up sort of externalizing to the whole community. It's hard for the whole community to have people who are not making enough money to live. It causes all kinds of other problems and strains on other services and things like that, so it really would have benefited the entire city if this had not been done. And it's just - yeah, it is puzzling as to why, after everything, this happened at the last minute.
[00:42:54] Crystal Fincher: Now in a conversation with The Stranger, Andrew Lewis did give a few reasons for why he took this action. One was, "I'm not saying we won't do them. I just don't want to do them in this bill," signaling that there was another bill that maybe he could incorporate this in. There is no date for when that other bill is come up. He also said it's basically a "moot point," 'cause this bill won't even take effect for another year while the Office of Labor Standards gets its ducks in a row. He's like - it's not like immediately these apps are going to have certain rights and the marketplace workers won't - that is literally what he voted for. And as with most laws, unless there is usually some emergency clause, they don't take effect initially, this is the standard course of legislation - so it's interesting to hear that - hey, it's not a big deal. This doesn't take effect immediately - when, if it's something that is popular, they're saying it's a really big deal, even if it doesn't take effect immediately.
He also had said - that these companies and other people were saying, these companies currently have not - hey, this happened in New York too. And these companies didn't change their business model after this exemption was passed in New York - they're really good corporate citizens and we can trust them to continue to do the right thing. I would note that we see so many times that they are on their best behavior while legislation is getting passed. And if they know this is up for a vote in subsequent cities, oftentimes they're on their best behavior. We've seen this in California with some app-based bills that impact employment, and who's considered an employee and a contractor. And then once legislation is all on their side, then the change is made. We've seen that a lot of times. This is one of the reason, the reasons why corporate profits are skyrocketing and incomes are doing nothing to keep up with the rate that corporate profits and executive compensation - how that's been skyrocketing - and income inequality is largely due to not regulating these companies and ensuring that they're all playing by the rules and meeting the minimum standards of pay and worker conditions that we expect from people.
So this was - it was disappointing for me to see, it was disappointing for others to see - this was a close vote. It was a 3-2 vote. And Andrew Lewis seems to have been the swing vote here, and for him to be such a proponent of this and then just change his mind on this at the very end - he's reading as - hey, we'll get to it, it'll be fine. I don't know that people who are counting on this money and who this would provide immediate relief to, whether it's paying for gas or making their rent or paying for their insurance, it feels like a big deal and it feels like we did not center the people who are closest to harm and crisis. And we did center people who are in a relatively comfortable position. And adding an exemption to a baseline standard, usually doesn't turn out well - there's a reason why we set standards and why we have baselines - it's so we don't go beneath them and so we don't allow exemption. So I do hope that Councilmember Lewis delivers on his promise to incorporate this into an upcoming bill. I hope that happens quickly. And I hope this is able to get resolved for the impacted workers.
[00:46:47] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: Same. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's deeply unsatisfying to hear - oh, I just didn't want to do it in this bill, or it's not even going to take effect. It feels like giving up before anything's tried and that's not what we need from people in positions of power. We need someone championing the rights of workers - they don't have the lobbying power, they don't have all the power, they don't have all the money. And so there needs to be champions, worker champions in our City government and our State government - at all levels of government. Because these corporations are not going to do the right thing because it's the right thing to do. The way a corporate structure is set up, their only obligation is to the shareholders. So there is actually not much of a legal option to just do the right thing. That's why we need regulations. That's why we need standards and we need a floor and things like that. And the erosion of so many of those things - unions, protections, regulations - over time have led us to this place where we are right now. And we need people to be strong in their positions. And so, yeah, this was sad to see.
[00:48:06] Crystal Fincher: We do and it's a deeply popular position. As we see, there is a workers' rights movement that is just spreading across the country, like wildfire locally, absolutely. If there's one thing that people are actively cheering on and that seems like a really bright spot in the midst of so much negative news, it's that so many workers are standing up for their rights and securing better working conditions for themselves and bringing just some - a little bit more of an element of fairness into this. And that the profits that would not be possible without them - that they are entitled to some of them and they shouldn't have to rely on public assistance or wonder if they can pay their most basic bills, while others are working on financing their third house and second yacht. It just doesn't seem to make sense. So I do hope that action can be taken soon - look forward to Councilmember Lewis making himself a champion on this issue because the people need it.
And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, May 27th, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler and assistant producer is Shannon Cheng. And our insightful co-host today is defense attorney, abolitionist and activist, Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, who is always a pleasure to have on. You can find Nicole on Twitter @NTKallday. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii and now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type “Hacks and Wonks” into the search bar and be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live show and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Jeff Manson about his campaign for State Representative in the 36th Legislative District - why he decided to run, how the last legislative session went, and where he stands on issues such as COVID response and recovery, housing affordability and zoning, homelessness, guaranteed basic income, public safety, drug decriminalization, and climate change.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Jeff at @VoteJeffManson.
Resources
Campaign Website - Jeff Manson: https://www.votejeffmanson.com/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Well today, I am very excited to welcome to the program, Jeff Manson, who's a candidate for the 36th District State House seat. Welcome, Jeff.
[00:00:49] Jeff Manson: It's great to be here, Crystal - thank you.
[00:00:51] Crystal Fincher: It's great to be here, it's great to see you. We were in the IDF class of 2010 together.
[00:00:59] Jeff Manson: Yes we were - 2010 forever.
[00:01:01] Crystal Fincher: 2010 forever. So I'm thrilled to have you on here and to have this conversation, excited to see you again. So starting off, what made you choose to run?
[00:01:12] Jeff Manson: Yeah - great question. So, I'm an administrative law judge with the state, I'm a labor leader, and a disability community advocate. As a state administrative law judge, we resolve disputes that people have with state government - so I see every day how underfunded government affects people, including the most vulnerable individuals in our state. So I'm running for State Representative to fund the services and infrastructure that we need and utilizing progressive revenue sources.
I've been fighting for progressive values since the fourth grade, when I co-founded my elementary school's Earth Club after reading a book for kids on the environment - it was 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth and each page described an environmental problem and then what a kid could do about. And I did most of the things and it really taught me not only about environmental issues at a young age, but also that one person can make a difference - if you get off your butt and start doing stuff, you can make incremental differences and possibly take that to scale. So since then I've developed a track record of effecting progressive policy change. I was lucky to go to law school at Seattle University, where I did an emphasis in poverty and inequality law, and I represented people with disabilities as a young attorney. But I saw them struggle with our legal system - there's just a lot of systemic barriers, especially for people with disabilities to accessing justice. So I gathered legal and disability experts and people with disabilities, and we wrote a guide for judges on how to accommodate people in legal proceedings.
And then, when I saw the negative effects of corporate and wealthy donations on our democracy, I became a leader with the group that brought the Democracy Voucher program to Seattle City elections. And it took about a decade - we had to change state law first, and then we tried to go to the ballot and decided not to, then we did go to the ballot and we failed, and then we went to the ballot again a couple of years later and were finally successful - and it's been a really successful program. And then in my own profession, our salaries were stagnating, we were having issues in our workplace. But we were not allowed as - even though we're state employees as administrative law judges - we were not allowed to collectively bargain for almost 40 years. So a few years ago I organized my colleagues and we successfully lobbied the Legislature - my own representative who I'm running to replace, Representative Noel Frame, sponsored the bill. And we successfully got collective bargaining rights for administrative law judges. And in the few weeks before COVID shut everything down, we got 85% of our judges to sign union authorization cards. So, and now we're unionized, we've got a contract, we got a salary increase, and last year I was elected as President of WFSE Local 562.
So I'm a restless personality - always seeing problems and trying to fix them and pulling people together to fix them - and I can't wait to hopefully be elected so I can work for the people of the 36th doing the same stuff in the legislature.
[00:04:33] Crystal Fincher: Yes, and it is exciting to have watched you do all of this over the years and get the opportunity to - see so many more people get the opportunity to see all of the work that you've done and how helpful that has been.
You just mentioned COVID. Right now, we're still dealing with COVID, but trying to move forward with COVID - sometimes lurching forward prematurely in how we're dealing with COVID. And so it seems like - to a number of people still - there still needs to be more done to mitigate COVID. I was just - a friend just yesterday came down with COVID. Lots of talk about - hey, we have the tools to address this, we have therapeutics and Paxlovid - and she and others that I've known have had challenges even accessing that with COVID, in addition to testing and some of the financial mitigation things. Should we - should the Legislature be doing more to keep us safe from COVID, and if they should, what should be happening from the legislative point of view?
[00:05:44] Jeff Manson: Yeah, it seems like two steps forward, one step back - or sometimes two steps forward, three steps back - depending on the season. It's been a long couple of years - I guess we're on 26 months now. And yeah, this isn't over. I don't know about you or the listeners, but it seems like more people that I know have caught it in the last few weeks than in the couple of years prior to that. And yeah, so it isn't over. Ideally this would be handled at the federal level, and I think the federal government has done some things right and some things not right. And our federal system, I think, makes it more difficult - when we first had the vaccines last year, I waited my turn until my category came up and then I went online to try to find a place, and it was just a mess to just find - it's like, can't you just tell me where to go. I'll drive to Yakima - I'll totally drive to Yakima if that's my assigned place - just tell me where to go instead of giving me 20 websites to click on, all of which say it's full. If the federal government had just taken it over, it may have run more smoothly, but we have this decentralized form of government in this country where the states were in charge and then they would turn it over to the counties. And I think we've seen some of the flaws in that system, especially when there's a crisis. I think federalism creates - we have the laboratories of democracy or whatnot - but in a crisis where you have emergencies declared and you need quick responses and top-down efficiency, that decentralized system doesn't work very well.
So I think from the Legislature - what the Legislature can do - is still provide the resources that people need, who are not able to stop quarantining. In my job, we adjudicate unemployment benefits appeals, and that's most of what I'm doing right now - we still have a big backlog. And there's still lots of people who are not comfortable leaving their homes, either because of their own health situation, or that of someone else in their household, or of a parent they care for in another household, or because their child is under five years old. And it's one of the main reasons a lot of people aren't going back to work yet. And why we have a - we talk about supply chain issues, but we have a labor supply issue in almost every industry right now. And people aren't able to go back to work 'cause they don't feel safe doing it. So for those who can't, I think we need to continue some of the safety net programs that we had for a year, year and a half, but many of which have expired.
And then beyond that, I think a lot of it is communication - there are free tests that - I bought a test at a grocery store, it was 20 bucks when it's like - oh, wait a minute, I could have ordered one of these if only I had known to go to this website and then do this and then do that. I think our state and our county health departments could help with that communication - that does require funding though, and the state provides a lot of that funding.
[00:08:56] Crystal Fincher: All right. Well, you talk about what the Legislature has done here in our state. We just got done recently with a session where there are some things that happened that were great and other things that were pretty disappointing. What was your evaluation of this past session? What would you have done differently than our Legislature did?
[00:09:19] Jeff Manson: Yeah, there were, like any session, there were highs and lows. Some of the high - we got a transportation package which was good. It wasn't a perfect transportation package, but it does fund a lot of really good things, including transit, bike, and pedestrian infrastructure. We got - for education, it's still just a - we haven't fully funded education in my mind yet, but we did take a step in the right direction. Teachers got a COLA [Cost-of-Living Adjustment], we got more funding for school counselors and nurses and social workers. But there were also some disappointments - there were some environmental bills that didn't pass. We had electric vehicle subsidies that didn't pass and there were some other environmental bills that we'll need to take up next year. And I think we have a housing crisis in the state - but in particular in Seattle, it's a regional housing market, but we see it acutely here in Seattle. And I think leaving housing decisions to the cities hasn't worked and there is a place for the state to step in. And I know Jessica Bateman, Representative Bateman, had a bill. There were a few different versions of it before it died, but I think we need to - I support the concept of the state directing changes in zoning and we should - that should be a priority next session.
[00:10:49] Crystal Fincher: Should we be increasing zoning density in single-family neighborhoods?
[00:10:53] Jeff Manson: I think in some of them - the devil will be in the details, but I think - we're at tens of thousands of housing units behind where we need to be. People are moving here and staying here faster than we're building housing units. And the result has been increased housing prices. We're seeing housing prices increase across the country the last year or so, but Seattle has been seeing this much longer than just the last year. And the result is that people are being priced out of the City or onto our streets. And so we need to - we need more housing stock. We need it - and of every type - we need more large apartment buildings in transit corridors, we need more duplexes and fourplexes. And the City of Seattle has taken some steps in recent years to add density, which I've supported - more ADUs [Accessory Dwelling Units], some up-zoning in urban villages. But a lot of cities elsewhere in the region haven't done the same, so I think state action is needed to prod that along. And ADUs and DADUs [Detached Accessory Dwelling Units] - I think that's great and for those who are able to afford to build one or renovate for one - it's wonderful. But the first year after that change, we saw an increase of about 300 ADU and DADU permits than the previous year. And 300 housing units - that's one large apartment complex, it's just a drop in the bucket. It's great, but we need to attack this from all angles, but it's just a drop in the bucket compared to the tens of thousands of units that we need over the next several years.
[00:12:39] Crystal Fincher: Do you support the social housing initiative that is currently gathering signatures in the City of Seattle. And do you think that's an approach that could be taken statewide?
[00:12:49] Jeff Manson: I'm very intrigued by it - I've not read the actual initiative, but I understand from what I've read, that it's a model that's been used in Europe, especially in Vienna. So I'm very intrigued by the idea and excited about the idea. I think we need to try as many things as we can and see what works. I need to see how it pencils out and what it looks like before I make a decision about whether I'll support it at the ballot or not, but I really like that we're having the conversation. And if it does look like it's a model that could work, then I think it should be expanded to the rest of the state.
I do - we were talking about the market rate housing and supply and demand, which is a big part of housing affordability. But I really think that there is a significant - government should also be responsible for subsidizing and directly building housing units. We need both the free market and the commons to take responsibility for housing people - and whether that's traditional public housing, or Section 8, or subsidies - the government needs to be stepping up to the plate. And the state provides a lot of the funding for those - cities and counties make a lot of the micro-level decisions, but the state provides funding for the Housing Trust Fund. This last session, we put money in for about 2000 units of supportive housing, which is great - it may not be enough, but it's great. But we really need government being part of this market. There's the free market, but it should be - we should have a safety net of housing, just like we have a safety net of food assistance for low-income people and disability benefits for people. We need a housing benefit, so to speak, and government role in that space.
[00:14:42] Crystal Fincher: And part of our housing problem, housing affordability problem, is one of the root causes of homelessness. And we are experiencing a crisis of homelessness. What are you proposing, that you can do as a legislator, to help make a tangible difference?
[00:15:05] Jeff Manson: Yeah, and it really comes back to funding. There can be - there's some at the edges, we can tweak policies to help with homelessness, but really it's a funding issue. We need more funding for more housing options, and that's really at every level - that's emergency shelter, it's tiny homes, it's supportive housing as I mentioned, and it's other public housing that I mentioned. But we have an acute crisis right now, and we need to get people off of the streets and into some sort of shelter that is safer for them and safer for all of us. And then longer term, increasing our housing stock will reduce the root cause, which is evictions - a lot of people are homeless. They were not born homeless - most of them. They, at some point, lost their housing or lost their support system. So yeah, it's really about funding and our state government has been, I believe, chronically underfunded for decades. And really that gets back to our tax structure. We have the worst tax structure in the country, where the lowest-income people pay the most and the wealthiest pay the least, and it's completely upside down. So we need more progressive revenue sources to fund things like housing and everything else that we feel like we need as a society.
[00:16:30] Crystal Fincher: There are currently about 30 cities across the country piloting some form of a guaranteed basic income program - a set amount of money each month targeted to low-income households just to help take care of basic needs. And with it showing results in everything from health outcomes, to educational outcomes, to public safety outcomes. Do you support a guaranteed basic income?
[00:16:58] Jeff Manson: I love the idea and I think we should continue experimenting with it. And actually, I am in the public benefits arena where everything - a lot of things are means-tested - unemployment benefits aren't, it's an insurance program. But in my office, we adjudicate food assistance, TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families], state disability benefits, Medicaid - and these are all means-tested programs. And maybe I'm going to get myself in trouble with my union because I'm going to propose putting us out of work. But what we do is try to figure out whether people qualify for these programs. Somebody will be getting - say, $182 per month in food assistance. And then they get a letter that reduces it from $182 to $165, so it's gone down $17 a month. They request a hearing, they come to the hearing. And so now we have this whole hearing about whether they should have their benefits reduced by $17, and then I issue a decision and then it's implemented. And this is all after the person shows up in a building, they fill out paperwork, they go to their doctor or they go to their landlord to get supporting documentation, a financial worker and sometimes a social worker with DSHS looks it up - so we've got all of this expense for the bureaucracy of determining how much this person should - just give everybody $200 per month of food assistance. Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, you, me, everybody - and is $200 the right amount? I don't know, but I think the concept of UBI [Universal Basic Income] has helped sort of change the conversation about this. There is so much bureaucracy around a lot of these means-tested programs, where if you just gave it to people, we know that almost everybody spends it in the way that we think people should spend it, which is on their basic needs.
I think we saw this with the refundable childcare tax credit at the federal level - I don't think we would have had that conversation if it wasn't for Andrew Yang and him talking about UBI in the previous presidential election - even Mitt Romney was on board with a refundable child tax credit for everybody, which gives it to people who have children, who are the ones who need it. And it was too bad that it hasn't been extended, but I think all the studies have shown that it's been better than just about anything to reduce child poverty in this country. So wherever - actually having UBI like Andrew Yang was talking about is incredibly expensive, and so I wouldn't want to flip the switch and necessarily devote resources to giving everybody thousands of dollars per month right now. But I do think the concept is a good one for changing our approach to a lot of these public benefits. It is also demeaning as hell to go through the process of getting public benefits. You jump through all these hoops just to prove that you're poor enough, or disabled enough, or fleeing domestic violence enough - to get the paperwork necessary to prove that you're fleeing a domestic violence situation is awful. It's retraumatizing just to get what you need to survive on the street, because we don't have public benefits that really house everybody. Most of the benefits and most of the people I see in hearings in King County are unhoused people trying to get benefits - just to eat, much less get a job or whatnot.
[00:20:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that is the current situation and it is a shame, and we can do better. Another area where we can and have to do better is in keeping people safe. It's a concern that a lot of people have - people are looking at crime - wondering if they're going to be victimized and wondering if we're doing the right things about it. What can you do in your capacity as a state legislator to make people safer?
[00:20:55] Jeff Manson: Yeah, no, it's a real issue, and it's something I feel - I live in Greenwood, I ride the E line downtown and it's an adventure every time. I've had stuff stolen and I've been doorbelling for about a month now, and it's what I hear more than just about anything. I think it's - as Democrats nationally - we're out of practice talking about crime. You know what I mean? Crime has been much lower - even now - over the last 20 years, 30 years than it was in say the 70s and the 80s. And now that it's ticking back up, and not just ticking back up, but accelerating back up here and nationwide, I think we're trying to figure out how to talk about it again. But it is going up and one of the basic public duties is to protect citizens.
And I think it goes back to underfunded government, both on the services side and the criminal justice system side. On services, I think if you give people housing and you provide mental health supports, addiction supports, and provide access to community and to both government and individual support, then that's the root cause of a lot of crime. And we have not been - part of what we're seeing now is the results of under-investment in our government supports over the last several decades. So I think first and foremost, we need to get people housed and give them the support they need for their own individual recovery. I do believe housing needs to come first because anyone who's trying to take a step towards recovery, whether it's mental health or addiction, is just not gonna be able to take that first step if they are in fight-or-flight mode, 24/7 on the streets, and more vulnerable to the kind of crime we're talking about than the rest of us are. But once they are housed, then there's at least the opportunity to be able to get them services that they need.
I also think we need more funding on the criminal justice side. Our courts have a two-year backlog in criminal trials, we don't have enough prosecutors or defenders or investigators or paralegals or social workers or mental health therapists. And we also have a police force, law enforcement that at least in Seattle has seen a lot of people leave. And I have mixed feelings about law enforcement, especially the last couple of years - after the murder of George Floyd, there was a big movement to increase accountability and oversight of police, which I 100% supported. We can not have law enforcement killing Black and Brown people and not having any consequences. So I supported the reforms from two sessions ago and was opposed to many of the attempts to roll those back this past session.
But, while we do need accountability, while we need training, and while we need independent oversight, we still do need law enforcement - often they're responding to things that others could respond to. Maybe we don't need law enforcement to respond to every mental health crisis, but we do still need police officers and Seattle Police Department is down about 25% of their officers. They have homicide detectives who are now responding to 911 calls. So I do think our whole criminal justice system, including alternatives to incarceration and mental health supports, all need funding. And as a public servant myself, I see underfunded government in my line of work, and I think we should fully fund my public service, just like we need to fund the public servants who teach in our schools, and public servants who try our cases, and the public servants - the police, firefighters, first responders, who are the frontlines of our criminal justice system.
[00:25:06] Crystal Fincher: Well, and you bring up an interesting point there in - looking at police and having them to respond to certain things, also looking at alternative responses or things that get more to treating the root cause. When, just as a general approach to crime, do you think - right now the majority of our resources are going into responses to crime pretty much after they've happened and trying to figure out are those right resources there, whether it's police or in the criminal legal system, to have it there. And we have severely underfunded alternative responses that get more to the root causes. So should we be shifting that priority in how we allocate our resources towards prevention and keeping people from being victimized in the first place?
[00:25:58] Jeff Manson: Yes, but I think we can do both, and. I think it's all of the above. And I think after - a couple of years ago there was the slogan, Defund the Police. And I think it - I never thought that was the best slogan at the time or now, but I think the intent behind that for a lot of people who said that was - we should be funding alternatives to police response, and alternatives to incarceration, alternatives to solely punitive response - which I am 100% in support of. I don't think, and as someone who thinks government's underfunded and as a progressive Democrat, I don't think it's a zero-sum game. I don't think in order to fund something, you have to take away from another government service. I think law enforcement - just like firefighting, just like roads and electricity - are just a basic government resource that should be funded at a basic level. But in terms of where we should be directing new resources - should be towards those alternatives and getting at the root cause of a lot of crime.
We have an acute crisis right now in that people call 911, or call the police, and they literally don't get a response. That's an immediate right now, this year, this month issue. While, on the other hand, the reason we're having an uptick in crime is that over the last couple of decades, we haven't invested in all this stuff to prevent the crime. So you need both - you need to attack the acute problem right now, but you also need to lay the groundwork and start investing in the social infrastructure to prevent crime in the future. And also when we talk about alternatives to incarceration, Drug Court is amazing - anecdotes say this, but studies show as well that those who successfully do Drug Court, it is a life-changing experience. But you don't get into Drug Court unless a police officer arrests you first. So I don't want to suggest that we start arresting people in order to get them into treatment that they need. But often it is the mechanism that gets them into where they need to go.
I mean, Drug Court is hard - people talk about it - when I say people, people who may come at this from a different perspective than me - it's like, oh, that's the easy way out. It's just handing them services instead of actually being tough on crime or whatnot, but Drug Court's hard - you have to make regular court appearances, you have mandatory treatment, regular drug tests, and if you slip up you're back to jail. But those who graduate, who actually get all the way through, actually stay clean and get housed and become productive members of society. And we need to expand that opportunity - and things like LEAD, Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, is another great program that - we hear the stories of how it's successful, but also the studies show that it actually has good outcomes and the amount of money invested is less than jailing somebody. But it is law enforcement that is assisting that diversion - it's that interaction with law enforcement that is allowing that to happen. So -
[00:29:22] Crystal Fincher: Well and that brings up an interesting question. So in your perspective, should addiction, or even possession, be criminalized? Is that the best approach, or should we be treating it like a public health problem?
[00:29:33] Jeff Manson: No, it's absolutely a public health problem. Yeah, it's - if you're pulled over and you've got half a ton of meth in your truck or something that's different, but yeah - simple possession, just being an addict - that is, these are people who are sick and they need treatment, just like someone who has COVID or cancer. It is a public health problem, and I very much believe in a harm reduction approach to addiction.
But I do think that a lot of the property crime that we're seeing and other kinds of low-level criminal activity is the result of addiction. It doesn't mean that all addicts commit crimes - not all homeless people commit crimes, it's a unfair stereotype - but a lot of the criminal activity that we're seeing - packages stolen from porches, windows being broken in small businesses - a lot of that is people trying to feed their addiction and that's not an excuse for the behavior, but it is an explanation of the root cause of a lot of what we're seeing.
[00:30:47] Crystal Fincher: And seemingly a roadmap to how to reduce the occurrences of crime committed as a result of addiction or dependency - that if we solve the root, then we also solve for the crime in many of those instances.
I'm also wondering - we need to make such dramatic progress in terms of our approach to climate change, in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, in mitigating the impacts that we're already feeling and that those who are most marginalized are feeling most acutely. And just starting off, our transportation sector is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions, so it seems like any solution needs to start there and it needs to be substantive. What would you propose, especially that impacts transportation-related emissions, to reduce those and help meet our climate goals?
[00:31:54] Jeff Manson: Yeah, you know what? I was in fourth grade and I read the environment book, I remember explaining climate change to my parents and it was news to them - this was 1990, so it was news to them. I remember telling them - look, this is my future, mom and dad. And now I'm realizing now it's our present, right? And it's going to get worse, even if we do all the things right, it's going to get worse. But we've got the smoke from forest fires in our summer days, our few summer days here in Seattle, we can see the glaciers get smaller and smaller on the mountains every year. I have a family member who was essentially a climate refugee, who was living in a more tropical area and two Category 5 hurricanes left her without housing. She fortunately had the supports necessary to relocate, but this is scary.
Fortunately, Washington State has been arguably the leader among the states in tackling climate change. Unfortunately, that's nowhere near close enough, but we should continue to push that envelope and be on the forefront as a state, not just for our own sake and doing our own part, but also to be a model for other states and other countries - look, here's what you can do. And not only is it not devastating to your economy to make these transitions, but it actually can make an economy more resilient if you do it the right way.
So in terms of the things we need to do, we had a transportation package this last session. I don't think we need to wait another 10 years for the next transportation package, which has sort of been the model - it's 6 to 10 years between transportation packages. There was no gas tax increase on this last one. Some of it was federal money that was passing through, so I think there's an opportunity - maybe not this next session, but within the next couple - to do another transportation package which should be very heavily focused on climate-friendly infrastructure - transit and other alternative modes of transportation. We have the Link Light Rail coming through the middle of the 36th a decade from now, right through Interbay and into Ballard. And we need to make sure that - first of all, that happens, but also that it happens in a way that we have a light rail system that people are actually going to ride. And I think that means having light rail underground under the Ship Canal. We just saw that the Coast Guard is saying that any bridge would need to be - I think it's 205 feet above - and I saw the drawing -
[00:34:36] Crystal Fincher: Gotta accommodate those mega-yachts.
[00:34:38] Jeff Manson: You gotta accommodate the mega-yachts.
[00:34:40] Crystal Fincher: That's a big priority.
[00:34:41] Jeff Manson: And maybe - I don't know if there are other vessels that would also require it or not, but there's an easy solution here, guys - go under the Ship Canal. It's not that deep, and actually it turns out that a tunnel is not that much more expensive than going above ground than we thought it would be. It's not that tunneling got cheaper it's that we're realizing the cost of going above ground is even more expensive than it used to be. And now with the bridge height needing to be that high, it's probably even more expensive. So, if the state needs to provide additional funding in order to make that happen, then let's do it. If we can find funding from some other third party source, that'd be great. But I think this is going to be - this is a hundred year decision, right? Like wherever this line goes and wherever these stops go, those stops will still be there a hundred years from now. We have to get this right now and we can't just say - oh, interest rates went up by 0.5%, therefore we need to remove a stop or we need to do it this way or that way. By going underground, it also allows the light rail to go west of 15th Avenue - right now, the proposals are along 14th, but that's not where people want to go. The historical downtown Ballard, which will still be the historical downtown Ballard a hundred years from now, is about six blocks west of where they're wanting to send it. If you go underground, then you're not having to destroy all those buildings and we need to provide the funding for that. Whether that's a transportation package or some other source, I don't know, but -
[00:36:18] Crystal Fincher: If you do get the opportunity to vote on a new transportation package, or help shape it - will you vote or support a package that includes highway expansion?
[00:36:29] Jeff Manson: Not if that's the overwhelming priority of the money - what the priority needs to be - green infrastructure and transit. And representing the 36th - my duty would be to do the best that I can for the 36th District. And we already have two highways - we don't need anymore. Now would I absolutely never vote for something that expanded a highway? Sometimes you have to make compromises - there are also - I would be open to an argument about a freight corridor or something. Maybe there's a one particular spot where there needs to be an expansion. But overall, my philosophy is - the place that we are the farthest behind from where we should be is in terms of our transit system. We are 40 to 50 years behind where we should be on transit.
[00:37:19] Crystal Fincher: What more can we do to help meet our goals? We've taken actions, but we're still behind our goals. We need to catch up and accelerate. Is there anything else we can do outside of our transportation system? Action that you could take to help make that change?
[00:37:39] Jeff Manson: Yeah, there's a lot we can do. And our own goals are reduced carbon emissions by about half by 2030 - we're almost to 2030. It sounds weird to say that, but we're talking about - I would be in a legislative session in 2023. Those policy - the laws would take effect summer of 2023 and the actual effects of those policies won't even start until 2024, and then we're only basically five years away from 2030. So we have to do whatever we're going to do now. There are some things that did not pass this last session, which is where we can easily just start off - electric vehicle subsidies didn't pass - we should do that in order to encourage the electrification of our vehicle fleet and people's cars. There was a bill to require climate impacts to be part of comprehensive plans and the Growth Management Act that didn't pass - something we should look at. Other opportunities to move towards more electrification of homes - some of those bills didn't pass. So it was just a lot of opportunities to invest in our electric grid. We already have one of the less carbon-emitting electric grids since we have so much hydroelectric power in this state, but if we're going to electrify homes and vehicles, we are going to need more electrical capacity than we have historically. So that means we're going to have to expand our electric grid, and we really have an opportunity to model for the nation and the world on how you can build an electric grid that is totally carbon neutral. We can build more wind farms, more solar power, and the transmission lines to get it to population centers. We need to move - we need cleaning up the electric grid and moving things towards electricity that are not currently electricity. That's about 90%, probably, of our carbon goals - transportation being electric and investing in transit, and then electrifying pretty much every building, vehicle, or tool that we have is really the key to solving climate change.
[00:40:10] Crystal Fincher: Well, and as we conclude our time today and are wrapping up, what is it that you think sets you apart from the crowded field of candidates that you are competing against in the 36th and how will voters' lives feel different as a result of you being their elected representative?
[00:40:31] Jeff Manson: Well, I think I bring two things to the race primarily. One is - I have been doing, doing, doing to solve problems like this since I was a kid. I am not comfortable sitting still when I see a problem - I want to fix it. And I know that sometimes it takes a decade or more, it often takes working with a lot of other people. And I've been following that model for 30 years now, since I was 10 or 11 years old. And that's - I think that's the model of action that we want in a legislator - someone who sees a problem, is motivated and works their butt off to try to solve it, and is able to bring people together to do that. And I think I have a track record of doing that with progressive causes over the years. And I think the other is just an expertise in state government. I literally see how state laws and state budgets affect thousands of people every year and know at a granular level, how a turn of phrase in a statute can affect the outcome in an individual's case, or how a reduction in the state disability benefit by 20% results in changes in people's lives. And I think that perspective and being able to bring those stories of the people in my hearings into the Legislature and being able to speak to it from the perspective that I've been in, in my day job, could make a real difference. And besides that, I just love the 36th District. I've been there - I've been in this district for 15 years, it's a beautiful place, wonderful people - for those who could still afford to live in it. And would just really be honored to represent the 36th District in the Legislature and would just be such a joy to solve problems for people in the district.
[00:42:28] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much for joining us here today.
[00:42:31] Jeff Manson: Thank you, Crystal.
[00:42:32] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal talks with Seattle political consultant Heather Weiner. They start by reviewing the news from filing week.
Crystal and Heather discuss one campaign in particular, Jim Ferrell’s bid for King Co. Prosecutor, that just lost access to the Democratic voter database. They then give an impassioned plea for listeners to file to run for Precinct Committee Officer.
Crystal and Heather transition to discussing news from a Seattle high school that a principal has been demoted and reassigned after revealing plans to reduce contact tracing after the district asked her to keep quiet about it, because she was concerned about the health of her students and their families.
The two close the show by discussing a Crosscut/Elway poll revealing that over 80% of Seattle voters said that lack of mental health and addiction services is the number one contributor to crime, and they want to prioritize directing their tax dollars towards those services over all else, if given the choice.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii, and find Heather at @hlweiner.
Resources
File for Precinct Committee Officer: https://kingcounty.gov/depts/elections/for-candidates/online-pco-filing.aspx
Tweet by Will Casey about Jim Ferrell: https://twitter.com/willjcasey/status/1527449561685323777?s=20&t=Vj09ki0vJAnUaGix-bRkOA
“Seattle Schools demotes Cleveland principal after she told families district would limit contact tracing, attorney says” by Dahlia Bazzaz from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/seattle-schools-demotes-cleveland-principal-after-she-told-families-district-would-limit-contact-tracing-attorney-says/
Cleveland High School students plan walkout to protest new principal by Monica Velez from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/cleveland-high-school-students-plan-walkout-to-protest-appointment-of-new-principal/
“How does Seattle feel about crime? It’s complicated” by Josh Cohen from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/politics/2022/05/how-does-seattle-feel-about-crime-its-complicated
Crosscut/Elway Poll: https://crosscut.com/sites/default/files/files/crosscut-elway-poll.pdf
Commit to Change WA: https://www.committochangewa.org
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week. Welcome back to the program: friend of the show and today's co-host, political consultant and urban farmer, Heather Weiner.
[00:00:50] Heather Weiner: Hi Crystal - so nice to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:55] Crystal Fincher: Hey, hey, hey - so nice to have you here, always nice to have you here. Well, today is the last day of candidate filing week. Why is today is such a big deal, Heather?
[00:01:06] Heather Weiner: Wow - that's kind like we're at a Seder right now - why - asking these really deep questions - why is today such an important day? Let's go through and talk about all the reasons and the history of it. Know that today is the most fun day for political hacks and wonks - because today is the day we find out who is going - which of the incumbents are going to have to defend their seats, who is going to show up for some of those open seats, and where and then we can start guessing about where the money is going to be spent on all of these leg district campaigns this year. And it's going to be a tough year for Democrats - everybody's saying that. And so it'd be really interesting to see how much money is going to be spent on inter-party stuff with Democrats trying to push each other out and make it to the top two.
[00:01:58] Crystal Fincher: It is - and especially interesting this year because we - these people are running in new redistricted districts, so they're not defending the turf that they may have been in for the past decade. They have some new constituents and they may be in different areas, a few folks may be running in a new district for the first time, people move around in different areas - so it really is interesting to see what these races are, who's running against whom, and how these are shaping up and also projecting how they're going to perform in the new parts of their district and how that might differ from previous years. Are there any interesting things that you've seen so far based on who's filed?
RIght
[00:02:47] Heather Weiner: now, the thing I'm most excited to see is that nobody has filed - the lack of filing - and that is the lack of filing in LD 36 against Noel Frame, who is going for Reuven Carlyle's now open seat for State Senator. I'm really excited about that, I think that we don't want an inter-party fight there - and I think Noel Frame would be very tough to beat, but I also don't want to see people having to get into that. So I'm excited to see no one has filed there. What are you most excited about?
[00:03:18] Crystal Fincher: I definitely find that interesting - beating Noel would be a very, very tough thing - very popular and a strong leader for very popular policy, especially fixing our broken and regressive tax code. But one of the interesting things - looking at the open seats - how much activity is in there and looking to see how many Republicans, Republican opponents to some Democratic incumbents that seems strong have filed. And how many races in swing districts, legislative swing districts look like they're going to be really competitive this year.
[00:04:00] Heather Weiner: That's right. And there's - we're also seeing some old folk - some people who left - come back. For example, we see Mark Miloscia, who was a State Senator, trying to come back and run against Steve Hobbs for Secretary of State. Claudia Kauffman, who was also a State Senator for a long time, is now coming back and running again in the 47th - so we're seeing some old names too. But then we're seeing a whole bunch of new names, like in LD 37, which is my leg district - there's a whole bunch of people who filed to run in what is now Kirsten Harris-Talley's open seat. And none of these people are big names. These are people no one's really ever heard of before, they don't have a lot of name recognition. And that is great 'cause we want to see some new blood, some new faces, some new energy coming in.
[00:04:55] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I'm familiar with a number of them just from lots of work that they have been doing over the past years. But a lot of that has been really visible to insiders and people who pay attention to this stuff all the time, which most people don't have the luxury or desire to do - completely understandable. And also a number of them affiliated with the Institute for a Democratic Future. And so just seeing them run there - there are several candidates this year who are -
[00:05:27] Heather Weiner: Shout out to IDF doing a great job of recruiting people to run. That is fantastic.
[00:05:33] Crystal Fincher: We're happy about it. We're happy about it. And it's just a great educational program for people who are interested in politics and policy in Washington state. Looking at a number of these positions, you talked about Mark Miloscia - notoriously anti-choice.
[00:05:49] Heather Weiner: And anti-gay marriage as well. Very conservative, comes from a very conservative religious background, and was good on some labor issues but really ended up splitting a lot of labor because he would really - ended up being a swing vote on a lot of those key social issues.
[00:06:09] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, the 30th district looking competitive with an open seat there - where you have a couple of Democrats: Pastor Carey Anderson who is garnering a lot of support, Kristine Reeves who previously was a State Representative, ran for Congress, and is now running for the State Representative position too - that open seat that was previously held by that - well, currently held and will be open - held by Jesse Johnson. So that is going to be interesting. One interesting race where Democrats are not involved so far - and to be clear, we're recording this on Monday [Friday] morning on Friday, filing week ends at 4:00 PM - so the dimension of these can change, more people can file before the end of the day. But in the 31st district, which is in southeastern King County - think like Enumclaw - you have Phil Fortunato, very conservative Republican, and Chris Vance, who used to be the Chair of the Republican Party here in the state, but now does not consider himself a Republican, he views himself as an independent and feels that the Republican Party has gone too far in the extreme direction. So that's going to be a really interesting race to watch.
[00:07:24] Heather Weiner: You should have him on the show some time, Crystal - let's invite Chris Vance. Do you think he would come? Maybe after the primary. Yeah, all right - you're like, ah, my distaste. I don't think I want him on the show. Chris Vance is very - he's run many times, he's a never-Trumper, he is conservative on taxes, a little bit more liberal on social issues. He's kind of the opposite - no, he and Mark Miloscia are probably opposites on that extreme, so it'll be really interesting to see.
[00:07:59] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. He - I think considers himself a moderate - if you were asking Republicans 10 years ago to describe where they are, he'd call himself a pragmatic Republican of 10 years ago, I think. I think we'd have a fine conversation - this is in no way projecting that I harbor ill-will towards him in any way. It would be an interesting conversation.
Looking at the 47th district, which is a very purple if not reddish-purple district, that some great candidates have worked over the past several years to turn purple and to be there in blue. But we have two open seats right now - one with the State Senator position because Mona Das is leaving. And so as you mentioned, Claudia Kauffman who was the State Senator before Joe Fain, and Satwinder Kaur who's a Seattle City Council, Seattle - who's a Kent City Councilmember is running for that seat, as well as Bill Boyce who's also a Kent City Councilmember and a Republican, Black Republican actually. And so that is going to be a really interesting race to follow, as well as the open State Representative seat that Pat Sullivan is vacating. And you have two Republican, you have two Republicans - Carmen Goers, another black Republican - they are recruiting in communities and churches, I wish lots of people would see them and their activity in suburbs, they are engaging in places where Democrats just aren't right now - and is a member of the Chamber of Commerce, as well as Ted Cooke. And then Shukri Olow which a lot of people know from the last year's County Council race - she ran against Dave Upthegrove, as well as Chris Stearns who is a City of Auburn City Councilmember running for the seat. So this - the 47th district is absolutely going to be a district to watch - it is the eastern half of Kent, Covington, Maple Valley, that area - that is absolutely going to be a district that's going to draw a lot of attention.
[00:10:18] Heather Weiner: Crystal, what do you think about the fact - so now we're naming a bunch of these districts where we're seeing a big wave of people of - young, particularly young - but lot of people of color who are running and they're running against each other. So that then makes, I think, things more complicated sometimes and also interesting. It's also great to see, but what's your - you're from the 47th - tell me a little bit about what you're thinking when you see that.
[00:10:44] Crystal Fincher: Well, I'm from - I'm actually in the 33rd, which is the neighbor of the 47th. I live right next to the 47th -
[00:10:49] Heather Weiner: Sorry to insult you.
[00:10:52] Crystal Fincher: No problem, but I will claim and rep the 33rd. It's Kent, it's - basically Kent is divided mostly among these two districts. And so I'm close to the 47th district boundary, but still in the 33rd. I think it's fine, I think it is just a signal of more people having access to our systems and institutions and wanting a voice, and our representatives looking like the communities they're running to represent. So yes, that is going to be more diverse than we've seen in the past, because it just hasn't been representative before. But they're bringing a lot of viewpoints to the tables. Like I said, there are several Republicans, who are not white, who are running in these districts - and people of color are not a monolith, lots of different perspectives and viewpoints - so it just reflects who we are as a community and that there are different people with different visions running to make their voice heard, make their case. And so we'll see - I don't think it complicates things in any way. I just think that it is a reflection of the society that we're in.
[00:12:18] Heather Weiner: Yep. Well, also - let's talk a little bit about the candidate for King County Prosecutor right now, Jim Ferrell, and what's going on. But before we do that, I want to walk back for folks who are not familiar with this. So Crystal, when a candidate files as a Democrat to run, they then get access to the Washington State Democrats' voter files, and they have to pay a fee, right?
[00:12:44] Crystal Fincher: They have to pay a fee - correct. And this voter file - just basic voter information is actually public record for anyone - so your name, address - we don't do registration by party in this state - in other states, it would be a party that you register with. Your basic information is - I think date of birth is in there - it might, I believe date of birth is in just the publicly available information - so that's there. The Party and actually both parties, but the Democratic Party specifically, also supplements this information with other information they have - received from commercial sources, other publicly available sources, research, canvassing that is done - and it's basically information on folks in neighborhoods, how people are likely to vote, what their voting history is, all that kind of stuff. That is useful information just to figure out who you need to talk to, or mail to, or communicate with - so it's a really useful list, database of information.
[00:13:54] Heather Weiner: Very - yes, it's very valuable because you can't necessarily - you probably do not have the resources to contact all 60,000 people in your district - I just made up that number. And you want to know who's likely to vote, who's likely to vote Democrat, you want to know how many times they've voted, is there - what their phone number is, do they live somewhere other than where they're registered to vote? There's so much data in there that's so valuable and so important. And so the State Democrats, led by Tina Podlodowski - but they've always done this - have terms and conditions that you have to sign when you take that, when you get access to that voter file.
So Federal Way Mayor Jim Ferrell, who's running for King County Prosecutor as a Democrat, has now just lost his access to that file. Why?
[00:14:41] Crystal Fincher: He has just lost his access to the file. He lost it because he, although he has run as a Democrat for a long time - several years - and a lot of people feel like - just because in some areas it is impossible, very hard to get elected if you label yourself as a Republican. Some people just use the label Democrat and run with Republican policies, which he has done for a long time. But this race specifically - he has veered really far to the right and it's showing in this race - we've talked about this a little bit before on the show, but has aligned with many Republican interests and especially trying to appeal to some of the fear-based public safety and policing narratives, and has leaned really hard into that. And now has - was advertised as being a part of a Republican-sponsored event, which is definitely not what most Democrats are doing.
And to be clear, this is not like - hey. , anyone has access to it. This database is funded and owned by the Democratic Party. There are other databases that you can have access to - there's L2 Political, there's the Republican Party one - and so each one has its own database, you can do your own. The Democratic Party is saying - hey, if you're acting like a Republican, going to Republican-funded events, being endorsed by Republicans - we're not - you are not looking like you're a Democrat and you should not be entitled to have the privilege of access to very proprietary, Democratic Party information. So they cut him off - which is reasonable and fair. If you're putting your resources into it, fine. If he wants to go use another voter file, that's his prerogative - but you don't get access to the Party file if you are actively working against the Party and with people who are directly opposed to the Party.
[00:16:54] Heather Weiner: Now this makes some incumbents really frustrated - because incumbent Democrats also do not want to see challengers, whether it's from the left or the right within the Democratic Party, have access to this information. And so they're often squealing and yelling at the Party about do not let a challenger get access to this information. But as Podlodowski says - look, if they're Democrats, they're Democrats - we're open to everybody getting access to this, that's just the way it works. But if you're - if you are showing up to a Patriot event like - Ferrell is being accused of his name being on this flyer for a Patriot event, then they need to take a look at it. Super interesting, though.
[00:17:39] Crystal Fincher: They absolutely need to take a look at it. And it is notable - although he is the incumbent mayor of Federal Way, he's not an incumbent in the position that he's running for. And this has been a conversation a lot of times when it comes to challenges from further to the left. There may be a moderate Democrat who is being challenged by a progressive Democrat. And there have been issues in the past with denying access to progressive Democrats. Tina and the Party took some steps to address that, to make that less of a problem, and to give more people who are clearly in favor of progressive values - clearing the way for them to have access. But when it comes to people who are aligning themselves with a lot of dangerous and false right-wing rhetoric and leaning into some really troubling and damaging narratives about who is dangerous in our society and what should happen to them - to me that's absolutely -
[00:18:41] Heather Weiner: And particularly when you see where that leads to real discrimination and violence - see what happened in Buffalo earlier this week. So we are, with that horrible, horrible terrorist attack. So we do absolutely have to take it very seriously. And I think it's also interesting that people are, as you note, claiming that they are Democrats - Satterberg, who's held that position for decades, has always been really clear that he was a moderate Republican. But you're right, the County has shifted and also the Republicans have shifted - like Chris Vance - people just do not want to be associated with that kind of hate.
[00:19:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And so Leesa Manion is someone who is a Democrat running for that prosecutor seat. And I think a lot of people were concerned that - it wasn't an issue of running against a person, Leesa Manion, from another Democrat. This looks like it has funding from the Republican Party and affiliated interests, and they were getting access to information that they shouldn't have.
[00:19:54] Heather Weiner: Super interesting.
[00:19:56] Crystal Fincher: Very interesting and another very, very important reminder for PCOs, or Precinct Committee Officers. If you are an elected or an appointed PCO, today is also the deadline for you to refile to maintain your status as an elected PCO, or to join it for the first time.
[00:20:19] Heather Weiner: It's really important for PCOs to do their work and to show up because you never know - you might be at a meeting where somebody is no longer, has said that they need to step down from their seat, and you get to vote on who replaces them. And so it's a very important position and very critical to be a PCO. Plus, it's fun - you get to go meet all your neighbors.
[00:20:40] Crystal Fincher: It is. And for as frustrated as folks get - and I'm definitely folks - as folks get about the national party and looking at some of the action or inaction there and some of the frustration, the local party apparatus actually has a lot of power and influence that I think a lot of people don't realize. Over a third of our legislative seats are actually filled - initially filled - by appointment, and it is the Party and PCOs who hold the power to select people that are then - you select a shortlist that then goes to the county council to be approved, they pick one of those people that the PCOs pick. But you are determining that list, you are picking who is going to be the new representative. They then have to run for re-election, but many times the person who you pick has an advantage when they're running. So you are - it's a little democracy shortcut, and so these folks are elected by their precinct, basically neighborhood-level stuff - this is grassroots.
Local politics is organizing - it's local organizing - and you have power to appoint candidates, to endorse candidates, to make your voice heard. So it's really important to have people who represent their neighborhoods, their communities who look like the communities that they serve. And that really dictates the direction of our local party organizations. There's one in each legislative district, there are some other affinity-based local party organizations - and there is actually power that is attached to that. And Iit's frustrating to see people overlooking really attainable power - there actually is no filing fee for PCOs. For other positions if you run for office, it comes with a fee that can be a few hundred, or even over a thousand dollars. This - you don't have to pay, you can just be a representative of your party. So I completely encourage people to listen to this. We record Friday mornings - by the time this is edited and gets out, it's usually Friday afternoon. The deadline is forced - if you're hearing this, probably not much time left or a little bit after.
If you don't make it in time, you can be an appointed PCO, which has a lot of the same ability - not all of it - but if you have any questions, feel free to hit me up directly. Email me, tweet me, whatever. And I can help you do this, but don't overlook this lever of power that's available - that for as hard as we work to elect people, this ability - and some south King County districts the - really, literally 30 people, are voting on who is going to be the next elected representative. You talk about your vote making a difference - that's a big difference that can be made when you're a PCO. So please take advantage of that and file for that. We'll also include links for that in the episode notes.
There are a few things that are - a few other things - that are happening this week. And so I wanted to speak real quickly just about the situation at Cleveland High School. What's going on here, Heather?
[00:24:07] Heather Weiner: It's confusing - I'm not really sure what's happening. So they've had - the students were threatening to do a walkout - this, by the way, is right down the street from my house - had been threatening to do a walkout because of the way that the current principal has been handling some of the COVID restrictions. And now the previous principal is coming back to be principal, but that principal had been in trouble - am I saying this right? Had been, there've been some questions about her handling of a teacher who'd been accused of assault. So what do you know?
[00:24:43] Crystal Fincher: So this appears to be a really unfortunate situation. And learned about this because so many students and parents were speaking out at a school board meeting - and this principal had been notified by the district that they were going to change their contact tracing procedures, that they were not going to be as rigorous in them, that they were going to be paring them back. But the district told the principal - but don't tell anyone. The principal was feeling extremely conflicted because COVID is still happening, we are not out of this pandemic. In fact, there is a surge coming, there is now news of a new variant that is even more transmissible than the last sub-variant and the Omicron variant.
And so she's thinking - okay, I think our parents and families deserve to know and have all the information necessary to make the best decisions for their families' health and safety. Some kids are living with immunocompromised people, some folks, some kids are in families with kids younger than five who have not been able to be vaccinated. There are lots of reasons why you want to know the specifics of how your school is handling COVID protections, contact tracing. And so with a more rigorous approach, there is more confidence that can be assumed that - okay, we know the source, we feel like we got everybody attached to it, and appropriate people can isolate, others can be in school. With this change, there's less rigor in that process and parents may be thinking there's more being done to protect them than there actually is. And they may want the option to step in and say - okay, well, I don't feel like this setting is appropriate or safe or healthy for my kid or my family, or maybe we'll choose to mask instead of not mask. You're really limiting parents' ability to make decisions for their families and families' ability to dictate their own comfort and actions when it comes to protecting their health and safety. So the principal said I'm not comfortable keeping this information from families. I'm going to let them know that these procedures are being changed.
The district was very, very mad about that. The principal said - I felt like that, like I was being asked to keep information, that could have really major consequences, from families. So the district came down hard on this principal who had never had any disciplinary action before. Lots of people commented that this was a pretty unprecedented level of punishment to reassign this principal - to basically demote and reassign this principal - and the students were having none of it. So they had tapped this new principal to come in and take the place, but then there seems to be some confusion in that the school district principals' organization said that this new principal is declining the appointment. I don't know if it's because of the controversy swirling, I don't know if there's more action behind the scenes, but it's definitely something to pay attention to.
And I think is something that a lot of people in middle management right now are facing in that there are a lot of people who are looking to decrease the amount of COVID protections, or just disregard what a lot of people have been counting on to keep them safe. And it seems like the bare minimum thing that seems fair to do is just to clearly communicate what you are and aren't doing - which this principal followed and is now paying for that. And I don't know that the school has ever, that the school district has articulated whether they feel it was right or justified to keep that information - it seems like this may be punishment and retribution for letting the cat out of the bag. But should that cat have ever been in the bag? I don't know. We'll continue to follow this, but it is creating a lot of angst in this community.
This is also a principal that has been with the school in this community for a long time. A lot of students of color are saying - you keep - this has been a longstanding problem that Dahlia Bazzaz of The Seattle Times has been covering for a while and is also covering this - but having more instability in those schools, more reassignments, less connection to the community - they're paying for Issues of staffing and everything to a much greater degree than other areas in the district. And so there are also issues of equity and racism and everything associated with this. And it is just challenging to see - but it is a really fair characterization to say that the students and parents do not seem happy about this and are lining up in support of their principal.
There is a poll that a lot of people probably missed. And they probably saw the headline and the characterization of it - it was a Crosscut/Elway poll - they do these every now and then, usually they get a lot more attention. And so as I saw this headline in this Crosscut article - and I do want to say a lot of times reporters don't have anything to do with the headlines, this is not a critique of this reporter in any way - but it's "How does Seattle feel about crime? It's complicated. A new Crosscut/Elway poll of likely voters finds wide gaps in perceptions of crime based on age, income and homeownership status." So with a setup like that, it seems like - oh, this must be another survey where things are split, there's no clear outcome, and if anything - it's complicated - people are mad.
Lots of people have been talking about perceptions of people being very unhappy with crime. And to be clear, crime is a problem, there's too much of it, we need to be doing more to actually stop it, and things that we know will stop it and not things that we know will just not actually solve the problem. We do need to urgently intervene to make people safer and to keep people from being victimized. It is a problem that needs to be solved with solutions we know that work, and that have data and evidence behind them. Now with this, it's like - well, there's this dichotomy a lot of times - the issue about public safety is either you want to fire all the policemen tomorrow or you totally back the blue and want a cop on every block - and it's one or the other. Do you care about public safety and want more cops, or do you want lawlessness and people running amok on the streets and no one answering when you call 911? And it's in those very binary terms a lot of times when it's being discussed.
And what this poll showed was very different than the characterization. When we actually look at this poll, there are actually some stunning - and I say stunning, like literally jaw-dropping results were in here. I don't know how many things you're aware of that poll at 90%, or 80%.
[00:32:36] Heather Weiner: Right? Never.
[00:32:38] Crystal Fincher: That almost never happens and that is headline-grabbing type of stuff. Hey, we're having this conversation on what the mayor's office should do with public safety, what the Council is doing - are they in line with what the residents want? What were voters saying last year in the elections? And lots of people trying to say that voters were saying that they want you to invest new money in cops, and they want you to invest new money in cracking down on these things. Well, Crosscut and Elway asked voters - explicitly - what do they think are the factors causing crime and what do they want to do?
[00:33:16] Heather Weiner: It was shocking to me that this was not the headline - because to say that 92% of people said that addiction and mental health program and services are what are needed, and that the biggest factor is lack of mental health and addiction services - that should be the headline.
[00:33:34] Crystal Fincher: It is shocking and jaw-dropping - to be clear, voters - and this was a survey of voters in Seattle - for each of the following factors indicate whether you think it's a major factor, a minor factor or not really a factor. And so they asked about lack of mental health and addiction services. 85% of people said lack of mental health and addiction services is a major factor. 11% said a lack of it was a minor factor. There is universal agreement in Seattle that lack of mental health and addiction services are a major factor in crime. Coming next, homelessness being a major factor in crime, 67% to 29%. Economic conditions, 63%. Political leadership, 56%. Lack of law enforcement, 53%. Number of prosecutions, 44%. Judges and sentencing, 42%. COVID pandemic, 38%. Protests and actions by activist groups -
[00:34:33] Heather Weiner: Which, by the way, is the stupidest I've ever heard.
[00:34:36] Crystal Fincher: Which is why there's so few people who support it - that's at 23%.
[00:34:38] Heather Weiner: Oh yeah - the increase in crime definitely has to do with Black Lives Matter. Yes.
[00:34:43] Crystal Fincher: Yes. And all the new population - all these new people coming to town - at 21%.
[00:34:49] Heather Weiner: All those tech bros - those tech bros were definitely doing it.
[00:34:50] Crystal Fincher: Those things were largely, largely dismissed by folks. People suggesting that it's the protests or it's new people coming to town - Seattle doesn't believe that. But let's get back to - wow, if anyone is covering - in order to responsibly cover this issue - if you are not leading with - hey, what does Seattle, what do Seattle residents want? Who are you talking to in your stories about public safety? If you are not leading with Seattle residents - a vast majority, almost everyone - 85% of Seattle residents are saying a lack of mental health and addiction services are the number one contributor to crime. More people are saying that than anyone else. Almost everyone is saying that. That should be the headline. And to be clear, even people who are not saying or even people who are saying - hey, cops may be part of the solution, and cops may have a role to play - are also saying, but you know what's a bigger role and to address the problems that we're seeing now, what the number one thing we can do is? Address some of these root causes - at the top of the list is lack of mental health and addiction services.
And I do want to get even more explicit because there's another question on this poll asking - if you could direct where your tax dollars were spent, would you have the City spend more or less on the following? And so this kind of gets to the root of the problem - what should Mayor Harrell be doing to respond to what the residents feel is making them less safe, and what kind of interventions and actions they want to see? What should this budget be looking like that is being put together right now, as we speak, coming up? What does the City demand you do, and the word demand is not more appropriate in any other situation than this answer right here - where 92% of the people who responded to the survey, people who even said - hey, if more officers are part of it, we can but more than anything, we - even more than that, more than more cops - we want addiction and mental health programs and services. Again, 92%.
[00:37:12] Heather Weiner: Now, I was polled on this - I was one of the people who polled and I'm glad I wasn't alone in my answers. I see that I was - the people are with me on this. But I noted when I took this poll that there was not - when they said - what would you, where would you direct your tax dollars? They said services, training for police officers, programs to address the root causes of crime - that's very general, who knows? Staffing courts, more prosecution. Yeah, yeah - never did they even ask about housing - that wasn't even offered. Why didn't they say - housing? Because over and over again, we know that when people are evicted or they lose their housing, they are much more likely to - they don't have access to money, they don't have access to jobs, and they're much more likely to commit economic crimes. Why wasn't housing listed in there? And I'll tell -
[00:38:07] Crystal Fincher: It would have been nice, but even more than that, I think it's an indication that again - the top three answers in this, top four answers - addiction and mental health programs and services. Again, this is explicitly - were asked - where do I want my tax dollars? Where do I want more of my tax dollars spent? 92% said I want more of my tax dollars spent to address addiction and mental health services. Only 3% said less. The number two answer was training for police officers to de-escalate situations. We talk about reform - that is actually different than - hey, more police. They're saying - if you're going to do something, we got to get them de-escalating situations. The number three answer - programs to address the root causes of crime at 80%. Number four - adding non-police staff to respond to certain situations, 75%. Staffing for the courts to process their caseload, 73%. Hiring more police officers at 64%, and more prosecutions of shoplifting and other misdemeanors at 51%. That was the last - that was in last place of all of the options listed. And again, 92% of the City.
Mayor Bruce Harrell, I am imploring you - listen to everyone in your City. City Council, listen to everyone in the City who is saying addiction and mental health programs and services. And just to folks covering public safety and this - with this result, it is really irresponsible to lead without talking about this. And it is astounding to me that this was not the headline, that this was not covered, that this just kind of floated by without anyone noticing.
[00:40:04] Heather Weiner: Well, I don't - I think there's probably two political reasons for that. Number one, it doesn't feed into the narrative that the mainstream media have really pushed for the last couple of years about crime, crime, crime, crime, crime. Fear, fear, fear, fear, fear. You're right about the budget coming up. And also the police contract is coming up. So there is, there has been this push by the Downtown Seattle Association, the Chamber, and a lot of their other friends - looking for ways that they can push to expand the police budget and to not have a lot of pushback on the contract. And you'll look at who has been appointed to the police hiring committee by Mayor Harrell right now, and it's the same folks who are supporting that agenda, including the head of the Chamber of Commerce.
[00:40:52] Crystal Fincher: It is, but there is no clearer time, more conclusive time where we can say they're just out of touch with what Seattle residents actually want, what these voters want. And there is an initiative on the ballot this year statewide that will - Initiative 1922, which is collecting signatures right now, to provide more funding for addiction and mental health services and decriminalize personal possession, to route people into addiction and mental health services - which with these numbers, looks really good. And full disclosure - I'm also working on that, but we were surprised in looking at this and these answers - just how stark and conclusive this is. And this is headline worthy. This is worth being covered.
And it's worth asking people who are asking for more cops and focusing on that, saying - well, if voters are saying that before you take the limited amount of money and invest it in that, why don't we also invest in mental health and addiction services? Maybe we should prioritize the additional money in that. And now that the City Council seems to have made their decision on the police staffing and the bonus amounts, it seems like it is time to say - okay, that's where that direction is heading. But the conversation about public safety is so much bigger than policing, which Seattle residents are screaming right now and saying - we have to address mental health and addiction services and the root causes of these issues, and that takes investment. They acknowledge it takes investment and said - in case that prior result confused you, I'm telling you where I want more of my tax dollars directed. There is nothing that I want more, in the realm of public safety, for you to do than to invest in addiction and mental health programs and services. Just an absolutely astounding result - at 92% of the City thinking that, particularly in light of the media environment - for that number to be that high is just jaw-dropping, but logical, which again -
[00:43:17] Heather Weiner: But ignored because it doesn't fit the narrative, does not fit the current dominant narrative.
[00:43:25] Crystal Fincher: Yes, and I'm here to say - it's irresponsible to ignore this. You are not covering this issue if you are not accounting for that and leading with that, and asking leadership questions about this. It's just so conclusive. When do you ever see 92% pop up in a poll? When do you -
[00:43:49] Heather Weiner: I mean, not even ice cream would be that popular because there's at least 20% of people who have a lactose intolerance or vegan. So it's more popular than ice cream.
[00:43:59] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. So for everyone listening, I hope that you engage with this - certainly this information will be linked in the show notes, but it is really important and we have to start connecting these conversations and moving them away from these special interests and people who have agendas that they're driving, to what the people are actually asking for - and it's just here in black and white. Let's listen and act.
With that, thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, May 20th. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler and assistant producer, Shannon Cheng. And our wonderful co-host today was Heather Weiner. And also for the last time today - Emma Mudd is here assisting us. She is going to be moving on to UFC[W] 3000 and we wish her the best. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can find Heather on Twitter @hlweiner, that's H-L-W-E-I-N-E-R. Now you can find and follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. While you're there, leave a review - it really helps us out. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On this midweek show, Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell joins Crystal for an extensive conversation about public safety in Seattle. Their discussion ranges from how to handle an officer shortage with a long hiring pipeline, the Harrell administration’s approach to encampment sweeps, how safety involves more than just policing, and the thought process on creating a third department (beyond Fire and Police). The importance of negotiating the SPOG contract in removing obstacles to progress is covered, as well as the thinking behind hotspot policing and strategic use of limited public safety resources. The show wraps up with what steps we can all take to help create positive change and make our streets safer.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell at @RuleSeven.
Resources
“Seattle clears Woodland Park homeless encampment after months of trying to place people into shelter” by Greg Kim from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/seattle-clears-woodland-park-homeless-encampment-after-months-of-trying-to-place-people-into-shelter/
“Harrell Outlines Public Safety Strategies: Expanding Policing, ‘Hot Spots’ Focus, Police Response Alternatives” by Elizabeth Turnbull from the South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2022/02/04/harrell-outlines-public-safety-strategies-expanding-policing-hot-spots-focus-police-response-alternatives/
Community Police Commission (CPC) - Police Accountability Recommendations Tracker (PART): https://www.seattle.gov/community-police-commission/our-work/recommendations-tracker
Community Police Commission (CPC) - Accountability Ordinance Tracker: https://www.seattle.gov/community-police-commission/our-work/accountability-ordinance-tracker
Washington State Office of Independent Investigations - Final Bill Report for ESHB 1267: https://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2021-22/Pdf/Bill%20Reports/House/1267-S.E%20HBR%20FBR%2021.pdf?q=20220517001510
“Harrell Touts Arrests at Longtime Downtown Hot Spot in ‘Operation New Day’ Announcement” by Paul Kiefer from PubliCola: https://publicola.com/2022/03/04/harrell-touts-arrests-at-longtime-downtown-hot-spot-in-operation-new-day-announcement/
“Harrell says he ‘inherited a mess,’ will solve crime issues by putting arrests first, social services second” by Sarah Grace Taylor from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/harrell-says-he-inherited-a-mess-will-solve-crime-issues-by-putting-arrests-first-social-services-second/
One Seattle Day of Service - May 21: https://www.seattle.gov/mayor/one-seattle-initiatives/day-of-service
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Well today, I'm pleased to welcome Senior Deputy Mayor of Seattle, Monisha Harrell, back to the program. Welcome back.
[00:00:47] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Thanks for having me.
[00:00:48] Crystal Fincher: Thanks for coming. Well, I suppose this is your first time as the Senior Deputy Mayor - your many, many previous roles and titles and accolades from before this proceeded you - but now you're in the role of Senior Deputy Mayor of Seattle in the Bruce Harrell administration. And how's it going?
[00:01:12] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: It's been a fast four and a half months - I think it's a little bit like dog years - each week feels like a year, and there's nothing like on-the-job learning.
[00:01:27] Crystal Fincher: Nothing like on-the-job learning. Now, what are you doing? What are you responsible for?
[00:01:33] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: So my portfolio includes Fire, Police, Office of Emergency Management, Office of Intergovernmental Relations, Budget, and HR.
[00:01:51] Crystal Fincher: And nothing else - that's it?
[00:01:55] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: I have a few things. I have a few things in the - I say anything that'll wake you up in the middle of the night is in my portfolio. It's helpful to have all those things in one place, and we're trying to envision the future of the City. There's a lot of work that has followed me from my previous experiences that I now have an opportunity to be able to put some of that visioning into practice in helping to lead the City, so it's exciting. I like it. It's a new take on some work that I've been doing for a long time.
[00:02:32] Crystal Fincher: Well and you've certainly worked in several areas of the public safety spectrum in several different roles. Now this is part of your portfolio in this role. So I do want to talk about just the - a number of things - starting in terms of public safety and the conversations that we're having - that are lively and starting off conversations, just this week, with regard to staffing in SPD and moving forward. And I think, as we're looking about it, certainly we've talked on the program before about it - whether or not people agree with the need for more SPD officers, the City is moving forward with hiring more SPD officers and talking about that being part of the solution, or your plan for helping to make people safer. But with that, even if we were to hire 50 people today, that is actually a really long pipeline and those folks aren't going to be making it onto the streets for a while. So if we're talking about public safety, that might be a solution for the fall or next year, but what - short of adding more officers, which can't happen - can be done right now to help intervene in the rising crime levels.
[00:03:58] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Yeah, that's a good question. We have to prepare for the short-, mid-, and long-term. And so one of the things that we've been doing in the short-term is civilianizing some positions that were previously certified positions. And so that helps us to be able to spread out our resources a little bit more - taking some internal positions, be they administrative or other, where we've asked - does this position need to be a law enforcement officer, a certified law enforcement officer, or can this be a civilian or a civilianized position and moving those to civilianized positions? So that is a short term solution - we are currently working on that, the chief has currently been working on that for the last several months. And so we're working through extending our resources through that.
And that's a great long-term solution as well - analyzing what has to be a certified position and what can be a civilianized position. In the midterm, we do have to recruit folks to be willing to go into the academy. And policing across the country - there's a shortage of officers across the country. I don't know one department right now that is fully subscribed, that has all of the officers that it needs. We have seen a lot of people, especially officers, leaving the workforce over the course of the last couple of years. It's been a toll. It's been a toll on absolutely everybody. And in particular, as we've been having discussions - deep, deep discussions - around policing and the future of policing, some people in the profession have taken a look at whether or not they want to continue in that line of service. Some have been retirement age and some have decided that they want to take different paths - but those are all culminating in this moment. We have people - good people - who have reached an inflection point in their life and want to do something different. Some of them may turn towards policing, many of them have turned to other ways to support and help the community.
So we have to talk to - and on the long end of the pipeline, it's talking to a lot of our young folks and seeing if there are people who want to be part of the future of what policing will be. And not looking at what it is now, but looking at what it could be for the future - and being a part of that, and being willing to step into something that is wholly uncertain at this moment. What policing is today is different than it was 10, 20 years ago, will be different than what it will be 10, 20 years from now. And so there has to be a willingness to embrace some of the uncertainty and wanting to be - and be willing to be - a part of what it could be in the future and shaping that.
[00:07:15] Crystal Fincher: So is it possible to make people safer in the existing staffing footprint that we're going to be dealing with for the near term?
[00:07:25] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Safer is - I think safer involves more than just policing. Safer involves getting more mental health support, safer involves better conflict resolution solutions beyond guns, safer is never going to be a police-only solution - and so we have to, candidly, be able to walk and chew gum in terms of yes, working on our policing shortages and working on shoring up our mental health systems, our physical health systems. Acknowledging that even if we have community members who had food on their table, a roof over their heads, jobs to attend to, their financial needs - the last couple of years haven't left many people in better mental and physical health than they were prior to 2020. And so even those who have had all of the means are still going to be unstable in some way and need help and need support. So safety really looks like - how do we build a larger support system and safety net to even catch those who wouldn't otherwise be considered vulnerable?
[00:09:12] Crystal Fincher: Well, you know I agree with that. And I guess that's why it has been confounding in some of the actions that have been taken, whether it's some of the hotspot policing or the sweeps of encampments, where there certainly has been a lot of talk about having those kinds of supports and interventions and people reaching out to be there, but that being absent in so many of those situations where we are seeing predominantly public safety-led, and some of those situations only law enforcement-led, sweep or intervention. And looking at whether that can effectively address the problem and whether that's really delivering on the vision that you laid out. How do you explain that?
[00:10:06] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Absolutely. So I think that people only see a portion and it's really hard. People only see a portion of what we're doing - of what any administration or any government agency is doing. Some of the things that are not as readily accessible is how much transitional housing we have actually opened up and made available over the course of the last few months - we have done an amazing job in terms of making transitional housing available and getting people into that transitional housing. In terms of some of the encampment removals, we've made a tremendous number of referrals and we've gotten people help and support that have been on the streets for years. Some of these stories of people being living on the streets for five years - that is never going to be a success. It's not a success that somebody lives in the street in the same spot for five years. That is an absolute dead end, and we should never be satisfied with somebody having that as an outcome and that as an option. And we have done quite a bit, this administration has done quite a bit, in terms of getting resources to many of those folks.
[00:11:27] Crystal Fincher: So are you disputing that some of those have taken place without that outreach taken, done at first? Are you saying that that has occurred with all of them?
[00:11:39] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Every person has been given the opportunity for support services - they're offered that. They don't always take it, and some people might not be in a place to be able to take it at that time period. I will talk a little bit about the Woodland Park encampment removal. There were, I think, 85 referrals made from the Woodland Park encampment. And those are real offers of help that we're getting out to folks in that we're making spaces available for them to be able to come indoors. Not everybody is ready for that, and certainly there were - there have been more people who have come on site who have needed help and support, and we're still working on getting supports for those folks. But when we have something open, we're trying to get people in it.
[00:12:41] Crystal Fincher: So would it then be a fair characterization to say, in the case of an encampment sweep or a hotspot enforcement, if - or I guess that's a different situation - looking at encampment sweep. If a person there hasn't had contact with a, whether it's a caseworker or service provider - someone with a connection to services available to them if they are ready to go, that meet their circumstances, that they meet the qualifications to go into. If that doesn't happen, that is not your policy, that would be something going wrong in the process and not what you had ordered to be carried out?
[00:13:32] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: So we don't have as many resources to allow people to pick their exact type of transitional housing. There have been times where we've said, there is a tiny home available and people might decline that because they would rather have a hotel, or there might be a tiny home available within a particular village and they don't want to go to that area of town. We don't have control over all of the inventory available, but we make something available.
[00:14:09] Crystal Fincher: So something is always available for someone?
[00:14:13] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: When we are doing - when we are doing removals, we make offers of support. There is a crew that goes out in advance that makes an offer of support prior to the removal.
[00:14:26] Crystal Fincher: And so one of the issues, and it's been covered - in looking at offers of support. There seem to be some disconnects in what is available and what people need. And some really understandable and justifiable reasons why people may not be able to go to a shelter. Sometimes the situation may be - hey, shelter requires people be in by 7:00 or 8:00 PM, I have a job that requires me to be there later or to leave earlier. And so I can't keep my job and both go into the shelter. Obviously, keeping the job is something that preserves a pathway into housing. In those situations, does the City have a responsibility to find something more suitable, or to wait on sweeping them until there is something more suitable available?
[00:15:25] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: So the removals are based on a number of different criteria and we'll be sharing more about that criteria in the coming weeks. There are some occasions where there is a safety reason to need to engage in a removal. And some of those safety reasons might be if there is a lot of - if there are some gun violence in that area or if there has been - and I'm just going off of specific instances that have increased the need for removals - if there was a sexual harassment, sexual assault incident within an encampment. There are any number of reasons - a number of fires that have been occurring in an encampment - those might be public safety reasons where we would prioritize dispersement in those cases. And so we use all of the resources that we have available - doesn't mean that we're going to have exactly what they need at that moment. We do our absolute best. Some people will be able to tell us what they are hoping for and if there's a match, we will try to match it.
But this is also where the Regional Homelessness Authority comes in. This is part of taking the regional solution - we have 84 square miles in the City of Seattle to be able to accommodate folks. There is more housing available outside the region, and we want to make sure that there are options available for folks all over. That's part of why, when I refer to something like the Woodland Park encampment - we had services for everybody that was at Woodland Park during the time that we took the inventory of the area. Those people received housing and new people came in because they knew that the people at that encampment were able to access housing. And so we're trying to get to as many places and as many people as we possibly can, and we need the support and the help of the regional authority to be able to bring their resources to bear, to be able to get more transitional housing faster.
[00:18:05] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. In terms of just community-based interventions overall, certainly some of those are useful in and addressing some of the issues that the unhoused population is dealing with, others are direct interventions to help prevent crime and people from being victimized - with lots of evidence to show that they're very effective interventions. And the Harrell administration - you have talked about the intention to establish that - it looks like the last place where that left off was Mayor Harrell saying that there was an evaluation of some of the partners and service providers that you would potentially be working with. Where does that stand and what is that evaluation based on?
[00:18:58] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Yeah, we're asking a lot of our providers to share with us what they've been doing with the resources that they are being provided by the City. And we're looking at the effectiveness rate - the rates with which people are able to support the community based on the resources provided. We had two - I don't want to call them necessarily summits, they weren't really summits - but they were information fact-gathering sessions with the providers who are doing that work - to be able to let them tell us how they're able to use their resources, and what else we could do to support them in their work.
[00:19:53] Crystal Fincher: So what are you hearing from that?
[00:19:56] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: We are hearing a lot of need, quite candidly. There is a lot of need, particularly in and around as we spoke about earlier, mental health supports, emotional supports. Some folks are meeting communities' need to just be connected with one another in order to better manage their challenges. And we're really trying to assess who has set up systems to be able to make greater advances with more resources if they were provided to them. There are certainly some services that I think people have heard quite a bit about that have had pretty good levels of success, and we're trying to figure out how to get some of those organizations more resources. And there are some organizations candidly that didn't fare as well through the pandemic, where their organizations might not be as strong as they were before and they may be in a position where they have to regroup before they're ready to receive more supports from the City. So we're evaluating all of those things, but we've seen a lot of really good things out there. Organizations like JustCare, for example, they've been able to remain pretty steady and and do some great work across the City. And certainly they've been resourced to do some great work, but we're looking at all of the, all of our providers out there who have a part of the puzzle piece that we need in this moment.
[00:21:51] Crystal Fincher: So in short - taking a look at, hey, you've had resources. Have you demonstrated that you have used the tax dollars that you've received to further the mission and deliver results, when it comes to tangible increases in prevention of crime, interventions, reduction of recidivism - metrics like that.
[00:22:18] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Absolutely. And then also looking at whether or not we've got the right mix. Do we have enough across the spectrum of the needs that are required? Do we have enough in the healthcare arena, both mental and physical? Do we have enough in the internship and apprenticeship arena to ensure that particularly folks have access to being able to set up their futures for themselves? Those are all of the things that we have to look at because we have a finite number of resources - as a city, we have to manage and take care of all of our basic functions. And then what we have, we have to be really - we have to really pay attention to - are we using these dollars effectively because we don't have the endless pot that we would want.
[00:23:11] Crystal Fincher: Right. So basically, are you getting a bang for your buck, is the money that you're spending resulting in safer streets?
[00:23:20] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Exactly. And not just safer streets, but prosperity for those who have access. Part of safer streets is - there are components of economic justice that are related to that. I don't think people - if they have to resort to any sort of stealing, I don't think they do it because they want to do it. I think they do it because there is a need that's not being met, so how else can we meet that need? Is it through additional education? Is it through apprenticeships? So stronger work opportunities, better paying jobs, access to education - we have to look at that whole ecosystem because it's not one lever. If it was one lever, somebody would've pulled it a long time ago.
[00:24:13] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. And as I look at it, especially with - looking at the money that we're putting into community-based interventions, it is not an unlimited budget, need to make sure that that money is delivering a result. It makes sense to do the same thing with the police department, doesn't it? Are you using that same kind of evaluation to determine if the police department should receive more funding, if we should pull back and redirect to other areas?
[00:24:42] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: And that's exactly what we were doing when I mentioned earlier - looking at positions and seeing which positions can be civilianized, looking at the job functions and trying to evaluate whether or not those job functions need to be certified in order to be effective. And so we're looking at the whole ecosystem of that. One of the things that I think we talked about before was the third department that would be on par with Police and Fire. What does that third department look like? What services still need to be met in an emergency situation that we need to dispatch, where Police or Fire are not the solution in that instance? We've talked about the history of EMTs and EMS, where you would no longer send police to a heart attack, but there was a time period where that's exactly what you did. And so we're looking at what are the calls that don't need a a law enforcement response or a fire response? What are the needs that are not being met and how do we put that department together? We're working on that - our goal, our hope is to have a white paper and structure for that third department by the end of this year, that we would then begin to structure in 2023 for a 2024 deployment.
[00:26:16] Crystal Fincher: So then am I hearing that it's a possibility that some of those community-based interventions, non-law enforcement-based interventions may be made functions of the City within a public safety department that doesn't have a sworn officer. So you're looking to build up that infrastructure. So that actually may not occur from service providers that you're partnering with today? That may be an internal thing?
[00:26:45] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Absolutely. It's also part of - what I will say is - we are looking at the functions that are provided and of course, if that's the case, the third department will be just, will be a professional entity, just like fire and law enforcement - where there will be a curriculum and a program and the proper certifications for whatever is needed within that body of work. It will be a professionalized entity that is able to respond to 911 calls that meet their unique skillset.
[00:27:20] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Have you received - which makes sense - have you received pushback from SPD on civilianizing parts of it? There were some - there was a recent report about responses to 911 calls potentially being handled by alternate responders that they recently pushed back on. Are you hearing that, and how are you working through that?
[00:27:44] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: I think that's natural and I think that's to be expected. It is part of - would I want that? No, I want everybody to work together and I think by and large people are working together. But it's the job of their police union to push and try to negotiate and try to get as much for their members as they possibly can. We know that some of it is founded, and some of it is just part of what they have to do in trying to negotiate for their next upcoming contracts. What they see is - they might see - well, that used to be a body of work that pertained to us, and we don't want to lose that body of work. But the truth of the matter is policing is many different professions rolled under one title. They're not all the same. Somebody who is on a beat isn't necessarily trained to be an effective detective. Somebody who might be doing homicide might not be right for a domestic assault. There are different skillsets, there are different trainings - and depending upon the line that an officer wants to go into, they might need a different career development path.
So we really have to look at the body of work and whether or not it fits in with solving some of those crimes and getting justice in that way and if not, there might be instances where the presence of a uniform could escalate a situation. And there's somebody who has not got a weapon on the other side - then we don't want to send a certified officer into that particular situation - that might not be a best fit for them. We know that labor will want to negotiate that and those are some things that we'll have to address. And there are some where labor might want to negotiate that and we say - but that's not, that's not within the purview of your scope anyway. So it's a conversation.
[00:30:18] Crystal Fincher: It's a conversation. And as you just brought up, that conversation is about to be codified into a new Seattle Police Officers Guild contract, and you will be at the negotiating table. And there there's been lots of discussions in the greater conversation about the role that police officers have and the larger public safety conversation and how and whether their interventions do result in people being less likely to be victimized. Lots of conversations about what is appropriate, what's not appropriate to be in a contract, what oversight should be more independent and not internal. So I guess starting out, are there, especially in light of the prior public safety ordinance that had a lot of reforms in there - some of them rolled back with the contract - are you looking to reimplement those? What approach are you taking in this negotiation?
[00:31:27] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: So our prioritization is absolutely on accountability. We have to move forward aggressively on accountability for many different reasons, not not the least of which is we have a consent decree that - at this moment, it's not benefiting the City or the people of the City to still have this as an operating standard or practice for the City. It reminds me of - there's this old Thomas Jefferson quote that kind of refers to - if you wear the clothes, if you try to wear the clothes that fits you as a boy as a man, it doesn't work. And to me, that's where we are with the consent decree - we are 10 years into this and those clothes no longer fit - we have moved well beyond that. And if we want to get to what the future of policing is, we need to move past this past that is not even close to the picture of where we want to be.
And so it has to be a prioritization on accountability - that has to be everything. And I know some people - going back to the other part of what we were talking about - some people will want to jump ahead and say, well, let's negotiate what the third department looks like and the trading off of those roles. The police contract is only three years and we're already one year into a three-year contract. We can negotiate the roles of that next contract in the next cycle. We're one year into a three-year contract, so we have to focus on accountability - that has to be our number one goal. And then once we get the right accountability measures in place, within the next contract we can start negotiating roles and responsibilities as pertains to what might be a third public safety department.
[00:33:45] Crystal Fincher: There've been several recommendations related to collective bargaining from lots of entities, including the CPC. Some of those including fully implementing the reforms in the accountability law, removing limits on civilianization of OPA and ensuring civilian investigators have the same powers as their sworn counterparts, removing clauses in the contract that take precedence over local laws including that accountability ordinance, the police being empowered to place an employee on leave without pay, and ensuring OPA has authority to investigate allegations of criminal misconduct. Do you agree that those should be implemented in this new contract?
[00:34:37] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: You named so many that I just want to say that the answer is yes. But let me - that's bad radio to be like, the answer is just yes - but the answer is yes. And I'll just pull out a couple of them that are of particular interest - civilianization of investigators at OPA - I think that is something that we need to seriously explore for many different reasons, but let me just go on a couple. One of which is - the statewide Office of Independent Investigations that we'll eventually move to - it was envisioned to eventually be a civilianized body so that there were no conflicts of interest in those investigations. And we have to look at the same thing for SPD - that these are officers that are being forced to investigate their fellow officers. That can't be a good place to be. It can't be a good place to be to - you're working in one department and you're working alongside your team, and then you move and have a rotation to the next department. And in that next rotation, you're having to investigate the people that you were just working alongside of.
And I use this example because - no matter how many firewalls you put up, there is always going to be the potential - and a strong potential - for conflict of interest. Crystal, you and I have known each other for a really long time and - we're not that old, we've known each other for a little while - and we would both do our jobs if we had to do an investigation. And yet I think that the way that we've crossed paths over the years, it would be really hard to be an absolutely unbiased independent investigator if something were to come up, because I know you're a good person. And I wouldn't believe that you would do anything terrible, so it would be hard for me to say and now I want to investigate you. And then when my rotation in this department is over, now I just want to go back to working alongside you. That's a tough place to be. And I think that exploring the civilianization of investigators at OPA - it protects us from some of those potential conflicts of interest, and we really have to take a hard look at that.
[00:37:04] Crystal Fincher: And not just civilianization, but giving them - removing the limits to make sure that they have the same power and authority in all instances of investigation. Because I think that's been a frustrating part - to be like, well, I'm not part of the police department - even the elements that are civilians just being kneecapped and not having the authority to fully investigate or to make any recommendations that hold any weight. Is that part of your vision, and what you plan to negotiate is also providing them with that authority?
[00:37:47] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Absolutely. And again, following the statewide model of the Office of Independent Investigations that will follow the same path. We'll see who races each other first to that finish line, but very much following the same model. And the one thing I want to just clarify for folks - sometimes people hear the term "civilianization" and they think sloppy or not as professional - we are talking about professional investigators that just may not be certified officers. And there are a ton of highly trained professional investigators in a lot of different professions that could have skillsets that apply to the work that would be needed for these types of investigations. I'll give you an example is - there's always forensic auditors for things like financial accounting crimes - they may not be law enforcement officers, but they are trained professionals in forensic accounting who can help with some of this criminal problem solving. There could be people who are forensic anthropologists or other such things, who know how to contain a crime scene and who know how to collect the evidence. When we say civilianized, we're not talking about anything less than the highest level of professionalism. It just means that they are not trained officers in the way that they would respond to an immediate and imminent crisis.
[00:39:28] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense and is certainly valid. We've seen that operate very successfully in similar areas. And I think an even bigger deal - we're seeing the current system not working, so a change is in order. So is that a red line for you in this negotiation? Is that something that you're starting with as a foundational this is where we need to be?
[00:39:54] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: It will probably take us, it will take us more than this contract to get to a fully civilianized team, investigative team at OPA, but we certainly want to begin to move in that direction where we have very professional civilian investigators available to us for that work. And I believe that there's going to be a bigger demand for that particular career going forward. I do believe that sometimes Seattle is on the frontline of a lot of this work, but where and how we make these things successful, we will see them roll out in other areas across the state and across the country.
[00:40:44] Crystal Fincher: So it's possible that we walk out on the other side of this contract and there are still situations where the police are investigating themselves.
[00:40:53] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: For certain things. So, as the Office of Independent Investigation gets set up, they will take all lethal use of force - that will go to the state regardless - that body of work will go to the state. As pertains to any accusations of sexual harassment or sexual assault, that will go to the state. So we are going to, we absolutely will honor state law. And quite honestly, I think folks should be grateful that the state is doing that work. I think that what they're setting up will be revolutionary in order to ensuring that we have unbiased, less-biased investigations. And do I believe you can eliminate bias 100% entirely? I would love to say yes, I don't know if that's ever completely possible, but I think we can get to a system that is more accountable and more transparent for everybody involved.
[00:42:02] Crystal Fincher: As we look forward in the short-term and some of the interventions that are going, do you expect a continuation or more deployments of the hotspot policing strategy?
[00:42:18] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: I think that while we have limited resources, we have to be really strategic about where and how we deploy them. And so, I wouldn't call it hotspot policing because it's a little more nuanced than that, but what I would say is when you have limited resources, you have to be really, really strategic about where and how you deploy them. And that's what we're having to do - we're having to look at the areas that are in the greatest need and providing resources to those areas in those moments. And so we look at things like - what are the big events coming up in and around the City and how do we deploy in order to make sure that yes, we can cover the Mariners game, the Sounders game, a concert at Climate Pledge, because we are short-staffed and that there's no quick way to make up for that.
This has been a while in the making and even if we had all of the body signed up right now, we still only have one Criminal Justice Training Center to run all of the state's recruits through. So we're going to have to be strategic for a little while - we can't, we don't have the staffing at every precinct and in every neighborhood that we would want to have. And so that means looking at what is on our social calendars, trying to get people back to normal, right? This is - it has been many years since we've had a full cadre of parades and outdoor events, and we want people to be able to get back into life again and get back into life safely. So how do we have the Torchlight Parade with such a limited number of officers available to staff? How do we have one of my favorites, the Pride Parade, with a limited number of officers to staff? So we really have to be a lot more strategic and it means that we really have to look at the chess board. I think what people see are hotspots and it's not as much hotspots as we have to be more predictive about where we go and strategically plan for that.
[00:45:01] Crystal Fincher: And I can see that - I guess the challenge, as you articulate that, the mayor certainly articulated certain spots that were spots of emphasis that were going to be receiving increased patrols and resources and have folks stationed basically there full-time to, I think as he talks about, calm the area. So it seems like there have been point - that kind of thing has been referred to by lots of different terms, whether it's a hotspot or an emphasis patrol or however we want to characterize it, we are focusing our admittedly limited number of resources in a concentrated area. And are we expecting, are you expecting to deploy resources in concentrated areas, not talking about surrounding events that may happen, but on day-to-day, as we saw before - Tuesday through Friday in a place - is that part of an ongoing strategy, or have we seen the last of that?
[00:46:16] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: It has to be a little bit of both. And so I'll give you an example - some of where people have seen us focus have been in areas where there have been increases in gun violence - and so Third Avenue is an example. So what people saw is they saw us move the mobile precinct to the Third Avenue area right after we had two incidents - two pretty painful incidents - of gun violence deaths in that area. And what that additional patrol allowed us to do was to be able to add more investigative resources to both of those cases. And we've made - we have two suspects that have been arrested for both of those shootings on Third Avenue where - it was an area that there was an increased amount of gun violence. And two, all murders are painful. It is particularly challenging when one of them is really just a child, a 15-year old. And because of the police work that we - the police and the officers were able to put in that area - to be able to canvass and collect the camera information from in and around the area, we were able to bring forth two suspects in both of those murders. And so, that is part of the job. It's not just about patrolling for what is happening in the moment. It's also patrolling and doing the detective work to solve crimes that we know have been happening in that area, that families will want answers for.
[00:48:14] Crystal Fincher: Well, I think that's an excellent point. I actually think there's a very strong case to be made for increasing the deployment of resources in investigative roles. It seems like that's actually an area of unique specialty and opportunity, and results that come from that can yield long-lasting results. So it feels like people in the City see that, it seems like that's been widely acknowledged. However, when we have these conversations about - hey, we're short staffing, the conversations are - we have to move people out of these investigative roles, these victim liaison and services roles - a lot of things that get at preventing behavior from people who are currently doing it. So does it make sense to continue to move people away from those investigative roles onto patrol, especially in these conversations as we continue to identify areas where patrol doesn't seem like the most effective intervention?
[00:49:29] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Yeah, we need both. It's - this is the Catch-22. We need both. We have to find ways to be able to, in some ways, tamp down ongoing incidents. And sometimes the presence of a mobile precinct can do that, can be a little bit of what just helps take some of the fire out of the air. There's some things that we've done over the course of the last few years - back in the olden times when people used to go out, for example, and they talked about - well, instead of everything closing at the same time every night, what if we were to stagger release hours from some of the different clubs and bars? For the young people listening, who don't remember what clubs and bars are, and that was a way to not push everybody who might have a little bit of alcohol in their system out into the street at the same time. So we are having to do a little bit of column A a little bit of column B because we have imperfect resources.
[00:50:40] Crystal Fincher: Well, and seem to be saying - we need to do all we can to meet patrol numbers, and we will take from other areas to deploy on patrol - that's what the chief was saying. Should we continue taking, or should we rebalance, because both are going to happen. Should we be deploying back in the detective arena and investing more in actually trying to solve some of these crimes and find some of the people who are doing them?
[00:51:16] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: For those people who are trained to be detectives, we are doing everything we can to get them back to their primary functions. And in the meantime, taking a try to do-no-harm approach, which is in not letting people continue to get victimized as we're trying to do that. And that's why I said it's gotta be a little from column A and a little from column B, because we have to solve crimes that have occurred and we have to do what we can to prevent additional crimes from occurring. Not everybody is trained to be a detective, but for those who have those trainings and have those skills, we want to be able to give them all of the resources we can to get them back on those jobs.
[00:52:05] Crystal Fincher: And you've been very generous with your time - we are just about to wrap up. I think the last question - we could cover a ton - but appreciate getting through the chunk that we did today. You talk about some of those emphasis patrols or areas where more resources are being deployed - whatever name it's going by. With those, there was a press conference that even Chief Diaz seemed to acknowledge that those increased patrols and having the mobile unit nearby does have an effect on that area during that time. But he brought up instances in this current iteration, and certainly we've seen in prior iterations, where the result isn't that the crime stops, it moves to other neighborhoods.
And it sets up a situation where it looks like - for moneyed interests, for downtown interests, they're getting super special police deployments in the name of safety. And sure it may improve things on that block while those police are there, but it actually is moving that activity elsewhere in the City. And he said they were working on trying to track that. And are we succeeding? Is that the best expenditure of resources if that's the result that we're getting, which is seemingly - hey sure, maybe a win for those businesses on that block, but a loss for the neighborhood and the residents that are receiving that activity. Should we - is that the most effective way to address that? Is that the most equitable way to address that for everybody in the City?
[00:54:03] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: I would say that there is still a benefit to having those resources visible and available. And think about when somebody - there might be an area where people are used to speeding and then they put up the electronic board that says you're going this fast, and it reminds people to slow down. Sometimes the visual cues that we use for some of the public safety is just - you're in this area and you might have something that might pop off, but just calm down. It's a visual reminder to calm down, a visual reminder. And that doesn't necessarily always move someplace else, but it can be a reminder to - this is not your time and this is not your moment.
We can't stop every single incident from occurring, but we certainly want to be able to give people pause before they might do something that would be regrettable later. So, it's not the perfect system. It's certainly not the perfect system, but there are benefits across the board if we can get people to think about how they might seek help, or how maybe just the presence can calm people down, or how we can even regain a sense of normalcy to an area that might draw in more foot traffic - and where there is more foot traffic and more positive activity than in the absence of nothing which can create some negative activity. We're bringing people back to an area that would allow us to get some good activity back on the streets. One of the best approaches for public safety, quite candidly, is for people to start going out again - filling up those spaces with positive activity, filling up those spaces with positive engagement - because where you have more eyes and positive activity, you actually need less policing.
[00:56:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely true. And I guess my question is, even in a situation where - okay, you do that, you intimidate someone away and they aren't doing that there. In the instance that they're then moving somewhere else, we have not necessarily successfully intervened in their activity, but have moved it.
[00:56:49] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: I don't think it's a hundred percent though. I do think that there are places where you can put in positive activity and attract positive activity response. So I think about some of our young folks where the hours where they would get in the most trouble would be those immediate hours after school. If they are in a space that is filled with positive activity, then perhaps they will adopt and take on that positive activity. If they're in a space where there is negative activity, then they can take on that negative activity. That's the case where it's not just it would move to a different place. It's - you're giving idle hands an opportunity to do something more productive. And that's what I'm talking about filling that positive activity space - not everybody would necessarily fill that space with the sort of activity that we wouldn't care for if we get more more positive engagement in those areas.
[00:57:47] Crystal Fincher: I certainly agree about the benefit of positive engagement. I am certainly hoping that maybe we can envision a time where we actually deploy resources surrounding positive activities and positive connection to opportunities - in that kind of emphasis patrol and intervention that we have. But I appreciate the time that you've taken to speak with us and help us understand better what's going on in the City and what you're up to, and certainly look forward to following as we continue to go along.
[00:58:27] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Well, this is a conversation, it's a dialogue. We've got a lot of work to do. There's no one group that has all of the answers, and so I appreciate the opportunity to come on and speak with you. And I know we get a lot of feedback and that's good, because we listened to the feedback and we'll make adjustments as we go along, but we're trying to do everything we can to make sure that we get the City back on track.
[00:58:54] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Okay, I'm going to sneak in one more question. You talk about you get a lot of feedback - is there something that people can do, or a way to engage that you think is a great opportunity to get involved in making a difference, helping to create positive change, helping to keep our streets safer? Is there one thing that you would recommend that they could do to be a part of that?
[00:59:14] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: I'm going to give you two things. So the first thing is I'm going to mention our One Seattle Day of Service on May 21st, and just say that it's more than about just cleaning up some aspects of our city and helping us put some positive activity out there. It's also about a sense of building community with one another - that we're really hoping that everybody who comes to the Day of Service will find somebody new that they haven't connected with, that they haven't built community with and be willing to reconnect with society in doing some positive work together. So I'll talk about that because I think that there are significant benefits to our mental health - to rebuild positive social skills and positive social relationships. So that's one thing that if people were like, I don't have a lot of time on my calendar, but I can commit to a couple hours on one day.
And then the other thing that I would say is - we need to return to the old scripture - being our brother's keeper. And that may mean reaching out to nonprofit organizations that are doing this great work. We will help their dollar stretch farther when we provide them resources through serving on boards, through providing hands-on activity or volunteer opportunities to help them further their missions. And so anything that we can do to pitch in and to add - whether or not that is - maybe even it's reaching out and having lunch with a young person and providing them paths that they might not have otherwise thought of, letting them know young or old - quite candidly in this one - that somebody out there cares and will listen to them. We have a lot of - our older folks - and I know you are wrapping up, I'm sorry - but I'm just gonna make this one last pitch. We have a lot of older folks who've actually struggled through this pandemic. They have suffered from withdrawal because their social structures have been pulled from them, and older folks who withdraw from society have higher instances of high blood pressure and hypertension - all of those things that result from depression and not having a social network around you, can result in physical health loss as well as mental health loss. And so being a part of - I know it's a tough time period because COVID is still out there, but the ability to reconnect with one another as humans - social skills deteriorate a little bit when we're not with each other. And so just taking these moments to rebuild our social skills, having some patience with each other, but rebuilding them together. When our City gets healthier in all aspects, especially mentally healthier, we'll be able to help each other better.
[01:02:26] Crystal Fincher: I agree with that. Thank you so much for your time, Monisha.
[01:02:30] Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell: Thank you.
[01:02:31] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by the former Director of Progressive Majority who has now transitioned into public service but remains involved in numerous political efforts across Washington, EJ Juarez. EJ and Crystal start off by discussing the Washington Supreme Court’s decision that driving while high can get you a DUI and the role that bias plays in situations of suspicion. Then, they discuss King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn’s lone vote against abortion rights that contradicts his previous position. News that Seattle parents are mobilizing against changes to school bell times sparks a conversation around whether the Seattle School Board is putting equity into practice and getting kids into school ready to learn. Crystal wraps up the show with a warning about “mutual termination agreements” that landlords are using to sign away renters’ rights and the two share enthusiasm for the prospect of moving elections to even-numbered years as the King County Council considers the change.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, EJ Juarez, at @EliseoJJuarez. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“WA drivers can get DUIs for driving while high, state Supreme Court finds” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/wa-drivers-can-get-duis-for-driving-while-high-state-supreme-court-finds/
“King County's Reagan Dunn votes against abortion rights in apparent about-face” by David Guttman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/after-years-of-supporting-abortion-rights-king-countys-reagan-dunn-votes-against-them/
“Seattle Families Mobilize Against Sweeping Change to School Bell Times” by Robert Cruickshank from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/05/04/seattle-families-mobilize-against-sweeping-change-to-school-bell-times-and-bus-schedules/
“Sign here to avoid eviction but beware: You might be signing away your rights” by Anna Boiko-Weyrauch from KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/stories/sign-here-to-avoid-eviction-but-beware-you-might-be-signing-away-your-rights
“King County Council to consider push to move elections to even-numbered years” by David Guttman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/king-county-looks-to-move-elections-to-even-numbered-years/
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Nicole Gomez about her campaign for State Representative in the 36th Legislative District - why she decided to run, how the last legislative session went and her thoughts on addressing issues such as housing affordability and zoning, homelessness, COVID response, public safety, tax reform, and climate change.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Nicole at @elect_nicole.
Resources
Campaign Website - Nicole Gomez: https://www.electnicole.com/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
So today I am thrilled to welcome to the show, Nicole Gomez, who is a candidate for State Representative in the 36th Legislative District. Welcome to the show, Nicole.
[00:00:47] Nicole Gomez: Thank you for having me, Crystal.
[00:00:49] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for joining us. So I guess I will start out by asking what made you decide to run for State Rep in the 36th right now?
[00:00:58] Nicole Gomez: Yeah, well, I'm running to be the next State Representative for the 36th district because I actually would like to help create an economy that works for everyone. I've been quietly doing the work behind the scenes for years and advising others on how to accomplish their policy goals. And I think now's a good time to get started.
[00:01:21] Crystal Fincher: You have been doing it for years - full disclosure to people - I work with you in a different capacity now that you are the Executive Director of the Institute for a Democratic Future, commonly known as IDF around these parts. And I'm on the board of that organization and an alum and appreciate work there. But what made you - to that point, you've been helping to mentor a lot of people because of your experience in working in the background - what in your experience do you think helps inform your candidacy and what kind of legislator you'd be?
[00:01:58] Nicole Gomez: I guess you're asking more of an origin story - so from about the age of five, an illness actually - an illness in the family left us homeless. And so from that moment, there was a lot of working through bureaucracy. My parents are both Hispanic, not very well educated - and helping them navigate some pretty complex systems, and so I always had vowed that, this is ridiculous. And so, even at a very young age, I vowed to do something about it. And so that's where I'm at right now. I have my own non-profit organization and I co-founded Alliance for a Healthy Washington and we have been working towards transformative healthcare reform here in Washington state, currently sit on the Universal Health Care Commission appointed by Governor Inslee - we're working to develop a healthcare plan for Washington state once the federal waivers are approved in order to innovate here. And so things are moving.
[00:03:22] Crystal Fincher: Well, we just came out of a legislative session where there were definitely some great things that happened, and other things that left some people disappointed. What was your evaluation of this past session?
[00:03:36] Nicole Gomez: Yeah. Well, when I'm thinking about this past session, there was some things that I would like to see move forward next session. For starters, I would say - there's a bill called Keep Our Care Act - I don't remember the bill number off the top of my head, I'm sorry - but essentially that bill is part of a puzzle piece in our healthcare system. What you see right now is these large healthcare systems coming into Washington state - and they're faith-based and they're buying up a lot of our hospitals - for instance, Swedish was bought out by Providence. And so, when you're thinking about the current state of this past week - abortion access and access to equitable healthcare and in reproductive health - having those large hospital systems could potentially become an issue if they're not going to provide certain services to people who need them.
Another one that I was thinking about is the middle housing bill - I know that Rep Macri had been working on that bill for a number of years and Rep Bateman was - took it over in a different lens - and they are amazing legislator, first of all. And they've been able to push this pretty far. And so I'm excited to see what comes out of that - was disappointed that it wasn't signed because we need more affordable housing.
[00:05:35] Crystal Fincher: We absolutely do - when it comes to affordable housing, what can we do to provide more of it? What can you do in your capacity as a state legislator? What are your priorities for helping?
[00:05:49] Nicole Gomez: Yeah, that's the million billion dollar question. I think a lot of legislators have been working on this issue for a number of years and it's not just a Washington problem, it's also a nationwide problem. And it stems from a variety of areas - there are, but that there's no way around it - we need more housing. We need more density in a place like - 'cause my district would be Seattle - so particularly in the Seattle area, there's not a lot of land to build on, and so you have to be smart about future planning. And so this particular - the middle housing bill was amazing because it would allow us to be able to build a little bit larger condo spaces, or multiplexes a little bit larger - six unit or four units, whatever - it's better than the single-family housing that we have right now, because we can house more people.
[00:07:05] Crystal Fincher: We can and one of the sticking points with that and that had been raised is - well, hey, we need to keep the character of our single-family, big-home neighborhoods. We need to maintain our property values, which are skyrocketing. Should we be increasing the zoning and increasing the allowed density in single-family areas?
[00:07:35] Nicole Gomez: Yeah, so, I don't think it's should we - we have to. If we're ever going to address our homelessness situation, the affordability situation - we just need to do it. Something that the state can do is to legalize that middle housing - right now, the cities are in control of their zoning practices and a lot of them are exclusionary zoning laws. I was thinking back to something my husband said - and the house that we currently live in, that we bought at the bottom of the recession - would not be able to afford it today. His grandpa couldn't have moved into this house because of the zoning laws that the City of Seattle had back then. A lot of those zoning laws were very racist, and they kept certain neighborhoods more, or less - there was less people of color in them. The houses are all single-family housing, there's not very many apartment buildings. And so, while I understand people wanting to keep the character, it's just a necessity.
[00:09:01] Crystal Fincher: It really is, and that bill is a great bill. I also wish it would have passed. We absolutely, in my opinion, need to move forward with density. And I think that's becoming a more common opinion. Certainly all the folks who were pushing for that bill, and Reps Macri and Bateman, have been instrumental in moving the conversation forward, especially in these past several months. It's part of the solution. It's not all of the solution. There is a lot more that needs to happen. What more can be done to help with housing affordability? And should social housing, like the initiative that is currently having signatures collected in Seattle, should that be part of it?
[00:09:51] Nicole Gomez: I think that we're in this crisis mode where we have to throw everything at it, at this problem, before things spiral further out of control. I have not fully read that initiative yet, but I've heard about it from people and they seem really excited about it. So, it's something I'm looking forward to digging in and learning more about. But certainly everything that we're able to do is needed. Something else that I was thinking about as I was filling out my questionnaires, as candidates do - one of the questions was about labor. My dad used to be a carpenter and so I'm thinking about how COVID has affected people's lifestyles, and I know right now that there's a lack of workforce within the trades. And so another thing that we can do at the state level is to help provide training programs for trades. And I think it's important to look at that for community colleges, high schools, apprenticeships - those are all things that we're going to need, especially if we're moving towards a green future.
[00:11:30] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. I'm thinking about it and the conversation about housing and housing affordability, and thinking about homelessness, which is absolutely related to the issue of housing affordability. It is essentially - the biggest issue is that they don't have and can't afford housing in their present situation. A lot of the homeless policy to attack, to address homelessness - I guess that was a Freudian slip - to attack homelessness - that's the manifestation of it in a lot of areas. A lot of the policy to address homelessness is dictated on a local level by city and county governments. Is there anything that you can do in your capacity as a state legislator to help reduce the amount of people who are living on the street?
[00:12:18] Nicole Gomez: It's such a complex issue - there are a variety of reasons that lead to it, and I think we need to be mindful of how we move forward in addressing, making sure that people are taking care of. One of the things that I think about when I think about homelessness is the social determinants of health. My work in healthcare policy has really hammered that into my head. And so, they need to have access - it's not just, oh, here's some houses. That's fine, but you have to have access to healthcare services, you have to have access to mental health supports, you have to have a safe, physical environment, and then also education. And then once you have all those things into place, then you're looking at adding in that employment piece - because people can't be employed unless they're well, and so how do we get them well?
[00:13:32] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that absolutely makes sense. Is there anything you can do to help people get stable enough to maintain stable housing, to afford that housing, and to be able to continue to move on with their lives?
[00:13:52] Nicole Gomez: Yeah, so that one is - we recently put some money - not this session, but the session before - into mental health. But it's going to take a while for those things to balance out because the process of setting up programs takes a while. But this past session, one of the bills that I was working to help pass, and it actually ended up being a budget proviso, but it expands mental healthcare to people. So there are mental health providers who are looking to do pro bono work, and this bill, or this idea, was brought to me by one of our members. And they're a nonprofit organization here in Seattle and they serve King, Snohomish, and Pierce right now, but they were being approached by mental health providers who are interested in pro bono work. However, there wasn't a program, that we could find, that would be able to screen patients. And so they actually already have something set up for other healthcare needs. And so they were like, well, we could screen patients, but we need help funding an additional position. And so that's what this proviso does - it's going to be a test to see if the program works. It's been working pretty well in another state, and so that has increased it's - with telehealth now - hopefully people will have a little bit more stability because what the studies show is that if you have access to regular mental healthcare, then you have less issues. And that makes sense, and so those are the kinds of things that I'd be looking at as a legislator.
[00:16:01] Crystal Fincher: I got it - talking about health right now, we are still in a pandemic. COVID is still spreading. We still have a very problematic virus that is spreading wildly. What should we be doing right now to address it? And I'm asking that in the context of - a lot of the COVID protections that had been in place and financial supports, whether its the cost, having free testing, free vaccinations, access to some time off, extra unemployment, the eviction moratoriums - all of those policies and protections that were put into place, many of them have expired. And so we're still in a situation where COVID is spreading, but we don't have the kind of rigor or coverage with testing, or treatment, or even people being able to manage being sick that we did before. Should the state be doing more? Would you do something different as a state legislator?
[00:17:07] Nicole Gomez: Yeah, it's a sticky situation. But first of all, my answer would be, yes. I would try to push for at least some of the services. For instance, I was in Yakima a couple of weeks ago for work, and one of the people I was with was like - oh, I have to go on a flight when I get back to Seattle and I need a COVID test for this conference that I need to be at. And so she started looking up to see whether or not there was anything there that she could just go quickly get a test and have her results. And there's not - there was nothing open and we were just floored that that was a thing. It's always so easy in certain areas of the state to get a test that that just didn't even cross our minds. And that's happening all over the place right now. So what we're seeing is a huge spike in COVID cases and it's just not working. So definitely I would want to see more availability of, not only the vaccine, but also testing sites or - and I know that we still have the ability to order tests online but quite frankly, I don't think a lot of people know about that. It's not like we sent out something in the mail - it's information that you have to seek out. And if you're not watching local TV - I don't know how many people do anymore because we've got all these really great streaming services - it becomes hard. But at the legislature, I would love to see better funding for public health because let's face it - with the way climate change has accelerated, I think that we're gonna see a lot more of this type of situation. We're going to see potential new, novel diseases and we have learned a lot from this pandemic - and I think that will be helpful in shoring up some of our public health programs moving forward.
[00:19:25] Crystal Fincher: Well, I certainly hope so. And the projections moving forward, considering everything, are not necessarily encouraging. But I'm hoping that more can be done to mitigate that.
Now there's a lot of people who are very concerned about crime and afraid of being victimized, and the conversation about public safety has been intense and getting more intense with very differing viewpoints sometimes. What can you do - again, an area where a lot of the policy is enacted on a city and county level - in localities with police departments and the city's dictating them, sheriff's departments and the county's dictating them. In your role as a state legislator, what can you do to address people's concerns that they're not feeling safe?
[00:20:23] Nicole Gomez: I think everybody deserves to feel secure in their - where they live - we can do better in that area. I've heard from businesses who have had their windows smashed in just overnight for no apparent reason. I think some of the things that people connect to public safety is homelessness, because they see homeless people out and about. And so in their head, they're like - oh, that's the problem. And then there's other people who see that the problem is drug use, and that is also a problem. So you're going through these things and you're like - we need to address the root causes of what's going on, quite frankly. More police is not the answer. The answer is to get people to support they need, whether whether that be treatment programs - I don't tell people this very often, but my brother-in-law went through a situation not long ago that ended up with us having to try to seek care for him. And it was really difficult. It took a few times to get him cleaned up and getting into the programs in the first place - it's not easy, it's not cheap, it's pretty much an exclusive situation if you don't have the funds to do that. And so, you're looking around and you're seeing all of these different problems and it's just - it comes down to we haven't been properly funding our safety net programs for decades and it's time to do that.
[00:22:36] Crystal Fincher: It is time to do that. What would you prioritize when it comes to funding safety net programs or actions? What is at the top of your list and that you think would make the biggest difference?
[00:22:50] Nicole Gomez: Tax reform. We need tax reform. That's the long and short of it - I have heard from neighbors their property taxes are really high. We have seen that that there are - there's just so many different problems with our tax system. We don't have an income tax here in Washington state - I would love to see a progressive income tax if that were ever a possibility. But I say, what we do to start is to - Rep Frame had a tax on an excess of wealth - it was a 1% tax on the value of stocks, bonds, and intangible assets over a billion dollars. So essentially only the very wealthy few would be paying that, but our tax code is upside down - the low and middle-income households are paying up to 17% of their income on taxes, while the wealthy few pay like 3% - that's ridiculous. I don't know how else to make it resonate with people, but I'm trying. When I talk to people about all these programs, I'm like - that's great, I love it, but we need to fund it. So let's get onboard, let's organize, let's talk to the rest of the state, let's talk to folks here in Seattle - educate people on what this would mean for them, putting a real dollar value on what they'd be saving or be getting back into their pay so that they could afford their rent increases that have been happening. Gosh, it's just a whole thing, and people are tired and frustrated and want action.
[00:24:51] Crystal Fincher: People are tired and frustrated and want action. And another thing that they are also tired and frustrated about is looking at the projections that are - and what's happening in our world around us - with extreme heat, extreme cold events, wildfires, just so much related to climate change already. And the projections being very dire that if we don't take significant action now, we are in for a world of hurt and our children are in for a world that we don't recognize. What should we be doing? And what will you lean on as a state legislator to address climate change and mitigate the impacts that we're experiencing?
[00:25:43] Nicole Gomez: Yeah. So, we all - I hope we all understand that this needs to be addressed. This is probably one of the top issues around the world. We need to address this situation. One of the things that I love about the 36th district is that there are so many people who are amazing experts in climate change policy, and so I'm super excited to have the chance to work with them on it - because it's a policy area that I haven't fully delved into yet. But something that I have appreciated, that the state has done, is last session they passed this transformative bill - it's called the HEAL Act - and it is pretty amazing, because one of the things that the HEAL Act does is it puts the focus back onto communities like a ground-up approach. So, they have a health disparities map and it also, on that map, adds to it some of the environmental factors. And so looking at that, they're targeting certain communities are most effected and going in as state agencies - I think there's seven state agencies that are tasked with this community building. And they're going in, talking to people who live in those communities, and then will be bringing recommendations based on what the community input is. So I think that that's something that is important.
Other things that we would have to do is - it's starting to transition to green buildings. We need more materials for that. Right now it doesn't make much sense, but I think that right now we are getting - a lot of the materials are not made in the country. And so when you're thinking towards what Washington looks like in the future, we have such a huge manufacturing employment base, or manufacturing industry. What about switching those over to making green materials? What does that look like? So there's plenty of things to consider and I'm excited to learn more and to work with advocates on it.
[00:28:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. When it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, our transportation sector is responsible for the majority of emissions here. There was a lot of conversation during the session about whether or not we should be expanding highways at this time, given that we know it doesn't reduce traffic, but it does increase emissions. Will you support or oppose the expansion of highways in future transportation packages?
[00:29:08] Nicole Gomez: I don't think that the highway expansions - some of them are unnecessary. The more room you have, the harder - it doesn't actually help traffic, if that makes sense.
[00:29:27] Crystal Fincher: It does make sense. It's counterintuitive because we've grown up with a lot of people just establishing conventional wisdom, which oftentimes is not attached to reality, that - oh, traffic is bad, add another lane, that'll do it. But it actually makes traffic worse when you add that lane. But with that, so given that and the reason for so many expansions is to accommodate future capacity and reduce traffic - would you vote for a bill that had highway expansion?
[00:30:04] Nicole Gomez: It really does depend on the location. It depends on - so what's happening right now is that because it's so unaffordable to live here in Seattle, people are moving further out. And so if there is an area that's growing and that needs it and it's further away from where there are jobs and if you're having to drive more than a couple of miles to get to a grocery store - those are all real things. So, I can't say that - no, completely, no more new roads. You can't bike in some areas, right? There's mountains. So those are - each situation is a very separate thing. One of the things that we're trying to do is increase options for transit, public transit. And so where does the public transit drive on? So those are all - until we have more walkable, small cities and areas to where people can get to everything that they need in a really small, short area - I have two grocery stores nearby, but that's not the case in other areas of the state. So, I think it's a very individual situation.
[00:31:41] Crystal Fincher: You mentioned displacement and people being pushed out of areas where they live, areas have been gentrified, people have been priced out and excluded, people are having a harder time living close to where they work, and people are very concerned that Seattle - now with an average median income over a hundred thousand dollars - is just going to be a place for people who are well-off and wealthy. And if you have an average income for the state, for the country - then you just are not included in that kind of an area, or have the opportunity to live in a neighborhood that's walkable and dense, or have access to services that now are increasingly concentrated around cities and urban areas and not in areas that a lot of people are being pushed out to. What can you do as a legislator? What kind of policy or action could you take to address that?
[00:32:46] Nicole Gomez: That's a good question. So you have the ability to diversify neighborhoods through building more housing in those areas. That's how you build diversity in neighborhoods - is allowing those places to be built. So a lot of the neighborhoods in the 36th are single-family housing areas, there are less places where you can put apartment-style or condo-style housing than there used to be. I don't even know how long ago it was - 15, 20 years, I don't remember - but there used to be a greater ability to build density and that's not the case now. There's actually very few places where you can build higher up, so a lot of what we can do as a legislator, or as legislators - is to partner with our cities, partner with our counties, work on actual plans government-to-government initiatives are a thing. You're there to represent people and essentially you're a lobbyist for your people that live in your neighborhood, that live in your - where you live. And so, you take their ideas and try to make them happen. And so part of that is having a really good relationship with your local people - call up people from King County, go testify at their meetings - it's real.
[00:34:54] Crystal Fincher: I got you. So there are also conversations, and going back to the last legislative session, about what we need to do to restore trust and build trust in institutions involved in our criminal legal system, including policing. There've been a number of incidents - obviously we've talked a lot over the years on this show just about various incidents - but there was action taken this past legislative session to roll back a number of policies. There are also several challenges from within our system of policing, within our systems of prosecution that seem to allow bad acts to occur without any accountability. And a lot of people are like - hey, we are asking a minimum wage earner to be more accountable, to employ more judgment, and they're experiencing more consequences than some of the highly-paid professionals in policing, in prosecutor's office, judges. One, do you agree with the action that was taken this past legislative session, and what more can be done to increase accountability and trust with the public?
[00:36:25] Nicole Gomez: I don't agree with rolling back what was done. And I will say that I used to work for a district attorney's office, I was a crime victims coordinator, I've worked with a ton of law enforcement - different types of agencies even - and they have a rough job and so I have respect for them. It's hard to go out every day and deal with stuff that you've been - the same people, the same problems - and I know it's their job, right? That's a real thing, but it gets frustrating because I think they also feel like they're not being listened to, so I get that. At the same time, they're accountable to the public - they're public servants. And so, that is - you have to hold those things together at the same time and it's difficult, especially because right now they've lost all public trust. And I would like to see them meet the public halfway. It feels right now - it feels like they got their feelings hurt and are pouting. And instead of trying to collaboratively work on the problem - so rebuilding trust takes a long time - and it takes transparency, it takes accountability, it takes effort, and it takes people to get out there, show up, be there for your community. Go to the night-out parties at your local, in your streets, in your blocks. Do the - get out of your car and go walk your neighborhood, bike your neighborhood, meet people, talk - those are the kinds of things that I think would help to rebuild trust.
As far as the legislature goes, I would love to dig in and learn a little bit more about the behind the scenes, the sausage of what happened, because I have a feeling that there's a lot that went into it and I'd be interested in talking to everybody. One of the things that I'm a big believer in is making sure that you've researched all sides of any given problem. And currently from what I've seen - it's through media and other people - so actually knowing what those behind-the-scenes conversations are would help in figuring out how to move forward. That's definitely a necessity in order to tackle such a hard problem. But I also get that they're frustrated and it goes back to those social programs. We have to do something. We literally have not been funding them for years.
[00:40:17] Crystal Fincher: All right. Well, we are coming to the end here, but as we close, there are - you're in a crowded race for the open seat, there are a lot of candidates in the race. Why should voters choose you? And how would their lives be impacted differently with you versus the other candidates?
[00:40:38] Nicole Gomez: Yeah. Well, I think with me - I come with a variety of experience, lived experience. I come with a few different fields - I've worked in healthcare policy as an advocate, as a volunteer advocate. I've been training people on civics, civic engagement. I have been - I've worked in workers' compensation for over 15 years. There's - it's a multifaceted person who hasn't had one specific path - it's all culminated into this ability to know how systems work. It's what I do. For me, I think the people of the 36th would get a thoughtful, humble servant. I have an innate curiosity about why we do the things we do. And I have a proven drive to change something if it no longer serves our community, and I would be honored to be able to represent this district that I love and call home.
[00:41:52] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:41:54] Nicole Gomez: Thank you - great talking to you.
[00:41:56] Crystal Fincher: You too. I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Metro News Columnist and Opinion Editor for The News Tribune, Matt Driscoll, co-hosts with Crystal. They begin by diving into the impact of the leaked draft of the Supreme Court opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade, frustration with the response from many elected leaders, more rights that are on the chopping block, and–now more than ever–the importance of local government. The impact of Roe v. Wade being overturned on the LGBTQ+ community sparks a discussion on Pierce County Executive Bruce Dammeier’s actions to block pride flags from flying across the county. Crystal and Matt wrap up the show by discussing the harm that the War on Drugs has inflicted for decades and how I-1922, an initiative to replace the failed War on Drugs with proven approaches that address substance use disorder through prevention, outreach, and recovery services, would reduce that harm.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Matt Driscoll, at @mattsdriscoll. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Think tossing Roe doesn’t affect WA? Try again. State must protect abortion, other rights” by Matt Driscoll from The News Tribune: https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/matt-driscoll/article261030217.html#storylink=cpy
“What the overturning of Roe v. Wade could mean for same-sex marriage rights” by Christine Pae from KING5: https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/roe-v-wade-same-sex-marriage-rights-united-states/281-38d7431a-b267-4b90-957e-5e6a4512da4c?ref=exit-recirc
“Democrats Want Your Vote, Socialists Want Your Feet on the Street” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/05/04/72555229/democrats-want-your-vote-socialists-want-your-feet-on-the-street
“Slog AM: Seattle Public Schools Changes Sexual Harassment Policies, King County to "Explore Proposals" to Fund Abortion, and How to Vaccinate a Tiger” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/05/05/72596019/slog-am-seattle-public-schools-changes-sexual-harassment-policies-king-county-to-explore-proposals-to-fund-abortion-and-how-to-vaccinate
“Why Justice Alito’s Draft Opinion to Overturn Roe Makes No Fucking Sense” by Will Casey from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/05/03/72401871/why-justice-alitos-draft-opinion-to-overturn-roe-makes-no-fucking-sense
“End of Roe v. Wade looms large in Idaho, where women are likely to seek abortions in Washington” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/end-of-roe-v-wade-looms-large-in-idaho-where-women-are-likely-to-seek-abortions-in-washington/
“Will Pierce County buildings ever fly the Pride flag? Not at this rate, and it’s shameful” by The News Tribune Editorial Board from The News Tribune: https://www.thenewstribune.com/opinion/article260828227.html#storylink=cpy
“Legalize drug possession in WA? Initiative should be a no-brainer, but expect a fight” by Matt Driscoll from The News Tribune: https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/matt-driscoll/article261098197.html#storylink=cpy
“New Poll Suggests Most of Washington Wants to End the War on Drugs” by Rich Smith from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/05/02/72070084/we-want-to-end-the-war-on-drugs
“Could WA be the next state to decriminalize drugs? Voters might get to decide in November” by Shauna Sowersby from The Olympian: https://www.theolympian.com/news/state/washington/article260900057.html#storylink=cpy
“WA introduces ballot measure to decriminalize drug possession” by MyNorthwest Staff from MyNorthwest: https://mynorthwest.com/3460600/wa-ballot-measure-legalize-drug-possession/
“Measure to decriminalize all drugs rolls out in Washington state” by Paige Browning from KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/stories/measure-to-decriminalize-all-drugs-rolls-out-in-washington-state
“WA Ballot Measure to Decriminalize Drugs Has Early Poll Lead” by Ben Adlin from Filter: https://filtermag.org/washington-drug-decriminalization-polls/
Transcript
Transcript will be uploaded as soon as possible.
On this Hacks & Wonks midweek episode, Katie Wilson, General Secretary of the Transit Riders Union, answers all of Crystal’s questions about the Raise the Wage Tukwila initiative. They cover how minimum wage in one of the most diverse cities in the state lags behind neighboring jurisdictions, why the proposed policy is so impactful and timely, the broad coalition of support and input behind the initiative, and the many ways to get involved with the campaign.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and Katie Wilson at @WilsonKatieB, and follow the Transit Riders Union at @SeattleTRU.
Resources
Raise the Wage Tukwila: https://www.raisethewagetukwila.org/
“Initiative aimed at Southcenter could raise minimum wage in Tukwila to match SeaTac, Seattle” by Daniel Beekman for The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/initiative-aimed-at-southcenter-could-raise-minimum-wage-in-tukwila-to-match-seatac-seattle/
“Group aims to bring Seattle minimum wage push to Tukwila” by KIRO Newsradio Newsdesk for MyNorthwest: https://mynorthwest.com/3407417/tukwila-minimum-wage-push/
Get Involved and Volunteer: https://www.raisethewagetukwila.org/get-involved
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I am excited to welcome Katie Wilson back to the program, and she's the co-founder and General Secretary of the Seattle Transit Riders Union and a former Crosscut columnist. Welcome back, Katie.
[00:00:50] Katie Wilson: Thank you, Crystal. Great to be here again.
[00:00:53] Crystal Fincher: Well, I am excited to have you back here to talk about the Raise the Wage initiative in Tukwila. What is this?
[00:01:02] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so this has been in the works for about the last six months and the Transit Riders Union has been building a coalition and doing outreach to workers and residents in the City of Tukwila. And we have launched a ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage. So right now in the City of Tukwila, the minimum wage is $14.49, which is our statewide minimum wage this year in Washington state. But there are two jurisdictions in Washington that have higher minimum wages, and those are SeaTac and Seattle. In Seattle this year, the minimum wage is $17.27; and in SeaTac - for most workers, is up to $17.54, so there's about a $3 difference there. And we want to close that gap. So we want to bring Tukwila's minimum wage up to match the wage next door in SeaTac, which next year with the cost of living increase, we think will probably be over $18 an hour.
[00:01:56] Crystal Fincher: For those who may be unacquainted, SeaTac is actually - was actually - the first city in the country to pass a $15 minimum wage initiative. So kind of operating right next door where history is made - what influenced your decision to do this right now in Tukwila?
[00:02:15] Katie Wilson: Yeah, I think this is a really interesting time to be doing a minimum wage initiative - as we're coming out of the pandemic or we all hope that we are, the cost of living is just going up so fast, right? We have the cost of gas, the cost of food, inflation, and also rents are rising. There was a period during the pandemic where there was basically a rent freeze, but now we're finding people who are getting rent increase notices of $200, $300 a month, so people are really feeling the pinch. And we're also in a moment for worker activism. We're seeing workers at Starbucks, workers at Amazon starting to organize and so - this campaign started before that got going, but I think we are in a moment where workers are feeling kind of bold. And so we just thought that this was a great moment to raise wages.
We would love to do this across King County, but unfortunately, the way our political system works, you have to kind of do it a city at a time. So, we thought that Tukwila being a huge job center - it's a small city in terms of residential population, but there are about 45,000 jobs in Tukwila. There's the Southcenter Mall, which is one of the biggest retail shopping centers in the state, lots of low wage retail and food service jobs, lots of warehouse jobs. And so we thought that now's the time to raise the minimum wage in Tukwila.
[00:03:47] Crystal Fincher: And it makes sense, and it's so needed. And the country - actions across the country seem to be acknowledging that - when we look at the movements just in support of unionization, which are largely about wages and benefits and just keeping up with inflation, in addition to just making sure that the profits that the employees helped to generate are being distributed in a more fair way. Inequality has just gotten so lopsided and so ubiquitous that people are just fed up and sick of it. What has the reception been like so far in Tukwila?
[00:04:27] Katie Wilson: We're just getting a super positive reception, which is heartening when we think about the ballot fight ahead in the fall. But starting last November, our team did a bunch of outreach to workers at and around Southcenter Mall, and we did a couple of surveys, talked to dozens of workers - and found really high support for this idea of raising the minimum wage. And then we've been door knocking and we've been out there gathering petition signatures now for about a month. And the response at the doors is overwhelmingly positive - vast majority of people that we talked to support this idea, and it really just seems like common sense at this point. When you say, we want to raise Tukwila's minimum wage to match what they've got next door in SeaTac, it's not a hard sell.
Of course, this is before any opposition messaging. And we definitely have to expect that we're going to have strong and well-funded opposition in the fall. I think that probably the National Retail Association, Franchise Association - these big business groups - are not going to want to see this happen. And so we have to expect that they're going to pour a lot of money into trying to get people to vote No. And I'm sure, they'll say, this is going to cause businesses to close, this is going to raise prices even more, it's going to make inflation even worse. So I think we're going to have to contend with that, but I think our base level of support among Tukwila residents and workers is very, very high.
[00:05:55] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and we heard all of those things when SeaTac passed their $15 minimum wage ordinance, or when they passed that on the ballot. When Seattle passed the minimum wage ordinance, a lot of predictions of doom and gloom. Going way back years ago, just as Washington had one of the higher minimum wages than several other states in the United States - again, people, business lobbies kept saying, well you're going to - this is job-killing legislation. You're really gonna make this a hardship for businesses. Everyone's gonna flee. And then we saw our population skyrocket, businesses move here en masse, people move here en masse. It really seems to have fueled the economy in our region, rather than been a drag on it. What do you respond - how do you respond to people when they do raise concerns about this potentially being harmful to jobs? How do you address that with them?
[00:07:00] Katie Wilson: Yeah, I think it is very helpful that we have these two precedents in SeaTac and Seattle right next door. 'Cause we can say, look - they did it and the sky didn't fall. And as you mentioned, there was a lot of fearmongering, especially in Seattle, about - oh, businesses are going to close. And then some of the businesses that said they would have to close, ended up expanding. And the research shows that it had very, very little negative effect in terms of business closures in Seattle. And obviously, our economy continues to boom, so I think that that's really helpful. So we haven't actually heard a lot of that from people - again, I think that once the opposition gets going, that will be more out there in the airwaves.
And then, I think to the raising prices or the inflation concern - what we usually say if someone is worried about that is, look - prices are already going up for reasons that don't have much to do with workers' wages. And so everything's getting more expensive and it's the lowest wage workers who are being left behind, so if we don't do something, it's just going to get worse. And people tend to be pretty receptive to that argument.
[00:08:10] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. So were people who lived and worked - who live and work in Tukwila - were they involved in the crafting of this initiative?
[00:08:19] Katie Wilson: Yeah, absolutely. So that was part of why we started doing all this outreach to workers and also to organizations that are rooted in Tukwila communities. Tukwila is one of the most diverse cities in our state, I think - it's just like half of families speak a language other than English at home. Tukwila was historically a refugee resettlement area, so there's just a ton of different - people of different nationalities, different backgrounds, different languages. And so, we've also done a lot of talking to, working with organizations that do work in Tukwila. And so we got a lot of input on the policy from those organizations, from residents, from workers. And for example, one of the ways that worker input really shaped the policy is that we had been thinking at some point - we had been discussing including a kind of a scheduling law, similar to Seattle's secure scheduling, in the ordinance - and through conversations with workers, what we heard from them is, keep it simple. Basically raise the wage - the scheduling stuff sounds like it might be good, but it sounds kind of complicated. And so we ended up basically doing that - and all we've included in terms of scheduling is a - what's called an access to hours policy. So that basically says that employers should offer available hours to existing part-time employees before hiring new employees or subcontractors. But apart from that, we're keeping it real simple and just focusing on the wage.
Another way that input shaped this policy is we did a lot of talking to local businesses - local small businesses - especially immigrant-owned restaurants. And what we've done is basically we have a few tiers. So for large businesses, which is those with 501 or more employees worldwide, the wage is going to go up all at once in July of next year. And then for businesses smaller than that, we have a three-year phase-in period to give them some time to adjust. And then the very smallest businesses, those with fewer than 15 employees and less than $2 million in annual gross revenue, are exempt. And so that came out of conversations with small business owners, as well as residents.
[00:10:39] Crystal Fincher: So a wide swath of the community was included in this - it wasn't like it was just workers and excluded businesses. This was shaped by people who are living and working and operating businesses in the City of Tukwila right now.
[00:10:55] Katie Wilson: Yeah, exactly. And it's complicated too, because if you look at Tukwila residents, there's about 20,000 people who live in the city of Tukwila and then there's the 45,000 jobs in the city. And so there are a bunch of people who both live and work in the City of Tukwila, but there's a lot of people who live in Tukwila and don't work there - they work in Seattle, or they work in SeaTac, or they work in another city. And then there's also a lot of people who work in Tukwila who don't live there. And so people are coming to Tukwila from all over King County and beyond, and especially other cities in south King County, in order to work. So there's an interesting dynamic there where you have these different constituencies. And when we're trying to win this at the ballot this fall, we're basically asking a lot of people who aren't going to directly benefit from it - because they don't work in Tukwila - to vote for it.
[00:11:47] Crystal Fincher: Well, and that's really interesting. And so often we're used to hearing, especially covered in media, perspectives of business owners and corporate lobbyists. But what impact is made when you give workers more money? What does that do for those workers and for a community like Tukwila?
[00:12:11] Katie Wilson: Yeah, I think the obvious thing is that it makes it easier for people to pay the rent, it makes it easier for people to afford things like healthcare, like groceries. And when we were talking to workers last year and early this year, when we were doing surveys, the kind of things that we heard from people were that, I'd like to make a wage that's high enough that I could have my own place. People are doubling up in apartments because they can't afford the rent, so that kind of independence of having your own place. Or I'd like to make enough that I could not only afford the necessities, but I could save a little - I think it was like 77% of the workers that we surveyed said that they didn't - they weren't able to save money because their wages were so low. And I think like a third of the workers we surveyed said that they would like to go back to school, but they don't have time or can't afford it - so having the means to go back to school, further your education, that's another thing. So really it's just - it's a really basic thing, right? It's like give people the money that they need to lead a dignified and independent life.
[00:13:15] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and giving, especially lower wage workers, more money has a higher percentage of an effect per dollar because they're spending the majority of that money - whether it is on education, whether it's on housing in the community, or out to eat, going to the movies, going to entertain themselves. All of that money comes back. And so an investment in workers in a city really is an investment in the city. Have you talked with people in Tukwila so far and gotten feedback on, yeah, I'm not working in Tukwila, I just live here. What do they think?
[00:13:57] Katie Wilson: Yeah, and I think that's right - what you just said. It's also money that can be spent at local businesses. And we have a good handful of local businesses that have endorsed the campaign because they see that - they see how putting more money into the hands of working families means that people have more disposable income to spend in the community. And I think another thing that's pretty persuasive for residents who don't currently work in Tukwila is - maybe you could work in Tukwila, maybe you could get a job closer to home. So there's a lot of people who commute to the airport to work in SeaTac, or they commute up to Seattle - because of the higher wages. And commuting takes time, commuting takes money. And so the idea that we're creating better jobs right here in Tukwila so that people can work closer to where they live, I think is a really strong argument for this for Tukwila residents.
[00:14:52] Crystal Fincher: A really powerful thing and giving someone the ability to work close to where they live just has so many benefits for that individual, their family, the community. Someone doesn't have to be commuting far - they have more time to spend at home doing what they enjoy. They aren't just having to spend so many of their own resources on the costs of commuting, most of which is done by car and all of the expenses related to that. There are just so many benefits there. So you said you are now signature gathering?
[00:15:32] Katie Wilson: Yes, that's right. We are about one month into signature gathering and two months to go. So, yeah and we need all the help we can get. So you want to come down and gather five signatures for us - that's - every signature counts.
[00:15:46] Crystal Fincher: How does someone go about that? How do they get in contact with you and what do they typically do while their signature gathering?
[00:15:53] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so we have a campaign website and it is at raisethewagetukwila.org. So I encourage folks to go and check that out - and there's a form there where you can sign up for updates and to get involved to volunteer. And so, yeah - go fill that out and one of us will get in touch with you and help you figure out how to plug in.
Basically, signature gathering - a lot of what we've been doing so far is door-knocking. And the reason that we're focusing a lot on door-knocking is that that is a very reliable way to find people who live in Tukwila. So it's Tukwila voters, Tukwila residents who need to sign this petition. And if you go to the Southcenter Mall, which is in Tukwila, and you talk to people walking around there, they're from all over. And so finding Tukwila residents at some place like the Southcenter Mall can feel a little bit like finding a needle in a haystack. So a lot of what we've been doing so far is door-knocking, but I think we're actually - we've had some good luck recently standing outside a couple of the grocery stores in or near Tukwila. There are some other public places, parks that I think would also be worth tabling or just talking to people who are outside - so we can do some of that too. So yeah, basically a combination of door-knocking and finding people in public places.
[00:17:13] Crystal Fincher: Okay, and how long will the signature gathering effort go on?
[00:17:18] Katie Wilson: We think that we have to turn in our signatures probably around the end of June, maybe closer to mid-June. And that's to give time for King County Elections to count and verify that we have enough. And then it goes to the Tukwila City Council. And then - they actually have a choice at that point. They could just pass it themselves without making any changes or, what we expect them to do more likely is, send it to the ballot in the fall.
[00:17:45] Crystal Fincher: It sure would be nice if they passed it - it would save everyone a lot of time and money. But if it does go on the ballot, are you prepared to mount a campaign and take on any opposition that might appear.
[00:18:01] Katie Wilson: Oh yeah - totally prepared. Well, we are getting prepared. I will say that this is a shoestring operation, right? We don't have dozens of paid staff and a million dollars. This is a very volunteer-powered operation, which is why I hope that people will get involved. And so we're going to do the best we can. I think we will have a robust, mostly volunteer-driven Get Out The Vote operation in the fall where we'll be following up with everyone who signed our petition and others. And I should say, in terms of the number of signatures that we have to gather - technically we have to gather - it sounds like a small number - 1,661 valid signatures of Tukwila voters. Now you need to overshoot because some of those are going to be tossed out for signature issues or whatever, but we actually have a more ambitious goal of over 3,000. And the reason that we want to overshoot that much is because we really want to make contact with people now, right? The people who are going to have to vote for this in the fall - we want to be talking to them now, so that once the opposition gets to them, they've already heard from us. So that's why we're kind of trying to overshoot.
[00:19:17] Crystal Fincher: Which makes sense, and I actually think your strategy of signature gathering via canvassing makes so much sense because it is the start of a campaign. Sometimes with ballot initiatives, it's like, okay, it's such a push and so much work to get the signatures necessary to get on the ballot. Sometimes people don't think about that and I think you're actually pretty modest - you've put a lot of thought into this and the ability - what you're doing right now in canvassing, making sure people just understand the nuts and bolts of the initiative, and really you're playing catch up to the other cities in terms of minimum wage just trying not to be behind them and putting employees in Tukwila at a disadvantage in comparison to workers in the surrounding cities. Just makes so much sense and it's so simple - that you are getting to thousands of people who are going to be those voters and that in and of itself could win the election. So, I just think that that is a really smart thing to do. Definitely achievable. And I'm looking forward to this.
Now, you said it's going to go to the city council - once the signatures are gathered, they have the choice to put it on. What has the reception been like from Tukwila City Council members and other electeds?
[00:20:41] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so we actually have a lot of support on the Tukwila City Council - five out of the seven councilmembers have actually endorsed the campaign - so that's great. And obviously makes it perhaps more likely that they would consider just passing it themselves. I do think - we haven't actually decided yet in the Transit Riders Union and then in the coalition whether to push them to do that or not - I think there are also kind of pluses to going to the ballot from an organizing perspective. So we'll see, but there's a lot of support there. And then, we have endorsements also from the two State representatives in the 11th LD. And also Congressman Adam Smith has endorsed and a candidate for that position, Stephanie Gallardo, has endorsed as well.
[00:21:31] Crystal Fincher: So pretty broad support just across the board on all levels, it seems like.
[00:21:38] Katie Wilson: Yeah, it's a remarkably uncontroversial idea so far. So we'll see.
[00:21:43] Crystal Fincher: And again, if you just think about it - really not surprising given how popular unionizing organizing is going, how there seems to be just a really broad understanding and acceptance that workers have been getting the raw end of the deal for a long time. And as companies have generated record profits, even through the pandemic, people at the top have made out like bandits while people at the bottom continue to struggle. And so improving the minimum wage just seems like the most common sense, basic thing that should be happening, that could be happening. And if it hasn't happened yet, it's coming.
[00:22:27] Katie Wilson: Yeah, that's totally true. And I think that we're also helped by the fact that raising the national minimum wage has been out there on the airwaves for quite some time now. So I do think that this just strikes people as a really natural thing to do. It's very different from the situation in SeaTac back in 2013, where that was first one in the country - 15 just sounded crazy high to people. So I do think that we have a much easier road ahead of us, but at the same time don't want to be overconfident 'cause a couple million dollars from the opposition can do a lot of damage.
[00:23:02] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and sometimes they get really threatened by things like this. Have you received, or what kind of coverage have you received so far media-wise?
[00:23:13] Katie Wilson: Yeah - well, we had a great article by Daniel Beekman in The Seattle Times - I think that was in March, a little bit before we launched. And yeah, he talked to a bunch of workers that - we helped to put him in touch with some of them - and he did a real great job of demonstrating the lay of the land and the stories of some of the workers who are supporting this and who will be affected by it.
[00:23:38] Crystal Fincher: All right. So you gave the website before - if people want to get involved, they can get involved with collecting signatures. Are there any other ways for people to get involved right now?
[00:23:51] Katie Wilson: Yeah, absolutely. So, we also have a bunch of data entry work that can be done remotely. So we're actually checking our petition entries against the voter file to keep track of how well we're doing. And so that's one thing that people can help with and we can do a Zoom training to get people trained up on that. And we also have - every Saturday at the Sullivan Center in Tukwila - we have an action meeting, which is a space where there's some other indoor volunteer activities that people can do. And so, from 1-3 PM every Saturday, so that's kind of our big volunteer day, so we also have a couple of door-knocking shifts that we've - on Saturdays. So that's a great opportunity to get involved. And also we just accept donations - like I said, a shoestring operation, so if you have a few bucks to spare, you can donate from the website as well - raisethewagetukwila.org.
[00:24:50] Crystal Fincher: All right - that makes a lot of sense. Now you made mention that the Transit Riders Union and the group would ultimately get together and decide whether, as an entity, you wanted to support passage through the city council or going to the ballot. Who is the group that is making this decision and how will that decision be made?
[00:25:16] Katie Wilson: Yeah, we're kind of figuring that out - in the Transit Riders Union, we have our own kind of democratic process - we're a membership organization, so we kind of have a mechanism to - we meet every month and we can have this debate about what we think makes sense. But in terms of the broader coalition, we have a bunch of organizations that have endorsed this campaign - they're listed on the website - and we have bi-weekly meetings where some of us get together and kind of chat stuff through. So we'll have to figure out a process of consulting with our allies in this campaign. And maybe we all come to a united position and decide to push them or not to push them, or maybe different organizations go their own way. So that's something that we'll have to figure out over the next couple months.
[00:26:02] Crystal Fincher: So it sounds like you have a pretty broad coalition - who are some of the organizations within it?
[00:26:09] Katie Wilson: Yeah - some of the endorsers of the campaign - so there's African Community Housing & Development, there's the Refugee Women's Alliance. There's a few labor unions - UFCW 21, WFSE 304, UniteHere! Local 8, MLK Labor also recently endorsed, Gabriela Seattle, which I believe works with Filipino workers. Golly - I'm not looking at it, so I'm - now I'm feeling bad because I'm sure I'm going to miss an organization.
[00:26:42] Crystal Fincher: And I did pop on - I see Puget Sound Advocates For Retirement Action, Fair Work Center, Global to Local - just a lot there - We Are Working Washington, Working Families Party. It looks like there are a number there, as well as several local businesses who are endorsing, in addition to just a number of the councilmembers and candidates that you mentioned. So it looks like it is a pretty broad coalition with supportive local businesses, who I'm looking at - you have listed here. So definitely a few support the initiative and look at supporting them - that seems like it would make sense. Just a lot involved here and I love that the community that is impacted was involved in creating this initiative - from both the worker and the small business perspective. Is there anything else that you, just as we close, would want people to know or do about this initiative?
[00:27:47] Katie Wilson: If anyone's listening who lives or works in Tukwila, we would love to hear from you. So yeah - get involved. Obviously there's a lot of great stuff to get involved in right now - I know in Seattle, obviously, the House Our Neighbors initiative is just starting signature gathering. Statewide, there's the Whole Washington initiative. So there are a lot of opportunities right now to get out and gather signatures for a good cause, and so I would just encourage everyone to get out there and do something if you can. If signature gathering is not your cup of tea, yeah - data entry. I think putting a few hours into this, or one of the other great campaigns that's going on right now, really makes a difference.
[00:28:30] Crystal Fincher: It does. And especially with these campaigns - volunteers do so much valuable work for these and other similar types of campaigns. So sometimes people are like, well, I don't know how much of a difference I could make in this thing. And people make so much of a difference - an individual could make so much of a difference.
[00:28:50] Katie Wilson: We absolutely could not - we could not do this campaign at all without lots and lots of volunteers. So, yeah.
[00:28:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely - so if you're so inclined, definitely do that. It makes a difference. And I guess I'll just give you the last word as we part here.
[00:29:12] Katie Wilson: Yeah - let's Raise the Wage. Let's do this all over King County.
[00:29:16] Crystal Fincher: Makes sense to me. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Katie. We'll include all of the links that we talked about in the show notes if you want more information, and we'll certainly stay tuned and keep updated on how things are going in Tukwila.
I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by former Seattle mayor and current Executive Director of America Walks, Mike McGinn. The show starts off with news that covid cases are on the rise in Washington and an estimated 75% of children have been infected, and Mike shares his personal experience traveling post-mask mandate. Then, Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison's plan to eliminate community court as an option for repeat offenders sparks a conversation on fear of crime and how that intersects with crime statistics and politicians’ response. They also discuss another sobering statistic: violent crime is 61% higher today than it was during the McGinn administration. The hosts recount the work that his office undertook to reduce crime, with McGinn offering advice to Mayor Harrell on the types of evidence-based interventions that will keep people from being victimized and make our streets safer.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Mike McGinn, at @mayormcginn. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
America Walks: https://americawalks.org
Seattle Youth Violence Prevention Initiative: http://www.ncdsv.org/images/UNITY_CityVoices_SeattleYouthViolencePreventionInitiative_6-2011.pdf
READI Chicago: https://www.heartlandalliance.org/readi/
“COVID still the leading cause of work-related deaths in WA” by Amanda Zhou from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/covid-still-the-leading-cause-of-work-related-deaths-in-wa/
“King County’s COVID-19 Situation Hits a “Yellow Light”” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/04/25/71684927/king-countys-covid-19-situation-hits-a-yellow-light
“CDC estimates 3 in 4 kids have had coronavirus infections” by Mike Stobbe from The Associated Press:
https://apnews.com/article/cdc-covid-infections-kids-baefa22555970245f0ff939e7bbc7c80
“Slog PM: 75% of Kids Caught COVID, The City Suddenly Cares About Rape Apologia, Seattle Is Scary but We Are Scarier” https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/04/27/71895403/slog-pm-75-of-kids-caught-covid-the-city-suddenly-cares-about-rape-apologia-seattle-is-scary-but-we-are-scarier
“Seattle city attorney pushes to prosecute repeat offenders” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-city-attorney-issues-formal-request-to-prosecute-repeat-offenders/
“City Attorney Davison Asks Court to Let Her Deny “High Utilizers” Access to Community Court” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola: https://publicola.com/2022/04/27/city-attorney-davison-asks-court-to-let-her-deny-high-utilizers-access-to-community-court/
“Police misconduct is costing WA taxpayers millions. The trend shows no sign of slowing down” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/police-misconduct-is-costing-washington-taxpayers-millions-is-george-floyds-murder-one-of-the-reasons/
“2021 crime survey: Capitol Hill and Central District trust in SPD continues plunge as Seattle crime fears… drop?” by Jseattle from Capitol Hill Seattle Blog: https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2022/04/2021-crime-survey-capitol-hill-and-central-district-trust-in-spd-continues-plunge-as-seattle-crime-fears-drop/
“Former Mayor McGinn: ‘Police alone are never going to be enough’ to curb Seattle’s crime problem” by MyNorthwest Staff from MyNorthwest: https://mynorthwest.com/3448749/former-mayor-mcginn-police-are-never-going-to-be-enough-harrell-crime/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. If you like the show, please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Today, we are continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a cohost. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: activist, community leader, former mayor of Seattle and Executive Director of America Walks, the popular Mike McGinn.
[00:00:59] Mike McGinn: Well, I think the popular was always in debate, but thanks for calling out the America Walks gig. I consider myself a very fortunate person because our mission is to support people around the country, working for more walkable and equitable and inclusive communities. So I think I got the best post-mayor gig that I've seen yet of Seattle natives. We can do a whole show on that one day.
[00:01:24] Crystal Fincher: And you've been doing excellent things - America Walks has been all over the place, certainly here in Washington state - has been active in advocacy so much appreciate it.
[00:01:36] Mike McGinn: Where are you going to take us today, Crystal?
[00:01:38] Crystal Fincher: Well, I figured we'd start off by talking about the pandemic that we remain in - that hasn't gone away, that people are still living with and dealing with, and that lots of people have contracted yet again - even though lots of those aren't reported because people are testing at home and not following up with a PCR test, so those numbers don't land in the official numbers. But King County's COVID-19 situation has hit a yellow light - is the term - cases are back on the upswing all over the country and world really, and accelerated after the ending of COVID protections. But King County Public Health had a press conference talking about, Hey, we gotta be cautious here - cases are on the rise. We need to be careful, it's not over.
[00:02:35] Mike McGinn: There's so many issues here to try to unpack with how we've responded to the pandemic and what we're doing now - it's clearly not over. Although, as we were talking about before the show, a majority of Americans have now gotten COVID - three quarters of kids have gotten it. We don't really know what the long-term effects are, but we also know that we've got better treatments - the number of deaths is not as high as it's been, but it is still a lot of people dying of it every day if you track it - it's still pretty serious.
I recently went to a conference and that was pretty interesting in itself. And I've been very cautious, very COVID-wary - but being on a plane, which turns out because of their filtration is safer than was initially thought. But being in a room of people, even with everyone wearing masks, definitely felt weird after two years. And interestingly enough, when I was heading back - it was the day that, it was the first day of flying without masks. And when we sat down, the flight attendants said, you are not required to mask. And it was interesting to me 'cause there were a couple of people on the plane who were like, yeah, you know, really gave their positive response - 'cause clearly protecting the health of others was oppressive to them, but it was a very muted response. And I remember as I approached the airport, I was like, well, what am I going to do? And I put my mask on when I entered the airport - it just felt like a prudent thing to do. So to me - they've also shown that a majority - I recently saw a poll and the majority of Americans still support masking up in public places. So we're kind of left in this halfway space where people are - where conscientious people are taking steps and - but there's also, and I'm going to put myself in this category too - I went to the conference because it felt like it was time to start doing things again. So it's a very interesting space that a lot of people are in right now. I'm not comfortable in a restaurant yet, by the way. I still would rather eat outside - glad that summer's coming.
[00:05:01] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, yeah. Glad that's coming, glad those options are available. So much of the conversation leading up, throughout the pandemic, has been on fatality numbers. And to me, we should be talking so much more about long COVID, about some of the impacts and effects of COVID that may not be part of the initial infection - but there is evidence that it impacts your - can impact your heart, can impact your liver, can impact a number of systems in the body, can cause an inflammation. And it's a new virus - we still don't know exactly what this is and exactly what it does. And I'm not in the mood to play with something that I don't know. It's not like I'm doing nothing - I certainly have been going some places, usually masked if I'm going to be indoors with people I don't know in public places.
But as Jeffrey Dr. Duchin said - King County's Public Health doctor - the fewer precautions we take, the more COVID is gonna spread. We still have to be focused on stopping the spread. And there has been news about therapeutic treatments for COVID - the challenge is that those are not yet universally available, and there are a number of restrictions and barriers for a variety of people getting them. For people with power and access, and great relationships with their doctors, and who have a traditionally easy time dealing within the healthcare system - that can be a comforting thing, but to a lot of other people, when they hear that, yes, Paxlovid or other ones, other medications that are available, but having requirements put in front of them or needing to be - there are lots of stories about people wanting access to it and not being able to get it. Navigating the healthcare system is a lot more challenging for some people than it is for others, especially women, people of color - who data shows repeatedly are doubted or not taken as seriously - certainly people with chronic health conditions that sometimes aren't easily diagnosed and having to go through all of that.
So I just hope that everyone listening understands that we are still relying on each other to prevent the spread of COVID. And even though it may not kill as many people as it once was, it still is killing people - but beyond that, it can dramatically impact people's lives with debilitating conditions causing disability, people getting reinfected with COVID and successive infections being worse. So we just have to continue to be careful. So I just wanted to talk about that and make sure that at least we remain aware that this is a thing and hopefully take precautions for people.
Moving on to other issues this week - lots in the realm of public safety and the fear of crime. And I guess we can start out looking at more news from the Seattle City Attorney this week - last week, we jokingly talked about "abolitionist Ann Davison" borrowing from Nicole Thomas-Kennedy's plans and playbook because we can't afford to lock everyone up and prosecute our way out of crime. Even if it worked - but that actually doesn't work - jailing people does not make our streets more safe. They get out and they commit more crime because we have done nothing to treat the root causes. But this week, Ann Davison requested that she be able to remove the option of diversion, which usually comes with more systematic supports, hopefully trying to do more to address some of the root causes that have landed people within the criminal legal system. And she wants to say, no - for certain habitual offenders, we don't want that to be an option. We just want to be able to charge 'em and to deal with it in regular court. What is your take on this?
[00:09:30] Mike McGinn: I guess there are multiple takes here. One is that - having been on both sides of the equation of running for office and holding office - running for office pushes you to black and white, and being in office pushes you to gray. And that's just the reality of it - and we saw that, right? Having to accept that with the misdemeanors backlog, there were cases not worth prosecuting. That was absolutely true and so it was nice to see that acknowledgement. The idea that some people are incorrigible and beyond hope - where's that exactly coming from? And that a punitive response is going to have a better response than some type of a diversion, or treatment, or through a restorative approach? It's fascinating to me how this narrative - that punishment alone can resolve it - is out there.
And I think this goes back to what you led off with - with the fear of crime being in the news again. And it was interesting because the headlines were - the fear of crime has gone down, while crime is going up. And we talked about before the show of - this type of survey doesn't necessarily, where the changes in the numbers are small year to year - that doesn't necessarily tell you a lot because it's not the type of survey that really seeks to hold your target audience that you pulled the same, year to year. It's a voluntary survey, there's a lot of outreach - like who takes it. And actually those numbers seem to hold steady, but it kind of raises a really important issue, I think, for me - that fear of crime is the issue being put out there to be dealt with as opposed to the crime itself. And I do want to say feeling safe in your community is a value and it matters. And it's something that government and community working together can help provide to residents, but I think we also all know that fear of crime can drive us to responses that aren't the best way to reduce crime. So if a neighborhood is particularly fearful of crime, but has low crime - should they get more police service to deal with that fear of crime? Or is a neighborhood that has less fear of crime, but has a higher rate of shootings or youth involved in - getting involved in violence, or gangs, or bad activities - should they get - is because they're less fearful, should they get fewer resources? Should that be factored in, or should there be more resources to help deal with the root causes?
So I guess the relation back to Ann Davison and her choices is - politicians use fear of crime, excuse me, and the media uses fear of crime to drive their preferred policy response. So, we need to get rid of, we need to have more homeless sweeps 'cause there's crime. Or we need to do something about aggressive panhandlers - they're generating the fear - like somehow or another, the panhandling is going to turn into an aggressive physical action, right? So they drive it so as to drive the policy response - and not even during elections. And it's just kind of funny hearing that from the folks who say, they're the adults in the room, and data-driven, and just trying to engage in good government. Where's the evidence as to what will reduce crime more? Where's the evidence about what will make people feel safer?
Fear is being used as a tool often, and to me, it's kind of notable that fear of crime has remained, actually, in a relatively narrow band over the years of those surveys while the crime has been increasing. And it kind of tells me that really what we need to be looking at is how do we protect people from crime, and reduce the harm, and mitigate the damage that crime causes in communities. Not simply look at how do we make people feel better.
[00:13:57] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And to me, this is a very - it's kind of a similar and related issue to me when I hear people talking about the fear of crime, and this neighborhood is so scared - and it's not tied to the actual numbers that are reported. Similar to when people talk about the problem being visible homelessness, as opposed to people being unhoused. Those are two very different things. And the fear of crime is a very different thing than reacting to crime as it currently exists. Now, to your point, crime is bad, crime is bad. And we don't want anyone to get victimized, and I think people get so flabbergasted - I know I get so exasperated when the conversation focuses on these narrow areas of focus, usually tied to punitive punishment of these people, and it is not at all tied to the ultimate goal, which is making people safer.
We're having all of these little conversations about, well, what is a police staffing level need to be? We need to get to this staffing level - without talking about, okay, well, how does that staffing level impact public safety? Historically at the staffing level or a lower staffing level, was crime lower with lower staffing? Then why do we need more? And if the projection is always more, are you ever assuming that police are gonna make things safer and we might need fewer? It never seems to go in that direction. They never seem to project that things are going to get safer because of what they're doing, and we're going to need fewer officers. It's always more and more and more and more and more, regardless of which way the crime numbers go.
So I would just love to be focused on the ultimate goal, the ultimate metric being safety and not the ultimate metric being, well, did we achieve a certain number of staffing in this area, or did we prosecute a certain number of people in this way? They're not tying that to safety because those don't impact safety. They would if they could, they're not because they can't. And we have just gone on for too long, we have invested too much money, and now there are too many people scared and being victimized to keep moving in this wrong and unproductive direction. We've wasted enough money. Can we please start spending them on things that will actually make us safer? You can probably hear my frustration coming through there, but it's just so frustrating seeing people suffer from the impacts of crime and we could do something productive about it that would increase the likelihood that a person who victimized someone will not victimize them again. And instead we move in the opposite direction.
[00:16:58] Mike McGinn: So many different things to talk about here. One is, and we've talked about these things before on the show, this single focus on the metric of number of police officers as being the measure of public safety - it's a great issue for the media to cover - it's one that is very central to legislative decision-making, right? How much money do we put in the budget? You can measure that. And how many police officers. But we also, and I'll argue - having officers on patrol, on foot, or in the community, or working in some way - can absolutely be helpful, not just merely to feelings of safety, but to helping prevent minor crime. We had experience in that with things like directed patrol. It's just that that's not it, that's not the whole thing - so my challenge - far from it, in fact.
My challenge to the media here, if anyone's listening over at The Seattle Times, is - and I haven't seen this coverage yet - and from the TV stations. Who is committing the crimes, who are the victims of crimes, what do we know about these individuals that are both committing crimes and are the victims of crimes? And that's - we have a murder rate that has gone up significantly. Violent crime is up 61% since I left office. So yeah, I went to SPD and I did the math to see, and what are the causes of that? And obviously there are causes that are beyond the scope of a city, right? This is something we're seeing everywhere. But at the same time, there are plenty of things that city governments can do to get at that. And we don't have an answer to that question. I seem to recall hearing this stat from Mayor Harrell - that a large number of the victims of crime, the shooting victims, were young Black men. Okay, well, what were the circumstances in which that occurred? What does that tell us? What happened to the Seattle Youth Violence Prevention Initiative - is my question. I would love a deep dive into that.
I think I know - Seattle Youth Violence Prevention Initiative was started by Mayor Greg Nickels, because there were a number of youths involved in shootings. When I came into office, we continued it and sought to expand it. By the way, Mayor Harrell's advisor, Tim Burgess, opposed the expansion 'cause he sent data to support it. At the time, in my second year in office or so - it was 2011 or 2012 - we saw an uptick in the number of shootings early in the year. I made a decision and was taken to every murder site in the City over the last year - Saturday morning, one of the deputy chiefs would arrive at my house, and pick me up, and we would drive from place to place - and this took a number of weekends 'til we got through it - and we would go through all of the details that the City knew. And one of the things that was really emerging to me was the number of crimes that involved people returning to the community from jail.
So at the same time, the Black pastors approached me and proposed that we invest more in their work providing community supports - not just housing or job training, but really providing the type of emotional and community support to help keep, really help reintegrate someone back into the community. The Black Prisoners' Caucus - I went and met with the Black Prisoners' Caucus in Monroe, at the Monroe Prison Facility, to learn more about what they were doing. And they were preparing themselves to return, but they wanted help - they needed help. So we launched a program called CareerBridge - where is that now? So where's the coverage of this? We're getting breathless coverage of fear, we're getting breathless coverage of the number of police officers and the morale of police officers. Where's the coverage of who is committing the crimes, what do we know about the victims, what do we know about the circumstances, and what do we know about strategies that might affect that?
'Cause here's the other reality. We're not getting 125 new cops in the coming year as budgeted. We're going to get 98, according to the most recent report. And we're going to lose 125. The number of police officers is going down. So you want to - you can argue as much as you want about the effectiveness of additional police officers in reducing crime. And again, I'm someone who did our best to deploy our officers in a way that would reduce crime, but that's not a solution. That's not a solution under today's circumstances. So why are we still arguing about that? Why is the media still covering that, other than it's a simple one to cover? Let's do the digging and let's start figuring out what's happening here. Is the rise in murders - is this related to domestic violence - people in the pandemic? Well, what are the resources, then, we could give to women, and it's almost always women, that are the victims of such violence? If that's the issue, how could we change that? So there are community organizations, community members, proven programs, and we're stuck on number of cops. And that's the debate we're going to cover, 'cause that's the debate driven by fearful people who want an immediate response, as opposed to thoughtful people who would like to figure out how to actually solve it.
[00:22:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I hope the conversation moves that way soon. I was talking last week - certainly I'm a very online person on Twitter also - and it is just so frustrating to see us stuck in these same conversations that don't have anything to do with making us safe at the end of the day.
[00:23:13] Mike McGinn: It's the same conversation we were having - I remember being the President of the Greenwood Community Council, and Peter Steinbrueck coming in and we were talking about the neighborhood policing plan to hire a hundred more cops - and this would have been in the 2007 timeframe or so. Well, we keep having that same conversation about what's the hiring plan, and we don't have the - let's have the conversation about the crime fighting plan, and the community safety plan. And in this regard, I'd really encourage Mayor Harrell to call people in. I mean, it was so meaningful for me to be out in the community and hear - both from our police department about what they knew - but to hear from the Black pastors, to hear from the Youth Violence Prevention street teams - to hear from them about their experiences and what was going on. To hear from our immigrant refugee communities, and the kids from those communities, talking about their experiences - all of that really informed my understanding that this requires a community response to a community issue. It's not a police response to a community issue. It takes all of us on this one.
[00:24:26] Crystal Fincher: It takes all of us, and it takes not - look, you asked what happened to the Youth Violence Prevention Initiative and a number of other initiatives. And my take on that is - you had a successor come in and because it wasn't their program, they discontinued it. That's my take.
[00:24:46] Mike McGinn: That's what I've heard. That's what I've heard, but I've actually not seen reporting on that and I wasn't in the room. So what happened? I also know another thing that happened was that after I left, the command staff of the police department was replaced by those much more sympathetic to the union. We now have a police union that is taunting us. Right? "Do you feel safe yet?" they're saying, that's what they're telling us. And they're saying that because you haven't spoken to us in the right way or respected us in the right way. We don't feel good about our work anymore and I get it - every employee needs to feel respected and appreciated at a city, but where was the - there was a story about police from Snohomish County coming down to give mutual aid to SPD. And they said, we're not going to come back. They felt like the SPD officers were sitting around - that was a news story - one story, ran, was done. What's going on here, folks? Is there a serious morale issue? And we're told there is - that's why officers are leaving. But is it affecting how they're dealing with crime, and what would be the way to deal with that? That's also worth reporting on, and trying to get to the bottom of, and having oversight hearings on - not just the number of officers. Because if you're going to add more officers, but we have a culture that feels itself at odds with the community it's supposed to police - and we can have a whole discussion about whose fault that is - but it needs to be fixed if we're gonna move forward. So let's get to the how-do-we-fix-it part and not just be mired in the let's-hire-more-officers.
[00:26:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and as I see with so many issues, the issues of SPD leadership, Guild leadership today - the seeds were sown in the big leadership -
[00:26:53] Mike McGinn: Purge - purge would be a good word.
[00:26:57] Crystal Fincher: - purge, that immediately followed your exit from the mayor's office. And that purge was - I think there was actually reporting that found somewhat of a paper trail on this - but there was a culture war going on, realistically, within SPD. And the mayor does have a lot of say about the chief. The mayor and the chief being aligned is really critical for any changes that the mayor is trying to enact - for reforms to happen, there has to be tight alignment with the mayor and the police chief, and both pushing in the same direction and supporting each other. And you were doing that and pushing in a very different direction that a number of people who were really happy with what the status quo was before, who wanted to take a different approach with officers, who felt that you were too oppressive in what you were demanding. And there was a capitulation made, and discipline immediately removed, and just things changed. And I just would like -
[00:28:17] Mike McGinn: I don't want to claim that I had all this figured out - being mayor was hard, and I don't want to claim that I had this all figured out. But it is definitely true - I have a document here that was shared with me by somebody who did a public disclosure request - I don't think it's ever been reported on. It's a memo from Martha Choe to Ed Murray during the transition about what's going on and here's -
[00:28:43] Crystal Fincher: Is this not public? This is what I was thinking about - was this not public?
[00:28:47] Mike McGinn: Well, people know what happened, but they don't - I don't think that anybody's reported on this specific document. Ron Smith of the Police Officers Guild - he was the head - called to request, I call Pugel regarding demotion, in my Transition Chair capacity. The head of the union was calling the new mayor to fulfill the promise to let go of him. Martha Choe had to explain that he didn't have the power to do that 'cause he wasn't the mayor yet.
[00:29:19] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and we knew that the endorsement was - that was the deal.
[00:29:24] Mike McGinn: There was a deal. And the deal was that - at the time - the union came to Jim Pugel and asked him to reduce discipline. There were a number of discipline matters under appeal - they asked Jim to reduce discipline, Jim didn't, and they endorsed Murray, and then Jim was demoted from his interim post. A new interim was appointed and the discipline was reduced. It was a deal that was made.
[00:29:55] Crystal Fincher: That was a sad, sad time. That was a sad time.
[00:29:59] Mike McGinn: Yeah. So it's just - I know. And Ed Murray then spent the next four years claiming he was a reformer, but the message was really clear to anyone in the department that if you were going to get sideways with the police officers union, your career could be cut short within the department, based upon the election of the next mayor. I think Kathleen O'Toole came then, and she had to hire her people now - after all of the union-friendly, remaining command staff were there - so then we ended up with a period where they had an excess of captains, which was the highest rank. Captains become deputies or assistants or chiefs, but captain is the official rank, pay grade, et cetera, where the title - if you lose your deputy chief, you go back to being captain. Anyway, they ended up with an excess of captains 'cause there were all the captains that were appointed by Ed's interim and then all the captains appointed by Kathleen O'Toole.
But again, I think the message came through really loud and clear within the department. And we also lost - that was when the department started using blast balls much more for control. The City police commission - the Community Police Commission - wrote them multiple times saying you need to do something about the crowd management, the use of blast balls is excessive. And so we really went through a different type of crowd management strategy that we'd been trying to use. And again, ours wasn't perfect - I really don't want to claim that, but we were trying not to repeat the mistakes of WTO and trying not to get ourselves into the situation that they found themselves in. I remember - my command staff, whom I met with weekly, by the way, I met with the entire command staff weekly in my office - they were like, you really have to be careful about how you do this. Because if you create something that the crowd can push against, if the crowd wants to try it - if you create - you can create the circumstances in which the crowd transfers its anger to you.
[00:32:01] Crystal Fincher: Yes.
[00:32:02] Mike McGinn: And that is exactly what SPD did with setting up that blockade near the precinct.
[00:32:09] Crystal Fincher: It's an escalation - it's an instigation and an escalation.
[00:32:12] Mike McGinn: And it was just - and as soon as it happened and when they were told finally to back down, their response was to abandon the precinct without communication to Mayor Durkan. And so we really had a situation there where - or even Carmen Best - really had a situation where the police department felt it could make its own decisions about how to proceed, that it really wasn't subject to civilian control. And again, that's always -
[00:32:39] Crystal Fincher: They went rogue.
[00:32:41] Mike McGinn: - always going to be an issue with any officer, or anyone in the department, but it's boy - when it went up that high in the department, that's a big deal.
[00:32:50] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I think the thing that's frustrating even looking at that - that makes them less safe. And again, just the focus on hearing accounts from people who've previously been in the department, or in the department - and there definitely has been a culture shift. And there definitely is a feeling from a lot of police officers that it is an us versus them mentality, and they are there to enforce and knock some heads and to keep things in line by force. But that makes them less safe too, and I just want everyone to be safe and healthy at the end of the day, just not to victimize each other, and just to do things.
And to your point, you didn't have it all figured out. It's not like you had some special magic wand and could do it. But a lot of people may not know that I did not always support you - I opposed you before I supported you. And what I actually found very surprising - was just the amount of work you put into understanding and addressing the problem. And that is what I feel has been missing from this - the going to every site, talking to the community, gathering all the information, going beyond the soundbite and the simplicity of "We need more cops. We just need this. We just need that." And through putting in the time, through involving the community, through having tons of town halls throughout the cities and throughout the city, and really trying to build relationships within communities, and build an understanding and at least a trust that, Hey, you're there - even if it's going to be a tough conversation, you're going to be there. You're going to be back. And you actually care about fixing the things that they're saying are the problems, and working together with people to say, okay, this is what you're seeing as the problem - let's work together to fix it. What do you need? How can we help in figuring that out?
And that took a lot of work - it took a lot of people power, it took a lot of energy and time, and I was surprised at how much just internally was invested in doing that. It was more than I had seen elsewhere, it was certainly more than I was expecting walking in. And I do think that that influenced public safety - I do believe that the Youth Violence Prevention Initiative reduced youth violence, prevented youth violence. And the focus on, yeah, we need to keep our streets safe today, but ultimately we need to prevent crime and working on solutions that did that. And now we have so much more data that shows that's exactly the right thing to do.
[00:35:48] Mike McGinn: Take a look at the READI program in Chicago - READI, R-E-A-D-I - people should take a look at that. It's really a similar model to the Seattle Youth Violence Prevention Initiative, extended older - that was one of the other things we wanted to do. We wanted to extend the age range of the Youth Violence Prevention Initiative from 18 to 21, right? Because people who need that support - it doesn't end at 18. I don't think very many well-off parents abandon their kids at 18, and I don't think we should abandon youth that are facing challenges in their life when they turn 18 either.
So I think there was a really a lot of - there's a lot you can do. And I also don't want to make it sound - I want people to think that this is like a long-term thing - like hiring and training officers takes a long time. I bet you, we could get a lot more street team members, we could get a lot more community engagement. These nonprofits exist - they need the funding, they can expand their work, and that person that they're talking to - as soon as they get the additional money to do that, that's somebody who might not commit a crime as a result of that. I mean, I think that the effects of this can be seen actually a lot more rapidly. We're not talking about - if you do pre-K right, it'll reduce that person's time in crime after high school - we're talking about intervening right now with the people most at risk of crime. And oftentimes that is that - the teen to young adult age range, oftentimes it's somebody returning to the community who doesn't have a place to land - can't find housing, can't find work, whose community supports are thin. We can help with those things, but we really have to do a deep dive.
And again, I really - I think that that would be, again that's anyone on The Seattle Times whose listening - maybe we should tweak this. Let's do a deep dive on who, what we know about the victims of murder right now, and the people that are committing murders right now. What do we know? And what would - where would that knowledge lead us to, in terms of preventing it. And crime statistics can be a little - people say, oh, well, everybody doesn't report all crimes, et cetera, et cetera. But murder is really an indicator because that's tracked, so let's figure this out. And I just - we're not going to be able to solve everything, and we're not going to be able to escape national trends, but we can use our resources here in a way that makes a difference - we should.
[00:38:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, we absolutely should. Well, we did a deeper dive into that topic than we were originally planning, but I think that was a productive conversation. And if it helps advance the conversation about truly making people more safe, and not just saying public safety and meaning officer staffing levels, or public safety and meaning how many people are we prosecuting - but public safety meaning how many people are not being victimized, how many people are safer and feel safer in communities. That's an urgent need in the City of Seattle and King County and everywhere we're at. And I just hope we become more thoughtful and keep our eyes on what ultimately needs to happen. And the real metric - it's are people safer. We need people to be safer. We need to stop spinning our tails on things that don't make us safer and and proceed with things that are.
With that, I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, April 29th, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler and assistant producer Shannon Cheng, with assistance from Emma Mudd. And our insightful co-host today is activist, community leader, former mayor of Seattle with a sweet jump shot, and Executive Director of America Walks, Mike McGinn. You can find Mike on Twitter @mayormcginn, you can find me on Twitter @finchfrii. And now you can follow Hacks & Wonks wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Julia Reed about her campaign for State Representative in the 36th Legislative District - why she decided to run, how the last legislative session went and her thoughts on addressing issues such as housing affordability and zoning, homelessness, public safety, drug decriminalization, climate change, and COVID response and recovery.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Julia at @juliagrantreed.
Resources
Campaign Website - Julia Reed: https://www.votejuliareed.com
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I am thrilled to be welcoming Julia Reed, who is a candidate for State House in the 36th legislative district. Welcome, Julia.
[00:00:46] Julia Reed: Thanks for having me - it's great to be here.
[00:00:49] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you. So what made you decide to run?
[00:00:52] Julia Reed: It's a number of things - I grew up in Seattle, I'm a teacher's kid. My parents both worked in public schools here. My dad was a long time educator in Seattle Public Schools and my mom works in Edmonds and Shoreline Schools in special ed. And so I think a lot of my initial interest in public service really comes from them and seeing how they serve their communities, were active in their communities, and also the things that they struggled with - the lack of funding, the state bureaucracy, families that just weren't getting the supports that they really needed. And I absorbed a lot of that as a child and it inspired me to really want to pursue public service as a career. And I worked on the East Coast in the other Washington in the Obama administration, and then I came back to my hometown and worked in public policy here locally.
And I've just seen a lot of changes in that time - from when I was growing up here and my parents, as an educators' family, could afford to buy a house and offer us a community that supported us and uplifted us. And now I think if my parents were moving to Seattle today, that same kind of lifestyle wouldn't be possible. And there are lots of people who are struggling, and as we are transitioning from the first depths of COVID into whatever is going to come after COVID - I think this is a really transitional time for our state and this is the time when we have to make choices about affordable housing and climate change and community safety and workers. And I want to be a part of that work, and I've been really involved in politics and community work here ever since I moved back as an adult. And I want to try to bring the voices of people like me - younger people, people in their thirties, who are trying to build lives here to the State House. So that's sort of what's inspiring me to run right now. I think this is a really transitional time and we need big thinkers to meet it.
[00:03:00] Crystal Fincher: It does seem to be, and I definitely agree we need big thinkers to address it. We just came out of a legislative session where there were definitely some great things that happened and a number of other things that left a number of people disappointed. What was your evaluation of this past session?
[00:03:21] Julia Reed: Yeah, I think you're right - some really great wins and some really tough losses. I think not being able to pass the missing middle housing bill, despite the governor's support was really hard - I see this as someone who's in her mid-thirties, I have a lot of friends who are trying to buy homes and make a life here, and they - because we have the fewest number of housing units per household of any state in the country, so we're 50 out of 54 housing units compared to number of households. The lack of supply is just choking them and they're starting to leave and go other places. And so I think we really needed that bill to try to address exclusionary zoning - what is keeping younger people from building lives and being able to settle down here. I think that -
[00:04:15] Crystal Fincher: Well, that's a huge issue. Do you support increasing density in single-family neighborhoods?
[00:04:21] Julia Reed: I do. I support - I think of it as inclusionary zoning, because I think it's important to remember that single-family zoning is fundamentally exclusionary. It's saying that a lot of people, a lot of families, a lot of people of color, a lot of younger people don't get to live here and it's - if we - I definitely think that our priority when it comes to upzoning and building denser housing should be urban villages and commercial centers. But the truth of the matter is we have a huge housing crisis and we just don't have enough arterials and urban villages to absorb all of that. And many of our urban villages are already upzoned and are already kind of starting to build. And I think what we need in some of these areas that have been exclusively zoned is to have more inclusionary zoning - to allow modest home choices, like duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes - to incentivize ADUs and mother-in-law apartments. I really think this is about are kids going to be able to live in the same neighborhood as their parents, in the same neighborhood where they grew up. Are they going to be able to move - are adults who want to move their elder parents to be closer to them - are they going to be able to live near them? Are we going to have communities that are walkable and climate-friendly or are we going to have a never-ending urban sprawl? Because growth is continuing and if we don't have housing to keep up with it, it's just becoming impossible.
And I see that in so many people my age, who are - and many of them whom are relatively economically privileged - the majority of people in Seattle, households in Seattle, now earn over a hundred thousand dollars a year. But even for people who are economically privileged, the lack of availability of housing really makes the afford - it really is a huge challenge. And then so much more so for people who can't afford these high prices - and it's not just a Seattle problem, it's an everywhere-in-the-state problem. Spokane was supposed to be the next great affordable city and it's already unaffordable. It's an everywhere-in-the-state problem and it's going to become something that really chokes our economy and our ability to grow. And so I really think that we have to think of inclusionary zoning if we want to have climate-friendly neighborhoods and communities where families and kids and older people can continue to live.
[00:06:58] Crystal Fincher: Well, and one thing that I wanted to talk about was a related issue - I think you raise excellent points on inclusionary zoning and the need to do it just to secure a livable future for those currently here and those who will remain here after we're gone. Related to the affordability issue is homelessness, and it's on a lot of people's minds and wanting to figure out what can be done. A lot of homeless policy is determined at the local level, frankly. And so a lot of people are like, okay, well in your capacity as a state legislator, what can you do? 'Cause affordability is also - the lack of affordability is driving people onto the streets. So what can you do in your capacity as a state legislator to reduce the amount of people living without homes?
[00:07:47] Julia Reed: Yeah, well I think it's really important - I really believe and I think the research shows that homelessness is a housing problem. And there is some great - there's a great new book by some UW researchers specifically looking at it through that lens. And I think as a legislator, I'd love to see us, as a state, think about how are we making massive investments in permanent supportive housing and affordable housing. Along the same lines of - when we're talking about building light rail or highways, we talk about that in the billions of dollars. But when we talk about housing for human beings, we talk about that in the thousands, maybe the millions - even though this is the number one issue.
Certainly there are people who are unhoused who are also suffering from mental health issues or addiction issues. There are housed people who also suffer from mental health and addiction issues. But those are more often than not, conditions that develop after they get onto the street and from the trauma to cope with kind of the trauma of living outdoors. And until we can bring them indoors, make them feel safe, give them a door that they can shut and lock - it's very hard for a person to start to think about how to commit to mental health treatment or substance use disorder treatment, or to think about finding a more stable job, or education or family reunification or therapy. If they need housing and there's not the housing - just like there is a lack of availability for people who can afford market rate housing, there's really a lack of availability for people who need permanently affordable housing, permanently supportive housing.
I'm also really interested in some of these new ideas, like this social housing concept that is going to be on the ballot, which the idea to create a public development authority that would purchase and develop affordable housing on behalf of the - I believe it's the City in this case - on behalf of public entities. I was involved in the creation of the Cultural Space Authority at the City of Seattle, which is a public development authority that can purchase and hold and develop cultural spaces. So for theater and art and dance and music and other kinds of community-specific cultural spaces.
[00:10:10] Crystal Fincher: All extremely valuable.
[00:10:12] Julia Reed: Super valuable - it's really hard to be a working creative in - the creativity of our communities is why people want to live here and why employers have a lot of good workers here. But it's hard to - the lack of rehearsal space, performance space, culturally-specific spaces - so you think about Wa Na Wari, the Black cultural center in central Seattle - trying to preserve spaces like that. So the Cultural Space PDA launched and is doing its job and it seems to be doing really well. And I'm really interested in learning more about how that model can apply to housing. It's something that is new to me, but I definitely want to learn more. So I think as a legislator, the things that we can do is really try to address scarcity in the state because we control the state budget. Excuse me, we use the power of the purse to control the budget. And I think that when it comes - that's the place where we can start to make big investments in housing and where we can start to think about also mental health care and healthcare in general. But I definitely think that when it comes to addressing homelessness - homelessness is a housing problem.
And I think that that is something that everybody needs to understand, because we can't just keep shuffling people along. I understand why people want encampments to be cleaned up and especially when they're unsanitary or unsafe or kind of getting out of control - but we've all seen encampments get cleaned up and then folks tend to just move down the street, down the block, they come back the next week because we're just cycling people through the same system and we can't just keep doing that and expecting to get different results. So I think we need to really start addressing housing and it's expensive and it's longterm and people like quick cheap solutions and that's what politicians are supposed to bring forward. But I think of myself, not so much as just a politician, but someone who is a public policy expert and a public servant. And I think it's incumbent on us to start looking at the systemic solutions to homelessness.
[00:12:22] Crystal Fincher: Really important - another issue, kind of similar, or another area pretty similar when - yes, people love the really simple you-can-encapsulate-it-in-a-slogan solutions to public safety. What will actually make us safer? What will reduce crime? What will keep people from being victimized? And again, when it comes to - certainly the policing element of public safety and often the incarceration element of it - lots of that is determined at the local level on how they're going to approach that. So again, another huge issue that's on people's minds. Lot of data out there - a lot of decisions don't seem to be tied to the data that shows what works. But what do you think again, in your capacity as a state legislator, should you be doing to help make people safer?
[00:13:20] Julia Reed: Yeah - I mean, it's a really good question. Every city in the country has seen an increase in crime in the wake of COVID-19 and that includes an increase in hate crimes targeting the Asian community. And that's a real concern and business owners who have struggled to keep their restaurants open or their storefronts open during COVID-19 - they don't deserve to come to work and see their door smashed in and to see their windows smashed. And they're just trying to keep their doors open, keep our communities going. And I think that that is a - it's a real, it's a serious concern. It's one that I hear about a lot from people as I'm out walking around and I would go back to this concept that one of the things the legislature can have an impact on is scarcity. And I think a lot of this low-level crime is tied to scarcity and tied to poverty. So a lack of jobs, a lack of education, a lack of housing, of healthcare, of community-based healing, and a lack of sort of community and spiritual support for folks.
So I think that as a legislator, we can be using the revenue in our state to invest in our communities and invest in some of these solutions to crime that are actually going to have an impact because - just like shuffling the encampment down the road is not a real answer to homelessness, cycling people for misdemeanor crimes through the system - constantly putting them in and then cycling them out, waiting months for a court date, pulling detectives off of cases like murders and rapes and other cases in order for them to do kind of street patrol. Like, that's not a real community safety solution. Investing money in our communities, addressing poverty, fully funding education, funding community-based safety initiatives - like in Seattle, we have some really great models. We have Community Passageways, we have Choose 180, which is an amazing program that works on diversion. I'm very involved in the YMCA's Social Impact Center, which is a branch of the Y that serves young adults all across King County and even in Pierce County - who are transitioning out of foster care, but also criminal justice involvement, gang involvement and incarceration. They have an amazing program called Alive & Free that works with young people who have been incarcerated or been in gang involvement who are looking to change their lives.
So we have these community models and I think we have to have the courage to really invest in them and prioritize them and say, this is work that is actually creating real safety and this is what the community is asking us for. And I think that is really what this is about is listening and then having courage - I think that speaking to your question about kind of police reform, I think one of the - in the legislature this year, I think one of the disappointments that I had was kind of the rollback of some of these reform measures that the state had invested in last year. And I think when the community has asked for something like this, we should listen to them and once we've passed the legislation, we should stand up for it, even if it's politically inconvenient. And I would like to bring that level of kind of courage and accountability to the legislature and stand with other legislators who I know, feel the same way.
Police reform is a hugely complex issue - I speak to this as a Black woman, I think about my father, my brother, my boyfriend who are all Black. When they walk out the door, I worry about them. I worry about myself. And that is the lens through which I often see these issues. I also have family members who are police officers, and I know that so much gets made about the individual hearts and minds of specific police officers. And in some cases, I think that is appropriate, but this is not about individual people, it's about a whole system that we have to change. And the state has a lot of power - yes, a lot of the policing issues are decided on the local level, but the state has a lot of funding power, we also have a state prison system that legislators have power and accountability over. And I think that we need to be listening to communities, we need to have the courage to stand beside them not just when the focus and the energy is on the issue, but all the time even when it gets a little bit politically inconvenient the next year. And then I think when it comes to police reform, we really have to, again, it's about community solutions. It's about systemic solutions and it's about understanding that people are telling us what they need to be safe, and what makes them feel safe and what doesn't. And I think we need to listen to them.
[00:18:25] Crystal Fincher: Well, and speaking of a legislative action - on the heels of our State Supreme Court's Blake decision, which basically made possession of small amounts of drugs - decriminalized that. The legislature went back and essentially recriminalized in some different ways and added some diversion opportunities to that. Do you think we should be treating substance use disorder and kind of low-level possession as crimes? Or should we be taking a public health approach to that?
[00:19:00] Julia Reed: I definitely think we should be taking a public health approach. I don't think that it serves anyone who has low-level possession to be put in jail. I don't think it - it keeps them from it and to have kind of their opportunities for education and employment and their lives curtailed for those reasons. And I think if you look at the types of possession that get criminalized, I think there is certainly a pattern there of focusing on Black and Brown communities. And so I definitely think it is a public health problem. And I think one of the things that will be really interesting in our state is as we transition into - we're still very much in the midst of COVID, but as we kind of transition into living with COVID or whatever this next phase is - thinking about what else our public health departments were working on before the pandemic and what they want to kind of get back to. And how can we be more invested in those spaces. But I definitely think - when someone has substance use disorder, they need treatment, they don't need jail. And unfortunately, in many cases, their only way to get treatment is to go to jail and that's not right. Like that is not how it should be. People are sick and they need help and we should be helping them to be treated and to get back on their feet and to address their addiction. And I think that it is a public health problem, and it's one that we should be treating in that way.
[00:20:42] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense to me. Another big systemic problem - we're talking a lot about big systemic problems. We've kind of allowed our problems to become bigger and bigger and bigger. Hopefully the things that we're talking about today and that you and other candidates are talking about are able to come to pass, but certainly when it does come to our climate and addressing climate change, mitigating the impacts that we're currently feeling - we have extreme heat and cold events and wildfires and smoke advisories, droughts and floods, just kind of everything here. What will you prioritize to make substantive, tangible change on not only the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, but on mitigating the impacts that we're currently feeling in our communities today?
[00:21:36] Julia Reed: Yeah, absolutely. Climate change is an existential crisis for all of us. And I think it's something that all legislators should be really focused on. And it's one of the reasons why I want to run for legislature because, as a millennial, as someone who's in their mid-thirties, this is an issue of serious concern for me. And I don't always feel like the people that represent me are focused on it with the same amount of urgency. I'm really - I come from a background of working in public policy, so I am all about the kind of pragmatic solutions, like what can we do today? And one of the things I'm really focused on in the climate change fight is on community resiliency, which is basically kind of a big phrase that is like how are communities gonna cope with the impacts of climate change? Because while we fight to have a zero carbon future and to decarbonize and lower our carbon emissions, there are impacts that people are feeling today and especially low-income communities and communities of color are feeling today the most. But everyone is really impacted by it, and you mentioned those extreme weather events.
So that's going to be a big focus for me in the legislature. It's something I worked on at the City of Seattle. I helped organize the first ever Smoke Ready Communities Day. That was an event across four counties, we had 12 cities participating, the State Department of Natural Resources. And it was a really great event, but one of the things that occurred to me as I was organizing it was - why am I random City of Seattle staff person leading this? Where is the statewide, or statewide push, for events like these, because this is something that is affecting all communities that really kind of felt like cities were sort of on their own to sort of figure out how to deal with this. There was no playbook, or real guidance for us on what we should be doing. And so I'd really like to see the state invest more in supporting cities in developing responses for extreme weather events related to climate change. I'd love to see a grant program for cities that want to install smoke filtration systems, for example, in community buildings like libraries or community centers or places where people can go during these events to be safe. It often is not really expensive to install or upgrade that filtration, but it makes a huge difference for people to know that they have some kind of safe haven in their community.
I'd also love to see funding for landlords to upgrade, to install heat pump systems that allow air conditioning, or to upgrade air filtration in apartment buildings, which is another big challenge. I live in a condo building - we don't have an air conditioning system in this building, so when it's smoky and it's August and I'm on the top floor and it's 85, 90 degrees outside, I got to close all my windows and just sweat it out until things get better. And I think about all of the people around me who live in senior - there's a lot of subsidized, senior citizen apartments near me - and other just kind of rental apartments that are older buildings that really also don't have that kind of filtration and support. So I'd really like to see the state make some investments in communities that are trying to cope with these smoke impacts and extreme heat, extreme cold impacts so that we can - as we're trying to move towards our zero carbon future, we're still taking care of people today.
[00:25:11] Crystal Fincher: Well, and towards that zero carbon future - right now, over 40% of Washington's emissions are coming from our transportation system. Lots of conversation following this past legislative session - after passing a transportation package that did make some excellent investments and bigger than we've seen to-date in alternatives to driving - people taking different modes of transportation, investments in transit, which are crucial and necessary. But we also saw highway expansion projects and things that actually support the increase of greenhouse gas emissions. As a legislator, will you be voting - will you vote in favor of a transportation package that expands highways, given how responsible they are for these greenhouse gas emissions?
[00:26:03] Julia Reed: Yeah, it was obviously - the highway extension stuff is really disappointing. I think you had Mayor McGinn on your podcast earlier talking about - cars will expand to fill the space that's provided. I was really excited about some of the other investments in the package and some of the investments we've made in things like electrifying ferries or on shore power for ports - so that ships are not idling on diesel, pumping that into the atmosphere - investments in transit. I think it's hard to say without - I don't want to say, yes, I'll vote for this, no, I'll vote for that on hypothetical bills. I am someone who believes that if you can move the ball 40 yards down the field, that is better than moving zero yards and waiting for the perfect touchdown - that's politics - you have to sometimes make imperfect choices and compromises.
But my going-in position is going to be - how are we moving toward that zero carbon future and starting to prioritize non-car travel. And this is where I think that - or alternatives to car travel - this is where I think, again, having voices from people in the legislature who travel that way - my prime - I do own a car, but my primary mode of transportation is my electric bike. I think electric bikes are incredible mobility solutions and they're really expensive. So we spend - we're willing to consider state subsidies for electric car buyers that have no means testing. I think we should be willing to consider state subsidies for electric bike buyers who are potentially - who potentially will be able to reach a lot more people, will change a lot more transit habits. And are a lot less expensive for the state to fund. And so I'd like to see more investment in those spaces, but I am looking for any and all allies to move us towards our zero carbon future. And I want to get us there. We can get a hundred yard - we can get all the way to the end zone in my first session, that would be amazing. But I think that I've been around politics long enough to know you have to be willing to kind of work it year after year after year. But it also is about the priorities you bring into the space. And my priorities are going to be our zero carbon future because that is the future that I want. And if I have children someday, that's the future that I hope that they will have.
[00:28:28] Crystal Fincher: Well, and this is a particularly interesting issue to have this conversation about because we continue, and actually just last week, received an IPCC report that that is basically saying, Hey, now is our last best chance to stave off some of the most severe and harmful consequences of climate change. We have not taken the appropriate action in time to keep from feeling some consequences, but wow, so much worse is coming if we don't rapidly, majorly systemically change the direction that we're headed. And so this conversation about climate change has a tension in it that I think some others don't in that some of that, whether you want to call it incremental or some progress can be made, but if we aren't making big progress, then we are inviting so much worse in the future. And there actually is a timer on the amount of time that we have to do this. So the year after year after year solutions, which has been the approach that we have been taking, which hasn't resulted in a reduction in emissions yet, is what a lot of people are looking at and saying - so what we have been doing has not been working and the situation that we're leaving our kids is dire and I think some of the - lots of discussion around where support is in terms of candidates and where people are leaning and how young people are feeling and voting - them more than anyone, taking a look at their future and saying, it's now or never for us. And we're actually the ones who are going to have to live with this long after the rest of you are gone and you're kind of legislating like it. We're trying to fight for our future. So in that vein, do you really feel like we have year after year after year, or we don't need to increase the urgency and draw some red lines where maybe we haven't drawn them before?
[00:30:42] Julia Reed: Yeah. I should clarify - I do think that there is extreme urgency and I think that you have to act on it with urgency. So it's not sort of like, oh, we'll do a little bit of this, we'll do a little of that. And eventually it'll all add up. I definitely feel that urgency. And I think like you said, it is about a future that I'm going to live in - I'm 35. I hope to have a long life and who knows what the planet is going to - well, scientists know and are trying to tell us what the planet is gonna look like 30 years from now if we don't take more action. So I absolutely think that we have to act with really strong urgency on this issue. And I think that we have to, we need to address things also like transportation pollution and the technology around airplanes and cargo ships. There are many sources of that kind of industrial pollution in our spaces, so I absolutely think that that is something we should be addressing.
[00:31:43] Crystal Fincher: Right now, we're also in, as you've said, in the midst - we're still in a pandemic - and despite a number of recent abandonments of COVID protections and case rates going up in some areas now, hospitalizations have also started to go up. Wastewater indications are certainly that COVID is surging in many areas in the country. What should we be doing and really in your capacity as a state legislator, should the state be doing more? Should you be taking more action to help address and mitigate the impacts of COVID? 'Cause there certainly are some people who are celebrating - there was just new polling that came out this morning showing that three quarters of Americans either are in favor of, or are not opposed, to masking in most areas. Less than 30% of Americans, fewer than 30%, are actually opposed to masking on public transportation and in public shared spaces. What should you be doing? What action would you want to take as a state legislator to help address this - to protect people who - we still have people who can't be vaccinated yet, people who are immunocompromised, people who are disabled or who have autoimmune disorders -
[00:33:12] Julia Reed: People who are under five.
[00:33:14] Crystal Fincher: Exactly. Who are saying, I am concerned about my ability to fully participate in society, and if I do choose to do that, what that means in terms of my health and the risks that we're taking. What actions should you be taking as a state legislator to address that?
[00:33:35] Julia Reed: Yeah, it's an extremely challenging time. And I feel really grateful to have weathered the pandemic in this area where a lot of people are vaccinated and a lot of people do wear masks. But, and I feel like I keep citing my age, 'cause you know I'm 35 - I'm 35 - and I have a lot of friends who have had children in the last three to four years. So I have a lot of friends who have children under five, and they're just so concerned. And as we - people like me who don't have children, or people who are vaccinated and really only around other vaccinated adults are starting to venture out to bars, or sports games, or travel - that is not part of their lives. And they're really worried. And they, and I think also, as you said - people who are disabled, people who are immunocompromised - they deserve to be a part of our society and have full lives as well. And I think that masking is a very small thing that you can do. I don't always love wearing a mask either, but I do wear it in public places and in indoor spaces. Because I do think it is important to respect people's needs and their risks. And I was really disturbed to read these stories as the mask mandate was lifted - of people on airplanes, pilots announcing mid-flight, oh, you can take off your mask and people just tearing off their masks and cheering, and families that were traveling under the assumption that people were going to be masked trapped on these planes for the next several hours. And I think that - I think that this, pandemic - I hope that it has shown us the importance of working together collectively. And I kind of shake my head at the administration's decision not to appeal this federal judge ruling, because it just seems like this is not a safe decision and not something we should be doing.
And, I think that we should be wearing masks on public transportation, I think we should be wearing masks at airports and on planes, I think we should be wearing them on ferries. I think that for those small periods of time that you spend in those business spaces, I think that people should be - I think it's reasonable to ask people to wear masks. And I think the fact that people are not doing that is really troubling and could potentially mean we're in this pandemic for even longer. COVID is not over just 'cause we're all tired of it - I wish it was - I wish it worked that way. But it is definitely super concerning for me.
And I think as a legislator, I think that one of the things we can do is just try as much as possible to invest in public health. I think that was one of the things that really helped us in King County, as kind of the ground zero of COVID for the nation, is we have a fairly strong public health department here. And I think they could certainly use more investment and more supports, but they did a pretty good job getting things up and running. And I think a lot of places in the country where public health has been uninvested or under-invested, you see the effects on people. And the other thing I'm really worried about is, as federal funding, as funding for uninsured people to get tested goes away, that's a big concern as well. So right now, when you go and get tested - or previously - even if you didn't have insurance - if you had insurance, the state would bill your insurance, your insurance company would pay. And if you didn't have insurance, state would cover it - you'd get - the federal funding would sort of make up the gap. But now that funding to cover insurance for testing for the uninsured is going away - and I don't think here in Washington - 'cause I think the legislature has some temporary funding. But in other states, certainly, you're hearing about people trying to go in and get tested and then being told, well, if you don't have insurance, then you're going to be billed directly for this. And then them walking out and not getting tested. And so if we're taking away masks, we're reducing the number of people who can afford to get tested, we're just opening up everything and not having any kinds of restrictions - I don't see how we don't have another significantly harmful viral wave. And that worries me.
[00:38:25] Crystal Fincher: It also worries me. Well, is there anything else, as we close today, that you would want listeners to know about you and why you would want them to support you?
[00:38:39] Julia Reed: Yeah, as I said, I'm running because this is a really transitional time for our state and our city. And Seattle's had a lot of tough times, it's changed a lot. There's a lot of challenges around affordability, transit access, but Seattle is also my home and I'm going to fight for it. My family's been here - my great-grandmother actually lived in the 36th district on Taylor Avenue in Queen Anne Hill at the turn of the century, the turn of the 20th century - she immigrated here from Ireland just the day before the great Seattle fire. So my family's been in this district and this area a really long time. And I really believe that this is a special place and I want to fight to make it a place where everyone can thrive. And I think I have the professional experience to know how to move legislation not just on the stump, but actually in the legislature, and how to write legislation that can actually be implemented by state government. I think I have lived experience as a lifelong Seattleite, as a Black woman, as a teacher's kid, as a public policy professional to really bring a lens of urgency and focus and equity and justice to the legislature. And I hope that the voters will see that, and I look forward to meeting everyone out on the campaign trail.
[00:40:04] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe, to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On today's Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Associate Editor of The Stranger, Rich Smith. They kick off the episode with news of a driver involved in a pedestrian collision and road rage incident at Pike Place Market and an increase in police patrols in south King County with the stated purpose of keeping pedestrians safe, which sparks a broader discussion on pedestrian safety and why increased policing isn’t the answer. They then discuss Patty Murray’s advocacy to allow pot shops to use banks, City Attorney Ann Davison’s decision to dismiss 40% of cases, and the apparent “cultural issue” around Seattle cops swerving masking laws. Crystal and Rich wrap up by celebrating the union victory at the Seattle Starbucks Roastery and discussing the state of the King County Prosecutor race without a progressive candidate.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Rich Smith, at @richsssmith. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Pedestrian Injury in Road Rage Brawl Underscores Need for Car-Free Pike Place” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/04/19/pedestrian-injury-in-road-rage-brawl-underscores-need-for-car-free-pike-place/
“South King County Cities Increase Police Patrols in Name of Pedestrian Safety” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/04/20/south-king-county-cities-increase-police-patrols-in-name-of-pedestrian-safety/
“Sen. Patty Murray Sees a Path to Finally Letting Pot Shops Use Banks” by Rich Smith from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/04/20/71280602/sen-patty-murray-sees-a-path-to-finally-letting-pot-shops-use-banks
“City Attorney's Office Will Decline to Prosecute Nearly 2,000 Cases to Help Clear Pandemic-Related Backlog” by Rich Smith from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/04/19/71145166/city-attorneys-office-will-decline-to-prosecute-nearly-2000-cases-to-help-clear-pandemic-related-backlog
“Report: Police Accountability Office Dismissed Widespread Mask Violations as “Cultural Issue”’ by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola: https://publicola.com/2022/04/21/report-police-accountability-office-dismissed-widespread-mask-violations-as-cultural-issue/
“Seattle Starbucks Reserve Roastery workers vote to unionize” by Brady Wakayama and KING 5 Staff from KING 5: https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/seattle-starbucks-reserve-roastery-count-union-votes/281-43c97cd2-43a1-4a8b-bd2a-acbfe1e69bad
“Slog PM: Seattle Starbucks Roastery Votes to Unionize, City Sweeps 13 People Ahead of Biden's Visit, WA's County Councils Are 99% White” by Rich Smith from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/04/21/71372295/slog-pm-seattle-starbucks-roastery-votes-to-unionize-city-sweeps-13-people-ahead-of-bidens-visit-was-county-councils-are-99-white
“Progressive Lane Wide Open in King County Prosecutor Race” by Will Casey from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/04/15/70845236/progressive-lane-wide-open-in-king-county-prosecutor-race
“WA prosecutors who withhold evidence rarely face discipline” by Melissa Santos from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/news/2022/04/wa-prosecutors-who-withhold-evidence-rarely-face-discipline
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in the state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, we are continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week. Welcome back to the program today's co-host: Associate Editor of The Stranger and noted poet, Rich Smith.
[00:00:51] Rich Smith: Hey Crystal - thanks for having me.
[00:00:53] Crystal Fincher: Hey, thanks for coming back. Well, there's a lot going on this week and I guess we will start by talking about a funky incident at Pike Place Market. There was a car that injured a pedestrian - a road rage incident - just wild things happening. What went on here and what's the deal?
[00:01:12] Rich Smith: I'm not - look - I knew you were going to throw this narrative to me, but I cannot give it. Because I read the police report five times, I read this summary in The Urbanist five times - I still cannot just basically put the ABC narrative together. But what I have gathered is that there was a massive road rage incident in Pike Place Market involving three vehicles, a hammer, a broken window - and at one point, a woman who worked at a nearby location in The Market was caught in the middle of this altercation when one of the dudes tried to use his car as a battering ram to hit the other car behind him. And she left the scene with apparently a broken leg, according to The Urbanist, and there's been charges. I saw a couple of charges come over from the King County Prosecutor's Office in the case. And it was just a big, nasty mess that shouldn't have happened because cars shouldn't be there in the first place.
[00:02:23] Crystal Fincher: 'Cause cars shouldn't be there in the first place - and we continue to have this conversation - these things happen when you try to mix a lot of cars where a lot of people are at. And this just seems like - obviously we've had this conversation for a long time here in Seattle - with lots of people who have been advocating to make Pike Place car-free, others car-free with the exception of commercial deliveries but prioritizing pedestrian use of Pike Place Market over cars. And currently it seems to be the opposite and resulting in things like this, which lots of people make the point could not have happened if Pike Place was car-free. So, so yet another thing we can add to the list that just really says, why are cars in Pike Place Market? And for me - I've actually taken a wrong turn into Pike Place before, and it's a miserable place to drive. Why would you want to drive there? It's gridlock all the time - if it was actually clear - you knew that, Hey, that's a pedestrian street, I can drive around and park if need be, or, Hey, I'm going to take transit and get in there, have a wonderful experience - like we have in many other places that we go visit for vacation because they look like that and they don't include cars. Why is it so hard? Why is it so hard, Rich?
[00:03:50] Rich Smith: Well, yeah, just to underscore the point here, it wasn't an isolated incident as The Urbanist notes. According - I think the piece in The Times - SDOT data shows that at least 170 collisions involving drivers have happened in Pike Place since 2004, so there has been a number of fender benders, a number of people have gotten hurt, nearly 40 since - during that time period - because of these cars. And yet, why is it so hard to just remove the cars, put some bollards in there, and let the pedestrians browse oranges freely? It's because there's a power structure that doesn't want that to happen. All of this kind of comes at a renewed - the rest of the City kind of rehashes this old argument about whether or not to have cars in Pike Place in the first place, with people like former City Councilmember, former Port Commissioner Peter Steinbrueck joining two others, I think, in the Pike Place Market administration writing an op-ed in The Seattle Times saying that, we can't pedestrianize Pike Place Market because that would - 'cause we haven't done it in the past and - that old traditionalist fallacy - and because it would lose its zest.
The argument is - from these people, right? This is their best argument is that - it wouldn't be as fun down there if you didn't have to play Frogger constantly. And some of the people who work in the Market worry about maybe they wouldn't be able to get their delivery trucks in - that's just not true - they can. And generally - it literally - they just fall back on this traditionalist fallacy argument all of the time - it's just, it's not how we have done it in the past. And so it's not how we can do it in the future. It's a classic conservative framework, and so that's why we can't do it. Jean Godden, former City Councilmember also tried to - she wrote an op-ed in Post Alley - she tried to make a couple of arguments, those also didn't stand up to scrutiny. Her arguments were basically that - even though 81% of the town thinks that we should pedestrianize the Pike Place Market, she openly wonders whether or not any of those people work at the Market who'll also want to prioritize it. And it's just like, well, look, if we had industries - only people within the industries that we're regulating make policy, then that would exactly be great, right? We live in a town, we could have nice things if we want them, and so we should.
[00:07:01] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and usually when 85% of your constituents prefer that something happen, most people don't seek to automatically just disregard that. And maybe, a path forward is listening to the residents in the City.
[00:07:21] Rich Smith: That's a good idea - yeah - and there's been some movement. Andrew Lewis has been saying that he's tried to press the issue - he's been working with Seattle Greenways to try to negotiate stuff with the Market Public Development Authority. And the last I heard was that they are going to put a - that is, the Market's got some planning coming up and they're going to put pedestrianization on the list of things to consider when they're doing their planning. And so, there's a - slow Seattle process is forming around the possibility of creating a pedestrianized Pike Place Market, but we'll see how that goes.
[00:07:59] Crystal Fincher: We'll see how it goes, we'll continue to pay attention to it. Also, south King County cities have decided to increase police patrols in order to help pedestrians become safer. What's happening here?
[00:08:14] Rich Smith: Question mark - yeah. Well, there's been a number of crashes on International Boulevard in SeaTac, which makes up a segment of State Route 99. And the cities have bound together to ask the government for a little grant money to figure out how to reduce the bad driving that has resulted in all of these injuries and crashes. The answer is apparently to just throw more cops at the situation and get the grant money to give them overtime so that they can do more patrols of that road. I don't know if that's going to work. It is not working as - federal transportation agencies and their safety documents have not highlighted increased police patrols as a way to reduce those kinds of injuries, traffic safety in an area, or to increase traffic safety in an area. So this just strikes me as a, yet another example of people trying to throw cops at any problem labeled as a safety issue. It's like if it's traffic safety issue, throw cops at it and it'll get better. If it's a public safety issue, public health safety issue - throw cops at it and I'm sure it'll get better. We'll talk about that more later, but it seems to just follow along this old path that hasn't worked.
[00:09:36] Crystal Fincher: It does and seems to be the default for a number of these south Sound cities here - in Federal Way, Kent, Des Moines, SeaTac and Tukwila - they're the cities along International Boulevard, or Pacific Highway South, or Highway 99, depending on where on that alignment within those cities you're at. But I'm very familiar with this stretch of roadway and as our federal authorities have said, state authorities have said, lots of localities are recognizing - that the design of roadways has, is actually the most influential in how safe they are. And are we really designing roadways that are only for cars, or are we designing transportation pathways that can accommodate all forms of travel and mobility safely?
And this stretch of road - it is very poorly designed - you have very, very long stretches of road where there are no crosswalks, there is no opportunity to cross the street. And there are three to four lanes of highway speed, like 50 mile an hour, traffic and more on each side of a middle divider in the street. And so lots of pedestrians, seeking to not walk half a mile or more to be able to cross the street, have jaywalked which is a very predictable thing that happens when you design streets this way. And policing that for a week is not going to solve that fundamental problem. And it just seems like such an oversight and a missed opportunity to recognize what does create this, to certainly not do it in the future when we're designing things here - that doesn't seem to be in the consciousness yet.
And also understanding that cops can't solve that problem and focusing money on what can - it just seems like another missed opportunity, misguided attempt at improving public safety that has no data behind it to show that it's going to work, is not in line with best practices. And usually when things like this fail, when we throw cops at it, the retort is well it's because there wasn't enough cops that we threw at it. And if we continue to throw more, that can help - soaking up the available budget for being able to fund things that actually would improve safety. So just frustrating to see.
[00:12:11] Rich Smith: Yeah. I don't know much about the grant structure that precipitated this spending, but it just - it seems like you could spend $25,000 in a way that addresses the root causes that you're talking about - that highway design, or providing for more pedestrian safety during crossing a four-lane, five-lane highway - that might be better spent than just having a couple of cops write some more tickets for a couple of months.
[00:12:44] Crystal Fincher: Well, something that maybe is a reason to be optimistic - this week, Patty Murray talked about potentially a path to letting pot shops use banks, which would certainly make them much safer places for everyone to be.
[00:13:00] Rich Smith: Yeah, that's right. She came into town, and she'd been doing a couple of speeches and she was promoting her work on the Safe Bank Act. This is, as you mentioned, an act that would allow pot shops to have access to the banking services and financial services - that every other small business has access to, that they don't have access to - because lenders don't want to support banks who work with pot shops for legal reasons. This would eliminate those legal reasons and allow them to do stuff like take debit cards and have access to capital and potentially increase minority business ownership since they'll have more access to capital and banks and stuff like that.
So it's a general good bill - there's a lot more that needs to be done, obviously, in this space to create equity in the cannabis industry. But this is the very first level step that should have happened a long time ago. And in fact, kind of has - the House passed this bill six times in various forms, it just hasn't gotten through the Senate. So Senator Patty Murray saying that she sees a path forward is significant - that path forward is kind of funny - it involves conference negotiations between the House and the Senate over two separate, but similar, bills that would increase manufacturing, particularly around semiconductor chips, which are in short supply, as we all know.
And the Safe Banking Act was in the House version, it was not in the Senate version that was going to conference. And Patty Murray says she's one of 13 senators who are going to try to get that bill in whatever the final product is that comes out of those negotiations. She says that this is the only path and the surest path to get a Safe Baking Act on Biden's desk. Those negotiations start soon and they'll last five weeks once they do, so this could happen outside of a month, but it's going to take a bunch of senators who come from states that haven't legalized pot to agree to do this. And so that's the challenge for Patty Murray right now, but she says she sees a path.
[00:15:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and that's the genesis of the problem is - unfortunately, cannabis still is not legalized federally, which has created complications initially in the banking system with some banks saying, Hey, we can't have banking activity that we know is related to illegal activity. And since it's not legal everywhere, and it's illegal somewhere, then we can't do anything - forcing pot shops to largely be all-cash operations. And when you tell the public that there are huge amounts of cash stashed in specific locations, it becomes a draw for people trying to steal cash - and we've seen robberies because people have known that there's a lot of cash there. So this regulation has made these stores more dangerous because they've made them a target for having, because they've had a lot of cash.
So it certainly makes sense to reduce that risk. This is a legal well-regulated activity. These places have shown that they're no more harmful than bars - certainly, much less - all the science, that debate is long over. We know that weed is just a substance, like many other substances, and is legal. If we can sell it, why don't we protect the people in the industry that we've allowed to thrive and flourish here. It just makes sense. It is a good time to contact your senators - let them know how you feel about this bill. Also doesn't hurt for folks in the House to hear that this is a priority for you and folks, but hopefully this can get through in this reconciliation process.
[00:17:14] Rich Smith: That's right, yeah. And then there has been an increase in armed robberies at the pot shops as a result of the fact that they carry like cartoon bags of cash inside of there. And in her speeches this week, Murray has framed the issue as an anti-crime measure. And that's how she's going to try to convince recalcitrant conservative Republicans on the conference committee to come along to her side. We'll see if it works.
[00:17:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, well, if someone can get it done, I think Patty Murray can get it done if it's possible. We will see.
[00:17:56] Rich Smith: Persuasive.
[00:17:57] Crystal Fincher: She is. Another big development this week - an interesting development this week - Seattle's City Attorney, Ann Davison, who is a noted Trump Republican who campaigned on getting tough on crime and prosecuting all these crimes and holding people to account. And wow, the problem is because we aren't charging every single thing and enforcing the laws on the book. And yes, if someone steals a loaf of bread - that is theft and we're going to prosecute them and we're going to hold them account to the highest extent of the law.
However, reality presented itself and that is actually just not possible - for a number of reasons - which lots of people were attempting to say, including her opponent, Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, in the race and was notoriously shunned for being like, no, that's just abolitionist crazy talk and we can't do it. But Ann Davison announced this week that she is declining to prosecute about 2,000 cases to help clear pandemic-related backlog. What led up to this, Rich?
[00:19:12] Rich Smith: Yeah, well, I mean a lot. So, yeah - as you mentioned, there's been a backlog of misdemeanor cases - has piled up on the City Attorney's desk over the course of the last couple of years. That number is between 4,000 and 6,000, depending on what you want to count. Some stuff is backlogged because we're waiting for toxicology reports in DUI cases. Some stuff is backlog for other kind of procedural reasons, but the number that they're going with is the middle number, 5,000. So when Ann Davison got the job in January, she hired somebody else - district attorney, or former district attorney Brian T. Moran, a Trump appointee - to consult on what to do about this backlog, paying him $200,000 for it. And he did what he was contracted to do - got a little report going and looked at the situation and found what any casual observer of any city attorney's office or prosecuting attorney's office would tell you to do with a 5,000-strong backlog - which is cut the petty stuff and just go after the more serious misdemeanor crimes. Still just talking about low-level crimes here, and that's what she ended up doing. So -
[00:20:38] Crystal Fincher: Which you called at the time.
[00:20:40] Rich Smith: That's right - yeah. You don't need to pay this guy $2,000 or $200,000 to do it - you could just do the thing that the City Attorney's office has done in the past whenever they faced backlogs as a result of - they've got a bad filing system - they get behind, they had vacancies, people go out of the office, and stuff piles up. And so backlogs accrue occasionally, and they deal with them in this way - every prosecuting office basically deals with them in this way. It's common. So I don't know why they had to do this whole thing, but in any event, yeah - Brian T. Moran's suggested and Ann Davison followed through with the recommendation to decline 40% of the backlog, 40% of the cases. Which is no different than what Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, noted abolitionist, would have done - though I think that NTK probably would have looked harder at declining some of the domestic violence cases and other assaults and stuff like that, depending on what they were. I shouldn't speak for her, but she did say in interviews that she didn't think we should be prosecuting some or most DV cases and even some assault, so that's what happened. Welcome to the abolitionist corner of the police accountability movement, Ann Davison.
[00:22:13] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, really interesting. The reality is we have a criminal legal system that has limits and that has limited capacity. And that capacity is - they're usually at or near their limit, with a lot of folks within that system being overworked and people doing more than they should be doing with what they have, whether it's in prosecutors, in public defenders, or whether it is with the jail system and the shortage of people that are staffing them - and all of the issues that result.
[00:22:52] Rich Smith: Oh yeah - you've got between 12-14 - the police refer between 12,000 and 14,000 cases to the prosecuting attorney's office every year. They've got 29-30 people to look over all of those cases and make filing decisions, if that, and then they have to deal with the court system, which has four courts, only two of which are operable at the moment. So even if Ann Davison charged every single case or directed her prosecutors to charge every single case that came across her desk, or the desks of her assistant attorneys, it would immediately seize up a court system which is far too small to handle this giant bureaucracy, basically, that the criminal, that the misdemeanor system has become. We don't have this - an adjudicated bottle where someone gets caught by a cop sleeping where they're not supposed to, or stealing a sandwich, and then there's a trial to determine whether or not they actually did what the cop said that they do, and a consequence meted out by a judge. Most of these cases - vast majority, upwards of 90% - don't go to trial. Most of the cases plead out in a kind of coercive way to prevent, so that the person doesn't have to face any more jail time than they already faced by waiting for their trial, or waiting to get a hearing with the judge in the first place.
And we just have this huge administrative system, basically, that seeks to mark people and kind of monitor them with a bunch of paperwork and procedural hurdles rather than put them through any kind of judge-jury system where we could determine whether or not it actually happened or didn't. And that's the result of - the system developed as a direct result of this policy that Ann Davison is - won her election on - of broken windows policing and attacking strongly all of these "quality of life offenses." And I suspect it will continue to see similar results in the future if we continue on this arrest-everybody-downtown-and-throw-them-in-jail sort of strategy.
[00:25:29] Crystal Fincher: And it's frustrating and it's consequential. I mean, people are scared and concerned. There are some wild things happening on the streets and people are concerned. And so people do want solutions that make people safer - that is really the goal and we do need to take action that makes people safer, but we have to get beyond the conversations that include policies that have failed. And that there's so much data showing that this actually doesn't result in making people safer - other things do, let's actually invest in the other things because we do need to be safer. The streets are not as safe as they should be - that's a fact. And I think some people interpret hearing things like, well, it is counter-productive - and it is absolutely counterproductive - to use hard enforcement or incarceration, especially with misdemeanors. And well, you're just being soft on crime and - no, we're spending time and resources and energy doing things that don't result in lessening the likelihood that you or I are going to be victimized on the street. And I just would love to do things that reduce the amount of people who are victimized.
And hopefully this begins a conversation - in these situations where they're like, oh, turns out the thing I was advocating for and that I attacked my opponent for is the thing that's necessary. Maybe that should cause me to pause and reflect on, well, if I thought they were super wrong and it turns out they weren't, maybe I should explore some other things that were said. Maybe I could be the one who needs to reevaluate and come to different conclusions. And I hope that happens. I hope we'll see that.
[00:27:19] Rich Smith: I just think that's such an important point because so many - people who come to a public safety conversation from the left get accused of just wanting crime to run rampant. But I don't hear from lefties - yes, please steal my bike, yes please beat up myself and the people I love, yes poor people should continue to wallow on the streets and try to get by - please no one do anything. That's the opposite of what's happening - but everybody in this conversation, I think, wants safer streets, wants people to get the help that they need. But the frustration, I think, coming from the left is - okay, we have tried the exact same strategy for the last 30-40 years and now you're just going to try it again. And I've got some new - now we finally have data showing - yes, aggressive policing actually increases crime. Yeah, throwing people in jail doesn't do much to help them - to help their drug treatment or to help their drug problem.
[00:28:26] Crystal Fincher: It increases their likelihood of reoffending.
[00:28:28] Rich Smith: Yeah, exactly. I don't know the data on this, but I'm gonna go ahead and assume that exits to housing from the jail are not high - for people who don't have a house to go to after they get scooped up off the street for trying to sell baby formula on Third Avenue, or whatever. The call is to spend the City's limited resources in smart ways that will actually reduce crime, and not just 10 years down the line, 5 years down the line, but soon. And by the way, I remember, although maybe my memory is fading - cops saying that they don't want to be doing this shit either. Cops don't need to be responding to mental health calls, cops don't need to be policing kids using drugs on the side of the streets - we need to get these people the help they need - that help isn't, despite what the mayor says, to be found in a cage.
[00:29:31] Crystal Fincher: It is not. And speaking of more frustrating things, and things that are happening despite what the mayor has said - this week, Police Accountability Office dismissed complaints of the widespread mask violations that we saw from SPD, despite their policy that they were mandated to wear masks - they just refused. Which seems like it would create more conversations about the police being out of control and not responsive to any kind of authority, even their own internally established authority, and that being wildly problematic - but anyway, they found that the complaints against policy for their failure to wear masks could not be addressed as a disciplinary issue because so many of them were not doing it, that they just chalked it up to culture and because we aren't punishing everyone - because we've decided not to punish everyone - that we can't punish one person because we're not punishing everyone. It just seems like more of that weird, funky twist-yourself-into-a-pretzel-to-avoid-any-kind-of-accountability logic that people have grown so frustrated with seeing. What's the deal, Rich?
[00:30:50] Rich Smith: Yeah. I mean, just to continue on - the state's Department of Labor and Industries fined the SPD twice during 2021 for not wearing masks and for mask violations, because it is a worker health and safety issue and it is a public health and safety issue. And the first thing I guess I would say on the worker health safety issue is that COVID-19 was the number one killer of cops in 2021 - putting on the masks is about making sure that the people who work in these precincts and these buildings are not spreading a deadly infectious disease around to their friends and coworkers, right? So, I understand that Donald Trump and conservatives think that masks are the devil or whatever, but you gotta wear them and failing to do so is gonna lead to your imminent death. And yet, the culture is strong.
I guess this is just the - it'll be interesting to see how Mayor Harrell responds to this, if he does, considering that culture change at SPD was one of his main campaign promises. He didn't have much in the way of concrete policies in terms of how he was going to make that culture change - talked about high fives, talked about pizza parties, talked about showing them the George Floyd video - none of that. I haven't seen any reports of that - maybe he's done that, maybe he has - I doubt that he has, otherwise it'd be a press release about it. Maybe he should show the cops videos with people on ventilators dying and saying, I wish I did the vaccine, I wish I wore a mask. Maybe that would fit in with his style, but, I don't know. It's bad for them - who knows if the City is going to do anything about it. The police oversight agencies that we have - this report shows - certainly aren't going to do anything about it, which reveals their toothlessness as well. And it shows that the people we entrust with the laws - wearing masks in the workplace being one of them - break them routinely without consequence. And yet they hammer poor people for committing low-level violations every single day on the streets as well. So hypocrisy that is deadly for them, and potential inaction on the City, and yet another instance revealing the toothlessness of our police oversight agencies - a perfect storm of a story.
[00:33:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and you raise an excellent point. It is deadly for them - nationally and locally - the biggest threat to officer safety is not some violent villain. It's COVID. COVID has killed more police than anything else. This is a risk for them also, and these complaints included one where an officer refused to wear a mask in a hospital around people who were immunocompromised and who were already in really sensitive situations. This is not just, Hey, I'm expressing my right. This has impacts on other people's health and safety. And if their job description includes protecting people, this was a direct and blatant failure of it. If that's not a violation, what is? And so often the answer to that question, "If this isn't a violation, what is?" - it's just nothing and the field of nothing just continues to be reinforced and it's just, again, frustrating. But better news -
[00:34:46] Rich Smith: It's selective enforcement. It's the same thing with the cops who went to the insurrection - they were just doing totally above-board, free speech stuff. How could we ever discipline half of the cops just for going to a coup party? Why would we ever? And how can we ever discipline cops for systematically not wearing masks? You know -
[00:35:09] Crystal Fincher: How can we discipline cops for voter fraud, who voted from the incorrect address - like that is a federal law violation that's major. And what the coup party was - supposedly what they were mad about was voter fraud - while they were committing it and their colleagues were committing it. So were they really mad at their colleagues? No, they weren't mad at their colleagues that they just kind of overlooked it.
[00:35:35] Rich Smith: Yeah, and any kind of actual consequences from an oversight agency would be - wouldn't do much because really this is just a culture thing. Meanwhile, we must imprison and jail anybody sleeping where they're not supposed to, imprison and jail anybody stealing some soda from a Subway, imprison and jail anybody breaks a window because they're having a mental health crisis. It's logically incoherent.
[00:36:08] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I've used the word "frustrated" several times in this conversation. I am frustrated, and frustrated that yet again, where we're having conversations about public safety, which should be completely centered around - is what is occurring making people more safe? Yet another thing that directly makes people less safe, that introduces threats to their health, safety, and wellbeing - and we're passing it off as okay. When we are having a conversation about public safety, is this making the public safer? Is there data showing that this makes the public safer, more dangerous? If it isn't making people safer, accountability is - okay, I'm doing something. Am I getting the result intended? And if that result is actually making the public safer, the answer is conclusively No. So what are you going to do about it? That is what we should be holding our public officials, our public employees accountable to - it is, is this making the public safer?
So many of these conversations are around, well, we should be enabling more overtime. We should be hiring more people. We should be doing all of these things that have nothing to do with keeping the public more safe. And yet another thing where we're quibbling about things that are conclusively making the public less safe and just passing it off as okay. This should be unacceptable to everyone involved. I hope we hear that this is unacceptable to Bruce Harrell and to his administration. People should be asking about this and saying, okay, you're doing all these things, but is it making people more safe? As we hear about more shootings and stabbings in the CID, that have already had emphasis patrols and more cops shown there, did that make the public more safe? Did that prevent or stop that shooting, this stabbing? When the answer is no, then what else are we doing to do that? Because these are real people having their lives upended and traumatized from this violence - that we are not doing the things that we know will stop it.
[00:38:23] Rich Smith: Yeah.
[00:38:24] Crystal Fincher: In more optimistic news - this week, we saw a very big deal - the Seattle Starbucks Reserve Roastery workers voted to unionize. Why is this such a big deal?
[00:38:38] Rich Smith: It's huge - yeah. Well, it's a big deal for a couple of reasons. One, there's only three of them in the US, and this was the second one to unionize. So Chicago is the only hold out - all eyes on Chicago. The one in Chelsea, in New York, unionized earlier this month. This was of course a high-profile roastery in Howard Schultz's/Starbucks's hometown. So this adds to the humiliation for the company and to the victory for the winners. And also the Roastery is our flagship store - it's where the top baristas go, it's where the career baristas go. And they're huge - there's a hundred employees working at them, so it's not like at a branch where there's 15 or 12 people. They're really difficult to organize, or relatively difficult to organize, so in a place with a hundred eligible voters, north of a hundred eligible voters - about half of them voted and most of them voted to unionize - that bodes well for this growing movement of unionization - not only in Starbucks, but in the retail sector writ large. As people are coming back and still working in pandemic conditions and being forced to work, now that the culture has moved on, and wanting more say in their safety and in their salary at the table.
So yeah, it's a huge win all around. This one was closer than some of the other ones we've seen, partially because of those challenges to organizing - it was, it felt really tense watching the vote happen. I was watching the Zoom meeting, as the NLRB representative was counting up the votes, and there was like - no, no, no, no, no, yes - it was a little bit tense, but the workers ended up prevailing and so now they'll need continued support as they try to negotiate a contract.
[00:40:38] Crystal Fincher: Well, and you raised a point before we were on air - this seems like it should be an indicator to Democrats, and really anyone running for office, that - looking at the energy that is behind this and the successes that they're having - the unionization movement among workers is one of the most successful things happening in the country right now. Wow - doing things that help people who need it the most, that really support workers, that are helping people at the lower end of the income scale. Those things seem to be really popular. How about focusing on doing more of those? Seems like it would make sense.
[00:41:21] Rich Smith: Every Democrat running for Congress should be screaming about this - supporting the workers, hopping onto this bandwagon. And a lot of it is young people 'cause they're baristas. We know that Biden's approval rating has tanked, especially among young voters. This might help out there as younger voters entering the workforce are increasingly interested in unionization and organization efforts. And I haven't, I just haven't seen - but maybe I'm missing it. I just haven't seen a bunch of Democrats screaming their heads off about this. I have seen Kshama Sawant, the socialist City councilmember in Seattle, do what she normally does - just fly a kite and try to catch the wind of this movement and increase her political salience as well. That's good political instincts. I don't know why the Democrats aren't running after her to do to the same thing, but I suspect it might have something to do with the fact that they are besties with corporations.
[00:42:19] Crystal Fincher: I mean, some of it - to be fair, I have seen some Democrats, certainly not enough - but I've seen our state Senator Karen Keiser cheering enthusiastically for every one of these as they come. Certainly some Democrats are there, but this should be something that is uniform within the party. And you mentioned, Biden and kind of everything down the line suffering from younger voters just not being excited and not feeling like the party is addressing their concerns. This has been a movement led by younger people - absolutely. And look at what young people can do when they're engaged and motivated and excited. They're doing things that have not been done before. These are not the first unionization efforts, but they're successful now with an energy behind them that is only gaining steam. So, younger people are a formidable political force and people better look at them, include them, address their concerns, and get behind them and support them. If you don't do that, you're in for some peril. You can see very clearly how powerful and influential and consequential they are - please take heed.
Another race, where there is an unfortunate development, is the King County Prosecutor's race? What happened here?
[00:43:49] Rich Smith: Yeah, Stephan Thomas, who was occupying the progressive lane in the King County Prosecutor's race, decided to drop out - dealing with some family stuff and he couldn't juggle his responsibilities at home with the - what we know is going to be a gauntlet of a prosecutor's race, especially as the progressive in a media environment where people are - where crime is up relative to previous years. And so, that leaves the progressive lane open in the race and leaves King County voters, right now at least, with only two options - Leesa Manion, a longtime chief of staff for outgoing Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg. I think she's been in the office 25 years, or 35 years - I can't remember. Probably 25 - 35 seems long, but it's been - she's been there a while. And the other person in the race is Jim Ferrell, who's the mayor of Federal Way. He has taken a hard right, sort of tough-on-crime approach, hoping to stir up people's fears to gain more votes. And he's been endorsed by Seattle Police Officers Guild, SPOG - didn't go out of his way really to criticize Mike Solan, who has spread conspiracy theories about Black Lives Matter, also being involved in the insurrection, and is generally a conservative prosecutor dude running the City of Federal Way.
[00:45:39] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it is a challenge. And Will Casey wrote a piece for The Stranger that covers all of this - that will be included in the episode notes. But yeah, it's unfortunate, especially in this conversation that we're having about public safety - who is centering what in the conversations about public safety - is safety, again, as we talked about earlier actually the thing that's being centered and prioritized, or is it other things that may not be exactly aligned to that? And it seemed to me like it was an opportunity to have this conversation county-wide - lots of people are unhappy with the status quo. And there is - certainly Leesa Manion is endorsed by the outgoing county prosecutor, which some people would look at being the status quo. I've heard some things that may be a departure from that - we'll hear more, we'll see.
But an opportunity, especially for people saying - what we've been doing has not been getting us the results that we want - to hear different alternatives to that, with Stephan Thomas being able to articulate with experience from within the system as a prosecutor and elsewhere - seeing what actually does work and what doesn't from a progressive perspective. And I actually hate putting labels on things having to do with public safety. There are things that work and there are things that haven't worked well. And so he has experience with a number of things that data and best practices suggest are the most effective now. And then kind of the approach that we used to take and lots of areas are moving away from on the other side, with Jim Ferrell, with a approach that increases criminalization, incarceration, focusing on, Hey, we just need to arrest and charge and jail people as accountability - and a focus on that. Not quite hearing how, with the data that we know, where we can conclusively say that incarceration does not improve any outcomes or reduce people's likelihood of reoffending, especially over other non-custodial intervention - that prosecuting low-level crime is not the most effective way to deal with that if we actually want safer streets. That preventing crime doesn't seem to be part of that narrative, just responding to it is. So we would have had an opportunity to have a more full conversation. Now filing week is not for almost a month and so there is an opportunity as the title of this - the headline of this article says - that that progressive lane is wide open in this race for someone who may be looking at it. But I hope we get to have a more full conversation than just defending what has been the status quo or moving backwards to more criminalization. I really hope the conversation gets to be more informed and expansive than that.
[00:48:52] Rich Smith: Yeah, that's a great point and Stephan also had an incredible personal story with his relationship with the criminal justice system - that he grew to start to change when he became a prosecutor in the King County Prosecutor's Office. And he would have added a real gravitas to that conversation that would not have easily been dismissed by people trying to make, as you said, arguments to get tough on crime that are unsupported by what the data shows actually reduces crime. So he was an incredible speaker, a great thinker, and he had an incredibly moving personal story. And so, I think that the discourse is certainly going to decline as a result of his absence and that's unfortunate.
And the piece that Will wrote sort of also highlighted another thing that is lost - represents - which that he was big on prosecutorial independence from the cops, and prosecutors and cops being cozy is one of the major problems in the criminal justice system. And he made a point of being independent by refusing endorsements from law enforcement agencies, and by considering not putting cops on trial to support cases when those cops were on the Brady list or even if they had been accused of lying - not just found guilty of lying, but accused of misconduct or lying or abusing their power. And Will asked Jim and Leesa what their response is on that and they gave a little bit of a spectrum of a response. And I think that Stephan would have been a little bit more independent.
[00:50:51] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and that was a great point. And in Melissa Santos' final article for Crosscut, she actually wrote a piece related to that about prosecutors who withhold evidence that they're supposed to turn over - about whether or not cops have been honest or not, and related things - how they rarely face discipline and that closeness is problematic. So certainly would have been an asset to have that conversation from people who are very familiar with our system - where it's working, where it's not, and how to make it better. So I hope we are able to have a full conversation - certainly wish he and his family well and hope things turn out well for Stephan Thomas.
And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, April 22nd, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler and assistant producer Shannon Cheng. Our wonderful co-host today is Associate Editor of The Stranger, Rich Smith. You can find Rich @richsssmith - that's three S's in the middle. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii and you can now follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. While you're there, leave a review, it really helps us out. You can also get a full transcript of the episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in and we'll talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks midweek show, Crystal has a robust conversation with Damon Petrich about his research at the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. As lead author of the seminal work “Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Damon performed an extensive analysis of 116 research studies looking at the effect of incarceration on reoffending. The review’s finding that the oft-used policy of imprisonment does not reduce the likelihood of recidivism sparks a discussion about how the United States ended up as the world leader in mass incarceration and the disconnect between conventional assumptions about what prisons provide versus reality. Noting that the carceral system does a poor job of rehabilitation - while eating up budgets across the country and exacting significant societal costs - Damon and Crystal talk about how to design and evaluate programs that do work to deliver greater public safety for everyone.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and reach Damon for more information about his research at petricdm@ucmail.uc.edu
Resources
“Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review” by Damon M. Petrich, Travis C. Pratt, Cheryl Lero Johnson, and Francis T. Cullen for Crime and Justice: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/715100
Scott Hechinger Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/ScottHech/status/1447596444886523911
“Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022” by Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner from the Prison Policy Initiative: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html
“Risk-need-responsivity model for offender assessment and rehabilitation” by James Bonta and D. A. Andrews for Public Safety Canada: https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/rsk-nd-rspnsvty/index-en.aspx
“Let’s Take a Hard Look at Who Is in Jail and Why We Put Them There” by Alea Carr for the ACLU-WA blog: https://www.aclu-wa.org/blog/let-s-take-hard-look-who-jail-and-why-we-put-them-there
Book - “Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect” by Robert J. Sampson: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo5514383.html
Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation Program - “Police Legitimacy and Legal Cynicism: Why They Matter and How to Measure in Your Community”: https://www.lisc.org/media/filer_public/05/0b/050ba3aa-044f-4676-bc1e-6e2b6c48412c/091317_bcji_resources_police_legitimacy_fundamentals.pdf
“Polls Show People Favor Rehabilitation over Incarceration” by Matt Clarke for Prison Legal News: https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2018/nov/6/polls-show-people-favor-rehabilitation-over-incarceration/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, I am excited to welcome Damon Petrich, who's a doctoral associate in the School of Criminal Justice at University of Cincinnati and incoming assistant professor at Loyola University Chicago. He was the lead author of a recent article, "Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review," along with Travis Pratt, Cheryl Lero Johnson, Francis T. Cullen. Damon's research focuses on the effectiveness of corrections and rehabilitation programs, desistance from crime, and the impact of community violence on youth development. Thank you so much for joining us, Damon.
[00:01:13] Damon Petrich: Thank you very much for having me on, Crystal. I'm excited to talk a little bit about my work and the implications of that and all that, so thanks again.
[00:01:20] Crystal Fincher: I'm very excited to talk about this and it's extremely timely - has been for a while. We have conversations almost every day in the public sphere having to do with public safety - this is such a major component of it. And so I'm hoping as we have this conversation, it'll help us to better assess what the costs and benefits are of custodial sanctions and incarceration, and alternatives to that - to have a conversation that kind of orients us more towards public safety. Sometimes we're so concerned with metrics around police and how many they are, and what the length of a sentence should be. And sometimes we focus on things that take us off of the overall goal of keeping us all safer and reducing the likelihood that each of us are victimized and to hopefully prevent people from becoming victims of crime. And just to have accurate conversations about how we invest our public resources - what we're actually getting from them, and then how to evaluate as we go along - what we should be tracking and measuring and incentivizing. As so many people talk about taking data-driven approaches and create all these dashboards - that we're really doing it from an informed perspective. So just to start out - what actually were you studying and what were you seeking to find out?
[00:02:47] Damon Petrich: Yeah, so the main purpose of our meta-analysis, which I can explain exactly what that is later on if you have questions, but the main purpose was to understand what happens when you take one group of offenders and you sentence them to something custodial like prison or jail, and then you sentence another group of similar offenders to something non-custodial like probation. How do those two groups differ in terms of whether they reoffend? So does prison actually deter recidivism, or does it make people more likely to commit crime afterwards? So that's sort of what we were looking at and so we considered all of the available research on that, in this review.
[00:03:29] Crystal Fincher: Got it. So right now we have gone down the path of mass incarceration - that is the default punishment that we, as society, have looked to for crime. Hey - sentence them and many times it's, Hey, they're going to jail. Sometimes they get out of jail and they have supervision that continues, but jail is really focused, where we focus a lot of our effort and where we put people and hope that that'll straighten them out and they come out and everything is fine. How did we get here and where are we in terms of how we're approaching incarceration in our society, in our country?
[00:04:11] Damon Petrich: Yeah, so there is a lot of public uproar around a lot of issues, like race issues, and there was crime spikes and concerns over social welfare - and there's all this confluence of issues in the '60s and early '70s. And we decided to - as a country, not everyone, but politicians decided that we should tackle the crime problem by A) incarcerating more people, and then B) once they get there, keep them there for longer. So we enacted things like mandatory minimum sentences, where the judge really has no discretion over what happens - the person gets automatically a sentence of incarceration if they've committed a certain type of crime. You had habitual offender laws where if you're - like California's three strikes policy - where if you have two prior felonies and you get a third, no matter what it is, you're going to jail for life. Michigan had the "650 Lifer Law," where if you get caught with 650 grams of heroin or cocaine, you're automatically going to prison for life. And then we got rid of parole and stuff like that in a lot of states.
So all these things lead to more people going to jail and then for longer, and those laws came to be in the '70s and '80s. And over that time, our incarceration rate ballooned up by about 700%, so by the early 2000s, we were at over 2 million people incarcerated and another 7-8 million people on probation or parole. So it's a pretty big expansion - the United States has 5% of the world's population and a quarter, or 25%, of the prisoners, so it's a little ridiculous. The crime rate here isn't nearly as high, or nearly high enough to justify that huge disparity. So yeah, it's a whole confluence of factors led us to be the world leader in incarceration.
[00:06:14] Crystal Fincher: And what attitudes or what justifications are the people who have the power to enact these policies and continue these policies - how are they justifying them?
[00:06:25] Damon Petrich: So there's a few reasons why you might want to incarcerate somebody. One is just because you want to punish them or get revenge on them, so that's more of a moral reason. But the main focus of politicians were twofold - one was incapacitation, so that one means that because you're keeping somebody locked up in a cage, obviously they can't be out in the community committing crimes. So the thought is that you're going to reduce crime that way. The research on that is a little squishy even now, and I can talk a little bit more about that later if you want. But the other reason, and the one that we focused on in our review, was that prison deters people from going back to crime after they get out. So the idea there is that prison sucks - you go in there, you're cut off from your job, from your family, from your friends, or from just having hobbies or things to do. And you're not going to want to go back, so when you get out of prison - you think real hard, and you think how much prison sucks, and you decide not to go back to crime. That's the thinking behind that deterrence hypothesis anyway.
So those two - incapacitation and deterrence - were the main drivers of those increase in laws and stuff during the '70s, '80s, and '90s, but there really wasn't any evidence for either of them - in the '70s and '80s in particular. So most of the research evaluating whether prison actually does deter recidivism has popped up over the last 25 years or so.
[00:08:05] Crystal Fincher: And as you took a look at it - all of the studies that have popped up over the past 25 years had varying degrees of rigor and scientific validity. But as that body of research grew, people began to get a better idea of whether incarceration actually does reduce someone's likelihood of reoffending. How big was that body of work, in terms of studies, and what were you able to look at?
[00:08:40] Damon Petrich: So in our particular review, we looked at 116 studies, which is a pretty sizable number. Most people - when you read through an article and a literature review might have 10 studies or something that they just narratively go through, but we looked at 116. And then within those 116 studies, there were 981 statistical models. So 901 different comparisons - or 981 different comparisons - of what happens to custodial versus non-custodial groups. So we looked at a pretty big chunk of literature.
[00:09:20] Crystal Fincher: And in that, in the reliance of - that's a really big number - and I think, people now are maybe more familiar, just from a layperson's perspective, of just how big that number is. As we've seen throughout this pandemic that we're in the middle of, studies come out - people are looking at one study, and wow - study number two comes out and we're feeling really good about it. And man, we get to five studies and people are like, okay, we know what's going on. To get beyond a hundred is just a real comprehensive body of study and analysis. What were you able to determine from that?
[00:10:05] Damon Petrich: So I should probably explain upfront what a meta-analysis is and why it's useful. So like you were just saying - like in the COVID pandemic, for example - one study will come out and it'll say, oh, Ivermectin reduces symptomatic COVID cases by X percent. And then the next study will come out and say, Ivermectin makes people way worse. So any individual study can be kind of misleading.
A good analogy for what a meta-analysis does would be to look at baseball, for example. So let's say you're interested in some rookie player that's just come out, he's just joined Major League Baseball and you go to his - you want to know how good this player actually is? You've never seen him play, you've only heard rumors. So you go out to his first game, he gets up to bat four times and he gets no hits. So you walk away from that game thinking, wow, this player is terrible, the team wasted all their money recruiting and paying this guy's salary. But that could have just been an off game for many reasons - it's his debut game so maybe there's just first-game nerves, maybe the weather was bad, maybe he was having personal problems in his life, or he had a little bit of an injury. So there's a number of reasons why looking at his performance from that one game is not going to be representative of who he is as a player. Ideally, you'd want to look at all the games over a season where he might go up to bat 250 times. And over those 250 times, he gets 80 hits, which is a pretty good batting average - it's over .300. So with that amount of data, you could come to a more solid conclusion of whether he's actually a good player or not.
And with that amount of data, you could also look at what we call moderating characteristics. So you could look at, for example, whether he plays better when it's an away game or in a home game, whether it's early or late season - you could look at all these sorts of things. So this is essentially what we're doing with research as well, in a meta-analysis.
So if you look at studies on incarceration - one might show increases in recidivism after people go to prison, the next might show decreases, and the next might show that probationers and prisoners reoffend at about the same rates. So just like in the baseball analogy, in a meta-analysis, we're looking at all of the available research. We're combining it together and determining A) what the sort of overall or average effect of incarceration is, and then B) whether these moderating characteristics actually matter. So in other words, is the effect of incarceration pretty much the same for males as it is for females, or for juveniles as adults, or when the research design is really good versus when it's not so great. So that's basically what we did in this meta-analysis is again - looked at 116 studies and from those 981 statistical estimates.
[00:13:13] Crystal Fincher: Very helpful. Totally makes sense with the baseball analogy, and I especially appreciate breaking down with all the statistical models and not just kind of thumbs up, thumbs down - the binary - it either increases or reduces the likelihood of recidivism. But under what conditions are - might it be more likely, less likely that someone does? What are some of those influencing effects on what happens? And so you were just talking about the justification that people used going into this, and now that we have data coming out - does it turn out that people go into prison or are incarcerated in jail, they think - wow, this is horrible. Some in society are like the more uncomfortable we make it in jail, the better we want to make sure it's a place that they never would want to come back to - that it's so scary and such a bad experience that they are just scared straight for the rest of their lives. Does it actually turn out to be that way? Do they take a rational look at - this was my experience, I don't want to go back again, therefore I will not do any of the things that I did going in.
[00:14:28] Damon Petrich: I would not say that's the conclusion - no. So again, based on the 116 studies that we looked at, which is again a lot, people who are sentenced to incarceration - so jail, prison - they commit crime, they reoffend at about the same rates as if you'd sentence those same people to probation. So in other words, they're not being deterred by being sent to prison. These effects are the same for both males and females. So in other words, prison doesn't reduce reoffending for one group versus the other. It's the same whether we look at adults versus juveniles, it's the same regardless of what type of recidivism we're interested in - rearrests or convictions. It's pretty much the same across the board. There's some slight variations in research designs, but even within those, prison either has no effect or it slightly increases recidivism. We don't find any conditions under which prison is reducing reoffending or deterring these people from going back to those lives.
[00:15:35] Crystal Fincher: So from a societal perspective, a lot of people kind of make the assumption that, Hey, we arrest and we incarcerate someone - whew, our streets are safer. They get out, and now they can choose to reintegrate themselves into society hopefully - they do and we're all safer because of it. But it looks like impressions that some people may have that, Hey, we're letting someone off easy. And suggestions - there's so much media coverage around this - and suggestions that because we're letting people off easy, that we're making it easier for them to reoffend, or they don't feel sufficiently punished enough and so that becomes an incentive to reoffend. Does that seem like it tracks with what the studies have shown?
[00:16:33] Damon Petrich: Not really - so there's some studies that actually ask prisoners and offenders whether they'd prefer going to prison or probation. And a lot of them will say, oh, I'd rather do a year in prison than spend two or three years on probation. So it's not like they view probation as just being super easy. And they're not saying this because they received time off their sentence for being in the study or anything like that. Probation's not easy either - and you have to also think that while these people are on probation, they're able to stay in close touch with their family, they're able to maintain connections with work or find work, they're able to participate in the community, they can pay taxes - that I know a lot of people who are pro-prison love.
So there's all sorts of reasons why - beyond just them reoffending at the same rates as if they'd gone to prison - there's a lot of reasons why we might want to keep these people in the community. And it's not like we're saying, let everybody out of prison - so the nature of this research - you want to compare apples to apples. So in this research, comparing prisoners to probationers - these have to be people who are getting - they could either legitimately get a sentence of jail or probation, or prison or probation. So these are going to be first-time offenders, people who are relatively low-level - they've committed low-level crimes and all that. So we're not saying - there's not going to be a situation where a murderer just gets probation - that sort of thing. So I know that might be a concern of some people - they think that's a natural argument of this analysis, but it's really not.
[00:18:24] Crystal Fincher: Well, and to your point, we're really talking - if we're looking at all of the crime that gets people sentenced to prison time, a very small percentage of that is murder. A very small percentage of it is on that kind of scale - you can wind up in jail or prison for a wide variety of offenses - many of them, people perceive as relatively minor or that people might be surprised can land you in prison. Or if someone has committed a number of minor offenses, that can stack up - to your point in other situations - and increase the length of detention or the severity of the consequences. As we're looking through this and the conversation of, okay, so, we sentence them, we let them out - it's not looking like there's a difference between jail or community supervisions, things like probation - what is it about jail that is harmful or that is not helpful? What is it about the structure of our current system that doesn't improve recidivism outcomes for people?
[00:19:42] Damon Petrich: Probably the main one is the rehabilitation is not the greatest. So just as an example, substance abuse is a very strong predictor whether people are going to reoffend, unsurprisingly. About 50% of prisoners at the state and federal level in The States meet the DSM [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders] criteria for having a substance use abuse disorder - so they meet the clinical criteria for substance abuse disorder. So half of them, and then more than that just use substances, but they don't meet the criteria for a disorder. But of that 50% who has a substance abuse disorder, only about 20% of those actually receives treatment for it while they're incarcerated. So, you're not dealing with a root cause of reoffending while they're in prison - so you're not deterring them, but you're also not rehabilitating them - so you're really not doing anything.
And then in the rare cases where these people are provided with rehabilitation or reentry programming, it's often not based on any sort of evidence-based model of how you actually change people. So there's a lot of psychological and criminology theory and research on how you actually elicit behavioral change, and these programs really aren't in line with any of that. And I could give examples if you wanted, but -
[00:21:17] Crystal Fincher: Sure. I think that's helpful, 'cause I think a lot of people do assume, and sometimes it's been controversial - wow, look at how much they're coddling these prisoners - they have these educational programs, and they get all this drug treatment for free, and if they don't come out fixed then it's their own fault because they have access to all of these treatment resources in prison. Is that the case?
[00:21:43] Damon Petrich: No, I wouldn't say so - first of all, they don't have access, a lot of them, to any programs. And then, like I said, the programs that they do get really aren't that effective. So the big one that everybody loves to argue for is providing former inmates with jobs. If you look at any federal funding for program development, like the Second Chance Act or the First Step Act - I think that was one under Trump - and then under Bush, there was a Serious [and] Violent Offenders Reentry Initiative - pretty much all of these federal bills will be heavily focused on just providing offenders with jobs. And almost all of the evaluations of these programs show that they don't reduce reoffending.
And it's not really that hard - again, if you go back to the literature on behavioral change and, criminology literature - it's not really that hard to understand why just providing a job isn't going to reduce or lead somebody away from a life of crime. A lot of these people have spotty work histories where they've never had a job at all, they believe and know that it's easier to gain money by doing illicit work than it is legal work, they have things like low self-control so they're very impulsive, they don't know how to take criticism or being told what to do by a boss. They live in neighborhoods with very poor opportunities for good jobs and education, and maybe there's a mindset around there that illegal work or whatever is just a better way to go - that's sort of ingrained. So there's a lot of different reasons why just handing somebody a job isn't going to lead them away from crime, 'cause they have all these other things that need to be dealt with first.
So ideally, a rehabilitation program that's comprehensive would deal with all of those other background factors and then provide them with a job. Because if you make them less impulsive, better able to resist the influence of their antisocial friends, and get this thought out of their head that other people are being hostile towards them when they're really not - all these sorts of cognitive and behavioral biases that they have - if you deal with all of those things and then you give them a job, they're more likely to actually latch onto that job as something worthwhile doing. And then they're going to go on to get out of a life of crime. But if you just give them a job and you haven't dealt with any of those issues, you can't really expect that to work. And that is the model that we currently do - is something that we don't really expect to work that well.
[00:24:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that's - it's really interesting and I don't know that a lot of people actually know that, Hey, giving someone a job isn't sufficient - which is why I think it's so important to talk about studies like this, because some of what has become conventional wisdom, really is not accurate or reflects what has been studied and discovered. And I guess in that vein, what are the factors - you just talked about a few - but what does increase someone's likelihood of reoffending or recidivism, and what reduces it?
[00:25:08] Damon Petrich: So those are probably two ends of the same, or two sides of the same coin, but this is pretty well known in criminology - a model called the risk-need-responsivity [RNR] model was developed by a couple of fellow Canadians, named James Bonta and Don Andrews, along with some of their colleagues in the '80s and '90s. And they, through again, other meta-analyses just like we did, found certain categories of characteristics of people who are more likely to reoffend. So you have things like having antisocial peers - so that one's pretty obvious - if you have a bunch of friends that are involved in crime, it's going to be pretty hard for you to get out of that life because you're surrounded by those people. Same with family members. If you have what are called criminal thinking patterns - so again, you might have what's called a hostile attribution bias, things like that, where somebody says something a little bit negative to you and you take that as a huge insult and you retaliate with anger and aggression - things like that. Or being impulsive - so you're again quick to anger, you're swayed by small little enticements in the environment and that sort of thing - so you're easily swayed one way or the other. Things like that are strong predictors of reoffending. Substance abuse - it's what I mentioned earlier. If you don't really have any sort of proactive leisure activities, like hobbies and stuff like that. So there's a bunch of well-known things that we know are strongly associated with recidivism, and a rehabilitation program should ideally deal with them.
Now this model that Andrews and Bonta and all these other people came up with - this RNR risk-need-responsivity model - the risk part says that we should give people a risk assessment when they're entering prison or leaving prison and determine what level of risk are they from reoffending. And we assess these different criteria, like criminal thinking patterns and antisocial friends and substance abuse. So we determine what those factors are and then we design them a treatment program that actually deals with those factors at the individual level. So we're not just giving a blanket rehabilitation program to everybody, and you're providing the most amount of care to the people who most need it or who are the most likely to re-offend.
And then once we've done all that, we need to make sure that we're addressing these problems in some sort of a format that we know actually works. The most well-known one, but not as often used, the most well-known within the sort of psychologist and criminological literature is cognitive behavioral therapy [CBT]. So this is pretty popular for dealing with depression and all sorts of eating disorders and substance abuse problems in non-offender populations. Well, those programs also work in offender populations and they work pretty well. So the research shows - again meta-analyses - that when you deal with all these three factors - risk, need, and responsivity - you can reduce reoffending rates by about 26%. So it's a pretty sizeable amount - it's much greater than you're getting by just sentencing people to prison without doing anything.
[00:28:42] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and I think you cover in your paper - those things are absolutely true. And you just talked about several administrations' attempts to implement programming and resources to try and help people get jobs, potentially - hey, there's even a CBT treatment, but if that treatment has twice as many people as are recommended being in a session and occurs over half the time that it's supposed to, you really are sabotaging the entire process or really setting it up for failure. And it just seems to be an expensive exercise that we aren't really getting anything out of. Does that seem to be consistent with how you've seen the attempts at introducing this programming within prisons and jails?
[00:29:40] Damon Petrich: Yeah, for sure - this is a pretty common finding too - so it's not just about preaching that you're going to do these things. You actually have to implement them well. So just like you said, there's a number of studies that show this - so you've designed some really great program that deals with all of these risk factors that lead people back into reoffending, you give it to them in a cognitive behavioral setting. So all seems good on paper, but in practice, like you said - one of the famous studies there - can't remember the names of the authors offhand right now - but one of the famous studies there showed that they're providing it to people in groups of 30, as opposed to 15, and they're delivering it in a really short amount of time. And they're not maybe giving it to the highest-risk people - so they're just mixing random people in there at varying levels of risk. So when you do all these sorts of things - you implement the program poorly - you can't really expect it to work.
And this is often the case - is the government pays people to come up with these great programs, and then not enough funding is provided to actually make sure that they're implemented and evaluated well. So the amount of funding that actually goes into that - developing the programs to begin with - is small, but when you do do that, you're not making sure that you're actually implementing things well. So it's just sort of shooting yourself in the foot, and probably making people come to the conclusion that these things don't work - when they do work, if you just implement them well.
[00:31:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and there's also a lot of rhetoric - and you discuss this - there's a lot of rhetoric coming from the government, even coming from leadership within the Bureau of Prisons or leadership in our carceral system, saying we do want to rehabilitate people. We are trying to implement programming that does this. You see - we have these educational opportunities and we are doing evaluations of people. And it may be happening while they're understaffed or other challenges, but one of the biggest, I guess, red flags is that none of the evaluation of their programs and none of the incentives that arise are in any way tied to what is the actual result of what happens. Are you actually succeeding on reducing someone's likelihood for reoffense? It does not seem like any compensation is tied to that, any kind of evaluation of positions or regular reporting - to say, is this program having its intended effect? And if not, what do we need to do to correct for that? Is that what you found?
[00:32:33] Damon Petrich: I would say that's probably a pretty fair assessment. A lot of the programs that are implemented are never evaluated at all. And then the ones that are - it's usually once - there's one evaluation of those programs. And then, like you said, there doesn't really seem to be a lot of self-reflection - I don't know what other word you would use - but these programs don't really change on the basis of these evaluations. So, it's kind of disheartening to hear about, I guess.
[00:33:14] Crystal Fincher: It feels very disheartening to live in the middle of - and one of the big things about this is that this - we have these conversations and we talk about these studies and we're saying, yeah, it actually - we're not doing anyone any favors right now when it comes to reducing recidivism. And having these conversations oftentimes detached from the cost associated with what we're paying for these. And my goodness are we paying to incarcerate people? It's not just, well, we do lock them up and we keep them away. Or we do a good job of keeping them in - they reoffend, they go back to jail. And lots of people are like, we did our job, they went back to jail - boom, everything is fine.
But we are paying through the nose and out the ear for this - just here, we're in the state of Washington, and right now the state spends about $112 per day, or over $40,000 annually, to incarcerate one individual - that's the cost per inmate. In King County - the county that we're in - they spend $192 a day, or $70,000 annually, to incarcerate an individual. That is a huge amount of the tax dollars that we spend - these come out of our general fund, meaning that these are dollars that every service, everything that is not a dedicated source of revenue, is competing for. So when we talk about things and have conversations like, well, we don't have the budget for that and we don't have the money - that is related to how much of that money we're spending on other things. And my goodness, I would think that we want to get our money's worth for that level of expenditure. And it really appears that if we're saying the goal of jail is to get people on the straight and narrow path and becoming contributing members of society and all of the implications of that, it doesn't seem like we're getting our money's worth. And so, if those aren't the goals and if we just want to punish people, it's not like we're punishing people for free. We're punishing people at the cost of $70,000 per day [year], and at the cost of all the other services and infrastructure needs that we have.
So it really seems like we're punishing ourselves as much, or more, as others - particularly if we're bringing people back into society that are likely to reoffend in one way or another. And so if our goal is to keep our community safe and that is the North Star, it looks like we need to realign our processes and our expenditure of resources. I guess my question to you, after all that, is - how should we be moving forward? What should we be looking to do? What is shown to work?
[00:36:24] Damon Petrich: Well, I would say - yeah, $70,000 a year as just a revenge cost per person seems like a lot. $80 billion in the country as a whole, for a revenge cost, seems like a pretty high price to pay, given we're not reducing reoffending. You could make the argument that these people aren't offending while they're in prison, but that's - there's other reasons why that might not be completely accurate, which I could talk about too, but -
[00:36:59] Crystal Fincher: Well, I'm interested in that. Why might that not be accurate?
[00:37:03] Damon Petrich: So, obviously the person - if you incarcerate a particular individual, obviously they can't be out in the community committing crimes. So that's obvious, but there's a number of reasons why that might not, en masse, actually reduce crime a whole lot. The research on it - this is a little bit squishy - in terms of whether incarcerating more people leads to lower crime rates, because one influences the other. But for example, if you look at illegal drug markets - a lot of the homicides in the United States and other violent crime that people are really concerned about, and it's plastered all over the media is - homicides, gang-related stuff. So if you take key gang members out and you put them in prison, what ends up happening is that there's competition in that market to take over that person's place, either within the gang or other gangs coming in. So what ends up happening oftentimes is a spike in violence. So that's one reason why just incapacitating, particularly high-crime individuals, might not actually lead to lower crime rates overall. Again, you're lowering crime for that one person, but you might be increasing crime on a more systemic level.
Beyond that, these things have broader societal and community level impacts - incarcerating a lot of people. Again, research shows that when you're incarcerating a lot of people in a particular community - so there's a bunch of really good work by Robert Sampson - he has a book that came out a few years ago called Great American City. And he looked at these individual neighborhoods in Chicago over time, and what he finds is that in communities where there's a higher number of people incarcerated in a particular community, this ends up increasing what's called "legal cynicism." And this is done in some other work as well with David Kirk and Andrew Papachristos - but they show that this increases legal cynicism, which means people are skeptical of police helping them out, the police doing a good job. And what ends up happening after that - when people are more cynical of the legal system, they're less likely to report crimes to the police, they're less likely to cooperate with the police. So what ends up happening? You incarcerate more people and people in that community end up being less willing to cooperate with law enforcement. And this leads to sort of an endless cycle where things sort of get out of hand. So there's all these unintended and nonfinancial consequences of incarcerating a lot of people that could potentially end up leading to more crime.
[00:40:03] Crystal Fincher: Well, and - speaking as a Black woman - obviously, looking at the impacts of mass incarceration in the Black community and in neighborhoods around the country - where it is almost like the community is responding to the actual outcome and that, Hey, this actually isn't making my community any better. I'm experiencing traumatic impacts from this - whether it's my relative went to prison or a sole breadwinner in the family and now we're thrown into poverty, or I'm in a situation where I don't have a parent who used to be there - who now is no longer there. Or causing instability and impacting the education that people get and the kind of job opportunity, watching someone who's come out have to struggle and be ostracized. And it looks like, Hey, this is just the first step on a long cycle of traumatic and undesirable events - and I don't want to participate in a system that is doing that.
With that, as we look forward, and I think this is also related to conversations about just fundamental trust in our criminal legal system and relations with police and throughout the system. It's - if we think about how to turn that around - to me, seems related to thinking about the question of how do we get better outcomes for everyone? 'Cause it seems like right now where we're investing a lot in poor outcomes for people who were already, usually, in pretty poor spots leading to themselves being incarcerated, coming out and not necessarily improving, definitely not improving. And if anything, a chance that it gets a little bit worse. How do we change that entire outcome? And I know you're looking specifically in the incarceration space, but what should be, what could be done differently? Or do we just need a fundamental restructuring of the way we do this?
[00:42:17] Damon Petrich: I don't know about a fundamental restructuring - I don't, I'm not great at that high-level thinking stuff, but what I do know is that - we're probably going to continue to incarcerate people. That's something that's done in every country and people seem to love here. So if we actually want to use prison for public safety - because 95% of inmates eventually get out - if we actually want to use it for public safety, then let's actually try wholeheartedly to rehabilitate them while they're in there. And again, there's a lot of theory and evidence-based principles on how we can do this, like the risk-need-responsivity model that I talked about earlier, cognitive behavioral therapy more broadly. If you use these types of things and continue to work on them and develop them over time, then yeah - prison might actually be helpful if people are going there and getting the help that they need. But that's not what's happening currently. So that's one level in incarceration terms - that's the area that I know best.
So that's one way you could potentially alleviate some of this stuff is - if people are actually getting resources and stuff when they're in prison, and then when once they're reintegrating, they're not only going to reoffend less, but maybe they're going to contribute to their community more. They're going to be better able to connect with their family and stuff like that. So rather than being a hindrance, it could potentially be a help. Obviously, again, it's not ideal to remove people from their communities and their family and friends. And like I said earlier, if you have the option to sentence them to something community-based instead, I think that's the better route to go. But if you are going to send people to prison, which I think we're going to continue to do a lot of the time, then let's rehabilitate them while they're in there is the main point. And do so based on what actually works to do that.
[00:44:23] Crystal Fincher: It's really the investment in the people who are there, and we're - I think up against a lot of societal attitudes and resistance where it just feels wrong to a number of people to be providing services and shifting that investment to things that are seemingly helpful for the inmate, because everything about how we've been conditioned to understand our prison system has been - the punishment is kind of the key, and they'll make rational decisions afterwards to avoid prison based on how bad the punishment is. When it comes to community supervision, things like probation, what are the differences there? If there are better outcomes from that, what accounts for the better outcomes when it comes to probation versus incarceration?
[00:45:23] Damon Petrich: I wouldn't say the outcomes are better - they're just pretty much the same as they would be if they're sentenced to prison. So, probation costs less and then it also enables the people to be out in the community doing community things, like being with their friends and families and all that. I mean, you can't quantify, based on a recidivism percentage, what their family members and friends and employers are getting out of it. So that's something we can't really look at - or I guess you could, but something we don't often do - but so there's intangible things that you would get by keeping people in the community. Plus it doesn't lead to all that other stuff I talked about where people become cynical of the legal system and it leads to this cycle of whatever.
[00:46:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and so if we're were doing this programming in prison and helping people, I think your research shows it's extremely important to do both the structural, Hey, you need a place to live, you need to be able to pay your rent and your bills - so having a job, having housing, having healthcare, getting those very basic needs met is critical. But also addressing a number of the mental or behavioral health issues that are common among the incarcerated population - and dealing with that is as important. And basically those two things both need to happen hand-in-hand. How do we do a better job of that in our current system?
[00:46:57] Damon Petrich: Well, first of all, I'd like to say that you're right there - I think maybe when I was talking earlier about employment, it might sound like giving people jobs is just a waste of time, but that's not the case. It needs - the two things need to be paired - you need to deal with the cognitive and behavioral problems in addition to giving them jobs and housing support and all that. In terms of how you actually go about doing that, there are examples in the literature of programs that do this, so there's examples out there.
I think if you're a state or local or even federal correctional department and you're interested in doing this - implementing something that's evidence-based - or if you're just a concerned citizen that wants to rally your local officials to do that - go and talk to researchers like me, or people at universities that have criminology departments or criminal justice departments, because this knowledge is out there. It's widely available. You just have to go and seek it out. So at my university, for example, we have the University of Cincinnati Corrections Institute and under the guidance of Ed Latessa, he was - now passed - but he was, over the last 30 years, responsible for disseminating a lot of this evidence-based practices to some of the state and local criminal justice agencies. And they helped with implementation and evaluation in a lot of these places, so the help is out there. You just have to look for it a little bit.
[00:48:38] Crystal Fincher: And another question I had - your analysis seemed to suggest that when we're talking about low-risk, medium, and high-risk offenders - or people who have done relatively minor crimes versus those who have done more serious crimes - that these interventions are particularly effective the more serious the offense or crime has been. And that perhaps even sometimes treating someone who is a really low-risk as if they're a high-risk, can worsen the outcomes for that person. Is that the case?
[00:49:21] Damon Petrich: Yeah, that tends to be a finding in research - we're not exactly sure why, but providing a lot of really intensive services to people deemed to be low-risk can actually be harmful rather than helpful. We don't know based on research why, but there's a lot of pretty good hypotheses about why. So a low-risk offender is going to be somebody who's a first-timer who's committed some not-that-serious crime. So they probably have a job, they probably have pretty strong connections with their family and all that. So if you're taking them and you're putting them in a program where you have to be there 40 hours a week, they're probably going to get fired from their job, it's going to be harder to stay in contact with friends and families that are sort of tying you into a non-criminal life. And then you're probably going to be associating with all kinds of people who are high-risk, and maybe they're going to draw you towards, oh yeah, I could earn four grand going out tonight and stealing some laptops. There's a lot of reasons why just taking low-risk people and putting them in these programs is going to be harmful rather than helpful.
[00:50:31] Crystal Fincher: And so with that in mind, and you talk about, Hey, if we're trying to influence local electeds - one of the interesting things about having a podcast and radio show that caters to extremely politically and civically inclined people is that we actually do have a number of policymakers and politicians who listen, and people who are enacting and in control of this policy. If you were to talk to them and give them advice about how to move forward, especially in the current environment that we find ourselves in, where over the past few years has been increasing awareness of some of the defecits of our system and pushes to change those. And also, as we have seen more recently, a real strong pushback from a lot of people who are invested in our current system saying, Hey, let's not change things too much. Maybe we need to jail more and for longer. And maybe we're just not doing enough incarceration, and that's the answer. In that kind of political environment, what would you tell people who are in charge of this policy, who may be facing pressure to keep going forward with the status quo, about how they should evaluate how they should move forward and the kinds of things that they should do?
[00:52:07] Damon Petrich: I know a lot of these politicians get lobbied by correctional officer groups or whatever, and that's whatever, but ultimately you get voted in by voters. So, I'm not an expert on public opinion - I have other friends who are more into that kind of stuff, but I do know from talking with them and from reading that literature, that the public actually does support rehabilitation. So they have for a long time and it's shifted more towards being in support of rehabilitation over time. So right now, most Americans support providing rehabilitation programs to prisoners and offenders. So this is something that's going to please your constituency, people want this kind of thing. And it's not like you're going to be losing all kinds of jobs by getting rid of prison - there's going to be a need for skilled people who can provide these programs and probation officers and all these sorts of things. So it's not a net loss when you're getting rid of prisons. There's a lot of reasons to sentence people to community supervision and things like that - provide rehabilitation. There's public support for it, there's jobs involved, there's cost savings - big time, obviously - it's way cheaper to keep somebody out of prison than it is to keep them in prison. So there's a lot of different reasons why you would want to do that as a politician.
[00:53:43] Crystal Fincher: I think that makes sense. Certainly it's a lot cheaper to keep someone out of prison versus in prison. I mean, we talked about the annual costs - in the state of Washington over $40,000, King County over $70,000 - comparing that to how much we invest in a student of $11,500 a year. If we focus more on investing in people, both inside and outside the system, it seems like we set ourselves up for a safer community, fewer people being victimized, and more people leading thriving, productive, tax-paying lives. And we're all happier than we are right now, I would think, I would hope - it seems like the research points in that direction. So I certainly appreciate you taking the time to speak with us about this. Is there anything else that you want to leave with us, in thinking about this study and your research?
[00:54:55] Damon Petrich: I think we covered it pretty well. Just to circle back to something you just said - I know this might put me out of a job since I focus on what happens when people's lives go awry, but you really are better off to invest in early prevention programs and giving people a good start on life than trying to correct the program or the problem afterwards. So yeah - politicians spend some money on prevention programs. I know the good effects of that are a long way out, but they're actually good on a societal level. So I guess I would add that, even though it's not good for criminologists, maybe, to put themselves out of a job like that.
[00:55:40] Crystal Fincher: Well, much appreciated, and thank you so much for having this conversation with us today.
[00:55:45] Damon Petrich: Yeah, thank you very much for having me on. I'm glad that there are people out there interested in this stuff, so thanks again.
[00:55:51] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by journalist from The Seattle Times, Heidi Groover. They begin the show by discussing a zoning change in Shoreline that would allow for more duplexes and triplexes, and the broader issue of housing affordability in Washington and across the country. Crystal and Heidi then dive into pushback from corporations and one city councilor on protections for app-based workers, a standstill getting concrete workers back on the job, and two Seattle Starbucks locations on strike this weekend. They conclude by reviewing predictable results from the Seattle Chamber poll, a proposed law that would impact ballot initiatives and a continued push for SPD hiring bonuses without compelling evidence to support the use of funds.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Heidi Groover at @HeidiGroover. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Shoreline may decide to allow duplexes and triplexes in all residential neighborhoods” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/shoreline-may-decide-to-allow-duplexes-and-triplexes-in-all-residential-neighborhoods/
“Across 26 Metro Areas, Residents Largely Support Allowing Missing Middle Homes in Residential Neighborhoods” by Manny Garcia from Zillow: https://www.zillow.com/research/modest-densification-zhar-30934/
“Millions of Americans are resorting to risky ways to buy an affordable home” by Jennifer Ludden from KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/stories/millions-of-americans-are-resorting-to-risky-ways-to-buy-an-affordable-home
“Corporations Push Back As Details Emerge on Seattle’s Pay Up Legislation for App-Based Workers” by Natalie Bicknell Argerious from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/04/13/corporations-push-back-on-seattles-pay-up-legislation
“Gig Economy Giants Worry Paying Minimum Wage Will Hurt Business” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/04/13/70697302/gig-economy-giants-worry-paying-minimum-wage-will-hurt-business
“‘Going to take some time to ramp up,’ concrete suppliers say of deliveries after strike ends” by KIRO Newsradio Newsdesk from MyNorthwest: https://mynorthwest.com/3433283/seattle-area-concrete-strike-ends-suppliers-not-ready-resume-deliveries/
“This Week in Worker Conquests: Biden Calls Out Amazon, Starbucks Claims to Be “Assaulted” by Unions, and NLRB Petitions Are Up 57%” by Conor Kelley from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/04/08/70306986/this-week-in-worker-conquests-biden-calls-out-amazon-starbucks-claims-to-be-assaulted-by-unions-and-nlrb-petitions-are-up-57
“Workers at two Seattle Starbucks take to picket lines on Friday over claims of union busting” by Nick Bowman from MyNorthwest: https://mynorthwest.com/3436753/seattle-starbucks-strike-friday-april-2022/
Nick Bowman Twitter Thread: https://twitter.com/nicknorthwest/status/1513885223553019914?s=21&t=XCkU4ETYl2IoU0MT6HgfMw
“Chamber Poll Asks Leading Questions, Gets Predictable Answers” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola: https://publicola.com/2022/04/12/chamber-poll-asks-leading-questions-gets-predictable-answers/
“New law could affect the way voters in WA decide on ballot initiatives” by Shauna Sowersby from The Olympian: https://www.theolympian.com/news/politics-government/article260388562.html
“Nelson Continues to Piss Off People with Her Push for SPD Hiring Bonuses” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/04/13/70609336/nelson-continues-to-piss-off-people-with-her-push-for-spd-hiring-bonuses
“The Police Hiring Incentives Conversation Continues” by Amy Sundberg from Notes from the Emerald City: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/amysundberg/issues/the-police-hiring-incentives-conversation-continues-1124878?utm_campaign=Issue&utm_content=view_in_browser&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Notes+from+the+Emerald+City
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Today we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week. Welcome to the program for the first time, today's co-host: reporter for The Seattle Times, Heidi Groover.
[00:00:50] Heidi Groover: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:00:51] Crystal Fincher: Thanks for being on - a lot to cover, just starting out with - Shoreline might decide to allow duplexes and triplexes in all of their residential neighborhoods, which is a big deal - a lot has been talked about on this topic lately. What is Shoreline considering?
[00:01:11] Heidi Groover: Yeah, they're very early in the process. My colleague, Dan Beekman, covered this this week - the City Council is essentially directing its planning department to study this idea and to do public outreach. And this is part of their planning update in 2024, so they're going to look at different options, they're going to look at environmental effects, and then of course they'll do some level of public meetings and that kind of thing to hear where their residents are at. Today, around 70% of Shoreline is zoned for low density development.
[00:01:49] Crystal Fincher: So this would be a major expansion of zoning and density possibilities in the city then.
[00:01:58] Heidi Groover: It would, yeah. And as you mentioned, this is part of this kind of broader discussion that's been happening all over the state and obviously in Seattle for a while, but by one estimate - we need something like 40,000 more units of housing right now, 80,000 more by 2050. People are continuing to move here, prices are up basically everywhere - tons of people want to buy houses in this market or rent, and there just aren't enough of them. And I think sometimes people think this is a Seattle issue or a King County issue, but it's really statewide and it is affecting suburbs like Shoreline. King County home prices last year were up 14%, but that was actually nothing compared to Pierce County, 20%, Snohomish County, 24%, Spokane County, 23%. So you're really going to see this conversation happening all over the state, I think.
[00:03:05] Crystal Fincher: And it is a big deal - it is a statewide problem, as we covered in the conversation that was had during the legislative session that ended about a month ago, where a middle housing bill that would have helped in this area was considered and almost passed, but wasn't able to get past some of the torpedoing by some legislators - in Seattle, go figure. But one of the important things is that it really is affecting suburbs and they need to accept density. They're also relying on the City of Seattle to do a better job of accommodating the people who are moving into the City - because as rents in Seattle skyrocket and people get priced out of Seattle, they then move to the suburbs and are pushed out there, but are also a lot of times bringing their higher incomes and really gentrifying those areas too. So this pressure is felt not just in our major metropolitan areas, but in suburbs and rural areas. And we're seeing the impacts of that with increased rents, kind of across the board.
Now, Zillow also ran a recent poll. What happened with that?
[00:04:26] Heidi Groover: Yeah, they polled in various cities across the country, including Seattle and Spokane, and they asked people about the idea of allowing more density in single family neighborhoods or lower density neighborhoods. And the reason I think this is interesting is that in Seattle, for example, 71% of people said that they think allowing more apartments increases affordability, but when they were asked, "Would you support an apartment building in your neighborhood?" only 53% said yes. And so - that's still more than half - but you see the difference between what people think hypothetically or universally, and then what they're willing to accept in their own neighborhood.
And I think this is really the core of why changing this is so hard - because the state bill that you mentioned, met really fierce pushback from cities and local governments. And I think that's because they know that the people who live there are sensitive to this kind of change and are not always going to welcome it, despite what they say in polls, and they wanted to retain what they view as local control. And so I think that if you don't think about the fact that people fear or are resistant about upzoning - it gets worse and worse the closer it is to them - you're not really prepared to make the changes at the scale. And so that's what's driving, I think, this gentle density thing where we're looking at duplexes and triplexes, because it's a little easier for people to accept. I don't know that that's really going to meet the scale of the housing crisis.
[00:06:24] Crystal Fincher: Well, we're certainly going to have to address a larger percentage of the land that is currently zoned for low density. I do - I think you hit the nail on the head in that support for increasing density and doing things that are proven to help affordability - erodes and people's inner NIMBYs come out. But I also think, to your point, in that, Hey, even when people are asked, well, do you want it in your neighborhood? Still a majority of residents support that. And I do think, from listening to legislators and lots of people in cities - the Association of Washington Cities, which kind of is a lobbying arm for municipalities as a whole - they're used to hearing from a frankly small, relatively small - a minority that's a subset of people who currently own land, their houses have been appreciating and not wanting anything to interfere with that. But as prices have skyrocketed and it's become harder to buy a home and harder to afford to rent, especially in the same areas that people are used to being able to afford, a larger percentage of people are kind of on the outside looking in. And I think that's been driving the increase in support that we've seen to now where even if we ask people, Hey, what if it's in your neighborhood? We're still getting a majority of people who support that.
And so I give credit to people like Chris Roberts - Councilmember Chris Roberts in Shoreline - who, even though they're used to hearing from some of the same traditional voices that we hear in these conversations that a lot of times are NIMBYs, are people who don't want development in their neighborhoods. And they aren't used to having people show up - because it's inconvenient and hard and people aren't familiar with the way the system works and how accessible or not local government is - that they haven't heard as much from people who do want increasing density. But those people are increasingly making their voices heard, and the recognition that there is a significant portion of people's constituencies, of cities' residents, that are demanding solutions to help keep their cities places where they can afford to live and work - that those voices are getting louder and we're seeing leaders step up and respond to that.
And I think that should be applauded and supported, but we will continue to see how this progresses over time - as you said, this is early in the process. Any ideas as to how this will progress in terms of timeline?
[00:09:12] Heidi Groover: I don't know exactly what the next step is, but I would expect that over the coming year, you would start to see more discussion in Shoreline, and more public meetings, more possible policies being laid out as the decision-makers there try to decide - Is it going to be a wholesale upzone? Is it only going to be in certain single family zones? - things like that.
[00:09:40] Crystal Fincher: Makes sense - we will keep an eye on that. Another story came out this week from KUOW talking about - as buying a home is becoming tougher for more people, lots of people are looking towards riskier ways of buying a home. What was in that article?
[00:10:00] Heidi Groover: Yeah, this was a national story from NPR, actually. So they were talking to legal aid advocates all over the country, and they basically found that people are turning to these "alternative financing options" which is basically like an off-the-books, under-the-table deal to buy a house. And it's not recorded by a bank, it's not regulated, it's something like a handwritten note or a handshake agreement. And this means that - if you're in this kind of agreement, you may be able to buy a house when you can't otherwise, because of bad credit or structural factors that make it hard for you to buy - obviously the legacy of racist practices in housing. But you're also not covered by a lot, or any, of the government protection that would usually act to prevent the seller of the house from ripping you off and simply not giving you the house when the time comes.
And so, this has been a hard thing to track because it's off the books. And so Pew did a survey and they found that 20% of borrowers said that they had used something like this at some point, which is significant - and they're largely people with lower income, people who live in rural areas, disproportionately Black and Hispanic people. And so, it's really - it's not the norm, by far, but it is something that is worth paying attention to because this is the kind of situation that people are driven into when they can't get a typical mortgage.
[00:11:56] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's complicated, and with so much - in terms - certainly in America, so much wealth is generated from people's homes. And the way our society is structured that there's - people feel a lot of pressure and urgency to make the move towards buying a home. And with it being more expensive, less accessible, all of these alternatives schemes popping up that are hard to parse for a lot of people - the fine print, the details of those are not necessarily obvious to a layman, or even someone who may have had a traditional mortgage before. This is just different, so it's a challenge.
[00:12:45] Heidi Groover: Yeah, it's not the only risk people are taking - I talk to home buyers all the time in this current market in Washington state who are doing things like waiving their right to an inspection before they buy a house, or waiving their financing contingency - which means that if their loan falls through, they could be out their entire down payment or more. And so, with this extreme - as you said, with this extreme pressure because homeownership is the primary way of building wealth, sometimes of having retirement, or having something to give to your kids - people feel this extreme pressure and they're willing to do almost anything to buy a house. And even real estate agents and people in the industry acknowledge that this kind of stuff is really risky, but they also are like, well, everyone else is willing to do it. And so if you want to buy, this is what you basically have to do. I think it really underscores what a housing shortage - and housing as a commodity that you have to buy - does in a market like this.
[00:13:57] Crystal Fincher: I completely agree. I think we're seeing signs from every corner that we are in an absolute crisis. It would have been great if more was done before this to prevent us from being here, but now that we're here, we need immediate and impactful action to get out of this. 'Cause people are desperate and it's putting people at risk, it's pushing people out of their communities, and we can do better so we need to do better.
Also this week - we have talked about Seattle's Pay Up legislation for app based workers before - this week, we saw a lot of pushback on that. What is that legislation and what is the pushback that we're seeing?
[00:14:41] Heidi Groover: This legislation would ensure that the gig workers who are picking up your food delivery for apps like DoorDash and Instacart are paid the equivalent of Seattle's minimum wage - and that's done through a complicated formula, but that's ultimately the result of the proposal. And it comes amid these two years of this growing recognition of the risks that these workers faced during the pandemic, how heavily so many people relied on them, and in turn small businesses who survived because of the possibility of delivery. And also these ongoing efforts to try to confront this independent contractor model that these companies use in which their workers are not employees and therefore are not guaranteed things like the minimum wage. So Seattle has done a ton of legislation around this, and this is basically the latest in that. And I think the pushback that we saw this week was that the companies alleging what they often do, which is that there wasn't enough process to engage them, that this kind of thing could increase prices for the consumer, which would result in less business for the drivers, and a kind of overall complaint that it's one-size-fits-all, or they weren't consulted enough by the City.
[00:16:16] Crystal Fincher: Which is interesting because it was reported that DoorDash, TaskRabbit, Uber, Rover, instacart, and GoPuff had been invited to participate in stakeholder meetings and also attended them. So did they give any specific feedback on how to make this legislation better, or were they mainly opposed to the entire idea?
[00:16:38] Heidi Groover: As far as I can tell, they're mainly opposed to the entire idea. I'm not actively covering this - so with that caveat, there could be something I'm missing - but based on the coverage I saw this week, they are against the idea and also using this talking point that they don't feel they were consulted enough.
[00:16:59] Crystal Fincher: Yeah - as far as councilmembers, how are they lining up in support or opposition to this?
[00:17:05] Heidi Groover: So the proposal was introduced by Councilmembers Lisa Herbold and Andrew Lewis. The primary opposition or concern I've seen so far is from Councilmember Sara Nelson, who had some of the same concerns that the companies expressed and we'll see how the vote goes. I think we can kind of guess, based on previous votes about gig work, how other councilmembers might line up. But I think it shows the dynamic, which is that most of the Council is, generally speaking, labor friendly. And then several members, including Sara Nelson, have said that there needs to be more focus on small businesses or the business owners' perspective.
[00:17:53] Crystal Fincher: Right, and I have certainly seen Sara Nelson's comments, which have largely, largely agreed with the app companies' comments. We will see how this proceeds - what's next in the conversation about this legislation, and when might it move forward for a vote?
[00:18:14] Heidi Groover: I don't know exactly when it will get a vote. I know that it's just continuing to move through the Council process, and obviously the advocates working in support are continuing to organize. And I imagine the companies are continuing to work on their talking points as well.
[00:18:29] Crystal Fincher: Makes sense. Well, we will continue to follow that. It will certainly be interesting to see further comments from councilmembers, and from Mayor Harrell - to hear how he decides to weigh in on this. It would be very useful - I don't - I have not seen any comment from him so far. Have you?
[00:18:49] Heidi Groover: I have not, no.
[00:18:51] Crystal Fincher: Okay, well, we'd certainly be curious to see what his input is on that, and his administration.
Also this week, there were more developments in the concrete workers strike. Last week, we talked about a judge rebuking the concrete companies for intentionally assaulting, striking workers with vehicles. They have since come to an agreement to largely go back to work, it appears. What's happening there?
[00:19:24] Heidi Groover: Well, as you said, this strike has been going on for months. It's about 330, mostly mixer drivers, who have been on strike for that time - and it started in November, it expanded in December. And so the most reason development, as you said, is that they - the union offered to send all of its workers back unconditionally without a deal. So, that's not something that we see happen all the time in strikes - it's controversial. And it, from the outside, it is unclear whether any real movement has been made in the negotiations.
One of the core issues for the union, which is this retiree healthcare plan - basically drivers - they work all their career, they come to the time they decide to retire, perhaps they are not yet eligible for Medicare and they have access to a healthcare plan that will cover them for that gap between when they retire and when they can go on Medicare. And that plan currently exists, but the drivers want to improve it so that it costs the retirees less. And they say that they are willing, the current employees are willing, to cover that cost and that the companies are refusing. And that that's one of their core issues that they've been trying to get in negotiation. Now, the companies haven't really addressed this as a substantive issue - they've said that their offer is fair, that it includes a pay increase and generous benefits, so it's a little bit of a black box as to what exactly they're thinking on this particular issue. But that's one of the core issues for the union, and as far as I can tell, basically no movement has happened over the course of this strike. And so now they've offered to go back to work. They're saying that that's a good faith gesture and they are waiting for the companies to call them all back to work.
[00:21:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and very interesting - lots has been discussed about how many projects in the region are reliant on concrete from these companies and workers on strike - in that timelines for bridge repair projects, other projects are in jeopardy and in danger of being delayed because of the strike. So the workers offering to go back to work would seemingly be a big relief, except the companies are saying, well, yeah, they've offered to come back, but we're not quite ready yet and it's gonna take a lot of time to get them back. Which is kind of reminiscent of what we saw when a smaller subsection of workers offered to go back. What is the complication with getting the drivers back to work?
[00:22:20] Heidi Groover: Well, the companies have - the way they describe it - they have these complex systems for how they dispatch the trucks to different projects and how they plan that out. And during the strikes, they - some of them leased out their trucks to non-union companies, some of them struck these other deals to try to keep concrete flowing with non-union drivers. And so now they're in a position of needing to unwind all of that and return to dispatching the union drivers. And so they say they're working on it as fast as they can, they want the drivers back to work, they want the projects back on track. I've seen some people in the industry speculate that there's a fear that maybe the union will call another one-day work stoppage or something - the strike could return. But I do think that pretty much everyone involved is served by getting the drivers back to work, so I think we'll see it at some point, but they say that it's going to take a little time.
[00:23:28] Crystal Fincher: Well, as we have been, we will continue to follow the developments of that and update you with anything else that might appear there. This week, there's been a lot of labor news. What has been happening, starting with Amazon and President Biden weighing in?
[00:23:46] Heidi Groover: Well, after this really unprecedented vote in Staten Island, where Amazon warehouse workers voted to create and join a union, President Biden said that he supported the effort, essentially. He said, this is what unions are about in my view - providing dignity. He said, Amazon, here we come. So he certainly seemed to be implying that he supports the effort, he wants to see more of it, and that his administration supports unionizing in general.
[00:24:19] Crystal Fincher: Which is a big deal - to have the president of the country weigh in in favor of your unionization, especially when we've seen such ferocious pushback and union-busting activity from Amazon.
Also, news this week that Amazon is developing an internal chat to help workers connect with each other. The challenge is that chat blocks a ton of words, including "union," "terminated," "compensation," "living wage," "unfair," "favoritism," "freedom," "restrooms," "trash," "coalition." Basically it seems like, hey, we're giving you this tool that we are acting like it's supposed to help you and connect you, but really we are going to great lengths to prevent you from being able to talk about anything related to organizing, unionizing, or working conditions - which just seems like it was really short-sighted. They were broadly mocked for that. What do you see in general, in terms of the stance that Amazon is taking and even Starbucks, and versus what their workers are doing and how they're organizing?
[00:25:32] Heidi Groover: Well, I think that what's been really interesting is to read about the organizers of this Staten Island warehouse and basically how they did it, despite all of this behavior from Amazon, which has been happening since they started, and of course happening in Bessemer also - the other warehouse where employees voted on whether to unionize. And if you read about what they did, it's a lot of very grassroots, on-the-ground stuff - they camped out in the break room, gave out free food, and talked to people about the union. They were basically every day at a bus stop out in front of the warehouse talking to people about the union, answering questions about the company talking points, and again, giving out food and other supplies. And they were showing that - we are Amazon workers, we're not an outside third party. We are working here at this warehouse just like you. And we are the union, and here's what that means. And I think that that's a huge reason why they were so successful despite this kind of bizarre stuff from Amazon, like we saw with this internal chat app. So I think that if this is going to move forward in other warehouses, that's probably only going to happen with that same kind of grassroots effort that we saw in Staten Island.
[00:26:59] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it seems to make a big difference. And here locally, we have some news - lots of Starbucks workers have been organizing - there is a wave afoot and a strike coming up this weekend. What's on tap?
[00:27:14] Heidi Groover: Yeah, so nationally it's something like 180, definitely more than 150, Starbucks locations have said that they want to unionize. And here in Seattle, there are a handful - we've had one of them vote so far and they were unanimous in joining the union. And so a couple of the other Seattle stores that are trying to unionize - Fifth and Pike and one on Eastlake - are doing some temporary strike actions this weekend. So Eastlake workers are on strike today, Friday, for one day. And at Fifth and Pike, they're planning to go on strike for three days. And they're raising concerns about - in general their unionizing effort and the company's response - which they view as union busting. The company has repeatedly denied any allegations of union busting. The workers also say they're dealing with things like understaffing and not getting enough hours to stay on their health insurance - things like that - so they're trying to draw attention to their working conditions broadly and their concerns, and why they view unionizing as a way to have a voice in these types of policies at Starbucks.
[00:28:29] Crystal Fincher: Well, we will certainly be continuing to pay attention to that - a lot going on - Howard Schultz is feeling some heat based on some appearances we saw that he made over the past week or two. They are on a roll - they have a lot of momentum - they're asking for what most people consider to be very reasonable accommodations and pay and benefits and protections. And so, personally, I can definitely say I am excited to see how they're making progress and we will continue to follow what's going on there. We'll also include links to help you follow what's going on there in the Starbucks union, Amazon unionization efforts. So check the episode notes for that.
This week, we also saw some polling come out - one of them from the Seattle Chamber. What did this poll say? What did it show?
[00:29:34] Heidi Groover: Well, this was one of these wide-ranging, sort of like how-are-you-feeling vibe track polls, asking people about how they feel about the direction the City's going in, what their biggest concerns are, right track wrong track, things like that. And they also included some questions about housing and homelessness and policing - the big issues facing the City. And I think that the big takeaways were - the thing that made a lot of headlines was - 67% of people said they had considered leaving the City. And I think when you see that, you can kind of quickly slot that into your politics or your priors, and you can assume why people might be saying that. If we actually look at the poll, 35% of people said it was because of cost of living and housing, 29% of people said public safety, crime, drugs, 12% of people said homelessness, 9% of people said City government and leadership. So that gives you a sense of the issues that are making people supposedly consider moving. Again, that doesn't mean they actually left the City - we're just talking about how people are feeling about the state of things.
[00:30:57] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and really interesting - was looking at just analysis by Nick Bowman, who is currently at MyNorthwest, a reporter at MyNorthwest - a Twitter thread analyzing this. And to your point, it's real easy to look at a number like that and then to assume that the reasons why are the reasons why you personally might consider that on either side. I think - we've talked about this a little bit on this program before, and as he points out, this is pretty consistent with eight years of surveys from various pollsters and groups. Looking at polling between 2011 and 2019, a lot of similar sentiments were identified and so it's really interesting that the current conclusion drawn by some over these surveys has been that - well, it's because things are getting more progressive and real Seattle residents don't like that. And we need to get back to the good old days and the way things used to be - which is always really interesting when we think about how Seattle actually really did used to be - but it's really not consistent with how Seattle has voted and elected leaders. A lot of that time - Bruce Harrell was on the Council for all of that eight-year period of declining satisfaction, Tim Burgess was on the Council for about half that time, Scott Lindsay was the public safety advisor for the mayor's office.
The Council's shift to have a significant, progressive arm has been a relatively recent thing. And when we look at polling, the dissatisfaction doesn't track with that shift. And so it just seems premature to make a conclusion that, well, this is dissatisfaction with things moving in a progressive direction. It just looks like dissatisfaction for reasons that have yet to be uncovered, or that are a little bit deeper. Because looking at the history of this, it really does not track with, well, people were more unhappy as things moved in a more progressive direction. Just really interesting, so I hope we see more publicly available polling to do this. There's lots of internal polling that is examining this around the area and the state right now - that'll certainly influence the shape of races and initiatives and the public discourse to come.
But, really interesting and PubliCola also had an article just mocking a couple of the real leading questions that weren't exactly constructed very well or that seemed like they were constructed to get a specific response. But even accounting for that, there's a lot to pull out of this that doesn't seem like it has a simple, well, we just need to do this simple policy or just go back to the way that we used to be doing things. 'Cause that way wasn't popular either. How did you see that?
[00:34:07] Heidi Groover: Well, the other thing that Nick pointed out in that thread was just kind of this question of what it would take to turn those numbers around. So obviously, in the last City elections, we saw a rightward shift toward more moderates - and we now have Mayor Bruce Harrell and City Attorney Ann Davison. And so the question is sort of - if the people with concern about things like public safety successfully elected politicians who said that they were going to crack down on that or make that their primary focus, then when will they begin telling pollsters that they feel better about the City, or will they ever?
[00:34:59] Crystal Fincher: Very relevant question - we anticipate that we'll be seeing more publicly available polling in the future, and we'll certainly be looking to see that, and hope that pollsters probe that - this hopefully is pointing those people in the direction of what they need to explore and uncover in terms of public opinion.
Also this week, we saw some coverage of the new initiative that is going to be on the ballot - Initiative 1929 - to repeal the capital gains tax and other taxes. It would also take out the JumpStart Tax in Seattle. And some - I would assume for supporters of that initiative - really alarming polling. We usually don't see initiatives land on the ballot that have this level of polling. What were the results?
[00:35:53] Heidi Groover: So the results of that polling showed that - in an initial poll, only 40% of voters would vote for that initiative. 39% said No, and 20% were not sure. And then there was a second survey that included a statement about what the initiative would decrease funding for - so this is a new state law that will require that kind of language on any state initiative that would repeal or modify a tax. And so, after including a line about how it would decrease funding for education and other programs, the results were that Yes votes went down a bit to 37%, 49% said No, and then 14% were unsure. So it seems to indicate that that kind of statement on the ballot would erode support for rolling back taxes.
[00:36:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it is really rare to see an initiative move forward on the ballot statewide - that has significant funding to back it up - that is starting - we generally don't see initiatives that start underwater. I mean, their high watermark was 40% when the ballot title is read. The ballot title is "Repeal the Capital Gains Income Tax." And at 40%, it just does not - that's before any negative messaging has occurred, that's before anyone has given voters or the people who were polled a reason to vote against it, just on its face - "Repeal the Capital Gains Income Tax" is a very unpopular thought and proposal. And only 40% of people approve that, which actually tracks with prior polling that we saw in support of the capital gains tax - that was receiving 65-ish% approval for the tax - which is part of the reason why it passed and was so popular.
So just in the face of that, it's a bit odd. And then when given detail - and in the poll it was said this measure - once respondents were told this measure will decrease funding for education, early learning, childcare, and school construction, support dipped even further down to 37%. So, starting from that point, before anyone else has had a chance to mount a campaign to educate people about why this is problematic for many people - it is really unpopular. So they certainly have their work cut out for them. Lots of people - it's not controversial to support education, early learning, childcare, and school construction. Most voters and polling that we've seen repeatedly and in support for school levies and bonds across the state - this is something that they certainly have been willing to dig deep in their pockets to fund because they place such a high priority on it. And they seem to be saying, man, we've been paying for these in terms of levies and bonds forever. It would be great if the ultra wealthy also paid their fair share to help this.
And so it's going to be really interesting to see how this unfolds - Republicans, the state Republican Party, and Republican legislators seem really excited about this. They are notoriously anti-tax and have opposed this from the beginning, but it just seems like a challenging place to be when we saw - in the mid-60s - support to herald its passage and to help get it across the finish line. And now trying to repeal it - you're trying to take away things that people care about deeply and need, and that are beneficial to the community. So, I am curious to see what they saw internally and what they thought internally - that gave them the confidence to proceed with this. I don't know what that would be in the face of results like this. I can't imagine their internal polling would be much better. It doesn't look like they have responded to this polling with anything that substantively or in any way contradicts it. So just kind of odd to see it on the ballot with such low support starting out.
[00:40:28] Heidi Groover: Yeah, and I wonder how this would play out for other initiatives - if it was required that, on the ballot, it said what it would cut funding for. We've seen so many Tim Eyman initiatives be successful, for example, and then a huge battle plays out about - most recently transportation funding. And I do wonder if it would have changed anything if it said what the hit to the state budget was going to be on the ballot.
[00:40:56] Crystal Fincher: Also this week, we'll wrap up talking about the Seattle City Council's conversations around SPD hiring bonuses that seemed to lack any data or suggestion that there's a reason to believe that they'll work. What is happening with that?
[00:41:17] Heidi Groover: This conversation has been going on at the Council for a while, and really as part of the larger conversation about the police department. And it seems that the most recent development is this debate about whether hiring incentives actually work to draw more officers to SPD. And there's a debate going on about - should there also be hiring bonuses for other City departments - what other City departments are facing difficulties hiring people, could hiring bonuses make existing employees feel undervalued, are there other reasons that it's hard to recruit people rather than just money? And so you've got some councilmembers really wanting to focus broadly on all the City departments and the work that the City's HR department has been doing to review hiring bonuses. And then Councilmember Sara Nelson is pretty focused on SPD and really believes that hiring incentives would help to hire more officers for SPD. And so you're seeing some friction between the councilmembers about whether to focus on that, or whether to have this broader conversation. And ultimately it seems to me like a proxy battle for just how the councilmembers view the police department and its role, and how it should be funded, and whether it should be privileged over other City departments. And so it seems like you're going to continue to see that divide play out.
[00:42:53] Crystal Fincher: Well, and I think part of it is that conversation, but part of it is looking at the data that they've received that shows that that did not seem to be an effective tool, so far, for keeping the hiring bonuses on. And the data shows so far that in SPD, the hiring incentive doesn't have any relation seemingly to people wanting to stay. And so there seemed to be more City councilmembers who are - who feel that they do need to do more to fill available spots and open spots, and to retain the officers that they have there. And some of the question seems to be around what is the best way to do that. And so it looks like largely Sara Nelson is saying, well, these hiring incentives work because they work in other cities - and so we don't need any more data or to study anything more here. Councilmember Herbold cited a study in 2019 on SPD hiring incentives in which only 1 in 5 applicants said the bonus affected their decision to stay. And so maybe - she suggested offering relocation assistance for people who are lateral hires might be a better idea, but it doesn't seem like the bonuses were effective in getting people to come here and that the amount of the retention bonuses in comparison to their salaries is enough to impact their decision.
And then also weighing this against - there are staffing shortages in several areas of the City. Does it make sense to also explore retention bonuses in other areas, particularly those where it represents a higher percentage of their salaries and might be more convincing or impactful in a decision to stay. So, I think there's a lot to do with this. I do think they need to continue to look to see if this is a useful and valid method of accomplishing what they want to accomplish. Whether that's a good goal in and of itself - of retention - there is disagreement in the community. But if this is their stated goal of retaining officers, this retention bonus that has been discussed so far and the amount that has been discussed does not appear to be effective in retaining a higher percentage of officers, which is really important overall because the City is still facing $150 million budget deficit. And so these dollars and how they're spent are impactful, given the size of the force and the total amount of expenditures that we're looking at. So we'll continue to follow this conversation also, and see how that proceeds. But I think the more information that we get on how effective the things that we're doing in achieving the goals that are articulated - that that's a useful thing.
[00:46:03] Heidi Groover: I think just that question of the other City departments - I think is going to continue to play out, because even if the Council starts to solve this issue for SPD, I've seen truck drivers, cashiers, other City jobs cited as places where they have trouble retaining people. And you can deal with this problem with SPD and you're still gonna have it in other departments.
[00:46:31] Crystal Fincher: Well with that, we will close the show for today. We thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, April 15th, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler, with assistance from excellent producer Dr. Shannon Cheng and Emma Mudd. Our wonderful co-host today was reporter for The Seattle Times, Heidi Groover. You can find Heidi on Twitter at H-E-I-D-I-G-R-O-O-V-E-R. And you can find me on Twitter @finchfrii. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. While you're there, leave a review - it really helps us out. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in and we'll talk to you next time.
On this midweek episode, Burien City Councilmember Hugo Garcia and Crystal catch up on how his first term as a brand new elected is going. They discuss an action-packed onboarding period, including building relationships with fellow councilmembers and an important vote extending Burien’s eviction moratorium. Hugo shares his hope of building out “the office of Councilmember Garcia” to bring community along in having a voice in local government and outlines his first-term priorities around park infrastructure, public safety, and housing. The show wraps up with words of advice for those considering running for office and the importance of setting oneself up for both success and sustainability.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Hugo at @CMHugoGarcia.
Resources
City of Burien - Councilmember Hugo Garcia: https://www.burienwa.gov/city_hall/city_council/hugo_garcia
“Burien City Council extends eviction moratorium through COVID-19 state of emergency” by Nicholas Johnson from The B-Town Blog: https://b-townblog.com/2022/01/13/burien-city-council-extends-eviction-moratorium-through-covid-19-state-of-emergency/
Twitter - Hugo Garcia: https://twitter.com/CMHugoGarcia
Facebook - Councilmember Hugo Garcia: https://www.facebook.com/CMHugoGarcia
Burien’s Recovery Roadmap Survey - How to Invest American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Funding: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BurienARPACommunitySurvey
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I am thrilled to welcome Burien City Councilmember, Hugo Garcia - welcome to the program again.
[00:00:46] Councilmember Hugo Garcia: Yeah, woo woo! I like to be here, Crystal - thank you so much for the invitation from you and all your powerful squad of ladies that help make this magic happen. So, very much -
[00:01:01] Crystal Fincher: I do have an excellent squad of ladies who make Hacks & Wonks happen. It is - they are spectacular and awesome, and it wouldn't happen without them.
I am excited to have you back on the show, 'cause the last time we talked, you were running for office. It was your first time running - lots of candidates aren't successful in their first campaigns, and you just went out and you won the thing - galvanized community, got it together. What was it like to win that election?
[00:01:34] Councilmember Hugo Garcia: Yeah, it was super intense, amazing, a ton of work - probably one of the most intense lifts of work that I can recall doing. Something that it was just like - you put every ounce of sweat and effort to it. So, it does feel like you won a - some sort of like championship when you're in Little League or something like, yes, let's go, we did it. But it does impact every fiber of your life - relationships, your family, your friends, your neighbors, your pets. So it was intense, but at the same time, it was super gratifying, being able to get an opportunity to continue to do the work.
[00:02:25] Crystal Fincher: To do the work. And to that point - so I talk with a lot of candidates about - it's like, man, as harrowing as the campaign is, as you just described - the real work actually begins after you win, and you actually start to govern, and you start to handle your responsibilities, and flex your power. And first, just getting acclimated to everything that you need to get caught up on. What was that process like for you?
[00:02:53] Councilmember Hugo Garcia: It was super intense - so it's very much like - I would say it's like starting your first big job with a company and you get onboarded for this new position, but times like a thousand, because it's all extremely short, quick. We had our first meeting from the beginning of the year 'cause you can't really do anything until the first of the year. So, I mean, you can prep up your administrative side of things, you can prep calendars - but at the same time, you just went a full year campaigning. So from November to January 1st, you're going to take a breather, there's also the holidays. The City can't really communicate much - they tell you, they send you links in advance of workshops and webinars to prepare to take. But then once that January 1st date comes in, it's a ton of training and websites and webinars and reading packets. And then getting to schedule meetings with directors of all the different departments of the city, so that you're aware of staffing, so you're aware of projects, emerging issues - and that's just to get ready for your Council meetings.
And you also have to start building or rebuilding relationships with councilmembers - some of them that you maybe ran against or in opposing to, potentially. So it's an intense first three months to say the least, but it's super exciting. When you first get a job or you first make a team, you're hyped, you're full of energy, you're like - let's go, let's get it, this is what it's about. It was a super stressful first meeting for us, but we were able to get some really great work done in our first week.
[00:04:55] Crystal Fincher: Did you extend your eviction moratorium - was that what happened in your first week?
[00:05:01] Councilmember Hugo Garcia: Yeah, that was pretty much one of the big - as we're learning, as you just get started, we had our first meeting - you select your Deputy Mayor, Mayor because we're a Council-led form of government, so the councilmembers vote on who the Mayor and Deputy Mayor are. And it tends to be a pretty intense discussion. And one of the deadlines that I saw on the agenda was that we had our eviction moratorium that was due to expire that Saturday - so I think it was Saturday, the 15th or 16th. Our first meeting was January 10th. And because we were all so focused on Mayor, Deputy Mayor, I didn't see that we - anybody brought up extending the moratorium. So we asked last second before the meeting went over to have a special meeting - a second meeting - before that moratorium extended to discuss it. And we were able to bring it back and have discussions on it. It was intense because when you're new, you haven't been in these meetings before - it can be intimidating. It can be a new space for you to, as a new incoming councilmember, ground your voice.
But we did - we were able to extend that moratorium in January when things were still really scary with Omicron and well, I think we were at that point, maybe one of three or four cities that still decided to extend theirs. And at this point we're the only one that has one. Yeah, but it was super rewarding - it was stressful, I was nervous. I remember feeling the same way when I played my first game of middle school basketball - man, this is nerve - you get those butterflies. But then you did some work and you feel like it was representative of the work that you - I campaigned on - and it just felt really rewarding. Like, man - this is it, I'm doing it. I'm doing what I said I was going to do.
[00:07:10] Crystal Fincher: That is what you said you were going to do and it was a really big deal, because you were a new member on the council. You did step up and say, Hey, we actually need to talk about this and address it. I know other cities are letting it expire, but let's talk about that. We shouldn't do that.
And the way that you approached your first meeting - I appreciated - because you took the time to break down to people who may have been part of your campaign or just paying attention to you for the first time, since you are a new councilmember - of here, let me actually walk you through what it means to - like what we discuss in a Council meeting, this is what goes on, this is how you sign up to testify, this is how you see what's on the agenda and keep up with what we're talking about. And just took the time to just make things as accessible as possible for people who maybe didn't have the exposure to Council meetings and to help the community - it just really felt like you were very intentionally bringing the community along with you, which I definitely appreciate.
[00:08:14] Councilmember Hugo Garcia: Yeah, it's something I really was - I did not know anything about Council meetings myself prior to maybe six years ago. I didn't know how they ran - I knew they existed, I knew they were our electeds, I knew I voted for folks to be there - but it took me a few years to get a bearing of how to have a voice in your local government. And I know that it's a - for those that are not in it - it's boring and it's complicated. It's like what - comment for only two minutes, but you can't really have a conversation with the electeds, what? So I've tried to think back about how I learned about how City Council works here in Burien and try to explain a little bit more of it.
It is something that I want to keep doing going forward, though I will be upfront - it has been a challenge. I wanted to make sure that within my first few meetings - as I'm learning - to be hyper focused on making sure I'm present for the meetings and not doing too much crossover on my current social media. It is a gift I'll give my predecessor, Krystal Marx, a lot of credit - she was amazing at doing the meetings and live tweeting information during the meetings. And I find myself not doing it as strongly as I wanted to, or sufficiently - so I said, hold on, let me focus on these meetings, focus on getting these policy decisions on place. And then I can get back to the social media aspect of things.
And at the same time, I'm rebuilding my office of Councilmember Hugo Garcia, because I realize it took a village to get me to win the election, but it also takes that community to also be an efficient elected. So I'm in the process currently of - sorry, that's my little puppy - I'm in the process of actually hiring and having some interns, essentially interns - sorry, not hire - getting a couple of youths from a local LatinX club at our only public high school to assist a little bit on some of the projects that the City is doing outreach on. Making sure that the communication - whether it's digital, whether it's Facebook, whether it's social - it's more palatable to just non-heavily involved civic residents. 'Cause I want to make sure that it's not just my own lens, but it's also the lens of folks that aren't super - that aren't able to attend focus groups or outreach events - things like that. So, yeah - and I actually bring back some of my campaign team to assist on a sort of office of Councilmember Garcia, even though we don't really have that structure in place for small cities.
[00:11:35] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, no, that's really good. And the more people can get ingrained in how things work and get an eye into how things move on the inside, the easier it becomes to figure out how to create the kind of change from inside and outside that people need.
You talked about - hey, when you were running, you were a strong, progressive candidate. You talked a lot about your values and being rooted in community, which not every sitting councilmember has the same kind of perspective. So once you're elected and you talked about building new relationships with your fellow councilmembers, who maybe agreed with some of what you ran on and maybe didn't - what has that process been like in building those relationships and talking about policy and coming to decisions, as you try and stay rooted in your beliefs and your positions, while still being a member of the Council and needing to give and take sometimes when it comes to negotiating policy?
[00:12:44] Councilmember Hugo Garcia: Yeah, it is an art, not a science - on navigating exactly what you just described - on staying true to the things you campaigned on, on your values. Fortunately for me, the Council that I came into was somewhat progressive and majority Democratic. We only, after the last election, we only have one councilmember that I would say identifies as conservative. So all of our - six of our seven are all local, whether it's 34th or 33rd Dems - endorsed candidates. So I think it's - the lift is not as heavy, but there is a separation and I'm learning that it's just constant effort in connecting with my other councilmembers, right? I initially tried to set up at least a weekly touch base - 20-30 minute spot for us to connect with Zoom and with remote - we're used to it. So it's worked out okay with the more progressive leaning councilmembers - I think it's a little easier 'cause we already campaigned together.
With the others, instead of maybe weekly, we're just catching up biweekly 'cause it's so hard on the scheduling of things - you're navigating two jobs, everybody's navigating two jobs, some people are navigating three. So being able to connect with folks routinely to share that, Hey, this is where I'm thinking when it comes to our upcoming pipeline of agenda items for a work plan, which is all public. So we discuss the same items - Hey, this is coming up in a month or two months. What are your thoughts on this? And it's really about having those early conversations, which the first two, three months have not been easy because it's all been about how to run the meeting smoothly, like the logistics of Robert's Rules and getting to know how - I hate to correlate this to sports but that's just what I do, or food - I would say we're getting to know how to play with each other, right? If we're in basketball and the basketball team - we're all on the same team and we have similar goals, but just with some players - you gel quicker, you're able to get some give and gos. And with others, you just have to make more efforts.
And I think we're getting there. I'm excited with having gone to a National League of Cities event with a couple - with our Mayor and Deputy Mayor, who were not - did not have to campaign. So since they didn't campaign, I didn't have a chance to really build relationships with them as I did with the others. And that really gave me an opportunity to get to know them more. When you travel with people, when you're out doing workshops together, opportunity to discuss things in both, not just on the city council stuff, but personally, too, 'cause these are personal relationships. So it gives you a better lens of how we're all trying to use our lived experience as best as we can to make these decisions on the Council.
[00:16:15] Crystal Fincher: Well, that makes sense. And I mean, the sports analogies are welcome. I am a Laker fan and we were just eliminated from playoff contention last night. It is a sorrowful time.
[00:16:29] Councilmember Hugo Garcia: Yeah, nobody saw that one coming - that's not expected from the greatness of LeBron and Co.
[00:16:34] Crystal Fincher: Well, when you talk about a team having members and just not playing well together - sometimes you have a Russell Westbrook on your team and you just gotta figure it out a little bit, a little bit better than you do.
[00:16:46] Councilmember Hugo Garcia: Yeah. That's exactly it - and on our end, the Russell Westbrook is probably the conservative councilmember. And I actually made a strong effort to touch base and we actually have - we text, we're rescheduling our 1:1s to do more bi-weekly - now that we're three weeks in, we understand more when we're making motions, when we're gonna bring up issues or thoughts. So, it's been an intense three months, but it's like preseason - I see it as preseason and I have four quarters. This is my first quarter - getting ready for four - keep trying to do good work. It's challenging because there's a lot of fires that you're putting out, so making sure that I'm intentional about reserving time to work on the projects that I really campaigned on and want to do - like investing more in our parks so that our parks are safer, more welcoming, more lights, more events, more features - but all those kind of things take time, right? We have 25 parks, we're doing letters of support route currently - one of the small projects that we're working on is to acquire a very big park that the City has, but it's shared with the school district. The school district actually owns the land, but the City has agreements with the school district to maintain it. And now we want to acquire it - full ownership - in order to secure the future of this park long-term, because once you lose a park - if it's developed or not, it's lost forever in essence. So, it takes a little bit of time to make sure that you get support, you connect with your school district to make this happen, and then you find additional funding to invest that. And currently that's one of the big projects that I'm excited about, which is our ARPA allocation funding.
[00:18:53] Crystal Fincher: Okay, and so - certainly a lot to do. I think you bring up a good point and you've been able to have conversations with the conservative - with your Russell Westbrook - the conservative member of the Council. And on a city level, there's actually so many opportunities to do that. I think sometimes it might surprise people in that you're dealing with pretty immediate and visible and apparent problems. And at the City level - you're living in the City, you guys are driving on the same roads, passing by the same parks, looking at the same areas to develop - and there's so much more of a shared context and understanding of the facts on the ground, I think to a greater degree than other levels of government. And so even with different perspectives, it does provide a basis to start a conversation and find places where perhaps you can agree or to start a conversation from, because there's not a Democratic or Republican way to fill a pothole. Some solutions just require listening and responding to community. And what I love about government at the municipal level is that you can be responsive in that kind of way that sometimes strips away the labels. And if you just focus on helping people - what ends up getting put in place is progressive, but it's just the focus on helping people with their problems on the ground.
[00:20:25] Councilmember Hugo Garcia: Yeah, literally - some of the first things I remember - there was a slide our first two, three weeks in. A neighborhood had a slide in a road - luckily, nobody got hurt, no major structure fell - but a road got blocked off that in essence, blocked off a portion of the City to the main shopping, to their food, to whatever they need. And I heard it was very close to someone that I met through campaigning and some of my fellow candidates. So, you feel like, Hey, let me check in on them. So I know that not only I, but a couple other councilmembers swung by - all of them did to a certain extent. We get a report from our City Manager - Hey, this is what's happened, this is the situation. These are the crews that are in place, this is the timeline when it's getting fixed - but you still - you know the people because you're so close. So you connect with that person, right?
There's another incident where a resident sent in an email saying, Hey, there's a property in our block that is seeing disruptions at night, there's all kinds of foot traffic and littering. It just was an enforcement code situation and you just double-check - you come in and you get reports from your staff on what they're doing to address it, but you - I called the homeowner 'cause they put all their contact information in their letters. I'm like, Hey, I'm sorry, you're dealing with this, understand it's a complex situation. Here's what I'm making sure that - and our staff had already done the work to address the issue, but I know that there's a good chance, and I've seen this resident at events and shopping. So I just wanted them to know that - yes, and I'm going to check in and just follow up to make sure that our staff continues to do that great work they're doing, which is to try to resolve the issue as best possible. So there is more of that personal touch on the things that you're deciding.
And another aspect of that is - that particular block is close to a hospital. The hospital emergency exit tends to address a lot of folks that have behavioral health issues, that are experiencing homelessness - and they don't have the capacity to take folks, once they address their emergency health issue, to take them to a shelter or take them somewhere. So they're released, and a lot of times they just end up passing out in the neighborhood. And this is another issue that the homeowner or resident brought up - Hey, more than anything - just for their safety 'cause sometimes they just pass out. So addressing it - it just connects the issues that we talk about - about homelessness, about affordable housing - to people, to our neighbors. And it gives you a bigger sense of urgency to try to come up with both the immediate solutions, whether it's connecting with our LEAD program to find out if there's a bus service that can, or a van service, that can be taken to nearby shelters for folks to better communicate with hospital staff. But you also need to address the root cause, right? That's one of the things I think I really wanted to try to focus on - on my campaign - that we can't keep trying to just do Band-aid fixes on issues, and we're going to be spinning our wheels if we don't address the fact that there's just not enough housing and the root cause of our homelessness crisis is on that. We're going to be spinning our wheels like we have been for the last 10, 15 years or so. [Dog barks] I know, Maya - I agree. We gotta get to the root cause.
[00:24:37] Crystal Fincher: So what are you going to be focusing on - talking about having to address those root causes? What are you hoping to be able to address here in your first term?
[00:24:48] Councilmember Hugo Garcia: Yeah, so, after getting a lay of the land on where we're at, one of the things that helped me is that I learned about our planning and zoning and land use - and have seen over the last four years - some of the affordable housing developments that have come into the City. There's a - what we called a affordable housing demonstration project - that was actually something that we worked on in the planning commission and eventually the Council accepted and used. But I realized that even if you support affordable housing developments within the City, it's not enough - some of the housing affordable housing developments that we have are still in construction - they're places that won't be ready for two years or so.
So I followed a lot of the state legislature because we have to see how the state is providing resources and what their plan is. One of those things that I saw was Representative Bateman, who proposed a bill to address the missing middle - and with my own experience on the planning commission, we actually did a similar study on the missing middle here - middle housing, which is in between affordable housing and market rate housing. You have apartments that are high density - a couple hundred units or more, and then you'll have single family homes - a single family home for a family - and there's a lot of both of those. And usually you're trying to just help support affordable housing because the private market doesn't really cover that. Missing middle is duplexes, triplexes, sixplexes, cottages, townhome developments so that it's in between. It's not all about having 200 people in a block, but it is an in between. And I firsthand live in that housing - I live in a duplex - 15 years ago, my brother, my sister-in-law and I were able to get the duplex here - we're in Burien - and right now we're able to afford to stay here. That's the reason I campaigned too 'cause I was like - Hey, I live here. I'm a part of this community, I grew up here. I want to be able to have a say in how more of those folks that have lived - are starting to grow up here - can stay here, have options to stay here.
So addressing the missing middle, I think, is something long-term that I'd like to really focus in my first term - and start to do that by advocating within the state legislation. I was able to, within the first month actually, go up and speak my experience and support that. It wasn't very popular, because others cities in the region prefer to address it on their own terms, but from what I've seen in my own five years here - in local government - both commission, working for King County, and now as an elected, and just having lived here - is that we're not addressing it fast enough. So we need to build more homes in the fixed amount of land that we have. So that means that we just have to build something in between a big apartment and single family homes. So I think that's something I'm going to look to work on.
[00:28:26] Crystal Fincher: So are you looking at potentially rezoning, expanding density within single family - single families owned areas?
[00:28:35] Councilmember Hugo Garcia: Yeah, exactly. Allowing for duplexes, allowing for quadraplexes, for sixplexes. Recently the state passed a very strong ADU policy - it won't impact Burien because our ADU policy was already as good, if not better than the one that the state passed. But I want to do the same thing when it comes to multi-family, working family housing - my brother's a teacher, his wife is a dental assistant, my partner works for healthcare doing administrative IT development. It's not like we're making $400,000 a year - we need more housing for folks that are just making average salaries here in the county. And we need housing to cater to that, to support that. So that's one of the things I would like to address in my first term.
Investing in our park infrastructure for public safety - we have a lot of parks and a lot of the feedback that I got is that sometimes families didn't feel comfortable - when I knock on doors - families didn't feel comfortable just letting the kids go by themselves, not all the parks have lights, not all the parks have features, not all the parks have speed bumps near them. So there's a lot of investments that we can do there, so I'd really like to make sure that our parks are fully developed in a way that supports neighborhood economic development, whether it's having food trucks come in, not just ice cream trucks - those already come through - but art spaces, events. Things like that - I think would be super, super important to show that it's not all about just - public safety's all about the number of deputies that you have, but it entails access and providing that sense of security, which can be done within our parks and neighborhoods. So really developing neighborhoods.
[00:30:48] Crystal Fincher: Yeah - designing and activating spaces makes them safer, and is a great investment in resources that then makes everything else in the public safety conversation easier, and increases the safety of people, and is a wonderful feature to have in the community. As you have started this journey yourself right now - where we're in another election cycle, where a number of people are currently running for the legislature, you just got done looking at the legislative session, you just got done being a candidate, and are a new elected. What advice would you give to people who are now running for office - looking at becoming legislators or even County Councilmembers in different jurisdictions - what advice would you have to candidates running right now?
[00:31:40] Councilmember Hugo Garcia: Definitely do it - run. I waited to run, I thought I wasn't "qualified enough." I said, let me do two commissions - so I did two commissions. Let me finish working and getting my feet under this County job that - I work doing economic development for King County. And I thought I needed to be more qualified to do the job, but now that I'm seeing how everybody goes about making, reviewing data on packets of policy on decisions you have to make - yes, it's helpful to have that experience - but my own lived experience prior to that, working in finance, working with small business owners, applying for loans, helping them navigate permits - things like that really give you a good sense of what makes sense. So I would say don't be intimidated by resumés and just do it.
It is going to be something that your whole family's going to entail, so it's going to be something that I would make sure you have consistent conversations with your loved ones. I had a few at the very beginning, but not as many - because once you get going, you get going - it's non-stop. So more consistent - just to make sure that you check in on how your campaign is impacting your family members 'cause it does - even if you think of how much it does, it impacts it more than I think we acknowledge. And also, the hardest part for me was self-care. One of the things I'm noticing, and I'm sure you have too, is that we're starting to see some really strong, impactful leaders take a step back. Burnout is real. Overwork is real. And that's kind of the - my biggest focus here in the next few months is to make sure that my energy of being super hyped, being able to be able to make decisions that I think will help the majority of our residents are all - it's exciting, so I'm able to work my two jobs, put in 60, 70 hours a week, work all the time.
But I want to make sure that I'm able to sustain that two years from now - when I'm halfway through my term - and I'm not burnt out, because I'm seeing folks that I'm like - wow, that is somebody I'd like to aspire to - to do work like. They've all done amazing work, community-led work, work that I was like - that's the type of leadership I'd like to exemplify. And I do feel it - having a full-time job that is a very intense full-time job on their own, and doing a city council job that in essence is a part-time job - I don't have - we don't have staff, we're not a King County Council elected, we're not a City of Seattle elected where they have two or three staff members. We're having to navigate everything a little bit on our own. The City staff does help, but the City staff can't help you on your campaign goals - on the things that you campaigned on. They work to serve the City and they're already - most cities in South King County are understaffed. I'm learning that right away - that most of them tend to be understaffed and they're doing multiple wearing of hats, which I think because of COVID and everything's happening, we're trying to get used to.
But I think being intentional about not burning out and being realistic is going to be important, which is something that I'm trying to make sure I bring up when we hire a City Manager. 'Cause we're in the middle of hiring a City Manager for our city and it's going to be the most important position - not just for the next four years for Burien, but potentially the next decade.
[00:35:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's a big deal - and really good advice, especially about needing to take care of yourself, needing to make sure that you're checking in with your family. These are things that I'm routinely talking to candidates about and burnout is real. It's easy to overlook that and usually - oftentimes people who run are very competent, productive, capable people and used to just running on a hundred all the time - but with something on the magnitude of a campaign, plus your day job which is not governing. And most cities that are not major metropolitan areas and all of the suburbs, the council position is not the main job.
[00:36:22] Councilmember Hugo Garcia: Yeah, and all your community commitments that got you that community support - they didn't go away. Your involvement in immigrant support groups, in youth sport groups - whatever you were doing - that doesn't go away. You still are super busy - that's why earlier, when you brought up being able to share content and explain the process on social media - that's really important to me because that's how it helped me to share the path of running, how that process was. But I know that - I could see it already that the burnout would not be able to last 'til the end of my four year term, so I need to be able to go back. I spoke to my campaign manager who - she has her own job, family, she's not a political career person, so she's not able to stay on and help me on the council work. And I'm telling them like, Hey, this is intense work. And they're like, you got to talk to the people that helped you and find a way for them to help in a way that makes sense. So that's why I was like - look, I can bring on some part-time interns. I'll share my stipend in essence and pay them out of my pocket. But at the same time, it helps with managing some of the communications so it's more efficient, so it's scheduled, so that it's also not me rushing and tweeting at 10 o'clock after meetings, but recapping. And also having someone that is 17 years old and has working parents so that if I share something, they know what I'm talking about.
[00:38:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely - makes a really big difference. I appreciate the time you've taken to come and talk to us, update us - appreciate the work that you're doing on the Council and to your point, it has been wonderful and highly recommend that people follow you on social media and just stay informed, follow your journey.
[00:38:36] Councilmember Hugo Garcia: Please do - I'm @CMHugoGarcia on all the channels - that's CM for councilmember - @CMHugoGarcia on Twitter on Instagram. You can find Hugo or Councilmember Garcia on Facebook, and also share things that you think are going to be good for me to keep in mind too. I do a lot of reading both on social media and just - whether it's books, news - it doesn't have to be just to see what I'm doing. Work with me - Hey, I think this is something you should really consider. I love getting interaction from folks and ideas on things. Hit me up.
[00:39:19] Crystal Fincher: Love it, love it, appreciate it - and we will link all of that in our episode notes also. So just - you can link from there and follow him from our episode notes. Just appreciate the time that you've taken and hopefully we'll have you back again in the future.
[00:39:33] Councilmember Hugo Garcia: Yes you will - and I'm going to do a quick plug, please, for all your listeners that are in the city of Burien. Check out our city's website, or my social media. We have some important surveys on our ARPA fund right now. We have the American Rescue Act Plan fund - we have $9 million that we can invest to help us recover from COVID - would really want to get as much participation. There's a survey - you can find it on my social media - any listener in Burien, whether you live or work, spend money in Burien - share your thoughts. I want to know how you would spend $9 million supporting Burien.
[00:40:11] Crystal Fincher: Well, shoot. I spend money and play in Burien. Maybe I'll go ahead and take that survey - especially in light of all of the news about how much of that money across the country has wound up in the hands of law enforcement for some reason. Yeah, I might share our thoughts - we'll go ahead and link that too.
[00:40:30] Councilmember Hugo Garcia: I will say it was $10 million - Council last year, not the Council that I am now on - did allocate $1 million towards public safety. So we now have $9 million - that's why I want your feedback. That's why I want more people to fill out that survey.
[00:40:46] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and appreciate your perspective and appreciate that - because it really is taking new people doing different things to change that trajectory. Because without any intervention and conversation that is how things happen.
[00:41:02] Councilmember Hugo Garcia: I work for the county and I do a lot of outreach work within my day job, so I know how challenging it is to get engagement from community members. Usually you get folks that are already in the civic involvement space, right? You get the neighbors that do know how to navigate and apply and get to ask for better service delivery from your departments - parks, roads, things like that - on issues. But we have, currently - I think we had a couple of meetings on this $9 million and I would say less than 50 people combined have attended. And that is going to drive a lot of the recovery - not a lot, but it's going to basically be like, Hey, in in-person meetings, this is the topics that were recommended for $9 million to be invested. I'm not saying 50 people are deciding - we're doing surveys, we're doing focus groups.
And that's why I want to get some of the youth involved with me because we need to be able to spread the word on there's all - and that's just one issue, right? $9 million ARPA allocation - there is subarea zoning that's going to impact how high density can go in undeveloped and underserved communities here in Burien, and there's parks, comprehensive planning. There's so many things that are so dry and boring and not important to the everyday person that's just trying to get their kid to school, pick up their kid, and get to the job, and pay the bills. But it's impacting them - it's going to impact all those things you're doing. So that's why I did that plug - yeah, all my people here from Burien, around Burien, and shopping in Burien, living in Burien, and working in Burien - let me know how to spend $9 million - how to invest, not spend - invest.
[00:42:57] Crystal Fincher: We will link that too - very important - and to your point, in so many of these suburbs and smaller cities, the amount of people who actually engage is so tiny.
[00:43:10] Councilmember Hugo Garcia: It's so tiny - 1% maybe if we're lucky.
[00:43:16] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and that's for huge, big deal things. Usually in an average council meeting - if there's a handful of people there, if there's just two or three people there to talk about something - that actually attracts attention. I'm like - oh, there's a couple people here to talk about something. It really only takes a couple people bringing something up to get people's - to get your elected councilmembers' and mayor's attention. So being one of those voices -
[00:43:46] Councilmember Hugo Garcia: Yeah - like I said, we get an email - we get a lot of emails in the Council, but you see them and I want to try to help. This is someone reaching out directly to the Council - Hey, this is an issue for me. But generally it's the same folks that can navigate that space and know how to find the Council's email. And it's not going to be typically Black and Brown folks like myself, like you and I - it typically just isn't. And I want to make sure that we continually focus on improving that. And that's why I'm here - literally, why I'm here.
[00:44:24] Crystal Fincher: I love it. Well, I love that you're there, I love that you're taking time to very intentionally stay connected to the community and make government accessible and less boring, and help the community just get why it's relevant, and to make sure that you're serving everyone and not just the people who have been the loudest voices traditionally. So just appreciate it, and we will look forward to talking to you again in the future.
[00:44:55] Councilmember Hugo Garcia: Thanks Crystal - be well and stay well.
[00:44:58] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks and Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If feel like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
On today’s Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by co-founder and General Secretary of the Seattle Transit Riders Union and former Crosscut columnist, Katie Wilson. They discuss the social housing initiative and Councilmember Tammy Morales' community engagement in preparation for the next growth management plan. Then they dive into a rift among regional leaders about how to address homelessness, the Harrell administration's controversial decision to decline issuance of authorized bridge repair bonds, and a new fare enforcement approach for Sound Transit. Crystal and Katie conclude with a discussion on minimum pay standards for gig workers, Howard Schultz’s return, and Bothell prioritizing pedestrians on a main street.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Katie Wilson, at @WilsonKatieB, and find the Seattle Transit Riders Union at @SeattleTRU. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
Seattle Transit Riders Union: https://transitriders.org
“Seattle’s middle class is vanishing. Could this idea save it?” by Naomi Ishisaka from The Seattle TImes: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattles-middle-class-is-vanishing-could-this-idea-save-it/
“How Seattle’s next mayor can solve the housing crisis” by Katie Wilson from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/opinion/2021/07/how-seattles-next-mayor-can-solve-housing-crisis
“Seattle mayoral candidates weigh in on public housing” by Katie Wilson from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/opinion/2021/07/seattle-mayoral-candidates-weigh-public-housing
“Seattle area has 6th-highest rent in the country” by Danny Schmitt from Seattle Refined: https://seattlerefined.com/the-home/surprised-puget-sound-area-has-6th-highest-rent-in-america-study-finds
House Our Neighbors: https://www.houseourneighbors.org
“Rainier Beach Strives for Growth without Displacement” by Shaun Kuo and Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/04/04/rainier-beach-strives-for-growth-without-displacement/m
“Group aims to bring Seattle minimum wage push to Tukwila” by KIRO Newsradio Newsdesk from MyNorthwest: https://mynorthwest.com/3407417/tukwila-minimum-wage-push/
“Will Seattle’s Next Growth Plan Create a “City Within Reach,” or More of the Same Old Crap?” by Andrew Engelson from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/04/04/69904228/will-seattles-next-growth-plan-create-a-city-within-reach-or-more-of-the-same-old-crap
Seattle Comprehensive Citywide Plan: http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/OPCD/OngoingInitiatives/SeattlesComprehensivePlan/CouncilAdopted2020_CitywidePlanning.pdf
Seattle Participatory Budgeting Project: https://www.participatorybudgeting.org
Seattle Within Reach Events: http://www.seattle.gov/council/meet-the-council/tammy-morales/seattle-within-reach
“Tiny-House Funding Debate Reveals Fractures Over Future of Homelessness System” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola: https://publicola.com/2022/04/04/tiny-house-funding-debate-reveals-fractures-over-future-of-homelessness-system/
“Harrell Administration Not Ready to Issue Bonds for Bridges, Council Pushes Back” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/04/05/harrell-administration-not-ready-to-issue-bonds-for-bridges-council-pushes-back/
“Sound Transit Fare Enforcement Plan Could Send Riders to Court and Collections” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola: https://publicola.com/2022/04/06/sound-transit-fare-enforcement-plan-could-send-riders-to-court-and-collections/
“PayUp Ordinance finally being introduced” by Ruby de Luna from KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/stories/seattle-ordinance-seeks-to-raise-pay-and-set-labor-standards-for-gig-workers
“Howard Schultz halts share buybacks to “invest more profit in our people”” by Dee-Ann Durbin and Matt Ott from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/starbucks-halts-stock-buybacks-as-schultz-pivots-to-workers/
“Bothell banned cars from Main Street in response to COVID. They may never return” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/bothell-banned-cars-from-main-street-in-response-to-covid-they-may-never-return/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week. Welcome to the program for the first time on Friday as a co-host, today's co-host: former Crosscut columnist, co-founder and General Secretary of the Seattle Transit Riders Union, Katie Wilson. Welcome Katie.
[00:00:57] Katie Wilson: Thank you, Crystal - great to be here.
[00:00:59] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you here - have just followed your work for a long time, have been a big fan. You seem to understand creating change and building coalitions toward change - and just appreciate everything that you're doing. One thing that I want to start off talking about this morning is the social housing initiative - there was a great Seattle Times column earlier this week about it, you've certainly covered this before in your Crosscut columns. What is this initiative and what can it mean for Seattle?
[00:01:31] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so Naomi Ishisaka had a great column on Monday about social housing and she really started from this fact that's been in the news a lot recently - that Seattle is, as we all know, more and more becoming a city of rich and poor, right? And so she introduced this social housing initiative as potentially an answer to saving Seattle's vanishing middle class. Now this initiative was filed a couple of weeks ago now by the House Our Neighbors coalition, which came together last year in response to the Compassion Seattle ballot initiative. And this is really an effort to put forward a bold positive solution to Seattle's housing crisis.
The initiative this week just got its number, so it's Initiative I-135 and hopefully they'll be able to start gathering signatures sometime in the next few weeks. But basically the idea here is that existing models of creating affordable housing are not enough. And so, House Our Neighbors is looking at cities elsewhere in the world - like Vienna is an example that often comes up, Paris is also doing a lot with social housing - of how can we really take more housing off the private market and make it permanently affordable? And I think a couple of the important characteristics of this proposal are - one, it would create publicly-owned housing, as opposed to the current model where kind of a whole range of nonprofit housing providers operate housing. This would create a public development authority so that the housing would be owned and operated by this public entity.
And it would also be mixed income - so this is, I think, really interesting. So as opposed to just trying to create affordable housing for the very poor or low-income households, this would create housing that potentially could be for people up to - I think it was 120% of area median income. And so what this would mean, among other things, is that the housing could be more financially self-sustaining and you could have more kind of mixed income developments and mixed income neighborhoods. And essentially higher rents could be subsidizing the lower rents - and so this has big implications for the ability of social housing to kind of expand. And so one thing that the public development authority could do is basically bond against future rents and basically create more money up front to expand and acquire new properties. So it's really an exciting idea and it'll be interesting to see how it unfolds.
[00:04:14] Crystal Fincher: An extremely exciting idea and critical to affordability - you referenced news that's recently come out where the median income in Seattle is now over a $100,000 - more than 53% of Seattle households make more than a $100,000, which is up dramatically from just 10 and 20 years ago. The skyrocketing rents that we're seeing in Seattle and also in the entire region is just really alarming, and so we're looking at - is Seattle going to be a place purely for the rich and wealthy, or do other people have a space in it? Especially given that for all of the high-income tech workers, big corporate people making a ton of money - they're all relying on services and people who are making low wages. And to force them out of the City and not being able to participate in the success that has been created, the jobs boom that we've seen over the past 10 years - just is really fundamentally unfair. And I think what we're seeing socially is that it's unhealthy, and we all lose because of it.
What does the plan for the initiative look like moving forward? Will there be a signature gathering drive? What kind of activity can people expect to see, and how can they get involved if they want to?
[00:05:41] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so signature gathering will be the name of the game - I think that the initiative is - they're hoping to get it on this November's ballot, which means that they need to collect ~20,000 valid signatures of Seattle voters by probably around the end of June. That's a lot of signatures. And so I think this is a very volunteer-driven effort, I know that Real Change is bottom lining the coalition, but it's going to take lots and lots of volunteers to gather those signatures. You can visit the coalition's website, which is houseourneighbors.org to learn more and to sign up to volunteer. I think they're already doing trainings for people who are interested in helping to gather signatures. And then if successful, this would go on the November ballot for Seattle voters to vote on.
[00:06:27] Crystal Fincher: It makes a big difference - we'll also include that in the episode notes for people who want to learn more. As we move forward in talking about this, this also is related to conversations about growth and displacement. The rising rents have priced a lot of people out of Seattle - people who do make less than a $100,000 - certainly home ownership is often out of the realm of possibility. But the ability to live in Seattle overall - Seattle, which in another article this week, has the sixth highest rent in the country. What does it mean to be able to grow without displacing the community that's already there, and how do we move forward and continue to support development and density without destroying the neighborhood that's already there?
[00:07:18] Katie Wilson: Yeah, I think this is a really a complicated question and one that Seattle's definitely grappling with right now. I feel like every month or two, one of these articles comes out that ranks Seattle among other cities in terms of how expensive it is to live here or housing costs, and so this is another one, right? Yeah - sixth highest rent in the country - I don't think anyone is surprised by that. I mean, if you're a renter in Seattle - as I am - you know that it's pretty expensive. And and of course this isn't just Seattle, but now it's all of King County where rents are rising. And I think we're seeing this coming out of the pandemic, right - there was a period of time during the pandemic when eviction moratoriums were in place and landlords, for a time, were not allowed to raise rents - there was a freeze on rent increases. That time is over, and so we're definitely now seeing an uptick in both evictions for non-payment of rent, right? 'Cause there's still tens of thousands of renters in the Seattle area who have rental debt accrued during the pandemic. And we're also seeing large rent increases around King County.
And, you know, I've been down in Tukwila - the Transit Riders Union is doing a minimum wage ballot initiative in Tukwila this year - and so we've been door knocking and talking to lots of renters in Tukwila about that. And we're finding so many people who have been getting rent increase notices of $200, $300, $400 a month - and this is happening around King County. So rents are going up at a really rapid pace and that's a problem, right? People can't afford it - they have to find somewhere to move to that's probably further away from urban areas, further away from jobs. And this is something that we've seen happening in Seattle and in King County for the past decade or more, right - where people, low-income people, communities of color being displaced by rising rents, by new development. And part of that, of course too, is our housing shortage, right? We've had this huge flood of higher-paid tech workers moving into the region and we haven't been building housing to keep pace. And so I think part of the debate going on right now is - how do we begin to build housing at scale? And at the same time, be doing enough to create also affordable housing, right? So that building new development doesn't just push people out further.
And there was an article in The Urbanist this week - Rainer Beach strives for growth without displacement, which was actually somewhat - something of a hopeful piece about what's going on in Rainer Beach right now, which is, has been - it's on the light rail line, but compared to some of the other communities around the light rail stations has seen less development over the past years. But this year there's quite a lot of projects that are kind of in progress, including a lot of affordable housing projects, which is really positive news.
[00:10:18] Crystal Fincher: Extremely positive. One of the things that I do appreciate so much about the social housing initiative is that it doesn't just focus on lower income areas - building affordable, mixed income areas. Having mixed income communities is actually great for public safety. Those communities are usually safer, more resilient, thriving - not just to concentrate lower incomes in one area of the City, which is usually just segregation. And usually the consequences that people in higher income areas don't want to experience, whether it's pollution, lack of investment and other infrastructure like schools and other areas tend to be concentrated in those low, lower poverty areas overall, where they're really just areas of disinvestment and of intentional neglect and underinvestment. So I definitely appreciate that about the initiative. And as we have these conversations in the City about what - what do we want the City to be - that's really healthy.
There was another article this week in The Stranger, talking about Seattle's - the approach that specifically Tammy Morales, Councilmember Tammy Morales, is looking at taking in looking forward to the next comprehensive plan in Seattle and just really very intentionally setting out to say - what do we want Seattle to look like? And what kinds of policies can help get us there? What was in that conversation?
[00:11:50] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so basically every - I think it's every eight years - Seattle updates its comprehensive plan. And that's - it's not binding legislation, at least as far as I understand it, but it's kind of a roadmap for how the City has decided it wants to develop and then that guides legislation after that. And so in this - and the last comprehensive update was passed in, I believe it was 2015 - and that really focused on adding development, adding housing, adding height in urban villages, right? So there was kind of designated areas around the City where there was good transit access, where there was already - it's kind of urban - and so the idea was to concentrate more development in those areas, but then kind of leave alone the vast majority of our residential land, which is zoned for single family homes. And so I think we've had a lot of public discussion over the last few years about how wrong that approach is and how it kind of perpetuates redlining and basically banning poor people from, and people of color from, most of the City. And so I think that part of the focus in this new comprehensive plan update, which - starting now and will be passed in a couple of years - is to figure out what we can do to reform our zoning so that more housing and more affordable housing can be built throughout the City.
But then there's a lot of other components to it, too. And I think this is where Councilmember Morales is thinking creatively about some of the other elements. I don't know how much she's ruled out, but I think that there's a lot of opportunities to think about where we locate businesses, for one thing, especially as the pandemic is kind of changing the places and the ways that people live and work - making sure that there's more mixed use development in residential neighborhoods so that you can have things like small businesses and cafes and childcare close to where people live. It will just be really interesting to see - Councilmember Morales is planning a series of discussions or public engagement that people can get involved in.
[00:14:12] Crystal Fincher: Well, and as we talk about a lot of these transformative changes that Councilmember Morales has been discussing - issues that we've talked about before, that lots of people and planners have talked about before, like the 15-minute city, are things that she has brought up that hopefully we are able to see more of. And especially in this context - the places that we love to visit, love to travel to, have fond memories of in terms of how wonderful it is to be, the feeling of community and accessibility of everything that those areas have to offer - they're usually really dense and walkable. And we love visiting 15-minute cities. And there's a disconnect between what we love and we know we enjoy and what fosters community - and for some reason we don't apply that same kind of lens to where we live at home. We can create more pleasant spaces here where we live if we just do some of the things that are really universally recognized - and that people pay thousands of dollars to travel to experience, and then seemingly just shun when it comes to local decision making.
So these are things that really enhance the overall enjoyment, safety, just attractiveness of communities. And the more we can do to instill that locally, the better off we are in terms of climate, jobs, health - all of the outcomes and things that we look at as markers of great healthy thriving communities, usually are enhanced by making them more dense and walkable. And really give people options for how they want to live instead of just locking them into - you have to own a car in order to survive and have all of the uncertainty of all of the expenses related to that - as we sit here now and gas prices are so unstable and expensive for a lot of people - just really giving people choice and options. We talk about freedom a lot in this country and man, I really wish more people had real choices and freedom to choose how they want to live and what they want their communities to be, and don't have to be locked into a certain way of life because the community design dictates that. So I'm really interested to see where this goes in the future. What do you anticipate to see as we continue through this process, Katie?
[00:16:43] Katie Wilson: Yeah - well, and I just want to add - I think that transportation is a really important piece of this as well. As someone who works with the Transit Riders Union, one of the big shortcomings of our climate action as a City over the last 10 years has been an utter failure to reduce transportation emissions. I think we had some kind of goal of cutting transportation emissions rather dramatically by 2030, and here we are - they've just been going up and up. And so that's really a measure of our car dependence, and so I think what's going to happen next - Councilmember Morales has a series of public engagement meetings which people should attend. This is going to be a long process - there's going to be discussions about this comprehensive plan update and about zoning - throughout the rest of this year and continuing into next year and probably beyond.
But hopefully what comes out of all of that is a commitment to upzone single family neighborhoods to at least allow things like triplexes, quadraplexes, maybe even other kinds of multi-family housing. I think we also need to be looking at changing the way that we regulate parking and not demanding that parking spaces be built everywhere. And so this is going to be a long process, but it's important that people get engaged because there's going to be strong opposition to making a lot of these changes. I think that our Seattle Times Editorial Board is notoriously opposed to making these kinds of positive changes. And from wealthy single family neighborhoods, I think there's also going to be a lot of opposition to changing the neighborhood character, so to speak. And so it's going to take quite a lot of organizing and pressure in order to create these mixed income, 15-minute neighborhoods that are walkable and affordable for people of all incomes.
[00:18:51] Crystal Fincher: Completely agree. I always find it curious how those in the NIMBY community who tout maintaining the neighborhood character always seem to be in favor of changing the character of other neighborhoods - and try and frame that in terms of wonderful, great revitalization and development and progress. But when it comes to their own neighborhood, it is somehow evil and forbidden, and just beyond what anything should be considered. I definitely agree that people really do need to engage and make their voices heard because we know for a fact that folks on the NIMBY side of things and who are opposing the kind of progress that we need to make this a livable city for everyone in the future are going to make their voices heard.
Another area that was covered this week had to do with the apparent fracture over approaches to homelessness that was revealed in - just kind of a disagreement and dustup over funding between the State, the King County Regional Homeless Authority, and another organization. What is going on with all that?
[00:20:08] Katie Wilson: Well, this all started or at least the news broke - I think it was last week. And there was an article in The Seattle Times by Scott Greenstone, which - it was trying to present this as like a scandal - that Frank Chopp, Representative Frank Chopp, had usurped the authority of the new King County Regional Homelessness Authority and had redirected $2 million to LIHI [Low-Income Housing Institute] for setting up tiny house villages. And it was a very - it was trying to portray this as a scandal - and then this week, Erica Barnett wrote a story to set the record straight. And thank God for Erica - I think what's really going on here, and I trust Erica's reporting on this, is that that money was never in the Regional Homelessness Authority's hands.
That was actually money which last year had been allocated to Seattle for tiny house villages. And then as you might recall, there was a lot of efforts on the part of the City Council to allocate funds to set up lots of new tiny house villages to try to give people an option other than sleeping outside. And Mayor Durkan never spent that money, and so - this was actually an attempt to put that money toward what it had originally been intended for. And the King County Regional Homelessness Authority put out an RFP for that money even though it wasn't there. So, a lot of drama.
I think that the bigger story in my mind is - there's a lot of scandal in how we approach homelessness, but it's not this. It's the fact that we are not taking our housing crisis seriously. And the Harrell administration has really stepped up sweeps, without really stepping up the creation of shelter and housing for people to go to. And this is a big problem - Mayor Harrell has kind of committed to carrying out the Compassion Seattle initiative, but only seems to be doubling down on the sweeps portion of it. And we haven't really seen the 2,000 new units of emergency housing or whatever that are supposed to be created in this first year. So in my mind, that's the real scandal here.
[00:22:37] Crystal Fincher: Well, I certainly agree with you there. And a lot of opponents of the Compassion Seattle initiative, myself included, really felt and understood that - wow, this is actually what the Compassion Seattle initiative was about. It was very clear and explicit in changing the City Charter to allow for sweeps, and very muddy and not as clear when it came to mandating the creation of housing and provision of services. It seemed like that was, Hey, if you can do it - great. But if not, you also don't have to. It really seemed like an attempt to codify the ability to sweep, and putting other language around there to make that more palatable - that that actually did not look like it was going to translate into action under the Harrell administration.
Certainly, as you just said, they took action on the sweeps, but the other stuff has been missing or very, very anemic. In this process, one of the things that you talked about, we've talked about on Hacks & Wonks before - the Durkan administration's refusal to spend money that had been allocated, which was just baffling at the time - what people in the City had, residents and voters in the City had repeatedly identified as their number one concern - that all of us can see is a humongous problem. Having people who do not have homes to sleep in - out in the elements, in dangerous places, outside sleeping - and the refusal to allocate money, to use federal money, to seek additional money, to address it - just really, really confounding.
And it really seemed, through this article and reporting, that Frank Chopp's action was more tied to accountability than it was any personal want or desire. It actually does not appear that he has any financial stake or benefit that comes from allocating this money, or related to LIHI. But they did explicitly say, Hey, we did allocate this money. And with the understanding that this was an emergency, we wanted it to be used, and you chose not to use it. Councilmember Andrew Lewis has been a leading proponent of tiny homes, and he also wanted to see this done, as did the rest of the Council - but it looked like the mayor's office just refused to spend it. And Frank Chopp said, well, if you aren't going to spend this and start to take action on one of the biggest problems we face, then we're going to give the money to someone who will, an organization who will - and it actually looks like that's what happened.
While at the same time there seem to be disagreements - and have heard them - about whether or not tiny homes are the most appropriate measure. From my standpoint, it looks like they're - they can certainly be part of the solution - they are not all of the solution. Nothing that we're talking about is all of the solution, but if money is allocated, then action does need to be taken to put it to use. It really does nothing to allocate money or to pass legislation, if you have an executive branch that refuses to do what they can with it. And unfortunately, the executive branch is the only branch who can actually take action and implement the policy and use those funds on the end.
So it's going to be interesting to continue to follow this, but it looks like the money is in the hands of LIHI. It actually was not in the hands of the King County Homeless Authority. They seem to be doing great work in other areas and certainly have funding and action that they're in the process of taking, and revamping things. And also in a complicated and sometimes contentious conversation about the need to pay frontline staff more, who have definitely been underpaid - I appreciate their willingness to bring that out in the open. But there's going to be accountability tied to this money, and there should be - so that if it's allocated for something, it should be used for that. So going to be interesting to continue to follow that, but again, I do appreciate - as you do - Erica's reporting on that, to see what was really behind this and getting to the core of the issue. And we'll continue to follow that.
Another item that happened this week - the Harrell administration actually announced that they are not intending to use bonds, bonding capacity, to repair 70-something bridges that are in need of repair in the City, which caused some consternation among Council people. What happened here, Katie?
[00:27:42] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so this actually goes back to last year's City budget process. And in the discussion around the transportation budget, there was a push from several councilmembers - Councilmember Alex Pedersen, among them - to get the City to allocate a lot more money toward bridge repair, especially obviously the West Seattle Bridge being on the top of everyone's mind. And the City ended up approving a $100 million bond issuance to fund bridge projects around the City. And so what's happened now is that the Harrell administration has basically decided against issuing those bonds this year. And they've said basically that there are not enough projects that are shovel-ready, and so for that reason, it wouldn't be fiscally responsible to pay interest, to raise funds for these projects that can't actually proceed.
And Councilmember Pedersen was very not happy about this - and actually I got a big kick out of this, because I think we've just come out of a administration with Mayor Durkan, where there was a lot of tension between the mayor and the Council. And it was kind of the Council's left wing that was dramatically at odds with the mayor on a lot of things. Well, we're seeing something a little different here where Councilmember Alex Pedersen, who is arguably on the Council's right-wing, was very upset and basically said, The decision of the executive branch of our City government to kick the can down the road yet again, makes it clear that if another Seattle bridge breaks or closes and strands people, freight and transit, the fault would be with the Harrell administration.
So a little bit of fireworks there, and one of the mayor's spokespeople countered - in One Seattle, we don't point fingers. We build consensus and take deliberate and effective action, so I kind of got a kick out of that. But on this one, I'm actually on Harrell's side and on Scott's side - I think that there's kind of a tendency to think of bonds as like magic, right? You issue bonds and you make money appear out of nowhere, but that money has to be paid back with interest. And so bonds can be a really good idea if you have a large capital project that you can get going on right away if you have all that money up front, and that you wouldn't be able to do if that money just dribbled in over the course of a bunch of years. But in this case, if you actually don't have a shovel-ready project or you don't have the capacity to do all that construction upfront, it probably doesn't make sense to issue bonds yet. And so I think that the mayor's administration is actually making the correct decision in this case.
[00:30:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this is an interesting one, and I see that point also. And another point they brought up is that - I think it's American Rescue Plan funds that can go towards infrastructure are still in the process of being distributed and there's an opportunity for the City to potentially pursue those - some of those funds to help defray costs. One of the things that is happening - there is continuing work in planning and moving some projects forward. I can see the frustration from Councilmember Pedersen in that infrastructure maintenance and bridge repair - just chronically falls onto the back burner - it's something that is invisible to a lot of people, that often times does not make it as the top priority, that may be hard to feel the benefit. And that you can't point to it and say, look what we did - and have it be something visibly different and a sign of progress. So sometimes are - short-sighted political decision-making that so often takes the day doesn't focus on that. And finally, we got to a point where we approve funds, we are taking a comprehensive approach at seriously maintaining our bridge infrastructure which just about everyone acknowledges is necessary. And it feels like a setback.
If there is an opportunity to get external funds, we should certainly try and do that - finding a $100 million or $50 million or $5 million can certainly help defray costs. I would anticipate, and the Harrell administration took pains to say that they're not dismissing the idea of bonding out of hand, just saying not yet since things aren't shovel-ready, but we'll continue to take a look at this. And I do hope that they have a plan and timeline in place to say, okay, we're seeking this extra funding, or we are planning to get these projects on track to be ready to get worked on by a certain date and to be able to take action. So hopefully we're not sitting here two years from now still talking about hoping to find other funding without taking any action to move us forward - because also, construction costs continue to rise the longer we wait to do this and that will become more expensive. So hopefully it's a quick thing that happens.
[00:32:58] Katie Wilson: Yeah - no, that's absolutely right - and I think part of the problem here, of course, is that we just have done such a bad job of maintaining infrastructure and retrofitting it for earthquakes. And so there is just this huge backlog, and I think one of the issues at debate in the budget process last year was how best to use our scarce local transportation money. And there was a proposal from several councilmembers, including Councilmember Pedersen, to use some money from a vehicle license fee toward the bridges - and multimodal transportation advocates, including the Transit Riders Union and the MASS coalition were pushing for that money to go toward walking, rolling, biking infrastructure instead.
And we were really saying that for this bridge funding, we should be doing everything we can to get federal and state money, 'cause that's where the big bucks are. And I do think that there's a big opportunity to do that. And that's not to say that we're not going to need to raise local funds for those things, and we also have the levy renewal coming up where that's going to be, I'm sure, under discussion - including a bunch of funds for bridge stuff. So, I mean, not to say that this is not a big issue that needs to be solved, but I do think that in this case it was right to hold off on the bond issuance.
[00:34:24] Crystal Fincher: All right. Another development this week - Sound Transit is discussing further fare enforcement policy changes. What are they talking about this time?
[00:34:35] Katie Wilson: Yeah - so this has been going on for a long time now. So this goes back to - golly, I would even say 2018 - when there was a audit done of King County Metro's fare enforcement program, that showed that it extremely disproportionately was impacting homeless and housing insecure riders. And that kicked off a process where the Transit Riders Union and a number of other organizations worked with the transit agencies and put pressure to try to get them to change the way that they respond to fare nonpayment. And so there were a bunch of reforms that King County Metro made, and then Sound Transit has been a tougher nut to crack. The agency has a more conservative, law-and-order culture - partly reflecting its larger, not just Seattle and King County, geographic area. So it's been years of pushing the agency and talking with people within the agency to try to get them to come up with a less punitive way to respond to fare non-payment. And the system that they had before was basically like - you don't pay your fare, you get one warning. You don't pay again, it's $124 fine issued through the court system as a civil infraction. And so that was basically leading to people getting a criminal record and ultimately unpaid fines being referred to debt collectors, just for not paying their $2.75 fare or whatever.
And so what Sound Transit is now considering is some pretty significant changes - a lot of them really positive. So the proposal that they were looking at, at the executive committee meeting on Thursday, in which they will be - the full board will be considering later this month - would basically increase the number of warnings. So I think there's like two warnings, and then after that you would get a $50 fine, but it wouldn't be issued by the court system. It would be kind of an administrative fine that the transit agency was issuing. And then, I think the next infraction, it goes up to $75. And then maybe after that, it goes up to $124. And they also were creating non-monetary ways to resolve a fine, so that you could - for example, sign up for a low-income reduced fare if you're eligible, if you weren't already signed up. And they also were - are proposing to end the practice of suspending people from Sound Transit services and making people get off the train if they haven't paid.
So there's a lot of really positive aspects to this. But we're still very concerned that there's this nexus with the court system and also with potentially sending fines to collections if they're not paid. And so we're continuing to push, to try to get the Sound Transit Board to remove those elements. We would also like to see just the fine lowered - I mean, ultimately we want to see free transit, right? But this is kind of baby steps. And so - I think we're also in a difficult moment - I think 'cause we all know there's something of a backlash to the racial justice movement of last year. And so, I think a lot of the Sound Transit Board members, especially those from jurisdictions outside of Seattle and King County, are feeling that this is being soft on fare evasion. And so it'll be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few weeks.
[00:38:14] Crystal Fincher: We will definitely continue to keep an eye on it. Another exciting development this week is that the Pay Up ordinance was introduced. What will this do?
[00:38:26] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so this is a pathbreaking piece of legislation - I believe it's the first in the country that would establish minimum pay standards for gig workers - so people who work for DoorDash, Grubhub, these app-based, delivery services. And so this would set minimum pay standards - trying to establish a minimum wage for time that you are essentially working. And so if you sign onto the app and you accept a job, then right now - you're not getting paid for all of your time and you might end up getting paid significantly less than minimum wage for the time that you're working. So this would try to fix that problem.
[00:39:19] Crystal Fincher: And with that - it certainly seems like a worthy fix - people should be paid for time that they're spending there. And with some of that, they aren't being paid for some of their travel time. These gig workers are also experiencing the pressures on their expenses that everyone else is - so gas, that the cost of gas is disproportionately impacting them. Other items are - and their pay sometimes is below minimum wage. There is some pushback from Councilmember Sara Nelson saying that - well, we've seen some negative effects and demand drop for some gig workers who have had legislation passed that was intended to help them. Do you see things in that way? Do you feel like that was a fair criticism?
[00:40:05] Katie Wilson: No, not really. I mean - Seattle's gig worker - Uber and Lyft driver - minimum wage law passed in late 2019. And I think went into effect around the time that the pandemic hit. So, if you're talking about demand plummeting, I think that we need to look at what the COVID-19 pandemic did to demand for rideshare. I think that the bottom line is that workers deserve a living wage. And so there's these industries that have sprung up, which really exploit vulnerable workers, and we just have to make a decision as a community that we don't do that.
[00:40:47] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that a non-negotiable is that people get paid fairly for their labor - it seems fair. Related - Howard Schultz is back - yay. Because we didn't get enough of him in his presidential run, he has decided to return to Starbucks, in what a number of people view as an attempt to quell the momentum that Starbucks unionization currently has. And he announced a plan to invest more of their profit in people by stopping their share buybacks. Do you think that's going to make much of a difference?
[00:41:30] Katie Wilson: Well, I think this is interesting. So he's back as the interim CEO, and this is his first major action. And share buyback programs are, I think often rightly criticized as, a way of - they basically return profit to shareholders, but the shareholders often include highly paid executives. So a lot of CEOs, higher-ups in these corporations get paid largely in stock options, and so when the stock price goes up, they stand to profit a lot. So there's these kind of perverse incentives for corporations to plow profits back into share buybacks, because that elevates their share price, it makes them look good, and it also monetarily benefits a lot of these high-paid employees who are making these decisions. So what Schultz has decided to do is to not do that. They were going to do, I think, a 20 billion share repurchase over the next few years, and that was on top of a 25 billion share buyback that was announced a few years ago. So they were really doing this big time. And so he's announced that instead, they're going to plow more of that money into the company itself.
And I think that this really reflects how scared Starbucks is about the unionization wave that's sweeping their stores around the country. I wouldn't be surprised if we see soon some kind of big announcements of raises for Starbucks workers, maybe better benefits - who knows what they're going to pull out of the hat. But this is a classic union busting tactic too - is where a union is getting traction - now we have, I think, 13 out of 14 stores that have actually had their union votes have succeeded. And there's 200 stores around the country that have filed for election, so it's actually a big wave at this point. And so I think the tactic here is for the company to start trying to make things better for employees so that they can say - see, you don't need a union - this is fine. We can work things out directly between the worker and the employer. So if you have a problem come to us - we can give you a raise, we can give you benefits. You don't need a union. So it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. I think that the union can also portray this as a victory, but it's hard to say which way it will swing.
[00:43:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Completely agree with you that this is more a response to the pressure that they're feeling from the labor organization - and frankly being called out and exposed for how differently profits being taken by corporate executives and investors are treated differently than profits created by the people who are working on the front lines, where the profits wouldn't exist without them. So we'll continue to see how Starbucks responds to this, how Howard Schultz does. There was coverage of one meeting I saw that he was in, and employees stood up and didn't back down. And I think he's going to have a bit of a different reception and experience with labor and accountability than he had perhaps 15 years ago, when he built a reputation for being able to hold unionization at bay. So we'll continue to follow that, also.
Finally, this week, I want to talk about Bothell making - extending their - one of their main streets being car-free. What's going on in Bothell?
[00:45:11] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so this is kind of cool. So during the pandemic, like a lot of cities, Bothell decided to make some more walkable areas in their city. And so there's a part of their Main Street that they blocked off to cars to try to encourage outdoor dining and shopping. And it was pretty successful - I think if you read the article in The Seattle Times, you'll see there were some different opinions, right? There were - a lot of the merchants thought it was great - they were able to have outdoor dining, got lots more customers. There were a few which felt that their business might've gone down because there weren't people driving by, but on balance, it was a really positive experiment. And so the whole city council has voted to continue that for the next couple of years, I believe.
So they're going to keep that section of their Main Street car-free through 2024. This is kind of cool - it's not like - in Seattle, we've had during the pandemic, we've had Stay Healthy streets in residential neighborhoods, we've had cafe streets where some of the parking spaces have been turned into dining. But we don't really have a fully pedestrianized street that is continuing. And so this little area of Bothell is one of the few local examples of a - something from the pandemic that might last in a positive way. And I think they're looking at European cities that have big pedestrianized squares and streets as a model for this.
And I think it's interesting too, as in Seattle, conversation has bubbled up again about trying to make Pike Place Market car-free, or at least closed to thru traffic. And I think there's some other candidates in Seattle for car-free streets - I think The Ave in the U district is another one that is sometimes brought up. But we were talking before about 15-minute cities and walkable neighborhoods. And so I think this is - it'll be interesting to see how it goes in Bothell.
[00:47:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, certainly. And sometimes suburbs are not thought of as places where this would happen, but they're ripe for this happening - and a number of suburbs have things like this on a more temporary basis, where they'll shut off a street for part of a day, on the weekend, or for a farmer's market. Usually they aren't permanent closures, but more are talking about that, especially after the experiences through the pandemic where lots of dining needed to move outdoors - and so repurposing some of those spaces and parking spaces for people. And the positive reception that has received - so sometimes people have been used to being a more conservative conversation in the dominance and priority of cars taking precedence, but experiences on the ground are different.
It's reflected in this article where community members are talking about, Hey, one of the people in the article is saying - I can come down here with my kid, don't have to worry. They can run around and have a good time. Don't have to worry about them getting hit by cars. Business owners are saying the foot traffic is great for business and it activates the space. Some concerns from a couple of business members have revolved around - well, I have elderly clientele or people who have mobility issues who used to be able to be dropped off at the door and now it's more of a challenge. So they've tried to mitigate that with some access and drop-off areas, but the reception seems to be really positive. And certainly taking a portion of the overall infrastructure that is public space but the cars have the priority - to actually hand that priority back to more members of the community certainly makes sense. We're at least part of that infrastructure at this point in time. So exciting to see - I've definitely followed Mayor Mason Thompson in Bothell for a while, who just has on his agenda a number of exciting things, so it was happy I see that.
And with that, I want to thank all of you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, April 8th, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler and assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, with help from Emma Mudd. And our wonderful cohost today was co-founder and General Secretary of the Seattle Transit Riders Union, Katie Wilson. You can find Katie at Twitter on Twitter @WilsonKatieB. You can find the Seattle Transit Riders Union on Twitter @SeattleTRU - you can also join them and become a member - highly recommend that. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, and now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. While you're there, leave a review - it really helps us out. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.
On today’s Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Co-Founder and Editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett. They start by discussing the impact of redlining on the City of Seattle today, housing affordability, and the initiative that would create social housing in Seattle. Then, they unpack why Seattle City Council’s tree conservation plan would ultimately slow down housing development. Crystal and Erica then dive into this week’s labor news and finish with a conversation about hiring and public safety – from the police chief to the downtown juvenile jail staff.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica C. Barnett, at @ericacbarnett. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“New maps show strong correlation between redlined places in Seattle and worse air quality” by Nicholas Turner from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/new-maps-show-strong-correlation-between-redlined-places-in-seattle-and-worse-air-quality/
“$100K-plus households are now the majority in most Seattle neighborhoods” by Gene Balk from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/100k-plus-households-are-now-the-majority-in-most-seattle-neighborhoods/
“Initiative Would Pave the Way for Social Housing in Seattle” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola: https://publicola.com/2022/03/28/initiative-would-pave-the-way-for-social-housing-in-seattle/
“Seattle City Council Embarks on Tree Conservation Crusade, but Strauss Says Urbanists Need Not Worry” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/03/30/69548451/seattle-city-council-embarks-on-tree-conservation-crusade-but-strauss-says-urbanists-need-not-worry
“Judge: Seattle concrete companies intentionally drove into striking workers at picket line” by FOX 13 News Staff from FOX 13: https://www.q13fox.com/news/judge-seattle-concrete-companies-intentionally-drove-into-striking-workers-at-picket-line
“Broadway is a union street — Capitol Hill Crossroads workers approve unionization” by CHS from Capitol Hill Seattle Blog: https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2022/03/broadway-is-a-union-street-capitol-hill-crossroads-workers-approve-unionization/
“Amazon Warehouse Workers Win Historic Union Vote on Staten Island” by Josefa Velasquez and Claudia Irizarry Aponte from The City: https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/4/1/23006509/amazon-warehouse-workers-union-win-staten-island
“Amazon Spent $4.3 Million On Anti-Union Consultants Last Year” by Dave Jamieson from HuffPost: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/amazon-anti-union-consultants_n_62449258e4b0742dfa5a74fb?c9h
“Kirsten Harris-Talley: Why I Am Not Seeking Reelection” by Kirsten Harris-Talley from The South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2022/03/29/kirsten-harris-talley-why-i-am-not-seeking-reelection/
“Seattle mayor announces nationwide police chief search, urges interim Chief Diaz to apply” by Sarah Grace Taylor from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-mayor-announces-nationwide-police-chief-search-urges-interim-chief-diaz-to-apply/
“Report Says Hiring Incentives May Not Work; 11 City Appointees Kept Hanging for Lack of Council Quorum” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola: https://publicola.com/2022/03/29/report-says-hiring-incentives-may-not-work-11-city-appointees-kept-hanging-for-lack-of-council-quorum/
“Parents Won’t Have to to Pay Jail Costs for Incarcerated Children; Another Suicide at Downtown Jail Amid Ongoing Staff Shortage” by Paul Kiefer from PubliCola: https://publicola.com/2022/03/25/parents-wont-have-to-to-pay-jail-costs-for-incarcerated-children-another-suicide-at-downtown-jail-amid-ongoing-staff-shortage/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I am Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. I can tell I've had a lot of coffee. Full transcripts and resources referenced in this show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, we are continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola, co-host of the Seattle Nice podcast, and author of Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery - Erica Barnett.
[00:00:58] Erica Barnett: Hey Crystal - great to be here.
[00:01:00] Crystal Fincher: Hey, great to be here with you. I've been reading you for over the past decade and enjoying all of our conversations that we have on here, so I'm excited to have you back. I want to start talking about a story here in Seattle this week that was published in The Times - talking about the correlation between redlined places in Seattle and worse air quality. What were these findings?
[00:01:26] Erica Barnett: Well, I think you basically said it. The places that were historically redlined in Seattle, places like Georgetown - and redlining of course is, I'm sure your listeners know this, but the racist practice of restricting home ownership and where people of color, Black people in particular, could live - it still persists to this day in the sense that we are a very segregated city. And no surprise, a lot of the places that people were sort of redlined into - South Park, Georgetown, the industrial areas of Seattle - are more dangerous places to live. Life expectancy is lower where pollution is greater and so the study basically confirmed that with some real numbers.
[00:02:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and part of the conversation related to zoning that we've had - what we are seeing today - the development patterns and where people today live has definitely been influenced by areas that have traditionally been redlined and those that haven't. Development has followed a very predictable pattern - looking at where it's occurred in areas that were outside of redlined areas, and where development has not occurred in areas that were redlined. This is just part of the continuing conversation of looking at how we build and shape our communities. And if we don't move with intention to undo the blatantly racist practices from a couple few decades ago, then we're continuing and enabling dangerous conditions to persist in these communities.
[00:03:16] Erica Barnett: Yeah - one of the most predictive factors for pollution and for health impacts is living next to a big road - a freeway, or just a big arterial - where you have lots of trucks and buses and cars driving all the time. And of course in Seattle, since the 1990s, we have had official policy of concentrating density around larger arterials and into areas that we call urban villages, which have lots of shops and businesses and restaurants and all that great stuff, but they're also on the busiest roads. This is official policy that basically was designed to "protect single family areas" which make up the overwhelming majority of Seattle - and there are real pollution implications and there are real class implications to doing that - to concentrating people who can't afford to buy a $1 million, $2 million house into these tiny little sections of the City where we allow them, or we allow us, because I certainly can't afford a house to live.
[00:04:26] Crystal Fincher: Well, I am in that same club. And this is related to another story that came out this week talking about $100,000-and-over households are now the majority in most Seattle neighborhoods. The average home in Seattle now has an income of over $100,000. What does this mean for Seattle?
[00:04:49] Erica Barnett: I don't find these numbers surprising, so I think it means exactly what we've been seeing - for those of us who've lived here for a decade or two - have been seeing for a long time. The haves and the have-nots in Seattle are just living in very different cities. Something like, I think, it was 52%, 51%, maybe a little more - make over $100,000. That is just a different world than the 18% or so who make under $35,000 - because when you have that kind of income, when you have that kind of wealth, even in the rental market, you've got people who are making a tremendous amount of money driving up costs for everybody else. And so if you make $50,000 a year, that means that the apartment that would maybe cost a $1,000 10 years ago now costs $2,000. So your money just doesn't go as far when you have this kind of tremendous income inequality and you have this tremendous top heavy city, with so many people just making sums that are absurd to those of us in the middle income and lower brackets.
[00:06:07] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and this is so just revealing - and I should note that these numbers are an average of 2016 to 2020 - and we have seen incomes and housing prices continue to rise in that time. So these figures might technically be a little out of date and odds are that the average has actually increased, but with 53% of the homes in Seattle making over $100,000, it certainly skews so many things there. And just such small percentages of people who make incomes lower than that - and also interesting where they're concentrated - so looking at areas in interior of West Seattle, some areas in the Rainier Valley. Other areas where lower income, or households that earn less than $50,000, include part of Bitter Lake and part of Northgate, the CID and Yesler Terrace, and parts of Beacon Hill around New Holly.
[00:07:16] Erica Barnett: It's Georgetown and South Park - the areas we were just talking about as being redlined - are also in those lower income brackets.
[00:07:23] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and we have to do something about this. We can't continue to concentrate poverty and to kind of exempt people from healthier areas, more vibrant areas, more economically mobile areas. There's so many reports and studies that have been done - when you actually have areas with mixed incomes, the families generally do better, the neighborhoods are usually safer. It actually is harmful to the City to have it be this segregated and certainly harmful to the residents living in the areas that we just talked about - are experiencing all of the downsides from concentrating wealth in so few areas and kind of locking people out of wealth in other areas. And then also impacting their health and the way their community is just shaped and developed, and the way their families are forced to deal with the challenges that higher income people are able to buy themselves out of. I certainly am of the opinion that we should do more to protect the entire community - it's to all of our advantage to do that, but we will see how that continues to unfold.
And then related to this, in response to so much of this that we've seen, there's a new initiative that was announced this week. What is it?
[00:08:52] Erica Barnett: This is a new initiative put out by House Our Neighbors, which is a project of Real Change, that would essentially set up a public development authority to develop publicly owned, permanently affordable housing. The initiative would just set up an organization to do this work - it does not actually provide a funding source yet. The folks who are behind it said to me that they want to do this in steps because there's a single subject rule on initiatives and to sort of get people accustomed to the idea and educated on the idea of what they're calling social housing. And they distinguish this from affordable housing because it would not be owned and operated by a private non-profit or any of the other existing models. And because it would be permanently affordable, including if you move into a social housing apartment and your income changes, you would not be kicked out. So those are kind of the basics, and I think we'll find out more about their intent once they start the campaign - they have filed the initiative and they need, I want to say, a little over 26,000 signatures to get it on the ballot in November.
[00:10:14] Crystal Fincher: All right. And then we're also seeing, in the City of Seattle, an effort to save trees that has some people suspicious. What's going on there?
[00:10:26] Erica Barnett: Well, there has been a push for a very long time among single family homeowner advocates to "save trees". Seattle is a very green city compared to a lot of other cities and I think that is a wonderful thing about it. You go to San Francisco, you go to other places - and it's not as green and that is definitely a huge asset to the City. But there is an effort to sort of restrict what people can do in their backyards in terms of removing trees of sort of normal size, not giant exceptional trees. They're trying to make the - I'm trying to think of how to explain this - to make the size of tree that you can remove without taking extraordinary measures and getting permission from the City smaller.
What this is actually aimed at is preventing development - it is an effort to say if you want to build a duplex, if you want to build a backyard cottage, and you have to remove a tree, we're going to make that incredibly hard for you to do. The legislation that they adopted this week was pretty anodyne - it was just about getting arborists to register and have licenses with the City before they can remove trees. But it was the first in a whole series of legislation - the largest piece of which is a giant update to the tree ordinance that would do all these things. It would make it harder to remove smaller trees - because now you already have to get a permit to remove exceptional, giant, enormous trees - so this would just kind of make it harder and harder to remove trees, and thus harder and harder to actually build new housing. And I think that is the ultimate goal.
[00:12:19] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and what has a number of people who've been supportive of increasing zoning and density and building new housing - suspicious that this is a tactic just to prevent building new housing and is not driven by people with a principle motivation of maintaining trees. Trees are an important conversation. We've talked before on this program about how important the tree canopy is and having a wide variety of trees - particularly, just in terms of air quality in the area, but also in terms of regulating temperature - and as we continue to increase the types of harms that we are seeing from climate change and having more heat extremes, the amount of trees in an area completely dictates how hot an area gets, how long it takes to cool down, and there have been absolute heat zones correlated with areas that lack trees definitely here in King County. And The Seattle Times has covered this before with maps that demonstrate this, so trees are an important conversation. I do not want to discount the importance of talking about trees in terms of public policy and safety. This does not seem to be that. This seems to be just, "Hey, we want to make it harder to have anything to do with that." It's not talking about planting any new trees, it's not talking about addressing areas that are in heat deserts without trees. It's - just seems like it's, "Hey, we're going to make it harder to modify our existing landscape, particularly in single family zoned areas."
[00:14:02] Erica Barnett: Right - I think the thing is, and the part of the conversation that we never seem to get to, is the fact that when we are in areas that do not have a lot of trees - development can be an opportunity to plant trees. And actually, we don't even need development to plant trees, but that is a great opportunity. And we're not talking about adding to the tree canopy in the same way that we are "protecting the tree canopy" by specifically not allowing people to cut down trees on private land. So I think that kind of reveals what this conversation is really about - because if it was about tree canopy, we would be talking about tree canopy everywhere and not just in these single family areas and these very wealthy single family areas that tend to have these huge urban forests, as opposed to these redlined areas - the poorer areas of town - where trees were cut down and where we don't have mature trees anymore. I think that part of the conversation just gets left out by these so-called tree advocates.
[00:15:12] Crystal Fincher: Completely agree. Now, I also want to talk about an update to a story that we've been covering on lots of these weeks in reviews, and it's about the concrete worker strike. And this week - kind of a big deal - a judge ruled that Seattle concrete companies have been intentionally driving into striking workers who are on the picket line. Literally driving into workers causing injury - evidently it's been a tactic that has been used. The King County Superior Court judge ruled in favor of striking workers who filed a lawsuit against the concrete companies - these companies have had drivers that have assaulted and blocked union members' constitutional right to protest. The judge agreed with that and found that there have been multiple instances at concrete company sites where non-union drivers or trucks, leasing from or serving the companies, have charged into picketers causing bodily injury and creating significant danger to the picketers. And also violating some signage requirements. They also found that one truck driver intentionally drove a truck against, or basically drove into a picketer who was clearly standing in front of the truck, and that another driver for Cadman drove a truck into the picket line causing physical contact with picketers and causing injury.
This is really, really out of bounds and scary. A representative from the union said it's reassuring to have the Court affirm our legal right to peacefully picket, but the violence that they've seen against their members is unfounded, egregious, and frankly disgusting. They're trying to negotiate, and exercising their rights to stand up for their members and negotiate better terms. The Court also found that the construction companies - particularly Cadman, Merlino and Stoneway - had failed to fully comply with an earlier order to post signage to drivers and customers alerting them of the pickets, and in order to prevent trucks from charging through picketers as they perform their picketing and patrolling.
This, as Teamsters reached a good faith agreement to try and come back to work for some of the concrete companies - as we continue to hear how projects around the region, whether it's Sound Transit or other affordable housing projects, a wide variety or bridge projects have been delayed by this and the County is searching for options, including potentially, a publicly owned concrete company. What's your read of this?
[00:17:56] Erica Barnett: I don't think the concrete companies have a lot of sympathy, and I'm not on the inside of this obviously, but if they're betting that all these agencies that rely on them and companies that rely on concrete flowing are going to get fed up with the unions and with the picketing - this certainly seems like a major miscalculation - committing violence. We were talking earlier off mic about how this sort of tactic of driving through protests has become more and more common in a lot of different contexts. And when you're talking about these giant trucks - obviously, it's incredibly dangerous, incredibly violent - and I think I on a political level, I don't think that it serves their cause at all to be committing violence against workers who are trying to bargain in good faith and as you said - are voluntarily working out agreements for some of them to go back to work, even in the absence of a deal with the companies - who I think the terms that they initially proposed were pretty unreasonable. So it seems like the stalemate just is going to continue, and there have been major consequences and I think will continue to be - Sound Transit relies heavily on concrete flowing - they're in a big production cycle, they're building a lot right now and I think that they could see delays. I don't think that this is going to make government agencies more sympathetic to the concrete company's side.
[00:19:45] Crystal Fincher: Completely agree - we will continue to pay attention and stay involved. With that, we certainly hope those companies cease their violent tactics and just negotiate in good faith, please. This can cost lives. There is just no justification for those kind of violent tactics. In better, more exciting union news - just yesterday, a new union was formed. The Capitol Hill Crossroads workers voted unanimously to approve unionization, and this comes on the heels of hearing that Amazon's 5,000-member Staten Island facility also voted to unionize - which was a humongous uphill battle.
And I don't know if you recall, especially in the Amazon example, there was a worker - a Black worker - who was fired unjustly for trying to organize a union. And it was leaked that Amazon suggested that this man was unintelligent, unarticulate, and that they wanted to make him the face of the unionization effort as if that was going to be some kind of liability, or that he was inherently problematic for some mysterious reason. And he said, "You know what? Bring it on." And actually led the unionization effort, and in a big David versus Goliath battle - came out on top and successfully organized that union. And so just a lot of news. I mean, we've talked about how just income inequality is flourishing as much as it ever has - and people are struggling in so many ways and experiencing so many consequences related to them just trying to earn a living and live a life - and certainly unionization helps. So congratulations to the Crossroads Workers Union in Capitol Hill. I definitely want to give a shout out to Emma Mudd who did an amazing job as a lead organizer there, and just hope that we are just seeing the beginning - between Starbucks and Crossroads, there is definitely a movement afoot.
One other thing I wanted to touch on and talk about was an article this week that was written by outgoing, or who will be outgoing, legislator Kirsten Harris-Talley from Seattle's 37th legislative district - who announced that she is not running for reelection and called out a number of challenges that are currently happening in the Legislature - and really calling out the toxic environment that has festered there for quite some time and has played a role in a large number of departures that we've seen. What was your reaction to the story?
[00:22:50] Erica Barnett: Well, I have to say it's not terribly surprising to me that the Legislature - she described the Legislature as a toxic work environment - and talked pretty specifically about some amendments that she tried to get in legislation and was basically just told, "Nope" - kind of a version of "not your turn." And this is something that I've heard about for years, that I'm sure you have even more so heard about for years since you are closer to the legislature than I am. And I think what's unusual about this is that - is for her to say all this explicitly - it's a very long piece in the South Seattle Emerald about what was the final straw for her.
But I think that the Legislature seems to me to be the kind of place where there's leadership - leadership makes the decisions. If you are new, you are supposed to be quiet and not step out of line and take your turn. I would consider that a toxic work environment if it was in the private sector. And the fact is - people who serve in the Legislature do not get rich from it. It is not a full-time job. It is something people do because they want to make a difference, and it's largely a very, very thankless job. And I can certainly see why you would just get frustrated with being told, "Wait your turn. It's not your time. You're being unreasonable. You're being too loud." And there are a number of people of color who are leaving the Legislature this year - not all of them are being as explicit about why as Kirsten Harris-Talley was - but I have to imagine that some of their reasons are similar.
[00:24:57] Crystal Fincher: Yeah - again, to your point, this is something that has been a problem for a while. I have personally witnessed toxicity and have certainly dealt with a number of legislators who have dealt with it themselves. That's not to say everyone in the Legislature is toxic - Kirsten Harris-Talley points out there are a number of people there who are absolutely pushing for the right thing, who are principled - but as she states, "The environment of a caucus is a unique one that speaks of being a family and collaboration, but is also one of centralized control, consistency, and compliance." I hope that sparks some reflection because one of the things that I have, just over the past few years in particular, have had my eyes opened up to even more than it was before - those three words - control, consistency, and compliance. And when you think about how those things are enforced in areas, it is in toxic ways.
And to your point, people are not making a ton of money from the Legislature. And even with that, a number of people are depending on this income to pay their bills. There are - I think to the Legislature's benefit - have been an increasing amount of people who are not coming in who are independently wealthy, who don't need the money. There are a number of people who do, and if you actually are relying on the job to pay your bills and you're pushing for the change that your district is demanding of you, and then you get a message that you could be punished for it, and punishment in a legislature can look a number of different ways - whether it's committee assignments or reelection support or anything like that. If people feel that could be in danger, that can do a lot to reinforce control, consistency, and compliance.
So I hope this sparks a lot of reflection. This was a very brave thing for Kirsten Harris-Talley to write. It's a very difficult thing for lots of people to discuss - and just the inherent power dynamics - we just had the unionization conversation - a lot in terms of workplace health and safety and culture. And understanding when you have more power - and in the Legislature, chairs and leadership have a lot more power than the average member - all votes and opinions are not equal - those of chairs and of leadership are greater. That the way they use that needs to be examined. And I just hope it causes a lot of reflection and conversation and people really examine how they've been using their power, how people have been made to feel, whether they are creating an environment that includes and is truly welcoming of certain opinions or does not. And that is not just, "Hey, we have a caucus with a variety of viewpoints," but just some truly not being welcome or people feeling like not toeing the line as it has been dictated perhaps by people above, comes with consequences and just may not be good for their career or their position, which therefore reflects on and impacts their ability to serve their district.
So I just hope it's listened to. I do want to say this was brave. It is accurate. There are some people who kind of defaulted to, "Well, this is just a person who's mad about a piece of legislation not passing." And man, it's a lot more comprehensive than that issue. Or, "Well, this is just a person who wasn't sure how the legislative process worked." And also want to point out that this is a person who had thrived in other public service legislative capacities within the City of Seattle - and certainly understood that situation - but to discount the toxicity that we have heard obliquely referenced so many different times, and this is one of the most overt examples, that people take heed.
And with that, I also want to talk about Mayor Harrell kicking off a search for his new police chief in the City. Was there anything that stood out to you in his announcement and direction there, Erica?
[00:29:51] Erica Barnett: Yeah. I mean, the fact that he made it stood out to me. The mayor is required by charter - which is something that Paul Kiefer reported on that I had forgotten about - that he has to actually consider three different candidates at least. And so this week he announced he's doing a national search. The tone of it was interesting because I think that the kind of common knowledge, or what is believed, is that he is going to appoint interim police chief, Adrian Diaz, to the permanent position. He said several times in press conferences and other contexts that he really thinks that the chief is doing a good job. Diaz is fairly popular compared to his predecessor, Carmen Best, among the rank and file - he hasn't made anybody particularly mad.
But he's doing a national search. And so the announcement was basically - we're going to have a search firm do this, so they're going to spend some money on this search process - but Adrian Diaz is encouraged to apply. So the way that the announcement was made was a little bit surprising to me - this kind of emphasis on a national search. And the other thing that sticks out is - we'll see, but I don't know what kind of response he's going to get for a couple of reasons. One, the fact that he has encouraged the police chief to apply, that the police chief is considered a favorite or the interim chief is considered a favorite to get the position could depress applications from elsewhere. And second, it's not like there are a lot of police chiefs in other departments around the country that are untainted by problems with accountability, allegations of abuse, allegations of biased policing. There's not a huge pool out there of people who are going to be able to come in and say, "I know how to change the system. I know how to get you out from under the consent decree. I know how to do all these things because I've done it in my own city." So I will be very, very curious to see how many qualified and good candidates actually end up applying. I was also kind of fascinated by the fact that there has to be at least three. So if there aren't three - if there was a scenario where there were not as many as three, I'm not sure what would happen.
[00:32:30] Crystal Fincher: That's interesting.
[00:32:32] Erica Barnett: Yeah, it is kind of interesting to dig into that announcement a little bit. Paul Kiefer, our dearly beloved and outgoing police accountability reporter, had a piece about that last night.
[00:32:46] Crystal Fincher: Well, another piece that was in PubliCola touched on something that we've talked about before on this program. And that was about the police department hiring incentives that were talked about and numbers were thrown out and, "Hey, let's increase these signing bonuses," and we noted at the time that it seemed odd - and there did not seem to be any kind of data that supported the fact that, "Hey, did people cite that they were not motivated to stay, and any data to indicate that this incentive and this amount would make that more likely?" And some data came out this week that shed more light on that - what did it show?
[00:33:36] Erica Barnett: I mean, essentially it showed that there was basically no impact. The City has been offering hiring incentives for a number of months, since October through actually January, because of some shenanigans by outgoing former mayor, Jenny Durkan. They were supposed to end at the end of the year, they went through January - so short period of time - that period did not show any bump in recruitment to the police department from the hiring incentives. And it showed a slight bump to the new 911 department, which has been sort of dissociated from the police department. And it showed similar outcomes from a previous period of hiring incentives - the incentives are not really working to recruit police but nonetheless, City Councilmember Sara Nelson has proposed bringing them back and believes that this will be the ticket to hiring more police. Of course, Seattle Police Department is at incredibly high attrition - a lot of people are retiring and leaving the department - and that's probably going to continue because there are new incentives in place from the state for officers to retire. And I think what we're seeing is what we've tried hasn't been working. If the goal is - just leaving aside whether this should be the goal - but if the goal is to hire more police and that is the mayor's goal and the City Council's goal for the most part, hiring incentives are maybe a waste of money.
[00:35:18] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And it's so interesting and notable to me that for - especially for the mayor and councilmembers like Sara Nelson, who have talked about using data-driven approaches to public safety and just following the data - that when data is released that they don't agree with, there are reasons why it may not be complete or they may not have the full picture. But the same kind of grace or latitude is not given to other areas or other programs. If the goal really is to maintain police officers, this doesn't seem to be working. And we do need to keep people safe in Seattle - this is actually really important and no one wants to be a victim of anything. There are people who are concerned and worried, and we have seen types of crime increase and the stakes are - to me - too high to continue to move in directions that seem like a resource suck without delivering any results. We have limited resources here. We have a need to keep people safe. People talk about that being a very high priority. And it just doesn't seem they're taking it seriously if they continue to spend money that could be used on things that have a much better record and a lot more data behind it to ultimately keep people safe than to focus on a metric that - again, leaving aside whether it should be the goal - that putting it in place, there just doesn't seem to be any tie to how is this keeping people safer. And if we're going to use this limited amount of money, is it best used in this way or another way that's actually going to keep people from being victimized in the first place.
I hope they start to take action that's effective in keeping people safe - also in the recruiting of officers, there is a long lag time between the time that they are actually signed and the time that they are deployed and active on the street - a really big delay. So what is the plan to keep people safer in the meantime? It feels like we're just talking about things that are not engaged with the reality of - how do we make people safer today and next month? There does not seem to be a plan for that and it is very concerning. I hope there is more of an examination of that from the mayor's office, from the Council, to actually do things to make people safer. There is not much time to waste and people are at stake.
[00:38:08] Erica Barnett: And one other interesting thing that came out of this report - very briefly - was that there is also a problem with retaining people in other City departments that do a lot of important work - some of which also keeps people safe. And the problem that they cited was lack of advancement opportunities, an outdated classification system that makes it hard for people to get permanent positions and get full-time work. Those are things that the City could be focusing on, and it would take a lot of time and it's more complicated than it sounds to fix a classification system, but people are kind of feeling like they're in dead end jobs in other departments - and that is arguably as big or bigger problem than the problem of whether hiring incentives are working in the police department. So it's not just the police department that's hemorrhaging workers, it's the whole city. And I think Lisa Herbold on the Council has pointed out that we need to take a look at that too.
[00:39:07] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and the last thing I want to touch on today is a story that you covered in PubliCola - just talking about another suicide, death by suicide, at the King County Correctional Facility in downtown - occurring amidst the staffing shortage that has been talked about for a while. What happened?
[00:39:30] Erica Barnett: Well, there have been four deaths this year so far in the King County Jail, and I think that some of them have been suicides, the others have been overdoses. I think it is in part a problem of the staffing shortage that we're seeing these deaths occur and not be stopped. But I also think when we are putting people in jail who are very high acuity - who have severe problems with addiction, severe behavioral health problems, all the people that frankly City Attorney Ann Davison wants to focus on throwing in jail so they can get some mysterious form of treatment that does not actually exist - this is the reality of what happens. I think people are ending up in jail who should not be in jail. I'm not speaking to the specifics of any of these cases because I don't know the specific circumstances of each of these people's lives, but my understanding is these are people who have problems that jail makes worse. And when the focus of the City is to take people with severe behavioral health conditions, severe addictions, and put them in jail to "get them off the street" - one of the results is that you're putting people in circumstances that are very, very dangerous for them. I think that is part of what's happening here, and my worry is that if the City's policy is going to be to take "prolific offenders" or "high utilizers" of the system and put them in jail to teach them a lesson and to get them off the street, we're going to see more of these incidents happening - particularly with the staffing shortage at the jail being as bad as it is.
[00:41:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. There are currently over a hundred vacant officer positions and the president of the King County Corrections Guild just stated exactly what you said. You said it seems like the people coming through our doors are sicker than they've ever been in terms of withdrawal, mental health, and everything else in the recent past - and it's hard to meet that need. They're experiencing shortages, not just with officers, but with the jail's medical staff - and it is putting everybody at risk. And again, the point of this - seemingly - and it's being sold as, "Hey, we put people in jail, it keeps the community safer." This is being touted as an approach to help clean up our streets and keep people from committing crime and it actually does not result in that. And again, this conversation about keeping people safe is too important to continue to do things that don't result in that.
We're exacerbating a shortage - they say that more corrections officers have left since the beginning of the year than the County has hired - the problem's getting worse - and we are not doing anything to address any of the problems that the people who are coming in have. And again, we don't just lock people up and throw away the key - it's unconstitutional, it is extremely expensive - we can't afford to do that. But what we are doing is undertaking the extreme expense of incarcerating people, doing nothing to treat them or to address anything that will help them get on a better path and keep the community safe, and then releasing them again. We are setting them up for failure. We are setting the community up to be victimized. And again, we need to do a better job of keeping people safe. And I hope we center more of our conversations around the need to actually keep people safe. And if our elected officials are not focused on things that are doing that and are not spending our limited resources on things that are accomplishing that, then we need to re-evaluate our elected officials. They need to re-evaluate their approach.
So I thank you for having this conversation with me today, and for all of you listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, April 1st, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler and assistant producer is Shannon Cheng with help from Emma Mudd. Our wonderful co-host today was Seattle political reporter and founder of PubliCola, Erica Barnett. You can find Erica on Twitter @ericacbarnett - that's Erica with a C and ending with two Ts - and on PubliCola.com, and you can buy her book Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery anywhere basically. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, and now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else to get your podcasts. Just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. While you're there, leave a review, it really helps us out. You could also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in, talk to you next time.
Djibril Diop, Director of Government Relations at the Washington Education Association, joins Crystal for a conversation about WEA’s advocacy work to support educators statewide. They dig into how protecting the interests of their members leads to better education, thereby benefiting all students and the future of Washington state. As the pandemic has shown us, schools have an enormous impact on our daily lives and we need to equip them with resources and create sustainable pathways for the dedicated folks who choose teaching as a profession. The two wrap up with what criteria to use when evaluating candidates’ education stances.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal on Twitter at @finchfrii and find more about WEA at @WashingtonEA and at @WEAAdvocacy.
Resources
WEA - Washington Education Association: https://www.washingtonea.org/
WEA - 2022 Legislative Priorities: https://www.washingtonea.org/advocacy/2022-legislative-priorities/
“Making huge strides forward for our students” from WEA Advocacy Blog: https://www.washingtonea.org/advocacy/ourvoice/post/making-huge-strides-forward-for-our-students/
WEA-PAC - 2022 Election Endorsements: https://www.washingtonea.org/advocacy/2022-election-endorsements/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
So today, I am so excited to have Djibril Diop with us, who is the Director of Government Relations at the Washington Education Association. And just - he is bringing so much experience and capability and political will and passion to this position - I was just thrilled to have the opportunity to speak with him on the show and to make sure all of us are familiar with who he is and what WEA is doing. So thank you so much for joining us, Djibril.
[00:01:11] Djibril Diop: Thank you, Crystal.
[00:01:12] Crystal Fincher: So I wanted to start out just helping people understand who you are, how - what your path was to land where you're at now with the WEA, and then talk about what the priorities of the WEA are and what you're doing.
[00:01:28] Djibril Diop: I feel like my past was a succession of accidents, but I feel like I stumbled my way to Washington in a good place and at a good time. I didn't have any prior relationship to Washington State before coming here - spent over a decade working in the California State Senate - various jobs there. And again, the same way I've landed in Washington by virtue of a series of accidents, I feel like I've landed in politics by virtue of a series of accidents. It's been a pretty good path and I'll get into it in a bit - as being someone that wasn't born in America and so familiar with US politics and culture - to be immersed in the line of work that I'm in now, so -
[00:02:16] Crystal Fincher: Okay, so you just were so incredibly modest in your description of your path then, but it really is underselling what you were doing when you said that you worked in the California legislature. You were a Chief of Staff in the California Senate - what was that like? And how did that propel you here?
[00:02:39] Djibril Diop: Well, yeah - there's always that conversation about California being the fifth or sixth economy in the world, and certainly while working in the legislature, we sounded that off quite often - from establishing what was the California economy all about, what did we want to market out? And this is when you kind of see the scope of what is it to be an executive and one of the largest stakeholder in the global economy, certainly. And for me, serving as the Chief of Staff was something that I like to say was - could have been offered to someone who is a former basketball player, an immigrant, and someone that you didn't have potentially the greatest interest into walking into politics - that pathway was offered to me in California. It gave me a lot of life lessons and I've met quite a bit of interesting folks, but I think that one of the things that I took away was - yes, this being a people business - people business for people by the people. And that was the part of the trade that attracted me the most about staying in this line of work.
My colleagues at the time were a lot of folks that had graduated from the Ivy league institutions and they were gunning their whole life to serve as a Senate aide or California Assembly aide. But my path was quite different - I ended up, after graduating from college, I ended up working for AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, under the leadership of one of the very few African-American leaders. He distilled in me a lot of the optimism that I have now about what is politics all about, and what is my place within it? What are the possible outcomes as a result of working in the political circles - a chance to work with him and one of my greatest mentors, Willie Pelote. And then, my first job in the Legislature was working for an extremely strong woman, Carole Migden - back then she was the State Senator out of San Francisco who taught me how to dream in reality. She was part of the cohort of queer legislators on the journey to get through marriage equality. And I thought that was - to me, to see - she was a petite Jewish lady from New York who was highly aggressive and she was extremely strong and - learned so much from her, in her passion for getting to marriage equality.
[00:05:34] Crystal Fincher: Well, that makes sense. 'Cause one of the things that I've definitely noticed about you is the sense of optimism that you bring - coming from a place of hope more than cynicism - and really pushing for what is right and what is possible. And also your strength in forging relationships. You're the Director of Government Relations at WEA. What does that entail?
[00:05:58] Djibril Diop: First off, I want to say how much of an honor it is to me to having stepped into that position. I know there's a lot of talented people in the state - coming here at WEA, you get a sense of how established this organization is - both in terms of the staff that is around me, that is very talented, but also the leadership. So I feel like I'm stepping into a good place - I'm stepping into a structure that is well organized and has had some success in the past. So that provides a certain level of comfort for me realizing I can come in within WEA.
One of my responsibilities is to lead the GR department, which - we have a team of lobbyists. Also, we have a team of political organizers that work and administrative staff. But the real goal is to work with our Board to make sure that we have direction, goals that are consistent with our values, to make sure that we step in with the ability to be culturally sensitive - as judicious as we could in terms of advancing the equity discussion in the state of Washington. So that was a very attractive position for me, which is to work with the largest - one of the largest stakeholders in the state of Washington - and be able to formulate and foster an environment where we can be helpful in this state to be a more equitable setting going forward. So, my role at WEA has been to work with the Board, make sure that my team is well managed - so those are two key components.
[00:07:38] Crystal Fincher: You talk about how important it has been for you to also have talented staff, and I just want to call out Samantha Casne and Emily Hansen - as just two incredibly dynamic and talented leaders in their own rights, who also do excellent work over there at WEA, and certainly are a testament to the entire team. So I guess in terms of just policy and the types of candidates that you want to see elected, the type of policy that you want to see them pass - what are the priorities that you're looking at?
[00:08:13] Djibril Diop: That's a great question. I'm pretty proud of the work that my members were able to do this year, along with the team obviously, in securing some benefit for our membership this year. Certainly, inflation is everybody's problem - the fact that us educators, who have a big portion of the state funding and we are very appreciative of that, but I think that people have to realize that - I work for a union - our union is centering around protecting the interests of our members. But we know, and very well understand, that our union wouldn't exist without the students. We are here to serve the students - making sure that we have policies that are beneficial to our members, for the benefit of teaching the students in the best way possible - because we understand how critical the role of education is not just for this state, but for this country going forward.
That's what we're not bashful about - pushing legislators to continue to invest in our educational system. We believe that this is not only a civil right, but a strategic investment that needs to be continued year after year. And so I think that this year, when we're looking at all the questions that educators have faced, we - this has been a tough two years for us - we had to change the modalities of instruction, tool suites. Our members were not prepared or trained for that purpose - bear in mind, we're not higher education. And I worked with faculty members before and online education is lot more present in higher ed - is doing a lot of technical changes, a lot of additional burden for the membership. And I felt that the members reacted the best that they could. I feel like we have a pretty patient membership. We are in every corner of the state and we have very strong, diverse opinions within the membership. And that also creates additional pressure at this time where we know that COVID created culture wars, community created culture wars, and then politics created culture wars - that ended up blending in the education lab.
Discussions that were started in political offices end up being debated in school board meetings. We can go out to this politicization of our education, but I feel like that I'm very proud of the work that our members have done this year. My union has been strong in making sure that we are not censoring our education curriculum, that we are not whitewashing our history - because that's important, especially for someone like me to be in the position that I am - to be honest about the conversation that we are having - whether or not we should continue to defend education at what level. I don't understand how that is a question - question as to whether we should censor part of our education to make part of our electorate more comfortable? That is just not - that is out of question - that's not going to happen under my leadership. I'm a parent, and I have three kids in school. I want the best for them. And I do think that - me being in this position now, as you said - allowed me to work for an organization that values the same values that I have, where group of members are well-intended, and to be completely real for a huge body of work to be tackling.
[00:11:44] Crystal Fincher: So many of the issues and challenges for society are so present in the classroom in so many ways - how do you negotiate all of that with the members? And when you listen to them and hear from them and talk about their priorities, how does that drive what you're pushing for? What are the biggest things on the agenda right now?
[00:12:07] Djibril Diop: My members are everyday people. They're working families and some of them are seniors. We have some very young members coming in. And I think that for the vast majority of them, they have been put in a situation where we need to help them stay in the profession. One of the main concern that I have is making sure that we continue to shore up educators within the profession - that we provide some incentive for folks to want to join our ranks. This is not an easy pathway - for folks to want to be educators in the long run.
And I think that, as you mentioned before, my members have to do a lot of - a range of services - folks were maybe not understanding what is entailed to be an educator in the classroom. You're going to have to deal with a lot more than just telling kids what they should do. You have to understand them, you're going to have to cajole them, you have to reassure them, you're going to have to help them brush their teeth sometime. And I think that that's a representation of how much time we as parents have. How much can we allocate for our children? And I think that when you're looking at that, then you realize that schools have a much greater impact on your daily life than you could ever assume.
We are trying to focus going forward - as I mentioned, having a student-centric approach - because my members, my Board understand very well that putting our best foot forward to make sure that the children have the best experience will allow us to have the best working condition, will allow us to do our job in the best way possible. We've invested quite a bit of energy this year in supporting a great investment in mental health supports for our children - that was a big part of our agenda this year. We're going to continue to push for that going forward because we realized that this is not just a post-COVID situation - this is about creating the level of wraparound services around our kids that will give them the tools to be successful. The ability to communicate well with parents through the ability to serve the students with the type of services that they need - we feel will equip our schools for the 21st century.
I see personally our schools as being community leaders, but they need to continue to work for - work hard to make sure that we create those community alliances and that we maximize our members' work by making sure that they have the tools needed for them to be successful. We started the pandemic without computers and without broadband, so it was not where we needed to be.
[00:14:57] Crystal Fincher: So you talked about making sure that it's a student-centered environment that educators understand and have support to do their job well. And that we need to retain teachers and make sure that we keep the professionals who are currently in those positions in them - and that they don't leave the profession - that it is a supportive and rewarding environment. What kinds of things can we do moving forward to help with that?
[00:15:25] Djibril Diop: Well, thank you for the question. I think that there should be - an educator - there is a certain pathway that you take. And so . Part of that pathway, we felt was not needed - or creating, or preventing access. We feel that there is some need for increasing access for BIPOC groups within the profession. And I think that there's a host of assistance that can be provided - as you know, to become an educator, you have to have some level of residency, which is costly for folks to be able to do without getting paid. So just like what we are doing, like apprenticeship for certain trade job, the thing that you can point to is that we create an easier pathway for folks to join the profession. And provide some financial assistance so they can, in fact, look at the possibility of becoming an educator when you have very little means.
WEA is working with OSPI right now to try to figure out ways to accentuate the number of subs through the certification process. We hope that we can be part of this effort to help train more educators and certify them so they can be in the classroom. I need to give them time, but I think that it's more for societal discussion - post-COVID, what do you want to invest your tax dollars for? Our discussion is that certainly you do not want to give tax cuts to the rich - we want to make sure that we have a tax system that is progressive and I think that the state will come out in a better light - just saying that it's about using that same progressive strategy to make sure that we are in fact investing in places where we are helping people. And we feel that schools - when you're looking at the relationship between the worker, their kids, and what the kids are learning in the school, there is a multiplier of benefits there.
And we also, from a competitive advantage standpoint, we know that a well-educated population will lead to better economic results. In it all, I've heard a lot of discussion about - especially in my time in higher education - about when I was younger, I used to work two or three jobs and be able to make ends meet while being a student. This is not the same conversation that you're having in 2022 - you have to work like 12 jobs to be able to make ends meet at our current level of tuition. And I think that looking at that, you realize that there's a lack of empathy for the students that are going through these very expensive, higher education process that we have now.
And when you're looking at K-12 - it's the same thing - we have to find empathy for the students that are going to our schools today. When we talk about empathy, we're saying that - invest in the resources that are needed so those kids can be successful. This is - there's no greater investment than making sure that those kids get a chance. My members have chosen to work in that profession - bear in mind that this is not the most rewarding profession from the monetary standpoint - in a society that doesn't really value making a professional direction that is not - where you cannot capitalize as well. You have to understand that my members want to be there. So I do find sometime that WEA, as a union, is one of the few organizations actually advocating for your kids.
[00:18:55] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and that they're so closely tied. And sometimes there are - there are groups, certainly, some extremist and anti-tax and anti-public education groups who try and call that into question - and whether advocating for teachers is advocating for students - and how you separate those. There is no real rational justification for that. There was just a new study that came out, earlier this week, showing that higher paid teachers - districts with higher paid teachers - produce better results than those that don't. And it's really, really similar to the conversation that we're having in a lot of other areas where - people do better - they're healthier, they're more enthusiastic in their jobs, they perform better - when they don't have to struggle in their own lives. And we are asking so much of educators, and we're relying on them to do so much for our kids - they really are such a significant part of the foundation of our kids' lives and their future - that we have to invest in them and we have to be vocal and definitive about - teaching is a profession. These are professionals, these are highly experienced and capable and educated folks who are teaching our kids. And that's not something anyone can do.
One thing that was really striking to me, especially throughout the pandemic was when schools were closed, just the call to open them, oftentimes without full regard for the health and safety of the teachers and kids in the classroom. And as teachers were not able to come because they were sick with COVID and that was spreading throughout classes and lots of students were having challenges - just the call for parents to cover classrooms and then sometimes police to cover classrooms - and they're not educators. And certainly a lot of feedback from that - that that is not an ideal situation. We certainly are not serving our kids by throwing anyone else there, and not doing their education any favors by having people who are unfamiliar with educating to do that.
But I think it's so important to recognize that it's a profession and that there is an organized opposition who is extremely well-funded to try and paint the picture in the opposite direction. And so the question I have for you moving forward is - one, in that environment where there is so much toxicity coming from extremists - a lot of times, Republican corners - in regards to education and teachers, trying to have conversations about privatization and lots of proposals to move money out of the public system and into other systems, and the need to - as you say, support our teachers. Lots of times we're only discussing this - sometimes in the well - Republicans versus Democrats, we believe in and support public education versus people who don't. And certainly, I think it's really fair to say most Democrats believe in and support public education, but there are so many issues within that - whether it's charter schools - and there's a robust conversation to be had about charter schools. But I do think it's fair to say that whether or not you are a proponent of those, I think we can still agree that the primary concern and responsibility is to make sure public education, a free education, is accessible to everyone and prepares them to thrive in their lives.
So with that in mind and looking at not just the - is a public education good or bad? And do we say we support teachers - yes or no? What are the issues where, even if we're talking about just among Democrats, where we need to make sure people are pushing? Or as we talk with and evaluate candidates for the Legislature and a lot of positions this year, what should we be looking to hear from people, even in those Democratic versus Democrat races, to say - you know what, this is the direction that people need to be moving on education. It's not just good enough to say that you support teachers. What should voters and people in the community and parents be looking at in terms of candidates to say - you know what, they're on the right track? What are those issues?
[00:23:48] Djibril Diop: Well, thank you, Crystal - this is a great question. And I think that for us, we've - this is not a new thing for folks to - to try to beat on the teacher, right? This is a national sport in this country for quite some time, and I'm providing historical reference about how educators were viewed in your history of this country. It was pledges that educators had to sign during the Cold War to make sure they were not Communist. There was always a question of what level of legitimacy can an educator have while providing education to my kid, right? And I'm saying that this is kind of like the things that we see nowadays, which is the resurgence of not trusting your local educator, and I think that you've seen that from multiple angles - from conservative parents or progressive urban parents might not see - might have concerns about how education is dispensed.
I think that for us, when we're looking at a candidate, we try to understand a little bit better what are their perspective on equity, what are their perspective on being pro-labor, what are some of the ideas that they have regarding education going forward? 'Cause for us, it's not about being public against charter school - it's about making sure that we foster in an environment that created public common for everyone - that fostered that asset that - the asset that the state of Washington has - that serve all in the best possible way possible. And I think that we don't want to deviate from that - we don't want to, we want to work with legislators, upcoming legislators, that seize the ability of making sure that we protect and defend, as opposed to escape or diverge from one of the few and most important public common that we have here, which is our educational system.
So when you start from that standpoint, you are saying that there might be some differences of opinion regarding how - what would you do specifically, Legislator A, regarding our education? We're not saying that we know all the answers, but we are trained to - my team and I, and along with our local council to do this - to make sure we identify folks that have a respect, that have an understanding about what takes place in the classroom, and that do not see the schools only from an individual standpoint. This is - schools help us as a collectivity - when I drop my kids to school, I get a chance to say hi to one of the parents, and I get a chance to see the teacher there, and I get a chance to see the bus driver - it's a little village, in fact. And so if you have no issue, don't think this is valuable, then it will be difficult for us to work with you.
I think that all Democrats and the vast majority of Republicans say that they are supportive of education, which - when you peel the onions, it's not quite there, you understand? I think that many folks would want to utilize public education dollars for many of their pet projects. And then therefore, I go back to the foundation of the discussion which is - how do you value public education? Because really, like we said, during COVID there's not that much that happens without that. So I think for us, it's about making sure that we have an equitable way of looking at things, that we are reflective of the community in the environment, and that we are able to serve the kids - all kids - in the best way possible. We feel that if we do those three things, we are achieving our mandate - we are helping this state in the best way that we could.
[00:28:24] Crystal Fincher: Well, that certainly makes sense. I appreciate you taking the time to speak with us today. We will be paying attention to candidates and these issues as we continue throughout this campaign season and beyond. But this is so critically important, and so just thank you so much for joining us today.
I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week in review, Crystal talks with activist, community leader, former mayor of Seattle, and Executive Director of America Walks, Mike McGinn about labor news, the downsides of car-centric planning, and alternative 911 responders. They discuss the first worker victory at a Seattle Starbucks, the tulip farm workers strike, King County elected officials getting involved in the concrete worker lockout, and an initiative to raise the minimum wage in Tukwila. Then they dive into the surprise highway in Seattle Waterfront plans and why adding lanes doesn’t reduce traffic. Finally, Crystal and Mike discuss pushback on alternate responses to policing and what moving those jobs out of SPD looks like.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Mike McGinn, at @mayormcginn. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Seattle Starbucks employees approve union, the first on the West Coast” by Paige Browning from KOUW: https://www.kuow.org/stories/seattle-starbucks-wins-union-vote-the-first-on-the-west-coast
“Tulip farm workers go on strike one week before popular Mount Vernon festival” by Angeli Kakade from King5: https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/farm-worker-strike-skagit-valley-tulip-festival/281-86d05687-6ab7-4d9d-9f94-8c9eb9c924b4
“County Proposes Concrete Co-Op as Private Companies Continue to Throttle Supply and Lock Out Workers” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/03/23/county-proposes-concrete-co-op-as-private-companies-continue-to-throttle-supply-and-lock-out-workers/
“Initiative aimed at Southcenter could raise minimum wage in Tukwila to match SeaTac, Seattle” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/initiative-aimed-at-southcenter-could-raise-minimum-wage-in-tukwila-to-match-seatac-seattle
“Surface Highway Undermines Seattle’s Waterfront Park” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/03/20/surface-highway-undermines-seattles-waterfront-park/
“Alternate Response in Seattle Meets Another Hurdle” by Amy Sundberg from Notes from the Emerald City: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/amysundberg/issues/alternate-response-in-seattle-meets-another-hurdle-1090894?utm_campaign=Issue&utm_content=view_in_browser&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Notes+from+the+Emerald+City
“UW Can Keep Civilians Who Replaced Campus Cops, Choe Show Canceled, Dembowski Bows Out” by Paul Kiefer and Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/03/21/uw-can-keep-civilians-who-replaced-campus-cops-choe-show-canceled-dembowski-bows-out/
“Third and Pine bus stop to temporarily close amid downtown Seattle safety concerns” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/third-and-pine-bus-stop-to-temporarily-close-amid-downtown-seattle-safety-concerns/
Downtown Seattle Association: https://downtownseattle.org
The State of Downtown from the Downtown Seattle Association: https://downtownseattle.org/events/state-of-downtown/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: activist, community leader, former mayor of Seattle, and Executive Director of America Walks - and someone with a mean jump shot - the excellent Mike McGinn. Welcome back.
[00:00:58] Mike McGinn: Thank you - although I don't think I have jumped on my shot for quite a long time. In fact, even - I played JV in college and they called me "Sunday Papers McGinn" - and the reason they called me that was they said that I didn't even jump as high as the Sunday papers. Now mind you - back then the Sunday papers were thicker than they are today, but even then it was still an insult about my jumping ability.
[00:01:23] Crystal Fincher: All right - "Sunday Papers McGinn" - "Mayor McSchwinn" and "Sunday Papers McGinn" - there we are.
[00:01:29] Mike McGinn: They also called me "Flash" because I lost every sprint, so it really is amazing that I could even hang at all on the court. I had to make it up with savvy and moxie - so there you go.
[00:01:44] Crystal Fincher: But it worked. I wanted to start out just talking about some - one, seriously cool thing that happened this week - the Starbucks employees approved the first union on the West Coast here in Seattle, Starbucks's hometown, with the unanimous vote by the employees at the Broadway and Denny store on Capitol Hill to unionize. There is now a unionized Starbucks store on Capitol Hill in Seattle, and this is a really big deal.
[00:02:14] Mike McGinn: I think that - I don't know how to put this in the great arc of the union story in America, but it does feel like we're starting to see - as we know, there was a real - unions saw a tremendous decline in post-World War II America. Immediately after the war, unionization was much stronger, there was a lot of shared wealth, the middle class grew stronger, broader, wealthier over that time and it really went together. Then we saw - you got to go back to the Reagan era - breaking the air traffic controller union was a highly visible sign, but there was a lot of other work that was done to weaken unions. And public opinions of unions declined as well. Unions were - oftentimes it was employee unions and public employee unions, excuse me - was really the strength of the union movement. And there were still, of course, craft unions and manufacturing unions and other service worker unions - but they really felt under siege.
In the City of Seattle, for example, and it still goes on today - will a new hotel be a union hotel or a non-union hotel? And that's existential for the union workers because they don't want a non-union hotel to drive down wages so that they can't compete for wages, or their hotel that they work for can't compete. Same thing for grocery stores, so something like unionization in a Starbucks - coffee shops and more retail workers unionizing - that's a big deal, considering how many Starbucks there are across the country. It's also behind the push for the $15 an hour minimum wage - or really should be starting to get higher now - behind the push for paid sick leave, behind the push for childcare. Unions helped provide a floor for wages and working conditions, and we've now turned to the government to provide some of that floor - but with all the rising inequality across the country, we're seeing more people turn to unions, and it just feels like a change. So we'll have to see what happens moving forward, but it certainly feels like a change.
[00:04:47] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, an absolute change and the link between the weakening of unions and income inequality is substantial. Certainly the pushback is happening - more than 150 other Starbucks locations are working to join the same union, including 6 in the Seattle area. So we're going to continue to see this with Starbucks, certainly with Amazon, another locally-based company that we're seeing a variety of unionization pushes across the country with that. And interesting because - trying to lead within the tech sector and the issue of unionization being important there - lots of times we're used to thinking about not just the lower wage jobs, but even the higher wage jobs is, "Oh, they make a good wage. They have no reason for a union," but my goodness, when you talk about all of the toxic workplace cultures that we've seen there, and actually even though someone may be making six figures and in not the lowest income bracket, the share of profit that is being absorbed by the company and kept from the workers, even in those higher paid jobs, is substantial.
So it's just going to be really interesting to continue to follow these movements, and also looking at other local strike actions and labor actions. Another one this week, with the tulip farmers going on strike - tulip farm workers going on strike just before the Mount Vernon Tulip festival, which is really popular, but they have issues with worker conditions. They've been expected to work with lesions on their hands, their employers are not paying for PPE, and in very low wage jobs. The word there is that they continue to have a dialogue and they're working through it and both sides say that they're confident they can, but it is taking this collective action by workers to make this an issue that is pressing enough for employers to deal with.
[00:06:53] Mike McGinn: Yeah, and we see an economy in which there's generally higher employment right now, so that's giving a little more bargaining power to workers, because the employment numbers are higher or the unemployment numbers are lower overall. It's a consequence of the inequality we've seen and grown - and in a period of growth - the pendulum swinging back a little bit. Will it be sustained? Probably will be determined by how government behaves ultimately in response to this. Do they support these movements? Or do we kind of go back to a time when the rules and procedures are set up to suppress it, and give more power to the companies in this discussion?
[00:07:47] Crystal Fincher: Well, that's an excellent point regarding the response by government leaders and how that impacts the situation for workers. Because we see that with the concrete workers' strike action, which really has turned into a lockout by the concrete companies. The workers offered to go back to work, but the concrete companies have largely declined the workers' ability to do so. And not just that - the few workers who they have allowed to come back to work, they have not allowed them to drive trucks that are part of the company's fleets. They have actually acquired some old beat-down raggedy trucks that they've literally Sharpied the required information on the doors, and it just seems like a petty retaliatory action. And in response, we have seen throughout this process - some local leaders seem to put pressure on the workers by not forcing the companies to come back to the table or to respond in good faith.
But Dow Constantine has basically said - hey, "Clearly the local concrete industry is failing the people of King County, and I won't let our region's infrastructure hang in the balance." And in response, he and members of the King County Council have proposed a local co-op, a publicly owned concrete co-op - to prevent situations like this from happening, to provide reliable, low-cost, on-time concrete to ensure that affordable housing projects, critical infrastructure gets completed on time. How do you see the leaders' responses in helping or hindering this whole process? Just how would you negotiate through this?
[00:09:39] Mike McGinn: I just want to say I find this really fascinating - and I am an outsider - I have no particular insights on what's going on. But first of all, just the historical analogy - we have a public Port because the people that owned the docks on the Seattle waterfront could control how things worked. That affected - anybody who shipped through the public waterfront docks had to deal with the people who owned the docks - that was the reason we now have a public Port, because we didn't want to allow a few companies to control the flow of goods in and out of the state. And that was during the progressive era, same era in which we ended up with a publicly-owned electric utility and things like that - so to me, just the historical parallel is fascinating.
I think the other piece of the parallel here is that - clearly, it's the issue of whether the workers are getting paid well, but this is also the rest of the business community saying we're hurting by the way you companies are acting. So what we see here is a split in the business community - so you have both Girmay Zahilay, a pretty progressive guy on the Council, and Dow Constantine - who's he's a progressive, but he's a more reliable partner to the business interest - let's remember, he came forward and he helped the Convention Center out with some short-term loans so they could keep going. And it's places like the Convention Center and the people who build massive infrastructure who really want to keep that concrete flowing. So it's just the politics of this here are fascinating, in which we're now seeing concrete production as a public good - or as a private good that must be handled by the public to ensure the smooth function of the economy.
Now, if you look back at the Port - although it was hired to protect the small merchants using the Port - like any entity owned, run by the government, it can start leaning in on behalf of the big companies. So the Port itself is known for how it treats independent truckers, the Port itself is known for how it treats workers at its facilities. So I don't know - I'm just really struck by this - that we've come to this, where you have labor interests and other business interests saying the concrete companies need to get their act together, or we're going to take the business away from you. That's quite a moment here in Seattle. Let's see if it starts extending to other public goods as well - like maybe municipal broadband - maybe that's another place where only a few providers are managing to treat the rest of the community not so well, and we should look at public ownership.
[00:12:37] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, another thing this week that was announced is an exciting initiative to raise the minimum wage in Tukwila, which includes Southcenter Mall - actually a really big employment hub for that city and that entire area, with a ton of retail and service workers - to raise the minimum wage there to $15 an hour. And it's next to SeaTac, it's next to other cities that have increased minimum wages - and so it's sitting there as an outlier and the Transit Riders Union is leading an initiative, a municipal initiative, to make that change. So this is a really interesting and exciting development - a test of worker-focused policy at the local level. And it's going to be really interesting to see how this unfolds. How do you see it?
[00:13:35] Mike McGinn: The cities in this area - SeaTac, Tukwila, Burien, Kent, Auburn - are all places which have become much more diverse racially than they were 20, 30, 40 years ago. And it's due in large part towards communities of color and immigrant refugee communities being pushed out by costs in Seattle. These are workers who - we're talking a lot of low wage service workers - who have to commute distances into the City or find local work. I view this as very positive that they're pushing for this. We know that the SeaTac fight was over $15, which occurred before anywhere - led to that SeaTac City Council being in the crosshairs from both sides as to who would get elected, who would hold the majority - of one that was more supportive of these communities, one that was more diverse than in the past, or one that was more business friendly. And I don't know, I'll just say that the trend continues here where we're seeing more and more public demand from the communities in those places to get more respect as to how they're paid and how difficult it is to make a go of it in expensive Pugetopolis.
[00:15:11] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - and so this initiative would set Tukwila's minimum wage to approximately match SeaTac's, which started at $15 an hour with cost-of-living increases. Right now, it is about $17.50 an hour, just around there - and so it's going to be really exciting to see how workers organize, how the community responds to this. There's going to need to be some signature collection and a campaign put forward for this, but it - being led by the Transit Riders Union who has experience and the resources necessary to do this - I am eager to see how it unfolds. Well -
[00:15:57] Mike McGinn: This is just fascinating - if you look at the demographics of Tukwila, which I'm doing on the Census - it's 20% Black, it is 26% Asian - that's Black alone or Asian alone, not looking at mixed. 6.6% mixed and 30% white - so it's really extremely diverse place, and a place where - we'll all be better off if the folks who have been pushed to the bottom of the economic ladder have a better wage. We really will all be better off if we can do this.
[00:16:37] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and another notable thing about this is - in some of the other pieces of legislation that have raised minimum wages, it was limited to certain types of jobs, or sometimes accepted - there were allowances or exceptions made for certain classifications of jobs to not be included. And this is an across-the-board minimum wage - saying that we're setting a floor for workers, period, that needs to be competitive with the region. And Tukwila's sitting in between Seattle and SeaTac and other areas, and neighboring cities can have as much of a $3 an hour difference in what the minimum wages are. So hopefully this also helps to speak to the competitiveness of the region, and just helping the people who are working and serving us to be able to participate in our economy and enjoy the fruits of it just like everyone else.
Also want to talk about - this week, a story that came out that I know you commented on - the Seattle Times Editorial Board was pushing back against people's surprised reactions to see just how car-centric the new Seattle Waterfront Park is. When this was sold - again, lots of conversations and history and context from the period leading up to when you became mayor and while you were, but - lots of talk about opening up the Waterfront, and this can be just a jewel of the City, and this is going to be a wonderful place for families to come and pedestrians and bicyclists, and like other waterfronts and their areas that are great pavilions for people to just enjoy and have fun, and a world-class park basically is how it was sold. And then you see it, and there's a highway that replaced the viaduct. How did a highway become part of this, and why are they trying to say that that is what they set people up to expect?
[00:18:50] Mike McGinn: I think there's a few different factors in here. And one of the factors, there's a bunch of different things going on here. Maybe you want to edit this piece out - I have a little bit of background noise, so I'll start my answer again here.
When you look at this, that was the debate initially - and the call from people was if we don't build the tunnel, if you try to just have a surface highway, you're going to end up with a big highway on the Waterfront. So that was a big part of the argument that was made by the tunnel advocates. And of course there were still some people that just wanted to rebuild the elevated - but if you had to rebuild it to modern standards, it would've been twice as wide, because wider lanes, full shoulder, et cetera, et cetera. So that was a big part of the argument. And for just - I would say the single largest reason why we ended up with the road we have there - is just a belief system that you actually can't remove roadway capacity. You just can't remove it. So that's why we ended up with the tunnel. People would say - well, if we don't have a tunnel, then all those cars will flood the City streets, or all of those cars will flood I-5, and the economy will ground to a halt. In fact, that wasn't just the public statement - I was lectured privately by Governor Gregoire, at the time, asking me if I wanted to destroy the City economy by snarling I-5. They just can't let go of this idea that we must have highway capacity to accommodate the cars.
And that attitude then found its way to the surface, even after the tunnel was built. The fact is that - at its base, there's a four-lane road, two lanes each way, which is a big road - let's be really clear about it. A four-lane road, two lanes each way. Those are roads that we find very uncomfortable in lots of parts of Seattle, whether that's Lake City Way, whether that's Rainier Ave, whether it's MLK - throughout the City, they tend to produce very high speeds on them because you have the two lanes side-by-side. They don't have the attributes of a good downtown City street, which will be more narrow, and just naturally slows down vehicles when you do that.
So you start there, then you add the ferry holding areas and then they say, "We need to put in a bus line," and this also was a controversial - actually, it wasn't really a controversial decision - it should have been more controversial, honestly. That was that the buses from West Seattle could have been sent through Pioneer Square - and if you took the streets on either side of the park down there, Occidental, you could have had one street dedicated to buses going in, another street dedicated to buses going out - and you wouldn't need a dedicated bus lane on the Waterfront. In fact, you could have kicked the cars off those streets and made those bus-only corridors at the time. And it would've functioned a lot like Pike and Pine function on the way up to Capitol Hill - would've been about the same amount of traffic, bus traffic, there. And it would've been delivering people to a place where there's a lot of businesses, a lot of residents, but it was rejected because the Pike/Pine neighborhood advocates and business advocates said, "We don't want the bus lines. Bus lines are bad, they'll hurt us." They said, "It'll be like Third Avenue through us." That's not true - it would've been more like Pike/Pine in terms of the number of vehicles, number of bus trips. So that was part of it too. So by the time you say we have to have room for all the cars, and we have to have room for all the ferries, and we need a dedicated bus lane - next thing you know, you got something that's eight to six lanes wide through big chunks of it, and that's a really big road.
[00:22:57] Crystal Fincher: It's a huge road.
[00:22:59] Mike McGinn: It's a huge road.
[00:23:00] Crystal Fincher: The Urbanist did a great article about this. So just to - again, they tore down the viaduct and put just as many lanes on the ground as they did - and actually more south of Columbia street, where it turns into that queuing area for the ferries - plus the tunnel underneath, and bypass lanes, and the new Elliot Way also adds four more lanes - funneling more cars and trucks into Belltown and the Waterfront, directly adjacent to the new aquarium - that's supposed to be a centerpiece of this Waterfront Park. So there are very few parks that people think of, when you think of a park, that actually include a literal highway going in the middle of it.
This is an area where I learned from you, where I was actually wrong. We talk a lot about, "Hey, Mike McGinn turned out to be right. A lot of people were wrong." The kind of roads and transit - surface roads and transit - option where - no, we actually don't need to replace the viaduct. We don't need the big stuff. If we actually add transit capacity and focus on just reasonable roads through here, we can actually do this without spending billions of dollars that are likely to create cost overruns in addition to this. We ended up just building a tunnel and a highway on top of it without sufficiently increasing transit capacity at all. My goodness.
[00:24:32] Mike McGinn: It's one of the hardest things for people to really accept - is this idea that the amount of traffic we have is not a fixed amount that's driven by some set of external factors. There are clearly external factors driving the amount of traffic, but there's so much latent demand for driving, and so much of driving that could be replaced by other modes - that actually the amount of traffic you have in successful cities - if you're a city that's fading, the traffic will be driven by your economic activity, right? But in a successful city, the amount of traffic you have is driven by the amount of lanes you have coming in and out. If you reduce the lanes, the traffic reduces, and this is a very hard thing for people to understand. And the opposite is also true - when you expand the lanes, the traffic increases to fill the lanes.
And it is because there are tons of alternatives - we do have buses running in and out of town, and some people take the bus because it's a pain in the butt to drive. And people are going to take light rail because it's better than driving, but it probably won't reduce traffic on I-5 that much. That line to Northgate will bring more people into downtown, and it'll bring them in a more pleasant way than if they had to be in stop-and-go traffic on I-5 all the way downtown. But we're still going to have about the same amount of traffic on I-5, because traffic is kind of like a gas - you remember your physics - it expands to fill the room available to it.
It's one of the reasons - I'll get this in - it's one of the reason people love bollards. If you don't actually put up a bollard to protect a street or a place from cars going, or a curb stop to protect a place, the cars just expand to fill it. And it's a very hard thing for people to sometimes grasp. And that the opposite is true - that when you reduce the amount of lanes, when you reduce the amount of space available for cars, people will make different choices. And it might be a different choice about when they drive, it might be a choice about where they drive - maybe if you're in West Seattle, Green Lake Park doesn't look so good anymore. I don't know why it ever looked so good, if you're in West Seattle, to go to Green Lake - but there are enough discretionary trips in the system that we can conserve some trips without hurting our quality of life. In fact, there's an argument to be made it might improve your quality of life if people were looking to take shorter trips closer to their home and supporting local businesses and local efforts. Not everyone can do it, I'm not saying everyone can, but enough people can that you don't need that bigger highway on the Waterfront, and you don't need as many lanes coming into town.
By the way, I'm going to toss one more thing into this mix - something that nobody talks about, it's been bugging me for a couple of decades now - is the 509 extension as part of the Puget Sound Gateway Program. Now, it's bad enough that we're building a highway that will cut through communities, add more pollution, et cetera, et cetera - but you know how everybody takes the back way to the airport from Seattle? Well, imagine if that road is extended to I-5 - people coming north on I-5 will have a back way into downtown. If you think the backups at the First Avenue South Bridge are bad now, wait 'til you see what it's like when you basically are mainlining cars from I-5 to the west of SeaTac Airport, straight to that First Avenue South Bridge. And who's going to breathe all the pollution of those idling cars? Residents of South Park and Georgetown and the Duwamish Valley.
And then they'll cross that and then they'll hit that stretch of road heading into downtown - and where are they going to get off, if they're trying to go downtown? They're going to get off at that interchange just south of downtown. So that'll mean yet more cars in the industrial area, yet more cars in Pioneer Square. So this 509 extension, and it's incredibly against the interests of the Port as well. Port's one of the biggest proponents - they have this vision we'll build this and our trucks will just get on the road - and they'll just fly out to I-5 south by going down the 509 extension. But they're not thinking it through - because what is it going to mean to them to have 30,000-50,000 more cars a day clogging the industrial area because they've got a shortcut to downtown that enables them to skip the I-5 main line into Seattle. To me, this is a known impact of the 509 extension. I guess I'm telling this story, not just because I don't think we should build 509, but because it illustrates the absolute inability of the Port and business and engineering interests to tell the public the real impact of adding lanes. They believe it will reduce congestion - instead, it's going to send many more cars and much more pollution into the exact places where we say people should have cleaner air and should have fewer cars.
[00:29:48] Crystal Fincher: Where it's currently creating shorter lifespans - it is literally taking years off of people's lives.
[00:29:53] Mike McGinn: Literally killing people. Yes.
[00:29:57] Crystal Fincher: And creating chronic illnesses - all of the cost and impacts associated with that. It's really counterintuitive, admittedly.
[00:30:07] Mike McGinn: Yes.
[00:30:07] Crystal Fincher: Because of our society, it's counterintuitive and people make the assumption - and feel confident in making the assumption - that if you add lanes then, "Hey, it's clear traffic." People think about when they're in a backup and they see a lane open up next to them and they can pull into it and speed up. And that's what they apply - they apply that logic to adding that lane is going to allow everybody to get in that lane and speed up. But that's actually the problem. And this is uncontroversial in planning circles. It's not like there is conflicting data and we don't know if adding lanes actually increases traffic. No, we've known conclusively for decades that adding lanes on highways increases traffic. The demand will always catch up - that's how it works.
So there is no traffic congestion and especially on a route like that - people talk about the need to prioritize freight movement and that is absolutely a concern - you're actually making that tougher. You're putting more cars on the roads that right now are being heavily used by companies moving goods throughout our region. It just is so frustrating to continue to watch elected leaders, at all levels, continue to say things that are absolutely false. This is absolute misinformation that adding lanes reduces traffic and -
[00:31:41] Mike McGinn: They know it's false. It's an iron law of congestion, it's an iron law of highway expansion. And again, it works in both directions and they know - but there is such a set of industries, and it kind of relates back to this concrete strike. There's a set of industries that - they need their multi-billion dollar cash infusion every few years to keep feeding them - and it's not just the construction companies, it's the companies that do the planning, it's the companies that provide the lawyers, it's the companies that help float the financial bonds to finance it all. Then you add in the trade unions that really want the union jobs associated with major infrastructure projects. And now you've got both sides of the aisle with support for this. So this last Transportation Bill was vastly better than prior ones in terms of the mix of spending, but it's got another multi-billion dollar fix for the companies addicted to the regular supply of money from the Feds and from the state for the work they do - same thing happened at the national level.
They all have an interest in just not accepting something all the studies, all the professionals know to be true - because if they accepted it, they would turn off the money supply to people who really just - their entire businesses and their reason for being exists around that. So you can argue correctly that if you built - projects to build more sidewalks, build more transit, build more bike lanes - produce more jobs per dollar - but they wouldn't produce more jobs for the people that are currently getting the dollars. So they're not terribly interested in that - in changing the dollar flows - so that's what really drives this. Then they mislead the public that the new lanes will solve congestion, or they're just building out the system, or they're fixing bottlenecks, or they'll even tell you - this is one of my favorites - it'll reduce the number of cars stuck in traffic, so they won't be idling, contributing to global warming. They'll actually argue it'll reduce pollution, because it'll be more free flowing. And these are just all not truthful statements. And they're all too often made by professionals who know better, but they are in a system where the political leadership demands that they keep delivering the dollars to these companies. And that's just how it is. So we all got to keep doing our work to let people know that the costs of that are actually way too high to just keep some people in business. We need to take a look at a different approach.
[00:34:38] Crystal Fincher: Well, this week there was also some very concerning events at the Seattle Police Department's presentation to the Public Safety and Human Services Committee of the Seattle City Council - a number of challenging things - and again, I highly encourage you to read, to subscribe, to Amy Sundberg's Notes from the Emerald City newsletter. She covers this frequently, comprehensively. But one thing I wanted to pull out was just - Brian Maxey, when making an SPD presentation regarding - I don't know if folks recall - the analysis that the City had done regarding SPD officers and how they were spending their time. So an independent analysis determined that 49% of the 911 calls that are currently handled by SPD were not emergencies, crimes - they could be handled by organizations other than SPD.
This traditionally has been an uncontroversial thing where - before we saw that the 2020 protests - there are lots of departments around the country, several local ones and SPD also had chiefs who talked about this. They were saying, "Hey, we actually feel ill equipped to respond to calls where no law's being broken, but someone is unhappy that an unhoused person is around there," or "Someone's having a mental health crisis," or "There's just activity that doesn't quite rise to the level of criminal activity," or "Maybe just a car is parked in the wrong spot." And that could be handled just as sufficiently with a civil response and does not require an armed police response.
And so the analysis was just about half of all of the calls, that could happen with - this presented an exciting opportunity, because my goodness, SPD has been complaining that they need resources to respond to these 911 calls, and we need to get police on the streets to be able to do this. And wow, you actually just got news that half of those calls are not sufficient enough or at the level where it needs an officer response. So it looks like the staffing crisis you've talked about actually has its own built-in solution - let's intelligently target what we respond to and what we don't, and where we use very expensive police resources that carry a high risk of escalation, and completely reduce that and reformat that. Unfortunately, SPD, instead of recognizing that opportunity immediately pushed back, and said, "Hey, we only identify 12% of the calls that we're confident that can be answered with an alternate response." I also want to note that 12% is not an insignificant number, so that should also be moved around. They basically said, "Well, we need more time to do more assessment and we need to do a study and create different protocols." And mire this in process to try and run out the clock and hope people lose the political will to do anything about this.
They were reporting this week saying that - we actually did some revising and we actually don't think anything needs to be moved outside of the department. Anything that needs to be handled - we feel that we can do it within the police department, and maybe it'll look different and we'll try and make it seem like an alternate response, but it's still coming out of the police budget and using police resources - and just a challenge there. So this was one of the first times this issue has been revisited since they said they needed to do additional analysis - and they were light on details, but certainly indicated that they are not willing to offload anything further. And that anything that needs to happen within the City, they plan to use a police budget and armed or officer resources to respond to. What did you think of this?
[00:38:56] Mike McGinn: Well, it is a great question, obviously. What do you really need police officers, and what do you not need police officers for? The police department may have a little bias there because they think they're pretty good. It's natural, it's human - I don't want to pick on the police department for doing that. We just need to recognize it - that things that they have historically done, they think it's appropriate for them to have done and for them to be involved in - that's just natural. So my first reaction to this would be that this is something that the police department needs to be having input into the decision, but you shouldn't be asking them to drive the process. It just may be too hard for them to do - to be able to separate those things.
And when you add into that - there's an internal dynamic within the police department too, which is chiefs don't want to get sideways with the force, or leadership doesn't want to get sideways with the rank and file. And the rank and file - they're unionized under the Police Officer's Guild - and it's just really instinctive for public employee unions, period, to believe that only the union member can do this job, so if you're taking a scope of work away from us, that's just bad. That's just reducing - it's the other side of whether it's a union hotel or a non-union hotel. If you're a union hotel worker, it's like I don't want to - let's keep these jobs here - and again, it happens across all the unions.
What makes this conversation harder is that police are still respected as having a word on safety - well, the police say we'll be unsafe if a police officer doesn't do this - they have a little more pull with the public. I believe I recall the firefighters were insisting that 911 calls for fire be handled by firefighters, because only firefighters themselves had the requisite expertise. And it's a good argument, but it is one that has to be tested and thought through. I think that's the type of thing that really has to be examined closely - is a good argument as to why this one requires a police officer as opposed to that one - but I don't think you can ask the police department to make that call. A mayor would have to set up a system where somebody else is doing the hard analysis and making the ultimate recommendations on how to do this, and it should have more stakeholders at the table as to how to do that.
You can't ask an agency or department of government to reorganize itself into a reduced role or out of existence. It's like asking a cat not to be a cat - they just can't say I'm not going to be a cat anymore - they're cats. And it's awfully hard to tell a police department to redefine itself in a way that it isn't what it thinks it is. So that's my takeaway - is that this is a completely natural reaction, and somebody else better be in there digging and actually making the decisions - and ultimately will take hard choices from the mayor who will then face a loss of confidence from the union representing those folks, because you just reduced the potential future number of union jobs. And then there's the leadership, right? What's the potential size of my constituency - you just reduce the potential size of my constituency and the number of jobs I can hand out - therefore, you reduce my bargaining power for wages, and you reduce the promotion opportunities for people in the ranks, and all sorts of things. This is just - you got to separate the institutional imperatives of a union and a department from the actual facts of what does or does not take a police officer to handle - and that's a process that you can't put the police department in charge of.
[00:43:20] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely and even in - and collective bargaining is bargaining with all sides at the table and one side not dictating what's going to happen. I also think it's important to highlight through this - the issue of having job security and protections is absolutely fair and legitimate and should be discussed. Moving these positions out of the police department does not mean that we have to move them to non-union positions. It may not be SPOG - it could be a different union, but that respond to the needs that the City actually has, that appropriately manage the resources that the City has, that enable the City to be as safe as it deserves to be. And so allowing responses to be laser focused on improving safety. If we have data that shows that something does increase safety, great. If we have data that shows the opposite, then that should be the signal to reallocate those resources to things that are more effective at doing that.
I hope that we see that from the mayor, that there is direction saying it looks like we could more effectively use the people who are there in a role that better serves the public. And that seems like it would be crucial to building the trust that everyone acknowledges is lacking, or certainly not where people would like it to be. So I just hope that the mayor does lead this in the right direction, and doesn't just hand this off to the police department to drive this process.
[00:45:09] Mike McGinn: I would add something else too - and a PubliCola article recently about the UW Campus police talked about this issue. There's also protections under labor law that you can't take a union job and give it somewhere else - potentially non-union job - it's called skimming. And so the argument that the police union can make, and it was an argument that was made by the UW Police Department rank and file, was that certain unarmed campus responders being hired by the University were skimming the union jobs of the SPD cops. And there was a ruling in the state - that no, that's not skimming - but that's a legal backdrop that also provides some power to the union, and you understand why that rule is there. If, let's say, a union has managed to unionize a portion of the workforce, you can't just reclassify them, give them a new title to do the same job and say but you're not union now. The skimming rule is there for a real reason, but that can also become an obstacle here towards changing things. I dealt with that some as mayor as well - when we were looking at how to reallocate responsibilities within City government, from one department to another, or from one set of workers to another - the skimming issue would come up.
[00:46:47] Crystal Fincher: Just kudos to UW for having the will to set an example in placing safety of the people on the campus first and doing what all of the data showed would increase how safe people are and making that change. To your point, that was actually a really important ruling by Washington's Public Employee Relations Commission - to say, "Actually, this was done okay. Let's continue to prioritize worker safety, worker protections, making sure that we don't just hurt unions by doing this and make it harder for people to unionize - but balance the needs of the population there, the actual core focus of the organization, and aligning how those organizations are structured with protected workers within them."
[00:47:45] Mike McGinn: And kudos to UW for taking the case all the way through and not simply saying, "Well, we can't do it because we might have to have a lawsuit, or we don't want to upset that union because of their role in the system." That can be harder for elected officials to do. Honestly, it keeps bringing up for me - the issue of public safety and the treatment of members of the public - the degree to which police officers have union protections, I think really is something that needs to be reevaluated. The idea, and I faced this as mayor - and every mayor faces it, every chief faces it - when they ask to do discipline, it's like, what is more important? The right of that police officer to keep their job, or the right of the public to be free of the conduct of a police officer that doesn't meet the standards that we believe the community's entitled to.
And too often, the gist of it is - well, the right of the police officer to hold the job is higher under the law than the right of the people to be protected. Or - now, I shouldn't say under the law - but in practice, that's what happens. I don't think people appreciate - I was often asked, "Well, why don't you just fire the bad cops?" And it's like - we're trying, but it's a lot harder than you think. And quite often, the defense about why you can't fire a cop, and we've seen this since I was mayor too, was, "Well, nobody ever got fired for that before." And that itself is a defense for why you can't let go of someone.
And as the force gets smaller, as it is right now, they're still not filling the empty spots. It's a lot harder to hide somebody in some department where they're not going to have to interact with the public in some way or another. This is a challenge. I think that that's a fundamental issue we have to start facing as a society as well - certainly, public employees should have the protections that any public employee has whether unionized or not, but have we gone too far - and for this particular set of workers - on the balance between the protection of someone to hold a job - a job that entails carrying a weapon, having the ability to arrest somebody, having the ability to stop someone for questioning and detain someone - all of these things just go to the fundamental rights, individual rights of members of the community. And on balance, whose rights are more important here? I think that calls for some reexamination of the union, of how we handle this.
[00:50:42] Crystal Fincher: I will leave it there because that was well said - completely agree.
[00:50:47] Mike McGinn: We'll call it good - thanks for having me, Crystal.
[00:50:49] Crystal Fincher: And with that, I thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, March 25th, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler and assistant producer is Dr. Shannon Cheng, with assistance from Emma Mudd. And our insightful co-host today was activist, community leader, former mayor of Seattle, and Executive Director of America Walks, Mike McGinn. You can find Mike on Twitter @mayormcginn, you can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I, and now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to resources referenced in the show at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
Robyn Denson, candidate for Pierce County Council Position 7, joins Crystal to discuss what’s at stake in her run for a critical seat in regional government, including the thin Democratic majority on the Pierce County Council. As a deeply-engaged community member and current Gig Harbor City Councilmember, Robyn is passionate about listening to the diverse voices of her district and fighting for their needs, whether the issue is housing affordability, ending homelessness, COVID assistance and recovery, or mitigating climate impacts.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii, and Robyn on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/robyndensonpiercecountycouncil.
Resources
Elect Robyn Denson: https://www.electrobyndenson.com/
“Gig Harbor councilmember will run for Pierce County Council to replace Derek Young” by Kerry Webster from The News Tribune: https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/community/gateway/g-news/article256502086.html
Pierce County Council District 7 Map: https://www.piercecountywa.gov/DocumentCenter/View/110768/District-7-2022_web
City of Gig Harbor - Councilmember Robyn Denson: https://www.cityofgigharbor.net/directory.aspx?eid=170
Communities in Schools - Peninsula: https://peninsula.ciswa.org/
Harbor WildWatch: https://harborwildwatch.org/
Gig Harbor Land Conservation Fund: https://www.gigharborlandconservation.com/
Pierce County - South Sound Housing Affordability Partners: https://www.piercecountywa.gov/7052/South-Sound-Housing-Affordability-Partne
United Way of Pierce County - South Sound 211: https://www.uwpc.org/get-help-now-dial-211
Pierce County - Applying for Rent & Utility Assistance: https://www.piercecountywa.gov/7488/Applying-for-Rent-Utility-Assistance
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
So today we are thrilled to have with us, candidate for Pierce County Council, Robyn Denson. Welcome.
[00:00:45] Robyn Denson: Well, thank you, Crystal. It is an honor to be invited to be on your podcast.
[00:00:50] Crystal Fincher: Well, I am certainly excited to have you - there are so many exciting races happening throughout the state. Lots of people have been focused on legislative races or prosecutor races, but we also have county council races and this in Pierce County is very important and interesting. So I guess I just want to start off getting a better idea of who you are and what your background is.
[00:01:14] Robyn Denson: Well, first, let me thank you for recognizing that we have county council races as well - because a lot of times, I guess we aren't as maybe as high profile as some of the legislative races, or as local as some of the city council races - so even as I'm door-belling already, people are like, "We have a County Council representative?" if I'm in the city of Tacoma. So, I get to explain the difference and get to draw them in to why this position is so important, why the County Council is so important, and I'm really, really excited to run for County Council District 7. I will say, like probably a lot of public officials and public elected officials, this was not in my plan.
I am a current Gig Harbor City Councilperson, and I've been really enjoying working with the community here and getting lots of things done. And that honestly came about because I've been involved in volunteer service in the community for so long - whether it was nonprofits, then I was on our volunteer City Parks Commission for a long, long time and got to know the city - and then at some point, I can't even remember how it happened, somebody asked me to run for city council and I did. And I've really been enjoying it, but about a year and a half ago, our current District 7 County Councilperson, Chair Derek Young - who's fantastic - came to me along with his assistant John Jolibois, and of course I've worked with him a lot on city issues and nonprofit issues as well, and they asked me if I would consider running to replace Derek for County Council District 7. And at first I was like, "What?" but as you know, Crystal, Derek Young is terming out on the Pierce County Council - there's term limits. He has had an incredible eight years, he's accomplished so much. He is the Chair now and for the last two years, the Democrats have had the majority on Pierce County Council, so they are just going gangbusters, accomplishing amazing things for our county and really putting us on a positive path - for the future, for the people, for the lands, and the waters - and this race is so important because it's really important that we retain that momentum and keep things going in a really positive direction.
So I will admit it took me - gosh, at least six months before I gave Derek a Yes - and I knew I would love the position, but as a single parent, single-income household, I had to take all of those things into consideration, as probably some of your listeners can appreciate. I knew I'd love the job - public policy, serving the public is definitely my passion. I do it for free right now - way more - I spend way more time on that than my income producing segment of my life. So I was excited about the job, but I just had to make sure that it was fitting in with where I wanted my life to go, because a position like this is so all-encompassing - campaigning is all-encompassing and then when you're in the position - I mean, this is your life. It's not just a 9 to 5 job. You're involved with the community, and going to events, and getting to know all the players, and making sure that you understand their needs, and talking to them about all the policies that are coming down the pipe or things that you're thinking about to make sure you're getting all of that input.
So, that's the way I treat my volunteer city council job right now and that's the way I'll treat the county council job. And once I made the decision to go for it, I'm a 100% engaged and a 100% working hard on this campaign. I have the support of just a lot of wonderful community leaders - and I don't know how other elected officials feel or other candidates - but to me, when somebody has given me their support and has maybe gone out on a limb to endorse me or give me hard-earned money, then I want to make sure that I am working as hard as I can to get into the position so that I can make sure that I'm serving the public just like I told everybody I would.
[00:05:32] Crystal Fincher: Well, and that's exciting. I completely appreciate you having to weigh what taking on this position would mean. And even as you so appropriately put it, a volunteer city council position - I think people sometimes don't realize how lowly compensated city council members are. If you look at major metropolitan areas, like the biggest cities in the country, the biggest city in our state, Seattle - those positions come with a salary and full-time staff and they have offices. Most cities around the state do not have that, most city councils receive a stipend -
[00:06:14] Robyn Denson: Right - a little stipend - no staff, no offices.
[00:06:16] Crystal Fincher: Yes. Like less than $5,000/year. Yeah, it's with no staff, no nothing - and it is - to say it's a part-time position is really misleading. It is a humongous responsibility and it really is just kind of mind-boggling that we expect our elected representatives on the local level, who are responsible for so much of what our daily life is on a daily basis, to just work for a stipend. And it certainly impacts the type of people who are able to serve. If you are a one income household, if you have a regular job and you aren't owning a company, or not independently wealthy or coming from wealth, it is certainly a different kind of consideration to be able to do that, not withstanding the cost of childcare and how it impacts your day job and all of that. So I sincerely appreciate just you having to take time to figure out how to make everything possible. I also appreciate you talking about how, for the past two years, Democrats had a majority on the Pierce County Council - was not always that. I mean -
[00:07:24] Robyn Denson: I think it's the first time in 17 years.
[00:07:27] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and this is not a given that, "Oh, hey, just Democrats win now," - you are in a purple area that can elect Republicans and it's not a given that, "Hey, this is just sailing and coasting to victory here." So what is your approach in a community that is diverse in many ways, including in ideologies that people hold - how are you communicating with voters and what are you focusing on as you're running for this seat?
[00:08:02] Robyn Denson: Well, I guess Crystal, I'll say that I feel very grateful that I have been involved - truly involved - in the community for a long time, and in roles that were not partisan. Even my city council position isn't partisan, which I just love because a lot of these issues that we face every day should not be partisan issues. They should just be basic human rights, human needs, making the community a better place, taking care of our environment.
So I'm fortunate that I have a lot of support from around the Gig Harbor and Key Peninsula communities in particular, because I've been involved in so many organizations - from Communities in Schools, which serves our community, our school district here in the Peninsula School District. From Harbor WildWatch, I just started a Land Conservation Fund and Veterans Day event, I'm involved with the Chamber - just all sorts of different types of people with different interests - all really good-hearted people that want to do the right thing for the community. So I love having that diverse base of support - people that, even if they're not in the same political party as me, we have a common respect and they know they can come and talk to me and I'm going to listen. I'm going to listen to their point of view and we can work together on finding solutions to any issue that comes up in the community that makes sense for everybody, whether it's business or tenants or homeowners or folks in the environmental community that are noticing something in our Sound or in this greater Salish Sea.
I love having that relationship and I'm building those kind of relationships in Tacoma as well. I'm fortunate to be able to get introduced to a lot of amazing community leaders in Tacoma, and because that area is admittedly newer for me, that's where I'm starting to doorbell. So for the last 3 weeks, 3-4 weeks, I've been out already starting to doorbell in Tacoma and getting to know the issues in that community. Because like you've said, my district is very diverse - I have got urban north Tacoma, I have kind of small city Gig Harbor, and then I've got the Key Peninsula that is very rural. And there are some commonalities, but there's a lot of specific issues that are top of mind in each of these communities that I'm excited to work on.
And I think having somebody that takes the time to get to know the people and the issues - and doesn't just assume they're the same as issues in other part of the state - that's what folks need from their representative, because out here in District 7 - I mean, the folks in Tacoma are fortunate because they have their city council person, as well as their county council person. Gig Harbor is a very small footprint, so those folks also have a city council - well, they have all of the city council working for them as well. But most of our district is unincorporated, and the folks in unincorporated Pierce County in District 7 - their County Councilperson is their one representative at the local level, so it's so important. And I'm trying to communicate to folks how important it is that they elect somebody who understands their needs and is going to fight for them.
[00:11:19] Crystal Fincher: Well, one big need that is manifesting in a variety of different communities is the need for affordable housing. And this is a conversation statewide, certainly has been in Pierce County - what are your plans to keep the area affordable?
[00:11:37] Robyn Denson: Well, thank you - that is a key issue, no matter where you are in my district. And like you said, anywhere in the county, and anywhere in the state, and I would say the country as well. Affordable housing is a huge issue and it's a really, really challenging issue. It's something that I've been involved with professionally for a long time - so I've worked with organizations that had homeless shelters and did Section 8 vouchers and did group homes. I worked for Habitat for Humanity - great organization. I worked for the State House of Representatives for five sessions back in - 2005 through 2010, I believe - where we drafted the Homeless Act, for example, and the Multifamily Tax Exemption Program. So we were really addressing it then as well - so it's something that is near and dear to my heart.
It's a challenging issue to address - I can't say that I have the silver bullet answer to it, but I think we're seeing a lot of initiatives that are going to be helpful. We're seeing encouragement of density, especially in transit-oriented areas and areas that are close to housing and other services, or to jobs and other services. That's so important, not only to promote affordable housing, but to prevent urban sprawl into our more rural and natural areas. So, that is certainly one solution. I'm a big fan of making sure that we're working on developing income-based housing as well though, because our area is such a popular place for people to move to. We've got folks coming down from Seattle, we have folks coming up from California, the East Coast, other areas of the country. So even if we're increasing density, a lot of those - if we're not keeping some housing that's really income-based and permanently affordable, I'm afraid that it's going to take us a long time to see density correlating with lowering house prices. It's part of the solution and it will help, but I think in addition to that, we need to make sure that we're creating some housing that is permanently available to folks at different income levels, and particularly the lower income levels.
[00:13:52] Crystal Fincher: So how do you do that from the County Council?
[00:13:55] Robyn Denson: Well, I think that we can partner with nonprofit housing builders and there's a number of them - Habitat is one of them, but we certainly need to collaborate with others that produce - maybe that their model is to create greater numbers of housing units, apartment complexes, or townhouse developments, cottage style developments - things like that - where we're really getting some numbers in. And those nonprofits are really well positioned to make sure that these properties are managed and sustained as affordable over time. There may be opportunities to work with for-profit developers as well. I was just having a conversation earlier with an advocate about this as well, because sometimes for-profit developers have figured out a way to build efficiently and in a really cost-efficient way, which is great, because we want to make sure that our money is well invested to produce the greatest number of housing options possible.
[00:14:53] Crystal Fincher: And so on the Gig Harbor City Council, you've had to contend with this issue also - how has the city approached this - because Gig Harbor's actually done a decent job in providing and growing the amount of housing that you have in the city.
[00:15:11] Robyn Denson: We have, although I would argue that not a lot of it is really affordable. So we have done a fantastic job of reaching our Growth Management Act targets. We're on track to not only reach those, but exceed those, and we do have a mix of housing. So I mean, there are definitely some things that we've done really well - and a lot of those decisions were made before me, so I won't take credit for it - but we've got some of our newer developments where the housing is a bit more dense, where we've got a larger apartment complex, for example, where there's some really cute cottage housing that when I door knocked there are a couple years ago, I thought - this is what I need - so cute and no yard to take care of.
So there's some good options, but we can do more - and actually just this year, we're embarking upon an affordable housing survey and plan here in Gig Harbor to really look at what housing - what types of housing we're missing and not just design, but in terms of what's available to folks at the lower and middle incomes. And I know we've got a long way to go - we did just join last year with an organization, or a collaborative group, called SSHAP - I'm sure you've heard of that - with a number of other Pierce County jurisdictions to share a staff person and try and identify some real best practices to move things forward. But we're excited to look at some innovative uses of city-owned property, collaborations, and making sure that we're providing some additional resources.
We have our businesses reaching out to us. We have our retirement - one of the retirement communities advocating for this saying, "There's no place for our workers to live and we love these people. We care about these people. We want these folks to be able to live in our community and their kids to be able to go to our schools." So we want to be able to provide that as well.
[00:17:08] Crystal Fincher: Which makes sense, and related to the conversation about affordable housing is that of homelessness. And an issue that every area is contending with - that is not limited to urban areas, but certainly there's a conversation there. How do you plan to get people housed who are currently on the street?
[00:17:30] Robyn Denson: Well, I'm very excited to have the opportunity hopefully to come onto the County Council at this time - as you know, just this week, they passed their comprehensive plan to end homelessness. So they have taken a major step forward with advocates to at least put something on paper and get everyone unified about an approach.
Now, I will say from my work in this area, and even just from recently walking around to five or six of the encampments in Tacoma and talking to people and asking them - what kind of housing would work for you, what do you want - that was extremely educational, and what I've learned and what I'm hearing from other advocates is that everyone who is unhoused and is experiencing homelessness - they have their own individual story of their path. No one is five years old thinking, I'm going to grow up and live in a tent encampment. And the other thing I heard from these folks in the encampments is they're like, "We don't want to be on somebody's sidewalk. We don't want to be in the neighborhoods. We don't want to be bothering these people. We don't want them to be bothering us," which is becoming more and more of a concern. They're uncomfortable, the community's uncomfortable, the businesses are uncomfortable - it's not a good situation. And from what I heard from them, because they all came to be unhoused through different paths and all of their situations are completely different - some are working, some are not, some aren't able to, some may never be able to, they need - there's so many different needs that are specific. We need that many different paths to housing.
I'm 100% supportive of the housing first model, but that's going to look different for different people. I talked to this one woman at the first encampment I visited and said, "Would you like to be in one of those hotels that the county just purchased or would you like a tiny home?" and she said, "No." She said, "I have experienced such trauma in shelters that I can't be indoors for more than three hours. I have anxiety attacks," and so it really ran the spectrum of what people wanted, but a lot of these folks were interested in sanctioned encampments - a place where, again, they could get out of the neighborhoods or get off of the sidewalks and have a place where they felt safe. They could be with their networks and communities, and there was sanitation, there were showers, there's laundry facilities, and there's supportive services so when folks are ready and they're feeling safer and more comfortable, they can avail themselves with those services. And then hopefully move up to what I think most of us would consider more sustainable, safer, better housing - whether that's tiny homes or the single room occupancy units in a motel or transitional housing, some may be supportive housing.
But I think some of us have these expectations that we can just pluck somebody off the sidewalk and stick them in an apartment - and for some folks, yes - some folks just need that first month and last month, and a security deposit, and maybe some subsidy to get them through a few months, and they're going to be on their way. But for a lot of folks, they've dealt with so much trauma and there's so many fears and trust issues that they kind of need that time to be stable in a secure, safe housing situation before they can make those next steps - whether it's mental health treatment, behavioral health, substance abuse, or just relaxing in their space enough to be open to be receiving the services that so many of our wonderful nonprofits are ready - they're ready to provide.
[00:21:13] Crystal Fincher: Yeah and I appreciate your perspective there - that safety for everyone, including those who are experiencing homelessness is so important. And the recognition that some of the things that sometimes were well intentioned, that people thought they were doing and providing a helpful space - like a congregate shelter - have been traumatic and harmful for a lot of people. And if you sit and think about it for a while - would you love to have no ability to have any privacy, to have no ability to lock up your possessions, and to not have any space and time on your own by yourself, and to constantly be around other people who may be experiencing their own crises - and that kind of a challenge. And that is traumatic for some people - has resulted in harm and trauma - and people are working through that, and so it's not always, "Oh, hey, we offered a service, there's a shelter available. Why wouldn't someone want to come in here? Well, they're refusing help and they clearly want to be where they're at on the street," and it's not that simple.
I appreciate you having conversations with people who are being impacted - that is the group who is usually most able to tell you how they got where they're at, and what types of things would be helpful to be able to get out. So, as we look at that and providing supported services and sanctioned areas for encampments - is that something you plan to pursue if you're elected to the council?
[00:22:48] Robyn Denson: Absolutely. Absolutely - and again, there's a variety of housing type needs that I will be supportive of, but I have to tell you, Crystal - until I actually had the conversation with the unhoused folks in the encampments, I did not think sanctioned encampments was a great idea. I thought, surely we can do better than that for these people, right - but what I heard, I learned so much. Again, it's so important to actually get their perspective and what I learned was they felt safer in their tent communities because where they are - if you'll notice - most of the encampments around Tacoma at least are small groups of maybe not even a dozen tents. And they all know each other and they watch out for each other - they take care of each other when somebody is injured or sick. I asked one, "Are you afraid to leave your tent? Are you afraid to leave your stuff and go to this service agency and get a shower?" because they're located typically where they can do that. And they're like, "Nope, we all watch out for each other," and so it's so important to - and even when and if we get some sanctioned encampments together - that we are cognizant of these relationships and of these little communities, because they're helping each other move forward as well.
But yeah, the situation now is absolutely a crisis. It's one of the reasons that I'm really passionate about having good people on the County Council right now - who are willing to listen to the unhoused population, to the advocates who've been working with these folks for a long, long time and certainly know way more than I do, and make sure that we are creating the kind of housing that actually works and is going to move people towards self-sufficiency to the extent that is possible for different individuals.
[00:24:37] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. And I also want to talk about this moment that we're in - in terms of the pandemic - which is not over actually -
[00:24:46] Robyn Denson: What?
[00:24:46] Crystal Fincher: A lot of people are talking about - hey, as we move beyond the pandemic and we're in a post-COVID world - we aren't quite in that post-COVID world. We have certainly moved down from our recent peak of cases, but man, that was a really high peak. And so the overall case rate is still not as low as it has been during other parts of the pandemic - and we're easing up on masking requirements, and easing up - and some of the assistance programs have now terminated or have at least run out of resources, and so some of the supports that have been there to help people get through this time are evaporating. And that's causing some anxiety among a lot of people in the public, and there's still a significant segment of our society that cannot get vaccinated and that isn't feeling protected, whether it's young children or immunocompromised people. So as you look at that, and especially when you're looking at the County Council, which plays such a huge role in the public health response, what is your approach as we move forward with COVID?
[00:25:57] Robyn Denson: Well, as I've said all along on City Council, I'm going to continue to follow the science and trust our professionals and our medical professionals as we move forward. I'm as excited as anybody else to be hopefully moving in a positive direction. Most of us, I think, are excited to be able to not wear masks anymore - I wouldn't do it if the CDC hadn't said it was okay, and our public health officials are saying it's okay. I do feel very encouraged that I know - the first day of school on Monday, I asked my daughter, she's a high schooler, "Were there kids that were masked?" and she said, "Yeah, there was four or five kids in each class that were masked," and I felt really good about that - the kids felt comfortable. And I see adults in the grocery store - that they feel comfortable wearing those masks, and I think that's where we need to be - that people need to feel safe and do what they need to feel safe.
I know I have friends that are nurses, for example, and they still stay masked because they're working with neonatal babies, for example, or immunocompromised people, or folks who have family members that are immunocompromised, Crystal - and like you said, can't get vaccinated or are just super, super concerned about contracting COVID. So I think we, first of all, need to be respectful of the folks that do still have concerns, because yes, COVID is still out there - and we've heard in the news, high-profile people that are getting COVID after all this time. But I'm also honored for the opportunity to be part of the solution because we do have such a fantastic Public Health Department here in the Tacoma-Pierce County area, and we've got amazing professionals that I will seek the counsel of. I'm not going to pretend to be a doctor or a public health professional - I'm going to listen to them and follow their guidance on things.
You mentioned assistance programs and that's a huge concern, because just 'cause we're able to take our masks off - doesn't mean snap your finger, everything's back to normal. There's going to be a transition period where - we're all kind of trying to get used to what our lives are going to look like. They're not going to go back immediately to what they were two years ago, and if folks have gotten behind on rent or behind on their mortgage payments or behind on their utility payments, we need to continue to beat the drum and let folks know that they need to reach out as soon as possible by calling, for example, 211 in Pierce County, or by contacting any of the social service agencies. They're going to point them in the right direction to start filling out that paperwork to get that assistance, because right now is not the time to be losing your housing. The housing market's going crazy, rents are just going up so high - that once you've lost your housing, it just makes - it makes the situation a hundred times worse. So we want to keep people in their housing.
[00:28:55] Crystal Fincher: So what programs are available, or what would you continue to advocate for too - as you talk about prevent people from losing housing, because that is another big part of the solution to homelessness - is not to create more homelessness. How do we do a good job of keeping people in their homes who are behind right now?
[00:29:16] Robyn Denson: Well, I think Pierce County has been doing a really great job at getting their rental assistance and mortgage assistance - sometimes people don't realize that's available as well - Pierce County's done a great job at getting that out the door. I'm not sure how much is left in the pot, or how long we're going to continue to do that, but I will certainly advocate that we need to keep an eye on what the need is and maintain our vigilance around that issue. So I'll continue and encourage everyone to continue to get the message out that these programs are still available. I know there's quite a bit of utility assistance still available - and something I learned - gosh, a few months ago by talking to somebody - is that even if you are - from what I heard, correct me if I'm wrong - but even if you are up on your rent, if you're behind on your utility payment, a landlord can evict you for that. And so we don't want any - we don't want to leave anything to chance in helping folks make sure that they can retain their housing. The resources are out there right now and even if, for example, the county had to pause its program or ran out of money until they get another influx of dollars, there's a lot of other social service agencies that do have pots of money for things like this - for emergency health, for rent in particular, and utilities. So I'd encourage people to continue to reach out and look for those resources because prevention is so much less expensive and so much less traumatic to an individual or family than an eviction would be.
[00:30:52] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And then wanted to talk about, before we do close, we just saw in the legislature - a missed opportunity to add climate mitigation as a goal -
[00:31:06] Robyn Denson: I know.
[00:31:06] Crystal Fincher: - in the Growth Management Act. And so now you're running in a situation where you're headed to the council - that planning is starting now, as we move forward. What are your plans, even though that is not an absolute mandate from the state now, to make sure that as decisions are made - there has been talk and I agree - just every decision that is made does have a climate impact and at this point we need to be aware of that and tracking that. What is your approach going to be, and what do you think you can do throughout this planning process and with the lens that you take to explore decisions that are being made to make sure that we are mitigating climate harms and protecting people from what we're currently experiencing?
[00:31:56] Robyn Denson: Right. Well, thank you for bringing that up and honestly, Crystal, I was shocked that that bill did not pass. It's something that I had advocated for, in collaboration with Washington Conservation Voters. And honestly, I thought that was going to be a slam dunk with this legislature and it's just to me, a no brainer. I can tell you that I'm very proud that the city of Gig Harbor is - we're not quite there yet, but we're a meeting or two away from - passing a resolution to include climate change in our comprehensive plan. So I think everything starts local, or sometimes it starts local - it certainly can start local and Gig Harbor is definitely doing that. And hopefully we will be a role model for other jurisdictions that are thinking of doing that as well, because as you mentioned, the planning starts now. So if communities are going to do that, don't wait for the state. At this point, don't wait for the state to mandate it - go ahead and I encourage all the jurisdictions to take that upon themselves.
I am fortunate that if I'm able to join the County Council right now, that they have passed their large comprehensive environmental sustainability plan with some fantastic goals to reduce greenhouse emissions. So I am joining a team that appreciates and is in line with my thinking in regards to the environment and climate. So I'm excited for the county to lead the way to be a good role model for the jurisdictions that we serve, and hopefully to be a good role model and hopefully create some best practices that other jurisdictions can follow. And I always say sometimes things do have to start at the local level. I know Gig Harbor, along with some other jurisdictions, for example, passed the plastic bag ban years before the state did. And so if Pierce County does it, if Gig Harbor - I know other jurisdictions are doing it as well - then maybe that will help give some leverage to our state legislators as they work to do it next year. And we don't have to wait for the state - all of you local jurisdictions - we can do it on our own too.
[00:34:01] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely makes sense. And as we part, are there any final words that you want to give to voters considering whether or not to vote for you, people even outside of the jurisdiction considering whether to support your campaign? What is at stake here and why is this so important?
[00:34:16] Robyn Denson: Thank you, Crystal. Well, I will say - I speak to all sorts of people in and out of District 7 and even in and out of Pierce County - retaining a good County Council that's thinking and putting the people first, putting our communities first, putting our lands and waters first - is so important. And if you're interested in learning more about me, I have a pretty robust website - some people are like, "You put too much on it," at electrobyndenson.com. I'm willing to meet and talk to anybody, I'm out doorbelling. This is a really critical seat - we've got some amazing County Councilpeople now, and I'm so excited to pick up the baton of the amazing Derek Young - he's done such a fantastic job. And really implement a lot of the things that the County Council has worked so hard to get started and put in place.
[00:35:11] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to meet with us today. We'll link to the website, anything else that is relevant to this conversation in our episode notes and thank you so much for spending the time to talk with us today.
[00:35:23] Robyn Denson: Thank you, Crystal. It was a pleasure.
[00:35:25] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcast - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal’s co-host is criminal defense attorney, abolitionist and activist Nicole Thomas-Kennedy. They discuss how a powerful lobbying group used a focus on local control to sink statewide housing reform, and how to overcome that in the next session, a rundown of candidates running for open seats, the disconnect of prioritizing the wants of downtown stakeholders over real solutions to homelessness, the Seattle City Attorney’s repackaging of a failed initiative, and mixed results on the plan for some concrete workers to return to work while concrete companies continue to drag their feet on negotiating a fair contract.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, at @NTKallday. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Here's What Happened in Olympia” by Rich Smith from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/03/15/68343035/the-strangers-rundown-of-2022s-huge-confused-legislative-session
“What Will It Take to Get Statewide Housing Reform?” by Matt Baume from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/03/16/68207458/what-will-it-take-to-get-statewide-housing-reform
“Surprise Sweep Displaces Fourth Avenue Encampment, Scattering Unsheltered People” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola: https://publicola.com/2022/03/09/surprise-sweep-displaces-fourth-avenue-encampment-scattering-unsheltered-people-throughout-downtown/
“Downtown Sweep Highlights Urgency of Resolving Seattle’s Other “Top-Priority Encampment,” Woodland Park” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola: https://publicola.com/2022/03/16/downtown-sweep-highlights-urgency-of-resolving-seattles-other-top-priority-encampment-woodland-park/
“City Attorney’s Office Introduces Latest Initiative to Target “High Utilizers” of the Criminal Justice System” by Paul Kiefer from PubliCola: https://publicola.com/2022/03/15/city-attorneys-office-introduces-latest-initiative-to-target-so-called-high-utilizers-of-the-criminal-justice-system/
“Harrell postpones Seattle police plan to crack down on ‘disorderly conduct’ at Third Avenue bus stops” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/harrell-postpones-seattle-police-plan-to-crack-down-on-disorderly-conduct-at-third-avenue-bus-stops/
“Cigarettes and Fentanyl: All Aboard” by Nathan Vass from NathanVass.com: http://www.nathanvass.com/blog/cigarettes-and-fentanyl-all-aboard
“Some Seattle-area concrete drivers return to work, others await go-ahead from employer” by Nick Bowman from MyNorthwest: https://mynorthwest.com/3398180/seattle-concrete-drivers-return-others-await-employer/
“Concrete strike continues in King County as union workers who offered to return didn't show” by KING 5 Staff & Adel Toay from KING 5: https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/concrete-strike-king-county-union-workers-no-show/281-f14d167c-c88c-44db-91c8-591171124209
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. For transcripts and resources referenced in this show, you can visit officialhacksandwonks.com and reference our episode notes. Today we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome to the program for the first time, today's co-host: criminal defense attorney, abolitionist, and activist Nicole Thomas-Kennedy. Hey.
[00:00:55] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: Hello. Thanks for having me - and this is the second time I've been on - must have been so memorable that first time.
[00:01:01] Crystal Fincher: No, this is your first time as a co-host on the Week In Review. Yes, we did an interview last time, which was very good and incredible. And a number of people were like, well, we see who you want to win. And it's just like, look, if she happens to be making great and salient points, it's not my fault. But yes, just really, really excited to have you here on the Week In Review.
[00:01:28] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: I'm excited to be here. Thank you.
[00:01:30] Crystal Fincher: Well, and so the first thing that we have coming out of the gate was one thing I wanted to talk about - coming out of the end of the legislative session - we talked last week and broke down a number of bills. The Stranger this week had a great article that we'll put in our episode notes that also further broke down what was great about the legislative session, what was disappointing, and how we can move forward.
And then Matt Baume also had another article talking about the failure of bills that would have mandated more density, specifically near transit, that would've helped address the affordability crisis that we have here in the state. And I thought it was very good - it was focused on, hey, what needs to happen moving forward to actually succeed in passing bills that require more density statewide? In that, he talked about the AWC, Association of Washington Cities, being a vocal opponent. They are a powerful lobby in the State of Washington. Their purpose, they say, is to represent the over 200 cities in the state. And their position largely was - it's really important to have local control in these and the one-size-fits-all solution that would come from the state just may not be right for our communities, so therefore we need to do nothing. The challenge in that is that most cities have not moved forward on doing anything. As you look at this issue, Nicole, what do you see as being the barriers and, I guess, the opportunities for moving forward successfully?
[00:03:16] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: I think that when I look at this, first I think it's funny that there is a coalition of all these cities that are all saying the same thing - we want local control - that seems to be the only thing that they agree on. But I think that on a state level, there needs to be a floor created for affordable housing and density, and that's really all we were talking about for the most part with these bills. It wasn't any incredibly specific directions that each city has to take on a certain timeline on a certain budget - anything like that. It was about just creating a floor of affordable, dense housing that is needed in pretty much every community.
And I think that what I heard a lot in the last year was that - the reverse of there needs to be local control - which was now we have municipalities competing against each other for who can do the least. Seattle is - Sara Nelson and other people are calling out other cities for not doing their part and spending their money on addressing the crisis. And it seems to be like a race to the bottom in terms of who can spend the least. And because the idea, I think, is that if you build services, if you build affordable housing, people will move into them. And why do that when you can concentrate a lot of the unsheltered population in one place that provides the minimum to keep people alive? And that's what I see going on.
[00:04:59] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and definitely a resistance to people who are defined as others and outsiders from even being able to buy into communities. It was really interesting in this article - there were representatives from cities across the state, from Port Orchard to Tacoma to University Place, and a number of them were leaders within AWC and talked about - we need local control, we are all very different. But one very consistent thread in these is that the median home price in most of these areas has doubled. This housing crisis is not just a crisis in major municipalities. It is a crisis across the board in areas that were affordable - that people used to consider being affordable and that people could buy into and still work in a major area where jobs are concentrated. And still live, even with a commute unfortunately - that it was possible to buy a home there with a median income. It is no longer the case in many of these places. And sometimes, like one of these examples in Port Orchard, they touted - well, we built new homes. Well, yeah, those are half million dollar plus homes adjacent to a golf course. If we're concentrating on making sure cities are accessible to people across the board and that you don't have to be rich and that we aren't displacing people outside of cities and just gentrifying them, then we have to have a solution across the board.
Also, interestingly, the National League of Cities, which the Association of Washington Cities is a member of, had a 2019 report that said, "While local control is often at the heart of policies that accelerate progress, there are examples, particularly in the affordable housing policy arena in which state policy is needed." To your point, there has to be a floor. We have to establish a minimum boundary. Cities can determine the right way that they're all going to get there, but what we can't do - what is not sustainable, we're already paying the price for - is continued inaction while just spouting excuses like, well, it's not local control, therefore it's nothing.
I would love to see leaders within the legislature say, "Well, you say you want local control? This wasn't successful this session. You now have this coming year to address this within your own cities. If you do, we can find a way to create legislation that respects what you've done." And more than likely if you're taking meaningful action, the floor is going to be below where you set it. But it's not going to be an option to continue to not take action next session and further on in the future. I would love to hear that from legislative leadership and leaders across the state - it just should not be an option. We have to make cities and housing affordable and accessible for people to live in, or else we're going to make our homelessness problem worse, we're going to make our displacement problem worse, we're not going to have people available to fill jobs that are necessary within cities. This is a critical economic development issue just in addition to a housing and social issue. So I hope we address that. Go ahead.
[00:08:31] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: Oh, I was just going to say too that I really like how you talked about these are communities that used to be affordable. When we talk about Port Orchard - my in-laws live in Port Orchard, and so when they bought their home, it was very affordable and the amount of money it appreciated to was pretty astronomical. And so when we're resisting building affordable housing - and affordable really is - we're talking about homes that are less than half a million dollars, which is just a wild concept that that's where we are with the average home prices in an area. It wasn't always like that. So the idea that these - the people that are already there should be able to stay with this huge, expensive appreciation that they have in their home value, but then not let anybody else in that is going to be coming in at the same level that they came in at. And unfortunately they're not going to be able to afford - they're going to have to have less in terms of space and in terms of all of those things. And so it's interesting to me to want to keep out the same people that are essentially already there, I guess.
[00:09:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it absolutely is that issue. And then as I look at this, it's like the people who are in housing whose housing has appreciated and who are resistant to any kind of acceptance of other people in their communities - we're talking about their kids, we're talking about their employees, we're talking about their students. And again, people talk about, well, I can't find anyone to fill this position in my company. We can't find people. No one wants to work. But is it that no one wants to work? Or is it that you're now forcing people who can't live and work in the same community, and maybe the compensation doesn't work for someone who has to commute 45 minutes each way and drop off their kids beforehand and pick them up after? It just isn't tenable for so many reasons.
I feel like we leave housing and affordability out of economic discussions and it's just so critical and a big part of those two. So I hope that we see significant action, and that candidates are talking about this on the campaign trail, and our leadership is making it clear in both the House and the Senate - that this is something that needs to be acted on and will be acted on next session, and that cities are on notice that they need to move in the right direction.
[00:11:19] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: Yes, I agree. Yes. That needs to happen. And I think there needs to be some - maybe more clear calling out of what is actually happening. If municipalities are saying, oh, we want to sit down, we want to sit down, we want to talk, we want to talk - but then they're not asking for any more talks and they're not proposing anything of their own. I think it's maybe time to call a spade a spade and say, are you really interested in solving this problem, or are you really just kicking the can down the road?
[00:11:47] Crystal Fincher: Exactly. Well, the legislative session did recently conclude, and that means that now we have a number of legislators who are kicking off their re-election campaigns and starting in earnest. One thing I don't know if everyone who listens is aware of is that - while our legislators are in office, they can't actually raise money, so they can't do a major element of campaigning. There is a prohibition against doing that, also for certain employees of the state. So once session concludes, they're all trying to catch up to people who have already been running and doing that. And so a lot of them are - people are receiving a lot more emails from their representatives and appeals for donations - that's happening now.
And I just wanted to do a quick little rundown of where there are open seats. There are a number of representatives who are retiring or moving onto different positions, some in the House are running for Senate seats - but that is leaving some positions open that are now contested by several different people. The 22nd Legislative District in Thurston County - having Beth Doglio and Laurie Dolan who are Democrats, and Loretta Byrnes running for those - that's Position 1 there. 30th Legislative District in Federal Way, where Jesse Johnson has decided not to run for re-election - we have Kristine Reeves, who's filed to run, Leandra Craft, Lynn French, Ryan Odell and Ashli Raye Tagoai, I think it is, and Janis Clark.
And then in the 36 District in Seattle, where Reuven Carlyle decided not to run and then Noel Frame decided to run for Reuven Carlyle Senate seat, leaving that House seat vacant - there's Julia Reed, Jeffrey Manson, Elizabeth Tyler Crone, Nicole Gomez, and Waylon Robert. And in the 46th District - and just a reminder, I am working with Melissa Taylor - there is Melissa Taylor, Lelach Rave, Nancy Connolly, Darya Farivar, and Nina Martinez who have filed for that seat. That's in north Seattle, northeast Seattle.
47th Legislative District, which is eastern Kent, Covington, Maple Valley area, where Pat Sullivan is no longer running, he's not going to be running for re-election - there's Carmen Goers, Kyle Lyebyedyev, Jessie Ramsey, and Satwinder Kaur, who is a Kent City Councilmember. And then King County Prosecuting Attorney is an open seat because Dan Satterberg is not running for re-election - and so there's Stephan Thomas, Leesa Manion, and Jim Ferrell who are running for that seat.
So there is a lot to come - we're certainly going to be having conversations with several of these candidates, but running these campaigns are getting off in earnest now - and you'll be hearing lots and seeing lots, and the end of the legislative session is a big turning point in campaign season with another big milestone coming up. There are lots of people who can file to run and you can start your campaign committee in May - in mid-May is where people officially declare that they're running for a specific seat - and that will determine who actually appears on your ballot. And so that'll be the final say on who is running for what, so people in the interim can potentially switch positions they're running for, choose not to run - lots of choices and paths that this can go down. As you're looking at this crew, does anything just come to mind for you? Or you've run a campaign - a big campaign citywide before - what do see just ahead for these candidates and for voters who are evaluating them?
[00:15:59] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: I mean, I see some candidates that I think are exciting - I also love Melissa Taylor. I used to work on the other side of Leandra Craft - I think she's smart and knows what's going on. So I think I'm seeing some good candidates. Campaigning at that level is different because there just has to be so much fundraising done, whereas in the City, we're so lucky that we don't have to spend all of our time doing that. I just - I wish everyone the best because - oh yeah, oh, Nicole Gomez too. There's some people to be really excited about, I think, and so that's great. I just wish everyone the best. I hope everyone's taking good care of themselves - that's what I think when I see this list.
[00:16:45] Crystal Fincher: Running for office is a very, very tough thing. It's not fun - you're putting yourself out there to be scrutinized - people do not always consider the human when they are communicating with or about candidates. And they are humans - even when we disagree with them, they're humans. I do think, as candidates are kicking off their campaigns, certainly fundraising is a big deal in the City of Seattle - with City races, there are Democracy Vouchers where every resident gets money from the City that they can donate to the candidate of their choice. That is not the case in these campaigns this year - they have to raise all the money they need. And campaigns do take money because unfortunately there is not broad media coverage, and getting your message out to most voters requires communicating directly with them. And so whether it's knocking on their door, giving them a call - which still takes resources - and usually also involves communicating with them via mail or online or on TV - just a lot of different mediums there.
And then people are also focusing on endorsements - especially early on, people are trying to figure out - what do these candidates stand for, what have they been involved with, and how have they worked before in the past, what is their history? And sometimes endorsements can be revealing and highlight what that candidate prioritizes, who is in their corner, what kind of issues they'll be strong on and a leading a advocate for - not simply a vote. So lots of that happening right now, and certainly just hope for the best and hope they are successful in getting their messages out. It is an interesting time and campaigns are kicking off once again.
I did want to pivot to a number of news items in the City of Seattle surrounding public safety - first being the issue of sweeps of a number of encampments. And so we had a 4th Avenue encampment sweep, which scattered a bunch of unsheltered folks. There's probably other sweeps to come soon, and the issue of another encampment that has been viewed as a top priority at Woodland Park. As you look at what's going on with these sweeps, what do you see as far as what's happening?
[00:19:33] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: What I see is the huge amount of disconnect between what the public thinks is happening and what is actually happening - and that's just such a huge disservice to everyone. I know that there's a narrative out there that people are refusing services and they're refusing shelter. And I guess the idea is that some people are camping out in the cold and rain, because that's preferable somehow to be sheltered. And that's not what the case is - we don't have enough places for people to live that they can afford to live in. We don't have the services that are needed to stop this from continuing to happen.
Also, the thing is - it really just moves the problem around. There's nothing really - it will clear one area of sidewalk for a certain period of time, but all it does is move things around. And the more people are destabilized, who are already barely, are clinging to stability and security in the most tenuous way possible - are then pushed around and have all the belongings they need to survive thrown away - because that's what we saw in the downtown sweep is - it was different than some of the other sweeps in that they didn't really offer services, they didn't offer anything. There's different timelines that they went by because they called the tents downtown an obstruction, a sidewalk obstruction, which means that they're - all of the things that they're supposed to do during the sweep, they didn't have to do any of that. And they didn't. And so we just see people's belongings being thrown away, tents thrown away.
And I think what's also missing from the narrative around these sweeps is just how much stress that puts on service providers. I talk to a lot of people and they say, well, the Navigation Center is just up the street and I'm like, how much do you think that they can handle? Because as a public defender, something that I saw often was people being displaced by going to jail. That means when they get out, they have to get a new ID, a new EBT card, they have to go to DESC and see if they can get a tent and a sleeping bag - because there's things that people need in order to survive. And people don't just evaporate after a sweep, they are still existing.
And also my partner has an office in Pioneer Square and he watched the 4th Avenue sweep, and he's seen a lot of sweeps around . That area. And he says, it's just really hard to watch people who are barely hanging on become so dysregulated by the horror of what is actually happening to them. And he said he would see people huddled together in alleyways trying to get away from the police - it's just a really horrifying scene that doesn't - it really truly does not solve any problem other than that one piece of sidewalk for a little bit of time. And so we're spending millions and millions of dollars to essentially make this problem worse. We move it around and make it worse. And so, I get that people don't want to see this anymore, but if that's what they want, then we're going to have to take some steps towards solutions and sweeps just aren't it at all.
[00:23:04] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. You raised so many good points - it's absolutely correct. The bottom line is the actions that we're taking are not moving people into shelter and permanent housing. It is not an ideal solution to have people on sidewalks and have people living on streets. But when people don't have a home to go to and they don't have anywhere else to go, that is the option. That is the option. Unless we just expect people to die, we can't jail our way out of the problem. There certainly is a contingent of people who are just like, well, they shouldn't be on the sidewalk and that should be illegal and that's an obstruction and it's bad, and they should be arrested and they're probably criminals anyway and they're causing problems and creating crime. When the reality is people who are unsheltered are actually many times more likely to be victims of crime. They're a very vulnerable population and that's all just factless propaganda that we're hearing otherwise.
But our services are not set up to meet the needs that actually exist, and time after time - when we listen and we hear things like they were offered shelter and they refused, we really do have to dig a little bit deeper and think about what were they offered? So many times what they were offered does not actually accommodate the needs that they have - if they have a partner, if they have a dog - those people that they have relied on that again, because they're in such a vulnerable position and because they are so exposed to the likelihood of having crime committed against them, having people that they can count on who help to look out for you, that help to protect your belongings - is essential to survival. And a lot of times we're asking them to give that up for a night in a shelter, for a week in a shelter. It's not even like they have the opportunity to transition in a permanent way and okay, maybe it's going to be okay. That stay in the shelter could be absolutely destabilizing for them and could tear apart the only thing that is keeping them safe and warm and alive.
And so we just have to get really serious about this. I think Marc Dones has talked a lot about this issue and that we have to get real about - when we see such high "refusal rates", which can just be a service didn't fit. And when we see high rates of people being referred to services and then not showing up or following through, there's a reason for that. And if we want to get to the root cause of this issue and if we want to get people off of our sidewalks, which I think everybody wants, then we have to actually address the issues there and meet the needs that exist, not the ones that - they have to be solutions that meet the needs that they're identifying that they have, not what we think they should have, not what we think they deserve, not what we think is right or good or moral or all of that stuff. If we aren't addressing the things that they say will, hey, yes, that is something that I could do to move forward to get off the streets, then we're just moving people around to different areas.
And again, a sweep is just moving people off of a block - the City and the County will acknowledge, have acknowledged - that no, it's not solving the issue of homelessness, it's moving them off of a block. I think another missing part of this conversation is that we seem to be prioritizing the needs and wants of downtown moneyed interests and not those of the rest of the community. We're perfectly fine spending tons of money - allocating tons of time and officer resources, City resources - to clear a block here and there at the behest of the Downtown Seattle Association, or the Chamber, or a business owner who's been loud and vocal, but we're actually not doing the same thing in other neighborhoods where just regular people are living.
In fact, we're displacing the problems that existed in the downtown area to other communities - freely admitting it and saying, hey, we just spent the money that we could have spent to house people - which is the biggest problem of homelessness is people lacking houses - and we're treating this like a criminal solution and basically putting the problem into your lap now. And doing a victory lap because this one block downtown is clear for now. It just does not make much sense to me. And I just feel like so many people are just like, well, you don't care and you want all the sidewalks to be like this. No, no one does. We just want to actually not keep kicking the can down the road and waste the money that we could be using to actually solve this problem.
[00:28:33] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: Absolutely - and I also think that there's - I don't really understand why there is so much comfort in subsidizing downtown businesses using all the resources there to make sure that they can have what they want, but everybody else has to deal with the fallout and they just have to take it on. But like downtown - their sidewalks, everything - the City as a whole pays to subsidize clearing those blocks for them and for their businesses. And I don't understand why anyone is okay with that idea, especially because yes, we're not talking about solutions. And I think that if you're not talking about getting people housed, then you are just talking about moving the problem around.
And there's a lot of reasons why - you were talking about people might refuse services, but there's also - and they're very real. Like you said, there's a community aspect that is the only thing that's keeping a lot of people truly alive, truly safe, truly alive - the modicum of safety and life that they have. And that's not considered. And I think that it's a very convenient - to say, well, they refused services - but it's just like, well, did you give them a three-night hotel voucher where they can't take any of their belongings? And so therefore they know if I do this, then I'm going to be out again in three days and I'm not going to have any of the things that I need to survive. There's a lot more that goes into decisions about what services to accept and not, rather than just personal preference. And I think that's how it gets sold - is like, oh, well, you maybe don't like this, but that's what there is. And it's just - first of all, I think people should have choices. But second, we're talking about the difference between life and death.
And so the idea that, and this is what I would see in court all the time too, especially around issues like addiction or not having shelter is - well, if we just punish you harder, then you won't be like this anymore. I'm - this person lives under a bridge and is fighting for their life. I don't know how much lower we can take this - there's no point in making people who are suffering suffer more. I think there's this idea that they'll just suffer more and then they'll just stop - suffer more and then they'll magically have money to move into an apartment that costs twice as much as it did five years ago? That's this weird, magical thinking that is really, I guess, hypnotic on some level, but it's really pervasive. And we can see that it hasn't worked, so I don't really understand clinging to those notions.
But yeah, that's where we are. And it's incredibly - I saw a picture the other day of some bike officers at a sweep and there was 12 of them just in the picture - and if you think about median income for a sworn police officer for SPD, I think it's $163,000. So even just looking - if we just rounded to $150k - 12 officers at $150k in this picture - that's almost $2,000 an hour. And I'm sure that was only a small number of the officers that were there. So in addition to parks, in addition to all of the other services that may or may not be provided - we're spending gigantic amounts of money to make the problem worse. And that just doesn't make any sense.
If you want people off the sidewalk - I do too, this is horrible. Yeah, and I think there is this idea that if you say you don't like sweeps, then you must love people living in the street. And I think it's the complete opposite - you can be in favor of the sweeps, but you are not in favor of getting people off the street. You are in favor of getting people off your street temporarily. So it really - but I think it's really hard for people when the narrative is, oh, they're refusing services - as if people are being offered an apartment and they're saying, you know what - I really like it outside in the cold and rain. Yeah, it's hard, it's hard, there's - the media around this issue is really hard, making it really difficult for a lot of people.
[00:33:30] Crystal Fincher: I agree with that. Another thing that we saw this week was the City Attorney Office pivoting back to a strategy - another strategy that we've seen unveiled many times before - an initiative to target "high utilizers" of the criminal justice system. And so Ann Davison has identified - I think it was 118 individuals who they say are responsible, 118 "high utilizers" who "create a disproportionate impact on public safety in Seattle." And so there have been similar initiatives launched in 2012 and 2019. And you may have heard other terms like high-impact offenders, prolific offenders - but this is the same strategy that they're using there. These clearly were not successful programs in the past, but we are returning to them. And certainly this is something that has been championed by more conservative folks, by the "law and order crowd".
And we have varying opinions with this - there's a PubliCola article that goes over this - but King County Department of Public Defense Director, Anita Khandelwal, views the initiative as just repetition of a failed strategy, saying, "Over the last decade, the city has repeatedly announced similarly named initiatives that would focus more law enforcement resources on those already most policed as a strategy for addressing public safety. This is a tired strategy of arresting, prosecuting and jailing. It's expensive and clearly ineffective." Lisa Daugaard, the co-executive director of the Public Defender Association and co-founder of the LEAD diversion program, who we've talked about before - most recently supportive of the failed Compassion Seattle initiative - sees potential for success, saying the initiative is built on a solid foundation - addressing the needs of "high utilizers" on a case-by-case basis. She believes Davison could avoid the errors of past crackdowns by pushing her counterparts in city and county governments to expand programs like LEAD to accommodate a new surge in clients.
Also, Lisa admits that if LEAD took on all 118 of those people's clients, they would not have any more capacity for additional clients in the future. And again, it's important to note that it does not appear that Ann Davison has expressed at all that she has any interest in diverting these programs to LEAD, or any other diversion program that is focused on treating more root causes to prevent this recidivism and reoffense that has been a hallmark of just arresting and jailing people. We have to do different things in order to get a different result. What do you think about this?
[00:36:47] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: I think it's funny - the repackaging every year - Ann really sold herself as this - someone so opposite of what Pete Holmes did, but now she's - this is the same exact thing. And it really is just window dressing in my opinion. And the idea that we can spend more on law enforcement and it's going to help is so ridiculous. The one thing that the 118 people that were identified have in common is none of them have shelter.
[00:37:28] Crystal Fincher: Literally none?
[00:37:30] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: Right. Yeah. No, none of them do. They're all unsheltered. And so instead of spending this astronomical amount of money on more law enforcement, why don't we put money into housing? Because also when you look at the breakdown of the repeat crimes, it's usually low-level shoplifts and trespassing, which is just sleeping under an awning. And so how much of that could we just remove by getting people sheltered? And that seems to be the last solution. It's just - try everything else, except for providing shelter and services to people, which are so - it's so much less expensive to house someone and give them wraparound services - wraparound services like onsite case management, medication management, things like that - is so much less expensive than putting them in jail. And it's stable, right?
Because no matter how much you hate that someone sleeps under an awning or steals a sandwich, no matter how much you dislike that, the criminal justice system will always fail to provide a solution because it's a temporary thing. The maximum sentence on almost every misdemeanor is - well, the maximum sentence is either 90 days or 364 days. And with the way jail time works, everyone's going to be back out on the street in 9 months - that's the max. We cannot just think of jail as this permanent housing solution and permanent incapacitation solution for low-level misdemeanors that could be so - I don't want to say easily, because it's not easy - it's not getting people into affordable housing, we don't have any first of all. And it's not an easy solution, but it's the only one that actually makes any sense.
And I think that when we talk about LEAD or any of these other things, we're just putting more money where it doesn't belong. I don't think lawyers and cops should not be dealing with these situations. That's not where the money should go. The money should go to service providers, to housing, to professionals that deal with addiction or mental health issues - that's where the money needs to go and those are prioritized the least, and it's all about arrests and incarceration. And again, it's just like the sweeps - you're kicking the can - there's nothing about that that's going to solve the problem. And so no matter how many times someone gets arrested for these things, they're going to get out of jail. If it doesn't escalate into a felony and we're talking about the people that are these "high utilizers", or a couple years ago repeat offenders or prolific offenders, we're talking about a lot of misdemeanors. We're not talking about people with a bunch of murders or something like that.
[00:40:24] Crystal Fincher: Committing violent crime, assaults - that type of thing.
[00:40:27] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: Yeah, so if we're talking about this low-level stuff, there's - it's a completely inadequate response that sucks up all of the resources needed to actually combat the problem.
[00:40:39] Crystal Fincher: It does, and it is a real challenge. We have done this before, it has not worked. We keep spending resources on what has been proven to not work, while simultaneously demanding data that proves that doing anything else will completely solve this issue, and create a nirvana and just be the end-all and be-all, when that is actually not the standard that we're applying with our humongous expenditure of resources.
And just another reminder that jail is really expensive. It costs a whole lot of money. The criminal, just our entire criminal legal system is a really, really costly system. So we do have a lot of resources available - we continue to make choices to spend them on lawyers, on jailing people, on all of the people and buildings and apparatus to support that. And when we actually have tons of data that that does not fix this problem - in fact, it is likely to make it worse. And so if we are focused on data-driven approaches, that is what is clearly being indicated - what we have a long track record locally that we can draw on that proves that, but certainly also looking nationally - so much data to back that up. We will have to see.
The last thing I wanted to talk about was a story that came out this week - David Kroman wrote about it in the Times - with Harrell postponing Seattle Police Department's plan to crack down on disorderly conduct at Third Avenue bus stops. The police department was looking at using the City's criminal code regulating disorderly conduct on buses - things like smoking, playing loud music, littering, drinking alcohol, "loud raucous and harassing behavior" and other conduct that is inconsistent with the intended use and purpose of the transit facility, transit station or transit vehicle. These have often not been cited.
We will put it in the episode notes - there's actually an article I need to track down by a bus driver that I thought was really thoughtful. And it does seem like it is a fact that there is more disruptive activity happening on buses than there was before. This bus driver was thoughtful and like, yeah, this is happening - and also there are lots of reasons why it's happening, and there are lots of reasons why taking a criminalizing approach may not be helpful, why taking a different kind of the law and order thing or just kicking people off buses may not be helpful. It's a complicated thing to solve. We do need to acknowledge that driver safety is important, that rider safety is important, but also have the lens that if we want to address this problem - again, like the conversation we just had - simply arresting and jailing someone actually doesn't fix and solve the problem. A lot of times this is a result and a symptom of failures in so many other places of people not having access to mental health treatment that they need, of substance use disorder treatment that they need, public health problems that we actually don't have those facilities for. What is your view on this, and on Mayor Harrell's decision to actually step in and postpone it?
[00:44:34] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: I think it's interesting because again, like as we already talked about, it's not a solution. There's lots of reasons for why these things are happening and it's not because there's lax enforcement. First of all, there is enforcement on buses - I've had many bus cases myself and there is some degree of enforcement. Is that something that's going to - or has that been working? Is it going to continue to work? Is the scope of the problem in a lack of enforcement? And it doesn't really seem to be. Like you said, there's lots of reasons that these things are happening. And when we're talking about mental health, addiction, housing - all of these things - addressing these things are going to help with those issues, but that's not what we put money towards. We just keep throwing it at this system that is not working.
It's interesting to me that it was walked back - they're putting that on pause. And I wonder is that because they realize - oh, that's actually not going to make that much of a difference - but there's also the fact that buses and bus shelters are not under the City's jurisdiction. Those are county issues, so maybe that was not known - I don't know - beforehand. But when the City talks about cracking down on things going on on the buses, they don't have the jurisdiction to do that. So that could be one reason why it got walked back as well.
[00:46:10] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. That's really interesting because - very clearly talking about enforcing things on buses - which yes, there is a jurisdiction issue there - but it also looks like they were planning to take action within 25 feet of transit stops. Is that defined as - technically the stop facility - or is there, I guess that's a really technical and wonky question, but I could totally imagine, to your point, that there are jurisdictional questions.
[00:46:49] Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: Yeah, I don't know what that - I have not looked that up. No, I think that's under City jurisdiction - that would be under City jurisdiction. Yeah. Just not anything on a bus - I don't think would be. But yeah, I would have to look that up, but I do think that would be the City still. It just depends - there's different parts of the City, like when - I won't go into jurisdictional issues, because no one wants to talk about those things for long periods of time - but they don't have as much control. Let me just say - they don't have as much control over things going on on a bus as they think they do. If someone's committing a felony on the bus, then SPD could potentially get involved, but it's still - it's going to be prosecuted by the county. And if it's misdemeanors, the misdemeanors on a bus are also going to be prosecuted by the county, because of county - see, I could go on, it could be a really long time.
[00:47:47] Crystal Fincher: Well, I just learned something because I did not know that misdemeanors committed on a bus would be prosecuted by the county and not city. Very interesting - these discussions are very interesting. But I think overall we'll just keep our eyes peeled on it and continue to update on it.
Just another quick update in terms of the concrete workers strike - there was talk this week about some of them potentially returning to some job sites as a show of good faith and an attempt to lessen the impact on the greater community. That seems to have had mixed results and a mixed outcome where some talked about returning, others didn't. One particular company looked like workers were willing to return and the company was unwilling to let them work again. But again, we've seen city and county leaders say that they want a quick resolution and that this is impacting various projects around the county, but also workers need fair conditions. And the workers are saying, hey, they're asking us - when you consider inflation - to take a hit to our salary, to healthcare benefits, and to our pension - it's across the board. And companies saying, but we're technically offering more money than we did before and so it should all be good. And still not doing much to come to the table and participating in this activity - hoping that public pressure just forces the workers back and they can just ride out the storm and do nothing, and hope that public pressure does some negotiating on their behalf.
So we will continue to follow it - the county, we had talked about before, had tried to issue an RFP to other companies to try and work around this and have greater protections for unionization and worker conditions. And that - no one responded to that RFP actually, so we seem to just be in this position - and unless there is some specific call or pressure, it seems like - on the companies to negotiate in better faith and to move closer to the workers, it looks like we're going to be stuck in this position for quite some time. So we will continue to see how that unfolds.
And again, I thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on today, Friday, March 18th, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler, assistant producer Shannon Cheng, with assistance from Emma Mudd. And our wonderful co-host today is criminal defense attorney, abolitionist and activist, Nicole Thomas-Kennedy. You can find Nicole on Twitter @ntkallday, and you should be following Nicole. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcast - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced on the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.
Sean Goode and Rebecca Thornton from Choose 180 stop by to share how to transform systems of harm and injustice - by supporting young people impacted by them as well as their own staff in doing this work. They discuss a better world where neighborhoods are resourced, generative programs are co-created, and the humanity of those accused of causing harm is centered alongside the healing of those who are harmed. Such a world is not as far off as one may think, but does require the transfer of power to those closest to the pain and a long-enough runway to have lasting effects.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii, find Sean at @GraceNotGuilt, and Choose 180 at @ICHOOSE180
Resources
Choose 180: https://choose180.org/
“A King County nonprofit raised all staff salaries to $70,000 minimum. Will more organizations follow?” by Naomi Ishisaka from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/labor-shortage-or-living-wage-shortage-one-king-county-nonprofit-is-taking-a-different-approach/
"Disparities in Wealth by Race and Ethnicity in the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances" by Neil Bhutta, Andrew C. Chang, Lisa J. Dettling, and Joanne W. Hsu for FEDS Notes: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/disparities-in-wealth-by-race-and-ethnicity-in-the-2019-survey-of-consumer-finances-20200928.htm
“Closing the racial wealth gap requires heavy, progressive taxation of wealth” by Vanessa Williamson from The Brookings Institution: https://www.brookings.edu/research/closing-the-racial-wealth-gap-requires-heavy-progressive-taxation-of-wealth/
“The economic impact of closing the racial wealth gap” by Nick Noel, Duwain Pinder, Shelley Stewart, and Jason Wright from McKinsey & Company: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/the-economic-impact-of-closing-the-racial-wealth-gap
“An Unjust Burden: The Disparate Treatment of Black Americans in the Criminal Justice System” by Elizabeth Hinton, LeShae Henderson, and Cindy Reed for Vera Institute of Justice: https://www.vera.org/downloads/publications/for-the-record-unjust-burden-racial-disparities.pdf
“Prosecutor-funded program helps kids do a 180, avoid charges” by Sami Edge from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/prosecutor-funded-community-effort-helps-kids-do-a-180-on-jail-bound-route/
King County Prosecuting Attorney - Choose 180 Youth Program: https://kingcounty.gov/depts/prosecutor/youth-programs/choose-180.aspx
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I'm very excited to have joining us Sean Goode, the Executive Director of Choose 180, and Rebecca Thornton, who's the Office Manager and bookkeeper for Choose 180. Thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:00:50] Sean Goode: It's an honor to be here, Crystal. Thanks for the invitation.
[00:00:52] Rebecca Thornton: Thank you for having us.
[00:00:55] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. So as we get started here, I just want to open up with you talking about what Choose 180 does and what brought you both into this work. And we can start with you, Sean.
[00:01:09] Sean Goode: Yeah. Our organization exists to transform systems that cause harm, systems of injustice, and support the young people who've been impacted by those systems. And what that looks like is we partner intentionally with folks like prosecutors to co-create programming that exists outside of the traditional criminal legal system and alleviates the need for them to continue to prosecute young people.
So in practicality, it's a young person lives in a neighborhood that's overly policed, their behavior's criminalized, the police send that referral to the prosecutor - but because of our relationship with them, they get community instead of a criminal conviction. And for the young people who engage in our traditional programming, over 90% of the time, they don't return to the criminal legal system within 12 months of participating in our programming. And so that's an example of one of our many models of service, but all of them have a genesis point of partnering with systems to transform the way they administer justice and supporting young people as an outcome to help alleviate the harm that those systems cause.
My brother was incarcerated as a 13-year-old boy until he was a 21-year-old man and how he was stigmatized as a problem. And yet how, when he was released, saw me beginning to engage in some of those same problematic behaviors, but saw the possibility that lived within me and was able to call that out from a dark place and show me, by the way of his light, that there was something else that I could become.
[00:02:30] Crystal Fincher: And what brought you to this work, Rebecca?
[00:02:33] Rebecca Thornton: About six years ago, I was looking for just some way to donate my time, because I just felt I had survived so much and that was just a way I wanted to give back. And I stumbled upon what was the 180 Program at the time. And they were like, "Hey, do you want to come and share your story at one of our workshops?" And I agreed, and I just jumped right in, and I just kept coming back. And about maybe eight months in, Sean ended up coming on and I got to watch that whole process. And then the team started to grow. And then about two years ago now next month, I came on full time as the Office Manager and bookkeeper.
And I stayed with Choose 180 because of my lived experience with drugs specifically. I hold this core belief that especially young people should not be criminalized for their behavior because so much of it comes from the things that have happened to them in their lives and the circumstances in which they lived, because that's what happened to me. And I just want to give back in that way so that people don't have to take as long to turn their life around like I did.
[00:03:46] Crystal Fincher: You actually made news last year for something that we don't see often, and that was for deciding to make sure everyone at Choose 180 is making at least $70,000, who's there full-time, which is a huge part of a discussion that we're having just around paying people a living wage in the first place and making sure people who are around us that we work with can also afford to live within our communities. But also particularly in the nonprofit space, where, so often, we are used to hearing about thin budgets and even thinner salaries, and there's just not that much money to go around. And this is a pursuit that people get into, not for the money, but for serving the community. How did this conversation start within Choose 180? And how did you arrive at the place where you decided to say, "You know what, everyone deserves to have a fair wage and to have the ability to live where they're working."?
[00:04:47] Sean Goode: Yeah. Thanks for that question, Crystal. I think I want to start by saying we're fortunate to serve in a community where there's organizations like Collective Justice, Creative Justice, and Freedom Project, who have all done work around wage equity. And some of them have started the organization out flat, or paying already close to or living wage. And so we're fortunate to be able to have examples like that ahead of us that make the journey that we're traveling easier.
And fortunately, we had a couple of our team members speak up who were asking questions about, well, how does it work around here? How do we determine what people make? And how does one get a raise? And do we do things by merit? Do we do things by a degree? And what we didn't want to do is provide any one-off answer and fix one person's situation. We wanted to go about it in a way that addressed it holistically. We convened a committee from our board to assess our compensation philosophy, and they spent time interviewing our team members and listening to their voices. And then they brought their recommendations to me. And their recommendations were many. There were things like, how do we value lived experience? How do we value college degrees? How do we value time served at the organization?
But a throughline that was consistent was living wage. And I heard the report, I looked at the report, and I said, "Yeah, that sounds good, but we're at a nonprofit and we're already paying above market rate in many of these positions. So I don't know what more people want from me." And I thought the conversation was done there. I thought, at that point, I was finished and we could move on, but then we had to build a budget out for the next year. And as the story goes, one of our team members was working on their budget and I told them to dream big. And if we need to add to staff, consider what that might look like, which is where I always start budgeting - to think big. And she came back to me and said, "Well, if we're thinking about adding staff, I can't do that and not have our teammates who are currently here making less than a living wage." And then it became a back-and-forth conversation where I still didn't really get what it was I was being asked to do. And at the end of that conversation, she said, "Look, we work to support young people and their families in escaping the material conditions they're living in that are contributing to the harm that they've experienced. Could it be that we're resourcing our team to live in those same material conditions?" And that cut deep. And so -
[00:07:18] Crystal Fincher: That cut deep, didn't it?
[00:07:20] Sean Goode: Yeah. Yeah. And then I went to Rebecca, because she was in the office that day, and I tugged on her and I said, "Rebecca, do you ever think about buying a home for Maddie?" And Rebecca, you can go ahead and talk about what that was like for you.
[00:07:33] Rebecca Thornton: Well, I laughed at him. Maddie is my daughter - she's kind of the office kid, honestly. Everyone is just in love with her - she's eight. But Sean pulled me aside and he asked me if I was able to save money or if I had plans to ever buy a house, and I laughed at him. That was my first instinct because that's never been in my plans
[00:07:54] Crystal Fincher: From your end, as you're following this process, Rebecca, a lot of times we hear about this as employers and people who hire people and determine how much people get paid - we frequently hear this conversation from their perspective. But for someone who's working in that condition and you are not dictating what your salary is, but you're living there, and as you said, it was laughable to you that thinking about saving for a house, or anything like that, was a possibility. What was this conversation like as someone working for the organization?
[00:08:28] Rebecca Thornton: Well, I know a lot of my coworkers were of the stance of, "Yes, we deserve this. We're going to fight for this." And I was more of Sean's thinking. I'm just so used to making below a living wage that that's kind of all I knew and kind of a core belief of all I thought I deserved. So for this to be on the table, I didn't believe it. I was like, when it's in my bank account, then I might believe it. And it was also odd because here I am, a white person in a Black-led organization. Do I deserve to make that kind of money at the same time? I don't know. There's a lot of - it gets down to all the core beliefs I have in making sure that I know that I deserve that. And it comes - I didn't have a lot of education, and I'm working on my degree and things like that. It's just, it brought up a lot of emotions in me, honestly, more than I thought it would. And I'm glad I had stronger coworkers that could keep the faith in it for me because I don't know - I was a little more pessimistic about it, I feel.
[00:09:52] Crystal Fincher: But I think you get to the root of something that a lot of people face - if they're just used to something and you think this is just how it is and there's not really a possibility for it to get any better, you just kind of accept the conditions and go along with the flow. To me, it seems like there's such a synergy between conversations and beliefs that you are bringing into the community, and this conversation that you had within your organization, which is something I feel a lot of organizations need to do. And there is a tension between what they're saying their values are, what they're saying they're working for in the community, and what they're perpetuating through their practices and their budgets. We talk publicly - budgets are moral documents. They're also moral documents within nonprofit organizations and businesses.
So what got you to the point, Sean, where you were like, okay, this is something that we can make happen? And how did you work through that?
[00:10:50] Sean Goode: Hearing from Rebecca and another one of our co-laborers here - just, it hurt because I care deeply for our team. And then I had this moment of realization, Crystal, where I recognized the only thing getting in the way of this happening is me. And there's also holding attention of this opportunity to build wealth and I know very well, as a multiracial Black man, that the wealth gap between Black Americans and white Americans is 95 cents to the dollar. So for every nickel that Black Americans hold, white Americans hold 95 cents. One of the principal ways to close the wealth gap in our nation is through home ownership. If I am an employer that's largely employing Black and Brown people and not paying them a rate that allows them to build wealth, then I'm perpetuating a historical harm on the very people who I believe are entitled to benefit from the same system that they've suffered from for 400 plus years.
[00:11:58] Crystal Fincher: I think that is so important - appreciate you being transparent about the tensions. I think that a critical part of this conversation is acknowledging that those tensions exist, talking through how you work with it. And to your credit and to your team's credit, Rebecca, the willingness to say this is possible and, hey, we believe in better and we're going to stand in this belief while you catch up. And for you, Sean, we talk about empathy and compassion. Those things, to me, are only useful as verbs. And I believe to my core that that enables people to work more effectively, to carry the message more effectively, to intervene effectively, and those in the community to see, okay, you actually mean what you're saying. It's like a bridge to build trust. And so I do want to talk about this work.
And so in that context, how do you start conversations with people who start out with that belief - "Hey, someone does the crime, they do the time. And looks like that fixes the problem to me."
[00:13:01] Sean Goode: What I'd love to do is this - I'd love to start back and say, hey, let's talk about slave patrols. And then let's talk about abolition, which then led to vagrancy laws, which meant that Black folks could be criminalized for standing on street corners - being unemployed because they weren't employable because the white farmers, who were no longer enslaving them, wouldn't hire them unless they could be servants again - would then be arrested. And then when they are arrested, they would be leased out as convicts, which then put them back on the very same plantations that they were supposedly liberated from. I would love to be able to dive into the prison industrial complex and talk about how for-profit prisons have driven an industry and a practice towards incarcerating people. I would love to highlight the fact that there's more Black people incarcerated today than were ever enslaved at any point of time in our country.
I would love to talk about the disproportionate policing and how policing is focused in impoverished areas that are highly under-resourced and undersupported and frequently neglected, where there's not access to quality education, quality healthcare, quality schools. I would love to talk about the many depravities that are present in the places where young people aren't allowed to have behavior listened to before it's criminalized.
I would love to bring all those things to the forefront, but what I know to be true is most people who don't understand this reality, are too distant from that place that - for them, that seems like history and not present. And it's difficult for them to draw a throughline. Where I do believe we can start at is a simple conversation around cause and effect. If historically, policing behavior would lead to a decrease in behavior that causes harm, then we should be seeing, year over year, a decrease of the number of people who are incarcerated. We should be seeing a decrease in violent crime. We should be seeing a decrease in property crime. If these systems were preventative measures that were persuading people away from making these types of decisions, then after all these years, it should have had an impact that demonstrates that things are getting better in that regard.
Everything we look at would tell us otherwise. Either it doesn't work, or humanity is so inherently evil that no matter how much we police behavior, it'll never change. I don't believe that humanity is so inherently evil. In the work we do, the majority of the folks that we're supporting are people who are committing - whose behavior's being criminalized because they're living in poverty. If someone steals from the Goodwill, it's not because they're some sort of malicious criminal. If somebody's stealing from Target, it's not because they're looking to make some sort of substantial come-up off of what it is that they've taken. So as a result, it's upon us to begin to think outside of our traditional pathways and lean in with the lens of empathy and grace, and understand that we can't police our way out of poverty.
[00:16:13] Crystal Fincher: I couldn't agree more with every single thing that you just said. So with that conversation and people going, well, okay, yeah, we see that there were problems with what we've been doing, but I still don't see what the solution is. You're talking about all this compassion stuff, and you're talking about let's treat people better and not put them in prison. What is the answer that you have and the programs that you are working on that are okay, so what is that different thing?
[00:16:41] Sean Goode: The work that we do and the work that we do in community with others creates an off-ramp from the criminal legal system and an on-ramp into community where both the young person who is accused of causing harm is invited to be on a healing journey of accountability, and the person who was harmed is also made whole and invited to be on a journey where they're healing. And we've had terrific impact because we center the humanity of those that we're serving - and not a humanity that's absent of being accountable to what you've done, but a humanity that doesn't limit the person to what it is they've done and creates a pathway to what it is they can do, and then provides them with the resources they need to fully lean into that possibility.
[00:17:21] Crystal Fincher: Focusing on the stopgaps, what types of programs are there and how do they compare? Because a lot of people are still, I think, having challenges contextualizing - well, yeah, recidivism rates are high, but we see what happens when, okay, someone's arrested, they're sentenced, they go to prison, and then they come out. They see something happening and they're like, "Okay, that is something." It's not as visible to people yet - what the interventions are outside of the criminal legal system that are like, okay, this is the process of healing, this is the process of justice, this is how we work to prevent further harm from happening and also work on healing people who have been harmed - which, to your point, is usually everybody involved in the scenario. What do those look like? And what are those programs? What are those processes?
[00:18:21] Sean Goode: Yeah. They look like eviction moratoriums, which keep people housed and not living on the street. They look like the County buying up hotels in places that are inconvenient for some homeowners, but necessary for those who can't afford to live in a home. They look like investing in mental health services at a statewide level, which is something that we failed to do for a very long time in Washington. They look like re-examining our tax code and considering more ways to be able to raise the resources necessary to meet the needs for the collective us, instead of prioritizing the needs for those of us that have already established the foundation of wealth. They look like initiatives like Best Starts for Kids in our region that allow organizations adjacent to ours and like ours to be able to stand up innovative programs that can serve as a stopgap to alleviate some of the hurt and harm that's been caused.
They look like many things similar to what it is that I'm sharing. They look like - how do we make sure we get more farmers' markets and healthy foods into neighborhoods that haven't had access to them historically? How do we make sure that people who have access to those healthy foods have the time and space to prepare them because they're not on public transit hours a day going to and from work for a less-than-a-living-wage job and picking up their kids from childcare, and then finally getting home at an odd hour where it's cheaper to buy a Happy Meal than it is to make a meal? Right? These are all contributing factors to the spread of this disease of violence.
So it's so multifaceted, but also, if you're wondering and you're listening to this - well, that sounds ambitious. That sounds huge. That sounds like a wonderful utopian society, but how do we deal with what it is we're dealing with today? I'd say, just imagine for a moment, close your eyes and - picture the suburbs - picture places where you can walk to the grocery store, like a gentrified Columbia City, picture places where you have access to green spaces and parks and healthy foods. I know it seems like it's abstract when we put it in the context of underserved neighborhoods, but in neighborhoods where people are paying $1.5 and $1.8 million for houses that were initially purchased for a couple hundred thousand dollars because they were dilapidated in squalor because the areas were underinvested for decades - if we just take a minute and imagine, how do we make sure people have equal access to those type of services, then we wouldn't be having a conversation about violence at all. We'd have a conversation around how do we make sure that there's equitable distribution of services, equitable access to quality healthcare and quality foods and quality education.
This is not a profound innovation that we're talking about. It is a profound effort only in the context of the fact that we've historically neglected those that have suffered, hidden them away, and hope that they disappear, and as we all should eventually benefit from a system of capitalism. We are still here. We still persevere, but we could thrive if people saw our humanity and began to make sure we had living wages. I mean, this goes right back into the wage conversation that we began with. If organizations - I was reading a book about the economics in Black community and one of the things that it stood up was that the middle class of Black folks across the country is largely comprised of people who work in social services. So we are the ones who are serving those of us who are impacted, and simultaneously impacted because the majority of our jobs don't provide a living wage that allows us to build wealth to benefit from capitalism, to build up communities that aren't living in the conditions that are causing the harm that's leading to the crime that people are complaining about because they don't want that to be present in their neighborhood. And then where are we supposed to go?
[00:22:22] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And absolutely valid and another - so many of those conversations about - as people explain the difference between Columbia City and an area that has been underinvested and under-resourced for so long - we can talk about Skyway, we can talk about a lot of different areas - it really comes down to the value that people place in those communities. To your point, about most Black people in the middle class being in the - basically serving and helping others, and that our value or people's value being tied up into their labor for others. And if you are laboring, then you have some value - not too much, but some, we'll recognize some. And if you don't, then we don't just value you. These are ultimately investment decisions based on value judgements of who deserves what and who deserves how much. And we repeatedly see and have a lot of empirical evidence about the judgements that our society has made about who is deemed worthy and who is deemed unworthy just for existing. And who has to do all of these shows of worthiness and value and labor to be considered worthy. And who just kind of gets that - because they exist.
Now, kind of circling back around to Choose 180 - within Choose 180, you talked about earlier partnering with prosecutors, partnering within the system. Certainly, these are stopgaps and not the entire solution, but what do those partnerships, programs, interventions look like?
[00:24:12] Sean Goode: Yeah. It begins with a genuine effort to connect with the people who are generally at the forefront of perpetuating harm, right? So the work with the Prosecuting Attorney's Office in King County goes back to 2011 when Dan Satterberg, now outgoing King County Prosecutor, was engaged with Doug Wheeler, community leader, and said, "Look, we're failing our Black and Brown children. Can you help me?" Right? And because Dan reached out to Doug - together, they created what at that time was called the 180 Program with other community leaders, and stood up an alternative that's continually alleviated the need for juvenile prosecution in our region. It begins with a willingness of those who are holding power to understand that their ability to hold power isn't going to transform the harm. It's their ability to release that power and give it back to those that put them in power, and allow them to co-create solutions that then serve the needs of those who have been impacted the most.
And our existence is a manifestation of what is possible there, but it takes a lot of deconstructing of narratives. It takes a lot of trust building. It takes a lot of empathy and understanding, and it takes a lot of grace. Grace selectively applied is favoritism. And so what that means is we have to extend the same grace to prosecutors and law enforcement and court folks that we do to young people and families that we serve, because otherwise, we're just doing the same thing that law enforcement and court system and criminal legal system has done historically, which is prioritize people that they're preferential to while neglecting those that they don't care for.
[00:26:00] Crystal Fincher: As the community is looking at programs that are happening through Choose 180 and the diversions that you're doing, as you're working with people to help connect them to resources, to coach them in better ways, provide better examples, and make sure they have the tools and support to sustain a different direction permanently, you talked about your success with recidivism rates. In terms of people sitting back - okay, things are broken, okay, totally not ideal. All right. Great. You have these programs. All right. How are they working in comparison to the traditional system? How do we know what you are talking about is working any better?
[00:26:49] Sean Goode: Yeah. Well, Crystal, what I'm asking the community to do is give us the same runway that we've given the systems that have historically caused harm. Give us the same runway that we give the systems that historically cause harm. If we're only - we've been in practice for 10 years and have had great impact. Our systems of oppression have been in place for hundreds of years and have caused a ton of negative impact. How much of a runway do we get to prove that we can be successful? Do we get a year? Do we get two years? Do we get three years? Do we get four years maybe to stand something up for it to be proven wrong? How many iterations do we get to come up with, right? Are we allowed to have as many moments of reform - calls for reform - as law enforcement has in our nation. Historically year over year, do we get that same grace? That's what I'm asking for.
If you want to stand up an alternative that's going to help deconstruct years upon years of perpetuated harm, then it's going to take more than 24 to 36 months to do that. It's going to take more than 10 years. It's going to take a generation of commitments to innovative ideas that we don't run away with the first time that they don't have the impact that we're looking for, because candidly, Crystal, if we ran away from the criminal legal system every time someone was released to the community and caused harm again, then we wouldn't be using it today at all. We wouldn't be resourcing it today at all, but we do because we believe that that can be fixed and it can be made better. Well, I'm asking folks to carry that same conviction in the community-based alternatives that are being stood up by the people who are closest to the pain points. Just like when it came to our wage conversation as an organization, the folks who are closest to the pain point understood what they needed to be healthy and whole. In community, the people who are closest to the pain point know what they need to experience safety in their community. Why don't we begin to just stand up what it is that folks are asking for and see what happens, and give it a runway like we've given to these other antiquated systems?
[00:28:48] Crystal Fincher: I feel like that is a big thing that we're running into today - that we are sure we haven't had the best results, but we can change, we can fix it. While at the same time, demanding that community-based alternatives - one, present all the data that we need to see that this will fix all of the problems in order for us to consider investing in you at one-tenth of a percent that we invest in the rest of our criminal legal injustice system.
Within there - certainly, goodness, you give it a 50- or 60-year runway, the change that you could see, it's hard for me to envision that change. Because if you just look on the short term, better results when it comes to reoffense and recidivism at the 12-month mark and other month marks - immediate results that are, sure, not perfect, but certainly better than the existing traditional systems. What would you say makes you most optimistic about the work that you're doing? And with this, I would just say also, Rebecca, in this question, what makes you most optimistic about the work that you're doing and the changes that you're seeing throughout the programs that you have, and the people who you're working with in the community?
[00:30:16] Rebecca Thornton: Well, for me, I'm so excited that it's being talked about because it's something that I've always believed in, and I just never believed it was possible. Coming to Choose 180 and starting working full-time and being totally enmeshed into the programs and the people, I've started to look at things differently and looking at ideas differently. Things are possible if you can come together as a group and work for it and have that belief in it. You can make things happen. I've never seen that before. But I come from corporate America - there's no room for that there as well. It's been so cool to see - and that can be applied out in the community as well. If people can come together and they have the will - and like Sean said, the stamina - they can make stuff happen. But they need the tools to be able to do that as well, because I was out in the community on drugs years ago. I had no idea that change could happen for anyone. And I just think of how differently my life would've been had I had access to the things that could be possible in the 50 years that Sean is talking about.
Or the things that my daughter's going to be able to have access to is just so important. My daughter - we have what's like "a broken home." There's statistics and stigma in that, right? So I've worked very hard to make sure that she sees me work hard and surround her with good people and all of that. But at the same time, there's still things in the way there. There's still stigma, right? And I just want to make sure that she knows that anything is possible. And I feel like what we're doing at Choose 180 just shows that, and it's pretty powerful.
[00:32:15] Crystal Fincher: And what makes you most optimistic when you look at the work you're doing and the impact that you're having, Sean?
[00:32:23] Sean Goode: I think about - brief history lesson here for some folks who might be listening. In the 1700s in Boston, there was a smallpox outbreak and there's an enslaved African American man who had established - there was a tribal cure for smallpox, a practice. And he introduced it to his enslaver, but for five years, the people of Boston refused to listen to this cure for smallpox because it was coming from an enslaved African American, from a tribal custom, because they felt like it couldn't possibly be an answer that would come from an enslaved person. It couldn't possibly be an answer. We need the richness of our white dominant medical science to be able to solve for this. And hundreds of Bostonians died because of their failure to listen to this enslaved African American man. I find hope that as a country, over the past 300 years, that we may have evolved past the point of ignoring those who are bringing solutions from nontraditional spaces, and that we may now be at a position, 300 years later, to lean in and say, "Well, if you think you have the cure, let's go ahead and give it a shot, because quite possibly your way could save lives."
[00:33:59] Crystal Fincher: Amen. So I just thank you both for coming on this show, for sharing your experience and your journey and your wisdom, and just encourage people to continue to pay attention to Choose 180, get involved, support. And certainly at a neighborhood and community level, you can do these things where you're at, and that's actually the most powerful place you can activate and get involved. So please make sure that we don't just talk about Choose 180 and other organizations in the abstract, and this is what someone is doing over there, and this is what's possible over there. It is possible everywhere and exactly where you are. And help to be part of what makes that happen. Turn what's possible into what's happening. So with that, I just thank you once again for being here, and hope the listeners have a wonderful day.
I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcast - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
On today’s Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Pierce County Council Chair, Derek Young. They reflect on the triumphs and tragedies of this legislative session including a transformative transportation package, the failure to pass the climate and missing middle housing bills, rollbacks in police accountability, and a victory for legislative workers. Then they dive into the mega-city proposed in south Pierce County and the challenges unincorporated areas face from missing out on the investments that cities make.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Derek Young, at @DerekMYoung. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“WA Democrats agree on funding for $17B transportation package” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/wa-democrats-agree-on-funding-for-17b-transportation-package/
“Why Washington state's missing middle housing bill died” by Joshua McNichols from KOUW: https://www.kuow.org/stories/why-washington-state-s-missing-middle-housing-bill-died
“5 major things the Washington Legislature approved in 2022” by Melissa Santos from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/politics/2022/03/5-major-things-washington-legislature-approved-2022
“These clarifications to police accountability legislation will go into effect immediately” by Shauna Sowersby from The Olympian: https://www.theolympian.com/news/local/article259078253.html
“Legislation Will Allow Police to Use Force to Stop People from Fleeing” by Paul Kiefer from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/03/08/legislation-will-allow-police-to-use-force-to-stop-people-from-fleeing/
“How pro-worker bills fared in Olympia” by David Groves from the Stand: https://www.thestand.org/2022/03/how-pro-worker-bills-fared-in-olympia/
“‘Mega City’ proposed for south Pierce County” by Tony Overman from The News Tribune: https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article258930478.html
“Pierce County talks of investing in ‘dumping ground.’ Would forming a city there be better?” by Josephine Peterson from The News Tribune: https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article258752158.html#storylink=mainstage_card7
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program today's co-host, Pierce County Council Chair, Derek Young. Welcome.
[00:00:51] Derek Young: Thank you, Crystal. I've always, since I was a kid, wanted to be on almost-live and so I'm super thrilled to be here.
[00:00:59] Crystal Fincher: Well, we are almost-live each Friday, and well today is the morning after the end of the legislative session which concluded late last night. So just starting off with recognizing what happened late yesterday - the flurry of activity - what is most notable to you about this legislative session overall?
[00:01:20] Derek Young: So, I think two things. One, they've managed to pass what I consider a transformative transportation package - that's probably a play on words there that I didn't intend. And also, on the flip side, the failure to pass House Bill 1099, which was a bill basically telling local governments to deal with climate change in our comprehensive planning. There was obviously a lot of other good legislation that got passed, but those for me were the yin and the yang of the really, really great and the disappointments.
[00:02:06] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, so there in the transportation package, what made it so transformative?
[00:02:12] Derek Young: For me, it's two things. One is that it focused more on maintenance and restoration which is important, rather than building lots of new highways. I know there are advocates that will say that it still builds too many highway miles, but compared to previous packages, this is more tightly focused. But the bigger thing to me, and this is a critical issue, is that it invests in local transit for the first time in decades. And that's a big deal for communities like mine that have really struggled to rebuild our local transit networks. And I just couldn't be happier because it just hasn't happened in a long time. Part of that was because of, frankly, years of work by Representative Fey - who I'm super proud because he's from South Sound, so well done Jake. But also Marko Liias, who was new to the role in the Senate. So, grateful for their hard work.
[00:03:22] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, certainly. And Marko Liias, now the Senate Transportation Committee Chair after Steve Hobbs, the previous chair, was appointed to be Secretary of State after Kim Wyman left to serve in the federal government. So, I think you're absolutely right. A huge increase in the amount of funding for everyone who gets around in ways in addition to or aside from cars. A big increase, the biggest investment in that that we've seen so far. And in highway projects, I think there is broad agreement and understanding that maintenance is absolutely necessary and we're behind the ball on that and are moving, making progress.
There is some expansion, which in some ways is frustrating and just the urgency with which we need to move in the opposite direction is notable. But I'm hoping that with this understanding and concluding this expansion that we have in this package - moving forward, we focus much more on maintaining the road infrastructure that we have as opposed to expanding it. In there, you talked about local, transit investments. What kind of a difference will this make within local communities?
[00:04:45] Derek Young: So, this'll make sense to people on South Sound, but just to put a real bus wheels to the ground kind of thing - this will mean our four main trunk routes, literally Routes 1, 2, 3, and 4, we're clever that way. We literally named our top routes 1, 2, 3, and 4. And those will all now go to 15-minute headways. For folks in King County, that may sound like not such a big deal, but for those of us down here, that is a huge deal. And why it matters is that frequency is king when it comes to whether or not people choose to use transit or not. And so our major routes will now be able to move to that standard. The rest of our routes will not, so let's not get too carried away in terms of what this means, but that's a big step compared to - right now, we have one single route and that's Route 1 that is on 15-minute headways. And so that's a huge deal.
The other thing it does is invest in some capacity projects. So, for example, it puts $10 million towards our bus rapid transit project. We're slowly closing the remaining gap to finishing that and that'll be our first non-rail high-capacity transit route and that replaces Route 1 in Pierce County, most of Route 1. So, that will serve tens of thousands of people and it's also where we're planning lots and lots of high-density growth. So, this is going to be transit-oriented development for miles and miles in South Pierce County and I couldn't be happier.
[00:06:46] Crystal Fincher: Well, and you bring up growth - there were certainly a number of bills introduced to help effectively manage growth within the state and within our cities. One of those, the middle housing bill was not successful - we've talked about that before in this program - to better allow cities to absorb density within existing built areas and to help reduce the amount of sprawl. Another bill that was not successful, that you mentioned, HB 1099 failing - is really foundational in how we plan our communities. What was HB 1099 and what kind of difference would it have made?
[00:07:26] Derek Young: So the essence of the bill was basically that we add climate change as a required planning principle or planning element to our local comprehensive plans. For those that don't know about what comprehensive planning is about, this is all part of the Growth Management Act, and basically local governments have to plan for housing, transportation, infrastructure. And then from there, our schools plan from what they receive from those documents, same with fire departments, you name it. Everyone figures out how to build their local services based on that.
So, adding climate change to one of those documents makes it not only a requirement that we reduce our carbon footprint as a region as growth develops, but it also says that it's now a challengeable requirement. Basically that a third party could say, "You're not meeting your climate change goals. You're not planning for enough housing. You're not planning for enough transit. You're not planning for correct transportation, infrastructure, whatever." And that would make it basically incumbent on local governments to plan for denser, higher quality, more sustainable development. I thought we were there, to be honest with you. It was one of those things where everyone's saying, "Yes, I support this." And somehow it still didn't pass in the end.
[00:09:10] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it was a big challenge. And you talk about how important the Growth Management Act and the comprehensive planning process is. It really is the guide by which local communities build and grow, and provides the bounds within which people have to operate and setting those bounds is really important. And as decisions are made, to your point, if something falls outside of those bounds, it can be challenged and potentially stopped. It's the lens through which all of the local planning decisions are made. I think a lot of times people underestimate how foundational this is, and how much planning determines just about everything about how our communities grow and look and change - to how our just basic services are provided, water and sewer and all of that, how the road and transportation network develops, how schools and services are sited within communities. How your community looks is really shaped and dictated by this.
So, we're all facing the challenges of climate change. The effects we're already feeling and cities are faced with the responsibility for mitigating extreme heat, extreme cold, dealing with wildfire smoke, pollution and the effects of that, everything that we're dealing with. And so, to have this as a consideration in planning makes complete sense since this is a factor that we have to contend with. We know these cities are growing, cities have to plan for that growth. We have revenue projections, people have to plan within those revenue projections. We have climate change and people have to plan in consideration and in response to climate change.
And yeah, it did seem like we were here. It took a bit of a path coming out of the House. It did look like everyone was on board. Initially, when it came out, the word was it was weakened, led by Rep van de Wege to take out some of those references in climate change. Went over to the Senate, those were put back in. Gave people the feeling that there was a consensus and it could be done, went back to the House, indications were that it was going to pass. It seemed like there were the votes there to do it and it didn't. Very disappointing. And this is not something where you can kick the can down the road. What happens, I guess, what's the consequence of this happening this year, and for folks being like, "Well, it seems like we can get to this next year." Is that going to be helpful?
[00:12:03] Derek Young: Yeah. And this is the part - I wonder if legislators understand the consequences of this, because the largest counties in Washington are due to have our comprehensive plan updates - basically due by the end of 2023. We are starting our planning process right now, or excuse me, 2024, but we're starting that process now because the updates are a big deal. It takes a lot of work. These documents are hundreds of pages. And if we don't have that requirement in place before next year, it's not going to happen. So, for the bulk of the population of Washington, it will be another eight years before we have to respond to those requirements. Now, some of us are going to try to do it on our own - we're going to try to do the right thing, but it's a lot easier if we're all doing it as a collective effort.
And the example I'll give you is this - let's say you have a city that has decided to site tens of thousands of new jobs, but doesn't provide the housing for it. Well, all those people have to live somewhere, right? So they're going to move somewhere else. Well, that means they have to drive far out of their homes, back into the city, to get to their jobs. How many vehicle miles are we adding to our list? Transportation is our largest source of carbon emissions in Washington. How many hours does that take out of their lives, away from their communities, away from their families? And then on the other side of that as well is what are we doing to our local environment? The rubber on the road is literally our biggest source of pollution into Puget Sound. So, in terms of sustainability, there is nothing we could do more than to start planning with that climate model in mind.
I just think there's nothing that we could do more for future generations than to begin to plan with climate change in mind as a guiding principle because the worst thing that happens - let's say Derek is nuts, climate change isn't real, we're not causing it from carbon emissions, whatever. The worst thing that happens is that we improve public health, make Puget Sound cleaner, and we all save a lot of time to spend more time with our families and improve our quality of life. Okay, so that's good planning, right? So, even if we aren't worried about saving the world, we can at least make our lives a little bit better.
[00:15:06] Crystal Fincher: We certainly can. Big missed opportunity - to your point, especially with larger counties, the planning process has started. This involves every department, touches every element of local government, and is a thorough and comprehensive review from the bottom all the way to the top, which takes time and a lot of effort, a lot of employee time. This is not a short process where you're just editing an existing document and calling it a day, updating some dates. This is essentially a review and an evaluation of how every element of government operates and incorporating climate has an impact on how every element of government operates. And really being forced to contend with every decision that you make has an impact, positive or negative, on the climate. Having to take that into consideration and mitigate any negative consequences or avoid negative consequences is a big deal. Big missed opportunity.
There are several other things that happened. We'll be talking about them in shows to come, certainly. Melissa Santos wrote probably the first of many just recaps of what happened following the session last night. Some of the big headlines from the session - our ban on selling large capacity magazines for firearms, a big step forward in terms of gun safety and regulation that a lot of organizations have been lobbying for, for years. Certainly as we are facing increasing gun violence and the need to address that, this is viewed as a step in the right direction. There are people who are enthusiastically opposing it and saying it violates their Second Amendment rights, but I am certainly a person who, while not opposing firearm ownership, overall thinks that these kinds of regulations just make sense. And even if it doesn't solve every single one of the issues possible in this, reducing the amount and opportunity for gun violence is certainly a positive thing in my estimation.
There was a delay and a restructuring of Washington Cares, our long term care program. We've talked about that previously in the show, but they're looking at making some fixes to that, helping more people become eligible for that - some people who may have been left out. They said that they're exploring portability of the program for people who may leave the state, so certainly getting that in better condition.
There are some public safety measures that were changed. There were police accountability laws that were revisited. And so, last year the legislature approved new limits on police uses of force. There was vociferous, enthusiastic objections by many in the public safety community. Some of that was viewed to be not exactly relevant, but some was considered to be necessary and made in good faith and they said that they took steps to help clarify that. So, one bill helped to clarify that police are still allowed to use physical force to help transport people to mental health treatment, if they're in a mental health crisis. Another one allowed police to use physical force against people who tried to flee when they were stopped for questioning. And, again, the necessity of those changes was certainly up for debate, but the legislature decided to move forward with those. One that did not change was a bill that would have impacted how police are allowed to engage in chases. And so that law was not changed. Lots of advocates were heavily in favor of that and feeling that it didn't just revise or fix things, that it actually moved things backwards and expanded the situations where police could engage in police chases and basically lowered the threshold to engage in those situations.
Worker - staff collective bargaining bill passed. Started with - there was an original bill that died, another bill introduced that started with major issues, but changes were made to it that seemed to have addressed many of the changes that advocates felt were necessary and many wound up being in favor of that bill and considering that a success. Lots of stuff around there. Was there anything else in particular that you found notable this session?
[00:20:06] Derek Young: Yeah, I think it was important to clarify the use of force issue. And I use the term clarify intentionally because it turns out that when the legislature passed the reforms, there actually was no definition of force. So, what the legislature and what most people on the street would consider force, they're thinking violence, right? They're thinking, "I'm in a struggle with this person. I'm using some physical kind of act." Our local prosecutors and city attorneys interpreted that as anything that is literally touching and even going so far as the threat of restraint, ordering someone to stop.
That went too far because when you are beginning to try to understand a criminal scene, it is very rare that they have probable cause. Probable causes is basically, "I have evidence you've committed a crime." Usually you need a little time to sort something out. And I'm talking like I'm a law enforcement officer here, but that's the way things go. And so being able to detain someone and say, "Look, I need you to stay." And keep them from leaving the scene - that is an important thing. On the flip side, that doesn't mean that you should be using excessive force. And so, differentiating between those two, I think is really important. So, that to me was an important clarification. I get the impression that that's not - when the legislature passed the reforms that it did last year, I got the impression that that's not what they intended, and what we heard from them was, "We disagree, basically, on these interpretations." So it seemed to me that it was, "If this isn't your intention, please clarify it." And so they did. So, I thought that was critical.
Speaking as a former legislative staffer, I just want to say congratulations to them for finally gaining their rights and honestly never giving up. Because it was - how difficult must it be to demand your bosses, while they're in session, give you your rights while you're at your busiest, right? So, I was incredibly impressed by that. It's actually important for our democracy that we not have people that are paid poverty wages and treated unfairly doing the hard work that guides legislation. So, this is one of those things that most people in the public will never notice, but it turns out treating employees fairly and treating your staff fairly are good things. And so out of the things you mentioned, that was the one that I think will fly by most people and I just wanted to point it out as something that was a good, good thing. And I was happy to see them claw it back.
[00:23:46] Crystal Fincher: Very good thing. Very excited about it. We've talked about it on this program before. And to me, it was also an issue of, "Are Democrats living their values?" Lots of rhetoric about how important unions are to workers, how important workers' rights are. I sincerely believe that and it seems like if one does sincerely believe that, then they don't object to that when it comes to their own staff and their own circumstance. And saying, "Well, it's good for all those other workers, but not for mine." That's a really bad look. And it seemed like that was the message being conveyed when the legislation initially died, before it was brought back.
And, absolutely, kudos to those workers for taking collective action. They had a sickout. The legislature absolutely relies on those staffers. They are the ones doing the work and keeping everything running and nothing would progress or proceed without the very hard work of the staff there who are dedicated, who are making less money than they would be in many other circumstances - many of whom do want to contribute to our community and our democracy and to be in a position where they want the opportunity to have their grievances fairly addressed, especially in the context of previous grievances not necessarily being fairly addressed. This was something that they felt was necessary to keep people safe and healthy and protected in their work environment, and it did seem to be absolutely necessary. So, congratulations to Rep Riccelli, who is certainly a leader in getting this through and resurrecting it after it died, working to make the positive changes, listening to feedback to amend the bill and get it in the right place. So, very gratified to see that collective bargaining rights will be extended to legislative staffers. As we move forward - just talking about it, it's so great to have you on.
[00:26:01] Derek Young: Sorry. I was just going to call out one thing you mentioned just real quickly. It's not just the collective bargaining - that protection for the workers is so critical because how many times have we heard in the past where legislative employees have not been properly protected? That to me is one of the most critical aspects of this. Having basically a grievance process - that to me is super critical. So, it's overlooked as a part of this, everyone tends to think about salary and benefits, but having a process to protect those employees - that's huge.
[00:26:36] Crystal Fincher: Very huge. And I mean, we see examples throughout the state and a herd of examples with legislative staffers, where without a clear and effective grievance process, that mistreatment was allowed to flourish. And that people who were found to have treated their employees poorly or created a poor, unhealthy or toxic work environment are not meaningfully punished, dealt with, and employees were not meaningfully protected throughout the process. Many ended up in situations where there was high staff turnover, where there was no remedy, and so it basically forced employees out. Just really negative situations that now, hopefully, there will be a meaningful process to rectify those situations, keep employees protected, and help people who are spending a ton of time and effort and energy there to just be protected in all of those ways, and to have the opportunity to have a voice in their own work environment and in their own situation.
I did also want to talk about, and excited because you are the Pierce County Council Chair. And sometimes we are very King County focused here, but it is really important to understand what's happening throughout the state and in other counties. There's been lots of conversation in Pierce County and the Tacoma area, areas south, about how, especially unincorporated areas, are invested in. Looking at projections for growth, both jobs and population occurring in many of those unincorporated areas and conversations about, does it make sense to incorporate some of those areas into cities? How are investments going to be made to help prepare and absorb that growth? What is that situation currently in Pierce County?
[00:28:42] Derek Young: So, glad you asked because I will just start it by saying, we want these neighborhoods and communities to incorporate. It's actually something that we would encourage. It's actually unusual to have such a large, urban, unincorporated area. And it's certainly not what is intended by the Growth Management Act under the state. The Growth Management Act wants growth to happen in cities and not necessarily in counties. But for those of your listeners that are in King County, they may not be aware that if the urban unincorporated part of Pierce County south of Tacoma were to incorporate, it would be the second largest city in the entire state. It is a huge number of people, a couple 100,000, and we've been planning for a significant amount of growth that continue to happen there. It's already denser in most places than the city of Bellevue. So, these are large areas.
It also happened, I would say, rather haphazardly. There are historic decisions that were made, and this is the thing about local government and land use and transportation planning - the decisions you make today will echo for decades. And that's certainly the case in Pierce County. There were lots of mistakes where basically growth was just allowed to happen in a haphazard way. It looked, at one point, like we were going to pave our way to Mount Rainier, and that was not the best idea in the world. And if you look at how you lay out a transportation grid, get resources - water, sewer, so on, so forth - just not a great idea. But that's what happened and we have to deal with it now.
So, there is a fair amount of frustration as a result and the thing is that counties are not greatly equipped to handle that. We actually have very different tax structures than cities. We're only allowed to do certain things compared to cities. Just this one example, and this has been a constant frustration of mine, the multifamily tax exemption that basically encourages quality apartment building, so on, so forth, to get more housing - counties are prohibited from using that whereas cities have it. So, your community can look exactly like any other city, except the fact that you are living in an unincorporated area means that you're not eligible for that. Same is true of utility tax. We can't do business licensing the same way. We can't even require garbage collection. I'm not kidding. We can't -
[00:31:47] Crystal Fincher: I did not know that.
[00:31:48] Derek Young: Yeah, it's a weird, weird state rule. So, the point being that most of these areas belong in cities and whether or not they incorporate on their own - in each smaller community, most of them identify separately. There's a push by Representative Morgan to try to think about maybe incorporating one larger city and we're open to all ideas. There's been a few different efforts and they've each failed. Many years ago, there was a push to incorporate lots of cities. And so in the mid '90s, University Place, the city of Lakewood, Edgewood - they all incorporated at the same time. And since then, there's been a pretty big hole. We haven't seen any communities incorporate.
So, the other option is annexing to a city, and that's an even slower process because the existing city residents - they may not think the same way as the new residents. So, for example, in terms of city services, will it be a net benefit in terms of tax revenue or will it be a net drain on your existing revenue? So, that's something that they have to consider, but it's definitely something that we want to encourage, which sounds odd as the county - we want to be the local government. But counties are always going to be the regional government. If you look at King County, for example, nearly all the urban area is incorporated into a city. There are a couple pockets that are not. There are a couple areas that are on the fringe of the urban area, but for the most part, it's incorporated. And, by the way, City of Seattle - incorporate White Center, for God's sake. I mean, it's a little crazy that that hasn't happened yet. Or Burien. One of the two. Someone do it.
[00:33:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, yeah. It certainly makes sense. And to your point, county governments are usually viewed as the regional layer and are not the ideal body to handle just those day-to-day, on-the-ground things like cities do. Which creates the conversation like we're having in Parkway, Spanaway and Frederickson. Certainly in King County, talking about areas like Skyway and White Center being neglected, really feeling underinvested in because the typical investments that are made by cities and in the overwhelming amount of places in the county that are handled by cities, it just makes those kinds of issues fall to the back burner, oftentimes. Or just on the scale that the county operates, dedicating resources to one pocket or to areas that are very small in comparison to the county, but very meaningful to the people who are living there, is a tension that continues to exist.
So, I will definitely be following this carefully. In this package, it looks like there's $200,000 that Representative Morgan had dedicated to studying the feasibility of incorporating into a city for those areas. Whether or not the city solution is right, I do not know. Probably best for the people who are there to decide, and the feasibility study is probably going to be very helpful and useful for that, but there has to be a solution for how to manage these local areas that, to your point, are large areas, are dense and highly populated areas, are some of the most populated areas in the state, but are and have been historically underinvested. And now we're expecting them to absorb a lot of growth, which is not being absorbed into other incorporated areas and cities because we are enforcing that and we keep not moving forward on policies that would encourage that.
But if this is not managed effectively, then again, we fall into the trap of making housing more expensive, of siting jobs further and further away from where people live, making traffic worse, putting a strain and demand on our utilities and resources. Building housing where it doesn't currently exist is a very expensive thing for cities and communities to do - not just having to extend city infrastructure out there to serve it, but also to then have to maintain that for it's lifetime - is incredibly expensive and costs that are typically not captured anywhere within development. We're very bad at capturing those costs and really reflecting the true cost of building outside of areas that are already populated and that have housing, and that's what we're looking at and we better manage that better than we have before. The state may have not taken big steps in making that possible, but hopefully local communities will use the initiative to do that.
And with that, thank you so much for joining us today on March 11th - time is flying and now we're past the legislative session - March 11th, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler and assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, helped out by Emma Mudd. Our wonderful co-host today is Pierce County Council Chair, Derek Young. You can find Derek on Twitter and you should follow Derek on Twitter @DerekMYoung, D-E-R-E-K- M- Young. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, wherever else you get your podcast - I listen on the Overcast app - just type Hacks, I may not listen to Hacks & Wonks, but other podcasts. Anyway, just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in and we'll talk to you next time.
On this midweek show, Ryan Packer, senior reporter at The Urbanist, stops by to cover the ins and outs of the $16 billion Move Ahead Washington transportation package currently moving through the State Legislature. Ryan and Crystal talk about revenue for the transportation budget, including interstate drama over a proposed fuel export tax. They then jump into details of what the package funds over the next 16 years in terms of public transit, pedestrian safety, free transit for youth, and highway expansion.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal on Twitter at @finchfrii, and find Ryan at @typewriteralley
Resources
“Democrats Unveil Transformative ‘Move Ahead Washington’ Transportation Package” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/02/09/democrats-unveil-transformative-move-ahead-washington-transportation-package/
“Proposed tax on WA fuel exports scorned by neighboring states” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/proposed-tax-on-wa-fuel-exports-scorned-by-neighboring-states/
“Top House democrat proposes removing fuel export tax from transportation package” by KING5 Staff from KING5: https://www.king5.com/article/news/politics/state-politics/fuel-export-tax-washington-house-jake-fey/281-592bd977-3174-428d-8b67-d2626de361d8
“Washington House jettisons exported fuel tax proposal that angered neighboring states” by Tom Banse from Northwest News Network: https://www.opb.org/article/2022/03/02/washington-state-house-exported-fuel-tax-proposal-neighboring-states/
Interstate Bridge Replacement Program: https://www.interstatebridge.org/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I'd like to welcome Ryan Packer to the program, who's a senior reporter at The Urbanist focused on transportation through the lens of safety and climate. Their work also appears in Seattle Bike Blog and Bike Portland. And so, we're going to be talking about the transportation package today. There's a lot in it, and we all need to get around at some point or another, and whether we're in cars and mad about traffic, or how inconvenient it may be sometimes to get from Point A to Point B, or we're riding the bus or the train or walking or biking or in a wheelchair or using an assisted device; the design of our transportation system, from our sidewalks to our roads, to bike facilities, impact how we all get around and the quality of our communities and how our communities look. So, we definitely are excited to have this conversation today.
I just want to go over, before we get to this conversation, what is in this package, and we'll be talking about it in more detail. So, the transportation package that is currently being worked on and finalized is the Move Ahead Washington transportation package. It's a $16 billion proposal funding a suite of transportation projects intended to be completed over the next 16 years through 2038.
It significantly increases the amount of state funding allocated toward transit, walking, and biking investments. It funds fare-free transit for people under 18 years old, invests a $150 million in advancing high speed rail investments, and active transportation investments total nearly $1.3 billion - and active transportation being walking or rolling. There's $146 million in grants for cities to remake existing streets to create space for people to walk and roll via the Complete Streets investments - that's if we're talking about things like Aurora Avenue or in the Kent Valley, connectivity for bikes and walking throughout the corridors - things like that are what those are funding. $50 million would go to Connecting Communities grants, those right there.
Highway expansion projects received $4 billion, the largest expenditure being a $1 billion allocation to the Interstate Bridge Replacement project, which will expand I-5 and replace an aging bridge, but also expand it along a five-mile stretch on either side of the Oregon and Washington border.
Transit investments include $30 million for three Community Transit Swift line expansions: the Silver Line, Gold Line, and an extension of the existing Green Line. $8 million for the King County Metro RapidRide I Line project, specifically for the segment in Auburn. $7 million for upgrades to King County Metro's RapidRide H Line project in Burien along Ambaum Boulevard, and $5 million for electrification at King County Metro's South Base. Ferries receive $1.5 billion, that's sorely needed. Highway maintenance and preservation receives $3 billion, and fish barrier removal gets a $2.4 billion allocation.
That's a lot. We'll be talking about the details, but just wanted to tee that up to let you know what's in this package, and now we'll proceed with Ryan. Welcome.
[00:04:03] Ryan Packer: So great to be here.
[00:04:05] Crystal Fincher: If people are trying to inform themselves about transportation in the State of Washington, it is hard to do that without reading your work. You have some of the most comprehensive reporting and coverage in the state - consistently following meetings, whether it's Sound Transit, things happening in the legislature, locally. I have certainly been informed by your coverage for quite some time. It's an essential read, encourage everyone to make sure they're on it. What was your path to covering transportation?
[00:04:38] Ryan Packer: Well, I think ultimately it was trying to get around Seattle and realizing the barriers that are invisible and very visible when you're trying to do that. It was the path of starting with, why is a bike lane design like this? Why can't our streets look differently? And that just took me on a path to going down the rabbit hole as I usually - it took me down a path of going down the rabbit hole of figuring out all of the aspects of the transportation ecosystem in Washington, the commissions and boards, and all the levels of government that play a small part in how everyone gets around every single day.
[00:05:26] Crystal Fincher: It makes sense. There's a lot to it. And I read somewhere, I think it was a tweet sometime. They were like, "Nothing will radicalize you quicker than riding a bike as a form of transit." This is not an exaggeration - almost all of the people I know who bike regularly, especially those who are commuting, have been hit by a car before. Some extremely seriously injured, and some moderately injured. Really unsafe for people to be getting around in modes that are outside of cars, and a lot of work needing to be done in many areas to make our streets safe - for people who are walking, or rolling, or on their bikes, or getting to the bus stop in a safe way - is a challenging thing. And so, I appreciate your coverage on what has gone into the outcomes that we currently see, and what is going into the effort to hopefully change it, and what's holding those efforts back.
There's a lot of that being talked about right now at the state level. As we're talking about this, this is Wednesday, March 2nd - probably be hearing this a little later. But the transportation package is really taking shape, leading up to the end of the legislative session on March 10th. So, what is in this package? I guess, an overview of it, and then we can talk about, in more detail, the different sections of it.
[00:06:54] Ryan Packer: I think it helps to take a step back and think about what a transportation package is. It's a thing that I think exists in a lot of states, but in Washington it seems to get a lot of attention. But it's really a promise to build certain projects over a period of time. And what we always do in Washington is usually pair that with a raise in revenue. And so, you're passing a bill that raises revenue for the next 16 years in this case, which is the expected lifespan of this Move Ahead Washington package. And it's paired with a commitment by the legislature that, "This is what we're going to do with that money."
And so, this package is pretty different than a lot of the packages that have been passed by the legislature in the past, namely that a big component of it is the Climate Commitment Act, which the legislature passed in 2021. And so, that is expected to raise around a little bit more than $5 billion through the middle of 2037, basically. So, over the next 16 years. And the requirement in that law was actually that that money had to be spent on things that decarbonize transportation, reduce transportation emissions. And so, they can't actually build new roads or use that money for preservation and maintenance of existing highways. It's already been set aside for things like active transportation, electrifying the ferry fleet, transit. And so, they already had that money coming. It was set to come in whether they passed a package or not, but this solidifies what they're going to actually spend that on.
And then they come in and they add additional aspects to it. They have diverted $2 billion from the state's operating fund, which is a thing that hasn't really been done very much in the past. It's a pretty unprecedented diversion of money that could be spent on many other things in the budget. Traditionally, transportation projects have been paid for with transportation dollars, i.e., gas tax money, license fees, user fees as they're called. But this is an unprecedented diversion. Unlike when they usually do a transportation package and raise the gas tax - per the Washington State Constitution, all gas tax money has to be spent on highway purposes. But in this case, there's no such strings attached to the money. And so, that's a brief intro to sort of the revenue side.
Because the legislature decided, and I say the legislature - I should say, Senate Democrats and House Democrats decided that they were not going to raise gas prices, given all that's happening in the country right now, via a increase in our gas tax, our 49 cent gas tax. They instead developed a plan to modify our export credit system, which would essentially amount to a 6 cent per gallon export tax on all fuel that leaves the state. About 40% of the fuel that's refined at the five refineries in Washington State leaves and it's not, as they say, captured by the transportation system in a way that in-state gas taxes are. And so, this was framed as a way to capture that revenue. It was also framed as a way to mitigate the impacts from those five refineries: Anacortes, Tacoma, which have really real impacts.
[00:11:06] Crystal Fincher: And those are massive impacts. Certainly any conversation about addressing climate change in the long term, about reducing our carbon usage, has to involve those refineries, and at a minimum doing a better job of mitigating and fully accounting for the impact that they're all having, and mitigating that impact and hopefully working towards lessening that impact directly.
[00:11:36] Ryan Packer: And so, that's a compelling argument in favor of charging exports on fuel more since most of it leaves the state. The problem is that there wasn't really a compelling nexus shown between the expected $2 billion that we raise by that fuel export tax over 16 years, and what is being done to actually mitigate those impacts. And so, I feel like that was one obvious gap in the logic for the fuel export tax. 90% of the fuel used in Oregon comes from Washington. And so, that became a huge point of contention. The Governor of Oregon, Oregon legislature is very upset about this - essentially describing it as a defacto increase in their gas tax. I just want to note that any state with a gas tax that's at Washington's level or higher wouldn't have paid any fuel tax. So, Oregon could have actually raised their gas tax to the same level and kept all of the money from the export tax, but that wasn't very much discussed either.
And so, that was a lot of political pressure. Alaska, Idaho joined in on trying to pressure the House and Senate Democrats to remove that export tax. Last night, during their hours-long debate on the House floor, they ended up doing so. So, the House version of the bill which passed close to midnight last night didn't include it. It was replaced with a diversion from the Public Works Trust Fund, which does not really make a lot of people any more happy since that money is used to fund things like sewer and water projects and rural areas all around the state as a rotating loan program. And a lot of people, especially leaders in small cities and towns, are pretty unhappy about that swap and maybe would've preferred to keep the export tax.
[00:13:51] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, a really interesting conversation there. I think sometimes a lot of people think, "Oh, it's a rural area. There are small towns. Totally, they're going to be against that tax." But I think people underestimate how far behind a number of those smaller cities and towns are in that infrastructure maintenance and improvement needs. Some of them, like critical water infrastructure that they're dealing with, other items, and that's long been a point of discussion with cities to the legislature and rural areas and towns with the legislature. So, I certainly hope that that is addressed because we do need a solution that works for the entire state.
How has the conversation about gas taxes evolved to this point? I know previously the gas tax has been heavily relied on and thinking, "Well, this is the most appropriate method to fund all of our transportation needs. We're directly taxing a transportation item." But one of the things that's happening is as we are increasing reliance on electric vehicles, as more people continue to take transit around, there is less revenue coming from the gas tax because less gas is being used. So, that's a declining revenue stream in the long-term, not something that can be counted on to sustainably fund what we have. Has that been part of what's created the motivation to find alternative revenue structures like these other taxes?
[00:15:30] Ryan Packer: I think in part, it definitely has, but just last session, both the House and the Senate were poised to raise the gas tax - the House version by quite a lot. So, I really think that primarily the move away from the gas tax has been driven by the national conversation, in addition to, like I said, that revenue that's becoming available through the Climate Commitment Act. There's also money from the federal infrastructure bill that's in this as well, and some COVID relief dollars as well. And so, I think ultimately it's just a question of the fact that we don't have to raise gas taxes in an election year when we have this revenue available, particularly again from the general fund, which is seeing a big turnaround in revenue projections. The transportation sector is, and the gas tax projections, are actually not rebounding anywhere near as quickly as the revenue sources that feed the general fund.
[00:16:40] Crystal Fincher: In this negotiation, what do you see coming next? Does it look like this is in trouble? Does it look like the House version is going to prevail? Any ideas on what lies ahead?
[00:16:52] Ryan Packer: I think the export tax is likely dead. The Public Works Trust Fund being its replacement seems fairly certain at this point, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Senate Democrats try and find another source for that back filling. It's already going to leave a hole of around $500 million over that 16 years. And so with the House version having passed last night, they do have to go into conference and hash things out. But ultimately, I don't think there's going to be too many surprises before the end of the session next week, and most of the plan is now baked solid.
[00:17:38] Crystal Fincher: In terms of what this is actually funding, what does it fund? What are people getting out of this package?
[00:17:45] Ryan Packer: So, let's start with the Climate Commitment Act dollars I mentioned that have to go toward decarbonizing transportation. So, this is going to be the single largest infusion of dollars from the state level toward public transit in at least three decades. And so, that's pretty big for public transit advocates, people who like to get people onto transit, which I would put myself in that category. And so, the lion's share of that money is coming in the form of a new program called Transit Support Grants. Traditionally, the federal government and the state government haven't really funded the dollars to keep buses running. They often will give grants to bus companies, transit agencies to buy new buses or do a capital improvement that gives you a new transit corridor or that sort of thing; but they haven't really invested in the actual dollars to keep buses on the roads. And now we're at a point where the level of frequency of local bus service in Seattle is incredibly different than it is in Tacoma right now, with very few bus routes even running 15 minutes or better.
So, that has been the legacy of Tim Eyman. I know you talked a little bit about this in your interview with Derek Young, it was very enlightening in terms of the history of disinvestment in public transit - relying on these local dollars that not every community is able to raise. And so, this is going to balance that a little bit. Like I said, the state really hasn't done this at all. And so, the level of state support that Washington currently gives to transit agencies around the entire state is around $100 million a year - fluctuates a little bit, but that's all that they get from the state. And this represents, if you divide the number of years for the $1.4 billion in the Transit Support Grants by the 16 years it's expected to be, you're going to get around $90. So, essentially it's a doubling of state support for transit, which is pretty huge.
And it's especially going to be impactful for the smaller transit agencies. There's a stipulation in the bill that no agency can get over 35% of the grants. That's in order to prevent something like King County Metro - in 2019, King County Metro saw two out of every three bus rides in the entire state. And so, if you were going to divide it by ridership, King County would suck up all the money. And so, there's a lever that lets them only get 35% at max of the grants. Terry White, the GM of Metro, has said that they expect to get around $640 million over 16 years - that's about their operating budget for one year. But it's going to be a lot more for the smaller agencies.
So, they're expecting to spend around $1.2 billion on things like pedestrian safety programs, Safe Routes to Schools, Complete Streets programs, and some specific projects that the legislature actually called out - notably a $50 million expenditure, just the single largest earmark in the whole program to remake Aurora Avenue in Seattle, one of the most deadly streets in the entire City. And so, that's great to see. But like I said, most of that money is coming in the form of grants. So since 2005, Washington has had a program where cities and towns can apply for either Safe Routes to School program projects, or bike and pedestrian focused safety projects, usually in the $500,000-$1,000,000 range of cost, maybe a little bit more sometimes. Since 2005, the state has had about $250 million available for that. And this essentially should around double that over the next 16 years, depending on how much the legislature decides to actually allocate. So, around 55% of all the cities and towns in Washington State have never received one of these grants. So, only 45% of the cities in the entire state, and only around half of the counties have ever actually either been able to apply or actually received an award. So, this will essentially allow a lot more cities to be able to access that money.
[00:23:26] Crystal Fincher: What does this do for high speed rail?
[00:23:30] Ryan Packer: So, the high speed rail money in the package includes some money right up front to keep the project alive, and then it also includes $150 million set-aside to be able to access any federal grants that might come our way. That's obviously a long way from construction of any projects, but it would be a big step if we were able to access that and unlock any federal dollars that could be able to be used for the project. But we're still a long way from really seeing what that money is actually going to be used for.
[00:24:20] Crystal Fincher: Okay. And did I see that there is free transit for youth included in this bill?
[00:24:27] Ryan Packer: Yes. Good question. So, the free transit is tied to those transit service grants that I mentioned. And so, that's one condition of receiving any state operating subsidy for transit is you have to make your fares free for riders under 18. If you're already providing free transit through a school district, or I know Seattle currently pays for high schoolers and middle schoolers to get free ORCA cards, and it's going to be a trade off because that money's actually going to be going away because there's no fares to be paid that way. But in Seattle, for example, that could actually free up those dollars to be spent on transit anyway, because it's the City spending that money. And it's going to be including ferries, Amtrak Cascades, basically any public transit in the entire state is going to be fare-free to riders under 18. We don't quite know exactly how that's going to work yet - assuming free passes for specific groups.
[00:25:50] Crystal Fincher: So, now let's talk about highway expansion. What is going on in this project? How much is being invested in expanding highways, where's that going to be, and what is the conversation around it?
[00:26:03] Ryan Packer: So, the package is proposing to backfill a bunch of highway projects that had been passed in 2015, essentially because costs are going up and things are more expensive now - labor's more expensive, and also delays from COVID just made costs go up. And so, it's backfilling the Puget Sound Gateway projects, which are the extension of SR-167 and 509 down by Port of Tacoma and South King County. So, that's about $430 million that's getting added to that project. It depends how you feel about that project - I know a lot of business groups love that project, it's going to make getting to the ports a lot easier. The Port of Seattle, Port of Tacoma have been fully on board with that project, but it is creating a brand new highway. The last, I would say, highway that's going to bust through a urban area in central Puget Sound. So, it's not an insignificant impact.
It's going to backfill the 520 project, because that project also ran out of money, on the west end in Seattle. The problem with calling that a highway expansion is there's a lot of really great aspects to the project that include bike access. There's a new transit lane that's going to get you from South Lake Union straight to the 520 bridge. Those are all add-ons. So, it's how a highway project should be - is oriented also toward different modes. But the problem is that if you cut that, it's going to leave a highway project. And so, has been hard to describe how that money has gone to be used. But ultimately, those elements are going to be great. It's just a matter of, should this be our priority? I mentioned that the bike and pedestrian and Safe Routes to School program had spent $250 million since 2005, when we're going to give 520 $406 million right now. So, it's this trade-off in terms of realizing how expensive these mega projects are.
But then there's the new projects. And so, there's about $2.5 billion identified for brand new highway projects in the entire package. $1 billion of that is the "Interstate Bridge Replacement" program. And I'll put "bridge" in quotes because it does include, as planned, a replacement for the two bridges that currently go over the Columbia as I-5 between Portland and Vancouver, but it's also a 5-mile, 7-interchange highway expansion project.
[00:29:26] Crystal Fincher: A huge highway expansion project that also is impacting housing and schools in the area, taking over a lot of land and property in that area, and is a behemoth project.
[00:29:43] Ryan Packer: And so, environmental groups on both sides of the border have basically been pushing for what they call a right-sized IBR. I would say they really haven't been successful so far. There's only three designs that are actually on the table. All of them expand the highway to 10 lanes over the river and are going to include a lot of interchanges. There's been some renderings that show basically a brand new elevated highway right through downtown Vancouver.
I think a lot of people agree that we need to have a replacement for that 100-year old bridge, but - one of the spans is 100 years old - but the question is, this is actually expected to be a $4-5 billion project. We're now putting in $1 billion just from Washington. There's going to be some Oregon match, federal money. It's being framed as a replacement project, but it's also going to massively expand the highway. So, there's that element.
[00:30:53] Crystal Fincher: And this has been a long-standing fraught conversation. When I first learned about this project and went through it, toward it was 10 - gosh, I'm old - 12 years ago now. This has been a long-standing conversation between Washington and Oregon about what to replace it with, how much each state is going to be putting in, where those funds are coming from. And so, even with the other tax conversation about Oregon, some of that has implications for this bridge also. And there was some tense moments this past week in rhetoric - some heated words that in this conversation about the tax and some red lines drawn from the Oregon people and a harsh reaction from folks in our state, including Senator Liias, who I think said some words that ultimately he agreed were in haste and crossed the line, which he then apologized for. But this has been a contentious conversation for years, and we're getting close to the finish line, but a lot of these fissures are certainly showing at this point.
[00:32:09] Ryan Packer: Correct, yeah. Last week, Oregon Republicans on the Bridge Committee basically threatened to leave the committee. I think a lot of environmental advocates were daring them to actually make good on that promise, since they're the ones that are pushing for the capacity constraints. But yeah, you mentioned this has been going on for a very long time. So yeah, in 2011 they were able to actually get a federal approval for that previous project. And that's part of the problem with this, is they're actually attempting to reuse that decision. So basically, get a rubber stamp to make some minor changes to that design, but ultimately keep it very similar. They considered adding climate directly to the project's purpose and need. Climate and equity considerations were considered to actually go right to the heart of the project. And they said, "No." They said they didn't want to do that because it would screw up the timeline and not allow them to start construction in 2025 like they want. But I don't know how you can spend a $4 or 5 billion project and not fully center climate and equity between our two supposed climate warrior states.
[00:33:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. A lot of rhetoric there. Don't seem to be lining up, although this has been a chronic problem for the years leading up to now. And so, I hope there are more voices who are pushing on that in our legislature. We'll see if that trickles up to leadership, and as they're in conference about this package and see how that turns out, and if some of that gets carried through.
As we're just looking at this package as a whole and where things are going now, what do you think we need to be looking out for? And I guess, what else is at the top of your mind as you consider the effect of this package?
[00:34:17] Ryan Packer: I think this is a very important step, which is centering a transportation package not entirely around the needs of our highway system. But given the incredibly unique nature of this package, with those revenues that are urgently needing to be spent on carbon reduction programs, and the federal matches, and very unique infusion of cash from the general fund - I think we have to make sure that this isn't a one-off, and we don't quite go back to having a highway package that's focused on highways and "local projects."
A lot of legislators and local leaders have been noting that the package doesn't include money for local projects, when it has all those grants I just mentioned - what they're talking about is money that they can get to rebuild roads. Obviously maintenance and preservation is really important. There's $3 billion for preservation and maintenance of the highway system in the package, which is more than we have really spent in the past two decades or so, but it's not the entire purpose of the package. It's to move us toward a different transportation future where it's not as focused around single occupancy vehicles. And so, I think there's a potential for us to sort of slip back, say we already did the climate transportation package in 2022, and then just move on to another package. But we need to fight for these investments to be in every single budget essentially, because traditionally decarbonizing transportation through investing in transit, biking, and walking has been a thing that's been really ignored, even by our governor who focuses a lot on climate action. So, I think we just can't let it slip off.
[00:36:37] Crystal Fincher: Makes sense. Well, thank you so much for joining us today and we will keep our eye out and make sure everyone stays updated on what winds up in the package at the end of the day after the legislature adjourns. Thank you so much for joining us, Ryan.
[00:36:53] Ryan Packer: Thanks so much for having me.
[00:36:54] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcast - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
On today’s week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattle political reporter, editor of Publicola, and author of Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery, Erica Barnett. They discuss a proposed bill that passed the Senate that would create an office to address highway encampments, why unions are split on the Uber and Lyft driver protections bill, automatic ticketing through camera enforcement in Seattle, a heated conversation among Sound Transit leaders about safety, whether we can address encampment shootings with more housing, and the Approval Voting initiative that would allow you to vote for every candidate on the ballot.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica C. Barnett, at @ericacbarnett. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“With Advocates Watching Closely, Legislators Propose Office to Respond to Encampments” by Leo Brine from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/02/28/with-advocates-watching-closely-legislators-propose-office-to-respond-to-encampments/
“Pallet, a For-Profit Provider of Utilitarian Shelters, Could Be a Contender for County Funding” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/03/02/pallet-a-for-profit-provider-of-utilitarian-shelters-could-be-a-contender-for-county-funding/
“Unions Split on Deal to Expand Uber and Lyft Driver Protections Statewide” by Rich Smith from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/03/03/67552231/unions-split-on-deal-to-expand-uber-and-lyft-driver-protections-statewide
“SDOT's automatic ticketing traffic camera program begins” by Adel Toay and Cody Miller from KING5: https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/sdot-automatic-ticketing-traffic-cameras/281-4ec1edd7-1821-4916-b0e6-5678a382a9ea
“New traffic camera enforcement begins in Seattle. Your fine comes later” by Mike Lindblom from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/new-traffic-camera-enforcement-begins-in-seattle-your-fine-comes-later/
“Sound Transit Leaders Call Trains Dirty, Dangerous; San Francisco’s Experience with Sanctioned Camps; New Poll Tests Harrell Priorities” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/02/25/sound-transit-leaders-claim-trains-too-dirty-dangerous-to-ride-san-franciscos-experience-with-sanctioned-encampments-new-poll-asks-about-harrell-priorities/
“Councilmember Touts Shelters as Solution to Encampment Shootings” by Paul Kiefer from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/03/02/councilmember-touts-shelters-as-solution-to-encampment-shootings/
“Election Nerds Feud Over Whether or Not Approval Voting Violates Voting Rights” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/03/01/67571578/election-nerds-feud-over-whether-or-not-approval-voting-violates-voting-rights
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I am a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola, co-host of the Seattle Nice podcast, and author of Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery, Erica Barnett.
[00:01:00] Erica Barnett: Great to be here. God, that bio just keeps getting longer and longer, doesn't it?
[00:01:03] Crystal Fincher: I mean, you manage to fill your day with a few things. Not sure how you have the time to fit everything in but you manage to with grace. Welcome back.
[00:01:14] Erica Barnett: Thank you.
[00:01:16] Crystal Fincher: I think I want to start off talking about a piece of legislation that has been proceeding through our legislature to respond to encampments, particularly those on the sides of state-owned freeways and right of ways. What is happening with this bill?
[00:01:37] Erica Barnett: Well, this bill - today as we're recording this, it's 9:30 in the morning on Friday - so today is the cut-off for bills to get out of the opposite chamber. And so we don't know what's going to happen with this particular bill. It's a short session and so this could die this year, but I think that the concept either way will live on. The idea is to basically create a new office with funding, with about $50 million worth of funding, to deal with encampments, as you said, in public rights of way that are owned by the state highway department.
The proponent of the bill, Patty Kuderer from Bellevue, has said that her intent is to really work on housing and sheltering people - emphasis really on sheltering I think, getting people out of the highway rights of way, and into shelter, and then eventually into housing. But the text of the bill itself doesn't really stipulate that. The main point of the bill is to sort of give an opportunity for the state to get people out of areas where they are visible, because it has been very challenging, I think, for the state to do that as opposed to the City of Seattle and other cities. And then the bill is attached to a budget request from Jay Inslee, the governor, that would essentially fund more shelter but there's not - this is one of those situations where there is an intent and there is the text of the bill, and I think the text of the bill actually matters a lot more than the intent.
[00:03:18] Crystal Fincher: Definitely, the text of the bill matters a ton more than the intent. I am known for telling a lot of people - if it's not in the text, it does not exist, because that is really the case. And in this case, with this bill, it has been amended since it passed out of the Senate. It's now in the House, and there were a number of specifics eliminated - language regarding the number of persons, specifically reducing the number of people in public rights of way, establishing the office to deal with that and the roles within there. Also eliminated provisions to require coordination teams and outreach teams and the data analysis. We have talked about this bill on Hacks & Wonks before and one of the big items in the bill that they had touted before was - hey, we're actually going to track people and make sure that they're getting services or that we understand what their needs are, where they are in the process. That's also been eliminated. There's a lot that's vague within this bill.
Certainly the idea and I think the goal of getting people into housing is what just about everyone wants - to not have people be in those rights of way and into housing, but definitely wanting to avoid just sweeping people - which again, conversations with homelessness have to start with housing. The issue with homelessness is that people lack housing. Sometimes there are other issues that contribute to that but the common thing with all unhoused people is that they lack housing and that is part of the solution. Without that, we're simply just moving people around and not really addressing a major core element of really getting people off of the street and into shelter. Where does this look like it's headed to go? Do we have any idea of the prospects of it today, or is it just a wait and see what happens with this vote?
[00:05:28] Erica Barnett: I think it's a wait and see what happens, but I do want to mention that even if this particular bill doesn't go forward, Governor Inslee has made a more than $800 million budget proposal to fund various items related to homelessness. I think it's really important to look at what that actually does. He was in Seattle this week at a tiny house village talking about tiny houses as an example of housing - and he used the word "housing" - and that his proposal would pay for. He has $335 million in that proposal to pay for various kinds of capital projects, but those capital projects really emphasize shelter and tiny houses are a form of shelter over housing in some ways. It feels like, as I've been covering homelessness over a period of years now, it feels like we are going from a place where we were talking about housing first, which is the concept that you don't need to be ready for housing and that housing is the first step to solving your other problems when you are homeless, to talking about let's get people out of the public spaces and let's get them into shelter and then eventually at some point down the road we'll talk about housing.
It's the same thing we're seeing with this bill from Patty Kuderer is the idea that priority number one has to be - gosh, we've got to get people out of these public spaces because - I would say, cynically, because they are visible there and because people complain about them and what's the easiest way to do that? Well, let's put them in shelter. And so we're going back to - a concept that has been rejected 10, 15 years ago has come all the way back around for different reasons, but it's the idea that we take people off the street, put them in shelter, eventually maybe they get housed. And I think that's backwards.
[00:07:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. It definitely does seem backwards and is related to another article that was in PubliCola this week - on a more local level, Seattle - where an organization, a company, a social benefit corporation - which is a little bit different in supposed intent than a traditional corporation - that builds tiny homes. But those tiny homes are actually really basic and part of the rationale for having them be less, I guess, homey, comfortable, aesthetically pleasing than some of the other tiny homes that are currently in use and in consideration to be built and expanded are that - hey, this is supposed to be temporary so they don't need anything aesthetically pleasing, they don't need anything excessively comfortable, because we want it to be temporary and that might help to get it out. And that, to me, was just an interesting framing in that it is okay to talk about building in discomfort to encourage people somehow to make that temporary, as if there isn't inherent discomfort in being on the street or in a tiny space with a few shelves. I don't know that people need to be uncomfortable to want to gain more stability and move more.
It's just a whole interesting conversation. I do completely agree that the conversation does need to start with housing and that as we've discussed before on this program, housing, especially moving away from non-congregate shelter and when people do have a space of their own, where they can close and lock a door, they have access to all of their facilities, it helps to stabilize them. It helps create the conditions that allow them to solve any other issues that are contributing to homelessness and has been demonstrated to do that with a much greater degree of success than people in congregate shelters where people are sometimes laying feet away from each other in the same room with just a lack of privacy and security. We will certainly be continuing to follow all of the dimensions of this conversation as we proceed.
Another bill that I wanted to just mention real quick that we have our eye on and that, again, will have a vote today is a bill that is getting some coverage in The Stranger and I saw a couple more articles this morning in The Times and elsewhere - where there is a bill where unions are split on expanding some driver protections to Uber and Lyft drivers, ride share drivers. A bill that has passed one chamber is currently in the opposite chamber right now - would increase the pay floor for drivers, provide benefits like sick time, worker's compensation insurance, discounts on some elements of insurance coverage. And some local unions are in favor of it with drivers saying, "Hey, this is going to be an immediate significant pay raise." Some of those drivers are on public assistance. Others are barely scraping by and saying, "This will be meaningful and basically help me to get off public assistance, help me to gain more financial independence this year if it passes."
The context of this, though, and what has caused other unions and especially on the national level some disagreement is that, overall, a long standing conversation has been, "Hey, our ride share drivers and a lot of workers in this gig economy, just misclassified as independent contractors in the first place." Right now, a number of them and a number of labor organizations have long contended that they meet the qualifications of employees, and therefore should get benefits and protections that employees get instead of just being completely on their own and classified as a contractor. And wanting to continue to fight that bill - that fight, feeling that this bill, if it passes, will undercut that larger effort in making that case. We don't know if this is going to pass or not. It looks like today is going to be the deadline to see if that happens, so we will continue to follow that and have an update on that next week.
Also, wanted to just dive into a couple of City of Seattle things. First off, traffic camera enforcement is about to start in a new way in Seattle. What's happening with that?
[00:12:22] Erica Barnett: This may feel like new news to people because it has been a few months since it was announced, but the City is going to start enforcing things like - primarily bus lane violations, so those red lanes that say Bus Only, that you may be driving your car in, hopefully not, are now going to be enforced with traffic cameras. So you can get a ticket, you'll get a warning, and then you'll get on a second offense, I believe, it's a $75 fine. I think there's also penalties for blocking the box, which is basically pulling out into the line of traffic when you are not allowed to go, so blocking traffic in that way.
I think there's going to be a lot of complaining about this. I've noticed that all the coverage so far has been here's how you can avoid getting these tickets - you do this. You know, I come at this from both perspectives, right? I'm a bus rider and I also have a car. And is it annoying to have to, I don't know, be on the part of the road that cars are supposed to be on, because you have to wait in a line of cars? Yeah. That's part of being part of traffic. When you're out there, you are causing the problems that you are complaining about.
I think this is hopefully going to not only address the problem that we see all the time of people just casually driving along in the bus lane, but it's also going to pay for bike and pedestrian improvements. I believe the first round of money is going to go to pay for crossing signals for people who are site impaired, vibrating signals and the like, and so that's great. It's going to actually pay to help people who are vulnerable roadway users as opposed to those drivers who want to get ahead by a few seconds.
[00:14:18] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and blocking the box is a nightmare for everyone, drivers included. It just creates gridlock. Like literal gridlock. It's really interesting. The first offense will actually be a warning. The second, you get a $75 fine, so actually on the scale of fines, this is lower on the list than a lot of other types of violations. It is just enforcing an existing law that hopefully should get everyone moving more safely and smoothly and help to reduce gridlock on streets. There are currently six locations that'll be covered - most of them downtown, a couple elsewhere - but we will see how this pans out. Hopefully, it does help fix the problem of people just blocking the box and sitting in the middle of the street and being where they should not be, an impediment to others.
[00:15:16] Erica Barnett: Just thinking about that is just making me so annoyed because I work downtown and just having to walk around cars into the middle of the street because they want to wait there in the middle of the street instead of waiting like 10 feet back, it's just infuriating. Hopefully, this will make a difference.
[00:15:32] Crystal Fincher: Hopefully so. I also wanted to talk about a meeting that Sound Transit had where their leaders seem to detest the very product and service that they're responsible for providing and expressed their dismay and revulsion at the idea of even using that service. It was a pretty incredible meeting in what was said there. What transpired there, Erica?
[00:16:03] Erica Barnett: Yeah. I covered this last week. This was a Sound Transit meeting where the agency got a presentation on issues around safety and sanitation and reports of drug use. The context of this is that there's been this ongoing debate about whether what Sound Transit needs is to really crack down on riders who are not paying their fare. Right now, people are not paying to get on the train to a large extent and whether Sound Transit needs to really hire a bunch of new security officers, they're very short-staffed from what they want to be.
During this conversation, a couple of Sound Transit board members, including Pierce County Executive, Bruce Dammeier, who was a former Republican state senator, said that he considers the trains to be "unsanitary, unsafe," and he said, "I wouldn't ride it." This sort of created a little bit of a pile-on with other board members agreeing that the trains are just indefensibly gross and sort of overrun - they made it sound like New York City in the 1970s. And Claudia Balducci - and again, Dammeier said he wouldn't ride it. I'm going to assume that means he does not ride the train. Claudia Balducci, who is a King County Councilmember from Bellevue, cut in and she's often the one person jumping in to say, "Hey, wait a minute" during these conversations. And she said, "Look, I ride transit all the time. I never stopped riding Sound Transit throughout the whole pandemic and I don't know what you're talking about." She said, "Have I seen unsanitary things on the train and situations that aren't ideal and the train isn't sparkling clean at all times? Sure, but I've never felt unsafe. The description you're providing just doesn't represent reality at all." And in a way, she is kind of the lone voice saying that at a lot of these meetings, which I don't know how much longer she wants to be the lone voice because it must be very frustrating to hear her colleagues who don't ride the trains talk about how disgusting they are.
I will say, I agree with her. I don't think they are disgusting at all. I think we can have a conversation about whether people should be paying their fare. We have a system now where we charge fare and they need to - if the goal is to get people to pay fare, they need to figure out a way to do that. But framing it as sort of the trains have been taken over by disgusting, awful people is not helpful toward that goal.
[00:18:54] Crystal Fincher: It's not helpful. It's counterproductive and, I mean, frankly, I have wondered, especially listening to so many of those comments from especially Republican legislators and city-level elected people, was just what really is their intention with Sound Transit and the service. It does not sound at all like they are invested in transit service. It sounds like this could potentially be a pretext for dramatically slashing funding, which has been on the table, continues to be on the table, and I just grow concerned that there is such a disconnect with people who express that they have no interest in using the service or seeing what it is in real life, which just is odd. You think that you would want to use and see what you're responsible for managing, but it is worrisome.
Also as someone else who takes public transit in addition to drives, my assessment is similar to Claudia Balducci. Have I seen things before that are not ideal? Absolutely. Is it this - do I feel unsafe on a train? No. I cannot recall a time when I have felt unsafe on a train, with the exception of the times - including one time I was singled out by fare enforcement who I guess assumed that I didn't pay. I had. They eventually saw that. But I have never felt unsafe from other riders on the train.
The other kind of context that I just continually am flabbergasted by is just the fare box revenue projections. They had it at 40%, which is a lot higher than similar agencies, other agencies in the area. They're currently at 5%. I just don't understand - even if you accepted everything that they had said, and while we completely need to pile on the fare enforcement officers, or whatever the name is that they're being called right now, to get people to pay - if they were to triple the amount of people who were paying, it gets us to 15%. How then are you addressing that gap? It almost seems like a distraction tactic, or a way to get away from the underlying fundamental fact that their revenue plan is unsustainable and unrealistic, and that they're going to have to implement another plan if they want to get there. I just don't see any way that you're going from 5% to 40%. I just don't understand how that seems realistic.
Also, I don't understand how we're investing all of these money and these officers, and getting people to pay, and the fines that people pay do not go to Sound Transit. They go to the court system, but that money isn't being recovered by the agency, which is what most people assume and that's how you're recovering the cost of the enforcement officers who were there. It just seems like a humongous cost with no pay-off. I just don't understand. It has been confusing to me for a long time.
[00:22:29] Erica Barnett: I'm not unsympathetic to the argument that - let's just take as a baseline, I think that there's a really interesting and important conversation to have about whether transit should be free - but taking it as a baseline that it is not free and that people are supposed to be paying a certain amount to ride, 5% is laughably low. To me, I look at that and it's like - well, okay, King County Metro does not have that low of a percentage of people paying and it's partly because Sound Transit decided not to have any physical barriers at stations, but they're not having a real conversation about how to get that amount up. What they're saying is we need more security, because we're at 65% of where we want to be and we need more fare ambassadors, which are what they've temporarily replaced fare enforcement officers with, who still go around and check fares but they don't issue tickets. They're saying we need more of the things we're doing, and it's obvious that the things they're doing are not working.
But there's not a real conversation happening about, why is that? Sound Transit board member Kent Keel often will go back to this idea that there are teenage boys who are sort of bad actors, who choose not to ride, even though they could afford to pay. He says, "based on my own experience as a youth" but the fact is, that cannot possibly be the explanation for 95% of people not paying or whatever it is, the incredibly high percentage of people not paying. They need to figure out what's going on and figure out a way to address it because just having fare enforcement - fare enforcement has punitive elements, it results in fines that, as you say, don't go to the agency. It tends to be enforced in a way that is racist, that is class-biased, and that is pretty ineffective. If they're going to charge fare, they need to have a real conversation and I have not really seen that happen yet.
[00:24:40] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. We will continue to keep an eye on that also, but I can't say that I am particularly encouraged. All right. Now I want to talk about Councilmember Andrew Lewis proposing shelters as a potential solution to encampment shootings? Tell me about this.
[00:24:58] Erica Barnett: When you put it with a question mark like that, it sounds like such an unrelated thing but - there have been a number of encampment-related shootings, shootings in and around encampments. It is just the case - this is something that outreach workers talk about all the time, that people in encampments tend to, A) protect themselves, so there's a lot of guns in encampments, especially large encampments and, B) have a need to protect themselves because of things like disputes over unpaid debts. That was a very common one that people mentioned to our reporter Paul Kiefer when he was reporting the story. The solution to those problems is multi-faceted, but part of the solution is not being in an encampment. Encampments are crowded, they're dangerous, they are chaotic often. Again, particularly, large encampments. The idea is if people can get into, specifically shelters that are geared toward helping people with criminal justice involvement, like the shelters that are operated by JustCARE, then that gets people on a path toward resolving some of the problems that are putting them in danger, such as debts and such as drug-related problems.
JustCARE is a program that is quite expensive. It costs about $10 million a year to operate at the scale that it's currently operating at, which is 150 shelter beds that are in hotel rooms. There's going to be a battle over whether to fund this program this year. The City is going to be facing a lot of budget cuts this year because a lot of funding for things that they have been paying for on an ongoing basis is going to run out, because COVID funding is running out, so there's going to be budget cuts. The question is does the City want to continue funding this program that is arguably very effective but also very expensive.
[00:27:12] Crystal Fincher: It looks like the price tag on this that PubliCola has reported is it's $7.3 million per year for 150 beds?
[00:27:22] Erica Barnett: To be clear, it's actually about $10 million a year to continue the program is what the City Council has calculated. That's the budget add they would be looking at. And they're trying to find a way to fund it that's outside the general fund, so that doesn't affect all of these other budget priorities that they want to pay for, but that is going to be a long and complicated discussion that is just getting started now.
[00:27:47] Crystal Fincher: Well, and I'm curious about the issue - obviously, we need solutions to gun violence - there is too much. There needs to be interventions in a variety of areas. How does gun violence or the prevalence - do we know an idea of the percentage of shootings that have occurred in encampments versus others in the City? What percent of gun violence does it account for? How many instances have there been? Do we have more information just about the scope of the problem within encampments?
[00:28:27] Erica Barnett: According to our reporting at PubliCola, about 6.5% of the City shootings took place in encampments at the beginning of the pandemic, and then by December of last year that had really dramatically increased to about a quarter of the shootings in Seattle. It is a marked increase and also just a significant percentage of the overall shootings in the City as a whole.
[00:28:54] Crystal Fincher: I am assuming that we also have information that it is not near that number for housing solutions that are talked about here.
[00:29:06] Erica Barnett: We have definitely not quadrupled the number of housing solutions. I mean, what the City is talking about doing right now with JustCARE and also with tiny house villages and other non-congregate shelter options - which, again, as we said, are not housing. They're talking about essentially preserving what's already there, so not kicking people out onto the street and then allowing more people to go through those programs as the people in the programs move into permanent housing. This is just something we're going to run into, I think, a lot with the end of COVID and the end of emergency funding for things related to COVID. We're going to have to decide what our priorities are. The idea that people should not be sleeping on mats on the floor six inches away from each other became pretty commonly accepted over the last two years. We ideally don't want to have these congregate shelters anymore, but the problem is now we've got to figure out how to pay for them and so it's a matter of priorities.
I think that the Council is really going to have to face that this year. Just like city councils and legislatures all over the country, because we made a shift during COVID and it's going to be a decision now whether we take a step backwards or continue the programs that we've established that are working and potentially expand them.
[00:30:31] Crystal Fincher: When is the Council going to take this up? When is a decision being made? Is there an opportunity for the public to weigh in?
[00:30:38] Erica Barnett: This is going to be a budget matter. It's a question that's going to really come into play later this year, over the summer and going into the fall. The budget gets adopted before Thanksgiving every year, but the mayor proposes his budget at the end of the summer and the council debates it into the fall. I think that is when the debate is going to happen, but it is really already starting now.
One way the public can weigh in is when these meetings happen, there's often an opportunity for public comment. This meeting last week was a City Council committee meeting where Andrew Lewis, the Chair of the Homelessness Committee, just asked for a presentation. You can always contact your councilmember at any time, of course, to say this is my budget priority, I really want the Council to consider funding this program. And I'm sure listeners know this but you have a districted councilmember, there's a councilmember for seven different districts in the City, and then there are two at-large councilmembers, Sara Nelson and Teresa Mosqueda, who is the Budget Chair.
[00:31:52] Crystal Fincher: Got it. Interesting. And starting to see more of an intersection in conversation between issues like housing and public safety and others. Certainly, we know that there's a lot of root causes and contributors to the outcomes to things like homelessness and of violence and I do think that it is healthy to have a discussion about what does contribute to that.
I do hope - this reminds me of the SPD staffing conversation that we had last week with Mike McGinn on the Week in Review, and others have also talked about where - if the solution is more police, which Mayor Harrell has certainly touted and is advocating for, those will not be on the street for, at least, a year. Even if they hired new police now, it is actually a long time before they get trained and are available to serve on the force and be out on the street.
There needs to be something in the interim if that's what you're proposing is going to help to make people safe - that could work when they get on the street but what is going to happen in the meantime? This seems like another issue where, certainly, I think it's a good thing to have more transitional housing available, more of all types of shelter and housing available, but in the short-term, is there also more of a plan to address issues like gun violence, which has grown in encampments. In the meantime, what is happening there? I know Mayor Harrell has a scheduled announcement later this morning about public safety. We will certainly follow along with what happens there but as of yet, we don't know the details of what he's suggesting.
I also wanted to talk about an initiative that is having signatures being collected on the streets of Seattle right now, and that will influence the type of voting, of a method of voting, that people might potentially use in Seattle. What is happening with this?
[00:34:14] Erica Barnett: This is a proposal called approval voting. Please don't make me explain it in any thorough way because, like a lot of proposals to change the way we vote, it is complicated. Basically, it would allow voters to choose everyone that they like on a ballot. So if you're looking at a ballot for City Council and there are 17 candidates, you can choose 1, you can choose 5, you can choose all 17. The argument for this, if I understand it correctly, is that it sort of rounds off the - and this is being put forward by a former City Council candidate, Logan Bowers, who came in I believe last in his election - ran against District 3 Councilmember Kshama Sawant. So his argument is it rounds off the radical edges, the right and the left, and chooses more popular candidates, which opponents are saying that just means more centrist candidates.
That's the argument for and against it. I'm going to present my own argument against this and other proposals to change the way we vote, which is that it, as I said, it's complicated and it requires voters to essentially do a massive amount of research, understand the pros and cons of every single candidate on the ballot, because you're not just picking one person. You're potentially picking every single person on the ballot, or all but one, or all but seven.
Any time you introduce new sort of levels of gamesmanship and machination and complication to voting, I think that that has a suppressive effect on voting. And I think that what we would see, if this was passed, or, frankly, if ranked choice voting, which is another alternative that's being pushed right now - although, it's not quite as far along - if that is passed, I think you'll see people looking at their ballots and saying, "Nope" because our ballots are already really long. We have lots and lots of people running, which is great, but there are certain ballots that we've had in the past where there are dozens of people just in a couple of City Council races or in the Mayor's race. And so, I think introducing more complication is just going to lead to fewer people voting. I think we saw that in New York City where ranked choice voting was implemented and it was the lowest voter turnout in a generation and it elected Eric Adams.
[00:36:56] Crystal Fincher: Not a fan of that Eric Adams. Not a fan. I tend to agree with your assessment of this approval voting. I kind of get the initial appeal if people are just listening - sometimes there is a number of people, like we just saw in the last mayoral election, and you might think I actually like a few of these candidates. I don't want to be forced to pick just one. You can vote every one who you would be okay with getting into office, but I do think the criticism of that - if you have to pick something that everyone agrees on, you tend to get something that lots of people don't love and is kind of centrist, is kind of there - there was a pizza analogy. It's like if you have to order a pizza that everyone likes, you generally are just going to end up with a cheese pizza, which is usually not what most people want, and if you like pineapple, you're out of luck and if you're vegan, you're just going to starve to death.
I think that there's some issues here. It is also interesting, given that that's an item that people have identified with that - this initiative has several corporate donors tied to it, including AmazonSmile, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and others. It is really interesting to see the group that is coalescing and funding this, but it does appear to be well funded - close to $245,000 raised so far.
It's going to be really interesting to see how this lands. I am a fan of ranked choice voting, over this if we are to choose, but I agree and have talked about before - whether it's ranked choice voting, whether it's this - any change in voting and any substantial change can be passed off as minor or trivial or this is going to be great. Just about every proposal I've seen has dramatically underestimated the amount of funding and resources and time that is necessary to educate voters about this. The kind of direct, in-person sustained outreach that is needed to help people understand this change. If you doubt that, just look at the amount of our ballots right now that are rejected because people forget to sign the outside of the ballot. Any kind of change is not intuitive to a substantial portion of the population and some people are not very online, some people are not tied to institutional government news updates. People who primarily speak other languages, people who are working, low income are all traditionally more disenfranchised when it comes to changes like that.
And so, in any one of these proposals, I haven't yet seen anywhere near the kind of investment and time that is needed for that. You know, it's expensive. No one likes a big price tag when it comes to policy and people tend to shy away from that, or think that, "Hey, the news can cover it and we can get the word out online." That is not sufficient. I just hope that as we continue to discuss these, particularly in the ranked choice voting conversation, we devote more of our energy and resources to making sure on the front end, a year plus before it would be implemented, that there are the resources dedicated to make sure that we're not leaving anyone behind when we make these changes, because that is what happens. We know that's what happens. It's routinely happened.
It also just impacts perception of the system. It's not the - we've implemented ranked choice voting before here in the state, in Pierce County. And the failure of it can largely be attributed to people not being familiar or educated enough about what that process is and then being confused and upset and angry and then repealing it. We just have a long way to go. I don't think approval voting is it, but it looks like people may have this as a choice coming up in November on their ballots. We will continue to follow it. And with that, I think we will call it a day, today on Hacks & Wonks.
Thank you for listening today, March - I can't believe it's March already - March 4th, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler and assistant producer Shannon Cheng, and our wonderful co-host today was Seattle political reporter and founder of PubliCola, Erica Barnett. You can find Erica on Twitter @EricaCBarnett, that's Erica with a C, and on PubliCola.com. You can buy her book Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse and Recovery. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H F-R-I-I, and now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. While you're there, leave a review, it really helps us out. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.
Newly-elected Renton City Councilmember Carmen Rivera shares with Crystal how she prevailed as a progressive in the November 2021 election despite fearmongering and misrepresentation of her campaign. They talk about the evolution of her beliefs and values through her experiences growing up as the daughter of the first Puerto-Rican born Seattle Police Department officer to working with marginalized and underrepresented youth to teaching the next generation as a lecturer in criminology at Seattle University, and how she shared that journey with voters to illustrate that believing in abolition doesn’t necessarily mean being anti-police. The two wrap up with what Councilmember Rivera hopes to prioritize as she starts the next phase of governing and words of advice for those considering their own run for office.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal on Twitter at @finchfrii, and find Carmen at @riveraforrenton
Resources
City of Renton - Councilmember Carmen Rivera: https://rentonwa.gov/city_hall/city_council/carmen_rivera
“Opinion: Racism Runs Rampant in Renton” by Carmen Rivera for South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/03/16/opinion-racism-runs-rampant-in-renton/
“King County Conservatives Discredit Progressive POC Candidates as ‘Defund’ Extremists” by Nathalie Graham from South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/10/28/king-county-conservatives-discredit-progressive-poc-candidates-as-defund-extremists/
“Progressives Make Impressive Gains in South King County” by Andrew Engelson from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2021/11/09/62717950/progressives-make-impressive-gains-in-south-king-county
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well today, I am really excited to welcome newly elected - it's a little bit of time now but everybody is excited - newly elected Renton City Councilmember, Carmen Rivera. Hello and welcome to the show.
[00:00:53] Councilmember Carmen Rivera: Hi, it's so nice to be here. Thank you for having me.
[00:00:56] Crystal Fincher: I appreciate it. Well, I'm excited - as we have different conversations just around Seattle, around this region, there's been lots of talk after recent elections, elections even before that - just how are progressives faring? We have so many - in certainly in the Seattle area - races that don't necessarily include Republicans but can include people who do view things quite differently, who may both identify as Democrats or as progressive. And in conversations about the last Seattle elections, I've talked to a number of people who are like, "Wow, it's hard to be progressive and get elected. I don't know if it's even possible. How do you even do that today? Is there a backlash? What do you even accomplish? Everybody's afraid to talk about public safety now." Just all that conversation.
And what was so inspiring to me about your race and some others in the region is that you didn't compromise on who you are, what you believe. You were completely consistent about wanting to move in a different direction, the urgency needed to do it, that reform wasn't going to cut it, that things need to be dramatically and drastically shifted to meet the needs of our community as it exists today. And you connected with your community - people were inspired, and engaged, and moved to action, and voted you into office. I just want to start out and understand what caused you to say, "I should run. I really want to run and I can win."
[00:02:45] Councilmember Carmen Rivera: Oh wow - that is a question. I honestly, in thinking about that question, I never thought I was going to go into politics and I have to kind of give a little background. I was born raised in Renton, Washington and in the 11th legislative district. And my mom was a very active Democrat when I was in middle school and high school. And in turn, I was very active in the 11th LD Democrats. And so I think the Democratic Party values were instilled in me at a young age and I saw the importance and the power of political organization and community organization and how those things can come together and create real change. And I saw a lot of the toxicity and negativity in politics. When my mom ran - she actually ran against Bob Hasegawa for his Representative House seat back in 2003 and she also ran for city council - and I saw her lose every time and it was really difficult. I saw how hard it was on her and how much it weighed on her mentally and emotionally. And I saw the toxicity in politics and I was so turned off from it that I didn't want anything to do with politics.
I went right into college, studied criminal justice, and wanted to be a police officer and follow in my father's footsteps - he was a Seattle police officer for 38 years. And it was actually through my career in working at Echo Glen Children's Center in juvenile rehabilitation, and then working for King County at YouthSource - working with marginalized and underrepresented youth - that my shift of thinking happened. And it was actually seeing the racial and ethnic disparities, not only at the state level, but at the county level as well, that really made me look more at a critical criminologist approach to our justice system - or injustice system, I think, better to describe it. And it was through those experiences of working at the state, working for the county, and then entering academia that I studied and learned that what we've been doing historically hasn't been working.
And I learned through teaching, through my students, that if we want to see real systemic change, it's a marriage between organization and politics and policy. And I did not want to be a hypocrite. I wanted to be the change that I wanted to see in the world and I wanted to be the role model that I tried to exemplify for my students. And I felt in 2020 very compelled to educate myself and work in the advocacy around educating people around abolition and defunding and what those things mean because there are not a lot of people with my background - my educational background and my privilege, my educational privilege and my position in criminal justice, in academia - that were properly educating and discussing abolition. I think the only other person that I know of is Nikkita Oliver and their curriculum on abolition that they posted on, I think it was Google Drive in 2020, is what really helped me expand my purview and expand my way of thinking. And really understand that we need to approach things at the root and we need to attack things at the root and go to the core if we're going to really see again that systemic change.
And so when 2021 came around, I was approached about running for Renton City Council. And I had been chewing on it since summer of 2020 actually. And it was some votes and decisions that had been made later in the year around the Red Lion Hotel and things that I've just seen in my entire life. I'm 32, going to be 33 years old, and I was born and raised in Renton. And I had seen things that hadn't shifted from when I was in middle school or high school and that wasn't okay with me, and I just felt called to it, and I felt supported by my community to do it. And I wasn't sure if I was going to win. I just knew that I had to try and I felt confident that I was the best person for the position and that the city council needed someone from my background, my experience and my purview to contribute to the decisions that were being made.
[00:07:05] Crystal Fincher: So how did your campaign unfold? What was that whole time and process like?
[00:07:11] Councilmember Carmen Rivera: Well, I was approached, like I said, in summer of 2020 by some friends who fanned a flame inside of me. And in January-February, I had gotten more involved in what was going on in the community in Renton - in particular, an instance of racism that happened in February of 2021 in downtown Renton. And I wrote an opinion piece called, Racism is Running Rampant in Renton. And I felt it was necessary to share my purview and my perspective, and I think it's important to call out racism and call out also just incidences of racism that are rooted deeply in our culture and our society - because in order to address a problem, solve a problem, you need to address the problem first. You need to call it out. You need to know what the problem is. And so for me, that was really important.
And it was from all of that that people were like, we think that you are somebody that could do really good things on the level of city council. And I actually thought that opinion piece was going to hurt my campaign. I thought that if I were to run, which I launched in April, that article might hurt me more than help me, and I'm still - the jury's out on that. I don't know if that article hurt me or helped me when it came to my campaign. It wasn't a strategy by any means. The two were not really connected - but from my opinion pieces that I've written and the organization that I've done, my campaign got a lot of support from community and I was really shocked and pleasantly surprised by how many people supported me and how many people were excited for my race. And it was a thick race. We had five people running for Renton City Council Position 2, including the incumbent who had been appointed over a year prior. And it was contentious. And yeah - I don't know really where else to go from there.
[00:09:10] Crystal Fincher: It was contentious - certainly following along with it, it was definitely contentious. I think what was exciting for me to watch throughout that process - some of it was infuriating - and that article, as any time people speak out against racism as it's happening, particularly as BIPOC speak out against racism, there is a predictable backlash from people who don't want anything to change, who don't want to talk about it, don't want to draw attention to it. It's working for them, they see no reason - that is always going to happen. And that in and of itself prevents a lot of people from speaking out. And so there's this perception that that is the dominant view, that that is something that you just can't overcome and should be avoided at all costs - just don't create the controversy - it's not worth it, it could hurt your campaign, all of that stuff.
But what we also saw was you were telling the truth and people heard it and understood it and are like, finally, there is someone who isn't afraid to look at the sky and call it blue. To just talk about what is happening. And that building trust - that hey, if Carmen is willing to speak out on these issues, even though conventional wisdom, whatever that is, is that this is risky and should be avoided, we can trust her to speak out about the things that matter when she's in a greater position of power. We can trust her to really understand where we're coming from and speak for us, to us, that we are included in your vision for governing. And that energizing people who may not have been energized by politics before, and who may have been disillusioned, or just haven't seen anyone who they feel really gets them and is speaking to their needs. And it's not like it was just a small coalition, or just BIPOC, or just young people. It was so many people in the community because - when elements of the community are being marginalized and harmed, we all feel the effects. It's just whether or not we're acknowledging them. And so many people saw it.
As things are going along and they're contentious in your campaign and you continue just to speak the truth as you see it - an educated truth - it's not like you just woke up one morning and decided to talk. You have lived here, lived abroad, highly educated, as you say, deeply steeped in academia, have both professional and lived experience. You're coming from a place that is very informed with a lot of data behind you to back you up. But that didn't mean that you didn't even face opposition from other members on the council - where it wasn't just a conversation - and a lot of the typical ways that a campaign unfolds between the candidates. But some institutional actors were not that happy with what you were talking about because you weren't sugar coating what you felt was needed to keep everyone in the community safe. How did you approach navigating through that? And what did that feel like as you were going through it?
[00:12:34] Councilmember Carmen Rivera: It was a learning experience. I'm an imperfect person and I have been described in many ways - inaccurately - I've been described as a bull in a china shop, feisty, spicy. Very passionate I think is probably a more accurate way that people like to describe me. Again, all of these adjectives have something in common when you're describing a Latina or a biracial woman of color. And I do have white presenting privilege because I only see the sun for six months in Washington, which happens - I lose my melanin. And so it's interesting because I kind of feel like I was raised in two worlds, and that I think helped in how I navigated a lot of this.
And I was told, "Don't talk about white supremacy. Don't talk about racism. Do not talk about abolition and do not talk about defunding." I was told straight up not to talk about those things and to avoid them. Those things came up because of the tactics that were used by conservatives this last election cycle. We saw those tactics used against Nikkita Oliver. We saw those tactics used against Nicole Thomas-Kennedy. Two, I think, highly qualified people who I was disappointed in their particular races when we're talking about those Seattle races. They really got a lot of grief for their educational backgrounds and their perspectives. And I was, I think, compared to them a lot. And I took that as a compliment because Nikkita Oliver teaches at SU Law and is an incredibly intelligent human being. Same - Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, an incredibly intelligent human being. And I think there was a lot of fearmongering and polarization that was used against them in their campaigns.
The same was used for me and I think that was because - when people don't know something, they don't understand something, they're scared of it. And I am a very, very strong cup of coffee. I like my coffee black and I think that's also how I come off to the rest of society - is I'm just very direct and I'm very blunt. And like I said, you have to be able to address the problem and know what the problem is in order to solve it. And when we look at who is in control in politics and I'm talking about - I teach social control and deviance, I teach critical criminology, I teach juvenile justice. And when you look at the people who are in power in politics, the majority of people who are elected officials are white men. The majority of prosecutors in this country are white men. The majority of educators and the educational academia lens, especially in higher ed, is that of white men. And if we look at our media, our media and media that we consume, is I think owned by less than a dozen major conglomerate of media companies - also majority owned by white men.
When you look at the data of who is running our society, it is a white supremacist society. And that doesn't mean that people are walking around in KKK hoodies and robes and this stereotypical idea of what white supremacy is. White supremacy is pervasive and deeply rooted in our society and that's what I like to try to teach and educate around. And that's what I tried to stick with in terms of just talking to people. I knocked on - ooh, I want to say over 6,000 doors and I just spoke to people like I would speak to my students, from an academic background but also someone who saw the academics in real life when I worked at the state, when I worked at the county, when I worked with my students. I saw the disparities. I've seen it. And like you said, I'm highly educated and so I think I just tried to meld those two together. Because also education is, and higher ed in particular, is another system that is rooted in white supremacy and I've also had to unlearn some of my privileges and things rooted, I think in elitism, that is also very pervasive in academia.
And so just coming from all of that and learning how I've navigated myself as someone who's worked in social services, and worked with marginalized populations, and worked with youth - and I've learned a lot from them and have also - I put my foot in my mouth. I've made mistakes. 10 years ago I was telling juveniles, "Just pull yourself up with your bootstraps." That's not what we tell juveniles. That's not what you should be telling juveniles. And I learned that through working with juveniles and working with these kids that are incredibly resilient, intelligent, and are amazing members of our community. And because of our injustice system, they have been written off and they have been labeled and they have been othered. And that I think is the fault of a capitalistic society that we live in, that is rooted again in white supremacy. And that's something again, we just need to address if we're going to be able to root out and create a more equitable society for especially our biracial and our Black and Brown Indigenous youth.
[00:17:48] Crystal Fincher: One of the things I think is a pervasive conversation in political circles is - yeah, we know white supremacy is a problem. We're dealing with and impacted by it every day. We can catalog on a daily basis how it's a problem for us, people we know, number of things like that. And we can talk about it to each other a lot of times. But people struggle when it comes to talking about someone - to your point, who may not have been exposed to different data points, different points of view, may not have been educated, may just have heard what the conventional wisdom is and - hey, there's a problem with crime, and cops prevent crime and solve crime, and we're safer when there are more of them on the streets. And if we just obey the law and are good people, then everything will be fine. And wow, I hope that works for someone out there. It doesn't work for a lot of people.
As you're encountering people in the community who you've had to talk through this, who you've had to connect with your message and who came to you skeptical, questioning, doubting, this seemed like you were just some extremist Antifa - throw all of those Fox News buzzwords at you. How did you engage with the community? Because you can't be elected without doing that. How did you have conversations with people who were like, "I don't know about this," - where did you start and how did that go?
[00:19:33] Councilmember Carmen Rivera: Ooh, that's a great question, Crystal. I will say honestly and I'll say it to you right now - I don't agree with our two party system. I think our two party system is flawed and problematic, and I think we are more fractured as a nation than we've ever had. I'm 32 going on 33, and I lived through Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump and now Biden. And I feel like we are more split as a country than we ever have been. And we're even seeing those cracks and those fractures within our own party. The Republicans seeing it I think on a smaller level - the conservatives on a smaller level - but the Democrats, we're fractured as a party because politics and I think democracy and the Republican conservatives progressives, it's a spectrum. It's not either or, it is a spectrum.
And that's how I would start a conversation - is saying, "I view it more as a spectrum." And just because I have certain ideas and upbringings - my parents, they fall on the more conservative end. My father was a Seattle police officer for 38 years. He - what's the word I'm looking for - he perpetuated a policing institution, again rooted in white supremacy, even though he was a man of color. And he engaged, I think, in some problematic policies around the War on Drugs and around crimes against society. And I struggle with the fact that we live in a society that has to be so polarized, and is so split, and everything has to be either-or and not yes-and. And so I think the hardest for me, and what was easy also, was when I got labeled anti-police - I'm not anti-police - that was just an honest thing.
And that's a struggle because people believe that if you are an abolitionist or believe in abolition or teach abolition, you also need to adopt the idea of ACAB and being anti-police. I understand the ACAB perspective and I understand those perspectives - I don't agree with them and I don't adopt them. It's a struggle for me, honestly, and I do struggle with cognitive dissonance as well, and I was very honest about that, in being raised with police privilege - being raised around police officers and being very comfortable with them and also understanding that there are friends and people in my life as I grew older, who they did not see police as equated to safety or security. They were seen as dangerous and they were fearful of them, and those were valid feelings. And I had to learn that those are valid feelings and I had to unlearn a lot of things as well. And I shared that journey when I was talking to voters. And the biggest feedback I got was - you need to spend less time talking to voters. Only five minutes, only five minutes. Couldn't do it. I love talking to voters, I love sharing my experience, love sharing my perspective - the fact that I do see both sides because I was raised in a very pro-police family. And I was raised in Seattle Police Guild picnics around other police officers and around SPOG. I - very familiar with that culture.
And as someone who also grew out of it and did not follow my father's career - I fell more into social services and doing direct service with again, youth who were incarcerated, who were marginalized, who fell through the cracks, who were survivors of the school to prison pipeline and victims of the school to prison pipeline. I saw a different side of our injustice system and I took all of the privilege and things I learned from my police family background to understand why people who I think have that bias are so resistant to the Defund and abolition movement. And I used the fact that three years ago I was a stark reformist - I was very much on the reform spectrum. And academically I've done a 180 because of everything I've seen and witnessed and learned in the last two years. And I think we are ever evolving creatures - that I am evolving to learn that we need to adopt ideas rooted in abolition in order to really create systemic change and root out institutional bias. And that is just a pragmatic approach that I have. And some people see it as radical - and I tell those people, "Well, if radical is reaching at the root and ripping it out from the root, and that's what we need to do in order to see any real change - and change that's going to happen in my lifetime."
And when I say that - I'm a realist. I am inspired constantly by my students. My students, they want to learn more about abolition. They want to learn about critical race theory and critical criminology. They are hungry for it and they are the ones who inspire me and make me believe that we are going to see real systemic change and rooting out institutional bias in their lifetime and hopefully in my lifetime because I have the honor of teaching them. And I think they are the ones who are going to go into these professional fields and really be the ones who carry the torch.
[00:24:56] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I am with you that the younger generation is so inspiring. I feel corny when I say it but like Whitney said it, "I believe the children are our future." They are doing things that are so impressive and they are unwilling to accept the excuses that too many of us - in my generation, older generations - have accepted that have allowed things to reach this point and have gotten to a breaking point in so many things.
I appreciate your openness and honesty just about - hey, you've been on a path and been on a journey. Which I also think we need to embrace and talk about and understand is real. Not everybody starts from a place of being ultimately educated and even if we have lived experience and a ton of education in one area, it doesn't mean that that applies to everything else. We're evolving and learning and growing. I certainly identify with your conversation about - no, I also am not an ACAB person. I can certainly see - and maybe it's just because some places that I've been, people that I've known - the options for getting out of a path that has no future in so many areas in our country are - those paths are rigged. And it's not a coincidence that that has people wind up in the military, wind up in the Border Patrol, wind up in police departments. And while there are certainly people who are looking to exercise dominance as they walk in, I don't think every single officer walks in saying, "I'm going to cause a problem." - that there's so much propaganda about policing being noble and you do really help people, that if you aren't in a place where that is actively challenged, you walk in thinking that's what it is. And the institution is extremely flawed and you have to question the function of the institution if its outcome has so consistently contradicted that for a significant segment of society and even within our community.
I appreciate the ability to have that conversation. And I appreciate that you talk about knocking on 6,000 doors and having real conversations with real people. I don't know if people who are listening have ever doorbelled and door knocked - you should - you should actually volunteer on a campaign that you believe in and see what it's like to have conversations with regular people at their regular places and to talk about the types of things that are weighing on their minds. It gets you out of this insidery conversation - everybody's interested - as people who are in advocacy or activism or policy, sometimes those are real echo chambers. And regular people may have the same root concerns and just may not have the time, inclination, ability, financial security to be able to engage on these issues to the level of someone else, or have just never encountered anything to trigger a questioning of what's going on. Those conversations are so important. So you have a lot of those, you go through the campaign, it was rough, it was contentious. You wind up getting through the general and then you wind up ultimately pulling ahead in - as votes are tallied - and winning. And so what did that feel like? Just that moment, what did that feel like?
[00:28:58] Councilmember Carmen Rivera: I'm going to get emotional. Oh wow. Oh my gosh. Oh, Crystal, Crystal. I will say the campaign was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life and everything I went through - to finally be able to win, it was a win for the community. It was so much bigger than me. I'm emotional because it wasn't about me at all. It was about the community. It was about Black and Brown bodies in Renton, and the LGBTQ community, and marginalized voices that were underrepresented in a city that raised me.
And I cry because I'm just so grateful to the voters. When you win by 620 votes, when you win by four points, I'm grateful to the voters for seeing me and not feeding into the fearmongering and the othering and the labeling because I spoke with voters who agreed with me a lot and also disagreed with me. And they were receptive, because more often than not - and it was because we know in odd year elections, older voters tend to come out more. And I'm so grateful to the older voters who were like, it's time to pass the torch onto the younger generation. It's time that we give up power and we stop doing what we've been doing historically and we hand over the reins to people who have more energy, who have a fresh perspective. And that they believed in my message and they, again, they didn't fall victim to the fearmongering and the mislabeling, because as much as I was labeled as a radical progressive, there are progressives out there who will also still see me and say, "Well, she's not as progressive as some people." I am not as progressive, I believe, as Nikkita Oliver and that's okay. Again, it's a spectrum.
And to conservatives, I was incredibly progressive and it was a moment for the community. And it was the fact that we won over fearmongering, we won over radicalized conservatism. And it was just, it was a community win. And because again, it wasn't for me. It was so much bigger than me - because after I got through the primary and the five-man race turned into a two-man race, me and my opponent. And me and my opponent were polar opposites. It was actually very reflective, I feel like, of the Seattle Attorney race actually, because in that same race, we saw the incumbent also not make it through the primary, and it was actually two very opposite candidates that made it through into the general - same thing happened in my race.
And so winning also meant winning over that radicalized old school mentality of white supremacy, of misogyny, of radicalized racially rooted views of how we view minorities - and who are actually not minorities, we are now a global majority, but people of color and queer people and people who are different and gender nonconforming and trans people. My opponent had used some really awful verbiage in the past historically and it was about not letting that win, not letting that mentality and that way of thinking and that radicalization win. And I get emotional because it was for community and we won.
[00:32:50] Crystal Fincher: And you won. And so, it's such an incredible thing because campaigns are hard. You are putting yourself out there for inspection, for criticism, for commentary, and people will overlook your humanity and say all sorts of things and do all sorts of things. But it also is a beginning. Now the work of governing begins and now it's time to deliver on the promises that you made when you were running, to enact the agenda and start to work on your priorities. What are you working on? What are you prioritizing? And how's it going?
[00:33:31] Councilmember Carmen Rivera: Well, I am learning a lot. I learned, near the end of my campaign - I did not enter my campaign knowing that because the position was filled by an appointee, I would take over the minute that the results were certified. When I started my campaign, I actually thought I was going to take office in January 1st - so you believe you're going to have some time when the election ends in early November, before you start on January 1st. That was not the situation for me. I started on November 30th, so I had no breathing room. And so it's kind of been like drinking from a fire hose is how people describe it - that's very accurate. I'm learning. I'm appreciative of my fellow councilmembers that are - I don't want to go so far as to say mentoring or taking me under their wing, that inquires some sort of hierarchy or condescension. There's none of that in our relationship.
I'm grateful to my fellow councilmembers - Ryan McIrvin, Kim-Khánh Văn, and Ed Prince - who have included me in conversation and met with me and are just open to giving me the feedback that I want. I love feedback and I love constructive criticism and I know I'm imperfect. And so I'm grateful to learn from them. I'm grateful to even - I've been able to meet with Mayor Pavone and Ruth Pérez and be able to bury the hatchet and be able to hopefully work together and effectively together for the betterment of Renton. Because I don't just represent myself, I represent the people who elected me and not even the people who elected me - everybody in the city of Renton. We as the city council, we are the people who represent the community and the city to the city. And we're a very mayor-heavy city.
And so for me right now, it's learning and holding true to the values of bringing public service and social services and the priority of human services to the city of Renton. And so I am trying to do that with challenging, respectfully, some ways that we are allocating funds. We had a very good conversation on Monday, on Renton City Council, regarding our ARPA funds. And even though we did not come to an agreement - I did not agree with how the financial committee report that was passed - and that is democracy. And that is okay. That was a voted majority on how those funds were going to be allocated. And I am happy that we are able to allocate money for body cams and finally get body cams implemented for Renton police department and in the city of Renton because that is long overdue.
And as we are approaching the end of the year, we're on a biannual budget year. The city of Renton has a very, very large budget and so - that happening this year - I'm going to make sure that we prioritize community services, human services and the new equity, housing and human services division. There was a new department that was formed in the last year. And I think it's equity, housing and human services, and making sure that that department is not just a throwaway department for equity, housing and human services but is a highly utilized department that is properly funded and informed and supported to be effective. I am a big believer that our government should help support our most marginalized and help combat the effects of the capitalist society that we have created.
And I want to bring my experience in human social services to the forefront, and when we are allocating funds for our budget and making sure that we are getting the most bang for our buck, like I said on the campaign trail, and being really critical of how we are going to spend our funding, especially this year when we're allocating that budget. Those are my big priorities and I am one of seven. It's going to be me partnering and working with my other councilmembers to educate them and bring them along my journey with me, and help them hopefully see things from my perspective and my purview, and respectfully disrupting the status quo to really bring Renton ahead of the curve.
[00:37:38] Crystal Fincher: Well, I appreciate having this conversation with you. I appreciate the way that you have engaged with everyone in the community throughout your campaign and continuing as you govern. It is so important to be able to have conversations, if you're running for office, with everyone and to meet people where they're at and understand that - I have a vision that I would love to help you see - and to do that work of helping them to see it, and to connect it to the values that they hold and the values that people like to feel in their community, and coming with concrete solutions. And you weren't just talking about some pie in the sky ideas, you were talking about policy that had application that has had demonstrated results elsewhere, as things that have been tried weren't working, and your ability to walk people through that was something that I certainly appreciated.
As we are closing our time here today, we're in mid-February as we're talking right now. A lot of people are considering whether or not they should run this year for the legislature, or for their county council, or - other counties are having county council elections, not King County. But that maybe they should take that step. And certainly people who are like, well, I see myself as an activist. I see myself - I don't necessarily see me in all of these halls of power. Do I actually belong? Is it worth it? Is it worth even expending that much energy? What would you say to people who are in that position? What advice would you give them as they consider whether or not they should take a step towards public service?
[00:39:36] Councilmember Carmen Rivera: I would have them ask themselves what they want to change. What do you want to change? And at what level? What do you want to see changed in your community and at what level? And that should give you your answer. What is your passion? Is it equity? Is it healthcare? Is it housing? Is it human services? Is it police accountability? At what level can you see that change really being made realistically? At the municipal level? At the legislative level? At the county level? At the public hospital commission level? There are so many different levels of government that you can create real change. Don't limit yourself and, respectfully, have the confidence of a mediocre cis heterosexual white man and go forth. And the worst thing's going to happen is you're going to fail and you're going to learn so much in that process, because in order to really succeed, you need to fail at least a 100 times.
And it is incredible that I was able to win my race and I hope that people can look at my race and my campaign and my experience last year, and my experience and my journey today, and see themselves a little bit and see that they can do it too. Because we did it in Renton. We did something that was almost impossible in Renton and it happened. And so I hope that it gives hope, I hope that you go forth and just do it with every ounce and fiber of your being. Don't leave anything at the finish line - like I want you crawling on your hands and knees crossing that finish line at the end, and just know that's what it's going to take. It's going to take support from your family, from your friends, and a really good consultant. That's another thing - make sure you get a good consultant.
[00:41:22] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. You know I'm amen-ing that. Absolutely. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. You're welcome back anytime - as you're working on different things and you want to talk about it, feel free - but just appreciate you and hope you all have a wonderful day.
[00:41:40] Councilmember Carmen Rivera: Oh my gosh. Thank you for having me. And I would love to come back and have any kind of conversation. This has been great and I truly appreciate it. Thank you so much.
[00:41:49] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcast - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
For the last week-in-review of February, Crystal is joined by Executive Director of America Walks and former mayor of Seattle, Mike McGinn. They discuss why the plan to hire more officers to address public safety is impossible in the short term and Plan B is needed to keep people safe now, how local officials can impact a Union strike, the disappointing new legislative staff unionization bill, the high cost sprawl and impact of not allowing people to live close to where they work, and how cities can raise more revenue from increased density.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Mike McGinn, at @mayormcginn. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Police Sweep Troubled Little Saigon Intersection, Retirement Incentives Could Thwart SPD Hiring Plans, City Still Plans Sidewalk Sweep” by Paul Kiefer and Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/02/22/police-sweep-troubled-little-saigon-intersection-retirement-incentives-could-thwart-spd-hiring-plans-city-still-plans-sidewalk-sweep/
“Cold-Weather Shelter Plan Illustrates Challenges With Proposals to Eliminate Encampments Downtown” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/02/22/cold-weather-shelter-plan-illustrates-challenges-with-proposals-to-eliminate-encampments-downtown/
“Concrete Companies Stonewall Negotiations with Striking Truck Drivers, Threatening Cascading Construction Delays” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/02/24/concrete-companies-stonewall-negotiations-with-striking-truck-drivers-threatening-cascading-construction-delays/
“King County Announces Request for Qualifications for Contract at Same Time Teamsters Bargaining Committee Shows Up At Companies’ Doorsteps To Negotiate” from The International Brotherhood of Teamsters: https://teamster.org/2022/02/king-county-announces-request-for-qualifications-for-concrete-contracts-at-same-time-teamsters-bargaining-committee-shows-up-at-companies-doorstep-to-negotiate/
Twitter Thread on Staff Unionization Bill by Nikkole Hughes: https://twitter.com/NikkoleHughes/status/1496232372605710336
“Nobody Knows the Number of Seattle Small Businesses at Risk of Eviction Starting Next Week” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/02/24/67269130/nobody-knows-the-number-of-seattle-small-businesses-at-risk-of-eviction-starting-next-week
The Seattle City Council Let the Eviction Moratorium End by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/02/22/67197191/the-seattle-city-council-let-the-eviction-moratorium-end
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing with our almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: activist, community leader, former mayor of Seattle, and Executive Director of America Walks, the excellent Mike McGinn.
[00:00:57] Mike McGinn: Thank you, Crystal. Glad to be here as always.
[00:01:00] Crystal Fincher: Glad you are here. Now, there's a lot going on in the world.
[00:01:05] Mike McGinn: Yes.
[00:01:05] Crystal Fincher: We tend to focus on local politics and policy - there are a lot of people talking about stuff at the federal level. Certainly right now, there's so much going on throughout the country and internationally with Russia invading Ukraine, trans rights under attack viciously in Texas and beyond - just a lot of news all over the place. I just want to acknowledge that as we start out. And there's lots of information, and coverage, and punditry that can be found about all of that.
Our little slice of experience is here in the state of Washington and King County, so we're going to focus on that, but I certainly do want to acknowledge that that is weighing heavily on the minds of a lot of us here and hopefully better news will come soon. With that, I guess I will start out this conversation talking about policing in Seattle. There's a lot of news that came out this week - talking about the plans for the staffing levels, there have been a number of encampment sweeps, and also a police precinct put in the CID [Chinatown International District] and more of a hotspot policing focus that they have there. So as you look at what's happened over this week, what are your thoughts, Mike?
[00:02:34] Mike McGinn: Well, I think one of the things that we knew, but I don't see that the media has really picked up on this yet - the response of the last two mayors and now Mayor Harrell as well, and it predates them as well. When I took office in 2009, Greg Nickels had shepherded through the neighborhood policing plan and - that's what it was called - and all of these had the central thing of hire more officers, right? And it's very appealing - it feels quite logical to the public. Okay, we have crime - what we need is more police officers.
And what we've seen over the last number of years is that the police department is losing officers much faster than it can replace them. So this week in City Council, the report showed that they hope to hire 125 new officers, and hiring takes time - they have to go through a state training academy. There's a special class being set up for Seattle recruits, or rather recruits to the Seattle Police Department, that might come from all over the state or beyond. And even so, even with this new emphasis, they are predicting that they will add 125 officers in the coming year, but they're also predicting that they will lose 125 officers in the coming year.
So this is my thing - this is what I think the media should be focusing on, which is if you're going to report that somebody's solution is more officers, you have to include that that's not going to happen anytime soon, right? We're not going to increase the size of the police force in the next year, perhaps two years. Who knows when they can actually reverse that attrition that's occurring? So if your solution to crime is we're going to get more officers and more officers will deter crime - if that's your plan, you don't have a plan because you can't hire that many officers. So you have to have a Plan B. And the Plan B has to be an emphasis on other ways to fight crime rather than more officers.
And when Bruce Harrell stood up and did a press conference in response to the very serious public concerns and the media concerns about increases in violent crime, increases in shots fired - basically, what we heard was hotspot policing and more officers. We didn't hear any of the other ways in which City government can put - I mean, I shouldn't say we didn't hear any - of course, he spoke about the need for that, but I didn't hear announced the programs or the new investments or the initiatives to look at what are the sources of the crime and how can you intervene? And this is not - it doesn't have to be long-term stuff. I mean, what the data is showing - that the victims of murders are mostly young Black men, right? We have had youth violence prevention initiatives in this City - they can be expanded, they can be made more effective. We have had partners with community groups on the formerly incarcerated returning to the community. We've done these things. We have ways of getting at this that requires reaching out to all of the skills and talents and abilities of the community as a whole and not immediately going towards a punitive approach.
I'm talking now about the mayor not really announcing a new plan, but I'm also not hearing the City Council go here. I think too many folks - we've kind of gotten in the habit from the progressive side of when people talk about crime saying, "Well, it's not as bad as it was 20 years ago." And it isn't. It is not as bad. But it is a real concern, it is increasing. There are people who are literally in the crosshairs of this crisis of public safety, and I don't think that's an answer. So I really think that the more progressive politicians should be coming in and saying, "We've tried making the size of the police department almost half the City budget, and it really hasn't worked." How about we put that same level of emphasis and approach on the programs that we know work - there's national studies, there's plenty of data. There's studies out there that show the number of community groups in a neighborhood is related to reductions in crime. These programs work. There's tons of data that these programs can work.
[00:07:38] Crystal Fincher: Tons of data.
[00:07:38] Mike McGinn: But we've never resourced them. We've never resourced them the way we resource police officers, and we have to do that. So this issue of crime is serious, the violence is serious, the shots fired is serious - and we need a serious response. And honestly, saying more police officers right now - that's not a serious response. That's just pandering because their own predictions say they were not going to be able to increase the size of the force in the coming year. Sorry, I'm kind of passionate about this, but this is a real thing. And communities and people are suffering - and just pandering to more police officers as a solution is not a solution.
[00:08:23] Crystal Fincher: Well, yeah - it's not a solution. We have to get beyond rhetoric to actually what are the policy differences? What procedures are going to change? What staffing levels are going to change? What is the substance that is changing? And we do hear so much about staffing and it seems like a number of both elected folks and folks in the media just kind of focus on that one metric. Kind of like with COVID, people only talk about deaths - and wow, there's long COVID, there's chronic illness and disability. There's so much more to consider besides just if someone's dying. There's so much more to consider than just the staffing level, whether it's more or less.
And with that, even if the, "Hey, everybody's on board. Let's hire more officers," - to your point, we can't do that. There cannot be more on the street for quite some time - even if they're in the pipeline, it takes a while for them to get through that pipeline. So it is absolutely true that crime is both lower and too high. We don't want - people are justifiably concerned. This pandemic has taken such a toll on so many people in so many ways - from road rage to some of the random nonsensical violence - that we've seen are wild.
[00:09:56] Mike McGinn: Domestic violence.
[00:09:57] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Domestic violence has skyrocketed.
[00:09:58] Mike McGinn: Absolutely. We look at these things and there's not going to be a police officer in place to prevent that. There are things that are beyond the reach of the police as well. It's the community-level interventions and the non-police responses that we need to be focusing on as well. And I want to be clear - from my experience as mayor, good policing can make a difference, right? If there's catalytic converter thefts, then let's try to figure out how that's happening and how to thwart that. And that's a combination of detective work, maybe some undercover work, detecting patterns, doing what's necessary. I saw this during my term - if there was burglary issue in a place, the police could use their resources to try to deal with that. So effective policing can make a difference.
I also think an officer walking a beat in a place where people feel unsafe can make a difference in making people feel safer and maybe preventing some things. But let's not make believe that that alone can solve it. And certainly the punitive approach, the longterm punitive approach that we have tried, it just hasn't worked. It just hasn't worked. We had more people in jail. People get arrested multiple times and recycle through the system, come out again. And it breeds, as we know with places that have followed stop and frisk tactics and the like - it leads to violence in its own right, and escalation and lack of safety for individuals subject to that treatment, as well as building horrible distrust between the community and the police. So there's bad policing and there's good policing. But I do think that good policing obviously can help with fighting crime. But it can't do it alone and never has. It requires partnership with the community to get at root sources.
I want to say this isn't long-term stuff either - it isn't like, "Oh, if we have a better educational system, we have fewer criminals." Yeah, that's true. But we can identify right now - I'm sure there are people in the community, I'm sure there are people working in the community right now who, if we said, "If we give you some more money to target some programs to the people who are most at risk, can you do that?" And we could, and it would make a difference within months. It could make a difference immediately. It could make a difference in a day if that person is reached and is put in a different position than they are in now. So it can be done. And it can be done a hell a lot quicker than trying to increase the size of the police force, which is going to continue to see attrition and continue to have hiring difficulties.
[00:12:56] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And it can be done more effectively than it looks like the iteration of this hotspot policing effort, which has been covered in a number of outlets - PubliCola wrote a story, KING 5 also wrote a story just about encampment sweeps not getting people off the street. Some of those sweeps are happening without any offer of services - if they declare it to be an emergency or a particular health hazard, no attempt at making any connection to services is necessary and that has happened with some of these - these are just sweeps, nothing additional. In other cases, they're offering shelter for the night as part of the sweeps. When they say they're offering services, that was the service offered. That does nothing to get someone off the street. All it does is put them further back and that now they have no belongings, no stability. And they just move elsewhere in the City.
So what in fact ends up happening, and PubliCola also got at this in their article, was the folks who were on the block that the police are - there's six policemen in this area, a mobile unit. So yeah, they moved off of that block, but they just went into adjoining neighborhoods. So PubliCola talked to some of the folks in the adjoining neighborhoods and they said, "Yes, they came over here. We're seeing them over here. It's just musical chairs." And unless if we're talking about homelessness, we include permanent housing that people can get into.
And in the case of trying to address crime, is that actually making a difference in violent crime? It was just close to one of these hotspot places - there was just a shooting the other day. So are we really doing the smartest intervention, to your point? Would these resources be better used in more detective capacities and trying to get to the origin and the root cause of the crime or who are the people really behind this? We seem to be moving further away from that. SPD moved resources out of specialized units, senior abuse units, domestic violence units to patrols on the street.
[00:15:24] Mike McGinn: I mean, it's a very difficult situation when you are faced with a declining number of resources and you have to start making choices about what to do with that. I think that then requires - you've got to start looking, "Well, what other resources do we have in the City beyond the police department? Who else is out there that can help? What roles can they pick up?" These aren't flip of the switch type of things, right? These are management level decisions about aligning people towards programs. There are good people in city government who want to get rolling.
And I don't want to be - I critiqued Mayor Harrell for, in my opinion, not announcing new initiatives on this, but I have hope for Mayor Harrell in this regard. I mean, my memory - his strategic advisor or strategic initiative advisor or whatever his title is - is the guy who brought forward the anti-panhandling statute. But Mayor Harrell cast the deciding vote against it that enabled me to veto that statute and prevent it from becoming law. And he did so because he read the Human Rights Commission report on that and what it would mean for that type of enforcement to be brought against homeless people or people panhandling on the street.
So I feel that Mayor Harrell - I had a sense of where his feelings are, and I think he now has a very significant management job to realign City resources towards a more humane approach and not respond to the demands of the business community which is very much a believer - there are portions of the business community that are supportive of various human services and social services. They're engaged in that. But the overwhelming demand from that sector right now is, "Well, we need to move the homeless out of the core. We need to have more police officers on the street." And it's just not a plan that's going to lead to much success.
What Mayor Harrell should be asking himself is - a year from now, does he want to be standing up at a press conference saying, "The solution is more police officers. And in the meantime, what have I done?" Or does he want to stand up and say, "Well, these are the programs we've lifted up. These are the people we're serving. These are the outcomes we're seeing"? So I guess I'd appeal to both Mayor Harrell's sense of compassion and sense of concern for the community in this - I've seen it. And to his own political wellbeing, that this is a place for leadership, this is a place for leadership - and a very hard issue. But sitting tight, it's not going to be a good press conference a year from now with sitting tight with just more officers is going to be the answer one day.
[00:18:31] Crystal Fincher: I completely agree. I also want to talk about a couple of occurrences this week in union strikes that we've seen.
[00:18:41] Mike McGinn: Yeah.
[00:18:42] Crystal Fincher: Or unionization - one including a strike. One is with the concrete workers. Concrete companies are negotiating with striking truck drivers - that has been going on for quite some time. And the companies have actually been stalling somewhat - they've been slow and hesitant to come back to the table, they're now asking for a new mediator - they seem to be using a number of stalling tactics and not being in a rush. Meanwhile, local elected officials Mayor Harrell, Executive Constantine, have been vocal in talking about needing to get back to work, this potentially delaying a number of projects including the West Seattle Bridge, other projects downtown, continually reinforcing the need to get to work. And it's interesting how this plays out and that if concrete companies are stalling, workers have a proposal that they feel like they're trying to work through and negotiate and the company just isn't participating in those conversations, then you have elected officials putting pressure on just to get this done with and get back to work and it's going to be late. That actually has the result of pressuring the union, pressuring workers, to just make concessions and settle for things that may not be fair, that are certainly less than they're asking for that are kind of falling by the wayside - because if the concrete companies can just run the clock out with no penalty and rely on others to do the pressuring, and try to get public opinion to just get this over with so we can get moving, that really is putting the workers in potentially a really unfair and unpleasant spot.
If the company isn't coming back to the table and making any differences in their proposals, the only way that can happen is if the union workers just decide to give up. That doesn't seem like that is where a lot of people in this community are aligned, it doesn't seem like that might be the healthiest thing for supporting the autonomy and authority of unions to negotiate in good faith with companies. This is a situation where we had a previous co-host, Julie McCoy, refer to you handling this when you were mayor and faced with a strike. How did you decide to approach this kind of situation when you were in office?
[00:21:27] Mike McGinn: Well, just first to comment, you're referring to a press conference. And one of the things that stood out to me about that press conference was that the person who's building the Convention Center downtown was one of the people at the press conference urging action. Yeah, and as you may remember the Convention Center - I think it's up to $1.7 Billion project, paid for with taxes. The County had to come forward in an unusual move and guarantee loans for it so that it could continue going. Harking back to the prior issue, it's clearly the County and the City were feeling the pressure from those interests to do something, so that's what you saw.
So it is interesting that there are times when people are called upon to take sides. And it's challenging to take sides in a union dispute. But if you can, if you can come in and lean in a good way, you should. We had a garbage lockout that was occurring. So we had contracts with companies to collect our garbage and recycling. I have to say, I can't quite remember which contract it was now - I think it was garbage. And they were going to fly in people to drive the trucks, because they were going to lock out the workers because they didn't have a contract. It turned out that our public utilities had wisely put a clause into their agreement, which said that if there was any failure to collect the garbage, there would be fines depending on how much garbage they failed to collect - a strike wasn't an excuse, or a lockout wasn't an excuse, to not pay the fines. So we held a press conference and said we were going to - we announced this, said how it worked, said that we were going to fine the companies if they didn't collect the garbage. I remember we asked people to tweet their uncollected garbage with some type of clever hashtag - I wish I could remember it now - but we had the clever hashtag. I think it was pretty darn quickly the garbage company settled because we had leverage and we used it.
So that would be one of my questions, and I'm not smart enough or knowledgeable enough about the situation to know what leverage the County or City might have to help get the companies to the bargaining table, or lean in a little more on the side of workers. But that would be the first question is - what leverage do they have? And we were fortunate. We were fortunate that we had a contract that had really good leverage and we chose to use it. By the way, when they settled, they called me up and they asked if - actually, I heard from the head of the utility - they contacted me and he said, "This is great. They've settled. They're going to get back to work. And as a sign of good faith they've asked you to cancel the fines for all the garbage that went uncollected while they were bringing in the scabs." And I was like, "No, they need to pay the fines, man. They were holding the whole City hostage with the idea that there'd be stinky garbage. They need to pay the fines." So they did, they paid a fine too. And again, we had the leverage, we used it, and we made it clear that we would use it. So hopefully that'd be a deterrent in the future as well.
[00:25:02] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I hope so. And just the awareness that the actions that they take do impact the process and that they can either help or hurt workers, applying this leverage does have an impact for the concrete companies or the union, and understanding that the actions that they take have come consequences.
[00:25:28] Mike McGinn: I had another example where I leaned in on that. It was during the 2013 re-election campaign - it became quite controversial, but there was a company - there was a developer that was redeveloping a site and they were asking the City to turn over the alley.
[00:25:44] Crystal Fincher: That's right. That street -
[00:25:46] Mike McGinn: Right. It's called a street vacation.
[00:25:49] Crystal Fincher: Vacation.
[00:25:49] Mike McGinn: In essence, they're asking the City to sell them property so that they can develop the whole block and not have to keep the alley in place. And we recommended to the City Council that they not do that. And that was at the urging of the grocery store workers, because they're like they're going to bring - they plan to bring in a Whole Foods, which was a non-union grocery. And I went and listened to the workers and there - the point they made was when you facilitate a non-union grocery, that puts downward pressure on our wages and makes it more likely that our grocery store will suffer. So there were lots of grocery stores in this neighborhood that were unionized, and here was going to come a non-union grocery. And I was like, "Yeah, we don't need to sell more property."
It was kind of interesting because the business community was like, "You can't use land use laws to favor unions." And my response to them was, "This isn't a land use law. This is our property. This is City property. We get to sell it to whoever we want to, for whatever reason we want to. And I don't want to sell it to a company that's non-union and that's going to hurt our union workers. So you guys are conservatives, you believe in property rights, right? Well, there's the City using its property rights. We don't want to sell it to you. We don't have to." So it was interesting - it wasn't portrayed that way. They thought it was a slippery slope to me using land use laws in some way, but it was actually a deeply conservative action we were taking. We get to choose who we sell it to, and that was that. Now, it turned out I lost that re-election campaign, a relatively close campaign, and Ed Murray pushed that one through with the support of the Council and that property was sold.
[00:27:35] Crystal Fincher: It's such a good lesson to so many of us in this area watching that and understanding that the City has so much power that goes unused. The City has so much leverage that routinely goes unused. The way that was framed was so interesting because it was - well, you're just trying to help workers, you're trying to create an unfair advantage. And with completely not acknowledging that we do that for companies, corporations daily.
[00:28:06] Mike McGinn: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. We did too, we did too. If you are crossing the West Seattle Bridge, if you look down, you'll see a really beautiful office building right next to the Duwamish waterway. Well, under the industrial rules - and it's the office building which is the headquarters for a tugboat company - well, under the land use laws at the time, you couldn't have an office of that size in the industrial area because the industrial interests didn't want industrial land taken over by offices. But tugboat company is different - we changed the law. We did that for that company. And that was the right thing to do to make it easy for the tugboat company to have its offices next to its tugboats in the industrial area. We did stuff like that all the time - we would look at what rules we have in place to try to facilitate business.
I think it's appropriate to see where you can use that to help workers as well in that process. You don't have as many as you think though sometimes - like there are - if the development rules say you can build a hotel, and this is I think always a big challenge for the hotel workers, it can be very hard to stop a hotel because they can go to court and say, "Look, we're following the rules. We're allowed to build a hotel and there's nothing there." And that's why you tended to see the purchase of City property - the alley vacations become a tool because that was a leverage point that the City had. But there are other leverage points as well, there are other leverage points, and sometimes it's just soft power as well as showing up and standing with workers somewhere can make a difference too.
[00:29:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Absolutely.
[00:29:55] Mike McGinn: Yeah.
[00:29:55] Crystal Fincher: So we'll see how that turns out. There's also - was a new development in an issue we talked about last week in the legislature, with the bill that had originally died that allowed legislative staff to unionize, which had a lot of support from Democratic lawmakers. Unfortunately, it didn't go through - there was rhetoric saying that it wasn't quite ready, even though evidently there has been some iteration of this since 2012. They were saying there just wasn't time, it's going to take one more year. A few legislators had been pinpointed as specifically opposing it and being problematic and preventing it from reaching the floor for a vote from the full legislative, the full House. But it turns out this week, they weren't actually bound by a deadline that they couldn't get past and a new bill was introduced. Who'd have thunk? Maybe the deadlines don't mean as much as people initially thought - that's one of, actually, my big lessons that I've learned over the years with the legislatures - the rules are flexible.
[00:31:13] Mike McGinn: They make the rules. They're allowed to change the rules.
[00:31:15] Crystal Fincher: Yes. And do routinely. And then at other times they're like, "Well, these are the rules we have, we have no power." The rules say this and that's just that, which it seemed like that was Plan A, and then there was a lot of pushback from - just kind of broadly across the political, policy, nonprofit labor and worker spectrum. And gaining a lot of attention even outside of Washington State. So a new bill was introduced to allow - new bill was introduced, it was dropped initially without language at first. So it's like, "Oh, hey. Maybe this is going to be a good thing, maybe they're going for it after all."
When the full text of the bill did drop, it was revealed to be a massive problem. This bill actually doesn't reflect the prior bill in that it would basically enable staff to unionize in the traditional manner on their terms. This basically established a committee or a commission that would study this, and charter a study to take a look at all the special circumstances of the legislature and the work, and talk about who should be able to unionize and who shouldn't, and what should be able to be collectively bargained and what can't, and also prevented any employees from being covered by a union until mid 2025. That's a long time. And certainly not consistent with the next year rhetoric that we were hearing. And also just seems to put a lot of limitations and set this process up to say, "Well, we might create a grievance process for you and that should take care of a lot of your concerns. But wow, there are so many problems with the idea of a union that we just would have to figure out and get around." That's going to continue to be really hard and just continue to kick the can down the road.
So I don't know if this is going to go much of anywhere - it certainly should not - kind of fell really flat with a thud. And it just actually made the situation look worse, and that there actually seems to be some real significant anti-union sentiment from some of these legislators working on these bills. I think one of the co-sponsors, Representative Riccelli, wanted to do something helpful and he was working with some people to craft this bill that did not have the same kind of motivation or pure intentions, purity of intentions. And this was the result of it. But certainly just another disappointment in this whole process. And really goes to the issue of trust - is this something that you actually do want to get done, looking at the text of this? Is this a priority for people? And it just seems to be a big question mark.
[00:34:26] Mike McGinn: It's not surprising - when I was but a young man, I went to work for a congressman and this was 1983. One of the things you learned was that Congress had exempted itself from pretty much every workplace law. It'd be really interesting to see - now at the time, members of Congress could retire and convert their campaign funds to personal use at that point. It became their money. So there were all sorts of laws and that one changed. I don't know the degree to which other laws have changed, but it is just not surprising that the body that makes the rules may not want it to apply to them either. So we just see that - I don't think FOIA applies to Congress, I don't think OSHA applied to Congress, there was all sorts of things that just didn't apply.
So that's challenging. Now, of course, the flip side of that is that the unions and it goes back to our prior discussion - with the loss of decline in the union membership across the number of workers covered by unions, the public sector and government sector has become an extremely important place for unions as well as the people that do business with government, as we were discussing earlier. Again, in 1983, the Speaker of the House was Tip O'Neill and it had been a Democratic Congress for a hell of a long time - these are the people that are most ideologically aligned, but it's a wholly different thing to apply it to their own offices.
[00:36:13] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and that's what matters most actually. That's where you actually see what someone's values are - is how they handle those situations when it does impact them and affect them. I hope they do better. I also want to talk about - back to Seattle and the Seattle area news this week - that housing prices have, continue to skyrocket. And also that the eviction moratorium is ending.
[00:36:43] Mike McGinn: Yeah.
[00:36:44] Crystal Fincher: What did you read on that this week?
[00:36:49] Mike McGinn: There's so many reasons why we are where we are on housing, right? One is an inequality question - just with the rise in unequal incomes and further distributions on wealth, there's a real haves and have not situation with regards to housing and getting into housing gets harder. There's a racial aspect to it as well because of the way the laws have really prevented Black people in particular from accumulating generational wealth - the discrimination, the red lining, the lending practices, et cetera. And then it all just really gets turned up a whole lot of notches when you lock into place a zoning regime that prioritizes single family homes, which has its roots in the same race and class issues I was just discussing.
So you have this situation where, not just in Seattle, but there's a New York Times article about being able to afford a house in Spokane, right? It's one of those cities that, "Oh, that's not a hot coastal tech hub with lots of high price people." Well, it's happening there too. And it's happening there because of these issues where we've just locked down the supply of housing for people. Obviously, there's a need for really big investments for those who need some level of subsidy - who need subsidized housing, whether it's shelter, whether it's transitional housing, or whether it's public housing, or social housing as they call it in Europe. There's a need for that. But there's also a huge need to, I believe, to allow the private sector to build housing too. I mean, the need is so big that just literally after decades of zoning laws that lock up most of your land in single family zoning, there's just not going to be enough housing out there. It's just not going to be there. And that's exactly what's happened. It's exactly what's happened.
And what we see is the public gets it. The public gets that we need to change the rules. Now, they may be a little more hesitant. That's also what the public shows, right? They may be a little more hesitant about changing it in their own neighborhood, but they certainly believe it should change in the system overall - like they're getting that. Housing laws that once only locked out a segment of the population are now locking out such a big segment of the population, including the sons and daughters of those who once could afford homes when they were that age, that the public demand is growing for that to change. But it's not moving close to fast enough.
[00:39:57] Crystal Fincher: It's not moving close to fast enough. There was a bill in the legislature this year, the middle housing bill, to address exactly that. Market rate housing, which doesn't dictate any particular price, but just private development - it's not public or social housing - and allowing just a modest amount of more zoning, of more density overall in neighborhoods, which is absolutely what's needed. That bill died.
[00:40:26] Mike McGinn: Yeah, that bill died, the backyard cottage expansion died - we put so much restrictions on it because we're concerned about the impacts of the people who already live in a place. And oftentimes those impacts are where will all the cars go? But if we look at some of our most desirable neighborhoods in the City - take a look at Capitol Hill - you can walk down a street and you can see a brick apartment building, you can see a courtyard apartment. You can go a little further - you can see a big house - maybe once upon a time that house was subdivided into multiple units, and now maybe it's just owned by one person. And they're all jumbled up together because Capitol Hill, when it was being built out, it was being built out the way all cities are built out historically which is they just get thicker. If you're a growing city and you have more jobs, places that are closer to the jobs get more intensely developed. Pioneer Square was a collection of wooden shacks at one point, right? And then there were probably nice houses. And then now you've got six or eight story brick buildings. That's what cities do. And what we did was we stopped them doing that when we brought in all of the zoning and the single family zoning restrictions. We just said, "No, you can't do that." We've had this limited thing of, "Well, they can build on arterials." Well, guess who's breathing the most pollution then? Again, the equity things.
Again, I'll go back to Capitol Hill. If you walk around Capitol Hill, it's not just on the arterials, right? It's mixed in and it means that you can absorb a lot of housing and still have a leafy green street. And more than that, you'll have a nice business district because there's enough people there to support the coffee shops and restaurants that everyone says they love. So we have this bizarre dichotomy where people are like, "I want a single family neighborhood, I don't want anybody else's car on my street. But I also want a thriving business district and highly frequent transit to my neighborhood, right? Oh, and I'm going to take my vacation to some European or South American -"
[00:42:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, to a community that looks exactly like what I'm fighting against.
[00:42:42] Mike McGinn: Yeah. Because isn't it so great to be in this place that has all of this activity and life and wonderful architecture? I know, it's nuts. And the biggest opponent of the state bills was the Association of Washington Cities. And what you find is that they say it's about local control, but I personally believe that the real issue is that so many local elected officials just share the values of the single family homeowners. They may do that themselves, they just share those values. From a financial perspective, if you are the mayor of a city trying to figure out how to pay for all your services, infill housing is great. You get the sales taxes on the construction, you get the real estate taxes on every time it changes hands, you get the sales taxes from the residents of the place, you get the B&O taxes from the new local businesses that serve those people. And you don't have to build another - you barely have to build anything, right?
[00:43:45] Crystal Fincher: You don't have to run a sewer line way out - yeah.
[00:43:49] Mike McGinn: Right. The road already exists, there may be a bus line nearby already, which now is more people dropping money into the fare box, right? This is a money maker. Now, sprawl on the edge of town is a money loser, right? You're not going to collect enough money from those single family houses to pay for all those new roads and pipes and wires to service a sprawling development. But you already have all the roads and pipes and wires to serve infill development - it's there - there you go. You also get utility taxes - every one of them hooks up to utility, you're going to pay utility taxes, 6% to the City. It's a major source of revenue for a city. I don't know if anybody from the Association of Washington Cities listens to this, but if you want to balance your budget, support infill housing. If you want better libraries and schools and roads for your community, support infill housing. If you want more business for your local small businesses, support infill housing. Really, it's not a bad thing. People really enjoy it. They'll spend good money for it. So I don't get it.
[00:44:59] Crystal Fincher: That became so apparent to me - I served on the City of Kent's land use and planning board a long, long time ago. And that was so immediately apparent in a way that is shocking that it's not something that we talk about more openly in municipal conversations. It is really expensive. Sprawl is really expensive. Building out the city's infrastructure and then maintaining that infrastructure is really expensive. We don't capture that cost from developers, we put that on the residents of every single city. And that's really expensive. So then we have these conversations about, "Man, these roads are horrible. They're torn up. My goodness, this service is terrible." And it's because cities don't have the money to maintain the infrastructure that they continue to build when they allow sprawl and thinks just to, "Yeah, we're going to build new houses way out on the edge of town instead of allowing more density where it currently is."
[00:46:04] Mike McGinn: It's a sugar buzz, right? You get a short term hit. You get a short term hit of revenue from that construction. It feels good. And the developer says, "Hey, I'll build the road for you and give it to you."
[00:46:14] Crystal Fincher: "And we might even put in a sidewalk."
[00:46:17] Mike McGinn: "You got a free road," they'll say. Except it's not free, right? 20 or 30 years from now, you're going to have to repave that road or something and do that for a few decades. And all of a sudden, you've got more roads than you can take care of. By the way, I'm not making this up. The County is talking about turning roads to gravel to reduce their costs. The City of Seattle has no way to pay for all of its local street repairs. They keep arterials in good repair, but they can't afford to take care of residential streets. And here we are talking about the housing issues and everything else. It's so straightforward, it's such a good thing, but at bottom. Oh, by the way, Kent's got a nice little street grid, right? Kent's got a street grid in downtown, they've got the good bones as they say for a good walkable community. But what's really at the heart of it is if we allow apartment buildings, who are the people that will move in and do we want those people here - the things that people say about renters, which is kind of code for maybe the person is -
[00:47:25] Crystal Fincher: One of "those people." Maybe people with lower income.
[00:47:27] Mike McGinn: One of "those people," right - they don't really have ties to the community.
[00:47:31] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. They don't look like us. They don't have the same -
[00:47:34] Mike McGinn: They're different. They might be immigrants. They might be Black people. They might not have as much money as us. All of that feels vaguely threatening to me. Can't we just keep this neighborhood single family with the people that are here? And next thing you know, you can't afford a house in Spokane even.
[00:47:51] Crystal Fincher: Yes.
[00:47:52] Mike McGinn: Which is a great town. It's a great city. I know why people are moving there. It's a great city, but it's crazy that we're not allowing people to build housing.
[00:47:59] Crystal Fincher: And Pierce County Council Chair, Derek Young, brought up in response to the local control desire that was brought up for many cities, is that not allowing density in larger cities, major metropolitan areas, directly impacts the affordability of housing in other areas. We've talked about how suburbs - the housing prices are rapidly increasing. And other areas in the state - in Spokane, the cost of housing is rapidly increasing because we can't absorb that in the areas where we should be able to, where there is existing infrastructure and jobs to support it. And the local tax revenue to support all of the infrastructure necessary from schools to roads, to social services, to support the population. So then that vicious cycle starts again where housing prices skyrocket. It displaces people from those communities who can't afford it. It puts people who need to be closer to services and to jobs and to schools in order to be able to afford to live, live in a healthy way - it puts them out of the perimeter where they can do that.
And we start to see the consequences that we've seen in so many other areas with increasing rates of people not being able to afford their homes and falling into homelessness. Increasing people needing to commute to work and creating the traffic that everybody says that they hate. All of that is a direct result of not allowing people to live close to where they work, to live in proximity to other people and services. It is so obvious and known in most planning departments in the state. This is not a partisan issue - you can go to Wahkiakum County, you can go to anywhere - and planners there will tell you the same thing. This is not a right versus left thing. This is just kind of a basic city planning, economics conversation. This is the way that cities run, and are built, and operate. And we just need to do something before there are too few people left in the cities to keep them accessible to anyone else.
[00:50:19] Mike McGinn: For the local elected officials too, you kind of like - this is a great place to Take the L, right? "Oh, we tried, but we couldn't stop them from changing the rules. Sorry, we have no choice but to allow that multifamily unit now." Right? The State Legislature is taking the political pressure off them if they pass this. So that the local elected official would not have to face the angry constituent on the new building and be like, "No, that's the state law. Go talk to your State Legislature." And then they could go reap the benefits in the community from that. So their hostility to it is - the hostility from the Association of Washington Cities is - it's just not well calculated either for the health of their city or for their local politics either. It's just not well calculated.
[00:51:17] Crystal Fincher: Just not well calculated. And with that, we will probably just conclude this conversation. It can go on for a long time. There are lots of other things that we could discuss.
[00:51:25] Mike McGinn: Of course.
[00:51:25] Crystal Fincher: But we'll call it a day with that. And I certainly thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, February 25th, 2022 - February just evaporated for me. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler and assistant producer Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was activist, community leader, former mayor of Seattle, and Executive Director of America Walks, and one of my mentors, Mike McGinn. You can find Mike on Twitter @mayormcginn. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii. And now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcast. Just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.
Marc Dones, CEO of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, and Crystal have an in-depth, honest conversation about addressing homelessness. They talk through the critical need to acknowledge the lack of appropriate housing supply, the harm our system has traditionally perpetuated on those it aims to serve, and the desperate state of a chronically underfunded service infrastructure. Though the scope of the problem is daunting, they discuss how the solutions are mostly straightforward, but hinge on a real commitment to resourcing them.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal on Twitter at @finchfrii, Marc at @marcformarc, and the King County Regional Homelessness Authority at @KC_RHA.
Resources
King County Regional Homelessness Authority: https://kcrha.org/
“King County head of homelessness may be an ‘impossible’ job, but Marc Dones is optimistic” by Scott Greenstone from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/king-county-head-of-homelessness-may-be-an-impossible-job-but-marc-dones-is-optimistic/
“Why does prosperous King County have a homelessness crisis?” by Benjamin Maritz and Dilip Wagle for McKinsey & Company: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/why-does-prosperous-king-county-have-a-homelessness-crisis
“Seattle homelessness nonprofits struggle to hire, complicating plans to expand shelters and housing” by Scott Greenstone from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/seattle-homelessness-nonprofits-struggle-to-hire-complicating-plans-to-expand-shelters-and-housing/
“A Literature Review of Single-Room Occupancy (SRO) Supportive Housing Structures in the United States: An Assessment to Ascertain the Viability of SROs to Address the Needs of Homeless and Vulnerably Housed Populations in New York City” by Ashwin Parulkar and Daniel C. Farrell for HELP USA: https://www.helpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/A-Literature-Review-of-Single-Room-Occupancy-SRO-Supportive-Housing-Structures-in-the-United-States.pdf
“Building the Capacity of the Homeless Service Workforce” by Joan Mullen and Walter Leginski for The Open Health Services and Policy Journal: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=D7337FB9BA53EC10246DDFB46B6B37AE?doi=10.1.1.457.1884&rep=rep1&type=pdf
“Frontline Workers: Urban Solutions for Developing a Sustainable Workforce in the Homeless Services Sector of Los Angeles County” by Vanessa Rios from Antioch University Los Angeles: https://www.antioch.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/RIOS-VANESSA.-URBAN-SOLUTIONS-FOR-DEVELOPING-A-SUSTAINABLE-WORKFORCE.-.pdf
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I'm thrilled to be welcoming this person to the show. Today, we have joining us, the CEO of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, Marc Dones. Thank you so much for joining us.
[00:00:52] Marc Dones: Thanks for having me.
[00:00:54] Crystal Fincher: Well, I wanted to have this conversation - we have talked about homelessness, what the unhoused population needs, providing housing, services - throughout several shows here on Hacks & Wonks. But it's a conversation that is so rich and there are so many facets to it, we really can't talk about it enough. I was really excited to see you take the helm of the Homelessness Authority - and just listening to you in various venues, just the vision that you're bringing to it. So, I guess, just to start out for people who may not be familiar with who you are and what this job entails, what brought you here and what is the work that you are charged with doing?
[00:01:42] Marc Dones: Well, for folks who aren't familiar with me - one, I'm jealous. You're living a great life and I encourage you to keep living it. You have managed to escape having to know about me or any of the things that I have to worry about, most of which are the worst things that our culture produces. So, kudos to you and teach me your ways.
What brings me to the work to some degree is my life - I'm a queer, non-binary Black person, I have some significant mental health issues - I have been psychiatrically hospitalized twice - I did some couch surfing. And when I began my nominal professional career, I was, as most young people are, fascinated most with myself and I wanted to understand - I remember being in my early 20s and trying to understand how it had kind of worked out for me, right? And my work and my research really led to the fact that it was kind of luck - that statistically speaking, this is not likely. And so, I think that part of the reason why I have done this work for as long as I have and what I'm trying to do is - to make a world where luck is not the mediator of a positive outcome for a person who's like me - where we are able to rely on the government and our social structures and our safety net, to produce the kinds of outcomes that we deserve as opposed to having to luck out.
So that's why I'm here, and I think that the work of the Authority - in a sentence - is to end homelessness. And homelessness is complicated, it is complex - I've said every which way to Sunday - there is no silver bullet here. There's just actually nuanced work, and it's just the one thing - that's all we got to do - is end homelessness in the county.
[00:04:14] Crystal Fincher: Simple phrase, hard work. So, what does it take to end homelessness?
[00:04:22] Marc Dones: It takes a couple thing - from my perspective, for our region and just broadly in this country, it takes a couple things. One is, we have to have a very serious conversation about housing. And it's critical we start every conversation with a conversation about housing, because for too long, frankly, we've started the conversation with everything but housing. And so, we've become obsessed with formulating homelessness through the lens of crime, or just of mental health, or all this service infrastructure without ever thinking about the roof. I say all the time that - with reverence and deep respect for the social workers I work with and know - no number of social workers becomes a home. It's not like you get assigned six case managers and they sort of Transformer-Autobot into a house.
And so, in this country, we have done a terrible job of producing and maintaining low-income housing stock. And in particular, for wonks, that's the 0-30% AMI - so Area Median Income is the index we use - it's got a lot of flaws and we can talk about those, but it's a good barometer of how much money you need to make in order to live in a region without being cost burdened. For our truly lowest income residents, that 0-30% AMI, we don't produce anything for them.
And I think what's really critical there is that 0-30% AMI - folks in their minds often, I think, picture - I don't know what people picture anymore actually. But the point that we should make is that 0-30% AMI is in many instances a barista, it is - a senior on fixed income is 0-30% AMI. And I'm not saying this in an effort to create the other thing we often do, which is the poor people we can empathize with and so, therefore we're worried about helping. I'm saying this just to be really clear that there was a time when getting to 0-30% AMI actually was hard to do because of the level of destitution it required. Now, you can work full-time or be attached to what's supposed to be our nation's greatest benefit structure and still be in that income bracket.
The other thing that I think we really need to talk about when we talk about ending homelessness is - the harm the system does when it is attempting to house you.
[00:07:18] Crystal Fincher: Yes.
[00:07:18] Marc Dones: In all honesty, part of the reason that much has been made about our shot here at really implementing a system that centers the voices of people with lived experience and who are currently experiencing homelessness, is it gives us this opportunity for the first time to be like, These things do more than just not help - they hurt, right?
[00:07:42] Crystal Fincher: Yes.
[00:07:43] Marc Dones: And so much of our system has been organized through these punitive and paternalistic and carceral lenses that they really create - not just like, "Oh, this was unpleasant." - they create trauma. And that trauma disincentivizes people from engaging in whatever the supportive services they might need. It also creates really significant - I've been playing with this idea for a number of years - this attachment theory, but for housing. That by the time you get to housing, the process has been so traumatic that you attach to it poorly. And so, as a result, are more likely to then experience homelessness again, because of the psychological damage that getting to that housing has caused.
And then the last thing would say is just that services are really important. We do need to support people who have experienced different kinds of trauma - whether it's intimate partner violence or war - and for reasons are or for those reasons, I should say, are experiencing housing instability. And our service infrastructure is awful - it is - we don't have it.
[00:09:09] Crystal Fincher: Right.
[00:09:10] Marc Dones: I think I would be remiss not to be clear that that is also racialized and classed in its construction. The vast majority of folks who do the frontline service work in the homelessness system are women, and in particular, women of color. To me, then it feels like no accident that it has been okay for 30, 35 years to pay them $27,000, while we ask them to manage people who are, in some cases, actively decompensating with psychotic spectrum disorders. Again, I say that not disrespectfully because I have been the person who's been decompensating with a psychotic spectrum disorder. It's hard to manage and we don't compensate those folks the way we compensate white men who do the exact same work, but with a different credentialing, because they had access and yada yada yada. For me, there is a really clear connection between ending homelessness and ending the poverty that we impose on the staff we are asking to do that work.
[00:10:28] Crystal Fincher: Such good information with all of that. I want to start off with what you talked about with housing - and such a critical point of the need to start these conversations with housing. I want to ask about the lowest end and I forget - there was an article that I read a while back that was talking about what we used to have but don't have anymore - like one room rentals, day rentals. And that being a way that a lot of people made it back on their feet or actually prevented themselves from winding up on the street - hey, this is suboptimal and I ultimately want a different, larger place to stay, but this is shelter that I can afford. This is my place that I can afford, and in a room, and single-occupancy type thing - but those used to be here. We used to have more of that supply and don't. Do you see that as part of the issue? Is that a more minor missing part of it? Do you think that we also need to increase the amount of really low-income stock that we have?
[00:11:37] Marc Dones: I think it's a huge part of it. I mean, let's be clear. America navigated two previous homelessness crises brought on by the two previous World Wars, largely through SRO [single room occupancy] stock. I mean, it was a known thing that vets could come back and get a room at the Y - that was just how we navigated that. And certainly before the passage of the GI Bill, that was it, that was literally it. With the passage of the GI Bill, we see vets having access to other kinds of monetary supports and financial tools to purchase homes in some instances. Although, we should also note that the GI Bill implementation was certainly quite racialized and so, who got access to those financial tools is its own story. Somebody's book, not mine. But I will be really clear that we lost those SRO units and other low-income housing units in the great suburbanization wave that begins at the end of the 40s and then pushes into the 50s and 60s.
So, with the creation of the suburbs, we begin to see a corresponding almost unraveling, frankly, of a lot of what had been that standard low-income housing stock. And it then leads to, in particular, with the 60s and some of the work that happens inside the Civil Rights era - we then see a sudden reinvestment in low-income housing. But now, it's taking the form of the Projects and of these other forms of architectural investment that are much more family-oriented than they are for single adults. They're supposed to be stable long-term apartments and then we see the advent of certain kinds of programs like Section 8, et cetera, or voucher programs.
But all of these post-suburbs conversations have at their core the same thing they're trying to solve for, which is a lack of the housing for people to access just on their own. In reality, again, if I think about most folks experiencing homelessness that I've known, most people could find their way to a thing and rent it themselves if it existed. They don't need my help to do that - that's demeaning. The only reason our voucher programs exist, the only reason we run the system we run is because that naturally occurring low-income stock is not available to people to find and get to on their own.
[00:14:40] Crystal Fincher: I hope we do a better job collectively of prioritizing and addressing that because it's a mess. Also, the service delivery system has a number of challenges and this is an issue. I heard you speaking somewhere before on a panel, and it really struck me just - hey, we can throw millions of dollars at this today. That does not mean that tomorrow we are in a position to spend that millions of dollars and implement stuff based on that. I don't know that a lot of people have visibility into that part of the system. People just hear of services and they think people are operating shelters or some places for people to live. And there are some social workers who maybe connect people to mental health resources. And these things are offered to people every time there's a sweep on the street and they get to opt-in or opt-out. They opt-out and so - hey, we did our best and I guess we got to sweep them now - is where a lot of people are at. What actually happens within this system and what is the current state of our service infrastructure?
[00:15:59] Marc Dones: Okay, so what currently happens, if we're being just very candid is - up until the pandemic, we offered you typically at best a mat on a floor with hundreds of other people. You needed to be in for the night, typically no later than 7 or 8 [PM], and out by around 5 or 6 in the morning. There was very little place for the storage of your personal belongings, if there was any place for the storage of your personal belongings. You couldn't - if you have a pet or had a pet, that - tough, no space for that. We oftentimes - well, actually in the vast majority of instances, not oftentimes - also run or ran those shelters, I should say, on the sole basis of gender. And so, if you are trans or non-binary, that can be a real uphill walk.
Or if you are a couple and were like "I'm in a heterosexual relationship" - I mean, I am not, but if you were in a heterosexual relationship and wanted to - which no disrespect to heterosexual relationships to be clear, it's just it's not the one I am in. But if you were in a heterosexual relationship and wanted to go to a shelter as a couple, that's not a thing. If you are a family, you need to be a family that we understand - meaning that you have to be, typically, a biological parent with children. Those kids certainly can't be over 18 - they probably can't even be in their teens - because oftentimes if you're trying to access shelter and have teenage children, particularly teenage male children, then they will be sent to the adult male shelter far away from wherever you are.
And that kind of goes on, actually. I could keep going through the many, many - frankly, to my mind - cruelties that we have imposed on people experiencing homelessness just to try to be inside for the night for decades. And so, when we say "we offered you shelter" that's what we've been saying. We didn't offer you - even a room - we have offered you kind of a place to be.
In this community, in this region, we have worked hard over the last three-ish years to move many of our shelters towards what's called an enhanced shelter status, which means you might have greater service connectivity, or some small expectation of privacy, but that's really it. With the pandemic, suddenly we couldn't do that to people anymore. I just got to be honest - if it takes a world-altering deadly disease to force us to realize that our treatment of other human beings was so inhumane and so beyond the pale unacceptable that we couldn't contain disease spread, that's something.
Since then, we have done a lot of work. Now, you see that hotel-motel shelter model - all of a sudden things that were not possible are suddenly possible. Certainly, now that I am in this position - let me just be very clear - we will continue to drive towards a model of shelter that is like SRO. That should be the minimum for what is considered shelter - a door, a key, dignity, the ability to mind your own business, to sleep when you want to sleep, to come and go when you need to come and go. Because the other thing I'll add, sorry, just because I think it's important is, we said to people, "You have a 7 PM curfew, you got to be out by 5 [AM]" and then told everybody to get a job, so heaven forbid they have the night shift.
[00:20:57] Crystal Fincher: Yeah.
[00:20:58] Marc Dones: What's the plan? There's no plan for that.
[00:21:00] Crystal Fincher: There is no plan - right.
[00:21:03] Marc Dones: That, I think, is what has been happening and I think it's really important for listeners to have that actual reality in their heads of the humaneness that we have pretended we have been operating with is - it should embarrass us, frankly.
[00:21:24] Crystal Fincher: It absolutely should and that bare minimum of humaneness, to your point - if someone had a job, someone doesn't have a traditional family, which many people are kicked out of their homes as teens for a variety of reasons - because their parents didn't agree with their sexuality or lifestyle or whatever it is. And finding people who help them to survive that are a family and trying to stick together and that not being possible. So much of what is actually reality on the ground outside is not acknowledged as an acceptable reality for our services system and for shelter and that leaving so many people out. And so, hearing, "Well, they refused services," has been - I just remember when I realized that, "Oh no, actually - being offered services doesn't actually mean being offered services for that person." It could be services that don't apply, that they are not eligible for, that they can't fit into - and then just too bad.
I guess, how do we get from, "Too bad, we can't accommodate you, this doesn't work," to being able to at least accommodate folks in shelter, to get people housed and on the path to becoming stable?
[00:22:50] Marc Dones: Well, I think part of it is - the portion of your question around, what is the state of our system from a services perspective and why can't we just spend $20 million because it was given to us? The reality is that - you could give us $20 million - there's no one to spend it. It's like, yes, it is now in an account, cool. But spending it means it has to pay somebody's salary, or pay for the benefits of a person, or pay for a property. It has to do something and the capacity of the system, because it has been chronically underfunded at the staffing level for 30 years, is, I mean, we're worse than at the bone at this point. We are actually - this is a slow crumbling. I have agencies in the system right now that have north of 200 vacancies and no pipeline to fill those vacancies - because we too have been hit by the great wave of resignations as people are like, "I don't want to live like this." No one wants to hear this because it somehow - I don't know why it feels so weird - but we have to pay people more. I'm just going to keep saying it until it gets just really in people's little noggins, I guess. Because if we don't pay people more, then we continue to see these turnovers, we continue to see these vacancies, and more money can come and more money can come and it won't mean anything. There will be no one to do anything with it, full stop.
And we have to spend more money. There are at least 45,000 people experiencing homelessness in the county. We don't have the budget - our budget, if I tried to divvy that up across everybody, it essentially turns into about $3,000 a year per person. Or what that translates into is a little over $10 a day, which is just - that's not doing anything. When a permanent supportive housing unit for scale costs about $24,000 per year - that's inclusive of services. Not everyone needs permanent supportive housing, but the difference then between PSH and where we are now is $20,000 per person. We have to put more money in the system, but in order for the system to be able to use that money, we really have to have the people who can do the work. The thing that I want to be really clear about is - this whole system - all of that, we use the word "system" and we use all these words that make it sound, I don't know, make it sound some type of way. I don't know.
But at the end of this - this, all of this, is people helping people. That's what's happening - it is people who have chosen - because of their own lives, because of what they see, because of where they feel called in life - to help somebody else. If they can't do it because they can't afford to do it, then there's no help. I'm a big fan of technology, I think technology can do cool stuff - but you ask people how they got into stable recovery, it's not an app. They work with other people who've been on that journey, who can talk with them about it, who can be like, "Yeah. I know it's very hard actually." When we don't provide for that kind of support, when we create through our staffing models such incredibly high turnover, the reality then becomes that you're never able to build a relationship. You can never have that honest conversation. The first time I wanted to have a conversation about like, "I think I might have some very serious mental health problems." - I had to work up to - there was a lot of trust, there was a lot of like, "Oh, maybe I'll flirt with telling someone, maybe I won't." All of these things take time and trust to disclose, to begin to actively work on. We have created these positions that have such high velocity of turnover that no one can build the trust. No one can hold those relationships.
And so, so much of what I'm trying to do and what my team is trying to do is - honor the fact that it's the relationships that do the work. And to turn this system into one that is relationship-oriented instead of always focused on these transactions. I guess, the last thing I would say is just that, in that vein, I think it's really critical that we be clear that this is not just some wacky notion I have. The first paper on the impacts of staff turnover on housing the chronically homeless came out in like 2010, I think. And noted that an initiative that the Feds started in 2003 to end chronic homelessness didn't get that done - largely suffered, largely suffered, because the implementation sites couldn't maintain staff. I mean, this is a question of, do we actually want to do this or not? The path is bright and clear. There are no tremendous unknowns. It's just a question of, do we actually care? Or is it just a thing that it makes us feel good to talk about?
[00:28:26] Crystal Fincher: Right, or feel good to fund and not actually be concerned about the end result, which is what I feel like we set ourselves up for sometimes by saying, "Okay, we have a great appropriation. Boom, here, let's go. Solve it, Marc."
But I also think it's helpful when we talk about service providers - I think some people envision this system of people and, "Hey, let me look up - someone needs shelter, let me dial up the shelter directory and ooh, I can see on my screen, there's a vacancy there. Let me send them here," where there is no cohesive system. We're talking about nonprofit organizations, we're talking about mental health and health organizations, we're talking about a huge hodgepodge of charities, nonprofits, health and mental health service providers who have some joint contracts, some individual contracts, but really it's just this patchwork of things all over the place. And I don't even - I think it was en vogue for a while to talk about - well, we just need a streamlined dashboard to have everybody just on the same page and see. I mean, that's been tried and has failed and several iterations in several places - because there are so many different providers. It just seems these are not people on one standard system, one standard way of doing things.
But to that, these organizations have a model that is really not able to handle what is being asked of it. Unless those models change, it seems pretty apparent - unless frontline workers are paid more - we're asking them to de-escalate and mediate more than police officers and firefighters do. They're doing it oftentimes with more trauma behind them if they have lived experience. And being asked to do it while living in poverty - which doing anything and everything while living in poverty is harder. Also, these organizations are understaffed, so you have people making minimum wage who are also doing the job of two and three people and being asked to do as much as they can bear until they burn out. Until we engage with that - and there have been some conversations within some organizations - but it seems like until there's a much wider conversation about that and acknowledgement of that and pressure to address the needs that we have today in our system, that it's not a realistic expectation that if we provide the money or if we - certainly, money can do a lot in a lot of different areas, especially if we just give it to people directly. But for looking at the system of service providers, we really have to ask - if your model is not working today, then what is it serving and who is it serving? How do we reorient that towards the people who actually need the help the most? I really hope we have more of that conversation among here.
I guess, looking forward, what do you think it's going to take to help some of those conversations along? Have you seen progress in any areas, or any models that can be followed for looking at how to align our provision of services to the actual needs of the people who need shelter?
[00:32:17] Marc Dones: I mean, this is the scary part - is, I think we're actually the farthest down that road in the country. We're the only system - I report to someone who lives in a shelter. One of my board chairs lives in a shelter right now. Half of my staff, myself included, identify as people with lived experience. No other system can say that and so, we are the next great experiment. I think about what it means to not just say we're centering people with lived experience or to say we're centering the voices of people who are actually trying to use the stuff, but to have that be structural and not tokenistic and really, really embedded. I mean, there are so many things that - we should talk for hours.
[00:33:05] Crystal Fincher: I know - I'm looking at the time going - man, I could ask you 17 more questions right now - yes.
[00:33:05] Marc Dones: I think - there are so many things in which you just said that I want to talk about. The thing that I want to really lean in on is - I do think, and I have seen it personally - I've seen people change over the course of the pandemic and realize how bad some of the congregate shelters were and have to be like, "We can't go back there." People who I've had arguments about it with in the past were like, "Actually, no, this is terrible." I do have hope and when I think about how we move forward and how we as a region can maybe be the proof point for why it is successful to center people - this is hokey, but I think it is about the community conversation. And I want to disaggregate that from the media conversation. I'm on a podcast, but still.
[00:34:24] Crystal Fincher: I'm just a political consultant. I am not media.
[00:34:27] Marc Dones: There we go, but I think that we got to talk to each other more than be talked at by media. I love my journalist colleagues and I have great respect for what they do and, frankly, the work they do to hold government accountable and all the ways that that must be done. But the way we talk about homelessness in the media is broken. It is bereft of that fundamental humanity and is tied to almost every single misconception that I can name. And so, when people ask me, "How can I make a difference?" I say, "Look, we just had a really great conversation. I feel like you asked me some questions, you got some different information. In some cases, I was informed by one of your perspectives. Invite your neighbor over and have this conversation with them, host a little dinner for your block. If you're part of a Rotary Club..." And I really mean that because unless we, as the community, start to have a different conversation about homelessness, we cannot expect either at the elected official level or the budgeting level - we can't expect those things to change. If this is a democracy, for as long as we can try to hold onto that -
[00:35:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that's a whole other show, isn't it?
[00:36:02] Marc Dones: - then, it's incumbent on us to be having the conversation we want to see leadership have. I try very hard to take my cue from the community so that I can just be like, "Look." I remember I got into a dust-up about some stuff a couple months ago and I remember calling my board chair who lives in a shelter. I was like, "Am I wrong? Tell me if I have lost my mind and I will stop. This is what I see, and if you tell me or the community tells me that I'm out of line, then we'll end this right now."
And that's what I think we need to be doing, is really focusing on building that community conversation, building that community will. I say this all the time and I mean it - I don't say no to anything - I have been to Rotary Clubs, I have done little dinners to talk about homelessness, because I want us to hold the nuance and compassion necessary to build the system that will get this job done.
[00:37:08] Crystal Fincher: Well, I certainly appreciate you taking the time to talk about this today and to shed some light on this for us. You are welcome back anytime - there's so much more we could talk about, but we are at time today. I just want to, once again, thank you, Marc Dones, CEO of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority for just helping to enlighten us. We are certainly going to keep an eye on how things unfold. Thanks so much.
[00:37:36] Marc Dones: Well, thank you for having me - glad to be here, I'll come back. We'll talk about democracy.
[00:37:40] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcast - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
On today’s week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Executive Director of The Urbanist, Doug Trumm. They discuss the death of the missing middle housing bill in the legislature and why creating affordable housing requires creating more housing, the legislative worker sickout in response to their Democratic bosses failing to pass legislation allowing them to unionize, Mayor Harrell’s State of the City address and the Partnership for Zero plan to address homelessness in downtown Seattle, the end of Seattle’s eviction moratorium and what that means 10,000 tenants at risk of eviction, and the end of vaccine requirements in King County.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Doug Trumm, at @dmtrumm. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
"Why Washington state's missing middle housing bill died” by Joshua McNichols for KOUW: https://www.kuow.org/stories/why-washington-state-s-missing-middle-housing-bill-died
“Over 100 Washington Legislative Workers Call Out Sick in Protest of Working Conditions” by Rich Smith for The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/02/16/66845792/over-100-washington-legislative-workers-call-out-sick-in-protest-of-working-conditions
“Harrell Pledges SPD Staffing Surge in State of City Speech” by Doug Trumm for The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/02/16/harrell-pledges-spd-staffing-surge-in-state-of-city-speech/
“Mayor Bruce Harrell Made a Bunch of Promises in His First State of the City Address” by Hannah Krieg for The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/02/15/66787839/mayor-bruce-harrell-made-a-bunch-of-promises-in-his-first-state-of-the-city-address
“Private Donations Will Fund “Peer Navigators,” Launch Plan to “Dramatically Reduce” Downtown Homelessness” by Erica C. Barnett for Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/02/17/private-donations-will-fund-peer-navigators-launch-plan-to-dramatically-reduce-downtown-homelessness/
“Seattle’s eviction moratorium to end” by Ashley Archibald for Real Change News: https://www.realchangenews.org/news/2022/02/16/seattle-s-eviction-moratorium-end
“Warning of ‘wave of evictions,’ Sawant calls for extension of Seattle eviction moratorium” by Nick Bowman for MyNorthwest: https://mynorthwest.com/3351303/kshama-sawant-extension-seattle-eviction-moratorium-february-2022/
“King County will close rent assistance program to new applicants as money dries up” by Heidi Groover for The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/king-county-will-close-rent-assistance-program-to-new-applications-as-money-runs-out/
“King County to drop COVID vaccination requirements for bars, restaurants on March 1” by KING 5 Staff for KING 5: https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle-king-county-vaccine-mandate-business/281-7a9b5968-f579-4a15-b486-49161cf4ef52
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program today's co-host, Executive Director of The Urbanist, Doug Trumm. How are you doing, Doug?
[00:00:51] Doug Trumm: Great. Thanks so much for having me. It's always fun to be on this podcast - it's the best podcast in town, I think.
[00:00:57] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much and I am a huge fan and always informed by The Urbanist - so great work, you and the entire team. I wanted to start off talking about where we're at in Olympia and in particular, some things that did not go very well - some bills that were really widely supported, certainly that I was a fan of, dying. The first being the middle housing bill that did not make it past cutoff. It looked like it might have had the votes, but it did not ultimately get a floor vote. What happened here?
[00:01:39] Doug Trumm: Yeah, that one really hurt. We got pretty invested in that and hoping this would finally be here. And we knew it'd be uphill since they've tried before and it's failed, but having the governor behind it, it seemed like there was a little extra energy this year. But it totally just crapped out in the finish line. We kind of had a proxy vote for the Accessory Dwelling Unit reform bill that did make it through and it's going onto the Senate. So we kind of have a good sense of which Democrats jumped ship - we can lose some of them, we have a big enough majority. Republicans tend to oppose this kind of stuff - even though they like markets, they don't like cities, so it kind of cancels out. And they don't really like markets when it counts.
So this one - a lot of the legislators on the Eastside - they didn't vote for the ADU bill, the Accessory Dwelling unit bill - so it's likely they didn't vote for the missing middle bill because that was even more density in single family zones. Even though there was all these measures to make it measured - whether it had originally started at the half mile of major transit for most of the changes - and that got watered down, it wasn't enough - watered down to a quarter mile. Just between some of those more, I guess, wealthy suburban legislators and then you had Association of Washington Cities banging the drum against it and really turning up the heat against it. It seemed like they put enough headwinds to stop it. And of course The Seattle Times deserves a shout out on this one as well - they hate anything that might offer more affordability to people who are don't already own homes.
[00:03:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And this was so important because it was key to the discussion of housing affordability. And also conversations about housing affordability are also tied to those with homelessness. We don't have enough housing for the people who have moved here and continue to move here. What we can't do, even though oddly sometimes people seem to suggest it, is just turn off the spigot of new people entering into our communities. People move here, businesses start, they hire people, they create jobs, which lots of people talk about as a wonderful thing. Jobs for the people who are here - plentiful jobs is a great thing.
But for people to move and live near where they work, they need housing near where they work. And we have been behind on keeping up with the amount of housing that we have, in comparison to the people moving here. That makes housing more expensive. We can't have a conversation about making housing more affordable without also making it more plentiful. All types of housing - this particularly addressed middle housing, so just market rate as - and market rate doesn't specify a price point, it basically means not subsidized - just as any to developer would build. It was so important to get moving on this - had a ton of momentum. You talked about a number of people who had advocated against it. There was also a piece that Joshua McNichols from KUOW wrote yesterday, talking about what went wrong and a lot of people are looking at Representative Gerry Pollet -
[00:05:03] Doug Trumm: Rightfully so.
[00:05:04] Crystal Fincher: - from Seattle's 46th legislative district, in North Seattle - and attributing the failure to his insistence on the watering down that you talked about. And basically saying, there was an agreed upon framework that did seem to have broad support and potentially the votes. But once his insistence on watering it down happened, the coalition that had been carefully brought together, and everything had been stakeholdered, and some broad agreements that were previously made were broken - and everything fell apart. In this article, it says Pollet, his changes, "took all the air out of the room ... Once you start amending what had already been agreed upon, it throws a wrench into it, and all of a sudden, this person doesn't like it, this person's not going to vote for it, and it just becomes a mess."
Certainly, lots of people, lots of entities who are invested in high property values and exclusionary zoning, advocated against it. But it really is unfortunate to see that it didn't make it this year and that every city is on its own to try and address this affordability problem. And it would've been so much better to have the opportunity to spend the next year with a unified approach across the state to get more people able to afford more housing in more places - it really does benefit us all.
[00:06:36] Doug Trumm: And it's really bad out there - I don't know if people who own homes have - I guess maybe they're checking their value on their home occasionally for kind of investment purposes. But we've seen home prices go up 20, 25, 30% in one year - that's insane - that kind of pace - we're going to be San Francisco very quickly. I don't think that's what we want to be - a place where only rich people can live. It really was - the timing was right, I think - and hopefully next year they can pick up where they left off. But I don't know what these legislators are looking at that they don't see this as a crisis. Because there's just not many options for people who don't own homes.
[00:07:21] Crystal Fincher: There really is not. Another major issue in Olympia that seemed to have broad support - a bill with a ton of co-sponsors - you would assume given how much Democrats have talked about the importance of supporting workers, supporting unions, about workers having protections, about that being a core Democratic value and one of the things that sets Democrats apart from so many others. And so many legislators just continually talking about how important that is - that the bill to allow legislative workers to unionize would be a sure thing, would be no problem. Unfortunately, that's not what happened. And that bill, which seemed to have enough votes to pass, was prevented from making it to the floor and therefore appears to have died. Unless Speaker Jinkins brings it back by designating it Necessary to Implement the Budget - without legislative workers, I think, they would have a hard time getting out the budget and implementing it.
[00:08:30] Doug Trumm: That's a good point. That's a good point.
[00:08:32] Crystal Fincher: But unfortunately, as it stands now, the speaker has not indicated any desire to do that and the rhetoric has been, from the legislators - it's so close, there are just a couple things that need to be ironed out, and this year we just didn't have the time to do it, and we'll get to it next year. Which is odd because Joe Fitzgibbon was also talking about being a leader in initially introducing legislation similar to this in 2012, so if it's been worked on since 2012 -
[00:09:06] Doug Trumm: 10 years now.
[00:09:07] Crystal Fincher: Why is it not already ready? What is going to happen in the next year that hasn't happened in the last 10? And how are you looking your workers in the eye after talking about how important it is to allow workers to unionize, how important unions are in protecting workers and building strong families and communities, and making sure everyone has a livable wage and working conditions that are not hostile - that if bad things happen, there's fair recourse and a process that people can follow. And just say, "But not you. Not when it comes to us." This is infuriating, personally. If you follow me on Twitter, it is just hard to see how this doesn't look hypocritical. Just absolutely hypocritical. And in response, a hundred workers called out sick in protest of those working conditions. We'll see where that goes, but my goodness. How did you read this?
[00:10:16] Doug Trumm: I mean, I knew that they weren't well paid, but it was shocking to me looking again at what they're listing these jobs at - still - in the year 2022. They're listing these jobs at like $42,000 to start or something like that. These are people who have to split time between Olympia - and the example they gave was someone going back to Bellingham - that's not a cheap place to live. There aren't many cheap places to live in this state. It's been expecting people to live off of $42,000 and they work insane hours all year long because when they're not in session - and when they're in session, they're expected to be at beck and call basically - but when they're not in session, they're expected to do constituent services. So it's a full gig for them even if the legislators themselves have their side hustles and their jobs they go back to.
I just think it's a basic fairness principle and so many government workers do get the benefit from unions. But the people really in the trenches of making our government work better, hopefully - but they're the ones who would do it if we can - they're not getting those benefits. And it sort of reminds me of the same principle we just talked about in the housing bill, where they're for progressive things so long as it's not in their backyard. And once it's in their backyard, they kind of walk away from that. I really want to see people just start leading where it matters the most to them - start being the change they want to see in their backyard.
[00:11:57] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. This is another issue where - yeah, Republicans aren't in favor of it - they're not at the front of the union parade, certainly. But Democrats have majority in the legislature. And so this is an issue where if Democrats are aligned, it happens. So who is the Democrat, or Democrats, who are opposing this? That has been opaque. And what is the party's - if not responsibility, but just kind of obligation and stance on an anti-union Democratic legislator? Should they be a Democratic legislator? Is that consistent with values? What does that say for where the party is? Lots of talk about big tents - but parties are based on values and built on coalitions around values. And some things may differ, but there are things in the party platform for a reason.
There is a statement of value and principles to say - anyone can sign up if you agree with what we stand for - these principles. Certainly, allowing workers to unionize is one of them. To your point, legislative staffers work really, really hard. There are lots of stories about working 20 hours of uncompensated overtime a week, especially during session. They are working to death. If your model is based on exploiting workers - having them work for more hours than originally bargained for, in a way that turns out to be not a living wage, when you look at the hours that they're putting in and the demands of the job - why are you allowing that? That is actually completely in your control. It is not good for policy - to have policy making rely on the exploitation or the reliance on paying workers less than they deserve, less than they need to afford the basics of life. These are kind of the core basic things that we talk about and it's just -
[00:14:16] Doug Trumm: Yeah, and there's a huge amount of turnover - Rich Smith's article in The Stranger pointed that out. And that's not good for policy making either. These are jobs where - if you can - in your first year, I'm sure you're just learning the ropes. If you can get someone who's been there for a handful of years, they're going to be able to really do a lot more with the position, really. Because they're the people really writing the laws and digging into these pieces of legislation, so it's just such an important position to treat like such a throwaway - like intern out of college kind of job or something - that's just an afterthought. We wonder why union rates are dropping. If Democrats aren't willing to stand up for stuff like this, what hope is there to sort of defend our rights in the private market and everywhere? This sort of erosion of unionization is sort of something we have to fight on a lot of fronts. And this is just an easy one that should be a gimme.
[00:15:20] Crystal Fincher: Should be a gimme. Should have been an automatic. But for some reason we are having a challenging time with that. Next up, we will pivot to the City of Seattle - Mayor Harrell gave his State of the City speech this week and unveiled plans in a number of areas, including a surge in police staffing that he's planning. What did you take away from that element and from the rest of his speech?
[00:15:50] Doug Trumm: In a way, there was some that was refreshing at this speech - I'll start with the good. Mayor Durkan's last speech was 6 minutes long and as you could expect, didn't hit on much. This speech was 32 minutes long, so in length, he wins. And he mentioned 8 Councilmembers by name. He's really trying to sort of, at least symbolically, repair some of the relationships with Council that Durkan really ran into the ground. And sometimes Council was an equal partner - they would spar on issues - but oftentimes there was some real strange hills that were died on that [inaudible]. So Harrell, at one level, just looks like an improvement over Durkan, but that's a low bar or thing.
The amount of actual policy detail in the speech was low and that's not completely abnormal. But this is also a mayor who ran on how ready he was to hit the ground running and I haven't seen a lot of that yet. He teased his announcement yesterday of "Partnership to Zero" in that speech. And we now know what that announcement was - it's a $10 million donation from different corporations and rich people to run their peer navigator program. But it's only for one year, so I don't know. As far as the whole scale of the homelessness crisis, that's not a big deal really. I mean, it's a little help, but this is a billion dollar problem with a $10 million donation. He said he was going to basically bring everyone inside within a couple years, and that's not the pace that we're on right now.
Really the biggest focus of his speech was giving SPD more funding and staffing them up. There was a lot of big rhetoric about how important that would be - response times going down - but the factor remains that there's really constraints that he has on how quickly he can staff up. So netting an additional 35 officers like Mayor Durkan aimed to do, and that was hoping that attrition rates slowed down - that's not going to lead to a dramatic difference in response times. Especially if there's also all this hotspot policing and all this other stuff going on as well - that all takes resources. They're pulling the same lever, but there's only so far that that can take them. I think there's some definite potential holes in his plans emerging. But it's still too early to tell with the scant amount of details exactly where he is headed and how that might kind of come apart.
[00:18:43] Crystal Fincher: At least rhetorically, there's some attempt to identify issues with each councilmember that they can work on together. Coalitions are really important in politics - you don't pass policy without them. And coalitions are often around issues, and some issues you may agree with and some you don't. If you can work together with a councilmember, and it's not just friction for friction's sake, or berating out of grudges, certainly it is good to find ways to accomplish - there's so much that needs to be done. There was a lot of talk about not needing to - looking at parks and encampments of parks and the stress that we don't need to choose between treating people with compassion - compassion is becoming a word that is one of those words that's so overused - but treating unhoused people with compassion and finding them housing and clearing out parks so that regular people, people in neighborhoods with houses and resources, can enjoy them.
Which is always interesting rhetoric, but that set up up with a number of these things - that we can make more people in this city feel more safe and take on issues of police reform, and have more cops and do the surge. These issues and tensions - that have been tensions for a reason, because at the end of the day, there are some choices that are very clearly made and others that aren't - but upfront saying, we can try and do this all together. Certainly, with the announcement on the $10 million for the Vision to Zero - the response to get people, particularly in downtown Seattle, housed. If you just say that as a goal, it's wonderful.
One thing that we know we all need, are people to work with the population. And so funding folks who can meaningfully connect people who are out on the street with the services that they need is great. The most important thing that unhoused people need is housing. They also need all the other services to stay in that housing. But there is no solution to homelessness without housing. He had brought up that they're relying on the 2,000-3,000 units of supportive housing that's supposed to come online in the next year to two years. He also had a caveat in there that that timeline might be put in jeopardy by concrete companies not coming to an agreement with their workers and so that's got to be taken care of. We had a conversation last week on this show where - I think it was last week - Heather Weiner pointed out that, instead of just saying this may be delayed, and you guys should get back to the table and figure something out - as if they hadn't been kind of doing that the whole time. Back in the McGinn administration, he said, "Hey, either work gets done on time or we're fining you according to the contract that is there. You have an obligation to have a workforce that is prepared to work on this project. That was part of the deal. Come to a fair agreement and get to work." And putting pressure on the companies who are most in a position to make that happen. Harrell has chosen not to go that route - and just to say, get back to the table - and if it doesn't go well, has basically put an asterisk by a number of the things that they're trying to accomplish. And say if it doesn't, looks like that's going to be what I'm going to point to as the reason why.
We'll see how that progresses. We'll see if we're going to do something different this time than we did before. And I think there is a recognition in some of the rhetoric that I heard from him that - like Durkan's peer navigator program was kind of a farce - in that, the term "offering services" actually didn't technically mean offering services. It means that they kind of went down a checklists and, do you need this? Do you want housing? Do you want to go to a shelter? Oh, well, the shelter may not accept their pet, their shelter doesn't let them enter after 8:00 PM, but they have a job that lasts beyond there so they can't go. The services may not fit what they need at all - they're not services available to them, but that could still qualify as offering and refusing services. I hope we see something different this time. I hope we have a bigger conversation about philanthropy not being a reliable or effective way to fund basic necessities in society. And that looking at the JumpStart Tax - is a much more effective solution. If these companies would just pay the taxes that they would fairly owe, we'd have more than enough money to address this. This is actually a tiny drop in the bucket.
[00:23:50] Doug Trumm: I'm sure some of that $10 million came from corporations that were a part of that lawsuit to try to block JumpStart, so it's sort of - they're going to give you some crumbs and they try to take back the loaf. It's definitely frustrating and it seems like some of these issues - we just need a firmer stand, it can't be mealy-mouthed on it. If he wants this concrete strike to end, like you said, take a stand and do what McGinn did. I'm sure we could have the strike done a little quicker if there was pressure of fines. And on homelessness, I don't know where these encampments are supposed to go, because we know we don't have enough shelter to bring everyone inside at once and WSDOT wants them off there right-of-way, as we saw in that announcement and Harrell was excited about that. We want them out of parks and we want them out of downtown, so basically the three main places where encampments are. They're going to need a lot of shelter and housing if all three of those plans are going to be realistic, because that encompasses the majority of encampments.
[00:25:04] Crystal Fincher: There are a number of organizations involved in this. A number of people in orgs who do have experience both lived and professional on how to address this - I hope they are listened to as this takes shape. There's going to be work done on how specifically all the funds are going to be allocated, there are some broad strokes - around 30 navigators pointing towards this amount of housing, in this year timeframe. We'll see how that unfolds and we'll definitely be following it as it does. But -
[00:25:38] Doug Trumm: And sweeps are definitely happening, and what those folks tell us is that - that damages their relationships, especially when they're last minute. We were hearing of a lot of a last minute sweeps where they say, "Oh, this is sidewalk, so we can clear you at any time - one hour's notice." That's what I hear from Real Change and other folks that are doing that work, is that the pace of sweeps - we can call them removals if Mayor Harrell prefers, that's his preferred term - but to hire all these peer navigators and say, "Good luck. We just shuffled everyone around. Go find them." I don't know. That doesn't seem like the most efficient way to do that.
[00:26:17] Crystal Fincher: We will keep following it. The other significant news which arrived earlier was that Mayor Harrell announced that he is going to end the eviction moratorium in Seattle at the end of February. And after that, the tsunami of evictions can once again resume and folks can be evicted for nonpayment of rent. As we know, lots of people - through no fault of their own, through no fault of their company - wound up out of a job for an extended period of time because of the pandemic. This was a widespread problem that necessitated a widespread solution. The goal of the moratorium was to - one, as lawmakers were trying to figure out, Hey, how do we get out of this solution? No, we can't leave landlords, especially small landlords, just holding the bag for potentially a couple years of unpaid rent. But it really is damaging to our entire society to allow people to lose their housing, and all of the problems become more expensive for us to handle when a person does that. The consequences to society when a person does that are much more expensive than just publicly doing what it takes to keep them in their homes.
A solution was made. Funds were provided and distributed at the county level. Unfortunately, the county started to distribute that - and even with a slow start, the eviction moratorium was extended to help the county catch up with the problem. Unfortunately, they caught up and they ran out of money. There are over 10,000 tenants in King County who are on the list who qualified for assistance, but unfortunately, they just ran out. There has been no appropriation from anyone to backfill that. We know that we're dealing with around 10,000 tenants, who as of March 1st, can be evicted. We're doing this at a time when we're just trying to get our arms around, as we just discussed, the problem that already exists. It feels like we're trying to mop without turning off the faucet. We're just going to increase the pressure of the faucet while not doing much more mopping. It would be great if we just turned the faucet off. It'd be great if we just stopped the possibility of people being evicted and figure out how to backfill this funding, so we can maintain the stability of our regional economy, of our neighborhood businesses, and all the rest. How do you see this?
[00:29:12] Doug Trumm: Yeah, I was also kind of flabbergasted that they didn't at least try to top up that eviction protection rental assistance program, as they ended the moratorium. I was hoping there would be more of a seamless hand off. But that program being out of money as they end the moratorium just seems like a bad idea. I don't know what the urgency to end the moratorium is - it's been in place for almost two years. We have a lot of data that it's been very effective in slowing the pace of evictions, in the time of great upheaval and economic turmoil and public health turmoil. I don't know why landlords suddenly need to be doing this. I mean, certainly there's been this program that was helping them too - as far as the eviction protection rental assistance program - gave them their income back.
Putting more money in that would've been a win-win. But I don't know. Yeah. It's certainly likely to lead to displacement and likely homelessness. Just digging yourself in deeper, like you said. I hope that they may reconsider. I know, Councilmember Sawant's already introduced legislation. Morales sounded pretty concerned about this decision to end the moratorium so soon. There are programs in place like the Winter Eviction Moratorium that help a little bit, but not as extensive as the full eviction moratorium under the mayor's ruling. I don't know. It's going to - I guess we're just deciding the pandemic's over, as we're seeing with mask mandates and then other stuff. I know people emotionally are ready, but I don't know - this whole follow the science stuff - I'm not sure if that's exactly what's happening right now.
[00:31:12] Crystal Fincher: Well, I mean, lots of people have talked about - there is a difference in between the statements - the number of cases are falling, is not the same as the number of cases are low. In fact, we still have caseload that is much higher than most other points during this pandemic. Spread is not low. It is lower than it has been. We have fallen off of our most recent peak, which is the highest peak we have had so far. We still have a lot of people in our community - people under five, immunocompromised people, just people who are vulnerable - who are relying on the rest of us still being protected, and providing protection, and providing accommodations to make sure we keep everyone safe. That has seemed to fall out of the conversation. Just kind of - it's time and if you don't like it, if you don't feel safe, then just stay home. As many people point out, especially for people who are disabled, who have chronic illness - sometimes they're relying on home health aides coming into their homes. They don't have to be masked if they've been exposed other places. You can't even stay home and avoid the risk. But we actually shouldn't be encouraging a society where some people are not allowed to participate in it.
And the conversation just about living with the pandemic, as now it's endemic, does not mean you just throw up your hands and do nothing. It means that you take the precautions and the preparations to say, okay, this is a thing and let's figure out how we can operate safely for all of us. Let's make sure that we're preparing for this next variant - there's already news about a B2 variant of Omicron that may be more transmissible and more dangerous healthwise than the original - because we're doing nothing to stop the creation of all of these variants. I feel for people in that position, I feel for people in our community. I still am not in the place where I am comfortable just throwing caution to the wind and saying, "Everything is fine. We don't need any precautions anywhere." Removing the vaccine mandates -
[00:33:43] Doug Trumm: Yeah, that was shocking.
[00:33:45] Crystal Fincher: - from restaurants and different places. I feel for our frontline workers and retail workers, who now are going to be in a really difficult position once again - having to weigh their own safety, the safety of family, or people that they may live with or be in constant contact with, and an increasingly hostile public to public safety measures. And the onus being put on them to negotiate that, while making low wages. We're just asking so much of them. It just puts even more pressure and stress on it. We will continue to talk about this and pay attention to what's going on - and just try and be good community members and make sure all of us have the opportunity to participate in society and thrive. With that, we have arrived at our time today.
Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7FM on this Friday, February 18th. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng and our wonderful co-host today was Executive Director of The Urbanist, Doug Trumm. You can find Doug on Twitter @dmtrumm, that's D-M-T-R-U-M-M. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.
On this midweek show, Crystal welcomes Anna Zivarts of the Disability Mobility Initiative and Paulo Nunes-Ueno of Front and Centered to talk about transportation advocacy. The three dig into the importance of centering the non-driver experience, a Transportation Bill of Rights, and how a just transition from the entrenched status quo of transportation funding is difficult but needed as we tackle the climate crisis and ensuring environmental justice.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal on Twitter at @finchfrii, and find Anna at @AnnaZivarts, Paulo at @pnumoves, and the Disability Mobility Initiative at @dismobility.
Resources
Disability Rights Washington - Disability Mobility Initiative: https://www.disabilityrightswa.org/programs/disabilitymobility/
Front and Centered - Just Transition in Transportation: https://frontandcentered.org/just-transition-in-transportation/
Alice Wong on Twitter @DisVisibility: https://twitter.com/disvisibility
“Draft Regional Transportation Plan Glosses Over Harmful Roadway Expansion” by Ryan Packer for The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/01/27/draft-regional-transportation-plan-glosses-over-harmful-roadway-expansion/
Puget Sound Regional Council - Draft Regional Transportation Plan: https://engage.psrc.org/welcome-rtp
“More Dollars for Highways? Infrastructure Funding Is Not Necessarily a Gift” by Paulo Nunes-Ueno for The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/12/06/more-dollars-for-highways-infrastructure-funding-is-not-necessarily-a-gift/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well today, and by popular demand, we are thrilled to have two extraordinary guests joining us. I'm very excited about it. First up is Anna Zivarts who's the director of Disability Mobility Initiative and Disability Rights Washington, and also Paulo Nunes-Ueno, Transportation and Land Use policy lead with Front and Centered. Welcome to you both.
[00:01:02] Anna Zivarts: Thank you.
[00:01:03] Paulo Nunes-Ueno: Thanks for having us.
[00:01:05] Crystal Fincher: Very excited to have this conversation today. So I think I just want to start by learning more about what each of your organizations do and what brought you to this work?
[00:01:18] Paulo Nunes-Ueno: Oh, so Front and Centered is a statewide climate justice, environmental justice organization by/for people of color and is a membership organization that has - counts over 70 community based groups from all over Washington. And we work together to create policy and create advocacy around climate justice, environmental justice in three key areas: in transportation, in energy policy, and in pollution reduction.
[00:01:58] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. And we recently had conversations with Senator Saldaña and Representative Wicks, both of whom talked about how critical Front and Centered has been in helping to pass critical policy like the HEAL Act and just really being a powerful and necessary force for advocacy, so this is very exciting. And Anna?
[00:02:27] Anna Zivarts: Hi. So Anna here, I'm the director of the Disability Mobility Initiative, and we are a program that launched just a little over a year ago at Disability Rights Washington. Disability Rights Washington is a statewide disability organization - and the Disability Mobility Initiative is an organizing project within Disability Rights of Washington focused on bringing together non-drivers from throughout the state. And not just disabled non-drivers - we are working across identities, across experiences. We want to involve anyone who doesn't have access to a car, doesn't have reliable access to a car, can't afford a car, maybe is too young to drive, is aging out of driving, or like myself can't drive because of a disability. And so that work that we're doing is how we got to know Paulo and Front and Centered, because there's a lot of overlap in our constituencies. And yeah, that's how we came to work together.
[00:03:27] Crystal Fincher: Well, this is really exciting and I have to say - when I say by popular demand - we interview a number of people, have a lot of conversations, and have certainly referenced the work of both the Disability Mobility Initiative and Front and Centered. And I will tell you, there are people on Twitter who are like, "You know who you need to talk to is Anna. You need to get them on, you need to talk to Paulo. And like, we would love to hear from them." So it's just a testament to the work that you've done and the broad coalition you've built and the people who you speak and advocate for that so many people from different walks of life are interested. And to your point, this is not just about disabled people, although lots of people have disabilities - an increasing amount of, an increasing percentage of our population is disabled. Most people have someone in their families that they know, and it is absolutely critical that we allow our community to be completely accessible to everyone in our community. How did you get started doing this work?
[00:04:44] Anna Zivarts: Yeah, so I was born low vision. I was born with an eye condition that reduces my visual acuity, but I was not really connected to the disability community. I was born before the ADA and just not aware of how, identifying as disabled, could actually and asking for accommodations that I eventually was legally entitled to could help my life and could give me access to the education and the resources that I needed. And so I worked for many years in the labor movement - I worked with low income service workers organizing and organizing against, or organizing for better wages, organizing for healthcare. And disability was always there at some level because we were talking about capitalism and we were talking about work and ability and sort of how you are valued in this structure, but it wasn't something - like I wasn't connected to the disability community.
And then my son was born and he has the same genetic eye condition I do. And it was this major reckoning for me around, "Okay. I have to be comfortable with this part of myself that is part of me, but I've been hiding and trying to hide and trying not to disclose and trying to pretend is not part of who I am if he's going to be comfortable in the world." And so that's when I sought out the disability community on Twitter - and basically Alice Wong, who's an amazing person to follow on Twitter, was how I got introduced to the community and felt like it was a place that I could start to identify with.
And then I interviewed for the job at Disability Rights Washington and actually this became part of my career. And I brought to it that perspective of there's a lot of people out there that may not be comfortable identifying as disabled who have disabilities, but there's so much stigma out there and there's so much pressure to be a good worker and produce and be independent and not rely on other people. And so if people have any choice to sort of hide that identity that could be a deep part of them, they often do. And so how can we create spaces where we can talk about access needs and talk about disability, but make it feel like it's an identity that can be part of our lives and not something that has this huge bundle of stigma attached to it.
[00:07:21] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. What brought you to this work, Paulo?
[00:07:25] Paulo Nunes-Ueno: This is a kind of a second career for me. I was a theater director in a previous life and did that for 10 years and kind of ran its course and then I moved to Japan. And then I was thinking, what do I want to do with the rest of my life? I was thinking - how I really want to do something at the intersection of sustainability in cities. And thinking - how do I spend my life trying to make cities better habitats for human beings so that we can have this planet for a little bit longer. And when I was thinking about what to do there, transportation kind of came up and it turns out that the whole theater thing was I was trying to get away from the family business, because my grandfather was a transportation engineer and so was my father.
And then I reverted back to mean - moved back to Seattle, got a job at Metro, went to graduate school at the Evans School at UW to get a public affairs degree. And my window into this has always been - we need to work against auto dependency because it leaves - A) it destroys the planet and B) it's leaving so many people behind, like we were saying earlier when we were chatting. It's a system that - it treats people as if they're a customer of a transaction. If you buy gas, if you own and operate a car, if you buy insurance - then you get dignity. But if you don't, then you're an afterthought. And that seemed to me like, "Wow, this is something we can do much better." And, Anna's story is really a kind of personification of that, I think.
[00:09:32] Crystal Fincher: We have defaulted to designing our communities around freeways and so many people, just a commute is not an optional thing - it's something that they have. And we do have a very car-centric lifestyle and some people love their cars and some people love that, but I think a huge problem is that it is almost mandatory in some areas, that people really don't have an option - a good viable option in many places to not have a car and that's extremely limiting. It creates a lot of instability, insecurity, bad health outcomes, really unhealthily and unsustainably designed cities and communities. And so it's been a big conversation in our legislature, all over the country - how do we do a better job of accommodating people who don't drive? Of giving people really viable choices for even if they don't have to not drive? You know, I'm a person who does have a car, who would prefer not to drive to places and I don't drive many places, but that's - I live in a location that is easier to do that, but lots of people do not have that privilege. How do we make that an accessible thing for everybody?
[00:11:01] Anna Zivarts: I think listening to people who are already not driving, who don't have that choice - and doing what - using that lived experience to inform how we can design and fund a better system, right? Because there is this narrative that everyone drives. And I think even in places like New York City where a lot of people don't drive, the people who are proud to live in New York City because they don't drive think that outside of New York City, everyone drives. And the reality is there's a lot of people in every community who can't drive - there's young people, there's old people, there's disabled people, there's people who can't afford cars, there are folks who have been recently incarcerated or recently immigrated here who don't have valid licenses. You know, there's a lot of reasons people don't drive. And I think there's a real undercounting and undervaluation of our lives as non-drivers because the dominant sort of narrative is that everyone drives and you have to drive to participate. And it's true that that is often the easiest way to get somewhere.
So we're trying to get a - I think the work we're doing is trying to give people a sense that there's a lot of us out there for whom the system isn't working very well, but we're trying to make it work as well as we can, and we have a lot of lived experience doing that. And how many of us there are? We, based on driver's licenses in the state of Washington, we think it's around 25% of the population that doesn't have a license. Puget Sound Regional Council just came out with their regional transportation plan and they say 47% of the population in the PSRC region is not served well by driving as sort of this special transportation - people with special transportation needs, 47%, right? That's huge. And so I think we need to start to look a little closer and start to ask people more specifically, "Do you drive and is driving working out for you?" Is it really everything that you have been sold to believe that it is?
[00:13:10] Crystal Fincher: And you have done - the Disability Mobility Initiative has done great work in this area and has produced some wonderful resources that center and highlight what people who are not able to drive are currently doing and facing. And everything from the lack of sidewalks, to the lack of roads and sidewalks being cleared of snow or leaves or overgrowth, to just not having safe and consistent ways to get from point A to B are challenges. What can fix that? What will help? From a policy perspective, what can our leaders do at different levels of government to make a meaningful change to improve this?
[00:14:07] Paulo Nunes-Ueno: Well, no, I think that our joint work has been exactly around that. And one of the things that our approach does is just to ask basic questions, right? So one of the key tools that we developed is this idea of a Transportation Bill of Rights that really articulates - even if you don't drive because of whatever reason, even if you live in a place that's not a megastar city where there's a lot of options - you deserve dignity when you are trying to get places and those are basic rights. And we need to create policies and create funding mechanisms and create the expectation that people deserve to be safe. When we went - and we spoke at Front and Centered with lots and lots of our member organizations and listening sessions and asked people, "Well, what do you want? What do you want your communities to be like? What do you want transportation to do for you?" And people said really basic - they said, "We want to feel safe when we're walking and biking and driving and taking transit. We want cleaner air and we want functioning transit."
And when we look at the ways in which the transportation funding works, it's so weird and balkanized because ultimately at the end of the day, everything is just doing the same job, right? Whether it's a sidewalk or a bus or a highway or a road in front of your house, it's just moving people and goods from one place to the other, but we treat them so so differently in the way that we do funding - and the legacy - and other policies. And the legacy of that is not a pretty one, right? Anna and I have written a lot about the Washington state 18th amendment and the gas tax restrictions that say this pot of money can only be used for highway purposes. And some of the history of that is really ugly. It really is the redlining on wheels portion of funneling funds, funneling public good, public dollars in a way that supported white flight to the suburbs and starved Black and brown communities of investments. So I think that part of getting to that vision that you're just describing, Crystal, is addressing these root causes of how we got here. Why do we have such amazing disparities?
[00:16:46] Crystal Fincher: Are you finding that there's a willingness to address those root causes among our leaders?
[00:16:50] Anna Zivarts: I think it becomes a question of power. It really does, right? I mean, there's a certain amount of work that we can do with just being like, "Hey, we exist" and people are like, "Oh look, cute - disabled people showing up to testify." And then there's the, "Okay, we actually want your funding for this highway expansion project and we want to take that and we want to invest it in sidewalks and transit." And then people are like, "Oh, not so cute. Never mind." And so, this becomes an organizing project - I think fundamentally - that we need to build a base of non-drivers and a base of people who are willing to stand up and say, "Hey, we can't just keep doing what we've been doing. We can't."
I think the latest fight's going to be around what replaces the gas tax as we move towards more electric vehicles. We have to be real sure that that money's not going to be restricted the same way that the gas tax was and funneled into these highway projects that are just digging ourselves deeper and deeper into climate and health equity crises, and accessibility crises. Like every additional lane of road that we build, whether it's a highway or even just a wider local road - that's an access barrier, increased access barrier, for someone who was walking or rolling and trying to get across that road that has more traffic and faster traffic as a result of that widening.
[00:18:19] Crystal Fincher: Which makes sense. You know, it seemed - that seems very reasonable and logical, Anna. But we are in this conversation that seems contentious with a hesitance to move forward, certainly, as we are talking about a transportation package in the legislature right now, as we're having continuing conversations within cities and between cities about how to most effectively move people and goods. And there seems to be a hesitance to even be able to say, Yes, we actually need to pause the expansion of roads. Sure, we can maintain them, but let's actually focus on investing our new dollars in ways that support our entire community and make our entire system accessible - no matter how someone gets around. How are you finding those conversations and how can people who want to be part of a coalition change and engage with this in a way that's helpful?
[00:19:24] Paulo Nunes-Ueno: Well, one of the things that I think is really changing around this conversation is that we are really picking up more and more the idea that this is a place of really deep intersections - ha ha ha, sorry - between the climate crisis and climate activism and environmental justice in communities that are safe and accessible for everybody, right? So this is - what's really sort of been exciting about this work that Anna and I are doing is that it brings people from a lot of different communities and a lot of different points of view. And you're right, Crystal, that the entrenched status quo of - these are the ways in which we must spend these dollars, these are the kinds of industries that are already equipped and tooled to do the planning and the design and the construction of these particular projects - would want to maintain the ways in which we've been doing things, in spite of all of the evidence that we have that it's not what our communities need. It's not in line with our climate goals or our environmental justice goals - is really tough. It's going to take, like Anna was saying earlier, a lot of power building of people saying, "Hey, I care about this because of this particular point of view", but it really centers on - we need to do the way that we invest - we need to do transportation investment really differently with a different lens.
[00:21:12] Anna Zivarts: And I think we need to be really thoughtful and think more about who this car-based system is working for, and why the powers that are behind ensuring that it continues - and who it's not working for. And you think about, when you turn on a television or whatever streaming service you're using, how many car ads you see - there is a lot of money and capital out there convincing us that cars are freedom, convincing us that we need to have these neighborhoods that look a certain way that are heavily auto dependent. And to change that is going to be difficult because there is so much inertia or not even - let me re-say that - to change that is going to take - it's like changing the direction of a big ship. It's going to take time, but I think we're starting to say, "Hey, look, this isn't working for a lot of us and this paradigm that began at the beginning of the automobile age is failing us on so many levels that we have to start to change direction." And as we're changing direction, I think the framework that Front and Centered is working within - this Just Transition framework - is a really useful way to think about it. That it's not going to happen overnight, but we need to make sure that we are building towards a more equitable future and that every step we take is building towards that.
And I think that links back to the transportation package and what goes on there and what we advocate for. Because I think - there's this argument that, well, a little bit of transit funding, a little bit of pedestrian funding, that's better than nothing and we should be pushing for that. But looking at the bigger picture, if we get that pedestrian funding attached to a whole bunch more road expansion or electric vehicle capacity expansion, is that getting us towards this Just Transition? Is it really changing who has access to resources? Is it really changing the equity of our communities, the health of our communities? I think we need to think about that.
[00:23:32] Paulo Nunes-Ueno: Yeah, that's exactly right, Anna. That's exactly right because what our experience to date is, like you're saying is, we get this huge road expansion proposals and they have a little bit of transit funding, a little bit of sidewalk here that "sweeten the deal." But that only works if you're looking at a very generalized view of the state as a whole. But when you start actually unpacking - well, who is benefiting from this and who is getting harmed by this? What you see is that it's the same communities over and over and over again that are getting the lion's share of the impacts in terms of loss of connectivity in their neighborhoods because there's a highway through them now. And are the same communities that have been historically overburdened by industry and by pollution from highways. And it turns out those map exactly to where the red lines were when there was all of this exclusion in real estate and underinvestment.
And so what Anna and I are working towards is to say - we, as advocates, and our allies who are advocating in the same space need to call it for what it is. We are asking the same people to bear the price for these bad policies again and again, whether it's by lack of connectivity or by overburden for pollution. And giving one set of communities a little bit of extra transit funding - it can't paper over the harm that these policies are causing. So we have to stop the harm now and then figure out the policies that figure out how to redress the harms that we've made, but also build the future that we need. And this dynamic that we've been in for a long time - hopefully is changing - where the shotgun marriage of transit and a little bit of transit and enormous road expansions is not good for anybody.
[00:25:45] Anna Zivarts: Well, it's good for some people.
[00:25:46] Paulo Nunes-Ueno: It's not good for most people.
[00:25:51] Crystal Fincher: And it's not good for an increasing amount of people. And I think that is certainly there - our current infrastructure is not working for more and more people. It is proving to be inadequate under, not only the widening and increasingly extreme conditions that we find ourself in, but also as people do, once they do have a choice, are choosing not to drive all the time. Or especially through this pandemic, people experiencing what it's like to not have to have a commute. Even for those who can drive and wanting to prioritize - just saving that time with their families, even just the matter of time can be a privilege. And for folks who have been pushed out of higher price areas and pushed further away from their jobs - certainly that's another burden that people are bearing.
So, we talk about a state transportation package - certainly there's a lot that needs to be done just within cities, whether it's a large one or a small one or a suburb. What should people be prioritizing and what lens - how should they approach decisions about, not only transportation and transit, but land use and design. How should our - not only legislative electeds, but also local electeds - be approaching this, and what should they be looking to do?
[00:27:21] Anna Zivarts: My take on this is that we should be looking at every - we have these project lists that are out there for all these road projects that are - many were our old project lists. Like they've been building since the 90s. And so many of them are for additional capacity because they were created under this paradigm that by increasing capacity we'll reduce congestion. Well, we know that's not the case. We know that increasing capacity just increases driving and then all the increased pollution, increased climate impacts of that, and decreased access for people walking and rolling. And so I really think we need to start going back through these lists of - some of them are zombie projects and some of them aren't quite zombies but should be - and looking really, who is this serving? And is this really the best investment of our transportation dollars? If we were actually moving towards a future where people can get around without having to rely on a vehicle, what would we be investing in? What would that future look like? And we're not going to get there tomorrow, but let's start building the connected network we need so that it's a possibility for our kids' generation.
[00:28:34] Paulo Nunes-Ueno: Yeah, exactly. So to that end, we've got a budget proviso up in the legislature this year for consideration that we hope will pass - that allocates a little bit of money for WSDOT to start researching what a frequent accessible transit standard would look like for different communities across the state. One of the analogies that we use when we're talking about this is that it's really hard to go out and rent an apartment, or rent a house, or buy a place in Washington state that doesn't have an indoor toilet, but that wasn't always the case. We've worked really hard over the last a hundred years to make electricity and indoor plumbing be a standard thing that you expect wherever you go for the most part. And there's no reason why, in 10 or 15 or 20 years, sidewalks and good transit can't be like that. We've worked hard in a variety of different ways from the funding, to the standard setting, to the engineering, to the planning - to say, just walking safely down the road to an easy walk to a bus that comes fairly often and goes to the places you need to go - that's not a huge thing to expect. We could do that.
Like we do hard things, right? Like building this enormous interstate highway system and making sure that pretty much every road that you drive on has a uniform surface and signs that you recognize? That was hard, but we did it - but now we need to turn our attention to the unfinished business of making sure that we've got sidewalks and buses that run in a lot of places, if not all places. So that, I think, is really important to set as an aspiration - that this isn't a bone that you're throwing to disabled people, or a bone that you're throwing to a community of color. This just should be a basic thing that everybody expects that we can do. We have the tools to do this.
[00:30:51] Anna Zivarts: And we need to do it everywhere, right? Because if we just do it in the central areas, in the areas that are already well-connected, those are the areas that have already become too expensive for the folks who need this the most to afford to live. So we can't just be doing this in targeted areas. We really need sidewalks everywhere, transit everywhere. And it's totally possible - it's not going to be the same frequency of transit, perhaps, in our more rural areas. I mean, it's not, but to have a daily bus service or a twice a day bus service in our more rural communities is not unreasonable. And we used to in earlier eras, but we've given that up. And the result of that is a lot of folks are completely isolated. And as people are getting priced out of areas that have better transit and that have connected - the connected sidewalk network - the cost of that to these individuals and then to the public because we have to provide other services to try to get people where they need to go, that's huge. And it's not something that I think we're thinking about enough.
[00:31:58] Crystal Fincher: If we make transportation more accessible to everyone - if we provide better sidewalks, better transit access, it actually helps all of us. All of us have dealt with traffic, or not having a bus available when we need it, or a long walk or a connection, or not being able to have a safe and reliable route to where we want to walk or our kids going to school. And if we actually help things become accessible to everyone, they become easier and friendlier to use for everyone in society. This is actually a benefit to all of us to make sure that everyone has access. And we just cut out so many people and make things so much more difficult for all of us, whether it's just walking down through our own communities - if a sidewalk is cluttered or not completely accessible or not existent. It builds stronger, healthier, more resilient and desirable communities for all of us together. I guess in the little bit of time that we have left - are there any last words or thoughts that you want to leave listeners with?
[00:33:14] Paulo Nunes-Ueno: Well, we're talking on the Eve of Rosa Parks' birthday, which has been recently celebrated as Transit Equity Day. And so I guess the thought that I would leave with is that - transit access, being safe in the streets, has been a central part of the civil rights movement of the 1960s because of the work around the Montgomery bus boycott. And you know that history that we know, but apparently being safe and having safe access and dignity in the Philadelphia street cars in the 1860s was a movement that was led by Black women that were part of the abolitionist movement and the civil rights movement of that era also. So, we stand on the shoulders of giants, of people that have been doing this work in the faces of much worse odds. And I think that we can take inspiration from them and win this fight too.
[00:34:27] Anna Zivarts: Oh, gosh, I think I'll leave it at what Paulo said. I think, we do have to have hope that we can get to a more equitable future, but I have that hope and so I am fighting this fight. That's why we're working together. That's why we're asking the folks that we organize to step up because we actually do believe that it's possible.
[00:34:51] Crystal Fincher: Well, I thank you both - Anna Zivarts, the director of the Disability Mobility Initiative with Disability Rights Washington, and Paulo Nunes-Ueno, Transportation and Land Use policy lead with Front and Centered. Thank you so much today. And we will definitely be including links to your work and what we talked about today in the show notes. Thanks so much.
I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcast - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
On today’s week-in-review, Crystal is joined by political consultant and urban farmer, Heather Weiner. They discuss the lawsuit against the capital gains tax in Washington, the concrete workers strike, the Harrell administration’s push for hotspot policing, safety at Pike Place Market and Inslee’s legislation to deal with highway encampments, and the “Tacoma Shuffle” of people returning to encampments after they’ve been swept because they still have nowhere else to go.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal on Twitter at @finchfrii, and find Heather at @hlweiner.
Resources
“Superior Court Judge hears arguments in capital gains tax case” by Shauna Sowersby for The Olympian: https://www.theolympian.com/news/state/washington/article258066028.html
“West Seattle Bridge reopening could be delayed if concrete union strike continues” by King 5 Staff for King 5: https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/seattle-construction-projects-delayed-concrete-union-strike/281-2765b55a-c89d-4abd-999f-261fc711b106
“Hot Spot Policing” Twitter Thread by Erica C. Barnett: https://twitter.com/ericacbarnett/status/1490185898108936193?s=20&t=8beV9DyCMjunAtJNLMatYw
“CID community group says they don’t see an improvement” by Hannah Krieg for The Stranger:
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/02/07/66263977/cid-community-watch-not-impressed-by-mayor-harrells-hot-spot-policing-strategy-in-little-saigon/comments
“Councilmember Pushes “Seattle Is Dying” Narrative, Data Confirms Stop-and-Frisk Disparities, Someone Is Posting Fake Sweep Signs, and More” by Publicola Staff for Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/02/10/councilmember-pushes-seattle-is-dying-narrative-data-confirms-stop-and-frisk-disparities-someone-is-posting-fake-sweep-signs-and-more/
“Inslee Pushes Legislation Prioritizing Homeless Encampment Removal Near Highways” by Natalie Bicknell Argerious for The Urbanist:
https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/02/10/inslee-pushes-legislation-prioritizing-homeless-encampment-removal-near-highways/
“'Tacoma shuffle': People return to I-705 homeless encampment days after sweep” by Lionel Donovan for King 5: https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/homeless/tacoma-encampment-remains-occupied/281-8730a985-8104-470c-b169-7dc1bdfae0cd
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in the state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: political consultant and urban farmer, Heather Weiner.
[00:00:52] Heather Weiner: Hi, Crystal. So happy to be here - happy Friday.
[00:00:54] Crystal Fincher: Happy Friday. Well, we have a ton to talk about today - I won't - so much, so much. I wanted to start off talking about the capital gains tax case - it was passed by our legislature and people filed suit against it - conservative Republican interests filed suit against it. And there was just a court hearing a week ago in - where arguments for and against were heard about it. What is going on with that?
[00:01:27] Heather Weiner: This is, I think, one of the most interesting stories if you care about education, you care about getting more childcare to people, you care about providing early learning, fixing leaky roofs in our schools. This is about $400-$500 million/year that is going to be going to all of these education projects. And in what I like to call a reverse Robin Hood move, these conservative interests are trying to steal from the children and give to the rich by taking away this capital gains tax.
Now it's in court right now - it's in Douglas County Court. We expect to see a decision in the next couple of weeks - have had a lot of really interesting people weigh in on that court case - everybody from Wenatchee school teachers to the former Wenatchee Chamber of Commerce president, economists - all saying the capital gains tax is actually a really great way to balance our unfair tax code which puts the biggest burdens on the poor and the least burdens on the rich.
Now here's a couple more things that have just happened today that you should know about, Crystal. The first one is we're seeing in the PDC filings that are coming in right now that there are some really bad black hat political consultants who are coming in to Washington state to help do this reverse Robin hood move. These are people who were fined the biggest fines in the nation's history for laundering campaign contributions during a previous ballot initiative here in Washington state - they were fined $18 million by my boo, Bob Ferguson. And here they are back again trying to repeal the Washington capital gains tax.
The other really interesting thing that's going on is kind of this - what I think is really bad reporting. There is a Amazon exec who is moving from Medina to Dallas - I think probably 'cause the Seahawks had a horrible season and the Cowboys had a pretty good season. But what the reporters are doing is saying that the move occurred right before the capital gains tax goes into effect, so therefore that must be the reason why they're moving. There could not possibly possibly be another reason that somebody is moving to a warmer, sunnier place that has better barbecue. And so I've just been - just been kind of a little bit of a - rhymes with "witch" - to people on Twitter this morning telling them coincidence does not equal causality - just because somebody left the state before the capital gains tax goes into effect. And by the way, this is a super rich person who should be paying their share just like the rest of us. And if they are moving because of the capital gains tax, then they need to say it, take responsibility for it - that they are a tax dodger and that they do not want to take responsibility for all of the great things that this state has done for them. Am I on my soap box? Can you tell?
[00:04:37] Crystal Fincher: I mean - it is logical and it makes sense - again, this capital gains tax - it's not an income tax. It is not a tax that most working people pay. This is where extraordinarily wealthy people are realizing gains - we're talking about that. And we are in a state that has no income tax FYI, so if you're arguing that people left for that reason - there are several stories where people have left to states with income taxes. It's like - I don't know if you're really doing this full analysis. But whether or not people are staying or leaving - and people continue to come to the state - it is, it has been well-documented and universally accepted and known for awhile that we have the most regressive tax structure in the nation, meaning that the people with the least pay the highest percentage of their income in taxes and the people with the most pay the lowest percentage of their income in taxes.
And at a time where we see the impacts - exacerbated through this pandemic - of years and years of underfunding of education, of our social safety net, of our public infrastructure - we absolutely need everyone to be chipping in their fair share. And to continue to ask working people, who are making an income, to be paying basically to make up for super wealthy people not paying their fair share - just isn't realistic. At this point, we are basically - most of the taxpayers are subsidizing the sixth homes and the third yachts of extremely rich people with our taxes.
[00:06:30] Heather Weiner: And the spaceship - and the spaceships up into the - up into the atmosphere. I mean, we are literally - actually, they do get huge tax subsidies for that. I mean, these are the same people who took tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds during COVID to basically pad their investment portfolios, to pad their investor rounds for these tech startups - they're producing nothing new. All they're doing is moving this taxpayer money between each other in kind of a shell game. And then they don't want to pay taxes on the gains that they have made from taxpayer money? Shame on you, shame on you - shame on you for going to Metropolitan Market and buying and spending $300 on cheese and then complaining about the people who are living in the boxes that that cheese was delivered in. Shame on you. If you want to do something about what is happening in this state with a lack of housing, with the lack of services, then you need to pay your damn share.
[00:07:27] Crystal Fincher: You do need to pay your share. Absolutely. We could go on about this at length.
[00:07:32] Heather Weiner: Oh boy. Boy, do I have feelings - I have a lot of feelings, Crystal.
[00:07:37] Crystal Fincher: We will leave it with that for today, but I think we are both aligned and with so many other people in the state. Again, this was supported by wide margins of the public - north of 65% are really tired of our tax dollars not going - coming into our communities at the level that they should be while they are padding the corporate bonuses and fourth houses of the uber-wealthy - it just - it just isn't wonderful.
[00:08:09] Heather Weiner: Can I just - you're talking about polling - for a second, I just want to do give you a quick update on polling. So I just read in The Olympian this week also that polling numbers - typically we think that Washington state is pretty just kind of knee jerk anti-tax - but we just this week approved a whole bunch of education levies. So we do want to fund education, which this capital gains tax does. And the polling, at least as reported in The Olympian, shows that any initiative to repeal the capital gains tax starts underwater. And as you and I know, as political consultants, a ballot initiative - a Yes ballot initiative - needs to start at over 60% to have any viability. So I just don't know how they're - if they're going to try to repeal this in the court, I think they're going to lose in the State Supreme court. I think they try to repeal it with the voters - I think it'll be a tough fight, but I think they might lose there too.
[00:08:59] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it is - it is certainly an uphill fight to try and repeal that. We're in a much different place than we were 15 and 20 years ago in terms of how people view their taxes. And now people have had a long time to see the effect of everyone not paying their share and seeing how many things now haven't been funded and are not happy about it.
Also, there are lots of people unhappy about working conditions that have languished and lagged over the past several years - and especially during the pandemic - employers not being as responsive and protective of their employees as they need to be, or just flat out issues of pay. We've seen that with a number of unionization efforts around the country and around our area, but there actually has been - what I feel has been somewhat under-covered and that's why we're talking about it today - a strike from concrete workers and that has been going on for a while. And this week there was a press conference with Mayor Harrell and County Executive Dow Constantine talking about some of the impacts of the strike and saying the West Seattle Bridge reopening could be delayed - other projects could be delayed - if this is not solved soon. Of course, that makes everyone kind of go back into some entrenched messaging - some people are like, Well, well, those workers just, you know, get back to work already - when really this is an issue of these concrete companies needing to meet these demands to get the strike over with. What is going on with this?
[00:10:41] Heather Weiner: Yeah. This is really interesting, because this is where unions have spent a lot of money and a lot of time electing people to office and this is where they expect those elected officials to stand with them. In this case, it's a public contract. There are four concrete companies who have basically - withholding great - better pay and better benefits for these people who are doing really hard physical jobs. And they're withholding that and so the concrete workers have been on strike. They've been outside for months - in the cold, in the rain - trying to negotiate this. And so this is where you - if you're an elected official - this is where you need to step up for the workers and you need to say, "The pressure is on the employers, is on these corporations, to pay fair share and get everybody back to work."
I was very disappointed to see that the message instead was, "The corporations - the unions and the corporations need to go back to the table." What they're really doing there - it's an implied you're both at fault message - instead of it being the corporations need to just - they're making huge profits on these taxpayer funded projects. They need to make sure that money is coming back into the community by paying people fairly.
Let me give you an example - your friend, Mayor McGinn, former Mayor McGinn, did the right thing in a similar strike situation when he was mayor. There were thousands of garbage, recycling, composting drivers who went on strike. And rather than saying they and the companies need to go back to the table, he said, "I'm going to start fining the companies millions of dollars a day for every day that they are not getting the trash picked up because that's what I can do under the contract." And he broke that strike and he helped those workers win much better wages. And that's what our elected officials should be doing right now, instead of somehow putting the onus on the workers themselves - they're sitting outside in the rain. It is not like they have a lot of power. They need to step up and help them.
[00:12:55] Crystal Fincher: Certainly do. And was a fan of that action taken by former Mayor McGinn, certainly. Other mayors have done similar in the past to help address these work stoppages. And one of the things that's really critical with this is that these companies have a responsibility to deliver - what is implied is that the companies do what's necessary to maintain a functional and effective workforce. If they are not paying them effectively, that is not maintaining a functional and effective workforce. There actually is precedent and great justification for saying, Hey, you are obligated to perform. Do what you need to do, have the conversations that you need to have, come to an agreement - but you have an obligation under this contract. And saying, well, we don't feel like - on other projects, our profits are massive enough, even though they are substantial to continue doing work. And to allow this work stoppage to continue - relying on some public partners and government to also play hard ball alongside them - is just not what I think most people are hoping to see. We know workers are put in more perilous positions today than they have been in decades. And navigating just the challenges of being a concrete worker and working on a site is not an easy thing on the body, it's not an easy job to have - certainly through a pandemic it has not been a comfortable job to have. So, I do hope that the companies are encouraged to do what it takes to be good corporate citizens, to invest in their workers and in this community to get this done. But the blaming of workers is just something that I think more - most people are - see through and are tired of.
[00:14:56] Heather Weiner: Yeah, I hope so. And I hope they do resolve this. I hope the companies do come to the table, do increase their wages and benefits so that they can get back to work. So that I can take the West Seattle Bridge to West Seattle again, because I - I live in Beacon Hill and boy, am I tired of that 3 minute drive turning into 35.
[00:15:15] Crystal Fincher: It is a challenge. Well, this week there have been lots of conversations around public safety. One of them being - there are conversations with, between councilmembers and community members, Mayor Harrell and his administration announced a new hotspot policing strategy to address certain hotspots in the City as Erica Barnett and PubliCola covered extensively on Twitter and has been written about. This is a strategy that has been used - has been tried several times before in the past in former administrations - several former - to say, Well, let's just increase patrols in these areas, let's target some intersections, some blocks - and kind of flood them with police and patrols.
And while it certainly is a visible sign that activity is happening and communities certainly don't want crime - they want to feel safe, they don't want to be victimized. And I don't think anyone wants that - that should not be happening. People do want to see action being taken to improve the safety in their communities. Whether more patrols are that action that people want to see is - certainly depends on who you ask, but it is not wanted across the board, certainly. And just the impacts of a hotspot strategy - how effective those are seems really questionable, given that this has been tried several times when SPD was smaller, when the budget was smaller, and Hey, let's hire more cops, let's increase the budget, let's invest in this hotspot strategy. And that has happened over and over and over again - yet, we're still having these same conversations about these hotspots. I certainly would hope that we would try strategy that's more in line with what data from across the country tells us actually helps to resolve crime completely. And that's getting closer to addressing the root causes and not after someone has been victimized - let's try and focus on that, let's prevent people from being victimized in the first place.
It appears that Harrell is certainly moving forward with this hotspot strategy. So we will see how that turns out. But The Stranger had an article this week talking about how a CID community group was saying, Well, you've been saying that you have implemented this hotspot strategy in our neighborhood now. We don't see an improvement and we actually don't think that improvement is going to come from adding more patrol officers on our block. So it'll be interesting to see how that is responded to, what the results of this initiative are this time, and follow through what is and isn't working.
[00:18:25] Heather Weiner: Yeah. I mean, we're just really - just moving people around from place to place to place. And so you have a hotspot team here, or an emphasis that they call it sometimes, and those people who are not housed still don't have any housing - you're not building any more housing - there's no place for them to go. And the people who are committing crime - fairly petty crime, but still disturbing crime - are working for much bigger syndicates of - and crime groups. And I think it was Andrew Lewis who said, Look, I really want to emphasize - I really think that we need to be spending resources on going after those kingpins, not going after the people, the pawns. By the way. I don't think he said it like that, but I think that's a brilliant analogy - I think he should be using that.
[00:19:10] Crystal Fincher: I love that.
[00:19:10] Heather Weiner: That was really good. Yeah - ring ring, Andrew.
[00:19:13] Crystal Fincher: Well see - that's why you're a political consultant, Heather. That is why - right there.
[00:19:17] Heather Weiner: Yeah. And - no, no. Yeah - anyway. Why am I a political consultant? We could talk about that next time. Well, not sure.
[00:19:28] Crystal Fincher: There's a lot to be talked about, and this is happening with a backdrop of conversations that were covered and written about this week of -
[00:19:35] Heather Weiner: Oh, I know - they were kind of shocking actually.
[00:19:38] Crystal Fincher: Councilmember Sara Nelson basically, kind of literally pushing a "Seattle is Dying" narrative.
[00:19:48] Heather Weiner: Didn't Bruce Harrell say that we weren't supposed to be doing that anymore? Didn't he literally say, I don't want to hear any more "Seattle is Dying."
[00:19:55] Crystal Fincher: Well, he may have said he didn't want to hear it anymore, but a coalition of people who supported him certainly are not tired of it. And a number of those people also support Sara Nelson, who owns Fremont Brewing with her husband. And Sara invited 11 business representatives to discuss their public safety concerns at her Economic Development Committee hearing last Wednesday - this was covered on PubliCola in one of their Morning Fizz articles this week - but Nelson's committee doesn't deal with crime or homelessness, and isn't considering any legislation, but evidently Sara felt it was important to allow these business community members, and only business community members, to talk about their concerns.
And again, those business owners really wanted more police - kind of at the end of the day. Sara Nelson was talking about, We're in a crisis. We need to increase the amount of police we have. We need to stop this horrible crime that is happening around the City and is out of control and the City is about to burn down - blah, blah, blah, blah. And again, to be clear, there are - people's concern about crime is absolutely legitimate. There are too many things happening that are bad. We do not want people to be victimized - I think that's really important to center. I think at the end of the day, if there was no crime, people would be happy about it, but wow is there so much data that is being ignored, really coincidentally by people who say that they want a data-driven strategy, that literally says that jailing people doesn't reduce crime at all.
[00:21:47] Heather Weiner: No, if anything, it makes it worse because you're making people -
[00:21:51] Crystal Fincher: There is actually evidence that it makes it worse because we don't focus on rehabilitation. We have to get in touch with the reality that if we're focused on - focusing on punishment is not the same thing as focusing on safety. We're really good at the punishment part, we're really good at making people feel pain - oftentimes it follows them for the rest of their lives as a consequence of committing crime. We're good at making some people and certain segments of our community feel good about that, other people don't feel any consequences for the types of crimes that they commit. But in this - we have to engage with the goal is - these people are reentering our communities. And they're our community members, and we have to help them reintegrate in society, and to be able to build a life - and to be productive on their own terms, to be stable in terms of housing and income, to have mental health resources available. And everything about our current carceral system destabilizes.
There is no meaningful rehabilitation services provided. And the fact that you have been in the system is a red flag that people use in terms of employment and housing - that makes everything harder to do for people who are struggling to get started anyway. And at a time when people with no record, who are struggling just to be able to afford housing, imagine what it's like when you have people who just don't want to house you, who don't want to hire anyone with a record - what do you then do? We actually stack the deck against people being able to rebuild their lives and reintegrate into society. And our solutions have to be focused on that if we are going to make our communities safer.
[00:23:57] Heather Weiner: Can I give you a totally - a little bit of a far-fetched conspiracy theory? So, I'm looking at the timing of this - this big push that we need more police, we need more police, we need more police, we need more officers - this is kind of what the answer is. And this is also during the time that the police union is entering into negotiations with the City. I don't think that that is - well, I don't know, it seems - I'm not saying it's causality - I was just bitching about coincidence does not equal causality, but I think that it - I don't know, it's an interesting timing issue.
I also think it was really interesting that Debora Juarez took a swipe at Pike Place Market this week.
[00:24:37] Crystal Fincher: That was interesting - also this week, Debora Juarez made comments talking about - she is afraid now to go to Pike Place Market because she feels that it's unsafe and that there are lots of issues around crime there, which raised a lot of eyebrows.
[00:24:56] Heather Weiner: Yeah, I agree with her though. I think it is really dangerous. First of all, there's the donut place, right? That calls me in, right? Then you've got to go to the pierogi place - Piroshky's - oh my God - then that calls me in. Then there's Beecher's Cheese place - that's sucking me in. It is a really dangerous - and then they're giving out free samples everywhere. It is highly dangerous for me to go to Pike Place Market.
[00:25:18] Crystal Fincher: And just so I correctly characterize Debora Juarez's words - she says she no longer goes to Pike Place Market downtown "unless it's Saturday in broad daylight" because of the "safety issues" there. Which was really interesting because Pike Place Market - one, closes at 6. And it is an area, as PubliCola points out, that is consistently bustling and full of people, which actually is one of the hallmarks of keeping places safe. I don't know if she is talking about feeling uncomfortable on her way to Pike Place Market - I am not sure, but that - if you were going to cite anything, seems like an odd citation and certainly made a lot of people raise their eyebrows and wonder - want some more clarification certainly from her, but also wonder if rhetoric is taking hold and if she is actually on those streets today or - you know that was -
[00:26:28] Heather Weiner: This has always boggled my mind about the Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Businesses Association, where their talking point is to - ends up discouraging the very customers that they are trying to attract. Instead of telling everybody, Oh, it's unsafe here, don't come here. How does that help their business members? How do the Pike Place Market vendors feel about their City Councilmember discouraging people from going there? It just seems like it's not a great message strategy. And if I were them, I'd be talking about what they are doing to make it safer, what they are doing to welcome more people there.
I do not want to undermine the fact that almost all the times we hear about people saying this - it's almost always women who are saying they don't feel safe. And I think that's a really valid point. If you are feeling less safe out on the streets right now as a woman, is there an increase in, particularly if you're a woman of color, is there an increase in a feeling of hostility from other - from men? What is happening out there, but putting more police on the streets and arresting more people, as you were saying, is not going to solve the problem. What's going to solve the problem is addressing - in a big way - the lack of housing, the lack of good paying jobs, the lack of economic and mental health and other health supports that people need so that they are not forced into crime.
[00:27:51] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And speaking of that - Inslee this week is pushing legislation that prioritizes homeless encampment removal near highways, which - he talked about this being very important and characterizes it as, This is how we're - we need to take care of those people who are living under the highways. It's an extremely unsafe environment, it's a hazard for them, for drivers. And a lot of times he is talking about the right of ways under or adjacent to freeways and highways. Now, this has been an area - some of these are out of sight, some of these are very visible. We all know that there are some people who are bothered by the sight of homelessness much more than the thought of people and their experiences outside in a hostile climate without shelter.
But as we go through this, Inslee was talking about the need to clear these areas, for providing a budget - and in this bill, there is also money allocated for outreach services. Everybody talks about the goal of getting people into housing and in ways that we've seen before - having outreach workers working with the people who are in these encampments to get them into housing and also to track the outcomes of the people that they're working with to see - was it successful, was it not? We've talked at length about some of the issues before in this program about the current way we offer services and "offer services." And that a lot of the services that we have actually do not serve our entire unhoused population, that our current shelter system - and in many areas and in many spaces - is really hostile to people in terms of requiring people to be in by 6:30 PM, out by 6:30 or 7:00 AM. If someone has a job, actually - and there are a lot of unhoused people who are working, who have jobs and are employed that - that can conflict with your ability to be sheltered. And that then makes any particular shelter, the possibility of that impossible, keeping someone on the streets. Or they don't allow pets that people have, or they don't allow partners to be together, or there's no secure storage for people's belongings and the threat of their belongings not being secure. Or a variety of reasons or requirements that disqualify people, or make it impossible for them to hold on to the amount of stability that they currently have and not fall further and while taking advantage of those shelter services.
And so while some services are available, we are seeing over and over and over again, that that does not serve a significant portion of our unhoused population. And we can keep doing the same thing and saying, Well, we offered them and they turned them down - for a variety of very legitimate reasons. And watch people continue to move around to different places and be unhoused, or we can meaningfully do it.
There are different perspectives on this bill. There are organizations like the ACLU, some housing advocates and providers, who were saying this is going to make it really easy just to sweep people and without enough accountability to protect people's civil rights and to actually address this problem. Others are saying our entire goal and why we have allocated this money is to make it possible to get these folks housed. It's an interesting perspective. How do you see this?
[00:31:46] Heather Weiner: Yeah, well - well, I keep seeing it as every - it all comes down to money. And I'm just going to circle it right back to where we started. It all comes down to money and the reason that - a lot of the reasons that we do not have this housing, we do not have the services - because we don't have the money to pay for it. And the reason we don't have the money is because the super rich have rigged the system so that they don't have to pay their fair share. And you're seeing more and more anger - I think people are just number one, sick and tired of being inside. They're sick and tired of it being gray, they're sick and tired of COVID, and they're looking. And when they do go outside, they see people suffering and they just get really angry. And who they should be angry at is the super rich that they can't see who are not paying into the system like they should.
[00:32:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that is - that certainly contributes to the problem. In this article, and I am looking and we'll link this in the show notes - this is an Urbanist article by Natalie Bicknell Argerious. A couple of things that they talk about are potentially some helpful things in that - different jurisdictions can only act on land that they own or have the rights to act on or engage with. There have been issues between the cities and the state when it comes to engaging with people in these state-owned right of ways. And confusion or complication around whether cities can even go into offer services or work with folks in these encampments and feeling that that has been largely off limits. This bill is an attempt to also address that and make it clear that the cities and state can work together, it establishes an office to basically enable that.
And so we'll see what happens but there is concern, as there has been everywhere, that this will enable sweeps and kind of move people out of some areas that seem to be relatively, really low impact for the surrounding community. It is away from neighborhoods, it's away from other things. And in the case of Seattle, many aren't even visible by anyone and allowing people to find a shelter in community that works for them while being unhoused. There was also the concern and has been some freeway deaths of people who were crossing a freeway or crossing an on-ramp and being hit by cars. So, I mean, there is some - obviously we don't want people to be outside, we don't want people to be in danger - I think that is a legitimate concern. But with a legitimate concern, we need to address it with legitimate solutions.
We will see how this plays out, but this - following it up with another article this week that we can talk about - talking about in Tacoma - having the situation where, Hey, they did a sweep in an I-705 homeless encampment, which is a highway through Tacoma. And starting just days later, people were returning because a sweep does not provide housing. The number one problem that has to be addressed if we're talking about homelessness is getting people housed. If a conversation about homelessness doesn't start with housing, then we're completely failing. There is no chance of actually meaningfully addressing this and we are seeing this as King 5 details it - talking about the Tacoma shuffle, which is the term that people use for, Yeah, you do this sweep, you clear an area, but people still actually don't have anywhere to go. They still don't have a home. And so they moved to another location for a little bit, they're pushed out of that location, and they're back at this one. So we're not doing anything, but just kind of moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic, just moving people around the community, and spending a ton of money to do it. The City of Seattle spent over $1 million to clear out an encampment under a freeway and install razor wire. Could we have spent that $1 million perhaps on helping people to get into stable and permanent housing? That's a conversation we have, but certainly looking at the Tacoma shuffle, looking at how this has happened so far in Seattle and other places - this is a statewide problem. And if we don't address the housing issue and not focus on - whether it's substance use disorder or mental health disorders, which are made worse oftentimes by being unhoused - if we don't start with housing and lead with housing, then we're not doing anything to address this problem.
[00:36:52] Heather Weiner: Amen sister.
[00:36:53] Crystal Fincher: Well, with that, we will wrap up the day. I certainly thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, February 11th. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler and assistant producer is Shannon Cheng. Our wonderful co-host today was Seattle political consultant, Heather Weiner. You can find Heather on Twitter @hlweiner. That's H-L-W-E-I-N-E-R. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii - that's F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. And now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our mid-week show delivered to your podcast feed. While you're there, leave a review, it really helps us out. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in this show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.
Senator Rebecca Saldaña of the 37th Legislative District chats with Crystal about legislating with a lens that centers all Washingtonians - whether it be climate resiliency and environmental justice, transportation priorities, public safety resources, pandemic relief and recovery, or voting rights. For those who are candidates or considering running for office, Senator Saldaña offers words of advice on understanding your own strengths and staying rooted and accountable to your values.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal on Twitter at @finchfrii, and find Senator Rebecca Saldaña at @SenSaldana.
Resources
Washington Senate Democrats - Senator Rebecca Saldaña: https://senatedemocrats.wa.gov/saldana/
Front and Centered - Health Environment For All (HEAL) Act: https://frontandcentered.org/heal-act/
“Washington Democrats and Republicans want to spend more on transportation. But what will the Legislature get done?” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/democrats-and-republicans-want-to-spend-more-on-transportation-but-what-will-the-washington-legislature-get-done/
Front and Centered - Just Transition in Transportation: https://frontandcentered.org/just-transition-in-transportation/
SB 5354 - Addressing traffic control in large cities: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=5354&Year=2021&Initiative=false
SB 5597 - Concerning the Washington voting rights act: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=5597&Initiative=false&Year=2021
“Democracy Just Got Stronger in Washington State” by Shannon Cheng in ACLU Voting Rights Blog: https://www.aclu.org/blog/voting-rights/voting-rights-act/democracy-just-got-stronger-washington-state
“Ways and Means Committee to discuss addition to Washington Voting Rights Act on February 5” by Jessica Perez for NBC Right Now: https://www.nbcrightnow.com/news/ways-and-means-committee-to-discuss-addition-to-washington-voting-rights-act-on-february-5/article_9823fe96-8617-11ec-9c46-8f7e6fbcd648.html
SB 5796 - Restructuring cannabis revenue appropriations: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=5796&Initiative=false&Year=2021
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today we're thrilled to have joining us a senator from the 37th Legislative District, Deputy Majority Caucus Leader Rebecca Saldaña. Thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:00:50] Senator Rebecca Saldaña: Thank you so much, Crystal. It's so great to be here. I really appreciate it.
[00:00:52] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Appreciate you being here again and excited about what you've been able to accomplish. So, we're going to talk about what's going on this session, but I wanted to talk more about the HEAL Act, which you were instrumental in helping to pass last session. Can you recap what that is for us?
[00:01:11] Senator Rebecca Saldaña: Sure - the HEAL Act puts into statute definition for environmental justice, it establishes a task force that is majority people most impacted by environmental hazards and harms and come from frontline communities, and it covers seven agencies. Let's see if I get this - it's been a minute since I've had to name them - but Department of Ecology, Department of Transportation, Department of Health, Department of Commerce, we're getting close here, and then also Puget Sound Partnership and the Department of Natural Resources. And so they have been tasked over this last - since it became law, the first steps are to establish the Environmental Justice Council. And the seven agencies form a work group to begin to start planning for how they're going to incorporate EJ [Environmental Justice] into their strategies and community outreach plans. And so that is underway. And it's also important to note that the Climate Commitment Act that was also passed last year is subject to the HEAL Act and environmental justice policies.
[00:02:41] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. So, that was such a big push from so many in the community and thank you so much for spearheading that. That is incredibly important. And, as we look forward to what's coming this session and looking at a transportation package - considering all of the impacts of climate change that we're already feeling and what we're going to be feeling in the future, impacts of pollution - how does that frame your approach coming up this session in terms of transportation and what's on the table?
[00:03:20] Senator Rebecca Saldaña: Yeah, so it definitely really sets us up from a different perspective than we would have in the past around transportation investment. So, this year what we're looking at is making sure that we move a transportation investment plan that meets the priorities of my Democratic caucus - which is to make sure that we have a more just and inclusive and equitable recovery out of this pandemic. And how we make those investments in transportation should help move that - it's making sure that we're addressing safety, that we're addressing climate impacts, that we're addressing mobility that is centered around all Washingtonians, especially those that are furthest from historic opportunities. So, what that means is that we're going to make sure that we spend and program correctly the Climate Commitment dollars of $5.2 billion, that we are making sure that we are addressing our plussing up pedestrian and multimodal investments, that we are really making sure that we are decarbonizing our transportation as we grow, and taking care of what we've already built into the transportation system - make sure it works better for everyone.
So, that's what we're up to. Chair Liias and myself along with Senator Randall, Senator Lovelett taking the lead on ferries - are instrumental in helping shape this policy and are in active negotiations with both the Republicans on this side for a current law on the supplemental budget and active with the Democrats in the House to come up with a proposal that I think really sets the tone and lays the groundwork for the kind of future investments that we want to see for a transportation system that works for - that's clean, green, and creates more opportunities for everyone.
[00:05:32] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Clean and green, creating more opportunities, serving more of the population is very important. I've heard you talk a lot about the importance of making our transportation work for people who don't drive. Can you share with us your approach on that?
[00:05:49] Senator Rebecca Saldaña: Sure. So, there's a couple of things in terms of just really specific investments and asks. This last year, when we went remote, one of the benefits is that more people that can't drive - that have impairments or disabilities - were able to participate in our committee hearings at a level that I've never seen before. And it was very empowering. And out of that came - from the Washington State Disability Coalition - they have made a big claim that over 25% of Washingtonians do not drive and that could be from - for choice - because they want to be kinder to our planet. It could be because there's a disability or an age issue. And so we want to know more. And there's - in the governor's budget and definitely plan to advocate for it to be in the final budget - is a proviso to support the further studying of that data so that we can really understand more about who are the non-drivers, how do they use our right-of-ways, how are they being served currently, and how can we do better.
And there's specific things around - whether it's safe routes to school or looking at our on-ramps, off-ramps, and where the highway interacts - with what we're trying to do around equitable transit-oriented development to give people more choices about engaging with their economy and their community, whether that's staying at home and being in their neighborhoods and being able to do that or whether it's using the roads through public transit, through ride shares or through their individual vehicles.
[00:07:36] Crystal Fincher: Great. And there's been a lot of conversation particularly among people who are interested in making sure that we continue to have a resilient economy and that the investments that we make don't make our climate issue any worse or pollution problems worse. And a real conversation around do we maintain the roads and highways that we have - and I think there's broad agreement that we absolutely need to do that - but looking at not expanding highways and roads. Where do you land on that? Do you support a package that expands highways or do you think we should be limiting it to maintaining what we have?
[00:08:18] Senator Rebecca Saldaña: We definitely need to go back to basics and have our number one priority to make sure that we are actually addressing preservation and maintenance and building in that climate resiliency. We have a lot of bridges that are failing or close to failing, and we need to make sure that we are building in climate resiliency and making sure that we are expanding safety for people that are moving across those bridges for instance. Whether they're walking, biking, riding, or rolling, or in their own vehicle.
And so I think that the piece where I have some nuance around expansion is that we have a lot of our transportation right-of-way has never been completed for all the users. And so in some places where it looks like there's an expansion - in my mind, it's about completing the street and making sure that we're creating a dedicated lane for bus rapid transit for instance - that's a lot of what the investments on 405 are about. It is about making sure that we are adding barriers or dedicated lanes for bike or rollers so that we can improve safety for everyone that's using that system. So, I think those are the places where it's a little nuanced when you're looking at the list of proposals or what comes out in a final budget. But definitely we need to make sure that where we're growing and investment is in preservation maintenance, it's in figuring out a sustainability plan around our ferries, and it's about making sure that we're creating opportunities for safety and decarbonization.
[00:10:11] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. So, what other bills should we be on the lookout for specifically when it comes to transportation?
[00:10:22] Senator Rebecca Saldaña: Well, the bills that I have in Transportation - one is really around the budget and that's where you'll see a lot of my involvement - is around making sure that we're planning so that we're not just pushing problems down to the next exit, but we're actually creating more flow and making a system that works better. The bills that I have in Transportation are really about, in large part, making sure that we're allowing badged officers to have their right role in public safety and freeing them up to focus where a lot of our communities want them to be. So, there is a traffic flagger bill - now this is where I'm like, "Let me go do my cheat sheet here for the numbers," because I am really bad at focusing on the bill numbers - but Senate Bill 5354 is in the House now. I'm hoping that they will take care of it this year. But it's saying that when there's large events in the City of Seattle for instance, that instead of having a badged officer on overtime in the middle of an intersection, that we have a professional flagger doing that work and the officer can be there to respond to actual crisis or needs. Similar to that -
[00:11:41] Crystal Fincher: That makes perfect sense.
[00:11:43] Senator Rebecca Saldaña: So, that's SB 5354. There's one around using camera enforcement for intersections and for bus rapid transit right-of-ways - that's Senate Bill 5707. And there's a little towing bill, which I don't remember the number, but again for Sound Transit - if there is a vehicle in their way, rather than having to call the police and then the police call the tower, they can just call the tower. So, these - sometimes you think these are not very exciting, but this is about good governance. It's about putting people in the right place and helping them be successful. And making sure that we're putting our resources in the right place. So, those are my Transportation bills.
[00:12:21] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, no, that makes sense. And it may sound minor, but something like SB 5354 making it so that licensed flaggers can control traffic makes perfect sense and is in line with what many people in the community have been asking for, and just gives folks so much more flexibility in allocating their own resources. I would think that lots of cities would be very excited about that because it gives them more control.
[00:12:48] Senator Rebecca Saldaña: Yeah, it's actually - the new mayor had a great story about leaving a Huskies game and being yelled at by the officer in the middle of the intersection. And it wasn't a problem for him, but it's these negative interactions that can - that the community has seen. And in a lot of cases, especially when it's young people, that's not the interaction we want them to have. And instead the officer can actually be free to respond to crises instead of being stuck in an intersection.
[00:13:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, makes sense. So, we talked about transportation. We are still here in the middle of this pandemic and the middle of an Omicron wave. And a lot of people are anxious about sending their kids to school still, whether their schools are prepared. People figuring out just how they can navigate their workplace safety, which a lot of people are being called back in to the workplace and figuring that out. A lot of just stress and strain, a lot of people getting ill, straining many of our hospital systems. What can be done from the legislative perspective to help people through this?
[00:14:11] Senator Rebecca Saldaña: Yes. So, last year, I think that was our number one priority when we were in the legislature, and I think part of it is circling back and saying, "Where do we need to keep things going? Where do we need to make adjustment?" So, last year we made huge investments in making sure that we kept our school districts whole so that staff would be able to be retained, and making sure that we were supporting families on the front lines - whether that was major investments in rent assistance, acquiring more housing so that we can have more affordable housing - that of course takes a little bit of time to show up. And to make sure that we are addressing our essential frontline workers - a big part of that was our Worker Relief Fund for individuals that didn't get any of the federal assistance, don't qualify for local unemployment insurance - and so that was a huge piece for keeping many families afloat.
I think this year we're looking at more about how can we support essential workforce to get the compensation for being on the frontlines, how important it is to retain and support our healthcare workers that are doing incredible work right now. There's a lot of work around apprenticeships to be able to help build the pipeline and support, again, retention and growth for other healthcare workers - whether it's behavioral health, whether it's folks that are working with unhoused individuals and working with folks suffering from substance use and addictions. So, there's that piece as well.
I think what we're seeing is - for families and for neighbors is - again, the kind of rent assistance and support, looking at increasing benefits for people that are living precariously in our communities, and making sure that people have access to food assistance - that has been huge as well. I think we're being responsive to what we're hearing from community in terms of how do we make sure that they have the right kind of PPE, how we make sure that educators and students and families are supported. A lot of the bill numbers I don't have in front of me, but I do know that there's quite a bit of legislation working through the process and I know that our end goal is to make sure that families have real freedom and choice to feel like they can stay in the school system and be safe.
[00:17:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. We're also in the midst of lots of conversations about people's access to the ballot nationally and locally. And a lot of legislation in different states and gerrymandering to various degrees - lots of concerns about people's access to the ballot. Here locally, we have done a much better job, in my opinion, of ensuring people have access to mail-in ballots and dropboxes. Is there anything else that you feel we should be working on, or legislation that's making its way through, to help people be able to vote more efficiently, effectively, and for more people to participate?
[00:18:01] Senator Rebecca Saldaña: 100%. There is. So, as you know, we passed a couple of years ago a Washington Voting Rights Act. And given the fact that at the federal level it looks unsure what kind of action they're going to take, and in the meantime we have a federal Supreme Court that has been weakening the historic federal Voting Rights Act. And so here in Washington we want to lead the way in making sure that we are strengthening our residents' access to democracy. And so I am sponsoring a followup bill to strengthen our Washington Voting Rights Act, which is Senate Bill 5597, and it will require certain jurisdictions making changes to cover voting practices to get pre-clearance to make sure that what they're doing is not worsening conditions and it is, in fact, actually improving access to democracy and real representation. We're going to make it, if passed - we'll make it financially easier to bring a claim against a jurisdiction under the Act, and ensuring that those plaintiffs that are brave and courageous to take on their local jurisdiction to get compensated for their work when a jurisdiction voluntarily takes action in response to a letter and a lawsuit ensues.
And also we'll create a data repository at the UW to assist jurisdictions, researchers, and members of the public to understand which jurisdictions should contemplate changing their form of election. And so really trying to get that data to be more accessible and available because a lot of our jurisdictions are very small and don't have the kind of resources that a City of Seattle or King County have. And they want to do right by their constituents but may not have access to that information and that resource. So, this will be a great asset for all to make sure that they are really creating opportunities for people to have representation - to have a voice in their work and in their communities.
There's also a little bill that - I'm so horrible at - that Representative Gregerson is leading. Because right now there are two elections going on that I bet a lot of people don't even realize. One is for King County Conservation District, so if you live in King County, you have the opportunity to vote until now until February 8, but no one knows and they aren't on any ballot that gets mailed to us. And so her bill would have them aligned with the general election cycle so they can also be on the ballot and more people can engage with who represents them at the Conservation District. And of course, I did just turn in my ballot yesterday for supporting the school levies. And that is another really important way that we can make sure that our local school districts have both more operating and capital resources that are really important for matching the investments that we put in at the state level to support our having healthy school buildings for our educators and our youth to really learn and do well.
[00:21:20] Crystal Fincher: I mean we're discussing this while there is an active federal Voting Rights Act lawsuit in the re-districting process here, where there's been tons of conversations in various counties and cities about whether they've drawn their boundaries fairly, whether their systems of government and elections are fair, and a history of them not being fair. And especially when we don't know if we're going to be able to count on federal help when it comes to keeping people in line, you leading on the local level certainly makes a lot of sense and is appreciated. What other bills should we be paying attention to? Are there any issues or things flying under the radar that you think people should know about?
[00:22:12] Senator Rebecca Saldaña: Well, there's definitely big things to look at. I'll say in terms of what I'm introducing and then I'll try to speak to some other big things if we have time. So, I mentioned the Worker Relief Fund last year, so that is, but there's a coalition of many of our neighbors that are actively working to recognize that - before the pandemic, there was a need for folks that are undocumented to be able to have access to unemployment insurance program - because they are excluded from the federal program and that has a huge impact both to those individuals, but really to our communities. Because we continue to have a broken immigration system that creates no opportunities for so many of our neighbors to be able to regularize their status here, and yet they contribute so much to our economy and to our communities. And so, Senate Bill 5438 - we will have a hearing on that this next week to consider how we, as a state, could stand up an unemployment insurance program for undocumented individuals that work in our economy.
The other is there's been a huge conversation going on around the fact that during the pandemic we've seen revenues in cannabis increase. And there's been a long - and more reckoning of the disproportionate impact of the War on Drugs and our state policies. And when we legalized cannabis that there were embedded barriers put in place. And so what we're seeing is that we see this cannabis revenue growing - it's a lot of our communities that were most impacted and harmed both by the War on Drugs, by our enforcement and policies - and then really felt banned and excluded from being able to participate in the new legalized market, are not seeing those revenues come back into their communities. And so there's been a call to make sure that our cannabis revenues are more transparent, accountable, and that they start investing in our communities that have been most historically harmed as well as creating new opportunities for Black and Brown community members to participate and be part of the regulated economy through licenses and other retail licenses primarily. So, I do have two bills that try to tackle that. One is really around just restructuring our current cannabis revenues - 5796. And then one that establishes a community reinvestment account and program, Senate Bill 5706, which we hope that the House bill will be the vehicle, and that is being championed by Representative Melanie Morgan. But those are two big things.
I think there's, in terms of what else is going on, the transportation package is huge. But the other big conversation is around how do we make sure that those investments actually mean affordability for more Washingtonians - for their housing, for their transportation? And, in our communities, making sure people aren't displaced - just as investments are coming, how do we make sure that the communities that have always been here can benefit from that and strengthen their roots in their communities? And so there's a bunch of housing policies that need attention. There are definitely continued conversation about how do we support folks that are suffering from being unhoused, folks that are suffering from substance use, and how do we make sure that we're building real supports and investments in supporting how we, as a state, make sure people have access to housing and resources when they need them.
[00:26:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that's very, very important, and appreciate you briefing us on all of that. I'm wondering in the final couple moments that we have - a number of people are considering running for office right now to become your colleague. And so as people consider - from someone who a lot of people in the community look up to, who has worked in community and understands organizing and mobilization - what advice do you have for people considering running or people who are candidates right now? What wisdom would you impart upon them?
[00:27:20] Senator Rebecca Saldaña: Thinking about what your strengths are and who you're accountable to, and have you talked to them about what it will take to run and win? And what it will take to govern. And can you count on their support? Because I think it's really important to make sure who - at the end of the day, you're going to have hundreds of bills come before you, dozens and dozens and dozens of interests, there's things that you will never have considered before. And so it's really important to know what's going to root you, and what's going to ground you, and how are you going to make sure that you have the support around you to be supported and successful on all the things you don't know once you get here.
But I think that's really important because they're going to be all everyone trying to get you to be a certain thing. You need to know who you are and what you're going to bring because this is a team sport - that's the one thing I love and hate maybe about the state legislature. It is a team sport. You need to make sure that you understand what is the value you're going to bring to the team, and how are you going to make sure that you get the rest of them to move with you. Because it is organizing, it is relationships - and anyone can do this job, it's just a matter of are you the one now feeling called and compelled to do this work? Because we need people with fire. We need people with heart. And we need people with values that are going to really wrestle with difficult things and find our way forward together.
[00:29:07] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much. Certainly excellent advice, and I hope people listen to and think through that on their own. Thank you for taking the time to join us - sincerely appreciate it and we'll talk to you again soon.
[00:29:21] Senator Rebecca Saldaña: Sounds fantastic. Thank you so much. Have a great day.
[00:29:24] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcast - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
On today’s week-in-review, Crystal is joined by staff writer covering Seattle City Hall at The Stranger, Hannah Krieg. They discuss City Council giving SPD control to change its ruse policy, what’s on the ballot for next week’s election, a bill that would move all elections to even years, changes to the missing middle housing bill, and how librarians are filling gaps in our emergency response to extreme weather.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Hannah Krieg, at @hannahkrieg. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“The Council Will Let SPD Spearhead Changes To Its Ruse Policy” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/02/01/65871823/the-council-will-let-spd-spearhead-changes-to-its-ruse-policy
“Didn’t WA just vote in November? Why is there another election already?” by David Gutman for The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/didnt-wa-just-vote-in-november-why-is-there-another-election-already/
“Help! What’s on the ballot for next week’s election?” by Ben Adlin for The South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2022/02/01/help-whats-on-the-ballot-for-next-weeks-election/
“Vote YES on Both Seattle Public School Levies” by Stranger Election Control Board from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/01/21/65253021/think-of-the-freaking-children-seattle-vote-yes-on-both-seattle-public-school-levies
Washington Secretary of State - Vote WA: https://voter.votewa.gov/
“Odd-Year Elections Suppress Tenant Votes But Even-Year Election Bill Can Fix That” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/01/31/odd-year-elections-suppress-tenant-votes-but-even-year-election-bill-can-fix-that/
Odd vs. Even Year Election Twitter thread by @mayormcginn: https://twitter.com/mayormcginn/status/1483512863444676612?s=20&t=NezYse4bRlsGCCygGvz0ug
HB 1727 - Concerning odd-numbered year elections: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=1727&Year=2021&Initiative=false
HB 1782 - Creating additional middle housing near transit and in areas traditionally dedicated to single-family detached housing: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=1782&Initiative=false&Year=2021
“Statewide Missing Middle Housing Bill Clears Committee Vote, But Not Before Pollet and Senn Water It Down” by Natalie Bicknell Argerious, Doug Trumm & Stephen Fesler from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/02/01/statewide-missing-middle-housing-bill-clears-committee-vote-but-not-before-pollet-and-senn-water-it-down/
“The new emergency responders: Librarians” by Hannah Weinberger from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/environment/2022/02/new-emergency-responders-librarians
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a cohost - welcome to the program for the first time, today's co-host: staff writer covering Seattle City Hall at The Stranger, Hannah Krieg. Welcome.
[00:00:51] Hannah Krieg: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited.
[00:00:54] Crystal Fincher: I am excited that you're here. All right - so I wanted to start off talking about a story that you wrote this week about SPD having to spearhead the policy changes around its own ruse. What is going on with that?
[00:01:10] Hannah Krieg: Yeah, so the story really came from - actually - a Hacks & Wonks episode with Teresa Mosqueda. She had said - she went out and made the very - the very powerful claim that maybe cops shouldn't lie. And she said that - she said we have to do something about that. And so I decided to track down who the we is - who is going to make that change. Bruce Harrell sorta said, We need to make a change. The Council was like, Should we do legislation? Should we ban ruses? There's a lot of - there's a lot of talk of what was going to happen and what I found was that the Public Safety Chair, Councilmember Lisa Herbold, said to me that she's going to reserve judgment on if she needs to put forth legislation until SPD has a chance to try to change the policy itself.
[00:02:12] Crystal Fincher: SPD - notorious for doing a great job policing themselves, correcting their behavior, revising their own policies. Yeah, totally makes sense to wait.
[00:02:22] Hannah Krieg: Well, okay - it sounds pretty bad. But I do want to give Herbold the benefit of the doubt in that it's difficult, I guess, to legislate SPD. They tried to do this with the less-lethal weapons ban and that kind of blew up on their face and they had to try again. And even still, that policy hasn't been implemented as of the end of 2021, so definitely there's some avoidance of going down that road again. But she did say that they'll look into it if SPDs policy isn't up to snuff - seems like they could just do that now but - 'cause they do have the power to legislate in that area. It just would be difficult.
[00:03:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And I mean, to that point also, this is - it's not like SPD is an outlier in using this unfortunately. Some of our Councilmembers, I think, are on record as saying that they don't think that - that there may not be a place and if so, an extremely limited place, where lying is permitted by police. Bruce Harrell has said he still has an open mind about whether lying should be permitted. So just kind of on the bright line of is this something that the department should be doing? It actually seems like that's not necessarily a firm no, and it probably makes sense to anticipate SPD coming back with - just maybe some slightly stricter guidelines on when they're going to - practice lying.
[00:04:17] Hannah Krieg: Yeah, it doesn't sound like - I kind of felt like some Councilmembers came out pretty strong against this ruse, and it doesn't sound like they're going to live up to that expectation by letting SPD handle this. When I talked to the mayor's office, the latest that he has said as far as goals for this policy - Bruce Harrell wants updates to the ruse policy that include a clear understanding of when the practice is appropriate, a process to notify the chain of command to prevent similar awareness issues as in the Proud Boys case in June 2020, and a record of the instances where ruses are used. So it doesn't look like he's wanting to ban them all together, though he said he had an open mind.
[00:05:06] Crystal Fincher: And one question I have here and I don't know if there's even an answer yet, but Councilmember Herbold did seem to indicate that, Hey, let the SPD take a shot at it, and we'll see if we need to take any action if theirs isn't sufficient. But an SPD spokesperson said that the Council will not have veto power over this policy - how does that work?
[00:05:31] Hannah Krieg: Basically when SPD makes their own policy - the processes - they're gonna talk to a bunch of stakeholders, they're gonna talk to agencies within Seattle and then nationally - to kind of shop around for different ideas of how other departments handle this issue. Then they're going to draft policy and present it to some oversight bodies and some other important stakeholders like the Council, but the Council won't have veto power over the policy that SPD proposes themselves. The Council could then go ahead and make their own policy, similar with the less-lethal weapons ban, but the policy from SPD - though Herbold said she would like to see drafts of it - when I talked to the spokesperson from SPD, he said Council will not have veto power over these kinds of drafts if they're not happy with it.
[00:06:32] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. So it just sounds like SPD is like, We just got a license to do whatever we want to do and we're going to do it. And you can't say anything about it once we do.
[00:06:43] Hannah Krieg: Kind of. I mean, they have the consent decree to adhere to and they have oversight bodies, but it's really them who's in the driver's seat right now with the policy on ruses. And to be clear, the Council could at any point still try to do a legislation - they would have to pretty specific if they wanted to legislate - if, when, how, what a ruse looks like - but they could do it. It would be difficult though, like the lethal weapons ban.
[00:07:16] Crystal Fincher: Okay, well, thank you so much for continuing to follow this story, for tracking down those answers, and continuing to pay attention. We certainly will and continue to talk about it whenever new events arise. I also wanted to talk about, Hey, you know, there's an election coming up this Tuesday, February 8th. What is on the ballot next week?
[00:07:38] Hannah Krieg: Gosh, the levies, right? I don't know - I'm not a homeowner - it doesn't really affect me, but - and I also don't have students. Um, there are two propositions, correct?
[00:07:52] Crystal Fincher: There are - well, depending on where people are listening, there are lots of levies, there are definitely prepositions - prepositions? - propositions on the ballot. And I do want to throw in - even if you're not a homeowner, this does impact you and sometimes homeowners make it out, Hey, we are owning homes - we're the ones paying property tax, therefore we're entitled to a greater say in what we say is more important. But property tax - landlords just pass that along to their tenants. And oftentimes pass it along with a markup, so renters are oftentimes more impacted by property tax and those changes. So I just want to be explicit about that because that is something that has been weaponized against renters or people who are not homeowners. And everyone deserves a say and some people are paying and impacted by property taxes, even more than homeowners on average, so that's a thing. And we all benefit from making sure our population is educated, and can process information, and determine what are facts and not. As we look around in our society and see the consequences of people not being able to parse relevant and accurate and correct data and understand how science works, but -
[00:09:22] Hannah Krieg: Thanks for clearing that up - I guess I fell victim to the propaganda - I don't know. I didn't know that it got passed on.
[00:09:28] Crystal Fincher: You know, it is absolutely the default talking point and the conventional wisdom that that's a conversation. And so it is going to take a lot of conversations and pushback, 'cause lots of people don't think about it, don't have a reason to think about it. And you constantly have people saying, Well, as a homeowner, as someone who's actually paying the property taxes. And as if they're not passing them along and that's not paid for when they raise the rent every year. And if you look at the rate of property tax increase and look at the rate of rent increases, one is significantly higher than the other. So as we're looking at this, it's just really important that you find your ballot - you track it down, you have it in your mailbox. And mostly there are school funding - lots of school districts around the area are asking to renew levies to provide information. And as we are looking around right now and seeing just the impact of a lack of school funding, a lack of preparation all over there.
So, Shoreline has a parks and recreation improvement proposition on the ballot. There is propositions in Fife and all over the place, but in most places, including in Seattle, there are levy renewals or levy votes, so we can adequately and properly fund our schools. We still have a long way to go. I encourage people to vote Yes on those. But most of all, the people who are really motivated to turn out for these elections sometimes are people who are super anti-tax and don't care what it is. They're just voting No - that's an especially activated population right now. So it actually does take regular people who are not - who don't sit there and stew about having to pay any tax all day long and screed against the government and all of that. You have to vote to make sure that happens. It is helpful and useful and that's my take on it - make sure that you vote by Tuesday - mail in your ballot, drop it into a dropbox. We'll include links where you can look up what is in your jurisdiction. You can also go to votewa.gov - votewa.gov - and just type in your information and it'll tell you everything that's on your local ballot, and what you need to do if you need a ballot replacement. Just vote. Anything else you want to add about looking at this vote this Tuesday?
[00:12:02] Hannah Krieg: Yeah, The Stranger Election Control Board did suggest a Yes vote on both Seattle Public School levies. And you can check out our endorsement at thestranger.com if you want to know more about the levy and why The Stranger supports it.
[00:12:20] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, you can. And we'll also put a link to that in the show notes. But speaking of these elections and speaking of, Hey, these - we're in February right now, which if you were asking me is not when I would choose to put something on the ballot. But we just got out of an election cycle in 2021 - and in odd years here in Washington, we elect most local offices - so city councils, mayoral races, county races. And then on the even years, we deal with state legislative races, statewide races on some of those even years, but they're very different. And then we also have our federal election - so we're voting for our Congress people and our Senators in even years.
And so one, it's a constant drum beat of elections, but man, there's a difference in the turnout, and the composition of the people who vote, and the amount of people who vote between these local even-year elections, which don't get as much attention or turnout, and the even-year elections, which get most of the turnout - I think I said odd years don't get turnout 'cause that's correct. But yes. And you have actually covered this - you're a fan, there's a bill that is advancing in our legislature. So what is happening with that and why is it useful?
[00:13:52] Hannah Krieg: Yeah. So, Representative Mia Gregerson put forth a bill to move all of our local elections that usually happen, as you said, on odd years to even years. And the hope is that - since these odd-year elections don't have that like sexy national race at the top dragging people to the ballot, that if we put it on the even year, more people will vote overall and we'll get better turnout. And so that has just passed through committee - I think it was last week. As of yesterday, it's in Rules - hasn't been caucused on, but so far it looks like kind of a partisan battle. So there's seven people in the committee - the three Republicans voted No, the four Democrats voted Yes. And sort of the belief I heard from Senator Jamie Pedersen is that Republicans think they're going to do better in elections if they spread it across the calendar and Democrats think they're going to do better in elections if more people vote, which are two different strategies. Very interesting.
[00:15:03] Crystal Fincher: I mean - really this is a conversation about turnout, which is not itself a partisan conversation. The data is clear - I mean, anyone can see it, anyone can look at it - and when we look at what turnout numbers are in even-year elections versus odd-year elections, or in local elections in the odd years versus the federally - top of the ticket is federal in even years. The difference in turnout is massive and the people who vote to a greater degree or represent a greater percentage of the electorate in those low turnout odd years are predominantly higher-income people, older people - certainly less representative of the actual population that we have. When more people vote and more people turn out, it looks closer to the actual population that we have. Now we still have a ways to go many times, but I mean, we're sometimes talking about the difference between a 40% turnout and an 80% turnout. More people having a voice in shaping their community and electing their leaders in their communities is a better thing. And again, this doesn't change who lives where - it's not like people are running in between jurisdictions in these different years. These are the same communities, these are the same people voting. And in heavily Republican districts - if that's what the neighborhood actually is - they're going to elect Republicans. If only a few people who are highly motivated and activated and the system caters to them more than it does other people - we've talked about that a lot previously on this program - then yeah, then it's going to be less representative. And a few people are going to have a say that may not be representative of the many.
So yeah, in Washington and when more people vote, I mean, it kind of is a self-own to say, Hey, if we actually let more people have a say, we're in trouble because we're not doing what most people like - I don't think that's a great argument to be making. I don't know that they have a better argument to make. I mean, clearly they prefer that most people don't vote because most people don't agree with them. And I'm not saying most people super agree with Democrats all the time either, but it does give people a chance to be more representative in their elections. And to be clear, these local elections are technically nonpartisan, so there's not a D or R by the person's name - you're voting based on who they are in your municipality, and what they're talking about in terms of issues, and what their track record is. So, this is something that one - lowers the cost of elections because we aren't constantly having them all the time at odd years and even years. If we can have half as many, get the same amount of work done, elect the same people - and give more people the opportunity to have a voice, to listen, evaluate, pay attention to, give media and residents the opportunity to scrutinize candidates to greater detail, and that information be available to more people who are paying attention in even years - why are we not doing this? It just completely makes sense to do.
So, I am thankful to Representative Gregerson that she has introduced this. I really encourage people to follow along with this bill and to make sure that you are actively voicing your support to your legislators, because even if they're reliable Democrats, you just can't take for granted that they're going to vote for this, or not try and modify it, or water it down. So I am excited about it. When did you start paying attention to the difference between what's happening in even-year and odd-year elections?
[00:18:59] Hannah Krieg: Oh, well, I don't know - I'm pretty young, so pretty recently, I guess. But I definitely - that was the conversation all this year with the recall for Sawant. And not everyone has the ground game that Socialist Alternative has to combat an even-year election - or sorry, an odd-year election - to get the turnout they need to win. But it's definitely - there definitely is a big difference. Another thing people are worried about though, and this isn't really even a Republican critique, but that - the worry is if we combine these two ballots, we have everything on one, the ballots going to get longer, and we're going to see people not vote down ballot anyway, because they just get tired of voting. And that - I talked to King County Elections about this - and they did say that they see anecdotally, they don't have any data on it or statistics, but they see anecdotally that people drop off as we get lower into the ballot. I just kind of did a quick look and the dropoff is a lot less than the dropoff between an even year and an odd year - as you said, it sometimes can be the difference of 40%. And I checked in the 2020 election, and the top of the ballot was in like the mid 80s. And then the bottom of the ballot was in like the upper 70s. So it doesn't seem to be as big of a deal, but it is definitely something worth thinking about. And then it gives voters more things to think about in one year, it spreads election coverage from local media thinner 'cause they have to cover more stuff. But I do think that it's worth the trade-off to get potentially 40%, or 40 points extra, of participation in the election.
[00:20:57] Crystal Fincher: Yeah - voters participating in these elections - absolutely. And you know, there's - obviously we're speaking on audio right now and describing a map may not be the most helpful thing, but I will link a thread - a great thread that former Seattle mayor Mike McGinn did about this who - Hacks & Wonks listeners are used to hearing from every now and then. And some maps that he shared - that Elliott Day actually put together - just showing the drop-off between odd years and even years, the composition of who votes, and the difference in odd versus even-year elections.
And it has broad public support - I think it was NPI that did some polling on this and I was actually surprised by how popular this idea is. So voters absolutely support it - it is moving forward in our legislature and we need to make sure it continues to move forward as these committee cutoffs and deadlines fast approach. We just passed one and it made it through that gate, but there are some more to come. So please, pay attention to that bill - and that is House Bill 1727 with Mia Gregerson. So we'll include those links, but very good, very helpful, very useful.
And although some - heard a little bit of grumbling before from some consultants thinking, Hey, this is really it's going to reduce the amount of work. It changes some of the timelines of the work, but I think that the primary - speaking as a political consultant, how much I get paid actually is not, shouldn't be the primary determinant of what we're doing to maintain the health of our democracy. To make sure people can participate - that should be the paramount consideration and everything else will work itself out. I don't think the political consultant industry profession is going to be hurt by this. In fact, I actually think it's going to be really helpful.
So moving on from that issue to others that we have here - one thing that I wanted to talk about was just, as things move forward just a little bit in the legislature, the missing middle housing bill is another item that we've talked about here - allowing more density in those areas and just wanting to make sure that we allow the type of housing that will enable our rents and home prices not to continue to skyrocket, and for us to actually have more livable, sustainable and resilient communities. And so, House Bill 1782 passed out of the Local Government Committee, but it was watered down a bit by, actually, 46th Legislative District Representative Gerry Pollet, who lowered the sixplex requirement to a fourplex requirement, who changed the distance calculation, who - they put a minimum lot size requirement in there and kind of lessened the strength of the transit requirements in there. It's just - still doing some good things, not as good as it was before, and not really seeing the justification in the watering down except to maybe address some of the vitriol that we, that occurs from the NIMBY community that doesn't want to see anyone new come into the neighborhoods, or kind of talking about the fear of they're going to build giant apartment buildings that don't adhere to the character of the neighborhood. And that is, as we see in so many neighborhoods in Seattle and elsewhere, that that is not true. And duplexes look like other ones - just kind of houses and sometimes it's really hard to tell them apart. What do you think about this whole bill and issue, Hannah?
[00:25:18] Hannah Krieg: Well, it's kinda wild - changing the sixplex requirement to a fourplex requirement - that's really slashing a lot of housing. It's not super surprising - I mean, as The Urbanist said, this representative is a favorite of the Seattle Times Editorial Board. And that board often has kind of more NIMBY views - backing exclusionary zoning, fighting housing reform, and opposing affordable housing efforts like JumpStart - as the urbanist said. I love density, so it is sad to see something that could be cool get watered down. I don't know if the middle housing bill would have solved all the problems anyway, but it is sad to see that even this one thing that the state was trying to do to help people out is getting watered down.
[00:26:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. No, absolutely, and I completely agree. And to your point, the middle housing bill won't solve all of the problems, but the problems will not get solved without the thing - doing the things that are in this middle housing bill and increasing density, and just making sure that we are making space and providing housing for the people who we know are moving here, living here. And we know the consequences of failing to provide that - we have to catch up - it's not like where we've been treading water - we've been drowning and we've got a long way to swim upstream just to get to the point of stability. So the urgency for this is really important. I hope to see it continue to pass and advance and we'll keep an eye on that.
There was an interesting article this week about the role of librarians and our - really our public safety net. What was that story? What did it talk about? I think that was in Crosscut.
[00:27:27] Hannah Krieg: Yeah, I love this story 'cause I love Crosscut and also love librarians, I guess. But basically, as we see an increase in extreme weather and the need for emergency services and emergency shelters, our county and our city has really relied on librarians to help out in keeping folks safe and - not housed - but inside during extreme weather events. And it's interesting because it's sort of like this symptom of capitalism where we don't have - we don't have a lot of free community spaces, truly free indoor spaces where people can just exist without having to pay to exist. And so this is really all we have in a lot of cases besides the shelter beds that we already have on a nightly basis. But the library is kind of this last - this last part that is free and people can be inside. And so librarians have to take up this role that they probably didn't expect to take up. And hopefully we'll figure out a way to get people into permanent housing before we need to put them in libraries again. But for now, this is a very interesting piece on Crosscut about the librarian experience, I guess, during a weather crisis.
[00:29:08] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I mean, certainly even before kind of our recent weather crises that have brought this once again to the forefront of people's minds, and as discussed in this story, as you said, the libraries are some of the only places that are free, that don't require a membership, or requirement to enter. And so they have been an accessible place for people who don't have reliable home internet access, for people who may not have a computer at home, which is a significant segment of our society. It can be easy to overlook that if you are not in that group, but that group is substantial - that the library is where they're able to access services. It's not just books. It is classes and internet access. There are people - all the time - applying for jobs in libraries, accessing services, which now especially during the pandemic are limited to being online to a much greater degree than they used to be. And so that created - they were doing this work even before and doing a lot more than just tending to books and what's happening there.
But especially in these weather emergencies that we've had, where it's been dangerous to be outside and unsheltered, this - many cities, including Seattle, have said the library is a place of refuge in these situations and didn't necessarily do that in consultation with the librarians and the people who are staffing the libraries. And so talking through that expectation of what does that mean, and one - just kinda cities and county governments not having more options for refuge and safety is its own issue. And a by-product of that problem is that so much more is being forced onto libraries than originally intended. And so these places are absolutely necessary, but I think we also have to have more meaningful conversations about now that we - like, it's not a shock that there's - this year we can expect that there's going to be some air advisories because of wildfire smoke, because we have those every year. That there's going to be super cold weather events, as we've just recently had 'cause now we have those every year. That there's going to be scorching hot times 'cause we have those every year. So are you going to continue to kind of do this patchwork emergency rely on libraries thing and maybe even not have adequate staffing, or are you going to provide a more robust emergency and safety network for residents? Because right now, a lot is being put on libraries, on librarians - who are doing excellent work, but certainly more support is needed and they're trying to address a problem that is so much bigger than what they're actually equipped to handle. So really good story about this, and I hope we continue to have that discussion and we continue to talk to our elected representatives at the local level to make sure that they're planning effectively and not unduly burdening anyone while making sure that our residents are safe. And putting the resources necessary to get that done as a priority.
So we will wrap it up with that. Thank you so much for joining me today - you are super awesome, enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM this Friday, February 4th, 2022. Vote on Tuesday, February 8th - you can vote before then, but definitely vote by then. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler and assistant producer is Shannon Cheng. And our wonderful co-host today was staff writer covering Seattle City Hall at The Stranger, Hannah Krieg. You can find Hannah on Twitter @hannahkrieg - that's. H-A-N-N-A-H-K-R-I-E-G. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, and now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our mid-week show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like, leave us a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in and we'll talk to you next time.
On this midweek show, Representative Emily Wicks shares her journey from youth leader to recruiter for women candidates to elected representative of the 38th Legislative District. She and Crystal delve into why women are better prepared to lead than they may think, discuss her legislative work around social equity in the cannabis industry and sustainable funding for our transportation infrastructure, chat about how her Week Without Driving went, and wrap up with how women can prepare for a campaign of their own.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal on Twitter at @finchfrii, and find Representative Emily Wicks at @WicksWA38
Resources
Washington State House Democrats - Emily Wicks: https://housedemocrats.wa.gov/wicks/
HB 2022 - Concerning social equity in the cannabis industry: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=2022&Year=2021&Initiative=false
HB 2026 - Implementing a per mile charge on vehicles: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=2026&Year=2021
Disability Rights Washington - Disability Mobility Initiative: https://www.disabilityrightswa.org/programs/disabilitymobility/
Disability Mobility Initiative - Week Without Driving:
https://www.disabilityrightswa.org/nodriving/
Front and Centered: https://frontandcentered.org/
Northwest Women’s Political Caucus of Washington: https://www.nwpcwa.org/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
So today, I'm especially pleased to have joining us - Representative from the 38th Legislative District, the Assistant Majority Whip in the Democratic caucus, and the immediate past president of the National Women's Political Caucus in Washington - Emily Wicks. Welcome.
[00:00:53] Representative Emily Wicks: Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here with you today.
[00:00:56] Crystal Fincher: Very excited to have you here. Well, I just wanted to start off by - wondering how did you wind up in the Leg? What is the path you took? When did you know you wanted to run for office? How did that unfold for you?
[00:01:11] Representative Emily Wicks: Wow. That's a long process, I guess, but also a short one. It's one of those things where you know that young people that get involved in ASB [Associated Student Body] - and early on in their life in leadership positions - tend to go into those spaces. So I guess I'm a poster child for that. And that's why I continue to tell young people to get involved in their schools, to get involved in that way. But I've always been somebody who saw a problem or wanted to take a leadership role on as I look at that, but I never thought I would end up in the Legislature in this capacity.
I began, again, just being involved in school and all of those sorts of things - being that kind of vibrant young person that wants to know everything and be involved in everything. And the term bossy, I guess, comes in - I try to own that term. But yeah, moving into - I love policy, I love public relations - I wanted to be a reporter when I started out. And that just led me to get involved in politics and government affairs and to learn more about that. And just a series of events - from a great job opportunity here and there to ending up working for the governor on his 2012 campaign - learning how to fundraise and ask for money, and then really wanting to get involved in the legislative process. And that's where I really fell in love with the legislature. There's a lot of different people that are involved in that area and that system, and it's really difficult for people outside of that system to kind of navigate it. And so when I was working for then State Representative Cyrus Habib during his first term, I got to learn how that process worked. And I was really passionate about making sure that people could get involved and talk to their legislators, and they could take an idea and translate that into meaningful action, and getting a bill passed.
When I was doing that, I also joined the Women's Political Caucus - that was about 2013. And that's where I learned the importance of getting women elected and the disproportionality of women in public office. And so I spent from 2013 to 2020 encouraging women to run and get in there. And in that process and in that work, coming back to my hometown of Marysville and the community of Everett in Snohomish County, really trying to build up the pipeline of women here - I actually ended up building up myself, I guess, as well. So when the option - opportunity - became available, when Senator McCoy retired and Senator Robinson moved into his seat in the Senate, I jumped in. I mean, that's what I always tell women to do. This is your opportunity - you know you can make a difference. And so this was not something that I thought would be possible, but coming back home and caring about my community is what really led me to this position, as well as all of the women that inspired me and I work to inspire to get elected.
[00:04:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I mean, and I've watched you do a lot of that inspiring up close and appreciate all of the work that you've done to support so many women running for office, build the bench, and help train and develop people who are interested in running for office. And we see the results of that on city councils across the state, in the legislature - just all over and appreciate that. What was it that really made you believe that you could run and win?
[00:04:58] Representative Emily Wicks: Well, we always talk about - have the confidence of a mediocre white man, and it's so fun when women haven't heard that phrase because I feel like we talk about it all the time, but they just get so excited and they all say, "I'm going to write that down," but it's absolutely true. I think so many times we see people in leadership positions kind of go to these meetings and they didn't really do the homework, they didn't really do the work on it, and they're there. And people watch them and they think they're doing a great job. And I think there's this expectation, too, that we need to have all of the information to do a good job. But so much of the skillset that I know that I've gotten from everything has just been doing the work - asking questions, and getting in there and being able to think clearly, and think about the impacts of it, and to learn. So you go into this and you don't need to know it all. You just need to be willing to learn. And so I think these spaces are especially important for people that know they don't have all the answers, but they want to do what's right and they want to be informed.
So I know so many people say, "Oh, I don't have experience in that. I don't know that much about the school board," but believe me, so many people don't have that kind of knowledge when they come into it. They just think that it's their right to be in that space. And we know that when it comes to applying for jobs, men will apply for a job if they meet 60% of the qualifications and women will apply only if they meet 100% of it. So it's really recognizing that you don't have to have all the answers, you don't even have to have all the skill sets - that actually comes with doing the work and it comes with being effective. And I can tell you that last year, in my first year, I constantly felt like I didn't know enough and that I wasn't capable. And I stopped trying to feel that way - I just said - just ask questions, ask things that you think are silly, ask clarifying questions. And I am so much more capable this year as a result.
And I can tell you too, when I became president of the Women's Political Caucus, I was so, so nervous to do that work. And it was a volunteer role, but I knew how important it was and my predecessors had done such amazing things. But my skills and everything that I was able to do for the caucus with the great team that I had came from doing the work - again, asking for assistance, asking questions and really diving into the process each time. So I would say anyone can do this if they have that passion and that excitement to do the work and they really care about people. But it does take doing the work, and I think women tend to do that. We don't tend to fluff up things and add to things unless we are really confident in that. And I think that makes it - people that want to learn and grow and also makes it so that we're going to make the more informed decisions. Hopefully, I answered that question in a long roundabout way.
[00:08:14] Crystal Fincher: No, you answered it perfectly. I think you made so many good points, including not having to know all of the information walking in and that you already possess valuable skills just from your lived experience - and you have broad professional experience - but what you picked up from that work and from the work of supporting so many women across the state in being trained and running and winning, you brought to the Legislature. I mean - just hearing feedback and different people talking to each other and watching you work. You working a bill is something. There are some people who introduce bills and they just kind of let it sit there. There are others who are in communication with all of their colleagues, with advocates, with impacted people in community, and sharing all of that information from those stakeholders with other stakeholders, and making sure people are up to date and brought on board. And building the coalition necessary, communicating in a way that respects your colleagues, but where you aren't compromising on what you believe. You're a very strong advocate with the ability to bring your colleagues along with you, which is a really valuable skill that a lot of women have - that would be valuable to have more of in the Legislature - for people who might be considering.
But things like that - that sometimes it's not just - do you understand this policy? And sometimes that is one of the easiest parts in the process is, okay, let me make sure to speak with, inform people in this area and relevant stakeholders - but those interpersonal skills with other legislators and the ability to not just introduce a bill, but to get support for it, to get co-sponsors, and to continue to pick up people and add in their feedback, and get enough votes to pass is a skill and a talent and something that a legislator has to have to be a truly effective leader. I know I've appreciated seeing that with you. So what committees are you on?
[00:10:28] Representative Emily Wicks: I am the Vice Chair of Commerce & Gaming, and I'm on the Transportation Committee and the Children, Youth & Families Committee.
[00:10:35] Crystal Fincher: Okay. So what are the pieces of legislation that you're working on or that we should be keeping an eye on and paying attention from you?
[00:10:44] Representative Emily Wicks: Absolutely. So on the cannabis side and the Commerce & Gaming side, we deal with - I'll say this again. On the Commerce & Gaming side, we deal with all of the fun sins, I guess you could call them - liquors, wine and beer, as well as gambling and cannabis and tobacco. So I'm actually a big advocate for the cannabis industry, and the way that we have rolled out our legal cannabis industry, I-502, has been less than ideal, I think. A lot of things that have come into this space have kind of been informed by history of, I would say, systemic whiteness and thinking through that. And so as soon as we made cannabis legal, we made it legal for people that have historically done everything right. And we've really criminalized in the past those who have engaged in this area and have used this product. And then we all of a sudden made it legal. And in that process of making it legal, we still left a lot of people out.
So this year, I'm bringing forward the social equity in cannabis bill, which is House Bill 2022. So I'm hoping with a great bill number like that, it can get passed. But it's really about correcting those inequities and making sure that our social equity applicants, those who have been left out of the system because they maybe had a criminal record related specifically to cannabis use or come from a background of a low-income background or have lived in poverty in the past, which makes it really hard to enter the system and to get the capital that you need to be successful in the system - that they have opportunities to receive licenses. And we have a cap on the number of cannabis retail licenses that we have. And currently they're not accepting any more producer/processor licenses.
So House Bill 2022 works to correct that harm by adding 39 new licenses per year until 2029 for social equity candidates, and then 29 for producer/processors. So 39 for retailers, 29 for producer/processors, basically allowing them to enter the system. There are also other mechanisms in there that they can be mobile. Right now - your license - you have to apply for your license in your city or in the city that you find a building, doesn't necessarily have to be your city, and that's where they provide your license. But then there's all these other local restrictions that could potentially go into place. Or you just have a problem finding a location that is going to make your business successful. And that also goes into restrictions on where you can be and the distance you need to be away from schools and other areas. And so we've lowered some of those restrictions because people were not finding spaces to be able to have a successful industry. And it's really important that we have a variety of businesses in different locations, and that they're not just in one specific spot. So we're doing that for the social equity candidates that come through seeking a license.
We're also providing some additional money for technical support and for low-interest loans, as well as some other pieces to support people in that process. So I'm really looking forward to it. I know it's going to be an uphill battle because there is this general idea that we shouldn't have more retail licenses, but what that's doing is really hampering people and it's leaving it to the elite and those who could get into the system. So by increasing that, we can increase the number of people of color that have ownership and that have that economic opportunity. So I'm really excited and I'm very thankful to Rep Jesse Johnson for helping move it forward and the folks at the NAACP for really saying, "We're going to go big and we're going to ask for what we need," because in the reality, it's just a small drop in the bucket of ways that we can support people that we've harmed for far too long.
[00:15:00] Crystal Fincher: Well, that definitely sounds like it's moving more in the direction that a lot of people were initially hoping things would move, before finding that people who had been historically harmed, historically criminalized and targeted because of marijuana use - predominantly people of color and people with lower incomes - were also shut out of the profits in this big marijuana boom. And now that people can make money off of it, it's respectable and all these white people now are owning these businesses and then selling those. But needing to address the harm that has been done in community and the inequity that it has created. So I definitely appreciate you taking action on that. And we will be paying attention to House Bill 2022, as it moves forward - definitely keep us up to date on that. What else are you working on?
[00:15:59] Representative Emily Wicks: Well, something that I'm bringing forward on the Transportation side is I'm proposing a road usage charge. And this really came about - the transportation commissions and others have been doing a lot of studies around this - and we need to expand that work that they're doing. And so this specific bill will allow current EV vehicle users that have an older EV vehicle - electric vehicle - to be able to opt into the system and pay a per-mile fee of 2.5 cents. And that fee would be capped at $175 for them to enter into this and work towards that process. So right now, our electric vehicle users are paying a $225 flat fee when they go and renew their license every year. And that's a pretty big chunk of money, especially when you add all the other licensing fees on top of it. So in addition to that, we're adding something in the bill to get the Department of Licensing to also implement periodic payments so that people can pay their licensing fees and their pay-per-mile fees in chunks.
But what we're really getting at with this piece of legislation is to address the declining gas revenue and to make sure that we still have that really critical revenue that we need both for maintenance and preservation, but also to move into a clean green economy. So we need the infrastructure to be able to support electric vehicles and electric hybrid vehicles and hydrogen vehicles - we need all of that in place. And we also want money to go toward more active transportation - so being able to bike and walk and have trails and all of those pieces that really make for a really healthy community and really connect us to our larger community. I can tell you just when I walk, I notice so much more about my community and I feel so much more connected.
And so there's a lot of aspects to the road usage charge bill, but right now when you're not paying gas tax, you're still using the road and you're still putting a lot of wear and tear on it. And so we need to be able to invest in all of the things that make our communities worthwhile, in the cities and the counties that are addressing their transportation needs and meeting that, and also on the state level - making sure that we have those resources in place. And what's really great is that this will be a small amount of money that we begin to earn, but the governor has proposed a $7,000 rebate for electric vehicle owners in his budget. And so with that, we really need to be thinking ahead of all of the people that are going to start moving to an electric vehicle soon and the gas tax that we will potentially be losing. And that gas tax - although we don't like paying our taxes - we know it goes into our roads. So how can we maintain that and make sure that everyone's continuing to pay their fair share, but are also moving to these cleaner vehicles and into a green transportation future.
[00:19:15] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And that's a huge question. And especially dealing with this directly on the Transportation Committee, you did something that not a lot of legislators or electeds did, but you participated in the Week Without Driving. And I've followed along as you were doing that and you were walking and taking transit. And it's so much of the conversation as we are looking at an increased percentage of people - I mean, as much as a quarter of people are getting around at some time without using a car, whether they're walking or rolling or biking, a wide variety of things there. And with an increasing population that's disabled and people just not wanting to have to own a car - really having the choice - how we design our transportation and transit systems directly impacts that.
And we have some money coming from the federal government to invest in roads. There's lots of conversation about what kind of Transportation package is going to be put together. And I know big questions that people have are - one, do you support expanding highways? I mean, certainly there's maintaining roads. But building new ones, expanding highways, additional lanes - is that something that we should be doing as we look forward to the future, particularly as we're trying to address a global climate change problem? And how do we make this system support choice for people who don't want to drive and to truly make people who aren't driving connected to the community and everywhere accessible?
[00:21:07] Representative Emily Wicks: Absolutely. There's a lot of questions in there and thoughts that I had during your statement and questions, but first of all, I think we need to be really cautious about expanding our highways because that is not a solution to our capacity issue. In order to get to capacity - what they would say - we need about $5 billion in more roads to be able to do that. And that adds additional cost to maintenance and additional things that can go wrong, so we really have to look at things differently. But my friends at Front and Centered actually came to me with a great piece of legislation that is being brought forward in California, which would prevent any more road expansion in disproportionately affected areas. So they would be using our health disparities map to make those decisions. And I love this bill. I really love it. However, in a short 60-day session where we're just working on it, it's really something that I want to kind of tackle in the near future with them on this piece of legislation.
And we have to think about other things - like is it okay to build another lane for transit? Is it okay to build another lane for bike and pedestrian use? Where are those pieces? And also, how do we look at those things in terms of a rural community? A lot of our rural folks have a lot of dangerous roads where they might need a turn lane - does that preclude that? So there's little pieces that we need to think about when we're talking about building more roads, but in general, I'm very much not in favor of doing that. I think we need to maintain what we have and continue to look at other options.
Transit is going to be a big need, and as our region and our state is growing, that is the only way that we're going to do that in a sustainable way - is moving people together and moving them around their community so that they don't have to get in a car and drive. It takes up way more space for 15 people to be in a car than 15 people to be in a bus or to take other modes of transportation. Again, I don't think cars are going to go away. I think there's an absolute - they're not an absolute, but there is a need for them, especially to move around our freight and our goods. And I think by doing that, we all also solve a big problem with our goods and services - our goods getting around and getting from port to store and helping that - making sure that the lives and the quality of life for the people doing that, those deliveries, and doing that important work, that they can get around and are not stuck in traffic. And also being stuck in traffic is really, really bad for our environment.
And then just to go back to that Week Without Driving, it really, truly inspired me to do more in that space. There's so many people that are non-drivers out there. And both in the governor's budget and what I'll be proposing with the disability folks is to invest in a non-driver study, so we can really understand how many people are not driving - what are those challenges, other aspects - so we can have a full knowledge about what people are going through and where the gaps are. I'm also going to be putting forward a proviso that asks WSDOT to do a very deep transit study to know where we have gaps and where people need more service. So I think combined with those two things - will give us some accurate data on really recognizing what we can do for people that are not driving.
And the experiences that I had during the Week Without Driving were amazing and really difficult. And being an able-bodied person and somebody who has full control of every aspect of my body - at one point, I had to take my shoes off and walk down a hill because it was so steep. And I think about a wheelchair going down there. There were certain areas where I had to take stairs. Going from Everett all the way to a very neighborhood community in Seattle - it was really difficult - three buses there, three buses back. And I just think about how difficult it was for me, with somebody with all of the resources at my disposal and money at my disposal to be able to purchase those bus passes, to have my ORCA card, and to walk around with that freedom.
And also - but the planning and the difficulty getting around. And I don't get sick very often, and I've been very lucky that I have not gotten COVID, but I got really sick from that traveling experience during that week. And that was just because I really was pushing myself in a lot of different ways and I can just understand how much other people, people living with disabilities, have to do to prepare, have to do while they're out, and just how difficult that is, especially when things go wrong because things went wrong a couple of times. I stood on the wrong side of the road for a bus, which was really embarrassing whilst the driver went by and yelling at him. I missed a couple too and ended up just walking home. So frequency was a really big issue as well.
So we have to think about how we're taking care of people in our community. And again, there's a lot more people that are not driving than we think. And we need to really invest in that and really invest in making sure that our transportation is clean by leaving our reliance on vehicles and taking transit and walking and getting to know our communities more. So those are some other comments that I wanted to add, but that's kind of the general direction that I'm moving. Of course, we need to take care of all of these important pieces of our transportation system when it comes to maintenance, but we shouldn't be adding more roads that really just create more capacity, more traffic, and lower our quality of life.
[00:27:24] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Completely agree. And the work that the Disability Mobility Initiative is doing in advocating in that area is excellent. We'll link them in the episode notes, along with Front and Centered, who is another excellent advocacy coalition. I wanted to talk a little bit about the Women's Political Caucus - you being the immediate past president, Olgy Diaz just starting as president. With a lot of people potentially considering running for office this coming year, next year, why is it important to prepare? And how does the Women's Political Caucus help?
[00:28:11] Representative Emily Wicks: Well, first of all, I'm so extremely excited for Olgy Diaz to take the helm, and she has absolutely embraced this position. And I've noticed too that we really haven't had any women presidents that have - one, had children, or been a person of color. So Olgy taking the lead on this and supporting this effort is going to be just absolutely amazing. And I'll add that the Women's Political Caucus - we're all volunteer-run, and that has created a lot of barriers, I think, too, in this process. So we are working on becoming or having a 501(c)(3) arm so that we can actually pay our president, or pay consultants that come in and support the women that are running throughout this process - to really recognize the hard work that it takes to do this - because I tell you, it is a labor of love.
And if you have so many other competing interests or if you even had a child, there's not a lot of opportunities for you to be really successful. And I'm proud of our organization for people not knowing that we're volunteer-run - that I always have to mention that to folks. So remember - we're an all volunteer-run organization - because there is this expectation that we're this full-blown group that is all working really hard. And we are working really hard, but it's just because we love doing the work. So what the Women's Political Caucus - our mission is to recruit, train, and elect women to public office. So that recruiting side starts with all of us in our individual communities doing specific things and bringing people into the conversation. We do that all year round through our events, through our network.
And there's really a lot more that we could do around there. I had someone come to me saying, how do we get women that might not already be interested in running? Because yeah, so oftentimes we get people that kind of have been thinking about it, so they go out and they look for you. So there's things you can do at the elementary school level, there's things you could do at the middle school level, and the high school level, and the college level, and just out in your community to do that - and to get people really motivated and interested in that. And I know I've been able to do some of that work with the Girl Scouts - talking about my experience growing up and doing leadership and where I am today. And so that's been really inspiring. So I'd love to grow that opportunity too.
But then we do our trainings every year. So we have - and you've been part of that - thank you so much for your input and your insight and providing that with all of these great candidates that we bring forward. But we do our training - both for campaign managers, potential candidates - people that are thinking about running, or really didn't think about running, but really want to how the campaign process works, or maybe just dipping their toe in a little bit. So we go over all of the nuts and bolts. We talk about kind of those big things - fundraising, field, and communications that you need to know about. And we bring together volunteer women consultants from across our state who are working with women and doing great things to get their feedback and hear their insight. And it's such a love fest too, because we really talk about what it's like to run as a woman. And every year, we're learning more things. We're getting more knowledge in there that we can pass on to folks. And we also just become a really tight-knit group of people supporting that group going forward that year.
After that, we begin the endorsement process and we have different endorsement committees. So we call them our Local Endorsement Actions Committee, Action Committees, LEACs, and they are in each county. And we always would love more people if there's other counties that we are not covering, because I know we do need a Whatcom and a Skagit person. So I'd love to put that out there, as well as Spokane. But we do cover all of those areas as well through the rest of the state. So if people come to us that way, we take them on. But our local LEACs work with the women and go through that endorsement process to decide if they are a pro-choice viable candidate ready to go, and we do our best to make sure that we're supporting that individual throughout their time. And one way that we do that support is through our PAC donations. So we are able to invest in all of the candidates running. And this past year, we invested $20,000 in local candidates from fire district to city councils and county councils. And we always are able to make a huge impact, too, when it comes to legislative years as well.
So we're continuing to build that resource, make sure that we provide the necessary options or, sorry, making sure that we're providing the necessary funding for candidates for them to be successful and continuing to build that pipeline by getting more women involved and being a critical network. But I'm excited to grow our organization to be doing more of that outreach - to identify people that maybe never thought about running, but definitely would be great and they just need a little bit of encouragement or to be asked seven times. We can do that.
[00:33:30] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And lots of studies show - you've said many times - how much more women need to be asked to run. It does not occur to women that they are prepared to run like it occurs to men, certainly nowhere near the frequency that it does for men. And it takes different people saying, "You should run. You could run. You can win," multiple times - at least seven times - for them to say, "You know what? Maybe I actually can," for them to actually internalize that and believe it. So couple lessons - if there's someone who you think would be great running for office, tell them yourself. Never ever skip that step. Never ever just think that. If you think someone would be great in any kind of leadership position, always tell them - particularly if it's a woman, person of color.
And then just make sure people get involved. It does take preparation to run. Lots of different ways to make change in communities - elections are one of them. But if you are going that route, it's so important to prepare, so important to know what's ahead of you. Elections are weird things with lots of weird rules and customs and conventions and all that kind of stuff. And you want to understand what lays ahead, you want to understand how to navigate all of that. You have to - you want to understand what actually works for winning votes and not - because there's a lot of misunderstandings and misinformation out there. So if you're interested in running, if you're interested in helping someone who's running, if you're interested in particularly - and possibly working on campaigns as a staffer, campaign manager, consultant - if you are considering any of that, sign up for the Women's Political Caucus trainings, please. They are among the best in the state. You make everyone else's job better and easier because you're more prepared and understand what's ahead and are prepared to win really. So I just want to absolutely thank you for taking the time to join us today, Emily.
[00:35:41] Representative Emily Wicks: Thank you. And if anyone wants to sign up, we do have a signup page at nwpcwa.org. We don't have dates yet, but we have a page that you can sign up and we can let you know how to, or as soon as the trainings get scheduled.
[00:35:55] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And you can also follow them on Facebook and on Twitter. So thank you so much for taking the time to join us today - always a pleasure. Appreciate all of the work that you're doing, and we will follow those bills that you talked about and keep an eye on Olympia.
I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcast - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
On today’s week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattle political reporter, editor of Publicola, and author of Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery, Erica Barnett. They discuss Mayor Harrell’s pitch to incorporate technology in Sound Transit fare enforcement, a bill that would force state agencies to improve access to DSHS benefits, new legislation that would create more housing density, a book ban at a Kent middle school, and a proposed retention bonus for Seattle police officers.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica Barnett, at @ericacbarnett. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
Sound Transit Fare Enforcement thread by @EricaCBarnett https://twitter.com/ericacbarnett/status/1486834701964697601
“Bill Would Force State Agency to Improve Access to Services or Stop Cutting Off Benefits” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/01/26/bill-would-force-state-agency-to-improve-access-to-services-or-stop-cutting-off-benefits/
HB 2075 - Establishing service requirements for the department of social and health services: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=2075&Year=2021&Initiative=false
HB 1782 and SB 5670 - Creating additional middle housing near transit and in areas traditionally dedicated to single-family detached housing: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=1782&Initiative=false&Year=2021
https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=5670&Chamber=Senate&Year=2021
“Let’s Make #Homes4WA” sponsored by The Urbanist: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/lets-make-homes4wa/
“LGBTQ+ Books Quietly Pulled From Washington State Middle School” by Kelly Jensen from Book Riot: https://bookriot.com/lgbtq-books-quietly-pulled-from-washington-state-middle-school/
“Talk of Seattle Police Department offering $5k retention bonus to keep officers” by Matt Markovich from FOX 13 Seattle: https://www.q13fox.com/news/talk-of-seattle-police-department-offering-5k-retention-bonus-to-keep-officers
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola, co-host of the Seattle Nice podcast, and author of Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery, Erica Barnett.
[00:00:56] Erica Barnett: It's great to be here.
[00:00:58] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you back - always an interesting show with you. Well, today I want to start off talking about Sound Transit - more conversations about fare enforcement, about their budget. What is going on with Sound Transit now?
[00:01:15] Erica Barnett: Well, for the last year or more Sound Transit has not really been enforcing fare non-payment. So when people walk through - we don't have turnstiles here in Seattle - so when people walk through without paying the $3 for light rail, there is a program called Fare Ambassadors. And the Fare Ambassadors are sort of a friendlier version of fare enforcement officers - and they come out to you, they check your ticket, and if you didn't pay, they give you a warning and they take down your information. At a Sound Transit Board meeting yesterday, the outgoing CEO, Peter Rogoff, sort of doubled down on stuff he's been saying for a very long time now - about the need to basically amp up fare enforcement, to get more farebox recovery, which is the amount of money they get from actual fares. Sort of warning of this very dire situation where he says that the agency will potentially be insolvent if they can't figure out a way to collect more fares from people.
Fares have gone down a lot since the beginning of the pandemic, largely because ridership has also been depressed for all the obvious reasons, but Rogoff also said yesterday that people are just increasingly not tapping their cards. He cited the example that he was at a Mariners game and I guess apparently saw a lot of people not tapping their cards and getting on the trains. Now, I would say that's sort of a situation where you don't necessarily want a huge backup with people tapping their cards because there are always crush loads, but he used that as an example of how people who can totally afford to pay the fare are just not paying the fare because there isn't enough of a penalty.
[00:02:58] Crystal Fincher: Okay. And this was Bruce Harrell's first meeting on the Sound Transit Board?
[00:03:05] Erica Barnett: It was. And he made a few comments. As he said, he came in hot with the suggestion that maybe there could be some kind of technological solution to fare enforcement. One of the criticisms of fare enforcement, particularly at Sound Transit, has been that it has way disproportionately targeted Black and Brown riders, particularly Black riders. And that it's all out of proportion to the percentage of Black riders versus white riders on the trains and Asian riders as well. And so Harrell was basically suggesting that maybe there could be a technological fix that would not be racially biased, but that would somehow increase the number of people paying fare and/or increase the number of people being penalized for not paying fare. It wasn't really clear.
Rogoff, the CEO, jumped to, "Well, we don't want to do facial recognition." And Harrell said that's not what he intended, but he didn't really say anything specific about what sort of technological fix there could be. I mean, as we all know, it's not like algorithms are an anti-racist tool. In fact, they're often quite racist. So I would be skeptical personally of any such fix, but again, he wasn't very specific about what it would be.
[00:04:30] Crystal Fincher: Okay. So there are two things in this story that I continue to come back to that just have me in a confused place. One is, okay, let's talk about fare recovery. So they're estimating 40% of their budget should be covered by riders paying fares, correct?
[00:04:58] Erica Barnett: Right.
[00:04:59] Crystal Fincher: How does that compare with other agencies? Does that seem to be a realistic number?
[00:05:03] Erica Barnett: Well, other agencies are generally - always, in almost all cases - lower - nationwide and also in this region. I mean, farebox recovery ranges from 2% for inner city transit to, I believe, King County Metro has a goal of 25% - they might have lowered that. But 40% is incredibly high. And it sort of has set the agency up for a constant cycle of failure, when you define failure as getting all this money back from fares. And as Rogoff pointed out, fare payment has gone down, but it's, I believe, almost always been lower than 40%. So you have to look at the metrics and you have to look at sort of what the values of the agency are. If it's a money-making agency, if the purpose of transit is to constantly be churning money back into the system so as to provide more service and to build more stuff, then that's one thing. But if the value of the agency and the purpose of the agency is mobility and equitable mobility for everyone who needs to get from one place to another, that's another thing. And I think it would - if that was the value - it might cause the agency to deemphasize this idea of a farebox recovery and getting as much sort of profit out of riders as it can.
[00:06:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. It just seems like they're setting themselves up for failure and setting themselves - we have this conversation, it seems like every year. Sound Transit is coming up short - what needs to happen? The other thing I find confounding - and ridiculous to be plain-spoken - is that when we have these fare enforcement officers, Fare Ambassadors, and they find someone hasn't paid a fare and they give them a ticket, I think most people assume that, hey, well, now you're paying a fine, and that fine is going to cover the costs of you not paying your ticket and hiring these Fare Ambassadors or officers, and that is back filling the money in the system. However, with Sound Transit, it's true that the fines that people pay don't go to Sound Transit, correct?
[00:07:25] Erica Barnett: That's right. The fines go to the court system. I mean, right now the maximum fine is $124. And they're looking at a system that would reduce the fine in a lot of cases - probably most cases to $50 - but that money doesn't go to Sound Transit. The whole purpose of the fine is to be punitive and to discourage people essentially from jumping the virtual turnstile and not paying for fear of having to go to court and pay a $50 fine. And then ultimately maybe pay a $124 fine. So yeah, it's a system that doesn't make a whole lot of sense from a financial perspective, because the only thing that Sound Transit is trying to recover is literally just the $3 that you did or didn't pay as you walked onto the train.
[00:08:17] Crystal Fincher: So the cost of fare enforcement officers or ambassadors is purely a cost. It's not how some other agencies sometimes justify it - saying, "Well, the fines end up paying for the officers, and we end up coming out ahead." That's purely a cost and a system that has shown to repeatedly fail to intimidate people into paying a fare when they're not paying, to backfill a budget that was already set unrealistically so that its goal, which has not been attained, continues to not be attained. It just seems like we're going around in a circle and nothing is making sense, and no one's pointing out that nothing is making sense.
[00:09:02] Erica Barnett: Well, people are pointing out that it doesn't make sense, but just nobody at the agency is sort of making the pointed, or at least effective, case that we need to find another way to fund transit. I mean, transit does cost money. When people don't pay fares - in complete fairness to Peter Rogoff and others, Bruce Harrell as well - there is a financial consequence to thousands of people not paying that $3 at the door, right? But the fact is we could also fund our transit system in another way, or in many other ways. There are other systems that fund their transit systems differently. Right now we pay for ours with a combination of fees and motor vehicle licensing and things like that. A lot of employers pay into the system, but we could have an employer tax, for example, that would cover the system more equitably than expecting individual riders to shoulder the cost, including a lot of riders that really can't afford it.
I mean, Rogoff said yesterday, and I thought this was a very telling comment. He said, "Well, we even have these ORCA cards, which are for people of modest means." Well, ORCA cards are only available to people making up to 200% of the poverty line on the federal level, which is actually below our local minimum wage and is way below poverty wages in this incredibly expensive city. And it just felt like, I don't know if - I mean, I assume that Peter Rogoff knows what the federal poverty level and knows a little bit about the cost of living in Seattle - but it felt like such an out-of-touch comment to me that - it felt like, very telling. Yeah.
And so I mean, we are not even near the point of talking about alternative ways to fund this system that we do need funding for and that does need to be expanded. I ride the Light Rail - it's very useful, but I don't think that funding it on the backs of people who can't pay is going to be a great, sustainable, long-term way of funding it.
[00:11:18] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And for me, I would rather invest money that is currently being invested in this kind of punitive system of trying to intimidate people and fine people into paying - which is not working - into something that is going to move us closer to a more sustainable system. I don't know what the budget line item is for the Fare Ambassadors, but it seems like if we're not recovering that money, if it is purely a cost, that maybe that money can be better invested in a way that could more efficiently help people pay their fares or subsidize those fares in a way that helps the people who actually need it. But we'll see. What is coming next from Sound Transit? I guess, where did things leave and what are the next steps?
[00:12:06] Erica Barnett: Well, they are considering - so they've had this Fare Ambassador program, which is, as I said, is basically just issuing warnings and taking people's information. They are discussing a new sort of system of enforcement that would have up to five warnings. And to me, I mean, again, I don't want to just sort of belabor the Peter Rogoff of it all, but his exasperation at the idea that people would just after warning, after warning keep "refusing to pay" - he was like, "And we can do a first warning, and then a second warning, and then a third warning, and then a fourth warning, and then a fifth warning." And, I mean, it's not like 27 warnings are going to make somebody who can't pay or who is not paying for whatever reason. It's not like any number of warnings is going to be the magic trick. So at any rate, that's what they're discussing - up to five warnings. On the fifth, you would have a penalty of up to $124 fine. Think on the fourth, it would be that $50 fine. So it's just kind of moving the goal post a tiny bit, but still kind of the - basically the same system that we've always had.
[00:13:21] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Well, we will continue to pay attention to it. We've had conversations with you about Sound Transit here before. I'm sure we will in the future. Always interesting. Well, I also wanted to talk about a bill raising an important issue about how people are able to access state benefits and our safety net - like TANF, food stamps, housing and essential needs. And how that's been limited because of DSHS offices being closed. And in an attempt to remedy that, what is happening there?
[00:13:55] Erica Barnett: Yeah, there's legislation being heard next Tuesday that would essentially require DSHS, which is the Department of Social and Health Services, to respond to calls within 30 minutes. So right now, just to back up, their offices have been either completely or partly closed since the beginning of the pandemic. So people seeking services for the most part have to call in or access services online. So when you're talking about people who are low income or maybe homeless, or you don't have internet fluency or access, they're usually calling. So this bill would respond to wait times that are right now - reportedly - sometimes three hours, four hours long, just to get somebody on the phone to tell you that they'll call you back. And it would require 30 minute wait times - no more - and it would set a bunch of standards for sort of levels of service that DSHS would have to provide.
Or if they can't provide them, which seems like a good possibility because the bill does not include funding - it's not a budget bill in this short session - they would not be allowed to penalize people for essentially not meeting deadlines, not getting through. In some cases, for benefits, you have to check in with somebody at DSHS on a regular basis. And people are finding that they simply cannot do that. So this would just say, okay, you can't lose your TANF benefits, you can't lose your food stamps, you can't lose your housing and essential needs benefits that you are receiving because you are a person in extreme poverty simply because you couldn't stay on the line for three hours because your phone didn't have minutes, because you had to get to work, or for any of the many other reasons that anybody can't stay on the phone for three hours.
[00:15:58] Crystal Fincher: Okay. So you say this has a hearing coming up next week.
[00:16:02] Erica Barnett: That's right. On Tuesday.
[00:16:04] Crystal Fincher: Is there any idea who is lining up to support or oppose it?
[00:16:09] Erica Barnett: I am not aware of opposition right now, which is not to say that there will not be opposition. DSHS itself told me this week that they were still looking at the bill and sort of trying to figure out what the ramifications would be for them. The sponsors are Strom Peterson, who's from Edmonds, and Nicole Macri, who is from Seattle and works for the Downtown Emergency Service Center, which is a homeless provider. And the actual - I should say that the drafters of the bill were the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness. So it is a bill backed by homeless service advocates.
One thing Peterson also mentioned to me though is that there's a lot of other folks who use DSHS benefits who are not necessarily homeless - including, he mentioned people with traumatic brain injuries, and also people who've served overseas and have PTSD, people who don't speak English as their first language. One thing I discovered during my reporting is that if you don't speak English and you call the hotline, you are told to leave a message in your own language and someone will call you back. So it's just another little hurdle that is sitting in your way if you want to get services right now.
[00:17:30] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And I think it's hard for some people to conceptualize, but if you are at the point where oftentimes you need these services, you're already dealing with so many hurdles and barriers in your own life. And just getting to the point where you can ask for help or go through the steps to receive help - you have to overcome several barriers just to do that. And putting barriers in the way of people who are already struggling and - for a variety of reasons - may not be able to sit on the phone for three hours to wait, or have that time available, or not be able to work, or not be able to focus or concentrate or sit in one place for that time - like just putting those barriers in front of this population - we know - so many studies support and looking at the population, we know that is cutting people off from being able to receive the benefits they're entitled to and the benefits that we've decided as a society benefit us all to provide.
It weakens our entire society if we allow people to fall through the cracks and have problems worsen, and then try and address those problems as they present as homelessness or different things. If we can intervene and help and get people back on their feet before problems get that bad, that is the goal and that benefits us all. There is a return on investment there, and it is the good thing to do as humans. So this is really talking about just kind of fundamental needs. And I think there is a need for it. I know that they - DSHS, I think, is dealing with staffing shortages as so many organizations were before the pandemic hit and now are dealing with that being even more of a challenge as people are out with COVID and various things.
So I'm sure, in a bill especially that doesn't address funding, that a big question is going to be, okay, so who are these people going to come for? But the remedy of that is okay, well then you can't penalize someone and cut them off from benefits because they did that. We'll certainly be keeping an eye on it. Do you know what the bill number is for that?
[00:19:47] Erica Barnett: It is 2075. House Bill 2075.
[00:19:53] Crystal Fincher: House Bill 2075. So we will monitor that and keep it on the list. I also want to talk about another bill in Olympia in terms of zoning. What's going on with that?
[00:20:07] Erica Barnett: Yeah. There is legislation in Olympia that is very exciting to people who support more density in cities, that has support of Governor Jay Inslee, that would - it's very complex. I'm just going to dumb it way down and say that it would allow more density in cities. And the main difference that this bill would sort of effectuate across the state - in cities of more than 20,000 people - is that in single family areas, areas that have been historically exclusively for detached homes, developers could build duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and in some cases, sixplexes and town homes. It's pretty modest as far as density goes. I mean, we're not talking about huge apartments. There was a bill that does not seem to be going anywhere this year, that would've allowed much taller buildings near transit stations.
But it's really remarkable, in a way, how far this conversation has come just in the last 10 years and even 5 years - the idea of even allowing duplexes and accessory dwelling units. I recall very well when that was like anathema. I mean, that was a third rail in Seattle and certainly in other cities. And now you've got Jay Inslee saying we need to allow more density and particularly around transit stops and frequent bus stops and light rail stations. Even though I don't think that the ultimate impact is going to be particularly dramatic, it's a step in the direction of a dramatic impact which is badly needed, particularly in the Seattle region where we just have so much growth and we don't have commensurate housing development, which is obviously contributing to our incredibly high housing costs.
[00:22:04] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. We will keep an eye on that. What bill number is that one?
[00:22:10] Erica Barnett: Oh, after you asked me the first time, I knew you would ask me this and I don't have the bill number memorized. I will look it up and I'll mention it in a second.
[00:22:21] Crystal Fincher: No, no worries. There are so many bill numbers to keep track of. I don't know the bill number off the top of my head. I've looked at it before. So what we will do is definitely put it in the show notes so you can see that - just in that text that comes along with the podcast and on officialhacksandwonks.com.
[00:22:37] Erica Barnett: Oh, it's HB 1782, Senate Bill 5670, if you want to follow along at home.
[00:22:43] Crystal Fincher: SB 5670. And then lots of calls to action from both urbanism and environmental groups have been spread on that. But these are going to be really important to make sure that you let your legislator know how you feel. This is an area where there are a lot more people in the public who support this than is assumed - just because a lot of times NIMBY groups who are notoriously vocal and always mobilize to oppose stuff are the ones who they are used to hearing from and who make themselves always very loud, both on municipal and the legislative level. So it's really important just to let your legislators know that you strongly support this, that you want them to support that, that it's actually critical for having an equitable and inclusive society and just to be able to afford to live near anything that people want to live near now and in the future. So hopefully everyone gets involved with that. And again, we'll put that in the episode notes. Also, want to talk about an issue - another issue in Kent that's - and today we're not talking about a Nazi cop who has not resigned.
[00:24:04] Erica Barnett: Just taking a breather from that.
[00:24:06] Crystal Fincher: Yes. I wish that was hyperbole - it is not - that's a literal statement. But we're talking about banning books, which sometimes people are like, "Well, that only happens in "backwards areas" and other states and not anything we would have to worry about in blue, progressive Washington - blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." It's everywhere. It's everywhere. If you think we're protected from something because we're in supposedly a blue, progressive Washington, please reconsider everything you have ever considered because everything is here, including a principal at Cedar Heights Middle School in Kent, which I'm very familiar with, taking it upon herself to ban some books - some LGBTQ books - what is happening here, Erica?
[00:24:56] Erica Barnett: Well, so the main book that has been banned and I don't have all the details of where we're at in terms of other books right now, but the first book that came to the attention of this principal - it's called Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts). It is a book that is - it's about a young man who is a sex advice columnist, anonymous sex advice columnist - he is gay. And the book is - it's somewhat explicit - it is sort of rated at a 14 year old reading level, which does not mean appropriateness or non-appropriateness, but that's one of the things that the principal has apparently seized on in saying that this book is not appropriate for seventh and eighth grade students.
I mean, it's fascinating because sexual explicitness - that's sort of the reason being given for removing this book from the middle school library - is really a moving target, as I think some of the critics of this policy have pointed out. There are many other sexually explicit books that are available to middle school students, including, I mean, one example of course, is the Bible - in which there's a story about a prostitute being hacked up into pieces that is quite explicit. And that's not banned, but this LGBTQ book that is somewhat explicit was banned. And so I think it speaks to a double standard for what types of sexually honest and straightforward literature we consider appropriate for children and what kind we don't. And yeah, I mean, Crystal, I don't know, what do you think about Kent? Is this the kind of thing that could only happen in Kent? Or is -
[00:26:53] Crystal Fincher: Very much not the kind of thing that could only happen in Kent. I mean, I feel like we just got done with a School Board race in Bellevue that got some coverage with a candidate that had some very racist and backwards views - that caught the attention of a lot of people. Kent, who - I happen to pay attention to very acutely - has had a number of issues in the school district. Kent has a very extreme, conservative contingent of the population - not a majority of the population, but like there's been an organized Republican - and conservatives who feel like Republicans are too soft - Party organized here. And in school board elections, geez, almost 10 years ago now, I mean - one, was just a very small forum that I went to where one candidate who was running against a woman of color at the time, talked about the problem with students these days coming from "Taliban hell holes". And being -
[00:28:05] Erica Barnett: Wow.
[00:28:08] Crystal Fincher: Yes. So like, sound all the alarms - that kind of kicked me into gear to in-kind some help to that candidate, his opponent, to make sure that he didn't get on because of just blatantly racist beliefs. Kent is known as one of the most diverse cities of the state now - it was not always that way. That demographic shift started in the Nineties - before that, it was an extremely white city. A lot of those residents still here - a lot of people very uncomfortable with change and blaming every conceivable problem that could be on that. And we see that in a lot of suburbs, rural areas - we see that everywhere.
And there's also a concerted conservative nationwide strategy to engage in local school districts and in municipalities, which are traditionally overlooked by most people - the turnout for those elections is lower than any other kind of election. People just don't pay attention. And so these conservatives - we've seen a ton of video online, if you're very online like I am, where you see these people railing against masking and testing and anything like that in school districts. That's a strategy. And so this book banning that we're now seeing is another tactic in this overall strategy to get control of school districts for a couple of purposes. So no, this is not something that can only happen in Kent. It's happening in Kent. It's happening in a lot of other places and people are going to have to get engaged in their local cities and in their local school districts and speak up in opposition to this. Because if all that happens is people go, "Oh, this is too bad," and they stay silent. And the only vocal people are the ones that want to ban books, then these books are going to get banned.
And as much as people want to be like, "Well, it's only going to make these books more popular in the underground." - the underground is underground for a reason because most people are not accessing it. And especially if someone's in a more conservative environment, if their parents are not open-minded, this is really cutting people off from books. And to that point, I mean this librarian who, when the principal, who had not read this book - when she decided to ban it, came to the meeting, had brought other books that had been accused of being sexually explicit. One was a book on pregnancy, another was a book by Maya Angelou, another was The Hate U Give, another - Are You There God it's Me Margaret - certainly the Bible. This becomes very, very subjective.
And I think part of the bigger issue is there is a process that is supposed to be followed when a book might not be appropriate. Because it's not like that can't happen, right? But there is a process dictated by the district which this principal did not follow. And so that's also another part of the issue is that - how subjective are we making this process and if we're not going to stick by given process and some visibility into this, how many books are disappearing that we know nothing about?
[00:31:30] Erica Barnett: Well, I think too, I mean, the fact that the list that you gave includes books that are perennially or have perennially been banned or that people have attempted to ban - I mean, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Are You There God It's Me Margaret. I mean, frequent targets in the past. I think that this particular book and the sort of focus on LGBTQ books in general is a wedge. I mean, it is an easy-ish thing to convince conservative parents that it is bad for children, or teenagers in this case, to be exposed to "sexually explicit, LGBTQ+ literature" and then kind of go from there. And this particular book is - Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) - has been a target in other school districts across the country.
So there is an effort to target specific books and specific books that are aimed at queer students, but I don't think that once it starts there, that it ends there, right? And so, this list of books, I mean, I could see some of those books being targeted again, because it hasn't been that long that some of these books were considered inappropriate for "young people" on all kinds of grounds. I mean, I remember reading a lot of these books when I was this age. I grew up in another time of frequent book bans. And there's nothing age inappropriate about them. 12 to 14 year olds are having sex. It is absurd to suggest, as this principal has, that the only appropriate thing for kids of that age is books that go up to hand-holding and pecks on the cheek and mild kissing and no more, because that is just not in keeping with the reality of teenagers that age.
So I feel like this LGBTQ focus right now is very much just the kind of wedge that conservative ideologues have identified as potentially being most effective to get their foot in the door and then move on to other stuff.
[00:33:55] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And to be clear, this hasn't even stopped with this book at this school. On a subsequent day when the librarian arrived to work, they said the most recent book order was waiting for them, but the boxes were already opened and one book was missing, All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson. And when they were in the office later that day, they spotted the book sitting on the vice principal's desk. They never sent any notice about taking the book. So this has already started down the path. The principal said that she was going to be putting together like a parent advisory board to determine which books were appropriate or not, which again is not part of the district policy. So this is an extremely slippery slope.
And again, like you made reference to, we both come from a time where book bannings were en vogue. And so here we go again, but I just hope people engage - whether or not you have kids in your local school system, you need to be very vocal, contact your school board members, make sure that you are talking to your local school administrators, that you expect there to be books in the library that represent a variety of perspectives and a variety of identities and people, and that there should be the strictest scrutiny for removing something and some very clear guidelines. Because these vague guidelines are how they get away with just removing anything that they want to remove for whatever reason they feel like that day. We will continue to keep an eye on that and continue to talk about that.
The last thing I wanted to talk about today, as we're coming up on a little bit of time here, was just news that broke this morning that Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell and interim police chief, Adrian Diaz, are discussing the possibility of a $5,000 retention bonus for every SPD officer - over a thousand officers there. This is different than the $25,000 or $10,000 signing bonuses for experienced or new officers. This would just be for existing officers - "Hey, we'll give you $5,000 if you stay." What are your thoughts about this?
[00:36:32] Erica Barnett: Well, if you look at what police officers make in Seattle, it is - I mean, it's certainly a starting salary of quite a bit more than I make - with overtime, easily into the six figures. And I mention that - not to say that police officers make too much or too little or anything - just to point out that if you're making six figures, $5,000 is really not that much money. It is not nothing, but as you pointed out, there have already been pretty large signing bonuses offered and all sorts of incentives for people to come to the department. And yet that has not worked, and we still have a net loss of officers year over year - just as I would add - many, many, many other cities are experiencing right now. There's a workforce shortage in all kinds of industries and the police departments of America are not exempt from that.
So it's hard to picture this strategy of offering what amounts to a small bonus working to retain people who are already making plenty of money. But more importantly, I don't think that they have defined where the money's going to come from. So I am curious what funding source, or what budget cut, are they proposing to make in order to pay for this. I mean, there's lots and lots of other departments and lots of other things the City pays for - including social service workers, outreach workers for encampments - all kinds of things that no one is proposing these kind of bonuses for. So where are the cuts coming from? Where's the money coming from? And why is this the priority - of all the City departments that are losing workers and of all the things the City funds - that deserves this extra funding on top of the extra funding that we've already provided?
[00:38:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. That mirrors my concern - like, I would be interested - is this something that came from officers? I mean, just purely looking at - could this achieve what they're hoping that it achieves, given that the amount represents a lower percentage of their take-home pay than it does for most other City employees? Is it something that they're saying, "Hey, you know what? For folks considering leaving, we are looking at this - but this $5,000 - that would actually make us stay." Where did that number come from? Has that been like validated?
And to your point, has this been considered? I mean, we have talked extensively, have a show coming up where we're going to be talking about - especially frontline workers who are working with the unhoused population and the strain that's on that infrastructure - the staffing shortages, and even for the staff that's there, the poverty wages that they're making and that being a significant barrier for just - in trying to get people housed and needing people to engage and provide support and services - we are paying those people who provide support and services pennies, and they're already overworked and understaffed. So it seems like this would make a much bigger percentage of that pay and perhaps make a bigger difference. Are we looking at these bonuses for other departments, other frontline workers who we are counting on who make lower wages and who are tied to more marginalized populations to see that? Is this under consideration from anything else? And definitely, where is this money coming from? So we'll keep an eye on that and continue with that.
I want to thank all of you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, January 28th - it is January 28th, we're almost in February - 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler and assistant producer Shannon Cheng. And our wonderful co-host today was Seattle political reporter and founder of PubliCola, Erica Barnett. You can find Erica on Twitter @ericacbarnett and on publicola.com. You can buy her book, Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery anywhere where you enjoy buying books. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, and you can now follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. While you're there, leave a review, it really helps us out. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, newly re-elected to citywide Position 8, joins Crystal with thoughts and next steps on the SPD ruse scandal, a run-down of ambitious plans for the broadly-supported JumpStart economic stimulus, and discussion of the urgent need to shore up our childcare infrastructure. The show closes with a call to action for electeds everywhere to not hesitate and take the bold, progressive action voters want.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal on Twitter at @finchfrii, and find Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda at @CMTMosqueda
Resources
“Seattle council questions watchdog about police lies, investigation into faked radio chatter” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-officials-face-questions-about-police-lies-investigation-into-faked-radio-chatter/
“As negotiations with city loom, Seattle’s police union has had an outsized influence on police accountability measures” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/as-negotiations-with-city-loom-seattles-police-union-has-had-an-outsized-influence-on-police-accountability-measures/
“Council Passes Mosqueda’s JumpStart Seattle Progressive Revenue Plan to Address COVID Response, Essential City Services, Affordable Housing” from Council Connection: https://council.seattle.gov/2020/07/06/council-passes-mosquedas-jumpstart-seattle-progressive-revenue-plan-to-address-covid-response-essential-city-services-affordable-housing/
“Councilmember Mosqueda Moves Forward with Transparency and Accountability Measures for JumpStart Seattle” from Council Connection: https://council.seattle.gov/2021/07/19/councilmember-mosqueda-moves-forward-with-transparency-and-accountability-measures-for-jumpstart-seattle/
“Durkan Budget Would Gut JumpStart Spending Plan, Increase Funding for Encampment Response” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2021/09/28/durkan-budget-would-gut-jumpstart-spending-plan-increase-funding-for-encampment-response/
“NPI’s July 2021 survey of Seattle voters found deep support for JumpStart revenue plan” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate: https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2021/09/npis-july-2021-survey-of-seattle-voters-found-deep-support-for-jumpstart-revenue-plan.html
Seattle City Council - Seattle Rescue Plan: https://www.seattle.gov/council/issues/seattle-rescue-plan
“Child care was already dysfunctional. COVID-19 could break it completely” by Melissa Santos from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/focus/2020/09/child-care-was-already-dysfunctional-covid-19-could-break-it-completely
“DEEL Awards Nearly $3M to Child Care Workers in Appreciation of Their Service to Seattle Families Throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic” by Sage Leibenson from Seattle Department of Early Education and Learning: https://education.seattle.gov/deel-awards-nearly-3m-to-child-care-workers-in-appreciation-of-their-service-to-seattle-families-throughout-the-covid-19-pandemic/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well today, I'm thrilled to be welcoming Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda - Position 8, the citywide position. Just got new committee assignments, so she is the Chair of Finance and Housing - lot going on there - Vice-Chair of Public Assets and Homelessness. She is a member on the Governance, Native Communities and Tribal Governments Committee, Land Use Committee, and Public Safety and Human Services Committee. And we are just thrilled to have you. Welcome to the program.
[00:01:08] Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda: I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for the invitation.
[00:01:11] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So I just want to start off real quick since we're in the middle of it right now - it's in the news - and talking about what is happening with SPD. The ruse issue, which certainly seemed to escalate and inflame tensions while protestors were protesting downtown, was near the beginning of CHOP and CHAZ, City resources were deployed thinking that it was real - what do you think about that? And what do you think should happen next?
[00:01:47] Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda: It erodes public trust. I think that it's a real problem that we have misinformation that's intentionally being used and - apparently - allowed for in policy. We had a hearing that Councilmember Herbold led through her committee on Public Safety where a lot of questions were asked, and I think the main question is - are we going to allow for this type of "ruse" to continue? I think if you'll remember at the time there was almost daily press conferences being held with the mayor and then the chief - Chief Best. I remember that this issue was talked about out in those press conferences and it just wasn't accurate. It was misleading, not only the folks who were calling for action and for accountability, but it misled the broader community. And I think that it has the effect of potentially eroding public trust when a real threat is there.
So I think there's a lot more policy changes that need to be put into place. I just finished compiling a list of questions as well that we're sending over to Councilmember Herbold that she's going to send over to the chief and the new mayoral administration, because there was also a lot of conversation about how the East Precinct was under attack and at the time, that was the justification for why the East Precinct was abandoned. I'm not sure that that was accurate. I'm not sure if that was a ruse or not. And if there's federal threats that were being assumed or spouted out in press conferences, I want to see what those details were because we need to be able to grow trust with the community, we need to be able to make sure folks know that there's not misinformation being spread. And if it's allowed for or sanctioned in public policy, then that public policy needs to change.
[00:03:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah - certainly seems to be the case. Certainly just a continuation of eroding trust. What can be done - I guess there's an issue about the texts also happening at that time, which are still missing. What can be done to get that information or to compel that information? Are there options there?
[00:03:59] Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda: Well, I'm going to be working with Councilmember Herbold as the Chair of Public Safety - I think she has some follow-up questions that she's going to be asking as well. I think that number one, text messages shouldn't go missing and for four to five months of text messages to be missing - from a handful of people in the previous administration - I'm surprised that that hasn't gotten more attention, frankly. And I think that it's really problematic. Problematic both again, from the policy standpoint, we want to know that good public policies are being adhered to and from public trust. I do think that we shouldn't have policies that allow for a "ruse" to be used, and we should change that. And I know Councilmember Herbold - this isn't the last time that she's going to be talking about it. And I'm very much interested in making sure that we can give folks a better sense of assurance that this type of misinformation will be used intentionally in the future.
That's, I think, just scratching the surface, right? You mentioned a lot of other areas that haven't been fully investigated or concluded yet. And we have a new mayor - I think that there's conversations right now about who will be a new chief. I know that there's been conversations about who will be interviewed for that. And during the inauguration, Mayor Harrell mentioned that they were going to have conversations with our existing chief, but I think across cities across this country, we need chiefs and leadership within police departments who are willing and ready to accept that reform - and the status quo - the status quo is not going to be permitted and reform alone isn't enough. We need to invest upstream in making sure that people have education, and housing, and that we invest in gun violence reduction strategies, and youth violence reduction strategies, that we create greater economic security and opportunity for everyone. And I'm interested in a chief and leaders that want to embrace that broader vision of what public safety looks like.
[00:05:59] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and they've mentioned being sometimes limited by the consent decree, and some of what the judge overseeing that feels. And also with the union contract, the SPOG contract. As you - I don't know if - what is going on there certainly with the new administration. The new mayoral administration - they're talking about how negotiations are going to unfold and who's going to be involved in them, but is there anything that you're specifically looking to get out of that contract in terms of accountability?
[00:06:37] Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda: Well, number one, I think that we should have had these conversations a lot earlier. When I came into office in 2017, we were already years delayed in having a renewed contract. So finally, when the contract was passed, it was supposed to be short-term in nature because there was only about 12 more months left of what should have been the contract. And I and other council members called for the mayor to convene the Labor Relations Committee meetings so that we could start negotiating faster. Those convenings didn't happen in, I think, a timely manner, and we're still here on the cusp of beginning our negotiations.
And I think what's going to be important is to make sure that the accountability pieces are truly not negotiable, right? We want to negotiate the things that relate to workplace standards, but on what I think is a broad consensus of needing reforms overall - items that we saw in the public safety legislation that Councilmember González led on in the past - we wanted those items to be statute, we wanted them to be law, and they shouldn't be negotiable. So those are going to be some of our core components that I know we'll continue working on in the upcoming contract.
[00:07:48] Crystal Fincher: Certainly, a lot more to come - a lot to unfold there. We'll keep an eye on it. I do want to talk to what you just spoke about and making meaningful investments in - really, it boils down to people, to prevention, to meeting needs, to addressing root causes of the problems that we're seeing, instead of just trying to address symptoms downstream. I wanted to start off talking about one of your signature pieces of legislation, the JumpStart Tax. And one, just to recap for people who are listening - what is it, what does it do, who does it help?
[00:08:25] Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda: This is one of the biggest pieces of legislation that I am so proud of, but it is one of the largest pieces of progressive revenue that has passed in Seattle's history. There's been a long road to have this actually passed, and I want to thank all of the community members for their calls for progressive revenue to turn our regressive system right side up and actually make it progressive. And in a city that has seen such tremendous growth in terms of the wealth of not only individuals, but corporations - it is the right thing to do to make sure that we have progressive policies that allow for dollars to be invested in our community, into our most vulnerable.
And it is the right thing to do for our economy as well - this is actually an economic stimulus when you think about the ways in which these JumpStart dollars will be used. They're going into affordable housing, into economic resilience, into Green New Deal policies. I just want to, from the outset here, say how important this is for our local economy. We cannot have a prosperous local economy when we have folks who are living in the door steps and entryways of the largest corporations across our country. And in the time that we find ourselves in with growing economic inequality that was existing before COVID, but has only been made worse by the pandemic, we have to invest these dollars into creating a healthy, more resilient local economy and that starts with housing.
So JumpStart progressive revenue is going to invest over $214 million a year into housing, economic resilience, equitable development, and Green New Deal priorities. 68% of the funds, so the vast majority - over two thirds - is going into affordable housing. This is for building affordable housing, low income housing, not just for individuals - like one bedrooms - but we're talking two, three and four bedrooms. We're putting funding into building first-time home ownership opportunities. Funding specifically going to smaller developers who are trying to build affordable housing in communities hardest hit by displacement, so that we can truly create ownership and liberty and self-determination among community members who've been hardest hit by displacement. And really address the past legacy of discriminatory policies as well.
Then 15% of the funds is going into economic resilience, especially into small, BIPOC, women, minority-owned businesses. In this time where we've seen folks really lose their livelihoods as small business owners as well, this is going to be critical.
Equitable Development Initiative, obviously - this is one of the biggest areas for us to invest in that creates, I think, greater equity and a more just local economy, because these are dollars that go into things like childcare, space for small businesses, community centers, creating community. As we've all been isolated for so long in our homes, if folks have been able to work from home, we're disconnected from family due to isolation and quarantining - we want our community, when it's safe for people to reconvene again, to be able to have a community plaza or a community center. And to be able to gather in markets and childcare settings so that we can create a sense of community. And that's what that Equitable Development Initiative really goes towards.
And the Green New Deal - this is the first time we've been able to allocate funding for the Green New Deal through JumpStart in a significant way. We have funding that's gone in - to the tune of, I think, near $20 million - that's going into helping set up Green New Deal investments. And this again, is not just something that we came up with on our own, either in my office or on council - this is what community has called for.
So this broad group of over a hundred businesses, and small community organizations, and Green New Deal advocates, and housing advocates, immigrant refugee advocates, union members helped pass this. And now, it's the critical time to make sure that it actually gets captured and that it gets deployed the way that we said it would. So we had to pass, as I'm sure you know, the implementation plan twice and make sure that it was truly codified in statutes so that those dollars didn't get swept for other items.
[00:12:45] Crystal Fincher: As a former mayor was trying to sweep that money for other items, and making conflicting statements about them, and just really trying to take this money - which clearly is doing a ton of good - and use it for other things and pitting interests against each other, which turned out not to work, thankfully. In talking to people, I don't know that a lot of people recognize just how comprehensive this is. Everything you just talked about - sometimes people look at one section of it or another - and you can look at one individual section and it is making a huge difference.
But to meaningfully address small business - investing in small business - to meaningfully address affordable housing, the Green New Deal. At this time, it really is speaking to the most pressing issues that we're facing as a city - to your point, as defined by the residents - and saying, "This is where we're saying we need help." And really said, "Well, here is a comprehensive plan to do that in a progressive way." In this state, which is coming from the most regressive tax structure, to really trying to rightsize that in a way that truly asks - just asks people to pay their fair share, is not asking for stuff from ma and pa businesses, stuff for employees who are making low or even medium wages.
This is really just looking at - hey, if you're a business who is one of the most successful businesses that we're dealing with, who has profited from what this community has provided you, the resources that the City has provided, and on the other side has created some challenges that the City has to deal with. We are looking at the rise in prices for homes that are now out of the reach of lots of people because of high-wage earners coming here to work for the Amazons of the world, so it certainly makes sense that for those super high earners - that a small tax on that - when we're asking so many other people to sacrifice so much. And they're already dealing with such burdens - and with fees and taxes and all that - while the richest just haven't been paying their fair share. And just look at what's possible when we ask people just to rightsize this whole thing. It's really wonderful.
[00:15:20] Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda: I was just going to say - thank you. And also, thanks to Seattleites, who I think are absolutely recognizing exactly what you said. The Seattle Business Journal said that they did a poll and 67% of Seattleites support JumpStart. And maybe they're thinking about the specific areas of interest that you noted - whether it's childcare assistance, or small business assistance, or housing assistance - but 67% of Seattleites embracing a progressive payroll tax is really exciting. And I think, as a reminder, this is not a tax on individuals or individual wage earners. This is a tax on those large corporations that have more than $7 million in Seattle payroll. And it's only on the highest salaries, so if an individual makes more than $150,000 a year, then the tax applies to that employee.
We're going to see how the work-from-home nature of COVID is going to affect the projected revenue, but what's clear is that those largest companies - that especially are in the tech sector - that had the ability to work, have their employees work from home. Those companies, with so many people doing online transactions, they saw their profits grow exponentially. It is absolutely still a fair tax, it is absolutely still the right thing to do, and it's going directly into providing COVID relief in the first year. In the second year, making sure that we had childcare and support for our most vulnerable and warded off austerity budgeting. And then this year and going forward, those investments in housing, Green New Deal, economic resilience - this is truly how we have avoided deep austerity cuts to budgeting.
And you're right - the previous mayor used those dollars after vetoing our bill. Then we, as a Council, came back and said, no, we're going to maintain this tax and we're going to put into statute the implementation plan. But for JumpStart, we would have been in the red last year. I think that it's going to be really important to build on that because even JumpStart alone isn't enough when you look at the sheer amount of housing needs that we have in this community and the infrastructure needs. And just the fact that, as you noted, our population's grown by 21% in the last 10 years, and we haven't kept up with the housing, childcare, and infrastructure needs. So we're going to need to do more, and this was a tax on payroll and corporations. We got a lot to do to recognize the individual wealth and, I think, CEO distribution of the pay between workers and CEOs that we can catch up on as well.
[00:17:59] Crystal Fincher: I think the public is more ready for it now than they have been. It says something about this that people see a direct benefit for them in this program in at least one, if not many of the areas. Because support has actually only grown for this. Before, when you were talking about it, support was still a majority of people supported it, but it has actually grown over the past year as this has been implemented, despite the really - opposition to this, a legal challenge - largely it's Amazon - who's opposing this - this is a big corporate pushback.
One of the things I think was made plain over the past couple years is that small businesses and Amazon are not necessarily aligned on a lot of things. You have a huge coalition of small businesses who came together to pass this - business coalitions like the GSBA talking about how crucial this is for their membership - providing direct support to businesses who are here in Seattle, who are hiring people, who live in Seattle, and it's a huge benefit. There really is one source of big mega-corporate pushback - because they seem to push back against any fees, taxes, anything, anywhere where they're at. The residents are just not in the mood for it after really bearing the brunt of some of the fallout from the economic inequality - from resources being used and exploited for mega corporation profit, but not then reinvested or invested in the surrounding community.
Certainly, I'm a big fan of this legislation. This is the kind of leadership I think people are looking for where, "Hey, we have some really big problems that we're facing that are going to take big, bold solutions." But man, when people do provide those big, bold solutions - they're rewarded. This is what people want - people support this, they support you by a large margin. I just hope people look at this and cities across the country, certainly the state, as a blueprint on how to move forward and how to rightsize their municipal budgets and provide services to the people who need them, and the revenue necessary to do it.
[00:20:34] Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda: I so appreciate that. Thank you. When we were considering JumpStart, we had a forum that brought in Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and In The Public Interest and a handful of other national groups - and they showed the charts that proved that. When you invest in public services and you prevent against austerity, when you raise taxes on the largest corporations and put those dollars into the public good - you actually make recessions shorter, you create greater economic activity, and you create greater wealth that is shared amongst the population. It's so counterintuitive that the Chamber of Commerce is the one who is leading this legal challenge when it's actually good for the smallest businesses. If they were representing those voices, it would be good for those local small businesses to allow for these dollars to go forward.
I'm really thankful that we had such broad support on Council and that that broad support was really generated by the community who saw the need for this. I think, like you're saying, in the wake of COVID too. This conversation around payroll taxes and our taxes - it predates COVID, but people have seen how these largest corporations have just become more and more wealthy as corporations and also as the wealthiest individuals that help run them. Now, folks are saying, "I lost my job. I lost my small business. I lost loved ones in this time and you've made profit. How are we going to recover from this in a way that doesn't bring us back to the normal that was before, and actually a more equitable recovery?" And JumpStart was part of that and I'm really proud.
But also we need it at the state level, right? And I want to thank Representative Macri who was really spearheading the progressive payroll tax at the same year. It didn't happen that session, so we picked up where she left off - we still need it at the state level. Representative Noel Frame, who was able to get capital gains passed in the state legislature. We need so much more so that we can actually rightsize our upside down tax system. They've been great champions as well, and I'm hoping that we can see more from our state partners as well on revenue.
[00:22:43] Crystal Fincher: Certainly, that's an excellent point. Sometimes we hear the tired excuse of, "Oh, it's going to chase business away. Oh, it's going to run jobs out of town." And time and time again - we've heard that with raising the minimum wage - that has shown not to be the case. In fact, Seattle has been attracting businesses at a greater rate than many other areas in the country. And even Amazon, the company that is pushing against this - as anything that would impede profit - there seems to be pushback against, but they have more jobs listed here in the Seattle area currently than they do anywhere else. It looks like the landscape for hiring and then feeling comfortable that they can continue to work here profitably and are looking to continue to hire here would suggest that maybe all the fearmongering isn't quite connected with reality. Once again.
[00:23:43] Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda: That's right, that's right. And even in the region where they're expanding, they're expanding places where we're going to have light rail - light rail which takes public investments, light rail which takes taxation and financing. To try to lure or encourage people to come to our region and take these jobs, they are benefiting from our infrastructure - whether it's light rail, or our roads and buses. Obviously, the limited housing stock that we have - we are going to benefit by having these large corporations pay into creating greater housing density, infrastructure, childcare, economic opportunities. This is actually good for the local economy. And we, as public policy makers, need to stay strong and recognize that these taxation strategies are a good thing for our local economy as well.
To your point, every time the fearmongering has been levied, the data proves it wrong. When we pass minimum wage in Seattle, all of these conversations were happening about how businesses are going to close and they're going to move out of Seattle. Literally, two years later, when the minimum wage went into effect, the headline of The Seattle Times read, "The Sky Did Not Fall." That is the letters that they used - the words that they used, because the sky did not fall and twice as many restaurants opened than closed. Restaurant industry is a really challenging area to open a business - I hear that all the time from entrepreneurs. I know that from my family who owns Tasty Tacos in Des Moines, Iowa - get your tacos there when you go, voted Best Taco every year - but it's a very challenging industry to start up in. There's always closures and opening, but twice as many opened than closed? I think that's a good indication of our strong economy. We're constantly rated among Forbes listing of one of the best places to have, to start your business, and grow your business.
We also want that to be a good thing for the workers in those businesses. I want it to be a good thing for the folks who are cleaning the buildings in those businesses. I want it to be a good thing for the folks to take care of kiddos for people who work for those businesses. That's where I think, by looking at the investments that we can get from JumpStart, and investing into worker safety standards, childcare investments, small business support - that is actually the antidote to the crisis that's been worsened by COVID. The public health crisis that is upon us is worsening the economic inequality that we previously had and we have to have antidotes against that type of crisis. Those are public health crises, too. As councilmembers will talk about, economic stress and chronic poverty - that affects our public health, that affects our health and well-being, and it's creating a shadow pandemic.
Stress and the physical wear and tear on our bodies during these times - just the income inequality that we live in in the United States is actually worsening our health. I'll just give a shout out to this one professor at University of Washington, Stephen Bezruchka, who talks about how income inequality, especially in the United States where income inequality is the worst - it is actually causing all of us, including the wealthy, to die earlier, our babies are dying at higher rates, our elders are dying faster, and we're living with more chronic health conditions because of income inequality. In countries where they have less income inequality, everybody lives longer and healthier. So if you don't care about income inequality from a social justice and economic justice perspective, at least care from your own self-interest, that you could have a better quality of life if we all had greater income equality across our area.
[00:27:23] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, I appreciate it.
[00:27:25] Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda: I'm nerding out on this. I love this.
[00:27:28] Crystal Fincher: I love it - I love it so much. I also want to talk about another big challenge and really a crisis situation that we're in with childcare. Working families having a very hard time to deal with childcare - certainly, with a PAC that I'm involved with, Persist PAC, we have started reimbursing political candidates for childcare expenses to try and lower the barrier there. But the amount of childcare facilities and providers was dwindling anyway, the cost of childcare was getting out of control before the pandemic. There are several counties in the state who have reported losing 30% to 40% of their providers through the pandemic, so you have families who are searching and scraping - sometimes can't find childcare, which is a barrier for people being able to fully participate in society, to work, it hinders economic mobility. What are you working on in that area?
[00:28:32] Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda: Well, this is an area I'm really passionate about and I think probably a lot of your listeners have been in a similar situation where if they are interested in having a kiddo, a lot of people are told you should get on a wait list before you can get pregnant. You should get on a wait list before you even begin the process of adopting a kiddo because of how long it takes to get into a childcare facility. And that is precisely because we do not have the capacity of childcare centers or in-home based centers to meet the need of our growing population.
Headline-wise - we saw a headline recently in The Seattle Times - I think last year that said we saw more kiddos born in our city than any time in recent history, and we don't have the childcare to keep up with that. We see people spending more on childcare than they do on their rent and their mortgage in some cases. We know that this is a crisis, especially for families who have kids between the ages of 0 and 3, where it is more expensive to provide care for those kiddos. And yet childcare providers often are earning minimum wage and the childcare providers themselves are often women and people of color and sometimes come from immigrant and refugee communities. And so the disparity in terms of both who is not getting an equitable wage and the impact of not being able to find affordable childcare directly impacts women and folks of color who are working in that area and also need to be able to have affordable childcare coverage.
What we're trying to do is a number of things. Number one, downtown core, right? Before COVID, anecdotally, we had heard more doggy daycares were opening than childcare centers in downtown Seattle, which makes a lot of sense if you look around. If there's younger single folks moving to Seattle to work maybe in the tech sector and we want to welcome folks, that's great. But doggy daycare was being provided at those places of work and not childcare. We need to be trying to create more childcare opportunities in all of our downtown buildings if we're wanting to think about how we encourage more workers to come back downtown in the wake of COVID. I think we should have started with City Hall. There's an empty room down there that has windows on the first floor that has a bathroom and a kitchen. We should be using that for childcare and opening it up to more folks to be able to have their kiddos there. For the fourth year in a row, we've been stymied on that, but I'm going to keep working on it.
And in terms of supporting our childcare providers that are out there right now, we passed $3 million in the Seattle Rescue Plan to provide direct cash assistance to childcare providers. It penciled out to about $835 per childcare provider before taxes and then the childcare providers got their portion of that before the holidays, which was really great. We put $5 million in for new childcare facilities and those are rolling applications, so we'll get you information about how to apply for that if you're interested and put that on our social media.
But what we have to do right now, I think number one, is support childcare providers. These are the folks who, if they don't keep their doors open, then folks can't go to work. And if they're barely making it, if they've had increased costs due to COVID and need additional support, we need to be supporting them. And also make sure that more people are able to work as childcare providers and really investing in those wages as a true profession that it is. I think that's in partnership with our state legislative members who are investing dollars into childcare.
We need to be doing more to subsidize the cost of childcare. In every other country, this is a public good. In the United States, we treat it as a commodity and it should be treated as a public good. Childcare is a necessity for local economies and it is a necessity from an economic and gender justice perspective because the number of women, specifically - folks who are parents who are women - who had to take themselves out of the workforce in the wake of COVID has led to this being as she-cession because they did not have places to take their kiddos when so many childcares were closing in the wake of COVID.
And as you mentioned, this was an issue pre-existing before COVID - so invest in childcare providers, invest in their wages, invest in career ladders, making sure that they have additional support for running those entities because they really shouldn't be treated as businesses, they should be treated as a public good. And that means we've got to pass public policies to make sure that we're supporting more workers and organizations and small businesses in that sector.
[00:32:57] Crystal Fincher: Well, I'm over here just saying amen to everything.
[00:32:59] Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda: I hear a hoot hoot from your train in your background.
[00:33:04] Crystal Fincher: You can hear this train in the background here - always in the background at some point in time, usually. But we are just about at time - I could talk to you all day long - you get so many things and are such a fierce advocate for policies that help regular people. And that are delivering results for regular people right now, which is really the bottom line. A lot of times, people look at the success as signing the legislation, but it really is about getting help to people who need it in ways that they feel on the ground. Certainly, that is happening with a lot of what you spearheaded and so, you should be proud, and thank you, and keep it up. And thank you for joining us - just appreciate you spending the time and hope to have you back again soon.
[00:33:56] Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda: Thank you so much - I really appreciate it. And thanks for your note across the country to look at Seattle to do things like investing in revenue and public policy. And I hope this last election was also a good indication to folks locally, whether it's in Seattle or at the state level - now is not the time to sit there and wring your hands and think about your next election. If you want to get the highest percentage of votes like I did in Seattle -
[00:34:22] Crystal Fincher: Like you did.
[00:34:25] Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda: - you got to get out there, be progressive. Be collaborative obviously, but aggressively committed to passing public policies that make radical change for people. And don't sit back and wring your hands and think about your next election because what voters want to see is action. So I'm thankful for your podcast and I'm thankful for the call to action that you put out there at the beginning as well. I'll keep working on it, and I know there's so much more to do - and look forward to doing that with you and our community.
[00:34:53] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcast - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
On today’s week-in-review, Crystal is joined by a new co-host, political consultant and founding partner at Upper Left Strategies, Seferiana Day. They discuss Corrections Officers and Public Defenders joining forces to demand a reduction in the county jail population to help address their COVID crisis, a new federal redistricting lawsuit alleging the new maps violate the Voting Rights Act, a new survey revealing 78% of Kroger (Fred Meyer & QFC in WA) workers struggle to afford food and shelter, and advice to people considering running for office in 2022.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Seferiana Day, at @seferiana. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Public Defenders Union Joins Jail Guards' Call to Address COVID Crisis” by Paul Kiefer from PubliCola https://publicola.com/2022/01/17/public-defenders-union-joins-jail-guards-call-to-address-covid-crisis/
“Seattle Police Chief: No more stops for 'low-risk' traffic violations like expired tabs, biking without a helmet” from Capitol Hill Seattle: https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2022/01/seattle-police-chief-no-more-stops-for-low-risk-traffic-violations-like-expired-tabs-biking-without-a-helmet/
“New legislative maps illegally dilute Latino votes in Central Washington, lawsuit says” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/new-legislative-maps-illegally-dilute-latino-votes-in-central-washington-lawsuit-says/
“Fred Meyer, QFC workers struggle in Washington to make ends meet, new report shows” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/retail/fred-meyer-qfc-workers-struggle-in-washington-to-make-ends-meet-new-report-shows/
“WA Supreme Court upholds $18M campaign finance fine against grocery industry group” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/washington-supreme-court-upholds-18m-campaign-finance-fine-against-grocery-industry-group/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspective on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome to the program for the first time today: our co-host, political consultant and founding partner at Upper Left Strategies, Seferiana Day. Welcome.
[00:00:52] Seferiana Day: Hello, thanks for having me.
[00:00:54] Crystal Fincher: Hello, hello - excited to have you on the program - a very talented political consultant and highly sought after political consultant. Excited to dive into some of the news of the week. And I guess just starting out, I wanted to talk about news that came out early in the week about the public defenders union joining jail guards to call to address the COVID crisis in the jails in Seattle and Kent that are under county control. Here, there's a huge surge of COVID-19 infections among staff and inmates at the King County jails that actually created this unusual alliance of corrections officers and public defenders, which should tell you how bad the problem is that they're coming together. They sent a joint letter to elected officials in Seattle and King County asking them to immediately intervene to reduce the jail's population and to stem the spread of the virus.
One of the quotes from the letter is, "COVID -19 should not be a death sentence for anyone held in jail or anyone working in a jail," the unions wrote. "The stark reality is that if no changes are made, people will continue to get sick and continue to suffer." Paul Kiefer from PubliCola did a great article on this, and just a problem that we've seen before - where people in jail for misdemeanors, petty thefts, pretrial where they have not been convicted of anything, or just waiting to be charged with some simple misdemeanors, and they're basically saying, "If this is not a serious charge, please let them out." What do you see when you look at this?
[00:02:44] Seferiana Day: Wow. Well, I'm just shocked, but also not surprised that this is happening in our system. I think it just really points to the fact that this is what's not seen by the general public - who knows what's going on inside the walls of the jail for this to come out. And for this alliance to form just shows the drastic nature of the problem and the fact that we're letting people really just kind of slip into jail. We don't understand what happens behind the door, behind the jail walls, and we almost have this hidden class of people, of citizens, of residents - and it's baffling to me, honestly.
[00:03:36] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I mean our current system - if someone is convicted of something, they're sentenced to a term, but that does not mean that they should be treated inhumanely or left to suffer and die. That's unconstitutional. That is not supposed to happen. And right now you have corrections officers there themselves saying that you're jeopardizing everyone's safety, and asking for four real specific items. In their joint letter, they ask for - one, imposing immediate booking restrictions so that violent offenses are the only ones booked into county jail facilities. Two, stop issuing warrants for misdemeanor and nonviolent offenses. Three, immediately take all necessary steps to improve staffing and workplace safety in the jail. And four, make plans for the immediate release of all misdemeanor and nonviolent offenders. They're being very clear about this and saying that their safety, inmate safety, is at risk - that they cannot continue as they currently are, and enduring these staffing problems that they've been enduring, and just watching needless suffering.
Now, this is also happening while Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison has really expressed her intentions to move in literally the exact opposite direction - to more aggressively pursue misdemeanor prosecutions. There was a story by one of the court watch organizations - with great Twitter accounts, by the way, and court watching is very important - but asking for someone who was unhoused, and one of the conditions was that they have home monitoring for two months. But an unhoused person doesn't have a house to do home monitoring in. So because they didn't have a house, they then asked for jail, which is just criminalizing poverty and homelessness once again. And that's exactly the thing that corrections officers are saying that is unsustainable and that doesn't make any sense.
And also this week we saw SPD say that they're reconsidering and have moved some new items to the lowest enforcement priority section, so things like low-risk traffic violations for expired tags or biking without a helmet, which David Kroman had done a lot of reporting on at Crosscut - at how that disproportionately impacted unhoused people, that those things, according to the SPD Chief Diaz, quote, "These violations do not have a direct connection to the safety of other individuals on the roads, paths, or sidewalks. We know there are also reasons for concern that these violations may disproportionately fall on those who are unable to meet the financial requirements set forth by law." So, I mean, when you have the SPD chief saying, "Hey, this is basically criminalizing poverty, has nothing to do with public safety. Putting these people in jail doesn't make us any safer - let's actually use our resources on things that do," seems to make a lot of sense, but looks like a lot of tension between the Seattle City Attorney's office, and what SPD just said, and what corrections officers and public defenders are asking for.
[00:07:05] Seferiana Day: Yeah. I think it really speaks to just the unprecedented nature of the COVID crisis, that it's almost - I mean, we are two years in, and what is it going to take for us to change our systems? We're seeing them kind of fall apart in front of us, right? And so in prior years, when we've talked about reforms to incarceration or alternatives to incarceration, but it's taking a public health crisis for us to see that we don't need to be convicting these low-level crimes because it really is criminalizing poverty and putting people into jail to basically get COVID and die if they don't have the proper care that they need.
[00:07:48] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, no, absolutely. And to your point, this pandemic has really made plain and made worse so many preexisting conditions in society, and just our approach towards punishment and jailing people without connecting that to, "Hey, is this actually making the community safer? Is this helping these people to address the root causes of the problem so that this isn't a revolving door situation and you're setting them up for future problems, like the inability to get a job or the inability to gain housing?" So it really is a challenge. And, again, with our Trump-Republican Seattle City Attorney, with the charge-them-all, jail-them-all attitude, it just seems to fly in the face of what every other entity - law enforcement, those involved in the criminal legal system are saying and what the data shows. So just a mess that I hope is resolved, and we'll certainly be looking to Executive Dow Constantine, the King County Council, Mayor Harrell, and the Seattle City Council to hopefully take meaningful action or do what they can to influence that.
Another thing I wanted to touch on were - this week, we saw another lawsuit pop up - don't know how this one is going to end up, but certainly an issue that has been on a lot of people's radar - with the redistricting maps. There is a new lawsuit alleging that the legislative maps illegally dilute Latino votes in Central Washington. There's an article in The Times by Jim Brunner, another one in Crosscut detailing this - we'll put those in the episode notes - but a new lawsuit basically saying that, "Hey, this violates the Federal Voting Rights Act. And they have purposely split and diluted the Latino vote to dilute their power." It's a tactic that we've seen in several areas around the country to gerrymander and to disenfranchise non-white male landowners from voting. And so the lawsuit was filed on behalf of eight Latino and Latina residents of Yakima and Franklin Counties by attorneys with voting rights advocacy groups, including UCLA Voting Rights Project, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Campaign Legal Center, as well as Kennewick attorney Edwardo Morfin. So we will see how this lawsuit turns out. If you're asking me my opinion, I think it has merit. This has been talked about for the entire process through redistricting - that the maps that were proposed - most of them did not look like they adhered to the Voting Rights Act, particularly in Central Washington. What do you think about this?
[00:11:12] Seferiana Day: I mean, I think Central Washington, and Yakima in particular, for almost a decade has been kind of the center of a conversation around the Latino vote. And I believe in 2014 when they decided that - also because of a ruling - that they needed to redistrict the City Council races so that it would actually be representative because it's a predominantly Latino city and it was very, very segregated. And I believe a majority of the councilmembers there were white and they were from certain parts of the city. And so, just for a decade, it's been a hot topic of conversation - like who is actually representing this community that is largely Latino.
[00:12:04] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And I mean, it really is a move to create a permanent underclass. I mean, so many Latinos are working on farms there owned by white people who wanted to maintain power. And so they're bringing people there to work for them and to create a profit for them, but not wanting to share any power in how their communities are operated, and in fact operating with hostility towards people who they're bringing in to help them, and not recognizing their full humanity and only viewing them as instruments of profit and really subjugation - to work for them and do nothing else and to eliminate modes of mobility and representation to fight against unfair working conditions. We just saw a summer where farm workers died because they lacked adequate protections from the heat - during record heat. And I look at things like that and look at how so many areas in our system are stacked against them. And this is certainly a foundational one.
And so 2004 - Yakima County had to enter into a consent decree with the Justice Department because they would not provide Spanish language voting materials - again, to a population that they court and need in their community. And like you said, in 2014, they were ordered to change their council districts because of that. I mean, just a long history of problems - don't know if this is going to affect timelines or alter the current boundaries. Or even if found successful - is it just going to alter the boundaries in those particular areas while all the other ones stay the same? A lot of unknowns - we'll see how this unfolds. I'm not aware of an anticipated timeline that this may roll out in, so we'll just keep our eyes peeled on what happens here.
Another element that we saw this week were Fred Meyer and QFC workers struggling to make ends meet - after a new report - following a survey of grocery workers. What did you see here?
[00:14:30] Seferiana Day: Well, I just see the - I guess my biggest question around this is who decides when the pandemic is over? We're seeing kind of a piecemeal approach over the past two years of the pandemic - of hazard pay. In Seattle, we have hazard pay because the City has continued to keep it. But as this article states, Federal Way - that hazard pay lasted three months. And you've got workers across the state who have to go to work to feed their families, and they're being paid minimum wage. And it's just - it's a classic story, really - of corporations doing all they can to pay their workers as little as possible. And these are unionized workers, which to me is surprising, and makes me wonder what can unions do? What can even the public be doing to support these folks who are on the frontlines every day and have been there for the last two years, while many of us are in our homes? I'm working from home often, and these grocery workers are out there on the frontlines.
[00:15:47] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Out there on the frontlines dealing with - I mean, we see the stories everywhere. We see people acting ridiculous, locally and nationally, and that really falling on the back of service workers, grocery workers, people on the frontlines to not only manage their own jobs, but manage people acting ridiculously in their store, and needing to - better de-escalation techniques than police officers is what's being asked of them right now. And it really is a challenge. And specifically, it was a survey of more than 10,000 unionized Kroger workers in the Western US, and 78% are struggling to afford basic necessities like food and shelter. One third of those respondents were from Washington where Kroger owns Fred Meyer and QFC stores.
One of the issues is that a lot of them are only working part-time, so minimum wage doesn't cut it, and full-time barely. I mean, it's ticking up, but it certainly is far behind inflation and what the cost of living has been. And so to then be working 18 or 20 hours a week and to not know what that schedule is going to be - a city like Seattle has some scheduling regulations, but other cities do not. So someone who came in getting more hours and that can just be cut back and cut down - there's a lot of financial insecurity and everything that results from that. And so this is just kind of a glimpse into - even in a unionized workplace, there are still things that need to be improved. And one of the things that we see, and a worker says in here, is, "Hey, our union did negotiate benefits and some of them start at a certain amount of hours per week, but they keep scheduling us below that amount of hours, so they don't have to pay more and so we don't make enough money." That's a challenge.
And I know in that article, it also said that a new contract is going to be negotiated in May - I think it was local UFCW Chapter 21, I think it was, and that they're going to be looking for significant improvements. And I don't know the details, but certainly before the pandemic, I recall a lot of grocery stores talking about how hard times were, how challenging things were. And so in those negotiated contracts, it probably reflected that. Pandemic happened and things got much more dangerous for workers, but wow, the profits skyrocketed in grocery stores and that has not been shared with the workforce. And so just hearing about how just swimming in cash Kroger has been, how incredibly profitable they have been, and the kinds of bonuses that their executives are getting - and then hearing that a majority, a vast majority of their workforce is food-insecure, shelter-insecure, some are actually on public assistance, which basically means that the public is subsidizing the exploitative work practices of this employer. If they're not paying enough, they're just saying, "We expect taxpayers to pick up the bill and to subsidize our profit." It's not like they don't have the money. They're just keeping the money for themselves and expecting us to backfill it. And it just doesn't seem to make much sense.
[00:19:30] Seferiana Day: Right. And this article talks about how the CEO himself brought in $22 million in 2020 - which is double the five years before, 909x more than the median employee at Kroger, that brought in $24,000. And that is the same for every corporation in America - that is the situation that we're seeing. And that is the inequality that's just being perpetuated by the pandemic - those that have to go to work every day and work for minimum wage at risk, risking their health. While you have "professional" workers able to work from home, able to keep their jobs, work in the comfort of their home and not be at risk, and continue making more money. And there's just a growing inequality there.
[00:20:33] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Growing inequality, growing resentment, growing intolerance of it, because it really just seems like a callous, cold-hearted exploitation. And to a point you made earlier, trying to pretend the pandemic is over. And the pandemic keeps saying, "Pretend all you want. You're going to have to contend with me," as everyone at schools and businesses and looking at products that are having a hard time shipping because the supply chain problem is not this abstract thing. It's people are not there in the places to get goods from one place to another. It's people who are missing there - people who are sick, people who are taking care of family members, people who can't afford to stay at a job, can't afford childcare. These are people missing in this supply chain problem. So it is really offensive to think about everything we're trying to address in society and the revenue that we need, and so much of it is going to directly and indirectly subsidize these corporations who are not struggling. They're more profitable than they've ever been before, and it just seems absolutely backwards.
And this comes in a week where the Supreme Court upheld a judgment against the grocery industry, because while they were fighting it - they fought against hero pay while they're bringing in these record profits, and they fought against a food labeling initiative years ago and sought to cover up who was actually funding it. And just had a record fine of $18 million upheld by the Washington State Supreme Court because they spent more than $11 million and tried to hide that it was coming from Coca-Cola, and General Mills, Nestle - a big coordinated campaign that they tried to make it seem like it was Ma and Pa, locally-owned grocers. And they seem to have deep, unending pockets when it comes to fighting anything that would give their workers a couple more bucks and allow them to reliably feed and house themselves. And will spend tens of millions of dollars of doing that, raking in tens of millions of dollars in profit, and just doesn't make any sense. It would be cheaper to just pay them. But for some reason, that seems like a big problem. Anyhoo, we will move on from that, but we will also continue to keep an eye on what's happening there. And also hope that those UFCW 21 negotiations in May are very fruitful.
So I want to talk a little bit now just about where we find ourselves in this election cycle. You're a political consultant, as am I - lots of candidates are considering running for office. Every legislative district has elections this year. People are electing all of their representatives, some of their senators - all of their senators. And we'll see some open seats - as we've seen, there will be some challenges to incumbents, I assume, as we see every year. So in this time when people are considering running, what is the advice that you give to potential candidates as they're considering whether to actually go ahead and run?
[00:24:23] Seferiana Day: Yeah, I would say we work with a lot of first-time candidates. We work with a lot of candidates of color. We work with a lot of candidates who are more on the progressive, maybe a little more radical, spectrum or end of the spectrum. And I would say that one of the first things that I tell candidates that I work with who maybe haven't run before is that - even if you've been an advocate, you're about to enter electoral politics, which is a different beast. It's really about - I think there can be a tension between telling your story and being authentic to who you are and what your values and vision are, and kind of marrying that with the electoral process - which because the topics we talked about earlier around voter suppression, the lack of representation on a really systemic level - we're really trying to cater our message to people who vote, people who have access to voting. Which can sometimes go against kind of what you really - what you really dream of is that you're going to be able to turn out the youth vote, people of color to vote - and I think in reality, we're often trying to give that message to moderates, depending on the seat.
And I think this year we're looking at a prosecutor's race, which is countywide. We're looking at these legislative races where it's going to be a very important year. I think I'm nervous - seeing how we can maintain our majorities. And so it's really important that we're sending that message out to all voters. And I tell my candidates to really be ready to be authentic with themselves, but also to have conversations with folks that they may not agree with, and that it's important to talk to everyone, it's important to get your message out there.
[00:26:27] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I think that's right on. And for me, I think - I certainly tell people, "Hey, this is going to be different than something that you've done before." I really try and help people understand where they are and what they believe. And it's okay not to have all of the answers today, but kind of have a framework that you process information and policy through, or your own ideology. But really, elections are not about the candidate, they're about the voters and potential voters - people in the community. And your job is to connect with them and to communicate with them in the way that they receive information, which may be different than how they're used to delivering it.
And also voting is not a - as much as we like to think that it is, it is not a logical decision. It's an emotional decision, and people need to feel some kind of connection with you that you understand where they're coming from. And even if they don't agree with you completely - if they feel that you care about making their lives better, they'll hear you out, and they'll give you a fair shot most of the time. But getting your message to them is a challenge and oftentimes an expensive one. And doing the work to get those resources in to effectively communicate with people, enough people to win, is work. And so to be prepared for the work of campaigning, which may even - to your point, like someone who's been organizing for a long time, or an advocate for a long time, who has been around politics but hasn't run themselves, may have expectations of like, "Oh, I've done this before." And it isn't the same. Some of it is different. And so it's just important to know that.
And elections are weird and strange also. And so having people who have been through it to help you along - having a solid consultant is just really useful because there are a lot of weird things. There are a lot of things that are gate-kept. You look at our national election system - you look at what it takes to get on ballots, and it is not easy. There are tons of rules and regulations with campaign finance rules and everything with our PDC here, the SEEC in Seattle - you need people in your corner to keep you from falling into just weird little traps that would trap someone if you don't have someone actively saying, "Watch out for this."
So it's just a serious time commitment. It's not always fun. It's a lot of sitting on the phone. It's a lot of knocking on doors. And a lot of monotony to be prepared for it, but you then get to represent people. And that's when the real work starts. As hard as a campaign can be, actually being accountable for making those decisions is in many ways harder than the campaigning. So it's an interesting and challenging thing. You have successfully guided a lot of candidates through that process, particularly when it comes to, I guess, a couple of things. I mean, so both sitting here as consultants, as non-white consultants, and how, I guess, in terms of working with candidates of color and with white candidates - do people approach you differently with both of those?
[00:30:29] Seferiana Day: You mean do candidates approach me differently?
[00:30:32] Crystal Fincher: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:30:33] Seferiana Day: Oh, yes. I would say, and there are times when I'm shocked because sometimes white candidates will rush over to us and want to work with us. And candidates of color are sometimes doubtful, to be perfectly honest. And I think that's hard. I think it can be really hard to know that we still after - this is our fifth year, we're entering into our fifth year - that we still have to prove ourselves, especially among candidates of color who expect a white consultant to kind of know what to do and they trust them. And I'm not saying that's every candidate of color. Obviously, we work with many, but I've encountered that as a woman consultant of color - that there's often doubt. And it goes unsaid - you kind of feel it. You're like, "Oh. They doubt the expertise. They doubt the experience and the perspective." And so you're always kind of trying to make up for that doubt that exists because I'm young and I'm Brown, and so yeah, I think that you do get approached differently. And I think as consultants of color, it's often assumed that we're the social media consultant or we're the [crosstalk] experts. And we have to remind people that we're general consultants - we do it all. And yeah, and it's kind of a constant, I would say, dialogue with folks just to remind them, like, "We know what we're doing."
[00:32:13] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I mean, yes, that is definitely a thing. And I mean, we've talked about this a little bit before just in general conversation, but yeah, it's a weird thing. And I've experienced this off and on for the past 10 years where, yeah, sometimes candidates of color will be like, "Well, I think it's safer for me to go with a white consultant," and man, that's a loaded word - safer - and really the advice to candidates a lot of the time that I give, that I stand by, is, "Look to consultants who win races like the one you're looking to go into." That should be your primary lens and consideration. Can they win competitive races? Or is it a lot of incumbents? Are they working with candidates of color? Are they having races where they're looking like things are ahead and the polling looked good at one time, and then things just continued to decline? What is the track record of the consultant that you're looking at? And one of the good things about Black consultants, consultants of color in Washington, is the track records often speak for themselves, but it is a weird dynamic - that feeling like, "Well..." I think some of it is, "People might not give me a fair shake as a Black candidate with a Black consultant. So if I have a white consultant, they can do the work of talking to the community or something." It's a weird thing.
[00:33:50] Seferiana Day: [crosstalk]
[00:33:51] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And again, not with all candidates, but it has been a thing that has certainly happened, and it is a strange dynamic. And then sometimes I will get, I've actually gotten a ton, where white candidates will assume that I only work with candidates of color. And I don't do many candidate races anymore, but when I was, it would just be like, "Well, you work in urban areas," or, "You work with urban candidates or just candidates of color or something." It's like, okay, most of the work and candidates I did were in suburban and rural areas and really winning races in the places where, frankly, a lot of white consultants didn't want to work or feel like it was profitable to work.
And so it's just like, well, I'm kind of a suburban and rural person more than I am the super inside the city, in terms of winning elections. But it's just this weird thing, the assumption that people have. And certainly like you said, "Well, we want another general consultant, but you can do social media. Well, you do." It's just like, "What would make you think that I would just want to... No, that's not what... Unless you're going to pay me something that you're not going to be happy paying someone doing just social media, I don't know what that's going to accomplish," but it's an interesting thing.
I think generally at this point, candidates are just well-served by making sure their teams represent their community and all that that is, and that you have visibility into as many areas in your community - as many communities, organizations, interests - have a connection and visibility to those, have a broad cabinet. If everyone is saying the same thing, that's a red flag. If everyone is talking in the exact same way, that's a red flag, right? You need to make sure that you're able to hear, see, listen to everyone in your community, because solving for all of those problems only will give them confidence in you as a candidate. If you don't even see them, if you can't have a conversation in a way that they could hear, those are votes that you're not getting and that may hinder you from running.
But we'll see, it's not an easy process. It can be rewarding if this is what you really want. Have this be what you really want, have this be an office that you really want to seek. Offices are different. Some people love legislative positions, and that's really where they can excel and make a big difference, others more on the municipal level or on a county level, but be intentional about what you choose, if you're considering it. And man, go to trainings. Please get trained. Please get some real information from people who've been there and done that. And it utilizes a number of elements in organizing and certainly governing. Good governing includes good organizing, but the nuts and bolts of campaigns are not identical to that of kind of organizing to help educate a community or shift opinion over a long term, which is valid and necessary. Campaigns are just a little different. And so you just have to be prepared for that.
[00:37:39] Seferiana Day: I agree. And I think one last note that I have is just around authenticity and that that's - if someone's considering running - thinking about who can I work with, what team can I build around me that's going to let me be authentic to who I am so I don't lose myself in the campaign? Because when people are voting - yes, campaigns are - it's different than being in office, but when people vote for you, they're going to want to know that you're going to be the same person elected that you were on the campaign trail. And so having a team around you that will let you speak to your values and vision is really important.
[00:38:17] Crystal Fincher: Really important. And I'm glad you said that, and it is a red flag if someone is telling you, "Oh, just say this." That will never work. You have to believe what you are saying. If you don't, it's going to show, you're going to have a hard time being consistent with it. You're going to have to get used to talking to people and being able to disagree with them - it sounds so cliché - disagree with them without being disagreeable, have a conversation. I mean, I guess there are some times where it's fine to be disagreeable when you disagree with someone. But if we're not debating someone's personal identity or dignity, and it's details in a proposal or something, you can disagree, it's fine. And have those conversations. But you have to know where you stand and you have to be consistent with that. And if someone is telling you that you don't have to be, that's a red flag.
So just as people are considering - please do consider - we need more people running for office who represent more of the community. But just please make an educated, informed decision. Get a good consultant - Seferiana and Upper Left are good consultants, there are a number of good consultants out there, but definitely get one. Do some campaign trainings, really understand what you're getting into so you can adequately prepare for it. Those who come in prepared just have such an advantage when it comes to winning. There's so much that you have to do in a campaign and figuring out campaigning during a campaign - you just can't afford to do it. It just takes up too much time and resources.
So thank you so much for joining us today and for sharing your wisdom. Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM this Friday, January 21st, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler and assistant producer is Shannon Cheng. And our wonderful co-host today was political consultant and founding partner at Upper Left Strategies, Seferiana Day. You can find her on Twitter @seferiana, that's S-E-F-E-R-I-A-N-A. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.
On this rebroadcast, Melissa Santos from Crosscut joins Crystal to talk about her deep dive into Washington State’s Brady List, which is a list maintained by prosecutors of cops with credibility issues which may compromise their testimony in court. In her research she found that nearly 200 cops in our state have such credibility issues. They also get in to how recent laws may affect police accountability in Washington State, what happens when a police officer’s account of an incident differs from other accounts, and how the media could more responsibly report on official police accounts of an incident.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s guest, Melissa Santos, at @MelissaSantos1. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
Crosscut resources on Brady list investigation: https://crosscut.com/brady-list-investigation
“Nearly 200 cops with credibility issues still working in Washington state” by Melissa Santos: https://crosscut.com/news/2021/04/nearly-200-cops-credibility-issues-still-working-washington-state
“How fired cops win their jobs back: arbitration” by Melissa Santos: https://crosscut.com/news/2021/04/how-fired-cops-win-their-jobs-back-arbitration
“How public records gave us a window into WA police misconduct” by Melissa Santos: https://crosscut.com/inside-crosscut/2021/04/how-public-records-gave-us-window-wa-police-misconduct
“3 WA families on how new police laws could have helped their loved ones” by Melissa Santos: https://crosscut.com/politics/2021/05/3-wa-families-how-new-police-laws-could-have-helped-their-loved-ones
“Recapping the 2021 Legislative Session and Uncovering Washington Police Credibility Issues: A Double Episode – Melissa Santos – Crosscut - #127” from the Nerd Farmer Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/recapping-2021-legislative-session-uncovering-washington/id1223805236?i=1000519554971
“Full investigation of Manuel Ellis’ death casts new doubts on Tacoma officers’ stories” by Patrick Malone: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/full-investigation-of-manuel-ellis-death-casts-new-doubts-on-tacoma-officers-stories/
“Tommy Le May Have Been Shot While Facedown on the Roadway, May Not Have Even Had a Pen, Documents Show” by Carolyn Bick: https://southseattleemerald.com/2020/10/09/tommy-le-may-have-been-shot-while-facedown-on-roadway-may-not-have-even-had-a-pen-documents-show/
“Opinion: Remember Tommy Le” by Senator Joe Nguyen: https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/06/14/opinion-remembering-tommy-le/
“Newspaper carrier who was confronted by Sheriff Ed Troyer files $5 million legal claim against Pierce County” by Jim Brunner: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/newspaper-carrier-who-was-confronted-by-sheriff-ed-troyer-files-5-million-legal-claim-against-pierce-county/
“How Headlines Change the Way We Think” by Maria Konnikova: https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/headlines-change-way-think
Transcript
[00:00:00] Lisl Stadler: Hi, I’m Lisl, the producer of Hacks & Wonks. Last summer Crystal interviewed Melissa Santos, an exceptional journalist from Crosscut, about her investigative reporting regarding what’s called a Brady list - a list that prosecutors keep of law enforcement officers who may have legal credibility issues. Since Melissa started writing about this, several counties around Washington state have changed the way in which they treat reports of officers who have had shaky relationships with the truth, but others have not. As we are currently in Legislative Session again, we thought that this would be an interesting episode and issue to revisit. You can find out more about this investigation at crosscut.com/brady-list-investigation. Additionally, there you can submit information about an officer experience you’ve had, or ask questions that you’d like answered about policing in our city and state. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show.
[00:01:11] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks, I'm Crystal Fincher and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, I'm really excited to have you join us today because lots of people are familiar with your reporting. You are known for doing very in-depth, long form reports and really diving into the details of issues - reporting thoroughly. And you really outdid yourself this time by doing a long-term investigative series on officers on the Brady list in the State of Washington. What motivated you to even do this story?
[00:02:08] Melissa Santos: Well,, I had known about these lists, where essentially these are lists prosecutors have of officers that have some sort of issue - an issue that often deals with their veracity, whether they tell the truth, not always, but sometimes. And especially after George Floyd's death, and we were seeing, sometimes, the initial narrative surrounding what happens during police uses of force especially isn't later found to be exactly what happened or some details are different. And sometimes we've been hearing a long time also - families of police shooting victims saying that they don't think the official story is right. So I just figured, if we have known officers who may have issues with truth, to the point that prosecutors keep lists of them and have to tell defense attorneys about this past issue, then it's worth finding out who those folks are, why they still have jobs, what the issue was. And so that's why I started on it last summer.
[00:03:16] Crystal Fincher: Right, and so as you covered, the Brady list is a list of officers who for some reason, their truthfulness has been called into question. What types of issues, or is it just lying that lands you on the Brady list? Are there other types of behaviors or activities that put you on there?
[00:03:34] Melissa Santos: Lying is the most common, or some sort of dishonesty. There also though, I mean, if you demonstrate racial bias and there's some documented incidents of that, you can get on the Brady list. I'm not sure that every officer that is suspected of having some bias is on this list - there's only some that are on there. But also, uses of force get some folks on there as well. If there was deemed to be some sort of questionable or excessive use of force, they could be on the Brady list. The other things that get you on there are - maybe they don't really think you lied - exactly, intentionally - but somehow your official report really doesn't match the other evidence. Especially if it's dash cam video - if your reports do not match official dash cam video, and there's some discrepancy that seems like it could potentially affect the outcome of a case. That's something that has to be disclosed - that will put you on the list.
And I mean, prosecutors will say this list is just an administrative tool by which we kind of keep track of officers for whom we have to send out notices to defense saying, "Hey, you should know about this past thing." Because it's a due process issue - they should have all the evidence that might indicate a cop's credibility is in question. And that can relate to future cases if the cop, maybe has been less than truthful in the past or there's suspicion that they were.
[00:05:04] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And it is important to really consider and talk about why the honesty and integrity of officers is really important and why this list is necessary. You just talked about it being a due process issue - and certainly in a trial, if there is reason to doubt the testimony of an officer, oftentimes that can be the determining factor on whether someone is viewed to be guilty or innocent. An officer's word is taken as truth universally. And that, in issues of guilt and innocence, you can dramatically impact and infringe upon someone's civil rights, their constitutional rights if you don't tell the truth, and that can result in them going to jail. It can be a lot, to some people, simpler. It could be, hey, maybe they didn't take a report of a crime seriously, and it depends on whether insurance is going to cover something, or their employer covers something, or whether or not they eventually wind up arrested.
They have so much control and influence over people's lives and what happens to them that they should be, and theoretically, are held to a higher standard when it comes to their conduct and their honesty. And so this list is saying, hey, these officers have not met standard of high conduct, and we need to consider that - that we can't automatically take their word as being truthful and honest, which has also been an issue in reporting overall. And I know you've had conversations, there was a great conversation you've had on the Nerd Farmer Podcast about this, talking about how reporters take officer's words as fact. And how after incidences, it can be an officer, an "officer-involved shooting", when an officer shoots and often kill someone. Or they do something and they come out with their statement about what happened - that has, as a default, been reported as fact. Is that practice changing - is that practice, do you think, worthy of being changed, and have you seen that talked about in reaction to your piece that you did?
[00:07:27] Melissa Santos: I think in the last couple of years, especially, I feel like there has been a broader discussion in the media about how to use police statements. But I do think there's pressure, especially for daily media outlets and newspapers, to get a story out quickly, immediately. And the police statement really is all you have at first, most of the time. And so I just think that that needs to be presented in the proper context. And not just kind of - I think that we've kind of been a little flip with being, like, "We said, 'Police said.' That it was the police who said it." Yeah. But I think that we might need to be more explicit and say, "This is the police's side of the story. We don't have other witnesses to tell their side of the story right now. So this is only..." I think we might just need to call that out a little more clearly, rather than just a small attribution and assuming readers can follow that.
And certainly readers can follow - they're smart - but people read things quickly. So, I just think that you need to stop readers and say, "Hey, this is all the information we have. We're working to get more. This is what the police say. There was some..." Especially now since we have the internet, there's usually some sort of, not all the time, but sometimes there's conflicting reports from the scene from social media. And I think maybe that can be acknowledged too. And I just think that it does need to be considered. Because I think the original press release from George Floyd's killing was like - it was not saying that Derek Chauvin stood on his, put a knee on his neck for nine minutes, right? It was like, "Oh, he died of natural causes after an altercation." It was something like that, right? Or he died of respiratory failure, or something like that. It wasn't like, "Respiratory failure because our person was constricting his airway with his knee for nine minutes." That was not what it said, right?
So I think we're all learning we need to be more cognizant that the police story is not the correct story, but all the time. However, there's been people saying this for a very long time. So I think media is a little slow to catch up on that. Sometimes that first statement may be accurate. I mean, it's not always inaccurate necessarily, but certainly there's enough instances where it has not been an accurate depiction of what happened during a use of force incident that there's reason to question whether you should just run with that narrative in the very beginning.
[00:09:51] Crystal Fincher: Oh, absolutely. I mean, we've seen that here locally recently. We saw it with Manuel Ellis, we saw it with Tommy Le. We saw it with Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer, where their account of events does not match up with that. I think your point of putting it in context and the need for media to independently work on verifying that narrative - that is one reported perspective, that should not be the only reported perspective. It should be noted that if that hasn't been able to be independently verified or verified through reporting by other means, that that is called out and explicitly said. I think that's helpful.
[00:10:45] Melissa Santos: I think we also need to be mindful of updates to stories, because that's a lot of times sort of how the industry has worked - well, we do a new story and we fix things. I mean, it wasn't inaccurate, that was what police said. That's what we said that was what police said. So that story is still somewhere in the ether. Again, the internet lives forever, basically for the most part. So those older stories can still cloud the truth of the actual matter if they remain up and aren't clear about what actually happened. So I think that there needs to be more deliberate going back and saying - and sometimes you still see this - we have a new version, we have more updates to this story that we've put here. Maybe for integrity's sake you may not want to delete the original story, right? That's not something we generally do. But something at the top saying - We've gotten more information. The updated information is here. You should go there. So people don't find some old story in a vacuum that doesn't have all that important context. And that's something we need to look at as well.
[00:11:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And certainly, also underscoring the importance of headlines - people can discern information, but it is also a reality that a lot of people don't read full articles or they may not have time to read through every article - so rely on headlines sometimes, and may get back to the information to get more detail or may not. So I hope that there is widespread thoughtfulness and consideration being given to putting that reporting in more context and not just treating that as a factual account that just gets passed through and kind of transcribed without it being verified, or at least explicitly noted that it hasn't been, that that is a perspective. Back to, I guess the issue of the Brady list overall, do all officers - how comprehensive is the list? We have a list of around, is it around 200 officers right now?
[00:12:44] Melissa Santos: Right. About 200. A little under 200 right now - statewide.
[00:12:48] Crystal Fincher: Do they feel like that covers the number of officers there? Are there still glaring holes? Or how hard is it, or how easy is it for an officer to wind up on that list?
[00:12:58] Melissa Santos: So I do think it varies a little by jurisdiction. But I will say in general, most officers don't get on the list for nothing - just for some casual, maybe they did something, maybe they didn't. I do not think that it is easy in the sense that you have to have some sort of concrete evidence usually. I don't think that prosecutors will put officers on this list of cops that may have issues, issues that have to be disclosed to the defense, without some sort of evidence that something went wrong or that there was some sort of fishy activity. So getting that evidence that a cop lied, for instance, that doesn't always come forth. So it's not always clear that a cop lied, so it's rare to actually have something really specific, like we saw proof that what they said did not match what actually happened. So that's somewhat rare, so that influences who goes on the list and who does not go on the list.
It also is dependent a lot on what police agencies report upward to the prosecutor's office. I mean, most of this is based on police officer disciplinary procedures. And if the police agencies do not have a sustained finding of misconduct, of dishonesty, then often that does not end up putting an officer on a prosecutor's Brady list, even if maybe there is some evidence that someone might think, well, wait, wait, wait, wait. I think that that actually was kind of messed up and maybe that investigation didn't actually turn up what it should have. So you're depending on the police officer disciplinary process, which in some cases I think some people would argue does not always kind of identify officer misconduct as reliably as it should, since it's the department investigating its own officers.
So that's one issue. And defense attorneys just say that, no, there's all of these officers we kind of know have issues that are not on this list. And so it's an undercount in that respect. And I should add that the 200 or so officers that I identified are ones that are currently working. There was a lot more that were on the list, but maybe have left law enforcement and things like that. So we actually kind of took a look to say, who is still around? Because theoretically if there's officers who have lied or have used force and they've been fired, you're like, okay, well maybe that's an appropriate response. But they still end up on prosecutor's lists in case they get another job in law enforcement or the prosecutors don't keep up with all the personnel stuff sometimes. So, yeah. So we actually narrowed it down, but there are almost 200 still working in the state.
[00:15:41] Crystal Fincher: So is it fair to say that usually officers wind up on the list when their own departments have found that there has been some kind of dishonesty or misconduct?
[00:15:51] Melissa Santos: Yes. The vast majority of the time that's what I found. In fact, I think that King County even has a system by which they have a pending list, a pending sort of, well, we're seeing how the outcome of this investigation plays out. And if the allegation is not sustained, that they won't end up even necessarily end up on the permanent list. So there certainly is some due process in that respect for officers. I've definitely have gotten some emails saying, oh, people can get put on this for anything. I don't think that's necessarily true. At the same time, there are cases in which a defense attorney brings something forward, being like, I looked at this guy's personnel file and this seems to be like you should've told me about this. And that sometimes will cause a prosecutor to say, yeah, that should actually be something that puts you on our list, even if the police agency did not deem it a problem.
I think one example of that is someone I actually used in my story - is a deputy in Whatcom County, who had used a really racist - he just said something really racist on Facebook about Native Americans. It was kind of joking about genocide. It was very bad. So his department didn't discipline him for that. I actually have inquired and I got an answer after my story ran that there was no discipline involved. And that came from a defense attorney who said, "I found this on my phone just looking, when I was looking up the key witness against my client, and you should know about this." And then so the prosecutor said, "Yeah, it does seem like it meets the legal requirements of something we need to disclose, so we are putting him on our list. But I really trust his testimony and I'm going to continue to call on him as a witness." They often say, this technically meets the criteria for something I need to turn over, but I have not had any issue with this cop and I trust that person.
[00:17:46] Crystal Fincher: Oh, the old, "I never had a problem with them, so they're not a problem for anyone" excuse, which we've all seen work out so wonderfully. I guess another question I have is, I've certainly heard reports and seen reports before that there can be misconduct that happens or a finding of some misconduct or lying, and that doesn't always make it or stay on an officer's record or in their personnel file. How does that affect or impact who winds up on the Brady list? Can there be actions or findings of misconduct that don't make it to the file, or that are erased from the file, and then that can prevent them from being on the list?
[00:18:34] Melissa Santos: In general, it depends on the county. But for instance, I'll use King County as an example. That's one case in which they told me they would not remove someone for their list. If it was something like, "Oh, an arbitrator said, 'We think this punishment was wrong, and we think you should not have disciplined this person.'" But finding the fact didn't change? And everyone agrees this happened, but it wasn't worthy of discipline or something like that. This is one reason why I actually did this story, because I realized the prosecutors have a repository of records on cops that sometimes their own departments may not even have anymore. Especially because in some cases, the police agencies, completely independent of the police contracts, an officer may have left pretty recently, but those disciplinary records are destroyed after usually six years. So even if it was at this point, 2014, 2015, something someone did in their last jurisdiction, that jurisdiction doesn't have those records anymore in a lot of cases, I found. But the prosecutor's office did.
So that's one reason I wanted to look at these records, because police disciplinary records are not very well-maintained. I think that's changing with the new law that just passed, it's supposed to hopefully change. But yeah, that was one reason. The prosecutors actually were better about keeping these records than the agencies themselves in some cases.
[00:19:58] Crystal Fincher: There seem to be so many loopholes, and we seem to be relying on people and agencies self-investigating and self-reporting, and there don't seem to be many exceptions to that. Looking forward, how are people - what has been the response to your story? How are people looking at the utility of the Brady List? And is there any responses that you've heard about how to make this list better, more comprehensive and more reliable?
[00:20:33] Melissa Santos: So I'm waiting to see if this - there is a new law they passed. I wouldn't say it was in response to my story, it was well in the works at the time I wrote. But there was a law that passed that said that police agencies have to send any findings of misconduct to the prosecutor's office within 10 days of their discovery of those incidents. So that's something the prosecutors say, "Okay, that would help us, because right now we don't feel like we're always getting them in a timely manner." Because even though the cops are supposed to turn that stuff over under the case law - that really should happen. They were saying, "Well sometimes it's like, they might turn them over once every six months, or maybe they send over a batch yearly or something." The prosecutors think that could get them in trouble, because they're assumed to know everything that the cops do. Because again, they're all part of the prosecuting law enforcement team.
So that new law, maybe it will help. I still think that it's dependent on the disciplinary - I guess we'll see. I think there is a little bit of wiggle room for how, whether the agencies think it's reportable misconduct or not - that law tries to clarify that - like, "You need to report stuff like this, lying, or if an investigation starts, you need to send it over." I'm interested to see how it's implemented on the ground, that's all.
And I'm not sure it solves the issue of - something else I'm looking into right now is whether prosecutors always do their job. That was a little too much to get into in my first story, but do they always turn over what they're supposed to to the defense, even for people on their list? Some defense attorneys tell me no, that they don't. They think it's very relevant that this cop lied sometime ago, but they didn't get a notification like they were supposed to from the prosecutor's office, is what some have told me. And I'm going to look at trying to find out how often that happens, that's a little hard to pin down. But there's a lot of ways in which it can still break down, I think, even with this new law potentially.
[00:22:47] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I'm glad you're looking at doing that story. Certainly just from attorney friends that I have, have heard stories of that happening. And you alluded to earlier, the very close relationship between police and prosecutors, and those prosecutors relying on the testimony of police to make their cases in sometimes. Sometimes it is the police making their case, and so there seems to be an incentive to present that cop in the best light possible, and to cover up anything that could jeopardize their case - which would be misconduct or lying from an officer. So I'm excited to hear that. Looking at, from what you've reported, as you're looking at the process, what do you see could be put into place to make it more reliable or strengthened? What are the biggest loopholes, or areas of opportunity for improvement?
[00:23:49] Melissa Santos: I understand the prosecutors have a workload. I don't think they're just mostly sitting around on their butts not doing anything. I'm not sure how this would exactly necessarily work, but I have a defense attorney who said she just looked at the guy's public Facebook page and found this, and the prosecutor had not had that in their file or anything on this cop. Maybe the prosecuting office does need to take a bigger role in saying, "Maybe we need to do a little more looking at our witnesses ourselves." Because it is a constitutional obligation for them to turn over exculpatory evidence, stuff that could clear someone or affect the outcome of someone's case. They have to do that.
I think the prosecutors take that seriously, in general, but I'm not sure how much they're taking it upon themselves to look for stuff that should be disclosed. I've kind of been told, "We can't do our own disciplinary investigations. How are we going to do that? We have to rely on the cops for that." But maybe there's at least some cursory work that needs to be done, or someone in each office that just looks up every witness and finds more stuff on the prosecutor's end. I'm not sure - if that's not feasible, but it does seem like that's where things go missing sometimes in this process. And still could, even with this new law. So that's happened.
And then there's also this element of - I'm just really unclear how determinations are made that someone's bias or use of force merits them putting on the Brady List. Because I think that there's plenty of people in our community that would argue that there are more than half a dozen officers who have demonstrated bias in a way that maybe should be mentioned in future cases that they're a witness on. But I only found maybe six or eight cases that were people on the Brady List currently for bias. So that seems like it could be low potentially. That determination is a little fuzzy, I think to me, how is that determination made? I don't know though that there's that many formal determinations of sustained finding that you were racist in the police world right now. And also, uses of force - there's not that many officers on the list for use of force, even though theoretically they should be. And I suspect there's a few more cases that maybe didn't make the list, where officers might have used force in a way that defense attorneys would want to know about in their past.
[00:26:22] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, you make some really good points. And even to your point, it does seem like most people involved in the legal system, prosecutors included, are largely acting in good faith. But the institution sometimes present some obstacles, and it seems like the job of a prosecutor, and investigating, and how they interact with police - 30 years ago, looking up their social media history was not a thing. Seeing if dash cam video or body cameras matched up to their account was not a thing. And so there's just a lot more to look into and they just may not have also expanded their practices and have the daily resources, given their workload, that accounts for being able to look into all of that. But maybe that should be happening, maybe they do need to really explore how to make sure that they're looking at all available evidence to help account for that.
[00:27:26] Melissa Santos: I actually thought of something else. In fact, there's a couple of people who got added to the Brady list apparently because of my going around asking everyone for their list, basically. That sort of indicated to me that there was some lag time, I guess, in people being added to the list. That's even on the prosecutor's end, apparently, I think. Or maybe they were like, "Oh, we really should get an update on this guy. Whatever happened with this?" Yeah, I think that there's some potential for wiggle room there.
I will say there's some instances when prosecutors were really concerned about a cop and the prosecutor saying, "This is a problem. We need to put that person on our list," happened independently of officers. But that was not the majority of cases. It was only a handful that I saw and had records on.
[00:28:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. It also seems like there is a problem with, okay, we only keep records for six years, or however long that is. If an officer changes jurisdictions, we just may not know that they had some egregious things on their record from 2013. Seems like we do that for folks on the other side of the criminal justice system, and if there is something on their record from 2010 or, really anytime, that that counts against them in terms of what they're charged with, how they're sentenced. And if it seems like that should be a factor taken into consideration for people who are defendants, certainly other people involved in that - that should be consistent. And, wow, 2014 just does not seem that long ago to be discounting what people are doing.
[00:29:12] Melissa Santos: Right. I was talking - early 2010s, there are some records I don't have. There was a guy who was police chief in one small town that oversaw some really, really bad management of stuff - evidence was just lying around the squad room. Actually, mishandling of evidence could get you on the list too. This was really rampant, bad. An auditor came in, he ended up leaving the department - but that works in another department now. And this, this changeover, he left that department in 2012 or something. There's records I can't get anymore from some of that. Yeah, it doesn't seem like that long ago, really.
But I will say there's this new bill. I was asking how much will this really help? This bill that deals with officer decertification, making it so it's easier for the state to pull an officer's license does kind of set new rules for union contracts to not allow them to destroy or remove files from people's personnel records because this actually happens as well. Sometimes officers can request after two years or something - sometimes it's as low as two or three years to have something removed from their personnel file. And all that might be in there then is a letter saying, "This officer asked for this to be - some disciplinary action to be removed." And I think that in some cases you can still get those records by asking a different department somehow, but it obscures the process at the very minimum, even if those records in some cases may be attainable somehow else. And so that's something that will change apparently with this bill. You won't be able to have contracts that let officers remove stuff from their files as often, at least.
[00:30:51] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter at @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H F-R-I-I. And now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type in "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our mid-week show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.
On this week-in-review, Crosscut reporter covering state politics and the Legislature, Melissa Santos, joins Crystal to discuss Governor Inslee attempting to make it illegal for politicians to lie about election fraud and ending the ban on affirmative action, bills to watch this legislative session, Seattle and Burien extending their eviction moratoriums, Kent's mayor saying that she didn't think the public would get upset about a Nazi cop, and parents and schools struggling though COVID.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Melissa Santos, at @MelissaSantos1. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Inslee will support bill to make lying by elected officials, candidates about election results punishable by law” by Joseph O’Sullivan and Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/gov-jay-inslee-to-support-bill-to-make-lies-by-elected-officials-candidates-about-election-results-a-gross-misdemeanor/
“Inslee rescinds directive banning affirmative action in Washington state government” by Joseph O’Sullivan, Jim Brunner and Heidi Groover from The Seattle Times:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/gov-inslee-to-rescind-20-year-old-directive-banning-affirmative-action-in-washington-state-government/
“7 things WA Legislature is expected to address in 2022” by Melissa Santos from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/politics/2022/01/7-things-wa-legislature-expected-address-2022
“Bills to Watch in the 2022 Washington State Legislative Session” by Stephen Fesler, Doug Trumm, Ryan Packer and Natalie Bicknell Argerious from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/01/11/bills-to-watch-in-the-2022-washington-state-legislative-session/
Burien City Council extends eviction moratorium through COVID-19 state of emergency by Nicholas Johnson from The B-Town (Burien) Blog: https://b-townblog.com/2022/01/13/burien-city-council-extends-eviction-moratorium-through-covid-19-state-of-emergency/
“Mayor Harrell Extends Seattle's Eviction Moratorium until February 14th” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/01/12/mayor-harrell-extends-seattles-eviction-moratorium-until-february-14th/
“As Harrell Extends Seattle's Eviction Moratorium, Cracks Begin to Show in the Statewide Eviction Prevention Programs” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger:
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/01/12/64855920/as-harrell-extends-seattles-eviction-moratorium-cracks-begin-to-show-in-the-statewide-eviction-program
“Email Reveals Even City Officials Fell Victim to 2020 Proud Boys Hoax” by Carolyn Bick from South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2022/01/12/breaking-email-reveals-even-city-officials-fell-victim-to-2020-proud-boys-hoax/
“Kent badly underestimated outrage over assistant police chief’s Nazi insignia, mayor says” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/kent-mayor-city-badly-underestimated-outrage-over-assistant-police-chief-who-embraced-nazi-rank-insignia/
“Facing dire staff shortages, some schools are asking parents to step in” by Marisa Iati from The Washington Post for The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/facing-dire-staff-shortages-some-u-s-schools-are-asking-parents-to-step-in/
“Teachers confront half-empty classrooms as virus surges” by Carolyn Thompson from The Associated Press for The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/teachers-confront-half-empty-classrooms-as-virus-surges/
“Seattle students plan sickout, demand COVID tests and masks as school closures climb” by Monica Velez from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/seattle-students-demand-masks-and-tests-plan-sickout-as-school-closures-climb/
“What Seattle Public Schools Needs to Say Right Now” by Ray Dubicki from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/01/13/sps-letter-to-families/
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program today's co-host, Crosscut staff reporter covering state politics and the legislature, Melissa Santos.
[00:00:54] Melissa Santos: Hi Crystal.
[00:00:55] Crystal Fincher: Hey, welcome back. How are you?
[00:00:58] Melissa Santos: Doing as well as anyone can be doing at this moment in time and history probably.
[00:01:03] Crystal Fincher: I feel that. Well, I guess we should start off by talking about a couple of actions that Inslee took over the past week. One is a move that he's trying to make to make it illegal for politicians to lie about election fraud. What is he doing there?
[00:01:23] Melissa Santos: Well, it's hard to say precisely because I still haven't seen the text of a bill and a lot is dependent on that, but basically the Governor said he wants it to make it a gross misdemeanor for politicians to lie about election fraud. The part that some reporters immediately went, "Wait, wait, wait - we know in our state that our Supreme Court has said that basically lying as a politician is okay. There was a ruling almost 15 years ago now that said lying about your opponent is free speech essentially, for the most part, so we're wondering how can you make this work?" The Governor's argument is that this is speech lying about election fraud, and lying about the results of elections can lead to violence, and that's like calling "Fire" in a crowded theater. So that is something he believes can be regulated.
I'm waiting to see how the text of that actually falls into place. Some other legislators that happen to be lawyers, including House Speaker Laurie Jinkins, said to me, "It really depends on how it's written, if it's constitutional," but the Governor made this announcement on January 6, the anniversary of the insurrection at the US Capitol and the anniversary of people actually storming the grounds of his, the governor's mansion in Olympia, over some of these claims of election fraud. I'm just interested to see how it plays out, and whether it could actually be passed, and whether it can actually uphold or be upheld in court.
[00:02:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and that seems to be the stance of a lot of people - just waiting to see what the text is. But frankly, not just lawyers in the legislature, but also other constitutional lawyers who, with both conservative and progressive backgrounds, have said that this can be really dicey and whether or not this can be constitutionally constructed is a big question. I think Inslee - his response to that was, "Yes, this may draw some legal attention and challenge," but he's feeling that the rhetoric has gotten so inflamed that the truth - that misinformation and disinformation is actually damaging to our democracy and society - and we're paying a price. And he feels compelled to act to try to do something. And is ready for the fight. And I think he has almost acknowledged that he's not sure how it will ultimately turn out. He's going to do his best to craft it constitutionally, but he doesn't know. He just feels that this is worth the fight.
[00:03:57] Melissa Santos: And I guess for me, I'm wondering if it just depends on whether you have to have violence result and then can go back and prosecute, because that might be a situation in which I think - I'm not a lawyer - and I haven't talked to as many people about this as I want to to make this claim. But I think potentially if you actually see violence that erupts that could be traced to someone's statements, maybe that's more legally defensible to have a penalty against a speech, than if it's just speculative, like this could lead to violence. So, I guess that's one of the things I'm wondering - if that will be specified clearly in what he puts out.
[00:04:32] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I mean the impression I got is that it wasn't going to be tied to violence - just the act of lying and knowingly spreading misinformation would be illegal and punishable by law. But again as you said, we haven't seen the text of this. So, this is a big stay tuned, but a big announcement and that has a lot of people interested in what the next steps are going to be. And then the other action that he took this week was ending the ban on affirmative action. What happened here?
[00:05:05] Melissa Santos: Well, essentially this is something that, as you know, has come up at the ballot box a few times in, oh 2019, which seems like a very long time ago somehow now. The legislature did rescind Initiative 200, a 20-plus now year old ban on affirmative action that voters approved in our state. And then voters reinstated the ban essentially in the fall of that year. Yes, that's essentially how it played out. You can get talking about referendums in a way that are very confusing, but that's essentially what happened. But what was interesting and during that campaign, I remember people - even Gary Locke, the former governor - saying a lot of the stuff we actually think we can do under current law - things like targeting, hiring of people from minority groups for state contracting roles and state contracts, and some recruiting - targeted recruiting - of people who are people of color for certain jobs and focusing on those efforts. Those things actually - there's a disagreement even at the time whether you could do that already, even with the ban in place. Because essentially boiling down, you're not hiring someone just based on your race - you're hiring people that are perfectly qualified for these, well, for these jobs, right? I mean that was always what the idea was, and that was said to be possibly allowed already. And then the State Attorney General put out something saying, "Yeah, you can do this. It's legal," and that was different advice than Governor Locke 20 years ago received.
So this has opened the door for the Governor, now Inslee, to basically change this just by executive order, or changing it through his own practices at state agencies without a change of law. I know this will be somewhat controversial for those who were like, "Wait, wait, didn't we just vote this down, et cetera," but I really recall - it was really such a healthy debate about, honestly even among supporters of rescinding the affirmative action ban - do we even need to do this, or can we just do it without any of this legal back and forth? And so that dates back a few years. And so the Governor, with advice from the Attorney General of our state, basically said, "Yeah, no, we can try to proactively recruit and hire people for state positions and state contracts that are from underrepresented groups." That's what he did just through his own authority without the action of the legislature, or vote of the people.
The one thing I'm not totally clear on - I'm not sure it extends to university admissions. I think it's more within the Governor's purview of hiring, but I'm not 100% sure on how this applies to university admissions and whether universities can give extra weight between two equally qualified candidates - to someone who is from an underrepresented group when they're doing admissions, admitting students. I'm not sure how the Governor extends to that. I'm not sure if you know, Crystal, if it extends that far.
[00:08:10] Crystal Fincher: I don't know, and I actually read an article by Joseph O'Sullivan, Jim Brunner and Heidi Groover about this and I don't think that's addressed in the article. I don't recall that being addressed in the article. They basically described exactly what you said - that there was a 2017 opinion by our current Attorney General Bob Ferguson that was different than prior attorney general saying that, "Hey, actually at the moment, race and sex conscious measures are not prohibited. You can do more. This isn't a blanket ban." And so, Inslee's executive order is instructing, within the next 10 days for that specifically, he'll issue a replacement executive order replacing the one Gary Locke put in place - to move forward "with achieving equity while still complying with essentially the law," which is restrictive. So, it's going to be interesting to see how he threads this needle and what results of it are going to be. I don't see that it impacts admissions, but I'm sure we're going to be hearing more about that.
[00:09:27] Melissa Santos: Yeah, and -
[00:09:27] Crystal Fincher: But it's really interesting.
[00:09:28] Melissa Santos: Yeah and I will say that when I looked at this and when other reporters have looked at this, there was a really stark decline in the percentage of state contracts going toward businesses and firms owned by women and people of color after the passage of I-200, which passed in 1998. There really was - I mean going back to one my old stories right now - in 1998, when race conscious measures weren't expressly prohibited by I-200 that had not yet passed, more than 13% of the money spent by state agencies and/or state educational institutions went towards certified minority and women-owned businesses. But in 2017, that was below 3%. So, we saw a more than 10 percentage point decline after I-200 passed in hiring and contracts going to minority-owned businesses. There's some dispute about whether women-owned businesses should be all grouped in the same way, but you saw a clear decline there, at least in that form of measure. There was an effect, I guess, of I-200 passing and whether it can be reversed by what the Governor has just done, I guess remains to be seen.
[00:10:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I think the effect is going to be - I don't know that we're going to see immediate action by a lot of places, but my goodness, I used to do economic development work in this area - increasing minority business, contracting and relationships - and the amount of people who were like, "Yeah, we want to do that, but the law prohibits it." And sometimes people say that - it's not in good faith - but there were people who were doing it before, who specifically felt handcuffed and they would get in trouble if they attempted to do anything in that realm and felt like they would be scrutinized for choosing to work with companies of color, being accused of giving preferential treatment. There are certainly those who lob that accusation, no matter what the qualifications or reputation of the firm is. So it definitely had a chilling effect, and what this does is it really frees up those types of localities who had an interest in it, and people who do have an interest to act immediately. And others, it may take more external pressure, lobbying, and accountability measures to make sure that something that is prioritized, but this is an area where the law had an impact. This ban had an impact and a negative one. Especially given everything we're looking at now, as much as possible needs to be happening to make sure that everyone can participate in our economy, to make sure everyone is given a fair shot with public contracts. All of our dollars are going into this, and it needs to be flowing in an equitable way to all of us.
[00:12:24] Melissa Santos: Yeah. And one other thing that I think is interesting about this, the Governor's budget proposal and I don't know if - he actually has a small amount of money for giving extra money to people who are of underrepresented backgrounds, or specifically I guess it says low income, to serve on state boards and commissions - recognizing that there maybe is an opportunity cost, or that people who are not rich basically can't participate in state government and have their perspective valued and incorporated into state policy making. So, he's pursuing different avenues of trying to get people who maybe haven't traditionally been involved in state government to have their perspectives. And the language is interesting because it's really saying people who basically are not wealthy, people who have lots of spare time to do this out of the goodness of their hearts - have a lot of valuable perspective they can add, and we need that perspective and we should pay for it. There's some interesting things happening with this across Inslee's administration.
[00:13:24] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. We'll keep an eye on how that plays out. You have been doing a fantastic job over several years covering the legislature. We just had this legislative session start last week. So, what is on tap? What are the top bills that they're working on, or things that we should be keeping our eyes on?
[00:13:48] Melissa Santos: I mean one of the things that they're moving really quick on which I think you've discussed a lot on your show, so I don't think we need to go deep into it, but changes to this Long-term Care Act, which is this program that was passed a couple years ago to provide people help with paying for nursing care and other things that could help them even age in place in their homes. It looks like the State House is going to vote to delay the payroll tax that pays for this program and delay it a little bit, and make some tweaks. And so that's moving through quickly. The other things that they're really focused on are some changes to the police accountability measures they passed - wow, I guess it was just last year. It feels like it was two years ago now, but at 20, 20 -
[00:14:31] Crystal Fincher: 2021 session, yeah.
[00:14:32] Melissa Santos: Wow, okay. Yeah, so there's going to be some tweaks - there's some bills introduced essentially, mostly focused on the changes that were made last year to use of force standards for police. The bill they passed last year set a higher standard for when police can use force. It's pretty detailed and nuanced, but essentially requiring more use of de-escalation and limits on when you can use force when in situations that aren't a dire danger kind of thing. And there was some concern that, "Hey, does this ban us from using less..."
Okay, that's a different bill, but there were some concern that they cannot transport people who are suffering mental health crisis - that there were police who raised the concern like, "Hey, we don't know if under this, if someone's not an imminent danger to hurting us, or killing us, or killing themselves. Can we still transport them to the hospital when they need mental health treatment?" And the legislator says, "Yeah, you can, you absolutely can," but there seem to be enough confusion about that aspect that they'll have a bill that would clarify - yeah, you can still help with mental health issues if you're police, even under this use of force bill that we passed last year. So, that's one thing.
And there's also some other changes. There were limits to police tactics passed in a wide-ranging bill last year and the concern that arose was, "Hey, can we still use less-lethal weapons - bean bag launchers and stuff - if we got those through military surplus programs," which there's some contradictory stuff potentially saying no military weapons will be used by police. I'm oversimplifying it, but then sometimes they use military grade launchers and stuff for less-lethal weapons. So, just making it clear you can still do things short of killing people that use launchers and things like that to launch bean bags and things like that. So, there's some tweaks like that.
There's Republicans wanting more bigger repeals, but I just don't see the Democratic legislature doing - completely rolling back what they did last year.
[00:16:36] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I mean, and I want to talk a little bit more about you say, "There were concerns raised." Certainly throughout the legislative process, there were concerns raised. To that point, legislators attempted and felt they had addressed those concerns in the legislation and gave clear guidance that, Yes, you can still intervene. This is just limiting when you can use force, which was responsive to what protests were demanding, what voters across King County voted for with the King County Charter Amendments, an action that was taken by elected leadership in Seattle and around the county - moving towards mental health officers, non-armed officers to respond to a variety of these other things - recognizing that focus on de-escalation, focus on trying to actually address the problem without introducing a big risk of violence is beneficial to everyone.
Police revolted in some situations - refused to respond to some calls, refused to intervene in mental health crisis calls. This went far beyond just a, "Hey we're concerned, we're not sure how to do this." They said, "Hey, we can't do this. We can't do our jobs," in a way that seemed that they were very unhappy with the fact that there was any legislation passed at all, and basically said it was all hindering their ability to do the job. And so some of this legislation is aimed at saying, "Fine. If this is really about a concern about responding to a mental health call, sure, we'll clarify that." And there are some clarifying bills, but obviously you've reported on this and this is me editorializing, but it seems like not all of those concerns have been raised in good faith and certainly the way that they were raised has been very contentious.
[00:18:41] Melissa Santos: I think there was some exaggeration in the first weeks that these new laws went to effect, which was in July of 2021. I feel like there might have been some genuine confusion about some of the smaller points like, "Oh, wait what about these..." Maybe the less-lethal weapons thing - I think that maybe there was some genuine like, "Oh, we want to make sure we don't get in trouble for using our rocket launchers for something that maybe wasn't considered, or clearly outlined in this bill. You know - that we aren't trying to kill people with rocket launchers, we're trying to not kill people with rocket launchers." Fine, okay.
But I do think there was some exaggeration and there were police chiefs that came out and said this is ridiculous, including Adrian Diaz from the Seattle Police saying, "The idea that..." - I think he called it ridiculous or something like that - the idea that you couldn't respond to mental health calls, because the assumption being that you're going to have to use physical force whenever you respond is where Adrian Diaz said, "I don't really see with the logic there." And also to be clear, you can use force when you see a crime happening or something. Police always, even under these laws, could pursue people, and they could pursue people. There was a lot of dispute about that, and I talked to a lot of chiefs who said, "I would definitely pursue someone in that situation if I saw them running away after I saw them under a car stealing a catalytic converter, and they ran off. I would not feel hamstrung by these laws. I think that's bunk." So, there was some, definitely even people within the law enforcement community saying, "I don't actually think that's how this works at all." That led me to think - Aaaahhh, I mean, is there genuine confusion in all cases, or is it also just resistance? And I think there was a mixture certainly of political resistance a little bit to some of the reforms. I think that was certainly true, and that might have caused people to interpret some aspects as being - people being - the police agencies to say I don't want to mess with this more than maybe what was necessary in certain cases.
Yeah. I mean I talked to the Director of the state Criminal Justice Training Commission who also said some of these claims that were being made by police were overwrought. "People seem to be in a panic that maybe was unnecessary," is what she said, and I put in my story. That made me think, Okay, this isn't a clear cut, we can no longer do our jobs as police. Anyway, that's a discussion that the legislature is now having about - sorting through what is a legitimate concern, what is more just we don't want the legislature telling us how to do our jobs as police. And that's something the legislators are sorting through now.
And I did personally have questions about the idea you can pursue certain people who are suspected of violent crimes, or people that you - one thing that someone from King County actually told me is that some police maybe have not had to distinguish that clearly between probable cause and reasonable suspicion, which are these thresholds for which you can do - super technical, but by which the standards you can do stuff under these bills basically. And there was a change in threshold, but to be honest, probable cause, some of the cops have told me, is not that high of a standard. If it sometimes -
[00:22:00] Crystal Fincher: It clearly is not.
[00:22:02] Melissa Santos: Some of the cops are saying, "Well, we have to do a full investigation of everything before we can even detain anyone," or say, "Hey, can you stop right there because we're investigating this and you're suspicious basically," but some police have said, "Actually, you know, probable cause is pretty low evidentiary standards. Even if you need probable cause to tackle someone to the ground and beat them, which is what some of these new laws do - it used to be reasonable suspicion which is lower - that's not that high of a threshold." I'm not saying police should be going straight to beating people, but the idea that they couldn't stop people ever, even when they saw someone fleeing the scene of a murder or something, was something that other police also questioned as being like, "Hmm, I don't know if that -."
[00:22:46] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, there were plenty in the law enforcement community who said that this did not prohibit them from doing the job that they thought they should be doing. And even, I want to say it was the Renton Police Department, but I'm not precisely sure. There was a chase that they said - that they couldn't pursue someone who had fled because of this new law, which was just absolutely ridiculous, and that was their way of protesting that.
But I mean we'll keep an eye on that legislation. We'll see how it proceeds, and I'm wondering if there is ever anything short of no action that they will find acceptable. And I think as you mentioned before, there are some Republicans who just want to repeal everything. But I think most people, the majority of people - and polling back that up and elections have backed that up - feel that changes do need to fundamentally happen to add protections and, at minimum, reforms. Now, how much those reforms need to be - it is another subject, but there's broad popular agreement that changes need to happen. And also, I just need to say, I don't see any situation in which I feel a police entity needs to have a rocket launcher, but evidently they do for some reason.
But I do want to shift and talk about some local stuff. And Seattle and Burien extending their eviction moratoriums, which was something that a lot of people have been lobbying for. I certainly have - we've talked about this on this program, but especially with the rise with Omicron - the Omicron variant - people being unsure, not wanting to be exposed, or being sick with other folks. It was unthinkable and obviously extremely stressful for a lot of people to think, "Hey, just when this virus is once again surging, which is the reason why we had an eviction moratorium in the first place, why would we end it when we are basically hitting pandemic-high numbers for infections, hospitalizations? Putting someone out on the street during this time seems to just go against all of the reasoning for why it is currently in place."
Bruce Harrell - this is one of the first decisions that he's made policy-wise since he's been mayor - decided to extend the moratorium for 30 days. Burien decided to extend their moratorium for as long as Governor Inslee has his COVID-19 emergency designation established, although they will revisit it for 90 days. In Seattle, lots of people are thinking, "Oh, 30 days, it could be longer." It is a good thing that the eviction moratorium was extended, and I'm very glad Mayor Harrell did that, and that the City of Burien is following, I know other cities are doing that. But it's absolutely necessary.
And I hope during this time, all government agencies and entities really focus on getting the available financial help to renters, to landlords, just following through with that process and making sure all of the help that's available for people to get is made available and accessible, and it actually gets to people. There's a report that there are a backlog of 10,000 rental assistance applications at King County - that King County can't get to because they've run out of money. That's another element in the backdrop of this moratorium extension, in that help that was supposed to be available for people has not materialized. So, hopefully everyone at all levels of government gets their acts together to get help to people who need it on the ground. Otherwise, a lot of this COVID mitigation stuff feels like, "Hey, we're trying to get over the hump." Money to get people through this thing, and it seems like some folks are giving up when it is the hardest and the worst. And a lot of the outcomes that we've been trying to avoid look like they're more pressing than ever, so I just hope people coordinate and get money to the people who need it.
[00:27:20] Melissa Santos: Well, I'm wondering, I'll have to look back at the Governor's proposal budget, but there is $1.3 billion in unspent COVID relief money at the state level, that's from the federal government, that still is sitting around. So, I'm wondering if maybe the legislature sends more money to some of the counties to help with this - even though the state eviction moratorium already expired - but I mean at least rental assistance is still something that many people need. Especially with Omicron, people - I mean again the economy, I think - restaurant workers and a lot of people in service industry jobs are underemployed or not employed. And that's still a huge issue and it's easy for people who are able to work remotely successfully and without a huge impact to their job, which is a lot of my colleagues and such. I mean to be honest, it's easy to underestimate how bad these surges create problems for people who are in other positions - when businesses have to downsize their staffs again because they just don't have people coming through the door. So that's something - I think I do wonder if maybe the legislature will send more money out to some of the counties to assist, relaying more of those unspent federal dollars. I'm not sure if they will. I think they probably will do some.
[00:28:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I mean it seems like that certainly should be an urgent priority for them to do, hopefully doing it as quickly as possible to enable help to get to people who need it the most, but I mean certainly people are sounding the alarm that more help is needed to keep people in their homes. And as lots of people have concerns about just general affordability - not just inflation, but housing prices - as people are trying to figure out, especially with a number of the reductions and COVID protections and isolation and mitigation, just what kind of effect that is having on people and their families, that that help is needed now and the legislature can certainly, excuse me, impact that.
Again, this is another one to keep their eye on, but also one to talk to your legislator about and say, "Hey, people still need help. The number one way to address homelessness is to make sure people don't wind up homeless in the first place." That is actually the least expensive, most effective way to address it. Don't let people get out on the street - every problem becomes much harder to address once they do. I mean I was happy to hear Bruce Harrell talking about looking at also preventing utility shutoffs, looking at people who are behind, and trying to connect them with services intentionally because that's a leading indicator of a risk for eviction. There's still a big issue brewing here that we're going to feel the effects of in very painful and negative ways if more help isn't provided.
[00:30:28] Melissa Santos: And this really is a statewide issue now. I mean, if you looked at the housing prices in Chelan County, they've gone up 20% year-over-year for instance. So, this is something that even though King County has a high concentration and super high housing prices that really compound it, here as an issue for folks, but I mean it really is something that other counties and other places in our state are experiencing acutely as well.
[00:30:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and let's go ahead and revisit Kent's Nazi cop, which - wow, wouldn't it be amazing if that was hyperbole, but it's not, that's a literal statement. We talked about this a bit last week. An assistant police chief in the City of Kent made Holocaust jokes, shaved a Hitler mustache - and this is over time - and posted Nazi insignias, literal Nazi insignias, on his door at work above his nameplate. A detective thankfully after four days of that happening - one detective who saw that out of everybody passing by - reported, filed a complaint, reported it. It was investigated - he, after the fact, said, "Hey, he didn't know that those were actual Nazi insignias. And the Hitler mustache was a joke. And the other joke was just unfortunate and poor taste, but he doesn't have a racist, anti-Semitic bone in his body, la-di-da-di-dah." Clearly highly unacceptable. The investigation found that he did knowingly post it, even though they technically said that they didn't sustain a finding of officially lying. They said that his version of events is not what happened. He did knowingly post, that he did make those jokes, he did shave a Hitler mustache - that all happened, that's not in dispute. And the punishment that they came up with was two weeks suspension.
And during this entire time, while he was under investigation, he wasn't suspended. He was still working. He was participating in personnel decisions, policy decisions. It's just beyond. So now he's on paid administrative leave and the mayor has - initially went along with the 2-week finding. Then after public outcry, because a group thankfully, called No Secret Police, put in public disclosure requests, found all of this information, and they're the ones who actually broke the story that we have a Nazi cop. The Seattle Times has been writing about it. But two weeks suspended after public outcry and revulsion. In response to that, the mayor, Mayor Dana Ralph, announced that she will be asking the union for that officer's resignation - not firing him, not doing any of that, but asking for his resignation.
And then, while everybody's saying, "Okay, so why are we even here? Why does it take public outcry for you to reconsider that maybe two weeks suspension for a Nazi cop isn't appropriate, or it just really spits in the face of all of your residents?" And her response to that is she said her administration and that - I'm reading an article by Mike Carter in the Times - her administration badly underestimated the public outrage that would spring from the decision not to fire an assistant police chief who posted a Nazi insignia on his door, embraced the rank of an officer in Adolf Hitler's murderous - what, Schutzstaffel or SS - joked about the Holocaust. So, where is your mind at that this is not a big deal? Where is your mind at that you can't picture people getting upset? This is very concerning to me. How are you looking at this?
[00:34:50] Melissa Santos: Well, and I mean the thing that does hit me a little is Kent is such a diverse community with - I mean, it's majority people of color - I'm trying to look at the actual population, but I think - I mean you know better than I, Crystal, because I believe you actually live in Kent, I think-
[00:35:03] Crystal Fincher: I do live in Kent.
[00:35:04] Melissa Santos: - but it's 60% people of color I think. The police department, I don't know how their demographics match up with the actual city - I've not looked into this - but it strikes me as the only way you could underestimate that this would be offensive and highly offensive is if you have a large number of people that are not from groups that would be personally hurt or offended by this. I'm really at a little bit of a loss for how exactly that happened. This all was happening in the summer and I'm not sure if the election was on people's minds a little bit like, "Okay, we don't want..." If you fire a cop, it's more likely to make news. There is that too. I mean people will be like, "Hey, well if the assistant chief got fired, what happened there?" So I don't know if they just didn't want to draw attention to it. There were elections happening last year, municipal elections. I don't know if that's a factor or not. If there was ignorance -
[00:36:05] Crystal Fincher: Clearly they didn't want to draw attention to it. Yeah, clearly they did not.
[00:36:07] Melissa Santos: Yeah, I mean if there really was some element of ignorance - that I think speaks to the police department being a little out of touch with a community that they serve potentially.
[00:36:15] Crystal Fincher: Massively out of touch and a threat and a danger too, yes.
[00:36:20] Melissa Santos: And looking through lots and lots of police disciplinary records, I've been a little bit surprised over the last couple years that a 2-week suspension to an average person may not seem that big of - I mean, I would be unhappy if I got two weeks unpaid leave from work, but I go back to work and it's not the biggest of deals. But it's pretty rare for police to actually issue those kind of punishments is what I have seen. So, possibly just because police discipline is structured the way [Crystal: The bar is on the floor.] that they considered it to be a bigger penalty than the public does, because I do see a lot of - the idea that police cannot - they have to start with progressive discipline. I mean they start with something small. So maybe in some cases - I mean there are cities where I've written about, where they've given someone a written reprimand as the only penalty for punching someone - a citizen in the face without real provocation - and things like that. If that's a written reprimand in some communities, a 2-week suspension would be pretty significant by comparison, right? I don't want to say they thought it was significant, but they're just out of touch with what the public expectation would be about what a punishment for this would look like.
[00:37:42] Crystal Fincher: Yes, in my opinion, this is disqualifyingly out of touch. If the only thing that is in your mind and the justification that makes sense to you - and again, this is me editorializing, this is not reporting or anything - but if the only thing that makes sense is, Well, we barely punish cops anyway and for this Nazi behavior, got two weeks, that's a disciplinary finding, it'll be on his record, that's fine - is so far removed from understanding that this speaks a lot to the culture of the entire department. How this behavior - this behavior only stopped because a detective - one, finally, after this had endured for years evidently - said something because something was so blatant and actionable.
But to have - what you hear in the background is a Kent police siren right now in my house - you have to be so detached from the community that you're serving to think that - that at the minimum gives the appearance of a police force that is racist, anti-Semitic, biased, uses extremely poor judgment, is not connected to the community at all. And if you're talking about needing to rebuild trust, needing to maintain and rebuild trust - which Dana Ralph tried to give some of that rhetoric during last year, while she was campaigning - then wow, this flies in the face of that. This spits in the face of all of the residents of the city.
And to think that when someone is in total control of someone's civil rights, if someone has the power to detain you, if someone has the power to beat you and jail you and give you consequences that are going to last potentially for the remainder of your life - can impact whether or not you can hold a job, or have a job, get housing - that that standard should be higher than the average employee who may get paid for two weeks with discipline. But also, we hold average employees to such higher standards of conduct than we do our police. We require more de-escalation from our service workers when someone is yelling at them for not wanting to wear a mask than we do from police. We require people who are in the right, who have been detained by police, to conduct themselves with more decorum than the police are for fear of getting beat or detained unjustly. This is just so far, so unacceptable, so ridiculous, so absurd - a literal Nazi cop is just - obviously, you can hear that this is very frustrating to me. And the complicity of the mayor and the other one just really speaks to the culture, and it really says to the community that we don't care about you, we don't consider you, we don't think about, you're on your own, this is not a city where - to serve everyone. This is a city that is looking out for its own interests and putting the feelings of Nazi cops, and using tax dollars to support Nazi cops ahead of residents here in the city. And it's appalling.
[00:41:25] Melissa Santos: Well, your point about one officer bringing it up, or a detective raising the issue makes me think a little bit about - our state just passed a law last year. One of - another police law they passed was about establishing a duty to intervene, and most departments have this on the books already. A lot of departments saying that if you witness misconduct as a cop, you're obligated to report it, but what if cops don't? What if a bunch of cops don't view this as reportable misconduct? That's what this brings to mind to me. I'm assuming there are other people who were offended and had misgivings about it, but maybe didn't say anything about the Nazi insignia on the door, but then only one person did. So, there are some established things that under our state's new law - if you've witnessed successive force, you have to report it, or else you can be punished kind of thing, but this -
[00:42:10] Crystal Fincher: It's limited to force because that's what I was thinking. I'm like, "How does this not fall under that new law?" Went back and looked at the text of the new law, and it must involve force. So, just general misconduct, they still don't have a duty to report which clearly needs to change, but yeah.
[00:42:29] Melissa Santos: Yeah. I mean what if that officer, that detective had not reported it, would it... I mean -
[00:42:35] Crystal Fincher: If that detective hadn't reported it, if we didn't have No Secret Police - that organization in Kent doing these PDR requests - they couldn't do that. If we didn't have those, we wouldn't know about this. We straight up would not know.
[00:42:54] Melissa Santos: Yeah, I mean I think that -
[00:42:55] Crystal Fincher: Which is appalling.
[00:42:55] Melissa Santos: So I mean that's the thing - I'm actually looking at that law too - they have to report wrongdoing, but wrongdoing is defined as contact that is contrary to law, or contrary to the policies of the witnessing officer's agency. I mean there's still a lot dependent on police recognizing that this is a violation, right? And if people did not recognize that, or thought it was a gray area of some sort for whatever reason, which I think that most people who read the stories about this do not think it's a gray area in any way, shape, or form. But I mean that's still the cultural issue. This brings that to light to me a little bit about what if other cops don't see this as big of a deal as everyone else does, and that's what gives me pause.
[00:43:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. It gives me huge pause. Clearly. If the Holocaust jokes didn't do it, the Hitler stache didn't do it - this is an assistant chief, this is someone who is dictating the culture, setting the policy, hiring, training, disciplining, guiding the department. People are following his example. He is there for that purpose, and he's a Nazi.
[00:44:05] Melissa Santos: That also actually brings - I shouldn't assume what the motivations of the cops - but is it more, are our forces structured so it's very difficult for underlings to report the misconduct of a superior? I don't know if we've addressed that in law and policy. This is me assuming that there were people who wanted to report it and did not, because I have to in my mind, but anyway.
[00:44:28] Crystal Fincher: Well, I mean, also we've heard about the - what is it, what a blue line of silence, whatever they call it - or issues in any general workplace where, "Hey, are you going to report your boss for misconduct?" That comes with the threat of physical force retaliation, maybe we're not going to back you up in police contexts, and just what a tainted and spoiled culture that must be. There was a statement made that, Clearly this is the action of a cop, we still have confidence in the department. I don't. How can you? I question you if you have confidence in this department. I question how you can see literal Nazi behavior tolerated and think that that's okay.
[00:45:22] Melissa Santos: We probably could talk about this forever, but again, it would have been very different if in July of last year, the chief and the mayor come out saying, "Someone reported this. We've looked into it and we think it's horrendous. And we're going to demote, fire this police assistant chief." That did not happen - coming out by the work of an advocacy group, by a group who's making records requests and not the police department itself - it does not look good.
[00:45:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it does not look good. There's a lot to talk about including how - there's a lot to talk about with this. We could talk forever, but we will leave it here actually for the day.
We have time coming up, but also I just want to speak quickly about schools, just being - parents are just trying to figure out - I have talked to a number of parents and they're like, "I don't even know at this point whether it's better to send the kids to school or send them at home, but I don't feel like they're safe anywhere. I feel like every situation is suboptimal. I feel like the communication from the school districts is confusing and contradictory and late." And even for people with privilege who can stay home, they're trying to figure out how to navigate around this. And to have two parents who are working outside the home, who can't stay home and deal with all of this, or who may not be very online to get all of this information that's dictated for the next day at 10 p.m. sometimes. It's just a lot to deal with. People are afraid for the safety and health of their kids. Quarantining rules are changing and different. And just no one knows what's going on.
Lots of calls for "schools to stay open." And I don't think there's anyone who disagrees that in a perfect world, yes, having people in school is ideal, but with the mitigating factors is that the case and they need to be socialized. And it's about the quality of education. But now so many people are out with COVID that they're asking parents to staff classrooms, they're asking lunch workers to staff classrooms, just any adult over 18. Some districts are changing qualifications to remove any qualification, but being an adult over 18 who can pass a background check. Clearly, we're out of the realm of talking about the quality of education and what's ideally best for the kids. And you've got to wonder just what is going into these decisions. It just doesn't seem like the health of the students is the guiding factor. I think a lot of people feel like, with the CDC, the health of Americans isn't the guiding factor. There seems to be a lot of profit motives at stake, and just people trying to force this to work in a way that makes people real uncomfortable about the health impacts.
[00:48:32] Melissa Santos: So, I don't have a kid that's school age. I have a kid in daycare and whenever there is a COVID closure, it's very disruptive. And I understand that for parents and this is even when I - I mean, you can't really get work done at home with a toddler, it's very difficult. So, I understand, and even if you have the ability to work from home. So, I understand that's a huge stress around parents. At the same time, I mean it seems like there should have been a backup plan. There's been remote learning for a long time now, and no one thinks that's ideal for most kids. Although in some cases, I know some students thrive with it more than others, and they can avoid other issues they run into school through remote learning. But it seems like there should have been a backup plan a little bit saying, "Okay, we will go remote if we have reached this threshold." And then again - because it's not like we don't have experience with this now, and it just seems like this patchwork closures of school here and there creates problems and confusion for parents that are dealing with that right now.
[00:49:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and just the level of anxiety and confusion and just feeling abandoned by the people who were supposed to be responsible for this, who were supposed to plan, is unfortunate. A lot of anger from a lot of corners coming to teachers who are just in the middle of this whole thing, not in control of any of the district decisions, not in control of this pandemic - trying to stay healthy, trying to help their kids, and navigate through this whole thing. I think lots of people are choosing from a menu of bad choices. I think that's where people are at. It does not feel good, but we need better from leadership, we need better from elected leaders, we need at least better communication, right? Communicate clearly with notice, frequently understand that people's lives are upended day-by-day when this is happening. And it's just a lot, and I think that people are frustrated at levels that we haven't seen before, period.
[00:50:54] Melissa Santos: Yeah. I mean and I will say I guess for Seattle, they do have a threshold, but it's very high. It says in this one Seattle Times story the district will consider shifting to remote learning for 10 days if the student absence rate is approaching 50% at elementary schools. That's very high and it does seem like there's individual schools that are getting announced that they're closing. And then what does that mean for those students at one school over? That's a confusing situation that's developed, where last minute notifications that one school is closed, but then district-wide, it's not uniform. I think that makes it hard for people, and I don't think it's easy for the district. I don't think it's easy for the teachers. I don't think it's easy for the parents or the kids. It's all very bad. I mean every choice is not great. Okay, that's not much of an observation. Everyone knows this, but -
[00:51:47] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I mean it's a thing, but I also think that while leaders better get to addressing this, people are feeling this in an acute way on a daily basis right now, and to ignore that is not wise. And understanding that speaking to it, trying to do anything possible to let people know that you actually are trying to help them, and not that you've just moved on, is necessary.
[00:52:20] Melissa Santos: And I noticed the Governor - this is the state level and that's something the districts say is - we're required to stay open as much as we can right now under state policy. And I don't know at what point the state changes its view, and I don't know - I haven't been keeping up as closely with what the specific requirements down from the state are now, but that's something that districts have said, is that they're hamstrung a little bit by the state. The governor as recently as last week, this week probably, has said we need to do whatever we can to keep schools open. But we have State Senators, it seems like a couple a day practically, or at least - testing positive for COVID. I mean at one point on Monday, it seemed like almost 10% of the State Senate had contracted COVID, and that was just on the first day of legislative session.
[00:53:01] Crystal Fincher: And one State Senator died of COVID.
[00:53:04] Melissa Santos: And one State Senator died of COVID. Oh well, technically his family will not confirm it was of COVID, but he died after contracting COVID. And he was in the hospital, where he had been airlifted with COVID, so that seems to be the logical conclusion that he died of COVID last month. I don't think anyone disagrees in person is better -
[00:53:25] Crystal Fincher: Well, there's some legislators saying, "No, we absolutely should be in person." It's just like, "Well, there might be..." Of course, ideally, people want it in person and I always get this sense, sometimes get this sense from some people, where they think that people are enjoying these mitigation factors, or enjoying being at home, or enjoying schools being shut down, and this is just all a big obviously conspiracy ploy and this is a joyful thing. This is painful for everyone. These are all bad choices that people are faced with. But the bottom line is - if we try and be careful today that minimizes the irreversible damage for a lot of people. I mean, people have died, people are dying, people have long COVID, people are becoming disabled with chronic illness because of this. And if that can be avoided, that is a factor in this. We can't ignore that that is a thing that is happening.
[00:54:33] Melissa Santos: And I see the research about how - I mean, especially kids - a year or two years is so long of their life, that the damage of their effects on their socialization and education, I completely get that. I think about it with my kid, but he's also in a class of 6, and not 30 in school. I mean so I don't know. I worry about my kid's language development as well, even though he's mostly in school. And I understand that these are all things that have to be weighed, but I also think that we're peaking with Omicron apparently. Maybe this would really - would be just a month of doing what we've been doing for another... All right. You know what, I don't even know. I don't envy anyone who has to make these choices.
[00:55:19] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that's where everybody's at. I think that's where everybody's at, but it's rough. I feel for all of you dealing with all of this, and I just beg people who are making policy, influence policy, that you really connect with what people are going through on the ground every day, and just try to help that. If we help that, we help everyone. If we ignore that, a lot of bad things happen.
With that, I appreciate all of you listening to Hacks & Wonks today, January 14th - Friday, January 14, 2022. These dates are so weird. My goodness -
[00:56:05] Melissa Santos: 2022...
[00:56:06] Crystal Fincher: - it's January of 2022. This is wild. Anyway, that's because I'm old. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. And our wonderful co-host today is Crosscut staff reporter covering state politics and the legislature, Melissa Santos. You can find Melissa on Twitter @Melissasantos1. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii. Now, you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced within a couple days of the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in, talk to you next time.
Representative Jamila Taylor of the 30th Legislative District joins Crystal to highlight the legislative priorities of the growing Black Members Caucus that seeks police accountability reforms that align with community values and needs. They delve into the importance of why equitable, sustainable, and accessible resources are the key to issues ranging from public safety to pandemic response to environmental stewardship.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal on Twitter at @finchfrii.
Resources
Black Members Caucus Newsletter: https://housedemocrats.wa.gov/taylor/the-black-members-caucus-newsletter/
“Kent badly underestimated outrage over assistant police chief’s Nazi insignia, mayor says” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/kent-mayor-city-badly-underestimated-outrage-over-assistant-police-chief-who-embraced-nazi-rank-insignia/
“Educate, not incarcerate: The value of restorative justice” from Federal Way Mirror Letters to the Editor: https://www.federalwaymirror.com/letters/educate-not-incarcerate-the-value-of-restorative-justice-federal-way-letters/
“Crime-conscious mayors criticize King County’s juvenile justice program” by Olivia Sullivan from Kent Reporter: https://www.kentreporter.com/news/crime-conscious-mayors-criticize-king-countys-juvenile-justice-program/
“The Origins of Modern Day Policing” from NAACP - History Explained: https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/origins-modern-day-policing
Q&A: The Blake Decision - ACLU of Washington: https://www.aclu-wa.org/pages/q-blake-decision
HB 1773 - Concerning assisted outpatient treatment for persons with behavioral health disorders: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=1773&Year=2021
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
So today, we are thrilled to have joining us, Representative Jamila Taylor, from the 30th Legislative District. She's the chair of the Black Members Caucus, just an esteemed and long-standing leader in our community here in South King County and throughout the state, has been doing great work for years, and has now brought her talents to the legislature, leading the Black Members Caucus. Thank you so much for joining us, Representative Taylor.
[00:01:05] Representative Jamila Taylor: Thank you, Crystal. I appreciate the time to spend with you today and with your listeners.
[00:01:11] Crystal Fincher: I guess I just want to start talking about your capacity as the Chair of the Black Members Caucus. One, wow, this caucus has grown - a much bigger group than it used to be when it was down to one. I was working with the legislator, who at the time was the only member of the Black - it was a Black Member Caucus - but now the ranks have grown. It's a very diverse and esteemed group. What is that like right now? What's on your agenda? What's upcoming in this session that's about to start?
[00:01:47] Representative Jamila Taylor: So what's fascinating about the Black Members Caucus is that we've done a lot of internal work to figure out what our true north is. We've grown from five members in the founding of the Black Members Caucus, if you will, as a formal organization to ten that we have now. So just in one elective cycle, we have doubled in size. But if you think about in terms of the entire history of Washington State, we've only had 26 Black folks serve in the legislature. And so generally that's been one or two at a time. And of course we've had historic moments with the 44th - it's the second all-Black delegation - the first was in the 37th - where you have the first Black male senator in 31 years. And of course having two Black senators at a time is incredible with that small group that is heavily influential in policy making and making sure that the interests of the Black community throughout Washington State is really heard.
So if you think about it, we've got folks who are representing districts outside of King County - so half of our members are not even in King County - so we got to dispel this myth that we're all concentrated in one spot - in Seattle - and we're spread throughout the region. And of course we have in constituents, if you will, all over the state that are looking to our leadership to not only help the Black community, but lift the rising tides of all. So when we help the most marginalized members of our community, we help the whole community.
[00:03:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. So I guess thinking about what your wins were coming out of last session, certainly a lot was accomplished, and work that needs to continue into this new session, work that is a priority - what's on the top of the agenda?
[00:03:45] Representative Jamila Taylor: In terms of the Black Members Caucus, which actually we're changing our name to the Legislative Black Caucus, last year we prioritized all of the police accountability reforms. And we are the first in the nation to have this suite of bills that address police accountability. There would be some in the community who believe that it's the cause of the rise of increasing crime, but remember the pandemic has happened and folks are engaging differently in community and are under stress and under immense challenge.
But what I would want to say is that these accountability reforms are necessary for community to be invested in our own public safety continuum. If we hold our law enforcement accountable for a police state, if you would say police brutality, to make sure that they are acting within policy, to make sure that innocent bystanders and those who are innocent until proven guilty are not held to a different standard in terms of, I guess if you will, the kind of brutality that is not necessary. Our policies need to be matching where we are as a community. We saw with George Floyd in the challenges that are global response - and Washington State was the first to step up on a statewide level to codify where community is. With the work with I-940, that really set the tone for us to do this work. So community-driven work is necessary for our communities to be healthy. So we believe that this work with the police accountability reforms, even with us as a diverse caucus - we've got folks who are attorneys, folks who are law enforcement, moms, dads, folks who are just members of the community who are invested in safety not only of the individuals who are stopped by law enforcement, but law enforcement themselves. We don't have to continue on the pathway of the militarization of our police force.
[00:06:03] Crystal Fincher: And I want to talk a little bit more about that and about public safety overall. I love the term that you just used - like a public safety continuum. Certainly there is the accountability component and talking about communities that are overpoliced, ineffectively policed, and where the focus is on criminalization and punishment, perhaps more than actually making people safer in addressing those root causes. One question is we continue to see a lot of malfeasance. I mean, we're sitting here recording this show the day after big City Council meetings in both Kent and Federal Way - addressing challenges - like one, Nazi propaganda posted by an assistant chief in Kent. In Federal Way, hostility towards police reform overall by many and seeking to pause on some community-driven initiatives. What do you think needs to be done in order to continue the accountability work? And beyond that, what else can be done just overall to make our community safer and to help bolster some of these community-led, community-driven initiatives to address the root causes of crime and prevent it before it becomes something that happens that police feel obligated to respond to?
[00:07:31] Representative Jamila Taylor: I mean, for one, we have to move away from this notion that criminality is race-based. And so, the policing policies and the way that the police departments were founded - based on slave codes - it has racist history. But do we want to eliminate public safety options in community? No. What we want to do is make sure that innocent folks are not attacked just for walking down the street. We don't want to criminalize poverty. We don't want to criminalize individuals who are experiencing substance use disorder or mental health crises that are untreated. We have alternatives to how to address community problems. And expanding resources at the end of the road - meaning in law enforcement, in jails - is costly to communities. We cannot afford to arrest our way out of these problems. We have to get to the root causes. And members of our community, Black members of our community, have been screaming for generations that we need resources.
And some of these policies en masse cause more disarray in communities. When you disinvest in communities that have a concentration of poverty, or unfair policing practices, and no investment in jobs or opportunities - one of the best ways you can help make communities safe is provide opportunities for folks to get jobs and education. Why aren't we investing more in that? And where our budgets go is showing where our values are. And it's not to say that law enforcement shouldn't have tools. They should. Some of the tools could be crisis responders so that instead of escalating a situation when someone's in a mental health crisis, that we're de-escalating. So there are techniques out there that allows for the dignity of the individual to be protected as they are contacted by police. And that's not soft on crime. Give the law enforcement the opportunity to investigate crime.
We don't sit here and talk about police brutality when it comes to white collar crime and how much fleecing of America that happens that is never accounted for. When we are talking about embezzlement, for example, folks want to be made whole if you stole money from them - you don't necessarily need to put them in jail. There are alternatives in other situations. So, I mean, it's a complex system - that it's hard for a lot of folks, including myself, to navigate. I mean, I'm an attorney. I work outside the criminal justice system with crime victims, and I know how people are impacted by the policies that we set at the state level and at the federal level. And I really wish that people understand that sometimes you're a victim today - you could be in a situation where you could be misconstrued as the perpetrator. And then you can be the victim in the next moment. And no one moment should define your entire future.
[00:10:48] Crystal Fincher: Well, and you raise a good point. You raised several good points, and we've seen especially for people who've advanced some of these very common sense reforms that have been accepted as normal, rational for quite some time, that you passed in the legislature, and responses of, "Well, this is hindering police from being able to do their job. You don't care about victims, and what are you going to do? Does that mean that everything that is happening and people being victimized is okay?" What do you say to people who are saying those, or people who don't know what to make about those arguments when they hear them?
[00:11:31] Representative Jamila Taylor: I'm a crime victim's attorney, and I represent domestic violence survivors. And most often, domestic violence survivors want the harm to stop. And so that doesn't necessarily mean putting their abuser in jail in all cases. Sometimes it means that person just needs to stop committing the domestic violence. There are individuals who need to be put in jail because they will be hell-bent on harming that individual, that survivor, or those in the path, in the pathway. So when you think about law enforcement, they are most likely to be harmed in responding to a domestic violence call than some of the other traffic stops and community stops. So when we think about how can we address community problems, how do we do that without law enforcement participation in the first place?
If someone is having a mental health crisis or a substance use crisis, can we use 988? This is a new system that we're developing that allows people to call this number instead of calling law enforcement when a person is in crisis. When more than 50% of calls to 911 are around substance use and mental health, there are other ways that we can address those challenges rather than "Law enforcement, come fix it, arrest that person." How many times have you been in a home where someone has a person who's a member of the family who has a substance use problem, and they have stolen something from the house? So grandma is upset that her television is stolen, but she's not going to report it to police, even though she can. She's already chosen other methods to address her family problem. And so again, do we want to push everyone into rock bottom and in thinking that that is the only way? We have to have multiple pathways to redemption, and we need to stop stigmatizing individuals who have found themselves addressing, having challenges with substance use disorder, or having untreated mental health challenges.
[00:13:39] Crystal Fincher: So how do we do more to put those resources in place? What can you do in your capacity as a legislator to - when someone does need mental health or crisis intervention, that when someone responds, there are resources to connect them with, to actually treat the root cause. Or if someone needs treatment and recovery services, that those are available for someone who wants to seek that treatment? What can we do from a legislative perspective to make sure those resources are there for people who need them - to make us all safer and healthier?
[00:14:19] Representative Jamila Taylor: So one of the things that we were addressing in the legislature last year was the Blake decision, which decriminalized possession of controlled substances. And as part of our response, it wasn't simply let's add "knowingly" to the statute and go back to the status quo and keep it as a felony. We, in the legislature, with bipartisan - heavy bipartisan support - decided that no, we're going to reduce it to a misdemeanor, which doesn't satisfy everybody. But we also needed to put the down payment in restoring the services that we need in community - crisis responders, recovery navigators, treatment centers. We have - even City Council members here in my district, the 30th district - saying, "Hey, a legislative priority is to have a treatment center in the City of Federal Way." And so we are now moving away from this "Not In My BackYard" mentality. We need the resources locally, and they need to be regionalized in such a way where folks don't have to go 30 miles, a 100 miles to get a basic service like Suboxone or something.
There's so many things that disrupt the person when they're trying to do the right thing. How do we reduce those barriers? And so when you're thinking about the restoration of services and rebuilding our complicated behavioral health system, we've got to make sure that we have a behavioral health system that has compensation, so people can be retained in the industry - professionals. We've got to have the physical infrastructure where people can access treatment, but then we have to have the recovery services that go along with that. So someone needs housing. They may need support with their family law needs, because if you think about it, a lot of folks actually have children and one of the challenges they face is that once they have a substance use disorder, they have difficulty getting access to their children afterwards. And we want those children to be safe, but we also want families to be intact, to be healthy. And how do we support the tools, the tools that people need to be on recovery and to stay in recovery. And so we're all about "Punish you, punish you, punish you from mistakes." Yes, we need accountability, but what is accountability when there are so many resources that are still lacking out there? When a person says, "I can't go through with treatment because there isn't anything in my entire county in Spokane." And that's just an example. I don't know what all the resources are in that particular community, but that's one reason why it needs to be community-driven, because we can't assume that what's available in Seattle or Tacoma is also available in Federal Way, Algona, Pacific. Or think that the best solutions only come from the big bureaucracies of a large city, like Seattle. There's some innovative opportunities that are happening out of Kitsap County, out of Pend Oreille County. We need to listen to all of our citizens as they are coming up with solutions that really matter for their neighbors.
[00:17:32] Crystal Fincher: So is more funding on the away? Is there legislation to help ease access, or to align access more? What can be done?
[00:17:45] Representative Jamila Taylor: So right now, it's around the supplemental budget and making sure that we continue to make more investments in the behavioral health system, make sure that we are on the right path around the implementation of the new laws that are out there. I'm working on a bill - assisted outpatient treatment - where if a person has been resistant to treatment, how can we get them into services when they're not making rational decisions to do it on their own? And so how does the family engage in that process? How do they petition the court to do it? And then if we do use that method of getting someone into services through a court action, making sure that it's not held against them in so many other venues, as a way to say, look, this person is a problem. No, this should be - they experienced a significant crisis. It's a disease. They're not making the same decisions that you or I would make, and we certainly don't know what it's like to be affected by some of these substance uses. At this time, at this moment, there are people who are in actual recovery serving in the legislature right now. There are people who are parents of folks who have a significant and severe substance use disorders - of all races, of all races. And so we just have to find the common ground to make that political will to invest - reinvest - because so much of it was pulled back with the great recession of 2010, 2008. And we're restoring services that were just slashed and burned and we're seeing the consequence of that.
And then, and we're seeing also, how do we do this in a different framework than what we did before the pandemic? When the pandemic gave us the opportunity to say, if we put someone in stable housing, they might have the time and the wherewithal to go to their telehealth appointment. Oh, wait, we find out that they need to have a phone to do that. We find out that maybe having food in their stomach will make it that they don't have to spend so much time getting access to that need and the drugs. So the harm reduction model is something that is absolutely necessary because the hard policy on drugs for the last 60 years has led us to where we are right now, and it has disproportionate impacts on communities. We've got to do something different than what we did before.
[00:20:17] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely agree with that. What we have been doing has not worked. We have to do something different. There has to be a change. I want to continue talking about health, especially as we sit here - the Omicron variant is running wild. I have never known as many people with COVID as I do right at this moment. It is hitting everyone. Fortunately, vaccines are still useful and helpful in that they reduce the incidence of hospitalization and death, but that does not mean that people still don't get sick and experience a number of complications from that. Everything from - they're experiencing their own health problems to missing work, missing income, dealing with that. People are worried and concerned because a lot of the safety net protections and supplements that had been there may not be there anymore. Eviction moratoriums are looking at ending where they haven't already ended.
And so people right now are going, "Hey, we're still in a pandemic." Lots of people want to be beyond it, but it is not over itself. It is still here. We still need the same kind of help and support that we did in the beginning of this. There are more people affected by it now when we're having lots of these programs end than there were when they were all in place. And so there's a lot of people feeling abandoned, frustrated - parents trying to figure out how to navigate through do they send their kids to school? Do they not? What kind of protections are in place versus not? It's a very unsettling, frustrating, and scary time for a lot of people. How do you plan to address this in the legislature? Is there anything that you can do right now? There's people having a hard time accessing rapid tests, super long lines at testing centers, hard time getting appointments for vaccinations. Do you think there needs to be a renewed effort and a doubling down reinstatement of a lot of the protections that were in place before? What's on your plate and on your docket to get to address this?
[00:22:31] Representative Jamila Taylor: I mean, I think this is a complex issue that is hitting all the domains of our daily living. When we say shut down schools, that has not only the impact on the education of the young person, but the childcare resources of the family. So that means that you might be pulling out not one, but both parents, out of the economic market. We don't have universal basic income that folks can rely on if we have to do that and they have to parent the child and educate the child and do what have you. We have folks who have inconsistent access to broadband. So it's like when you do go to a virtual school setting, can they even get the education during that temporary time?
I mean, this pandemic might end up being an endemic, meaning that it's going to be with us for the long-term. So we have to come up with strategies that help us cope with the situation. That means vaccinations. While some folks may say that they're not effective, they are effective. It is reducing the hospitalizations. And just last month, FEMA set up a shop in Federal Way where they had 500 to 700 people a day coming in for their vaccinations and their boosters. I went in there for my booster. It was simple. It was easy. And folks want to come back. The only reason why it was interrupted was that snow that happened between Christmas, but I believe that it was modified operations and some people were able to get in despite the snow. If you think about it, when I was in there, there were folks across all racial backgrounds who were getting the vaccinations.
And I noticed in one of the stats that the disproportionality is a problem across the state and across the nation. However, folks in communities are catching up. So for example, Joseph Seia, in the Pacific Islander community, has done incredible work to ensure that members of the Pacific Islanders are having access to vaccinations and testing and what have you. And they do it in a culturally responsive way. So having those messengers from community to ensure that they have the good information that's out there - we don't want anyone left behind.
And if you choose not to get a vaccine, okay, but we also know that basic medical standards has separation and segregation. When you're getting a surgery, you're not asking to have that surgery in the middle of the meat locker. You're trying to go into an OR, where it's sanitized and people have very limited access to the space. And when you're talking about airborne illness that is hard to control and is easily transmitted, taking reasonable actions - like social distancing, masks, and other precautions - can slow down the spread of the disease. We know we're not stopping it. We would love to get to stop it, but we have to do something and we can't just put our heads in the sand and think, "Oh, I'll take that horse tranquilizer to cure my condition with COVID." As much as you trust the science on that and you don't want to trust the science on the vaccine that is globally researched - researched - I don't know what to say. How do we choose some science and not other science?
[00:26:10] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And you talked about this being a highly transmissible virus. It is. I think one challenge that a lot of people are looking at and asking our leaders about is that, especially with this more easily transmissible variant, in conjunction with now we have CDC guidelines saying that the quarantine time can be shorter, lots of reports from folks in the service industry where employers are attempting to rush them back to work sick, not taking all the appropriate precautions. They don't have time to get tested and certainly can't afford to take that time off. Even time with vaccinations and experiencing side effects and maybe needing a day off and time to do that, that's not there.
Does the legislature have a role to play, or is there anything that can be done to say, hey, if we are going to remain open and try and figure out how to navigate through this without shutting things down, then we have a responsibility to the essential workers who continue to be out there, continue to be exposed to this virus, and people continuing to ask more of them under increasing strain throughout this? Is there a place for mandating, within the states, certain time that people get and making sure that workers have protections? Is there anything that can be done to make sure workers aren't being forced back into work while sick, which impacts the entire community's health? What do you see as the legislature's role with that?
[00:27:57] Representative Jamila Taylor: One of the difficulties that we have as a legislature that only meets once a year - for 60 days in even years, and 120 days in off years - is that we are trying to respond to something that's rapidly changing. Two weeks ago, it was 10 days for quarantine. And so the minute we start building statewide policy that responds to that, then something else is going to happen. And so I think that there are some long-term effects that we know off top. How do we address the lack of funding that some schools have, and they may go bankrupt if we can't address how many children are pulled out of the school. So we can talk about how it happens. I know that as Senator Lovick was in the House, he wanted to introduce legislation on a pandemic response, so we can kind of triage through all of this.
And I think part of that can inform long-term policy. We can over-legislate and we can under-legislate. I think the complexity of this challenge and the advantage of having a Speaker in the House that has a direct public health background informs us on how we can address some of the challenges in even how we operate. We want to instill confidence in community to live their daily lives. But I know - you and I - in the pandemic post-George Floyd, we don't want to go to a new normal where we go back to old routines where we have four and five jobs. What we want to go is to new possibilities of how to live our life. And sometimes when you have new possibilities, there are new factors that we have to take into account, that what we did before wasn't always healthy. And maybe that is the wake-up call that we need. We were not on a healthy path. Maybe we need to have more healthy Nubians in charge who can help guide us through some ways of thinking about the future of work.
[00:30:03] Crystal Fincher: I guess, in this few minutes that we have left, I just want to see if there's anything on the top of your agenda. You're also on the Transportation Committee, a lot more there. Is there anything that folks should keep an eye out for? And how can the public be engaged throughout this session that's happening? And what is your call to people who are just wondering what they can do?
[00:30:29] Representative Jamila Taylor: Well, I would say there are four key themes that are still present in the legislature: racial equity, economic recovery, still COVID response. And so I know that there are several legislators who will probably have bills to drop there. And then of course, environmental stewardship. And so if we think about, in terms of transportation, we have this huge transportation federal package that we're waiting to get dropped into Washington State. And how do we use those federal dollars to leverage the resources that we need to put on the table locally? We know we need huge infrastructure packages throughout the state that have been long in the queue to get funded. We're still behind in passing a transportation package. And so the federal money will help us address some of those immediate needs. And -
[00:31:22] Crystal Fincher: On that - real quick, just on that transportation thing. I know there's lots of conversation looking at, hey, we're in the middle of this climate crisis. A lot of our communities, especially in South King County - lower income communities, BIPOC communities - are disproportionately impacted by air pollution, other types of pollution. As we look at this new transportation package and cars and highways being a primary source of greenhouse gas emissions and pollution, are you looking for a package that doesn't expand current highways - that it might be maintenance-focused, but maybe not expansion of that and more investment in transit and facilities and infrastructure for people biking and walking who may not be able to drive?
[00:32:15] Representative Jamila Taylor: Well, I mean, part of that is building out the infrastructure of where people live. So if you think about our housing policy, if we are expanding options that are transportation-oriented design. So in South King County, we have hubs coming through light rail to Federal Way in particular. So how do we increase the density around those light rail stops? How do we make sure that we have services that are available? So for example, Black Members Caucus is very much interested in having more community health centers throughout the region. So how do you access the basic services within the walking distance? And how do we use public transportation in a safe way? Because - well, the perception is it's not safe to be on public transportation or it's not convenient, and we've got to find ways to respond to the needs of community. And we're in unique times where some folks are working from home, and so how do we change what being in our communities looks like in terms of accessing resources and services in regards to transportation needs.
[00:33:25] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Much appreciated. This is our time for today, but I appreciate you taking this time -
[00:33:29] Representative Jamila Taylor: Can I come back?
[00:33:31] Crystal Fincher: - to talk with us. Of course, you can come back. You're welcome back any time. No shortage of things to talk about any time you're here, and appreciate the work that you continue to do. Thank you so much, Representative Taylor.
[00:33:43] Representative Jamila Taylor: Thank you. Appreciate your time.
[00:33:45] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter, @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, wherever else you get your podcast. Just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
On today’s week-in-review, Associate Editor of The Stranger, Rich Smith, joins Crystal to discuss the investigation finding that SPD improperly faked radio chatter about Proud Boys and escalated and inflamed tensions as CHOP formed, and a Kent PD Assistant police chief being asked to resign for posting Nazi insignia and his wife hiding critical social media posts on the city’s official social media accounts. They also chat about bills to pay attention to as the legislative session starts on Monday, as well as what Mayor Bruce Harrell’s inaugural press conference revealed about his plans and priorities.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal on Twitter at @finchfrii, and find Rich Smith at @richsssmith
Resources
“Seattle police improperly faked radio chatter about Proud Boys as CHOP formed in 2020, investigation finds” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-police-improperly-faked-radio-chatter-about-proud-boys-as-chop-formed-in-2020-investigation-finds/
“Kent assistant police chief disciplined for posting Nazi insignia, joking about Holocaust” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/kent-assistant-police-chief-disciplined-for-posting-nazi-insignia-and-joking-about-the-holocaust/
“Social media posts criticized how Kent police handled Nazi controversy — but they were hidden by chief’s wife” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/criticism-of-kent-police-nazi-controversy-was-hidden-on-social-media-by-police-chiefs-wife-who-ran-the-accounts/
“A Big List of Bills to Track During Washington's 2022 Legislative Session” by Rich Smith from The Stranger:
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/01/06/64661375/a-big-list-of-bills-to-track-during-washingtons-2022-legislative-session
“Harrell Pledges Bold Agenda in Inaugural Speech” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist:
https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/01/04/harrell-pledges-bold-agenda-in-inaugural-speech/
“It’s up to Harrell to Save Renters in Peril” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger:
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/01/07/64713950/its-up-to-harrell-to-save-renters-in-peril
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced on the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a cohost. Welcome to the program again, today's cohost, Associate Editor of The Stranger and noted poet, Rich Smith.
[00:00:50] Rich Smith: Good to be back - thanks Crystal.
[00:00:52] Crystal Fincher: Good to have you back. Well, we have no shortage of things to talk about this week. And you know what? The SPD just keeps popping up into the news - it doesn't seem to end. And this week, we learned that police improperly faked radio chatter about Proud Boys as CHOP formed in 2020. What happened here?
[00:01:19] Rich Smith: Yeah. Well, it was June 8th, which was the day that the cops had abandoned the [East] Precinct, and lifted the barriers, and allowed protestors who had been gathered at that intersection in Capitol Hill - for several days being variously gassed and beaten up for making vocal their criticisms to the police, and occasionally throwing a rock or two. They released the barricades, let the protestors walk the block that they wanted to walk, and then yeah, and then left the - and then went about their business, basically.
And then after that, the cops hopped on the scanner, where they communicate with one another about crimes stuff, reports - stuff that's going on around town, and invented a hoax. They fabricated a maraudering gang of Proud Boys, a violent group known to brawl people in the streets, seek out anti-fascists and beat them up, suggested that they were armed with guns - and it was four cops who were enacting this ruse. And the ruse was overseen and approved by the two commanders, including the Captain of the East Precinct, which was the one that the cops had just abandoned. On Wednesday, the Office of Police Accountability determined that this ruse improperly - or not improperly, sorry - this ruse added fuel to the fire of the situation - it was not a de-escalation tactic to claim that there was a roving gang of white supremacists looking to crack some Antifa skulls downtown. But there was no recommended discipline for the cops who participated in the ruse, and the two cops who signed off on the ruse are no longer employed at SPD. And so-
[00:03:48] Crystal Fincher: It's all good, evidently.
[00:03:49] Rich Smith: That's what's going on - right, yeah.
[00:03:52] Crystal Fincher: I mean, from the OPA, their finding was just, "Shouldn't happen, but don't do it again. We're not looking at this in the context of everything else that has happened." And I mean, just underscoring that - no, it absolutely was not a de-escalation tactic. Yes, it absolutely inflamed tensions. Because this was not some nebulous threat, this was not some theoretical violent threat - these were people who had enacted violence upon protesters recently before that. There was a legitimate fear.
[00:04:32] Rich Smith: Absolutely, yeah. I mean, I walked through with the protesters - the barriers that were lifted - when they were happening. I was interviewing people, hearing the chatter and the gossip as that place where eventually the Free Capitol Hill that became CHAZ, that became CHOP - that autonomous zone around the precinct was forming. And the number one thing I heard, the number one concern I heard were these rumors of Proud Boys coming around the neighborhood. They're armed, they're dangerous, they're looking for Antifa. And there was concern that the Proud Boys were going to burn down the precinct and blame it on the Black Lives Matter movement, so suddenly there was this need to protect, ironically, the precinct from an attack. And a need to kind of hunker down and barricade the zone, and protect themselves against the threat that the cops had just invented over the scanner.
And you're right, that they also had further reason to believe that these rumors were true, because the day before, a man named Nikolas Fernandez allegedly drove his car into the side of the protests, had shot with an extended clip a man named Dan Gregory, and then ran to the front of the police line, where he was welcomed with open arms, potentially because his brother worked at that very precinct. Now, the defense for that case says that the guy was just confused, and he was on his way to work, and there was road blockages, and so he didn't know what to do, and he suddenly ran into this protest - yada, yada, yada - he's got his story. But, this is all to say that the protestors were very afraid of people attacking them in cars, were very afraid of Proud Boys coming, burning down the precinct, shooting them up in retaliation for the protesting.
And this ruse by the SPD was just bad policing - it inflamed the situation, to quote the OPA, but it also was the reason that CHOP formed. It might not have been the only reason, of course, it was non-hierarchical structures there - everyone was there for their own shit. But, that was the word on the street in the moment - was Proud Boys are coming, we've got to circle up, we've got to protect ourselves - and that was the staging grounds for CHOP.
[00:07:21] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and certainly aided the fortification, obviously. Everybody was there, principally initially, mainly, to protest violence against Black lives, particularly from the state. But in the moment, certainly, especially looking at tactics to maximize the effectiveness of this direct action, fortification was what made the most sense when you have an armed threat approaching you, and you're trying to assert your First Amendment right to protest. That is what they inflamed, what they created. And I don't even think, certainly in the aftermath of this, "Hey, this is a commonly used de-escalation tactic." Clearly they wanted to just mess with these protesters and to create chaos, and to provoke action that they could act against.
[00:08:26] Rich Smith: Yeah. What was his name - Brian - he was the captain of the East Precinct who now works for ADT, I think, down in Texas - the home security firm or whatever. Anyway, the guy who perpetuated, or who approved the ruse - when asked about it by Myerberg, or investigators with OPA - said that the reason for the ruse was they wanted to let the protestors know that cops were still out there doing stuff, that their position had not been weakened despite the fact that they literally had just abandoned the East Precinct - or a couple hours before - slash, they also wanted to do the ruse because they hoped it would draw protesters away from the precinct, and then, I don't know, maybe give them an opportunity, give the cops an opportunity to retake the precinct that they had already decided to abandon, again, as far as we know, themselves, without telling -
[00:09:28] Crystal Fincher: Themselves, yeah.
[00:09:30] Rich Smith: - without telling the mayor, who was supposed to be the overseer of the cops. They're Durkan's cops, acting on their own extremely bad, extremely wounded impulses. And they were clearly - it doesn't take a Psych major to determine that they were clearly wounded - and they wanted to show the protestors that the cops were still the top dog, that they still had the power, and the way that they decided to do that was to do what any bully or big brother would do, which is say there's a big, scary monster coming to attack you. And you're going to wish you had us to protect you, you know what I mean? And the protesters - they felt the need to defend themselves, felt the need to suddenly defend the property so that they didn't get accused of burning down a precinct when they didn't even do it, didn't want to hurt the movement. And so, this happened.
And then the response from City officials so far has been fun too - newly elected mayor, Bruce Harrell, released a statement saying like, "That sucked. Don't do that, that's totally bad, that's wrong. Don't do this - this ruse was bad." And, what was the action he's going to do? He's going to go down there and talk to Interim Police Chief, Adrian Diaz, and tell him that that's unacceptable behavior, and stuff like that. So, that's nice - the chief is going to get a talking to. And then the Public Safety Chair of the City Council, Lisa Herbold, released a statement saying that what she's calling for is for the cops to fully implement ruse training.
[00:11:20] Crystal Fincher: Ruse training?
[00:11:22] Rich Smith: Yeah, ruses are acceptable - cops can lie to people in order to arrest them, or get evidence from them - so long as they don't quote the, according to state law, shock the conscience. A cop can't say there's a nuclear bomb headed this way or whatever, just to get someone to move somewhere. They can't do anything that shocking. This maraudering gang of Proud Boys coming to attack you - that would, I think, falls into the bad ruse category. Anyway, OPA - the cops were supposed to fully implement training recommendations on ruses, they had only partially done so according to Herbold. And so, she wants to get those fully implemented - you've got to tell all the cops about how to do ruses properly. And she also wants the ruses fully documented - that was another recommendation from the OPA - every time they do one of these ruses, they should write down that they have done the ruse so that we can go back later and determine whether or not it was a good ruse or a bad ruse.
Or, we don't get in a situation like we were in today, where it comes out a year and a half after - like this vital piece of a narrative that the City is telling itself comes out a year and a half afterwards - thanks to, shout out to Omari Salisbury at Converge Media, who asked the cops for body cam footage of these Proud Boys that they were supposedly tracking. When his request turned up nil, OPA initiated their investigation. And also several, I should mention, journalists at the time - particularly Matt Watson, aka Spek - immediately thought that the ruse was a ruse.
[00:13:24] Crystal Fincher: He called it at the time, yeah.
[00:13:28] Rich Smith: He called it at the time, yeah. And communicated that very clearly, and brought receipts. And so, that prompted questioning from journalists that eventually, through the process of gaining public records and initiating investigations with the OPA, comes out with this vital piece of the story of the protests of 2020.
[00:13:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting - one, just the story, and just the - obviously the story on its own is egregious, just another egregious example. But also another example of the loss of control of the department - this was not a mayor directing or controlling anything - nothing in that narrative was directed, influenced, controlled by the mayor. And also, nothing in that narrative, according to the information that's publicly available, was directed or controlled by the Police Chief at the time, Carmen Best. These were officers who had basically gone rogue, and made these consequential, harmful, dangerous decisions on their own with no recourse. We're now finding out about this months, years after the fact - and then following up with laughable accountability, honestly.
I mean, if ruse training is what comes out of this, I don't know how people are really looking at that as anything that meaningfully addresses this issue here - both with this specific issue - and with SPD overall. I hope that that was just an idea in the beginning, and we're going to get to the meat of accountability coming up, because that seems wholly just insufficient.
[00:15:28] Rich Smith: Yeah, I'm skeptical, yeah, of this reformist answer that the City leaders are currently taking, which is to - you have Bruce Harrell doing an appeal to authority saying, "I know what I'll do, I'll go to the chief, and then we'll have this top-down answer," which is pretty typical, I think, of Harrell's impulse just as a leader. He's constantly talking about how he's going to bring the right people together, he knows everybody in the City, everybody knows him, it's a real top-down kind of coach approach. And so it makes sense that he would be like, "I know what I'll do, I'll go to the lead of the organization, Diaz, and say, 'Hey, this is unacceptable, tell everybody to quit this, whatever.'" Okay, so that's one - that's his approach to this reform.
Herbold is saying, "We need more oversight over the cops lying, we need more records of this stuff, we need more training." But, the thing that seems to actually work, and what we're finding out as a result of many of these OPA investigations, is that the cops who perpetuated this bullshit are no longer at the department. And they're no longer at the department not because reformers rooted them out, but because of the Defund movement, which created a culture around policing that is inherently skeptical, that demands real accountability, that says, "You can't be hitting us, and we're going to film you when you do," that demands more of cops, and that doesn't - yeah. And so, that seems to be the thing that worked to root out a number of these officers who've gone rogue, or whose mission as officers don't align with the City's mission - I'll just say that.
[00:17:25] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, yeah, pretty much.
[00:17:26] Rich Smith: Defund worked - I don't know what to tell you. It probably rooted out more bad apples than any consent decree could have. I really should put asterisks all over that, I don't have any numbers or whatever. But just anecdotally, every time they go to discipline one of these guys, they're not there anymore. And it's for a reason.
[00:17:50] Crystal Fincher: I would say increasingly - I think that there's still a number up there. But, certainly increasingly, and certainly it's because there has been pressure applied and accountability demanded, and increasingly made possible by the Defund movement and its demands, and holding other lawmakers accountable for enacting that through policy and through investigation and action. So, we will see how that continues.
This is not the only police story that came up this week. In my city of Kent, Washington, we - it came out - have a police chief, an assistant police chief, who displayed literal Nazi propaganda, who was disciplined for posting a Nazi insignia, and joking about the Holocaust. The more that we learn about this, the worse that it gets. He admittedly joked about the Holocaust, he admittedly - this was a long-running thing. He had shaved his facial hair once into a Hitler mustache, and repeatedly told a joke to the effect that - just a horrible joke, horrible anti-Semitic joke, obviously this is all anti-Semitic. And word was given that the discipline for this - for an assistant chief who had repeatedly joked about the Holocaust, who had acted consistent with Nazi behavior and literally posted Nazi insignias on his door in the police department - was a two week suspension. That's what initially came out.
[00:19:34] Rich Smith: That'll do it.
[00:19:35] Crystal Fincher: Obviously, public outcry. Obviously, a response from other City officials caused the mayor to reconsider and announced that she will be asking the union for this officer's resignation. Now obviously, firing may not be as simple in all of these situations to have it stick, but you can certainly act that way and then be like, "Okay, well, we dare you to try and get your job back, you person who are comfortable with Nazi actions and cosplay, and spreading that nasty infection to the rest of the department." I should note that this was caught because a detective under this assistant chief's command reported him after this insignia had been up for four days. One reported him - everyone else in the department, I'm sure, was not comfortable reporting an assistant chief to this. To me, this speaks a lot about the culture that is currently happening there - that this can happen and only one, thankfully one, but only one reported this. And my goodness, if the recommendation that comes back after an investigation is two weeks, then doesn't that indicate that this entire system is broken? There's a lot more broken here.
[00:21:07] Rich Smith: Yeah. I mean, if you can't fire a Nazi cop for putting Third Reich insignia outside of his office door - and he wasn't just like some cop, right?
[00:21:22] Crystal Fincher: Nope.
[00:21:22] Rich Smith: This guy was the head of the Department of Special Investigations and Detective Unit -
[00:21:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, Assistant Chief.
[00:21:30] Rich Smith: Assistant Chief, yeah. And this guy's safe space sticker is a couple of Nazi patches. It's just - the plausible deniability stretches the bounds of the imagination. He says that he didn't know that the insignia was Nazi stuff, it was from a show. So, if you're fighting an improper dismissal case or whatever, it just - I guess this is where you end up in the process, with a two-week suspension. But you're right, you could try to fight it a little bit harder, and push and push and push on this guy's counter-story, and really continue to gather more of this evidence that he was just flagrantly doing Nazi stuff in the Kent Police Department.
[00:22:23] Crystal Fincher: Openly in the Kent Police Department. And if you can't fire a Nazi cop, who can you fire? The investigation found - he tried to say, "You know, despite making anti-Semitic jokes, and despite giving myself a literal Hitler mustache - that Nazi insignia that I posted on my door, I had no idea it was actually a Nazi insignia." And the investigation found that that was not the case, the investigation found that he knowingly posted that, knowing that it was a Nazi insignia. Everything about this screams Nazi cop, because literally Nazi cop. And so, this is a situation - to me - and for a lot of departments when they have egregious actions like this, and then they say, "Well, given the how - with the cop contracts oftentimes are - it's hard to fire them. If they went through arbitration, they'd wind up back on the force." Well, test it, test it. Say, "We're making a stand. And if you force us, perhaps, but we're not doing this willingly." Make that stand. And so, I suppose that is now where the mayor is at, asking for the resignation. If he says no, then what? Kick him off - get him out.
[00:23:46] Rich Smith: You know, I think maybe we should do anti-Nazi training. But, anti-Nazi is a little just one-sided, so we probably should do anti-extremist training.
[00:23:55] Crystal Fincher: Oh my gosh. And look, I live in Kent - it is not like I haven't noticed the increase in Blue Lives Matter stickers on police vehicles, which has been an issue in other cities. And there's been pushback against in other cities - certainly this has been brought up and basically ignored by City leadership. Would love to hear some accountability on that. There's a lot to find when you look into the City of Kent.
[00:24:26] Rich Smith: Yes, yeah, and there should be more - yeah, much more scrutiny on a lot of these, the goings-on in these suburban cities. But, just the whole Nazi cop thing, or alleged Nazi cop thing goes back to this - how do you change the culture in these institutions? And the reformist answer seems to be - you change it by training, you change it by putting pressure on the higher-ups to be accountable to the people they oversee - these are their answers. It just goes back to how challenging it is going to be for reformists to really change the culture of these institutions, especially when the culture right now of these institutions is self-victimization, a feeling like that they're the guardians, literally, against chaos in society. And a number of them are attracted to - everyone goes where they're flattered - and so the cops are going to conservative wings of political thought, where they're bathed and flattered. And this is all contributing to being a little bit more permissive of the old Nazi insignia on the door. I don't know how you rearrange that without drastically changing who a cop is and what a cop does. I think that that's where you have to start making change, rather than saying like, "We're going to tell your boss on you," or, "We're going to train you to not be a Nazi." I think that those reforms haven't worked, as well as-
[00:26:09] Crystal Fincher: They have failed.
[00:26:10] Rich Smith: Yeah, yeah.
[00:26:12] Crystal Fincher: They have failed.
[00:26:13] Rich Smith: And yeah, going back to what I said earlier, the Defund movement did more to root out these kinds of cops than any of these reforms seem to. I don't know that for sure, but that seems to be what we're learning anecdotally.
[00:26:25] Crystal Fincher: Well, it certainly has brought - it says in no uncertain terms that the resources that we continue to dedicate to the things that have not worked, that have not worked to make us safer - bottom line - and that have not worked to curb this behavior in all of these departments. It has not worked, so why are we continuing to dump more resources in the same types of things? We're at a time now where we just had a lot of new lawmakers sworn in - lots of city councils, new mayors sworn in - and they have the opportunity to lead in a different way than we've seen before. We have a new legislative session that's about to start, and there's the opportunity there for them to take substantive action to fill in the gaps in accountability that exist.
And I would just urge these people to look at these situations, and to look at how inadequate our laws, regulations, have been in addressing this - and understanding the need for more accountability. That we've tried training, we've tried all of these types of, "Don't you see how bad this is?" And the only thing that seems to be effective at getting people to see how bad it is is treating them - is acting on our behalf, as if it's actually bad - and holding people accountable. We're having this conversation at the same time that we have a new City Attorney in Seattle who is talking about prosecuting crimes. We are more comfortable as a society talking about the consequences for stealing a loaf of bread than we are for being a Nazi assistant police chief, and I am just sick of it. I cannot stand it, and I urge people to take substantive action. It is time to be bold - this is why people were elected. Please do something.
[00:28:18] Rich Smith: Would you mind for a moment if we did see what the legislators are up to over -
[00:28:21] Crystal Fincher: Let's look at that - you actually - there was a wonderful article that you wrote about this that covered a lot of this. And one directly ties to - a number directly tie to policing. One, an issue directly tied to the lying - ruses in SPD. What is on tap in the legislative session that's about to start on Monday?
[00:28:55] Rich Smith: That's right. We've got a 60-day session coming up - short session - mostly just tweaking stuff going on, mostly just kind of working multi-year bills that people know are going to take a bunch of time to get over the finish line. And of course, we've got to pass, I think, around a $60 billion supplemental budget, so there's some consideration about how to use a lot of one-time millions and one-time federal funding.
But, there is some policing stuff going on in terms of the proposed bills, thus far - related to lying - House Bill 1690, if you want to follow it, Rep Strom Peterson, of all people - a Democrat - wants to render inadmissible evidence gathered from cops who lie to suspects during interrogation. So that, if passed - if a cop is interrogating somebody and they invent a ruse or a lie - say, "Your dad told me you did it, your friends told me you did it," and that produces a false confession or some piece of evidence that is going to be submitted in court later. This law passes and says, "We're not going to take that evidence." So, the thinking being that that would deter cops from using this tactic to produce evidence, which would be no good to them in a court anyway. So, that wouldn't stop cops from using ruses of the kind that helped to start CHOP in the City. But, it would potentially lower the use of this tactic, which young people are particularly vulnerable to. For instance, the Central Park Five - they picked them up because the cop lied and said that their friends had already ratted on them. And so, they drew false confessions that way.
More recently, in 2019, I think a Seattle police officer was interrogating a guy who they suspected of hitting a bunch of parked cars - didn't injure anybody, but the cop told him that he had left one person in critical condition. A little while after that, the guy, feeling so sad that he had done something that killed somebody - he thought killed somebody - committed suicide as a result of that. So, I don't know if it should be illegal for cops to do ruses. But, these kinds of - I'm sure that they don't want to unilaterally disarm when suspects themselves do ruses to try to escape accountability from laws that we decide that we want as a society or whatever. But, there should be some guard rails around how badly you could lie, to what extent evidence produced through this really tricky, potentially disastrous tactic can be used. And, that seems like a good one in particular.
[00:32:15] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and there's a lot of others. I mean, you've rounded up - there's gun legislation to ban high-capacity magazines, close the ghost gun loophole. There's bills to address income inequality - work continues with Rep Noel Frame. And work on the guaranteed basic income policy, sponsored by Liz Berry. Lots of good stuff in there, lots of criminal justice reform, a number of them - bill to allow for the legal grow and therapeutic guiding of trips for psilocybin - which has been legalized in a lot of other places. Certainly, the frequently-talked about Washington Cares Act, and figuring out what to do with that. Environmental bills to reduce emissions from gas companies, to make buildings more efficient, make packaging more recyclable. One that I am tracking closely and in favor of - by Mia Gregerson - to move local elections to even-numbered years with Rep Debra Entenman. A lot of stuff there - are there any other ones that stick out to you?
[00:33:26] Rich Smith: Yeah. The big one for me, this year, that I'll probably be screaming about - I won't be alone in it, I'm sure, is Senate Bill 5670, House Bill 1782. They're identical bills - it's just the House bill and the Senate version - sponsored by Mona Das in the Senate and Jessica Bateman in the House. And it would legalize multi-unit homes statewide - I don't know how you want to put it - abolish single-family zoning statewide under certain criteria. That criteria, not to bore people, but everywhere within a half a mile of rapid transit - that is like bus stops that come every 15 minutes, rail, ferry stop - you're going to legalize up to sixplexes, basically. And then cities with lower populations, under 20,000, they'll have to take less density. I think it goes down to quads. And then cities under 10,000, they have to take duplexes. There's an alternative for cities who don't want to do that - where they have a formula - and then they get to put the density wherever they want to, but they can't perpetuate racism in doing so. So, that's kind of the basic structure of the bill.
Oregon has already legalized apartments and homes and multi-unit homes everywhere. California has already legalized apartments and multi-unit homes everywhere. Minneapolis has done this. The sky hasn't fallen. It's absolutely necessary because we have a 250,000 unit-strong housing deficit. This has tragicomically - sorry, this has raised the price of homes to tragicomically high levels. The only place a first-time home buyer can afford to live is in like, Ferry County. There's six counties, there's seven counties, in the eastern part of the state where you can technically afford to buy a home if it's your first one. Everywhere else is astronomical and damn-near impossible to own affordably. We're only building 44,000 units a year, so that's not going to keep up with the number of units we need to solve this housing crisis. They've been trying to pass this bill for four years, and this year there's some reason for excitement, because Governor Inslee has put his weight behind it. However, there's still plenty of opposition - you've got the Association of Washington Cities, which represent cities, which are filled by NIMBYs, because they think that adding more density is going to lower their property values, which is going to tank their retirement prospects, because we live in a society that for some reason links the price of our house to whether or not we get to comfortably retire in old age. That's a separate episode. But, there's a lot of strong opposition to this bill, so - at a press conference yesterday, the leadership didn't sound too enthused about it. So, it's going to take a big - if you want to try to save the housing crisis with a market-based solution this year, you're going to want to be tracking this bill. And every time it gets a hearing you're going to want to sign up to talk about it, say how much you can't afford a house in your own neighborhood, et cetera. And you're going to want to push your lawmakers, because right now they're hearing from NIMBYs - the default is, don't allow this density. So, yeah.
[00:37:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And many of them live in those neighborhoods, and have those tendencies themselves -
[00:37:16] Rich Smith: That's right.
[00:37:16] Crystal Fincher: - realistically, and are hearing this from their literal next-door neighbors. So, it is critical that people make a phone call, send an email to your legislator to say, "Hey, absolutely support this. I'm excited about it. I am expecting you to support it and will be paying attention." And to sign in when the bill has a hearing as it goes through the process. People have to know and hear from people who want this legislation, because NIMBYs mobilize for this, always, big time. And, they're in the minority. We see poll after poll that says that they are not the majority here, but the majority isn't used to advocating in the same way and pushing those same levers of power for these issues. And we really need to.
[00:38:02] Rich Smith: Yeah. And it's hard to tell - and you've got to do it blanket. You can't assume because you think you have a progressive representative that they're going to be automatically on board. You cannot name one Democratic Senator in the Senate right now who is like - you could name any of them, and then say, "This person is going to vote against this bill," and that would make sense to me. I don't know who opposes it, but there's a reason it hasn't passed in four years. There's a reason why Mona Das has to keep trying, who's a renter by the way. She's also a mortgage broker, but she's also a renter. And, so any one of these people could be problem children to getting this, again, market-based solution. I mean, we're talking about letting people build. I thought that this was what you all were about, you know? I thought you guys were super into this kind of thing. But yeah, so, anyway, this is all to say - don't give your representative the benefit of the doubt because you think they're progressive. They could be a NIMBY in hiding, you know?
[00:39:14] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely correct. Well, I just want to take these last few minutes on the show to talk about another event that was covered this week - the Bruce Harrell inaugural press conference. After being sworn in, he made a speech - we now have Mayor Harrell, Mayor Durkan is no more - no more in office, she's certainly around - who knows where she's going to end, like go, I don't know, maybe she's going to run away from Seattle. But, Bruce Harrell is here, and he made a very bold-sounding speech. And I just wanted to talk about a few of the specifics in his speech, or what he brought, and some of them had specifics.
One kind of immediate thing - he's still weighing whether to extend the eviction moratorium, which ends on January 15th. Obviously the Rona is here, the Omicron variant is just continuing to dance through our lives. We are in the middle of a pandemic, we aren't beyond it - certainly parents are struggling with how to approach school, schools are struggling to just be staffed at a level that they can have staff in classrooms. Now we're not even at just teachers in classrooms, just any adult staff member is filling in in many places, in many districts. It's a hard thing. And in the midst of this obviously we're still dealing with the same issues of people taking care of sick relatives, people they are living with, living with immunocompromised people. And so, we don't know - he said he would be looking at the data and figuring that out. So, we can expect an upcoming announcement on whether or not that's going to continue, and I'm sure your feedback on whether he should continue that would be helpful. Chief Diaz is - oh, go ahead.
[00:41:05] Rich Smith: Yeah, just to add, there was an important report in The Times this morning that the County doesn't have enough money to handle all of the rent assistance applications that has come its way. So, there's 10,000 requests for rental assistance that the County is not processing -
[00:41:25] Crystal Fincher: Oh my gosh.
[00:41:26] Rich Smith: - as of November. The County asked for $120 million from the Feds to cover the gap. So, if Bruce doesn't - I mean, and so - that's 10,000 people who say that they're behind on rent - in King County - I don't know how many particularly in Seattle. If Harrell lifts the eviction moratorium, that's that. And then those people could face eviction for non-payment of the rent.
[00:41:57] Crystal Fincher: That's the trigger, yep.
[00:41:58] Rich Smith: And so, that's something to - hopefully that the Harrell administration is considering. And also he says that he wants to strike some kind of balance between keeping vulnerable people housed, and making it so that vulnerable landlords don't feel like they have to sell their rental property and potentially decrease the rental housing stock. That's another conversation, but this is what he's balancing. Okay, he hinted that he was going to maybe rewrite some version of the moratorium, maybe he'll just keep it for another month based on The Seattle Times report, the amount of need that's out there. But, it's a huge problem, it's a big thing that the Harrell administration needs to deal with right now, and it's happening next week.
[00:42:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah - very, very big thing. And that was a very important data point to be considered. Another one - Chief Adrian Diaz might stay - Bruce Harrell didn't say that he was definitely going to leave, that they had some evaluation to do, that he needed to set expectations, and they needed to talk about those. And so it's possible that Chief Diaz stays, or that he embarks upon a nationwide search. He brought up that the City will pursue climate policies towards net zero emissions so that there'd be an early focus on electric cars. But that there weren't many specifics there, so we will wait to see what happens there.
You know, another big thing that I was not expecting - that was intriguing, actually - and that could turn out to be very good. He said that he wanted to provide healthcare for every Seattle resident. That would be big, that would be awesome if that actually turned out to be every Seattle resident, if that included mental healthcare - like comprehensive healthcare for every Seattle resident would be great. Announced that as an initiative, where they said that they're coming up with the parameters to evaluate who does and who doesn't have healthcare so far, and figuring that out. So, we still have to see what the specifics of this are going to be.
[00:44:15] Rich Smith: Yeah, finding money in the City budget - if it takes any money to provide healthcare for people as a City, finding that money in the City budget sounds like a real challenge. But, it's a worthy one. I don't know of many municipalities that offer healthcare for all in this way. I think New York City - Bill de Blasio did one - I should have looked that up before we started talking. But yeah, it seems like it would cost a lot of money, and he's got Tim Burgess on the case, the Strategic Initiatives Lead that he hired - former mayor, former City Councilman of many years, I think 12, don't quote me on that - and Burgess is a former cop, but he has led, I think, on some health initiatives. He made a big deal out of the Nurse-Family Partnership whenever he was on the Council. So, it's not crazy to have him do this - he's created healthcare policy, or worked on healthcare policy before. There's another person who's working with Burgess on this, I can't remember her name. But, in any event - so yeah, it would be a big deal, it would be cool, it will be interesting to see what they end up doing. From the sound of it, it was like, "We've got to get a dashboard spreadsheet of who's sick first," and yeah.
[00:45:44] Crystal Fincher: One of my takeaways was that this is going to be an administration that loves dashboards - there was talk about data and dashboards for everything. We'll see how that turns out, but that certainly was a big, bold proposal that would be a huge win for everybody.
[00:46:02] Rich Smith: Yeah.
[00:46:03] Crystal Fincher: For residents of Seattle. He also talked about making noticeable change, noticeable progress, on housing people, on reducing our unhoused population - in the first quarter, I believe he said. And so, I'm going to be excited to see how he conducts that. He said that he's excited to get people into housing. And if he can get people into housing and there's a noticeable difference, I don't know anyone who is opposed to that. Now, if this is a sweeps-based solution, I think there's a lot of people who are not going to be happy with that. But it will be very interesting to see - again, they said that they're still collecting a lot of data, but he said that is one area where we can expect to see noticeable improvement. So, I truly hope - I don't think there's anyone who does not want people to be housed who are not housed. And I hope that there's listening to people who are telling people - there's this narrative about "refusing services." When people are offered services - that can be a very misleading statement - because a lot of times those services aren't available or applicable to their situation. But also, there are reasons why the services available may not meet the needs of the people on the ground. And so, I hope we're listening to what people say will meet their needs, and build towards what will meet their needs and solve this issue and house people. If that happens, I think we're all waiting to applaud Bruce Harrell for that.
[00:47:33] Rich Smith: That's right. And he also said - on the getting houses for those people to live in, or for everyone to live in - he talked about housing for all, and making sure everyone had an affordable place to live. His first action was going to be to - he did an executive order to look at permitting processes. And it sounded like he wanted to streamline permitting - which is a thing that people say, but that's going to be interesting to see what he gets back. I mean, permitting - what's he going to get? It's a bunch of ideas that sound good on their own. So if he gets a list back and sees what kinds of permitting people need to do to build housing, what's Bruce Harrell administration going to get rid of? Are they going to get rid of design review, are they going to get rid of MHA, are they going to get rid of sprinklers for town homes, are they going to get rid of environmental review? I wonder if the Bruce Harrell administration is going to get rid of any of these processes that have built up around building housing.
We know what it's going to take to get housing for all, and it's a billion dollars a year for 10 years, with the current affordable housing scheme that cities have concocted. Or, it's going to take massive investment in public or social housing, so we can put people inside. And so, maybe streamlined permitting can work a little bit, but it'll be interesting to see how we want to streamline that process. Not saying that there's not room for improvement, there definitely is. I don't give a **** about design review, I imagine the Harrell administration does. But, maybe they don't - I don't know, surprise me. Yeah, there's a lot more reporting to do on this.
[00:49:30] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I mean, it will be interesting. Also, there is a - on the subject of zoning specifically - was a little bit fuzzy on that, but he said, quote, "We'll fill in the gaps where zoning is already available for housing and construction and density. And our Chief Operating Officer, Marco Lowe (a name that Hacks & Wonks listeners will be familiar with, as he's a co-host sometimes on Hacks & Wonks) who not only has deep experience in City Hall but also actual experience in the housing industry, will lead this critical effort. So, as we embark on a City-wide master plan update - and again, it's time for that master plan update. As many of you are aware, we'll look at opportunities to address every neighborhood to address the shortage of quality housing at every income level." So, not specifics there - a plan to address it, a point person named, and Marco Lowe to do it. And so, eager to see what results from that, but certainly results are needed.
[00:50:26] Rich Smith: More power to - let them know, Marco.
[00:50:34] Crystal Fincher: Marco's certainly competent, on the case, and I hope that they can make substantive progress. I believe Marco can - hopefully the intentions of the administration are truly to do that. And again - that happens, everybody wins. People are waiting to applaud that.
[00:50:55] Rich Smith: It'll be an interesting four years.
[00:50:57] Crystal Fincher: It will be, it definitely will be. Well, thank you.
[00:51:00] Rich Smith: If he brings back the Sonics, that's going to be eight years. I've been telling you, this is the one thing - anyway, I don't want to start a new topic, but it'll be an interesting four or eight years depending on whether or not Bruce Harrell brings back the Sonics.
[00:51:14] Crystal Fincher: Look, you know what? If he brings back the Sonics - yeah, that's going to be a whole thing, that's going to be a whole thing. And my goodness, looking at some of these other clubs around the country. And look, I don't want to take a team from the other city, but they have really messed things up in Oklahoma City. Wow, they did not earn the Sonics, they did not. They are a mess, they are trifling and shady and ridiculous and shameful. And anyway, I mean, I'm a Lakers fan, so you know. But I mean, the Sonics have a place in my heart. Kevin Durant has a place in my heart, we just - we need the Sonics back here. All right.
We are more than beyond our time, but I just want to thank everybody for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM, this Friday, January 7th 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler, with assistance from Shannon Cheng. And our wonderful co-host today was Associate Editor of The Stranger, Rich Smith. You can find Rich on Twitter @richsssmith, with three S's in the middle. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, with two I's at the end. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts, just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live show and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show - all the great articles that we talked about - at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in, we'll talk to you next time.
In this second part of a discussion with Executive Director of America Walks and former mayor of Seattle Mike McGinn, we reflect on Mayor Durkan's term and legacy, discuss the mayor having more power than the council to drive change on the ground, Mayor Harrell's predecessor and an ongoing pandemic creating a taller task than usual for an incoming mayor, and some advice from McGinn for Mayor Bruce Harrell as he begins his term. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Mike McGinn, at @mayormcginn. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com. Resources:
City of Seattle - Race and Social Justice Initiative: https://www.seattle.gov/rsji
“Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan leaves a mixed legacy shadowed by crisis” by Sarah Grace Taylor from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-mayor-jenny-durkan-leaves-a-mixed-legacy-shadowed-by-crisis/
“Durkan Leaves Behind a Mess After Four Rudderless Years” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/12/31/durkan-leaves-behind-a-mess-after-four-rudderless-years/
“Outgoing Seattle Mayor Durkan looks back with pride — and some regrets” by Nate Sanford from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/politics/2021/12/outgoing-seattle-mayor-durkan-looks-back-pride-and-some-regrets
“WA Supreme Court dismisses recall effort against Mayor Durkan” by David Kroman from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/news/2020/10/wa-supreme-court-dismisses-recall-effort-against-mayor-durkan
“Recall effort against Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant can move forward, state’s highest court rules” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/recall-effort-against-seattle-city-councilmember-kshama-sawant-can-move-forward-washington-supreme-court-rules/
MRSC - Public Facilities Districts (PFDs): https://mrsc.org/Home/Explore-Topics/Economic-Development/Financing-Economic-Development/Public-Facilities-Districts.aspx
“Don't do it, Jackson: Misdemeanor jail would disproportionately affect residents of color” by Cliff Johnson from Clarion Ledger: https://www.clarionledger.com/story/opinion/2021/11/17/jacksons-proposed-misdemeanor-jail-would-hurt-citys-black-residents/8631447002/
“Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review” by Damon M. Petrich, Travis C. Pratt, Cheryl Lero Jonson, and Francis T. Cullen in Crime and Justice, volume 50, 2021: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/715100
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: activist, community leader, former mayor of Seattle, and Executive Director of America Walks, the excellent Mike McGinn.
[00:00:57] Mike McGinn: I'm glad to be here, Crystal. Pivoting to Durkan, I mean, I just look at all of the background behind the abandonment of the East Precinct and the stories that have since come out - about how that went down and how the communications were occurring. And what you see there is that there was just no - the police department, by that point, was acting completely independently. And I think you can say that about any mayor and any police department, right? There are always officers and maybe some people in leadership who aren't really following the directions from the top. But this one went right up to a layer beneath the chief, where people felt they didn't have to listen to the mayor, or even really communicate. Yeah. Even the chief was surprised that the precinct was abandoned. So there was a breakdown in management there that was really, really severe.
I think a lot of the policy on sweeps, like the attempt of the City Council to try to pass policies that determine how and when, and the practices should be followed in sweeps - I think a lot of that is management. If you want these things to be done well, it's up to the people doing them too. The mayor hires the department heads and the department heads hire the next layer down, and they're the ones who can really monitor and work on specific behaviors, or specific patterns, or specific implementation. And that's just not something a City Council can do, and I think that a lot of the homelessness response - we've seen this thing over the last election cycle where it was like, "Oh, it's the City Council's fault." It's like, "Hold it." We've got two mayors in a row who write the budgets, who have a lobbying team in D.C., who hire the department heads, who set the policies. How is it somehow the City Council's fault when we've got two mayors in a row - now, again, this is a problem that's bigger than a mayor, no mayor is going to solve it alone in a city. But if there's anybody who was the most power in a city to make a difference, it's the mayor. So why are we blaming the City Council on this, when it's the mayor who has the budget-writing authority, the hiring and firing authority, and the management authority to mobilize a response? And they don't have to check with eight colleagues on everything on the fine points of the policy. They can just implement. And I think that that's a challenge under any circumstances, but I think we have not seen people responding to the scale of the problem from the executive branch in the way they should, and passing the blame off to the City Council with the help of the business community, which doesn't want to pay more taxes, so it must be the City Council's fault.
And that's just been a recipe for disaster. And Mayor Harrell is going to have to break that pattern. He's going to have to mobilize resources on homelessness and get people aligned and have a better approach to this. And if -
[00:04:07] Crystal Fincher: Well, he doesn't have to, but I certainly hope he does.
[00:04:10] Mike McGinn: Well, otherwise, we're just going to be in the same cycle. We're just going to be in the same cycle. And I just don't want to hear it's all the City Council's fault on this next go-around. He's got to take responsibility.
[00:04:22] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I mean, I really do hope we have an honest conversation moving forward. But to your point about just what's possible, the Council can ultimately approve a budget that is largely set forth by the mayor setting the course on that. They approve it, they kind of hold the purse and dole out the money, but really, it's just giving the mayor the money to do with it what they will do. And so, the implementation of that policy that this - the setting of that course and the ability to do that is - it is largely on that. And certainly, they're steering a very big ship. A lot going on with it right now, and changing the course of that ship is not a simple or quick thing, but it is possible. And there are some meaningful things that can be done in the short term and in the medium term to get that accomplished, so it'll be very interesting to see what's on the horizon.
I mean, I think a huge opportunity for the Harrell administration - left by Durkan - is that I think that there were many balls dropped by Durkan in a lot of different areas. And just the ability to pick those up and to deal with the low-hanging fruit, and in some of the several areas where they could start to make an immediate impact, will reflect really well on the Harrell administration. There's a lot that they could immediately take action on that could help people and be a reflection on them in a very positive way, frankly.
[00:05:53] Mike McGinn: I want to give credit to my predecessor for a couple of things, which are - there were things that had started under his administration, which I continued - the Race and Social Justice Initiative. I didn't feel like we had to rename it or rebrand it or somehow or another. It was good the way it was. The Seattle Youth Violence Prevention Initiative - those were programs that could be expanded. I think that's another challenge that Mayor Harrell will face is - I don't think after Murray, who at the end of his term, didn't really leave Mayor Durkan with many new initiatives. I don't think Mayor Harrell is going to be left with that many new initiatives either. I'd love to be surprised. Because I think that there was obviously some drift there when Mayor Durkan decided she didn't really enjoy the job anymore and was going to move on - and that's been a year.
I think you tend to get a situation in government of - it takes a special type of City employee to drive Initiative and create new programs when they're like, "You know - we're going to get a new mayor soon, and how much will this be still supported in the future?" So I think that's going to be a challenge for Mayor Harrell - is coming in and he's going to have to get more things started than he might have because of that.
And it's kind of telling to me, and all mayors - oh God, I hated this - the round of interviews at the end, the exit interviews with all the media, and what's your legacy, and all of that. And nobody's even going to remember any of these things in a year, so I don't think mayors should worry that much about legacy. I think they should just try to do a good job. There'll be another mayor along, whether it's four or eight years. There's going to be another mayor along and a new controversy, so just try to do your job.
But in kind of watching this round and watching Mayor Durkan speak, it seems to be talking more about how hard a job it was. And it is indeed a very hard job, rather than about what happened. And here we are - well, seriously, we are further from a reformed police department today than we were when Jenny Durkan and I first signed that consent decree in 2012. We are further from a reformed police department. A lot has gone on in those years, and they're not good. They're not good. And that's a challenge. We talked about - obviously, the protests were a extremely difficult time, led to the abandonment of the precinct. Where are all the text messages that were deleted? And covered up - the deletion was covered up for months. And where are the consequences for that? The idea that the Seattle Ethics and Election Commission has not referred this to the Attorney General, the City Attorney hasn't referred this to the Attorney General to investigate - they have the power to do that, if they feel conflicted or they don't have the authority to do something here. It's right in the statute. They can refer an investigation for that. So the idea that somehow or another, Durkan is leaving off as the victim of a hostile public that was unappreciative of her work, and there's no accountability for this. And people died in CHOP and CHAZ. That was a hard time, and neighborhoods were teargassed. What happened? And the idea that you can just delete the texts and there's no consequence - not good. That's sending the wrong message to every elected official. And honestly, I think the Seattle City Council should be taking a hard look at how ethics are monitored in the City, if this can occur with no action taken to try to figure out what happened and what the consequences for that should be.
[00:10:04] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I mean, certainly a troubling message and reinforcement of a message sent. I mean, you just talked earlier about - it is very blatant what types of programs we choose to scrutinize and which ones we don't, and who those programs serve. There is a never-ending trail of questions if a program is going to serve poor people, that is going to serve in a way that unhoused people are asking to be served and not one that is being dictated from on high. And certainly, Black people, people of color, being served - endless questions, endless needing to prove the worth and providing data, while other stuff slides through. And then we're looking around at who is being held accountable in the City - who is being targeted for - hey, it's not okay - we're having conversations in this City about people needing to be held accountable somehow "for being homeless."
[00:11:14] Mike McGinn: Correct. Correct.
[00:11:16] Crystal Fincher: Meanwhile, we've got deleted texts. On-purpose deleted texts - illegally - after training, after we know on record that they were told not to delete this. From a former federal prosecutor - who their job was holding people accountable who broke the law - who is then not subject to the same standards themselves. If you can't tell, I find this extremely objectionable, abhorrent, ridiculous, preposterous, shameful really. And just the lack of accountability here is extremely troubling. It sends a horrible message.
And I mean, it really goes to how we view - what is public service. Are people accountable for spending the public tax dollars for the power that we put in their hands? There seems to be a message coming from those in power to, "Don't worry about it. Don't worry about what I'm doing. Don't worry about if it's serving you or not. Don't worry about if it's helping or not. Don't worry if I'm living up to my word or obligations, or even just the bare minimum standard of following the law. Don't worry about it. Don't ask me any questions. You're not entitled to this information." And they're literally legally entitled to the information.
[00:12:34] Mike McGinn: Let us compare the recall effort against Kshama Sawant and the recall effort against Mayor Durkan. One was dismissed by the courts. And the gist of the recall election was that she had lost control of the police, and her defense was, "I'm not in charge of the police." I'm sorry. The defense was kind of an Exhibit A in, should you be mayor or not, if you are claiming that. But that charge was dropped. But the charge against Kshama, the recall against her was continued. And you look at that and it really does feel like certain people get different treatment than others.
So here we are. We've got the round of exit interviews for Durkan and the retrospectives, and we're getting articles about how hard it was to be mayor. And it was particularly hard in a pandemic and in the face of this, but every mayor - I had May Day riots, I had a consent - I had a DOJ investigation, I had snowstorms. Look at Paul Schell. Look at Wes Uhlman, who did it through the Boeing Bust years, and he had a recall election against him for trying to integrate the fire department and the police departments. So mayors face hard times - that's their job. And mayors get a lot of negativity sent towards them. And you can't be bitter about that because you were given an opportunity to serve that few are given. You just can't be bitter about that. It comes with the territory. And I think just going through -
[00:14:21] Crystal Fincher: I mean, the interesting thing when you say that is - you've chosen not to be bitter about that. Mayors certainly can and have been bitter about that, will continue to be. You shouldn't be. It is helpful when you're not. You have chosen not to be, but, oh my goodness, some are.
[00:14:39] Mike McGinn: If you get me in the right day and in the right mood, I can let go with a little bit. I'm not going to act holier-than-thou here, but you shouldn't be out there doing interviews that way, as if somehow or another that it was an imposition to have to serve as mayor, and that you were mistreated, and all the rest. It's not quite seemly. So this is - let's focus on what the real stories were. Where are we on police reform? We're further behind. Where are we on homelessness? Even further behind. And again, these are big external forces, but we remain further behind. And it was the City Council that provided more money for it and gave more tools to do it, and we didn't get there. And there was a - we still don't - leaving, as you pointed out, kind of just skating off with no consequences for obstructing justice and deleting texts and evading accountability. And this is pretty important stuff that we should be focusing on moving forward, as to -
[00:15:42] Crystal Fincher: Pretty important stuff.
[00:15:43] Mike McGinn: - how are we going to address these things, and that requires an honest appraisal of what happened.
[00:15:48] Crystal Fincher: Well, and from Durkan's own rhetoric when she took office, I mean, similar to what we heard from Ed Murray - they were going to be the person who brought everybody together, the person with the experience and the know-how, and could be the adult in the room, and get everybody together, and will listen to all perspectives, and wasn't divisive like other progressive mayors with the last name McGinn were, but were more reasonable and were friendlier with the business community and not proposing all these radical bike lanes and road diets and that kind of stuff. And really, what that was code for was, "I'm friendly with the business community. I don't scare people who don't want taxes as much as the other person was." But it did not, in any way, translate to any less contention. In fact, if you just look at the state of the City, it not only increased the amount of contention - but that was really a result of inaction and being stuck on so many issues and not wanting to upset the coalition that they had built that got them elected - that they ended up not taking action on so many things that were issues.
And also, this habit that we have in Seattle where the centrist candidates take on the general rhetoric of progressive candidates - end up sounding very similar - so people get the impression that they're going to govern more progressively than they actually do. And then there just being that disconnect between what people were expecting and that creating more public dissatisfaction with the leader in charge and with the inaction on the problems that they consider to be most important. So I mean, I think a big challenge was the goals, just the tone that was articulated initially by Durkan just wasn't ever followed through on. And on top of not being able to bring people together and to create solutions and there being gridlock, it really did seem like she did not enjoy the job much and kind of took a backseat after that. I think some of the execution suffered because of that and a lack of engagement, and to your point, alignment between department heads and the mayor's office.
And then this focusing on the rhetoric. And for me personally, I always get very wary when people consider the signing of a piece of legislation the win. The win is actually when that's implemented and helping people, when it's delivering on the promise that it was. And so to me, it was always kind of a red flag like, "Hey, we're announcing this initiative. We're moving forward with this program."
[00:18:44] Mike McGinn: Right.
[00:18:44] Crystal Fincher: And then we didn't hear much after that. And then the stories would trickle in about like, "Hey, all of this promise to build this many housing units and to be able to house many people and that's falling apart," or announcing that you're going to be moving forward with this partner, and that partnership falls apart. And that seemed like it was a continuing dynamic throughout that administration. And so, I am hoping, in the Harrell administration, to not see the same type of, "I'll bring everyone together because I listen and get along with everybody. And that, in and of itself, will make everything okay." There are going to have to be decisions made. Some of them, people will agree with; some of them, people won't. But the thing is, you have to make a decision and you have to move, and there just seemed to be a hesitance to make decisions in that office.
[00:19:37] Mike McGinn: You made so many good points in there. I think one of - you really don't know which one to dig in on first, or to comment on first. One, I think, is that it's just gotten harder - with the rise in inequality and with the rise in housing costs and all of its effect in the City and the rise in homelessness - it's become harder and harder for a candidate from the business side to bridge that gap between rhetoric, between the progressive goals they say they espouse, and the obligations they feel to their base to not raise taxes or change the rules or policies too much. Right? And I'm restating what you just said. I think it becomes really harder. So you create this dynamic where the candidate comes in and say, "Well, the problem is just it's the personalities of people, and what we need is someone with that personality to bring people together and get everyone to agree," that somehow it's a personality thing.
And there's really some underlying dynamics that are in play here. And one of those underlying dynamics is - if you're elected from the business side, they don't want you to raise taxes. They don't want you to change the rules too much. And part of that coalition is also the people who live in neighborhoods who don't want to see their zoning change, and they really don't want to see their on-street parking spaces disappear, and they're skeptical of bus lanes and bike lanes. So you get tied to trying to assuage... Assuage? Assuage - satisfy that set of constituents by not changing things too much, but you've run for office on a rhetoric of, "I'm going to change things." And that gap just gets harder and harder to bridge as things get more divided in the country. So your point is well-taken - that to make those promises and get nowhere close to achieving them, it's actually pretty divisive too, right? And it's not because the person is impolite or can't work with people or something. It's because those are the underlying political dynamics that the person faces.
And the other thing is - I really love your point. One of the things I didn't - there were many things I didn't understand when I became mayor, and one of the things I didn't understand was that the media - we all decry horse race politics and campaigns. They're just covering who's ahead and who's behind, who's scoring points or not. Well, the media gravitates towards that during the term as well, except the horse race and the score-keeping is, what bills you passed or did not pass. Right? So if you didn't pass some, if you tried to pass something and you didn't, you lost. And if you tried to pass something and you did, you won, as opposed to, is there actually progress being made on things.
So Ed Murray, for example - HALA, the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda, was a win for Ed because he got a big stakeholder committee to agree to present a series of recommendations, many of which got adopted. Well, getting a stakeholder committee to agree is kind of a mayor's job in the first place. And they did in fact pass a number of them, and a number of the changes were good. It's not close enough to the scale of the problem. Housing prices have continued to go - just blow right through the roof, right? It just wasn't - we need to do more than what was in that bill. But the coverage of that is just focused on the legislative win or loss, or the who stood with them and who didn't stand with them. And it really calls for a different type of media coverage, right?
And I appreciate, honestly, that places like The Seattle Times, with the Homelessness Lab or the Traffic Lab, are really trying to analyze what's working and what isn't, rather than simply kind of covering the day-to-day of the legislative back-and-forth. And so, yeah, those are both great points that you made about the challenges for a mayor and just getting the public not actually seeing beneath the surface to see whether or not progress is being made.
But you can't fool the public. They figure it out. They just have to look around. Right? The streets are still congested, there are homeless encampments everywhere, and things aren't working. So that style of governance of, "I'll get a set of people to stand up with me for a press conference and that'll show unity, and I've got a committee working on something, so I'm doing something on that topic. And I just passed a bill that sounds good," - you can keep that afloat for a while, and then the public goes, "No, it isn't working, and we need something new." And I think the timeline keeps getting shorter and shorter on that. Maybe you could keep that afloat for eight years before, but it's pretty hard to keep it afloat for more than a couple of years now, because people are mad and they want to see something happen. And this is going to be something moving forward
[00:24:40] Crystal Fincher: It's going to be something moving forward. I'm really interested to see what the initial moves and what the Harrell administration comes out of the gate with, because it is going to take making some decisions. And you've got some people who are going to view that through a kinder lens upfront. You've got some people who are going to view it through a more critical lens. But I do think that, to your point, if we do examine it critically and say, "Okay. What is this doing for people? What is this doing to meaningfully address this issue? What impact is being made on the ground?" Even if he starts out with that and takes an action that can initially be viewed as unpopular, if it ends up working out and he's got time for things to work out, it's a win. That is the win. And that, you can run on. And that, you can message on.
And it'll be interesting to see - one of the things I think about just in comparing different mayors and tenures and thinking about you is just - a lot of things that were controversial and that lots of people disagreed with you on - where you were vindicated. There are quite a few of those things, but the runway on those was really long, so it was after your term where a number of those things were just like, "Oh, road diets aren't evil and they don't create chaos in cities," and "Oh, okay. I understand. Yeah. Maybe people swearing that there aren't going to be cost overruns in defiance of every single project ever, maybe they aren't being completely aboveboard and straight." Like, "Hey, maybe we should plan for that. It would be prudent to plan for that."
But the runway on those was really long, so a lot of that came post-tenure for you. So just thinking through that lens on - just kind of putting on the political hat. So what does that mean in terms of what the Harrell administration may or may not choose to pursue, or make some big decisions on, if that's factoring into it or not? But there are times where if the goal is meaningfully solving the problem, and kind of these issues that we're running into with rhetoric-based solutions and PR-based solutions, and let me put together a nice press conference, without consideration of actually solving the problem. People seeing that the problem isn't getting any better and in fact worse.
[00:27:06] Mike McGinn: It's got to be homelessness, right? Number one.
[00:27:09] Crystal Fincher: Got to start there.
[00:27:10] Mike McGinn: Number one -
[00:27:11] Crystal Fincher: Got to start there.
[00:27:12] Mike McGinn: - you really have to see - what's the progress being made in housing people, and giving people options. And that is going to take an extraordinary mobilization of resources - more than we have. And some of the things are going to take longer than others, obviously. Changing our - there's the immediate response to people in need, but there's also changing our land use rules to actually allow more housing in the City, and allow people to build things that cost less to build, because they don't have to go through endless design review over the color of the bricks, right? Or they don't have to build parking spaces at a cost that's excessive, or why not bring back small apartment buildings in neighborhoods? People love them - fourplexes, sixplexes. Maybe all of our apartment buildings shouldn't be immediately next to arterials, and the air pollution are caused by them. And instead, look at some of the older parts of our City. One of the things that makes Capitol Hill so wonderful is that you got these gracious old apartment buildings all through the neighborhood, not just on the arterial streets. Why not allow that type of incremental improvement in housing throughout the City, as well as making deep investments in shelter and interim housing and permanent housing and affordable housing? It's going to take - it just is a major lift. And I think -
[00:28:46] Crystal Fincher: I mean, it's a major lift. Go ahead, go ahead.
[00:28:49] Mike McGinn: It's a major lift. And I think that the issue is, and I'll speak to this, you come in and there are all these things and people give you all these tweaks or these little things you can do. It's not going to be enough. It's got to be so much bigger. That's what I would say, if I had one thing to say to Mayor Harrell. It's going to be much bigger than what the people around tell you to. Ask them to come to you, not with the plan that they think will get through the process of Seattle. Ask them to come back to you with a plan that will actually get you to the finish line. And get that plan. I think we've all trained ourselves in this arena to think small in terms of the changes, because it's all hard. Building a tiny home village in a neighborhood is hard. Raising money for affordable housing and new taxes is hard. Siting some type of affordable housing in certain communities is hard. Changing zoning is hard. They're all hard. So we keep saying, "Well, what's the next incremental step we could take that we could get through the system?" Well, if you look at all those next incremental steps to get you through the system and it doesn't actually solve the problem, then send them back. And that, I think, there's a kind of courage it takes from a mayor to do that. And I don't think I had that courage in my first year in office, honestly. I had some courage to take on some things, but didn't have enough depth of understanding or knowledge to send them all back and say, "Come back to me with a better plan."
So unsolicited advice, you don't have to listen to me, Mayor Harrell, but really have some courage here, push them even harder, and have the courage with the public to go big. Because if we just keep thinking that if we ring the alarm bell and ask the Feds for help, or if we make this tweak to policy, if we do this thing differently - that that's - it's good, it's incremental, it's not going to be at scale. Go at scale, even if it makes some of your original supporters mad, because that's the type of boldness that I think will be rewarded politically in this environment. And not going big, you can keep that afloat for a while, but if there's not substantive change on the ground, it's going to come back at you because there's been enough promises on this one that the incremental and, "I'm making progress," and "Please wait and give me more time." There's just not enough patience for it anymore.
[00:31:20] Crystal Fincher: There's not enough patience. I completely agree with you that I think big choices, big decisions, taking big steps in leadership and saying, "I know this is a lot. I know this is more than we've done before. I know I'm asking for more than I have before, but we've got to get more done than we have before." Particularly in Seattle - people are there, people are there. And kind of baked into this conversation, I feel like we're baking in an assumption that, "I don't know how it's going to turn out yet," - in a response to homelessness, that there is going to be meaningful investment in addressing some of the root causes and a real initial push to move on - getting towards the amount of new housing units that are needed in that.
I hope it happens. I don't know if it's going to happen. Certainly between, not just Harrell in there, but we've also got Ann Davison in as the new City Attorney. And so, criminalized solutions are certainly on the table, and that's an area where it seems like Ann would likely be comfortable with making some bold decisions and big solutions in a different way. So I think a question that's going to be put in front of Seattle is, "Hey do you view it as a solution, is getting this issue solved - if fewer people are on the street in a tent, but our jails are full?" And we're spending money and resources there, and we're dealing with that mess in municipal courts, and really flexing that system, which is also under strain, which there are crises of capacity that exist. And that it seems like Seattle definitely has the appetite for moving back, and backing off on that, and looking at addressing some of the root causes. Or are we going to see what - if we talk about data-based solutions, right? Filling up jails also increases all of the other problems, right
[00:33:43] Mike McGinn: Yeah. Absolutely.
[00:33:43] Crystal Fincher: If that is the direction that things are going, do Seattle residents call that out right away? Does Seattle media pay attention to that and call that out right away? Is there tracking on, "Hey, what are the outcomes that are coming based on criminalized solutions, versus those and programs that aren't"? I'm wondering if there's going to be that kind of a lens, because I see those things being relevant in the conversation in the coming year to two.
[00:34:13] Mike McGinn: I've always felt that there is in fact - your point about the public being ready. I've always felt, during the last two terms, mayoral terms, and even during my term, that there was in fact a basic policy consensus already established. And we like to think - and I guess it depends on what and how you define policy and how granular you want to get about policy, but I think there's a basic policy consensus, which is that people - from the public - people who want housing should have access to a roof over their head. They should have meaningful access to a roof over their head, and people that need services should be able to get them, right? That is the policy consensus. And that means that parks should be parks and sidewalks should be sidewalks, right? It's okay to ask people to not camp in a park, if in fact there's a place they can go, and if in fact there are services they can get.
We're in this situation because we abandoned, in some way, that commitment to it. And abandon is a strong word. I know there are people working hard to provide housing opportunities and roofs over people's head, but not at the scale that was actually needed, right? And the same thing is true of services, not at the scale that was actually needed. And so, we started getting into this "one weird trick" kind of aspect of policymaking. Well, if we could just do this one weird trick, it would have this effect. If we could do this thing, it would have this effect. And really, it was scaling up the services and the homes and the housing. And as what I've said a bit earlier, that's actually really hard. And it requires a much bigger commitment of resources than we believed it would - in a time of rising inequality, and it turns out the Feds weren't going to come help for a number of years at the scale needed. And they still may not. But now is the time. So when I saw Mayor Durkan not taking federal money to get hotels for homeless, it's like, "What are you doing? What are you doing? Take the money. House the people." Right? This is hard.
So I think that there is a policy consensus, and I think that a mayor who embraces that policy consensus and tries to avoid the one weird trick style of governance - if only we did something differently, we just need to be harder on the homeless, or ship them to McNeil Island, or they're all drug users, right? All of these easy, handy soundbite solutions people start throwing out at you - no, no. We're talking about a refugee crisis here, right? And it's the refugees from our own economic system, and they're here on our streets because they are our communities, and they are our people, right? And we need to treat it like that and put the resources in place to deal with it.
And that's just a lot harder to do because we get anchored in the budget priorities of the past, and we have this weird blaming thing going on, "Well, they must have done it to themselves somehow. They're broken people," - instead of like, "No, it's a broken system and we have control over the system, so let's fix the system." And that's, I think - no, we don't know how it's going to turn out. And that would be the boldest thing that Mayor Harrell could do - is to embrace the scale of the response, and let the chips fall where they may after that. And I think they'll fall into the right place, but it surely will make some of his backers angry, because they just think you need to get a few more of those homeless people out of downtown and we'll have this economic recovery, and that's what's most important.
[00:38:08] Crystal Fincher: Yes.
[00:38:08] Mike McGinn: That's just not...
[00:38:09] Crystal Fincher: Let's just hold them accountable and let's get back to the economy.
[00:38:11] Mike McGinn: Yeah. Do not listen to the Convention and Trade Center folks, or the tourism bureau folks, or the hotel folks. They are right to be concerned about what their street is like. They are right to be concerned about that. But the answer is, it's got to be a whole lot of resources to actually give people services and give people roofs over their heads - and embrace that, and don't go for the shorter, easy palliative here.
[00:38:40] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And hey, everyone else has skin in the game. Everyone else is being asked to be taxed and contribute to resources, and so they've got to do their fair share. If they want a voice in this solution, then they need to meaningfully be part of it from beginning to end - not just on demanding you write a policy that satisfies my needs, but in providing the resources to meaningfully address the problem.
[00:39:06] Mike McGinn: Look, we've got $1.7 billion for a downtown convention center, paid for by taxes through hotels. $1.7 billion. Yeah, we have resources.
[00:39:20] Crystal Fincher: Well, and so, I need to see where that landed. I actually had a - Dow [Constantine] and I talked about this in the conversation that we had on Hacks & Wonks. And so, I think he took the temperature of the room and thought this is not going to look very good for the many reasons that you had articulated in print and voiced over the past couple years. And so, they found a lot of private money in place of the public money that they were going to be putting up for that.
[00:39:55] Mike McGinn: They found private borrowers and private lenders.
[00:39:55] Crystal Fincher: They found private borrowers.
[00:39:56] Mike McGinn: Excuse me. Private lenders.
[00:39:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah.
[00:39:58] Mike McGinn: And that $1.7 billion debt is entirely paid by taxes from a public development authority.
[00:40:05] Crystal Fincher: Yikes. Are we still there?
[00:40:07] Mike McGinn: Yeah. That's how this works. If the downtown business community wanted a convention center because they believe it's important to their business environment, they're wrong. There's lots of great talks out there. So the legislature set up a public development authority [public facilities district], which has the authority to tax, certain taxing authority, mostly on hotels themselves, and there we go. So the hotels voted to basically - and urged to tax themselves to pay off those bonds, and it's $1.7 billion. Now, that's a tax source that could have been used to build affordable housing for the people who clean the hotel rooms, right? Or who provide the security down there. The money is available.
[00:40:57] Crystal Fincher: 100% percent. If you're selling this by saying, "It's going to help the people who are working there. It's going to provide jobs," then why are we funneling it through a multi-hundred-million-dollar-aire and - instead of just giving it directly to the people? It seems like that would be the more efficient and more effective way to do it. Like, "Hey, if we're trying to help the construction worker, let's actually help the construction worker and not have to give the person employing them - not give Matt Griffin millions of dollars and have him give a tiny hourly wage to a construction worker."
[00:41:39] Mike McGinn: But it's a great example. Where was the public debate on spending $1.7 billion on a convention center? Where was the public vote? Where was the decision made? It wasn't, right? Seriously. We were talking earlier about programs for returning felons and youth violence prevention - that went through extensive public debate. And the City Auditor looking at it, and arguments about what the data showed or not. And we were literally arguing over $800,000 expansion, or $400,000 expansion of a program. And this is $1.7 billion of tax dollars that was raised, and their argument was, "Well, the public has no right to talk about this, nor even to elect the people who voted to ultimately pass these taxes." And when the place ran into trouble, they went to the public to make the loan.
There's two sets of rules, right? And that's the question again for Mayor Harrell - is what set of rules is he going to play by? Is he going to engage in that where literally hundreds of millions or billions of dollars are spent on projects that are demanded by the powerful, or money is not spent because the powerful don't want to raise taxes for them on things that benefit other people? It's a choice. It's a hard choice, but it's a choice. And it's not just a question of everybody getting along. We're having good media, getting good media coverage, so everybody feels a little better that there's a little less arguing going on amongst the public officials. The problems are too big for that.
[00:43:30] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I completely agree. I will also just say, since you brought up the Youth Violence Prevention Initiative, wow are we paying for not investing in that and continuing that program today?
[00:43:43] Mike McGinn: It was -
[00:43:44] Crystal Fincher: I think about that really frequently.
[00:43:47] Mike McGinn: It was my understanding, and I wasn't in on it, but it was - basically the new mayor, the mayor after me, felt like there needed to be a program that had his stamp on it.
[00:44:02] Crystal Fincher: That is exactly what -
[00:44:02] Mike McGinn: And so, there needed to be a new approach. And shots fired were up, murders were up in the City. And this is a nationwide issue, but I do think local action can make a difference in places to ameliorate that, to work on that. And you just can't throw up your hand and say it's a big national - if you're over here, you can't throw up your hand and say, "Well, there's a big national issue." And you can acknowledge the severity of the issue, but you got to figure out, in the billions of dollars the City spends, and the people that it employs, how can you make a difference in your own community? And that, I think, is another serious issue for Mayor Harrell and mayors across the nation. How are we going to deal with this rise that we're seeing in shootings and killings?
[00:44:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And there's a good bit of data out there about what makes a difference. And really, it all boils down to addressing root causes.
[00:45:07] Mike McGinn: Yeah.
[00:45:08] Crystal Fincher: And a watershed study came out, a huge research project came out, showing that carceral solutions are actually ineffective for dealing with this. It is not dealing with the root cause of these issues, and not making the problem better. It's making it worse. So I do hope we look at that. I hope if we look at things in general.
We've been talking for quite some time now, and what I anticipated originally was going to be just a simple little week-in-review, maybe we have some expansive stuff talking about the year. Now will be split between two episodes. I mean, we technically probably have enough for three episodes - we'll try and cap it at two. But this is what happens when we talk. We end up having conversations like this. We just had a lot of it with the record button pressed, as opposed to it not being pressed this time. And off the air, but I always appreciate you and your insight. I always appreciate your ability to reflect and to look at what you did, and you're like, "Hey, this went really well, could have done this better." And I have certainly learned a lot from that over the years.
So I thank all of you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Thursday, December 30th, 2021. It's December 30th, oh my gosh. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance by Shannon Cheng, and our insightful co-host today was activist, community leader, and former mayor of Seattle, and Executive Director of America Walks, Mike McGinn. You can find Mike on Twitter @mayormcginn. That's M-C-G-I-N-N. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcast. Just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Get boosted, stay away from the Omicron rona. It's getting everybody out there. Please be safe, and be kind to your neighbors. And we'll see you in 2022.
For the last show of the year, we have the first part of a discussion with Executive Director of America Walks and former mayor of Seattle Mike McGinn about how the City’s response to the recent snowstorm and Harrell’s recent appointees highlight opportunities for the incoming administration to both learn from and leave behind the past as they stand up a government to lead us into 2022 and beyond.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Mike McGinn, at @mayormcginn. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources:
“Why Sweden Clears Snow-Covered Walkways Before Roads” by Angie Schmitt from Streetsblog USA: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/01/24/why-sweden-clears-walkways-before-roads/
Disability Rights Washington - Disability Mobility Initiative: https://www.disabilityrightswa.org/programs/disabilitymobility/
“Does Adding an Extra Driving Lane Make Traffic Worse?” by David Stockin from Drivetribe: https://drivetribe.com/p/does-adding-an-extra-driving-lane-E6FPiVJnQSCPun1-pS-Q-A?iid=Ic6o2PzdQcaGewi7L9kSbw
“The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion: Evidence from US Cities” by Gilles Duranton and Matthew A. Turner from American Economic Review 101: https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/aer.101.6.2616
“'Zombie highways,' mass transit failures: PBS 'News Hour' takes look at Birmingham” by Bob Sims from Advance Local: https://www.al.com/spotnews/2009/08/zombie_highways_mass_transit_f.html
“Inslee’s Proposed 2022 Budget Plugs Holes in Highway Megaprojects” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/12/27/inslees-proposed-2022-budget-plugs-holes-in-highway-megaprojects/
“Seattle Mayor-elect Harrell names niece deputy mayor, lists other appointments” by Sarah Grace Taylor from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/bruce-harrell-announces-key-cabinet-members-appoints-niece-as-deputy-mayor/
“Seattle Mayor-elect Harrell appoints final deputy mayor, other leaders before taking office” by Sarah Grace Taylor from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-mayor-elect-harrell-appoints-final-deputy-mayor-other-leaders-before-taking-office/
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: activist, community leader, former mayor of Seattle, and Executive Director of America Walks - the excellent Mike McGinn.
[00:00:57] Mike McGinn: I'm glad to be here, Crystal.
[00:00:59] Crystal Fincher: Glad to have you here, as we close out 2021 and tiptoe gingerly into 2022 - and just wanted to talk, not just about what's happening this week, but contextualize it and what's happening through the year. And there was no one better to do that with than Mike McGinn, with so much context just in organizing and urbanism land use policy - and few things you picked up as mayor of Seattle.
So this week, we are in the midst of seemingly unending snow that we're dealing with - it snowed on Christmas, it is snowing right now as we're recording on Friday morning, temperatures have not been above freezing all week, they're just supposed to get above freezing today - briefly - before we get some more snow perhaps this weekend. And so we've been blanketed with the snow, mobility has been a challenge, sidewalks have been treacherous - and please shovel your sidewalks, folks - but there's been no cohesive strategy and a ton of people haven't. Our streets have been a mess. Also, it's been freezing and dangerous for people who are unsheltered and we have an imperfect emergency response. And we've talked many times about our responsibility to keep our neighbors safe from extreme climate - heat in the summer and now freezing cold, which can be lethal if you're out there. And so as you're looking at what we're dealing with, what does it tell you about where we're at in Seattle?
[00:02:50] Mike McGinn: Well, first of all, I just want to say that it goes from an old mayor to a new mayor at midnight on the 31st, or the first minute of January 1 - and I actually went outside to check the weather the second I became mayor, right? Because I was actually thinking about at the time - what would it be like to enter office if there was something happening? And that's happening right now to Bruce Harrell. So clearly the response that you see to a snowstorm is based on muscle memory and work that's done years and months in advance. So for example, I believe they're still substantially using the road clearing plan that we adopted - and I took office a year after a snowstorm that really showed some weaknesses in the snow response of the City of Seattle. And so there were a lot of big changes made after that. And we still follow that strategy. But there are things -
[00:03:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, we lost the mayor over that snow response.
[00:03:55] Mike McGinn: Yeah, that was big deal. And at the time, this City didn't really use salt, it pushed snow to the middle of the road - not to the edges. And we got a long, cold stretch so it froze in the middle so people couldn't make turns - all the streets were icy. It really had really dramatic effects on the City and the City's residents. And that was a big deal. So we changed a lot of that - the focus now is on plowing the transit routes first, we even shared online the GPS of where they were going. And we use salt because it turns out actually - all that sand has an effect too on the City's systems and storm drains. And the salt was not that big a deal, not as big a deal environmentally.
So we made all those changes but it still took us a couple of snowstorms to really get it right. The very first one - there was freezing on the West Seattle Bridge and it shut down stuff. And the brine that was used on the roadways in advance of the storm wasn't powerful enough. So Bruce Harrell will be coming in and it's not like he can change all of that stuff in the past. But it's - one thing I learned though, was it's - a mayor does make a difference in the moment to moment, because there are decisions that have to be made. And we are seeing some of that right now, right? Like as we discover the City can't open up the winter shelters that it wants to open up because people are having trouble getting in to man those shelters because of the conditions.
So we have an Emergency Operations Center that opens. I discovered that you want to be there before the snow starts falling, or the ice, or the wind, or whatever the issue is. And you stay there through it for a couple of reasons. One is that you might be able to help facilitate some decisions - you might be able to make a phone call to another arm of government. But I think it's also just a show of support for the City employees that are doing the work. They know it's important when the mayor is there and it matters to them. So for this to be happening during a transition, hopefully everybody is in a position to keep pushing. But this is really something that I hope Durkan and Harrell are working on because there are people, and particularly the least powerful among us, who are counting on the City to innovate and come up with different ideas and different solutions to take care of people in circumstances like this.
And I remember being down at EOC, in the Emergency Operations Center, and overhearing the conversations of people on the phone who are working to try to get people to treatments they needed. And just dealing with the situations that come up - that maybe there's a City resource that can be used in that moment to help people. And you need that attention to detail and attention to the developing circumstances to be able to do that. You don't want to read about it the next day - that a bad thing happened and nobody was there to help from the City who should have been.
[00:07:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, completely agree. And as I look at this, just looking more forward, we're in a continuing, worsening climate crisis. And we are seeing more extreme temperatures than we've seen in decades - right now on the cold side. We saw that on the hot side earlier this year. And so it seems that we should be preparing for more extreme and more prolonged weather events of all different types. And so to your point, you put in place and largely constructed a snow response strategy after the catastrophic failure that helped to lead to you -
[00:07:55] Mike McGinn: 2009. Yeah.
[00:07:56] Crystal Fincher: - to being in office. Yeah. And it has been updated since then, but now we're at this time and it is foreseeable that these staffing issues as we move forward are going to be - there're issues with staffing for these kinds of services when we're not facing this kind of an extreme challenge - it only gets worse when we are. How do we plan to be more resilient as we move forward? How do we plan to make sure that we have more than just a bare bones, nighttime, get out at 7:00 AM, shelter - and it's still freezing outside and we're putting people out there. How do we focus on perhaps not forcing people into congregate shelter? Are there better options that we can provide even in an emergency situation?
So really there's a big opportunity for the Harrell administration, as we move forward, to update this plan and this policy and this capacity. And a lot of people would be surprised to understand that government provides a lot of services - not directly - I mean, they certainly do their share of direct services, but they contract with a lot of companies and service providers. And even what we're asking them to do is the same as it has been. And we need to talk about updating that and making sure that they have the type of capacity to respond to this and that they're prepared for a response for today and not the response of 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. Everything is demanding more updated, more relevant, responsive, resilient solutions. And I see this as a big op opportunity for the Harrell administration to take on. And one that's going to have more consequences if they don't.
[00:09:42] Mike McGinn: Well, that use of the word resilient too - and it's worth looking at that because the pandemic certainly exposed every weakness in our society, and exposed the way in which inequality works at multiple levels - and who was exposed to harm because of the pandemic, whether it was the disease itself or the loss of a job or exposure to the disease, all of these things - and who didn't. It's a stress test on the system and a snowstorm is a stress test on the system too. And one of the things - you look at car commercials and they just love to show these big, robust vehicles muscling through the snow like there's some fantasy of freedom associated with that. But what we know from snowstorms, as an example, or flooding - is that it's a very fragile system - that a transportation system that relies on every individual, that they need a big vehicle to navigate the system - that system doesn't work. It doesn't take much stress to tackle that. Whereas if you have neighborhoods that are built around walkability - the ability to get down to the grocery store and pick up what you need, or get to a pharmacy, or get from your home to staff the emergency shelter. So that resiliency isn't just the walkability, but actually affordable housing throughout the City. So that the people who take care of the City can afford to live in the City and close to a bus route that might be operating - because we have enough snow plows to handle the arterials, but we don't have enough snow plows to handle every residential street. So there's all of these even more fundamental things we can do to create a resilient place.
And I remember that once in a snowstorm long before I was mayor and I walked home. I walked home from downtown to Wallingford where I was living. And I felt pretty good about it - like if something went wrong, there was probably a public house along the way where I could stop in and get warm. I was going to make it and people could still have a semblance of their daily lives. Whereas the person driving out to Issaquah might have been leaving their car out by the side of the road in a snow drift, wondering what to do next and how to get home. So these are just a resiliency that filters through everything. And we should be looking at our cities when the sun is shining and the weather is great, we should be looking at our cities with, Well, how do we make it so that people can afford to live here so they can meet their daily needs?
And it goes to snow clearing strategy as well. And we were talking a little bit about this before the show started. In Sweden, they went and studied and made a conclusion that they should clear the sidewalks before the roads, because the people who were using the sidewalks tended to be more women than men and tended to be on very important trips - for childcare, for getting to work and the like. And we're now developing a set of protected bike lanes around the City. And we got a little snow plowing machine for that - I don't know what they named it yet, but I forget, there was a whole naming thing going on for that - but the idea that if you had a connected network of those places, you could plow those. And that meant somebody in a wheelchair, if they could get from their front door to that lane, they could have a clear path to the neighborhood store. They wouldn't be isolated in their homes by the ice - that is what happens now to somebody who is disabled.
So looking at the strategies and rules we have around snow clearing of sidewalks, how - maintenance of sidewalks. Right now, it's the job of private property owners. And we started sending out crews - we were just starting to get at this - we started sending out crews to clear the corners downtown, because the snow plows of course piled up snow at the corners. But we were sending out crews with shovels. Well, why not hire a bunch of people with shovels to go out and make sure that there's clear paths on all the curb ramps where people need them, which is a lot of the City.
But these are the types of policy choices we can make about what we prioritize. And of course it's going to take money and it's going to take a different viewpoint. First, it's going to take a change of view - that maybe the person in the single-occupancy vehicle isn't the most important user of the transportation system that needs to be prioritized. It's the everyday trips that people who don't have vehicles need - center our transportation system around them, and we'll have a transportation system in which we all benefit from really great accessible neighborhoods.
[00:14:46] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I completely agree. And to your point - for me, there was a term that was used a lot in the prior federal administration - prior administrations were picking winners and losers. And really that's what we do when we talk about transit and prioritization of cars. We are really eliminating the choice for people to walk, or bike, or roll, or to do anything but drive. We've made that so inaccesible and hard for people that - if people want to drive, great, but there are so many people who dislike so many elements of driving - dealing with traffic, dealing with parking, dealing with trying to be out on these roads and can you make it up a hill or not? And just the inflexibility of the system to support cars that we continue dumping money into. And if we actually did prioritize transit choice - that hey, you know what? If you end up driving, okay. But what we're not going to do is make it impossible for you to walk, for you to ride your bike. I mean, I saw a picture online this morning of right now in the middle of the snow and someone attempting to walk on Aurora. And they're basically walking on the side of the street because the sidewalks are just snow and ice - in the middle of this extremely dangerous road when conditions are ideal. And now they're driving on an icy snowy street. And you just look at that and have a sense of impending doom and dread because you know how dangerous that is on a clear, sunny, dry day. And we are forcing people to walk in the median, we're forcing wheelchair users to roll in the street because it is just impossible to do that on a sidewalk where a sidewalk exists.
[00:16:40] Mike McGinn: Yeah. If they can even make it down past the ice that's on the sidewalk outside their front door to reach that place. So yeah, we were talking about prioritization and money. I highly recommend by the way - what the State Legislature will be making decisions in the coming year about - where money should go. There's a lot of federal money heading to the states right now as part of the infrastructure bill. And I really commend to people in the state of Washington, across the state, but certainly the listeners here for Rainier Valley Radio and whoever else we've attracted to this podcast. Thank you, Crystal for your work for building and promoting this thing. The Disability Mobility Initiative is a partnership spearheaded by Disability Rights Washington, but they partnered with Front and Centered - they partnered with other advocates. And what they want to do is put the needs of non-drivers at the center of transportation policy. So that was the philosophy I was talking about earlier.
Because I think a lot of our transportation, and you'll see this in advocacy organizations - there's some advocacy organizations that are like, look, the powers that be are going to build their highways. They got all the power. And our job is just to try to fit in around the cars somehow in the policy making too. Maybe we should get a little bit more. Now transportation is now the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the state, in the country. It's behind this extreme weather. It's one of the things behind this extreme weather we're having. So it's a good reason to change it by itself. But how about a philosophy that instead of trying to fit in around this dangerous polluting activity, instead we said, well, how about we make it so that cars fit in around people, that we start to get the ability of people to walk to their daily needs, to walk to transit - and transit, by the way, as a middle leg of a walking trip says the Executive Director of America Walks - me.
[00:18:47] Crystal Fincher: It's true.
[00:18:49] Mike McGinn: It's true - mostly, mostly. I guess there's some Park and Rides out there, but it's mostly the middle leg of a walking trip. It extends how far you can walk by quite a bit, I've discovered. So why not build a whole system around that and then figure out how to fit in the vehicles around that that you still need. And that is how places were built until we abandoned the good sense of building walkable town centers and walkable business districts in order to prioritize jamming cars through them. So this is a big philosophy change and what's beautiful about the Disability Mobility Initiative is it's centering the needs of non-drivers. And again, that's great for everybody. And that's an approach that Washington state transportation advocacy is needed. And enough of, let the highway builders have their highways. Maybe we'll get a few dollars for the things we care about. Let's get the dollars in the right place to start with.
[00:19:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And huge point in the coming months - there's going to be a lot of decisions made on this transportation package. We do know and have a ton of data that expanding highways does not improve traffic, which is often how it's sold. And so let's actually improve people's commutes no matter how they choose to take them, which is going to take a massive rebalancing of the share of our transportation budget that we spend on cars versus the share that we spend on everything else that - that's such a large portion of our community uses. So appreciate that.
[00:20:27] Mike McGinn: Nationally and locally, there's an issue. There's a phrase out there. There's something they call zombie highways. These are the highways that were drawn up in the heyday of the highway building era. And the reason they're called zombie highways is because they're still out there soaking up money for planning, and people are still trying to figure out how to raise the money to build them. 509 extension, which will - everybody goes, "Oh, great. It'll connect I-5 to that dead-end 509 by the airport." Yeah. It'll also send tens of thousands more cars a day through South Park, which wants to get rid of another highway that was built in the past that isn't so good anymore. We've got to stop funding the ideas from the 70s - 1970s - and start funding the ideas for the 2020s. And it seems like now would be a good time to think about that.
[00:21:17] Crystal Fincher: Now would be an excellent time. There was a great article in The Urbanist about this, this past week, and talking about the - Inslee's proposed budget and a significant amount going to highway expansion. And even conversations within Seattle of - do we have one bridge over Montlake versus two, and relying on old projections that are no longer needed and an increasing realization that hey, we don't need what we thought was needed 30 years ago, 20 years ago. Why are we still relying on the same projections? And I recall there was a mayor around a decade ago that had several conversations about this in terms of a tunnel, and few other things, which actually turned out to be correct. So yeah.
[00:22:07] Mike McGinn: Oh my God. And yeah - no - for the listeners that don't know, I thought - if you were around then, you knew. If you're new, maybe this is history. I thought we should not replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with the tunnel highway. I thought we should invest in transit along that corridor. And there was not a single elected official in the state of Washington who would side with me on that, except for Councilmember Mike O'Brien at the time. The entire City Council, one of whom is now our mayor, thought that building a highway on the waterfront for $4 billion - and by the way, they promised at the time that then there wouldn't be a highway on the surface - and it turns out, they still need lots of lanes on the surface too is what they're saying. So we haven't let go of this magical thinking that more lanes will lead to a better transportation system, when what we know is that more lanes just leads to more vehicles and lots of other places too besides that highway. And that's a big source of the pollution we have and challenges we face. And it doesn't scale, doesn't stand up to bad weather. It doesn't scale and it's not a question of ideology. I like to say it's a question of geometry. If everybody is surrounded by a car, they don't fit in a city. You just can't fit them all. You just can't fit it all. It's just math. So be nice if we could figure that out. Yeah.
[00:23:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I mean, I learned a lot of lessons from you in that too. I did not start off agreeing with where you're at - I'm like, "What do you mean? Just roads and transit - that's not going to be enough." And I was wrong. Lots of people were wrong. And lots of lessons to be learned throughout that. And one of the points that you made then was just like, "Hey, these projections are all out of whack. There's no way that this works and it creates so many problems when you count on capacity, then tolling on that capacity." And then that doesn't happen. Then what? Then what happens? And then the promise of no cost overrun. But anyway, we don't need to go back there. We can do year in review, but we won't do a decade in review here.
[00:24:18] Mike McGinn: There is a transition here. There is a pivot here - because one of the topics that we've talked about out is - topic of the week is there's going to be a new mayor. There's going to be a new mayor, but we're learning a lot more about his administration. And he did replace his transportation chief, and he's announced some new people he's going to come in. So the history of the past is still with us in the present. But let's talk about the present then.
[00:24:45] Crystal Fincher: Well, let's talk about the present. And to your point, Harrell announced the final round of his major appointees, deputy mayors - among those that were recently announced, big deputy mayor heading intergovernmental relations, intergovernmental office relations - I forget what the exact title is - but Gael Tarleton, former port commissioner, former legislator. Gael Tarleton - background in security and issues related to Russia. And Gael was a big supporter of Sara Nelson, a supporter of Bruce Harrell - certainly an indication of the direction that is being signaled in terms of policy, I would think.
[00:25:36] Mike McGinn: Well, I think there's a mixed bag of appointees. And I don't know everybody that's listed, but there are a number of people I do know. And for the one thing is - there are a lot of names, I'm not quite sure how to describe this - it's like there's some type of special LinkedIn that you have to be on in order to be hired by Murray, Durkan, or Harrell. Right?
[00:26:09] Crystal Fincher: Well, let me list some of them instead of - qualifying that. In the first round, a lot of them - Monisha Harrell, who is the senior deputy mayor and shares a last name with mayor, soon-to-be mayor Bruce Harrell, because she is his niece, but has a lengthy resume of her own. And I certainly will say, have seen - certainly there are a lot of people not excited about Bruce Harrell being mayor and that has led to some justifiable critiques of who he has slated for his administration. But what I don't want to feed into is just tossing people out, or their accomplishments out - especially women of color - their accomplishments out just because they're working in this administration. I try and keep my critiques policy focused. And I don't want to suggest that Monisha Harrell is not worthy of holding the position of senior deputy mayor at all. She's a board chair of Equal Rights Washington, member of the National LGBTQ Task Force Action Fund - extremely competent. And we'll see how that manifests within this Harrell administration. Tiffany Washington is going to be the deputy mayor of housing and homelessness, the deputy mayor of external relations - is that what Gael did? Is that intergovernmental -
[00:27:36] Mike McGinn: That's Gael Tarleton. That's Gael Tarleton.
[00:27:38] Crystal Fincher: Okay. That was - I'm looking at one of two articles - this one's by Sarah Grace Taylor. And part two, so yes, Gael Tarleton. And then some appointees from folks who worked in Harrell's office before. So two former employees of a City Council office, Jennifer Samuels, and - let me see - Jeremy Racca.
[00:28:09] Mike McGinn: Yeah.
[00:28:10] Crystal Fincher: Jeremy Racca, who worked as a former LA. So it's going to be an interesting time. Kendee Yamaguchi will serve as mayor of external relations, Gael Tarleton is the interim director of the Office of Intergovernmental Relations. As we talked about last week, and you just mentioned, there's going to be a new SDOT head. So Derrick Wheeler-Smith is going to be the interim director of the Seattle Office for Civil Rights. And it's really interesting to see a number of these appointees hold the title of interim. So I don't know what that means, and if they are planning on transitioning into that role, seeking others, but there are a number who still hold the title of interim. So these could change over time, but that's who we're looking at now.
And Tim Burgess - former Councilmember, former mayor Tim Burgess - is going to be influential within this administration. So certainly a lot of names that we have heard, were used to hearing from 10, 15 years ago, are now back - as recently as 5 years ago for some of them. But here we are. So certainly a shift in tone and direction from -
[00:29:34] Mike McGinn: It's really interesting, because you are right to point out - there are names that are new to city government and then there are names that we have not seen before. And that's why I said, it's something of a mixed bag. And it starts one to wondering - what direction does he go? And I think that's where a lot of people are in right now - is the reading of the tea leaves, right? Like what will be Bruce Harrell's priorities as mayor? And how will he govern? And people look to appointments as part of that question.
I have to say - Burgess and Tarleton both give me pause - because both of them, specifically on these issues we were just talking about, represented an older view. And the firing of Sam Zimbabwe, who's a pretty competent administrator and a professional, and was mostly under the radar during his term. He wasn't out there either upstaging the mayor or making the mayor look bad - just being a dedicated civil servant. That gave me pause about - what does it mean for policy that Sam Zimbabwe was let go when there're so many other positions to fill. Like trying to get a new transportation head while you're trying to also get a new police chief and all sorts of other positions - why take that on? And it gives me fear that what we're going to see is that somebody was complaining that maybe Sam was building too many bike lanes or something. And that was the impression I got from reading The Seattle Times article on that - that somebody in Bruce's camp - and I remember Bruce saying something to the effect of, "I'll tell you what? I'm not going to lead with bike lanes," he said, during the forum, which was kind of a peering into Bruce's soul on transportation there, for a second.
And so that's bad. I think it's bad. I think it's a real challenge coming in, as mayor Harrell will be, coming in with the incumbent not going to be there. So all of the department heads and the people in city government, they didn't know who the mayor was going to be for a long time. And so - or whether they would have jobs. So in that situation, you see people leave. And I had the same experience because my predecessor lost in the primary. So everybody knew from August onwards that there would be a new mayor. And even after I took office, there were people who had applied for and received great jobs, and they'd come to me and say I'm leaving for the Obama administration or I'm leaving for a new national position. And there were about four of those. And each one of those searches is important and time-consuming and requires the mayor's personal attention because you really want good people in there. And I think that there's been a fair bit of turnover and interims. And so I think that's going to be one of the challenges for mayor Harrell - is standing up government, so to speak - not just forming his own office and how that functions, but also seeing how - getting the department heads in place to realize his vision.
Circling back to Burgess and Tarleton, both of those just give me a lot of concern because I just don't think either of them - to the degree that Burgess in charge of special projects is going to have some strategic leadership in this - that just gives me concern because I saw what he prioritized and what he didn't prioritize as a City Council president. And I just hope that Bruce will be listening to some more progressive voices in his administration than Tim Burgess.
[00:33:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, certainly - and Burgess's support and involvement in the Compassion Seattle campaign that was there to codify sweeps in the City Charter certainly gave a number of people pause. And the criticisms of progress attempting to be made in terms of the SPD and public safety in a meaningful way for everyone in the City - certainly a divergence in a lot of what has turned out to be popular opinion in the City and where Tim Burgess was at. And I think that, to me, probably more than anything symbolizes just the conversation - recalling the many conversations during your term that you had with the Council, and where the Council was at, is a very different place than where the Council is at - and by implication, where the residents of Seattle who are electing that Council, is at. The residents have made a turn in who they are electing and supporting in recalls for their Councilmembers. And so that is very different than some of the rhetoric that we've heard back when folks were in office. And certainly during this election cycle in 2021 throughout these campaigns.
[00:34:49] Mike McGinn: One of the things that I admire about Bruce Harrell, and mayor Harrell in a day or two, mayor-elect now but mayor Harrell - is when Tim Burgess wanted to pass an anti-panhandling statute, it was Bruce Harrell deciding to listen to the Human Rights Commission and vote against it, that meant that that didn't become law. And another thing that -
[00:35:14] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. He was the deciding vote. It really rested on where he was going to be at.
[00:35:17] Mike McGinn: He kind of cracked it open too, honestly. When he said he would vote against it, that opened the path for Mike O'Brien to come in as well. And so I could veto that and not have the veto overridden on that. And he also spearheaded the effort to get - that felons didn't have to check a box saying whether or not they had been a felon previously when trying to get rental housing. And that said something about who Bruce wanted to support.
I recall, late in my term, I was meeting with the Black pastors. I met regularly with them, and they were asking me a series of questions. They would ask me why had Council president Burgess not funded the Seattle Youth Violence Prevention Initiative the way I'd asked for additional funds. And I tried to explain to them about how Tim didn't think there was good enough data to support that. And they asked me about why Tim Burgess had not expanded a program for returning felons called Career Bridge. And I explained to them again that Tim didn't think there was good enough data. And then they asked why he had cut a program in Rainier Valley, just eliminated it from the budget, as the chair. And I'm sorry, I can't remember quite the name of the program, but again it was a program that worked in Rainier Beach. And I explained again - and they're all looking at me and I realized, they're actually asking me a different question. They said, "Why is that, though? Why is that?" And I answered them - because the point they were making is that, why was it the programs for poor people and Black people that were subject to this exacting scrutiny for effectiveness in the City budget, whereas other things seemed to fly through.
I had a great conversation with Girmay Zahilay about the King County Council - they just walked on some type of relief for the Convention Center. He said, "Yeah, if it was a program for poor people, we have this long exacting process to decide whether or not we can afford it or whether or not it's good. But if it's for other people, if it's for the big donors, it just flies through." And this is my concern. So when I look at this new administration, I'm looking for the Bruce Harrell that stood up against the anti-panhandling statute and stood up for the rights of people returning to the community from prison, and to not fall for that. And I'm really hopeful that the idea that we can't spend public money on programs to assist people until we know they're perfect is not the voice listened to in this process as well. And I think this is going to be a really big test of the new administration because Bruce came in with a coalition that doesn't like taxes, the business community doesn't want taxes. And will he stand up to them like he stood up to them on the anti-panhandling statute. And that's the Bruce that I want to - that's the mayor I want to see in Bruce Harrell and I hope he does it.
[00:38:20] Crystal Fincher: I feel the same. And to your point, in the mix of appointees, some of them certainly give me pause, others give me hope. I mean, there are certainly people who have done a lot of good work. I mean, I look at work Monisha Harrell has done, I look at work that Marco Lowe has done - I mean, the guy who wrote the book on transitions - and just very competent, and talking about the importance of these searches and getting the right people in place. As the Chief Operating Officer, just really focusing on execution within the City, which is major. You can have a great idea - Durkan had some good ideas that she was just not able to execute. And another lesson I learned during your tenure and administration was just how important the actual ability to manage - to manage people, to execute on programs and policy, and to not just set a goal, but to be able to work through the implementation of it and make sure that it actually delivers on the promise that it initially had. I think that was one of the major challenges of the Durkan administration and one that I think Harrell has the opportunity to do much better on.
[00:39:37] Mike McGinn: Yeah. And I think oftentimes what's covered in the media are the disagreements in policy between the City Council and the mayor. And so we see - what's the policy on sweeps, what's the policy on police officers, or the like. But there's so many things that - it really exists in the executive branch and there's nothing the City Council can do to make the City work better - that's a management function and an executive branch function. And I think that this is a place where the City really needs to rebuild its muscle memory, to rebuild its strength on execution on a lot of things. And again, there are people in departments who I'm sure are executing great right now, but what I just saw - so much of that is dependent ultimately on getting that alignment through the department director and to the top.
[00:40:42] Crystal Fincher: I always appreciate you and your insight. I always appreciate your ability to reflect and to look at what you did. And you're like, "Hey, this went really well, could have done this better." And I have certainly learned a lot from that over the years.
So I thank all of you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Thursday, December 30th, 2021. It's December 30th, oh my gosh. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance by Shannon Cheng. And our insightful co-host today was activist, community leader, and former mayor of Seattle, and Executive Director of America Walks, Mike McGinn. You can find Mike on Twitter @mayormcginn. That's M-C-G-I-N-N. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Get boosted, stay away from the Omicron Rona - it's getting everybody out there - please be safe and be kind to your neighbors. And we'll see you in 2022.
On today’s rebroadcast, Crystal’s interviews King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay, and they discuss police accountability and what it really means to invest in community. In the conversation they discuss the King County Charter Amendments that were on the November 2020 ballot and have since been approved by the voters, changing how the sheriff is selected, and requiring investigation over all police related deaths. Councilmember Zahilay also goes into the important work he's doing to increase investment in Skyway, without displacing the people who already call it home.
A full text transcript of the show is available below, and on the Hacks & Wonks blog at https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/post/king-county-councilmember-girmay-zahilay-talks-sheriff-reforms-supporting-skyway.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and Councilmember Girmay Zahilay at @girmayzahilay. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Articles Referenced:
Learn more about the King County Charter Amendments from People Power at https://www.wethepeoplepower.org/kcca.
Transcript:
Crystal Fincher: [00:00:00] Welcome to Hacks and Wonks. I'm your host, Crystal Fincher. On this show, we don't just talk politics and policy, but also how they affect our lives and shape our communities. As we dive into the backstories behind what we read in the news, we bring voices to the table that we don't hear from often enough.
So today on Hacks and Wonks, we are excited to be joined by Girmay Zahilay, King County Councilmember for District 2, who has been doing a lot of work in the community. You've probably seen and heard from him - he's everywhere, just about, but we are excited to have a conversation today just about what you're working on. So thanks for joining us.
Girmay Zahilay: [00:00:52] My pleasure, Crystal. Thank you for having me.
Crystal Fincher: [00:00:54] So I guess starting out, what are you working on? What's top of the agenda right now?
Girmay Zahilay: [00:01:00] We're working on a lot of stuff. I would say the two biggest policy agendas that we have are number one, Skyway, which is a neighborhood just south of Seattle and north of Renton. And that encompasses all things for the wellbeing of that neighborhood. And the second area that's our top priority is our criminal legal systems and imagining the future of public safety and making sure that marginalized communities are uplifted, supported, and feel safe rather than brutalized by a system that is racist and that hasn't seen much of any innovation for a long time. So, I would say those are the two biggest and we can dive into each of those umbrellas, as you like, Crystal, but there's some exciting stuff in each one of those.
Crystal Fincher: [00:01:46] Sure, absolutely. I mean, both of those are related - Skyway has the largest African American population, in the State, per capita. And so we see under-investment, and an under-resourced area that's been ignored and neglected, despite it's absolutely prime location. And so the conversations that we're having with public safety go hand-in-hand with conversations that we're having there, and that, if Black Lives Matter, as you've said, Skyway has to matter - and the types of considerations that we're talking about in public safety extend to the whole conversation - just about racism and inequalities, and really setting people up for very different outcomes in life from the very beginning, based on the way we're set up systemically. So in terms of public safety, what are you working on?
Girmay Zahilay: [00:02:48] Right. Your point, Crystal, about these two issues being intersecting is so spot-on. Right now we're seeing possibly the largest civil rights movement in the history of the United States. The Black Lives Matter movement has brought in millions of people nationally and tens of thousands of people locally. I grew up in South Seattle, so seeing our streets packed with tens of thousands of people like we have, shows me that there is momentum to support Black Lives. The Black Lives Matter movement is not just about ending police brutality. Of course, that's a central message, but it's also about ending all kinds of systemic harm and uplifting Black people because our systems have not done that so far. And like you said, Skyway is the place where we must start. It has the highest proportion of African Americans in the state of Washington and simultaneously, it's also the area that has been disinvested from the most. When you have an area that has the highest proportion of Black people and the area that has been disinvested in the most, that is systemic racism, plain and simple. So it, just to me, it points out this issue where again, our region says one thing and does another. We can drive around South Seattle and Skyway and see Black Lives Matter signs everywhere, but we don't invest in Black people the same way that we should. These issues are intersecting - Skyway, our system of public safety, police brutality - these are all intersecting issues.
Crystal Fincher: [00:04:29] They're absolutely intersecting issues and have been issues for so long, and we're really late in having this conversation. And it's a matter of having a representative in your position continually stress that this is a priority - this is urgent. And someone with lived experience who this is not a theoretical issue for and who has spent many years leading up to this, working on how to change from the root, systemically, the issues that we're dealing with. And one thing that I do want to point out that, from my perspective I appreciate, is, as an elected representative, we want you to take great votes and people are certainly excited about that. But the leadership goes beyond just what you do in the meetings and the votes you take. And you talked about being part of the largest civil rights movement happening right now, that we're in the middle of, and there were nights when we saw horrifying video coming out of the streets of Seattle and surrounding areas and, certainly SPD, behaving questionably. And some just, unambiguously, inappropriately and violently. And there were protesters and people in the community who said, Hey, we need help down here. We need someone down here to witness this, to address this. This is wrong, from being teargassed, to being beaten, to being corralled, and you answered that call. You were there, you were available - one, you were in a position to even see that. I mean, between Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, you are there and present when a lot of other people are not. And you were like, Hey, I'll be there. And you were there. And that just meant a lot to me, it means a lot to community to see - not only as someone willing to take the vote, but this is personal and this is real, and they're willing to stand shoulder-to-shoulder on the front lines and say, You know what, I'm part of this too. And this affects me too. And I'm in a position to use my platform and power to change this, not just when it comes to taking a vote, but just using your voice, shining a light on it all around. So I just want to say - I appreciate that, I saw that, I know a lot of the community sees that. And it matters to have someone who understands and who has felt and experienced, what this really means and the consequences of these actions. And so beyond that, or I guess looking through that lens, what is your approach to turning just the understanding, the pain, and the need into policy - and what is in process?
Girmay Zahilay: [00:07:30] Thank you, Crystal, for highlighting that. There were a number of other elected officials who came out that day as well, and just the community members who've been organizing and protesting for the past six months. They've been putting their bodies and their lives on the line every day, to advance justice. And we, as elected officials, need to be out there with them. 2020 is such a special and different year, right? Before 2020 happened, we already had so many crises - it's not like we were in peace times before this and there were a lot of issues to resolve. But then 2020 starts and the issues get bigger and our tools for resolving them diminished greatly - because the usual tools that we have for advocacy engagement, understanding one another, are completely obliterated when we're not allowed to gather or be near each other.
So as elected officials, we have to find other opportunities of engaging and learning and listening, because it can't all happen virtually. We cannot believe and be lulled into the false sense of understanding our constituents from a laptop or from a cell phone. We have to be out there. And that's why I try my best to be out as much as I can, in a safe way, every opportunity that I get - whether that's outside delivering masks - I could have my staff or King County officials go out and do that for me, but I want to be out there, I want to see people, I want to talk to them - or that's going out and protesting with people, because I need to experience the police brutality and overreach firsthand if I'm going to shape effective policies. I think it's really important for us to be out there, to be visible, to show people that we're truly listening, and crafting our policies based on what we're seeing and hearing from our constituents. Otherwise, we're susceptible to just believing the spin, and the narrative, and whatever media agenda there is out there of the people who have access to media, telling the story for us. And I think the most perfect example is the evening marchers and the young people who are organizing and marching every night. If I were to just to open up my news apps and read about them, I'm seeing - mobs, destructive mobs. When I went out there and actually sat with them and spoke to them, I was blown away by the level of nuance and informed discussion that I was able to have with these teenagers and young adults. They were pulling up our voting records, they were pulling up things that we have said in the past in various committee meetings. It was just the most intellectual conversation that I've had in my time as a councilmember. And I would have never known that if I hadn't gone out there and spoken to them.
Crystal Fincher: [00:10:28] Well, and what you talked about is very important in needing to be present and experience it yourself 'cause you just mentioned, if we watched the typical evening news, they'll focus on, Hey, if there is some property damage, if there is someone that they can view looking aggressive, or if the police department says, Hey, this is our take on things today, whether or not that story changes later on down the line. That's really been the focus of our local TV coverage that a lot of people catch. A lot of people don't have the time or ability just to do a deep dive into news and the social media and to see what's actually happening. So for you to be able to experience it yourself and be on the ground and understand that this isn't - these aren't people without a plan. These aren't people acting impulsively. These are people who understand that lives are at stake and who have taken it upon themselves to educate themselves, to arm themselves with knowledge, and to say, You know what? We are going beyond what we've done before and we're demanding better. And I tell you, young people are the best at holding everyone accountable. And out of necessity - because their preceding generations have slipped and didn't do the job they should have. So they're actually coming around and saying, Okay, let's actually show you all how it's done. And we just saw that result in the Seattle City Council recently - overriding Jenny Durkan's veto of the rebalanced budget that significantly defunds SPD and sets the stage for even more defunding in the next budget.
Girmay Zahilay: [00:12:16] Right.
Crystal Fincher: [00:12:16] So, from the County perspective, and talking about the Sheriff's that are within your jurisdiction - are you also looking at defunding and what are the specifics of the plan?
Girmay Zahilay: [00:12:29] I would encourage everyone to look into Charter Amendment #6, which will be on your November ballot. When anybody who's listening to this opens up their ballot in November to vote on things like who they want their next president to be, they're also going to see a list of seven King County Charter amendments, and four of these amendments relate to your County system of public safety. If you vote Yes on Charter Amendment #6, it would allow the King County Council to shape the future of public safety. This is not some kind of symbolic, or incremental, or performative change around eliminating police brutality. This would allow the King County Council to move away from a system where we send armed police officers to respond to every single challenge on the streets of our city and county - to assist them - that is a diverse toolkit of public health alternatives. So, if we see a mental health crisis on our streets, we can send trained mental health professionals. If we see somebody in need on our streets, like an encampment, we won't send officers with guns - we send rapid response social workers who can help people in need. If our youth are having conflicts or issues, we can send violence interrupters and mentors to respond. If somebody has routine, everyday things like a noise complaint, or wants to do a wellness check, or a fire code issue, we can send code enforcement officers who aren't armed. Our default response to every single issue does not have to be to send police officers who have guns, because that's how Black and Brown people die unnecessarily. That's what we've seen all around the nation and this charter amendment, if it's passed - and it is something that our office proposed - would remove certain restrictions that would allow, then, the King County Council to transfer public safety functions away from traditional law enforcement and toward community-based and public health alternatives. I think this would be a huge and beneficial change for our county and all it takes is our public approving it through the voting process.
Crystal Fincher: [00:14:49] You're listening to Hacks and Wonks with your host Crystal Fincher on KVRU 105.7 FM.
So that's going to be on the November ballot.
Girmay Zahilay: [00:15:30] The one I described is just 1 of 7, but there are others - like shifting our Sheriff from an elected position to an appointed position, which would increase accountability to the Council and allow us to give the Sheriff policy instruction, which we can't right now.
Crystal Fincher: [00:16:24] You just mentioned the charter amendment to make the Sheriff appointed and not elected. A lot of people feel like, Hey, if we elect people, they're directly accountable to the people - we can hold them accountable, we get a consistent voice. Why is having them report or be appointed and accountable to the council a better system? How does that increase accountability?
Girmay Zahilay: [00:16:56] Well, an independently elected sheriff is exactly that - more independent, and we do not need a more independent police department. We need better checks and balances, we need to be able to oversee them, we need to be able to provide policy instruction to them. And yes, on the surface, it does feel like electing someone feels like accountability to the voters, but once you've elected them for four years, who are they exactly accountable to? The Council right now has budgetary power - we can provide incentives through budgetary sticks and carrots, but we cannot give them policy instruction. We cannot transfer public safety functions elsewhere. And the King County Executive right now - if the Sheriff did something wrong, the King County Executive cannot fire the Sheriff, for example. There would have to be a recall process, which is way more complicated than a King County Executive just saying, Hey, you've done something wrong. You are not being accountable to our constituents. We're going to look for somebody else. And also an appointed position would allow the King County Council and the Executive to do a nationwide search and find the best quality person for the job, whereas an election, you are inherently through that process - you're attracting politicians to that job. People who are going to be accountable to - more accountable to the police unions and to their donors - than to people who want better policy instructions for them.
Crystal Fincher: [00:18:35] It's always interesting to have this conversation with politicians, but it's usually only politicians who hold themselves accountable and allow the public to hold themselves accountable, who want to bring that up. that is a legitimate issue - that there are a lot of politicians who do feel beholden to their donors and to, a lot of times, the special interests that helped provide the funding and resources to get them elected - but that often have competing agendas with the people who they're actually elected to serve.
So as we're looking at this overall - one issue that we have recently talked about in Seattle, and especially looking at the Mayor and the control that Jenny Durkan has over the Seattle Police Department, and even the Police Chief for the Seattle Police Department - not really having power or authority to impose appropriate discipline, to make appropriate changes, because of the police guild's contract for Seattle. Is that also an issue with the Sheriff's department in King County? And how do you fix that? How do you begin to change that, so that there is accountability?
Girmay Zahilay: [00:19:49] It's a huge obstacle for justice and accountability. One of the things that we talk about most is the fact that oversight - the process of holding police officers accountable for misconduct, for example, that process is subject to bargaining - meaning that we can only hold police officers accountable in the ways that the police unions agree to. Imagine if any other profession, a high risk profession, say surgeons, or anything like that. Imagine if they told you, Hey, you can only hold us accountable the ways that we agreed to. Is that real accountability? Of course not. That's what we have here - that's the issue that we're facing here - the fact that oversight is subject to negotiation and bargaining. I understand why some things are subject to negotiation - we want workers to be protected - police officers are workers as well - things like benefits and workforce conditions, things like that, of course. But when we're talking about holding you accountable for misconduct, for example, that is not something that we should have to negotiate with you. That should be a completely independent function not subject to negotiation, but it is right now, because of state law. And last month, I actually held a round table discussion with several state-elected officials and community members, especially out in Skyway, and people in the union world, like MLK Labor Council. I had them all on a call and we discussed what can we do to solve this issue without deteriorating workers' rights? Because the last thing we want to do is have anti-union people using this police union issue as a way of deteriorating union rights. That's not what we want to do. Is there a way to carve out this specific, special situation? And that's what we would discuss with the state-elected officials as a state matter - it's not something that King County Council can change, but we did get some commitments from state-level people - that they are going to look into this and address the collective bargaining laws that allow police unions to be an obstacle to true accountability.
Crystal Fincher: [00:22:16] Okay, that makes sense. So, in terms of what is possible in this next legislative session, are there fixes that they're committing to bring forward, or that are currently in discussions? And then how much is an issue of state law preventing that, and how much is an issue of direct negotiation of the contract?
Girmay Zahilay: [00:22:41] So it's both for sure. And I, the sense that I got from the state-level people is that they are going to introduce something that allows - that would carve out police unions from this collective bargaining law. Or at least carves out accountability measures from the requirement to bargain and negotiate. Because again, that should be independent. I can follow up with them to hear if a specific bill is going to be proposed, but that's the sense that I got.
Crystal Fincher: [00:23:12] Yeah, that makes sense. And, appreciate you trying, even though that is not in your direct area of control - to make an effort to work in cooperation with your partners at the state, and to say, Hey, we need action. What can we do? And to get that conversation started, and we will certainly be talking more about that here on Hacks and Wonks.
So broadening the conversation - and we started talking about Skyway - and we started talking about the disinvestment and, really, the institutional neglect and hostility, which is certainly harmful and a form of violence. How do we - what are the best ways to address that? What change can meaningfully be made? What policies can be changed, especially right now in the middle of a pandemic, when every local government and state government is saying, We're experiencing a budget crisis at the same time - so what can be done? And looking at the near term, and then in the next six months to a year, what is planned? What is possible?
Girmay Zahilay: [00:24:29] For sure, Crystal, and I think the most important thing is to start off understanding what the problem statement is. The problem statement is not - how do we get more investment into Skyway? I actually just got into a Facebook argument with somebody on Facebook - which I tell myself every day, Don't get into Facebook arguments because it's a losing battle - you're not arguing rational people most of the time. But I posted how Skyway needs investments, et cetera, and this guy who, of course, had a vote Trump thing in his profile pictures, somewhere deep in there, was saying that, The easiest way to fix Skyway and to have it catch up with the neighborhoods around it, is to reduce regulations for developers, handout permits as quickly as possible, and private capital can flow in and we can develop it so fast - this is such an exceedingly simple solution. And I have to tell him, Again, you are working with the wrong problem statement. The problem is not where we need to find ways of having private capital flow into Skyway. If that were the only thing we're trying to solve for, the solution is exceedingly simple, right? It's just to eliminate all regulations, hand out permits to developers. And of course, they would take that in a heartbeat. The problem statement is - How do you invest in Skyway without displacing the people who already call it home? And the solution to that is much more nuanced and requires us to be much more thoughtful about how we proceed with development. It requires us to, yes, invite development, but do it in a way that is lockstep with anti-displacement measures, that invests in existing people and existing small businesses that are already there. It requires us to down-zone certain areas so that we can slow the pace of gentrification as much as possible. It requires us to be really thoughtful about what kind of requirements we're putting on developers - we're not just saying, Hey, developers, it's a free-for-all. No, you have to have a certain number of your units be affordable. You have to - right of first return to people that you displace in the process of development. You have to invest a certain amount of money in existing small businesses. You have to create community land trusts and community ownership. Those are all things that we're trying to do right now, because as far as I can tell, I have not been able to identify a single neighborhood or region in Washington State that's gotten it right so far. If it was so simple, I asked this man who argued with me on Facebook, give me the list of neighborhoods in our state where this has worked before. Just - we don't have to argue - just lay out the facts for me, because again, if you're going to point to places like the Central District - no. South Seattle - no. Anywhere you point to me, I'm going to show you that - no, we did not get it right. Yes, private capital flowed in and development happened, but what happened to the people who already live there? And that's what we're trying to solve in Skyway. And I can talk about the things that we've been working on so far, but I know it's always best to give myself some breathing room and not talk endlessly.
Crystal Fincher: [00:27:50] Well, we do have a few more minutes, but it would be good just to get an idea of what the focus is.
Girmay Zahilay: [00:27:59] For sure. So the first thing that we did was help get a Skyway Land Use and Zoning Plan pushed across the finish line. This is something that people had been working on before I got here, but we helped push it across the finish line. And that's the first thing - is setting the foundation for investment - and that means we down-zoned certain areas from bigger commercial areas into smaller neighborhood commercial areas. Because again, we don't want speculative developers coming in here and putting in giant high-rises, and Targets, and Walmarts, and all that. Not yet. We also changed the areas that are already zoned for multi-family housing, like apartment complexes - we included some affordability requirements into those, so if you are going to develop areas that are already marked for multi-family, you have to have a certain level of affordability for lower income people to be able to live there. That's just setting the foundation. And then, now what we're working on is bolstering the level of investment that King County is willing to put in - for things like a community center, we just got earmarked for $10 million. For things like participatory budgeting, where the community gets to choose how it wants to spend money - whether that's for housing, or youth services, or roads and infrastructure - $10 million is going to go into that. We're getting $4.6 million - and this is all part of King County Executive Dow Constantine's proposed budget - $4.6 million is going to be redirected, of marijuana revenue, is going to be redirected from law enforcement and go toward community-based alternatives. So you lay the foundation of slowing the rate of gentrification, and then you slowly invest and build up - and at the same time, in lock step, we're going to also be placing, preparing anti-displacement measures, like just cause eviction, which would require that landlords and other big commercial developers - that they have a just reason for kicking out tenants and can't just do it for commercial reasons, or whatever it might be.
Crystal Fincher: [00:30:21] Right. That is helpful, certainly. And excited to hear that you're picking that up - other local jurisdictions have taken that up, and so others are just beginning to follow their lead and I'm glad to see that you're on the leading side of that.
So I appreciate you just talking to us about everything today and what's going on and just understanding more of one central point. It isn't simple. It isn't simple, it isn't easy, but that is not an excuse not to do the work. And in fact that means that we really have to double down and dive in to understand the issues and get to work now, because we really can't wait any longer. We can't afford to wait any longer - people's lives are at stake and in the balance - and everything from health to education, just to what someone's neighborhood and school and street looks like, and what their future is set up to be - depends on the work that we're doing today. So I appreciate you spending this time, I appreciate the work that you're doing. Can you give your Twitter handle one more time, so people can get more information about what we've talked about today?
Absolutely. It's @girmayzahilay. Thank you so much, Crystal. I Girmay Zahilay: [00:31:48] really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. I really love the work that you do, and your whole team does. Thank you for highlighting the voices of our most marginalized communities and some of the solutions that would get us on track to being a region that works for everyone.
Crystal Fincher: [00:32:10] Thank you for listening to Hacks and Wonks. Thank you to KVRU 105.7FM in Seattle where we record this show. Our chief audio engineer is Maurice Jones, Jr. And our producer is Lisl Stadler. If you want more Hacks and Wonks content, go to officialhacksandwonks.com, subscribe to Hacks and Wonks on your favorite podcatcher, or follow me on Twitter @finchfrii. Catch you on the other side.
Crystal is joined by Doug Trumm, Executive Director of The Urbanist, for today’s jam-packed show that covers successful tactics used in the Sawant recall election, Durkan veto of the Council vote to end the hazard pay they enacted, the Starbucks unionization movement coming to Seattle, a City Hall Park land swap without park preservation guarantees, new leadership ahead for SDOT in the Harrell administration, the Legislature suing Inslee over vetoes, and the potential for a white Christmas posing risks to those left out in the cold.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Doug Trumm, at @dmtrumm. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“What Sawant’s Close 310-Vote Recall Victory Means for Seattle Politics” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/12/18/what-sawants-close-310-vote-recall-victory-means-for-seattle-politics/
“Sawant’s Recall Maps Show Familiar Path to Victory Through Capitol Hill and Central District” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/12/22/sawants-recall-maps-show-familiar-path-to-victory-through-capitol-hill-and-central-district/
“City Council Votes to End Hazard Pay. Grocery Workers Say They Feel ‘Abandoned’” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2021/12/15/63863317/city-council-votes-to-end-hazard-pay-grocery-workers-say-they-feel-abandoned
“Mayor Jenny Durkan will use veto to keep hazard pay in place for Seattle grocery workers” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/mayor-jenny-durkan-will-use-veto-to-keep-hazard-pay-in-place-for-seattle-grocery-workers/
City of Seattle - Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda Statement in Support of Continuing Grocery Store Worker Hazard Pay: https://council.seattle.gov/2021/12/22/councilmember-teresa-mosqueda-statement-in-support-of-continuing-grocery-store-worker-hazard-pay/
“Starbucks Workers United says Broadway shop wants to unionize” from Capitol Hill Seattle Blog: https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2021/12/starbucks-workers-united-says-broadway-shop-wants-to-unionize/
“Controversial City Hall Park Land Swap Moves Ahead” by Natalie Bicknell Argerious from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/12/21/controversial-city-hall-park-land-swap-moves-ahead/
“SDOT Director Zimbabwe is Out, What Does This Mean for Seattle Transportation?” by Natalie Bicknell Argerious from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/12/17/sdot-director-zimbabwe-is-out-what-does-this-mean-for-seattle-transportation/
“Washington Legislature sues Inslee over vetoes, setting up another clash over powers” by Joseph O’Sullivan from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/washington-legislature-sues-inslee-over-vetoes-setting-up-another-clash-over-powers/
“Seattle area to see some snow Christmas weekend” by Christine Clarridge from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/weather/seattle-area-in-for-a-cold-snowy-weekend/
King County Regional Homelessness Authority - Cold Weather Shelter Dec. 25-29: https://kcrha.org/2021/12/22/cold-weather-shelter-dec-25-29/
City of Seattle - Severe Weather Flyer: https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/HumanServices/Severe-Weather-Flyer_2021-12-22.pdf
“Warming shelters to open during cold weather” from KIRO7: https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/warming-shelters-open-during-cold-weather/AJGQT4FRZRANTAGCWY5GS2K3BI/
Transcript:
Transcript will be uploaded as soon as possible.
Today on the show, fellow political consultant Heather Weiner joins Crystal to preview the players in the upcoming state legislative session - who’s stepping down, who’s getting appointed, who’s moving up in leadership positions - as well as a peek at next year’s elections with announcements that several incumbents are resigning (and one who changed their mind). They discuss Inslee’s supplemental budget announcement, an opportunity to address our upside-down tax system with a Wealth tax, and the need to fix the now-delayed WA Cares long-term care benefit system. Plus a reminder to get your booster!
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal on Twitter at @finchfrii, and find Heather at @hlweiner.
Resources
“Historic vote: County Council appoints Lovick and Donaghy to state legislature” by Mario Lotmore from Lynnwood Times: https://lynnwoodtimes.com/2021/12/16/44th-legislative-district-211216/
“Yasmin Trudeau appointed to represent 27th LD in Senate” by Aaron Kunkler from Washington State Wire: https://washingtonstatewire.com/yasmin-trudeau-appointed-represent-27th-ld-in-senate/
“State Rep. Vicki Kraft announces run for 3rd Congressional District” by Lauren Ellenbecker from The Columbian: https://www.columbian.com/news/2021/dec/01/state-rep-vicki-kraft-announces-run-for-3rd-congressional-district/
“Washington state Sen. Ann Rivers changes course, plans to continue in politics” by Troy Brynelson from Oregon Public Broadcasting: https://www.opb.org/article/2021/12/14/washington-state-sen-ann-rivers-changes-course-plans-to-continue-in-politics/
“Marko Liias chosen to chair the Washington State Senate’s Transportation Committee” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate: https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2021/12/marko-liias-chosen-to-chair-the-washington-state-senates-transportation-committee.html
“Inslee’s 2022 budget highlights poverty, climate, salmon recovery and transportation investments” from the Governor’s Office: https://www.governor.wa.gov/news-media/inslee%E2%80%99s-2022-budget-highlights-poverty-climate-salmon-recovery-and-transportation
“Q&A: Rep. Noel Frame on her Washington State Wealth Tax” by Michael Goldberg from Washington State Wire: https://washingtonstatewire.com/qa-rep-noel-frame-on-a-wealth-tax-for-washington-state/
DuckTales theme song: https://youtu.be/p1I2HqXIMRo
WA Cares Fund: https://wacaresfund.wa.gov/
“I didn’t think I would ever need WA Cares: I was wrong” by Dani Rice in The Spokesman Review: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2021/dec/14/i-didnt-think-i-would-ever-need-wa-cares-i-was-wro/
“Inslee, Washington state Democrats discuss delaying WA Cares long-term care payroll tax” by Joseph O’Sullivan from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/inslee-washington-state-democrats-discuss-delaying-wa-cares-long-term-care-payroll-tax/
“As scientists race to gauge omicron threat, here’s what’s known and what isn’t” by Emily Anthes from The New York Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/as-scientists-race-to-gauge-omicron-threat-heres-whats-known-and-what-isnt/
Seattle & King County Public Health - COVID-19 Vaccine - Getting vaccinated in King County: https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/vaccine/distribution.aspx
Washington State’s Vaccine Locator: https://vaccinelocator.doh.wa.gov/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com and in our episode notes. Today we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week. Welcome back to the program friend of the show and today's co-host, political consultant and urban farmer, Heather Weiner.
[00:00:51] Heather Weiner: Crystal Fincher, I'm so glad to see you! Good morning and so happy to be here, or afternoon depending...
[00:00:57] Crystal Fincher: So happy. Yeah, I mean, people hear this in the afternoon. It's early in the morning - it's quite early in the morning. I'm always fighting morning voice on these things, but I'm delighted to see you and have you back on the program. Welcome, welcome.
[00:01:10] Heather Weiner: I'm so glad to be here, and what a year it's been, and what a year it's going to be. I'm really excited about what we're going to talk about today. About Leg Session - what's happening next, who's retiring, who's getting moved up. We've got a lot of great things to talk about today.
[00:01:24] Crystal Fincher: We do have a lot of great things to talk about, so let's dive in. I mean, to your point, there's a lot of turnover. We have folks who were just appointed. We have Senator John Lovick in the 44th. We have new Representative Brandy Donaghy in the 44th. We also have Senator Yasmin Trudeau in the 27th. A number of appointments - I think people would generally be surprised about how frequently we actually do appoint legislators, who then go on to run for - to retain their seat after that.
[00:02:00] Heather Weiner: This is why people - this is the only real benefit of being a PCO within the Democrat - I mean, not real benefit, there's lots of benefits to being a PCO. But one of the great benefits of being a PCO is being able to appoint someone to fill an open seat. And that's what they did in LD44 - is they appointed John Lovick from Representative to Senator to fill Steve Hobbs' position. And then they nominated someone to fill his position. And the Snohomish County Council actually went against what the PCOs recommended and appointed Brandy Donaghy - who by the way is fantastic - she's a US Navy vet, she's a woman of color, she's amazing. But I've only seen this happen a couple of times where County Council will go against the recommendations of the PCOs and the legislative district. I think the last time I saw this happen was down in SeaTac when Mia Gregerson was appointed over the recommendations of the LD - and she's been great by the way.
[00:03:11] Crystal Fincher: She has been great and -
[00:03:13] Heather Weiner: Super interesting.
[00:03:13] Crystal Fincher: - that was in my legislative district, the 33rd. I remember -
[00:03:17] Heather Weiner: Oh, so you remember that?
[00:03:17] Crystal Fincher: Very well, yes, and was happy to support Mia in that meeting - and certainly was a contentious time in the 33rd legislative district. But PCOs, or Precinct Committee Officers - to your point - that is one of the most consequential and impactful duties that they have. In Seattle LDs, you frequently have 100+ active PCOs. In a number of the suburbs, you're talking about 30 people who are getting together to decide, just by a majority vote, who is going to be the next legislator when there is a vacancy. That's a very important role to play.
I've been involved in efforts to recruit and increase the number of PCOs, and how representative those PCOs are of their communities - and this is one of the biggest benefits that I consistently talk about is - Hey, you actually get to choose. We talk about all these elections and how important it is, but wow, sometimes you are one of 35 people who gets to choose who your next Representative or Senator is going to be, and there are plenty of close votes in those situations. PCOs pick three people to send to the County Council, and the County Council gets to pick one of those three. And to your point - usually, they pick the number one choice, but they don't have to and sometimes they don't.
[00:04:45] Heather Weiner: They don't have to. Sometimes they don't.
[00:04:47] Crystal Fincher: And now the 44th has a legislative delegation that is 100% Black.
[00:04:52] Heather Weiner: Which is fantastic. And we have a new person of color in our mostly white State Senate, which is also fantastic.
[00:05:02] Crystal Fincher: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:05:03] Heather Weiner: I mean, all of it is great. But it's very interesting to watch - again, I have not seen this happen very often. And I think it's a great - I don't know, it's a lot of internal politics going on - but again to your point, 90% of this is showing up, so if you're a PCO and you happen to show up for that meeting, you're one of 30 votes that is setting somebody into a seat that they may hold for decades.
[00:05:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. That they may hold for decades. And these days, I mean, we're talking about the turnover of one to two Senators. A vote composition change of one to two within the Democratic delegation makes the difference between progressive revenue or not - or that can impact policy just by switching one, two votes, one, two changes - particularly in the Senate. These are very, very consequential - and certainly we'll be talking about these new appointments, these new legislators - as we head further into the session -
[00:06:07] Heather Weiner: Well, welcome.
[00:06:07] Crystal Fincher: - which starts on January 10th.
[00:06:09] Heather Weiner: Yeah, welcome.
[00:06:09] Crystal Fincher: So yeah - I'm excited.
[00:06:10] Heather Weiner: Welcome Senator Trudeau, welcome Senator Lovick, welcome Representative Donaghy - you'll be hearing from us. And then -
[00:06:16] Crystal Fincher: Yes, absolutely.
[00:06:17] Heather Weiner: And then there's a bunch of people who are also retiring from the Senate. I mean, from the Legislature, right? Kirby just announced yesterday that he's not running.
[00:06:27] Crystal Fincher: Mm-hmm [affirmative], and that's in the 27th legislative district.
[00:06:29] Heather Weiner: Also in the 27th, which is -
[00:06:31] Crystal Fincher: South Tacoma, Lakewood, Spanaway. Certainly a big opportunity for people to run there - I know a lot of people were looking at Sharlett [Mena], who ran last time, be going "Hey! Are you still interested?"
[00:06:45] Heather Weiner: mm-hmm [
[00:06:45] Crystal Fincher: affirmative].
So that'll be interesting to follow and see who is interested in running for that open seat. Certainly David Frockt has announced that he's not running for re-election. Representative Javier Valdez has announced his intention to run for that seat, so he's running there leaving his seat open. And so Melissa Taylor is running for his seat, and she's got $50,000 in the bank and a number of endorsements. I'm working with her, full disclosure - but very excited about that race. And she is an absolute force to be reckoned with and has done so much work in the community that - I'm excited.
We also have Vicki Kraft down in the 17th legislative district, down in southwestern Washington who - that has been a purple district, with her winning by one to two percentage points in her last few races. She has announced that she's running for Congress against Jaime Herrera Beutler, leaving that seat open.
[00:07:52] Heather Weiner: So she basically - she is primarying -
[00:07:54] Crystal Fincher: mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:07:56] Heather Weiner: A Republican.
[00:07:57] Crystal Fincher: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:07:57] Heather Weiner: She's a very conservative Republican, who is primarying a conservative Republican, in my view. I think that's really interesting - it could actually end up flipping the seat, because if Kraft wins that primary, it really opens it up for a more moderate Democrat to take the seat. Because Kraft is much more aligned with the Trump right-wing of the Republican party.
[00:08:19] Crystal Fincher: I mean, she is - the disgraced former Representative Matt Shea, literally an extremist - Vicki Kraft introduced legislation to jail women and their doctors for having abortions or providing abortion services, denied coronavirus was a thing, denied climate change was a thing - really, really troubling - just the most extreme that there is. And so that's going to be really interesting - both to see how that Congressional race plays out, because there were a few challengers to Jaime Herrera Beutler from her right. And to see what opportunities that leaves for Democrats in that legislative district.
[00:09:10] Heather Weiner: Super interesting.
[00:09:11] Crystal Fincher: And I think it might get a little bit more slightly - we'll have to see what the district looks like post-redistricting, and get beyond these challenges to the redistricting maps that currently exist - but it's going to be real interesting to see how that shapes up. Lots of change, lots of turnover, lots of opportunity.
[00:09:35] Heather Weiner: But Crystal, what do you think it means that Ann Rivers just took back her resignation? So here's what she says - she said she was stepping down because she had a new job and that was going to take up most of her time in Longview. Now, all of a sudden she takes back - she goes "Oh, actually, I think I'll have enough time." What? Don't you think, I mean, let me just go ahead and project on here - did they take a look at the poll and realize that that seat would flip if it was open? And that as someone who's held the seat since 2010, as an incumbent, she's going to keep it? What happened? What really happened there? I don't think her job description changed.
[00:10:12] Crystal Fincher: Her job description definitely didn't change. I don't know what the polling shows in that district. I mean, certainly in many areas across the state things have become less beneficial for Republicans, but I also think that also given some - I mean, Republicans can't be feeling great within the state - nationally is a different story. But within the state, they aren't feeling that great - and so, some certainly are going to be departing. I'm wondering if she saw opportunities for increased power just within her caucus.
[00:10:50] Heather Weiner: Yeah, maybe somebody traded something to her.
[00:10:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah.
[00:10:52] Heather Weiner: Well, she has three more years, right? She doesn't have to run.
[00:10:55] Crystal Fincher: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:10:55] Heather Weiner: She has three more years there, which also helps save the state Republican caucus quite a bit of money. I think - super interesting - I didn't know you could take back your resignation. It's not like you're breaking up with somebody and then say "Oh, I had a good sleep and I changed my mind."
[00:11:12] Crystal Fincher: Well, if you remember Pat Sullivan in the 47th legislative district - did that last -
[00:11:16] Heather Weiner: Well, that's true.
[00:11:18] Crystal Fincher: - cycle.
[00:11:18] Heather Weiner: But he stepped down because he was tired, and then I think he just realized he wasn't really that tired and came back. But here, her excuse was my job is going to take up too much time and then suddenly it's not taking up a lot of time. I don't know.
[00:11:31] Crystal Fincher: Suddenly it's not. Yeah, I -
[00:11:33] Heather Weiner: Seems fishy.
[00:11:34] Crystal Fincher: It is fishy, and also - wow, there are so many people who could take over. Certainly on the Democratic side we have plenty of conversations about - Hey, there should be space for new leaders within the party. Although, on the Republican side, this is a really interesting conversation, especially from folks coming from a left perspective, because a new Republican is probably one who is more extreme than the one who currently exists.
[00:12:06] Heather Weiner: Exactly, which is another reason why they didn't want Ann Rivers to -
[00:12:09] Crystal Fincher: Right.
[00:12:09] Heather Weiner: - right - step down? I mean, she represent - the 10th is a - right? That's where she's from? The 10th is a tough place for Republicans and it's another purple district.
Huh, all right. Well, let's talk about - there's so many things - it's a short session and they're going to try to put a whole bunch of things in there. Leadership has been changing also, as we're talking about elections. What's happening with the Democratic leadership?
[00:12:33] Crystal Fincher: Well, probably the headline leadership change is with the Chair of the Transportation Committee. Steve Hobbs, who had been the Chair and had been certainly a moderate, some would even say conservative Democratic member of the caucus, was appointed to be Secretary of State - which created an opening for, not just for someone taking his seat and Senator Lovick filling that role, but also a new Chair of the Senate Democratic Transportation Committee, which is a very consequential and very powerful position to be holding in the Legislature. Especially at this time, where there are a lot of resource coming in federally - probably the time where they're dealing with some of the biggest budget opportunities that are going to be coming their way, that have come their way - and as we talk about the vision for what our transportation focus should be looking forward. Are we going to focus on expanding highways and doing things that have a track record of not just increasing traffic, but also making our climate crisis worse? Or are we going to focus on really giving people choices about how they're able to navigate through our communities? Whether it's commuting to work, whether it's having an option to bike, whether it's having sidewalks in their neighborhoods so that they and their families can travel safely.
[00:14:06] Heather Weiner: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:14:07] Crystal Fincher: Right now there really is a crisis because there's a lack of choice in how people can get around. We default to making it very comfortable for folks and cars, which is going to continue to be necessary and I don't know that anyone is saying that it's not necessary, but up to a quarter of the people in this state rely, in some degree, on a non-car mode of transportation. Some don't have any choice on their ability to drive, be it because of disability or lack of mobility or just how their community is situated, and so what kinds of investments are we putting in that, what kinds of investments are we making in reducing the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions? These are all at stake, and so the new head of the Transportation Committee, Marko Liias, is now holding that seat. That was an appointment that was announced at the State Legislature.
[00:15:06] Heather Weiner: It's great news. That's great news - I mean, Marko is younger.
[00:15:13] Crystal Fincher: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:15:15] Heather Weiner: Definitely more urban focused, and also definitely more transportation and future transit focused, so I think it's great news. And I think that transportation advocates are probably breathing a sigh of relief - and happy -
[00:15:32] Crystal Fincher: Yeah.
[00:15:32] Heather Weiner: - to move forward. Because I mean, bless Steve Hobbs, he's got a lot of great things about him, but one thing was that he was definitely a roadblock to some of the more progressive things that the transit advocates wanted.
[00:15:44] Crystal Fincher: Yes. A roadblock and a road lover. [laughter] A road lover and expanding that - yeah.
[00:15:50] Heather Weiner: All right, there's your quote for Twitter. Well, I'm very excited about that and I'm really excited about what Inslee came out with in his supplemental budget announcement yesterday.
[00:16:01] Crystal Fincher: What did he come out with?
[00:16:02] Heather Weiner: He said, Look, the state is not out of the Covid crisis yet and we need to put more money back into the economy, and we also need to make sure that we are proposing significant funding to address poverty that - which means the child tax credit.
[00:16:21] Crystal Fincher: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:16:21] Heather Weiner: Which means, as you said, investing well over $160 million into more housing and resources, expanding K-12 learning, investing in the green economy - which means more jobs, but also helping to combat climate change, and of course his favorite, which is protecting salmon habitat. He even went out and had a press conference a couple days ago - out by a salmon stream. That - he also is talking about rebuilding the rainy day fund, and of course what's happening is the conservatives are wanting to use an anti-tax message to both attack the governor and to also shore up some of their swing folks in the next coming election. We're going to see a lot of fighting over - do we have the money to do all of these things? Why don't we cut taxes for people instead? Why are we raising taxes? It's going to be a really interesting discussion for the budget geeks out there over the next couple of days.
[00:17:30] Crystal Fincher: And I mean, next couple of days, weeks, months?
[00:17:35] Heather Weiner: Through April.
[00:17:35] Crystal Fincher: Yes, there's going to be a lot to continually talk about. One question I had, looking at a number of these proposals, are two issues in particular - the Wealth Tax, and might be most appropriate to say wealth taxes, and there're some different configurations of those. And then the longterm care payroll tax.
[00:18:00] Heather Weiner: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:18:01] Crystal Fincher: And that looking at a potential delay. What is happening with those?
[00:18:05] Heather Weiner: Well, first on the Wealth Tax, last year, or this year, the Legislature passed a modest tax on extraordinary profits that people, extraordinarily wealthy people, make when they sell their stocks and bonds on the stock market. They passed a small tax on that. That was the first step in fixing our upside down regressive tax system, and also raising half a billion dollars a year for childcare, early learning, and other things that we need to invest in - in education - but that's just the first step.
Our tax code is so regressive, and before we can start cutting sales taxes, cutting property taxes, providing more tax credits to people who are in the lower incomes - we have to make sure that we first know where that money's going to be coming from. And Noel Frame has been pushing for a Wealth Tax, which is on billionaires - people who have so much wealth that they're sitting on - that's sitting in bank accounts, it's sitting in third houses, it's sitting in off-shore accounts. People who are just hoarding this amount of money - it's not circulating through the economy - she is proposing to do a tax on that wealth. It's not an income tax, it's not a sales tax, it's a tax on the wealth that you're just sitting on - and to get it back into the economy, get it back into jobs, invest it back into businesses. Very excited about that - we know that Senator Warren, Senator Sanders have all been pushing on a Wealth Tax in Congress. I think we need to take the bull by the horns and do one here.
[00:19:48] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and wow, the public support behind this has just been skyrocketing - north of 60%.
[00:19:53] Heather Weiner: Yes, and it is bipartisan. Yeah, it is a bipartisan support. Everybody agrees that the super wealthy need to be paying what they owe in taxes, that we need to stop them from dodging their responsibilities, and get more money into the hands of working people - so that we can pay our bills.
[00:20:14] Crystal Fincher: So we can pay our bills, and I think a lot of it has been - we used to hear a lot of rhetoric of, Well, we can't tax job creators. And then there was the recognition that wow, this money that's being hoarded isn't being used to create jobs. It isn't being used to do anything. These billionaires have so much money that they cannot spend this money. It is literally just sitting there collecting interest in amounts that are more than any of us are seeing in a lifetime.
[00:20:46] Heather Weiner: In a lifetime! In a lifetime! They're collecting more interest in a minute than any of us will be seeing in a lifetime. And what are they wasting it on? They're wasting it on frivolous rocket trips into - 30 second trips into space. I mean, they're not putting it back into the economy. And of course they do - people point to when Bezos, or Gates particularly, fund couple hundred million dollars in philanthropy projects - but those are one offs, and they're things that they control. They control the outcomes of that. The public doesn't control the outcomes of that. They get to choose where the money goes to and who the money goes to. Often that's inequitable, and often it doesn't actually work. And what we need is the public to be controlling that money and deciding where it goes. We are still a democracy, last I checked.
[00:21:36] Crystal Fincher: Particularly because the infrastructure that is funded by the public is what is enabling their wealth. It is not like they had nothing to do with it, but certainly it is not like they had everything to do with it. And that public investments, that subsidies - have not played a great role in their ability to grow and continue to profit in the amounts that they have been, while also creating challenges in communities. Seattle is a perfect example of the impact of massive growth and scale - from primarily Amazon, and that radically shifting the whole composition of our housing market, that completely directly impacting the homelessness and affordability problems that we're seeing. And then to not play a role, and to not pay their fair share in mitigating these issues, has been repeatedly found to be unacceptable.
[00:22:38] Heather Weiner: It's like a cartoon. It's like a cartoon that we used to watch as kids, where there's this greedy duck sitting on top of a huge pile of money and jewels, and just laughing but not being able to do anything with it, right? And pointing at everybody else while they're just working in the mine. I mean, I just made up that cartoon - I don't know if it actually exists - but that's the image that I have in my mind.
[00:22:58] Crystal Fincher: I mean, and now I'm picturing Scrooge McDuck, but -
[00:23:01] Heather Weiner: It's probably Scrooge McDuck - that's probably where I got that image from.
[00:23:04] Crystal Fincher: And also now I have the DuckTales theme song in my head, which -
[00:23:07] Heather Weiner: Well, how's it go?
[00:23:08] Crystal Fincher: It's one of the best theme songs ever created. Look, we do not need me singing -
[00:23:13] Heather Weiner: No, please, will you just sing it for one second?
[00:23:19] Crystal Fincher: Life is like a hurricane - what am I even doing? Okay, anyway -
[00:23:25] Heather Weiner: Use that mic for good, Crystal.
[00:23:27] Crystal Fincher: And it is not me singing, let's - let's put a period on that right now.
[00:23:32] Heather Weiner: All right, we have a couple more minutes, but let's talk about this really controversial, but really important, Long-term care - Washington Cares - that this tax. So Inslee is expected to announce today, along with the House and Senate leadership, that they're going to delay implementation of the payroll tax for a year while they figure out how to make some improvements to it. For people who are listening - you're shaking your head, Crystal, I'm not really sure why - are you still, you still got the Duck...
[00:24:04] Crystal Fincher: I'm just thinking about how the hell did I end up attempting to sing on my podcast. Anyway, go ahead, sorry. But yes, it's a very important issue.
[00:24:18] Heather Weiner: Yeah, so let's remind people what Long-term care is. Long-term care - I'll give you a story - Dani, actual real woman, she's actually now Ms. Wheelchair USA of 2020 - 30 years old, has a son, goes in for a routine medical appointment, medical procedure - comes out paralyzed. Not expecting, of course, nobody expects to be paralyzed, but comes out paralyzed. She's going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Health insurance does not cover Long-term care, which is help around the house - so that she can pick up things, move, clean. Health insurance doesn't cover it. And Medicare, if she somehow was older, does not cover help around the house - or if you're elderly, if you're seriously injured, if you have long-term Covid - who's going to help make your meals? Who's going to help you get to appointments? Who is going to help you get dressed, go to the bathroom? Medicare and health insurance do not pay for that, so who does pay for it? Well, Medicaid does help with that in-home care, but in order to qualify for Medicaid, you have to sell everything - you have to have no assets.
[00:25:37] Crystal Fincher: Yes.
[00:25:37] Heather Weiner: Zero. You have to spend down.
[00:25:38] Crystal Fincher: You have to live in poverty. Yes.
[00:25:39] Heather Weiner: And at the age of 30, she and her husband don't have any - they're just starting to build a life, so she does not have access to this. WA Cares, the Long-term care payroll tax, would fund help for people like Dani, or people like - people's grandparents, me in 20 years - who need help around the house so that we don't have to go to a nursing home or rehab facility. Everybody pays into it, just like they do for Medicare, just like you do for Social Security - everybody pays a small amount from your paycheck. It goes into this fund, and then it's there when you need it. And 70% of us are going to need some kind of Long-term care at some point in our lives. 70% of us.
Controversy is - number one, somebody added, I'm not going to name names - somebody added an opt-out provision to it last year or the year before. That then, the Long-term care insurance industry then swooped into Washington state and told everybody that they didn't want to pay a payroll tax, a small payroll tax, that ends when you retire. Instead they want to pay thousands a year into a Long-term care insurance, which is often a scam, and that they have to continue paying and cannot miss one payment for the rest of their lives. So Long-term care insurance companies are in there now - and people got really upset because number one, now they know that they're being taxed. And number two, they can't buy Long-term care insurance because a lot of people have pre-existing conditions and so now they're not being able to buy it. People are upset, there's a lot of confusion - the Democrats and the Republicans are upset about this. So now they're going to delay it and see if they can make some fixes to it, and then restart it in a year - is my understanding. Now, what do you have to say, Crystal? I know, you're not very happy with this program.
[00:27:33] Crystal Fincher: I mean, I'm not very happy with how it ended up. I mean, it is absolutely a fact that we have a problem that has to be addressed. That the longer we do not address it, the more people are going to be needlessly suffering many of the same types of issues that we've been facing with healthcare. The private market has become predatory and is not serving peoples needs - it's not primarily concerned with taking care of people. It is primarily concerned with profit. And we have put safeguards in place for people during retirement - care in our state. We certainly have more healthcare choices, but we still don't have many options for people who find themselves unable to work because of a disability - who are in need of Long-term care, or who are not able to live independently for a variety of reasons. And especially, we're still in the middle of a pandemic - we have a lot of people suffering with long Covid. Disability is a fact of life for an increasing percentage of our population and we have to contend with that, but we make it - we basically tie disability to poverty. To your point - to be covered, someone has to basically have no assets and no income, and as soon as they do they stop qualifying for assistance.
[00:29:04] Heather Weiner: Yup.
[00:29:05] Crystal Fincher: And so what do we do? Are we allowing people to fall back into poverty? As we know and as we -
[00:29:11] Heather Weiner: Forcing them. Forcing them into poverty.
[00:29:14] Crystal Fincher: Yes, forcing them into poverty - and as we've seen, that hurts everyone. That doesn't just hurt the people who are directly involved - that weakens our communities, that affects our economy.
[00:29:24] Heather Weiner: And it actually affects the tax payers, because the tax payers - we as tax payers are responsible through Medicaid. We pay Apple Health, DSHS - we pay for this support. Either we pay for it for others, or we pay for it for ourselves - and that is what we're trying to do - is to shift that from being a Medicaid burden where people have to go into poverty, to where people have access to this.
[00:29:48] Crystal Fincher: Yes.
[00:29:49] Heather Weiner: Now -
[00:29:49] Crystal Fincher: So the need to fix it is there?
[00:29:51] Heather Weiner: Yes.
[00:29:51] Crystal Fincher: The challenge is as soon as they made this an opt-out situation.
[00:29:55] Heather Weiner: Yeah.
[00:29:56] Crystal Fincher: Insurance works because everyone pays in and then it takes care of the people who need it, but it takes everyone paying in in the first place. Otherwise it is untenable for a variety of situations. We went through this whole discussion with Obamacare - we understand how this works, we understand the necessity of it - and there are also a billion court challenges against it that were unsuccessful because this is how this works in society and it is beneficial for us all.
[00:30:28] Heather Weiner: Right. You are 100% right. Everybody has to pay into it or else it doesn't work.
[00:30:33] Crystal Fincher: Yes. And one, the policy choice to make it optional was a poor one, and really set this program up to fail - and all of the messaging against it that is disingenuous. And somehow as if it doesn't matter - and this messaging against it is, to be clear, funded by very conservative forces - big corporate forces who just want to maintain their ability to extract profits from people in healthcare crises. And in its current constitution, it's unworkable. It is a problem.
[00:31:16] Heather Weiner: Yeah.
[00:31:17] Crystal Fincher: And everyone has acknowledged that. There's a bipartisan acknowledgement that there is a problem. But I hope we also understand that there is an urgency to actually fix this problem and not just to sit there, as we heard so many people attempt to do in the healthcare conversations overall. Hey, everyone loves their insurance - when in fact no one loves dealing with insurance, right? And trying to paint the status quo as somehow okay, and that's why it's okay not to make any changes - when the status quo isn't working for anyone. We're having this conversation because the status quo is so incredibly broken.
[00:31:54] Heather Weiner: And there's so many people who are going to be - we're going to see a 40% increase in 2025, 2026 - in our Medicaid rolls if we do not deal with this, because so many boomers are becoming older and are going to need help. And so that means they're going to be filing for Medicaid for Long-term care, and who's going to be paying for that? We the tax payers are, so this needs to be fixed quickly and not delayed too long, because those people are going to need help.
[00:32:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. It has to be fixed. I just hope people see through all of the messaging of - everybody who is against everything just tries to call something a tax when - yes, we collectively pay for things that benefit us all, and it is much more expensive to not handle this in a way that reliably provides Long-term care for those who need it, and to try and place the burden on the individual. We've seen how poorly that has turned out with our healthcare system, we see how poorly it's turning out with the current way we handle Long-term care - and it's just unsustainable. That's the bottom line - what we're doing now is unsustainable.
[00:33:07] Heather Weiner: Yeah.
[00:33:07] Crystal Fincher: So I'm looking forward to a bipartisan fix to provide people with reliable, affordable Long-term care.
[00:33:17] Heather Weiner: Me too. I am too, and I just think about this woman, Dani, who went in for routine surgery and came out paralyzed - and she and her husband have been financially really struggling to figure out how to get her some help.
[00:33:30] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Absolutely.
[00:33:30] Heather Weiner: And it could happen to you. It could happen to me.
[00:33:31] Crystal Fincher: It can happen. It can and will happen to many, if not most of us, so we better prepare for it. It's coming and we better make it possible for people to prepare for it, and not have it so expensive that it's inaccessible to people, and then we force people into poverty to access any kind of care.
[00:33:55] Heather Weiner: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:33:56] Crystal Fincher: It's bad. We've seen how bad that is in so many different scenarios. Let's not continue to go down this bad path.
On a different subject, I just want to encourage everyone to get boosted, number one. But I also feel like we need to continue to have this conversation about the need for Paid Time Off for employees - especially wage based employees, service employees - to have time to deal with the side effects that are part of vaccinations. This is what happens.
[00:34:28] Heather Weiner: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:34:30] Crystal Fincher: And as we see that we are so reliant on community vaccination and people getting this - that we have to understand that this - people are going to need a day or two to deal with their flu-like symptoms that result from the flu shot, from the Coronavirus booster, from all of these. And that people, when they're forced to make a choice between being able to come in for a shift and pay their rent, and somehow maybe fit in something that's going to make them sick, they're going to say look, my rent is coming whether or not I get boosted. I have to earn this money to pay my rent, to pay my bills. And we need to make sure that there is a way for them to continue to pay their bills and be healthy. And so that there is a responsibility that we all have to not just get boosted ourselves, but also to hold companies in our community responsible and accountable for allowing their employees to have time off to get this and to deal with this.
I am saying this because I personally know a number of people, there have been a number of stories about people who really are looking at the choice between being able to work and earn money versus fitting in a booster shot. And we need to make this not a hard decision for someone. People shouldn't have to chose between their bills or their health.
[00:36:04] Heather Weiner: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:36:07] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. It is a challenge.
[00:36:12] Heather Weiner: Agreed. I'm looking at the time, my love.
[00:36:14] Crystal Fincher: Yup, and we are there. I appreciate everyone listening today to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, December 17th. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. And our wonderful co-host today is Seattle political consultant extraordinaire, Heather Weiner. You can find Heather on Twitter @hlweiner. That's H-L-W-E-I-N-E-R. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. And now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. While you're there leave a review, it really helps us out. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced to the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
This week, we revisit our conversation with Pierce County Council Chair Derek Young discussing what’s up in Pierce County. They discuss the vast differences in funding available for transit and other public projects in King and Pierce counties, how Pierce County and Tacoma are absorbing the population overflow of those who can’t find affordable homes in King County, how the Pierce County Council is approaching investigations into police misconduct, and how one governs as a Democrat in a county where there is a substantial Republican presence.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s guest, Pierce County Council Chair Derek Young, at @DerekMYoung. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“‘Home in Tacoma’ Advances with Recommendation to Eliminate Single-Family Zoning” by Stephen Fesler: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/05/26/home-in-tacoma-advances-with-recommendation-to-eliminate-single-family-zoning/
“Zoomers Flock to Tacoma over Pricey Seattle” by Brandon Zuo: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/03/17/zoomers-flock-to-tacoma-over-pricey-seattle/
“Tacoma on the Move: Pierce Transit’s Vision for a Growing City” by Rubén Casas: https://www.theurbanist.org/2018/09/17/tacoma-on-the-move-pierce-transits-vision-for-a-growing-city/
“Two Tacoma officers involved in Manuel Ellis’ death named in excessive force claim” by Allison Needles: https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article252735288.html
“Newspaper carrier who was confronted by Sheriff Troyer files $5 million legal claim against Pierce County” by Jim Brunner: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/newspaper-carrier-who-was-confronted-by-sheriff-ed-troyer-files-5-million-legal-claim-against-pierce-county/
“State attorney general launches criminal investigation into Pierce Sheriff Ed Troyer” by Will James: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/newspaper-carrier-who-was-confronted-by-sheriff-ed-troyer-files-5-million-legal-claim-against-pierce-county/
“Facing charges, Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer uses dog whistles to play the victim" by Matt Driscoll
https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/matt-driscoll/article255184512.html
"Report: Tacoma could diver many emergency calls to civilians” from The Associated Press: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/report-tacoma-could-divert-many-emergency-calls-to-civilians/
Transcript
Crystal Fincher: [00:00:00] Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm your host, Crystal Fincher. On this show we talk to political hacks and policy wonks to gather insight into local politics and policy through the lens of those doing the work and provide behind-the-scenes perspectives on politics in our state. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com and in our episode notes.
So today I am thrilled to welcome to the show Pierce County Councilmember Derek Young. Thanks for joining us.
Derek Young: [00:00:58] Thank you for having me.
Crystal Fincher: [00:01:00] Well, I really was excited to have you on the show because you are on the Pierce County Council, you're a former Gig Harbor City Councilman. You're really vocal on Twitter, you're really visible in advocating for what Pierce County needs. Most of the audience for this show is in Seattle - familiar with Seattle and King County issues and probably less familiar with Pierce County issues.
One of the biggest differences is - in Seattle, as we're talking about all of these campaigns right now, really it's what kind of Democrat are you? Are you a moderate Democrat or a progressive Democrat? Different story in Pierce County. There are actually Republicans. Republicans that support Trump. Republican Republicans. And governing is much different. A lot of the rhetoric is much different. So, what is it like, especially in the context of comparing and contrasting it with Seattle, serving on the Pierce County Council and what are your priorities that you're dealing with?
Derek Young: [00:02:07] Well, first of all, thanks. I feel like this is the part where I say, "First time, long time." I appreciate you bringing me on because, yeah, listening to you - being in the shadow of King County politics I think is a little weird for us because we're obviously a very urban county near by, and we're very affected by what happens in Seattle and King County. And so, for example, you're obviously talking a lot about housing, transportation, growth politics in Seattle. That lands really hard on Tacoma-Pierce County. And so we very often are dealing with the repercussions of decisions that are made outside of our capacity. And so that centers a lot of what we deal with here, and that's kind of on a bipartisan basis. We have to figure out how to absorb the housing that isn't built in King County.
It turns out jobs - you can have all this growth, but housing is where jobs go at night. And so that means you have to build the housing here. So, we're picking up the slack. We have to provide the transportation, and we don't have a regional transportation system contrary to popular belief. We have a very localized and regressive transportation system that hurts people, frankly, in South Sound. So, we have to figure out how to work through all of that while we watch all of these incredible light rail stations and BRT intersections get built while we still wait to be connected to that.
On the more partisan side though, we, as you said, have Republicans here. And for big chunks of the county that tends to be the way they vote. We have a Republican County Executive and so just like King County, they're separately elected and run countywide. And then we have a 7-member Council. Before I ran against and defeated an incumbent, the Republicans actually had a 5-2 supermajority. That tells you a little bit of the makeup there. We recently took the majority, so we now have a 4-3 majority on that.
But, as I regularly point out to people, my district, which covers the west side of the Sound that's in Pierce County - Gig Harbor where I'm from, as well as parts of North End and West End Tacoma - it hadn't been held by a Democrat since 1980. So, there are some changes that are happening in that direction, but the east side of the county, I think, reflects a lot of the national trends that you've seen towards the party in that end.
So, the way that plays out is - in the social services that counties are supposed to provide, very often on behalf of the state but often we should be doing our own local thing. So, we just recently passed the behavioral health tax - we're one of the last counties to do that. We really have a Public Health Department which - I chair the Board of Health - that has been underfunded for years and we're trying to make some changes there. Obviously the pandemic brought that out a little more. We're getting into children's services for the first time which is something I'm super excited about because who doesn't love kids? Trying to make sure that they have the tools they need, but also we know it has downstream effects. So, there's a bunch of things that are happening more on the social side.
And then finally environmental. Pierce County is - and the reason I ran in 1997 for City Council was growth management. And we were the poster child for sprawl and we're still dealing with the ramifications of those decisions made, frankly, back in the early 90s. And trying to deal with that, and environmental consequences, and those issues. So, we got a lot going on, but the good news is that the Council's personality has changed, I think, for the better. We were pretty dysfunctional there for a few years and so even some of my Republican colleagues who I disagree with, we're getting along great. And that's pretty productive.
Crystal Fincher: [00:06:35] That is productive. I remember some of those extremely dysfunctional times and it is good to be able to move forward on a number of these issues. I do think the pandemic made plain how much of a need there was and helped to bring some people along.
You brought up a great point early on just about you being affected by what King County does. Talking about transportation, we're in a conversation now about Sound Transit and delaying, continuing to delay, a lot of what was scheduled to be built in Pierce County. And people are paying for it now. They may not see the benefits of that for another decade or two. What is funding transit like? What is that conversation like? And I guess in looking at working with King County and working around King County, what would you ask of King County and what are you forced to do with these delays in a regional system?
Derek Young: [00:07:40] It's a great question and gets to, I think, some of where I disagree with some of my colleagues in King County. But I have to back up a little bit to explain this. One of the tragedies of the last 20 years in the Legislature, where I've worked representing cities and counties down there for a number of years - either my own, our association, or even as a contract lobbyist at one point. And we have not only the most regressive tax code in the country, which I think most people know, but what many of your listeners may not be aware of is that it's the localization that really lands hard on communities that don't have the same level of wealth as some of the cities in King County.
So, let's take local transit for example. It used to be that about a third of the funding for local transit came from the state, which is the way most states do things. It's the logical thing to do. In Washington, basically the Initiative 695 and the Legislature's response to that, basically eliminated that. There's very little state funding. Most of it's either federal passthrough or regional passthrough from the Feds. So, what that meant was they gave us something called local option. "Local options" are the two words that I want to hear the least from the Legislature ever because what that means is the way you can serve your community is what you can raise locally. So, if you're a poorer county, like Pierce County, I can only raise for every one-tenth of 1% sales tax, about 60 cents on the dollar what King County can. So, I have higher need but less money to do it with. Does that sound progressive to you? Does that sound like something that - the tax code that you would want as a liberal Democrat? No, of course not. But it's just fine for a lot of King County Democrats because they're piling up so much wealth there that they get to buy a lot of stuff. I always picture when I go through my budget - King County must be diving into piles of gold like Scrooge McDuck because they forget more money than I can try to scrape together to put a sensible system.
So, the second part is that because we have poor service, people don't value that transit as much. So, we've had trouble passing the last three-tenths authorization. So, that means we have two-thirds of what most other counties have and it only raises about 60% what King County can. So, our system is really starving and it barely provides basic services.
So, I'm a regular transit rider. My bus comes once an hour. If you had a bus in King County that went once an hour, there'd be riots. So, that's the kind of problems that we have. But you would think a regional system - that wouldn't impact. This is where a perversely named sub-area equity law in state law comes into effect. This was the idea of Rob McKenna back when he was on the King County Council - concerned that, basically the suburbs, were going to subsidize Seattle. Obviously since that time - this is back in the old days when Seattle hadn't had this explosion of growth - the reverse has happened in fact.
So, what that means is that we can only spend for regional transit what we can raise locally. That's why you haven't seen the connection through South Sound, and I include in that South King County - honorary South Sound membership in South King County.
Crystal Fincher: [00:11:02] Thank you.
Derek Young: [00:11:03] It hasn't gone through that zone or into Pierce County where we have our own. So, we've really struggled to connect to the system that - as people that are in the service industries and lower-wage tech workers get pushed further and further away from where their jobs are, they've been pushed away from where transportation can connect them effectively. It's really a terrible system. If you were to sit down and design this as a regional system, people would think you were nuts. But this is what we have. And each year I kind of scream at the top of my lungs to fix it.
The problem that this really gets put into hyperdrive is when we get some federal funding, which we've had recently, we distribute it based on what King County calls fair, and that means we're going to base it on service hours. Well, if I'm starting out with a tenth of the service hours that you can provide there, that means you're taking up almost all of the money in these other places where you've already concentrated all this wealth. So, we got basically 10% of the federal funding for our transit system and for our Sound Transit projects that King County did. If you don't think that's just morally abhorrent and outrageous, I don't know what to do. That to me is wrong and we have to fix it. But we've gone through two cycles now at Puget Sound Regional Council where that's exactly what's happened.
Crystal Fincher: [00:12:30] So, how does it get fixed? What needs to happen to fix it?
Derek Young: [00:12:34] The first thing is it's got to start with state legislation. And here's the part where I hate to put this on raw parochialism, but because our Party that is in control of both chambers is concentrated so much in King County, there hasn't been a lot of movement and a lot of support for changing that setup.
The second thing that I do appreciate and I want to call her out because she's been a great leader to try to fix this overall tax structure problem, and that's Representative Noel Frame. I don't think at first she was thinking as much about the local impacts of the tax structure problems that we have, but she's been super open to it since we started talking and realized how this is hurting people, not just in Pierce County by the way - that this is happening in a number of different places, where it doesn't make sense to base all of our services on what you can raise locally.
We actually just fixed this basically with schools. That's essentially what we had done with our school systems where we said, "We're going to rely on your local levies to determine what kids deserve." We didn't think that was right with schools. We shouldn't think that's right with basic social services like behavioral health, funding for early childhood, or transit, or any of these programs.
Crystal Fincher: [00:13:53] Well, I hope it is something that is taken up in the Legislature and that is going to be fixed because it is fundamentally unfair. And it ultimately inhibits and drives down support for regional solutions for a variety of things overall. And drives up the, I guess, I don't want to call it jealousy because it's not jealousy, but just some of looking at Seattle and going, "Man, you guys get everything and we're sitting out here outside in the rain with no cover and no one seems to be noticing." You talked-
Derek Young: [00:14:28] I'll give you one example that really highlights this. There is one BRT highway intersection in Kirkland that is going to cost upwards of $135 million. That is more than the entire Bus Rapid Transit line that is being built - covers, I think, a dozen miles - in Pierce County. One intersection that's going to serve a few hundred people versus ours that's going to serve thousands. And our funding was in jeopardy until the federal government stepped up. That's how outrageous this disparity is.
And so, yeah, I'm hoping we can get some common sense to this. But it is sort of frustrating to watch. And that's why when ST3 came up for the repeal - for the nearest brick to pick up and throw through that window, if they're not getting the services that they think they're paying for. And then they look up north and don't realize they're not actually funding those systems, but I guess that's what you're saying is - it isn't jealousy, it's that I'm getting hurt and we should stop that.
Crystal Fincher: [00:15:37] We're also dealing with, as you said, King County's failure to manage sprawl - people being people being priced out of Seattle and King County - moving further away, being forced out of the City, and forced further away from the City in search of more affordable housing, both rentals and owned homes. And so now we're also continuing to see headlines in Pierce County that housing prices continue to rise. Are you looking at the same kind of housing cost increases that King County has been experiencing? And how do you prevent that from happening?
Derek Young: [00:16:17] Yeah, in answer to your question, we have. At one point, Spanaway, which is in unincorporated Pierce County outside Tacoma, was the hottest housing market in the entire country. That's not a normal thing. That's pretty far out. And it tells you the kinds of pressures that are being put on the system here.
We have absorbed more than our share of the population growth. In fact, if it had not been for the fact that Pierce County had - A) coming out of the Great Recession, a large housing glut - meaning when I first joined the Council in 2015, our big problem that we were dealing with was abandoned homes, which sounds crazy now but we had a lot of them. So, that basically absorbed some of the pressure and then we've grown a lot. So, we've added a ton of new housing.
Tacoma right now is looking at a plan called Home in Tacoma which is going to basically transform a lot of their single family homes zoning into more accessible, and it's based on where transit support is. And so it'll cover most of the city. That's the kind of thing that we need our major metropolitan cities doing in general. It's our regional growth plans.
Seattle just announced that they're going to change the name of their single family zoning. They're changing the name. Now, I understand why they're saying it's exclusionary rhetoric - that's great. But when I first saw the headline I was like, "Oh my God, this is what we need. They're going to get rid of their single family zoning." They're changing the term, but it'll continue to do the exact same thing.
Crystal Fincher: [00:17:53] Okay. I saw you post on this. I will say, in fairness, I saw the announcement by Council President Lorena González, who's also running for mayor. And actually one of the things we've talked about on Hacks & Wonks before is - there does seem to be universal agreement among mayoral candidates, and there will be a new mayor in Seattle, that the need to actually end exclusionary zoning is there. They have different plans to approach it. So, yes, changing the name. But I will say that they are not talking about simply stopping at a name change. They are actually talking about changing the policies.
Derek Young: [00:18:33] And when they do I will be there to applaud them. In fact, one of the things I miss most about regional government was when we lost Mike O'Brien. Mike was a great partner negotiating our regional strategy and what basically - which was aimed at Seattle, forcing it to accept more housing. And I watched even a couple meetings where he was at where he was getting the - strong feedback might be the way to put it. It was tragic because he's such a nice guy that -and decided not to run again. But we need that leadership on the Seattle Council. I don't get a say in those elections, but I joked for a while - now that I know that residency is maybe not a requirement, maybe I should run for Seattle mayor so I can blow up their zoning code.
Crystal Fincher: [00:19:26] Well, I am rooting for the blowing up of the zoning code, and I am actually with you in terms of - dealing with rhetoric is entirely insufficient. It is actually changing of the policy that is going to be impactful for people on the ground.
Derek Young: [00:19:41] And by the way, I should say it's a good idea to change that. I understand why the name is - it's always good to police our language a bit and realize where that came from. I just wouldn't send out a press release over it. Just do it.
Crystal Fincher: [00:19:55] I get it. We have had a number of interesting press releases lately. In terms of dealing with exclusionary zoning in Pierce County, where are you on that?
Derek Young: [00:20:06] So, we are following basically what we believe to be smart growth practices. And so most recently we had what's called our Centers and Corridors proposal. It was in our last Comm[unity] Plan update and Development Reg changes. So, where we have access to high capacity transit, and this is a term that we have in our regional plans going through Puget Sound Regional Council - that means frequent high capacity, something more than a regular bus route. It's got to be either Bus Rapid Transit or light rail. And along those corridors, so basically within half a mile, we're allowing very large scale development. Originally it was going to be unlimited and just let the market decide. But Tacoma and us had a disagreement. Tacoma wanted to make sure that their downtown was protected and they were going to have more growth concentrated. It makes sense. The line starts there, so it's a good idea.
And then we'll also add more as we add more high capacity transit. That's trying to pull back from the outlying areas where there's more sprawl and really try to build healthy, sustainable communities that are walkable, have good access to public transportation, and don't require you to drive everywhere. This is trying to turn the corner on an auto-centric model that we have in Pierce County that forces everyone, including people who really can't afford it, to buy a car.
Crystal Fincher: [00:21:35] In terms of high capacity transit routes, lots of broad agreement across the state. In terms of single family or neighborhood residential, where does zoning stand on that in more developed cities that are not predominantly rural in Pierce County?
Derek Young: [00:21:56] Yeah, so, there's still quite a bit. And that's why I kind of called out Tacoma's work to try to - they're going to basically try to pass this this year. That's the recommendation from their planning commission. I think they're close. The pushback began. I kept telling people to wait for it. That's why we all, the Executive and the Council, unanimously sent a letter basically applauding their work because we're like, "We need you to do this so that we don't keep pushing more growth out in the outlying areas."
But, yeah, we need - I guess the way I would put it is the urban core. And that's the places where we do have that infrastructure. So Lakewood, University Place, Puyallup, Tacoma, and urban and incorporated Pierce County - those are the areas where you find that. And we're trying to concentrate as much growth there as possible. That means rezoning, in some cases, the single family zones. We already had quite - our moderate density housing already allowed for a lot of that flexibility. I think we need to go further in some of the cities. So, we need our city partners in Lakewood, Puyallup, UP, frankly, to step up along with Tacoma. I think we're getting there. Everyone seems to be - unlike my frustration in King County where some of the cities just ignore their population distribution, ours at least seem to say, "Okay, we'll plan for that." Now, this isn't Sim City. You can plan for it, the market has to come to it.
The second thing is that we're just now getting into serious - we have some money to start doing some major investments in public housing, which is something we really haven't done. The degree to which, and this is a compliment for King County, since I've said a few negative things. You all have invested a lot in public housing and are poised to make some bigger ones. We're just dipping our toes into it right now. So, we're working on those plans and we'll start our own developments. We'll start building much more public housing than what we have right now.
Crystal Fincher: [00:24:00] Well, and that's really exciting to see. And it is encouraging to hear you talk about - hey, cities, even cities with Republican leadership in Pierce County, are planning to absorb growth and are planning to meet those goals. And that there does seem to be some unanimity and agreement on - hey, we do need to absorb density. May not be agreement everywhere, but hey, if we're along a transit line we need to support the density on that route. That seems like a positive thing that should not be odd for every community to be advocating for and expecting.
In terms of the conversation around public safety, policing, we have certainly talked a lot in King County, throughout Washington. Pierce County is no different - whether we're talking about Manny Ellis or talking about Sheriff Troyer and his, as I will put it, setting up a Black man newspaper deliverer to potentially be killed - by saying his life was actively being threatened and seemingly not being honest about that. Where does, I guess specifically in those two cases, the Council stand and where are things moving, with the understanding that you may be limited in what you can talk about because you're on the Council and actively dealing with that? But overall, do you think policing is where it should be? And the conversation around public safety is where it should be? And how should it be different?
Derek Young: [00:25:34] Yeah. I'm glad you asked because I'll go to the part that will be difficult for me to elaborate too much on, and that's the current investigation into Sheriff Troyer. We did two things. First of all, I was heartbroken when I heard that story because all I could think was - how would I have felt if I saw this swarm of officers showing up to what they believed to be an officer in danger? And then I also can't put myself in the shoes of a Black man. And so I would have been nervous enough. I can only imagine what he was experiencing there.
So, we said - right away, my thought was let's use our public - an elected sheriff is only accountable to the people. The problem is that the people don't have investigatory powers. So, we, as the branch that most closely represents them, do have that. We have subpoena power. We do have the ability to compel testimony. So, let's basically hire someone who will conduct an independent investigation, find out what really happened, get into the details beyond maybe what the newspapers were able to uncover, interview folks. And then basically issue that decision and say, "Here's what I have found." We'll make it public. This is unusual for government. Typically when you know you're going to be sued, you don't do discovery for the other side. But I felt the public's interest was in this case not just financial. It was to get to the bottom of the matter and we'll deal with that. So, as we expected, we did have a claim filed and we expect a lawsuit.
So, that got paused because then we found out that the Attorney General was launching a criminal investigation. And when I say paused, it didn't mean that he stopped doing work. It's that it - basically the gentleman that we hired is a former US Attorney, so he has prosecutorial background both at the local level and federal level. He basically said, "Hey, it's going to be hard for me to interview witnesses while this is criminal, or interview Sheriff Troyer himself. So, let's wait for that to wrap up for those. I'll pause." But he's continuing to do some work. We expect that to wrap up in the next couple weeks - both the criminal investigation and the civil one. That's about what I have now and that's not just because I'm being cagey. I actually don't know many details because we're trying to keep this very independent. And that's to avoid that partisan problem.
The second thing I'll say is that - on the Manny Ellis case, this is one where all I can say to the Ellis family is - his death was a tragedy and shouldn't have happened. It's also clear that Pierce County badly bungled the investigation, starting with the death inquest and the medical examiner's office. Even the way they communicated with the family was a shame. And then the way it got turned over to the prosecutor's office where we discovered there was a deputy on the scene. So, we had - the investigation was conducted by an involved party. That's when we all said, "This is why we've been begging you to set up a state agency. You can't have local agencies investigating each other." There's too much - if there isn't actual conflict, there's an appearance of conflict. And we have to rebuild trust in law enforcement. We have to remove both. So, I'm glad the State Legislature authorized that, but it was too late for this case, so the AG took over and obviously made their criminal decisions on that case. And I don't think it's actually concluded. Those were the charging decisions that were ready.
So, I'll just say, from Pierce County's perspective, we have to fix what was broken within our departments. I will say this is something where the Executive and I agree 100% - where he's trying to make sure their processes are fixed. We have created a Justice Review committee that is looking through every of our procedures throughout the criminal justice system - starting with law enforcement, going through the judicial system, prosecution decisions - and we're beginning to make some of those decisions.
I will say the Sheriff's department, surprisingly to me at least, had already adopted a lot of the best practices that you hear, in terms of we basically don't use any no-knock warrants. The place where we did see a need for change was vascular restraints. The Legislature took that. So, we're looking at other places where we need to make some changes. The biggest one though is - the intersection of people in crisis, dealing with having other needs, ending up in contact with law enforcement - is a big problem in Pierce County because we've lacked those social services. So, we've been trying to push more into diversion, avoiding contact with law enforcement.
And frankly our law enforcement's always asked for that. They will tell you, "You ask us to do too much. We're not experts in dealing with people in crisis. So, let us deal with the security of an emergent dangerous situation, responding to a crime. Don't ask us to show up when someone is apparently just in crisis on the street corner, at a bus stop, or whatever. That's a place where someone trained with that can show up and help them and probably be more successful."
Crystal Fincher: [00:31:18] Yeah, I think that's an excellent point that gets lost in a lot of these conversations - in that police themselves, for a long time - I think some of it has quieted down a little bit for fear in this entire conversation. But man, for decades they've been saying, "This is something that we could do without doing. This is actually - we don't have the tools to address mental health crises, some issues of addiction, some issues around homelessness. There are actual issues here that we can't solve. Sometimes we have nothing to do at the scene." And their addition to it only makes it worse and more complicated, and complicates the job that they're trying to do.
So, in the conversation around looking at some of these responses - looking at overall staffing tied to 911 calls overall and maybe not tailoring that to the types of calls, do you think that there should be more movement in terms of tailoring the actual size of the force? Not focusing so much on patrol, as in investigation and targeted actions, and using some of the money that is now funding this entire infrastructure of response to things that they have said before they don't want to respond to - could be better spent on social services?
Derek Young: [00:32:41] This is where I kind of get off the bus in terms of the overall movement here because not every - no two departments are created equal. This is the way I'll put it. Basically Pierce County has about a third of the number of deputies that SPD, Seattle Police, has for officers and they cover a much larger territory. So, they've been well understaffed for a long time, and last summer I had joked a number of times that we already defunded the Sheriff's department, we just forgot to do the second part where you actually try to build up the services that would replace that need. And so I don't think we can look at every department as being the same.
In my district, where we have a rural detachment, basically 60,000 people on two peninsulas are covered by two deputies as minimum staffing. They're both 30 minutes-plus away from help if something bad happens. We can't reduce that. It would be dangerous not only for the deputies but for people in calls they're responding to because if they feel alone, which they very much are, you can run into problems.
We had a deputy killed in exactly that situation in the mountain detachment not long ago. We think the reason he broke protocol and didn't wait for backup to go into a home where there was a home invasion is because he was familiar with it, knew the help was 20 minutes away, and there were children present. Or would have thought there might be. So, he entered the home heroically and ended up losing his life.
And so we really don't have the capacity to make further reductions. But what we can do is add to that. Again, getting back to behavioral health tax, trying to add treatment. We're trying to build up co-responders, have alternatives. We have both an emergency response and a proactive response. It's important to go out in mobile teams and meet people where they are and begin to transition them to more traditional services. In many cases we've seen some success where someone has been living in unacceptably inhumane conditions for a long period of time, and we've been able to get them help and to a situation where they have stable housing and get their needs met, their medical conditions met. So, this is going to take some time. It's going to be complicated. It's going to be expensive. But I think what ultimately you will see in most departments is that you will save money by treating - basically going upstream, treating the problem not the symptoms. That's where we've been stuck for too long.
And I hate to say this - I don't want to say that anything in the last year we should be glad for. But the one thing about the pandemic and the resources we're seeing from the federal government, is for the first time we can make that initial investment that we haven't been able to afford before, and then show that there's savings there that we can then pay for the ongoing expense. That's always been a difficulty. I have known for years that instead of jailing people, permanent supportive housing is cheaper and in many cases would solve the problem that was going on there. But we've never been able to afford to take that money and invest it in something else. It's too complicated to get set up. So, now we have that opportunity. This is like an intervention in our system to reset things and hopefully make some improvements.
So, I know this isn't going to go nearly as fast as a lot of people want to see. And believe me, I would love to move faster. But I think things are moving. And the good news is, even in places like Pierce County that are politically mixed, we are seeing a lot of bipartisan work on this. And so I'm actually really proud of us on a couple of those issues. My colleagues that I may disagree with on occasion, we're finding places to work together on this.
Crystal Fincher: [00:36:45] Well, I certainly appreciate the time that you've taken with us today to speak about this, to help educate people about Pierce County and what it is like to govern there, the issues facing Pierce County and the state, and what we can do in terms of advocating and maybe nudging all of our legislators to say, "Hey, you know how we are letting other transit, housing, funding languish in the rest of the state? Let's not do that. We'll actually all end up better if we do that." Helping to equip us to have those conversations. So, thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Derek Young: [00:37:18] Thank you, and you're always welcome down in Pierce County.
Crystal Fincher: [00:37:21] Well, I'm there often. So, here we go. Thanks. Talk to you soon.
Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks. Our chief audio engineer at KVRU is Maurice Jones, Jr. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I, and now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type in "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. You can also get a full text transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced during the show at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com and in the podcast episode notes. Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.
Today on the show, Seattle Times politics and communities reporter, Daniel Beekman joins Crystal to talk through the Sawant recall election results, the importance and success of listening and ongoing engagement between election cycles in SeaTac, a bevy of State Legislature candidates including Melissa Taylor in the 46th Legislative District, and an update on what’s not happening in the saga of Jenny Durkan’s missing texts as she prepares to leave office.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Daniel Beekman, at @DBeekman. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“She’s Winning: Sawant Surpasses the Recall Effort by 232 Votes” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2021/12/09/63491197/shes-winning-sawant-surpasses-the-recall-effort-by-232-votes
“3 progressive candidates just changed politics in SeaTac — here’s how” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/3-progressive-candidates-just-changed-politics-in-seatac-heres-how/
“Washington state Sen. David Frockt to step down at the end of his term in 2022; 2 other senators plan to leave office” by Joseph O. Sullivan from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/washington-state-sen-david-frockt-to-step-down-at-the-end-of-his-term-in-2022-two-other-senators-plan-to-leave-office/
Elect Melissa Taylor: http://www.electmelissataylor.com/
“Health Care Advocate Bevin McLeod Runs for Open State Senate Seat in Northeast Seattle” by Rich Smith from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2021/12/07/63431657/health-care-advocate-bevin-mcleod-runs-for-open-state-senate-seat-in-northeast-seattle
“Report on Seattle mayor’s missing texts still hasn’t shown up as she prepares to exit City Hall” by Daniel Beekman and Lewis Kamb from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/report-on-seattle-mayors-missing-texts-still-hasnt-shown-up-as-she-prepares-to-exit-city-hall/
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome to the program for the first time today's co-host, Seattle Times politics and communities reporter, Daniel Beekman.
[00:00:51] Daniel Beekman: Hey there, Crystal. Thanks for having me on.
[00:00:54] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So many of us have been reading your work for years - appreciate all of your reporting that you've been doing in and around the city and the state. And so excited just to dive into this week's news with you. And I think the thing that is certainly on the top of a lot of people's minds, that we've been waiting to see the results of for months now, is the Councilmember Kshama Sawant recall election. And it looks like we're certainly at, or very close to, some definitive results. What has been happening there?
[00:01:29] Daniel Beekman: Well, a lot of get out the vote, it seemed like, in the last week or two before Election Day. I actually was not the main reporter for The Seattle Times covering the Sawant recall election. Our new City Hall reporter, Sarah Grace Taylor, was on that and she's been doing a great job. But just sort of watching from afar, it seemed like there are a lot of folks, especially on the Kshama Solidarity side, out on the street knocking on doors and trying to get out the vote.
And then now we're in the refresh mode, where we're looking at the results coming in. But last night, the No side came from behind in some of the later votes and is now in the lead. So we'll see if it sticks - there aren't that many votes left to count, I think, but it looks like there's a good chance that she's safe.
[00:02:44] Crystal Fincher: Well, and you raise a great point - turnout is such a huge issue. And in this election, one of the continuing issues as we went on was - when was this going to appear on the ballot? And they were signature gathering earlier in the year, there was talk about even the Sawant campaign continuing to send signature gatherers - knowing that this was almost inevitably going to end up on the ballot and trying to get on a ballot during the general election, where other people are voting, there's going to be higher turnout, more people participating. Usually that's when there's the highest participation - you anticipate that being more representative of the City as a whole. Sometimes when there are very low turnout elections, it is easier to steer the result in a particular way. And certainly for more moderate or conservative efforts, they feel that they have a better chance on a ballot with much lower turnout - typically, older wealthier people participate in higher numbers and at higher rates in those elections.
So this landing on a December ballot was certainly viewed as not ideal by a lot of people and they had a tall task in turning people out. But one thing that some DSA folks are going to do is turn people out. And there was a discussion online - I think Brett Hamil was talking about - you can rely on some Democratic Socialists to get out everyone. And I saw that tweet and 10 minutes later, I was on the phone with a friend who lives in District 3 and he said, "Hold on, someone's at my door." And it was people canvassing for the Sawant campaign, making sure they got to him. He was like, "That's actually the third time they have been to my house." And they get out, they knock on doors.
I think it also illustrates how different the dynamics can be in a district election versus a citywide election. Certainly a lot of money poured in on behalf of both sides in this campaign - over $1 million on each side came in - a lot there. But the element of being able to talk to the voters in your district and not only having to rely on money because you can't doorbell, or can't talk to everyone in the district - I think gives more people an opportunity to get engaged, to get involved. And we certainly saw that in what appear to be the turnout rates and numbers - and a higher turnout rate in this December election among young people than there was even in the November election. How do you see that playing out?
[00:05:36] Daniel Beekman: Yeah. It look like - I haven't sort of compared closely here in the last 24 hours - but it looks like the turnout in the recall election will be similar to sort of the citywide turnout in the November election. And I wonder - I haven't looked to see what the turnout in District 3, Sawant's district, was in November, but maybe it'll end up being a little bit higher than this December election. But it seems like they'll end up fairly similar, so really not that big of a difference in the end in terms of turnout. And then is it because voters in District 3 are engaged, and they're interested in this, and they know about it? Is it partly because of that turnout machine on the Sawant side, a combination? Somewhat hard to say. But yeah, it seems like if there was some assumption or thought or strategy or alleged strategy of putting the recall on this sort of weird special ballot in order to depress turnout, it seems that that's not exactly what happened.
And I guess something that I've been thinking about with this election is just how - you spoke about the impact of money and it being dampened by a district race as opposed to a citywide race. And I've also been thinking about - maybe the impact of money is dampened when you have a candidate on a ballot that people know and are familiar with. This is the third time - fourth time - this is the fourth time that Sawant has been on the ballot since 2013. So that's four times in eight years. She's been on the ballot a lot, she's very well-known, there isn't even another candidate on this ballot to learn about. She last ran in the district - she's won in the district twice before, including two years ago. And so there isn't that element of voters coming into this not really knowing the candidates and being out there as targets for having their mind shifted one way or the other a lot, or introduced to somebody in a particular way. People are coming into this in that district - they know who she is, they generally know whether they support her or not. And it looks like - the last couple elections she's fairly narrowly won. And so in some ways, even though this is special and weird and a recall, it could end up looking somewhat similar to the last couple elections.
[00:08:40] Crystal Fincher: Well, yeah. And I think you raise a good point that makes sense - the influence of money is really the ability to communicate in various ways directly with voters. That's really what that buy is - it's a bullhorn in a variety of different types and forums and different types of media. And in an election like we just saw, in November, where we had candidates who had not run before, who people were not familiar with, several didn't have much of a political history, certainly not in the City of Seattle - there was defining to be done. You could educate a voter and tell them something that they may not have known, they may not have heard before, and frame the race in a way that they may not have thought of. And money is very helpful in accomplishing that.
Otherwise, the other way to do that is by talking to voters yourself and knocking on doors. And that you just can't do in a city the size of Seattle, in a citywide election. To your point, Kshama Sawant is a known quantity. And I think what was misguided about the recall from the start, besides it being based on somewhat flimsy or dubious or certainly inconsistently applied standards for following rules by people in City Hall, there seems to be a continuing narrative or sense that somehow "real voters" don't really support Kshama. And the election was a fluke and the reelection and the reelection was just some fluke and it was somehow faked or not representative over and over again.
That's not the case - Kshama represents her district. And even in her last election, where it was just like crowded primary and where there were certainly people who disagreed on style, the substance of what she is fighting for repeatedly polls consistently with where she's at in the district. Even when people voted for other candidates in the primary, the majority still voted for candidates who agreed with her on issues like the JumpStart Tax, the Head Tax, rent controls and mitigation. And so it's not a fluke that the voters are voting for Sawant, voting for a Democratic Socialist, voting for substantive transformational change, and able to see that through again in this recall election.
The wildcard is when there is no other choice on the ballot and it's just an up or down vote - sometimes those can turn out to drop some from where someone finished electorally. But here we are again and Sawant's going to squeak through, I anticipate - she just pulled ahead in the recall race with just over 50% of the vote in yesterday's drop. I'm anticipating, I think a lot of people are anticipating, that that is going to extend somewhat, but there may not be that many ballots left to count. So we'll see how that transpires there. But not a surprise and certainly a shame to spend that much on running an election and having to spend all of that, both in terms of just the County expenditure in tax dollars and all of the private money and millions of dollars that went into that, to get the same result that we have been getting that was not a surprise.
[00:12:31] Daniel Beekman: Yeah. Part of it - the issue of it being different with only one candidate on the ballot is also, I think, mitigates a little bit with Sawant as opposed to a different kind of candidate. Because in past elections, it's almost been like a referendum on her even more than it might be normally with an incumbent, where past challengers have really based their campaigns to some extent around anti-Kshama Sawant as opposed to, or in addition to, pro-themselves. So in that way, again, I think the past races are more similar to this race than sometimes it might be in a strange recall special election.
And in terms of the continuing - that sense you were talking about, or the continual momentum there to try to unseat her - some of that has to do with her policies and her politics, I think, and the people who don't like those and disagree with those and have some influence and some money. But also, even though she's won a number of elections, it hasn't been by enormous margins - there's obviously a structural divide politically in that district. And there's a significant chunk of voters who really don't necessarily agree with what she's about. And so I think probably some of it is dependent on who you're talking to in your neighborhood, and who's in your social circle, and all of that stuff - it might feel like everybody agrees with me that Councilmember Sawant is great, or everybody agrees with me that - don't we all agree that she's the worst? And so I'm sure there's some of that going on too.
[00:14:46] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, there is. And we will continue to keep an eye on this district, the district races heading into the next municipal cycle. Certainly there's a lot going on in 2022 that we'll be paying attention to. But I do also want to say - looking at the turnout numbers as they're shaping up now - and the turnout numbers among those under 35, those under 25 being noticeably substantially higher than they usually are in Seattle municipal races and higher than they were in this past November election that just happened. We all have a lot of attention - we have a lot of studying to do, paying attention to how the DSA is operating, turning out people, how they are relentless on the doors. It is a turnout machine and it is going to be to people's detriment, certainly in the political spaces, to ignore that or to excuse that or to attribute that to anything other than a very intentional strategy - that if certainly leftist, progressive Democratic candidates are looking to be more in touch with and more relevant to younger voters, they need to be paying attention to what's happening there.
And so we will move on and talk about your new beat that you're on, the politics and communities beat, and your recent coverage of races that we have talked a lot about here on Hacks & Wonks - the SeaTac City Council elections. What have you been doing there?
[00:16:42] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, so I spent the last seven plus years covering Seattle City Hall and for various reasons, it was time for a change for me to try to do something new. And I'm trying out a new beat that we're calling politics and communities. And it's sort of a work in progress in terms of exactly what that's going to look like - but to some extent, the goal is to report on and write about politics, but as it's showing up in the lives of people around our region, in neighborhoods, in faith communities, on the block, and just in people's lives. But also I think it's going to include some additional reporting on electoral politics and politics in general outside of the City of Seattle. But local in terms of the cities outside of Seattle - their municipal elections and that sort of thing.
And so, as I was moving away from the Seattle elections last month in November, I decided to take a bit of a dive into SeaTac and what had happened in the SeaTac City Council elections. And those seemed interesting, and was able to spend a good amount of time down in SeaTac talking to folks. And wrote a story about how three incumbents were unseated by three challengers in one election - something that just doesn't happen all the time. And that those three winning challengers were all sort of on the progressive side of things, although didn't have the same exact politics as each other, but worked together - coordinated their campaigns. And by winning those three races have changed the political landscape in that city. And trying to dig into, well, why is that and how did it happen - was really interesting.
[00:19:06] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And full disclosure - I've been part of independent expenditure campaigns in support of those SeaTac elections, and we've talked about that before on this program. But yes, real kind of transformational change there. And there's a lot of conversation about - and valid conversation about - voting being a useful tool, but certainly not being the only tool that is necessary for meeting community needs on the ground and transformational change on the ground. But also talking about local elections, especially in suburban and smaller cities, non-major metropolitan cities - that is grassroots organizing. That is how that happens and what is happening there.
And so these races were a very big deal. To your point, three candidates who were certainly more progressive candidates, certainly with challengers that were very different than they were, conversations over a long period of time. This is the second cycle in a row where organizing has been going on. I think it's really important to recognize that in SeaTac, this is a part of a continuing movement and a result of continuing engagement that goes beyond just the cycle - but this is the payoff that happens when you invest time and resources over multiple cycles into a community that has a government that looks very different than the population that it's serving and not meeting those needs. And so, to me, this is just such a great example of what organizing within community can do, and what being very intentional about supporting and developing great candidates and really supporting their campaigns, and being intentional about needing to change the fundamental type of representation that a city is having. What did you discover that was surprising to you in that race?
[00:21:17] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, I'm not sure anything I would say was extremely surprising, but I did think it was interesting coming in and - you might come in and think, Well, what was the secret - almost? Especially with sort of more progressive candidates not doing as well in Seattle and in some other places around the region, in the country - what was the special strategy that the candidates in SeaTac had? And just understanding that really there's no trick - just looking at this election cycle, the challengers who won did have more money, they had more endorsements. And that definitely matters, as we know. But also talking with them and the folks organizing in SeaTac, it's that multi-year grassroots organizing - connecting with voters and not-every election voters on issues that matter to them outside of elections - that folks said made a big difference.
And also, as we were talking about in the Sawant recall election, in the SeaTac elections, the candidates and folks who were working with them told me and voters told me that it was knocking on doors and reaching people who maybe haven't been asked for their vote in the past, or very often. And also when engaging with voters, not just saying, "Here's my pitch. Vote for me," but saying, "What's going on in your life? What do you want to know? What matters to you?" And then listening. And maybe it sounds kind of hokey, but in talking to folks in SeaTac, it sounded like they felt like that made a big difference. So I think a combination of those things.
[00:23:40] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And I think you hit the nail on the head - with campaigns, there's a distorting effect in bigger city elections with a lot of money. And then we talk about - or in these national elections, congressional elections - where you're talking to a lot of people and you can't engage with everyone in your district, or a large percentage of people in your district in-person. And so then the dynamics somewhat change. But in a lot of suburban areas, particularly in smaller cities and towns and rural areas around, it really is about connecting. And I think, to your point, a lot of times when people are thinking about doorbelling and canvassing, they think about it in terms of, Oh, you're going to talk to the person and tell them all about you. But I was just in a conversation with a candidate yesterday and another one last week - it is as important to listen. And the biggest - there's such a huge benefit for candidates getting out and talking to regular people, and not just talking to activists and insiders and politicos. One, just the language is different, the type of engagement is different, how we talk about issues is different than people who don't have the time or inclination, for so many different reasons, to pay attention to every detail about everything. And they're just trying to live their lives and running into roadblocks in their own lives that they've identified and how they're engaging with them - hearing that directly from them and understanding where they're seeing challenges are coming from - only helps people develop better policies and better responses to helping the people in their district.
And really all of this, the point of all of it, is helping the people that you're serving, helping solve the challenges that they have. The point is not developing the most slick messaging. You certainly need to win, but the point of winning is delivering policy that helps the people in their district. And getting to people on the doors certainly helps that. And when you're interested, and representing those interests, and hearing the people and turning that into policy that helps people, and they see a track record of doing that - that is what makes a winning coalition over time. And when you fail to listen and when you fail to heed the people saying, "These are the big challenges in my life," and you're like, "Yes, yes, but look at my slick message. And as long as I win again, that's fine." And you fail to deliver material help for people who are struggling, that's a recipe for disaster. So we will see how that continues to play out, but appreciate your reporting on that and looking forward to more of your coverage on that beat.
I wanted to close out - we're coming close to time here, but wanted to talk about two extra things. One, we are seeing a number of candidates announce in the 46th Legislative District in northern Seattle. It's like election after election after election - it always feels like that from the political consultant end, but now it's just a little bit more overt on the end of people who may not engage with elections, but we're beginning another cycle here. And it kind of kicked off when Senator David Frockt announced that he was not running for reelection and creating an open seat, an open Senate seat, in the 46th Legislative District - which Representative Javier Valdez announced that he was going to be seeking. And he has since drawn a challenger, Bevin McLeod, who is - there's a profile of her in The Stranger. And so that is going to be an interesting race - that appears to be a challenger running to Representative Valdez, who's a Democrat - she is running to his left. So more progressive challenger or certainly positioning herself that way. So that's going to be interesting to see. Representative Gerry Pollet is running for reelection in his seat and hasn't drawn any challenger yet.
And then for the seat that's being left open, the other Rep seat that's being vacated by Representative Valdez - Melissa Taylor just announced that she was running for that. And full disclosure, I'm working with Melissa Taylor. But was gratified and happy to see a lot of support. And I don't work with candidates very often - I used to do that. Now I do a lot of independent expenditure, or different organizing work, and working on ballot initiatives. But when a candidate comes along that is - that I deeply believe in - and I've worked with Melissa in a number of capacities before, including with Persist PAC. I am happy to get involved with people who I deeply believe in. And Melissa Taylor certainly is one of those who's worked in organizing spaces in community, and just kind of that listening and meeting needs and solving problems. Looking at her doing that over and over and over again, and building coalitions to get things done, and convincing me to get involved in different things. And she's just very engaging and very determined and tenacious and really driven by a desire to help people - and she's a force. So those 46th Legislative District races are certainly shaping up, and encourage lots of people to continue to stay engaged and involved with that. Have you thought about any of these legislative races so far at all?
[00:29:51] Daniel Beekman: Not too much, but I guess the thought I was having as you were talking there was sort of wondering about, for folks who aren't in politics, how you would explain what the stakes are in those races. Obviously for the Legislature, those are safe Democratic or lefty - that's a lefty district or Democratic district. It's not Capitol Hill, but still. And so, for the folks in the non-political world, I'd be interested in how you would characterize - why should we care about this? And what's at stake for us?
[00:30:36] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that's a great question. And I think as we're looking forward here, especially as you pointed out, this is a safe Democratic district. This is not a district where there's a risk of a Republican winning and moving in a completely different direction on policy. But what we do face are a lot of choices on policy moving forward - do we look at incremental change? Do we look at kind of the status quo that we've seen with consistent leadership? Or do we make some substantive progress and change on issues that have been frankly languishing for a while?
Whether it's issues about public safety. And I mean, we're talking about - we're sitting at a time where there's been a rash of gun violence, lots of concern about whether people are safe in their neighborhood - and what kind of an approach should we take with that? Should we be investing deeply in moving forward in approaches that have been proven to improve safety and to reduce shootings and that way? Or are we paying lip service to that, right?
We are facing tremendous environmental challenges. Are we moving forward at a time when - Senator Marko Liias was just made Transportation Chair in the Senate, taking over for Steve Hobbs, who's now the Secretary of State - but with a lot of new revenue coming into the state from the federal package, are we going to be pushing those investments in ways that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce pollution, reduce the impacts on communities that have been hit the hardest? Or kind of just go along how we've been getting along and not press necessarily with the type of urgency that we've seen?
We have made some progress when it comes to addressing how burdensome our tax system is, but we've got a long way to go. We have been the most regressive state in terms of our taxes, meaning that the people who can least afford it are paying the highest percentage of their incomes in taxes, even before we talk about fees, right? And people are feeling that.
We're having conversations about how high the rent is getting, how hard it is to own a home, and how difficult it is to afford to live in Seattle. There are substantive actions that Olympia - that legislators - can take to make a difference in the affordability of houses, and setting up what kind of zoning and land use possibilities there are to help our cities be more affordable and more livable.
Just in terms of - back in conversations about being safe - do we feel safe walking down the street? Are our overall statewide transportation planning policies addressing the needs of people who don't want to drive all the time - who are walking, and riding their bikes, and who may have mobility challenges? Can everyone get around the city safely and live the life that they want to live, or are people being artificially held back by a lot of barriers?
So it isn't necessarily a conversation that we see in Democratic versus Republican conversations where it's like - do we need to address climate change? Yes or no? There's so much more on the Yes side than just, Yes, we need to address it - how we address it, the urgency with which we address it - in terms of housing, transportation, land use, taxation, and housing affordability, just public safety. It really - are conversations around there. And I'm looking forward to having those in these races and an unusually prepared crop of people who are making their way into the electoral sphere right now. So it's an exciting time.
[00:34:53] Daniel Beekman: Yeah. I guess something that I was thinking about with the 46th, and it's a little bit tricky because as we were talking about before recording, the boundaries are shifting a little bit as we speak. But it does seem like for North Seattle, and I know the 46th now includes - I think - some of Lake Forest Park and that kind of thing, and it may not anymore. But for sort of North Seattle, it does seem like sort of a big existential question that the Legislature can and has been involved in, at least to some extent, is how much more urban are those neighborhoods going to become? How much more of the city are they going to become? And what does that look like in terms of street safety, in terms of land use, in terms of zoning, and in terms of how people can afford to live there - as those changes happen or if they don't happen? So, yeah, that definitely seems like something to keep an eye on.
[00:35:55] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it definitely does. And even those conversations about growth and even just like the term urban and what people think and envision when they say that. Growth looks different in different places. And I think question one is - is growth an option? And kind of no, right? It is happening. You can't opt out of growth in different ways. And if you don't adequately plan for it, then you wind up in a situation where lots of people are having a hard time affording to live there and you're setting the stage for displacing small businesses and residents who have lived there. And the block that you've been used to is going to change in ways that people have very little control over when you don't plan adequately to absorb the people who are coming in there.
And Derek Young, who's Pierce County Council President now, is talking about - Gig Harbor has absorbed more growth than most areas in King County, right? And I don't think many people would think of Gig Harbor as an urban area how a lot of times people think when they do that. But it's just, Hey, instead of six people on your block, now there are eight or nine. And maybe it's a backyard cottage, maybe there's a duplex, maybe there's different things. And if you design appropriately, if you allow for common sense updates to zoning practices, that a lot of times have not changed since the '80s, then we have a much better job of having attractive, inviting, affordable neighborhoods for everyone. But this is going to be a conversation that happens a long time. And to your point, this is always on the top of a lot of people's minds, particularly in areas with a lot of home ownership and where there are changes in the population and growth is happening.
I do want to ask just real quick on the issue of Jenny Durkan's texts. You have written about that recently. Really kind of part of the news is that there hasn't been any news, despite spending hundreds of thousands of dollars with a firm whose job it is to help trace, figure out, get these texts. What is going on? What was committed to and what is happening?
[00:38:35] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, we wrote a story recently - I wrote a story with Lewis Kamb, a co-worker, about the fact that - this is kind of a convoluted tale, so I'm trying to think about it in the simplest way possible. But basically, there is a forensic analysis report on the - how Mayor Durkan's text messages, for 10 months, were deleted and lost or went away, whether they can be retrieved or some of them can be retrieved and sort of - we don't know all the details of that work, but looking into that - that is being done under contract by an outside private company in contract with the Seattle City Attorney's Office.
And the reason why this work is being done is that more than a year ago in November 2020, with the city facing a number of lawsuits over the City's actions in the summer of 2020 when there were protests going on and the CHOP and tear gas out on the streets and other things happening - the plaintiffs in those lawsuits were asking for records. And it became apparent that there were text messages missing, not only from the mayor, but also from a number of other top city officials. And so the City Attorney's Office said we're going to hire this company to look into this for us. And when we found out about this last spring and started writing about it, we were told that a report from this contractor would be - the aim was to have it out, I think, by the end of June, was sort of the initial word that we got. And now here we are in December and there's no report.
And the City's continued paying more money to this company. In the summer, they had paid about $200,000. Now it's over $400,000. So we wrote a story saying the City Attorney and the mayor are both out of office at the end of this month. The public was promised this report - the public wasn't told about the report and the work in the first place when the contract was signed, but when we found out about it, the public was told that the report was coming soon. And many months later, there's no report, so that's what our story detailed.
[00:41:18] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. No report, no comment or update from the City Attorney's Office or the mayor's office on when it can be expected. And certainly after reading that, the big concern is that both the mayor and the City Attorney are going to be leaving their offices, and does this issue get dropped? Is there no explanation, no accountability? Durkan said something to the effect of - they operated, I forget what it was - outside of the law or like not within the law - breaking the law. And kind of ironic that her career was built on putting people in jail who operated in the capacity that she described. But it is a big concern that there seem to be no answers.
And on top of no answers, we've now spent $400,000 to continue to get no answers, which is a difficult pill to swallow - when continuing to hear for a number of other initiatives and projects and priorities in the City, that there's no money. And for something that seemed like it was a setting intentionally to delete these texts - that now getting them back is not only very expensive, but maybe just not going to happen with no answers, is certainly concerning and disappointing. And I appreciate that you continue to follow this and write about it, and that The Times is pursuing this also in court. And it's just a mess, it's just a mess.
[00:42:58] Daniel Beekman: Yeah. And there's sort of different threads of it because there's the issue of why the texts were deleted or lost, et cetera. And that's sort of an issue in and of itself and that's what this report is about. But then there's also the issue of, well, once they were gone, how were public records requests handled? And that's another issue. So related. Yeah. So multiple threads there and it'll be interesting to see how some of these lawsuits play out - the lawsuits involve discovery, so records that need to be disclosed through the court process. And so more information may come out that way, but we'll see.
[00:43:56] Crystal Fincher: Certainly hope so, but appreciate the time and appreciate you being with us today. And I thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM this Friday, December 10th, 2021. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. And our wonderful co-host today was Seattle Times politics and communities reporter, Daniel Beekman. You can find Daniel on Twitter @dbeekman, that's B-E-E-K-M-A-N. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. And now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type Hacks & Wonks into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in and we'll talk to you next time.
Today Crystal is joined by Shasti Conrad, Chair of the King County Democrats, to discuss Shasti's journey from working on progressive national campaigns to immersing herself in political organizing with the local Democratic Party. In 2018, Shasti became the first woman of color chair of the King County Democrats and set out to re-make the local party into a place where everyone can belong and make an impact in their community. Come listen in on the conversation and learn how to be part of a vision that both recruits and retains passionate volunteers.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and Shasti Conrad @ShastiConrad. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources King County Democrats: https://www.kcdems.org/ Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by Shasti Conrad, a friend of mine, the Chair of the King County Democrats, and someone who's done a lot of work in the electoral space, campaign space, both locally and nationally. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:57] Shasti Conrad: Hey, Crystal, it's so great to be here.
[00:00:59] Crystal Fincher: Well, I wanted to start off and just talk about who you are and how you came to this work. How did you first get started in politics?
[00:01:09] Shasti Conrad: Well, in some ways, I feel like I never had a choice not to, in some ways. I felt called into this work even as a little kid. My family were - they treated politics as though it was a part of your civic duty. My grandmother was from Britain and got her citizenship in her 50s and I'm adopted from India. And so it was one of the hot topics at the dinner table - was just being on the issues of the day - what was happening, what elected officials were doing. And then my grandmother would take me to go vote - every year she would go and would make a big deal out of it. And so I was just like the kid on the playground that was constantly talking about politics. I would school my preschool teachers on why they were supporting Ronald Reagan and telling them that they were making bad choices.
So, yeah - and then I worked on my first campaign when I was in high school. It was a school bond levy campaign. And then when I moved up to Seattle University to go to college, I reached out and started working for the Washington State Democrats as an intern and just kind of fell into all of this work and it became a huge part of my life.
[00:02:26] Crystal Fincher: So what was your path between just that very beginning and winding up in the White House?
[00:02:32] Shasti Conrad: Yeah. So I went to Seattle University for college and it was during the Bush administration. And so I was spending a lot of time protesting, and I was really active in the anti-war movement and was really trying to rail against the system. And then in my senior year, a guy named Barack Obama decided to announce that he was going to run for president. And I had been working on my senior thesis, which was on hiphop and politics and this cultural connection between political activism and community organizing. And then Barack Obama entered the scene and I read his book, Dreams from My Father. And he talked about being this cultural ambassador between white society and his white family, and then into communities of color. And as an adopted kid by a white mom in a small white town, that really spoke to me. And so I just believed in him. I just wanted to help him. And so I jumped on that campaign - I was an Obama organizing fellow and out of the Everett Labor Temple actually.
And I always like to remind people - we weren't supposed to win. We were not the chosen candidate back in 2008. And so when he became the nominee and then when we won, it was such a huge deal - just felt like such a chance for America to deliver on its promise. And a friend of mine had been working on the campaign and went to the White House to go set up their internship program. And she asked me to apply for the internship program. And that's how I was in the first class of Obama White House interns in the summer of 2009. There was 100 people chosen out of, I think, 6,000 applications. And that was what set me off on the trajectory that's led me to today.
[00:04:27] Crystal Fincher: Thanks for the reminder about Barack Obama - not supposed to win. A lot of people are - I mean, you're certainly younger than I am - a lot of people are a lot younger than I am. And after Barack Obama had been president for eight years, it seems it's really easy to assume that he would've been pretty standard Democratic nominee, but everything was geared to go the Hillary Clinton route. And certainly the establishment was largely in favor of her, so that was an uphill battle that did not at all look like it was going to happen until much later in the game. So yeah, you found your dark horse candidate.
[00:05:15] Shasti Conrad: Yeah - I remind people - he was the progressive in that race. He was the left candidate that people thought like, "Oh, cute, he'll try, but there's no way he'll actually win." I mean, there was also all of the first Black president. I mean, I think so many of us - particularly older people of color - had Jesse Jackson. They'd seen how this stuff had played out previously and they're like, "There's no way in hell. America is not going to allow this Black man to win." And so I always go back to that - it was a real moment of hope and it was a real - say what you want about how the administration ended up - that was a really special time in American history. And improbable.
[00:06:06] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I mean, I think we've seen in the time since then a significant backlash against that happening and a concerted effort to not allow something like that to happen again, because they just didn't think it was going to happen at that time. Kind of snuck in under the gun before they realized what was happening. But anyway, so you landed at the White House and you wound up working for Valerie Jarrett, which a lot of people certainly look at that and are just like, "My goodness, that's a big deal, really big deal." What was your time like there? And I guess how did it shape the work that you've done since then?
[00:06:46] Shasti Conrad: Yeah. I mean, when I look back, that arc is so crazy even for me to be like, "How the hell did I end up there?" So when I was an intern, I was in the Office of Urban Affairs. And the plan was it was a summer internship - I was going to go to graduate school that fall. And I did really well in my internship - I worked so hard. My goal was basically to be the person that it was - people just knew they could rely on me. It was like anything that needed to get done, it was like, "We have Shasti. We know we can trust her. We know that she's a value here." And so at the end of my internship, I talked to Valerie's chief of staff, Michael Strautmanis, who had been an intern for Michelle Obama back when they were lawyers in Chicago. And I sort of said to him like, "Hey, I'm supposed to go to graduate school, but I feel called to do this work. I want to stay, I want to build." And he said, "Dream big." He's like, "Okay, put it on the line." And I decided to defer graduate school for a year - I gave myself a year to try to see if I could get a job in the administration.
And in a couple of months, Michael Strautmanis came back to me and he said, "We've got something for you." And so I ended up in the Office of Public Engagement, working for the special assistant to the president on disability policy. He was a blind civil rights lawyer. And I worked with him for about seven months and then was promoted to Valerie's office. And that was such an incredible honor. For people who don't know, Valerie Jarrett was basically the President's best friend - had been the kingmaker in Chicago, met Michelle Obama who - Michelle Robinson - who introduced Valerie to her fiancé, Barack Obama, and they became fast friends.
And so I was able to work in her office, which meant that I had an office in the West Wing. And it was intense - there was a lot of crises at that time - it was in the first term. So we were trying to get the Affordable Care Act passed, we were dealing with "Don't ask, Don't tell," there was the BP oil spill - there was just so many things that were happening over and over. There were crises all over the time. But I learned a lot about the toughness and trying to hold onto your compassion and humanity while dealing with deep serious issues where people's lives are at stake. So that balance was a good thing for me to learn - it was in my early 20s.
[00:09:33] Crystal Fincher: So what was the path from there to then becoming involved with the King County Democrats?
[00:09:41] Shasti Conrad: Well, I'll try to give you the short version. The short version is - so I left the White House to go work on the re-election campaign. Because I loved DC, it was really intense experience, it was all kinds of special opportunities and getting to really - you feel like you're making a difference - but I missed the people part of the work. So I went back on the campaign and we won again, and that was great. And by that point, I felt like, "Okay, we did it." And I was kind of ready to take a little bit of a break. And for me, that break meant going to graduate school. And so I did that and then I went and worked for the Malala Fund and did a couple of other international development foundation projects.
Then you speed all the way up to 2016, and I worked on the Bernie Sanders campaign. I did advance for Bernie. And then I came home. And Trump won and folks were in shock and traumatized and there was such a sort of like, "What are we going to do?" And I came back and decided that the best thing that I could do was to try to rebuild, here in the Seattle area in King County, because so many people look to us as this like Blue paradise. And if we couldn't get it together in Seattle, then I was like, "What hope do we have for the rest of this country? We've got to try to build a really strong Democratic Party. We need to..." And you remember, in 2016 - the infighting that was happening because in part, we lost. We turned on each other to say, "Well, it's because you guys messed this up because you messed it up. You pulled the party in these ways," and everybody was fighting. And it was like I just wanted the fighting to stop so that we could pull together to be able to fight back against what Trump was - I knew the Trump types and the GOP - what they were going to go after and we needed a strong front. So that's what brought me back into this work.
[00:11:58] Crystal Fincher: Well, and at that time - you talk about fighting and discord nationally. And the local party here in the King County Democrats - there was a chair at the time who had been found to be involved in a variety of different types of misconduct and unethical practices - from harassment to financial mismanagement, in addition to a lot of issues before that and subsequently - come to turned out. But you were taking over - were elected to become the Chair of the King County Democrats - and were taking over an organization that was almost an organization in name only. There was so much that had been either dismantled or was not cared for under the previous chair - there was very little infrastructure. How did you, I guess, go into - thinking about, looking around - what were you seeing as the state of the party then? And what was the vision you had for what it could be?
[00:13:12] Shasti Conrad: Yeah. The Democratic Party, both at the county level and some of - not all of the LDs - but in a number of the LDs, there was all of that in-fighting and there was a history of this type of fighting and jockeying for power. And really, I do want to say that there have been a lot of incredible volunteers who have held the line for the Democratic Party. I am appreciative of their work, but there were leaders who were using the party as basically their own power base. It was just about what they could do for themselves, who they could intimidate, who they could - all this kind of quid pro quo stuff behind the scenes. And it just wasn't serving the community. It wasn't doing the work - like sure, we were getting Democrats elected, but it was leaving so many people out.
And so - I had no plans. I was not planning to be a leader in the Democratic Party. That wasn't what I was like, "Yes, that's my dream." But I just kept seeing all of this pain. I just kept meeting people who were like, "I got hurt this way when I got involved in the Democratic Party, and I dealt with this type of racism and sexism, and this leader harassed me." And I just was like, "I just want the pain to stop." And so the vision, and I think you helped us back when we were running as Vision 2020, was really that we wanted to create a healthy professional organization that was about the old ethos of Obama - it was like respect, empower, and include. And we really recognized that the party needed to be more diverse and needed to be more inclusive. And we needed to have a team that was going to - who believed in those values.
One of the things that I had recognized when I looked back at the history of the different iterations of leadership at King County Democrats, is that in the elected officers, you would have people who had run on different teams who didn't like each other. There was no consensus in, "This is what we want to do. This is what we stand for. These are our values. And so we are going to do this together." And so we ran as a slate because I needed to know that I had a solid team who bought into this belief of, "We want to create an inclusive, welcoming organization that has a culture of accountability, transparency, and is about electing Democrats - people with our values - and not just gate-keeping, not just about power maintenance for a small group." That's what the other team does. That's not what we were going to do.
And so we won back in December of 2018 and we set forth on doing the work to try to restructure this organization and bring in new people, bring in more young people, more people of color, more women - and create a space where people felt like they could do good work and they could make a difference in their communities through being involved with us.
[00:16:33] Crystal Fincher: This local party apparatus is really what determines whether you have strong, competent elected officials at the local level - and that's the bench that then proceeds on to the national level. So it really does take competent, intentional organizing at the local level. And the local party is ideally supposed to be that. What it actually was was pretty far from that. And I think one of the things that you brought with your vision was to be influential and consequential in local government - and looking at what's happening with city councils, and playing a role in advocacy, and making sure the right people are in the right positions to make the right decisions. And to lead and push those decisions.
I know, certainly from my perspective as a Black woman, and we've had conversations about this before, but similar to a lot of us - where we've experienced from party sources - racism and sexism, and viewed harassment and bullying, and things that we fight against. And I had grown quite frustrated with the party quite frankly because of watching those things persist in the local level and not feeling like it was very relevant. I definitely felt that when you came aboard, you were seeking to really completely change that direction and make it relevant again. What have you been working on to help the average person in Seattle, regardless of whether they have a partisan affiliation or not, know that there's a local party, see that it's influential, and trying to help them in the issues that they're dealing with on an everyday basis?
[00:18:29] Shasti Conrad: I mean, so much of it is it's basic - it's education, it's connection, it's building authentic relationships, and it's showing up. I think that there had often been this idea that people had to come to the party and that it wasn't that the party was showing up. And there's so much expectation a lot of times that when it comes time to vote, everyone should just get on board with what the Democrats are doing. But if we're not there for the community, if we're not there for other community partners for the rest of the year, we lose our ability to have any leverage to say like, "Hey, remember August primary? Remember November general? Hey, in February, did you know there's special elections for King Conservation District, or there's this or that?" People - they didn't know - and we didn't do a great job of communicating what the value is.
We certainly have benefited for the last couple of years of a much more heightened spotlight on politics, I think, because of 2016. You have people who are paying attention who weren't paying attention previously. But yeah, we have tried to demonstrate how important it is to focus on the local. Now, my career, I have worked on four national presidential campaigns. I was like so many other Democrats where it was like my energy and excitement would be in a presidential year. I'd be all about the national. I love my national politics, but I know that the place where I can make the biggest difference is in helping to flip the city council in Sammamish, it is helping to make sure that on our school boards across King County that we are fighting back against these people who are pushing anti-Critical Race Theory nonsense. We've got real white supremacists that are getting onto Black Diamond City Council - that's happening right here.
And so I can drive 10 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour across the county, and I can make a difference in people's lives in a way that - when I was on Obama's campaign, I'm one of several thousand staffers - when you are part of - and it's great, it's exciting, but we have to remember that you have to guard the cast every single election. And in some ways, I find that these odd-year elections - often have way lower turnout than the even years - are the most important. And Seattle - we'll have Democrats - there is a battle between the type of Democrat that we want leading the City. But in places across the County, you really are fighting against people who don't believe in democracy.
My counterpart, King County GOP Chair, Joshua Freed, has totally thrown in with the insurrectionists. He says that wearing masks is child abuse. These are not people who fully believe in what we consider American values. That's what we're fighting against. So I think that's really important for us to continue to keep the spotlight on. And then we've been pushing for getting Precinct Committee Officers - which you helped us with that project - where we have found that, in 2019, in precincts where we had Precinct Committee Officers, there was a 5% higher voter turnout and that those numbers matter. We found that if we'd had full coverage of PCOs in every precinct in King County, we would've passed I-1000. It makes a difference here in King County, but it's also for statewide elections and statewide initiatives. Those progressive votes are going to come out of King County. So if we're not solid here, it impacts the entire state and that impacts the region. So all of this work really, really matters.
[00:22:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it does matter. And one of the reasons why I decided to say, "Okay, let me go ahead and try and help," was seeing that someone was willing to do the work even when it got uncomfortable and even when you were facing some pushback to say, "No, it is important to have a local party that looks like the communities that it serves. It's not okay to make people feel unwelcome, to pass off racism and misogyny as casual, let people get bullied out of the organization," and really moving to have the party truly represent and serve people in communities. Which a lot of people have come into meetings, seen that they - especially for someone taking some free time in their evening to come into a meeting - if they see people in-fighting, or if they hear things that are like, "This is not a welcoming or inclusive place for me, I don't feel like this is a space for me," they're just going to peace out, and they had been in droves.
And in my view, there's such a potential - and clearly in yours, right? Such a potential for the party to be impactful in driving some of those key meaningful things where, to your point, there are certainly especially sometimes in Seattle, these extremely passionate but really ultimately nuanced conversations about like, "What is the correct climate policy that we should be pursuing? What is the correct zoning policy where some people are just like, 'No, we don't believe in the concept of climate change, we don't believe in the concept of a minimum wage?'" You would be surprised how many local city council candidates right now in King County are publicly saying they don't believe there should be a minimum wage. Period. Not, "We shouldn't raise it to a living wage," just there shouldn't be. We are going all the way back.
And to your point, just some blatantly talking about violence and being okay with undemocratic processes and just really just being flat-out racist and violent, and it's not cool. So I guess in looking at how people can and should get involved and what the party has in the pipeline here in King County, what are you looking to do, I guess, as we come upon these November elections, how are you involved with that? And overall, just in communities, how are you engaging?
[00:25:14] Shasti Conrad: Well, and let me underline one thing - which is the other thing that we saw over the last couple of years is that the Republicans were doing a much better job than we were at building a bench. They were so much better. So in King County, they'd kind of given up to some degree the State Legislature. But what they were doing was they were back-filling in Hospital District Commissions, on Water Districts, in City Councils, and School Boards. They were doing a much better job fixating and getting people running in those places, which then made these - yes, they're smaller offices - but they had a huge impact. They were more conservative. And it was flying under the radar because we were like, "Oh, good, we've got the governor." Finally in 2017 with Manka like, "We've got the State Legislature - good enough."
And then people were getting deeply hurt in their communities by what was happening there. So that was one of the biggest things for us where we were like, "This is clear." Also, just to put it out there, the King County GOP has 10 times the amount of money that we do at King County Democrats. They are better funded than we are because, again, people know to give to somebody who's running for Congress, they know to give to their candidates, but the regular Democrat wasn't investing in the infrastructure. I often describe the party as candidates and campaigns are the jazz. As a party, we're supposed to be the steady drum beat. Whoever shows up and says, "I'm willing to put my name on the ballot, I'm willing to run, I align with your values," our job is to show up with volunteers, to show up with resources to say like, "We understand the lay of the land, we know the communities here, and we've got your back." That is our job.
[00:27:08] Crystal Fincher: People want to get involved or learn more, where can they contact you or the King County Democrats?
[00:27:14] Shasti Conrad: Our website is kcdems.org. And then my email is chair@kcdems.org. And I'm always happy to answer questions, or if you folks have ideas in their communities that they want to amplify, get up to me. And there are 17 legislative districts in King County - all of them have Democratic Party organizations. And we love to have people get linked into their Democratic LD organizations as well.
[00:27:43] Crystal Fincher: One thing a lot of people talk about, especially here in King County, is there are Democrats, there are Democratic Socialists, there's the People's Party - there's a lot of people who are on the left politically but may not identify as Democrats either - because just in the City in particular, just kind of everybody's a Democrat, that's kind of taken for granted. But other people on purpose have felt like the Democratic Party is not the place for them and they want another home. How do you view them or candidates running under - who are not officially Democrats, but who may hold values that a lot of Democrats agree with and a lot of people on the left agree with - how do you work through that?
[00:28:29] Shasti Conrad: Well, I think people might know that I worked on Bernie Sanders' campaign both in 2016 and 2020. I consider myself a strong progressive and align with a lot of the values of, like you said, folks who are the Working Families Party, or People's Party, or DSA. And I think for us leftists and progressives, we have to build the coalition. And so I think there's room for those organizations to exist, but what I always like to remind people is - for better, for worse, we are currently a two-party system. That's just the reality of what we have. And sure, I would love to do all kinds of other things, but I recognize that the Democratic Party - that's what we had. That is the most solid party organization that represents the most people. If you believe in democracy, that's what we have.
And so I am an institutionalist in the sense that I believe it is our job to go into these institutions, into the infrastructure, and try to change them from within. I've done the work on the outside, and there's a place and a role for that, but you also - these institutions are what stay. And so I believe that it is valuable to try to work with the party to try to change it, to open it up, to build the coalition so that more people who identify and feel comfort with DSA and People's Party and Working Families Party - that they feel welcomed back into the Democratic Party - because I think that's how we're going to win, is if we build that broad coalition.
And so I'm in full support. I understand why people may not have wanted to work with the Democratic Party before. But I am trying to lead a millennial, Gen Z, woman of color organization. I'm trying to do the work to change it so that it doesn't feel as - it's not as traumatic or painful as it has been previously. And that is what I have - put my stake in the ground, and what I really believe in, and I'm trying to fix.
[00:30:46] Crystal Fincher: Do you see your role as the Chair of the Democrats, or just should the Democrats, in your opinion, be supporting candidates who may not share the label, but who are sharing the values?
[00:31:05] Shasti Conrad: Absolutely. Look, I look at it as it's somewhat of a marketing issue. My job is to understand why someone would not want to choose our brand. It is to understand that and to be able to recognize, what are the ways in which we can change that to be more appealing to a broader base of people - who for the most part, you look at the Venn diagram of it all, for the most part, probably share 90% of our values. And so what is it that we need to fix internally and externally? Sort of an outward facing front, but also internally, what do we need to change that will welcome those people back in? I believe you can hold - two things can be true at once. You can be a proud DSA member, a proud member of the People's Party or Working Families Party, and also work with us in the Democratic Party. I mean, that's how we get things done. That's how we move the needle. At the end of the day, we are the caucus that you're going to have to work with to get things done once you get into office. So that's my hope, is that we can better build something that people want to be a part of, even as they hold these different identities.
[00:32:26] Crystal Fincher: I managed campaigns for a long time, so I went to lots of different LD meetings with several different candidates - that's just a thing that you do. And man, these meetings are oftentimes horrible things to go to. Lots of great people doing great work, lots of great volunteers, but in the past has been the exception and not the rule for the meeting not - the meeting to be relevant. You go in there, you hear people arguing, using Robert's Rules of Order. You see these long marathon hours, multiple hours, long endorsement meetings. You hear people just like yipping and yapping at each other. Sometimes you hear people with microaggressions or macroaggressions. And so a lot of people will dip their toe into their local LD and just not feel like it has been the best use of their time. Like, "Hey, I'd rather watch a movie instead of listening to someone debate one tiny element of one thing for 20 minutes using Robert's Rules of Order." What do you say to people who have looked at the Democratic Party locally and been like, "I tried it before, it didn't quite work out, it may not be a place for me."
[00:33:53] Shasti Conrad: I mean, look, I get it. And I hear them. And I've felt that way. Like we talked about earlier, I came back into the party and into Washington State politics in 2016. And I remember going to these LD meetings where there was like 100+ people. And then I watched over the next few months as those numbers dwindled because people wanted to do something, they wanted to be actively involved. And the Democratic Party offered them nothing. What it offered them was, like you said, Robert's Rules of Order, people getting completely wrapped around the axle on some minutia that didn't really matter. It wasn't open and accessible to the average person by any means. And particularly to people of color and younger people who it's like - I'm trying to survive here. I'm trying-
[00:34:42] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and people with disabilities, parents. Yeah.
[00:34:47] Shasti Conrad: Yes. I mean, in some ways, the pandemic has given us the opportunity of being able to do things in a way that are slightly more accessible in that - before, I would hear parents - it's like you'd have a meeting at 7:00 PM in Renton, that's right in the middle of bedtime and dinner and all of that. And so at least now we are able to do it where it's like, "Hey, hop on online and we'll make it easier." But I would say like, "Look, I get it. And what I am trying to do as the first woman of color chair for this organization is I'm trying to rebuild an organization that is welcoming. That is a safe space for everybody. That it's not about power gate-keeping." I'm like, "Hey, you want to come in and do some work?" Come on in. There's power for you too."
And we have to do this work because we're fighting against fascism, we're fighting against authoritarianism. And I think also come on back - we want to welcome you back in. I want to know how it didn't work and I want to make it better. I had a call with a woman of color who's running for school board up in the northern part of the County two weeks ago. And she was talking about the endorsement process and how awful she had been treated by a couple of these LDs. And I was like, "Tell me, because I want to go and fix it." And like, "Let me go help you hold these folks accountable. Help me demystify the process."
For better or for worse, I feel like I've gotten a PhD in this weird party stuff. And the reason why that matters is because I am here to be a resource to help change the way that it works, but also to help explain it. To help be able to say, "Hey, here's the side door. Let me help show you the way and how you can make this work and get done what you want to get done." And I believe that we're doing that. I mean, you've gotten involved, Crystal, in some ways in helping us. And you said you would never - I remember when we first met - you were like, "I'm done with the party." And you've been helping out here and there because I think we're making those changes and we're doing that work.
And it's not perfect, by any means, but I can't do it alone. I think that's also what I really want to be clear. When it's just me, I can't make the changes and I can't do the work that needs to get done. And so I need more people who are also committed to these types of changes to come in and help me build an organization that is of value to everyone that is a part of our community and not just for the few. That same way of doing things doesn't work. One of the things I am most proud of is - in 2019, we endorsed and we supported people like Tammy Morales, Shaun Scott. We supported people who - other places weren't. And Shaun didn't win, but he has gone on to do all kinds of amazing work in the community. And last year, with the State Legislature, we replaced Democrats with more progressive Democrats, more Democrats of color, and that shifted and changed the type of legislation we were able to get passed.
[00:38:03] Crystal Fincher: Oh, absolutely. I mean, we don't get capital gains without those changes, we don't get a number of the progressive policies - some of the environmental policy, certainly the police accountability legislation - that doesn't happen without the changes on the Democratic side to more progressive people that were there. And I think you bring up a great point. I mean, you talk about me - and I don't know that I've talked a lot about this on the podcast - but certainly have had major frustrations with the party, consider myself a progressive and continue to have frustrations with the party, particularly on the national level. But when there are people in places, and just FYI, these local Democratic organizations, they're actually all their own organizations. They're part of a master organization, but it actually is not like a company with branches - they have a lot more autonomy than that.
So there's actually a lot that can be done in shaping these local party organizations - how they're composed, the leadership that is in there, and how they can interact with and serve their communities. And the Democratic Party has resources. It's a party of resources and those resources certainly can be helpful in getting people elected. So if we can use those resources in the right way to get the right people to make the right decisions and in the right position with the appropriate power to do so, that's a good thing. And I think what I saw in you was, "Okay, there is someone willing to work and willing to push in the right direction." So if there is a tool available, with resources behind it, that can actually be a force for good, Hey, I'm willing to help have it be a force for good.
Would I do that if - I wasn't doing that - I'd said that I was not going to do that unless I saw that. Had not seen that up to that point and was skeptical that I would, but certainly here at the local level with you being involved and willing to push in the right direction. And a lot of times bend over backwards to make the process more accessible to more people - is helpful. And to help the local LD organizations move in that direction too and be spaces that are inclusive and open enough to even have leadership that understands the ability and the potential and how to be more inclusive and continue walking down that road. So that's how you hooked me in - was my ability to see you doing the work. And so if someone's willing to do that, I am willing to help. I do have some skills and talents that I can use to be helpful. And so I appreciate that.
So if there are other people who are perhaps considering where they are going to be investing their time and talent, this is certainly an option and one that can be consequential in who gets elected, and what decisions are made, and what policies pass. With that said, the accountability piece is also important and holding people accountable - both within the party, within the party organization, and with electeds - and seeing you be serious about that was another reason why I got involved because, man, was I sick of just watching people do ridiculous, buck wild, out of pocket things - and in some instances, unethical things that -
[00:41:57] Shasti Conrad: Yeah. It's not fair to ask someone to come in and be a part of something that you know is going to be traumatizing for them. So we have a recruitment problem and we have a retention problem. And so that is where it is both on the doing the outreach, getting out into the community, but it's also creating a culture of accountability and creating these spaces that are welcoming and conducive for all kinds of people to be able to do work that they find meaningful and can be proud of. And my subversive reasons for being in this role is because I know that the Democratic Party is an organization that has to change from within. It just does. And so we need more people to become members of these LDs who then can vote. And if they become Precinct Committee Officers, they can vote on leadership. They can choose people to lead in a way that backs up their values and is going to take these organizations in a direction that they want. If you're just railing from the outside, nothing changes. That's just where we're at. So that's why I think it's so important to come back in and I'm doing everything I can to try to create a place at King County Democrats where people who want to do good work can do that.
[00:43:14] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And it's worth pointing out that, to your point, PCOs or Precinct Committee Officers, kind of the most grassroots party position that there is - you're like a neighborhood captain - they vote on appointments of elected officials. When there's a vacancy in the Legislature and on some County Councils, they vote for those replacements. And those votes are pretty well-attended in Seattle, but I will tell you, in many of the LDs here in King County, those votes often don't include more than 30 people.
[00:43:55] Shasti Conrad: Our good friend, Representative Jesse Johnson - that's how he was picked for - down in the 30th LD. And he's wonderful and that's great, but 30 people were able to make that decision. And so it's absolutely an incredibly important role to play. I first got involved when I was running for an appointment to fill Pramila Jayapal's State Senate seat. And so about 100 some odd people voted on who became the State Senator - and that was Rebecca Saldaña, another wonderful elected official. But look, this stuff actually matters. A third of the State Legislature was picked by PCOs. It's not a small number - so it's really important. So if you become a Precinct Committee Officer, you get to vote on leadership within the party, you potentially get to choose elected officials, and you get to volunteer and knock doors in your community and get to be a leader in your neighborhood. That's pretty cool, and I think a really fun way to get to participate in democracy.
[00:44:55] Crystal Fincher: Sounds good. Thank you so much.
[00:44:57] Shasti Conrad: Thank you. This has been fun.
[00:44:58] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in and we'll talk to you next time.
Today on the show, the oft quoted Doug Trumm, Executive Director of The Urbanist, joins Crystal to discuss the widespread popular support for pedestrian only streets and protected bike lanes and bus lanes in Seattle, the precinct-level turnout results from the 2021 election, whether Bellevue will actually be ready for the business boom that it has long courted, the Washington State Supreme Court’s decision to make no decision on redistricting, and the Kshama Sawant recall election (ballots are due Tuesday, December 7th).
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Doug Trumm, at @dmtrumm. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Pedestrian Streets, Protected Bike Lanes, and Bus Lanes are Popular, NPI Poll Shows” by Natalie Bicknell Argerious from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/11/18/pedestrian-streets-protected-bike-lanes-and-bus-lanes-are-popular-npi-poll-shows/#comment-28490
“Despite Its Bluster, Bellevue Is Ill-Prepared for Amazon Boom” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/01/15/despite-its-bluster-bellevue-is-ill-prepared-for-amazon-boom/
“WA Supreme Court decides not to get involved in redistricting” by Melissa Santos from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/politics/2021/12/wa-supreme-court-decides-not-get-involved-redistricting
“Critics call for reform of WA redistricting process after commission failure” by Melissa Santos from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/politics/2021/11/critics-call-reform-wa-redistricting-process-after-commission-failure
“Strong early turnout in Sawant recall with one week of voting to go” from the Capitol Hill Seattle Blog: https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2021/11/strong-early-turnout-in-sawant-recall-with-one-week-of-voting-to-go/
"Everything You Need to Know About the Sawant Recall" by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2021/11/09/62713074/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-sawant-recall
“The Recall Sawant debate” from the Capitol Hill Seattle Blog: https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2021/11/the-recall-sawant-debate/
“Nearly $1M pours in from each side in Seattle Councilmember Sawant’s recall” by Sarah Grace Taylor from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/nearly-1m-pours-in-from-each-side-in-seattle-councilmember-sawants-recall/
Transcript:
Transcript will be uploaded as soon as possible.
Today Crystal is joined by Laura Loe, Founder and Executive Director of Share The Cities, which both educates around and advocates for affordable housing and reasonable housing policies that serve the communities they're in. Discussions include the continued legacy of racially motivated redlining, the controversy of golf courses, and how LEGO and The Sims have formed a new generation of city planners.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find more information about Share The Cities at @STCActionFund and @sharethecities. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
Share The Cities Community Education: https://sharethecities.org/about
“Acronyms for Action: ADU DADU EIS” by Chrystine Kim, Matt Hutchens, and Laura Loe from The South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2018/06/21/op-ed-acronyms-for-action-adu-dadu-eis/
“Segregated Seattle” from the Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project from the University of Washington: https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/segregated.htm
“Are golf courses the solution to affordable housing?” by Bill Radke from KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/stories/are-golf-courses-the-solution-to-affordable-housing
“Five Steps to Prevent Displacement” from the Sightline Institute: https://www.sightline.org/2020/08/03/five-steps-to-prevent-displacement/
“Post-election Seattle has housing density on the agenda” by David Kroman from Crossut: https://crosscut.com/news/2021/11/post-election-seattle-has-housing-density-agenda
“Must Reads: From video game to day job: How ‘SimCIty’ inspired a generation of city planner” by Jessica Roy from The Los Angeles Times: https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-simcity-inspired-urban-planners-20190305-story.html
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I am thrilled to have Laura Loe on the program, who is the Executive Director of Share the Cities Community Education and Action Fund. Thank you for joining us, Laura.
[00:00:48] Laura Loe: Thank you. I'm so thrilled to be here also.
[00:00:51] Crystal Fincher: I'm thrilled to be here. Before today, we've only known each other on Twitter, but I have long admired how much work you've done and how much of a difference you've made - being really instrumental in mobilizing to pass legislation, both on the local and legislative level. And just being a fierce advocate for housing justice - just so many good things. So I guess I just want to start off by asking - what are the two organizations, Share the Cities Community Education and Action Fund, and how'd you get started and what do you do?
[00:01:32] Laura Loe: So the Action Fund side of Share the Cities is the kind of meaner, not safe for work side - can curse on our social media accounts and hold people accountable, whether it's people that we organize alongside - elected officials, decision makers, corporations, other folks that we want to shine a light on if they're up to no good, or they're not living up to our ideals. And the Community Education side is our kinder, gentler side where we want to talk about public broadband and digital equity and housing and land use wonkery, like come into the schools and talk about the history of redlining or stand on a corner next to a farmer's market and tell community members how they can get broadband and kind of like the friendly, neighborhood version of ourselves. So that's how I've been thinking about it. And part of it has to do with funding sources and what you can do with what buckets of money -
[00:02:43] Crystal Fincher: So Community Education is a 501(c)(3) -
[00:02:47] Laura Loe: Exactly.
[00:02:48] Crystal Fincher: - focused on education and information. And then the Action Fund is the 501(c)(4) -
[00:02:54] Laura Loe: correct.
[00:02:55] Crystal Fincher: - which has a different tax classification, but is focused on action and advocacy work.
[00:03:02] Laura Loe: Yes. So we get people to show up to things, whether it's signing in at the state level for a broadband bill or showing up for the Solidarity Budget at Seattle City Council. Getting people to do super, super wonky land use things like the Puget Sound Regional Council, which nobody even knows what that is. Or a comprehensive plan. Or one of our wonkiest successes was partnering with another organization called MOAR around Seattle's backyard cottages. And there was something called a scoping phase of the EIS, which has to do with an environmental review. And about a thousand folks weighed in, and sometimes planning departments laugh - They're like, we're used to getting about 10 comments - like we're not used to getting 1,000 people commenting on this stuff.
And so that's always really exciting. And usually we're working with a lot of other organizations to advocate in a big group, whether it's 100 folks for Solidarity Budget, or House Our Neighbors, or Stay Home, Stay Healthy - like all these different coalition pieces. We're just one loud piece of it. But because of our Twitter - the Action Fund's Twitter following is about 7,000 people - it's a pretty nice megaphone and it is pretty fun to see those impacts. And also just so many people saying, "This is the first time I've ever written my legislator." Or "This is the first time I ever was in a meeting with my Councilmember." Or - just seeing people get over that fear and seeing them realize how easy it is to access government. Because people think it's just this far away thing. So I think that's part - I was a middle school teacher so I like that education aspect even while I'm doing the advocacy part.
[00:05:05] Crystal Fincher: And I appreciate that and how accessible you make those things that seem so - just wonky and complicated and inaccessible to the masses and looking to see how that has translated into action, mobilization, and legislative successes. And I kind of want to back up a little bit. I'm sitting over here as super wonky, former land use and planning board member and really see how impactful zoning decisions, land use decisions are - just to fundamental ways we are able to live our lives every day. What motivated you to start this? And why is, particularly on the land use and housing side to start off with, why is that work so important for people to engage with?
[00:05:58] Laura Loe: Well, I moved to Seattle in 2009 and I started getting involved in volunteering in my community through urban farming and some food justice things, and then volunteered at Treehouse with foster youth. Had usually about five hours a month where I was volunteering in different things. And all of a sudden I fell into volunteering at the Roosevelt Neighborhood Association. I lived in the U District at the time and they needed help with their newsletter. And so I started editing their newsletter and it ended up being a giant free job - I wasn't getting paid, but it was fantastic for understanding who was who and what was up in the municipal level. And I had never paid attention to municipal politics before.
And before I knew it, I was - the current Councilmember in D4 in Seattle, Alex Pedersen, had kind of reached out to me and said, "My buddy's going to run for City Council. I think you'd be a great campaign manager." And I'd never been a campaign manager before, I didn't know what that meant. And I was like, "Sure, why not? That sounds like a challenge." And it was great. And it felt like summer camp - because at that time, it was the first time Seattle had district elections. And so I got to know all of the other campaign managers and the consultants and all of the journalists and go to all the forums. And over the course of that time, working for the candidate, I sat in the forums and I filled out the questionnaires and I realized that I didn't agree with the candidate that I was working for.
And over that time - it's like spring and summer of 2015 - land use in Seattle became the election issue because this report came out that the Seattle Times and others - the bulldozers are coming, we're going to tear down all the single family homes, and rezone the City. I had no idea what zoning was before that moment, and all of a sudden I was being asked to help weigh in on that through the candidate - whether it was at the doors, knocking on doors, or talking to journalists, or whatever. And I realized that I didn't agree - he had a slow growth mindset and didn't want changes in the neighborhoods. And I did.
And so that was kind of a real awakening - I realized how it impacted school segregation, and food security, and immigration, and all of these things that I had been advocating for on kind of a national level - and how it kind of played out in land use locally. I was going to grad school, and I quit to start my Twitter account and, I don't know - take that time and energy that I was planning to devote to grad school and devoted it to this instead. That grew slowly over time into these two organizations. But the point of it is - if only I had known what I know now, and how can I get more people to know that stuff - to understand that zoning and land use are foundational for all these other things that we advocate for that are more interest based or values based.
I really think things have changed. You see everybody talking about it in the elections. You see it at every candidate forum now. There's just been a big shift in Seattle and across King County and across the country on zoning - it was a national presidential election issue. And so there's just much more awareness of how we've built our cities to exclude people and that's not fair.
[00:09:56] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. It is certainly - there certainly is increased awareness. It is much more part of the conversation. People in large cities can't run a campaign without talking about it. I am happy that you are active in the space and helping to mobilize people, because I think that although there is an awareness of it, there certainly are people who disagree about whether or not more just zoning is a good thing or not. We're seeing in - we're having local elections coming up right now, ballots are about to hit mailboxes as we are recording this and the election ends on November 2nd. We have candidates certainly talking about this, but how that translates to action within each theoretical administration looks like it can end up being very different and you see supporters and donors lining up behind candidates.
Usually on one side there are people who are excited about making changes to make our land use policy and codes more just and less exclusive. And other interests lining up behind other candidates who are very opposed to that. And some of them extremely vocally opposed to it, but happy to let the candidates say whatever, pay lip service, with the hope and belief that if they take office, then actions won't follow their words. And candidates being exact - like a little bit squishy on the answers that they're giving.
[00:11:43] Laura Loe: Definitely.
[00:11:44] Crystal Fincher: So they can't be held accountable for any actual promises.
[00:11:49] Laura Loe: It's hard in the Seattle mayoral race to see exactly what is going to happen. You're not getting any strong commitments from both candidates. You're hearing from Bruce Harrell that, I don't want it in every neighborhood and I don't want it to be a rushed conversation. And I don't want - the framing that we use for Share the Cities is ending apartment bans. So right now apartments are banned in 75% of Seattle, and really 75% of most cities in the West Coast and all across the United States. And that zoning wasn't an accident.
I think that this thing that I see with Nikkita Oliver and in the City Attorney's race - they're talking about that part. That this wasn't an accident, that this was on purpose. This was purposely done - that 75% of Seattle where apartments are banned was an act of exclusion historically on purpose - to exclude certain communities. There was already racial covenants. There was banks and redlining, but this zoning piece was historically, and continues to be a way to keep some people along busy arterials with bad air quality and other folks kind of in the leafier, greener parts of the community with 6,000 square feet lots and all of that kind of stuff.
At the mayoral level, the rhetoric is a little toned down in both directions. You don't hear Bruce Harrell coming out against some changes and you don't hear Lorena González going all the way to being very clear when she talks about citywide changes. Is that on every block? Is that on every street? Is that starting with communities that had been most exclusionary? You don't hear a lot of details either. So I think that there's fear, at that level, of being too extreme in either direction.
And the words for folks that are new to this are often - NIMBY, Not In My BackYard, and YIMBY, Yes In My BackYard. And there's a third category that I like to talk about - PHIMBY, which is Public Housing In My BackYard. And those are kind of the three organizing spaces that exist in most cities around housing, and where housing should go, where affordable housing should go, where new apartment buildings should go in your city. So this is not a Seattle specific issue, but you do see it still being an area where candidates are scared to take too strong of a position.
[00:14:36] Crystal Fincher: A lot of wealth and power is really being hoarded in those NIMBY spaces where people are saying, "I bought into this exclusive area," and viewing that exclusivity as a bonus or something that they paid for and are owed. And it manifests in people getting mad that people who they aren't familiar with are parking near their home on a public street that is collectively paid for by tax dollars. Or people are looking to use community parks in their neighborhood and they feel like they are owed exclusivity of public spaces and public investments and are exempted from-
[00:15:31] Laura Loe: Sharing.
[00:15:32] Crystal Fincher: Participating and sharing resources and growth with others in the City. And feeling like there's a point at which you can realistically purchase exclusivity. And we see that manifesting in schools - public, private, and quasi. We see that in parks conversations. And looking at if golf courses are really green space - if they're exclusive and can't be used by everyone.
[00:16:01] Laura Loe: You're trying to get me in trouble - bringing up golf courses. Golf courses are - the golf course lobby is powerful. The public golf course lobby is powerful. We were talking about the golf course up at the top of near 145th, the border of Seattle and Shoreline. It has an 18 hole course and a 9 hole course. And we were talking about building some housing around the outside of it. Or maybe in one corner of it. And immediately the golf course folks were putting up their signs. You went to any of the courses and there was like lots of organizing. They got a big spokesperson, Aaron Levine from local sports news person, to be their figurehead pushing back. Yeah, golf courses are a dangerous subject.
[00:17:00] Crystal Fincher: Well, I do want to talk a bit about, because you - we talk about these NIMBY spaces, but we also hear sometimes people from within displaced communities and people using rhetoric from those within displaced communities who may not be coming from a place of concern about actual displacement. But looking at conversations around gentrification and exclusion, people being priced out and pushed out of their areas - and saying if we're talking about up zoning and new development, that to me sounds like it's a bunch of new people coming in, and a bunch of people being pushed out. And when we look at what has happened in the Central District and hearing, sometimes concerns from those areas on - how do you balance issues like maintaining the character of a neighborhood, which you hear from people like in the CD to say, "Hey, this has a heritage and a culture and a history that is worth preserving." And you hear that from people, like in Broadmoor to be like, "Hey, I paid to have three McMansions on this street and nothing more." And no one who looks unfamiliar or feels unfamiliar to them.
[00:18:26] Laura Loe: Yes. So I early on, I was watching what was happening in the Bay Area around these tensions - what I call the YIMBY-PHIMBY tension, which is the Public Housing In My BackYard folks who want affordable options, want land trusts, community ownership models, and other anti-displacement tools ahead of zoning changes. So they want to know that these anti-displacement things will be funded and robust before we start doing any big zoning changes - where market rate developers can come in and build new condos, new townhomes, new towers, or six story buildings that are catering towards, stereotypically the tech worker kind of folks, in people's minds, and not to their communities or not making sure that the communities that are there right now have housing. That first we need to shore up large amounts of state and federal funding that will be in place ahead of time to prevent the displacement. And what ends up happening is you'll see communities opposing new market rate buildings. And so nothing's getting built because there isn't the state and federal dollars to do the deep anti-displacement community development projects that absolutely need to happen.
There's kind of a standoff in the Bay Area, in some cases, around anything getting built. I guess the argument that was made by many of us in Seattle in 2016-2017, when there was big zoning changes happening is - if nothing gets built, the same people are going to get displaced anyway. So we might as well build something and the hated tech bro symbol of who's doing the displacement and the gentrification, but they'll at least have some places to go and they won't be taking up all of the more affordable market rate units. But it's not a solution and it's not a comfortable place to organize in.
I think there wasn't enough listening to those communities. I don't think I did enough listening. I don't think other folks in the Seattle YIMBY movement back then did enough listening. And I think that things are a lot healthier now. And that when we go to make the next big changes in 2024, there's going to be a comprehensive planning process going forward. There's a lot more trust and a lot better listening amongst the different folks that do want more neighbors, do want more housing, that aren't being NIMBYs, that when they say no to market rate development - it's not saying they don't want new neighbors. They're just like, What are the consequences and have we adequately prepared for them? And of course the answer is no, we haven't - because we haven't taxed the rich, we don't have income tax, we don't have the pots of money we need, we're underfunding all of the things that we say are anti-displacement solutions. In Seattle, it's the Equitable Development Initiative, which has 100 shovel-ready projects and no money to put into them.
So yes, I have gotten much better and my organization has gotten much better at listening to most impacted communities in terms of gentrification and displacement, but it's definitely a work in progress. Because I saw the toxic, both on Twitter and the daily Twitter fights, as well as in person - very toxic organizing spaces in San Francisco and I didn't want that to happen here. So that's been a core mission of the organization is to bridge the YIMBY-PHIMBY organizing divide that happens all across the United States in every city. I think that people forget when they're fighting for their block, whether it's the Broadmoor person or even folks in Seattle on their particular block, that this is happening over and over and over and over again across not just the U.S., but Vancouver, BC, Toronto. This is actually - Australia - this is a global issue. And so it's really important for folks to understand the global forces at play here. That's something - it's very hard because housing is so emotional and so personal towards our deep feelings of security and safety. And when they're under attack, it's hard to zoom out to the global level and the forces that are at play. Nobody even wants to hear that. But I think that we'll get much better planning - what we're talking about here is long range planning. Not helping people survive right now, but how do we prevent the next housing crisis in 20 years?
[00:24:09] Crystal Fincher: So how do you bridge that divide here, whether it's Seattle and Washington state - but here locally, how do you bridge that divide? Because there are people concerned about survival right now, which doesn't mean that you can't overlook long term planning. But with some of the tension that has existed within those spaces, how has that informed what you've pushed for and how you've pushed for it? And I guess - what's on your short, medium and long term agenda to accomplish that?
[00:24:48] Laura Loe: I think that while it's super fun, I mean, I grew up loving to play with Legos and all of that kind of city building stuff that I think someone that's not GenX, that's younger than me, maybe they grew up playing Sims or whatever it is that made people turn into urbanists which are people that dream about -
[00:25:07] Crystal Fincher: Yes, I played the Sims. Yes I did.
[00:25:09] Laura Loe: Yes. All the things that created - I was, again, I was a middle school teacher - all the things that create the urbanist brain, right? All of the playing and daydreaming about cities, that then turns into adults that daydream about cities. I think it's important for those folks that exist in a very imaginative, playful space about the city, cities - are as committed to the painful parts of our cities and don't look away and don't get lost in that 20, 30 year, 40 year planning space, whether it's about building subways, or even some of the kind of longer range climate solutions. When people are thinking about those, but they're not actually doing climate justice.
And so for me, what we've done to bridge those divides is we make sure that we're showing up just as hard for the House Our Neighbors fight against Compassion Seattle. That we're showing up just as hard - we show up in Olympia for rent control rally, or anti eviction, or make sure to yell at Inslee's mansion because he's passed this terrible bridge moratorium that's not actually protecting everyone. For example, people that live in hotels lost some of their protections under that bridge moratorium. So, making sure that the energy and that the mobilization of those people that I talked about earlier on wonky things like environmental impact statements - that we are constantly recentering our focus, not in just the joyful, playful, daydreaming aspect of city building, but the kind of harder, immediate needs of people that have been failed by the planning that happened 20 years ago. If we had a time machine - there was no time machine.
I think you just keep showing up. You just keep showing up. You show up and you listen and you try not to take up a lot of space. You listen to people and they give you advice. Someone from Got Green gave me advice early on, which is, You don't need to organize in the CD. Go talk to the white people in Laurelhurst. I'm white-presenting Latin X. I experience Seattle as a white person and I lived on the North End. And so go there - there's a lot of conversations that we don't want to have there. Go have them for us. Go talk to those communities about how they failed. That was really good advice.
And it wasn't just like a stay in your lane conversation - which I think I've had many of those - where it's what you do after someone says that to you, right? There's a lot of organizations that someone says that to them and they keep doing the same thing they were doing. And I think that all those moments where people have taken the time to hold our organization accountable for being too YIMBY, or too overly enthusiastic about kind of magic wand solutions - like everything's going to be great if we just rezone Seattle. That's not true. And we shouldn't pretend that it's true just to get people excited about organizing around it.
I think it's about listening and being, I don't know if the word is humble, but being responsive, and taking the feedback, and hiring consultants if you need to, and restructuring your year. Like maybe you were moving in one direction and it's time to go in this other direction. I didn't know when 2021 started that I would be helping out with House Our Neighbors, for example. But was very happy to work in coalition with people with lived experience, currently or recently with housing insecurity, to fight against that basically disinformation campaign.
[00:29:23] Crystal Fincher: I sincerely appreciate that. Especially in urbanist spaces, in just environmental spaces here in Washington State. Oh my goodness, could that advice that you just gave and how you practice there - I wish more people would take that to heart. Because there is so much tension in communities around that. I appreciate the way that you show up and build equitable, reciprocal coalitions. And showing up just as hard for other people as you want them to show up for you - does an excellent job of really demonstrating that you're not just there to use someone and exploit them for whatever your interest is at the moment. And it's more than just getting someone to show up for a hearing, but you're really trying to move forward and not leave anyone behind. And showing that it's unacceptable to just chase a win without acknowledging that it may be happening at different speeds and we need to help others achieve the equity and wins that are necessary for us all to participate in the world that we're trying to build. So I just appreciate that. I appreciate you.
[00:30:45] Laura Loe: Oh, that's so sweet of you - thank you. I want to say the last thing is mutual aid - I've learned so much from different people in mutual aid spaces and from Black folks in Seattle around what is mutual aid and what isn't. And what is white saviorism and what is - I think I've gotten to a place where I don't believe that there's altruism and that every time I show up in a space, there is an expected transaction that I'm hoping for. And acknowledging that upfront that - pretending that I wasn't transactional certainly didn't work. I think it's better for me to show up in digital equity spaces, for example, and say, I want public broadband. I'm here to advocate for public broadband, but I know that that's not going to be the magic solution for digital equity. Or I want zoning changes, I want to rezone Seattle, but I know that that's not all community needs. Instead of - I don't think that I can truly show up to some of the organizing spaces I'm in and not pretend that there's not another agenda there. And I think that that's okay and I think that's something people get wrong too - is that you can work towards being less transactional, but pretending that organizing isn't transactional is false humility. Does that make sense?
[00:32:09] Crystal Fincher: It makes total sense.
[00:32:11] Laura Loe: So I think that that's a really hard thing for people to practice, especially I think in the Pacific Northwest. I lived in Los Angeles and Chicago and New York. And especially in Los Angeles, everyone's hustling something. You go to lunch with someone and it's not just to catch up, and it's okay. Like it's not - it's in the water there. Everyone's got their script, everyone's got their day job and their night job and their other job. And they're -
[00:32:40] Crystal Fincher: And they're in the studio and it's in production -
[00:32:43] Laura Loe: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
[00:32:43] Crystal Fincher: And as someone who's lived in Los Angeles - absolute fact. Yes.
[00:32:47] Laura Loe: And so that's the energy that I bring to the work too - is that it's not shameful to admit that you're moving in a direction and that you have these goals and you don't have to wait a year to bring them up. I think that that's part of what's gotten me in trouble and also what's helped me in the work and in creating the space. I have about 150 volunteers in the Slack channel. And before we end this, I just want to shout out all of them - there's working groups where they're creating things that I had nothing to do with, there's work happening that I had very little to do with. There's a lot of folks behind me at this point. It's not just me quitting grad school and jumping on Twitter.
It's fascinating - the organizing space that's kind of grown up around me. And the kind of people that I've attracted and selected for are people that are dual thinkers - that do want to think of short and long term solutions, just as hard at the same time. And that aren't scared. I had some individual donors early on - they're like, You're not focused enough. And you keep changing your mind about what you're working on. And it's so confusing to me. And I'm like, Fine, then stop donating to me and like, okay. So I think some people don't understand it. It's too messy for them. So I've attracted people that can handle the messiness of it.
[00:34:21] Crystal Fincher: Which is important in organizing spaces. And people who are resilient in understanding that we are pursuing goals that are bigger than the short term, that what we do is bigger than just elections and getting people elected - there's accountability and advocacy that has to happen around and beside that. And I just appreciate your work and thank you for taking the time to share with us today.
[00:34:46] Laura Loe: Awesome. It was great talking to you.
[00:34:49] Crystal Fincher: All right. And everyone can find all of the resources that we've talked about, of course, in the show notes. And we will talk to you next time.
I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
Erica C. Barnett from Publicola joins Crystal this week to review the news of the week, including:
- King County’s decision not to count the homeless population this year;
- Crosscut’s opinion section shutting down;
- Sound Transit continuing its punitive fare enforcement policy; and
- The continuing redistricting saga.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica C. Barnett, at @ericacbarnett. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“In a Move with Potential Funding Consequences, King County Won’t Count Homeless Population This Year” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2021/11/24/in-a-move-with-potential-funding-consequences-king-county-wont-count-homeless-population-this-year/
“Seattle City Council passes a 2022 budget that emphasizes funding for homelessness, affordable housing” by Sarah Grace Taylor from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-city-council-passes-a-2022-budget-that-emphasizes-funding-for-homelessness-affordable-housing/
“Council Declines to Fund Two Big-Ticket Asks from Homelessness Authority” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2021/11/17/council-declines-to-fund-two-big-ticket-asks-from-homelessness-authority/
“Q&A: Two years after her report on Seattle’s homelessness, how does Barbara Poppe grade the city?” by Vianna Davila from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/qa-two-years-after-her-report-on-seattles-homelessness-how-does-barbara-poppe-grade-the-city/
“An Interview with Homeless Consultant Barb Poppe” by Erica C. Barnett in The South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2017/03/16/an-interview-with-homelessness-consultant-barb-poppe/
“No Safe Street: A Survey of Violence Committed Against Homeless People” from The National Coalition for the Homeless: https://nationalhomeless.org/no-safe-place/
“Crosscut’s Opinion Section is Shutting Down. That’s Bad News.” by Katie Wilson from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2021/11/22/crosscuts-opinion-section-is-shutting-down-thats-bad-news/
“After Years of Debate, Still No Fix for Sound Transit’s Punitive Fare Enforcement Policy” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2021/11/23/after-years-of-debate-still-no-fix-for-sound-transits-punitive-fare-enforcement-policy/
“Mayor Wu Takes Steps to Expand Fare-Free Bus Service” from the City of Boston Mayor’s Office: https://www.boston.gov/news/mayor-wu-takes-steps-expand-fare-free-bus-service
“A look at last-minute deal-making in WA redistricting negotiations” by Melissa Santos from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/politics/2021/11/look-last-minute-deal-making-wa-redistricting-negotiations
“Critics call for reform of WA redistricting process after commission failure” by Melissa Santos from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/politics/2021/11/critics-call-reform-wa-redistricting-process-after-commission-failure
“Washington’s redistricting failure: What went wrong and what happens now?” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/washingtons-redistricting-failure-what-went-wrong-and-what-happens-now/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I am a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, we are continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show, and today's co-host, Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola and author of Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse and Recovery, Erica Barnett.
[00:00:55] Erica Barnett: Hi, Crystal.
[00:00:56] Crystal Fincher: Hey, glad to have you back. We've got a lot to talk about, and you've been covering a lot. So, I wanted to start off talking about what we have seen coming out of recent budgets - in one area in particular, which was a central issue in the elections that we just had - it, if you look at all the available polling, it's on the forefront of Seattle residents' minds and a very important issue - in that of homelessness. And there have been a couple of developments in terms of funding that have resulted. What has been going on in terms of funding, particularly with a County authority in the City of Seattle?
[00:01:41] Erica Barnett: Well, I believe you're referring to - well, first, let's start with the City of Seattle. Of course, the City just adopted its budget, as it does every year before Thanksgiving. And two, it basically funded everything that the new King County Regional Homelessness Authority requested - the City will be the primary funder for that authority.
And with two major exceptions - there was a request for the City to pay for 69 new peer navigators, which would be basically case managers with lived experience who would become sort of partners with people experiencing homelessness and walk with them through the entire process of getting services - like whether that's literally just, I need food today, to we have housing for you. And to just kind of be that case manager with actual experience with working in the same systems. That did not get funded. The City is going to do more study. And the second item was a high acuity shelter for people experiencing severe behavioral and physical health needs. The authority asked for full funding for that. The City decided to put in $5 million, which is about a quarter of what the authority wanted.
On the other funding front, the County authority has decided this year not to do a Point-In-Time count of the region's unsheltered homeless population. You may recall that last year, because the pandemic, the existing County authority - which was a joint - the City and the County both did this count together. They skipped it last year because of COVID. And the thought was - and almost every other, in fact, I believe every other county or homeless counting authority is going to be doing a count in the rest of the state. King County will not be doing it next year, and that has funding implications going forward in terms of getting federal funding.
[00:03:45] Crystal Fincher: So, this count - there's been conversation about whether it's actually a useful tool, whether it's not a useful tool. What does it seem to be useful for? What have the critiques of it been and how has it helped?
[00:03:58] Erica Barnett: Yeah, the critiques of it have been that the methodology is not the greatest, in that it always results in an undercount. And this is absolutely true and it's a very well-known fact going back decades of this count, and one that people associated with the count have always acknowledged. They go out in January, typically, in the middle of the night - it's typically raining and cold. And you're just not going to see as many people out on the streets. So, there's a methodology they use - they assume a certain number of people in tents, a certain number of people in vehicles, etc, etc. So, they're not like knocking on people's tents, so to speak, to get an exact count.
So it's inexact, it's volunteers, who which - that's been criticized - that it's not people who are trained specifically for, I guess, a long period of time in doing this sort of count. But, I mean, with the acknowledgement that it's going to be an undercount, it is useful, year over year in looking at trends. So, if we see the count of unsheltered homeless people going up dramatically using the exact same methodology year after year, we can pretty reasonably say, there are more unsheltered homeless people living in King County this year than there were last year. So, it's useful for those purposes.
It's also useful in a very practical sense in getting money from the federal government, because HUD requires agencies like the King County Regional Homeless Authority to do the count every two years. And as I reported this week, because they skipped it last year - because the County skipped it last year - the regional authority actually is required to do it this year. And in deciding not to do so they are potentially going to make themselves less competitive for federal funding in the future.
[00:05:55] Crystal Fincher: So, we could be walking into another situation where we saw in the City of Seattle, there was federal money available that we - that the City, in particular the Mayor's office - didn't seem like they wanted to pursue. So, has the County addressed at all the possibility of being less competitive for, or not receiving the amount of funding that they could, what that would affect, and how they're planning on backfilling that - particularly when they're getting less funding, like we just talked about, for other elements of their plan that need to be addressed?
[00:06:33] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I mean, I think that, when I talked to the regional authority, what they said was, "Look, we're going to get dinged a point or so or something on our applications for future federal funding, but we feel pretty strongly that we can't do this count this year for various reasons. And one of them, I mean, which is very legitimate is that they are a new authority. As I said previously, I mean, this count has been done by a lot of different entities over the years - it was done by the Coalition on Homelessness, it was done by All Home, which is like a joint City-County venture. So, this is a new thing for them and they are a new agency, and they only have a couple dozen staff right now. So, I think that balancing it out, they decided that it was worth it. But I do think that the response that it's going to ding them a point is not entirely accurate or known yet. If you look at kind of the way that they apply for money, I mean, it does - they get dinged more than just a point. And there's a point system that determines how much money they get and how competitive they are with other agencies that are also fighting for very limited federal dollars. So, I think it could hurt them. I think we'll see - obviously, in a year, it's not going to affect them this year. But when they apply for federal funding for 2023, we'll see if this had an effect.
[00:07:57] Crystal Fincher: And I don't know if we know all of these details yet, but are they just planning on proceeding with existing estimates and basically saying, We're proceeding as if the data that we have had from a little while ago now is what we're operating on? Or is there a system or an estimation that they're planning on to take its place?
[00:08:18] Erica Barnett: No - so they are planning to, and we don't have the details yet, but they are planning to do a combination of qualitative data, which is also always been collected. But they say they're going to do a different kind of qualitative data collection, which is asking people questions like, "When did you become homeless? Where do you sleep most nights?" - those sorts of questions. And also, quantitative data through systems like the Homeless Management Information System, which is what you have to basically become part of if you seek any homelessness services - your information gets entered into this database. There's kind of this, and there has been for many years, this holy grail that's called a By-Name List, which is essentially a real-time - and it doesn't exist - so it would be essentially a real-time list with detailed information about every single person experiencing homelessness in the County on a day-to-day basis. This has been something that Barb Poppe, five years ago - she was a consultant that the City brought in to do a big study - that said the City was doing everything wrong on homelessness. And one of the things she said was, "You have to have a By-Name List." We don't have that yet. The County authority is saying that that's what they're going to do. But, I think again, it remains to be seen, whether that happens and how long it takes since it has been extremely challenging for built-up government entities like the City of Seattle, like King County to come up with this kind of list. There are By-Name Lists the individual homeless service providers have for their service areas, but it's a big undertaking, especially when you're talking about thousands and thousands of people and keeping that data in real time. It's a lot more work than just saying we need to get a By-Name List.
[00:10:14] Crystal Fincher: Well, it's a lot more work, and I can absolutely see how people are looking at that and saying, "Wow, that would be really helpful, useful information." And we might be able to get or track services to people effectively over time with that. There are also reasons that people may not want to be on that kind of list, especially in today's climate. Have any conversations happened about that?
[00:10:42] Erica Barnett: Well, this is always part of the conversation. Is it - there's trade-offs with people's privacy. I mean, I remember seeing - there was sort of a private enterprise that may still exist, that had little beacons that people could wear. And if you were walking by a person wearing one of these beacons with your smartphone, it would alert you and you could give them $10, or a coffee card, or whatever. And I'm not saying - that's not what the homelessness authority is proposing - but you can see how having a lot of information about people or collecting a lot of information about people could rub people the wrong way. I mean, I think that people who receive services from the government are still entitled to a measure of privacy. And one of the reasons that the one-night count every year does not go around unzipping people's tents is because that is an invasion of their dignity and their privacy. And so, I mean, depending on how much information you gather on people and how much you track them, again, in real time, on a day-to-day basis - did this person check in at such and such soup kitchen, or rehab program, or parole officer, or whatever? I mean, these are all questions that I would personally have if I was being asked to participate in such a program as a condition of receiving services to which I'm entitled. So, I think there are always going to be privacy questions and those are always going to weigh against how good of data do we actually need to have, not how good can we have, but how good do we need in order to effectively provide services to people?
[00:12:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a really important question to be asking, particularly as a number of people in our unhoused population have been targets of hostility, of harassment, of violence. With a Republican City Attorney - who we don't know what approach they're going to take to homelessness, but certainly has indicated a more criminalized approach. Having someone's specific whereabouts and being in a database can be a very worrisome thing for the people in there. And just for thinking about how our unhoused neighbors might be targeted or affected by that, or how that could follow people for the rest of their lives depending on what happened. So, I hope those questions and issues are being considered and to your point - asking what do we need, not what can we get. Because unfortunately, we have seen many situations when people are looking to access services that again, they're entitled to, that comes with so many strings attached that aren't necessary, that we don't need, but that just act as other barriers or can act as challenges for them in the future. And I just think we need to examine that more as we move forward.
[00:13:56] Erica Barnett: Yeah, and the last thing I'd say about that, I mean, think about too - I mean, homeless service providers right now are incredibly understaffed like everybody - every entity that pays somewhat poor wages in the country. And so, a lot of that is going to be put on them, right? I mean, does the Compass Housing lunch provider program next to my office need to take everybody's information in every single time they give them a plate of food? And that is an additional burden on homeless service providers that are already really, really strapped for employees and where morale is low because people are being asked to work too hard for too little money.
[00:14:43] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely true. And appreciate your continued coverage of this - always encourage people to read PubliCola, but particularly because you continue to do detailed reporting on issues like this that are so critical, and asking questions and examining the several dimensions of these issues and policies that are so useful and necessary to consider.
Now, I want to talk about another issue that you addressed in PubliCola or that Katie Wilson, specifically addressed, but that you published in PubliCola. Crosscut is shutting down its Opinion column section. What happened?
[00:15:26] Erica Barnett: That is such a great question. And I mean, the answer is we don't know exactly what happened behind the scenes, but Crosscut got a new Executive Editor in charge of news. And the first thing that he announced was that the Opinion section was going away, and that it will be replaced by some new form of direct engagement with the community. And that is the part that we do not know what it will look like at this point. I will say, though, having read Crosscut over the years since it was founded, there have been a lot of kind of iterations of editors coming in saying we're going to do direct engagement with the community. I mean, I remember there was a very similar announcement when Crosscut got rid of its comments sections - which mazel tov - I think comment sections are pretty useless in 2021, or 2017, or whenever they did that. But it's always supposedly to benefit direct engagement with the community. And I haven't seen a model for that in Crosscut or anywhere that replaces the good, old fashioned, well-informed opinion piece by somebody with expertise and a stake in what they're writing about. So, I think it's a loss.
[00:16:43] Crystal Fincher: I absolutely think it's a loss. One, we are a city that has one big paper of record in The Seattle Times. And that paper's Editorial Board certainly has its own perspective, which has been pretty consistent over time. That perspective, when you just look at people who Seattle elects and polling, frequently isn't shared by the majority of people in Seattle. So, particularly for Seattle - in looking at policy solutions, electoral opinions, and issues that are being examined - having something else is useful. Certainly, there's The Stranger, but it's helpful to have a number of venues who can broadcast ideas to substantial platforms.
Crosscut has been excellent, in my opinion, because - some of the feedback throughout this, that we've heard, is that there may have been some concern that the Crosscut Opinion section may have been too left-leaning. They certainly had a number of Republican and conservative contributors, but it is a different stance than the more consistently conservative or corporately friendly perspective that a lot of times we see from The Seattle Times Editorial Board. But to say that it didn't reflect Seattle would be false.
And one of the things I think is important is - so many times, if we're having a Republican conservative, or traditional left-right conversation, it's about, especially these days, whether or not something should be done. Or two very, very different viewpoints on how something should be addressed. But even if you agree something should be addressed, the question isn't necessarily should it be addressed or not? It's how do we address it. And there's so much to explore in the how, and that's one of the reasons why I enjoy having conversations with people like you on this show, is that there's a lot to explore and discuss and dissect and examine and talk about within each broad policy area. Yes, we should address homelessness. Yes, even if you are of the opinion that we shouldn't criminalize homelessness and we should treat root causes - wow, there are lots of different ways to do that, and lots of things that we can debate about that, and lots of policies to address that. And I think Crosscut, in their Opinion section, did an excellent job of getting into the meat of ideas to a degree that we sometimes don't see with this kind of platform. So, I definitely feel the loss. I hope that they bear that in mind and keep it moving forward. But it's a challenge and it feels like a loss particularly because that makes one particular editorial voice seem even louder and overpowering now. How does that inform - just your view of it, and how you approach it with PubliCola?
[00:19:50] Erica Barnett: Well, I mean, PubliCola does not have a massive platform the way The Seattle Times does, but we do publish opinion pieces. We publish opinion pieces that I, as the editor, personally disagree with. We don't - I was going to say all the time, but we don't publish them all the time, in part because we have a limited capacity just to pay people and Crosscut's opinion writers were paid, which I think is notable. I'm curious to see if this new iteration of community voices includes people who are being paid for their voices and opinions, or if it's just kind of soliciting opinions from unpaid contributors. And - but it definitely does, I mean, we published Katie Wilson's piece about the demise of the opinion section of which she was a major, and I would say the best part - she's a great writer, head of the Transit Riders Union, and I think just really added a lot to Crosscut. And, I mean, it was the main reason I went there, to be honest, was to read her columns. And of course, to read Melissa Santos and David Kroman, who's no longer there - their news writing.
But, I mean, I think, going back to this question of balance, right? I mean, PubliCola - we're pretty unabashedly left-leaning website. I would say that probably people on the far left in Seattle would disagree with that. But Crosscut, I think, encountered the same problem that PubliCola has encountered in the past, when we've tried to include more conservative voices, and that The Stranger has encountered in the past, when I was there. And I imagine now - it is hard - it's just hard to find those great centrist writers, that sort of mythical idea of the great centrist, David Brooks of Seattle point of view.
[00:21:47] Crystal Fincher: Oh my God.
[00:21:47] Erica Barnett: And because, first of all, a lot of times, you can't back up those opinions with facts. And I don't like publishing opinions that are not backed up with facts, or that are contradicted by the facts. And particularly after Trump, as you know, we all know what's happened to conservatives in this country. Seattle is not exempt. It is very hard to find those voices. And I'm sure Crosscut tried to some success, but you have a lot of - frankly, you had a lot of pretty milquetoast pieces from people like former gubernatorial candidate, Bill Bryant, former gubernatorial candidate, Rob McKenna. Pretty partisan, if you ask me - first of all, because those are both Republican guys. But, I'm guessing people were not just blowing up the clicks over there - whatever the metaphor is - just blowing up their site, wanting to read those pieces. So, you can blame the Crosscut - their board may or may not believe that it has been too left-leaning. But frankly, that is a challenge that we have all faced in trying to find good conservative writers.
[00:23:10] Crystal Fincher: It is, and I appreciate the approach that you take in having editorials that are backed up by facts. I think that's really important, and I wish other publications would be more rigorous about that. Because my goodness, some of the pieces that have been published even recently are just, just shameful.
[00:23:37] Erica Barnett: Yeah, well it's easy to be The Seattle Times editorial page, frankly - I mean, you just have to not fact check anything and you're golden.
[00:23:46] Crystal Fincher: It's a challenge.
[00:23:48] Erica Barnett: That's me saying that and not Crystal. But I do stand by that.
[00:23:55] Crystal Fincher: Well, I do also want to talk about one other update this week, and that is a non-update update, I suppose. And that's with Sound Transit and their fare enforcement policies, which have come under consistent fire and criticism, for years now, really. What is happening or what decision was made recently in terms of Sound Transit and their fare enforcement?
[00:24:23] Erica Barnett: Well, I mean, I guess the answer to what is happening is not a lot, as far as we know, really. There was a presentation last week, I believe, about the latest kind of round of rider surveys and community feedback. And just to set the context - the issue of Sound Transit's fare enforcement has been for many years, I mean, both A), that it is incredibly punitive to anyone who gets a ticket for not paying the approximately $3 fare. Fines have historically been up to $140 - I might be getting that exact number wrong, but over $100. Initially, you used to have to drive to Shoreline if you wanted to challenge your ticket. They got rid of that eventually, but not very long ago. And the other issue is that it's racially biased - that the people that are most likely to get ticketed are Black people and homeless people. And so, these are major problems, major outstanding and long-standing problems with Sound Transit's fare enforcement that they have chosen to address by doing a series of studies and surveys and asking people what they would like to prioritize in a new fare enforcement policy.
In contrast, King County Metro has completely decriminalized its fare enforcement policy. I should add that, if you don't pay a Sound Transit ticket, you can eventually go to court and theoretically even to jail. But you can get a criminal record for not paying that $3 fare and then not paying your fine. Metro decriminalized it - they found all these ways to sort of mitigate when people do get tickets - giving them ORCA passes, giving them alternative dispute resolutions, and decriminalizing it.
So now, Sound Transit - they've got a new survey out that they presented last week. They're going to be supposedly coming up with a plan by January - and I only say supposedly, and I only sound skeptical, because this has happened many times in the past where they've said they'll have a plan, a new fare enforcement plan in a set number of months and on such a date, and it doesn't happen. So, we'll see if this is real. But I would also say that whatever the policy ends up being, I doubt it's going to be as sort of forward looking as Metro's, because Sound Transit is very, very wedded to the idea that it needs to recover 40% of Link Light Rail's budget, for example, from farebox revenues. And so, they are very wedded to the idea that if we don't penalize people for not paying their fares, then people are just not going to pay their fares and they're going to ride for free, and we're going to run out of money and everything's going to be a disaster. So, that point of view - that's not what Metro has experienced - but that's what Sound Transit predicts if they don't have some sort of penalty for not paying fares.
[00:27:26] Crystal Fincher: Well, and that's really interesting. Did I see before that the fines and penalties that people get from tickets from Sound Transit, don't go to Sound Transit?
[00:27:38] Erica Barnett: Oh, that's a really good question, and I'm going take a pass on that one, because I do not - I assume that you are probably right. But I'm drawing a blank on exactly where they go.
[00:27:50] Crystal Fincher: No worries - I thought I read, I mean, this is like a year ago at this point in time. So I quasi-recall reading that, but what I appreciate in you is that you are not going to verify something if you don't have the facts. So, yeah -
[00:28:01] Erica Barnett: I believe that a lot of it goes to the court, but I'm not - I can't say the exact percentage, so I'm not going to go on record with numbers that are wrong.
[00:28:09] Crystal Fincher: I appreciate it. But in looking at this, I think it is also notable that other cities are moving in the opposite direction. We, throughout this election and the conversation in the Seattle mayoral race, was not centered on how to make sure and do we punish people? How do we find them if they don't pay? It was, why are we asking people to pay for transit, which we're also, for a number of reasons, for a number of goals, in just sound management of the city, reduction of traffic, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and pollutants. We want more people on transit and to make it easier and less friction in that process. So, we actually are moving towards conversations and actual policies of just removing fares in so many places. And we just saw an announcement in Boston, with a new mayor that was just elected there, where they're removing fares on several lines there. We've certainly talked about that here. That seems to be where the conversation is going. Because frankly, we need, and the Downtown Seattle Association even acknowledges, we need more people on transit, particularly within the City. We need it all over the place. But for just not burning up our planet. But we also need it to address parking issues, to address traffic issues, just to address people being able to move safely even if you're on other modes of transportation, whether you're on a bike or walking. Having less cars just makes life easier within cities like Seattle. So, I hope we continue to move further in that direction. Sound Transit seems like it has just been in a completely different place in this conversation than most other transit agencies in the region, but we'll continue to follow how this goes along, and I'm with you - I'm not expecting too much from the continued study and information.
[00:30:18] Erica Barnett: Well, I mean, one of the things that they found is that riders would really like more attention paid to racial bias. I mean, it's paying people to find out things we already know. I will say, just very quickly, about what your excellent point is about, needing to get people onto transit. I mean, I think there is kind of a bit of a divide between the way the bus agency thinks and the way that the rail agency thinks - that has to do, and I'm not absolving Metro of having sort of the same bias too - but there's this thing called non-destinational riders, which is basically people who use the buses and the trains as shelter because we don't have adequate shelter in this region.
And I mean, frankly, transit agencies do not want those riders. And we should have a shelter system. We should have a system where everybody is housed, but we don't. And so, a lot of the people that are not paying fare are people who are experiencing homelessness and they're getting on the buses and trains to get warm, particularly in the winter. And so, I think we have to also keep that in mind that - right now, transit agencies are not just transportation agencies. They are also social service agencies. And that is just kind of, like it or not, and ideal or not, that is part of their function. And that's part of what this fight is about.
[00:31:47] Crystal Fincher: Yes, it certainly is, and thank you for that. And I just wanted to quickly, before we go, just cover the update on the mess that is the redistricting process that we have here in Washington right now. We certainly talked last week about our current challenge in our redistricting process - what was supposed to happen was that a bipartisan commission that had appointees from the Democratic and Republican parties were supposed to get together, produce maps like they have successfully done since 1983. Except for this year, they didn't. They did not complete their job by the deadline, which was Monday before last. And in addition to just not achieving their deadline, they also looked like they violated Open Meeting requirements and transparency requirements to hold their deliberations and meetings in public after they met for several hours in private - seemingly two at a time, but somehow after that, they came to some tentative agreement that they tried to codify, but didn't make a deadline. So that has basically kicked this process over to the Washington State Supreme Court. Because if the Redistricting Commission doesn't meet its obligation by its deadline, then the responsibility becomes the Court and they have until April 30th to produce a new redistricting plan with new congressional and legislative district maps.
That's where we stand right now. That's all we know. We don't yet know what process the Supreme Court will take to go about this. This isn't their main job, they don't really do this. So, certainly a lot of people are looking to a few other states that have similar processes through their courts, to draw upon what they're doing for a system and addressing some of the issues, particularly surrounding the Voting Rights Act that have been addressed with some of the prior maps that were produced by the Redistricting Commission and the one that they produced after their deadline that they said had been agreed to after the deadline. But we're in a bit of a mess here.
And so, Melissa Santos with Crosscut, has been doing an excellent job covering all of this. And there was conversation about, "Hey, do we need to change this process to prevent this from happening again and to address some of the deficits and discrepancies that we saw on this?" What did you see in terms of the conversation on what we can do to keep this from happening again?
[00:34:45] Erica Barnett: Yeah, well, I too, am relying on Melissa's excellent reporting, to sort of inform what I know about this. I mean, I think that it seems like it's a little premature to say we need to adopt X, Y or Z process from another state. For a few reasons, I mean, one, we need to diagnose beyond the obvious and glaring public meetings problems and potential violations that went on. We need to diagnose exactly what went wrong, and I think that's going to require some post mortem analysis that has not been done yet. And two, I mean, I think that some are kind of leaping to this idea that we can find a nonpartisan set of people with no partisan leanings whatsoever to create non-partisan maps that are completely nonpartisan. I'm going to say partisan, like 10 more times. Because the thing is - it's just, you're not going to find people who are going to participate in this kind of process who do not have some sort of leaning, first of all, in terms of how they would like for elections to go. Unless you find completely uninformed people who don't understand how elections work. You're going to find people with biases, because people have biases. So, I'm not sure that some of the solutions that are proposed of just appointing citizens who say that they are non-partisan to do this is necessarily going to work. I think that a certain level of expertise would probably be a better criterium.
But yeah, I mean, I am sort of just an observer in this and watched with shock and awe as this whole thing went down a couple of weeks ago. And particularly, the lack of public - the apparent violation of public meetings law - I struggle to just sort of visualize how that would happen if we were not meeting on Zoom and if these meetings were something that a lot of people were going to in person. The closest comparison I can think of is like when the Republicans and Democrats go into caucus. But I just, I kind of wonder if part of this is just a function of where we're at right now with COVID and with kind of democracy in the time of COVID.
[00:37:14] Crystal Fincher: And I think we talked about this last week - the point was raised that three of the four appointees to the commission were former legislators. So, they certainly had more comfort with discussing things privately than other people may have, which certainly does not in any way, excuse them for appearing as if they violated public meeting requirements. But that may explain their comfort with not doing that, which certainly needs to be addressed. And a similar criticism of this process popped up, following this, that we've heard sometimes at the end of legislative sessions where - do we actually know what they're voting on? Do they know what they're voting on? But certainly, it would be nice if we had the opportunity to examine what their final process is. And I know Senate Majority Leader Andy Billig brought up, "Hey, as we move forward, we need to look at addressing the final agreement sitting in public view before they vote."
[00:38:24] Erica Barnett: I thought that was such a good point. Yeah
[00:38:25] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, which I appreciate and completely agree with and think it would be positive and increase trust in this process. I also think you raise an excellent point in that we need to find out exactly what happened. This past Monday, the Chair of the Commission had to certify, according to their understanding, what happened throughout this process. They ended up verifying that the voting process did not take place in time. There were also some statements made by commissioners that suggested that they deliberated on some legislative maps after the deadline and after the voting had taken place. That's still a question there, but part of what this reveals and continues to reveal is that we don't know what happened yet because so much seemingly happened outside of the public view, which should never have happened, but appears to. And so they're just a bunch of question marks, and it's hard to examine exactly what happened exactly when, because it wasn't transparent. So hopefully, I know that there are a ton of public records requests that have been submitted, and hopefully we get more information about what was deliberated, what iterations of maps did they go through and discuss? Exactly what some points of contention are, which Melissa Santos has another article about - some of the challenges that they address, particularly in some legislative districts that look like they were the final points of negotiation and conversation in this process. But again, this is not from any information that has been sitting in public view. And we need that in this process.
So, I hope that as we move forward, we continue to learn more and that the Commission and the people involved are very forthright about what they did discuss and turning over all relevant information to be examined. And that we move forward in a more transparent way, including giving the public a chance to see what these agreements are, and provide comment on them before a final vote takes place. And with that, I mean, I think that's all we have time to discuss today. But every week, I so appreciate you and your expertise in not just looking at issues, but looking at them thoroughly and continuing to follow up on them on PubliCola. So, I just continue to appreciate your reporting and your publication.
And thank you, listeners, for tuning into Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, November 26, 2021. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. And our wonderful co-host today was Seattle political reporter and founder of PubliCola, Erica Barnett. You can find Erica on Twitter @ericacbarnett, that's Erica with a C, followed by a C, and then Barnett and on publicola.com. And you can buy her book Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. And now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you prefer to get your podcast - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. While you're there, please leave a review, it helps us out. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.
Justice G. Helen Whitener is a fascinating person. Her life story, her path to the Washington State Supreme Court, and her extensive experience in law in our state, and lived experience as a Black, immigrant, LGBT and disabled person is worth listening to and learning from. In this re-broadcast, Crystal and Justice Whitener get into why representation matters and the purpose of the law.
A full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii.
References
Claiming your identity by understanding your self-worth, TEDxPortofSpain talk by Justice G. Helen Whitener: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57FMau29O_g&list=PL3vudArV4R9e5USALmWYa4v38zP_2nviP
Transcript
Crystal Fincher: [00:00:00] Welcome to Hacks and Wonks. I'm your host, Crystal Fincher. On this show, we don't just talk politics and policy, but also how they affect our lives and shape our communities. As we dive into the backstories behind what we read in the news, we bring voices to the table that we don't hear from often enough.
Well today on Hacks and Wonks, we are very thrilled to be speaking with Justice Helen Whitener today. And Justice Whitener currently serves on the Washington State Supreme Court. She was appointed this past April by overnor Inslee and is running to finish the term of her predecessor which is a term that will last two remaining years. So prior to this, Justice Whitener served as a judge on the Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals for two years, followed by five years of service on the Pierce County Superior Court, beginning in 2015. Thank you so much for joining us Justice Whitener.
Justice Whitener: [00:01:04] Thank you so much for having me.
Crystal Fincher: [00:01:06] So I just wanted to start out and get an understanding of how - what your role was - what your path was to the State Supreme Court. How did you get there? What is your background?
Justice Whitener: [00:01:20] Well, my background is very varied. I started in law school, working for the Attorney General's office. I worked for the Department of Corrections, it was called back then. And then it became the Criminal Justice Division. From there, I got to Pierce County working for the Attorney General's office in their DSHS division, and I did dependencies and those types of cases out at Remann Hall here in Pierce County. By the time I graduated law school, I had 25 trials under my belt - and that's jury trials, because I also worked as a City of Tacoma prosecutor, Rule 9 prosecutor we call them - when you're in school and you're under the supervision of an attorney.
So by the time I graduated, I had over 25 trials under my belt. I then had a job waiting for me with the City of Tacoma prosecutor's office. But unfortunately there was a hiring freeze that year, so I had to find a job and I found one at the City of Olympia prosecutor's office, but it was a part-time job. So while I was working there - I stayed there for about six months - my supervisor there, who's now a judge in Thurston County, Kalo Wilcox - she had contacted the prosecutor out of Island County prosecutor's office on my behalf. I interviewed with him over the phone, got the job, and literally was driving from Renton, where I resided at the time, to Island County - two and a half hours each way. I decided that was too much, so I moved to Island County and I stayed there for a little over a year working at the prosecutor's office. While there, one of the attorneys I worked against in Pierce County - he was a public defender - contacted me and we were chatting and he said, Where are you? And I said, I'm out in Island County - I'm a prosecutor here. And he said, Are you interested in coming back to Pierce County? But I'd need to do public defense - I'd never done defense work, so I jumped at the opportunity. One, I wanted to come back where my roots were, and two - do defense work, public defense work.
Came back, worked there for over two and a half years. I was doing a murder case with one of their top public defenders, Dino Sepe. And we were doing this murder case together. I was then recruited by the prosecutors we were up against - one is now a judge and he is - what is his name? It slips me right now, but it was against him and one of the top prosecutors there, Dawn Farina, and Jerry Costello - that's, that's who the judge is now, but he was a prosecutor then. And I actually went back to prosecution after that murder trial was completed, right here in Pierce County. So I've worked in Pierce County and it's really interesting, Crystal. I have been a prosecutor, a public defender, as well as a private defense counsel, but I've also been a judicial officer on all the trial level courts. So that's Municipal Court, District Court, and Superior Court. Because when I finished at the prosecutor's office - I stayed there for over two years, I believe - I then started my own firm and it was a solo practice for a few years. And then I took on two partners and it became Whitener Rainey Writt, and we handled Class A felonies - actually all levels of criminal matters, as well as some civil cases. And then we also had an appellate attorney. She was the writ in the practice and she was a law professor out of Seattle U Law School, who joined the practice. So I did that for eight years, but while I was doing that, I also pro-tem as a judge - and that is someone who sits in for a sitting judge when the judge takes leave. I was a pro-tem judge on the Municipal Court here in Tacoma, the City of Tacoma Municipal Court, as well as the Pierce County District Courts. So I have the unusual background of having been a prosecutor, defense attorney, and a judicial officer on all three trial level courts here. And then in 2015, the Governor appointed me to the Superior Court, as you've stated.
Crystal Fincher: [00:05:55] Well, and that varied experience seems unusual for any kind of justice related to State Supreme Court, the national Supreme Court. Is that unique to have that much and that varied type of experience, coming to the bench? And how do you think that makes a difference in your approach versus others?
Justice Whitener: [00:06:21] I think it is unique. You have judges and justices who have done one side, and you may have a judge - I don't think we have any justices - that have done both sides. But what is truly unusual is to have done all three, on all three level trial level courts, which is what I have. And I think the unique perspective it gives me is I have a very intimate knowledge of the trial level courts and what the courts face on a daily basis, having gone through it on both sides, as well as sitting on the bench in those courts as well. And yes, it is unusual, but I think being an immigrant that's probably..
Crystal Fincher: [00:07:06]
Well, and it will probably do well right now just to - most people don't have a lot of exposure to the State Supreme Court or to a lot of courts - except for at the Supreme Court level, hearing that there was a major case decided - but they may only catch the headline and not know the details or understand what's really involved with being a justice. So what are you responsible for? What is the job of a justice like on a daily basis?
Justice Whitener: [00:07:36] Now I can answer that question, but I will preface it with this. My ascent to the Supreme Court is truly unusual because we're faced with COVID right now. And the pandemic has caused the workings of the court to be a little different. So when I got appointed, I got appointed in a virtual world. So I have not sat on the bench with my colleagues yet, yet I've sat through a term and I'm getting ready actually, we just started the second term. So I literally will be going through one year of being a Supreme Court justice, and never sat on the bench with my colleagues. We hold oral arguments in a virtual world. So my experience right now may be a little unusual and maybe very different than what is considered normal. But in regards to cases, we handle - just about any case comes to the Supreme Court, can come, is whether or not we accept it for review, it has to meet certain criteria.
And I'll give you an example. If there is a decision on the law court, the court of appeals - the first intermediary court before you get to the Supreme Court - but it's the court between the trial court and the Supreme Court. If a case is heard in Division One - there are three divisions - and they come down with a decision one particular way. And then in Division Three, a very similar case with very similar issues comes before Division Three, and they come down a different way as far as interpreting the Supreme Court's decision that everyone should be following. Then the court will take that up because it's clear there's a conflict between how the court on the appellate level is interpreting a Supreme Court opinion. That's one very simple example. Another set of cases we hear are personal restraint petitions. In criminal matters, the defendant, after conviction, has a number of remedies available to him or her, but once they've exhausted all those remedies, they still have an opportunity to request a review by the Supreme Court. But then again, they have to meet certain criterias - it has to be done within a year on a number of those cases, if you're going to do a collateral attack of your underlying conviction. So that's another type of case that we hear, but we hear literally just about any type of case that can come before the court - is whether or not it is worthy of review. Is it going to have substantial public import or public interest? Is it going to affect a large section of the community that we are serving? Those types of things. Is it something that is worthy of review - is the easiest way to conceptualize what it is the Supreme Court will look at. So many cases come before us wanting review, but not many get review because they are not meeting the criteria that is necessary for review.
Crystal Fincher: [00:10:52] That makes sense and in those discussions, I'm assuming that there are discussions between you and the other justices, do your backgrounds - does your professional experience, lived experience inform how you process what is important, what may be significant, how something affects a lot of people. How do your experiences, and I guess, how do the justices themselves help inform what kinds of cases get chosen or the approach to that?
Justice Whitener: [00:11:32] So that's a wonderful question because yes, we get a number of cases, but judges and justices are human beings. We have our backgrounds that we bring to the table - not just our legal backgrounds - but our lived and lived, as you indicated, background. And when we sit and assess a case, we are doing that through our lens, whatever lens that is, we bring to the table. So, and that's your experiences as well. So being a Black woman may be relevant in some instance, depending on the case or the issue before the court. Being an immigrant may be relevant and it may be an experience others don't have - which in this case they don't, because I was born an immigrant. I was born in Trinidad and Tobago, so I am an immigrant. I'm not an immigrant descent. So my perspective may be a little different. LGBT - being someone who is not of the mainstream sexual orientation may my lens may be different from some of my colleagues . Identifying as disabled - depending on the case, I may be seeing it through accommodation eyes, whereas they may not because they don't have that experience. So I think our experiences, whether it's even on the Supreme Court or even on the lower trial level courts or the appellate courts, is relevant in regards to assessing cases that come before the court - because our experiences are different, which means the way a decision may impact a particular subset of the population may be relevant on a particular issue regarding the particular facts that come before the court. So I think it's extremely important.
What's wonderful about the Washington State Supreme Court is it is the most diverse court in the United States. When I joined, we became the most diverse court. I don't think it was just because I joined, but I think I had a little bit to do with it. So we have five white individuals - four of them women, one white male. That's unusual because normally the Supreme Court benches are heavily white male. Then we have one Latino male, one male of color. We have one Asian/Mexican 'cause she's biracial and Supreme Court justice. And she's also openly gay. So she brings that experience to the table. We then have one, and the only, Native American Supreme Court justice in the country. And then you get me, the first black female, the fourth immigrant born, the second LGBT, but the only black LGBT judge in the entire state. So the discussions that we have and the depth of the discussion and, and the amount of citizenry we can cover is amazing. And we really work through the cases, trying to make sure we don't leave anyone behind. And what's important as well too, is economics - none of us, or not all of us, were born with a golden spoon, or however they say it. We have gone through struggles, different types of struggles economically, at different points in our lives and some more recent than others. So that is also very important to the discussion because we always try to make sure that we're not leaving anyone out in the decision as much as we can. Because of course, sometimes you just can't cover everyone under the law. But the law was meant to embrace and cover all of its citizenry and that's something we really try to do. And I'm really proud of my colleagues when I got there and saw that's how they approach things.
Crystal Fincher: [00:15:55] You're listening to Hacks and Wonks with your host Crystal Fincher on KVRU 105.7 FM.
And I appreciate you talking about the composition of this court and the diversity of the court. And I watched the announcement of your appointment live - and a number of people I know did - and there were certainly lots of excited group chats and posts and you know, My goodness, I'm watching a Black woman be appointed and oh my goodness, a new LGBT member! Just excitement across the board. And I've seen similar excitement, like you talk about, having the only Native American justice in the country. And LGBTQ representation. And how important that is to people or why it feels meaningful - I think you talked about - it gives people hope that there will be - that the court will become more accessible, that the court will become more fair , that the law will serve and consider and account for more people, more types of people, the entire community, and ...
Justice Whitener: [00:17:10] It builds the trust and confidence in the institution. Having representation at the table when these serious discussions and issues are being addressed, builds trust and confidence in the judiciary, in the legal system. I remember when I was a litigator walking into a courtroom and I'm the only Black person in the courtroom. Or I'm the only woman in the courtroom. Or my client is the only person of color. The jury pool not reflecting who we are. So it really builds confidence in the judiciary and in the decision. Not everybody is going to always get what they want. That is not what the law is about. But the law is about trying to bring well-reasoned decisions based in the law and taking into account real-life experiences so that the decision has useful meaning to its citizenry. That's truly important.
Crystal Fincher: [00:18:18] It's critically important. And so I guess, where do you feel like we're at right now in terms of everyone being served fairly and equally by the law, and what can be done to improve where we're at right now?
Justice Whitener: [00:18:39] Well, it's not working and it hasn't been working for years. And it probably won't work for everyone for a while. The hope - and that is the end goal - is to be the court or the legal system that truly encapsulates everyone. That is not the reality. And the Supreme Court, after the killing of George Floyd, put out a letter to the community. I don't know if you are aware of that and the letter.
Crystal Fincher: [00:19:17] I am aware of it. And it was - I know a lot of people were surprised and heartened by it. It was unique.
Justice Whitener: [00:19:25] Yes, it was. And it was well thought out, but what was really important for people to get from that letter - is that all nine justices signed it. Didn't have to - all nine justices signed it. And when we sign something, it says, We believe in it, we support it, and we're putting our badge, our signature, on it. And that is what I think resonated with everyone in the legal community of the judges in other states, who have been trying to get their judiciary to acknowledge, that there is an inequality in how people are treated in our legal system. And unfortunately it has taken recent incidences on our media - different mediums - for our population to see it. People have been saying it for years, but to have it be acknowledged in such a vivid way was shocking. And that is what the law is about - when you see something like that occurring, it is time for change, because it's a systemic issue that has not been resolved with whatever mechanisms we were using before.
So now is the time - and the legal system has really jumped on this. I actually, to be honest, was surprised at how much the legal community jumped on this. Because they realize - those who did not work within the trial system, the trial level courts - I think they were surprised at some of the things that had been occurring in the trial level courts. And it is causing the legal system to take a hard look at itself because this is how one subset, and there are many subsets, but this is how one subset - Black people - have been treated in the legal system that has been validated for everyone to see. The question became, What are you going to do about it? You have a responsibility to act. This was not a time to be silent. This was not a time to be complacent. This was a time to act. And the court acted. Well, what we did not envision is the legal community was waiting for that and they are now acting. They're now assessing the system. And hopefully we will have some changes take place and it will not just be for Black people. When people try to make this a Black people thing, that is very disturbing to me. This is a people problem. Unfortunately, it took a Black man losing his life - and Black men and women losing their lives - and this being shown on such a high medium - social media click - oop, everybody's seeing it. It took that scenario to have change, or have the discussion occur. But any change that occurs is going to be helping everyone, because unfortunately Black people, we have been at the bottom of the bucket. So if you help us, you're only making it better for you. So that's the kind of change that I see happening. That's the change I've always wanted to see, even when I was a litigator, but I realize now, as I moved up in my profession, my voice became stronger because I've always been very vocal and visible. My voice became stronger and now I can actually participate in - at the big people table, so to speak. And not only just have a say, but have their ear, because it's one thing to sit at the table - and I've been at many tables where you're talking and ain't nobody hearing, or somebody takes what you just said, reconfigure it, and it sounds like it's just something that just came out of their mouth and you're sitting there going, Am I the only one seeing that they just kinda stole what I just said, but now they're hearing it, whereas when I said it, they weren't. And that has happened to many women as we move up and we're in this room with a lot of men, unfortunately - that's what they like to do. That is changing, you know? So as I move up, I realize my voice is not just being heard anymore. They're actually listening and trying to understand - and I'm doing the same too. 'Cause I'm learning a lot about differences as well, because I'm - in an odd way, I've always tried to see similarities. So for me, this is unique because I'm now seeing differences. And I think that's a good thing for me.
Crystal Fincher: [00:24:41] Absolutely. And you're doing this - you talked about your - you are doing the work of justice right now. And also, you are running a campaign and you're going to be on the ballot in November. And so what's that like? And how is your campaign going?
Justice Whitener: [00:25:05] Well, running a campaign in a virtual world is different. I've ran one campaign before and that was 2012, but in 2020, in this virtual world, that's different. In 2015 I was up for election - I didn't get an opponent. 2016 - didn't get an opponent. I got out there and I connected with the community anyway, 'cause it's just something I like to do. But this year that's different and I'm having to reach out through Zoom and virtual platforms. And to be honest, that's the correct thing to do right now. It is just too deadly of a virus to take a chance, not just on myself and my family, but on others. So it's been difficult, but I'm connecting. And I'm connecting in a way that I've always connected, which is - if this is the platform, Justice Whitener, formerly Judge Whitener - I'm going to be there, we're going to chat, let's have a discussion. And I love talking about the law. This race is a little different, not just because it's the virtual world, but I have an opponent. Remember I didn't get one in 2015 or 2016, so that's different. What's unique as well is my opponent was recently sworn in as an attorney, just when I got appointed to the Supreme Court. So he has never practiced law as an attorney, which means he's never practiced law because to do so without being certified by the bar is illegal, so he has never practiced law. He just passed the bar - in April, he got sworn in - in February, I think he passed the bar. He graduated law school, I think, 20 years ago when I - I graduated in '98 - he graduated, I think in '99 and failed, and then decided to go into education. Why he decided to run now is anybody's guess, but our Constitution actually does not prohibit him from running. To run for an appellate level position, you have to have at least five years of being an attorney. For the Supreme Court, you don't. So it is very important to me, this election cycle, that I inform people of what could happen if I don't prevail. You could have someone sitting on the Supreme Court who has never practiced law, and that can make it rather difficult for the other individuals, but most importantly, what can happen to our law. And I'm very vested in the law - and to make sure that it's held in high esteem, that it should. So campaigning this year is a little different - that's an understatement.
Crystal Fincher: [00:27:58] Well, and it certainly is different. If people do want more information about you, they can head over to justicehelenwhitener.com and learn all about your campaign and read more about you. But you bring up a really interesting point about your opponent and that he hadn't practiced law, hadn't been a lawyer before this campaign, and the surprising bit of information that being a State Supreme Court justice actually does not require that, even though other levels do. And especially at a time right now when, I think a lot of people are looking at the people who we are electing and placing in positions of power, and looking at the difference between those who came with experience and a resumé that people were able to look at, and judge the value of similar work, and use that to inform how future work might be. And then looking at people who were elected, who did not have experience , and also seemed to make a decision out of the blue to run, and the consequences of that. That knowledge actually does count and experience actually does count. Lots of things can be knowledge and lots of things can be experience, but it is important to understand the role that you're taking. And so, having none is certainly at the very extreme of the end, but also, as you talked about in the beginning, you are actually on the other extreme - of lived experience and professional experience and the variety of experience , and how that is able to help you see more of the community, more of the impacts and effects of the law , and how important that is.
Justice Whitener: [00:29:55] Yes, the law is very difficult. The intricacies of applying the law - it takes experience. If I had just gotten out of law school and tried for the Supreme Court and got onto the Supreme Court, I don't think I would be able to do the job, one. And even if I was to try to do the job, I would be a burden on the system because I would not be pulling my own weight. It really does take experience. It's like going to medical school or going - getting a pilots license - just because you have the license does not mean to say you can fly a commercial flight without an experienced pilot at your side. All professions have that learning curve to get to the highest position. So people can look at that and make whatever decision they like, but also think of the impact it can have on your life. Because most cases that are heard in the State come through the trial level court - family law cases, criminal cases, civil cases, and I've handled all of them - they're complex cases. Asbestos cases with 15 co-defendants - I've handled those. And then when those things go up to the high court for final resolution - because the lower courts may have made a mistake here or there, that's not something you learn overnight. That's not something you get in a textbook at law school either. It really comes from experience. So we'll see what happens in November.
Crystal Fincher: [00:31:45] Well, I appreciate the time that you've taken to speak with us today. I could listen to you forever, but unfortunately, we've come upon the time for this show today. So thank you so much for being willing to serve, thank you for all the work that you've done in the community and on the bench, even the virtual bench. And just am excited to see how this campaign unfolds and to see how this new term turns out. Thank you very much, Justice Whitener.
Justice Whitener: [00:32:14] Thank you, Crystal. Thank you for giving me the space where my voice can be heard. I appreciate you.
Crystal Fincher: [00:32:26] Thank you for listening to Hacks and Wonks. Thank you to KVRU 105.7 FM in Seattle where we record this show. Our chief audio engineer is Maurice Jones Jr. And our producer is Lisl Stadler. If you want more Hacks and Wonks content, go to officialhacksandwonks.com, subscribe to Hacks and Wonks on your favorite podcatcher, or follow me on Twitter @finchfrii. Catch you on the other side.
Today Crystal is joined by Amy Sundberg, author of Notes from the Emerald City & Co-Chair of the Seattle Committee of People Power Washington - Police Accountability and Shannon Cheng, Chair of People Power WA - Police Accountability. Crystal, Amy and Shannon break down the latest on the Seattle City budget process, the mess that is Washington State redistricting, and talk about a wonderful opportunity to get involved with the Institute for a Democratic Future.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-hosts, Amy Sundberg at @amysundberg and Shannon Cheng at @drbestturtle. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
References:
“Seattle’s Divide on Public Safety is Fueling a Fight Over Next Year’s Police Budget” by Ben Adlin from The South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/11/15/seattles-divide-on-public-safety-is-fueling-a-fight-over-next-years-police-budget/
“In Reversal, Council Keeps Durkan’s Expanded Police Budget Mostly Intact” by Paul Faruq Kiefer from The South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/11/19/in-reversal-council-keeps-durkans-expanded-police-budget-mostly-intact/
“Seattle’s LEAD program wins accolades, but not everyone is a believer” by Amy Radil from KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/stories/seattle-s-lead-program-wins-accolades-but-some-officials-want-more-options
“The Community Responder Model: How Cities Can Sent the Right Responder to Every 911 Call” by Amos Irwin and Betsy Pearl from the Center for American Progress: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/community-responder-model/
“Council Declines to Fund Two Big-Ticket Asks from Homeless Authority” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2021/11/17/council-declines-to-fund-two-big-ticket-asks-from-homelessness-authority/
“In a first, court will decide new WA redistricting plan as commission falters” by Melissa Santos from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/politics/2021/11/first-court-will-decide-new-wa-redistricting-plan-commission-falters
Learn more about how you can get involved with Institute for a Democratic Future here: https://democraticfuture.org/
Find the contact for your Seattle City Councilor here: https://www.seattle.gov/council/meet-the-council
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome to the program today's two co-hosts - Chair of People Power Washington-Police Accountability and indispensable member of the Hacks & Wonks and Fincher Consulting teams, Dr. Shannon Cheng. And, Amy Sundberg, author of Notes from the Emerald City and Co-Chair of the Seattle Committee of People Power Washington-Police Accountability - an excellent live-tweeter of municipal meetings in Seattle, indispensable informer of all of us, and the person who's happy to take your baked goods for compensation. Welcome to both of you, Amy and Shannon.
[00:01:21] Shannon Cheng: Thanks Crystal.
[00:01:23] Amy Sundberg: Good to be here.
[00:01:24] Crystal Fincher: So I am happy to have you both on here to start talking about the Seattle budget process, the actions that the Council just took - particularly because you both have been instrumental in keeping people up-to-date on where we're at in this process. And this was an eventful week. So what has been happening?
[00:01:48] Amy Sundberg: Well, a lot of very long meetings have been happening, especially yesterday's marathon all-day meeting. I signed off at 6:30p and it was still going. So the Councilmembers have been talking about proposed amendments to the Budget Chair's Balancing Package this week.
[00:02:12] Crystal Fincher: Okay. In that process, what was under consideration and what ended up getting passed?
[00:02:19] Amy Sundberg: I mean, there was a fair amount under consideration. In terms of public safety, there were several proposed amendments that would - basically the Chair's Balancing Package decided to invest a bit less in the police department than what they had asked for in the mayor's proposed budget. And-
[00:02:51] Crystal Fincher: So pausing for a second. What is a Balancing Package?
[00:02:54] Amy Sundberg: The Balancing Package is basically Budget Chair Mosqueda - she gets feedback from community, she gets feedback from Central Staff about various issues having to do with the mayor's proposed budget, she speaks with her colleagues. They already went through a round of amendment proposing, and then she looks at where she thinks the strong consensus is going to be for the Council in terms of what they all agree on - what should be funded and what should not be funded in the year's budget. And then she puts together a package that funds these priorities and balances to where they think revenues will be for the year.
[00:03:46] Crystal Fincher: Okay. So where are the points of likely agreement? What did they end up saying, "Yeah, we're all on the same page."?
[00:03:55] Amy Sundberg: I mean, the Balancing Package - and one of the great things I think that was in that package was a huge investment in affordable housing, much more than we've ever seen. So that was very exciting. I would say that's probably the most notable thing that was happening in the budget. But in general they were funding a lot of services for people - so a lot of food assistance. And there were also a lot of district-specific investments - fairly small investments for various projects within a particular district. And obviously that varied a lot, but there were a bunch of those - different parks, different sidewalk projects, different community centers, all of that sort of thing. There was some consensus around public safety, but a lot of the requests for funding for alternatives, like alternative emergency response, for example, or for LEAD to be scaled up, or for mental -
[00:05:16] Crystal Fincher: And LEAD is Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, which is an alternative to incarceration or further involvement in the criminal legal system and trying to give people pathways and alternatives out of the system.
[00:05:31] Amy Sundberg: Exactly. Just Care, which helps house people in hotels if they don't have a home or a place to stay. Behavioral health response - all of these things were proposed in amendments and most of them were not fully funded in the Balancing Package. So there was -
[00:05:57] Crystal Fincher: And these proposals were making good on commitments that Councilmembers had made to fund alternatives to basically police patrolling the streets, and alternate responses that may be more appropriate to the challenges that people calling 911 are actually calling about. So if someone is having a behavioral health crisis, if someone is unhoused, many Councilmembers have said, "Yeah, actually probably an armed patrol response is not the appropriate response for that." Or certainly isn't able to address some of the root causes to address the issue that's being called about. So having someone with a different set of expertise that may not be armed, that doesn't introduce or escalate a situation in an unhelpful way may be more appropriate in addressing the root cause of the issue and actually solving the problem that's being called about. And the Council collectively had previously signaled and made commitments to move in that direction. Is that a fair synopsis?
[00:07:11] Amy Sundberg: Yeah. I would say that's correct and I would even go further and say it's not even particularly controversial. In general, people would like there to be alternate responses. In general, people would like people who are qualified to answer some of these needs and some of these calls - they don't all need to be armed policemen.
[00:07:35] Crystal Fincher: And so, these community responses were a number of the ones that you just talked about, but the Council seemed like it changed direction and didn't follow through on there. How did that come about? What were the votes that changed what happened?
[00:07:53] Amy Sundberg: I mean, it wasn't voted upon. I mean, that's what happened. The first round of amendments are not voted upon - and basically Chair Mosqueda has to go back and she has to look at all the different proposals, all which cost money. And then, she has to look at how much money is available and she has to make some hard choices about where to spend that money. And she did not find the money to fully fund some of these programs.
One of the ones I was personally most disappointed to see not funded was - Andrew Lewis had proposed money for standing up a CAHOOTS-style community-based alternate emergency response for 911 calls. And you know - a couple million dollars. It wasn't, in the scheme of the budget for Seattle which is very large, it was not much money. And $400,000 of that did get allocated to start working on dispatch protocols so that 911 dispatchers can start to figure out how to route calls in alternate ways, which is great. I mean, that is an important step, but the rest of the money was not given to that project to start to actually stand it up.
[00:09:14] Shannon Cheng: Yeah. I think it's just been really frustrating that it is kind of generally agreed upon that we want a faster ramp up of alternative responses to armed police, but obviously the money does have to come from somewhere. And this whole budget process has been about SPD digging their heels in - whenever any even tiny amount of money or arguing about semantics about funded versus unfunded positions. And all the energy is being spent on that instead of actually building actual solutions that are going to help all of us.
[00:09:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And I mean, there were certainly articles this week and some clarifications that were trying to be made about the funding of 110 police positions and that being - that right now they are positions that are not filled. And so, it's not like they are removing any police from the streets. That was never the proposal and nothing there, even though that had been strongly implied by several of the usual suspects who report on it. But even things like that seem to be caught up in political spin and moving that away from the roots and the crux of what's being discussed. And what the community voted for. And to say that you support moving in a different direction, making a commitment to do that, and then failing to provide any funding to do that is just plain old not meeting the commitment and going back on your words. So I certainly hope that gets addressed throughout the budget process. What are the options to address this further on in the budget process and how can people advocate for seeing a budget that reflects their values?
[00:11:10] Amy Sundberg: Well, the budget process is almost over now. It will be done on Monday. So if you want to speak up, now is the time. You can definitely call and email your Councilmembers now. And there will be a chance for public comments on Monday at 2:00 PM. So I guess signups would be at around noon then - right before all the Councilmembers take their final vote on the budget, which will be at the 2:00 PM meeting on Monday.
I will say, also, regarding those positions that you talked about in the police department that aren't filled but are funded - not only are they not filled, they cannot be filled. It is literally impossible for SPD to fill those positions because they have a hiring pipeline. They've figured out how many officers they can hire next year - that amount of officers, there's money for that. And then, these are in addition to any officers that they could possibly hire. They probably can't even hire them in 2023, to be frank. So these are not positions that are going to be filled any time in the near term. The fact that this amendment was not able to be passed, even though it's completely about transparency of budget and fiscal responsibility and has very little to do with staffing, is deeply disappointing.
[00:12:47] Shannon Cheng: Yeah. I was really frustrated about that one as well, Amy. I guess I was trying to think about how to relate that to a household budget situation. So I was thinking it'd be like you have two people in a household but you only have one car. And so, you're trying to budget money to buy a second car for the second person to get to work, but conditions are currently difficult - used cars are super expensive, maybe you aren't able to get the car. But then it would be like the first person who has the car telling the other person, "No, you can't use any of this money that's been allocated for a car to take the bus to work and you have to walk." And I guess that's just how I feel about these unfunded positions - that SPD gets to hold the money and we don't get to use it for any of the other things that we desperately want and need. And it's just going to sit there. And then, if Council does ever try to take the money back that SPD isn't even able to spend, it just becomes this big messaging spinning from - we've seen already Chief Diaz and others come out and make it sound like we're trying to take money from them.
[00:13:52] Amy Sundberg: But even in the dialogue going on right now, we've been talking about these amendments that are going to restore a $10 million cut in the police department. But I mean, it's only a $10 million cut because they had all of this money to begin with for these unfilled, unfillable positions. So then, it gets to be called a cut but it's not actually - the framing of it becomes very convoluted and it becomes harder to talk about it in a really honest and straightforward way.
[00:14:23] Crystal Fincher: I mean, there is a City Councilmember who was just elected, a future member who was elected, who talked about finding waste in Seattle and finding money that isn't being used optimally that we can use for other things in the City, and there has to be somewhere. We found the somewhere. We found where money cannot be spent, where money is allocated that is not serving any purpose. These are residents' funds, this is public money. And so, where there is money that cannot be spent, it's not even possible to spend it, and is only there to serve as a budget line because they just solely want a bigger number for vanity purposes and for messaging purposes - that could be used to help the people of Seattle in different ways more directly and be spent on something, instead of just sitting dormant in an account. We found it. It's SPD budget. It is for positions that not only are not filled, cannot be filled.
And for some reason there are not the votes at this moment to use that funding for something more productive. It really is mind-boggling. It's disappointing, and I certainly would hope that people listening and those that you know, that you encourage people to call their Councilmembers to talk about this, to ground this conversation in reality and facts. And that we need dollars that are there to be spent on people, on the residents of Seattle, and not sitting in an account because of some political messaging war. It just doesn't make any kind of sense. We are facing too many challenges that are so big and so pressing that we can't let funding get caught up in this pettiness. And it is pettiness. And I'm just very challenged by that. And hope it changes, but yeah, that's been a frustrating conversation to look at.
And another frustrating thing was that the Council declined to fund two requests from the Regional Homelessness Authority and Erica Barnett wrote piece about this in PubliCola. But we have had so many conversations about the priority of addressing homelessness - certainly the mayor-elect, who is coming in, made commitments about doing this. The Council has made commitments about this. Residents of Seattle have talked about this being the most important thing. And what we've heard for years really, and heard continuing conversation about is, well, this really needs to be a regional solution. We really have to take action in conjunction with our regional partners. And we all have a role to play in this. And Seattle certainly is the largest city in the region and would be carrying the lion's share of that responsibility with contributions from others. But there is a responsibility from the City of Seattle in this. And the City declined the requests from the Homelessness Authority.
As Erica Barnett mentioned in her article, there was a request for a high acuity shelter to help stabilize unsheltered people experiencing health crises. The King County Regional Homelessness Authority asked for $19.4 million. They will receive $5 million of that, with potentially another $5 million from the county to begin work on a shelter. That's supposed to help that, but certainly looking at a quarter of the funding there. And then a $7.6 million request to fund 69 peer navigators, people who have lived experience being homeless to help unsheltered people navigate through the homeless system, won't receive any funding. This one came with a justification that there are several existing providers that provide similar services that may be able to do that without incurring additional expenses and be able to build on their current expenditures and current processes. So that will be interesting to see how that shakes out. And they're looking at certainly coming up with proposals to see how they might be able to address that, but this is something to keep our eye on and just feels a bit counter to all of the rhetoric and a number of the promises that have been made. And certainly the direction of the solution that a number of electeds in the City and people who were just elected have made. It's a bit confusing to hear rhetoric for years - we need to participate in a regional solution. It's like, "All right, regional solution, got everybody on board. Here we go." And it's like, "Yeah, never mind, maybe not so much." But we will see if the City comes up with a better plan on their own or not. But I think that's something to keep our eye on.
And also looking at how legitimate is this Regional Homelessness Authority going to be if the charter it's been given and the solutions that they are looking to implement may be dead or disabled on arrival because of a lack of funding. I mean, really a lot of what we talk about in policy - it's great to talk about these policies, it's great to talk about these alternative public safety programs. And it's great to talk about needing to address all of our unhoused neighbors and getting them into housing. It takes money and that money has to be allocated. And when it's not, we're not going to make progress on solving these problems. So I am curious to see what results from this - and what targets they have, how they plan to meet the commitments that they've made. And if not funding this as part of a regional solution is in their plans, what is the regional solution they've been talking about for years and what are they going to do about it? And I'm interested in hearing that from the mayor's perspective and from the Council perspective. Certainly it's an issue that people want addressed. It's an issue that people who are unhoused need addressed and so we will see how that happens.
[00:21:24] Amy Sundberg: It's going to be really interesting to watch the transition and see how much power the City of Seattle is willing to cede to the regional authority, because they're used to kind of doing their own thing, right? And so, I think there might be a little bit of resistance there. I also know, for example, that the Council has been very excited about tiny home villages for some time now. And the new CEO of the Regional Homelessness Authority is not so excited about tiny house villages. So you get these interesting kind of policy discussions and power dynamics that I don't think we know how they're going to play out yet.
[00:22:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And speaking of things we don't know how they're going to play out yet, we might as well talk about redistricting. Redistricting. So this has been a bit of an eventful, not eventful week in the arena of redistricting. So if you haven't seen, and do not fault anyone for not having seen - this is not a fun thing to be following. But our state has a bipartisan Redistricting Commission that we put in charge of redrawing maps every 10 years in response to the changes in population and demographic compositions that we learn from the Census that is taken every 10 years. In Washington state, we have Democrats appoint two members and Republicans appoint two members. And then there is a different Chair of the organization - that is the Redistricting Commission.
They are responsible for collecting public comment and basically balancing the population and composition within districts, which involves adjusting boundaries of different districts to even out population - some districts grow a lot in size, some shrink. And so, from Congressional Districts on down, the boundaries have to be adjusted to balance out - to rebalance - population and representation to make sure everyone is being represented fairly and accurately throughout the state. This process has successfully produced maps every year that it has been in existence, which this current process has been in existence since 1983. Every 10 years they have successfully performed their jobs and produced maps, until the deadline this past Monday, which they missed. And they didn't just miss it, they missed it in such interesting, ridiculous, and we can plug in whatever adjective we want to use their way.
[00:24:19] Amy Sundberg: Shady. I would say it was kind of shady.
[00:24:23] Crystal Fincher: There was a lot shady about it, and likely straight up potentially illegal about how it happened. Because the deadline was Monday night. Now it is not at all uncommon for a commission to take to nearly the deadline, or any entity to take until nearly the deadline to complete their job. A lot of times a deadline is a helpful pressure point to help people who may be disagreeing negotiate and come to an agreement. And that clock ticking down is helpful in getting that done. However, as the deadline approached, there didn't seem to be any progress. And oddly and troublingly, as the deadline approached, in what was supposed to be a public meeting - because by law, these commissioners and these commission meetings have to be held in public. This is not like the Legislature - this is like most other bodies where their deliberations have to be held in public. And they actually are forbidden by law to meet in groups of more than two to prevent there being any meeting basically that is not in view of the public. However, leading up to this deadline, instead of meeting in view of the public, the commissioners retreated - they said - to meet in groups of two, and they were going to meet and come back and discuss publicly. And then they didn't come back. And then they didn't come back again. And then, the updates were non-updates and the meeting that was supposed to take place in public view did not. And then, there was an update that coming up to the midnight deadline on Monday, maybe there is a vote to be taken. There wasn't. And then, the word came that - they came back just in time to take the vote, to approve - it's still confusing what they did or did not approve and what timeline and this is part of the confusing part.
What was presented in public at the time - they said that they voted to approve a framework, just after the midnight deadline, I believe. But that framework did not have any maps attached to it. And so, this was a very confusing time, and it's not quite sure what was approved and they have not clarified much about their deliberations or what was approved. And then, the next day, late in the day, and this was well after the deadline, they published some maps that they said were what was approved in the framework. Both Congressional District and Legislative District maps, which a lot of people - I mean, the first reaction was just, for most people, well these maps are invalid. One, you missed the deadline to vote - that's kind of very cut and dry, that's actually a pretty black and white thing. They admitted they missed the deadline, there doesn't seem to be any disagreement that they missed the deadline. What they do seem to be saying is, "But we voted just after the deadline. And so we put so much work into it that maybe you should consider what we did."
However, the maps that they eventually - that the commission eventually published a day later after the deadline passed - it has issues. It has a number of issues, but I think a lot of people are really not even getting into those issues yet at this point in time, just because they missed the deadline and therefore - in a situation where it would've gone to the Legislature to be approved, now it is up to the Supreme Court. If you missed a deadline, it gets kicked over, Redistricting Commission is done. What they have done is basically all null and void because they did not produce what they were supposed to approve and produce in the timeline that they were supposed to do this. And this is prescribed by law, so it's not like someone can just decide to take a little bit more time. And in this process with the Supreme Court, they have until now - April 30th - to approve maps. So what seems pretty clear is that the Supreme Court has no obligation to consider anything that the Redistricting Commission has done. The challenge becomes that the Supreme Court is not a mapping body. This is not anything that is in their - it's not in their job description.
[00:29:09] Shannon Cheng: Yeah. And Crystal, isn't that April 30th deadline really problematic? Isn't filing week for a lot of these positions, that people need to know their districts for, the second week of May, usually?
[00:29:22] Crystal Fincher: It's so problematic. And that's such a good point. I mean, the reason why the deadline is in mid-November is because we actually moved it up from the end of December. We moved the deadline up because it was such a stretch to implement all of this and have people learn their new districts. And so we said, "Hey, we actually need more time to - once we decide what these maps are, everything that follows the new maps - need more time to implement it." So not having maps now and moving this deadline to April 30th does mean that some representatives do not know which district they are going to ultimately represent. Depending on which version of which map you look at, some representatives are in one district on some maps, they're in another district on another map. They maintain their incumbency according to some maps, they don't according to others. Different candidates who have run four different positions or are considering - are in one district according to some maps, another district according to others. So this uncertainty now goes until April 30th. The candidate filing deadline is May 20th. So there are less than three weeks, fewer than three weeks between the time districts become final and the time that people learn, not just whether if you're an incumbent, whether you're still in your district, but what the composition of your district is.
And we know that there are going to be several districts whose compositions meaningfully change. So you don't know what neighborhoods, what areas you're going to be representing or not. As someone who may potentially be a candidate, you don't know where you might end up running, who you might challenge. There may be one person who you're very interested in running against, there may be another person who you're not. This is all up in the air until April 30th. I hear a lot of people say, "Well, maybe the Supreme Court will get done early." And to that I say, what entity has ever gotten done early? There is nothing that has happened in the past that suggests that this would happen early. It could happen. The thing is this is actually a completely unprecedented process and we don't know what's going to happen, but trying to assume upfront that they're going to get done early does not seem like it's the most likely thing, given that, I mean, you have a commission whose job it was just to figure out these maps - who came in and it was on their job description, part of their job description, to get these maps done. They had process, they had staff, they had this whole thing. They were unable to get this process done by the deadline. I don't know why kicking it over to a body that doesn't have any of the preparation that this one had would make us think that they would get done faster. Certainly is possible but -
[00:32:16] Amy Sundberg: And weren't there also problems with a lot of the proposed maps in terms of the legality?So I mean, that becomes an issue as well.
[00:32:24] Crystal Fincher: Oh there are so many problems. Yeah. There have been several independent analyses, from Harvard to UCLA, I think the League of Women Voters - looked into several of these maps and several of them have pretty blatant Voting Rights Act violations. They appear to be unconstitutional, they appear to be illegal maps. That's certainly a major issue that had been talked about throughout this process. The alleged maps - it's hard to even say - this last map that was published after the deadline, which seems to have several issues even on top of the Voting Rights Act violations. Yeah, that's a problem. And so, the one thing I would say is I would assume, I would hope and I actually would assume from our Supreme Court, our Washington State Supreme Court, that they are interested in adhering to the Voting Rights Act, which would automatically mean, because of that would mean that some of the maps that have been published, that their maps would not look like those.
And so, there's going to be a question of where do they start? Because the process is not defined. There are some states who have gone through similar processes. Some would be useful to follow, others may not be good to follow - but that's all going to be determined. But really what we have now is we're in an unprecedented situation for our state. The Redistricting Commission did not complete their job by the time that was required, so the normal process that we are used to following is no longer the process that we're in. We're in a brand new process, we are going to see what happened. Because there is so much - I'm sitting here probably - I still don't get what happened on that Monday, and what they approved, and what they didn't approve, and what happened when. And I probably did a horrible job of explaining that - the reason why, is because we don't know. It is very confusing as to what happened. In fact, the Supreme Court has ordered the Chair of the Redistricting Commission to basically submit a sworn statement about what did happen because no one knows. We are supposed to know. It's supposed to be in public for deliberation. What was the timeline of the events? What happened? When did it happen? And that is due by this coming Monday, the 22nd? I think Monday is the 22nd. So we will hear the Redistricting Commission's sworn version of events and from there we'll see where it goes. But it seems pretty black and white from what they said before that they did not make the deadline for the map.
So that basically - question one, the most important question is, did you approve those maps in time by the deadline? They did not. I'm sure they will be like, "But it was only by a little bit." And the thing about when a deadline is prescribed by law - is when you miss it, it doesn't matter whether it's by two seconds or two days. It is missed. And so that's question one, which is why it is now in the hands of the Supreme Court. And we'll see where it goes from here. We will probably have other shows talking about this in more detail, but certainly as we get more information. But this is something to continue to pay attention to and certainly to make sure that you are engaging, especially as we have, these conversations about whether districts adhere - proposed districts - and that's adhere to the Voting Rights Act primarily.
And that's important for issues like in Central Washington, looking at places like Yakima - are there attempts, bad faith attempts really, made to dissect that community in a way that eliminates voting power, organizing power that would normally be there because of the population? Or are they looking at that and trying to dilute the power of specifically non-white populations in order to maintain electoral power? And this is the conversation that we see with gerrymandering in so many other states, right? And so we were trying to avoid that here. So we'll talk about this a lot more, but it's a mess.
[00:37:10] Amy Sundberg: I think too, that it bears repeating how shocking it is that we don't know what happened. And that it's now Friday and we still don't know what happened. And that these are meetings that are legally required to be within public view. And that all the commissioners felt emboldened - they felt just fine not having to be transparent.
[00:37:35] Crystal Fincher: Well, I will be careful in characterizing what all of the commissioners done - I mean, did. I don't know where all of the commissioners were, I don't know if a couple of them felt strongly about this and a couple others didn't. I don't know that, but I do know that the process overall was certainly not ideal. And even that meeting in pairs - it is also illegal if you meet in pairs and then have an intermediary relay information from one of those meetings in pairs to a member of the other pair. You can't pass information back and forth that derives from those smaller meetings, because that in effect is a meeting. That is also specifically illegal. So I think most people are going now - it is not believable to think that this process happened completely behind doors, behind closed doors, there was no agreement beforehand. You come back in time to take a vote, but no one talked to each other, even though we didn't see what you were doing and somehow came to an agreement. No one believes that.
[00:38:47] Amy Sundberg: No.
[00:38:48] Crystal Fincher: I think we're there. I don't believe that.
[00:38:54] Amy Sundberg: And I would say if you're appointed to be a commissioner, one of your tasks is to work towards transparency. So making sure the public does know what you're doing. And I mean, yes, maybe there are circumstances we don't know about, maybe you can just be swept along - but, I mean, transparency is part of what you should strive for.
[00:39:18] Crystal Fincher: Part of what we should strive for. And really that issue in itself, whether or not they violated Open Meetings Acts and whether or not they adhere to the law there, even if they would have voted in time, could invalidate that entire process. So there are just so many issues with how this process came to its non-conclusion conclusion, but we will get more information about what the commission says happened by Monday. And certainly we'll be talking about this next week too on Hacks & Wonks.
One last thing I wanted to talk about before we left was - we are approaching the deadline for applications to the Institute for a Democratic Future. What's the Institute for a Democratic Future, you ask - I'm glad you asked. It is a fantastic six-month fellowship where you spend about a week in a month immersing yourself in politics and policy on the ground throughout the state of Washington and there's even a trip to DC. But it is an excellent way to get an education on not only a range of policy and politics, but to see how the policy that is passed connects to real-world conditions on the ground for people in different circumstances and in different walks of life. So being in Eastern Washington, being in Central Washington and talking to farmers and talking to farm workers and talking to union leadership and talking to people who are doing environmental work and talking to business organizations and just the full range of people in communities. And how different legislation impacts them, how different challenges are presenting themselves, and what their feedback and perspective is on different things. And it's varied. And especially, I think most of the people who are listening to this podcast are in the King County area, how things look in rural communities is different. How life is experienced in rural and communities elsewhere is different. And it's important to understand how that manifests in order to create policy in a way that actually does help people.
This program is for people who are 39 or under. The deadline is approaching, coming up in about a week. So if this sounds like it's something interesting to you, I would highly encourage you - reach out to me on Twitter, I'm @finchfrii, send me a text message, email, send me a message to the website. I'll be happy to talk about it more with you, but this is actually how I got my start in politics. I had a career before I worked in politics - I was in corporate sales, but I knew that I wanted to make a change and do something different. I was pretty naive - I didn't know what jobs and stuff there were in politics, what options were. I had watched the West Wing and knew of those positions there, but really didn't understand the wide variety of positions in politics.
But also how that also works together with policy positions, advocacy positions, and there is a rich world that you can work in and contribute to. And it can be in a full-time paid capacity or not, but it's just really useful and helpful to be able to see how policy translates. What type of policies in the conversation, what different people from different areas are saying about their lives and what they're facing. And what is helping and what is not helping. And a lot of it will surprise you. A lot of it may not fit neatly into rhetoric that we're used to hearing. And that's really important to engage with and understand. So I highly encourage you to do that. If you're listening to this and you know me, there's a letter of recommendation required - talk to me. If you know me and we can do that, I'm happy to do that. I've done it before for people, but highly recommend this for anyone interested in being more engaged in the world of politics or policy or advocacy, it really is invaluable. You would not be hearing my voice on this podcast right now if it weren't for the Institute for a Democratic Future. I wouldn't be working in politics. It is just really important and helpful.
So if this sounds interesting to you or you think it would sound interesting to any others, you can go to democraticfuture.org. I'll also put that in the show notes so that you can read more about it. But it really is valuable. And for young leaders, young progressive leaders, age 21 to 39, and the program itself runs January through June. And there are 11 weekends between January and June plus a Washington, D.C. week. So give me a chat if this is interesting, but Institute for a Democratic Future is great. And it's also just a great network of people and really helpful and useful network of people to belong to, and you would be surprised how many people have been through this program and who are working there. It has been useful for a ton of us. So that's where I'm at on those.
And I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on today, November 19th, 2021. And thank you to the producer of Hacks & Wonks, Lisl Stadler, who is assisted regularly by Shannon Cheng and our wonderful co-host today - who, hey, Shannon Cheng, the Chair of People Power Washington-Police Accountability, as well as Amy Sundberg, author of Notes from the Emerald City and Co-Chair of the Seattle Committee of People Power Washington-Police Accountability. You can find Shannon on Twitter @drbestturtle, Amy Sundberg @amysundberg and you can find me @finchfrii. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks & Wonks" in the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listening to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
Riall Johnson, Principal Partner at Prism West consulting, joins Crystal to talk about Nicole Thomas-Kennedy's campaign for Seattle City Attorney, the funding mechanisms behind the scenes in Seattle politics, and the future of progressive candidates in Washington.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii, and Riall Johnson at @RiallJohnson. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
"Where Urbanists and Progressives Go from Poor 2021 Showing" by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/11/05/where-urbanists-and-progressives-go-from-poor-2021-showing/
"Abolitionist Nicole Thomas-Kennedy Announces Last-Minute Run for City Attorney" by Mark Van Streefkerk from The South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/06/10/abolitionist-nicole-thomas-kennedy-announces-last-minute-run-for-city-attorney/
"Two Seattle candidates reflect rise of abolitionism in U.S. politics" by Lilly Ana Fowler from KNKX Public Radio: https://www.knkx.org/politics/2021-10-21/two-seattle-candidates-reflect-rise-of-abolitionism-in-u-s-politics
"Seattle's Choice: A Police Abolitionist or a Law-and-Order Republican?" by Mike Baker from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/30/us/seattle-city-attorney-election.html
Ann Davison's 2019 Homelessness Plan: https://twitter.com/ericacbarnett/status/1450516851503501314
"Abolitionist Candidates Are Running for Office Across the Country" by Gennette Cordova from Teen Vogue: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/abolitionist-candidates-running-for-office
"Seattles Divide on Public Safety is Fueling a Fight Over Next Year's Police Budget" by Ben Adlin from The South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/11/15/seattles-divide-on-public-safety-is-fueling-a-fight-over-next-years-police-budget/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I'm thrilled to be welcoming back to the program Riall Johnson. Hello Riall.
[00:00:43] Riall Johnson: Hello.
[00:00:45] Crystal Fincher: Hey, so you have worked with a lot of candidates before and this cycle, including a candidate that lots of people were extremely excited about - unfortunately just shy of 50% it looks like - Nicole Thomas-Kennedy. How was it working with Nicole?
[00:01:05] Riall Johnson: Well, Nicole herself is awesome - she's great. I was sold on Day One when I met her - so, and lucky that Day One was the deadline of filing day. So, it's an interesting story how we met was when, I guess, Pete Holmes was about to not have a challenger, someone introduced me to Nicole, said, "This person wants to run and run on an abolition platform." I was already busy - we're down to the deadline for the filing and getting ready to do all the other stuff for the pamphlets - I actually took on two other clients that week, same week, actually three other clients. So, my whole staff was pretty mad at me already, like, "Why do you bring it on?" and it's like, Oh yeah, by the way, it's a citywide race we're going to take on. Because when the person introduced me, I was like, "Yeah, I'm pretty busy. I don't know, but I'm happy to give some advice." And then I met Nicole, I was like, "All right, we're going to do this." And we filed.
[00:02:02] Crystal Fincher: And turned it around really quick. I remember when that was coming up, people were wondering if Pete Holmes was going to be unopposed. I think that there was an article written shortly before that being like, "Pete Holmes is not going to have a challenger. Are, are people actually happy with him?" And everyone behind-the-scenes is like, "No, no, very much not." But trying to find someone who was capable of mounting a campaign - and then Nicole Thomas-Kennedy stepped forward, you got together with her, and rolled out a really exciting seeming campaign. And someone that had a message that was resonating with a lot of people, especially in the primary. So how did that unfold?
[00:02:50] Riall Johnson: It felt like - because it was actually the kind of campaign that I kind of exist for. I started this company to help really progressive clients have that advantage - to be able to start from scratch. So, almost all our candidates that we have - we had about 17 this year - and they all come from the community. They come from like almost nothing. A lot of them, they don't have this pre-backing. They can't really self-fund the campaigns. They don't get to loan the campaign $6,000 or put $20 grand of their own money - everything they do starts from scratch. And when you do that, it's really hard - you're at a disadvantage already, especially if you're challenging an establishment candidate - someone that already has the money, already has the foundation, they're in that structure already.
Almost all of our candidates were first-time candidates. We had one incumbent this year. And it's just amazing to watch, I think, these people decide that they have the power to do that. And they've been advocating all these issues at an activist level - protesting, marching, lobbying, all these stuff, organizing mutual aid. And then all of the sudden they actually see an avenue that's like, "Well, if we run for office we can actually do more." And then they do it. And then sometimes they win.
And so we've had that history. And so this is kind of what we exist for - Nicole to be able to say, "There was an opportunity to actually bring abolition into the conversation, into the political sphere in Seattle." And I had to jump at that chance 'cause I actually like Pete Holmes, I'm actually friends with him, and I think he's-
[00:04:40] Crystal Fincher: Really?
[00:04:41] Riall Johnson: Yeah. Actually, Pete Holmes actually supported - he was more emotional support, I guess. He always liked what I was doing - we used to - I've interacted with him. So, it was nothing against, for me personally, about going against Pete Holmes. I just couldn't turn this client down - it's a business thing. No one's - also, Pete Holmes wasn't paying me to stay out the race either. So, no one pays me to stay out of these races. So, if you're worried about me messing things up and bringing people all these challenges from the left, it's kind of an F you, pay me situation, that's what I say - I'm censoring myself. But also it's like no one pays me and my company to stay out and that's not what would keep us out anyway. The thing is people hire us to give them a voice and help them build that - build their platforms, build their campaigns, and give them a chance to win. And that's led to historic wins, like Varisha Kahn or Carolina Mejia. We just got the first Black woman elected up in Whatcom County in county history. We got the youngest-
[00:05:44] Crystal Fincher: That was a big win and that came through late in the count. I'm excited about that.
[00:05:48] Riall Johnson: Yes, Kristina Michele is dope as hell, and can't wait to see what she's going to do there.
But, I guess, back to Nicole - you want to hear about Nicole. This was a dream come true, in a way, for me to say, "Here's a chance to actually insert, talk about real, real reform, not just these moderate incremental reforms - really talk about overhauling the justice system with abolitionist mindset." And the platform to say, "We can have a better world. We can have a better city. We don't have to be going down this path that we're doing, where it's just recycling the same things. Recycling people in and out of the justice system without services, and putting the people constantly in worse situations." The narrative that we wanted to fight was that this - it's funny how Pete Holmes was facing a battle on the right who were saying that he's not punishing people enough. And we're saying you're actually punishing people too much, and you're not getting to the root of the problem. If you just keep putting people in jail and then just let them out, when they get out of jail they're in a worse situation than they were before.
[00:07:00] Crystal Fincher: Right.
[00:07:00] Riall Johnson: A lot of people who are arrested - they have jobs, they have maybe a place they're couch-surfing, or they might have an apartment, or they have a car. And all that is gone when they get out.
[00:07:09] Crystal Fincher: Particularly when we're talking about misdemeanors, yeah.
[00:07:11] Riall Johnson: Exactly. And the thing is the trial rate in Seattle - the prosecution only wins about 37-38% of the time. So Nicole's undefeated - she's never lost a trial because these charges are so arbitrary - what you're arresting people for, a lot of them just fall apart and they usually end up just pleading out because they get threat of a felony, or threat of a - people just want to get out of jail so they can get back to their work, get back to living. So, a lot of people just plead out even when they're not guilty. And it's just the thing is - the problem I saw - this was a chance to fight, to actually highlight what's actually wrong with it. In the way, from the left perspective, an abolitionist perspective, to say, "This is actually what's wrong with what we're doing. And if we actually just put people in homes, it's a win-win for everybody." Less people in jail - rich NIMBYs would see less homeless people, because that's their biggest gripe - I have to see these homeless people in the park. And I was like, "Well, then give them housing. Pay your taxes and give them housing and you won't have to worry about it."
[00:08:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, do the things that actually make us more safe. And it turns out that meeting people's basic needs, that addressing the issues that put people in positions where they're making some of those choices is much more effective at stopping that behavior than punishing someone or just throwing them in jail and doing nothing to address any of the underlying issues.
So and I think people appreciate - I think some people have a misconception about political consultants sometimes. That this is just for the money and it is just because - we don't actually care about these issues. And I know that you typically get involved with candidates and campaigns that you do care about. And who oftentimes are - those candidates may have a hard time finding many people who are willing to lend their professional backing and actually spend their time and resources on those campaigns. Because a lot of people don't know that sometimes a lot of the non-marquee races that are not in the City of Seattle and in other places are not where - a lot of other consultants are not there. There's not a ton of money to be made working with some of those candidates, and so there's just the absence of people able to help in those races - willing and able to help in those races. And you have taken those on for a long time.
So, you take on Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, you are rolling along in the primary and lots of people start asking, "Okay, is this just to make a point about Pete Holmes or are you actually trying to win?" When did you start putting together, Okay, we're not just a thorn in Pete Holmes's side, we actually have a shot to get through this primary and to maybe win this race?
[00:10:19] Riall Johnson: Yeah. We saw that probably in July when - one, when the Seattle Times endorsed Ann Davison. That actually - it was more so not that we were worried about - we were thinking we were going to win - we were actually almost worried we weren't going to make it through. Because at first, when we filed, Ann Davison hadn't filed yet. She filed an hour after us. So, 10 minutes, literally, right after we did. So, it became a three-way race. And if Ann Davison didn't file it would have gone straight to the general.
[00:10:55] Crystal Fincher: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:10:57] Riall Johnson: So we had to fight to get through the primary, which essentially ended up putting us at a disadvantage in the general because we had to spend all our money to get into the primary. Meanwhile, Ann Davison didn't spend anything - she didn't have to, she didn't have the money to spend. She spent $35,000, we spent $187,000.
And when we saw - okay, well, we had to get about - we were shooting for about 30%. We thought we needed about 30% to get through the primary. We ended up getting 36% and that was shocking. That was actually shocking to us, pleasantly shocking. We were going for 30% - we think if we get under 25% we're not going to make it through, because we didn't think Ann was going to get more than 15-20%. But then the Times endorsement happened and that kind of changed the scenario - sadly, that's how it is. And then Ann Davison actually got more votes in the primary than Scott Lindsay did in the general of 2017.
So, that whole thing is - when you look at the whole narrative that was built up against Pete Holmes from the right, with the Seattle is Dying, the Soul of Seattle - just constant bombardment he was facing on the right, it was mostly - and then when you see why, it wasn't so much they don't give a crap about the homeless - was that censored enough? It's ironic - we talk about this campaign, I got to censor myself. It's not like the rich give a **** about the homeless, they only care about their taxes. The main thing, the reason they were opposed to Pete Holmes is they saw it - The Times and other corporations saw it as a chance to get someone in that's not going to defend the JumpStart Tax, or any taxation on the rich. And they took that opportunity, and we ended up squeezing Pete Holmes out.
So, yeah, we saw that around July - Pete might not actually make it. All three of us are scrambling to get through the primary. And it became an even three-way race. We saw that polling where so many people were undecided. So, it was kind of around July - early July, late June - we saw we might have a shot. Especially when we saw that. And when we were raising money - when we got the money raised and we saw the response, it just kept building and building. First, it was like you think we're going to challenge him, we're going to try to bring to light these issues. And then of course it just kept building, building, building - it was like, Oh, we have a chance. I would not have bet that Ann would have made it through. I thought it was going to be us and Pete, but that's how it worked out.
[00:13:37] Crystal Fincher: And that's at the stage - those would have been two very different races. A race that you would have run against Pete Holmes would have very different dimensions than a race that you ended up running against Ann Davison. Two very different candidates - Pete with a long record, who is a Democrat, and Ann Davison, who last year declared herself to be a Republican in Trump's Republican Party, running for Lieutenant Governor with the state. Very different candidates.
So, you wind up making it through the general election. Pete Holmes doesn't make it through. And so now you're facing this person who previously ran as a Republican, who I think you correctly saw that - fundamentally for the big money behind this race, this was about them not wanting - it was about the hoarding of money. It's them not wanting to be taxed. It was them not wanting to pay what I would consider, and a lot of Seattleites consider, their fair share in giving back to the City that they are profiting so handsomely off of. And wanting to have Seattle residents and Washington residents bear the brunt of the social costs that are a result of us not funding services for the residents who live here, and continue to give tax breaks, and continue to do the things that have allowed them to have record-breaking profits, including throughout the pandemic. And defending the JumpStart Tax, which is going to help a lot of people, is near the top of that list.
As well as continuing talk - if people are concerned about crime, there's almost no bigger more frequent crime than wage theft here in the City of Seattle and most places. So actually going after the types of crimes that are affecting the majority of the people was not going to wind up in their favor also. And so they certainly used a lot of scare tactics that we saw to get through. As you were laying out the plan for the general election, what was your plan in terms of message? What was your theory going into the general election, how you were going to get through it?
[00:16:08] Riall Johnson: Well, of course the general election was - we wanted to more highlight, shift into talking about the civil side - like the JumpStart Tax, wage theft, rental protections. Because the civil side is two-thirds of the department - it's twice as big as the criminal side. The funny thing is - it's funny how we're going up against a Republican and we're actually preaching - our policies are actually smaller government. And the stuff that Davison was talking about was actually big government. She wants to double the jail population, technically quintuple the jail population. She's literally talking about putting 2,000 homeless people in a concentration camp - that's their policy. That's what she wants to do. And it was just ironic how when you go against conservatives, and it's like this shouldn't even be a conversation - you think Seattle is aware of these things. But the thing is - people vote emotionally. And we wanted to focus on the policies and the platforms and stuff, highlight that our candidate was way more experienced, our platform was more solid, it actually saves everybody money, protects working class folks, working folks, protects renters, and actually helps homeless people on a more fundamental level because we want to divert things into the root causes of things.
But, of course, that all got derailed when old tweets came out. And that's what people - it ended up scaring them and I think made the difference. This race is going to be about 48-52 - we're at 47-53 right now - it's going to be 48-52 probably after today. And sadly that was the narrative - that was what we were hearing on the doors. That was what we were hearing. We ended up allowing them - gave them that ammo to use to scare a lot of moderate Democrats.
[00:18:16] Crystal Fincher: Well, that was an interesting thing - and certainly campaigns on the inside are a lot different than - there's a lot more going on than what we see from the outside. And so I think a lot of people are wondering about a number of things. Okay, so you have these tweets - seemingly these tweets have existed, people know these tweets exist. That's what ended up dominating so much of the conversation and what the opposition was determined to use against Nicole Thomas-Kennedy. I think most of us, especially those of us who are online, completely see that within context.
But there's a lot of Seattle, we're talking 250,000 voters total - most of whom are not very online, most of whom don't pay attention to politics. The majority of people can't name anyone on the City Council. Lots of people can't name who the mayor is. I think sometimes it's really easy to underestimate how many people are just not connected to anything happening politically, and just start tuning in once they see a ballot arrive in their mailbox. So, once they start getting bombarded by information and the $500,000 of spending that the Ann Davison campaign and the Independent Expenditures on their behalf are going, and once the media has started to focus and hyperfocus on the tweets as presented by your opponents, what was the game plan there?
[00:19:57] Riall Johnson: The game plan was to just shift as much as possible into talking about what I just - we had a plan to ramp up what we were planning on doing, actually, the general. Obviously you can't talk about abolition without - you've got to explain it, because everyone gets a kneejerk reaction. When people get a kneejerk reaction to defunding the police, but then when you talk to them about it - so if we actually had other programs that would actually cost less, so there would be less of the need for police, then people are like, "Oh yeah, that sounds great." Well, that's really what defunding is or that's what abolition is - is creating other systems, building better platforms and services so we don't have to depend on police and prisons and jails. And actually saves us money.
But the thing is - this is a national problem we have, where if you don't really educate people on what you're talking about constantly, the other side will do it for you. So, people already had what abolition was in their mind before we even talked to them. It was anarchy, it was chaos, it was riots.
[00:21:00] Crystal Fincher: And because of the bombardment of communications from your opponent. They took it upon themselves to beat people over the head with mail and commercials and digital ads painting chaos. And all of these images of, like you said, trying to paint Nicole Thomas-Kennedy as basically an anarchist, violent chaos candidate. And they used several of those words. So, how did you see the possibility - one, it seems like we were on that tweet conversation for a long time, which certainly your opponents loved and perpetuated. And just the amount of communication from the other side was enormous. Were you trying to counter that?
[00:21:54] Riall Johnson: Of course we did, it's just hard to because you're outspent. We did the vouchers - the voucher cap is $375,000 for both primary and general combined. And that's supposed to even - I won't say the voucher evens the playing field - another candidate client of mine said it best a couple of years ago - it gets you on the playing field. So, it allowed Nicole to - and we actually out-fundraised everybody in the primary. But we had to spend it all, because it's malpractice to not spend all your money in the primary if you don't know you're going to get through. If you're not 100% sure you're going to get through, you spend it all.
The thing is we spent $187,000, and had $187,500 to the dime. Ann spent all her money, but it was only $35,000. Ann didn't even qualify for the vouchers in the primary. Pete qualified at the very end, so Pete didn't - Pete didn't take us serious, didn't take any of it serious to his own detriment. So, the thing is - when you get through, Ann getting through without having to spend - not even qualifying - she ended up qualifying in the general, and then gets to raise up to $375,000 in the general. It's pretty easy once you get there. The vouchers come in naturally, as they come. People just throw vouchers at you. So, she got to raise and spend $340,000 before the cap got lifted, so she even got really $400,000 to spend. We only can spend $200,000, because we already spent to get through the primary. So, that was a disadvantage.
Then, of course, you count the other $400,000 of independent money that came in, and we probably had, what? $9,000-$10,000 spent for us, I think. I can't remember what it was. Someone started a PAC somewhere and threw $5,000 for us and $5,000 against Ann. Meanwhile they had $400,000 to spend, mostly against us. So, we were outspent not just two-to-one - roughly, in the general, we were outspent three-to-one.
[00:24:02] Crystal Fincher: Just from the campaign, not even considering the external - other PACs who were aligned.
[00:24:09] Riall Johnson: Two-to-one on the campaign side and then double that. So, yeah, three- or four-to-one. We were at a spending disadvantage. The thing is, I'm used to that - I'm used to being outspent. I am almost always outspent by campaigns because all my clients are progressives and they're always going up against moderate and established candidates that get that funding from big business. That's almost all my clients. So, we're used to that. We usually find a good way to counterpunch. We have to be extra savvy on our press and social media, which I think we were. We did everything possible to counter that. It's just hindsight is always 20/20. You think you're doing everything right, but no one's ever run a perfect election until you get 100% voter turnout. Until everyone in an election votes, no one's ever going to run a perfect campaign.
The thing is - I am extremely proud of the campaign that we ran, what Nicole put out. It just wasn't enough. And the thing is what we need to do is - obviously look at what we did wrong, but also we need to really support and amplify what we did right.
[00:25:27] Crystal Fincher: Right.
[00:25:27] Riall Johnson: There were two abolition candidates that got through the primary and were major contenders on the citywide race, not just a district race but a citywide race. If we brought that up, if we said two years ago this was going to happen, everyone would laugh at us.
[00:25:48] Crystal Fincher: If you would have said it a year ago - I was literally in a meeting just before this where we were talking. It was like - if you would have said a year ago that a candidate in a citywide race, leading with abolition, running for City Attorney. Or any candidate for a citywide position, talking about abolition loudly and proudly, would have gotten over 40%, over 45%, people just would have kicked you out of the room. There's no way they would have taken that seriously. That was not deemed as possible.
And you hear conversation about, well, was this just a repudiation of progressive messages? And one thing that I think people need to understand is that - absolutely not. One, the opposition had to parrot progressive messages in order to be included in this. They bent over backwards to avoid talking about being a Republican, to try and seem like they were in line with Seattle values, and had to spend half a million dollars to try and paint Nicole Thomas-Kennedy as some extremist. And just barely squeaked out the win. I think a lot of people sometimes - and this irritates me every time - look at Election Night, when we know returns are wildly incomplete, where we only have 30%-40% of returns in, and those are going to be the most conservative returns. And try and paint a narrative on that, which is always irresponsible and doesn't make any sense. When we look at what actually happened and that this is a close campaign - wow, the amount of voters in Seattle who don't even want incremental change, who understand that we need to fundamentally change the way we are doing business in Seattle and we're handling things in the criminal legal system is humongous. So, I definitely think there's a lot to celebrate.
And just structurally, I've talked about this before, but citywide races are really expensive to run. You can't advertise on Facebook - the avenues to spread your candidate's message are limited and the only way you are able to do that is by paying to communicate directly with candidates. So, it automatically out the gate favors big money interests. Nicole Thomas-Kennedy was unknown before this thing, and most candidates are not successful on their first run. Most candidates are not successful on a second run. To come up with this number, to come within a couple percentage points of winning, is really impressive for a first-time candidate.
And so just from the campaign perspective, from a consultant perspective, this is a better result than I think most people thought was possible when you were walking in this race, when you just look at the structural elements and what typically happens in this kind of situation. I hear questions, and again things can look different from inside a campaign than outside of it. Two big questions that I hear from people looking at this campaign, aside from questioning whether or not this was a repudiation of abolition or progressive values. It's the tweets, man. The tweets were such a big issue. Did you see that issue coming? And if you had to handle it over again, would there be anything that you would do differently?
[00:29:20] Riall Johnson: One, I would have probably scrubbed them from the start. But that wasn't my focus. When I met Nicole it was just go, go, go, let's get this campaign going. I probably would have - normally you make a campaign website, put the person on private or something. Even then, there's way to find tweets even if you delete them. So, there's really no way to cover it all up - you got the wayback machine. So, we just had to stand by them.
But also - I hope anyone that's listening to this - know that I agree with what she said. I think what she said to the police, they deserved it. The way they were behaving, what they were doing to people - they deserved every single word Nicole said to them. And that's the funny thing people forget. Oh, you used violent words. They were doing violent actions. They were literally abusing people on the streets and teargassing us. I was there and Nicole was there. So, I have no sympathy. And if people want her to apologize, I'm like, "Apologize to who?" The cops have never apologized for killing us, they don't apologize for beating us. They falsely arrested hundreds of people during that time. They didn't apologize for any of that. So, when they apologize, maybe Nicole might think about it. Nicole stood her ground. I asked her if she wanted to apologize. It was like, apologize to who? Edward56732567? MAGA2024? That's who she's responding to. I'm not worried if she's going to apologize to random named bunch of numbers on Twitter. If you saw those tweets and you think you owe them an apology, no. I'm sorry, she wasn't talking at you. She was talking at trolls and the abusive police - and they deserved every word. That's how I feel. That's how Nicole feels, and that's how a lot of people that support us feel.
Going back on that - how you campaign is how you govern. If Nicole walked back too much of that stuff, then you know that she would have done that on policy. So, I'm proud that she stood by how she felt. Obviously she regrets that - because she wasn't running for office, she wasn't even thinking about running for office. She was an activist that was angered by seeing what police were doing to her fellow residents and herself. And seeing nationwide about how police treat people of color and poor people across the country. And we ain't got time to be nice to them. We've been nice to them. We give them all the money in the world, all the money they want, and we have national holidays, we say thank a cop, we say all this stuff, and they still treat us like crap. I'm censoring myself, but -
[00:31:57] Crystal Fincher: I don't think there's anyone who saw what was actually happening who was not incensed by what was happening.
[00:32:07] Riall Johnson: Yeah, there are some people -
[00:32:13] Crystal Fincher: Who isn't happy and who doesn't feel like the police are serving them by keeping "those kinds of people" in their place and all of that. But they were literally, not only illegally and against what was supposed to be their policy, teargassing people on the street, but they just teargassed an entire neighborhood. People were inside their homes and were not able to escape teargas. And we're just seeing more research on the effects of teargas on pregnancy and on a variety - it is a poison. It's a poison. And that was just wildly irresponsible and violent to do.
In the campaign, as I'm looking at it, I think Nicole did an excellent job in a New York Times article that came out just talking about - that was in a whole different context. Would she do it again? Is she writing those kinds of tweets now that she's running for City Attorney? No. Would she do it again? No. But this race isn't about that, and then she talked about what she believed. I think more of that sooner could have been helpful, and I know that a lot of times in campaigns, your opposition is looking to inflame everything they can possibly inflame. They felt like talking about tweets was helpful to them, and obviously not talking about tweets would have been preferable at all - and to talk about substantive issues having to do with the office of City Attorney would have been preferable. So, something to be able to move off of that sooner or to - I understand exactly what went into saying that, and the police were wrong and I was articulating in a way that maybe I would articulate differently than today that they were wrong, running for City Attorney.
I think that when races are really close it puts you in a headspace of picking apart every little thing. You can go down that road forever, and I've been in that situation, and you can go down that road forever. But I think, to your early point, it's really important to also recognize what went right and what is right there to build upon. I think there's so much to build upon in this race.
So, as our time is getting shorter, as you look forward, what do you see as being next? Both in terms of, okay, so now Ann Davison is going to be in this office and what kind of accountability needs to happen? And in terms of the movement? And I don't know if you've talked with Nicole Thomas-Kennedy about potentially running again. Most candidates aren't successful on their first run, and, wow, she's poised for an exciting run if she would decide to do it again. And certainly there's other candidates who believe in abolition, or in addressing root causes rather than solely focused on punishment - should be seeing a bright future running for office in and around Seattle. What do you see moving forward?
[00:35:30] Riall Johnson: How much time you got? Because actually we've been on here for 35. Because I want to answer all that. For one, I don't envision Nicole running again. Nicole kind of ran on a whim in the first place. She ran to fill a void. She'll be the first person to tell you there's other people that can fill that void. This is one of the things I really love about Nicole - because being a white woman working in this space, she acknowledges all the disparities you see, acknowledges the privilege and those that - she's only able to run on an abolition platform because that whole narrative and conversation was built by Black and Brown folks that have been speaking on it beforehand. So, she was just more of a conduit.
If there's going to be someone to run on a platform like that again in the City Attorney's race it would most likely be someone who has been more involved in - not more, but been involved with the community from that space, more likely a person of color. Nicole would be happy to support that person. I don't envision her running again. I'm not saying she won't. She's not thinking about that right now.
[00:36:41] Crystal Fincher: That's not part of today's plan, but who knows what could happen in the future?
[00:36:46] Riall Johnson: So, the thing is, the most important part is, the movement behind it and what she can do. She would do what's best for the movement - to actually bring on the policy, bring abolition policies. It's funny because it's the same people. I say, if you're against abolition now, you would have been against it when Frederick Douglass was talking about it. All these arguments, well, what are we going to do without slaves? And people get offended with that. But knowing that same narrative, that same conflict was happening in the 1800s that is now, it's happening in the 1960s, you would have been tone policing Martin Luther King in the 60s if you're talking about, well, I don't agree with the protests and the riots and blah blah blah. I agree that police shouldn't be doing that stuff, but unless - we have to sit there and take an ass whooping in front of you on camera for you to get the empathy for it. We can't all be John Lewis. And so how many beatings and killings do we have to take before you actually get it that the system needs to be completely overhauled? And that's what the community is doing.
What Nicole Thomas-Kennedy did with the main focus of this campaign - what we established - was to bring the community along with it. All of the staffers in the general election were all Black women, all of the paid staff, it was all Black women. And all brand new organizers too. They've organized, but they were brand new to the political spectrum to run in an electoral campaign. All of them were new. So, we brought on a whole new crop of organizers for this campaign because - and that was the plan from the start. Obviously we weren't thinking we were going to be competing with Pete Holmes. If it was just us and Pete, Pete would have run 70%+ easily. Or he would have won over 60% of the votes, maybe 70%.
The thing is this campaign helped build a movement that's going to continue. And we won't sit there and say, "We should have done this, and this is a repudiation." It's not a repudiation. It was a buildup of even further narrative because the thing is it wasn't - you see the other candidates, like Bruce Harrell or Sara Nelson, adopting all these progressive talking points. The funny thing is they're not going to live up to it. I think they're going to - corporate Seattle has always run Seattle. The last two terms we've had a corporate-owned mayor, and now we have another. Hopefully Bruce realizes that and sees that, hopefully realizes what's actually controlling where his values lie, where his money comes from.
And the thing is now we have to make sure that - I'm at this point, let the conservatives have it. It's your mess now because you've been blaming on the few women of color in the City Council that don't have the power to do this stuff. They've literally given the mayor all the money in the world to deal with these problems, and the mayor just doesn't do it. And hopefully we were able to educate Seattle at some point and they're going to get educated further. Ann's going to get educated that her methods aren't going to work. But they've been doing this stuff, and they've been creating these problems, and now it's on them to fix it.
Hopefully what comes out of this is they can't be blaming the Council anymore. Because the Council doesn't have the power. All they do is write checks, write bills, and oversight. It's the executive branch. That's why it's called the executive branch, to execute the things that they said they were going to do. And Jenny Durkan didn't do any of that. She promised a thousand tiny homes. They built what, 100? She promised police accountability. They just let cops off the hook completely. She told me to my face that she'd hold police accountable. I was on Durkan's transition committee. She told me to my face multiple times-
[00:40:31] Crystal Fincher: You were on the transition?
[00:40:34] Riall Johnson: Yeah.
[00:40:37] Crystal Fincher: Wow, Riall.
[00:40:37] Riall Johnson: I know. I know. I just lost all my street cred.
[00:40:40] Crystal Fincher: I appreciate people who are willing to help in the process. So, that is a good thing, it is a positive thing - and then accountability is the conversation that follows. And you certainly have been working to hold Jenny Durkan and others accountable, which is the part that matters. And I think, to your point, this is what it's time for both with the new mayor who's been elected, Bruce Harrell, and with Ann Davison.
Ann Davison's campaign talked a whole lot about Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, not very much about Ann Davison. And there's not a lot of relevant experience. There's very, very little relevant experience, if any, that Ann brings to this position. So, certainly just a matter of competence and understanding. But then in terms of policy and actions, this is going to be where we have this conversation, it's absolutely true, where we hope people see that, no, the Council actually doesn't have the power to make these moves. They can allocate the money, they can set the general direction of policy, but it gets executed by people like the mayor, like the City Attorney, and it's really on them.
But community also has to pay attention and call this out because part of the reason why the narrative focused and landed on the Council is because we have these editorial boards of very large papers, we have these entrenched established interests, who are using those platforms to advance a narrative that may not be attached to reality - like this is all the mayor and we need a new direction. Well, what direction is that? Because there are actually two different directions and really there is no direction because the mayor won't actually do anything - so afraid of making people mad that we're just stuck in the same place, and you've got these supporting interests and editorial boards making the attempt to consistently blame that on the Council. So, it really is going to take a consistent effort from people calling out, okay, you promised this, where is it? You can't blame it on other people. Show me the money. Show me the action. Show me the substance behind your words and your promises. That's got to happen to a greater degree.
[00:43:05] Riall Johnson: Yeah, and the Seattle Times has done really journalistic malpractice on what they did - when they wrote, what, six op-eds against Nicole? And then of course they get to choose where they place it. So, it's literally the owners of the paper say, "Put it right front and center along with ads plastered," that they did without disclosure and saying, "Nicole is bad," all over. But also it's not just talking about - I expected that in the campaign. Like I said, I was on Tammy Morales's campaign, Shaun Scott's campaign, I'm used to that stuff. The problem is the years leading up to that, year round, they have the money to just fund this narrative constantly with documentaries, reports, op-eds, all that stuff in their favor. Meanwhile they've had the mayor they've wanted for the last eight years, and they're going to have the mayor they want for the next four years. They wanted Ed Murray in office. They wanted Jenny Durkan in office. They got that mayor and they have somehow absolved them. And the funny thing is somehow in the way they've painted this narrative, Lorena González has been mayor for the last decade apparently. Even though she's been City Council president for the last two years. The City Council president before that for six years was Bruce Harrell, who is now mayor. So, basically they had the City Council president and the mayor and now it's a problem of the Council.
The Downtown Seattle Association wrote a letter at the Council demanding - blaming them for the shoplifting that's going on because they say there's not enough police. The Seattle police are still on the biggest contract they've ever had - with raises, all that stuff. $400 million contract, they're still on that. They have not been defunded. And they don't control the police. The mayor controls the police and the police chief can control the police. But they literally - these are well educated, well connected people from Downtown Seattle Association disingenuously writing a letter, publicizing it, blaming the Council for their problems when really it's they want to have their own private security force. If they're getting shoplifted, why don't have they have security? Walgreen's, why don't they have security? But they want us, the people actually paying taxes, the working class, to pay for their own private security for us with cops down there.
So, I think that's the narrative that they've been pushing year round, year round, and we have to be able to push back. So, when you say it's on community to push that narrative, it is on us. We have to fight back. The thing is we are not resourced. We are fighting.
[00:45:26] Crystal Fincher: Right.
[00:45:27] Riall Johnson: These activists are broke. They're fighting, they're putting their own free time. They're not getting paid to do this and it's really hard to say, "We've got to push back." We are outspent not just in the race, we are outspent year round, 24/7, and that's hopefully what I'm trying to do from now on is push that narrative, bring resources to the community. And that's why Prism exists in the first place, trying to bring that bridge and give people a leg up and help be strategic at all times. So, we're just coming right back to fight. We're not going to go wait for the next election. Our job now is to get back to work right away and push this. And, like I said, we were closer than ever to bringing real community justice to the forefront. We're going to get even closer or hopefully win next time.
[00:46:10] Crystal Fincher: Agreed. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today to talk about these races. Like you said, the work continues.
[00:46:16] Riall Johnson: All right.
[00:46:16] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much, Riall Johnson.
[00:46:19] Riall Johnson: Thank you.
[00:46:19] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
This week we have the second part of the Hacks & Wonks post-election breakdown, featuring Executive Director of America Walks and former mayor of Seattle Mike McGinn, Managing Partner of Upper Left Strategies Michael Charles, and Co-Founder of the Mercury Group and former Colleen Echohawk campaign consultant, Bill Broadhead! They get into election results from outside of Seattle, the continual incorrect characterization of the most progressive elected officials as the "most divisive", the need to hold elected officials accountable to their campaign promises, how strange the office of City Attorney actually is, and much more.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii, Bill Broadhead at @billbroadhead, Michael Charles at @mikeychuck, and Mike McGinn at @mayormcginn. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
"Seattle Progressives Gain 13 Points from Election Night, but Come Up Short" by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/11/12/seattle-progressives-gain-13-points-from-election-night-but-come-up-short/
"Where Urbanists and Progressives Go from Poor 2021 Showing" by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist:
https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/11/05/where-urbanists-and-progressives-go-from-poor-2021-showing/
"Election results for Seattle and King County 2021 races" by Crosscut Staff from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/politics/2021/11/election-results-seattle-and-king-county-2021-races
"Hamdi Mohamed and Toshiko Grace Hasegawa, both challenges in Port of Seattle Commission races, take lead" by Akash Pasricha from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/mohamed-and-hasegawa-both-challengers-in-port-of-seattle-commission-races-take-lead/
"What the Seattle election results mean for progressives" by Katie Wilson from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/opinion/2021/11/what-seattle-election-results-mean-progressives
"Bruce Harrell and other winners of Seattle elections made big promises. Next they'll try to deliver" by Daniel Beekman and Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/bruce-harrell-and-other-winners-of-seattle-elections-made-big-promises-next-theyll-try-to-deliver/
"Republican Ann Davison, talking law and order, wins Seattle City Attorney race" by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/republican-ann-davison-defeats-nicole-thomas-kennedy-to-become-seattles-first-woman-city-attorney/
"Election Analysis: Garcia surpasses Barrett as Mora unseats Marx in Burien City Council races" by Nicholas Johnson from The B-Town Blog: https://b-townblog.com/2021/11/06/election-analysis-garcia-surpasses-barrett-as-mora-unseats-marx-in-burien-city-council-races/
"Six takeaways from the 2021 Spokane City Council election results" by Daniel Walters from the Inlander: https://www.inlander.com/spokane/six-takeaways-from-the-2021-spokane-city-council-election-results/Content?oid=22652130
"Election Results 4: Challengers continue to hold leads in SeaTac City Council races" from The SeaTac Blog: https://seatacblog.com/2021/11/07/election-results-4-challengers-continue-to-hold-leads-in-seatac-city-council-races/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Outside of Seattle - some people are very happy. Some people are just going, Okay, we wanted a different direction, we actually wanted substantive change - did not get that in Seattle. But in a lot of the suburban races - to me, actually this year, and interested to see if you agree - I think it was a better cycle than the average suburban cycle is in these races. I mean, I'm thinking about SeaTac and Burien, I'm thinking about Spokane. I'm thinking about a lot of these races where - in these suburbs, especially with a lot of the rhetoric that have been going on and getting more conservative in school board races, and a lot of these where we've been seeing super conservatives not hiding their language in progressive sayings - just straight out criminalizing homelessness is the right thing to do. They're trying to take over our school districts with critical race theory and just a lot of the rhetoric - Hey, we've got to just straight up lower taxes, all this taking care of people stuff is too much. And seeing pushback on that and seeing candidates who are substantively progressive and talking about things in a number of the suburbs that haven't been talked about in that way. What have you've been seeing, Michael Charles?
[00:02:05] Michael Charles: Yeah - I mean, to me, it's been more of a mixed bag. I think we look on the Eastside and I think a lot of the pieces on the Eastside that we'd hoped - some of the seats in Bellevue, in particular - where we were hoping for stronger showings from progressives. It was pretty much a repudiation directly to turning the council - what could have potentially been a more progressive council. Looking into South King County, though - you mentioned SeaTac. I thought that was - that's such a dramatic shift from what it's been for like the last six years, 4-6 years. So real exciting to see that move in a different direction again, and especially with low turnout and everything that went - makes me think maybe even the voting population period is shifted. Some exciting wins in Tukwila - youngest City Councilmember in the state elected there and that was pretty cool.
And there were some fun things to celebrate, but then some trends - looking into the next legislative session and thinking about what districts are close, and where are we going to be having fights versus Republicans? Looking into the 30th LD, looking into that part of South King County - I didn't feel really good about those results. I thought Kent was bad - and I don't know if, again, was it bad candidates? Because I think about Brenda Fincher - here we go - good progressive in Kent elected year after year. So again, is it about message? Is it about not putting the appropriate campaign resources into these areas? I'm not of the same mindset - I think the progressive message works. I do think that King County tends to be in favor of the progressive message and I just think it's been a lack of execution from the left, honestly. And I do find a lot of it to be - we're trying to live out these values, but not willing to execute on the campaign trail. It's maddening to watch because you do get these good candidates - you get people that are winning. I mean, I think about Toshiko and Hamdi winning countywide - these were clearly more progressive than these challengers that had been there, and they were winning. So I want to refute.
And I think what the right wing wants to happen, more than anything, is to say that this was a repudiation of progressive values - that we're moving too far to the left and all this. And that's nonsense. We're getting younger, our electorate is getting more progressive. We have to do a better job of executing. And I just think we can't buy into this inevitable narrative that's going to come out of - and you've already seen it from the typical players of - this is clearly a refutation of progressives gone too far. They're radical. The moderate progressives are the ones now that were left in the rain. And that's just not how this works either. So I just think we're not seeing the - I don't know whether it's coordination from outside sources, other people, but we're just not seeing what we need at this time.
[00:05:20] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I agree with you. I think we have to have a serious conversation about just allocation of campaign resources - how you spend the time and the resources in campaigns. Certainly, as a resident of Kent, I have been repeatedly frustrated by the results that we've seen, but I think that we have to take a look at a couple different things. One, I think Cliff Cawthon, who was running for city council, ran a good solid campaign. I think we see that race tightening up, and I think much like the opponent that he is up against right now, a lot of times it takes more than one run to win. A lot of times it takes a little bit more familiarity - and taking out an incumbent is hard. I think if Cliff runs again - he worked hard, he did the types of things that are consistent with winning campaigns.
As far as other campaigns, I'm not sure. But I think that, absolutely to your point, progressive messages win. And I actually think that if we look at, even the rhetoric in Seattle, the more moderate candidates had to articulate a progressive message. What they didn't do was say - they had to at least give lip service to inclusionary, non-exclusionary zoning. They had to talk about transit and transportation choice. They had to talk about racial equity and increasing justice. Now, are they going to deliver on those things? Were they squishy on that? That's what we see term after term after term. But what they couldn't do is say, No, we're not going to change anything. What they couldn't do is say, We need to lurch back to the right.
[00:07:10] Michael Charles: I was going to say - I was just going to bring up that Renton race with Carmen Rivera and Ben Johnson really fast - just thinking about how Ben Johnson even had to brand himself like Bernie Sanders in order to even come across as a liberal, in any sense. And I think Carmen's going to end up pulling it out down there, but not for what was the fakest, terrible pretending-to-be-a-liberal I think I saw across all of the County.
[00:07:40] Mike McGinn: I think there's a few points. One is, yeah, in order for the more conservative candidate to win, they have to show that they care about the progressive issues - there is an underlying thing there. But it sure is nicer to get someone who's actually a champion rather than someone who's paying you lip service, and that's a lot of what we're talking about here. I think also, the fact that there are articles out already about - progressives it's all - this just proves that progressivism doesn't work in Seattle, or that's the bad tack to take politically. That's part of the four-year game. Don't you think those articles were written before the Election Night occurred? And those articles were written in order to cow the sitting Councilmembers from pursuing things that might be quite popular with the public. This is actually part of the four-year game.
Now having said that, I want to draw a distinction. There's a difference between being the most progressive and talking to voters about progressive issues that resonate with them. And this, to me, was my biggest gripe with the Seattle race this year. The infighting among progressives of, Oh, well, you're not really a progressive, or you did this and so you're not a progressive. That just made it - that was actually the decision to be made in the primary, right? And that was one issue I had.
The other issue I have with the decision made is, Well, who can finance the candidate? And I guess whoever has the most money - Labor - gets to pick the candidate, and we should all go along because they have the most money. That was a mistake, this race - I get it. I have been in places where I wanted to believe that the thing I believed in was the most likely thing to win, including me. I have been there. I have fought for things. It's like, well, if we just explain it enough we can get over the top. It's easy to get blinded by the fact that what you believe in is what you want to be on the ballot, but that requires -you've got to step back a little bit collectively.
I guess one more point is I think that the County and the City - it's a little different this year. The Port races are great - I love seeing the people who voted for that Shell oil rig get voted out. That's awesome. I loved seeing Toshiko and Hamdi moving into the Port, my buddy Mohamed Egal won down in SeaTac after his second race down there - in a place where we had literally a Trump-loving mayor and a plan to map out where Muslims lived in the city. And that's a good example - obviously, Mohamed had to figure out how to win, how to speak to voters in a way that he could get votes. So I don't think it's so much about how progressive you are - it's can you connect those progressive values to the things that voters care about with the ideas that'll move voters. And I just don't think we were at all there this year with how we did it in Seattle.
[00:10:37] Bill Broadhead: I guess my thing, picking up on what McGinn's saying is - the lesson here is those with great power have to exercise great responsibility. Labor's obviously a valuable partner - they bring money, they bring resources - but they have to get better politically. Honestly. If we don't want Fox News running the victory laps they're running on my TV today. We got to get better, they got to get better. You know who else has to get better? The Stranger has to get better.
[00:11:06] Michael Charles: Wait. Are you watching Fox News, Bill?
[00:11:09] Bill Broadhead: Yeah, no - you turn it on. I mean, they're like, Look at Seattle, look at Seattle - they're electing a Republican.
[00:11:19] Mike McGinn: You don't have to look at Fox News. You don't have to look at Fox News. It's everywhere.
[00:11:21] Bill Broadhead: Everybody's holding up Seattle.
[00:11:22] Mike McGinn: Electing a Republican for the first time - yeah.
[00:11:27] Bill Broadhead: As an example of the-
[00:11:28] Mike McGinn: And Bruce Harrell is a uniter. Uniter in chief. That's the message they're sending out right now.
[00:11:34] Bill Broadhead: It sickens me. And so, another entity that has great power that needs great responsibility is The Stranger. The Stranger determines primary elections on the left - and that used to be run by a very smart group of people that really knew what they were doing with politics. And now it's like children playing with a nuclear bomb - they have no idea what they're doing. And all I'd give you is - all of their last endorsements and how well that's worked out for us. We really need to up the political game at The Stranger if they're going to have so much power in the outcome of these elections.
[00:12:15] Crystal Fincher: Progressive candidates have to do a better job of speaking to an electorate that may not be used to speaking in the ways that they're speaking - in very online spaces and to each other. And I feel like, when this is talked about in very progressive spaces, it's like, Well, that just means that we're changing our values and we're not going to change anything. It really is about just speaking to your audience in the way that they understand, and connecting to them in the ways that they talk - in the context of their everyday lives, which may sound different and may look different to different people in different walks of life. But I think we have to recognize that that is different for different people and we have to be very thoughtful about concepts that may be very familiar to us in some spaces - are not yet at all familiar to other people.
If you do not speak to those issues, even though they're using coded language - we know what they're talking about, right? If you don't speak to those issues to those people, you have just one conversation going on with no opposition. You at least have to speak to those voters. You at least have to speak to those issues in ways that they hear and understand, which doesn't - I completely want to underscore - this does not mean that you soften on the issue. It doesn't mean that you stand for any less equity or justice. It doesn't mean that you try and become more moderate. Lots of people think about "pivot in the general" and now you're moderating your opinions. It is not that. But it's recognizing that you're speaking to a broader electorate and you have to do it in a way that's relevant to them and their lives, and in ways that feel familiar to them. That's the thing - you have to connect with people where they're at. You have to connect in a way that feels familiar. And I think that sometimes we overlook that what's familiar to us may not be familiar to someone else, so we have to communicate in the way that best reaches them.
[00:14:32] Michael Charles: Well, I will say one thing - Mike, I know you mentioned calling Bruce the uniter in chief, but I think that brought up a - and I know you were saying it sarcastically - but I do think that he did a much better job of owning a positive message at the end and just being a much more positive candidate. It wasn't, The sky is falling, all this. And we might be right, but that message turns people off that aren't tuned in to the everyday nuances of politics. It has to be a more positive message as well. So I was just going to throw that in there about your previous points. But go for it, Mike.
[00:15:09] Mike McGinn: No, I think that's a great point. I think that's a great point. And I think the reason I threw in that uniter in chief argument is just because - the way that the other side works, the way the other side's permanent war machine works is - whoever is the most progressive person on the other side is the most divisive person. I mean, they've been running the same script year after year. And they've now elected three in a row - Durkan, Murray was hailed as a great collaborator who could bring people together, and Durkan was a steady hand on the wheel who could bring people together around solutions. And now Bruce is the uniter in chief. And one of the consultants who's worked on all three of those campaigns was quoted as saying, "Seattle's more divisive than ever." Well, how did we get more divisive than ever if we're now onto our third straight great uniting mayor?
Maybe it's not the progressives that are the divisive ones here. Maybe what's divisive is allowing the income disparities in the City to grow to astronomical levels, while people are pushed out on the street and we fight the taxes to pay for it. We fight the income taxes at the state level, we fight the housing that people can go in. Maybe those are the divisive actions. Yet, somehow or another, the other side gets to run around saying that the people who were coming up with the solutions that might scale to fix these great issues of inequality are the divisive ones, and the people who are fighting the solutions to these problems are the uniters. It's a really neat trick they're pulling off here.
[00:16:51] Bill Broadhead: And the other very practical step we can take if we want to start winning is - we can figure out how to talk about our values and our issues and our solutions with voters, particularly swing voters in Seattle and other places we want to win. And you do that with research - you do it with focus groups, you do it with polling. And you invest some money and you figure out, how do we need to reach people? What kind of language do we - what works with people? What works at an emotional level? And you do the work. You go in - I mean, it's hours and hours behind the glass. We've all done it, but you invest the time, you invest the money, and you figure out how to communicate. And then you do it.
[00:17:35] Mike McGinn: I think there's another thing that goes on too. And I noticed this with the Council I had. They spent four years asking when I was going to fix things, and making sure I was the focus of attention. And I think there's something - so there's another asymmetry, which is, I think the progressives are like, Well, we're not going to play that political game. We're going to try to figure out how to fix it. But they put themselves in a position where they weren't able - you can't fix the execution of sending a group of people into a park in a way that will effectively deliver services. You can't fix that from the Council - that's an executive branch function, because the executive controls the Human Services Department, the police, the contracts with the shelter providers, et cetera.
So I think we've seen a lot of instances where the Council was attempting fill a really significant vacuum of leadership - Ed was caught up in scandal, Durkan was not interested in trying to figure out how to bridge those gaps. And the Council tried to step in and lead, and they really paid for it. And I want to praise them for wanting to step in and try to lead, but they didn't do enough of - and I think sometimes the outside allies don't do enough of - really naming the source, the problem, properly. And I think that's something we need to think about too. Really not just, oh, there's a new mayor. Let's just figure out what we can get from them, and we don't want to appear to be divisive. That's the other thing about "the divisive." Let's make sure we're holding the new mayor accountable and so that the voters really understand what are the policy things that are solving things or not.
[00:19:18] Bill Broadhead: Jenny Durkan, when she ran in '17 - she promised 1,000 tiny homes. She delivered 73. Nobody called her on that. Nobody said, Oh, you're pissed at people sleeping in parks? Well, you know why? Because Jenny Durkan promised 1,000 tiny homes and she didn't build them.
[00:19:40] Mike McGinn: And that's more than a tweet - that's a campaign. That's a campaign. That requires steady drum beat of messaging.
[00:19:48] Bill Broadhead: And so, there was no effort to hold her accountable, and instead, like Michael said, the City Council took on the responsibility but they couldn't really execute, so then they got stuck in the middle with that. So now Bruce Harrell said 2,000 - he upped the bid. He said 2,000 tiny homes. So now he owns it. If you see people sleeping in parks, the question is, how many tiny homes have you built, Bruce? Where are you at on your promise? You said 2,000 homes in the first year. Where are you? Are you living up to your promise?
[00:20:22] Mike McGinn: And we stand ready to help.
[00:20:23] Bill Broadhead: Yeah. The Council needs to put this on the mayor - he promised to fix it, he gave a metric. Where is he on the metric? We can't make the same mistake we made with Durkan.
[00:20:34] Michael Charles: We're not holding these executive-level leaders accountable in any way. You don't see any stories and follow up in the news - in The Seattle Times, and even in The Stranger - rarely do we see a story and follow up to - you made this promise to solve homelessness and what happened? It's very rare, and it's definitely not coming around campaign time. And it's definitely not coming when we can actually do something about it, usually, which is unfortunate. And I think that pillar of civic engagement is really lacking from the press corps out here. And it's purposeful.
[00:21:12] Crystal Fincher: And you have one side who has very unified messaging - that whoever isn't carrying their agenda, which often is the agenda of not doing anything - certainly not doing anything different, which in Seattle often just translates to not doing anything. It's the other party who is always at fault. So with Mike McGinn - oh, he was divisive, he was the problem. We need to change. Even though - you had a clear vision - you were very clear what you were trying to do and had a Council who had stated publicly that they were trying to obstruct what you were doing.
And then we see it flipped with both Ed Murray and Jenny Durkan, where now you have a more conservative mayor than the Council. And so, now it's the Council's fault that things aren't going right. And now everything that's happening in the City is owned by the entity actually trying to take action to change things. That's been very intentional - the drumbeat of that, just in daily news coverage, has been consistent. So it is that accountability piece to say, wait a minute. And if you've listened to me for a while, you know that this has been frustrating. I know it's been frustrating to you, Mike McGinn, in that, Hey, Durkan said this. Durkan is actually the one in charge of taking care of this. Durkan has actually got to - has money authorized to spend, but isn't spending the money. What is happening here?
[00:22:41] Mike McGinn: Somehow or another they turned Lorena into the incumbent mayor, which is just ridiculous. Just absolutely ridiculous. Somehow or another Lorena was the incumbent mayor and was the source of the problems.
So one of the things is, before I go back to that point. The M.O. of the right, of the establishment, is they pick the most liberal person and try to isolate them. So I always felt that Nick Licata owed me, because as soon as I showed up - all of a sudden Nick was the elder statesman and why couldn't McGinn be like Nick, who got along with people. And after me, it was Kshama. And now Kshama was the person. And when they couldn't lay a glove on Kshama, then it had to be Mike O'Brien - somehow or another - nice, pleasant Mike O'Brien was the most divisive person in Seattle politics. It was hard to make stick, but they were going at it. So that's their M.O. Is they always go for the furthest left person and call them the most divisive. They call them the most divisive person.
The point I want to make from the City Council thing is - in the role of City Council and mayor - is just recognizing where their actual strengths are. The Council's strength is in passing policy - they ultimately pass the policy. There's a lot of room within policy for mayor, but the Council ultimately has the final word on policy. They also have the final word on budget, so they can withhold money or give money. And they can use that power. They gave away power to a mayor - they would pass money and not hold her accountable, or they would cut money and then Jenny would go spend it from somewhere else and say, Oh, well, you didn't tell me I couldn't spend that pot of money on the thing that you said I couldn't spend money on. So they let her just run free there.
The other real power they have is the power of oversight. The City Council does not have the power of execution - they just don't. They can't administer the agencies. And when they try, it's just not going to work. It's nothing to do with the people involved. It has everything to do with the position. So don't try to run the agencies - don't try to run the details. What they can do is - they can hold hearings. They can actually subpoena people if they wanted to. And they can publicly hold a mayor accountable. Now, of course, that drove me nuts as a mayor, and it probably drives every mayor nuts. But that's actually a significant value add of a City Council - is to do that. So let's go into this next one and do it.
[00:25:02] Bill Broadhead: That's where Lorena got in trouble, in the run up to this election - is she got so afraid of being tagged as divisive that she got stuck in that middle ground of, Well, I don't want to do any of the things Mike said, because then I'll get tagged in this divisive narrative. But if she doesn't do that, then she's going to get tagged with all the failings of incumbency. I mean, and it's like Ann Richards used to say - the only thing in the middle of the road is the yellow line and the dead armadillos.
[00:25:34] Crystal Fincher: From the council perspective, is to also - I think a lot of them - and they've passed excellent policy. The JumpStart Tax is huge, right? That is monumental, major, substantive, impactful policy. But it hasn't necessarily been messaged like that out of the Council, and I think sometimes it's really easy to get caught up in the work of doing, that you forget that you also have to communicate that to the residents as you're doing that work. That's as much of the job as the job, unfortunately. And I know that can be frustrating and they've got so much that they're trying to manage within those offices already. But I would just impress upon all of them to remember that they, throughout this time, also have to make sure that the residents of Seattle understand what they're doing. And I would say that the opposition does a much better job, even when they're not doing anything, of making it seem like they are - and speaking to the residents of Seattle about their perspective on policy, about using their bully pulpit, calling their press conferences to talk about their perspective. And the Council can and should, and in fact I think they have to, do the same thing in order to have that translate into electoral success. I think that's part of it - is the consistency of that communication.
[00:27:08] Bill Broadhead: I agree with that, Crystal, but I also think - I mean, just like the Downtown Seattle Association and that constellation of corporations and public affairs apparatus operates around them. I don't think you can just count on the Council to do that. I mean, the left really needs to build a war machine here to bring some parity to the existing operation on the establishment side.
[00:27:39] Crystal Fincher: I agree. So when you say build that war machine, what does that look like to you?
[00:27:44] Bill Broadhead: Well, I mean, first of all, I would hope - my dream out of all of this is - it's such an obvious, stunning defeat that everybody goes, Wow, we got to really take stock of what we're doing and how we're doing it. And I would hope that everybody that's a player in this and selecting candidates and funding candidates and recruiting candidates and running campaigns - really has an open door approach. And there'd be some kind of summit, some meeting where everybody gets together and says, All right, let's talk about why we're not winning these races in a progressive city. And that it's a free form thing and nobody controls it. And that we hear from a lot of different voices. And out of that, we hopefully can put together a plan. It's Seattle - I think there is money there to do the research, to do the polling and focus groups, and fund some basic operation so that we're not just - every time an election rolls around, we're not trying to build it from scratch.
[00:29:06] Mike McGinn: I said it's kind of funny - I ran from outside of that apparatus in '09, and the fact is that it was just a really unique set of circumstances that year that I could end up in the general. But I totally agree with what Bill's saying. It actually needs people to be able to sit down and have a heart to heart, and nobody's tweeting from the meeting - of what happened and allow people to be able to talk about it and see if they can't come up with a game plan for moving forward on that. I mean, because everyone has their own - every group that plays in elections has their own particular agenda. And there's obvious - and those agendas are being frustrated because we don't have a mayor. We're going to have three straight terms of mayors where that's a lesser priority for many of them. Not all of them - some of them are still going to get stuff from Bruce. And that's the other game they're all playing. Every one of them's going to be playing the game of, Well, maybe if we're just nice to Bruce. Let's just see what we can get. And if Bruce is smart, he'll give a little bit to all of them to try to keep them on the sidelines. But there's a really fundamental decision then that people have to make is, what's the better play here? Is it to unite and hold accountable what's going on and then run? And my experience as an advocate was - I never got kicked out of a room as an advocate because I ran good - when I did good accountability. I got invited back because I did good accountability and they didn't want me to do that again. So I don't think you give up power when you do good accountability, but I think a lot of progressives somehow or another feel they lose access and that's just the wrong way to approach it. I'm sorry - go ahead, Crystal. Take it away.
[00:30:55] Crystal Fincher: Oh no - I agree with that and appreciate that point and think that's as necessary now as it's ever been - is that accountability piece for all of them. And that voting is one tool that people have to utilize. But also using all of the tools of accountability and understanding that, especially from the advocacy perspective, loyalty to issues is the thing, not to politicians. You're there to represent your members or your own - for all of the web of organizations in Seattle, their own segment of the progressive agenda. And that that carries the day - being willing to be a partner, but not - sometimes I think as we've seen over the years, putting that agenda aside in order to gain more access never turns out well. And so, being willing to understand what the electeds have promised, to hold them accountable to what they've said, and to operate based on that. To try and be a partner if things are moving in a positive direction and to call it out when they're not.
[00:32:11] Bill Broadhead: Let me give you an example of what the permanent effort could do, or a coordinated effort could do. And I actually have to give credit to my wife, Julie McCoy, for coming up with this. But early in the Harrell administration, there should be a push to have him go to his business supporters and have them drop the lawsuits to the JumpStart Tax. I mean, you can't solve homelessness and have the corporate titans in Seattle continue to press, and God forbid, they defeat the JumpStart Tax. So if he's serious about solving homelessness and he's serious about what he said about not being controlled by the people that funded his campaign, well then there's a very easy way to show that. Go to them and have them drop that lawsuit right now. That'd be a really good test, early on, and it'd be a smart move for Bruce to do that. It could be a - I hate to give the advice, but it could be a way to really shake the stain of his funders, and show that he's going to be a mayor for all of Seattle. But it'd be a good early test and a good coordinated push to have him do that - well, that would be really smart for the left to do.
[00:33:30] Crystal Fincher: I certainly agree that that's at the top of the agenda to defend and advance on. What do you think, Mike?
[00:33:42] Mike McGinn: I think that's a great idea from Bill.
[00:33:46] Bill Broadhead: Well, Julie.
[00:33:46] Mike McGinn: Well, from Julie then. It's a great idea from Julie. We're going to need the JumpStart Tax - it exists. Let's show that the business side, as a sign of good faith and more than that, that I, Bruce Harrell, will defend a revenue source that is really meaningful to solving this problem. And I'll just get in there and I'm going to call on my supporters to get rid of it. And I'd like to point out that Bruce - it was when Bruce decided to vote against the anti panhandling statute, that was the point at which it was possible to get to a veto proof vote. Where I could veto it, and they couldn't overdo it. I'm sorry - I mixed up the words there. But it meant that I could veto it and I wouldn't be overturned. And in fact, when Bruce did that, it actually put all the pressure on my buddy Mike O'Brien, and Mike did the right thing. And so, it only passed with five votes and Bruce bucked the powerful one. I'll point out that Bruce led on making it so that if a felon is - somebody has returned to the community, a returning member of the community from jail, is applying for a rental unit, he doesn't have to answer a question about whether he was in jail, which is used to push these folks who've done their time and are trying to contribute. And he stood up for them, not for the landlords. He stood up for them.
So I know that Bruce has a beating heart - and I've been pretty hard on him because I liked the other candidate more, and I think that Bruce can and should have done more on the Council, and could have done more on the Council. But I know he has a beating heart and this would be a great way to show it right now. I know - and so, I'll add that to it. So Bruce, if you're listening, show that same leadership and you'll have this former mayor coming out and applauding for you the instant you do it. And honestly, you should have a lot of other people applauding for you too.
[00:35:46] Crystal Fincher: When it comes to the City Attorney, in terms of accountability, this is going to be a very interesting situation with Republican Ann Davison coming into this office. What does accountability look like and what should be on the top of the agenda in terms of - what Ann Davison should be moving on and what progressives should be demanding from that office?
[00:36:16] Bill Broadhead: I'd like to say something just on that point. The City Attorney in some ways is the most unaccountable office in the City Charter. And it's the dumbest office. I mean, the City Attorney as an elected position doesn't make sense. The City Attorney's job is to defend the City of Seattle in large part. But having an elected person defend the City of Seattle then means they think they have their own power base and their own constituency. So you have a client, in the City, whose lawyer is like, Well, yeah, no. I don't really represent you. I represent myself. This is a really bad idea.
[00:37:03] Crystal Fincher: Yes. This happened during the McGinn administration.
[00:37:07] Mike McGinn: And it happened with other folks too.
[00:37:10] Crystal Fincher: Yeah.
[00:37:11] Mike McGinn: Uhlman told me a fascinating story about a showdown he had to have with his City Attorney. Now I could see there's something about maybe the prosecutorial discretion, wanting to have somebody independent on prosecutorial discretion. The idea, however, that the lawyer for the City as a municipality, which makes policy decisions through its Council and mayor - the idea that somehow or another - and boy, was this huge with Pete. His playing both sides. The City was actually kicked out of the tunnel lawsuit in the first instance because the judge said, Well, who authorized you to come here and sue to stop the vote on the tunnel? And his answer was, nobody. The City was moved from plaintiff to defendant and the WSDOT was moved to a plaintiff on the matter. And that was just Pete. That was just Pete acting on his own and that was really nutty.
So I think it's really - maybe it's time to look at a Charter change here as to, what is the role of the City Attorney. For any of those who are a little bit nervous that maybe a Republican thinks that she should drop the defense of the JumpStart Tax, because that's a tax on corporations, and that she doesn't agree with that ideologically. Or she runs a bad defense. Or she settles it on her terms. We really want to invest that in one person and then end up with an argument that somehow or another, a Charter argument over who gets to set City policy?
Here's another one - I don't even know - I'll stop with that one. I'll stop with that one. But that's just a great example. I mean, City passed it, she should defend it. And if she chooses not to defend it, where's the accountability? Really hard to get in this system.
[00:39:07] Bill Broadhead: Well, if Ann Davison decides to substitute her values or her judgment for the elected policy decisions of the Council and mayor, it's time to get rid of the office. It really is. I mean, it's time to push through the Charter Amendment and get rid of the independently elected City Attorney, because it hasn't made sense for a long time and maybe this will be the final flash point that will make it obvious how little sense it makes.
Joe Nguyen did better than I thought he would.
[00:39:41] Crystal Fincher: Yeah.
[00:39:42] Bill Broadhead: I mean, I was really surprised - and I think to your point, Crystal, the progressive performance outside of Seattle and King County - much stronger than inside Seattle. But Joe Nguyen in particular - I mean, that campaign disappeared in the last few months. I mean, somebody actually mentioned him and I had to remind myself he was still running. I mean, I just didn't see anything. And I was really impressed with how he ended up showing.
[00:40:13] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. He showed up strong and I actually think - the point Michael Charles made earlier - the progressive message is carrying the day. The progressive message has been connecting with voters throughout King County, throughout the state. I think Joe Nguyen did a really good job of executing - I think that he came into the race with a significant name ID disadvantage than four term incumbent Dow Constantine. And they had a primary. And there just wasn't enough time for him to effectively communicate with the County by early August. But given more time, certainly found some footing there. And also, I think pushed Dow further to the left. And we saw Dow getting very active and announcing -
[00:41:09] Bill Broadhead: The hotels.
[00:41:10] Crystal Fincher: Right. So I think there are a lot of good signs. I think, especially in some of the suburban and rural cities where we have seen conservative chokeholds on those councils and certainly mayoral positions, that those are starting to loosen. And as we see more people get pushed out of Seattle and into other places in the County, that that's also impacting how these races are turning too. So I am optimistic by a lot of these races. I'm optimistic to figure out collectively how to more effectively communicate within Seattle and continue the progress outside of Seattle. But we'll see how this continues to unfold and continue to talk about it weekly on Hacks & Wonks. Go ahead, Mike.
[00:42:03] Mike McGinn: Okay, I got one more point.
[00:42:05] Crystal Fincher: Go ahead.
[00:42:05] Mike McGinn: One more point - I can't believe I haven't raised it already. Even year elections, folks - that we're holding these local elections in odd years. And if you haven't heard me on this before, it's intentional. This is not an accident. 80% of the country holds local elections in odd years. And it was brought in to try to reduce the votes from what the elites thought were the riff raff, the people who didn't know enough to make good decisions. That these were decisions better left to the folks that would show up for every election. And talk about an underlying dynamic that makes it hard to elect good people. Now, we'll see a 50% turnout here - presidential year, we'd see 80-85% turnout. And that's a lot of young people, that's a lot of immigrant and refugee communities, it's a lot of BIPOC voters. And that would really change the dynamic a lot in these races. It would just move the entire thing to the left. And that's why you see in cities like Kent and SeaTac, these places which have become where whites are no longer more than 50% of the population or the voters, but they're still more than 50% of the voters in an off-year election. So it's our little version of the Electoral College. It's a rule that's built in that's designed to give power to certain people over other people, and we just need to change it.
Mia Gregerson has a bill in the Legislature and let's just move them to even years. Let's get rid of all of those ridiculous Tim Eyman vote to affirm a vote of the Legislature, which is never - it takes up all that space on the ballot. Let's put some local races on there. Let's tie the national issues. Let's talk about all the issues in a year, and let's get local leaders that represent the public, not represent half the public.
[00:44:05] Bill Broadhead: And this is a change - just to echo that. This is a change that Democrats, that Labor - we can push this through. This is all on us.
[00:44:12] Mike McGinn: Absolutely.
[00:44:12] Bill Broadhead: We don't need the Republicans. This is Inslee and this is the Democrats in the Legislature. We can make this happen. We don't need anybody. We don't need anybody else's permission.
[00:44:24] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it also gets at this political industrial complex that we have. And I'm saying this as a political consultant who is going to get dinged financially - certainly there are others who are going to be dinged, who are making a lot more money and going to get dinged more than I am. But there is no need to spend millions of dollars every single year on these elections. It makes so much more sense, for so many different reasons, including that it drives down the average cost of every election. It makes it more accessible for more people to run and to be able to win. There are so many reasons to make this move to even years. And also, let's help our electeds focus on governing and not on running all of the time, which so many are. So I am completely in favor of that - would love to see that bill advance and appreciate you bringing that up. And you've been a proponent of this for years, I know, Mike.
[00:45:27] Mike McGinn: Hey, even, yeah, absolutely - we'd have different mayors in this City. We absolutely would have different mayors and we'd have different City Councilmembers and we'd have different policies. There's just no two ways about it. That's why the establishment will fight it because they know it too.
[00:45:41] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, I thank you both for your time. Thank Michael Charles for joining us, as he did - appreciate everything that they've going on. Any parting words from either one of you?
[00:45:52] Mike McGinn: Thanks for doing it, Crystal.
[00:45:54] Bill Broadhead: Yeah. Thank you, Crystal - you run the smartest show in Seattle. I really appreciate it - it's a public service you do.
[00:46:02] Crystal Fincher: Well, I appreciate that.
[00:46:03] Mike McGinn: And to everyone out there, elections aren't the whole game. They're just the scorecard. We got - the game continues. Get out there. Make a difference and let's have us running up the score the next time.
[00:46:16] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Let's get to the work of accountability.
I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter at @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
Crystal sits down with Amy Sundberg to walk through how the Seattle City budget process works as well as how and when to get involved in making your vision of the future a reality.
Note: This episode was recorded in late September and references parts of the process that have already happened. A key opportunity to provide public comment happens this week on Wednesday, November 10th at 5:30p so listen up and then make your voice heard!
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii. Subscribe to Notes from the Emerald City and follow Amy on Twitter at @amysundberg. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
Notes from the Emerald City - newsletter on Seattle government and policy: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/amysundberg
Converge Media - Budget School: https://www.whereweconverge.com/post/understanding-the-city-of-seattle-budget-converge-media-launches-budget-school
Seattle City Council - Budget Process: http://www.seattle.gov/council/issues/past-issues/budget-process
Seattle City Council - Sign up for Public Comment (opens 2 hours before start of public comment period): https://www.seattle.gov/council/committees/public-comment
“Seattle mayor proposes increasing police staffing in 2022 budget” by David Kroman from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/news/2021/09/seattle-mayor-proposes-increasing-police-staffing-2022-budget
Mayor Durkan’s Proposed 2022 Budget: https://www.seattle.gov/city-budget-office/budget-archives/2022-proposed-budget
Solidarity Budget: https://www.seattlesolidaritybudget.com/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, we're thrilled to be joined once again by Amy Sundberg, author of Notes From the Emerald City and co-chair of the Seattle Committee of People Power Washington - Police Accountability. Thanks for joining us again, Amy.
[00:00:51] Amy Sundberg: It's great to be here.
[00:00:53] Crystal Fincher: Well, I am excited to have you here once again. We have spoken about the excellent newsletter that you have - your coverage consistently of City Council meetings, City meetings and hearings, and your live tweets, and recaps in your newsletter - which is an excellent resource for people who are looking to follow civic processes in the City of Seattle.
Today, I'm excited to talk about the budget, which most people generally are not excited to talk about - the budget. But it's actually a really big deal. And that process is just kicking off here in the City of Seattle. And this is super consequential because it affects everything. This is how we determine what gets spent on what, who gets what and where and how, and who doesn't. And there's a lot involved with it - there's a lot of confusion. Because of that, a lot of people typically don't engage. And so I thought it'd be helpful to do this show today, just to give people an overview of what the budget is, how it's composed, just what's going on with it right now, and how they can get involved if they're looking to make a difference in the issues that they care about. And with that, I guess I would just start off by asking, what is the budget? What does it fund? How is it composed?
[00:02:12] Amy Sundberg: Yeah. So I also am excited to talk about the budget today. Because you're right, it is very consequential. It makes a huge difference in individual's lives, which is something I think can get kind of lost in the weeds. But it does really impact every one of us who live in Seattle.
So the budget, I mean, it is in many ways similar to a household budget that you might have for your own finances - in that it tracks what revenues the City is bringing in and then it tracks the expenditures - how that money is going to be spent over the course of a year. This budget that we're talking about will be for next year - 2022 - and it's a total of $6.6 billion. But only about $1.5 billion of that is in the General Fund, which is most of what the budget process is regarding - still a lot of money though.
[00:03:17] Crystal Fincher: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:03:19] Amy Sundberg: And it funds a lot of the services that we enjoy here in Seattle. And I'm just going to give you a -
[00:03:27] Crystal Fincher: And some we don't.
[00:03:28] Amy Sundberg: And some we don't. Yeah. Some we might not agree with - exactly. So it covers everything from transportation - so that's public transit, building and maintenance of roads, bridges, sidewalks, bicycle lanes, safety features. Funds libraries, one of my personal favorites. It funds parks and recreation. Homelessness services, including both shelter options and wraparound services - childcare assistance, food assistance, rental assistance, developing more affordable housing in our city. A small budget for arts and culture. A lot of offices - so the Office of Construction and Inspections, the Office of Planning and Community Development, the Office of Civil Rights. A lot of administration - so all of the City employees who work to run all of these offices. Public safety, and that isn't just the police department - that's also the fire department, that's 911 dispatch, that's the Office of Emergency Management, Seattle Municipal Court, the City Attorney's Office, and any alternate responses. So all of that is covered by the budget and more.
[00:04:55] Crystal Fincher: Okay. And so that's a lot. And a lot of times, one of the questions that I've heard frequently is, "Okay, well, if you've got $6 billion and it's a huge number. If the Office of Arts and Culture is asking for this tiny amount, why can't you just move some money over here, over there?" Can you just take money from one department and give it to another? How does the budget work? How does the General Fund work?
[00:05:26] Amy Sundberg: So the reason I specify that only a $1.5 billion was in the General Fund is because that's basically what the Councilmembers are deciding what to spend during this budget process. A lot of that other money is already allocated, and it's not allowed to be spent for anything else. Some of that is because it's - I mean, it comes from various taxes. And as part of those taxes, there was an agreement that it would be spent only on certain things. And part of it is because certain fees that you might pay will go back to fund whatever department they came from. So if you pay a parking ticket, that's going to go back into the Department of Transportation, and that's the only place that money can go. Or if you pay a park fee to rent out a picnic area, that's going to go right back into Parks. So a lot of the money is tied up in various ways. And one of the biggest examples of that is utilities - Seattle Light and also the Public Utilities. They generate a lot of revenue - from your electricity bill - and that's put right back into their budget, so that's not available for other uses.
[00:06:44] Crystal Fincher: So some money comes with - by law - with strings attached. You can't decide to spend it in a different way. Some money comes with no strings attached. That no strings attached money is the General Fund. And that is where the conversation centers at times like now, when we just heard that the mayor announced what her budget was. Really, when they're talking about more money for this, less money for this, it is really in that $1.5 billion allocated to the general fund.
[00:07:14] Amy Sundberg: Exactly. And the budget that just came out this week - that's the mayor's proposed budget. So she's put together kind of a proposal - she's talked to all of these City departments that I was talking about and heard kind of what they need, what they've been spending. And there's a Budget Office of the City that looks through all these things, thinks about what the priorities are, and puts together this proposed budget - that then is transmitted to the City Council to review and consider.
[00:07:46] Crystal Fincher: So let's talk more about the process that is just kicking off now. The mayor proposes a budget - what happens between, "Okay, now this budget is proposed" and when a budget is approved and money starts getting spent?
[00:08:05] Amy Sundberg: So it is a about eight week process to approve next year's budget. And it's supposed to be done - I think by law it has to be done by early December. But we're expecting it to be done the Monday before Thanksgiving. So exactly eight weeks. And basically, the Council will go through an eight week deliberative process about the budget. Built into that process are lots of opportunities for the public to weigh in on what their priorities might be. And we can talk about that a little bit more later.
But also they - so right now this week, we're going through and having presentations from different City departments - to kind of hear about this proposed budget and why it is the way it is, and what these departments were thinking about in terms of these dollars being spent. After that, we go into Issue Identification. So that's when kind of Councilmembers flag different areas that they want to dig deeper into to see what the impacts might be, different investments they might want to make, things they might not want to spend as much money on, and get a lot of analysis from their Central staff.
Then they propose some amendments to the proposed budget and they discuss those amendments. And eventually the Committee Chair, who is Councilmember Mosqueda, creates a Balancing Package. So what that is - is basically, she's kind of looking at these conversations they've been having, and looking at Issue Identification, looking at the amendments that they've been discussing, and she tries to find all the areas in which they have a general consensus as a Council in terms of how they want the money to be spent - what they can all agree on pretty easily. And that will all go into this Balancing Package. And it has to be balanced - so it has to - it can't be - you can't spend more than you have.
Then there's another round of amendments and they have to have at least three Councilmembers who will sign on to each of these amendments so that you don't get any - basically to save time so that there's not tons of amendments that only one Councilmember is going to support and have no chance of actually making it into the budget. They vote on those amendments, they vote on the whole package in Committee, and then it moves to the Full Council where they do the final vote. And it's important to remember that that final vote on the budget has to be passed by a three-quarters vote, which is not true of most legislation that goes through City Council. So seven out of nine Councilmembers have to vote to approve the budget in order for it to move forward.
[00:11:14] Crystal Fincher: Okay. That's good to know. And that is different than most other stuff, like you just said. And FYI, I mean, this is a lot of detail - it's a complicated process. You are doing an excellent job breaking it down for us in a way that the average person can digest. And I should mention, we're talking about the budget - Converge Media has a very detailed multi-hour series that really gets into the granular detail of the entire budget process. But wanted to just give people, here right now, the opportunity to get an idea of what the overall process is to make it easier to understand and engage with if you want to.
Okay. So we're at the point where we understand the timeline. It actually sounds like it's important to get involved earlier in the process so that if you see an area in the budget that looks concerning to you, you can communicate with your Councilmembers, flag that as something that you feel is a major concern. Hopefully, get at least three Councilmembers who are willing to say, "Yeah, what is currently down on paper does not look good to me. Let's actually hold this as something that we're not saying we're good with and that we'd really like to hopefully change and reserve for further discussion and amendment." So what does that timeline look like in there before they have to - when should people be getting involved with this process and when is it best?
[00:12:51] Amy Sundberg: To be honest, I think that people should be involved throughout the process for the optimal results. I realize people only have limited bandwidth, but I think there are important things going on throughout the eight weeks. I do agree with you that if you get in earlier, it kind of flags for Councilmembers what their constituents want, right? What is important, what are the actual community values?
But, I mean, also sometimes towards the end of the process, the Councilmembers benefit from having a little public pressure to kind of push them maybe a little outside of their comfort zone or to try to just make sure they stick with what they were kind of thinking of. Sometimes they get a little cold feet and need that extra support at the end. So I think, more than a specific time, is if you can get involved at any time, that's definitely better than if you don't get involved at all.
[00:13:59] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. And you just raised another good point - that Councilmembers need to hear from you. They need to know where the community is - and pressure, accountability, communication, whatever you want to call it - is necessary and makes a difference. We saw in the - was it the last budget go around?
[00:14:18] Amy Sundberg: It was, yeah.
[00:14:18] Crystal Fincher: Here where -
[00:14:19] Amy Sundberg: It was a big deal.
[00:14:21] Crystal Fincher: Public pressure made the difference between a vote to reduce funding for the SPD - in one of the only cities in the country to actually take that vote - and have the Council united on that with a budget vote that requires seven out of nine members, which is a really big deal. It took every single bit of public pressure to the very last moment to get that accomplished. So it's not something that's futile. It has made a difference. We talk about voting and candidates a lot and I certainly believe in that, but that is not enough. People have to stay engaged throughout these processes and hold Councilmembers accountable to their promises and to their constituents. And so the more involvement - the more consistently people can be involved - the better. Now we just talked about dates for things and when that's going to come about - let's talk about how the budget relates to public safety, which there's actually a lot of news about right now and where a lot of people are concerned.
[00:15:29] Amy Sundberg: Yeah. So, I mean, there's been a big discussion in Seattle about public safety overall. And there have been demands from some community members - and specifically the Solidarity Budget - as a group who have been pushing for a divest and reinvest strategy for the Seattle Police Department. And so what that means is basically taking some of the money out of the Seattle Police Department and investing it in other community-led public safety alternatives. The idea is that true public safety is not always supported at its best by SPD. And that there are other solutions that might give us better and more equitable outcomes for everyone that's living in the City. So a big point of contention then ends up always being the Seattle Police Department's budget. I will say that last year, 22% of Seattle's General Fund was given to SPD, which is - 22% is a significant percentage of the overall.
[00:16:57] Crystal Fincher: It's a significant percentage.
[00:16:58] Amy Sundberg: Of money. And that being said, it was - 2021 was the first year that we saw the SPD budget go down in actual dollars, as opposed to increasing. Now that's not true if you factor in inflation, but it's still very significant. In 20 years, that was the first time that that happened. And that was because of community, because - frankly, because of all of the protests for racial justice that were happening all last summer and fall - put enough pressure to get that change brought into reality.
[00:17:40] Crystal Fincher: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:17:40] Amy Sundberg: But that being said, no police officers were laid off. There was talk of doing that - there was talk of out-of-order layoffs. It turned out that wasn't a thing that is legally possible and no officers got laid off. There were increased number of attrition - so a lot of officers were choosing voluntarily to leave for various reasons. So we did get some shrinkage of the force, but that was the primary driver of it.
[00:18:17] Crystal Fincher: Okay, so - oh, go ahead -
[00:18:22] Amy Sundberg: So I was just going to say - and so this year we have to then revisit that entire conversation when we're deciding how to allocate public safety money. And the mayor's proposed budget kind of gives us a starting point so to speak, of where that conversation is going to start. And the total SPD budget is only - she's only a proposed an increase of $2.5 million. So it would be going up again - but that's a fairly small amount in the grand scheme of how much it often goes up from year to year.
[00:19:07] Crystal Fincher: So less than what people say, but still not reducing the funding of the police, which is what-
[00:19:12] Amy Sundberg: Yes. It's definitely.
[00:19:13] Crystal Fincher: - a number of Seattle voters have voted for - and voted for Councilmembers to enact. And certainly is part of a big conversation that we're having right now. But an area where - Durkan has seemed pretty determined not to reduce funding. So given that it is that amount, it seems like the focus is more on being able to say that she's not reducing funding of SPD instead of having that really fund anything substantial and with that amount of money.
[00:19:50] Amy Sundberg: Yes. I mean, and it's definitely not divestment - it is holding fairly steady. And you'll see one of the interesting things in terms of media coverage - you'll see that a lot of media saying she's proposing addition of 35 net officers. What that actually means is hiring 125 officers next year, because they're anticipating 90 separations - 90 officers are going to leave. They're going to hire 125, so that's 35 additional officers - that's what she's proposed. And there's a couple - on the one hand, you can say, "Well, they're hiring a bunch more officers instead of either just letting it stay the same or reducing." And then another narrative that I'm sure people will be hearing in upcoming weeks is, "Well, but there's actually less funded positions for police officers in this budget than there was in the last budget." In 2021, there were 1,357 FTEs - so sworn officer positions funded, not actual officers that we had - but the money was there for them. And this year there's only 1,230 funded.
So that's going to be one place that I think we're going to see pushback in terms of - actually we're shrinking the SPD - because we don't have these positions that are open and not filled that we're still pretending might be able to be filled. But I would like to say the counter-argument to that view is that there's a long pipeline for getting new officers into the force because of just all the training and all of the vetting that has to be done, et cetera. So if we're already lower in terms of how many officers we have - we can spend that time building to a higher number of officers again, or we can spend that time and that money instead building alternate community led responses. There is a choice there.
[00:22:08] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - and certainly an area where people can make their opinions heard. And this year is - "exciting" is always interesting to use in terms of a budget for wonky people like us - but this time there actually is a reason to be excited, I think, because there is a budget that's being introduced by organizations in the community called the Solidarity Budget. What is that?
[00:22:36] Amy Sundberg: So the Solidarity Budget is really exciting - and it's a coalition of groups who have put together basically a plan of how community would like to see the money be spent in Seattle in 2022. And it's a coalition of many groups. I know they had a goal to get a hundred endorsing organizations - I don't know if they quite reached that yet. But it's organizations like 350 Seattle, Decriminalize Seattle, the Black Action Coalition, the Transit Riders Union, et cetera, et cetera - it's a large number of local organizations.
And they have various - basically policy and budgetary goals that they present in this document, called the Solidarity Budget, that asks for various investments into community. And part of it is based on the idea of divesting from the police department, as well as the Municipal Court and the City's Attorney's office - and then reinvesting that money back into community priorities, whether that be housing, Green New Deal - or other priorities - alternate responses for public safety, et cetera. And there's a 65 page document kind of laying out all of their ideas.
[00:24:11] Crystal Fincher: So that's really interesting, and we're probably going to be seeing an increased level of advocacy and activism because of that - in addition to just more people being interested, particularly after the activism with recent budgets and what's been going on there. So as people look to get more familiar with the Solidarity Budget, the City budget, and what's going on, what do things look like in the next couple weeks in terms of activity with the budget and how should people go about making their concerns known?
[00:24:48] Amy Sundberg: Yeah. There's several options. So this week, we're just having overviews from the departments. So basically, we're all getting up to speed on what this proposed budget is and what the City departments think they need. And then next week we kind of get a breather to process through it all. And the week after that, which is the week of October 11th - then we start diving into Issue Identification, so getting deeper into the weeds of these various issues.
There are several opportunities to get involved as a private citizen. There are three public hearings during this budget season, and the first one is October 12th - so a great time to get in early - at 5:30 PM. And then there's another public hearing - November 10th at 5:30 PM. And the last one is November 18th during the day at 9:30 AM. So if daytime is better for you, they wanted to give both options. Also, all of the budget meetings have a 20-30 minute public comment first thing in the morning at 9:30.
But even if you don't want to give public comment, you can also - you can call your Councilmember's office, you can email them - I email mine all the time. You can set up meetings with them - some of them have regular office hours. I know some of them go to Farmer's Markets occasionally - I know the weather is shifting, so I don't know how much longer that will be going on. Sometimes they have Budget Town Halls in a district that you can attend and ask questions or make comment at that point. So there are a lot of ways to kind of let your Councilmember know what you're thinking and what your concerns and priorities are.
[00:26:41] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And I think it is really important to understand that your Councilmember is your Councilmember. They're your representative and they need to know what you think in order to represent you. And if something isn't clear, you can ask them questions and ask them to explain some things - they really are there to serve you. And this budget is there to serve everyone in the City - that should be the goal. And so I hope that people engage with this and just start to get more familiar with what's being talked about and what's not. Because they're so used to this process almost being opaque with hardly anyone paying attention. And it's exciting when more people get involved, because generally that produces a budget that addresses the needs of more of the community.
[00:27:31] Amy Sundberg: Yeah. And it's exciting when people realize that this actually really affects them personally. This isn't just some abstract cloud that you don't have to think about. It's something that is going to impact your daily life in the future.
[00:27:45] Crystal Fincher: Yep. Thank you. So thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today - appreciate it and we will certainly be providing all of the links to everything we talked about here in the show in the episode notes. And if you have any questions or any specific questions - issues you want addressed - feel free to shoot us a message. Message me on Twitter and we will continue to stay engaged here also. Thanks so much, Amy.
[00:28:11] Amy Sundberg: Thanks for having me.
[00:28:12] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, wherever else you get your podcast - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
This week Crystal is joined for part one of a post-election breakdown by Executive Director of America Walks and former mayor of Seattle Mike McGinn, Managing Partner of Upper Left Strategies Michael Charles, and Co-Founder of the Mercury Group and former Colleen Echohawk campaign consultant, Bill Broadhead! They discuss the irony of Bruce Harrell running as an “outsider” candidate, the importance of having a powerful message and transmitting it effectively to the voters, and why the Seattle political establishment doesn’t necessarily reflect the changing demographics of Seattle.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii, Bill Broadhead at @billbroadhead, Michael Charles at @mikeychuck, and Mike McGinn at @mayormcginn. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Harrell is Seattle’s next mayor, after González concedes” by David Kroman from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/news/2021/11/harrell-seattles-next-mayor-after-gonzalez-concedes
“Election results for Seattle and King County 2021 races” by Crosscut Staff from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/politics/2021/11/election-results-seattle-and-king-county-2021-races
“No incumbent in Seattle mayoral race, but candidates still running against City Hall” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/no-incumbent-in-seattle-mayoral-race-but-candidates-still-running-against-city-hall/
“‘In This House,’ Seattle Votes for the Status Quo” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2021/11/04/in-this-house-seattle-votes-for-the-status-quo/
“PAC spending in Seattle elections tops $3 million with late surge in real estate, business money” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/pac-spending-in-seattle-elections-tops-3-million-with-late-surge-in-real-estate-business-money/
“We Have a Culture War…in the Seattle City Attorney’s Race?” by Benjamin Cassidy from The Seattle Met: https://www.seattlemet.com/news-and-city-life/2021/10/who-are-the-candidates-for-seattle-city-attorney
“Progresses on the ropes? 5 takeaways from Seattle’s election night returns” by Jim Brunner and David Gutman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/progressives-on-the-ropes-five-takeaways-from-seattles-election-night-returns/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well, hello everyone - this is Hacks & Wonks. I'm your host, Crystal Fincher. I'm also a political consultant, and we thought we would get together today to talk about the election results. I am joined by Bill Broadhead, Mike McGinn, Michael Charles. I'll let each one of them introduce themselves and talk a little bit about the work that they're doing. And then we will hop into talking about the races. I will go ahead and start with Michael Charles.
[00:01:10] Michael Charles: Thanks Crystal for having me again - I appreciate it. My name is Michael Charles. I am the managing partner of Upper Left Strategies. We were fortunate enough to have some great candidates this cycle involved in these races. And yeah, we're just excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:29] Crystal Fincher: And Mike McGinn.
[00:01:31] Mike McGinn: Mike McGinn - I am currently the Executive Director of America Walks. I've been a long time advocate in the City of Seattle around climate and active transportation and equity and community - and was once a mayor, too.
[00:01:48] Crystal Fincher: And - yeah, once a mayor, little stint as that. Bill Broadhead.
[00:01:55] Bill Broadhead: Hi, I'm Bill Broadhead. I run Mercury, here in Seattle, with my wife, Julie McCoy. We've been going since '97 working for a variety of progressive candidates and causes.
[00:02:10] Crystal Fincher: Let's talk about Seattle - City of Seattle - first off. There's a lot to talk about, but let's start with the mayoral race. Is anyone surprised with how it says - with how the results turned out?
[00:02:30] Mike McGinn: Maybe the depth of it - maybe I'm surprised by the depth of it only. How, and again, it's - I don't want to be - we know that the late votes swing, and if you just react to the initial night's votes, you're not reading the final vote. Votes historically - to swing as much as 9% or 10% is pretty big. I think Kshama got up to a 13 point swing one time, but we're looking at a 30 point difference right now, or a 29 point difference. So, maybe this year it's a bigger swing because it's more polarized. Maybe it's a smaller swing because there wasn't a strong close to the campaign. But it sure doesn't look like it's going to be a 29 or a 30 point swing from election night. And that, to me - the depth of the defeat - to some degree is surprising.
I thought from the very beginning - and we can talk about why - but I thought from the very beginning, and I think I was on Hacks & Wonks more than a few months ago, just saying that a long time City Councilmember running this year in a right - with the wrong track where it was - and this has nothing to do with Lorena González as a person. I like her. She's a wonderful progressive. But running as an incumbent in a wrong track year is a really, really hard place to be. And that's what she was doing. So I thought - I am not surprised with the outcome at all.
[00:03:59] Crystal Fincher: What about you, Michael?
[00:04:04] Michael Charles: I felt like, similar to what Mike pointed out - just the idea of - the being the representation of kind of the current establishment was difficult to overcome. And I think Bruce did a really good job of proving himself to be the outsider when, I mean, in some odd way, that's really what it like flipped felt like - was it was the current establishment versus an outsider candidate. And I typically think elections boil down to change or more of the same, and this was a change election. And oddly enough, the old City Councilmember that'd been there for a long time was the change candidate. But, just given the circumstances and the context, that's how it turned out in my opinion, so -
[00:04:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I mean, I also think the messaging was really - was interesting, and actually contrary to what really happened. Certainly candidates were trying to message themselves as representative of change and a new vision. But, I actually think that given where we are at currently with Mayor Durkan, it was really a status quo versus a different direction. And it looks like we are sticking with the status quo.
[00:05:29] Bill Broadhead: I got to tell you - the status quo got re-elected last night, and nobody would've known it from the campaigns that were run. I mean that's the depressingly ironic thing about this entire cycle for all of us - is we got the third term of Murray, Durkan, and now Harrell. And Harrell ran as a change candidate. And I don't know how the left allowed that to happen, and honestly, how González's campaign allowed that to happen, but it was flat out political malpractice. And now we're going to have to endure another four years of these shitty policies because of it. And I'm pissed - I really am. I got to tell you, as a citizen - long time citizen of Seattle - as somebody that watches people have to sleep through another fricking winter in these tents and parks and live outside, I'm mad. I'm just mad. People say, "Well, you were right." You know, we did the Echohawk campaign on this whole thesis - that an incumbent like González in a record wrong track environment was going to do really poorly. And yeah, we were right, but it's - it really pains me to be right about that.
[00:06:52] Crystal Fincher: Well, and I'm wondering about this in the context also of the City Council and City Attorney race in Seattle, where we see results that are closer than they are in the mayoral race, but still further behind. And interesting in those, especially as I look at it, there are a couple things, I think structurally, that we don't talk about often enough. One, winning a citywide election is a lot different than winning a districted election. And the citywide elections favor the establishment, they favor big money - because it is really expensive and hard to communicate with over 225,000 voters, certainly. And to get your message across to all of them - it's really expensive to do, because there aren't many avenues of doing that for free. So that sets things up where we see over half a million dollars being spent on the more moderate and conservative side - more than on the side of the progressives. And we see that repeat itself over and over again. And it's certainly, in the mayoral years, is more pronounced than in the years where we just have City Council elections and when they're districted. What was your take on both of those races, Michael Charles?
[00:08:16] Michael Charles: Yeah. I mean, you point out the money situation, and I think that's important from one perspective for sure - that there's a lot of people spending a lot of money for the moneyed interests, which is typical of elections here. But, I also thought it was kind of disappointing to see the progressive candidates not really spend as much money, or at least even a proportional amount of their money on direct voter contact in the general election. I thought that while some of these attacks were - they were executed well, I thought - they were also, and you could have anticipated a lot of it, and should have been prepared and spent money to be ready to answer those questions, to talk, to keep the public conversation going. And it felt heavily one-sided in each of those conversations. It was - all the money felt like it was being spent either anti-Nikkita or anti-NTK. It didn't feel like there was any response publicly going on - whether it be in the news, or none of it directly addressed any of the accusations. And I just thought there wasn't money put - spent in the right places - to keep it competitive in those races. And I think, as we continue to see the numbers trickle in, I think we're - it's going to be a lot closer than we think it was on Election Night for a couple of those races. And I think within the margin - if we had maybe stronger campaigns run - that possibly we could have won still.
[00:09:47] Crystal Fincher: What do you think, Mike McGinn?
[00:09:49] Mike McGinn: Well, races start with an underlying dynamic. And I think there was an underlying dynamic here of tremendous frustration over the homelessness issue in the City of Seattle. And a candidate had to have a plan about that - and I think this is where we're looking at - essentially being the incumbent. Now, if Jenny Durkan were on the ballot this year, she would've been in huge trouble, right? Because, not getting it done, right? The homelessness problem is getting worse. All of that energy had to find a place to land. And it landed on Lorena's campaign because she was the closest thing - she was the incumbent in the race in a change year. And so that made it very hard to make the race about something else. And that's the point I want to make here about money - is Lorena had a lot of money. Labor put a lot of money into an IEC and she had money. And, maybe NTK and Nikkita did not have the same amounts of money, but it became a race about how the left was - progressives were too ideological and weren't effective at governance.
And the Nicole Thomas-Kennedy tweets fed that story of being too ideological in some way, or not serious about governance. And that was the story as ballots were dropping - there was no other story in the media right then. Campaigns have to be about something - and I don't want to make it sound like it's easy to make it about something. You can try - because the other side's trying to make it about something too. Your side's trying to make it about something, the other side's trying to make it about something. And you fight it out with money and earned media and people knocking on doors. But, our side had enough money to get a message out about something, but we didn't have a something to get out because we were stuck with kind of defending the status quo policies. I mean, Lorena was in a position of her homelessness policy was - well, we've passed the JumpStart Tax. We're trying to invest more in shelter. We're in fact - we're on it, we're already taking care of it. And that's just not going to be an effective message at - where there was that level of anger and discomfort.
So the other side had a plan for homelessness and we hate the plan. I hate the plan and think maybe everybody else here does - we're going to sweep the parks, we're going to prosecute poor people. And we're going to be compassionate about it - we're not terrible people, we're all Democrats - that's our plan. And they had the virtue of plan beats no plan, the way it worked out, where the anger could land on that plan as sounding like there was something more serious about it than what was being presented. So again, I think we weren't - after the years of the policies we've had, and the problem metastasizing and getting worse, and more people being in distress and greater difficulty of not scaling to meet the scale of the problem. That could have been the framing - that it wasn't getting done by the people in power. Well, that was the framing - it's not getting done by the people in the power and the left are in power.
And there was no alternative frame to be made in this race. In fact, the race was run very much on - I'll stop talking in a second - the race was very much run on the fact of resumé, of who was the most progressive. And I think this is a - I mean, that wins you the primary - because the most progressive wins you The Stranger, but the most progressive doesn't win you the general, because that doesn't get you there. You got to be talking about something that hits the voters hard enough. And we just didn't have something on our side - like Kshama had $15 an hour when she won citywide - that was really hitting people like, Okay, I can get behind that. Now granted, she may have a lot of trouble this year, but she's been in office a number of years. But I think that we just - races have to be about something and we didn't have a something on our side that was really compelling, or we're united from top to bottom. And so they won the framing battle.
[00:14:03] Bill Broadhead: Yeah, I got to be honest. I still don't know what Lorena González's message was. I mean, other than that she was a child of migrant farmworkers from the East side. I really don't know what her message was.
[00:14:18] Crystal Fincher: And I certainly have heard that from other people. I wonder though - it's such an interesting race, right? And, Mike McGinn, you talked about - this is a change election. To me, it's very Seattle - in that, there's messaging about change, right? There's messaging about all the progressive buzzwords that are being used by more moderate and conservative candidates. And almost the - please make me feel better about voting for a more moderate or conservative candidate by peppering it in all this progressive language, right? And, so we're going to stick with what we're doing policy-wise, because I still haven't heard anyone articulate how the Harrell administration on policy is going to be substantively different than a Durkan administration - except for perhaps a lack of scandal that the Durkan administration has had. I notice there's a rehab effort to try and pepper over - but anyway, I think that that's part of the thing that we keep on seeing with Murray, with Durkan, with Harrell. Same group of donors, same group of supporters, same type of - let's just talk like and try and sound like our opponent, and try and claim that lane. And I do think the spending still made a difference in this thing. Yes, Lorena had quite a bit of money, not as much as the Harrell campaign - but in terms of spending on direct voter communication, you're still talking again - over a half million dollar deficit on the other side. So I mean we're - when there's that much on the airwaves and there's not much being done to combat that message, and then attempts to combat that message don't land and backfire, this is where you land.
[00:16:17] Bill Broadhead: But, Crystal, we can't, in my opinion, we can't keep falling back to, Well, they have more money. They're always going to have more money. Always. Like if that's our excuse for losing, we might as well just get used to it, because they're always going to have more money. And the fact is - is that I'd rather have a message than money. I mean, because you know -
[00:16:42] Crystal Fincher: Well, we're talking to people who work with a message and less money. We have several people on this call - I think all of us are used to winning with lower budgets than opponents.
[00:16:54] Mike McGinn: It's a mathematical equation. It's a mathematical equation, right? If you could give a number to your message, like the quality of your message, and multiply it times your delivery. And the problem is if you got, and this was - talking about campaigns, Bill and I worked on beating Roads and Transit. They spent $5 million, we spent $50,000 on robo-calls. But we had a killer message and they had a crappy message - and we won. Now that's an extreme example, but that was when it really drove home to me - that if you can deliver a really strong message that moves voters, and the opposite - that you can have millions of dollars and not move a single vote, because you don't have a message. So that's where I always start is - what is the race about.
I also just want to say, Crystal, I agreed with everything you said about their M.O. - their side's M.O. - it is, it's all the same people, the same consultants, the same corporate donors. And in fact, that's another structural disadvantage, right? We all show up every four years - Oh, who's our best progressive. They spend four years, working over whoever's in office - whether it's on the mayor or in the City Council. And the corporate lobbyists that work these campaigns, the lobbyists that work these campaigns, they didn't show up for the elections. They were all paid by Comcast and paid by the Downtown folks - they're all paid. Part of the service they deliver to their clients is to deliver a compliant mayor with a message into the race. They're working on this for four years. And your point is exactly right - they know that they can't win with the mayor candidate that they would love to have. A lot of the business folks would love somebody that was more conservative than the candidates they run, but they just take a look and they got to go, Okay, it's Seattle. We got to make it progressive enough to win, but willing to play ball with us and cut deals. And that means we don't get some old white anti-tax Republican - that's never going to show up for them in the race. They're going to show up with somebody who has some progressive cred, but who also knows what team they're on. And that's what we face.
[00:19:04] Bill Broadhead: And it's not just consultants that come in and help on the campaigns. It's a war machine, right? We got to call it what it is. It's a war machine that runs a polling operation, that runs a PR information campaign - every month, every year. We show up every four years or every two years and go, Okay, there's an election, kids. Let's go have a fight. They're in a permanent war footing.
[00:19:35] Mike McGinn: And it's public affairs. It's public affairs firms, it's Vice Presidents of public affairs. They've got so many people staffing this from one end to the other - and I'm sorry, Bill - but yeah, it's a war.
[00:19:46] Bill Broadhead: And they're doing polls and they're doing focus groups. They know exactly where the Seattle voter is all the time, and they know exactly what kind of candidates to recruit if they can, they know exactly how to approach each election. We come into it totally blind each time and try and figure it out. And until the left understands this asymmetry that we have in this fight, in this long battle - until we figure out this asymmetry and try and get some parity with who we're up against, we're going to keep having trouble. I guess the thing - I guess I wish everybody would ask themselves is - Why is 2009 in Seattle, Washington the last time we elected a progressive mayor? The City's got substantially more progressive since then, and we keep losing. I mean, if you have an all-star team playing against a crappy team, and you keep losing - you got to ask yourself why, and try and do something different. And this is my frustration, honestly, with the Seattle left, is we should not be losing these things. We should not - not in Seattle, Washington. We should not be losing to the more conservative candidate, and yet we do.
[00:21:05] Crystal Fincher: Well, I see a couple different things. And I've been thinking a lot about this - it's really interesting to me. I know some of us have had conversations about this offline - but there's elections, and there is where the electorate is - where the residents are, of the City. And we're seeing a couple of different dynamics, right? We're seeing a dramatic divide in terms of age. And right now older people turn out at much higher percentages than younger people - but there is an undeniable, dramatically more progressive bent to younger voters than there are older ones - and younger, like under 50, right? We're not talking about 25. We're talking about people who are not seniors right now. We're also seeing organizing, which is different than doing the types of things to win elections, but really focusing on building sustainable movements, right? And I think that there is that - that one, that's an effort that has not been traditionally part of the left in Seattle for a long time and that is growing. And that doesn't always look like the types of things that win every election.
[00:22:35] Mike McGinn: It is worth looking at the Nikkita race, because I think the point Crystal is making is a really strong one. That Nikkita is coming off an organizing base that lifted her up to a certain point and looking at where she ran, kind of as a message candidate, in a mayoral election to now really moving to trying to win a citywide seat and building a movement to do that. And, I think in a different year and with the different cast around her, I think Nikkita would be very close to pulling off a citywide win in Seattle. I think that she got pulled into a little bit of the overall negativity, right? She got associated with the other candidates, because it was very clear in watching Nikkita - that she was running a different race this time. And I'm very, very impressed by the quality of her campaigning and the rest. But she was running against a headwind of that kind of underlying dynamic in the race. And she wasn't really helped out by being - I think there's a thing that goes in Seattle, and I maybe I'll go back a little bit - it's like, Yeah, we can have Nick Licata on the City Council, and maybe he's an outlier, but one or two outliers is good. And having an outlier in Kshama is good, right? It's okay to have a Councilmember who holds down a certain end of the spectrum because they're only 1 of 9 - but I don't think that that was the mood this year. The mood was that the Council itself is flawed, and now there's a City Attorney, and now that there's a mayor and all of that - I think just kind of added up on Nikkita and didn't give her that opportunity to break through as kind of the principled left anchor of the City Council, or a principled left member of a City Council, and just made it harder for her. So that was my read on that race. I'd be interested to let - either one of you can jump in on your read on Nikkita. I'll turn it to Michael Charles first.
[00:24:30] Michael Charles: Sure, thanks Mike. I thought - so I agree with your assertion about the getting wrapped up into the City Attorney's race, and the whole discussion around those tweets became somehow every progressive person's tweets. And I thought that was really well done and that, to be perfectly honest, of really tying everybody to this sort of - here's what happens when the radical left goes too far, like this is just the ultimate manifestation of all of the craziness that has happened. And if we put these people in charge, we'll have riots - and what's the most visible thing Nikkita's been attached to - is those BLM marches. And it was very purposeful that they were using that protest imagery in a lot of the attack mail that they were sending us for pro-Sara/anti-Nikkita mailings.
So, I mean, I think - and we can talk about the racial issues that are obviously a part of that as well. But, I am going to come back to again though - I thought that there was a missed opportunity. Like sure, the money wasn't as much - but like Bill said, it can't just be about the money. You have to get your message out to people - and if you have enough money to get your good message, which I thought they had this time around - I thought they'd done a good job of getting organized and getting - figuring out about being what pragmatic, actual leadership looks like on the City level. And I thought they'd done a good job of doing that in person and in forums, but it was that last piece of really putting together - you had money for TV, could have done anything to mail. And it's sure - I mean, people can say they don't like it, but it's part of the equation. You have to do these things to get in front of people to, and again, anticipate what these attacks were going to be, and be ready to answer with your better message.
[00:26:31] Bill Broadhead: My mentor, Bob Gogerty, always said, "If you want me to hear you, talk about me", and it sounds super simplistic. And for a while, I used to kind of be like, Oh God, Bob. But you know, as I've gone on with my life, it's like, it just - it's amazing how many people just don't get that. And you know, they talk about themselves. They talk about a lot of stuff, but they don't talk about the voter, they don't listen to the voter, they don't hear the voter, they don't speak to the voter's concerns. And, I think what we saw in this election was people - you could see it in the polling - by far and away, 70% of the public said homelessness - that's what I'm concerned about. And they weren't all right wingers. It wasn't all just Fox News watchers saying that. A lot of them were people - were real progressives, people that we like, that are on our side - that they were concerned about homelessness for a variety of reasons. And we couldn't speak to them - we couldn't hear them, we couldn't identify with them.
And I see this in the lefty Twitter bubble - that anybody that's concerned about homelessness - Well, you're the other. Oh, well you must be a racist, or you must be a whatever. We start shrinking and shrinking down, and expelling anybody that says, "Well, God, I don't know, there are needles at the parks". Oh, well screw you. Man, this is not a recipe for our side winning going forward. We've got to think about this, folks. We've got to hold up, and listen and whatever - do some research, do some focus groups, start expanding our political base a little bit - because if we shrink down to anybody that's, and exclude anybody that's concerned about homelessness out of the tent, we're left with a very small tent.
[00:28:22] Crystal Fincher: I certainly see a tendency sometimes, to the very online people, and I'm certainly a very online person, getting used to talking to each other. I actually do think, especially with Nikkita, that they did, and to Michael's point, in forums and on the campaign trail, they did an excellent job of connecting their message to the people. What I think, and I think Michael Charles basically said it was a challenge - is that at the end, communicating that to the 100,000 people who just start tuning in once they get their ballots - is where that challenge is. And I think we see that in the publicly available polling, which was close, close, close. And then when it was time to turn on communication and that had started, that's when we started to see the gap widen.
I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler, with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, wherever else you get your podcast - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
Today Crystal is joined by Michael Charles, political consultant and managing partner at Upper Left Strategies. Elections are coming up next Tuesday, November 2nd, and Crystal and Michael break down spending in the Seattle City Attorney's race, how campaigns are spending their money and what the strategies may be behind it, races to watch all around the state, and the importance of paying attention to political races outside of Seattle.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Michael Charles, at @mikeychuck. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
References:
“The 2021 Seattle Mayor’s Race By The Numbers” by Erica C. Barnett from The South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/09/29/the-2021-seattle-mayors-race-by-the-numbers/
“PAC spending in Seattle elections tops $3 million with late surge in real estate, business money” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/pac-spending-in-seattle-elections-tops-3-million-with-late-surge-in-real-estate-business-money/
“Seattle mayoral race filled with ads, PAC money, and cash” by David Hyde and Gracie Todd from KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/stories/as-candidates-court-voters-with-campaign-ads-pac-cash-flows-into-seattle-s-mayoral-race
“Poll finds overwhelming support among Seattle voters for JumpStart tax” by Marc Stiles from the Puget Sound Business Journal: https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2021/09/10/seattle-voters-overwhelmingly-support-jumpstart.html
“Gap in strategy, fundraising opens up between Seattle City Attorney candidate” by Nick Bowman from MyNorthwest: https://mynorthwest.com/3096045/seattle-city-attorney-fundraising-gap/
“Fact Check: Ann Davison’s Mailer Is Misleading, Full of Inaccuracies, Dumb, and Disqualifying” by Rich Smith from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2021/07/27/59571999/fact-check-ann-davisons-mailer-is-misleading-full-of-inaccuracies-dumb-and-disqualifying
“Q&A with Kent City Council candidates Cawthorn, Troutner” by Steve Hunter from The Kent Reporter: https://www.kentreporter.com/news/qa-with-kent-city-council-candidates-cawthon-troutner/
“Q&A with Kent School Board candidates Clark, Franklin” by Steve Hunter from The Kent Reporter: https://www.kentreporter.com/news/qa-with-kent-school-board-candidates-clark-franklin/
“Will Local Governments Reflect the Changing Demographics of South King County?” by Phil Manzano from The South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/06/30/will-local-governments-reflect-the-changing-demographics-of-south-king-county/
“King County Conservatives Discredit Progressive POC Candidates as ‘Defund’ Extremists” by Nathalie Graham from The South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/10/28/king-county-conservatives-discredit-progressive-poc-candidates-as-defund-extremists/
“Outside campaign spending on Spokane City Council races grows to unprecedented level” by Adam Shanks from The Spokesman-Review: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2021/oct/28/outside-campaign-spending-on-spokane-city-council-/
“Northeast Spokane candidates Sherazi, Bingle debate homelessness, public safety” by Adam Shanks at The Spokesman-Review: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2021/oct/21/sherazi-bingle-debate-homelessness-public-safety/
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host, political consultant and managing partner of Upper Left Strategies, Michael Charles.
[00:00:52] Michael Charles: Thanks, Crystal - good to be here again. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:55] Crystal Fincher: Good to have you again. So it is the Friday before ballots are due - the election is November 2nd. That's next Tuesday. Make sure everyone listening - you get your ballots in, get them in early, do not wait. They're very important elections this year, but there's a lot going on - campaigns are getting out all the stops to get people out to vote, to make sure that voters who tuned in late are getting their messages and understanding what's at stake in these races. So I guess starting with the Seattle races, what are you seeing right now?
[00:01:33] Michael Charles: Well, it feels like we're in what feels to be potentially a correction back to the center on some of our issues with the Seattle City Council races, with the mayoral races. It's been a pretty clear divide between what we'd seen as traditionally the liberal establishment versus the more moderate establishment run against each other. It's interesting to see how it's all breaking down and where each camp is deciding to spend their energies - with the more moderate folks spending on traditional expenditures like mail and digital and TV. We're kind of seeing the more liberal candidates are taking a different approach, at least down ballot ones. The mayor's race seems to be pretty traditional, but the down ballot races seem to be taking a more non-traditional approach and time will tell to see how it turns out for folks. So we're in for a ride, I think, over the last four days, especially with only a quarter of the people that have voted thus far.
[00:02:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah - you raise a really good point. I mean, there certainly is - we'll see how these elections turn out. But when you look at the amount of money that is being spent, especially on behalf of the more moderate, or candidates to the right, in these races - occupying the lane furthest to the right. Man, they're spending a lot of money. Man, they're talking to a bunch of voters. My goodness! It's a lot. I was looking at spending in the Seattle City Attorney race - just on the campaign side, before you get to independent expenditures, for Ann Davison - $170,000 cable buy in mid-October. So, I mean that's not that much time, but basically all over the TV airwaves with commercials. 175,000 mail pieces - spending $105,000 on that. $11,000 on texting, just texting there. Another $5,000 on digital banner ads. That's a lot of communication. That's a lot of money and that's just coming directly from the campaign. You're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars on top of that with independent expenditures.
Comparing that to the spending from Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, it's nowhere close. We're talking orders of magnitude bigger here, and it's just a big challenge. I mean, just to give you perspective - in terms of mailers for Nicole Thomas-Kennedy - 40,000, compared to over 150k - $26,000 spent on mailers, $6,000 spent - it looks like on digital. And what you see is - in this campaign, a lot invested in canvassing, a lot invested in direct person-to-person conversations, which are the most effective way to win votes. The challenge is in a citywide election, when there're going to be over 215,000 people voting - I think last mayoral race was 217,000. That's a lot of voters that you have to communicate with and the only way to get to that many and speak to the majority of them is with some paid communication. So we'll see how far the canvassing efforts can get to them.
But overall, when you just look at the money that is coming into this race, other races like it - clearly the forces supporting the moderate candidates are very concerned, have been voicing their displeasure with the direction that the City Council has gone. And although that has been in line with what people voted for when they elected their City Council representatives - and when you look at polling for things like the JumpStart Tax, the Head Tax - those are popular in Seattle. But when you bombard people, who often are not tuned in to the daily news of politics and policy in Washington and Seattle, that repeated constant hammering communication wears a percentage of those people down. And so in a close race that can make the difference. We'll see what happens. I mean, certainly we saw it a couple years ago - there was a backlash to the amount of money spent certainly, with Amazon at the helm - lots of people were unhappy with that. Do you think that's possible in this race this year - to see a backlash to the kind of spending that we've seen in these races?
[00:06:50] Michael Charles: I would also mention just briefly that there's also almost over $350,000 spent against Nicole Thomas-Kennedy as well in independent expenditures. So I'd like to believe that there - I do think that voters out here are very smart. Voters out here like to make decisions independently, they're not easily swayed by arguments that are nonsensical. Some of the hysteria that I'd received in my own mailbox around "stop chaos in Seattle" - some of this feels like pretty prototypical Fox News coverage type efforts. So I believe that a lot of people can see through that. But like you said, it's about those small percentages when these races are close. I believe if there is any backlash - I unfortunately think that a lot of this message of hitting home has been more effective, but I've been proven wrong many times before and none of us are perfect at this. So it'd be interesting to see if there's one boogeyman putting money in like there was before that I thought contributed to with Amazon in particular. I don't foresee any of that this year, but who foresaw Amazon putting in millions. So we're kind of getting to crunch time here now. If there's not something big that's going to happen like that, it's going to be a long weekend.
[00:08:31] Crystal Fincher: It's going to be a long weekend. I mean, to your point, over $300,000 of independent expenditures - you're looking at $500,000, half a million spent, in attempting to take down Nicole Thomas-Kennedy. So one, wow, what kind of a threat are you and how formidable are you when someone is spending half a million dollars to take you down and people hadn't heard of you before this election - that's something. And speaks to the power that they believe Nicole Thomas-Kennedy has, and are afraid that she'll be able to use it on a larger platform. Those forces, I mean, it's no secret that Ann Davison declared herself to be a Republican in 2018, decided to run against - or excuse me, in 2020, my - time doesn't mean anything to me anymore, it's just all run together. In 2020 - basically just opting into Trump's Republican party with a lot of extreme views. A lot of her biggest donors are some of the biggest donors to Trump in this state. What they have been certainly trying to do is to paint her as a moderate, to paint her as reasonable, and to paint Nicole Thomas-Kennedy as extreme.
But that's a lot of money invested - you look at the cost per vote - it's astronomical, right? The problem is when someone has super deep pockets, and a lot of these forces do, and are interested in maintaining their deep pockets and not having them taxed more, or being looked into for wage theft or anything like that. That you have these people donating to keep the status quo and to ensure that. Communication is effective to some degree and even bad communication, even if you're just changing the minds of 10% of people who you're communicating with - when that 10% equates to 10,000 or 20,000, that can make the difference in these races. And we've seen razor thin races in Seattle - we saw them in the primary and so-
[00:10:56] Michael Charles: Especially when it comes to these controversial candidates.
[00:10:56] Crystal Fincher: Yes. Yeah, so we'll see. But again, man, when you have to spend half a million dollars against someone, clearly their message has penetrated. Clearly their message is reaching a lot of people and there's fear around that getting out further. So kind of a David and Goliath situation, yet again. And the people have turned out for the Davids before in Seattle elections. So we will see what happens - I am notorious for disliking making predictions for that reason, because who knows and it really does taking people standing up and raising their voice, using their vote for the government that they want to see that reflects who they are. Certainly we have to do more than vote, right? We have to hold our leaders accountable, we have to act within our own communities. Voting is not the only tool in the tool belt that we need to use, but it is an essential and necessary one, in my opinion.
So I hope people - just talk to your friends and family, talk to people who you know, mention it at work. When you run into someone, "Hey, did you get your ballot in? Hey, this is who I'm voting for, and this is why." It makes a difference. Sometimes we get so caught up in talking online or to other people who are so plugged in, we forget to talk to those people who are close to us, who are in our family - who may not have all the information, who may not be as plugged in as probably the people listening to this podcast are. So I just encourage everyone to just talk to the people in your life who you are around. Send people a reminder to get their ballots in. The turnout projections are never excellent in an off-year, non-presidential, non-gubernatorial, odd-yeared race. So make sure you do your part to help your friends and family vote in an informed manner.
Now, we just talked about Seattle races. I want to talk about some of the other races going on. Obviously Kent, in my heart. Cliff Cawthon is running and has a great chance at beating a Republican incumbent, who is a very strong Blue Lives Matter, need law and order, increased police presence in our city. We just had situations where there have been a lack of interpreted documents, even in emergency notifications and notifications that can impact people's health and wellbeing. Sometimes those aren't even being translated. And in Kent, 40% of the residents in Kent speak a language other than English. So that's pretty critical. And so just some basic issues in dealing with a diverse modern population are at stake. Cliff Cawthon has certainly been a fighter for renter protections, for serving the entire community. I certainly hope people still do what they can to support him by making phone calls, volunteering, make a donation. But that's a big race that I have my eye on. Certainly Dawn Bennett is also running against the incumbent mayor - similar situation there. So lots of races in Kent.
In addition, we have Sara Franklin running for school board against Tim Clark - both consider themselves Democrats. Sara Franklin is a young - look, I would call her young - African American woman. Younger certainly than her opponent, but has been a member of unions, worked on behalf of unions, has been involved in a lot of work in the city of Kent and in the greater Seattle area. It would be great to see her serving the students on the school board. Who do you have your eye on, Michael?
[00:15:09] Michael Charles: I've been watching the Renton races - has been one of the more exciting juicy races, if you will, in that we have some interesting dynamics. Basically good old fashioned Democrat versus Republican races. One side being the labor-supported, from community - not that the other folks aren't from community - but from community organizing backgrounds where they're around issues that have been prominent in their communities - around policing, around just LGBT rights, around just several things that can be of the more liberal persuasion. And then up against what are seen as more traditionally conservative, business-friendly candidates - that the economic engine is the only thing that matters. So it's interesting to watch down there. I know both the liberal candidates did really well in the primary, so it's been interesting to see the consolidation around the other candidates that finished in second in those races. So we'll see how it turns out in the general election. But I know the Democratic candidates have been putting up a big fight down there, so it should be a really interesting race to see about the direction of our suburbs - because some of it, I feel like is a real reaction to what's going on in Seattle. Seattle feels like it's on the ballot in every one of these suburb areas as well. It's very traditional - you hear it from Bellevue to Kent to Federal Way - that we don't want to become Seattle. So that's definitely a battle cry on the right.
[00:17:06] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely and you raise a really good point - we've talked about on the show before - that whole Seattle is Dying narrative is actually for the suburbs. It's not for Seattle. It consistently falls flat in Seattle because people in Seattle can - they look around their neighborhood. They don't feel that Seattle is Dying. Sure there are issues that are are urgent and that need to be addressed in Seattle. But the narrative that every street has been overrun and there's lawlessness and it - just all of that just is false. People in Seattle know it's false, which is why candidates that have run on that platform have never reached above 15% of the vote total.
However, that narrative has taken hold in suburban and rural races. Because people don't have their own eyes to use as a reference, and they see these things on TV. I mean, KOMO ran that whole series, they tried to run a part two on it. They take that as fact, especially if they're tied into these Facebook networks that love sharing misinformation, disinformation. So it's a challenge - you hear it in the rhetoric, especially when it comes to addressing the homelessness crisis, when it comes to addressing mental health issues. Basically if there's an issue that has a question as to whether a criminalized solution is appropriate, and overwhelmingly data says no to that, but there's people who find comfort in the thought of just, "Well, just arrest someone, throw them in jail. Just sweep them, tell them to get out of here." Their primary motivation isn't necessarily solving the problem - it's just moving the problem to a place where they can't see it. That has taken hold in suburbs.
[00:19:05] Michael Charles: Absolutely.
[00:19:06] Crystal Fincher: So we're having some stark conversations. If people think the conversations in Seattle and around Compassion Seattle were a challenge - I mean, you should hear how explicit some of these candidates in a number of these suburbs get about, "Just sweep them, lock them up. We got to get them out of here. They're making a choice to be on the streets." All of that, clearly not true, but they're saying it with confidence and people believe it. And they're citing a lot of stuff they hear in some of the Seattle is Dying groups and narratives. So it is a concern, a big concern.
To that, looking at the Burien and SeaTac races. In Burien, you have Hugo Garcia and Sarah Moore running. Hugo's running against a candidate who explicitly states he wants to bring a Christ-focused government back into place. He does not believe in the separation of church and state and is running directly opposed to it. All that flows from that, right? Sarah Moore is also running against a conservative candidate. It is critical that people engage in those races. I always encourage people who live in Seattle - I mean, there's so many people in Seattle compared to the suburbs - be active, support your own candidates, and adopt a candidate somewhere outside of Seattle. Volunteer, phone bank, make phone calls, knock on doors, donate, do something for a candidate outside of Seattle. Because when we talk about this regional response to homelessness, when we talk about our regional transportation network - we talk about how we handle, we're talking about a transportation package and whether it's going to be responsive to people's need for transit and addressing our climate crisis - we have to elect reasonable, responsible people on our suburban city councils, as mayors. We have to elect people to do that. So this is a huge opportunity. So Hugo Garcia and Sarah Moore in Burien. Iris Guzmán and Jake Simpson in SeaTac - huge, right? They have to get on those councils. That is really what progress in those cities is going to hinge upon.
[00:21:27] Michael Charles: I don't think - I didn't realize that SeaTac is a majority Republican council.
[00:21:32] Crystal Fincher: Yep. Majority Republican council in a majority-minority city.
[00:21:36] Michael Charles: By far majority minority city.
[00:21:40] Crystal Fincher: Yeah and Trump Republican council.
[00:21:44] Michael Charles: That's right.
[00:21:44] Crystal Fincher: Wearing hats with Trump and a crosshairs on them, and talking about Muslim registries, and passing policy hostile - purposely, antagonistically hostile - to immigrant populations.
[00:21:58] Michael Charles: Setting up Muslim registries of their own - working with the City Manager to do that.
[00:22:03] Crystal Fincher: Yes. Yes. I think sometimes people think - Washington is known as a progressive state, seattle is a progressive area - nothing like that could happen here. It is happening, present tense. It is happening and could happen more. I think people underestimate the backlash. You see the spending in the Seattle races - this energy is also behind conservative candidates in these suburbs. They're fighting, they feel the pressure, right? They feel that progressives have been making progress and they're putting everything that they can into stopping it. It's a lot that they're putting into it.
[00:22:49] Michael Charles: I mean, you see it countywide, you see it in all these races - Nathalie Graham in the South Seattle Emerald had a great piece yesterday on the conservative tactic countywide happening down from Dow Constantine to everybody else - to facing somebody - the right is to paint their opponents as Defund crazies, right? It is their go-to path of scare people into thinking that anything that might be different or is going to be change is putting their public safety at risk.
[00:23:27] Crystal Fincher: Yep. Absolutely. And I want to talk about our neighbors in Eastern Washington - in Spokane, because there are some huge races over there with Naghmana Sherazi and Zack Zappone running for City Council there against conservative opponents. There was an article about some of the tricks that the Realtors Association was using over there and all of the money that's pouring into oppose these progressive candidates, who are speaking for the regular people of Spokane, right? And not these entrenched monied interests who are used to having control there - and how they're hiding the positions of their preferred members while trying to put others on blast, and just holding double standards - using their deep, deep pockets to attack progressive candidates. Really, that turned ugly and they've been exposed for that. But one of the challenges and why you continue to see them spend money in these races is that - they don't make the wisest decisions when it comes to spending a lot of times. But they just spend so much - it's like they'll spend a dollar per voter. When you look at the amount of voter, it's a lot of money or more, just to get a small percent of them - because they know just that small percent, even if they spend $300,000 to do it, is going to yield them more money if they elect their candidates and get their tax breaks and allow them to continue with the same business practices that have lined their pockets to date.
So again, talking about adopt a candidate, make phone calls for them - you can phone bank remotely - it's really simple and easy. But Zack Zappone and Naghmana Sherazi - two excellent inspirational candidates who really are voices for the people - bringing a lot of lived experience and compassion, actual literal compassion to the table. So I hope people also support them.
Then you have candidates like Kiara Daniels in Tacoma - just a lot of great candidates running locally for a lot of positions that I hope people listening to this program support and encourage others to support.
[00:25:51] Michael Charles: I also - I mean, not to pivot too hard, but to think how do we fix this problem of money in politics - it's just such a daunting task. When we think about the role that - when you can just throw more money at a problem and politics, and we know in policy that doesn't work, why would we think that that's going to work just because we get people elected that way? I mean, I think you can think of a million examples of where that's frustrating. But I just think that you can think example after example of how money is really - plays an outsize role year after year in the outcomes of elections and the people voting in their own interests.
[00:26:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. When someone is spending half a million dollars in a race, when interests are spending half a million dollars in a race - you have to ask, why are they investing that much? They must be getting a return greater than their spending in that. Why are they making that investment? What kind of a return are they looking to see? It's really challenging. I think positive steps were taken with Honest Campaigns, Honest Elections with Democracy Vouchers. It certainly broadens the base that candidates speak to in terms of voters, right? I think that's a positive thing. I think allowing more people to be taken seriously and treated legitimately, since money is a marker of viability in our elections - that's a positive thing.
But that has nothing to do with spending caps, right? It doesn't prevent any of that at all. At the end of the day, we're coming again to - people who have the deepest pockets are blasting the loudest bullhorn. They're able to talk to more voters in the City of Seattle. I mean, when you're sending mailers to 170,000 people, just as a campaign, before your backup as an IE spends $300,000 almost $400,000 to have your back, right? I don't know how we address that without spending caps. I don't know how we address that without truly publicly-financed campaigns. This is a problem, it's a problem. I would like to solve it. Almost certainly any solution certainly takes money out of - all of this money that's being spent on this is going to different consulting firms like CN4, which was previously known as a Democratic consulting firm, but is now working for Republican Ann Davison. I mean just the commission on that cable buy was $30,000, right? So it's just - yes, any solution will necessarily cut the money that's coming to political consultants, particularly larger political consulting firms. But I think you and I are sitting here both as political consultants saying something's got to give - because if you can just spend your way to victory, which is where we're at now, not saying that's going to turn it out. But spend your way to competitiveness, spend your way to get through a primary, right? To be part of the conversation and to steer this conversation - they've spent their way into steering this conversation, and looking at the kind of rhetoric that they're using that you referenced is - it's really hyperbolic, it's not in line with data and facts, but everyone's getting it. They see that and that gives it an air of legitimacy. It is a problem and we need to figure out some way to address this in a more comprehensive manner.
[00:29:49] Michael Charles: I mean, we're saying that as political consultants that certainly benefit from these higher prices, no doubt. But at the same time, I feel like democracy is the one taking the big hit out of all this and the ability to fairly have conversations in the public realm.
[00:30:08] Crystal Fincher: I completely agree. I'll let you have that last word, wise as it is. And thank everybody for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM this Friday, October 29th, 2021. Our chief audio engineer at KVRU is Maurice Jones Jr. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. Our wonderful insightful co-host today was Michael Charles, Managing Partner at Upper Left Strategies. You can find Michael on Twitter @mikeychuck, that's M-I-K-E-Y C-H-U-C-K. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, that's F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
Today Crystal is joined by candidate for King County Council District 3, Sarah Perry. They discuss Sarah’s vision for community involvement in the district, how Sarah would work with communities that have been fully ignored by the incumbent Kathy Lambert, and her opponents outrageous take on sexual assault (among other things), supporting small businesses, and much more.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s guest, Sarah Perry, at @perryelect. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
Night by Elie Wiesel: https://bookshop.org/books/night-9780374500016/9780374500016
“’Don’t go to a hotel room’ with a drunk man. Councilmember Kathy Lambert’s full KUOW interview” by Sydney Brownstone and Isolde Raftery from KUOW:https://www.kuow.org/stories/word-for-word-this-is-what-kathy-lambert-said
“Seattle Times Rescinds Kathy Lambert Endorsement Over Racist Mailer” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/10/12/seattle-times-rescinds-kathy-lambert-endorsement-over-racist-mailer/
“About the GMA [Growth Management Act” from Future Wise: http://www.futurewise.org/growth-management-act
“2018 Small Business Profile” from the U.S. Small Business Administration: https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small-Business-Profiles-US.pdf
“Washington trails the nation in mental health treatment” by Drew Atkins from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/2016/07/how-washington-is-failing-the-mentally-ill
“Chicago attorney, activist picked as King County’s new director of Office of Law Enforcement Oversight” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/chicago-attorney-activist-picked-as-king-countys-new-director-of-office-of-law-enforcement-oversight/
More information about Sarah Perry’s campaign for King County Council: https://www.electsarahperry.org/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I'm very excited to have Sarah Perry joining us - candidate for King County Council. Welcome!
[00:00:46] Sarah Perry: Thank you - I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me.
[00:00:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah - I am thrilled and excited - this is another race outside of Seattle. Sometimes we can get so Seattle-centric and focused on that, but man, there's a lot going on outside of Seattle that is hugely important to our region - impactful to the City, to the County, to our State realistically. And this is one of the most consequential races we face because this isn't just two people on the margins who agree on a lot of stuff. This isn't one of those - this may be a blowout race. This is highly competitive. You're running against an incumbent Republican - Kathy Lambert. This is in an Eastside district - so Issaquah, Redmond, Sammamish, some unincorporated King County - and wow, this is one of the premier races this cycle. What made you decide to run?
[00:01:45] Sarah Perry: I am so committed to civic engagement. I have a background in nonprofit and government sectors. I was the first Eastside - I was the first executive director for Eastside Housing, which is now Springboard Alliance at the base of Avondale and Redmond. And went from there to Seattle University and then to Social Venture Partners International. When I was at Social Venture Partners International, I went to Birkenau - Auschwitz-Birkenau - on the Rick Steves tour with my husband. And I was reading Elie Wiesel's Night - it was two weeks before the Holocaust survivor passed away. I was standing in Birkenau - Auschwitz-Birkenau - where he stood. And that was '16. And I knew in every fiber of my being that she was going to win that election. I just knew it - I felt it in my bones. But if for some chance she didn't win, all I could see were trains of Muslims this time, or trains of immigrants, or trains of people with brown skin because of the rhetoric from the candidate at the time - our former president. And I felt like I had to do something when I got back - something was so moved in me in that experience. And it's still with me and I knew I had to do something.
So I came back home and went to the single most unorganized experience of a 1,000 people - called the Democratic caucus. It was ridiculous. There were people booing with Hillary and with Bernie - it was ridiculous. Five people talking for one minute, one person talking for five minutes - and everybody's upset. And I'm an organizer in my sleep - and so I decided after four hours, I was going to get up and go home, or I was going to go and offer help. So I decided to do that first, and I did. He didn't know if I was friend or foe. I didn't know there was a Legislative District 5. I'd been involved in politics for campaigns - for presidential campaigns - throughout with my family, growing up with my family and my current family, but I had not been more involved. And so I didn't quite understand all of this and this man invited me to come and help with that - with selecting speakers.
The next week, he asked me to come to an executive - what turned out to be an Executive Board for the 5th Legislative District Democrats. And they nominated me as PCO chair on the spot. And I said, "That's great. That's great. What do they do?" And they said, "We don't know. We've never had one." I said, "Okay. Okay." So I was committed. I'm still committed in my marrow. And so I started calling people that were alternates and delegates. I started calling - I wanted an equal balance of people that identified as men and people that identified as women, and people who were supporting Bernie and supporting Hillary at their highest value. I wanted both at their highest value. So we pulled together a group of 24 leaders in '16 and in '17, and we started recruiting volunteers. And then in 2018, we had over 150 canvassers to activate - who knocked on 50 doors once a month for that entire year. And we flipped the 5th District and elected Bill Ramos as State Rep, Lisa Callan as State Rep, and then Kim Schrier also - a big part of the 8th Congressional District is the 5th District. So that experience was electric for me - seeing people, a whole bunch of people, giving a little bit in a way that works in their life - it was just electric. And I was inspired.
And after that I came home - when Bill Ramos was looking like he was going to win, I left Social Venture Partners International, came home and began my work again. I'd started work with Perry Consulting - decade before, two decades before - and I built that up again. And as I was doing this volunteer work - so it was 30 to 40 hours of volunteer work each week - while I had my day job. And as I was doing that, I just continued to be deeply connected to the House and the Senate and the Governor and Bob Ferguson and all these different candidates. So once that happened, the House and the Senate hired me to do the same kind of thing in Puyallup and Vancouver, Washington - and that was amazing. And then pandemic - doing this in the middle of phone calls was a completely different experience, but still the bones were in place.
During that whole time, people were saying, "When are you going to run? When are you going to run? When are you going to run? This is all great. Thanks for organizing. When are you going to run? And when are you going to run specifically for this position?" And I've been thinking about it because what I am at heart is a coalition builder - I love to mobilize people and engage people in shared values. And so I looked at this position very carefully and I realized there are many, many voices that are not being heard from. We have a huge community of Hindu and Muslim, secular Indian and African. We also have Latinos, the Hmong community, African-American community. Many of these voices are not at the table in discussion with our current King County representative. Many have never ever seen her - many, many. There are areas around the environment and around transit that desperately need support and need attention and need complex thinking, not simple singular solutions. And I am ready to take that on and I am thrilled with the opportunity.
And the first thing I did was I called Bob Ferguson and I said, "I'm thinking about doing this. Am I nuts? What do you think?" And he said, "If you do this, I will move everything in my power to help you get elected." I said, "That is amazing. Why would you do that? I mean, thank you, but why would you do that?" And he said, "Because we've been looking for someone for years who could run in this position and represent the values of this district and where we need to go. And if anybody can do it, you can do it." So that just continued to move forward, continued to move forward - and I got a similar message from so many people and yeah, I am completely, completely electric about this opportunity for coalition building so we have civic engagement throughout KCD 3.
[00:08:25] Crystal Fincher: And that's what makes me so excited about you. I had mentioned to you before - a mutual friend of ours was who first turned me on to you. And it was just like, "You know what? There is this woman in Issaquah who," - and Issqauah was not organized in any way - in the Democratic party, outside. Many people had kind of written off in terms of organization or engagement - the Eastside. Certainly that County Council district is represented by a Republican - it's purple if not red. Hey, let's go focus somewhere else. And there, there wasn't much going on there. And you basically said, "Yeah I'm just going to do this." And knocked on doors in neighborhoods, found Precinct Committee Officers who are critical to increasing turnout and to helping people get out the vote for Democratic candidates and left-leaning candidates - critical, especially in districts represented by Republicans. And just did the work. I appreciate people who just do the work.
[00:09:38] Sarah Perry: I appreciate people who do the work too.
[00:09:43] Crystal Fincher: So that's what got me so excited - because not only were you willing to do the work, but you were effective - you were highly successful in recruiting PCOs and reaching out to members of all different types of communities and bringing everyone together. And as you said, you were - I feel that you were critical - you were a critical component in flipping the Legislative District. And certainly the coalition that you are continuing to build is certainly propelling you in this race and wow, what a competitive race it is.
And just in case people have not been paying close attention to this district race with Kathy Lambert. Kathy's a problem. Kathy is a proud Republican - praised Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, voted against storing guns safely, voted against pro-choice causes. Joe Fain, a former Senator - State Senator in the 47th district - was credibly accused of rape, ended up losing his seat - that certainly contributed to it. And she blamed the victim and went as far as saying, "Hey, when I was younger, slapping a woman on the butt was a compliment." Now to be clear - Joe Fain was accused of much more than that, but just that - like who does that today? You know - just take it as a compliment, who should know - and just blindly defending Joe Fain. It's just problem, upon problem, upon problem.
And so the values that she represents are so far away from where people are at today. Looking at how the district has been voting, it's been trending far away from that and getting further away. So the primary was interesting - it was a competitive primary and who is going to be the Democrat who comes out to face Kathy Lambert. This is a top two primary, but it is a Democrat and a Republican. And so you wound up being the choice of the community and of progressives to go up against Kathy Lambert - and wow. How do you begin to address the needs and the issues of the community when you have someone so extreme, and so problematic, and out of touch with people? What's it like to run against that? And what are you focused on getting accomplished first?
[00:12:34] Sarah Perry: Thanks. You know - she is who she is, she's who she's always been. And we can no longer afford to have simple solutions. And part of the challenge is that she's been here for 20 years since Bush was in office. And our district has changed so much since then - 68% of our district voted for Biden. Bob Ferguson, Mike Pellicciotti - they're at 65% - it really is very strong in that direction. But that aside, she is a strong supporter, as you say, of Betsy DeVos - I'm a strong supporter of public education. And when I look at the district and because of the work that I've done in Issaquah - so I've lived in Issaquah for 21 years, North Bend for six years, worked and played throughout the district - I love this district. I love the cities of Issaquah, Sammamish and Redmond. We have unincorporated Woodinville, we have these beautiful towns of Duvall, Carnation, Snoqualmie, Skykomish, Fall City. One third of our district is unincorporated, and when you look at the primary, that's where she had any of her strength and the 40% that she received of the vote was from that area - 60% between me and the other Democratic challenger, Joe Cohen, who turned around and endorsed me - for which I'm very grateful.
You know - I feel that with the work that we're doing at the doors, with the support that we've been able to raise, the endorsements that we've been able to raise - I have a few folks that would have otherwise voted for her and supported her, but feel so strongly that she's just not able to get the work done anymore on council. They don't feel the same way about the others, but they feel this way about her. And so, essentially, we need a fighter in this position. And I think people know that - I think people are also - they get tired of the same person for so long, especially in a district that has shifted so much. So many new families have moved in and so much more diversity. And we just have a lot of work to do here. So when I'm talking to the environmental community, they just come right in - and they're excited that I am focused on Growth Management Act and keeping the growth in our urban boundaries. They're excited that we set up zoning laws to protect our farmers and our farmland - not so that somebody can come along and allow businesses to be set up, favorite friends or whatever, and not have the mitigation for the sewer, so that the sewage runs into the farmland and into the waterways. And it's those businesses, but not these businesses - so I'm a middle child and things have to be fair.
And so it really - I'm really okay with what we do, but we have to do it together. We have to have this conversation together - look at how all of the communities are impacted, make sure there's an environmental impact statement, and go from there. We do need to upgrade the Growth Management Act - it's absolutely true, but we have five forests and four watersheds. We have federal, state, county, city and private forest. We have so much space - 500 of the 1,500 miles of unincorporated roads are in this district. People come out here from all over the place and because we're the second fastest growing district in the next 10 years next to Bellevue - Claudia's is also in there. We have so much to protect if we're going to meet our environmental impact goals. So people - it's resonating with the environmental community, it's resonating with the transit community who understands that we need to make it very convenient for people to get out of their single-use vehicles into electric shuttles or the bike lane or walkways. And also that we are focusing on safe communities from a collaborative standpoint, so that we have folks working together who are most impacted with the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight, with the new Sheriff - making sure that the people who feel most impacted by any bias that might be going on are in that conversation together. And we do it together. And when we lean in, things only improve. And so having more civic engagement is a very exciting thing to me. And I think when we have these conversations one after the other, it just seems to be resonating with people and they're coming on board.
So she raised a $100,000, she spent a $100,000 in the primary. She's got another $140,000 from 20 years of not being seriously challenged that she's bringing into the general. And I spent so much of my money - I've got half of that right now. It doesn't look like that on the PDC, but I've got half of that to be able to meet all of the challenges for these next three weeks before the ballots arrive. So I'm just working really hard to shore up that support so that we can have the digital and cable and mailings that we need, 'cause I know that that's her focus - digital.
[00:17:53] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely.
[00:17:53] Sarah Perry: Yeah.
[00:17:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Now there's a lot that going to be on your plate, if and when you get elected. We're facing so many crises that are converging and making each other crisis worse. We're still in the middle of this pandemic, we're still dealing with COVID - and it's a huge problem. And negotiating through how this is being handled at schools, at local businesses, just in the community. There's an eviction cliff coming and getting the assistance out that has been provided for at the County has been a major problem. And getting the funds that are already earmarked to help people prevent eviction hasn't quite been happening. And so there's still a massive risk of people who are behind on their rent - most of them multiple months. We've got people struggling - the have-nots have less, the haves have even more throughout this pandemic. And so there are people who are really at the margins just struggling - who've been put out of work, who've had hours reduced - a lot of uncertainty with businesses as we continue to negotiate through COVID and more. How do you address all of that? What is the plan?
[00:19:26] Sarah Perry: That is a great question. One of the first things that I'm going to do is build a KCD 3 community coalition. So what I want is I want people at the table. I want people looking at current practices and policies from each of our communities, from education and business, environmental, from our secular Indian and African communities, our Hindu, our Muslim communities, our Sikh, Latino, African-American. I want everybody at that conversation so that we can look at where King County is impacting with the tax dollars - all of its residents and where it's completely missing it.
I'm also very appreciative of the work that Senator Manka Dhingra and Claudia Balducci have done. They've met with business owners from the communities of color every month all year - throughout the pandemic - all year last year, and into this year. And the current incumbent in this district has not attended one. I just don't understand that. And so I'm very excited to work with communities of color and businesses. I believe that when our small businesses thrive, our communities thrive. I know they provide half the jobs in this country - they're the second most trusted institution in this country and in every community they need to thrive. And that's why we're doing a small business Saturday video - I'm going to continue to do a highlighting of businesses and work to see what we can do to streamline fees and regulations across all seven cities that can be cumbersome and inhibit the success of our small businesses at a critical time - that part's important.
I'm very interested in women - in strengthening women and women's self-sufficiency. I want to see transit options that are working with childcare, that support people in childcare, and needs for elder care. I want to see the support coming in more and more for our labor industry, for women, and for communities of color - in internship programs to strengthen these spaces, to promote a middle-class income.
I want to see our housing really focus in on what we can do. I know that we - the seven cities had to figure out how much housing and the jobs and transit through 2044 - that was a few months back. And Redmond requested the majority - the lion's share of housing in this district through 2044, and that is because of light rail. So there's going to be huge development in Redmond for affordable housing, workforce housing, many different kinds of housing centered around light rail and mass transit opportunities. In Issaquah, there's 8,000 apartments and townhouses coming in. In the foreseeable future, there's just a lot of development of this kind of housing. And I want to make sure that it's not just affordable, but that it's attainable. I want to see people be able to live, work and play in the same community if that is their choice. That impacts our social texture, it impacts our environment, it impacts all of the areas that are of most critical concern.
And because this is one of the two fastest growing region, districts in all of nine districts in King County, we have to get a hold of this. We have to pay attention to how we're going to do this together in a smart way. So I want to be in that conversation, but I'm not going to wear the white cape and step up and say, "Thanks for waiting. Here's the solution." I'm going to bring in people who are closest to the issue at hand and experts in the area - in these different spaces and have that dialogue together so that it is informed by the communities. That is what is critically missing in this district - is that things are not informed by the communities. There's a solution that's too simple, that's brought up and moved forward, and nobody will vote for it on council, and it goes nowhere, and it's talked about over and over and over for years and nothing happens.
So we need to shake that up and do it differently and act as if every single resident, the voice of every single resident, matters. And I mean whether they agree with each other or not - I want a good balance of people who are grounded in their values. Like my husband and I, we don't always get along and I can be strong, he can be strong - but we put the marriage in the middle of that conversation. It is the health of the marriage that we look at when we are moving forward. And I want the health of our community as the thing that we look at when we are moving forward. But I want people who feel strongly and have divergent viewpoints and they're grounded in their values - I want those folks at the table - not for the fight, but for the movement forward. .
[00:24:20] Crystal Fincher: Well, and that's an interesting point that you bring up. And one that - in talking with a lot of candidates - there's wanting to get community and put - absolutely necessary and needing to make sure that you are including people who are impacted in solutions. If you don't, they're not going to work - they're certainly not going to serve everybody. But at the end of the day, you have to make a decision one way or the other. How do you parse hearing different viewpoints, talking to different communities, having sometimes competing interests, sometimes just different interests that aren't necessarily competing - just different? How do you parse that at the end of the day? And I guess - what is your North Star, when you're saying first and foremost, I have to make sure that I deliver this for the community - how do you parse that?
[00:25:15] Sarah Perry: Greatest good is always my North Star - what is the greatest good? What is the least suffering? Who is suffering the most? So when everybody does better, everybody does better, right? So I want to make sure that we are looking at our communities that are struggling the most, that are in the most vulnerable situation. And look at that as the guidepost for how we get to better - because better is determined by your weakest space. And weakest not being the people - people are often very strong, but they are not listened to or deliberately ignored. And we need to make sure that we are hearing what is best for each of the communities and engaging. And at the end of the day, I'm going to look at the greatest good - what's happening for our children, what's happening for our seniors, what's happening for our women.
These are things that sit with me - women really rock the communities. They hold the communities and they need to be supported in raising their families and in supporting elder parents. And what does that mean? That means when they need to be supported - it means recognizing that childcare and eldercare is not women's work. It's the work of our future collectively. So it's really a telltale that so many of our women have had to leave the workforce because they're paid less in the partnerships, they're paid less for the same job. They leave the workforce to take care of the children or to take care of their elder parents. And the challenge there is that they're then sacrificing their advancement, their financial prosperity in the future, their children's education and advancement in the future. There are so many dominoes to that - that fall. And so, you know, I'm really focused on how we take care of our children and our elderly and our most vulnerable first - as a society, as a people.
[00:27:21] Crystal Fincher: Well and we're in a situation where we're seeing the most vulnerable suffering in ways that are heartbreaking and frankly unnecessary - they're results of policy decisions - whether it's looking at our sizable unhoused population, people dealing with mental illness and mental health issues, which has certainly been aggravated by everything that people have had to deal with throughout this pandemic. And people just wanting to feel safe in their neighborhoods and not necessarily feeling that way - that those who currently are in charge of policing don't always serve the goal of public safety for everyone. How do you address that?
[00:28:08] Sarah Perry: Yeah. Homelessness - not having housing - is a complicated issue. And you might have folks who are struggling with behavioral health - we, in my family, have had the opportunity, the unfortunate opportunity, to see the acute failure of our state in this area - in our family. And seeing that firsthand - watching what's possible, watching how it works with a family that can have choices - as we had the privilege of choice to go to other states. Others don't have that option. This affects all of us and people could be - they could not have housing because they had behavioral health issues that Washington State really does not have the training and the resources and the personnel and the psychiatric hospital beds to address. We are below Tennessee. We are below Mississippi. This is a great state. Why is that? Why is that, right?
And Manka Dhingra has done amazing work. She's moved us up - we were 48th. We're now like 35th - something like that - because of her work. She's such a Trojan, such a champion in this area. It could be because somebody has a behavioral health issue and is not getting the medication, the counseling, the psychiatry, and the support they need to get through that blip in their life - and it becomes a catastrophe rather than a blip, and where they can then go on to live a meaningful stable life. Or it could be substance use disorders - so addiction is serious and real and heavy. It's opioid, it's alcohol, it's other drugs - sometimes that's used to self-medicate with behavioral health needs. Sometimes it's just the pure addiction unto itself - it needs its own set of complicated, not simple solutions - complicated, not simple solutions for mental health, for behavioral health needs as well.
And then you also might just be - you've got your kids, you're living in a car because why - well, you're working - but you have to pay childcare, which costs the same as another mortgage or rent. So you can scrape that together to keep your kids stable and you're working and you're living in your car - first, last and deposit without behavioral health issues, without substance use issues - just plain too expensive without enough support. These are complicated issues, but we are a smart people. We are a smart, smart people, and we can figure this out. But the only way we can figure it out is if we own it as our issue. Yeah, 1% or 2% are given a bus fare from Florida or somewhere else - one-way to Seattle - that is true, but it's a phenomenal thing. Phenomenology thing - it's 1% or 2% - the rest start in the zip code that they end up in. These are our people - they're my weird Uncle Al, or they're our kids, or they're our siblings, or they're parents. All of these are our people, and until we embrace that as a solution that cannot be swept away - people don't - human beings don't go away. It's not going to go away until we lean into it and engage and embrace and look at these solutions together and own it together. It's complicated, but it's only through that complicated, sophisticated work together that we can come to a solution and we can do it.
And I am excited to be in a district here that can support folks being safe, finding housing, feeling safe walking around in their communities, walking into businesses, not having to walk on needles and excrement, feeling safe in that way. Knowing that they have law enforcement who are not the bad apples, but the good apples that have stuck around and they want to understand their own racial bias and they want to comply with the accountability and transparency. They're the leading edge in those conversations because they know it's critical and they're in it and they welcome it - like our new Director of the Law Enforcement Oversight. He knows - he knows that he has to lean into the community and if the community doesn't work with him, it won't work. He knows that. Well, that is an amazing first start. And he's Muslim. That's a lovely thing too.
[00:32:18] Crystal Fincher: Well, I appreciate the thoughtfulness that you've taken in your approach and just how you've involved the entire community. If people want to learn more about your campaign, get involved - how do they do that?
[00:32:34] Sarah Perry: ElectSarahPerry.org is the website, and there are opportunities for weekend canvasses or canvases during - we go every single day - I'm knocking on 50 doors a day. But people can go knock if they're comfortable - we show them, we take all safety protocols - only vaccinated folks and still wearing masks. But they can do that - we are doing phone banks, we are doing text banks. They can make a contribution to support our campaign. We'll be doing sign wavings. We got lots of opportunities with labor to do sign wavings as well and lit drops - all of those things are in place and they can check out our website, give us a call. We would love to get anybody involved at the level - lots or little time - they like to do it - to make, to be effective and to feel like they're contributing to changing democracy because this district needs that change. And we need you with us to win.
[00:33:28] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, it does. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. We're going to be keeping our eye on this. It's one of the biggest opportunities this cycle to make a big change from a Republican district to a Democratic one. And in one of the biggest, most prosperous districts and the biggest county in the state - that's incredibly impactful. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today.
[00:33:55] Sarah Perry: Thank you for having me - really, really appreciate being here and you elevating this and letting folks know what's happening on the Eastside.
[00:34:03] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Chang. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I and now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officalhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
Today Hacks & Wonks Week in Review is back after a brief hiatus! Crystal is joined by Co-founder of the Mercury Group and previous Chief of Staff to Mike McGinn, Julie McCoy to discuss the charges filed against Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer by Attorney General Bob Ferguson for falsely accusing his Black newspaper carrier of threatening his life leading to an overwhelming police response, the case for the Attorney General conducting an investigation into Jenny Durkan’s deleted text messages, and analysis of new polling out this week of the election coming up on November 2nd and what the campaigns should be doing to reach the voters they need to win.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Julie McCoy, at @mcjulie87. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer charged with false reporting in January confrontation with newspaper carrier” by Jim Brunner and Christine Clarridge from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/pierce-county-sheriff-ed-troyer-charged-with-false-statements-in-january-confrontation-with-newspaper-carrier/
“Criminal charges filed against Pierce County sheriff” from the Washington State Office of the Attorney General: https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/criminal-charges-filed-against-pierce-county-sheriff
“Durkan Destroys 10 Months of Text Messages in Apparent Coverup” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/05/13/durkan-destroys-10-months-of-text-messages-in-apparent-coverup/
Polling results from the Northwest Progressive Institute, via The Cascadia Advocate: https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/category/elections
Candidate Forums:
Previously Recorded: Seattle Mayoral Public Safety Forum conducted by the ACLU of Washington: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=1228402674346629
Upcoming on Saturday, October 23rd: The Great Debate 2021 conducted by Urbvote, Rainier Arts Center, and The Emperors Group: https://www.facebook.com/events/529623018366265/
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work, with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we are continuing, after a bit of a hiatus, with our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome to the program, for the first time, today's co-host, co-founder of The Mercury Group and previous chief of staff to Mike McGinn, Julie McCoy.
[00:00:55] Julie McCoy: Thank you so much for having me - I'm excited.
[00:00:58] Crystal Fincher: I am excited for you to be here. Again, you have just so much knowledge and context about what's gone on in the City - a previous chief of staff in the mayor's office and instrumental to both the McGinn win and administration, which realistically, after the past two and a half administrations has been vindicated on a whole lot. You were chief of staff with a more conservative Council and a more progressive mayor's office. Now those dynamics are flipped and we'll talk about some of them and the mayor's race in a minute.
But I wanted to start off today talking about a story that - some news broke earlier in the week - in that Pierce County Sheriff, Ed Troyer, was charged with two misdemeanors because he was, for some reason, chilling, I guess, in his driveway or something in the wee hours of the morning, saw a Black man in his neighborhood - Black man just doing his job delivering newspapers - and was so uncomfortable with that, he decided to tail him, follow him, not saying anything, but did it for quite some time. And then ended up, with no provocation from the man just doing his job, called in a report saying that the man threatened his life and called in - and a police response ensued. That was completely false. It was made up. He quickly stopped repeating it, but we all know how scenarios like that can happen and that news carrier is lucky to be alive. It was just really an egregious abuse of power - he harassed and intimidated that man and then took action that certainly violated his civil liberties and could have gotten him killed. What did you see in that process, Julie?
[00:03:00] Julie McCoy: Yeah. It was, as you said, just an absolute egregious abuse of power, first and foremost. I mean, people like to pretend that we know our neighbors, we know what's happening in our community - especially police officers. And how he - first to start with - how he didn't know that this was his newspaper carrier in his own neighborhood just is unfathomable to start with. Then the abuse of power in making that call and then the over-response - the number of police officers that showed up was insane. I mean, I don't even know what to say. To have - I think it was 14 patrol cars show up - that is just incredibly lucky that nothing bad happened. I mean, nothing worse happened. It could have been deadly. It's shocking that he continues to hold this position - that this is a "political witch hunt," I think, is what he's calling it.
[00:03:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah - he is certainly playing the victim. There is an op-ed today by Matt Driscoll in the News Tribune that's talking about - he's saying that this is just an anti-police hit job, and this is all just trumped-up charges to prove a political point - when he's acting like he's not on tape accusing a man of threatening to kill him, trapping him in a location - he said his vehicle was blocked in - and which of course created a humongous police response. And thank goodness that this man kept his composure, did his part to try and de-escalate and get out of the situation, and didn't respond - as he would've been justified to when someone is just harassing you and lying to you - but unfortunately, probably would've ended with the loss of his life. We continue to rely on civilians to have the professionalism that people in public safety are lacking. And the consequence for not being more disciplined, more respectful, more controlled than the person in the position of power is death or incarceration. It is just egregious.
I think it is definitely a step in the right direction that the Attorney General chose to look into these charges. Certainly the Pierce County Sheriff's Office is no stranger to problems and controversy, and so having someone outside of that department looking into this was positive. I'm sure lots of people, including myself, can talk about our feelings about two misdemeanors for falsely reporting on these, but you were talking about earlier, before we were on, about the precedent this sets of the Attorney General looking into issues like this, which I think we have seen just off-the-top increases the amount of accountability. Whether it's enough, we'll see, but certainly is an improvement in the litany of cases we've seen where, "Hey, we investigated ourselves and turns out we think we did nothing wrong." - when everyone can see what happened. Do you think that is a trend that should continue?
[00:06:28] Julie McCoy: A hundred percent. I really hope it does. I think Ferguson stepping in and doing the investigation, alone, just provides so much more accountability than if this had been done in-house. I mean, regardless of what they said in-house, they just don't have the credibility to make sure that the public believes it anymore. There's just been too many examples of cover-ups and sweeping under the rug and diminishing charges that we're at that point, especially when these charges are leveled at the top of these police forces - police chiefs, captains - we need somebody else to step in like a Bob Ferguson. I think it's really important that we lead with accountability and not just say we're leading with accountability - that means an investigation.
We've got a long track record of dishonesty being a charge that can result in firing. That's been proven over and over again - Seattle Police Department, Tacoma - police departments have flat out said, "If you lie, that is grounds for dismissal." I'm not sure how you can say the police chief of Tacoma [sic: Pierce County Sheriff] - he lied. He flat out lied about what he did. Now, obviously he's elected so you can't really fire him, but these are accountability issues that need to be taken very seriously. I would love it if Bob Ferguson would come into Seattle and take a look at some of the issues that we've had in the Seattle Police Department.
[00:08:09] Crystal Fincher: Amen.
[00:08:11] Julie McCoy: The OPA and OIG - it's not getting done at the local level, and we have not established that we can trust those investigations anymore. Paramount to public safety is trust in your police department, and until that is re-established, we're not going to get anywhere.
[00:08:33] Crystal Fincher: One, and interesting situations - police department and issues where you are dealing with some high-powered executives and electeds - we have a situation where the current mayor, Jenny Durkan is - texts are gone. It looks like they were gone through willful intentional action, and if that's the case, then that's illegal - and we are not talking about any kind of accountability for that. Is that a situation that you see the Attorney General could be useful?
[00:09:08] Julie McCoy: Absolutely. Absolutely. When you've got a mayor, the fire chief, the police chief, and four members of the command staff for the chief of police - all having mysterious deleted texts - which nobody in their right mind can say that this was a technology issue across the board. I mean, NPR did the most - I think - I think NPR's done the most deep dive in this investigation. It's ludicrous to pretend like there is not a significant issue here - both from a public safety perspective, as well as an accountability perspective. And if it's the mayor and the chief of police and the chief of fire - who's going to investigate that? Who's really going to investigate to get to the bottom of it? NPR did a great job. But this is a situation, I think, where absolutely the Attorney General should come in. I mean, this is not just a matter of public records. There's something that happened that they won't tell us, and that's a huge problem. You cannot have true public safety if we do not have accountability.
[00:10:18] Crystal Fincher: I agree. That's an absolute fact. And I am confused as to why Seattle Ethics and Elections has not taken action to refer that - that is certainly within their sphere of responsibility. They can do that, so it just - and agreeing with Jenny Durkan's politics or not - in a similar situation with Obama was decent on some things, not decent on some others - and it's okay when they're not decent to say they're not decent on some others. Whistleblower protections and press freedoms were not the best thing in the Obama administration - talked about that quite a bit at that point in time. And the reason why you hold even people in your party, or your allies, or people on your "side" accountable - is because that sets a precedent for what other people can do. The last thing we want is people being like, "Okay. Game has changed. Now we're just going to communicate privately and delete it all. It doesn't matter." And the fact that this was so pervasive at the highest levels of administration in our public safety departments and in the mayor's office, is just really concerning. So we'll see how that unfolds, but right now, Ed Troyer, Pierce County Sheriff - Ed Troyer's charged with two criminal offenses, two misdemeanors, and we will continue to follow and see how that goes.
Now I want to talk about the little elections that are coming up here in a little less than two weeks. This week we saw some polling that came out from NPI Advocate in a number of races. I'll start off by saying - we don't have all the information on these polls. As we've talked about before, if we don't have all of the poll information, you have to take it with a grain of salt. We don't know a lot of information about the sample, we don't have cross tabs, we don't have the source data that is standard to release with polls that are up for public consumption. With that in mind, there were some interesting races.
And I guess just starting out, looking at what they were showing in the race with Teresa Mosqueda and her opponent, Kenneth Wilson - certainly raised a lot of eyebrows - because it had Teresa Mosqueda at 39%, Kenneth Wilson at 31%, and those who were Undecided at 26% - which seems off. How did you read that?
[00:13:09] Julie McCoy: It does. Yeah, to have - I mean, it's probably not surprising to have that high of a number of undecideds at this point, but like I said earlier, I probably couldn't have told you the name of who was running against Teresa Mosqueda before I even saw the poll. It is surprising that somebody's polling that high. And one thing - polling is in a difficult situation nationally, right? I mean, there are so many issues with polling. And one thing that I would put out there with this poll in particular is I think that there's definitely a bias in who is answering the poll. Obviously, a pollster's going to go out there and they're going to try to hit all the demographics they need to hit. They're going to make it statistically viable. Who picks up and answers though, I think tends to be a certain kind of person. I think they tend to be madder at the status quo. I think they've got a reason to kind of let their opinion be heard, so I think you could see some skewing that way in some of these results. It would be surprising to me that a third of the folks that they polled actually knew who this guy was, so it could also be a proxy for how mad people are at the status quo and the Council, which I think we probably see overrepresented in this poll - if I had to guess.
[00:14:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. That would also be my guess. I mean, I notoriously do not like making predictions on races before they happen. I don't necessarily think that's helpful in the general discourse, but this winding up being an eight point race at the end of the day would definitely surprise me. To be fair, I mean, polls are a snapshot in time. This is not claiming - the poll itself - to be, "Hey, this is how things are going to wind up." It is, "This is how people responded at this point in time." It was done early in the week or the week before the ballots.
[00:15:22] Julie McCoy: The 13th to the 15th, somewhere in between.
[00:15:25] Crystal Fincher: So shortly before ballots dropped. One of the things - paying attention to all of the mailers and commercials and videos - I mean, certainly it seems like there's a lot of money at play in these races, and those candidates with a lot of money have been up and communicating with everyone early and often - and potentially that had time to saturate and other candidates' messages have not had time to saturate at that time, but we'll see how this turns out.
There were some other results in this poll. Ann Davison was shown - again, we just talked about some of the challenges with this poll - but it had Ann Davison at 43%, Nicole Thomas-Kennedy at 24%, and those Undecided at 30%. It had a race that was at a 4% difference with Nikkita Oliver and Sara Nelson, which I think was right at the margin of error. It had Bruce and Lorena González separated by - it was over 10 points in this poll, again with a large number of undecided candidates. I mean, in this, it's just challenging to say - given some of the challenges in that we don't have all the information with it yet - but I would say that I definitely agree that I would not look at this as indicative or determining of a final result. I would look at it - there's a lot of people still, even in this scenario where probably more people are saying they're decided than actually are in real life. There's a whole lot of undecided votes and the undecided votes in every single race, more than outweigh any margin that there is between the candidates that was polled. Really, at this point in time - I mean, you are a veteran of campaigns - have consulted for races on the local and national level. As you're looking at the campaigns, what are they looking to do now? What should they be focusing on more than anything else?
[00:17:37] Julie McCoy: Yeah, and you're exactly right. This is just a snapshot in time - of where voters were in that moment. We know a couple things - we know people are voting later and later and later in these elections, and so there is a lot of time to move undecided voters at this point. If I were out there helping a campaign right now, I would be looking to connect with people as soon as possible. We know people tend to vote over the weekends. It's a great time be flooding messages out there. I think this weekend and next weekend will be extremely important for these campaigns to really connect with their voters, figure out who they are trying to talk to, and deliver. These are two huge weekends for these campaigns. I think there's a ton of time left, but these campaigns have got to break through the noise out there that's happening right now. There's a lot of noise.
And I think one thing that we do know from all the polling, that's shown over and over again, is dealing with the crisis of homelessness is the number one issue and public safety is coming up right behind it. Honestly, I think public safety is a little bit of a proxy in this election, and I really think the homelessness crisis is what voters want to talk about right now.
[00:19:09] Crystal Fincher: One of the things that - one, your point that people are voting later and later - absolutely the case. There are fewer ballots that came in this time than we've seen in the recent past here in these local elections. Most of the ballots are still out. An overwhelming majority of the ballots have not been returned yet, and so people are still making decisions. And even in those polls - those polls that were done kind of asked a two-stage question. Kind of started off saying, "Who do you prefer?" And they gave a preference or they said that they didn't know. And after that answer, they then pushed the people who said they didn't know even harder, "Okay. If you had to choose, who would you choose?" And then they chose after that, so those aren't people who are like, "I've got my candidate, I'm here." Those are people who are like, "What do I know about either one of them?" What I think is also a fact, just in general and that polling certainly bears it out, is that not only are people undecided, they're unfamiliar with candidates. I think it's really easy for a lot of people to overestimate the amount of people who are plugged in to campaigns, and especially if you're very online or engaged in campaign worlds - everyone around you is talking about this and living and breathing it all day long. It has been a months-long slog - you're looking at all the forums. I mean, some of this stuff sounds tired and redundant to you and you know what everyone is saying and all that. And now you're reacting to things that have happened in the past, and it's a very different conversation than literally the majority of the voting public who is just tuning into these races right now.
Most people can't name a City Council person at all - anyone. Many people, if not most, can't name the mayor of the City. There's a big divide between the circles of people who are very tuned in and the amount of people who are just generally tuned out for a lot of different reasons. I think it does campaigns well and the general public to understand that there's a lot of people who kind of figure out that there's an election when they see their ballot in their mailbox. And so everything before then, they haven't quite seen yet or they're just starting to hear and see the litany of mailers and commercials and digital ads, but this is all new information to them, and they are not familiar with the candidates. And if so, it's just in the briefest of references or introductions, so there's just a lot of people who don't even really know the candidates yet. It's not that they're weighing all the issues and they know both candidates and they can't make up their mind. A lot of them just don't know yet - want to vote, will get around to it, but they don't know.
And so to your point, talking to voters as early and as often as possible - it's talking to that 100,000 people who are just now tuning in. I mean, the last mayoral race - 215,000 people voted - and so it becomes really easy when you have hundreds and literally thousands of people being like, "Hey, things are great. I'm familiar. I'm tuned in." I mean, you may get that 50,000 who's like, "I know you. I got you." Okay. What are you doing with the other 150,000? Of those voters that you think you can realistically get, how are you communicating with them? How are you making your message understandable and something that they can connect to if they don't have all of the context of the past several months? If you're just introducing yourself to them today, which is happening - how are you communicating in a way that they understand who you are and what your vision is for Seattle? I think that's the biggest charter that these campaigns have, and their biggest job is really connecting with those voters.
[00:23:20] Julie McCoy: I think that's exactly right. Again, to your point earlier, a lot of people are reporting 18% Undecided, but that was a second-push question. Really the Undecided - in my opinion - really the Undecided number is probably the first number - 28% and probably higher than that, because like I said earlier, I really believe people who take polls have a predominance to know what they want to say. And so I think that number is probably even higher than 28%, in terms of Undecided, and they have not voted yet for the most part. There's a lot of clock left and there's a lot of opportunity here for candidates to go out and connect, and I think it's really important that candidates make that move now because they're voting - they want to know, they want to make an informed decision - and there's been so much upheaval. The pandemic, last summer - it's been terrible, right? We've been living under this dark cloud for so long and people want to be reassured. They want to know where you're going to go. They want to know what your vision is, and they want you to connect emotionally, I think. I think so often we get hung up on policies and plans and being exactly right about an issue - when yes, that's important, but when you're talking to a voter, they need to connect emotionally with the candidate.
And I feel like across the board, with maybe the exception of Oliver, I think across the board people are not connecting emotionally yet with the voter. I think it's really important that they hear the frustration, they hear the fear. There's a lot of fear out there with the electorate, and I don't blame them, right? We've come out of this horrific pandemic, we've had so much inequality, so much injustice - that people want to be reassured - are you going to fix things? I think that that's a place where a lot of these candidates could make a lot of hay right now, if they'd step into that space.
[00:25:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I mean, certainly I'm sure they are attempting to do that, but I mean, it sounds so simple, but it is a tall order and everything kind of culminates to now - all the money that you raise is so that you can push out paid communications and connect with voters directly. Sometimes you're doing that partially at the doors - it's hard in a citywide election to account for 200,000 people at the doors. So basically the need for paid communication, whether it's mailers or digital ads or videos, or whatever it is - the need for paid communications is necessary in a citywide election.
[00:26:17] Julie McCoy: Absolutely.
[00:26:17] Crystal Fincher: That's just a thing - because voters do need to see something about you beyond the voter guide statement. Again, as much as people who are plugged in have seen tons of stuff - I mean, we're looking at all the mailers, looking at all the ads, we're dissecting all the forums and what everyone is saying and their histories - but the 100,000 people that are not doing that - that are going to vote, but have just been busy with everything - they don't. How do you get to them? And especially when you know your opposition is talking to them - how do you make sure that they understand what you stand for? And most importantly is what you stand for. I mean, there certainly is a place to draw contrasts with your opponent, but they need to know who you are first, before they know how you are different than the opponent. If you only focus on that contrast, that still doesn't tell people who you are and what you're going to do. Fundamentally, people need that to connect. I think to your point, people need that to connect.
[00:27:27] Julie McCoy: Absolutely.
[00:27:28] Crystal Fincher: I think the campaigns are going to be spending a lot of time focusing on just that and talking to as many voters as they possibly can. I mean, there's still a lot of time. Lots of people are timing their - campaigns are timing mailers to come out before the last weekend. Kind of last big push in communication usually happens before the first weekend and right before the last weekend of balloting, so there's still a lot of time and a lot of communication to be done. Given the closeness of some of these races, it's going to make a difference. It's going to matter.
[00:28:05] Julie McCoy: Yeah. We sure have made it difficult - I'm not defending Facebook by any stretch of the imagination, but you know this, Crystal. I mean, how difficult it is to get advertising up for a lot of these races because it's so expensive. It's so expensive. And we are so restricted now from social media advertising, which was - for better or for worse - a really good platform to talk to voters on. You can't really buy any advertising now on social media, I don't think. I mean, you can't buy YouTube pre-roll. It's really hard to connect with voters in this environment. I feel for the campaigns, man, because short of going up on TV or going over the top with Hulu ads, it's hard. It's really hard to connect on a mass communications basis right now. It's hard.
[00:28:58] Crystal Fincher: It's a challenge. We will continue to stay tuned and take a look at what is happening in those races - a lot to come. And I hope we will link in the show notes - a number of forums that have happened recently and get an understanding of what we have there. And with that, we are about at our time for the day, so I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM this Friday, October 22nd - it's October 22nd, this time is flying - 2021. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. Our wonderful co-host today was co-founder of The Mercury Group, Julie McCoy. You can find Julie on Twitter @mcjulie87. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, wherever else you get your podcast - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.
Today on the show, Marco Lowe, Professor at Seattle University’s Institute for Public Service, joins Crystal to discuss the extension of the eviction moratorium, the vital importance of keeping people housed, the departure of Sound Transit CEO Peter Rogoff, City Council candidate Sara Nelson caught in a lie regarding laying off workers at Fremont Brewing, new polling in the Seattle mayoral elections, the increasing impact of climate disasters, and developments in the carpenters’ union strike in our state.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Marco Lowe, at @MarcoLowe. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Seattle eviction moratorium extended into 2022” by Katie Campbell, Dyer Oxley, and Angela King from KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/stories/seattle-eviction-moratorium-extended-into-2022
“King County Scrambling to Distribute Rent Assistance as Eviction Crisis Looms” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/09/23/peter-rogoff-departing-sound-transit-leadership-in-2022/
“Peter Rogoff Departing Sound Transit Leadership in Early 2022” by Stephen Fesler from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/09/23/peter-rogoff-departing-sound-transit-leadership-in-2022/
“A $550-per-hour coach is helping Sound Transit’s chief get along with his employees” by Mike Lindblom from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/a-550-per-hour-coach-is-helping-sound-transits-chief-get-along-with-his-employees/
“Sara Nelson Said Fremont Brewing Didn’t Lay Off Anyone During the Pandemic. Unfortunately, That’s Not True.” by Rich Smith from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2021/09/17/61269041/sara-nelson-said-fremont-brewing-didnt-lay-off-anyone-during-the-pandemic-unfortunately-thats-not-true
Crosscut-Elway Poll for the 2021 Seattle General Election: https://crosscut.com/sites/default/files/files/crosscutelway_0921.pdf
“New Poll Shows Harrell’s GOP Donors, Response to Murray Rape Accusations Could Drive Voters to González” by Rich Smith from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2021/09/20/61276092/poll-shows-harrells-gop-donors-response-to-murray-rape-accusations-could-drive-voters-to-gonzalez
González campaign internal polling: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MMyriegbmkvCj8ePRLa0hKiY7rx0CyH9/view
“Early Polling Indicates Tight Mayoral Race, Potent Lines of Attack Against Harrell” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/09/22/early-polling-indicates-tight-mayoral-race-potent-lines-of-attack-against-harrell/
“Weather Disasters Have Become 5 Times As Common, Thanks In Part To Climate Change” by Eric McDaniel from NPR: https://www.npr.org/2021/09/07/1034607602/weather-disasters-have-become-five-times-as-common-thanks-in-part-to-climate-cha
“The Greatest Killer in New Orleans Wasn’t the Hurricane. It Was the Heat.” by Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Katy Reckdahl from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/15/us/new-orleans-hurricane-ida-heat.html
“Carpenters union pauses picketing in Seattle after wildcat strikes, dispute with Kshama Sawant” by Heidi Groover from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/carpenters-union-to-pause-picketing-in-seattle-after-wildcat-strikes-dispute-with-kshama-sawant/
“Concerns about safety and legal action grow as carpenter strike ends first week” by Lilly Ana Fowler from KNKX: https://www.knkx.org/2021-09-24/concerns-about-safety-and-legal-action-grow-as-carpenter-strike-ends-first-week
Joe Mizrahi Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/Joe_Miz/status/1441250734150803474
Transcript:
A transcript will be uploaded as soon as possible.
Today on the show Hugo Garcia, City Council candidate for the city of Burien, joins Crystal to discuss the planning for growth and justice in a rapidly changing city, how to create more housing and ensure residents are able to afford to live in a city, and the vital importance of parks and public spaces.
Fun fact from today’s episode: Burien has more than 350 acres of parks.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s guest, Hugo Garcia, at @hugo4burien. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Latino candidates triumph after Burien’s nasty campaign” by Lilly Fowler from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/2017/11/burien-election-city-council-pedro-olguin-jimmy-matta-racism
“Inequality by design: How redlining continues to shape our economy” by Amy Scott from Marketplace: https://www.marketplace.org/2020/04/16/inequality-by-design-how-redlining-continues-to-shape-our-economy/
“How Planning and Zoning Contribute to Inequitable Development, Neighborhood Health, and Environmental Justice” by Wilson et.al in Environmental Justice: http://www.ced.berkeley.edu/downloads/pubs/faculty/hutson_2008_environ-health.pdf
“In Washington state, housing is the question and the answer” by Shaun Scott for Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/opinion/2020/11/washington-state-housing-question-and-answer
“What is sweat equity?” from Habitat for Humanity: https://www.habitat.org/stories/what-is-sweat-equity
“Can Beacon Hill win the fight for quieter skies and a healthier neighborhood?” by Manola Secaira from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/2019/06/can-beacon-hill-win-fight-quieter-skies-and-healthier-neighborhood
“Parks and Health” from the Centers for Disease Control: https://www.cdc.gov/healthyplaces/parks_trails/#health
“Near Roadway Air Pollution and Health: Frequently Asked Questions” from the Environmental Protection Agency: https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-11/documents/420f14044_0.pdf
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm your host, Crystal Fincher. On this show we talk to political hacks and policy wonks to gather insight into local politics and policy through the lens of those doing the work and provide behind-the-scenes perspectives on politics in our state. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by Hugo Garcia and a candidate for City Council in the City of Burien. Hey, how's it going?
[00:01:01] Hugo Garcia: Hey, what's up, Crystal - super excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. It's going well - yes.
[00:01:08] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I've been following your campaign - it looks like it's been going well. I'm thrilled to have you on the show because so many times we talk about Seattle politics, Seattle candidates - there's so much going on outside of the City of Seattle - with a lot of times some different stakes. In Seattle, the conversation is about progressives versus centrists pretty often. And although there are some stark differences and important issues, they don't have the same kind of opposition that you find in a lot of our suburbs - where there are Republicans, there are conservatives, there are people who, for example, are actively campaigning on removing the separation between church and state.
[00:01:56] Hugo Garcia: Right?
[00:01:57] Crystal Fincher: Like your opponent - so I really wanted to talk with you about who you are, about your race, about the stakes, and what's really at stake in these elections - and help people understand just what's going on and how they can help. So I guess starting out, what caused you to run, what got you in this race, and why do you feel you're the best to take on these issues?
[00:02:24] Hugo Garcia: Very much like a lot of folks - prior to the last president, I wasn't really involved - yeah, I'll be honest. And I saw the repercussions of that locally - and so much so that I started to see hate crimes. I'm an immigrant from Mexico - I came here when I was eight years old, I was brought here because of a small business that my dad and his cousins ran in Seattle - but he could afford to raise a family of three on the salary of a waiter and my mom's salary of a part-time lunch lady by having us live in what used to be unincorporated King County, because the City of Burien is really a young city - it's only been around since the mid 90s when it incorporated as a city.
And I just started to see attacks on our people of color, immigrants - specifically our Latinx immigrants - so much so that I saw an event that happened here and it really just turned me around - I did a full 180 and said, "You know what? My privilege as someone that's been here and has been raised here now, I got to make sure I put it to work." So I did a full 180 and had been diving in the last four and a half years into getting civically involved, because I did not want that to spread. I did not want the hate to spread, I did not want the city to become less welcoming and less affordable to working families and people of color, immigrants, refugees. So I've been doing a lot of work on that and I'm excited - I'm super excited because I'm all about Burien.
I've been living here before it became Burien, when it was unincorporated King County, and there's a lot of change. A lot of time has gone by in those 25-30 years and I know all about it. And I think having that perspective, that lived experience from a working family - now I do economic development work for King County. I saw how challenging things were for our family in accessing capital and getting business finances - that's what my background I ended up going into - I started working in banks. That's how I worked at a Latino-focus bank back in 2006, 2007 in Kent. Started working at a local branch before that here in Burien at one of the big banks - set up some of the business accounts for some businesses that are still here today. And I have just made it my mission to support really small business owners locally that go from that really challenging transition of a side hustle, to a micro business, to a small business, and then growing into just a bigger small business. But if you're not at the table, you're on the menu - and that's why I decided to get myself into this race.
[00:05:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And you bring up such a good point in seeing how Burien has grown and changed. As someone over here in Kent, not too far away - you're South King County brethren - seeing many similar things. Moving to Kent before - we were kind of - before a lot of people of color moved to Kent, before Kent became more diverse in every way - economically diverse, ethnically diverse, lots of different types of businesses. The complete economy of the city has changed. And there being realistically a backlash to that by some of the people who wanted to keep outsiders outside and aren't comfortable with growth and aren't comfortable with change. And those being the people who were most entrenched in government, in the community, on boards and commissions - and everything geared towards serving people who had traditionally been here, and not serving, and sometimes just being outwardly hostile to people who were new or coming in. And it seems like Burien is experiencing those same kinds of growing changes.
[00:06:24] Hugo Garcia: Exactly. We have in the last four years, we've seen a lot of that change and we responded. I got involved four and a half years ago - when for the first time ever, we were able to change the leadership of the council. In essence, we flipped it from what had been a traditionally conservative council, to a more progressive leaning council for the first time. We were able to get two Latinx men, a LGBTQ woman representing. And that change also - it was the first time I ever got involved, I ever knocked on doors. I didn't know how to knock on doors before that, but I knew I wanted to because I had to, I had to do what I could. So I was out knocking all the time, I was promoting, I was helping those folks get elected.
Afterwards though, I saw that staying engaged after that hard a cycle is really, really challenging. And even before that, even before you are elected - for the folks that we were able to get into the council - everybody's like, "Ah, okay - well, now they're there." But I found that they needed some more support, so I started to get involved and I stayed involved. So I decided to learn more about the commissions and found my way into the Planning Commission - because as someone that worked in finance and lending, I did some mortgages - I know that redlining and access to capital, it's all about zoning and land use. So I wanted to understand that a little bit better, so that's why I joined the Planning Commission four years ago and started to really work in making recommendations up to those councilmembers that we helped elect - on multifamily housing, on expanding our ADU policy, making sure we update our tree canopy policy and how to protect that. So really getting into understanding what goes on behind the policy, into being a councilmember.
Because I knew if I ever wanted to run for City Council, I would have to be that much more qualified - because I saw how challenging it was that the two Latinx men that ran in their primary in 2017, were behind substantially in the primary - a lot, like over 10 points and it's a small town. They were able to make it up, but it was really fascinating - not fascinating, but I guess it just kept pointing out to me that - the other candidates all were white women did very, very well. They didn't have as much of a struggle to get elected, per se. So that's why I've been doing that work to address that. And I've been learning a lot. The city, it's somewhat midsize city for South King County, we're 55-ish, 55,000 residents. Of those, about 30,000 are registered voters. And of those you'll get maybe 10-13,000 that will actually vote on this odd year, non-presidential election. So very few will actually vote and that's what's happened in the past. You've seen a presentation from a very conservative base and they have made up all the decisions, and we're starting to make that change, and I'm excited to be a part of that and have a say to be able to share my lived experience.
[00:10:02] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I love it. I love that you got on the Planning Commission, I'm a former land use and planning board member here in Kent, and my goodness, it is just eye-opening to see how instrumental everything that we interact with is influenced by planning and zoning. It's the backbone of how cities are designed and how they function, and really sets the stage for how they can and cannot function, and how communities can and cannot function. So I love that you just went straight into the heart of it - and just saw a need and got involved. And people - when they see something to be able to do something and even coming from Hey, I might not have had this background before but let me go ahead and get it - let me get involved, let me see what I can do, which is what you've done.
One of the things I love is that - you have been working. You have been, from a political consultant, it warms my heart to see you out working - campaigning daily, doing the things that a lot of people - when they see campaigns, they see people at parades and they see people at forums and giving speeches. And yeah, that happens, but just the daily grind of knocking on doors, making phone calls, dialing for dollars, all of that, sometimes gets monotonous and sometimes isn't the most fun thing. But it's absolutely necessary to win a campaign, especially when you're coming in not as an incumbent. Not as - there's a lack of representation from people who look like you, and you are not coming from people who have historically held that power. So to see the work that you've put in has been enlightening.
There are also just a lot of issues where there's been some progress made, but certainly a backlash. And so you talked about zoning, Burien is dealing with the issue of homelessness, as most other communities are dealing with this. Housing prices are so much higher than they used to be, we're still in the middle of a pandemic that has hit the poorest the hardest, and it's hit the people who were already closest to the edge the hardest. And so just making sure that we have policies, that we provide shelter and housing, is absolutely necessary. And this is something that is controversial, surprise, surprise -
[00:12:41] Hugo Garcia: Yes.
[00:12:41] Crystal Fincher: - in Burien with - we hear that "Seattle is Dying" commentary and people in Seattle don't buy it. They repeatedly just kind of toss that out of hand, and candidates making that kind of argument lose pretty handily regularly in those elections. But that has a foothold in a lot of the suburbs - and the fear of not criminalizing homelessness leading to bad outcomes, when the truth is actually the opposite. What have you been dealing with in Burien?
[00:13:12] Hugo Garcia: No, it's quite as intense in Burien as it is in Seattle, to be honest. I learned a lot there through a Planning Commission project that came up three or four years ago, when a well-known nonprofit that serves the homeless community, Mary's Place, had a project here in town and it was on Ambaum. So Ambaum is a corridor that runs north to south on the west side of the city. It connects from basically West Seattle through White Center and then it takes you up into our old Burien and our downtown core. It has traditionally been mostly renters along that path, so it's a large renter and middle to lower income segment of the city. And it's adjacent to the waterfront - so right behind, on the west side, you'll have Shorewood on the Sound, you'll have Seahurst, you'll have Gregory Heights, and Three Tree Point. So you're starting to see the growth of the city - and that growth also involves not having enough housing, which results in homelessness, in that impact. So I signed - the project ended up being right on Ambaum Boulevard and it surely was very controversial, even though this was a nonprofit that has a history of serving families, they were well funded, they've done great work. But there was a lot of NIMBYism at all the Planning Commission meetings, all the City Council meetings. And that kind of opened my eyes into, yeah, it's just as intense if not more sometimes here.
And lately we started to do work on the Planning Commission and we did that. We supported expanding multifamily zoning, ADU. We also brought and enacted a affordable housing demonstration project that had been in the pipeline for the city staff since 2012, but they hadn't been able to get it lifted. And we prioritized having this pilot to bring in more affordable housing to the city, which we did. We opened up - it took us months to prepare it, and we launched it - the City Council voted on it, and it went out. It's a three year project and we now have two projects in place. One is controversial and one is not, even though they're both serving the same focus of bringing more affordable housing to the city.
The first one is a Habitat for Humanity 43-unit sweat equity program where your folks are able to actually build their own home - they get assistance with the financing, so that they have down payment and actually are able to have home ownership, which brings in that wealth and helps shorten that gap between the haves, have nots and also people that historically have not had access to housing, so great program. The other one is a supportive housing project. It is a 95-unit project. It's close to the downtown core and it is serving - it's by the organization called DESC, the Downtown Emergency Service Center. And it just was very controversial - it was somewhat close to that old Burien shopping center and close to the downtown core. And folks got really, really scared in essence. They were scared and they came out in droves against it, even though it's a very well funded 95 units - it's going to include services, health and behavioral health services in the first floor. It's going to also impact the most impacted homeless individuals - those that have physical and mental disabilities. And-
[00:17:09] Crystal Fincher: So the exact kind of thing that addresses the issue in its entirety, and also deals with the root causes to get people off of the street and give them a chance to really have that be permanent. This is what people claim to be wanting, except when it's going to be next door to them.
[00:17:30] Hugo Garcia: Exactly, that's exactly it. And at the end of the day, we need more housing. Homes is what's going to help our homelessness situation. And I know the work on policy, on the zoning, on housing - on how challenging it is to do affordable housing. There's no affordable housing developers, it's nonprofits. So you have to get help from - funding from the state, from the Feds, from the county. And we want to make sure that we lead on that. I mean, we just saw that this supportive housing development - it did go through after a lot of community outreach, multiple meetings, language assistance - it passed. We are going to get 30% of those units to be somewhat local to the Burien folks that are experiencing homelessness, 25 units will be for veterans.
But this type of supportive housing is coming to the state. The state just passed a bill saying that the cities cannot ban these supportive housing developments - and you just can't. We're actually ahead of the curve because of that. Our city is now - we did a demonstration project, we did the analysis, and we know that we don't want to keep sending or putting these developments out in the fringes of the city. Because what historically has happened is these developments that assist tend to be in unhealthy environments, meaning industrial zones, under airport, air flight paths in very low income communities. So we need to change that. We need to make it so that there's no other-ism. And the services that people get for affordable housing are close to our core - where they're close to bus lines, close to stores, close to our parks, and we know that. So that's a change that we're having a difficult time with in most of South King County. But we have to make that work and we're doing that in Burien, we're already ahead of the curve and I'm excited to be able to have learned so much while doing that work.
[00:19:40] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and that's an area where your opponent is certainly in a different place than you are. This race offers a very stark choice. There are huge differences between where you and your opponent are. And if people want to see these types of solutions and policies that really do target addressing the whole issue and the root cause, and respect and work with people's humanity in a way that creates these win-win situations for all - that you're really the only candidate who is working towards this in your race.
[00:20:24] Hugo Garcia: And the only one that's brought up solutions, right? Like I speak about making sure that we expand our funding to our LEAD program to make sure that our LEAD gets introduced to DESC - so LEAD is the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program similar somewhat to the one in Seattle. But ours is specific to the downtown core for right now, and we've had success with it. Our chief has let us know that, I mean - we're a smaller town, smaller program.
We've had about 20 relocations of folks that were in downtown living on the streets to temporary housing. And we need more of that. But that won't solve everything, right? We need more housing. So we have a goal of 144 units a year that we should reach - to make sure that by 2040, we catch up to the number of housing units that we need. And we're on pace for that with these two projects alone, and we're doing that work. My opponent just screams about not in our backyard, not close to our businesses, and they should just go elsewhere, they should just go to San Diego. If they want to live homeless, they should be in San Diego. He doesn't bring any actual solutions and that's the frustrating part for me - that I've been doing the work, I understand the policy, I know the problem, I've worked with and seen the interconnection between our other cities, the county - and know that you can't just wish people away, man - like he wants to do. You can't do that, you have to work within what you have, the resources that you have, and have a plan which is, at the core of it, just build more housing.
[00:22:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, which your opponent expressly opposes. And in the middle of a - I'm just going back and reviewing a speech of his where he talks about bringing God back into government and God's government to Burien and aligning government with Jesus, and a lot like that. Which is, clearly a different place, and not that someone being religious or spiritual is bad - but the policies that that translates to, in his opinion, seem a bit inconsistent and ineffective.
[00:22:58] Hugo Garcia: Yeah. To say the least.
[00:22:59] Crystal Fincher: Yeah.
[00:23:00] Hugo Garcia: I'm not an expert in religion, but I know that Jesus would probably want to support the poor and the homeless.
[00:23:11] Crystal Fincher: I mean, that's actually unambiguous - he's pretty expressly supportive, according to the books and the teachings that they ascribe to him in his own words. I do want to talk about public safety and where Burien is. And Burien is such a fascinating city to me - because you do have a progressive council now making moves in some areas, and also a push back to that progressive council by a lot of the conservatives and people previously in the establishment in the city. And so these conversations are really enlightening. But Burien has been willing to try new things and move in different directions. What is happening in terms of public safety, and what more do you want to see happening?
[00:24:05] Hugo Garcia: Yeah. I think we are ahead of the curve when it comes to that, for South King County. We too have a relationship with King County Sheriff - that's who services our police force. And as all of the county, the Sheriff's Office is right now going through a bit of a transition that has impacted not just us but everybody. So we're very lucky that we have probably one of the best, if not the best, chief for a small city here in South King County. He has made work with the staffing that we have, and has done incredible work - compared to the amount of money that we have to put into our resources, the number of officers, they have done strong work.
However, I don't think we're ever going to be able to get to a point where public safety will address everything with police. So recently, we launched a three-pronged attack - the city went ahead and had a team of three folks that included both behavioral person specialist, an EMT specialist, and a dedicated downtown business core public safety officer, to basically be the focus of public safety for mental health, homelessness around the core. The rest of the city then has the support of the traditional police force - for burglary, for addressing car thefts, catalytic converters, safety - and I think that's one good way to start to head to. I would want that team to be expanded, I would want our LEAD program to expand to nighttime. Because a lot of times folks experience crises at night - mental health crises - and that results into what people perceive as property damages and crime. So I think we need to do more of servicing folks at night. And we've started to interconnect our LEAD program with those services of behavioral health, as well as - I want to bring some of my experience from helping some of the businesses with economic development, the job I've done for the county. We launched a program where we actually hired folks through Uplift, the nonprofit that used to be called the Millionair's Club. And we started hiring folks that were experiencing homelessness to actually do business district communities' improvement work - so litter abatement, graffiti removement, dumping ground clear up. And that program has done really, really strong work in Skyway and White Center, specifically, over the last two years. It's going to get expanded to other unincorporated areas, and I want that to come to Burien. I want to be able to also provide jobs and those jobs are at working family and I believe those are $18 an hour jobs - because if you provide folks with opportunity, the health and the place to live, you're going to find that that's the way that we're going to be able to make a dent into the crisis that we're seeing, and that will impact public safety.
But that's just in the downtown core. I think it's really important that we invest and normalize in being in beautiful public spaces - that means our parks - we have to normalize that. And historically, we've spent so much on our policing that our parks are not as robust as they could be. The City of Burien is beautiful - it has 25 parks, 350 acres of parks - but you only hear about maybe one or two, one by the waterfront or one close to the downtown core. We also have a large - used to be a community center type facility called the Annex that unfortunately, had to be torn down because of health concerns. But it is in the core - it has green space, it's in the core of the city, and it could very much be our own version of a Marymoor Park here in Burien. But that's what I want. I want to make sure that the smaller parks - and not just the ones downtown, but the ones in residential neighborhoods - have lighting, have splash pads, have places where the food trucks can come in and people can gather. Because that is public safety - being able to go to those parks and enjoy that. And that's really at the core of what I want to do - not just focus on policing and serving our homelessness, because that's not tied to public safety as its main driver. It's about people being able to normalize being in our public spaces.
[00:29:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah.
[00:29:01] Hugo Garcia: And if we invest in them, that's how we'll address it.
[00:29:05] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And another thing that has been proven to make people safer - really activating public spaces for the community achieves that.
I wanted to ask you, and we have a little bit of time left, but in terms of - you brought up earlier in the conversation about how bad it is to relegate the homeless to industrial areas where there's more pollution, less access to services and transit - they're less connected with the rest of the community, which is crucially important. For the community overall, and just dealing with the issues of pollution and climate change - certainly in Burien, being underneath the flight path for SeaTac and all of the research that has come out about how negatively that impacts people's health. Proximity to freeways, major roadways, and pollution - causing lung disease, heart disease, asthma, a variety of problems that directly impact life expectancy. And our responsibility even in suburban cities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as we deal with all of these impacts of climate change. What is Burien doing, and what do you think should be happening more within Burien to address that?
[00:30:31] Hugo Garcia: Yeah, so it kind of circles back a little bit to that divide, right? The divide is a political divide, just like in the Cascades - the Eastern Washington versus the Western Washington and the mountain range. In this case, at the city level, it's the Ambaum corridor - and the east and northeast being the core, and the parts of the city that got added in the annex from White Center in the last 15 years - in relationship to the areas that are adjacent to the water. And those areas historically just have been the ones that vote, the ones that make up policy, the ones that decide where these developments go. And even now, on the Planning Commission, like I mentioned the Habitat for Humanity project - it's a great project - 43 units, it's going to be multifamily sizes, it's going to have some green space in it. But it's literally adjacent to 509 - like right next to 509. And it's progress that at least it's affordable housing, it's ownership. But we really tried to challenge Habitat for Humanity to make sure they could do as much as possible to make it safe, to protect that green space in there, to not make this a norm. And we know we made comments to the council to say, Hey, we have to normalize being able to provide these type of projects close to our downtown core.
And doing that, like this project, makes progress towards that. And I think the way that you can make that progress even go further is to make sure that you normalize and bring our local government to other neighborhoods. We have to be a community governed city. But historically, the north, central, east part of the city has just never gotten outreached to enough. So I would plan on having quarterly town halls in all the different neighborhoods - at least quarterly, if not more. I would move our city council sessions at least to - every quarter, to other neighborhoods, so people realize, Hey, we care. Like I went to east of Boulevard Park to like the very northeast - I was out yesterday. And they're like, Yeah, no one from the city has ever come out here. We have easements that get used as dumping sites. And that's what has to change - but that only changes if you come to people, because people in those areas historically are going to have to work harder, have to travel further to go to work, and don't have the time - everybody's just working on surviving. So we have to make sure we go and connect with folks out that way, because that's how they can see, Okay, you know what? If this guy went from doing this by going to the Planning Commission, and there's a way - there's a way to start making that change. So I think that's impactful and we need to make sure we do that, otherwise the same people are going to be making the rules and that's only going to prolong progress.
[00:33:55] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So if people want to get involved with your campaign, how can they find out more about you and how can they get involved?
[00:34:06] Hugo Garcia: Please hit me up on Twitter - it's probably - I'm on there all the time. Hit me up on Twitter @hugo4burien. You can also reach out to our website of course, that's www.hugo4burien.com, and you can email me at info@hugo4burien.com. Facebook - we have a page, but Twitter's where I'm at - I see you on there a lot too.
[00:34:32] Crystal Fincher: Yeah.
[00:34:34] Hugo Garcia: But yeah, just hit me up because it is a tough race. My opponent is very well funded. Historically, his part of the neighborhood of the city votes a lot more. And our race is very, very - how should I put it? We don't get paid. I mean, we get a stipend. The city councilmembers get a stipend, 500 bucks I think a month. People are not doing this for the money, right? I'm now choosing to do this because it's - one, I have the privilege to have a flexible job where I'm able to do it. But historically, man, you have to have time and you have to have money. And the people that live in the outside of the downtown core, generally don't have both of those things. It's changing a little bit with the demographics, but if we don't get the word out and people don't start to connect, it's just not going to happen. So please hit me up, I really would love to connect, show you - when you canvass with me, you're going to know about all the food spots, all right? Because afterwards we're going to go get some tacos birria, we're going to get some chilaquiles. Burien has got amazing, amazing food scene - we're a small business city, we don't have big employers, so I'm all about connecting through food. So come out, support, and let me share with you why I love Burien.
I love it, I want to make sure that other people have the same opportunity as my family and us did - where we're able to raise a working family, keep it affordable somehow, and develop here so that kids want to stay here and grow up here - and even have the option to do so. Our family's doing that because we're thankful for that opportunity. So hit me up. Let's go, let's get Burien represented, we need to do this. So hit me up.
[00:36:36] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And this is the type of race where - one, you had a very strong showing in the primary, so this race is winnable. It's going to take people pulling together and community support. And a lot of times, I'll have people ask, and we've talked about on the show like, Hey, outside of Seattle, what are the races to pay attention to, what's going on? And have talked about Burien myself, but definitely wanted to talk with you directly because this is one of those races that if we pay attention and if we get engaged, then we'll get somebody on the council who aligns with our values. But if we don't, and if we tune out, then that's where the establishment uses people's apathy and just people not engaging, to continue to perpetuate the same things. And there's a foothold of a progressive movement in Burien that really can be codified and can go so much further if this election goes right, so -
[00:37:39] Hugo Garcia: Yeah, for sure. And I just want to make sure - it's a foothold and that's just it. And right now, even though I had a good strong primary, it wasn't enough.
[00:37:51] Crystal Fincher: Right.
[00:37:52] Hugo Garcia: My opponent had more votes. And I mean, when you talk about - we want people of color to run for office and represented, I've been putting in that work to make sure that I have a chance to represent and help our community. But we need people to show up and right now, with the hard four years that we went through, the tough election that we had, COVID - we're in a pandemic, not post-pandemic, we're in a pandemic. Heat waves, reopening, closing, our businesses are closed, people are just tuning out. And when that happens, you're going to get people that want to discuss theocracy into their policy. So we need to show up. I know people are tired, I know I'm tired, but this is the difference between having a city - that it stays welcoming, that supports their small businesses and keeps families together versus not. So come out, hit me up, I'm ready to do that work. I'm already doing the work and I will continue to do that work.
[00:39:07] Crystal Fincher: Well thank you so much - appreciate having you Hugo, and we will make sure to put all of those links in the show notes if people want to get in contact with you and just stay engaged.
[00:39:18] Hugo Garcia: Yeah, thank you, Crystal. Appreciate it. Take care.
[00:39:25] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks. Our chief audio engineer at KVRU is Maurice Jones, Jr. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H F-R-I-I, and now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type in "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar - be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. You can also get a full text transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced during the show at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in, talk to you next time.
This week Erica C. Barnett, editor of Publicola, joins Crystal to discuss the recent announcement that King County will soon require vaccination to go to restaurants and outdoor events, Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes efforts to hurry through his last priorities before leaving office, the wild world of political polling, misogynistic attacks on the leader of the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters, accusations of interference in the strike by Councilmember Sawant, a new city department's attempt to reroute crisis calls away from the police, and why some unhoused folks don’t want to go to some government quarantine shelters.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica C. Barnett, at @ericacbarnett. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“King County Will Require Proof of Vaccination at Outdoor Events, Indoor Restaurants” by Alex Garland from the South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/09/16/king-county-will-require-proof-of-vaccination-at-outdoor-events-indoor-restaurants/
“Court Approves City Attorney’s Motion to Clear Outstanding Prostitution Warrants” by Paul Kiefer from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2021/09/16/court-approves-city-attorneys-motion-to-clear-outstanding-prostitution-warrants/?utm_source=pocket_mylist
“Poll shows many Seattle voters undecided, but Harrell leads” by David Kroman of Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/politics/2021/09/poll-shows-many-seattle-voters-undecided-harrell-leads
"Super Scary-Wary Anti-Abolitionist Push Poll Hits the Field, Foreshadowing Contentious Races for Seattle City Council and City Attorney" by Rich Smith from The Stranger https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2021/09/16/61244528/super-scary-wary-anti-abolitionist-push-poll-hits-the-field-foreshadowing-contentious-races-for-seattle-city-council-and-city-attorney
“Accusations of ‘Interference’ by Sawant, as Carpenters’ Union Strikes” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2021/09/16/misogynistic-attacks-accusations-of-interference-by-sawant-as-carpenters-union-strikes/?utm_source=pocket_mylist
“Seattle’s Newest Department Aims to Change the City’s Response to Crisis Calls” by Paul Kiefer: https://publicola.com/2021/09/15/seattles-newest-department-aims-to-change-the-citys-response-to-crisis-calls/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work, and covering the work, with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a guest. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola and author of Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery, Erica Barnett.
[00:00:53] Erica Barnett: Great to be here.
[00:00:55] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you here, once again - was just saying that I appreciate that not only do you cover Seattle political government with great depth and accuracy, but you also bring context from the past couple of decades that a lot of people don't have, or aren't familiar with. Definitely pleased to have you join us once again.
[00:01:19] Erica Barnett: Well, context is code for you're old, but I appreciate it.
[00:01:23] Crystal Fincher: Well, as a fellow old person, I appreciate that more with each year. I want to start out just talking about, Hey, we actually just got a new vaccine mandate. What is going to be required and how did this come about?
[00:01:42] Erica Barnett: Well, what I know about it is that, and this is something that the South Seattle Emerald and other publications have covered a little more than PubliCola, but there's going to be a new requirement. Outdoor events and indoor restaurants, which if you've gone out at all in recent weeks, it may feel like there already is a mandate, but it is going to be a real mandate for big outdoor events and for basically dining inside. It's pretty similar to what New York has already done. Some say it's overdue at this point, but I'm pretty excited. I'm hoping that King County will quickly roll out another component of this, which is a vaccine passport essentially - also like New York's, where you can just show it at the door. You don't have to fumble for your physical, crumpled up vaccine card or go through your photos to find a picture of it. It'll just be easy to show that you've been vaccinated and you can scoot right in the door.
[00:02:42] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that absolutely makes sense and we will link that South Seattle Emerald article that gives all of the detail about this - but the mask mandate came, but going one step further with vaccines. I know one thing that was said is, Hey, this is something that can give people a lot more confidence in sharing public space, especially indoor space, with others and viewed as really important to helping people get jobs back, recover jobs, helping businesses stay in business, and just important to the economy. People talk about mandates shutting things down - ultimately, as many states have had to reckon with - it's not the mandate, it's the fear. The very justified and realistic fear that people have of getting exposed to coronavirus, especially with the Delta variant, if they are in public spaces with unvaccinated people. Hopefully this is just an extra layer of protection that actually does make a difference and helps people get back to be able to do some public things without as much risk as it would be in other situations.
[00:03:58] Erica Barnett: Yeah. I hope it actually is an incentive. I mean, I'm a little flip about how easy and wonderful it's going to be, because that is going to be my own experience and the experience of some 80% of people in King County. There are still people out there who are not vaccinated. I mean, we've talked about this before - the carrot and the stick. I do think we have to have a little bit of a consequence, if you choose not to get vaccinated - there are certain things that you're not going to be able to access because vaccination is really necessary. Everybody needs to start figuring out a way that they can get on board and get that shot, because Seattle is doing a lot better than a lot of other places. King County is doing a lot better, but we still have people who aren't vaccinated. If there starts to be sort of consequences and I don't want to say penalties, I mean, but it's your choice whether you want to go out. And it's a business's choice, whether they want to admit you. And now the County is saying, This is our decision - these are the consequences and you can decide if you want to bear them, or if you just want to suck it up and get that shot.
[00:05:08] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. We had a conversation, I feel like it was a couple, few months back, maybe now - on this podcast about this very thing. You were suspicious about incentives for vaccination and thinking there needed to be more of a consequence behind them - that just trying to throw trinkets at people may not be the most effective thing. And that's what's turned out to be the case. In fact, now that we're seeing vaccine mandates, those seem to be pretty effective - was just reading this morning about an Indiana hospital system with 36,000 employees that implemented a vaccine mandate and less than 0.35% of them ended up resigning. Most of those were working full-time or less, or were already on leave. When you have 99.65% of people complying with the vaccine mandate in a state that certainly has a much lower percentage of vaccination than that, that is yet another hint that, Hey, these mandates seem to be working even when initially when they happen, people say they aren't happy with them, but compliance seems to follow without much of a loss of personnel - which is what a lot of people seem to be worried about. The existing data is promising so far. Hopefully we continue to see that.
Also, wanted to talk about an issue here in Seattle government, where prostitution warrants were just cleared in the City of Seattle. How'd that come about?
[00:06:36] Erica Barnett: Well, City Attorney Pete Holmes basically said, We want to clear all these warrants and a Seattle Municipal Court judge agreed this week, on Thursday, to quash all outstanding warrants for misdemeanor prostitution. I think that the larger, meta-story about how it came about is Pete Holmes, the City Attorney who lost his reelection bid in August - he is no longer on the ballot for November. He's really trying to kind of rush through a lot of, I would say progressive to-do's before he leaves office next year.
There's two candidates - one on the left, one on the right - that are vying for this position. I think Holmes's view is that either one of them could result in sort of administrative chaos. I'm not saying this is my view - but Ann Davison is a Republican who ran for Lieutenant Governor last year, vowing to get rid of the office. She could credibly be called an anti-government Republican in some ways. And then Nicole Thomas-Kennedy is running from the left and she wants to essentially stop prosecuting all misdemeanors. There's more nuance to her position, but that's the sort of high-level summary. And I think Holmes believes that neither of them have sufficient experience doing the kind of legal work that is the bread and butter of the office, so he's kind of pushing through a lot of things before he leaves in December.
[00:08:22] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and interesting to see - this has certainly been something that has been an issue. You certainly covered the issue also from the perspective of how problematic SPD can be in these enforcement actions, and in policing prostitution, and in harassing and intimidating sex workers. I think this is encouraging to see - one of the things on the to-do list were not wanting to let this linger and have people who shouldn't be criminalized, who may need assistance in other areas if there are other issues - but just straight up criminalizing this sex work, seemingly in a vacuum, isn't effective and just seems pointless.
[00:09:12] Erica Barnett: And also, the buying of sex - I mean there was a big operation a couple of years ago where the City, I mean, literally just a couple of years ago - where the City said, we're not going to prosecute sex workers, we're going to prosecute sex buyers. I think in those two years, we've moved a long way toward saying, Well, maybe it's not the sex trade that is the problem and maybe prosecuting buyers is also problematic. I think that the City has really moved a long way in thinking about sex work and whether all aspects of sex work should be criminalized or not. We're definitely moving more in the direction of decriminalization on kind of all sides of that equation.
[00:09:59] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely and more familiarity with - a lot of people have conflated sex work and trafficking - and I think the conversation has progressed in understanding that those are two very different things. And so, to treat harmful activity as harmful and to treat sex work as sex work, which should be decriminalized in my opinion. But certainly I am gratified to see the City Attorney's office move in that direction and know that Nicole Thomas-Kennedy also plans on - is running on a platform of not continuing to criminalize poverty. Which again, sex work is for income. When people are just trying to make money or doing things for a lack of money, attaching criminality to that only makes the problem worse.
One interesting thing - another interesting thing that came about this week - was some new polling. Interesting polling and more than one poll. What developed or what was out there in terms of polling in Seattle races this week?
[00:11:08] Erica Barnett: Boy, there were so many polls out in the field in the last week and a half. Last week, I counted four different polls that were out. This week, Stuart Elway and Crosscut released a poll, and Lorena González released a poll. These are the two mayoral candidates and they're all over the map. The Elway poll says that there's a lot of people undecided, but Harrell is leading among people who have made up their mind. The González poll says that González is slightly leading. I mean, I think that there's a couple things with all these polls. I mean, one is that the undecided vote is quite large, which is not super unexpected at this point - we're in September. But whenever you have a large 30 percent, 40 percent, 50 percent undecided, you're not really looking at what the actual electorate is going to do. You're looking at a whole lot of people who don't know enough to make up their minds yet, or who say they don't.
The other thing is a lot of these polls that are done by the campaigns themselves have what I would consider somewhat leading questions. Bruce Harrell, or someone working on his behalf - there's a PAC that's doing supportive work for Harrell - put out a poll that was online and you could take it as many times as you wanted. That was distributed and went around on Twitter and probably other social media - it's like when you have a poll that's sort of so poorly designed for security purposes, and it's just an online Survey Monkey poll, like can you really trust those results?
[00:12:49] Crystal Fincher: That answer's no.
[00:12:52] Erica Barnett: Yeah. At this point, I don't know. I mean, I wouldn't read too much into any of these polls. I think this is a fairly close race. It's going to depend on turnout, it's going to depend on what happens in the debates, and what happens in the next couple months. We're just coming off the primary, we're just getting into election season. They're spending an awful lot of money on polls right now that I don't think necessarily are all that revealing.
[00:13:17] Crystal Fincher: One of the things I appreciate about the coverage of the Crosscut poll is that polls have different purposes at different times and can be useful in different ways. A lot of the coverage is strictly on the horse race - who is leading - but a lot of polls are not fielded with the purpose of just finding out who is leading. And a lot of what's happening right now, both in a legitimate way and as you just talked about - in several illegitimate ways, and there is also push poll, that was released by some entity friendly to the Harrell campaign, which had very - beyond leading - misleading questions. And it's basically just an attempt to get a message out instead of collecting any meaningful results.
But this is a snapshot in time - this is not - we're early in the game. One of the things that I think was mentioned in that article is that - right now, people are just beginning to tune in, which means that a lot of people still haven't tuned in - hence the large percent of undecided people. And the campaigns are trying to figure out what their message is going to be - what's resonating with the public, where their big risks are. I know one of the things that came out in that Lorena González poll, which again, if you don't see all the data of the poll, you have to take it with a grain of salt. With that one, the candidates were very close - still a large percentage of undecided people, but they're looking to see the effect of messaging and how that boosts numbers - when messaging about Bruce Harrell's response to Ed Murray's situation and the accusations of molestation and some of his corporate support, that his support went down.
Some of them - the polling sent by his campaign - was testing positive and negative messaging, and some messages made his support go up, others made it go down. That's what they're trying to gauge, so that as they put together their messaging, their talking points, their mail and digital for - that people are going to be bombarded with in about a month - that they have some confidence that those messages are going to resonate with people. We can certainly expect to hear some of the messages that were tested make it through to what campaigns are actually using - but by all accounts, it seems to be a close race from all of the information. A lot of people still yet to decide.
Another one of the interesting things was looking at how other candidates' voters from the primary split. From the Elway poll, it was saying that those who voted for Jessyn Farrell and Casey Sixkiller - appear to be splitting evenly between Harrell and González - which was interesting to me, because those you would think would predominantly go to Harrell. That would - it's going to be interesting to see how that shakes out. Most of Colleen Echohawk's voters were turning towards González and Art Langlie's were going towards Harrell - just curious to see how voters are landing, who did not vote for the two candidates who made it through the primary.
[00:16:34] Erica Barnett: I think too, I mean, this is just kind of a longstanding irritation with polls and how they're done - for me, I guess. When you do a poll, if you're Stuart Elway or whatever pollster, you have a list of issues, so you're testing out which issues people care about, but it's from a list. If you look at this Crosscut-Elway poll, the issues that were tested - among the issues were homelessness, police department crime, and then zoning and density, and then condition of downtown. Condition of downtown jumps out at me-
[00:17:12] Crystal Fincher: Yes.
[00:17:12] Erica Barnett: -as one of those issues that is definitely - people go downtown and see what downtown is like. I don't know if you asked an open-ended question, What are your top five issues? that people would necessarily say, "Oh my gosh, the condition of the however many square blocks comprise downtown Seattle is my number one issue." I find it not very credible. I think that what happens with polls often is - they kind of create the narrative, or they supplement the narrative - that downtown is the issue and crime is the issue. I mean, of course crime is always going to be an issue in voters' minds. If we had an open-ended question, I'm really curious what people would say are their top five issues once you get beyond homelessness, crime. I mean, if you asked about transportation and traffic - if you said, do you know where does traffic rank? I bet a lot of people would include that on their list. It's just kind of, maybe its unavoidable because you can't just ask people open-ended questions - it would cost so much money, but it just frustrates me the way that polls shape the narrative and the narrative shapes polls. It's just kind of this self-perpetuating monster.
[00:18:30] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I agree with that, and even closer beyond that - when asked about, Hey, what are your top issues? and you ask about homelessness and crime - I've talked about this before, but homelessness and crime are so broad. Someone can have a concern about homelessness and be like, "Hey, we should just arrest all of them and sweep all of them and just get them out of the City," which of course is a horrible solution, doesn't do anything to fix the problem and in fact makes it worse, but people feel that way. Those account for some of the answers, but also other people want to address the root causes and actually solve the issue and get people into homes, so when you say your concern is homelessness, that tells you that that's on people's minds, but it doesn't tell you the orientation of that concern.
[00:19:21] Erica Barnett: Right.
[00:19:21] Crystal Fincher: Crime is very similar. Do people want to treat the root causes, do they want to ultimately do things that keep people from committing crimes in the first place? Or have after the fact, criminalized interventions, that again, have failed to work - but it does not tell you the orientation. So often when those are covered, especially by larger media organizations, it's like, Oh, crime is a concern, people want crack downs and what are you going to do to - oftentimes, address visible things that people associate with crime oftentimes - homelessness and mental illness are lumped in with that, incorrectly, many times. It just doesn't get to that. Then the media goes, Well, the people want that addressed. They want someone who will crack down on it. Seattle repeatedly votes in the opposite direction. They want to, they've said, "Hey, we've looked at this and hasn't worked for so long, let's try something different," and then the media is like, "Whoa, how did that happen? That doesn't make any sense."
[00:20:30] Erica Barnett: Yeah.
[00:20:31] Crystal Fincher: I just wish there were more nuanced questions and coverage. And sometimes there are, and they don't make it into coverage, but I wish we would be more careful in the covering of that to say, This is an issue that is on people's minds, and they have a range of opinions with that. Which to be fair in that article covering that, it certainly expresses a variety of perspectives in there. There's some of that in the coverage, in the article that we will link in the show notes, but we will stay tuned on those.
The next thing I wanted to talk about was a story that you worked on about the Carpenters Union strike that's happening right now, and accusations of interference by Councilmember Sawant - what is going on?
[00:21:16] Erica Barnett: Well, I will say right up top - these are accusations of interference that are happening, that are not accusations being made by me - but they are being made by a lot of folks in the Labor movement, including within the Carpenters Union itself, as well as King County Labor Council and others. So what's going on? The Carpenters Union is striking right now. They had a 54-46 vote, I believe, to not accept a contract with the Associated General Contractors last week. And now there are allegations that Sawant's office interfered by essentially promoting a no-vote on the balloting. People are saying that she supported a rally that was run by a group that formed to support a no-vote on the contract, that she has been sending workers - her own employees and members of her Socialist Alternative Party - out to sort of agitate and foment descent from within the union and from union members.
I'm not in the union. I've only talked to people who were familiar with what they say these discussions were, but there are some credible allegations out there. The head of the union, Evelyn Shapiro, said that she would appreciate elected officials like Sawant staying - sticking in their own lanes, essentially. King County Labor Council leader Nicole Grant and City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda made similar comments to me. These are the allegations that are out there.
At the same time, there's the typical problem that you see online - which is that, in some of these groups - people who are opposed to Evelyn Shapiro, who's the first leader of the multi-state Carpenters Union in the union's history, who is a woman. You're seeing a lot of misogyny. You're seeing a lot of really gross attacks on her from people within the union itself on a couple of Facebook sites,and so I also reported on that. Those misogynistic attacks are generally coming from people who supported a strike and who feel that she has not been sufficiently supportive of the further left position on the contract, and that she supported the contract, and that that's bad, essentially.
[00:24:00] Crystal Fincher: Well, and what was notable to me in that is some of the people making those just straight up misogynistic comments, were people who had had leadership positions in that union.
[00:24:14] Erica Barnett: Oh yeah. I mean and these are union members. I mean, what's frustrating to me is every time - leaving aside whether you think the contract was good, whether you think the contract was bad, whether you think that Sawant was too involved and her office was too involved, or whether you think they weren't involved at all. No matter what happens, when a woman ascends to leadership positions for the first time - or in a union like the Carpenters, or organizations like the Carpenters, which is 98 percent men. The go-to for some people is going to be to call her the "C" word and to call her all kinds of names and to make sort of very thinly veiled, sexual threats against her, which is what is happening on these pages. I think that deserves to be called out every time it happens.
One thing that Nicole Grant of the King County Labor Council said to me that really struck me was, This is not the way that labor unions are supposed to deal, or labor union members are supposed to deal with each other, to deal with disagreements. You are supposed to have the debate, have the fierce debate, over contract and whichever side ends up prevailing, everybody falls in line and you get on board because that's what a union is. She said that she was incredibly disappointed to see, even if it's a tiny percentage, to see people being extremely vocal in this way. To just say these hateful, misogynistic, awful things about their union leader, she said, "This is just, this is not the way we act. I mean, we are all about solidarity and support and anti-racism and anti-misogyny and anti-homophobia and anti-transphobia." This is just not okay, wherever it's coming from.
[00:26:09] Crystal Fincher: It is not okay. We'll certainly keep our eyes peeled on that one too. They are currently striking. I mean, just a reminder, do not cross picket lines, wherever they're at, and we'll keep our eyes peeled on that.
Another issue - another thing - event that happened this week is Seattle launched a new department to handle the City's response to crisis calls. What happened with that?
[00:26:34] Erica Barnett: Well, there is - the new department is a little bit of a shell right now. There's not a whole lot in it, but right now it's basically the 9-1-1 division. The idea is that it will eventually expand to include some of these new programs that the City is trying to stand up to respond to calls that are now 9-1-1 calls that don't require a police officer to intervene. The City has proposed sort of expanding or building on the Health One system, which is two vehicles that go out and respond to crisis calls that don't require a cop with a gun and that may actually be hindered by having police there. That's a fire department program. Now they're talking about doing this other program called Triage One, which is for slightly lower acuity calls. There's also a statewide 9-8-8 system. And so somehow, all of these mish-mash of programs and any other additional programs that get stood up, and hotlines, and things like that are supposed to go through this one new department that is currently housing 9-1-1.
Personally, I think there's - I use the word mish-mash advisedly, because I think there's a lot of different programs that are being proposed sort of a little bit willy-nilly right now. I don't really understand what Triage One is and how it is superior to Health One for dealing with slightly lower acuity calls. It feels like just a little bit of a mess to me right now - but ultimately the goal is to have all those low acuity calls go through something that is not the police department and to eventually route some of that work away from SPD, so that some of SPD's funding can go into these non-police responses.
[00:28:33] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. My sense is the same as yours at the moment - that it doesn't seem to be very clear and is still forming. Also, I do try and have a little grace in that - as things that were repurposed or reimagined take shape - whenever you're designing and creating something new, it's not always super linear, and clean, and perfect, and may take some refining. Hopefully this can be refined into something that is effective and helpful and useful, but we'll see, it is just beginning. Certainly we're going to be paying attention to it as it continues to take shape and roll out.
But kind of on that subject and issue that could quite likely end up in some of these crisis calls where people who are unhoused, with certain issues, especially in this conversation where we talk about offering people services. The conversation about how appropriate and useful and helpful those services are has been robust and continues to be. Right now we're dealing with many - some people among the unhoused population that are feeling that the services offered can potentially be harmful. What is happening?
[00:30:01] Erica Barnett: Well, this is a story that I'm working on this week - it should go up in the next day or two on PubliCola.com. Just one little slice of the reluctance to "accept services among the unsheltered and the unhoused population" is going into isolation and quarantine when a Covid test comes back positive. What we are seeing and what outreach providers and public health are seeing on the streets right now, is that a lot of people, particularly unsheltered people, but also people living in shelters, are really reluctant or don't want to go into the isolation and quarantine sites that the county has set aside for this purpose. Those are sites where people go and stay for a week to 10 days to basically let their symptoms pass or to become not infectious anymore.
To some people living on the streets, it feels like a van shows up and they take you away to an unknown place and you have to stay there. There's rumors going around right now that - inaccurate rumors I should add - that people are not being allowed to leave isolation and quarantine. It is very much entirely a voluntary thing, but if you leave, they say that you're leaving against medical advice. And there's a lot of fear out there. Outreach workers and outreach groups are working to - and Public Health as well - are working to kind of dispel those fears, make it a little easier for people to go into isolation, quarantine - giving them whatever food they ask for, giving them - just sort of saying, What would it be, what would be helpful? What would help keep you here for the required period? Because the problem is if people leave, they potentially go to another shelter and don't disclose their Covid status and could infect other people. They potentially go back to an encampment and infect people there - and it's - Delta is out there. The prevalence of COVID among the unhoused population is going up. The more people that they can get into these isolation and quarantine sites, the better.
[00:32:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, no, absolutely. I just want to throw into this that - people get under the impression that things are going to happen - this is how misinformation and disinformation spreads. But what also helps spread that is a prevailing sense of hostility from the community towards this population, and that community feels and absorbs it. Some of the rhetoric, especially around compassion - the Compassion Seattle Charter Amendment 29 initiative, which is now dead - but incorporating that language into some of the mayoral campaigns, the City Attorney's - Republican Ann Davison's campaign - and hearing people talk about the unhoused population as if they're less than human, as if they're all criminals, and just a blight on society, and just wanting to kind of sweep them away - certainly does not present a welcoming feeling to people who are in that population. If you're setting up services and they're hearing these coming out of the institutions that are supposed to help them, that's going to create some suspicion. I certainly think that that does not help the overall situation when they hear hostility coming out of the places and institutions that are supposedly there to help.
[00:33:47] Erica Barnett: The hostility comes too from the fact that the City is sweeping encampments.
[00:33:51] Crystal Fincher: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:33:52] Erica Barnett: If you go into isolation and quarantine, there is a very real possibility and likelihood that when you come back, if you are living in an encampment, all your stuff's going to be gone. Public Health lets you, or DCHS of King County, lets you store some stuff, but not all your stuff. There's also worries about pets and they have to be boarded. There's a lot of very real concerns that are beyond the level of rumor. They're real, exigent concerns that people have, that aren't being addressed.
[00:34:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. There's a lot more that we could talk about, but we're at time today. I just want to thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, September 17th, 2021. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. Our wonderful co-host today was Seattle political reporter and founder of PubliCola, Erica Barnett. You can find Erica on Twitter at @ericacbarnett, that's Erica with a "C" and on PubliCola.com, and you can buy her book Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery. You can find me on Twitter at @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I, and now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe, to get our Friday almost-live show and our mid-week show delivered to your podcast feed. While you're there, leave us a review - really helps us out. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
Last Friday, Crystal and Executive Director of America Walks (and former Seattle mayor), Mike McGinn, talked for so long that it made for a two-part show! In the second half of the conversation, Mike and Crystal get into the SPD's calls being predominantly non-criminal, the surge in gun violence in Seattle and the need for the new mayor to respond with the police force they have (not the one they wish they had), the benefits of decriminalizing jaywalking, the continued refusal by the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission to request an investigation into Mayor Durkan's alleged illegal deletion of text messages, and the vital importance that the law be applied equally to all people - regardless of whether or not they are a public employee or an elected official.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and Mike McGinn at @mayormcginn. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources:
“Nearly half of Seattle police calls don’t need officers responding, new report says” by Elise Takahama from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/nearly-half-of-seattle-police-calls-dont-need-officers-responding-new-report-says/
“Seattle police intervening in fewer mental health calls, data shows” by David Kroman from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/news/2021/09/seattle-police-intervening-fewer-mental-health-calls-data-show
“Durkan Won’t Sign Crowd Control Weapons Bill, Raises Specter of Court Challenge” by Paul Kiefer from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2021/09/07/durkan-wont-sign-crowd-control-weapons-bill-raises-specter-of-court-challenge/
“Seattle gun violence surges in 2021, as police force dwindles” by Angela King and Dyer Oxley from KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/stories/gun-violence-surges-in-seattle-over-2021
“King County’s rise in gun violence doesn’t have an easy explanation” by Nate Sanford from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/news/2021/09/king-countys-rise-gun-violence-doesnt-have-easy-explanation
“Our Letter on Decriminalizing Jaywalking: California Could Demonstrate National Leadership by Passing Timely Legislation” from America Walks: https://americawalks.org/our-letter-on-decriminalizing-jaywalking-california-could-demonstrate-national-leadership-by-passing-timely-legislation/
“Seattle 911 response times climbed in summer 2020. Now, police and activists debate what comes next.” by Lewis Kamb, Daniel Beekman, and Manuel Villa from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-911-response-times-surged-in-2020-now-police-and-activists-debate-what-lessons-to-draw/
“Recidivism and Reentry: What makes people more or less likely to succeed upon release?” from the Prison Policy Initiative: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/research/recidivism_and_reentry/
“Employees who blew whistle on Seattle mayor’s missing texts file lawsuit against the city” by Lewis Kamb and Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/employees-who-blew-whistle-on-seattle-mayors-missing-texts-file-lawsuit-against-the-city/
“Mayor’s office knew for months Durkan’s phone settings causes texts to vanish, emails show” by Lewis Kamb, Daniel Beekman, and Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/mayors-office-knew-for-months-durkans-phone-setting-caused-texts-to-vanish-emails-show/
“Obama leaves Trump a mixed legacy on whistle-blowers” by Eyal Press from The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/obama-leaves-trump-a-mixed-legacy-on-whistle-blowers
“Thousands of Washington state workers seek exemptions from COVID-19 vaccine mandate” by Joseph O’Sullivan from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/thousands-of-washington-state-workers-seek-exemptions-from-covid-19-vaccine-mandate/
“Seattle police union pushes back on Jan. 6 investigation” by David Kroman from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/news/2021/07/seattle-police-union-pushes-back-jan-6-investigation
Transcript:
Show Notes
Today on the show, Executive Director of America Walks and former mayor of Seattle, Mike McGinn joins Crystal to discuss new Covid-19 vaccine mandates, planned walkouts by some workers in Seattle fizzling, rising gun violence and the conspicuous lack of analysis by the media and the mayor’s office, the knee-jerk desire for police presence when crime rises (in spite of it being ineffective), and the integration of Compassion Seattle into a certain mayoral campaign now that it’s off the November ballot.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Mike McGinn, at @mayormcginn. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources:
"State employees union announces agreement with Inslee over vaccine mandate" by Joseph O'Sullivan https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article254009258.html
“Biden Lays Out Plan To Mandate Vaccines Or Testing For Millions Of Workers” by Alana Wise and Tamara Keith from NPR: https://www.npr.org/2021/09/09/1035149651/biden-will-require-vaccines-for-federal-workers-as-part-of-a-new-covid-strategy
“‘Every hospital is quite full’ in Washington as delta variant of coronavirus spreads” by Elise Takahama from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/every-hospital-is-quite-full-in-washington-as-delta-variant-of-coronavirus-spreads/
“‘Don’t have a clue’: It turns out Washington state set a murder record in 2020, but no one knows why” by Danny Westneat from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/dont-have-a-clue-it-turns-out-washington-state-set-a-murder-record-in-2020-but-no-one-knows-why/
“Sickout at Seattle City Light over COVID-19 vaccine mandate doesn’t materialize” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/sickout-at-seattle-city-light-over-covid-19-vaccine-mandate-doesnt-materialize/
“Unions warn of ‘mass exodus’ over city of Seattle vaccine mandate” by David Kroman from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/news/2021/08/unions-warn-mass-exodus-over-city-seattle-vaccine-mandate
“Seattle’s arrest alternative, LEAD, moves beyond police” by David Kroman from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/2020/07/seattles-arrest-alternative-lead-moves-beyond-police
“‘Compassion Seattle’ Is Dead. Now What?” by Katie Wilson from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2021/09/06/compassion-seattle-is-dead-now-what/
“Harrell Says He’ll Implement Key Provisions of ‘Compassion Seattle’ Measure, Clear Encampments” by Erica C. Barnett of Publicola: https://publicola.com/2021/09/03/harrell-says-hell-implement-key-provisions-of-compassion-seattle-clear-encampments/
"Durkan Won’t Sign Crowd Control Weapons Bill, Raises Specter of Court Challenge" by Paul Kiefer https://publicola.com/2021/09/07/durkan-wont-sign-crowd-control-weapons-bill-raises-specter-of-court-challenge/
"Harrell Ducks Police Accountability Forum, Burgess Rides In to Attack González" by Doug Trumm https://www.theurbanist.org/category/politics-and-government/elections-and-endorsements/2021-election/
Transcript:
Transcript will be uploaded shortly.
This week on the show Crystal is joined by Senator Karen Keiser, Washington State Senate President Pro Tempore and one of the busiest women in the Washington State legislature. They discuss what happened in the past legislative session this year, as well as changes that will be worked toward next year. Highlights include more than a dozen public safety bills passed, protection of essential workers during the pandemic, attempts to rectify Washington State’s upside-down tax code, worker protections in the unprecedentedly hot conditions we’ve experienced due to climate change, passage of the Working Families Tax Credit, supporting childcare workers as we face a massive childcare shortage, and more. This was indeed a busy legislative session!
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Senator Karen Keiser at @karenkeiser1. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
"What would it cost to house and provide treatment for Seattle's homeless?" by Scott Greenstone at The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/what-is-the-cost-to-house-and-provide-treatment-for-seattles-homeless/
"With 12 New Laws, Washington State Joins Movement to Overhaul Policing" by Austin Jenkins from NPR: https://www.npr.org/2021/05/18/997974519/a-dozen-police-reform-bills-signed-into-law-in-washington-state
"A year after George Floyd's murder, what's changed in Washington state?" by Melissa Santos from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/news/2021/05/year-after-george-floyds-murder-whats-changed-washington-state
"With the Washington Legislature halfway through its session, here's where policing bill stand" by Joseph O'Sullivan from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/washington-legislature-passes-bill-requiring-police-officers-to-intervene-if-they-witness-excessive-force/
"Washington Legislature charts 'new beginning' in climate change fight" by Levi Pulkkinen from Investigate West via Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/politics/2021/05/washington-legislature-charts-new-beginning-climate-change-fight
"Inslee signs off on capital gains tax for wealthy and tax rebate for lower-income workers in Washington" by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/inslee-signs-capital-gains-tax-for-wealthy-and-tax-rebate-for-lower-income-workers-in-washington/
"Return to Work? Now With Child Care Still in Limbo, Some Parents Say." by Claire Cain Miller from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/05/upshot/covid-child-care-schools.html
"2021 heat wave is now the deadliest weather-related event in Washington history" by John Ryan from KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/stories/heat-wave-death-toll-in-washington-state-jumps-to-112-people
"Washington Joins Oregon, California, British Columbia In Passing Low-Carbon Fuel Standard" by Courtney Flatt from KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/stories/washington-joins-oregon-california-british-columbia-in-passing-low-carbon-fuel-standard
"The HEAL Act gives WA a path to environmental justice" by Jennifer Calkins from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/opinion/2021/03/heal-act-gives-wa-path-environmental-justice
The Front and Centered Coalition: https://frontandcentered.org/
"Relief slow to reach King County renters as evictions set to resume" by David Kroman from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/news/2021/06/relief-slow-reach-king-county-renters-evictions-set-resume
Hacks & Wonks interview with Pierce County Councilmember Derek Young: https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/listenpodcast/episode/32ca17ec/seattle-pay-attention-to-pierce-county-a-conversation-with-pierce-county-council-chair-derek-young
Hacks & Wonks interview with Senator and King County Executive Candidate Joe Nguyen: https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/listenpodcast/episode/1e38d0ac/meet-senator-and-kc-exec-candidate-joe-nguyen-again
Today on the show Crystal is joined by a new co-host, Rich Smith, Associate Editor of The Stranger! They discuss competing plans to tackle homelessness in the mayoral race, a ridiculously racist email sent (recently!) by Bellevue School Board candidate Faye Yang, the deep need for accessibility to be central to transportation planning, and a rare alliance of landlords and renters threatening to sue King County to expedite the distribution of rental relief funds.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Rich Smith, at @richsssmith. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Bruce Harrell vows action on homelessness in parks, M. Lorena Gonzalez responds as Seattle mayoral race restarts” by Daniel Beekman of The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/bruce-harrell-vows-action-on-homelessness-in-parks-m-lorena-gonzalez-responds-as-seattles-mayoral-race-restarts/
“Compassion Seattle measure will now appear on November ballot after court rejects appeal” from the Associated Press via King 5: https://www.king5.com/article/news/politics/compassion-seattle-homeless-measure-appeal-ballot-rejection/281-93aaa118-a937-4021-a118-eca1622679aa
“Bellevue School Board Candidate Argued that Black and Latino Kids Have Lower IQs Due to Genetics, Cited Debunked Book” by Rich Smith from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2021/08/30/60818943/bellevue-school-board-candidate-argues-that-black-and-latino-kids-have-lower-iqs-due-to-genetics-cites-debunked-book
“Report Calls for Radical Inclusion of Disabled Nondrivers in Transportation Planning” by Natalie Bicknell Argerious from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/09/02/report-calls-for-radical-inclusion-of-disabled-nondrivers-in-planning/
“Landlord and tenant groups threaten to sue King County to speed up rent assistance” by Heidi Groover from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/in-rare-partnership-landlord-and-tenant-groups-demand-king-county-speed-up-rent-assistance/
Transcript:
Transcript will be uploaded in the next week.
This week on the show we have the second half of the Consultant Roundtable, featuring Consultants Riall Johnson of Prism Consulting, Michael Charles of Upper Left Strategies, and Heather Weiner discussing the results of the primary elections, and what we can expect from the general election in November. Discussion points include the Kathy Lambert’s risks in the King County Council race, the upset in the City Attorney’s race, the possibility of having abolitionists both on the Seattle City Council and in the City Attorney’s office, the low hanging fruit that is Senator Reuven Carlyle, the frequent mischaracterization of Seattle voters as being far more conservative than they actually are, and the fact that real live Republicans exist in King County.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii, Michael Charles at @mikeychuck, Heather Weiner at @hlweiner, and Riall Johnson at @RiallJohnson. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Lambert leads District 3 primary for King County Council” by Conor Wilson from the Issaquah Reporter: https://www.issaquahreporter.com/news/lambert-leads-district-3-primary-for-king-county-council/
“Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes concedes primary election” by David Kroman from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/news/2021/08/seattle-city-attorney-pete-holmes-concedes-primary-election
“Four reasons Seattle’s left will likely prevail in November” by Katie Wilson from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/opinion/2021/08/four-reasons-seattles-left-will-likely-prevail-november
“Progressive Trend Emerging in Late Primary Election Returns” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/08/06/progressive-trend-emerging-in-late-primary-election-returns/
“Ranked-Choice Voting Gets A Prime-Time Shot Under New York City’s Bright Lights” by Domenico Montanaro from NPR: https://www.npr.org/2021/06/22/1008807504/ranked-choice-voting-new-york-city-mayors-race
Washington State’s voter registration portal: https://voter.votewa.gov/WhereToVote.aspx
Transcript
Today on the show Marco Lowe, Professor at Seattle University’s Institute for Public Service, joins Crystal to get in to kids returning to school this fall without having had a Covid vaccine, the impact of the Pfizer vaccine being approved by the FDA, the Supreme Court striking down the federal eviction moratorium, the incredibly slow pace of rental aid being distributed in King County, the arrival of Afghan refugees in Washington State (and how you can help welcome them!), and the tragic rise in gun violence in our area - including a shooting between a 14 and 17 year old.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Marco Lowe, at @MarcoLowe. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Because of COVID surge, packed TRi-Cities hospitals turning ambulances away” by Annette Cary of the Tri-City Herald, as printed in The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/because-of-covid-surge-packed-tri-cities-hospitals-turning-ambulances-away/
“Pediatricians besieged by parents seeking COVID vaccines for kids under 12” by Ariana Eunjung Cha and Frances Stead Sellers from The Washington Post, as printed in The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/pediatricians-besieged-by-parents-seeking-covid-vaccines-for-kids-under-12/?utm_source=pocket_mylist
“COVID-19 vaccinations increase in Washington following mandates spike in cases” by Drew Mikkelsen from King 5: https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/covid-19-vaccinations-increase-in-washington/281-1af4cc43-2d7f-4e77-a2fd-0fad28d0c4f3
“As The Coronavirus Surges in Florida, Some Vaccine Skeptics Change Their Minds” from the Associated Press and NPR: https://www.npr.org/2021/08/17/1028538495/florida-covid-vaccinations-skeptics-shots-changing-minds
“The Supreme Court Will Allow Evictions to Resume. It Could Affect Millions Of Tenants” by Krishnadev Calamur and Chris Arnold from NPR: https://www.npr.org/2021/08/26/1024668578/court-blocks-biden-cdc-evictions-moratorium
“King County rent relief still slow to reach tenants” by David Kroman from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/news/2021/08/king-county-rent-relief-still-slow-reach-tenants
“Federal rental assistance dollars can prevent evictions - if you can navigate the process” by Paige Browning and Joshua McNichols from KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/stories/federal-rental-assistance-dollars-can-prevent-evictions-if-you-can-navigate-the-process-aef7
“Agencies Scramble To Resettle Afghan Refugees In The Seattle Area” by Martin Kaste from NPR: https://www.npr.org/2021/08/24/1030561811/agencies-scramble-to-resettle-afghan-refugees-in-the-seattle-area
“Washington is poised to accept a wave of Afghan refugees. How will they be received?” by Naomi Ishisaka from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/washington-is-poised-to-accept-a-wave-of-afghan-refugees-how-will-they-be-received/
“Washington Organizations Are Resettling Afghan Refugees, Here’s How You Can Help” by Mark Van Streefkerk from The South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/08/24/washington-organizations-are-resettling-afghan-refugees-heres-how-you-can-help/
Living Well Kent: https://livingwellkent.org/index.html
“17-year-old critically wounded, 14-year-old in custody after gunfire outside Seattle middle school” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/14-year-old-in-critical-condition-teen-in-custody-after-gunfire-erupts-outside-seattle-middle-school/
“Seattle police investigate 3 shootings, including killing of man in Belltown” by Christine Clarridge from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/man-50-fatally-shot-in-seattles-belltown-neighborhood-early-thursday/
Transcript:
Transcript will be uploaded as soon as possible.
Missed the Hacks & Wonks consultant roundtable? Never fear! On today’s show you’ll catch up on the first half of it. Consultants Riall Johnson of Prism Consulting, Michael Charles of Upper Left Strategies, and Heather Weiner join Crystal to discuss the results of the primary elections earlier this month, and what we can expect from the rest of election season. On today’s show they discuss the mayoral primary election results, Charter Amendment 29 / Compassion Seattle, and the primary results for City Council Position 9 (City Wide).
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii, Michael Charles at @mikeychuck, Heather Weiner at @hlweiner, and Riall Johnson at @RiallJohnson. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
Watch the entire consultant roundtable here: https://twitter.com/finchfrii/status/1425987129218240517?s=21
“Bruce Harrell, M. Lorena González eye November race after dominating Seattle’s mayoral primary” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/bruce-harrell-m-lorena-gonzalez-eye-november-race-after-dominating-seattles-mayoral-primary/
“2021 Primary Precinct Results Show Familiar Rich vs. Rent-burdened Battle Lines” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/08/19/2021-primary-precinct-results-show-familiar-rich-vs-rent-burdened-battle-lines/
“The C Is for Crank: Correcting the Record on Compassion Seattle” by Erica C. Barnett at Publicola: https://publicola.com/2021/07/13/the-c-is-for-crank-correcting-the-record-on-compassion-seattle/
“Seattle mayoral race filled with ads, PAC money, and cash” by David Hyde and Gracie Todd at KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/stories/as-candidates-court-voters-with-campaign-ads-pac-cash-flows-into-seattle-s-mayoral-race
“Where This Year’s Campaign Money Is Coming From” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2021/06/15/where-this-years-campaign-money-is-coming-from/
“Seattle’s 2021 primary just set up a ‘battle royale’ in November” by Angela King from KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/stories/seattle-primary-sets-up-battle-royale-in-november
“Nikkita Oliver overtakes Sara Nelson to assume the lead for Seattle City Council #9” by Andrew Villeneuve: https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2021/08/nikkita-oliver-overtakes-sara-nelson-to-assume-the-lead-for-seattle-city-council-9.html
Carolyn Bick’s coverage of policing for the South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/?s=carolyn+bick
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm your host, Crystal Fincher. On this show, we talk to political hacks and policy wonks to gather insight into local politics and policy through the lens of those doing the work and provide behind-the-scenes perspectives on politics in our state. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com and in our episode notes.
Hello, welcome to the Hacks & Wonks Post-Primary Consultant Roundtable. I'm Crystal Fincher, the host of Hacks & Wonks and a political consultant. And today, I'm thrilled to be joined by three of my favorite political consultants to break down what happened in last week's primary election. First, I want to introduce Riall Johnson. Hey, Riall, thank you for joining us. Also, Heather Weiner - hello. And, Michael Charles. So, I just wanted to start off by letting you give a quick synopsis of what you've been doing, what you're working on this cycle, and the types of races that you work on. So, I will start with Riall.
[00:01:35] Riall Johnson: Hi, thanks for having me. Riall Johnson, manager of Prism Washington. We work on a lot of progressive campaigns around the region. We had about 16 candidates running this year for office - 12 of them were people of color. 15 of them ended up making it through the primary or didn't have a primary. So, we count those going through. So, hopefully, all 15 of them can win the general, but a lot of - just really focused on helping candidates that usually don't have the institutional support getting that leg up, especially at the beginning of the campaign, to make it to overcome those hurdles, and making more people from the community run for office.
[00:02:21] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. And, Michael Charles.
[00:02:25] Michael Charles: Great. My name is Michael Charles. I'm the managing partner of Upper Left Strategies. We have about 8 candidates this cycle - which I did 15 before, Riall, that's why I don't have any hair anymore. But yeah, we're excited. But we're similar to Riall - we work with progressive folks, we really like challenging the establishment and taking on tough races that people don't expect our folks to win. And we really like to do good job and get out there and win. So, we're excited this cycle to have a lot of good candidates countywide and citywide, and we're just excited about the work we're doing. And, thanks for having me here today.
[00:03:09] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And, Heather Weiner.
[00:03:12] Heather Weiner: I am so honored to be here with you, Crystal, and also with Riall and Michael, who have just been kicking some serious butt over the last few years, and particularly, in this cycle. In contrast, I'm only working as a consultant with Lorena González, who's running for mayor in Seattle. And most of the campaigns that I'm working on - are not on the ballot this year - they're mostly issue and legislative campaigns.
[00:03:39] Crystal Fincher: You said that super all modest - only working on Lorena González. Basically, if you want to win a ballot initiative, you call Heather Weiner, is basically where we're at. Well-known for so many big progressive wins. So, thrilled to have you, along with Riall and Michael Charles here.
I'm Crystal Fincher with Fincher Consulting. I have worked with a lot of candidates - now mostly focusing on ballot initiatives and independent expenditures. But I wanted to kick off this conversation - starting off looking at the Seattle mayoral race. Heather, you just mentioned that you're working with Lorena González, who was one of the two candidates who made it through, along with Bruce Harrell. So, starting off, what do you think of the results? Was this what you were expecting? And what do you think this says about the voters in Seattle?
[00:04:33] Heather Weiner: Well, let me give you, first, my spin answer. Oh, yeah. We knew that Lorena was definitely going to be in the top two, and come within two points. That seems totally natural and we just totally thought that that was what's going to happen. Okay. Now, let me give you the real answer. Oh, my God. We were blown away. We knew we were going to be in the top two, but we thought that Bruce Harrell would have a larger lead at this point - that he would have coalesced some of the Republicans/more conservative elements. And, particularly with the results that we saw in some of the other races, we definitely thought that Lorena would be in the 20s. So, we were very surprised at her great showing there. And, I do have to say a lot of that had to do with name recognition, of course. Also, the amazing amount of support that she got from labor. And also, I think the people who are informed voters in the primary being concerned about Bruce Harrell making it through. So, I was very excited. And in fact, I think, made a fool out of myself in the party - some bloggers and reporters reported on somebody running around cheering and making an ass out of herself. And that, I will 100% admit, was me.
[00:05:51] Crystal Fincher: So, for Michael and Riall - we all saw the public polling that was done in this. So, I'm sure we all heard about some of the internal polling from the campaigns that showed a lot of voters - the majority of the voters undecided - heading into the final stages of the primary campaign. But I think it's fair to characterize the polling as showing Bruce and Lorena González in the lead. Bruce, usually leading - those, as Heather mentioned, by a wider margin than we saw in the actual results. But, we also saw that Colleen Echohawk seemed to have more traction in polling than resulted in the final election tally, that Jessyn Farrell was talking about different stuff. So what do you think accounts for the polling that we saw and the difference in the results that we got?
[00:06:51] Michael Charles: I do think that these folks were really independent, or they were undecided at the time, but as I've stated many times on your show, that I think there's two parties in Seattle now - it's the Seattle Times and it's The Stranger. And those two make up the bulk of voters in Seattle now. And if you get The Stranger vote, you're going to make up the mind to a lot of those undecided voters that were deciding between Colleen - and I thought that The Stranger actually, devastatingly for Colleen, made a pretty good argument for why you wouldn't want to vote for her.
[00:07:29] Crystal Fincher: What do you think, Riall?
[00:07:29] Riall Johnson: Yeah. The Stranger and The Times are really big forces in terms of the primary vote and who else gets through. One thing I know is - I worked with Andrew Grant Houston [Ace]. We had a lot of people that gave vouchers to Andrew, but they still voted for Lorena - basically, out of a lot of fear - for someone, they figured that Lorena was the person that could beat Bruce. And, it's a valid argument - that you're afraid of - giving us money and then voting for someone else, because they didn't - probably didn’t feel Ace had the name recognition to get to the general.
Well, like I said, it's disappointing. And of course, on my end, but also, you see why it happened. And I think what's like other candidates, people always talk about wanting change and new, but also experience and name recognition still hold strong in a lot of things. And I think that's what Lorena did. She did a great job of wrapping up a lot of the union support, I think - coalescing in progressive organizations, show that she built a good coalition of progressive establishment support, which I think really carried her through. And that's what The Stranger saw. I think with Colleen - I was actually even - when we first heard about Colleen running here excited, but I think you saw who was supporting her and the policies. There was really a lot lining a lot with Bruce, I think, which made people fall off in the end. And when people - primary voters do look at platforms and they see Lorena's platform was more on the progressive side than they were with Colleen. And I think that's what helped, in the end - probably steer people away from Colleen towards Lorena.
[00:09:10] Heather Weiner: I really wanted to find out from you two - what you thought about some of the negative messaging that was out there - from people on the right who were sending out the "Seattle is Dying" type mail. "Seattle - have you had enough?", was a mailer that I saw. Did you think that that would depress votes, do you think that's motivating to voters? What do you think is the interaction with that kind of campaigning?
[00:09:37] Riall Johnson: It probably depresses you because voter turnout was low. Way lower than I expected. I was hoping there would be some residual voter turnout increase from the 2020 election, where 75%-85% of Seattle voted. And now it's down to - it's at 36% right now, something like that, but we're going to probably crack 40% hopefully by the end maybe? So it's lower than it was two years ago, I think, it looks like so far. The "Seattle is Dying" message has been going on for 100 years - as we've seen it. It's like, if it's not dead by now, then Seattle is just immortal. And, I think that the whole point is people are catching on that it's just right-wing propaganda to say the fastest growing city in the country is dying.
And it's just like, if it's dying so much, how come there's so much economic boom here? The only thing that I'll say is, Seattle is actually choking - and it's choking the poor, and it's choking the working-class - because people are getting priced out because the rich here are thriving so much in this booming city. And that's why we see people just - if anything is dying, it's like, we're getting pushed out because of just the unfair - if anything it's a right wing haven, I always joke about Seattle - just because there's no income tax, billionaires live here for a reason. They get to crap on the poor - I'm not allowed to cuss in here, I mean I will. And the police get to get away with anything they want. It's just like, this is not the progressive city we live in. And I think that narrative of Seattle dying, it's just more just demonizing homeless and demonizing poor people to make it feel like - people feel like just because they see homeless as icky, and they want to just sweep them away with police. One thing that resonate is that, I think-
[00:11:30] Michael Charles: Yeah. That's what I was going to say too, Riall, around the homelessness. And I think that - this election is so much about homelessness, it's the top issue. Everybody wants to talk about homelessness. And I think if anything, that messaging drove people to think who has the vision that's in line with me about how I think homelessness can be solved in the region. And I think that, especially considering that I feel like this electorate is probably the most conservative electorate you'll see every four years, which is post presidential election primary in a city. It's going to be the most conservative electorate we can see, which I also think speaks to how powerful, or what strong positioning Lorena's in - in that that was literally the most conservative electorate we're going to see. And if she's only two points behind, that really makes me feel like she's connecting, clearly, on some issues with some folks that otherwise wouldn't feel the same. And if anything, I think that actually helped Lorena in that case, to be honest, where a lot of the people that are tired of this messaging of "Seattle's Dying" or like - I'm just tired of hearing it. So, they're going to vote for somebody that they think, actually, is the opposite of that. And so-
[00:12:51] Heather Weiner: It's so interesting, because we know we did some polling about public safety issues - because we saw some of the polling that was coming out of other outlets and the public polling that was talking about, "Oh, people are really scared. There's a big safety issue going on. People are really scared about crime." And certainly, you would think so, in seeing KIRO, KOMO, Q13, some of the mainstream media coverage of this, but when we actually ask people, "Well, how safe do you feel in your neighborhood?" 83% said they felt very safe. So, in terms of our own - we feel scared about what's happening somewhere else because that's what we're being told to feel. But, what we see with our own eyes in our own neighborhoods is - yeah, there are people who are living on the street and they are human beings and they are my neighbors, and I feel compassion and empathy to them. And we can also talk about Compassion Seattle. I hope that's on the agenda.
[00:13:49] Crystal Fincher: It is on the agenda.
[00:13:50] Heather Weiner: Before I give up the mic, let me just say, shout out to Riall, who helped his candidate max out on vouchers. He was the first one to help his candidate max out on vouchers in the mayoral campaign, which is mind boggling hard, particularly for a candidate that most people haven't heard of. And then the second thing is, your candidate, Andrew, was so smart, so on-message, so unapologetic about the positions that he was taking. I think he did drive the narrative and drive the message and drive the debate on it. And so, I'm going to be able to say sorry - I'm sorry to not have him at those - the upcoming forums. I really enjoyed having him there. I was totally into his headbands.
[00:14:34] Michael Charles: And, Riall is unquestionable GOAT at getting vouchers at this point. I just think everybody needs to know that - that is undoubtedly the case.
[00:14:44] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. There is not anyone who is in the same tier as Riall and Prism, when it comes to voucher game - extends into regular signature gathering - just fantastic, incredible job. And you just set a new bar throughout this cycle. The other thing-
[00:15:05] Michael Charles: You know when you're making the establishment mad, you're doing something right.
[00:15:08] Crystal Fincher: Yes.
[00:15:09] Riall Johnson: They only had a few hearings about it, you know -
[00:15:13] Crystal Fincher: Change some rules in the middle of the cycle.
One thing I wanted to just circle back on a little bit was talking about the whole "Seattle is Dying" narrative, which clearly didn't carry like people thought it would carry. And I think we've talked about this on the show before, but that is such a narrative - I think people confuse that narrative. I think sometimes, there are some entities when you look at historically like their cost per vote are very bad. A lot of times the more, business focused Chamber candidatesque - those IEs - a lot of times are not the most efficient at driving out votes. And it takes all that money that they throw at candidates to drag them across the finish line.
But that "Seattle is Dying" narrative does not work in Seattle. And I think, sometimes, people have some blinders on within Seattle, thinking that that's an effective thing - when really that narrative works for people who are not familiar with Seattle, who don't live in Seattle, who are outside of Seattle. That's where that's gaining traction. But as you mentioned, Heather, that polling matches up with everything that we've seen before. And that people who live in Seattle, don't feel that. They don't feel that as they're walking through their neighborhood, that they feel like they're in danger. They don't feel like, "Oh, the city that we thought we knew - that this was utopia is now this barren wasteland. And there's lawlessness and anarchy and seeing the..."
[00:16:44] Heather Weiner: Well, let's be honest - there are a lot more people who are living on the street. And with people living on the street - we are seeing, we are visually experiencing more trash or seeing people who are suffering more, we're seeing more drug use. And as a result, we all feel very uncomfortable. But let's go back to what Riall was saying, which is, when you're talking about who's to blame here and what really the problem is, the problem is that the money that was taken out of housing, out of mental health, out of treatment services back in 2011 by the State Legislature was never put back into those budgets. And the cities and counties have then been left with the bill. And they are the ones who are now responsible for taking care of people who are being evicted, who can no longer pay the rent because of the recession, for the expansion of substance use disorder because of trauma. And as a result, who's got to pay? And let me just go here and channel Andrew Grant Houston and say, "Big corporations are the ones who have got to pay, because they are the ones who are hoarding the wealth." Okay. I'm not running for office.
[00:17:53] Crystal Fincher: Well, so I guess that - that is an interesting conversation. And looking at some of the other candidates - I guess a couple things. One, it appears that candidates who did favor the Compassion Seattle amendment got more votes than candidates who did not favor the Compassion Seattle amendment - with the caveat that this is a primary election that we-
[00:18:17] Michael Charles: But it was only Jessyn and Bruce, right? That really were in favor of it, right?
[00:18:22] Crystal Fincher: And Casey Sixkiller.
[00:18:22] Michael Charles: And Sixkiller.
[00:18:25] Crystal Fincher: Yeah.
[00:18:25] Heather Weiner: Oh, yeah. Okay. That's right. That's probably true.
[00:18:30] Riall Johnson: Colleen was, and then she wasn't.
[00:18:32] Heather Weiner: And then she wasn't.
[00:18:33] Michael Charles: Yeah. She's like half.
[00:18:34] Heather Weiner: Yeah, yeah. Pretty close. Somebody who's listening, do the math.
[00:18:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. It was there, but it was a primary electorate. There is not much messaging about Compassion Seattle. To your point, Heather, we're just getting started with the citywide conversation on Compassion Seattle. And I think part of the challenge of it, as someone who - people who listen to Hacks & Wonks are not going to be surprised that I oppose the Compassion Seattle Charter Amendment 29 - because it's codifying sweeps and doesn't do much to actually solve the root problems that cause homelessness. But the messaging on it - the name, Compassion Seattle, the headlines that you hear on the evening news - it guarantees money to be spent on services and provides a humane, compassionate way to address the problem. Those are all things that people want, and we haven't really gotten into a wide discussion city-wide or communication to people who don't pay attention to politics that much on what the details of this actually are and how it might differ from the rhetoric there. So candidates like Jessyn Farrell and Bruce Harrell supported it. Do you think that is going to help or hinder them in the general election?
[00:20:02] Riall Johnson: I think it's going to hinder them - I hope so because it's a *** initiative. We had to contend with these people on the streets and it was just a horrible initiative there. One night on the streets - and it was just like, they would try to take over turfs on where my people gathering vouchers were - Heather experienced it. So, you just use people. The way they did about that, they were just trying to bully their way into this initiative, and then bully their way on the ballot. And it was really easy to get someone to see the side of things, if you pitched things right - because that messaging - they would just say, "It's going to help the homeless." Anything you can say can help the homeless - it's all subjective. And everyone wants to help the homeless, but the question is, what are they going to do about it?
This whole thing about guaranteeing money, we've already been spending money on the homeless. Question is, what we do with it. People keep trying to blame the Council for the problems - at this point, I can blame the Council for, or get mad at them. But the thing is that Council is only like 20% of power in the City. The rest of it resides in the mayor. And we have had a corporate conservative mayor for the last three decades. Maybe with the exception of Mike McGinn, but even he had his issues. But like with Ed Murray and Jenny Durkan, Tim Burgess and Bruce Harrell, who was also there - the last four ... five mayors, and any before that. It's just been corporate supported, backed mayors who have just done what the corporations want them to do in Seattle - and always giving police more money, giving corporations whatever they want, and then stripped funding. Even if when they get funding, they just don't spend it on housing or homeless situations. They just spend it on sweeping them, and sweeping them out the other way. So it's like, we say we'll put money in it - we've been throwing money at the sweeps, not even throwing money at actual housing. And the mayor is to blame for all that, because Council has given the mayor money for this and mayor just doesn't choose to use it.
And people need to realize the power resides in the mayor's office. That's why Andrew ran in the first place. He's like, "We can be the most progressive City Council ever. We can be 9 out of 9 progressive City Council. But unless the mayor actually does what we ask them to do, which they have the choice not to - and Durkan has been declining these choices - misusing this money. There's not much a Council can really do in the City." And the thing is, unless they got 9 they can do more to approve both, but we don't have a full progressive council. It's funny how they always try and blame Kshama or Tammy or the three actual progressives on the Council, or four progressives - but they don't have the full power. Lorena has given money and shepherded a lot of bills - it just doesn't get spent right. And even to that, I don't want to blame Bruce for everything the Council did either, because the Council can only do so much.
[00:23:00] Heather Weiner: Yeah, it's not a weak mayor government that we have - it's a very strong mayor form of government that we have here. On C29, one of the things that's in the news, I don't know if you guys have seen - is that ACLU and some homelessness advocates and Transit Riders Union just filed a lawsuit yesterday, challenging C29. And, I am a lawyer - I don't play one on TV, but I think they have a good chance. And I don't want to bore your listeners by telling them why they have a good chance, but actually, I think they have a good chance. And, I think it also helps - by ACLU getting their name into the press, talking about how they oppose this - I think that also weakens that unofficial backdoor IE that the Downtown Seattle Association and the Chamber have going right now.
[00:23:53] Michael Charles: Well, polling has backed up that people are actually like - when they hear this on the surface, it's actually not a bad idea. And so, it's - I'm worried that with no official - we have a small amount of opposition, but I think Heather's right. I think that there's a good chance this gets through right now. And without the right information, without people really understanding what's in the bill here, it's a really good chance it's going to pass. People are looking for a plan. People are looking for a vision. People want just something done on homelessness.
[00:24:32] Heather Weiner: Right. And, if you look at their messaging, it's very much about the Council, the Council, the Council. So, pointing the finger at them. So, yeah, I think C29 is going to be really interesting. I know you guys don't want to talk about Seattle politics the whole time, so I'll be quiet.
[00:24:52] Riall Johnson: Isn't that what we're here for?
[00:24:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah.
[00:24:53] Heather Weiner: Well, there are actually, other cities in King County.
[00:24:55] Crystal Fincher: There are, and we will get to them.
[00:24:57] Michael Charles: Crystal lives in one of them - just throwing that out there.
[00:25:00] Crystal Fincher: I live in one of them, and I'm excited. We had one primary race. And the candidate shares the same last name with me in Kent, and her results as the local paper of record said - she dominated her two opponents. So, pleased with that, but-
[00:25:24] Michael Charles: With minimal spend, mind you.
[00:25:26] Crystal Fincher: Minimal spend - that cost per vote. It's pretty impressive. Nice work on that, Michael Charles.
But, I do want to just put a bow on Charter Amendment 29. I'm looking forward to that lawsuit. I agree with the panel here - that the anti-campaign has a tough road, just because of the simplicity of the message favoring the pro-campaign. The devil really is in the details - significant devil in the details, but you have to get to the details. And that's really hard without a concerted communication effort, which takes a lot of resources. And the pro-campaign clearly has the resource advantage. Doesn't mean it's impossible. Just means that the work is cut out for the anti-Charter Amendment 29 campaign ahead, but I'm sure they're going to have a lot of eager and talented people willing to put in that work.
[00:26:28] Riall Johnson: Yeah. All you gotta do is tell people, "Just follow the money - look at who's funding it."
[00:26:31] Crystal Fincher: Seriously. And there was a story, I think, by Jim Brunner this past week in the Seattle Times talking about Trump's number one booster in the state giving to both the Bruce Harrell campaign and the Charter Amendment 29 campaign.
[00:27:01] Heather Weiner: Yeah. And Bruce Harrell's IE. Let's make sure to give credit where credit's due - that was Danny Westneat, of all people.
[00:27:02] Crystal Fincher: It was Danny Westneat.
[00:27:02] Heather Weiner: Yes. Danny Westneat published that, just when I think I broke up with him.
[00:27:03] Michael Charles: George Petrie is also one of the people that are fighting the eviction moratorium the most - that wants to end that. So I would just throw that out there as well.
[00:27:13] Heather Weiner: Yeah. The landlord.
[00:27:13] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I hope to see covered in the general election - the story of campaign spending. It's an undertold story. And so many, especially Seattle campaigns and mayoral campaigns - I think that we have ignored to our detriment, the story of donors. Certainly, during the past two with Durkan and with Ed Murray - their rhetoric said one thing, their donor list said something completely different.
[00:27:41] Michael Charles: I would add Dow Constantine to that list as well, as somebody who takes money from Amazon and lots of other places as well -
[00:27:51] Crystal Fincher: It's something I think is a fair question to ask candidates. These are investments for access and policy from businesses - and you just have to ask them, why do they feel it's a good investment in that candidate? What return do they think they're getting? It's fair to ask that, for a lot of different ones. But, I think that one lesson we need to learn in politics is that - it's not that candidates are bought and sold, but organizations, companies know where a candidate stands, and they're giving with an expected result. And usually, that turns out to be correct. When you look at how someone governs - usually, there are no surprises when you look at their donors. That's something that Seattle voters have a history of ignoring. I hope they pay attention this time. And I hope the media pays attention this time - that story by Danny Westneat, I thought was excellent. I hope to see more.
[00:28:46] Heather Weiner: Yeah, don't say that too loud. If he hears you, he's going to write something completely opposite of it.
[00:28:51] Michael Charles: And shout out to like Erica - Erica Barnett normally does a really good piece every year. I don't know - I didn't pay attention as close this year if she did one on the mayor's race or City Council, but she normally does an excellent job on this every year.
[00:29:06] Crystal Fincher: She's been on top of it in covering that, in addition with Charter Amendment 29 also. So PubliCola has been on that. The Urbanist has been doing more coverage of that and has had a lot of great stories throughout that, in addition to the South Seattle Emerald. So, a hat tip to local Seattle media for being engaged in helping to hold candidates accountable and help to inform voter.
[00:29:31] Heather Weiner: And to City Hall reporters - it is a thankless job, but there's new people coming out. New people you're seeing on Twitter who are following what's happening in City Hall. And I really appreciate that - it's a thankless job. I want to hear what you guys have to think about Council race 9.
[00:29:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah.
[00:29:52] Riall Johnson: So first off, shout out to Carolyn Bick, as well for - in South Seattle Emerald, especially [their] police reporting.
[00:30:09] Crystal Fincher: Excellent.
[00:30:09] Riall Johnson: Council race 9 is - this is like a lot of hopes and dreams you've been thinking about - in that someone that doesn't have to follow the party establishment framework can actually win. And so, Nikkita getting through the primary gives hope that we could actually break free of this two party system. And, that's my biggest joy from seeing Nikkita get through. It's just like - not only is that seeing someone from the community that's put in so much workin leading movements, leading marches, leading protests - showing that and seeing that reflect in the electorate - without party support, without party politics - started their own party and getting through and leading is just hugely exciting to watch the potential of that.
It's not the first person, obviously, Kshama did as well - but city-wide was getting that much support. It's a testament to the community organizer that Nikkita is. And of course, I'm really good friends with the campaign manager, Shaun Scott, who's an amazing organizer. He just knows how to get people out - you see their posts - you see 100 people coming out to canvass, because they're just that excited for that person. And that resonates with voters regardless of party. I think just the excitement of that campaign has been very contagious.
[00:31:35] Heather Weiner: I love - just to see some of the volunteer art around town. I had my two nieces visiting here from Florida, and all they could talk about was Nikkita. They're both 14 and 16, and they saw the art around town, and they were starting to tell me about this candidate named Nikkita. It was really inspiring and really interesting.
I want to hear the tea though - tell me about - let's say, I'm not involved with either DSA or the People's Party. What is going to happen if we have Nikkita and Kshama both on the City Council? What do you think will happen? Will they work together? Do you think there's going to be tension? What's happening there?
[00:32:10] Riall Johnson: I wish I could tell you. I don't know.
[00:32:14] Michael Charles: Well, I think they represent two different things, right? DSA is not the same as People's Party. I feel like there's a big separation in their approach and how they're going to go - or not even DSA, but what is it? What's Kshama's -?
[00:32:32] Riall Johnson: Socialist Alternative.
[00:32:32] Michael Charles: Socialist Alternative. Yeah. I feel like they're totally different approaches - the way they go about problem solving is a lot differently. And I say that in the way that, I think Kshama's approach is to throw bombs, right? And I don't know that Nikkita's approach is necessarily to throw bombs, but to speak truth to power. And I think those are two different things. And I know that Kshama's approach is about speaking truth to power, for sure. But it's through the lens of capitalism versus everything else. And Nikkita's is more around equity, and how are we genuinely pushing equity in government?
Not to throw too much, but I want to step back just from the D9 race itself, and I felt like that was like - two things. One thing being, the day after punditry needs to be dead. We need to just stop doing the day after the campaign punditry. This is ridiculous. I can't tell you how many posts we read that was like, Nikkita underperformed - she should have won. Sara Nelson was up by all these numbers. And then, here we are - Nikkita's clearly in the lead and it's switched. But secondly, there's no room for middle politics right here. And I think the mayor's race proved that. I think this race was the clearest example of - there's no room for anything, but you got to pick a team at this point. The voters have no room for nuance. You are either on the side that's going to fight what's going on in this City, or you're cool with everything that's going on - you want more of the same. So, there's just no room for nuance. There's no room for - if they think you're the policy person or that you work for them. That's just not important in these races any longer. It's about, are you on our side or not? And, I think we're really clear.
[00:34:27] Heather Weiner: Now Michael, you worked for a candidate in this race, right? For Brianna Thomas, who was very much in that lane, and wasn't able to break through both of those. And I am a huge fan of Brianna Thomas. I voted for Brianna Thomas, and I know she's a friend of the show. Tell me how it would have been different if either Nikkita or Sara was not in the race. I'm sorry. Am I sounding like I'm trying to host right now? Crystal, feel free to kick me-
[00:34:56] Crystal Fincher: No, you're fine. This is a conversation.
[00:34:58] Heather Weiner: All right. Sorry. I'm just really interested. Yeah.
[00:35:00] Michael Charles: No. The thing is that Brianna has integrity, and what she needed to do once Nikkita got in the race, was not like - if she wanted to get through, you had to pick a team. And the fact is, Brianna's also really progressive, has progressive ideas. But if what you were looking for was that, you chose the person that had more history with that lane, that clearly was less intellectual about explaining - you need to know this about city politics, and you need to know this about city politics in order to get things done. And I think voters really resonated with that of like - I don't care about the insider ball game. I just don't care. What I want is people that are going to stand up for these issues.
And I think that for Brianna, it was hard. If Sara Nelson wasn't in the race, Brianna would have gotten through. If Nikkita wasn't in the race, Brianna would have gotten through. Traditionally, we look at Lisa Herbold. We look at Andrew Lewis. She's in the mold of a lot of the candidates or a lot of the current Councilmembers of a former staffer. She is what traditionally we have done in Seattle for politics. And so, I just think that it was a repudiation of the idea of more of the same. And they said, we want somebody that's more extreme to get done what we want done.
[00:36:25] Riall Johnson: Also, I think it came down to name recognition. Nikkita has just been doing a lot of work, been out in the spotlight, led a lot of things, and people recognize. And also, you don't have D next to your name on the ballot - that also makes it - so, it was a nonpartisan race. People saw the progressive candidate that - voter's pamphlets, all that stuff added up. And Brianna has been just doing a lot of great work for years. And I hope people come away recognizing the stuff that she's done behind the scenes. She's been that person behind the scenes, that workhorse that has just got things done - like, the minimal wage. Even the very first minimum wage - organized the SeaTac one, not just the statewide, but the SeaTac minimum wage. A lot of policies that we are thankful that we pat ourselves on the back for, the progressive policy in City Council, Brianna got done.
So, I think you've got to give credit where credit's due. And hopefully - I don't think Brianna is done with Seattle, because she's just someone who - when we actually do turn this place into the progressive ****hole that Fox News thinks it is, we're going to need people like Brianna to get things done. So hopefully, we see more of her and her career, one way or another. She's sharp as they come. Hopefully, she's not done with Seattle.
[00:37:49] Michael Charles: Brianna is not done with Seattle politics. In my opinion, I think that she's going to be an important part moving forward.
[00:37:54] Heather Weiner: There's so few women of color who were running for office in the City of Seattle, and there's so many who are starting to run now, thanks to the three of you, in all of these other cities and in King County. But to have two women of color running against each other in that race was painful to watch, right? Because we want to raise up women of color as much as we can everywhere.
[00:38:20] Crystal Fincher: I mean - go ahead, Michael.
[00:38:21] Michael Charles: I was just going to say, I think it's good that we have multiple women of color running for office. I'm excited about that. I get mad when - I don't think we have to coalesce around the one or anything ever. Actually, I wish we had four women of color running in every race, always. That would be amazing. We would feel we're doing something right, if that's point.
[00:38:45] Heather Weiner: And that's a good point. We had two women of color running in this mayor's race, with Lorena and Colleen Echohawk, which was fantastic. Yeah.
[00:38:55] Michael Charles: And to have two Black women running is almost even cooler.
[00:39:00] Crystal Fincher: It's really cool. And I think it impacts the quality of the discourse. I've heard from several journalists who commented on the quality of the policy discussions in that Position 9 race, and the detail of Nikkita's policy, Brianna's policy. I don't know that Sara Nelson brought a lot of detail in policy to the table. But certainly, between Brianna and Nikkita, really talking about - not just a vision, but the plans to get there. I think in the mayoral race - multiple women of color running and having more nuanced conversations and better conversations - I think that's a positive thing. I'm with Michael in that I don't think that there can only be one.
And I also appreciate it, because I think there's a tendency to - because we don't have enough women of color running yet, we're still excited when it happens because it happens too infrequently. But there's this tendency to be like, well, there can only be one - who is the true and authentic person of color who can speak for all of the people of color, right? And we're definitely not a monolith. We have a lot of different perspectives. And I think the more people of color, women of color, more Black women that run - we get to see the richness of how varied we are, how many different perspectives and solutions we can bring to the table. So, I like seeing people run. It's never - do I wish that we could be able to elect great people, and not have to choose between two, if it would be great if they both could wind up in office? Sure. But when they end up running against each other, is it okay? And, do I think it is necessarily unfortunate? No. I think that it's good to see those perspectives. And I agree that we have not seen the last of Brianna Thomas and will be better for it if she stays engaged.
Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks. Our chief audio engineer at KVRU is Maurice Jones Jr. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I, and now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type in "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our mid-week show delivered to your podcast feed. You can also get a full text transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced during the show at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.
This week Erica C. Barnett of Publicola joins Crystal to dive in to the breaking news about Mayor Durkan intentionally causing her texts from last summer to disappear, why folks experiencing homelessness face more harm from congregate shelters than from encampments, the deep deficiencies of "Compassion Seattle" Charter Amendment 29, and the map of González versus Harrell voters breaking down clearly along income lines.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Erica C. Barnett, at @ericacbarnett. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Mayor’s office knew for months Durkan’s phone setting caused texts to vanish, emails show” by Lewis Kamb, Daniel Beekman, and Jim Brunner of The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/mayors-office-knew-for-months-durkans-phone-setting-caused-texts-to-vanish-emails-show/
“When a homeless encampment was cleared, no one went to a shelter. The reasons are complicated” by Daniel Wu from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/when-a-homeless-encampment-was-cleared-no-one-went-to-shelter-the-reasons-why-are-complicated/
“The C Is for Crank: Correcting the Record on Compassion Seattle” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2021/07/13/the-c-is-for-crank-correcting-the-record-on-compassion-seattle/
“The City’s Progress Report on Homelessness Is Also a Reality Check” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2021/07/27/the-citys-progress-report-on-homelessness-is-also-a-reality-check/
“Beware of the feel-good news story” by Samantha Grosso from Vox: https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/11/26/20982211/feel-good-news-inspiration
“2021 Primary Precinct Results Show Familiar Rich vs Rent-burdened Battle Lines” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/08/19/2021-primary-precinct-results-show-familiar-rich-vs-rent-burdened-battle-lines/
"In King County, pollution makes ZIP codes predictors of your health" from University of Washington: https://depts.washington.edu/urbanuw/news/in-king-county-pollution-makes-zip-codes-predictors-of-your-health/
“National Environmental Public Health Tracking: Community Design” from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/tracking/topics/CommunityDesign.htm
“Fine particulate air pollution associated with higher risk of dementia” by Jake Ellison from University of Washington: https://www.washington.edu/news/2021/08/04/fine-particulate-air-pollution-associated-with-higher-risk-of-dementia/
“King County rent relief still slow to reach tenants” by David Kroman from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/news/2021/08/king-county-rent-relief-still-slow-reach-tenants
“The Severe Health Consequences of Housing Instability” by Frances Gill from The People’s Policy Project: https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/07/09/the-severe-health-consequences-of-housing-instability/
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight in the local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind the scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost live shows where we review the news of the week. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show, and today's co-host, Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola and author of Twitter, a Memoir Of Drinking Relapse And Recovery, Erica Barnett. I was just having a conversation with a friend who was in the middle of reading your book and they were loving it.
[00:00:51] Erica Barnett: So awesome. That's so good to hear.
[00:00:53] Crystal Fincher: Yes. And it's now available in paperback. So pick it up wherever you pick up your books. Well, I wanted to start off by talking about news that broke... Well, kind of news. More news about Mayor Durkan's missing texts and missing texts from the mayor's office. The mayor knew for months, the office knew for months what was causing those texts to vanish. They were acting like it was a mystery, not sure what happened, but a review of messages and the fruit of public disclosure requests reveal that they've known the whole time because they did it. What did you think about this story?
[00:01:27] Erica Barnett: Well, I mean, as you said, it's breaking news that's not really breaking. I mean, anybody reading these stories that have been coming out in The Seattle Times over the last few months is probably scratching their head going, "How could you just accidentally on purpose delete months of texts?" And of course it was done intentionally. I mean, it reminds me a little bit of like, when celebrities say something really inappropriate on social media and then claim that their Instagram was hacked or their Twitter was hacked. I mean, it was never a particularly believable excuse that somehow there had been a technical glitch that had conveniently deleted months of texts relating to the protests last summer. And as we're finding out more details, of course, it's coming out, that they were not believable because they were not true.
So it's a real bummer for the city that they're going to have to be dealing with this and the city attorney's office is going to have to be dealing with this for months, if not years after Jenny Durkan leaves office, because there are more important things in the city to be handling. And the lack of disclosure and the decision to deny information to reporters, including myself, is going to have ramifications long after this particular mayor leaves office. I mean, I hope it ultimately leads to some stricter public disclosure requirements at the city. State has pretty good public disclosure laws, in my opinion and the problem is always in the implementation and in people taking them seriously or not.
[00:02:56] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. It is. And whether people take them seriously and I'm still frustrated at the different levels of accountability that we hold our powerful privileged and some public officials to, this is a potential felony. Jenny Durkan, on purpose, changed a setting to cause those texts to automatically be deleted after a set period of time, which was not legal, which is a potential felony. This is a former federal prosecutor who is intimately familiar with disclosure requirements and rules. And I mean, there's a reason why a former federal prosecutor might be concerned about what things may look like if they got out and with an understanding of how to prevent the facts from getting out. This is a mayor who had to go through remedial disclosure training while during her tenure in the city.
This is not an accident. This was completely on purpose. This has been a whole charade about, "Well, we're not sure. Who knows. We can probably find and recover this information," and it's so disappointing. It's already cost taxpayers over $200,000, and we're just at the beginning of this process and just... It is so infuriating, it's infuriating. It's frustrating.
[00:04:14] Erica Barnett: Well, it's interesting too, the mayor's office. I mean, this information came to The Seattle Times through public disclosure requests. And my understanding at least, in my own personal experience is that the mayor's office is having to go back with a new person, doing these public disclosure requests and essentially redoing them to... And this is not just with regard to text messages, but also emails. I, last week, received some emails from the mayor's office that included her personal city email address, which I have never received a single email that I'm aware of, or that I can recall. It jumped out at me that, oh, all of a sudden, there's this huge batch of emails that has the mayor's actual direct email address on them that came to and from the mayor.
I've never received those. Is that because this was just a coincidence that finally, when they were being done by someone working under duress and pressure that they actually turned them over, or is it just while she just never uses this address? I mean, I have no real way of knowing, except that now my public disclosure request responses look very different than they have for the previous three and a half years of this administration.
[00:05:20] Crystal Fincher: I, again, just so frustrated. And part of my frustration is that some of this looked apparent. I mean, you certainly called attention to general obfuscation of facts, hiding information, unwillingness to speak to people who they didn't view as friendly to them or willing to carry their talking points. And I think now people... There've been so many mistakes and so many missteps that Durkan has few allies left anywhere, but we could have avoided some of this if the scrutiny that was applied to different officials certainly applied to the city council was applied to the mayor's office from the beginning. So I hope this is a lesson that people from all across the board from all sectors, from all areas pay attention to. Even if you feel like someone is an ally, you still have to hold them accountable. And wow. That just did not happen with Jenny Durkan and I'm thankful it is beginning to happen now.
[00:06:22] Erica Barnett: Well, then the election is in just a few months. So we're going to have a new administration, and hopefully this will not continue into the next one.
[00:06:33] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. This week there was a great story in The Seattle Times that reminded me of several stories that you've done on PubliCola, going deeper than just talking about yes, the homeless... We have more unsheltered people. The issue of homelessness is more apparent and present than it's been in our lifetimes. And the reason why people are on the street and not in shelter, sometimes even when shelter space is available is not a simple one. But there are legitimate reasons why people don't want to go to congregate shelter and it's because many of them feel and have experienced more danger in some of those congregate shelters than they have in encampments outside. You've reported on that. There were also shelter acceptance numbers released this week. What have you seen on that?
[00:07:22] Erica Barnett: Well, I mean, I think that it should be self-evident to anyone just thinking about themselves and their own life. Just thinking about the way human beings are that, first of all, people don't like to... It is not desirable to sleep in a big room with no privacy, with no safety, with no guarantee that you're going to have a bed in the morning. So that's basic congregate shelter. The city of Seattle has largely moved away from that to enhanced shelter but what that is is slightly less congregate, generally dorm style rooms. You have a little bit of privacy, but I mean, that is still really less than ideal, particularly if you've experienced trauma or violence or had your stuff stolen, or even if you just can't be in a room full of people. For whatever reason, sleeping in a room full of strangers is not appealing to me. And frankly, I've thought about this a lot, if I became homeless myself, I would much rather have some privacy, some sense of safety in a group of people that I know, which is often the case with encampments. People get to know each other, they protect each other. They look out for each other. And so when the option then the city comes through and sweeps and encampment of, say, 30 people who all know each other, who all trust each other, and maybe don't trust anybody else because life has taught them not to trust people, and tells them, "You all have to go to different shelters across the city and you can't take your pets or you can't take your partner," because a lot of these shelters are sex segregated, "You got to get rid of all your stuff." It's not an appealing prospect.
So the numbers that came out recently show that the shelter acceptance rate, which is an unfortunate term, because it implies you're accepting or rejecting an option that is great, which is really simplistic, but the shelter acceptance rate went up in this last quarter because people are going to the hotels the city has provided, and that's great. Hotels are a much better option than enhanced shelter. But I think that the city is touting it as this incredible achievement, but I think it really speaks more to the fact that the city failed for months and months and months to accept money and to open up shelters in hotels for people. And now, we have just 200 or shelter rooms in hotels for the thousands and thousands of unsheltered people in our city. So the fact that those hotels filled up is not something to be celebrated in an unadulterated way. It's great that some small, tiny percentage of people were able to move into them, but it is still a small, tiny percentage, and the city should've done more and could have done more, much, much, much earlier. And under the Durkan Administration, they chose not to.
[00:10:03] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. and this has been a longstanding problem. It's one of those things that they announced a celebration. I'm sure Durkan is thinking about her legacy and trying to put a good spin on things before she makes her final exit from the mayor's office. But it reminds me of those stories that are presented as feel good stories, like this kid sells lemonade and raises $2,000 for his mom's cancer treatment. And it's just like that is not a happy story. That's a story of failure and burden and deep inequity. And this is what that reminds me of. Compared to the need, we were talking earlier, you mentioned the latest one night count number for unsheltered people in Seattle was around 5,500, and that's usually a dramatic undercount.
So using that as a starting point, a very conservative figure, looking at the numbers that the mayor's office is touting is just so woefully insignificant when we do have information on what helps. And it does not escape my notice that what helped make a big dent in that was providing the hotel rooms, which the mayor's office dragged their feet on and didn't get a fee reimbursement for it. It just seems like it's been like pulling teeth to make any progress on the things that have data behind them that we know work. And it's like, "Oh, finally, I did the things that I've been resisting that you have been begging me to do that we know work. And whew, success." And it's just like, "We could be so much further along if you would've just done it sooner."
[00:11:34] Erica Barnett: and I will say too, this really speaks to the oversimplification that Compassion Seattle, the homelessness initiative, is doing, because they're saying, basically, "We'll clear the streets." And by that, they primarily mean Downtown Seattle, which is where all their money is coming from. "And to do that, we're going to provide 2,000 shelter beds." It shows how little the backers of that understand about why people accept shelter and why people reject shelter. Again, I don't love those terms, but if you are going to do shelter on the cheap, which is what Compassion Seattle is essentially proposing, you're going to get shelter that people don't want. You're not going to be able to pay for 2,000 permanent or semi-permanent hotel rooms using that money, that Compassion Seattle is proposing to require the city to spend.
It's not going to be enough money, and it can't be done that quickly. As we're seeing with the county, it takes time to buy hotels, et cetera. It's just, we have a very oversimplified idea in the city and probably in this country as well of what people actually need, because we think of people too much as just widgets we can stuff into boxes. As we've seen over and over again, they're not, and they have preferences and freewill and choices to make in their lives, just like everybody else.
[00:12:58] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And make them just like we make decisions. As you pointed out, would any one of us be excited to spend the night in a room with no walls, with no doors, with a ton of people who we don't know, when we've heard others have had bad experiences in that situation? Absolutely not. That would wear on us after a short period of time. And we're asking people who already are dealing with challenges that are only intensified by being unsheltered to enter into a dangerous and destabilizing environment, and it just makes no sense. I do appreciate that Seattle Times article this week, we'll link it in the episode notes, for making that plain and for really talking about the reasons why what is offered does not fit the need and is actually not a fit or a solution for the problem there. And thank you for pointing out that Charter Amendment 29, known as the Compassion Seattle Charter Amendment, it doesn't provide enough time, it doesn't provide enough money, it doesn't enough shelter to begin to meaningfully address the challenges out there.
The amount of shelter they say they're going to provide accounts for less than half of the very most conservative estimate of the need out there. So really, the only change that is definite and codified into the city charter is the ability to sweep people, which is what the financial backers of this initiative have been advocating for, and it's not a surprise that that is really the only thing with teeth and specificity in this initiative. And so I hope we have a more robust and full conversation about that generally throughout this general election time period. There is a lawsuit that the ACLU of Washington, How's Our Neighbors, they've sued that initiative, basically saying that it operates outside of the authority of a charter amendment and is getting into policy details that it is not authorized to do. We'll see how that pans out, but certainly I'm concerned that we're not paying attention to people saying, "This is actually what would help," the people who are most in the position to know what would actually help, and why things that are being offered aren't helping, and it's up to us to listen and respond.
I also want to talk this week about a story that I think The Urbanist did a great job in breaking down, which was the 2021 primary precinct results. Now that we finalized where we are at in this election, we have the precinct by precinct results. They've mapped those results, and then also did a really smart analysis on just what that means. And what we see is something that's been familiar to us throughout several elections, where areas of Seattle that are more single-family exclusive, basically people who are well-to-do and wealthy, voted one way, people who are rent burdened voted a different way. And so this is a familiar looking map, but it also discusses also not just the population growth in Seattle, which I've talked about before as being a unique factor in elections here that we don't see in a lot of other areas, because there's been so much growth, even things that happen 5 and 10 years ago are unfamiliar to a significant portion of the population here, like Pete Holmes, his history, and what happened before Ed Murray, and all of that stuff may not be familiar to the tens of thousands of people who weren't here before then. And so, not just that Seattle has grown, but where that growth has occurred and what that suggests about potential voting patterns was discussed in this Urbanist article by Doug Trumm. What do those results look like to you?
[00:16:40] Erica Barnett: Well, it feels like every two years or every four years we look at these maps, and it shows that if you have a view of the water, if you live in an exclusionary single-family area, you tend to vote more conservative. I mean, I do think your point is well taken, Crystal. The number of people who are moving here from elsewhere and don't have the same history is going to, eventually, one hopes, reshape our voter map in a more progressive direction. To bring it down to like a very wonky level, and I think this is where Doug took it too, if the city chooses not to do anything about the zoning problem, which is fundamentally a problem of being able to rent in Seattle and the ability of people like me and people who don't make $200,000 a year to live here, that is going to largely determine the course of our future elections.
Bruce Harrell has said very, very clearly that he wants to preserve single-family zoning. And in fact, he of all the candidates in this primary election, he was the most clear on this one issue, which is that single-family zoning is extremely important to him and that he believes that we should only allow apartments along essentially car sewers, busy arterials, which is the current situation. And when you have that, what happens is there's not enough housing, people who make under $100,000 a year move out to Issaquah and vote Kathy Lambert out of office maybe, but they're not here to vote for progressive candidates or for more progressive candidates in Seattle elections.
I really think that this issue, I mean, it's a bit of a sleeper issue amid all the discussion about homelessness, but it's very related. Lorena González who wants to eliminate the exclusionary single-family zoning map that we've had for many decades now, and Bruce Harrell wants to preserve it as it is with maybe a little bit more density right along those big busy streets. And that is a huge, huge decision that's going to shape the future of our city and who can afford to live here and call it home.
[00:18:56] Crystal Fincher: It absolutely is huge and has been a big topic discussion throughout the mayoral race. Look like Bruce Harrell was initially a little bit more muddy on where he stood there, and certainly initially gave indications that he may be open to addressing exclusionary zoning. But as time moved on as we saw his donor list and the list to the PAC supporting him, you get filled with some of those more traditional, downtown conservative interests that talk crystallized on exactly what you said, "Hey, in areas that are already dense, we'll have them accept more density, but we're going to leave those exclusive previously red lined areas alone." And people keep remarking on maps of Seattle. Just like when there's a voting map and there's a map of health outcomes, when all these maps come out, they're really racial and income disparity maps.
That's really what we're looking at with every single map that comes out. And unless we change that dynamic, fundamentally, overall, as many cities are doing, I mean, shoot, Olympia is moving in that direction. Portland, so, they're moving in that direction. Unless Seattle does that, we are not going to change this underlying dynamic, which impacts everything. So it's absolutely critical to focus on that issue, to understand where the candidates are. And there is a clear choice in this campaign between Bruce Harrell and Lorena González. And in my opinion, only one of them is offering a solution that will begin to break this disparity that we see over and over again, throughout every election and through so many issues.
[00:20:37] Erica Barnett: Just to pinpoint another issue of racial justice, it's income, it's racial equity, but it's also I think more and more about environmental justice, the environmental justice impact of telling people they have to live on these busy streets. And not every arterial is like a zooming highway, but the fact is when you live on a busy roadway with cars on it all the time, your health outcomes are worse. And if you look at racial mapping of Seattle, if you look at income mapping of Seattle and you look at health mapping, it all correlates, and it's in those areas where people live on freeways, where they live along busy six-lane arterials that you see worse health impacts. And so, when we say that, "Oh, we should confine density to these specific areas," what we're also saying is we should confine disparate health impacts to certain areas. So I think for Bruce Harrell to be making that argument is really something people should be looking at and considering as they vote.
[00:21:36] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. We're really saying we accept illness in these areas. We accept that we are going to force asthma and heart disease and lung disease in these areas. There are up to 10 years difference in life expectancy within different zip codes in Seattle, primarily due to environmental impacts and racial disparities that we see with that. There's been great data that's come out of the University of Washington over the past several years about this, but it is not minor. And again, we're talking about years of someone's life. Just thinking about how impactful that is, it is unacceptable. And the reason why this doesn't happen in other neighborhoods is because they have the resources to fight for something and to really move the levers of power and get listened to when they find something unacceptable. It's not an accident that this is not happening in affluent areas. What we should be looking to do is say, we deserve every opportunity to be healthy and to thrive as the people who can afford to today. And things are going to have to change in order to make that happen.
[00:22:45] Erica Barnett: Absolutely.
[00:22:47] Crystal Fincher: Now, another issue that is major, that there was a story about in Crosscut this week is about the rent relief being slow to reach tenants. We talked about this on the show with Rep. Debra Entenman, and she talked about the issue of some landlords being uncooperative through this process. Additionally, in this process, there are bureaucratic barriers that we're seeing. And we've had this long conversation over the past year-plus about the eviction moratorium and how critical that is to keep people in their homes. And, if you ask me, that was absolutely necessary. But that's always been a temporary solution.
The only thing that's going to help is getting money in the hands of people or canceling debt, to account for these big rent balances that have been accumulating throughout the pandemic. The only thing that is going to fix this are these programs in this relief, like King County and other counties are in charge of administering. There's a significant amount of money available that can help thousands and thousands of people at risk of being evicted, but that help has been extremely slow to get out to tenants. And this is something that I hope we collectively pay attention to, shine a light on, put pressure on people to do more, to work faster, because this is the difference between people staying in their homes and getting evicted, and that the ability for landlords to evict people is coming up again soon. So if we don't get this money out, we're going to see some of the negative outcomes that we've been working so hard to fight for this long. What were your takeaways from reading the article and looking at this issue?
[00:24:19] Erica Barnett: Well, I think you're right. I mean, the eviction moratorium does have to be, it is inherently temporary and I suppose it can just be extended again and again while they work out all these problems. But rent assistance, I mean, this is something we should learn from the pandemic, I think. It's better to find a way to pay people rent assistance than to let them get evicted and become part of the homeless population on our streets, which we have a lot more trouble dealing with than just paying people's rent. And so, if we can't set up these systems where the money gets to people through a less bureaucratic and a less time-consuming. So I mean, the problem seems to be, and I'm just reading the same article as you, but the problem seems to be a problem of bureaucracy, tracking people down, getting the money from the feds, to the county, to the agencies, to the people.
And if we can't set up a system where this works efficiently at the end of this process, then the next time there is a big crisis, or arguably in the ongoing crisis that is the lack of affordable housing and a lack of affordability of this region, we're going to be screwed. I mean, I have always said that, and it is not just me, it is data supported that the best thing to do for people who are rent burdened is to help them stay in their homes by giving them money. And so, I would like to see out of this pandemic a more permanent system of doing that so that we don't have the homelessness crisis just continue to get bigger and bigger.
Just the stress of dealing with tens of thousands of dollars in debt. I've been in debt in the past, without my housing being at risk, and it is incredibly stressful. And my heart goes out to all the people that are struggling with just the stress of that. I mean, even if the outcome in the end is that they get the money that is coming to them, I mean, it's a human tragedy beyond the level of people getting evicted and becoming homeless. I mean, it's a human tragedy that people are having to deal with the amount of stress that is caused by the situation that they did not cause, which is a global pandemic and unemployment and everything that we've seen over the last year and a half.
[00:26:35] Crystal Fincher: Yeah absolutely, and I appreciate you mentioning that and bringing that up as someone who has also been both broke before, housing unstable, it is tremendously stressful. And there's also been a lot of research that's come out about that over the past few years, about just how much that toll, on top of everything else, takes on your health and wellbeing and ability to even function. That only gets worse if we allow people to then become unhoused. It becomes more expensive for us to publicly deal with it, the health and personal outcomes are certainly more pronounced and severe. And so we have to do everything in our power. And I hope, as Dow Constantine is working through this, these are primarily county issues, that he takes a laser focus on getting this money out to the people who need it.
And a lot of it looks like, hey, people have a checklist that they're working on. They've got to tick down the checklist and, oh, there's a problem here, and we can't continue. One organization was rejecting around 75% of applications because they couldn't track people down, they didn't get all the information. That, to me, seems like a signal to go back, to take a look at the checklist and look at how you can work through those barriers, to get the resources to people who need them, how appropriate it is to have those barriers in the first place, and do we need more feet on the street, resources allocated to getting beyond those without just saying, "Well, we can't help." This is a crisis. This is a crisis. And we have to treat it like one and rise to the occasion with the appropriate allocation of resources and attention and energy. So we will certainly be following along with that.
We thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, August 20th, 2021. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng and our wonderful cohost today was Seattle political reporter and founder of PubliCola, Erica Barnett. You can find Erica on Twitter @ericacbarnett, that's Erica with a C, and on publicola.com. And you can buy her book Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse and Recovery, wherever you like to buy books.
You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, and now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type Hacks & Wonks into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost live shows and our mid-week show delivered to your podcast feed. While you're there, leave a review, it really helps us out. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com, and in the podcast episode notes. Thanks for tuning in, we'll talk to you next time.
Today Representative Debra Entenman (District 47) joins Crystal to discuss triumphs of police accountability legislation in the most recent legislative session, how much public safety work still needs to be done, and the strong and immediate need for privacy protections. Additionally, Rep. Entenman discusses how you can best support legislation to protect your communities and your privacy, and reminds you to get your Covid vaccine, because “the Delta variant is not playing!”
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s guest, Representative Debra Entenman at @DebraEntenman. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Bill to create civilian office to investigate lethal force, serious injuries by police advances in Washington Legislature” by Maya Lesikar from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/bill-to-create-civilian-office-to-investigate-lethal-force-serious-injuries-by-police-advances-in-washington-legislature/
“New Law Demands De-escalation, Not Abandoning People in Crisis” by Kim Mosolf from Disability Rights Washington and Enoka Herat from ACLU-WA: https://www.aclu-wa.org/story/new-law-demands-de-escalation-not-abandoning-people-crisis
“Washington Legislature bans police chokeholds and neck restraints and sets limits on tear gas and use of force” by Joseph O’Sullivan from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/washington-legislature-bans-police-chokeholds-neck-restraints-and-sets-limits-on-tear-gas-and-use-of-force/
“What new WA police accountability laws do and don’t do” by Melissa Santos from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/politics/2021/07/what-new-wa-police-accountability-laws-do-and-dont-do
“‘The Computer Got It Wrong’: How Facial Recognition Led To False Arrest of Black Man” by Bobby Allyn from NPR: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/24/882683463/the-computer-got-it-wrong-how-facial-recognition-led-to-a-false-arrest-in-michig
“The WIRED Guide to Your Personal Data (and Who Is Using It)” by Louise Matsakis from WIRED: https://www.wired.com/story/wired-guide-personal-data-collection/
“Google Says It Doesn’t ‘Sell’ Your Data. Here’s How the Company Shares, Monetizes, and Exploits It.” by Bennett Cyphers from the Electronic Frontiers Foundation: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/google-says-it-doesnt-sell-your-data-heres-how-company-shares-monetizes-and
“King County rent relief still slow to reach tenants” by David Kroman from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/news/2021/08/king-county-rent-relief-still-slow-reach-tenants
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm your host, Crystal Fincher. On this show, we talk to political hacks and policy wonks to gather insight into local politics and policy through the lens of those doing the work and provide behind-the-scenes perspectives on politics in our state. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Well today, I am thrilled to have with us the esteemed and fabulous representative from the 47th District, Representative Debra Entenman. Thank you so much for joining the podcast today.
[00:01:06] Representative Debra Entenman: Thank you very much for that kind and generous introduction. I am looking forward to this discussion.
[00:01:13] Crystal Fincher: Well, I'm definitely looking forward to this - as someone who lives in the South End and is a neighbor to your district and get to see the work that you do - see you in the community, see you in meetings - you are quite busy and quite active, which I definitely appreciate. I wanted to talk about what you've been working on, what you're going to be working on - particularly coming out of this past legislative session - one of the headlines from the session was working on police accountability and some reform bills, which you definitely took leadership on. And so, what were you able to work on and accomplish when it comes to policing and public safety?
[00:02:03] Representative Debra Entenman: Well, what I was able to work on - and I have to say it was governor-request legislation. There was a task force that the governor put together because of the unfortunate death of Manuel Ellis - from that, there were recommendations that were made. Many of these people had come together in the past, working on [I-9]40 and had done other work around police accountability. So first of all, I want to give thanks to those people who came together with recommendations. Then working with staff, we created legislation around an independent investigative body, funding in the governor's budget. And so, we were able to pass legislation to create an independent investigative body, which will be under the auspice of the Attorney General's Office, but there will be a firewall. And there will be a firewall because people were concerned that if the Attorney General had to work with the Washington State Patrol, and he works with them on some of the issues, that there may be a conflict of interest.
We hope with the implementation of this legislation that passed this last session, we will not have any conflicts and I look forward to having the teams put together, the director hired, and we can start working on independent investigations in Washington State. Also, a bill for independent prosecutions that was heard at the very end of session, too late to be voted on out of committee, but it was heard in committee. And I'm really hoping to bring that bill back. I have been working since the interim - meeting with community members, members of the Coalition for Police Accountability, and police officers representing the Fraternal Order of Police on what they'd like to see changed in the proposed prosecution bill. So we are now having discussions on that and we hope for a positive outcome in the next legislative session.
What I want people to understand about police accountability is that we started last session. It was just the beginning - continuous and more work to do. I know that there has been some pushback on the two pieces of legislation that were passed, which is 1310 and 1054. 1310 is about intervention when someone is in a behavioral health crisis and 1054 is about tactics that the police may use or are no longer allowed to use. And so there has been some serious discussion. We had a wonderful - that many people saw from the Attorney General and Representative Jesse Johnson that talked about the misinformation that was being spread by different police departments. I'm hoping that we have a handle on that now. I have been reaching out to the local police departments in my community, specifically the police chief in Kent, Chief Padilla, who was quoted as saying in the Associated Press that the bills were poorly written and other things. We know that we talked to seven different guilds and organizations that represent police. They weighed in on the legislations. We of course have an excellent legal team and although I know that they are not perfect, I do not believe the bills were poorly written.
[00:06:07] Crystal Fincher: And they certainly do not appear to be poorly written. They also were not a surprise. There was plenty of opportunity for input. There was a lot of collaboration. There was concern that there might have been too much collaboration even throughout parts of the process.
[00:06:24] Representative Debra Entenman: That's right.
[00:06:25] Crystal Fincher: Because so many people from the law enforcement community were at the table and being heard and submitting feedback and suggested edits to this process. But it's not unusual to, as we've seen in a lot of different areas throughout the state, even here in King County, to see a pushback now to any change - which is different. It seems that there's been a circling of the wagons, because if you go back 5 years ago, 10 years ago, a number of the things that you're talking about and that you passed were not controversial in law enforcement circles.
I remember going to a number of meetings - you brought up Chief Padilla, who is the City of Kent's police chief - to Kent Police Department community meetings and them talking about they're not social workers, they're not equipped to handle those kinds of issues and problems - and they're more systemic, and the tools that they have to address that are inadequate to fix the issues that are creating that problem. That came from them before. And so, to hear the change in - certainly in tone and substance - is curious now that those things are actually being put into place. It sounds like there's a lot of fear of change. It sounds like they are feeling like this is just an attack instead of an opportunity to help them focus on the things that actually make people safer, and that the community who they serve and work alongside are saying, "You know what? These are the things that make us safer."
So I appreciate you for listening to so many people throughout the crafting of these bills. I think next week, there's going to be a town hall in Kent to talk about this and certainly the chief has indicated that he has issues with the legislation, but these are things that are largely uncontroversial that have been passed in several areas throughout the country. And that seem, like you said, it's the start and certainly not the end of the road. These are kind of the lowest hanging fruit where there was fairly broad consensus that this was necessary. Really I just think-
[00:09:01] Representative Debra Entenman: I think the shot over the bow by some people representing law enforcement was to see how strong coalitions would come together and resist their narrative on what this legislation would do. The fact that we have been able to build coalitions, not only in Western Washington, but Eastern Washington to push back on the narrative from the police department has been - well, for me, it has been a joy. But it has also opened people's eyes, because there were many people in community who thought that many of the things that we implemented - like you had said - in this last legislative session were already in place and they were not.
We also have been - I know that I personally am not anti police person as much as I am a pro public safety person. And that means not only public safety for community, but public safety for the police as well. You need to have a clear demarcation on what you can and cannot do - so that we know what you can do and so that you know what you can't do. And I think that we need to be able to look at the profession of policing and improve it. There is more work to do. I think we need to raise the age of a person who is in a police department or the Washington State Patrol. I think they need to have more education and training. I'd like them to come in with at least an AA, more points even for a BA. I'm also concerned that we have through what I think was an honorable thing to do, which is to try to hire veterans - we have moved to the point where we have militarized our police. When you are in the military police, your actions and your responsibilities are different than when you're in a civilian police department. I don't think we have done a good enough job in making police officers understand that they are in a civilian police department.
[00:11:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that's-
[00:11:13] Representative Debra Entenman: So all of these things are - there's still work to be done and I am very proud of everyone on our team. It was not always easy work to do, but we have all tried our best and there's more legislation to come. I want to talk about Representative Thai's bill that didn't make it out of [inaudible] to be heard in committee. I want to bring back the bill talking about limiting the immunity for police officers. Senator Solomon also had a bill and I honestly say I like some of it, some of it I didn't like, but I think that we can come together and have something strong that comes out around immunity. I think that police officers have a responsibility because they have the ability to take someone's life and in our legal justice system, I don't think a person should be shot just because they encountered the police. There is no justice when you don't get to go to court and have your voice heard. I do believe a person is innocent until proven guilty and I don't think we should have extra-judicial killings in the United States of America.
[00:12:25] Crystal Fincher: Well, I wholeheartedly agree and it's such an important issue - and to your point, they have such an incredible responsibility. They directly impact people's civil rights and a lot of times the conversation, because we see it too often, is about killings. But my goodness, just the ability to arrest someone if you're in a bad mood or you have a bad day. And just what is involved with someone having to defend themselves - sometimes they may have to sit in jail if they can't afford to bail themselves out of jail or they don't have resources or connections to do that. There's just so much involved with that, that it does make plain sense to make sure that we're holding people to a high standard as we do in so many other professions who don't have the freedom and flexibility to impact the civil rights and the freedom and the future, really the future of so many people in their community.
So I appreciate the work that you continue to do. One question I always want to make sure we ask is - with work that's important and you're pushing hard within the legislative process, what can people in the community do who want to see this happen and who want to support the bills you're working on? What can they do to help?
[00:13:53] Representative Debra Entenman: I think one of the things that they can do is to continue to hold elected officials' feet to the fire. So now that we've passed these bills, I need them to start asking about implementation. I need them to start trying to get on the committees where these implementations - if there's community input, I need them to participate in that. COVID brought us many things, but it did bring us one thing, which was the increase in participation by people who cannot get to Olympia because we were able to use Zoom. I want us to continue to use Zoom as a tool to hear as many voices as we can. We had record participation in our committees around testimony on these particular police bills and it was amazing to me. And to go back now - because see, once you put your testimony on the record, I as a legislator can go back and listen later, hear things differently. And I think it's really important for that to happen, and I want to continue to be able to have remote testimony, even as we make it through this COVID pandemic.
I think that what also is important is for people to get involved with their local law enforcement. We should have relationships with law enforcement before an emergency happens, and I know that for some people, this is very difficult and challenging. But if we can, I'd like us to, and my thing is - don't go alone. If you think you need somebody with you, have a buddy, make a buddy system and say, "We're going to go to these City Council meetings and then we're going to listen to the testimony. We're going to go to when the police chief invites us to community events, we're going to listen. We might not always agree with them, but we're going to sign our name on the dotted line and turn out so that they will know that community members were there because the word that we always hear is that, Oh, those people were troublemakers and they were coming from Seattle. Those people aren't the true voices of Kent.
So what I really want people to do is to step up, sign up - even if you sign up and give your name and address and say thank you for having this meeting, I think it's an important community meeting, I might not always agree with what you say, but to have the opportunity to hear you is important. If you do just that, I think it will help to make our community stronger. We can't just believe that electing people to office is enough. There is some responsibility that we all have for participation. So wherever you are, however you can, it is important for you to think about these pieces of legislation and work with your local police department, city council, and mayor, and the legislature to make sure these are implemented. And keep asking questions, keep asking questions - hold our feet to the fire.
[00:17:07] Crystal Fincher: Keep asking questions. Yes.
[00:17:08] Representative Debra Entenman: Keep asking questions.
[00:17:09] Crystal Fincher: You know what I love? I love an elected official who asks people to hold their feet to the fire. I love that. Especially you in your position and pushing to make sure that we're all safer - doesn't necessarily come without any risk to you. I don't know how many people listening are familiar with the 47th Legislative District, but that is absolutely a purple, if not reddish-leaning district. And we'll see what it looks like after the redistricting process, but this is not a district that is safe for Democrats. This is not district that elects Democrats to local government positions. You are in the midst of a lot of red territory in Covington and Maple Valley. It's a lot there, so you are certainly not satisfied with just playing it safe and saying things that are safe to everyone. While at the same time, you're listening to people in the community and you're taking a common sense, collaborative approach to addressing these issues - but it doesn't come without pushback. I do definitely encourage people who are passionate about police reform, about supporting someone who is pushing for things to be better, to make sure that you're familiar with Representative Entenman in the 47th Legislative District, that you support, because this is how we keep good people in office and this is how we get some of the great policies, like the ones that she just talked about, passed.
I also want to talk about another issue in the public safety sphere and that's privacy. I don't know if people know your background and that you are an expert in the area of privacy, but I just want you to talk a little bit about your background, why this issue is important, and what you've worked on.
[00:19:15] Representative Debra Entenman: Well, first, I want to say thank you for the compliment of saying that I'm an expert. I think that I have always been a very curious person. And when, in the Legislature, we started talking about privacy and the lack of privacy, specifically around the Department of Licensing - it was very eye-opening for me to learn how much information was given to law enforcement, how much information was shared with law enforcement, and how many people had access to the information. Some of them had access to the information and I was concerned about the safeguards that were put in place, especially around entities that are contracted to work with the Department of Licensing to issue license tabs, so we had sub-agents. How much information do they have? How much information do they have access to? What's the accountability measures that we put in place for them? That's where this all started for me - was around privacy.
And then of course we had a bill in 20... - well, we've been trying to pass a privacy bill even since before I got to the legislation - it's been very challenging. So we decided in 2018, 2019 to sever the facial recognition apart from the privacy bill. And so, I worked with Senator Nguyen in the Senate, and we had come to an agreement on a privacy bill - was very successful - it was new, it was innovative in the fact that we were one of the few states to actually regulate the use of facial recognition software, because there were many things that people were saying about facial recognition that just weren't true. We wanted to make sure that we had some level of privacy protection and that a person who was just generally walking about - this is how I always say it - when I am in a public space, I have not given up my right to privacy. If I'm at the mall, I have not given up my right to privacy. So what do we need to do to protect my privacy? Well, I have to say, just a little COVID sidebar, but us wearing mask does protect our privacy. It's really hard for the computer to tell who we are when we're wearing those masks. I'm not mad about that - I'm just going to say.
But we had facial recognition that - we had entities who were creating it, telling us that they couldn't see Black women. They couldn't tell the difference between a Black woman and a Black man, that it was identifying African-American people who were well-known figures, comparing them with people who had been arrested and had arrest records. It was flawed and we needed to have work done.
Now, there is still a lot to do. I want to make sure people understand this. We have passed a facial recognition bill, but we still have a long way to go around privacy. We have a long way to go around the use of social media in our regular lives. I'm not talking about things we don't do. Most of us are on Facebook, we use Amazon - I know the young babies are on TikTok - I'm not there yet, I'm on the Instagram, and I don't know if Snapchat's still a thing, I'm not sure, but what people need to understand about these things is that you don't get something for nothing. You have to ask yourself, if I'm using this and I'm having fun, what is happening on the back end? What information are they finding out about me and how are they using that information? If they're monetizing that information - because I had a person pound on the desk and tell me we don't sell your information, we monetize it. And I said, "Well, what's the difference if you're making money and I'm not?" And I didn't get a clear answer to that - but you, at least to me, need to know that when you go on to these platforms, the information that even though they keep on saying it's anonymous and they can't be sent back to you, it can't get back to you directly - that's not true. We all know that they have a profile on all of us. They monetize that profile and that is how they are billionaires.
If you are doing that, I should be able to say, "I don't want you to do that with me - with my image, with the way I look, with my name, with my age, with my weight, whatever it is." And so, what we are trying to do now in the privacy sphere, is say whose information is it and what can be done with it? And that has been a very challenging thing, because there are a lot of people who have made a lot of money off of us and don't want to give up that access.
[00:24:37] Crystal Fincher: And that's really the bottom line. I don't know that a lot of - so easy not to have to think about this. These companies who are monetizing, selling this information, make it very easy for us not to have to think about anything other than the immediate task that we're doing or whatever we're looking at. But my goodness, you brought up anonymous information. There was a couple of weeks ago, a recent case where a priest was outed - an example of information that they say, "Oh, this is not tied to your identity. We collect information, but it's not tied to you personally. It's just analytics and data that we're using to do stuff." Well, when you have a lot of data points and most of us carry mobile phones and it is giving away our location, it is giving away where we're shopping. If you have a rewards card, that's tracked. If you're going from home to work, that's tracked - your location data is tracked and sold. So you can take these anonymous pieces of data - and if you know where someone works, you can say, Okay, well, what phone IDs are pinging from this location? What phone IDs are pinging from that location? What did this person attach to this rewards card by? And all of that information can be tied back to your identity because there's enough independently verifiable data that only ties back to you.
And I don't know if people engage with how much that data is and how accessible it is to people. I can buy that data if I want to. That data is commercially available to a lot of different people. It is for sale to whoever wants to buy it. And so, you engaging with this is really meaningful, because we are - I don't know if we're at or past a tipping point, but the amount of data that people have on us that is not anonymous if they don't want it to be is alarming. I think most people would not want to wear a T-shirt that has all their personal details and information for everyone to consume, but we're doing the equivalent of that with privacy. So I appreciate you engaging in this issue and encourage people to support that bill and make their voices heard on those issues. I do want to talk in the few minutes - oh, go ahead.
[00:27:14] Representative Debra Entenman: No, I just wanted to say, this is the thing that made me understand it. What I learned was - and we kept on using the term of the dry cleaner - right now, we think of our dry cleaner as just a dry cleaner. We take in our dirty clothes and we get back our clean clothes, but what we don't always know is that the dry cleaner can decide that the dry cleaner wants to be a part of the business of providing information. So the dry cleaner can have a percentage of his business come from dry cleaning, but have another percentage of his business coming from monetizing data. Now, most of us are thinking about the dry cleaner and thinking, Well, I don't really want my dry cleaner monetizing my data. It's the same with Facebook. That's how you have to think about it. If you don't want your dry cleaner monetizing your data, why do you want Facebook monetizing your data?
Facebook, to me, is supposed to be for entertainment and I can be on it or I can be off of it. If you want me to pay for Facebook, then tell me that you want me to pay for Facebook. If you want to charge me a fee, I can decide whether or not I want to be on Facebook or not. If you're making money off of me on Facebook, then why can't I either have some of that money, or you stop making money. Those are the questions.
[00:28:32] Crystal Fincher: They're your details, it's your data.
[00:28:35] Representative Debra Entenman: It's your data. Those are the questions that we should be asking everywhere we go, anywhere we are. But go ahead - I'm sorry, Crystal, I didn't mean to interrupt.
[00:28:46] Crystal Fincher: No problem. Look, we are here to hear from you. I wanted to just talk a little bit about us - we're still dealing with this pandemic that seems - I don't know if the light at the end of the tunnel is actually an oncoming train or not, if we're dealing with this Delta variant and cases are spiking. We've got an eviction moratorium that's going to be sunsetting. There is rent relief for renters and landlords that has been allocated to counties and localities, but man, that's having a tough time getting dispersed and distributed. What can be done?
[00:29:28] Representative Debra Entenman: Let me tell you about some of the problems with - first of all, you need to understand how the distribution system is supposed to work. And everybody right now seems to be blaming it on how it's getting distributed, but not really on some of the people who are putting roadblocks. Some of the people are landlords and I'll tell you why. Let's have the scenario - you are the landlord and I am the tenant. We both go for relief. You as the landlord have to commit to not evicting me if you take the landlord relief dollars. And I as a tenant have to commit to making sure that if I take money to pay my back rent, that I pay my back rent. Most tenants are willing to have that money passed through them and go to the landlord, but some landlords don't want to make the commitment that they won't evict the tenant after they take the money to help them - because they not only want to be able to get their back rent, they want to be able to evict the tenant so they can turn over that apartment, raise the rent, and get first and last months from another person. So it isn't that the money is going out slowly. In some cases - is that the landlord that's not wanting to commit to the agreement. I want people to understand this. It's not necessarily about the money getting out, it's about the landlord not wanting to commit to the agreement so that he or she can receive funds.
[00:31:07] Crystal Fincher: So what can be done? Is there anything that can be done about that or is that just something that we have to shine a light on?
[00:31:13] Representative Debra Entenman: I think that more people need to talk about it. More people need to talk about it. If you are a tenant and you are willing to participate in this entity so that your back rent can be paid, and you have a landlord who doesn't want to participate - as we would say in the community, that landlord needs to be put on blast. That's the bottom line. Let's get Jesse - let's focus, let's call attention to landlords who don't want to participate in the process because they want to be able to kick off a tenant. You can't do both.
[00:31:58] Crystal Fincher: Can't do both.
[00:31:59] Representative Debra Entenman: You have to keep the tenant in the apartment if you're going to take the federal dollars so that you can be made whole. And there is - right now, we are not asking for any deductions or any reductions. Whatever the tenant owes is what the federal government is willing to pay. So if people are saying, "They're only offering me such and such," - to my knowledge, that is not true. The rent that they are offering to pay you is what the rent that you charge the tenant. Let's make sure that we are honest about the money and how it's going out.
Now, we do have systems that are always slow because they're government systems, and we do want to prevent fraud. We've already seen fraud in the unemployment system - we do not want to have fraud in the system where we are paying landlords for back rent. We don't need to have that scandal. We just don't need to have that scandal. If landlords and tenants agree to go together - there are some community-based organizations - where they come to the community-based organization, they make an agreement, they sign the papers and within a certain amount of time, they receive their checks.
[00:33:14] Crystal Fincher: I will certainly do some digging.
[00:33:16] Representative Debra Entenman: But it's not all, it's not - and we also have to remember now that there really are small landlords, but there are now people who are investing in multifamily homes that are hedge funds. They are not individual mom and pop landlords. We hear about these mom and pop landlords. And I do have sympathy because I have family members who have been able to save up enough money so they have a small house that they rent out. They're not getting wealthy. It's a part of their retirement plan. And they have been very good to their tenants and not kicked them out, and they would like to participate. And so, they are signing up and doing all of the things that they're supposed to do so that they can prove that there was back rent, that they had a rental agreement, and that the tenant wasn't able to pay. It does take time to do all of that, but there are some people who truly are - it's going to be a very large wealth transfer from the federal government to some private entity and I don't think that that's fair.
[00:34:26] Crystal Fincher: No. And unfortunately, we see in crisis after crisis and emergency after emergency that wealth transfer take place. We did in the last great recession. We certainly have during this pandemic - the amount that the richest billionaires have grown their fortunes is just staggering, just absolutely staggering. So we will continue to keep an eye on that. We will try and do our part to put landlords on blast who are being a hindrance to people just attempting to stay in their homes.
And I just appreciate you and the work that you do and encourage people to stay in contact with Representative Entenman, stay up to date with what she is doing, and make sure that you support - because particularly in districts like the 47th Legislative District, which is a toss up every time there's an election there, you never know what's going to happen - if it's going to go red or blue.
[00:35:31] Representative Debra Entenman: Yes, it is
[00:35:31] Crystal Fincher: it is always a battle that - and once again, next year, you're up for election again, several other people are up for election. The Senator's seat is up for election, so we will make sure that we stay up to date, but appreciate the work that you do and thank you for joining us today.
[00:35:54] Representative Debra Entenman: Well, thank you for having me. I want to say that - one, I appreciate your voice in this space. I appreciate the voice of an African-American woman having a podcast and inviting me to participate. For many who don't know, I very seldom get to speak with an African-American person who is interviewing me on a podcast. And I have to say that I'm very proud of Crystal. And so, it is always an honor when she asks me to do something. Thank you very much, I appreciate the work that you do. Please continue to blaze trails yourself because you are also a trailblazer.
And for those who are listening, the Delta variant is not playing, the racial reckoning in this country is not over - it was only the beginning. COVID is not over, it was only the beginning. So please take care of yourselves. There is a lot of work that we want you to be here to do and if you have not gotten vaccinated, please get vaccinated if not for yourself, for the other people who you care about and who care about you. And just remember, as our children are going to go back to school, the more people who are vaccinated, the less likely they are to get sick. As we look at COVID, it is now starting to strike younger people, children. I do not want to lose a generation of babies because we were stubborn and wanted to hold onto our ignorance and fear. Please get vaccinated for the children.
[00:37:42] Crystal Fincher: Amen. Thank you and thank everybody for joining us today. We'll talk to you next time.
Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks. Our chief audio engineer at KVRU is Maurice Jones, Jr. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I, and now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type in "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our mid-week show delivered to your podcast feed. You can also get a full text transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced during the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.
Today Crosscut political reporter David Kroman joins Crystal to discuss the Seattle City Attorney primary election results, the massive impact of primary endorsements from the Seattle Times and The Stranger, the lawsuit being brought against Compassion Seattle, Seattle Police Department consent decree updates, and local governments having a responsibility to protect residents from dangerous heat and toxic, smoky air.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, David Kroman, at @KromanDavid. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes concedes primary election” by David Kroman from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/news/2021/08/seattle-city-attorney-pete-holmes-concedes-primary-election
"Nikkita Oliver overtakes Sara Nelson to assume the lead for Seattle City Council #9" by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate: https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2021/08/nikkita-oliver-overtakes-sara-nelson-to-assume-the-lead-for-seattle-city-council-9.html
“Lawsuit filed to block Charter Amendment 29 from the November 2021 Seattle ballot” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/aclu-and-advocates-file-lawsuit-over-compassion-seattle-ballot-initiative/
“Federal judge to Seattle officials: ‘Too much knee-jerk, not enough forethought’ on police reform” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/federal-judge-to-seattle-officials-too-much-knee-jerk-not-enough-forethought-on-police-reform/
“Trump’s stolen election racket is working extremely well -- even here in Washington state” by Danny Westneat from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/trumps-stolen-election-racket-is-working-extremely-well-even-here-in-washington-state/
“Hidden Toll of the Northwest Heat Wave: Hundreds of Extra Deaths” by Nadja Popovich and WInston Choi-Schagrin from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/11/climate/deaths-pacific-northwest-heat-wave.html
“Smoke from Canada arrives, air quality alert issued for some parts of Puget Sound” by Christine Clarridge from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/weather/smoke-from-canada-arrives-air-quality-alerts-issued-for-some-parts-of-puget-sound/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a cohost.
Welcome back to the program friend of the show, today's co-host, Crosscut political reporter, David Kroman.
[00:00:51] David Kroman: Hey Crystal.
[00:00:52] Crystal Fincher: Hey, how's it going?
[00:00:54] David Kroman: It's going well. How are you doing?
[00:00:57] Crystal Fincher: I'm doing okay. Well, we have got a number of things to talk about today. I think we will start off just putting an exclamation point on the primary results. We spoke a bit about that last week, but we got some clarity this week on a few races - particularly, probably top of mind, is the City Attorney's race. What are your thoughts about that result?
[00:01:25] David Kroman: My thoughts is - well, on the one hand, I want to be surprised because I think it's a position that people - I think maybe don't often understand exactly what it is. And for good reason, because the City Attorney is not really a job that exists in a lot of other places. Most places like Philadelphia or San Francisco, you have one prosecutor which is basically our Dan Satterberg, our King County prosecuting attorney. For most places, that's it. But in Seattle, we have this weird position where there's this guy who, or soon to be woman, who only prosecutes misdemeanors and then does civil litigation for the City. So it's a weird position and I don't think a lot of people really understand that.
And so my baseline assumption going in was - you have a huge advantage as an incumbent because especially someone who's been there for three terms, it would take a lot, I think, to motivate people to want to shift gears on that. At the same time, I'm also not surprised because there's been a lot of conversation from both the left and the right - on the left about reforming how we do criminal justice, a lot of introspection around whether prosecuting misdemeanors makes any sense at all. And then from the right, this feeling like, Pete Holmes has been too light on low-level crime and this broken windows view of things - which is, if you don't clean up low-level crime, it leads to more serious crime - that sort of thing.
And then I think the icing on the cake was the endorsements, which maybe we'll talk about more later - where Nicole Thomas-Kennedy gets The Stranger's endorsement and Ann Davison gets Seattle Times. And so, it's a surprising result that it led there, but I think by election night, we all understood that this was a real possibility - that Pete Holmes could win or could lose, rather. In fact, Pete Holmes was saying that he could lose. So it's surprising, and it's going to make for what I think is going to be probably the most interesting and contentious race Seattle has seen in a really long time.
[00:03:35] Crystal Fincher: I agree. And I think you hit the nail on the head talking about some of the dynamics there, and it'll be interesting to see what kind of a role people's understanding of what the City Attorney is plays in that race and how different people may try and exploit that. Because just looking at messaging and rhetoric, particularly from Republican Ann Davison, who made it through in addition to Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, it's very much, "Oh, he's letting dangerous criminals back on the street. It's a revolving door." And it seems like a lot of people do not know that the City Attorney does not handle felonies - and really thinking about violent crime - some of the more serious crime that is associated with felonies. And this is really a different conversation, so it'll be interesting to see how that conversation unfolds.
Going into this, I don't think many people were surprised that there were a strong competitor or strong competitors, but yeah, definitely the weakness of Pete Holmes - and some of it, it appears that he did a lot of this to himself. One, just trying to not do anything to rock the boat, it seemed like for a majority of the election - just act like he didn't really have opponents, just try and be an incumbent, don't make any waves. That didn't seem to work out really well. Then he realized that, "Hey, this is really competitive." Polling came out showing that it was really competitive. And then a last minute push with an odd interview with, I think it was Jim Brunner of The Seattle Times, where Pete Holmes admitted that he changed his decision to sue the Seattle Times and ended up dropping the lawsuit, in part, because a State Representative threatened to withdraw his endorsement for his campaign. So it just looked really odd that, okay, are you making decisions based on your responsibilities as City Attorney, or just fear based on where you stand and in terms of voters and funders and all that kind of stuff.
So, and there's been so much conversation about public safety. Certainly the City Council has been held to account for their decisions and a lot of examination, and the mayor and the police department. The City Attorney does have a lot of influence there, and he was also silent throughout so much of that process. And I think people were certainly dissatisfied with just what they were seeing, and where we stand on so many big issues - and were searching for an alternative. The endorsements by The Seattle Times and The Stranger of his opponents certainly didn't help. And you brought up an interesting question online - I mean, I'll let you pose the question - but thinking about how The Times and Stranger endorsements matter, what was your question and thinking there?
[00:06:49] David Kroman: Well, I guess it's just that every primary election, we see - Danny Westneat always comes out with his analysis pretty quickly on election night. And we see columns and hand-wringing around what happened. But at the end of the day, the people who won are the people who got either The Stranger or the Seattle Times endorsement. So in some ways, there's this obvious answer around who wins - which is, especially in a race where I think people maybe don't always understand exactly what the office does. People turn to the newspaper that they feel aligns most closely with their politics and goes that direction. And I don't think that is as important in the general election when it's just two people, but in the primary, when you have a lot of people running and a lot of decisions to make, and a few points can make a big difference - I think it really matters.
That said, I will caveat that a little bit and agree with you that Pete Holmes certainly did not help himself. He didn't campaign hardly at all, as far as I can tell, until maybe the last week or two. And at the end of the day, he didn't lose by that many votes - because when you have three people in a low turnout primary, you don't need to win that many more votes to make a difference. And so, I think there was a path when he could have overcome the fact that he didn't get those endorsements, had he taken this race more seriously from the beginning. But I think the fact that - a day before the filing deadline, no one had really filed against him - I think created this impression that he was just going to waltz to a fourth term. Nicole Thomas-Kennedy decides, basically last minute, that with hours to go, that she's going to do this. And so I think that beginning to the season - my sense is, and I hear this from talking to allies of Pete Holmes, that he just never really - he was just caught flat footed. That he didn't think that this was going to be as challenging of a race as it was.
And I don't think it was until those endorsements came out that he started to understand that his position was really in danger. Which I think there's a broader message there too for Pete Holmes' whole tenure, which is even people who were basically backers of Pete Holmes and preferred him to the other two people say - I think he was progressive on a lot of fronts, but he never quite did enough to fill this void that was being left around. He's saying basically - there are better ways to handle public safety than prosecutions, but he wasn't really saying what those ways were. And he wasn't throwing the full weight of his office behind - we can do this for people, here are all these things we can do for people, and we should be pushing really hard for them instead of prosecution. So, because he didn't really have a good answer to those things, it left a lot of room for someone like Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, to say, "I'm going to come in and I'm going to fill that void by not prosecuting and offering a lot more service or whatever it might be." And then on the other hand, Ann Davison, who's saying, "Pete Holmes doesn't know what he's doing. He needs to be prosecuting more people and so I'm going to run." So, I just think he never had really a strong - he never really had anything like a competitive race for City Attorney since he was first elected, and I think he got complacent. I just think he didn't have a good strategy and it came back to bite him.
[00:10:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I would absolutely agree with that. And on top of that, the dynamic of the middle is a challenging place to be in a primary. Particularly in a three-person primary where you're offering stark choices, where people are unhappy with what is happening now - maybe for different reasons that they're unhappy - but it gives them somewhere to go for people who are presenting strong, bold visions on one side or another. But that middle of the road position, it is just really challenging in a primary.
And I think in terms of the endorsements, particularly from The Times and Stranger, you had two lesser known people, in Ann Davison and Nicole Thomas-Kennedy. Ann Davison had previously run for Lieutenant Governor as a Republican candidate. Nicole Thomas-Kennedy was largely unknown before she threw her hat in the ring. So when Seattleites aren't that familiar with someone, I think those endorsements matter much more than they do in races where they have already formed an opinion, or there's been a lot of coverage already. As voters get more familiar with candidates, then those endorsements matter less because they can already form their opinion. They don't have to rely on someone else's, but certainly in a race like that, it is impactful.
And when these races are being decided within 10 points, that boils down to communication. I know a number of consultants have talked previously - we before have compared those endorsements to basically being the equivalent to a citywide mail piece or two where - in terms of communication, a lot of times it's like, Well, usually you figure a communication can give a candidate a 10ish point bump if it's good and effective. And that is what those endorsements generally can do also. And in close races that can determine who wins and who loses. And I think that's what we saw. Do want to pivot to talking about a lawsuit that was filed this week against Compassion Seattle Charter Amendment 29 in the City of Seattle. What is happening with that?
[00:12:51] David Kroman: I always caveat talking about lawsuits that I'm not a lawyer, so I don't have any prediction as to the merit of this particular lawsuit, but it's interesting because in Washington State with initiatives, usually what happens is there's not a lot of recourse for preventing an initiative from going to voters in the first place. Usually what happens is it goes to voters and then if it's approved, then you start to see these lawsuits - people fight over whether it's constitutional or not. We've seen this a ton of times with Tim Eyman's initiatives, where they pass, go to court, get struck down, sometimes with gun control related initiatives or things like that.
But this lawsuit is basically arguing that a city's response to homelessness and how it handles homelessness should not be a subject of an initiative vote at all. It's the same argument as was made against a measure to stop or to ban safe injection, safe consumption sites, which is that, it's a matter of public health. And it's basically the city's prerogative to decide how they want to do this for the health and safety of people involved. And so that's what this is saying - is it's trying to get ahead of the normal legal proceedings that happen around initiatives and say, This shouldn't be on the ballot at all.
[00:14:14] Crystal Fincher: So who are the parties who are bringing this lawsuit?
[00:14:18] David Kroman: So, it's a few parties - the ACLU, Real Change is involved, I believe the Tenants Union, or is it the Transit Riders Union? I need to actually pull up the actual case itself, but it's a few different advocacy organizations who have been pretty skeptical and opposed to this possible charter amendment from the start.
[00:14:46] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And it'll be really interesting to see how this proceeds - the ACLU of Washington - again, I'm also not a lawyer, but certainly they have brought a number of successful lawsuits in a range of policy and issue areas before. And so, certainly having them attached to this makes a lot of people pay attention and say, "Hey, maybe there's something here," because they typically are very thorough in what they choose to pursue and not pursue. And usually only pursue things they feel they have a good chance at winning and they often do. So certainly an interesting development - we've talked a lot about Charter Amendment 29 on this show and the differences between the rhetoric from the pro campaign and what the actual initiative says. So this conversation throughout the general election will be interesting, and this is going to be competitive. This charter amendment, as we were talking about - we did a consultants roundtable last night - and the people who are putting on this initiative have very deep pockets. There's a lot of downtown business associated with it. There was just an article this past week by Danny Westneat talking about some of the funders involved with this. And one of Trump's biggest boosters and financial supporters in the State of Washington is a big supporter of the Compassion Seattle campaign, also Bruce Harrell's campaign. So it'll be interesting to see just how House Our Neighbors, the ACLU of Washington - those on the record as opposing the initiative - are able to respond to this campaign, which certainly has a lot of slick messaging. But really debunking and fact checking that is going to be a tall task because of the differences in resources. But certainly there are some organizations involved who are very capable of doing that. So we'll see how that unfolds.
Also, want to talk about updates on the consent decree process and the federal judge who is in charge of that. What is happening there?
[00:17:17] David Kroman: What is happening there is, I think, a lot of uncertainty around what comes next. I will preface this - it's really difficult to talk about the consent decree and not get too far into the weeds. But what we're seeing, I think, is some tension between essentially branches of government - which is you have this consent decree, which is basically under the ownership of this federal judge. And that consent decree, I think people forget, is not really - it's actually pretty narrow. It's not really just about - make the police department a better place. I mean, that's part of it, but it has pretty specific goals around use of force, and training, and things like that. And so, because the goals are so specific, anything that the judge thinks might get in the way of those goals becomes the subject of his skepticism and ire.
And so, that recently has become - the City Council's actions around "re-imagining" or possibly even defunding the police - because it gets right at the heart of this debate around how do you make public safety better? Is it by funding more police? Some people think that is the case, or is it by moving police dollars into something else? And I think for the federal judge, James Robart, he comes clearly more down on that depriving police departments of resources will make it more difficult for Seattle to meet its obligations of this consent decree, which is pretty much in direct conflict with a lot of the cries of the protestors and things of the last summer who wanted to move away from this model of policing.
And so I think right now I don't really know what the path forward is. I think the judge is a little stumped. I think the people involved in this consent decree are a little stumped. This thing has been going on for almost 10 years when it was supposed to go on for 5 years, it costs a ton of money. And so I think the federal judge the other day was basically saying, "I'm skeptical of what the City is doing, but you guys need to give me a plan for how you're going to finish this thing." And I don't think that plan really exists right now.
[00:19:48] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and particularly because that plan is the policy, the politics of it. It really is a matter of perspective. I think you are correct when you talk about the federal judge has hesitations about the direction that the Council is taking. But residents of Seattle elected the Council based on the positions that they said they were going to take. They're taking the positions that they were elected to carry through. The challenge is them attempting to do that can be overturned by this judge, and that's an element in this reform discussion and through re-imagining discussion, that's confounding to everyone. Activists are pushing hard. Electeds are pushing hard trying to move in a different direction and get some of these changes that they've been talking about implemented. And that can actually be rejected by the judge, so there's this extra unelected element influencing policy in the City. And there have been decisions that the City Council had to basically walk back, or not make, or revise because it may be rejected by this federal judge. So in essence, they're negotiating with a federal judge regarding police department policy. And if it doesn't meet his approval, he'll just reject it. That's a very powerful position for an unelected person to be in, in terms of such impactful policy with the residents of Seattle. And I don't think this is what people on any side envisioned at the outset of this consent decree process.
[00:21:51] David Kroman: Yeah. I agree with that. The one tweak I would make to that is it's - I think it's not so much that people are - that the City is beholden to an unelected judge. I mean, that is true. That is true. But I think what he would argue - I think what's really happening is the City is beholden to the people who were elected in 2010, because this settlement agreement that the judge is enforcing was written by the people who were in office or in the Department of Justice in 2010. And so - it's like if you imagine the 2010 City Council passing a piece of legislation and the 2020-2021 City Council still negotiating over whether or not - how to implement it. And that's what's going on. And so, it's this - and as we all know, the notion of police reform or what police reform looks like has changed fairly dramatically since 2010. So I think that's the main tension - is that the City is negotiating against its past self when negotiating the settlement with the Department of Justice was what they viewed at the time as the best option. And now their view of that has shifted and yet they are still obligated to fulfill the parameters of that 2010 settlement agreement.
[00:23:20] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, yeah. That's a great point. And this is a reminder, I mean, that was the Council that had, I believe, Tim Burgess and Bruce Harrell, Richard Conlin - certainly a much more conservative Council than we currently have. And a completely different conversation on police reform. I mean, they hadn't even gotten to the point of body cameras at that time, I don't think. That was basically on the bleeding edge of consideration at that time. Certainly a lot different than we're looking at today. And there were people, including Mike McGinn, at the time who were calling it out as, "Hey, we're setting ourselves up for some problems here. And this policy is going to wind up different than Seattle voters seem to want at that time." Those calls weren't heeded, here we are - but it'll be interesting to see how we continue to proceed here and who we place as the next mayor in Seattle, who the Councilmembers are going to be coming in - could dramatically impact the way this conversation and policy unfolds.
I also want to talk just a little bit about the situation we find ourselves in again - today, here, Friday, August 13th, we have hazy, unhealthy skies again because of wildfire smoke. We're in the middle of a heat advisory - temperatures in the upper 90s once again - and heat is something that we are going to be dealing with increasingly. This extreme heat, it's lethal heat. Absolutely dangerous to people's health and wellbeing. And we've talked about on this show, the responsibility that particularly local governments have in protecting their populations from threats to their health. And I think it's pretty clear that heat and the impacts and effects of heat were not top of mind on many cities' radars for a long time. And now that we are here, cities are trying to reckon with this.
Last time in June, when we had extreme heat over - we reported over a 100 people, over 115 people died. It was the most lethal heat event that we've had in the state to date. There was a story that came out in the New York Times, I believe it was, this week talking about in the Pacific Northwest - there were actually over 600 excess deaths during that heat wave, which is far higher than any of the governments reported. No matter what lens we examine this through, heat is a major problem and a major threat to our health and wellbeing. And that's even before we get to the effects that it has on our ecosystem, the changes that it's making to the organisms and fish that inhabit our waters, our - we rely heavily on agriculture. It's a huge industry here. That is jeopardized by extreme heat. So we're going to have to deal with this and governments are not only going to have to take action to make sure that we keep this from getting worse than it already will be, but also protect their populations from the impacts that are happening right now.
And I am looking at governments providing cooling centers. It's great. It looks like this is on - getting further on the radar of governments. But for example, a lot of suburban cities have cooling centers that close at 5:00 PM, which we're still dealing with lethal heat far after 5:00 PM. And the Seattle Times did some great reporting the end of June about heat islands. And because of the lack of a tree canopy, the extent of pavement - there are some areas in King County, particularly South King County, looking at like Kent, Auburn, Burien - that are routinely 20 degrees higher than other areas in our county and in our region at 8:00 PM, far after the highs of the day have been reached. Other areas are cooling down rapidly, but particularly in South King County, some areas just aren't cooling, so the threat of heat carries on well into the evening and night. And so I just hope that as we all listen and continue to move through this, that we all hold our government at all levels to account for making sure that they are protecting people from heat. We demand this when it comes to hurricanes, floods, other emergencies, and this is predictable. We know it's going to happen more frequently. We have to do a better job protecting our population because man, this is just highly lethal to people. And with significant unhoused populations, with one of the largest populations that doesn't have air conditioning in our homes and our region - this just continues to be a big threat. So I will hop off my soap box on that, but feel very strongly that we have to be more proactive in addressing this and in protecting people.
With that, I am very thankful for you joining me today, David - lots of excellent insight and information. Appreciate it.
[00:29:18] David Kroman: Thanks so much for having me.
[00:29:19] Crystal Fincher: And I want to thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 this Friday, August 13th, 2021. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler, assisted by Shannon Cheng. And our wonderful co-host today is Crosscut political reporter, David Kroman. You can find David on Twitter @KromanDavid that's K-R-O-M-A-N David. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live show and our mid-week show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks - it really helps. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in, we'll talk to you next time.
This week on the show April Sims, Secretary Treasurer of the Washington State Labor Council (WSLC) AFL-CIO and member of the Washington State Redistricting Commission, joins Crystal to get in to how redrawing district boundaries in our state happens, how it impacts communities where lines are redrawn, and how you can advocate on behalf of your community as the Redistricting Commission makes its decisions.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii, and find Commissioner April Sims at @aprilr_sims.
Resources
Washington State Redistricting Commission website: https://www.redistricting.wa.gov/
Redistricting & Census Information from the Office of the Secretary of State: https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/redistricting/redistricting-information.aspx
“Changes ahead for Washington state’s political landscape: Redistricting may bring some drama” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/washington-unlikely-to-gain-congressional-seat-but-2021-redistricting-may-still-bring-drama/
“Washington State Hits 7.7 Million with 14.6% Growth in 2020 Census” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/04/26/washington-state-hits-7-7-million-with-14-6-growth-in-2020-census/
“After Months Of Delay, The Census Data For New Voting Maps Is Coming Out Aug. 12” by Hansi Lo Wang from NPR: https://www.npr.org/2021/08/05/1024878625/2020-census-data-redistricting-voting-districts-when-release
“Public asks Washington redistricting committee to keep them together” by Brennen Kauffman from The Daily News: https://tdn.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/public-asks-washington-redistricting-committee-to-keep-them-together/article_175d4174-4014-5f46-9fa6-51c36175fa0a.html
Transcript
[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm your host, Crystal Fincher. On this show we talk to political hacks and policy wonks to gather insight into local politics and policy through the lens of those doing the work and provide behind-the-scenes perspectives on politics in our state. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today we are thrilled to welcome April Sims who is the Secretary Treasurer of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO - the first woman of color and the first Black person to be elected as a WSLC executive officer. And who was appointed to the Washington State Redistricting Commission in January - also being the first woman of color, the first Black person to be appointed to the commission. So this is a big deal and we really want to cover the topic of redistricting because it is so important. So just first off, thank you for joining us - really appreciate you and having you on.
[00:01:26] April Sims: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to join you again and really excited to talk about the work of the Redistricting Commission, so thank you again for having me.
[00:01:36] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So I guess just starting from the beginning, what does the Redistricting Commission do and what made you want to be involved with it?
[00:01:44] April Sims: Oh yeah, great question. So the Redistricting Commission redraws our Congressional and legislative boundaries every 10 years, based on population shifts and changes. And it's significant because those maps remain in effect for the next 10 years, in terms of what the boundary lines look like and whether or not folks have the opportunity to elect representatives from their own communities. So the redistricting process is incredibly important, but I think why it's important to me and why I wanted to serve on the commission - I think it's a number of things both personally and professionally. So you mentioned that I'm the Secretary Treasurer for the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, and as the Secretary Treasurer my fiduciary responsibilities are constitutional compliance in the budget, which doesn't sound that exciting, except that our constitution includes language that charges us with fighting the forces that seek to enslave the human soul and to protect our democratic institutions of our nation. And the right to vote is fundamental to that and making sure that everyone has the opportunity to cast a vote that could lead to them electing someone who's going to represent them in their community.
So professionally it's important to me, but also personally it's important to me. My grandparents migrated to Washington from the South, they were sharecroppers in rural Louisiana. And my grandfather found out that the landowner was shorting some of the families on the crop payout, so he got the rest of the farmers all riled up. I like to think of him as a union organizer because that's what we do - is organize workers against bad bosses. But that wasn't the kind of thing that you did in that time and in that area, so he put his life at risk doing that and they were planning to lynch him, and he had to flee the South.
And migrating to Washington changed our family's story, it changed our history - well, maybe not our history, I guess, I should probably rephrase that - but it changed our family's story, right? It changed the future of my family. And they couldn't freely exercise their right to vote in the South, so voting when my grandparents migrated here was a huge deal. Every year they would get the community together, they'd dress up, Election Day was a big deal - then they'd go vote, they'd share a meal together, it was like a holiday for my family and the members of my community. So our redistricting process maintains our democracy and that's personally why this work is important to me.
[00:04:35] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely critical. I did not know that about your grandfather and family. So you just come from a legacy of organizing and, wow - just representative of really the harrowing life-threatening attempt to just live. To just live and to experience just fairness, and survive, and help your family just make it.
[00:05:00] April Sims: Yeah.
[00:05:00] Crystal Fincher: So especially at this time where we see voting rights under attack, not just attacking via issue - but structurally, institutionally - looking at people interfering with the ability for people to cast vote, disenfranchising people, and gerrymandering happening all across the country. The way we do redistricting here is a little bit different than we see in a lot of those other areas - how does ours work?
[00:05:34] April Sims: Yeah. That's a great question because it is really unique in Washington State. Lots of other states - their Legislature is responsible for redistricting and redrawing their maps. In Washington, there are four appointed commissioners - the House Republicans and Democrats each appoint one commissioner and the Senate Democrats and Republicans each appoint one commissioner. Those four commissioners select a fifth non-voting commissioner who serves as Chair and helps kind of navigate or facilitate the process. Those four commissioners are responsible for drawing the final maps - they have to be agreed on by three of the four commissioners. Those maps have to be finalized by November 15th so they can go to the Legislature for adoption. The Legislature can change our maps, but only by a vote of two thirds majority of the Legislature and then they can't change the maps by more than 2% in any one area. So it is a little unique - all of the commissioners are independent, appointed by caucus, but serve independently.
[00:06:50] Crystal Fincher: Right. Okay. So two commissioners appointed by the Democratic caucus, two commissioners appointed by the Republican caucus, and then there's one - is there a Chair?
[00:07:02] April Sims: There's a Chair, yeah. The Chair serves as a non-voting commissioner.
[00:07:08] Crystal Fincher: Okay. And so I guess a cross between a bipartisan and nonpartisan - but really bringing in a lot more independence than we see in other states where active legislators are directly drawing those lines which sometimes comes up with more extreme outcomes. How do you think the process that we have here, I guess, manifests in the results that we've seen? Has that turned out to be better historically? Has it turned out to be worse? What has our process yielded up to this point?
[00:07:46] April Sims: I think for the most part, the maps have been competitive, right? That it's led to competitive districts, which is ideally the point - that every voter should feel like their vote matters. And how your district is drawn impacts whether or not your vote matters. So I think historically it's been a process that hasn't had a lot of representation of young people, minorities, low-income folks - because it is a volunteer commission that pays a small stipend, but it's a lot of work. So you have to either work for an organization that supports your serving on the Redistricting Commission or have enough financial means to take this position unpaid. So I think that impacts who has historically served on the commission and what values they bring to the work.
[00:08:46] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And that's a very big deal. And as we talked about just upfront, this has been - historically been a domain of predominantly white men, and concerns of representation from community just hasn't been there. You are the first Black person serving on this Redistricting Commission, the first woman of color serving on this Redistricting Commission. As you're approaching this work, what difference do you think that makes? Or bringing your experience and your life and identity to this work, how does that help? How does that play out? Why do you think that's important?
[00:09:30] April Sims: Well, I think it's what happens organically with representation. So as we're thinking about even community outreach, how we reach out to communities of color and underserved communities - what happens organically for me, because these things are top of mind for me, right? How do I make sure that my community has an opportunity to participate and feels like their voice in this process will make a difference. I bring the voice of my community into all the spaces where I work and operate. So just it's an organic thing that happens with representation - but because it happens organically with representation, it also means it doesn't happen if there isn't representation, right? That there aren't folks that just naturally are looking around the room and asking questions about who's missing and how do we bring folks who are missing into the space. But I will tell you candidly, Crystal, it's a lot of responsibility. I think there's high expectations - anytime you're the first, right? High expectations to serve my community well, do my job well, be fair and negotiate maps that are going to make a difference.
[00:10:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. We could talk for quite some time about the challenges of being the first, and the expectations and the institution that you are walking into that has never been designed or even tasked with accommodating someone different. And here you are and having to push up against some of those just institutional attitudes, tradition that has excluded you, precedent that has excluded you, and trying to make that process more inclusive. I think as we look at these maps here in these states, there are a number of districts that are competitive - there are a lot of districts that could go either way. There are purple districts - there's been a lot of population shift in different areas and some demographics in different cities and areas are very different than they were before. So how do you approach, I guess, trying to maintain fairness as you're drawing the districts? And what does that look like collaboratively as you're working with the two people appointed by the Republicans? How does that process work? How is the sausage made?
[00:12:08] April Sims: Well, I think it starts with clarity around your values, right? Being clear about what's most important and how you prioritize those values - like what is a value and what is a consideration? I think historically folks have always viewed, I certainly did before I was part of the process, viewed redistricting as an incumbency protection plan, right? I think that that is a consideration but not a value, right? So being clear about what's a value and what's a consideration and how you prioritize those things. I think in terms of population shifts and what we know about the growth in Washington State, we're still waiting on the data. So I think the first approach is to ask all the questions and capture as much anecdotal information as we can while we're waiting for the data to come in. So for your listeners - historically, we use the Census data to redraw the maps. And historically that data is available to the commission and to the general public sometime in the middle of April, but because of COVID and problems with the former administration, that Census data is not available to us until August 16th.
Now remember, I said we have to finalize our maps by November 15th, so we're working behind in terms of when that data is available. So we know that the population in Washington has grown, we can make some assumptions. There are some population estimates about where the bulk of the growth has been, but we don't have that detailed demographic data to tell us who is living where and where the population shifts have not only been, but where we anticipate those population shifts to continue to grow over the next 10 years. Because remember these maps will be in effect for the next 10 years, so it's not just a snapshot of where we are right now. But also what data we can gather that will tell us where we might be in 5 or 10 years, so that we can be mindful of those things when we're drawing maps too. So right now the process is to just gather as much data as possible and not make any assumptions based on population estimates until we have the actual Census information.
[00:14:35] Crystal Fincher: But there are-
[00:14:36] April Sims: Oh, go ahead. You're going to ask me another question?
[00:14:37] Crystal Fincher: Oh no, sorry. Go ahead.
[00:14:40] April Sims: No. I'll just keep rambling. Your listeners are going to get tired of hearing my voice so you should jump in.
[00:14:44] Crystal Fincher: It's good information. I think what I was wondering is - you talked about bringing values to this work. What are the values that you're bringing? How are you processing this? What kind of lens are you bringing to this process and how does that impact the feedback that you give?
[00:15:03] April Sims: That's a great question. I think the first value that I'm bringing to this process is to be as open and transparent as I can be - keeping in mind that we still will be negotiating final maps. But to be as open and transparent as possible and to acknowledge that I don't have the answers, at best I have the questions. And I want to provide as much space as possible for folks who will be directly impacted by these final maps to provide me with the feedback and the information that I need so I can be as thoughtful as possible around what these final maps look like.
[00:15:44] Crystal Fincher: Well, and I appreciate that you are reaching out more and more deeply into the community than has happened before. Certainly having to make accommodations just during the pandemic and how to get feedback - considering that. But particularly, I think, just looking from some feedback from some communities of color of different types and different areas, the conversation from last redistricting period to this one certainly talking about majority-minority districts, or districts where there's a majority BIPOC population, but also looking at - does that potentially in some ways also dilute some votes or take away some power, if then you're dissecting cities in a certain way and in several areas, and breaking up some of the natural ability to mobilize around some issues. And I'm thinking of Yakima, I'm thinking of South King County - where some districts are comprised of five cities or more. How do you, I guess, think through that and are you primarily seeking to keep communities together? What does community mean? Is that based off of municipality? How do you approach that?
[00:17:11] April Sims: Yeah. Well, there is a criteria written into the law, right - for the Redistricting Commission - that includes that the districts should be equal population; that they should be compact, convenient, and contiguous, so as whole as possible, right? That we reduce dividing county and municipal boundaries, that we do not favor or discriminate against any incumbent candidate or political party which I think is something that the general public might not be aware of - that that is actually written into the law and part of our redistricting criteria - that we encourage electoral competition, and that we preserve communities of interest.
So I think that gets to your question, Crystal, around majority-minority districts and keeping our tribal reservations and our tribal nations together. Those are all communities of interest, but there could potentially be other communities of interest. School districts are arguably a community of interest, so doing as much as we can to keep school districts together and cities - like right now, we're hearing testimony from folks in Eastern Washington and in the Bremerton area that their cities are divided among three different legislative districts and how challenging it is for them to consolidate their political power, so that they can elect folks that have their communities of interest in mind.
So I think that - thinking about what is a community of interest and how we keep those communities of interest together - is definitely not just a legal criteria but a value, and that's where public comment really is helpful for me. And what I'm looking for when folks are offering comment to the commission is for information around those communities of interest. There's what we know based on data and then there's what we know based on what we hear from folks who live and work in these communities - and it's hearing from folks who live and work in the communities that's really helpful. I mean, we can analyze the data until the moon explodes and cut it 19 different ways, right? But having folks, having your listeners show up at an open meeting and providing us with the little nuances and the nuggets of information that the data won't tell us is really, really helpful.
[00:19:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And I identify with the feedback that you were getting from folks in Eastern Washington. I live in Kent, and Kent has three legislative districts in there and some of those challenges of organizing and being able to elect people. So how do people offer public comment? When are the opportunities for them to get involved? How can they submit testimony or testify to you live?
[00:20:05] April Sims: Well, the first thing that I would tell your listeners is go to washingtonredistrictingcommission.com - wait, is it .gov? I should know the email off the top of my head but now I'm going to Google it. So -
[00:20:19] Crystal Fincher: And it's great, we'll also include that in our show notes.
[00:20:23] April Sims: Yes. Oh, go to redistricting.wa.gov - that's our official website. You can provide feedback to the Redistricting Commission in a number of different ways. You can attend a public outreach meeting - we are wrapping up our first round of public outreach meetings and scheduling our next round. So go to the website and you definitely can find more information about the upcoming public meetings and how you can offer your testimony. But if you're not comfortable with technology, or you don't want to be on Zoom, or you're not sure that you want to give your public testimony orally - you can also email us, you can submit your comment online, you can submit a video. So if you miss the public comment meeting for your specific area, you can upload a video.
We're trying to make it - you can call and leave a message for us. We're trying to make it as accessible as possible, right? Knowing that folks process in different ways and feel comfortable providing feedback in different ways. We also have a tool where you can actually draw a map of either your district, or your region, so you can provide that information to us if you want to nerd out on the numbers, like I know a lot of us do. Or you want to play around with what you want your legislative or your congressional district to look like - that's a tool that's available, and all of that information is shared with all of the members of the commission. So we try to provide as many ways as possible. And folks can submit their written testimony or their oral testimony, or their video testimony in whatever language they're comfortable with and we will translate it. So we wanted to remove as many of those barriers as possible through our public outreach this year.
[00:22:27] Crystal Fincher: I love that. I love all the different ways that people can get there, I love that there is not a language barrier. Is there also non-English and alternate language outreach happening?
[00:22:38] April Sims: Yeah. Sending out information in a number of different languages, working with stakeholders and community partners to find out - and I think this is important - not just language that's translated or documents that are translated, but communication that's culturally competent, right? So taking our lead from community stakeholders around what messaging resonates with the communities that we are seeking to engage. So we don't - we want to meet folks where they are and we want to be as inclusive as possible, so being culturally competent in our communication is important. We have ASL and Spanish translation automatically available for all of our meetings, but if someone wants to attend a meeting they can request an interpreter in another language and we will provide that.
[00:23:29] Crystal Fincher: Okay. And so a lot of people - as I just encounter people all over the place and get in random conversations about submitting testimony and voting and all of that - offer comments such as, I just don't know what to say, I don't know what they want to know, I don't know what would make a difference, what do I have to say that they don't already know, what could be helpful that I have to say. What is it that is helpful to hear? And what is it that people can tell you? And what kinds of experiences are useful for you to know?
[00:24:01] April Sims: Ooh, great question. I think the stories are most helpful and that's what moves folks the most. So when I hear stories from folks who say - my neighbor is in a different legislative district, but our kids go to the same school. Those are - I want to dig in deeper and look at why is that the case, why are we dividing this specific community of interest and is there an opportunity to make that community whole? I think also stories around how folks have been harmed by the redistricting process in the past - stories about 10 years ago, I was in this district and now I'm in this other district and I don't have the same voice or the same opportunity to participate in the democratic process because I've been drawn out of my neighborhood or I've been drawn out of my community - so I think hearing stories about harm.
And then I also think what's helpful for me is for folks to tell us - how has your community changed? We've got the current maps and I think, I'm trying to find the right word for this, but I think the standard course, right? Is to look at the existing maps and redraw based on an existing map. And so if we look at the existing map and we redraw from where the current lines are just based on data, that might not necessarily tell us how that community has changed over the last 10 years. Some of the demographic data will get us there, because we can look at some of the micro data and we can drill down fairly deep. But I also find it really helpful for folks to let me know how their community has changed since the last time we drew the maps, so that when I'm looking at the new maps I can be mindful of that.
[00:26:00] Crystal Fincher: That is really helpful information. And I think that's an excellent point - that it's not just the data, it's about the people - and fundamentally, the people, their neighborhoods, and communities, and how they can feel a part of their community, participate and be a part of their community, and giving feedback back on how they are or are not able to do that and how boundaries can impact how they can do that. So I appreciate that, that's excellent insight.
I want to also ask just about - on the composition of the Redistricting Commission - as we talked about, two people appointed by the Democratic caucus, two people appointed by the Republican caucus - one of those people appointed is a former Senator, Joe Fain, who narrowly lost re-election after being credibly accused of rape in the - he was a Senator in the 47th Legislative District, which is southeast King County. And he was appointed to serve on this redistricting commission by the Republicans - certainly has raised a lot of eyebrows, caused a lot of concern - and many people feeling it's inappropriate. How does that impact your work? What's your view on serving with someone who has been credibly accused and so far there has not been a legitimate investigation into what happened?
[00:27:39] April Sims: Yeah - and Crystal, we've heard a lot of testimony and a lot of public comments since our very first redistricting commission meetings about how members of the public feel like this has impacted their ability to participate. I think we have to make space for the hard work that folks who are daylighting sexual assault are doing, and we have to acknowledge that there has been harm done, right? It's a difficult position to be in because ultimately we negotiate our final maps with the other members of the commission. So at the end of the day we have a job to do, and I'm going to do the job that I was appointed to do to the best of my ability. I think it's unfortunate that this is who the Republicans chose to represent - the Republican Senators chose to represent their caucus in this process because based on the public comment that we've heard, it is impacting folks and their ability to participate in the process.
We want to have an open, transparent process that's accessible to everyone and if we have folks who feel like they can't participate because of these allegations then that does real harm. And ultimately, the Republicans got to pick their person and this is who they picked. So I'll do the job that I was appointed to do and we'll negotiate the best possible maps for the folks in the State of Washington that I can, and it's unfortunate that we have this playing out in the background and that there isn't more accountability.
[00:29:36] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And that there isn't more accountability there - certainly I share that feeling. I'm also wondering just your opinion on, now, to serve on this commission there has to be a period of time after you finished serving from office - so it's not like someone can leave office today, serve on the commission tomorrow - there is a grace period in there. There is also a grace period after serving on the commission where you can't run for office. However, that grace period doesn't cover the length of time - these maps will be in place for 10 years later. And so someone could conceivably eventually run for a district that they helped to shape and create and could think of this as drawing their own boundaries. And in that example actually, former Senator Joe Fain, who some may feel is on an attempt to rehabilitate his reputation after the rape allegation could potentially be involved with drawing lines and then try and make an entrée into office. Certainly this could happen with anyone serving with there - you could choose to run, other people could choose to run. Do you feel it's appropriate for commissioners to be able to run if they've been involved in drawing those boundaries?
[00:31:08] April Sims: Yeah. I think you raise a really good question. Right now, it's a two year embargo, so you have to have been removed from elected office for two years and you can't run for two years after the maps go into effect. Actually I should double check that - if it's after the maps are finalized or when they go into effect. And so I think the thinking there is you couldn't be a first-term candidate under the new maps but that certainly doesn't prohibit you from being a candidate two years later, right? So the maps will go into effect in 2022, you could arguably run for an elected office in 2024. And I'll have to double check - I don't know if it's state and federal office based on the maps that we draw or if it's any elected position - I think it might be any elected position but I should double check. I don't have plans to run for office so it wasn't a deal breaker for me. But I think you raise an interesting point - how long should that embargo be? Should it be two years? Should it be five years? The population will continue to shift over the course of the 10 year maps, so at some point in time the districts change. I don't know, I think that's a really good question. I say now that I have no plans on running, but 10 years from now who knows what my life would look like and whether or not I'd be interested. So -
[00:32:46] Crystal Fincher: I mean, you could run and you would be a formidable candidate. I'm just throwing that out there.
[00:32:50] April Sims: I appreciate that but I'm pretty happy where I am now - big work to do, but I appreciate that Crystal, I do. So no, I think it's a really interesting question and might be worth looking into - where is the ethical boundary?
[00:33:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Interesting questions involved in the process that certainly, I think, we will be discussing more in the future and I appreciate getting your take on them. I think overall as we are wrapping up here in the time - why do you think it's so important to be involved in this process? For people to get involved in this process? What are the stakes?
[00:33:37] April Sims: Well, the stakes are whether or not we end up with maps that keep communities of interest whole, right? And it is important because these maps will shape the future of policy for Washington State - who we elect next year to represent us - those are the folks that are going to pass policy that will outlive our current maps. The policies that we pass over the next 10 years will be in effect long after the next round of redistricting is over, and so we've been able to do some really amazing things in Washington State - we lead the nation in minimum wage and our Paid Family Medical Leave Act, we just passed overtime protections for farm workers who have historically been left out of the National Labor Relations Act and-
[00:34:32] Crystal Fincher: That was huge.
[00:34:33] April Sims: Huge, huge. And Crystal you know that those exemptions are rooted in racism and are tied to Jim Crow and slavery, right? Leaving farm workers out of standard protections for workers, because most farm and agricultural workers, when those laws were passed, were Black folks, right? Sharecroppers like my grandparents. So those types of policies are passed by members of our Legislature, right? And having members of the Legislature that hold our values and the values of our community - it's how we impact change, right? I'm trying to say this in a really eloquent way, but we need folks who care about the things that we care about elected into office and the only way we get those folks elected into office is to have maps that keep our communities whole. And the only way we have maps that keep our communities whole is if we get engaged in this redistricting process. So the work that we do right now engaging in the redistricting process sets the direction for the policies that we have in Washington State for generations to come and whether or not our communities are going to be protected as part of that process.
[00:35:50] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, I think you said it perfectly eloquently. I do not have anything to add to that - that is excellent. And I just sincerely appreciate you taking the time to help educate us about this redistricting process today.
[00:36:04] April Sims: So much appreciation to you, Crystal, and to the team for having me today, for giving me some space to talk a little bit about this wonky thing we call redistricting in Washington State, so - it's always a pleasure to see you too, by the way, so -
[00:36:19] Crystal Fincher: You too. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Yeah, excited and excellent work. Thank you for involving the community in this process and let's all make a point to make our voices heard.
[00:36:29] April Sims: Let's do it, I'm with it.
[00:36:32] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks. Our chief audio engineer at KVRU is Maurice Jones Jr. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I, and now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts, just type in "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. You can also get a full text transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced during the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in, talk to you next time.
Today Crystal is joined by a very special co-host and KIRO 7 political reporter, Essex Porter! They cover what happened in this week’s primary elections, whether or not there were any real upsets or surprises, and we may see over the next few months heading into the November general election.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal on Twitter at @finchfrii, and find Essex at @EssexKIRO7.
Resources
“Harrell, González will likely compete to be next Seattle mayor” by David Kroman from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/politics/2021/08/harrell-gonzalez-will-likely-compete-be-next-seattle-mayor
“Incumbent Pete Holmes slips to third place in Seattle city attorney race after Thursday’s ballot count” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/incumbent-pete-holmes-slips-to-third-place-in-seattle-city-attorney-race-after-thursdays-ballot-count/
“6 takeaways from ballots counted Tuesday in Seattle area’s 2021 primary election” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/6-takeaways-from-ballots-counted-tuesday-in-seattles-2021-primary-election/
“Primary election results: Harrell, González lead mayor’s race” by Crosscut Staff: https://crosscut.com/politics/2021/08/primary-election-results-harrell-gonzalez-lead-mayors-race
Read Hacks & Wonks interviews with candidates that are likely to move on to the November election:
-
- Mayoral candidate, Lorena González: https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/listenpodcast/episode/f9428eab/conversation-with-lorena-gonzalez-city-council-president-and-mayoral-candidate
- District 9 City Council candidate, Nikkita Oliver: https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/listenpodcast/episode/300d5a84/nikkita-oliver-activist-organizer-city-council-candidate
- District 9 City Council candidate, Sara Nelson: https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/listenpodcast/episode/29584c47/discussion-with-sara-nelson-city-council-candidate
- City Attorney candidate, Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/listenpodcast/episode/20c5baf6/nicole-thomas-kennedy-candidate-for-city-attorney
- King County Executive, Dow Constantine: https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/listenpodcast/episode/1e6eecae/a-chat-with-dow-constantine-king-county-executive
- King County Executive candidate, Senator Joe Nguyen: https://www.officialhacksandwonks.com/listenpodcast/episode/1e38d0ac/meet-senator-and-kc-exec-candidate-joe-nguyen-again
Transcript
Crystal Fincher: [00:00:00] Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows, where we review the news of the week. Welcome to the program - I'm extremely happy and excited to welcome today's co-host, KIRO-7 political reporter, Essex Porter. Hey Essex!
Essex Porter: [00:00:54] Hello, and good to be here.
Crystal Fincher: [00:00:57] Excellent to have you here. Well, I'm thrilled to have you on the program. You are known to everyone as the person who lets us know what's going on with politics here locally on TV. So we just had a big primary election earlier this week and we have vote-in-mail here in the state, so we don't get all of the results on Election Day. We get them in batches in the days - on Election Day and throughout the week. Usually most races are clear by the end of the week, and most races are clear with one or two hanging in the balance. So I guess, starting with the mayor's race, what was your feeling on just the result that we got?
Essex Porter: [00:01:45] The result was not surprising. We expected former City Council President Bruce Harrell to be in the lead on election night and he is. We pretty much expected current City Council President Lorena González to come in second and make the November ballot - and she did. The other two - three and four - Colleen Echohawk, number three, Jessyn Farrell, number four. That was pretty much expected as well. And the Northwest Progressive Institute poll pretty much nailed where they would come in. I think they were tied pretty much in that poll, or close to tied in that poll. And that's exactly the order they showed up in. So we have the November election matchup that we expected, but we'll see if there are surprises between now and November. It's a long time away.
Crystal Fincher: [00:02:41] It is a long time away - a lot of communication yet to go. Where we stand today, and today we're recording this Friday morning - people will be starting to listen to this on Friday afternoon. We still have yesterday's results. We don't have the Friday results in yet. There are probably going to be another 20,000-ish votes counted today in Seattle is what we're anticipating. But as it stands right now, Bruce Harrell is just shy of 37% - 36.9%. And then Lorena González is at just shy of 30%, so 29.6%. With Colleen Echohawk further behind, in third place, but at 9% - I think that's further behind than a lot of people expected her to be. Some of the polling showed that she was closer, that she had a potentially significant upside after people heard her message and how she talked about herself. Why do you think that that result didn't line up with expectations?
Essex Porter: [00:03:46] Well, yeah, interestingly and the only poll I'd really seen, was the public one by Northwest Progressive Institute, which had her roughly where she is ending up, as I recall. I think it had her right at 8%, but there was a large number of undecided people in the race. Perhaps for Colleen Echohawk, who has been a very strong candidate when you see her in person - but of course it's hard to meet everybody in person, and you really have to get a message out there when you are someone who has not been in the headlines of the public eye for as long as Councilmembers Harrell and González had been. Now Colleen Echohawk has a very public profile, she's just not as well-known. And I think the result can be heartening for her and her supporters, and can point certainly to a future in Seattle politics, even if she's not going to be on the ballot this November.
Crystal Fincher: [00:05:00] Absolutely, and I think you nailed it. It really is, for people who pay attention to politics - a number of people who listen to this podcast are more plugged-in than the average person when it comes to political news. So we can - we're more exposed, we're more in tune with all the news coming out - where the candidates stand, who they are, what their histories are. But the average Seattle voter is not us. We are abnormal. The biggest opponent for a candidate is not the person or people who they are running against. It's everything else in a voter's life that is competing for attention. There's a lot going on right now in the world. We're dealing with a pandemic, people are figuring out what they're doing with their kids and school and work and home and remote, and just a lot going on, in addition to everything else that's going on in life. And so lots of people don't start paying attention until they notice that they get their ballot in the mail and their voter's pamphlet.
And in that time, you really have to communicate really effectively with a message that penetrates and captures people's attention. Certainly that's simpler to do when there's familiarity with a candidate. So people who had been Councilmembers and incumbents enjoyed that. They'd been on ballots before, voters were already familiar with them. People who voters weren't very familiar with in the mayor's race, they just didn't seem to - their message didn't seem to penetrate. So, but as we've seen with a lot of other races, this can certainly set someone up for a future successful race, now that they're more widely known, more broadly known, and people have gotten a little bit more of a chance to get to know who they are.
Essex Porter: [00:06:44] I got to talk to a few voters on the day before the election and on Election Day. The sense I got from voters was certainly - coming out of this pandemic and having a nice weather summer, and for, at the time before the election - things were relaxing and people were enjoying getting out, enjoying maybe taking a little bit of a vacation trip. I talked to one person, I asked him why he was voting so late, "I'm voting so late because I just moved and I needed to get the ballot at the new address. Soon as I got it, I came and I voted." People have things going on in their lives.
But what's one of the thoughts I have is that - I wonder if the atmosphere will be changing. Because in the last few days of the election and this week and continuing on, there is more concern about COVID. There is more of a restrictive attitude as the highly contagious Delta variant of COVID begins to impact our lives here in the Seattle area and the Northwest. There is a concern that the psychological, if not physical opening we have, will be closing back down. That may also be on voters' minds as they go into November. That will be one of the things that's overhanging that vote as they make choices.
Crystal Fincher: [00:08:12] The Delta variant is here and prevalent. So we'll see how that continues to line up. Another interesting thing I was looking at is obviously - we have the Compassion Seattle initiative coming up on the November ballot, and we had the major candidates basically all line up on one side or the other of the initiative. And that acted as a dividing line between where candidates stood. Are they more of a law and order-focus candidate, looking at issues that may bring more criminalization or certainly codify some criminalization of homelessness into the City Charter with sweeps, in addition to some other elements and in that -
Essex Porter: [00:09:01] And I have to say, that's one of the arguments over Compassion Seattle - as to whether it does criminalize homelessness and poverty. Whether it does make it more likely and give more approval to sweeps. I mean that's going to be one of the big debating points. There are supporters of Compassion Seattle who don't necessarily see it that particular way.
Crystal Fincher: [00:09:27] Absolutely. And certainly the language about it, right? Compassion Seattle - this is a compassionate solution to this challenge that we're facing. Everyone seems to agree that it's a problem. Which part of that they find to be the problem is up in the air. Is it that they have to see and deal with people being homeless? Is it that they are feeling uncomfortable about it and wanting them to be removed, or swept, or other things happen? Is it an issue of services? Certainly the initiative does address services. People talk about how effective that is and is it really more than what we're doing now? And many people say that it is 1% more perhaps, but perhaps more restrictive, but -
Essex Porter: [00:10:18] And as I talk to voters - and again, this is a small number of voters I'm talking with, as I'm working on deadline and meeting people at random at the ballot box. But as I talked to voters, when they mentioned homelessness, all the voters I talked with started out with a feeling of compassion for those who are homeless, who may be forced to sleep on the streets, or camp in a tent. And then as you listened to them, even if they didn't say who they liked in the mayor's race, it was clear that they kind of divided. There were people who spoke compassionately about those who are homeless, who felt to me - is that they would be more inclined to support Bruce Harrell. There are others who talked very much the same way, who felt to me - they would be more inclined to support Lorena González or Colleen Echohawk. The Northwest Progressive Institute poll has Compassion Seattle at, I think, it's 61% support. So it just seems to me, there's a lot of people across the mayoral candidate spectrum who support Compassion Seattle. It may not be that a vote for one person as mayor is a vote against Compassion Seattle. That's what it will be interesting to see work out in November.
Crystal Fincher: [00:11:48] It'll be interesting to see it work out in November. And interesting to see how the vote share was turned out based on where the candidates were at. Candidates who supported Compassion Seattle got more votes than candidates who didn't in the primary. But we do have Bruce Harrell who said that he is supportive of Charter Amendment 29 and Lorena González who opposes it.
Essex Porter: [00:12:16] Yeah, that's going to be one of the key things that differentiates those candidates, because there's actually a lot that's alike about those two candidates. But we'll be looking for what the differences are.
Crystal Fincher: [00:12:24] Will be interesting to see how that turns out. We also got results in the City Council races. I don't think many people are too surprised to see Teresa Mosqueda, the incumbent, in Position 8 with 56%. Kenneth Wilson is going to also make it through to the general, at 17%, but that race is looking pretty settled. In the Position 9 race, Sara Nelson is in the lead as we speak, with 42%, followed by Nikkita Oliver - they have 36%. And then Brianna Thomas in third place, with just about 14%. So it looks like Nikkita Oliver and Sara Nelson are making it through to the general - two very different candidates. Two other candidates who line up on opposite sides of the Compassion Seattle debate, they're on different sides on the JumpStart tax, the head tax, many different things. So that certainly is going to be a race where voters have a clear choice.
Essex Porter: [00:13:31] Yeah. Now that is absolutely true, and I talked briefly with Sara Nelson before the election, because by total coincidence, she doorbelled my house. And you look through the doorbell camera and think, "Hey, that's somebody I recognize," but when we talked, at least the public polling did not have her in the lead in this race. She sounded very concerned, and while I haven't spoken with her after the election, I suspect there are few people as surprised as she is, that she did so well in this race - that she has a strong lead at over 40% of the vote. And this race, I think, will be probably more for the folks who are interested in policy, and follow policy - because they do differ so much on policy. They are both seasoned at creating policy, and evaluating policy, and taking stance on policy. So it's going to be going to be a very policy-oriented City Council race. Because they diverge very much, ideologically, people are going to have that choice you're talking about.
Crystal Fincher: [00:15:05] Yeah, I mean, Nikkita has certainly talked a lot about policy. And one of the nice things about that race is that it has been so policy-focused - in their debates, especially with Brianna Thomas, there were definitive policies, plans laid out. I think it's going to be interesting to see the contrast between Nikkita and Sara. I interviewed both of them earlier, we'll link both of those interviews in the show notes to this show, but very different approaches. It feels like they're taking different stances to even the conversation about policy.
Essex Porter: [00:15:45] I think Sara Nelson will be running a message that, "I'm a business woman. I've been at City Hall. I've worked policy in City Hall. I'm a business woman too. So I know how what happens at City Hall impacts business. I don't necessarily have all the answers, but you can be comfortable with my approach and my thought process." I suspect that's the kind of message that she'll be trying to get out there.
Crystal Fincher: [00:16:17] I anticipate the same, and I anticipate to see a lot of the downtown and business interests that have traditionally been associated with the Chamber to consolidate around her. And to see a lot of the more progressive interests consolidate around Nikkita. We'll see how that goes.
Essex Porter: [00:16:38] That might be the race that's not going to be settled by Friday after the November election.
Crystal Fincher: [00:16:43] After the November election, that may be tight, but we'll see. Now there is a race that, as we sit here on Friday morning, still is not decided. Not enough for either, for any of the candidates, to have definitively declared victory or conceded and that is the City Attorney's race. And my goodness, is this a race? So as we are sitting here, after the results release on Thursday - Ann Davison is at 34.5%, Nicole Thomas-Kennedy is at 33.19%, Pete Holmes is at 32.02%. Talking to the campaigns, it looks like they're anticipating 25,000-40,000 more ballots perhaps. But this is an unusual situation, in that the incumbent Pete Holmes is now trailing - unless he significantly improves his vote share in today's count, it's looking like he's not going to make it through the primary.
Essex Porter: [00:17:54] This is, at the moment, the classic example of late votes lean left. The total on election night had Holmes in third place. The total on Wednesday night had Holmes moving up just barely to second place. And now, the total on Thursday night, where the late ballots are finally counted - those ballots that went in the mail on Monday maybe, or went in the mail on Sunday, some of the ballots that went into drop boxes late on Tuesday - those are the ballots that have been counted. And they push Nicole Thomas-Kennedy ahead of Pete Holmes again. We both have seen it often - once that trend gets started, it doesn't reverse - the Friday ballots just confirm it.
Crystal Fincher: [00:18:49] Yeah, they do. So it is looking highly unlikely that Pete Holmes is going to end up making it through. The other thing is that they're strongly trending for Nicole Thomas-Kennedy in yesterday's count. If you look at just yesterday's count, there were just over 28,000 ballots counted yesterday. Nicole Thomas-Kennedy got 37% of those ballots, Ann Davison 33%, and Pete Holmes 29%. So it's just - that trend is going to have to move sharply. And when you start thinking about what it's going to take to close that gap, you start looking at numbers, he's going to have to clear 35% to closer to 40% of the remaining ballots to look like he has a shot. That just doesn't seem consistent with anything that we've seen so far.
Essex Porter: [00:19:45] Yes, exactly. So now we have to contemplate what happened to Pete Holmes? Here's a three term incumbent, taking a position on criminalizing poverty, basically, that a lot of people favor. I mean, his criticism is that he is not tough enough on people for petty crimes like shoplifting or petty theft. But his stance has been to focus on those he perceives as true dangers in society, and that's not most of the people who come across for misdemeanors. Most of those are not necessarily violent crimes. So he's taken a stance that a lot of people on the left would support, but somehow that wasn't enough?
Crystal Fincher: [00:20:40] Well, it's interesting, because he certainly, when he came into office, he certainly came in as someone who was more reform-minded from his predecessor - in talking about stopping prosecuting some marijuana, crimes, stopping - being more friendly to nightlife and entertainment venues, that kind of thing. But what Nicole Thomas-Kennedy spent a lot of time talking about was there have been certain areas where they stopped that focus, but my goodness, there's still a lot of criminalization of poverty. And prosecutions of what seemed to be misdemeanors that are so minor that it's certainly costing the City more to prosecute it, than they're getting from the prosecution. And that criminalizing people in that situation actually is more likely to make the problem worse and more expensive to solve, than to fix it. So she has talked more about addressing root causes, taking an approach that helps get people on the right track, as opposed to just criminalize people and have them going in and out.
So he took heat for not being progressive enough and for criminalizing poverty too much on one end. On the other end was for people who think he's just been too soft on crime, look at everything happening, you've got people going for that, "Seattle is dying" narrative. And just on the hard side saying, "Oh, he's a liberal and letting everyone off, and crime is running rampant." But then there's also people saying, "I just see ..." I think it doesn't help that a lot of people associate, wrongly, I should point out, wrongly associate homelessness with criminality. People who are unhoused are more likely to be victims of crimes, than they are to perpetrate them.
I also think a lot of people don't understand that he is dealing with misdemeanors and that felonies, or most serious crime, is handled from the King County Prosecutor. So I think he's also taking heat for a lot of people's perception that crime is up, and some types of crimes are up. Overall crime is down, some violent crimes are up. So he's also taking heat for that perception. And then also, he just didn't really seem to care about campaigning for a while, until it became clear he was in danger. And then it seemed to be too little too late, with some faux pas added in some late interviews and statements.
Essex Porter: [00:23:20] Yeah, I haven't taken a look at the crime numbers, even for the non-violent crime, so I can't immediately confirm that overall crime is down. And it may not matter, unfortunately, exactly what the numbers are, because it is what the feeling is, right?
Crystal Fincher: [00:23:45] The perception - exactly.
Essex Porter: [00:23:47] It's the perception. I spoke with Ann Davison after the election, and one of the phrases that she uses and I think is going to be at center of her campaign, is that she's going to, "Center the victims," and that's the language she uses. It's going to be a victim-centered approach. I think that's the kind of approach on public safety issues - because we're going to have public safety issues that are going to be headlines about some terribly unfortunate things that happen between now and November, that will be happening every week.
When she talks about centering victims, I think that is going to be a strong counter to Nicole Thomas-Kennedy if she is in the November election, who is going to be talking about a wholesale change. She calls it abolition, and people are going to be weighing again, the stark contrast between Ann Davison, who maybe will take a more conservative approach than many people would like, and Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, who may be taking a more progressive approach than many people feel comfortable with. It's going to be which person can make people feel comfortable with their approach to public safety.
Crystal Fincher: [00:25:22] Yeah, absolutely. And basically, Pete Holmes not making it through the primary, as looks likely - certainly we'll have a much clearer idea about that after today's results. But if you're asking me, it doesn't look good for Pete Holmes. It's - there's an admission that what is going on now hasn't worked. And so people want a new approach - is that new approach more of a, "Hey, let's just crack down on people and arrest them, get them in jail," or is it, "Let's treat some of the root causes." And I think, as you articulated, Ann Davison's position and what she may be talking about. I think Nicole Thomas-Kennedy is going to be focusing a lot on what we have done hasn't worked. And what we hear proposed is more of exactly what has not worked on this level. A lot of clarifying and educating that we aren't talking about violent crimes. And that's where a lot of the disdain and discomfort comes, when people think, "Well, we can't just have people assaulting people on the street and facing no penalty. And what are we doing?" And that's a scary prospect for a lot of people. So I think hearing her talk about, "Okay, what does this mean in the role of City Attorney. And how do we change our approach?" I think that's going to be a really interesting and enlightening dialogue. I think people are going to hear some things from both candidates that are different than what they were expecting. So it'll be interesting to see how this continues to evolve through the general, but I'm excited about the conversation that will happen because of this race.
Essex Porter: [00:27:11] Yeah, and I think it's going to get some national attention as well, because I think, more than the mayor's race, it'll be a clearer choice of where Seattle wants to go.
Crystal Fincher: [00:27:23] Absolutely. And I mean, Hey, we're in the City who has a socialist on the City Council, who the DSA is not just a synonym for the Downtown Seattle Association, it's the Democratic Socialist. And they are a significant force here. We have a candidate who identifies as an abolitionist proudly, who is making it through a primary, beating the incumbent. So, I mean, this is, even for people in a primary election, which is usually a more conservative voting group compared to a general election voting group, there's a lot of receptivity to Nicole Thomas-Kennedy's message, which I think was surprising to a number of people. But I think people need to understand that there is a feeling that what has happened isn't working. And people do want reductions in crime, people do want to feel safer. But it's just, what is it that actually does make us safer? And that conversation and the details and the contours of it are one I'm excited to have.
Essex Porter: [00:28:39] Yeah.
Crystal Fincher: [00:28:41] Well, I think we are coming up on our time. I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to join us today, Essex on July ... Geez, listen to me -
Essex Porter: [00:28:52] It's already August.
Crystal Fincher: [00:28:52] I'm going to edit that.
Essex Porter: [00:28:55] Don't edit that.
Crystal Fincher: [00:28:57] I'm totally editing that. Maybe I'm editing that. I'm all over the place, but I appreciate you listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, August 6th, 2021. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler and our wonderful co-host today was KIRO-7 political reporter, Essex Porter. You can find Essex on Twitter @EssexKIRO7. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I, and now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our mid-week show delivered to your podcast feed. While you're there, leave a review, it really helps us out. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes. Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
Essex Porter: [00:29:50] Bye-bye.
Today Crystal in joined by Tiffani McCoy, Advocacy Director at Real Change, to discuss Charter Amendment 29, commonly known as Compassion Seattle. This amendment will appear on your November ballot, and would codify encampment sweeps into our city charter. Tiffani and Crystal discuss the misleading way this amendment is being messaged, what the actual cost of the amendment would be, and why its backers should make us wonder if it’s really intended to solve the homelessness crisis, or just remove houseless people from our sight.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal on Twitter at @finchfrii, and find Tiffani at @TiffaniMcCoy1. You can also find updates on the work of the House Our Neighbors Coalition at houseourneighbors.org, or follow them on Twitter at @houseRneighbors.
Resources
”Compassion Seattle Amendment Faces Scrutiny from Democratic Group and Homeless Advocates” by Chetanya Robinson from the South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/06/24/compassion-seattle-amendment-faces-scrutiny-from-democratic-group-and-homeless-advocates/
“Seattle chamber appeals dismissal of lawsuit against city’s ‘JumpStart’ payroll tax” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-chamber-appeals-dismissal-of-lawsuit-against-citys-jumpstart-payroll-tax/
“Sweeps Continue in Seattle: Perspectives from the Street” by Luke Brennan from the South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/06/14/sweeps-continue-in-seattle-perspectives-from-the-street/
“Interim Guidance for Homeless Service Providers” from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/homeless-shelters/plan-prepare-respond.html
“’Every Community Should be Using FEMA Dollars’ for Hotel-Based Shelter. So Why Isn’t Seattle?” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2021/03/18/every-community-should-be-using-fema-dollars-for-hotel-based-shelter-so-why-isnt-seattle/
“The Cost of ‘Compassion’” by Kevin Schofield from the South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/07/17/weekend-long-reads-the-cost-of-compassion/#:~:text=Compassion%20Seattle%20Cost%20Analysis&text=Here%20is%20their%20report.,annually%20in%20ongoing%20operational%20costs.
“The C Is for Crank: Correcting the Record on Compassion Seattle” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2021/07/13/the-c-is-for-crank-correcting-the-record-on-compassion-seattle/
“How many homeless people in Seattle are from here?” by Scott Greenstone from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/do-homeless-people-come-to-seattle-for-help/
“Regional Homelessness Director Marc Dones: ‘The Driver of Homelessness Is Economic.” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2021/07/26/regional-homelessness-director-marc-dones-the-driver-of-homelessness-is-economic/
“Myths and Facts of Homelessness in Washington State” from the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance: https://www.wliha.org/sites/default/files/myths.pdf
Transcript
Crystal Fincher: [00:00:00] Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm your host, Crystal Fincher. On this show, we talk to political hacks and policy wonks to gather insight into local politics and policy through the lens of those doing the work and provide behind-the-scenes perspectives on politics in our state. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by Tiffani McCoy who's the Advocacy Director at Real Change, and I wanted to have Tiffani on to talk about Charter Amendment 29, the Compassion Seattle - so-called Compassion Seattle - Charter Amendment to address homelessness in Seattle. Thank you so much for joining us, Tiffani.
Tiffani McCoy: [00:01:13] Crystal, thank you so much for having me to talk about this important issue.
Crystal Fincher: [00:01:17] Absolutely, I appreciate it. So I guess, just to start, what is Charter Amendment 29?
Tiffani McCoy: [00:01:26] Yeah, Charter Amendment 29 is being peddled as a solution to the homelessness crisis in Seattle - that's verbatim what people heard on the street when approached by a paid signature gatherer. But Charter Amendment 29 includes no new solutions, no new funding, and would codify the forced removal of our unhoused neighbors into the City Charter, which is basically the same as our City's constitution.
Crystal Fincher: [00:01:56] Okay, and so they're saying, "Hey, this will solve homelessness and we're going to do it in a compassionate way. After all, our name is Compassion Seattle. It dedicates resources for services that are badly needed. It guarantees that there's going to be housing built. And it makes sure that we can do something to actually take care of people and get them off the street." Is that accurate to you?
Tiffani McCoy: [00:02:24] Yeah. So if the backers of Charter Amendment 29 - which are real estate developers, millionaires, and corporations - if they were true about solving this crisis, they would compassionately put their money where their mouth is. And they would stop recycling the false claim that we simply just need to spend our dollars better to solve homelessness. And they would also stop trying to characterize sweeps - the forced removal, the displacement of unhoused neighbors - as compassionate. And the question really is - should real estate developers dictate who lives in Seattle? Should millionaires dictate who lives in Seattle? Because according to this Charter Amendment, these folks who are bankrolling this are saying that they get to dictate who lives in Seattle.
Crystal Fincher: [00:03:15] Well, and it certainly has been reported on - that it is primarily funded by downtown Seattle business interests, who frequently talk about taking a more hard line or more criminalized approach to addressing homelessness. And I guess starting at the point of, "Okay, what does it actually do?" They're saying, "Hey, we're dedicating resources to addressing homelessness that have not been there before." I think the number is 12% of housing dollars going towards being mandated to be spent on this. Is that tangibly better than where we're at? Is that a significant improvement?
Tiffani McCoy: [00:03:55] Yeah, what you're saying is really important to kind of suss out, and I really think that this tweet by Erica C. Barnett captures it just really specifically. This Charter Amendment doesn't fund anything. It merely says that the City must shift existing resources to create 2,000 new shelter beds so that parks can be clear for housed people to use. That's the essence of this Charter Amendment. It doesn't fund anything. Right now, the City of Seattle spends roughly $11 million a year already on housing and homelessness. This Charter Amendment requires 12%, so $18 million more to allegedly "fund," and I say "fund" in quotes - wraparound services, mental health treatment, diversion programs, parks cleanup, sweeps of folks, and also to build 2,000 shelter or permanent housing units.
That's fanciful thinking. That's why this is an empty promise. There's absolutely no way that this will fund all of those mechanisms. And actually, recently, a lot of City Council members actually asked the Seattle central staff - it's the City Council's research body - "What would this actually cost us if it were enacted?" And those figures are daunting, and I think that all listeners should go and look for that report - because it looks like to enact Charter Amendment 29, it would cost between $20 to $180 million a year to do. And the lower end of $20 million is assuming that the funding of diversion programs, the funding of mental health services, the funding of wraparound services, is already happening in the City. So those boxes are already checked and that's how you get that low end number.
So, no, this doesn't fund anything. This would fund shelter beds over permanent housing, which we know under a housing first model, is the preferable range. That's the true way to get folks off the street - getting them into housing. So, no, this isn't something. This is nothing. And it is being pushed by these big business interests that just very clearly want to influence City Council and mayoral races through buying a law and putting it on the ballot at the same time.
Crystal Fincher: [00:06:23] Well, I mean, there definitely have been people who have speculated that the reason why Charter Amendment 29 is on the ballot is to help the more conservative candidates, or candidate for mayor, as it will turn out, in the general election. So, the motivations have been called into question, especially since a number of the donors previously simply advocated for more sweeps before, but then came back with the language of compassion wrapped around this. And some of the issue that you brought up about the funding - really leading with saying, "Hey, this is going to provide so much funding. We are dedicating so much to this," without mentioning that, "Hey, almost all of that money is already allocated on being spent - that is already in effect - and the new funding, any new funding that is provided for it, doesn't necessarily mean that it will provide 2,000 new units."
We don't know exactly - there's no mandate on what those units have to be. There's no mandate on what the service has to be. And we're in the midst of a situation where money has been allocated, for actually years, in the City of Seattle to build more housing - and delays and bureaucracy in the mayor's office have prevented that from coming to fruition. So I know one of my initial concerns looking at it was, "Okay, so you say that you've allocated money for doing it, but we are currently in a situation where the money can be sitting there for years with nothing happening."
Meanwhile, we would have codified in our City Charter, which is basically the city's constitution, that you can now sweep these people off of the streets - which is important because these sweeps have been ruled in several courts to be unconstitutional because there is no place else for them to go. So if the City doesn't provide some option for people to go, it can't outlaw people's existence in public and say, "No matter how you exist, if you can't afford a house, its going to be criminal." As you look at this, what are, I guess, the biggest barriers that we need to address overall to get this fixed and does the Charter Amendment make any attempt to address those or not?
Tiffani McCoy: [00:08:51] Yeah. So you brought up a lot in there, a lot of really important points. And I want to really kind of hone in on the funding aspect and how you've aptly described kind of the blocking of progress by the backers of Charter Amendment 29. I mean, these are the same folks that have stepped in full-on to stop any progressive revenue measure to actually fund the crisis. The Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Seattle Association have a lot of overlap, but actually we're litigating against the JumpStart progressive revenue source - that about $150 million a year would go towards building deeply affordable permanent housing, which we know we desperately need. And they litigated against that to try to not have that go into effect. The judge ruled against their efforts to block that funding, but they've appealed and they are still trying to fight to make sure funding for housing doesn't happen. So that also calls into question their flowery, slick PR, "We want to get everyone inside." If you truly did, you wouldn't be blocking a progressive revenue measure. You would be helping to support that.
I also think that getting into this - is this something? Sure, I'll admit that 2,000 more shelter beds would be helpful, but I'm also going to tell you, based on vendors that we've talked to at Real Change, mutual aid folks that go out and do outreach - shelter bed, mat on the floor, congregate shelter is not at all wanted. It's not desired. It is not taken. Even though we've moved in positive ways during the pandemic away from congregate shelter, there's nothing in this that guarantees that that won't happen - that these won't be mat on the floor, in at 8:00p, kicked out by 6:00a, not being able to bring a pet, not being able to bring your belongings and your partner, et cetera, et cetera. So this is a false solution. And not only that, it does absolutely nothing for 50% of our unhoused neighbors currently living outside, and it does nothing to deter the inflow of homelessness. It has nothing about eviction protection or just deeply affordable housing. Generally, it's an empty promise to end homelessness and it grossly sensationalizes our most vulnerable residents for political gain.
Crystal Fincher: [00:11:21] Well, and I think you raised some important points - one, looking at really criminalizing the most vulnerable residents - putting them at risk of being swept - and really it's important to think about - when you are unhoused and you are really carrying all of your belongings with you, being swept means someone coming and just taking all of your things, and oftentimes, despite assurances that have happened in the past saying, "Well, we try and spare people's belongings," frequently they do not. So someone who is just trying to cobble together anything that they can, maintain their few possessions, have some kind of sense of continuity and history - we look at all of the things that we keep around our houses and imagine you just trying to keep a few things and someone just deciding one day that they're going to come and remove it all, when you have nowhere else to go and don't have ample time or opportunity to move or to relocate.
And as you said, this also doesn't mandate any kind of productive housing. We were actually able to get a lot of data throughout this pandemic as congregate shelter - people just kind of in one room on cots or mats all together - became a public health risk because of the pandemic. And so there was a shift to housing people in hotel rooms. And the difference between being among a bunch of other people who you don't know - concerns about your safety potentially, your belongings, whether or not they're going to be stolen, it not being a place where you can just be, like in your house all day long, you have to clear all your stuff and leave and then come back oftentimes. The difference between the stress and anxiety that causes, and then being able to have a room to yourself, a door that locks, a place where only you have access to your belongings - just that measure of peace and ability to exhale, just removing that really mental health barrier of the burden of not having any privacy, set people up for so much more success and there are much better outcomes.
So being that this doesn't even mandate that, "Hey, we're going to make sure that we provide the type of shelter and housing and individual rooms that increases the likelihood for success," seems like that's a big glaring oversight to me. And one of the criticisms is that, "Hey, this was crafted by the people who just want to sweep people." They actually did not include the impacted populations in this group. Sure, they had a couple people from service providers who may stand to profit from this initiative and see revenue result from it, but people who are actually living on the streets - who can provide great feedback on what would actually be helpful, what can actually get people over the hump and into, not just housing, but be stable in their housing - were excluded from this process. And so a lot of what we're seeing that has been helpful in other circumstances is not even included in this. As you look at it, what do you see as some of the major oversights?
Tiffani McCoy: [00:14:48] I mean, all of those oversights you just mentioned are critical and point towards the pretty clear fact that this isn't about housing our neighbors. This is not about building housing for folks to have inside. This isn't about stemming the economic impact, which is creating homelessness in the first place - rising rents, wages that are decreasing, the pandemic. This isn't about any of that. This is truly just about buying a law to influence City Council and mayoral races. I mean, the Chamber of Commerce had a stunning defeat - and the Downtown Seattle Association - in the 2019 races, spending millions of dollars to try to influence and they lost most of those seats. So they're doing it in this backdoor way, again, by sensationalizing homelessness for political gain.
I also like to think of this as just very clearly, Mayor Jenny Durkan's dream scenario for sweeps. This is how she has moved the City since she has stepped into office. We used to have mostly 72 hour sweeps and now the predominant amount of sweeps are very last minute - no services, no outreach there. You've got to throw your stuff away and just get on with yourself. And I mean, incredibly traumatizing. Sweeps are traumatizing all the time, no matter what, no matter if you have 72 hours, if you have a week, two weeks. It's the City, it's the state telling you, "You don't belong here. You need to find somewhere else to go, and we're not going to help to actually stem what brought you into this position in the first place."
So it's just overall just smoke and mirrors and it's just so unfortunate and deeply disturbing and gross because we do know what can address this crisis. And instead of being able to focus on that, these corporations and big businesses are still trying to operate like a parallel government in that they get to decide equally with folks that we elect into office how the City should run.
Crystal Fincher: [00:16:57] I think a lot of this fundamentally goes down to the - I think there's just "conventional wisdom," which is not tethered to reality - but just that, "Hey, people shouldn't be on the streets and for some reason it is more of a problem for me to see people who are homeless than for people to actually be unhoused. And they just need to go somewhere else and they just need to move somewhere else and it's their fault anyway. They're probably using drugs. They're a source of crime." And I think we really have to grapple with the amount of people who are underneath this impression - sometimes media coverage and what gets sensationalized exacerbates that impression - that homelessness, really when a lot of the interests, especially pro Charter Amendment 29 interests talk about it, they talk about it in terms of a crime problem. As if, one, this is a major or significant source of crime in that people who are unhoused are somehow not victims more often than perpetrators of violence, and some of the most vulnerable people in our society that need protection. But how do you address to people that, "Hey, just step back for a second - just criminalizing this. Here is why throwing someone in jail if they're in a tent on a sidewalk doesn't work?" How do you talk about that?
Tiffani McCoy: [00:18:35] That gets into a lot of the framing that Charter Amendment 29 is using around this. They always highlight one of the first couple things is one, that this is about us getting people off the streets, and then the second and third thing is usually about, we need more mental health service and addiction treatment. So they are perpetuating the myth that the vast majority of people are living outside because of a drug and alcohol problem and mental health problem. And we know that's not the case. In fact, just this last week, Marc Dones was interviewed by PubliCola. Sorry, I'm in the office so there's a phone ringing in the background. But Marc Dones, who's the new head of the Regional Homelessness Authority, just said that it's really about 15 to 20% of those living outside have severe behavioral health or substance use issues. The vast majority of folks experiencing homelessness can't afford to get into housing. He says it is an economic issue and not at all because of - that the main driver is not drug and alcohol issue, as Charter Amendment 29 backers would have you believe.
So, in the face of all of this evidence, we know again the political impetus for Charter Amendment 29 is about sensationalizing those things that you mentioned about people not wanting to see visible poverty, about people seeing mental health issues happening in public when they're walking to get coffee or to lunch. It's not about a humane approach and look at how our economic system is failing humans. It's about, "You are a bother to my eyes. I don't want to see it. Let's sweep you off to somewhere else." So we need to get back into realizing and absorbing and embracing that this is an economic issue through and through - not just even in Seattle - nationwide. We don't have housing as a human right. We don't allow housing to meet your needs based on your income. It's just like a completely gross upside down system and until we start to truly realize that this is an economic issue, that rent is too high, that we don't have deeply affordable housing - at the end of the day the question is, who gets to decide who lives in Seattle? That's what I would say to that person.
Crystal Fincher: [00:21:01] I think those are all excellent points and I do think that we have work to do and that we need to hold more of our media accountable in the wider ecosystem. There's been a lot of excellent reporting on this from some of our local papers and local media outlets, but there's also been some problematic local reporting. And so we really have to, I think, call out when there are obviously misleading, obviously non fact based, non data based narratives that frequently make homeless people increasing targets of violence and absolutely stigmatize it. Because to your point, and there was just another study that came out - I think it was this past week - that yes, homelessness is an economic problem. More people are homeless because they cannot afford to pay for a place to live than any other problem. And in fact, being homeless exacerbates all of the other problems. So allowing people to become homeless actually makes all of the other problems worse. It's not that those other problems start and then homelessness suddenly spontaneously erupts. This is a problem of affordability fundamentally and prioritization of making sure everyone does have a home and that this is accessible to live in.
So I guess one of the biggest issues to me is that I think there is a considerable - polling continuously reinforces that there is a huge percentage of the population who, I think, a lot of times feel like, "Hey, I don't know what the ultimate decision is to fix this. There have been a lot of people trying for years. I've heard it talked about for years. It's been declared an emergency and only got worse. And I hear this bickering about it. And it seems like no one who's been elected whose job it has been to fix this has been up to the task of getting this fixed, so at least this is something because what's the alternative?" So when you hear that, and what's the alternative - what should be happening for people sick of seeing nothing happening - what should be happening? What is possible? What can be done in the short term to make a big impact?
Tiffani McCoy: [00:23:34] Yeah, I want to go back to that media accountability, because I think it's key. We have to, as a society, move past this idea of respectability politics and call it out as we see it. We're in a climate crisis. I have a young daughter who's two. I'm terrified for the next generations and myself, all of us, for what's going to happen. There are massive things that we should be focusing on instead of me fighting a bunch of rich people who want to influence city politics by buying a law. That's what I'd like to do, but back to the media - we have to hold them accountable. The Seattle Times is playing a really, really egregious role in not being objective whatsoever in this. They very much want this to pass. They make that super clear in all their writing. They aren't publishing any op-eds that shows, like the House Our Neighbors Coalition who's fighting to defeat this Charter Amendment. They're not running any op-eds from anyone in the community and we've had several people send in. They're not going to run that, just not at all going to give that viewpoint.
We also need to hold the people that are in power accountable, like truly, truly accountable. If you look at the mailers that are going out for City Council races - one of these mailers by Jessyn Farrell shows the list of neighborhoods that are going to be the priority for encampments should she become mayor. That is a very clear dog whistle and violent actually. And it's a dog whistle that everyone-
Crystal Fincher: [00:25:11] Wait, she released a sweep priority list? Is that what you're saying?
Tiffani McCoy: [00:25:14] I'm going to show you it.
Crystal Fincher: [00:25:15] Okay, so we can see each other on video on this podcast. So... Oh, look at that. There's a whole map.
Tiffani McCoy: [00:25:25] These are the priorities.
Crystal Fincher: [00:25:28] I am looking at this. It does exist. And so looking at Jefferson Park, Lake City Park, Occidental Square, Haller Lake, Ballard Commons, North Aurora, any public school property with unsheltered people. What that tells me is that, once again, although they seem to be bending over backwards to avoid talking about the one thing that this actually does that's new or significantly different, and that is codify sweeps in the City Charter, which is basically the city constitution - which I continually, and we're deep into this podcast now, but I also have to say is against King County Public Health guidance in the middle of a pandemic and against CDC guidance in a pandemic as being very unhealthy and likely to spread the virus doing sweeps.
And we see this determination to not just move forward, but to make it impossible for anyone to keep people from being able to sweep and to basically enact a criminalized or just basically razing people's abodes. So we have a challenge here, but I guess I'll go back to the question. For someone who's saying, "I am so fed up with this problem being this problem, and it's not my job to fix it. Elected people haven't fixed it. This seems like it may do something new to address the problem." What are the alternatives? What should people be pushing for? What do we know works? What can be done in the short term to make a significant impact?
Tiffani McCoy: [00:27:17] I'm glad that we were able to go back to that. Thank you for going on that tangent of that dog whistle to all of those neighborhoods, "I will be there for you to make sure you don't see visible poverty." That's across many different candidates. You can tell which ones have adopted Charter Amendment 29 language and are putting it in their mailers.
But to what can happen now - I think that we just do have to take a step back and look at how disastrous this mayor has been for this crisis and for, I mean, lots of things, but let's just stick to this crisis. She has left time and time again money on the table from the federal government to bring people inside. She decided not to take up FEMA money to put folks inside and COVID-19 money to put folks into hotels. She's just left millions of dollars on the table and folks, I encourage you, if you want to read more about that to just Google anything about Seattle and COVID money being left on the table. So that could have put hundreds of our unsheltered neighbors inside, into a room of their own, where they have that agency and safety. So we just didn't take that money that would be basically no strings attached from the federal government.
What also can be done right now is folks can, especially if they're in the business community, demand that the Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Seattle Association drop the litigation against the JumpStart progressive revenue because that will put into the hopper thousands of units.
We also just need to look at zoning, just have to be very real about it. There's a recent racial equity toolkit analysis that came out on, I can't remember the name of it, The Urban Village Strategy. Not only is it showing the deep racist roots of so many in the city of Seattle, but how it makes it impossible to solve the housing crisis because of all of the single family zoning. So we have to look at that. That is starting to happen immediately at the City Council, so getting involved in those fights to make sure that we change zoning so that we are able to... Sorry, a phone is going on in the background. So that we're able to actually create density and affordable housing across the whole city and not just have these very white dominant spaces that are protected.
I would also say, RV safe lots. Real Change fought for some of the federal money that just came through for RV safe lots. We have about 1,500-2,000 folks living in their vehicle and we just always forget them. We don't do anything to meet their needs. So we need to like massively expand those. We did win some funding through the federal money that came down. There is a second round, so Real Change is going to keep fighting for that, so stay tuned. We need to get like thousands of those. We need to start talking in the thousands, not the hundreds or the dozens of units.
And then I would say investing in housing first. I mean, we'll see what House Our Neighbors becomes after November 3rd, but those are a couple of things to plug into now. But I also recommend folks look at the House Our Neighbors Twitter because we are actively plugging people into fights that will make a difference right now.
Crystal Fincher: [00:30:21] Perfect. So where can they find you? What is the House Our Neighbors Twitter?
Tiffani McCoy: [00:30:27] I think it's just house and then the letter R... Yeah, it's @houseRneighbors, and neighbors is spelled out, on Twitter. Same with Facebook. Our website is houseourneighbors.org, but the our is spelled out. And yeah, we're on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. Get involved. We've been tabling for a couple of weeks now.
We also did some decline to sign petitions and we had people actually remove their signatures as well, because just going back to something you said Crystal, this is a slick PR campaign. They have millions of dollars behind them. They paid $180,000 to get signatures collected and when people are starting to learn about the disingenuous nature of this and who's backing it, they reached out to us to remove their signature. And one woman was crying and not to like politicize this, but she just felt ashamed that she was duped, as she says, by this. But we do want to solve this crisis as a community - you're completely right - it's just this is not the way to do it and it would actually cause a lot more harm and, as you said, it would cost way more money.
Crystal Fincher: [00:31:37] I mean, this seems like it's going the way of several other issues - whether it's how we address substance use disorder and substance use, to how we just address issues of general affordability in society and workers' rights. There are very well-funded efforts afoot to keep things the way that they are and the way that they are has been harmful. And the attempt to move in a more positive way, which in this situation is not throwing people into jail or throwing away all of their belongings and just telling them to move somewhere else. That actually does nothing to address the issue, the fundamental problem, which is that that person does not have a place of their own to stay. For most people, the reason why is because they can't afford it. That is the primary reason. Nothing else is more of a cause.
And that this population is more at risk of being victimized and harmed, not more likely to do harming or to be victimizing others. And so to prioritize taking care of people who need a home, and as you said, there is no substitute. We have to build places for people to live. There are not enough places. There are not enough affordable places. We have to address all of that.
There's encouraging conversations happening within the mayoral race right now and City Council races. Certainly, there are candidates like Bruce Harrell and Jessyn Farrell and Casey Sixkiller who are supporting Charter Amendment 29. But there's a lot who aren't. Basically, the rest are not. And so those conversations and really giving the investments that are being made, like you said, even the JumpStart tax that was just passed with investments there, there is actually action being taken. I think part of the issue is some of the stuff that is taken and that we are seeing is working is very contrary to the narrative that has been set out by some of the hard line interests that we've seen come out of downtown from the DSA and the Chamber.
So, part of the answer I think is to see the investments that are now being made through, to see now that the Regional Homeless Authority has a leader and direction for that work to be done and to continue with the work of building homes for people and addressing affordability. There really is no other sustainable solution. So thank you so much for joining us today. And again, if anyone has any questions, wants to get involved, we'll put all of this information in our show notes and they can reach out to you again on the House Our Neighbors Twitter or Facebook or website, I assume, and reach out to you there. So thanks so much, Tiffani, for joining us today.
Tiffani McCoy: [00:34:47] Thank you Crystal. I appreciate the opportunity.
Crystal Fincher: [00:34:47] Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks. Our chief audio engineer at KVRU is Maurice Jones, Jr. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I, and now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type in "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. You can also get a full text transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced during the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.
Show Notes
On today’s week in review, political consultant Heather Weiner joins Crystal to provide insight into the final days of primary campaign season, including:
- Optimistic vs pessimisticmessaging in candidates' primary election closing arguments;
- The candidate who spelled their name wrong on a mailer, and the biggest consulting mistakes Heather and Crystal have made;
- This week's Pete Holmes interview where he admitted to making decisions as City Attorney based on fear of losing political campaign endorsements; and
- Why Crystal tries to refrain from making primary election predictions.
And remember, get your primary ballots in by next Tuesday, August 3rd!
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal on Twitter at @finchfrii, and find Heather at @hlweiner.
Resources
“The ‘fifth wave’ of COVID-19 is here. What you should know about the delta variant and masking” by Ryan Blethen at The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/the-fifth-wave-of-covid-19-is-here-what-you-should-know-about-the-delta-variant-and-masking/
“Why getting a name right matters” by Zulekha Nathoo from the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210108-the-signals-we-send-when-we-get-names-wrong
“City Attorney Pete Holmes worries he’ll get squeezed out in tight 3-way Seattle primary” by Jim Brunner at The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/city-attorney-pete-holmes-worries-hell-get-squeezed-out-in-tight-3-way-seattle-primary/
"Nearly half of Seattle police calls don’t need officers responding, new report says" by Elise Takahama from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/nearly-half-of-seattle-police-calls-dont-need-officers-responding-new-report-says/
People Power Washington 2021 Policing and Public Safety Voter Guide: https://www.wethepeoplepower.org/2021-voter-guide-seattle
Endorsements
-
- The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2021/07/14/59065522/the-strangers-endorsements-for-the-august-3-2021-primary-election
- The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/06/28/the-urbanists-2021-primary-endorsements/
- The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/who-supports-who-in-seattle-elections-endorsements-roll-in-for-mayoral-council-races/
- 350 Seattle: https://350seattleaction.org/2021-elections
- Transit Riders Union: https://transitriders.org/blog/2021/06/25/trus-2021-primary-endorsements/
- Publicola:
- Mayor: https://publicola.com/2021/07/19/publicola-picks-lorena-gonzalez-for-mayor/
- City Council Position 9: https://publicola.com/2021/07/19/publicola-picks-brianna-thomas-for-seattle-city-council-position-9/
Transcript
Crystal Fincher: [00:00:00] Welcome to Hacks and Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week. Welcome back to the program friend of the show and today's co-host, political consultant and urban farmer, Heather Weiner.
Heather Weiner: [00:00:50] Hi Crystal.
Crystal Fincher: [00:00:51] Hey Heather. Good to have you back.
Heather Weiner: [00:00:53] Always glad to chat with you the couple of days before the elections.
Crystal Fincher: [00:00:57] Couple days before the elections - I'm sure your schedule is just totally wide open and you're not busy or anything at this point in time.
Heather Weiner: [00:01:05] What do you like to do on Election Day itself, when you feel like there's not much else you can do? Do you have a routine? Is there something you like to do?
Crystal Fincher: [00:01:13] So that's an interesting question - between me and the candidate, right? So, for me, I just like to make sure that the candidate is occupied because they're dealing with anxiety and apprehension and all that kind of stuff and nerves. And so just making sure that there's a good plan in place for them. And then for me, I just like to step back and center myself a little bit, make sure that I'm prepared for the evening's events, whether it's an Election Night party, or if I'm just paying attention to - trying to figure out - okay, let me get situated for when the numbers come in, make sure that I have a good plan. I usually don't like to be in public when numbers come in. I like to be able to digest them myself before I have to react or synthesize them for anyone else. So that's me. What about you?
Heather Weiner: [00:02:04] Well, sometimes I like to go get a pedicure, because I'm nervous and kind of do a little bit of self care. Sometimes I go get my hair done. There's always something now - of course, now that we've been in COVID times, there haven't really been Election Night parties - you're just kind of sitting at home and pacing and chewing your nails. So, I've been trying to get some exercise during the day, a little bit of self care. I will say though, that my hardcore campaign friends are like, "What do you mean? I am out there door knocking and getting ballots in until 7:59. I am making sure people are getting their ballots in. Don't even talk to me." And I'm like, "Oh wow. I guess I'm a little lazy. I guess, you're right. I guess I do need to be out there getting ballots in."
Crystal Fincher: [00:02:52] Depending on - there have definitely been some campaigns, particularly close campaigns, where you are chasing every single ballot to the very last moment - making sure that everyone who has said that they were going to get their ballot in has, that you're assisting people with the last minute, "Oh man, I'm not going to be able to make it to the post office." Let's get that figured out for you - because every vote is going to count.
Heather Weiner: [00:03:15] I remember, boy, back in 2013, I was working on the Prop 1 SeaTac minimum wage campaign. And there, you only had 7,000 voters. So you knew exactly who had voted, who hadn't, what time they came home. I think actually Brianna Thomas was the campaign manager at that point - outreach manager - and she had dozens of people out there making sure people got their ballots in on time. And it made a big difference because we won by just a couple dozen votes.
Crystal Fincher: [00:03:41] Oh, it made the difference and why I have always said - if I'm ever running a field campaign, Brianna Thomas is near the top of the list of people - just because what she has done, including in SeaTac and Seattle Honest Elections, she will work a field campaign. So yeah, that's interesting.
I also like to just center myself a little bit with family generally and just, okay, this is what matters most - no matter what happens, at least I still have people who I love and people who love me, and this is what's most important. And even if everything falls apart on the outside in the world, this is still the center and just getting back to what I know matters most.
Heather Weiner: [00:04:24] Great. I think this should be a poll question you should always ask consultants is - what is their Election Day thing? Do they have a special pair of socks they like to wear, like baseball players? Or, is it just what are they doing? Or are they just already making plans to be out of town? It'd be interesting to find out.
Crystal Fincher: [00:04:46] Many are already making plans to be out of town, I'm sure. I always have a thing with red lipstick on Election Days too.
Heather Weiner: [00:04:52] I like that.
Crystal Fincher: [00:04:54] That's my war paint.
Heather Weiner: [00:04:55] All right. Please post photos. All right.
Crystal Fincher: [00:05:00] We will see. So, let's talk about the races and as people are wrapping up, I was just taking a tour around some of the final C4s, which are reports that the campaigns have to file on their spending and final fundraising - just to see what campaigns are up to in these closing days. I guess I'll just say - what's interesting that you're noticing just in the general campaign world?
Heather Weiner: [00:05:27] Well, you said you're looking at C4s and you're looking at the money. But I've actually been paying more attention to the messaging. I've got a lot of mail sitting right here that says, Seattle is Dying. Are you done yet? What do you want to - it's kind of a last person to leave Seattle, turn off the lights - really a doom and gloom messaging. Which I don't think works with voters in Seattle - we may all be kind of bitching about our lives, but we want optimism, we want, vision. And telling us that everything is bad, I think, actually depresses voter turnout - does not help with voter turnout. So, I'm really interested to see how many people from Jessyn Farrell to Art Langlie are using this very negative messaging - even Colleen Echohawk - are using these images that are kind of poverty porn, right? The images of people's suffering, tents, all of trash, just kind of ginning up fear and anger. So I think that's super interesting to see that that's what some of the folks are doing. And I'm going to be very curious to see if that messaging works.
I've also been hearing a lot from the chattering class about an anti-incumbent, anti-City Council, anti-government backlash. And I think that that is definitely true, but the reasons that people are unhappy are very different and very split. So there's a lot of people who are kind of the older, more conservative voters who are unhappy because they see that things are changing. They don't like that things are changing in the direction - they're scared of younger people and their agendas, they're scared of crime, safety, et cetera. And then there's a whole other section of voters who are frustrated with economic inequality, the wage gap, rising housing costs, their inability to make a wage, to get to work with good transit. And so I think that those people are going to split. You're not going to see 80% voting for one candidate. So I think it's super interesting. I'm really interested to see what the results are. What's your take on it?
Crystal Fincher: [00:07:47] This is really interesting. I agree with you in that - super negative, doom and gloom, is not - that can't be the only thing that you're doing. Sure, you have to contrast with other candidates and you have to underscore why there is a change needed. But really people need to understand what your vision is, and people are looking for what is on the other side? What does it look like when we get out of this?
And, I think part of the problem - why doom and gloom is even worse now than it has been before, when it comes to getting results, is that people are having a harder time seeing beyond these times now. I mean, we're just now again, talking about how bad and contagious the Delta variant is. Is it that we're going to be heading back into lockdowns? Is it mask mandates reintegrated and all the drama that creates with anti-maskers and anti-vaccine people - talking about vaccine hesitancy and this Delta variant taking over and spreading. So it's just like, man, are we ever going to get out of this? And, housing is getting more and more expensive along with so many other things. And daily life is just a challenge for a lot of people. They need someone who can say, yeah, it is a challenge right now, but here is where we can be in two years, four years, eight years. And articulating that vision effectively, I think, will do a lot for any candidate running in the City.
You talk about messaging. And so just looking through - some folks scan and send me mailers - just looked at one where Bruce Harrell spelled his name wrong on his own mailer.
Heather Weiner: [00:09:36] Get out of here, I didn't see that. Let me see, let me see -
Crystal Fincher: [00:09:39] We're on video - you can see. You see the third R in there. And I look at this and like, these are things - sometimes bad things happen and it is really easy to miss if you're not proofreading well, but you talk about the nightmare of consultants - is actually this mailer. It's like looking at it.
Heather Weiner: [00:09:59] Christian, if you're listening now.
Crystal Fincher: [00:10:03] I wasn't going to say his - but there you go. I didn't say it, Christian.
Heather Weiner: [00:10:05] Oh man. Well, look look - we've all made those mistakes - disclaimers will eff you, is what we say in the consulting business. Also, I'm seeing quite a few candidates who are forgetting to put their disclaimers on their mail, particularly their videos, and Seattle requires your disclaimer [in] your video to also be spoken. And so I am not going to name any names, but I think there's a consultant out there who needs to check all his videos because he does not have the spoken disclaimer. He's going to get fined by the PDC - not naming any names.
Crystal Fincher: [00:10:37] Yeah. I know who you're talking about. But yeah - and that's a challenge. And really, there are so many rules and regulations - and they stack up and it's easy to miss something. It is our job not to miss them. And it always is -
Heather Weiner: [00:10:50] It happens. Believe me, I've never made a mistake-
Crystal Fincher: [00:10:52] - it is a nightmare. And trust me, I've made my share of mistakes, so-
Heather Weiner: [00:10:55] Oh, can I tell you my most embarrassing mistake story?
Crystal Fincher: [00:10:58] Sure.
Heather Weiner: [00:10:58] I mean, I can tell you now - it's four years later. It's horrible though. I was working on a mayoral campaign - you can guess which one. And, we were getting ready to do a big press conference with some labor unions announcing this candidate's economic platform - right before Labor Day, I think. And I texted somebody who had the same - there were two women with the same name. I thought I was texting the one who was with labor. I actually was texting the one who was the campaign manager for the opposition.
And then I tried to pretend like, Never mind, we're not going to do it. Oh, never mind - we're not going to do it. And of course what happened - they jumped us, came out the day before we were going to do it with their own platform. I mean, I don't know if they were going to do it or not - they were going to scramble. Anyway, oh my God - even just talking about it right now, I feel the shame of that mistake. I had to call my team and say, You guys, I really just effed up. I'm so sorry. Here's what I just did. And all that work you just put into this economic platform, I just totally screwed. Sorry.
Crystal Fincher: [00:12:11] We all have-
Heather Weiner: [00:12:11] Oh God, my face is hot talking about it. I'm so embarrassed.
Crystal Fincher: [00:12:16] Yes, we're talking about this mailer with the candidate - and out of everything you don't want to spell wrong - the candidate's name's is the complete number one.
Heather Weiner: [00:12:25] But we've all done it, we've all done it. We've all made mistakes.
Crystal Fincher: [00:12:26] And I was like, Oh, maybe this is a IE mailer - and I'm like, oh no, actually campaign. But to the point, we've all made mistakes. My biggest, certainly one of my biggest, I would rank it as my biggest - I was putting together a poll for a legislative race. There were two legislators who had the same last name - very different districts. I polled the wrong legislator. Polls aren't cheap. I - wrong legislator -
Heather Weiner: [00:12:58] Oh my God.
Crystal Fincher: [00:12:58] - same name, wrong person. I did it, I did it. Yep. That's me, I did it.
Heather Weiner: [00:13:06] Wow. Wow. Too late.
Crystal Fincher: [00:13:09] Yeah. Yep. That wasn't ideal. That was not fun.
Heather Weiner: [00:13:13] Polls are not cheap. I will say that I am seeing a lot of people making the same mistake over and over again, which is spelling Lorena González's name - last name - incorrectly. And I kind of made fun of it - if you were going to say the name O'Sullivan, you would definitely put the apostrophe between O and the S - and yet what I'm seeing over and over again is people spelling her name without the accent mark over the a, which is a completely different letter in the alphabet.
Crystal Fincher: [00:13:41] It's a different letter.
Heather Weiner: [00:13:42] Right. So you're misspelling the name. We've also seen it misspelled with an S instead of a Z Gonzales with an S apparently is a Filipino last name, González with a Z is Mexican. And we're also - just saw somebody completely garble her name in a voter guide as Gun... I can't even say the name. It was like Gungales.
Crystal Fincher: [00:14:06] Funky.
Heather Weiner: [00:14:06] Apparently the name González seems too hard for people to spell, and I'm not going to say it's racist.
Crystal Fincher: [00:14:17] Yeah, I've seen it with the S.
Heather Weiner: [00:14:18] ... but I am going to say it's lazy.
Crystal Fincher: [00:14:20] It's lazy. And it is a sign of us being in a society that has not prioritized learning how to equitably interact with everyone in our society - understanding that there are different letters and, to your point, we get O'Sullivan and O'Reilly, and we get capitalizations correct. And McDonald and McGinn. We pick up these conventions for other ethnic last names.
Heather Weiner: [00:14:55] Van De Wege.
Crystal Fincher: [00:14:57] Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I mean, von Reichbauer. We can spell von Reichbauer and Steinbrueck. I mean, there was another racist Post Alley article this week involving Colleen Echohawk, which was horrible. But previously, there was another - that was not the only racist one. There was another one talking about Port candidates where Steinbrueck was spelled correctly, but he did misspell Hamdi Mohamed's last name - first name incorrectly. It's like, you can spell Steinbrueck correctly, really? You're getting that correct and you can't even double-check -
Heather Weiner: [00:15:39] Hamdi? Wow. Well, I am definitely guilty of garbling people's names in pronunciation.
Crystal Fincher: [00:15:47] I have.
Heather Weiner: [00:15:48] Yeah, I think actually I was on your show and I said, Ubax when it's "Uba," when her name is, you know, and that's horrible and I apologize to you. So I understand like, but if you are writing something, you can Google it. Let me Google it for you. All right, look, listen. We have so much more to talk about. Let's keep going.
Crystal Fincher: [00:16:07] So much more to talk about. Okay. And we've yeah, we can - the issue with the show is a lot of times we just talk anyway, and these are very reminiscent of the conversations that we have when we're not recording a podcast. So sometimes it just reverts into conversation mode like, "Hey, what do you think?"
Heather Weiner: [00:16:25] And also I cuss more in our actual personal conversations.
Crystal Fincher: [00:16:28] That is also true. I might also.
The Pete Holmes interview that was just done in the Seattle Times. This came out yesterday, written by Jim Brunner, was very interesting to me. Titled - City Attorney Pete Holmes worries he'll get squeezed out in a tight 3-way Seattle primary - I guess I'll start off by saying, "Yeah, he should be worried." But it was really distasteful for me to read, because one of the things he says in there - a very unpopular decision, which he took a lot of criticism from people from all ideological backgrounds - was his decision to countersue the Seattle Times for seeking the texts that are missing from Jenny Durkan. These are just a regular part of government that the City is responsible for maintaining and providing - and is a potential felony for the way that they were missing and/or deleted. It's a real problem and so, as makes sense, and thankfully the Seattle Times did sue the City for those records for that process. And he chose to countersue.
This was something talking about at the time - it's like, "Hey, there's some discretion here that we're not acknowledging the City Attorney has." And he's acting like - one, no statements, no nothing - and this seems like a very poor decision and one that should factor into voters' decision-making. He was silent at that time, has been silent until very recently - 'til a poll showed him within the margin of error of his two opponents who have been - both of his opponents have been endorsed by - one by the Seattle Times, the other by The Stranger. And so he's certainly feeling pressure. So now that he feels electoral pressure, now he's saying, "Yeah, probably wasn't a good move," and admits that he dropped that suit in part because Representative Gerry Pollet threatened to revoke his endorsement of him. It just does not seem like the proactive, principle-based leadership that we need if you're sitting here silent until you're forced to say something, because your silence has been costing you and you might lose. And then you say, "Well, I changed my mind because someone might have put my campaign in further jeopardy." How do you read that?
Heather Weiner: [00:18:56] Well, first of all, I just want to talk about media training for candidates. So when you have a candidate, you need to make sure that they are media trained, which means they need to know how to say to a reporter, "I want to tell you something, but we have to have an agreement - it's on background, or it's off record." Reading this interview, I think that this candidate was not clear with a reporter about what was supposed to be on background and that's why the reporter was able to quote him. And I think he was being very candid with the reporter, which was a mistake - to not be that candid at that point on the record. So, first of all, media training - very important for your candidates. Anybody who's out there thinking about being a consultant, make sure you remind your candidates how to talk to reporters. Reporters are doing their jobs. They're not evil. They're not out to get you, but they are doing their jobs. And if you say something that is interesting, they will print it. I have also made mistakes there. That's another story about what I have done.
Crystal Fincher: [00:19:59] There's an article coming out today, that I'm like, "Wait, what did I say again? Okay, yeah."
Heather Weiner: [00:20:04] Believe me, I've lost a client for something that I said to KUOW that - and it wasn't like I could say they misquoted me because it was on KUOW. Oh, it was horrible - so when I criticize other consultants, let me just say, I have done all of the things and I'm probably - have made many more mistakes than anybody else has ever made.
So I think that's one of the things that I read. The second thing that I read is - I see this as and, by the way, I voted for Pete Holmes, myself. But I do want to say that he - like many men that I have seen in our political system who have been there for decades - are sometimes sitting on their laurels and not reading the room. And I think they need to read the room and understand that they cannot sit on it anymore and they need to follow where the people are going - particularly on police reform, and on transparency, and accountability. And I think he's catching up.
Crystal Fincher: [00:21:05] Well, and I want to have a better standard for our elected officials than having to catch up. We have an option to have people who are already caught up, and who aren't resting on their laurels, and who don't have to follow where people are at, who can lead people in the right direction. There are few races where - I feel like there have been incumbents who, and one in particular I'm thinking about - he straight up said, "Hey, I couldn't do all of the stuff I'm talking about doing before," - a longterm incumbent - "because the people weren't ready for it before. We couldn't do it." And it's like, okay, well, what was your responsibility to help push people in the right direction? If you know that's the right policy, what is the difference between leadership and just following? To me, that is the difference - is not having to continually catch up. Now at the same time, continuing to listen to the public is important, right?
Heather Weiner: [00:22:10] Completely. Look at the style of Pramila Jayapal. So when Pramila was - when she was elected, she said, "I am not going here to just sit and take votes. I am coming in as an organizer. I have always been an organizer. And I'm going to organize my fellow legislators, my fellow members of Congress." And indeed she is - she's now the Chair of the Progressive Caucus. She has pushed and pushed and pulled and brought dozens of people with her - into the movement, as an organizer. And I think not all elected officials can be organizers, but I think electing organizers to those positions is really key. Look at Rebecca Saldaña - same thing, right? Kirsten Harris-Talley. Electing organizers, I think, is actually very smart if you want to move the movement. Yeah.
Crystal Fincher: [00:22:57] And just thinking of congressional people really quick. I did notice that Adam Smith, Representative Adam Smith in the 9th Congressional District, endorsed Bruce Harrell, which was - you can't see, viewers - Heather's making a face. Probably the same face that I made when I heard that - I thought that was a very interesting choice.
Heather Weiner: [00:23:19] Well, speaking of consultants. I was like, wow. So he shares a consultant with Colleen Echohawk - Adam Smith does. And so I thought it was interesting that he then went and endorsed somebody else's - another consultant's candidate. Anyway within the - usually you keep your candidates all together.
Crystal Fincher: [00:23:37] It is a little family.
Heather Weiner: [00:23:38] Yeah. It's a little family and usually, you don't screw over your consultant like that. So I thought that was very interesting. But also Adam Smith - Pramila Jayapal endorsed Lorena González. So Adam Smith, who doesn't represent that much of Seattle, endorsed Bruce. And we talked, I think last time, about how Kilmer endorsed - who did Kilmer endorse?
Crystal Fincher: [00:24:03] Was it Jessyn?
Heather Weiner: [00:24:03] I think Kilmer endorsed Jessyn, yeah. Oh no no no no no. You know who endorsed Jessyn - was Marilyn Strickland.
Crystal Fincher: [00:24:14] Oh, I actually did not know that.
Heather Weiner: [00:24:16] I think so. Oh, I could be making stuff up. Yeah, hey, y'all - just make sure you Google. Make sure I'm saying - yeah, who knows - I might just be making this up.
Crystal Fincher: [00:24:25] It's really interesting. And I do think that - I just think that Harrell endorsement is very interesting, especially in this early segment in the race, and that a number of the LDs chose not to endorse Bruce Harrell. They endorsed other candidates to the degree that they did endorse them. And in the votes, Bruce Harrell actually wasn't a big vote getter within the LDs. Now that doesn't mean that he can't win a city-wide election at all - oftentimes those are at odds. But on the insider game, I just think that's another interesting choice that is going to fuel some contrast with his opponents who are - he's got a crew of opponents who are coming after him. And he also has Pramila Jayapal being a leader and outspoken and unafraid to take on an establishment or a long held establishment Democratic belief to say, "Hey, I am the party. We are the party, and this is the base. And we need to account for these real problems," in a way that's just different than Adam Smith. I think that contrast is very visible and is going to be really interesting to see play out throughout the next year.
Heather Weiner: [00:25:38] Hey, I just want to go back and footnote and correct myself. So Derek Kilmer endorsed Sixkiller.
Crystal Fincher: [00:25:44] Oh, wow.
Heather Weiner: [00:25:45] And Marilyn Strickland endorsed Harrell. So those are two members of Congress who don't represent Seattle at all, weighing in on the Seattle mayor's race, which is unusual.
Crystal Fincher: [00:25:56] That Strickland endorsement of Harrell makes more sense to me.
Heather Weiner: [00:25:59] Yes.
Crystal Fincher: [00:26:00] Former Chamber head, Seattle Chamber head. If you look at where the Chamber money is going, even though it's not going directly through a Chamber PAC - where people who are members of the Chamber - and that money is certainly going to Bruce Harrell. So that doesn't seem surprising in a way. But Casey Sixkiller for Kilmer - I just want to know what compelled that - do they have a prior relationship or - that's an interesting -
Heather Weiner: [00:26:27] Well, remember Sixkiller was a lobbyist for a whole bunch of different industries that congressional - lobbied Congress for some not great industries. He also was a legislative aide in Congress for a while. So I think -
Crystal Fincher: [00:26:44] That makes sense.
Heather Weiner: [00:26:44] - that's where the relationship is. We're not going to hear from Sixkiller again, so let's not worry about him right now. He is not going to make it through this primary. I would like to give my predictions right now. You ready?
Crystal Fincher: [00:26:57] Yeah, I'm ready.
Heather Weiner: [00:26:58] All right. I think it's going to be Harrell and González coming out of there. I think it's going to be, of course, Teresa Mosqueda and somebody we never heard of. What do you think's going to happen on Position - Seattle City Council Position 9? There we've got Oliver, Nelson, and Thomas - as you know, Brianna Thomas is a friend of ours. How do you think she's going to do, though? And Brianna? I know you're listening.
Crystal Fincher: [00:27:25] I mean, here's the thing - which, that article that I said is coming out today, then I'm like, what did I say? I hate predictions.
Heather Weiner: [00:27:33] Oh, you do?
Crystal Fincher: [00:27:34] I love entertaining - I love hearing other people's predictions. I don't like making predictions. The reason why I don't like making predictions is that I don't want to keep someone from voting their conscience, especially in a primary. I mean, in generals I make them often, but in a primary, I think we get a lot into, "Okay, well, who's going to win? Who's best positioned to win? Where should I put my vote? Well, maybe I won't vote for this other person to get through." And I just personally believe that when we make those kinds of concessions in primaries where we're like, "Okay, well maybe, my candidate doesn't have much of a chance, so I'll vote for this other one that I don't really agree with, but we'll see." That that just dilutes the pool of general election candidates and doesn't accurately reflect where all the voters are at. Because even if Candidate Y gets 15% of the vote, but doesn't make it through - those two general election candidates are going to have to contend with that 15% of the electorate and say, "Okay, we see where people are at and we better make sure that we address those concerns if we want to win the general election." So I just think it's important to make a statement of values when you vote in a primary. Because a lot of analysis, a lot of policy making - consultants are looking at it, journalists are looking at it - and going, Okay, so where are people at?
And I just don't think it's - I think that we wound up in the place that we are at now from making too many concessions too early - in the choices that we have for who's elected. I think that we would have had Tammy Morales sooner if we would have paid more attention and if more people would have voted their conscience, instead of thinking about who had the best chance of winning. That's just me. I know it's just me. But I think that race may be closer than people think. I certainly think in the Position 9 race that it looks like Nikkita Oliver is in a pretty comfortable position. I know they're still working very, very hard and out canvassing with big teams. But who knows whether it's Sara Nelson or Brianna Thomas that gets through. I have interviewed all of them on this program - and I would just say, I think that there are dramatic differences between Nikkita Oliver, Brianna Thomas - and Sara Nelson on the other side.
Heather Weiner: [00:30:08] Yeah. Yeah.
Crystal Fincher: [00:30:10] So she managed to get that Times endorsement somehow, which just doesn't speak very well for the Times endorsement, because there's just not much there.
Heather Weiner: [00:30:23] Oh well, the Times - right. Well, okay - we can talk about the Seattle Times endorsements, whether or not they're even relevant. You know, one of the things that we've also been seeing a lot in the Seattle Times, but also all of the other mainstream media, is a lot of talk this week about police - about shootings and then correlating that with the Defund movement. So - which is not - there's not a straight line here, people.
Crystal Fincher: [00:30:52] Not at all.
Heather Weiner: [00:30:53] So a couple of facts that we just want to make sure we're all working with. I mean, the first one is that shootings are up across the country, not just in Seattle.
Crystal Fincher: [00:31:02] Red areas, blue areas, rich areas, poor areas - every area gun violence is up. Homicides are up. Yeah.
Heather Weiner: [00:31:11] Right. This has much more to do with the availability of guns, particularly stolen guns - for people who have not properly stored their guns in safes, and leave them in their cars, and then their cars get burgled, or whatever the situation is with stolen guns. So there's a lot of stolen guns out there. Thank you very much to the NRA for opposing gun storage laws and everything else. We really appreciate that.
The second thing is that, I think, there's been this whole narrative that somehow 250 police officers have left and it is somehow the City Council's fault - that that's why they have left. And it is true that many officers who were eligible to retire took those retirements. And many of them decided to go to other jurisdictions. PS - a couple of them have come back. But I think it has much more to do with the stress of being a police officer with poor management. And remember they are fully funded to hire who they want to hire right now. There actually hasn't been -
Crystal Fincher: [00:32:18] They are fully funded.
Heather Weiner: [00:32:18] They're fully funded. So this is all a false narrative that I think is very much coming from the exceedingly brilliant - and I say that in a respectful, also your evil kind of way - from the exceedingly brilliant minds of Scott Lindsay, Tim Ceis, and Tim Burgess - who are trying to figure out a way to punish Teresa Mosqueda and Lorena González for not being who they want them to be.
Crystal Fincher: [00:32:47] Yeah. And the same narrative of, "Oh man, incumbents are super unpopular. The Council is super unpopular." Well, polling seems to defy that - when you have two former City Council members who appear to be in the lead in polling. That does not mean that they're definitely going to make it through - a lot of undecided people, all of those caveats. But if you just pay any kind of attention you see that that narrative is half-baked and there's a lot of wishful thinking going on in there. And it just doesn't match up with the data that we have. I mean, if it was that much of a problem, then there would be much more of a backlash against the candidates who fit that profile. But we're seeing the literal opposite. And it's a lot different too, in the same way - again, I've said this before we asked for - we poll on Congressional approval and, "Oh, it's at 22%." And then we see each Congressional incumbent get elected with 75% of the vote. Like that's - polling a person versus another person is a lot different than polling a person's positive negatives. It's a lot different than polling the entity that that person sits on - very, very different things.
Heather Weiner: [00:33:59] I mean, how many times have people said, "Oh, you can't elect a US Senator to President," right? Because the Senate is so unpopular. Well, we currently have two former Senators as President and Vice-President. So yeah, you're absolutely right. And I think when it really comes down to it, people are much more worried about putting people who have zero experience in governing into these positions with something so important and so complicated.
Crystal Fincher: [00:34:27] Yeah. And fundamentally, I think people just want to be comfortable that the people who they elect are going to act. I think people are sick of hearing a lot of talk and seeing little to no action, and they want to be comfortable that someone is going to act in accordance with what they're talking about.
Heather Weiner: [00:34:45] Correct. All right - so, it looks like - I'm looking at the time and -
Crystal Fincher: [00:34:50] Yeah, we're just about - I mean, we could talk forever about so many of these things, and I appreciate your brilliance and insight with so much of this. But I just wanted to, again, thank you. Thank everyone for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, July 30th, 2021. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler and our wonderful co-host today was Seattle political consultant, Heather Weiner. You can find Heather on Twitter @HLWeiner, that's W-E-I-N-E-R. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. And now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar - you may need to type the word and a ampersand, or an ampersand and not "and". Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. While you're there, leave a review - it really helps us out. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in and we'll talk to you soon.
Today Crystal is joined by Amy Sundberg, author of Notes from the Emerald City, and Dr. Shannon Cheng, Chair of People Power Washington to talk about public safety policy in Seattle and King County. Amy gets into the serious issues present in Seattle’s Office of Police Accountability (OPA), failing so spectacularly that the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) said that the process “cannot be remedied.” Shannon follows up with updates about King County’s appointment of a new Director of the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight (OLEO), the continued wait by the families of police shooting victims for inquests into their deaths. They also discuss the People Power Washington Voter Guide that details where Seattle and King County candidates stand on public safety issues.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal on Twitter at @finchfrii. Subscribe to Notes from the Emerald City here, and follow Amy on Twitter at @amysundberg. Read People Power Washington’s voter guide here, and find Shannon at @drbestturtle on Twitter.
Resources
Notes from the Emerald City - newsletter on Seattle government and policy: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/amysundberg
People Power Washington - 2021 Voter Guide: https://www.wethepeoplepower.org/voter-guide-2021
“Investigation calls for firing 2 Seattle police officers over insurrection” by David Kroman from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/news/2021/07/investigation-calls-firing-2-seattle-police-officers-over-insurrection
“Councilmember Herbold on OPA Findings Surrounding SPD Officers’ Attendance of January 6 Insurrection” from the Council Connection: https://council.seattle.gov/2021/07/08/councilmember-herbold-on-opa-findings-surrounding-spd-officers-attendance-of-january-6-insurrection/
“OIG Memo Reveals Serious ‘Deficiencies’ in OPA Protest Investigation That ‘Cannot Be Remedied’” by Carolyn Bick from the South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/06/30/oig-memo-reveals-serious-deficiencies-in-opa-protest-investigation-that-cannot-be-remedied/
“OIG Partial Certification Memos Raise More Concerns Over OPA Investigations” by Carolyn Bick from the South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/07/13/oig-partial-certification-memos-raise-more-concerns-over-opa-investigations/
Information on the King County Public Safety Advisory Committee from KingCounty.gov: https://kingcounty.gov/elected/executive/constantine/initiatives/public-safety-advisory-committee.aspx
Interviews with final candidates for the Director of the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight from KingCounty.gov: https://kingcounty.gov/independent/law-enforcement-oversight/DirectorOLEO.aspx
Information on the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight (OLEO) from KingCounty.gov: https://kingcounty.gov/independent/law-enforcement-oversight.aspx
“Families of people killed by police are left without answers while King County’s inquests are stalled” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/families-of-people-killed-by-police-are-left-without-answers-while-king-countys-inquests-are-stalled/
“Washington Supreme Court reinstates King County inquest system that expands inquiry into police-caused deaths” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/washington-supreme-court-reinstates-king-county-inquest-system-that-expands-inquiry-into-police-caused-deaths/
Transcript
Crystal Fincher: [00:00:00] Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm your host, Crystal Fincher. On this show, we talk to political hacks and policy wonks to gather insight into local politics and policy through the lens of those doing the work and provide behind-the-scenes perspectives on politics in our state. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
So today I'm excited to have two people who are not new to Hacks & Wonks joining me - Amy Sundberg, who is an activist with People Power Washington, she writes Notes From the Emerald City - excellent newsletter - you should subscribe. And she has always done just extremely useful live-tweet threads of Seattle City meetings and hearings. So if you want to know what is happening in the City of Seattle that oftentimes gets lost in the filter of reporting - you can only say so much in a story - and really figure out where every Councilmember is at, what everyone has said, and what is happening in the City, Amy Sundberg is an essential follow on Twitter and an essential newsletter subscription.
And also with us is Dr. Shannon Cheng, Chair of People Power Washington, and works with me at Fincher Consulting - who is just a powerhouse when it comes to everything public safety and accountability. And definitely wanted to talk with you both about what is happening in the world of public safety in Seattle and King County, because we're getting close to an election where a number of the candidates have different stances on different issues. I want to make sure that we can review where everyone is at, understand what's happening, and what's going to be on the agenda for people facing election, and just understand how we can interact with the process. So thank you both, Amy and Shannon, for joining me.
Amy Sundberg: [00:02:28] It's great to be here.
Crystal Fincher: [00:02:29] So there is a lot that has happened since we spoke to you both last, and I guess we can kind of cover it all. I suppose I'll start with the findings on the insurrection and where that stands. We've talked a little bit about that on the show, but can you recap what was found with regard to Seattle Police Department officers found to be in DC at the insurrection, and what Councilmembers and electeds have said about it?
Amy Sundberg: [00:03:01] Sure. So as far as we know, there were six SPD officers who were present in Washington DC on the day of the insurrection. That's as far as we know - so there could be more, but six we know of. And so they were the subject of the OPA's investigation. And what the OPA found was that two of those six officers definitely trespassed and definitely witnessed illegal activities. And they discovered that through shared video from the FBI. My understanding is that Director Myerberg hasn't yet seen the video, but he's seen stills from the video that firmly place these two officers at a place and time where it was clear that they couldn't have not known what was happening.
Three officers were exonerated - it looks like they attended the rally and then left and didn't participate in the insurrection. And then one officer - there's inconclusive evidence. Basically they don't have solid evidence that places him in a place where he would have been doing something illegal, but we're not really sure what was happening with him. So, it also appears that the two officers who were definitely involved in illegal activity lied about it during the OPA investigation, which by itself is an offense that can lead to termination of employment. But right now we're waiting for - there's a hearing with Interim Chief Diaz on August 5th, when he'll decide what to do about the case. Termination has been suggested by the OPA, I will say.
Crystal Fincher: [00:04:59] Well, and the Chief had previously said that he would fire anyone who was found to be participating in the insurrection. So certainly would expect to see his decision to be consistent with that. They do have the opportunity to basically appeal and go to arbitration - is that correct - if they are fired?
Amy Sundberg: [00:05:19] Yes, that is correct. Director Myerberg has said that he is confident he has a strong case that would hold up under an appeal, but of course we'll have to wait and see what happens.
Crystal Fincher: [00:05:32] We'll have to wait and see what happens. That process doesn't always turn out as it seems it should. What have Councilmembers said about it, and where do they stand on the issue of whether the officers should be fired or not?
Amy Sundberg: [00:05:46] Well, Council President and mayoral candidate, Lorena González - she has said that the two officers should definitely be terminated. And then she thinks that all six of them should be disciplined in some way, although she doesn't go into details about that. Councilmember Herbold, who is the Chair of Public Safety, has a little bit of a stronger take. She thinks they should all be fired - potentially, at least. Her take on it is interesting. She wants to try to look and see if the officers knew before they were traveling to DC that this insurrection was going to take place - if they were aware of the threats of violence and overthrow that were kind of flying around the internet around that time. Because if they were aware, that's a different matter than if they just went to a rally. So there's a lot of question as to what is protected speech and what isn't, especially in the case of a police officer.
Crystal Fincher: [00:06:58] That certainly is curious. We've talked about it here on this program before - to me, just the fact that you are attending an event - flying across the country to attend an event called Stop the Steal, whose premise is that the election has been stolen from predominantly people of color in predominantly areas with large Black populations, when the rest of us could see that there was violent talk leading up to the insurrection. Seems curious that just attending that doesn't seem to be a glaring, concerning piece of conduct in and of itself that would make me question if those officers are treating members of the public fairly and what feedback from their interactions has been. So we will see what happens with that. There's a lot to be talked about in terms of discipline and accountability investigations and there has been a lot that has been uncovered about that process. Can you brief us on what happened with the OIG and OPA?
Amy Sundberg: [00:08:14] Yeah, sure. So the OIG certifies each of the OPA's investigations, and then they sometimes do partial certifications. And in that case, there's a memo attached that the public can access and read. And I will say that 96% of OPA cases, the OIG gives a full certification and they say this is fine, this is great. And 4% of the cases they disagree with something that happened with an investigation. But we're, I think, very lucky in that we have a journalist Carolyn Bick working at the South Seattle Emerald, and they have been really digging in to some of these partial certifications of the OIG for these OPA investigations, some of which have to do with protest cases from the last year. And that really gives us insight into where these investigations can go wrong and how the accountability system in Seattle is working in practice.
So I think one great example of this is the SPOG headquarters protest, which happened on September 7th of last year, 2020. So the OIG certifies based on timeliness, objectiveness, and thoroughness. And so if it's a partial certification, that means that not all three of those will be certified. So in this particular case, the investigation was found to be neither objective nor thorough. So there's two out of three that they did not hit the mark on.
So I don't know if you remember this protest, but it was when a bunch of protesters went to the SPOG headquarters. It was a peaceful protest. And then, from a lot of bystanders' accounts, suddenly some police on bicycles arrived and things got hairy - there were blast balls, pepper spray, a lot of people got arrested. And there were a lot of complaints about this made to the OPA, because it seemed like it was a peaceful protest and that there was no need for that kind of escalation.
So this investigation of the OPA was problematic because, I mean, the OIG said, and I'm quoting directly here, "No further investigation is being directed at this time because OIG finds the deficiencies of the investigation with respect to thoroughness and objectivity cannot be remedied," meaning it's such a mess of a case that nothing can be done. So I went through and read through the article enumerating what went on with this investigation. And I made a list of all the issues that the OIG called out about this investigation. And there were eight separate issues. It wasn't like one or two little minor problems - like the entire investigation was kind of flawed from its heart.
Basically it looked like the OPA was crafting a case to support a certain narrative - the narrative of the SPD - that they were attempting a targeted arrest of someone who had an incendiary device and that is why the protest got so out of control. However, there was a lot of additional evidence that showed that fairly early on, it became clear that there was in fact no incendiary device. That it was a trash bag. And at a certain point when they were arresting the man with the trash bag, he dropped it or they took it from him or something, but you could see trash falling from the trash bag. So it was very clear at a certain point what it was. But for example, in the investigation, evidence about the fact that the suspect was potentially carrying a trash bag, that there was trash that you could see falling - that was all omitted from the investigation, which is extremely sloppy if nothing else. Like that's the kindest thing you can say -
Crystal Fincher: [00:12:56] That's the most generous interpretation, but given the context that this is happening in, I doubt that was an accident.
Amy Sundberg: [00:13:03] But also things so egregious - that the sergeant who made that arrest of that man who was maybe holding an incendiary device but wasn't - they didn't interview that sergeant at all during this investigation. There was another named officer who was present and he was also not interviewed. There was no probable cause analysis done to figure out how likely it was trash bag versus incendiary device. There was body camera footage of the man holding the garbage bag and the report said there was no such footage. So the list goes on and on - it doesn't take an experienced investigator to see that this investigation was very deeply flawed.
Crystal Fincher: [00:14:04] In fact, it's almost farcical to call it an investigation. This by all accounts appears - and from Seattle's own internal and investigative arm, or from the OIG - that this due diligence that you would find in an investigation was not done, as you just detailed, part of the problem. And it was all helpful to the narrative of the officers.
And the question is really - when we have evidence of so many things that have gone wrong, when the department for things that we've seen with our own eyes on video and other things has admitted, "Yes, there was wrongdoing here," that there actually is not a disagreement on whether things were problematic and have said, "Yeah, there's been issues before." So when there's reason to question different accounts of things that happen and someone makes a complaint where there's lots of independent witnesses and in fact complaints made to spur an investigation that this didn't appear to be right, the body that is supposed to be the arm of accountability that is set up to say, "We're going to be the ones investigating whether something wrong happened or not," just seemed to be there to rubber stamp whatever the officers say - just seems like it continues to reinforce - this is actually something that we can't reform, that tinkering around the edges is not going to fix this.
As we hear a siren going on outside at the same time - that nothing, that we can't fix this. We actually have to completely rebuild, reframe, and reconstitute this in a completely different construction - that we can't rehab this. That investigation was so mixed up and so messed up, it couldn't be fixed. What else is going on in all of the other investigations? What shot do we have at actually addressing these issues if we don't get to the root of this?
Amy Sundberg: [00:16:18] Yeah. It definitely undermines the credibility of our accountability arm - that, I think, the City of Seattle has kind of patted it itself on the back for having this model of accountability and I've heard Director Myerberg pat us on the back for that as well. But it has some pretty deep flaws.
Crystal Fincher: [00:16:43] Irreparable flaws, it would seem, in my opinion. We will certainly see what the response is. The City, like with so many things, seems to be either taking issue or ignoring it from what I've seen. Have you seen any other response from the City on this report and what needs to be done to fix this?
Amy Sundberg: [00:17:06] No, I haven't seen anything official, or unofficial for that matter. I don't think enough people are talking about it. So, it's good that we're talking about it now.
Crystal Fincher: [00:17:18] Yes. Well, I also want to talk about King County and what is happening with the Sheriff's department - including in this process of going from and implementing the changes that were voted on with the changes in Charter Amendments, including finding some new personnel and moving forward with the appointment of a Sheriff and no longer electing a Sheriff. So where does this whole process stand now?
Shannon Cheng: [00:17:50] Yeah, thanks Crystal, for bringing up King County, because I think sometimes there's so much happening in Seattle that we can kind of overlook that we also have a County level Sheriff's office that has also had its own problems with accountability and transparency. So as you mentioned, last year in November, the County overwhelmingly supported Charter Amendments 1, 4, 5, and 6, which were about public safety and policing. Charter Amendment 5 was changing the Sheriff's position from elected to appointed and so they are currently in the process. They put together an advisory committee with representation from across the County and from different groups - to put together a set of values that they should be looking for in the next Sheriff. So that committee is currently meeting and I think they're trying to set up ways to gather community input. It sounds like the County Council is also doing their own process of figuring out how to get community input, as well as the County Executive, who is doing his own third branch of getting community input. So it's not clear yet that they are ready and prepared to take all the community input, but when they get around to it, it sounds like there should be a lot of different avenues because there's at least three different branches of people trying to work on that.
And so initially they were trying to rush the appointment and try to do it, I think, before the end of the year, but the timeline has just been super tight. And so in order to get back everybody's input into what we should be looking for in the next Sheriff, and then be able to do a nationwide search - it doesn't look like it's going to happen before the end of the year. So this will probably happen sometime in 2022, which will also be potentially when we might have a new County Executive and new County Councilmembers who would have input into that situation.
Crystal Fincher: [00:19:55] And what have the stances of the County Councilmembers been in terms of what they're looking for and what this process is going to be?
Shannon Cheng: [00:20:04] I don't know if that's entirely clear yet. I think a lot of focus has been being put into setting up the process and not so much yet talking about the end result of the process. So Councilmember Zahilay chairs the Law and Justice Committee, and so they put together the ordinance that established this community committee that is going to be informing the process. And so I don't know yet that there has been statements from them of what they are looking for.
Crystal Fincher: [00:20:40] Okay, so in addition to a new Sheriff, we're also going to be, at the County level, hiring a new Office of Law Enforcement Oversight head. Where is that process? And, I guess, how is that playing out?
Shannon Cheng: [00:20:56] Yeah. So this is happening right now. So what happened is last year the previous director of the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight did not get reconfirmed by the County Council, so they started a search for a new one. And what happened is they are now at the point where they've chosen two finalists. And last - well, so we're recording this on July 21st - by the time this airs, it will have been two weeks since they held some community meetings where the community had an opportunity to come out and meet both finalists, ask them questions, learn kind of what their history is, where they stand, what kind of vision they have for what they would do if they were chosen to be the new director. And so, County Council was supposed to select the finalist on July 20th, a Tuesday, but then something happened in that meeting and they decided to punt the decision for a week and put it to the Full Council. Which was kind of confusing to me because all of the Council is on the committee that was trying to make that decision, so basically they were just trying to buy themselves more time.
So now I think that the day that this episode is planned to air is the day that the County Council will be voting and selecting one of the two finalists. And so this is important - because at the Seattle level, we just heard from Amy just how dysfunctional our supposed model accountability system is. And we've had similar issues at the County level. So the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight - its goal is to represent the interests of the public in its efforts to hold the King County Sheriff's Office accountable for providing fair and just police services.
And many listeners may have heard of cases such as Tommy Le, who was killed in Burien, and then there appeared to be somewhat of a coverup around that. And so the role of OLEO is to do independent investigations into these egregious things that happen within the Sheriff's office. But similar to Seattle, the OLEO doesn't necessarily have the right powers, or teeth, or authority to be able to actually hold officers accountable. So for example, they don't have full subpoena power. They can make recommendations but there's nothing that says that those recommendations need to be acted upon or followed through on. And so this is something that with the Charter Amendment last year and then earlier in 2015, we've been trying to give OLEO more power, but there's been a huge pushback from the Sheriff's office to give it to them.
Crystal Fincher: [00:23:51] So I guess, are we walking into another situation with this, where regardless of who the head is, if they don't have any teeth, what is it going to accomplish? And I guess looking at different levers of accountability, whether it's OLEO or even the inquest process, what shot do we have? Where does the inquest process stand?
Shannon Cheng: [00:24:18] Yeah, so the inquest process is another one of these places where it sounds like a place where we would be able to achieve accountability, but then when you dig deeper you find out that the whole process has been undermined to the point that it's just kind of in name only. So the King County inquest process is meant - so this covers any officer-involved shooting in King County, whether it's by the King County Sheriff's Office, or within a contract city that the King County Sheriff's Office runs, or within Seattle Police Department, or any other municipal police department such as Auburn, Kent, Federal Way - these cities all have their own police department. So whenever any death occurs at the hands of officers within King County, then there is supposed to be an inquest process. And so the inquest is a fact-finding hearing where we learn sort of what happened in that case, but it has no - again, similar to OLEO - anything that comes out of the inquest, there isn't an official process by which any recommendations need to be implemented.
And so what happened was a couple years ago, Executive Constantine, kind of at the request of some families who felt like the process was very unfair, tried to implement some reforms. So some of these were things like - trying to make it not as lopsided towards the officer. For example, it was trying to provide the families legal representation that was paid for by the County. The County pays for the officers to have legal representation, but they weren't supporting the families of the loved ones. So things like that. So what happened is he established these reforms with the Executive Order, and then the King County Sheriff's Office, the City of Seattle, Cities of Renton, Federal Way, Auburn, I believe - they all sued to say that these reforms were not allowable and they didn't like them. And then at the same time, families of loved ones who had died also sued because they felt like the inquest reforms had not gone far enough.
And so what this caused was just this stalemate where there's, I think, now a backlog of 40 cases. These are 40 individuals who have died at the hands of law enforcement in King County and their families have not had the opportunity to have an inquest, to kind of get any kind of closure as to what happened to their loved one. And because this is all held up in court, or was held up in court, none of those could proceed.
But so, an amazing thing did happen, which is that the Washington State Supreme Court issued a decision that not only allowed the inquest reforms to move forward, but it actually added something that makes them stronger. So initially what the inquest is trying to find out is kind of more about like the facts of what happened, that kind of thing. But what the Supreme Court said was that they should also look into whether the act of the officer killing the person was criminal in nature. And so this is important because if this finding came out - again, the inquest process on its own doesn't force any kind of accountability to happen, but you could see that if a finding came out about a case where they said, "Yes, the officer acted criminally," then that would pave the way for a prosecutor - perhaps the King County Prosecutor, perhaps the Attorney General of Washington - to file criminal charges against the officers and hopefully achieve accountability in that way.
Crystal Fincher: [00:28:02] Well, it seems like we just have a continuing mountain to climb when it comes to accountability - and we get good news, and some legislation gets passed, and there's a new process or office. And then we get news like we did from the Office of the Inspector General saying that OPA is toothless and just rubber stamping was happening. So we will continue to keep our eyes on this.
I especially wanted to talk about this now because there's a lot going on in the world of public safety in Seattle and King County. We have the city-wide elections for everything from the Seattle City Attorney, which is critical in these types of decisions and what is defended and not defended - just the stance on public safety and accountability is for people and SPD - in addition to the mayor and the Council who are setting policy at a City level. You are with People Power Washington, and you actually are trying to inform voters because of this also. What have you guys put together?
Shannon Cheng: [00:29:21] Yeah. So if you have felt frustrated listening to the first part of this show - at how either incompetent or inept everything sounds - you should be angry, and then you should realize that you have power to do something about it. So we have local elections happening this year that are critical to how we move forward in the next four years. The people who we elect are going to get to do things such as select new heads of law enforcement. So in Seattle, we're going to get a new police chief. In King County, we're getting a new sheriff.
They are also going to be influencing the process by which we negotiate the collective bargaining agreements with our law enforcement guilds and associations. So much of what has stood in the way of accountability - the OPA not having the teeth to be able to do anything, or OLEO not being actually respected as an independent oversight body - is because of the collective bargaining agreements that we have with either the Seattle Police Officers Guild, SPOG, or the King County Police Officers Guild. And so both of these contracts, I think SPOG's is already expired and up for renegotiation and I think the King County Guild's contract is expiring soon. So how the next set of agreements with those guilds gets negotiated will determine whether we are able to oversight bodies that can actually give us true accountability, by which I mean something that is robust, transparent, and that the community can actually trust. It's not just going through an exercise of we did something and then it turns out that Amy can find out there were eight different things wrong with what was done, right? That does not foster trust in the system and so that's what we need.
And the last thing is just - all these electeds are going to get a say in what our budgets and what our priorities and values are in our communities. We're going to be tackling the economic recovery from the pandemic, trying to address systemic racism in all of our public safety solutions and the criminal legal system. How are we going to deal with homelessness and the climate crisis? Are we going to pick people who are going to act in ways that are equitable to everybody and reduce harm? Or are we going to stick with people who just want to do status quo and like incrementalism? The clock is ticking and we need to act decisively. So I just really encourage -
So to finally answer your question, Crystal, is that our group has put together a voter guide about these issues that surround specifically policing and public safety. So we drafted questionnaires about these issues that matter at the City of Seattle and the King County levels. We also did one for the City of Burien. And we sent them to everybody who's in the primary and got answers back, and so we've put together a guide. You can see it on our website - it's wethepeoplepower.org, and then it should be pretty easy to find the voter guide from there. And yeah, you can see the full answers of what candidates said about the questions we asked about these issues, such as the accountability ordinance, the inquests - all of that is up there. I encourage people to look at them and read the answers that people actually wrote back. They're in long form and I think, yeah, we can hopefully get a more nuanced view of how candidates would approach these problems.
Crystal Fincher: [00:32:57] Absolutely helpful. Sometimes it's hard to get a lot of that information all in one place. There has been so much that's happened over such a long period of time, and some of the stuff that candidates have done have been very visible. Some of them are elected and we can see what they've done. Other things, even for the electeds, have not been very visible and some people may not know where candidates stand and what their, I guess, long form takes on issues are. Sometimes in forums there's only time to give a yes or no answer - it's in the middle of a lightning round - when really understanding their perspective and where they're coming from and how they would answer a question in longer than 30 seconds, especially questions as important as how do we keep our community safe and how do we hold accountable people who really hold people's civil liberties in their hands and should be held to a very high standard. So I appreciate both of you taking the time to come onto the program. Again, this is critical. Again, where can people go to find that information on the People Power website?
Shannon Cheng: [00:34:11] Yeah. So our website is wethepeoplepower.org. And I would also like to add that in addition to the candidate questionnaires, we've also written up issue explainers. If you hear the term Consent Decree, or police accountability ordinance, and you don't know what that necessarily means, we've tried to write up easier-to-understand explanations of what those are, so that when you do read about what the candidate said, you hopefully have a little more context for what they're talking about.
And the final plug is just - please send us feedback about the guide - we are trying to make this to be helpful for you, the voter, to understand the differences between your candidates, because these decisions are really important. So anything that you think would be more helpful to include, or if the explanation doesn't make sense to you - too short, too long - we would love to hear it. And then the other thing we would love to do is try to expand to other jurisdictions for the general election. So if you live somewhere that's not represented in our voter guide and you passionately care about these issues in your local community, reach out to us and we would love to work with you to try to include it and educate constituents in your own community.
Crystal Fincher: [00:35:17] Okay, so if people want to get in contact with you with feedback, or just find out more about you on other platforms, how can they do that?
Amy Sundberg: [00:35:26] Well, in addition to our website, you can also reach us on Twitter - it's @PeoplePowerWA.
Crystal Fincher: [00:35:32] Thank you very much. I appreciate you spending the time with us today.
Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks. Our chief audio engineer at KVRU is Maurice Jones Jr. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I, and now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type in "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. You can also get a full text transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced during the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.
Today on the show, Marco Lowe, Professor at Seattle University’s Institute for Public Service, joins Crystal to discuss recent polls that have come out about Seattle’s mayoral, city council, and city attorney races, the importance of understanding poll methodology and margin of error, and the historic and tragic impact of Seattle’s recent heatwave and our governments responsibility to act to protect people from the impacts of climate change.
Key takeaways:
- Seattle’s population has changed so much in the past 10 years that incumbents can’t run just on their past popularity - a lot of folks who live here now won’t remember it.
- Polls are just a snapshot in time, and it’s important to contextualize them.
- Climate change is here, and there is no more neutral ground. All policy and legislation needs to be evaluated through the lens of helping or hurting the environment.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Marco Lowe, at @MarcoLowe. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
“Bruce Harrell, Lorena Gonzalez lead in 2021 Seattle mayoral race with many undecided” from the Northwest Progressive Institute: https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2021/07/bruce-harrell-lorena-gonzalez-lead-in-2021-seattle-mayoral-race-with-many-undecided.html
Poll released by Echohawk campaign:
- https://www.dropbox.com/s/pvy5wwbipq2ln4t/Seattle_Primary_Mood_Q1-9.pdf?dl=0&fbclid=IwAR2szALLpK5ndk6lUQfD4faPero_XajzTUU7g83EByX95iF_zLhwFBtXmmc
- https://www.dropbox.com/s/abts97djtqhv08i/Seattle_Primary_Issues_Q11-17.pdf?dl=0&fbclid=IwAR1BG9eSNaZi0wvM2c-2o92fHHynGUd7HXbM28lcnWU8go55oLtAMJW48po
- https://www.dropbox.com/s/t387o51ncqqr8ia/Seattle_Primary_Q18-22.pdf?dl=0&fbclid=IwAR2e-n1Jl6tnIp99yZWVZZF8_gwczGlMhimhLIVRblDB_jmSpQGqoSBHB44
“A three-way race for Seattle City Attorney: Pete Holmes barely ahead of two challengers” from the Northwest Progressive Institute: https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2021/07/a-three-way-race-for-seattle-city-attorney-pete-holmes-barely-ahead-of-two-challengers.html
“Nikkita Oliver has a big lead over Sara Nelson for Seattle City Council Position #9” from the Northwest Progressive Institute: https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2021/07/nikkita-oliver-has-a-big-early-lead-over-sara-nelson-for-seattle-city-council-position-9.html
Endorsements
-
- The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2021/07/14/59065522/the-strangers-endorsements-for-the-august-3-2021-primary-election
- The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/06/28/the-urbanists-2021-primary-endorsements/
- The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/who-supports-who-in-seattle-elections-endorsements-roll-in-for-mayoral-council-races/
- 350 Seattle: https://350seattleaction.org/2021-elections
- Publicola:
- Mayor: https://publicola.com/2021/07/19/publicola-picks-lorena-gonzalez-for-mayor/
- City Council Position 9: https://publicola.com/2021/07/19/publicola-picks-brianna-thomas-for-seattle-city-council-position-9/
“2021 heat wave is now the deadliest weather-related event in Washington history” by John Ryan at KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/stories/heat-wave-death-toll-in-washington-state-jumps-to-112-people
Transcript:
Crystal Fincher: [00:00:00] Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows, where we review the news of the week with a cohost. Welcome back to the program friend of the show and today's co-host: professor at Seattle University's Institute for Public Service, Marco Lowe.
Marco Lowe: [00:00:52] Thank you for having me. Always love being here.
Crystal Fincher: [00:00:54] Always love having you here. Always very insightful. I thought we would get started talking about polling that was released in the past week about Seattle races, including the Mayor's race, City Attorney's race, the City Council races - the Northwest Progressive Institute actually sponsored a whole slew of public polling - some of the only public polling that we've seen regarding these races this cycle. We've heard a lot about internal polls at various points from different campaigns, but this was really interesting. So, I guess, starting with the Mayor's race, what did you glean from these polls?
Marco Lowe: [00:01:39] I think that they're reflecting what we've seen some of the campaigns release quietly, maybe through back channel communication. That it looks like, currently - and again, Not Sure is the winning candidate in most of these races - but Bruce Harrell seems to have coalesced a good group behind him that gives him a very good chance of getting into the general. And then Council President Lorena González is probably in that second spot behind him. But what I think we've been watching is the jockeying with Colleen Echohawk and Jessyn Farrell that are trying to jump into that second spot as the weigh-in days of the campaign commence.
Crystal Fincher: [00:02:17] Yeah, absolutely. And so, just for the percentages that were in this poll that has a 4.3% margin of error and a 95% confidence interval. Not Sure, Undecided at 54% - more than half of the people there. So to your point, Undecided is the winner here and really how they break will be how this race breaks, it looks like. Bruce Harrell at 15%, Lorena González at 8%, Colleen Echohawk at 6%, Jessyn Farrell 4%, Andrew Grant Houston 3%, Arthur Langlie 3%, Casey Sixkiller 2%. Lance Randall 2%, and everyone else has not broken 1%. The rest are at 0%. So really what that says is even though, technically, Bruce Harrell is - looks to be leading in this poll for people who've made a choice - one, more than half of the people who are still Not Sure. And it really is still a race for second place, if not first. It's certainly still a race for second place, and by no means decided.
Marco Lowe: [00:03:27] I agree. And just to say that sometimes there's a tactic that you think you're going to push all the Undecided into the current levels and that's not often true. If people aren't deeply engaged in a race - when they enter and get educated, it doesn't follow that pattern. They will find other candidates. So I would agree with you entirely. This is an open race.
Crystal Fincher: [00:03:48] Yeah, absolutely an open race. And there usually are a percentage of Undecideds who, unfortunately, end up not voting. Also, sometimes they just do not end up feeling strongly about any candidate and don't wind up pulling the trigger at all. But certainly, even with that percentage accounted for, this race is still wide open. But I think a number of the candidates certainly view the two front runners in the poll as front runners. And you see a number of candidates taking aim at the leader in their lane. And we've talked about lanes on this before - who is the more progressive candidate in the race who are aiming for that lane. Who is - again, I always talk about conservative in Seattle does not equate to a conservative in other areas - but Seattle's version of a conservative or a moderate Democrat, certainly, Bruce Harrell in that lane and people looking at that.
And so, you have people like Colleen Echohawk, really seeming to take the fight directly to Lorena González, which led to another quasi poll released that we saw this week, that came from Bill Broadhead and people affiliated, it appeared with the Colleen Echohawk camp. But who released a portion of a poll, which upfront means that we need to take it with a grain of salt, because we don't see the methodology. I mean, there are best practices around how to release polling, so other people can, basically, check your work and verify that this is a legitimate poll - polling is an actual science. And we didn't get all of the information from this poll that purportedly shows that Colleen Echohawk performs better head-to-head against Bruce Harrell than Lorena González. And they certainly were pressing that point very hard online, but, unfortunately, the actual poll information that they released was scant. How did you view that?
Marco Lowe: [00:06:06] It was an interesting release, because they did not, as far as I can tell, formally release it from the campaign. I saw it on Facebook from Bill Broadhead. And I think the way that you normally see these laid out, it looks a little different. Not bizarre, but just it was a little more informal, might be the right word. And I don't know exactly what they were trying to do, but there is potentially this effort to show that she could possibly win in a head-to-head. And that, again, we're trying to see her move into second place. So, I think this may have been more an insider game to show to donors or larger groups, versus a wider - because you see campaigns release these with press releases and press conferences and framing for the race. And this seemed to be a much more subtle effort.
Crystal Fincher: [00:06:53] Yeah. I agree with that. And certainly, this brings to mind conversations - I've had a number of these conversations in real life with people - but polls as marketing versus polls as actual research. And this certainly seemed to be on the side of a marketing effort. Now I say that, and I certainly would not be surprised at all, to see that Colleen Echohawk polled more favorably against Bruce Harrell than Lorena González. I actually don't think that's a wild and ridiculous outcome if it were to happen. That could be the case. It's just making that conclusion from the data that we've seen publicly seems to be a stretch. Especially given as I read it - the bios as they were constructed in this are not consistent with the bios that people have heard to date. Now this can certainly have been message testing and "Hey, this is how we will message him and paint him if we do get through the primary. And so we can create these conditions." Maybe that's part of the conversation. And to your point, maybe part of that insider conversation, but we just haven't seen this information publicly.
So, and given just the platform that it appears that the poll was done on, based on the watermarking, is one for corporate market research, commercial market research, not necessarily public opinion polling. So there are challenges there. That doesn't mean that the result is wrong, but it does mean that it's hard to accept that conclusion based on the information that we see here. And clearly the campaign was comfortable just releasing this information. So, I mean, I assume it's accomplishing their objectives, especially with some of the coverage of it that I've seen is certainly advancing this narrative. But it'll be interesting to see how this continues to play out over the final weeks of the campaign.
Marco Lowe: [00:09:02] And it's worth saying - even just putting this poll aside, head-to-heads are tough until you're really in a race. And if you're in the last month of a presidential race, where there's been so many TV stories and everything about it, that's one discussion. But I remember in the second round for Dino Rossi and Governor Gregoire, he was polling very well into the spring against her. And one of her campaign folks, when I called them asking about it, they said, "Let's get them both in the ring and then let's see what happens. This is all just subjective data at this point." And so, it does just always with every poll - put it in its place in time.
Crystal Fincher: [00:09:35] Yeah, absolutely. And it is worth reiterating that polls are in fact, just a snapshot in time. These polls are a snapshot of what people thought when they were fielded - which for the NPI poll was week before last or going into early last week, and it finished in the field early last week. So that certainly is before a lot of voter communication has happened, it's before a lot of the messaging from campaigns that are happening in these final weeks and campaigns making their closing arguments for this primary have happened. And that's going to impact how a lot of people wind up making a decision for this, in addition to a lot of endorsements that have come out and people seeing organizations that they like or trust, or dislike or distrust - see who they wind up supporting.
So, certainly not conclusive. It would not be a shock if the results don't wind up lining up with these polls, because there's a lot that can change. And again, it's worth noting that the more than half of the people, the biggest vote getter were people who were Undecided. So, anything can happen. We're still in a wide open situation.
Speaking of wide open situations, though - one race that really caught my eye in this polling that I think has to be causing some consternation for the incumbent is the polling in the Seattle City Attorney race. That race is extremely close in this poll with - again, 53% of people not sure who they're going to vote for, but Pete Holmes coming with 16%, which as a three term incumbent, not the number that you are aiming for. I mean, either he has not made an impact, has not been notable, or people have not noticed the work that he's done, or they're just unhappy with it. Either way, a tenured incumbent is never going to be happy with a number like 16%.
Marco Lowe: [00:11:46] As a creature of City Hall, I will defend City Attorney. If you stopped cars on Fourth Ave in downtown and rolled down the window and put a mic in and said, "Who's the Seattle City Attorney?" I think you'd be lucky to get 16% to name any - maybe going back to Mark Sidran in the 90s and early 2000s, you had somebody who was on the press a lot. But Tom Carr, in the middle, lost to Pete Holmes - I think by his second re-election in '09. And I do agree with these numbers. I don't think anybody on Mr. Holmes' teams are saying this is a good news, but it's a challenging place to be.
But that knee-jerk reaction aside - yeah. I agree with you. Going into a primary with these numbers and having three people so close together - you made a great point that with three - we were talking prior to the show. They can pitch somebody out really easily and it raises the bar for what he needs to get to now to close. I think that may be the first race I look at it on election night when the numbers drop.
Crystal Fincher: [00:12:44] Yeah, same here. And so Pete Holmes is at 16%, Nicole Thomas-Kennedy at 14%, and Ann Davison at 14% also. So a race within the margin of error. The interesting thing about Pete Holmes is he used to be well-known. When he first came onto the scene, it was with a lot of pomp and fanfare - and he had looked at doing what, at that time, were some progressive things. Certainly, working with the nightlife community - there were a number of issues that were important to people involved in nightlife - owners of bars and cultural establishments, arts establishments, who definitely preferred him over his incumbent.
And being willing to decriminalize, at that point in time, pre-legalization of marijuana, that they were going to de-emphasize prosecuting marijuana crimes. And they were on the front end of doing that. So when he came in, it was with progressive fanfare. But I think that, one, what we've seen from him in the preceding years was a lot less vocal, a lot less upfront, and he has been in the background. And a lot of the conversations where previously he has been in the foreground with, he was also well known for having some disagreements with Mayor McGinn at the time when that came in.
But also - yes, there's been a lot of population change since he first came in. So there are just a lot of people in the City who never experienced that Pete Holmes, and never experienced what he hung his hat on. And so he's just a name that's part of this unpopular administration. And so looking at these numbers for his opponents, and especially given that The Times has endorsed Ann Davison, his opponent to the right. And The Stranger has endorsed Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, his opponent to the left. So, I would not call his position comfortable. And he certainly has to campaign and deliver a message to the people in order to get through this primary.
Marco Lowe: [00:15:03] No, absolutely. And it is a low turnout - those endorsements matter a heck of a lot more right now. And it's interesting - boy, that point on population growth - we've added 30,000 people since '14. That's an incredibly good point. And he may be - you could almost look at his campaign like he is a new entrant into the race and we have three first-timers. That's a really interesting way to look at it. Especially when you're in an office that just isn't watched. I mean, there hasn't been high profile cases, they work a lot behind closed doors as attorneys do. Boy, when I'm hitting refresh on Tuesday night, it's going to be looking at that race.
Crystal Fincher: [00:15:43] That's going to be one of the first races that I'm looking at. And who knows how that's going to end up? One and two could be anyone in that race. It could include Pete Holmes, it could not include Pete Holmes. Just really interesting. And the polling shows that it's completely up in the air. So, that's interesting.
The other race that we saw some notable polling in was in the City Council race, with Brianna Thomas, Nikkita Oliver, and Sara Nelson - where Nikkita seems to be in a comfortable position in the lead. I'm actually pulling up this polling to get the exact numbers as we speak.
Marco Lowe: [00:16:33] 26% was-
Crystal Fincher: [00:16:36] Yeah. And so look, especially comparing this with the numbers in the other races - I mean, we're looking at Pete Holmes at 14%, Bruce Harrell at 15%. Seeing Nikkita Oliver at 26% - that's a big number. It's a big number, especially compared to a number of the other numbers. Certainly helps that Nikkita had been on a citywide ballot before - with this has Sara Nelson at 11%, Brianna Thomas at 6%. Again, Undecided - still 50%. So, again, when you're looking at this, it certainly is a race for number two, it appears, that could go any way. And with 50% of people Undecided and looking at Seattle ballot return - Seattle was trending a few percentage points behind the full King County number, which in my opinion, Seattle usually - well, I guess the fact that Seattle usually ends up with higher turnout numbers, but I feel like they may be lagging behind a little bit, because there are some tough choices for Seattle residents to make that aren't as tough in other cities, and in terms of City Council and mayoral races. So it just may take people a little longer to decide, but I anticipate that we'll see a Seattle number probably higher than the overall King County number. But this is going to be another interesting race to watch. And seeing Brianna Thomas and Sara Nelson - seeing how they both make their final statements. Sara Nelson ended up with The Times endorsement, Nikkita Oliver got The Stranger endorsement. Just saw today, PubliCola endorsed Brianna Thomas in the race. So we will see how this finishes out. But again, another one of those races that is not sold and that has a big Undecided number.
Marco Lowe: [00:18:36] And you're seeing it's an open seat - when Nikkita Oliver, when they ran last time - if somebody agreed with them or not, oh my gosh, they were amazing. That King 5 debate - they owned the stage on numerous answers. And so, we have that name ID for them. Sara Nelson did not get through the primary last time. This is Brianna Thomas's first race. 26%, I mean, that's-
Crystal Fincher: [00:19:06] Second race actually.
Marco Lowe: [00:19:07] Second race. Oh, I apologize - so second race. So yeah, they're in a real strong position. And then you get to the general and it kind of resets, but I agree with you. Compared to the Mayor's race, it'd be hard to see them not going to the general. City-wide race to city-wide race, this is how people get into elected office.
Crystal Fincher: [00:19:30] Yeah. I would agree. It is - this more than any other situation, that's hard not to see Nikkita getting through to the general. This seems like it would be the least likely to wind up in a surprise for the person in the lead in this poll to not make it through. But I do think that it's - we're up in the air for number two. Certainly a Times endorsement - countywide, a Times endorsement is a big deal. This could be something that really helps, or actually hurts - in terms of a Seattle race. But I also think an interesting dynamic there, because the voters who that would probably hurt most with are probably leaning towards Nikkita. But there is a lot to be talked about just in terms of people's records, whether they've been honest and forthcoming about those records. And I think that there may be more to come about that in the race. We will see.
Marco Lowe: [00:20:39] Agreed. And also, you see this if Seattle breaks into, I call it, the outer ring and the inner ring. And the outer ring, homes with a view, tend to be the more conservative Seattle Times voters. And the inner ring tends to be the more progressive candidates. And you see the progressive candidates win when they push out the ring and the conservative candidates win when they compress the ring. And that's where I think you're going to see if Sara Nelson can attract the outer ring voters or not.
Crystal Fincher: [00:21:07] Absolutely. And we will put in the show notes a review or links to different organizations and the endorsements that they've made. I know, certainly, it helps me sometimes to read through how other organizations are making their decisions, if I'm undecided about something. And I certainly have spoken to a lot of Seattle voters who still don't know which way they're voting in a number of races. So, this is still a critical time for making the case and people are still trying to decide. There's still a lot of communication that campaigns have to do. And that's also still making a difference. So the race is still shaping up.
Marco Lowe: [00:21:49] If I can throw in one quick thing too - for all the races in Seattle, I think these three candidates have done an excellent job of articulating what they want to see in the City. This is as issue-based race as I've seen in a long time and I appreciate it. There's a lot of, "Here's what I'd like to do." And I just really appreciate that. A lot of races tend to say, "Look over here, look over there, but not right at what I'm trying to do." That is not the case. All the mail has been very specific.
Crystal Fincher: [00:22:21] Yeah. Which I appreciate and I think is actually necessary at this point in time - not just that someone has a vision, and we've heard lots about people's visions. Or even that they're supported by, "I've got a ton of endorsements." Lots of candidates can tout that, but what do you actually plan to do with your power and authority and your jurisdiction? What are your plans? Not what we can do regionally, not what we need partners to do, or what we can study and learn more about doing, but what are your actual plans? What action will you take? I really do hope voters take a look at what candidates have said on that. And to your point, in that City Council race, there certainly is a lot that have been talked about for what the candidates actually plan to do, the action that they plan to take. And I hope they look at the mayoral race through that lens to say, "Okay. It's one thing to say, 'Yes, I believe in equity and treating people well, and we can have a better Seattle tomorrow,' but what have they committed to doing? What are our concrete steps and concrete actions beyond 'A lot of people support me?'"
Marco Lowe: [00:23:42] And I give a little bit of credit to Nikkita Oliver on that. Anytime they're on stage, they are ticking off boxes. And even on Twitter, they said with a retirement of Seattle police officers, this money should be going to these kind of community groups. And again, this is a constant statement of what they would do in office. So, just - you kind of set the example - and the other candidates, it's hard to be on stage if you're not doing that as well.
Crystal Fincher: [00:24:13] Very hard to be on stage if you're not doing that. I mean, just drawing on - we had conversations with all three of those candidates on Hacks & Wonks, and I heard a lot of information in detail and frankly, leading by example, from Nikkita Oliver, Brianna Thomas. Heard a lot of" I don't know"s from Sara Nelson and "We'll have to study that and figure that out." it's also interesting to see how campaign candidate rhetoric evolves throughout the campaign. So, a little bit more polished, but I certainly think that it is more natural for some candidates to be more action and ownership focused than others. And I think that's really important, especially at a time like this, when so much needs to be done to get us on the right track.
Marco Lowe: [00:25:09] Sometimes just where they are in the race too. They're kind of - I mean, where I've started with some candidates early on at positions and later they may get better, but I agree, that's going to be a really interesting race.
Crystal Fincher: [00:25:23] Going to be a really interesting race. So, we've covered races. Another thing that I wanted to talk about this week is it's taken a little bit for the state to compile all the numbers on what the impact of the historic heat wave that happened as a result of climate change was, but 112 deaths is the current toll. Throughout the entire Northwest - hospitalizations up over 60x. Not 60%, but 60x higher than what they normally are. So, the toll that the heat took on our communities was huge and devastating. It was the most lethal weather event that Washington State has ever had. And by all accounts, more extreme heat is something that we have to be expecting, because of climate change over the coming years. So this is something that our state and local governments have to prepare for. And frankly, it seemed like a lot of them were caught flat footed with, "Oh, heat coming. Oh, it's just another heat wave." We have some of these occasionally, but especially with the amount of folks that we have who are unhoused, who are vulnerable with a low percentage of air conditioning in homes and apartments now. This - you could see it coming - was a major threat to people's health and wellbeing.
And it just seemed like a lot of governments were viewing this as something that was happening, that they didn't have to prepare for, that they weren't responsible for. And I think that we have to have a massive shift in attitude that, "Hey, this is something that is predictable - the consequences, the deaths, and the casualties are preventable. And we actually have a responsibility to prevent it." How did you see that play out?
Marco Lowe: [00:27:30] I agree. A lot of local governments looked very flat-footed and we saw this temperature coming over a week away. And that's just irresponsible to not have both cooling centers, and how you get people there. The humans that are most vulnerable to this heat, whose bodies can't cool themselves. And at 105°, nobody's cooling themselves.
Crystal Fincher: [00:27:47] No one.
Marco Lowe: [00:27:49] But the most vulnerable aren't often driving. We have a whole issue with seniors in America that are somewhat stranded. Whether they can't drive, they live in a non-walkable community, what have you. So it's not just that you open the centers, but you get people in the center. And you staff them and people may be sleeping in those centers, because the night did not get better. So we have this immediate tactical response that we need to have better going forward, because we're not done. 2021 has been a B-roll for a disaster film - Texas mold, China and New York rain, Northwest heat, the fires in Oregon, in Washington, California, and the smoke that's gone all the way to New York City. We are in climate change, people are dying, and we have to react now.
The other thing I'll throw in is that we are watching a fight in Washington, D.C., over an infrastructure bill that has in it more money towards renewable energy, so we can decarbonize this world. And America has to be a leader on it, because we are most of the carbon. So, to have both this tactical response and strategic response is essential and immediate and there's not a this or that. It is all of the above.
Crystal Fincher: [00:28:53] It is all of the above. And I forget who it was on Twitter, but someone very astutely tweeted like really there is no neutral action on climate change. Every piece of legislation that every City Council person advocates for, passes, mayor legislator, there is no neutrality on climate change, on pollution. We have to examine every piece of legislation and say, is it hurting or is it helping? And to that point, we have a transportation package coming up in our State Legislature, where this has been a big point of conversation and contention - in that, are we going to continue to push for highway expansion and building and road expansion, which is the number one source of pollution. Over 40% of greenhouse gas emissions and a lot of air pollution is directly attributable to the transportation sector. So, are we going to continue and move in that direction? Are we going to start to move in the other direction?
And to your point, climate change is here. We are dealing with it. And we also talked about, before the show - a point you made, which is very true - a lot of people have been pushed out of the city, because of affordability, into suburbs. A lot of our most vulnerable people now live in suburbs. And what people always hear talk about the "inner city," which is really a relic of the past, especially here on the West Coast. And that extreme poverty and some of that hardship is now in suburbs, who do not have the human services infrastructure that was built and developed in cities. And so, access to transit, access to assistance and help, just the visibility and prioritization of human services and health, in a lot of these suburbs and rural areas just does not exist. And it's not something that they've even factored in before and thinking in conversation. So, we're so behind. And so, experiencing these lethal challenges with some governments who just up to now aren't up to the task, we just need a rapid redeployment of resources, a rapid getting electeds up to speed, and demand from people in every city that you're in, that this is an essential service of government. Fundamentally, they're there to protect their residents and to keep them from foreseeable harm. And this is a threat that we know exists.
It's so interesting seeing how heat and climate related disasters are covered in comparison to a lot of other things. Because there's this tendency for media to just cover it as an extreme weather event, disconnected from anything else, and like, wow, that was wild. Who could have predicted that? Or that was a once in 100 year event. We've seen these once in 100 year events, several times a year, all over the place. This is what climate change is. We have a responsibility to prevent it from getting worse. And man, we're already in for it getting worse and more just trying to prevent Earth from being uninhabitable for a majority of its people and for mitigating those impacts.
So, we have to take action. I've certainly been vocal about this and the responsibility that local governments have to their residents to protect them. And that deaths and injuries that result are really a matter of negligence at this point, because we know what these consequences are. And either we choose to act and protect people or ignore the risk, and people should be held to account for that.
Marco Lowe: [00:32:53] And if U.S. and, frankly, human history teaches us anything, when a crisis hits the wealthy will be taken care of. I mean, I have to - in my head, Exxon has a Dr. Evil lair some place, where they know they're going to be okay. I know that sounds crazy, but they know the data better than we do. They've been looking at it for 40 years and continued on their path. So if they're comfortable, it's not that they don't see the change, it's that they don't worry that it's going to impact them. And that has to be part of it. I will also just really - you said something that's worth putting a light back on. Legislation all needs a lens - is this making it better or worse? There is no middle land. I just think that's a really, really great idea.
Crystal Fincher: [00:33:35] Well, thank you so much - we are at this time - certainly, issues that we both feel very passionately about. But I just want to thank you, the listener, for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM, this Friday, July 23rd. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. And our wonderful cohost today was Professor at Seattle University's Institute for Public Service, Marco Lowe. You can find Marco on Twitter @MarcoLowe, it's M-A-R-C-O-L-O-W-E. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live show and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
Today on the show Crystal is joined by Vivian Hua, Executive Director of the Northwest Film Forum. They discuss Vivian’s path to leadership in the film forum, Vivian’s remarkable film Searching Skies which explores the Syrian refugee experience during a holiday dinner in America, supporting emerging artists through the pandemic, and the need to have long-term cultural spaces available to artists.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s guest, Executive Director of the Northwest Film Forum Vivian Hua, on Instagram at @hellomynameisvee, and find the Northwest Film Forum on Twitter at @nwfilmforum. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources
Learn more about the Northwest Film Forum: https://nwfilmforum.org/
Watch Vivan’s film, Searching Skies: https://vimeo.com/208980578
Find the Office of Arts and Culture’s Cultural Space program: https://www.seattle.gov/arts/programs/cultural-space
See all of Vivian’s work: https://vivianhua.com/
Transcript
Transcript will be uploaded in the next 48 hours.
Primary ballots are in mailboxes now! Today friend of the show, former mayor of Seattle, and Executive Director of America Walks Mike McGinn joins Crystal on the show to discuss the front runners in the mayor’s race, how candidates need to be making the case to the public in these remaining weeks before the primary, and the psychology and emotion that drives Seattle’s voting decisions. And Mike delivers a fundamental election rule: Message quality multiplied by message delivery equals impact.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @frinchfrii and find today’s co-host, Mike McGinn, at @mayormcginn. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Resources:
“No incumbent in Seattle mayoral race, but candidates still running against City Hall” by Daniel Beekman: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/no-incumbent-in-seattle-mayoral-race-but-candidates-still-running-against-city-hall/
“Poll shows many voters still undecided, Bruce Harrell leading race for Seattle mayor” by Daniel Beekman: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/poll-shows-many-voters-still-undecided-bruce-harrell-leading-race-for-seattle-mayor/
“For the first time in years, there are 2 serious candidates for the King County executive” by David Guttman: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/race-for-king-county-executive-pits-experienced-well-funded-candidates-against-each-other/
“Seattle’s mayoral candidates have plans for homelessness, but they’re staring at an uncertain future” by Scott Greenstone: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/seattles-mayoral-candidates-have-plans-for-homelessness-but-theyre-staring-at-an-uncertain-future/
“The C Is for Crank: Correcting the Record on Compassion Seattle” by Erica C. Barnett: https://publicola.com/2021/07/13/the-c-is-for-crank-correcting-the-record-on-compassion-seattle/
Publicola Elections Coverage: https://publicola.com/category/elections/
South Seattle Emerald Elections Coverage: https://southseattleemerald.com/tag/2021-elections/
We the People Power Voter Guide: https://www.wethepeoplepower.org/voter-guide-2021
Primary Elections Endorsements:
The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2021/07/14/59065522/the-strangers-endorsements-for-the-august-3-2021-primary-election
The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/who-supports-who-in-seattle-elections-endorsements-roll-in-for-mayoral-council-races/
The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/06/28/the-urbanists-2021-primary-endorsements/
350 Seattle Action: https://350seattleaction.org/2021-elections
Transcript:
Crystal Fincher: [00:00:00] Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: activist, community leader, former mayor of Seattle, and Executive Director of America Walks - and a fire Twitter follow also, the excellent Mike McGinn.
Mike McGinn: [00:00:59] Yeah, you can find me on Twitter @mayormcginn. I just can't let go of that handle - it's just too good. But I'm really many years past it now, so thanks for having me on the show, Crystal.
Crystal Fincher: [00:01:11] No, absolutely. But you know what, you're always there to provide context and an informed opinion - and it's usually insightful, and useful, and often spicy. We get spicy McGinn a lot of times, and I like it.
Mike McGinn: [00:01:25] I'm not running for anything anymore so I'm just pure truthteller mode. No, 95% pure truthteller mode. I pull some punches. I do pull some punches still, Crystal.
Crystal Fincher: [00:01:35] Well, what I want to talk about is - ballots should be in your hands today, tomorrow. If you're listening to this, ballots are arriving in Washington State for primary elections. So it's a big deal. We've seen a wave of endorsements be released from major political organizations, media organizations - both The Times and The Stranger. So it is now time to vote - a lot that we've been talking about, all the candidates that we have been talking about - now the rubber is hitting the road and communication plans are in full effect. Mailers are hitting mailboxes, commercials are on TV, digital ads are all over the place, so how are you seeing this race standing right now, Mike?
Mike McGinn: [00:02:23] Mayor's race - I think at this point we're really down to three viable candidates - is where I would start. You can look at - fundraising numbers is one way to look at it, major endorsements is another. And Bruce Harrell has the Seattle Times and in early polling, he was what, at 17% or 18% or something like that, which is when you think about it, kind of low for an incumbent, somebody that the City knows. He's not incumbent in the office, but for being known.
Lorena González has The Stranger endorsement and lots of labor endorsements, got a big IEC from labor coming out. The theme of her campaign is her personal resume primarily is what she's running on. But she has the drag of being from the City Council. I don't know whether it's 29 or 39 City councilmembers that have run for mayor, and only Norm Rice actually pulled it off. And he had the tailwind of the Rainbow Coalition from Jesse Jackson running for president. And when he announced that coalition, that was the following year from the Jesse Jackson race, and he just vaulted in. And also a very skilled elected official. I mean, "Mayor Nice"? Who gets that nickname, "Mayor Nice"?
Crystal Fincher: [00:03:44] You didn't get that nickname?
Mike McGinn: [00:03:51] [Laughter]. And the other thing is - when you look at it is the right track, wrong track numbers in the City have been off the charts on all of the polls that have come out to date. And so if you're associated with what's been going on, that's going to give you a headwind.
I think that the third candidate in the race and full disclosure, I've endorsed Colleen Echohawk in the race. She's talking about the issue that people say is the most important one - homelessness - that comes out on top of almost every poll. That's the focus of her campaign. She organically raised a lot of money through vouchers - got there first, didn't have to hire people to collect them as opposed to the other candidates, and is the outsider.
The other candidates in the race are credible and have been treated as credible, but I think at this stage when you look at the fundraising numbers and the endorsements, I think it's going to be very hard for Andrew Grant Houston or Jessyn Farrell or Casey Sixkiller to come out of this primary with where they stand right now - the combination of institutional endorsers, dollars, message and political base that they're bringing into it.
Crystal Fincher: [00:05:10] So based on the polling that's come out, a number of people are looking at this as, okay, on the - conservative and progressive are different when used in Seattle than when used in outside of Seattle-
Mike McGinn: [00:05:24] Let's use right lane, left lane.
Crystal Fincher: [00:05:26] Right lane candidate being - looks like it's going to be Bruce Harrell, by polling and indications there, it appears to be that he is leading the right lane. And the left lane as you just talked about, it looks to be Lorena González, with potential Colleen Echohawk on her heels. How are both making the case that they can run against a right lane candidate and when?
Mike McGinn: [00:05:59] Well, and that's interesting. Part of the reason I think Bruce - well, the right lane always consolidates more than the left lane. It's like that Will Roger's joke about, "I don't belong to any organized party. I'm a Democrat." So the left is never powerfully organized and the right tends to consolidate. The other right lane candidates didn't really take off. And the left lane candidates all have a little more juice in them. And actually, given that Jessyn decided to endorse the Compassion Seattle Initiative, I'm not sure what lane she's in at this point, but both.
Crystal Fincher: [00:06:32] Well, and I think that's been a problem for her.
Mike McGinn: [00:06:34] Yeah, I think that's been a problem for her because this is a year that unlike prior years in which you had the Chamber of Commerce uniting with the King County Labor Council to decide on a candidate - that's what they did with Durkan, that's what they did with Murray. We're now back to - that's what they did with Mallahan, as I think about it. Right, and I got some union support but the Labor Council and a lot more of the unions went with Mallahan because labor was for the tunnel. Labor was for the tunnel and I actually heard from service worker unions that ended up endorsing him and they said, "We're taking a risk, all of our brothers and sisters are mad at us for supporting you because they really want the tunnel."
Crystal Fincher: [00:07:15] That tunnel.
Mike McGinn: [00:07:17] Yeah, that tunnel. So even though I was clearly the candidate for transit and working people against what I believed was a corporate bureaucrat who was running in the right lane, they still went with him. You still see that happening in politics today. The construction unions still have a lot of influence. So do the firefighters - they're quite conservative. And the Labor Council.
In this case, we don't have that - where the Labor Council and the Chamber are ordaining a leader. So we're seeing a business backing Bruce - they're consolidating behind Bruce. You're seeing labor consolidating behind Lorena, but you're not seeing all of the progressive left consolidating behind Lorena. You see it breaking up into more pieces there. So the argument as to, against Bruce, is insider versus outsider.
And I think that's going to be a huge challenge for Lorena in the general - right track, wrong track numbers. It's about the mayor but it's also about the Council. I ran in 2013 and I wanted the electorate to say, "Well, if you see conflict between the mayor and Council, look at what people are advocating and pick the person on the right side. By the way, that's me." That was my argument. But if you're close to City Hall, you might be able to do that - but people who are further away, they paint everybody with the same broad brush and it can be hard to distinguish yourself. And I just think that when you look at the polling to date and how low Lorena's numbers have been for somebody who's run city-wide multiple times, it really suggests she still has to go out and get a lot of votes. You probably got to get to 25% or so to get out of the electorate. So she's got to get from wherever she's starting - a long way. Everybody does, and Bruce has a shorter path to get there, but everybody's got to go a long way and the question becomes, does Lorena have a ceiling because of the negativity towards the City Council?
Crystal Fincher: [00:09:34] That's a really interesting question. I guess the variable that I'm also looking at in this is looking at candidates independently. It's always a different scenario than looking at them head-to-head with another candidate. Bruce, also being an insider, does that neutralize that whole insider argument? Really, and to be real, Colleen is a former head of the Downtown Seattle Association-ider. So it's not like she's a radical outsider.
Mike McGinn: [00:10:03] I don't think she was the head of the Downtown Seattle Association.
Crystal Fincher: [00:10:05] Was previously.
Mike McGinn: [00:10:07] I think she was just on the Board, but maybe I'm wrong.
Crystal Fincher: [00:10:09] On the Board, on the Board.
Mike McGinn: [00:10:10] She was on the Board, right. But just for the record, that's a spot that's given to the Chief Seattle Club. They are automatically on it because they are downtown and the DSA wanted a homeless provider on their Board.
Crystal Fincher: [00:10:22] Which is the case for a lot of different organizations. They have different spots there but also not known as a left-leaning organization at the same time. So looking at their policies and being associated with that from a policy standpoint does not quite paint the picture of an outsider in the way that a lot of people think of outsiders in terms of politics. A lot of people would view that as a more establishment qualification on the resume, but neither here nor there.
I think the bigger point I was making is that - does the fact that Bruce was formerly a Seattle City Council member, briefly mayor also - does that negate an insider argument if both people are former Councilmembers within Seattle-elected government, or does that more even the playing field and get to more of an issue-based stuff, or does the insider versus outsider argument still carry?
Mike McGinn: [00:11:22] I think that Bruce carries that baggage too. He's helped by the fact that he's been off the Council a couple of years, but he does carry that baggage too. There's no question about that. I think if the question is how would Lorena - if Bruce has consolidated the right lane and people are fighting for the left lane, the question becomes how would Lorena do against Bruce in a head-to-head and how would Colleen Echohawk do in a head-to-head? And I'll bet you, that in those types of heads, Colleen would do a lot better than Lorena. I would bet you that. But of course, we're only going to get to run one of these. That's the way it works. But if there were polling done, I bet you what those head-to-heads would show as well.
Crystal Fincher: [00:12:10] Always an interesting conversation on if there was polling done. And one of the things that we both have browsers refreshing right now is that the Northwest Progressive Institute, NPI, is actually going to be releasing public polling in the Seattle City Council, the mayoral races, several Seattle races. So that's going to be interesting to see actual public polling come out. They anticipated it being near the end of this week. Let's see if that actually comes out today. It wouldn't surprise me if it wound up being early next week, but we certainly are keeping our eyes on it.
Mike McGinn: [00:12:47] I also think you have to take a look at the messaging of the candidates. Bruce's messaging is, "I'm a decisive leader. I know how to get things done." That's also Lorena's messaging - "I'm a decisive leader, I know how to bring people together to get things done. And look at my resume, I'm a progressive." Colleen's message is, "I've dedicated my life to helping homeless people in Seattle, and I'm an expert on homelessness which is the most important issue in the city." And I think that the headwind that both Lorena and Bruce face in the general is that they're saying that they know how to get things done, but the public says, "Yeah, but you had your shot." And that's the biggest headwind that both of them will face in the general election.
Crystal Fincher: [00:13:35] Yeah. I'm also curious to see how much attention is paid to their donors and what their donors say. Because one, I think - continuing issue that we have in Seattle elections is ignoring that, and then being surprised that candidates vote pretty consistently in line with where many of their donors are at. That does not mean that their votes are necessarily bought. It just may mean that, "Hey, people see someone who has values that they feel are similar, that they feel is representing them." Not necessarily that they're buying it but that they see kinship there. And it really is telling where corporate interests see their candidate, and where labor and progressive interests see their candidate. And looking at the overlap between where major donors to Ed Murray, major donors to Jenny Durkan - and then look to see where those are at in the current races - a lot of them with Bruce Harrell. So is what we're signing up for really different if the traditional backers, if the coalition of donors looked similar to a profile of prior coalitions of donors? I wish we paid more attention to that in Seattle politics.
Mike McGinn: [00:14:58] I agree. And clearly the kind of the business side donor class is consolidating behind Bruce and they're going to have an independent expenditure for him. Labor is consolidating behind Lorena and they're going to have a big independent expenditure campaign for her. And it's hard to cross your base. It's hard to tell your base they're wrong. That's like an axiom of politics and you're absolutely right. It's not that it's pre-negotiated or bought, but it becomes hard.
And we saw that in play with Lorena when the police contract came up and the King County Labor Council urged a Yes vote on the contract, Lorena voted Yes on the contract because that's what labor wanted at the time, and the Community Police Commission wanted a No vote on that. We saw it very recently with the vehicle license fee. A stakeholder group came forward and said 75% of the $20 vehicle license fund, like $7 million a year - real money, but not big money in infrastructure. And the climate advocates and the alternative transportation advocates asked for, so the Council respect that. And labor said, "No, put it into bridges." The laborers, the carpenters and the King County Labor Council went down and said, "Nope, take the money from walking, biking and transit, put it into a bond for bridge repair." And that's basically what Lorena did on that one as well.
So you get the situation where the base, the people that pay for your elections - it gets hard to cross them on tough issues, on high profile issues.
Crystal Fincher: [00:16:47] I would just ask that as people are voting, consider that. Consider where their base is and what their history is of voting in line or not in line with those considerations. And certainly I know a number of people who agree with Lorena on a number of issues and that issue for a lot of people is the most challenging one. It's like, "Oh, but that police contract vote." is a sticking point for a number of - particularly further left-leaning progressives and where they're having a challenge in there.
But there's issues with that with every single candidate almost - although I did - someone referred to Andrew Grant Houston as - what did they call him - the Elizabeth Warren of the race because he has a plan for everything, like well thought out and well organized. But I would say, aside from him, most - just anecdotally, a lot of people are like, "I love this candidate except for major issue where there was a problematic vote or a problematic issue." Jessyn, it's Compassion Seattle. With Lorena, it's that police vote. People got stuck with Colleen on the initial indication of support for Compassion Seattle, which she later said she's not going to be voting for and she does not support. But that gave people a lot of pause. So there's a number of those with candidates.
Mike McGinn: [00:18:16] And I think over on the progressive side, that's absolutely right, and there's a little bit of - kind of arguing over who's in fact the most progressive. Although I think we can say that all of them have very strong progressive credentials. You don't represent homeless downtown, or come from Lorena's background and she's done great things in other areas.
But clearly, your point about labor is good. By the way, Bruce Harrell voted for that contract too. And Colleen asked for them to vote No. It's an interesting thing getting elected as I did in '09 without a lot of institutional endorsements. It meant that I actually had a lot more freedom of movement. Everybody was trying to figure out where I would land. At the same time, I also didn't have a whole cadre of people behind me who were looking to back me up and stand up for me when I got in.
Crystal Fincher: [00:19:14] That is the thing.
Mike McGinn: [00:19:15] It's an interesting mix. But it really did - people were really wondering when I got in, in 2010, well, where is he going to land? Because in the primary-
Crystal Fincher: [00:19:25] I was one of those wondering in 2010 where you were going to land.
Mike McGinn: [00:19:25] On the other hand, it gave me - it meant that I didn't - this is going to sound a little trite, but honestly, my biggest concern was responding to the voters because I had gone around the institutional endorsers for the most part to get to win. The Stranger endorsement was big, and I picked up some service worker unions and other individual endorsements but nothing like anybody else in the race did. So that makes a difference in governance as well as you pointed out.
Crystal Fincher: [00:20:01] Yeah, absolutely. And to be clear, the City of Seattle races are not the only races happening. We have a number of races. One, King County Executive race where certainly the two front runners are Dow Constantine, the incumbent who's been there and certainly in a strong position, versus Senator Joe Nguyen. What's you're read on where that stands right now?
Mike McGinn: [00:20:23] It's hard to say. I think that Dow, after 12 years in office, is going to be facing the same time for a change sentiment. But I think Joe has to make the case for change. I think if you look at - and Joe Nguyen has got a great progressive record in the legislature and you can hear his values when he speaks. Dow has to explain the Youth Jail, he has to explain the Mariners Skyboxes, he has to explain the bailout of the Convention Center. He's got to defend his record and explain why he is the agent of making things happen now after 12 years based on where things stand. So I think that's going to be a big challenge for him.
I think that is somewhat of a lower profile race. It doesn't necessarily deserve to be a lower profile race. It just is - the mayor's race is going to use up a lot more of the media coverage than the County Exec race will. So Joe has to make the case. He's got to aggressively pursue the change argument and what his values were. But it can happen. Look at Girmay vs Larry Gossett - it can happen. People can make a decision that it's time for a change even if they're not particularly angry at the incumbent, but they just think that the incumbent isn't delivering to their expectations of what they want to see at that time.
Crystal Fincher: [00:21:59] Yeah. This is going to be an interesting race to see, especially at the primary point. I think looking at the point where Joe Nguyen got into this Executive's race - before he got in, Dow, obviously incumbent not challenged by major Democratic candidate before that, was running away with all of the endorsements. After Joe declared, they've really split most of the endorsements. It has not been strong one way or the other. They've really been splitting a lot or just blocking each other's endorsements. There isn't enough for a consensus in a lot of places.
So I think the insider, more activist, more involved, and people who pay attention to those stuff all the time - which is a small percentage of people - are indicating that they view this certainly as a race. It's a whole different thing than communicating with voters who don't pay attention across an entire county. That's a heavy lift, a really heavy lift. And so for me, the question is can Joe Nguyen communicate that same kind of thing that makes the insider race competitive county-wide before the primary? Certainly, they have a lot more time for the general, assuming he makes it through which he should. But man, that's a lot of communication to people who don't pay attention.
Mike McGinn: [00:23:29] Who will be low information voters, right - which is why that kind of background, that insider or outsider thing takes on a larger influence in races like this. It comes in and they already have a frame for deciding the race. And what you were just talking about is something I call the "perception primary". Some people might call it the "money primary". But it's not just money - it's a perception and it's spread by the insiders.
And the thing about the perception primary is that people can be entirely wrong, in the perception primary. And that's, I think, one of the things you're highlighting here. Again, I'll go back to my own experience. In 2009, Greg Nickels had almost all the major endorsements and a lot of money. And the idea that he was vulnerable was actually the reason that I could get in the race. Nobody else would get in the race. He couldn't be beat. So the perception primary was keeping people out of the race. They said, "Well, we can't win the perception primary. We can't even get out of the perception primary." So I think that's always a challenge for a candidate is - can you survive the perception primary and I barely did. I barely did, let's be really clear about that. But I did survive it, but then once you got into the actual primary, I took first place.
So I think there's a thing that happens where we all get sucked into the perception of the race. So clearly, Joe has political insiders or the politicos, whatever you want to call them. People are like, "Yeah, Joe has got a shot." But now, he's got to take his case to the voters. That's a very perceptive observation.
And the same thing is true - I'll circle back to the mayor's race. There was a whole lot, I was doing a whole lot of - same thing happened in my '09 race. Remember when Jan Drago, a longtime City Councilmember got in the race, it was almost literally a headline of "Now it's a real race". Well, her highest polling numbers were the day she got in. And the two highest vote getters in the primary were two people who had never been in office before, me and Mallahan. So that was a case where the perception primary was just way off. And mayor's race, there's been a perception primary but this is a remarkably wide open race, more wide open than I think we've ever seen in my time watching.
Crystal Fincher: [00:25:57] It's pretty wide open. One thing that we talked about in terms of, hey, who appears to be leading here based on polling - the leading vote getter in polling is Undecided, really at this point-
Mike McGinn: [00:26:10] By a lot. We are engaging in some of that perception primary stuff too by saying message, dollars, institutional support should lead to votes based on what we know. But we could be wrong - because the nature - yeah. The biggest leader right now is Undecided.
So, once the paid media lands and once the media decides how they're going to frame up the race in the last few weeks - will really decide which candidates can propel a little bit and get to that finish line. Maybe they're starting in a different place to get to the finish line. I think two weeks before the ballots drop, I was polling 7% in the mayor's race, ended up at 28%. And Greg Nickels was polling at 22% and he ended up at 25%. So, he spent a lot of money, it just didn't move his numbers because he was in a context where he just couldn't. And I was.
And in 2017, I said, "I'm going to do this again," and the exact opposite happened. I started with a higher number and I went down because these people heard about the other candidates and they wanted someone new. So, it really drove home to me just how important the context of the race is, not what the early polls show. It all happens when the money drops and when the voters start paying attention - what movement do you start seeing then? That really happens.
Crystal Fincher: [00:27:48] Yeah. Now is when the race for real regular people begins. A lot of people realize that the race is happening once they get their ballot in the mail. It's like, "Oh, this is a thing." And usually along with their ballots, they're getting four mailers a day from here on out most of the time. So, it's going to be real interesting to see how effectively people can get their message across. And that's not an easy thing to do. It takes - you have to penetrate people's consciousness at multiple points, multiple times - in order to make a real impression. And so that takes - certainly a significant budget and just good message execution.
Mike McGinn: [00:28:40] Well, good message too. That was part of the point I was making about '09. But I really learned it in 2007 when I worked on the - Roads and Transit campaign. So, to refresh people's memory, the legislature decided to - that a regional Roads and Transit ballot would go in front of the public in 2007. And it included money for light rail but it also included money for highway expansion. And the Sierra Club - we decided to fight it because we believed it was bad for global warming. And I think we got the Cascade Bicycle Club with us and no other institutional endorsers. A few elected officials joined us late. But it was all the elected officials, business, labor, most of the environmental groups supported the Roads and Transit ballot measure. They said it's the only chance to get light rail. They had $5 million to spend and the polling had them at like 56%. They ended up, I think, at 44% on election night. And we spent about $50,000. We had no money, but we had a really good message. And they spent $5 million, they didn't have a good message.
So, here you go. I now feel like I'm in Marco Lowe's Politics class. It's a mathematical equation, it's really simple. It's Message x Message Delivery = Impact. And if your message is - it's the only math you have to know in this. If you got an awesome message and zero delivery, no impact. And if you got a billion dollars of delivery and your message is a zero, zero times a billion dollars is still zero impact. It's both. You got to have a good message. You got to deliver it. And now, we're going to find out who's got the message in these races that actually moves voters.
Crystal Fincher: [00:30:40] Yeah. And a lot to learn from it and that will certainly inform how the message is developed in a general election. Certainly, your race - a number of races - have been instructive just for me personally in terms of how effective a message can be. But in a singular rallying issue, certainly you and transit-
Mike McGinn: [00:31:02] Kshama and 15 in her race-
Crystal Fincher: [00:31:06] Yeah. And Kshama was the other one - 15 Now.
Mike McGinn: [00:31:10] 15 Now, yeah. And I think that-
Crystal Fincher: [00:31:12] That was huge. That was very instructional for me.
Mike McGinn: [00:31:15] I think that Bernie Sanders got into that first race against Hillary Clinton, thinking he was just going to be a message candidate. I mean somebody to carry this message and use the race as a way to distribute a message. And he discovered his message about the power of Wall Street and the power of billionaires was really powerful. And all of a sudden, he was in a real race. The reporters say he didn't think that was going to happen and maybe if he'd realized that sooner, he might have won that one. Because you want to race differently when you're trying to deliver a message and when you're trying to win. But it's another example of how someone can have tremendous amount of institutional support, but somebody can come in with a better message and lap 'em, or at least give them a good run.
Crystal Fincher: [00:32:04] Well, Obama versus Hillary was message versus establishment.
Mike McGinn: [00:32:08] Great example of that. And so it's not necessarily about experience, or resume. It's about what the voters are looking for right then in a candidate. And you can run a race that - it's the context that's going to decide it, ultimately, more than the candidates.
Crystal Fincher: [00:32:33] Voting is an emotional decision. Voting is not a logical decision. And to your point, it really is about how you can connect, how your message and the vision that you're painting connects with voters. And if you can tap into what they're feeling, both their frustrations and their aspirations, that is the key. Like - "We don't have to be here. We can be in a better place. I can bridge that gap and get us there." Make that connection to the voters - that sticks.
And helping to have, I think, in your case and Kshama's case and certainly looking nationally in Obama's case, but on a local level with a number of people, to be able to paint a very clear image of where you can go. You were very clear on your vision. Kshama was very clear on her vision, to the point like other people have no problem repeating and defining where you stand. And I actually think that's kind of the crux of where people have challenges with candidates. It's like, "Okay, explain the candidate to me." And if they have a hard problem doing that, that's a problem for the candidate. They need to be able to say, "Oh, Kshama is 15 Now candidate. Mike is the transit candidate."
Mike McGinn: [00:33:56] The fact that I rode a bike actually delivered a lot of message. I was an environmentalist who cared about transit and walking and biking and alternatives. Those things really mattered. And if your supporters can't explain why you're running, you have a problem because so many votes are actually gained by your supporters carrying the message on your behalf. So, it's got to be really simple - people complain about sound bites and I understand, because they feel like it oversimplifies the issues, but the reality of somebody running for office or running an advocacy campaign is they have to be able to boil their message down and express it in a way that actually has impact and conveys meaning to people. It's a lot harder than it looks to do that. It's a lot harder and I think people don't fully appreciate the role that a few words can play in delivering a message that moves voters, or moves people to action in an advocacy campaign.
I think of "Defund the Police", everybody is picking on Defund the Police - that it hurts Democrats, and it may well hurt Democrats. But that wasn't a message invented by Democrats to a bunch of people in swing districts. That was a message invented by activists to call attention to the role of policing America. And by that measure, it seemed like a whole lot of people were repeating their message. And again-
Crystal Fincher: [00:35:38] A whole lot of people repeating the message functionally. In several areas, including here in Seattle, more movement both in rhetoric and in policy than we have seen in the past 20 to 30 years in most instances. And a clear delineation between action that is inconsequential and what is just rhetoric - like a reform conversation - versus Defund is a clear bright line of if we aren't addressing the resources involved with this, if we're just tinkering around the edges of maybe some trading and stuff, that that actually is not getting us where we need to go.
Mike McGinn: [00:36:17] And I think that is just completely on point, Crystal. It came from a constituency that's been yelling for decades, if not longer, at not being heard. And somebody is now hearing the message and having to confront it and respond to it - the criticism that, "Well, it's not a perfect message and it might hurt somebody else over there," that's kind of a secondary concern to the activist who's been ignored already.
Crystal Fincher: [00:36:45] 100%. 100%.
Mike McGinn: [00:36:47] Now having said that, I've noticed that that's not a prominent phrase in this year's City Council or mayoral elections.
Crystal Fincher: [00:36:57] No - no it's not.
Mike McGinn: [00:36:58] But it served its purpose in the moment and now people have to move and find a different way to try to move the debate. And actually, I think that is-
Crystal Fincher: [00:37:05] But it actually set the stage for the debate that we're having now - and determine the lanes and set the parameters. So now, there are discussions about what percentage of funding, how're we going to divert. And so it's not an explicitly Defund conversation - but starts with where are the resources, what are we doing with the actual funds, what are the budget numbers and items. And so kind of like talking about the bridge, or the tunnel - the tunnel, the tunnel, the tunnel was an issue that stood for a whole set of policies.
Mike McGinn: [00:37:43] It stood for climate. It stood for using tax dollars wisely. It stood for equity - that transit was a better investment than highways. All of that was in play there. Boy, it kind of takes me to another topic I hesitate to bring it up, but there's a little bit of a test. This year is a test. Two years ago was a test too of where is the electorate right now on a lot of these things. The Compassion Seattle Initiative is an example of that. Now, it's written in such a way that people can see things in it that aren't there or not see things in it that are there. The vote is happening. It's become a little bit of a litmus test for left to right, but not completely. I saw former City Attorney Mark Sidran speaking up - I saw an article he was speaking up at a Belltown forum - saying you can't support Compassion Seattle, it's too lenient on the homeless.
So, I think this why I'm laughing because there's such a swirl around this issue. But I think that's kind of one of the issues out here - is homelessness is clearly the most important issue in the city right now. That's what's showing up on the polls, and that's what people care about. But then you have to dig a layer deeper, what does that mean? What kind of city are we? Do we go to, "Yeah, so we need to build more housing," or do we get to, "We need to kick them off the streets and parks"? And that's the other thing that's kind of really very much in play this year. And the fact that Compassion Seattle is on the ballot and who's backing it - now that we see who's backing it, now that its contours become a little more clear - you can see that in a way it's designed to try to boost voter turnout of those who might vote for the right lane candidate.
Crystal Fincher: [00:39:50] Absolutely.
Mike McGinn: [00:39:50] That's what it feels like to me. This is a political ploy more than a reasoned solution. And we declared an emergency on these six years ago, for crying out loud, but we haven't really treated it like an emergency in that six years. It was just - and there's only so many task forces or government structures and emergency resolutions you can pass before the public goes, "Well, what the hell are you going to do?" And that's really a big issue. Is it a progressive response to homelessness or not a progressive response to homelessness? That's going to be a task for the Seattle electorate in the City this year. I know which side I come out on, and I hope the City comes out on the right side of that too.
Crystal Fincher: [00:40:34] Yeah. I mean it is in reality. And Erica Barnett, in PubliCola, actually did a great piece this week on - what do its advocates say versus what does the text actually say? They're very different things. It is clearly not a progressive policy. It is clearly being, trying to be - it's dressed up in progressive clothing - from the name on down and what they're saying. So, it will be very interesting to see, but that's one of those where the simple messaging on that - the easiest way to message, the simplest way to message is very deceptive and it makes it seem like, "Hey, this is finally going to do something and take care of something and people who don't just want to see people swept. But hey, there's money for this and they're going to help." You can message all of that in a way that a lot of media organizations are carrying without question, and the text doesn't jive with what their messaging is.
Mike McGinn: [00:41:38] I have a sense that the confusion about what it really means will hurt it in the same way that it hurts many initiatives. That initiatives always often suffer from the public response if it's not well thought out, it's not well-thought through, that the legislative process enables things to be a more nuanced approach. And I think that that is going to be a drag for the proponents of this getting it through, which is good, from my perspective.
But even so, its level of popularity overall even without those negatives of we're not quite - maybe it's not built right, maybe it's got some bad provisions in it, maybe it's not well-thought through. I still think the level of support is going to be so high, even if it fails, that it kind of shows how fed up people are with no action from government on this issue.
Crystal Fincher: [00:42:37] I agree with that. The issue is that people are so tired of this problem not being taken care of. It's been declared a crisis in overlapping jurisdictions - that it's been the top priority - and people have seen the issue get worse, not better. So, it is something. It's doing something, and some people I think are just willing to say, "Well, it's time to do something, and we've seen politicians dither for years. And so we have to do something." That is the challenge, I think the biggest challenge.
Mike McGinn: [00:43:10] I don't know whether it passes or fails. Even though I was kind of leaning on it, I think it might fail, but I also think it might pass. Back then, maybe here's a close. Maybe we've reached the end. I think that that we have to do something kind of feeds back to the County Exec race we talked about, feeds back to the mayor's race - how that will affect people that were more in the position to do something and those that weren't. And even how it affects the race between Nikkita, Sara Nelson, and Brianna Thomas. Granted, none of them are incumbents but one worked for a City Councilmember and one is clearly the right lane and one is clearly the left lane.
Crystal Fincher: [00:43:52] Technically, two have worked for City Councilmembers, but Brianna currently-
Mike McGinn: [00:43:56] Oh that's true - Sara did for many years. I shouldn't say that, but Brianna more recently. Actually true - Sara worked for City Councilmembers for quite a long time and was working for Councilmember Conlin when I was mayor and we interacted with her quite a bit.
So, yeah, I think that this overarching sense is something that's going to be feeding into all of the races and what's the power of that - given the specific people in the race and their personalities and their platforms and their supporters and their messaging - remains to be determined in each one. But I think it's a powerful driver in all of the races.
Crystal Fincher: [00:44:32] Yeah, I agree with that. I think people are fed up and impatient at the moment. For what is the question - they are unhappy with where things are at. Most people do feel like things are on the wrong track for one reason or another. And so what to do with that is the question.
Mike McGinn: [00:44:53] Never seen wrong track numbers this high, never seen them this high in my years of following it. It's really astounding numbers on the wrong track.
Well, let's Crystal, you and me, we're trying to get the City on the right track in our own ways. And maybe not everybody agrees with our ways, but I'm for all the people out there fighting to make it get it back on the right track. So, maybe we'll lead back with everybody.
Crystal Fincher: [00:45:21] Yeah, I'm with you. Getting things on the right track, taking action. I do think people have to - I do think people owe an explanation, who have been in power - an accounting of what they have done with that power. And I think that we are seeing in a lot of different places - certainly, with - Republicans are not hesitant to use whatever power they have and wield it in whatever way they can. I think a lot of frustration with Democrats is that a lot of people say, "Hey, you have the power to enact so much change and not much is happening," and feeling frustration with that. Certainly, that's not universal. Republican inaction is notorious. But people have to account for the power that they have. And I think people are like, "Dude, I'm electing you to use your power to do something." And I think people who can make the case that they will do something with the power that they have will fare well if they can communicate that effectively.
Mike McGinn: [00:46:23] And I'm not running for office, so I'll say this. I think the voters too, have to hold themselves accountable as well. There's a little bit of, it's not easy to cut through all the rhetoric and the misrepresentations and all the rest. But ultimately, get out and vote this time - like we get the elected leaders sometimes that they get past us or they get in. And it's up to the voters to really hold them accountable. So, take your time. You don't have to take my word for who the right candidate is, or Crystal's, or any endorsers. Take your time to dig in and definitely take your time to vote. It's a low turnout election year. Sorry for just being - but it's a low turnout year. And what we know is people are calibrating their arguments and their policy positions based on who they think is going to vote this year. So, you get out there and you vote and upset the applecart a little bit. Maybe you can get some people in there who are more progressive.
Crystal Fincher: [00:47:26] Yeah. And I think I said it in another show - vote your conscience. For me, I am a strong believer that in primary elections, a lot of people are like, "Well, am I throwing away my vote if I vote for someone who I feel is not in the lead?" And that's a whole host of people because right now, there's lots of talk about who's in the lead - although to be clear, Undecided voters are the plurality of voters right now.
But vote for the candidate who you feel most closely matches your values because whether or not that candidate makes it through, that is a statement of values and that's a statement that all other candidates pay attention to. If X candidate that stands for a range of values doesn't make it through, but they're 15% of voters, especially in a general election where more than likely no candidate is going to be approaching 50%, probably not 40%, probably closer to 30%. They're going to have to put together a cohesive platform that can consolidate the other voters.
And if they see that, "Oh, man, I am not going to get out of this without addressing climate. I'm not going to get out of this without meaningfully making sure people feel safe, without meaningfully addressing the issue of unhoused people on our streets." Make sure that they take notice of where you actually stand in terms of your values. And you don't have to compromise in a primary election. The choice in the general will be between two people and that's where you have to kind of look at, "Okay, what's the better choice, neither of them probably are going to be ideal on everything but the best choice." But vote your values now, please.
Mike McGinn: [00:49:11] Let me put it this way - 90% of the elections, I'm with you. And boy, would I love some ranked-choice voting in a race like this. I would love to see ranked-choice voting in - so order the ones you want. So, you won'thave to worry about the strategic vote.
But I think there are sometimes some races you want to vote for the person who you think stands the best chance of winning the general too. And I think this might be one of those as we talked about earlier. I think sometimes you have to look at that one too. And that certainly I think was a factor in getting Biden through the election. I think one of the reasons that the Black voter supported Biden so much, in addition to having a relationship with him and knowing where he stood, was also knowing they didn't want to take a chance on Trump. And they thought Biden had the best shot.
Crystal Fincher: [00:50:03] And mistrust of other voters that they would vote progressively and not betray the vote that people might take if they voted their conscience. Yes, yeah.
Mike McGinn: [00:50:13] Yeah, and so it's a tricky one. I wish strategic voting weren't a thing. I think there are sometimes when it is. And so that may be where we are this time too, but you can't and you shouldn't vote for somebody if you don't feel good that they're going to advance the causes you believe in at the end of the day. That's the thing that matters. So, do your homework, folks.
Crystal Fincher: [00:50:38] Do your homework. We'll certainly include a lot of links - lots of organizations have endorsed - we'll include links from a variety of organizations - Times, Stranger, Urbanist, PubliCola, Transit RIders Union. There are a number of organizations and you can read through their rationale about why they made the decisions that they made. I find that helpful in sometimes trying to wade between which candidates I'm debating on. But please do that.
We thank you so much for taking the time to listen to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, July 16th, 2021. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was activist, former Seattle mayor, Mike McGinn. You can find Mike on Twitter @mayormcginn - that's M-C-G-I-N-N. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. And now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live show and our mid-week show delivered to your podcast feed. You can also get the full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show today at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.